In the BART station on the way home after a very satisfying Giants win over the Nationals, Leslie and I hear the mournful sounds of a harmonica echoing down the platform; it’s sad and incongruous – the mood in the station is pretty cheerful except for what we can only assume is a hobo riding the rails. It turns out to be a guy ambling around with a harmonica in his mouth but his hands in his pockets; he’s doing a pretty good job of producing more than just random sounds without using his hands to move the harmonica around, and the sound makes me think of cowboy movies, and nights on the trail. “That’s Lonesome Joe,” I tell Leslie. “He’s the Lonesomest Guy I Know.” Lonesome Joe wanders by us a little later, an unsteady list to his gait, and we think he notices us enjoying the story we’re making up about him, because he sees Leslie laughing and his orbit tightens. He passes in front of us three or four times before slowing, taking the harmonica out of his mouth and saying with a sad smile, “I’m sorry to be doing this to you, but she left and I don’t…I need to go to Concord?” I assure him that he’s not bothering us and all he needs to do is catch the next train, and he wanders off, still dolefully, sweetly harmonicaing. When the train comes, he gets on the same car we’re on, and the music drifts down the noisy tunnel with us, mixing with the discordant screech of the rails and making me think of campfires and cans of beans; there’s a couple right next to us sharing a pair of headphones and happily moving to the beat of what must be a very different song. I can’t help but feel like Lonesome Joe owns this car, though, and I say to Leslie “I don’t know what we’re gonna do about these two; they’re not bean people.” A minute later Lonesome Joe’s phone rings, and although we can’t hear what he’s saying, we hope it’s whoever left him, calling to guide him home.

I might have a new favorite anthem; unfortunately I can’t give you a link to it, but if I ever find a way, you may rest assured I will. MLB.tv is criminally lax about including the anthem in the archive – often the recording starts just after the performer finishes up. Today’s was performed by the first graders of a local school – which one I cannot say – and it was absolutely fantastic. You know how when you get enough people singing, the voices all come together and average out to the right pitch or key or timbre or whatever? Well, that didn’t happen here. Imagine what it would be like to listen to maybe forty kids singing the national anthem but none of them is paying any attention to any of the others, or to anyone trying to coordinate them, and you will have an exact picture of what happened here. It was glorious. Look at that kid in the middle: you can tell he’s just concentrating on being as loud as he can, and the two guys to his right aren’t totally sure they’re supposed to be there; the girl to his lower left is making sure she gets all the words right, and her neighbors are just glad to have been invited. It was the loudest, least musical national anthem I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard Metallica do it seven times now*. Every anthem should be performed by a platoon of first graders who learned the words this week.

The Giants won handily tonight; after yesterday’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Bay Area Sports Day, it was a relief to see an exciting game that wasn’t exciting like a car crash. Along the way to a 4-1 win, we get a solid performance from Logan Webb and a home run from Casey Schmitt, making a triumphant major league debut. Usually the radio is my favorite way to experience baseball if I can’t see it live, but watching Schmitt go through is first game on TV is a treat. He comes close to a misstep in the field, and watching his relief over it not mattering and then his home run celebration are heartwarming.

Leslie has some good questions – my favorite kind, in fact. Why can a baserunner overrun first but not second or third? I like a question that makes me think about how the game works and what makes sense. On reflection, I think the logical answer is that if runners had to slow down to stop right on first base, they’d get thrown out every time, and also maybe that it has to do with there being a line to run down, but the answer I give her and the one that I think is probably most true is that that’s how the game evolved to work best. She also asks how they keep the uniforms so white (my guess is regular laundering), how many uniforms (I think five – home cream, the Orange Friday uni, the black jerseys, the City Connect Creamsicle outfits, and the road greys), why some guys on the field have long pants and some guys are wearing capris (each player gets to pick which ones he wants to wear, and also those might technically be capris, but we just refer to that look as the high socks).

Every day I’m on the lookout – the listenout, I guess, really – for the quote that’s going to feature at the top of the blog post, and today on the MUNI ride in I thought I had it before I’d even gotten to the park; a guy with a bottle of gin and a chip on his shoulder snarled “Oooh, I’m rich, I get off at Brannan,” when some people got off at Brannan (I don’t know if they were rich or not). He continued to mumble, yell and growl guy-on-a-train-with-a-mostly-empty-bottle-of-gin-at-five-pm stuff all the way to the park, and it was all pure gold, but Lonesome Joe totally eclipsed him at the last minute, like Mage coming from out of nowhere to win the Kentucky Derby.

*Complaints in the comments, please.

• 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