Well, as it turns out, it wasn’t that mysterious.  It was just my friend Chris who was also at the game and he just wanted to know where I was sitting.  We realized our seats weren’t close, we were lazy, and neither of us felt like walking unnecessarily through the rotunda again, so we decided we’d just see each other at the Yankee game on Thursday.

Sorry.  Lame phone call.  But I had to get you to come back for more.

Just for a bit of a description of this rotunda –  the walls are covered in pictures of Jackie Robinson, all of which are made of ceramic tiles.  The idea was that they would be indelibly burned into the stadium.  Presumably so that 100 years from now, after some disaster has befallen the earth, the apes and aliens who stumble upon the old Citi Field will be able to see remnants of Jackie in the rubble of the rotunda.  And what better way to pay tribute to number 42?

But, seriously, it’s actually pretty cool.

Well, eventually, my friend Mike and I made it to our seats — things got a little more normal.  The Padres opened up the first game at Citi Field with a leadoff home run. And I was like, “Cool.  I can relax and forget all this rotunda business. I know where I am.  I’m at a Mets game.”

But, in the immortal words of R. Kelly, “You’re not going to believe this but things get deeper as the story goes on.”

Mike Pelfrey, who had previously just been having a normal crappy game, actually trips on the mound.  Like on nothing.  Just trips.  Falls.  On the ground.  On his face.  At a baseball game.  While he was pitching.

As if that wasn’t weird enough, after that, a crazed cat, which had apparently fallen out of the sky, ran onto the field. After frantically running in circles and trying unsuccessfully to climb multiple walls to get the hell out of there, he finally makes his escape.

Meanwhile, Daniel Murphy, who’s taking his at-bat, doesn’t even flinch.  Like doesn’t even look in that direction to see what in the hell is the holdup.  Now, I know he’s worried about missing something important (like, say, the pitch) after missing something important (like, say, the ball) the other night.   But if a cat takes the field in the middle of the ballgame and only one guy in the stadium fails to take notice or express anything like alarm, I’m just saying.

As a sidebar, apparently teammates had to physically restrain David Wright who tried to run out of the on-deck circle and follow the cat so he could capture it, take it home, rehabilitate it and nurse it back to health.  (And when he was done I’m guessing he would have dressed it up in little costumes and made a calendar to give everyone at Christmas.)

(While he was unable to save the ailing cat, he did earn the Mets their first home run of the season — a three run shot in the fifth. Well played, Dee Dubs. And, for the record, the new apple doesn’t look like a car overheating.)

I needed a break from all the weirdness and thought that maybe a change of venue for a half inning or so would be a good idea.  We went to get some food, and Mike stopped to use the bathroom on the way.  Unfortunately, our travails began yet again.  When Mike emerged from the bathroom, he looked disoriented.   He reported that the urinals were “art deco and confusing.”  And apparently, he wasn’t the only one who felt this way.  The guy at the urinal next to him, unable to figure out how it worked, turned to Mike and said, “What are these – effin’ star trek urinals?”

For those of you who know what someone who lives in Flushing sounds like, imagine what it would sound like if someone from Flushing had said this.

In an effort to distract Mike from the urinal ordeal, I thought we should try to find some food.  I asked someone who worked there where we might go to do that.  I’m sure you will not be surprised to hear that we were directed to go through the rotunda.

I want to preface this by saying that we were on the Sterling level-these tickets were a gift-so it’s possible that it wasn’t as insane in other areas of the stadium.  All I know is that when we walked into the food court area, I felt like I was in Dean & goddamn DeLuca. I mean, there was a place in this food court where you could buy coffee. No, not a cup of coffee. Like, a pound of it.  To take home.  There were paninis.  Cupcakes.  I was trying to find peanuts, and when I asked the people at the place where I thought they’d be most likely to have them, they said, “No, I’m sorry.  But we have a delightful mix of roasted nuts that we can offer you.”

Come on.  This is baseball.  I wanted the peanuts of the people.

I guess the thinking is that people who come from fancy neighborhoods to watch a ballgame want the experience of being at the ballpark to most closely approximate the experience of being in their fancy neighborhood.  I reject this theory.

As if it wasn’t all already weird enough, we saw a guy who looked like he had literally just wandered off his two year trek in the Himalayas where he had maybe been working as a Sherpa. (He was ordering a veggie burger.)  This is actually when I started to create a theory that the rotunda was something like a lake house, a portal for people traveling from different times and places. It would explain the Sherpa.  And the cat.  Hell, even the star trek urinal.

The rest of the game was more or less pretty normal.  The Mets lost.  First game at the new stadium and they lost.  And a new legacy is born. I was headed out of the stadium with Mike, discussing what the season held for his beloved Mets. We were crossing through the rotunda on our way to the parking lot when I received the following text from my cousin Will, who was also at the game: “You going through the rotunda?”

If I was R. Kelly and this was a video and not a blog entry, I would take this opportunity to stare into the camera with a perplexed look on my face.