Day Off

While the Angels enjoy their second day off in the last five days, I thought I'd write about one of my favorite baseball days.  Thanks to RetroSheet, I was able to find the exact date and games that involved my adventure.  If you haven't been to RetroSheet, check it out.  It's an amazing website that has compiled boxscores for all games from 1953-2007 (most with play-by-play narative) and a few game from 1871-1952.  It's a cool site.  Anyway, back in 1988 I noticed that it would be possible to see all 5 California teams play in 24 hours, so my friend Steve and I decided to see if we could do it. 

On Tuesday July 26th we flew to San Francisco to watch the Dodgers and Giants play a doubleheader at Candlestick park.  The Dodgers swept the doubleheader, with the second game going into extra innings.  I don't remember much about the games, but I do remember the experience of Candlestick.  During the late innings of the second game the fog started rolling in and they blew a loud foghorn.  I thought that was pretty funny.  They also gave out pins to the fans who stayed for the extra innnings because of the cold.  They were some sort of 'die-hard" fan pin that read something like "I survive extra innings at Candlestick" or something.  Also during the game, I called my wife back home in SoCal to tell her to start recording the game because Steve and I were going to try and sneak down behind the plate.  Wasn't much sneaking involved, we just walked down and found two empty seats right behind the plate.  We were the two idiots waving at the camera for a couple innings.  Later, we walked around the stadium for a while, checking things out.  If I remember correctly, I thought Candlestick was kind of a dump, but in a good way.  Classy-dump.  Old school baseball dump.  And cold.  Here it was end of July and it was cold at a baseball game.  I don't mean "chilly" cold, but eskimo COLD.  I think it took a few days for my testicles to come out of hiding.

The next afternoon we went to Anaheim Stadium to watch the Angels play Oakland.  Back in 1988 you didn't have to buy tickets in advance to get a decent seat for an Angels' game, so we figured we'd just buy whatever was available the day of the game.  As we were walking up to the staduim, an older gentleman approached us and asked if we needed tickets.  We said yes that we did, and he gave us two tickets.  He said we could have them, but with the stipulation that we didn't have any horns, bells or other load noise-makers.  Of course, we didn't, so the tickets were ours...free!  And they were awesome tickets, behind the plate on the field level, under the net (what would be Diamond Club seating now).  We watched the Angels defeat the A's 9-8 in 12 innings, with Wally Joyner going 3 for 4 with two home runs and 6 RBI.

After the Angel game ended, we jumped in my car, drove down the 5 freeway and caught the Padres hosting the Astros.  This game featured Nolan Ryan starting for the 'Stros and beating the Padres 4-1.  Nolan Ryan is one of my all-time favorite players and at the time I had "Shrine" in my den, so it was a big treat for me to see him pitch again.  The last time I had been to a game he started was during his days with the Angels.

Once the "day" was over, I figured out we saw all 5 California teams, acted like dorks on T.V., watched 41 innings of baseball, saw my favorite player at the time have a great game, and one of my all-time favorite pitchers get a win, all within about 24 hours.

Daily Notes:

• No big news, Angels swept the Yankees.  Just another day in the Angels' march to a World Series championship.
• Magic number: 31