Tenth & Island: Pirates/Pads Rubber Match

Wednesday was the final game of the series and in a way I was happy to see it end. While I love being able to see my Bucs play, it was weird not cheering for the home town Pads. Our seats this day were 10 rows behind the Pirates dugout. It was a late afternoon game which led to a small attendance of 16,603. The attendance in our section was particularly sparse since the ushers are pretty militant about not allowing people to sneak down from the cheap seats. Our friend Mike refers this as "keeping the riff-raff out".

The Pirates once again jumped on top early scoring a run in the 2nd and six more in the 3rd. Doumit's grand slam looked like it was shot out of a bazooka - a line shot that got out in a hurry. The seven run lead deflated the crowd and made the rest of the game a bit dull. The Pads scored two runs off local kid and former Friar Kevin Correia before he left after six innings.

As the Pirates leave the field each inning, a coach tosses a ball to the Pirates player who recorded the last out in the field. The player then tosses that ball into the crowd. Throughout the game, the Pirates tossed the balls to kids in the crowd (most of them wearing Padres garb) or fans wearing Pirates apparel. In the 8th inning, Laura stood up and waved at 2nd baseman Neil Walker as he returned to the dugout. He immediately flipped the ball to her. Unfortunately, she bobbled the toss and watched as it bounced to another Pirates fan down the aisle. Several boos from the crowd above us followed. Oh well.

In the 9th, Jose Veras came in to pitch for the Bucs. He proceeded to give up two home runs to cut the lead to 3. He then walked Jason Bartlett and allowed him to take second base. At this point, the San Diego broadcast pans to a shot of Pirates owner Bob Nutting (sitting one row in front of where we sat Monday) looking very stressed and irritated. The camera then pans to a full screen close-up of Laura and I looking very stressed and irritated. It is a very funny scene. I would post the screen capture, however Laura has threatened to kill me if I did. For those of you with MLB.TV, the sequence starts at the 3:07 mark of the Padres broadcast.

The Pirates held on to win and we walked up to the dugout to cheer the victorious Pirates. Joel Hanrahan flipped us a ball (that we did not drop). The Pirates won their fifth road series (after only winning four all last year) and we celebrated by grabbing dinner from Lolita's. On the way to Lolita's, a guy wearing a Mike Ditka shirt and begging for money came up to us and said "I've got cancer and need to buy some chemo - can I have a dollar?" His delivery with his Ditka-esque accent and his complete lack of effort in making any attempt to make his story seem slightly real made this the funniest request for drugs/booze money we have heard.

UPDATE: Just spoke to Gabe, our Padres account rep, and he mentioned that he saw us on "Friarvision" (the video on the scoreboard). We've seen ourselves on the bigscreen in the past, but must have missed it yesterday.