San Francisco: Oracle Park
The turnaround.
Whenever I went out on tour with the band, there was always a certain sadness that set in after playing our show farthest from home. Usually, by that point, we had been on the road for a week or longer, and the turnaround back to Ohio meant it would all be coming to an end soon.
That feeling — a combination of fatigue, homesickness, anxiety and disappointment — always made it difficult for me to muster the spirit to play the week or so of shows we had lined up for the return swing. At once I felt like I wanted the tour to go on forever, while the thing I actually desired most was to be done with it and back to my normal life.
It’s a terrible dichotomy, torn between the road and home, acknowledging that the adventure is thrilling while simultaneously longing for comfort and familiarity. This trip to all 30 Major League ballparks is by far the longest I’ve ever been away from home. By the time I packed up my things to leave the Bay, I had been living the vagabond life for five weeks with another two to go. Six more ballparks left to visit and a transcontinental drive to get the job done.
Turnaround syndrome had set in once again.
Erin and I were determined to live it up for our last three days together in northern California, checking off a couple of items from our aborted 2020 road trip up the Pacific Coast Highway. Mindy and Scott were staying in Napa and made reservations for us at a fancy pants winery on a Thursday afternoon. I had Russian River Brewing — home of the famous and sought after Pliny the Elder double IPA — on my non-negotiables list, with enthusiastic concurrence from Erin. We planned to drive up to Santa Rosa, grab some lunch at Russian River, then make our way to the winery to meet up with our friends.
Let’s consider northern California geography for a moment. It’s difficult for an Ohio flatlander like me to imagine, but the bulk of America’s third largest and most populous state is virtually uninhabitable. Jagged mountain terrain, remote forests and cruel, arid deserts make up most of the land area, leaving only thin strips of the Pacific coast and a handful of valleys fit for human settlement. While this leads to some absolutely staggering natural beauty, it also makes travel from one area to another somewhat of a challenge.
It took us just about an hour to drive the 53 miles from our place in the Berkeley Hills to Santa Rosa, crossing the San Francisco Bay via the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, passing near San Quentin prison1 before winding up Route 101 to our destination. We got a bit of a late start after the previous day’s excitement, walking into Russian River about 1 p.m. We knew we’d only have about an hour to spend here, since we’d need to drive about an hour to the winery, despite it being only about 35 miles away.
Pliny the Elder is every bit the beer it’s hyped up to be, at least as far as I could tell from the sip I nipped from Erin’s pint. I ordered a couple of small pours so I could try some of their funkier and experimental offerings, paired with the lunch special of a pizza slice from their wood-fired oven and a side salad for some ridiculously cheap price. We were running behind schedule by the time we settled up the bill, but not in so much of a rush as to skip the gift shop to grab a case of bottles and cans to-go. They were out of “Pliny for President” stickers, which is one of the few political statements worthy of permanent placement on my bumper.
The 35 mile trek toward Napa took us along the serpentine Bennett Valley Road, cutting a meandering trail southeast through the passes in the Sonoma Mountains. While a gorgeous drive, the route is primarily two-lane road with many twists and turns. When stuck behind an ardent tourist slamming on the brakes at every historical marker, or some rule follower who insists on driving below the speed limit, there are very few opportunities to pass. As such, we arrived about 15-20 minutes late for our double date with Mindy and Scott.
Artesa Winery, situated on a hilly 150 acres about four miles southwest of downtown Napa, is maybe best known for its unique, modern architecture or its star turn in the 2019 Amy Poehler-led Netflix film Wine Country. From the outside, the tasting room, buried into the side of a hill, seems like what you’d imagine a new age healing center for the lackluster children of billionaires might look like. Or possibly a luxury bunker built by a titan of industry preparing to survive Armageddon, but who, fueled by a personal loss and lack of coping skills, becomes a supervillain determined to cause the end of the world instead.
The wine was fine.2 I think I need to stop writing this post and take some time to hammer out the above-sketched pre-apocalyptic action movie script instead.
After the tasting, we made our way into Napa proper for dinner at Zuzu, a Spanish tapas restaurant recommended by our wine guide3 at Artesa. On this warm summer evening, I was delighted to see that the restaurant’s drink specialty was not wine, but gin, primarily in the form of the gin and tonic, my all-time favorite hot weather libation. From their impressively curated list of gins and tonics, I opted for the Austrian Reisetbauer Blue Gin, infused with licorice root and green cardamom, paired with Q Spectacular tonic water, dry and effervescent with a hint of organic agave to balance the quinine bitterness.
Among the four of us, we split a delectable array of small plates: delicate, fresh caprese salad; luscious, wine-steamed mussels; tender, savory pork albondigas; assertive flatiron steak with chimichurri; and so much more. Post-nosh, we ambled through downtown Napa, popping into a few of the local shops specializing in artisanal “Live, Laugh, Love” signage or bawdy T-shirts geared for the “my third bachelorette party” set. Erin and I were out of town by sundown and back in Berkeley an hour later.
“Don't bother with churches, government buildings or city squares; if you want to know about a culture, spend a night in its bars”
―Ernest Hemingway
A week of opulent living was starting to catch up with us. After splurging on club seat drink service, nine-course omakase lunches and posh, secluded accommodations, we really needed a more proletarian Friday night to bring our lifestyle back to reality. We popped back down to Jack London Square on the waterfront in Oakland in search of some familiar and budget-friendly entertainment.
First stop, as is so often the case in my escapades, was dinner at Cellarmaker Brewing’s Oakland taproom. Alongside some sharable snacks and a Detroit-style pepperoni pizza — 8” x 8” and cut into four pieces so every piece is a coveted corner — were a couple of delicious beers, including a smoked porter called Coffee & Cigarettes4 that thankfully tasted more like coffee than cigarettes.
From there we walked down 3rd Street to Dokkaebier, a Korean-inspired brewery founded by Youngwon Lee in 2020. My friend Rob from Arizona recommended this place to me while I was a guest on his podcast, and we tried to stop in a couple days earlier after my unwitting attempt at petty crime. Craft beer appeals to me and many others because of the adventurous approach to flavor that brewers pride themselves on. At Dokkaebier, that means beers like Kimchi Sour, Calamansi and Tea Lager, Minari Witbier and Rice Kolsch are the flagships, as opposed to slightly different takes on tried and true IPAs, pilsners and stouts that you’ll find at an overwhelming percentage of small, independent breweries. I enjoyed everything I tasted at Dokkaebier — though as I’m not a sour beer fan, I don’t think I’d personally want more than a flight pour of Kimchi Sour, despite being a kimchi stan — and it reminded me that taking risks and being true to yourself is a time-tested way to make a name for yourself.
Before this trip, the last time I had walked through Jack London Square was back in 2010, as I was courting the Jerry Brown for Governor campaign to hire our company for merchandise-based fundraising. As I explored the East Bay, I took a BART train up to Berkeley, walking through the University of California campus, fingering through the stacks at Amoeba Music, wandering down streets and through neighborhoods, rehearsing my pitch that I’d soon deliver to a deputy to a deputy to the deputy campaign manager.
High noon5 eased its way into happy hour. I happened across a non-descript hole-in-the-wall bar, well removed from the upscale operations in downtown Berkeley, that beckoned me inside. It was me, the bartender and maybe two or three other solo day drinkers. I ordered a beer and sat down at a table, checking my BlackBerry Storm for any emails I may have missed while ambling around. I picked up the local alt-weekly paper from a stack on a shelf in the back of the bar, nestled betwixt event fliers and counterculture leaflets. Among the promotional bric-a-brac were little business cards that read “No Shame.” in large, serif type.
I don’t remember what was on the other side of the card — likely an ad for something banal like bar trivia or an all-vinyl DJ night — but I do remember feeling no shame in that moment, drinking a beer at 3:30 in the afternoon, alone, in an unfamiliar place. Not just a lack of shame, or fear, or anxiety, but contentment. Belonging. Peace. I snapped a quick photo, which would become my Facebook cover image for the better part of a decade, moved from my solitary table to the bar, ordered another beer and struck up a conversation with my fellow midday derelicts. I kicked myself out when the beers increased to full price and went about my business.
I have often reflected back on that afternoon and the feeling that overcame me. Knowing that my 30 ballpark journey was going to lead me back to the Bay, I resolved to return to this place, if it still existed, and see if it engendered the same wave of positivity in me 14 years later. The only hitch in this plan: I had no idea what the name of this bar was, where it was, or how I could find it again.
I spent a good, long while Googling Berkeley dive bars, looking at maps and trying to retrace my steps from a decade and a half prior, dodging all the impertinent results that come from searching the phrase “no shame.” Eventually I settled on the notion that this Brigadoon bar must be on San Pablo Avenue in West Berkeley, as I half-remembered it being on a pretty major street and that I ate at a mystery Asian restaurant on my way back to the BART, probably on University Avenue. If we assume that to be true, the place that seemed like it would fit the description best was Acme Bar & Company, though from their curated social media, it seemed a little higher end than I remembered. Still, it seemed the most likely, so Erin and I set off to indulge my flight of nostalgia.
As we walked up, it felt right, the front door flanked on both sides by blue brick arches. One step inside and I was convinced I had found it. I spied the small bar, filled with frolicking patrons on a busy Friday night, and imagined what it would look like empty on a Tuesday afternoon. It all seemed to fit the bill. Except for the tables.
In my memory, I sat at a table some distance from the bar, but here at Acme the handful of low-tops were practically right behind the stools. My brain contorted, thrust into this uncanny valley, wishing, hoping that I had found the place that meant such a great deal to me, but not fully being able to accept it.
Maybe it’s the fog induced by the passage of time that altered my perception. Maybe the metaphor of abandoning the solitude of the table and joining the community at the bar created an actual, physical distance in my recollection. I vacillated between “this must be the place” and “this ain’t it” for the entirety of our one round stay at Acme. I never landed on a definitive answer, and I probably never will. Regardless, the “no shame” mantra persists, not only in the initial feeling of finding a home away from home when simply searching for a cheap drink, but also in indulging a flight of nostalgic fancy amidst an evening of memory making. At least this time I took better notes.
In all my dive bar research, the place that called my name the loudest was the Hotsy Totsy Club, an 85-year-old rough-and-tumble drinking outpost in Albany, just north of Berkeley, best known for stiff, creative cocktails and an inescapable barrage of B-movies on the TVs that border on softcore pornography. The bar’s name hummed into the cool California night, illuminated in hot yellow neon above a Dutch door guarded by a gruff bouncer checking IDs. The impeccably curated interior — a hodgepodge of post-war pin-ups, mid-century furnishings and commissioned dog art in the style of thrift store velvet paintings — contributes to the vibe that the Hotsy Totsy has worked so hard to cultivate under its current ownership: working-class meets weirdo and everybody better fucking get along.
Erin and I wormed our way through the thick, inebriated crowd and ordered our drinks under the old light-up sign proclaiming “PRESCRIPTIONS RECEIVED HERE.” She ordered the Six-Toed Cat, a mojito-adjacent cocktail inspired by Hemingway, consisting of Mexican rum, lime juice, strawberry, maraschino and orgeat syrup. I forgot the name of mine — something with the word Albany in it — featuring rum, mezcal and a big-ass slice of watermelon clamped to the rim of the glass. After downing our drinks, I fought my way back to the bar to close my tab and snag a T-shirt with an illustration of Jimmy, the bar’s late, beloved canine mascot. If Acme was the bar I was trying to find to rekindle a long lost feeling, Hotsy Totsy will be the place I seek to revisit my next time in town.
The last stop on our tour was the bar closest to our temporary home, Kensington Circus Pub. Located between the spokes of a traffic circle where three streets intersect, the Circus, as you could probably surmise from the name, is an English-inspired public house featuring Imperial pints of beers from near and far as well as a mish-mash menu of British, Italian and American fare. Nothing really special to report here, other than that we had driven past this place for four days before popping in to try it, and that, while unspectacular, it really accentuated my longing to have a local corner bar in my own neighborhood in Columbus.6
ARE YOU EVER GOING TO WRITE ABOUT THE BASEBALL GAME, YOU LUSH?!?!?
Confession time: in my handful of visits to the Bay, I had never set foot in San Francisco proper. All my business was conducted in and around Oakland, and as a working class, Rust Belt soul, I felt at home there with no reason to cross a bridge to the hoity-toity peninsula. No disrespect to one of America’s most storied cities, but I just never had a reason to go there.
Obviously, in the quest to visit all 30 MLB ballparks, I now have one. But something I’ve learned throughout this trip is that you don’t necessarily need a reason to do anything. Sometimes it’s okay to just throw caution to the wind and go. My pre-Zoloft brain would have let anxiety, depression and fear deter me from such a capricious notion. I cannot understate what a relief it is to have 50 milligrams of help to keep those things from dominating my decision-making.
That said, I learned in therapy that preparation is also an effective way to combat anxiety, which is why I spent a fair bit of research time to make sure my first-ever visit to the city would be fruitful.
Plan points:
Transit to and from the ballpark
Coffee (always a high priority)
Ballgame logistics
Post-game shenanigans
If you’ve been reading along with this blog so far, you know that I’m not too keen on driving in a lot of cities. More to the point, I’m not too keen on parking in a lot of cities, especially around ballparks with hyper-inflated lot and garage prices. In the case of San Francisco, I also wanted to avoid the headache of driving around the packed, winding streets with just the Google Maps lady as a guide in unfamiliar territory.7
Public transit around the entire Bay Area is pretty robust and reliable,8 so we took the BART train from Berkeley to the Powell Street station, just on the cusp of San Francisco’s infamous Tenderloin neighborhood,9 where it would be about a mile walk through the SoMa — “South of Market” — district to Oracle Park.
My SF coffee research turned up a lot of really interesting options between the train and the ballpark, but many of them were closed on Saturday as they primarily catered to the business crowds on weekdays. I settled on Delah Coffee, a shop with four locations spread out on either side of the bay, specializing in authentic Arabian coffees and baked goods. Erin got a mocha latte while I opted for a Yemeni latte, despite not really knowing what I was in for. My drink was heavily spiced with cardamom — I love cardamom — and I can safely say this was the best cup of coffee I had on my entire trip.10
The San Francisco Giants were celebrating the 10th anniversary of their 2014 championship before the game we were attending. In the early 2010s, the Giants were a short but prolific dynasty, winning the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014 after a five decade championship drought since moving to the west coast in 1958. Built on superior pitching, clutch hitting and sterling defense, this version of the Giants reinvigorated a fanbase that had become used to getting close but never grasping the ring. As such, I knew I wanted to get to Oracle Park right around the time gates opened if not before, since the game had sold out in advance and Giants backers would be out in full force.
As we walked up to Willie Mays Plaza, the throngs of fans waiting to get into the park had formed long, snaking lines down the surrounding sidewalks, even stretching over the 3rd Street bridge that spans the Mission Creek Channel. It was hard to tell where the lines ended: we may or may not have surreptitiously snuck into the middle of one, taking advantage of the confusion.11 Minutes later we were through the gate, promotional Hawai’ian shirts in hand.
Oracle Park routinely lands toward the top of many fans’ favorite ballpark lists, and upon my first visit there, it certainly occupies a similar spot on mine.12 After walking up the winding ramp from street level to the main concourse, we made our way out to the right field corner, where the grandstand ends and the waterfront begins. There’s a kind of magic to standing atop the 24-foot high13 outfield wall, just 309 feet from home plate. As a young man, I’d watched Barry Bonds hit scores of baseballs over this fence in the early 2000s, some landing in the hands of lucky fans standing where I was, some flying over their heads and splashing down into McCovey Cove14 to be retrieved by the zealous boaters and kayakers waiting patiently for a souvenir from the sky.
After making a lap around the outfield concourse, past the giant Coca-Cola bottle sculpture — which is actually a slide that has caused dozens of injuries and lawsuits — and down the left field line, we headed to the upper deck to meet up with Libby, Scott and Mindy and take in the pre-game ceremony. The bulk of the 2014 championship roster was on the field, addressing the crowd as clips of the momentous plays they made on their way to winning a title played on the massive video board, soaking up the admiration of a fanbase high on nostalgia, all set in this modern-day shrine, the jewel of the Embarcadero, nestled into the picturesque panorama of San Francisco Bay. For one day — and this one day only — I was a Giants fan, even as they were about to take on my beloved Detroit Tigers.
Rookie southpaw Brant Hurter came on for Detroit in the bottom of the second inning, following opener Alex Faedo’s shaky but scoreless first frame. Making just his second big league appearance, Hurter pitched admirably for five innings, striking out five while allowing three runs in the fifth, as San Francisco capitalized on a combination of timely hitting, lucky placement and poor defense. Hurter’s admirable pitching, unfortunately for Detroit, could not match the masterful performance from the Giants starter Logan Webb, who hurled seven innings of one-run ball, striking out eight Tiger hitters on the afternoon.
As each team’s pitcher traded zeroes on the scoreboard with his counterpart, Erin, Libby and I went out in search of some of Oracle Park’s vaunted stadium food. I had one thing and one thing only in my sights: garlic fries. Ever since we drove through Gilroy — the garlic capital of the world — on our way up from Los Angeles, that intoxicating aroma lingered in my brain. Garlic fries are an Oracle Park staple, making their major league debut in 1994 just a few miles down the road at the now demolished Candlestick Park, home of the Giants from 1960-1999.15 Given the option of eating my fries from a disposable paper boat or a collectible San Francisco Giants helmet, I happily chose the latter. Libby, noticing that the fry helmet was bigger than an ice cream helmet but smaller than a nacho helmet, dared me to complete the “three helmet challenge,” which is not a real thing.
Until now, that is.
After the scoring in the fifth inning made the score 3-1, I ventured out for my second helmet snack: carne asada nachos. I’m totally guessing at the cost on these based on my credit card statement, but I’m guessing this calorie pile set me back about $27, but after enough stadium beers to stop keeping track of my expenses, a helmet full of soggy nachos seemed like a steal at twice the price.
After the seventh inning stretch, it was time to claim the last jewel of the triple crown.16 By the time I got to the ice cream stand to order an $18 ice cream sundae, the giggling employees behind the counter informed me that they were sold out of soft serve for the day. Seeing the half empty sleeve of novelty helmets behind them and a mother and child with their freshly purchased Dippin’ Dots, inspiration struck. I convinced them to sell me a $10 container of the ice cream of the future along with one tiny helmet for the full sundae price — drunk math strikes again — and was on my way, basking in the glory of completing a challenge that had literally been made up about 90 minutes prior. Maybe 10 years from now, they’ll hold a pre-game ceremony for me and hand out gaudy Hawai’ian shirts with my face and faux guacamole stains splashed all over them.
I made it back to my seat just in time to see Detroit start a rally that would come up short, ending with consecutive strikeouts that would leave the tying runs on base. Final score: 3-1 Giants.17
The sold out crowd of 40,030 fans clogged the exits: it took an exceptionally long time to get down the same ramp we easily climbed up just a few hours before. The access from the ramp to the main team store had also been closed, and I discovered once we finally made it out onto the plaza that there was yet another long line to get into the store from outside. For all the things the Giants and Oracle Park do well, efficiently moving crowds doesn’t seem to be one of them, the only real knock I have on this place.
After procuring my requisite Giants pin — I guess if I had one more complaint, it would be the pin selection, but we’re really grasping at this point — Erin and Libby and I made our way up the street to Black Hammer Brewing, about a half mile from Willie Mays Plaza. As you can imagine, it was a pretty popular watering hole an hour after the final out was recorded and, yes, another sizeable line. We held out, ordered our drinks and waited for a couple of bar seats to open up, which they did in short order. The man who was sitting in the seat before me was unknowingly the subject of a pencil sketch in progress by another bar patron. As he was walking toward the door, the artist fessed up and showed his work to his model, who was, as far as I could tell, amused, flattered and impressed.
The three of us took the train back to the East Bay for a nightcap at Temescal Brewing in Oakland, enjoying our last gorgeous California evening together on the patio, flanked by a sparse crowd of locals and their dogs. I miss my dog.
The turnaround is the hardest part of the trip. In this case, my turnaround was dropping Erin off at the airport in Oakland at 7 a.m., envious that she could just go home while I had a week-long drive staring me in the face. With 24 ballparks under my belt, I was tempted to throw a brick on the accelerator and let the Mazda 3 drive itself into the ocean before I hopped a plane back to Ohio. I mean, that’s close enough, right? And I don’t have to do them all in one season: this can be a lifetime achievement, like it is for most people. I’ve still got three weeks of sabbatical left, maybe I can actually relax before I have to get back to normal life. I let these thoughts run through my head for a few minutes as I drove the looping causeway out from the airport terminal. I checked the clock and did a little math in my head.
“If I put my foot down, I can be in L.A. right around 1 o’clock, first pitch time for the Dodgers/Pirates game.” With renewed purpose and doubts cast out the window like roadside trash, I hit the gas.
NEXT GAMES:
Colorado Rockies at Arizona Diamondbacks, Monday, Aug. 12, 6:40 p.m. MST, Chase Field
Arizona Diamondbacks at Tampa Bay Rays, Sunday, Aug. 18, 1:40 p.m. EDT, Tropicana Field
Arizona Diamondbacks at Miami Marlins, Monday, Aug. 19, 6:40 p.m. EDT, loanDepot park
Philadelphia Phillies at Atlanta Braves, Wednesday, Aug. 21, 7:20 p.m. EDT, Truist Park
Toronto Blue Jays at Boston Red Sox, Thursday, Aug. 29, 7:10 p.m. EDT, Fenway Park
St. Louis Cardinals at New York Yankees, Friday, Aug. 30, 7:05 p.m. EDT, Yankee Stadium
A note from nearly three months in the future:
I started writing this dispatch back in September, jotted down some more in October and finished in the early days of November. I’ve been back home since Labor Day after finishing the journey — spoiler alert, I guess — and immediately had to pivot back into normal life.
I have to say: I love my normal life. Our little human and animal nuclear family is the best; Erin and I just adopted our newest member, a sweet senior mutt we named Doris, a couple of weeks ago. My job, despite becoming more challenging and nerve-wracking over the past few years, is ultimately a good fit for my skill set, personality and lifestyle. My friends are all such talented and kind-hearted people, and I feel so much joy from creating satisfying art and lasting memories with them.
This two month sabbatical, which I promise I will finish documenting, has been as therapeutic for me as a year of psychoanalysis and daily SSRIs to balance my brain chemistry. I literally returned from this trip feeling like an entirely new person, and it’s been a new adventure of discovery for me to simply live my everyday life through a new lens. Alas, I haven’t devoted as much time to these faithful recountings of the last seven stops on my ballpark tour.
Thank you for all the support and thank you for occasionally prodding and needling me about when the next posts will go up. It really does mean a lot to me that this story means something to you. I think now that I’ve mostly settled into old and new routines that I can finally get this project back on track. Let’s consider September and October to have been my own personal seventh inning stretch. Now it’s time to finish strong.
At Folsom Prison might be the better Johnny Cash live record, but At San Quentin features the definitive recording of “A Boy Named Sue,” originally written by Shel Silverstein. The San Quentin concert is also where Cash would pose for one of the most iconic photographs in the history of American music.
I have to admit that I’m a bit of an ignoramus when it comes to wine. I hardly ever drink it and even more rarely buy it. For years, my go-to rule if I had to pick out a bottle of wine was to find one that had an animal or a machine on the label. I know a tiny bit more now, like the difference between Champagne and Crémant, or that you should never pour your own glass of port, but still would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a $100 bottle of Cabernet and one that costs a sawbuck.
I want to call him a sommelier, but I don’t know if our guy — who was informative and engaging — has the experience or training to demand the title. Or if he would even want it: stuffy French titles are often just coveted points of distinction for dilettantes.
Likely named for the Jim Jarmusch film, not the Jimmy Eat World song or, reversed, the Otis Redding song or the Paul Thomas Anderson short film that would later be expanded into his feature-length debut Hard Eight.
This would’ve been during daylight saving time, so high 1 p.m., I guess.
We live in the dead center of a one square mile residential neighborhood with the closest commercial lots at the northeast and northwest corners. There is one bar within a mile radius of our house, as opposed to four houses of worship within a half mile. Maybe I should start praying for a zoning variance and get a liquor license for my garage.
No shade on the Google Maps lady: I think she only tried to steer me into oncoming traffic or a body of water three or four times over the course of 17,000 miles. Not bad.
We briefly entertained the possibility of riding the ferry from Alameda to Oracle Park, but we would have arrived too late to catch the pregame festivities and get the promotional giveaway item. Maybe next time.
As I mentioned in the Oakland post, California governor Gavin Newsom was spearheading a campaign to crack down on homelessness, not by addressing the causes or offering new solutions, but simply by rousting the unhoused from their spots and making an already difficult life more so. As it turns out, this strategy is ineffective, inefficient and ultimately pointless.
Two Yemeni coffee shops have opened in the Columbus area over the past year, and I am excited to try them out. I have lots of opinions about my current hometown, but the fact of the matter is that you can find almost anything you want there, if you’re willing to search for it. The version we get might be a chain concept looking to expand to a new market, but that’s basically Columbus’s brand as a city.
Listen, I’m usually a pretty reliable rule follower, but something about California had me in a lawless, rebellious spirit. Maybe it was a subconscious west coast wilding, knowing I was as far from home as I would get, throwing caution and consequences to the winds off San Francisco Bay.
I don’t have a list. Please don’t make me make a list.
Willie Mays wore number 24 for the Giants for 21 seasons, and is arguably the best player to ever lace up spikes in the Major Leagues. Little tributes like this are absolutely everywhere at Oracle Park: the Giants do an amazing job of paying homage to their 142-year history.
Named for the prodigious slugger Willie McCovey, who spent 19 years of his Hall of Fame career at first base for the Giants, knocking 236 of his 521 career homers over the walls at the team’s former home, Candlestick Park.
Candlestick Park is considered to be the first modern ballpark, built entirely from reinforced concrete. The stadium’s design and construction, with a well-timed safety upgrade in the late 1980s, helped it to withstand the Loma Prieta earthquake, which hit just minutes before game 3 of the 1989 World Series between the Giants and the Oakland Athletics. The park was filling with a capacity crowd in excess of 62,000 people at the time of the quake, but only minor injuries were reported. Candlestick Park was deemed safe for the resumption of the World Series 10 days later.
That’s what this challenge is going to be called from now on.
That’s eight straight for the home team, bringing the record to 13-12 on the tour. The Tigers, sitting at eight games under .500 after this loss, would go 31-13 for the rest of the season, making a miraculous run to the American League playoffs.
I always "checked in" at San Quentin while my sister drove us to RRB. I'm glad you're still writing these, it's really fun to read your adventures and I hear them in your voice 🤣
You know if this whole beer thing doesn't work out you'd make one hell of a travel writer