Let this be a lesson to all of you. A teachable moment, as they say in the corporate world, or at least as they used to say in the corporate world. Or in the sub-corporate world. An old boss once said it to me anyway, after I threatened to shove a Big Mike’s submarine sandwich down a customer’s throat.
At any rate, do you see how much good can be accomplished in this mean, mean world with one simple apology? One small gesture can make all the difference between a lifetime of festering resentment and inexplicably horrendous play on the baseball field, and, well…a three-game winning streak and what I guess I’ll go ahead and call a sort of pervasive atmosphere of good will. I won’t yet go so far as to call it a Love-Fest. Let’s give it another week before we get carried away.
I don’t ask for much from any of the miserable wretches who visit this site –there are, I think, something like thirty-seven or thirty-eight of you a day– but in this instance I’m going to have to demand a little bit of credit where credit is clearly due.
So, come on everybody, get in line. It’s Leo Buscaglia time. Zellar needs some hugs.
While I bask in the many much deserved bouquets of thanks, appreciation, and, I’ve no doubt, a few disturbingly obsessive missives that have hero worshiper and stalker written all over them, I’m going to run some dispatches from Patrick Donnelly, a damn fine fellow and writer who covers the Twins from time to time. Patrick’s out on the road at the moment, taking in some West Coast games, and he’s been –and hopefully will continue to be– kind enough to check in for however long his money and patience holds out. His first stop was in San Francisco, the city of broad shoulders, hog butcher to the world, the toddlin’ town, the city that never sleeps, the mistake by the lake, etc.
SBC Park, San Francisco
July 18, 2005It’s been repeated so many times that it could be apocryphal, but if Mark Twain didn’t say that thing about how the coldest winter he ever spent was summer in San Francisco, he damn well should have.
I’m on the first leg of my five-games-in-five-days journey through California. For reasons I don’t care to get into, the trip started in Las Vegas. Three days, temps topping out in the range of 115 freakin’ degrees, and though it’s a dry heat, so is a kiln. The weekend in San Francisco was a welcome change — an almost autumnal chill, fog so thick we couldn’t see the Golden Gate Bridge as we walked across it, and a sourdough tang in the air.
I boarded the Muni at the Moscone Civic Center station and headed to SBC Park (a.k.a. The Park Formerly Known As Pac Bell, or The House That Barry Balco Built) for the Giants’ post-All-Star Break home opener against the Atlanta Braves. The hometown nine had just come within an eyelash of sweeping four from the hated Dodgers at Chavez Ravine and were looking to scratch their way into the NL West race, while the Braves were welcoming Chipper Jones back into the lineup after another extended stay on the disabled list.
You know how every park has its own unique aroma that triggers a flood of memories from every game you’ve seen there? The old Met always smelled of cigar smoke and stale beer (but in a good way) and took me back to my first big-league ballgame, where I saw my hero Rod Carew, and marveled at Oscar Gamble’s afro. The Metrodome’s bouquet of boiled meat products and plastic grass always reminds me of the glory days of the Dan Mastellar Era.
Well, in San Francisco, garlic is one of the four major food groups (along with bread, chowder and chocolate), and SBC Park is all about the garlic smell. Garlic fries. Garlic chicken sandwiches. Garlic beer (probably — if not, I’m sure they’re working on it). I can’t wait to find out what memories that smell will trigger the next time I see a game here.
The buzz that filled SBC was entirely foreign to me, having been raised on Domeball. The Giants are six years into their new home, twelve games under .500 and in the neighborhood of ten games behind the first-place Padres, yet some 42,000 fans ventured down to McCovey Cove on a damp, gloomy Monday night. Contrast that with the 20,308 the Twins drew for a game with wild-card implications against the Baltimore Orioles on the same night. Still think a new park wouldn’t be a draw in Minneapolis?
The fans stayed engaged throughout the game, despite seeing the Braves pull ahead 3-0 in the first inning on back-to-back homers by Andruw Jones and Chipper Jones. The Giants didn’t scratch out a run until the sixth inning and lost 6-1, and decided to make me feel right at home, stranding eight runners in the first four innings and grounding into a double play with the bases loaded.
But that was just about the only similarity to baseball, Metrodome style, that I saw on Monday. Obviously a new park will have nicer amenities, but the perks at SBC are flat-out ridiculous. I knew I wasn’t in Kansas City anymore as I grabbed a Guinness (Guinness!) on tap (on tap!) and settled into my seat down the third-base line.
Talk about disorienting. I was twenty rows up, even with the bullpen mound, and my seat actually faced the center of the diamond. Instead of staring out toward center field or cranking my back to see home plate, I stared right at the pitcher. What a concept.
Andruw Jones hit his second two-run shot of the night in the third inning, doinking it off the foul pole just to my left, to put the Braves ahead 5-0, but nothing seemed to dampen the spirits of the Giants fans. I strolled over to the left-field corner, near the massive Coke bottle and oversized mitt sculpture, where the packed bleachers hummed with energy.
Every ballpark has its share of wacky fans, including the screaming twenty-something guy lubed up with liquid courage making a spectacle of himself. (Ah, memories.) But instead of trying to start the wave, the wacky SBC guy was pointing out Braves fans and trying to get the crowd to turn on them. When the kid wasn’t getting the desired result, he finally screamed out, “Hey! That guy, over there! He’s a Republican!”
He then turned to his buddy and said, “Here in California, that’s all they’ll respond to.”
I wandered past Orlando’s BBQ, named for former Giants star Orlando Cepeda, where the Baby Bull Tri-Tip Sandwich and Cha-Cha Bowl have become legend, but I knew I had to dine at the Stinking Rose concession stand, where you can get authentic, garlic-laced cuisine from the legendary North Beach restaurant. I inhaled a meatball sandwich that would make Steve Lombardozzi weep like Batgirl meeting Torii Hunter [editor’s note: for the record, it has been documented that Batgirl held up admirably in the presence of Torii Hunter. No tears were witnessed, none, we feel certain, were shed, at least by anyone other than bench coach Steve Liddle, who wept copiously in the presence of BG]. I knew I wouldn’t get a better meal in The City for the seven bucks I’d just spent.
The beverage selection at SBC is pretty phenomenal. You’ve got your standard macrobrews, your boutique beers, your Anchor Steam (the real San Francisco treat), your Guinness and Harp (did I mention they’re on tap?), and amazingly enough, there’s even a PBR kiosk, where you can fight through a crowd of aging hipsters in trucker caps to pay eight bucks for a Midwestern classic. Of course, there’s an array of wine selections for the effete liberals, and don’t get me started on Tully’s Coffee, where the lattes flowed like water. Fancy an Irish Coffee from the Buena Vista, where the drink was invented? They’ve got a stand at SBC too.
And –get this– they serve popcorn that’s actually popped before your very eyes, not hauled up from the bowels of the stadium in a body bag, fresh as Chris Berman’s home run derby schtick. What a revelation.
The fans roared at the cable car races on the scoreboard between innings, then sang along with “Take Me Out To The Ballgame,” played on an actual ballpark organ, and not followed by some faux patriotic right-wing anthem –go figure.
The views were breathtaking from everywhere in the park, especially the right-field pavilion overlooking McCovey Cove, where the winds whipped up in the late innings and dropped the temps easily into the low fifties. I capped the night with a trip to the souvenir stand, where sixteen bucks got me the fastest-selling item of the evening –a Giants stocking cap.
Somewhere, Mark Twain is smiling.
Next up: Fresno
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