EPISODE 228: Candlestick Park - With Steven Travers

Described as a "festive prison yard" by famed New Yorker baseball essayist Roger Angell during the 1962 World Series, San Francisco's famed Candlestick Park was equally loved and hated by sports teams and fans alike during its 43-year-long run as the dual home of baseball's Giants and the NFL's 49ers.

​Curiously (and perhaps illegally) built on a landfill ​atop​ a garbage dump ​at the edge of San Francisco Bay, the "'Stick"​ was notorious for ​its​ tornadic winds​, ​ominous fogs​​ ​and uncomfortably chilly temperatures - especially in its first decade as an open-facing, largely baseball-only park.

​Though fully enclosed in 1971 to accommodate the arrival of the football 49ers (replacing the stadium's grass surface with the more-dual-purpose Astroturf to boot), the aesthetics changed little - made worse by the elimination of the park's previously lovely view of San Francisco's downtown.

B​ut there were sports to ​be had. While the Giants only won two NL pennants during their time at Candlestick (despite some huge talent and multiple future Hall of Famers), the 49ers brought perennial playoff-caliber football to the venue - including five NFL titles and a record 36 appearances on ABC's "Monday Night Football" - before leaving for Santa Clara in 2014.

Sportswriter Steven Travers ("Remembering the Stick: Candlestick Par​k: ​1960–2013​")​ takes us back in time to recount the good, bad and downright bizarre of one of the Bay Area's most unique sports venues.

Remembering the Stick - Candlestick Park: 1960-2013 - buy book here

EPISODE 212: Horace Stoneham & the New York Giants - With Steve Treder

Baseball historian Steve Treder ("Forty Years a Giant: The Life of Horace Stoneham") steps up to the plate this week to delve into the oft-overlooked contributions of influential San Francisco (née New York) Giants owner Horace Stoneham - who quietly stewarded the storied National League franchise through four turbulent decades of baseball history (1936-76).

Inheriting the club at the tender age of 32 from his father after his death in 1936, Stoneham actually began his tenure with the Manhattan-based Giants (and its sprawling multi-sport Polo Grounds venue) twelve years earlier as an apprentice - working his way up from lowly ticketing assistant to (legendary field manager) John McGraw confidante by the early 1930s.

Despite winning only four NL pennants (including the famous 1951 "Shot Heard 'Round the World") and just one World Series title (1954) while in New York, Stoneham more significantly impacted the team's legacy and the game's future off the field.

In the mid-1940s when the Pacific Coast League was angling to gain Major League status, few except Stoneham and Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey took it seriously; twelve years later, the Giants and Dodgers became the first teams to boldly relocate westward.

Stoneham was also an early pioneer in racial integration: he signed Negro League stars Monte Irvin and Hank Thompson in 1949 (enabling the Giants to become the second-ever MLB club to break the color barrier); and he hired the majors' first-ever Spanish-speaking scout to help find and develop Latin American players.

Forty Years a Giant: The Life of Horace Stoneham - buy book here

EPISODE 147: The Dodgers & Giants Bolt West – With Lincoln Mitchell

Following the 1957 season, two of baseball's most famous teams – the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants – left the city they had called home since the 1880s and headed west to the Golden State of California.

The dramatic departure and bold reinvention of the Dodgers (to Los Angeles) and the Giants (to San Francisco) is the stuff of not only professional baseball lore, but also broader American culture – brash and (especially among generations of New Yorkers) unforgivable acts of betrayal committed by greedy owners Walter O'Malley and Horace Stoneham. 

But, as this week’s guest Lincoln Mitchell (Baseball Goes West: The Dodgers, the Giants, and the Shaping of the Major Leagues) argues, the broader chronological story of America’s biggest-ever pro sports franchise relocation was, and is, not a one-way narrative.

While a traumatic blow to the societal psyche of the New York metropolitan region, the transplanting of two longtime National League rivals was not only inevitable (as the nation’s economic and demographic profiles were rapidly changing), but ultimately crucial to the survival of the sport – as increasingly modern forces like air transportation, television and the automobile began to transform pre-War notions of leisure time and discretionary income.

A culturally and financially booming post-War California quickly proved to be not only fertile ground for baseball, but also a blueprint for US professional sports writ large in the decades that followed.

Thank you VisitArizona.com for sponsoring this week’s episode!

          

Baseball Goes West: The Dodgers, the Giants and the Shaping of the Major Leagues - buy here

Will Big League Baseball Survive?: Globalization, the End of Television, Youth Sports, and the Future of Major League Baseball - buy here

San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third-Place Baseball Team - buy here

1939 Brooklyn Bums Tee (from Streaker Sports) - buy here

"Dem Bums" Brooklyn Baseball Shirt (from OldSchoolShirts.com) - buy here

San Francisco Seals Baseball Shirt (from OldSchoolShirts.com) - buy here