Pittsburg Pirates @ San Francisco Giants (game 1)

Fortunately, I was able to buy my MUNI passport at the Walgreen's just around the corner without having to pay to travel to a station to buy it there - unfortunately, there is nowhere near the Caltrain station to buy these passes, so I'd had to pay last night to travel to my hotel - although I got a 50 cent discount because I'd come by train. 

I'd looked up the tickets online from my hotel room to see what was available, and I was pleasantly surprised: inner club level tickets for only $65-$70 - this is barely more than the same tickets at the Baltimore Orioles a few days before!  Usually, it's at least twice that, but this is symptomatic of the Giants being a long shot for the wildcard this season, plus the Pirates are not a "premium" opponent.  However, Ticketmaster wanted to add $11.75 per ticket convenience fee, plus a $3.50 delivery fee (the tickets are electronic, deposited in my online account and shown on my phone).

I went down to the stadium with my list of seat numbers to buy my tickets in the Dugout Store in person.  This is the best place to go to buy tickets, even when the ticket windows are open, because there's rarely a queue here and you are inside in the cool and can have a proper conversation with the person rather than having a glass window in the way.

In all, I paid $305 in total, as I added on $10 SplashTix supplement for each ticket.  This attaches $12 of value to the ticket that you can spend at any concession stand in the stadium, so provided you were going to spent it anyway, it's just giving you a $2 bonus.

After dinner at a nearby restaurant, it was game time, and I was sitting in the back row of section 222, which is just on the third base side of the plate. The stadium was half empty - but even so, there was over 26,000 in attendance.

This might have been my final chance to see Madison Bumgarner pitch as a Giant, unless I see him pitch in Boston, which will depend on how the pitching rotation turns out.  He did not disappoint, pitching 7 innings giving up just 2 runs and leaving with a 4-2 lead.

Unfortunately, the wheels came off in the 9th inning, as Pittsburgh managed to score 4 runs off a procession of different relievers, and although the scorebook shows just one error, there were many errors that occurred in the inning, starting with a Pittsburgh base-running disaster, where they ended up with 2 runners at 2nd base, but so inept was the fielding, the extra runner was able to make it back to 1st base and survive.  Another runner looked to have been tagged out at 2nd base as the umpire rules that he lost control of the ball on transferring it to his hand (to throw to 1st for an attempted double-play) but after a replay review, the decision was changed to safe at 2nd base.  After all that, Pittsburgh's closer came on, throwing 100mph pitches to strike out the first two batters, and then a weak ground ball to finish the game.

Location: 24 Willie Mays Plaza, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA

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