I went to the game on August 17. The first thing I did was walk around the stadium to check out the vaunted “new additions,” which did not particularly impress me (see the blog entry below). I went to the game with my daughter Sonia and her boyfriend Chris. We had $25 Promenade tickets I bought on StubHub for $9.93 each. This is really the way to buy tickets now. Help your fellow Mets fans stuck with tickets they don’t expect to be able to get rid of.
It was very hot and humid and there I was up in the Promenade eating my Blue Smoke Kansas City Ribs, which I’ve decided are probably the best thing to eat in the stadium. Although it wasn’t physically pleasant, I was enjoying the feeling of a hot humid night up in the Promenade. The crowd around us had a kind of languid restlessness and I felt as if I was back in unairconditioned ‘30s or ‘40s summer New York, sitting on the rooftop or the fire escapes of my apartment building with all of my neighbors and all of their families. You saw all kinds of people, of all ages. There was a family that kept passing around a truly adorable little baby for everybody to kiss, there were several couples in their seventies in our section, there was a five-year old boy with his dad next to me who was a truly gifted dancer, and there was my daughter and her boyfriend who were doing some timid and decorous adolescent kanoodling. Everybody was relaxed and sweating but enjoying the breezes you got so high up, just under the moths that flit through the bright black stadium-lit sky. I liked this whole scene. Here was some real old-time Brooklyn, Mr. Wilpon.
The game was eh, you know what the game was. There were a couple of moments of baseball pleasure. I liked Cory Sullivan getting some hits and seeing Gary Sheffield drive in our daily run. Daniel Murphy made a couple a fine plays and grabs which kind of shocked me. And although he didn’t get anybody out with either of his throws, I got to see just how strong Jeff Francoeur’s arm actually is. Most of the game, however, was depressing and lousy, but in the peculiarly festive heat, no one acted as if they particularly minded. A couple of times, when batters came to the plate, I got a little nostalgic looking at their statistics. I thought of how there were periods in Mets history when I was impressed by someone hitting above .270, with more than 10 home runs for the season. I could call that the Joel Youngblood line. We have a few guys in that range. It’s funny how it has now become almost impossible to remember or imagine having four players as good as Beltran, Reyes, Delgado, and Wright in your line up.
As the game wore on, I wanted my “Lazy Mary” and my “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” but I was in no mood for the Arpielle race to Citi Field and they must have sensed that no one was in the mood for an eighth inning sing-a-long. So they just played that “She’s a Native New Yorker” song from back in the Son of Sam Days. It was nice to hear it, even if I’ve never thought it was much of a song. Sitting up on the roof with my neighbors, I felt that we were all native New Yorkers and how what that sometimes involves is having a philosophical attitude towards a hopefully temporary surrounding lousiness.
One nice thing that happened near the end of the game, and something that I think typifies that rooftop philosophical attitude, was that there was somebody named Andy Green who came to the plate as a pinch hitter making his debut with the Mets. Boy did we give it up for that kid. We cheered every ball in the way that people used to make fun of Mets fans for doing back in the early sixties when the team was no good. When he walked, you might have thought he hit a grand slam home run if you were listening to the 10,000 people who remained. It was wonderful. We lost, 10-1. Atlanta and Philadelphia were about to come into town. I felt as if we were deer in the middle of the road. I don’t like the sense of just not wanting to be embarrassed. But I also don’t want the Mets to be embarrassed. I want this absurd season to end without a massacre, without the thumbs coming off of our backup shortstop. I want harmony and equanimity. And next year I want something different. But for the time being, for this evening that was here and will never come back, I was content with the heat and the lights and the human warmth.
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Along with my distinguished fellow bloggers Greg and Jason from Faith and Fear in Flushing and Caryn from Metsgrrl, I’ll be reading at the MetStock event at Two Boots Tavern on the Lower East Side on Tuesday, August 25 at 7. You can read about this terrific event here.
I’ll be reading from my new book The Last Days of Shea which will be in the publisher’s warehouses on August 19 and in the Amazon and Barnes and Noble warehouses very soon after that, and in bookstores very soon after that. If you want to pre-order the book for $11.53 from Amazon, you can do so here and you’ll have it next week. I’ll also have copies for sale at Two Boots and will be happy to inscribe them personally.
