New York: Citi Field
Bottom line... I'm grateful.
“Oh god, he’s going to write about money again.”
While planning this trip to all 30 MLB ballparks, I’ve been fixated on how I’m going to be able to afford it. The experience of watching baseball in person is infamously expensive, and that’s before you factor in high fuel costs, inflated food prices, the pesky need to sleep indoors, etc., etc.
My wife and I make enough money to be comfortable and we certainly don’t lead a lavish lifestyle. We bought a house at a really fortunate time in our city’s booming market, so our mortgage payments are pretty reasonable. We don’t have kids, and while my guitar collection1 might stand in for a brood, I’ll never have to put a Stratocaster through college or bail a Les Paul out of jail.
All that said, like many Americans, we’d be financially ruined if, say, one of us accidentally stepped out in front of a COTA bus or caught a stray bullet in the spine.2 Since we’re nimbly balancing in the gray area between “not struggling” and “financially secure,” I made it my mission to make this cross-country odyssey as frugally as possible. That’s why you’re reading “Bleachers and ‘Bleeds,” not “Diamond Clubs and Luxury Boxes.”
I dutifully saved big chunks of my paychecks to put toward this trip. I obsessively track my spending. I shop for deals on tickets, lodging and travel wherever I can find them. Even with all of this responsible planning, this journey will be the most expensive thing I’ve ever done aside from buying a home. More than I spent on college. More than any car I’ve ever bought. More than a lifetime of collecting guitars and studio equipment. It’s all just the slightest bit terrifying.
None of the above is meant to pull your levers and get you to send me money or gifts to help fund this trip. This blog is for documentation purposes only, it was never intended to be a side hustle of any kind.3 I’m confident that my trip savings, my thriftiness and a decent credit limit, if needed, will get me to the finish line.
However, I’m so grateful to the people who have chipped in a few bucks for gas, offered me a place to crash, scored tickets to the games and otherwise supported this wild trip I’m taking. If you’ll allow me to quickly roll credits…
My wife, Erin: She’s been so supportive of me taking this trip, even though it means I’m abdicating all of my responsibilities to our homestead for two months. I’m beyond excited that we get to spend our normal summer vacation week in Wisconsin and she can join me for the California leg of my trip.
My mom, Sue: Even though I tried to turn down her financial contribution to help make my travel more comfortable, maybe the best gift she gave me — besides *life* — was the Moon Guide to Baseball Road Trips. That’s been my bible for planning all the stops, totally invaluable resource.
My boss, Mary: The whole reason that I have a two month sabbatical at all is because she took one and then insisted that I be allowed to take one too. She also really wants me to turn on paid subscriptions on this here Substack, but I’m not going to do that.
Also starring: Amy, Nick, Deb, David, Chad, Gwen, Erik, Caitlin, Christopher, Jill, Vlad, Andy and Amy (not the same Amy) who’ve all chipped in to buy me a game ticket or a beer or a couple gallons of gas.
I’ll introduce more characters that are also worthy of my thanks as the summer rolls on. And if that’s not enough of a segue…
After a delicious breakfast at Square Cafe in Pittsburgh, Erin and I pointed the Mazda 3 eastward.4 We had a dinner double date on the books with my friend Michael and his ladyfriend Ava, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to drive into Manhattan, so we stashed the car near Red Bull Stadium in Newark and took the PATH train into the city.
I first met Michael while I was running the Big Room Bar, taking my hack at restaurateur, oblivious to the fact that I was maybe a year away from failure and a second hard career pivot in a five year span. He and a friend were sitting at the bar, and as is Michael’s way, he struck up a conversation with the first person he saw, which happened to be me. I talked him into the papet vaudois special I had running that night, in honor of the bar’s origins as a Swiss social club. From first bite I could tell that he had cemented his opinion of me: I can walk the talk when it comes to food.
Michael came back to the bar as a rep for one of the local breweries and again later as a rep for a moonshine brand making an entrance into the Columbus market. In between, he was a semi-regular and we struck up an easy friendship around booze, baseball and obscure cultural references. Sometime after I had to make my exit from the bar life, the owner brought Michael on to run the place in its post-kitchen music venue phase (which is probably what it should’ve been since day one.)5
I hadn’t seen Michael since he left Columbus for the Big Apple and hadn’t met Ava yet, so we had a meet up/catch up session at their apartment in the West Village. After a couple of amaro spritzes and apertivo on the rooftop of their building — featuring a stunning 360° view of Skyscraper National Park — the four of us hoofed it a few blocks to Ambra for a really nice Italian meal, served in the traditional courses (antipasto, primo, secondo, etc.) along with a couple of bottles of wine.6 Ava and Michael picked up the check for dinner over our protestations: I fully appreciate the graciousness and generosity, I really do, but they totally could’ve just taken us to a hole-in-the-wall slice shop and saved a few bucks.7 That said, I wouldn’t take my out-of-town guests to Roosters, so maybe I should just shut up and say “thank you” again.
We strolled back to their apartment and said our good nights on the sidewalk before Erin and I caught the PATH back to New Jersey. Our hotel was near Newark Liberty airport, recently built onto the top floors of an existing parking garage. Really strange setup, but clean, convenient and not a bad deal, all things considered.
It takes about an hour and a half to get from Newark to Citi Field in Queens via subways — PATH Red to World Trade Center, 4 to Grand Central, 7 to Willets Point — and we reached our destination a little before noon with gates scheduled to open at 12:10. As we made our way off the platform, we saw an extremely long line, ostensibly of people to get into the ballpark. It was Hello Kitty light-up bow bobblehead giveaway day on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, so I guess I should’ve anticipated that there would be a big crowd waiting to get in (kinda like jersey day in Seattle a month prior.)
We asked the people at the end of the line what they were in line for. “We don’t know,” they replied, so we set off to investigate. The line passed through the train station and re-emerged in the Citi Field parking lot, but we circumvented it by taking the ramp down to the street below and crossing. That’s where we discovered that it was not one long line to get into Citi Field, but multiple lines, spurring out tangentially from every single gate into the park.
I did some quick mental calculus considering the radiant temperature of the black top, the SPF value required to protect my pasty white skin, the length and speed — or lack thereof — of the various lines to get in the park, the sentimental value of a Hello Kitty bobblehead, my blood alcohol content (0%) and the patience level of my ride-or-die. It didn’t take long to say “fuck it” and head for Ebbs Brewing, located on the southeast corner of Citi Field. Despite being built into the ballpark, you do not need a game ticket to get into the brewery. When we walked in, we discovered that several dozen other people had come to the same conclusion that we did: waiting in line is bad, beer is good.8
After monitoring the slow moving line to the bullpen gate for about an hour, I got the text that Michael and Ava had arrived, so we made our way to the Home Run Apple and soon were inside.
The exterior of Citi Field was designed to resemble Ebbets Field, the former home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, razed in 1960 after the team moved to Los Angeles. Just inside the main gate behind home plate is the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, a grand entrance space meant to honor the legendary player, but ultimately feels more like an overthought airport terminal with the team store and ticket windows tucked behind stairs and escalators leading up to the concourse level. Sadly, the tributes to a historic figure in American sports and civil rights are easily missed by the throngs urgently making their way through to pick up their Hello Kitty bobbleheads.
Those were long gone by the time we made our way inside, so we hustled our way up to the 400 level to get to our seats before first pitch. On the way up the stairs, I witnessed a secondary market transaction involving one of the promo bobbleheads. If you show up too late to get it for free, you’ll literally pay the price.
We grabbed a couple of Montauk IPAs from a beer vendor — one of the few craft beer options available in the park and, goddamn, were those cans $17 a piece? — and settled in for the game. Michael is a big Giants fan and while the crowd around us are mostly rooting for the home nine, a few brave San Francisco fans are decked out in their team colors. That said, there were plenty of empty seats in our section and all over the ballpark for a game that nearly sold out.
Ava checked eBay in the first inning to see if any Hello Kitty bobbleheads had been listed. Sure enough, they were selling for upwards of $75 a piece just minutes after 15,000 of them had been handed out for free. Three weeks later as I write this, prices are still about the same. One enterprising and ambitious soul has valued theirs at a cool million (or best offer.) Should I have stood in line and got my bobblehead? I ended up buying about two bobbleheads worth of beer at Ebbs and inside the park, so maybe I should start subsidizing this temporary lifestyle by flipping promotional items.
Oh yeah, there was also a baseball game. Pretty good one too. The Mets came back from down 3-1 in the bottom of the 9th to win 4-3 on a walk-off base hit by Omar Narvaez. Less than a week later, the team traded for a new catcher and let Narvaez go. The game is like that.
On our way back to the subway, Michael snags a handful of totally illicit beers from a local entrepreneur, which we drank equally illegally on the 7 Express back to Manhattan. Right around this point is when Erin and I realize it’s a little after 4 p.m. and we haven’t eaten all day. We give Ava and Michael hugs goodbye and transfer at Grand Central to a downtown F train.
I couldn’t justify waiting in an hour-long line for a Hello Kitty bobblehead, but I could easily wait 20 minutes for pastrami from Katz’s. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been to this New York institution, but this would be Erin’s first. A giant mound of smoked corned beef stuffed between two slices of rye bread was just the thing to eradicate our hunger. No sides needed beyond the pickles that come with it. Yes there’s probably better pastrami in the city. Yes, Katz’s is packed with tourists. But is it good, even great? Hard yes.
With full bellies and a solid buzz, we decided to make our way back to the hotel: a short walk to Delancey St. to catch the J to Fulton, then a hike over to World Trade Center to pick up the PATH back to Newark. Before heading back to Jersey, we walked over to the 9/11 Memorial. Listen, I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, but maybe don’t take duckface selfies for the ‘gram at a place where 2,600 people were killed? Then I remember that some of the people I see doing this weren’t born yet when it happened. Fuck, I’m old.
On Monday morning, Memorial Day, we had an eight hour drive ahead of us back to Ohio, so we knew we didn’t want to skip breakfast and take our chances with road food. I made a reservation at Tops Diner so we could eat on our way out of Newark.
I have heard all the tales of Jersey diners — the phone book length menu detailing an impossible number of options, coffee mugs you will never see the bottom of, chrome everywhere — but I had never actually been to one. Tops recently underwent a major renovation and I can only describe them as the Disneyland of diners. No jukebox, but a permanent DJ station. Overworked coffee machines, yes, but also an espresso bar. Lunch counter, make way for a full L shaped bar with the requisite permanent chrome stools, of course.
A true Jersey diner snob may claim that Tops is too ritzy now to be a legit representation of the state’s favorite restaurant format. But the food, y’all. Oh my god.
Erin and I both ordered off of the daily breakfast special menu, which was longer than most restaurants’ full-time breakfast menu. The catfish and grits for her, a smoked salmon omelet with a side salad for me, and to split, the Jerseyest of all Jersey diner menu options: a pork roll, egg and cheese sandwich.
If you’ve never had it, pork roll (or Taylor ham, basically the same thing) is a New Jersey staple food, shaped like a salami in its original state, sliced thin, notched to keep it from curling when heated, and griddled until the surface is brown with a crispy crust. You’ll get a slight smoky bacon note, but a powerful cured ham flavor and a soft, pliable texture. It’s hard to find outside of the Garden State, but worth picking up if you can.9 A pork roll, egg and cheese is just that: griddle-fried pork roll, a fried egg cooked to your liking, and American cheese on a Jersey hard roll or a kaiser bun. add salt, pepper and ketchup if you desire. So simple, so perfect, so delicious.
There was one more New Jersey ritual in which we needed to partake: letting somebody else pump our gas. If there’s one place where a consortium of “legitimate businessmen” could bully state government into driving out their competition with a bold mix of bribery and violence, you bet your ass it’s New Jersey.
NEXT GAME: Toronto Blue Jays at Cleveland Guardians, Saturday, June 22, 4:10 p.m. EDT, Progressive Field
Soundtrack:
I own six guitars, which is probably a couple more than I need but doesn’t put me into “collector asshole/crazy cat lady” territory in the grand scheme. I may not have room in my budget for more at the moment, but I certainly have room in my heart.
The former being incredibly unlikely because Columbus’s public transit system sucks. The latter being much more likely because this is America.
Several people have proposed the idea of monetizing this trip and the content I’m creating around it. Here’s the thing though: the reason I’m taking this trip in the first place is to unplug from the stress and anxiety of my regular job. I’m not trying to replace my job with another job.
Well, northeastward. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay $25 in Pennsylvania Turnpike tolls — with the EZPass discount, of course — for a trip that takes the same amount of time without spending a dime on I-80.
Coincidentally, while I was in New York reminiscing with Michael about our Columbus days, the Big Room Bar announced its permanent closure after almost nine years. I have mixed emotions about this announcement, but mostly I’m sad that the place was never able to harness its potential. The people involved in the day-to-day operation of that place over the years worked so hard to build something unique in the city, and I truly believe that we were maybe 10 years ahead of our time as the neighborhood around it becomes more of a destination.
I know a lot about beer as a consequence of my career path, but virtually nothing about wine. Erin and I were more than happy to entrust the selections to Ava and Michael, the oenophiles in our party.
The worst pizzeria in Manhattan is still better than 90% of what Columbus, Ohio calls pizza, which is basically a saltine cracker topped with ketchup. We do have that good pepperoni here, though.
The beer was actually pretty good, pricy though at $12 a pint. Still cheaper than inside the ballpark.
I’ve found it in a few nicer Columbus groceries. If your local deli carries Boar’s Head products, I believe they distribute Taylor ham outside of New Jersey. Can’t hurt to put in a request.
My partner and I have been vegetarian for the better part of a decade, but we made an exception for Katz's when we were in NYC last year -- definitely worth it!
I'm just now reading this as you head off on sabbatical, because I was on vacation when it posted. I hope you have an amazing time, eat and drink delicious things, unplug, relax and experience all the joys of sabbatical and having fewer adulting responsibilities! You very much deserve it!