Baseball by the Bay: One Spring Day in San Francisco

San Francisco Giants

Specifics:

AT&T Park (now known as Oracle Park)

Pittsburgh Pirates vs San Francisco Giants

Date of Game: Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Time of Game: 12:45 PM PDT

Final score: Pirates – 0, Giants - 6

Section 226, Row C, Seat 6

Knowing that I’d be in San Francisco for a few days to attend a conference, I just had to make seeing a Giants game in their home stadium a “must do”. I asked my partner to travel with me so that we could do some sightseeing during the evenings and any downtime I had between sessions. We stayed at the Parc 55 San Francisco – A Hilton Hotel which is near to the BART and conference center. We did not have a car with us.

With downtime in the room while I was attending sessions, my partner was tasked with obtaining tickets and figuring out the best transportation to get us to and from the stadium without a car. After a brief discussion, where we cross referenced my conference schedule and the Giants home schedule, we determined which day worked best. Wednesday was the last day of the conference and there was a morning session I wanted to attend. This matched well with the Wednesday afternoon baseball game and didn’t disrupt the flow of my attendance at the conference.

Now, the hotel isn’t exactly near the baseball stadium (it’s less than 2 miles by car), but there was public transportation everywhere. Seeing as my partner had lots of downtime during the days leading up to the game, he researched how to get us to the stadium. He told me we could take 2 buses. The first ran down Market Street and the second went towards the stadium.

Looking at Google Maps now (almost 16 years later), travel time indicates 15 mins. Yeah, that’s not what happened…

On April 14, 2010 – I went to the conference as planned and arrived back at the hotel just a little after 11:00AM. We had time, the weather was nice, so we walked towards 3^rd Street to pick up the bus there. When we got to the bus stop, it was mobbed! Like, we didn’t even consider a crowded bus stop on a Wednesday afternoon. So, we walked a little further to the next stop. That too was even more crowded than the previous one. But, over the crowd of people my partner pointed in the direction of the stadium, and I could kinda see it. So, we kept walking, and walking, and walking. Each stop that we walked by was more crowded than the next. We never got on the bus; we just walked to the stadium.

The walk felt long but I think it was because I felt rushed and was in an unfamiliar city. It was probably a little over a mile when you add walking into the stadium and to the seats. We arrived at the stadium before game time and went directly to the window to pick up the tickets. We didn’t stop for ice cream or food, went directly to our seats. I was exhausted from the walk and just wanted to sit.

OMG, what a view. We were behind 3^rd base and facing the water. Not only were we able to see the field well, but if we stood up, we could see San Francisco Bay. The weather was simply gorgeous. There was a breeze off the water and lots of sun.  Additionally, the people sitting next to us were lovely. They introduced themselves, told us that they go to all the games and travel to the away ones too. We didn’t chat much after that, but I felt part of the group for the rest of our time sitting together.

We were in the club level section of the stadium. Later, my partner said he was eyeing these tickets the whole time he was looking into game tickets but couldn’t decide on whether to splurge on them. We’d never sat in club-level seats and had no idea what to expect. Since they remained open, he took a chance and purchased them.

From the beginning when we were talking to our seat neighbors, the game seemed to zoom by. Before we knew it, it was already the 5^th inning, and we hadn’t checked out the concessions at all. In the top of the 6^th inning, we went to grab hot dogs, soda and a pretzel to share.

While my partner ordered, I noticed that the concession stand didn’t seem very crowded, but come to think of it, the view from the seats didn’t show a ton of people sitting in the stadium either.  Where were all those people from the bus stops? Before we went back to our seats, we ordered ice cream. They offered an option to have your ice cream served in a small, plastic baseball helmet with the team logo on it. What a great souvenir! We each got one. (We did not know then, but collecting plastic ice cream helmets from each MLB ball stadium would be our goal. This is where it started!)

With our ice cream helmets in hand, and lots of napkins, we were back at our seats in time for the 7^th inning, where we enjoyed the rest of the game. It really must have been a pitcher’s game, or the Pirates were having a really bad game day, because there were zero hits from the visiting team. Which I guess explains why the entire game wasn’t much longer than 2 hours.

As we exited the stadium, we saw that there was a train station across the street. Curious to see where it went, we walked over to look at the map to see if it went near the hotel. It did! It was the Muni Metro, and it went to Union Square which was down the street from the hotel. I was very happy that we didn’t have to walk back to the hotel and excited about seeing a part of the city that we hadn’t been to yet. We didn’t have to wait very long for the train to arrive and a quick fifteen minutes later we were dropped off at Powell Street station.

It was a shorter day than expected, but still pretty full and definitely memorable!

Some information, such as walking distances and names of businesses were confirmed by using ChatGPT or Perplexity. Blog title brainstorming too!

Written February 24, 2026