i only slept 15 minutes last night/this morning, due to trying to jam stuff onto here. i've had many experiences of wanting to write stuff later and then watching it ever-fade into the past, so a little sleep deprivation here and there really isn't that big of a deal in the longer term.
the flight into OAK was a touch beyond as turbulent as you want to endure. more than one air sickness bag made its way past me when the seat belt light was turned off.
the event of the day, in fact the reason i came back home at all, was to see the san jose giants play baseball. before there was such thing as AYCJ i wanted to see the giants play in the CA playoffs, once i had the passes i thought coming back to watch a single A game was approaching an ultimate form of decadence.
a little background is in order ...
the san jose giants are A baseball, and for all practical purposes the lowest level professional baseball in america. (there are lower levels that don't play full season -- teams like the aberdeen ironbirds -- but that stuff's so freakish that only number-crunching crumb eaters really worry about them.). in theory (and maybe even in fact), they are the first in a pecking order with the AA CT defenders being next, and the AAA fresno grizzlies being the end. from there you move up into the true big leagues and become a san francisco giant.
i'm sure there's some sort of remarkably arcane, complex (and probably minorly corrupt) way of moving from one league to another, but i'm equally sure i don't care.
i cut my teeth on minor league baseball. when i was a kid growing up in CO, the AAA denver bears gave free tickets to any kid in the denver area that got straight As. my brother and i always did so we'd always go to half a dozen games or so during the year. they played in the gigantic mile high stadium (set for the denver broncos), so when you went to watch, the stands were mostly empty. few enough people that both my brother and i got a ball over the years.
my biggest bitch with the giants is that they have the wrong name. having them called the "giants" when they're a feeder for another giants is just stupid ... especially when there are an infinite number of great possibilities to choose from. if you think about it from a large city point of view, san jose is the heart of the silicon valley ... so you could be the silicons, the wafers, the chips, the RAMs, the ROMs, the fabs ... anything like that. hell, if you wanted to riff on the giants you could be the tinys ... choosing "giants" is just dumb. (the best concept in minor league ball, by far, are the las vegas 51s -- that's right, name yourself after an area that the government refuses to acknowledge and make your official team logo be the head of a space alien.)
but here's the rub, i don't watch TV, which by default means i also don't follow sports. so you'd think that something like the SJ giants would be the furthest thing from my mind, but that's the very greatest thing about the SJ giants -- baseball is merely a backdrop for everything else. rather than get all erudite and snooty about it, let's just go to the game and get the full-on experience.
unfortunately i forgot to bring my camera along (i'd left it in my bag at home) so there are no pix today. i promise i'll include a ton in tomorrow's posting since i'll be fitting another game in then.
i hit the ground in OAK in late morning and almost immediately got TXT from special K ... the non sports hating parts of his family were going to the game and they were saving seats for us, but far more important was orchard supply hardware (OSH) had free tix for the game today. OSH are a heavy sponsor of the giants and will often have free tickets. what's great here is this is the play-off for the CA league championships ... try getting your major league world series play-off tickets for free.
the giants play in municipal stadium. a place seating about 5000 made in the 40's under the WPA acts. the stands have been constructed very precisely such that they're hotter than the tenth ring of hell during the day and can be, as my dad always put so succinctly, colder than a tree frog's butt at night.
i could rattle on and on about the giants, but just tag along as we go to a game.
my accomplice is a giant's fan as well so we wheeled over to OSH, picked up a pair of tix and headed to the stadium. our timing was so perfect that we entered just as the national anthem started.
this was definitely a tenth ring of hell day and i exchanged pleasantries with the K and his family. the bakersfield blaze were on the field with the giants ... it took about an inning and a half before i was paying full attention to the game.
for me one of the biggest attractions of the giants is what happens between the innings.
they have a "race-the-bases". today's was four little kids, a big teenager and gigante (pronounced spanish style hee-GANT-ay -- the insipid, and great, mascot). you race from first base to home plate trying to win a chevy's gift certificate (in chey's sombreros, of course). when they started, gigante immediately jumped on the teenager's back, guaranteeing a loss for him, as the rest of the kids tore around. gigante eventually jumped off and managed to throttle his pace to, as always, just coming in second.
at another point they had "grab for cash" where they bring out a person blind-folded, scatter money around them, and they have to pick up as much as they can in 30 seconds as the PA system blares the o'jays' "for the love of money." they had a woman do this today, which i always particularly like, but was disappointed when she didn't do the near-tradition of shoving the money down her blouse as she picked it up.
they had a dressing race where a mom type was racing a kid to put on an over-sized uniform -- pants, shirt, shoes and hat and race back to the starting line. of all things at the giants, this is the one most likely to hurt an audience member. put on a baggy pair of pants, turn around, start to run, face plant. unfortuantely, that didn't happen today. the kid won, but cheated, because he had slung the jersey over his shoulder instead of putting it on. aside from an extremely bad call at second base (the umpire was obstructed when trying to see a tag that was clear from our angle), this got the biggest boo from the crowd of the day.
the human tug of war pits two people against each other, trying to put rings around posts at opposing ends of a line. momentum and center of gravity are key here. today it was two 20-something guys. one in fairly good shape and the other a tad overweight and a bit shorter. sportsbetters would normally go with the heavy guy here, being a bit lower to the ground and holding a mass advantage, but mr. in-shape dropped to all-fours and scrambled to the post for his first ring, sending beefy down the field on his side. once you've got one ring, the other's a cinch (because the other guy has to return to the middle to get his second ring). the human tug of war never disappoints.
free sunflower seeds are thrown to the loudest section of the stadium (seven sections). sadly ours wasn't the loudest ... maybe because i was telling special K's wife not to lie to me (you know things are bad when bigg knasty [aka "jewnior K"] is the most reliable K on the block) ... still, as always, the fans were instructed to "eat, spit and be happy."
dance for your dinner had two kids trying to out dance each other for some turkey mike's (expensive, but fabulous) barbecue. both of them looked suspiciously like limberjacks. there'll probably never again be as great a moment in dance for your dinner, when one kid, who knew he was clearly losing, popped into a full-on robot.
smash for cash where baseball players attempt to break the headlights of a carpet van (re-painted from when it was a car dealership van) didn't happen today. "we haven't been able to start the van in the two week break following the end of season." (third loudest crowd boo of the day.) so instead they had the adobe hidden ball under a hat game ... you follow a ball on a screen as it is shell-gamed around on you. now remember, this is the silicon valley ... the people here are nothing if they aren't all a little aspergian (or off-spring of two apergers), so of course they can follow a ball under a hat for forever and a day. i would put the san jose audience up against any other stadium of people in the US in the adobe hidden ball under a hat game. i would.
shoot for ice tickets puts a kid with a hockey stick and three tennis balls against an evil goalie whose name is changed every game. this is special K's favorite part of the game. today the goalie was igor ivegotbadluckski which immediately sent special K foaming. "what! that's not a good name!" he wobbled a bit on his bench and then made a sound like a hurt animal. "oh, oh." as always, the kid got the first two shots blocked, gigante leaps on the goalie and the kid shoots the ball in to win. (the best ever was a three year old who was being explained to very slowly and gingerly how to play and when the announce put a ball down immediately slapshotted a 50 mph ball into the net before anyone had set up.)
in musical chairs there was a huge upset today. four people start off vying for three chairs that are removed one-by-one. i've been working on a theory that looks pretty damn accurate -- smallest person wins. today's mix was three adults and a kid, but the kid got aced out first round when he didn't go for the easy, open chair. so it was won by the second biggest. still i need to go back and really think my theory on this game through.
in the port-a-potty TP toss you have to throw rolls of toilet paper to gigante holding a small trash can in a portable toilet. if you can get one in the trash can, you win a stadium "tushie cushie." gigante's a good catch and is more than willing to lean far out of the toilet to make you a winner. throwing a roll of toilet paper is harder than you would think -- it get wildly unstable if it goes side over side -- so you need to treat it like an american football. the teenager today was a good throw -- nice big football spirals -- and made it easily on the second try. this is one of my least favorite events -- i find a port-a-potty on the field unsettling, but this may be more due to my bicycle ride across america than anything else.
the sheet metal workers' sing-along to neil diamond's "sweet caroline" wasn't nearly as lame as it usually is. someone was fairly drunk behind me and he would occasionally belt out additions, mostly acapella riffs on the instrumental breaks "DAH! DAH! DAH!" and the non-existent portions of the song ("good times never felt so good") where he adds "SO GOOD! SO GOOD ! SO GOOD!" a very welcome addition to an otherwise unbelievably bad part of the game. i became so enamored that i started conducting him over my back ... this provided nothing but encouragement. he can drink and yell behind me anytime.
that guy may have been drunk because the beer batter struck out. someone from the bottom of the opposing line-up is picked. if he strikes out, beer is half-price for 15 minutes. and that happened at first up (i was buying my first, and only, meal of the day at the time -- an italian hot link and a polish sausage). nothing (including victory) makes the giants fans happier, nor clears the seats more quickly than a beer batter strike out.
(he struck out later in the game as well. after the sixth inning if he strikes out he becomes the apple juice batter. that's the one that sends the kids packing.)
in the seventh inning stretch they sing god bless america along with kate smith. aside from the raw jingoistic overtones, what bugs me here is i think you're supposed to remove your hat (why? this isn't the national anthem and the sun is beating down out here on a whitey like me) and they cut out the penultimate line of the song. it's supposed to end:
god bless america, my home sweet home
god bless america, my home sweet home
but they cut a line. no. no no no no no.
if you buy a score card for the game, you get a bingo card as well. different numbers are associated with different plays (e.g. center fielder strikes out may be B-7), but my accomplice did a full analysis of this game some time ago and noticed that O-68 doesn't have an associated play (meaning if you have that number, you can never actually score it on your card) and O-66 has two plays (short stop steals a base or right fielder steals a base). sometimes cards get returned because of this (not mine, i don't play -- it seems too much like hard work). if you win the game you get a free night at chukchansi casino (some injun place that must be a fair drive from here -- it's still a damn sight better than the older prizes; winchester mystery house tix and bonfante gardens tix). my associate didn't win, perhaps drunk on too much BBQ.
the horse race is done beyond the outfield fence. an orange, white and black stick horse run from the adobe sign to the first championship flagpole. today was a shockingly slow race, with orange winning dispite a stumble immediately at the finish line. if you have a sticker of the color of the winning horse in your program, you win some damn thing, i'm not sure what. i've never seen a program with a sticker in it. (a friend of mine once rigged this horse race by paying off people behind the fence to win a bet.)
as far as the game goes, it was a good one today. giants won 1-0, even though they were out-hit 8-6. winner of the play off series will play for the CA league championship. the giants are having their winningest season in history, so i suspect that they'll win it all. not that anything in this paragraph matters. as i'm sure you've gotten by now, it's not the reason i go to the game.
i was flickering in-and-out of consciousness and after the game immediately crashed into six deep hours of sleep.
tomorrow i'll grab a ton of game pix and i'm walking with some other #AYCJ across the golden gate bridge. i strongly suspect there will be a delay on posting tomorrow. the timing between the game and the red-eye out is very close and once on the plane i'll have no 'net.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
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