San Fransisco, Baseball.

San Fransisco was amazing. I hadn't been there for years. I found myself loving the busyness, the variety of people, the sound of the trolley cars ringing and rattling on their tracks. The air was warm and humid but got cool when the wind would come.
We walked everywhere. It was a mile and a half to the stadium. We went to two Giant games. the first one was in the middle of the day and the sun was so hot I felt like a chocolate bar melting on pavement. The game literally felt like a half hour long because I think I was so hot my brain was frying. I finally got a snow cone and sucked on that until we were getting up and leaving. They lost.
The night game felt it's normal three hour length. It was cool, but definitely not cold like I thought it was going to be. We sat up high, looking down on the players like toys on the field. There was two guys in front of us, drunk, loud and funny. There was a girl with them as well but by the fifth inning after she came stumbling up the stairs, she sat down in her seat with her head between her knees and stayed that way the entire rest of the game. I worried she had died. The boys would occasionally place a sympathetic hand on her back and then return to their loud cheering and barking, fists in the air, their voices deep, loud, full of testosterone and completely hoarse. They were determined to get all 40, 000 of us behind them in their cheers. They were so entertaining and definitely made the game for me. They reminded me of some boys I grew up with and their goofy familiarity made me feel warm.
The seagulls circled overhead, coming out in droves in the seven inning, their white bellies illuminated by the bright stadium lights. We saw a glob of poo land on the back of a man down in the third row. I put my blanket over my head.
The sellers circled the game, their neon green shirts standing out amongst all the black and orange. They were Mexican, Asian, black, and European. Each one had a unique voice and accent when he would call out his goods.
Hot churrrr-ooos! Hot churrr-ooos! (the Mexican).
Freeesh Lemon-ade! Freeesh Lemon-ade! (the Asian).
Hot Choc-o-lot! Hot Choc-o-lot! (the European).
The black boy was also selling hot chocoate, but you could barely hear him. He would just hold up the cup and look up at us.
They whole game had a very ethnic feel to it, ironically, as it supposedly is an all-American type game. Most of the music the players picked to play before they would bat was very non-American, very Zumba. Reminded me of Samba a bit. Made you want to get up and move your hips. I guess you still have the National Anthem, but as a whole the game had a very foreign element to me that I wasn't expecting and enjoyed very much.
I looked around and saw all these people just loving being there. And it was alright. But I decided that baseball is like camping: you have to grow up with it to love it. You have to have memories to make the present meaningful and worth the money, worth the pain in your butt sitting in that hard green chair for three hours. I just don't think I will ever love baseball. Understand it, yes. Sit through a game or two, sure. Actually feel something for it? I cannot imagine it, but I kinda hope it will happen someday.