Leaving Early Just Once...And Look What Happens!

In many cases when we attend professional sporting events we’re forced to make a decision on when to leave the stadium or arena. That’s because if you’re commuting from most of Ocean County you’re trip home may be delayed by traffic, especially if you are coming back from a baseball game in New York. For years I always looked down on the so-called fans that would leave a game in the 6th or 7th inning just to save a few minutes of travel time.
However as I’ve gotten older the convenience of saving time and hassle has obviously replaced the feeling that you stay until the game ends. Thursday I got burned on both ends.

As a life-long fan of the Mets I made many trips to Shea Stadium when I was younger, even when they were anything but Amazin. However in recent years most of the Mets games I’ve attended were when they were playing in Philadelphia. It’s a much-easier trip, I love Citizens’ Bank Park and it seems like half the crowd roots for my team anyway.

My son happens to share my passion for the Mets and is always getting on me about not going to games at Shea so when my brother said he had field-level tickets, a parking pass and admission to the Diamond Club for yesterday’s day game against the Cubs I figured this was a good time to head to Flushing.

We arrived around 12:30 and our parking pass put us right at the gate we needed to enter. When we got into the stadium I looked at the scoreboard for the starting line-up and said, “Who are these guys?” The Mets were playing just two regulars and the starters included 48-year old Julio Franco, David Newhan and Ruben Gotay…household names in their households only.

For most of the afternoon it felt like spring training game and I was serious when I said the 40,000 plus fans should have been entitled to a refund. So with the Mets trailing 5-1 after 7 innings and looking like they would go quietly we agreed to begin heading home. Big mistake!

First we didn’t beat the traffic even though it was before 3:30 when we left the parking lot. Then we listened on the radio as the Mets made their biggest 9th inning comeback in 7 years by scoring five runs for a 6-5 victory. The fans that stayed were delirious and it sounded like a lot of fun. We were stuck in traffic on the BQE, looking at a long trip home and shaking our heads in disgust over what could have been. I think I’ll catch a BlueClaws game next week.