The concrete crypt that is baseball in Oakland still offers some appeal, although the experience is most likely to charm someone who is either too true a believer to know better or who had never previously experienced the magic of the Coliseum's Kremlin-style architecture. Thus the news that our much beloved Comrade Anantharaman was making her first trip to what the locals used to call "the Mausoleum" inspired us to try and capture the moments of discovery that would flood her senses, and maybe also show her the toe to which the game has tied its coroner's tag.
Fortunately for her, Comrade Redford was part of the traveling party as well, which left two people who see the good in others and their surroundings to steel themselves against the scheduled indignities of Mariners-A's on a Wednesday night in September when the Mariners are barely in the wild card race and the A's are already sewing "West Sacramento" on their baseball underpants. The comrades would have fun if they had to dig beneath the asphalt to find it; Comrade Anantharaman wanted to experience Oakland baseball as part of what is apparently a very long baseball bucket list, and Comrade Redford just has a good attitude in general.
And Oakland did not disappoint her. It didn't inspire her, either, mind you. She decided to resist her itch for Eisenhower-era American archaeology, and declined an offered tour of the stadium; the chance to explore a product of early 1960s municipal construction subjected to decades of systemic neglect proved less appealing than the allure of “some baseball.” And frankly, who can blame her? She is a baseball completist, as her apps will testify. She is not necessarily a stadium completist, though she knows which parks she hasn't seen yet (Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, which might be in Kansas by the time she gets there). Otherwise, she would have booked her trip for Sactown in late August of next year, the height of hypothermia season in central California. Also she was in town, and having watched the turgidities of Diamondbacks-Giants the day before, she needed Mariners-A's for the benefit of her soul.
There is medication for this sort of contentment-through-ball, but everybody gets the church they want. We went to our assigned seats in the second deck, beyond the Mariners bullpen, and learned that even on a night when the stadium had eight times as many empty seats as occupied ones, security people were overtly present to make sure you didn't improve your location by so much as a row. It is touches like these that have made John Fisher's A's a monument to systematized irritation.
As it turned out, they were the seats we should have had. Comrade Anantharaman was fascinated by the two bullpens being on the field of play, in an homage to the 1949 Boston Braves; she was so enraptured by the twin manual out-of-town scoreboards that she fantasized briefly about what a great job it would be for her to be trapped inside a wooden studio apartment with no visible windows and only a laptop to update the latest developments in Nationals-Marlins—the perfect environment for an unshaven old man with scoliosis, a metal folding chair, and two packs of Pall Malls changing the pitchers' slots from one incomprehensible jersey number to another, and perhaps for her as well.
The seats also knew what we needed when A's catcher Shea Langeliers fouled off a ball in the second inning directly over our heads. Because we were in a stadium made up almost entirely of concrete and empty plastic chairs, the ball bounced untouched back toward Comrade Redford, who as the tallest of the party had the best chance of, and the most eager demeanor about, catching it. He very nearly did; the ball glanced off his right ring finger and then fell to the lower deck, accompanied by the groan of the 15 people within eyeshot. A security person approached without actually inquiring to make sure that he was all right, because that's what HR said she should do, but there are no splints for mortification. She returned to her three-hour torporfest, and we to ours. (Patrick blamed the finger, which he had previously injured doing something needlessly exercise-y, for not making the play, as though a finger acts independently of its owner. Neither he nor Comrade Anantharaman ever got another chance; a memory ruined, to be sure, by a finger with a coward's heart.)
That setback did not prevent Comrade Redford's spaniel puppy heart from buying a batting helmet full of nachos and an IPA as refreshment. He would need them for the rigors ahead, which included:
- The offensively hemophiliac Mariners scoring their highest number of runs in a game in eight years, despite a lineup featuring four guys with a batting average below .205, and also despite being retired in order in four of their nine half-innings.
- Gloriously named A's reliever Janson Junk making his Elephants debut—he was a Brewer and then an Astros minor leaguer before this—by facing eight hitters in the seventh inning and going homer/double/single/single/wild pitch/walk/double/walk/single. It was at that point that Junk was removed for the also rather gloriously named A's reliever Ross Stripling, who allowed the last two of Junk's remaining hitters to score and then gave up four runs himself in the eighth. Junk was DFA’ed this morning, and the F should stand for more than "for"; Stripling is still with the team. It’s tough to say which is the greater punishment.
- Blandly named putative Mariners superstar Julio Rodriguez flying out five times in six at-bats, including two predicted by Comrade Anantharaman because she is a legitimate baseball knower. She became mildly agitated when her beloved Detroit Tigers vomited up a 5-0 lead in San Diego and fulminated through the agony of trying to follow the games through the stylized inertia of Ezra, the 86-year-old ghost inhabiting the right field scoreboard operator.
- The Athletics' massive electronic scoreboards offering no statistic more modern than on-base percentage, and introducing its starting lineup by showing only the players' eyes. This seems less like a stylistic choice than the result of old-time scoreboards on the facing in the upper deck that crop every player’s image such that they look like either a bathroom pervert or a spy.
- Comrades Anantharaman and Redford both noticing the guy wearing the Alex Bregman jersey and wondering why he thought that was a sensible choice; he was sitting alone, if that's a help.
- The two delighting at the dingy corridors of the stadium where merch was sold under the least appealing shopping atmosphere. Most admirably, Comrade Anantharaman resisted the urge to buy a shirt to commemorate her night in Atlantis, or even to accept Comrade Redford's nacho helmet as a memento. She's a pro, and not one to be bought off with mere soon-to-be-outdated schmatta from a team trying not to die despite the best efforts of their melted candle of an owner. She's today's best person ever, and Comrade Redford is a close second despite having to explain to his spouse why he now has both a plastic batting helmet that barely fits over his big toe, and also a failed finger.
The lesson of all this? Accompany a Defectorite to a sporting thing as part of your mega-enhanced subscription price—soon to be added to our current list of extortion plans, and keep refreshing that tab, you overdressed sloth. You may be lucky enough to get happy and moderately well-adjusted people as your companions. But avoid the Magary-at-Soldier-Field package at all costs. You all know why.
