The 2026 season has come to a close with a flop that will likely only be remembered in Milwaukee. Locally, the 2026 NLCS will be seen as the end of an era, as cracks papered over for a couple of years finally burst open in a way that probably felt cathartic by proxy in Toronto and the Bronx.
Today is not a day for that postmortem examination of what went wrong. Today we don’t cry that it’s over; we smile because it happened at all. No one is guaranteed a tomorrow, but one can look and wonder at the
joys of yesterday. Although it never hurts to laugh at ourselves.
Mild spoilers for Lanterns, but I was trying something new from a bit of the show that made me chuckle.
On the anniversary of arguably the greatest game ever played, we return to that fateful night through the penultimate game of the regular season, when my mother wanted to visit Oracle Park for the first time.
By Timely Ferry
As someone who has lived in this part of the Bay Area for almost two years, after a year-long sabbatical near Fresno, I admit I don’t take as much public transit as I used to. But one way to get to Oracle Park I had always wanted to try was by ferry. A dedicated game-service ferry arrives about an hour before game time and leaves exactly twenty minutes after the last pitch for about $30 round trip.
The selling point for this ferry is that it drops you off and returns from a port literally right by Oracle Park. There is regular service between Vallejo and San Francisco, but San Francisco’s ferry terminal is about a twenty-minute walk from Oracle Park.
As for ferries, I have been on two in my life: a slow ferry that went from Belfast to Glasgow and back for a day trip I took after my job at The Parades Commission was essentially completed, where I had haggis for the first time (I liked it). Did I get up to any Catherine Breillat-esque shenanigans on the brief crossing? No, as it was too brief a crossing.
Here, we have an hour-long ride where, if you arrive soon enough, you get a seat on calm water and the chance to buy snacks.
Guess how I know about the exactly twenty minutes part? Yeah, we missed the return trip. For future reference, for best results with the special Vallejo ferry service, either try to leave the ballpark early or sit in the bleachers. If you miss that special return ferry, you will need to get to the Ferry Terminal by local train or by walking the Embarcadero.
As for the game, Mom wanted to go because she knew of the impending lockout and wanted an excuse to come see me, and by extension, Oracle Park. For anyone keeping track besides me, she’s now at seven ballparks and hopes to go to Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore next year, assuming we get some semblance of a schedule.
She would have liked more time to explore the stadium, but we had fun seeing bits of San Francisco that she wouldn’t have seen otherwise. When I first moved to the Bay Area, I lived on Harrison St., about a ten-minute walk to Oracle Park. It’s funny how things go full circle sometimes.
My buddy from law school, Louie, joined us, and we had a good time. Louie was with me that very first game in Oakland back in 2021, which ended up starting this entire baseball adventure. Nowadays, we just go to a game in San Francisco when the Dodgers are in town.
One Year Out
One year ago today, arguably the greatest baseball game ever played was started. It didn’t finish until 1 am local time. I tried to soak in as much of the atmosphere as possible by getting to the ballpark three hours early after a nap.
For the first time, I have included the playlist I have created of the major moments I recorded from Game 7 of the 2025 World Series. It’s funny, considering how stressful this game was for everyone involved, I was generally calm throughout, determined to have a good time.
The kicker is that the only thing I feared last year was a result similar to Game 3 of the 2026 World Series: a game that snowballed into a laugher in a hurry. Whereas Tropicana Field was rocking with away fans, a shocking development I know, the thing that stands out at Rogers Centre that night was how quiet things got at the end.
Not “Tokyo Series quiet,” where you felt like you were committing a sin if you were talking to your seatmate, but the answer to a question: what does a domed stadium sound like when all the air gets let out?
One thought I had on the tarmac when I flew back to San Francisco the next day was: how could baseball top what I just witnessed? The short answer: it couldn’t. My adventures in 2026 were personally memorable, but unlike other years, the memory of a game from a different season took up all my mental bandwidth.
If pressed, the Yamamoto almost no-hitter stands out, as does the first game after the All-Star Break: the duel between Roki Sasaki and Gerrit Cole in New York. Unlike other years, this season melded good and bad, and it carried its own weight.
Game 7 feels like yesterday and years ago at the same time. Nothing has measured up since, and that’s okay because generally nothing could measure up like that. Yamamoto throwing a perfect game would have been an interesting discussion, but Mookie Betts and Tristan Peters made that point moot.
No nightmare trip where everything went wrong, and no blissful romp where everything went right. There are worse ways to describe a campaign. I get the temptation to try and cling to this moment, but all things must pass.
What’s Next
With the upcoming MLB lockout and the completion of my first complete trip around the MLB circuit, starting in 2021, the most frequent question I get is what’s next. The short answer is wait and see, but I think I have come up with something interesting for 2027. Regardless, my travels will be limited to what I have in mind and my annual trip with Mom, hopefully to Baltimore.
On a programming note, I usually publish my annual update of On the Road with Eli (zondo) and Adric around the start of the year, which serves as the omnibus update containing all the Guide entries in one place. Generally, we publish a new entry when the Dodgers return to a place I have been.
So far, we have 26 MLB entries, plus an extra entry for Sutter Health Park.
In a normal year, one would expect two entries: Philadelphia and Arlington (first visit since I went in 2025). But with the pending lockout, I am going to tweak the formula, and I need your help. Four entries remain to finish the Guide: Arlington, Houston, Philadelphia, and the Bronx.
For the next 30 days, please vote in the comments for which of the four remaining cities you want to see next. The city with the most votes on December 1 will be the next entry, most likely out by Christmas; then we’ll release another entry every three to four weeks, starting with the second-most votes, until we finish. The goal is to publish the final ranking once baseball returns.
Please leave your votes in the comments. As always, thank you for coming along virtually with me on my travels in 2026.
