Baseball at the Ballpark

Last week I went to my first baseball game ever. My company holds its annual company day at the games every year, where they take all employees to watch a home game (right term?) at the Giants Stadium, tailgate included. If you know me you’ll know that I cannot be bothered to show up at a cricket game (though there are exceptions to that), and so I figured that I probably wouldn’t go to a baseball game any other way. This seemed like a good introduction to the sport and to understand first hand why this country is so obsessed with this sport even though they think cricket is the most boring game ever.

It is with a degree of amusement that I conclude that baseball, much like its bat-and-ball cousin from the east, is all about the hype and the emotion and less about the game. In fact, I will go so far as to say that baseball is probably the real gentlemen’s game, over and above cricket. There’s no chest thumping, fist-in-the-air declaration of strike/out, cursing at the batsman/striker and fighting with the umpire. The players come to the pitch, do their thing, chalk up their stats and leave. Home runs are action-replayed to the soundtrack of Bon Jovi’s It’s My Life or Van Halen’s Jump or any other heavy-riffed-guitar-playing-hair-band tune. Everyone has a good time, and crowd participation is way better and not resorted to throwing stuff on the field. Unfortunately, no one proposed on the big screen (or does that only happen on tv?)

So now that we have my expert opinion of the game out of the way, I have to spend some time ruminating on the stadium itself. Giants stadium, also known as the AT&T Ball Park, is H-U-G-E! Surrounded by the bay on three sides and downtown San Fran on the other, the view from up where we were was phenomenal. Blue blue ocean, dotted with boats of all sizes and the San Mateo bridge in the distance. It was great to see my colleagues outside of the cubicle setting, and good to catch a break in the middle of the week.

I wish the Indian cricket team would come play a game at the Ballpark. Now that would be a game I would gladly go to!