Shea Stadium

Shea Stadium

23-01 Roosevelt Avenue

Flushing, NY 11368

July 8, 2008

Ahh…July. Nice and humid. A perfect day for a Mets/Giants face off. A perfect day to finally get one’s picture with Barry Zito…maybe even say more than two words to him without stuttering or drooling on oneself. It was also a perfect day to appreciate the New York Jets…though we’re not quite sure how this idea came to fruition. We arrived at Shea Stadium in time for batting practice (as usual). As we walked to the gate, what did we happen to see? A New York Jets jump, jump. At least, that’s what Lisa saw. Serena spotted something much more important with her shoddy vision. Mr. Met. And he was wearing a Jets jersey. Naturally, we needed our picture taken.

Note that constant happiness on his face. Even when the Mets’ bullpen blows a 10-run lead, Mr. Met’s smile never wavers. No. He doesn’t call the relief pitchers nasty and foul names like we do. No. He doesn’t call David Wright a jerk for avoiding Lisa and Serena yet again. No. He doesn’t run away and hide in fear from Lisa and Serena’s cameras despite the fact that he may want to. No. He only smiles and high-fives his admirers with his giant, soft, fuzzy, and white hands. Could our luck really be changing? We met Mr. Met within a mere 5 minutes of arriving. Maybe this was the day that we’d leave a Mets game with a marriage proposal by both Barry Zito and David Wright. At the very least, a date? Maybe we’d win this ridiculously great prize like a JetBlue getaway. Or (and this was the more likely option) was this a sign that we were about to be struck by lightning and die?

We sincerely hope that there are multiple people playing the role of Mr. Met. After all, we’ve had at least 6 pictures taken with him up until this point and if it is only one individual, he probably fears for his life. Anywho, we practically skipped into Shea Stadium after that chance encounter and headed down to field level to watch batting practice. The Giants were on the field and our primary mission was to meet Barry Zito…again. You might recall our incident in DC when we attempted to get his autograph at RFK Stadium and failed, however that was not our first encounter with Mr. Zito. Admittedly, we met him at an earlier Mets/Giants game. Serena had managed to get him to sign his Athletics baseball card. Unfortunately, in her nervousness, she forgot to remove the card from its protective plastic covering, so he signed that instead of the actual card. She’s a real jack ass. We meandered our way down to the left field wall and waited patiently as he stretched nearby. Eventually, he slowly made his way over to where we stood. Behind us, two Giants fans requested that Lisa get Zito to sign their baseball.

Of course, Serena forgot the baseball card for him to sign, but she did manage to get her picture taken with him without fainting. He seemed nice enough, but he didn’t say much and he didn’t ask for Serena’s phone number. Perhaps David Wright told him not to. That bastard. Or maybe because Serena looked like she had a stink eye. We may never know why.

To thank Lisa for her kindness, our newly found Giants friends treated us to the largest beers we’ve ever seen. They sat with us for a little bit in the field level section while we watched the rest of batting practice. They even took this somewhat decent picture of us:

Unfortunately, as we proceeded to get drunk on empty stomachs, the novelty of us wore off. We started rambling about random topics until finally, they stood up and claimed that they had to leave in order to “use the bathroom.” We’re pretty sure this was code for, “you guys are really annoying and we’re going to leave you now. We’re so sorry that we bought you those beers.” We’d just been dissed by two fat, unattractive dudes. We decided we needed hot dogs. Now, listen. This is very important. When visiting Yankees Stadium, you do Italian sausage, but here in Flushing? You do the doggies. We’re not sure how or why this happened, but the Mets do hot dogs better and the Yankees do sausages better.

After purchasing our dogs, we headed up to our real seats in the upper deck to watch the game. When we reached our seats, we noticed that it was magically the 2^nd inning. Where the hell had we been? How did we miss 2 whole innings without recalling a single play? And the Mets were winning! You’d think the Mets leading the game would have managed to stick out in our minds. Who gets that drunk off of one beer? Were they magical cups of Bud Light?

At about the 8^th inning, we got tired (we were probably coming down from our drunken hot dog high), so we decided we wanted ice cream. Our favorite ice cream place was a little family-operated place around the corner from Serena’s house. In fact, that night was buy one, get one free night, so we decided to leave. Before leaving our section, we got our picture taken by a 12-year old girl who showed off better photography skills than most of the adults we’ve bumped into during our travels. Please disregard the sweaty, skanky look that we are sporting in this picture. We like to think that we clean up rather nice.

Of course, we couldn’t exit our section without bumping into twins celebrating their birthday. They were quite fond of Lisa. They grabbed her and insisted that Serena take their picture. Wanting to get out of the stadium alive and not raped, Serena acquiesced.

As we headed down the ramps of the stadium leading to the building’s exit, we bumped into the “cherry on top.” What, might you ask, could possibly make this night better? Meeting Mr. Met again. Never one to pass up a photo op with one of the league’s best mascots, we took another picture with him. We acknowledge the fact that we don’t look hot in this picture, but look at how thrilled he is to be taking yet another photo with us!

We briefly got lost in the parking lot while searching for Lisa’s automobile.

Thankfully, we found it by Lisa incessantly pressing the panic button on her alarm key chain. Serena just so happened to be standing next to the car when the frightening alarm went off.

A worthy note regarding a piece of Shea Stadium’s history that needs to be included in this post, but is unrelated to this game is the home run apple that lives just beyond the center field wall. Since no one on the Mets hit a home run during this game, we didn’t get to take a picture of it. The rising of the paper mâché apple (it’s supposedly made of fiber glass, but it certainly doesn’t look like fiber glass) from a faded black top hat following a Mets home run is one of the most exciting things that Shea Stadium has to offer. No matter how many games we attended at Shea, it never failed to excite us when a Mets player hit a home run and it wasn’t just because they put a run on the board. It was because that old, shabby apple slowly crept its way out of the hat. We also secretly hoped that one day it would accidentally topple over and squash Carlos Beltran.  It’s not like we wanted Beltran to die. We just wanted him out of the lineup. Perhaps on another team. Despite its ratty appearance (and rumors that Middle Earth and a squirrel colony inhabited the top hat), we’re quite fond of the apple. We’ll be extremely put out if we discover that Citi Field does not accommodate its presence.  In fact, we may instigate a revolt.

In the famous and highly brilliant words of Bon Jovi, “oh, we’re halfway there. Oh, oh. Livin’ on a prayer.”