After moving hotel and settling in, I went to Ghirardelli Square for dinner at the McCormick & Kuleto's restaurant, that has an excellent view over the bay. I had an excellent meal and then headed off to the ballpark which is south-east of the downtown area on the coast.
Fortunately, the 30 bus goes from the Ghirardelli Square area directly to the ballpark, so the journey was quite easy.
As I made my way to my seat, there were ominous signs of rain as the first spots started falling. However, the most obvious thing that everybody saw at the start of the game was the bright rainbow that had formed over the stadium. Not long after the initial rainbow's arc formed, it turned into a double. From where I was sitting, the arc framed the centre field scoreboard perfectly.
As can be seen in the first photograph, the main rainbow's colours were intense and even the blue and purple could be seen clearly. As the planes flew overhead, they were catching the effect as well as they were shining different colours, as shown in the second, smaller picture.
Luckily, the rain held off and there was nothing other than the odd raindrop for 20 minutes at the start of the game, and there were no interruptions to play at all.
This game was the last of the series and for this game, I was in the Premium Field Club seats - which actually translated to 3 rows behind the home team's dugout! As you might have imagined, this gives you a very good close-up view of the players.
I was also far enough around the third base side that I was past the safety netting and had an unobstructed view of the batter, so I was able to take better pictures tonight, such as this one of Buster Posey batting. Of course, being outside the protection zone provided by the netting means that you
must pay attention to every pitch: the balls can came very fast in the direction of the dugout.
Unfortunately, San Francisco's pitcher Madison Bumgarner gave up a run in the first inning and the D-backs eventually extended their lead to 6-0 before the Giants even got their first hit of the game in the 7th inning where they scored 2 runs. The Giants had rallies going in the 7th, 8th and 9th innings, but grounded into too many double plays to kill the innings.
Probably the most "exciting" part of the game for the home fans was on a fielding play, where Arizona had men on 1st and 2nd, 0 out, and the ball was grounded sharply to the first baseman Brandon Belt who instead of throwing the pitcher covering 1B, threw across to Pablo Sandoval at 3rd who tagged the incoming runner with a sort of bulldozer move instead of just tagging the bag for the force out. Neither the runner nor Arizona's third base coach, Matt Williams, were happy about this and thus the benches cleared and what followed can best be described as aggressive milling around and posturing by both teams' players. This got the crowd excited anyway, where they'd had nothing much to cheer for the rest of the game.
During the 7th inning stretch, I got a close-up picture of our mascot, Lou Seal. He was throwing bags of peanuts to people in our section, including some in the front row who did really well to catch them as Lou threw them quite fast at point blank range!
I'm not going to be this close to the front for any of the games against the Dodgers - I'm in the club level in the second tier for all three of those games instead.
Fortunately, the 30 bus goes from the Ghirardelli Square area directly to the ballpark, so the journey was quite easy.
As I made my way to my seat, there were ominous signs of rain as the first spots started falling. However, the most obvious thing that everybody saw at the start of the game was the bright rainbow that had formed over the stadium. Not long after the initial rainbow's arc formed, it turned into a double. From where I was sitting, the arc framed the centre field scoreboard perfectly.
As can be seen in the first photograph, the main rainbow's colours were intense and even the blue and purple could be seen clearly. As the planes flew overhead, they were catching the effect as well as they were shining different colours, as shown in the second, smaller picture.
Luckily, the rain held off and there was nothing other than the odd raindrop for 20 minutes at the start of the game, and there were no interruptions to play at all.
This game was the last of the series and for this game, I was in the Premium Field Club seats - which actually translated to 3 rows behind the home team's dugout! As you might have imagined, this gives you a very good close-up view of the players.
I was also far enough around the third base side that I was past the safety netting and had an unobstructed view of the batter, so I was able to take better pictures tonight, such as this one of Buster Posey batting. Of course, being outside the protection zone provided by the netting means that you must pay attention to every pitch: the balls can came very fast in the direction of the dugout.
Unfortunately, San Francisco's pitcher Madison Bumgarner gave up a run in the first inning and the D-backs eventually extended their lead to 6-0 before the Giants even got their first hit of the game in the 7th inning where they scored 2 runs. The Giants had rallies going in the 7th, 8th and 9th innings, but grounded into too many double plays to kill the innings.
Probably the most "exciting" part of the game for the home fans was on a fielding play, where Arizona had men on 1st and 2nd, 0 out, and the ball was grounded sharply to the first baseman Brandon Belt who instead of throwing the pitcher covering 1B, threw across to Pablo Sandoval at 3rd who tagged the incoming runner with a sort of bulldozer move instead of just tagging the bag for the force out. Neither the runner nor Arizona's third base coach, Matt Williams, were happy about this and thus the benches cleared and what followed can best be described as aggressive milling around and posturing by both teams' players. This got the crowd excited anyway, where they'd had nothing much to cheer for the rest of the game.
During the 7th inning stretch, I got a close-up picture of our mascot, Lou Seal. He was throwing bags of peanuts to people in our section, including some in the front row who did really well to catch them as Lou threw them quite fast at point blank range!
I'm not going to be this close to the front for any of the games against the Dodgers - I'm in the club level in the second tier for all three of those games instead.
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