Baseball

Present at the Re-Creation: The Loma Prieta Earthquake

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30 years ago today!

October 17, 1989, 5:09 pm
Section 51, Upper Deck
Candlestick Park, San Francisco

It’s in the drink, man! The Bay Bridge has fallen down!

Uh oh, it’s going to take a while to get home tonight. The man in front of me with the radio pressed to his ear continues to relay news to the fans around us. We’re here for the third game of the World Series. Five minutes ago, the earth shook, and the crowd cheered. Now we start to realize the magnitude of what’s happened. And where the heck is Darrell?

Writing Projects for Varney’s Place

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Recently completed pieces for The Kenwood Group, for their Varney’s Place blog:

Giants Stadium: In the Shadow of Kenwood

Starting Friday afternoon and 81 times in the next six months, the neighborhood around Kenwood will be transformed. Thousands of people of all ages wearing Halloween colors and panda and giraffe hats will flood the streets around our office, their shirts bearing an odd collection of names which are common nouns like Posey, Pagan, Panda, Pence, Belt, Huff, Bonds, Snow, Mays, the Beard, and the Freak, as well as unique three-syllable names like Bumgarner, Vogelsong, Marichal, Scutaro, McCovey, and Lincecum.

Shooting Giants: Photographing Baseball from the Diamond’s Edge

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I’ve got the best view in the house.

I’m poised on a folding chair in a photographers’ dugout just below ground level, at the edge of the diamond at AT&T Park in San Francisco. It’s the bottom of the ninth inning, and the Giants are losing to the San Diego Padres 6-3.

My camera is less than two feet above field level. As I look straight out through protective netting, I am focusing on Giants infielder Joaquin Arias at the plate, no more than 50 feet in front of me. A right-handed batter, Arias faces away from my vantage point on the third-base side of the field, but I can clearly see his body language throughout the at-bat and see his face during his follow-through.

Confessions of a Bicoastal Baseball Fan

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In honor of the A’s and Giants both winning their divisions and making the baseball playoffs:

Here’s my dirty little secret: I am a bicoastal baseball fan. I root for both the Giants and the Athletics, who play on opposite coasts of San Francisco Bay. This duality is heresy for many baseball fans, who call me a “bad fan” and consider sports loyalty an absolute, one-sided affair, even in a two-team market.

But how glorious to have two clubs to follow! When one wallows in mediocrity, the other is often a contender. One of my teams plays at home every day. If the other is on the East Coast, their starting times are staggered, and I can listen to or watch two games a day — an embarrassment of riches, for sure.

Blowing Up the Catcher: Buster Posey and the Clean Play Club

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The collision was so violent that, for a moment, I feared he was dead, then paralyzed. But Giants catcher Buster Posey started to move almost immediately, clawing the dirt in agony, and I knew he had sustained a devastating injury.

Posey was hit on a play at the plate in last week’s second game between the Giants and Florida Marlins, when substitute Scott Cousins, who had entered a tie game as a pinchhitter in the 12th inning, attempted to score after tagging up at 3rd base on a shallow fly ball out. Giants right fielder Nate Schierholtz, who had been throwing out runners at various bases on an almost daily basis, released a bullet throw on one hop to catcher Posey, who had stepped out in front of home plate.

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