White Elephants
Posted at 9:05 pm on Monday, June 22, 2009, in Sports, and tagged athletics, baseball, philadelphia, zoo.
Live, right now, on NBC in the bay area: SF Giants vs. Oakland A’s, played in Oakland. By rule, er, by law, all games of the bay series should be played in San Francisco and their beautiful waterside ballpark, AT&T Park (formerly and still locally known as Pac Bell Park), not simply for the sake of the fans and baseball itself, but for all of humanity. The stadium in Oakland is that bad, and the ballpark in San Francisco is that nice.
Qualification: Long-time readers — hell, even casual readers — know that I attend A’s games semi-regularly in Oakland (not yet this season; I’m taking the year off), and don’t consider Giants fans true baseball fans, for whatever that is worth. Giants fans are like the indoor bird sanctuary at the zoo. Yea, it is nice to see all those birds in one place, but there is something extra wrong about the habitat, a feeling that accentuates the unnaturalness. You can just tell that they do not belong. (This is obviously a mixed metaphor: the ballpark as the habitat works; the fans as the birds do not. Note to self: work on metaphors.)
I’m not a big fan of zoos anyway. I’d much rather prefer animal refuges. If it were up to me, I’d ban zoos that don’t meet criteria (e.g., San Francisco’s banning of elephants at the City Zoo since they were not allowed an acre per elephant, a requirement that was impossible to meet; the end result is no more elephants at the zoo, which sort of makes sense, since historically there have never been elephants in the bay area, the environment and climate simply do not support it) and all circus acts that include animals. I think that is fair, but that is why I’m what they consider “unelectable.”
The A’s mascot is an elephant, and I’m alright with that. They’ve had the nickname “White Elephants” since the start of the last century when they played in Philadelphia.
Full circle.
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