Bonus game: San Diego Padres @ San Francisco Giants (game 1)

I arrived so much sooner than I had expected, that I went down to Kincaid's early and asked if they could honour my reservation 3 hours early - which they could.  It was very efficiently served too, and I was done 40 minutes later.  I'd already checked online that there were tickets available for the night's game, and there seemed to be plenty, so I went over to San Francisco and down to the ballpark and bought a ticket.  It cost $75, with no convenience fees or order fees or anything like that.  The website had offered me the same ticket for over $90.

CSN, a local TV station, are very brave - sometimes, they broadcast their live pre-game show from Willie Mays Plaza, just outside the main gate, with all the arriving fans standing around.  They were doing this at the 49ers game too on Monday night.  Everybody is so well behaved - there's the general buzz of excitement of arriving for a game, but no heckling or interrupting when they are actually broadcasting, until one of the production crew asks for cheering!


It was quite a bright evening, with a clear blue sky - and pleasantly warm to start with.  I'd remembered to take my coat, unlike the night before in Santa Clara.  I sat on it for the first half of the game, and then it was nice and warm to put on when I needed it later.

This game went along quite well, as San Francisco built a lead steadily until the 9th inning when we were leading 4-1.  It was at that point, San Diego started getting runners on base, and then a home run came and all of a sudden, they were leading 6-4 and ended up winning the game, with their excellently-named relief pitcher Quackenbush coming up to close it out.

Many people had left after 8 innings.  The Padres are a team that the Giants need to beat to keep their lead in the wildcard race and to chase the Dodgers (who also lost today)  This was an annoying loss to get so close and then lose it right at the end.  Our starter, Suarez, was the victim of a bullpen loss in Denver in the previous baseball game I saw.

I'm not sure why the pictures all came out so dark - it may be that I had the wrong mode selected on the camera still.