Candlestick Park
Candlestick Park was an outdoor stadium located in the Hunters Point area of San Francisco, California, United States. It was originally the home of Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants, who played there from 1960 until 1999, after which the Giants moved into Pacific Bell Park in 2000. It was also the home field of the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League from 1971 through 2013, after which the team moved to Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. The last event held at Candlestick was a concert by Paul McCartney in August 2014, and the demolition of the stadium was completed in September 2015. As of 2019, the site is planned to be redeveloped into office space.
The stadium was situated at Candlestick Point on the western shore of San Francisco Bay. Candlestick Point was named for the "candlestick birds" that populated the area for many years. Due to Candlestick Park's location next to the bay, strong winds often swirled down into the stadium, creating unusual playing conditions. At the time of its construction in the late 1950s, the stadium site was one of the few pieces of land available in the city that was suitable for a sports stadium, and had room for the 10,000 parking spaces that had been promised to the Giants.
The surface of the field for most of its existence was natural bluegrass, but for nine seasons, from 1970 to 1978, the stadium had artificial turf. A "sliding pit" configuration, with dirt cut-outs only around the bases, was installed in 1971, primarily to keep the dust down in the breezy conditions. Following the 1978 football season, the playing surface was restored to natural grass.
Park history
When the New York Giants arrived in San Francisco in 1958, they played their home games at the old Seals Stadium at 16th and Bryant Streets. As part of the agreement regarding the Giants' relocation to the West Coast, the city of San Francisco promised to build a new stadium for the team. Most of the land at Candlestick Point was purchased from Charles Harney, a local contractor. Harney purchased the land in 1952 for a quarry and industrial development. He made a profit of over $2 million when he sold the land for the stadium. Harney received a no-bid contract to build the stadium. The entire deal was the subject of a grand jury investigation in 1958.Ground was broken in for the stadium and the Giants selected the name of Candlestick Park, after a name-the-park contest on March 3, 1959. Prior to the choice of the name, its construction site had been shown on maps as the generic Bay View Stadium. It was the first modern baseball stadium, as it was the first to be built entirely of reinforced concrete. Then-Vice President Richard Nixon threw out the ceremonial first pitch on the opening day of Candlestick Park on April 12, 1960, and the Oakland Raiders played the final three games of the 1960 season and their entire 1961 American Football League season at Candlestick Park. With only 77 home runs hit in 1960, the fences were moved in, from left-center to right-center, for the 1961 season.
Following the 1970 season, the first with AstroTurf, Candlestick Park was enclosed, with grandstands around the outfield. This was in preparation for the 49ers in 1971, who were moving from their long-time home of Kezar Stadium. The result was that the wind speed dropped marginally, but often swirled irregularly throughout the stadium, and the view of San Francisco Bay was lost.
Candlestick Park played host to two Major League Baseball All-Star Games in its life as home for the Giants. The stadium hosted the first of two games in 1961 and later hosted the 1984 All-Star Game. The Giants played a total of six postseason series at Candlestick Park; they played host to the NLCS in 1971, 1987, and 1989, the World Series in 1962 and 1989, and one NLDS in 1997.
The 49ers hosted eight NFC Championship games during their time at Candlestick Park. The first was in January 1982 when Dwight Clark caught a game-winning touchdown pass from Joe Montana to lead the 49ers to Super Bowl XVI by defeating the Dallas Cowboys. Clark's play went down as one of the more famous in football history, and was dubbed "The Catch". The last of these came in January 2012, when Lawrence Tynes kicked a field goal in overtime to defeat the 49ers and send the New York Giants to Super Bowl XLVI. The final postseason game hosted by the 49ers at Candlestick Park was the 2012 NFC Divisional Playoff matchup between the 49ers and the Green Bay Packers, won by the 49ers by a score of 45–31. The 49ers' record in NFC Championship games at Candlestick Park was 4-4; they defeated the Cowboys twice, in 1981 and 1994, the Chicago Bears in 1984, and the Los Angeles Rams in 1989. Their losses came against the Cowboys in 1992, the Giants in 1990 and 2011, and the Packers in 1997.
In addition to Clark's famous touchdown catch, two more plays referred to as "The Catch" took place during games at Candlestick Park. The play dubbed "The Catch II" came in the 1998 NFC Wild Card round, as Steve Young found Terrell Owens for a touchdown with eight seconds left to defeat the two-time defending NFC Champion Packers. The play called "The Catch III" came in the 2011 NFC Divisional Playoffs, when Alex Smith threw a touchdown pass to Vernon Davis with nine seconds remaining to provide the winning margin against the New Orleans Saints.
On October 17, 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck San Francisco, minutes before Game 3 of the World Series was to begin at Candlestick Park. 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 ABC, later credited the stadium's design for saving thousands of lives. 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 Park after such a massive natural disaster. The World Series between the Giants and their Bay rivals the Oakland Athletics was subsequently delayed for 10 days, in part to give engineers time to check the stadium's overall structural soundness. During this time, the 49ers moved their game against the New England Patriots on October 22 to Stanford Stadium, where they had defeated the Miami Dolphins 38–16 to win Super Bowl XIX on January 20, 1985.
The NFL awarded Super Bowl XXXIII to Candlestick Park on November 2, 1994. After planned renovations in preparation for the game were not made, the NFL owners instead awarded Super Bowl XXXIII to the Miami area during their meeting on October 31, 1996. The league promised to award Super Bowl XXXVII following construction of a new football stadium, which was approved by voters in 1997, but the forced sale of the team by owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. caused plans to fall through.
File:Candlestick Park - 7-24-1971.jpg|thumb|Candlestick Park upper deck expansion in progress during 1971 baseball season. Note the artificial turf then in use, along with the pre-49ers football scoreboard used during the annual East-West Shrine Game.
In, the Giants moved to the new Pacific Bell Park in the China Basin neighborhood, leaving the 49ers as the sole professional sports team to use Candlestick Park. The final baseball game was played on September 30, 1999, against their long-time rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who won 9–4. In that game, all nine Dodgers starters had at least one base hit, while the stadium's final home run came from Dodgers' right fielder Raúl Mondesí in the 6th inning. The National League rivalry between the Giants and Dodgers, one of the oldest and most hotly contested in the Major Leagues, dated back to when both teams were based in New York City. When first the Dodgers, then the Giants, moved to California in 1958, the rivalry continued unabated.
For its last several years as home to just the 49ers, Candlestick Park was the only remaining NFL stadium to have begun as a baseball-only facility which later underwent an extensive redesign to accommodate football. That was evidenced by the stadium's curiously oblong and irregular shape, whereby views from a sizable section of lower-deck seating in the baseball configuration's right-field corner were so badly obstructed by the eastern grandstand of the football seating configuration that they were unusable for football games and would consequently sit empty. Since a football gridiron, including its end zones and benches along the sidelines, is much smaller than a baseball playing field and foul territory, this large grandstand, which provided thousands of prime seats along one whole sideline of the football field, was designed to be retractable. It would slide backwards for baseball games, under the upper deck, and provide a smaller section of baseball seating beyond the outfield wall in right. After the Giants played their 1999 season and moved away from Candlestick, this grandstand was left permanently in its football position, and the unusable seats were eventually removed.
On September 3, 2011, Candlestick Park hosted the first and only college football game in its history with a neutral site game between the California Golden Bears and Fresno State Bulldogs. This game was in San Francisco, because of the massive renovation and seismic retrofit at California's home stadium, California Memorial Stadium. The rest of the Golden Bears' home games in 2011 were played at AT&T Park. Cal won the game 36–21.
At approximately 5:19 p.m. local time on December 19, 2011, Candlestick Park experienced an unexpected power outage just before a Monday Night Football game between the 49ers and the Pittsburgh Steelers. An aerial shot shown live on ESPN showed a transformer sparking and then the stadium going completely dark. About 17 minutes later, however, the park's lights came back on in time for the game's kickoff. With 12:13 remaining in the second quarter, another power outage created yet another 30-minute delay before play resumed again. The 49ers 2011 season ended at Candlestick Park with a loss to the New York Giants in the NFC Championship Game.
The 49ers played their final game at Candlestick Park on Monday, December 23, 2013, against the Atlanta Falcons, winning 34–24 after a NaVorro Bowman interception that would be called The Pick at the Stick by some sports columnists. This game was the facility's 36th and final game on Monday Night Football, the most at any stadium used by the NFL.