Delayed Entrance

Maybe the Mets were trying to tell us something by not letting us inside the ballpark until 90 minutes before first pitch. What they were telling us was at some point they changed the entrance time for a weeknight non-promotion game. For as long as I can remember, the gates opened at 5:10 for a 7:10 start. Stephanie and I showed up Tuesday around 5:15 only to find lines of people and nothing happening, as if we were all tourists queuing for a Broadway show. Geez, I thought, I hope there isn’t some kind of incident they’re keeping us out to address. Or, more likely, it’s the Mets being the Mets. The latter, definitely the latter.

I guess I haven’t arrived outside Citi Field in these circumstances — with a ticket kind of early — in a while. I’d have figured they wanted people inside so we could start spending and racking up those Mets Connect points, but maybe 5:40 keeps them from having to pay those who operate the concessions a half-hour’s worth more. Well, sooner or later they let us in.

And weren’t we sorry?

We weren’t, actually. Tuesday was Chasin Night at Citi Field, even if it had to wait an additional 25 minutes to get going. Chasin Night for Stephanie and me is Prince Night for our father-and-son friends Rob and Ryder, the Chasins. Really, it’s Our Night, the August date the four of us have kept for now fifteen consecutive summers, even the pandemic one when we watched a game together over Zoom. Our Night is not result-dependent. If it was, it would have gone the way of the 5:10 gates-opening.

An on-point gift from the Chasins to mark the 15th consecutive Our Night. (FYI to Augie Donatelli: Buddy was safe.)

Citi Field management was against us coming in too soon. The Oakland A’s were against us once we were seated. As will happen with any opponent you don’t see too often and have vaguely warm feelings for, if the Mets lose badly to them, you despise them by the final out. The denouement of 1973 notwithstanding, I don’t know if I’d apply hatred to the A’s, who are in Queens for the first time in seven years and, once they leave, will never return as Oakland. Minor-league accommodations in Sacramento await this once-proud franchise for a spell and then, if shovels ever hit the ground, they’ll be the Las Vegas A’s, assuming they don’t change the most easily spelled, most mysteriously punctuated team name we’ve ever known. A kid fully decked out in A’s gear asked me on the platform in Sunnyside if the 7 Express went to Willets Point. I assured him it did. When our train pulled in, I watched him tear down the stairs like he was Shooty Babitt going for an extra base. He, like we, didn’t know he’d have to wait to get inside the ballpark. But I admired his enthusiasm for his A’s, no matter that A’s ownership merits none of it.

Simpatico for their fans didn’t extend to the occupants of their dugout. The A’s player who drew most of our attention was a relief pitcher who I kind of thought sounded familiar. Yeah, Austin Adams. Didn’t we have him in the offseason? We did. We sent him on his way in Spring Training, and he wound up on Oakland, and he’s still there, and good for him. Adams wasn’t here long enough to be an Old Friend™ or even a valued acquaintance. Austin Adams was that that guy I think we once shook hands with in Port St. Lucie. It appears he remembers us.

The Mets had a few truncated rallies in the course of their 9-4 loss. The one that seemed most promising had three runs in and two runners on, which didn’t wind up as robust as it ought have. The Mets had been down, 7-1, when that inning, the bottom of the fifth, began. Still, Ryder and I agreed, this game had felt “comebackable,” and there we were, coming back. Coming on for Oakland, trotting in from the bullpen at not quite the same speed as the stirrups guy from the subway was Adams. Citi’s A/V squad lowered the lights, pumped up the music, and set the stage for any fan who chose to wave a cell phone light, presumably in the name of home-team hype, though it came off as mindless taunting of some innocent middle reliever. The spectacle reminded me of when I was six years old at the circus and we were all thrilled to have those miniature flashlights our parents bought us. Maybe Adams felt clowned. He took the mound, retired his three hitters in order, and snuffed out the last productive Met inning of the evening.

Next thing we heard was booing. That’s pretty rough, I said to Ryder, booing the Mets after an inning when we closed to within 7-4. From our vantage point in the last row of 309, I hadn’t discerned the booing was directed at Adams, who decided to be this year’s Paul Sewald. Sewald, the Quadruple-A schleprock turned dynamite closer, did a thing with his hand to his ear a couple of years ago when he came into Citi with the Mariners and set down the Mets who (with reason) never fully committed to his potential. BOO! on Sewald in 2022. Adams, replay helpfully revealed, was doing his own private OMG bit in front of 30,000 not so friendly foes (plus the stirrups fellow, who presumably loved it). BOO! on this A’ss in 2024.

Later, the dude swore he meant no disrespect and he was just fired up. At least somebody was enjoying the way the game was going.

Call Adams the pitcher of the game. It surely wasn’t our trade-deadline savior Paul Blackburn, who gave up seven runs over four innings, and it wasn’t Joe Boyle, who came in with a 7.16 ERA; was staked to a six-run lead by the third; and didn’t last long enough to qualify for the win. Boyle’s ERA rose even as the Mets fell. We were also treated to an Edwin Diaz sighting — and more scoreboard histrionics that seemed out of place as no Met lead was being protected.

Pete Alonso, who delivered two ribbies, was hopefully OK after he face-planted in quest of smothering a ball ticketed for the right field corner and came up with a noticeably skinned nose that dripped blood (thanks, monitors, for the closeups). Behind the last row of 309 there was an area that beckoned loiterers, including three kids who couldn’t have been older than eight. They shrieked for a half-inning in Ryder’s and my ears while whichever dad brought them chatted with somebody a few feet away. They were quite taken with the video images of Alonso’s nose. So was the dad, who interrupted his conversation to let them know how “tough” Alonso was to wave off the trainer and stay in the game with blood in the middle of his face. Ryder and I concluded he was teaching these children a questionable lesson. “Kids, never go to the school nurse.”

The Met we focused on most once Alonso’s toughness went unquestioned was Jesse Winker. Winker, we concurred, was going to be the mid-season Met get who in three years we wouldn’t instinctively remember was ever a Met, a Matt Lawton for a more digital age. But then Winker got a single and drove in a run with a double (necessitating the warming of Adams in the A’s pen), and Ryder and I converted to Winkerism. Jesse Winker is halfway to the cycle. Jesse Winker should be known as the Wild Card, because if the Mets had 26 Jesse Winkers, they’d have the Wild Card in hand rather than be slipping away from it. All Mets currently on rehab must get pestered by fans in the hinterlands asking if they really know THE Jesse Winker.

Winker never did get that cycle, and the Mets never did get the Road Trip From Hell out of their system. But Stephanie and I did get in on some of that $5 Tuesday action. Earlier this year, just as the Mets were OMG’ing their way into our hearts yet perhaps hedging their bets on whether they’d need to attract a crowd with something other than exciting baseball, the club announced select food and beverage items would cost “only” five dollars on Tuesday nights. Five-dollar hot dogs. Five-dollar pretzels. Five-dollar bottles of water. In Pulp Fiction, five dollars for a milkshake was considered extravagant. Now it’s a bargain. We were so stoked to take advantage that we showed up at 5:15. The Mets told us to hold our horses and they’d hold our hot dogs. Per John Travolta as Vincent Vega, I don’t know if it was worth five dollars, but it was pretty fucking good.

The Princes and Chasins parted ways at the edge of the Rotunda. We Princes, as ever by this juncture in the journey, were laser-focused on our reverse commute. Stephanie had already stepped six inches outside the border separating Out There from In Here when Rob and Ryder told us they wanted to duck inside the team store before they went home. Stephanie stepped back in for a proper goodbye until next August, eliciting a glare from one of the maroon-shirted customer-interaction specialists stationed by the main exit to make sure you don’t try to sneak back in and sleep overnight behind a sausage cart in advance of tomorrow’s game (one way to solve the 5:10/5:40 gap). What’s that Jackie Robinson quote inscribed on the wall? “Glaring at your customers is not important except on the impact it has on other customers.” We got our hugs and handshakes taken care of without a supervisor having to get involved, thereby completing the Citi Field circle of life. Don’t come in too soon. Don’t come back in. And we hope to see you again.