I’ll spare you the details of how I got the tickets. Suffice
to say, I had several friends enter the ticket lottery, one of them won, and
the end result of my battle with mets.com’s whimsy was two opening day tickets
in Upper Deck Section 7, Row
U. For those who don’t
know, Row U is the second-to-last row in the Upper Deck (how I laughed at those
poor suckers in Row V!). I had thought about buying better seats on EBay or
stubhub and offsetting the cost by selling my Row U tickets, but the going rate
for good seats was a lot higher than the going rate for Row U seats. And
besides, there’s a certain honor that comes with sitting where Uecker sat,
where my head really did feel lighter, and where I could see the shadow of
airplanes pass over the buildings and highways of Queens.

So Row U it was. My brother and I arrived on time to see
Keith throw the first pitch to HoJo. (Guess his on-air claim that either Lo
Duca or Castro would be his catcher proved to be inaccurate.) Boy is Keith a ham.

First inning, both pitchers look sharp. It’s going to be a
pitchers’ duel. Second inning, Maine
doesn’t look so sharp after all, though Hamels still does. Third inning, Maine
is about as far from sharp as he can get, though he somehow escapes a bases loaded
no-out jam with Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Pat Burrell due up, only allowing one run. (By the way, how in the
world does Maine
throw to third on that Victorino bunt? It was abundantly clear from Row U that Maine had no play at all
on the lead runner. Come on Paul, yell louder and more correctly next time.)

Fifth inning, Willie pulls Maine. “Already?” the guy next to me says.
“When you gotta go, you gotta go,” the woman in front of me says. She checks
her scorecard. “Six walks.” Yikes. And now we’re bringing in…Ambiorix Burgos? Double yikes. But he
gets Nunez easily to end the threat.

Bottom five, Jose pops up a ball a thousand feet in the air
and no one comes down with it. Lo Duca tries to bunt him over, before settling
for a weak grounder to second to merely move him over. I seethe. Are we really
playing for a single run in the fifth inning, against the Phillies lineup? I
hate sacrifice bunts.

“Still pitching for the New York Mets, Ambiorix Burgos,” I
say to my brother. “Did you think they’d take him out after one hitter?” he
says. “No, but I’m still scared,” I say. Burgos
is wild against Cole Hamels, but
eventually retires him on a grounder. He’s even more wild to Rollins, and hits
him with a pitch that seemed to bounce ten feet in front of the plate. It’s not
looking good. It’s especially not looking good when Victorino singles and
steals second, and the Phils have second and third with one out, with Utley and
Howard coming to bat. Chase Utley
and Burgos
proceed to have the best one-on-one battle of the young season. Utley fouls off
six pitches with two strikes—fastballs, sliders, didn’t matter—before finally
striking out on pitch twelve. Wow, great job Burgos. But now you have to be coming out in
favor of Feliciano, right? Or at least walking Howard to get to Burrell? There
is a conference on the mound, and when it’s over, Burgos still stands there, and Lo Duca does
not signal for a walk. “They’re out of their minds,” my brother says. But after
throwing ball one, Burgos
gets two quick strikes on Howard, and the crowd comes to its feet. Howard fouls
off a couple pitches. The next time he swings, I say “five-three” while the
ball has barely even left the infield. It’s a no-doubter. The dude in the next
row shakes his head. “Nobody in the stadium wanted to see him pitch to that
guy.” I had to agree.

How could this happen? How could we blow our second lead in
two days? The park remains perplexed for what seems like hours, wondering how
Howard could’ve been allowed to hit. This all comes to a halt when Geoff Geary, after hitting for himself
(!! as my brother said, “who does he think he is, Guillermo Mota?”), walks Julio
Franco to load the bases for Jose
Reyes. We haven’t technically taken the lead yet, but everyone knows. The
Jimmy Rollins error and ensuing chant is icing on the cake. You didn’t actually
think we were going to lose this game, did you?

They’ve moved the turnstiles for the subway. They used to be
in that gazebo-like structure underneath the pedestrian bridge. Now they’re
right next to the train tracks. As a result, the traffic moves a little faster,
but over a much greater area. Basically, we get to sing “Jose, Jose Jose Jose”
not just on the down ramps in the stadium, but also while climbing the up ramps
to reach the subway platform. I can’t help but wonder how the subway will file
into the new stadium—whose pillars (and the beginning of bleacher seats,
perhaps?) were clearly visible throughout the day from Row U.

I have Upper Deck Row L seats for the first game of the Yankee series.
I guess that will be high enough.