Battle for the Bay

By Daren Many

SAN FRANCISCO — Before I get started on the Battle for the Bay, I must first give a huge thank you to Al and Rochelle Blair. They welcomed us into their home for three nights. I don’t even think my mom would want us to stay three nights. 

Our trip depends heavily on the generosity of others and the Blairs made our stay in the Bay Area a great one. A special thanks to Al for hanging in until 4 in the morning on Saturday as we buried two bottles of Jack and a bottle of vodka for good measure. A trip like this is only as good as the people you meet and ours has been awesome so far. Thank you, Al and Rochelle.

Now, in this corner we have McAfee Coliseum. In the opposite corner AT&T Park. Let’s have a good clean fight, fellas. DING!

Round 1: AT&T Park punches the Coliseum in the face. Game over.

AT&T Park is awesome. It’s the perfect baseball setting.

The Coliseum looks like a giant cement turd fell out of the heavens and landed in the middle of a parking lot.

AT&T Park has an amazing view of the bay, a great waterfront walkway, statues honoring their most beloved players, and a very interactive stadium experience.

The Coliseum has some green tarps that cover up the seats where nobody sits. The tarps do have “Athletics” printed across them, so it’s got that going for it.

We attended the two stadiums on consecutive days and the differences were glaring. The Coliseum aside, Oakland has great fans who are loyal. There just aren’t a lot of them. But it’s okay, Oakland. I grew up with Shea Stadium and that’s just as big of a dump, but I still love it.

So here’s what went down in the eighth inning at the Coliseum that nearly pushed us over an emotional cliff. Here’s a rough transcription of a conversation between me and a guy who noticed me holding a fancy video camera.

Guy: “Hey! Nice video camera, we have one just like it.”

Daren: “Cool, what are you guys doing with yours?”

Guy: “We’re making a documentary about baseball. We’re traveling around to all 30 Major League stadiums in one summer.”

Daren: “Wow, sounds like a great idea.”

We all understand this trip has been done before. We are not breaking new ground. This trip will be done again. But to run into a group of people who are doing the same thing at the exact same time — at only the second game! — was a little deflating.

Here’s a comparison of our trips:

We are driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee across the county. They’re driving a huge luxury RV with a kitchen, master bedroom and bathroom.

One point for them.

They are promoting and raising money for cancer research and have sponsors. We are promoting nothing and are sponsored by no one.

Another point for them.

They have guys who went to film school. We have a math professor.

Tie.

They’re trying to get in the Guinness Book of World Records by attending one game in each of the four major sporting leagues of North America. Troy is going to try and take a dump in all 30 MLB parks.

Point for us.

They win in a close one, 3-2. None of this really matters, though, because they’re radically different projects. We understand this; it’s actually not a big deal to us that another group of BaseCrawlers are doing a documentary. There no doubt will be several others.

But back to the games.

One thing that AT&T Park has is this slide that goes down through the middle of a huge Coke bottle above the outfield bleachers. It’s a brilliant marketing strategy. It gets all kinds of kids. So, of course, Troy and I had to go down it. The only problem is it’s designed for humans weighing 100 pounds or less. It’s a fairly long slide and I got stuck in the middle. It’s enclosed, too, so I immediately had a panic attack. I had to awkwardly maneuver down to freedom.

It was the worst slide ride of my life.

I need to wrap this blog up but in closing it was a great trip to the Bay. Nolan and I got in kayaks today and hung out in McCovey Cove. It was unreal paddling around next to this huge park that you have seen so many times on ESPN.

We didn’t get any home run balls but Troy was nice enough to throw us practice splash hits. It’s a lot harder than it looks. For us to actually get a ball I’m convinced it would need to land directly in the kayak.

That’s it for now. Los Angeles is up next with an actual Mets game looming in San Diego.

Mets: 4 games back.

(There’s more on this and our other adventures at BaseCrawl.com.)