"I'll be prepared. Our 7th grade trip was to Antartica. I'll take a bunsen burner over there. And maybe some powdered food. For lack of a better word, by the end of the game, I'd like to say I breezed through 9 innings."
--Joe Magrane, Cardinals pitcher on his first trip to Candlestick Park
Stadiums
Pacific Bell Park
By Wikipedia
SBC Park (formerly Pacific Bell Park or Pac Bell Park and
soon to be AT&T Park) is an open-air baseball stadium, home to
the San Francisco Giants of the National League. The park is located at 24
Willie Mays Plaza, at the corner of 3rd Street and King Street in the
South Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, California.
Giants
subsidiary called
China Basin Ballpark Corp.
Surface
Sports
Turf (a blend of five
grasses)
Construction
cost
$357
Architect
HOK
Sport
Names
Pacific
Bell Park (2000-2003)
SBC Park (2003-2006)
AT&T Park (2006-?)
Tenants
San
Francisco Giants (MLB, 2000-)
San Francisco Demons (XFL, 2001)
Seating
capacity
41,503
(2000)
Dimensions
Left
Field - 339 ft (103 m)
Left-Center - 382 ft (116 m)
Left-Center (deep) - 404 ft (123 m)
Center Field - 399 ft (122 m)
Right-Center (deep) - 421 ft (128 m)
Right-Center - 365 ft (111 m)
Right Field - 309 ft (94 m)
Backstop - 48 ft
History
Groundbreaking on the ballpark began on December 11, 1997 in the
industrial waterfront area of San Francisco known as China Basin. The
stadium cost $319 million to build and supplanted the Giants' former home,
Candlestick
Park, a multi-use stadium in southern San Francisco. Fans had shivered
through 40 seasons at "The Stick." In contrast, this new
ballpark was built in a sheltered and relatively warm area of the city's
topography.
When it opened on March 31, 2000, the ballpark was the first Major
League Baseball stadium built in the U.S. without public funds since the
completion of Dodger
Stadium in 1962 (though the Giants did receive a $10 million tax
abatement from the city, which also paid for upgrades to the local
infrastructure, including a connection to the Muni Metro). The park opened
with a seating capacity of 40,800, but this has increased over time as
seats have been added. The first Major League Baseball game took place on
April 11, 2000 against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Fly
to Pac Bell Park!
If you have Google
Earth installed, click here
to be "flown" to the site of Pac Bell Park. (If you do not
have it installed, get
it from Google. It allows you to view virtually anywhere on
Earth in 3D using satellite imagery.)
In just its first few years of existence, the ballpark has seen its share
of historic events primarily due to veteran Giants outfielder Barry Bonds.
On April 17, 2001, Bonds hit his 500th career home run at then Pacific
Bell Park. Later that year, he set the single season home run record when
he hit home runs number 71, 72, and 73 over the weekend of October 5th to
close the season. On August 9, 2002, Bonds hit his 600th career home run
at the park. On April 12, 2004, Bonds hit career home run 660 at SBC Park
to tie Willie Mays on the all-time list and on the next night, he hit
number 661 to move into sole possession of third place. On September 17,
2004, Bonds hit his 700th career home run at the park to become just the
third member of baseball's 700 club. It has also hosted the 2002 World
Series against the Angels, which the Giants lost 4 games to 3, and will
host the 2007 All-Star Game.
Pacific Bell, a local telephone company in the San Francisco Bay Area,
purchased the naming rights for the park for $50 million over 24 years
when the park opened. Pacific Bell's parent SBC Communications eventually
dropped the Pacific Bell name and reached an agreement with the Giants to
change the park's name on January 1, 2004. The name change upset some
fans, leaving them in the awkward position of desiring the park's former
corporate name. The voters of San Francisco twice rejected ballot measures
that would have paid for the stadium with their tax dollars, which would
have at least given them a say in what the stadium was called. Simply put:
you can't have it both ways.
Giants Enterprises, a wholly owned subsidiary of the San Francisco
Giants created and headed by longtime team executive and marketing legend
Pat Gallagher, brings non-baseball events to the stadium on days when the
Giants do not play. The stadium was home to the XFL San Francisco Demons
in 2001, was the home of the Shrine Bowl (until 2006) and college
football's Emerald Bowl (since 2002). Numerous concerts are also held at
the park.
Features
The stadium contains 68 luxury suites, 5,200 club seats on the club
level and an additional 1,500 club seats at the field level behind home
plate.
The most prominent feature of the ballpark is the right field wall,
which is 24 feet (7 m) high in honor of former Giant Willie Mays who wore
number 24. Because of the proximity to San Francisco Bay, it is only 309
feet (94 m) to the right field foul pole. The fence angles quickly away
from home plate; right-center field extends out to 421 feet (128 m) from
home plate. Atop the fence are four pillars with fountains atop. These
four pillars will burst jets of water when a Giant hits a home run. To
some old-timers, the right field area vaguely suggests the layout at the
Polo Grounds. This deep corner of the ballpark has been dubbed "death
valley" or "triples alley". Like its Polo Grounds
counterpart, it is very difficult to hit a home run to this area, and a
batted ball that finds its way into this corner often results in a triple.
McCovey Cove
Beyond right field is a section of the bay, dubbed McCovey Cove after
famed Giants outfielder Willie McCovey, into which a number of home runs
have been hit on the fly. As of September 18, 2005, 40 "Splash
Hits" have been knocked into the Bay by Giants players since the park
opened; 32 of those were by Barry Bonds. Opponents had hit the Cove on the
fly 11 times, Luis Gonzalez of the Arizona Diamondbacks being the only
visiting player to do so twice. On game days, fans take to the water of
McCovey Cove in boats and even in kayaks, often with fishing nets in the
hope of collecting a home-run ball. (This echoes what used to happen
during McCovey's playing days. Before Candlestick Park's upper deck was
extended, the area behind right field was occupied by three small bleacher
sections and a lot of open space. Kids in those bleachers would gather
behind the right field fence when "Stretch" would come to the
plate.) Just beyond the wall is a public waterfront promenade, where fans
can watch three innings of a game through the wall's archways, free of
charge, albeit with a somewhat obstructed view. Across the cove from the
ballpark is McCovey Point and China Basin Park, featuring monuments to
past Giants legends.
The ballpark also features an 80 foot (24 m) Coca-Cola bottle with
playground slides that will blow bubbles and light up with every Giants
home run and miniature version of SBC Park behind the left field
bleachers. Next to the Coke bottle is a giant baseball mitt, a replica of
a vintage 1927 glove. Right-center field features a small cable car, with
a label that states "No Dodgers Fans Allowed," and a fog horn
that blows when a Giants player hits a home run.
The park has automated scoreboards, but in right-center field it also
has enormous, manually operated boards which tell fans the results and
scores from games elsewhere around the league. These are operated by three
people, whose work on gamedays starts at least two hours prior to the
first pitch of the Giants game - they pride themselves on making sure fans
arriving at SBC Park early are immediately up-to-date with other scores,
especially those from the East coast which are often concluded by the time
play begins in the West.
Primary
research by Jim Herdman & David Vincent
Courtesy of Retrosheet.
Starting in 2004, the Giants installed one hundred and twenty-one
802.11b wireless internet access points, covering all concourses and
seating areas, creating one of the largest public "hotspots" in
the world. SBC Park could thus be said to be one of the largest
"Internet Cafes."
Outside the ballpark are three statues dedicated to San Francisco
Giants all-time greats. The Willie Mays Statue is located in front of the
ballpark entrance at Willie Mays Plaza and is surrounded 24 palm trees, in
honor of his jersey number 24, retired by the Giants. Another statue is
located at McCovey Point across McCovey Cove, and is dedicated to Willie
McCovey. A third statue, dedicated in 2005, honors former Giants pitcher
Juan Marichal, and is located outside the ballpark at its Lefty O'Doul
gate entrance.
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has ranked SBC Park
the top vegetarian-friendly ballpark. Woof!
Future Naming
On October 7, 2005, USA TODAY reported that SBC plans after their
merger with AT&T that they would adopt the AT&T name if the FCC
agreed to the merger in a meeting on October 28. What this means for the
naming rights — which would be their third in six years as the stadium
would possibly called "AT&T Park" — is still unclear. That
would tie this stadium with the park it replaced for the most names in a
five year period.
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