That’s Amaury News and Commentary

OAKLAND–The Oakland Athletics will have a 1989 World Series players reunion this 2014 season at the Oakland Coliseum.

Not many on the air today, called the 1989 World Series(The Loma Prieta Earthquake Series). Athletics vs Giants. I was lucky enough to have survived that event. As a matter of fact, as we get ready to go to Spring Training and to begin the 2014 A’S baseball season, only two A’s broadcasters today were there behind the microphone, Ray Fosse and yours truly.

Yes, I remembered too well, when they installed my then broadcast partner Evelio Areas Mendoza(retired living in Nicaragua) and yours truly inside a very small box next to the roof of Candlestick Park, that faithful 17th of October 1989 around 5:05pm when the earth shook. I was the Spanish play by play announcer for the Oakland Athletics and the games aired on KNTA radio 1430AM, San José.

Minutes after the earthquake I became a hard news reporter, as the Latin American media present from other countries, and the United States, interviewed me about the event. Just minutes after the quake, Manolo Alvarez, from WQBA AM in Miami(later he became a color analyst for the Florida Marlins, when they first played in 1993)Alvarez asked me in Spanish, “are there more earthquakes coming?” He was from non-earthquake places, from Florida, born in Cuba, but had never experienced such a tremor under his feet, Alvarez was terrified.

It took me almost four hours to get back to my home in Fremont, (a normal drive on 880 between Fremont and the Oakland Coliseum is 25 minutes)bridges were closed, part of the Bay Bridge collapsed, and that with the fire in the Marina district of San Francisco, plus the Oakland Cypress freeway that also collapsed, made news worldwide. It was really hell. Originally was announced as a 7.1 in the Ritcher Scale, then later downgraded to a 6.9, still it was a very good jolt for a few seconds that for many seems like many minutes.

The A’s won two more games to register the sweep against the San Francisco Giants, in the only World Series, that featured and earthquake in the middle.

Fay Vincent, MLB Commissioner interrupted the ’89 World Series for eleven days, he was a good steward for the game and showed real leadership.

To this date, and during my close to 40 years career in broadcasting Major League Baseball, this was one of my most memorable memories, one that I brought to life during my induction speech in 2010 into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame(BARHOF).

Memories!

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for Oakland A’s baseball and does New and Commentary each week for Sportstalk Radio