The stupidest little things fascinate me. Tonight’s example is the stadium changeover in Oakland.
Last night, the A’s and Tigers played a playoff baseball game at the O.co Coliseum. Tonight, the Raiders and Chargers are going to play a football game at the same stadium. Stadium-sharing situations like that used to be commonplace, but now, the A’s and Raiders are the only teams that play in the same building.
Originally, the Raiders-Chargers game was slated for 1:00 p.m. local time, but because of the time required to change the stadium from its baseball layout to its football configuration, the game was pushed back to 8:30 Pacific.
Apparently, it takes about 24 hours for the changeover, so with the baseball game starting at 6:30ish the night before, the crew was expected to have plenty of time to get everything set. But in typical “best laid plans” fashion, the A’s and Tigers went into the ninth inning scoreless. The A’s walked off with a 1-0 win to prevent extra innings, but what if they hadn’t? What if the game went on until midnight, or 1:00 a.m, or even later? Would they have finished the changeover in time? Would the football game have started even later?
That would most likely have been the worst case scenario; I don’t want to run into Raiders fans in broad daylight, let alone get the “Black Hole” fired up (aside: they start tailgating at 7:00 a.m. for a 1:00 p.m. kickoff, so…) for a 10:00 p.m. start time.
It sounds like difficult work, but for one night, I would love to join a stadium crew that has to do one of these changeovers. Like I said, it may be stupid, but to go from one layout to another, filling the same building with tens of thousands of people on back-to-back nights in two different configurations, is fascinating to me.
I am but a simple man.
A Revolution From My Bed 