Citi Night: A Met Game Odyssey – Part The First

I used to be a partial season plan holder at Shea Stadium. I bought the seats in 1992, splitting a weekend plan with a friend of mine: he took Saturdays, I took Sundays. Just in time for The Worst Team Money Could Buy. Isn’t my timing exquisite?

I loved those seats. Mezzanine level reserved, section seven – right behind first base – first row. It was great. Right on the aisle, so I had unfettered access to a hot dog stand, a beer vendor and a men’s room. If I walked toward home plate a couple of sections, I could get myself a hat or a tee-shirt. I had a rail to rest my chin on when the game got boring or – more often – disastrous. My Dad and I would make our way at about 11:30 on a Sunday morning and be there in time for batting practice: there wasn’t a lot of traffic for either New York stadium in those days, so the George Washington Bridge/Harlem River Drive combo was usually blessedly empty.

I kept those seats right up to when the Mets started getting good. I kept them through the Strike Blight of ’94 and the tail end of the Dallas Green reign of error. I kept them through the dawn of Bobby Valentine and the thrills of ’97 & ‘98. I got giddy when I put in my order for playoff tickets in ’98 and I was sent ducats for every possible home contest, including any possible play-in games. That turned out to be a dashed hope, of course, but they actually got me into playoff games for the first time ever in ’99.

By this time, I had met and was courting Sarah, the woman who would become my wife and, well…priorities shift, y’know? I actually left the “Todd Pratt” game before “Todd Pratt” because my future in-laws were throwing us an engagement party that night. Life happens. It really didn’t work financially or time-wise to keep it going. And so, those Sunday mornings with my Dad dwindled down to a precious few and I gave up those magical seats before the 2000 season – again, timing, remember?

Fast-forward to 2006. The Mets are now running away with the division and about to go to the playoffs for the first time since that 2000 year. Through a series of minor miracles, I secured tickets to every post-season home game – I’ll write up a column detailing that one at a future date – and Dad and I were on again, with higher stakes. I had forgotten how much I’d missed that old grey hull during the six years I was gone. I had forgotten how electric it was on cold October nights. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the experience of going to a game – especially when there’s much on the line.

My wife is fabulous. Finding herself at a loss as to what to get my father for Christmas that year, she came up with a genius idea: a Shea Stadium Saturday plan for 2007! I absolutely adore my wife. So, Dad & I were back on again. The seats weren’t quite as prime as they had been in 1992 – the team got wise and priced us right out of there – but they were still pretty terrific. Upper deck, section 16 – hovering over third base – again, first row on the aisle. We enjoyed those seats into the middle of May, when Dad started losing interest. I could get it: it was a hassle on his 81-year-old bones to truck out from Jersey. And it was a rainy summer that year, so that made it worse. The last game we went to was Mets near-loss to the Yankees on a drizzly afternoon. After that, he announced he didn’t want to go anymore. I was able to find partners for the rest of that damned, doomed season and used the tix right down to the bitter end – I’m choosing my words carefully.

Just before Christmas, Dad died.

I renewed the tickets, anyway. It just didn’t seem right to let ‘em go at that moment. I would use the ’08 season as a tribute, all the while steeling myself against the same kind of disappointment from the year before. I went in halfies on the seats with my cousin’s son Jim and we soldiered on through the season which, of course, turned out to be a lower-case replay of the year before. I was there for the penultimate game at Shea. I’d had a prior commitment on Sunday, so I could only Shea goodbye via radio. My old grey friend fell that winter.

I renewed the tickets for Citi Field and bought a Walkway brick in tribute to my father. I thought it would be nice, and it was.

If we were getting something shiny and new, I wanted to be there as quickly as I could. Sarah researched the new layout and found what we thought were comparable seats to my third base perch at Shea.

Citi Field is a beautiful ballpark. The food is fantastic, far better and with a lot more variety than the Aramark slop I’d become used to across the parking lot. The seats are a bit more comfy, as far as ballpark seats go and the rest rooms far more plentiful and modern.

HOWEVER…

We made a gross miscalculation about the seats. They turned out to be in left field – right on the break where the left field foul line becomes left field. In fact one seat was in foul territory, one in fair. About halfway up the Upper Deck –ooops, excuse me: “Promenade” – and in the middle of the aisle. Gone were my easy access to beer and bathrooms. Gone was my railing to lean on. Something they didn’t tell us was that we wouldn’t be able to see all nine players at the same time from there. Gone was the left fielder: he had become merely a rumor.

And the 2009 team was horrid.

That tore it. The cost of lousy seats to see a lousy team and have a lousy time conspired with some familial circumstances to have me drop my tickets for the 2010 season. I was fed up. Fed up with the ineptitude of the player-personnel decision making, fed up with misleading injury reports, fed up with being pandered to by the PR department, fed up with hearing one thing and experiencing something entirely different. “I refuse to give my money to an organization that continually lies to me,” I railed whenever anyone asked me if I still had my seats.

Away I stayed. Until last Friday…

Tune in Thursday to find out what happened.