Margo, who first came to a game with me in 2019 (and who I haven’t seen since that game), is a big Bay Area sports fan, and she shows up decked out in more Giants gear than me, which isn’t unusual for the park, but isn’t usual for people I bring, who mostly aren’t big rooters. Margo talks about going to see the Warriors, Sharks, Raiders and Niners as well, and her enthusiasm is nearly boundless. She is excited the whole time and never stops bouncing. I lose track of the number of times she says, in marveling at how difficult it has been for me to fill all the dates with ballpark companions, “How could you not say yes to this?” or some variation thereof. I have to agree.

She wants a crab bowl from the seafood ghetto behind the DiamondVision scoreboard, but the line is apocalyptic; one of the downsides to the new rules speeding up the game is that a decent tour of the ballpark, a 30 to 45-minute endeavor, now takes up a significant percentage of the game. Margo doesn’t need a tour, but the thought of a half-hour in line for a crab bowl is unappealing; we decide instead to stop in at the big ground-level dugout store, where she would really like to buy a beanie with a lot of orange in it but ends up taking advantage of my season ticket discount to pick up an overpriced but astonishingly soft sweater, in which she delights in fondling herself for the rest of the game.

It seems like the kid next to us might be new to the game – he’s maybe ten or so, and it seems like he can’t quite decide where he wants his rooting style to land. Mostly, he says things like “Go Giants!” or “Yeah!!” but once, about midway through the game, he lets slip a “Dodgers suck!” It’s quiet and a little tentative, like he’s trying it out, and Margo laughs in delight and throws him a high-five, which he accepts with a slightly sheepish but bright-eyed grin. He delivered it at a volume that he clearly hoped was going to slip under his dad’s radar (it did not, but Dad just smiled a fond little smile. In the modern world, it’s probably nice to be dealing with a kid whose idea of rebellion is to screw up his courage far enough to say ‘suck’.)

The same kid is positioned directly in front of Margo in the last couple of innings when she starts really letting loose with the rhythmic, singsong cadence of the ancient tribal “Let’s-Go-Gi-ants!” chant. At this point, she has partaken enough in the park’s offerings of what Jeopardy calls Potent Potables that the singsong part has mostly given way to the need for volume, and he takes a few of those right in the earhole before turning around, taking stock of her and her current drink, and saying “You might want to ease up on that a little…,” to which Margo’s response is a succinct “Nope!”

It’s nice too, that he is still innocent enough to think that’s the point at which a person in the ballpark should start to moderate.

At another point, he asks his dad what that smell is, and Dad says “That’s marijuana,” and the kid nods and says “Right, got it.” The whole evening is a charming little episode in the history of this kid’s exposure to vice; he recognizes in the smell the presence of a substance and he has made a direct connection between the can in Margo’s hand and her just-at-the-edge-of-control enthusiasm, but it’s still kind of academic for him. At one point, Margo has left a can unattended on the seat, and Dad tells us for a moment he wondered where his kid got a Mimosa. “Wait till you’re 21 for that,” he says to the kid, and I chip in with “Don’t drink beer,” which gets a nod and a “Right!” from the kid, and then I follow up with “Drink whiskey instead – you get to be a snob about it,” which earns me a laugh from both of them.*

We end up seeing a pretty good game, a 5-0 Giants win that stays close at 2-0 until the late innings when a double and a couple of homers make it a more-or-less sure thing (although Monday’s Sean Hjelle adventure reminds us that a five-run lead is not a rock-solid insurance policy. We head out the gate feeling good.

*Sure, you can be a snob about beer, too, but it takes more work.

• 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