VISIT A GRAND STADIUM OF THE PAST
By Dick Meister
AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, is without doubt one of the grandest baseball
stadiums ever erected anywhere. But once upon a time, another grand ballpark
graced San Francisco, one that also was hailed as among the very best of its
time. I highly recommend that you visit it. It's been gone for a
half-century, but that shouldn't stop you. Come along with me and I'll show
it to you.
Seals Stadium, it was called. Like Pac Bell, it was an urban park. It stood
deep inside the city, unlike that chill, windswept blot of concrete, Monster
Park nee Candlestick, where the San Francisco Giants played for 40
uncomfortable seasons.
For 27 years, Seals Stadium was the home of the San Francisco Seals of the
Pacific Coast League, then baseball's top minor league. Like Pac Bell, the
stadium was easily accessible by public transportation, with bars and
restaurants and other commercial and industrial facilities nearby.
But San Francisco was different then, as were baseball crowds. Most Seals
fans were men who worked in factories and warehouses in the mixed industrial
and residential areas around the stadium, in other adjacent working class
districts or down on the waterfront. Some of the Seals themselves worked in
the same places during the off-season. In-season and out, many of the
players were regulars in the two invariably crowded bars just across from
the stadium.
The Seals moved to Honolulu when the major league Giants came to the city in
1958. Seals Stadium was demolished two years later after serving as the
Giants' temporary home. It's inconceivable that anyone whoever entered that
magnificent, scrupulously maintained jewel box of a ballpark has ever
forgotten it:
*The rows of dark green wooden seats set off by ornate arms of black
cast-iron stepping one after another into the marbled sky.
*The unbroken expanse of dark green outfield fences, unsullied by the ads
that marred those of other stadiums and built higher than most and farther
from home plate than most so as to encourage teams to rely on strategy other
than simply trying to bash more balls over the fence than their opponent.
*The unbreakable glass that formed the unique screen behind home plate,
fashioned of mere wire mesh in lesser parks.
*The smells. The sweet odor of bread baking at Kilpatrick's just beyond the
stadium. The sour stench of puddles on the stadium floor, residue of the
fluffy white pockmarked foam that rose gently out of the Rainier brewery
across from the bakery, drifted lazily over the stadium walls and floated
slowly, hypnotically to earth. The compelling aroma of peanuts roasting, of
hot dogs and mustard, the fetid odor of cigar smoke.
Not that Seals Stadium was faultless. It was often cold and foggy,
especially at night. And those dark green seats were hard. But we were
young. We didn't mind the cold, and the hard seats provided a great
opportunity for enterprising youngsters. It required whole gangs of kids to
gather up the brightly striped orange and green cushions that were rented
cheaply to fans.
Dozens of us would scramble up and down the concrete steps of the stadium
after games, dashing along the rows of seats to snap up cushions, often out
of each other's grasp, driven to a competitive frenzy by the reward awaiting
us. Ten cents each we got -- plus passes to future games -- but only if we
worked hard enough and fast enough to grab off enough cushions to satisfy a
sharp-eyed supervisor in the crisp black-and-orange uniform of the Seals'
concessionaires.
Only a few years later, I was playing at the stadium, as an unsuccessful
invitee to a Seals' tryout camp and as a shortstop on one of the
semi-professional teams that held their championship games there. I'll never
forget standing on the infield gaping in wonder at the expanse of seats
above and beside me. I imagined all 25,000 occupied, everyone watching,
everyone cheering. What more could life offer anyone?
No contemporary stadium, not Pac Bell or any place else, could possibly be
as intimate as Seals Stadium -- not even famed fan-friendly Fenway Park in
Boston or Chicago's Wrigley Field.
There wasn't a bad seat in the park, no place where you could not see the
field clearly. You were closer than just about anywhere else, so close in
the lower reaches you could reach out and touch the players, talk to them
and, if you felt particularly brave, razz them to their faces.
I remember how as a pre-teenager in the 1940s I would reach over the low
railing in left field and into the Seals' bullpen to pluck at the pinstriped
sleeve of a hero -- usually Pard Ballou, the great relief pitcher, a
friendly, fat-faced man eager, always, to chat with fans young and old.
Often there with Pard was backup catcher Bruce Ogrodowski, who tended to the
rabbit hutch he kept in the bullpen when not warming up Ballou and his
fellow relievers. It's been more than a half-century, but I can still feel
the heft of Pard Ballou's uniform shirt and feel the gentle coarseness of
the heavy flannel on my fingertips.
Our greatest hero, the greatest of all Seals -- even greater than the great
Joe DiMaggio who went from the Seals to superstardom in New York -- was
legendary manager Lefty O'Doul. For 17 years he was at the stadium, from
1935 to 1951, striding anxiously between the white lines of the third base
coaching box, peering intently from the top of the dugout steps, directing
fans as well as players.
Often when the Seals fell behind, Lefty would pull a big red bandana from a
hip pocket and wave it at the opposing pitcher, a signal for all of us to
pull out our pocket handkerchiefs and wave them. When the enemy pitcher
faltered, we knew we had helped. We were all on Lefty's team, our team.
O'Doul did not leave the Seals by choice. He was fired by a new owner who
foolishly believed that would help the team's sagging fortunes. The team --
and attendance at Seals Stadium -- continued in steady decline until the
coming of the Giants.
Today I can see, from the dining room window in our home high on a San
Francisco hill, AT&T Park on the edge of the bay below. From our kitchen
window I can see the light towers of Monster Park. But what I see most
clearly is Seals Stadium.
Copyright © 2007 Dick Meister