Archive for April 30, 2009

The handicap

April 30, 2009 at 4:26 pm · Filed under Sports

My father-in-law’s health has been in decline for number of years. Now he walks with great difficulty. I never really think about handicap that much. But the other day, when we took him to the Citi Field did I think about it. He gave up his handicap licence when he no longer able to drive. My dilemma was what should I do? And thought about it, many handicaps couldn’t drive, so shouldn’t their drivers get the special licence instead? I asked the Citi Field. No, they won’t give me special parking privilege, but replied within few minutes.

Unfortunately, without the Handicapped Parking tags you are not permitted to access the spots.
We would say to get here as early as possible to get parking as close as possible to the Ball Park.
As an alternative, you may drop him and another member of your party at the Bull Pen gate (on Roosevelt Ave) and then go and park your car.

I dropped him off at the Right Field gate on 126 Street @ 37th Avenue, the dumpy auto repair shop row that made the area so undesirable.

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Strawberry Fields Forever

April 30, 2009 at 4:09 pm · Filed under Sports ·Tagged

The recent radio commercial for opening days at the Citi Field goes like .. bring the whole family, tour the new facility for $3 with free parking (during the game day, it’s $18) .. meet Strawberry. It reminded me of Disney has mickey mouse, Buckingham Palace has Queen and the baseball stadium in Queens has Strawberry Field.

I enjoy play softball but baseball is never my cup of tea. However, I know Darryl Strawberry, he’s to baseball to me as LT – Lawrence Taylor, never Larry Taylor 🙂 – or Joe Montana to football: the most prominent and striking figure of the sport when I started getting to learn.

Straw’s pics, two thick black stripes under his playful and curious eyes were all over New York in the 1980s. He’s tall and gracious build, a piece of an artwork. That’s my impression of him, the fearsome slugger of Mets that won 1986 World Series championship with Mets. When later he became of a real artwork with all sort of troubles in life, and even he won 3 more World Series with Yankees, I seldom paid any attention.

He’s been in the news lately, either to promote the Citi Field or his book or both. I was amused to hear one day on SNY where he’s an announcer now, the interviewer asked him about the Mets. And he replied that Mets is a great team with a huge potential – that was the identical word the former GM used to describe him when Frank Cashen refused Straw’s demand, a José Canseco type of contract.

This last Tuesday we took my father-in-law to the game. There wasn’t Straw in the field. Under the above 90 degrees weather, the Mets scored 2 runs in the first inning and one more in the second. But Florida’s Marlins ended up won the game.

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