Cincinnati Reds in SF

The Reds only came to SF once this season and it was last week. So of course Max and I got our tickets to go on Saturday night. Now the Reds haven't had a stellar season thus far this year. In fact, I believe they had lost 12 of their last 15 games before this one including two loses to SF. This was the third game of the 4 game series. We took the bus down to the Embarcadero and walked the two miles to AT&T park. This is a really nice baseball park. Imagine the new Cincinnati Reds Great American Park, except as a backdrop you have the San Francisco Bay instead of the Ohio River. It is a little different.
I love going to ball games- it always screams the coming of summer- and such a lazy way to spend an evening- it's not much work- and baseball fans don't do that up and down and up and down and up and down of some other spectator events- just sit and soak up the evening mood. I do love THE GREAT AMERICAN PARK in Cinti- always welcoming- and when you don't want to watch the game you can watch the river go by. And the ball park here is so like the Cinti park- just bigger- And of course I must admit watching the boats here in the Bay is quite an experience.

We had great seats, up a little high, but right behind home plate. I did see another person quite a ways away from us with a reds hat on, but other than that, it was a sea (or a bay) of the SF Giants orange and black. Max and I wore our red shirts and we each had on a Reds baseball hat.

Max and I do enjoy going to a baseball game, but it's not just the game that we enjoy. What can be better than also enjoying a Giant hot dog with sauerkraut and mustard. We each had one and just called it dinner.

It is usually our habit that Max always does the hot dog buying at the ball game, which is something that I don't mind a bit. But she also knows that mustard has a great affinity for parts of my body other than my mouth. Consequently, I think she sometimes tries to see how much mustard she can get onto a hot dog and then how much of it gets transferred to my nose, my chin, and my clothes. As you can see from the above picture and the one below, taking a bite out of this dog covered with mustard can include some occasional misplacement of the yellow stuff. At least I had lots of napkins to get it off of my nose before she took another picture.

Watching Don eat a "dog" covered in mustard and sauerkraut is so much fun- and he always get mustard on something- this night it was all over his blue jeans. And I wasn't quick enough to get the picture with mustard on his nose- and he did look just a bit cranky when I scrambled for the camera rather than the napkins!

This game was certainly the one we wanted to see. By the 7th inning, the Reds were ahead 10-5 and the SF fans started leaving. We were lucky we were sitting among very good natured Giants fans- they didn't scowl when we cheered for the Reds- though we did clap when the Giants did something right- which wasn't too often actually. They did get a bit testy when the refs called all our runners safe (couldn't tell from our seats) but we tried to stay a bit quiet at these moments. We of course stayed until the end, and the end was more exciting than the rest of the game. In the bottom of the 9th, the Giants scored 4 runs to make the score 10-9. They had one man on base with two outs and the winning run at the plate, but Cincinnati's closer did just that and struck out the last batter to give Cincinnati the win.

We left the game and caught the trolley back to the Embarcadero and then the bus back to our neighborhood. The trolley was packed with Giants fans, but we proudly wore our Reds hats. I had to hold Don back- he was so proud that he rather wanted to rather gloat (that is so Don)- I was afraid for a minute that at this point in the evening these Giants fans might get a little surly- I will say they didn't look the least bit happy that's for sure. It was a great game and great fun. We may actually go to another Giants game just because it was lots of fun.

PS: Look closely in the last picture- and you'll see our reflection in the glass! What a great time we had.