No Last Licks at ‘Stick for Him

There can’t be too many other Los Angeles natives who feel this way, but it makes me a little sad to see the San Francisco Giants leave Candlestick Park.

Although I grew up in Southern California, my grandparents lived in San Francisco and Candlestick Park is where I watched most of my early baseball games.

A friend of the family had season tickets and would take me down to the ‘Stick whenever a Giant home stand coincided with one of my visits.

It was at Candlestick that I learned the basics and the nuances of baseball: how to read the count, righty-lefty hitting matchups and outfield positioning.

I saw Vida Blue and Johnnie LeMaster play in person more than I saw Bob Welch and Bill Russell.

I split my allegiances between the players I knew best and my hometown team. I had a Giant cap and a Dodger plastic batting helmet. I know, it’s like wearing a UCLA T-shirt and USC sweatpants. But when you’re young, you don’t know any better, so I rooted for the Dodgers and the Giants.

Candlestick is where I first saw such all-time greats as Pete Rose, and where-are-they-now stars such as J.R. Richard. It’s where I saw all of the tacky, polyester uniforms and the funky hairdos of the ‘70s.

I rooted for Jack Clark when he was a Giant, years before he came to Dodger Stadium as a St. Louis Cardinal and hit that playoff home run off Tom Niedenfuer that devastated all of Dodgerdom.

And so it is that every time I drive on the 101 past that familiar piece of wind-whipped land jutting out into San Francisco Bay, I look at Candlestick Park with the same fondness with which you might regard your old elementary school.

I still can smell the sauerkraut that the vendors heaped on so many hot dogs and can see the wind whipping the stray papers around the outfield.

Candlestick didn’t have many outstanding architectural features. One of its unique elements was the area behind the left-field fence where fans would hop out of the stands to chase home runs, but they lost that when they installed bleachers out there about a decade ago.

The ballpark’s name was one of the best things it had going for it. So distinctive. That’s why the switch to 3Com Park a few years ago was one of the ugliest of the corporate name changes that have swept across stadiums in the 1990s. It’s also one of the least used. No one in the Bay Area calls it 3Com, the same way no true San Franciscan would refer to his hometown as “Frisco.”

Mine was probably the last generation in which most people saw a baseball game for their first professional sporting event. Baseball doesn’t cast that same spell on today’s youth. It can’t truly consider itself the national pastime anymore.

The ballpark is my office now, and covering a baseball game for a newspaper can be an ordeal. It’s a race to finish the game and the story before deadline, and every pitching change, every throw to first can be excruciating.

It wasn’t always that way. I remember when I got to the ballpark and never wanted to leave, when the only prospect more appealing than a baseball game was two baseball games. Of course, this was back when doubleheaders were a part of the regular schedule, not weather-mandated necessities.

And most of those memories were at Candlestick.

One doubleheader stands out. It was in the waning days of the great Willie McCovey’s career. He was called upon to pinch-hit in the bottom of the ninth in the opener and he hit a double to drive in the game-winning run. It seemed as if the cheering didn’t stop until the first pitch of the second game.

The more I watched the Dodgers play the Giants on Thursday, the more memories came back.

The closest I ever came to catching a foul ball was at Candlestick. A batter fouled one back near our seats some 20 rows behind the plate. I scrambled to the walkway, stuck my hand up and watched as the ball descended toward me. The next thing I knew it smacked my hand so hard that the seams left red marks for two days. The ball bounced off and went to the ground, and as I tried to join the scramble, a vendor dropped his tray on me and snatched the baseball.

No one ever called Candlestick the Friendly Confines.

And when the Giants move to their new ballpark next season, no baseball team will call Candlestick home. Before long, the 49ers will get a new place of their own and Candlestick probably will be torn down to make room for some Internet company’s campus.

When Eric Karros stepped on first base to record the final out, I felt a little pain.

Can’t say it bothered me to see the Dodgers win, though.

J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com.

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DODGERS: 9

GIANTS: 4

Rookie Williams is the last winning pitcher at 3Com.

Page 5

RANDY HARVEY

The Astrodome, supposedly the future, is now a dinosaur.

Page 2