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Giants officials, including team president Farhan Zaidi, are entertaining the notion of reconfiguring Oracle Park. As in bringing in the fences.
They have one unassailable talking point: removing the bullpens from the field of play. That was an injury waiting to happen. A year ago next week it happened. Giants outfielder Mac Williamson, while chasing a fly ball, tripped over the bullpen mound and suffered a profound concussion. So yes, fix that.
But the thrust behind the extreme makeover movement is generating more offense. And if you’ve been paying attention the past few years, you know that offense is code for home runs.
Oracle always has been and (hopefully) always will be a tough home run park. It’s part of its basic charm. And charm is what the Giants were after when they conceived a boutique, old-timey, waterfront, creature-comfort palace of the fans. They wanted tall, beveled walls, quirky angles, crazy bounces, all the aesthetics you could eat. Surely you remember. Everybody was doing it.
One of the suggestions, The Athletic is reporting, would be to shut down Triples Alley and relocate the bullpens there.
For what purpose? To worship at the shrine of the four-play swat? Sigh.
Raise your hand if you honestly can say you haven’t seen enough home runs in your lifetime as a baseball fan.
You lie.
It’s been hail-storming home runs since Astros manager A.J. Hinch was an A’s rookie catcher. Again, stipulating that Oracle Park does not give up a home run without a fight, consider its history.
In the grand opening game in 2000, Dodgers shortstop Kevin Elster hit three home runs. In one game. Never an All-Star, Elster averaged less than seven home runs per season during his career.
Do you recall who was voted National League MVP that inaugural season at the new place? Giants slugging second baseman Jeff Kent, Triples Alley and all.
Kent was succeeded as MVP by four Giants. You know him as Barry Bonds. He hit 160 home runs in his eight seasons at Oracle, during which time he broke the records for home runs in a season and home runs in a career. Buster Posey was an MVP, winning the batting title to boot. Pablo Sandoval hit three home runs in a World Series game at Oracle. Travis Ishikawa delivered the Giants to the 2014 World Series with a Thomson-esque three-run walk-off home run that he managed to squeak over the villainous offense-suppressing 25-foot high brick wall.
Remember Ichiro’s inside-the-park home run in the 2007 All-Star game?
It might not happen just that way if the “improvements” The Athletic are reporting now had been in effect then. Not to be too hard on The Athletic, but to report something is to give it a certain legitimacy.
You want a legitimate reason to pull in the fences? Toss me the keys to the time machine and we’ll pay a visit to the Giants who have just completed their first year in Candlestick Park. The dimensions of the new yard — 330 feet down the lines, 397 in the power alleys, 420 to dead center.
Yes, you read it correctly.
“Candlestick was bigger (than Seals Stadium),” Willie Mays told author Charles Einstein. “Hell, Candlestick was too big.”
A mere 77 home runs were hit in Candlestick in 1960, exactly one per game. So the Giants consulted with a gentlemen named Robert Kingsley, identified in a story published in the late, great San Rafael Daily Independent Journal as “a St. Louis engineer, who over a 15-year period has made a thorough study of home run statistics in the major leagues, and the conditions affecting the home run production.”
Kingsley gave the Giants three proposals, one of which the team accepted — shortening the power alleys by 32 feet, and shortening the distance to center field by 10 feet.
Even the politicos were in on the action. San Francisco Mayor George Christopher authorized $45,000 for a batting backdrop — the lack of which was giving hitters problems tracking a pitched ball — and $50,000 (at a time when Mays commanded an $80,000 salary) for “an aero-dynamic survey to see what can be done about the wind.”
Money well spent? You be the judge.
