1989: Two Bay Area Sports Championships
Last year, the Miami Heat (NBA) and the Florida Panthers (NHL) were finalists for the championships in their respective sports. It was the first time since 2016 that an NBA team and an NHL team from the same geographical region made it to the Finals in the same year.
That year, the Golden State Warriors were upset by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals and the San Jose Sharks lost in the Stanley Cup Finals. 2016 was the first year in which two Bay Area major professional sports teams lost in the final round of the playoffs. Has there ever been a year in which two Bay Area major professional sports teams won the championship? The answer is yes!
It has only happened in one year. In January of 1989, the San Francisco 49ers defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 20-16 in Super Bowl XXIII.
John Taylor scored the game-winning touchdown with 34 seconds left (see picture above). Ten months later, the Oakland A's swept the San Francisco Giants in the World Series.
Overall though, 1989 was not a great year for the Bay Area. It was also the year of the second-largest Bay Area earthquake in the last two hundred years. (The largest Bay Area earthquake was in 1906.)