Posted in Drawing Crowds
Last updated 02/24/2012 at 3:29 p.m. PST
Take Me Out to the Ball Park, Buy Me Some Beer
As part of SF Beer Week, Public House offered a ballpark tour heavy on nostalgia for the Giants' 2010 World Series win
By Marina Luz on
February 21, 2012 - 10:37 a.m. PST
For SF Beer Week, Public House brought out their best 2010 beers and showed World Series footage for the "Reliving the Magic" event. With Spring Training just around the corner, could the ballpark bar whip fans into the appropriate frenzy?
It's impossible not to look forward to recapturing the thrill of the Giant's 2010 World Series. Would it be anything like late October in 2010 in SF, where giddy fans packed the bars, fire-code deep? Or the ticker tape parade (usually reserved for triumphant astronauts of the newsreel era), where complete strangers grinned at each other all day long and shouted themselves hoarse?
Eh, not so much. This Beer Week event at Public House turns out to be a pretty low-key affair that involves a muted highlight reel with a lot of (silent) talking heads, (silent) interviews and a few actual game highlights. Most of the screens are tuned to the evening's Knicks game. Bits of the very manageably-sized crowd seem to be there incidentally, rather than purposefully.
I start by ordering a Lost Abbey Deliverance (dark chocolate color with a matching dark chocolate flavor, 12.5%), and hope that people will soon be swapping stories of their favorite moments, like Game 6 against the Phillies where the Giants went up against such great baseball names like Chase Utley and Shane Victorino in Philadelphia. Bottom of the 9th, 2 outs. Brian Wilson puts two walks in a row on base, letting tense Phillies fans have a very small, very cruel touch of hope, and then promptly strikes out Ryan Howard for his third save of the NLCS, and the Giants win the pennant in front of a completely subdued crowd who clutch their little rally towels in stunned silence.
I remember the joy of still having baseball to listen to deep into October, and then came November 1st, the only day in November that mattered that year:
Game 5 against the Rangers, with Tim Lincecum going up against Cliff Lee in Arlington. In the 7th, Huff hits his first sacrifice bunt of his career and gets Ross and Uribe to 3rd and 2nd. And then Edgar Renteria does something that prompts one of the best radio calls of all time:
The way Dave Flemming's voice breaks when he hits the word "gone" encapsulates the sheer excitement that every Giants fan felt at that exact moment. It's flawed, and because of that, it's perfect.
And then Brian Wilson efficiently polishes off Josh Hamilton, Vladimir Guerrero, and Nelson Cruz in order, and with that the Giants, in their away-game greys, win the World Series in front of yet another completely subdued crowd who clutch their little rally towels in stunned silence.
If anything could recapture that amazing time, it would be a tour of the ballpark for the first 60 beer-drinkers (and one newborn, who presumably did not have to purchase and/or quaff a 12.5% lager).
We transfer our beers to plastic cups (Firestone Walker Parabola, also quite dark, also 12.5%), and then the tour starts off with a bang, with a close-up look at the World Series trophy. Much picture-taking ensues. Everyone's face is red, whether from the excitement or the Green Flash Trippel (light amber color, 7.5%), it's hard to tell.
We move down the hall, taking photos of signed baseballs, pins and rows of bobbleheads. Even Jon Miller, very deservingly, has his own hydrocephalic likeness. I cannot imagine listening to a Giants game on the radio without his play-by-play of hitters striking out ("He was fooled, and fooled badly"), or even just his descriptions of the setting sun hitting the picture windows in the Oakland hills across the water from the stadium in the first few innings of a warm summer evening game.
The Brian Wilson gnome (but sadly, no Brian Wilson-encased-in-carbonite-a-la-Han-Solo-with-arms-crossed, perhaps one of the best giveways ever) inspires more flash-photography. Here, at last, are the real fans.
Then it's off to the bowels of the ballpark, where we look at Muni-style pleated accordion rubber inserts in the walls, and learn that the park is one of the best places to be in an earthquake. A few people dutifully snap photos of the logo'ed pipes that can twist for about six inches before breaking.
A quick peek at the visiting team's clubhouse, the batting cages (complete with 5 gallon bucket of sunflower seeds), and another collection of bobbleheads, and then it's time for to the topper: a visit to the Giants dugout.
The field is completely torn up, being redone, and little bulldozers and furrows of dirt lie where grass and bases and white stripes should be. And even still, it's amazing.
The original design for the park called for the cutout section near the bleachers to look out to the Bay Bridge, which would have been very pretty. Unfortunately, it also would have created a little wind vortex on the field, so the stadium design was rotated a few degrees, and thus, the splash hit was born.
In the fading dusk, people take pictures of each other mimicking dugout behavior; using the manager's telephone to call in a pitcher, leaning over the railing, or kicking an imaginary cooler. And just like that, the magic is back.
Marina Luz runs her letterpress printing company Honeylux out of Oakland.
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