A Day in Balance

The Lady E. and I were at the Giants-A's game yesterday, in what I like to call "vista" seats in section 225 in the second deck; that is, we were out beyond third base but were at right angles to most of the action. It was -- as Nero Wolfe might have said -- "satisfactory," with the A's ahead the entire game but the lead tenuous and the tension thick because of the fragile state of their bullpen.

Plenty of Giants fans were around us, which can be irritating when the Giants are winning, but is amusing when they are not. We feel their pain, and we feel good about it. One Giants fan with a shriek for a voice -- an increasingly drunken shriek -- cried out "Let's go Giants" for most of the game. But since the Giants weren't going, though they seemed on the verge of going, it fed the tension, particularly since I was willing to get into a little point counterpoint with the guy.

"Let's GO staROIDS": That was me.

Also, the drunker he got the more ironic and self-mocking his cry became. He played with his own pose. He was a joke, but he was in on the joke. Oh he lurched into me once but apologized and patted my arm. It wasn't like a Raiders games. Evil was not abroad in the land.

But I was glad when the police came confiscated his half-empty bottle of what looked like Old Grandad to me but what someone else said was Hennessy. Can you believe I hadn't noticed? I guess I thought he was high on ballpark beer. I was pretty sure he wasn't high on life.