May 25 2020 08:54 AM
Candlestick Park, also known as Harney Stadium, also known as The Stick, also not really known as 3Com Park at Candlestick Point, San Francisco Stadium at Candlestick Point, and Monster Park, was a feature of any west coast trip. A start by John Montefusco seemed to be in the part of the festivities for about 40 years, Ken Moffitt would come in out of the bullpen, and if you were really lucky, Johnny LeMaster would be at shortstop. Ralph Kiner would be helpful in explaining that the real indicator of the wind wasn't the direction the flags were beating but that you should instead keep your eyes on the swirling hot-dog wrappers. Dave Kingman would hopefully do something devastating, despite the Giants taking three of four, and it would always be a puzzle that a great city such as San Francisco would feature a park nobody that almost nobody ever said anything good about. But wind, dampness, dew, and fog always made for interesting conversation and added features to a game.
But then came 1989, and the Cross-Bay World Series, and this highly derided baseball stadium held steady with perhaps 63,000 Americans shat their pants as the Loma Prieta earthquake rumbled through with a 6.9 Richter magnitude. And just as all of baseball started saying, "Hey, we talk shit about the Stick, but that building has soul," the powers that be were making plans to demolish her.
The longtime home of Mays and McCovey, where Mays used Bobby Bonds for leverage in making the second most famous catch of his career, Candlestick has held the Mets to a 104-139 all-time record that frankly feels worse. It's where Roger Craig taught everybody the splitter, and where bullpens in foul territory always added to the fun. Like Busch, she went from grass to a rug to grass, but had the good sense to toss the rug after 1978, a rare time in that strange year where good sense trumped bad taste.
The park was also the longtime home of the San Francisco 49ers, the short-time home of the early-AFL version of the Oakland Raiders, and the location of the almost-entirely forgotten San Francisco Golden Gate Gales' single season with the United Soccer Association. It was the site of the last official (non-rooftop) concert by the Beatles and it's final public event was a return engagement by Beatle Paul McCartney. Popular lore says missing that 1966 Beatles show broke Brian Epstein's heart and contributed to his premature decline. A 1988 stop by the Monsters of Rock tour featured a massive food fight in the upper deck, the tremendous waste of which might have broken the heart of Pope John Paul II, who had visited a year earlier, celebrated Mass for 70,000, and famously cried out for God's blessing upon the victims of the AIDS epidemic. Such were our times.
As noted above, all my Candlestick game memories tend to fade into one. That may in part be due to the games coming after midnight so often, but for a while they tried to follow the Cubs model of afternoon ball being the standard. But it's hard to displace the 2000 playoff game that began the Mets pennant run. An Alfonzo home put the Mets up 4-1 in the ninth before a pinch-hit JT Snow three-run homer off of Armando Benitez tied it up and set up Benny Agbayani to put the Mets ahead for good in the 10th and John Franco to lock it down.
What are your Metly memories of the Stick?
