Attending my MOS school aboard an Army (Aberdeen Proving Grounds) base as a United States Marine. I had just convinced a couple of dozen other Marines — many of which were senior to me — to allow me to watch the game on the only television in the barracks that had cable. They let me without much of a fuss.

After the quake, I attempted to call home (Martinez) to see if my family was okay. The dreaded “all circuits are busy” message played on my end of the phone. I was a nervous wreck until a couple of hours later when I finally could contact someone.

I was nowhere NEAR three goats and a shepherd.

I was walking home from school to watch the game and noticed the sidewalk seemed to be swaying back and forth. I thought, “Huh” and kept walking, more concerned about not missing first pitch.

Then I turned on the TV and there was static and I thought “No freaking way!!! The TV chooses NOW to go on the fritz????”

Then the phone rang and it was Nick, asking if I was ok, and I was like, “No – my TV isn’t working and the game’s about to start!” Then he explained there had been a major earthquake and suddenly everything made sense.

but this is me the following morning:

A freshman in high school out on the football practice field in Gustine Ca. about 90 miles away. We were running some drills and the stadium lights started to sway. I cant’ say that it was something to worry about, it was an earthquake. Then I went home and all the glass from the china hutch was all over. I turned the tv on to see the undescribable. THAT will stand in my mind forever.

A tiny car rental company here in Las Vegas. We didn’t have a TV in the office so I brought my 9" black and white portable TV with rabbit ears to work with me and put it on my desk. Nobody else cared about the game, but once the quake hit, there were seven of us crowded around that cheesy little TV for hours.

Saw the highlight of Dave Parker’s double in Game 2 when things started shaking.

Thought, “Man, he hit that ball hard!”

Knew right away it was bad.

at the old Albany Middle School field at the bottom of Marin (I think it’s now called “Ocean View Park”….thing is flatter than flat, where do you see an Ocean?!?!?!!?). There was a rumbling noise, which we thought was the BART train going underground, until we remembered that BART was above ground about ten blocks east of us. Then we saw the smoke rising from downtown Berkeley (remember the tire place near BHS?). We were so excited, thinking that the high school was on fire (nevermind the fact that we were all in Junior High School, so the destruction of BHS wouldn’t affect us at all). Then our parents all started driving into the parking lot in a panic to pick us up and take us home.

I remember that night, looking out of my window in the Berkeley hills at what was normally a gorgeous view of the lights of San Francisco, and only seeing darkness (the power was still out city-wide), except for the glow of the fire in the Marina district. Very creepy…

I wasn’t even born in 1989, and my parents weren’t even married yet.

I was in my New York apartment tuned into the game and then the picture went blank and a minute later was watching some TV re-run.

Once the live signal came back and I watched the horror unfold.

Don’t ask me about the year before, too painful!

I’m pretty sure I wasn’t alive (well thats what my birth certificate tells me), but my family has good stories about it, like my sister claiming to be “saved” from something.

…waiting to go to Burger King. I was (for a ten year-old) a diehard fan, but not a diehard fan of the A’s. Exactly one month earlier my mother and I had completed a drive across most of the country from Evanston Illinois to Albany. Having lived most of my young life a few blocks from Wrigley, (and the last few years a few miles from it,) I lived and died with the Cubs, and as most of you know that involves a lot more dying than living.

It was only the 2nd year in my lifetime that the Cubs had made it to the postseason, and I expressed my belief that the Cubbies would stomp the Giants in the NLCS to my 5th grade classmates with the utter certainty that most Cub fans have beaten out of them by the time they reach adulthood. I also said that I thought the Blue Jays would win the ALCS, possibly because of an innate contrariness that hasn’t noticeably abated through adulthood. I may have just wanted to piss off the A’s fans as much as I pissed off the Giants fans.

But of course, I learned the lessons that Cubs fans must learn. Future HOFer Greg Maddux would give up 12 runs in 7 1/3 innings over 2 games and the Giants would take 4 out of 5. I sullenly hoped for the A’s to get some revenge for me, but if ten minutes before the earthquake you’d asked me to name 5 of the A’s players, I really strongly doubt that I could. (The Bash Brothers, Rickey and Eck was about as much as I’d known, and the last only cuz he was a former Cub.) I had little interest in the Series itself.

I’d convinced my mother to take me to Burger King for dinner, and we were in the yard on our way to the car when the quake hit. My mother had been through a 4-5-level quake in LA a year previously when visiting her brother, so she recognized what was going on. I, however, had no clue. I could see that one house on the street was shaking, and so I asked aloud “Why are they shaking the house?” shortly before the quake stopped. My mother explained, and we then checked our house. The power was out, and one painting had tipped over, but that was the extent of the direct effect the quake had on us. (Well, it also knocked out power to the BK, so dinner would end up being spaghetti instead.)

on the phone with someone in San Francisco, finishing up some business, wanting to get out of there and head home to turn on the game. It was a unique little building on Mission Boulevard in Fremont where the 1st floor was below “street level” and I was able to look out on the parking lot in the front of the building at eye level.

I’ve lived in California my entire 53 years and this was the first and only time I’ve felt like running out of a building or scrambling under a table during an earthquake. When it started to shake, I said to the person in SF on the other end of the line: “I think we’re having an earthquake.” He said: “I don’t feel anything.” I watched as the parking lot in front of me began to ripple… the building jolted and creaked. I said: “Oh yes, we’re having an earthquake… a big one.” A pause… and, he said: “Oh my god… I feel it.” He was in a SF skyscraper and it was swaying. Seconds later the line went dead.

It seemed like it lasted forever. But, I didn’t run out of the building or jump under the table. I immediately went home and turned on the TV, though.

Shame the A’s Eighties Dynasty’s only WS win had to be overshadowed by the earthquake. But, it was memorable. Still irks me to this day that they lost in 1988 and 1990!

so the baseball series didn’t really register at the time. we did, of course, hear all about the earthquake. at the time, the big news was speculation about whether margret thatcher was going to be challenged as leader of the conservative party (and hence prime minister) – i can tell you exactly where i was when i heard about her being finally shown the door!

But anyway, i do remember, after hearing about the quake, turning to my parents and saying ‘wait, we used to live there??’ or words to that effect. we used to live in san anselmo, but from 6000 miles away, it’s pretty much the same.

what’s interesting to me, on reading some of these replies, is that i seem to be roughly the same age as some people on here, and that we could well have been classmates, had my parents not decided to move back to the UK. but, yknow. you wouldn’t have liked me. i was a horrible child. still. makes you wonder

We had the game on, and then we lost the signal, and I joked, “There must have been an earthquake.”

Whoops.

After a few minutes, we realized that yes, there was an earthquake and I went back to my room to call home (Pleasanton, at the time) to see how everyone was. Fortunately, no major damage at home.

I’d just gotten done with a rehearsal of “The Miracle Worker” and was waiting outside the school (Mission San Jose High in Fremont) for my mom to pick me up. There was a jolt, and I swear I saw the foundation of the school slide out from under the rest of the building, like someone whipping a tablecloth out from underneath the dishes, before the rest of the building caught up a split-second later. When the shaking stopped, I went back into the theater and the lights were pointed every which direction and there were lighting gels all over the ground. Everyone was still hiding out under tables, but no damage and no injuries.

When my mom finally showed up, she said, “Yeah, did you feel the earthquake?” Then she told me that apparently just about everyone pulled off the road because they thought they had flat tires. I thought that was kind of a silly image; everyone pulling over all at once and checking their tires…

We went home and went inside, and the chandelier at the entryway was swinging precariously to and fro. This was probably at least 20 minutes after the quake, but the lamp was on such a long chain that it had little reason to stop. I thought, “Well, that was interesting, now for the game!” and turned on the TV. No signal. Well that’s interesting, I thought, I can’t believe I’m going to miss the game because of some stupid earthquake! (I was a rather self-centered teenager…)

So I turned on the radio, and they (I can’t remember exactly who was talking at this point) were discussing the fallen bridge. Whoa….really? So I went back to the TV, and this time got a signal, and an image of the section of Bay Bridge fallen down, and the collapsed Cypress structure. The reporters didn’t seem to realize that it had collapsed; they kept saying it had “buckled.” Maybe 10, 15 minutes later, they finally realized with horror that it had fallen upon itself, and whoever was unfortunate enough to be on the lower structure at that moment.

My dad was among those who traveled the Cypress Structure to and from work, but I don’t recall him being in any immediate danger that day…I think he worked later, and was simply stuck in SF for a long time.

A really weird coincidence is that this year, my band had a show at the high school for the first time. I was sitting on exactly the same planter bench as I was when the quake hit, and I got to thinking about that..and realized that it was exactly 19 years ago — October 17, and I think I may have arrived slightly after 5:04pm. And the interesting thing about 19 years is that in the Indian lunar calendar, the dates line up with our calendar every…19 years.

In fact its only my second long-term memory, the first being my 3rd birthday. I was watching the game, not that I was really watching, sitting on the ground cross-legged when it started. I remember being thrown up and down off the floor and actually laughing gleefully, not knowing the seriousness of what was happening.

My 6th grade class from an Oakland Elementary school was on what was to be a week long trip to the mountains. I had smuggled a radio along (which was forbidden) in order to listen to the game. We were lining up for dinner when the Earthquake hit. We were supposed to come home on the following Friday and ended up not coming home for a much longer period of time due to a lack of communication and road damage, if I recall correctly.
I remember being really freaked out about being unable to contact my parents or my two brothers. I was really worried about my youngest brother, even if he was and is a giants fan.

I was in my fifth year of grad school at Iowa State. I was driving home just before 8:00 pm (CT), when I heard a garbled radio report of an earthquake in the SF Bay area. Incredibly, there was no radio station in Iowa covering the World Series – this fragment of a report came from a station from San Antonio that I occasionally could pick up. At the time, I thought “Wow, that would really mess up the Series”, but then didn’t think much of it. When I got home and turned on the TV, the first thing I saw was the Bay Bridge with the collapsed upper deck. At this point, my thinking changed from “ho-hum” to “WTF?”. I tried calling my folks in Mountain View but couldn’t get through. From the scenes of the Cypress freeway, the Marina district on fire, and the bridge, I could only imagine what catastrophe had befallen them. Eventually, my brother (who lived in Ohio) called me to tell me they were fine. The only damage in their house was an overturned lamp and a broken light bulb in the entryway chandelier, which got broken when the chandelier hit the wall, three feet away.

One thing I still remember to this day was how impressed I was with Al Michaels, who changed from play-by-play guy to serious TV reporter at the drop of a hat. His background in the Bay Area also helped him to speak intelligently about what we were all looking at.

like I can remember what I had for breakfast this morning or where my pants are right now.

He had picked me up from my Mom’s house in Oakland, and we were driving home to watch the game. The quake hit as we were passing through Pleasant Hill. As oblique’s mom witnessed elsewhere, my dad began to pull over to check for a flat tire; when he saw most other cars on the freeway doing the same, he figured it was an earthquake.

Got home, turned on the TV thinking that I had missed the first inning, and saw all hell breaking loose in the city, et al.

listening to pre-game on the radio. The ground started rolling a little and the water in the pool began to lap over the edges.

I was 12 and mostly upset we were gonna miss the game.

sitting down with my buddies in the apartment belonging to the girls next door (they had a better TV) getting ready to watch the game. we felt it up there. very surreal to put it mildly.

WTF, I thought.

but actually I was on a bus and the busdriver was driving.

I wasn’t a baseball fan then, but my sister was. She didn’t have a television, so she was going to meet me at my apartment to watch. I left work a little early, so at 5:04 our bus was past Treasure Island about halfway to where the bridge broke.

I didn’t feel a thing.

I’m still not sure why. Physicists might say we happened to be positioned right on a node or something. All I know is it wasn’t just me who was oblivious. Nobody else on the bus felt a thing either. We just noticed that the traffic was stopped even worse than usual for rush hour on the bridge and we were grumbling about the delay. Then we noticed that people in front of us started getting out of their cars, which to me was just baffling. We were all thinking, “Hey, what are you doing? Get back in your cars!”

But the traffic was now at a dead stop going nowhere, so people on the bus started getting out, too. I am patient by nature, so I was one of the last, but eventually I gave in and joined the crowd of pedestrians milling about on the car-filled bridge. It turns out it wasn’t just our bus but our segment of the bridge. We all asked each other, “What’s going on?” but nobody knew. After a few minutes some people came running from ahead of us on the bridge. A few of them were frantic, yelling, “The bridge is collapsing!” The bridge seemed completely solid to me, so I thought these people were just crazy.

Eventually the rumors sorted themselves out and we got the idea that there had been a big earthquake and a piece of the bridge really did break. It seemed pretty clear the bus wouldn’t be going forward any time soon. Even if it were possible to get across on the bridge, so many people had abandoned their cars it would take forever to get them all back and moving again. So I joined the crowd walking back toward Treasure Island (or rather Yerba Buena). When I reached the island I walked out on the grass to the north a little ways so that I could see the other end of the bridge in the distance, and I could barely make out the broken piece.

I hung out on the island for maybe 20 minutes. There were now cops on the bridge working on turning around all the vehicles and sending them back to San Francisco. I hopped on a bus and went back to the city. I tried to get on a pay phone to call my sister, who I figured might be worried about me, but it was hopeless. Then I walked back to my office and tried the phone in there, but it wasn’t working either. (For all you kids, this was before cell phones.)

For several hours I wandered around San Francisco, not knowing what to do. Eventually I found a bus headed for the East Bay by way of the Richmond Bridge. I wasn’t even sure exactly where it was going, but somewhere in north Berkeley it got on San Pablo and kept going, so I got off at 40th where I knew I could hop on a 57 to take me home. I got home at about 10:30.

in my college dorm, upstairs in a friends living room. They had the Playboy channel on and we were probably a few minutes away from switching over to the game. Probably.
Everyone (except me) panicked. Couple of people ran out the door, my roomate ran into the sliding screen door trying to get out. The T.V. reception/power went out, I grabbed him and threw him under the kitchen table. I could see the building and large glass windows bending and bowing. It was quite a site. School was shutdown for a week. Unfortunately many used it as an excuse to party and get drunk. Not exactly the right situation to be doing this in. Power and phone didn’t come on until that next day. It’s the 2nd biggest earthquake I’ve ever felt, taking into consideration proximity to the epicenter etc… (Northridge #1).
vr, Xei

trying to get home to Alameda to watch the game. We didn’t really know what had happened until we lost power and everything went dark in the tunnels between Powell and Montgomery St. stations. We ended up walking back through the tunnel to Powell with BART workers lighting our way with flashlights. When we came up to street level we were met with complete chaos. Glass was everywhere. There was a Muni bus stranded in the middle of an intersection with shards of it all over the roof. We walked down to First Street to the bus terminal only to find that the Bay Bridge had collapsed and the Golden Gate Bridge closed. Close to sunset we were finally able to get across the GG into Greenbrae on a Marin County Transit bus, passing by the Marina district where the fires there lit up the night sky. It took us hours more to get through the jammed telephone lines to someone who could come and get us back to the East Bay. It was midnight before I got home. I was three months pregnant with my son and I remember thinking, well, at least I know where he is and that he’s safe.

Watching Game 3. In my full A’s get up, t-shirt, hat, etc. complete with knee high tube socks in the green and gold of the A’s. I had just finished my homework and was hoping to tune in to see the A’s get one game closer to the WS title. When the cameras started shaking I was complete taken aback. Here in NC, we worry about hurricanes which are predictable and you have lots of warning about them. But with earthquakes they just happen, no warning or time to prepare, which scared the heck out of me. So when the picture came back and the news reports started coming in that it had been an earthquake and that the Bay Bridge had collapsed I was totally speechless. I forgot all about the game and started trying to piece together what was going on there in the Bay Area, I can only imagine that it was chaotic. And like someone earlier said I was impressed with Al Michaels, going from play-by-play to serious TV reporter in a second.

And I know that where I was is nothing compared to several that are above but that is probably the most rememberable sports moment I have seen on TV so far in my life.

I was waiting for my mom to take me to band practice. She was standing by the sliding glass door talking to the gardener and I looked past her and noticed the water in the pool sloshing a bit. I showed them and we all agreed there must have been a small earthquake. I had turned off the TV a few minutes prior because we were leaving. I didn’t find out what actually happened until later that evening. We had a long evening making sure family in Alameda was ok. Afterwards, we found out one of my cousins was on the Cypress about 1/4 or a mile away from the collapse.

is pretty boring (I had just left work and was getting ready to jump on 880), but I did want to rec this well-penned recollection of that unforgettable day, and that wonderful period in A’s history.

Also thought it was interesting that there are two recommended posts, one asking “Who are we?” and the other one asking “Where were you?”

Perhaps I am just a little bored right now.

I was home alone… nine years old, and in the 9th inning of my game of Bases Loaded on the nintendo… I was winning 21-2 and trying to finish quick so I could turn on the REAL baseball game. Then— the power went out and I lost my game :-( Then I noticed the shaking and thought someone was trying to break into our house — then I realized what was actually going on.

There was no time to think about baseball as the events of the times had me very busy. If any of you have ever seen a movie called “The Panama Deception,” this was around the time of the coup attempt on Noriega that failed. I heard all about the A’s game the next day when I spoke to my mother who was in downtown SF when it hit. She described to me hanging out on the street drinking wine out of a bottle, just trying to calm down.

I have a photo of myself with an A’s shirt on hanging out and drinking beer with the PDF troops. Pretty trippy to look back now.

It’s rather unfortunate that our team has won only one championship in my sports-viewing life (the 70s don’t count, as I was too young and bored by baseball), and that happened to coincide with the worst year of my life thus far. 1989, a number, another summer, perhaps, Chuck. But a bad, bad, bad year. I’m still uncertain how I made it out of that school year alive.

I was most certainly drunk, waiting for the game to start. My high school sweetheart had dumped me about a month prior and I thought life was over. I was busy drinking and hanging out with Kymb, a punk rock chick who was perhaps the worst female alcoholic I’ve ever laid eyes on—and I assume she feels the same way about me to this day. We liked to get really, really drunk, cut each other with razor blades and have what I assume would be considered sex, though it did not resemble anything I’d ever seen or even heard of, so I’m still unsure of the classification.

I was blazing my way toward two straight semesters of 0.0. Even Ball State, whose admission standards were incredibly lax, asked me not to return. By the way, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation and later (post-drink) decide that perhaps college deserves a second chance, just let the 18 credits go. The 30 units of F from a 19th Century “progressive” school like BSU will stay on your transcripts FOREVER, regardless if you’ve moved 3,000 miles away or not.

Only to find it had nothing but static.

The difference, of course, is that I was trying to get Square One TV or some similar children’s show.

related seminar. While driving back from the Inn of the 7th Mtn to my hotel room to catch the game, I drove by Drake Park at was the exact time of the quake, without knowing it yet, and saw a gal walking two dogs that just suddenly started leaping barking whilst pulling on their leash.

When it hit I was stopped at a stoplight and the car started “bucking” I thought it was having enging trouble, I looked at the Tach, and it was fine. So I said “who the F just rear ended me.” I turned around and nobody was behind me. I looked at a street lamp and was waiving around like the tail on a dog. Then water started coming out of the street. I knew at that point we were in deep Kimchee. I wanted to get to Oakland to help, but I could not leave my jurisdiction.

I just had to wipe the spit of the monitor

at my place (back then) at Clayton and Frederick. I had gotten back from the store with a six pack, had opened one, turned on the pregame, and …
when everything started shaking, I knew the drill: got into the entryway.
For twenty seconds or so I watched the buildings across the street rocking back and forth. The rocking finally stopped, but I remember the telephone lines were still gently swaying as i went back inside to watch the game. It was the biggest earthquake I’d been through but It wasn’t until I noticed the electricity was off and the phone was dead that I realized maybe there wasn’t going to be a ball game that day.

The earthquake happened at an unfortunate time for me in more than one way.

Can I share my petty pet peeve about this earthquake?

Am I the only one who was repeatedly pissed off by the insistence on everyone in the world to call it the “San Francisco earthquake”? Why San Francisco? Nevermind that Oakland is where dozens of people were squashed to death. Nevermind that Santa Cruz is where the force was most severe and half the town had to be rebuilt. All that matters is San Francisco, because San Francisco is the imperial capital of the Bay Area and the rest of us are just crappy little suburbs that don’t count for shit.

It was a violation of baseball fandom to be at the practice and not watching the game, but practice was at 5:00 p.m. and we were kicking the balls around during a scrimmage. A friend’s parent drove up around 5:30 and said if we had family in the Bay Area, she would take anybody home. The rest of practice was listless.

just having gotten out of the shower……..I was pretty freaked out! Had I not been on the loo, I most certainly would have shit my pants.

I was in Santa Cruz (Soquel) about a mile from the epicenter.I had just gotten back from surfing and had rushed home to catch the game. It was in fact the only game of the series I didn’t attend. The quake hit and it felt like the ground dropped about 3 feet. I watched what was once a solid brick wall/fireplace morph into a room with a view. Never thought that I would ever be happy to have missed an A’s world series game.

…I felt it but didn’t realize what had happened. Cursing the radio stations all suddenly going out. Didn’t realize it had been an earthquake until I got home 20 minutes later.

I rushed to the newsstand the next day to pick up the IHT to read about the A’s victory, only to see the headline about the quake. The IHT map made it look like the epicenter of the quake was right on top of my parents’ south bay area home.

I panicked since they hadn’t called me to tell me they were all right (and they did have a # to reach me). So, I promptly rang them. It was 3AM.

They eventually forgave me.

I see I’m one of only two people who voted “at the game.” If I could find my ticket stub I could tell you exactly where I was sitting, but it was waaay up in left field, four rows from the top. At first I thought it was those silly Giants fans stomping their feet in anticipation of the start of the game. When I realized what it was, I looked up at those overhang things that circle the structure, and they were swaying in segments such that you could see daylight between them as they moved. I stayed in my seat and waited for the game to start again. I’m a California native, so it was no big deal to me at first. It took about 20 minutes before those people in the stands with Sony “Watchman” TVs started getting some images of the bridge, Marina, etc. At that point I decided I better get down to ground level. It was slow but orderly — no panic, at least by that time. I have a friend who works in Brisbane, normally a 5-minute drive from Candlestick. It took me an hour and a half to reach his office, and from there a coworker of his took us both home for the night, gave us fresh toothbrushes, and made pancakes the next morning. I drove home over the San Mateo Bridge, having no idea what to expect. At my house in Oakland, the only “damage” was a picture frame that had fallen off the mantel. I’ve always wondered what it felt like at my house, but it sure was exciting where I was.

So who’s the other person who was “at the game”??

and sitting on the couch at home in oakland talking on the phone with a friend and watching the world series!

the absolute worst stadium experience ever in my opinion!