For the better part of eight innings yesterday I sat in section 504, high above the grass at Citi Field. Shortly after Matt Stairs scored in the top of the eighth, however, I thought it'd be a good idea to walk around the ball park, check out different sight lines, and maybe grab a burger from Shake Shack.
As much as I dislike the Mets, I don't really have anything overtly negative to say about their park. There's plenty of space to move around the building, concessions never seem too far away, the beer man (and more specifically the lemonade man) was fun, friendly, and entertaining in his work; there were places to stand behind most sections, and there were Phillies fans everywhere. I kind of liked it. But it wasn't perfect. The view outside the park was not of a beautiful bay as in San Francisco, or an amazing bridge as in Pittsburgh, or even a wonderfully ugly sign as in Philadelphia, but rather a dump of sorts for automobile parts. I also felt like the upper level, section 504 specifically, felt really high above the playing field making it hard to gauge the trajectory and power differences between a legit home run and a routine long fly out. Whether it is in fact higher than other parks, I have no idea. It just seemed that way to me.
Anyway, back to the black-and-white milkshake part. After stopping at different spots around the park and watching the bottom of the eighth and parts of the top of the ninth, we stumbled upon a Shake Shack in the lower center field area with almost no line. A burger and shake seemed in order.
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We got our single shack with a shake and perched up at one of the tables in the concourse with no view of the field but there is a very nice screen, surrounded in advertising for people to keep abreast of the action while they wait in lines and/or take a break from their seats to chow down. There was also a similar screen on the upper level behind home plate. It's a nice touch.
So I was enjoying a burger and watching the bottom of the ninth on this big screen, praying that Brad Lidge wouldn't give me worse heart burn than my meal.
So Pagan gets on while we're still in line, then Castillo got on, scoring Pagan while we stood at the tables. At that point, it seemed as if Lidge had allowed things to get serious enough to warrant my total attention. I literally told my special lady friend that "I have to go watch this for real" and walked the 20 feet over to stand behind the center field bleachers. Not two minutes later, with Murphy getting on, did Jeff Francoeur line one directly up the middle and Eric Bruntlett found himself in the exact right place at the exact right time. The rest is history.
Don't fool yourselves. Eric Bruntlett is still Eric Bruntlett. But now he'll be remembered for that amazingly quirky play he made that happens once a century or so -- a game ending unassisted triple play.
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And boy, I would have felt like a total punk of a fan if I had missed that one. Ended up at the perfect vantage point in center to watch it happen. Nice little Sunday.
The trip was capped off with the guilty pleasure of tuning in to WFAN on the drive back down the Jersey Turnpike listening to what sounded like Omar Minaya's eulogy. One grieving fan, after noting the hardship upon hardship that his Mets have gone through this season, said that Bruntlett's triple play was the icing on the cake.
The Shake Shack milkshake was pretty sweet too.