Giants 5, Dodgers 3 -- July 19, 2011

The Giants have a ridiculous number of promotional give-away events this season.  There are bobblehead nights and T-shirt nights and replica World Series trophy nights and horrendously ugly Giants based beer stein nights.  Sometimes these give-aways are available to the first 20K-25K fans (that's how we got our Cody Ross Bobbleheads).  And sometimes the give-aways come with specially purchased tickets (that's how I got my cursed Cody Ross T-shirt).  A few weeks ago, Duckie decided that she wanted to exploit one of these special offers, so we bought pretty nice View Level seats behind home plate on Bobby Thomson bobblehead night.

You'll be happy to know that this particular bobblehead does come with sound effects.  Specifically, pressing the little black button on the pedestal plays the famous radio broadcast of Thomson's "shot heard 'round the world".

So that's why we were at this particular game.  And it was a good game.  I probably wouldn't be writing that if the Giants had lost, but they didn't.  So it was a good game.  I'm not going to recap the game, though.  If you want a recap you can find it here.  And here's the box score for you statistically-minded folks.  Instead, I'm going to provide my own impressions from on and off the field.  That will be more fun for me.

Off the field:
 Last night was a particularly beautiful night for baseball in SF.  It wasn't cold.  It wasn't windy.  The sky was clear, and it was about 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  Duckie didn't even put on her jacket until the 8th inning or so.

We got to AT&T Park in time, but since we decided to get food and our bobblehheads before going to our seats, we missed most of the first inning.  No biggie.  No one scored.

Food-wise, we ate well.  I had my traditional Cha-Cha Bowl and a beer.  Duc went for a Polish sausage and Sprite combo.  Later in the game (the fifth inning, I think), I went off to find us some ice cream for dessert.  Fortunately, there was a Dreyer's (that's Edy's to those of you on the East Coast) stand not far from our seats.  The line wasn't that long, but progress was very slow.  I missed the full inning.  When I reached the front of the line, I learned the reason for the delay.  The kid manning the scoop put nearly a half of pint of ice cream in each waffle cone.  It was ridiculous.  But for $7.25 per cone, they should give me at least a half a pint.  I ate all of mine, but Duckie had to bail out on hers just as she made the ice cream flush with the top of the cone.  I couldn't help her much, either.  Dairy sits heavily on a bed of Cha-Cha Bowl and beer.  I was too full for the remnants of her cone.  In the end I spent $25.75 on food for me alone.  Actually, in San Francisco that's not that bad.

The other major form of off-the-field entertainment for me was my traditional Giants game texting conversation with David.  I think we exchanged about 50 texts during the course of the game.  I may need to upgrade my plan if I go to too many games.

The Game:
This game marked the return of Giants rookie first baseman, Brandon Belt.  With the rookie Brandon Crawford at short, the Giants were employing a two Brandon infield.  It was a risk that paid off.  Belt had 3 RBI on the night including a solo homerun in his first at bat.  Welcome back, Brandon.

Brandon Belt has a great baseball last name for obvious reason, but the Giants starting pitcher for the night, Madison Bumgarner, has one of the worst baseball names around.  Ever since the movie "Splash", Madison has been a girl's name.  I don't know how the Bumgarner parents missed the memo.  And Bumgarner is a clumsy last name that starts with a euphemism for 'ass'.  No good.  And no one has come up with a good nickname for the guy, and he needs one badly.  The press seems to like MadBum.  I think it sucks.  No flow.  But I have now an alternative. I'll get back to it in a minute.

The Dodger's starter was a fireballer named Rubby De La Rosa.  He hit 99 mph on the gun at least once that I noticed.  He wasn't super dominant, but he was relatively effective, and damn he throws hard.  His biggest problem is that Rubby is pronounced Ruby (ROO-bee).  Not in my dictionary it's not.  When I expressed my disdain for the pronunciation to David, he proposed that if changing Madison Bumgarner's name to Mubby (MOO-bee) made him throw 99 mph, he'd be on board.  So, you can probably guess my proposal for MadBum's new nickname.  Mubby Bumgarner it is.  At least until someone finds a better name that I'm willing to accept.

Anyway,  the Giants won the game, and Mubby got the W.  We have tickets for three more baseball games for sure this season, and only one is in AT&T Park.  I'll try to remember to blog about my impressions of those games, too.