Ultimate Baseball Road Trip (8 page)

Shea was home to not only the Mets, but also the Yankees during the 1974 and 1975 seasons, as The House
that Ruth Built underwent a massive renovation. In 1975 the New York football Giants played their home games at Shea too, making Shea the first facility to house two MLB teams and two NFL teams in the same year.

Shea played a starring role in three of the most unusual doubleheaders in baseball history too. During the inaugural 1964 season, the Mets and San Francisco Giants played a nine-hour and fifty-minute double-dipper, the longest in baseball history. The first game must have seemed like a breeze after the second went twenty-three innings, spanning seven hours and twenty-two minutes. The Giants swept the twin bill. More than four decades later, another oddity took place at Shea. On April 15, 1998, the Yankees were forced to play a 12:05 p.m. game against the Angels at Shea after a beam fell from Yankee Stadium’s upper deck. That evening, the Mets hosted the Cubs. Both New York clubs won. And finally, on July 8, 2000, the Mets hosted the Yankees for an afternoon game before the two teams traveled across town to play a night game in the Bronx. The split-venue double-header was the result of a rainout at Yankee Stadium in June. The Yankees won both games by identical 4-2 scores.

Later in the 2000 season, the Mets and Yanks met in the World Series for the first time ever. The Yanks were again victorious, as Bobby Valentine’s Mets fell in five games, but not before Yankee hothead Roger Clemens threw a broken bat at Mike Piazza in Game 2 at Yankee Stadium, precipitating a benches-clearing brawl.

The Mets nearly made it back to the World Series in 2006, but the Sons of Willie Randolph fell to the underdog St. Louis Cardinals in a seven-game NLCS.

Kevin:
So they’ve been managed by Willie Randolph and Yogi Berra.

Josh:
Yeah, and Casey Stengel and Dallas Green too.

Kevin:
Sounds like somebody has a bad case of Yankee-envy.

Josh:
Yeah. But the Mets had Joe Torre first.

Two of the more riveting postseason games in baseball history took place at Shea. Both were extra-inning affairs won by the home team. The first occurred in 1986 when the Mets shocked the baseball world and ruined Josh’s adolescence by coming back from a two-out, two-strike, no-one-on-base, 5–3, tenth-inning deficit to win Game 6 of the World Series against the Red Sox. Car horns honked jubilantly throughout New York as Ray Knight streaked home with the winning run after Mookie Wilson’s groundball went through Bill Buckner’s legs. Two days later, the Mets won their second World Championship.

Josh:
And that’s all we’re gonna write about 1986.

Kevin:
I thought you’d be over that incident, you know, with the World Series wins since.

Josh:
A true Red Sox fan never forgets.

Kevin:
You should really get some counseling or something.

The other extra-inning beaut was in 1999 when Robin Ventura hit a “grand slam single” to propel the Mets to a Game 5 NLCS win against the Braves. The hit ended a five-hour, forty-six-minute affair that took place in a steady rain. With the bases loaded in the bottom of the fifteenth, Ventura smacked a ball over the right-field fence. He made it only so far as first base, though, before being swarmed by ecstatic teammates. Because he never circled the bases, he was credited with a single and only one RBI. Had Ventura touched all four, the hit would have been the first walk-off “grannie” in postseason history. Now that’s what we call “taking one for the team.”

Now that they’re playing at Citi Field, the Mets hope to pen a whole new chapter in their postseason history books. We’ll be interested to see if such a return to glory prompts Mets fans to look a bit more kindly on a new park that made such a lackluster first impression. Perhaps then they’ll start filling the Citi Field stands and maybe, too, they’ll stop referring to the park by the vulgar nickname (rhymes with “city” field) by which it has come to be commonly known.

Rather than experiencing an attendance bump upon opening their new yard, the Mets saw their attendance precipitously decline during Citi Field’s first few years. They drew nearly fifty thousand fans per game during the final season at Shea Stadium in 2008, but attracted only thirty-eight thousand during their first year at Citi Field. By the time this book hit bookstore shelves a few years later,
the Mets were struggling to attract thirty-thousand fans a game. The team’s poor performance on the field during this time partly explains the fall-off. And the bad economy does too. But we suspect Citi Field’s high ticket prices have also scared many working-class fans away. And we’re not just talking about the posh seats on the first level. Most of the second deck/Club Level seats cost more than $100. And many of the third deck seats, which sell for about $20 or $30 at some parks, cost as much as $77 (2011 prices). Heck, a home run territory seat, some four hundred feet from home plate, is priced at $98. Now, we understand that Mets owner Fred Wilpon was one of the victims of the Bernie Madoff investment scandal, and we realize that Citi Field cost a fortune to build, but you’d think the Mets would take a good look at their one-third-empty park and recalibrate their prices.

The takeaway for road trippers is that you won’t have trouble securing really good first or second deck tickets to this park. Face value isn’t cheap, but on the plus side, you won’t have to pay a surcharge on the secondary ticket market as you would in, say, Boston or Wrigleyville.

The first several rows of the lower bowl incline at a gradual rate, and then as the row numbers increase, the slope of the bowl rises more dramatically. This allows for a still-close view for those standing atop the bowl on the open concourse. Another positive thing is that the overhang of the Club (200 and 300 Level) deck does little to detract from field level views.

As you might expect, all of these infield seats provide premium views. They were built and priced with the thinking being that they would be owned exclusively by season-ticket holders and corporations, but we found many still available for single-game purchase via the Mets website a few days before our visit. The cost—between $126 and $440 apiece—priced us out of the market, though. We’re writers, not stockbrokers.

These seats located in the uppermost rows of the sections just past first base (Sections 109–110) and third base (Sections 125 and 126) may be the best you’re willing to shell out for. Their cost varies, depending upon the quality of the Mets’ opponent and the time of year, but they are always under $100.

Note to the Mets: The baselines extend between home plate and either first base or third base. These seats are deep in the outfield corners. Calling them “Foul Line Boxes” would be more truthful. But we still wouldn’t recommend them.

Because the right-field seats are tucked beneath the second deck, which overhangs the field, we only feel comfortable recommending these seats to people who happen to be nearing the end of their Claustrophobics Anonymous programs. This is a great opportunity for such folks to see if they’re really cured. But seriously, the second deck seats upstairs in right-field homer land are much better. We do, however, recommend the low-numbered rows of Section 103, since their seats aren’t smothered by the deck above like the other seats nearby.

Sections 140–143 in right-center aren’t enclosed by an overhang, but they’re very far from the plate. Section 143 is
positioned behind the two bullpens, making it that much harder to stay involved in the game.

The home run territory seats in left aren’t tucked as dramatically beneath the second deck as the ones in right are. But due to the deck’s looming presence we only recommend Rows 1–8.

We’ll give the Mets credit for this much: They minimized the potential obstruction posed by the foul poles by lining up wide stairways directly behind them.

The Excelsior Level houses both 200 and 300 Level seats. The 200 Level extends only from third base out to the right-field foul pole, while the 300 Level spans the entire park, save for the open portion in center field where the scant view of the world beyond is obscured by billboard-sized advertising. The 200 Level seats (Sections 201–244) hang out over the lower bowl, providing amazingly low and close views. We wished they were available for single game purchase but knew that even if they were, they would be beyond our humble means.

These seats sit atop the narrow 200 Level and are slightly tucked beneath the overhang of the third deck. The views are not negatively affected by the overhang, and if anything the shade created by the upper deck is a bonus. This is the place to be on a hot day. Section 306–308 along the outfield foul line should be eschewed in favor of infield seats in Sections 311–328 or home run territory seats in right (Sections 301–305). We really liked the view from this overhanging right-field perch, where the deck extends over the field of play, a la old Tiger Stadium in Detroit. The view seems much closer than from the second level homer land seats in left (Sections 334–339). In fact, this so-called Pepsi Porch in right is probably the best value for the money at Citi Field. We highly recommend sitting out there.

As is also the case at the new Yankee Stadium, the upper deck seats are accessible by a semi-open concourse that allows Promenade Level strollers to either head down the stairs to their 400 Level seats or up the stairs to their 500 Level seats. If you’re a ball hound, set your sights lower. You won’t see too many pop-ups flying into this uppermost deck, not even fouls straight back.

The views from the 400 Level are a lot better than those from the 500 Level. The 400 Level seats are much closer to field level and there are far fewer obstructions to block the view than in the 500 Level. But the difference in cost is significant.