1989: the Year the Oakland A's Won it All

My favorite sports memory. Now that is a difficult one to narrow down as I have had many awesome memories as a sports fan.

My dad took me to Super Bowl XIX at Stanford Stadium to see the San Francisco 49ers knock off the Miami Dolphins. It could be the first time I walked into the Oakland Raiders facility as a credentialed member of the press. The corollaries of that were standing on the playing field at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum as the team was doing their open workout to watch practice and take pictures or walking into the Coliseum bearing my credential to get into my first game.

I have to step away from my football specialty for my favorite sports memory and go to the national pass time. It was 1989, and as a 16 year old sports fan, it was great to be an Oakland Athletics fan. After years of watching them as the dregs of Major League Baseball for much of my youth, they were in their second year of tearing their way through baseball. Of course, looking back it is a but tarnished by the fact that The Bash Brothers were the poster boys for the coming steroid era, but through the eyes of my 16 year old self, it was a great year.

To make it even better, my dad scored tickets to game four at Candlestick Park. I was on cloud nine. Then came the quick crash down to earth as the 1989 Loma Preita quake struck in the run up to game three. Once the worst of the damage was stabilized, and the stadiums involved cleared seismically, the World Series resumed.

It was electric being at Candlestick Park to watch the Oakland A's that I grew up watching clinch the World Series over the home team San Francisco Giants. Long since lost to the sands of time was the image I caught of Rickey Henderson diving head first into third base, but the excitement etched in my heart will never dim.

It would turn out to be the only championship that the A's would win in my memory. It would also be the end of another era, as it was the last sporting event that my father and I attended together. It was a special moment shared between father and son during a time when things were becoming increasingly strained.

So much of my life is tied to different sports memories. Whether it's Dad taking me to Raiders, 49ers, and A's games as a kid, or in my professional life as a sportswriter. But my favorite was that brisk evening in that run down park in San Francisco where the A's won it all.