Sport
BREAKING; Earlier this week, the Giants reinstalled the statue on the opposite side
For the past four seasons of San Francisco Giants baseball, one of the six statues around Oracle Park has been missing. But now, just before the 2024 season begins, the statue of Willie McCovey has returned to its namesake’s waterfront.
Earlier this week, the Giants reinstalled the statue on the opposite side of McCovey Cove from Oracle Park, where it has been since it was first unveiled in 2003. But the statue is not in the exact same location it was before; it’s been moved a couple hundred feet west, to be a centerpiece of the newly built China Basin park and hangout space.
It’s all part of the team’s Mission Rock neighborhood development. The first phase of the development is nearing completion, with the park set to open by the Giants’ first regular-season home game April 5 and feature several food options and picnic space.
The construction of the Mission Rock complex drove the statue to be moved into storage, which the San Francisco Chronicle first reported back in 2020. The Chronicle was also first to report on the statue’s return earlier this week. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)
The statue of McCovey, who died in 2018, is one of six around the ballpark that mainly honor the Hall of Famers who have suited up for the Giants in their San Francisco era: Willie Mays sits at the corner of Third and King streets, while Juan Marichal is in front of the first base side entrance gate to Oracle Park. Both Orlando Cepeda and Gaylord Perry are on the third base side. The sixth statue is of a seal, in honor of the team’s mascot and the baseball team that predated the Giants in the city, and sits at the center field gate.
At the Giants’ media open house event Thursday, team president and CEO Larry Baer said the McCovey statue was a “constant source of discussion” before they eventually elected to store it in a warehouse, given the lack of real estate around the ballpark.
“It was a super bummer, frankly, that we couldn’t display it. What we didn’t want to do was put it someplace it was kind of inappropriate, in an out-of-the-way location,” Baer told SFGATE at Thursday’s event. “This is going to be, in today’s vernacular, an Instagrammable moment. It’s going to be right front and center.”
The statue’s move does take it outside Oracle Park’s extended fair territory, as its old location was theoretically reachable for a “splash hit” home run. It would have taken the longest-hit home run in the history of baseball to reach, and none of the Giants’ 102 splash-hit big flies have even gotten halfway across the cove, let alone close to touching the McCovey statue. Now, if a player somehow hit what Baer called a “moonshot” and reached the statue, it wouldn’t even be a home run but just a foul ball.
Still, Baer is thrilled that the statue is back where it should be after four years in storage.
“It’s sitting on McCovey Cove,” Baer told SFGATE. “I think Willie would love that
