A couple of things of note:
1. My co-worker Alicia Vosberg is one of the finalists for the Comcast Teacher of the Year award. You will hear more about this later from me because you will all be expected to vote for her online when the time comes.
2. My best friends on staff is leaving El Camino for much more lucrative waters. Although I'm excited for her, the cycle continues and I watch another friend leave. This may also explain why I get so crazy in May. Thankfully I have other great friends on staff, but this ranks up there with a couple of others who have left in the past.
3. Last Friday I left the Giants game and saw the man who later died because of the fight on the ground with all the medical personnel surrounding him. I will go more into this and copy the article from the SF Chronicle at the end of this entry.
4. Senior Ball was Saturday night and it was a pleasant evening. It was a little strange remembering that I missed last year's ball. I took a couple of interesting poses and I will post those when the pics come in from the company.
5. I made my long arduous return to competitive softball this Sunday night. It had been almost a year since I last played a true game and not just practiced. To make things even more interesting, my brother just left for his honeymoon (at least what I call his true honeymoon) so I had to pitch in the first game of the playoffs. This was one of the most exciting games I had played in in a long time. My team lost in extra innings 12-10 unfortunately. My tendons are inflamed and the thought of surgery is starting to sound appealing (and I would truly become part beast when the doctors replace my achilles' tendons with animal ones). My team didn't hit well; I was horribly rusty and even struck out looking. On the positive side, I think I pitched 5 scoreless innings out of 8. The game was a tight pitching duel the entire game. We even came back in the 7th inning to tie, but my legs (quad muscles in particular) felt like they were going to detach and I gave up 6 runs in the top of the 8th inning. My team picked me back up when somehow I got on base as the second batter of the inning and Will hit a 3 run homer. We were able to get the winning run to the plate to hit but we fell short. I really wanted to play in two more games next week for a championship, but my play encouraged me that I should be good for the summer softball season.
So let me go back to last Friday night...
the night was just surreal... you know, one of those nights when you think it's a full moon out...
Johnny came with me to the game and for a change of pace we decided to save a little money and take the train to the ballpark. Immediately, I thought how odd it is i'm there because one of our students sadly lost his life in a train accident just a couple of weeks ago at that same station in San Bruno. We just missed the train and realized it would be 20 minutes until the next scheduled train. Then a marquee sign flashed that the train would be 10 minutes late... then 15 then 20. I grew agitated, especially because it was cold.
We noticed the people around us and many of them were in their early 20s and looking like they had no common sense whatsoever. You could just sense there was going to be trouble... many of the guys were yelling and obnoxiously hitting on some of the women. Three idiots jumped the barrier and were almost hit by an express train. And after what I just knew about one of our students, I couldn't help but think why aren't some people more careful.
After getting off the train and missing the first 2 innings of the game, we walked to the ballpark and 2 of the idiots on our train immediately began yelling loudly and getting into it with other fans around us. For the length of two blocks, these idiots were fighting a few other guys and let it spread into the other hundred fans walking along King Street. One of the idiots was a short guy about 5'2" & 90 lbs. and was wearing a football jersey that could probably fit me. He tried to punch every person who came near him or that he would run into. He was sucker punching people who were not even involved. He would be running down the block accidentally run into somebody and punch them. At one point he ran into a 6'3" dude about 180 lbs and punched him right in the chin. The dude seriously looked down on him and yelled "Are you f**** serious?!?" He grabbed him and tossed him aside, but he immediately got up and started trying to hit others again. He almost ran into me once and all I could think of was that if he attacked me I was going to step on him.
Finally, we made it to the ballpark and 138 was in odd form. The bleachers were filled with all kinds of strange people. Your occasional Friday night fight happens, but the stupidity of behavior all around me was disgusting. One fool (drunk male, very small) kept trying to fight a woman. One of the Giants regulars who sits a bit further away came over to us in 138 and said that he read an article in Sports Illustrated that reviewed all the ballparks. Its comments about AT&T were you don't want to be sitting in the bleachers on a Friday night especially if the Giants are playing the Dodgers. If anyone can get me a copy of this article, I would appreciate it.
Upon leaving the ballpark I saw the consequences of yet another fight... a fight that proved fatal. Click here if you want to read the article.
While walking back to my friend's car after the game, some other idiot was walking alongside the buildings making a scene. He ran up to the window of Amici's and hit the windows yelling at a party eating inside. He kicked the glass windows and doors the entire length of the block and continued to spit at each wall panel. He wanted to fight anyone who would approach him.
For the first time, I thought to myself that I was getting to old to be around this kind of crap. But why should I let idiots ruin my fun at a Giants game. I was kind of reminded of opening day when two guys kept trying to attack one of my buddies... they even followed us into a bar and circled around us. Thankfully nothing happened.
Well, this Tuesday in our school district fundraising night at the ballpark and I hope it's a safe night all weeklong for the Asian Heritage Nights during the homestand.
To end on a happy note... here are pics from sr. ball
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