This Morning, I arrived in Port St.Lucie in time to attend the Tigers v. Mets exhibition game.

We flew into Palm Beach International Airport, and we took a rental car up to Port St.Lucie, and saw the Spring Training home of the Mets for the first time in 2017.

The first thing I noticed was a lot of temporary signage for First Data Field, which made sense, considering they changed the name from Tradition Field just a few days ago.

Parking was slightly more expensive than last year, not that it really matters, but $10 does seem somewhat hefty, especially when there is a considerable amount of elderly folks in attendance, and there is no public transit option.

I picked up the tickets at the Will Call windows, and was promptly directed to the First Base side gate.

The security set-up is fairly similar to what you see at Citi Field. There is a “Special Services” line on the left, and a metal detector express lane on the right. One of the guys that was helping continue the flow of traffic directed me and 10 others to the “Special Services” lane, and we weren’t even checked, so I’m pretty sure people are right when they say this whole thing is “Security Theater”.

Once inside, I went to my seat, in Section 203, in the last row, X. The breeze from the row was absolutely amazing, and I thoroughly believe this is one of the better seats at Tradition First Data Field.

The strikethrough of the word Tradition does bring up an interesting point, however. Despite the temporary signage found throughout the stadium, there is plenty of Tradition signage that remains in the ballpark.

Even the tickets, which indicate that the game is played at First Data Field, has the Tradition Field logo directly behind it, which I’d bet will be some of the last vestiges of the old name, as the team probably printed out a lot of cardstock tickets prior to the season.

The game was pretty enjoyable, but in the fifth inning, I was getting slightly hungry, so I tried out Sonny’s BBQ, a place where you can get a pretty tasty Pulled Pork Sandwich. I’m un-sure if this was here last year, but I can easily call this the best grub in the ballpark, which isn’t known for it’s culinary options.

I spent the sixth inning walking around the ballpark, and made my way to the berm for the last few innings of play. Like a lot of other fans, during the last few innings, I cared a little more about soaking up the sun as opposed to closely watching #89 and #93.

Overall, this was a great day at Port St.Lucie. Hopefully tomorrow will have a lot of other exciting and memorable moments.

One of the better bloggers on the Mets blogosphere is Shannon Shark from MetsPolice.com. Whenever news like this breaks, Shannon always writes a humorous post along the lines of “Bloggers write obligatory post about something everybody knows”.

However, I do think it’s important to document and write about this, as I do have some thoughts on this.

According to a Press Release, Tradition Field is no more. Instead of giving the naming rights to Tradition Florida (a small commercial town near St.Lucie) they entered a ten year “strategic” partnership with First Data, a company based in Atlanta, Georgia focusing on payment technology.

I don’t mind the name First Data, but like a lot of people have been saying, Tradition Field just sounded considerably better. This is the fourth name of the ballpark in St.Lucie. To start, the stadium was named after developer Thomas J. White, before switching to Tradition Field in 2004. In 2010, the park was renamed Digital Domain Park, before reverting back to Tradition two years later due to issues with the financials. Now, in 2017, the park has been officially renamed “First Data Field”.

To be completely honest, I’m not going to care much about this after a week or two, and, judging by the 77% of the 1,300+ fans that voted on a Twitter Poll from Orange & Blue Thing, I think it’s safe to say most Mets fans don’t care that much either.

Last but not least in this series of Uniform Recap’s is the Postseason Recap:

Here is a breakdown of the Mets Postseason Uniforms:

• Home White Pinstripes: 1 games out of 1. (0-0 record) Paired with Primary cap.
• Blue Home Alternate: 0 game out of 1. (NOT WORN) Paired with Home Alt cap.
• 1986 Throwback Alt: 0 games out of 1 (NOT WORN) Paired with throwback cap.
• Road Grey: 0 games out of 1 (1NOT WORN) paired with Primary cap.
• Road Blue Alternate: 0 games out of 1 (NOT WORN) paired with road alternate cap.

• And here is a breakdown of the Mets Sept/Oct Caps:
  • Primary Mets cap:  1 games out of 1 (0-1 record)
  • Road Alternate cap: 0 games out of 1 (NOT WORN)
  • Home Alternate cap: 0 game out of 1 (NOT WORN)
  • Original Mets Throwback cap: 0 games out of 1 (NOT WORN)

And that’s that for 2016 Uniform Recaps. I plan on doing a cumulative post within the week, and then it’s off to the 2017 review.

This is pretty cool news!

As someone who used to play MLB The Show a lot, I was always annoyed by the lack of real life elements, with generic signage, regular stadium music, and fans that were automatically triggered to stand up.

All in all, MLB The Show isn’t the most real life experience out there, but year by year, they become closer to that alternate reality. This year, in what has been a long awaited move, The 7 Line Army will be present in the Big Apple Reserve during Citi Field games. I’m curious how the will be able to program the army to appear during certain games, or if they will be present during every game played at Citi Field.

While they probably won’t be programed to wave towels or use thundersticks, this will make the game considerably more enjoyable for all involved. A huge tip of the cap to whoever made this change at San Diego Studios. Now we just need a few posters, a K tracker, and the sign-man…..

One of the questions I always used to hate when I was sitting around the dinner table when visiting family was “Hey, Niko, what do you want to do when your grow-up??” or some version of that.

Even when logging into WordPress, I forgot my password, and the “security question” was “What did you want to be when you grew up when you were a child?”.

Simply put, the future has been a huge topic of discussion for a large portion of my life, and throughout my college admissions process, this topic has been amplified, and I’ve been forced to answer many questions about parts of my life that haven’t even occurred yet.

Funny thing is, like most people, I don’t know where I want to be in a five years, I don’t even know where I want to be in five months. However, I’ve had a good idea. On those college searches, I’ve filled in “journalist” or some iteration of written media on any applicable prompt, and that’s what I’ve told my family and friends. However, there are lot of other areas that interest me, like Public Relations, Hospitality, Customer Service and Broadcast Media.

So, to help me understand career paths, I indirectly signed-up for the Green Careers Lab. I say indirectly because I basically found this program through another Central Park Youth program (both of which I recommend, highly)

The Green Careers Lab, in it’s third year, is run for the main purpose of having professionals in the “green landscape” share their story about their career paths and explain how they got where they got to high school students like me.

One of the many interviews with Park Professionals

Throughout the entire interviews, there were two common themes:

1. Nobody had the same career goals from their childhood, or, in other words, no one had a linear route to their current occupation. There were fragments of their childhood goals, but their goals had all evolved, sometimes evolved because their interests had changed, and sometimes because the atmosphere around them had changed which in turn changed their interests.
2. None of the professionals were 100% settled in. Everyone that talked to us had a lot of experience and for the most part were very gracious and happy with their current setting and routine. However, none of the professionals seemed like they had reached the end of the career journey, and a lot of them had a lot of plans and thoughts for the future.

So what did this all teach me?

Well, it will change the way I answer those dinner table questions. While it might sound somewhat cliché, being open to whatever life gives you, even if it’s something that appears un-appealing right now, is the most important thing one can do in the present. Sure, Journalism might interest me right now in 2017, and I have no plans of stopping. However, in 2020, in some college, I might become interested in Political Science, or TV Production, and I can’t do anything right now to change those natural emotions in the future.

If you live in the New York area and are still in High School, I highly recommend the Green Careers Lab. At first, I was a little un-sure of what dividends the program was going to provide, but, with time, I quickly realized how my career path is considerably less complicated than I thought it was, but so much more complex.

If you have any questions about this program or about careers, email me Niko@MetsPlus.com or tweet me @NikoMetsPlus.

Today is the first official day for Pitchers & Catchers and Injured Players to report to camp in Port St.Lucie, Florida.

As the players filter in, we start to see images from Twitter of guys approaching the backfields, throwing in-front of palm trees, and overall just making me and every other Mets fans looking at these photos wish we were down there.

This Spring Training will bring a lot of competition, there is no set in stone 5 man-rotation, as Robert Gsellman or maybe even Seth Lugo could out-do Zack Wheeler if he performs better in Spring Training.

In the bullpen, we don’t know who will be closing (or who will be setting up if Reed is forced to move into the closers spot during Familia’s suspension.)

In the infield, we don’t know where T.J Rivera will play. He was very strong down the stretch last year, and it would be a shame to waste him by not giving him a starting infield spot this year if he’s able to produce similar numbers in Spring Training.

The outfield is a mess too, as there are six guys looking at three positions, and, there might not even be a bench spot for one of them, so, the outfielders will definitely have their work cut out for them this Spring.

All in all, a very important Spring Training. Unfortunately, it’ll be chopped up a little bit in the middle with the World Baseball Classic, but, it should be an exciting beginning to an exhilarating season.

Personally, I love 20 inning thrillers that go into the early hours of the morning.

Unfortunately, that feeling is not mutual among common fans, and Major League Baseball is recognizing that.

According to rumors around MLB, Major League Baseball will pilot a program in Rookie Ball, (low level minor league) which will speed up the game.

The rule, which is based of a different variant of this “extra-inning speed-up” rule from the World Baseball Classic, will put a runner on second base to start both the top and the bottom of the 10th (and every subsequent) inning.

This rule, according to Joe Torre, will speed up the game and add an extra component into dealing with extra innings. “It’s not fun to watch when you go through your whole pitching staff and wind up bringing a utility infielder in to pitch. As much as it’s nice to talk about being at an 18-inning game, it takes time.” Torre said.

The rule, after being tested in the Rookie League this summer, will be considered for higher levels of play, including the majors.

While there is a lot of opposition from hard core baseball fans, I see this as a positive potential change. This will radically change how managers play in extra innings, and every inning will be important. Coaches and players will no longer be playing for the tie in the ninth, instead, they will be playing for the win.

My only criticism is time that the rule is enforced. The 10th inning is way too early to add an extra baserunner to speed things up. The tenth, eleventh and twelfth are all “early extras”, in my opinion, and, things don’t start to get “slow” until the thirteenth, the same time the rule was implemented for the WBC.

It’ll be interesting to see if this rule change ever takes effect in the big leagues.