| | SAN FRANCISCO -- Balls splashing into San Francisco Bay. A 26-foot-tall mitt in left field. Yet the strangest sight at Tuesday's debut of Pacific Bell Park was Giants fans in shorts and T-shirts instead of parkas and mittens.
There wasn't an earmuff to be found when the Giants opened their $319 million ballpark with a 6-5 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The temperature at game time, following an hour-long ceremony with fireworks and jet flyovers, was 65 degrees.
|  | | Fans say the Giants' new home is a major improvement over Candlestick Park. |
"I'm skipping school to be here. My dad said it was OK," 12-year-old Stephen Mason said. "This is better than Candlestick because it's not as windy. I didn't like night games there."
A few miles down the bay at windswept Candlestick Park, now relegated to the NFL's San Francisco 49ers, fans and players dreaded the cold winds that swirled through the stadium on summer nights.
So even those fans who wore shorts and suntan lotion to Tuesday's opener packed an extra layer or two of clothing.
"We have sweatshirts, sweatpants, windbreakers just in case," said Dan Block, who was wearing shorts. "That's our Candlestick habit."
Veronica Bales and Amanda Tucker, who got opening-day tickets as a high school graduation present from their parents, wore sleeveless shirts and worked on their tans while reminiscing about how cold they used to be at Candlestick.
Several stadium quirks have the potential to become Pac Bell trademarks, just as Boston's Fenway Park has the Green Monster and Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix has a swimming pool beyond the right-center wall.
Balls hit over the right-field wall, just 309 feet from home plate along the foul line, will splash into a channel named McCovey Cove in honor of the Giants' Hall of Famer. Several balls landed there during batting practice Tuesday.
Though six homers were hit in Tuesday's game, including three by the Dodgers' Kevin Elster, none landed in the water. The closest was a ninth-inning solo homer by San Francisco's J.T. Snow that
landed in the seats atop the right-field wall.
The wall itself has already generated plenty of controversy. There will be strange bounces off the 25-foot-high brick surface, driving right fielders crazy.
"It's a beautiful park, but right field could become a circus with all the bounces out there," Dodgers right fielder Shawn Green said after a workout Monday.
And there's the giant mitt above the left-field bleachers, 518 feet from home plate -- reachable by sluggers such as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.
Pac Bell Park is the 10th stadium the Giants have called home, ranging from the St. George Cricket Grounds in Staten Island, N.Y., (25 games in 1889) to Seals Stadium -- their home for two seasons after moving west in 1958.
With its hand-operated scoreboard in right-center, its small foul territory and the brick wall in right, the Giants hope Pac Bell captures the old-time feel of some of those previous homes.
"I'm kind of a traditionalist. The grass and the dirt and the brick -- you get that here," Dodgers manager Davey Johnson said. "The best things about the new ballparks is they're bringing the fans and their emotions more into the game."
The 40,800-seat park, which took more than two years to build, is the first privately financed major league stadium in 38 years. Designed by the same architectural firm that did Camden Yards in Baltimore, Jacobs Field in Cleveland and Coors Field in Denver, it resembles all of those 1990s parks.
More than 29,000 season tickets have been sold, compared to a peak of 12,000 at Candlestick Park, and most games this season are sellouts. When Peter Magowan bought the Giants in 1992, the team
was on the verge of moving to Florida.
"I think that what this park will mean is the Giants are now safe," Magowan said. | |
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