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Monster Park

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Monster Park (colloquially Candlestick, after its original as well as future name of Candlestick Park, and sometimes just simply The Stick) is an outdoor sports and entertainment stadium located in San Francisco, California. Originally built as the home of the San Francisco Giants, who played there from 1960 until moving into Pacific Bell Park (since renamed AT&T Park) in 2000, it remains the home field of the San Francisco 49ers NFL team, which moved in before the 1971 season.

The stadium is situated at Candlestick Point on the western shore of the San Francisco Bay. Due to its location next to the bay, strong winds often swirl down into the stadium, creating interesting playing conditions. At the time of its construction in the late 1950s, the stadium site was the cheapest plot of land available in the city that was suitable for a sports stadium. Legend also has it that city officials and stadium designers made visits to the site during the morning when the breezes are usually calm, but not during the late afternoon and evening when the winds frequently pick up quite dramatically, even on clear sunny days.

The surface of the field is natural bluegrass, but for nine seasons the stadium had artificial turf, from 1970 to 1978. The "sliding pit" configuration, with dirt cut-outs only around the bases, was installed in 1971, primarily to keep the dust down from the breezy conditions. Riverfront Stadium had introduced the sliding-pit layout in June 1970. Following the 1978 football season, the artificial turf was removed. Natural grass was re-installed before the 1979 baseball season.

Park history

Ground was broken in 1958 for the new home of the National League's San Francisco Giants, who were moving west from New York. The Giants officially chose the name of Candlestick Park after a name-the-park contest on March 3, 1959. Prior to that, its construction site had been shown on maps as the generic Bay View Stadium. In a sense, it was the first modern baseball stadium, as it was the first to be built entirely of reinforced concrete. Richard Nixon threw out the first baseball on the opening day of Candlestick Park on April 12, 1960. The Oakland Raiders played their 1961 American Football League season at the stadium. In 1971, the NFL's San Francisco 49ers became tenants as well.

The Beatles performed their last live commercial concert at Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966.

The stadium was enclosed during the winter of 1971–72 for the 49ers, with stands built around the outfield. The result was that the wind speed dropped marginally, but often swirled around throughout the stadium, and the view of the Bay was lost. Candlestick Park has the distinction of being the sole remaining NFL stadium that started life as a baseball-only facility that underwent extensive reconstruction in order to add a football field. This accounts for the stadium's odd oblong design that leaves many seats on what was the right-field side of the stadium behind the eastern grandstand of the stadium during football games. Other baseball parks that had been converted to house football include Angel Stadium of Anaheim and Mile High Stadium, although Angel Stadium has long since been reconverted to baseball-only, and Mile High Stadium was demolished in 2002.

Candlestick also has the dubious distinction of being the last NFL football stadium in which upper-deck supports obstruct the sight lines from the prime first-deck seating.

The Stick was also home to dozens of commercial shoots as well as the location for the climatic scene in both the 1962 Blake Edwards thriller Experiment in Terror, starring Glenn Ford and Lee Remick, and the 1973 Richard Rush comedy Freebie and the Bean, starring James Caan and Al Arkin.

On October 17, 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake (measuring 7.1 on the Richter Scale) struck San Francisco, minutes before Game 3 of the World Series was to begin at Candlestick. Amazingly, no one within the stadium was injured but 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. The World Series between the Giants and Oakland Athletics was delayed for 10 days out of respect for the loss of life and property, and also to give engineers time to check the stadium's overall structural soundness (and that of nearby Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum). In addition, the 49ers moved their game against the New England Patriots on October 22 to Stanford Stadium.

In 2000, the Giants moved to the new Pacific Bell Park (now called AT&T Park) in the South Beach neighborhood, leaving the 49ers as the lone professional sports team to use Candlestick. The final baseball game was played on an unseasonably hot day, September 30, 1999, against the Los Angeles Dodgers, who won 9-4.

In 1961, a year after the park opened, a chicken appeared in the outfield; there were still some parcels of farmland near Candlestick Point. The umpires and groundskeepers had a difficult time chasing the chicken off the field, to the amusement of the fans present.

Reputation

As a baseball field, the stadium was best known for the windy conditions that often made life difficult for outfielders trying to catch fly balls, as well as for fans. Architect John Bolles designed the park with a boomerang-shaped concrete baffle in the upper tier to protect the park from wind, but it didn't work. For Candlestick's first 10 seasons, the wind blew in from left-center and out toward right-center. It was thought that enclosing the park for the 49ers would cut down on the wind. Instead, it dove, swooped and swirled from all directions, and was as strong and cold as before. Willie Mays claimed that the wind cost him at least 150 home runs.

During the first of two All Star games played in the park (one in 1961, the other in 1984), Giants pitcher Stu Miller was forced into a balk by a gust of wind. Two years later, wind picked up the entire batting cage and dropped it 60 feet (18 meters) away on the pitcher’s mound while the New York Mets were taking batting practice.

The stadium also had the reputation as the coldest park in the major leagues, resulting in fewer home runs. It was initially built with a radiant heating system to keep most of the seats warm, but it didn't work, and the city and the Giants balked at the repair costs. They also played more day games than any major-league team except the Chicago Cubs. Many locals, such as Giants' broadcaster Lon Simmons, were surprised at the decision to build the park right on the bay, in one of the coldest areas of the city.

The Giants played on the reputation to bolster fan support with promotions such as awarding the Croix de Candlestick pin to fans at the conclusion of extra-inning night games that the Giants won. Among many less-than-flattering fan nicknames for the park were "North Pole" and "Cave of the Winds."

Giants owner Horace Stoneham visited the site during the day in 1959 -- not knowing about the cold, windy and foggy conditions that overtake the park at night. By 1963, he commissioned a study to find a way to improve the park. The study revealed that conditions would have been significantly improved had the park been built a few hundred yards further inland.

Attorney Melvin Belli filed a claim against the Giants in 1960 because his six-seat box, which cost him almost $1,600, was unbearably cold. Belli won in court, claiming that the "radiant heating system" advertised was a failure. (Source: How Do Astronauts Scratch an Itch? by David Feldman)

Name changes

Candlestick Park was named for Candlestick Point, a point of land jutting into San Francisco Bay. Candlestick Point is itself named for the indigenous "candlestick bird" (Long-billed Curlew), once common to the point.

The rights to the stadium name were licensed to 3Com Corporation from 1996 until 2002. During that time, the park became known as 3Com Park at Candlestick Point. In 2002, the naming rights deal expired, and the park then became officially known as San Francisco Stadium at Candlestick Point. On September 28, 2004, a new naming rights deal was signed with Monster Cable, a maker of cables for electronic equipment, and the stadium was renamed Monster Park.

The City and County of San Francisco had trouble finding a new naming sponsor due in part to the downturn in the economy, but also because the stadium's tenure as 3Com Park was tenuous at best. Many local fans were annoyed with the change and continued referring to the park by its original name, and many continue to do so to this day, regardless of the official name. The Giants reportedly continued to call the stadium "Candlestick Park" in media guides. Freeway signs in the vicinity were recently changed to read "Monster Park" as part of an overall signage upgrade to national standards on California highways.

A measure passed in the November 2, 2004, election states that the stadium name will revert back to Candlestick permanently after the current contract with Monster Cable expires in 2008. This highlights San Francisco's extreme distaste for corporate naming. Many San Franciscans refer to AT&T Park, where the Giants play, by its original name, Pac Bell Park, despite its having undergone two name changes in the stadium's relatively short life. Monster Park is similarly almost universally referred to as Candlestick Park by both locals and much of the media despite the name change. The Monster Park moniker is confined to the 49ers' front office and to some radio and television broadcasters, all of whom are contractually required to use the corporate sponsor's name whenever referring to the park, just as they were with 3Com.

On August 10, 2007, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom announced that the playing field would be renamed Bill Walsh Field in honor of former San Francisco 49ers' coach, the late Bill Walsh, who died on July 30 that year, pending the approval of the city government. However the stadium will retain its current name as is contractually obligated.

On February 29, 2008 it was announced that the Candlestick Park name would be returning to the stadium in June of that year at the conclusion of Monster Cable's contract. The team would not be seeking a new naming rights deal in accordance with the 2004 city law.

Future

Plans were underway to construct a new 68,000-seat stadium at Candlestick Point However, on November 8, 2006, the 49ers announced that they would abandon their search for a location in San Francisco and begin to actively pursue the idea of building a stadium in Santa Clara, California. As a result, San Francisco withdrew its bid for the 2016 Olympics on November 13, 2006, as its centerpiece stadium was lost. However, 49ers ownership is still willing to hear any offers San Francisco may want to bring, including the Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard.

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