Oakland Rocks With Joy as A’s Sweep S.F.

OAKLAND —  Just 11 days after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake rocked the Bay Area, Oakland shook again--this time in jubilation.

Thousands of Oakland fans celebrated last night as the Oakland Athletics stormed to a 9-6 victory in Candlestick Park over the San Francisco Giants--the crowning victory in a four-game sweep in the longest, strangest World Series ever.

After days of grim body counts from the collapsed Nimitz Freeway and the unrelenting images of misery and homelessness from the Oct. 17 earthquake, the victory of the hometown team gave fans an excuse to explode in a burst of joy.

For Oakland, a funky, working-class town that has always labored in the shadow of its glamorous neighbor across the bay, snatching the World Series was a milepost of sorts, marking the city’s move toward recovery from the disaster and better times to come.

The sound of honking car horns and people cheering “Go A’s” filled the downtown area as the final score was read.

At the Hyatt Regency in the heart of this East Bay community, May Jordan of Oakland, said: “You know, I’m a little tired of all the earthquake stuff. Let’s hear it for the A’s and our city.”

Added Gene Fleming, also of Oakland: “This is long overdue, we should have won it last year.

“But either team winning would be great. It makes all of the Bay Area feel good.”

Gilbert Wong, 31, of Oakland stood on Broadway, in Chinatown, watching as A’s fans made their way toward Jack London Square.

“I’m happy for the A’s, Oakland and our Chinatown, but most importantly, we need to get our lives together again,” Wong said. “We have had a lot of devastation right here in Chinatown. Winning the World Series is a good start for us.”

An official celebration is scheduled for Monday at Jack London Square, police said.

On the other side of the bay, Giants fans suffered for four hours as they watched their team go down in four straight games.

The groans of depression could be heard from the very start of the game at Pat O’Shea’s Mad Hatter, a sports bar in San Francisco’s Richmond District.

After Oakland left fielder Rickey Henderson slammed a home run leading off the game, a shout of “Oh no! I don’t believe it,” rang out through the bar.

At the Irving Club, also in the Richmond District, fans were depressed early on and settled in for a long night of waiting for “the inevitable” to happen, said one patron. “It’s not the ‘battle by the bay,’ it’s a ‘slaughter by the bay,’ ” said Giants fan Susan Gwynn, 43, a word processor from San Francisco.

There was hope, albeit brief.

At Pat O’Shea’s bar, Kim Spangler, 30, was one of the loudest boosters during the Giants’ thundering seventh-inning rally: “This team right now is showing the spirit of San Francisco. They’ve come to life and are rising to the occasion.”

She screamed madly as yet another Giant run came in.

But when it was all over, Spangler added wryly: “Hey, how about those 49ers, they’re really looking good.”

For some fans, the series end brought a sense of relief.

“It’s over,” said Keith Gordon of San Jose. “Let’s get back to earthquake relief.”

But for fans in both cities, no matter how their teams did, the final game of the 1989 World Series was something that many felt proud about.

After so much misery, the series seemed to rise out of the destruction and become a symbol of the spirit and grit of these two cities.

“Just playing the World Series is a victory for the entire Bay Area,” said Ann Miller of Alameda as she sat in a bar in Oakland’s Jack London Square.

Daniel Blick, 49, who watched the game at the Irving Club in San Francisco, said he took the Giants’ defeat as a metaphor for these trying times.

“We’ve been down before and we can come back,” Blick said. “Baseball is like life. If you can still play, there is hope.”

The cheers that greeted the A’s victory stood in sharp contrast to the sound of sirens and screaming that echoed in the moments after the earthquake struck at 5:04 p.m. Oct. 17.

The Bay Area quake hit Oakland hard.

At first, the Alameda County Sheriff-Coroner’s office believed as many as 250 lay dead in the collapsed sections of the Nimitz Freeway.

The actual figure eventually dropped to 39, although authorities believe a few more bodies will be discovered as the structure is demolished.

But as the number of dead and missing declined, the other grim statistics of the disaster moved steadily upwards.

In Oakland alone, the injured numbered 320 people, 1,400 homes were damaged, 2,500 were homeless.

City Hall was immediately condemned and may never open again.

One of the hardest hit areas was West Oakland, where building inspectors condemned several low-income hotels, throwing hundreds of poor and elderly residents into Red Cross shelters. The total cost of the damage from the quake in Oakland now stands at nearly $1.2 billion.

But the series helped, at least for a while, to give Oakland residents something to cheer about.

“We’re recovering. It was something that would have happened anyway,” said Oakland resident Fleming. “You have to pick up and move on. But winning the series makes everyone feel good.”

Even in San Francisco, some fans found a silver lining to the defeat of their team.

“Everything is getting back to normal in San Francisco,” said Cliff Zall a 25-year-old law student watching the game at Green’s sports bar in the Polk Street area. “In the context of the World Series, normal means the A’s are just superior.”

Contributing to this article were Times staff writers George Ramos, who reported from Oakland, and Louis Sahagun, who reported from San Francisco.