Who's Drinking?!

Shea Stadium, our dearly departed former home, was pretty far from desirable when it came to the quality and variety of available food offerings. I don't think I'll find too much argument there. We always had a readily available assortment of the standard fare, Hot Dogs, Pretzels, Beer, etc. But there was nothing particularly special about anything. And it was generally not worth what you paid for it. In the late 80s, or at least this was when I noticed it, things started to get jazzed up a little bit. They opened a quaint little food-courty type place in the Right Field corner in the Field Level called the "Fielder's Choice," where you could get more or less the same stuff, I believe. In my younger days, I always opted for the chicken tenders. The Fielder's Choice caught on, and before too long, they popped up in the Mezzanine and Upper Decks.

In the 90s, Aramark took over the concession from Harry M. Stevens (I'm more or less going from memory now, so correct me if I'm wrong) more and more specialty food stands started to pop up, and the Fielder's Choices had wholesale makeovers, with new names like "Midtown Express," and "Grand Central Grille." But they more or less had the same stuff they always did. Then, there were some satellite stands that had ice cream, or beer and pretzels. In the early 2000s, an odd, rather tasty smell began wafting through the stands, when they started putting Italian Sausage stands in various locations. I tried one once, in 2001. I was immediately hooked. It was substantial, it was good, and it was, by Shea standards, reasonably priced. And thusly, the Sausage & Peppers became my Shea Stadium food of choice.

But through these years, I was going to quite a few games, generally within the neighborhood of 15-20 a season. Sometimes, I didn't always feel like the Sausage & Peppers. So, I began to explore the other available options. The standard Hot Dog had gone through its own metamorphosis, from Kahn's to Nathan's, and if you found the right stand, was even available in a footlong variety (see above). At some point, they even started throwing a free bag of chips in there, too. There was also the old standby, the Chicken Tenders, which now came plopped on top of a small stack of soggy French Fries. They were cardboardy, heartburn-inducing goodness. There was pizza around, however after trying it once and finding the box it came in to taste better, I wasn't going there again. The Bubba Burgers that appeard in 2006 were nice, but unsubstantial. I felt limited. Were there other, palatable options? I meandered around the Field Level a few times in 2007 and 2008 and found that the original Fielder's Choice had turned into a veritable strip mall of chains and inscrutable local establishments. The BB Sandwich Bar had an interesting Cheesesteak-like sandwich (Upon mentioning this to my infamous co-worker, he replied, "Cheesy Steak? Who the hell eats that at a ballgame?!"), but it was basically an over glorified Roast Beef Sandwich, hardly worth going out of my way for. I wasn't about to frequent Dunkin' Donuts for dinner either. There was also a Subway there, which I could only make fun of, because it was overpriced and unnecessary. And if I ever wanted to go to Subway, I would have gone to one of the many real ones in Manhattan, gotten a reasonably-priced sandwich and eaten it on the train out to the stadium. There was also the Glatt Kosher stand, which I never went to because I'm clearly a bad Jew. In the Mezzanine, there appeared, in 2008, a stand called Mama's of Corona. I'd never heard of it. They had a stack of boxes, but no picture or description of what was inside. It was the Mystery box. El Guapo and I wondered about it for several weeks, before I finally took a moment to walk over and read the menu. Turns out they were specialty sandwiches. I believe there was a Turkey Club, and something called the "Mama's Special." $9 specialty sandwiches, that they didn't show you before you bought them. I decided to pass.

So, what's the point of all this? Well, with Citi Field opening, there was the promise of some newer, higher-quality, recognizable food coming in. The concession deal with Aramark remained, and one can only assume that many of these options will still be available (I'll be sorely disappointed if I can't get the Sausage & Peppers in the Promenade level). But who cares about that? An article in Friday's Daily News gives a blow-by-blow account of the new assortment of culinary choices available at Citi Field. I guess, at Shea, the only really high-end anything as far as food was concerned was the Diamond Club. I never set foot in the place. I'd venture the guess that I probably won't see a number of the new places at Citi Field, either.

First, there's the Shake Shack. This isn't anything resembling high-end, I don't think, though I have to admit that I've never set foot in a Shake Shack, nor have I been to the original stand in Madison Square. El Guapo raves up and down about it, so I guess it's probably good.

Next, Box Frites. This place serves Belgian-cut french fries. Because when I think of great Ballpark Food, I think of Belgian-cut french fries.

The Verano Taqueria, much more acceptable than if they'd decided to plop a Taco Bell in Center Field.

The Wheelhouse Market purports to have "classic, artesianal comfort foods," which sounds to me like an overglorified diner.

Then, there's the Delta Sky 360 Club, the Acela, and the Blue Smoke, in case you have the urge to sit and have a gourmet 3-course meal while watching the Mets. Apparently you can only get into the Acela if you have a reservation. Well, la dee da! I wonder what the menu at that place must look like.

But the real kicker is Zachys, a Wine Bar. I'd love to see what happens when the Sack 'O Nuts crowd gets tanked after too many glasses of Merlot.

Many of these new stadiums tend to have a hearty sampling of local food, such as the Sushi stand in Seattle or the Crabcake stand in Baltimore. I know there's something in San Francisco too, but whatever it was has slipped my mind at the current time. What appears to be lacking here is that the Mets seem to have gone for a lot of glitz and glamour, and some big-name restaurateurs when it came to putting together the Citi Field Menu, but it lacks New York flavor. I know a good Corned Beef or Pastrami sandwich isn't the first thing that comes to mind when you're at a ballgame, but wouldn't a 2nd Avenue Deli stand work here? How about a Junior's Cheesecake stand? How about finding someone who can turn out a decent Pizza, rather than that Sbarro crap they've been passing off as food? And the Wine bar is just plain bewildering.

One thing's for sure. If you're going to go to a game at Citi Field, you won't go hungry. But at what cost?

Slate of Amazin' Eats on Citi Field's Home Plate [Daily News]

So It Continues...

I'm starting to think I've been through this before.

Problem is, whenever a Mets player has opened their mouth and proclaimed them the "Team to Beat" in the NL East, it hasn't exactly ended up so well for the Mets. I'd feel a little better if the Mets kept their mouths shut and did their talking on the field.

Then again, given that their main opponent, the Phillies, seems to have developed an obsessive and rather unprofessional hatred of the Mets, maybe it's just a little tough to ignore them. Maybe, perhaps, Carlos Beltran feels it better to needle them, just to make them think about the Mets a little bit more than they should.

The people doing the talking on the Philly side seem to be the usual suspects. First, it was Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins taking ample opportunity to trash the Mets at their own World Series Celebration, which I thought rather odd, why worry about the Mets when you just won the World Series?

It continued in December, when Cole Hamels, who was goaded and took the bait, called the Mets "Choke Artists" on Joe Benigno's radio show on WFAN. Again, I thought this rather odd, considering that, although the Phillies won the World Series, and Hamels was the World Series MVP and put himself into the National Spotlight as a Big Game Pitcher, the one team he struggled with more than anyone else in 2008 was, in fact, the Mets, to a tune of an 0-2 record and an ERA of 6, replete with a pair of HRs by Carlos Delgado that may still be going.

It would be preferable, I'm sure, to me and to most Mets fans, if we just kept quiet, because the Phillies seem to be doing a good enough job of making themselves look like a bunch of insecure, sore winners. Francisco Rodriguez is new here, and new to the rivalry, and I suppose he just wants to fit in a little better when he starts opening his mouth and making predictions. Predictions are cheap, and in all reality, they should be left to the writers and the bloggers to make. Even Jimmy Rollins himself, the guy who started this mess, seems to be out of the predicting business.

And all this is to say nothing of the warring factions of fans, who continue to seem intent to take over each other's stadiums, though this appears to have always been a one-sided battle that the Mets fans usually win. Particularly with Citi Field opening, 12,000 fewer seats, and far fewer opportunities to get tickets.

But it took Jose Reyes to say the one thing we've all been thinking all winter long. It took him one day in camp, and one conversation with a reporter, but Jose pretty much said what we've all been thinking. I certainly hope all his teammates are in agreement with him.

“We don’t worry about Philly. I don’t know why they worry so much about the New York Mets. They can talk about whatever they want to, because we worry about us. They are the one to win the World Series, not us, and we don’t say nothing about them. We just say congratulations to the Phillies. We focus on them when we play them, but they always seem like they’re talking something about us, and I don’t know why.”

I'm not so sure, either. It's even worse dealing with their fans, who seem to come off like an even more insecure version of Yankee fans. Tell them their concern with the Mets is insecurity, and they say something like, "SHUT UP! YOU SUCK! WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME THE METS WON THE WORLD SERIES!?"

It's a common retort to the Mets fan. We're used to it by now.

At any rate, Jose continued by talking about the Phillies' criticism of his Home Run celebrations:

“I heard that. I don’t know why they say that, because I’m not the only one pimpin’ when I hit a home run. A lot of people do that. People from Philadelphia, too. They stand for a couple of seconds at home plate and nobody say nothing. So like I said, I don’t know why they’re so focused on us. We just worry about us.”

I find it rather ironic that they would complain about Reyes jumping around and pumping his fist and doing some goofy handshake with Carlos Delgado, while their own guy, Little Shit Victorino, does everything short of run around with a flag whenever he gets a hit.

It's a recycled comment, but these 18 games are, once again, going to be very interesting, and very difficult to sit through. I'm looking forward to it.

I think...

A Final Tip of the Cap

This was my final glimpse of Shea Stadium, as I left on September 28th, 2008. I, like others, did not return to the Shea site after that date. I did, however, diligently follow the destruction of Shea, piece by piece, through sites like Stadiumpage.com, and the work of people like citi_field on Webshots. But I never went in person. Even in the years that they weren't tearing down Shea, I preferred not to go out there between October and April. I preferred to remember Shea as it was when I was going there with purpose, not just passing through on my way to someplace else. In other words, I prefer to remember Shea as it was on a night like this:
(Photo from October 12, 2006)

as opposed to today, February 18th, 2009, where, in a rather ignominius bit of symmetry, Shea finally fell to the ground on my 30th Birthday.

I have, previously, said my peace on Shea, and I know my feelings are echoed by multitudes of Mets fans around me. It's gone now. But it's never dead.

Just look here.

Or here.

Or here.

Or here.

The Church of Sporadic Offense

This is #1 of 5 Key Mets Players for the 2009 season.

The last man ever to swing a bat in Shea Stadium was Ryan Church.

If things had broken a little better for him during the '08 season, perhaps that final swing could have taken place under vastly different circumstances.

If the 2008 season for the Mets could be best described as long, frustrating and ultimately unfulfilling, perhaps nobody exemplified this more than Ryan Church.

After arriving in New York in a rather controversial trade, Church certainly had a number of questions surrounding him. Could he hit lefties? Could he hit for power and drive in runs on a consistent basis? Would he be able to hold down the bottom third of a batting order that stood to peck and scrape for runs?

At the outset, the answer to all of those questions turned out to be a resounding YES! While the rest of the team seemed to be in their own fog, Church broke from the gate and played like he really had something to prove. Over the first two months of the season, nobody was playing better than Church. He kick started it off with a rally-extending single on Opening Day, and only went up from there, finishing April with a .316 BA and 19 RBIs. His defense in Right Field was more than solid as well, as he chipped in with a strong arm and great range to complement Beltran in Center. May started, and Church continued to swing a hot bat. His power numbers picked up, and by May 20th, Church had a robust 9 HRs and 32 RBIs for a team that wasn't scoring much.

Then, came the nightcap of a miserable May 20th Doubleheader.
Trying to break up what would be a game-ending Double Play, Church's high slide led him straight into the knee of a leaping Yunel Escobar. The resulting collision was brutal, ugly and ultimately short-circuited Ryan Church's entire season.

Whether or not the Mets Medical staff botched the handling of Church's second concussion in three months is academic. Church should have been sent back to New York and immediately put on the Disabled List until his head was clear. But, instead, Church played on. But it was clear that he wasn't right. After about a week's worth of Pinch-Hitting appearances, Church was back in the starting lineup on June 1st. He responded with a fine game, even hitting a HR off Hiroki Kuroda.

Church would go 0 for his next 10 before being placed on the Disabled List for the next few weeks. He wouldn't appear again until June 29th. Clearly, something was very wrong. Again, Church claimed he felt good, and he certainly looked good, picking up a pair of hits in a victory over the Yankees. When he continued to play well the following week, we again thought Church was back. But on July 5th, he left the game against the Phillies in the 8th inning with Dizzy spells.

He would not play again until August 22nd. For June, July and August, he played a grand total of 20 games.

When he returned, he played his heart out, and the fans knew it and appreciated it. But he hit .195 for August and September, and clearly killed the Mets in a number of spots. Instead of being a bottom of the order run producer, Church instead deepened the Black Hole at the end of the lineup. His hits counted, including a Grand Slam in Milwaukee, and a pair of clutch hits (and an even more clutch slide) in the frenetic September 25th game vs. Chicago. It was clear that he couldn't be counted on, and he probably wasn't playing at 100%, and yet Jerry Manuel continued to run him out there day after day, until that final afternoon, when he embarrassingly struck out in his first 3 at bats before making that final swing and lofting that final fly ball out to Center Field.

After the season, there were revelations that he hated New York and wanted to be traded, though the prevailing thought was that this was little more than a Mike Francesa Creation, and Church and his wife were happy, and moved with the fans response to Church, particularly after he returned from the DL. Whether this is true or not, Church is back, and for better or worse will be the starting Right Fielder on Opening Day.

[Note: Some further research revealed Francesa's comments to be totally False. Church sounded off on this in an article here, and was further corroborated here.]

The question is, what, exactly, do we have in Ryan Church? His career norms don't jump off the page at you, and his 2008 season all told didn't vary from those numbers at all. The 43 doubles he hit in 2007 while playing in cavernous RFK Stadium were a good indicator of his gap power, and Church certainly displayed that when he was going good, though he didn't come close to 43 doubles for the '08 season.
It's clear that Church certainly has the capability to play well for a good streak of time. I don't think his hot start was an aberration. But it's unclear as to whether or not he can keep that sort of a streak going over the course of a full season, and end up hitting .290 or .300 with 20 HRs and 80 RBIs. These are the kind of numbers that the Mets are probably going to need out of Church if they expect to challenge for the NL East. Given that it's going to be the same cast of characters playing out there for the Mets in 2009, and given that the Mets didn't bring in a righty bat to platoon with Church if he begins to falter against lefty pitching, it is incumbent upon Church to show that his concussion battles are behind him, and that the hot start he got off to in 2008 was no fluke.

After the season, I wrote that teams were pitching around Delgado and Beltran to pitch to Church, and Church was justifying the move every single time. If Church hits, and hits well, it means that Beltran and Delgado get better pitches to hit in front of him, it means guys like Daniel Murphy don't have quite as much pressure on them to get that big hit, and it means that the Mets lineup looks a lot better from top to bottom.

Happy Valentine Day (Revisited)!

It's a little known fact that Bobby Valentine invented, or at least claims to have invented the Wrap Sandwich at his Stamford, CT restaurant. This video, found here, features our own beloved Bobby V talking about his discovery. As always, on Valentine's day, it's only proper to tip our cap to the only Valentine the Mets fan really needs.