Earthquake World Series Remembered by Golf Coach Brad Bedortha

The 1989 World Series was played between the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants. The Series ran from October 14 through October 28, with the A's sweeping the Giants in four games. It was the first World Series sweep since 1976, but it is best remembered for the Loma Prieta earthquake, which occurred on October 17 at the beginning of Game 3 and caused a ten-day disruption in play. This Series is also known as the "Earthquake Series," "Bay Bridge Series," and "The Battle of the Bay." NAU Women’s Golf Coach Brad Bedortha was in the stands at Candlestick Park that day and recounts his experience.

I drove down from Oregon to see my brother in San Francisco and spend a few days with him. I remember it was really warm which is obviously unseasonal for that time of the year. It is 90-95 degrees and it is hot.

The day of the game we went into the city because my brother worked half a day. We had lunch and went back to place. We got the game at 2:30 p.m. and played a little catch in the parking lot with a football. I remember someone saying, ‘It is really hot. It is like earthquake weather.’ Supposedly when it is really hot they have earthquakes. We joked about it.

We then went in the stadium and took some pictures of the scoreboards and around the stadium. We went back in the parking lot to put the camera away and came back in about an hour before the game.

We are sitting in the upper deck and close to center field. We are out in the bleachers. My brother had some friends he went to see before the game so I am sitting by myself. There are people around getting ready for the game. I was just sitting there and it sounded like a plane was flying over the stadium. I did not know what was going on.

Candlestick was near the airport. It sounded like a rumble. I am looking around for planes and I don’t see any thing. I am thinking “What is going on?” All of a sudden my seat started moving. This is not normal. I look and see the light poles just shaking. This is an earthquake. I had never been in one so I did not know what to do.

It is going on and on and on. You can just feel like a wave going through the stadium. Everything is moving. It went on for like 30 seconds. It was loud. I do not know where my brother was at and he came back in like three minutes. He was up with his friends under the awning at the top of the stadium. He said particles were falling down.

The power was gone. The scoreboard was flashing on and off. They had no PA system. No one knew what was going on. But there were people around us who had little stereos with earplugs. The guy next to me was saying the Bay Bridge was in the water. Then you could see smoke coming from the downtown area. I don’t remember which neighborhood got hit really hard but it was on fire. So you could see the smoke billowing up.

All the people on the field were milling around with the players. We sat there for 10 or 15 minutes. We did not know what to do. All of a sudden another aftershock came, a pretty good sized aftershock. We decided to get the hell out of there. We decided we will get to the car and turn the radio and see what is going on.

We walked out and people were holding chunks of concrete and doing stuff like that. I saw the next day in the newspaper a photo of where someone was sitting you could see a hole and look straight down.

We turned the radio on and it was immediately, BEEP, BEEP. It was the emergency broadcast system. It is not like this is a test. The Bay Bridge is closed. Don’t go here. It is basically telling people where to go. At that point, I was like this is very serious. You hear the emergency broadcast system all the time and you think it is kind of a joke. It is truly in play and they are telling people where to go, what to do and directing people everywhere.

We started driving out of there and it took us an hour to an hour and half to get out of the stadium. We just took a bunch of back roads back to my brother’s house. It took us quite a while. Where he lived his half of the street had power so we could watch all the tv coverage. We watched it all evening. I made an effort to buy all the newspapers the next morning before I drove to Phoenix.

I have vivid memories of being there. It was a surreal experience. You don’t expect to be sitting at a baseball game and have an earthquake, especially in game three of the World Series.