YCS MLB Road Show: AT&T / SBC / Pac Bell Park

Some blogs bring you hard-hitting scoops. Some bring you in-depth analysis. Others, satire. But here at YCS, we bring you something better: recaps of relatively meaningless regular season baseball games ten days after they occurred.

So in continuing our YCS MLB Roadshow segment, I bring you the narrative account of the Giants game Paul and I attended during our recent pilgrimage to see that street in the opening of Full House, which sort of doubled as a vacation of San Francisco.


After a long day of stalking the mysterious blonde-haired woman who believed she was possessed by the ghost of her dead ancestor, Paul and I relaxed our nerves by taking in the opening game of the Battle of the Bay interleague matchup between the A's and Giants.

It was Friday the 13th, so we figured we'd see some crazy shit go down, like Dan Ortmeier sacrificing a dove on the field or Barry Zito pitching a shutout [rimshot]. It turns out, we would not be disappointed. (But you'll have to keep reading to find out how!)

The area around the park seemed pretty cool... city blocks, business establishments, streetlights, you know, stuff like that.


The crowd, as expected, was a mix of loyalties--about 65% Giants fans, 30% A's fans, 4.996% impartial, 0.002% out-of-towners posing as A's fans to look cool (me), and 0.002% Brewers fans unabashedly wearing the hat of their out-of-town team (Paul).

The inside of the stadium has a spacious concourse and smells exactly like my apartment--a blend of garlic, potatoes (both from the famous garlic fries that you hear out-of-town announcers rave about during the eighth inning of a blowout), gourmet coffee (another popular concession), and of course, beer.

Our seats were up in the 300 or "view" level, which I'd deride as code for "nosebleed" if not for the fact that the view was--as the hollowest stereotypes of San Franciscans say--groovy, man.


We were lucky enough to be there on "'80s Night," so we were treated to throwback orange Giants uniforms, which incidentally, were only worn during three years of the '80s and also three years of the '70s (not the only era-bending that the promotion would include). Also as part of the promotion (I think), we were treated to another surprise--Matt Williams in the hoooousse! (...even though he only played three years of the '80s).


One of the things we noticed early on was that there are no beer vendors in the stands at AT&T Park (which was no big loss considering the $7.50 price tag). Instead, they have coffee vendors who dispense their fare from a giant thermos they wear on their backs. That's California for ya--always different!


Other than the thrill of Bengie Molina hitting cleanup, the first inning was slow and uneventful, thanks to spotty control from starters Zito and Greg Smith. The second was pretty much the same until the first awesome, wacky, Friday the 13th-like thing I'd never before seen live at an MLB game: a straight steal of home, courtesy the aging but spry Omar Vizquel.




In the third inning, Barry Zito heard his first (but not last) boos while he was in the midst of a three-run A's rally. He lasted 5.2 shitty innings before being pulled for the fantastically-named Vinnie Chulk.

Another part of the '80s promotion (I know this has become total incoherent sprawling) was a ridiculous scoreboard graphic thing where the Giants hitters' pictures were photoshopped into posters of popular '80s movies. Rich Aurillia's movie was Turner and Hooch. I only bring it up because I noted each player's movie on my scorecard (appended) and didn't want anyone to be confused.

Say, here's a question: What was your favorite 1980s fashion? Think of an answer, and keep it to yourself. Now, I'll give you three choices for your answer. They're the same three choices that the Giants Scoreboard Network people offered when they posed this question to a fan and some of the Giants players for one of those recorded between-inning segments. Was your answer...

a) stone-washed jeans
b) rhinestone gloves, or
c) bell-bottoms

If your answer was c), congratulations! You're retarded! Just like the goof in the Giants marketing department who came up with this question. I quote the bell-bottoms Wikipedia page: "When the disco backlash started in 1979, bell bottoms started to go out of fashion along with leisure suits and other clothes that had become associated with disco." Personally, my favorite '80s fashion was the stovepipe hat.

Ok, so back to the game. Uh... pitches were thrown; balls were batted; some runs were scored, I think. It was an average game at best. But we stuck around for the end, and boy, did it pay off. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, we saw zany Friday the 13th event No. 2:

Sprinklers!!!

Yeah, that was pretty sweet.

Ok, so I'm probably forgetting something and could've definitely constructed this post better, but too bad. I've got places to be. In conclusion, I got really dizzy and couldn't save the mysterious blonde woman who jumped from the bell tower and plummeted to her death. The End.

Here are the game totals: