We hired someone from the San Francisco area to work here in the sports department of The National. Yes. Even though a certain someone in the newsroom is a Southern California guy.
We haven’t come to blows yet, but it could happen.
The NorCal kid turned around this morning and announced: “Who would have guessed the last sports event played in Candlestick Park would be a soccer game between Atletico Madrid and the San Jose Earthquakes?”
And my first question was not “who won?” or “gee, no one would have guessed that!”
My first question was: “Are they going to demolish The Stick?!?”
Answer: “Yes.”
Question: “Think there is any way they will let me push the button?”
The Giants moved out of the oozing dump that is Candlestick Park in 2000. Then the 49ers ended their run there with the conclusion of the 2013 NFL season and are moving to new digs in Santa Clara.
And that’s it for sports at The Stick.
I have been complaining about Candlestick Park for decades (it opened in 1960), and I have a couple of entries on this blog to prove it. Here, after the New Orleans Saints lost in The Stick in 2012, and here when recalling a few of my Bad NFL Playoffs Road Trips.
It was a miserable place to see a game. Any game.
I remember being desperately cold in the baseball press box, desperately claustrophobic in the overheated and overcrowded football press box and ridiculously alarmed when I drowned a rental car in three feet of rain water in an empty parking lot there late one night.
Candlestick isn’t quite done-done-done.
Paul McCartney will play a concert there on August 14. (As the wiki entry notes, the Beatles’ last concert was at Candlestick 48 years ago; may be no coincidence they quit after surviving that.)
And then sometime late this year, or early 2015, they will blow up the place.
OK, I will be 12 time zones away, in Abu Dhabi, by the time this happens, but I will fly out there if I could push the button that reduces Candlestick to rubble.
I realize, however, that the line must be very, very long — of those who would be happy to blow up The Stick.
1 response so far ↓
1 Ben Bolch // Aug 4, 2014 at 11:58 AM
As a longtime Braves fan who grew up in North Carolina, there was always something mystifying and alluring about Candlestick Park. Braves-Giants games there always started at 10 or 10:30 p.m. Eastern, which meant staying up until 1 or 1:30 if you wanted to catch the whole game on WTBS. I remember such interesting things as the fog rolling in at any particular moment (especially during night games), fans wrapped in blankets in mid-July and the ever-present kazoo blaring the Charge! tune. Plus the homers that would clear the outfield fence and land in the grass, prompting fans in the aluminum bleachers to scramble for the trophy. Plus the Giants beat the Dodgers there on the final weekend of the 91 season, giving the long-suffering Braves the division title. Never actually saw a game there but it will always hold some cool memories for me. Sorry to disappoint you.
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