Upcoming coverage of the World Series will include 20-year flashbacks to the 1989 Series and the earthquake that hit the San Francisco Bay Area shortly before Game 3’s scheduled first pitch at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on Oct. 17.
Two days earlier, a Little League World Series hero from Connecticut named Chris Drury threw out the ceremonial first pitch before Game 2 in Oakland, where the Athletics took a 2-0 Series lead over the Giants.
At 5:04 p.m., Candlestick shook.
At first, there was more dark humor than panic in the stadium. Then word quickly spread about the extent of the devastation.
In the next few hours, like many of my brethren, I talked with fans in the stands and then on the walk back to the media bus. As the bus crawled back to downtown San Francisco, I wrote on a TRS-80 Radio Shack computer, a tiny and indestructible machine powered by AA batteries.
I finished the column with:
I’m writing this on a bus riding through darkened streets, hoping to be able to transmit when we make it to the first downtown stop, the Meridien Hotel.
One man on the bus just got ill.
“Be extremely careful,” the bus driver just said. “They are doing a lot of looting down here. So be careful.”
Update: Sixty-three minutes after the bus started moving, we pulled up at the Meridien. The lobby was dark, but the bar was open and cocktail waitresses were serving drinks. The makeshift press room was open in a restaurant.
If you’re reading this, the phone worked.
After sending the column, I walked a mile to my hotel, the Parc 55 in Union Square. A freight elevator and hallway lights were operating on a backup generator. I was on one of the upper floors in the 32-story hotel. There, the darkness was eerie. Most of my fellow guests had their doors propped open to let the limited light from the hallway into the rooms.
The next morning, I walked down the stairs and outside, and I ended up writing several pieces about the devastation and many of the affected characters I encountered in the area. That morning, I came across the pillar clock in front of Samuels Jewelers on Market Street. Both faces were frozen at 5:04.
A plaque touted it as “one of the finest street clocks in America” and pointed out that it was “insured by Lloyd’s of London.”
The policy’s expiration date was not listed.
