Giants Opening Day Weekend and Rock of Ages

The weekend I have been looking forward to since November 3, 2010.

Like many San Francisco Giants fans, many of us wondered when we would ever see a championship banner fly over AT&T Park. The Giants office knows how to organize a party and celebrate the team's achievements. Willie Mays brought out the flag, each player touched it while passing it down the line, and finally, Brian Wilson accepted the banner and ran it across the outfield, into the bleachers, so he could raise it up the flagpole. My next favorite moment was Matt Cain throwing out the first pitch. As the longest tenured Giant, he truly represents sportsmanship and excellence.

Thank goodness for personal necessity days so I could make my twelfth consecutive Opening Day. However, the festivities did not end with the extra innings back-to-back Aaron Rowand walk-off hits for the second straight year. I rocked all night long at the Curran Theater to revisit 80's hair metal in Rock of Ages. And yes, the show felt like the 80's complete with women decked at in high hair, long t-shirts, bandannas, and fishnet stockings. The show entertained the hell out of me, especially the one-liners, "Phil Collins can rock." Although a couple of the songs felt a little forced into the loose plot, I enjoyed hearing the different takes in which they were infused for the most part. Constantine looked ridiculous in his boy band outfit, while the women made me miss 80's fashion. Luckily, I was able to share this with Lance, Mary Anne, and the newlyweds, Macho & Gina, my 80's queen.

Saturday night - Opening Night
I truly loved the ring ceremony. The ceremony moved all 40,000+ of us. Though I was disappointed I didn't get my ring keychain giveaway (I had no idea people were going to line up at noon as if this were a Lincecum bobblehead day), I was able to witness the moment I longed to see. The Giants wearing championshiop rings. However, I didn't think I was going to last the whole night to see Miguel Tejada hit a walk-off double to win the game, because my coughing worsened in was one of the coldest nights I have experienced at the ballpark. I love cold weather, but my four layers and heaviest jacket could do nothing to protect me from a hellish wind chill. I suffered in the cold, but I watched another dramatic win and knew there would be no way I would be able to attend Sunday's Posey rookie of the year ceremony.

So the weekend concludes and I look forward to state testing week at work... I hope our school continues to improve...

Enjoy the two newest plaques on the portwalk commemorating Lincecum's 14 K's and the world championship win and parade.

Orange October/November

Many of you know that I'm a Giants season ticket holder, which means this past month has been
heaven for all of long-suffering Giants fans. Here are some of the scenes I was able to witness.

Giants clinch NL West




World Series Game 1







World Series Game 2





Giants Parade

Support my friend Manny and his graphic novel Dugout

well, it's that crazy time of year when San Diego is dressed up in its finest costumes. While many of us cannot be there nor have the channel G4 to explore the most commercial of segments at the con, one little project might be overlooked by the casual fan and unknowing public, so I must make you aware that at thecompany booth, my friend and artiste extraordinaire, Manny Bello, has completed a graphic novel that can't help but be successful. This image is from the current Wizard #202 magazine and lifted from the AiT website, but it provides a glimpse into a great story. How can it not be, for it combines baseball, prison, and comics all in one place. So go to your local comic store and demand Dugout... support the indie creators.

Surreality

I know that I've been working a bit much, for the month of May is probably the craziest month of the year for me. Homecoming week might be my hardest week of work, but there are just so many deadlines in May. I have to wrap up the school year and plot out all of next year in the span of a month... and this month has the added stress of preparing for WASC next year. The world around me seems to not be making much sense.

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

El Camino HS Night with the Giants

El Camino HS Night with the Giants

Support our community's future by watching the Giants future



Event InfoName:
El Camino HS Night with the Giants

Tagline:
Support our community's future by watching the Giants future

Host:
Derek Padilla

Type:
Sports - Sporting Event
Time and PlaceDate:
Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Time:
7:10pm - 10:10pm

Location:
AT&T Park

Street:
24 Willie Mays Plaza

City/Town:
San Francisco, CA

Description
This is our annual fundraiser with the San Francisco Giants, who will be playing the Housto Astros that night. Tickets are $20 and 7 or 8 of that goes directly back to the school. Please consider helping us, particularly with the 10% cut in educational funding that will happen next year.

Our district band will be doing the National Anthem, while the jazz band plays in Willie Mays Plaza around 5pm. If you're interested, please contact me. My work email is dpadilla@ssfusd.org

The tickets are situated in the upper reserve along the 3rd base line. Sections 319-322, I believe.

Hope to see you all there. Go Giants! Support the future... the Giants young players and our young high school students.

Please pass this on to anyone interested.

If you look carefully, you will see our seats in the pictures.

Giants Baseball meets Drumline Battle #8 - Jet Li

Before we get to the next Drumline Battle... my family celebrated Dwight's Birthday and we got to meet his family. Woo Hoo!

I took so much abuse this week about the Giants record and season, particularly at the beginning of the week. Then, the Giants won three games in a row, even the KNBR hosts were wondering if that would even be possible. Well, it happened much sooner than many expected. Yet, many of the people around me said that the Giants were just playing over their heads. It will only last so long. Unfortunately, more of the games will be like Saturday's in which the Giants lose in break your heart fashion. The good thing about that is that there is always a chance they will win the game and not just get blown out like many naysayers suggest.

So I decided with this entry in the Drumline Battle, I would share a clip that shows truly what it means to battle over heads. The scene comes from the first Jet Li I ever saw. Thankfully, my buddy Eric use to take me to the UC Theater in Berkeley on Thursdays, when the theme of the night was Asian films (usually action/martial arts films). Eric helped me to discover Jet Li, John Woo, and Chow Yun Fat long before they made their first American films. In many ways, Eric is responsible for helping me to develop any film sensibility/aesthetic (while an ex-girlfriend also taught me more than I ever expected since she was a broadcast media major), which all has led me to being able to teach film lit. Enough of the Digression....

This scene from The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk introduced me to Jet Li and just how much fun and how different foreign films can be than the usual Hollywood fare.




In much the same way, Jet Li fights for pride (and a possible bride) because he is young and talented, yet he discovers he has much to learn and ultimately loses the battle. The Giants may not be choosing to lose, but they will be learning from their mistakes. As long as the games are close as they have been, they will be entertaining. Hopefully, more fans will show up to the park rather than just us true fans. The attendance this week was the lowest in ballpark history.


138 Aside:
I can't believe that during Friday night's game there were some people mad at me for not moving out of my seat for their friends because they assumed I was in their seats. They looked at me dumbfounded that I would deny their request. I stared back and said NO! I am a season ticket holder and my butt has been on this seat since 2000. I'm sorry you assumed your friends had my seats but you're wrong. They all eventually moved a few rows in front of me.

Second horrible thing to happen in 138 Friday night was some fans several feet away from me tried to start the wave. About a dozen people kept getting up trying to begin their wave. However, my section finally shaped up to true Friday night form and booed them down. My 138 family around me made them sit down as we yelled at them that the wave is not San Francisco, but an East Bay or Southern California mentality so go back to from whence you came.

Later we began a Let's Go Giants chant, and those fans who booed sarcastically said "ewww... we don't do that here! we don't cheer for our team!" Those fans are lucky that none of the stupid drunk fans that tend to show up were there and make the situation a bit unruly. It disgusts me when fans who show up to 1 or 2 games a year come to the ballpark and disregard ballpark etiquette and proceed to try to dictate how the regular hard-core fans should act. How can they yell at me and say I'm not a real fan? I haven't seen their faces there before, and I have been to a few hundred games in the last decade.

Opening Night/ Drumline Battle #7

The Giants are starting to stress me out. I survived a crazy opening day. If you want details, you'll have to talk to me in person. But I am a masochist, so I went back for Tuesday night. I suppose I am too loyal, but I cannot give up on my team--no matter how many of my friends think I'm being an idiot.

I brought 45 leadership students to the game tonight, and it was really cold. Most of you who know me, know I rarely get cold. I had 4 layers on tonight. Way too cold. So of course, the night I bring my class, the game goes into extra innings. However, I can't think of too many more exciting things to see live at any event than watching a walk-off home run, especially when your team is considered to be the underdog. Bengie Molina homered for the first run in the 2nd inning and won the game in the 11th... such a warm pleasant feeling to cast away the cold sense of dread. And to celebrate, the Giants did something even more rare... they won a game on Fireworks night. Special thanks to Moller, Sanguinetti, and Sidhu for helping out with the chaperoning duties and freezing their butts off in the process.




So for this next response to the Drumline war... I've decided on Rocky III... mostly for the great pump you up music and reminder that the underdog can come back to succeed.... just like the Giants will this year. Can't get much better than "Eye of the Tiger" and "Training Montage."




Woo hoo! I got another wedding invitation today. That's five weddings so far this year. I'm ahead of last year's pace of 4.

Opening Day

In honor of what I feel is a national holiday... I will be attending my ninth straight home opener. I love fans who stick by their teams and are not bandwagon fans like so many of my students. Where's the loyalty even during the bad times? despite most critics and even other Giants fans saying this will be a horrible year... I will still be seating in 138 right where my season tickets state. Hopefully, this 1-5 start to the season will get better. I gotta believe in hope... otherwise I couldn't be a teacher.

So in honor of overcoming the odds and making history... here's a moment from Giants history and here's hoping another moment will happen this year in San Francisco. It would be perfect with it being the 50th anniversary since the team arrived on the west coast.

MINI-LOU

OK, I'm still rampaging just a little and it's nearly 5AM. I should get some sleep... but... how can you ignore probably one of the best reasons why 138 rules... where else can you find a mother who makes a mini-lou outfit for her daughter? seriously, mini-lou gets to ride around the park during the 7th inning sometimes.

'nuff said! No other section can compete with us! Look in the background... what's 139 got... orange wigs... really... is that all...139 is where we banish people... especially those who spill their drinks or can't keep it in...
learn the rules and OFF THE PHONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

138 shall not be ignored!

The marketing people of the San Francisco Giants have let me down. BIG TIME!

There is a new Giants commercial airing on local TV that interviews people and asks the question "Where are the best seats in the house?" The commercial ends with Rich Aurilia saying that he thinks he has the best seat and shows him in the dugout. But before him, a variety of fans are giving shout outs to their sections.The sections are all over the park; well, I didn't really hear any upper deck sections but you get the point. The final fan before the Aurilia shot is a bleacher fan saying slowly "one...three...nine" WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!?!?!

I think 138 is officially going to declare war on every other section. We're the ones that don't stand if the AT&T tries to do the wave and turn into Oakland or Los Angeles. We're the ones were called Lou Seal's favorite section on the stadium screen and in the kids newsletter mailed home. Our section is the one that's been getting all kinds of face time on the new HD screen--I've been up there three times and once on TV during the Friday night game vs. the dodgers. We're the first section to put our numbers on our jerseys, hats, and tattoos (only one has that, but c'mon, that's commitment).

Section 138 in the news again!

Section 138 makes the news

So, no one wanted to buy my Giants tickets... or flaked on buying the tickets...
but what happens... I miss one of the most memorable Friday night games ever... just look at my previous entry... I almost never miss these games...

albeit, i missed the game for an important reason... everyone... give their shout outs to the birthday girl Mary Anne, my bro's fiancee... also, the other half of the quarter ton battery combo of which I am one half as the pitcher... my partner/cousin, Macho Marlon is the catcher and it was his birthday also and he was at the game...

if you didn't see the news... my home in the bleachers went bezerk when Bonds was ejected on a horrible call strike by the umpire...

and my second home family members felt justified in demonstrating their displeasure by filling the outfield with litter from the bleachers... now, i don't advocate tossing things that can injure people, but if i were there, I wouldn't have stopped anyone from doing it because I would be just as pissed...

there was an 11 minute delay,,, the Rockies were called off the field for their safety...

now, I didn't know any of this was going on because i was in the East Bay and all I really heard was the radio host say that if you were at the game... you would never forget tonight, for it was one of the most memorable moments at AT&T Park...

it felt like that scene from Fever Pitch when Jimmy Fallon gets the call from his friend that he missed the greatest Red Sox comeback in recent memory...

I seem to always miss some of the best 138 moments...
the infamous moment when my brother carried away by paramedics.... (because I was chaperoning the farewell dance)

Moises Alou's 300th career homerun that landed in the seat in front of me... (but I was interviewing students to be in leadership during spring break this year...)

and this....
fortunately, I made the more significant moments like the Bonds homers, and world series, and the other more personal moments of 138 amongst the family...


here's a recent article in the Chronicle... that discusses the attitude that apparently until now was unbeknownst to its writer Ray Ratto, but that I breathe everyday i'm out there in the bleachers...

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/06/SPGUIKC3U31.DTL&hw=ratto&sn=001&sc=1000


seriously, why aren't more of you joining me out there for one of the best interactive moments in san francisco... if you're visiting our city... your visit is incomplete without paying a visit to the bleachers where you can recapture that candlestick spirit...

why i go to Giants games? reason #13

just another 138 night

finally the giants take another squeaker win 4-3 from the lowly brewers...
however... it was another typical night in 138
Lance and Ray almost got into a fight backing some guy who really didn't know (but he was the friend of one of our 138 crew's niece (who had the tix tonight).
The worst part about the annoying guys who sat next to us is that they were friends with one of the security guys and he didn't seem to do anything. One of his co-workers finally came and started doing his job.

then fight #2 broke out behind our row just after the first one settled... i wasn't involved so i took a pic



Near fight #2
Most attendees to the park or who watch enough games know the guy called "Bunny Man." You've probably seen him at the park wearing the chicken outfit when Bonds is intentionally walked. Well, some guy started trying to give him hell as the game ended. I stuck my nose into because i was walking by and put myself between them and pushed the other guy out of the way. Who messes with the Bunny Man? That's just wrong!