A Playoff Game in Oakland

I’d been to a game in “o.co” or whatever that monstrosity is called. I’d gotten a sunburn on a free ticket given to me because I spent money (yeah, real money) on a Warped Tour ticket, and I remembered the vast expanses of concrete, the Shea-like feel of a 1970’s-era bunker. I remembered too much sun, bad beer and baseball that felt a mile away from my seat even while my neighbor felt like he was in my lap. I remembered understanding why someone might want a new stadium if this was their stadium.

But fellow FanGraphs writer Wendy Thurm got tickets and couldn’t make every game, so I ponied up and took my Giants-fan father, who said, sure, but only if it doesn’t rain. They’re a fun story, he said. They’ll be excited, they haven’t been there in a while.

Excited. That was a word for it.

You might say that the stadium, that day, was not full of people following our directives for the proper attendance of a baseball game. Boisterous was a good word.

We got to the bar first — my vegetarian father wanted something other than nachos, and he found it… in pizza. I was looking for better beer than Budweiser, and I found it… in Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

But while we were there, the Giants’ game three was headed to extra innings. Coming from New York most recently, I expected a mixture of shouts — Boos for the Giants and Yays for Coco Crisp, who had just led off the game with a single. I was wrong! The crowd in that bar roared at every moment in each game, and those colors bled for a day. I’ve never seen a Met fan congratulate a Yankee fan in Shea or in Citi, so even if there is a bit of a ‘little brother’ complex — a phenomenon pointed out to me by Hannah Ehrlich from River Avenue Blues in which the less successful team in a market hates on the more successful team — it can’t run as deep in the Bay Area as it does in the Tri State.

Leaving some new friends behind after a full inning that saw Crisp score and the Giants finally win a postseason game in 2012, we made our way to our seats. Over the next few innings, we were treated to an overzealous whistle in the mouth of the Dave Henderson jersey wearer and the comedic arm-waiving of the autographed (!) Jerry Blevins as they goaded us into the Bernie dance and more, louder yelling. Brett Anderson just kept putting up zeroes.

I apologize for the picture, which came from the television later that night, but this guy was also doing the Bernie with the co-co ‘wig’ on nearby.

Mr. T walked by! Well, turns out he was a pizza vendor, but he wasn’t the real thing anyway (too little gray to make THAT play, as Clyde Frazier would say) and hey, even the pizza vendors were having fun. As we were yelling at Mr. T, two people burning incense sat down next to us. Well, ‘sat,’ they really just danced next to us. My father, a Grateful Dead ‘head,’ smiled at them like it was something familiar. They offered the incense around as a blessing and did what looked like a rain dance for two innings. As the couple danced away, my father muttered something about, ‘see they don’t come out to games enough to know what it’s like at a baseball game.’ I welcomed our more normal neighbors back.

Sean Doolittle struck out the side. It felt like every human being everywhere was screaming. I couldn’t even hear the final inning of that Athletics victory.

On the way out, I realized it was impossible to meet up with Hannah, given the hours of travel in front of me and the throngs pushing my father and I on to the train platform. She responded with a picture:

Magic can happen anywhere.