Brooklyn Living is the website for Brooklynites and visitors to discover the rich cultural roots of our city and to understand how it is changing into the middle of the 21st century.
The NY Mets win the NL Eastern Division for 2015. Anyone growing up in the 1960's and 1970's lived in the wake of the Dodgers leaving to Los Angeles. Brooklyn of crazy for the Mets but even in the mid-1960s, people around the city were intimately familiar with Koufax and the Dodgers, watching the team from afar with great interest as they entered the WS many times. Gil Hodges was well planted in the Brooklyn community, as was many other Dodgers. Gil's Bowling Alley was a local hangout and my parent met the Hodges and others quite a few times. By 1969, the town was NY Mets nuts. Buses were filled, leaving the Junction to the outland of Shea Stadium, a service long gone. The beloved Mets, was the only team I knew growing up. My mother would tern in here grave to know of any other team being cheered for by the locals. So now the Mets meet the Dodgers again the playoffs. Unlike 1988, there are almost no more Dodger fans alive anymore. But I miss you all. Here is a list of NY Mets Resources
- Mets Musings Podcast
- SNY Mets blog
- Mets Tradee rumors
- MLB Blog
- Mets Podcast
- Just Mets Blog
- NY Mets News Group
- Game 5 of WS 1969
- 1986 Game 7
- Grand Slam Single
- Piazza HR Game 6
- Piazza Grand Slam off Clemmen
- Piazza Intentionally Beaned
- Lenny's Walk Off HR Game - Stratomatic
- Davis-Knight Fight Game
- Hernandez to Seaver
- Kiner and Seaver
- Kiner Seaver and Keith
- Seaver no hitter with Hernanez (no 37) on the Cards ... Keith got a walk.
- Gil Hodges for the Hall of Fame ... great testimonial for Gil with a lot of players now past, including Tug and Kiner and others
- WS 1969 Game 4 with Seaver
- 16 innings against Houston
- 1952 - Dodgers Yankees
- Wilmer Flores only on the Mets
- Number 4 - Wilmer Flores follow up only on the Mets ... again
- Bartolo Colon is a steroid cheat. I asume at this point in his career he is clean and he has provided a section of his own for the Mets this, the 2015, season.
- Gil's Funeral
2015 11 Game Winning Streak
Last Days at Shea
Passover 2022 at Citifield and Flushing Meadows
I sent a great deal of this Passover at Citifield watching Mets Games. I have a lot to say about this, but for the time being, I just want to post these pics and videos for the young man and his father who I promised to get him this image of him on the website so he could download it. I got this terrific pic and 2 videos.
On a recent trip to Citifield I had a chance to see a few games and take a few pics. I have other pictures of both Shea and Citifield spread throughout this website and mrbrklyn since we've attende games for decades. This, being the second year of the Steve Cohen reign for the Mets, I'd had a chance to see things as the new ownership has taken root. I am not sure if it is because of the COVID-19 lockdowns or just the ownership transition, but for the first time Citifield is showing some age and the experience is a bit short of what it had been previosly. There are not as many food choices as there once was, as PAT LAFRIEDA has takenover most of the food vendings. And there are some very fan unfrieldly changes, the biggest one is the ZERO CASH policy at the stadium. The stadium now takes NO CASH and you have to run around with a vending machine to take your cash, and there are maybe two or three in the entire stadium. It sucks. And there is no excuse for it.
In fact, while we are on this topic, the entire experience is out of hand. Aside from ZERO CASH, the no bag policy is an affront to fans. The safety consideration is a paranoid delusion and an excuse to abuse fans. There has NEVER been a serious public threat at a baseball game and the experience increasingly feels like being in a prision. If you take a subway to the game, like from work, you are totally screwed by this policy. Go forbid that you sneak in a few bottles of water in a backpack. They are treating the fans like crap.
And this treatment of fans as the enemy of the team continues with ticking policy. You can't purchase tickets at home any longer and print them and you have to buy tickets from a spyware phone app. Otherwise, you are not even welcome to the game. Your only choice then is to go to the ticket gate at Citifield and buy tickets that they print. And don't bring cash, because the cashless policy includes ticketing. You have to put cash unto a plasitc debit card. They REALLY treat you like garbage and god forbid you are a young kid who has a few bucks in their pocket and decide to see a game. First, you can't buy the tickets on line without a MLB app, and if you are using cash, they make you go put all your money first on a card and then maybe they will sell you a ticket. It is so sickening how they treat the fans now, it is no wonder that the game is dieing. Not only is nobody going to games, nobody plays basbeall either as we import all our players from the Caribean.
Despite all this, this Passover I headed out to see games. I don't carry a cellphone, as it is prohibited to most Orthodox Jews because of the negative content that is being pushed at cellphone users and the tracking. So I had to take cash to the stadium at 9AM and puchased seats in secion 322. The seats were good and reasonably prices. I put the cash on the debit card and purchased the tickets. They insisted on having my name and ID to buy the tickets, that is how deep the tracking is now.
I had hours now to kill until the 3PM game time. This was a double header, unscheduled, against SF with Max Schwerzer on the mound. The visiting team was SF Giants, so I had a chance to see Wilmer Flores play. With time on my hands, I got some pics of the Seaver Statue and cruised Flushing Meadows. I ventured to the back end of the park past the Van Wyck expressway and found a bunch of Hassidic Partygoers enjoying the park and the rental bikes. After touring the Unisphere, and the rest of the park, I finally got back to Citifield, stood and stood inline to get in and to pass through the metal dectors and to be pat down like a common criminal.
Citifield itself needs some work, including the Jackie Robinson retunda whose black ceiling is coming off. The support struts for the seats that overhang the excelior level has water leaking into the seats causing damage to the concriet and the metal struts that hold up the promanade. The whole stadium just feels as if it has aged during the lockdowns. There is a lack of consession hot dog sellers working the crowd, and without cash business, one can see why. The call, "Hot Dogs Here!!" seems to be a thing of the past, along with National League baseball. So much of the crowd is glued to their cellphones now, that maybe this is a side affect. You would think that you send a good chunk of money to be at the game that one would actually BE at the game and put the video distraction box DOWN and be with the crowd and to watch the game.
I think they should have special nights with no cellphones allowed, no electronic music and noise, and just an Organ and minimal scoreboard details. Just let the crowd enjoy the game.
On that note, the scoreboard itself is a problem. The main scoreboard is too busy and the lettering is too small. Essentail parts of the action is difficult to find or to read, like who is pitching? It takes time to realize that the big picture in the center of the scoreboard is the pitcher. It might say, "Now Pitching". Ball and strikes are just too small to read. The out of town scoreboard is impossible to understand. It is over designed without enough thought given to ease of use, readability and fan enjoyment.
One of the most useful parts of a modern scoreboard is the speed and type of the last pitch. That information is hard to find on the board and it flashes by too fast to be pick up. I spent too much time trying to see what that last pitch was, usually to see it just fade from view. they should swap the big board being used for useless images of batters and and music videos, and put the scoreboard there so we can see it easier. That screen is nearly 30% larger.
Brooklyn Fishing Report
Fifth Avenue 2008 Street Fair
Photos of Bastille Day in Cobble Hill 2007
Photos of Coney Island Summer of 2007
Never Published Downtown Walking Tour
Notary Services in Brooklyn