i will destroy this stadium with my anger
If all goes well, the first real episode of Holy Goddamn (001) will be posted this Sunday. By then, I will have also devised a way for any of you without podcasting abilities to download the show.
My progress will be slowed somewhat by the fact that I'm attending Mets games on Friday and Saturday. I went to the home opener this Monday, which was great game-wise since they pulled off a come-from-behind win (one that would not have been necessary had the bullpen held on to a lead, but a W's a W). However, as far as a stadium-going experience, the event was sub par. I began to suspect that conditions at the Mets' home field were less than ideal earlier this year, when I experienced the joy of waiting in its hallways for nine hours for Opening Day tickets. But at that time I figured the season was a ways off, and they had plenty of time to spruce the place up. Now having attended a game in the 2005 season, I have finally come around to the point of view that many Mets fans share: if Shea Stadium was a horse, they'd shoot it.
My newly minted hatred has little to do with the aesthetics of the place, at least from the outside. I actually like its (now) retro Worlds Fair look. But I have to concede that Yankee Stadium, a much older facility, treats its patrons much better than their counterparts in Queens. For one thing, Yankee Stadium is in the middle of a neighborhood, with bars and souvenir shops all around it. It's a fun place to be during a game, even if you don't have a ticket. Shea was plopped inside of Flushing Meadow Park, across the street from the US Tennis Center, and there's nothing to do in its immediate environs during a game, unless you're looking for a hubcab for a 78 Buick. As with many shitty things about New York, you can thank Robert Moses for this.
I grant that it's hard for any ballpark to compete with Yankee Stadium in terms of atmosphere. But the problems with Shea go beyond those of atmosphere, and land somewhere in the deep infield between neglect and apathy. It was very obvious to me on Opening Day that Shea simply did not have its shit together. Everything smacked of hurried, last-minute preparation. The front office must have had one of those dreams where you wake up for school and realize you have this big report to hand in that you haven't even started yet, on a topic you know nothing about. Except that in this case, the report was a major league baseball game. AND THIS WAS NO DREAM! (dun dun dun!)
Case in point: I wandered out to a concession stands in the middle of the third to get hot dogs. I was told at two different booths that the hot dogs weren't ready yet. I could see them spinning around on those little grease covered conveyer belts, but they had the translucent, squared-off sheen of still-frozen franks. I shrugged my shoulders and returned to my seat. At the end of the fifth, I went back to the concessions--and not one stand had yet produced an edible dog. How long does it take to cook a dog? At your house, ten minutes on a grill. At Shea, almost two hours on greasy rollers is apparently insufficient. Assuming, of course, that they started the preparation before the first inning, which is a big if. The workers were still hastily stuffing bottled water and beer into the fridges when the game was more than half over.
So I thought I'd wait for a vendor, but--surprise!--I didn't see any in my section. I only managed to flag one down when I returned from a bathroom trip. I completed my visit to the loo in roughly 2.3 seconds, since the Mets do not have video or audio of the game playing in the hallways like they do at, oh, EVERY OTHER FUCKING BALLPARK IN THE COUNTRY. Or maybe, like my neighborhood, Shea is located in the blackout zone for FSN and MSG, who show more than 80 percent of all games.
Things got downright insulting at the start of the sixth inning, when the batter's eye broke. In case you don't know, the batter's eye is a black area behind the center field fence, painted black, so the batter's view of an approaching pitch won't be obscured by anything shiny. Most stadiums just paint a section of the bleachers black, or use a scoreboard that stays dark during innings. The Mets have just installed a revolving ad-board with rotating slats, displaying (in turn) ads for Samsung and Waste Management. When the 6th started, the Samsung ad (featuring Pedro Martinez) was stuck in place and would not budge back into the black. The batter refused to hit, but Tom Glavine kept warming up, putting more wear and tear on his 40-year-old arm. Eventually, the Mets walked off the field, but no announcement was made as to the cause of the delay. It slowly spread through the crowd as a rumor. Several angered fans in front of me growled "Fuck this," and left. The crowd tried to cheer itself up with chants of PEDRO! PEDRO! Martinez responded by dancing on the top step of the dugout. It made the situation only slightly less pathetic.
The grounds crew tried to cover the ad with black tarp anchored to its roof, but to the surprise of no one, the tarp ripped and crashed to the ground immediately once unfurled. So the ad was slowly turned back to black manually, except for one stubborn slat that refused to move. One of the grounds crew took to the unruly slat with a hammer, and once the distracting piece had been right, play began again. This, of course, spelt doom for both starting pitchers, who had too wait far too long to throw again and were all but done for the day after that point.
With Mayor Bloomberg high on dreams of football in Manhattan (please, may I have some of what you're smoking?), I don't hold out much hope for a stadium for NY's Other Baseball Team any time soon. Maybe Shea could be spruced up a bit. Or maybe the front office could just make sure that all the escalators work before opening the gates, or that the concession stands don't serve hot dog-sicles, or that a man taking a piss between innings doesn't have to worry about missing any pitches he paid good money to see. But from what I saw on Monday, for all the money Minaya and co. spent on Pedro and Beltran, the front office has zero interest investing in fan comfort.