NOW ENJOYING CONTINUAL SUCCESS, THE GIANTS WILL HONOR THEIR ROOTS
By DAVID WALDSTEIN (FROM THE NYTIMES)

DETROIT — It has become Mike Murphy’s new biennial tradition. When the Giants win the World Series, he immediately calls Willie Mays. And then he calls his wife.
The Giants’ celebration of winning the World Series, as in 2010, will spill into New York, where the franchise played until 1958.
It’s understandable. Murphy, the Giants’ avuncular equipment manager, and Mays share a deep friendship. It goes all the way back to Murphy’s first day with the team as the Giants’ bat boy in 1958, the year the club moved to San Francisco from New York.
In 2010, when the Giants won their first World Series as a Bay Area team, Murphy did the same thing as he did Sunday night. And the Giants as a team are basically sticking to their script, too. After they won in 2010, they paid homage to their New York roots by sending Mays, the star catcher Buster Posey and the championship trophy to Manhattan for what amounted to a sentimental victory tour of the city.
And now they’re going to do it again. “We’re bringing it back,” exclaimed Giants General Manager Brian Sabean amid the euphoric celebration here Sunday night after his team won Game 4 to sweep the Tigers. “Tell everyone in New York to get ready, because we’re coming with it.”
That may not be such heartening news to the Mets and the Yankees, the two local teams who would prefer to be parading the trophy around the city themselves. But instead it will the Giants, who played in New York for more than 70 years. It was in January 2011 that the Giants contingent carried out its initial championship visit. Sabean was part of the group, as was the team president, Larry Baer, now the team’s chief executive. They met with two groups of old-time New York Giants fans, all of whom faithfully attended games at the old Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan and never lost their love for the team, despite being abandoned by it. The fans regaled Mays with their recollections of his majesty at the Polo Grounds, and happily listened to his stories.
In addition, Mays and the rest of the Giants contingent visited a public school in Harlem, where Mays told students about living in their community as a young player on the Giants. And the Giants also took the trophy down to Finnerty’s, a Second Avenue pub that has become a New York hub for transplanted Giants supporters from the Bay Area.
“It was a really cool trip,” Posey said Sunday, not long after his two-run homer helped the Giants win the title.
Although there was real heartache when the Giants, who were founded in 1883, left New York, their departure did not engender the same animosity that the Dodgers encountered in deserting Brooklyn for Los Angeles. For one thing, it was the Dodgers’ owner, Walter O’Malley, who was seen as the catalyst — or culprit — in the decision of both teams to move to the West Coast; for another, the Giants, despite their distinguished history in New York, did not have the romance attached to them that the Dodgers did in Brooklyn.
The bitterness was simply more profound among Dodgers fans and, as such, it might be harder for the Los Angeles Dodgers to ever attempt a victory tour of Brooklyn similar to what the Giants are now doing in Manhattan for the second time.
“The whole thing with New York is that we see ourselves as a 130-year-old franchise,” Baer said. “It’s not just the 55 years in San Francisco. The New York roots are important to us and we don’t forget them, so yeah, I’d like to bring the trophy back. I think we should do it every time we win.”
Shawon Dunston, a spring training instructor and part-time coach for the Giants, grew up in Brooklyn, where he was a high school baseball star. His parents still make the borough their home. Dunston said that when the Giants take the trophy back to New York this time, he wants to be a part of the celebration. He also noted that the current Giants had a strong connection to another New York team — the Yankees.
After all, Sabean worked in the Yankees’ front office, and Dick Tidrow, the Giants’ scouting director, was a pitcher on the Yankees’ championship teams in 1977 and 1978. The Giants coaching staff also includes several other former Yankees, most notably Dave Righetti, the pitching coach.
“We learned from the Yankees,” Dunston said. As for the Giants becoming a West Coast dynasty that would mimic the Yankees’ overall success, Dunston said, “We’re not there yet, but we’re getting close, yes we are.”
In fact, the Giants, who now have seven championships, are still 20 shy of the Yankees. Their first title came in 1905, and all six before now were celebrated in New York at some point. And now the seventh will be, too. Perhaps with Mays again joining in the celebration.
“He was all excited and said, ‘Murph, we won it again,’ ” Mike Murphy said Sunday night in the champagne-drenched Giants clubhouse as he recounted his phone call with Mays. “He said he was on pins and needles the whole game. We waited a long time for the first one. Now it seems like every other year, we win one.”