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By all predictions before the event and according to all reports after, Saturday’s celebration at the ballpark was the biggest and alivest crowd ever at Citi Field for a regular season game. From the time I came down the steps of the elevated 7 tracks, you could see it and feel it.
That photo was taken at 12:30. over three hours before the scheduled first pitch of the game (it wound up almost exactly four hours before it once the ceremonies finished), and 90 minutes before the gates would even open, but everyone was there early for two important reasons. One, to acquire the promised swag of the day: Keith Hernandez immortalized in broadcaster bobblehead form, limited to the first 25,000 of the expected crowd of 43,000-plus. This artificial diminishing of the supply is an old ballpark trick, encouraging people to show up way early so they’ll spend more time and money inside the gates.
But we were not there early just for that. We were asked to be in our seats an hour before the scheduled first pitch so we could take in all of the moments of honoring a man who has been with the team, on the field and in the booth, for most of the past 40 years.
That has it backwards, since I was in the cheering section in the outfield stands. I still got to hear every word, and had a perfect view when they unveiled the number in the rafters that will never be worn on the back of the uniform by anyone other than Keith at an Old Timers game.
But again, we are getting ahead of ourselves.
----
Those 90 minutes waiting to get in were an experience unto themselves. Other than the couple I'd seen behind me on the train, I didn’t know a soul, but I knew every soul. Some were a little older than me, some very very young; most in Met paraphernalia, many in jerseys and tees honoring number 17, a wide variety of that gear commemorating this very retirement day. I was in my 7 line T-shirt from the Toronto trip four years earlier and an obscure Buffalo Bisons hat, but I was still among my people.
Since I wasn’t going to have the chance to find anybody outside the stadium, I did some quick texting to find out where people would be inside. I knew that one couple had had to beg out due to a COVID outbreak in their house, and I found that one of my favorites from the blogging community, who attends many games, decided to sit out the craziness of this one. But I confirmed where my friend Rebecca would be, who had fixed me up with the seat in the Army section, and got coordinates for one other friend I really wanted to meet who would be further up. Then it was just waiting and people watching for another hour or so.
My only regret in not being able to explore outside was that I might not get to see the new iconic feature just added at the start of the season. Tom Seaver had previously ticked off all the honors: Halls of Fame inductions in Flushing and Cooperstown, his number 41 the first Met player's to be retired from the rafters in Shea days, a gate at the new stadium named for him before he died, and the address of the ballpark changed to 41 Seaver Way shortly after his passing last year. But the new thing in sports circles is to put a statue outside the stadium, and his, unveiled this spring, was our first. I hope there would be enough time after I left to find it and get a photo.
As the line began to move, I realized I had no worries: I was right next to the thing.
Also within sight as the queue moved along:
The obligatory street preacher-
-sorry, but I prefer to believe in Dog.
Also, this Dog:
But our line moved quickly, the security and mobile ticket checks almost instantaneous, and the designated bling was in hand:
I later learned what "connecting" meant, and why Keith only had the word "New" in front of his broadcast platform. Their plan is to honor Gary and Ron, his partners in the booth, at later games.
Which had better be much later, because I'm not doing this again any time soon.
----
From there, it was find the seat and find the food. The former: third row of the section overlooking close to dead center field, the homefield home of the 7Line Army. This was my third and a half outing with them- the half came when I scored a seat close to their section at Yankee Stadium- and, spoiler alert, the Mets are undefeated in those four visits, a far better showing than my overall lifetime record with them. Despite the militaristic theme, this section is basically full of well-intentioned baseball nerds. Most are there for all of their events, many keep those seats for all 81 home games, and the cameraderie among them, of all ages, genders and ethnicities, is inspirational. They also exude kindness: I never made it to that third-row seat, opting for an empty one on the aisle a few rows up, and when its owner (Travis by name, Travisty on the back of his 7 jersey) showed up, he encouraged me to stay where I was. I wound up listening to the whole ceremony and the ensuing game on the MLB app on my phone for most of my drive home from Beacon, and you could hear some of our section-specific cheers on the air. These began during the retirement ceremony. It began a little late and ran a good 20 minutes past the scheduled first pitch, but nobody minded and there were no "network stooges" from a national broadcast to make the game start on time.
Keith was humbled, funny and grateful- to the team staff that set up the event, to his family and fellow 80's players in attendance, and to the current manager and players who came out of the dugout- every one of them- to form a receiving line of appreciation for the event we were witnessing. His current successor at first base even grew a mustache (Keith's signature facial feature) in honor of the occasion, and the 7 Line people passed out fake ones to all of us:
(Yeah, it's a little off, but then so am I;)
The moment we all were waiting for finally came-
- and I took one more trip through the stands to get some other views, including of the Home Run Apple all decked out with Keith's number on it:

(That's the orange-clad 7 Line section to the right of the 408 sign in straightaway center.)
Oh, right, forgot about the food. One big change since I was last here three years ago? No change; every concession stand was cashless. I only wound up hitting two for the entire event: the signature Shake Shack with the final topping from the old Shea Stadium scoreboard above it-

- and a beer stand where I bought my only bottled water of the night, which I would refill about eight times from the well-hidden fountains. I was also seeking out places to charge my phone after all this picture-taking and texting, and those were also hard to come by. At one other food stand I walked by, there again was that couple I'd been running into since the first train down the Hudson; the husband had a real mustache of his own, and his wife politely declined one of the extra fake ones they passed out in the Army section.
I did also head up to a higher altitude to finally meet up with a friend from the social media world I'd never gotten to before:

Maria is often the first person to post about a win or loss after I've checked out for the night; I'm still hoping to meet her husband, also a kind and funny soul, but he's got MS and navigating the ballpark is always a challenge for them, especially with a sellout crowd. It was on that attempted visit that I had my one and only cognitive fail of the event: I realized I was short one bobblehead. Fortunately, (a) I realized it almost immediately, (b) I remembered exactly where I left it, and (c) unlike the Bronx where someone once stole a once-sipped beer from me while I grabbed a napkin, it was right there untouched, because Met fans don't let Met fans steal stuff.
----
After all that, why not take in a ballgame?
Most of one, anyway. With the late start, a couple of delays for injured Met players and the typical length of an MLB game, I made it only to the middle of the 8th. I got to see the Home Run Apple come up twice to give the Mets a 1-0 and then a 3-2 lead, but the bullpen coughed both of them up and it was tied 3-3 when I headed back to the 7 train right around 7 to begin the long journey home.
I would later hear the end of the game on my phone, reaching the bottom of the 10th inning somewhere north of Binghamton. Miami scored their almost automatic run in the top of the 10th, aided by some bad Mets defense, but this team refused to lose on Keith Hernandez Day. In fact, they won it in historic fashion- winning a game on a walkoff error for the first time since Keith's teammates did it, thanks back then to Bill Buckner in Game Six of the 1986 World Series.
I'd heard a few minutes of it on the subway, but the phone battery was again fading fast. I'd staked out a 7:45 Metro North departure to my station, but the 7 train got in just a few minutes too late for that, so I spent the hour to the next one just exploring Grand Central and a couple of streets around it, looking for caffeine and an outlet to recharge the phone with. I found neither; the city that never sleeps looked pretty sleepy for a Saturday night, with very little open in the terminal itself and nothing on 42nd or Lexington of a Starbucky variety. One thing that was open in the terminal was a newsstand, which did actually have newspapers- there were none for sale anymore in the station platform joint at Beacon because nobody buys them anymore- but I settled on a cheap paperback to keep my eyes moving once the 8:45 got going....
and there, literally in front of me when the doors opened, was a seat next to an AC outlet I could charge my phone with.
I was back in my car a little after 10:20, needed one stop for gas halfway up 17, and otherwise made it in the door in just under five hours.
And the steps that went into all of that? Almost double my higher-than-usual 7,000 plus from the day before:

Sunday and today were down quite a bit from that, and they've been mostly devoted to recharging me and my workload rather than my phone battery. Today was a day for fixing a garage door, driving to Rochester and back, and telling or hearing three really bad jokes.
Those will wait until tomorrow, though:)
Wow
Date: 2022-07-12 12:36 pm (UTC)