The Giants’ sellout streak at AT&T Park is over, and the riffs are flying.
“Sellout streak? The only thing sold out was Larry Baer’s imaginary world!”
“Sellout streak? Yeah, if you count empty green seats as fans, then yes!”
“Sellout streak? Maybe they should count the seagulls at night games, and the streak would still live!”
As we used to say on the elementary school playground: Har de har har.
Sure, no one likes a half-baked riff more than yours truly. Hell, we wouldn’t have a show without them.
But I’ve come to KNBR.com not to bury the Giants’ sellout streak, but to praise it.
Truly, it’s one of the most remarkable Bay Area sports statistics of my nearly 50 years on this rock.
The Giants, sports fans, were never a glamour team until AT&T Park. The Giants were never a draw until AT&T Park. The Giants appealed only to the diehards until AT&T Park.
How this team that routinely dwelled in the bottom of MLB attendance figures — dead last in 1974, 1975 and 1976 — has become the home of the longest sellout streak west of Fenway Park sort of defies reason.
Here’s another of the most remarkable Bay Area sports statistics of my nearly 50 years on this rock: For all the A’s fans who carp that the Giants are some sort of pretty-boy franchise, and that the A’s are the ‘green collar’ team that are the scrappy underdogs … the A’s outdrew the Giants in 16 of their first 25 years together in the Bay Area market.
True story. The A’s outdrew the Giants in 1968, 1970, every year from 1972-77, every year from 1982-85, and then every year from 1988-92, when the A’s were a top-five attendance team in baseball four times.
How about this one? In 1989, the year both teams went to the World Series? The A’s outdrew the Giants, 2.6 million to 2.0 million.
The A’s were the pretty boys. The Giants were the ugly ducklings.
So, to think that the Giants sold out AT&T Park 530 consecutive games — whether you count StubHub as “sold tickets” or not — is a sports feat on mind-blowing par with something like Joe Lacob’s Warriors becoming the gold standard in the NBA after 20 years of winter.
And it just goes to show you what architecture and location can do for a sports experience.
Yes, winning helps a ton. Of course it does. But as I noted, even when the Giants were winning in the late 1980s, the A’s outdrew them.
That Peter Magowan and Larry Baer and the band of investors were able to build AT&T Park on the gorgeous waterfront, in a city where it is impossible to cross the street without some sort of regulation, has to rate as a modern miracle. That the park has turned out to be a destination in 21st century San Francisco — go see the Golden Gate Bridge! Chinatown! AT&T Park! — is a development that I still have trouble believing.
That the San Francisco Giants — who used to hand out ‘Croix de Candlestick’ pins if you made it through an extra-inning night game at Candlestick — have the second-longest sellout streak in MLB history is something the team and ownership should be praised for, truly.
The streak has come to an end, because that’s what streaks do. What hasn’t come to an end is the reign of AT&T Park as arguably the best ballpark in the big leagues. Which is kinda amazing.