Candlestick Park: Difference between revisions

On October 17, 1989, the [[1989 Loma Prieta earthquake|Loma Prieta earthquake]] (magnitude 76.19) struck San Francisco, minutes before Game 3 of the [[1989 World Series|World Series]] was to begin at Candlestick. No one within the stadium was injured, although minor structural damage was incurred to the stadium. [[Al Michaels]] and [[Tim McCarver]], who called the game for [[Major League Baseball on ABC|ABC]], later credited the stadium's design for saving thousands of lives.<ref name="Storied"/> An ESPN documentary about the earthquake revealed that the local stadium authority demanded that Candlestick Park undertake a major engineering project to shore up perceived safety red flags in the stadium. The authority pushed reluctant officials to get this done between the 1988 and 1989 baseball seasons, which prevented a "collapse wave" that could have killed thousands of fans and led to there being very few casualties of any kind in Candlestick after such a massive natural disaster. The World Series between the Giants and their Bay rivals the [[1989 Oakland Athletics season|Oakland A's]] was subsequently delayed for 10 days, in part to give engineers time to check the stadium's overall structural soundness (and that of the A's nearby home, the [[Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum]]). During this time, the [[1989 San Francisco 49ers season|49ers]] moved their game against the [[1989 New England Patriots season|New England Patriots]] on October 22 to [[Stanford Stadium]], where they had defeated the [[1984 Miami Dolphins season|Miami Dolphins]] 38–16 to win [[Super Bowl XIX]] on January 20, 1985.