Tags
Angels, Bay Area, Blog, Brandon Crawford, Fans, Foul Ball, Giants, Mike Trout, Mitt, Todd Steed
Decisions.
Decisions.
What do you do when the squad splits? Do you stay in Scottsdale and gamble on a better roster or do you venture off for Tempe just so you can say you saw Mike Trout?
I saw Mike Trout.
I also saw Brandon Crawford smash a marvelous triple. Sorry, Mike, Brandon was more fun to watch despite your cannon throw from center field.
By all accounts or at least mine, it was a radiant, pleasant day watching the Giants lose to the Angels. Losing is acceptable when it’s Spring Training. The final winning score is whether you had a good time or not- and I did, though I must confess I left during the 7th inning.
I would have stayed for the whole thing but I realized my preference for older, rundown stadiums had suddenly waned right about the time they cued up Take Me Out To The Ballpark.
Some brands of charm can’t sustain nine innings of inspection. The Angels fans were gregarious, generally tipsy and quite knowledgeable about the game even though nobody in my row could pronounce Adrelton correctly.
The fans were not the problem. There was just TOO MANY OF THEM….crammed in every shaded and sunny space one could find. The bleacher rows were horribly oversold and cramped unless you happen to be sitting next to a group of Thai ballerinas. If you wanted a pretzel or had to pee you had to find a way to get dozens of baseball fan statues to slightly move so you could get by.
Like I mentioned, the fans were fine. Unless. Unless you happen to have brought a mitt to the game and then had an easy foul ball drop right into the mitt and then the ball somehow gets free of its own accord. Then Angels fans turn on you like wild, rabid beasts. There was hellish heckling and sarcastic belittling like you have never heard even at a hockey game.
If you drop a foul at a Giants game you will get, maybe, a chorus of sighs. Awwwwww. They feel for you. Many Bay types even empathize. Some of the more sarcastic fans will offer the tired but well meaning old chestnut: Send him back to AAA! It always get a few mild laughs.
But lord help if you drop a foul ball at Diablo Stadium. You’ll immediately learn where the name for that stadium originates.