Oracle Park was practically mine, empty except for a couple CS kids drifting around Series E startup booths, and old Lou Seal clowning around. I went back to the same seat I had ten years ago when the Mets shelled the Giants, just to see if the past would stick to me. That day the scoreboard was promising free Levi's if somebody dropped one into Levi's Landing. But we left the night lighter by the price of a ticket and a Giants hat, and snoozed the whole game.
I'd been a walking Warriors team store all throughout that trip in 2015. I didn't own any baseball gear, so in the absence of a Posey shirt, I wore a black‑and‑orange sweatsuit, and neon orange socks with a treasonous stripe of Mets blue hugging my ankle like a bad secret.
The Coke bottle monument still loomed over left - same bottle, different names for the park every few years (Pac Bell to SBC to AT&T to Oracle). I took a photo with Lou Seal, and the phone died before it could save it.
At a stand I asked this vendor - maybe twenty, arms crossed and a grin far older than he was - if I could take another Diet Coke. "Of course. I've got a million in the front, I've got a million in the back."
There wasn't much more to it: kids selling themselves to startups with résumés sporting Stanford, MIT, and Georgia Tech, and startups selling themselves right back with sweet merch and logos you can wear so the night has a name. And the Coke bottle, just hanging there, winning again, lodging itself in my dumb head while I walked out with two. Man, I sure love Coca‑Cola (and the Giants, and the Warriors, and Levi's, and Oracle, and Ramp®).