Once in a Lifetime

I was blessed this year with the opportunity to attend the All-Star Game Home Run Derby at CitiField. A good friend of mine has connections throughout Major League Baseball and was able to hook me up with tickets. At first he offered me a pair of standing room only tickets but because of Papa Poop's advanced age I elected for a pair of seats. He warned me the seats would be high, but I graciously told him I was just going to be happy to be there. And I was. I was thrilled to be going, until I got to the parking gate.

$35 to park! An outrage! But I was too late to get a spot under the overpass, I didn't want to use Nails's trick and drive into downtown Flushing, so I paid my money and took my spot.

The first thing I discovered was a huge popup Modell's store in a tent in the parking lot. They really did a good job with merchandising, thinking of everything, including an All-Star Game case for your iPhone.

Of course they had All-Star game jerseys and t-shirt jerseys for the local players (Harvey, Wright, Cano, Rivera) and a few other stars (Harper, Cabrera, Davis and surprisingly, Domonic Brown).

I bought the Matt Harvey ($25) shir-zey and immediately changed into it.

On the way out of the store I saw Cecil Fielder signing autographs, but elected not to wait on the long line that was developing.

Eventually I took my seat in the 500 level, midway down the left field line and had a pretty good view of the entire field.

Because I wanted to get there early, I ended up sitting for a while, we saw some players take batting practice, but mostly nothing was going on, so by 7:55 we were anxious for the Derby to get started. But for some reason we had to listen to Pitbull perform. First he did "Don't Stop the Party" and then after 8:00 PM, when we were expecting to get started he performed "Feel This Moment," better known as the song with the "Take On Me" sample.

This is how his stage and pyrotechnics looked from my seat.

And he sounded even worse. It was as if his microphone wasn't hooked up to the speakers, couldn't hear the lyrics, just the pre-taped music they were pumping in.

Finally the Derby started and it was awesome. Sure, it would have been cool to be in the outfield with a chance to catch some homers, but our seats were actually pretty good. It seemed like every homer by a righty was flying right past us. We had a great view of each one of the bombs blasted by Yoenis Cespedes in his amazing first round performance.

I will admit that the Derby did drag on a little in the middle especially because it is a made-for-TV event and the commercial breaks were very long. Also adding to the lull, Cespedes had to hit in the second round (to raise money for charity) even though his first round total was higher than anyone else combined number.

Luckily they did have cool entertainment like a Home Run Derby between two top high school players. These kids were jacking bombs. And aided by their aluminum bats they were pulling more than the Major Leaguers with the wood, the kids were ripping shots high, and straight down the lines. They also had other diversions including Frisbee-catching dogs.

Other than the mid-Derby lull, and the parking fee, there was one more negative to the Derby (and not the heat, which actually wasn't much of a factor after 6pm), the in-stadium announcers, Mike (Greenberg) [corrected] and Mike (Golic). I agree that it's hard to say something interesting about 100+ home runs, but though I dislike their daily schtick, it was turned up even more for this event, with these two saying the dumbest cheesiest shit, including imploring the crowd to cheer at least three times during each player's round.

So we had a transcendent performance in round one, doldrums in round two and then a stirring finale. Bryce Harper put up a decent 8 in his turn then Cespedes blew right through, saving the best for last, with a monster shot to center to clinch the victory.

Though I doubt anything could top Cespedes's performance, I enjoyed the event so much I would gladly go again, even if I have to wait until I'm 85 for it to be back in CitiField.