Day at the Ballpark

AT&T Park Home of the San Francisco Giants. They were playing the San Diego Padres in a race to get into the playoffs. I ordered the tickets on Stubhub.com and got the seats I wanted. The outfield section in rightfield is only seven rows deep and right behind that is McCovey Bay where kayakers wait with headphones, have pizzas delivered and get positioning in hopes that Barry Bonds can make a ball splash en route to catching Hank Aaron for the career home run record. At the time he was 24 away.

Of course thing dont go as smooth as you plan. Jill asked me if I had the tickets as we were leaving the house for the trip I said yep showed them to her and we were out the door. Just to make sure she asks if I had given her the tickets(to the game and Alcatraz) when we left I was like no I have them in my bag. WRONG. The plane takes off. I am upset with myself I had put them down and left them on the coffee table. Alcatraz was easy they just reprinted our tickets. The baseball game was different. First I had to call and get our land lord to go in get the tickets. She left them between the doors of our place then we had a friend that Jill works with stop by get them and Fed Ex it to the hotel we would be checking into on Sat. sounds easy enough but I was stressing until I saw them in the package.

So the game was at 1:00 P so our plan was to ride down to the park get a bite to eat and a beer at a nearby sports bar. When we arrive its about 11. There is no one around but I still didnt think anything. We go into an Irish pub and start watching the NFL which games start at 10 in the morning. The owner of the bar is Irish and really nice. We start talking and find out that the game got moved to 5 so it could be on ESPN( even though he didnt know that) since it was two playoff teams fighting for position.

So we just went exploring for the day. Shopped, ate, and rode the trolley. Trolley drivers are the best tour guides when looking for local places. Everyone else always pointed us to spots that we werent interested in.

The next time we get down to the park it is filled with people. Thats more like it. We walk in to the park and actually have to go up to get to field level. I was amazed at what I saw. High Def Plasma screens everywhere in the concourse showing the game. If you havent seen a sporting event in high def its like you are there except brighter. Then we walk through the concourse with a multitude of smells hitting our noses. We are used to Milwaukee: Beer, brats, beer. They have sushi and wine, garlic fries, spaghetti, seafood, clam chowder, and beer and brats. The field looks tiny with the small amount of seats in the outfield. It made for a great viewing of the game and quite an experience. Even if Bonds didnt hit the ball to me. Final score SD 10 SF 2