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(Hey, this is a chick blog, remember?)
I wanted to do a LOLCat but I worked 12.5 hours yesterday and was too tired.
My friend Kari, the Twins fan who came with me to last Saturday’s game, just got home, and sent me this:
We went to the Yankees game and the WHOLE time I was there, I was writing my own personal blog in my head. I just don’t get it. When I was in elementary school, there was a girl named Julie. She was smart, attractive, and a good athlete. But she was mean. She was mean in a very special way. She could purposely hurt the feelings of every single person in the classroom at one point or another, but yet SHE was the one everyone wanted to be friends with. Even if it meant that she just wasn’t a very good friend back. She could have cared less how many friends she had. She would plan parties at her house and only invite the other popular kids. Julie was the Yankees.
Click to continue reading A LETTER FROM MINNESOTA.Friday night was a fun night at Shea. However, just when you think that Phillies Phans are going to take the title of Worst Phans in Baseball, Shea is invaded by another sea of red. Section 12, in particular, seems to be The Place For Fans Of The Opposing Team. It’s not just one or two of them, it’s rows of them. I was going to write a diatribe about idiots who provide a standing ovation when a member of their team hits a single, but I realize I have already DONE that for the Phillies series. It’s even more moronic to do so when the player you are applauding has already struck out three times in that particular game.
The best description of St. Louis fans has to be the ladies’ room line after the game:
STL fan: “Well, so we’re not going to sweep you, but we’re still going to take the series.”
Me: “The Brewers called. They say ‘hello’.”
STL fan: *starts singing and clapping*
Saturday night was a special night because TBF was unavailable and I was going with my friend Kari from Minnesota. When I say “Minnesota” I don’t mean “a charming suburb of Minneapolis.” I mean middle-of-nowhere-Minnesota. Of course they are Twins fans and when I met her and her family (in town for Springsteen on Sunday) at Grand Central, she was wearing her daughter’s Santana jersey, much to her 15-year-old son’s concern. He was worried that someone was going to give her a hard time. We had to actively search for someone to heckle her (one of the vendors) so his prophecy could be fulfilled.
We haven’t seen each other for over three years and it was her first time at Shea, so we got there early. I gave her the grand tour, we got two of those bargain enormous $9.50 beers, and headed for Upper Reserved Section 8. Those $9.50 beers are the best deal at Shea and I hate to write about them, because they might stop offering them. People will stop you when you are walking around with them in your hand and ask you, urgently, where you acquired them from.
Click to continue reading DON’T FORGET ST. LOUIS.No beverage containers are allowed. Not even water.
Video cameras, the bane of MLB, *are* allowed.
No water. IN TEXAS? (I know it’s a dome.) NO WATER?
I’m sorry, but that’s almost as infuriating as disallowing sunscreen.
Dear SportsNet New York:
I am a long-standing subscriber of your network. We will omit the small fact that I have no choice but to be a subscriber of your network if I want to watch the New York Mets on television. Let’s just leave it that I am a loyal customer.
I am writing to bring your attention to a series of commercials featured on your network. While I realize you are not just a Mets station, but rather are a “New York sports” station (as you go to great lengths to remind us), these commercials are played with disturbing frequency during Mets games in particular. I am speaking, of course, of the Ford motor vehicle advertisements regarding one Derek F. Jeter* and his “edge”. These commercials air constantly during Mets games, repeatedly. They don’t just run once, twice or three times, but well over half a dozen times. Sometimes they even run one inning break after another.
Click to continue reading THE EDGE.There’s a neighbor on our block, an old-timer, owns the entire brownstone. He’s fond of the seasonal decorations, you know, those big blow up snowglobes and turkeys and Easter bunnies. He’s also a Mets fan, which means that the Mets flag hangs outside the front door whenever the Mets are in town. Seeing it hang there yesterday morning on the way to work made me feel proud and happy. Not that our neighborhood isn’t a Mets neighborhood, but it was one of those moments when the sun hits the brick just right and it’s quiet for two minutes and it just *feels* like Brooklyn should feel.
I was excited and happy to get to the game, even if I was so exhausted that I almost slept past the Willets Point stop. When we pulled in, I was sure we were at Junction Boulevard, and had to scramble to get past the tourists and confused and slow people. I was early, and I was happy that I would have a few minutes of peace in Section 12 before the madness began.
I do not fault the Phillies “Phans” for coming north. If I was them, I would be heartily tired of us turning CBP into Shea Stadium South for the past few years. However, the fact that it took an organized effort on the part of Philly Phandom to put the idea of the northern migration into the phanbase’s head says all you really need to know about them.
Click to continue reading I WAS BRUISED AND BATTERED.Earlier in the season, TBF and I found ourselves at Shea with time to kill, so we got in line for the Citi Field preview center. I didn’t expect much - I mean, the finishes of the various suites aren’t going to impact me, now, are they - but I had hoped to learn something.
For the most part, my assessment was correct. (They should really offer two levels of tours - one for those who are seriously interested in suites or boxes, and one for people who just want to see the circus.) They started the tour by saying, “I’m sure some of you are season ticket holders or plan holders and have a lot of questions, and we’ll answer those questions later in the year, we can’t answer them now.” So I expected the tour to be largely irrelevant to TBF and myself.
What I didn’t expect was to walk out of there completely fucking devastated.
The most relevant (and also the most interesting) part of the tour is when you walk into a room that two rows of actual future Citi Field seats of different types and quality. They even (allegedly) replicate the future legroom. You then get to sit there and watch a pretty cool virtual reality presentation on the wall, where they can show you the view from just about every level at Citi Field.
And that was when it hit me.
It isn’t just that we’re going to end up in the last rows of the upper deck. It’s that every seat, from the far edge of the Mets’ dugout to the far edge of the visitor’s dugout, on every single level, will be a club seat.
Period.
So even our humble but enjoyable seats in the current mezzanine reserved, right up from third base, will be off-limits to us in Citi Field.
Click to continue reading THE OBLIGATORY CITIFIELD POST.I got an email this morning asking me to please post a review and photos of the Billy Joel show.
I realize some of you will find this uproariously funny already. You are the people who get the song references in my post headlines, and who managed to turn a Mets blog into a Pearl Jam blog a few weeks ago. Some other people will have realized that the “grrl” part of MetsGrrl probably signifies that I’m not a big fan of the middle-of-the-road, AOR kind of tunes.
I’m sorry. I hate Billy Joel - or at least that’s what I would have said as a teenager. As a reasoned adult who isn’t getting into a fight on Metro North over the fact that I’m wearing a Clash t-shirt, I will say that I greatly respect Billy Joel, think he has added to the culture, and that there are some songs of his I actively enjoy. But I’m not a fan, and am not going to the show. I have seen my concerts at Shea, and I am fine with that.
But on the subject of “Concerts I Have Seen At Shea Stadium” I did think that perhaps since it was the weekend, I could justify posting something about my concert history at Shea Stadium.
Click to continue reading THE ANTI BILLY JOEL.Higher and Higher - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band [live] - mp3, 12mb
“Higher and Higher” was chosen by TBF as his 2008 “Mets Win!” song. We had been listening to Jackie Wilson’s original those odd few times earlier this year it had been appropriate to break it out, until TBF looked this one up (from Boston 3/25/77, with the Miami Horns, aka The La Bamba Horns, aka the Max Weinberg 7 Horns). Tonight, after this come-from-behind, no we are NOT going to break our 9 game winning streak, [expletive] Cincinnati, win, it seemed appropriate to share with the rest of you.
What a game! What a huge, huge game. They fought. They battled. They got ahead… they fell behind… they came back… they fell behind AGAIN… and they came back AGAIN!
There was shouting.
There was dancing.
The cat hid under the coffee table.
We danced around the room some more.
So far, the after-game playlist has been “Taking Care of Business,” the original “Higher and Higher,” “Mary’s Place,” and now “Let’s Go Crazy.”
Maybe it’s true? Maybe?
When we were discussing our summer vacation plans, and what we want to take out of the joint tour/playoff fund, I said, “Maybe we should wait until the middle of August to decide whether or not we should take any money out.” Right now, I’m going to back that. I’m going to back it because it’s more fun to believe and have fun than it is to slink around and mope. They could let us down again, but right now, at least going to Mets games will be enjoyable again.
My Afghan Whigs obsession is well-known to most people of my acquaintance. I will go see or hear anything that Greg Dulli ever does sight unseen/unheard. It’s unlikely my iPod can go more than half an hour without cycling through some Dulli project.
So of course I am thrilled to have found out that not only is he a righteous guy with amazing talent and impeccable musical taste, but he is also the type of baseball fan that TBF could appreciate. (I also heard a rumor that he has a fantasy league, and would give my eyeteeth to know 1. who is on his team and 2. who else is in this league.) Since of course the Whigs are from Cincinnati, The Great American Ballpark allegedly plays Whigs music on a regular basis.
(This is how I am justifying this post as being relevant to MetsGrrl, anyway.)
Here’s the latest Dulli baseball quote:
My Favourite Way To Relax
“I watch baseball, either on TV or by going to a game. I support the Cincinnati Reds, who are terrible at the moment-they have one of the worst teams I’ve ever seen in my life! But when they’re your team, you’re with them for the good times and you’re with them for the bad times.
--Kerrang!
What’s not to love?
