Ryan Howard looks back

Looking back on his time in Lakewood

As a Mets fan, it's tough to see Ryan Howard do well. As a baseball fan, it's a treat.

The big man (who, to this point, has managed to avoid a nickname that's stuck, as far as I know) is a bonafide superstar and a personable fellow who always gave me the comments I needed, both in 2002 as a developing first baseman with the BlueClaws and in the few times I've run into him since.

Last night in Lakewood, I took the night off, attending the game as a fan as his number was retired and he got three at-bats in a rehab start for the BlueClaws. It was Howard's second appearance at FirstEnergy Park since reaching the Major Leagues; in 2007, he played in two rehab games, including an 11 a.m. start I attended. Afterward, Howard joked that he couldn't remember the last time he had woken up so early.

This appearance was a more common 7:05 p.m. start, delayed a few minutes by the pregame ceremony to retire the No. 29 that Howard wore in 2002 and again last night. (In his 2007 rehab, he wore his Major League No. 6, which I saw on a fan in the stands.) His mother and brother were on hand and the No. 29 was unveiled on the center-field wall, to the right of center, far enough to the side to be clear of the batter's eye.

Part of what I love about Ryan Howard is that he remains a humble man. Yes, he's made a few contract demands in his time in Philadelphia, but other than that, you don't see any showboating from him, no showing up opponents and no grandstanding. He's one of the few Phillies who come to mind who (as far as I know) hasn't taken shots at the Mets on the radio or at victory parades or dropped f-bombs on live television (twice, Mr. Utley). I'm not saying he needs to be accomodating to his opponents, but he certainly treats them with respect, not only during the game, but afterward as well. He just lets his play speak for itself, not seeing any need to supplement it with verbal digs.

This graciousness has shown through during both of the rehab games I've seen him play in Lakewood. I've seen other established Major Leaguers back in the minors, most recently Shane Victorino and Carlos Delgado 10 days ago at Triple-A Lehigh Valley, but I haven't seen any of them interact and become one of the boys as much as Howard seems to do. That's not to say that Victorino, Delgado, John Maine, Robinson Cano, Phil Hughes and Derek Jeter have been standoffish or aloof, or even that the circumstances were the same. It just seems to me that Howard has gone out of his way to just blend in as one of the guys when he's been back in Lakewood -- even if he stands out as a big, hulking anomaly.

Case in point: in the big leagues, Howard is among the pajama-pantsed set. In Lakewood, he walks the high-socks walk with the rest of the BlueClaws. And he did in 2007, too.

Howard admitted last night that Lakewood "holds a special place" in his heart, so perhaps that's why he seems so at ease when he returns. And, of course, there's no guarantee he'll make it back again before the end of his career, which is why it was nice that it worked out so well last night. The BlueClaws had originally planned to retire his number on Sept. 2, an off-day for the Phillies and my birthday, on which I'll be flying to Chicago and wouldn't have been able to attend. But when it was announced that the Phillies and Rockies would make up a rainout that day in Colorado, Lakewood had to postpone the retirement ceremony. It worked out for them when Howard went on the DL with his ankle injury and the Phillies gave him to Lakewood for one night of rehab.

Howard's appearance may have kept Greensboro's Chad James from history. The hard-throwing left-hander (he was in the mid-90s in the first inning) came into the game with a 3-9 record and 5.32 ERA. He did not allow a hit until the sixth, when Howard crushed an opposite-field double to left-center, driving the ball over the outfielders' heads to score Leandro Castro. In Howard's two previous at-bats against James, he walked and grounded out to second as the Grasshoppers employed the drastic shift, putting the shortstop behind second base and the second baseman in short right field. James finished with six innings, one hit allowed, five walks and three strikeouts. He improved to 4-9 and lowered that ERA to 5.09. Two 'Hoppers (I have no idea if they're called that) relievers allowed just one more hit and two more walks in a 4-1 win.

Lakewood manager Mark Parent sent in a pinch-runner after that double, allowing Howard to jog off the field to a standing ovation and ending his night after three at-bats. He's scheduled to play for Triple-A Lehigh Valley tonight and could be back with the Phillies on Sunday. Last night may very well have been the last time a Lakewood BlueClaw will don No. 29 -- unless Howard has another rehab appearance somewhere down the line.

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Photo Flashback: Meeting the Mets home and away

Night at Oriole Park

I'm finally catching up after a whirlwind weekend. After working long into the morning on Thursday, I went to that afternoon's Mets-Padres game before going back to work that night. And who would've thought that of the two matchups -- Mat Latos vs. Johan Santana and Jon Garland vs. Jon Niese -- that it would be the Niese game that would turn out to be nearly perfect?

When Wednesday's game was rained out and the doubleheader announced for Thursday, I was psyched that Johan drew the afternoon start. I would've enjoyed seeing Niese -- I've seen him before, as far down as the Class A Sally League -- but I'm never disappointed when I get to go to a Johan game. As it turned out, I did get to enjoy Niese's performance on SNY, watching much more closely than if I'd been at the ballpark.

Padres vs. Mets, 6/10/10

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On Friday, my wife and I hit the road at 1 p.m. -- an hour later than we'd hoped, but I needed to sleep in a little -- and got to our Inner Harbor hotel a little before 5. Even though we were an hour behind schedule, we still trudged up through the Mount Vernon neighborhood for cold beer and good food at The Brewer's Art (make time for it the next time you're in Baltimore), even though it meant missing the start of the game when the light rail took forever to come afterward. We waited for about 20 minutes and watched three northbound trains pass by.

Once there, we entered at Eutaw Street and walked around to our seats on the third-base side, behind the Mets' dugout. It had been nearly eight years since I'd been to Camden Yards and I think almost 18 since I'd been anywhere but the Eutaw Street concourse, so I didn't recall the layout of the main concourses. While Oriole Park began the retro ballpark trend, one significant change in most of those that followed is the open concourse that allows fans to see the game as they're circumnavigating the stadium. It doesn't detract much from the experience for me, and I actually found it quaint and another retro aspect of the design. The concourses are still wide, but they open through vast wrought-iron gates to the surrounding streets and as you walk to your section, you notice the immense support poles holding up the slanted structure above you. Writing now, I wish I'd paused to take a few pictures (though it's not like there aren't any out there, or like I'll never go back there), but at the time, we were weary and late and eager to get to our seats. Then once there, we didn't move until the Mets had wrapped up their 5-1 victory.

Mets at Orioles, 6/11/10

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Photo Flashback: Take me back to the aughts

Chance Corgan

Not much time for a more in-depth post because I'm off to the Mets game today (Johan!) and have to catch my train in less than an hour. [Expanded below.] Yesterday morning I drove up the road to see the Pittsfield Colonials face the New Jersey Jackals at Yogi Berra Stadium mainly to see the Pittsfield uniforms. The former American Defenders of New Hampshire in the Can-Am League moved from one old, historic ballpark to another, taking up residence in Pittsfield, Mass., at Wahconah Park. If nothing else, the uniforms -- which harken back to Pittsfield's long, 100-year baseball history -- are a 180-degree improvement.

Bonuses yesterday? Former Met Argenis Reyes playing for New Jersey and Pittsfield starter Chance Corgan (above) playing the part with the moustache.

Off to the Citi. This is going to be an extended run of in-the-ballpark fun, so there should be more posts in the next few days.

Update:

I sat in the first row next to the Pittsfield on-deck circle and had a great view of the uniforms. I considered trying to strike up a conversation with one of the hitters, but even though it's a small independent league, I figured these guys still take their work pretty seriously and might not be open to an extended conversation while preparing to bat.

Among some of the highlights (all included in the gallery below):

Love how the collar flares out as the pitcher delivers.

The pant cuffs have drawstrings -- but it would look better if they wore true stirrups.

The long sleeves are a great touch, as is the deep collar and lacing. That's a team logo on the sleeve. All of the players seemed to be wearing generic blue batting helmets -- and not the new, S1000, either. I don't know if that's simply a cost-cutting measure or if an order with a Pittsfield logo has yet to come in.

The numbers appear to be felt, which is cool.

All of my Pittsfield-tagged photos are here.

I'm so intrigued by this concept that I may delve into it further in the future. I'd hoped to make a more definitive declaration, but recent unforeseen events that may necessitate auto-buying research have put leisure pursuits on hold.

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People still come, Ray

What's out there

I've been to heaven. Twice, in fact.

I first learned you could go there on your own time during my junior year of college. A friend of mine from western Illinois, Joe, had a photo of himself with several friends, a few I knew, together on the ballfield in the cornfield in Dyersville, Iowa. Until that point, I don't think I knew that the Field of Dreams was still there, still a pilgrimage site for fans of the game and the movie, still a little piece of heaven in the Iowa corn.

I'd first read about it a few years earlier, while in high school, but my first trip didn't come until some years later, during my post-graduate cross-country sojurn. I put Dyersville on the map as one of my definite stops and made it there on a perfect Saturday afternoon:

The map took me to Dyersville, the AAA took me north, signs took me east, and my deep-rooted love of baseball took me to Don Lansing’s farm and the Field of Dreams. It sat there, just like in the movie, as everyone expects it to — a little piece of heaven cut out of the cornfield. Turning down the driveway, seeing cars parked by the house, it all just felt right. Like on this perfect, warm sunny Iowa August day, that we should all be here, out in the field, standing at the plate, walking in the corn. Fathers pitched to sons, daughters took their cuts, mothers watched with cameras in hand. Some had brought chairs and sat in the shade along right field — there for several hours, no doubt. Everyone, it seemed, was smiling. People did come, and it was as they’d remembered it — maybe not form childhood, but from the movie. Out on the field, the men talked, chatted, joked together — a group of them may have come together. But standing there in perfect Iowa afternoon, I had the feeling that maybe they hadn’t known each other. Then, stepping on that field, they began to look familiar; they realized they were all fans — all kids again. And they talked like old buddies.

Everything from the movie came to life — the people on the field in pure enjoyment; the crunch of the gravel and red-dirt infield; the chirp of the crickets and rush of the wind; and the coarse rustle of the corn stalks tickled by the wind or brushed aside by the curious visitors investigating “what’s out there.” Before leaving, I magically remembered I had brought along a baseball tape, and I found James Earl Jones’ “People will come” speech. I sat there listening to it in stereo, for all the background sounds existed on that perfect Iowa afternoon.

The second trip was 10 times cooler. For his bachelor party, my friend Brad had a long May weekend of bars, baseball and cigars lined up, beginning with a reserved room at Chicago's ESPNZone, then a Cubs-Brewers game the following day (a cold, rain-delayed experience, though we did meet up with some nice folks in the left-field bleachers who graciously saved us some space; we ended up chatting with them and pondered when the Cubs would call up the pitching prospect who was lighting up the minor leagues, Mark Prior). Following the ballgame, we got a late start west, deciding on dinner at a Hooter's before we'd left Chicagoland and arriving at a new Super 8 or Comfort Inn just off U.S. 20 in Dyersville late that night. The next morning, we warmed up by playing catch in the parking lot as the stragglers in the group packed up and then -- after a quick breakfast at McDonald's during which we discussed Brad's brother's former soccer teammate, DeMarcus Beasley, and his prospects for that summer's World Cup -- headed off to the Lansings' farm.

Brad's "other friend Dan," as he still refers to him (to me) to this day, had called ahead to arrange for us to meet with Becky Lansing before we took the field. As the website explains, the Lansings have continued to offer use of the field from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., every day, from April through November, politely explaining that they do not take reservations for groups, individuals or events. But if we arrived early -- on a Monday in May especially -- she had said, we'd likely have the field to ourselves for an hour or so.

Though Dan, as the best man, organized the trip, the idea had been Brad's. "What I liked about the game is that everybody could play, everybody could relate to it," he told me afterward for a potential story I'd hoped to write about our experience. I never did, but I kept my notes, so now I'm doing something with them.

"I had friends there from my dorm in college," Brad said, "from the college newspaper, from work, from law school, and I had a brother at the game, too. That’s five different circles of friends, five different times of my life represented. When you have so many different groups, getting them to meld together can be really hard, particularly when their paths will only cross for a weekend. The people are thrown together, and with only a couple days it’s hard for people to get to know the others, hard to get to know them any more than beyond the typical superficial questions -- where are you from, what do you do, et cetera.

"But when you get together to play baseball, everybody knows what to do. You don’t have to preface the game by explaining the rules to anyone. It’s baseball. And after the game is over, everybody has something in common with each other -- they played a game of baseball together."



Not only did we play a game, but we got some one-on-one (group) time with Becky Lansing. Before taking the field, we sat ourselves down on the bleachers -- the same set along the first-base line with "Ray loves Annie" etched into the top bench -- as Becky gave us some of the backstory to how her farm was chosen, what filming was like, and what the next 13 years had brought.

"The Dubuque Chamber of Commerce and the Iowa Film Board came by in late 1987," she said. "They were looking for a long lane with a two-story white house. They looked at 250 farms from Georgia to Canada."

The Lansings' farm, which has been in Don Lansing's family for 105 years now (97 when we visited in '02) was almost perfect. The house -- in which Don himself was born -- was showing its years and needed a little work.

"The front of the house is the east side, away from the field," Becky told us. "So they put in a new door, fixed up the porch and put in bay windows."

Filming took 15 weeks during the summer of 1988, and the field wasn't supposed to remain when they were finished.

"It took four days to build the ballfield," Becky said. "What you see in the movie is what is happening. It covers three and a half acres. To a young farm family, losing that much corn might make a difference. It’s $7,000-8,000 worth of crops here [in 2002].

"The original contract with the studio was to have them put everything back -- replant all the corn -- after filming was finished. Next door, they put all the corn back in left field the week the movie premiered. A year and a half later, they put the field back in."

"Next door" is the neighbors' property, including left field. I first learned of the movie site in an article discussing that corner of the field (I believe it was in Beckett Baseball Card Monthly) in the early '90s. While the diamond, backstop, bleachers and farmhouse from the movie all sit on Don and Becky Lansing's land, left field was in fact cut out of the neighbors' corn. Parallel to the Lansings' lane leading to the field and farmhouse is another driveway. Between the two are a series of telephone poles and power lines that mark the property line. Since then, there have been two sides to the Field of Dreams: Drive down the right driveway and you're on Don and Becky's farm; buy from their souvenir stand and the money goes to help maintain the field. Drive down the left driveway and you're on "left field" land. Buy from that stand and the money goes into the bank.

"We pay Universal Studios royalties, a portion of the proceeds from the shop," Becky explained. "The rest of the money goes back into maintenance. This is not a money-making opportunity.

"Left field was leased to private investors, but our intensions were to keep it small and simple. They wanted to build a corn maze in left field, but you can get lost in my corn for free!"

Of course, in mid-May, there was no corn in which we could get lost. We had to settle for our imaginations, but otherwise, visitors to the site feel like they're in the movie.

"We work three times as hard to keep it that way," Becky said. "Corporate America comes in every year, but we turn them away. People notice every single detail if it changes from the movie.

"Donny and I do all the field maintenance. We close at 6 p.m. because the field needs to rest and we need to rest."

When it was time to play ball, we divided up into our predetermined teams -- the Yankees (Brad's favorite team since his days growing up in the Bronx suburb of Fort Wayne, Ind.) vs. the Cubs (Brad's adopted National League team from his post-college years in Chicago) for a nine-inning pickup game. Because Dan had ordered numbered T-shirts for each of us that we'd be taking home, I requested to join him on the Cubs, even though Brad, our friend Matt and most of the other Notre Dame grads would be on the Yankees (the Cubs consisted of Brad's Chicago friends, those from his recently completed first year of law school, and the friends of his brothers invited along for this outing to help fill out the teams). I still have that Cubs T-shirt, but doubt that would be the case had it been a navy-blue NY shirt.

The warmth of the morning sun was nullified by the cold wind whipping across the barren cornfields, so many of us were bundled up under our team shirts. I found swinging and throwing to be restricted, but I still managed to attempt an athletic, off-balance throw on a dribbler down the third-base line (the runner was safe, if I recall), collect a couple of base hits and drive in a run with a respectably deep (read: deep enough that no infielders had a shot and the center fielder didn't have to sprint in from his position) fly ball.

What made the morning so special was that, like in the movie, we were two teams of former players getting one more chance to play baseball on a private field in an idylic setting, something we could never be sure we'd be able to do again. And now, eight years later, I still have yet to take a baseball field with a glove on my hand and spikes on my feet and play nine-on-nine with overhand pitching. The closest I've come is regular batting practice/shagging flies with some friends from work these past few years or the occassional softball game among friends, but never the combination of nine-on-nine (or more) and overhand pitching. As we enjoyed ourselves, Becky spent some time watching, standing behind the backstop or beside the bleachers as we laughed and ran and swung and threw.

"The only two things that weren’t perfect that day were the final score and the fact that mid-May is too early for six-foot-tall corn stalks," Brad told me. "The game was close until the sixth or seventh, but they [the Cubs] broke it open after that. I had a chance to close the gap when I batted with the bases loaded and two outs in the seventh (I think), but I grounded out. What a waste. And it would have been cool to have had the opportunity to knock a ball into the corn stalks and watch it disappear like James Earl Jones. But those are minor complaints. After all, I still went 2-for-5."

The Cubs won, 15-3, even after some in-game trading in an attempt to even out the squads. My final line was 2-for-6, with that RBI and a run scored. I batted sixth and played third base. We kept score, and afterward Dan sent around the box score with all our names and batting averages listed. The pack rat that I am -- both digitally and physically -- I dug up my old laptop and inserted the -- get this -- floppy disk to transfer the box score and the file with Brad's comments onto a flash drive and then onto my current laptop. I found Becky's comments in one of the dozen reporter's notebooks I still have packed away. I'd always toyed with the idea of crafting a first-person account of our trip for a potential submission, such as to the Notre Dame alumni magazine, but I never truly made the effort. Now, with the farm up for sale, I wanted to get it all down.

We finished our game just as the first visitors to follow us began to arrive, but we took our time packing our things. Becky opened up the souvenir shed to take our donations (on a cold May weekday, it seems the business hours of the stand were customized to when someone showed up) and then allowed us where most visitors aren't allowed to go: Onto the porch of the farmhouse for a group photo she took with our cameras, mine included.

Looking back, we could've asked for more -- a warmer morning, a later date so that the corn was growing -- but had we gotten either of those, we probably wouldn't have had the field to ourselves for so long, or had the chance to visit so long with Becky. If more visitors had been there as we were preparing to leave, we might not have been allowed onto the porch for a photo. I'm not sure I'd change a thing about that day; I'd only ask for the chance to do it again. Hopefully, the new owners keep things the way they are.

"My husband’s favorite actor from the movie was James Earl Jones," Becky said eight years ago. "He said to us, 'What do you want for the farm?'"

I wonder if he's still interested. If only Brad, Matt, myself and a few others had the resources to pull together $5.4 million -- and someone to live on the farm and continue maintenance so that we could all reconvene there once a year for another game.

"Playing a game of baseball, I thought, was a better event for a bachelor party than the typical events," Brad said, "because after you’ve been to a few bachelor parties, your memories of them can run together. Bars in Chicago look pretty similar to bars in New York (although they do look a lot better than bars in South Bend -- trust me.) But how many times does a bachelor party involve playing in a baseball game?

"The point is, I realized that the bachelor party was one of the few instances I’d ever have where 18 guys I know had to do what I wanted. And what I wanted to do was play baseball with my friends. As you get older, how many more chances do you have to do that?"

As we now know, none so far. Brad and his wife have two children and live in Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., where they work. Brad's National League allegiance has shifted from the Cubs to the Nationals -- and now, it's the Nats that seem to be the team on the rise out of those two. I'm married, living in northern New Jersey, and working in New York. Matt remains close friends with the two of us and, married himself, lives in South Jersey, working in Trenton. The three of us have managed to get together at least once a year since then and have included ballgames in many of those meetings, but for those we're drinking beer and cheering on the home team, not putting on gloves and swinging bats.

As great as Brad's idea and Dan's planning were, all the credit to such a memorable trip goes to Don and Becky Lansing, simply for keeping the field. They had a once-in-a-lifetime experience in having a movie filmed at their home, and they could've quickly gone back to the way life was afterward, but they didn't. And it all started with the first visitor.

"The first person to come was from New York," Becky told us in 2002. "We were sitting down here on a Saturday afternoon and he just drove up the lane. He said he just saw the movie and had to stop by. It’s a pretty amazing story -- art imitating life and life imitating art."

They kept coming from there: 7,000 in the first year, doubling each year until topping out at 55,000 annually. After 20 summers, Don and Becky Lansing have earned their retirement.

"We hope to keep the farm the way it was portrayed in the movie," Becky said eight years ago. "We can’t promise it will always be that way when we get up to our retirement years, but right now it’s really important.

"Sometimes, we lose sight of the wonder of it all. When we do get a chance to talk to people, we get a chance to relive it."

Thank you for that, Don and Becky.

Photo flashback: Enjoying the meat of the sweep

Frenchy's follow-through

A busy weekend has made this look back at Saturday's win over the Braves a little outdated by now, but it's still fun to look back on the middle of a sweep sandwich involving one of the Mets' biggest division rivals -- especially when one Larry Wayne Jones Jr. played such a big part in two of the losses.

We had a friend visiting from California for the weekend and four free tickets from my wife's dad, so we invited a fourth who was also making her Citi Field debut (more for Shake Shack and the company than the baseball, but I always enjoy explaining the game to others) and were treated to a gorgeous day and dozens of pooches for Bark in the Park. I couldn't help but think of the fans' criticisms of all the nods to the Dodgers while bringing Lauren, a UCLA grad like Jackie and Dodgers fan, in through the rotunda and snapping her picture in front of the big No. 42. To top it off, Steve Garvey -- who works with the Bark in the Park sponsor, Natural Balance Pet Foods -- threw out the first pitch.

This team sure isn't perfect and this run of six wins in seven games -- coinciding with Ike Davis' arrival -- could be little more than the yang to the yin of the first two weeks to put this team one game over .500, but it is nice to be one game on the good side than one on the bad. Another series win against L.A. would be a nice springboard into a weekend in Philadelphia and a Sunday night series finale with Roy Halladay on the hill.

And, hey, look at this: Monday's rainout, which pushed Oliver Perez back to the second game of today's doubleheader, means that both Ollie and Johan Santana will have four days of rest between now and Sunday. So it's Jerry Manuel's choice of who goes up against Halladay and the Phillies on Sunday night on ESPN. Had Ollie pitched on Monday, it would've been his turn in the rotation and Johan would've been left to open the series in Cincinnati on May 3. Hmm, which would you choose for Sunday night? [2:51 p.m. update: YES!]

Here's hoping the good fortune keeps coming.

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Diving into Mets history

'69 pins

Earlier this week, I went to the Mets' website and searched for tickets to last night's game on Stubhub. I considered two seats in the front row of the Pepsi Porch -- I can't wait to sit there, hanging over right field -- but then when I checked the weather and saw 50 degrees and a chance of rain, I thought better of it. Instead, I bought Promenade Club tickets that also gave us access to the Acela Club -- providing us with three options (they had Caesar's Club access, too) to get out of the cold, rain and/or wind.

Smart planning, if I do say so myself, but I'll get to that. We arrived early to walk through the new Hall of Fame and Museum in the rotunda. Unlike Opening Day, there was no line, so we could take our time without being crowded. It's a great display of the team's history and a nice touch going into the club's 49th season, giving them some space to work with next year for any 50th anniversary exhibits they may consider.

I particularly enjoyed the uniform displays. There's a timeline that shows examples of each style worn throughout the team's history, plus more jerseys in the front to highlight various players and moments in the last 48 seasons. Looking at the sizing tags gives some idea of the evolution of ballplayers' physiques -- David Wright wears a 48 jersey, Tom Seaver wore 44, Jerry Grote caught in a 42 and Bud Harrelson sported a 38. Manufacturers and technology probably play a part in jersey sizing over the years, but I can't imagine there's a Major Leaguer today who wears anything smaller than a 44. And those who do go that low are the likes of Alex Cora (I checked on one of his game-worn jerseys for sale on the concourse, $200 for a white Coolbase version), not any pitchers of Cy Young ability.

I also dug the World Series press pins. The four from 1969, '73, '86 and 2000 are on display, and the '69 and '86 ones are also mounted at the center of the Commissioner's trophies. Compared to the sparse Yankees trophy in Trenton on Thursday night, these are blinged out. Of course, press pins are probably a thing of the past anyway.

Another historical touch comes as the result of the lineup's new display at the top of the escalators in the rotunda. Above a field level concession stand on the first-base side are nine Topps reproductions of former Mets: Keith Hernandez, Rusty Staub, Cleon Jones, Wally Backman, Ron Darling, Tug McGraw, Bernard Gilkey, Bud Harrelson and Robin Ventura. It's a fun collection to look at, both for the card designs and the players themselves ... except for Gilkey. Really? He's one of the nine Mets chosen for this display? The obvious question is, Why not Piazza? But there are a host of other candidates for the spot: Koosman, Matlack, Carter, Alfonzo, Garrett, HoJo, Mookie, Gooden, Strawberry, Knight, Olerud, even Hundley. Or even Nolan Ryan.

I didn't dwell on it much. From there, we went on to a pregame dinner at the Acela Club and watched the game from the Promenade Club, out of the wind, until the eighth, when we decided to split a Shackburger and didn't have to wait in line for it -- though did have to wait for them to make it. It was there as we waited when Jeff Francoeur hit his second home run of the game, establishing two interesting marks. It was the first four-homer game for the Mets at Citi Field and the first time two Mets hit two home runs each at home since Shea's first year, 1964. Earlier, while in the Promenade Club, I noticed a graphic on SNY that showed visitors hit 79 home runs at Shea in 2008 and 81 at Citi in 2009 -- perhaps another indicator that the Mets' lack of power in '09 was not because of their new ballpark but more an indication of their depleted lineup and, hopefully, a change in approach for the one constant in the lineup through the season, namely David Wright. So if Rod Barajas and Francoeur can hit two apiece and Wright can pound one off the wall on a chilly, windy night, I'm hopeful there's a rebound afoot this season.

How I saw Opening Day

A sunny, warm mid-70-degree day. Is this really Opening Day?

Indeed it was, yet we kept pinching ourselves and discussing whether it really was as good as it seemed. My mom and my pal Dave arrived separately from Casey and me, but we all met up in Danny Meyerland in center field before the game, munching on garlic parmesean fries and washing them down with Brooklyn Summer Ale, new to Box Frites this year.

After our appetizer, we made our way to our seats in the first row of section 137 in left-center field. I decided to splurge a little for the opener, choosing seats in a new vantage point and in a location where we'd be comfortable. Mom commented several times throughout the day how nice it was, especially the legroom as she stretched out and propped her feet on the screen in front of us. Looking over the wall before the game, we found ourselves situated between the banners for the 1986 World Series champions and the 1988 NL East champs, directly above the 384 mark. When Jason Bay hit his triple, I stood up and leaned out a little to watch Chris Coghlan pick up the ball on the warning track and fire it in, too late to third base.

Sitting in left-center made for some good scouting. Gary Matthews Jr. surprised many out there, and to me he looked like he had a good read on fly balls, taking charge in calling off Bay and Jeff Francoeur at times and going back and coming in with ease. Yes, he looked shaky on some, but that seemed to be more from the effects of the wind on the baseball than Matthews' ability. I certainly hope we don't have to critique Matthews' and Angel Pagan's play in center for too long, but at least they each got off on the right foot.

The same could not be said for the Marlins' Cameron Maybin, who flailed at the plate (as many do against Johan) and had an adventurous day in center field. A couple of bloop hits fell in front of Maybin, out of the reach of any infielders or Coghlan, but that isn't necessarily Maybin's fault. It is a vast outfield, and who knows how the Florida coaches had Maybin positioned. But on Rod Barajas' double in the four-run sixth, it seemed that Maybin was overmatched and out of position from the moment Barajas swung.

It was very easy to get caught up in David Wright's home run and Johan Santana's solid six innings. We didn't care that it's just Opening Day or that Johan can't pitch every game. It's the start of a new season; Spring Training is over and we'll worry about Game 2 on Wednesday. In fact, as Marty Noble's game story in that last link pointed out, the Mets did a lot of things right to start off 2010 that were problems in 2009 -- they brought home runners in scoring position (4-for-10, plus a sacrifice fly), tacked on runs (extending a 2-1 lead to the eventual 7-1 final) and put up a big inning (a four-run sixth immediately after Florida had cut the margin to 2-1).

Wright's homer was a particularly good sign after all the talk in the offseason about his power outage last year and the discussions in Spring Training about his enhanced physique. I truly believe he'll hit 20-25 out this year for a variety of reasons, not least among them the fact that Bay provides some protection in the lineup and once Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran return, Wright will hopefully bat with some threats on the bases more often than he did in '09. And after having the foresight to record Wright's home run in last year's home opener, was pleased to snap a photo when he hit his first this year. It wasn't until later that I realized that it was the first long ball of Wright's career that did not count for at least one of my fantasy teams. After some fortunate draft positions in the long-running keeper league (three players per team, with no one player allowed to be kept for more than three years in a row) Dave and I are in, this year I couldn't keep Wright and didn't have a chance to draft him before Dave did. But at least another Mets fan benefitted.

On Opening Day more than other days, I find that I want to see as much of the game as I can and am not as interested in walking around for other vantage points. I crossed Shea Bridge a couple of times and we entered through the rotunda, passing the Home Run Apple's new home out front. And after leaving through one of the exits on the first-base side, we saw Jerry Seinfeld and family (plus Tom Poppa, the host of the Seinfeld-produced The Marriage Ref) walking to their car in the ultra-VIP parking lot. They were in a small group and stopped at the edge of the lot, which would've been an easy opportunity to politely ask to take a photograph, but we chose not to bother him with his kids in tow.

So we didn't see the new Mets Hall of Fame (other than in passing as we walked up the stairs in the rotunda) or make our way down to McFadden's in center field. But we're already going back on Friday; I went to Stubhub and bought some slightly reduced Promenade Club tickets for the game against the Nationals and I hope to get there early to visit the museum and get a good spot in the Acela Club. We'd like to try fine dining at the ballpark just once, and I figured a cool, possibly rainy night against the Nats in April isn't a bad choice. I could've bought first-row Pepsi Porch tickets instead (another Citi Field goal for me), but with the possibility of rain, I figured sheltered was better -- even if Adam Dunn is in town.

Here are the rest of the photos of Opening Day, a truly beautiful and gorgeous day at Citi Field.

Watching the good Doctor work

Late last night, Marty Noble put up a blog post reminiscing about crooner Johnny Maestro and hurler Doc Gooden, and it brought up some memories of my own that I didn't include in my post about Gooden's Nike billboard in Midtown.

I was 10 in 1986, and the two games I did see that year were started by Sid Fernandez (8-2 on June 20!) and Rick Aguilera (he homered!). I didn't catch Gooden until he faced the Phillies on Opening Day 1991, my first opener and definitely a thrilling one because my parents let me miss school to go. Sometime during that offseason, I asked (probably begged) my parents to buy tickets and call me in sick to school. They agreed -- "Just this once" -- and Dad took the bullet by calling out sick himself and driving my friend Will (he might've actually been off on his Catholic high school's two-week Easter break, but his parents would've let him go anyway) and me to Queens. It truly would've pained my dad to take the day off and make the two-hour drive from the Jersey Shore, across Staten Island, up the BQE and down Northern Boulevard (before the internet and GPS, he took the most direct route, rather than the fastest, which is the BQE to the Grand Central Parkway). He's a Mets fan, but he prefers to watch on TV; Will's a Yankees fan, but he's not the dick kind that starts chanting "Let's go Yankees!" on Opening Day in Queens.

Traffic near Shea was a mess, and the parking lot where Citi Field now stands was full by the time we arrived. So we wouldn't miss the first pitch, Will and I got out of the car and walked across the lot and reached our seats in the left-field mezzanine with time to spare. Dad had to park somewhere in or near Flushing Meadows Park and caught up to us in the second inning, I believe. By then, the Mets were already ahead, 1-0, after Vince Coleman doubled down the right-field line in his first Mets at-bat and Gregg Jefferies followed with a double down the left-field line.

Gooden was on his game that day, getting through the first needing only 13 pitches to get Lenny Dykstra to fly out and fanning Darren Daulton and Von Hayes on seven total pitches. Doc went eight innings, allowing six hits and a walk and striking out seven. His only mistake was a 1-2 pitch to John Kruk leading off the fifth. Kruk belted a line-drive homer over the Mets bullpen in right field and hit one of the Phillies' buses parked beyond the 'pen.

The other game was on July 8, 2000, the Shea Stadium end of the first day-night Mets-Yankees doubleheader in both boroughs. Doc won that one, too -- for the Yankees, in his former home. I'm pretty sure that remains the loudest ovation given a Yankee in Queens since interleague play began, and the only time Mets and Yankees fans cheered in unison. That included myself and a college pal, Brad, another Yankees fan (he grew up in the Bronx suburb of Fort Wayne, Indiana). The game was Doc's first in his second stint with the Yankees, following his release by the Devil Rays, and it was his final victory at Shea. He won only three more games in his career.

So Gooden's combined stat line in the two games I saw him pitch reads like this:

13 IP, 12 H, 3 R/ER, 2 BB, 8 SO, .249 BAA, 1.08 WHIP, 2.08 ERA
He only struck out one Met that day, and his performace was overshadowed by the night game -- also a 4-2 Yankees win -- in which Roger Clemens beaned Mike Piazza, giving him a concussion and keeping him out of that year's All-Star Game.

It was clear from the beginning of the day game that the former Mets would do in the current Mets. Chuck Knoblauch led off the game by lining the first pitch to center for a hit, but Jay Payton threw him out at second base. After Yankees first-base coach Lee Mazzilli appealed to first-base umpire Robb Cook that first baseman Todd Zeile had interfered with Knoblauch, the call was overturned. Bobby Valentine argued and was objected, even though he was right -- the call was crap. Zeile barely moved from his position in the field, and Knoblauch took an unusually wide turn around first base. Valentine argued that Knoblauch never changed direction or came into contact with Zeile, but the blind umps wouldn't budge. I distinctly remember Valentine repeatedly and demonstratively walking in Knoblauch's footsteps on the otherwise pristine, freshly dragged infield to make his point. It's still a bullshit call. Knoblauch should've been out and Derek Jeter, who followed with an RBI double, should have one fewer RBI among his career totals.

There is one more memory of seeing Gooden in person, though he didn't pitch. Dad also took Will and me to the final weekend home game in 1989. The Expos won, 6-5, on Fan Appreciation Day (remember those?). Howard Johnson stole his 40th base and Darryl Strawberry hit his 29th home run. But the highlight came before the game, when Will and I were hanging over the railing at the end of the right-field loge, watching David Cone warm up for the start in the Mets bullpen. At one point, Gooden emerged from the small clubhouse beneath us and we called down to him, hoping we might get one of the baseballs lying on the grass. He didn't toss us a ball, but he looked up with a smile and a wave, and that made our day more than anything that happened in the game.

Photo Friday: Braves vs. Mets, 1991

Out at first

This week's slideshow is another set taken before I got my first SLR (and, therefore, first telephoto lens), so the photos tend to be more of the wide-view variety. I cropped closer where I could, but for the most part, the view is what I saw 18 years ago.

A few highlights about this game. On a personal level, it was my first field-level game at Shea Stadium. We got a thrill out of being so close to the field, particularly during pregame warmups, when the players were so close. This collection of images also includes some personal favorites in terms of players: Howard Johnson, Gregg Jefferies and Todd Hundley. I also like how you can see the blue-and-orange racing stripe down the side of the uniforms, even at a distance. And one photo that's a particular favorite -- and I nealy used for the image at the top -- shows the outfield wall in left-center, with the old logos of the National League teams along the blue background. Those were so much more attractive to me than advertisements, which I prefer for the minor leagues, not the Majors.

Photo Friday: Memorial Stadium, 1991

Cal

I never got to see Comiskey Park before it was replaced by New Comiskey, and I still regret that a bit. But I was just 13 in the summer of 1990, and Chicago is a long way from New Jersey. There was no way to get there on my own, and our family trip that summer was to California, so Dodger Stadium was the ballpark away from home that I got to visit.

But a year later, I did get to see Baltimore's Memorial Stadium in its final year. As with the Rangers-Red Sox game at Fenway in 1993, the foursome of myself, my friend Matt and our fathers made the trip. It was a one-day jaunt down to Baltimore and back, about a 3 1/2-hour drive each way, not counting the time spent sitting without moving in the parking lot after the game. With the stadium jammed into a neighborhood, parking was limited, so cars were just lined up in the lots around the ballpark, as you can see in the photo on this page. We weren't in too deep, but we did have to wait for at least one car to move before we could depart, and the owner of it didn't leave the game as quickly as we did.

Other notable moments from the day: We saw Mo Vaughn's first Major League home run, I was definitely psyched to see Cal Ripken play (you'll notice his batting stance in one of the photos) and Wade Boggs struck out. I found this last one notable because, a week earlier in Boston, I'd seen Don Mattingly strike out, and neither did so all that frequently.

The next year, we went to Camden Yards in its inaugural season, and the differences were immense. Of course, Oriole Park is noted as the beginning of the "retro ballpark" trend, but in addition, it also marked a shift from building stadia on the outskirts of town to finding room in or near the heart of downtown. Or at least more accessible to the city itself and its public transportation. In some ways, it can be seen not only in Baltimore, but San Francisco, San Diego, Cleveland and Houston, just to name four off the top of my head that I've visited. The drive to Memorial Stadium on the city's east side included a civics lesson, while a visit to Oriole Park is as much a tourist destination as the nearby Inner Harbor.

Photo Friday: Angels vs. Yankees, 1992

Donnie Baseball stands in

Didn't get around to today's slideshow as early as I have the past two weeks, so no attempt at a soundtrack today and no particular reason for choosing this set.

This was a late-August game between two teams going nowhere in 1992: the Angels and Yankees. California, as the Angels were known then, won, 7-3, and Tim Salmon hit his first Major League home run, which is why this particular game always stood out in my memory. Years ago, when I discovered Retrosheet.org and its archive of box scores, I wanted to track down every game I'd attended. Finding this one was easy, because I remembered Salmon's milestone. Same goes for Mo Vaughn, who hit his first homer about two months before this in Baltimore's Memorial Stadium (I'll eventually post my pics from that day).

Nothing particularly wonderful about this set. It was before I'd gotten my first SLR camera, so I'm using my mom's point-and-shoot, the first camera I'd used that had a zoom function. But the settings couldn't be adjusted, even if I knew what to do back then at almost 16 years old, so there is definitely some blurring that could've been prevented had I known what to do. So even though they might not hold up to my personal standards today, I've decided to include them for what they are: The memory and record of what I focused on and what I saw 17 years ago.

The breezy comfort of a Midwestern, Rust Belt summer evening

This is the problem with having a blog but not being diligent about updating it through the season. I'll start a post but then get distracted or bored or tired and will leave it for later. And then it will completely slip my mind, and "later" is then defined as "months after I started." So in an effort to turn some of these drafts into posts, I'm going back to finish them off, continuity and relevance be damned. Sadly (for me), this first effort, a review of a visit last July to Cleveland, will be truncated and less detailed than if I'd written upon returning home -- or even returning to our downtown hotel, within a convenient walk and with a top-floor room with a view of the ballpark. Procrastination: It kills (memories).



Progressive Field, home of the Indians, was my 24th ballpark (16th active), and though it's considered one of the "new" ones because it opened in 1994, after Comiskey Park and Camden Yards, it's now the 13th-oldest ballpark in baseball. That is, more than half of the current parks are newer. I mean seriously, think about that: More than half of baseball's 30 teams play in stadiums built in the last 20 years. In the NL East, the home of the Marlins is the oldest park, opened in 1987. In other words, the Mets' last World Series title predates every ballpark in the division. When the Marlins move into their new stadium in two years, Atlanta's Turner Field -- built for the 1996 Olympics -- will then be the oldest of the five in the NL East, meaning each one will have opened since I graduated from high school.

Jacobs Field was actually the next stadium to open after Oriole Park, so the two of them share the distinction of being at the front of the "retro trend" in stadium design, the move away from grand, hulking, massive arenas on the edge of the city limits to more cozy, intimate parks nestled into downtown or other neighborhoods. But what if the White Sox had accepted the Oriole Park blueprint instead of going big when they built the new Comiskey Park? The whole alignment of new parks as we know them might've been skewed.

My wife and I were there on one of the Indians' "retro Saturdays," when the team wore their off-white alternate uniforms, the night had a theme (ours was Beach Night) and the fans walked the concourse with their bobblehead giveaways -- Surfin Sizemore in our case -- in their arms. We watched a cover band sing Jimmy Buffett tunes from a stage set up by a temporary beach on the plaza outside the left-field gate, then took our time walking around the concourse to our seats on the first-base side. We got dinner, sampled several local brews and enjoyed the breezy comfort of a Midwestern, Rust Belt summer evening. At a souvenir stand on the right-field concourse, I chose my retro hat as Casey tried to convince a middle-aged man to buy a four-foot tall Chief Wahoo statue for $250.

From our seats just past first base, we had a great view as the players hustled down the line on groundouts and base hits. Ken Griffey Jr., Ichiro, Grady Sizemore, Shin-Soo Choo, Victor Martinez and the rest made the turn to the infield on a base hit or veered into foul territory when their batting average took a hit. When Franklin Gutierrez hit a two-run homer with Griffey on in the fourth, the two met at home plate and tapped their helmets against one another to celebrate.

That homer proved to be the difference as the Mariners won, 3-1, and with a listless Indians offense against Jarrod Washburn, it was clear when the Tribe scored in the seventh that it would be too little, too late. We spent the last few innings walking the concourse some more, getting one last beer in the bottom of the seventh and pausing at different vantage points for a different view. On the way out, Casey stopped to photograph the vegetable mosaics lining the walkway along 6th St. past Quicken Arena (home of LeBron) as the ballpark crowd filed past us. The pedestrian mall of 4th St. was loud and lively, the neon of the restaurants and bars casting a Kodachrome glow over our faces. We walked into the majestic lobby of our hotel in the historic Guardian Bank Building and rode the elevator to our top floor. Out our corner window, I looked over the rooftops to the soft glow coming from the ballpark. The toothbrush-like light towers were dimmed, leaving enough light to illuminate the seats and field for cleanup crews to finish their tasks for the night. Just to the right, 4th St. glowed with a bright energy.

Photo Friday: Cardinals vs. Cubs, 1998

Mark McGwire, May 1, 1998, Chicago

With the way the week started out, I had to go with this set for Photo Friday. When I went through the negatives to find that photo of Mark McGwire I used on Monday, I scanned in the rest of the worthy images to use for today's slideshow. I had a fitting song picked out, "The Apologist" by R.E.M., but YouTube's gotten smart enough to recognize music tracks and disabled the audio because of copyrights. And I didn't even use the complete song. Anyway, here's the photo-only slide show.

Update, Feb. 19: It occurred to me that Blogger has a video uplink button that I'd never used. Maybe, I thought, I can upload the video with the track that way. I finally remembered to try it and it worked out, as you'll see below. The version without the song can still be seen here, where the photos are a bit larger as well.

Still a fan of the summer of '98

Mark McGwire at Wrigley Field, May 1, 1998

I graduated from college in 1998, so that was a special summer for me, too. I set up my spring semester schedule to only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My friends and I popped champagne on our apartment balcony after our last finals. We caught a Cardinals-Cubs game at Wrigley Field on a pleasant May afternoon. After the commencement ceremony -- which took place on the same day the Yankees gave away Beanie Babies for a game against the Twins (and David Wells pitched pretty well, I believe) -- I came home to New Jersey and spent six weeks going to a few graduation parties and planning my cross-country trip.

And all that summer, as I drove out to California and back, I followed what has become known as the Great Home Run Chase. Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and the ghost of Roger Maris. I saw McGwire hit home run No. 12 that season, a ninth-inning two-run shot off of Rod Beck in a game the Cubs won, 6-5. When I stayed in Major League cities, I checked the schedules to see if the Cardinals were in town, just missing them in San Diego when I was in L.A. and in Colorado when I got into Denver. And in a small bit of personal symmetry, I was back on campus in South Bend, watching the Labor Day afternoon game on ESPN when McGwire hit his 61st long ball that season. An interview for a job with a local newspaper kept me in town the next night, too, when I watched him hit his 62nd. I might've teared up watching it happen.

It was all so compelling: missing first base in the excitement, high-fives from Cubs infielders as he rounded the bases, a bear hug with his son at home plate, Sammy Sosa's sprint in from right field, his tearful embrace with Maris' widow and sons. As baseball fans, how could we not become enthralled? The 1994-95 strike was still pretty raw, robbing fans of the World Series for the first time since John McGraw didn't feel the Boston Red Sox, of the inferior "American League," were a worthy opponent to his National League pennant-winning Giants in 1904. Cal Ripken may have broken Lou Gehrig's consecutive-games streak in '95, but that came too close to the strike -- and he would've broken it sooner if it weren't for the strike -- to help the healing. We didn't have enough distance.

Three years, it seems, was enough distance to bring us back, to capture our attention with a chase at one of the game's great records. We all watched, and few of us, I think, questioned it. Mike Lupica wrote a book about it. I bought it and read it and still love the cover image.

But even if we did suspect at the time that McGwire might not be all natural, we did so in a less accusatory tone. Yeah, it may have happened, but who can really say? It wasn't like today, when accusations of performance-enhancing are not brushed off so easily and we find ourselves pausing to contemplate whether or not we think the player mentioned compiled his stats solely on his own ability. When McGwire first appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot, Lupica said that he doesn't think McGwire should be elected. Bill Simmons called him on it. We're all still trying to figure this out.

In 80 plate appearances against three admitted or widely suspected performance-enhancing pitchers, McGwire hit four home runs -- two each off of Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte and none against Jason Grimsley. He struck out 14 times vs. Clemens (in 53 at-bats), five vs. Pettitte (in 21) and had none against Grimsley (but with four walks in six at-bats). But now that our suspicions are being proven, will we look at the steroid era any differently? Will it someday come to the point that, yeah, hitters were juicing, but they were facing pitchers who weren't clean, either? Are others going to come forward? Is Sammy Sosa next?

I never thought I'd be saying this, but I may not care anymore who was on steroids. With every new player whose name comes up, I think my outrage subsides a bit. I liked McGwire in the '90s and I can't say I like him any less now. I'm a bit disappointed, both in the fact that he decided to cheat and that he waited so long to come clean. But he still came clean faster than Pete Rose did for his transgressions and some of these other players we've got at the top of our suspected users lists. Knowing what I know now, confirmed, may sadden the 33-year-old me, but the 21-year-old from 1998 still remembers a great summer.

So maybe it's time Bud Selig and the baseball writers just give amnesty to all the steroid and HGH users from the past up until the Mitchell Report came out. If you used then, 'fess up, and all's good. Yeah, the numbers McGwire, Sosa and Barry Bonds put up may not be fair to Roger Maris, Babe Ruth (Sosa broke Ruth's record for home runs in one month) or Hank Aaron, but the 162-game schedule also wasn't fair to Ruth and so many other advances in baseball and technology have also tilted the playing field -- literally, in some cases. From expansion several times over to night games to domed stadiums to maple bats to elbow guards to dietary supplements to training regimens to ballpark design, the game has changed over the decades. Even comparing players of the same era is not fool-proof. Did Ted Williams hit 160 more home runs than Joe DiMaggio because he was more powerful, or did Yankee Stadium's Death Valley in left-center rob DiMaggio of a glut of long balls? Or what if DiMaggio hit left-handed? Sadly, maybe this is another variable to consider. Maybe, as others have written, the Steroid Era has to be treated like antithesis to the Dead Ball Era.

I'm not going to go out and buy a McGwire jersey and I don't see myself making an extra effort to get to batting practice and cheer him as hitting coach when the Cardinals come to New York. But I won't boo him, either. I won't make signs or yell insults. Maybe I've come to accept it, or maybe I'm just scared that the next name will be someone I truly adored, a name that will really upset me and shatter those memories of past summers.

An overdue trip to Fenway

Sky lights

May 22, 2009

Fenway Park always makes me think of Iowa.

W.P. Kinsella set "Field of Dreams" in Iowa, yet one of the pivotal scenes takes place in Boston, when Ray Kinsella takes Terrence Mann to a baseball game at Fenway Park. Why Fenway? Why have the protagonist drive nearly 1,200 miles to track down a recluse writer, when Wrigley Field -- a ballpark just as old, with just as much history -- sits just a few hours east of that Iowa cornfield? Because in the book, Terrence Mann is actually J.D. Salinger, who lives in New Hampshire.

Yet it's those scenes at Fenway, particularly when Ray and Terrence are walking in the cramped, crowded concourse -- this in the late 80s, during the Red Sox's Roger Clemens era of competitive baseball, but before this decade's two championships and Fenway upgrades -- and buying hot dogs and beer (Ray: "So what do you want?" Terrence: "I want them to stop looking to me for answers, begging me to speak again, write again, be a leader. I want them to start thinking for themselves. I want my privacy." Ray: "No, I mean, what do you WANT?" Terrence: "Oh. Dog and a beer."), that make me think of the movie.

The ballpark is cramped, cozy and quirky. Our seats were in right field, near the Pesky Pole, and if we sat back and let the shape and angle of the seats tell us where to look, we sat staring at the Green Monster in left field. But all that added to the charm. We had a good view of Johan Santana warming up in the outfield before he went to the bullpen during his pregame routine. I thought about making my way over there for some amazing photos, but decided it just wasn't worth navigating the narrow, crowded aisles. Instead, I watched the other people watch Johan warm up.

This was my fourth game at the Fens, but my fifth visit. The first experience came on a stopover trip during our annual summer trip to Maine. We stayed with my mom's cousin and family and visited the ballpark one warm morning even though the Red Sox were out of town. It was 1987 or 1988 and I wore a Mets cap as we walked Yawkey Way and Landsdowne St. When we passed an open gate and gazed upon the green sun-splashed seats and walls of the ballpark, a grounds crew member or some other employee noticed our touristy interest and invited us in to see the field. We walked out of a tunnel on the first-base side and stood behind the dugout, halfway up the grandstand. I can still see in my mind the photo the employee took of our family that day, but there's little chance I'll ever find it. It may have been taken with my first camera, a cheap Kodak disk thing that was pretty much manufactured to be the first camera of young children.

That trip also ignited in me my love of baseball jerseys. We walked into a souvenir shop on Landsdowne where uniforms of many MLB teams -- but mostly the one in Boston -- hung from the ceiling. I wanted them all, to be able to put one on and button it up. I think I tried to find that store again on a subsequent visit, but it either changed its layout and/or display, or it wasn't the same as I recalled, because it just didn't have the same effect on me.

The first game was with my dad a few years later; we had tickets in the second row behind the visitors' bullpen in right field. We stayed with that same cousin in the suburb of Arlington, where they dropped us off at the T station and were there to pick us up when we got back.

The second game came at the end of August 1993, when my best friend Matt and I went up with our fathers on a college visit to Boston College. We paid to park in a Howard Johnson's lot or some similar nearby business and walked through the back of the parking lot to get to the ballpark. We stopped for an early dinner at the Cask'n Flagon -- a visit that may have instilled in me my love of a cozy sports bar. I had my brand new SLR camera with me and loved the zoom lens that brought the players so much closer during batting practice. I focused on Nolan Ryan, Juan Gonzalez and Rafael Palmeiro because we were there during the Rangers' batting practice. That's what stands out, because I can't remember where we sat.

The third game was nine months later, just a night after we graduated from high school. I'm not sure how the trip came up, but three of us -- my friends Walker and Brian joined me -- bought three individual seats behind the plate. Because the Yankees were in town, we couldn't get three together, but we still found three close enough that when we sat down, we managed to switch with other fans to have the three of us sitting near one another -- two beside one another, the other in front. The fact that three fresh high school graduates could afford tickets behind the plate at Fenway for a game against the Yankees, identify ourselves as being from New Jersey and have a pleasant conversation with the fans around us tells you how the game has changed in the last 15 years.

I don't know how it came to be the trio of Brian, Walker and me. Walker never was (and still isn't) much of a baseball fan, and Brian was always a football guy to me, though he does root for the Yankees. My dad drove us up, we checked into a hotel in Kenmore Square within walking distance of the ballpark over the Mass Pike, and dad headed down to Cape Cod to visit a family friend. He returned the next day to pick us up and take us back to New Jersey.

And so my fourth trip was with my wife, my dad not playing a part in my presence at Fenway for the first time. (The next day, we'd drive down to the Cape to meet up with the family, but that's not quite the same connection.) The Mets won this one for us, 5-3, and we walked back to Tremont St. on a cooling Boston night. It had been a warm, humid afternoon, but after perusing the cool concourse beneath the bleachers and downing a couple of beers, we adjusted.

There aren't too many ways to better spend a night to kick off the summer than in Boston, at Fenway.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

This one goes out to the one I love

Springtime

R.E.M. was the first music we heard coming from the field, but we were still on the concourse. We'd just come up the escalator through the Jackie Robinson Rotunda and we were ready to work our way around Citi Field.

While I enjoy college baseball games, we weren't there to see St. John's and Georgetown. Most of the 20,000 or so who actually made it out to the ballpark were there for the unveiling, the soft open of Citi Field -- and its food. We were barely halfway down the first-base line on the concourse when I noticed Blue Smoke out behind center field. Our trajectory was set.

They started announcing the lineups and John Franco took the mound to throw out the ceremonial first pitch, but we stood on line at Shake Shack and Blue Smoke and Box Frites. I took off my hat as the national anthem played, but I wasn't anxious to place my order and get my food to get back to my seat (and that felt weird at first). Instead, the smell of the grill -- of the Shackburgers -- weighed more on me, and that's what I found myself anticipating more.

"If I see Danny Meyer, I might just kiss him," I said as we downed our burgers, pork sandwiches, fries and beer on a wall at the top of a stairway out beyond the center-field scoreboard.

In short, I'm hooked.

Shea Stadium had its charm, its character, its history. But it also had its rust, its gunk, its grunge, its smells and its attempt at food. Citi Field tops it all. We spent the afternoon at the ballpark and never even found where our seats, as printed on the tickets, were located. We circled the ballpark on the field-level concourse -- a first in Queens -- and did the same on the promenade (upper deck) level. We ducked into several shops, read multiple menu boards and made our way back to Danny Meyerland for a second lunch of tacos.

In 23 years of attending games at Shea, I saw games from just about every vantage point -- field level behind the dugout, boxes on the loge, mezzanine and upper levels, the top row, the picnic area, the small slivers of seats in fair territory down the lines. After one look at Citi Field, I hope to take in as many different views in must less time.

I appreciate baseball's history as much as anyone. I lament the fact that I never got to Chicago in time to see Comiskey Park and I would probably use a chance at a time machine to see games at the Polo Grounds, Ebbets Field, pre-renovated Yankee Stadium (the true original Stadium) and several other old parks. At times, I'm sure I'll miss Shea, where I saw scores of games and I'll miss Yankee Stadium, where I saw my first game. But those days should be few and far between now that the Mets have a beautiful new ballpark that they both deserve and need.

Citi Field wasn't quite complete for this soft opening -- it was just short of a full dress rehearsal, with the Mets still in Florida, after all -- but it was only a few Jackie Robinson murals and outfield advertisments short of being finished. It didn't feel like Opening Day, but it sure felt like a new era.

Falling short once again

I've let time pass and decided I'm ready to write this post. It's hard to watch your team come so close to the postseason and not close the deal. It's particularly tough when your boys have it in their control -- all they have to do is win -- and it still gets away. But as time passes, as the days go by and we get deeper into October, we get further from the season and reality sets in. Baseball fades as teams drop from the playoffs, football rises, and sad thoughts of this year become hopeful wishes for next year.

This year's fall wasn't as bad as last year's. It didn't hurt as much. While I hoped the Mets would erase the bad taste from 2007, this year's team wasn't as good. It didn't have the depth to overcome all the injuries. Bringing back Moises Alou probably wasn't a good idea from the outset, but losing him wasn't the worst thing to happen. But losing Angel Pagan and then Fernando Tatis, well, that exacerbated the problem. John Maine's absence in September wouldn't have been crippling if Billy Wagner hadn't gone down and blown up the entire bullpen. With Wagner on board, that bullpen lines up much better and fewer games get blown; more close losses instead to go the Mets' way and -- perhaps -- they edge out the Brewers by a game, instead of the other way around.

The 2007 Mets were on top of the NL East -- and the National League -- for the bulk of the season. They led until the final week. They were the better team. The 2008 Mets, though, weren't as good as this year's Phillies. Nevermind the postseason, where anything can happen (note the 2006 Cardinals and '07 Rockies, to name just two recent hot-at-the-right-time teams).

What we can hope for, as Mets fans, is that this year taught management a lesson. Luis Castillo is a black hole in the lineup and at second base. The bullpen needs an overhaul. Oliver Perez, for all his inconsistency, should probably be brought back. It'll be easier to fill that fifth-starter's position than both slots four and five. Ryan Church can be an everyday right fielder so long as he isn't concussed, and while Daniel Murphy and Nick Evans could probably be a serviceable left-field platoon, an everyday replacement there would probably be a better move.

I'll use another post to go through the free-agent options, but one thing is clear: The Mets are probably going to have to open the checking account to bring in Francisco Rodriguez or Kerry Wood. A closer is needed, and there aren't many available. Brian Fuentes may be had in a trade, but if the fans got on Wagner just because he put two runners on base before getting the last out, what will they do when Fuentes turns two-run wins into one-run wins? Or worse?

And I'd love to see them revive a possible acquisition from three years ago: Rafael Furcal to play second base. Castillo would have to be traded (and his contract paid for), but I'd rather spend throw money at the solution than throw losses at the problem by starting Castillo everyday.

So now we're left with another offseason of waiting, watching, wanting. The Phillies are up, 2-0, in the NLCS and appear headed to the World Series. Those fans will be even more obnoxious and unbearable if they get there. As for us, we'll just have to anticipate the Winter Meetings, wait for the New Year and long for Spring Training and then the coming of Citi Field.