What's Your Memory?: Candlestick Park

[Edgy MD]

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?



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[Benjamin Grimm]

That 2000 game you mentioned, with Franco striking out Barry Bonds, is the greatest game that the Mets have played in San Francisco. But the Giants were in their new stadium by then.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

10:40 pm starts, the latest of the late starts.



I didn't know until just now it ever had turf.



Lots of fun watching the 2000 playoffs

[batmagadanleadoff]

Ask Keith Hernandez about Candlestick. He'll tell you a goddamn encyclopedia's worth about the place.



The second greatest sports moment I ever witnessed live, in real time in my lifetime -- just total joy with a lotta wtf mixed in:



[FIMG=666]https://vault.si.com/.image/t_share/MTY5MDk4NDk5ODU4MjQ1MDgz/40621---original-layout-thumbnail-image.jpg[/FIMG]



And maybe neck and neck with #1 on my list:



[FIMG=555]https://hollandsheroes.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/buckner1_original_original_original_display_image.jpg[/FIMG]

[Edgy MD]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: That 2000 game you mentioned, with Franco striking out Barry Bonds, is the greatest game that the Mets have played in San Francisco. But the Giants were in their new stadium by then.

Well, blow me down.

[Edgy MD]

The weird thing is that Clark's catch, in the pantheon of catches, was just a really nice catch, nothing truly superlative, but the combination of the context (the downfall of a formidable Cowboys dynasty and everything it represented) and that fantastic photo elevated it to monumental status.



So, seeing as I was stupid wrong about the 2000 playoffs, and we're not only looking beyond Mets games but beyond football, are we saying that the Mets have played two million games at the Stick and none of them stand out?

[batmagadanleadoff]

Edgy MD wrote: The weird thing is that Clark's catch, in the pantheon of catches, was just a really nice catch, nothing truly superlative, but the combination of the context (the downfall of a formidable Cowboys dynasty and everything it represented) and that fantastic photo elevated it to monumental status. So, seeing as I was stupid wrong about the 2000 playoffs, and we're not only looking beyond Mets games but beyond football, are we saying that the Mets have played two million games at the Stick and none of them stand out?

No. It was a tremendous catch and a tremendous play. If you saw it live, in real time, without the benefit of having seen the play a hundred times and knowing how the play would turn out, you were certain that the pass was going out of bounds. That pass was thrown into the tiniest of windows with no room for error. The Buckner play, by comparison, if you were a very knowledgeable Mets fan at the time with a good feel for Mookie's speed, you were probably thinking that Mookie was gonna beat out the roller even if Buckner fielded it cleanly.

[MFS62]

I hated that place and the fans who filled the place. They boo-ed Willie Mays and cheered Orlando Cepeda and for that reason alone they didn't deserve a major league baseball team. I rooted for the A's in that World Series, and when the earthquake hit, my only thought was "Too bad it didn't hit Chavez Ravine, too".



Later

[batmagadanleadoff]

My strongest Mets Candlestick memory is a game from elementary school where Seaver totally dominated the Giants, pitching like a HOF'er and Bud Harrelson hit a homer. You'd never forget a Bud Harrelson homer if you ever saw one. Plus, that was the first year where Candlestick was totally enclosed and the announcers talked that up a lot.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Is it cheating to refer to this page?



http://leaptoad.com/mets/oppteams.php?ThisTeam=09&tabno=Ghttp://leaptoad.com/mets/oppteams.php?ThisTeam=09&tabno=G

[batmagadanleadoff]

My strongest Mets Candlestick memory is a game from elementary school where Seaver totally dominated the Giants, pitching like a HOF'er and Bud Harrelson hit a homer. You'd never forget a Bud Harrelson homer if you ever saw one. Plus, that was the first year where Candlestick was totally enclosed and the announcers talked that up a lot.

I looked up the game and my memory's a little off. Seaver allowed four runs -- though he did strike out 12 in 6.2 innings.



https://www.leaptoad.com/mets/gamedetail.php?gameno=1643https://www.leaptoad.com/mets/gamedetail.php?gameno=1643

[G-Fafif]

Beyond being told on every single trip how unfathomably cold it was, these three spring to mind...



The very last game the Mets played at Candlestick or 3Com or whatever it was called had the Mets beating Livàn Hernandez for a fifth time in 1999, a function of the Giants trading for Hernandez from the Marlins and the Mets spanking him on both coasts. That game (Candle)sticks out for Tom Seaver telling Gary Thorne that it's Sunday, and Sunday's a good day for a quiz and he quizzed Thorne on all the Hall of Famers the Giants featured in the ‘60s.



Fourteen years earlier, on August 31, Doc's 14-game winning streak snapped to a normally terrible Giants team. The next day Keith Hernandez emerged from his late-summer slump and delivered a pitch-homer to beat lefty Mark Davis, signaling what a September the 1985 Mets were gonna give us.



In 1977, the Mets had a protest upheld regarding a game in which they were getting blown out in the seventh inning; Retrosheet's explanation follows:

game halted by rain at this point; the Mets protested the game because the umpires did not wait at least 30 minutes after suspending play; NL President Chub Feeney upheld the protest and ordered that the game be resumed on July 26; on July 13, the Mets withdrew their protest after Feeney had ruled in their favor

So they were sore they couldn't finish a 10-0 loss, then they were told they could, then they said never mind. 64-98 in the standings, 1-0 on principle.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Is it cheating to refer to this page? http://leaptoad.com/mets/oppteams.php?ThisTeam=09&tabno=Ghttp://leaptoad.com/mets/oppteams.php?ThisTeam=09&tabno=G

Cool. I never noticed that feature. I was aware only of the players memories page -- not team memories.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Fourteen years earlier, on August 31, [1985] Doc's 14-game winning streak snapped to a normally terrible Giants team....

And this memory triggers another Met-themed Candlestick moment: Doc the rookie chalking up three strikeouts in one inning at the '84 ASG, held at "The Stick".

[G-Fafif]

Doc at Candlestick in 1985 also conjures for me a Marty Noble story about then SF veteran Vida Blue watching the Gooden phenomenon warily as one of the few pitchers active who could understand what it was like to have survived such a frenzy.



Three more pitching quick hits:



1975: Ed Halicki's no-hitter, in the untelevised half of a Sunday doubleheader.



1987: David Cone breaks a finger trying to bunt. More good news.



1992: Doc homers while Mrs. Fafif and I are returning from a concert at Jones Beach (New York Rock & Soul Revue), and for one August night it doesn't feel like the Mets suck.

[G-Fafif]

One more from the balm for a lousy season file: Frank Tanana carries a no-hit bid into the seventh on a Saturday afternoon in 1993. Mrs F. and I had just left the Met — they had a baseball card exhibit — and my Walkman carried the exciting news. Just as I decided this was the PERFECT way for a no-hitter to happen, it was broken up. But the Mets hung on and we had a nice dinner.

[Edgy MD]

One that sticks with me that may in fact not be from Candlestick at all is from a time when Joel Youngblood and Ellis Valentine were competing for a single regular spot, and despite having perhaps the two best outfield arms in the league, both were losing.



The Mets were in the top of the ninth with a slim lead and Kingman and Foster in the corner outfield spots, so George Bamberger told both Youngblood and Valentine to get ready to go in for defense. The two of them elected to loosen up by playing catch in front of the Mets dugout as the team came to bat in the top of the ninth.



The captain of the umpire crew came over to Bambi, and was like, "Are you fucking kidding me? Your players can't just play catch in front of the dugout while the game is going on. This isn't weekend softball.



And Bambi was like, "Well, we're the 1982 Mets in the ninth inning at Candlestick, with 275 patrons left in the house. It's pretty close."



And Umpy was all, "Don't play stupid, Bamberger. If your player need to warm up, they can go down to the bullpen."



And Bambi was all, "Well, that's only 100 feet away, so we're just talking about a matter of degrees here, but whatever."



(OE: I can't find the game, so there may be misremembering going on.)

[cal sharpie]

Like Batmags, I was also at the Dwight Clark game. I was sitting in the end zone where the catch was made. My then gf and I spontaneously went to the game hoping to buy tix outside. We ended upboth getting in but not together. The SF Chronicle interviewed us trying to buy tix. When I showed up at work the next morning everyone knew I had been there from that article.



Met memory: Greg Minton was having a lights-out year out if the pen for the Giants in ‘82 and was on his way to some kind of record for longest homerless appearances. He came into a game having been overused the past few days and gave up a crucial homer to John Stearns who I believe was coming off his own homerless streak as a batter.



I liked Candlestick just like I liked Shea.

[Edgy MD]

That game I'm remembering wasn't even close to the Stick, but was actually in https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MON/MON198204240.shtmlMontreal.



I need a brain workup.

[Frayed Knot]

Well at least you were in the right [CROSSOUT]city[/CROSSOUT] [CROSSOUT]area code[/CROSSOUT] [CROSSOUT]state[/CROSSOUT] [CROSSOUT]time zone[/CROSSOUT] [CROSSOUT]country[/CROSSOUT] continent.

[batmagadanleadoff]

cal sharpie wrote: Like Batmags, I was also at the Dwight Clark game....

I wish. When I wrote that I saw "The Catch" game live, I meant live, on TV.

[cal sharpie]

Well I did think that was a tremendous coincidence that you might have been there, Batmags.

[Gwreck]

Edgy MD wrote: 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.

I know we established this happened at the new park, but point of order: it was a Daryl Hamilton double and a Payton RBI single that gave the Mets the lead in Game 2.



Benny's walk off homer was game 3.

[Benjamin Grimm]

http://leaptoad.com/mets/scorecard_graph.php?game=6240&font=5>

[Edgy MD]

BENNY!!

[Edgy MD]

"it's a good thing you don't play for the Giants."



— Ed Lynch, upon hearing that Ray Knight's daughter had been named "Erin Shea."