Horace Charles Stoneham ( ; April 27, 1903 – January 7, 1990) was an American Major League Baseball executive and the owner of the New York / San Francisco Giants from 1936 to 1976.
Inheriting the Giants, then one of the most prominent franchises of the National League, from his father Charles in , he oversaw four pennant winners, including one World Series champion, in his first two decades as owner. In he moved the Giants from New York City to San Francisco, one of two National League owners to bring Major League Baseball to the west coast territory. Although the Giants won only one pennant () and one division title () in their first 15 years after moving to the Bay Area, they were a consistent contender that featured some of the era's biggest stars. But during the mid-1970s, lacklustre on-field performance and dwindling attendance forced Stoneham to sell the team in .
Stoneham was born in Newark, New Jersey, and educated at the Hun School of Princeton and the Trinity-Pawling School. In 1919 during his high school years his father bought the Giants. The younger Stoneham briefly attended Fordham University, but soon dropped out to work in a copper mine in California. At his father's insistence, he came back east to begin his apprenticeship as a baseball executive and future owner. He worked on the Giants' grounds crew and in their ticket office, then moved into their front office. When, at age 32, he succeeded to the team presidency on his father's death in January 1936, Stoneham became the youngest club owner in National League history.
Hands-on owner
His tenure witnessed three separate pennant-contending and -winning eras: the team that he inherited, the 1936–1938 Giants of Bill Terry, Carl Hubbell and Mel Ott; the 1949–1955 teams of manager Leo Durocher, including Monte Irvin, Sal Maglie, Bobby Thomson and Willie Mays; and the star-studded Giants of 1959–1971. During Stoneham's 41 years as owner, the Giants won National League pennants in 1936, 1937, 1951, 1954 and 1962, a division title in 1971, and a World Series title in 1954.
Stoneham employed at least two general managers during those four decades: Bill Terry (1938–1942), who doubled as the Giants' field manager through 1941, and Chub Feeney (1946–1969), Stoneham's nephew, who became president of the National League (1970–1986) after his December 1969 resignation. Stoneham was known as a hands-on owner that was concerned with the day-to-day business of the Giants and personally involved in player trades and transactions.
With the post-World War II Giants falling into in the league's second division, Stoneham moved to replace the popular Ott as manager with Durocher on July 16, 1948. Giant fans initially reviled Durocher as the pilot of the arch-rival Brooklyn Dodgers, but he quickly produced an exciting team that just two years later, in 1951, won one of the most thrilling pennant races in history. Durocher and Mays' 1954 Giants also took the NL flag and won Stoneham's only World Series title with a four-game sweep over the Cleveland Indians. That season, Stoneham was hailed as [[The Sporting News Executive of the Year Award|The Sporting News''' Executive of the Year]] in baseball.
Controversial move to San Francisco
As it turned out, the 1954 World Series title was the last hurrah for Stoneham and the Giants in New York. Stoneham was alarmed by a dramatic drop-off in attendance during the 1950s. The 1947 Giants had drawn 1.6 million paying fans despite finishing fourth. But the 1951 pennant winners and 1954 world champions struggled to hit seven figures in home attendance, and mediocre 1956–57 Giants' teams had drawn fewer than 700,000 customers each season. It did not help matters that the Giants' park, the Polo Grounds, was not aging gracefully. The park had been built in its present form in 1911 and had not been well maintained from the 1940s onward. Meanwhile, the park's surrounding neighbourhoods (in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan) had entered a steep economic and social decline, with rising rates of crime. All of these factors contributed to a sharp drop in attendance.