My spousal compendium of remote facts, who continues to surprise even after 29 years of matrimony, notified me that this song has verses, and he is correct, there are two, in which baseball fanatic Katie Casey disdains a date to the show for one to the game, knows all the home team players’ names, and revs the crowd up to sing the chorus to encourage the players. The lyricist was not a baseball fan, but he recognized the potential in fandom, and dashed off the lyrics in a quarter hour. He wrote over 2500 songs including Shine On, Harvest Moon, but this one is by far the best known.

We went to our first Giants game last weekend. The successor to Candlestick Park, now called Oracle Park, was built in 2000 and affords beautiful views of the Bay from many of the seats and public areas; the upper region where we sat is actually called the View Level, and here is just one of our Views, which includes the left field foul pole.

When a Giants player smashes a ball into the portion of the bay just over the right field wall, which is known as China Basin, a counter records a Splash Hit, and we were lucky enough to see one, the 80th since the park opened, and the 45th not hit by Barry Bonds. People in kayaks hang out hoping to retrieve balls, just as people do on Landsdown Street behind Fenway’s Green Monster, except sans kayaks. We had a view of that, too.

At $35 per ticket, Oracle Park compares favorably to Fenway in terms of cost, plus fans are allowed to bring our own food. Also in terms of diversion. If you get bored by baseball, you can watch the tankers lining up to load, or maybe unload. Each one seems to be computer controlled to react to current, perhaps, as they slowly change orientation in synchronicity while waiting, a long wait, longer than it takes to play a ball game at least. There was also a brief fire in East Bay, billowing smoke until it was extinguished.

Oracle Park is a lot farther than 1.7 miles from our house, so we left our car at Millbrae and took a train in, then made the mistake of stopping for a coffee on the way back to the station. By the time we got there, perhaps 40 minutes after the last play of the game–Giants won, lots of action, lead changed multiple times–the train station was not only empty, the police were moving people along since the next train was 90 minutes away. Seriously? We had to take an Uber three stations to our car park. Later we realized that this wasn’t a subway, rather a commuter train that was running Sunday schedule other than one special just after the game.

Lesson learned, at some cost. Still a great day.