Giants Season Begins with Familiar Talent, Optimism

From Bay City News

The defending World Series Champion San Francisco Giants outlined a variety of celebrations, promotions and special events for the upcoming season today at their annual media open house held at AT&T Park in San Francisco.

Announcing details for commemorating their second World Series title in three years, Giants President and CEO Larry Baer touched on several aspects of the team's history, last year's victory, and what the organization has planned for the 2013 campaign.

"I'm proud to be accompanied by our twins here," said Baer, gesturing towards the Giants' two Tiffany World Series trophies that were on display.

"As we look into 2013, we've been able to do something that doesn't happen much in professional sports anymore, and that is to bring a team back," said Baer. "Essentially the core of the team is returning, and that is something I think is important for fans, and significantly important for the team itself."

Showing a series of new television ads, the Giants introduced this year's advertising theme as "Together + Again."

A number of spots revolved around events from the 2012 post-season run, including Pablo Sandoval's three home runs against Justin Verlander in Game one of the World Series, and how fan support purportedly helped power the feat.

One particularly humorous ad played on Hunter Pence's inspirational pre-game speeches, with a fictional recreation that spoofed John Belushi's famous speech scene from the comedy film "Animal House."

"It's really something that builds upon last year's 'Together' theme, and we feel really blessed that that theme was exemplified in many ways, not the least of which was of course on the field, with the team playing together and battling so much, including in the six elimination games."

Tom McDonald, Giants Senior Vice President of Marketing, added, "We have a great group of players that have very interesting personalities, that all seem to embody the word 'team.'

"The enthusiasm level of our fans is probably at an all-time high; it's really a very unique connection that has developed between the Giants players and our fans," said McDonald.

The Giants also announced that there will be a new "social media center" at AT&T Park, located in the former Build-A-Bear store, for fans to interact with each other via the Internet.

"We pride ourselves on being a hub for technology and the social media world; we're the number three most checked-in Facebook venue in the world, and each year we install more Wi-Fi capability to deal with that," said Baer.

Among the highlighted special events discussed were the raising of the World Series champions flag, Buster Posey's Most Valuable Player award presentation, and the ceremony where Giants players will receive their World Series rings.

The Giants start the 2013 season on the road in Los Angeles versus the rival Dodgers on April 1, and come home to celebrate Opening Day at AT&T Park on April 5 in San Francisco versus the St. Louis Cardinals.

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