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It's rare that I get to see the Mets in person, so I looked forward to the opportunity to catch the team in Milwaukee this past weekend. We were only going to see the Saturday game, but my wife, sensing my dispair, offered to pass on going to the zoo on Sunday and we attended that game as well.
Here are some observations of the team and the ballpark.
-- The Saturday lineup looked to be as solid as we can put out there at this point, with Conforto, Cabrera, Rivera and Walker. But I was stunned to see who all was introduced on Sunday: Kelly Johnson batting cleanup? Reynolds at short batting second? De Aza in left. We had two guys batting below .200 and two between .200 and .220. How Cespedes got a pitch to hit is a mystery.
-- When Lagares, Cabrera and Confroto were introduced as pinch-hitters, the Mets fans in my section were saying, "Where the heck were these guys in the first inning?"
-- I think Petralta, the Brewers pitcher on Saturday, was batting a robust .059 when he launched that bomb into the Seven Line Army. It was the best hit ball of the day.
-- Speaking of the Seven Line Army, it was fun to see it in action -- a first for me! But I was surprised when it sounded like they were doing a roll call. Isn't that a Yankees thing?
-- Curtis was locked in on Saturday. He darn near had a second homer. Not so much on Sunday, but he made a nice play.
-- Bastardo looked terrible. Those back to back homers were brutal.
-- Speaking of brutal, the Mets were throwing the ball all over the place on Sunday.
-- Miller Park is nice. None of the sections are deep, but they're stacked up tall, if that makes sense. There's a Bob Uecker statue in the last row of the upper deck behind home plate with an chair for you to sit in and pose with. Lots of other nice things to see inside and outside the park.
-- It was nice to meet TransMonk!
-- We got a barking dog bobble head on Sunday. The dog -- "Hank" -- is on all kinds of merchandise and has his own shopping area in the stadium. Supposedly it's an actual dog and not a guy in a costume. But I never saw him. The racing sausages are as cool as advertised, and on Sunday they handed off to "little weenies," which were kids or really short people in smaller versions of the costumes.
-- I've never seen so much tailgating for a baseball game.
-- The brats were nowhere near as good as I remembered. And it seemed like the team made a big deal of the secret stadium sauce in the past. This time, there was just a bottle of it next to the ketchup dispensers. But it's still a brat in Milwaukee, so that's not a bad thing.
-- You can get right close to the visitors bullpen, so I got some nice shots of Thor and deGrom hanging out and Matz warming up.
Here are some of the things that went wrong on Saturday that neither the Mets nor Brewers were responsible for:
-- It was sweltering hot, in the 90s and our otherwise sweet seats behind the Mets dugout were right in the sun for most of the game. My wife doesn't do well in the heat, and my promise that the roof would be closed to allow for AC was wrong. Apparently the roof is there for rain, not necessarily comfort, like the retractable roofs in Houston, Arizona and Miami.
-- We had really annoying people sitting around us. I know that's totally up to chance, and the heat made tempers short. But the ushers did not care who wandered into the section or where people sat. There's a chance my wife and i were the only people in our correct seats. Here's an example. These two older guys came with a woman. I think their seats were supposed to be together, but they spread out. The guys decided to sit on opposite sides of the aisle, and seemed to be having issues hearing. So you get stuff like this:
"Jeffrey, those are the retired numbers up here."
"What?"
"The numbers, above the scoreboard, they're the retired numbers."
"Where?"
"Up there, above the scoreboard."
"Aaron never played for the Brewers."
"What?"
"Aaron ... never.. played..for..the Brewers."
"Then why his is number retired?"
"What?"
"Why did they retire his number then?"
Me, and I recognize this was a mistake; "He did play for them at the end of his career. He was a DH."
"What?"
Me: "In his last year."
"He says he was a Brewer."
One of the guys, dismissing me with a wave: "Nah, he was on the Braves."
My wife, in what can best be described as a stage whisper: "STOP TALKING TO THEM." The volume and inaccuracies remained while the topics changed for the rest of the game.
Then there's the big guy in the Rangers cap and jersey -- no idea why, and I didn't dare ask -- sitting in the middle of the row who kept getting up for food, like, every inning. And the people who sneaked into the section with an overheated 3-year-old, saying loudly, "Look! There's the baseball men. Can you see the baseball men? No, that way. Comeback here...no, don't bother that guy..."
The Gnome of Victory and Celebration fell out of my backpack in the team shop and broke. He's been broken before, but these were new breaks. He'll see a hot glue gun tonight. But it sucked to gather up the pieces.
In the team shop, after waiting on line, I was told that the rubber stamp for the MLB Pass-Ports was broken and I had to go to the other team shop. I have no idea how you break a rubber stamp.
I was taking photos with the cell phone, but also brought the camera. Got some really nice shots of the guys in the on-deck circle and at bat, and Granderson and Conforto talking before the game. Somehow, and I don't know how, the settings got messed up later that night and the entire memory card was erased. Also, the people across the hall in the hotel brought their dog, and it started barking very early in the morning. And these two demon spawn in the breakfast area where totally running amok. I've never seen anything like that.
So, after all this, and the Mets giving up so many homers that Bernie Brewer must gotten slide burn, it was not as great a day at the ballpark (or in the hotel) as it could have been.
My wife, sensing the disappointment and knowing that I had been planning this road trip for months, graciously offered to pass on the zoo and see the Mets again on Sunday, when the temperatures were 30 degrees cooler. It was a more enjoyable trip to the park, having discovered the access to the bullpen, visiting the statues and sitting around calmer, nicer people.
It's always a treat to see the Mets in person, even when the conditions -- on and off the field -- are not at their best.
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