The 1989 World Series between the Oakland A's and San Francisco Giants was deemed the "Battle of the Bay" and ended on October 28^th and that was after a 10 day delay due to a severe earthquake. No November baseball back then! The earthquake occurred on October 17^th just as Game 3 in San Francisco was getting ready to begin and served to make this World Series much more unforgettable than the actual baseball games did. Here is the live footage of the broadcast as the earthquake happened...

I remember watching the game when that happened. ABC play-by-play man Al Michaels, who you hear in that video footage, would end up being nominated for an Emmy Award for news broadcasting after giving an eyewitness account of the aftermath of the earthquake at Candlestick Park. The earthquake also caused a section of the Bay Bridge which connects Oakland and San Francisco to collapse with 42 ending up being the final death toll from the event. Baseball rightfully took a back seat to this tragedy.

The Oakland A's dominated this World Series both before and after the earthquake. They had won the first two games 5-0 and 5-1 respectively. Then the A's would complete the sweep by winning the next two games 13-7 and 9-6. This was the first World Series where the losing team never had the lead in any game and never even had the tying run at the plate in its final turn at bat. It had been the first sweep in the World Series since 1976.

As a big fan of Rickey Henderson (as documented in my Rickey Hall-of-Fame issue), I was cheering for the A's in this series. This team which won the 1989 championship is the one of the best teams of the 80s decade. In addition to the great Rickey Henderson, the team also featured Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Dave Parker, Carney Lansford and Dave Henderson in its line-up. They were managed by Tony LaRussa and had a pitching staff which included future Hall-of Famer Dennis Eckersley and World Series MVP Dave Stewart. They could have gone on to become a dynasty, but would lose the World Series the next year to the Cincinnati Reds. Between the earthquake and the dominating performance by the A's, the 80s decade of baseball would come to a memorable end.

That wraps up this issue of Kickin' it Old School. Thanks so much for reading. If you are interested in reading any of my other 80s related issues, please click there for a summary of those. You can also always click on the Archives in the upper left hand column or use the Google Search Box at the top of the right hand column to find any other issues you may have missed. If you are a fan of Kickin' it, PLEASE CLICK ON THE FACEBOOK LOGO in the upper right hand column. This will take you to the Fan Page where I ask you to then click on "Become a Fan". Even if you are not a Facebook member yet, please consider joining and registering as a fan at that page. You can also now follow Old School on Twitter by clicking on the FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER LOGO also in the upper right hand column. This will take you the page and you can just click on the box that says "Follow". Trying to send daily 80s tweets out via Twitter, so be sure to follow me there. Let other 80s fans know about it as well! Peace and much love.

Check this out: Someone recently sent me a list of random thoughts. Not sure where they originated, but I thought most were pretty good and wanted to share them with you here:

Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

I don't understand the purpose of the line, "I don't need to drink to have fun." Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they've invented the lighter?

Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase "Regards" again.

Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.

There is a great need for sarcasm font.

I think everyone has a movie that they love so much; it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I'll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone's laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I'm still the only one who really, really gets it.

Was learning cursive really necessary?

How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?

I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!

Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection. Even BlueRay is kind of annoying.

There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page file that I swear I did not make any changes to.

Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet my a$$ everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time...

It really pi$$es me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text.

I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

I told you they were random, but hope at least a couple hit home with you.

Quote of the day: "Everyone who got where he is, had to begin where he was." -Robert Louis Stevenson