This isn’t really like going to a ballgame. Not at all. It’s like going to fancy hotel that overlooks a ballgame. I can’t honestly say if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But I can tell you it was fun. Last year, at a school charity auction, one of the families we’re friends […]
This isn’t really like going to a ballgame. Not at all.
It’s like going to fancy hotel that overlooks a ballgame.
I can’t honestly say if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But I can tell you it was fun.
Last year, at a school charity auction, one of the families we’re friends with bought box tickets to a Giants game. I don’t know what they paid, and I have no idea what the box actually costs.
But this is what we’re talking about.
No, not at all like going to a ballgame. The level of luxury is akin to a fine hotel, a four seasons or something. Leather furniture. TV’s, major mini bar, catering with a dedicated server per suite.
Then there’s a balcony out front which is like regular stadium seating, but more comfortable and roomier.
Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it. I mean, fancy hotels, sure, done that, but not at a ballgame. But maybe I’m used to Candlestick where the 49ers play, which is a dump, a fucking pig-sty. But this level of comfort at a stadium, it’s surreal.
I’d never been to SBC/Pac Bell park. It’s supposed to be one of the best ballparks in the country, and I have to say, I think it is. Not that I’m an expert, but it’s just a fantastic place to watch baseball. And the change it’s made in the neighborhood, I’d never have recognized the place had I not seen the old Happy Donuts that’s still there from when this was a scary broken down warehouse district. The kind of place even the cops didn’t like to go.
The Giants lost the game, which was a shame. But the evening was fun. These are some of the school families that vaguely get who I am (if only vaguely), and a drinking, good time crowd. We had one mom who almost had to be carried to the train, and another who was roaring drunk, but no one was hurling on the way home (I bet they are pretty unhappy today though). Good folks though, if still a little mundane and uptight for my taste.
I’d sure do this again, though the price for theses suites must be simply insane.
It’s funny. Until recently I never got baseball. My friends were crazy for it, but I would watch and go – yeah, so? They stand, they spit, the stand, they spit, something happens for no apparent reason, they run around, then they stand and spit.
For years, that’s how I saw baseball.
I don’t know what changed. I sat one day and watched a game — I think when Barry Bonds was chasing a milestone — and slowly some of the key points I’d been missing started to drop into place. A couple of key things about when something is an out and when it’s not. Not sure what else.
After that I started paying more attention, watched games a little more. And then I think I got it; one day it clicked.
The core, the heart, the essence of baseball is the psychological duel between the pitcher and the batter. It’s not when the ball is thrown. It’s when the ball isn’t thrown, the mental duel. The staring, the waiting, the challenge. Will you swing? Will I throw that same pitch again? Who’d going to blink first?
There’s more. The defense. The batter, of course. Little complexities of who’s playing in what order and all that. But the key is the poised tension, the ‘something about to happen’ feeling baseball has when it’s good. Poised instant before all hell breaks loose.
I like it. The whole game made sense to me after that, the drama and psychology. So different than other sports. Football will always be my game. I grew up on it, I live and breath football. Hockey is becoming a favorite sport though I don’t dig it on TV. But baseball has something special that those sports don’t have that I’m still assimilating. I need to go see it live more, I need to hear the sounds. I need to get down there in the stands, not just up in the super-deluxe box.
But I sure won’t turn down another chance to sit in one of those luxury boxes. Nosiree.