Hey Chatter, Chatter, Chatter! When the San Francisco Giants Won the 2010 World Series
Here's a peek back at when the city of San Francisco celebrated the SF Giant's 2010 World Series Championship victory and how Salesforce was honored to take part in the festivities.
Kim Mercado
We’re posting a series of vignettes to celebrate Salesforce’s 20th birthday. Follow our digital scrapbook to get a behind the scenes glimpse of our history.
At the beginning of the 2010 baseball season, no one expected the San Francisco Giants — a group of “misfits” and “outcasts” — to make the playoffs, let alone become World Champions. Against all odds, they conquered teams they shouldn’t have beaten to bring the Commissioner’s Trophy to the Bay Area — 56 years after their last championship win and their first since the team moved to San Francisco in 1958.
The night the Giants clinched the National League’s pennant, celebratory plans went into motion at Salesforce, but it all snowballed after they actually won. Linda Dunlap, Vice President of Strategic Keynote Events, recalls the flurry of activity leading up to the World Series victory parade. “The day after the Giants won the World Series, we were contacted by the Giants organization and asked if we wanted to participate in the first World Series parade the city had held in over 50 years. We worked with Employee Success to identify and invite employees to round out the float participants. We also sourced, rolled, and packed hundreds of t-shirts to be thrown into the crowds. The details were a blur,” she says.
The centerpiece of Salesforce’s parade experience was the float. Paying homage to the Giants’ closing pitcher Brian Wilson, our (now retired) mascot Chatty donned a beard for the occasion. The float also received a boost from another popular mascot: the Giants’ own Lou Seal who hammed it up for the crowd.
To say that San Franciscans (and neighbors) were excited is an understatement. Although one million parade attendees were expected, two million showed up. “Fans were standing hundreds deep through the entire route. They were leaning out windows, on terraces, and standing on light posts. Confetti was flying everywhere and fans were cheering for the shirts we were throwing out,” Dunlap remembers. “The energy was nothing like I had ever seen. The employees who shared in the experience of that day are forever bonded. I continue to be so grateful to Salesforce for enabling me to have a career full of experiences with employees that will forever bond us.”
