Giants raise ticket prices — again
Here is a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1990
Sept. 18: Citing skyrocketing player salaries, the Giants are seeking to boost ticket prices next season. If the request is approved by the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, it would mark the third year in a row that Giants ticket prices have increased. Prices would jump from $7 to $8 for upper reserved seats at Candlestick, from $9 to $10 for lower reserved seats, from $10 to $11 for upper box seats and from $11 to $12 for lower box seats. The higher ticket prices come despite record attendance last year, topping 2 million for the first time.
1965
Sept. 19: His square features are rounding at the edges now, and the stocky frame is rounding out, too. Mickey Spillane, nonetheless, retains the appearance of toughness that the readers of his Mike Hammer books would like to expect. Spillane does little to dissuade people from making the cross-identification and he shares Hammer’s overriding sense of practicality. “I write for one reason only,” the crew-cut 47-year-old Spillane, said here yesterday. “Money.” It is hard to think of Hammer as being a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses but not so hard to imagine Hammer curled up on a bed with a beautiful young blonde, as Spillane was yesterday in a room at the St. Francis Hotel. The blonde was Spillane’s 23-yearold wife, an aspiring actress whose name was Selma Malinou before she changed it to Sherri and married Spillane. Spillane lounged back on the red quilt while Sherri polished her nails and talked about “the writing business.” “I’ve long had the finger of sex and sadism pointed at me,” he began with a smile. “What do they call me? The poor man’s Marquis de Sade. There is more sex and violence in any day’s newspaper,” Spillane insists. Spillane last year wrote eight books, this year he has written four. He spends two weeks “or three at most” on a novel “depending on how badly I need the money.” As for the completion in the mystery-thriller field, he noted, “There is none. There was Ian Fleming,” he said, “but he’s dead.”
— Robert Graham
1940
Sept. 19: The army served notice today that there would be many aching muscles and sore feet as America’s conscript army goes through the first stages of training because the intention is to put the men through to whip them into a “fighting force comparable to the best combat troops of any country,” said an Army announcement. Meanwhile it was indicated that the physical standards for regular army enlistments would be considerably lowered. Although the requirements have not been announced in detail it is expected that hearing, height and weight standards will be relaxed. For example, the army now accepts only men weighing 120 pounds or more and measuring a minimum of 64 inches, conscripts of 107 pounds and 60 inches are expected to be acceptable. Restrictions against those with partially defective hearing, “extreme ugliness of the face” or “indecent” tattooing are expected to be relaxed also. Rejections in cases of flat feet, loss of toes, and ingrowing toenails also may be reduced.
1915
Sept. 13: Fighting venomously like a beast at bay, George Nelson came to his end just as the placid Sabbath dawn brightened the scene of the most sensational episode in local police annals. In a room of the ruinous old mansion at the northwest corner of Buchanan and Oak streets, from where for seven hours he successfully held off approximately 100 minions of the law, armed to the teeth, the body of the young Russian was found when the police battered down the doors at 5:45 o’ clock. On a shabby couch, beneath the sill of the bullet wrecked windows, lay the corpse. It was clad in sleeveless mesh undershirt and blue trousers. The blood-smeared head rested on a dirty pillow amid shattered glass, and stocking feet hung stiffly over the couch. The big 45 automatic, with which he had fired the shot that sent him into eternity, lay against his hip, where it had evidently fallen from his dying hand. On a chair were the three other revolvers with which the bandit had fought the long duel with the police. Besides the fatal head wound there was a large bullet wound in the groin, evidently from a police rifle, and the left elbow had been shattered by a pistol bullet. And upon the scene the police gazed for some time in silence while hushed thousands stood without the mournful old structure and looked across the neglected gardens to the shattered windows and bullet-pierced walls. The frightful horrors of the night seemed strange, unreal. But the haggard faces of the police and the whispering of the women and children, who in the rooms above had faced the terror of dark and invisible danger, proved the that the events of the night were not some frightful dream.