One man's journey to the Citi

Spring is theoretically in the air — even if this late April day is marked not by sunny warmth but by a damp and dreary overcast sky that presages the disastrous Houseparties weather to follow shortly — and we’re all in the mood for the high quality baseball today’s pitching matchup presages and a look at the new digs.

After loading up directions, making fun of our fallen erstwhile comrade and shaking off most of our hangovers, John, Doug and I finally pile into Doug’s car at around 10:45 a.m. and pull out onto University Place.

It’s smooth sailing up Route 1 and Interstate 95, across Staten Island and through Brooklyn before we hit our first inexplicable New York traffic jam getting onto the Van Wyck Expressway at Kennedy Airport. Doug eventually navigates through the jam — with no help from his abnormally teenage-girlish taste in music or John and my concomitant snark — and we get off of the highway with the stadium in sight around noon.

We suffer a bad case of sticker shock when we pull into Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and find that a parking spot costs $18, and we decide that the extra half-mile walk from College Point Boulevard is worth the money.

After an hour and a half in the car, we continue our journey on foot, going a little more than a mile through the park and over the train tracks before finally arriving at the Jackie Robinson Rotunda 30 minutes before the 1:10 p.m. first pitch.

Now, as anyone who’s watched a Mets game on TV this year can tell you, that rotunda is always called the “Iconic Jackie Robinson Rotunda” by announcers. While I’d thought the honorific funny and absurd before my visit, this new entrance really is stunning.

There’s something about the power and grandeur of large, open space that just doesn’t translate on TV; the rotunda had those qualities in spades. This atrium certainly earned its “iconic” moniker in my book, especially when contrasted with the complete lack of any dignity or splendor in Citi Field’s predecessor, utilitarian Shea Stadium.

Our seats are directly behind home plate in the upper deck, and the view is excellent. I’d say we’re at least 40 feet closer to the field than we would have been in a similar seat at Shea, and even better, getting upstairs doesn’t involve the same vertigo-inducing 10-story elevator ride that it did at Shea. Nor does it involve squeezing down narrow ramps and causeways: both are the naturally wide and easily navigable kind that one takes for granted at modern parks, but for someone weaned on Shea and the Meadowlands, they’re a revelation.

As I look out at the players warming up, I’m struck by how huge this field actually is. The listed dimensions and TV shots again don’t do it justice: This is an immense field, an absurd pitcher’s park tailor-made to screw with power hitters and benefit the speedy.

It’s not just that the fences are way back or that they’re all really tall — which they are — but that there is also no prevailing wind to speak of on the field.

I know the Mets’ owners didn’t want the park to play like the bandboxes in Philly or the Bronx, but this is overkill. In the first inning alone, we’ll see what should have been a no-doubt home run barely clear the fence and three balls land in play that would have been well out of any other big-league park. (Two of the three, nonetheless, go for triples.)

Still, despite the overzealous dimensions, I really like this park. My seat was comfortable and had a great view of the action.

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Out in right field there are some seats set in the wall — the design is responsible for one particularly daunting power dead zone and is a nice touch.

The tiered restaurant, in which every table has a view of the action, also looks great. The food, while not really that much of an improvement from the fare at Shea, is nonetheless generally accessible and reasonably good; the $4 corndogs are probably the best buy in the house.

And we did see some good baseball. While the outcome was far from optimal — the Mets bullpen again blew a Santana lead — it was a good game and an enjoyable afternoon.

The long walk back and the horrific drive home on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — which you should never take under any circumstances — was annoying, but as I sat down to scarf down some dinner with John and Doug at Cloister afterwards, I couldn’t help thinking it had been a day well spent.