Back in 2007, a friend and I had bought tickets to a Giants game; he wanted to go to Italian Heritage Night and we got our tickets well in advance – in March, in fact. The tickets were for August 7th. on August 6th, my friend called me to tell me he couldn’t get out of jury duty and wasn’t going tomake the game. I scrambled to find someone to take the ticket; I started with friends who liked baseball, ran through those pretty quickly, and then started offering the seat to co-workers. Everyone who might have wanted to go either already had tickets or couldn’t make it, and I ended up giving it to someone who was about thirtieth on my list – someone I would never have expected to come to game with me. In the event, that turned out to be the day that Barry Bonds hit his 756th home run and broke the all-time home run record. Baseball people will high-five everyone within reach for a run-of-the-mill RBI, so you can imagine what it was like. We were jumping up and down, embracing strangers, acting like the war was over and the boys were coming home, and as I shared the moment with a friend who had never bee to a major league sporting event in his life and an ex-girlfriend, I said” You can come to as many games as you want, but I can’t guarantee any of them will be this exciting.” So I understood the emotions of the guy behind me today when he was telling the story of how he was flirting with a dude at a party in October of 2010 and everyone went nuts. Utter pandemonium, but the dude was not a sports person, didn’t even know the World Series was still going on, and had to wonder “Why are all these guys hugging me?”

Sometimes it’s hard to come up with enough stuff to make this blog interesting, although I hope that even the stuff that isn’t obviously fascinating or sufficiently basebally is funny or clever or at least well-written enough to hold someone’s attention for whatever number of words I put down. I’m sure there is a way to check that, but I am really underusing all the options that WordPress offers. I need a manager.* Usually, during a game, I usually send myself little notes to remind me later what I thought was notable or interesting when it was happening. Sometimes these things are obvious choices for the title of the post (mostly i’m just impressed that they own two cars); some seem they would be but don’t make the cut (capris are for ladies), and some are completely baffling by the time I get home (labels since 2000!). Tonight I wrote myself three notes: clouds like a lava lamp, parental mistakes, and strikes and fouls. None of those seems really compelling

Mike is wearing Pittsburgh gear, as he did last year. He’s a California boy, but his sports loyalties somehow like in points east. At least they don’t lie south. Last year, when I brought him to a Pirates game, he managed to get a ball in the 415 while we were watching a reliever warm up, and I also gave his parents the tickets for one of the games I couldn’t go to. We end up talking a lot about parents and their failings. Lest you think the primary topic was how badly our parents failed us, we were actually really saying, mostly, that their worries about having done a bad job were pretty much all wrong. Neither of us is in jail or addicted, and Mike at least is not a feckless layabout with no ambitions. He has children of his own, and he worries about failing them. I don’ t think he has, but he still worries a little. I’m glad I only have nieces – it takes one more source of anxiety off the table (for me, at least; maybe not for my sister and her husband, who are great parents).

It is not a great day for the Giants; they score first with some smart small ball, but give up eight runs between the third and the sixth innings and a ninth in the ninth. Our men manage four total, but it only serves to give us occasional false hope, Well, me. Mike is delighted with the outcome, but he is gentleman enough not to crow about it to the person who gave him a free ticket. He could, though – we do not discriminate in 152, and as long as you’re not a dick about it – we apologize for the fruity language – you can cheer your team on as lustily as you like and suffer no consequences. Mike is not a dick about it, and in fact his Steelers jersey invites plenty of friendly hellos from passersby, wherever we are in the park. I imagine someone hates Steelers fans, but they’re not here.

Conversation with Mike is wide-ranging and lively. It’s rare, I think, to make a new, good, male friend at my age, and having met him just before the pandemic started and at a time when some others were fading away, I appreciate him all the more. The conversation is, in fact, so engaging that we never leave our seats, and most of what we do is talk about Ted Lasso and quote each other the funny parts, which, of course, takes up a LOT of time. People come by to visit at a rate and in numbers that make me feel really good about being a fixture here.

Important note: this post is short on photos for the same reasons that I didn’t send myself a lot of notes. I was having too much fun with my friend.

* Would you like to be my manager? I can pay you in baseball tickets.