How incredible were the events surrounding the ‘89 Earthquake Series?

I remember every boy in my 2nd grade class talking about it in wonder. Everyone was watching the World Series and saw all the footage. Growing up in Louisiana we barely had a clue about what an earthquake even was

Probably one of the events on TV I remember most vividly from childhood.

didn't ESPN do a 30/30 on this

I was only 3 years old, but my mom said she was making us dinner, came into the living room, and saw chaos on the screen.

Had a co-worker years ago that grew up around Santa Cruz. Said he got home from school and took a nap. Said the quake woke him up, throwing him out of his bed and into the floor.

Yeah, Al Michaels chuckles a couple of times when they came back on, presumably because of the scare. Little did they know there was a freeway collapse.

I was at work in Foster City, about 10 miles south of SF.

Since I grew up here, we had earthquake drills at school when I was a kid. When there's an earthquake you're supposed to get under a desk or a sturdy table to protect yourself from falling objects. Well, all of that training went out the door. The earthquake started and I ignored it as usual. But it lasted way longer than usual, and got stronger. It never occured to me to get under anything. I was concerned that this tilt-up building would collapse so I walked to the door of the room I was in to leave and noticed that the door frame was being distorted from the forces and the closed door was actually keeping the frame from distorting more than a little bit. I felt like the closed door was helping to maintain the integrity of the wall, so I didn't want to open it. I just stood next to it for a while. When the shaking eased up a bit I opened the door and went into the long hall to make my way out and I remember a co-worker leaning her back against the wall in the hallway and not moving. She got knocked against the wall while trying to leave, and she froze there. Eventually everyone got out. I had commuted to work with a coworker, so we drove back and encountered power out everywhere along the 25 miles between the office and the area where we lived. We decided to avoid the freeway (that was a mistake) and took surface streets only to discover that all of the traffic lights were out. It was chaos. It took 3 hours to get home, where it normally would take maybe 45 minutes taking surface streets.

Also, it seemed like most of the radio stations got knocked off air. We did find the station broadcasting from the World Series game. They were providing updates where they could, as well as speading rumors. They said they heard that the Bay Bridge had "collapsed," so we envisioned that the whole deck had fallen into the bay and hundreds of people had died. Turns out it was just that short upper deck segment that you've all probably seen.

Kirk Gibson. Epic.

Will Clark

It was wild. I don’t remember how it actually might have affected the baseball on the field—did it screw up rotations and bullpens (extra rest) and give the A’s an ever bigger advantage (I think they were clearly the better team). Series was a sweep, but lasted 2 weeks.

Crazy that’s the only WS that A’s group won. They were one of the best teams in MLB history over a 3-year stretch.

quote:

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Huge advantage for Oakland. They were already up 2-0 after pitching Dave Stewart and Mike Moore pitched games 1 and 2. They were able to throw them in games 3 and 4 after the series resumed and sweep. Stewart and Moore finished 2nd and 3rd for the AL Cy Young that year and won 40 games between them. I want to say the two of them pitched 30 of the 36 innings.

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Well, there ya go. I still think the A’s would have won—they were so damn good. But we’ll never know. They were so damn good in ‘88 and ‘90 too.