I’ll be at (or am at) Citi Field for Opening Day. Follow Ceetar on Twitter for interesting tidbits, Citi Field changes, Mets observations and thoughts from inside the stadium. ( Also like Optimistic Mets Fan on Facebook.)
A Brand New Beer, Have it at Citi Field
Blue Point Brewing Company has a new beer. It’s a White India Pale Ale and it’s available at Citi Field starting on Opening Day. It’ll also be available via cans in the summer. (So will Blue Point Toasted Lager and Blue Point Summer)
Here’s the description of the beer via Blue Point:
European-style white ale that finishes like a fresh American IPA. Malted and unmalted wheat, west coast hops, and Belgian yeast give it a perfectly balanced character with less bitterness than traditional IPAs. 40 IBU, 6%
Mets Add More Food Options to Citi Field
There are some tasty new options at Citi Field this season. The winner to me was the Buffalo Dog available at Box Frites. It’s an all beef grilled hot dog topped with Buffalo blue cheese sauce, pickled carrot, and celery. The veggies provides some nice crunch and cooled down the spice in the buffalo sauce.
Another tasty treat was the 7-1-Ate Special that’s in the Promenade Club. Despite the lame name, it was pretty tasty. The only thing I’d say is there was just too many different things on it. It has hot or sweet Premio sausage, split and grilled, topped with a hash brown, fried egg, slaw and pepper hash on ciabatta.
For dessert I had a fried apple crumb with caramel sauce, also from Box Frites. This one is pretty self-explanatory: It takes like a delicious apple crumb pie with caramel sauce.
There were some other delicious things out there too, and I have no idea if anything will be removed from the menus, though I suspect there will be. Keith’s Mex burger will still be around, as will the Pastrami. Check out some of the other blogs (On the Black, Daily Stache, Tedquarters, Metspolice, Faith and Fear in Flush, Mets Today, Metsmerized Online..and probably a handful of others I’m forgetting that were there) for different writes up, or head to Citi Field and explore for yourself. My full gallery is here. Opening Day is only 9 days away!
Mets Add New Craft Beer Options
Last night was a preview event for the new food options at Citi Field for the 2012. I’ll get to some of that in a different post, (Or you can check some of the other obvious places, such as the confluence of all Mets and Sandwich news, Tedquarters. Spoiler alert: We both agree on what was the best new food option.) First off, the beer changes!
The Citi Field Beer List lists Blue Point Lager and Blue Point Toasted. Those are actually the same beers as far as I know. It’s Blue Point Toasted Lager. One has a star and one does not, so I think this means it’ll be available at both the craft beer stands and at some normal places. (Catch of the Day is where it’s been) Another weird one is Goose Island Sum Blonde Ale. I don’t think Goose Island makes a blonde. They make Goose Island Summertime, which was occasionally available last year at Big Apple Brews due to it’s Anheuser-Busch/InBev distribution.
Yes, craft beer stands. Located near sections 105 (That’s by the World’s Fare Market), section 127 (Near the other foul pole) and in section 413 (That’s the Promenade food court area) of the Promenade Level meaning we don’t have to go downstairs from the cheap seats to get good beer.
Real craft beers that weren’t on the list last year, or were only available in the Delta Sky 360 Club (The Ommegang may still only be there) include Blue Point Summer, Blue Point White India Pale Ale (This one’s a new one, premiered March 29th, 2012), Ommegang Abbey Ale, Redhook Pilsner, Six Point Sweet Action, Sierra Nevada, Magic Hat #9, and Widmer Drifter Pale Ale. Also new is the expanded line of Shock Top ales, the Lemon Shandy, the Raspberry Wheat, and the Wheat India Pale Ale.
I’m still going to do a full analysis of Citi Field on Opening Day to take in the options and confirm this list. Having a craft beer stand is an excellent idea, and having three of them even better. I’m happy with this expansion, but I also hope this is a first step and not a final idea. The list has 12 stars on it representing the beers available at the craft beer stands in either cans or drafts. I imagine some of the more seasonal ones will rotate out, like Blue Point Summer, but the others include Shock Top, Leinenkugel Summer Shandy and Blue Moon, which are macro brews. Also included are Anheuser-Busch/InBev distributed Goose Island IPA, Kona Longboard Lager, and Widmer Drifter Pale Ale. The real expansion is the Blue Point brews, and that’s great. It’ll also be nice to be able to have Magic Hat #9, Sixpoint Sweet Action and Sierra Nevada outside the club areas. Sixpoint has a large line of cans available these days, so hopefully more of those start showing up.
Angels Add Local Craft Beer
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are adding four craft beers from two different local breweries this season. This is nice to see, especially that the manager of premium services at Angels Stadium says it was his number request last year.
I’ve been harping on the Mets for their lack of publicly available local craft beer. Last year they cut out the local Brooklyn Brewery beers present in previous years. Now one of the only beer not distributed byAnheuser Busch is Blue Point’s Toasted Lager at Catch of the Day.
The Mets and Aramark have been pretty good at adding new food and drink at Citi Field, and there’s a preview event tonight featuring at least the new foods, so I’m going to reserve further judgement on the Mets beer situation until Opening Day. Still, it’s nice to see the craft beer revolution catching on in baseball stadiums, even ones in California.
What Was Left Of Shea Stadium
Dueling Brews: Another Beer Idea For Citi Field
This is an idea I’ve been bouncing around for a while, and then The Crazy Mets Fan made a comment on Twitter to Matt Cerrone that he should get a pub in Citi Field called Cerrone’s with some nice IPAs. I chimed in (and you can follow me on Twitter here) that they should do dueling brews.
This started as a thought about a variable beer menu at Citi Field. The best beer bars are not the ones with a good selection, but the ones with a rotating selection of seasonal and small release beers. The idea was solidified while following the Giants Super Bowl run this year. Brooklyn Brewery in New York and Anchor Steam in San Francisco made a wager on the NFC Championship game that the team’s brewery that lost would serve the beers of the other brewery. Brooklyn beers flowed in San Francisco, and it was wonderful.
So why not do the same thing at Citi Field? We know which teams are coming in for each homestand. Why not have two rotating taps, one serving beers local to New York (minus the Bronx) and one serving beers from the city of the away team. These two taps would ‘duel’ until one was empty, becoming the winner. I’m not quite sure what the beer would win besides an announcement that it’d won, but it’d be a fun way to introduce Mets fans to the brews of their enemy and provide the beer-loving masses, who’s size is underestimated, with some nice beer to drink while watching baseball.
The first homestand features the Braves and the Nationals. I don’t know what the availability and distribution rules are for acquiring beer from far away places, but Terrapin is an Atlanta brewery that you can find in New York, so it’d be a good choice. Washington DC is a little tougher, and perhaps the toughest baseball city. Baltimore has some options, but that’s a different team. Shenandoah Brewing bills itself as Washington DC’s only brewery, but as far as I know they don’t distribute to New York. Flying Dog is nearby, but it’s based in Maryland and equidistant to Baltimore. On the other hand, AL is junior league baseball and it doesn’t really count.
I think this would be a cool idea. Citi Field needs more distinctive beers outside of the Anheuser Busch distribution agreement and why not tie it to what’s going on on the field? That’s why we all go there after all.
Some Thoughts on Dynamic Pricing
The Mets now have their dynamic pricing guide online on Mets.com. Tickets first went on sale to certain presale codes Monday. I got Opening Day tickets at face value, but just three hours later they were $10 higher. Btw, at 10am today the Mets blogger presale begins. More details here.
This ultimately sucks, although it won’t quite hurt the true fans. Dynamic pricing does not change the prices of packs and plans. If you want a particular promotion or banner day, you have an incentive to buy ahead beyond just getting better seats. As more fans get exciting about specific events, the price will go up. This will have a fairly catastrophic effect on suddenly popular games. Clinchers, Dickey’s first home game after his no-hitter, and late season divisional matchups during pennant races can suddenly become very expensive. Staying ahead of the hype will save you money.
On the flip side, it’s unlikely tickets will plummet that far for unwanted games. The Mets set up an artificial floor so that a fan will never pay less than a season ticket holder paid for that section. Reading between the lines to me means that it’ll never be less than the 10% discount they get. Prices are fairly reasonable for value games as they are, but it’d be nice if the more expensive games become affordable if the Mets are eliminated early or if the weather is supposed to be really bad.
Another interesting use for dynamic pricing is tracking the popularity of games. It can give us insight into tickets sold that previously only the Mets knew. If you want to know how Banner Day is doing for example, you can check out the prices for that game against a similarly valued game and see if it’s inherently more popular or not. As we get a feel for it, we’ll probably be able to tell how close it is to sold out, even within specific sections.
I’ll also be curious to see how the secondary market reacts. Sites like Stub Hub and Seat Crew that deal in second-hand tickets may not be able to keep up with the fluctuations. If a game suddenly takes off in popularity, it will take a while for people to unlist and relist their tickets. If ticket prices drop, the secondary market will suddenly be overpriced. This may also kill day of game sales. If fans really want to go to a game, chances are the prices will increase past the secondary market…unless it’s raining.
Regular Season Ticket Pre-Sale
A special pre-sale for blog readers starts Wednesday at 10am. Follow this link and use the code HODGES to purchase tickets to any regular season Mets game. Obviously Opening Day and the Subway Series are the ones guaranteed to sell out, but you might want to get a jump on other games as well. You never know what supply and demand will dictate closer to the day of a game, especially with the new flex pricing.
My suggestions are to buy for Banner Day and the bobblehead (Edgardo Alfonzo) of your choice. June 3rd is the Mets Hall of Fame induction for John Franco. Complete promotional information found here.
Pondering The Delay in the 2013 All-Star Game Announcement
This post is dedicated to the memory of Gary Carter, a true Mets All-Star.
Mets Police has been pondering why there has been no official announcement of where the 2013 MLB All-Star Game will be played. Unofficially it’s going to be at Citi Field, but that news is been pending for a long time now, and it’s past the time we usually have these things announced.
I had speculated that it was related to first Bud Selig’s pending renewal of his term as commissioner, and then not wanting to announce things during the Giants Super Bowl run. Now it’s almost Spring Training and we’ve heard nothing.
But something else is happening in 2013: interleague play and realignment. This will probably add more interleague games, and all year long. Perhaps Major League Baseball is considering changing the All-Star Game from an AL versus NL to something akin to the NHL with captains picking teams. Or perhaps they’ll go with something they did for the Home Run Derby a couple of years ago; teams based on country of origin. Coincidentally 2013 will also be the third edition of the World Baseball Classic, so the game will already be in an international mode.
I have no idea why something like that would need to delay the announcement though. Maybe they just want to have more details about it when they do eventually let us know.