Erin & The Favorite Take Citi Field

We're back together for today's blog post about Erin and Matt's first visit to Citi Field. Thankfully for them, we managed to get tickets to "El Noche de Mexico." Mariaches were plentiful. Thanks to the lesson learned by their late arrival at Yankee Stadium in which they missed all of the cool stuff, we arrived at Citi Field nice and early to guarantee that they missed nothing.

We showed them the base markers of Shea Stadium and the original home run apple...

...And made sure they saw the museum. Matt got his first glimpse of Mr. Met's origins. He was not pleased.

While we waited for Matt to buy his shake ($6.25) at The Shake Shack (we insisted that he make a pit stop here), we decided we'd show them the Kids' Zone. That's a blatant lie. This is really how we ended up in the Kids' Zone:
*gathered around the beer stand, blabbing away about the pros and cons of Matt's strawberry shake*
Lisa: OMG! There's Mr. Met!!!!!! And he's got a different hat on!
Erin: What?
Lisa: Don't you want you picture with him???
Erin: Well...ok. Sure.
Lisa: I'll go get on line!!!! Follow me!
*Lisa runs off faster than we've ever seen her run*

After taking a picture with Mr. Met, we found a little booth where people can chill in comfy leather chairs and play video games. Matt found home. Serena felt tired, so she contemplated sleeping in one of the chairs for the entire game until Lisa informed her that they closed the area once the game started. Shame on you, Mets. Some people need to take a nap once in awhile! Just sayin'!

As we exited the premises, we were accosted by an individual who were charmed by our personalities from afar. He wore an MLB.com badge, which concerned us only a touch. He asked us to participate in this "game show" thingy that MLB.com hosts called, "Bucks on a Pond," which, once the rules were explained to us, sounds like Cash Cab. Now, we don't know when our episode will be aired, but we must stress that he encouraged us to be as ridiculous as possible, so don't judge our the footage when you see it. We certainly did not fail his request. We acted like the biggest pack of ass clowns that you'd ever see. AND we answered all of their questions correctly like game show professionals. We were borderline going to search for trivia contest at a local bar afterwards to see if we could win some extra cash.

After our game show shenanigans, we headed in search of food. Erin got her traditional hot dog, but was pretty pissed off that there was no yellow mustard to be found anywhere.

Serena got a hot dog as well, but covered it with spicy mustard, Cholula, onions in red sauce, and jalapeno peppers.

Lisa went a different route this time out and bought a Mex Burger from Keith's Grill. For $20, she got all of this:

To be clear, that's a burger, tootsie pop, beer, and bag of potato chips. $20. It's no pizza from Grimaldi's or shot of Patron, but still, that's pretty darn good.

This was the view of our Matt Harvey/Hector Santiago matchup:

We scored these tickets at the kindness of Mr. Danny Ryan (no relation to The Favorite). The matchup turned out to be a good one. Matt Harvey carried a perfect game into the 7th, when an infield single by Alex Rios messed everything up. To be honest, Rios would've been thrown out had Ruben Tejada not gotten so damn fancy with his throw. There was no need for him to make a jump throw on that play, and the jump cost him precious seconds. Not everyone is Derek Jeter. Technically, Jeter shouldn't be making that play. It's amazing he's as successful as he is.

If you asked the douche couple sitting in front of us, Harvey's perfect game was ruined by the girl "jinxing" Harvey by talking about it. After the Rios single, the guy could not let it go. We had to listen to him for the rest of the game yelling at her for pure nonsense. We think there was a threat of her sleeping outside with his dogs. Lisa overheard him say, "You're not even a Mets fan! You're a Yankees fan!" Note: she WAS wearing a Mets t-shirt that said, "The NYM <3 2010.="" 99="" a="" and="" asked="" championships="" dialogue="" embarrassment.="" explain="" groaned="" had="" her="" how="" in="" know="" lisa="" lot.="" many="" of="" out="" p="" pink="" relayed="" replied="" serena="" series="" she="" should="" someone="" the="" then="" they="" this="" to="" which="" who="" won="" world="" yankees="">
Harvey pitched 9 innings and had a career-high 12 strikeouts, but received a no decision. Why? Because the Mets couldn't score a run and we headed into extra innings. The sad thing is that the Mets pulled it off with a Mike Baxter pinch hit single that scored Ike Davis from second in the bottom of the 10th!!!! If they had left Harvey in for one more inning, he would've gotten a complete game. But we understand. He had already thrown a lot of pitches. Whomp, whomp.

When Serena, Matt, and Erin got back to Serena's apartment, she conducted the same survey she had done for the Yankee Stadium visit. Both felt like they'd missed nothing on this trip, unlike their trip to Yankee Stadium (to which Serena apologized for...again). Both agreed that their favorite part of the visit was the trivia game for MLB.com, which has nothing to do with the stadium, but Erin did add that she appreciated the Shea Stadium bases and the museum.

Matt felt that Citi Field "didn't really identify itself as a Mets stadium," which bothered him. Erin expanded upon that subject, saying that from our seats in particular, you didn't know we were at a Mets game. From the opposite side of the stadium, it wasn't as bad. Erin rated her hot dog as 6/10 because it was too thin and she couldn't find yellow mustard anywhere (she was very specific on this subject). Matt gave his shake an 8/10.

The big question of the night: How does Citi Field stand up to your other stadiums? Remembering that Matt's scale rating is 1 being shit aka: Oakland and 10 being hand jobs for everyone, this is their assessment:
Matt: 5/10. The stadium is middle of the road.
Erin: 6/10. Parts of it she really liked and parts that were really "blergh."

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mommies out there and especially to OUR mommies: Mamadukes and Mama L.