Shea Stadium: Home of the world’s largest Slip ‘n Slide

As I previously mentioned, the entire reason I took this trip to New York City was to see the Mets play at Shea Stadium. After NYPD gave us the go ahead to leave the scene of the accident, we caught another cab.

“Did something happen here?” our new cab driver inquired.

“Yeah, our cab driver hit just hit a pedestrian. As far as I’m concerned, if you get us to the hotel without incident, I’ll consider you the greatest cab driver in the city.”

We arrived at the hotel, checked-in, and headed down to the bar to have a few pints and watch Russia beat Greece in the Euro2008 tournament. The weather did not seem very conducive to an evening of baseball, as it had been raining sporadically, but we figured it would clear in time for the game.

Not quite. We arrived at Shea around 6:15pm and the rain started to pick up. We bought tickets for seats in the covered upper reserve area and waited for the storm to pass. Our seats were pretty good, and we were definitely surrounded by some, uh, entertaining New Yorkers. Shea Stadium was pretty disappointing, though. There was nothing special about it (might as well have been back at RFK stadium) and you could tell they had really skimped on maintenance for the past few years. Most of the rows weren’t even lettered, so it was amusing to watch people attempt to find their seats (“This K?” “No, this is J.” “What? I thought this was L.”). Citi Field, which is being built right next to Shea and is due to open in 2009, looks like it will make an excellent ballpark, though.

Game time rolled around, and conditions were still too poor for play. The announcer came over the loudspeaker and told us that the National Weather Service predicted the storm would pass in half an hour and the game could begin afterwards.

Wrong. Another intense storm rolled in. Thunder, lighting, and heavy rain. Huge puddles formed in the outfield and along the edges of the infield tarp.

Laura mentioned that it would be fun to slide across the wet tarp that blanketed the infield, like a giant Slip ‘n Slide.

Apparently the Texas Rangers had the same idea, because several of them emerged from the dugout, ran full speed towards the tarp, dove headfirst, and then slid across the tarp on their stomachs. The crowd LOVED it (frankly, anything at that point was entertaining).

Here’s a video I took of the Slip ‘n Slide action:

With the fresh batch of storms rolling in, an announcement went out that the game was canceled and that we had a year to use our tickets for another Mets game.

“Ugh, we have to come back to this city?!”

So, yeah, between the incident with our cab and the rainout at Shea Stadium, this weekend jaunt to New York kinda, well, sucked.

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