Candlestick Park

This was a dual purpose stadium that wasn’t really good for either. For football, some seats were completely view obstructed and unusable. For baseball they would fence in left field and put up some generic stands behind them – with unusable permanent seats behind them. Access to the park was poor. There was one road from the freeway to the parking lot. The parking was adequate but mass transit was virtually non-existent (one bus line, no BART). The stadium sat (or still sits) close to the SF bay just south of the city. During the day it’s a nice park temperature-wise but night games could be brutally cold. I fully understand what When Mark Twain meant when he wrote “the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” I don’t know the actual dimensions but I think this park had one of the smallest screens behind home plate.

My first game at Candlestick was in 1992. We sat in the upper deck on the first base side. We saw them play the Padres in a day game. Neither team would challenge for the NL West that year. The Padres had Tony Gwynn, Gary Sheffield, and Fred McGriff. The Giants had Will Clark, Matt Williams, and Robby Thompson. The Giants got the 3-1 victory on a good Bud Black performance and Rod Beck save. Willie McGee, a long way from his speedy St. Louis days, stole a base in this game.

In 1996 my friend John and I took a trip to the bay area (SF/OAK) for a long weekend and to see some baseball. We saw three games at Oakland and two at the Stick including a day/night double header with the day game in Oakland and the night game in SF. Please see the Oakland Alameda Coliseum entry for the other games on this trip [this is also the trip I cured John of his bridge phobia]. For the double header, the game in Oakland was warm, sunny, and we were dressed comfortably in t-shirts and shorts. On the way to Candlestick I changed into jeans, put on a sweatshirt, and brought a jacket. It was not nearly enough. This was [prior to Veteran’s Stadium] the coldest game I ever attended. We had tickets for the upper deck but we sat in seats on the lower level and the ushers never bothered us. This was a bad Giants team playing slightly better Reds team. The Giants had Barry Bonds at this point but no one else on offense. For perspective the Giants opening day outfield consisted of Bonds, Stan Javier, and Glenallen Hill. Rich Aurilia was still a rookie for the Giants. The Reds had Barry Larkin, Eric Davis, Vince Coleman, and Bret Boone. Neither team had much in the way of pitching other than Rod Beck and Jeff Brantley in their respective bullpens. As I mentioned before this game was COLD. I bought a Giants scarf which I still use today. The Reds won the game 4-3 (Brantley save, SB’s by Larkin and Aurilia). We came back the next day for a day game, which the Reds won again. Brantley got a save after Rod Beck blew a one run lead in the top of the 9th. Bonds hit a home run and Eric Davis had 2 SB’s.

 

One of the most interesting things about this trip was where we stayed. I was dating Myra at the time and she said she had friends in Berkeley we could stay with. About a week before we left she called and asked if it would be OK for John and I to stay at their place. John and I had never met these people but they said yes, but they were going out of town that weekend. When John and I arrived we had dinner with the husband, wife, and daughter. The next morning the wife and daughter left for the week. The husband, who owned a liquor store, had to work that night so John and I saw him after the game briefly. The next morning he took off for the week leaving John and I the keys to the house. At the end of our trip we left the gifts [book on the NY/SF Giants, Bath & Body Works gift basket, and a stuffed animal] which they said they really liked.