CANDLESTICK'S ELECTRICITY GONE.

Byline: Kevin Modesti

SAN FRANCISCO - The naughtiest, if not the only, Dodgers-Giants moment of the Pacific Bell Park opener Tuesday happened 20 minutes before the first pitch. Too bad it, like much of the afternoon, came straight out of a script.

``Ladies and gentlemen,'' San Francisco Giants play-by-play man Jon Miller, emceeing the pregame ceremonies in a tuxedo, said momentously, ``let's have the very first Pac Bell Park welcome for . . . the Los Angeles Dodgers!''

The crowd picked up the cue and delivered a half-minute of hearty boos, then hooted again as Davey Johnson and his lineup trotted one by one to the first-base line. But the boos died down quickly.

Minutes later, some upstairs fans tried to start a ``Beat L.A.'' chant. But it didn't take.

``Come to think of it, I didn't hear `Beat L.A.' as much as I did at Candlestick,'' Giants first baseman J.T. Snow, an Orange County kid, said after the Dodgers' 6-5 victory, in which he hit one of the six home runs and, unbelievably, Kevin Elster hit three.

Come to think of it, the usual Dodgers-Giants flavor, the flavor of hip-flask whiskey and cigarettes, was largely missing from the game that made official the Giants' move from wintry Candlestick Park to clever Pac Bell Park.

Behind the backstop sat a man in a Dodger-blue ``Nomo'' T-shirt, and not far from him were a young couple in Dodgers jackets and caps. They paid nary a price for their heresy, fielded not a single insult, let alone an AA battery.

``If you wore Dodger gear at Candlestick, you'd get your a-- kicked,'' Dodgers first baseman Eric Karros observed.

Here and there in the sold-out stadium you'd spot a ``Clark'' jersey (Will, not Jack, presumably) or a flannel ``Marichal'' jersey, and black-and-orange Giants caps were plentiful. Yet you found fewer fans in the colors of the home team among the 40,930 at Pac Bell Tuesday than among the 9,000-odd customers at the Cleveland-Oakland game the night before, where half the crowd seemed to wear the gaudy green and gold of the diehard A's rooter.

What happened to the old Candlestick crowds?

Maybe they went the way of the cheap baseball ticket. The average seat at Pac Bell costs 23 percent more than its counterpart at Candlestick. Who did you think was going to pay the $319 million it cost to build this?

Maybe they went the way of the sparse Giants crowd. The club has sold 29,000 season tickets for 2000 and sold out 74 of its 81 home games.

Maybe they went the way of the black-and-orange parka.

It could be that Pac Bell is too comfortable, quaint and lovable to bring out the werewolf in Giants fans.

``I think you get more of a feeling of the city people, who live in the city or work in the city, coming to the game,'' Snow said.

People who couldn't get basketball tickets, perhaps. Or theater tickets.

``They were still throwing those (Dodgers) home run balls back. That was good to see,'' Snow said, finding some passion in the ``new'' crowd.

The good news, for those of us who liked the old Giants crowds, is that it could be different the next two games, which will be played under the lights.

Pac Bell is constructed with its back to the wind, shielding the field and stands from the worst San Francisco weather. But the wind will still swirl.

As I write this, at about first-pitch time for a night game, trash is clattering through the left-field bleachers, the corners of tarpaulins covering the bullpen mounds are lifting off the ground, and sprinklers watering the outfield are blowing into the stands.

A moment before Kirk Rueter spun the game's first pitch past Devon White - following a drawn-out and overproduced opening ceremony - a sudden gust blew my scoresheet onto the press-box floor. A Candlestick poltergeist gone downtown?

There will never be another Candlestick, yet Pac Bell has enough quirks to make any game interesting.

The blueprint is best known for its 309-foot right-field line, which gives left-handed power hitters a chance to lose balls in the marina. But stranger than that is the 25-foot-high right-field wall, which includes cut-out sections through which standing-room fans can watch the action from a unique ground-floor perspective. The upshot is that batted balls will ricochet off brick, metal, padding or chain link, depending on the whims of the baseball gods.

Barry Bonds' first swing in the new park sent a Chan Ho Park pitch into the corner Tuesday. Dodgers right fielder Shawn Green played it tentatively and watched the ball nestle against the chain link. Bonds ended up with a double, as he would have anyway, but the play confirmed that tentative is the way to play a guessing game like that.

``It's an adventure out there,'' Green said. ``You never know how it's going to bounce out here. It adds a little extra character to the park.''

Another bit of character: The right-center-field wall angles toward the water until it's 421 feet from home plate.

In the third inning, a drive by Doug Mirabelli one-hopped the 421 sign.

Before Dodgers center fielder Devon White could get the ball back to the infield, the Giants catcher chugged all the way to his first major-league triple.

Character? The place has plenty. Unfortunately, not much of it was in the stands. But what can you expect on the day someone wears a tux to a ballgame?