Fun at AT&T Park

Tuesday, April 14

Day 7

Woke up and got organized and packed the car as well as we could. Emailed a couple of beat writers to see if we could get a response. We actually heard back from one of them saying she would run it by her editor and wished us luck. Sponsorships have slowed down, now the tough part starts, talking to strangers!  Drove down to the BART parking by the Coliseum. The lot seemed full but talked to the very helpful BART police who explained how it worked, how to pay, and he actually found us a spot to park. Much appreciated. We went in and figured out how to get our round-trip tickets to San Fran and then proceeded to try to get down to the trains. How hard can it be to get the ticket through the slot in the turnstile? Everyone else seemed to be able to do it. Not us, we stuck our ticket in and it spitted back out. Kept trying as people passed us putting their ticket in and walking through after their ticket popped up on top. As this is happening I am thinking, ok this can't be this tough. We are fairly well traveled. We have used public transportation in Mexico, Italy, Croatia, Prague, France, Germany and Bosnia but can't figure out the turnstile at BART in Oakland. A guy watching us, said, red means stop, green means go. Oh goodness, we were trying to go through the turnstile for leaving the station, not for getting in. Oh my. How stupid can we be?

Sung to the tune I left my heart in San Francisco: "I left my brain at home in Lakewood"

Red means stop, Green means go!

Rode the BART to Embarcadaro, which only takes 20 minutes. We walked the waterfront in the opposite direction of the ballpark and got a coffee. We then turned around and headed in the direction of AT&T. It is now about 2:30. The game doesn't start until 7:15. There are lots of Giants fans even at this time.

We noticed lots of homeless people here,mostly all with grocery carts. We talked to one for awhile who called himself “mean Santa”. He told us about his grandson and his police chief brother-in-law and wanted to take pictures with Jack. He showed us the old tow truck in front of the stadium, I think a 1956. 

We had our Mariner shirts on which seems to be a conversation starter. Jack kept telling people we were lost as the Mariners were actually playing at Dodger stadium. Some very friendly 30 something(I think) started talking to us and we started telling the them about our trip. They were at the back gate of AT&T having fun and getting in line for the Bobblehead giveaway. John told us that we could wander around, go eat and they would hold a place for us at the front of the line. How kind! So we did. We took pictures of the stadium, the statues and had a beer at Zeke's.

Heidi, John, Lauren and Angel

Jodi is continuing to learn how to step outside her comfort zone. When we were walking back to meet our new friends, we walked by a man with a Romo (Sergio Romo/relief pitcher for Giants) jersey. It turns out, he was the only one we ever saw and the player chosen to represent little Sergio from Unbound. I am fairly certain that he thought I was a crazy woman, but I walked up to him and commented on his jersey, showed him a picture of Sergio and handed him our letter. He didn't say much, but he was reading it when we left. We returned to our friends and told them about Unbound as well and gave some more literature out. It turned out that Angel was from Guatamala. His girlfriend, Lauren was very kind and said she would look at our blog. We had a great time waiting with our new Giant friends to enter the stadium and as we entered we got our Madison Bumgardner Bobblehead (I have to say we had to make room in the car).

We enjoyed the game in the beautiful stadium. The Giants fans are passionate, a sea of orange and black everywhere you look. Brother Mark and Barb came to see us for a few innings. It was great to see them, wish we would have taken a picture.

One creepy thing about AT&T is straight out of Alfred Hitchcock. About the 6^th inning, the seagulls start flying in. At first I thought it was really cool looking. As the game progressed, the numbers escalated, so by the end of the game there had to be 1000 seagulls flying around waiting to munch on garlic fries, nachos and whatever else any fan had dropped. The only time they scattered was between innings when the music got loud.

Giants lost to the Rockies