TODAY IN BASEBALL takes us back to APRIL 12, 1958 in SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA. The first major league baseball game to take place in San Francisco was played on this date in 1958. The Giants new home, Candlestick Park, was beautiful, but the location was simply not a suitable place to build a ballpark. Unfortunately, New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham didn’t know that when he toured the site on a beautiful day in 1957. It turned out it was a great spot to build a ballpark — NOT!
San Francisco Mayor George Christopher promised that the city would build a ballpark at Candlestick Point if Stoneham would make his New York Giants the first tenants. What Stoneham didn’t know, and presumably Mayor Christopher didn’t volunteer, was that the sun isn’t the only thing that drops at sundown.
The temperature plummets too, and the fog rolls in. This made for some interesting events at Candlestick. For example, during the 1961 All Star game, Giants pitcher Stu Miller was blown off the mound. In 1963, New York Mets Manager Casey Stengel took his squad out for batting practice, only to watch a gust of wind pick up the entire batting cage and drop it on the pitcher’s mound, 60 feet away.
The most memorable phenomenon was an earthquake during the 1989 World Series, but the stadium weathered that event quite well.
The Giants moved to a much better location for baseball in 2000, Pac Bell Park, which is now called AT&T Park. Attendance has been phenomenal.
The NFL’s San Francisco 49ers continued to play home games at Candlestick until 2014. Candlestick worked for them because parts of the Bay Area are milder in the winter than in the summer. In 2014 the football 49ers moved into brand new Levi Stadium in Santa Clara. As long as nobody tried to play baseball at Candlestick, everyone was happy.
