Random Thoughts While Waiting For Ray King's Release

1) Nice crowd there last night. Though the place was dead. Not sure if it's the lousy team, the segregated seats or what, but the place really hasn't had much atmosphere in any of the games I've been to this year. At least the Mets fans were there to spice it up a bit.

2) The lines for ticket-buyers were long, and plenty of people reported problems waiting half-an-hour in line. That's silly.

I went around to the waterfront side, by the staircase entrance -- what a waste of a nice entrance -- and there's a small window there that was mostly empty.

3) I took Metro home for the second time. Last time I do that. I live off the blue line in Alexandria. Once Colome came in the game, I left. Not gonna sit through his crap!

So it was a 10-minute wait for them to close the doors at Navy Yard. A 20 minute wait for the Yellow line at Infant Plaza. Then a 11-minute wait for the blue line at Braddock Road. It took me ~75-90 minutes to get home. I'm driving next time. (There are parking spots within a ~15-minute walk)

4) Any night with chili nachos is a good night. No, that's not quite right. Any night with chili nachos can't be truly terrible. The lines seemed relatively short. It seems like they've done a good job getting their handle on that, a bit.

5) DO NOT GET THE FISH AND CHIPS. I REPEAT. DO NOT GET THE FISH AND CHIPS. That they're serving these things and charging $8.50 is a farking embarrassment. It's about 5 small, lipstick-sized tubes of fish sticks. Those are NOT fish and chips. I don't care if it's a flash-fried generic pressed-fish fillet, but what they're serving now is icky.

6) I'm up in 405, and the seats aren't too bad. Can't say that I love them. But they could be worse. My seats are on one of the expansion joints, which they've covered with a giant piece of rubber -- basically a big floor mat. It's usually wet there, but the biggest problem is that the seats aren't quite level, and I'm pretty sure it's not my fat ass pushing it to one side.

7) I like the improvements they've made to the scoreboard. The ball/strike pitch count thing is excellent. The pitch speed is great. The scoring decision is terrific -- although our scorer usually scores games drunk. I love the emphasis on on-base and slugging, especially on the ribbon boards -- though another location might be nice, perhaps at the other end of the ribbon boards?

Last night, they started putting up 'fun' facts -- Did you know that Ryan Church is 9th in the league in runs scored? No? Nor did we care. That's fine once a game, but they kept it up intermittently, when they should've been recapping the player's previous ABs. (I'd also suggest a way for them to keep average/onbase/slugging on the main board somewhere, but I ain't gonna complain too much.)

8) Last night, the PA guy started giving R/H/E/LOB totals as a recap at the end of each half-inning. Not sure I like that, or see the point of it, but whatever. Interesting that he now gives the score updates as much as Chuck!

9) I really hate the ramps. They're graded too shallow, so it takes a good 5-10 minutes to walk up -- and I'm a fast walker. They've got the one escalator near the LF foul pole. Is there another? There should be.

My biggest complaint about that, though, is the staircase. I'll take it down when I'm hunting for my chili nachos (it's tucked in a little alcove behind 3B opposite the elevator). But the doors are no reentry, so you can't get back up without taking the ramp or escalator. I don't know why they can't leave them open. If you need to post a guard, post one. they've certainly got enough ticket nazis around -- especially in those empty sections in RF. You so much look at the section and they're shooing you away! (I wish they'd spend more time not letting people back down into the seating sections until between innings or pitching changes)

10) I reserve the right to revise and extend my remarks.