BASEBALL

During our recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area we also went to Oakland to see the Tigers play. We had 4 tickets, but my oldest daughter could not make it so I used Twitter and 3 connections to give away the last ticket to Chris the A’s fan. Chris was good company and from Chris I learned that part of the stadium in the outfield that had changed the most from the late 80’s was called Mt. Davis in “honor” of the owner of the Raiders who got the boxes installed as part of a package to return the Raiders from LA.

We took the train- Bart this time- from near out hotel in Millbrae. It takes a long time to get to Oakland from there, but I really don’t like parking at away games and the BART platform is connected to the O.CO Coliseum area by a pedestrian overpass.

It was hat day in Oakland, too.  Oakland is still getting used to the metal detectors it seems as it took 20 minutes to get in the stadium. The metal detector lines were all held at one point to allow a back up at the ticket scanning area to clear as well.

Concession lines were ridiculously long. Some people said that this is because many vendors and other support workers work for both the Giants and the A’s who are rarely scheduled at home on the same weekend. Normally lines are not as bad and you can find vendors in the stands. At this game the few vendors were able to stay in a mid-level path in the 100 sections and have fans come to them! I did find a good barbecue place in the outfield. It was nowhere near as good as the KC barbecue place, but it was better than typical ballpark fare.

We had seats near the Tigers bullpen. The seats were good. I won’t speak of the game except to note that it didn’t worry me that Coke was warming in the late innings. It also didn’t worry me that he gave up a single before an error by the shortstop and a catcher’s interference. It also didn’t worry me that he gave up a grand slam- the fifth homer against the Tigers that day. This got us to the train platform before the real rush of fans came.