How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Pac Bell

I'm back in CA for 48 hours this week, which is why my schedule is all Catty Wumpus (we are now the first and only sports blog ever to use that word, thank you, thank you). This also led to going to a Giants game with friends of mine in the area, and their kid, last night.

The Giants beat the Rockies, 3-2, as Ryan Vogelsong overcame weak control to keep his team in it, then the Giants scratched together some runs late against impressive rook Christian Fredrich (he's good, though I'm not in love with any pitcher in Colorado) and the less-impressive Colorado bullpen. Oh, and Sergio Romo is nails. The game went for a little more than three hours, and we had a blast. Not exactly a unique experience, this.

You see, it's kind of hard to enjoy Pac Bell when you are an A's fan; the park more or less exists as a reminder of what life could be like, had the team only been able to find their own dot-com sugar daddy back in the day when such things existed. (Pac Bell was built with public money, much of it from terrible sites like Webvan. But I digress.) The view is great, the food is great, there's 41K+ people in the place no matter what team is facing the Giants, the kids' area is ample and wonderful, you can pretty much eat anything imaginable out there... assuming, of course, you have the cash.

My party of four sat in the left field corner for $25 a piece. We kept the young'un happy with food early, cotton candy and ice cream late. The adults had some adult beverages, and we paid for parking. So we easily spent over $200 on this, or what I would have spent to take my daughter to five A's games at the Coliseum.

Which is crazy and wrong, of course... but the plain and simple fact of the matter is that even if baseball were affordable on a routine level, I doubt I'd go to very many more games per year. There's just not enough time in my life, just not enough close stadiums, just not enough times when I'm with people who want to go to games. So while it would be nice to keep games affordable, it's just not going to happen, and the 41K+ people per night filling the place aren't complaining.

So, yes, Pac Bell is just the best place to see a game, and since every other place is charging Monopoly money now for the experience... why pule about the cost? Go once a year, enjoy it for what it is, and move on from the idea that the world should rebel against Better Stadium Less Ball. The tide has rolled in, never to roll back, and standing on principle in the ocean ruins your shoes.