Game Three, Atlanta, Georgia (aka Longest Fanpost Ever)

So, now that we're glowing in the glory that was Game One of the NLDS, it's finally time for me to tell the epic tale of my trip to Atlanta for Game Three of the NLDS.

I had never been to a Giants postseason game before. Once, when I was eight years old, my dad took me to an ALCS game at the Oakland Coliseum, but I remember nothing about it aside from that I went. I don't remember the game. I don't remember who won. I don't even remember, without Googling, who the A's were playing.  We occasionally went to A's games because we lived in Albany and the Coliseum was so much closer than Candlestick, and so easily accessible by BART, but neither the A's nor American League baseball ever really meant that much to me.

The sad truth is, I've almost never even been in California when the Giants were in the postseason. In 1987, we were there, but we didn't get the chance to go to a game. In 1989, my family had just moved to Princeton, New Jersey, a couple of months before the NLCS. My dad and I watched the games and the earthquake on television from our seventh floor apartment in Princeton. In 1997, I was back in California, in my senior year of high school, but that was only three games, only one of them in San Francisco. I didn't even get to watch or listen to any of those games, really: during each of the three games, I was working at my after-school job at a bookstore in Berkeley. The owners turned on the games on the radio in the office in the back and store, so I heard snippets. It was never good news. In 2000, like 1989, I had just moved away a couple of months earlier, but this time it was to New York City for college. I could've gone out to Shea for a game, I guess, but I was a college student and ridiculously broke and living in the nation's most expensive city. It was never really an option. They'd only have broken my heart anyway. And then, of course, 2002: still in New York. Watched Game 6 and stewed and screamed from my girlfriend's house in Connecticut, scared the hell out of her with how angry I got. In a year of being together, she'd never seen me like that. 2003, I'd graduated, and we were in Amherst, Massachusetts. The UMass students rioted and flipped over cars when the Red Sox won the ALDS, but nobody but me cared about the Giants.

The one thing I always did, though, was make it to at least one Giants game every year. The last time I didn't was in 1986 - for me, the last months of kindergarten and the first months of first grade. My parents were grad students, and we didn't make it back home from New Jersey that summer. But after that, every year, I got back at least for a little bit and I made it to at least one game, first at the 'Stick and then at Pac Bell SBC AT&T Park. In 1993 I also saw the Giants play at Shea Stadium, took the commuter train to Manhattan and the subway out to Flushing, and saw a wild game, a game with four doubles and six home runs, a way-too-close game against a ridiculously overpaid and truly wretched Mets game (the more things change...), but, in the end, a winning game.

2010 was about to be a milestone on two fronts: first year since 1986 where I never once set foot in California, and first year since 1986 where I didn't make it to even one Giants game. Well, I'm still not going to make it back to California this year.

But Game 3. It only occurred to me that maybe we could go in the last week of the season, before the Padres series. "I don't know how it would work logistically," I told my wife, "but it would mean a tremendous amount to me if I could go." I bought our tickets as soon as the Braves and the Giants both clinched. It being a Braves game, there were numerous tickets still available, but we're grad students had to buy three tickets (for myself, my wife, and my son - my daughter is a few months under two, so she gets in free), so I stuck to Upper Box seats at $20 a pop, plus Ticketmaster fees. Put 'em in Will Call.

It's about a 5 hour drive from Tallahassee to Atlanta. We left around 9:30 for a game time of 4:37, which should be plenty of time, but of course it wasn't quite so simple. We had to stop for lunch, stop for gas, stop for snacks, stop for my son to go to the bathroom. We passed through cotton fields, through the small towns of cotton country where every front lawn is covered with a light dusting of little cotton balls, through the woods, through a town called Omega.  At one point, about 30 or 45 minutes south of Atlanta, we stopped at a gas station that also sold hunting supplies, where customers came in wearing full camouflage or with Confederate flag neck tattoos. My wife said she felt very not white; I felt very not southern. And then, finally, we got into Atlanta, and we got lost. Our directions for the hotel were wrong: we'd just put "Pine Street" into Google Maps instead of "Pine Street NE," so the directions lead us to the airport, not the hotel, which was in the downtown area. So finally, with only an hour to go until first pitch, we decided to skip checking into the hotel and head straight for the ballpark.

And a good thing we did, too, because the traffic hit the second we took the freeway exit for Turner Field. Getting just a few blocks took a good half hour. As we creeped closer to the ballpark, we started passing by houses where local residents were selling parking spaces in their driveways and on their lawns for large fees. Finally, 20 minutes to game time, we pulled into a convenience store a block or two from the park, where they were jamming cars into every nook and cranny and charging $30 for the pleasure. At that point, we still had to pick up our tickets from will call and find our seats, and traffic was still brutal and we had no way of knowing if there even was any official parking left. So we took it and we paid through the nose.

It took a hike halfway around the ballpark to find will call, and when I turned the corner and got in line for the machines, Braves fans waiting to get through the turnstyle responded by an impromptu tomahawk chop: the first of approximately eleventy billion. "You constipated?" I asked and picked up my ticket. At the turnstyle, ballpark employees handed out foam tomahawks. An older man held one out for me, then saw my Tim Lincecum shirt (my son was wearing my hat at this point), and then pulled it back and mock-chopped off my arm with it. "I think I can make do without one," I told him. Our seats were another halfway across the park, and by the time we sat down, the game was two at-bats old. Andres Torres stood on second, Freddy Sanchez on first.

Turner Field isn't an ugly ballpark, but it isn't especially beautiful, either. It's larger than AT&T Park, but nothing like as cavernous as Candlestick. We were in the upper deck, fifteenth row, along the third base line but still on the infield. The seats weren't bad: we could see the whole field, had a nice angle on the pitching mound, and weren't exactly up close, but we weren't too far away, either.

As we settled in, the crowd was restless at the early baserunners, but very much into the game. This continued for most of the afternoon. The tomahawk chops barely stopped. Runner for the Braves on first and one out? Tomahawk chop. A Giants hitter pops out? Tomahawk chop. Giants have a couple of runners on and nobody out, and Tim Hudson throws a strike? Tomahawk chop. The fans were on their feet, too, at the slightest cause, and I respect that, but those goddamn tomahawk chops just made me want to stab them all in the face.

Then again, as the game progressed, there was a guy who wanted to stab me in the face. In front of my wife, my son, my daughter, and me was an older couple. "Older" being a relatie term: old enough that they were both white haired, young enough so that he was quite burly and not fragile in the slightest. My son, early on, sat behind him, which became a problem. My son, I should say, is four years old, and although he's very big for his age, he's very much a four year old. He's terribly friendly, terribly energetic, and stubborn as hell. Won't listen to anyone if he doesn't want to. But a good kid, and incredibly sweet. Anyway, being a four year old boy, he didn't stay still the whole time. Being a four year old boy, he sometimes squirmed and bounced around. And, being a four year old boy, his legs weren't long enough for his feet to reach the floor when he sat in his seat, or for his knees to reach the edge of the seat when he sat with his back and against the back of the chair. So, when he moved, his legs kicked up: not much to do about that, really. Unfortunately, there was also very little space between his seat and the seats in front of us, and often, when his legs kicked up, his feet bumped the back fo the man in front of him. We did the best we could, of course: tried to get him to sit still, talked to him about how he was kicking the man in front of him and that wasn't okay, tried to distract him. There's only so much you can do with a four year old, though, and every now and then he bumped into the man.

He did it a couple of times in a row around the third inning, and I turned to my son, put my hands on his shoulders, and told him that if he couldn't sit still, we would have to get up and go wait outside. At that point, the man turned to me, red-faced, and growled, "Yeah, I think that's a real good idea. You guys need to get out of here, 'cause if he keeps up with that shit, I'm gonna take you down and kick your ass."

Needless to say, I wasn't quite sure how to respond at first. After a pause, I answered, "I'm not going to fight you, because I know how to behave like a civilized human being, but you're welcome to hit me if you really want to go to prison." More tense words were exchanged; his wife got in on it too, as did mine. He made some derisive remarks about how we obviously had no idea to raise our child and obviously had no character whatsoever - after, of course, he threatened to start a fistfight with a family at the ballpark, because lord knows THAT screams excellent character and strong family values. And, you know, I can understand being annoyed, I can understand getting angry if we were just letting him kick the guy and not doing anything about it, but we were trying our best - and, really, you're going to threaten physical violence because my four year old doesn't always sit perfectly still? Really? Really!?

Fortunately, there was an empty seat next to ours, and another empty seat in front of that one (LOL SELLOUT CROWD), and it had become clear that they weren't going to fill in by this point in the game, so we moved my son over there, and I propped my leg up between my son and the man's wife, so he couldn't possibly make contact with her without me being able to block him. That seemed to do the trick, finally.

At around the fifth or the sixth inning, the man and his wife got up and left. Apparently, they were the same caliber of fans as they were human beings. Good riddance. The ballpark was much more pleasant without them.

Oh, and the kicker? The (adult) Braves fan behind me kept putting his feet up on the back of my chair. I never said a word. There wasn't much space, it wasn't such a big deal, and I'm capable of behaving like a civilized human being. Suck it, old man.

The other fans around us weren't nearly so obnoxious, aside from the constant tomahawk chops - and there was actually a middle-aged woman sitting behind me who was rooting for the Braves, but hated the chop and refused to do it. I did have a bit of a tiff with the guy behind me at one point, but it was more good-natured. When Omar Infante was retired early in the game, I yelled, "Sit down, undeserving All-Star!"

"Uh, he hit .330!" the guy said.

I smirked a little. "He was given the last spot on the All-Star Team over JOEY VOTTO. Are you saying he's better than the guy who should probably be the National League MVP?" He didn't have a really good answer for that.

In any case, the game went on, and Jonathan Sanchez dominated. I don't have to tell you guys this: his pitches were just as nasty on tv as they were from the upper deck. The Giants kept pissing away scoring opportunities, and every now and then I turned to my wife, groaned, and said, "Classic Giants baseball!" But I believed. I believed Sanchez could do the seemingly impossible and turn in the NLDS's second no-hitter. He looked that good. When Tim Hudson of all people broke it up, it was crushing: but not for long. Sanchez got out of the inning and the Giants still had the lead.

And then, the 8th inning. The fucking 8th inning. Eric Hinske comes up, and of course I can't not think about that dumb factoid of three years, three teams, three World Series appearances. Romo came in, and he threw a bad pitch to Hinske. I heard the contact, but I didn't see the ball off the bat at all. Lost it right away. I only knew it was a home run from the crowd's response. And from that response, it sounded like it had been gone all the way, like it went into the upper deck, or out of the stadium, or into low earth orbit. The replay on the big screen showed differently, of course: just over the fence, just inside the foul pole. But no matter: it scored two runs all the same. I often joked, in the lean years of the mid-to-late-aughts, that I should start bringing paper bags to the ballpark so I can put them over my head at appropriate moments of awfulness. That was one of them. I wanted to crawl into a crack in the stadium, and for a minute, I thought there were going to be cracks in the stadium. The whole upper deck seemed to jump up and down with one rhythm, shoes pounding into the concrete below. For several seconds, maybe a minute, the whole upper deck started to shake - not like a major earthquake, but like a little one, when some stress has built up along a fault-line and then is quickly released. For a moment I imagined the stadium collapsing in a heap, and then, when the shaking slowed and ceased, all I could imagine was the Game 2 collapse and now this seeming Game 3 collapse taking their place alongside Game 6 in 1987, the last game of the year in 1993, the extra innings of Game 2 in 2000, Game 6 in 2002, and Jose Cruz's dropped fly ball in 2003 in the long line of Giants postseason nightmares. I couldn't help it: I've been a Giants fan for too long and it fit too well into that narrative of spectacular collapse, of getting right up to the edge of winning and then watching it all fall apart all at once. Especially facing elimination in Turner Field, where the Braves could seemingly do no wrong. It was hard to see a way out at that point.

But I kept the faith. When the Braves were finally retired, I turned my Giants cap inside out for a rally cap, I got up to my feet with my daughter in my arms, and I continued my quest to singlehandedly drown out 45,000-odd goddamn Braves fans. Cody Ross - he could be the hero! He'd come through so many times already in the NLDS. He could lead off with - no. A ground out. And then a pinch hitter: Travis Ishikawa. "C'MON ISHI, LAST OF HIS TRIBE!" I called out. A two-strike count quickly. Not looking good, even with Wagner on the shelf. The Braves' bullpen was just too good. But a few good takes to work the count full. Every time a pitch was called a ball, the entire stadium groaned and screamed indignantly, as though it had been right down the middle, even if it was actually a foot off the plate. "JUST 'CAUSE A BRAVE THROWS IT DOESN'T MEAN IT'S A STRIKE!" And BALL FOUR! We have a baserunner. The crowd, so raucous with that quick out and that quick two-strike count, started quieting down just a little. Then, the top of the lineup. "ANDRES THE GIANT!" Two strikes and - what!? Strike three!? That looked way off the plate. Oh well, can't really tell from up here. Freddy Sanchez: not my first choice for a last chance, but please, Freddy, please...BASE HIT! And a pitching change. Cox dragging his feet on his way out to the mound. Aubrey Huff coming up. I was about to shout, "AUBREY, GET A HIT AND I'LL HAVE YOUR BABY!" but then I remembered I was in the South.

And then, of course, Buster. The ground ball straight through Conrad's wickets. The crowd was brutal on him. I didn't quite get it: we hadn't gotten to our seats in time to see his first inning error, and his second error was a really tough play. Should've been Heyward's ball, really.  So, from my perspective, it was Conrad's first major fuckup of the day. And a major fuckup it was, but even so, the response seemed strangely beyond the pale. I get it now, though I really just feel sorry for the guy.

Needless to say, we were on our feet through the bottom of the ninth, screaming for Brian (except when Brian McCann came up - then, we were screaming for Wilson). The only reason I didn't jump up and down with my fists in the air at the third out was because I was holding my almost-two-year-old daughter.

The foot traffic getting out was ridiculous. We moved about a foot per minute for quite a while there. At one point, an older man with a thick southern accent asked me if we'd flown "down from Frisco" for the game. I bit my tongue. The highlight of the walk out of the park, though, was seeing bits and pieces of those fucking foam tomahawks strewn everywhere, as if torn up in absolute, unmitigated disgust. Never has litter been so beautiful a sight.

The neighborhood around Turner Field, I noticed as we left, is pretty iffy. I mentioned long ago that we parked in the lot of a convenience store. We were hoping it would still be open: we hadn't eaten anything but popcorn since lunch, and were famished. Cotton-mouth thirsty, too. As we approached the store, though it appeared closed, with bars on the windows and doors. When we got up close, though, it was open: they just have bars and windows on the doors all the time. And two panes of bullet-proof glass separating customers from the cash register, too. Okay.

We got lost again driving back to the hotel, of course. So lost that, after about 45 minutes, we ended up BACK AT THE BALLPARK. Finally, we found the hotel about an hour and a half after the game ended.

The next morning, before hitting the freeway, we stopped at a CVS to pick up snacks and drinks for the road. I ran into the store while my wife and kids waited in the car. As I was walking to the cash register, I heard a woman's voice behind me. "Still wearing your Giants hat, eh?"

I turned around. "I saw you leaving the park last night, with your kids in Lincecum shirts," she said. "'At least one family's leaving the park happy,' I told my husband." I smiled. We smiled. It was a nice counterpoint to the asshole sitting in front of us: a classy fan. Gracious in defeat.

We hit the road. Back down the interstate, back through the cotton fields, back through the approximately ten million counties of Georgia. Seriously, the state has 159 counties. More than any other, except for Texas. There were times when we passed through three counties in less than five minutes. Back to the Florida state line, back to Tallahassee. My only regret was that we couldn't stay another night.