It was supposed to be a celebration of the Bay Area. October 17, 1989. The "Battle of the Bay." For the first time ever, the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco San Francisco Giants were facing off in the Fall Classic. Candlestick Park was packed. Over 62,000 people were screaming, waving orange towels, and waiting for Game 3 to start.
Then, at 5:04 p.m., the earth moved.
Most people watching on TV didn’t see the ground ripple. They saw Al Michaels and Tim McCarver on ABC, and then they saw the screen flicker into static. Michaels managed to shout, "I'll tell you what, we're having an earth—" before the signal cut out. That earthquake at World Series moment became one of the most surreal broadcasts in the history of television. It wasn't just a sports delay. It was a 6.9 magnitude disaster that killed 63 people and changed California forever.
Why Candlestick Park Didn't Collapse
Honestly, it's a miracle more people didn't die at the stadium. Candlestick was built on reclaimed land, which is usually a recipe for disaster during seismic activity because of soil liquefaction. But the stadium held. If you talk to engineers who studied the site afterward, they’ll tell you the structure groaned and swayed, but the upper deck stayed put.
Imagine being in those stands. The sound wasn't just a rumble; it was a roar. Fans thought it was a plane crashing or a massive explosion under the bleachers. Because the pre-game festivities were in full swing, the crowd was already loud, so it took a few seconds for the realization to sink in. Once the shaking stopped, a weird silence fell over the park. People looked at each other, confused.
Then the transistor radios started chirping.
In 1989, we didn't have Twitter or iPhones. You couldn't just refresh a feed to see what happened. People relied on those little handheld radios. Word started spreading through the stands: the Bay Bridge had collapsed. A section of the Cypress Street Viaduct in Oakland had pancaked. Fires were breaking out in the Marina District. The earthquake at World Series was no longer about baseball; it was a legitimate humanitarian crisis.
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The Science of the Loma Prieta Break
Geologists will tell you this wasn't actually the "Big One" everyone fears. It was a slip along the San Andreas Fault, specifically the Santa Cruz Mountains segment. The focus was about 11 miles deep.
What made it so destructive was the duration. It lasted about 15 seconds. That sounds short. It isn't. Not when the ground is moving like a liquid. The shaking was felt as far away as San Diego and western Nevada. Because the World Series was happening, the traffic in the Bay Area was actually lighter than usual. Thousands of people had left work early to get home and watch the game.
Think about that for a second.
If the A's and Giants weren't playing, the death toll likely would have been in the hundreds, if not thousands. The Nimitz Freeway (I-880) would have been bumper-to-bumper. Instead, the "Battle of the Bay" arguably saved lives by clearing the roads. It's one of those weird, dark ironies of history.
Players in Uniform Helping Fans
The scenes on the field were bizarre. Giants and Athletics players, still in their full uniforms, were roaming the stands or the parking lot, trying to find their families. Terry Steinbach, the A's catcher, later talked about the sheer confusion of trying to navigate a stadium with no power.
There was no formal evacuation plan that accounted for a 6.9 quake. People just sort of drifted out. The police and stadium staff did a decent job, but it was mostly just people helping people. You saw guys in Jose Canseco jerseys helping elderly fans down the concrete ramps. It was human instinct taking over.
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Ten Days of Silence
Baseball basically evaporated. Commissioner Fay Vincent had a massive decision to make. Do you cancel the World Series? Do you move it to a neutral site?
For ten days, the series was on ice.
The Bay Area was in ruins. The Marina District was smoldering because the water mains had snapped, leaving firefighters to pump water directly from the bay. The iconic image of the double-decker Bay Bridge with a chunk of the upper roadway missing became the face of the disaster. Baseball felt small. Kinda trivial.
But Fay Vincent stayed firm. He believed that the community needed the game to return to help the healing process. It wasn't about the money—though that’s always a factor in sports—it was about a return to normalcy. When Game 3 finally resumed on October 27, the atmosphere was completely different. There were no sirens, just a heavy sense of resilience.
The Oakland A’s ended up sweeping the Giants. They won in four games. But if you ask anyone from San Francisco who lived through it, they barely remember the score. They remember the dust. They remember the smell of the smoke. They remember where they were when the earthquake at World Series changed the landscape of their lives.
Misconceptions About the Damage
A lot of people think the stadium was ruined. It wasn't. Candlestick took some hits, but it was cleared for play relatively quickly. The real damage was structural in the city's infrastructure.
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- Liquefaction: This is the big word geologists use. In the Marina, the ground was made of loose fill and sand. When the shaking started, the soil behaved like a milkshake. Buildings didn't just shake; they sank.
- The Bridge: Only one 50-foot section of the Bay Bridge fell. It wasn't the whole thing, but that one section was enough to sever the artery between Oakland and SF for a month.
- The Death Toll: 42 of the 63 deaths happened on the Cypress Street Viaduct. It was a specific engineering failure where the support columns snapped.
How it Changed Modern Stadiums
If you go to a ballgame today at Oracle Park or Levi’s Stadium, you’re standing on some of the most advanced seismic engineering in the world. The 1989 quake was a wake-up call. We stopped building double-decker freeways with that specific 1950s design. Stadiums now use base isolation—basically giant shock absorbers—to make sure they can ride out a quake without snapping.
We also learned a lot about communication. The fact that the power went out and killed the broadcast left the rest of the country in the dark for hours. Today, with mesh networks and satellite backup, that wouldn't happen. But back then, the silence was terrifying.
What to Do if You're at a Game During a Quake
Most fans today don't even think about it. But if you're in a stadium and the ground starts moving, the rules are a bit different than if you're at home.
First, stay put. Don't run for the exits. That’s how stampedes happen. Modern stadiums are designed to sway. If you're in the stands, drop to the floor between the rows of seats and protect your head. The biggest danger isn't the stadium falling; it's falling light fixtures, scoreboards, or debris.
Wait for the "all clear" from the PA system. Even if the power goes out, stadiums have backup generators for emergency announcements. And remember, aftershocks are a real thing. In 1989, there were thousands of smaller tremors in the weeks following Loma Prieta.
Actionable Steps for Seismic Preparedness
You don't have to be a prepper to be smart. If you live in a high-risk zone—whether it's California, the Pacific Northwest, or even the New Madrid zone in the Midwest—take these steps:
- Check your stadium's "Emergency" tab. Most MLB and NFL teams have a specific page on their website detailing evacuation routes and safety protocols. Read it once.
- Keep a physical radio. If the cell towers go down (and they will), an old-school AM/FM radio is your only link to the outside world.
- The "Text, Don't Call" Rule. In a disaster, phone lines clog up instantly. A text message has a much higher chance of getting through a congested network than a voice call.
- Know your surroundings. If you're at a game, look up. Is there a massive glass overhang? A heavy speaker? Don't sit directly under things that look like they could vibrate loose.
The 1989 earthquake at World Series was a fluke of timing, a collision of America's pastime and the raw power of plate tectonics. It proved that nature doesn't care about the bottom of the ninth or a 3-2 count. It also proved that sports have this weird way of holding a community together when everything else is falling apart.
Next time you're watching a game and you see the camera shake for a split second, you'll know why the old-timers in the Bay Area still get a little nervous. They remember the night the lights went out at the Stick, and the game that didn't matter anymore.