…from Game 3 of my Getting Acquainted With It tour was this: There wasn't any particular news.

OK, there were a couple of new things I found out. I exited down the ramps in the left-field corner and found them a pleasant surprise — you zig-zag ever downwards, the light filtered by the big sepia banners that were my first happy glimpse of Met history at the new place, accompanied by the giant faces and numbers of David and Jose and Keith and Tug and others. Confronted by a Shake Shack line that fazed even me, I had the Danny Meyer tacos and they were fantastic. I skipped the insane line at the Jackie Robinson Rotunda for the nonexistent one at the Swoboda Gate and decided that from now on this was my entry point to the park. So there were a few more notes to scribble in my Citi Field ledger for next time.

But that was about it — I didn't have another Come to Jesus moment at a concession stand, though those carnitas did renew my faith in a higher culinary power, or revel in additional legroom, though I did start to wonder when I'll break the Shea-style habit of sitting with my feet scrunched under me. And that lack of big moments is for the best. Because what I spent a lot of time doing Saturday afternoon was … watching a baseball game. And while ballpark eats and explorations are fun, particularly for a man on the brink of 40 with a six-year-old son who's not always going to be gripped by impassioned explanations of who should be the cover man, ultimately the game's the thing. And in Game 3 the game pushed its way back to the head of the line.

Unfortunately, the game was a fairly rude arrival. Emily likes to call Oliver Perez the girl with the curl, and today boy was he ever horrid. No life on the fastball, no sense of the strike zone, no inkling of the wisdom to wait a moment while Luis Castillo and Jose Reyes sorted out who was covering second, and no mercy from Jed Lowrie. Exit Ollie to midseason-form boos, enter worry and fuming: Next time they have the fucking WBC, if Omar lets ANY fucking Met play I'm going to TP his fucking house. Fucking Teddy Higuera, not answering his cellphone and pitching our fucking crucial third starter twice in 19 fucking days. Fucking Oliver! Fucking WBC! Fuck we are FUCKED! You'll note there wasn't anything about Danny Meyer or seat angles in that pungent little reflection. And that's as it should be.

Sitting in the Excelsior level (which still sounds like it should be somewhere between the Valhalla and Excalibur levels, but we'll get used to it) just behind Daniel Murphy, my friends Chris and Peggy and I had a pretty good view of the proceedings, though the left- and center-field warning tracks were mysteries requiring a turn to glance at one of the several nearby HDTVs. And as the Mets spotted the Bosox an Alfonsecan handful of runs and then fell further behind, we compared notes on how the new park seemed to play.

* Like there's very little foul ground behind the catcher, and balls come back off the brick hard. The Melvin Moras and Kevin Mitchells of alternate Met universes please take note.

* Like those outfield walls are high, and have already cost Fernando Tatis and Jeremy Reed home runs. I'm sure the Lost Met Home Runs count will start up in the Post or the Daily News any day now. It'll be interesting to see if the top panels in left and center come down and the orange lines (still weird to the eye) get drawn lower in 2010.

* Like those walls and the Moddell's gap in right-center will produce a lot of triples. David Wright may not have quite as many highlights in Citi Field at first, but Jose Reyes seems assured of an additional share.

I'll be happy to not miss a pitch on the scoreboard obverse (working today) while Joshua plays Wiffle Ball or I'm in line for something I couldn't have had at Shea. I want to hang out during a cool summer evening at one of the picnic tables in the Keyspan-style plaza that sits atop the rotunda. I want to find a great vantage point from which I can look out over the field when I arrive late or when I can't bear to take myself home just yet. But most of all, when I'm at Citi Field I want to watch the Mets. Doing that will make the new place home more than any kitchen wizardry or traffic planning will. And today that's what I started to do again.

You can't watch the Mets Sunday — and Monday looks pretty dicey too — so why not watch the words go by in Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets. You can order FAFIF: AIPHOTNYM from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or find it at a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

“You like it?”

“Good, 'cause we live here now.”

—Danny Tripp and Matt Albie, Studio 60 pilot

1) Shock

The first song to come on my iPod on the 5:11 to Woodside was Carly Simon's “Anticipation”. It was a coincidence, I swear.

Anticipation. Not dread. Anticipation. I was excited when I left the house just before 5:00. I was excited in June of 2005 when the go-ahead was given for what would become Citi Field. I hid it well since its design was unveiled in April 2006 because I had dreamer's remorse, but I stayed, in my own way, authentically anticipant.

Second story of the week from that trip to Milwaukee two years ago. We took a bus to get around the city, which was fine, except for one leg of the journey for which I miscalculated the distance between the bus stop and our hotel. We got off in what would objectively be viewed as a not great part of town. We're walking around in our touristy state and feeling quite out of place. Maybe we were in absolutely no danger, maybe we weren't technically lost (Milwaukee's too efficient a city for that), but we definitely weren't where we needed to be. We weren't feeling too good about our predicament as the sun set and a way out seemed miles away.

Two thoughts crossed my mind as we walked and got no closer to our destination.

• If something happens to us, the cats are boarding at the vet — what will happen to them? My sister's the emergency contact and she freaks out when one of them does as much as arch his back.

• If something happens to us, I'll never get to see Citi Field.

Note that in my moment of panic, I didn't think “I'll never sit in my beloved Shea Stadium again,” but rather I worried that the pile of bricks rising next door would go up without me, that I would be cut down going from second to third before I could see what was going to be my team's new home. I'd seen Shea, by then, more than 300 times. Nobody had seen Citi Field.

(Oh, we hopped another bus and eventually made it back to our hotel, in case you were wondering.)

I waved the Shea banner high and proud and, ultimately, sadly because it deserved to be waved for all that its 45 seasons had given us and given me. But for all my precautionary kvetching and moaning, I never didn't want to see the Mets play baseball in Citi Field as long as that was where they were headed.

Yet when the moment arrived for me to see the Mets in Citi Field on April 3, 2009, I was almost too shocked to get that it was going on.

It was around 103rd Street, en route on the 7 from Woodside, that I got up to find a window at which to stare at the scene I knew was waiting: a clear shot at Citi Field. Absolutely nothing in the western foreground. Shea a pile of rubble, Citi up and at 'em. Me and another guy, a fellow traveler. We both stood and stared. We looked at each other. We agreed we didn't know what to say.

Next stop Mets/Willets Point, whatever that was.

Down those installed-in-2008 stairs and…boom. Shock. A plaza. And behind it, a stadium. I mean a park. I mean a field. Whatever. It was the new home of the Mets. That's what the ticket Jason gave me said. I never looked at the tickets I had before to see if they said Shea Stadium. I just assumed they did.

What the hell is this place? I know what it is, I watched it from its environmental impact study infancy all the way to nearly complete. I studied every picture that every baseball-fever obsessive took all winter. I even sat down and focused on Mike Francesa's YES simulcast Friday afternoon because it was live from here and it was the first extensive televised look I'd seen.

But what the hell was this place?

The bricks…my brick. Our brick, make that. Suzan and Mark gave me a brick certificate for the birthday that followed my making fun of the whole commemorative brick initiative. But there I was filling it out on behalf of Stephanie and myself, and in the mail, a few weeks ago, came word that I could find the finished product in Section 11, last batch on the upper tier of bricks. So I sought to meet my brick before introducing myself to my park.

I still haven't met my brick. It's out there somewhere, I'm sure. But forget about it. There's like 7,000 bricks per batch. They all seem to say LET'S GO METS, which is swell, except it's one large blur of team-first mentality, a whole lot of being true to the orange and blue in varying auburns and umbers. My sweet message about our first Shea date (METS 8, GIANTS 3 MAY 15, 1987) did not leap out. Maybe next time.

I'd read too many perspectives on Citi Field after the St. John's game. I'd examined too many photos. I knew too much going in. I sort of wish a tarp had been thrown over the whole thing and that it had been constructed in private. I knew too much, yet I knew I didn't know anything. A lethal cocktail.

Where do I go? Ticket says JRR, which has nothing to do with Jeff Reardon, Jerrod Riggan or Jason Roach, the only three Mets with the initials JR. No Met had a Rotunda built in his honor. Jackie Robinson's entryway was the first thing anybody told us about this place, back in '06. It indeed existed just as they said it would. It was right there for the inspiring but it was also backed up clear to (Jackie) Roosevelt (Robinson) Avenue with ticket holders. From all the reviews and pictures, I knew enough to bolt right.

The BULLPEN GATE beckoned. Gate BG, I suppose. I suppose not, actually*. The days of Gates with letters are over. Leave it behind, already yet. The Gates were the first elements of Citi Field to start winning me over this winter. On the LEFT FIELD gate, there was a silhouette of Endy Chavez leaping and catching. For the RIGHT FIELD gate, Rocky Swoboda, stretched out and catching. Two Silhouettes from the Shea. It gave me confidence that this wouldn't necessarily be Ebbets II, that the Jackie Robinson Rotunda and the Ebbets Club and that placeholder from the CGI featuring DUKE'S GRILL (though Snider was a Met, too) just combined for an opening salvo, something to talk about, like the inane chatter about seat cushion thickness they dealt us at the Citi Field Preview Center in Loge in 2007. The Mets would have Mets around, right?

Yes. Banners with faces in NY caps lined the walkway from the Rotunda to the Bullpen entrance. Not Giants, but not Dodgers either. Mets. Mets is all I wanted in this strange place. Mets is what I was beginning to get. It didn't seem possible that this was a Mets operation because they were doing something right after convincing me for the last few years they could do only wrong. They were honoring the Mets. It also didn't seem possible that there was no line at the Bullpen Gate and that they'd let me in without a hassle. (While I was calculating the odds that this would go smoothly, that I wouldn't be sent to the back of the Rotunda queue, some guy walked by and gave me a big “Faith and Fear! Keep up the good work!” So now I, too, was part of the Citi Field Experience.)

It was an operative gate, topped by a silhouette of probably Seaver, maybe Gooden, hard to discern inarguably. The security was quick, efficient and not offensive. In a moment, I was groped respectfully and directed up a brief flight of stairs and inside Citi Field.

Inside Citi Field.

I was in shock. Not awe, just shock. This is our ballpark? This, not Shea? This, not the Polo Grounds? This, not…I never pictured us anywhere else. I never saw the Mets in the Polo Grounds except on a plaque. I never saw the Mets play any home games anywhere but Shea. Which at the moment is rubble.

I was in shock.

I entered some concourse. I didn't know what it was leading me to. I glimpsed the field and the seats. I hoped to be blown away. I was blown away in Pittsburgh. I was blown away in Baltimore. I wanted to mutter to myself how great this was, how wrong I'd been for three years of nitpicking, that for all my odes to Shea and all my warnings against soulless corporate greed or whatever was bothering me for three years, I was wrong.

I wasn't blown away. I wasn't necessarily right that this was going to be missing something, but I couldn't tell yet. I was reminded, in a one-two punch of snap judgment, of Citizens Bank Park and Nationals Park. My very first glimpse of the new home of my Mets reminded me of two venues devoted to two rivals of my Mets. Fine parks both. Neither ever blew me away. And now we were the third in that line, already a game back in the parks department.

Damn.

I forgot about impressions and comparisons and just sought bearings. Where the hell am I? Oh right, the Mets game. The Mets game isn't quite starting yet, and it doesn't count in the standings, so I don't have to rush to my seat. I can walk around. So I did.

Where, I didn't know. I mean, yeah, I could see the field from out there in the outfield. I could put together the bridge in front of me with the bridge I'd seen on my computer. I could read the signs for the places with the food. WORLD'S FARE. (Cute, but why no 1964 motif?) Peckish and curious, I went in.

Quesadillas! And my Daruma! I love quesadillas, so I bought one. My fondness for Daruma is well-documented. I didn't really need their sushi anymore in the new order because I had quesadillas, whereas at Shea, it was me and Daruma against the world: only food I truly enjoyed there, so naturally I was barred from it more often than not by “policy”. For old time's sake, I bought the tuna rolls from Daruma. To satisfy my curiosity, I bought the quesadilla.

“Do you take credit cards?” I had to ask before taking possession. Of course they did. This is Citi Field.

The quesadillas were overpriced (everything was overpriced) but the first thing I ever ate at Citi Field was heavenly. It didn't last long. I wouldn't last long without a cash machine. Citi Field has those, too.

I placed the pre-packaged sushi in my schlep bag for later partaking (if anything, Daruma's grown dandier) and took off on a 360-degree tour. Just walked and watched, watched and walked. Stopped to witness the first pitch by a Met in Citi Field history (though it didn't count) and the first at-bat by a Met in Citi Field history (ditto). Otherwise I wandered and I lingered and I remained in shock.

Where am I?

2) Grasping

I had come into the park around Section 109 and my seats were in Section 109. These were exhibition-priced Field seats. They were, like the food, overpriced given that this didn't count, but Jason snapped them up, figuring they were a one-time-only opportunity to sit down here (even if the new Mets thing is to let us walk unfettered almost everywhere). I was surprised and delighted I could figure out how to find my seat immediately. I thought after a lifetime of nailing Mezzanine Section 7 and Upper Deck Section 23, that a new stadium/park/field would baffle me. It didn't. It was clearly marked.

I showed my ticket to a man at the top of the stairs of the section. He pointed me in the correct general direction. You mean no schmata preserved from George Weiss's private stash is going to follow me down the stairs to grunge up my seat in exchange for a dollar? You mean it? No ushers ushering! Hallefuckinglujah! This is a seat upgrade.

The playing was the thing for a bit. We watched some baseball while comparing notes and grasping what we were in the midst of. Where's the count? Is the out-of-town scoreboard functioning properly? Do you like the retired numbers looking as they did before? Where will the pennants hang? What's with the angles in the outfield? Why is the wall black? Who are those advertisers? What's that weird thing with the pizza boxes on the big screen? That would have been out of Shea.

Shea was never far from our thoughts. It's our only home park reference point to date, so it had to serve as straw man in every reflexive comparison. I don't mind telling you Citi Field was winning every informal battle by TKO. But this wasn't a competition and the scoring wasn't done viciously by either judge. Shea is now that mangy mutt who ate your shoes and left you a package you didn't order, but he's gone and now, for all his misdirected hijinks, you remember him honestly but fondly. A sub-theme of the evening emerged: Look how well this aspect of Citi Field works…remember how at Shea it didn't? It was inconvenient then. It's sort of sweet now that it's not bothering us.

I can't measure Shea the baseball pressure-cooker against whatever Citi will be when the heat is on in a big game because we have yet to see a big game here. Nothing counted Friday night except first impressions.

Among those impressions was they didn't lie about a couple of winning features. Big seats. Long leg room. You don't know how great that is until you've got it and recall how the mangy mutt you loved/tolerated bottled you up. I mentioned no ushers. I should also mention the nice young man who sold me my Diet Pepsi didn't take my cap away. And that a pretzel and a hot dog (because a quesadilla and a tuna roll weren't enough) were hot and fresh, not regrettable and maddening.

3) Exploring

The rain delay was the highlight of this Mets-Red Sox exhibition game. It gave Jason and me an excuse to stroll everywhere. Except for not being permitted to drag our wet selves into the Excelsior Club (in our Shea-conditioned minds, Field Level seats trump everything and thus double as backstage passes; at Citi, they don't), we loved everything we encountered. Citi Field is arranged to function as a very sociable place. Access may be restricted by ticket price and shortened supply but the place itself, inside, is very accessible. You can pick a spot and stand and do, as Larry David calls it, a stop 'n' chat. You can gaze out at the Queens that surrounds you from all kinds of intriguing vantage points when you're away from your seat. Stare south at the Unisphere and remember why they call that thing in the outfield WORLD'S FARE. Project east toward downtown Flushing and believe you can reach out over Little Albania and touch the U-Haul sign. The skyline of Manhattan twinkles to the West. LaGuardia's fun to watch beneath the northern sky. I don't care for being cut off from a view of the outside world at my seat, but I love the way the world is there for the taking in once you get up and walk around.

I also loved the sense that we — the fans, the staff, the media, the players a little bit even — are all in this together. Nobody knows anything yet. I'm clueless, but so is everyone else. We're learning this thing as a group. It's kind of fun to feel in the same boat.

It's also fun to see the old Apple. I never quite melted at the thought of it in Shea as some others did, but welcome to Citi Field, you big lug.

4) Absorbing

I thought the rain delay would become a cancellation, but the game came back, so we returned to our seats in 109. We were joined by my friend Gary and his wife Aneta (ah, the magic of the text) and, with many having cleared out from the storm, we had even more leg room. Gary was overwhelmed with joy at what he deemed a “palace,” taking to the organ accompaniment in particular (we call Gary “Jane” in deference to his Jarvisian keyboard skills). As play resumed, it wasn't so much a shockingly strange new place where we couldn't figure out where they posted the radar readout. It was “this is really nice, hey another baserunner.” Not a lot of people, a little tack-on rally, some cheering from the faithful…holy crap, it felt like a Mets game. It felt like one of those nights at Shea where you could lean back and enjoy the companionship of those you were glad to come with and delighted to bump into. Except here you could actually lean back.

Somewhere between the bases-loaded walk in the bottom of the sixth and Frankie Rodriguez's triumphant final strikeout in the ninth, I found myself thinking, without even thinking about it, “I want to come back.”

5) Reflection

I don't know that Citi Field is a particularly special pin on the ballpark map. It wasn't PNC or Camden. It doesn't have to be, I suppose. What it has to be is ours. It has to become ours, which will take a little time. Friday night shows me it has the potential to be a friendly place, a relaxed place, a place where we and the Mets fit in glove-like cohesion. How it acts with a fuller house and greater concentration and lots more drinking will help us understand what it means to be the home of the Mets from this moment on.

The prices are ridiculous. The prices were getting ridiculous at Shea for a long time. In 1977, M. Donald Grant justified the shunning of free agents to Sport magazine this way:

“The board discussed it and we thought it wasn't good for the fans. We don't think fans can afford it. if you continue to pay these prices, the fan is going to have to pay between $7 and $8 to get into the game.”

Somewhere Down There, the chairman of the board of Met Hell is having a good laugh. We sign free agents, we pay our players well, we tear down a stadium to replace it with a field and all $7 gets you is a little change for your frank. But at Citi Field, to a certain extent, you get what you pay for. The food is way better. The service is way better. The physical comfort is way better. The bathrooms, pending a mass run on beer, are way better.

Yet even as I couldn't see the world outside because of the way the park “envelops” you (Jeff Wilpon's phrase), I remembered on the train home there is a world out there and it's not doing so hot. Jason was a lower-case prince and treated me to my first game at Citi Field. That was $38 for a game that didn't count. I didn't keep track of my noshery bill, but the total spent was close to that figure (I don't plan to eat that well every trip in, but boy am I tempted). These are not throwaway figures in the course of an evening or a week or a season. What I am left to mourn of Shea Stadium is the way of life it represented before, during and, for a not inconsiderable period, after Don Grant. You could walk up and buy a pretty cheap ticket on no planning. You could buy four to bring your kiddies, bring your wife. It got more difficult as the years went by, but it was manageable. And you were guaranteed, in ways that counted, to have the time of your life.

In Citi Field, upstairs is filling in fast and first. When those cheapish seats are snapped up, your options ascend financially like one of those old World's Fair rockets. What was $38 in short right Friday night for an exhibition will be $75 for the proverbial weeknight against the Marlins by the end of this month. And that's the Value date. A Friday night against the Brewers in between? That's Gold, baby — Gold. That's sixty bucks in left field reserved. Per person. Never mind all your fancy sections that are beyond the means of most of us. That's absurd, and not in that Marvelous Marv Met sense of the word.

I didn't want to think about how much things cost at my first-ever game at Citi Field or how much they'll cost for the one after that and the one after that. But it costs a lot. Shea has Citi beat on that, even if all you paid for was baseball, crappy food and snarling personnel (or was it snarling food and crappy personnel?). The market will dictate whether these prices will hold, whether every Mets fan who wants to will or can go, whether they have to skip the quesadilla or whatever so they can handle the $18 parking. I hope something can be arranged and that those wide seats with loads of leg room don't go unoccupied. They deserve to have asses in them and legs unfurl from them, respectively.

It's a good park. It's a fine park. It's not a great park on first contact, but first contact is just that. It has running room. We will see how we interact with it, whether we spend so much time meeting and greeting and eating that we don't focus on the field and yell as we always did at Shea. But we're Mets fans. We'll figure it out.

Citi Field is a nice place to visit, which is good. 'Cause we live there now.

*Actually, no. I realized Sunday I entered through the RIGHT FIELD gate on Friday. Boy was I disoriented.

Thanks go out to Matt Silverman, the latest in an encouragingly long line of blolleagues to file an enthusiastic review of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets. And he knows from Mets books. You can order FAFIF: AIPHOTNYM from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or find it at a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

For those who wondered what would come first, the Mets playing in a new ballpark of their own or Gary Sheffield wearing a Mets uniform…it's a tie!

All-time reserve Never Met Sheffield has been signed. Unwanted elsewhere, unlikable in general, unskilled relative to what he was a few years ago, yet Doc Gooden's nephew (though they're practically the same age) is here until further notice. The roster will be readjusted ASAP, one presumes, with Nick Evans maybe taking the hit for now and Marlon Anderson drifting away days later. His next homer will be his 500th. We'll like him fine if he gets it.

I don't know if it's going to stop raining altogether tonight. I don't know that Sheffield isn't a waste of Major League minimum salary. But I do know that with Castillo, Hernandez and now this guy, we must lead baseball in 1997 World Champion Florida Marlins. World's longest-running fire sale, indeed.

You are more in need of a night in Atlantic City than any man I've ever met.

—Will Bailey, upon meeting an overwrought Toby Ziegler, The West Wing

I need a trip to the ballpark. Honest to god, I need a trip to the ballpark.

Have we got a ballpark? We do, don't we? It's not the same old ballpark that I loved. It's the gleaming new ballpark I'm only beginning to think about trusting. But it's the only ballpark we've got, so that's good enough for me.

I get my first genuine look at the new home of the New York Mets Friday night. By this time tomorrow, I could be affirming it is the greatest thing since sliced Shea. It will, by every informed indication, exceed its predecessor in form and function. It's up to me (and you and you and you and…) to give it a heart. I imagine we're up to the challenge.

In our final Shea trip together, Jason said to me that he'd walk over broken glass to watch the Mets, which was his way of declaring Shea Stadium, as much as he found fault with it, was better than nothing. Citi Field (brrr…what a crappy name after all this time) is more than a bag o' glass, to be sure. I may have hesitated to embrace it in its construction phase, but now that it's here and I'm going to be in it, it's going to be mine. It has to be. It's got the Mets.

And I need the Mets. I need the Mets to be not just some holding action in Florida, some place for WBC All-Stars to stow their stuff while they're off Representing Their Country. I need the Mets to get to a 48th season. I need the Mets to make history, not merely be history. I need something new to talk about. I'm the guy, it says in my book, who can talk about being a Mets fan all day and all night. At this moment, I'm not interested in talking about being. I'm frothing to be doing. What I'm going to be doing, under the familiar threat of Flushing Meadow weekend rain, is going to the ballpark Friday night to see the Mets.

It will feel good, even if it doesn't count.

Thanks to the Faith and Fear devotees who took themselves out to Varsity Letters Thursday night to spend quality time chilling with/listening to Jason and me. We got to meet some fine folks, renew some great acquaintances, hear three other wonderful authors (one poetic Met, one soulful Yank, one odd man out) and cap the offseason in undeniably unique fashion. Thanks to the organizers, too, for having us on the bill. Will notify all here of other, hopefully geographically amenable (depending on where you live) appearances as they are arranged.

Order Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or find it at a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

If you somehow can't make it tonight's meeting of the Mets History Miniature Bobblehead Year at Citi Field committee…I mean to seeing Jason and me at Varsity Letters (for real), here a few other things you can be doing with your Thursday evening.

• You can listen, if you haven't yet, to NY Baseball Digest's Mike Silva and I discuss Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets here. The freewheeling hour of book talk, Mets talk, media talk and, well, me talk flies by. You can get a shorter but still substantive spin from this Q&A with Gelf Magazine.

• You can read the latest in the whirlwind of FAFIF: AIPHOTNYM reviews, each of them wonderfully considered and immensely appreciated: Mets2Moon at The Ballclub; Coop at My Summer Family; Long Island Mets Fan at 24 Hours From Suicide; and, as a movie pitch I know I'd snap up, Jon at the grandsite of 'em all, Mets By The Numbers. Thanks to everybody who has weighed in on behalf of this book via blog, e-mail, message board and subway whisper campaign. I can express what it means to me, but you still couldn't guess how much it does.

• You can make yourself hungry by perusing the Citi Field offerings as inspected by NYC Food Guy. I've already done so, and there's mouth water everywhere. Don't tell my gastroenterologist. Or my accountant.

• You can by all means order your copy of FAFIF, or even a copy for somebody else, at Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and then you can join the ongoing discussion at Facebook.

• You can wait for the season to start. But you were going to do that anyway.

• Or you could make a late dash for Varsity Letters at the Happy Ending Lounge. We'd love to see you there, tonight at 8:00.

Not that a formal invitation is required, but this Thursday night, April 2, Greg will read from Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, at the Happy Ending Lounge, home of Varsity Letters. Here's hoping you'll come out and listen and cheer and maybe buy a copy. (Already got one? FAFIF: AIPHOTNYM also makes a great gift!)

Varsity Letters is a great venue, even when the program isn't properly Metscentric. The Happy Ending Lounge is easy to get to: It's at 302 Broome Street, between Forsyth and Eldridge on the Lower East Side. Near the F train and an easy taxi ride from downtown or midtown. Despite the name, the happy endings are strictly figurative by now — to paraphrase a Castillo-sized rock star, we'll do anything to get readers, but we won't do that. Though speaking of trading money for pleasure, around the corner you can get five awesome dumplings for a measly buck at Dumpling House.

Though I'm admittedly biased, let me join more-objective readers in saying that Faith and Fear is a great book. It's one of those one-more-chapter books that keep you reading until suddenly it's hours after you planned to go to bed. Yes, it's a terrific baseball chronicle. But it's also a superb memoir, told with bracing, unflinching honesty and gentle humor. I knew my favorite team before I read Faith and Fear, but when I finished it I knew them far better and appreciated them far more. The same goes for my friend Greg.

Oh, and it's got pictures! And an afterword with Gary Cohen! And a foreword by some schlubby co-blogger that's not even that bad.

Anyway, I'll have the honor of introducing Greg Thursday night and the greater honor of sitting back and listening to him tell part of his story. I hope you'll join me for that, and come say hi and help celebrate his book.

Speaking of Faith and Fear, you can read a terrific interview with Greg by Jim Chairusmi at Gelf Magazine. And Greg took part in a roundtable with MetsBlog's Matthew Cerrone and Amazin' Avenue's Sam Page today at Bats, the New York Times' baseball blog. All three have wise counsel for the season to come.

The rest of the lineup for Varsity Letters: Matt McCarthy, author of Odd Man Out, a memoir of life in the minors; Mets poet Frank Messina, whom we like already; and Alex Belth, creator of Bronx Banter and the author of a terrific Curt Flood biography. Belth's a Yankee fan — you're not going to let him pull in a bigger crowd than Greg, now are you? (Actually Alex is a great writer and a wonderful guy, inexplicable rooting interests aside.)

Hope we see you there!

Sartorial Announcement: We now have lots more Numbers shirts available at PrintMojo, so if your size was out in recent weeks, head on over and gear up.

(Let's try an experiment — follow along with this travelogue at this album on Facebook. If it doesn't work, holler in the comments and I'll put it on Flickr or something.)

The first thing that I saw at Citi Field and the first thing that happened to me at Citi Field had something in common: They were nice surprises. Neither is a guarantee of anything, but they made for a heartening start.

Joshua and I landed at La Guardia around 11:30, and had made plans to meet Emily at noon in front of the rotunda, which was logical enough given that it's the only Citi Field landmark any of us know. The dispatcher looked at me blankly when I said Citi Field. So did the cabbie. If nothing else, Shea Stadium will live on in the navigational lexicon of New Yorkers for some time. To spare the cabbie a potentially hellish odyssey, I told him to let me and Joshua out where the left-field corner borders whatever road it is that used to serve as the boundary between the parking lot and the chop shops. (We'll learn.) We stepped out of the cab and right in front of us were sepia banners affixed to the side of the new stadium. And there, friezelike, were Tom Seaver, Tug McGraw, Rusty Staub, Keith Hernandez, Jesse Orosco, Gary Carter, Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Lenny Dykstra, Mike Piazza and John Franco — along with Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, David Wright, Johan Santana and room for some more. Below them, crowning the left-field gate, was a silhouette instantly recognizable as Endy Chavez leaping above the fence. The right-field gate has Ron Swoboda in full dive, making for nice bookends. Oh, and from the sublimely reassuring to the ridiculously reassuring: The looped message that plays outside Citi Field still inveighs against “the irresponsible action of a misbehaving few.” (I think an 's' got dropped somewhere, but that's OK.)

Veteran readers of this blog will know Greg and I were of different minds about the passing of Shea and the arrival of Citi Field. But we agreed that we saw worrisome signs of an organization inclined to downplay, sell or erase its history in moving into Citi — our fear was that the park would evoke Ebbets Field but skip over Shea, as if a shabby park somehow invalidated the scintillating memories that were made in its blameless confines. As we'll see, things aren't as they should be in that department just yet, but the Mets' first steps are absolutely in the right direction. Getting a first sign of that while I still had one foot in a cab did a lot to set my mind at ease.

Joshua and I decided we wouldn't go in just yet, so we could all share first impressions with Emily, arriving via the 7 train. So we started to walk down the left-field facade to the rotunda. I got within about 10 feet of the first bag checkpoint, staffed by Citi Field security guys in maroon jackets and Met caps, and heard something that made me do a double-take: “Welcome to Citi Field — thanks for coming out, and hope you enjoy the game.”

Huh?

Not “that bag is an inch too big, so take it back to your nonexistent car or hide it in a bush.” Not “BAGS OUT!” Not the vacuum created by surly silence. It was a greeting (I paraphrased a bit, as I was shocked), one that sounded genuine. And it wasn't just one guy — everywhere we went in Citi Field, we were treated invariably courteously and often warmly. That was another thing Greg and I had worried about in the interim — that better-angled seats and new amenities would be undermined by transplanting the same surly, inept vendors and ushers and counter people who too often made Shea a lousy experience to the new park. So far, the indications on that score are all very, very positive. There are old faces (and to be fair, some of the Shea staffers were welcome exceptions to an ugly rule), but the attitudes seem very new. It's a completely different experience.

Part of the fun of the St. John's-Georgetown exhibition was seeing 20,000 or so Met fans (the mist/cold/rain seemed like it cut down the crowd considerably) collectively wandering around with craned necks, learning their new home and trying stuff out. (Greetings to Dana Brand and Zoe Rice, online friends finally met in the flesh.) Conditioned by Madison Square Park, Emily and Joshua and I marched immediately to Shake Shack, whose trademark letters rise just below the old skyline that crowned Shea's scoreboard. Those sights together were enough to make me want to jump up and down, and it got better from there. The lines at the Shack were shorter than your average queue for a helping of Congealed Whatever at Shea (“We don't got no more Congealed Whatevah — NEXT!”), the prices were reasonable, and the quality of the Shackburger was indistinguishable from Madison Square Park. OK, the staff didn't have any idea what to do with customers waiting for their orders, which needs to be fixed but falls under the heading of First Day Forgiveable given everything else. I was too busy wolfing down Shackburgers with obscene glee to try the other Danny Meyer offerings, but I'll put that right soon enough. Another welcome sign in the left-field eateries area — staffers emptying trash cans so stuff wasn't overflowing everywhere.

Our seats were in the Promenade level; temporarily sated, I looked down at our tickets and realized I had not the faintest idea how to get there. And what's Promenade level, anyway? That was definitely a strange experience, being utterly lost in one's home park. (The backstairs are the way to travel. And, I suspect, the place people will congregate to smoke. Which would be against the new rules but basically harmless.) Once we got there, we found that the Promenade is the equivalent of the upper deck at Shea, and we were seated under the out-of-town scoreboard down the left-field line. The good news about Citi Field's seats is they're wider, have more legroom, are properly angled to the field of play and much closer to the action. Heck, that all adds up to great news. Basically, take the equivalent level of Shea, subtract one and move about a third forward and you'll have an idea of what kind of view you'll get: Our seats were far down the left-field line, a few rows from the top of the stadium, and they felt like we were in the same spot at Shea but about a third of the way up the mezzanine with a good angle. The bad news? The park's dimensions and overhanging decks suggest to me that there are a fair amount more seats where you'll lose an outfield corner and part of center.

There are many more places to eat — with lines that looked shorter everywhere, I suspect because the infrastructure is much better. There are many more bathrooms, with the whir of automatic towel dispensers replacing the roar of geysering toilets, and no recruiting pitch from the Dallas Police Department just yet. (The ovoid urinals struck me as a bit more Barcelona disco than New York ballpark, but so long as they work….) The left-field and right-field bleacher areas are connected by bridgework that doesn't particularly evoke any New York City landmark (though I'm sure the Mets will claim it's channeling something) but serves surprisingly well to tie those areas together. Generally speaking, the pathways for circulating around the stadium almost invariably take you behind people's seats instead of in front of them, which should cut down on screams of “DOWN IN FRONT!” And unlike Shea, Citi Field has a lot of unique geography — there's a food-court area high behind home plate that will become popular, the rotunda, the overview of the bullpens, the bridges that link the bleacher areas and the main stadium, and a lot of other nooks and quirks that we'll need to learn but I think will come to like, with fans sharing navigational tips and favorite hangouts in ways that weren't possible at Shea. Oh, and the home-run apple is gigantic and has its own lair in center — a Georgetown player hit one out, and the Hoyas were nominally the home team, but we couldn't see if it rose. (Update: It didn't.) Happily, Shea's apple is still there too — it's been saved and is down by the bullpens, where it attracted a long line of folks waiting to have their pictures snapped with it.

Another difference is more subtle: Shea was surrounded by an ocean of parking, and so felt like a suburban park. The back of Citi Field overlooks the maze of Willets Point chop shops, which will lead to thousands of jokes but definitely feels different: At least at that end, Citi Field feels like an urban park. It would be easy to make too much of this: The view is more Albania than Wrigleyville, and between eminent domain, ground pollution and the lack of infrastructure out there it'll be the view for a long, long time. But it's a bigger change than you might think.

Those are scattershot impressions from a single, very odd day with a small crowd and no actual big-leaguers on the field. (The plink of aluminum bats was borderline sacrilege.) I'm going to be lost for a while (what's Empire level, anyway?), and to really start getting to know Citi Field I'm going to need to see it after a Met comeback that leaves the faithful bellowing LET'S GO METS! as we march triumphantly out. And I'm going to need to sit it during some hot-as-hell night when the boys are down 10-2 in the third and the relievers have applied to enter the Witness Protection Program. I'm going to need to see it during close plays and managerial rhubarbs and slow-building rallies and tense extra innings and torpid middle ones. I'm going to need to see National Anthem singers and throwers of first pitches and giveaway days and ceremonies. I'm going to need to build up a backlog of Citi Field knowledge the way I did at Shea, in other words.

Oh, and of course there are things that need to be put right:

* The rotunda is not what it should be. It looks impressive from the outside and does make for a very nice introduction to the stadium. But inside it still looks a long way away from completion — you come in, look up at the ceiling and see not a soaring dome, but a crazy quilt of ductwork and pipes. (To be fair — Citi Field is, in fact, not actually finished. For example, the outfield walls are missing not only retired numbers but also distance markers.) A bigger problem is that the big number 42 detracts from the very nice salute to Jackie Robinson — at least for me, it's unfortunately more evocative of “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” than of a ferociously brave ballplayer and human being. I think an actual statue would work much better than a big number.

* The interior hallways are pretty bare. I'm sure this is temporary, but I hope, expect and will soon demand that we get many more banners and posters and nods to Met history to serve as not only reminders but also as landmarks. I hope all those banners at Shea are replicated somehow, and other bits of Met history are unearthed and shared. Again, early indications are very good — there's the scoreboard crown, the sepia banners, the silhouettes of players, and the old apple having not just been saved but presented so you can actually touch it. Much more of this please — for example, inscribe a concourse wall with the name of every Met to wear the uniform. (I'll make an Al Schmelz rubbing just to say I did.) Give us busts for the members of the Met Hall of Fame. Do anything and everything you can think of. Steep and soak the place in Met history.

* The A/V services aren't in place, so Citi Field gets an incomplete there. I hope the radio feed is piped into the bathrooms, and the concourses and concession stands have TVs so you don't miss anything. Again, the early indications are good: There were HDTVs in the right-field seats, and what looked like mountings for many more. And the area around Shake Shack and the kids' wiffle-ball field (another nice touch) has a mini-scoreboard and DiamondVision so parents can keep following the game while keeping a promise to Junior.

* The Danny Meyer area doesn't have anywhere to stop and eat — we kept looking for chest-high counters or somewhere to set down our burgers. This may be intentional, in order to get you back to your seats, and there are tables a bit farther along. But the natural inclination is to stop there, and there's nowhere to do it — so at the very least, fans will have a learning curve figuring out where to go. The food area above and behind home plate (I don't know the name of anything yet) has lots of picnic-style benches, and works a lot better.

* OK, this is ridiculously petty, but it annoyed me: The shade of blue in the bathrooms is closer to the Chicago Bears than to the New York Mets. I know Met blue has wandered around the Pantone scale since 1962, but it should match the team logo. (Oh, like you didn't guess I'd scrutinize the blue in the pissoir.)

I'm sure I'll nitpick more. But I don't want nitpicking to obscure the main point, and that's that my first impressions from a whirlwind tour were that Citi Field delivers: much better views of the game, much better food options, many more concessions and bathrooms, and customer service that feels night-and-day different than Shea's. (None of that is necessarily Shea's fault, but what else are you going to compare the new place to?) And the ballpark doesn't feel generic, which was something else I'd feared — the rotunda, despite its faults/growing pains, feels unique, as does the bridgework in the bleacher areas, the light stands and many other things. You want to explore not just to figure out where to go, but because you actually find interesting places if you do. That's nice.

And hey, Citi Field has Shake Shack and will soon have the Mets. Those are pretty big advantages too.

You'll also have a big advantage if you pick up Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets. And don't forget that this Thursday, Greg will be reading from his book at Varsity Letters on the LES. I even get to introduce him! You can get copies of FAFIF: AIHPOTNYM there, or come prepared with your own by visiting Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or a bookstore near you. To keep up on discussion and events related to FAFIF: AIPHOTNYM, join us at Facebook.