The LoHud Mets Blog

The Diamondbacks’ 5-2 victory last Sunday at Citi Field wasn’t a complete loss, at least for me anyway. In an unexpected turn of events, a friend and I were invited to one of the 54 luxury suites. It couldn’t have come on a better day as the game was delayed more than 2 1/2 hours by rain. I’ve never wished so hard for a game to be played in my life, just so we could enjoy the suite to its fullest. It was music to our ears when it was announced that the game would indeed get played.

So what should’ve been a three-hour affair turned into almost six hours of pure joy, except for the loss of course. It was like heaven itself opened up its pearly gates as we entered the suite. What seemed like a blinding light from the heavens was just the open door of the refrigerator fully stocked with Corona, Heineken, Coors Light and Budweiser. A row of heat lamps hovered over an assembly line of ballpark goodies including hot dogs and sauerkraut, pizza, sliders, chicken wings, french fries, chips and more. So what if all of the food raised my cholesterol levels? It was free!

After sampling every morsel provided, you can lounge on the couch and watch the TV inside the suite.

Or you can go out and take in a great view of the field and surrounding suites. Each suite has TVs both inside and outside, where in addition to watching the on-field action, you can watch the SNY broadcast. With a good pair of binoculars, you can actually look into the SNY booth and watch Ron Darling and Gary Cohen commentating.

Each suite has its own butler service to attend to your every wish. You can watch the game in any one of the leather seats provided and hoist your beers and food on the bar in front of you.

In addition to the amenities of the suite, you also get a great view of the field. The process by which the grounds crew removes the tarp from the field is also interesting to watch.

About a dozen guys start pulling the tarp off and you can see all the water that pooled up on drain off of it. They drag it completely off the diamond into the outfield and then back onto the diamond again.

Then they pull it back off again and start rolling it up.

It’s amazing how quickly they can get the field into playing form after 2 1/2 hours of steady rain.

The only negative about the suite is that it’s virtually impossible to catch a foul ball or even a T-shirt shot out of an air gun. But I’ll make that trade-off.

Sitting in a suite is akin to flying First Class. Once you’ve tried it, it’s hard to imagine watching a baseball game any other way.