SAN FRANCISCO — For a drab, bone-chilling, wind-swept punching bag of a stadium, Candlestick Park enjoyed one hell of a good run.

The Stick hosted two World Series, two Major League Baseball All-Star Games and eight NFC Championship Games. Joe Montana and Jerry Rice spun their magic on the soggy field alongside the bay, as did Willie Mays and Willie McCovey. The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Pope John Paul II stopped by.

And not even one massive earthquake could bring the old lady down.

The San Francisco 49ers will play their final regular-season game at Candlestick tonight against the Atlanta Falcons. That will bring to a close — barring an unexpected playoff game next month — nearly 54 years of swirling hot-dog wrappers, frigid summer nights and indelible sports memories.

Former 49ers wide receiver Dwight Clark, who carved out the most enduring image when he soared skyward to make The Catch in January 1982, acknowledged his mixed feelings about the Stick.

“It was a dump, but it was our dump,” Clark said. “We had a lot of history there, and a lot of success.”

Candlestick was home for the baseball Giants from 1960 through 1999 and for the 49ers from 1971 through this season. (The Oakland Raiders also played there for part of the 1960 season and all of 1961.) And it was a true Bay Area original, known as much for its rampant quirkiness as the stage for feats of athletic grandeur.

Among those feats: Juan Marichal and Warren Spahn had their epic 16-inning pitching duel in 1963, Joe Morgan launched his Dodgers-spoiling home run in 1982, and Will Clark lined his pennant-winning single in 1989. Dwight Clark sparked a series of dramatic postseason catches, with Terrell Owens (1999) and Vernon Davis (2012) offering worthy encores.

As for quirkiness, Giants pitcher Stu Miller provided the first clue during the 1961 All-Star Game, barely more than a year after the ballpark opened. Miller was not blown off the mound, as legend has it, but a fierce gust of wind knocked him off balance, caused him to balk and cemented his place in Candlestick lore.

There was more weirdness to come, from the Giants using helicopters to dry the field during the 1962 World Series, to much-maligned shortstop Johnnie LeMaster wearing a jersey with “Boo” stripped across the back instead of his name (1979), to two power failures interrupting a Monday night football game between the 49ers and the Pittsburgh Steelers in December 2011.

Call them Candlestick-esque moments.

Still, the stadium’s legacy will revolve around its infamously unpleasant climate. Lon Simmons, the Hall of Fame broadcaster for the Giants and 49ers, recalled how the Stick’s television and radio booths were exposed to the elements in the inaugural season of 1960.

Simmons and his partner, Russ Hodges, began wearing parkas they had needed for the Winter Olympics that year in Squaw Valley. Hodges and Simmons soon persuaded the Giants to enclose their booth, but the visiting broadcasters were not as fortunate (at least for a while).

“They were so grateful we gave them parkas in the summertime,” Simmons said.

Longtime Dodgers first baseman Steve Garvey, like many visiting baseball players, dreaded the long walk from Candlestick’s third-base dugout to the visiting clubhouse along the right-field line. Garvey sometimes dodged more than insults.

“I remember walking back to the tunnel after a one-run loss, and something whizzed by me,” Garvey once said. “It was a gin bottle. I picked it up and saw it was half full. Right then, you knew you were at Candlestick.

“In New York, they would have kept it full for more impact. At Candlestick, they had to drink half of it to keep warm.”

Even the early days of Candlestick Park included strange twists. Some people wanted the new stadium built downtown, south of Market Street. The contractor, Charles Harney, feuded with city officials — they traded lawsuits at one point — during construction in the late 1950s.

One day, then-Giants vice president Chub Feeney visited the site for the first time in the afternoon. He asked a construction worker if it was always so windy, and the man replied, according to a Chronicle story, “Oh, no, sir. The wind only blows between 1 and 5 in the afternoon.”

Perfect for a ballgame.

Candlestick was the first stadium to be built entirely of reinforced concrete. The initial excitement reached the point where Vice President Richard Nixon, in San Francisco to throw out the first pitch at Opening Day on April 12, 1960, declared it would be “one of the most beautiful baseball parks of all time.”

At least it was one of the most interesting parks. Soon after Candlestick opened, the city commissioned a study of the wind problem and The Chronicle ran columns debating the wisdom of putting a dome atop the stadium. It was expanded in 1971, to accommodate the 49ers, but that only made the wind more unpredictable.

Andy Lee understands all too well. Lee, the 49ers’ punter the past 10 seasons, meticulously studies weather patterns in advance of games. He routinely gauges Candlestick’s ever-shifting wind on the sideline before a punt — and often sees it abruptly change direction.

“One time, a guy got injured on the play before I punted,” Lee said. “He wasn’t on the field very long, but the wind had totally switched by the time we lined up. So in a matter of a minute or two, it went from being at my back really hard to being in my face really hard.”

Many National League outfielders shared Lee’s frustration. Simmons, now 90, recalled McCovey hitting a high pop fly to shallow right field against the old Milwaukee Braves. Hank Aaron started running toward the infield, only to see the ball suddenly carry over his head and over the fence for an unlikely home run.

Another time, Simmons said, heavy fog rolled into Candlestick during a Giants-Dodgers game. McCovey hit a fly ball to center field, but the ball disappeared into the fog. By the time Duke Snider eventually found it, McCovey had lumbered into third base with a triple.

If the wind and cold aggravated the Giants, it truly tormented opposing players.

“It was harder to play the game there than at any other ballpark,” said Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper, who played for the team for four seasons (1982-85). “But we always thought we had an advantage, because the star player for the other team was always going to take one day off during a series at the Stick.”

Several former 49ers players marveled at the perpetually damp state of the field. Drainage improvements mostly alleviated that problem in recent years, but onetime running back Roger Craig described numerous games in which footing was ridiculously difficult.

Clark embraced the conditions, suggesting they slowed down all the players who were faster than him.

One of Clark’s teammates, offensive lineman Randy Cross, often did some impromptu scouting on his way to the Stick. Even if the 49ers’ website says the field is more than 13 feet above sea level (a fact confirmed by Recreation and Park Department officials), Cross always thought the playing surface actually was below the level of the bay.

“If you drove up and the tide was above the rocks,” he said, “you knew it was going to be a swamp, even if it was 75 degrees and sunny.”

Not all of Candlestick’s quirkiness is this visible. Brent Jones, a tight end for the 49ers from 1987 to 1997, once made an unexpected discovery as he walked down the long, narrow tunnel from the locker room to the field three or four hours before a game.

Jones came upon a small, dark room with assorted pieces of junk. He found an ancient-looking hot-chocolate maker, took it back to the locker room and plugged it in — and it worked.

The next week, Jones started a tradition of mixing hot chocolate and coffee to load up on caffeine before games. Sometimes, he poured hot chocolate over his hands to make them sticky. Jones convinced his teammates that the machine brought good luck because “Mays and McCovey used this back in the day.”

That’s the essence of Candlestick, in many ways — a bit offbeat and bursting with San Francisco sports history.