Okay, so I fudged the date on this entry to make it look like I wrote it the day of the game when I actually waited nearly a month. It’s a lie, it’s a deception – you’ll get over it.
This was the first of my California ballgames. As luck would have it, SBC Park is only a short walk from Breath’s apartment. We got up and headed over to meet Quinn and Dale in front of the Willie Mays statue that guards the stadium. Since they were late and I had their tickets, Breath and I had to settle for being entertained by the Giant’s cheerleaders who were selling raffle tickets to raise money for Aids awareness outside the gate. These may possibly have been the first baseball cheerleaders I have ever encountered.
Once our compatriots showed up, we entered the stadium and headed up to our seats… and up… and up. We were on the third deck on the first base side, in the second to back row – easily the highest up I have ever watched a ballgame. At first I was nervous about the seats, but the turned out to be pretty good seats for viewing the entire field, albeit from a distance. As an added bonus, because we were so high up, we had a good view of McCovey cove and all the boats waiting for splashdowns. The only thing we didn’t have a good view of was the scoreboard in right field.
The game started and, as usual, I kept score. I never got around to replacing my lost scorebook, so I was forced to buy a program. Much to my delight, the Giants scorecard had a little more substance to it than the graph paper they give you at Fenway. I did have a small problem scoring one play in the space allotted. In the top of the third, Grady Sizemore singled to right center. After Coco Crisp (yes, that really is his name) flied out to right, Sizemore attempted to steal second, but was caught in a hot box. I scored it 1-3-4-1-4-3, which spilled over to the neighboring box.
The rest of the game wasn’t all that exciting — the Indians scored first in the top of the third and followed it with a four run fourth, highlighted by Casey Blake’s three run homerun. The Giants showed a little life in the 6th and 7th innings, but it was too little too late and the Indians walked away the victors.