Although the Giants just won their second World Series for San Francisco by beating the Detroit Tigers from what would have been their fifth World Series win, there is still plenty of San Francisco and Detroit sports history to be made for what seems like two significant reasons:

1. The Detroit Lions haven’t gone to, let alone won, a Super Bowl.

2. The year 2014 will mark 10, 20, and 30-year anniversaries of Detroit and San Francisco sports: The Detroit Pistons won their last NBA championship in 2004, the San Francisco 49-ers won their last Super Bowl in 1994, and the Detroit Tigers won their last World Series in 1984.

It goes without mentioning that there is plenty of sports history to be found in ArchiveGrid, but the amount of it depends on the sport. Hundreds of search results show up for searches related to the Tigers and Giants teams, while football teams are much easier subjects to research because they retrieve fewer matches. A search in ArchiveGrid for the San Francisco 49ers yields 46 results, while a search for the Detroit Lions, in quotes, gets 22 results.

Three results show up each for the Detroit Pistons and the Golden State Warriors, the closest NBA team to San Francisco (in Oakland), which hasn’t won a championship since 1975. Perhaps an interesting research lead is the Will Herzfeld Papers, 1967-1990, held at the New York Public Library. The search result display indicates he was the chaplain for the Warriors. What would it be like to provide spiritual needs to a team struggling to win a championship? Unfortunately, further research will have to wait, since access to the library’s finding aid was shut down due to potential damage from Hurricane Sandy.

Farther down the San Francisco Bay in hockey, the San Jose Sharks haven’t won an NHL title, and a search for them in ArchiveGrid reveals only two results.