Shea Demolition

Though there's almost nothing left inside the stadium, it still hasn't been demolished. There's a great site documenting the demolition that's worth checking out. The picture above is from January 31, and there are some pretty good ones of the site in the snow two days ago.

an unofficial Shea Goodbye

I was out of town this weekend, and so missed this informal gathering to say goodbye to what's left of Shea, though many thanks go to Mr. Rosen for passing along the link. The last time I took a good look at what's left of Shea, it was merely a TADIUM, as the letters for SHEA and the S at the beginning of "stadium" had already been dismantled. It was a pretty funny sight, as you can see on the right.

Was anyone reading this blog at the event on Saturday? How was it?

Carlos and David's catch, up close

I've written here plenty of times about how I love Carlos Delgado and David Wright's tradition of having a catch out in front of the Mets dugout before home games, after the National Anthem, while the starting lineups are being announced on DiamondVision. Our seats under the net behind home plate afforded me the best view I've yet had of their ritual ball toss.




they start out pretty close to each other, just lobbing the ball.



slowly, they move further apart, making the tosses into throws.



Carlos keeps moving back toward first, and David keeps moving back toward home, until they're really throwing the ball and shagging the throws.



the game winds up with David throwing running shots at Delgado, and ends quickly when they get the sign that they're about to be called onto the field and scamper back into the dugout, just to run out again with their team when we start cheering for our 2007 New York Mets.

I don't know why I love minutiae like this, but I bet it has something to do with my father, who rightly pointed out once Mota came into the game that David was firing the ball back to him on the mound after outs, a departure from the normal toss from third baseman to pitcher-- and then rightly pointed out that now, for the rest of my life, I'll pay attention to the way third basemen throw the ball to the pitcher after an out.

so close

...and yet so far.

one of the things you see when you're a mere 30 feet from the on-deck circle is how close they all are to each other. on TV, it looks like the guys on deck are miles from the plate, but when you're right behind them, it's obvious that they can see quite a bit about how a pitcher's looking from that vantage point. they're right there.



in the bottom of the 9th (when I realized I had little time left to take pictures!), Ramon Castro watched Damion Easley at bat. you can tell that Castro is big on TV, but in real life, it's even more self-evident why his clubhouse nickname is Shrek.

Easley flew out to left field.



Shawn Green swings the bat on deck as Castro takes his turn at the plate.


Shawn Green always watches a pitch or two leaning on is bat that way in the on-deck circle. he also goes through a series of stretches in pretty much the same order every time, just like almost every other major league hitter.



Castro struck out, and Green took his place at the plate, but suffered the same fate. Ruben Gotay never got to bat in the 9th.

as you can see, we had great tickets to Thursday's day game against the Pirates. though I'll recount the very annoying loss in a traditional game day post, the seats afforded me the opportunity to take many more pictures than usual-- more, I think, than should go in one post!

the problem with digital point-and-shoot

I love our Nikon D600. I love the immediacy of digital photography, the ability to edit on the spot, and to record many of the smaller events in life where I wouldn't have bothered to take a film camera. Never the less, shutter delay makes it not the best choice when you want to take many shots in a short period of time.

Like when you have seats so close to home plate you can snap the players coming back into the dugout after an inning in the field.



for instance, you might press the shutter release when Oliver Perez and David Wright are looking up, but not have the image captured until they've looked down at the grass.



you might try for Jose Reyes and Ruben Gotay and end up only with the latter, and blurry at that, because you were trying to catch the both of them looking up and didn't pause for focus.


of course, the inability to really control light and the angle of the sun might make it difficult to see Damion Easley's face anyway.



but you can count on Shawn Green to look up when he hears a nice Jewish girl calling his name!

Jose Reyes Spanish Academy

I know the quality is terrible, but this is probably my favorite part of every home game (that doesn't happen on the field, of course).




turn it up-- it's all about the sound on this.

Glavine vs. Moyer, Redux

Game 56: Phillies 4, Mets 2
34-21 for the season


this was the first game of the first sweep of the Mets this season. of course we didn't know at the time that the Phillies (against whom we were 3-1 this season before this series started, and who are now leading the series 4-3) and Mets bullpens would seem to trade ability levels for the duration of the series.




our bullpen has been fantastic all year, but fell apart in every game of the series, in a fashion much like the one you see above.





and we just couldn't hit. as my dad said, bad pitchers pain their fans with wrenching innings, but a struggling offense is wrenching to watch through the whole game.




though the game turned out to be disappointing, the evening was perfect-- warm but not hot, light breeze, no humidity, and a ballgame with my sister after dinner in Flushing.

I love being there before the game starts, seeing the end of the teams warm ups. It's also really fun to watch the progress of Citi Field behind the outfield, and the many many cranes that make up the view over the bleachers now.




David Wright stretches in left field, while Jose Reyes walks back to the baseline after a sprint to center.




David and Carlos Delgado have their routine catch on the grass between their dugout and the first base line just before the game starts. I still love this.




I love the bench above the right field fence from which the guys in the bullpen watch the first couple of innings of each game. I'll really miss that bench when Shea is gone.




a little league team and their parents and coaches enjoyed the game in the boxes next to ours. we actually had $9.00 Upper Reserve seats, but the park was half empty and we were able to sit in the first row of the Upper Boxes just to the third base side of home.




when the game went into extra innings, the Party Patrol broke out the banner. one imagines this was a ploy to keep fans in their seats and cheering loudly after 10pm.




check out the R2D2 mailbox right outside the stadium! it's commemorating the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars.

Mets-Yanks brings out the demonstrative in fans

more freaky than awesome.


more awesome than freaky.

off night

Game 43: Yankees 6, Mets 2
28-15 for the season

If I'd known Tony Randazzo was behind the plate on Sunday night, I would have lowered my expectations for victory. to the extent that guy has an eye, it's one trained to see calls as they go against the Mets. never the less, I was so excited all day on Sunday-- like a kid on Christmas Eve, eager with anticipation of the excitement to come. I practically skipped to the train.

dang! that's a lot of people!

others were not as successful at fighting the urge to bring a broom as I was.

CBN's tickets were in the Mezzanine, just down from third base-- a good vantage point, with a direct view of the scoreboard and into the Mets dugout. I'm so annoyed with myself because I keep forgetting to bring the small binoculars I bought for our safari in Africa to the ballpark, so I've now put them in the bag I bring to games, but I would have loved to have had them on Sunday night for the view I had of the Mets bench.





the apple, up for the 7th inning stretch (though was also up earlier, in the 2nd, when David Wright hit a home run for what proved to be his only hit of the night).

CBN and I went to Mets games together in high school, and I was honored that he asked me to join him at his first game of the season on Sunday. it was great fun to be at a game with another real fan, someone who pays attention to the game and the team, and also just to be there with him-- it's been more than a decade since we'd been at Shea together, and it was fun to be there with my old friend again.




the good time we were having in the stands was not represented on the field on Sunday night. in truth, though I was hoping for a sweep, I didn't expect it, even against the struggling Yankees. and that's a good thing, because my expectations would have been severely disappointed. Maine struggled from the beginning, and the five Mets pitchers we saw by the time the game was over collectively had a horrible time with falling behind in the count-- they just could not pull ahead, and the Yanks were able to hit them as a result.





the Mets have a hard time against rookie pitchers, because they rely heavily on tape to prepare. this game was no exception-- the Yanks rookie pitcher Clippard held the Mets to 1 run on 3 hits in the six innings he pitched.



as much as I hate the Yankees, a real ball fan has to have respect for the great Mariano Rivera, the best closer ever to play the game. I am a real ball fan, and a lover of pitching in particular, and I have enormous respect for the talent in Mariano's arm.




this may be the last time I see Rivera pitch live, and it was a pleasure to watch (including the ultimately useless homer from Easley).


there was some predictable Mets/Yanks fans scuffling, but that'll get it's own post, hopefully tonight.

putting the band back together

Game 40: Cubs 5, Mets 4
26-14 for the season


the day started out poorly for me, with my stomach being messy, which meant I wasn't able to get to Shea until a little after noon, at which time it was too late to get onto field level with my nose-bleed ticket. though I walked the length of the park on the next level up looking for my dad down in the orange seats, I was unsuccessful. I guess we'll have to try again later in the season.





this must have been a give-away at some point in the last 15 years. it was pretty cute to see a grown man carrying it.

though I wasn't able to get onto field level, I did spy Willie having a conversation with some folks out the side of the dugout 45 minutes or so before game time.

the field was messed up by the rain yesterday and then the playing on soggy ground, so the choir that sang the National Anthem was forced to do it on the dirt.

our seats were where I usually sit, in the upper deck as close to home as possible. SRL and I were there when the game started, but when KJB showed up he was really freaked out by the height. rather than force KJB to look away from the game the whole time, we set out to find seats closer to the field.

after being kicked out of the Lodge boxes all the way in right field, we settled in the back of the section, a little closer to 1st base. I remembered why so many people think of Shea as a crappy ballpark-- in most of the Mezzanine and all of the Lodge sections, the overhang means you lose sight of the ball when it goes up in the air. since I normally sit in the upper deck, I don't face that problem, and so have great sight lines and not many complaints about the stadium.

we missed a little more than a half-inning before getting settled again, which caused me to stop scoring the game entirely-- missing so much made it seem futile. I'm now a bit sorry I stopped-- it would have been fun to get the bottom of the 9th down-- but it doesn't really matter. it was the first time I'd been to a game in a loooooong time with folks who aren't really invested in baseball, and so it seemed better to hang out with them than to cling to my desire to score the game.

Carlos Gomez, just a bit older than 21, is having the time of his life in the show. He'd picked up his first two RBIs the night before.

BFFs for more than half our lives: we've been having so much fun putting the band back together since they both moved back to NY last summer.

at the end of the 8th, it was looking like the Mets were going to lose 5-1, and SRL had to head back to the city for a work function. KJB and I moved down to the boxes at that point, and so were in a great position to see David Wright get a hit and an RBI in his first major league appearance as a pinch-hitter ever, and to watch Carlos Delgado hit the ball that drove in the winning run of the game. it did look as the ball was moving off of Delgado's bat and toward right field that it was going to be an out, but the Cubbies second baseman dove for it and missed...



...and the crowd went wild!

the team was too excited by the awesome win to do any kind of formal lineup-- the jumped all over each other and then off the field. it was the perfect way to end the last game before the Yanks come to Queens this weekend.

later on that night, after a yummy dinner and lots of fun hanging out with my cousins and their awesome partners, JRG and I rested up for the excitement of the weekend series against the Yankees. her papa is pretty excited about this series... his mom kept teasing him last night that you could say "M, how's the baby?" and he would say, "the Mets are going to bury the Yanks this weekend!" which may be true, but in fairness, he'd be saying it right after having given his daughter the perfect swaddle and while cooking dinner for all of us.

in the stands

one of the particularities of attending most games at Shea is the sound of a cow-bell at important moments in the game. the cow-bell is weilded by a guy we all know as Cow Bell Man. he happened to be in our section for one of Pelfrey's few strikeouts on Saturday, and the sound is unmistakable.



the "yeah" at the end of this video is LHJ, excited by the strikeout.




the inning over, Cow Bell Man left to bring his sounds to other sections.




ha! I'd never seen this shirt before, but I love it. click on the picture for the hilarious detail.




for the All-Star Game? for President? I'm confused.





I do love my new sweatshirt.

Wednesday afternoon in Flushing

Game 26: Marlins 3, Mets 6
16-10 for the season

I'm feeling shy about writing this post. my father gave me an incredible gift at the game-- faded copies of the letters he wrote to my uncle J during the '85 season. as every schoolchild knows, my father is a celebrated author in certain (very specific) circles, and one imagines that's at least in part because he writes so beautifully about baseball. I hold no illusions that what I'm doing here is publishing in any real way (hell, I barely even edit these posts), but these letters my dad wrote-- so richly described, so beautiful-- were written on a typewriter. sure, he used an automatic corrector (is that what they were called?) but that he used a typewriter means really no editing-- and the product is never the less amazing. I harbor many of my father's traits, but sadly an impressive innate writing ability is not one of them.

so I can say with confidence that when I talk about a game, I don't do it with the level of expressive beauty that my dad does. never the less, I have the urge to do it, and I know that's in some part genetic. I know that because it's now clear to me, having read the letters, that the very way I think about baseball is a mirror of my father's way of thinking about the game, and that all of my preferences are his. it's also now clear to me that my father's and my preferences are the same as those of my cousins and uncles, because they learned baseball together from their aunt and grandfather. we even have our own way of scoring the game, a system I've never seen anyone but a member of my family use. one of the things that I've so far enjoyed this season is talking about it with my cousin M, and realizing how similarly we think about the team and the game.

after I'd read a few of my dad's letters and expressed my gratitude to him for giving them to me, I called my cousin M to tell him about what I'd been reading. "What an amazing thing for us to have," he said. and he's right-- what an amazing thing to have, an insight into a great baseball mind that happens to be my fathers (and M's uncle's), and a time machine back to being 8 years old. I'm about to start reading them through a second time, and scanning them so we'll have digital versions forever.

as for the game, it was great, even if we didn't pay that much attention to it (well, as little attention as two people who are scoring every play can pay). I could pull out my scorecard and tell you all about it, but the truth is that the pleasure of it was being there, talking about the players and the plays and baseball in general with my dad. he asked me some good questions that will prompt other posts, but if you need details of the game, check out the scorecard. my only real disappointment is that I forgot to bring my camera.

perspectives

I'd bought $9 seats upstairs for Saturday's game.



this is Carlos Beltran, digitally magnified as far as my camera will go, from the area SJ and I sat in two weeks ago, and where our tickets were for Saturday.

turns out LHJ had run into the ex-cheif at the firehouse, and he'd offered his season tickets on field level, a few rows back of the Mets dugout. this is David Wright batting as we saw him from those seats, with just 3x optical zoom.

the awesome seats and awesome sun and awesome game made us very happy.

a perfect day at Shea

Game 16: Braves 2, Mets 7
11-5 for the season

a glorious day was had by all at Shea on Saturday-- unless you play or root for the Atlanta Braves. but even those folks should have been able to appreciate the first beautiful day of the year at the ballpark; it was sunny, warm, and in all ways a perfect day for a ballgame.

I bought tickets in the cheap seats for the game, but LHJ went to the firehouse before I got up in the morning and returned with a friend's season ticket seats for the game. The seats are 11 rows back of the Mets dugout on Field Level, and watching the game from that perspective is always a thrill-- even upstairs in the ballpark, it's easy to forget that those are real live people playing the game, and they all look so very human from just a few feet away.





Jose Reyes leads off first at the top of the 2nd inning. He stole second base shortly after I snapped this shot.

Moises Alou has a weird stance-- his knees both lean in, bowl-leg-like. I won't criticize, though-- he's hit quite well from that stance so far this season.

Mr. Met came to do a between-inning spot for 1-800-Flowers just two rows back of us.

I'm not sure why Mr. Met was playing peek-a-boo with that guy, though.

Oliver Perez winds up.

this girl, sitting just two rows in front of us, held up her glove at every pitch. hope springs eternal, especially with those still young enough to wear a pink glove.

Willie Randolph keeps a close watch on the game.

I think I'm the only white girl in New York who thinks Jose Reyes is more attractive than David Wright. But how can you resist that kind of tallent combined with that smile?? Wright never smiles on the field.

the Big Apple out of the hat after Ramon Castro's homer in the 5th. Castro won our immediate love and respect by having the Imperial March (Darth Veder's theme) from Star Wars as his batting music.

Perez jumps over the baseline when he's leaving the field after every inning. This is his jump, taken to thundering applause when he left the game in the 7th. I was happy for the way Ollie recovered from his (terrible) last start, and that the fans were willing to forgive him that game as long as he came back and pitched like we know he's capable of pitching. He did, and got a fantastic reaction from the crowd to his performance.

It's such a treat to see Howard Johnson back in a Mets uniform, coaching 1st base. He tries to pretend that people aren't cheering for him as he walks back to the dugout, but with the number and volume of the "HoJo! HoJo!" chants, I can't imagine that he misses the love he's getting.

I love discovering new things in the ballpark, like this lame-duck sign.