Since opening in 2000, AT&T Park (formerly Pacific Bell Park and very briefly SBC Park) has seen an unfair share of exciting times. Highlights include four World Series, an MLB All-Star Game, 13 college bowl games, three operas, one disastrous season of the XFL, and Kanye’s proposal to Kim.

All that, garlic fries, and a killer view of the San Francisco Bay from the upper deck? We are #blessed with the best stadium in America, people.

But, about that grand view—that wasn’t really the plan.

According to this archival news report from the mid-’90s, Giants management originally wanted their new ballpark to face the San Francisco skyline, not the bay. This was back when SoMa was mostly squat warehouses, and the tall buildings ended around Market Street.

But science tells us that facing the city would have been a disaster. Fortunately, heroic UC-Davis engineers, using the high-tech modeling methods of the day (literally building models), demonstrated that a west-oriented stadium would have been bombarded with swirling gusts of wind. And you think night games are freezing now.

As baseball fans remember, the Giants’ old home at Candlestick had the roughest conditions in the game. Why? Because it was situated at the very windiest spot on the peninsula, directly behind Bayview Park Hill, which split the powerful westerly gales that tunnel south of Mt. Davidson. These winds then re-converged directly into left field. Brrrrrr.

If the UCD team hadn’t done their wind simulation work, AT&T Park would have been a tornado of hot dog wrappers. And all those Barry Bonds “splash hits” might have been smash hits, for all the windshields they’d have taken out on King Street. Thanks, Science.