Fracchia: A SABR tour of Candlestick Park
From SABR member Charles Fracchia at Baseball Reflections on March 31, 2014:
Recently, I had the great pleasure of taking a tour of Candlestick Park, one of the ‘homes’ of my youth. It was done through my SABR group, the Lefty O’Doul Chapter. SABR is Society for American Baseball Research, a group devoted to baseball—both to baseball’s history and to its statistics. I happen to enjoy both the history and the statistics very much. The San Francisco Giants haven’t played baseball at Candlestick since 1999, and now, there was no sign that the Giants had ever played there. I was there in 1999 for the last baseball game though the Giants lost handily to the Dodgers. I was there with my childhood friends to watch the game reflecting back on our childhoods spent here. We had all gotten older, and we were all looking forward to a new era at the Giants beautiful new ballpark. I went to very few 49ers games there, I have strong memories of the great 49ers teams of the 1980’s with coach Bill Walsh, Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott, Dwight Clark, Steve Young, and Jerry Rice; however, most of the games I watched were on television. My primary memories at Candlestick Park were those of baseball: of good games and bad games, of good players and bad players, and of time spent with friends and family.
My tour of Candlestick Park brought back many memories for me. I remembered as a kid that I would go to Candlestick Park with my two best friends, brothers, on the Van Ness Ballpark Express bus. Their mother, who was dating my father at the time, would drop us off at the bus stop near a little neighborhood store. We’d buy some food and catch the bus, which would go down Van Ness Street, get on the freeway and head out to the ballpark.
Read the full article here: http://baseballreflections.com/2014/03/31/a-sabr-tour-of-candlestick-park/
Originally published: March 31, 2014. Last Updated: March 31, 2014.