The Bigs 2 Travelogue: Crispy's Day of Baseball

Scott Jones and John Teti took the subway out to the Mets' new stadium to watch some baseball, get an early glimpse of The Bigs 2, and meet a surprise guest.
4/22/2009 5:06 PM | 1 Comments | Page 1 of 7

Last Friday John Teti and I were invited to spend the day watching baseball at Citi Field, drinking beer, and getting a first look at the upcoming The Bigs 2. What follows is the transcription of the notes found in the jacket pocket of my corpse that was discovered on Queens Boulevard later that same night. Ah, I'm just kidding. Teti and I actually survived this Queens-ian odyssey, but only just barely. Read on...

1:49 p.m. The 7 train, aka "the elevated," connects Manhattan to Queens. Teti and I climbed aboard the lurching old rickety train, and were treated to a panorama of used car lots, Best Westerns, porn shops and White Castles.

Oh Queens; how I love thee.

For the low price of $2 for subway fare, including all the smells you can smell (we played my favorite 7-train game, which is called "Guess Who Shit His Pants"), Teti and I were on our way to Shea Stadium. Did I say Shea? Silly me. It's Citi Field now, one of two new mega-million, totally indulgent neo-ballparks recently erected in the city. (The Yankees got one, too.)

I'm a Mets fan. I had nothing against the now-destroyed Shea Stadium. It had a pretty cool name. Plus, Shea had those urine troughs in the men's rooms -- those long, stainless-steel troughs where a man could stand and pee into a raging river of pee and water, and really feel like man.

It's all gone now. There's nothing there but an acre of scorched earth where that old gray mare once stood. R.I.P. Old Shea.

2:38 p.m. The 7 train arrives at Willets Point. It's the end of the line. Teti and I get off. And there it is: New Shea. Fake Shea. Citi Field. There's a pretty, red-brick anonymity to this monolith. One of the big complaints from fans is that the place is sterile. I wonder aloud if perhaps, like a new car, there might be a break-in period for a new stadium. You know, a time when you're not supposed to drive the stadium more than 40 miles per hour or work the brakes too much.

2:39 p.m. It's a beautiful day. No joke. A tall, blue sky arches over the stadium, making this feel less like Queens and more like godless, soulless San Diego. Teti and I locate the Media Entrance. We pick up our badges, and suddenly, we're inside what appears to be an insurance office in Poughkeepsie, New York.

On this level of Fake Shea, it's all tile flooring and fluorescents and drinking fountains. I'm thinking, There is definitely not going to be a urine trough in this place.

2:44 p.m. Within 30 seconds, Teti and I, two reasonably well-educated men, are hopelessly lost. We wander the labyrinthine bowels of Citi Field, searching for someone to tell us where we're supposed to go. "It would be pretty easy to B.S. your way in here," Teti remarks. And he's right. They didn't ask for IDs or anything. The affable guy at the front desk gave us a badge that looked like something his daughter had made in a third-grade crafts class. If we'd told him that we'd be sitting in Omar Minaya's private seats while we made balloon animals in the shape of Jackie Robinson, he probably would have said, "All right, enjoy yourselves."