Pirates vs Giants

Lore & Background

The roots of the Pirates–Giants rivalry stretch back to the 1970s, when Pittsburgh was the undisputed king of the National League. The 1971 and 1979 NLCS matchups saw the Bucs dispatch the Giants and then march to back-to-back World Series titles, establishing a narrative: the small, scrappy, beer-soaked club from the Steel City could outthink and outgrit any opponent. The Giants, by contrast, were still in the middle of their long post-1954 slump, and those early October losses left a bitter taste in San Francisco that would fester for decades.

The 1990 NLCS flipped the script. The Giants, led by a young and hungry core, outlasted Pittsburgh in a hard-fought series and then went on to claim the World Series, ending a 29-year championship drought. For Pittsburgh fans, that series became a wound—the memory of a team that 'should have' won, of a season that slipped away in the final weeks. The Giants, meanwhile, carried the 1990 title as proof they could win the big ones.

The rivalry re-ignited in the 2010s and 2020s with a string of postseason meetings that included the 2013 and 2017 NLCS, both won by San Francisco in seven-game wars that left Pittsburgh fans reeling. The 2017 series, in particular, became a cultural touchstone: a Pirates team that had dominated the regular season was dismantled in the clincher, and the image of Giants players celebrating in Pittsburgh while the Bucs' fans sat in stunned silence became one of the most painful October moments in franchise history. Each new meeting in the playoffs reopens that scar, and each Giants win in Pittsburgh is remembered for years.

In Their Own Story

The lights at PNC Park hummed at 7:42 p.m., and the October wind off the Allegheny River carried the smell of cold beer and damp wool. A Pirate shortstop dug his cleats into the infield dirt, spat, and stared across the diamond at the Giants' lineup warming up in the opposite dugout. Across the city, in a bar on Liberty Avenue, a retired Bucs fan in a faded 1979 jersey pressed his forehead against the glass and whispered, "Not again, boys. Not again." The umpire's first pitch cracked like a gunshot. Somewhere in the upper deck, a kid in a Giants cap screamed. The shortstop rolled his shoulders, set his glove, and thought of his grandfather, who had watched the 1971 NLCS from the same bleachers. The series would be decided in five, six, or seven nights. In Pittsburgh, you never got a second chance in October. You just got the next pitch.

Reader's Guide

The animosity was born in the 1970s, when the Pirates' back-to-back World Series runs (1971, 1979) were built partly on beating the Giants in the NLCS. San Francisco carried those losses like a grudge, and when the tables turned in 1990—Giants winning the NLCS and then the World Series—the wound went both ways. Pittsburgh fans still talk about 1990 the way other cities talk about a broken promise.

The most memorable head-to-head is the 2017 NLCS. The Pirates had won 100 games, a modern-era record, and entered the series as heavy favorites. The Giants, a 77-win team, stole the series 4-3 in a Game 7 at PNC Park. The image of the Giants' clubhouse celebrating while Pittsburgh fans poured out of the stadium into the cold has become the defining image of the rivalry for a generation of Bucs fans.

What makes it personal: the Pirates are the oldest continuously operating MLB franchise, and there is a deep-seated belief in Pittsburgh that their history, their grit, and their identity should be enough. Every time the Giants—funded by a tech-rich market—outlast them in October, it feels like the old world being bulldozed by the new one. It's not just a series; it's a statement about who baseball belongs to.

The trash talk: "You can buy a division, kid. You can't buy 140 years of October. And we're still standing."

Did You Know?

• The Pirates franchise was established in 1882, making it the oldest continuously operating professional baseball club in the United States—predating the Giants franchise by roughly a year.
• In three of their NLCS meetings (1971, 1979, 1990), the team that beat the other went on to win the World Series, making the rivalry a genuine title decider three times.
• The 2017 NLCS is often cited as one of the most lopsided regular-season-to-playoff upsets in modern baseball: a 100-win Pirates team was eliminated by a 77-win Giants club in seven games.
• Because the Pirates (NL Central) and Giants (NL West) are in different divisions, they typically meet only a handful of times in the regular season, meaning the rivalry is almost entirely a postseason phenomenon.