Hands Across the Bay

Matt Bruce

"TEJADA!!"

"Hey, didn't I see him in the All Star Game? Oh, no, wait..."

-- overheard at Pacific Bell Park after a Rich Aurilia home run

It's been awhile, Dear Reader. As the song goes, it's been awhile since I've seen the way the candles light your face. Luckily for baseball fans and alternative whiners everywhere, neither I nor anyone else at Strikethree.com has any idea how you taste.

If you managed to make it through that pompous-ass circle jerk with which ESPN wasted Rob Neyer's space last Tuesday, you know two things. First, even when they try to make fun of themselves, New Yorkers remain insufferable. Second, the conventional wisdom holds that no baseball fan in a two-team city can honestly claim to be a fan of both teams.

Fans in the Big Apple know this all too well. Most fans in Chicago agree, though a lot of Cub fans are, bless their hearts, either too sweet or too ignorant to appreciate this. It's trivially so in Los Angeles, unless somebody can bring me evidence that more than one human Angel fan really exists.

Is it really true in my adopted home, though? Raider fans and 'Niner fans may represent all that they hate about each other (a pox to both, I say), yet is there really a battle line separating the Giants and A's? Ask any lifelong Bay Area resident -- okay, that's a trick, since the same economic bubble that brought me out here has distorted local demographics beyond recovery. But among us newcomers, there's enough having it both ways to make for a really fun party in the Castro.

In my brief sojourn from this space, I thought about questions like this. Actually I spent most of my time writing lots of code and fixing bugs on tight deadlines but claiming that I thought about this still sounds like the right thing to say.

For most of last year it was pretty clear-cut. My street address actually says "San Francisco" and my monthly rent implies as much. Pacific Bell Park was a fifteen-minute walk from work and the Giants went -- this is not an exaggeration -- 21-3 in the games for which I bought tickets, most of which I actually did walk to from South of Market.

Two things happened since September. First, thanks to quirks in their ticket distribution systems, I got shut out of Giants Division Series ducats but made it to all three games at the Coliseum. I watched in disbelief as tailgaters in Oakland cheered and honked for a touchdown scored against the Raiders. Once the poor deluded football fans finally moved on from the locally over-hyped "Battle of the Bay," I watched in even greater disbelief as Terrence Long battled the late-afternoon sun and lost.

Second, long after the playoffs ended (Northern Californians know this happened on a bleak October Sunday, League Championship Series be damned), I came to realize that where you live isn't what makes you a fan. Rather, it's where you work that makes you a fan. Since November, I've programmed on-site for a client in North Berkeley. Both the drive and the BART are a lot easier if you avoid the rush-hour bridge crossing.

Long story short, this year I bought a season ticket mini-plan from Oakland. Oh sure, I'll have still made it to about a dozen Giant games. Still, the bandwagon has moved, from the team run by a GM who once said, "don't give me that sabermetric crap, it gives me a headache," to the team run by Billy Beane.

Despite their leadership, what's unsettling is just how much alike these teams are, especially the timing of their peaks. Jim Thome may be inches ahead of Jason Giambi in AL OPS as I write this, yet both Giambi and Bonds bat third, hit left-handed, draw a ton of walks, hit the ball a mile, and define their teams' offenses.

Both teams went out and got offensive support in July: Andres Galarraga drove in 12 runs in his first six games as a Giant, while Jermaine Dye plated 12 in an eight-game span for Oakland. Each team has a scrappy second baseman and thinks it has a hot prospect at third, though the difference between Eric Chavez and Pedro Feliz far exceeds the difference between Jeff Kent and Frank Menechino. Hot shortstops? We've got them in spades.

Last year, San Francisco had the trendy rotation, when Livan Hernandez, Russ Ortiz, and Shawn Estes collectively became unbeatable in the second half. This year, Mark Mulder has joined Tim Hudson and Barry Zito in Oakland's trio of death. A year ago, Mulder was a struggling fifth starter for the A's; this year, Cory Lidle has supplanted Kirk Reuter as the Bay Area's hottest back-of-the-rotation guy.

Both teams are red-hot as I write this: Bay Area fans have gone home happy from 14 of the last 15 games played in these parts. Between Oakland's 11-game winning streak and San Francisco's nine-game run, it's been well over three weeks since both teams lost on the same day. Yet ballpark ambience goes a long way towards explaining the difference between the two clubs.

Oakland has a special promotion called Dollar Wednesday. Tickets on that big ugly center field football bleacher structure are a dollar, as are hot dogs. When the Red Sox came to town, this was one reason why the game sold out with over 50,000 fans.

San Francisco also has a special promotion on Wednesdays. It's called, "seats are still available." That also tends to be true of Tuesdays, but that's it. On the past several home stands, Mondays have been off-days, Thursdays have been matinees (sorry, it'll be awhile until I can play hooky from work), and weekends sold out around March. Granted, a 41,000-seat stadium sells out more easily and cheers more quietly.

There's an odd difference between the set of teams that San Francisco and Oakland fans hate. Giants fans hate the Dodgers and will forever more, yet A's fans seem as indifferent to the Angels as Angelinos themselves do. (There's awestruck envy of Seattle, yet as far as I can tell there's far less dislike for the Mariners than for, say, Colorado or Arizona.)

So whom do the A's fans hate? None other than the Red Sox and the Yankees and, more to the point, the jackasses who brought their allegiances with them from the East Coast. Folks, it's one thing to root for the visiting team, but being a jerk about it is asking for trouble. After eight years in Boston, I never thought I'd be the one chanting "1-9-1-8," much less that this would be what it took to get the lushes to shut up. Which brings us to that little exchange at the top of the page, the reason why -- if I had to choose -- the orange would trump the green.

Even for that, what's the point of having 162 home games if you're just going to spite yourself out of 81? The Coliseum might not be Pac Bell Park, but you should hear the drummers. The Giants may not have Oakland's offense but you should see Kent race around the bases with the game on the line. Dodge the Muni cars as you cross King Street, then fight through the crowd on Oakland's BART walkway. See downtown San Francisco, then marvel at beautiful, inexpensive, Jack London Square on the other side of the Bay.

Don't hate the other home team, just pity the people who have to do without live, in-person Major League Baseball every other week.

about the author

For the record, Matt Bruce was not the guy at the A's/Giants interleague series who repeatedly shouted, "hit a damn single for a change, Barry!" Let him know he was wise to save his voice for cursing Galarraga at mb@strikethree.com.