Giants rain, Diamondbacks rain

I got there at 9:00, right on time. The Sunnyvale Baylands Park is actually really nice, neatly maintained, with a lovely view of the mountains east of the Bay Area, and wetlands along which you can walk. It has a terrific field for playing frisbee, too.

We had seven teams - five of which were composed of members of two teams each, but ours was purely ours; we've had great turnout all year. So we had six teams playing at a time, with one team sitting out. We also got our discs which we paid for as part of our membership fee. It was very windy, and with intermittent drizzle, which made for a challenging game.

As often happened, I did better on defense than on offense, and generally without even touching the disc. All season I did a good job of marking my man and after a while the people I covered made enough bad throws that I figured that I'm actually doing something right. And the others must have thought so too, since several of the more experienced members suggested that I play in the "cup" on our zone defense, which basically involves three people covering the other team's handlers trying to get them to make a bad throw to force a turnover. This involves a lot of running, so people must have figured I brought something decent to the position since I certainly was on the low end on the endurance scale! It was pretty neat.

So it was a good four hours or so of running around and throwing frisbees around. But Subrata and I had to leave early because we had tickets to meet a couple of friends of his at Pacific Bell Park to see our first Giants game at the new digs, against the Giants' divisional rivals, the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Pac Bell Park is right in San Francisco itself, as opposed to old Candlestick Park which is somewhat south of the city. PBP is also right near the CalTrain commuter rail which runs down the peninsula, and about a mile from BART, the mass transit system which runs along the East Bay into the city. Since Subrata lives literally a couple of hundred feet from a CalTrain station, we took that option, after showing and changing clothes at his apartment.

CalTrain is pretty slow, and doesn't do very well at keeping to its schedule. The seats are moderately comfortable, but nothing special, and the ride to the city takes about an hour. Subrata and I sat around reading the Baseball Prospectus and talking about teams, players, and our fantasy league. It was a fun time.

Unfortunately, we got up to the city only to find that... it was raining. A steady rain, though not especially heavy. We headed over to the park and saw the statue of Giants great Willie Mays in the front:

We met Subrata's friends Annette and Rich (in fact, it turns out they're both Red Sox fans - there sure are a lot of us out here!) and went in to the stadium. We grabbed some food, and I was disappointed to find that the Buffalo Wings at PBP are considerably smaller - but no less expensive - than the wings at Candlestick were. Well, I won't make that mistake again, though maybe someone else there is selling the old style of wings as well. I wasn't very inclined to go around looking in the rain.

We had true nosebleed seats, in the next-to-last row of the upper deck. Here's a shot of Annette and Subrata sitting to my right, showing just how close to the top we were:

Notice that we're far enough back that we're beneath the underhang! This proved to be very cool, since it meant that if the game got rained out, then at least we wouldn't have been sitting around in misery, trying to keep warm and dry, in seats that had gotten rained on.

Well, start time was 5:05, and by that time the infield was still covered, and it was officially announced that we were under a rain delay. No duh! But I did take the time to get some panoramic shots of the park with the digicam:

Boy, and people complained about the Coke bottles in Fenway Park when they added them a few years back! That monstrous Coke bottle and baseball cap in left field are hideous; I presume the Coke bottle erupts or something when the Giants hit a home run. (Hopefully they're not waiting 'til they win a game, since they have yet to win one in their new stadium. Indeed, the Giants are in a tremendous slump.)

Other than that the park seems pretty nice. The seats are reportedly wider than normal, although I didn't notice anything especially luxurious about them. The view of the Bay sure is nice, and it'll be interesting to see if anyone ever hits a home run into the Bay in an actual game.

Well, Subrata and I bailed around 6 pm, as it seemed like the rain just wasn't going to let up, and indeed as the CalTrain pulled away from the station about 35 minutes later (did I mention they have trouble keeping to schedule?), someone on the train heard over the radio that the game had been called.

Amazingly, this is my first rainout experience ever! Not really noteworthy otherwise; hopefully I'll never experience another one. On the plus side, the game will probably be made up in late September when the Diamondbacks are in town again, so if the Giants manage to wake up and win some, it could potentially be a meaningful game.

Did I mention that the tickets are electronically scanned when you enter the park, so they don't tear off any part of the ticket? Welcome to Silicon Valley. (Though I guess they do the same thing in Seattle's new park, too.)

Subrata and I got back to his place, where it was also raining, and we walked over to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, which was fairly tasty. While there, I got the following provocative fortune:

I'm just going to leave that one alone. This is a family journal. (Yeah, right!)

Anyway, I was pretty wiped out by this time, so I headed home and did a little reading before heading to bed.

Busy weekend! Long journal entries! Hope you enjoyed 'em!