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Shea and Citi Fun Facts of the Game

Some Things I Learned At Shea For Last Night’s Game.

1.Jose Reyes is so fast, it took the scoreboard operator three batters after he tied Roger Cedeno’s single season Mets record for them to announce it on the board. (They were ready instantaneously for his record-breaking steal of third) Not to mention that he stole those bases after striking out.

2.There is going to be an Orchard Seating section at Citi Field. It will be in right center field, right next to the new Home Run Apple.

3.Some of you may have noticed that the right field side of Citi Field facing the subway seems to be more finished than the rest of the ballpark. Not surprisingly, this is where the Mets offices will be.

4.The right field ‘excelsior seating level’ will actually jut out over right field.

5.There will be a seating section directly behind the two bullpens.

6.The seats, particularly the ones for the special people behind home plate, are comfortable.

7.The neon ballplayers that adorn Shea Stadium will make the trip to Citi Field, at the very least residing in the home clubhouse.

8.I never knew that shouting ‘drop it!’ at a fielder fielding a pop-up worked, but apparently neither did Luis Castillo because when Geoff Blum dropped David Wright’s pop-up Castillo was still basically on first and had no chance to get to second before Blum picked it up and threw him out.

9.It was inconsequential, and probably mostly unnoticed, but when Alou threw the ball to the plate in the 5th inning, David Wright pretending to grab it and faked a throw to second to try to keep Gonzalez from advancing.

10.If Mota makes the postseason roster, I may cry. How can he explode so thoroughly after two outs? I strongly suspect that he’s no good after one inning, and maybe not on consecutive days either.

11.There are only three places in the entire stadium where you can buy a knish, but I still think it’s the best concession food I can buy.

12.If the Mets were to win the World Series, they could have a Ticker-Tape Parade with torn of 2007 pocket schedules. There are boxes upon boxes of the things in the ticket booths, and that’s just Gate E!

13.One of the ball-boy’s jobs is to run the umpires out their water bottles. I just find this funny.

I’m going to stop at 13 for now, I’ll probably make a longer post about my trip to the “Citi Field Preview Center” another time. Of course, I didn’t get to ask questions because it was 7:10 and I didn’t want to miss the game.

Oh, and if you haven’t already seen it, Texas won the first game of a double-header over Baltimore 30-3 setting a modern day record. It was a come from behind victory, and Littleton earned the save for the Rangers.

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Ticket Woes

Feb 26, 2007 01:27 PM

It gets harder and harder to get the platinum level type ticket every season. Last year I managed to have tickets for opening day, and all three subway series games. This year I have 3 tickets to opening day, and 3 tickets to one of the Subway Series games. I also have 4 tickets to a second subway series game, but that’s only because I took the financial hit and bought a Saturday season-plan which included one.

Sadly baseball is becoming, at least here in New York from my perspective, a sport for richer folk. Now I don’t remember the days where you could see a baseball game for less than the current price of a mocha at Starbucks, but even at 24 I can see the ever increasing cost of being a fan.

I understand that a fan has to remember that baseball is a business, but I think that _baseball_ needs to remember that it is also a game and a passion of a lot of ordinary, average people. It’s understandable that baseball tries to make money, by offering corporate boxes, charging more for prime games, and the like. There are millions of us out here that are fans that cannot come up with hundreds of dollars to see a couple of games, but are willing and enthusiastic about spending what money we have on the sport we love. Making it hard for the average fan to buy a cheap ticket, even to deep bleacher seats just alienates us, and mutes our interest in the game.

Some people have wonderful memories of paying quarters to get into memorable games of baseballs rich history, remember getting into the bleachers just so they could see some of baseballs great players play. Others listen to stories of fathers, or grandfathers, or uncles as they recollect some of the exciting games they went to, even if they weren’t rich, while we listen on, remembering just how much to costs to be able to goto a game today.

With the construction of Citi Field, and others like it, the philosophy of having no bad seats is a wonderful one, but if the trade off is the cheapest ticket being $20 or $30+ dollars, I’d be just as happy watching it at Shea. For the true fans, it’s not about the seat, the concourses or the view. It’s about the game in front of us.