Leave Your Kiddies, Leave Your Wife, Guaranteed To Be A Waste Of Your Time . . .

Let’s say you leave your wife and kids and job and camp out an entire week so that you can be first in line to buy Mets tickets. What game do you get tickets for? Home opener? Interleague action against the Yankees in May?

Nope, not you. Instead, you use that opportunity to get one ticket for what will likely be a totally meaningless late-season game against the Florida Freakin’ Marlins:

Bayside native Eddie Sanchez moved to the Poconos in Pennsylvania three years ago, but that didn’t stop him from vying for the title of “Most Determined Mets Fan”. For 14 years he was number two on line when Mets ticket windows opened on the second Sunday in March, and for the past two years he’s been the first person to buy tickets. This March was no exception.

When the New York Mets opened their ticket windows on Sunday, March 11 to sell single game tickets for the 2007 regular season, Sanchez snatched up the first ticket sold.

Sanchez had waited on line during a week that saw temperatures dip to near record levels, demonstrating his devotion to the National League East Champions. (The Mets missed the 2006 National League Playoff title by one game.) A contractor, Sanchez took a vacation from his wife, three children and his job to trek to Shea Stadium on Sunday, March 4 to secure his place at the head of the singlegame ticket line. On Sunday, March 11 he bought one ticket, for the last game the Mets will play at home during the 2007 regular season on Sunday, September 30, a 1:10 p.m. match up against the Florida Marlins.

. . .

According to Sanchez being the number one Mets ticket-buying fan is easy:

“My secret; take a vacation from your wife, family and job, and be prepared with food to last you for a week. Yes! You must also love the Mets.”

Imagine Paying $400 To Watch A Meaningless September Game Against The Devil Rays’ 40-Man Roster

Apparently not even the huge, gigantic television market can mitigate costs associated with the huge, gigantic payroll and the Yankees will raise ticket prices again:

Starting next year, ticket prices will soar as much as $40 for plum seats and $14 to sit in the nosebleeds, team officials said yesterday.

Reserved seats at Yankee Stadium will run from $17 to $56 for full season-ticket plans, $18 to $61 for partial season-tickets, $19 to $66 for advance purchase for individual games and $20 to $71 on days of games.

In comparison, those same seats sold last season for $17 to $50 for full season-tickets, $18 to $52 for partial season-tickets, $19 to $55 for advance purchase for individual games and $20 to $57 on game days.

. . .

For Yankees fans with more cash to burn, the price of box seats closest to the field will jump $40 to $150. Those seats — which are going up 36 percent in price — are for the first four rows in the sections nearest to home plate and are sold as part of season-ticket plans.

In the unlikely event any of those ducats are available for sale for individual games, they would be priced at $300 in advance and $400 on days of games.

No word on whether beer prices will go up again like last season.

How About The “William A. Shea ATM” — Sorry — The “William A. Shea Citibank ATM”?

Even if Bill Shea loses out entirely, at least Jackie Robinson will get a rotunda:

A rotunda honoring the life of Jackie Robinson, Citibank A.T.M.’s, a 41 percent increase in concessions and enough restaurant capacity to feed 3,134 people are among the features planned for the Mets’ new ballpark, Citi Field, which is scheduled to replace Shea Stadium in 2009, the team announced yesterday.

Gov. George E. Pataki, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other politicians joined the Mets’ principal owner, Fred Wilpon, and several team officials and players yesterday for a ceremonial groundbreaking on a new 42,500-seat stadium. The design for the stadium is inspired by Ebbets Field, the former home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and is expected to cost nearly $800 million.

Under a 20-year sponsorship deal with Citigroup, the stadium will be named Citi Field, displacing the name of William A. Shea. Shea, a lawyer, helped bring National League baseball back to New York in 1962, five years after the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants left. Shea Stadium opened in 1964.

The Mets have encountered some criticism for not naming the new stadium for Robinson, the Dodgers legend who broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947, but Wilpon said fans would be welcomed into the soaring Jackie Robinson Rotunda, inscribed with this quotation from Robinson: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” The rotunda will include a statue, still to be designed, and an exhibition on Robinson’s life.

A rotunda is a very thoughtful way to remember the man who broke the color barrier in baseball. Almost as thoughtful as a plaza.

Laura Branigan “Most Inspirational”? Only In The Twisted Mind Of The Marathon Runner

Now playing on that marathon runner’s iPod is Laura Branigan*:

For many of the nearly 37,000 participants in the ING New York City Marathon yesterday, iPod-fed adrenaline helped them kick through those grueling final miles.

“I had my go-tos ready for the end of the race,” a 37-year-old physician, Natalie Poppito, said. While scrolling through an 80-song play list that was custom made for the marathon, Ms. Poppito touted “Gloria” by Laura Branigan and “Blister in the Sun” by the Violent Femmes as most inspirational.

Although headphones were noticeably absent from top finishers, Ms. Poppito was one of the many marathoners yesterday who relied on favorite motivational music as the source of that extra burst of energy.

“Music is a huge part of the runner’s routine,” a 40-year-old owner of a chain of health food stores in Arizona who was stretching out in Central Park after the race, Kevin Easler, said. Just two weeks before the race, Mr. Easler’s iPod crashed, engendering what he called “a really anal and uptight planning process.”

Mr. Easler, who said he listens to hard rock and punk music while running, immediately went out and bought a new iPod. When he brought it home, he found the new iPod required an upgraded operating system, which, of course, his computer couldn’t support. “I had to buy a whole new computer and refill my entire music library just before the race.”

For others, music provided a clock of sorts. “My goal was 4 hours and 15 minutes, so I put exactly 4 hours and 20 minutes of music on my iPod,” a 27-year-old elementary school teacher from the Upper East Side who had just finished her second ING New York City Marathon, Erica Selkowe, said. Using her empirical knowledge from 2005, Ms. Selkowe paced the early parts of the race with easy-listening pop and R&B, saving her Beyonce and other upbeat dance music for the home stretch. “I couldn’t sleep last night so I worked on my play list until midnight,” she said.

*Actual lyric:

Gloria, you’re always on the run now
Running after somebody
You gotta get him somehow
I think you’ve got to slow down
Before you start to blow it
I think you’re headed for a breakdown
So be careful not to show it

You really don’t remember
Was it something that he said
Are the voices in your head
Calling, Gloria

Hrm . . .

That Doctor’s Yacht Is Brought To You By . . . Your Knees

The New York Marathon is making local doctors rich:

The marathon is 11 days away, but city doctors specializing in sports medicine are already seeing a run on appointments. Physicians say strenuous pre-marathon regimens, such as 20-mile training runs, can take a toll on the body.

Knee pain is the most common complaint of long-distance runners, the marathon’s medical director, Lewis Maharam, said. Dr. Maharam, who has a sports medicine practice on West 57th Street, estimates that his business increases by an average of 35% in the two weeks before and one week after the annual 26.2-mile race.

This year’s ING New York City Marathon, sponsored by New York Road Runners, is slated for Sunday, November 5.

On the day after the race, Dr. Maharam schedules no appointments. “People come in, and they get a number,” he said. “It’s like a bakery line, stretching down the hall.”

The director of sports medicine at New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia, William Levine, said the marathon is “not very good for your body.”

. . .

Tendonitis and cartilage tears resulting in knee pain are common marathon-related injuries, according to Dr. Levine. “There are patients who don’t really recover, and end up with chronic orthopedic problems,” he said. Earlier this week, Dr. Levine said he treated a patient who ran last year’s marathon and has been experiencing knee pain ever since.

Also seen are more serious problems, such as stress fractures in the hip, thigh, and calf bones, Dr. Levine said. He recalled operating on a marathon entrant who fractured a thighbone in the middle of the race several years ago.