It is a gorgeous day at the park, and everything is conspiring to make it an absolutely perfect baseball day. There is a guy dressed up as the hitherto difficult-to-find Waldo in the front row of Section 152 – the jokes write themselves – and there are a couple of kids up there too, including a girl, maybe eight or nine, all decked out in her Giants gear and cheering her head off. I love seeing Giants wear treated the same as princess dresses or mermaid outfits.
This is the second time I have brought a minister to the park this year. Carol is semi-retired, but still does minister stuff from time to time, including committing to the funerals of friends who have seen other funerals and been less than satisfied with the officiating. I was told before the game that Carol was new to being a Giants fan, but that turns out to have been misinformation. She does admit to being the kind of fan who doesn’t pay much attention to statistics, which puts us in the same category. When I ask if she has a favorite player, it takes her a few minutes to settle on Yaz, which is understandable. With all the new guys on the team, it’s hard to get a sense of who’s who and what their personalities are, especially when you want to invest in someone as a long-term prospect. By way of complimenting me on my Mayor/152 jersey, Carol also opines that it’s silly to get a player jersey since they often move on so quickly, which makes me feel a little foolish about the Bailey road jersey I bought yesterday, but I am hoping he will stick.
The other kind of fan, the kind who does love statistics and can remember everything about given season, is sitting on both sides of us. John, who is at the game with his wife Kassandra, is on the right, and Ben, with his two sons, is on the left. John, in spite of having grown up five minutes from Candlestick Park, is a Yankee fan; he says he got to it by being an avid reader as a kid and only having access to literature about the Yankees, which makes sense. He’s a little older than I am, and remembers listening to the radio in the sixties. I remember the sound of it from when my dad listened in the summers but nothing more specific than that.
Ben is a little younger than I am and became an Angels fan in 1982 when they signed Reggie Jackson (that is already more information than I had in my head about the 1982 Angels) and has never looked back. He rhapsodizes about that team, and he and John get going about their American league stuff ifn a way that I can’t keep up with at all, but have to endure because they are on opposite sides of me and Carol but are happy to talk across us. I’m happy to listen. I said to someone recently at another event that I love listening to nerds talk about whatever their nerdery is, and it’s true: even if it’s nothing I want to know about, the joy of it is intoxicating. Both of them come and go in the seats for the whole game, but Carol and I pretty much stay on one place the whole time.
I was told that someone called yesterday’s game a nailbiter, which is not really accurate since only about half an inning involved any nailbiteable action, but today’s is a lot closer to being an actual nailbiter. The Giants score early, with one run in the second inning, and manage another in the fifth, but the Red Sox get one in the seventh, and when the usually pretty reliable Tyler Rogers gives up a two-run go-ahead homer in the top of the eighth, things look bleak. They looked bleak last night, though, and that worked out okay. Sure enough, the Giants manage to squeeze a run across in the bottom of the eighth, and we end up in extra innings. Carol is on the edge of her seat, and out of it, for most of the game from here on in – she’s the kind of person who reacts instantly to every ball leaving the bat, every half-swing, and it’s a good time to be that kind of fan.
When I’m watching the archive game later on, there are a lot of balls, strikes and check-swing calls that the crowd disagrees with, but most of them – as usual – aren’t bad calls. The ninth, tenth, and eleventh are definitely nailbiting time, but we get a chance to relax a little in the bottom of the eleventh. Even the Giants, who have a real talent for getting the least out of a situation in general and have left twenty-eight men on base in the last three games, would have a hard time not scoring with the bags loaded and no outs, which is the situation they find themselves in. A free runner on second, a hit batter, and a perfect bunt leave them in a situation where it would take real talent not to score at least one run. After all that, a simple single does the job for a 4-3 win, and the Giants walk away with a series win and some momentum going into a Diamondbacks series that could make a real difference at the end of the season.
The last few innings, with the Giants refusing to give up, chipping way here and there, reminds me very much of my dad; he used to employ the phrase “them pesky Giants,” and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a game or a series where they’ve been peskier. Hey dad! Thinking of you today.
What Did You Think of the Evening, Carol?
Carol was unavailable for comment at time of publication.
81 Dates 