30 Years As a Mets Fan – Birthday Games

30 Years As a Mets Fan – Part 9

Birthday Games

I’m sure that all baseball fans born during the baseball season can relate to this – wanting to spend your birthday at the ballpark watching your favorite team in action. I’ve been able to do this a few times in my life. I’ve also gone to games near my actual birthday as the Mets schedule and my schedule allowed, but those aren’t the same. When I was younger, and only going to 2 or 3 games a year, something like my birthday was a big deal on the schedule. These days, a weekend home game is an occasion for me to go to Citi Field.

In 1987, I went to Shea Stadium for my 9th birthday. It was the first Mets game in person since becoming a fan 6 months earlier. I don’t remember a damn thing about that game other than one play by Len Dykstra in CF that made Warner Wolf’s plays of the year. I was enamored by the Shea Stadium scoreboard with the lineups and out of town scores and I probably got excited seeing the Home Run Apple rise 4 times in the Mets 11-3 win.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN198704300.shtml

I honestly can’t recall any other birthdays spent at Shea when I was a kid. I think there might have been one or two that worked out.

I spent my 21st birthday at Shea with friends on a Friday night in 1999. That was a great night. Maybe one of the best I had at Shea. We were all into getting there at 4:30 pm to see batting practice and get autographs. It was around the time I started doing that. We had my favorite seats in the ballpark – Loge, Section 7, Row A. I even had another friend randomly walk up in the bottom of the first and claim the seats next to us, an unplanned surprise. We got to fight over a foul ball (I got bumped back into my seat and someone else broke their watch on the play). None of us got the ball. It’s still the closest I’ve ever come to getting one at a major league ballpark. And we got to heckle rising Giants star Jeff Kent from his days as a Met.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN199904300.shtml

As an adult, working for a living, it wasn’t as easy to just head into Flushing from New Jersey on a weeknight/day to celebrate my birthday. But for my 30th birthday, I decided I wanted to take off from work (baseball game or not). The Mets hosted one of those mid-week afternoon games (I think they were called “businessman’s specials” back in the day, but the politically correct term is really “get away day”) and this was a no-brainer. For it being a big birthday and the final season at Shea, I convinced my dad (who already had the day off from work) to get us seats behind the Mets dugout. It was one of the few places at Shea I hadn’t sat in yet, but I certainly knew the neighborhood from batting practice.

After our lunch in the Diamond Club and looking at some Citi Field previews, the start of the game ended up being delayed for about 45 minutes because of a broken water main nearby and the grounds crew couldn’t water down the field to get it ready for the game. Mets pitcher Nelson Figueroa, always a good guy and good for an autograph or three, came out of the dugout during the delay to sign for fans. I think it was my fourth autograph of his that season alone (counting Spring Training). Mets post-season hero-turned-regular season goat Oliver Perez was the starting pitcher for New York. And after an uneventful first inning, things came unglued for the Mets starter. He gave up 7 runs in the top of the second to the Pirates and hero of the delay Figueroa had to come in and finish the inning. Figgy settled things down, but the game got worse after he left.

I still call it the day that “Ollie Perez ruined my 30th birthday at Shea” and call Figueroa the “hero” of the day.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN200804300.shtml

I made it in for my birthday last year too. It was a Saturday and a big giveaway (one of the garden gnomes). It was another no-brainer. Friends all over the place. Some I planned to see, some I didn’t. It was lots of fun. I think I watched the game.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN201604300.shtml

Next year, I’ve said that no matter where the Mets are, I spend my 40th birthday there. It’s a Monday next year, so I might have to walk that statement back if I don’t want to travel some place to see a game alone.

How Oliver Perez ruined my 30th Birthday at Shea

April 30, 2008, Flushing, NY.

I've spent several birthdays at Shea Stadium between 1987 (my first season) and 2008 (Shea's last). And I'd sat in almost every part of the ballpark. For my 30th birthday, I wanted to check off one of the elusive ones. I wanted dugout seats. It was a Wednesday afternoon game, getaway day, which was a perfect excuse for me to take off work, and my dad who was my faithful companion at games in the pre-social media days (heck, he did that in the pre-driving days for me too) also had the day off. The script couldn't have been written any better.

Oliver Perez wasn't quite the bad player we all think of him as. Yet. He was about 18 months removed from pitching well in Game 7 of the NLCS. He was still a couple of years away from his last pitch in a Mets uniform (hint, it was in Spring Training). But he was getting there. And he had the start on this beautiful Wednesday afternoon at Shea.

It was setting up to be a great birthday at Shea. We came in early for batting practice in my usual spot by the Mets dugout (no BP for a day game after a night game). Dad and I ate at the Diamond Club (very overrated if you ask me). There was something new behind the LF wall to see (Citi Field). And then, maybe 30 minutes before the game, there was a water main break in the area. I didn't quite get the reasoning, but it delayed the start of the game by about an hour. In hindsight, maybe we should have left at that point. There wasn't much to watch during this delay, other than an extra hour of being at Shea where the clock was ticking and an extra hour of being in really good seats 5 rows behind the Mets dugout.

I'm not really sure what prompted this next thing, but seemingly out of nowhere, popping out of the Mets dugout and basically offering to sign autographs was Nelson Figueroa, a Brooklyn-born player drafted by the Mets many years earlier and now part of the Mets ballclub for the first time after being away from the big leagues for 4 years and having 5 teams already on his resume. It's definitely not out of character for Nelson to come out of the dugout and sign autographs. This was definitely an unusual circumstance though, with a non-weather delay at the start of the game. I think he signed for anyone by the dugout who wanted an autograph, and probably more than that. Okay, NOW was probably the time to leave and cut our losses.

The game finally gets started, and Ollie being Ollie, he gives up 7 runs in the 2nd and doesn't make out of the inning (to be fair, only 2 runs were earned). It put the Mets in a really big hole, one they had absolutely no shot of digging themselves out of. Now pitching for the Mets, number 27, Nelson Figueroa. Figueroa had been a starting pitcher for the past 4 times through the early season rotation, but was coming in for long relief on short rest (he had started just 3 days earlier). Nelson comes in puts out the fire in the 2nd and ultimately gets through the 5th inning just giving up one run of his own. 3.1 inning total for Figueroa. Jorge Sosa comes in and gives up 5 runs (only 1 earned, so it's not all on the pitchers) in 1 inning. 2 other pitchers came in to finish the last 3 innings, giving up a total of 1 hit. The Mets only had 2 hits over the entire 9 innings. Mets lose the game 13-1.

I definitely give the player of the game for my 30th birthday game to Nelson Figueroa.

Dad and I sat in some real bad rush hour traffic getting back to NJ after the game. It certainly wasn't what I wanted for a game result, but I was certainly happy to spend my 30th birthday (and the last one I could possibly spend there) at Shea.



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The Birthday Game

If you were born during the baseball season, then you probably celebrated your birthday at a baseball game at least once in your life. I have celebrated quite a few birthdays, mostly when I was young, with my dad or my entire family at Shea Stadium (and once I think at Yankee Stadium before I grew to resent the team in the Bronx).

There was my 9th birthday in 1987. It was the first Mets game I went to after becoming a Mets fan. I don't remember much except that Lenny Dykstra made a great catch in CF that ended up on Warner Wolf's Plays of the Year for 1987. Looking up the box score, I saw homers from 4 Mets sluggers including Kevin McReynolds' 5th on the young season. Rick Aguliera went the distance for the Mets win.

In 1990 in Atlanta (I wasn't there), but David Cone was, and he got into that famous argument with the first base umpire without calling timeout and it cost the Mets the game when 2 runs scored.

In 1991, I went on a rainy afternoon on the weekend before my birthday to see the Mets and Pirates. They played through it, but my mom spent most of the game sitting in a phone booth inside Shea writing the candle lighting speeches for my upcoming Bar Mitzvah. Since that game, I've been a little brat about having my mom and sister join us at any Mets games.

In 1995, I went on my 17th birthday to see the Mets and Cardinals. At that point, it was the closest I had come to Opening Day, with MLB nice enough to move it back a few weeks for me so I could be there Opening Weekend. Somewhere, I have a roll of black and white photographs from this game. I don't remember much about it.

In 1996, I went the night before my 18th birthday to see John Franco record his 300th save. Except that it was one of the few games I left early because I had to catch an early train in the morning back to school. I can be, and have been, a brat about not being at the ballpark for first pitch and last out. The Mets were rained out the next day.

I went with a bunch of friends from the Computer Lab at college where I worked for a few years in the late '90s to the game on my 21st birthday. It wasn't the occasion why we went, just a coincidence. We were all Mets fans (maybe the largest group of Mets fans concentrated in one place to that point in my life) and we found a common date before finals when we all had off and could go. It was a great night. I found maybe the best place to watch a game from at Shea - Loge Section 7, Row A. We had a foul ball (as you would almost expect sitting that close to home plate), we got to serenade ex-Met Jeff Kent, back in town with San Francisco. And it was the 1999 Mets, and they were a lot of fun.

I saw another game with my dad on the occasion of my birthday a few nights later, where the Mets blew a late lead to Houston. As you might expect, Benitez blew it in the 8th (Franco was still the closer then), and Wagner came in for the Astros to get the save against his future ballclub. Those 2 games in 1999 were also a lot of fun because it was early on in the popularity of going to Shea for batting practice, shagging foul balls, and getting autographs.

As I got older, the tradition was put to rest (it was more of a thing for a child), but 2 years ago when my 30th birthday came around, I knew what I wanted. There were only 2 places at Shea I had never sat in, and 1 that I had never been to. I wanted dugout seats. I knew the dugout area from 10 years worth of batting practices (a few each year). But I wanted to watch an entire game from there. Let me say that it was different. You could get good pictures without a zoom lens (which my camera at the time didn't really have). We had Diamond Club access (which I never thought was really much). I think I saw Rusty Staub on the elevator up there. I'm trying to avoid talking about the game because it was worth avoiding. 2 words - Ollie Perez. After a water main break delay of about an hour (in which Nelson Figueroa was a great guy coming out to sign autographs for everyone by the dugout), Perez came on to give up 7 runs over 1 2/3 innings. Thanks a lot Ollie. Jorge Sosa was the other goat. Final score was 13-1 Pittsburgh. To be fair though, Mets pitching only gave up 4 earned runs. Wright made his 5th error of the young season (that kids, is a lot), among others. The box score can tell you a lot about the game. I also debuted my white pinstriped Mets jersey with that game. Of all the then-and-now-current jerseys, that one is my favorite. No name or number on the back.


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Happy Birthday to the longtime voice of the Mets

Gary Cohen reminded us on the TV broadcast today that today would have been Bob Murphy's 85th birthday. Murph, for you younger fans, is what I call "Forever the Voice of the New York Mets".

Just as I did on the anniversary of his passing, I invite you to listen to his voice from a couple of posts from earlier this year.

First is a few minutes of play-by-play and banter during Spring Training with Gary Cohen.

Second is something that I put up just before Opening Day and is available on the right side of (every page in) this site. Just Bob Murphy talking about Shea.

And I invite you to read (or re-read) something from Faith and Fear In Flushing that Greg Prince sent me about a month ago and posted about a year ago, in which he transcribed Bob Murphy's account of the first half inning at Shea Stadium. I can read those words and just imagine his voice in my head.


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Happy Birthday to Bill Shea

Today is Bill Shea's birthday. He would have been 102 years old.

Did you know that he is also responsible for the New York Islanders being at Nassau Coliseum.

Thanks to The Real Dirty Mets Blog for the tip.