Citi Field and Our First Niece Visit

Scottie and I have had an impressive string of extended weekend travels lately starting back in mid-August with our trip to Providence/Boston for Coach and AG's wedding, then to Chicago for Scottie's fantasy football draft, then to Ludington (MI) to celebrate our 1-year Anniversary, then to Union Pier (MI) for a relaxing weekend of wine tasting, and most recently to visit my family back in St. Louis.  It's been a whirlwind tour of the United States, and this weekend, we head back East to New Jersey/New York to spend some time with Scottie's family.

While Scottie actually took off a few days mid-week, I ended up flying out Friday morning from Detroit connecting through Philly.  Before I could really land, settle in, and play with our niece and nephew, Scottie and I were off to the city, New York City, with Melissa to catch a New Yorks Mets game against the Philadelphia Phillies at Citi Field.  This would be Scottie and my first time at the new renovated Citi Field as well as a Mets game together!  I'm not sure if I was more excited to be in New York, at Citi Field,  hanging out with Melissa, or waiting in line for admission into the stadium on a free Mets blanket giveaway day!

As we entered Citi Field, we did the typical walk-around the stadium although it was a bit abbreviated to spare Melissa.  They had a clever way of listing out the starting line-ups using "Topps" baseball card photos.  It is interesting to note that they have a headquarters in New York City, then again, who doesn't?

Since we purchased our tickets at the box office on the day of the game (during a giveaway day), we weren't expecting much in terms of our seat location.  Furthermore, we had no interest in forking out a lot of money to sit lower in the stands when none of us, well, other than Melissa maybe, gave two cents about the Mets or Phillies.

Let's be honest, we were just hoping for a home run ball so we could see the  big apple out in center field get some action!  Scottie briefly mentioned this apple tradition to me that if a Mets player hits a home run, this apple pops out of the Center Field wall, lights up, and makes some noise before retracting.  I even did a little research on the origins of this tradition finding some interesting information in this article by Matt Gagne and Anthony McCarron in the NY Daily News.com:

The original apple was introduced at Shea as a marketing ploy during the 1980 season, a distraction from a woeful team that went 67-95 and finished fifth in the NL East. But it wasn't deployed too often that first summer: The Mets finished with just 61 homers, equaling Roger Maris' output from 1961 and more than 40% of them were hit on the road.

I'm not sure why I had never heard of this before now, but lucky for me, in the bottom of the 3rd, Carlos Beltran, belted a 2-run home run to tie the game 3-3.  Unfortunately, that was about all the excitement from the Mets until the 8th inning when they pieced together another run; however, it was too late as the Phillies easily beat them 8-4.  Regardless, it was a fun night for the both of us and we appreciated Melissa sticking it out with us after a school night!

For the rest of the weekend, we spent some time visiting with our new niece, playing with our nephew, and laughing at Scottie's father's interesting quirks like his latest experiment in cherry vodka or something like that.  Although, not sure if it was really an experiment or not!  As a bonus, we did get to finally catch the latest thriller in the theaters, Inception!  First movie in awhile for us and we held out for a good one!

More pictures from the baseball game in this photo album and of our new niece in this photo album.