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<\/p>\nSAN RAMON, Calif. \u2014 The line of cars waiting to turn into City Center Bishop Ranch stretched a quarter mile to the exits on I-680. The line of San Francisco Giants fans in front of the autograph tent spilled past the last of the stanchions. The team\u2019s first FanFest satellite event in the East Bay was a success before it even began.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d only done Sacramento, so it\u2019s good to do a different one,\u201d said Giants right-handed ace Logan Webb, meeting with reporters in a green room of a steakhouse before he ventured out to sign and shake hands. \u201cI\u2019m excited. I love the East Bay and \u2026 this is considered the East Bay, right? Yeah? All right. I love the East Bay. I love being out here.\u201d<\/p>\n
San Ramon is most definitely the East Bay. And it\u2019s most definitely a deliberate choice for the Giants to add a new stop on their caravan in territory that used to belong to their Bay Area rivals. Perhaps Giants fans already outnumbered A\u2019s fans in places like San Ramon and Pleasanton and Livermore. But there\u2019s no territorial pretense to respect any longer. The A\u2019s ceded their claim and are entering their second season untethered from Oakland and their former home at the Coliseum, instead treating a Triple-A ballpark in Sacramento as a waystation with an eye toward a permanent home in Las Vegas as soon as 2028.<\/p>\n
For the Giants, the East Bay has become just another population center where many of their fans reside. So one week after the Giants drew close to 6,000 fans at a satellite event in San Jose, they picked up stakes and continued the caravan in San Ramon. The official estimated attendance of 12,000 was their largest in three years since they turned FanFest into a series of regional stops.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the main priorities of FanFest is to go to the communities where our fans live and we clearly have tons of fans in the East Bay, given the record number who showed up today,\u201d said Shana Daum, the Giants\u2019 executive vice president of communications and community relations. \u201cWe are extremely grateful for all the support.\u201d<\/p>\n
Webb received cheers as he appeared in the autograph tent. Fans crowded the KNBR Q&A stage and chanted Jung Hoo Lee\u2019s name. A parade of women in traditional Korean hanbok dresses paraded down an escalator and waved the South Korean flag. Young pitchers Hayden Birdsong and Landen Roupp were also in attendance, along with left-handed reliever Erik Miller. So was new manager Tony Vitello, who also attended last weekend\u2019s stop in San Jose.<\/p>\n
Vitello grew up in St. Louis with split baseball loyalties because his father was a fan of all the Chicago teams. He can\u2019t pretend to understand the pathos of Bay Area sports fans just yet, but he didn\u2019t reject the suggestion that former A\u2019s fans can be swayed to the only team still in town.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone gets excited about being a part of a clan or a group and to have a park they can call home, and Oracle Park, I think, is going to become home, especially for some younger fans that are growing up as fans of baseball and experiencing new things,\u201d Vitello said. \u201cThey can latch on to the Giants.\u201d<\/p>\n
Webb has a deeper perspective on the subject. He grew up an A\u2019s and Raiders fan in Rocklin near Sacramento. Does he really believe that A\u2019s fans can be converted to wear orange and black?<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, my dad did it,\u201d said Webb, smiling.<\/p>\n
OK. How about former A\u2019s fans who don\u2019t have a son who\u2019ll take the ball for the Giants on Opening Day?<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I think so,\u201d Webb said. \u201cI think it\u2019ll be hard. You know, I\u2019m a Raiders fan, and they left for Vegas too and it was frustrating. But you\u2019ve either gotta stick with your team or not. And if not, the Giants are there with open arms if you want to be a Giants fan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe East Bay is such a good area for sports and I know a lot of people were pretty sad about losing a team. I mean, I was sad about it. I grew up an hour and a half away. I really enjoyed the Coliseum. I was one of few players who did, I think, and I missed going there last year, to be honest. For selfish reasons, I loved going to Sacramento (to play the A\u2019s), but it was just different.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n The Giants and Athletics split the last Bay Bridge Series played at the Coliseum in August 2024. (Darren Yamashita \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
\u201cGrowing up in the area, I think the Giants were already the biggest in Northern California. So I don\u2019t know how much changes, to be honest. The revenue part, how those things might change, that\u2019s over my head. But it could be an advantage. I just know right now, Northern California is already Giants country.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a few weeks, Webb will be wearing the uniform of another country. He\u2019s ecstatic about joining the pitching staff for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic alongside Cy Young Award winners Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes. Webb didn\u2019t want to disclose when he\u2019s scheduled to pitch in the international tournament, but he confirmed that he wouldn\u2019t start Team USA\u2019s exhibition game against the Giants on March 3 at Scottsdale Stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to, though,\u201d he said with a grin.<\/p>\n
The Giants are less thrilled about Webb\u2019s participation, given his prominent place on the roster and the inherent risk of a pitcher competing in March with far more adrenaline than you generate in a typical split-squad exhibition game. At the winter meetings in Orlando last month, Giants president Buster Posey left little doubt that the team hoped to talk Webb out of participating.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe perfect-case scenario for some of these pitchers that are asked to do it, with me being somewhat selfish, is you hope that they have an opportunity later in their career,\u201d said Posey, citing veteran starters like Adam Wainwright and Clayton Kershaw who pitched for Team USA. \u201cIt\u2019s a great event. But we\u2019ve also seen over the years that it can derail some pitchers, just because there\u2019s no way to replicate getting yourself ready for what\u2019s essentially a playoff baseball atmosphere in early March.\u201d<\/p>\n
Webb said he took the advice to heart. But he wanted to participate in 2023, when he backed out because he and the Giants were finalizing his five-year, $90 million extension. He\u2019d spent the past three years reading texted recruiting pitches from Team USA manager Mark DeRosa. In early November, Webb was visiting friends and attended an ERNEST concert that included a backstage pass to meet the country music artist on his tour bus. When the doors opened, Team USA bullpen coach David Ross was standing there along with ESPN personality Pat McAfee. Webb listened to their hard sell and made a verbal commitment on the spot. McAfee, wearing a Team USA hat and a cheeky grin, posted a captionless photo<\/a> of the trio to social media.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously (the Giants) have their thoughts about it,\u201d Webb said. \u201cThat\u2019s known. At the end of the day, it\u2019s my decision.\u201d<\/p>\n Webb stuck to his usual offseason program and started throwing in late November. He\u2019s thrown off a mound nine times. He figures that he\u2019ll have two exhibition starts under his belt before he leaves with Team USA for the first round of pool play in Houston. He\u2019ll be on a regular schedule for his final exhibition tuneups as well before he throws the first pitch of the 2026 Major League Baseball season on March 25 against the New York Yankees at the Giants\u2019 waterfront ballpark.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m trying to treat this offseason as normal as possible but definitely know there\u2019s gonna be more adrenaline going into springtime,\u201d Webb said. \u201cThe same buildup I\u2019ve always done. There\u2019s an intensity that\u2019s maybe amplified a bit but I think it\u2019s pretty much the same.\u201d<\/p>\n Lee will rack up a few more air miles when he leaves the Giants in early March. Korea will participate in pool play at Tokyo Dome. Outfielder Heliot Ramos will compete for Puerto Rico and right-hander Jos\u00e9 Butt\u00f3 will pitch for Venezuela.<\/p>\n Lee formally asked the Giants for permission to compete when Posey, Vitello and shortstop Willy Adames led a 17-person travel contingent on a goodwill tour of Korea earlier this month. The Giants sought to make marketing and business inroads in the country while Lee, a national celebrity and former KBO All-Star, is on their roster.<\/p>\n If Saturday\u2019s attendance at Bishop Ranch was any indication, making those inroads closer to home should be a simple task.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN RAMON, Calif. \u2014 The line of cars waiting to turn into City Center Bishop Ranch stretched a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,162,4,63,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342],"class_list":{"0":"post-536994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-giants","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-giants","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-oakland-athletics","12":"tag-san-francisco","13":"tag-san-francisco-giants","14":"tag-sanfrancisco","15":"tag-sanfranciscogiants","16":"tag-sf","17":"tag-sf-giants","18":"tag-sfgiants"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}