Twins @ Mets 6-27-10

We pulled into the parking lot at Citi Field (parking is now up to $19 by the way, folks) at 10:30 am. Start time for the game was 1:05 pm. It sounds like we were super early for a baseball game, but as Chris Cornell has said, we were on a mission. Okay, so technically he said, “I’m on a mission now,” but you get the point. We had the unlikely goal of meeting Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau in mind. We figured that there was a slim chance since they were at least playing for the away team, which we’ve always been more successful with. Even that early in the morning, the weather was stifling. We entered the stadium through Jackie Robinson Rotunda, received our Mets free travel mug, and immediately headed for the Twins side of the field.

Surprisingly, a lot of Twins fans were present. We managed to score a great spot between the left field foul pole and Twins dugout because the usher for that section hadn’t arrived for duty yet. Normally, we would’ve been relegated to the area near the foul pole and if you had read Serena’s letter to the Mets from last week, you’d know that that section isn’t ideal for taking pictures with players because of the gradual inclination of the wall. Therefore, our snagged spot was prime real estate for getting our paws on the M&M boys.

While we sat and chatted about how hot it was outside, Twins’ pitcher, Matt Guerrier just happened to appear, signing autographs. Literally. No joke. We were talking one minute and the next minute, there was Matt. Standing less than a foot away from us. How we didn’t notice him approaching us is beyond us. Maybe the heat was getting to us. He signed Serena’s ticket stub while Lisa documented the situation. In retrospect, we should’ve gotten him to sign both of our ticket stubs and asked him to pose for a picture with the BOTH of us, but apparently we’re idiots. It is also apparent that the TBB only have success with pitchers, which is a problem because neither of the M&M boys are pitchers.

Serena showed Lisa her signed ticket stub and said, “He’s got pretty nice handwriting for a man.” Lisa agreed. Suddenly, a voice interrupted our conversation. We looked up and Guerrier smiled at us.
Serena: What?
Guerrier: What did you just say?
Serena: Uh, I said that you’ve got nice handwriting for a man.
Guerrier: I’ve never gotten that before.
Then he laughed and moved off to the corner of the outfield to warm up. Our luck would not run out with Guerrier. Brian Duensing (another Twins…pitcher) walked over and tossed a ball to Serena! Okay, he didn’t sign it, but it’s still a ball! That was used by a professional baseball player!

As the players jogged off the field and into their respective dugouts, we decided to take a look at the Mets Hall of Fame museum that just opened up this season. We turned to exit the field level section and Lisa spotted this gem:

Amazing. The Hall of Fame is located on the lower level of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. When we arrived, the line was extremely long, so we popped over to the gift store next door in hopes that by the time we were done behaving like jack asses, the line would be shorter. Examples of our tomfoolery? Donald made some sweet action moves on Serena…

…and Goofy kicked Lisa in the face.

We spent about a half hour in the gift store before checking out the Hall of Fame again. The line was still ridiculous, but we had nothing better to do at this point and it did seem to be moving fairly quickly.

The museum was tiny, but filled with some goodies, such as the 1986 World Series trophy when the Mets triumphed over Satan…we mean the Red Sox. Oops.

Lisa posed with the 1969 World Series trophy in honor of Papa L.

In the middle of the space, the original Mr. Met was on display. We never thought we’d say this, but Mr. Met was definitely a Stage 5 Pedophile back in the day. We’re glad he’s evolved to the glorious being that he is now.

Tom Seaver’s ridiculously expensive $500 contract was available to check out as well. $500. Back when baseball was just a game and not a red carpet affair. That’s why Tom Seaver will remain a Mets hero for generations to come and Pedro Martinez is just a shmuck.

On the opposite side of Seaver’s contract is something that made Serena act like a real asshole. Behold the autographed baseball bats of her favorite third baseman in history, Robin Ventura.

Wandering around a bit more led us to a giant black and white poster of the 1969 ticker tape parade. We couldn’t resist…

As far as Lisa concerned, she felt that this would be our only opportunity to ever get our picture taken during a Mets ticker tape parade. We ended up with about 30 pictures of us in front of this poster because the older gentlemen who offered to take our picture were a bit entertained by us. The photographer kept repeating, “You’re awesome” while his friend “posed us.” You think we’re kidding, but we assure you that we’re not. At one point, he even threw Lisa his mitt and commanded her to “catch the ticker tape.”If this is what it’s like to be a Cover Girl, we adamantly refuse to work in those types of conditions. Not that Cover Girl would want us…

The museum exits into the gift store next store. As we filed out of the museum, we spotted a Daniel Murphy signed base. *sigh* Lisa took a picture with it in his memory. We miss him. The store had an entire clearance section filled with his memorabilia and we all know what that means. Bye-bye, Murphy. Stay gold.

You would think that after wasting all of that time, the game would’ve started at this point. You’re wrong. Arriving at the stadium at 10:30 has its perks, you see. What’s a pair of girls to do? Pay a visit to the Mr. Met store in the Kids’ Fun Zone? We think so. On the way, Serena spotted a gluten free food stand in a nook behind right field. Serena shrieked in excitement and dashed away from Lisa to take a picture of the stand for Erin. In her excitement of finding a food stand at a ball park where Erin can eat, she completely forgot to check what kind of food they served. Lame, Serena. Really friggin’ lame.

Continuing on our merry way to Mr. Met’s store, we noticed that the Mets finally embraced Citi Field’s predecessor by naming the bridge behind the outfield “Shea.” It’s a good change. It’s a good change.

Once again, we got side tracked on the way to Mr. Met’s store. We found the Verizon boutique. You may recall that last season in this very same boutique, we took the unforgettable and magical photo of a reenactment of a pitcher’s perfect game. If you do not remember this photo (and we’re not really sure how you COULD forget it), check out the Citi Field post. You’ll notice that we’re pretending to be the pitcher and catcher embracing on the mound while wearing batting helmets. On this visit to the Verizon boutique, we discovered that the backdrop was changed from a celebrating team to TOWSNBN swinging his mighty bat! We’re sure that you can see where we’re going with this, but just in case you can’t:

We did finally make it to the Mr. Met store only to find nothing really of interest. In our lollygagging, we missed a photo opportunity with Mr. Met. The sign informed us that he would return at the end of the 2nd inning, but we were tired, hungry, and it was too hot to wait that long, so we actually passed on taking a picture this time. After all, we do have an insane amount of pictures taken with him already. Plus, we’ll be returning to Citi Field for the August 14th game against the Phillies and we can always stalk him then. It was almost game time and we wanted to get our hot dogs before finding our seats, so we set off to climb the multiple staircases that would lead us to our upper deck location. The hot dog stand was located just outside our section, which is perfection as far as we’re concerned. We both purchased foot longs for $6 and covered them with our favorite toppings. Lisa topped her dog with relish, ketchup, mustard, and sauerkraut. Serena went with mustard, red onions, and jalapeño peppers. At our seats, we chowed down like mother f’n champions. Like mother f’n velociraptors.

Despite our seats being located in the upper deck, we were situated over home plate, offering us the best view of the entire field. Plus, our seats were covered, which meant that we didn’t have to suffer in the sun. Unfortunately, it didn’t help the humidity situation and in no time, we sucked down multiple water bottles and soaked through our tank tops. Our pitching matchup was Jonathan Niese and Joe Baker.

We reached our seats just in time for the lineups to be posted…and much to Serena’s dismay, her future husband, Justin Morneau wasn’t playing! Sons of bitches! Thankfully, Joe Mauer did and we made sure to get a photo of his first at bat (or his stats…whatever. Close enough). It was as good as we were going to get.

The heat was stifling and neither side gave an inch until the 4th when Jeff Francouer launched one over the left field wall. Lisa managed to get her camera out fast enough to document the imposter home run apple rising from the center of hell.

Even though action was minimal at first, the innings dragged on indefinitely because the wet, hot air was oppressive. As you can see in this picture, our makeup is melting off of our faces and what you can’t see because the camera cropped it out is the boob sweat we rocked for the entire game. Sexy stuff.

In the middle of the 5th, Serena couldn’t take it anymore. She needed to walk around, refill her water bottle, and subtly wipe the sweat from the backs of her thighs. Lisa thought it was a good idea and agreed that her thighs needed some serious wiping and airing out to do as well. We decided that we really needed garlic fries in order to help the situation, which makes total sense if you think about it.

For $10, we got the largest box of smelly goodness to share. While standing online to place our order, the inevitable happened. The Mets slaughtered Baker. The bottom of the 5th kicked off with back to back home runs by TOWSNBN and Ike Davis, making the score 5-0. We hurriedly stuffed our faces as quickly as our pie holes could handle having large amounts of food being shoveled into them and made it back to our seats smelling even worse than before (if that’s even possible) just in time to see Rod Barajas single to right and scoring Jason Bay from third. We actually started to feel bad for the Twins. Especially the nice fans next to us who recommended that we eat a Juicy Lucy when we visit Target Field next year. They were also nice enough to take this photo of us with the field behind us when we chose to leave in the 7th because we legitimately could not take the heat anymore. If we stayed for one more batter, Serena was going to turn into a slice of fried bacon and then Lisa would’ve tried to eat her.

Leaving the stadium, we had two brilliant ideas in mind. One was to get our picture taken with the true home run apple since it’s been moved from the bull pen area to outside Citi Field near the entrance to the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, which Serena finds offensive but we won’t go there right now. Secondly, we wanted our picture taken with a pair of Morneau/Mauer fans because that’s as close as we’re ever going to get to the M&M boys. Ever. In what alternate universe is Mauer and Morneau going to look at us, with all of our disgusting habits and retarded photos, and say, “Hey, fine ladies. Let’s take a picture together and then maybe we’ll discuss a joint wedding ceremony?” Um…never. We’ll have to settle for their fans. Turns out that finding this fan combination would be tougher than anticipated. Most clusters either sported all Morneau jerseys or all Mauer. A few rocked random jerseys and by random, we simply mean that the jerseys were of players that wouldn’t be considered “All Stars.” We reached the home run apple without finding a single group of Twins fans that held our desired jersey combo. Fail.

We decided to give up on our joke M&M picture and just play around on Shea Stadium’s bases in the parking lot. In the heat, Lisa shuffled her feet along while Serena walked ahead. Then something miraculous happened. Without even wearing her eyeglasses, Serena spotted a glimmer of hope. A flash of 33 and 7. Wide eyed and borderline delirious, she turned to Lisa and screamed, “Move your goddamn ass, Lisa! They’re here!” Before Lisa could even complain about it being too f’n hot to run, Serena was off and Lisa had no choice but to attempt a slow jog in flip flops. While Lisa endeavored to catch up, Serena shouted like an escaped mental patient at the group of four men walking through the parking lot to “Wait!” As she got closer, they finally stopped and eyed her suspiciously. The oldest man of the group (one of the Morneau’s) looked the most skeptical.

Serena: I swear, we’re not trying to be assholes.
Morneau #1: Okay…
Serena: We just want to take a picture with you. We’ve been looking for the Mauer/Morneau combo for awhile now.
Morneau #2: Um…
*Insert Lisa arriving breathlessly*
Serena: I promise we’re not trying to harass you.
Friend Without Any Jersey On: Yeah, right. Are you going to wait for them to turn around to stab them in the back?
(Hmm…must’ve had a bad experience with the Mets fans at this game)
Serena: No. We just want a picture with the jersey backs.
Morneau #2 (Mauer Fan just kind of stood there and watched this entire exchange with amusement): Alright. We can do that.
Serena: Thanks so much!

The boys lined up obediently in the order of Morneau #1, Mauer, Morneau #2. Lisa made the Friend Without Any Jersey On take the picture because he didn’t wear a jersey for pete’s sake! Why the hell would we want you in this photo then? We thanked them a million times as they waved good-bye and headed off to their car. Hopefully, our interaction made up for the fact that they had a miserable time at the game.

Infused with sheer joy that we ended the game on such a high note, we decided to really go all out with our asshole behavior and take more ridiculous pictures on the Shea Stadium bases. The following photos are testament to this ludicrousness.

Asshole:

Bigger Asshole:

Biggest Asshole:

Truly, the only thing that would’ve topped this off was Serena getting into her ready position at third. The score would remain 6-0. We drove off into the sweeping fire of the majestic setting sun and made sure to update our Facebook profile pictures with some of the choice ones we took at the game.