Waves, swings, chaos leave big impressions
Third edition of readers’ momentous events covers all kinds of happenings
The memories continue to flow in after the Sporting Green asked readers to submit their fondest recollections of events they attended.
This is the third collection of those memories, the earlier ones having debuted online May 16 and May 23.
Entries have been edited in some cases for brevity and clarity. In terms of exact dates and names, factchecking was performed for accuracy.
Big waves
As a fan and filmmaker of bigwave surfing, I was fortunate to witness one of the biggest days ever held for a contest. The Feb. 13, 2010, swell at Mavericks went down in history not only for its size and magnitude, but raising the bar for future generations. With an incoming swell of 21 feet at 17second intervals, most of the waves were in the 40 to 50foot range. Every competitor had the reputation of a bigwave charger, and before the contest even started, Hawaii’s Shane Dorian executed the kind of cavernous tube ride rarely seen at the Half Moon Bay spot. But the wipeouts were titanic, taking down local legends Tim West and Ion Banner. Zach Wormhoudt and Alex Martins made some of the heaviest drops in bigwave surfing, but ended up being vaporized. With an extreme high tide on the rise, the crowd ignored warnings from the beach patrol and at least a halfdozen people were hospitalized after being swept onto the shoreline rocks. During a 45minute freesurfing session before the finals began, Santa Cruz surfer Shawn Dollar took off
“It was absolutely exhilarating, a fight that lived up to every billing you can imagine.”
Sam Piraro, San Jose, on watching AliFrazier I at San Jose’s Civic Audtorium
on a wave that was measured at 55 feet and got him into the Guinness Book of World Records for the biggest ever ridden by a paddlein surfer. And in the end, there was South African Chris Bertish, who traveled 36 hours to get there, lost his surfboards in transit, and wound up without enough money to get back home if he didn’t perform well. Surfing the finals on a wing and a prayer, Bertish won the event with a borrowed board from Mavericks pioneer Jeff Clark. There could be no better example of the fortitude of bigwave surfers and their passion.
— Eric W. Nelson, Montara
And that makes 73
My wife and I had tickets for the GiantsDodgers game on Sept. 16, 2001, but 9/11 happened, MLB shut down for a week, and with the Giants’ six suspended games pushed into October, now our tickets were for the final game of the season. We had barely sat down in the bottom of the first when Barry Bonds came to the plate, having hit his 71st and 72nd homers against the Dodgers two days earlier. From where we sat in the lower grandstand, it looked like knuckleballer Dennis Springer could have rolled the ball to the plate faster than his throws. Bonds ran the count to 32 and waited on what research says was one of the slowest pitches ever recorded: a 43 mph floater. Bonds did what we had come to see: No. 73, and the crowd went wild as he rounded the bases. Eighteen months later at “24,” Pac Bell’s restaurant at the time, my wife and I became engaged in booth No. 73.
— Doug Carlson, Sacramento
AliFrazier I
March 8, 1971, at the Civic Auditorium in San Jose for a closedcircuit broadcast of the AliFrazier fight. My best friend and I arrived about 90 minutes beforehand (cost to get in: $20), and the Civic was already packed and buzzing. You could cut the tension with a knife. The bell rang, and for the next 45 minutes, everyone was on their feet. It was absolutely exhilarating, a fight that lived up to every billing you can imagine. It was a unanimous decision for Frazier, but he sat in his corner for several minutes, totally exhausted. He had taken a terrible beating and was never the same after that. The Civic didn’t clear out for over an hour. People just couldn’t stop talking. We went to Original Joe’s for dinner, and that place was abuzz. I didn’t sleep a wink that night.
— Sam Piraro, San Jose
Nono for A’s Manaea
I had knee replacement surgery in March of 2018, and had barely been out of the house, when my brotherinlaw mailed me two tickets for the A’s game against the Red Sox on April 21. My wife and I decided “what the heck,” if we could make it to the Coliseum on BART, we could have a meal in the Shibe Park Tavern, maybe see a couple of innings and watch the rest on TV back home. I even got a wheelchair ride across the bridge from BART. By the middle of the fifth inning, we knew we couldn’t leave until Sean Manaea gave up a hit — and you know how that turned out. I’d been in the seats for a nohitter (Tim Lincecum’s in San Francisco), but this was definitely the most memorable. My surgical knee didn’t even hurt until the next morning.
— Dan De Vries, San Francisco Watson’s chipin
I’ve been to a lot of memorable sporting events, including Matt Cain’s perfect game, but my most memorable was the 1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. My father, brother and I had the good fortune of being on the 17th hole when Tom Watson made his miraculous chipin for birdie. It’s so lucky to be on the correct hole when something historic happens at a golf major, and the three of us were able to share it together.
— Joe Maly Jr., New Orleans Disco Demolition Night, 1979
I was at home watching the first game on TV, and I’ll never forget White Sox announcer Jimmy Piersall’s comment about a longhaired fan in attendance: “He sure doesn’t look like a baseball fan.” My phone rang, a bunch of us grabbed some LPs and we headed to (Comiskey Park). There were freaks everywhere. Hell, I was one of them. The smell of weed was so prevalent, I felt like I was at a concert. It seemed there were more people than seats, and that turned out to be true. Steve Dahl, the DJ who inspired this event, blew up the records and then the insanity started. Knuckleheads ran out and destroyed the field. Small fires broke out. People were throwing LPs like Frisbees in the crowd. I’m surprised no one got decapitated. We didn’t get to see that second game. It was canceled, later forfeited. A historic ’70s baseball promotion gone wrong.
— Michael Manushaw, Alameda
Koufax’s perfection
I was about to start junior high school in Glendale in 1965 when my dad came home from work and suggested we take in one last ballgame at Dodger Stadium before school started. Sandy Koufax was starting, and he did not have to ask me twice! We got a gameday edition of the old Herald Examiner (cost a dime) on the way, because the front page had a grid for keeping score. Little did we know we were going to see baseball history — Koufax’s perfect game — that night against the Cubs. Koufax had been struggling since the Juan MarichalJohn Roseboro incident at Candlestick Park a few weeks earlier, but he was dialed in this night. He struck out 14 batters, and I vividly remember Koufax’s cap flying off his head in the ninth inning as he struck out the side, including exGiants outfielder Harvey Kuenn for the final out. If I remember correctly, Kuenn also made the last out when Koufax nohit the Giants in ’63. That’s an uncommon coincidence. (Editor’s note: Correct. Kuenn grounded out to end that game.)
— Curtis Reeves, Fresno
Riding the Key to games
Back in the olden days, the Key System trains used to run over the Bay Bridge. Once in a while, as a kid, I would ride the Sunday morning train from San Francisco to Emeryville to watch the Oakland Oaks in the first game of a Pacific Coast League doubleheader against the San Francisco Seals. If I remember right, the train stopped right at the stadium. That ballpark was a rickety wooden affair, and whenever the crowd would jump up, the seats rocked back and forth. The second game of doubleheaders was played in San Francisco in those days, so after the morning game, I’d jump back on the train, take the streetcar to Seals Stadium and watch the afternoon half from there.
— Warren Oglove, Rio Vista