Opening Day

5:23 a.m. -- 6 mos., 17 days

My sister told her boss that she was going to the Mets' final opening day at Shea Stadium with her brother and 6-month-old niece.

"Six months?" her boss said. "The kid'll last two innings."

We'll show him, I thought.

M said our first priority would be to keep Baby A alive. I told her that, given our seats, the chance of death by foul ball was remote but that nevertheless I would watch diligently. I added that I would equally protect our child from testosterone- and alcohol-addled fans.

"You won't get in any fights?" she said. I assured her my conduct would meet Gandhian standards.

"Just bring her back in one piece," she said.

We'll show her, I thought.

I've been acculturating her to baseball from the start. In her first month, back in October, she often fell asleep listening to the playoffs and World Series. She loves my San Francisco Giants cap. (Though, truth be told, she seems to love almost any piece of headgear worn by her parents.) I've been singing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" for weeks. We do the "Charge!" call almost every time she has a dirty diaper, though we substitute the word "Poop!" I've even learned to play on our mini-xylophone the Jose Reyes theme song. ("Jose, JoseJoseJose, Jose, Jose.")

Baby A had been to Shea a couple of times last year, in utero, and I seem to recall that she'd responded well. Since birth, she'd gone on lots of outings, though not many with just one parent. Still, my sister would be there to help.

I packed the diaper bag with blanket, Snuggli, extra outfit, two pacifiers, enough diapers for the direst contingency, and the tiny S.F. Giants cap that was her first gift. (From my brother, the hardest of die-hard Giants fans.) Worried our large collapsable stroller wouldn't fit under the seats, I went out the night before the game and paid $20 for a more compact, if flimsy, model. We were good to go.

The plan was to walk the half-mile to our local Long Island Railroad station, then meet my sister at the park. Baby A has ridden the train plenty of times, always either sleeping or looking happily out a window. I planned it so her naptime would come as we boarded the train. I fed her some cereal and left with plenty of time to spare.

Baby A didn't seem to like her initial fitting into the stroller -- maybe its canvas seat bothered her, or its less reclined tilt. But she settled down, and we started off down our steep neighborhood hill. The stroller's wheels veered unaccountably, first to one side and then the next. But no bother. Then, three-quarters of the way down, my brain running through a list of contingencies, I realized I'd forgotten one thing: milk. Criminey. I reversed course and ran up the hill as fast as I could, the stroller rattling and swerving. Baby A seemed rattled herself, but she stayed quiet.

I ran into the house, grabbed two bottles from the fridge, stuffed them in the bag, and set off again. Ten minutes to train time. The walk took ten minutes. I tried to run down the hill, but the stroller careened wildly. Baby A started to fuss. My thigh muscles pulsed, but I kept my clip as steady as the stroller would allow. The day was cool, but sweat pooled in the small of my back.

When we got the station in sight and my heart rate slowed, Baby A decided to break into a full-fledged squawl. She kept it up as walked along the platform past a gauntlet of Mets fans. We happened to walk behind a lone man wearing the jersey of the Phillies, the Mets' opening day opponent. At least five people decided it would be funny to mention that my child must object to his jersey.

We found an open spot on the platform, and she settled down once I stopped panting and removed her from the stroller. The train pulled up, and we sat at the front of a car in the space for wheelchairs. Baby A didn't want to return to her rickety new contraption, but she sat in my lap happily enough.

Then, as more fans poured in at each station, she began to fuss. I stood, but there was no way to move to a window. The car was packed. Faces loomed over and around us. Mewling turned to bawling. Bouncing and singing solved nothing. She kept rubbing her face on my shoulder, her signal for extreme fatigue. But with too little movement and no music, she wouldn't go to sleep. "Must be a Phillies fan," someone said. I smiled thinly. After a longish quarter-hour, the train pulled into the Shea station.

"Any elevators?" I asked a railroad employee on the platform. Nope. A woman behind me offered to carry the empty stroller up the long flight of stairs. I thanked her profusely. "I'm a grandmother," she said, shrugging. On the ramp to the stadium Baby A settled back into the stroller, looking sleepy and stunned.

We negotiated two more flights of stairs, as I found one of the crappy stroller's few benefits: it lifted easily with her in it. As we waited for my sister I rolled the stroller furiously, hoping she'd drop off, but there was too much activity: the parade of fans, MTA employees with bullhorns telling people to buy return tickets, a police dog barking at the bullhorn user.

My sister arrived, and we walked to Gate D to find a massive line created by security's need to search bags and wand patrons. Baby A sat calmly for a while, but as we inched forward and the crowd pressed closer she began to cry. I picked her up and we folded the stroller. Baby A rubbed her eyes and sobbed occasionally. The sun broke through the clouds, and I fumbled in the bag for her Giants cap. I pulled it on, tugged, adjusted -- too small. Baby A began to cry steadily.

The crowd grew denser. The line barely moved. I was sweating again. I thought Baby A might be drifting off when a couple of military jets did the obligatory Opening Day flyover. The crowd roared. Baby A began to give it her full-throated best.

I decided to stand by a couple of cops, away from the crowd at the line's edge. She immediately calmed, though her eyes remained open. A nice cop let us walk through the barriers once my sister arrived at the front of the line. We headed through the turnstiles just as the first pitch was being thrown. OK. Things would be fine once we reached the seats.

We inched past a half-dozen fans into our seats. We sat in the mezzanine reserved level, just under the concrete roof of the upper deck -- good for rain delays, bad for noise. Worse, a speaker sat just above our heads; the public address announcer's every syllable reverberated in our brains. A trio of large young men sat to my immediate left, with, I was dismayed to note, booming voices. Baby A looked fretful.

The stroller fit under the seats reasonably well, but the diaper bag was stuffed at my feet, pressed against the seat in front. The Phils had a couple of men on base. My sister went to get hot dogs. I decided a bottle might put Baby A to sleep. She sucked for a second, and then Oliver Perez dropped in a strike-three curve on Pat Burrell for the third out: bedlam. Baby A paused, then opened her mouth and wailed.

She'd just about settled down by the time my sister returned with the dogs and an $8 beer. But Opening Day crowds are not filled with quiet, contemplative fans, awaiting slow-building moments of baseball drama. They're jacked up, screaming at every pitch. At one point -- I think Luis Castillo had just drawn a one-out walk in the bottom of the first -- my bellicose neighbor issued a full-throated "Hell yeah!" I tapped on his arm and indicated Baby A, who'd responded with a fresh round of screaming. He laughed with delight.

For a couple of minutes in the top of the second, Baby A seemed to calm down. But her eyes were wide open and glazed; she looked comatose. The yells seemed to have no effect. I'd never seen her like that. I checked: she was still breathing. I shook her gently: she moved her head, but her eyes stayed glassy. Then the Mets turned a double-play; the crowd erupted, turning Baby A's mini-coma to a fresh round of screams. I decided to head for the concourse to find some relative peace.

As it turns out, even in its farthest recesses, Shea Stadium is a loud place. We stood on a ramp overlooking the parking lot, but a thoughtfully placed loudspeaker kept us attuned to the p.a. announcer, whose between-innings prattling was far worse than his announcements of each batter. I found a family restroom and changed her diaper. Baby A cried the whole time, drowning out the loudest version of the diaper song I'd ever attempted.

I moved to another section of ramp -- another loudspeaker. A steady stream of fans came out to smoke. Three different people said it was great that I was taking my boy to his first game. Carlos Delgado hit a homer, and the crowd roar sent Baby A into another paroxysm.

I moved half-way up a ramp leading to the upper deck, sitting on the hard concrete in the sunshine, as far away from the smokers as I could manage. Baby A wouldn't lie still. I gave her a bottle; she pulled for one second, then opened her mouth and let the milk drip down her chin. She'd never refused milk. I put the bottle away, stood up, and bounced her until she seemed to head toward sleep. But as soon as I returned to our section, she again began to shake and sob.

I told my sister I needed to leave, and though it was the top of the fourth inning, she gamefully said she'd come with us. We headed down the ramp, and by the time we'd descended a couple of levels Baby A fell asleep. "Why don't I take her and you can watch a couple of innings?" she said. So she stood on a field level ramp, Baby A sleeping fitfully on her shoulder, and I stood in an aisle and watched the Mets scratch out another run in the bottom of the fourth. But I hardly enjoyed it, walking back down the ramp between batters to see if they were OK.

So we put Baby A back in the stroller and headed home. As soon as we got outside the stadium she awoke, apparently refreshed and happy. We had a long wait for the train, but Baby A bobbled happily in my sister's arms. She was delightful for the entire train ride, and cried only briefly on the walk home. She'd never been so happy to walk in our front door. Then she enjoyed a lovely afternoon in her playroom while my sister and I chatted and listened to the radio as the Mets bullpen fell apart.

When the seventh-inning stretch rolled around, I decided, churlishly, not to sing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame."

I've been to 400 or 500 baseball games in my life, and this was my first Opening Day. It also marked the third time in my life that I've left any game before the final out: once when I was 11 (and the game was completed in the 19th inning the next day); once when my prospective father-in-law insisted on beating the post-game traffic; and then Baby A's first game, when I saw about nine batters.

She sure showed me.