Ain’t No Indignity Low Enough

Amid the sensory assault the Citi Field A/V squad aims at its patrons in the course of a ballgame, lest we not be properly stimulated to MAKE SOME NOISE and fill every potential silence, is a clip that used to be shown at Shea. I don’t need the sensory assault. I certainly don’t need it between every goddamn pitch. But I appreciate the creativity behind this particular clip’s use as well as its longevity as an electronic cheerleading staple. It was played in the days of Matt Franco pinch-hitting for Al Leiter, and, despite some periods of hiatus, it’s still in rotation.

Cue Peter Finch as UBS anchorman Howard Beale:

“I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell…”

…at which point a drumbeat throbs and a graphic imploring Let’s Go Mets! takes over the big screen. That’s something a crowd in Queens doesn’t mind being nudged to articulate en masse. It loses a little of its impact when it’s embedded amidst umpteen-dozen other admonitions, but I’ll never not appreciate that somebody more than a quarter-century ago thought to incorporate the crescendo portion of the legendary “Mad as Hell” rant from Network into a baseball game.

What I don’t appreciate is the people running the same stadium where this oral tradition lives making me mad as hell in the moments before I step inside it. I am speaking of the smiling, polite security goons who insisted that I could not bring into said facility one sealed twenty-ounce soft-sided bottle of carbonated beverage. I’ve been bringing one with me for about as long as Finch/Beale has been riling up rallies on local video boards. The bottle is in general accordance with the announcement that is played in a loop as security prepares to have its way with you and your things. It is not open. It is not glass. It is not alcoholic. It is admittedly not juice or water, but that had never presented a problem for me before the night of Tuesday, May 27, 2025.

On Tuesday night, my first in-person game of the current baseball season, it was a problem. Smiling, polite security goon ‘A’ searches my bag. I have nothing to hide. He finds the carbonated soft drink or CSD, as it’s known in the industry. This represents a red enough flag to call over smiling, polite security goon ‘B’ for a discussion of whether this non-water, non-juice product is admissible. Their conclave cannot reach a conclusion, so they call over their supervisor for a ruling.

Oh no, that’s not allowed in. The bottle is ostentatiously placed under the rectangular card table that serves as the Jackie Robinson Rotunda’s version of Checkpoint Charlie. In a blink, my beverage has been disappeared.

Though it’s not blaring over any loudspeaker, I can hear in my head the other legendary rant from Network, this one delivered by Ned Beatty as corporate titan Arthur Jensen:

“You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it!! Is that clear?!”

That’s not what I said to the smiling, polite security goon supervisor. Instead, I requested clarification. The 20-ounce CSD bottle, adhering to all relevant specifications, is always with me when I enter Citi Field. It was always with me when I entered Shea Stadium during its emeritus years. I’ve stopped bringing in open water bottles. I’ve stopped bringing my zippered schlep bag. I’ve been a solid citizen as a paying customer. I haven’t activated a magnifying glass app to read the fine print on my virtual ticket, but I’m willing to adhere to the standard “their yard, their rules” ethos of public sporting events without much fuss. All I want is to have and hold my store-bought CSD bottle. I like knowing it’s in my tote bag. I like a sip now and then when the screen and the loudspeaker isn’t yelling at me. I like that it costs me less to buy it in advance than it does at the ballpark. These are the primal forces of my nature, and they had been meddled with.

“What, is this new this year?” is what I asked the goon supervisor.

“Actually,” he said smiling and politely, “it is.”

If I’d been willing to sit and shiver as April’s winds blew, I would have known about this alteration of policy for nearly two months. Silly me, staying warm at home and entertained by the Mets as I sat glued to my couch, except to get up and go to the refrigerator and partake of any damn store-bought beverage I pleased. You miss a few things by not being at the ballpark. You miss your bottle being taken away from you.

Not quite knowing how to litigate the case, I requested a final reconciliation with my beverage before we parted ways. “I can drink from it out here, right?”

“Oh yeah!” The security goon supervisor reached down underneath the table and returned it to my temporary custody. I opened it and swigged, mostly for effect.

“Hey,” the supervisor goonishly advised, “don’t drink too much of it or you’ll get a bellyache.”

I had a bellyful already. I considered emptying the remaining contents into the nearby trash receptacle so I could keep the empty bottle for the five-cent deposit, but that seemed a bit too theatrical, even in the face of security theater. I drank however many ounces and turned in my contraband. I was polite if not smiling.

“Have a great night!” I was told. What a goonish thing to say.

And with that as the overture, my wife and I were off to finally make our Citi Field debut for 2025. Somehow, despite the indignity inflicted upon my bag and my bottle (not to mention the silliness of making both Stephanie and me walk through the metal detector twice), we considered it a worthwhile outing. It took me a while to reach that conclusion. The CSD incident cast a pall over the evening’s earliest minutes. It kept me from buying a program in the Rotunda because I wasn’t in the mood to give these people any more of my money right away, which meant when I looked for a program later, upstairs, I was told they were sold out (because there’s suddenly an epidemic of keeping score?), so that also dinged the overall experience, but going to a game is so much more than the accumulation of its annoyances.

Ever an inviting tableau, security goonishness notwithstanding.

There will be goons. There will be inflated volume in your ears and inflated prices when you purchase a replacement beverage. There will be obvious inventory management issues when you wish to pay for a program on this level rather than that level. There will be confusion when you and your lovely spouse in your lovely seats on the third base side of Excelsior can’t tell any better than Brandon Nimmo from his vantage point of the basepath between first and second whether the drive Juan Soto just lined into center was caught or trapped. Nimmo didn’t know. Soto didn’t know. We didn’t know. Suddenly a rally in progress was stifled by indecision and interpretation. Or so we figured without the helpful voices we rely on from television to narrate multiple replays.

Fortunately, this was a rally that could be stifled but not stymied, as basically everybody who batted after Soto (called out on the trap because he and Nimmo passed each other, presumably looking for a scorecard) kept hitting the ball hard. Security apparently checked neither Pete Alonso nor Jared Young for explosives. Each Met detonated an absolute bomb with a runner on base, and in the bottom of the very first inning, the Mets had four runs, dwarfing the two the Chicago White Sox nicked Tylor Megill for in the top of the frame. The Nimmo-Soto bewilderment left me thinking we should have had another run. Then again, I was thinking I should have had my carbonated beverage.

Megill with a lead was better than Megill out of the box. He lasted five-and-two-thirds. I would have preferred he’d been able to finish the sixth. Jose Butto completed the inning on his behalf, but then couldn’t conclude the seventh without assistance from Jose Castillo, or the White Sox shortening the Met edge from 5-2 to 5-4. Castillo, who unjammed Butto, was removed in favor of Reed Garrett during the eighth. i am in favor of Reed Garrett, but I’d have been more in favor of pitchers economically saving other pitchers from throwing additional pitches. It’s being economical that has me bringing my own beverage all these years.

Letting Reed Garrett know I was in favor of him was something I couldn’t do at home. I could, but he couldn’t hear me. He probably couldn’t hear me at Citi Field, either, what with the recorded din making individual cries of encouragement indiscernible to any given Met. Still, it’s a heckuva motion for a fan to go through. “C’mon, Reed!” That’s the sort of thing I’d call out all the time for Rick Reed (though it’d be “C’mon, Reeder!”) when it was dawning on me I could save a couple of bucks by bringing my own sealed twenty-ounce soft-sided bottle of carbonated beverage in my bag. Details change over time. Impulses remain.

I remain in favor of going to games, though not as many as I used to. I got to late May without getting to Citi Field, but I knew I was missing something. I was missing the noise. There could be less of the artificial kind, but it’s something to be in a crowd encouraging the entity to which I remain attached. It’s something to watch Pete Alonso urge on the fans behind first base to urge the rest of his teammates on (he raises a hand in their direction without taking his eyes off the batter; it’s really cute). It’s something to watch the kid who swings his heart out on the Wiffle Ball field for prizes and the kid running his heart out between bases for same. The latter sponsored feature has been dubbed “Run Like Rickey” this year, a classy tribute I didn’t know about until May 27. It’s a nice touch, same as one of the musical cues between pitches being a snippet of “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo” on the same day Rick Derringer’s passing was announced. Maybe they play it every night. I wouldn’t know in 2025. I’m not on hand that often.

But, give or take the encountering of goonish policy enforcement at the gate, or my ongoing disappointment that the Mets Museum remains shoved inside a closet (you don’t need to be Rickey Henderson to run the length of it and back in under fifteen seconds), the overall tableau continues to be inviting. We wanted to go to a game. We decided to go to this game. We wanted to applaud every Met when introduced, if not so heartily at first for the stranger Jared Young, but you go to a game, you can learn a stranger is just a slugger you haven’t yet embraced. We wanted to urge on our pitchers by first name. We wanted to witness the adding on an urgently needed insurance run in the eighth, delivered by the same man whose pair of walkup songs we got to hear in the dizzying first inning.

Francisco Lindor comes up to “My Girl,” and we sing along. Francisco Lindor comes up nine batters later to “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” and we sing along again. “My Girl” is already “Lazy Mary”-tier entrenched for Mets fans. Singing along has been second nature since last October. Yet I doubt anybody at Citi Field is aware that for approximately two precious weeks in late August and early September of 2001, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ was that year’s version of “L.A. Woman” or “Who Let the Dogs Out?” it was the Mets’ designated victory song at what felt like an intense baseball moment. The club was surging as autumn approached, and whoever co-opted Network for Metsian purposes had pretty obviously seen 2000’s Remember the Titans, which used Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell to great effect. The Mets would win, and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” would play, and I’d get my hopes up that our heretofore muddling nine, gaining ground on the Phillies and Braves night by night, could pull off a miracle in the spirit of 1973. The miracle we’d settle for as September of 2001 wore on was the Mets playing baseball in New York at all. My Log tells me I saw the Mets win four games during their “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” phase. Given circumstances that had nothing to do with nascent pennant pushes, the song disappeared from the Shea playlist by the time the Mets came off the road on September 21. It wouldn’t have fit the red, white, and blue mood. But the association has always stayed with me, even if I hadn’t heard it again where the Mets play until Lindor decided it was ideal to alternate with his other Motown hit.

It is heavy, it’s my yearbook.

I don’t get all of that out of a ballgame if I don’t go to a lot of ballgames over the years and at least one this year. I don’t get to be audible in support of my guys and harbor the illusion they can hear me. I don’t get to prove, alongside my beloved, that I still have yet to learn most of the lyrics to “Lazy Mary”. I don’t instinctively kick in my voice to “New York Groove” when it earns its place on the turntable. You don’t realize any of that when you’re watching from home. You can eat and drink on a budget better from there, and you can have bizarre plays explained to you, but you’re missing something. I was missing being with the Mets in the way I get with the Mets. After absorbing all the nuances of a 6-4 victory, and humming along in Pavlovian fashion to Ace Frehley en route to the 7 and LIRR while lugging my yearbook if not program in my bag, and eventually entering the topline details of what I just saw in my Log like I did in 2001 and 1981 and any year I’ve gone to any Mets game, I’m no longer missing that little piece of me. I’m whole again.

Including the business with my beverage. That goonishness will stay with me, too.