SJ Giants vs Cupertino in My Personal Fireworks Competition

This week the San Jose Giants (yes, I mean San Jose, not San Francisco) won two battles:  a game against the Modesto Nuts (as Dave Barry says, you can’t make this stuff up), and my personal yearly fireworks competition between the SJ Giants post-game fireworks show and the Cupertino fireworks.

The San Jose Giants are a Minor League Baseball team that counts Buster Posey among its most successful players. They offer easily accessible, affordable baseball with entertainment between innings. The entertainment is a real high-brow affair, like a couple of kids from the crowd racing around the bases or competing at air guitar to the applause of an appreciative, yet discerning, crowd. 

The young ball players are pretty awesome, but they also make spectacular errors, so you want to watch every play. Otherwise, you might miss the chance to jump up shouting, “You just don’t see that in the Majors”.   

Plus, a favorite treat for Mom and Dad is the Beer Batter, a role assigned to one unfortunate player on the opposing team. If he strikes out, beers are 2 for 1 for the next 15 minutes.  Forget the San Francisco Giants’ nail-biting play-off games -- you haven’t seen cheering for a pitcher until you have seen the San Jose fans (of beer) cheer each pitch to the Beer Batter. Back when I was ignorant of the machinations of an evening in Municipal Stadium, I had just bought a beer and was walking back through the tunnel to my seat when the Beer Batter struck out.  Suddenly, I was flattened against the wall as a rush of thirsty fans hurtled out towards the concessions. Believe me, you don’t make that mistake twice.

The SJ Giants are always home on July 4th with a post-game fireworks show. Another home game on July 3rd or 5th also has a fireworks show. We always pick a game that’s not on the 4th so that we can go to Cupertino’s fireworks, too.

The Cupertino fireworks are shot from Cupertino High School, but no one is allowed there. Well, I guess the people who actually shoot the fireworks are allowed there. Unless they use remote control detonators. But then they’d still need firefighters on the scene ready to hose down the high school gym in the event of a misfire.

It’s got me wondering just who are the people who shoot the fireworks, and what was the career path that led them to this job? Does the UC system offer a major in Pyrotechnics, right between Public Relations and Quantitative Economics?  In any case, only these fire-wielding experts are allowed on the Tino campus. Spectators like you and me, who never advanced beyond blowing up little green, plastic army men with inch-long firecrackers when we were twelve-years-old, view the show from designated parks. The city provides live music and activities for the kids that don't involve explosives, like face painting.

We always arrive very early, around 6:30, parking our car on a secret street for easy get-away. This parking area is known only to us, a few close, personal friends, and 53,000 other Cupertino residents. But we get there first, so nyah nyah nyah. We bring a picnic and claim our space on the grass for optimal viewing. The fireworks begin promptly at 9:30, and are usually worthy of lots of Oooh’s and Aaah’s.

But this year, the fireworks weren’t as high up as usual, making them often partially obscured by the park’s trees. Perhaps a newbie shooter, one who has not done the required 14 year apprenticeship, was in charge.  

Normally, I rate the Cupertino fireworks about equal to the SJ Giants fireworks.  I do this not with mere whimsy, but with precise scientific calculations. Here’s how it works. Imagine a right triangle with the base going from your viewing position to the shoot-off point, and the hypotenuse from your position to the burst point.  (Go get coffee now.)  Let A be the angle formed by the base and the hypotenuse.

Recall from your trigonometry book, which I’m sure you were perusing just last night before bed, that the tangent of an angle is the length of the opposite side of the triangle divided by the length of the adjacent side that is not the hypotenuse. If the tangent of A is greater than or equal to 1, and the length of the base is less than a quarter of a mile, award the fireworks 100 points. If the fireworks last longer than 15 minutes, award 50 bonus points. Therefore, San Jose Giants fireworks receive 100 points, but not the bonus points.

Stay with me now. The algorithm for this year’s Cupertino fireworks goes like this. If the tangent of A is less than 1, and the length of the base is greater than half a mile, award the fireworks only 50 points. Add the 50 bonus points for the length of the show – 20 to 25 minutes. However, if there is a BIG, FAT, LEAFY, TREE blocking your view, subtract 400,000 points.

San Jose Giants win. Cupertino, we’ll be rooting for you next year. Please study my algorithm in the meantime.