Monster Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Monster Park | |
|---|---|
| Candlestick Park, The Stick | |
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| Location | 602 Jamestown Avenue, San Francisco, California 94124 |
| Broke ground | 1958 |
| Opened | April 12, 1960 |
| Owner | The City and County of San Francisco |
| Operator | San Francisco, California |
| Surface | Bluegrass |
| Construction cost | $15 million USD |
| Architect | John Bolles |
| Former names | |
| Candlestick Park (1960-1995) 3Com Park (1995-2002) San Francisco Stadium at Candlestick Point (2002-2004) |
|
| Tenants | |
| San Francisco 49ers (NFL) (1971-present) San Francisco Giants (NL) (1960-1999) Oakland Raiders (AFL) (1961) |
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| Seats | |
| 70,207 (Football) | |
Monster Park (colloquially Candlestick, after its original name of Candlestick Park, and sometimes just simply The Stick) is an outdoor sports and entertainment stadium located in San Francisco, California. It is the present home field of the San Francisco 49ers NFL team, who moved over from Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park before the 1971 season.
The stadium is situated at Candlestick Point on the western shore of the San Francisco Bay. Due to its location next to a hill, strong winds often swirl down into the stadium, creating interesting playing conditions. At the time of its construction in the late 1950s, the stadium site was the cheapest plot of land available in the city which was suitable for a sports stadium. Legend also has it that city officials and stadium designers made visits to the site during the morning when the breezes are usually calm, but not during the late afternoon and evening when the winds frequently pick up quite dramatically, even on clear sunny days.
The surface of the field is natural bluegrass, but for nine seasons the stadium had artificial turf, from 1970 to 1978. The "sliding pit" configuration, with dirt cut-outs only around the bases, was installed in 1971, primarily to keep the dust down from the breezy conditions. Riverfront Stadium had introduced the sliding pit layout in June 1970. Following the 1978 football season, the decrepit artificial turf was, mercifully, removed. Natural grass was re-installed before the 1979 baseball season.
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[edit] Park history
Ground was broken in 1958 as the new home of the National League's San Francisco Giants, who were moving west from New York. The Giants officially chose the name of Candlestick Park after a name-the-park contest on March 3, 1959. Prior to that, its construction site had been shown on maps as the generic Bay View Stadium. Richard Nixon threw out the first ever baseball on the opening day of Candlestick Park on April 12, 1960. The Oakland Raiders played their 1961 American Football League season at the stadium. In 1971, the NFL's San Francisco 49ers became tenants as well.
The Beatles performed their last live commercial concert at Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966.
The stadium was enclosed during the winter of 1971–1972 for the 49ers, with stands built around the outfield. The result was that the wind speed dropped marginally, but often swirled around throughout the stadium, and the view of the Bay was lost. Candlestick Park has the distinction of being the sole remaining NFL stadium that started life as a baseball-only facility that later had a football field added. Previous baseball parks that had been converted to house football included parks such as Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Angel Stadium of Anaheim, Mile High Stadium, Shea Stadium, and Milwaukee County Stadium. This accounts for the stadium's odd oblong design that leaves many seats on what was the right-field side of the stadium behind the eastern grandstand of the stadium during football games. Candlestick also has the dubious distinction of being the last NFL football stadium where upper-deck supports obstruct the sight-lines from the prime first-deck seating.
The Stick was also home to dozens of commercial shoots as well as the climatic scene in the Richard Rush 1973 comedy Freebie and the Bean starring James Caan and Alan Arkin.
On October 17, 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake (measuring 7.1 on the Richter Scale) struck San Francisco, minutes before Game 3 of the World Series was to begin. Amazingly, no one within the stadium was injured, but minor structural damage did occur to the stadium. The World Series between the Giants and Oakland Athletics was delayed for ten days as a result as the overall structural soundness of the stadium (and of Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum as well) was checked by engineers, while the area had some time to recover.
In 2000, the Giants moved to the new, Pacific Bell Park (now called AT&T Park) in downtown San Francisco, leaving the 49ers as the lone professional sports team to use the stadium. The final baseball game pitted the Giants against their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and occurred on an unseasonably hot day.
[edit] Reputation
As a baseball field, the stadium was best known for the windy conditions that often made life difficult for outfielders trying to catch fly balls. During the first of two All Star games played in the park (this one in 1961, the other in 1984), Giants pitcher Stu Miller was forced into a balk by a gust of wind. Two years later, wind picked up the entire batting cage and dropped it 60 feet (18 meters) away on the pitcher’s mound while the New York Mets were taking batting practice. Keith Hernandez had a clause written into his contract with the New York Mets that he could not be traded to San Francisco because they played in Candlestick Park.
The stadium also had the reputation as the coldest park in the major leagues, resulting in fewer home runs. The Giants played on the reputation to bolster fan support with promotionals such as awarding the Croix de Candlestick pin to fans at the conclusion of extra-inning night games in which the Giants were victorious. Among many less-than-flattering fan nicknames for the park were "North Pole" and "Cave of the Winds."
[edit] Name changes
Candlestick Park was named for Candlestick Point, a point of land jutting into the San Francisco Bay. Candlestick Point is itself named for the indigenous "candlestick bird" (Long-billed Curlew), once common to the point.
The rights to the arena name were licensed to 3Com Corporation from 1995 until 2002. During that time the park became known as 3Com Park. In 2002 the naming rights deal expired, and the park then became officially known as San Francisco Stadium at Candlestick Point. On September 28, 2004, a new naming rights deal was signed with Monster Cable, a maker of cables for electronic equipment, and the stadium was renamed Monster Park (many people erroneously assume the Monster Park name is associated with the well-known Monster.com job search website).
The City of San Francisco had trouble finding a new naming sponsor due in part to the downturn in the economy, but also because the stadium's tenure as 3Com Park was tenuous at best. Many local fans were annoyed with the change and continued referring to the park by its original name, and many continue to do so to this day, regardless of the official name. Freeway signs in the vicinity were recently changed to read "Monster Park" as part of an overall signage upgrade to national standards on California highways.
A measure passed in the November 2, 2004 election states that the stadium name will revert back to Candlestick permanently after the current contract with Monster Cable expires in 2008. This highlights San Francisco's extreme distaste for corporate naming. Many San Franciscans refer to AT&T Park where the Giants play, by its original name, Pac Bell (which is itself a nickname for the universally despised original name Pacific Bell Park), despite having undergone two name changes in the stadium's relatively short life. Monster Park is similarly almost universally referred to as Candlestick Park by both locals and much of the media despite the name change. The Monster Park moniker is confined to the 49ers front office and to some radio and television broadcasters, all of whom are contractually required to use the corporate sponsor's name whenever referring to the park, just as they were with 3Com.
[edit] Future
Plans were underway to construct a new 68,000 seat stadium at Candlestick Point [1], however on November 8, 2006, the 49ers announced that they have abandoned plans for a new stadium and would be moving to Santa Clara. As a result, San Francisco withdrew its bid for the 2016 Olympics on November 13, 2006, just days after the 49ers said they would not build a new stadium that would have been a centerpiece of the bid.
[edit] See also
- Dakin Building
- Humphrey the whale, the humpback whale who was beached and rescued south of Candlestick
[edit] External links
- USGS aerial photograph showing football layout, a 2004 image from Microsoft's TerraServer-USA website
| Preceded by: Seals Stadium 1958–1959 |
Home of the San Francisco Giants 1960–1999 |
Succeeded by: AT&T Park 2000–present |
| Preceded by: Kezar Stadium 1946–1970 |
Home of the San Francisco 49ers 1971–present |
Succeeded by: current home |
| Preceded by: Kezar Stadium 1960 |
Home of the Oakland Raiders 1961 |
Succeeded by: Frank Youell Field 1962–1965 |
