metsgrrl.com

RANDOM SEARCH QUERIES.

2008-08-19T17:08:00Z

Yes, it’s time here at MetsGrrl to fall back on that tried-and-true content strategy of all lazy bloggers everywhere, a list of recent search queries. To be fair, I’ve never done this before (except the one time people without any sense of irony were looking for what was on Barry Zito’s iPod), and to be honest, TBF and I do this at home all the time for fun. But it’s a busy week, I’m not going to make it to the game tonight, and we’re getting ready to go to St. Louis and Kansas City on Thursday, so this is what you get for fresh content today.

what can’t you bring into shea stadium
can you bring wine into shea stadium
beer garden near shea stadium
where to stay when going to Shea stadium
things to do around shea stadium nyc
places to drink near shea stadium
bringing children shea stadium
balboa versus the earth slayer*

*Not to get all Pozterisk or anything, but this one is all my fault. I used the title of this obscure Springsteen song as a headline for a John Maine outing last year ago. It popped into my head as I was watching, because I was thinking of David and Goliath which seemed cliched, so I went for what I know. Everyone is searching for it now because that song was the song that Springsteen’s former manager wanted him to sing at the Super Bowl in the 70’s, right about the time he was on the covers of Time and Newsweek. Now that Bruce is actually appearing at the Super Bowl, it’s getting mentioned in a few articles. Since the song was never released and there are very few circulating live versions, people are out looking for it on the internet. If I had it, I’d probably have hosted it somewhere just to get the search queries off my site.

citifield ticket prices
citi field pricing
partial ticket plans citi field
mets partial season tickets- any word on getting into citifield?
Citi Field seat relocation
“citi field” bring own food
will anyone really call it citi field?

It doesn’t surprise me that I get all of this traffic because it’s not like the Mets are being forthcoming. And, while I’m sure it keeps me on the SNY blacklist, I do have an opinion on this subject.

the shoes that MR.MET wears
mr met birthday party
mr. met porn*

*Seriously.

ford commercial of derek jeter
derek jeter edge
Ford Edge commercial baseball*

*I was this close last Sunday to registering several URL’s related to this subject and parking the domains with some ads. However, my highly-paid in-house legal counsel strongly urged me not to do so.

I’m still thinking about it.

how far is an amtrak station from shea stadium
mezzanine overhang row shea starts
when is shea stadium imploding
what cant you bring into shea stadium
detailed seating map of shea
can i bring bottled water into shea stadium*

*This is one of the most popular queries, after people asking about food. I can understand the food ban to a certain extent (although in this economy, if MLB wants people to continue to bring their families, they better start rethinking it pretty soon), but it seems absolutely unconscionable to disallow water. It’s WATER for crying out loud, a substance that makes up 70% of the human body. I cannot understand places that do this.

what types of food does shea stadium offer?
pictures of hot girls in ny mets clothes
why does david wright wear an orange shirt
david wright pink jersey
what do girls wear to a baseball game
girls in skirts at stadium*

*Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

what’s the name of the song the new york mets play after take me out to the ball game
tour bus with tickets to mets game
“david wright” walking with a girl
girl hit by baseball mets
bus to Shea stadium from Albany
how long is the walk from shea stadium to LIRR
getting to shea stadium from port authority
what are seats you should never sit in at Shea
detailed Shea Stadium seating chart
Bag Check facilities Shea
bag check near shea stadium*

*Now you know these are Yankees fans running this query.

hotels near shea stadium near train line
Good places to shop around shea
7 train to shea gets near what gate
getting home from shea stadium to downtown
do people sit in Loge section at Shea*

*No, of course not. Those are professional seatfillers you see during games.

David Wright signing autographs for fans before and after games
best place to hang K’s at shea stadium
section 39 shea stadium good seat?
best place to get mlb autographs shea
camera policy shea stadium*

*The website says nothing (although I could swear it once said ‘no detachable lenses,’ more on that below) and if you call the Mets and ask them, they will tell you “no professional cameras.” Like the rest of the world, they have no idea what a “professional camera” is, and no one working security has a laminated chart denoting what constitutes a professional camera and what does not. I got an email once from someone who was told by the Mets that he could not bring in a 150mm lens at the very moment I was sitting at Shea taking photos with my 200mm - which I snuck into the 06 playoffs wrapped in butcher paper and with the words “Turkey Sub, $3.69” written on it (old concert trick) only to run into someone in my section with a lens that wouldn’t have been out of place in the photographer’s box, because I thought I had read that long lenses were disallowed. Seriously, unless you’re sitting right behind the dugout you’re not going to get anything worth selling.

what train goes to shea stadium from jersey city
walkway from shea stadium
parking hints for shea stadium
where the teams stay, Shea Stadium
wave banned at shea stadium*

*A girl can dream.

IRON CITY HOUSEROCKERS.

2008-08-18T16:56:00Z

Pittsburgh worried me, just like the Nationals worried me. These are the games that the 2008 Mets would typically lose, the games against the less-than-stellar teams who suddenly decide to sit up and fight because they are playing the Mets. The Mets, of course, not expecting this attack, are ill prepared. And lose. Badly.

Except this time, it was the Mets who decided to sit up and fight. Against the Nationals. And the Pirates. Brian Schneider decides to be a studmuffin and hit TWO two-run homeruns (and that PNC Park HR was not cheap).

I have taken a more cautious approach to this roadtrip. I don’t want to get my hopes up but I don’t want to be completely pessimistic either. On the other hand, TBF has been staying up late watching the Phillies out on the West Coast. I care deeply about these games, too, but my caring allows me to go to bed at a reasonable hour and not sit up until 2am glued to Gameday. TBF, however, cannot refrain from continual game updates, and has woken up me and the cat at least once. (Or twice. But who’s counting?) We found ourselves both entirely too wrapped up in last night’s San Diego game (OMFG Padres offense, where were you when we needed you)?

It is getting complicated now. TBF is rooting for the Brewers, because he hates the Cubs, while I in theory like the Brewers, but am not sure that I am ready to take a side in that fight. However, I can’t not root for Mike Cameron, which might be the deciding factor there. We are united in our rooting for the Rays, although I remained PERPLEXED IN THE EXTREME that I can’t get a goddamn Cliff Floyd Rays shirt. (Then again, it doesn’t seem that they sell player number shirts for any player, although they might at the stadium. Any Rays fans want to help a girl out?)

The concept of Triple Happiness used to be - Mets Win, Braves lose, Yankees lose. Now it’s Mets Win, Phillies lose, Yankees lose. Or is it?

I liked that Gary stood up for the fans the other day when discussing Mr. Glavine’s recent outing to the DL and how there were many of us who would be disappointed by the fact that we would not be able to see him come back to Shea. Keith stood up for Glavine, but Gary didn’t back down too much.

Things I am tired of: HEARING HOW FAR AWAY THE PRESS BOX IS FROM THE FIELD. Guys, get over it. It’s starting to be really unprofessional and incredibly whiney.

Braves at Shea tomorrow night. That phrase used to be more ominous than it is now. I hope it is These 2008 Mets coming into town to face them.

HAVEN’T USED THIS IN A WHILE.

2008-08-15T02:54:00Z

That’s more like it. Let’s win the games we can easily win and save our fight for when we need it.

It’s hard to think that there has now been a game where Mr. Brian Schneider is the official Boyfriend of the Game, but I think a 2-run HR qualifies.

FRIDAY NIGHT, MEZZANINE.

2008-08-14T14:53:01Z

A little bit of an experiment:

.
mezzanine, shea stadium, friday night from caryn rose on Vimeo.

Now you will understand the technical difficulties. Feeding 300 photos into iMovie and learning how to use iMovie and then encoding for the web took a little longer than I expected.

I’m hoping this is the kind of thing I’ll be really happy I bothered to document in five years.

I am considering buying a Flip for the last month.

BECAUSE WE HATE YOU.

2008-08-13T23:56:01Z

Scott McCaughey, rock dude, super sideman and leader of The Baseball Project did a Q&A on ESPN today. Most of it sucks, frankly, because the majority of people asking questions were European R.E.M. fans who had no idea what this chat was about - just that it was happening - and asked a bunch of idiotic questions that had nothing to do with baseball. (In that way I guess it wasn’t much different than your average ESPN chat, just more international.)

The reason I post about this at all this here is because of THIS:

Steve R. (Brooklyn, NY): So who’s your favorite all time player, and your favorite current player? And could you see writing a song about either one?

SportsNation Scott McCaughey: (6:17 PM ET ) Willie Mays is my all-time fave probably, and he got a song on Volume One. Current player, I don’t know, I’m still probing and examining them. Aaron Heilmann maybe?

Go ahead. What would you call a song you wrote about Aaron Heilman? (The title of this post is the title of a Young Fresh Fellows album, so it’s already taken.)

I DON’T WANT TO GO HOME.

2008-08-13T20:45:00Z

Here’s our current schedule for The Last Week Of Shea:

Monday, September 22 vs. CHC - Upper Deck 12 ($5!)
Tuesday, September 23 vs. CHC - Mezzanine 12
Wednesday, September 24 vs. CHC - Upper Deck 14 (again, $5!)
[Deliberately skipping Thursday.]
Friday, September 26 vs FLA - Mezzanine 12
Saturday, September 27 vs. FLA - Upper Deck 8
Sunday September 28 vs. FLA - still looking at options. People on StubHub are still smoking crack.

Are we the only ones this insane?

We were going to wait to buy the tickets for the Cubs series but, well, we couldn’t.

ON TOP OF THE SKY.

2008-08-12T13:30:00Z

It is unfortunate that the weekend I decide to do some photo-heavy posts is the one I run into technical difficulties, some of which I am still working through. The challenge with being a baseball blogger is that no one really cares about what you have to say about the game two days later. I could write the best piece in the world about a game three days ago and the attention span would be zero.

Saturday we got to the game early because I had some photos to take. Last year at some point, I toyed with getting the domain lastdaysofshea.com and doing a photo essay just of the stadium. Obviously that didn’t happen, but I’m trying as hard as I can to take as many photos as I can, even of what seems like the most insignificant things - as well as the significant ones. I am taking endless photos of Mr. Met. I am still trying to capture our favorite beer vendor and our favorite nut vendor. I still have to find a night when the Mets are on the road to go out there with a tripod and do my photos of the neon.

Saturday, however, was the night we finally made our pilgrimage to this spot:

...because I knew if I didn’t specifically plan to do it, it would never happen. As it was, there was actually a LINE of people waiting to take photos (TBF: “Because there’s *nothing else* for people to take photos of."), and I am now wishing that the woman who had the tickets right below the number would have gotten the hint and just moved, instead of leaning out of the way, annoyed, because she didn’t want to be in photographs taken by random strangers (no, she wasn’t leaning out of the way out of consideration).

I have a love-hate relationship with the upper deck. Unlike most of you, I didn’t go through those years where it was the only place I could afford to sit. I have some great memories of sitting up there, but it’s rarely been my preferred location. It’s not just because it’s far away - it’s mostly because of the idiot factor. It’s harder for me to concentrate on the game up there. Too many people, too much up and down, too many people there not really paying attention or caring about the game. I realized on Saturday night that that’s changed for me somewhat. It helps that our section has a great collection of people (and not just the resident characters); there are plenty of people who clearly have a Saturday plan and are there to watch the game and not sample every single type of food sold by every vendor at Shea.

And then there is the sky. You don’t have the same kind of relationship with the sky downstairs as you do upstairs. When someone hits a home run and you stand up, arms outstretched, it makes you feel like you own the world. The sky is an accessory downstairs. Upstairs, it’s your neighbor, as much as the guys behind you that you high-five with.

The Saturday photo set is here.

DSC_0429 [Flickr]

2008-08-12T06:51:19-05:00

metsgrrl.com posted a photo:

DSC_0428 [Flickr]

2008-08-12T06:51:05-05:00

metsgrrl.com posted a photo:

DSC_0427 [Flickr]

2008-08-12T06:50:49-05:00

metsgrrl.com posted a photo:

DSC_0426 [Flickr]

2008-08-12T06:50:32-05:00

metsgrrl.com posted a photo:

DSC_0425 [Flickr]

2008-08-12T06:50:16-05:00

metsgrrl.com posted a photo:

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES.

2008-08-11T13:42:01Z

The photos from the weekend are on a new memory card...which doesn’t work in my old reader.

Actual Mets content coming tonight. Please stand by. :)

THE BALLPARK AT ARLINGTON: REVIEW.

2008-08-11T00:26:00Z

I will qualify this review by saying that aside from the tour, the entire time we were in Arlington it was 100 degrees and I was a little bit dehydrated, despite having purchased a case of water when we landed in Houston. It’s just hotter than us New Yorkers ever, ever have to deal with. So if it is not as lengthy or detailed as other reviews, I apologize. For example, we didn’t make a point of entering the stadium from the home plate entrance. I can’t even tell you what it looks like. We just entered the closest entrance we found because we were hot, tired, thirsty and wanted to sit down.

The Ballpark at Arlington is about a 3 1/2 hour drive from Houston. So if you’re in town for a series, why not skip a day, rent a car, and drive to this suburb of Dallas? Even if the team isn’t in town (which happens, the same way the Yankees aren’t at home when the Mets are) there would still be enough to make it worth your while.

It’s located in the middle of nowhere. There are no stores or any kind of commerce in its immediate vicinity. We did find it easy to find and abundantly signposted, and there is commerce about a 10 minute drive away. It is across the street from Six Flags, and on the other side, the new football stadium. There are a couple of hotels in the immediate vicinity. (We chose to drive an hour back after the game so we didn’t have to do the entire drive the next morning.) The parking lots for those who aren’t season ticket holders or Lexus owners are very, very distant. They do run shuttles, but be prepared for a lengthy walk. There’s a parking lot map on the web site; it would do you well to study it and know where you want to park.

The outside of the Ballpark isn’t that impressive. Aside from a few faux-historical friezes, it seemed like Early 80s Suburban Strip Mall to me. Inside, however, is another story. I thought it was beautiful and majestic and felt like baseball. The full photo set is here.

I loved the Ballpark. I loved the Tiger Stadium-esque porch, the bleachers in the outfield, the exposed steel detail, the offices out in center field. I loved the tour even more. We are ballpark tour junkies. We take them in the off-season if we happen to be in a town that has a park we haven’t seen. After the grand disappointment of the tour in Houston, we were thrilled to have an enthusiastic, knowledgable tour guide in Arlington.

We drove up in time for the latest tour on game day - 2pm - and taking the tour on game day meant that we wouldn’t see the training room of the clubhouse. I’m told you don’t get to do more than walk in and walk out of those two rooms in any event. We still got to see the concourse, the underground tunnels, the tunnel to the dugout, the dugout, the indoor batting cages, the briefing room, the press level, and of course, a suite (in this case, belonging to the City of Arlington). The tour guide, Ed, was personable and knowledgeable. He was also, once upon a time, a Brooklyn Dodgers fan.

Our guide seemed disappointed that we didn’t have any questions - but that was because he told us everything we wanted to know! Even with a large group (we had a church group as part of the tour), he kept things moving and made sure everyone could hear.

Your tour ticket also you gets you into the Hall of Legends, which is a three-level baseball museum. The first floor has exhibits from Cooperstown (and considering that you are in Texas and not a lot of people there will ever make it to Cooperstown, it’s a good thing). The second floor is about Texas baseball, and has special exhibits (when we were there, it was the top 21 moments in baseball). The third floor is an educational center. Obviously we skipped the first floor and headed for the Texas baseball exhibit. It made our feeble Hall of Fame in the Diamond Club lobby look like the sad, pathetic gasp that it is.

In the outfield is an office building that houses the team’s offices, but also the offices of just regular normal businesses. On the ground level is a picnic area and a play area for kids, with a tiny baseball diamond. Rangers Captain (it’s a horse) is often found out there. It’s also where the access to the outfield bleachers is found. There’s also a nice statue of Nolan Ryan in the middle.

The ballpark was built before the HOK open-concourse standard was a standard, so while the concourses are open and airy, you don’t have a view onto the field. There didn’t seem to be any policing of the aisles between at-bats, but we were pretty far out. It might be different if you were sitting in the infield.

There is no retractable roof in Arlington. As per our guide, the people who owned the team at the time - including one George W. Bush - thought that baseball should be played outside. While I agree with that sentiment, when we were there, it was 99 at first pitch - which was 7pm. I can’t even imagine a 1pm game there in the summer. A local said, “You have to sit in the shade,” but I just can’t imagine being there in the afternoon in August.

The team store is spacious and has a player number shirt available for EVERY PLAYER. What a concept.

We sat on the club level, way out in left field. This is not where we would normally choose to sit. We also bought our tickets in advance, something we would not have done for Arlington - except that the day we were visiting was “Faith and Family Day” and there was a free Christian rock concert before the game. Research indicated that these games generally sell out, due to the concert, so we bought our tickets in advance. (If you run into this scenario, the concerts are held outside the park, in a field just adjacent, and before the game. So you can totally go to the game and not ever have to deal with it. Please don’t be offended, but this is not kind of thing at which a Jewish girl from New York is going to feel comfortable.)

Field level tickets are more expensive than you would expect, so we chose the club level. If I had to do it again, I’d go sit out in the porch if I had to sit that far out. The porch at least looked like a lot of fun. The Rangers bullpen is right in front of the porch, and the visitor’s bullpen is probably the worst I have ever seen, stuck in a gap between the field level seating and the bleacher level seating in left field.

The Rangers give out free tickets to the best sign, so people are encouraged to bring them and they’re put on Diamondvision. The result is a lot of great signs (and a lot of lame ones too - but more clever ones).

The official scoring is sponsored by - wait for this - Hooters. The incongruity of Hooters appearing on the Diamondvision five seconds after the Rangers finished welcoming The First Baptist Church of [insert city here] (they greeted 57 churches the day we were there) struck us as a little odd. They hand out ‘bingo’ cards sponsored by Hooters when you walk in, and the bingo squares are scoring options. Really seemed out of place.

There is an enormous Starbucks ad above the offices in the outfield. However, there is no Starbucks in the park (that we could find, anyway). The giant Frappucino in the outfield taunted us when it was 99 at first pitch (as per the clock/temperature underneath the sign).

I was told (by Mr. Lone Star Met himself) that the turkey legs at Arlington were a specialty. They also had garlic fries. By the time game time rolled around we were so dehydrated and hot that the last thing we wanted to do was eat, so unfortunately I cannot share with you the culinary delights of this ballpark. They did have Chicago-style hot dogs and the construction of same was enough to get TBF to reconsider his decision not to eat.

The in-game race event is the ‘dots race’ sponsored by the local bottled water supplier. It’s like the pierogie race in Pittsburgh where it starts on the screen and then finishes in the park.

Seriously, I’m not kidding:

A country song is played after “Take Me Out To the Ballgame”. However, I can’t tell you which, because that was the time at which we decided we had been hot enough, long enough, and given that this was a game we cared little about, made the revolutionary decision to leave early.

I really loved this ballpark and was just sorry I was too damn hot to enjoy it.

MINUTE MAID PARK: THE REVIEW.

2008-08-07T21:31:01Z

Minute Maid Park is located in downtown Houston. By “downtown” I mean it’s one of those areas that was formerly neglected, the original center of the city, and that the city is trying to revitalize. There are some residential buildings, but it’s mostly commercial, government, entertainment and hotels. Aside from after the game, the only people we saw walking on the street were the people who clearly were going to work at the businesses in downtown. We never felt unsafe - we had multiple offers of help the one time we stopped to doublecheck something on a piece of paper - but it does have a bit of an odd, semi-deserted feeling in spots.

The home plate entrance to the park is through Union Station. The park was built on the location of the old railroad terminal, so instead of just tearing everything down, they kept the station to function as a public space and an entrance to the park. It is one of two places in the ballpark you can still see the Enron logo:

Union Station is also where you will go if you are taking any of the ballpark tours, and is the location of the team store.

The most important part of the review is right here: You cannot bring ANY food or drink into the park. No water, no snacks. The guards aren’t searching your bags for contraband, they are looking for granola bars. If you think I am kidding, I watched a security guard confiscate a package of Twizzlers and a quart ziploc of homemade popcorn. It’s unconscionable that in Texas you can’t bring a bottle of water in - even in air conditioning, you need to hydrate. Rant over.

Photo Set 1
Photo Set 2

BALLPARK TOURS: We are ballpark tour junkies. We take them everywhere they are offered, off-season and during the season. For Minute Maid, we chose their “Twilight Tour,” which starts at 4pm. You can’t see the clubhouse or the dugout, but it does get you onto field level right behind home plate during BP, before anyone else is there. The tours are supposed to be limited to 50 people, and you pay more for this tour than you do the other standard tours.

The Twilight Tour was terrible for us. For some reason, there were two groups, and our tour guide was rushed, impolite, and was not very knowledgeable about the most basic things. Within the first 10 minutes of the tour, we knew we were in trouble:

Guide: “And over there is our railroad train, we have a conductor who drives it, it’s actually much larger than it looks, blah blah blah, and someone hit a home run into the train once and hit the conductor.”
TBF: “Who hit the home run?”
Guide: “I don’t know, but it was in a game against the Nationals.”

(BTW, all weekend we hoped we would sit next to a fan knowledgeable enough that they could tell us. We STILL don’t know who hit that HR.)

If it was just that one thing we could have forgiven him, but the entire tour was like that. “See those old houses over there? We actually had to move them when we built the ballpark because they have some historic significance. If you have extra time before the game you could go over there, there’s some kind of plaque that explains it.”
or
“Over on the scoreboard next to where it says ‘Minute Maid Park’ you will see a bunch of numbers, those are our retired numbers. We are retiring Craig Biggio’s number later this month.”

[Seriously. That was it. No mention of Nolan Ryan. No explanation of Jose Cruz. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Not even a token recitation of the Jackie Robinson story.]

We were rushed in and out of every place we were taken into, and the only thing that the guide bothered to take the time to tell us was his continual reminders that we should be quiet and we shouldn’t touch anything and we shouldn’t take anything - which I understand are needed, people are stupid, but everyone who worked at this ballpark was so incredibly polite, a “Please be sure” or “We’re getting this room ready for the game, so please..” or “I know it’s tempting but people are working so we’d appreciate it if you could be quiet.” would not have taken a lot of time and would have made you feel like customers and not burdens.

Of course, given all of those cautions, the one caution we weren’t given was that we weren’t allowed to cheer for the players when we got taken out to watch BP. As I mentioned in my writeup of the weekend, I saw Ryan Church in the dugout, and since I haven’t seen him in forever and was excited that he was suited up and hopefully going to take BP, I yelled, “Hey Ryan, you’re looking great!” and was immediately pounced on by two security guards and told I had to move away...away, when I was already, what 30 feet or more from the dugout in the seats behind home plate. I immediately responded, as politely as possible, that I had never been to the park before, didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to cheer for the players during BP, and that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I moved a few rows away but came back later. I can understand if this is a rule, and if I had been told about it I would have followed it. But the reaction was ridiculously over the top.

We saw the park from the upper level, from a standard suite, from the owner’s box, from the press level, and got to walk through the Diamond Club on the way to field level. Most of this, pretty standard. The attraction to this tour is the early field level access, which would have been great if I’d had my camera, which I didn’t. We probably would have been better off taking the standard tour, which would have probably been less rushed, and taken us to more places in the stadium. The early access to BP is imho not worth the tradeoff, even for an Astros fan, and defeats the point of the ballpark tour. You can get into early BP in a lot of stadiums without having to pay for it.

TICKETS: When we visit other ballparks, we generally pick up one pair of great seats (usually from the secondary market) and one pair of affordable seats (either from the team or a secondary market bargain). Even our affordable seats were phenomenal in Houston. I imagine that if you wanted to see any other team besides the Mets, you would have your choice of seats. In our case, we did have to put more than a little effort into finding good seats, so don’t leave it until the week before you go if that’s the impetus behind your trip.

[I never talk about prices because compared to Shea, unless we’re talking Fenway or Wrigley in the secondary market, nothing will be as expensive as Shea.]

We sat about eight rows behind home plate in Section 120 and then further down the first base line in section 128. We would have liked to get something further up but behind the plate but nothing great was available. (We don’t like outfield seats as a rule, which is why we didn’t sit in the Crawford Boxes. However, if we had been there for the entire series and not just two of the games, I would have sat there for one of them.) If I went back, I would probably still try for field level down the line.

Section 128

Section 120

BALLPARK FEATURES: Minute Maid Park has a retractable roof, and it is closed and AIR CONDITIONED for 85% of the games at the park. If you think this is “not baseball,” go see a game at Arlington in August and then come back and talk to me about it.

The Train: hopefully, if you go to see the Mets, you will only hear it once, at the beginning of the game.

Layout: It’s your standard HOK open concourse layout, with balconies out in left field for standing room patrons. Bathrooms are conveniently located, food is not far, and if you happen to be in one corner (like right behind home plate, where the press box is) that you can’t see the action, tvs are everywhere.

The visitors bullpen is not accessible, hidden underneath the walkway along the outfield. The Houston bullpen is in the outfield. There is standing room along left field, but you will have to compete with the Little Pumas and Los Caballitos for space.

What I found particularly interesting about Minute Maid is their efficient use of space to create the batter’s eye. Unlike most parks, that seem to eat up a lot of space, they angled the park so that it’s using very little good real estate, but still getting the job done. It’s subtle instead of creating a waterfall or a lawn or some other feature. It’s hard to explain without being there.

I was thrilled to see The Hill in person:

The thing I liked best about Minute Maid was the large wall of windows along left field. You’re downtown, and most likely under a roof, but the windows eliminate the cramped feeling you get in, say, Safeco, when the roof is closed. There was so much light we had to wear sunglasses for the first few innings. That was nice.

For those who like to see the roof open and close, they do open the roof on Friday nights and have fireworks. We didn’t stay because of how badly the Mets lost. I’m sorry now that we didn’t stay at least to see the roof open.

Team Store: It’s just inside Union Station and you can get there when there is no game.

Mascot: Junction Jack, a jackrabbit, doesn’t seem to do much, and was hard to find. Not impressed.

T-shirt tosses: use these completely ineffective slingshots. You could fire five tshirts out of a pepsi gun in the time it takes them to shoot off one.

Music: the sound system at Minute Maid is AWESOME, and the music is appropriate. It’s not over the top, it’s not too much, but it is modern and effective. The song after “take Me out to the ball game” is “Deep in the heart of texas”. The words are on the Diamondvision so you can sing along. Don’t be a square.

Walk around the ballpark on the concourse. They’re wide, easy to navigate, and there’s plenty to see. Wherever there’s a wall, there’s a tribute to a player or the history of the team. Or, something like this:

[Things we will never ever see at Citi Field, #303]

Heckling: The Houston fans are terrible at heckling. Zero originality. I would say “they can dish it out but they can’t take it” but they can’t even dish it out. It’s feeble. You will hear heckling and cheering en espanol, something I’m surprised isn’t more prevalent at Shea.

I would say “do not wear a Carlos Beltran shirt to Houston” but it’s not like wearing a Alex Rodriguez jersey to Seattle or Arlington, because the reasons they don’t like him are specious. I would wear one the next time because I think their logic is just stupid. On the other hand, there were plenty of Roger Clemens shirts to be seen. Go figure.

I did feel that, despite it being a Friday night, and sitting behind something like this:

...that people were there to see the game, and actually were paying attention and cared about what was going on.

One of my favorite elements of the park was this sign, held by ushers:

I wanted to steal one for Section 12 back home. But plenty of people just walked right by them.

FOOD: We were very disappointed in the food choices. Maybe we missed something, but I didn’t feel that there was enough to say “this ballpark is in Texas.” There was the Goya Latino corner and you could get a frozen margarita, but aside from that, hotdogs, sausages and other standard ballpark fare for the most part.

Until we saw this sitting on someone’s plate:

This, my friends, is the BBQ baked potato. that isn’t chili, that’s chopped meat. It was super-delicious. We had it twice. It’s also one of the cheapest items on the menu, at $6.50.

An aside: we were on the tour with a gentleman who worked at the ballpark. He told us to not order any hot dog that wasn’t kosher. I will take his word on that.

PARKING: is plentiful, and costs anywhere from $10-15 based on your proximity to the ballpark. ON the weekends you can park on the street for free, just check the signs. I’m not sure I’d park on the street at 3 in the morning down there (especially close to the highway) but given the amount of people on the street & the police presence, we left luggage in our car during one game and felt okay about it.

HOTELS: there are many downtown, all walking distance from the ballpark. We stayed in an incredible five-star boutique hotel called Hotel Icon, which was significantly less expensive than any chain hotel and offered a level of service (and all-night room service) that we wouldn’t have gotten from a chain. Cannot recommend it enough.

If you stay downtown, you don’t need a car - and there is light rail - but keep in mind that this is Texas and you will probably wish you had a car if you want to see anything that’s not downtown, the mall, or the ballpark. Arlington is only 3.5 hours away, so get a car and see two ballparks in one trip. (That review, coming next.)

WEEKEND PHOTOS.

2008-08-05T19:48:00Z

Until I get everything written up, some highlights and some links:

The Ballpark In Arlington
Mets v. Astros, Minute Maid Park, 8/3/08
Minute Maid Park, 8/1/08 - BP, Tour, pre-game

CLASH CITY ROCKERS.

2008-08-05T17:56:01Z

Rare Clash Performance At Shea Stadium Set For CD Release

Clash’s entire performance at the Shea Stadium in 1982 is to be released on CD.

The band’s 15-song set at the New York venue, which closed earlier this month, will be available to buy from October 15th.

More here.

[thanx, K.]

LONE STAR STATE.

2008-08-04T17:46:00Z

This team remains an enigma. They lose to teams they shouldn’t lose to and when they win, it is valiant and dramatic and makes you believe again… until they lose to, say, Randy Wolf.

*cue annoying wolf howl that Houston pipes through its ballpark that I hope I never have to hear again*

I am not going to talk about the games very much besides that sentence. But if you want to hear about the rest of our southern sojourn, read on.

We arrived in Houston early Friday morning. We were at the airport early (LGA on a Friday in the summer? You’d do the same) and since the security line was zero and we don’t check bags, we were able to get on the 6:30am flight. We picked up our car, and proceeded to kill time until check in with trips to Target (water, drinks, snacks, photographs), the House of Pies (breakfast), and the Galleria (travel sizes). We checked in around 1pm at a lovely 4-star boutique hotel about 7 blocks from the ballpark. We had enough time for a nap and a shower before walking down to Minute Maid Park for the 4pm tour.

It was during our walk through downtown when an old unused courthouse caught my eye and I stopped to take out my camera. That’s when I realized that the battery was sitting in Brooklyn, and D40 batteries aren’t sold in the team store. TBF had his point and shoot, which he kindly allowed me to take possession of, but it’s just not the same thing. It’s funny how in the course of a few years taking photos of baseball games, and the people and the places, has become so important. I kept trying to console myself that I could just enjoy the game, but when we settled in just off of the first base side later and I watched Jose Reyes jump back to base again and again and again from an angle I never get to see, it hurt.

The tour sucked (more on that later). It got us into BP early, which was another cause for no-camera-battery agony. I see Ryan Church in the dugout and immediately yell, “Hey Ryan! You’re looking great!” only to be pounced on by two security guards who tell me that there is NO YELLING AT THE PLAYERS and that I need to go over to the other side, closer to the Houston players. I immediately protest: “I have been to BP dozens of times in multiple stadiums. No one has ever told me that I need to be quiet.” (TBF would tell me later that I totally shocked them with the response. They weren’t expecting me to do anything more than move along quietly). Considering that this is the ballpark where there’s a group of fans who dress up in lion costumes every home game, yelling encouragement to a player in the dugout didn’t exactly strike me as crazy fan behavior.

Following the tour, we collected our Lance Berkman bobbleheads and made our way to our excellent seats on the field level. More than a few fans would ask us later in the evening if we wanted our bobbleheads, which we actually did. Also, no one actually went about it in a fashion that would have made us give them up. If someone had come up to us and said, “Hey, I didn’t get here in time and I’m a huge fan. I was wondering if you really wanted both of your bobbleheads. I’d be happy to buy both of you a beer in thanks if you were willing to give up one,” we might have considered it. Perhaps that was too opportune and too New York of us to expect. And truthfully, we would have been too New York to actually believe that the bobblehead was for them, and they weren’t going to turn around and sell it on eBay.

Minute Maid is a nice cross between cozy and expansive. There’s enough light so you don’t feel like you’re inside, and it doesn’t suck to not be a sticky clammy mess by the third inning. We met up with Dan from Lone Star Mets and his wife for a few minutes, and I made plans to meet up with MG reader April after the game (carefully sending her two plans, one if the Mets won, and one if they didn’t).

Our seats were along the first base line and MUCH nicer than we had previously thought, based on our initial read of the seating chart. Our M.O. on these trips is to buy really good seats for one game and pick up anything for the other game. These were supposed to be our ‘anything’ seats but if we had them at Shea we would be thrilled. There were a few Mets fans in our section, most of whom seemed to be local, and completely unable to start a decent “Let’s Go Mets” chant. (For the record: it’s a crisp “LET’S - GO - METS”. Each word is one syllable. Not “LET’S GO MEEETTTTS, LET’S GO”. I don’t know whose cheer that is but it’s not ours.) They were so annoying that TBF considered going back at the half inning to instruct them on the correct syntax, except for the fact that it became unnecessary later.

Our row was empty until not long before game time, when a family of cowboys came and sat down. As soon as the gentleman in the carefully creased Wrangler jeans and real cowboy hat had settled into his seat, he offered me a polite “hello,” and then a few minutes later, he looks at me carefully again.
“Oh, no,” he says, out loud.
“I told you,” says his wife.
“How did you end up rooting for the wrong team?” he says.
“That’s not quite how I see it,” I say.
“Where are you from?”
“Brooklyn, New York.”
“You down here on business?”
“No, we came down to see the Mets.”

Well, that made all the difference in the world. We told him about our trips to ballparks and about Shea and how many games a year we go to. He took one look at TBF’s scorecard and prounouced it “high-tech”. It was his anniversary and they had decided at the spur of the moment to “come on down and see the ‘Stros,” him, his wife, his son and his son’s girlfriend (or wife, can’t be sure on that).

It is an unfortunate circumstance that since a lot of people elsewhere in the country don’t normally meet people from New York in the normal course of their day that a portion of the conversation ends up being about 9/11. In Texas, especially, this was not a conversation I wanted to be having. (A t-shirt we saw the next night read OFFEND A LIBERAL, THINK FOR YOURSELF.) Luckily, that was the time the Astros pitcher got that HR and so the conversation took another tack.

Houston fans cannot heckle.
“PEDRO, YOU SUCK!”
“HEY REYES, YOU SUCK!”
“THE MEETTTSS SUUUUCCCCKKK”
“I’m sorry,” TBF said, turning to me. “What place are the Astros in?”
“Why, I do believe they’re just below the Pirates,” was my answer.
“THE MEEEETTTTSSS SUUUCCCKKKKk”
Ad nauseum.

Carlos Beltran. When I think of Beltran, I think of a quiet, shy, soft-spoken guy with a wife and kid who is deeply religious and makes plays seem easy when anyone else would do some unnecessary dramatic dive to get to the ball. I know we paid a lot of money for him and everyone thinks he underperformed at the beginning. I know I’m in a minority who has no problem with Carlos Beltran simply because of the defense he provides. I think it is greatly undervalued because he makes it look so easy. It makes people think he isn’t trying hard enough because he is so good at what he does.

Houston, however, hates Carlos Beltran with a venom that neither of us anticipated. We’re talking Roger Clemens coming to Shea level boos. A guy behind us kept yelling ‘We don’t take that kind of crap here, Beltran’ and that made me wonder, “What crap, exactly?” A kid on Sunday had a sign that read BELTRAITOR and that was when TBF went over to have a conversation. TBF’s line of reasoning: he didn’t choose to come here, it’s not like he’s a prospect that you brought up through your farm system. He played his heart out for you. What more do you want?

Fan line of reasoning: he left us for a few million dollars.

In Houston, in a park that was once named after Enron, this distaste of capitalism seems just a tad out of place.

There are fireworks at Minute Maid Park on Friday night. They open the roof and it’s supposed to be a sight to behold. We were all in favor of staying for this spectacle until the game ended the way it did. We chalked it up to an anomaly and knew that Johan would redeem us the next day, when we were in Arlington.

*sigh*

After a stop at Best Buy in the suburbs to replace my camera battery, it was about three and a half hours from Houston to The Ballpark At Arlington. The Ballpark is located in the middle of nowhere, adjacent to a couple of hotels, Six Flags, and the monstrosity of a new football stadium (that looks like the set from Thunderdome). We booked the 2pm tour in advance, and were there by 1:30. The tour entitles you to go through their Hall of Legends, which is a museum with one floor dedicated to the Texas Rangers, and another floor with an exhibit from Cooperstown. It was wonderful. They celebrate their team and their legendary players in a way the Mets will never, ever do.

The tour went everywhere except the clubhouse and the weight room, and I am told that you don’t get to go that far into either one anyway. The tour guide (an old Brooklyn Dodgers fan, who noticed my Brooklyn Cyclones shirt - which I wore as a way of saying WE’RE NOT YANKEES FANS - right away) answered every question we could have possibly come up with.

I loved Arlington. I even loved that it was outside. I think the only thing I will ever agree on with George W. Bush is that baseball should be played outside (which is the explanation Ed, our tour guide, gave us about why there isn’t a retractable roof in Arlington). The tour was absolutely outstanding and stood in stark contrast to the tour at Minute Maid, that didn’t even take us through the retired numbers. We were done by 3:30 and didn’t know what to do. It was 106 so we couldn’t just sit around, and my purchase of a Josh Hamilton t-shirt and a stuffed Rangers Captain for the mascot collection took us 15 minutes.

me to TBF: “google ‘grassy knoll’. I’m driving.”

As I said in a text message over the weekend, I now have no moral high ground with the tourists who stop me at lunchtime and ask me how to get to Ground Zero. I don’t know if it will make us any better if I tell you that we approached it from the conspiracy theorist side of things (me: “God, I just love the First Amendment."). We were in Dallas; we doubt we will ever be there again; we were tacky (although not as nearly as tacky as the families who were posing on the bullet locations painted in the middle of the street).

It was Faith and Family Day in Arlington, with a large Christian Rock concert going on outside the ballpark. It was the reason we had bought these tickets in advance, since our research online had indicated that these often sell out. I didn’t feel entirely comfortable going into the day, but I have to say that the extent of the ‘faith’ part of the day seemed to be confined to the concert and the 57 churches (we counted) that were welcomed by the Texas Rangers on the scoreboard during the game.

We made our way down to the field as the Blue Jays were finishing BP. I had printed up copies of this photo and this photo and had a hope of getting an autograph just based on pure originality. We were standing down front when we noticed a line of people standing down the steps and then a mother admonished her son that he was going to lose his place in line.

A LINE? To get player autographs????

We joined the line, but no long after that the fans at the front of the line came up the stairs telling everyone that they had just been told that the team was not going to be coming onto the field until game time, due to extreme heat (something our tour guide had mentioned earlier while we were in the indoor batting cages). We walked around some more, looking for Rangers Captain (it’s a horse) so TBF could add to his ‘photos with mascots’ collection, and as we were trying to figure out what to do next, since our seats were still very much in the sun, I realized I wasn’t quite feeling very well.

I sat in the concourse as TBF brought me two bottles of water, a wet bandanna, and an enormous lemon ice, and after consuming all of the above, began to feel somewhat more human again. He was a strong advocate of not getting to our seats until the sun had gone down, but I felt like a sissy, and we sat down right before first pitch. The mistake we made was that while we were drinking water all day, we just weren’t drinking enough, and because we spent almost the entire day from 2pm on outside.

Once the sun went down it was almost pleasant, although it had only reached 98 degrees by the time we bailed at the top of the 7th inning. Arlington has a manual scoreboard, and they were not keeping up - plus at our angle we couldn’t see the pitching changes. I finally pulled out the PDA.
“Who the hell is Dan Murphy?”
I ran out of battery life about the time we decided it would be better to not see what disaster happened around Billy Wagner this time. We drove about an hour back towards Houston and stayed there for the night, so we didn’t have to do all four hours the next morning.

We got back to Houston by 11:30 the next day. Sunday’s seats were 8 rows from behind home plate. It was Astros Family day, which had all the wives and children out around second base for a group photo. I refrain from yelling rude things at David Newhan and his family. Funnily enough, a guy in an orange Beltran shirt turns up not long after we arrived; the person we bought our seats from on StubHub had three, we remember, and guess who bought the third? Another Mets fan. We were also joined by two young boys in Mets gear (while their fathers had Astros shirts and were clearly local).

Sunday was just beyond painful. We would never leave early, but I had to question why on earth we were staying. I mean, it was RANDY WOLF, someone the Mets had beaten easily in the past. Oliver wasn’t Mr. Hyde but he wasn’t Dr. Jekyll either. As on Friday, too many ducks on the pond, no bats showing up when they needed to, no one coming in in the clutch, and NICK EVANS IS NOT A MAJOR LEAGUE PLAYER. <--- NEWS FLASH

“While I know that we’re going to get a hit in the next few minutes that will tie up the game, in order to bring in Carlos Delgado to hit the winning run in spectacular fashion,” I said to TBF at the top of the 9th. “When we do leave the ballpark, we need to go out on this side of the park to be closest to the car.”
“Of course, that will be in many minutes from now,” he says.

Needless to say, we were at the airport by 4:30.

Full ballpark reviews and photographs are forthcoming.

TEXAS UPDATE.

2008-08-03T04:54:00Z

Things to remember when you get on a plane to go a thousand miles to see your team play:
THE CAMERA BATTERY. I know, I know. How could I, of all people, forget the camera battery? Thank god for Best Buy.

--Texas is hot. Like 106 hot. Like 99 degrees at first pitch hot. (And if anyone here says “but it’s a dry heat” I will invite you to do our laundry when we get back.)
--I sat next to a real cowboy Friday night
--Hunter Pence is dating this really sleazy stripper, and Houston is convinced that’s why he stopped hitting. David Wright isn’t dating a stripper, but I have to wonder if his current issues aren’t related
--Houston hecklers are the most boring and unoriginal in the entire country (gotta branch out from ‘sucks’, people)
--There so definitely was a second shooter behind the picket fence
--Billy Wagner is unreliable as heck (it was Family and Faith day up in Arlington, so that was as vocal as we got) when you need him most.
--In a superiority contest between the two ballparks, Arlington wins. However, while nursing my dehydration around 6:30, my superiority about not seeing baseball in air conditioning vanished.

Please, let Oliver The Good take the hill in Houston tomorrow. We are sitting six rows up from home plate, look for me. I’ll be the one NOT waving at the camera while not talking on my cell phone. TBF is planning on having a sitdown with some diehard Astros fan to find out why on earth they hate poor Carlos Beltran so much. Pray for us all.

More later.

With love from Corsicana, TX,

TOKEN YEARLY CAT PHOTO.

2008-07-31T13:08:00Z

(Hey, this is a chick blog, remember?)

CAPTION THE PHOTO:
“It’s for your own good. I don’t think the Houston fans would appreciate you wearing a Beltran shirt.”

I wanted to do a LOLCat but I worked 12.5 hours yesterday and was too tired.