Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 13, 1993 TAG: 9304130095
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From Associated Press reports
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
1ST WOMAN PA ANNOUNCER OPENS MIKE
With the words, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Candlestick Park," the first full-time woman public-address announcer in major league baseball made her debut Monday.Sherry Davis was behind the microphone for the first time for the San Francisco Giants' home opener against the Florida Marlins.
"I'm really excited, to put it mildly," she said before the game.
Davis, a legal secretary who beat out more than 500 competitors for the job in March, had a busy first day on the job, swarmed by television cameras and photographers as she read from her script.
Her voice clear and confident, Davis presided over elaborate Opening Day festivities staged to celebrate the city's successful effort at keeping the team in town. A group of Florida investors tried to buy the team last fall and move it to Tampa Bay, but baseball owners vetoed the deal.
"Welcome to an opening day like no other," Davis told the sellout crowd. "Today the words `San Francisco Giants' have a special meaning for all of us."
The Giants put on a show to mark Opening Day for a sellout crowd. The Grateful Dead sang the national anthem. Tony Bennett crooned his signature "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." It seemed the game against the expansion Florida Marlins was merely a footnote to the day's festivities.
In other baseball news:
\ FERNANDO: Fernando Valenzuela said he is returning to the major leagues after a one-year absence with new pop in his pitches, butterflies in his belly and no bitterness in his heart.
"I am just real happy to be back in a big league uniform. I think the 200-some innings I threw in Mexico last year really helped because if I didn't do that, the owners wouldn't have known that I can still pitch," said Valenzuela, who starts for Baltimore tonight against Texas.
Valenzuela made his first appearance for the Orioles on Friday night when he came out of the bullpen. He posted a 1-2-3 seventh in a 6-0 loss to Seattle.
\ IN HOT WATER: Army water tanks provided drinking water and concessionaires boiled bratwurst in bottled water at the Milwaukee Brewers' home opener because of the city's water contamination crisis.
Soft drinks for the 50,000 baseball fans came from the can and water fountains were turned off.
Thousands of people have gotten sick the past two weeks from drinking water contaminated with the parasite cryptosporidium.