Ballpark experience number three: Queens, NY

Stadium number three on my baseball tour was Citi Field, home of the New York Metropolitans. I had just arrived that morning on an overnight flight from LA, and hadn't had much sleep or rest. Check-in time at the Y was 3pm, so I had heaps of time to wander around...and wander around I did. I spent most of my time is a slight trance (only partly attributable to the dehydration caused by 30+ degree heat). I was in awe of the tall buildings in Brisbane...so the skyscrapers in New York blew my mind. I won't bore you with paragraphs and paragraphs gushing over how awesome New York is. I will bore you will a baseball stadium trip report!

I decided to visit Citi Field that night, despite very little sleep the night before, because Jacob DeGrom was pitching for the Mets. He is young and very good and on my fantasy baseball team. Yay! Plus, the Mets were playing the Rockies (who aren't very good), so I expected some pitching domination and a valuable boost to my team ERA and WHIP for the week.

I took the subway out to Queens and managed to find my way to the stadium (New York's subway system is pretty easy to use). I took this photo while waiting in the security check line to get in:

Yes, I suck at taking pictures, but you get some sense of the scene. Citi Field is a relatively new stadium (opened in 2009), and it looks pretty... it doesn't have a lot of character, but it looks pretty. I had a wander around before I ascended up to my seat in the nosebleed section. I wanted to check out what was on offer food-wise.

Citi Field has a Shake Shack concession stand! Shake Shack only has the most delicious and perfect fast-food burgers known to man. I wanted to get one, but the queues were ludicrously long... I did actually want to see some baseball that evening. I didn't end up getting anything to eat at Citi Field, because I had eaten this pizza for lunch:

It was excellent.

Other than Shake Shack, there wasn't anything particularly compelling to sample at Citi Field. This is New York, there are so many great places to eat. I thought it would be a shame to fill my belly with crappy ballpark food (memories of the Dodger dog were still lurking in the back of my mind)

So I went to my seat and took in  the view:

Not as close to action as my seat in Dodger stadium, and the sun setting in my eyes was slightly annoying (didn't bring my hat cause it was a night game). It was pretty cool sitting there though. There was a family (mom, dad and at least three adult children) sitting behind me, and they had the most awesome accents. They were really getting into the game as well. The mom sounded exactly like Kyle's mother off South Park and she kept exclaiming that she wanted to see the big apple. That is literally a giant apple that rises from an area beyond the centre field fences every time a Met hits a home run (unfortunately we didn't see it that night). You can see where the apple emerges from in this picture:

But yeah, back to the family...I just thought that their conversations and interactions were very sweet; and I sat there with a big grin for most of the night.

The stadium atmosphere was pretty good, but as with the Dodgers, this is to be expected because the Mets are good this year. The singing of "Take me out to the ballpark" was a little disappointing. I think this is because the Mets didn't even replace their name for "home team" in the song (I guess it doesn't work out very well syllable-wise). The crowd in LA yelled "Root root root for the DODGERS!" very loudly, whereas I didn't hear much singing at all from the Mets fans.

I left shortly after the seventh inning and managed to find my way back to Manhattan safely. The Citi Field experience ranks 4th on my list, largely on the strength of the stadium atmosphere (and cute family). It would have been nice if there had been a better selection of food (and shorter queues), but all in all, there was nothing really to complain about. Citi Field was pretty solid in all departments.

Ballpark experience number two: Los Angeles

The day after my ill-fated trip to Angels stadium, I visited the home of the real baseball team of Los Angeles. Fortunately, this game was an evening game, and I wouldn't have to deal with the ravaging California sun. I had spent all of that day lying uncomfortably in bed, dealing with some nasty sunburn; and recovering from what I suspect was a case of heat stroke.

I did manage to eat this for lunch:

Kimchi Carbonara! Me gusta mucho!

Good thing I ate a substantial lunch, cause it was quite the trek to get to Dodgers stadium. The place where the bus dropped me off was pretty far away from the actual stadium, and it was basically all uphill. Also, I really needed to go for a piss for most of my walk. There is always that big decision about whether to walk faster (but intensifying the feeling of needing to urinate), or walk slower in a zen-like state (attempting to mentally block out the feeling of needing to urinate).

With a stadium of this size, getting there is only the first half of the challenge. The second half involves trying to make your way to a toilet and then to your seat. A wrong turn can mean walking around aimlessly for nearly half an hour. Not that I know this from personal experience or anything like that...*cough* *cough*.

I got myself sorted and went in search of food. I spent about 30 minutes in a queue to get some barbecue from the Think Blue BBQ concession stand. While waiting to order, the national anthem came on. Pretty interesting to see everyone stop what they were doing (even if they were in the middle of receiving a big tray of food), turn to face the flag and take their hats off. When the anthem comes on, everything stops.

I got a beef brisket sandwich, I think. It had some pretty decent smokey barbecue flavour to it. The potato salad was pretty ordinary though and the blue cheese coleslaw was nasty (and I love blue cheese).

I also got a Dodger dog, which was pretty mediocre.

Yeah, it was probably the worst ballpark hotdog I had on my trip.

The game itself was pretty good. I was sitting facing right field, and two of the best young right-fielders in baseball were on display that night, Bryce Harper and Yasiel Puig. In the picture below, if you look past the curly-haired gentleman's head, you can see Harper chilling out in-between pitches.

I was pleasantly surprised during the seventh inning stretch that: A) most of the crowd hadn't left yet; and B) they were really getting into singing "Take me out to the ballpark". This was a much better atmosphere than the seven inning stretch in some other stadiums. I suppose this is a result of the Dodgers having a good team this year.

All in all this was a good ballpark experience. I had been a little weary after hearing a friend describe the last time he visited Dodger stadium. Apparently there were Mexican dudes yelling at each other and throwing up gang signs late in the game (after a bit of alcohol no doubt). I saw no such evidence of that, and everyone seemed to be happy and engaged.

So out of the 8 ballparks I visited , I would say that my Dodgers stadium experience ranked 5th. The stadium is not easy to get to, and the food options weren't all that great, but the crowd and atmosphere were pretty good. I didn't rank Angels stadium in the last post, but that came in 7th.

Ballpark experience number one: Anaheim (most definitely not Los Angeles)

I recently went to the USA to do a bit of a food and baseball tour. I tried to combine the two for a little bit, but quickly realized that baseball stadium food is almost always overpriced and mediocre. I will write some posts about this trip!

So Anaheim is home to the Los Angeles Angels, who were formerly the California Angels and then the Anaheim Angels. I think they did some kind of naming deal with the city of Anaheim to get their stadium there, so for a while they were the bizarre "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim". But whatever they are called, their ballpark is a concrete monstrosity very, very far away from downtown Los Angeles. This is what it looks like from the carpark:

So I needed to take the subway to get to Union station, so that I could take the train (a proper train, like an Amtrak train), so that I could walk for several hundred metres through carpark, so that I could finally arrive at my seat and sit down...only just over two hours later. 

I did grab a beef short rib grilled cheese sandwich on the way to my seat. A bit of google research showed that this was one of the best things on offer at Angels Stadium (which apparently is not one of the better MLB stadiums for food). Here is what it looked like:

You know what? It was actually not bad. It could have done with more beef, but the cheese was nice (proper cheese). I washed it down with a red coloured lemonade drink:

This was pretty refreshing.

The main problem I had was that I was sitting in an uncovered area in the outfield seating. I was not wearing sunscreen and the sun was pretty darn fierce. 

I did manage to (perhaps foolishly) gut it out for 4 innings. This doesn't sound like much, but Jered Weaver was pitching for the Angels and each inning was taking an interminably long time. I don't think there were many people staying out there to watch every pitch. I suspect Angels fans are on the whole, a lot less hardcore about baseball than the fans of some other teams (this is not necessarily a bad thing...I hate you Boston).

So my trip started off with me travelling two hours each way to watch an hour and a half of baseball while getting burnt to a crisp. I would say that the overall experience was slightly negative, but I am going to put that on me. It was a bit idiotic to buy a cheap bleacher seat and then sit out there without sun screen. Madness... I will probably never return, because Angels are the hated division rivals of my beloved Seattle Mariners...and because it is such a pain to get to.