7/13/08 Shea Stadium

The crowd at Shea for ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball tonight seemed to be the biggest crowd I've seen so far this season when we were on the LIRR bridge but inside the stadium, although the attendance was 51,293, it looked like a regular 47,000 ticket holders were at Shea. I'm not saying that's not enough but the Yankees sell out almost every night and the cross-town Mets are almost 10,000 people from a sell out crowd.

Tonight was the last game before the 2008 All-Star Break and the New York Mets squared up against the Colorado Rockies. If you all remember, the Rockies were the 2007 NL Champions before being swept by the World Series Champion Boston Red Sox. This year, the Colorado Rockies are currently 39-57 with a winning percentage of .406. Going into the All-Star Break, they are on a four-game losing streak after losing one game to the Brewers and then losing three straight to the New York Mets. At this time last year, the Rockies were a .500 team with a record of 44-44 and pretty much fell off of the "good" teams in the MLB.

My girlfriend PJ from a past entry and I arrived at Shea around 6 PM. I had ordered last minute tickets off of a seller on StubHub! and was told to pick them up at the window between Gate D and E. After doing so, we waited on line, got our FREE Southpole sponsored Mets t-shirts and went straight to Section 31 in the Loge. A fellow MLBLOG-er, Zack Hample, who is also known for being The Baseball Collector had told me the previous day he was attending the game as well. One of his spots is also Section 31. When we arrived, there was no sign of him and no sign of any baseballs reaching that section. I noticed two fans received baseballs from the Mets but I arrived once the Rockies were coming onto the field for BP and some came close to the seats but none that landed in my glove.

We moved to our seats in the shade and with under an hour to go, the New York Mets were looking to win their season high 9th game in a row. There were a couple of fans I met from Toronto, Canada that were here for All-Star Week and came over from the Futures Game that was earlier in the day at Yankee Stadium. They had tickets to every MLB related game in NYC for the week and Shea was one of their stops on the New York tour. There were so many people that attended tonight's game that were fans of other baseball teams, mostly of Yankees decent. Heckler's cried out to the Yankees fans and asked them about Joba as others concentrated on the fact that Phillies fans walked by several sections and were being verbally abused.

Carlos Beltran got Shea Stadium to jump when he blasted a 3-run HR to left field landing 415 feet away from home plate. The next inning, the Mets scored one and continued to make the Rockies look like a AAA Ball Club, retiring every batter that came to the plate. Later in the 5th, Carlos Delgado revived himself by hitting a 390 foot HR to right-center, putting the New York Mets up by a score of 7-0. The Rockies came close to getting one run on the board but thanks to a double-play in the 4th, that didn't happen.

The rest of the game was silent but the crowd in the Upper Deck was reckless. Wherever you looked, you saw people yelling at one another, a kid running by trying to get the wave started with a whistle, drunks, Cow-Bell Man, and the most "into the game" crowd I've seen all season. Why shouldn't we be into the game? We were about to have sole position of 2nd place and be exactly .5 games out of first from the Phillies. Eventually, the wave WAS successful and the Mets went on to win the game 7-0.

Staying until the very end of the game is usually a bad idea but getting to the LIRR seemed so much faster than it usually does with the whole crowd pouring out from Shea. We got to New York Penn Station at 11:30 PM and boarded the 11:51 PM train to Linden before arriving at home.

The next game I plan on attending is July 22, 2008 at Shea Stadium, Philadelphia Phillies vs. New York Mets. If the Mets keep up the good work (knock on wood) and win the series vs. the Cincinnati Reds at least 3-1, the series vs. Philadelphia should be one to tune in to.