The Giants betray San Francisco. ‘Dear Giants’ letters won’t stop until they apologize.

This is part of Outsports’   series of “Dear Giants” articles featuring letters written by San Francisco Giants fans and sent to the team after their mishandling of this season’s Pride Night, with Bible verses written on Pride caps by three players intending to send an anti-gay message during Pride Night.

If I could ask one question to the three anti-gay “Christian” San Francisco Giants pitchers who chose to demean me and my entire community at Pride Night, it would be this:

Why are you so concerned about my 23-year love for my husband?

Why are these three anti-gay ” Christian” Giants players so concerned about my marriage — or any other union between two Americans — that they had to defile their Pride Night caps and tell us that we can’t have our community’s one symbol of unity — the rainbow — at one home game?

Yet the pitchers weren’t the worst offenders, not to me and not to just about anyone who has contributed to Outsports’ ongoing series with a “Dear Giants” — sent to team management expressing disappointment.

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If I could ask team management one question, it would be this:

Why do you continue to betray San Francisco?

It became clear a couple weeks ago, in the final days of Pride Month, that the Giants would not apologize for betraying their own city. That realization helped me understand that the people now running the Giants either don’t understand their own city, or they now openly reject it.

There’s an ethos in San Francisco that, unlike any other city in America, shines as a challenge to societal norms, advocating for individual social freedom.

The guy with no clothes walking around the streets of the Castro. The hippies of Haight-Ashbury. Even the rise of the city’s politicians — former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Presidential nominee Kamala Harris and rising left-wing star Scott Wiener.

The culture of San Francisco is different from all the other major American cities. It defines itself with activism, left-wing ideology and a level of personal freedom that leads the world.

So why are the San Francisco Giants betraying all of that?

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‘Dear Giants’ letters showcase uprising by fans against the team

That betrayal of culture is a common theme in the questions raised by Giants fans featured in our ” Dear Giants” series, which has over the last few weeks showcased the thoughts and insights of fans incensed by the team’s rejection of the LGBTQ community both during and since its own Pride Night.

Of course some trot out the old “It’s just sports” mantra to diminish these fans’ complaints.

For so many sports fans in San Francisco… No, it’s not.

Karla — she’s 79 and been cheering for the Giants as long as she can remember — named her dog, McCovey, after the legendary Giants player Willie McCovey.

Barry GH shared his letter to the Giants devastating team management a couple weeks ago. He wrote Baer and the team a follow-up email this week, detailing his journey through the stages of grief he, as a straight man and lifelong Giants fan, has felt.

“And finally acceptance,” he wrote, “which for me is that I simply no longer give a damn about my previously beloved Giants.”

Read that again. From a straight Giants fan in his 70s.

“I simply no longer give a damn about my previously beloved Giants.”

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Yet the fan letter that has hit me the most over the last month was from Annie S. She left the Bay Area a few years ago, but she’s remained a fan.

Her son has stayed in the Bay Area, and he attends several games a season. He’s named after Giants great Willie Mays.

Her husband proposed marriage to her shortly after a game when the Giants beat those hated Dodgers.

The Giants are part of her personal life. They always will be, in so many ways.

“Both our kids attended Giants games in San Francisco and San Jose from before the time they were born,” Annie wrote in her letter to the team. “They ditched school to attend World Series victory parades.”

It might be easy to dismiss a fan or two who says they won’t come to the ballpark anymore. That they won’t wear orange and black anymore.

This is much bigger than that.

The Giants have shed anywhere from 5% to 11% of their attendance since Pride Night, as we’ve reported.

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That drop isn’t about wins and losses. It’s about the very element of any city that a pro sports team represents: The culture.

“Our firstborn’s middle name is  Mays,” Annie wrote.” He rooted for ‘Wee Tok’ before he could pronounce Will Clark.”

That’s sports. And that’s what the Giants have lost.

SF Giants problem now extends well beyond the team

The San Francisco Giants have now created a problem beyond most of what we’ve seen in the last few decades with fans of any American pro sports team.

For the last three weeks, we’ve run a ” Dear Giants” letter every day that a fan sent to the team in response to the Pride Night rejection of the LGBTQ community and San Francisco culture.

We have many dozens more, but we’re going to be running them less frequently — a couple a week — in the coming weeks.

No, our “Dear Giants” series isn’t going away, and no, we don’t have a lack of letters to run. We have many dozens more.

We’ll keep publishing these letters for as long as it takes to get a real apology and real next-steps from the team.

A few people, including some Outsports readers, have reached out telling us it’s time to stop running these letters. It’s “overkill,” they have said.

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Ending our series would be following the orders of Giants CEO Larry Baer, who told the fanbase to “move on.”

Despite some homophobic naysayers claiming otherwise, yes, the Giants owe the City of San Francisco and their fanbase an apology for Pride Night and the weeks that have followed.

Until they get it, Outsports and our “Dear Giants” letter series are not going away.

If you are a San Francisco Giants fan and sent a letter to the team expressing thoughts about their Pride Night debacle, DM us on social media or email us at team@outsports.com

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