What happens when Tales from the Temple wins the lottery, gets drunk, beats its kids and heads to the Big City to make it as a dancer? Well, the answer is obvious – it heads to Citi Field, scores tickets behind home plate, forgets its camera, relies on grainy cell phone pics from a beaten up Blackjack II (note to readers: if you don’t aspire to have an iPhone you can show off to your friends at parties, there is no reason to have AT&T service – well unless you like having your calls dropped 5 times a day while driving between DFW Airport and Downtown).

I’ve attend a few Rangers games since my last post, most recently the finale of the Silver Boot series - aka the one game Houston won - and had to listen to their fans celebrate like they won  four consecutive WNBA titles. My Houston hate has softened with repeated trips to visit my sister-in-law. Similarly, sometimes I find myself losing my hatred of San Antonio… Until I realize that my siblings are honest Americans who live in the well-insulated “white parts” of town and I’m getting as sterile an experience of each city as possible. It’s not the race part that comes in to play – it’s the white man’s love of comforting and familiar malls, strip shopping centers and chain eateries that make me feel like I am just taking a jaunt over to Allen, Flower Mound or another North Texas suburb enduring a melanin famine.

But my treatise on race relations, white flight and the rise of Hispanic consumers will have to wait another day, because I am on the plane to LGA, ready to enjoy the spoils of my surprise one day baseball trip. I found out about this jaunt at the last minute and was bummed to learn that I would be taking a one night trip to the actual LaGuardia Airport. No midtown, no uptown, no taking photos of smiling Chinese people in Times Square. Just me, a client, and the airport.

Meanwhile, I quickly realized that this was the night I was supposed to meet up with several friends – including long –forgotten and now-Kansas-dwelling Nappy Headed Ho – and see the chick from The Wizard sing songs at the Granada. She is to me as old school Liz Phair is to Ioannis (and somewhat to me), so I was pretty bummed as I sold off the ticket and threw some things in a Nike bag.

Aside: I note the bag only because I have another question for the loyal readers. My attire for this trip only required slacks and a polo, meaning that I could ditch the suit/sport coat/assless chaps combo that I usually break out when I need to seal the deal. The wife says that carrying a duffel bag makes me look like a college kid headed to spring break, but here is my defense: (1) I don’t have to fight for overhead bin space because I can smush that bag in and still carry a laptop and (2) I don’t have to deal with wheels, pull handles or flight attendants asking to measure my suitcase. Much like the stadium peanuts issue, I need to know who is right.

As I sulked about the stolen concert, I had no idea that the universe was quickly making adjustments to put me in the 14th row of Citi Field behind home plate to take in a Mets game. I have no Mets affiliation (I mean, they haven’t won since 1986, who would cheer for them?), but I did take a childhood trip to Shea with my father that has served as my benchmark for every stadium I have been to since. For the first and only time in my life, I saw fans who cheered each pitch, watched the game, refused to do the wave, got in fights with each other, started their own chants and generally purchased a ticket hoping to see the team they cared about win a game.

True, their fans were a bunch of foreigners with AIDS, but they easily blew away the Arlington Stadium/Ballpark in Arlington, Ameriquest Field/ Rangers Ballpark yokels that I have come to know and love through my life as a Texas Rangers fan. My baseball weenie did not go to midnight, but it quickly rose and bent mightily towards about 11 o’clock position (sorry, I can only get it all the way up in a committed fan relationship).

Since I haven’t posted in weeks, I am feeling pretty wordy today. Wordy enough to write this post on the plane while flying before the game. I’m taking this time to set my expectations for the evening and make sure I set goals that I can reach with only a client and camera phone in tow.

So, here are my goals for my sexy night at Citifield:

· Find a Big 12/Texas Douche (I’m sorry, but Tech folks have been multiplying so rapidly at Rangers games that it may be time to revisit how we reference douche fandom. For example, I saw a fan at the gym last night with a shirt that read “roses are reds, violets are blue, we beat the horns at home, now go boohoo.” I would have immediately kicked the person wearing this in the dick, but he was busy trying to explain to the woman at the front why his card wouldn’t scan correctly).

· Find out if Livan Hernandez is a zombie corpse being reanimated by dark spirits to kill us all. I could not believe he was the starter I saw listed yesterday – let alone that he is 5-1. I know it’s easy to pitch in NL, but the fact that a dead zombie can do it that well is nothing short of amazing. Speaking of which, I fully expect El Duque to rejoin the Rangers, go 10-3 in the second half and then celebrate the first division title in ten years by eating Nolan Ryan’s ripe brain.

· See Albert Pujols at the plate four times. No explanation needed, but I expect him to wash away the horrible aftertaste of having watched Chris Davis’s season thus far. I haven’t seen a sophomore abortion this disgusting since my high school prom.

· Not see the wave. As you read above, so much of my romanticizing of the early Shea experience came from how into the game I remembered everyone being. Since the only non-Rangers games I’ve been to besides the Mets were in Phoenix and Frisco, I’ve had nothing to ever replace this memory. If the fans suck, text each other or discuss the finer points of the John and Kate divorce, I am going to lose my faith in baseball fans.

· Eat some crazy ballpark food. The first few weeks of the season, I kept hearing about NY stadiums were serving fancy-pants items like diamond-encrusted flounder with poached mermaid-ravioli or ox ribs dusted with the ashes of Saint Peter, so I fully expect to try something wild-ass before the night ends. Let the immigrants and Jews eat the kosher hotdogs (but not the immigrant Jews; they’ve been through enough).

· See a fight. I may be once again letting my childhood view of the world skew things, but I am fairly certain that I saw 584 fights and security ejections in the stands last time I watched this team. Anything less than half of that will be a huge disappointment. Unless they somehow recreate this.

· Boo K-Rod regardless of the situation. As a Rangers fan, there have not been many players I have wanted to see ear-raped by Long Dong Silver more than the members of the Angels bullpen (Shields and this guy especially). For some reason, these assholes would somehow manage to load the bases, hit people and then barely wiggle out of it every single game. Then, K-Rod would, and I may be misremembering, strap his Goggles to his wiener, drop his pants and point both hands in the air while his testicles pressed against the lenses of the goggles. And, because his team was above average and good enough to build a large run differential last year, he has some stupid saves record for barely pitching above average. I am planning to root for the home team, but if K-Rod enters the mix, all bets are off.

· Kiss David Wright. He’s dreamy, and I have always wanted to be on Page Six.

· Find and buy some kind of anti-Yankees shirt, just to say I did. If these are not for sale, I will cry and/or wait to visit Boston. Thanks to my other degree from A&M, I am more than happy to base my own identity around the failure of others. Speaking of which – I NEVER MENTIONED THE DETROIT RED WINGS LOST THE STANLEY CUP HERE. This totally deserves a follow up post that no one will read later.

· Remember to write the follow-up blog post before August. This will be a tricky one, but I have faith in my self to do this. If not, I’ll try to make the North Texas/Ohio season opener plus live blog (warning: may not happen) as interesting as possible.