Friday, April 13, 2007

A Sort of Homecoming

For all the big deal that Opening Day was made out to be, or that I thought it would be, or that it believes that it is, the truth is that its significance paled in comparison to tonight’s game. Tonight’s game, the first game for those of us in the Tuesday/Friday plan holders group. The first tickets to be torn out of the ticket book. The first time this year of packing the clothes for the game to take to work, the familiar arrangements and accouterments.

On that last note, while I fully understand that April baseball is not for the meek, and have endured TBF’s tales of sitting at Shea while light flurries swirled around the upper deck, this week has to be an all time low. In an email sent to my companion for the evening, the lovely and charming Ms. Zoe (TBF is in Florida on business. He may have warmth, but at least I have baseball) in which I related items I was bringing for the evening, I feel the need to display this here for the record:

“fleece blanket, fleece scarf, gloves, wrist warmers, mets hat, warm hat, sweater, tights under jeans, wool socks.
i have handwarmers too.
it’s not a baseball game, it’s an expedition to antarctica”

We know that it will be cold and we go anyway. We know that it will be unpleasant and we go anyway.  We go gladly, we go happily, and at no point during the course of the evening, no matter what our discomfort, does it actually occur to anyone crazy enough to attend a baseball game in April (except those shepherding small children, perhaps) to leave the game EARLY.

I meet Zoe outside Shea and we enter through Gate B, the familiar stomping grounds. Up the escalators, around the bend, and there is the entrance to Section 12.  It wasn’t so much the first view of the field through the tunnel as the comforting sensation of familiarity from walking up that tunnel to *that* view of *that* angle of Shea. My angle. This is where I sit. This is the lens through which I view Mets baseball for most of the year.

My initial excitement, to be honest, was to see which of my seat neighbors from last year had returned. The family of redheads is back, having acquired two additional seats in the row. They displaced the father-and-son, they of witty repartee and seemingly endless bank account, who decide the drive from New Jersey to Shea is too taxing (or so relate the redheads - there sans pere, who does not come out for April baseball). The cousins down the row are also not in evidence. My suspicion is that they bought a full season, but I could be wrong, and I am a little sad they are not with us again, because they were good people.

Surprisingly, the gentleman to our left, seats 5 and 6, who wasn’t there all that much, was back, with his father in tow. One of the funniest moments of last summer was when his father was there with another elderly gentleman, and for all the world they both represented Statler and Waldorf, the two elder Muppet statesmen. TBF, of course, fit right in with these wizened baseball curmudgeons, because he is in fact one himself. We are exchanging pleasantries just when the owners of Seats 1 and 2, the delightful sisters Miriam and Julia, were back as well, but we’re myspace buddies so I knew they would be there. Julia up from law school for the weekend, just for the occasion.

None of us know each other that well; in many cases, we don’t even know first names. But the connection is restored instantly, through shared experience and memory and ritual and repetition.

Last year at Shea, these early season games were empty. Yes, we had the drama of the extra innings games and the walk -off home runs and the other milestones, but there was something special to me about those two months of sitting in a 3/4-empty section in a half-empty stadium. As much as I thought I hated those months of watching baseball without TBF, I’m immensely glad now that I had that experience. I found my place at Shea, as a Mets fan, all by myself. As much as I love to learn from TBF, the baptism (if you will) needed to be a solo flight. I ask him, sometimes, if he doesn’t miss those solitary days sitting in the no-alcohol section in the upper deck, just him and his scorecard. He says, no, that it’s more fun to go with me, but then there are the nights he wants to head to Shea and I am happy to let him go, not because I don’t want another game but because the experience belonged to him long before we ever met. (As for myself, I’m already planning to keep a set of baseball clothes at the office for the moment that the day is too much and I don’t want to think and I decide I need to call the Mets, get on the 7 train, and head for a game that night.)

There are hot dogs and there are french fries and Miriam and Julia start the game with coats off, proudly displaying their newly-purchased Reyes jerseys (traditional pinstripes, and I note that TBF will be most pleased). They are even drinking beer, and as much as I would like a refreshing beverage to go with the game at the end of this week, I am simply too cold already.

Question: Why is cotton candy so popular? No, really, this wasn’t Sunday afternoon where every father is buying their kid sickly blue cotton candy to keep them sedated. It was freezing. You needed to use bare hands to eat it. And then they would be sticky. WHY?

It is almost good that the game is reasonably uneventful, because there is so much to absorb and observe. What’s new, what’s the same. For Zoe it is all new because her vantage point for the last year or so was the complete opposite of this one.  Mr. Met makes an appearance right before the first inning, and I do not even have the camera ready because I have been stuffing my face, and yakking with the boys and the girls and the people on the other side, and have already indulged in an inaugural yell or two of STOPBLOCKINTHEVIEW,BUDDY,YO! DUDEINTHEREDCOAT, MOVEIT,DAVIDWRIGHT’SATTHEPLATE, as once again, the hordes emerge from the tunnel and decide the railing at the front of it would be a fine place to watch the proceedings on the field.
“We need a sign,” says one of the redhead twins.
“This is more fun.”

“What is that on your hands?” Miriam asks.
“They’re wrist warmers.” (Think fingerless gloves.)
“Right, that’s not finger warmers,” Zoe adds.
“I need to be able to write,” I protest.
“Those are not adequate,” Julia chimes in.
“Great, I’m in an entire row of Jewish mothers.”
Later, all of these Jewish mothers indulge themselves by singing along to Carlos Beltran’s at-bat song. Yes, let’s watch the Jewish girls sing along to Puerto Rican Christian Contemporary Music (otherwise known as CCM).
“What does it mean?” Miriam asks.
“‘He Is Here,’” I translate.
“He who?”
“The guy upstairs - Carlos’ guy upstairs.”

Don’t worry, they all sang along to Julio Franco’s song too (which is pretty much the same thing, just American CCM).

New Shea innovation: mustard is no longer provided in a large, economy-sized jug with a pump on the top; instead, it’s not individual packets of the same mustard. Good or bad? Discuss.

We observe that there’s some tool in a Yankees jacket (oxymoron? you decide) sitting in the field boxes right behind the photographer’s well, and that he gets up and waves like a moron every time Kevin Burkhardt is on camera (either that or he randomly got up and made an ass of himself every so often. Hmmm.)
Someone starts a Yankees SUCK chant, w hich morphs into a “Let’s Go Mets” chant. Except that Zoe only does the “wooo!” at the end of “Let’s Go Mets.”
I do not bother to detail (as TBF would have, had he been in attendance) that it’s not “woo,” it’s more like a “hugggggh,” and was introduced at games played at Shea against the Yankees to stop their followers from interjecting “Let’s Go Yankees” at the pause between lines. I do, however, relate the last bit.
“I always do the woo,” Zoe insists.
I shake my head disapprovingly.
“I can tell you that it’s very popular over there--” and she gestures at her former seating location.
“We do not woo here unless the sign tells us to woo,” says the twin behind me.
I beam approvingly.

At this point I have my blanket out and a fleece scarf wrapped around my hatted and hooded head. The hand warmers are inside the wrist warmers. I would take off the coat and add the fleece vest that is in my bag, except that would involve me having to disarrange my current state of almost-warmth and take off my coat. It remains in the bag.

Note to the Mets: I’m not even going to comment on the Dunkin Donuts coffee in the visitor’s bullpen lighting up and spinning around. But there’s a reason that only one person in the entire stadium would do that air guitar thing you tried. That one’s right up there with the dance interlude with the Pepsi Party Patrol you tried last year.

We discuss everything and anything. We have those discussions the way guys do at a sporting event, not taking their eyes off the field for one minute, but discussions of incredible importance and depth take place while balls are batted and balls are caught (or not caught, as the case may be), and as the Washington Nationals - the team, last year, that rows E and F of Section 12, mezzanine, would say of them that “You, me and 7 other guys from this section could beat the Nationals” - put up a bit of a scrap.

[Of course, it doesn’t help that we can’t seem to hit for beans. Admittedly, the gale force winds that caused the field to look like it was covered in confetti likely had something - okay, more than something - to do with various balls not reaching their intended destination on the other side of the outfield fence.]

It was an odd moment, there, when we are talking about boys and baseball and tampons (you know, get over it) and the other 19 million things that we thought of, what song is this, Miriam, do you still like country music? Yep, and I’m going to Nashville for FanFest this year. And sharing the communal binoculars and Julia scanning the stands for a fight and Zoe scanning the dugout and observing that all the Latino players were bundled up head to toe (and we wonder why they can’t hit or catch? these boys were not built for cold weather) and talking about work and life and here’s a cute picture of my cat. It was this completely female moment, girls night out atmosphere, at the one place you would never think to find it. We weren’t drunk or wearing pink hats and yelling rude comments at David Wright’s ass. I was taking notes and Miriam had the box score and Zoe was trying out various nicknames for Mike Pelfrey (no, seriously, terms of endearment, not what you’re thinking) and Julia is borrowing the binoculars. We were engulfed and engrossed in the game, but carrying on this second level the same way most of you reading this do (by ‘most of you’ I mean the members of the stand-up-to-pee sex).

(I have now reached a record, I think, for mentioning the most bodily functions in one post about the Mets, ever.)

Here, have some baseball: Does anyone know why Willie left Pelfrey in for that last at-bat? Anyone? Regretfully, since I have been writing this, I have missed the 9,852 calls that Steve Sommers undoubtedly took this evening that likely touched on this very issue. TBF would have been thrilled that two entire rows bellowed “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, NO PINCH HITTER?” and “YOU REALLY THINK YOU’RE GOING TO LEAVE HIM IN FOR ANOTHER INNING?!”

Later in the game, the announcer and the scoreboard share: “Got a question? Visit the Fan Information booths located on each level, right behind home plate.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a question: WTF WAS WILLIE DOING LETTING PELFREY BAT IN THAT INNING?,” I mutter under my breath.

All I can think the whole time is: it was worth enduring this week just to get to this place. It is worth wearing 20 layers on the subway and sweating to get here, it is worth the wind tunnel, It is worth the cold and the shivering just to be here and be able to watch this. It is worth the agony to feel like this again, to drift off into that rhythm of baseball, of the things around the baseball, of the people and the sounds and the smells and the tastes, the idiots and the delightful people, the party girls and the home boys there just to walk around and parade the new hat or jersey.  It is worth it for that moment when Delgado hits the ball and you are sure it is going out, over that wall - even if it doesn’t go, for a minute we all held our breath and waited to see what would happen. No matter the grumbling or complaining, it comes down to those seconds, those moments when Reyes slides into third or D. Wright touches home or Jose Valentin surprises us all yet again and and and--

And all of it.

Baseball is back. Welcome home.