Brooklyn, Baseball, and Bumper Cars

I decided not to stay home and brood on the day that my job was closed due to budget cuts. Instead, I took my nephews (Elder Satan, 14; and Satanski, 5) to Brooklyn. I can count on one hand the number of times that I’ve been to Brooklyn, but that’s more due to a lack of any specific reason to go, than to an opposition to the borough. The primary reason for our trip was to see the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets’ Short-Season Class A affiliate. I really enjoyed the minor league games I went to when I was going to school in Virginia (Single A Lynchburg Hillcats and Triple A Norfolk Tides), and thought that it would be a fun trip to see with the boys. I didn’t want the first baseball game I took them to to be a MLB game, especially since those tickets cost a lot, and I wasn’t sure if the kids were willing to stay for an entire game.

We arrived in Coney Island about two hours before we needed to get to the stadium, so we grabbed something to eat and then went to an arcade and played air hockey, skee ball, and that basketball game where you see how many baskets you can get in 30 seconds. Elder Satan and I had hoped to compete against each other, but the balls took forever to come back, and we agreed that it would be a waste of time to count the few baskets we were able to get before the time ran out. We did better competing at skee ball and air hockey, and I’m not mentioning them just because I won.

We played bumper cars, too, and it cracked the boys up to see me driving anything. I am awesome at bumper cars, though, and with Satanski by my side, managed to crash into Elder Satan a lot, while avoiding most of the weird strangers who kept trying to ram us. It was harder to find things for Satanski to do, since we learned the hard way that he didn’t have the height for the basketball game or the coordination for skee ball (his balls had the disturbing tendency to end up one or two lanes over from where they’d started). He had a great time on the motorcycle video game, although his brother had to help him steer, and on Dance Dance Revolution, where a helpful little kid stepped on whatever food pad caught his fancy, sometimes even making the correct combination. Although we were excited about seeing the Cyclones, we were all a little sad to leave the arcade when it was time to head over to the stadium.

We shouldn’t have been, because we had a great time at the game. One thing that I love about minor league stadiums (I know, I know: technically, stadia is more correct, but hardly anybody uses that word anymore) is that they try to get and keep your attention in a way that major league ballparks do not. As we walked to the game of MCU Park, people in Carvel shirts gave Carvel Flying Saucers to anybody who cared for one (Satanski declared that he was frightened of these, and did not take one), and after we had our tickets scanned, stadium employees handed out CUNY duffel bags to the first 2,500 fans, so we got some of those, too. It was Thomas the Tank Night last night, so kids who wore Thomas clothing got to take the field (I didn’t dress Satanski in anything related to Thomas, but he did enjoy the Thomas songs and trivia throughout the night). Did you know that Thomas & Co. are 65 years old? I didn’t either.

Satanski made friends with a similarly-aged boy in the row behind us, and they laughed for five innings straight at the beverage vendor in our section, whose call was, “Beer and a bottle of water!” He did have a thick accent (like New Yorkers often sound on tv and not as much in real life), and for some reason the boys just died every time he said that. I didn’t get it, and the joke did grow old with repetition. I didn’t mind it so much when that kid and his family left after the fifth.

Satanski was more into the game than I’d dared to hope he would be, and he got really excited when the Cyclones scored on a two-run double. “Touchdown,” he yelled. It was pretty cute. Even after I explained that there were no touchdowns in baseball (“or cheerleaders, either,” he added), he yelled the same thing the next time the Cyclones scored. Another thing that he enjoyed was when three people dressed as Ketchup, Mustard, and Relish had a race along the left field line. Satanski and I do not like mustard and relish, so we rooted for Ketchup, but he was vanquished the gooey, oddly-textured Relish. I listened to him talking on the phone with his dad, trying to explain how we booed Mustard and Relish, and took the line to explain to my very confused brother that his son and I had not randomly jeered condiments.

My older nephew, who is not as evil as his brother but is nevertheless known as Elder Satan, was not as chatty as his brother during the game. We did share a laugh over a 20-something hipster couple where the guy had an insane handlebar moustache and the woman had fuschia Lee Press On nails.  We spent two innings trying to get a picture of the guy, and I finally was able to get it not too long before we left at the top of the eighth.

It was a long trip back home (an hour on the subway and then a wait at Port Authority, and then traffic at 11 pm on 495), but we had a really great time yesterday.