Baseball, BASFA, and Daleks in the Cove
May. 11th, 2013 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeI got away from work early enough yesterday to head back over to Newark, drop my things at my hotel, and collect Eric Larson from his place to drive us over to BART, where we caught a train for San Francisco and walked to AT&T Park for the Giants-Braves game. There we joined BASFA members and co-workers of Dave Gallaher, who organized the outing and bought the tickets.
Here's the view from our section overlooking home plate as the Giants came to bat in the bottom of the first inning. What a view! And thankfully, while the wind was whipping the flags above our heads, it wasn't swirling around us, although it did get a bit chilly in the later innings and I had to go buy a $6 cup of hot chocolate to keep my fingers from falling off, despite wearing a pair of Giants texting gloves from a previous outing.
It was a romp for the Giants, who had a spectacular fourth inning, sending eleven men to the plate and scoring six runs. It was nice to run off a big inning against an opponent rather than being the victim of one, as so often has been the case. It turned into an easy 8-2 victory against the league-leading Braves, particularly satisfying given how the Braves had shut down the Giants the previous evening.
As the game went into the ninth, many people started leaving, as the result appeared to be a forgone conclusion, but those who left early missed the entrance in McCovey Cove of a peculiar object, even by the standards of the Cove.
A Dalek-like UFO puttered into the cove and wandered around during the ninth inning as the Giants finished mopping up the Braves. (Alas, my camera-phone is not ideal at all for taking these kinds of pictures.) Eric and I made our way down the Lefty O'Doul stairs and I stopped on a landing to shoot this video of The Thing in the Cove.
I said, "It's a floating Dalek!" and was particularly amused to hear the people around me (none of whom except Eric were from the BASFA outing group) agree with me, meaning that they all understood the reference. We have won the culture war, I thought.
After shooting the video, I tried to get down to the Portwalk so I could take a closer shot on account of the camera-phone's zoom is terrible.
Alas, by then, The Thing in the Cove was already skittering away into the night.
Eric and I walked back up the Embarcadero, stopping to admire the LED light sculpture on the Bay Bridge (this being our first time in The City since it was installed) before heading off to BART. We were train-lucky, as a train going our way was approaching the station as we reached the bottom of the stairs.
Aside from a short delay due to a "police incident" at West Oakland (where the BART Police apparently removed a person or persons from the train), we had an uneventful ride back to Fremont. I dropped Eric off at his place and headed back to my hotel. Given that I'd been up since 5 AM, I was very grateful to get to bed.
Today, I "slept in" all of 90 minutes but took my time packing and getting on the road before driving home to Fernley. Typically, today's Giants game came on the air as I was leaving signal range of any of the team's radio network stations. This keeps happening to me, so I gave up and stumped up the $20 for the MLB At Bat app that allows my smartphone to bring in the game as long as I can get a cell phone signal, and I-80 is well-supplied with towers.
I got home to Fernley about 5 PM, and Lisa was of course glad to see me. I'm tired from all that driving. Today was National Train Day, and I would have preferred to have been riding a train home than driving, but I need the van at home. Perhaps on another trip to the Bay Area for work I'll arrange to do it by train and leave the van at home with Lisa.
Here's the view from our section overlooking home plate as the Giants came to bat in the bottom of the first inning. What a view! And thankfully, while the wind was whipping the flags above our heads, it wasn't swirling around us, although it did get a bit chilly in the later innings and I had to go buy a $6 cup of hot chocolate to keep my fingers from falling off, despite wearing a pair of Giants texting gloves from a previous outing.
It was a romp for the Giants, who had a spectacular fourth inning, sending eleven men to the plate and scoring six runs. It was nice to run off a big inning against an opponent rather than being the victim of one, as so often has been the case. It turned into an easy 8-2 victory against the league-leading Braves, particularly satisfying given how the Braves had shut down the Giants the previous evening.
As the game went into the ninth, many people started leaving, as the result appeared to be a forgone conclusion, but those who left early missed the entrance in McCovey Cove of a peculiar object, even by the standards of the Cove.
A Dalek-like UFO puttered into the cove and wandered around during the ninth inning as the Giants finished mopping up the Braves. (Alas, my camera-phone is not ideal at all for taking these kinds of pictures.) Eric and I made our way down the Lefty O'Doul stairs and I stopped on a landing to shoot this video of The Thing in the Cove.
I said, "It's a floating Dalek!" and was particularly amused to hear the people around me (none of whom except Eric were from the BASFA outing group) agree with me, meaning that they all understood the reference. We have won the culture war, I thought.
After shooting the video, I tried to get down to the Portwalk so I could take a closer shot on account of the camera-phone's zoom is terrible.
Alas, by then, The Thing in the Cove was already skittering away into the night.
Eric and I walked back up the Embarcadero, stopping to admire the LED light sculpture on the Bay Bridge (this being our first time in The City since it was installed) before heading off to BART. We were train-lucky, as a train going our way was approaching the station as we reached the bottom of the stairs.
Aside from a short delay due to a "police incident" at West Oakland (where the BART Police apparently removed a person or persons from the train), we had an uneventful ride back to Fremont. I dropped Eric off at his place and headed back to my hotel. Given that I'd been up since 5 AM, I was very grateful to get to bed.
Today, I "slept in" all of 90 minutes but took my time packing and getting on the road before driving home to Fernley. Typically, today's Giants game came on the air as I was leaving signal range of any of the team's radio network stations. This keeps happening to me, so I gave up and stumped up the $20 for the MLB At Bat app that allows my smartphone to bring in the game as long as I can get a cell phone signal, and I-80 is well-supplied with towers.
I got home to Fernley about 5 PM, and Lisa was of course glad to see me. I'm tired from all that driving. Today was National Train Day, and I would have preferred to have been riding a train home than driving, but I need the van at home. Perhaps on another trip to the Bay Area for work I'll arrange to do it by train and leave the van at home with Lisa.
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no subject
Date: 2013-05-12 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-12 11:44 am (UTC)As it was we caught the second "local" train rather than express, I didn't get home until after Midnight. But I was glad I didn't have to drive all the way from San Francisco. I was exhausted.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-12 03:10 pm (UTC)