For one day, a sportswriter attends his first World Series game as a fan. For the next 25 years, the memories remain indelible.
(From Denise Polverine, Director of Digital Operations: Jamie Turner is Northeast Ohio Media Group's Quality Assurance Producer and a regular contributor to our sports and elections coverage. Turner is the author of our weekly in-game reports during Cleveland Browns season. We found his story on the anniversary of the World Series earthquake compelling and asked him to share it with our readers.)
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- What's the life experience that comes to you quickest in daydreams? A child's birth? A parent's death? The first kiss, or the first one that meant something?
At 57, I've never been a parent. I've traveled often -- with others and by myself -- around the country and the world. Been on the Champs-Elysees on a summery Saturday night and St. Andrews' stunning Road Hole on a brisk afternoon. I've dealt with deadlines in the cauldron of New Year's bowl games that decided national championships. I was a member of a collegiate glee club that spent a scholastic year planning to conquer an international competition in Wales, and succeeded.
But if I close my eyes and let my memory sort through the synapses and allow the strongest moment to return, it is always the same.
I'm pulling off the cardboard cover of a chocolate malt, deciding where to put the container as the public address system begins to reveal that day's lineup for the first World Series game I have ever attended. I am cooled by the late-afternoon shadows under the overhang of an upper-deck facade, getting ready to put pencil to scorecard while enjoying a brilliantly blue California sky.
It is a few seconds after 5:04 p.m., Oct. 17, 1989. At 32, I'm in my 11th year in the newspaper business.
It begins as if every Giants fan in the right-field corner of Candlestick Park is stomping his or her feet. The rumble is an aural version of the wave found at every major sporting event of the day, marching toward those of us in the upper-deck behind the infield. Then it's more, the roar of a nearby train -- if it was running from first to third base.
The sound is disorienting with its volume and palpable physical presence. That's when I start to feel the sway. Left. Right. I'm still gripping that chocolate malt in my left hand and the scorecard in my right, the tip of the pencil digging into my palm. The Loma Prieta Quake, all 6.9 of it on the Richter Scale, is 10 seconds old and for the first time, I realize what it is to be at the mercy of a uncontainable force.
I was in my seat because of a kindness from USA Today writer Tom Pedulla, who covered the Yankees for Gannett's Westchester, Conn., paper. Up to that moment, my sportswriting career had been limited to high-school football and basketball in Mississippi and upstate New York, editing a weekly in Michigan and writing spring training baseball and PGA golf in Florida for the modest Hollywood Sun-Tattler (ah, vintage newspaper titles) in southern Broward County.
I covered Jimmy Johnson's camo-wearing Canes in Arizona and his redemption a year later against a mismatched Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. I reported on the inaugural season of the NBA's Miami Heat -- which lost its first 17 games with a collection of n'er do wells like Pat Cummings (who shot free throws with a forward spin), Rory Sparrow, Billy Thompson and rookie center Rony Seikaly, whose athletic gifts didn't yet include the ability to make free throws.
But I had never attended a World Series game. Tom and I developed a springtime friendship as I covered the Yankees spring camp in Fort Lauderdale. This was during the Dead Years, as the front office of blustering George Steinbrenner was stuck in a rut of mixing and matching fading veterans (Steve Sax, Jesse Barfield, Gary Ward, Don Slaught) with two stars -- Don Mattingly and Ricky Henderson -- and a wretched pitching staff (Andy Hawkins, Dave LaPoint, ancient John Candelaria and antique Tommy John, who started 10 games in 1989 at age 46).
Tom's reward for covering that wreck was postseason coverage for The Nation's Newspaper. In the fall of '89, I moved from South Florida to Reno, and when Tom headed to Oakland/SF for the Bay Bridge Series, he offered to have a ticket held for me as long as I could get to the park and pay for it.
Busman's holiday.
I arrived the night before Game 3, attending a Series party in the city before crashing in Tom's hotel in Berkeley. It was my first time in San Francisco since a college trip 13 years earlier. Tom handed over the ticket and I handed over the money. My seat was in the upper deck between third and home, about two-thirds of the way to the top. Good location, great view.
It's 15 seconds after 5:04 p.m.
In my seat, the upper deck pitched forward. Six inches. Maybe a foot. Maybe more. It was enough that I could sense my forehead moving ahead of the rest of my torso. If the deck kept moving, it would eventually detach and we would all tumble into the lower stands or onto the field.
There was nothing to be done about it, so no point in screaming.
The whole quake, which originated near Santa Cruz, lasts about 15 seconds. When it ends, a roar begins from the bleachers beyond the Giants' quaint chain-link fence in left field. Fans see this as a good portent for the home team, which trails 0-2 in the Series. There are about 90 seconds of general joviality before the power blinks off. Within 10 minutes, those who brought Watchmans (miniature TVs that are the current technological marvel of entertainment) started murmuring about a Bay Bridge collapse.
I'm about 50 feet from the football press box, which hosts the spillover Series media. Most of the visiting writers, unnerved by the glass facade of the enclosure wobbling (more or less by earthquake engineering design), are eager to assess the situation somewhere closer to field level. These are the days of hard-wired phone lines paid by newspapers covering the game. My paper, the Reno Gazette-Journal, has its baseball writer in the main press box, and there is no way to reach him, but there are a dozen abandoned phones at hand --- so I duck in (no security in sight) and call the Reno newsroom to see what I could do to help out.
A night editor passes along TV reports of a fire in the Marina district and that it would be great if I could get there, pick up a few observations and quotes, and call back to the office. My knowledge of the downtown area was 90 minutes gawking at the cable cars, buildings (including the notorious O'Farrell Brothers Theater) and restaurants around Market Street before heading to the game. So all I had to do was figure out 1) how to get out of the crowded parking lot and 2) head against the traffic flow back into a city that 3) I did not have a map for.
No problem. Back in journalist mode.
It takes a mile or two (and an hour) on the side streets north of Candlestick before I find a freeway ramp not blocked by a police car. I pass a building on fire, a auto repair shop, across from the open ramp ... perhaps that's why it's accessible. Many years later, former Giants pitcher Don Robinson recounts that the team was told not to attempt to drive back into the city, and there certainly aren't many people on the 101 North.
There's a spot on the 101 where you swing left, then right around a hillside as the southern cityscape opens before you. As I do so, I behold a city powerless in early evening ... the silhouette of San Francisco a gray wall of shadows, backlit by an orange glow from what has to be the marina fire. The only electricity still available is the emergency beacon lights on the tallest buildings. It's indelible.
This must be what the apocalypse will look like.
My first stop is the only part of the city I'm quasi familiar with, Union Square. The World Series headquarters is the ornate Westin St. Francis, where I met Pedulla the night before. I am struck by the civility. Although the traffic lights are inert, drivers calmly treat each intersection as a four-way stop. The radio in my car chirps about collapsed walls and the possibility of looting, but I never witness that. People wave flashlights at crowded street corners and keep cars away from glass fallen from the mammoth Macy's and FAO Schwarz stores.
I briefly park in the square to jot down some notes on a page of the Series program. Broken windows in the department stores, the curtains blowing through the openings. No panic. No apparent injuries. I ask a couple of people which way to get to the marina, and head off.
Basically, the trick is to keep driving to the light beyond Coit Tower. Fire trucks and the marina's glow are the night's only illumination, so as I navigate one-way streets and wander up and around the tower, I eventually glimpse my destination.
There is a staging area on the edge of the district, where emergency workers and TV trucks were located. I have a RGJ business card, and get into a nearby parking lot pretty easily. Once there, I'm listening to a police chief describe the dark area behind him when I introduce myself to a woman taking notes. I no longer recall her name (to my shame), but she is a food writer for the Chronicle who lives a few blocks away sent in for quotes. She also hears the reports of looters and is a bit hesitant to leave the staging area. On the other hand, she knew the area well.
I offered to provide security if she would be my guide, and off we went.
The photos that every paper carried over the next few days don't quite relate the impact of walking a mostly-quiet neighborhood just hours after the quake. The marina was famously constructed on landfill and relocated bay sand. As the quake rolled through, the ground liquified by the vibrations and foundations lost its grip. Houses resemble three-layer birthday cakes that suddenly experienced a crisis of yeast.
I am struck by the consistency of the damage. In a row of connected condos, the outside units are typically the worst hit. Inside units, given extra support by the walls on either side, fare better. Freestanding homes/apartment buildings are, almost unanimously, hammered to the ground. In a few buildings, entire exterior walls had fallen away, giving the appearance of the back of a child's dollhouse. Bedrooms, closets, bathrooms, kitchens all in full sight. Some appeared little worse for the wear ... with the exception of the missing wall.
On the other hand, you could smell the gasoline from cars crushed in basement garages.
We walked down one street where we encountered a husband and wife cooking hot dogs and hamburgers on a small hibachi grill on their driveway. They are feeding neighborhood children whose parents have yet to return. The father, an amazingly calm and good-natured fellow, surveys the damage to his home's foundation with spectacles featuring two small pen-sized flashlights on each rim.
Inside, curio cabinets are toppled, glass shattered. There are three ornamental teapots on ledges, with the lid of each askew by nearly the same angle. The dad provides the phone in his study so I could call my paper, giving me a lantern so I could read my notes.
I'm just finishing my report when the dad pops his head into the room. "I'm opening up the wine cellar. Want anything?"
One hell of a city.
California Police official report on the extent of the earthquake
Before the marina tour ends, I reach the embers of the building that famously burns on national television. The firefighters are exhausted and wet from the spray ... and angry. They don't hide their belief that they might have not lost any lives that night but for aged hydrants with minimal water pressure. This is despite constant warnings to city officials of what a serious fire might do in this neighborhood without upgraded utilities.
With the Bay Bridge out of commission, there is no way I'm getting back to Berkeley, so my Chronicle guide generously provides the couch in her apartment, and a phone so I could call my family back in Michigan to let them know I was OK. It's nearly midnight when I reach my mom ... 3 a.m. EDT. She says she never worried, even when hearing of the Oakland freeway collapse -- I would never be late for a World Series game. Since there were no fatalities reported at Candlestick, she knew I was safe ... if somewhat occupied.
There are a couple of aftershocks that night ... I snap awake both times.
The next day, the RGJ asks for a day-after marina story. Our baseball writer is handling the collapsed freeway. Other reporters are on their way. I spend the morning and early afternoon in the marina. Although police try to keep the looky-loos to a minimum, I have no trouble getting around. I talk to store owners giving away their perishables to residents banned from their damaged homes.
There's a story going around that Joe DiMaggio, who lives in the district, is temporarily among the "homeless." I ask around, but can't find him. There are 3-story walkups facing the marina that are now 2 1/2 stories, having sunk 5-10 inches into the soft ground. Their cement stairs now extend above their front porches.
Eventually I drive to the Marin Independent Journal (a fellow Gannett paper) to file. The RGJ has a hotel room reserved in my name -- I'm still wearing my game clothes from the previous night. On the third day, I'm free to find a route to Berkeley (it takes several hours), grab my stuff out of Pedulla's room and head back to Reno.
A few days later, with the smell of broken gas mains still in my sinuses, I wrote a Sunday column about the experience. Game 3 was played 10 days later, but I'm not able to get away.
Some months later, apparently impressed by my competence in dealing with the unexpected, the RGJ editors ask me to shift from copy editor/writing coach/occasional writer to a vacant sports editor position. My career takes a permanent turn -- for every story I write over the next 25 years, I assign, edit or critique 99.
I think of those moments in the upper deck several times every year. I can still hear the rumble rolling toward me, still feel the strange, unexpected swaying.
I have yet to attend a World Series game.
But I still have the ticket.
Shawn Marion turned in a solid performance at small forward. 
