Thursday, July 2, 2009

San Fran: After The Parade

As much fun as I had at the Pride parade, there is only so much over-the-top flamboyance I can tolerate before needing some down time. So in order to get away from grown men running around in spandex, slapping each other on the asses and swearing at every possible chance, I headed to Oakland Coliseum for some good, old-fashioned, heterosexual baseball.

It's often easy to forget that most stadiums don't require dropping $50 with a scalper for the cheap seats. While Fenway is great a couple times a season, it can quickly send you to the poor house. Luckily, Billy Beane has put a team together that rarely draws more than 25,000 fans. While the players must hate it, tourists like myself love the $48 seats that are less than 5 feet from the dugout, first base foul area and photographers.


I also had the added bonus of being able to see one of the more entertaining traditions of organized sports - hazing of the rookies. While I wasn't able to see anyone's face painted with permanent markers or an atomic wedgie, watching Matt Daley head to the bullpen wearing a pink backpack was entertaining enough for me.

To end the day, I followed the lead of nearly every other lard-ass of a tourist by gorging myself on sweets, burgers and entertainment. This town is definitely worth many more return appearances.

1 comment:

MA said...

Where are the photos from the family 5k that was actually a 3.5 miler? Love MA - those would be similar to the ones in the parade???? By the way, I am very proud of you in case you did not know.