Riverside for three nights: where to sit, what to eat and how to get home after extra innings

Riverside is the shortest road trip of the year and the one most of us get wrong.

It looks easy on the map, forty minutes along the river, and then the last bus leaves at 22:40 and the game goes eleven innings. Everything below comes from three seasons of getting it wrong and one of getting it right.

Getting there

Take the train. The 17:48 from Nordtal gets into Riverside Central at 18:31, which leaves time for the walk along the embankment to Ferry Road. Driving is possible and nobody who has tried it recommends it: the car park behind the left-field wall fills by 18:15 and the next one is on the far side of the river.

For the Sunday game the trains are hourly. The 11:48 is the one. The 12:48 gets you in for the second innings, if you are lucky with the bridge.

A drawn baseball diamond, the infield dirt pale against green grass and white foul lines. — Ferry Road from the away block. You see the infield well and the left-field corner not at all.

Where to sit

The away block is sections 18 and 19, down the third-base line. Row F and above are under the roof, which matters more than the view, because Riverside in November rains sideways off the water. Section 18 is closer to the visitors' bullpen. If Mahoney is warming up, you will hear him before you see him.

What to eat

One kiosk sells anything hot, behind section 16, and it closes at the seventh-innings stretch whatever the score. Their chips are good. The pies are a gamble. There is a bakery on the embankment that stays open until 18:30, and most of us now arrive with a paper bag and no regrets.

The kiosk behind section 16 takes cards only. The one behind home plate takes cash only. Nobody knows why.

Getting home

The last direct bus to Nordtal leaves the stop on Ferry Road at 22:40. In nine innings you make it with time for a drink. In extra innings you do not, and the next option is the 23:52 train with a change in Südfeld, which gets in after one. Last season we watched Okonjo's walk-off on somebody's phone on that train, which is a sentence nobody should have to write.

If the game is tied in the eighth, make a decision. Lou stays. June leaves. Neither of us has ever been happy with the choice.

Floodlights over a dark ballpark. — Ferry Road at first pitch and at the stretch, an hour and a half and four degrees apart.

The diamond in the last light of the evening. — Ferry Road at first pitch and at the stretch, an hour and a half and four degrees apart.

After the game

The Anchor on the embankment lets away supporters in if they keep the singing below the level of the jukebox. It shows the highlights on a television above the dartboard. Win the series and the barman will put them on twice.