You didn’t need to stare out the window this morning to know this was the kind of day to make like Zooey Deschanel and ask your iPhone to conjure you some tomato soup (although maybe you could do it less preciously than Zooey Deschanel). All you had to do was tap the weather app on your device of choice and observe nothing but “100%” chances of precipitation for ZIP Code 11368 forecast across the Flushing afternoon. Then you could look out the window. Then, if you were the New York Mets, you could put one and one together and come up with the decision to tell your customers well in advance of their leaving their homes, “Stay in today, have whatever kind of soup you like.”
It was a day meant for bisque, not bobbleheads. But the bobbleheads were on the schedule — the Tom Seaver bobbleheads, for Gil’s sake — and the tickets were sold, so…
Better get going, lest the Mets give away all 25,000 of what you’d purchased a ticket to secure one of months earlier. Better go against your soundest judgment and bundle up because even though the Nationals called their game way early in Washington and the appropriately named Thunder called their game way early in Trenton, the Mets of New York pretended blue skies were shining on them long enough to lure you onto the 10:56 to Woodside.
You disembarked by 11:26, you swiped your Metrocard through the turnstiles to the 7, you waited for the local and, after 11:30 AM — or almost 90 minutes to scheduled first pitch — you were informed via Twitter that the game was finally called.
So, you asked yourself, what am I doing up here waiting for the train to Shea/Citi Field? Why did I pay $2.25 plus the $7.00 in prorated 10-trip LIRR fare to get here, plus the $7.00 in prorated LIRR fare to now get home? Buyer beware, “ticketholder assumes all risks” and you love the game of baseball let alone Tom Seaver so much that we want to believe the clouds will part in deference to the conferring of his Terrificness’s porcelain likeness, but WTF, y’know?
No kid and few adults want to give up on a Sunday afternoon game. We’re all Charlie Brown at heart. We’re all willing to convince ourselves “it’s going to clear up.” But what separates us from our cartoon selves is we have weather apps and we have the sense of sight if we’re lucky and the sense of touch probably. We can tell it’s raining and that it’s not going to stop raining. And the only thing that can get us into that rain when we have no other reason to be soaking in it is because the Mets won’t immediately advise us to remain indoors where we belong and assure us our bobbleheads will be waiting for us on another date to be announced shortly.
Because they sold us the tickets. And they really wanted to scan them and have us inside their building for a while and sell us some more stuff while they waited for the weather window that was never, ever going to come. I can’t imagine that wasn’t the plan. Surely it wasn’t because rescheduling both the Mets-Giants game and the bobblehead promotion wasn’t easily solved. It was very easily solved. The Giants were sticking around through Monday anyway. Voila, doubleheader. The bobbleheads were moved to the next available weekend date that didn’t have a promotion, Saturday, May 5.
All that would have been lost in announcing those solutions early enough to keep people from schlepping in their cars and on trains and paying whatever their unnecessary trip cost them was Sunday’s gate…which was lost anyway and was going to be lost no matter how much magical/financial thinking the Mets applied to the gray skies grimacing on us.
Nobody likes to leave the gate closed. But sometimes courtesy and convenience is the better part of valor where the surprisingly predictable nature of nature is concerned.
Happy remainder of Earth Day. This part of the planet needed a little rain anyway.
Plus it’s fucking bullshit to only have 25,000. Of all the cheapjack things the Mets do, this one might actually piss me off the most.
They didn’t even open up the Rotunda at 10:40 – they just had the folks standing out in the rain for about an hour while the ticket takers and security guards just stood their waiting for whatever the hell they were supposed to be doing. Shockingly this isn’t the first time I’ve found the staff in total confusion as to what was going on.
At least if they opened the gate people would have gone and bought stuff; instead they pissed off happened.
Thought the Rotunda was supposed to be a grand meeting place. Would it have killed them to use it as such on a rainy day? Open it up but close the escalators and staircases. Keep your customers dry and less cold.
I go to college in Williamstown, MA. My friends and I, having similarly locked ourselves in months ago, decided to make the three-and-a-half hour trip today. Seeing nothing on mets.com about the weather, we decided to try our luck. We drove down route 22 for an hour and a half before we realized our folly. A timelier cancellation would have saved us three hours of driving. But hey, at least the Berkshires looked pretty neat in the low cloud cover.
Showed up around 1210, waited in a 15 min line to get a voucher that states the following: “good for one Tom Seaver bobblehead… can be redeemed at any field level fan assistance booth… expires 6/1/12.” They said that showing up anytime between now and then with this voucher would secure you a bobblehead—so what does that mean for May 5? Will they be giving out an even more limited number of bobbleheads? Did they make more? Is this voucher bogus?
All I’m asking for is clarity. Hopefully by tomorrow afternoon we’ll have some.
They always have more than 25,000 made, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
For anybody who showed up and stuck around that long, why not just distribute the bobbleheads? Voucher next best thing, I suppose.
First off I am a somewhat delusional Mets fan in saying that I always go into every season believing the Mets can make the playoffs and do great things once they get there. I became a fan in 1975 and I will be for life. Having said that, If I was picking a team today I don’t know if I’d pick the Mets (The Yankees? NO I WOULD NEVER PICK THE YANKEES,I’D RATHER PICK MY NOSE AND SOME OTHER BODY PARTS!) But with the Mets it’s not the losing on the field that bothers me. Yes that stinks but dealing with losing years is part of being a fan sometimes. No it is the way the Mets treat us the fans. From the way they guard the lower decks in the late inning no matter how many people have left. (If the Mets ushers guarded the borders this country would not have an immigration problem)or the way they ignored Mets history when Citi Field opened and tried to make it Ebbets Field too. (I do believe that the history of the Giants and Dodgers has a place in Mets history but a place NOT THE MAIN COURSE) and things like today. I had a ticket today but I simply could not afford to like I had many times in the past make the trip and hope for the best. People cannot afford to throw money like that. I love the Mets and although I cant afford to go to 15-20 games a year like I did in the Shea days, I do try to get their when I can. I can live with the losing years sometimes and I dream of the day when we win again (THIS YEAR!!) but I just wish the Mets treated their fans with not more respect but some respect because sometimes it seems they dont care about the fans and I am being kind when I say sometimes, LET’S GO METS!
Re guarding the lower decks in the late innings:
My dad grew up a few blocks from Ebbetts Field. On summer Saturday afternoons, he and his buddies would head down to the ballpark to catch the last few innings of the Dodger games. They would always make sure to get there no earlier than the sixth or seventh inning, so there were no more paying customers expected at that point.
As my dad tells it, Ebbets was guarded by a ferocious-looking gentleman of Irish descent. And every Saturday afternoon, he would glower at the kids, and say, “Now I wouldn’t want to see any of you fine young gentlemen sneakin’ into the ballpark, would I?” And he would pointedly turn his back, while my dad and his friends would run gleefully into the stadium.
What can I say? Times have changed.
This all could have been resolved had they built a space-age stadium with a retractable roof like they should have, and not bothered with Ebbets Mach II.
I was giddy about the rainout because I couldn’t go yesterday (Mom’s birthday) and desperately want one of these bobbleheads. Now I am informed that my daughter is taking the SAT on May 5, and then I am obliged to attend some acquaintance’s kid’s First Communion party that day. So I guess I’ll be paying the ebay price for Tom anyway.
[…] have to agree 1,000 % with two prestigious members of the Mets blogger-ari, Greg Prince of Faith and Fear in Flushing and Shannon of The Mets Police as they took the NY Mets to the wood shed for the spanking their […]
That is really a shame what they did to those fans!….Why not at least open the gates if they were supposed to be open?
Its really sad that we have to create an old time single admission double header because of a rainout.
They deserve all this backlash and thne some!
Re the rainouts – the Mets are serial offenders.
The only thing worse is when they actually attempt to play the games during a hurricane, risking injuries to their players and pneumonia for their customers.
As always – clueless!
[…] have to agree 1,000 % with two prestigious members of the Mets blogger-ari, Greg Prince of Faith and Fear in Flushing and Shannon of The Mets Police as they took the NY Mets to the wood shed for the spanking their […]
One more thing I have to gripe about. I remember when the Mets had a promotion and EVERYONE got one if that was what the promotion called for not just 25,000 and at the very least all ladies and children should NEVER be told, “Sorry we are out”
I was in a very similar situation last year…it was raining on a Friday night…game wasn’t called yet…and the Rotunda was open. Finally they called the game…but that Rotunda floor is like ice when wet…in fact I saw them wheeling out a fan who had slipped…they were trying to put down rubber mats. That is probably why they didn’t open it.
I had traveled all the way from Jersey spending $40 in gas and tolls only to be turned away at the gate about 11:45 a.m. for a game we ALL KNEW at 8:00 a.m. was never going to be played. Nice job, Mutts… alienate your quickly-shrinking fan base that much more.
Guess I must be a genius , cause I checked the forecast on weather.com & figured there’s no way this game was gonna be played & I’m not schlepping from NJ for no reason !
[…] the fellow who handed me my Tom Seaver bobblehead (whose dirt-perfect knee was worth the rainy wait); the young lady in the small hobbyists concession in left field Promenade who didn’t know what I […]