Back in July, when my boss gave us tickets to a Dodger game, he mentioned that any Met fan who did not check out Citi Field, was seriously missing something unique. I decided that I would take him up on his advice and go to a ball game, when I booked flights to NY.
A bit of back story. My whole family were big Met fans in the 60's. It was the days when Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman and the amazing Mets in 1969 happened. We had sat through the downs of that entire decade and thankfully, that season was definitely an UP! When I met my future Husband in North Hollywood, he mentioned that he grew up in Fresno. As a point of interest and not like I expected him to say anything, I said that the only person I knew from Fresno, was Tom Seaver. He then said that he went to school with him and when I finally did visit his apartment, he showed me photos in his year book. Very cool. :-)
So we share our interest in Tom. Due to this fact, he was all for going to Citi Field. I mentioned to my brother that I was going and he asked if he could come along with us. Sure, why not...
We get to the place where the old stadium was (which is now a parking lot) and we see this incredible building. Folks, it seems to have everything. Shops, restaurants, clubs, secret entrances for VIP's, it was all there. We took a look around the Met museum and saw some really cool stuff, like the two World Series trophies! That made my day.
We got to our seats and they ended up being handicapped accessible, which made them so easy to get in and out of. There were only two rows and then you could walk right to the refreshment stands behind us. They were high up, but there was the top section above us, so we were better then we could have been. We were on the third base side and could see the action clearly. It wasn't the primo seats that my boss gave us for the Dodger game, but they did well.
It was Star Wars night and so every inning, we were subjected to video clips and Darth and the gang walking around the stadium. Surreal, to say the least. :-)
I had the Met equivalent of a Dodger Dog and shared my soft serve ice cream, which came in a helmet, with my Hubby and I was a happy girl.
We lost 3-2, but we were in the game, right to the last out.
We could have had worse.
My boss gets major points for his good advice.
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Photos:
1. A very
happy me.
2. Hubby and
my brother in
our seats.
So many of these new stadiums are beautiful buildings with all sorts of amenities (restaurants, shops, museum/historical displays, etc.) and well worth the effort to check'em out at least once. I've heard many great things about the new Mets stadium when listening to either the Phils' broadcasts or the Mets games themselves on 'FAN (660 AM) out of NY.
ReplyDeleteBut I absolutely refuse to call these new places by their corporate names! I know those corporations paid millions for the naming rights and I assume announcers contractually HAVE to use the name, but they didn't pay ME any of that so I figure I can call'em what I want. So I just call the places by the team names.
The local news radio station just refers to the local sports stadiums generically as "the park" (baseball), "the stadium" (football), and "the center" (hockey/basketball). I don't blame them because as a radio station they have their own paying sponsors, many of which are competitors of the stadium sponsors.
If I'd had my way—and this was my own unique idea, I never heard anyone else mention it—I might have called the Phillies new stadium "Ashburn-McGraw Park" after long-time player/announcer Richie Ashburn and the great Phils/Mets reliever and local media personality Tug McGraw, both fairly recently deceased in 2004. Then fans could have used the acronym of the stadium name to call it "The AMP!" lending an image of crowd noise and excitement. (Or I would have been very satisfied to simply call it "The Vet II" in honor of veterans.)
At any rate the Phillies park is great too (and the only one of the new generation of stadiums I've visited—though not much—so I can't compare). Of course, recent Phillies fortunes of the last five years might have a little something to do with the ambiance and overall impression as well. Maybe the measure of a good stadium is if you can still enjoy a meaningless September game.
I still miss the old Veterans Stadium, though. It may have been a "cookie cutter" multipurpose stadium, but we went to a lot of games there when I was a kid. We always sat way up high, the highest seats we could get (the infamous "700 level"—though much more infamous for Eagles games really) because the tickets were $2 for adults, 50¢ for kids.
Sigh, those days are gone forever, over a long time ago.
(Apologies for rambling on so.)
Our seats were $28, plus a $4 convenience fee. I absolutely refused to spend more then $100 for a ball game. Seriously! :-)
ReplyDeleteI remember going with my family and the tickets were something like $6. We brought our own food and it was an event that came out to something like $36. Like you, the nose bleed section was our place, too. Memories...