I have a friend in San Francisco who is a Giants fan. We work together professionally quite often, but our phone calls, office to office, usually start with baseball talk. After listening to him go on about how great Pac Bell Park is, I had to take in at least one game this season. So early in the summer I made plans for a business trip to the city by the bay (see also my earlier entry about the Oakland versus Yankees games I saw while there).

Sadly, my friend had to leave town for a business trip of his own before the date of our game, so corwin and I went to the park by ourselves, and gave the extra ticket to an old childhood friend of corwin's named Scliff.

Although I had planned for the game far in advance, I didn't buy our tickets as soon as I would have liked to. I was buying a lot of tickets at one point this summer, for games in Baltimore, New York, Seattle, and yes, Oakland. But in the shuffle I forgot to consummate the final transaction on the Giants tickets until the week before the game. Oops. On the phone to the ticket agent, I asked him what he had available. He rattled off the section number and row. When I asked where the seats were he replied "Third base side, up higher than God."

As is our custom, corwin and I packed up our bags and headed for the park good and early--around four in the afternoon. We took public transit, a train system called MUNI, and found ourselves in a crowded trolley filled with commuters, though as the car crept closer to the park, more people with Giants hats and jerseys joined us.

Oakland is decidely low rent, a football stadium for rowdy fans, a rec room where you slouch with your shirt untucked, whoop it up, and don't worry about spilling your beer. Pac Bell Park, on the other hand, is the parlor where the aristocrats (or, well, yuppies) sip micro brews in their casual Friday chinos.

Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a little. Pac Bell's still a ballpark, and I didn't feel at all self-conscious about dropping peanut shells or spitting sunflower seeds there. I don't want you to think that it's so squeaky clean that it's no fun. But the contrast is definitely there. (The A's, in fact, play up the difference. One of their television commercials features an elderly looking gardener clipping some grass by hand with a pair of scissors. The caption reads" San Francisco." The camera pulls back and you see he's in the Pac Bell outfield, Clip clip clip. Then from nowhere, a baseball lands on the grass next to him. He ignores it. Then another one. He looks around and realizes there's no one there hitting--and the balls are flying in from the wrong direction! Cut to a new scene, caption "Oakland." And there's Jason Giambi, sweaty and disheveled as always, taking batting practice--hitting the balls all the way over the bay.)

If I may be allowed to interject, just on the subject of low rent versus pristine--Yankee Stadium manages to be the most magnificent sports building in the United States by virtue of its history and the intensity of its fans, and it definitely shares more in common with the Oakland Coliseum and its rowdy inhabitants, than it does with the sparkling spic and span bells-and-whistles stadia like Pac Bell Park, Camden Yards, and Safeco Field.

That said, it's still a hell of a lot of fun to attend games at the beautiful new parks. But I wouldn't trade Yankee Stadium for any of them. But well, it's no secret that I'm biased.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled report about Pac Bell and the Giants. Pac Bell is COOL. I mean, neato, nifty, really fun. We got off the train and crossed the street to the nearest entrance. Up and up concrete ramps (Yeah ramps! I still don't understand the stadiums that force you to climb STAIRS when you're not the seats yet...) and eventually we reached the main promenade level.

One of the first things we saw there was a Palm Pilot beaming station (click to see a photo of it)--yes, you can get that day's scorecard, lineups, stats, a whole bunch of stuff beamed into your handheld PDA. corwin took advantage of the opportunity and loaded his Palm, and then we went to explore the food options.

Hmm. I could make an anti-commercialism comment here, when describing how the Giants decided to remind their fans of their glorious history and Giants greats like Willie Mays and John McGraw. I mean, naming concession stands after them? "Say Hey Sausage Specialties"? "John McGraw's Derby Grill"? But, really, I thought it was kinda neat. For the purists, there was also a very nice statue of Wille Mays outside at the main entrance, which I photographed after the game. Most of the other stands just had descriptive, non-baseball names. It was telling that at that hour the only stand that had a line (and it was a long line) was Gilroy Garlic Fries. Yummmmm....

We didn't want to eat just yet, so we wandered about, poked into the souvenir shop, and then worked our way beyond right field, where you can look right over the wall into "McCovey Cove"--the stretch of water where divers and small boats fight for every home run ball that flies out there. As we stood looking over the wall I said to corwin, "And that's right where Bonds is going to hit one for us tonight!" Along the walkway there was a souvenir penny-flattening machine, which corwin paused to use.

It was after 5pm now and lots of people were doing exactly what we were, walking along the promenade and looking at stuff. Batting practice was going on, but it was less compelling than the attractions of the outfield, like the world's largest baseball glove! No, it's not leather, but it looks like it, even when you're standing next to it. How about the authentic San Francisco cable car? They pick some lucky fans every game to sit in it, and they have to ring the bell every time the Giants get a hit or something like that. Check out the wording on the trolley by clicking here...

Then there's the giant (Giant?) Coke bottle. Some of my friends have sneered at it, like it's somehow bad to have a huge product placement in a ballpark. Uh, hello? Guys? Would you rather have a massive billboard that says "Coke" on it, or would it be kinda cool to have a modern industrial sculpture? I vote for sculpture! (Here's the Coke bottle with the Bay Bridge in the background. Notice the bubbles coming out the open mouth...)

Well, get this, it's not just a sculpture which looks great on Sportscenter. It's got SLIDES in it. You know, big metal playground type slides inside! You climb up one of four ladders and go down one of four slides that either corkscrew or undulate. Of COURSE we did it.

At the bottom of the slide they had a tv showing another major league game that was going on. It was small tv so I asked the guy watching it who was playing. It was the Cubs and somebody (I forget who). "Go Cubs!" I said, still quite happy about how they were in first place and playing great. (The Cubs are my NL underdog team.) The guy was a Cubs fan, too, it turns out, but not wearing a cap. "Hey, that's Joe Girardi," I said, as Girardi stepped to the plate. "Man, I love him." The guy agreed. "Such a class act, and he comes through in the clutch, and what he's done with the pitchers... that's why their winning so much." I had to ask him, then: "So you think Hundley was a mistake? I was crushed when I saw they'd signed him and Joe G. wasn't going to play that much." The guy pshawed. "Hundley's not half the catcher Joe is, and he's been hurt most of the season. Fortunately!" Then we watched Joe get a base hit with men in scoring position. "This is some park, isn't it?" I said to the guy as we prepared to move on. "It's my first time here," he told me. "Just in town on business, but I love baseball, I had to see it." "Same here!" We shook hands. Go Cubs.

Near the Coke bottle was a woman hawking newspapers, like something out of the old days. In fact, it's a pretty old time newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle PM Edition--yeah, a late afternoon version to read on the way home from work. Lots of newspapers used to do it, but then again, in the old days, cities had four and five daily newspapers. Now if you've got two dailies, you're lucky, and the afternoon edition is mostly a thing of history. But at Pac Bell you could get not only a newspaper for twenty five cents, you also got a SF Giants pencil, scoresheet and a plastic bag to carry it all in. Now that's what I call a bargain--the pencil ALONE was worth the two bits. Of course I bought one--where else are you going to find a cheaper souvenir? (Well, except for the free ones, like foul balls, but they are much harder to get).

We came to a Three Pitches stand. This one didn't actually have a radar gun, and it was free, just step up, and see if you can throw three strikes. Why not? Man, I can't throw for squat if I don't warm up my arm. corwin threw pretty good though.

Next on the tour of outfield attractions was a mini-Pac Bell Park, where Giants employees had organized toddlers and young children into some kind of Nerf baseball game. There was even a DiamondVision-style screen for the proud parents to watch their progeny on.

At the picnic area, the winners of a local educational reading contest and literacy fundraiser were being entertained by Rich Aurilia, the Giants' shortstop. We was signing autographs and taking photos with people. Hmm, that food looks really good...

We came then to a Caribbean food stand, offering a big bowl of jerk chicken, vegetables, and spicy rice for an exhorbitant price, but you know, not any more exhorbitant than you normally expect ballpark food to be. So we stopped and got some and may I say, before I forget, it was quite YUMMY. I may not want Yankee Stadium to be overrun with yuppies, but I'd vote for putting in a stand like that. Mm mmm.

We took the food up to our seats, and I do mean up, up, up. We were, unfortunately, high enough up to have the wind at our backs, and as the sun set, the usual San Francisco chill settled in. Now, everyone says that the old place, Candlestick Park, was freezing cold, and too foggy, and so on. But let me tell you, Pac Bell has its share of fog and swirling winds as well. You'll notice if you're clicking on the links to photos throughout this article that all the early ones show a nice blue sky, but the later ones you can see the fog rolling in, especially as you look down toward the old park.) We had brought sweatshirts and coats and batting gloves, and after we ate, with the evening chill coming on, we started to bundle up.

High up as our seats were, though, we had a good view of the field. (Here's the obligatory shot of Bonds coming up to bat in the first...) There really isn't a truly bad seat in the house. And the seats are built at an angle so, unlike in Fenway Park, you aren't craning your neck to look toward home plate.

The Giants' foe that day was the Florida Marlins, which is funny, since both corwin and Scliff grew up in the Miami area. corwin's brother, who lives in L.A. but who couldn't come up to see the game with us, roots for the Marlins. But I wanted to root for the Giants, to see what it was like, and I wanted to see Barry do it. corwin declared that he was rooting for lots of offense from both teams, and for Bonds to hit one out.

corwin got part of his wish in the first. In the top of the inning Luis Castillo led off with an infield single, then moved to second on a Derreck Lee hit. The Giants pitcher was some kid named Jason Schmidt, about whom I admit I knew nothing prior to the game, and about whom I know very little now. Anyway, Schimdt struck out two, but then allowed a double to Kevin Millar, and Castillo scored. Schimdt then got Preston Wilson, one of THREE Marlins that we could name (Cliff FLoyd and Charles Johnson being the others). Let's face it--I just don't really follow the National League other than peeking at how the Cubs are doing about once a week, and listening to the occasional Giants game late at night through MLB.com Radio.

A note on Schmidt. He struck out the side in the first, though gave up a run and three hits, got three straight Ks in the second, and struck out the first batter of the third. Not bad. Unfortunately, he then gave up two more runs on two more hits and walked two in the third. In the fourth he struck out two more, to begin and end the inning, but the Marlins sandwiched four more hits, a walk and two runs in there as well. So when Schmidt left the game after five innings with nine strikeouts, but five runs, nine hits, and three walks, we weren't sure what pitcher to compare him to...

I do know the Giants better than any NL team other than the Mets and Braves. They continued corwin's wish for offense in their half of the inning, as Aurilia singled and then Bonds walked. Then Jeff Kent walked. Then up came one of the only non-pitchers from Atlanta that I ever liked, Andres Galaragga, the Big Cat. I think he's great and is a great come back story, and I am so glad he got out of Texas. He doubled and Aurilia and Bonds scored. Then Eric Davis singled, and Kent scored. it looked like maybe the rally would go on even longer, but Benito Santiago lined hard into a 5-4-3 double play, a rocket that would have been a double if the Marlins third baseman (Mike Lowell it says in my scorecard) hadn't snared it. Three runs on four hits and two walks. It looked like it was going to be a promising night for offense.

What an understatement that turned out to be. The Giants banged out twenty one hits in the game, and the Fish had thirteen of their own. Guys were bunting for base hits, there were doubles and there were triples. And in the third, Eric Davis homered.

But in his first two at bats, Bonds walked. In the third inning he came up a third time and hit one deep into left field, taking the ball the other way, but it was caught on the warning track, and I thought--shoot, that's probably the only good pitch he's going to see tonight. He came up again inthe fifth with a man on, and was Intentionally Walked. Argh. Were we not going to see Barry do it?

I was sure he would do it. I just knew he would. I didn't fly all the way from Massachusetts to see him play to have him walk four times.

So it was, when a situation was developing in the sixth, Ramon Martinez doubled, J. T. Snow pinch hitting was intentionally walked, and Calvin Murray hit a single, loading the bases for Rich Aurilia, wiuth Bonds on deck. corwin sounded almost despairing as he said "Gee, Aurilia will probably hit a grand slam here, leaving the bases empty for Barry, who'll get walked again."

"No," I said. "Aurilia is going to walk, and then the bases will still be loaded for Bonds. They won't be able to walk him without walking in another run. And then he's going to hit one out for us."

Let me be clear on this--this was not one of those times when I got that tingling, where I just KNEW the hitter was going to homer. That usually only happens with me and certain Yankees (Jeter, Chuck, sometimes Tino, and with corwin, he can tell with Bernie sometimes). It was more like the conviction of a child--it just HAS to happen that way, because we believe in magic and happy endings.

Well, damn if I didn't call it. Aurilia walked. And Bonds came to the plate. He took a strike. Then he swung and missed and I thought, dang, if he strikes out... then what? But then came the 0-2 pitch. The pitcher at that point was some guy named Ricky Bones and he and Mike Mussina are both wondering if on 0-2 if maybe they shoulda bounced a splitter in the dirt before going for the kill. In Mussina's case, Carl Everett took a high fastball away and laced a single into the Fenway outfield that broke up Mussina's perfect game at 8 2/3 innings. Bones threw something--I don't know what pitch it was, we were way too far to be able to tell anything like that--something that caught some part of the plate, and Bonds smashed it. You knew the second it left the bat that it was, to paraphrase John Sterling, High, Far, and Gone.

"It's in the cove! It's in the cove!" Someone was screaming -- hey, it was me, and my pregame prediction had come true. Bonds not only hit one out for us into the cove, he hit a grand slam. It was home run #545 in his career, and one of many in his assault on the Ruth/Maris/McGwire single season home run record.

That was back on August 14th, when Bonds was still saying he didn't think he was going to break the record, mostly, I think, to keep his focus and keep the media off his tail. But as I write this, it's September 26th, he's hit 67 now, and has 11 or 12 games left to play. Ba-rry, Ba-rry, Ba-rry!

Very little of note happened in the game after the grand slam, which put the Giants ahead 13-5. We were cold and had had our fill of french fries and hot chocolate and churros. (Perennial complaint: not enough vendors walking around with food. The churros guy was the only one we saw twice.) So all we needed was for someone to come in and get nine outs from the Marlins and we could all it a night.

Call us crazy, but despite arriving before 5pm, we hate to leave a ballgame early. It's like walking out of a movie before the end. Do you just go to see the car chase and miss the ending? Of course not. So we stayed.

By the ninth we were sleepy and it was getting close to 11pm, which was 2am to our East Coast bodies. So we groaned when we saw who would be pitching the ninth. Brian Boehringer, who had been traded by the Yankees for catcher Bobby Estalella earlier that season, took the mound. We sighed and told Scliff, who doesn't know the Yankees, that it was not likely to be a one-two-three inning.

When Bo induced the first two batters to ground to short Scliff was about to urge us to get up and leave. But then Charles Johnson hit a ball into right field, and Eric Davis made a mess of it somehow. I don't even remember how, and it certainly isn't Boehringer's fault that Johnson ended up on second base. But, if he could just get Alex Gonzalez out, the game would be over. He worked him deep in the count, and then Gonzalez singled. This wasn't at all suspenseful, because we knew Bo could get three outs before they could score five runs, but we did hope he'd hurry. If only he could get the number nine hitter out (it might have even been the pitcher)... Nope, he singled, and Johnson scored. Now if only he could get Luis Castillo, who hadn't had a hit since his leadoff infield hit. Wash, rinse, repeat--Castillo singled and Gonzalez scored! We just rolled our eyes and sighed. Sometimes it's NOT good when a ballplayer gives you exactly what you expect. Scliff asked, "Is he always like this?" "Well, not ALWAYS, but..." You can see why the Yankees unloaded him.

This was all interminable, as none of these batters jumped on the first, or even second, pitch. We were yawning and looking at a mostly empty ballpark by the time Boehringer finally induced the third grounder to short of the inning, and ended it.

Final: Marlins 7 runs, 13 hits, no errors, Giants 13 runs, twenty one hits, one error, and everyone got what they came for.