Shea Stadium #1.. 9/26/2004

Our first two forays into the Major Leagues were pretty successful so it only seemed fair to my wife that we plan a trip to Shea Stadium to see a Mets game. She's a lifelong fan and had never been.. coincidentally her birthday is in September so as a birthday present I picked up tickets to a Mid September game against the Cubs. This was especially fortuitous because now Nomar Garciaparra was now a member of the Cubs, so it was a win win situation in my book. Jackie gets to see the Mets, and I get to see Nomar.

When Jackie's sister, Dee, hears of our plans to go to Shea, she expressed an interest in joining us with her partner, Todd. So I pick up 7 tickets to a game. At that time, Mets tickets were relatively easy to come by since it was September and the Mets were 20 games out of the NL East. We wind up with some pretty decent Mezzanine level seats just a couple of sections down towards first base. Not bad for a last minute purchase. We drove down as New York as it is a pretty easy day trip from Albany.

I have a few vivid memories of this particular trip.. the best was that of seeing my daughter's face on the scoreboard.. at one point between innings a camera guy is walking up our aisle and he focuses in on Breanne sitting there looking cute and next thing you know her face is on the scoreboard.. wow.. I frantically reached for my camera to try and get a picture.. In the meantime she turns slightly towards the cameraman and you can see on the scoreboard that she's wearing a pink Nomar Red Sox Tshirt.. almost immediately the picture changes to some other random people in the crowd. The moment was lost, except in my mind she's still up there on that screen.

The 2^nd memory from that day has to do with Breanne's hero, Nomar. He hit what I thought at the time was a home run, but turned out to be a ground rule double. I was taking video of his at bat and got the whole thing. I thought it went out because the outfielders gave up running and I didn't see it bounce looking through the camera. It looked like a home run to me at least.. it was off of Al Leiter. The Mets did won the game 3-2, so it was a good day.

Last memory of this trip was discovering Main Street Sweets in Tarrytown, NY. Driving home we got out of the city and stopped in Tarrytown for something to eat. The place we ate at didn't really serve dessert, but the waitress recommended an ice cream shop a short walk down the street. So we walked down and discovered Main Street Sweets. Ever since this trip it has become the final stop for us whenever we are heading home after a game in the City. They have excellent homemade ice cream in a shop that is reminiscent of Ben and Jerry's when it was a place no one knew about.

Soon after this trip, we started thinking about what to do for vacation the next summer. During these discussions, Jackie mentions how cool would it be to see a game at Wrigley Field. I agree and add in as long as we are going to Chicago, might as well see a White Sox game as well and hey looking at this map it looks like Milwaukee isn't far, let's make a trip out of it, maybe even do Minnesota. At this point what started out as a few harmless day trips was starting to turn into something more.

Some pictures from that day ..