It’s not that nothing interesting happens in the game. Lots of interesting things are happening, and will continue to happen, but I am distracted. It’s Season Ticket Members’ Appreciation Week, and tonight’s treat was ice cream on the club level; there’s a little patio behind third base with a bar and tables with stools. It’s still nice and sunny, so Megan and I have a good half-hour to sit out there and eat free ice cream and catch up. We both chose the chocolate-chip cookie vanilla ice cream sandwich, but I am reminded – as I always am – that I should have chosen something fruity and light. I resolve to have some lemon sorbet when I get home, but it’s going to be a while. Have I mentioned Javier? Javier is my season ticket rep, and he goes above and beyond. I lagged on answering the invitation for the ice cream party, and by the time I got to responding, it was sold out, but he got me in anyway.
Megan is not a baseball girl, not what the radio guys call a gamer babe, but she knows how to ask a question. The one she asks today – well, one of the ones – is something that no-one has thought of asking before. She does not phrase it quite this way, but it amounts to: “I hear you complaining endlessly about the new rules, but, given the idea that games should be speeded up a little, what would you do instead?” I don’t immediately know what I would do; it takes me a while, but I do eventually come up with some answers. Those are for a different post – maybe in the middle of next week, when there aren’t any games – but at least now I have some. I am no longer just a curmudgeon shouting into the void; I am now a curmudgeon with slightly more to talk about shouting into the void.
Another distraction, one directly related to Season Ticket Members’ Appreciation Week, is brisket. I know I have mentioned brisket before, but it has not, for various reasons, been a big part of my season so far. One of those reasons is that the only good brisket place is on the club level, to which I do not have regular access; however, tonight, since the ice cream social was on the club level, I do. This turns out to be both a good and a bad thing, because although we get up to the club level and eat a pile of delicious brisket (technically, we got brisket sandwiches, but I ate all the meat and saved the bread for later; I forgot to take a picture of my sandwich, but I did take one of the bread in the ninth inning), we also do that during the fifth inning, which turns out to be the action inning for the evening. It is the only inning in which the Giants score, and the one in which the Giants mount a replay challenge that results in four runs instead of two and gets the Padres manager thrown out of the game. We see none of that, because we are in the club level, and we can barely even see the DiamondVision screen. On the other hand, as I have noted before, we would have been utterly baffled as to what was going on wherever we were, because the stadium announcers never ever explain confusing situations. I do eventually learn what happened, but only because I watch it on TV later.
By the time we get back to our seats, most of the exciting stuff is over; there will be a couple more Padres runs and another confusing review, but the game ends with a 4-2 San Francisco win. it’s the tenth in a row, and if it’s not exactly routine, it’s at least one of the first games in a while that isn’t kind of stressful. What is stressful in a minor way is two foul balls in rapid succession that come very close to section 152 – I think it might be time to put the glove on, but JD Davis, who puts one in the arcade and one over it, strikes out and the inning and the danger are over.
The only other thing of note was an enormous container ship out in the roads, piled high with cargo boxes. You know how I love a big boat. MSC Teresa, 365 meters long, might be one of the biggest I’ve seen in person. I know – that doesn’t have anything to do with baseball, but I do have other interests.
81 Dates 