Giants 5, Fathers 7: The Comeback That Wasn't.

On Tuesday while I was at work, I got an unexpected but very welcome invitation from my friend David.  He was the generous recipient of his boss's two Field Club level tickets to that night's Giants game, and he wanted me to join him.  I was coy at first.  I reminded David that I had just sat in Field Club a few weeks ago with my wife, and I didn't think it was wise to spend that much on tickets more than once in a month.  He told me the tickets were free.  I actually suspected as much, but I didn't want to be presumptuous.  Free baseball in primo seats is difficult to pass up, even on short notice.  Once I got Duckie's buy-in, I told David I would come along.

You might recall that my last trip to Field Club seating at AT&T Park was a mixed bag.  This trip was no different.  I didn't get to go home with a nice memento like last time, but the game was a lot better even if the outcome was similarly disappointing.

The Set-up:
We got a late start on the night.  David's wife, Suzannah (Ooooooo, shout-out to you, girl!), had to work until 7 pm, so David had to stick around the house to take care of his daughter, Noa, until he could make the hand-off to Suzannah.  Noa is seven months old, so she's not quite to the point where you can plop her in front of the TV with some Mac 'n Cheese, kiss her on the forehead and walk out the door for a little baseball.  Maybe next year.  Fortunately, David's tickets came with a parking pass,  so we drove to the game instead of making the long, slow trip on MUNI.  In the end, we only missed the first inning and a half, and as it turned out, we didn't really want to see that part of the game anyway.

The club portion of the Field Club seating is really just a big food court, and you walk right into it when you use the super convenient, super exclusive Field Club entrance (which, of course, we did).  Once you're in the massive cavern of beer and fattening foods, it doesn't make much sense to go to seats without your hands full of dinner and drink.  So that's what we did.   Field Club doesn't offer Cha-Cha Bowls (a serious oversight, in my opinion), so I went with a Polish sausage.  David's eyes went all kaleidoscope-y with all the exciting options, and he decided to break with tradition.  He went for a meatball sub.  Later in the game I stopped back for some made-to-order caramel corn (they serve it to you in a Chinese take-out container.  Mmmmmm....buttery sugar).  It was all good.

The Game:
By the time we got to our seats, the Giants were already down 3-0.  If you've followed the Giants at all over the past month, you know that 3 runs is generally considered to be an insurmountable deficit for their horrible offense to overcome.  Needless to say David and I were not encouraged.

Now, I don't generally do game summaries in my baseball blog posts, but since this game turned out to be pretty exciting, I'll be mixing in a little more detail from the game into this post.

As I was saying...the Giants were already down when David and I sat down, and the Padres threw another run on the board in the fourth to make the situation feel particularly hopeless.  We were left to find ways to amuse ourselves as we waited for the Giants' bats to wake up...or not.

One of my favorite games to play at any ballpark is the "Make Entertaining and Occasionally Cruel Observations About The Teams" game.  David was totally on board for this.  Here's what we came up with:

Ugly Nick Hundley
 

1.) The picture of Padres catcher Nick Hundley shown on the scoreboard for his plate appearances was awful.  He looked kind of like a sneering hick who might have been part of Kiefer Sutherland's pack of hoodlums in 'Stand By Me'.  The picture was bad enough that David and I just started calling him "Ugly Nick".  (The following night, David and I watched the second game of the series from our respective homes.  After a Hundley strikeout, David texted me, "Hit the pine, Ugly Nick.")
2.) Padres third baseman Logan Forsythe officially earned his place among the Worst Names in Baseball.  I'm sure Trevor Plouffe will welcome him with open arms.
3.) Padres outfielder Kyle Blanks is huge.  Seeing the true size of the gigantic baseball players is one of the benefits of sitting in Field Club.  And by the way, Kyle Blanks is huge.
4.) At some point, Giants shortstop Orlando Cabrera ended up on second base (I know!  I was as surprised as you are.)  When he got there, he had a nice little jovial chat with the Padres second baseman.  It wasn't until later that I realized that person was Orlando Hudson.  It was an all Orlando summit.  If only we could recreate the event at the foot of the Orlando Cepeda statue outside the park...and everyone could eat a Cha-Cha Bowl....awesomeness.

The other compelling entertainment available to us as we suffered through the first five innings of the game was provided by our neighbors in the stands.  Early on we were introduced to the cheers of a guy a few rows behind us who sounded like he might have been Aaron Rowand's little league coach.  "Watch the ball come all the way in!  Good job there, kid!"   All game long, he was hopelessly upbeat though in a condescending and pointless way that might be appropriate at a slow-pitch softball game, but not at a professional baseball game.

Sharing Row M with us were a bunch of guys in business casual attire who kept getting up for alternating beer runs and trips to the bathroom.  Since we had the two seats closest to the aisle, they kept walking in front of us.  At least they apologized for it.  The weren't actually all that entertaining.  Mostly, they were annoying.

A few rows ahead of us and across the aisle were a couple more colorful fans.  First there was a guy dubbed "House of Pain" by the people behind us.  The moniker fit.  He was a tall, skinny white guy, shaved bald and heavily tattooed.  He was wearing a black knit cap all askew as if he were trying to express some sort of mid 90s hip-hop sentiment....you know...like House of Pain.  He emoted convincingly throughout the game.  He really cared.  And he wasn't so bad.  His buddy, on the other hand, I didn't care for.  I'll call him Asshole Guy.   Despite being decked out in full Giants regalia, he decided in the late innings of the game he was going to heckle Brian Wilson, the Giants closer.  He would yell things like "Hey Wilson!  Does your butt hurt?" or "Brian why don't you stop shaving yourself?"  Do those sound like reasonable taunts to you?  Of course not.  They're idiotic.  And why was he dong that, anyway?

This is Lou Seal holding a little girl in the aisle near our seats.

The guy in the black knit cap on the aisle is House of Pain, and

the guy two seats to HoP's left is Asshole Guy.

Behind House of Pain and Asshole Guy was a woman with her three year-old daughter.  There aren't generally a lot of kids in Field Club, and this little girl was a trooper.  She made it all the way to the end of the game without conking out.  In the eighth inning, or so, David pointed her out to me and said "That girl is a plate."  I didn't understand.  I made him say it four more times before I realized he was really saying, "That girl is up late," which makes a lot more sense.  I'm getting stupid in my old age. 

Back to the game.

In the sixth inning, the Giants finally scored some runs.  Pablo Sandoval and Aubrey Huff were on 3rd and 2nd, respectively.  Brandon Belt grounded to Padres first baseman Jesus Guzman, and I think we all felt impending disaster because Pablo was way too far off third.  Guzman felt it, too.  He wanted to get the lead runner, and he got greedy.  Instead of stepping on first to get the out, he airmailed an ugly, ugly throw to third that was way out of Logan Forsythe's reach.  Both Sandoval and Huff scored, and we were all ecstatic.  High fives all around.  At the end of the inning it was 4-2.

The Padres scored again in the seventh thanks to an error by Jeff Keppinger.  The Giants failed to score in the bottom of the inning, and the Padres returned the favor in the top of the eighth.

In the bottom of the eight, things got interesting.  Brandon Belt singled.  One out later, Cody Ross doubled allowing Belt to score.  Then Aaron Rowand got on due to an error which also moved Ross to third.  And then something crazy happened. 

Bruce Bochy decided that this high pressure situation was the perfect time to put in his fourth string catcher (with Posey out for the season and Whiteside out with a concussion, the Giants needed to bring up a back-up to back up the back-up's back-up).  So Boch replaced Chris Stewart with Hector Sanchez.  According to the Giants' scoreboard, Sanchez is from Maracay, Aragua.  That threw us for a loop.  What the hell country is Aragua?  Answer: It's not a country.  It's a state in Venezuela.  I just learned that in the interwebs. I'm deeply flattered that the staff at AT&T Park assumed we were so savvy about geography that we knew that.  Though, they were wrong.  Anyway, Bochy really wanted this guy to bat.  Needless to say, we were concerned.  Rowand's little league coach was concerned.  The beer-swilling pee-boys were concerned.  I'm sure House of Pain was concerned, even if Asshole Guy was too busy being an asshole to care.  We were collective yelling, "Bochy!  What are you?  Crazy?"  Turns out, no.  He wasn't crazy.  Sanchez hit an RBI single. 

The Giants followed that up with one more run on a hit by Orlando Cabrera.  The game was tied!  The Giants were back in it!  The crowd was back in it!  We were all in it!

But we were arrogant, and forgetful.  We forgot that the Giants' most dependable relievers, Brian Wilson and Sergio Romo, were not available.  The Giants would have to rely on the likes of Ramon Ramirez and Steve Edlefson, and they would fail. We would not be leaving on the high of a walk-off victory.  With the help of Ugly Nick Hundley and his compatriots, the Padres scored two runs in the top of the ninth, and we were back out of it.  The Padres still had their lights-out closer, Heath Bell, available, and he did exactly what we knew he would do.  He retired the heart of the Giants line-up in order.  Final score 7-5 favoring the fellows from The Whale's Vagina.

Wrap-up:
Field Club is awesome and convenient, though apparently my presence there is a bad omen for Giants' success.  The Giants are 0-2 when I've sat in that part of the park.  After the game, David and I walked back to his car disappointed, but not broken.  We were able to bolster our spirits by repeating the best name in baseball over and over again in random contexts.  In fact, I recommend you all try it when your team loses a painful game and starts to look like the play-offs may not be attainable.  Say it with me now:  Jair Jurrjens.  Jair Jurrjens.  Jair Jurrjens.  Ahhhhhhhhhh.