Houston Astros @ Oakland Athletics (game 1)

My first game of two seeing the newly-resurgent Houston Astros face off against the Oakland Athletics.

I don't recognise many of the names in the Houston line-up, as they are mostly young players with one or two veterans.  They have been a surprising package this year, currently sitting atop the AL West division, with a lot of series like this one against divisional rivals.

My seat was down at field level, fairly near the front, so I had an excellent view of proceedings.

One of the worries about young teams that rely on hitting more than pitching is that they are liable to get shut down by a good opposition pitcher.  That's what happened tonight

Two Oakland pitchers, Gray and Dull (yes, really!), threw a combined 5-hit shut-out, whilst Oakland scored a few runs to take an easy victory.

Marriott Oakland

The Oakland City Centre Marriott hotel is shaped like a trapezium - and my room is in one of the pointy corners, so I have a strangely triangular-shaped room with windows on two of the three sides for views out to the south-east and the south-west.

When preparing the room, the maid had left the curtains closed and I opened the curtains for these pictures, but I soon discovered why they were left closed: during the sun really heats the room up fast and the air conditioner can't keep

the room cool in competition with it!

In fact, the air-con unit seems to go off and on in short bursts, probably because the temperature sensor for it is just below the vent through which the cooled air comes, so it's nice and cool over there, but warm in the room.  I've had to set the temperature to 16C/61F to persuade it to cool it down to something vaguely reasonable.

I didn't do much today except wander around a bit and then go to the game in the evening.

  The journey was very easy with the BART station just outside the hotel, as the stadium is only a few stops down the line to Fremont, although the trains only run every 15 minutes, so they do get quite crowded, especially when it's a night game, because you have all the commuters on the same trains too.

Boston to San Francisco

This time, I left the hotel in plenty of time and took the express bus to the airport, which was very quick, what with it being the very early hours of a holiday Monday morning!  This flight, I didn't get the fast-lane access, but I did get to join the normal queue near the front.

The breakfast was OK but nothing special, but there was no more food on this 6 and a half hour flight except for a freshly-baked cookie just before we arrived in San Francisco!

I was able to reload my Clipper card for the journey to Oakland on BART, except there was a closure of the transbay tube that runs between San Francisco and Oakland, so we had a rail replacement bus service - albeit quite a complicated one.  We were directed out of Embarcadero station's emergency exit so we didn't have to tag-out and then tag-in again in Oakland (to avoid getting charged for two journeys), then had to walk several minutes down two blocks to the bus station.  However, there were BART employees every hundred metres of so to encourage people, saying things like "nearly there!" - although after we'd gone past 4 or 5 of them, the lady I was chatting to and I suspected the first one was lying.

Unlike rail replacement buses at home, there was a constant stream of buses.  People got on one and if there was a gap in the stream of people arriving at the bus station, the bus left and the next one was right there to take the next group of people, with virtually no waiting at all.  My bus only had a few people on it.  It didn't take all that long to get to Oakland 19th Street, where I went in the emergency exit and went one stop south to my hotel.

Very conveniently, the Marriott is just next to the BART entrance, and just across the street from where I stayed at the Courtyard Marriott many years ago.  Also, there's a free bus (but not on Labor Day!) that runs down to Jack London Square, where many of the restaurants are.  I had to pay today.

Out of the places I had listed for dinner, I chose Kincaid's for dinner, which was fortunate, because it is closing for 2 weeks for refurbishment the day after next!  Sadly, that meant they'd run out of many menu items, as they'd stopped ordering deliveries.

Philadelpha Phillies @ Boston Red Sox (game 3)

The final game of this three game series saw yet another unknown (at least to me) pitcher for the Phillies up against the Red Sox.  This game was strangely reminiscent of the previous game: one big inning for Boston, a small inning for Philadelphia, and then nothing much else - in this case, a consolation run for Philadelphia in the top of the 9th, although one more hit would have brought the tying run on deck.

David Ortiz hit another home run today and a sac-fly that was only a few feet short of being a grand slam, and was then removed from the game, apparently due to soreness.  That was disappointing, but at least he had ad a couple of plate appearances.

I was in the back row of a loge box for this game, so had a completely unobstructed view - it was also $40 more expensive than the row behind, but the seats were slightly wider and plastic instead of narrow and wooden.  It was much warmer today, and the hotel's weather page said it was 24C/75F.  I'd say it was at least 30C/86F.

The "loud" pedal

On our way back along Boylston Street towards downtown Boston after the game this afternoon, there was the usual traffic jam and the pavements were filled with people too.

However, one very expensive white sports car was making its slow progress through the jam with the other traffic, but with an extremely loudly revved engine.  It turns out that David Ortiz, the Boston player, was the driver.  I'd have thought the whole state could hear the engine's complaints and screams ... but at least it gave some people a chance to get a close-up photo of David.

Philadelphia Phillies @ Boston Red Sox (game 2)

The middle game of this series was a late afternoon game, featuring Wade Miley pitching for Boston, and a group of players for Philadelphia, most of whom I've never heard of - Ruiz and Howard being the obvious exceptions.

Not a lot of scoring innings in this one - the game positively flew by until the bottom of the 4th inning, when Boston batted around and then some, plating 8 runs, including David Ortiz's 30th HR of the season, a solo shot that followed what at first appeared to be an inside-the-park grand slam, but was actually scored as a 3 RBI double, batter/runner scoring on an error.  Philadelphia got 2 runs back in the top of the 5th, but that was it for them as Miley completed the game, picking up one tack on run late on to make the final score 9-2 in under 2 and a half hours.

I was sitting on the end of my row in the grandstand, which turns out not to be such a great seat when all the people on your row are constantly going in and out of their seats.

Philadelphia Phillies @ Boston Red Sox (game 1)

Fenway Park is about a 25 minute walk from my hotel, so given that the weather has cooled off back to something sensible, I walked there and back this evening.  This was the first game of a 3 game series between two struggling teams, and my seat was up on top of the Green Monster in left field.  I even received a hand stamp of a monster so I could go in and out without having to show my ticket!

Given how far both teams are out of it this year, there was still a large crowd.  Joe Kelly went for Boston and pitched 6 innings giving up 2 runs, whilst Morgan went for Philadelphia and was much more economical with his pitches, until the 4-run outburst in the 7th inning that put the Red Sox up by 5.  It is a mystery how the Red Sox managed to only score 1 run in the bottom of the 1st - there were base runners and hits all over the place.

This game featured several weird plays.  One of these was big David Ortiz lumbering around to score from second base on a sharp single to shallow right field.  The ball was tossed back to the infield, but missed by the fielder and allowed to just dribble slowly across the infield.  The second was a bizarre base running play where the Phillies had runners on 1st and 2nd, the runners appeared to attempt a double steal - but got stranded between bases with the ball in the hands of the second baseman.  However, confusion then started as runners went back and forth and were chased about, with the end result of runners were safe, one back on 1st and the other on 3rd, without a throw.