Hiram Bithorn Stadium
San Juan,
Puerto Rico
New York Mets at
Montreal Expos
April 11-13, 2003
By
Ken Schlapp
Therefore, I wanted to make sure I
went to Puerto Rico
to see a few games, and why not schedule that trip when the Mets
were playing. Yes, I am openly admitting to being a Mets fan from
Queens, New York. And if you ask me “why?”
The answer is simple, it is because my older brother Steve was a Met
fan, and I am extremely
 loyal, so I’ve continued to support them
through good times and bad, and to be sure, the Mets were really bad
in Puerto Rico. So you will have to forgive me if at any point
during my writing about this journey, I appear to show any bias
towards the Mets or against the Yankees. Otherwise, you should know
that I absolutely love baseball, whether it’s Little League,
Independent Leagues, the Tigers, the Mets, or even the Yankees!
My plan during the entire journey
is to keep track of the following things at each stadium:
Ø
Miles traveled
Ø
States, provinces,
and/or commonwealths visited
Ø
Prices of typical
stadium food (Beer, Hot Dogs, Program, and Soda in Souvenir Cup,
etc.)
Ø
Extra baseball
excursions
Ø
Stadium highlights
Ø
Atmosphere and fans
Ø
The game
This is similar to the itinerary
included in a book I read by Brad Null & Dave Kaval called “The
Summer That Saved Baseball”, which documented their journey to all
30 ballparks in 1998. This was a great book and helped me to
formulate strategy for taking my own trip, but the one specific
thing I want to do a little bit different is to spend a more time
talking about the game I saw in each stadium. It may be a little
bit strange to mention someone else’s book, when I plan to write a
similar book about my own experiences, but It was a good book and
helped me to get going.
In addition, I planned to do the
following three things at each stadium:
Ø
Keep score
Ø
Buy a souvenir soda
cup
Ø
Apply for a team
credit card to get a free gift
So now that I’ve laid out the
framework, here goes with my story.
San J uan is the only portion of my
journey that required travel by means other than car or subway. I
had to take a round trip flight from New York’s Kennedy Airport to
San Juan, which was 1,597 miles each way (3,195 total). Puerto Rico
is also the only U.S. Commonwealth that I will visit on my journey.
I also had some company on this part of the trip as my friends Vinny
and Tommy joined me.
Another unique part of my trip to
San Juan was that this is one of only two spots that I will be
staying at a nice hotel (instead of the side of the road motels) –
The Wyndham Condado Plaza Hotel and Casino. This was only due to
the fact that I had assistance from Wyndham hotels, which thought it
would be a great idea, if I could write about the place that the
players would be staying in San Juan. They had no complaints from
me! This hotel was definitely a great place to stay. There were
three pools, a beach next to the pools, a few good restaurants, a
casino, an incredible view of the waterfront, and most importantly,
some very friendly and helpful staff.
The players were actually staying
at Wyndham’s El San Juan Hotel and Casino, which was close by. Now
to be sure that those who know me so well understand how much I
dislike to “Dress Up”, they will find it quite humorous that I could
not get into the front door of the El San Juan. I didn’t even bring
shoes or pants other than jeans and shorts, because I just had
baseball and beach on my mind when I packed for my trip (and to
boot, it was even too late to buy clothes)! My two friends,
however, were smart enough to bring appropriate attire for late
night activities. They went and had a great time gambling and
cavorted with various players that were also enjoying the amenities
of the El San Juan. Therefore, the bottom line is to make sure you
stay at one of the two Wyndham Hotel’s when you go see the Expos
play in Puerto Rico, but make sure you have appropriate attire to
mingle with the players!
OK, enough of the extracurricular
stuff and back to baseball! If you take away the part about being
upset at the Mets for being swept by the Expos, the experience at
Hiram Bithorn stadium was incredible. The stadium is of minor
league size, but is of Major League quality. The stadium is named
after the first Puerto Rican baseball player to make the major
leagues back in the 1940s. His best season was in 1943 when he had
a pitching record of 18-12 with
 a 2.60 ERA for the Cubs. Puerto
Rico has honored him with a life size statue of him in front of the
main entrance of the stadium. The stadium has a clamshell like
appearance with the wavy white covering over the seats from right
field all the way around to left field. The one negative to this
stadium is that the game is played on artificial turf and the
symmetrical stadium is relatively small with a distance of 315 feet
down the lines, 360 feet in the gaps and 398 feet to dead center.
The stadium only holds about 20,000
fans, but the view is good from any place in the park. Since we
were going to three games, we wanted to make sure that we got a good
perspective of the stadium by sitting in three different locations.
The first game we sat in the more expensive ($65) seats down the
left field line about 15 rows from the field, the second game we sat
higher up behind home plate ($25) and for the third game, we sat in
the bleachers for $10. The views were good from each spot, but we
made the mistake of sitting in the bleachers for the day game in 95
degree whether, plus a decent amount of humidity as well. So of
coarse I got a pretty good baseball tan/burn…you know, burnt knees,
face, and arms so that when you take off your shirt you still look
like you are wearing a T-shirt!
My initial game-plane was a little
thrown off when I first got to the stadium, because they did not
sell scorecards or souvenir soda cups at the stadium, so I could not
keep score or bring home my cup. They did, however, have a credit
card promotion and the freebie was an Expos towel. Overall, the
pickings for souvenirs were pretty slim. They sold hats and
t-shirts commemorating the Expos playing in Puerto Rico by having
both the Expos logo and the Puerto Rican flag on them, and they sold
pictures of Roberto Alomar. They didn’t have t-shirts that would
fit me (XL), and there was no way I was spending money to buy a
picture of the Mets most disappointing acquisition, but I had to get
something, so I bought the hat for $20 on day two (it was $15 on day
one).
They had all of the food that is
typical to U.S. ballparks, such as hot dogs, ice cream, soda,
pretzels, pizza, and beer. In addition, they had some things that
you don’t see everyday like vendors walking around the stadium
selling Pina Coladas (which tasted real good) and stands selling
straight liquor such as rum. In addition, they were selling crushed
plantains that appeared to go over well with the crowd. I said
appear, because somehow I did not notice this while I was there and
did not find out about it until I got back to New York and read
about it in the newspapers and heard about announcers (such as Tom
Seaver) raving about how much they enjoyed it. The other thing that
stood out to me was that even after the game was over, they were
still selling beer! You just don’t see that in the U.S. ballparks
anymore.
The atmosphere of the game is what
really won me over. The Puerto Rican fans really appeared to be
ecstatic about having Major League baseball in their town. The
almost sold-out crowds were yelling and screaming and having fun
from beginning to end. Most people working at the stadium and in
the stands spoke English, so communication was not a problem. In
fact communication was great, because everyone was so happy and
friendly. The interesting thing about the fans rooting interest was
that you couldn’t tell if they were rooting for the Expos or the
Mets. However, it was clear as day that they were rooting for the
Puerto Rican players on each team such as Jose Vidro and Wil Cordero
on the Expos and Roberto Alomar on the Mets. I loved how happy they
were to root for their hometown heroes playing Major League Baseball
at home for the first time in person. The only thing that made this
difficult for me was that I couldn’t justify outwardly booing Alomar
here like I do regularly at Shea Stadium!
Now as promised, I have to talk
about the actual games.
The game on Friday April 11th was
the second Major League Baseball game ever played at Hiram Bithorn
Stadium (and the first for the Expos at their second home), because
the Rangers and Mariners opened up the season there in 2001. David
Cone started for the Mets in his second appearance since coming out
of retirement this year. He won his first game, but got absolutely
battered around in the second inning of this game including giving
up a grand slam to Brad Wilkerson in the process. Tomo Ohka, Scott
Stewart and the Expos went on to win 10-0 while allowing only one
hit (by Cliff Floyd) to the Mets in the process. I have to admit
that I ended up going against my religion by being forced by my two
friends to leave the game in the 7th inning to get a head
start on enjoying the nightlife (I’ve already noted how badly that
went for me). I absolutely abhor leaving a game early no matter
what the score is at the time, but I wasn’t about to find a taxi on
my own in a foreign place where not everyone speaks English. As it
turns out, that would not have been a problem, but I did not know
that at the time.
In the second game, the Expos were
once again victorious by the count of 5-4. My buddy Roberto
Alomar’s (even though they didn’t officially give him any errors)
and Mo Vaughn’s shoddy defense helped give the Expos three more runs
than they deserved. It should be noted that the Expos poor defense,
including two errors by First Baseman Jeff Liefer allowed three
unearned runs as well. Livan Hernandez got the win and Jae Seo got
the loss.
The third game was much more
exciting even though my Mets lost again, but this time it took them
10 innings to lose 2-1. The Mets had a 1-0 lead going into the
bottom of the 9th inning, but Benitez gave up a Home Run
to Orlando Cabrera to tie the game up. In the bottom of the 10th
inning, the Puerto Rican fans got to go wild because Jose Vidro, one
of the hometown favorites, won the game with a Home Run against Mike
Stanton. Although the results weren’t the way I wanted them, I was
still excited about how great this whole experience was for both me
and the Puerto Rican people at the games.
Overall, the Home team Expos won
all three games, which isn’t what I was hoping for, but I wouldn’t
trade the experience I had in Puerto Rico for anything. If you get
the chance to go, do it. The people, the stadium and the atmosphere
are all worth the trip! |
