STAN ISAACS
Out of Left FieldWith A Ball Park Like This One, Maybe the Game Doesn't Matter
A Day at the Giants’ Xandu-by-the-Sea
The McCovey Cove Patrol stands by to observe and recover home run balls
By STAN ISAACS of TheColumnists.com
THE GIANTS are floundering
a bit in the western division of the National League. No matter.
They have Pac Bell Park, the Giants’ Xanadu-by-the-Sea.
The ball park is San Francisco’s La Scala, Prince Albert
Hall, Cathedral of St. John Divine; it is the Sydney Opera House
in the eyes of its citizenry.
It is a spectacular ball park in a spectacular setting on San
Francisco Bay. It is treasured all the more because it was not
built at public expense and it succeeds the much-despised wind
tunnel that was Candlestick Park. It has come to this: At Candlestick
Park the Giants could have a good team, but they were in a bad
ball park; right now it wouldn’t matter if the Giants had
a bad team because they are in a great ball park.
I, who got my first taste of baseball as a Giants fan going to
the Polo Grounds in New York, saw this for myself recently on
a visit to the town columnist Herb Caen called “Baghdad
by the Bay.” On this bright, sunny, cool Sunday, I loved
the games-and-fun feeling of the ball park, the excitement and
anticipation among the sold-out crowd of 41,000 that Barry Bonds
might hit a splash home run, a drive over the right field stands
into what is called McCovey Cove.
There is a bigger than-life-size statue of Willie Mays completing
his swing outside the main entrance of the park, the Willie Mays
gate. It is a gathering place somewhat mindful of the Ebbets
Field rotunda. People gather there, take photos in front of the
statue on which are inscribed many tributes to Mays. The homage
to Mays is the result of the admiration for him by Peter Magowan,
the owner of the Giants, a New York Giants fan in his youth who
first started rooting for Mays when he saw him break in at the
Polo Grounds.
Magowan understands as well as anybody that Giants history didn’t
start when the team came to San Francisco in 1958 after owner
Horace Stoneham messed up the franchise in New York. There are
reminders of the New York Giants all over the place: huge photos
of John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, Mel Ott, Carl Hubbell and
Bill Terry grace the press box. The media guide has a photo of
Bobby Thomson's “Shot Heard ‘Round the World”
and Thomson will be honored by the Giants later this year with
the approach of the 50th anniversary of his feat.
There is a carnival feeling to the area behind the left field
stands. Kids swoosh down slides; they swing with all their might
on a diamond carpet designed for wiffle ball. The die-hard baseball
fan might object to this as taking away from the game itself,
but Magowan has an answer to that.
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He says, “To expect young children to follow a three-hour game with the same rapt attention as an adult is unrealistic. To not cater to those families, those children, is to lose the next generation of fans. And these successive generations of fans are the lifeblood of baseball.”
Even the most hard-hearted basball purist has to be seduced by the portwalk area at the right field fence where people can look at the game for free through an iron grating. This is a bow to one of baseball’s oldest tradition--kids getting a free look though a knot hole in a fence.
I have never been to a ball park where so many fans walked about during the game. I took my walk, circling the entire park. In right field some 50 boats--sloops to kayaks--idled in the cove, swimmers hopeful of retrieving any home run ball hit into the drink. Seats out there cost $20.
Beyond center field I checked out Orlando Cepeda’s Caribbean Bar-B-Q featuring such as the “Cha Cha Bowl” of jerk chicken, rice, black beans and pineapple salsa. “It is the best food in the ball park,” an insider said.
On to the left field stands I noted Willie Mays Sausages; sushi; coffee bars for the latte crowd; Ben and Jerry ice cream; sourdough bread bowls of chowder, pizza; Krispy Kreme; and Gilroy garlic fries, a bow to nearby Gilroy which calls itself, I believe, “the garlic capital of the world.”
Why, they even have hot dogs and cracker jacks.
The public address announcer is a perky woman, Renal Brooks Moon. Some of the ball boys are old gents, called “ball dudes” by some, “golden retrievers” by others. And get this, the sound system doesn’t blast your ears off as it does at Yankee and Shea Stadiums. Glory be, one can talk to a neighbor during the change of sides between innings.
A touch right out of nearby Silicon Valley was provided by 12-year-old Manuel Romero, who sang a smashing rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner.” Romero was identified on the message board complete with his e-mail address.
Nothing is perfect. One needs the eyesight of a Ted Williams to make out the numbers on the manually-operated scoreboard in right field. I would prefer the photo of Mel Ott in the press box show him in his heralded cocked-leg swing rather than a head shot. And I think the Ralph Lauren people missed a great bet. Former Giants announcer Hank Greenwald would have had Lauren put up the big bucks to gain the naming rights to the stadium; then, with a bow to its line of clothes, they could have named the park the Polo Grounds.
The Giants lost to Milwaukee that day, beaten 6-4 in the 12th inning. It almost didn’t matter.
© 2001 by Stan Isaacs. Photos © 2001 by the San Francisco Giants.
You can comment on this column or contact Stan Isaacs with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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