California Baseball: Day 3
San Jose Giants
Earlier in 2019, I had joined a group of colleagues after work for the San Jose Giants’ home opener against the Visalia Rawhide. Despite being a lifelong baseball fan, it was only my second Minor League game. As we swapped stories and cracked peanuts in the bleacher seats atop the third-base side — vibrant skies from the setting sun framing the action and other entertainment before us — I fell in love with Minor League baseball.
Beyond the baseball itself — beyond a cool April evening warmed with good company and good beer — I fell in love with the spirit of the occasion. It had a real sense of community. Between nearly every half inning, fans participated in little competitive events with the team mascot, Gigante: throwing baseballs at the (protected) headlamps of a truck, racing around the bases, rolling sprints inside giant rubber balls, musical chairs, and more. The ballpark was near its modest capacity of 4,200, and every fan was close to the field, engaged in the action. Before the game, an opposing player was designated as the night’s “Beer Batter,” and when he struck out — and he did twice that night — it sent fans rushing for half-priced beers, available for the next 15 minutes.
The playground for kids, the variety of concessions from local restaurants, the hometown ads on the outfield wall, the banners hung in honor of the team and its best players — all of it had the feel of something that was not slick and sponsored, but genuine, created and preserved with heart.
It was shortly after that game that I planned this trip. I needed more. I wanted to see every stadium, every uniform, every mascot. I wanted to try all the crazy food and watch a bunch of baseball with talented prospects working to make their dreams come true. I wanted more of this sense of community.
I work just 10 minutes from the third stop on our ballpark journey, Excite Ballpark, long called San Jose Municipal Stadium but now named for a local credit union. The commute home and back would take about two hours, so I decided to give Danny the night off and go on my own. I parked just down the street and walked up to the oldest ballpark in the California League, and one of the first stadiums to be built entirely of reinforced concrete.
The Giants were again hosting the Visalia Rawhide, the Advanced-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks and now the hottest team in the league. Visalia had already clinched the first-half championship in the California League North, and were 15 1/2 games ahead of last-place San Jose.
I stopped just inside the front gate to check out the posted starting lineups, seeing a few familiar names from the Giants’ game against Stockton two nights earlier. Nearby was a tall whiteboard with the names of those “On the Bump” (starting pitchers for each team), the Rawhide’s Beer Batter for the game, and the Giants’ Double-Double Batter of the game (who, if he hit a double, would earn an In-n-Out Double-Double burger for everyone in a randomly selected section of the stadium).
I turned down the Gigante’s Alley behind the stadium on the third base side and ran into a number of tributes to former San Jose teams and stars of the big-league club. Since it opened, the ballpark has hosted the San Jose Owls, Red Sox, JoSox, Pirates, Bees, Missions, Expos, Bees (again), and, since 1988, the Giants. Perhaps the most famous non-Giants player to have graced the field was Hall-of-Famer George Brett, who played for the San Jose Bees when they were an affiliate of the Kansas City Royals in 1972.
Many of the key contributors to the San Francisco Giants’ World Series titles in 2010, 2012, and 2014 spent time in San Jose. Madison Bumgarner, Buster Posey, and Brandon Crawford were all there in 2009; Pablo Sandoval, Tim Linecum, Matt Cain, and Sergio Romo arrived just ahead of them. Those San Jose Giants won four California League titles in six years, a harbinger of things to come in the big leagues.
The next order of business was food. Because I’d arrived when the gates opened, I had my pick of the several good-looking concessions along the alley: burgers, chicken, pizza, gyros. All fine stuff. Plus, many good craft brew choices, including locals Strike Brewing and Santa Clara Valley Brewing — and trust me, those did not get overlooked.
But I already had a plan, the only plan I can have when visiting this ballpark: Turkey Mike’s BBQ.
Turkey Mike’s is a San Jose institution. While they do serve a turkey burger, this place is ironically not named for its meat but for a ballplayer from the early 1900s, “Turkey” Mike Donlin. A .333 hitter over a 12-year career, Donlin played primarily for the New York Giants. He was a popular and flamboyant character who liked to entertain crowds with his unusual strut, earning him the “turkey” monicker. In the middle of his baseball career, Donlin decided to leverage his fame to entertain a different kind of crowd on Broadway. There he met Vaudeville comedian Mabel Hite, whom he married and performed with in a series of comedic baseball skits called Stealing Home. Turkey Mike returned to the field for two more seasons, but saw limited appearances while being traded from the Giants to Boston, then to Pittsburgh. He retired in 1912 and would go on to appear in more than a dozen feature films.
Turkey Mike’s BBQ is a little more down to earth. The popular spot on the left-field side is marked by a winding chain-linked path that leads not to a theme-park ride but to a glorious world of grilled meat. You are handed a paper menu to ponder as you make your way to the front counter: ribs, chicken, pulled pork, sausages, hot links, linguica, bratwurst, grilled vegetables, hamburgers and hot dogs.
I would have loved the ribs, but I wanted to try something wilder. I chose “The Heater,” a hot link smothered in barbecued pulled pork, barbecue sauce, and jalapeños. It was fantastic.
As I sat chewing my meal in piggy bliss, a TV in the bar area nearby aired Game 6 of the NBA Finals between the Toronto Raptors and the Golden State Warriors, taking place just 40 miles north of us. The Raptors were up 3-2 in the seven-game series, but the two-time defending champion Warriors were expected to take it to a deciding Game 7. It was tight out of the gate, with the Raptors up by one after the first quarter.
I made my way over to the Giants dugout along the first-base side to see Gigante, wearing a Warriors shirt and doing some warm-up routines. Gigante is a large ape-creature who, according to his bio, weighs “5,000 bananas” and has been voted Best Mascot in the California League. Gigante is indeed a quality mascot, putting a lot of effort into his broad comedy and cool-dude attitude.
Just in front of Gigante, Giants players milling about the dugout signed baseballs for kids hanging over the railing, a scene as iconic as it gets in this sport.
Jose Marte
After a soulful, country rendition of the National Anthem, the game got underway. The Giants started Dominican Jose Marte, one day shy of his 23rd birthday, in what would be his best appearance of the year. In five innings, Marte looked sharp, giving up just one earned run, while striking out eight and walking one.
Overall, however, 2019 was much rockier for Marte, who finished with a 3-9 record and a 5.59 ERA during a full season with San Jose. His 8-to-1 ratio of strikeouts to walks in this game would plummet to a 2-to-1 average by season’s end.
The Rawhide countered with 23-year-old Jeff Bain from Montebello in Los Angeles County. A 39th round pick in 2014 out of high school, he opted to play college ball at Cal Poly Pomona. In 2017, the Arizona Diamondbacks drafted him in the 16th round, and he had success, arriving in Visalia in 2018 after posting a 7-4 record and a tidy 2.52 ERA with the A-ball Kane County Cougars.
On this day against the Giants, Bain also looked good. He pitched six innings without giving up an earned run. Unfortunately, the Rawhide defense gave away three runs of their own in the first three innings on throwing and fielding errors. Giants rising star Heliot Ramos, who homered in the Stockton game, added a double, and it was 3-1 Giants.
Jeff Bain
In the top of the fifth inning, Anfernee Grier came to the plate for the second time as Visalia’s designated Beer Batter. He had denied Giants fans their discounted beer in the second inning with a walk. But here in the fifth, with tensions in the stands mounting, he struck out swinging — the first of three swinging strikeouts Marte would coax from the Rawhide in his final inning of work. The fans let out a cheer and scurried to the concessions for their brew of choice.
I had fantastic seats, right behind home plate, with a great view of the action. As I snapped photos, Gigante came into frame, then paused to strike a flirtatious pose. We shared a moment.
Between innings, the team ran it’s games for fans: Gigante racing with kids, a blackjack dealer with super-sized cards to promote a casino, a little girl throwing bean bags into a toilet. I moved down the first-base line in the middle innings to watch a man attempt to hit plastic golf balls from a tiny turfed platform in the stands down to the field, aiming for a flag inside a ball bucket, which itself was centered inside a kiddie pool. There would be a good prize for a shot making it in the kiddie pool, a bigger one for knocking a ball into the bucket. Instead, the man missed the pool by about 20 feet on each of his three tries.
I stuck around along the rail above the Giants dugout to watch the next inning as the golden hour swept orange sunlight and tall shadows across the field.
Visalia scored in the top of the sixth when catcher Renae Martinez slapped a two-run homer to left field to tie the game. Despite hitting just .212 in 78 games with the Rawhide, Martinez would get called up to the AA Jackson Generals for the final month of the season — a testament to the value of a good catcher.
Soon after, my photo appeared on the scoreboard.
I had tweeted about our California Baseball Roadtrip to the Excite Ballpark Twitter account earlier and had been selected as the Excite Fan of the Game. I went to the ticket booth and posed for a few snaps with my winnings — a seat cushion, blanket, plastic tote, plastic cup, and other goodies, all sporting the Excite Credit Union logo. A close ballgame in a friendly ballpark on a beautiful night and a bank-branded seat cushion?! How could things get any better?
The Giants reclaimed the lead in the seventh with a pair of singles, including the second hit of the night for Ramos. I moved to the third-base side to get a better view of the sunset “baseball skies” gracing me with another fine show.
At the main concessions behind home plate, and in the souvenir shop nearby, attention was being drawn to the final minutes of the Warriors-Raptors game. Golden State had pulled ahead in the third quarter, but a championship-caliber performance from the Raptors — four of whom would end the night with 20-plus points — ended the Warriors’ reign. Groans and murmurs trailed the disappointed fans as they dispersed back to their seats for the final innings.
Olbis Parra
With the Giants still up 4-3, another Dominican pitching prospect, Olbis Parra, came into the game to claim the save in the ninth. The first batter he faced: Anfernee Grier, the Beer Batter. And again, Grier struck out swinging. But because it was a late inning, and fans in cars would soon be heading out onto the highways, the bounty was not beer but a deal on Martinelli’s apple cider. It did not produce exactly the same stampede to the concessions.
Parra walked the next batter but followed up with two consecutive groundouts for a Giants victory. He would finish his season in San Jose with a 6-2 record and a dominating 2.12 ERA, and was rewarded with a move all the way to the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats for three games, giving up no earned runs in 4 1/3 innings.
It was the third win for the home team in the first three nights of our trip — good fortune that enhances the experience for the neutral fan. That streak would be put to the test the next night in Oakland.
