adventures at Shea stadium

I went to my first major league baseball game. It was between the NY Mets & the DC Nationals, which just happened to be the same teams that Dimitri & Craig saw in Florida for spring training. Coincidence? I think not. It also happened to be opening night, and even though there was nobody there (fine, there were almost 20,000 people there but most of the seats were empty) we were sitting in what you might call “nosebleed seats.” The highest tier of the stadium, though not the highest row of the tier. We were right behind (and above) home plate, so we could see all the action regardless.

The national anthem was sung by the lead singer of Queensryche. It was honestly the worst thing I’d ever heard. But I’m glad it happened; if my ears hadn’t been torn off, they would have been very cold like the rest of me. My feet almost fell off from the 28 degree weather, but unfortunately they survived long enough to feel cold, tingly, pain.

In actual baseball-related news, it was the Mets’ starting pitcher’s very first major league game. It was very cute. I was excited for him. He almost pitched a no-hitter, which roughly translated, means he was doing a super job. He did, however, hit 2 batters with the ball; 1 in the shoulder & 1 in the head (doh). Someone else broke a bat whilst hitting the ball, which is so cliché, it was actually cool. Another cool thing was the score. It was 4-4 going into the 10th inning (and those of you in the know are aware that baseball normally has 9 innings only), but by the end of that inning the score was 9-5. Nationals won. Mets fans were very upset.

The best play of the night was definitely when one guy suddenly gained super powers. His new powers enabled him to fly like Superman. It must have been a deal with the devil or something, because while these new powers allowed the outfielder brief airtime to get an out, they did not allow him to land anywhere besides his face. It was very O’henry-esque. After successfully catching the ball (and not dropping it after landing entirely on his face), he just lay there in the field for a few minutes. Naturally, this worried the other players, and lots of people ran onto the field to make sure he was ok. We in the stands figured that the catch was just so awesome that it killed him. In the end, he wasn’t dead. He either kept playing or was taken off the field. I couldn’t really tell who was who from our lofty seats.

Because it was a baseball game, and because he is who he is, one member of our crew got very drunk. He drank so much, I bestow upon him the new title of Captain Drunko. Very entertaining, Captain Drunko would alternate between yelling, cheering, and booing. Pretty much just copying the general mood of the stands. He would also disappear for long periods of time. This happened multiple times, and as he got drunker and drunker, we were more & more worried each time that he would be beaten to a poor bloody pulp. Our concerns were amplified after a drunk Mets fan gave up all hope and left early. He had been sitting in front of us, and so had heard Captain Drunko’s pro-Nats-anti-Mets yelling (as everyone around us did). As he passed us, he said “Good luck with that whole HIV thing” and a few other statements of this nature that I didn’t hear, but left expressions of shock & appall on the rest of my cohorts’ faces. Captain Drunko miraculously lived through the game.

There were many distractions. There were advertisements everywhere. One of these ads was for a certain airline named after a Greek letter. They now offer “multiply” flights daily. I’m not going to fly on a plane that can not employ people to properly proofread the stadium ads. Between every play there would be loud music and cartoons of what I honestly believe were instant replays. For example, at one point someone got caught stealing a base so he went to jail. Another guy turned into a pile of ice cubes and a penguin sat on him. Since I was so high up in the bleachers, I had to rely on these cartoons to keep me informed of the proceedings down below.

Then there was the jumbo screen. I was never on the jumbo screen. One time the camera crew did come very close, but did not look at us. Even though Craig & I were willing to kiss for the sake of baseball entertainment, they did not put us on kiss-cam. This is because Craig was wearing a Nationals hat, and they do not like to encourage this kind of behavior at the Mets’ home stadium.

All in all, a fun night. We saw 2 rats in subway stations on the way home, and one was really big. We got home around 1 am (thanks to the long game & long, long trip home) and promptly fell asleep.