Saturday January 25th we made the trek to Citi Field for Amazin’ Day. We had gone to the fan fest they had in 2020 and decided to check it out again. When tickets went on sale there was absolutely no information available about what all would be happening, but it still sold out pretty quickly. We had 12:30pm entry tickets and arrived to the parking lot around 11:30. The line seemed pretty long to get in to the rotunda, so we decided we’d line up pretty early to make sure we didn’t spend too much time waiting to be let in. We were told by staff we could go in an ADA entrance and could wait inside until 12:30 and out of the cold which was nice. While we were waiting, the screens inside were showing some information about what was happening, including the topics of some of the panels that would be happening so I found one that I thought David Wright would be at and we added it to our agenda for the day.
Our first stop was the Mets Mini Museum and Press Conference Photo – in the press conference room they had some memorabilia together for the concerts at citi field, some player jerseys, Grimace’s glove (it was hilarious how many people were so excited over it, including us!) and a nice little display of some of the post season artifacts – not having watched most of the game, just following box scores it was cool to see all of that up close. They also had a couple of photo ops set up where you could sit with cut outs of Steve Cohen, David Stearns and Juan Soto as well as stand at the podium leading your own press conference.
Then we tried to figure out how to line up for the autographs, but no one told us we had passed the line as we were looking for the end. So we had to go all the way back. The hallway did not have enough room for the traffic and it was a total mess. When we finally got back to the end, someone tried to cut in between us and then made it seem like I was the problem when I kept knocking into them with my walker. I mean, maybe it’s because you’re taking up the free space I have to maneuver? Just a thought… once we finally got to the room, there were 4 lines that you were randomly placed into depending on which line was shortest when you got to the front of the line for placement. Each room had 2-4 players. We saw Daryl Strawberry walk by when we were waiting so we knew he was in one of the rooms but they were being very secretive and making sure the curtains were closed so you couldn’t see who you were going to get. We ended up getting to meet Nelson Figueroa and Sean Manaea.
We then made our way up to the Piazza 31 Club for some of the panels. Gary Cohen was interviewing Steve Cohen, David Stearns and Carlos Mendoza and we caught the tail end of that. Next up was the 2015 World Series panel with David Wright, Matt Harvey and Jon Niese. After realizing that was probably the closest to David I was going to get, we went to the K Corner for the legends photo op, knowing that David was going to be on another panel in another hour or so.
The line for the legends photo op was through the bar in the restaurant. When we could see who was doing the photos, it was Robin Ventura. As we got closer, I saw Terry Collins enter the room and they ended up switching places. Robin went to sit at a table to sign autographs along with Benny Agbayani and Edgardo Alfonso. So we were able to get autographs from the 3 of them and then a photo that was instantly printed with Terry. There also was supposed to be a spot to enter to win a chance to see the Mets in San Francisco but we didn’t end up finding that.
After spending most of our time waiting in lines, we decided we’d make our way to the store to see the Warehouse sale and head home. The only other thing we had wanted to do was the baseball card but it was on the other side of the stadium. Later I had found out the wait was 2+ hours and I’m not sure we had it in us to wait that much longer. As the day went on and more and more people were coming in the lines just kept getting longer and longer and the hallways more and more packed.
The store had post season items for 80% off, almost everything else was 50% off and select items were $1, $5 or $10. I got 2 patches, a pin and a yearbook for $7. The store was very crowded so I didn’t get to shop like I normally would have, I maybe should have gotten a jersey at 50% off, but oh well. At the time, I didn’t have a favorite as Pete being signed was in limbo, but as of writing this he is back! (And when David Stearns was walking through the hallway chants of ‘SIGN PETE!’ were being yelled by all the fans at him, glad it worked out!)