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.