Pop 89

[Edgy MD]

Grantland tells the oral history of the 1989 World Series. Mostly it's a story of the day of the quake and the time following. Good footage and quotes from many of the principle and peripheral characters. You got your Sandy Alderson. You want Tim McCarver, you got him. Mackey Shillstone? No joke, we've got Mackey Shillstone quotes. Unfortunately no Rickey Henderson. But seriously... Mackey Shillstone!

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9859539/view/full/the-1989-world-series-earthquake-oral-history

And that's just the Met figures. Aside from ballplayers, you've got journalists, family members, fans from the upper and lower decks, Dan Quayle, Ted Koppel, Larry F. Gatlin. Tim McCarver and Gatlin's brother both claimed to have had ominous cases of nausea that they imply may have predicted the quake. Willie Mays, says a third-hand source (Thirty-Something's Timothy Busfield!), had a premonition brought on by the weather.

Nice intermediate side story is the A's retreating to their Arizona Spring Training complex to work out and play intrasquad games, and everybody, it turns out, HATES... not Canseco, not Rickey, but Eckersley. Eck ends up plunking Jose during an intrasquad game in the middle of the World Series and everybody takes Canseco's side.

A weird thing you see in the middle part of this video that's straight out of an Irwin Allen disaster movie is the players' first instinct is to use their field privileges to get their wives (and kids, I think, in some cases) down on the field to give them the meaningful but hardly foolproof protection against the building going down on them. The wives, expecting to get the cameras turned on them in the stands when their hubs come to bat, are glammed out like they've likely never been in their lives, looking like they're posing for the cover of Vogue, but in the midst of a disaster rather than a World Series game. It's surreal.

jjShDPY2nBs

Fuck this earthquake boochit. This kid came to see a ballgame.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Dave Parker shit his pants, man.

[Guest themetfairy]

I can remember being in our condo with our 6-week-old baby and ready to settle down to watch the game, only to learn of the Series Interrupted.

My biggest memory is the sight of the upper level of the Bay Bridge collapsed upon the lower level....

[G-Fafif]

On the air for WFAN when the story broke: first-year Mets announcer Gary Cohen, hosting World Series talk.

[dinosaur jesus]

That's a great read. Thanks for the link.

[Zvon]

That is an amazing article that captures the event like no other.

[Frayed Knot]

I was at MSG watching a Ranger game that night.
Some guy in the next row overheard one of my group wondering about the series and told us of the earthquake.
Thought he was kidding at first, but at the concession stands you could see, although not hear, the films of the destruction, fires, etc.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I had only recently begun my first real job at a small newspaper. We got the news as it happened over the AP wire; we would have stayed till the game was over to put that day's edition to bed anyway.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Holy 80's hair!

[batmagadanleadoff]

Great piece. Grantland's been doing those oral history pieces for a while now. Here's a link to their oral history of the falll and then rise of WFAN, timely given the recent Mets departure from the radio station and the death of Bill Mazer. Other quotables include Howie Rose and Steve Somers.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8016912/don-imus-mike-mad-dog-fall-rise-first-all-sports-talk-station-wfan

[Vic Sage]

the night of the earthquake game, i was at a restaurant hosting a surprise birthday party for my girlfriend (soon-to-be fiance, later-to-be wife). We watched it all unfold on the TV in the restaurant; it was on in the background and we slowly became aware that people were paying attention to something on the TV. Of course, I don't think that including a natural catastrophe in the celebration was why she ended up marrying me. But she did, so there's that. which gives me oddly positive feelings about that tragic event.