San Diego Padres @ New York Mets (game 2)

The final game of my holiday was this Wednesday evening game.

This time, I arrived  just as the game was getting underway, although I didn't get to my seat until the bottom of the 1st inning, as it took several minutes to get up to the Excelsior Level in the lift and then queue to buy a bottle of water.

I took my hat and coat - which turned out to be a waste of effort, because it was warm throughout and no sign of the drizzle that had been lingering most of the day.  

Today, there were plenty of innings with zero or one run scored - until Manny Machado hit a grand slam for the Padres in the middle innings.  The Mets managed to keep it tight and were gradually eroding the lead one run at a time, but in the end fell short and lost the game 7-4.

As a reward for being at the game where the three million attendance mark was passed, I should be receiving an email containing a discount voucher for a game next year.  It will be interesting to see what restrictions it might have.

After the game, I remembered that you have to go to the wrong platform at the subway station!  For a lot of its length, the 7 line has three tracks: updown, downtown and then an express line whose direction changes depending on the time of day.  If you go to the signposted platform for downtown-bound trains, you get stuck on a local (all stations) train, but if you go to the uptown platform, you have access to the express line's platform.  Not only that, but they run a "super-express" service that calls at even fewer stations than a normal express service.  It only takes 25 minutes to get you back to Times Square in Manhattan, whereas it took 40 on the local train, as there were only 3 out of the dozen or so stops in Queens.