Nomads, Coach K, Purple Uniforms and The Great Gatsby
Three-Dot Friday 4.11
I went to the San Francisco Giants home opener last Friday. When they announced the attendance as 40,800 or so, I realized at once that more people went to that game than the entire West Sacramento opening series for the A’s. Who I would like to call the Nomads but then would have to explain the joke to everybody, so it’s not worth it…
But seriously, the official attendance numbers for the first “home” series for the Nomads: Game One: 12,119
And Game Three: 9,342 (weekday day game)
Doing the proper math, that’s: 31,556
By comparison: Giants home opener, Game One: 40,865
Giants, Game Two: 40,886
Giants, Game Three: 41,060
So, legit question: when will the Nomads break the 100,000 fan attendance mark for the season? At ten thousand fans a game or so, that’s game ten. The Giants did it when half the crowd got into the park for game three.
Now to be fair, these official attendance numbers for the Nomads are better than they were for the first three games at the Oakland Coliseum last season. But there were some mitigating circumstances there, like ownership doing the best they could to keep fans away. But I digress. The idea is the same. You play in a minor-league park, the best you’re going to do is minor-league attendance numbers. That part won’t change…
Based on prior experience, this might be the only month of the season you can see Mike Trout play, so I encourage you to seek him out and remember when he was going to take his place among the all-timers. (Hit his first 2 homers of the season on Thursday) …
The Giants new City Connect jerseys are supposed to invoke the city’s “Summer of Love” vibe, but of more importance to me is that they include purple and point out that the Giants wore purple for a time while they were in New York…
That’s because- if you’re unaware- I wrote a book about one of those seasons, the 1916 New York Giants where they actually wore purple windowpane uniforms, gaudy even for the time, and won a still-record 26 games in a row. So, I enjoy this nod to those Giants. Am I going to buy one of those jerseys or caps because of it? Oh heck no. but I appreciate the gesture…
You really want to make some noise, bring back the purple windowpanes…
In one of the NCAA men’s basketball brackets I was invited to fill out, I named my bracket “Chase Center Champs” because I like alliteration, for one, and also because I was going to the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games at Chase Center here in San Francisco. Well, the Florida Gators won both games here to become the Chase Center Champs and then went on to win the national title. So, I was right in that the Chase Center Champs were the national champs…
Does that mean I picked them in that particular “Chase Center Champs” bracket? Of course not. I created it and I saw it, but I didn’t realize it. I should have picked up the vibe I was putting down!
Although Chase Center has only been open for a few years, it’s already etched itself into some pretty interesting college basketball history. for instance, this year saw the second-biggest Sweet 16 comeback ever (Texas Tech, at one point down 16 points to Arkansas), a game that left me completely stunned. I kept saying “There’s no way that could have happened” because Arkansas absolutely had that one in the bag and then… didn’t.
And then in the Elite 8 game, Texas Tech led Florida by 9 with 3:14 to play, and Florida outscored them 18-4 to win by ten. That one I was less surprised about because Florida was clearly the better team but just couldn’t make a shot until, well, the final 3:14, and then they couldn’t miss (specifically Walter Clayton, Jr.). It didn’t set a record, but it sure was a memorable final three minutes…
But if you want to win a trivia contest, ask somebody this question: Where did Duke’s legendary Mike Krzyzewski win his last game as Blue Devils head coach? The answer is at Chase Center. In the 2022 NCAA tournament, Coach K beat Texas Tech in the Sweet 16 and then Arkansas in the Elite 8 to advance to the Final Four… where he lost to North Carolina to end his career...
The last game is what most people will remember. But the last victory is also rather significant, and that happened in San Francisco…
And less than a mile away and a few years earlier, I was at Bruce Bochy’s last win as San Francisco Giants manager. It was a Thursday weekday day game (because of course it was) in September 2019. Since the Giants got swept by the Dodgers in the last series of that season and didn’t make the playoffs, it’s a reasonably significant game in Giants history that doesn’t get the credit it deserves…
Attendance at that game? 30,050…
Another legendary baseball park opened on April 9, 1913… it’s probably inspired more “this is how baseball used to be” odes than any other park. It was a small ballpark in a neighborhood, the players lived nearby and therefore there was a real connection, and it was easy to get to without a car no matter where you were because of the streetcars that went down every block surrounding the place…
It was Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, home of the Dodgers for 47 years until they moved to Los Angeles. (as much as Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley has been portrayed as the villain for moving the club out of Brooklyn, in truth New York City Building Commissioner Robert Moses stymied O’Malley’s plans to build a new park somewhere in Brooklyn at every turn, insisting he build in Queens. O’Malley said “Brooklyn or Bust,” and eventually, it was Bust. O’Malley laughed all the way to the bank, and Moses got his ballpark in Queens.)
The unofficial attendance for the first exhibition game at Ebbets, 112 years ago? Somehow close to 35,000 forced themselves into an unfinished ballpark that was only half built and could only 18,000. For the official opening day attendance was 14,000…
In other words… more than the Nomads will ever draw in West Sacramento…
The A’s are trying to recapture something that Ebbets Field had. They insisted that moving from Oakland and playing in this tiny ballpark will revitalize them as they wait for Vegas to happen, or perhaps not. They instead would do well to remember this famous line from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” released 100 years ago this week in 1925…
“His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.”
Do it in a way that makes sense, that is.
I know that about 1958. And I would be fine with it somewhere in a uniform. But, not in a psychedelic mitt. If they want to celebrate the summer of love there are ways to do it.