gordonzola | I go to Giants games so you don't have to

I went to the Giants game on Tuesday night. I had no idea that it was singles night.

Really. I swear. But when I found out, it did kinda explain the weirdness. I thought maybe I just hadn’t in this section of the bleachers before and it was always this drunk and flirtatious. Hell, maybe it is.

But there was an air of last call at the nightclub that I had never seen at a sporting event. Behind me sat a crowd of 6 or 7 sorority girls. One was yelling "Yeeeeeeah-yeah." Every 5 minutes until it became the night’s cheer, taken up by everyone within hearing distance whenever the Giants did something good, which wasn't very often. This made her up the ante. Her favorite cheer for the late innings became "Go Giants! . . . Fuck you Padres!" delivered in a drunken slur. When it was quiet, she liked talking to the Padres centerfielder. "Hey Payton, you’re a bitch!" When he didn’t respond, she lead her friends in a "Show us your tits!" chant.

One of her friends kept saying to the group of guys to my left while leaning into them, "I don’t know why guys don’t like me. Why wouldn’t guys like me?" The guys said they didn’t know. Personally, I suspect it’s the alcoholism. Some guy in a full-on suit seemed to have an opinion because he moved over from a couple of rows away to discuss the issue with her.

When someone caught a baseball the group had him take their picture licking it. Insert any "ball-licking" jokes you can come up with here because someone in the vicinity said it. If he "Girls Gone Wild" people had gotten through the gate, the DVD would be available soon.

Some Cal Swimming Team members sat in front of me. Their ringleader had a wispy, wanna-be tough guy beard. He smeared ketchup on his friend’s back when he wasn’t looking. He kept talking to a woman on his right. She went for a hot dog and never came back. He threw food wrappers at women he thought were cute. The guys next to me decided they didn’t like him. He didn’t notice the first few objects that hit him but when he did, he wanted to fight. He started yelling at someone uninvolved who insisted he hadn’t throw the granola bar wrapper. Then he noticed that their were five big teamster guys munching granola bars and staring at him. "Oh,. . . it’s cool. Right on." He sat down and shut up for awhile.

Two working class girls sat to my right. They were wearing work boots and Carharts with their Giants gear and their clothes were worn, not trendy. Also the one closest to me kept saying something incomprehensible about her day of work and her journeyman something or other. Oh yeah, they were drunk too. She went off to go to the bathroom and her friend remained. I kept seeing her staring at me strangely as if she expected me to say something. Eventually she went off to find her friend who hadn’t returned. Nothing was making any sense in the baseball-watching etiquette I had been taught as a child and I’ve been going to Giants games since I was a little kid.

Then suddenly it did. On the scoreboard behind me they announced that the San Francisco Giants Singles Night Dating Game was starting. A woman dressed in an outfit that would not keep her warm in a misty San Francisco night at the ballpark was going to choose a date from three men chosen by Giants officials on their way into the game. I don’t remember what the male contestants said but she chose the one that looked like Gavin Newsom. "He’s going to be traveling to Brazil, my native country, and I’d love to teach him Portuguese." Not Gavin looked embarrassed. Then came the twist. He could accept the all-expenses paid date, OR a free Playstation 2.

He took the Playstation. The woman was visibly pissed.* The Giants kept giving up runs and hitting into double plays.** I went home thinking that this was the weirdest thing I’d seen at a Giants game since Domestic Violence Awareness Day when a horde of women walked, waving, from centerfield to home plate as the ballpark announcer said, "Let’s give a big hand to the survivors of Domestic Violence in San Francisco!" ***

* Looking through the 4/21 Missed Connections will verify this all to be true. Just search for PS 2.
**Except for Barry Bonds who is truly the most amazing hitter ever. He only saw one strike all night and he hit it into the water.
***OK, she might have said "give a big welcome" instead of "give a big hand" but isn’t the story funnier this way? The rest is totally true.

Epilogue I was about to post this when I saw this ad placed in the Missed Connections: Did you go to Singles Night at SBC/Giants? How was it? Anyone got a report (other than the Playstation - hot chick story)? More guys than girls? More girls than guys? Did people really mingle? I picture this guy alone in front of the computer hoping, just hoping, that he hadn't just made the biggest mistake of his life by staying home in front of his computer porn instead of heading to Pac Bell. Even if he doesn't really like baseball