San Francisco Giants tickets

There is good news and bad news for the long-suffering Giants fans in San Francisco. The good news is that their team no longer plays in abysmal Candlestick Park. The bad news is that although Pac Bell is a wonderful new facility, it is subject to the same fierce winds that plagued Candlestick.

The Giants built Pac Bell with private funds. The new stadium is located in the China Basin section of downtown San Francisco, adjacent to the bay. The ballpark is situated so that fans sitting at club-level seats or view level have a marvelous view of the water. The right-field wall runs perpendicular to the bay, and beyond the wall is a 35-foot-wide promenade where fans can stand to watch the game and await long balls. The distance to the wall from home plate, a mere 307 feet, presents an inviting target for left-handed hitters.

This section, called the Old Navy Splash Landing, is the most notable feature inside the ball-park. Beyond the promenade is only the deep blue bay, called Willie McCovey Cove, where guys in little motorboats drift, ready to fish out baseballs that clear the stadium. 
The trade-off for this water view, the most beautiful in all of baseball, is exposure to the strong wind. Unlike Safeco Field in Seattle, which has Plexiglas installed behind the seats in the upper deck, fans here shiver, just as they did at the Stick. Were it not for the bone-chilling wind, Pac Bell might be the only major-league ball-park where fans might prefer sitting up top; the water isn't visible from field-level seats.

Several features here pay homage to ballparks gone by: bullpens located foul territory instead of beyond outfield walls; grass cut with no pattern in it; the brick wall behind home plate. And there are a couple of entertainment features, such a Coke-bottle slide for kids above the bleachers in left field. Whatever the conditions, fans here cheer long and loud for the home team, without prompting from the scoreboard. But for the price of Plexiglas . . .

ELLIS BURKS "I guess one of the best things about it is the great view. You got forty thousand screaming fans every night, which is always a plus. It's a beautiful all-around ballpark. You got to like coming here playing, the excitement of it. You can't beat it."

JOE NATHAN "The one thing I've noticed is just as far as the ball carries.
I'd say, you keep a ball down, if you keep it on the ground, it's very calm. But if you hit a ball in the air here-you can see the flags blowing up top-if you hit it good, it's going a pretty good way. It can become a good home-field advantage for us, with outfielders learn-balls, how they're going to bounce off the brick, if they're going to stick inside the fence."

J. T. SNOW "I think that this park, after playing for three years in Candlestick, is pretty unbelievable. As far as playing in front of ten or fifteen thousand a game, then you come here and you play in front of forty thousand. They did it right as far as making it not too big, not too small . . . There was a lot of talk about this being a hitter's ballpark. I don't think the ball's been flying out of here like people thought, especially to right field. I think it's pretty fair. So for guys who played in Candlestick, it's almost like going from the outhouse to the penthouse."