Game 11: New York Mets

On Sunday, we took a break from exploring NYC to head to Queens to see the Mets play the Reds. For those of you who aren’t big baseball fans, the Mets are the non-Yankee New York team. They are the Clippers to the Los Angeles Lakers. The fans consist of those New Yorkers who don’t want to root for the Yankees, the proverbial favorite to win the World Series every year. This group of fans always seems to be rooting for the underdog, and for the last 20 plus years, this has been the case for the Mets. So we headed to Queens, accustomed to rooting for our own underdog, the California Golden Bears, ready to see the Mets whomp the red hot Reds.

Outside of Citi Field

We get off the subway and head toward the 4 year old Citi Field.  The stadium was finished during the height of the bubble, which could correlate to the large cost of the stadium ($1.5 million).  While the stadium is new, it shied away from the small town ballpark renaissance that has occurred in Pittsburgh and Baltimore.  Instead it went for size and grandeur.  The outside of the stadium is beautiful, with nods to old Ebbets Field (former home of the Brooklyn Dodgers) and Shea Stadium (former home of the Mets).  Once we entered we found ourselves in a beautiful rotunda dedicated to Jackie Robinson and home of the Mets museum, which had a lot of neat memorabilia from the Mets of the past. 

The inside of the stadium holds a lot of fans, close to 50 thousand.  However, much of the stadium is a tiered like a skyscraper and it was hard to find a seat without a roof unless you go the top deck or the ridiculously expensive bottom deck.  And tickets aren’t cheap.  Those top deck seats run at 40 bucks a pop, which we managed to get for $30 off of a scalper.  We knew we must have been paying for the luxury of the sunshine.

Jackie Robinson Rotunda

Once we started heading to our seats, we weren’t too surprised to see a decent amount of seats empty, since ticket prices were so high.  However, it wasn’t too long before we found where everyone went: the Shake Shack.  The Shake Shack is a burger joint that serves as the model for all other burger joints.  As California natives, we love our In-N-Out, but the Shake Shack sparks a debate over which burger is better.  And New Yorkers love their locally founded chain.  Citi had a Shack inside and it had at least 100 people waiting to get their hands on this juicy burger.  By far, the longest line we’ve seen for food anywhere.

At our seats, we had a decent view of the field, but the stadium was nothing too spectacular.  It seemed like a modern take on the old multi-sport areas. There were large amounts of billboards out in the outfield, and airplanes flew by overhead over 20 minutes or so.  The people in the seats in front of us would try to name the airline that was flying overhead.  At least it was keeping them entertained.

The line outside Shake Shack

The game wasn’t anything special.  The most exciting thing of the day was watching Votto (Reds First Baseman) go 3-4 to raise his average to .366.  The Mets seemed tired, David Wright didn’t hustle, and the Mets lost 3-1.  The game and Met experience was one of the worst of the trip, and we would soon see how it compared to the Yankee experience.