On the Promenade level near my seats, there is a kiosk that sells Giants gear (golf tees, octopuses, unicorns – all the baseball standards) and most of the time it is pretty busy, but tonight is very, very slow. Attendance is listed at 20,203, but it feels smaller; maybe most of those people are out in the bleachers, or on the club level. Walking through the concourse in the seventh inning isn’t a matter of dodging people or being stuck behind slow movers, so when i pass by the kiosk I have a clear view of the guys who work there practicing the five quick claps in Wilmer Flores’ walkon music, which is about eight seconds of the theme song from ‘Friends.’ It seems like maybe the older guy is teaching the younger guy how to do it, although they have both been here forever and have to have heard it about nine hundred and ninety times, which is roughly how many at-bats Flores has had at Oracle Park plus how many times the average human seems to have watched ‘Friends.’ It’s hard to tell why they’re doing it, but on my way back from the bathroom, it’s still going on, and as I pass, I join in: clapclapclapclapclap, as fast and sharp as I can, and I get a volley of applause from them, like I did something difficult. I did notice later when I was typing this out that it is a) pretty much impossible to say clapclapclapclapclap as fast as you can clap it and b) humbling to try.

Eric shows up just before the anthem (which is lovely – I’m beginning to wonder if maybe the person who chooses the performers has been replaced) and it’s a joyous little reunion, partly because it’s a joy to see him after half a year of winter, but mostly because Eric is relentlessly joyous. Even when he’s down, his demeanor contains the spirit of his inherent optimism in the same way that you can still see the shapes of whatever you were looking at when the camera flash went off. Eric works in social services in San Francisco – it’s a difficult job anywhere, and almost exponentially more so here, but Eric has been doing it for a while. It’s still not easy, but I don’t think it would be for anyone.

I met Eric in the SportsHosts year, 2019; he was one of the other hosts, and I found out quickly that he is the kind of baseball fan who really knows his stuff, and not just statistics. My friends think of me as their baseball fan friend, but I know things like who started in the game that featured the starting pitchers with the most letters in their last names combined (VanLandingham and Isringhausen) and what the most common first name in baseball was in the 1970s (Dave) and who the most successful pair of pitching siblings were (Phil and Joe Niekro). Eric knows things like who is good at hitting baseballs and who plays for what team and who just hit a three-run homer while I was talking about chicken strips (JD Davis), which are details that often get away from me.

Anyway, Eric is my go-to for a companion when I can’t scare up someone from Facebook or the various other places I trawl for guests. As such, he has come to more games with me over the last few season than anyone since Christine; he was my first choice for the last preseason game against Oakland this year, but he was off helping a friend of his near Salinas who had been flooded out of his house, which was very inconvenient for me but exactly the kind of shenanigans Eric will get up to if you leave him to his own devices. Once I texted him a picture of a quilt my sister made for me, and he replied with a message that essentially said “That’s a nice quilt!” but was a hundred and seven words long and included praise for me, my sister, my family, our library and the floor plan of my mom’s house, and last year he used the buy-one-get-one-free Alaska Airlines coupon the Giants give away every September to fly his parents to Hawaii. I mean, when my mom came to a game with me in 2018, I made her buy her own train ticket.

It has been a rough year for Eric, and I have what I hope is a little wisdom to offer, much of it cribbed from Ted Lasso, Hamlet, and a Facebook meme I remember most of; he does me the grace of nodding along and allowing me to feel like a sage. When we walk out of the park, he adds a hug and a handshake to the five-gallon bag of Cracker Jacks he brought for me. The man knows all the ways to my heart.

PS: Giants win 4-0 over the Cardinals, with a strong complete game from Logan Webb.

• 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