Al might be the most important person I’ve ever taken to a ballgame. i find out midway through the game that he’s a City Councilman in Winters, which is where my friend Irene lives, which is why they know each other and how Al ended up here with me tonight. Like almost everyone who comes with me and is already a huge fan, Al has been into the game since way before I arrived. We do have in common, though, that our first baseball games were both PCL games – his a Seals game at Seals stadium in 1958, mine a Sacramento Solons game at Hughes Stadium in 1974. I didn’t know anything about baseball back then and didn’t care to learn; my only memory of that game is that my dad gave me a half-dollar to buy food, and I immediately dropped it and listened to it roll away down the rows of seats in the stadium. On reflection, it couldn’t have gone that far – it wasn’t a smooth slope or anything – but in my memory, it rolled forever.
Also evoking my childhood is the kid in the front row of 152 who’s reading a book instead of watching the game. I probably had a book at that Solons game; I know I had one at the first rock concert I ever went to, an impromptu trip to a Jefferson Starship show in Davis in the early eighties. I had books with me pretty much everywhere I went as a kid, and still do. These days it’s a Kindle, so I have several hundred, although I don’t use it much while there’s a game on any more. I get a picture of him that is almost clear enough to read the text and tell what the book is – I could have just asked, but I get a kick out of trying to figure out what people are reading by looking over their shoulders.
It’s Firefighter Appreciation night at the park, and there’s a fireboat in the Cove with the hoses going, turning in a lazy circle during the national anthem, which is nearly as perfect a performance as I’ve ever heard. Maybe it’s my deep streak of sentimentality and the idea that the boat and the Appreciation Night are memorializing a branch of public service that is more or less unimpeachable, but I find myself moved in a way that I seldom feel. It also helps that the singer makes the anthem straight and clean; she’s not trying to show off her skills. It’s just her clear, lonely voice, with no accompaniment.
I didn’t ask what Al thought of the anthem, but he probably has an opinion – aside from being a City Councilman, he plays the mandolin with a few friends in Winters. He mentions at one point that he needs to learn how to play ‘Bye Bye Baby’, the Giants home run song, and I realize that I’ve never once thought about how a person might need to learn how to play a song. I mean, you pick up your mandolin, you think about how the song goes, and then you do things with the strings that make that song come out, right? All that time I lived with musicians in my family when I was a kid, you’d think I would have had some inkling. Al also mentions having had to learn to play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” for a show in Winters, where a friend of his put together a museum exhibit about Winters baseball. All the talk of small town stuff is making me want to live in Winters, where the City Councilmen will just go out to a ballgame with you if you ask. Try that in a big city.
Speaking of ballgames, this is another tense one. It seems to be following a pattern of recent games where the Giants score early, grit through a few innings, cough up a couple of runs, and then have to struggle in the late going. It’s been working out a lot, but tonight the ball bounces elsewhere. A 2-2 tie in the ninth leads to extras for the second night in a row, and a run for each team in the tenth ratchets up the tension, but when Arizona scores in the top of the eleventh and the Giants can’t quite cash in their free runner, we end up heading out of the park with a loss. I keep coming back to “them pesky Giants,’ but they couldn’t quite manage that extra pesk. A recent tradition has surfaced again – back in 2017, the crowd at the park started turning on their cell-phone flashlights, a nod to the old lighter-waving tradition, when the Giants needed a rally. It is both cool to see and difficult to take a picture of. I didn’t manage a good one, but I stole a photo from an online Chronicle article to show you. Aside from the inspirational aspects, I think it’s nice, on Firefighter Appreciation Night, that we’re not all waving actual flames around.
The one thing that I’ll remember most about Al from this game is that I can’t remember looking at him and not seeing a grin. I like to see a happy guy at the ballpark.
What Did You Think of the Evening, Al?
Al is a City Councilman and has things to do, but he will get back to us soon.
81 Dates 