What's the Deal with Seinfeld Night?

I finally went to a professional baseball game in Brooklyn.  I was just six decades or so late.  Adam and I celebrated the real Independence Day by going to Coney Island to see the Brooklyn Cyclones host Seinfeld Night.  I've lived here my whole life and this was the first time I had ever been to Coney Island.  Our first stop was Nathan's, where they would have the annual hot dog eating contest two days later.  We both had real Nathan's hot dogs.  I think the last time I had Nathan's was at the St. Louis airport two years ago.  The real Nathan's in Coney Island was much better.  After that, we walked along the boardwalk for a little bit.  Coney Island was pretty cool.

Nathan's

Coney Island

But let me go back to the hot dog eating contest for a minute.  There's a lot not to like about the hot dog eating contest.  It's not healthy.  It's gluttonous.  I'm opposed to people eating massive quantities of food without appreciating it.  There are people starving in the world, but it's not like the Nathan's executives had a choice between having 500 hot dogs available for the eating contest or sending those 500 hot dogs to starving children in Africa.  But if I was running Nathan's, I would make some pledge to donate a certain amount of food or money that is dependent on the number of hot dogs consumed in the contest.  So the more people eat, the more Nathan's would do to help deal with world hunger.  So while there's a lot not to like about it, I do like hot dogs and I do like competition.  But I would definitely change some things.  These changes all come down to being required to eat hot dogs like a normal human being.  No dipping hot dogs in water.  Buns and dogs have to be consumed together.  I would like to have a mustard requirement, but I can live without that one.  Joey Chestnut ate 70 hot dogs, but no normal person dips hot dogs in water.  No normal person would eat the hot dog and bun separately (you might eat a hot dog without a bun, but if there's a bun, you're eating that with the hot dog).  Let's see how many hot dogs they can eat if they're eating like a normal person.  I'd say the number would be more than cut in half under my rules.

Anyway, we went to KeySpan Park for the game.  KeySpan Park?  You most likely know it as MCU Park, but it will always be KeySpan Park to me.  It was the third annual Seinfeld Night there.  I think the first two were on July 5 (the anniversary of the first episode), but this one was July 2 since the Cyclones were away July 5.  July 2 was appropriate because it's Larry David's birthday.  They were playing the Seinfeld theme in the stadium when we got there.  We got Roger McDowell second spitter bobbleheads.  Unfortunately, we ordered tickets too late to get the J. Peterman package, which would have included a J. Peterman bobblehead and a Make Kramerica Great Again shirt.  They played some clips from the show before the game.  I said they should have played Jerry's stand up routines between innings.  There were contests before the game and between innings that had Seinfeld themes.  After the game, there was an Elaine dancing contest.  The real highlight was that J. Peterman was there.  No, not the real J. Peterman, John O'Hurley was there.  He threw out the first pitch and sang the national anthem.  They announced that fans could meet him between the second and sixth innings.  Unfortunately, by the time we tried to get on line, they decided that the line was too long and cut it off.  So we missed our opportunity to meet J. Peterman.

This was the best picture I got of J. Peterman.  It's him and his son after he threw out the first pitch.

The game had a wild start.  The Cyclones scored four in the first off of Kyle Funkhouser of the Connecticut Tigers.  I knew that name because he was picked last year by the Dodgers with the 35th pick of the draft last year.  He didn't sign with them and then he was picked by the Tigers 115th pick.  So that didn't work out too well for him.  He only lasted the first inning.  Connecticut scored four in the second and one in the fifth.  And that was all the scoring for the game.  Brooklyn had runners on second and third with one out in the bottom of the ninth, but the next two batters struck out to end the game.

Our view for the game

During the game, Adam asked me how many baseball games I've been to in my life.  Without giving it too much thought, I said about 200.  Unless I'm counting wiffle ball games or little league games that I played in or went to watch my friends, that was an overestimate.  So let's limit this to professional baseball.  I know the exact number of Major League games I've been to outside of New York.  It's 41.  And I'm fairly confident that I've been to 19 games at Citi Field and six games at the new Yankee Stadium.  My guess for the number of games I went to at Shea Stadium was around 50.  And I guessed 13-20 at old Yankee Stadium, so let's call it 15.  So that would be 131 Major League games.  I think this was my ninth minor league game.  I'm somewhat confident about that.  So I've been to somewhere in the neighborhood of 140 professional baseball games.

So KeySpan Park was cool.  It's a great location.  You can see all the Coney Island rides in the background.  There's a Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese statue outside the stadium and on the press box, they have retired numbers from the Brooklyn Dodgers and a thing for the 1955 World Series Champions.  But they changed the field to artificial turf a few years back.  I definitely don't like that decision.  I only had a pretzel to eat since I had the hot dog before the game.  I also had a Mermaid Pilsner from the Coney Island Brewing Company, which was pretty solid.  They had a little stand where I was able to get those without much of a wait.  But Adam had a pretty long wait to get nachos.  After my last trip to a minor league game, I ranked most of the minor league stadiums I've been to.  I think I'd slide KeySpan Park in at number 5 after Newman Outdoor Field.

Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson

I'll finish with some Seinfeld-related rankings.  We drove to Hicksville and took the train from there to the game because it gave us more options to get back after the game.  On the drive there and back, we listened to the Banished to the Pen podcast draft of minor Seinfeld characters.  I won't give away anything from the draft in case you want to listen to it, but here's how my draft board would have looked if I had been part of this draft (in reverse order to build suspense):

13.  Lloyd Braun
12.  Bob Cobb
11.  Morty Seinfeld
10.  Mr. Kruger
9.  Kenny Bania
8.  Uncle Leo
7.  Yev Kassem
6.  David Puddy
5.  Jackie Chiles
4.  Frank Costanza
3.  George Steinbrenner
2.  Newman
1.  Jacopo Peterman

They only drafted minor characters, but they should have done one round with unseen characters and one round with aliases.  Here would be my draft board for unseen characters:

8.  Harry Fleming
7.  Cousin Jeffrey
6.  Len Nicademo
5.  Jay Riemenschneider
4.  Corky Ramirez
3.  Dr. Bison
2.  Lomez
1.  Bob Sacamano

And finally, my draft board of Seinfeld aliases:

9.  Paloma
8.  Colin O'Brien
7.  Dylan Murphy
6.  Kel Varnsen
5.  Wanda Pepper
4.  H.E. Pennypacker
3.  Slappy White
2.  Art Vandelay
1.  Martin van Nostrand