Hippies. They're Everywhere.

As the wise American philosopher Eric Cartman once said, "Hippies.  They're everywhere.  They wanna save the Earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad."  I thought a lot about the wise words of Cartman as I traveled from Los Angeles to San Francisco.  Before last week, the only time I had ever been in San Francisco was for a layover on my long trip home from Los Angeles in 2011.  Hurricane Irene forced me to stay in Los Angeles two days later.  Even then, the best I could do to get home was to fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Las Vegas to New York.  But finally, my quest to get to every Major League Baseball stadium brought me to my least favorite city in the United States (feel free to watch this South Park episode and come back).

I probably should have dressed like this for my day in San Francisco.

Anyway, I purposely got an early flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco so that I would have some time to explore the city.  I thought about getting tickets for one of those double decker bus tours.  You can pay for the day and hop on and off as you want.  That's probably what I would have done if not for the crappy weather forecast.  When I got there, it was just cloudy.  So I just started walking around the city.  It was 2.3 miles from my hotel to Fisherman's Wharf.  I figured that wasn't too bad.  What I didn't realize was how hilly San Francisco is.  Some of the hills have steps because they are so steep.  But I made it.  I went to Ghirardelli Square and had a delicious hot fudge sundae.  I took a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge that didn't come out too well because of the weather.  By then, the rain had started.  Considering the weather and having to go up those hills again, I thought about taking a cable car back.  I might have done that, but there was a huge line for the cable cars.  I decided to just walk it.  Early on during the walk back, I checked the route on my phone and realized I was near Lombard Street, the most crooked street in the world.  So I took a little detour to check that out.  The rest of the walk back was rough.  It was a relief to finally get to the top of the hill and realize the rest would be downhill.  But the hills are so steep that even going downhill isn't the easiest.  You use energy fighting momentum and staying upright.  And some of the sidewalks were slippery from the rain.  I almost slipped and fell at one point.  The area around my hotel was actually pretty flat.  So when I made it back to flat ground, I was relieved.  At one point my legs started to tremble after the workout I had just put them through.  I was expecting to be really sore the next day.  I was not as sore as I expected, but the soreness lasted longer than I expected (it took maybe three days for it to go away).  Anyway, simple math says I walked at least 4.6 miles, but that would have been if I walked directly to Fisherman's Wharf and back to my hotel.  I'm thinking I probably did about six miles to and from my hotel in the afternoon and then it was a mile to and from the stadium at night.  Usually I walk three to four miles per day, so I probably did about double that in San Francisco and the amount of marijuana I smelled in San Francisco was infinitely more than what I normally smell in a day.

This was pretty awesome.

This is as close as I got to the Golden Gate Bridge.  Unfortunately, the weather made this picture pretty bad.

Seriously, who thought this was a good idea?

The game was at 7:15.  I got to the park around 6:30.  I walked around the stadium on the outside and then I walked around the lower level before heading up to my seat.  I have to admit, it is an impressive stadium (more on that later).  Like the night before at Dodger Stadium, it was a bobble head night.  But this was for one of the Giants' broadcasters who hit is only home run when he played for the Indians.  I politely declined the bobble head when it was offered to me as I walked in.

I had been worried about the game possibly being rained out, but it only drizzled a little bit during the game.  The MLB At the Ballpark app on my phone says it was 52 degrees for the game.  The app also says that it was 52 degrees last year when I saw the Dodgers beat the Mets at Citi Field.  It says the doubleheader I saw four years ago at Citi Field had temperatures of 51 and 53 degrees.  The app also says the doubleheader was the windiest and this game was the next windiest of the games I just mentioned.  Remembering those games, I was very bundled up.  Perhaps because I was better prepared, the temperature really didn't bother me at all.  The doubleheader four years ago and the game last year at Citi Field definitely felt colder than this game (the doubleheader was by far the worst).  I didn't really notice the wind.  Maybe it was blocked where I was sitting.

As for the game, I was rooting for the Indians, but I was not optimistic with the pitching match up of Carlos Carrasco against Tim Hudson.  The Giants scored two in the bottom of the first.  The Indians got a run in the top of the first on an RBI single by Nick Swisher (our old friend Flynn's favorite player).  But the Giants scored on a Hunter Pence single in the bottom of the third and on a long Michael Morse home run in the bottom of the fourth and they were never really in trouble.  It was a comfortable 5-1 win for the Giants.  So far I've been to two games this year and neither went the way I wanted.  I just hope the Dodgers make the playoffs and 11 games go the way I want them to in October.

My view for the game

I didn't really want to like the stadium, but it's hard no to.  It is a great setting.  I guess it's most comparable to PNC Park in Pittsburgh.  I'm giving PNC Park the edge.  One of the great things about PNC Park is that you pretty much have a really cool view wherever you're sitting.  If you're down low, you can't see the river, but you have the city in the background.  At AT&T Park, you could argue that the best seats are higher up.  Where I was sitting, I had a great view of the bay, but if you're down low, you don't really have a view of anything in the background.

Previously, I had PNC Park as my cutoff for the elite stadiums.  I'm slotting AT&T Park at number seven on my rankings and that's the new cutoff.  I know a lot of people would have it even higher than that (and some would probably rank it as the best in baseball).  So I need some reasons for ranking it that low.  I have Fenway Park, Dodger Stadium, and Old Yankee Stadium as my top three stadiums.  Park of the reason for that is the history.  Fenway Park is where Ted Williams played.  Dodger Stadium is where Sandy Koufax played.  Old Yankee Stadium is where Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter played (Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle didn't play in the version of Yankee Stadium that existed when I was going to games there).  On the other hand, Barroid played in AT&T Park.  So yeah, there's history, but I'm counting it as a negative.  Next, concessions are an issue.  There were some good options, but the lines move way too slowly.  I left my seat to get food after the top of the second.  I didn't get back to my seat until the bottom of the fourth.  Part of that was me walking around and deciding what I wanted (about half of an inning).  But part of it was just lines moving way too slowly.  I had to wait on one line to get a bread bowl of clam chowder (which was good) and then on another line to get a Widmer Brothers Hefeweizen.  I mentioned in my last post how they have little stands in Philadelphia with just good beer.  San Francisco had some good beer options, but at least on the upper level, they were all at concessions stands where people were on line for food and whatever else they were getting.  Another drawback was that while I was on the concourse for two innings getting food and beer, I couldn't see the field.  Sure there were TVs around the concession stands, but I like to be able to see the field from the concourse (you can on the lower level, but not up high).  And then I have a couple of issues with the field.  First of all, there's no pattern cut into the grass.  Come on, I used to cut patterns when I cut the grass on the baseball field at Camp Alvernia in 2004.  The Giants not doing it is just laziness.  I can't think of another stadium that doesn't cut any sort of pattern into the grass.  Also, they have their bullpens on the field.  I think that's really, really stupid.  They easily could have taken out a few seats from the outfield (and probably just put those seats somewhere else if they wanted to) and had the bullpens out of play (that was one of my issues with another elite stadium, Petco Park, but the Padres fixed that before last season).  And finally, AT&T Park is the home of the Giants and full of hippies.  Two big negatives right there.

I know only a few people will get this joke, but I wish this had been outside White Castle after our bar crawl in 2005.

As George Steinbrenner once said, "From 1973 to 1982 I ate the exact same lunch every day: turkey chili in a bowl made out of bread. Bread bowl, George. You'd eat the chili, then you'd eat the bowl. Nothing more satisfying than looking down after lunch and seeing just a table."

Recently, my friend John wrote about his experiences at Fenway Park as a Yankee fan.  If I lived in San Francisco, I couldn't do what John does.  The biggest difference is that John's love of Boston is clear.  I certainly don't like San Francisco and I would never live there (also John is married to a Red Sox fan, there's no way I could marry a fan of the Giants, Lakers, USC, or Michigan, any of those would be three strikes right away).  So let me finish off with my Least Favorite City Power Rankings (I've already done my favorite cities).  I'm limiting this to American cities.  I'm willing to spend a small amount of time in each of these cities.  Believe me, there are plenty of cities that I'd never even consider going to (particularly in the Middle East because I'd worry that I'd be killed by terrorists).  But here we go, starting with my third least favorite city:

3. Detroit.  I haven't been there yet, but I will be this summer for a Tigers game.  I'm spending as little time there as possible.  This ranking is only based on what I've heard about Detroit.  I'm pretty sure I've never heard a good thing about Detroit.

2.  Las Vegas.  I hate everything this city stands for.  It's a city built on taking advantage of people's stupidity (I was going to say it was built on stealing people's money, but people willingly forfeit their money to casinos).  I was there two years ago and I'd be just fine never going back.

1.  San Francisco.  I'll give the final word to Eric Cartman:  "You don't know San Francisco, Butters.  It was the breeding ground for the hippie movement in the 60s.  There's hard-core liberals, lesbian activists, and die hard modern hippies young and old.  I swore I would never set foot in San Francisco.  God help me.  All right, Butters, I'll be tethered to you through this cord. It's my only lifeline, so make sure it stays taut. If you stop hearing my voice, for the love of Christ, start reeling me in with all your strength."