SF Tennis Freak

Posts Tagged ‘Tim Lincecum’

I want to take a moment away from tennis to tell you about my brush with greatness the other day on my way home from work. As some of you may have heard (lol), on Sunday, the San Francisco Giants won the World Series in dominating fashion over the Detroit Tigers. They swept Detroit off the field, winning four straight games. It was great stuff to watch, especially that last pitch by Romo that froze Cabrera at the plate for the final out. Amazing!

On Monday, I was on my way home from work in San Mateo, listening to reports of the Giants having just landed at SFO (as I was driving by SFO), when all of a sudden a CHP officer on my right started weaving for a traffic break. I got out in front of him, but it occurred to me that this was THE traffic break that was going to allow the team to get back to ATT Park during the commute. In that instant I knew what I had to do: follow the team back to the park for homecoming.

After the 2010 win, I missed out on much of the festivities and ended up kicking myself over it. I didn’t get a t-shirt, or go to the parade/rally at City Hall. I watched on TV and felt slightly removed from it all, and maybe even a little bit jealous when I saw Bruce and the players showing off the trophy to the crowds at the park. I didn’t want to miss out for a second time.

I waited on the side of the road by Candlestick Park for the buses to go by, then followed them onto 280 and down to King Street as they headed for the ballpark. The gods were smiling on me as I was able to immediately park at the only available meter just off the exit. I put in a token amount of change, and then hauled ass the few blocks to the park so that I could be there for the team as they got off the buses. My timing wasn’t great, as I missed Panda getting off the bus with the World Series trophy overhead. And the crowd was so deep that I could barely see Hunter Pence high-fiving the crowd in front of me. Still, I was there to soak up the atmosphere and share in a bit of civic pride, and felt successful on both fronts.

As much of a whiz as I seem to be with all of my tech toys, I kept having issues with my phone’s camera. So I didn’t get any good pics of the players AS THEY SPED OFF IN THEIR CARS IMMEDIATELY AFTER GETTING THERE!!! That was pretty disappointing, but I guess you can’t blame them. I did get a chance to see a few of them drive off from my perch on the traffic island right opposite the ballpark driveway, and that was pretty cool. I saw Sergio Romo, Pablo Sandoval, and Tim Lincecum. They all had their windows down, and it was cool to cheer for them and see their smiles in response.

The top picture is just a cool view of the Posey banner I had from my traffic island location. The middle picture is of sportscaster Ken Wayne interviewing a woman in front of me. Coincidentally, I was watching his local coverage after the win on Sunday. I think he would have interviewed me if I had any amount of orange and black on, but I didn’t. 🙁 Hence, the bottom picture with my new t-shirt in front of the statue of Willie Mays!

I’m also including a short video just to show how crowded it was down there while we waited. Crowded, but not out of control thankfully. After all the players left, the staff thanked us all for coming down and started to bring down the barricades. I walked over to the Dugout and got my official t-shirt, well worth the price at forty bucks. I’m not a big baseball fan, but I’m certainly aware of those moments when sports can unite a city. This was definitely one of those times, and in a setting that was better than the million+ throng today at the parade and rally.

Move over Rafa, I think my new sporting crush is Sergio Romo. 🙂