approved by the other National League owners later that day. Lurie held a 51 percent controlling interest, with Herseth holding the other 49 percent. Lurie said that while he and Herseth were "equal partners in operation," he would cast the team's vote in league matters. By comparison, Stoneham's father, Charles, had bought the then-New York Giants for $1 million in 1919; Horace had inherited the team upon his father's death in 1936 and moved it to San Francisco in 1958. Lurie became the Giants' sole owner when he bought out Herseth three years later in early spring of 1979. Although Toronto was awarded its own expansion team, the Blue Jays, in 1977, it would not be the last time that San Francisco's baseball fans would fear the possibility of losing their team. The 1970s was a generally disappointing decade for the Giants and the trend continued throughout Lurie’s ownership. In 1985, a year which saw the Giants lose 100 games (the most in franchise history), Lurie responded by hiring Al Rosen as general manager. Under Rosen's tenure, the Giants promoted promising rookies such as Will Clark and Robby Thompson, and made canny trades to acquire such players as Kevin Mitchell, Dave Dravecky, Candy Maldonado, and Rick Reuschel. The Giants would not have a better influx of young position players since that period until the mid-2000s. Lurie tried to make improvements to the notoriously unaccommodating Candlestick Park, but concluded there was no way the Giants could succeed there. However, in both 1987 and 1989, San Francisco voters rejected two stadium referendums to build a new downtown park, even though the Giants agreed to pick up half of the tab. Worse still, a plan to improve the existing stadium failed by an even wider margin. Frustrated, Lurie looked south toward Silicon Valley, only to see San Jose and Santa Clara voters reject three more proposals to build a Giants ballpark. Finally, in June 1992, Lurie announced that he would sell the Giants, claiming that he could no longer sustain the financial losses (averaging about $2–7 million annually) that had accumulated over the last few years. During his announcement, Lurie appeared visibly emotional, his voice breaking as he explained his hopes for turning the business side around when he bought the team in 1976. Nonetheless, losing teams and poor weather conditions at Candlestick Park kept many fans away, and at the time of