Out to the ballgame

Wednesday evenings at the Oakland Coliseum aren’t bad. I would even go so far as to say they’re lovely. Two dollar tickets, one dollar hotdogs, seven dollar beers. Spending time with Susie, priceless.

Susie and I (yes, the Suz duo returns) had been planning to go to an As game for a while and finally managed our way there tonight. I don’t like baseball. I think the actual watching of the sport is boring. I like going to games though to jump when the wave comes around, to wave my arms in the air to try to get my face onto that jumbo-tron, to boo and clap when everyone else around me is booing and clapping, and especially to eat, or, rather, to keep my eyes peeled on those guys in the bright neon green shirts lugging around pizza, ice cream, cotton candy, popcorn, and other baseball game treats.

We got there and wandered our way through one of the lower decks with all the big windows that face the field, smelling garlic fries all along our route. There was no way we could resist that infectious aroma. It was like Sirens were singing their garlic song, calling us toward a night of stinky breath. We picked some up on our way to our seats, stopping off first at the hotdog stand to get hotdogs, beer, and a cup of ice, which the stand lady refused to give me, saying that I had to buy a cup and the cup was the same price if I wanted a drink and not just ice so I refused to pay. She, then, gave me a cone of ice and when I very politely asked if I could have more than two cubes she told me, no, because she was running low. Odd. I shook it off.

We pumped ketchup and mustard and I spooned on relish onto our little dogs in foil and found seats that weren’t ours but sat in them anyway. Okay, so I had hotdogs for dinner last night. I usually don’t eat hotdogs. I can’t even remember the last time I had one, but I rationalized it, believing that it was all a part of the baseball experience. And, the hotdogs weren’t bad. The bun was soft and the hotdog was warm. My hotdogs were a bit salty but I think that’s how hotdogs are supposed to be, and a sip of beer made that all go away.

After the hotdogs, I kept eyeing the men in neon green, jotting their journey across the deck and calculating how long it would take them to reach me. What else did they have and where was the ice cream man? We waited for the ice cream man and he wasn’t coming. Susie then got us scoops of chocolate ice cream in mini plastic As caps, which were adorable and the ice cream was decent. It wasn’t enough though. I wanted the man with the ice cream cookie sandwiches to come back. He never did. We waited, we waved, we watched, but he never came. He was such a tease.