Truist Park Guided Tour

September 28, 2021

Let's start this post off by saying we thought we had quite the heavily stacked schedule on this day. We purchased the earliest possible entrance time to the largest Jim Henson collection in the world. We knew we had to leave this glorious exhibit no later than 1:30 if we were to get to Truist Park in time for our guided tour. Unfortunately, we finished the entire exhibit in 30 minutes. It was awkward because we had not planned for the extra time. So we went back to the hotel to nap instead of going to the World of Coca-Cola because who really gives a giant F about soda? It's not alcohol.

ANYWHO, back to the real purpose of this blog. We picked the last tour of the day prior to game time, so we didn't get to see the broadcast booth or visit the field and dugout, but we aren't totally sure if the tour guide would have hit the field and dugout ANYWAY because the team clubhouse is off limits regardless of game day rules due to an apparent "towel incident" on a prior tour. 

Our tour guide was a lovely, stereotypical southern gentleman type of man. Though he did give us a little ribbing from being New Yorkers and specifically to Lisa for being a Mets fan. Thankfully, his jokes never came across as being "dick-ish" unlike some other ass clowns we've come into contact with. Or else this tour could've gotten really ugly. And possibly criminal. 

We will talk about the area surrounding the park (known as The Battery) in our game post, so if you're interested in reading about that, you'll have to check that out. For now, we will keep this focusing strictly on the actual guided tour. 

When we do guided tours of baseball stadiums, we bump into two kinds of people. The first group of people think we're super interesting for being in the midst of a ballpark bucket list or having completed the aforementioned bucket list. These people ask us a lot of questions about ballparks they've yet to visit and opinions about the ballparks they've also been to. 

Then we get the second type of people. When we went to St. Louis, we had an entire tour group of these individuals. It's the type of people who hate us for this bucket list. We're not sure why, but they never make it a point to hide their animosity towards us. We've yet to meet anyone in this category that's actually completed the bucket list. Usually the fellow bucket list completers are found in the first category of baseball fans - cool people that are excited to meet other people that have done what they've done. The trolls tend to be openly mean and often aggressively challenge our opinions about the ballparks we've visited. On this tour group, we had a couple that fell into this category. At least, we think they're a couple. They may have been brother and sister or colleagues, but who the f*ck knows? They angrily asked what our favorite parks were and seemed offended that we didn't choose Target Field. She, in particular, also seemed offended when we said that Oakland's park was trash, but let's be serious. Even the A's agree that their stadium is trash. That's why they keep trying to leave. Both also rolled their eyes or had snide comments to make whenever we answered one of the guide's baseball trivia questions correctly. 

End rant. 

One of the first spots on this tour is this tomahawk made entirely of Legos, which was built by a young fan. If a grown man had built this, we probably would have spent some time making fun of him, but since a kid did it, we can call it, "impressive." He also apparently did this without any sort of directions, so it's possible that this kid is a borderline genius. Perhaps he will solve the environmental crisis. 

We headed up to the top level of the park where he showed us a few things, including the broadcast booth that we could not visit because it was too close to game time. 

Franchise titles and also Cathy the Cow (she used to hold a tomahawk over at Turner, but now she holds a Chik-Fil-A sign with the kind of spelling that makes Serena twitch in anger):

Retired Numbers (Dale Murphy, Bobby Cox, Chipper Jones, Warren, Spahn, John Smoltz, Greg Maddux, Phil Niekro, Eddie Matthews, Hank Aaron, Tom Glavine, Jackie Robinson):

A huge drum that is, from what we can see, purely ceremonial because we did not see it get used once. Not during the tour and not during the game. From our original position behind home plate, we did think that it was a large coffee cup. We did not figure out that it was a drum until we got next to it, so not sure what that says about us. Either we have a severe coffee addiction or our eyesight is failing us in our old age. Or mayhaps it is both. 

They do have quite a few luxury boxes and as usual with these guided tours, we visited them all. It's becoming pretty tired for us, so we're no longer going to report or share every single club that we're shown. We're only going to share the highlights of these locations. In the case of the Hank Aaron suite, they had two pretty cool features. 

The wall of bats represent each home run Hank Aaron hit, as well as the date and location/team he did it against. The bat is the  one he hit his 715th home run with. It HAS vacationed in Cooperstown, but Hank felt that the bat belonged in Atlanta and here it stays. 

This is a painting of dots:

He said quite a bit about the local artist that created this and the other dot paintings in the area, but we have ADD and we didn't pay attention to any of it. 

This is a suite with some sort with a "wall of fame" type of vibe, but again, we kind of zoned out, so you're lucky you're even getting these pictures. 

Braves Monument Park IS super cool, but not nearly as cool as the original museum that Turner Field had. Also, the tour is a good way to get clean photos of everything because during the game, it gets crowded.

Tom Glavine is the only Brave we can ever truly love. Javy Lopez is hot. Physically. He might actually be a beautiful idiot though. They always are beautiful idiots.

This is weird cafe/homage to Chipper Jones. Who is terrible. That is all you really need to know. 

Here is the view of the field from the fanciest seats in the house:

A Phillies player headed towards the dugout, but he had a sweatshirt on and we weren't close enough to really see who he was. Serena sat up at attention when he started walking towards the dugout because she wanted to flip the middle finger if it was Bryce Harper. It wasn't and apparently the player mistook her Kermit the Frog stare down as a compliment because he waved at us. We begrudgingly waved back. 

Mets Opening Day 2017

April 3, 2017

We experienced a ballet of emotions over the course of the last two weeks with our teams' opening days, but we'll focus on the Mets right now and discuss the Yankees later this week. We've experienced things never before experienced on an opening day. Before we get ahead of ourselves, let's just get right to it. Last Monday afternoon was a lovely one. Sunny with just a slight breeze in the air. Lisa packed travel wine cups. We packed Dr. L and snacks. We hit the road around 11:15 for a 1:10 game start time. We arrived at Citi Field at 11:45. Again. 1:10 start time. We cannot stress that enough. Police officers denied us immediate access and detoured us, which was fine. That's happened before and usually, we're simply detoured to the other side of the stadium so we weren't concerned.

Slight concern began to set in when the cops kept waving us on as we drove by the US Open. And then the Queens Museum. Even more so as we navigated passed the World's Fair. Full panic set in as we headed into territory we never saw before. Eventually, the cops deposited us in one of the parking lots of Fresh Meadows Park (which we didn't know existed). It took us approximately 15-20 minutes to arrive at this destination. At the entrance of the parking lot, Lisa got into an altercation with the senior citizen monitoring traffic. She called Lisa, "honey." This was a mistake.
Lisa: "How do I get back to the stadium?"
Old Person: "Honey. Ya not goin' to the stadium."
Lisa: "Yes, I am. I don't want to park here."
Old Person: "Ya gonna park (sounded like pahhhhk) here. Ya gonna to take the shuttle to the stadium and when you get back, ya gonna take the parkway (pahhhkway) home." (please note: the shuttle stop was a half mile away from our parking space)
Serena: "How does she know what parkway we need to get home?"

After Lisa begrudgingly pulled her car into the lot, another senior citizen demanded that we pay $25. They didn't even discount the parking rate for us. At parking time, it was 12:15 pm. We needed a little breather, so we tapped into our awesome wine sippy cups and a bag of chips. Look at our nails.

At 12:45, we headed to the shuttle. We walked through a geese sh*t filled field in order to get there. The shuttle transported us back towards Citi Field. Ten minutes. No big deal. But guess where they dropped us off? Not at Citi Field. Roughly four blocks from the subway station, not even the gate. We've now seen where the 7 Line is parked and where the MTA offices are. No one ever needs to see that. This is photo taken halfway to the subway. Not the stadium. The subway:

When we emerged from the subway station, this is the sight that greeted us:

Hell on earth.  Lines. Lines upon lines of people. We thought we were being clever by circling around the entire stadium, but we weren't. We were not clever at all. The lines wrapped around the stadium and god knows where else. Our gate was the bullpen gate and our line was so long that it encircled McFadden's, the stadium dumpsters, and began in the parking lot. It was so crowded that it was hard to determine which line led to McFadden's and which line led to the stadium itself.

Sidebar regarding McFadden's: Citi Field should not allow non-ticketed patrons to park in their parking lot during prime games such as opening day, popular rivalry games, or playoffs. It's not fair that non-ticketed McFadden's customers took parking spaces that could've been made available to customers who actually purchased opening day tickets. For too much money. Especially since Citi Field has limited parking. There is only one lot. Once it's full, fans are sh*t out of luck. Have you ever been to Flushing? Tom Glavine was a liar. No one should ever experience Queens or get stuck street parking. Trust us.

Now rumor has it that the reason some teams have nixed the idea of "print at home" tickets is that the tickets are able to be scanned more than once. We cannot speak to whether or not this is true. We don't know. We've never tried it. We're a-holes, but we're not d*ckheads. However, that being said, it's clear that SOME people think it's a trick that works because while we stood on line near McFadden's, Serena watched several people enter the stadium through the bar's entrance and then pass their printed tickets through the fence to their friends waiting outside. While they may not have gotten into the game with these tickets, these individuals definitely contributed to the crowd control issues surrounding the stadium's exterior.

Once inside, we noticed this little addition:

Lovely touch. We also found this wonderful M&M bench. Note our awesome free giveaway socks courtesy of Serena's work mom.

At the top of the staircase, we stepped right into the supposed "standing room only" section. Mayhem. It looked like the scene from Independence Day just before the aliens attacked and the humans just stood around like jack wagons staring up at the sky. That's a sh*t ton of people just standing around in the walkways if you ask us. Let's call a spade a spade. Baseball stadiums should not offer standing room only tickets unless the venue also functions as a football stadium. Citi Field and Yankee Stadium cannot possibly accommodate a crowd size like Met Life Stadium can, for example. They're just not big enough. Most likely, a facility the size of Citi Field cannot provide the PARKING necessary to accommodate these extra bodies. That's right. That's another dig at the parking f*ck up.

This is a view of the crowd congregating around the food court as we used the escalator to get to our seats:

We reached our seats at 1:45. It was the top of the 3rd inning. Remember, we arrived at Citi Field at 11:45 in the morning. We sat at 1:45 in the afternoon. Perspective.

 

The wind was no joke up there.

The view from our overpriced seats was decent. And by overpriced, we mean that we spent $200 total for this view.

We received a visit from both Ginger Snaps and Old Man Ed. Neither of them bought us snacks, so we had to go get our own. Unfortunately, it was so crowded, that we couldn't deal with the concession lines, so we simply settled for the shortest line available to us. Which is why we ended up spending $13 on a boring, lukewarm cheeseburger/french fries platter. We ate it before we could take a picture of it, but we did take a picture of ourselves on the way to the concession stands, so we figured that would be a suitable substitute. Plus, you're not really missing much by NOT seeing our food because it wasn't that interesting and in this case, you get another photo of our kick ass socks.

After the game, we waited 15 minutes before being able to get onto the shuttle back to the car. Needless to say, we had a long day. On the upside, the Mets won 6-0.