Game 11: April 27, 2014, Marlins at Mets

After overnight in Philadelphia I caught a train to New York City and then the 7 train to Citi Field. Unlike the three previous stadiums, I'd never been to Citi Field. I went to college in New York, but back then the Mets played at Shea. Shea was a horrible stadium, so any stadium would be better.

I met up with Steve, a friend from college. He wasn't a big Met fan then, but he is now. Weirdly only one of his sons is a Met fan. The other likes the Yankees. If you can't raise your sons to like your teams, you might as well return them and start over. What do I know? I have no children.

I walked in and was greeted by a giant atrium and a tribute to Jackie Robinson. I must admit I found this impressive. It was very inviting.

We walked around the stadium, because Steve knew I'd be blogging about it. I was impressed by a few things. Citi offered free Wifi. I've encountered a few stadiums that do this, but not all. To me, it's a no brainer. They tell you they want you to upload photos to Instagram and Facebook to promote their product. The least they can do it make it easy for you to do. One "upload failed" is all I need to stop. I liked that the atriums were wide. I never felt crowded and wasn't trying to walk through people in line. Citi had a lot of food carts and an area in back that catered to kids.

This little whiffle ball field was similar to the one in San Diego. I think it's smart for teams to have kid friendly activities. The kids might not enjoy the game, but they will enjoy this. This area reminded me of Ashburn Alley in Philadelphia. We had club seats, but I didn't find anything too unique in the food up there. So I opted for local cuisine down here. The sliders were tasty.

They had an ample beer selection, which some stadiums (looking at you, Dodgers) don't, but almost all of the beers were golden lagers, summer ales, or IPAs. I did find a Leffe Brune in bottle and enjoyed it. Our seats had a good view, although I'm not enamored that they choose to cover up the whole outfield with scoreboards and seats.

One of the many problems Shea had was the cold breeze blowing in from Long Island Sound. I suppose they are trying to mitigate that with the outfield barriers, but it was still cold and the wind blowing in makes it harder to hit balls out of Citi Field. That was good news for Dylan Gee. He pitched eight innings and I saw my third shutout in three days.