Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Citi Field and Floogin McMoron

My dad's friend gave him tickets to see the Mets. Two tickets per game, four games over the course of the summer. So, last night was the game. Neither one of us really wanted to go. For starters, the weather continues to suck ass. The forecast was for rain at night and we didn't want to get stuck there during a rain delay or, worse, stuck in the rain without umbrellas.

On top of that, the Mets are not the Mets. They're the replaceMets. They have more injured players than starters right now. Two starting pitchers, one relief pitcher (set up man, very important), one catcher gone, one just came back, their centerfielder is gone and he was having a stellar year, their shortstop, who leads off and is a key catalyst in more than half of their wins (their winning percentage in games he gets on base is insane) is out, their first baseman, who is their clean-up hitter, is gone, their back-ups are hurt and, fuck, no need to continue. They have one of their core players still playing. It's a minor league team and even then, some of the players are AA level, not AAA.

Still, we decided to go. The train was at 6:36 so we hightailed it to the station and just made it onto the train before the doors closed. As we approached the first stop I realized I left the tickets on my desk. Not the train tickets, the fucking baseball tickets. We got off the train at the first stop so that we could turn around and go get the tickets and my dad, being the smarter of the two, suggested we call my new tenant to see if he was still around. He was and he said he'd bring us the tickets as soon as his wife dropped his daughter off.

We waited.

He finally showed up around 7:00. We got to the stadium as the first drops fell. As we sat down the rain started coming down. We watched the morons in the grounds crew mangle the tarp covering. Twice. By the time they finally removed and recovered the infield the third time, the rain stopped and the game was set to continue. Problem was, all that time trying to cover the field resulted in a soggy, unplayable infield. We were forced to sit through a rain delay that was more than twice the length of the rain itself as we watched them re-sand the infield.

The game sucked, they lost. The stadium is amazing. Perhaps it's a result of the newness but it was fucking nice. Looked clean and shiny and the staff were all so polite and courtious. Opening doors, greeting you, wishing you well. Even the crowd was a bit classier than normal. It was a very pleasant, extremely enjoyable experience and I'm actually looking forward to taking my son in August - we've got insane seats for him, complete with waitress service.

As a result of my dad being a bit on the tired side, we didn't get a chance to walk around the stadium and check out the restaurants in center field. Some stellar food options exist but this wasn't the night to check them out. My dad said he doesn't think he'll want to go again so I might take my wife or pass the tickets along to my associate who was so fucking cool about bringing us the tickets.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yawn.........

Floogin McNoogin said...

someone once said "you can't please all the people all the time."

allow me to take that a step further. I could give two shits if some anonymous poster didn't find my most recent post interesting."

Anonymous said...

some people have no class-
here Floogin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4-gsdLSSQ0
me loves baseball.

no-one you know said...

I think baseball is a game i could get into if i were an American. I like soccer and cricket.
If you offered to take me to a baseball game, i would definitely go. If i were in America. In New York.
I am in a renewed "Floogin-fest" if you must know, and my blog is back also. A new post will be there in a an hour or so (if you were interested)

Floogin McNoogin said...

glad to have you back. Baseball is a relatively slow moving, boring game but there's something about being at the stadium that makes it much more appealling.

I'm very interested in the blog and I'll be heading there shortly.

no-one you know said...

I would love to go to a football game (soccer) just for the atmosphere, but i always have a sneaking feeling that some hooligan ragamuffin would....well...stab me.

And that kind of ruins it for me.

Don't check out the blog yet...let me get my "groove" back first. As i said...an hour or so.

Unknown said...

I dunno Floogin, there are no cheerleaders at a baseball game. There are some at a football game, however.

Baseball is way to slow for me as well. I can't bear to watch it, it's so slow.