The Most Awful Baseball Game

So, I show up at CJ's around 5:15 pm, for a 7:30 start time. This usually gets us to the park about an hour beforehand, so we can catch some batting practice and eat some overpriced stadium food before the game starts. Since I have my spiffy new car, I drive. So we head off to highway 101. We get about six miles up the freeway, well into the heavy traffic heading to the city, when...

(CJ may want to cover her eyes here.)

CJ says, "I forgot the tickets." So we turn around and head back to get them, Ceej cursing all the way back.

(Okay, CJ can open her eyes now.)

As the traffic on 101 has doubtless gotten worse, we decide to instead head to the farther-away-but-usually-less-congested I-280. But, it turns out that it, too, is fairly congested until we get north of Redwood City. It appears that the problem was just too many cars coming from unmetered on-ramps and clogging things up until we got past them. Yuck.

(Do out-of-towners know about metered on-ramps? Some cities have them, others don't. Basically, they're stop lights at the on-ramps which allow one car to go onto the freeway every five seconds or so, to help alleviate exactly this sort of congestion on the freeway. Usually they're only turned on during rush hour, or after special events which clog a local area.)

The traffic was not too bad, and we did finally get to the stadium. However, we failed to reckon with the huge attendance the Giants would be commanding on this, their final homestand at 3Comdlestick Park. (Tonight's attendance turned out to be around 48,000 people.) We sat in traffic, slowly approaching the park, and then learned that the main lot was full. So where else do we park? We'd never parked anywhere but the main lot. Well, it turns out there are many other lots on the north side of the stadium which we'd never seen, and they're more than capable of holding all the cars. The trick was getting there, as traffic was very, very slow in getting to the lots.

We were still sitting in the car when the game began and the Diamondbacks came up to face Giants starter Shawn Estes. Estes is a Jeckyll-and-Hyde type of pitcher, who is capable of doing very well, but every few games falls apart completely. We've had the good fortune of seeing more Jeckyll than Hyde when we've seen him. Tonight, though, he allowed a leadoff hit, and then everything went to hell. The Giants committed two errors to score four runs in the first inning, pretty much surrendering the game to the D-backs right there. Aaigh!

We finally found parking, and got into the stadium. As we were walking in the front gate, we heard loud cheering and it turned out that Ellis Burks had just hit a three-run homer to cut the D-backs' lead to 4-3. It would be the Giants' only scoring of the game, and we missed it!

It was a fairly somber game, punctuated by sarcastic comments from the crowd directed at the hapless Giants performance. Although the Diamondbacks committed three errors of their own, the Giants contributed another two and were unable to capitalize on their opponents' miscues. D-backs pitcher Randy Johnson pitched a complete game 5-hitter with 11 strikeouts, and the Diamondbacks won 11-3, clinching their first division title in only the second year of their existence, at their rivals' home park.

Ugh. This was the most poorly-played baseball game I've ever seen.

The one bright spot of the evening was that the Giants put on a lovely fireworks display after the game for their final Friday night game at the Stick. It was quite long and quite good, including some amusing fireworks in the shape of circles with smiley faces inside. It almost made the rest of the trip worthwhile.

But geez, otherwise it seems this just wasn't fated to be our night for baseball.