The shaken Series Thirty years ago, on Oct. 17, 1989, the A’s and Giants were preparing for Game 3 of the World Series when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck.

The shaken Series Thirty years ago, on Oct. 17, 1989, the A’s and Giants were preparing for Game 3 of the World Series when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck.

Thirty years ago, after a glorious summer of baseball by the bay, a once-in-a-lifetime event seduced even casual fans: A’s vs. Giants in the World Series, an unprecedented slice of Bay Area sports history.

Then, suddenly, another once-in-a-lifetime event struck.

The Loma Prieta earthquake, of course, instantly turned the 1989 Series into a historical footnote. One minute, baseball players were mythical, larger-than-life characters preparing for Game 3 — Will Clark and Kevin Mitchell on one side, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire on the other — and the next minute they were rattled and confused citizens, just like everyone else.

Because the quake hit at 5:04 p.m. on Oct. 17, exactly 31 minutes before the scheduled first pitch at Candlestick Park, baseball became the lens through which many people watched the first moments of a natural disaster. And now, on the brink of Thursday’s 30th anniversary of Loma Prieta, that World Series remains the lens through which they remember Northern California’s most destructive earthquake since 1906.

So listen closely and you can hear then-ABC broadcaster Al Michaels blurting out, “I’ll tell you what, we’re having an earth...” … and picture players from both teams milling on the field, near a San Francisco police car … and see Mary Steinbach, wife of A’s catcher Terry Steinbach, openly sobbing … and recall baseball commissioner Fay Vincent, in a candlelit news conference the next morning at the Westin St. Francis hotel, announcing the World Series would be suspended indefinitely.

It ultimately resumed 10 days later, on Oct. 27, with an emotional pregame ceremony. The A’s rolled to two more victories to complete their sweep, avoiding a looming conflict with the Rolling Stones at the Oakland Coliseum.

That tidbit is among the many to emerge in recent interviews with several former A’s and Giants players, club officials and others involved in the most surreal World Series ever.

A’s pitcher Dave Stewart: I was in the clubhouse when the quake hit. We were told to get on the field. We could see dust coming out of the air vents, so we knew we needed to get out. It was crazy.

Clark: I just got through running a sprint in center field and was starting to walk back to right field. It sounded like one of those F-15s overhead — just a big, humongous roar. I looked up and the stadium was swaying back and forth. It was very violent.

A’s closer Dennis Eckersley: I was in the bathroom at Candlestick, combing my hair and standing next to (Dave) Parker. It was the loudest screech, like a f— train was coming through the door. I knew in a split second what it was. The lights went out and the auxiliary lights came on. I was out that f— door and went in the (players) parking lot. We were looking up at the people in the second deck, and they were yelling, “We will rock you!”

Giants pitcher Mike Krukow: It felt like a 600-pound gopher going under my feet at 40 miles per hour.

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Clark: I’m from the South. You deal with hurricanes all the time, and there’s a projected path. If it’s coming your way, you get the hell out. When the ground starts shaking, you have nowhere to go. It’s a helpless feeling.

McGwire: I was doing a hamstring stretch down the left-field line, and it felt like I was riding a surfboard. I’m like, “Oh, OK, that’s an earthquake.” Then you look up and the light standards were (swaying). … It was shocking and disheartening, all the lives lost and the destruction in the Bay Area.

Jorge Costa, Giants vice president of operations and security: I remember looking up at a guy untangling the wind sock on a light tower. I could see people on the mezzanine kind of swaying a little bit. I remember thinking, “Please, no one fall.”

Giants second baseman Robby Thompson: I stopped running sprints and saw everyone from the dugout was running out on the field. … The seats at Candlestick were spring-loaded, so I heard the click-click-click-click of people getting out of their seats. Fifteen seconds seemed a lot longer than 15 seconds.

Michaels: The broadcast booth was in the mezzanine, below the upper deck. At first, it almost seemed as if there were a bunch of kids in the upper deck banging bats on the floor just above us. That was my reaction for a second or two. Then we began to move and I knew what it was.

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A’s general manager Sandy Alderson: What a lot of people don’t know, from a baseball standpoint, is that Bob Welch was supposed to start that game and he was hurt. He’d pulled a hamstring shagging balls a couple of days before. So we were going to see how he warmed up, but we had Curt Young ready to go if necessary.

Costa: We don’t have power, the public-address system or the scoreboard, and we don’t know if the lights are going to come back. So we’re trying to get information, and then we start hearing about the fire in the Marina, the damage to the Bay Bridge, the collapse of the Cypress (freeway) structure. It starts to turn very different. We were still in research mode; we didn’t want to make a rash decision.

A’s third baseman Carney Lansford: Sandy came to me and quietly said, “I want you to get the families out of the stands and get everyone’s clothes out of the clubhouse. We’re heading back to the Coliseum, things are worse than people realize.” … We couldn’t go back over the San Mateo Bridge, because they didn’t know if there was damage. So we took 101 all the way around the bay, down to San Jose and back up. We were actually going the wrong way on off ramps to get back to Oakland.

Mary Steinbach: Our daughter Jill had gone to every game, so it was a big deal not to have her there. We didn’t want to be distracted by a 2-year-old, so we got a babysitter and they were across the bay in Alameda. Other than being Minnesota people totally taken aback by an earthquake, it took forever to get hold of her. … I didn’t know what was happening.

Terry Steinbach: The pictures of Mary being so upset, it wasn’t like a brick hit her or anything like that. But we can’t get hold of our daughter. If we have this much damage here, what’s there?

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Clark: My brother-in-law, Jason, was there, and he was this 6-foot-5, 270-pound guy from Mississippi with a high-pitched voice. I’ll never forget, he says, “I got to get back to Mississippi. That red clay doesn’t move.”

Krukow: We had family in town and got a suite at the Marriott by SFO. We walked into the room that night and it looked like it had been ransacked — the TV had bounced around the floor, all the windows were broken, glass was shattered.

Pat Gallagher, Giants vice president of business operations: (Commissioner) Fay Vincent was sitting down the right-field line, and by that time the police had confirmed it was a major earthquake. We sort of briefed Fay on what was going on, and he looked at us pretty much white as a sheet and said, “Do whatever you have to do.”

Costa: We had to turn around traffic to get people out; we went from going inbound to going outbound. It was getting dark and we had to get people out safely.

Thompson: It was the first time as a professional I ever went home in my uniform. There were no lights in the clubhouse, so we had to go in the dark, using a little flashlight on (pitcher) Mike LaCoss’ key chain. I grabbed my jeans, my keys and my wallet, and left my uniform on.

A’s equipment manager Steve Vucinich: There were still a couple postgame parties going on, and one gal in the ticket office told me a guy was bragging about stealing this half-A’s, half-Giants jacket from the visiting clubhouse. It was in my locker. Some big real estate guy from Los Gatos. I finally had a friend of mine from the FBI call him, and I got the jacket back.

Stewart: I drove by myself, straight to my place in Emeryville. It took almost six hours, the equivalent of driving to L.A. I would usually take the Cypress structure. So when we were being detoured, I had to drive right past the center of it, and I took in everything that was being done and all the people who were there. Then I went home and showered and came back out to see if I could give assistance. To see the firemen and law enforcement officers working diligently trying to free people, it was more than anybody could even imagine. …

I was able to rally some of the local stores, eventually, to supply food for the workers. I probably stayed until 4 or 4:30 in the morning. Quite frankly, the baseball side of it was over at the ballpark. Then it became more of a human thing.

Clark: We went to shelters in San Francisco and served food in the days following the quake. I probably did that three or four times. … Then we started having a few practices on field, and the whole time workers were up there working on Candlestick. So many things went on, there was so much loss of life, I tried not to think about it. I tried to forget about it.

Dave Stewart and his well-known schowl, would win Game 1 and Game 3 for the A's in the 1989 World Series, photo shot October 27, 1989 Photo ran 10/28/1989, P. D1 Dave Stewart and his well-known schowl, would win Game 1 and Game 3 for the A's in the 1989 World Series, photo shot October 27, 1989 Photo ran 10/28/1989, P. D1 Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice / The Chronicle 1989 Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice / The Chronicle 1989 Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Oral history: Loma Prieta earthquake hits A’s-Giants 1989 World Series 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

Krukow: The next 10 days, when we went into the shelters, it really changed our lives. It was the first time I saw a city like San Francisco come together like that. It was inspiring to see how everyone got through it.

Gallagher: The morning after the quake, we had a meeting at the St. Francis: the ownership of both teams, the commissioner and his staff, Donald Fehr (of the players association), the head of the television network. Then the mayor, Art Agnos, kind of burst into the room with the police captain. He said, “I’m not going to be able to have anyone go out and look out at the stadium for a while, I’ve got bridges and hospitals to deal with.” The room sort of went silent. Fay said, “It looks like we’re not going to play.”

Lansford: (A’s manager) Tony (La Russa) asked players’ opinions about playing a couple days later, during a meeting in the clubhouse at the Coliseum. Some guys didn’t feel good about playing. Then (Dave) Parker stood up and said, “Hey, we’re two wins away from the greatest title in the world.”

Eckersley: We were playing intrasquad games, and I faced Dave (Henderson), (McGwire) and then Jose (Canseco). He comes walking up, pointing like Babe Ruth. I think this story came out — the first pitch I drilled him in the back. I didn’t mean to drill him. I think I just got fired up and threw it as hard as I could. It kind of makes me look like a bad dude.

Rickey Henderson (from his autobiography “Off Base”): It wasn’t easy to get back in the spirit of baseball. In fact, I had missed the first workout after the quake because bad phone lines made it impossible to get through to the A’s offices. I never knew about the workout.

Alderson: We raised the possibility of going to Phoenix (to work out); initially, the commissioner was against it. And at some point, we just said, “Hey, we’re going.” It wasn’t out of any insensitivity to what was happening around us. The Haas family (owners of the A’s) certainly had a great reputation, and guys like Dave Stewart were very involved in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. My own feeling was that eventually we would get past the earthquake, and 40 years later people would remember whether we won or lost. I don’t think the commissioner was too happy with us, but we wanted to make sure our fans had some positive memory of that period of time.

Gallagher: (Giants owner) Bob Lurie and (general manager) Al Rosen had meetings with the commissioner at Al’s apartment in the Financial District. I wasn’t there, but I was told Fay talked about possibly moving the games to L.A., and Bob basically said, “Over my dead body.” He may have had a few other choice words in there.

Lurie (via email): Mayor Agnos was there, the commissioner, (Giants executive) Corey Busch, Al and myself. Vincent proposed moving the series; I recall he suggested San Diego. I reminded him what we went through to keep the Giants in San Francisco. To say I was upset over the idea is a major understatement.

A’s chairman Wally Haas: I remember George Vukasin, who was head of the Coliseum commission, wanted to reach me because we had a serious problem. When the mayor of San Francisco and baseball agreed to resume the Series when they did, no one talked to anybody in Oakland — and Bill Graham and the Rolling Stones were supposed to be at the Coliseum for what would have been Games 6 and 7.

I knew Bill from my past life in the music business. And he said, “Guarantee me you’re going to win in four games, then we don’t have a problem.” And so we went through a whole negotiation. In fact, the Rolling Stones actually donated $1 million to earthquake relief, thanks to Bill Graham, really.

Clark: That was the hard part, getting refocused back on baseball after everything that happened away from the ballpark. It really does bring to the forefront: You’re only a ballplayer for a short time. You’re a human being for a longer time.

Mary Steinbach: When the Series resumed, the gals (players’ wives) got on the bus to go back to Candlestick and I was there. They stood up and clapped for me. I wouldn’t miss it and I didn’t miss it.

Costa: It was a little nerve-wracking bringing people back into the ballpark. You just don’t know if you’re going to have another earthquake.

Mary Steinbach: When our kids were in earth science class in middle school, they would study earthquakes. They didn’t realize the video was going to show their mother. I told each of them, “I’m so sorry.”

Eckersley: The World Series was such a downer, and rightly so. We came back from the long delay and pounded them. … We swung it, man. Everybody went deep. We just beat ’em up. It was kind of a cakewalk.

Krukow: The A’s were as good as I’ve ever seen. They were just the whole package. I cannot give any illusion we were fragmented and their win was tainted. It wasn’t. We were into it.

Lurie: Because the game was scheduled to start at (5:35), I’ve always believed people were home and there were much fewer casualties. But whenever I think of the Series, my first thought is we lost 4 games to 0. I am recovering!

Costa: The earthquake had an impact on how venues looked at emergency preparedness — now you have exercises and run through scenarios. None of that used to happen before, and now it’s a staple. It changed how you prepare for big events, and it came out of that night.

Chronicle staff writers Steve Kroner and John Shea contributed to this report.

Ron Kroichick is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rkroichick@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ronkroichick