The Yucky Giants Game

I get there a little after 10:00, which is when I usually show up so we can catch CalTrain to the park. David comes to the door in his bathrobe, opens it, and says, "Is there something happening today which we should know about?"

Uh-oh, I think. "Baseball game?" I inquire timidly.

"Honey?" he yells, "Are you going to a baseball game today?" CJ looks around the corner: "I thought that was tomorrow!" I come in, and CJ rifles through the tickets and says, "Shit! It's today!" and tromps off to hurriedly get dressed.

David and I take the time to figure out that one of them has written on their "cheat sheet" schedule that the game was "Sunday, August 5", which obviously doesn't fall on this year. CJ had read "Sunday", but I just read "August 5". Yoiks!

No harm done, though: CJ gulped some coffee, and we hit the road, making our train with time to spare.

We got to the stadium, and CJ wanted to go into the Giants merchandise store to look for a new T-shirt. She wanted white, and mumbled something about wanting a JT Snow shirt or something like that. But most of the shirts were either black, or not JT snow, or were for the stadium, not for the Giants. (We agreed that we'd want to support the team, not the stadium, nice as it may be. I also noted that I might break down and get a Giants cap sometime, but I'm so wedded to the Red Sox it's hard for me to make the leap to buy something for another Major League team.)

She eventually bought a shirt with a simple, old-style Giants logo (something like "San Francisco Giants Baseball Club"; I said the term "baseball club" sounds very 1910s, in a nice way of course), and a scorebook I noticed and pointed out to her, which seems much cooler than the scorecards they sell outside the park (and the book was only six bucks!). We looked at the Giants memorabilia available, and then went to enter the park.

One catch: The entry scanners claimed that we'd already gone in.

Pacific Bell Park, y'see, has a computerized bar-code-scan-based ticketing system. They no longer rip tickets when you enter. This has led to some abuses: For instance, you can go in, come out and get your hand stamped, sell the ticket to some hapless fool, go back in (because your hand's stamped), and the guy you sold the ticket to is screwed. Apparently this is a real problem.

We encountered a different problem: David had bought these tickets from a cow-orker of his. And the nice lady at ticket services told us that they had been reported stolen. So either he'd sold us stolen tickets, or he'd sold them to us, reported them stolen, gotten a new pair, and sold them to someone else. Either way, he's scum. Also, he apparently had left David's company in the intervening time and had done so under somewhat confusing circumstances. Sheesh!

We were "lucky" enough to get standing room only seats, but it was still a big pain. I remained fairly blase about it, but CJ was completely livid. She thought about going to the seats we'd had and confronting whoever was there, but since we didn't know this former cow-orker, for all we knew we'd be confronting some other hapless pair who'd bought tickets from him, and wreck their game, too.

CJ had never done the SRO thing before. I've done it once before, at Fenway Park, when Matt and I went to a game which had just about sold out. You usually go in and find some seats, and move if their owners come by. The catch, though, is that Pac Bell is sold out every game this year, and on a lovely Saturday afternoon you'd better believe most everyone is there! We could have gone up to the upper deck, but CJ wanted to stay more near field level, I think. (I like the upper deck; CJ does not seem to care for it.)

The game itself was pretty lousy: Mark Gardner was ineffective, the Giants only managed a couple of runs against surprisingly capable pitcher Dan Serafini (who has been a cast-off fifth starter for many clubs in the last several years), and the Pirates beat the Giants 7-2. It was the first loss CJ and I have seen this year.

On the other hand, we did get some food, CJ scored the game, the sun was nice, and we got to wander all along the outfield stands. And SRO seats are only $8.00, so it was a pretty decent experience. Had the Giants won, it probably would have been an overall acceptable one. Oh, well.

At least we didn't have any transit problems: We took the train home and drove back to CJ's place where we sat reading for a little while, and watching the A's game, which ended in a very bizarre manner involving a questionable balk call, losing to the White Sox 4-3.

Incidentally, I've finished two books recently. First, I slogged my way through Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, which I thought was weak, even weaker than The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I still think Starship Troopers is the Heinlein book to read, and even it isn't worth going out of your way for.

And I've also finished (or nearly finished) Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein's Baseball Dynasties, which is an analysis of the greatest teams in baseball history. Filled with good analysis and profiles of the teams, players and seasons of different eras, it's a fine companion to Bill James' great book Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?. It's a little weak at the end, as I think the analysis of which team is the all-time best is rather cursory, and not convincing considering some of the evidence presented for, say, the 1975 Reds. But it's still worthwhile for any serious fan.

In the evening I went to Cafe Borrone, planning to finish my reading, but instead I ran into John as soon as I arrived, and we chatted instead. Bill showed up a little later, and I passed off some books I ordered for him from Amazon UK; he'll pay me for them later, as I don't yet know the US dollar amount that I payed (it was about 68 UK pounds; I'll find out when I get my Visa bill). I ordered for myself the three most recent Harry Potter books in British editions (which I think are nicer than US editions), including the bestselling Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Either before or after Bill arrived, to my surprise Adrienne showed up! She was on the way back from her party and decided to join us at Borrone. She was exhausted, as was I. Bill and I got into a heated discussion about the housing market around here (which you may have heard sucks; rents went up on average about 20-25% last quarter), and the three of us geeked out for a little while. I felt kind of guilty, since Adrienne didn't seem to be participating in the discussion very much. So it wasn't quite the ideal Borrone evening. Besides which, Lucy was unable to show up!

So it was kind of a bittersweet day all around. Well, it happens sometimes.