Joe Eichbaum, a steelworker from Concord, stepped cautiously on his way to his seat in Section 53 of Candlestick Park. The last time he came here for a baseball game an earthquake broke out.
"It took me four or five days to get all that out of my system," he said. "But then I thought, `Hey, it held,' and now I'm back."So were most of the 62,000 fans who survived the Oct. 17 earthquake in Candlestick Park, the day Game 3 of the World Series got off to a shaky pregame and was then called off. They returned to the scene of the grime last night, 10 days later, for Game 3 II. Even those in Section 53 came back, where bolts and rivets and concrete blocks fell during the 15-second quake.
Nothing fell on Eichbaum. "If it had I'd own the stadium by now," he said, grinning. "Well, such as it is."
Nearby, Mark Katz, of Pleasanton, sat between his 12-year-old son, Marty, and his 10-year-old daughter, Krista. Marty and Krista had been there last Tuesday, with their mother, who decided to sit this one out. "Krista didn't know if she was coming back or not," said Mark. "But then she came. I guess she decided to get back on the horse."
Not that everyone in last night's stands was a returnee. Marv and Mark Miller, a father and son from Mill Valley wearing Giants and A's hats, respectively, said they secured their Section 51 seats from friends who traded them for their Game 5 tickets.
"Yeah, I swapped tickets with a coward," said Marv, clearly enjoying himself. "A guy who wanted me to check out the stadium first.
"But the way I figured it, I made a good deal. There probably won't be a Game 5."
Among last night's famous no-shows were Oakland A's right fielder Jose Canseco's wife and his twin brother, Ozzie, who told reporters, "Jose just bought me a Porsche. I want to live long enough to enjoy it."
It isn't every day, or year, that the start of a World Series game carries this much intrigue. People are usually on the edge of their seats at the end of the game, not before it begins.
Running shoes were the preferred footwear last night. Beer sales lagged. The crowd had pregame jitters. When the public address announcer came on about an hour before game time, to ask non-playing personnel to please leave the field, the crowd did a perceptible jumpstart at the sound. Did he have their attention or what?
Roger Craig, the San Francisco Giants manager, joked that he might use the inordinate pregame nervousness to the Giants advantage. "We might get some jackhammers and put them (the A's) on top of their dugout," he said.
Of course he didn't, even though the A's 2-0 lead had survived the quake intact.
For the 63 people who lost their lives because of the earthquake, there was a moment of stadium silence at 5:04, the time the quake hit. Although that was slightly more than a half hour before the game would begin, virtually all of the 62,038 fans were by then in their seats, or standing under doorways close by.
By the time the moment of silence had passed, there was an audible lightening up. The earthquake hadn't struck twice.
Then there was a stadium-wide singing of "San Francisco," the song with the famous "Open your Golden Gate" line that was written for a movie about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Even though the song is a movie musical that is about as easy to sing as an opera, it was sung, if not with precision, with enthusiasm - particularly when it got to the part at the end of the first verse that goes, "I've been away, but now I'm back . . . "
A dozen heroes from the earthquake, including firemen, policemen, relief workers and those who risked their lives rescuing people trapped in the Nimitz Freeway, threw out a dozen official opening pitches. Willie Mays had been scheduled to throw out the ceremonial pitch in the original Game 3. Now he deferred to more recent heroics.
It had been this World Series that had deferred to an earthquake. With its resumption, it not only paid tribute to the heroes that had evolved, but to the people of the Bay Area who had gone through a long and trying 10 days since the original Game 3.
Many of them were in Candlestick last night, sitting down to watch a World Series game in San Francisco, finally. And by the time the game began, sitting rather comfortably. Open your Golden Gate, and get on with it.