Susan is the big Met fan. She and Greg were going to hire Mr. Met to appear at their wedding but there was a day game on that date, and the destination of Montauk was outside his radius for appearances anyway. Greg took lots of video of Mr. Met and sent them to Susan while we were at the game. Susan is disdainful of Mrs. Met and thinks she's not good enough for him. My feelings toward the pair are very much neutral.
At the game you're very much aware that you're not seeing commercials for cell phones, trucks, or beer. You do however see ads for "moderna" repeated to infinity on the auxiliary scoreboards that line the rims of the seating levels. I forgot what Moderna was. I had to ask my son-in-law. I thought it was the beer that has knocked Budweiser off its perch.
But those are just like ads in the subway. They don't count. The real action is BLASTING from the Jumbotron scoreboard.
The resolution is fantastic on this giant of all TV screens. The required national anthem is accompanied by colorful fireworks shooting out of the scoreboard when they lyrics reach "rockets red glare." It's startling. You almost think you're seeing the evening news from the Ukraine.
Then there's the teams' lineups displayed. Helpful, but followed with a new metric set of numbers, OPS, I guess. No one it seems brags about a batting average anymore, and as for the Mets that's just as good since no one other than a recently called up rookie from Syracuse, second baseman Ronny Mauricio, has an average over .300.
The Jumbotron NEVER stops. It is the most kinetic of all things in the ball park, and the nosiest. Shots of the crowd mugging for the camera when they realize they've been highlighted on the big screen. It's nice to see people of all stripes at the game, but he best one was the young woman, who on realizing she was caught on camera, opened her shirt and proudly displayed a top that said: BASEBALLBRA. I wonder how many games she's worn that top to and never been on camera. She made the big time this time. It had the homemade look. She should market it.
Then there's the constant entertainment between innings. You have young ladies and gents interviewing fans with trivia questions, awarding some swag it seems even if they bomb the answers. Then there are the young boys who are timed to try and steal a base on the third base foul line with a few seconds. They have to run toward the bag, pick it up, and run back in under whatever number of seconds.
Then there's the guy who is challenged to pull a truck, I'm sure in neutral, a certain number of feet with a heavy duty lanyard toward a goal line in a certain amount of time. I'm not sure what the prize is if he succeeds, but I don't think he's playing for the truck, but rather something cheesy from the souvenir stand.
There's the old standby of a baseball under one of three swirling Met hats: the shell game. There's 8th inning karaoke with some ditty the fans have selected from one of three artists and songs to play and sing along to. I think the choices were something from Taylor Swift, the Killers and Miley Cyrus. The Killers won, and the lyrics to something that made absolutely no sense to me appeared and were sung along to by an amped up crowd.
The guy in front of rightly complained that the choice of a Jimmy Buffet number should have been an option, since Jimmy just passed away. The Met organization missed an opportunity to pay homage.
There's the walkup music for the batters, and there is Harry Belafonte sometimes singing "Day O." Just "Day O," no more to it. That's a ballpark staple. I would like to challenge anyone under 70 if they know that's the opening lyrics to 'The Banana Boat' song and was sung by the stevedores who were unloading bananas in the tropics at night, to avoid the sweltering daytime heat. "Day O" is their plea for sunlight and the end of the shift. "...Daylight come and I won to go home..." Now you know. Belafonte made the song famous in the '50s, I believe.
With all this going on, they actually do manage to play a game. And despite the Mets losing 8-7, it was a great game to watch. The Met runs were almost entirely achieved through home runs. The Mariners blasted a few as well. There's a countdown clock to tell you how long it will be before the scoreboard entertainment will end and the game will resume. At home you aren't aware of all the sideshow stuff that goes on while the game is being played.
The Mets went through 5 relief pitchers, but could never get ahead in the game, evening it up twice. The game took 3:10 minutes to play in front of 31,000 fans, perhaps drawn by the corduroy METS hat give away that we weren't aware of until we entered, and perhaps by the Saturday night schedule. Only in New York can you have two big league events playing simultaneously within a stones throw of one another, with the tennis U.S. Open being played right next door in the Billie Jean King Tennis Center.
It's a testament to the appeal of baseball that 31,000 fans will show up to watch a team that has fallen far below the pre-season predictions of playoffs and World Series. The Mets are struggling to stay out of last place in a 5! team division. But they can still be entertaining. Meet the Mets.
With a 7:10 start, and a three-hour plus game, heading for the exits didn't happen until after 10:00, pretty much after I would have headed upstairs to read and sleep.
But being at the game, makes you watch the game. And in the bottom of the 9th inning with Mets behind by a run, the DH Daniel Vogelbach smacks a line drive into the gap and sees it roll toward the wall.
Now anyone who has tuned into a Mets game knows the size of Vogelbach, and one look at a sturdy bouncer's build tells you he can't run fast. But, when you're a DH and you hit something that's not a homer, you got to hustle the bases. Within reason.
Seeing the ball roll to the wall Daniel thinks double. Uh-oh. Please tell us you're not headed to second. He rounds first with no intention of stopping to draw the throw. There are little clouds of dirt puffing in his wake as the locomotive heads to second, with all intention of being safe. But you know what's going to happen, and it isn't going to be pretty.
And it isn't. A relay throw from the outfield nails Daniel sliding head first into second that even from the seats without a closeup replay, you know he's out. And he is. If only the second baseman had dropped the ball, Not to be.
Still, all agree the game is highly entertaining, despite the disappoint of no walk-off 9th inning. On leaving the game I've got a splitting headache. At 74 I can't boogey in my seat, can't stand up for key pitches, can't sing along to songs I don't know, and would rather just watch the game. How old fashioned of me.
But as I said, being there makes you watch the game. If I was tuning in at home I would have been on Midsomer Murders when the Mets fell behind, looking like sure losers.
I was knackered, but pleased. If the seats are free again next year, I'll surely go.
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