A HAPHAZARD GEEZER FAN GETS A REMINDER ABOUUT BASEBALL MAGIC
Next generation Giants fan (Authorized photo by Fran Johns)
The crowds! The organ music! The peanuts! The chants, the cheers! The excitement!
Oh, and the ballgame!
It’s all in an afternoon — or evening — for millions of American sports fans, so I don’t pretend to be saying anything new. But plunging into it after a decade’s absence amounted to a sight for new eyes — and what a view.
In an earlier life I was drenched in ballgames. My late beloved husband, Bud Johns, covered sports for the Flint (MI) Journal when he was still in high school, worked his way through college officiating games of all sorts (when he wasn’t playing one) and throughout his life covered and/or followed every sport known to TV. I once came home to find a curling match on. I draw the line at curling.
Baseball, though, was number one. Beginning with several 1940s Negro League players who became lifelong friends, he kept a mental file of players, games, batting averages and obscure trivia that boggled more sports-oriented minds than my own. For decades I was a San Francisco Giants fan with the ultimate personal game guide.
Then life intervened.
A combination of Bud’s decline and death, the pandemic and a few other of life’s little surprises sent the remembrance of our national pastime back to the level of my undistinguished third baseman career with the Ashland (VA) High School girls’ softball team.
Until now.
Gifted with four great seats for a recent game between the Giants and the Texas Rangers I rounded up three geezer friends, happily including one confirmed fan who knows stuff, a key bonus. It all came back in a rush, you could say nine innings’ worth of rush.
AND! Bottom of the 9th: Heliot Ramos sends a blooper softball into no-man’s land, the Rangers make a couple of throwing errors and Ramos steals his way clear around the bases and into a walk-off dive across home plate. It doesn’t get any better than that.
San Francisco Chronicle story the following day (Author photo)
Here’s my comprehensive report on the day:
Arrive early. Of the 41,000+ people who showed up at Oracle Park for our game, some 20,000 were simultaneously funneling into the same entrance chosen by my three companions and me. (This will be the only quasi-negative element of this report. I apologize for it.) Deference, to little old ladies or anyone else, is not shown by baseball fans intent upon reaching their seats before the opening pitch and picking up garlic fries en route. Of the fast-moving sea of 20,000 in which we swam, all but four of us knew exactly where they were going. We four were saved by the guidance of our one stadium-familiar fan. We arrived unscathed.
The scent of the game: deep fry. Nowhere but in a ballpark can recirculating hot oil smell good. Sensibly limited or outright banned in most home kitchens, it miraculously morphs into attar of ballgame. Irresistably aromatic. You may have just finished Sunday dinner, but suddenly you absolutely have to have that corndog.
Fans are wired to be friends. Despite the jostling to get seated before game time, about 40,000 of those 41,000+ (our game was sold out, I’m not making this up) seemed to be my new best friends. Folks approaching our seats after we were comfortably settled politely explained we were in the right seats but the wrong section, and guided us one section (with way better view) over. Folks behind expertly leaned over to take our picture when they saw we didn’t know how to take a foursome selfie. The mom of one of countless adorable toddlers in game-day couture (he was high among the most adorable) obligingly said, Sure! I could post his photo online. And scattered everywhere else were smiling fans happy to give directions, make running commentaries on the play, offer opinions or sing along.
Ballgame music is the All-American heartsong. From the three-note thrum to get the home crowd going to the intermittent rousing organ notes (why did somebody have to tell me it’s all just digital?) to the seventh inning ‘God Bless America,’ music in the ballgame air is bound to the joy. Even mangled renditions of the Star Spangled Banner can be goosebump-inducing. (To the extent that our less-than-melodic anthem can induce goosebumps.)
News of the day? Forget it. There is no world outside the stadium once the ballgame starts.
There is also just no need to hurry. A few innings in, though I had successfully bypassed the corndogs and garlic fries, I was in desperate need of a latte. Thanks to my confirmed inner coffee snob I did not think any of the umpteen dozen fast-food kiosks could serve drinkable coffee. So I set out for the Peet’s place behind the scoreboard, hardly a few hundred yards as the crow flies. On foot, though, Peet’s is a good quarter mile or so. Speed-walking is out; at one point the crowd simply, mysteriously stopped for a while. Going for coffee, as it turns out, is a two-inning endeavor. But never mind — everyone’s friendly, the music is good and there are ever-changing views of the action along the way.
And one more note about the music: Observing the sights and sounds of the ‘God Bless America’ episode was a monumental nostalgia moment. I was, at that moment, behind the scoreboard in the outer, outer outfield surrounded by a sizable portion of the 41,000 — I never did figure out who was actually in the seats, since they all seemed to be swimming in the sea of kiosk-shoppers. But then, as one, the shuffling crowd — which seemed to include every size, shape, race and tattoo preference — shuffled to a stop. Hats came off, hands went to hearts (this being national anthem junior, I guess,) and every other fan seemed to be singing along.
For a brief interlude there was world peace. And God, whoever and wherever She is, surely blessed America’s pastime.
🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
This essay appeared earlier on my Substack page, The Optimistic Eye. C’mon over any time, it’s free.
