Day 191: Risking Life and Limb (To Be a 12th Man)

Last week, I was sitting here watching the Seahawks beat the crap out of the Cowboys (and Tony Romo) on TV, I saw that the next Hawks game was going to be against the Raiders in Oakland. Which you know, is only like an hour away. 

So I tossed around the idea for a couple days of whether to even look for tickets, and once I cleared some possible schedule conflicts, hopped on to Stub Hub and pessimistically looked for tickets to the game. After all, last year my BFF and I paid over $120 a seat for regular season game tickets to the Hawks in San Fran and nearly double that for tickets in Seattle. Not to mention it would probably be sold out anyways, being that the game was two days away. But it's still preseason and I thought hey, maybe I'll get lucky. 

Not only did I find 4 seats together (in multiple sections and rows), but they were $12 a piece. Twelve. 

Well if that isn't a sign from God to go to the Seahawks game, I don't know what is. 

So I basically bought them without even discussing it with Brad and said "so we're going to the game Thursday", and we laughed and laughed about how stupidly cheap the seats were. Then reality sank in. 

We are going to Oakland, to a stadium full of Raider Nation hood rats, dressed in blue and green. 

We're going to get shanked. 

Some risks in life aren't worth it. Like bungee jumping, or cage free swimming with piranhas, or drinking the water in Mexico. But some things are worth risking life and limb, like going to Oakland Coliseum for a Seahawks game for $12 a ticket. Who cares if we get shanked. 

Let's talk about the elephant in the room. The Coliseum is a complete dump (I mean, it's Oakland) but kind of sort of charming in an "Angels in the Outfield 1988 flashback" kind of way. We enjoyed making comments like "wow, that was a great pass to second base", since the Athletic's infield is still hideously sitting on top of midfield. The audio is terrible and the announcer reminds me of an inexperienced high school football announcer. 

No wonder the tickets were so cheap. 

Much to our surprise, we didn't get shanked. We did have one incident, in which we were standing (yes, standing, stop being a douche-wad Colin Kaepernick) during the National Anthem, and some drunk asshat behind us kept shouting "F*** the Seahawks!!! F*** the 12th Man!!" during the entire song. At the end of the anthem, the man kept cursing us out, and Brad turned around and told him to stop swearing at our kids and especially not during the National Anthem. The guy got heated and Brad told security and that was the end of that. 

Keep it classy, Oakland. 

But really, the game was great. Since it's preseason we only saw our favorite starters play one series and the rest was less than awesome 2nd and 3rd strings, but the 4th quarter was super exciting and we pulled out a win 23-21. The kids had a blast and since we were in the 2nd row (of the upper deck), we could see everything and really enjoy our experience (drunk Raider Nation aside). 

Not bad for $12 tickets. 

gametime! Camden's first Seahawks game!

The Oakland Coliseum. 

This guy had a great time heckling Raider fans. Whenever they'd start their Raider chant, he'd counter with "Sea...HAWKS!!!" as loud as his little voice would go. 

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