Candlestick guy apparently forgot about 1985 and 100 losses.

Let's give him a fiddle and have him fight the A's Banjo Man in a cage match to the death.

His complaints about this year's team are right on, but Candlestick Guy still sounds like a cranky boring old curmudgeon. Don't pick the barstool next to his, or he'll talk your ear off about how much better the old days were.

I guess his editor cut the paragraph about how rap isn't even music and what's wrong with these kids with their baggy pants.

All this false mythology about "real fans" at Candlestick vs. "posers" at AT&T Park was officially tired by May 1, 2000.  I won't pick on a hack writer using a hackneyed device in order to meet a deadline and get paid; I have come to enjoy getting paid myself.  But for god's sake, what's next? Jokes about Jimmy Carter?  Why anyone would need a COLOR television when Milton Berle comes across just fine on the black and white set?

The "real fans" at Candlestick? After moving here in 1990, I attended games over the next couple years late in the season where there were literally several hundred people in attendance.  Hundreds.  Not even a thousand.  (Obviously, the people there WERE real fans, so this observation is really about the semi-fans who weren't there.)

"Real fans" at Candlestick? Attendance figures would absolutely spike on days with 2-for-1 tickets, and the cheap seats would sell out quickly while the rest of the seats were less populated.

Versus the "poser fans" at the now-in-its-eighth-season AT&T park... tens of thousands every single game, even though the team has sucked for 3 years (yes, yes, obviously the Bonds HR Fest has been a draw).  The "poser fans" have only bought 3,000,000 tickets each season for almost 8 straight years-- all at full price, and mostly by season ticketholders and other licensees.  

It was the "real fans" at Candlestick -- and, to be fair, Candlestick itself -- that made owners want to take the team to Florida or San Jose or Santa Clara.  It's the poser, brie-and-chardonnay pooftahs that are consistently pouring in large and steady revenue so that everyone can attend the nicest ballpark in the sport (albeit attend less frequently than they could have at Candlestick, but when attendance is 500 on a chilly night in September, the argument of "gee, we can't attend as much" falls apart-- you weren't going when you could have!).  

As a charter licensee and season ticketholder, I certainly am not asking for thanks, because those are choices I made on my own.  But I do wish people would colonically store their class-based resentment of fans at AT&T park. If Candlestick was such a paradise, why did attendance suck?  

there's no question that the crowd at PacBC&T Park is more upscale than at the 'Stick. The basic reason is that it costs more to go to the games and costs more when you get to the games than it did before and thus people with more money will be able to go to more games and people with less money will go to fewer.

That's pretty much a reality of having a nice newer privately-financed park. For these reasons, there will be some resentment by the poorer fans who can't attend as many games as they used to (or could have) just like there is resentment in larger society towards rich people (or anyone who makes $1 more than you).

"Candlestick Guy" sounds like an insufferable whiner. Know what I do with insufferable whiners when my tolerance for insufferable whining has been reached, as it already has been reached mid-week?

Hey who took my board with a nail in it?

His overall (unintended) theme is certainly spot on, though: Candlestick Park indeed is much better as a memory than an actual place to watch a game.

I hated Candlestick Park from the first time I walked into it in June, 1960.  It was a shitty building arranged by a cabal of crooked bastards named Charles Harney, (the developer and landowner) Horace Stoneham, and Mayor George Christopher. It was a laughingstock before it even opened. And exceeded everybody's worst expectations.

I found it dreary, depressing, uncomfortable, and a bad place to watch baseball.  It helped a little bit when the outfield was finally closed in, but originally the capacity was not much more than Pac Bell's.

Vendors were a pain in the ass, always intrusive, obnoxious and blocking sight lines.  The food was fucking the shits. It was horrible, and there were few good seats in the place. Actually even front row boxes were shitty seats.  The best seats to actually see the game were upper deck boxes on the 1b side.  For most of the years the Giants were at the Stick, the Giants sucked. They were considered a bottom tier franchise. A laughing stock, between 1971 and 1987. This guys been breathing too much ether.

I am Magowan's biggest critic. But he has set a very high standard for himself. To compare Magowan's operation unfavorably to Stoneham/Lurie is silly and irrational. I think the writer realizes this and writes tongue in cheek to a certain extent.

I make fun of the Pier 39 aspects of the yard, but its the tourists that poplulate the place that keep the bucks flowing into the operation.  Unlike the assholes in Kansas City, Tampa Bay, Minnesota and Milwaukee who pocketed all their profits rather than field good teams, the fanbase/market will not allow that to happen here. Stoneham and Lurie tried that approach and they eventually had to sell out.

My bitch is not that Magowan does not want to win, its that he is too arrogant to realize that he has hired and retained people that are not helpful and have been bypassed by the changes to the game.

I wrote the guy about the article, this is what I got back:

"I was in my pre-prime, major prime and post-prime as I went to games there from 1966 to 1999. I saw some awful teams, Josie. But as opposed to the current park, which is beautiful and comfortable, the fans were there to watch the Giants. Not talk on the cell phone or yack about their new apartments in the middle of a key at-bat.

This team is one of the worst in National League history on offense. The previous seven seasons, the team was always in the race for a while, even winning the division three times. That's why I fired off that column as much as anything.

I'm glad you think ATT is female positive and family friendly. But all they want is your money. That is all they will ever want...be you man, woman, old or young, classless or cranky. Same with the A's when they go to Fremont."

I guess he's upset that just being at the park has become a desirable commodity, and as such you have fans there who don't watch the game long enough to know the Giants are horrible and aren't demanding a better job from management?

The Betting Fool always writes like this. I just nod, smile, and move on.