A Trip to Citi Field

The Braves came to town over Easter weekend, and I was able to go to the games on Friday and Saturday night.  Fortunately I chose not to go to Sunday's 5+ hour marathon game.

Here are my thoughts on the weekend:

1. Too Cold.  It was way too cold for a mid-April baseball game.  Temperatures dropped into the low 30s with a harsh cross wind.  I never leave baseball games early, but I left Friday's game in the 8th inning (more on that below).
2. Citi Field is nice. I sat in left field for both games.  I was able to select my seats (2nd and 3rd row), which offered a great view of the game for a decent price ($32 on Friday, $40 on Saturday).  Those prices include the ridiculous "convenience" fees ($5 per ticket plus another $8 for the transaction) which could only be avoided by purchasing the tickets at the stadium ticket office.  Apparently these fees are also dynamic pricing because I just checked about buying Marlins/Mets tickets and those fees were $3/ticket and $6 addition, but Phillies/Mets and other Braves/Mets have the fees I paid.
   
     
   
   
3. Food.  The food selections were great, but the lines were very long.  I went with the BBQ joint (highly recommended) and the burrito place (burrito not recommended / nachos were fine).  Both waits were too long (missed at least an inning), but I probably would have missed the entire game waiting for Shake Shack.  The prices were not unreasonable especially given that NYC prices for food and drinks in general are exceptionally high.  My seats for both games were in the outfield, so I did not look for the typical baseball food stands, but I assume those lines would have been somewhat shorter. 
4. Aaron Harang is having a great season.  Wow we almost saw a no-hitter.  Harang was clearly struggling and exhausted in the 7th, but the first six innings were dominant. 
5. Bartolo Colon at-bats should all be nationally televised.  Seeing this at-bat live was worth the price of admission:
   
6. Justin Upton throwing with the Mets ball-boy was the most entertaining thing of the weekend.  The Mets sent out a ballboy to throw with Justin every inning.  This poor kid is just completely unathletic.  He was left-handed, but he threw as if he was really right-handed and was just beginning to throw with his left.  At least 30% of his throws did not travel the 90 feet needed to reach Justin.  Right before the inning began, the kid would attempt to catch a lobbed throw from BJ.  He caught approximately 40% of them.  At first Justin looked a little annoyed.  By the 4th inning, he was rifling balls back at the kid.  By the 7th, Justin just waived him off.  I am not sure if the Mets were trolling Justin, but if they were, it was an excellent prank.  These are the little types of advantages that home ballparks can give a team that go completely unnoticed but could legitimately affect a game because Justin was visibly affected by this kid. 
   
7. David Wright has awesome walk-up music.  Most of the Mets have terrible or generic music.  Boring and stuff.  David Wright comes up to You Got It (The Right Stuff) by New Kids on the Block. I'm not sure if this is new or if he has been doing it for years, but it was awesome.   
8. B.J. Upton catching fly balls gives me nightmares.  He wildly missed that one pop-up that fortunately was still an easy out at second, but he seemed to misjudge every single ball off the bat.  He is ridiculously fast and able to catch-up to his misreads, but his first step and initial reactions seemed to be delayed or wrong.  Yes I miss the original death to flying things, Andruw Jones.
9. Dan Uggla's fielding is an atrocity.  I'm sure that pop-up that he dropped was knuckling in the wind or something, but good grief that was ugly.
10. Carpenter, Walden, and Kimbrel throw really hard. The ball just pops out of their hands.  I was impressed.
11. Citi Field is a large ballpark.  I can't believe we hit two homers in that series.  I also can't believe that the park is still that large after bringing the fences in.  Freeman's home run was annihilated, but barely cleared the fence.  Justin's probably should have been caught.  There were a lot of other fly balls that were caught that I thought had a chance to leave the park.  The Mets don't appear to be developing a team strategy around their ballpark (Granderson is a slow and terrible outfielder), but I think the same benefits of pitching in Petco could apply to pitching in Citi and the Mets would be wise to target pitchers with flyball tendencies.