I’ve been griping for a while about the new baseball palace in which the Mets will take residence beginning next season.  It’s not that I doubt the need for a new ballpark.  Shea Stadium is beyond old and antiquated and in dire need of replacement.  While it is the site of many of my fondest childhood memories and I will likely be sentimental at its passing, I know it’s time to go.

It’s not even any real concern I have as to whether I’ll still feel Citi Field is indeed a baseball palace once I make my first visit there.  I’m sure that it will be everything I could have wanted in a home for my Mets.   No, my gripe with Citi Field likes purely in its capacity to hold paying customers.  Shea Stadium is something of a behemoth relative to most baseball parks these days with the ability to hold 57,000 plus.   So it was something of a shock to learn that Citi Field would only hold 45,000 at max capacity and that 2,500 of that capacity was standing room only……standing room only????

My perspective changed a bit tonight.  I still think that Citi Field needs at least 5,000 more seats.  I still think it’s a farce that a team that has been setting Shea Stadium attendance records each of the last few years will be forced to take a step backwards next year simply because Citi Field can’t hold more people.  However, I no longer think including standing room only is a bad idea, if done right.  PNC Park showed me just how good it could be.

My brother Mike and I made our way to Pittsburgh early.  A phone call to the box office had revealed that the only tickets available were of the SRO variety.  We thought it best to head to the park and make the purchase there in order to bypass the various surcharges that would nearly have doubled the price of eight dollars per ducat.  An enjoyable lunch at Finnegan’s pub complete with drinks, cigars, and conversations with other Mets fans who’d made the trip as well as some Pittsburgh natives passed the time leading up to the ballgame.  We finished our meal and headed to the ballpark, taking no more than two minutes and approximately fifty feet before finding our SRO spot just beyond the left field flag pole.  While Mike did go to take some photos of the action, I would not leave that spot until the last pitch had been thrown.

I had remarked on how many Mets fans were present at Friday Night’s 2-1 Mets win.  Maybe it was just the perspective on the SRO section as opposed to the seated section, but I think there were even more Mets fans in residence tonight.  To my left and right, as well as in the circular ramps above, I was surrounded by my fellow faithful.  Throughout the night, we discussed Jose Reyes’ tendency to start popping everything up after having hit a home run, as he did after homering to start the game nearly into our section.  We discussed the magnificence of a resurgent Pedro Martinez, who was mowing down the Pirates in rapid fashion.  And we discussed our hope that Eddie Kunz would get to pitch the ninth inning given that the game was now well in hand at a score of 7-1.

It didn’t take very long for the lot of us to regret that last wish.  A 7-1 blowout quickly became a 7-4 nailbiter with the dormant Bucs fans beginning to smell blood in the water.  We had all seen this show enough times to know how it usually ended…..badly.   Thankfully, Pedro Feliciano would be summoned to the mound and would quell the uprising.   I bellowed Howie Rose’s signature “Put in in the books!” and exchanged high fives with my fellow fans before heading home one happy and relieved Met fan.

And to think I’ll be back for game 3 on Sunday!

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