You're invited to a housewarming party

Not a good night for the Mets. A new ballpark, sure, but things on the field weren't so snappy. For the second day in a row defense in the outfield betrayed them, with Ryan Church getting turned around on a long fly ball the day after Daniel Murphy let one pop out of his glove. At least Church's had entertainment value in that the he was quite obviously taunted by guys holding beers in the restaurant directly behind the chain link fence in right field. I love that fans can just stand there behind a player and yell "Noonan" or whatever it is the kids do these days. How long do you think it will be before we have a beer-splashing incident on an opposing right fielder (or Church if the Mets keep losing) followed by the installation of hockey-style Plexiglas?

Church's error led to a man on third base, who was immediately balked home by Pedro Feliciano. That is, according to David Eckstein, who called the balk and waved the runner home from the batter's box. Really, I rewound and watched it again, and the ump appeared to do nothing and say nothing until after Eckstein started emoting and gesticulating about it.

Other notable tidbits on a night the announcers kept calling "historic" despite the fact that there's nothing particularly historic about a team starting play in its third park 47 years:

On the field, I was rather interested to see Gary Sheffield run down to first base on a fielder's choice and then score from second on a long single with no apparent trouble. Sheffield has a lot of questions to answer this year, but at least the legs look OK so far, and the legs are usually the first thing to go on a guy.

Maybe it's a bit distorted by virtue of television, but the out of town scoreboard appears to be at an altitude of approximately 12,000 feet above left field. I can only assume that it's for the passengers landing at Laguardia.

While that right field restaurant is fun, why all of the fussy little corners on the field itself? The thing about weird dimensions in old parks is that they were usually necessitated by the geography of the ballpark itself. Not enough land to make a full left field? Make it short and build the Green Monster. One wall in too far? Bump out another to compensate. It wasn't just a matter of quirky architecture, which is what this appears to be. While I don't necessarily require a symmetrical field, intentionally-inserted nooks and crannies make no sense to me. There are going to be a lot of triples down in that corner, and with the way the non-Santana portion of the Mets' pitching staff has started out, most of them are going to be hit by the opposition.

Especially when Sheffield is out there, good wheels or no.