A Final Stop: Citi Field

Our final stop on our journey to 30 baseball stadiums, throughout 37 US States, a foreign country, and over 16,000 miles of road was to see the New York Mets at Citi Field in Queens, NY on Tuesday, August 24th. We took the MegaBus down for our second trip to the Big Apple, leaving from South Station in Boston. Neither of us had riden the MegaBus before, but it turned out to be pretty nice. The double decker bus provides plenty of room, there is free wi-fi, they played a movie on the way down, it was non stop and very cheap. Much better than most other buses I've ever taken.

We made it to the city fairly early in the day and had plans to meet up with a college friend, Sean Kelly, who lives and works in NYC. Since he was in the office, Andy and I hiked around the city seeing the usual crazy sights of New York, got lunch at The Heartland Brewery, a pretty good spot at the bottom of the Empire State Building. The weather wasn't too welcoming but we managed to stay mostly dry until we got to the game, which featured Josh Johnson of the Marlins (who was having a great season) and R.A. Dickey for the Mets, a knuckleballer. So it seemed like it could be a fun way to finish off the trip.

Though it got much less press, Citi Field actually opened the same year as Yankee Stadium. Despite not getting as much attention as its cross-town rival, which could be said for the Mets organization as a whole, Citi Field is a very impressive place. An expansive entranceway welcomes you into the venue, featuring a great museum of Mets history which we spent quite a bit of time in having arrived pretty early.

We made our way up, and up and up to our seats which were in the upper level of the park in the area behind home plate. Drizzling rain and high winds loomed for most of the game, which was somewhat ironic considering that we had such great luck for the three months beforehand. After watching the game from our seats for a few innings and getting some good views of the whole park, we headed down towards the main concourse level and did our usual walk around the stadium, catching an inning here and an inning there. The game turned out to be a great way to wrap up the trip as well. The Mets carried a 4-2 lead into the top of the 7th inning, but surrendered 3 runs in the top half of the inning, putting the Marlins up 5-4. Along with the rain, it dampened the mood of the fans and us, as we were hoping for a final hometown victory to cap of the trip.

But, the Mets didn't let up and scored a run in the 8th to tie it up, and then Luis Castillo pulled through with a walk off single to score Angel Pagan in the bottom of the ninth. A walk off to end the trip! It couldn't have really gone much better than that. After the game we headed back and met up with Sean at his apartment. It was late and he had to work early, so we had a couple beers and were able to catch up with him a little bit before hitting the hay. Thanks a lot Sean for coming through on short notice and letting us crash at your place! It was a big help.