Jumping Over the Candlestick

I indulged in a nooner yesterday.  Not that kind of a nooner; cleanse that dirty little mind.  A nooner is a weekday baseball game.  Years ago it was called a businessman’s special.  Take off from work at noon, maybe take a client, catch the game and back to work for a couple of hours.  Men went to the game in business suits; there was no such thing as business casual.  When I was working at a retail hardware store my co-worker Joe would often say, "I'm going to the businessman's special today.  Joe wasn't a businessman, he was the delivery driver.  His "suit" was jeans and a Giant's t-shirt.  The midweek day game is great fun, and usually an opportunity to get a good seat at a good price but unfortunately is becoming a dinosaur.  The reason; grousing about post-game traffic mingling with rush hour traffic.  Let's just take all the fun out of life. There was no work for me this day and in lieu of a client I opted to go with my wife; a definite upgrade.


 

The Giants at AT&T (formerly Pac. Bell) Park.  The rain that was forecast stayed away.  It was my first ballgame in probably 10 years and I felt like a kid going to his first game.  Those of you who’ve read a previous baseball post of mine know that I boycotted the yard during much of the time that a petulant, bloated left fielder named Bonds launched a record number of steroid inflated frauds into San Francisco Bay and subsequently scrambled the record books.  But on this particular afternoon walking towards the stadium I looked across McCovey Cove at the ball yard and I felt a surge of excitement and sense of nostalgia for the tradition of the game.  Did I mention that I felt like a kid going to his first game? 

AT&T is a relatively new ballpark; only 12 years old.  It replaced Candlestick Park, the former home of the Giants and the now temporary home of the San Francisco 49ers. A trip to a ballgame at the “stick” was like an Arctic expedition.  Getting there with its limited ingress could take hours and getting out was seemingly as difficult and time consuming as tunneling out of Alcatraz.  Built on Candlestick Point right on San Francisco Bay directly in the path of howling chill winds blowing off the Pacific and often shrouded in fog, the “stick” was a cold, miserable place to see a game.  The only reason to have a cold beer at the “stick” was either because you were hide bound to the tradition of beer at the yard or you were a hopeless alcoholic.  Hot coffee or cocoa was more appropriate.  Wind is a fact of life in San Francisco.  Even AT&T is subject to gusts playing tricks with pop flies.  Broadcaster Duane Kuiper will describe a player weaving underneath a popup as doing "the popup dance."  But in Candlestick the winds were legendary.  According to Willie Mays the gales may have cost him the all-time home run title; "I bet I lost 200 home runs in that place," he once told a Seattle reporter.  The wind would come in and just knock them down.  You'd think they were gone and then the ball just dropped."   Small dust storms of infield dirt would kick up and wrappers and bits of food would blow onto the field.  By game's end there was enough wrappers and food that swarms of seagulls would descend on the field.  Beginning in 1983, fans who braved the elements and stayed for an extra inning night game were awarded a pin called the Croix de Candlestick.  Every now and then you see old timers sporting Croix pins on their caps and jackets. 

Candlestick seemed to be ill-fated from the start.  It was built in 1958 on land sold to San Francisco by Charles Harney.  It turned out that Harney was awarded the no bid contract to do the construction as well.  The whole affair was the subject of a Grand Jury investigation.  As if that wasn’t ill omen enough, the first pitch to open the stadium was thrown by one Richard Milhous Nixon.  Tricky Dick and the “stick”; two star crossed fates in the making.  The "stick" even walloped The Beatles.  After playing there in August of 1966 they never played together again (okay, a coincidence; maybe).  In 1989, the first World Series played there in nearly three decades was interrupted before it started by the Loma Prieta earthquake.    And in an encore to the nation, just before a rare Monday Night Football appearance by the 49ers, the Candlestick light banks failed, the stadium went dark and the only illumination was the red glow from the embarrassed mayor Ed Lee’s face.      

Once the Niners move to their new home in Santa Clara the “stick,” will probably fall to the wrecking ball.  That's along the lines of my original notion; blow it up, grind the pieces into sand and then salt the ground so that nothing ever grows there again (as if anything could flourish in that harsh environment).  But when I look through the gray veil of fog and past the frigid tempestuous nights, the traffic snarls, the mediocre food and the rusting orange colored, cracked ugliness of that place a rich history comes into view; a history that I was fortunate enough to witness.  Among the pitchers that stood their ground on the windswept mound were Juan Marichal, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Nolan Ryan, Warren Spahn and Whitey Ford. Outfielders who battled the windblown flies included, Mickey Mantle, Duke Snider, Roberto Clemente, big Dave Parker, Richie Ashburn and the two REAL home run kings Hammerin Hank Aaron (755 career knocks) and Roger Maris (61 in a season).  Maury Wills and Lou Brock scorched  the base paths.  Willie McCovey, Ernie Banks, Mike Schmidt, Joe Morgan, Orlando Cepeda and Pee Wee Reese played the infield.  Pitchers threw to backstops like Yogi Berra, Johnny Bench and Gary Carter.  

Crazy Crab in a peaceful moment

There are some fond personal memories of Candlestick.  My parents and I attended numerous games there.  My mom, the feisty Italian and diehard Giants fan, often argued with me the Dodger fan but she stood up for me when I was heckled for wearing the hated blue cap; and I recall her battling with a hat wearing fan in front of her who insisted on continually standing up.  After games we would go to the player’s entrance for autographs (a lost tradition).  It was at Candlestick where I got one of my most treasured possessions, a baseball autographed by the ’62 Giants.  In 1984, Candlestick was home to the ridiculous and much abused mascot, Crazy Crab.  Crazy and the Giants both endured an ignominious ’84 season with the Giants losing 96 games and the crab getting pelted with taunts, insults, food, drink and trash.  He (I guess Crazy was a he) was even assaulted by players.  Current broadcasters Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper who were players at the time recalled that they would “drill him with the resin bag daily.”  Crazy was retired after one year of abuse.  In 1992, after a last failed effort to get a new ballpark, Bob Lurie put the team on the block and entered into a deal to sell the Giants to an ownership group bent on moving the team to Tampa-St. Pete.  I remember going to what I thought would be the final San Francisco Giants home game.  At the end of the game many of the fans sat forlornly in their seats figuring that our National League club would move to play in an ugly dome and sport some sort of Floridian aquamarine and pink uniforms. I still have a photo of my son in his seat after the game.  The Giants never moved of course.  They were raised from the grave of Florida by Peter McGowan who bought the team and eventually reigned over the construction of AT&T.

The Croix (Note the snow capped letters)

Initial plans are to replace the stadium with 6000 homes.  There will probably be a mall of some sort.  Candlestick might have been a better stadium in a better location but it had the bad fortune to be located in an icy wind tunnel in a city that for years stumbled all over itself in its failures to replace it.  It long ago became a relic and a hated one at that.  Reportedly Keith Hernandez had it written in his contract that he could not be traded to San Francisco.  In 1983, major league ball players voted Candlestick as the worst park in the majors.  But with all that there should be some remembrance of the history that passed at Candlestick Point.  Maybe a monument with a plaque bearing the names of hall of fame players and Giant's greats who played there.  It could incorporate the unique historical flavor (if you could call it that) of the "stick;" the Giant's logo, their pennant years, a bas relief of Crazy Crab and the Croix and even a figure of a seagull with a hot dog wrapper and a beer cup at it's feet.

The stick in its pre-football configuration with open outfield