drench your thirst

the great thing about working in SOMA is that it takes me about 5 minutes to walk from work to at&t park. i got there in time to watch warm-ups, which included huston street working on his stretch and angle with coach young and santiago casilla throwing as much as he could. kirk saarloos seemed a little distraught that he didn't get to throw a practice session in the bullpen; seems he was told he would get the chance, but coach young said, "not today." kirk was respectful, but i felt badly for the guy.

this is one of the (only) positives about the bullpen positioning at at&t. sure, the planners forgot to build a bullpen originally, so pitchers are always at risk for getting hit. BUT during warm-ups, fans (and their boxes of cookies) can stand right there and feel like they're part of the action.

i passed off my "two thumbprint up cookies" to a cute, blondish haired player, who resembled our aaa-pitcher of the day, greg smith (dear cookie receiving player, if you weren't greg, oops!). i used ina garten's recipe, but took a little liberty, substituting jana valley sweet cream butter for the regular butter, mountain fruit co.'s strawberry gem jam and stonewall kitchen's wild maine blueberry jam (with adorable tiny blueberries) for raspberry and apricot, and dried unsweetened coconut for the sweetened variety. 

my anti-rain dance proved disastrous, though. by the second inning we were huddled under my umbrella and propping our bags on our feet (by then, the puddles had turned into swamps). the attendance was dwindling at about a few double N-Judah cars worth, but we stayed on for the whole game, rewarding ourselves and our frozen limbs with a big bowl of tom ka from citrus club afterwards.

neither team was "on," but i felt courageous for sitting through my first rainy game ever. things can only get better, right? like the giants' spelling, perhaps?