How San Francisco came up with baseball’s billion-dollar blueprint

In two decades, the San Francisco Giants went from being sold as scrap to Florida to baseball’s $2 billion model franchise. Below, how it came to be in five steps:

By Andrew Pridgen

Step 1: Find a franchise with a history of success and distress

In early August 1992, the fifth-place San Francisco Giants were en route to a 72-win season playing to crowds of 5,000 or fewer in a broken football stadium that had been ravaged by an earthquake during what would be the team’s final World Series appearance in San Francisco.

Owner Robert Lurie, frustrated over the repeated failure of voters to approve financing of a new stadium, agreed to sell the team to a Tampa Bay-based group fronted by Vince Piazza, owner of the Philadelphia-based Piazza Management Co. Piazza, a lifelong friend of Tommy Lasorda, was set to move Lasorda to the Giants’ front office. Piazza’s son…