Disaster Stops the World Series

On October seventeenth, nineteen eighty nine, the Loma Petera earthquake happens have five of four local time affecting the Bay Area of California, where the third game of the World Series was being held at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, where two Bay Area teams in the San Francisco Giants in the Oakland Athletics, were facing off for a chance of the World Series. But all that stopped with its six point nine Richter scale earthquake, damaging bridges and buildings in roads, killing sixty three and injuring almost four thousand people. Say, we're going to dive into what happened and how this effected the nineteen eighty nine World Series. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide for a rapid deep dive into sports history every day now. Earlier, we've covered the nineteen eighty eight World Series, which also featured the Oakland Athletics, in another California team which is largely remembered for Kirk Gibson's Game one home run. But a year later, Oakland was again in the World Series, attempting this time to win, winning ninety nine games and brought back many of the same people as they had the best brothers and Mark Bwire and Jose Conseco and Dave Stewart was their star pitcher that year, and face off against Toronto in the ALCS, beating them pretty handily in five games, leading to meeting their neighbors across the Bay, the San Francisco Giants, who represented the National League that year, as they won ninety two games, winning their division, led by Kevin Mitchell, who hit forty seven home runs that year, and despite having no one on their pitching staff win more than seventeen games, they were able to put together a strong season, so the World Series, known as the Battle of the Bay began as both teams were right next to the San Francisco Bay. Began on October fourteenth, when Dave Stewart took off took the starting job against Scott Geroldtz, where Oakland won handily five to zero. In Game two, again in Oakland, Oakland came out with starter Mike Moore basing off against Giants pitcher Rick Rouchelle, and again Oakland won, winning five to four. As a game shifted across the Bay for Game three at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, as roughly fifty thousand people were in attendance for this game. The game was set to start at five point thirty and as everyone was making their way in and pregame coverage was starting, the telecast at five oh four completely cuts out. Now, remember this is nineteen eighty nine. There is no social media. News coverage is not twenty four hours. So when you're watching a sport and it just goes away and then it just cuts it like technical difficulty or just says a generic logo, you have no idea what how to You think maybe a fuse blue or the television stations having literal technical difficulties, But that's not what happened in this case. See Loma Bertha is a mountain range just outside the San Jose area, and that was the epicenter for this six point nine Richter scale earthquake. Now, if you don't know much about this scale, it goes from zero and it goes all the way up to ten. But the largest ever measured was nine point two in nineteen sixty on the coast of Chile. But the highest level is seven point zero and this was just below that. The reason why it was so devastating was the population in the Bay Area. Now, shortly after this post moment, all the sports networks do eventually get back on the air and try to explain what's happened. The earthquake has happened, and you start to see the chaos that is ensuing at the stadium as many fans may have not been there yet or we're making their way. And actually the fact that this game was going on it actually helped as many people had left the city to go home early to see the game, and so there was less people in the city for the chance of the devastation. So they did probably save lives by hosting this event, and because it was such a good event. The Goodyear Blimp was actually there for the telecast and helped coordinate emergency efforts as they were using everything they could. The police used ABC's generator to help coordinate their packages and use one of their phone lines as they didn't have anything besides radio for communication, and we even see police cars driving onto the field coordinating with people telling them the game has been postponed. Make your way in orderly fashion out of the stadium. Now, many of the patrons at the stadium were a little freaked out as the way candlestick was put together, it was made for earthquakes, and it has joints that are made to move so that in a case of a earthquake, it doesn't crumble. But when you see that as a person, you see cracks and joints and things not where they're supposed to be, it freaks you out. And that's why many people left, and they did not want to stay, and it was good for them to leave, and luckily it was done in orderly fashion. And it's interesting to watch pictures as we see many of the players and their teammates in the middle of the field. So it's a crowd of people in the middle of the field because that's arguably the safe place because if something were to crumble at the stadium, it wouldn't fall on top of them. So they waited there for a few while everyone cleared out, and then the teams made their way out. Now, one of the biggest things that happened where bridges in the area were collapsing. There were high ray bridges, including the Bay Bridge that connected Oakland to San Francisco. Now this is not the Golden State Bridge, it's another bridge, and this was a double decker bridge and the top deck fell down onto the bottom deck, making it more like a ramp. You couldn't use the bridge at all because of this, and there were other bridges and highways that did actually collapse and come down on multiple people, killing them. Unfortunately. Now it's estimated that there were over twelve thousand dollars homes that were damaged, over two thousand businesses. And this actually this earthquake, although it was devastating, lives and injuries were happened, and it was a life changing event. It really kicked up everything for California and the West coast where most earthquakes do happen. And they now put into place that they were going to retrofit all the places they could, all the bridges, the old houses, the old buildings, gonna retrofit them, and any building that is made is going to be a hurricane safe to help something like this from happening again, as you can't stop an earthquake, but you can prevent the devastation, as most of the devastation that happened was due to bridges falling and buildings falling and debris and that's what mostly gets during these earthquakes. Not the actual quake itself, the earthquake itself. It shakes you, you feel uneasy, but if you're out in the middle of a field, you will be fine. It's when there's other stuff around you. So this moment has actually helped save even more lives, even though that some lives were taken in the process. Now, after this happened, the commissioner of the League, Fay Vincent, came on held a press conference by candlelight to let us know that the series was suspended and we were going to take it. We were going to evaluate later on what we were going to do. And he actually did not tell anyone before he made this announcement that he was going to do this, as he was making decisions as he went. Now, this decision was do we keep the series here or do we move it or do we cancel it? Those were options they were dealing with, and many other stadiums offered up their location to host the rest of the game, Wrigley Field, Cominsky Park, the Kingdome, and Seattle the Astrodome, Hey Stadium, Shay Stadium, but they decided to just delay until it was safe to have the game again at Kansiastick Park now Kanostick Park only had minor damages and they were able to be quickly repaired. It was deemed safe to start Game three on October twenty seventh. Now, in between this time, San Francisco Giants stayed in the San Francisco area to help their family and friends in the area the best they could, but Oakland actually went to Phoenix so they could practice. Now, they are a Bay Area team and many of them had homes and family affected as well, but they didn't want the distraction that was going on and wanted to focus on baseball for the rest of the series. And because of this delay, it actually allowed Dave Stewart, Oakland's ace, to actually pitch again for Game three, during an offensive blowout they won thirteen to seven, then again in Game four. Mike Moore pitched for the Oakland Athletics on October twenty eighth, but at the time was the latest date the World's Series had ever been played, which now it goes all the way into November thanks to the increase of the Baseball playoffs. But Oakland won this last game nine to six, sweeping the San Francisco Giants now Oakland one, as they were the favorites. They were probably gonna win this series anyway, but having this happened to San Francisco at the same time made it very hard for them to really be focused into the game. And so it allowed the A's to win another championship and it would be years before the Giants will get a chance to follow. And this just goes to show you that natural disasters do affect sports. This hasn't been the only time that earthquake has affected sporting events. Hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, this stuff happens in the world. And just because sports we put them on a pezestal and we love them, and these guys are millionaires, they still go through all the stuff that we go through. Teams had to figure this out and it's interesting how they go about it all the time because because we all want to see our sports, but it has to be done in a safe way. And if you want to learn more about natural disasters, check out the Disaster Response. We're hosts Paul and Joshua go into the history of natural disasters and the response that happens. They dive into even more about what would happen covering earthquakes, hurricanes, volcano explosions. They go through it all in great detail so you can learn even more. We'll put a link in the description so you can check them out. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a review wherever you're listening, and if you want, you can tell us a topic you want to cover and your name and we'll get that done just for you. And come back tomorrow for more Daily Sports History.