Baseball By the Bay
You’d have to be a real fan of Major League Baseball to do what Sharon and I did this past Thursday.
But we are, so we did it.
These days, being what you might call “old,” we satisfy ourselves by watching plenty of MLB games on TV.
But on Thursday we got up really, really early so we could drive to the Clovis Senior Center and get on board the charter bus that would take us to the Bay Area to watch the Giants host the Dodgers at Oracle Park on San Francisco Bay.
We arrived at the senior center just before 6 a.m. — 6 a.m.! We were among 49 other folks who were either baseball fans — or who had simply decided to take a day off from their usual retirement activities and spend the day in San Francisco.
To our big surprise, more than half of those on our bus were wearing Dodger blue caps or shirts. When we were growing up here in the Valley, that never would have been the case.
No way.
Because, you see, this was overwhelmingly Giants territory in the immediate decades after they moved from New York to San Francisco.
Even though the Dodgers had moved west that same year — 1958 — hardly anyone except me cared about the Dodgers back then.
I fell in love with them because of their great radio announcer, Vin Scully.
I’d take my transistor to bed with me on summer nights and listen to Vin on KFI Radio in Los Angeles, eloquently describing the exploits of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale and Maury Wills and Junior Gilliam and Ron Perranoski.
Vin made me a lifelong Dodgers fan.
Sharon became a lifelong Giants fan.
We got married anyway.
And so there we were this past Thursday morning, riding out of the Valley, on our way to see our two favorite teams.
Over the decades we’ve been together, we’ve gone to many Big League baseball games and more than a few World Series games.
Thursday’s trip was a new treat for both of us. I had gone up to Oracle with a friend right after it opened years ago. I was eager to go back.
Sharon had never been there. She wanted to see what I’d told her about the park.
Our trip from Clovis to Oracle Park took about four hours — not bad, considering we stopped along the way at the famous Casa de Fruita tourist trap along Highway 152 just over Pacheco Pass on the way to the coast.
This admittedly charming spot gives weary travelers the chance to rest and eat and — well, rest and eat. And it’s not just Casa de Fruita.
There’s also a Casa de Sweets building and even a Casa de Restrooms building. Enough said.
And that four-hour travel time was also quite good, considering the bumper-to-bumper traffic we encountered on Interstate 280 as we approached the stadium. It was bad, but it also was “nothing” compared to what we would face after the game.
San Francisco — and the Giants — have done it right with Oracle. If a stadium can be classified as beautiful — this one qualifies.
For one thing, it’s right on a cove of San Francisco Bay. That cove is known as McCovey Cove — for the Giants’ Hall of Fame, left-handed hitting first baseman who was known for launching monstrous home runs into the right field stands at Candlestick Park, the Giants’ home for many years.
And a giant statue of Mr. McCovey is next to the cove, just outside the stadium (right)
Now, left-handed sluggers can launch monstrous home runs over the stands at Oracle and into McCovey Cove, which is just a few feet beyond the park.
Kayakers often guide their craft into the cove on game days and wait for balls to sail into the water.
It’s only happened about 100 times since the stadium opened a quarter-century ago — but hope springs eternal for those kayakers.
Other Giants legends — the great right-handed pitcher Juan Marichal and the legendary centerfielder Willie Mays — also have statues outside the stadium. We entered on the first-base side, so our picture (left) shows Mr. Marichal’s not-to-be-forgotten high leg-kick as depicted on his statue.
Mr. Mays’ statue is at the stadium’s main entrance.
Because this was a near-sellout — impressive, since it was a 12:45 p.m. start on a working-day Thursday afternoon — the line to get into the stadium was long.
And once we got inside, Oracle impressed Sharon as much as it had impressed me, two decades ago.
The scoreboard is a large feature in right-center, and it’s capable of showing many images and much information. (I’m a fan, but I had to look up what “MVR” was. And how in the world could the scoreboard display, immediately after each pitch, not just how fast that pitch had been, but such things as the horizontal displacement and vertical displacement of it?)
Above the left-field seats are a giant mitt replica that could catch home runs hit its way and a large Coca Cola “bottle” with a real-life slide inside that kids can play in during the game.
There are more ballpark amenities, of course. Between innings, two game “hosts” appear on screen (their cameras moving with them around the park), urging fans to vote with their IPhones on this or that “choice” that will appear on the screen in the next inning (such things as what video fans want to see or the music they want to hear).
It’s truly a full-sensory experience “show” at the ballpark these days — all designed to keep fans from getting bored.
Of course, Oracle, like other parks, has plenty of food — all expensive. A delicious all-beef hot dog goes for $15. A soft drink sells for $10. And four gluten-free pizza slices (Sharon needs gluten-free) go for $20.
But what’s a ballgame without ballpark food? We sampled lots of it.
Perhaps the most surprising thing at the park was — as it was on the bus — the abundance of fans wearing Dodger blue. Perhaps half the crowd wore that color.
And then there was the moment during the seventh-inning stretch — when we were all standing and singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and reached the point where the lyrics were “let me root, root root for…”
At any ballpark in the nation, the home crowd will finish that line by yelling the name of their home team.
But Thursday, “let me root, root, root for the Dodgers” rang out louder than “the Giants.”
That never, ever, would have happened decades ago at the Giants’ stadium.
It’s a whole new world, indeed.
It’s still a great rivalry, this Giants and Dodgers thing, but it’s much kinder and gentler.
As for the game itself, the Dodgers won, 3-0. Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow was magnificent, giving up just one hit in eight innnings.
And because of baseball’s rules that now mandate that pitchers deliver their next pitch within 15 seconds of the last one — which speeds up the game immensely — this game ended barely two hours after it started.
So we were back on our bus by 3 p.m. Unfortunately, that was not quick enough to avoid San Francisco’s bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic jam.
It took us a full hour to reach the entrance to the Bay Bridge — which was only a few blocks from the park — another hour to actually get on the bridge from an on-ramp — and another hour to get across the bridge and onto Highway 580, which eventually would get us to Interstate 5 and Highway 99 and back to Fresno.
We arrived at the senior center around 9:15 Thursday night. Sharon and I were tired — really tired — and so was everyone else on board.
But we were also exhilarated. Every one of us.
As the late, great Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray used to bellow, “You can’t beat fun at the old ballpark.”
Well, Harry, you were right.