We Own the Pennant-Giants NLCS 2014

Last week, for the potentially title-clenching game of the NLCS championship, I really wanted to go to the game.  I threw my Romo shirt into my bag and planned to monitor StubHub all day, hoping to find reasonable tickets.  Standing Room only was registering at $180 at the start of the day, and that just seemed like a bit much.

So the thought occurred to me to start a social experiment and tap into my network: Boxers.  I put out a container with the following sign:

Now this could have come off in one of two ways: 1) fun, or 2) deeply pathetic and embarrassing.  Fortunately, it was the former.  I steeled myself to be shameless, plugging my cause with laser focus.  The responses were amazing, and people who weren't going themselves for cost-prohibitive reasons gave money so I could go.  One Boxer sent out an email to the entire office nudging them to participate.  People even donated from afar, in other offices, over the internet-as much as $50.  It was incredible!

I twisted Angelica's arm about one degree and she immediately agreed to come with me, and pretty soon we had $220 SRO tickets.  And my office had paid for my entire ticket, and then some.  I raised over $350!

The energy at AT&T park was crazy.  We grabbed our beers and started seat-hopping around the bay side, posting up somewhere until we got kicked out by the rightful owners of the seats.  

Eventually, we found D'Arcy, another Boxer, who has season tickets right at the K's.  We spent most of the game playing musical chairs with the people in this area.  It was so fun!

It was a pretty quick game, and relatively close.  But by the 9th inning Ishikawa hit it out of the park for a walk-off win.  The crowd went crazy!

The whole day was a bit surreal, from the donations to the spontaneous ticket purchasing, to winning the pennant.  The next day at work, so many people said they were thinking of me being there while they were watching the game, and lived vicariously through me.  We all banned together, putting positive karma into the atmosphere, and the Giants won because of it.  I was certainly feeling the Box Love.  Thanks again to everyone who donated to the cause!

Now time to start a World Series jar...