There are a lot of things to write about before Leslie (a different Leslie) and I even get to the ballpark. Leslie, who read last night’s post, was disoriented by reading about a different Leslie, but she gets over it quickly. I mention that this is the first time I’ve had two Leslies in a row, but that in late July I had a Marty on a Friday and a Marty on Saturday, although they were the same Marty. The two Marty experiences were, necessarily, much the same, although both delightful. The two Leslie nights are very different. Neither one of them cares much about baseball, although that manifests in different ways.
Tonight’s Leslie, whose last adventure to the ballpark with me included an encounter with Lonesome Joe on the BART train, wanted to come for Harry Potter Night, which, in spite of the fact that she made a special request for it near the beginning of the season, I have kind of forgotten about. I was going through one of my boxes of Giants hats looking for a specific one earlier in the day and bypassed all four of the Hogwarts house hats that I got last year. Leslie didn’t dress up for the evening either, in spite of admitting that she watches all of the Harry Potter movies about once a year. I asked why, and she said “Because I like them,” which is a reasonable answer. What I meant was “What about those particular movie appeals to you so much that you’d watch them all once a year?” but I failed to follow up.
On MUNI, this teen in a Ravenclaw hat asks the one woman on the train who is not wearing any Giants gear if she’s going to the game, and she says no; I ask him what he needs, and he ignores me in a way that makes it clear that what he really wanted was to talk to an attractive woman, rather than to talk to someone going to the game; which is borne out when the woman next to him, less conventionally attractive but also wearing a Ravenclaw hat, asks him what he needs and he immediately engages with her – “Oh, you’re going to the game?” I pretend the kid is just being snooty – Ravenclaw too good for the Muggles, eh? – but then am cheered up by thinking of a Giants/Dodgers style rivalry playing out at the ballpark between rival houses, with robed magicians throwing both punches and spells at each other in the stands, and the Hufflepuffs trying to calm everybody down.
Leslie didn’t bring any knitting, but she did bring – on her feet – a pair of socks that she made at another venue. They are multicolored and complex, and I ask if the two socks are exactly the same; someone made a pair of socks for me several years ago that are so comically unalike that if you looked at them side by side you might conclude that they had been made for two members of the same species, but had nothing more in common than that. Leslie’s socks, however, are the same size and shape, and have exactly the same pattern, which, she says, is because they were knitted on the same needle at the same time. She also says she can do four at the same time, and that she has a friend who is doing twenty, which makes me think that there is probably a spell that you could say, in the Potterverse, to make your needles do twenty pairs of socks at the same time, floating in the air: Clicketiosum!
That leads to the idea that there could be truckloads of money to be made in going to Muggle games and betting on outcomes that could be subtly affected by a wizard of, let us say, porous ethics: Imagine someone with “Accio baseball!” at his command waiting for a record-breaking homer, or someone throwing “Expelliarmus” at a fielder. You could trip up a runner with “Locomotor Mortis,” or use “Wingardium Leviosa” to put a base hit wherever you wanted it. Even more subtly, you could get a guy off the DL with “Brackium Emendo,” if your betting ran to the long-term; the list goes on (the list is here – I had to look all of these up; I don’t watch the movies once a year).
Speaking of subtle, a balk gets called in the bottom of the second that leads to a Giants run, and to considerable confusion for me, and even more for Leslie since I can’t explain it except to tell her, generally, what a balk is, but not how this one happened or what the rules about the consequences. Why did the runners at first and third advance, but not the batter? I have no idea, and the MLB rulebook is less than helpful. The Giants get the first of six runs, though, which is nice, especially since those runs support a strong outing from Alex Cobb, who finishes up a complete game with a very slightly shaky ninth – not a worrisome one, given the six-run lead, but on in which he walks a batter and gives up a run on a two-out double that puts paid to both the shutout and what would have been the 18th no-hitter in Giants history.
What Did You Think of the Evening, Leslie?
“An evening at a Giants game with Justin is always a fun experience. I especially enjoy it when the Giants win which they did last night. I always enjoy watching Justin be friendly and chat to any and all folks. Harry Potter night was especially fun to be a part of with the outfits and all the themed things they brought to the game.
I learn more about the game of baseball each time I go. Last night they had two plays that popped up during the game that were especially interesting…a Balk and a catch that they had to stop the game to evaluate whether the outfielder trapped the ball or not. It was not a trapped catch. It was an amazing catch that got the Reds out.
All in all, I thought of the evening was awesome!“
81 Dates 