81 Dates

It’s taking me a while to finish this post. The end of the season, no matter how it turns out, is a complicated time. It is for me, anyway. I have set myself this task, given myself this job that at this point in the year is almost a burden, as silly as that is to say. The last game is always a little bittersweet, especially since the Giants haven’t had a winning season while I’ve been attending on these season tickets (I don’t want to talk about 2021). It is simultaneously just another game and a special one, and this year carries some extra weight. The Brandon Crawford era is almost certainly over, the Gabe Kapler era is definitely over, and there are others ending as well. The team next year will have to be very different, and we don’t have much f an idea how – all we know is that Things Have to Change.

Gerry would get rid of most of the current players. We agree that there aren’t a lot of bright spots, excepting a few of the rookies who may pan out in the long run – Casey Schmitt, Patrick Bailey, maybe Blake Sabol, maybe Kyle Harrison. Lamonte Wade can stay, Thairo Estrada can stay, Mike Yastrzemski can stay. We love Wilmer Flores – who could not? – but you can’t have a MLB-level baseball team where Wilmer Flores is the standout. Some of the pitchers can stay – Cobb, Webb, Doval, the twins – most of the bullpen, honestly – but we need more than two reliable starters. We need at least one superstar, maybe two slightly lesser lights, to carry the rest of the team, and it is going to be a hard road to making that happen in the off-season.

There is not a cloud in the sky, not even a wisp. The game starts at noon, although we got in at only a little after 11 am. It is officially Fan Appreciation Day, although honestly I feel very appreciated every time I come in here. I had originally hoped that I would get a Norm-on-Cheers type reception from my fellow season ticket holders, but none of them, except for Christine of long-ago memory ever showed up, if there were any in my section in the first place. I get it from the guest services people, the ushers, the people who work the kiosks where I get food or merch, the ones who all know my season ticket number and how I like my brisket sandwich, the ones who know I won’t buy the hats with the straight brims, the people at the gate who never have to ask how many tickets I’m using today. Kenny, Margie, Han, Charlie, Victor, Jason, Frank.

Gerry is the traditionalist I want to be; he went to the games I read about, saw the players whose statues I walk past every day when I come in, and his opinion of how thigs should be is untempered by the way things are now. When Kyle Harrison hits two batters in a row in the first inning to virtually no notice from either side, he wants the benches to clear, makes it clear that he regards the lack of response as a lack of character. He is a more vehement critic of national anthem performances than I am, and isn’t afraid to start sentences with “In my day…” I don’t really have those days; I feel like I do – I want to – but all my nostalgia was passed on to me by David Halberstam, Roger Kahn, Roger Angell, Jim Bouton, by reading books about Ted Williams and Satchel Paige and Bill Veeck and the Greatest Game Ever Pitched and the Summer of ’49. I long, I suppose, for a simpler time, a time when a pitcher could knock a guy down for something another guy did and everybody thought that was okay.

There are a lot of near misses today. A guy three seats to our right in Row 2 catches a foul ball – it’s the closest a ball has ever come to me while I’ve been in these seats. The woman sitting three seats to my left in the same row wins a $500 Visa gift card in the Fan Appreciation lottery. Some of the people I wanted to say goodbye to didn’t make it to the park. Brandon Crawford starts but leaves without making a final mark, unless you count fouling a ball off his foot in the third inning; we had all hoped he would hit one more home run to bookend his career – he began it with a grand slam in Milwaukee thirteen years ago – but he goes hitless. We still stand for him at the beginning of the game, at every plate appearance, and when he comes out after the game to make a farewell statement.

It’s not a barn-burner of a game, as much as it feels like it should be. The only thing really at stake is whether the Dodgers are going to win their hundredth game; for a while it looks like we might deny them that much, but five scoreless (if at times precarious) innings from Kyle Harrison don’t quite hold up – Brebbia and Taylor Rogers give up five runs between them in the sixth inning, after which Ross Stripling – of all people – closes it down. Two home runs from Casey Schmitt are all the Giants can manage. The first of those come literally seconds after Gerry says Schmitt can’t handle major league pitching and I reply that he needs consistent at-bats, that he’ll be okay when he’s not getting shuttled up and down between leagues, and after the second Gerry says “Well, I guess maybe I was wrong about Schmitt,” and I feel as baseball-smart as I have ever felt in my life. Taking Gerry to a game is probably – no, definitely – as close as I will ever get to going to a game with my dad in a period when I can claim to know things about the game.

The anemic ninth inning ends without a bang, as do the game, the homestand, the season, and maybe my time as a season ticket holder. I have given out my tips and my gifts and said my farewells, eaten my last hot dog of the year, carefully chosen my last hat. We get Gerry to the curb outside the ballpark and I see him into his car and off home, and then I sneak back into the park for just a couple more minutes. I’m prepared to claim that I think I left my phone at my seats, but nobody challenges me, and I walk right in and back up the stairs.

The park is the way I like it before and after games – emptying out, quiet, with just a little bit of wind and the late-afternoon sunshine that makes for the best games. The scoreboard says simply “Thank You, Fans.” It will say that until the last one has left tonight; in previous years, when I’ve been in the city hours after the park closes on the last day, I have passed by hours after and seen that message shining like a beacon in the dark. Most of the people in the stands are gone, although there is a line of people stretching out through one of the arcade archways; fans have been invited to run the bases after the game – not just kids 14 and under this time, but every one. I could, but I have been on the field a few times before in much less restricted circumstances. Just going from first to home in a crowd isn’t going to awaken much for me, so I head out the Marina Gate to say goodbye to Ken and his wife Elena (she came to the game today).

When the hopper ferry leaves to go to the Ferry building, I take it and watch the park dwindle in its wake; it will strike me later that this is an interesting and fitting way to leave the park, perhaps for the last time as a season ticket holder – like a general on the last boat out of a besieged city. The Giants haven’t had a winning season while I’ve been in the park. I know people who will go stand in the kitchen when the 49ers are in the red zone because one time in 1984 the Niners scored while they were getting a bowl of chili; I am not really a believer in that kind of micro-managing magical thinking, but it’s hard to not correlate the Giants’ stretch of epic badness and then just mediocrity with my presence, especially since they had their best season ever in 2021, when I was in Sacramento and didn’t make it to any games at all. It’s hard not to feel like they were somehow sprung from a cage of bad luck, realizing all the potential being wasted because the bootheel of my unluckiness was holding them down. I can manage to back away and see how silly that is, but still … it might be time to take a year off an see how they do.

We’ll see what happens with Shohei Ohtani and whoever manages next year.

• 1 October: Farewells and Almosts
• 30 September: For the Love of God, Max Muncy
• 29 September: Flower Mary Child Lavender Blossom
• 27 September: Junk Time
• 26 September: Mathematically

Charlie and I used to be on a bar trivia team named, at different times, the Wurst and Kick ’em in the TACO; we were never league champions, but we reliably found ourselves at the top spot in our home pub. We went to the championship three times, I think, but we never placed higher than third. It didn’t occur to me at the time to mention it to my second Dodger-fan guest in a row, but the Dodgers, over the last decade, have found themselves in a very similar situation; Charlie is of the opinion that the Dodgers aren’t going to last long in the playoffs this year. We differ only in that he thinks that will be the case; I just hope it will.

Charlie says a lot of people tell him he looks like a baseball player himself, which is probably because he looks like a baseball player; he’s got a very pitchery face – think handsome in a Madison Bumgarner way, except not with the eyes of an implacable venomous snake that has sworn vengeance on your house – and a mid-length, well-kept beard. He also has a pristine Dodger cap that is just a little fancier than just the white on blue (the LA logo is edged with gold) that really rounds out the look. You wouldn’t be surprised at all if you saw his picture up on the scoreboard.

It’s been a while since he’s been at Oracle Park – in fact, he may never have been at Oracle Park, because the last time he was at this address, it was AT&T Park. He has not, however, been missing out on baseball – he is in fact employed by the Oakland Athletics, just across the bay. He works in the department that creates graphics for the A/V system at the Coliseum, and you can tell by his eyes, and also because he just says it out loud, that his soul cries out for a scoreboard like ours, which has five times more square footage than any house you have ever lived in, displays statistics updated in real time, and can tell you the name of every person the batter has dated since high school, with codes for why the relationships ended. Seriously, the screen is bigger than the diamond. The ones at the Coliseum are basically leftover TVs that Colecovision users no longer want.

It’s a busy night in section 152. An Australian named Scott has come on a pilgrimage to the Bay Area; he’s standing in the SRO section behind me, but we end up talking for quite a while. He’s on his way to Levi’s stadium tomorrow to see the 49ers play the Cardinals and decided to take in a Giants game as long as he was here, even though he’s an Oakland Athletics fan. The Niners game is the centerpiece of the whole trip – he’s been in the States for three and a half weeks working up to it and will be heading home on Monday morning. He’s accompanied by his son’s best friend Sam and Sam’s – as Scott puts it – “partner, friend, girlfriend, person, whatever” Lianna, who have come down from Vancouver for the weekend to join him. Scott has been a Niners fan in Australia since the late seventies, which can’t have been an easy thing; apparently he used to watch NFL matches on videotape to keep abreast of the state of play. He is ready to talk about it for the rest of the game, and the only reason we don’t hear about it is that I give them wristbands to go down to the 415 and watch the Dodgers bullpen wram up.

Also in SRO attendance tonight are a pair of women who … well, let me sum up their presence by relating the conversation that Charlie and I had after they left, which went like this:

Justin: You know, one good thing I can say about Dodger fans is that, across the board, the women are better put together than any other fanbase that comes here regularly.

Charlie: You…you mean physically, right?

Because Marissa – the one whose name I got – is at that stage of inebriation where she’s not really in control of her volume, and she is operating at the top pitch a person can achieve. At one point, Scott from Australia leans over my right shoulder from behind and says quietly “Don’t mind me. You don’t have to talk to me, I’m just trying to get a little distance.” Marissa is, however, fun and in a great mood. Her friend, whose name I don’t hear, is wing-womaning for Marissa, who is flirting like she’s just gotten out of prison – not outright hitting on anyone or being inappropriate, but making it clear that she is on the prowl. Marissa looks like the kind of Bettie-Page-inspired art you might see on the nose of a B-24 Liberator, and she’s wearing one of those Pear rings that are a sign to the competent observer that you’re open for business. I appreciate her dressing up for the game, but from what I know of LA, I think Dodger women go to the store this way. She too is only in town for a minute – she came to yesterday’s game and decided that wasn’t quite enough. All in all, the arcade is a lively joint.

Oh, the game? It’s an exciting one, in spite of the lack of significance. Charlie wants the Dodgers to win – it would make a hundred for the year – and both teams play like it matters. Tyler Fitzgerald cranks a home run off Clayton Kershaw (which has to be a moment when a rookie might contemplate retiring), Mookie Betts drives in a run in the fifth to tie it up, and Wilmer Flores hits a for-sure inning-ending double play ball that, unfortunately for the Dodgers, hits Max Muncy right in the hands. Every frame of the video of Muncy booting the ball twice is a different kind of comedy, from the moment it bounces off his glove to the moment when he finally corrals it and has to stand there looking at Flores improbably on first and Austin Slater at home plate with what turns out to be the winning run. The Dodgers mount a couple of credible threats, but we hold on with a couple of innings from Tyler Rogers and Camilo Doval.

It’s good to see Charlie again, after four years. We never made it down to the 415, but we also never didn’t have something to talk about, so I don’t think we missed out.

What Did You Think of the Evening, Charlie?

“I had a GREAT time. Would have loved a Kershaw win, but I love catching a game in that ballpark. I loved our Aussie friends, and the drunk Dodgers girl definitely added a little flavor. Thanks so much for the night.“

• 1 October: Farewells and Almosts
• 30 September: For the Love of God, Max Muncy
• 29 September: Flower Mary Child Lavender Blossom
• 27 September: Junk Time
• 26 September: Mathematically

Murias – pronounced Muir-ish – is a sprightly, gleeful Dodger fan. I don’t think she’s the first Dodger fan I’ve taken to a game, but she might be the most memorable, and she’s definitely the first Druid. As with so many other baseball people, her history with the game comes from family; she says when she was six, her grandmother gave her a Dodger hat and wrote her a four-page letter about the history of the Dodgers, back to the old Brooklyn days, and that when Tommy Lasorda moved up in the Dodger family from coach to manager in 1977, the deal was sealed. “It’s all about family, see?” she says. My uncle wrote me a four-page letter when I turned 21; it was mostly about how to get girls, and was almost all terrible advice. It ended with a plea for me to buy him a Jaguar when I got rich (joke’s on you!) and didn’t mention the Giants even once.

One could wish the Giants had given Murias less reason for glee, but that is the way things are right now. There are two angles to the SF/LA rivalry: wanting to watch your team win, and wanting to watch the other team lose. Head-to-head matchups allow you the possibility of indulging both of those things at the same time, but only if your team is on the upswing. The wheels have really come off for the Giants, and Murias is able to revel – while being scrupulously polite about it – in just exactly how much she is enjoying watching our sparking, battered chassis skid along the last few feet of road.

Three people asked me on Wednesday if I thought the Giants were about to fire Gabe Kapler; I didn’t know if they were or not, but I did express the opinion that whoever they hired next wasn’t going to do any better. The Giants’ problem hasn’t been the manager; it has been that they aren’t a very good baseball team. The ghost of John McGraw could inhabit the zombified corpse of Connie Mack and use Casey Stengel as a lifeline and not be able to manage these Giants to a World Series. Blaming Kapler for the Giants’ record is like blaming the president for the price of gas. Anyway, the Giants have gone from being in a tailspin to being in freefall, and Murias can’t quite conceal the touch of schadenfreude.

Up in the club level – thanks to Javier for stopping by at the last minute with a pair of passes – I’m waiting while Murias is in the bathroom, and there’s a kid standing with his family while they discuss something, and he’s practicing his throwing motion; he’s chucking an invisible ball past me down the hall, and after a couple of tosses I catch it and throw it back to him, and we play catch for a couple of throws until his folks decide what they’re doing. Murias and I stop by the exhibits behind the broadcast booths; turns out she’s a fan of Peanuts, so she takes special delight in the statues of Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Upstairs, we take in the views from the left and right wings of the top deck, and then we head down to get some chimichangas out behind the scoreboard. Murias has been craving one since she tooled around the park before I arrived, but she is doomed to disappointment – they are out of chimichangas. It’s hot dogs for her. While we’re out and about, though, the Dodgers score three more runs, so at least there’s that.

In the bottom of the sixth, Kai Correa, the Giants interim manager, initiates a challenge based on the positioning of Dodger shortstop Miguel Rojas’ feet; it is the ticky-tackiest challenge possible, a pine-tar level thing that takes advantage of the new rules about defensive alignments, and the Giants win it; Murias complains about the Giants rules-lawyering (as though the Dodgers have never abused the regulations – looking at you, sticky-fingers!), and I get to take this small opportunity to smirk at her. It doesn’t ultimately make any difference in the game, but small comfort is still comfort.

Murias qua Dodger fan is mostly tolerable, but it is particularly satisfying to me that every time we get into a bit of one-upsmanship about which team is better, I’m able to answer her gloating (her entirely understandable gloating) about the current situation with facts about the overall history of the rivalry – more total head-to-head wins for the Giants, more World Series titles, more players in the Hall of Fame; it’s nice to be able to hold my own. Murias announces herself as a stat geek a little later, and I beg off, replying (as you know) that I only care about statistics when they’re funny. One of the last things we spar about is Clayton Kershaw’s record against the Giants; she has mentioned several times her opinion that Kershaw is a lock to win tomorrow’s game. He probably will (NB – he did not) – the odds are in his favor, although not overwhelmingly – but I don’t think I have ever wanted Kershaw – not just the Dodgers, but Kershaw – to lose more than I want him to lose tomorrow.

We’ll see.

“What Did You Think of the Evening, Murias?

“Had a great time… oh and ya.. there was a ball game.. of course the dodgers won!“

• 1 October: Farewells and Almosts
• 30 September: For the Love of God, Max Muncy
• 29 September: Flower Mary Child Lavender Blossom
• 27 September: Junk Time
• 26 September: Mathematically

Angela is a documentary filmmaker who is working on a film about a nomadic Israeli family, and is also the co-host of a podcast called Bitch Talk. We met a few weeks ago when she, Jeff and Erin stopped by my seats to say hi. I haven’t listened to Bitch Talk (Booze and Interviews Straight from the Heart of San Francisco) yet, but only because I haven’t had the time. Judging from how animated Angela is, though, and how much she has to say, I can only imagine that it is worth listening to. Angela is a little bit of a whirlwind, and we touch on and leave behind so many subjects that I don’t really even have time to take notes.

Sometimes I come back from an evening of company at a game with a couple of pithy anecdotes or a good line that someone zinged out, and sometimes there’s no one easily explainable thing that can define the conversation. Sometimes I have to just find something else to write about, because “…and then we talk about pets for awhile” just doesn’t carry any dramatic weight. “Then we talk about our dead moms for a while” does, though. Angela and I had, it turns out, just about identical experiences during COVID, moving back to where our moms lived to take care of them in their last days. This is not 81hospices.blog. though so I will just say that it is our joint recommendation, me and Angela, that if your mom is on her way out, go take care of her if you can – if you can get there, if you have the time, if you can stand her. We don’t really pay attention to the first couple of innings because we are busy saying things like “Me too!” and “Oh god yes.” Also, we don’t really pay attention to a lot of the rest of the game either, because It Just Doesn’t Matter.

We are in junk time.

Just before the game starts, we are pleasantly surprised by Javier, my season ticket representative, who stops by with the too-small Bruce Lee shirts from a few weeks ago and another of last night’s UC Davis caps for me, and who, after finding out that I gave my Mandalorian Funko Pop away to a little kid on Star Wars Day, brings me a replacement, along with a Gryffindor stein for Angela. I swear, if I told Javier I needed to watch the game from horseback in a hot-air balloon directly above the scoreboard, he would find a way.

The game today is a tight one until the end, when a 2-2 tie breaks open with three San Diego runs in the top of the tenth, for which the Giants have no answer. There’s still a .500 record to play for, though, and the potential to finish third in the west instead of fourth. Small potatoes, but still potatoes. To get to .500, they will have to win all three against the Dodgers this weekend, which seems…unlikely, even though the Giants are still playing hard, not just folding up and playing out the string. Thairo Estrada, who is Jeff‘s favorite player, hit a home run in the second inning. It is important to note that Thairo is Jeff’s favorite player because Jeff is here tonight; he is the reason I know Angela and may one day feature me on his podcast. I didn’t expect him, but he is very welcome. You may remember that his pregame ritual is a beer in the Public House, so he heads off to do that while I go pick up today’s special event item, the Portuguese Heritage watch cap.

Erin, Jeff’s wife, was going to come tonight as well, but had some back trouble, so Jeff joins us in the 415 and sticks around for most of the game, which seems to be unusual – Jeff is a man who likes to keep moving, or at least it seems that way at baseball games. We end up in the 415 in the seventh with Angela’s friends Kym and Ruby, a mom and daughter who have left a twin sister at home tonight. Watching Ruby have a good time is a delight – she’s one of those kids who never stops.

I have concluded this year that although the 415 is a nice place to visit, and I enjoy it for a few minutes every time I go, it is ultimately a place for people who want to party and hassle the visiting pitchers rather than a place to enjoy the game. We end up in my seats again for the last out. Looking over this post, it seems kind of haphazard and scattered, but that’s mostly the Angela whirlwind. It’s nice to have a night like this at the end of the season – I could see the atmosphere being kind of moribund, but Angela and Jeff definitely salvaged it.

On BART on the way home, I got involved in a discussion with a Dodger fan about the new rules, and about some old ones. He asked what I thought of instant replay, and I said I didn’t mind it; he was opposed, vehemently, and his argument against it was the same as mine against robot umps and the computerized strike zone – that baseball, where every home field is slightly different, with different ground rules, is inherently imprecise in a way that no other American professional sport is, and that the frustration of the occasional bad call or umpire having an off night is part of the game and should be embraced rather than legislated away. That, in short, “to explain a magical thing is to rob it of its magic,” and furthermore, if every call is perfect and every strike zone is consistent every night, what will we talk about later? I got on the wrong train deliberately so I could keep the discussion going as long as possible, and I think he ended up convincing me.

What Did You Think of the Evening, Angela?

“What started as enjoying a simple baseball game became a very cathartic (and surprising) therapy session. I guess when it comes to sports, you really never know what to expect, both on the field and in the stands. 10 out of 10, would do it again 👍🏽“

• 1 October: Farewells and Almosts
• 30 September: For the Love of God, Max Muncy
• 29 September: Flower Mary Child Lavender Blossom
• 27 September: Junk Time
• 26 September: Mathematically

One of my favorite aspects of having season tickets is that I’m entitled to buy all the special event items – Irish Night, Jewish Night, Star Wars Day, whatever – ahead of time and just go collect them at the game. The Giants offer a package in which you can pay something like two hundred dollars and get a random selection of all the items, including gate giveaways, after the season ends, but you don’t get to pick which ones and you probably get stuck with the Santa Clara University blanket or the Firefighters Night soft-sided cooler (to be clear, I have nothing against Sant Clara or firefighters – it’s the blanket and soft-sided cooler part I would feel cheated by). Anyway, I prefer being able to choose which swag I get, which is why I go over the schedule early in the year and see which events have hats, T-shirts, or good creative bobbleheads. This year I plumped for tonight’s UC Davis hat, among other things; I don’t usually get the college items, which are often all of the same type, but this one was a nice design. I realized, though, that I was going to have – purely by coincidence – a UC Davis grad with me, and it was immediately obvious that she should have the hat.

Natalie is the daughter of my sister’s lifelong best friend, with whom she is in constant text communication over the course of this, the last meaningful Giants game of the year (where “meaningful” is purely a notional mathematic quality). She and her mom stopped by my demesne to say hi a few weeks ago when I was looking to fill the last couple of spots in the season, and I leaped at the chance to take someone who I have known for twenty four years but don’t know very well at all. Natalie has just moved to San Francisco to work at a law firm, having just graduated from law school. She took the bar exam and says she is statistically more likely to have passed it than not, although she is still on tenterhooks about the results (not so much because she’s afraid she didn’t pass it as because she really doesn’t want to take it again).

It has been a really long time since I was a young person who had recently moved to the Bay Area, and I have a lot of questions. Things have changed a lot, to the extent that a lot of the resources that she has available to her for arriving in a new city just straight-up didn’t exist for me. I am a little jealous, although the truth is that she got here with a job, a plan, a neighborhood full of friends, and a dog named Archie, and I got here with two boxes of comic books, a drawer full of cassette tapes, and a bag of swords. Looking back over these posts, I notice that a lot of my guests are much more responsible people than I am. Really, all I have going for me is charm.

Natalie got here three weeks ago, with another three to go before she starts work, so she has some free time to settle in and explore the city. I pester her with questions all night long (what have you done in SF so far? Walked the dog in Golden Gate Park; did you ever have a non-law-related job? Yes, pear-packer; did you have to break up with anybody to move here? No; what kind of law do you want to get involved in? Government law, ideally with the Attorney General’s office; what kind of entertainment grabs your interest? True crime) to the extent that I forget to keep any notes. I did remember this time to get a selfie, and to ask her to send me a text about the evening, which is better than I managed last night.

We are both very much resigned to the mathematical elimination scenario that plays out tonight; Juan Soto’s homer in the first inning seals the deal, although we don’t know it at the time. Luciano apparently forgets how many outs there are in the third and blows a potential inning-ending double play , and then the Padres score two more in the seventh, but only the homer matters because the Giants can’t push any runs across, and the final score is 4-0 San Diego. The season has effectively ended with a whimper. Several times tonight, in the park and on the radio, I hear the phrase “time to think about next year,” but mostly what I’m thinking now is that at least we were eliminated by San Diego – it would have been especially galling had it been this coming weekend against LA. We stayed, as is right and proper, until the very end, although Natalie’s mom was out after the second Soto homer in he seventh (as we learned from a disgusted text). All that is left for us now is to root for every other team in the playoff picture until the Dodgers inevitably fall short.

What Did You Think of the Evening, Natalie?

“It was a lovely evening at the ballpark for my first Giants game as an actual Bay Area resident! Chatting with you and seeing all the friends you’ve made at the park for the past seasons was such a wonderful treat. If the Giants can’t be good, great company and good weather are still nice reasons to be at the park. Here’s to hoping for a better season next year (maybe without the new rules and with Ohtani)!“

• 1 October: Farewells and Almosts
• 30 September: For the Love of God, Max Muncy
• 29 September: Flower Mary Child Lavender Blossom
• 27 September: Junk Time
• 26 September: Mathematically

Tonight is the first time I’ve gotten to sit with a Hall-of-Famer. It’s Jess, who plays for a team here in SF called Meow Mix and was just recently inducted into the San Francisco Gay Softball League’s Hall. It’s the oldest softball league (I am told) in the world, which is pretty cool. I haven’t seen Jess since before the pandemic, but she seems about the same. She makes sure to tell me that it’s only a local Hall of Fame, not the national one, and that it was mostly for general contributions to the league, but it’s still a Hall of Fame. Does she have a shot at the national HoF? “No,” she says with a laugh, “You have to have athletic ability for that one.”

It is a beautiful night for baseball – for anything, really; even by the time the evening is over, it’s probably still sixty degrees out. There’s a moment when a breeze kicks up, but only a moment. You couldn’t ask for a better evening – it’s Polynesian Heritage Night, and the dancers from the Manuia Polynesian Revue do not look cold at all; even when I go up to get the Polynesian add-on, a very nice t-shirt, it’s not cold on the third deck.

It’s the second T-shirt of the night – the 415 was giving away a Flavor Flav-themed shirt – it’s (bizarrely) one of the most elegantly simple giveaways this year, at least in terms of the design – just an orange clock face on a chain, with the hands at 4.15. No SF logo, just the 415 on the sleeve. I’m more likely to wear the Polynesian short, especially since the Flavor Flav one will remind me of having to listen to Flavor Flav “sing” Take Me Out to the Ballgame, which was…well, pretty much what you’d expect, except that you’d figure he would know the words.

Jess points out, well over halfway through the game, that we only have three hits from two players, and that that isn’t going to work out for us in the long run. Logan Webb gave up a run in the first inning, and the Giants – in spite of constantly putting men on base – haven’t done much to answer; Webb has settled down and blanked San Diego since then, but something has to spark the bats. Maybe down in the dugout, someone mentions that if the Giants lose this game, that’s the season – one more loss means we’re mathematically eliminated; in the eighth, there’s a sudden surge, and we get two runs, and Webb comes out for the ninth to finish the complete game. Disaster is staved off for one more night.

I forgot to take a selfie with Jess. I asked for one later, via text, and she sent a picture of her which is immeasurably better than the ones I take.

What Did You Think of the Evening, Jess?

“It was a great night at the ballpark catching up with you, my friend and former colleague. Hard to believe it was our first game together since before the pandemic! The weather was perfect, Webb was almost perfect, and the Giants came from behind for the win!“

• 1 October: Farewells and Almosts
• 30 September: For the Love of God, Max Muncy
• 29 September: Flower Mary Child Lavender Blossom
• 27 September: Junk Time
• 26 September: Mathematically

I try to build in a hefty safety margin, timewise, when it comes to making my way to the park; you never know when there’s going to be a disaster on BART or MUNI (well, you know there is going to be one, but you never know which or how long it will last). I usually leave the East Bay in time to arrive at the park and hour before first pitch, and I try to schedule meeting people so that they have a cushion too, although I don’t always tell people about it – if you say you want then to be there at 6 but 615 would work, they will invariably show up at 630. Part of the cushion is so I will definitely get to hear the national anthem, and part of it is because I like to watch the crew set up the field and to watch the place fill up. Mostly this works out, but there are always exceptions – a car won’t start, someone works late, whatever. And then there are the people who take the ferry.

Shoshana took the ferry.

As I waited at the 2d Street gate for her to get here from the Ferry Building, foot tapping as the seconds ticked down, I reflected on the ferry. Yes, it’s much nicer than BART, but it takes you to basically the same place. Even the ones that come directly to the park arrive about ten minutes before first pitch, so people who come in from Alameda or Larkspur are going to be pushing my timetable, and the ones who come through the Ferry Building tack an extra twenty minutes onto that. I am not a man prone to letting frustration and anger take the helm, but as I hear the etiquette announcement from inside the park, and then the anthem, and then the (admittedly desultory) cheering for the ceremonial first pitch, I’m gritting my teeth and pursing my lips in a way that would make a certain set of people call me ‘small-mouth Justin’, and I’m getting tenser and tenser, and Shoshana is nowhere in sight, and then there’s a deep, sudden “Oooh!” from the crowd inside, and even though I don’t know exactly what it was (it was Kyle Harrison’s head-height first pitch pushing Steven Kwan off the plate) I know that it was something happening in the game, and now we are late.

And it’s all suddenly okay. We’re late. But we’re late to a baseball game. It’s a beautiful day, I’m going to spend three hours with a delightful little elf of a woman in one of my favorite places in all the world. We’ll win or we’ll lose (we’ll win), as we have for the last seventy-five games I’ve come to this year, and I will sit and watch the pitching and the hitting and the crowd, and I will have a great time. Once we’re actually late and there’s no more wondering about whether, there’s not point in being upset. All of the teeth-grinding and fist-clenching and toe-tapping evaporates and the only thing that’s left is peace and … not resignation, not even acceptance, just contentment with what I have instead of dissatisfaction with what I don’t.

When Shoshana gets there – fifteen minutes after first pitch (only fifteen stupid minutes – what was the big deal?) we go in the Marina Gate and say hi top Kenny Mac and then head up to 152 to find that the fifteen minutes missed included four runs for the Guardians. Not, honestly, a bad fifteen minutes to miss. Harrison is new, had a spectacular start but rocky terrain since then, and will give up one more run in the second inning, but the Giants will hold the line and gradually work their way back with a run in the seventh, three more in the eighth, and a walkoff sacrifice fly in the tenth seals the deal. Exciting in its way, but we are getting to the point where the Giants basically have to sin every game but have demonstrated clearly that they can’t do that; every victory is a mixed blessing, for a fan, in that you want to see them win but have to be aware that every tick in the win column will probably be just one more unit of frustration when they fall short. Today’s lesson, though, is about savoring every moment for what it is instead of grimacing about what it’s not.

Shoshana brings things to savor. She’s one of those people that brings little fruits and sausages and nuts and fancy mustard instead of string cheese and goldfish crackers; she perches like a sparrow on the seat, turns to face me instead of watching home plate. We used to live in the same apartment complex, and about the second time we crossed paths in the hall, I asked her if she wanted to go to a ballgame; she said yes, and then there was a pandemic, a lot of which she spent in Mexico. We didn’t see each other again till shortly before I moved out, and she did go to a game with me last year, but it has been a while since I have seen her. She reminds me a little of my sister’s mother-in-law – bright, smart, tiny, curious (I suspect they share some qualities in terms of what kind of food they would bring to sporting events as well). She’s been building a vacation house in Mexico, but the builder has made some modifications to the plan that aren’t going to work out, so the building is on hold, a thing that might drag some people down, but not Shoshana.

We are also celebrating Orlando Cepeda’s birthday – it’s not till the 17th, but the Giants are observing it today, so we can all be here to share it. We don’t get cake – I don’t know if Orlando gets cake either, although I would think he would – but we do get a picture of Orlando Cepeda, 11-time All-Star, Rookie of the Year, MVP, World Series champion, and MLB Hall-of-Fame star, pointing at the scoreboard to say “Hey, look! You’re up on the big screen!”

What Did You Think of the Evening, Shoshana?

I forgot to ask Shoshana what she thought of the evening, but she did text, a little later, “Thank you for a perfectly lovely fun afternoon,” so I am going to assume it was as enjoyable for her as it was for me.

• 1 October: Farewells and Almosts
• 30 September: For the Love of God, Max Muncy
• 29 September: Flower Mary Child Lavender Blossom
• 27 September: Junk Time
• 26 September: Mathematically

Steighton is one of those guys who has already thought it through. He’d rather be riding a motorcycle, but he comes in on the ferry because he’d rather do that than BART. I usually get to my seats by about a half hour before first pitch in order to watch the crowd come in and the guys laying down the chalk lines and the other guys hosing down the field and then listening to the national anthem – in spite of how much I like to complain about it, I do like to listen – but the ferry is the ferry; time and tide and the Blue and Gold Fleet wait for no man. It’s been a little while since I made it in that early anyway. Tonight is no exception, but it’s okay. I’m jazzed to have Steighton here; he is one of a few people I have decided it would be a good idea to be friends with as a matter of choice instead of circumstance, and even though he is manifestly not a baseball guy, he is smart and interesting – one of those people whose conversational remit is seemingly without limit, who you can point in any direction and he will keep you entertained and engaged without hogging the mic.

It’s his first professional baseball game, but he knows enough about the sport to heckle convincingly, talk about a snappy fastball, and complain accurately about a muffed double play. I get the feeling he could speak with the same confidence if we were watching football, boxing, curling, goat hockey, whatever. He played soccer as a kid in Michigan, which surprises me – we didn’t even really have soccer at the Sacramento private school I went Sacramento, which so desperately wanted to be a British public school that we had a headmaster and like five kids per class (looking back on it, I’m kind of surprised I didn’t end up best friends with Rudyard Kipling or Richard Francis Burton), and which should have been on top of the coming soccer boom, which is still kind of coming. I would have thought Michigan would be American football country, but according to Steighton, not so much.

It’s Mexican Heritage night, but I miss a lot of the pregame stuff because a) we come in a little late and b) I was waiting on the opposite side of the park from where they do things outside; I did, however, buy the special event item, which is an extremely comfortable item of clothing that I am ashamed to admit that I don’t know the exact name of; eBay sellers call it, variously, a shirt, a poncho, a serape, and a jorongo, which is the one I think is probably right. It’s big and soft and it has armholes and a head hole. On the way up to get it (a journey on which Steighton accompanies me in order to keep up his end of an exercise-based deal with his knee doctor), we ride up in the 2d Street elevator with a small family, a guy headed for the Club level, and Larry Baer, who presses the button for the third deck after the elevator attendant mysteriously disappears. I am the only one in the elevator who recognizes the owner of the team, and as the door closes on the Club level, I say “They’ve got you running the elevators now?” He looks back and says “Yeah, I do all kinds of things around here,” and I say “Probably best to maximize your value to the organization.” He laughs a little, nods, and gets out on the suite level with a quick “Have a good game,” exchange, and I am left feeling like I did after I called my boss at Gamelink ‘ace’ except about seventeen times more so.

In a different elevator, on the way down, it is Steighton’s great pleasure to first be very courteous to a pair of Cleveland fans by ushering them in before we board and then, when they remark on the kindnesses shown them by San Francisco fans, to inform them that he only consented to come to a Guardians game because the team formerly known as the Indians changed their mascot. They make the mistake of sighing and saying “Oh, we loved Chief Wahoo,” which frees Steighton up to tell them that he’s a quarter Native American and he’s glad the Cleveland organization stopped being so racist, which makes them extremely uncomfortable. Fortunately for everyone, the elevator arrives at the Concourse level just in time for them to not have to defend their belief (I am absolutely positive that they were about to say this) that Chief Wahoo was not a racist mascot and that the Indians was not a racist name. They struck me as the kind of people who would say that right after a school shooting is not the time to discuss gun control. I guess this is what you get for allowing unlimited interleague play.

Later, Steighton and I exchange app ideas; not only is his better than mine, his ideas about mine are better than my ideas about mine. But he works for SalesForce, which has to give you some kind of juice when it comes to ideas like that (I should note that his would actually help people do things, whereas mine is just a goofy idea). A little after that, Steve and Eleanor come by for a visit, and we spend a pleasant half hour socializing while Steve stalwartly stands with his back to the field; the risk of foul balls here is very low, but I don’t tell him that; it’s more fun to let him think he’s being brave. I am reminded of the kid a couple of days ago who said to his dad “If a ball comes toward me, you be ready to catch it, okay?” I am ready to catch the ball for Steve.

The Giants lose this one, 3-1.

What Did You think of the Evening, Steighton?

• 1 October: Farewells and Almosts
• 30 September: For the Love of God, Max Muncy
• 29 September: Flower Mary Child Lavender Blossom
• 27 September: Junk Time
• 26 September: Mathematically

“I’m hungry,” says Heather, and I am ready to deal with that. Did I not solve the very same issue for a different Heather, with a crab sandwich and, later, garlic fries, just two short nights ago? Did I not, in fact, facilitate Michelle enjoying one of everything only this last Friday? I did. So I know how to handle this. We have arrived a little early at the park – I always build in some extra time in my journeying – and we have an hour before first pitch to explore the options. “Garlic fries!” she says, just inside the gate, and it is made to happen. She wants to have the garlic fries to take the edge off while she decides what she’s going to have for dinner, and we take a slow lap around the park, including a trip up to the third deck to see the view from 301. By the time we get to 152, the garlic fries have taken their toll, and Heather admits she might be done with food for the evening, allowing that a bacon-wrapped hot dog outside after the game might be a possibility (NB: in the event, nope).

It’s not freezing, but it isn’t the warmest night of the year. The Hufflepuff-themed Giants scarf (or Giants-themed Hufflepuff scarf, if you want to look at it that way) that she brought turned out to be more useful as a seat cushion than a neck-warmer, and a hot chocolate (I have now had three hot chocolates in four nights) rounds out the amenities for the evening. It is a good night to be cozy.

In spite of remarking last night that a 737 flyby was an odd thing to schedule so close to 9/11, I have forgotten what day it is, and I am in the bathroom for the moment of silence. Fortunately, (for a lot of reasons, I guess) I am not in the habit of making a lot of noise in the bathroom, so I observed it, if unwittingly. Even with the moment of silence and the fact that a guy near my seats asks, petulantly, “Where are the jets?” I don’t put it together until the seventh inning, when we are asked to stand, take off our hats, and sing “God Bless America,” at which point I am so annoyed by the jingoism that I put on an extra hat in protest. Petulantly. When the guy asked where the jets were, my first thought was to say “New York,” thinking of football, and only now as I write this do I really think through the implications of what that might have started.

It’s a pretty good game – not a shellacking like the last couple, but still featuring a fair amount of offense. The scoring is slow but even – a Giants homer, a two run (lower-case) splash hit for Cleveland in the top of the third, two answering Giants RBIs in the bottom to take the lead; Civil War general John Brebbia gives up a run in the seventh and it’s all tied up. “I don’t think I have extra innings in me,” says Heather, who nevertheless manages to sit through the one we have to endure, which sees one run for the Guardians and two for the Giants, and we walk away with a fourth straight win after a game that feel like it ended much later than 10.06.

There’s a guy nearby who insists on calling the Guardians the Indians; it’s not by a long chalk the most offensive thing he says over the course of the evening, and I take a certain amount of enjoyment in the fact that, even if I have to listen to his sixth-grade vocabulary and his 1950s homophobia, I know things aren’t going his way society-wise. Having him there sounding dumb all night long does make me think, though; I had a friend once who declined an invitation to the park because she didn’t want to be around what she assumed was going to be the kind of pervasive toxic masculinity that sports fans are often attributed; I’m glad to be able to reflect that the incidence of loud, dumb jerks is pretty low here. I don’t know if that’s just San Francisco, or if the culture has just changed, but I’m happy to be here most of the time. I am not normally a confrontational person, and I am both relieved but also a tiny bit disappointed that although he tries to stare me down a couple of times after he has said something especially crude, that when i say “If you’re going to let our beer do the talking, you should be buying smarter beer,” it’s not right to his face.

A much better quote, from someone in his vicinity who finds his company less distasteful than I do: “If you’re here on a Monday night watching the Giants and not having a good time, you should get a better therapist.”

What Did You Think of the Evening, Heather?

“It’s always a good feeling watching the Giants win, even if it means going into extra innings. My highlights were: garlic fries and hot cocoa, a pickle and a bunt, and always your warm presence.”

• 1 October: Farewells and Almosts
• 30 September: For the Love of God, Max Muncy
• 29 September: Flower Mary Child Lavender Blossom
• 27 September: Junk Time
• 26 September: Mathematically

Don’t get me wrong. I love taking people who don’t know baseball to games. Aside from the opportunity to talk, I love being able to show someone who maybe doesn’t care about sports what the fuss is, or at least what my angle on the fuss is. I love telling people weird little facts and quirky stories and explaining why that guy is standing there or why that guy didn’t run till then or how to figure out where the ball is going; I mean, you know how I love top talk. But there is also something great about sitting with someone who knows what’s happening and doesn’t need to hear why that run didn’t count or why that pitch wasn’t a strike but the last one was, even though the exact same thing happened.

Mark is another of my perennials; he is my first choice for Opening Day, but almost never makes it, because he has a family and a job and spring is a busy time for people with responsibilities. Still we almost always make time for a game at some point during the season; this year it is very late, because he is not on any of the social media sites I use to get people to go with me and I have been lax about being in touch with my offline friends. Still, we made it happen, almost at the last minute. A lot is going on for Mark – he and his family have moved twice since we last saw each other (so have I), and he and his two kids just got their Austrian dual citizenships (mine, Irish, is on the way). The Giants., then, have not excelled, but things are moving along for the two of us.

Today’s game is unremarkable except that it’s the third win in a row and the final game of a sweep. I won’t recapitulate my frustrations right now, but it is, in a tactical sense, nice to see yet another win, even if it was against a team that would surely be relegated at the end of the season if we had relegation. Speaking of relegation, I asked Mark what sport he would take up watching if he had to move to Austria; he said soccer (he means, of course, Fußball), and I had ot think about what sport I would watch if I had to move to Ireland. I guess I would still watch baseball, just in the middle of the night. I haven’t had a lot of experience watching soccer (I mean, of course, peil), but I don’t think I could take more than a couple of matches a year, although it’s possible that watching it with a pub full of dedicated fans would change my mind.

Today’s gate giveaway is the much-coveted but nearly useless Alaska Airlines BOGO companion fare voucher, which I can never use because I never fly anywhere with anyone or plan ahead enough to know where I’m going. It’s only good for buying a ticket for someone to go with you, you have to make your reservations within about 48 hours of getting the voucher, and the blackout dates and eligible times are Byzantine. I always take mine anyway, with the same kind of sure-I’ll-get-to-it hubris that I access when I’m buying two gallons of milk at Costco, or pirating the complete works of Vangelis. Last year, I gave it to Eric, who used it to buy his parents a 50th anniversary trip to Hawaii. I gave him this year’s voucher as well.

The other aspect of today’s Alaska Airlines sponsorship is the least exciting flyby I’ve ever seen: during the national anthem we get a pass over the park by an Alaska Air 737. It’s a weird choice, especially since the pilot can’t really come in low enough to make it thrilling in the same way that the Memorial Day fighter jets or the helicopter’s steep bank, circling practically inside the stadium, were. It’s also a really weird choice this close to 9/11. I can’t help but wonder if Alaska Airlines cut out a special 737 just for this, or if they just diverted a regular flight out of Oakland and had the aircrew tell the passengers they were part of a special ceremony at Oracle Park.

I asked Mark if he had any commentary on last night’s question, about how we maintain our devotion to teams and players that have no obligation to return it, but he doesn’t really have anything to add. Maybe being a fan is one of those things that you can always talk about in terms of tribalism and a need to belong but never really encompass.

Go Giants.

What Did You Think of the Evening, Mark?

“The only thing better than the super nachos was the company. It’s always great to catch a game with Justin, my only regret is that it took so long this year to finally connect. Just to be safe, I’ll book PTO for the first 2 weeks of next year’s baseball season, just to guarantee I can attend opening day. (Assuming Shohei Ohtani signs with the Giants, that is.)“

• 1 October: Farewells and Almosts
• 30 September: For the Love of God, Max Muncy
• 29 September: Flower Mary Child Lavender Blossom
• 27 September: Junk Time
• 26 September: Mathematically