Wednesday, August 16, 2006

metsgrrl tours the safe, part 2

I’d like to start this portion of my Seattle travelogue by acting like a 7-year-old.

This man would never survive in the New York area. He could be The Second Greatest Closer In The History of Western Civilization, and he would not make it through half a season. His team could have a J.J. Putz t-shirt day where they dutifully instruct us that his name is pronounced “pootz” - it wouldn’t matter. No one would buy his jersey. No one would add him to their fantasy league. Mike and the Mad Dog would have a running joke daily—no, hourly—over him. Keith Hernandez would say stupid things while Gary Cohen tried to suppress his laughter. Jay Horwitz would throw his hands up in despair over his inability to stop the entire New York baseball community from acting like a bunch of grade schoolers.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, I can tell you about our seats for this game. I had known that our friends had these seats, or somehow vaguely knew that their charter seats were in the front row, but Alan has access to a gazillion seats at any given moment and I would have been happy to sit anywhere. The point was for the four of us to go to a game together, and more importantly, for Alan and TBF to see a game together.

Late Saturday night, as Alan showed us the video where he threw out the first pitch last September (it’s disgusting, I know), he asked, “Do you want a preview of your seats tomorrow?”
I said no because I honestly wanted to be surprised. And I never expected we were going to sit in the charter seats because there were only two of them.

Sunday morning, both Alan and I manage to wear different Mike Cameron t-shirts; neither of us can be bothered to change.  We are just heading out the door to the game,  driving separately so TBF and I can have dinner with other friends post-game.
Alan hands us a parking pass, and then he hands us our tickets.
“Alan, this says Row 1,” TBF says.
“Yes, I believe it does,” Alan replies.

If you’re that interested, there’s surely a Safeco seating chart available, but the pictures kind of say it all.

Section 119, Row 1. I mean, ROW 1. Row 1, that you can walk down to the seats and kick out the Japanese kids waiting for Ichiro (who is done with signing autographs and isn’t coming back out). Row 1, where you can reach down and touch the dirt on the warning track. Row 1, where the Mariner Moose will come strolling along the field level and pose for pictures and sign autographs. I take one for TBF, I take one with Alan and Sarah and the kids (Lauren screamed, Jake looked concerned). And then, finally, after all these years, I get my photo with my guy.

(No, I’m not sharing that here. It was a - private moment.) This isn’t the Moose playing peek-a-boo, it’s the Moose signing autographs - he holds the ball up to his eyeholes so he can see, is what I figure. “He’s a good mascot,” TBF admitted a little bit later.

HA!

Row 1, where Ichiro will fly by you on his way to and from the outfield 18 times. Row 1, where you could hear the players talk if the entire experience of being THIS CLOSE wasn’t making your ears ring. TBF had to have a few moments alone when he finally settled down to fill in the starting lineups in the boxscore, he was so overcome.

All I could think was: Wow. Imagine if this was Shea? Imagine if that was Delgado standing there, or the Mets bullpen was just down the row, or if this is where I’d watch Reyes fly by as he hit a triple or Wright careen into first or Valentin angle as he threw someone out at first or or or or…

*sigh*

I will sound like a complete moron if I tell you that it was very, very difficult to concentrate on the game in those seats, but it was. From the mezz or the upper deck, you have the entire field of action in your view. Here, you had to constantly change your field of vision and if you watched a play at 1st you might miss what went on at 3rd. I would have to completely relearn how to watch baseball if I had seats anywhere this good.

Yes, my friends bring their kids to the game. They are just getting to the point where they are getting too squirmy, but for now, they bring the kids. (If you’re thinking about filling up the comment section with your outrage, please go do it somewhere else.)  And I’m happy to report that both kids got baseballs from the A’s first base coach, whose thing is to walk out of the dugout each inning with a ball in his back pocket, and find a deserving youngster to give it to. “You gotta root for the A’s, kid,” he’ll admonish them, and they’ll nod their head half-seriously.

Lauren preferred to eat her ball:

“It’s mud and grass, she’s had worse in her mouth,” was the comment made by one of her parents.

Yeah, the Mariners sucked again. But it wouldn’t have mattered if they got trounced. Not in those seats.

I remarked to TBF that our plans to become rich and famous needed to pick up steam so we could come somewhere close to approximating those seats at the new Shea. Alan immediately leaned over and started offering up his strategy on how we could do just that.

Now, that’s a friend.