Milwaukee Brewers @ St Louis Cardinals (game 1)

The first game of this series was a tight affair, with only a few runs scoring.  Lance Lynn was starting for the St Louis Cardinals as they tried to increase their lead in the NL Central.

My seat was in the dugout box, the 4th row from the front, down the first base line, in the bit of the stands that juts out a bit.  In the first inning, Jonathan Lucroy, the Brewers' catcher, hit a foul ball that came towards my area very fast, and hit about a couple of metres away from my seat, a couple of rows back.  You definitely have to pay attention in these seats, because the ball can come very quickly.

This game was much more like you expect a National League game - pretty quick.  The problem was that although the Cardinals took a 2-1 lead into the 9th inning, Trevor Rosenthal gave up a run to allow Milwaukee to draw level.

It was getting quite chilly by this time, as the temperature dropped to around 12C/52F, so I was pleased that I had taken my coat to wear, although my legs were getting a little chilly.  As usually happens when games go into extra innings, people started leaving as they have to get up for work or school the next day, so when the Brewers pushed across a run in the top of the 12th inning, I and a lot of other people were hoping that the Cards would score 0 or 2 in the bottom of the 12th so we could all go home.  They got 0, although it was close with a couple of balls caught in the deep.

I walked back to the hotel, back the way I had come, although it didn't seem nearly as far on the way back.  That's probably because on the way there, I went to Joe Buck's restaurant, which is a little bit further along next to the stadium, and had a typical St Louis meal: BBQ ribs.

Los Angeles Dodgers @ San Francisco Giants (game 3)

The final game of this series was an afternoon game, fortunately.   I had feared that ESPN would make it the Sunday Night Baseball game which would have moved it to 5pm which would have clashed with the 49ers home opener against the Bears.

The Dodgers had their ace, Clayton Kershaw, pitching in this game against one of our better pitchers, Yusmeiro Petit.  This game was much more of a contest than the previous two, as it wasn't a blow-out either way.  The Dodgers scored first, however, and then the Giants fought back and managed to raise Kershaw's ERA and chase him after 8 innings(!)  Jansen got the save in the 9th as the Dodgers took the game 4-2, which was a shame, as we had chances throughout the game.

All three of these games have been surprisingly slow for National League games.  All of them have been over three hours, some of them significantly more than three hours.

Los Angeles Dodgers @ San Francisco Giants (game 2)

After the victory last night, expectations were high that we could also have a go at Zach Greinke.  However, this was not to be as the game started in an eerily similar way to game 1 but the other wayy.  The Dodgers managed to push across 4 runs in the top of the first inning and in the bottom, the Giants looked to be going OK until a strange decision by the 3rd base coach to send the runner when it was obvious he was going to get thrown out at the plate.

The Dodgers added on more hits in the second inning, chasing Tim Hudson early, although it still didn't feel lost at that point, as we brought in Tim Lincecum to take over, but Tim is not the Cy Young award-winning pitcher any more, and he gave up more hits to give the Dodgers an 8-0 lead after the 2nd inning.  In the 5th inning, we managed to retire the side without any more runs scoring, but the Dodgers went on to register a record-breaking 24 hits and 17 runs - both the most for a visiting team at AT&T Park.

I had a loud Los Angeles fan called Chuck and his wife Michelle, who is not a baseball fan, sitting next to me.  As the game was pretty much over as a competition by the 4th inning, we spent a lot of time talking about Dodgers players, broadcasters, and other baseball things, which was fun.  We even got to wave to Jon Miller who was just behind us in the commentary box, as was Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers radio broadcasts who has just signed up for his 63rd season as radio broadcaster for Los Angeles!

Los Angeles Dodgers @ San Francisco Giants (game 1)

This was the first game of the 6 that the Giants and Dodgers will be playing against each other in the final days of the regular season.  With the Dodgers holding a 2 game lead in the NL West, it was important for the Giants to win at least one of the games.

Tonight we had Jake Peavy going against Hyun-Jin Ryu.  Unfortunately, AT&T Park has some of the dafter security precautions on the entrances, so I ended up missing the entire first inning whilst waiting to get into the ballpark.  That meant I missed the Giants scoring 4 runs in the bottom of the 1st as they batted around and knocked Ryu out of the game.  Fortunately, throughout the rest of the game, Peavy was rock solid and the Giants went on to register a 9-0 victory, which was something of a surprise, but the Dodgers never recovered from that first inning.

Arizona Diamondbacks @ San Francisco Giants (game 2)

Thursday was 11th September, as lots of commemoration activity was expected.  However, when I went down to the metro stop, there was a technical problem at Van Ness, further out of town, that stopped everything coming inbound.  This was going to be fixed "shortly" for about 40 minutes before services started again, so I missed the first two innings of today's game and all the ceremonials.

No problems with the temperature today, though, as being a day game it was pleasant to sit in the shade right behind the plate, but up just in front of the commentary boxes.

In this game, we have Jake Peavy going and after this first rough outing when we acquired him earlier in the year, he's turned out to be a really good pick up - Peavy came out of the game with a lot of pitches in the 6th inning having given up the first run to Arizona, and although they would later add a second run, the Giants already had 3 on the board, and added another 3 in the bottom of the 7th to cement a 6-2 victory.

Lou Seal visited our section during the 7th inning stretch to distribute bags of peanuts - by randomly throwing them in different directions, so everybody had to pay attention to avoid maybe getting hit on the head!  He got one stuck on an antenna attached to the next deck and managed to get one through the open window into the radio commentary box, which caught Kuiper & Krukow by surprise as it flew between their heads whilst they weren't watching.

As the stadium was emptying after today's game, and the announcement of the next game was made, the stadium was already ringing to the chants of "BEAT L.A.!"

I had never understood why it takes so long to get everybody back downtown after the ballgame on the metro.  It takes half an hour with lots of waiting around at a standstill because of the congestion on the line, despite there being only a few trains.  Maybe they should consider running a shuttle service between Embarcadero and the ballpark, just for half an hour after the game to try to clear the crowds as quickly as possible.  As each train only have 2 carriages, it takes quite a few to carry people back.

Arizona Diamondbacks @ San Francisco Giants (game 1)

This was the middle game of a 3-game series, of which the Giants won the first game on Tuesday.  The journey down to the ballpark was quick and hassle-free.  I was able to get into the stadium fairly quickly but because I went in the 2nd Street gate, I missed the escalator up to the club level and had to walk around quite a way to get up there.  My seat was just up the third base line with an excellent view.  However, I forgot to take my coat - it gets very cold in the stands at a night game, even if it's a hot day, so I was quite chilly by the end.

This game took nearly 3 and a half hours, which was puzzling as there were very few hits, and very few runs until the bottom of the 7th inning.  Vogelsong pitched 6 2/3 scoreless innings, but Machi picked up the win.  Collmenter matched Vogelsong with 6 shutout innings, but took the no-decision.

I have heard of Mark Trumbo, but none of the other Arizona players.  I was glad to see Angel Pagan pack in the Giants lineup, as I thought he might have been done for the year, although I didn't get to see Susac, who seems to have come in and started tearing it up.

The 4 in the bottom of the 7th and extra tacked on in the 8th were enough to complete the 5-0 win.

Smart card collection

I've added to my collection of smartcards with a Clipper card.

The new Clipper smartcard for the transport systems here now supports MUNI passports, unlike when I was here a couple of years ago.  Since I knew what I was looking for, I was able to quickly purchase a smartcard with 7-day passport on it and go straight down to catch the metro out to the ballpark.  I should be able to transfer the value from my paper BART ticket onto it it, I hope, but it wasn't clear how to do that at the machines, so I can visit the help centre just up the line later and see if they can register it for me and transfer the value.  Whilst the (Chicago) Ventra card let me register it online, albeit with an incorrect address and phone number, and unlock the $5 of value, the Clipper website wouldn't accept my address, because it said the town, for which I put "Cambridge UNITED KINGDOM" and 00144-1000 ZIP code didn't match.

The Clipper card works inside my National Rail wallet without having to open it (the Ventra didn't)

So now, I have: Orca (Seattle), Clipper (SF/Oakland), Ventra (Chicago), SmarTrip (Washington/Baltimore)