Baseball is back!

The 2022 Major League Baseball season has begun in earnest this past weekend. It’s just nice to tune into a Giants game on the television during a lazy weekend afternoon. The YouTube TV package includes the local NBC Sports channel that carries the Giants broadcast, so I am setup for the whole season. No more diving into the depths of Reddit to find that one sketchy streaming channel. Completely illegal, obviously. What’s the statute of limitations on that sort of stuff again?

I also get my Formula One broadcast in legit fashion now. YouTube TV carries the entire ESPN family of channels, home to F1 in America. The NBC family of channels carry English Premier League, so I’m truly made in terms of sports I like to have on in the background while I do something else. Sports that I use to have to access via the aforementioned Reddit.

At $65 dollars a month, YouTube TV is expensively priced like a cable subscription. I would never pay for that by my lonesome - otherwise what’s the point of “cutting the cord”? Thanks to family sharing, we are able to split that cost four ways. $16 dollars per month is far more palatable, and an absolute bargain for how much channels are included (70+). Of course, a de-facto prerequisite is having unlimited home internet. The typical 1 terabyte per month data caps simply won’t cut it: one hour of 4K streaming uses about 20 gigabytes. 50 hours of 4K and you’re already at the limit.

So after a historic 107-win regular season last year, what are my expectations of for the 2022 Giants? I predict a team of feisty dogs that grind out games. This is not a team of marquee names and big-time contracts. But the sum of all the parts will be highly competitive game in and game out. Well worth having on the TV in the background!

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It’s the most, wonderful time, of the year.

Solar eclipse and Giants game

Yesterday was interesting.

In the morning hours there was the big happening with the solar eclipse going on. Sadly, us San Franciscans are infinitely familiar with the sun being blocked due to the constant fog so it wasn’t too huge a deal. Of course, it was immensely foggy on the west side of the city where I work, so there was no hope of seeing the actual thing, though I’m sure my ocular faculties were thankfully spared the solar intensity. Not suppose to look at the sun during a solar eclipse? But I look at the sun all the time!

Shoutout to NASA for having a killer live-feed from Oregon though. Nothing like a solar eclipse to remind me just how amazing the universe and our solar system is, and what a golden coincidence it is that these three circular objects are spaced at just the correct distance apart for the moon to perfectly cover the sun. Even those not of the religious milieu would appreciate that perhaps only a supreme entity in the sky could conjure up such magical geometry. I had chills when the moon began to move off to the left and that first blip of sunlight started to dash through the temporary darkness in the most beautiful of rays.

In the evening I attended the first Giants game of the season, which is quite the contrast to the earlier parts of this decade where I’d go to about two dozens worth of games per season. Oh how have priorities change. The Giants have been awful this year, and in commensurate the attendance levels at games have reflected that as well. I’ve not seen the ballpark so empty since the mid 2000s. Bandwagoning or not, you can’t blame people for staying home when your product no longer provide joy and excitement. 

A positive though is that I was able to score tickets really inexpensively. With the Giants being in the doldrums of the major leagues, me and my friends can finally go watch games live without having to think of the wallet. It’s wonderful. I wouldn’t mind if the team continue their bad steak for quite a while longer; we’ve already got three championships, a few losing seasons isn’t going to hurt too much. 

Midsummer

It was an interesting weekend for the most part. It marked the final two days of the 2014 World Cup, which is a bit melancholic when you think about it. Granted, fours years will undoubtedly fly by in seemingly no time until the next world tournament. Unfortunately that is to be held in Russia, so only the most hardy of fans in the United States will be willing to essentially not sleep at all to catch games during the early hours of morning.

Pass the snacks, please. 

It was also a rare weekend where I went to two Giants games. Well, two if you only look at the ticket stubs. Due to the World Cup final I had to abort the Sunday game, having only entered the ballpark to receive the bobblehead giveaway. I didn't even pay for seats - it was a standing room ticket. Quite clever, if I do say so myself. The game on Friday that I actually did stay and watch was a good one, though. The team actually won, which is a rarity of the Giants this past month.

I am miffed that I missed seeing the two grand-slams hit by Posey and Bumgarner on Sunday. Damn you, World Cup! 

A Facebook acquaintance of mine flew to Spain this week to partake in the historic running with the bulls. Tick one off the bucket-list for that guy. Personally I don't think I'd be brave enough to risk getting impaled by an angry bull many times my size. But a lesson for the younger people out there: stuff like running with the bulls is proper "you only live once" type of shit, not getting hammered with alcohol and peeing on a police car (massive cookie points if you get this albeit obscure reference). 

Black Day

Saw Captain America 2 this past weekend, and it was a fantastically entertaining movie. As a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I obviously enjoyed it as I did with all the other ones. You've got to head into these movies without any expectations of complex/interesting plot-lines or intense character development; all of it is merely there to entertain you. Waiting impatiently the next one, Guardians of the Galaxy, this coming August. 

Great weekend of baseball for the Giants. I still can't believe Bumgarner hit that grand slam; definitely not something you see everyday. That Crawford walk-off home-run into the water on Sunday was equally unexpected. The Giants has got an intricate and interesting offense, that's for sure. The team is currently leading the majors in home-runs collectively! Pretty crazy considering the team isn't exactly known for hitting home-runs these past seasons. 

The jinx is broken

So the story of the jinx is this. During the previous year’s baseball season, whenever me and my Giants-baseball-partner-in-crime Amber is at AT&T Park at the same time (either went together or in separate groups), the Giants have not not won a single game. That’s right, zero wins out of the 11 or so games we were there at the ballpark. It was so bad that it was dubbed a jinx; blame was tossed around, threats was spewed, and friends begged us not to go to games anymore.

Well, the jinx is no more! On Sunday, April 30th 2012, Giants beat the Padres 4-1 as we watched from the upper decks of AT&T park. Oh yeah, it is going to be a good season of baseball. I can tell.