whilst bouncing around the blogs, i came upon inspiration for this post from brother blogger arpsmith
over at Arpsmith's Sportscard Obsession. he mentioned his memories of candlestick park, and although i never attended a game there, as a lifelong Dodger fan i have lots of baseball memories of the stick.
when i was a kid, ESPN didn't exist, and your team's every game on cable wasn't an option - heck, cable itself wasn't an option. But good ol' channel 11 always broadcast games for us here in L.A. when the Dodgers played up in S.F. i remember watching just about every game. some of my favorite memories from my youth are watching the game on our black & white tv with my dad.
i remember Vin Scully always talked about the swirling bay winds turning the act of catching an innocent pop fly into a daring adventure.
back in those days - the LA/SF rivalry was deeply felt from the players to the managers, to the fans.
the scene from above was before my time, but it epitomizes that rivalry. juan marichal is shown here parting Dodger catcher Johnny Roseboro's hair with a bat. Sandy Koufax is in there too.
they say candlestick was notorius for Dodgers/giants fan fights, but the new park is much more peaceful. i've been to quite a few games up there, but never to a Dodgers game. what do you think. arpsmith?
the S.F. fans love to hate the Dodgers, and they really loved to hate Tommy Lasorda. at the stick, Tommy would have to take a long walk along the stands from the clubhouse to the visitors dugout, and the frisco fans just loved to shower him every step of the way with a healthy portion of BOOOOOOOO !!
the Dodgers were the visitors again at the last baseball game ever played at the stick. even though Tommy was no longer the Dodgers manager, he was invited to walk that gauntlet one last time. (that's the picture shown above.) which brings me to the memorabilia portion of this post. at one of the games i attended in S.F.'s park with the giant soda bottle, i bought this...
this is a cool connection to old, personal baseball memories. also cool because it says 'FINAL' game. finally, extra cool because the Dodgers gave candlestick a great farewell present. yup, the Dodgers won that game 9 - 4.
THANKS for reading!
i went to a dodger game at pac bell/at&t park a few years ago. i wore my dodger gear and received absolutely zero flak. none. i think i got more harassment at coors field in 06 than i did that day in san francisco.
ReplyDeleteyeh - i went to a few games there and wore my dodgers cap, but it was never for games against the Dodgers. Nobody ever hassled me either.
DeleteLast time I was there, i wore a Raiders cap. I thought I might catch some beef from 49r fans...but nothing.
good, really.
That is a very cool ticket, I have to see if I can track one of those down, especially since it feature McCovey front and center. I had never seen one before.
ReplyDeleteI would agree it is more tame at AT&T than it used to be at Candlestick. These days you may get a little friendly ribbing but nothing that I would characterize as abusive or scary.
Unfortunately I haven't felt comfortable taking my young boys to see the Giants at Dodger stadium, they have no filter and I would hope nobody would do anything crazy with young kids around but I just can't be sure. My biggest hope with the new ownership is a little change in the stadium atmosphere.
Luckily the Giants played in Anaheim this year and I was able to take the kids there to see our Giants. We have also been down to SD once.
Great post! I believe it is the first time one of my posts has inspired another post :-)
i bought the ticket from a stand inside the stadium. i can ID mccovey, mays and marichal, who's the fourth guy?
Deletethe past couple seasons have been improving in terms of security inside the stadium.. the part i don't like is some of those super dark parking lots after night games. there's almost no security anywhere after games.
thanks for the compliment on the post.
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