What I really misunderstood was the demand a Brian Wilson gnome would bring.  Now, I should have been tipped off when, pre-season, the only tickets I could get for the game were way up in the third deck behind left field — not exactly prime seats.  But this morning, knowing that the gates opened at 11 AM, I figured that leaving my apartment at 10:45 would be no problem.

Here’s the thing: my apartment is only a few blocks from AT&T Park.  To get to the end of the line that had formed, I had to go the opposite direction of the park from my apartment to just under the Bay Bridge.  Google maps tells me that it was a line of about 2/3 of a mile.  Some of the people I talked to had been there since 7 am.  Eek!  I was pretty sure I wasn’t getting a gnome.

But I was wrong!  After getting to the end of the line, it shortly started moving forward.  I kept waiting for a message to get passed back that they were out of gnomes… but none ever came, and when I got to the ticket gate, the agent handed me my very own box of gnome.  Would you like one?  They’re going for $60-$75 on Ebay.

Oh, and then there was a game.  It was a pretty exciting game and I decided (again) that I am an American League gal at heart and rooted for the A’s.  Which was good, because the A’s won and I was wearing a Kurt Suzuki jersey.

This past Monday, I saw him in his new uniform and new number (3, for Harmon Killebrew) when the Rockies came to San Francisco to play the Giants.  While Cuddyer went 0 for 4 on the night (just missing a grand slam in the third by about 10 feet), the game itself was well worth the price of admission.

Scoreless for three innings, the Rockies struck first with a solo shot by Wilin Rosario to lead off the top of the fourth.  The Giants struck back in the bottom of the 6th went Gregor Blanco went yard to right.  The scored stayed tied at one until the bottom of the 8th when Blanco singled followed by an odd “Sac, E-2″ by Joaquin Arias to put runners on first and third.  After Melky (not Miguel) Cabrera sac flied to left to score Blanco, fan favorite Buster Posey singled to center to score Arias, giving the Giants both the lead and insurance run that made fruitless the Rockies run in the bottom of the 9th.

I don’t think I’ve hidden the fact that Justin Verlander is my favorite player outside of the Twins.  He’s just so consistently dominating — he’ll hit 100 MPH in the 8th or 9th inning like it’s no big deal.  So when I noted that he was going to be pitching against the A’s, I e-mailed my friend Suzanne and invited her to join me at the game.  (And even if she had said no, I’d have gone anyway.)

Verlander didn’t disappoint even my exceedingly high expectations.  The A’s didn’t get a hit until the 4th inning.  They got a second hit in the 5th, which happened to be a solo homerun by Seth Smith, but other than that, Verlander was lights out for 7 innings.  (And that homerun didn’t hurt as the Tigers had already scored 2 runs, but I didn’t go to watch the Tigers offense.  Especially since my former second favorite Tiger, Brandon Inge, is now an A.)

When he didn’t come out for the 8th, I was a little confused, because normally he doesn’t let things like pitch counts get in his way — it turns out he had a callous on his hand that had cracked open and started bleeding during the 7th and the trainer decided he should be done.  I will note that the 7th inning was the only inning he didn’t get a strikeout… probably the bleeding thumb.

This season I’ve been trying to pick 10 or so diverse pictures to illustrate whichever game I was at.  In honor of Justin Verlander, this time I picked 13 pictures of JV’s delivery, taken with burst mode, so you can watch him pitch in slow motion over and over again.

But it was a gorgeous day for baseball and my view of the game couldn’t be beat.  Afterwards, I went up to the upper deck and saw Mt. Rainier, which was in full view for the first time all weekend.  Seattle — it’s a lovely town.  If only the Twins had decided to play a bit better, the weekend would have been perfect.

Amittai also got me to do a thing I never do, which is leave my seat during the game.  We went and walked around the upper deck to see the views of the Seattle skyline — it wasn’t clear enough to see Rainier, but the sunset just past the Space Needle was nice.

And for those who might be curious, Amittai and my mother got along just fine.

Given the week they’ve had (i.e. they were no hit in their last game and hadn’t scored a run since Monday), I’m extra excited at having attended a win tonight. I got up this morning and flew to Seattle where my mother was already waiting for me — after having herself quite the adventure last night. (My mom is, uh, not a seasoned traveler. But she managed not to go to the hospital, so that’s something.) We headed out to the game early to check out some batting practice and get out of the rain.

That’s right, we went to the game to get out of the rain — because Safeco Field has a retractable roof. And actually, as far as ballpark roofs go, this was by far the best one I’ve ever seen, because it’s only a roof and there are no high walls. It doesn’t seal up the ballpark and the fresh air still comes in from outside.  (By the middle of the game, I might have been a little bit wishing that the air was less freezing fresh.)  Two thumbs up from me — plus the oyster po’boy was pretty delicious.

And as an added bonus, we were treated to a pre-game concert by Mike McCready, lead guitarist of Pearl Jam, who played the national anthem Jimi Hendrix style… and I recorded it for the Internet to enjoy, missing the first phrase:

And then there was the very excellent  game that The Twins Won!!  In particular, the 7th inning when they scored three runs on a Parmelee double, two walks, a fielding error, a fielder’s choice, and a Joe Mauer single.  It wasn’t exactly an offensive juggernaut, but it got the job done as Carl Pavano and the Bullpen (new band playing covers at the local bar?) held the Mariners to only two runs.  Matt Capps even came and pitched a 1-2-3 9th inning with two strikeouts.  It’s a Star Wars Day miracle!  (May the fourth be with you…)  Maybe they can do it again tomorrow when I attend a game with my mother and Amittai?

While Jo was less than pleased with the outcome, I was secretly enjoying watching the local boys do good.  After all the Twins games I’ve been watching lately, it was fun to finally cheer for a winner.  (The Twins actually managed to win yesterday, but I was too busy watching the Giants to watch that one.  I did have the radio streaming on my phone before the Giants game started.  Smartphones are magical that way.)

One of the advantages of the night tour is that they open areas of the prison that aren’t open to the day tour folks, like the hospital upstairs.  There you can see the room where Robert “Bird Man of Alcatraz” Stroud spent 11 months.  (Fun fact: He didn’t have birds at Alcatraz, only at his previous stint at Leavenworth.)  It sounds like if you take on of the day tours, you spend more time exploring the island itself as less of the prison is open.  While checking out all of the birds that roost on Alcatraz Island might be fun (they roost there because there are no predators), if I had been on a day tour, I would have missed the other highlight of the night tour: the demonstration of the prison cell doors.  I took some video, but unless you have a good subwoofer hooked up to your computer, you’re probably not going to get the thunderous vibrations that rumble through every time the doors are opened and closed.  Alcatraz was probably not a good place for prisoners with PTSD.

Of course, everyone knows that Alcatraz was a prison and then became a National Park.  What I was surprised to learn (and quite frankly, disappointed in myself that I didn’t already know) was that from November of 1969 to June of 1971, Alcatraz was occupied by a pan-tribal group of American Indians as a protest against the proposed Termination Act, which would give the US government the power to dissolve reservations and relocate tribal members across the US.  Nixon, dealing with the fallout of Kent State and other protests of the time, decided to let them stay.  For nearly two years, they lived on the island, receiving food and supplies from donors.  Some of their graffiti is still visible, which you can see in one of my pictures below.  After an unknown arsonist burned down a number of the buildings, including the warden’s house, things started to become unstable and the occupation ended soon after.  But the Termination Act was dropped and the occupation is seen as one of the first pan-tribal movements of the 70s which led to a number of improved laws for Native Americans.

Much like last week, the home team lost to a team of seafarers, but this time it was Pirates instead of Mariners.  But the weather was nicer and there’s no denying that it’s just more fun to be at a full stadium with that gorgeous open outfield showing off the sky and the bay than in a mostly empty bowl in Oakland.  On the other hand, no player ever delivers pizza to the AT&T bleachers.

Today I sat (pizza-less) in those bleachers and found myself talking to a couple of fans who were fascinated by my scorebook.  They’d never seen anyone keep score before and they wanted to know how it worked, what the rules were, and why shortstop is 6 and third base is 5 when they don’t play in that order around the infield.  Also, when the Pirates scored their 3rd and 4th runs, they asked if I could just leave that out of the record and make it official… tempting, but no.  Their four year old also seemed interested… for about 10 seconds and then he just wanted a sno cone.  And then he wanted a nap, so he slept on his mom’s lap.  Nothing cuter than a kid with rainbow colored sticky stuff all over his face and hands, wearing a mini Buster Posey jersey, curled up in a ball.

Sitting behind me was a pair of couples on a double date… and I’ve discovered my new pet peeve: guys who try to explain the rules of baseball to their dates and get the rules wrong.  (The runner didn’t take off even though it was a fly ball to the outfielder because of “The Sac Fly Rule” — he took off because there were two outs.  He would have had to tag on a fly ball.)  What’s worse, when the guys left to go get beer, the women suddenly started talking about the game like they’d been watching for years, which I suspect they have.  They probably didn’t need their dates to explain to them that “bases loaded” means “the Giants have a runner on every base.”  And yet, they seemed pretty grateful when that happened.

The game itself was owned by the Pirates pretty early on when Garrett Jones launched a homer to right in the top of the 2nd.  They scored another run later in the inning on a series of singles, and never really looked back.  The Giants tried to squander a Brandon Belt lead-off double in the fifth, but two ground outs later and Belt was crossing home plate as the ump was calling the second out of the inning.  They were more successful squandering Angel Pagan’s lead-off triple in the 8th.  Once that happened, the stadium started to thin out and sure enough, there was no rally in the 9th.

Pictures and such in the slideshow…

And why are A’s tickets so cheap?  Well, because they tend to trade away players once they start to get expensive (see awesome jersey for Player To Be Named Later I spotted while leaving the game) and because the team’s not that good.  Which they mostly proved by going down 7-0 after the top of the 4th inning.

But then, a funny thing happened… those scrappy little Moneyball players started to crawl their way back.  First with a manufactured sac fly run in the bottom of the 4th and then a solo shot from Jemile Weeks in the bottom of the 5th.  (Weeks is really fun to watch by the way… some big pocketed team will probably snatch him up in a few years, sadly.)  Then they scored two in the 6th off a Kurt Suzuki double that nearly cleared the wall in left and got every one cheering, but they were still down 8-4.  In the 7th Yoenis Cespedes launched a three run bomb to deep center to bring the A’s within one and the crowd — all half-dozen or so that were left — went nuts.  I briefly thought about how amazing it would be if the A’s could actually come back and win…

… but they didn’t.  Of course they didn’t.  The only remaining highlight after the Cespedes homerun was the bunch of balloons that first floated out of the stadium at the end of the 7th and then apparently lost buoyancy as they came back into view in the 9th.  They floated around awhile, nearly landing in center field prompting an usher to run out and jump in the air manically trying to grab them.  Eventually they floated over to the left field seats where another usher retrieved them.  And so ended the balloon drama… and more or less the game.