The statue of Juan Marichal, at the O’Doul Gate, is always a busy place before a game, but it’s not nearly as busy as the main gate at Willie Mays Plaza. It’s where I usually direct people when we’re looking to met before the game, especially if we haven’t met before. Today there’s a guy there who asks me, very politely, if I need him to move his duffel bag, which I don’t. He is clearly not taking that thing into the park, and it looks like it has a significant portion of his possessions in it, and I have no need to roust a man who seems down on his luck. He asks, again very politely, if I might be able to spare some money for food, and I look in my wallet, but there’s empty space where I thought I’d had a $20, and I have to say no. He says “Well, at least you looked,” and I’m about to offer to buy him a hot dog using a credit card when he launches into a monologue that lasts a solid five minutes without a break, covers his journey here from St. Louis, touches on his high school golfing career (including a lengthy description of a match that lost him a scholarship), veers into a digression on the Freemasons, the Army and organized religion, features prominently the sentence “I’m not very intelligent that way – I’m intelligent the other way” and ends with “Wait a minute – are you related to Whitey Herzog?” I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that Scoby, my guest for the evening, shows up at just that moment. Scoby’s enthusiasm for being there, though, is so genuine and bright that it’s impossible not to lean toward relieved, or at least delighted to have the next chapter of the evening be so happy.
Scoby (I find out later in the evening that Scoby stands for symbiotic colonies of bacteria and yeast) has been to the ballpark before, but not for a while and the last time she was here did not get a tour; her first need once we’re in the park is for some gluten free food, which is readily available at the Garden under the scoreboard. I don’t usually spend a lot of time in the Garden – it is, it seems to me, the windiest place in the park, and being here, even on the warmest of days, always makes me sing “the wind goes right through you/it’s no place for the old” in my head. I could safely have sung it out loud and given Scoby a chance to sing, too – something she warns people about in her profile on the social media site where I met her (she also mentions there that she hosts cuddle parties, and when I ask her what she does for a living, she redirects me to cuddle parties, saying “I prefer to maintain an air of mystery.”) Gluten-free flatbread pizza achieved, we take the quick tour – slide, mini-park, third deck views, Lego statues, trophies, water fountain – and head toward 152 on schedule for the first pitch, but get delayed when she spots a charity her parents do work for in a prime spot on the Promenade. Canine Companions for Independence has a dozen delightfully good dogs at the park, out meeting the people. We stop to say hello to some folks who know her parents and then head off to the arcade, where we arrive shortly after the game start. Fortunately nothing has happened yet.
Something happens almost immediately, though, a play so weird that both the radio and TV announcers are baffled about what is going on, and Kruk and Kuip say they’ve never even seen anything like it. I’m not sure I could explain it even if I didn’t have anything else to talk about, but it somehow involves Nick Madrigal of the Cubs stealing second on the fourth ball of a walk and being thrown out, at which point the Giants appeal the out call, win the appeal, and then immediately throw out Seiya Suzuki trying to steal the same base to end the inning. In addition to the thing being bizarre in the first place, they don’t show any replays on the big screen. It’s confusing to me – I won’t figure it out until I’ve watched it four times at home – and must be even more so to Scoby, who, when I asked her earlier what she knew about the game, said “A guy hits the ball and then runs around the bases,” which is absolutely correct but doesn’t give you a lot of runway for understanding whatever the hell this business is.
The rest of the game is much less opaque, and very exciting in its way. There’s not a lot of scoring – a Giants run in the third, three Cubs runs in an unfortunate seventh where DeSclefani, the Giants starter, gets taken out either two batters too late or three batters too early, depending on how you look at things. The Giants pick up a run in the bottom of the seventh, but that’s it, in spite of some credible threats in the eighth and ninth. At this point, most of the fun in the game is provided by a family in front of us – it appears the women are Cubs fans and the men are Giants fans – who have a battle of rally caps going on. Unfortunately for both the Giants and the rule of law, it looks like the Cubs rally caps carry the day even though they put theirs on in the seventh inning; it’s a situation that I feel makes mock of the rules of rally cappery (which are nebulous, but about which I have strong opinions. Of course). It’s all good-natured, as is the custom in 152, but the Giants come up short.
We end up talking a little to the matriarch of the family, Shea, and I explain that I just can’t find it in my heart to be too upset about the Cubs winning – they’re not a team I feel like I can drum up any hate for. She has some harsh words about White Sox fans, who she says “wear jorts” and “are like Raiders fans.” There’s more, but I feel like that’s enough. At about this time, Scoby starts singing, regaling me with a selection about hot water from “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” a TV show I have not invested a lot of time in. She does make it sound appealing. The responsibility is mine – I asked her what she was passionate about, and it turns out that it’s musical theatre. I have some background there myself, but mostly as an observer. It turns out it’s singing time anyway – we’re behind in the eighth, and the whole stadium belts out “Don’t Stop Believin’.” We have been given permission to believe again.
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