New schedule, new workplace, new bullpen, new park, new season. Let’s see what happens. (Snapped with my iPhone, which as a camera is a heck of a phone.)
 
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans. Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here. Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here. Got something to say? Leave a comment, or email us at faithandfear@gmail.com. (Sorry, but we have no interest in ads, sponsored content or guest posts.) Need our RSS feed? It's here. Visit our Facebook page, or drop by the personal pages for Greg and Jason. Or follow us on Twitter: Here's Greg, and here's Jason. |
The weather-insurance off-day always makes for a cruel start to the season — being confronted with a Metless Game 2 is a little like being a starving dog who’s snoffed down half a can of Alpo only to find himself dragged away from his dish and told to wait for 30 hours. What? You’re kidding me, right? You realize I haven’t had anything to eat since late September, don’t you? I’m dyin’ here, man! But that’s the way it goes, so we’ll have to tide ourselves over with White Sox-Royals and other vague nourishment until tomorrow night. Still, at least we still have yesterday to bask in, from the fact that the day even existed to its unaccustomed plan-gone-rightness in the final innings. I suppose it was fitting that the longest and weirdest and boringest spring training in recent memory be followed by an unorthodox Opening Day. I’d taken the day off, it being a national holiday and all, only to rescind that decision when it looked like Cincinnati would be a far better locale for hockey. With Opening Day clearly delayed until today, I went about my salary-related business with relative equanimity, occasionally glancing over at Metsblog or Mets.com for official word that the game was called. Until, finally, I flipped on WFAN and gathered that the game was not only not called but starting in about 15 minutes. Wha? Over to weather.com, where sure enough the blob of pink and purple vectoring in from Indianapolis had degraded into light green blemishes, prompting Jerry Manuel and Dusty Baker to meet with the umpires, chew toothpicks, discuss ladies and gangsters, reminisce that in their day they’d once played in four feet of snow and still hit behind the runner, and say let’s play ball right now. Fortunately my commute is eight minutes with optimum subway luck — off I dashed, day off turned day on now hastily remade as a day half. And was in my living room just in time to wonder why ESPN HD was a black rectangle, fall back to the FAN and then hunt for the game on SNY. Hello baseball! I just can’t take spring training seriously anymore — I now plop down on the couch with a magazine in the top of the first, if I even remember it’s on — but I snapped nicely back into focus for real baseball, exulting at Johan’s first two punch-outs and groaning through the walks that followed. Until I calmed down around the bottom of the third, every Met hit was a sign of an MVP award and NL East supremacy and every LOB was a sign of deep slumps and a summer scuffling with the Nats. Overheated, but welcome given that a week ago I realized to my shock and horror that I couldn’t fill out the likely 25-man roster. Even more welcome was seeing familiar players big as life and going about serious business. There was David Wright with his tics and wiggles at the plate and his vaguely amazed expression when he finally gets himself settled and focuses on the pitcher. There was the stock-still ferocity of Carlos Delgado, huge in waiting, the effortless glide of Carlos Beltran, and Johan all taps and swipes on the mound. And there was the first for-real look at the new guys: J.J. Putz was particularly striking, with his vulture-like hunch on the mound, his half-asleep stare, and the slow, uncloserlike metronome of his pitches. (Early warning: Right now Putz seems admirably unhurried and inexorable, but when he goes through his first bad stretch we’ll find him downright Trachselian.) And baseball itself, of course: There was the outfield bad luck of Darnell McDonald, treated cruelly by his teammates and the baseball gods in his 22nd game of a career that’s taken him to age 30, contrasted with the good luck of Ryan Church, who turned in a 9.0 difficulty sliding juggling routine paired with a quick throw to first for a hugely unlikely double play. (And a piece of evidence to be put before the jury in the forthcoming court case The People for Good Defense vs. Gary Sheffield, Right Fielder.) Give a Reds fan seven inches to reapportion between McDonald’s three misplays and Church’s little miracle and he could have turned a Met nail-biter into a Red rout, but that’s baseball in all its beauty and unfairness. If there’s a Met fan in this great land who didn’t think of Pedro and Joe Randa and Willie Randolph and Braden Looper in the ninth, they’re either new around here or deliberately amnesiac. (And probably better off either way.) I muttered and fretted and squirmed through the debuts of Sean Green, Putz (who got away with a couple) and K-Rod, all too aware that this game’s dominant theme could still turn out to be David Wright Left Murphy on Third AGAIN, or Johan Still Can’t Trust That Bullpen, or Don’t You Regret Saying All Those Mean Things About Aaron Heilman? Happily, everything turned out just fine. Heck, the only improvement would be hearing that at the very moment Ramon Hernandez struck out, someone in the San Francisco visiting clubhouse startled Braden Looper, who spilled a cup of coffee in his own lap. For a quality start, effective middle relief and a flawless save, chart pitches along with Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook. Queens and Long Island readers, if so inclined, can pick up the Daily News today for a brief story by Nicholas Hirshon on Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, including author comments and photo in the Queens News insert, part of a spread covering the coming of the new ballpark (Stanley Cohen, whose wonderful A Magic Summer has been reissued for the fortieth anniversary of the '69 Mets, is also interviewed). FAFIF: AIPHOTNYM is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook. The Mets enjoyed a statistically familiar Opening Day. Yet I enjoyed a very unusual one. They opened at Great American Ball Park. Yet I watched them at Citi Field. They were led by Johan Santana, Daniel Murphy and Frankie Rodriguez. Yet I was awed by Mookie Wilson, Ed Kranepool and Ed Charles…and Cow-Bell Man. Can’t forget Cow-Bell Man. Here’s the surreal deal: A friend with the fine folks who sponsor that swell Pepsi Porch invited me to a New Year’s bash on said patio (a rare intermingling of my beverage and baseball lives). We’d eat, drink, mill and cheer the action from Cincinnati on the big screens. And it would be great, unless it rained. It rained, but it was still great, because Pepsi and the Mets moved the party indoors to Caesars Club. Hence, there I was, eating, drinking, milling, cheering the action from Cincinnati on smaller but very sharp screens and not getting wet. And being surrounded by greatness. The greatness on the screens is what we all care about, so let us praise not Caesar or even Mookie for a moment, but Johan. From what I could tell when not helping myself to unlimited fare (standard ballpark stuff but with those Citi kitchens, nothing is substandard), it was colder in Ohio than it was in New York (where it was cold enough) and Johan wasn’t feeling the ball, thus the four walks. That’s the sort of thing that could derail an Ollie Perez — that does derail an Ollie Perez — but this is Johan the Magnificent we’re talking about, so he essentially shook off the cold and picked up where he left off last September 27 and 23, respectively. The Mets, 31-9 to commence their calendar since 1970 and 4-for-4 since 2006, left too many runners on base, of course, but don’t they always? Daniel Murphy and defense gave Johan enough wiggle room and the bullpen…OH THAT DELICIOUS NEW BULLPEN! The LOB may be the official state bird of Metsopotamia, but can we declare the blown save extinct? Probably a little too soon for that, but wow, what a difference however much they’re paying Green, Putz and Rodriguez makes. They’ll have their bad days, but…no! No! Never again! No more bad days! Not the kind with which we’ve been regularly burdened! Sorry, just projecting my deepest hope for this season: no more cringing at that bullpen gate or even the thought of it. No matter where you were watching from Monday, you couldn’t help but hark back to the last time the Mets opened in Cincy, in 2005, and Braden Looper sabotaging the New Mets before they could spread their wings and fly. That was the first game this enterprise ever blogged and my partner captured the emotion of that ninth-inning, 7-6 loss perfectly when he wrote one word and one word only after Joe Randa circled the Great American bases. (He did so again today in an e-mail that read, in part, “Fuck Braden Looper.”) Four years have gone by. Maybe some Mets fans today had forgotten or never even knew about that wasted first start from Pedro Martinez and how (fucking) Braden Looper just dampened everything for days and then, at just the worst instances, all of 2005. More saliently, nobody’s forgotten what last September was like in these parts. Green to Putz to Rodriguez…that’s something to remember and repeat. I’ll probably never get to repeat my own personal Opening Day celebration from 2009, but I’ll remember it. Credit Pepsi and the Mets’ organization for thinking of everything except a temporary SkyDome to shield us on that Porch of theirs. But Caesars did well by its guests in a pinch. My friend who extended the invitation got stuck at work, so I didn’t know anybody there, but I felt like I knew everybody there. Everybody came dressed in their Opening Day finery and everybody was focused on the Metsiana of the occasion. Yes, of course, to Murph’s home run and two RBI, yes to David Wright and Ryan Church and Jose Reyes playing solid to spectacular defense. Yes to the pitching in its starting and relief flavors (YES!), right up to the impromptu K-ROD! K-ROD! chant that closed the festivities. And yes to those Mets legends who joined us for the afternoon. I saw a line early and I thought it was for beer. It was for Mookie. Made sense. The presence of Mookie will always be more intoxicating than alcohol. He was signing autographs for children of all ages, including a Pepsi generation’s worth of Mets fans who couldn’t possibly know anything more about him than how could you not want the autograph of a man named Mookie? I didn’t queue up for Mr. Wilson’s signature. Too long a line, too preoccupied by those images of Mr. Santana (and the sausages). But when it got short, I strode over. Somebody vaguely in charge tried to tell me Mookie was about to be done signing. I don’t want an autograph, I said, I just want to shake his hand and say hello. I was granted my wish. “Hi Mookie, my name is Greg, and I want to thank you for being such a great Met and giving us such a great Met career, all ten years of it.” Mookie accepted this completely unoriginal thought graciously before wrapping up his day. I couldn’t have let the opportunity go by without telling him what surely he’s heard before. He’s Mookie Wilson! (I had a copy of my book in my schlep bag and thought about giving it to him, then I remembered that the chapter that focuses on his most famous moment is laced with stream-of-consciousness cursing and that Mookie was the most straight laced of ’86 Mets, so I resisted. Maybe for one of the Scum Bunch I’d be less embarrassed by my working blue.) Ed Charles had a line, too, but I caught it when it was winding down, and all I wanted from him was about 15 seconds of his time. I shook his hand and said my piece: “Hi Ed, my name is Greg, and I just want to thank you for being such a great Met all these years. You gave me so many thrills when I was a kid and I can’t thank you enough.” “That means a lot to me to hear you say that,” The Glider Ed Charles said to me. And he patted me on the back. It felt good. Ed Kranepool I was close to, but said nothing. Three reasons: 1) The Krane was not, when I was in his midst, doing his official Krane stuff; 2) I couldn’t stop thinking about what a friend of mine who once ran into him in a deli said after introducing himself as a fan: “Ed Kranepool looked at me like I owed him money,” though he seemed pretty relaxed today; 3) I was too in awe to say anything. I’m not kidding. This was Ed Kranepool, a Met for the first eighteen seasons that there were Mets. This was Ed Kranepool, king of the Mets record book still. This was ED KRANEPOOL! As I wandered in Ed’s aura (and believe me, this guy’s got aura), I found myself behind him as he grabbed a cookie off a tray on the bar. I grabbed the cookie right after his before we diverged to our respective seats. I wouldn’t say I ate Ed Kranepool’s dust, but it’s fair to say we shared a few crumbs. And Cow-Bell Man was there. I wasn’t in awe of Cow-Bell Man, but it was gratifying to see Cow-Bell Man in and out of action. When I walked into Caesars (which puts all airport lounges to shame but could use a few Mets trinkets to make it seem less LaGuardia), I saw somebody who looked like Cow-Bell Man quietly enjoying some lunch. It was him. It was Cow-Bell Man. Cow-Bell Man does Mets parties. Good for him. Now and again, he roamed the room, banging his bell and being Cow-Bell Man, posing for photos, signing t-shirts, making Mets fans a little happier for a few seconds per clank. When the affair was over, I found myself on the same subway platform with Cow-Bell Man. I was going to strike up a conversation, ask how he came to be there today, how he likes Citi Field, what his relationship with the Mets’ organization is, whether the bullpen can keep up the good work. But as I organized my thoughts, he walked over to where he wanted to get on the train and I stayed put at where I wanted to get on the train. Cow-Bell Man’s only got so much aura. Final unexpected guest of the day was that parking lot they’re building where Ol’ Blue used to stand. Caesars doesn’t face the current field, only the former one, or what’s left of its dirt. While Jerry made all the right moves in Cincy, while Mookie and the Eds (Cow-Bell Man’s real name, too, come to think of it) were eliciting grins, while Mr. Met and the Pepsi Party Patrol were bringing the Seventh Inning Stretch indoors, the men who work the Breeze machines continued to move earth. That thing will be paved over in no time. I watched now and then, between pitches and good cheer. I watched what used to be Shea Stadium get a little more covered up with every passing minute. Never saw that on Opening Day from Cincinnati before either. Hope they pave over any remnant that indicated Braden Looper and his arsonous successors ever existed but good. Two New Year’s gifts on one Opening Day…you guys shouldn’t have! But you did, Ray from Metphistopheles and A.J. from Deadspin (excerpt included in the latter). Read what they’re writing about: Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.  8 comments - (Comments closed) | |  Print This Post |  Citi Field, Cow-Bell Man, Ed Charles, Ed Kranepool, Mets Opening Day, Mookie Wilson, Shea Stadium A quick reminder to our boys wrapped in orange and blue layers for when they begin their season in Arctic conditions today or tomorrow or whenever there isn’t a projected 29-degree wind chill with 60% chance of snow showers in Cincinnati: Play every game. There are 162 on your slate. Play all of them. Play all of them as well as you can. Don’t take days off unless you, as an individual, have been in fact given the day off. Keep playing. Play now, play later, play to the end. Play hard 162 times. Do not let your minds wander after a dozen or so games. Do not spiral into a funk after sixty or so games. Do not mentally wander the desert after 120 games. Consider the season as an in-progress entity even after you’ve reached the black-magical mark of 145 games. At that juncture, institutional memory will tell you to ease up, not compete and lose more often than you win. Do not listen to it. You are contracted to play all 162. You start, the schedule says, this afternoon. You keep going straight through to October 4 at least. At least. Thank you in advance for your efforts on our behalf. Please don’t make us regret our faith in you again. A great way to wait out rain delays is to read Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook. Friday night was about taking the first steps from a state of shock to a sense of tentative acceptance. Sunday (the workout opened to planholders; Stephanie and I went courtesy of a very thoughtful planholder) was for the journey from bottom to top, front to back, side to side, ins and outs. Maybe. I say maybe because no matter how much we looked around in blessedly brilliant sunshine, it's going to require a long journey for Citi Field to go from house to home. House is a structure, home is a feeling. One of the most unsettling moments of the long Mets fan winter that is scheduled (weather permitting) to end Monday afternoon at 1:10 was a press conference I caught on the MLB Network announcing the Red Sox' re-signing of Kevin Youkilis. Youkilis said something about how this was home. He meant the Red Sox, but the event was taking place inside of Fenway Park. You know Fenway Park is home of the Red Sox. It's the same home of the Red Sox that's been for almost one hundred seasons. When John Updike passed away during the offseason, we all thought about “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” highlighted by the timeless description of the lyric little bandbox. Fenway was as recognizable in the mind's eye and on Yawkey Way in 2009 as it was in 1960 as it was, presumably, in 1912. It may lack those all-important amenities we hear so much about, but you know what Fenway Park is. Red Sox don't have to think about whether or not they're home. Shea Stadium was that to me and to us. Shea Stadium was the home of the Mets. It's torn down, but that feeling doesn't demolish easily. At one point on our extended tour this afternoon, we wandered into Caesars Club (nice of him to have us) and out those arch windows was the pile of rubble, a little less high than Friday night, I swear. Shea Stadium is, as promised, transforming into $18 parking spots. Last year I sat in Shea Stadium and watched where I was today take shape. Today I sat in a plush chair in a commodious lounge and watched where I was all my yesterdays. That asphalt was center field, wasn't it? Wasn't Carlos Beltran just taking a home run away from Ryan Ludwick down there? Isn't that where I saw every centerfielder from Agee to Cameron before him ply his craft? Center field at Shea Stadium could be an adventure. Adventureland was now pavement. I stopped looking at the past. I tried to look ahead. But baseball isn't just one long scouting report, one massive volume of Baseball Prospectus. I care deeply about how the Mets will do before every game and every year but I realize I care less and less about season previews and projected records and all that crystal ball gazing as each April arrives. What'll happen happens. I've guessed right sometimes. I've guessed wrong plenty. I guess I'll find out for sure about the 2009 Mets starting very soon, and Citi Field soon after that. I'll stand by my delight from Friday about the concourses and the culinary options (Shea specialized in discomfort food, literally and figuratively) and all those upgrades that were injected into the new park. I miss the soul of Shea Stadium, but its infrastructure you can keep. Yet that soul…that'll take a while to rebuild over here. As Stephanie and I compared notes on how this felt like Busch, like the Jake, like Great American, like Miller Park — “And the nicest part of all, Val…I look just like you,” as it was put in that Twilight Zone in which everybody was subject to mandatory plastic surgery — I realized what I really wanted was the Citi Field modernity as I walked around and then I wanted Shea Stadium to open up before me as I sat down. Can't have both, apparently. A friend once told me a story of a coat he wore for many winters. It was red, white and blue, so his buddies called it his Captain America jacket. He grew less and less amused over time and, come one Christmas, he asked his folks for a new winter coat. Whaddaya need that for? his practical dad demanded. The one you have still fits. “I'm tired of the Captain America jacket,” my friend insisted. And for Christmas, he got something less comical to wear for warmth. I can understand the impulse for a new coat — but I've been cloaked in the same forest green parka for a decade because it still fits. Shea Stadium still fit me no matter that others swore we'd outgrown it. I wish it were Every time SNY has had a spare hour, it's replayed the Shea Goodbye ceremony from September 28. When it's on, I stop and watch. It occurred to me a few weeks ago that this is akin to viewing a funeral over and over and over again (luckily, they don't show the fatal car wreck of a game that preceded it). I can't help but look. It's the last time Shea Stadium stands. After Seaver and Piazza close the gates and Aaron Copland celebrates the common man, there's no more Shea. I like having the last of it in living color, but I hope they stop showing it. I don't want to be drawn into a funeral procession any longer. I can miss it without mourning it. When I lost the first pet that ever died on me, as an adult, I was beside myself with grief. I asked a friend who'd had a cat learning curve similar to mine — not converting to felinism until his thirties — how he coped when he lost the kitty he loved. “You mourn, but then one day you just stop,” he said. “It's a cat.” I got it. And eventually I stopped mourning. Never stopped missing, but I moved on. Today I began to move on from mourning Shea. I miss it, but I'll keep moving forward. I have to. Mourning has broken. In a recent episode of The Simpsons, Lisa frets over what kind of candy to buy to impress a new classmate. “How about Charleston Chew?” Bart asks. “What is this,” Lisa huffs. “Brooklyn in the Fifties?” No matter the cynical conception that METS stands for nothing more than My Ebbets Team Substitute to a certain majority owner, Citi Field feels nothing like I imagine the joint on McKeever Place did. You can have your archways and your Rotunda (I can't look at that 42 sculpture and not think “Ron Hodges”), but that's where it ends. I don't mean that to let Citi Field off the hook for its overly nostalgic tics. I mean this ain't some lyric little bandbox. You wouldn't build Ebbets Field in this day and age any more than you'd build Shea Stadium. It can pay all the homages it wants and it's not going to be from 1913 or serve as a chummy little neighborhood asylum. It's too now, it's too affluent (or would be in better times). That's OK. There's a reason a team once left Ebbets Field that has nothing to do with Robert Moses. It was no longer considered an optimal business model. This is not Brooklyn in the Fifties. Does it carry on the intangibles of Ebbets, though? Is it “intimate” as billed? Well, it's smaller than Shea, as you well know. There are spots from which you're sitting far from the field and you don't feel on top of the action as promised. There are spots (probably ones I won't be sitting in again when it's not an open house) where you feel cut off from baseball civilization. And then there are spots that give you the impression they weren't kidding about intimacy. The Pepsi Porch feels that way; we were in right, but I was tempted to shake hands with whoever was sitting on a line with us in left. Midway up the Promenade on the third base side feels that way, too. It's a new, improved Upper Deck over there, at least until you climb to the top (when it's just a very high and windy perch). The tilted seats make their most impact up there, I thought. I am so used to staring at the left fielder from that vantage point that it will actually take practice to not turn my head toward Daniel Murphy and just stare straight at the batter…but what's attending a glorified batting practice for anyway? It was at those two random sit-downs when I felt like I might enjoy watching a Mets game at Citi Field, that it won't feel foreign. The Prom was ballpark seating like I was used to, but properly aligned. The Porch doesn't feel as far away as other outfield seats I've tried in other places. That could be fun. Even though a revisit to the Field Box level (as opposed to Field Level boxes of yore) was pleasant, that's the part where I felt we were in Anypark, U.S.A. And a brief sampling of the Caesars level was too exclusive for my tastes. A great, great vista, with a guest appearance by Flushing Bay in the distance, but isolated in its splendiferousness. If I want privacy, I can sit here at my computer. Ballparks are public spaces. The Mets' public (even if I've had my run-ins with disreputable representatives thereof) needs to be bonded together. I gotta hand it to the Mets for having this housewarming, as my friend Sharon called it. Sure it was an excuse to sell stuff (nobody forced me into that team store or toward the Catch of the Day counter, so I'll forego restating my astonishment at the price tags) and a fourth chance to flick the switches on and off so they operate properly a week from Monday, but it was simply lovely to be among Mets fans again. I don't think it's fair to identify any subset as “the real fans,” but the partial people strike me as particularly committed. They'd have 81 tickets every year if time and money weren't issues. They have made an annual habit of every Saturday or every Sunday at a Mets game (though I understand that the Mets rejiggered weekends to include spare Wednesday nights this year). These people wandering and noshing and taking in a slice of BP weren't from some elite superstrata of the population. They were Mets fans who would have gladly gone to watch batting practice at the old ballpark and seemed just as pleased to have it presented to them at the new venue. Maybe some of them were the people I saw lingering atop the Upper Deck ramp the last Sunday of last September, not wanting to give up what was so familiar and reassuring. I hope those ramp people, wherever they were today, are happy in the new digs. I hope they find it to be home. I hope I do, too. I had a great big head start this morning and afternoon being there with Stephanie. Finally finding, after ten minutes of searching, the brick that commemorates our first date reminded me how happy I was to begin to share my passion with my then newly beloved. Our visit later to the Caesars seats brought me back to that August day in 1993 against the Rockies when we had a similar view from Loge: right behind the plate, the Mets in the foreground, us together. That was then. That was now, too. Shea La Vie — and Citi Field while we're at it. The end of Shea Stadium and the fanwalk that brought us there is retraced in Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.
With Citi Field sadly lacking an explicit tribute to half of the Mets’ forebears, I installed my own New York Giants homage atop my noggin for the day. FYI, in the interest of old-timey accuracy, the Dodgers didn’t wear white jerseys that said Brooklyn. That’s something you do in your road grays.
The 126th Street side of Citi Field can’t possibly go very long without a strike zone box painted on one of its walls. It’s too perfect a place for stickball not to. Any ball that bounces into the chop shops is a triple.
Our brick, in the foreground. It’s the one with a date and a score. …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. |
Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers. 
Amazin' Again: How the 2015 New York Mets Brought the Magic Back to Queens by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers. 
Volume I of The Happiest Recap: 50+ Years of the New York Mets As Told in 500+ Amazin' Wins by Greg Prince is available in print and for Kindle on Amazon. 
Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History by Greg Prince (foreword by Jason Fry), is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers. |
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