As some of you may have heard, there’s a professional baseball club in Queens that just built a new home.  Through my roommate and his very generous employers at the Sports and Arts In Schools Foundation, I had the good fortune of getting a free ticket to tonight’s game against the San Diego Padres.

In addition to being a great game (Pitcher’s duel, turned big Mets’ rally, turned first CitiField Mets’ win), I got the chance to walk around the stadium a bit and see some of the features.  I tweeted about it and snapped a few quick and dirty shots with the iPhone.  Here’s how it went down (Bulleted items are from my twitter feed, italics are just my comments now):

• Holy crap! Free tickets to the game tonight. On the 7 express to CitiField now!

Untwittered, but true: My roommate texted me and asked to meet him at the Woodside Ave subway platform, which I thought was odd, because, well, that’s not where the Mets play baseball. I met him there, getting off the express train, mind you, only to hear that he has lost one of the tickets to the game. He was willing to give me the one remaining ticket and just head home. Instead I convinced him to come to the ballpark and see if we could find a cheap ticket from a scalper.

• It’s a tax day miracle!

And it truly was. Right off the train, there was a guy selling his ticket for $20. Boom. Just like that…

• And I’m in!

New Home Sweet Home

The Fan Walk

• Sitting in foul territory of the pepsi porch.

Little did I know I was sitting in the wrong section.  My actual seats were much, much better…

• It’s Jackie Robinson night. Nice tribute before the game and everyone’s wearing 42
• Shaky top of the first, but #mets escape unscathed.
• Dos carlos with a rally

… that went absolutely nowhere.

• Very quiet game so far. I’m taking a hike around the park.

View from the Field Level Concourse

• A little pulled pork to warm me up on this cold night at Citi. Luckily I got back in time for the rally.

This rally actually worked, and the Mets scored a pair.

• Murphy is not a good outfielder.

To be clear, I’m still glad he’s in there every day, and I love to watch this guy’s at-bats, but he should have nailed the runner at home on that play.  Thankfully, not a deal-breaker.

• Edge network stinks. Pics will come when I get back to BK, I guess.

And that’s no lie.  In fact, here’s another pic:

The View from directly off the Pepsi porch balcony... Weird.

• Pepsi party patrol can hit all levels with the tshirt guns.
• That was a pretty pathetic 1-2-3.
• Little league ball at citifield!

Referring to a play where a passed ball never got more than 25 feet from home plate, and two runs came in (one from FIRST BASE!!)

• @jeremymyerson actually we moved closer to center. I’m in the centermost section of the porch.

Two things: 1) Jeremy’s on Twitter!  Go follow him.  2) Carlos Delgado was taking a swing as I tweeted that…

• I’m sitting two rows above where that landed. Look for me on tv.

Seriously, the closest I’ve ever been to where a home run ball landed.  I had a chance at it, but the people from in front were better situated.

• And cowbellman is here. It’s officially the mets’ home.
• Citifield gets an A from me.

Awesome game, good crowd, the food was spectacular (and not really highway robbery – Pulled Pork sandwich was $9, and TOTALLY WORTH IT), and the place feels like home already.

Shea's scoreboard header atop Shake Shack and Blue Smoke