Raley Field is actually across the River and in the city of West Sacramento, in Yolo County, but, whatever.
All things being equal, I'm usually down for a ball game, and asked Norm if going to the Triple-A venue was something he wanted to do, as I'm familiar with his feelings about the sport. He assured me that if I wanted to go, he would go and enjoy it, or try to enjoy, or keep an open mind, or whatever.
Another motivating factor in all of this was the tickets. Holly had won the tickets from somewhere, or something, but we had two ticket-shaped vouchers that were redeemable only on Monday through Wednesday and up to a certain day of the month, which happened to be that week. This was pretty much the last day anyone would be able to use the tickets.
After the hike and a nap and a shower, we met up again for a trip to the ball park.
I'd never been to this park before, but always thought that baseball in the summer evenings in Sacramento would be nothing but a beautiful way to spend an evening. even when I lived there and couldn't wait to leave, the prospect of night baseball in the summer was a sublime wish. I'm pretty sure I left before the River Cats became a thing.
The drive in had some nice views from the bridge:
One of the many Downtown Sac views my camera has in it's storage banks currently. This shows off just how beautiful the day was.
These next two pictures were taken from the parking area we stashed Norm's pickup. This is the famous I-Street Bridge, well, famous in Sacramento as one of the iconic shapes from the downtown region that through cultural osmosis everybody there recognizes as characteristic of the city. At one point I suggested just parking in Sac proper and walking over, but by then we were close enough to just park. We wouldn't have been the only people to come up with that idea.
This is the West Sac Pyramid, visible from the Sac County side of downtown in the Old Town neighborhood. This is as close to it as I'd ever been on it's own side of the River. It was empty for years and might still be, considering the times.
The seats were pretty nice for free...hell, they were nice if you were paying.
So, a little background: the Sacramento River Cats are the AAA-affiliate of the Oakland A's and their opponent on this night were the Fresno Grizzlies, the AAA-affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. Sacramento is split between A's fans and Giants fans anyway, so this game was attended rather well by both, and cheering could be heard from different quarters at almost every good play.
There was a surprising lack of booing, though. Maybe it was all the kids...
Now, the A's had signed Manny Ramirez for basically nothing and were trying to work him into shape, and the crowd had hoped to see him play...maybe to cheer, maybe to boo, we'll never know, since he didn't play. But, the crowd did get to see the young Cubano the A's shelled out good cash for, Yoenis Cespedes"
I know the picture quality isn't so good, but this kid, coming back from the Disabled List, is a star, and he killed the ball in this game. I think he went 4-4 with two doubles. He was called out on appeal for missing first base on one of those doubles, and I'm not sure how that gets scored officially. I do know he was just ripping the ball.
That toss out on appeal gave me another chance to help Norm understand all the nuance that fans take for granted. Norm know the basic rules of the game, but I took the opportunity to try and school him on why fans exist at all, and how someone gets into the game. So, obscure rules and strategy discussions came into play: how to tell when a pitcher is luckier than usual; what it means to "battle" as a pitcher; how to tell where the ball might drop in the outfield; what a pitcher's count is versus a hitter's count, and, consequently, what pitch to expect during those specific instances. Now, that last one didn't get discussed too heavily.
Much of the talk revolved around the Fresno pitcher. This guy got into and out of trouble every inning. If you didn't look at the score you'd think he was getting shelled. He gave up like two hits every inning, at least two baserunners every inning, and somehow battled his way through it, yielding only a pair of runs through 6 or 7 innings. It was incredible. I was trying to tell Norm how this pitcher is somehow keeping the Grizzlies in the game.
Fresno tied the game late, and their starter finally exited, but at a 2-2 tie. Good for him, holding it together for that long.
The game ended on an exciting note, a Ricer Cats walk-off two run homer, for a final score of 4-2.
I have to note, on an aside, that the River Cats caps, while eschewing the old-school Sacramento Solons and Senator nicknames that they used to use, in choosing the oddly vague River Cats, are able to use "R" and "C" on their caps. This is obviously for "River Cats", right? Well, I'd like to point out that on more than a single occasion Sacramento has been called "River City", and to me, the caps the Cats where pay tribute to that as well.
After the game I went home and stayed up late watching James Cameron's Aliens all the way through for the first time, getting to bed a little after 2 am.
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