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!
