From Craig:
We just finished a two-week RV trip, at a very important time for me as a baseball fan. When we left, both of our Bay Area baseball teams, the Giants and the Athletics, were doing well at contending in their leagues. Both continued to do so as we swung through several days of repairs, maintenance, and new tires. I got a little scared that if they both kept playing so well, we might have another 1989 earthquake :-)
Last Tuesday Sep 18 we drove into Yosemite National Park. We heard that it was pretty much a communications wasteland, which was true with one exception. Our Verizon cell phone (which is also our internet "hotspot") had zero bars of any protocol: 4G, 3G, 1X, or the really scary indication on the phone: zero bars of no protocol at all! Which means no internet access!
At our campsite Crane Flats on the north rim of the Yosemite valley, scanning the AM radio band showed no stations at all! As a kid I in Milwaukee I used to listen to stations in Nashville and Little Rock and Denver, so getting no stations at all was a shock. But it turned out that the FM band was full of stations, including the A's home station. Now I know why I can't get 95.7 at home in the Santa Cruz mountains: they send most of their signal east to places like Yosemite!
The nights I got to hear Athletics games in Yosemite were disappointing: they lost all the evening games, though they did win one day game while we were out hiking. But I had no way to learn Giants results at all.
Today as we drove home and crested the mountain range leading into civilization, I learned that the Giants had won all of their games while we were out of touch, and that they were in line to clinch the National League Western division title tonight.
Which they have in fact done, which makes for a wonderful homecoming for me as a wandering RV baseball fan.
I've been listening to interviews with the (amazingly young) Giants players while typing this, and there really is no sport in the world that has a successful result like winning first place in a 162-game season. Despite the earthquake fears, I hope for another Giants vs. Athletics World Series!
Merikay will be back tomorrow.
I thought the Giants played for New York. Shows you how much I'm in touch with that sport. :)
ReplyDeleteEldy LOVES his baseball, too...That would be hard for him not to know what's going on with his beloved sports teams. Football is right up there with baseball. He's experienced quite a few times doing without TV , he's seriously thinking about getting the satellite hooked up while on the road. Two years and no satellite tv. Sparky is not too enthusiastic about more TV in the near future.
ReplyDeleteJudy and Emma: the team name "Giants" indeed comes from New York. Their professional baseball and football teams both took the name many years ago. The baseball Giants moved from NY to SF about 1958, but the football team stayed (anyway moved to NJ) and has had considerable success there in recent years.
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