Candlestick Park: The Wind, the Cold and the Giants' Home
Candlestick Park housed the San Francisco Giants from 1960 to 1999, with its wind and chill, the 1961 All-Star Game, the 1962 World Series and the 1989 earthquake. The park's history, with its park-factor numbers.
Candlestick Park was the home of the San Francisco Giants for 40 seasons, 1960 through 1999, and in that time it became better known for its weather than for its baseball. It stood on the shore of San Francisco Bay, open to the wind that came off the water, and anyone who sat there for a night game in July learned how cold a San Francisco summer evening can be. The park hosted the 1961 All-Star Game, in which a gust of wind became part of baseball folklore, the seventh game of the 1962 World Series, which was decided by a single line drive, and the third game of the 1989 World Series, which was never played on schedule because an earthquake struck beforehand.
The historical record lists the Giants in Seals Stadium for 1958 and 1959, in Candlestick Park from 1960 through 1996, in the renamed 3Com Park from 1997 through 1999 (the 3Com name was adopted in 1995, a couple of seasons before the database's park field switches), and in a new downtown ballpark from 2000 on. In those 40 seasons the Giants' overall record, home and road together, was 3,259-3,083, a winning percentage of .514. The park also hosted the San Francisco 49ers from 1971 and the Beatles' last paid concert in 1966, and when the football team moved out for 2014 the building was torn down.
This article tells the history of the building and the clubs that played in it, and then checks the park's reputation against the numbers. The reputation, as it turns out, is a mixture of truth and exaggeration. All figures come from the historical record through the 2025 season.
Why the Giants needed a new home
The Giants moved from New York to San Francisco after the 1957 season, along with the Brooklyn Dodgers' move to Los Angeles, and the two clubs together brought major-league baseball to the West Coast. For 1958 and 1959 the Giants played at Seals Stadium, a minor-league park that had been home to the Pacific Coast League's San Francisco Seals. The team drew 1,272,625 in 1958 and 1,422,130 in 1959, its best attendance in the old park, and the city began building a permanent ballpark on Candlestick Point, a spur of land on the bay shore in the southeast corner of the city.
The new park opened for the 1960 season, built for baseball and open on its bay side to the wind. The Giants drew 1,795,356 in 1960, a figure that stayed their best in the park until 1987. The wind and the cold were noticed from the first season, and the Giants could not move the building. It remained their home for 40 years.
1961: the wind and the All-Star Game
The park's first national stage was the 1961 All-Star Game, played on July 11. The National League won in extra innings. What is remembered is not the score but a moment in the late innings when a gust of wind moved Stu Miller, a small right-hander, on the mound, and the umpires called a balk. Miller was listed in the historical record at 5-foot-11 and 165 pounds, and over his career he went 105-103 with a 3.24 ERA. The story of the pitcher blown off the mound has been told in many versions. In its essentials it is true: the wind that day was strong enough to disturb a pitcher in his delivery, and a balk was called.
It was the first of two All-Star Games in 1961, the other being played at Fenway Park.
1962: a pennant and a line drive
The Giants of the early 1960s were a team of stars. Willie Mays, who hit 49 home runs in 1962, led the National League that year, and Willie McCovey, who had been Rookie of the Year in 1959, was beginning the career that would end with 469 home runs for the Giants and 521 overall. Juan Marichal, who joined the club in 1960, would win 238 games and throw 52 shutouts for the franchise. Orlando Cepeda, the 1958 Rookie of the Year, shared the infield and outfield corners with McCovey.
In 1962 the Giants finished 103-62, a record that includes a three-game playoff win over the Dodgers, who ended at 102-63, and then played the Yankees in the World Series. The Series went to a seventh game at Candlestick on October 16. Going into the bottom of the ninth, the Yankees led 1-0. The Giants put runners in scoring position with two outs, and McCovey came to the plate. He hit a hard line drive that went straight to the Yankees' second baseman, Bobby Richardson, who caught it, and the Series ended. The Yankees won the Series four games to three. McCovey hit more than 500 home runs in his career and was a Hall of Famer, but the line drive is the out for which baseball remembers him.
The Giants did not return to the World Series until 1989. Between those years the team had many good seasons: from 1960 to 1996 the franchise went 2,994-2,861 under the Candlestick name. It finished second five years in a row from 1965 to 1969. Mays won the MVP award in 1965 and McCovey in 1969, and Mike McCormick won the Cy Young Award in 1967.
The park that was changed for football
In 1971 the 49ers moved into Candlestick from Kezar Stadium, and the park was enclosed to make room for them, with a grandstand extending around the outfield. In 1971 the Giants won the National League West at 90-72 and lost the playoffs to Pittsburgh, three games to one. The next few years were bleak. The club's attendance fell to 647,744 in 1972 and as low as 519,987 in 1974, then 522,919 in 1975 and 626,868 in 1976. In the mid-1970s the club was very nearly sold to buyers who would have moved it to Toronto. Instead, Robert Lurie bought it in 1976, and the Giants stayed.
The enclosure belonged to an era when many cities built or converted stadiums for both baseball and football; for that trend see The Cookie-Cutter Stadiums of the 1970s. For comparison, the Mets' home in the same period is described in Shea Stadium: The Mets' Home from 1964 to 2008, and the sport's best-known attempt to defeat the weather altogether, with a roof, is The Astrodome: The Eighth Wonder of the World.
Attendance recovered in 1978, when the club finished 89-73 and drew 1,740,477. In the 1980s the team found a new manager in Roger Craig, who led it from 1985 to 1992, and a pair of stars in Will Clark and Kevin Mitchell.
Who played here
The Giants of the Candlestick years had some of the best players in the National League, and the franchise career leaders show how many of them spent time there. Willie Mays leads the club with 646 home runs, 3,187 hits and 2,011 runs. Willie McCovey hit 469 home runs for the Giants, Juan Marichal won 238 games, and Gaylord Perry, a Hall of Famer, spent 10 seasons with the club. Barry Bonds joined in 1993 and hit 586 home runs for the franchise through 2007, playing his last eight seasons in the new ballpark.
These are club totals, and they include years elsewhere. Mays played for the Giants from 1951 to 1972, including the New York years before 1958, and the historical record has no home and road splits, so the share of any player's totals produced at Candlestick cannot be isolated from the database. What the database does show is the pattern of awards: Mays won the MVP in 1965 and McCovey in 1969 while the club played there, Kevin Mitchell won it in 1989 and Bonds won his first in 1993, and the Rookie of the Year honors went to Gary Matthews in 1973 and John Montefusco in 1975. The franchise's only Cy Young winner before 2008 was Mike McCormick, in 1967, though Juan Marichal, a Hall of Famer, never won one.
The wind and the numbers
The historical team table includes a park factor for every club-season, the BPF, in which 100 is a neutral park and lower figures mean fewer runs are scored there than in other parks. The factor is imperfect, since it mixes a park's effect with the home team's own strengths and is smoothed over several seasons, but it gives a rough check on the park's reputation.
| Period | Average BPF for Giants seasons | Seasons |
|---|---|---|
| 1960 to 1970 | 100.0 | 11 |
| 1971 to 1979 | 100.7 | 9 |
| 1980 to 1989 | 96.7 | 10 |
| 1990 to 1999 | 95.6 | 10 |
| 2000 to 2005 (new park) | 97.0 | 6 |
The result is not what the reputation would suggest. In its first decade the park was close to neutral, with a BPF near 100 in most seasons: 99 in 1962, 104 in 1965 and 1966, 100 in 1967. The lowest early figure was 95 in 1960. Only in the 1980s and 1990s did the park become a clear run suppressor, at 94 to 97 in most years, and after the Giants moved downtown the factor was 93 in 2000 and 2001. In other words, by this measure Candlestick was no pitchers' park in the 1960s, and the 1971 enclosure did not lower scoring in the 1970s. The factor falls after that, and the data does not say why. This is a check on the claim, not a final answer, because park factors also depend on the Giants' own pitching and hitting.
What the table cannot show is the experience. A BPF measures runs, not comfort, and the cold affected fans as much as hitters. The park's lowest attendances, below 650,000 in the 1970s, were not entirely about the weather, since the team was bad, but the weather did not help.
1989: the earthquake game
The best-known night in the building's history was October 17, 1989. The Giants had won the National League West at 92-70, with Kevin Mitchell the league's MVP, and beaten the Cubs in the NLCS, four games to one. They faced the Oakland Athletics in the World Series, the first all-Bay Area Series, and after two games at Oakland the Series moved across the bay to Candlestick for Game 3.
Shortly before the first pitch, at 5:04 in the afternoon, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck. It was a magnitude 6.9 earthquake that shook the Bay Area, and everyone in the stadium felt the stands move. The park was damaged but did not collapse. Fans left the building in an orderly way, and the game was postponed. Elsewhere the earthquake caused serious damage: a section of the Bay Bridge fell, and the Cypress Street Viaduct in Oakland collapsed. Baseball paused for ten days. The Series resumed on October 27, and the Athletics won Games 3 and 4 to complete a four-game sweep.
It remains the best-known interruption of a World Series by a natural disaster. Whatever else happened to the Giants in those years, the 1989 Series is the event most readers associate with the park.
The 1990s and the end
The Giants returned to the postseason rarely in the 1990s. In 1993 the club went 103-59, the best winning percentage of the Candlestick years, and finished second, one game behind Atlanta's 104 in a race that had no wild card. Barry Bonds, who had joined the club that year, won the MVP award, and the team drew 2,606,354, the park's highest season attendance. The 1997 club won the division at 90-72 but was swept by Florida in the division series.
By then the renamed 3Com Park was an outlier, a cold concrete bowl in an era of new ballparks. The Giants played their last season there in 1999, going 86-76, and opened the new downtown ballpark in 2000. In its first season the new park drew 3,318,800. The 49ers stayed at Candlestick through the 2013 season, and the building was demolished beginning in 2014. The Giants' later homes are listed in the club's historical data as Pacific Bell Park, SBC Park, AT&T Park and Oracle Park.
Common questions
Where did the Giants play before Candlestick? At Seals Stadium in 1958 and 1959. In New York they had played at the Polo Grounds.
Was Candlestick always called that? In the historical table it carries that name from 1960 to 1996 and is listed as 3Com Park from 1997 to 1999.
Did the wind really affect games? Yes, on some days, and the 1961 All-Star Game is the standard evidence. How much it changed run scoring over a season is less clear; the park factors above suggest the effect was small in the 1960s and larger later.
Who won the 1989 World Series? Oakland, four games to none, after the ten-day delay.
What was the best attendance at Candlestick? The historical table gives 2,606,354 in 1993, the year of the 103-win team. The new ballpark drew about 3.3 million in each of its first two seasons, 3,318,800 in 2000 and 3,311,958 in 2001.
Who managed the Giants there? Roger Craig managed from 1985 to 1992 with a 586-566 record, and Dusty Baker from 1993 to 2002 with 840-715, the latter spanning the move to the new park. Charlie Fox, who managed the 1971 division winner, went 348-327 from 1970 to 1974.
Do weather and rain delays follow the same rules everywhere? The basic rules for suspended and called games are the same in every park, and they are explained in Rain Delays, Suspended Games and Official Games.
Where to go next
For the ballparks that came after Candlestick, see the current Giants team page and the ballparks and fans topic page, which collects coverage of ballparks. For other classic parks, The Original Comiskey Park and Crosley Field and the Birth of Night Baseball tell the stories of two more.