So what happens to the SF Giants’ Cruise jersey patch?

But when Melvin put on an orange and black jersey for the first time as manager, sewn on the right sleeve was a patch of a brand under even more fire than the Giants: Cruise.

On Tuesday, the California DMV suspended the San Francisco-based driverless car company’s permits to deploy and test driverless vehicles in California. The DMV said the suspension came in part because the agency felt Cruise had hidden the full story of an Oct. 2 crash in San Francisco that left a pedestrian severely injured.

When approached by SFGATE after Melvin’s introductory press conference Wednesday, Giants president and CEO Larry Baer declined to comment about the jersey patch. Cruise did not answer an SFGATE inquiry about the partnership by the time of publication.

The Cruise patch was a hot-button issue for the fan base from the start. Many were upset with the Cruise partnership on the whole, but also about the aesthetics and the prominent placement, especially once fans discovered the patches are specifically placed for maximum viewing. On the team’s two main jerseys, the patches are on the right sleeve for left-handed hitters and on the left sleeve for right-handed hitters, so the Cruise patch can be clearly seen whenever a Giant is at bat. It’s the same for pitchers: The patch appears on the arm that a pitcher uses to throw home.

There was also an unfortunate on-field performance trend once the patch went on the jersey. In the first game with the Cruise patches, the Giants beat the Diamondbacks 1-0 on Aug. 3 to improve to 61-49. After that, San Francisco completely fell apart. In their final 52 games, the Giants went 18-34, going from a team firmly in Wild Card position to finishing under .500 at 79-83. The finish led fans to claim the Cruise patches are “cursed.”

For Giants fans, Tuesday’s move from the California DMV brought hope that the partnership might end. After all, Baer’s statement in the Aug. 3 announcement discussed Cruise’s intent to “expand to serve more of our fans across the Bay Area.”

Cruise is still publicly operating in three major cities — Austin and Houston in Texas as well as Phoenix in Arizona — and has collected data in several other cities, including Atlanta; Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina; Las Vegas; Miami; Nashville, Tennessee; Seattle; and Washington, D.C. But the list no longer includes Cruise’s hometown of San Francisco, at least for now. Whether the company’s patches will stay on San Francisco’s jerseys even with its cars off the city’s streets remains to be seen.