When Rivals Became Saviors: How the Dodgers Kept the Giants in San Francisco

In the fall of 1992, the San Francisco Giants were all but gone. After years of struggle, both on the field and at the box office, and after repeated failed efforts to secure funding for a new stadium, the Giants were on the verge of relocating to St. Petersburg, Florida. The plan was not theoretical. It was finalized in writing. A Tampa Bay ownership group led by businessman Vince Naimoli had reached an agreement in principle to buy the team from longtime owner Bob Lurie. A domed stadium in Florida sat ready to receive a franchise, the ownership group had financing in place, and Major League Baseball appeared prepared to make it happen. The Giants were going to leave San Francisco, and it was only a matter of time.

But something strange happened. Something that rarely happens in sports let alone in the world of billion-dollar franchises and cutthroat rivalries. The rival that had once shared the city of New York with the Giants, the team that had followed them west in 1958 and had traded barbs, beanballs, and pennants with them for over a century, decided to step in. The Los Angeles Dodgers, or more precisely, their owner Peter O’Malley, made a choice that stunned both insiders and fans. He chose to fight to keep the Giants in San Francisco.

To understand the gravity of this decision, one must first comprehend the severity of the situation in the Bay Area. Candlestick Park had long been a source of misery for fans and players alike. The swirling winds that tore across the outfield made fly balls a game of guesswork. The stadium was hard to access and lacked the amenities modern fans had come to expect. Repeated referendums on building a new stadium had failed at the ballot box. Bob Lurie, a generally respected figure and a man who had tried for years to keep the team rooted in the city, reached his breaking point. In August 1992, he agreed to sell the team to the Tampa Bay group for $110 million. There were newspaper covers that treated the news like an obituary. Local sports radio sounded like a wake. Fans in the Bay Area felt betrayed, even though many had long since stopped attending games. Others were angry but not surprised. The Giants had been losing, and the region’s attention was increasingly focused on the powerhouse Oakland A’s across the Bay.

As the sale moved toward formal approval, Major League Baseball’s other owners prepared to vote on the relocation. Under the league’s rules, such a move needed the approval of three-quarters of National League team owners. It was expected to pass. Tampa Bay had long been promised a team. The region had already built a stadium, the Florida Suncoast Dome, and had been courting franchises for years. The area had previously missed out on expansion teams and had endured false starts. This time, it seemed they would finally get their team. But not everyone was comfortable with the idea of letting one of baseball’s oldest franchises be uprooted. And no one felt more strongly about that than Peter O’Malley.

O’Malley, the son of Walter O’Malley, who had moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, understood the consequences of franchise movement better than most. He had grown up amid the backlash to the Dodgers’ relocation. He had watched lifelong fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers refuse to root for the team ever again. He had witnessed the cultural rupture that occurred when baseball teams left their hometowns. More importantly, O’Malley was a traditionalist, a steward of baseball’s history in an era increasingly dominated by television contracts and market forces. To him, the Dodgers-Giants rivalry was not a quirk of scheduling or an incidental connection. It was one of the core pillars of National League history. From the days of Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds to the golden years of Willie Mays and Don Drysdale and the 1960s and 1970s battles in the newly built stadiums of Los Angeles and San Francisco, the rivalry has remained essential to the sport’s mythology.

So O’Malley did something rare. He made calls. He lobbied other owners. He told them that letting the Giants leave would be more than a business decision. It would be a historical betrayal. He argued that the rivalry brought value not just to the teams involved but to the league itself. National League owners listened. Some were surprised to see such impassioned advocacy from a rival. The economic argument swayed others. Still, others were moved by the idea of preserving something that could not be replaced. Ultimately, when the owners voted, the deal to relocate the Giants was rejected.

At the same time, a new offer emerged. Led by Safeway CEO Peter Magowan, a San Francisco-based investment group assembled a last-minute bid to buy the Giants and keep them in the city. Magowan, a lifelong fan who had attended games at the Polo Grounds as a child, believed the team could be saved. His group offered slightly less than Tampa’s, but they had the benefit of the owners’ newfound resolve to keep the team in California. More than money, they brought a plan to make the team relevant again. They immediately signed free agent Barry Bonds to a historic contract, sending a signal that the Giants were not just staying but aiming to win.

The team stayed. Tampa Bay was left empty-handed again. Years later, the region would receive an expansion team, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, but the sting of losing the Giants never fully went away. In San Francisco, the story became legend. From the brink of disaster came revival. Within a decade, the Giants would be playing in a sparkling new waterfront ballpark, one of the most beautiful venues in all of sports. Within two decades, they would be champions.

But none of that would have happened without the intervention of the Dodgers. In one of baseball’s strangest plot twists, it was their greatest rival who helped save them. The Giants might not have made it through 1992 without the votes Peter O’Malley helped line up. And without that, there is no Bonds era. No splash hits into McCovey Cove. No Lincecum. No Cain. No Bumgarner. No three titles in five years. No electrified crowds in black and orange erupting into October roars. There would be no rivalry as we know it.

That rivalry, still going strong today, carries the weight of a century of tension and triumph, and it owes its survival in part to a moment when history mattered more than business. It was a moment when baseball’s oldest grudge match was preserved not through bitterness but through respect, a moment when the Dodgers kept the Giants in San Francisco.