I was jealous of A's fans when I was growing up

They had 4 recent championships to celebrate by 1990 (relatively speaking), 3 straight rookie of the years, a great stadium (though it was big, it was still a nice place to take in a game and the whole retro stadium stuff hadn't taken off yet), and a great owner (Haas) with a great payroll.

The Giants had been winning recently (good run from 86-89 at that point), had brought up some decent players (but no rookie of the year types, though Will would have been in the running if he hadn't missed so much time--story of his career, I suppose) but they had a shit stadium and a shit owner who couldn't get anything done and who insisted on public money for a stadium and that was always a longshot. To be fair, it probably would have happened in the 1989 election but the earthquake screwed it up and that POS owner of the Kings at the time (Lugenbill?) started a campaign of disinformation claiming that the funds used to build the new stadium would be diverted from quake relief funds (which wasn't true, but that never stops these guys).

Fast forward 2 years and Oakland started losing some of their stars and came back to earth. Lurie tried to sell the Giants to a group headed by Mike Piazza's dad (I think) that was going to move the team to Tampa Bay and MLB pulled out all the stops and forced him to consider local buyers. A group led by Safeway Chairman Peter Magowan stepped in and bought the team, fixed the stadium up as much as one could possibly hope for at that point, signed the best hitter I have ever seen, and worked to get a stadium built with no public money. Now they're swimming in cash with a paid off stadium, real estate projects in the vicinity, and their own TV contract.