It’s difficult to imagine nowadays, but the view from the Double Play bar’s windows and swinging doors on the corner of 16th and Bryant was once among the most spectacular in all of San Francisco.

What you could see from that spot on the afternoon of April 15, 1958 was something never witnessed before on the entire West Coast.

Just across the street, Major League Baseball had arrived. And it was a sight to behold.

Seals Stadium, a neat and tidy 22,000-seat minor league ballpark tucked beside the Mission District neighborhood was the Giants’ modest starter home, and its doors were opened for the transplants from New York for the first time that day. The Dodgers, “Dem Bums” from Brooklyn who had also joined the Giants in fleeing New York for the coast months earlier, were on hand to serve as the Giants’ perfect foil for the first time here.

The scene was surreal and awe-inspiring, even for the those in the sophisticated big city.

“It’s probably hard for many to understand, but it was almost unimaginable (more than) 60 years ago that Major League Baseball would come west,” said Giants longtime clubhouse manager Mike Murphy, whose tenure began that day as the team’s batboy. “Before the Giants and Dodgers arrived in 1958, the only way we could connect with big league baseball was through reading the box scores of teams in the newspaper.

“Once the Giants arrived in San Francisco, we had real players to identify with and call our own.”

These weren’t just any players, either. Giants fans had the likes of future Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda and Juan Marichal to choose from.

The Giants were feted the day before with a parade through the streets of San Francisco in front of hundreds of thousands of screaming, welcoming fans as sirens blared and confetti rained down upon the players and coaches.

As to be expected for something that happened 62 years ago, there aren’t a lot of physical reminders left from the day the Giants introduced the region to Major League Baseball with a rousing 8-0 afternoon win over the Dodgers at joyous Seals Stadium.

The ballpark itself, which originally housed the minor league San Francisco Seals and Missions, is long gone. Wrecking balls helped demolish it to make room for a strip mall just two months after the Giants finished their 1959 season and moved out to brand new Candlestick Park. In its place is the Potrero Center, which takes up the entire city block.

The Double Play still sits in the same spot it’s been since 1909 — kitty corner from where Seals Stadium’s left field foul pole once was. There are remnants of the good old days still in the place, including the top of the stadium’s flagpole, the most tangible artifact still around. Otherwise, the watering hole still serves the same purpose it did in the late ’50s — it’s a place where Giants fans can celebrate or commiserate with each other.

Oh, if you look closely enough you’ll see a small plaque on the sidewalk on the corner of 16th and Bryant that recognizes baseball once lived there. But otherwise you’d need to use your imagination not to see a Safeway sitting at the northeast corner of Bryant and 16th, where a baseball cathedral once stood.

Yet, it’s not impossible, thanks to some diligent research by local bloggers years ago. Using a series of map overlays and geo-tagging the savvy reporters were able to pinpoint exact locations for many of Seals Stadium’s focal points.

Thanks to them, if you’re in the back of Potrero Center’s Safeway near the meat counter you can safely imagine the feeling when a ball landed right there 62 years ago when Giants shortstop Daryle Spencer hit the first home run in San Francisco history off Don Drysdale.

Standing in a long line at the Starbucks counter inside Safeway there doesn’t need to be a frustrating experience if you stop and realize you’re right where Willie Mays hit a grounder to second base that he beat out for his first hit with San Francisco.

Want to stand where Giants Opening Day starter Ruben Gomez did for more than two hours on his way to shutting out the Dodgers on a six-hitter? Once Decathlon Sporting Goods opens its doors, there’s a spot in the aisle there where Gomez and others once dealt — just don’t expect to see a pile of dirt to help you find it.

Once there, you can take 20 healthy steps and be confident that’s where home plate was. That’s the location where Gino Cimoli made history, thanks to his benevolent Dodgers manager Walter Alston. Cimoli, you see, grew up in San Francisco and was a star at Galileo High. Even though Cimoli had never led off a game in his major league career — and never would again — Alston figured the local kid deserved to forever be the answer to a trivia question as the first ever batter on the west coast. (They just don’t have to remember the local kid struck out).

While it now takes imagination to find clues of how baseball dominated life there more than 60 years ago, that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes the most obvious reminders of what once was can be staring us right in the face without us realizing it.

As the story goes, there used to be a burly United Parcel Service deliveryman in San Francisco whose delivery route took him through the old Seals Stadium neighborhood for 25 years. He was a quick-witted, pleasant man who always managed a smile for customers while distinctively chomping on his cigar.

The kindly man finally retired and moved away to Sacramento, where he lived until he died in 2011. It’s said not many people along his old UPS route in The City ever realized the guy dropping off their packages was Gino Cimoli.

Also on this date …

2019: The Warriors blew a 31-point lead in Game 2 of their first-round series against the Clippers, falling 135-131 as Los Angeles backup guard Lou Williams scored 36 points in the stunning victory at Oracle.

2014: Cal hired ex-Tennessee coach Cuonzo Martin as its 16th men’s basketball coach in school history, replacing Mike Montgomery, who retired a month earlier after going 63-41 in three seasons. Martin’s Bears went 62-39 in his three seasons in Berkeley, including one NCAA tournament appearance in 2015-16.

2000: Oakland Raiders select Sebastian Janikowski of Florida with the 17th pick of the NFL Draft, making him just the third kicker in NFL history to be a first-round pick. the 19year veteran retired in 2019 as the league’s 10th-leading scorer in history.

1972: A’s star Reggie Jackson became the first baseball player in 58 years to wear a mustache during the regular season. Jackson’s mustache led owner Charlie Finley to encourage the rest of the A’s to also wear them, offering them each $300 to do so.