You’d think a fella would know better. Your intrepid columnist has been down this road before and gotten burned, but some lessons come hard. Back in 1999, he left a famous playoff game early in deference to a pre-scheduled family function: yes, I missed the Todd Pratt moment of the Todd Pratt Game. I heard the end on the radio on the way home.
On April 26, 2016, I was in attendance at the second Citi Field Bark in the Park game of the year. That’s the event when dog-loving Met fans can bring their best friend to a game. It’s a really neat idea. For a lark, my nephew Jim – with whom I share my ticket plan – decided to bring his dog, a goofy standard poodle named Oliver. We knew what the ultimate prize was: not only would we get to go to the ballpark and watch a game with the dog at our feet, but if we got there early enough, we would participate in the dog parade around the warning track…on the field. Yes, I would set foot on the track where Curtis Granderson leapt and caught flies during the playoffs, where Carlos Beltran roamed briefly, where Jose Reyes’s triples alighted. On the field. So we brought Oliver, resplendent in a repurposed Free Shirt Friday tee. On this drizzly Tuesday, we waited outside the bullpen gate for what seemed like an eternity while the tarp was removed from the infield. Finally, we moved into one of the few areas of Citi Field I’d never been, a corridor between the home bullpen and the erstwhile Mo Zone, now called the Honda Clubhouse. As we waited to move forward, the evening’s starting pitcher, Bartolo Colon, came strolling past us to begin his pre-game warm-ups, with pitching coach Dan Warthen and bullpen coach Ricky Bones in tow. My night was made, right there. Eventually, we were able to make our way through a series of doorways and out onto the green, green grass. Jim tried to keep Oliver in check, but he’s a dog, y’know? Let me put it this way: I’ll never be able to look at the Gulf sign on the right-center field fence in quite the same way ever again. But it was awesome to be down there & checking out the low stands, the area behind home plate and the dugouts. If the night had ended there, I would have been a happy man, but we also got some Mets baseball coming, too!
Jim, Oliver and I made our way up to the Pepsi Por-…err, sorry, Coca-Cola Corner and settled among the other canines plus humans. It was odd to have the focus be on something other baseball up there, but you had to have your head on a permanent swivel or the dogs would go nuts on you. The game wasn’t great. Colon wasn’t sharp and he wasn’t even funny. He let up a run in the third, mainly due to some boneheaded fielding by Wilmer Flores at first base. In the fourth he gave up a two-run homer to Ivan DeJesus, Jr., whose father was a particular Mets tormentor back in the late ‘70s. For the Mets’ part, they kept putting leadoff hitters on and leaving them there. It was cold and damp in the stands, the dogs were restive and the crowd nudgy. Jim and Oliver left after the bottom of the fifth. In the sixth, the Mets put on what constituted a rally for this evening: first and second, nobody out. David Wright hit a long fly to left, advancing Granderson to third. Michael Conforto, masher of all he surveys, popped up to shallow left this time. Neil Walker then hit a fly to deep center. Well, that’s it, I thought. That’s gonna be their best shot all night. I was chilly and tired and besides, it was now 9:15 on a school night and I had a good hour and a half drive ahead of me. So I up and split. I made my way down to the field level, catching glimpses on monitors where I could. I made a pre-emptive men’s room stop and headed out of the Rotunda, listening to the dulcet tones of Josh Lewin describing a leadoff strikeout of Flores to start the bottom of the seventh. As I got down to the gate, I heard Juan Lagares walk. I lost contact at that point between the park and my car. I finally arrived at the vehicle, put the key in the ignition and flipped on the radio just in time to hear Lewin braying “Tie game! Yoenis Cespedes has hit a three-run, pinch-hit homer!” In rapid order, then, there was a Reds pitching change, a Granderson triple, a strikeout and a Wright base hit for the ballgame.
While it was a fun ride over the Whitestone, I’m still kicking myself.
Follow me on Twitter @CharlieHangley.
I enjoyed the story.
Serves you right for leaving early.
I can relate. Having to get home in NJ from Flushing is noneasy feat, so I often leave before the game is over. When I lived on Long Island and then in Manhattan I never left a game before the last out.
I was at the Mike Piazza vs Trevor Hoffman homerun game. I was with a friend who was sick as a dog but wanted to try and finish game. We always stayed till last out. He was shaking so much, he finally decided he could not finish. As we walked to car, Piazza hits the homerun. I never let him forget. .