San Francisco History buried deep within Office Depot

February 10, 2010 10:35 AM

Where is home plate from Seals Stadium now? (Aisle 6.)
posted by serazin (21 comments total)

That is awesome.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
posted by three blind mice at 10:41 AM on February 10, 2010

Podres delivers. . .crack!

A high fly ball to deep left-center. Snider goes back, back, a-way back, it's GONE!

Serazin does it again!

(Nice post, in other words.)
posted by Danf at 10:41 AM on February 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

Next up, in collaboation with Burrito Justice, we may try to convince the managers of the Office Depot and Safeway stores to place permanent markers for each of the bases on their respective floors.

They would be fools not to put down some base markers and use them as promotional tie-ins.
posted by Burhanistan at 10:42 AM on February 10, 2010

Everything ends.
posted by Senator at 10:42 AM on February 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

Great post!
posted by sciurus at 10:45 AM on February 10, 2010

Very cool find.
posted by eyeballkid at 10:49 AM on February 10, 2010

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

I'm going to assume that's a reference to the famous Giamatti quote. Well done.
posted by sachinag at 11:11 AM on February 10, 2010

Of a similar fate was Sick's Stadium, home for one year of the MLB Seattle Pilots and the rest of the time for the various Pacific Coast League and Northwest League minor league teams that called Seattle home. The Mariners never played there, going straight into the Kingdome in 1977. A few years later the stadium was sold and demolished to make way for an Eagle Hardware (now a Lowe's).

But unlike Office Depot and Safeway, Eagle Hardware made sure to mark home plate. The pitcher's mound is inside the store as well. Lowe's hasn't removed them since they took it over.

Oh, if you want to see some of the last remaining pieces of Seals Stadium, they're part of Tacoma's Cheney Stadium.
posted by dw at 11:20 AM on February 10, 2010 [3 favorites]

> I'm going to assume that's a reference to the famous Giamatti quote. Well done.

It's also a key line from a popular song.
posted by ardgedee at 11:26 AM on February 10, 2010

Aaand I forgot a bunch of links.

Sick's Stadium

Seattle Pilots

Flickr set of Sick's Stadium markers inside the Lowe's
posted by dw at 11:28 AM on February 10, 2010

Eugene has an old stadium on the chopping block, also.
posted by Danf at 11:30 AM on February 10, 2010

It's also a key line from a popular song.

True - we also lost the starmaker machinery of the old Pacific Coast League. (I kind of assumed people got the Joni Mitchell quote; the Giamatti one is less well-known but it holds a special place for those of us who are hard-core baseball romantics.)
posted by sachinag at 11:45 AM on February 10, 2010

the Giamatti one is less well-known but it holds a special place for those of us who are hard-core baseball romantics

Giamatti was one of those rare moments when a cerebral yet romantic man finds himself running a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Since then we've had the misunderstood but ultimately incapable Fay Vincent, followed by the love child of Alan Greenspan and Darth Vader that is Bud Selig, destroyer of the Seattle Pilots, destroyer of the Montreal Expos, and the guy who presided over the Steroids Era yet denies any knowledge of what was going on.

And to think it was going to be Dubya running MLB. He'd have probably run it into the ground with the '94 strike, but at least it would have been a guy who actually enjoyed watching a game.
posted by dw at 12:02 PM on February 10, 2010

Seal's Stadium was a wonderful place. The stands were close to the action. The players were accessible for--free!--autographs. Unlike the horrific Candlestick Park, Seals Stadium was in San Francisco's (relatively) sunny southeast corner. Night games gave no one pneumonia. I miss it.
posted by Carol Anne at 12:10 PM on February 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

And to think it was going to be Dubya running MLB.

I once had an idea for an alternate history type story detailing the grand and unqualified successes of both Commissioner Bush and President Selig.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:11 PM on February 10, 2010

The Double Play is still right there on 16th and Bryant, a baseball themed dive that is probably the only active remnant from the ballpark era.
posted by quarterframer at 12:12 PM on February 10, 2010

Thanks for this post! I go past that site on a daily basis, and point it out to visitors as the site of the original stadium. My mom remembers going to a game there when she was a kid.

There's also a bronze plaque directly across from the Double Play that they put in a little over a year ago.
posted by gingerbeer at 12:40 PM on February 10, 2010

I didn't realize you were an SF OG, GB!
posted by serazin at 1:19 PM on February 10, 2010

the guy who presided over the Steroids Era yet denies any knowledge of what was going on

"I'm shocked--shocked!--to find that steroid abuse is going on in here!"

"Your juiced home run statistics, sir."
posted by kirkaracha at 2:02 PM on February 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

There are two similar markers in the Mall of America, which sits on the site of the Twins' former Metropolitan Stadium. A home plate marker and a seat from the old stadium mounted on the wall to commemorate where Harmon Killebrew's 520-foot home run landed in 1967.
posted by hootch at 3:39 PM on February 10, 2010

Ponce de Leon Ballpark, former home of the Atlanta Crackers, is now a Whole Foods and Home Depot shopping center. I think home plate was somewhere near the Dunkin Donuts.
posted by Andy's Gross Wart at 7:54 PM on February 10, 2010