Innings One Through Four: Set Out Running But I Take My Time
On the day when a new Field Poll showed California voters narrowly supporting a measure that would tax marijuana (Proposition 19), the San Francisco Giants will pay tribute to ’60s icon Jerry Garcia. Tonight is the 15th anniversary of his death. “It seems like only a couple years ago,” says the security guy who hands me my press pass. Everything is happening so much faster now, he laughs, everything but baseball. Agreed. Baseball is timeless. It is our only team sport where clock time is not a factor. Maybe that’s why baseball loves ghosts like Jerry Garcia.
The players return from a dreadful sojourn in the suffocating swamps of Georgia, seeking some relief on the cool banks of Mission Creek. Really cool; 60 degrees at game time. Officially. Unofficially, the fog has already blurred the sun, and Madison Bumgarner, from rural North Carolina, knows what everybody else in the ballpark knows: It’s frickin’ cold. He takes the mound for the Giants after the living Dead do the national anthem, and his first 20 pitches are colder than the gusts of wind coming from the sea: 10 balls, 10 strikes, down a run, man on third, two out.
At the beginning of the fourth inning a man in Section 113 yells out, “Don’t take the brown acid!” Everybody around him cheers. Pat Burrell doubles down the left field line off third baseman Aramis Ramirez. The press box dissolves into uncontrollable giggling when a reporter says he’s got the “munchies.” Travis Ishikawa strikes out. Despite his well-known “experimentation,” Garcia did not die from taking drugs, but from withdrawing from drugs. Burrell left standing on second. At the end of four, Cubs 2, Giants 0.
Innings Five Through Eight: You Better Watch Your Speed
Carlos Zambrano from Venezuela pitches for the Cubs. Andres Torres from Puerto Rico is on first with a walk, Edgar Renteria from Colombia is the batter: so what music do they crank up on the AV? Hava Nagila! It works! Renteria singles! Buster Posey (from Leesburg, Georgia) doubles! Zambrano throws the ball into the dirt and it’s a tie game. The Giants are dancing the hora! Or is it the flowing, aimless, timeless, circle dance Deadheads did in the parking lots of ballparks across the country as they waited for their time to begin?
A fan wearing a tie-dye shirt told me that every time Barry Bonds hit a home run, Jerry Garcia would play “Ripple” in the hitter’s’ honor. Cool. Not true, says the Asian girl. Garcia didn’t care about the Giants. That’s cold, says her boyfriend.
Three well-placed ground balls score another Cub run and send young Mr. Bumgarner, who has pitched well, to a shower, hopefully not cold. If this were a Dead concert, there would be a haze over the field and it would not be the fog. Some remark on a more substantial correspondence between Bonds and Garcia. Whatever. Travis Ishikawa is hitting tonight. And so is Andres Torres, who knocks home Ishikawa and ties the score again.
After Bill Walton and Mickey Hart lead a 7,000-kazoo rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in front of 40,000 fans and a regional TV audience, I make a dash for “the well,” where TV and press cameramen hang out. I am interrogated by the TV cameraman as the bottom of the seventh inning unfolds. “We are live,” he admonishes me. He is being fed questions through his earpiece. They want to know if I’ve taken the brown acid. I want to know if my press pass will be revoked.
Innings Nine Through Eleven: Just Keep Truckin’ On
The farther you go toward the bleachers, the colder it gets. OK, not Candlestick, but Mission Creek chill factor; hands feel packed in dry ice. Brian Wilson comes on, the cardiac kid. On the anniversary of Garcia’s death by heart attack, is this, you know, kosher? Not to worry, says a guy with a big grey beard, “Wilson won’t get the save, so he’ll be quick.”
He is quick — and deadly. Wilson had no chance for the save, which is really what a closer wants, but he could have had the win had the Giants scored. Pat Burrell once again stands stranded at second.
The game begins to resemble one of those Garcia/Dead riffs that wander into oblivion and back more than a few times. I’m in the bleachers now, sitting on someone’s ice chest. Only die-hard fans and sportswriters remain. In front of me, two rows down, just behind Andres Torres in center, some kids furtively pass a joint. The row behind me they’re passing a flask. Bottom of the tenth, Ishikawa again on base, Torres again at the plate. Did he get any fumes? Did he inhale the spirit of the night? Yes, he did — he doubles deep to right field! Ishikawa is going to go for it — what’s he been smoking?! It’s going to be close! I can’t watch. Out by a mile (or so).
Aubrey Huff in right field, hugging himself to stay warm. Andres Torres kicking his legs, winding his arms, Pat Burrell pounding his glove. A pitching change. The three huddle together in the outfield. “Looks like they could use a fire,” says the old guy next to me. In the bottom of the 11th, as pagan chants from the East Bay hills mark Garcia’s death, Edgar Renteria lights the fuse (Hava Nagila!). Huff follows with a single, and the Cubs walk Posey on purpose. “Walk Posey to get to Burrell — they must have swallowed the brown acid,” I say. The family around me laughs, as Burrell clobbers the first pitch he sees: a long, long fly ball, long enough to send the Giants and their fans home winners (what else?), 4-3.