I'd bought tickets for the game for two reasons: One, I'm a Mets fan, but two, the team was giving away a bobblehead. I'm hardly a collector of bobbleheads. I own four — two are accumulating dust on my work desk, and the other two remain in their original box, sitting on a shelf in the back of the closet.
But for whatever reason, I was drawn to this one:
RT to enter to win a @MrMet on the moon bobblehead!— New York Mets (@Mets) July 22, 2019
The first 25,000 fans this Saturday will get their very own. https://t.co/iXmLdNwjWp pic.twitter.com/R2ObvdYv2w
Mr. Met on the moon! The bobblehead, as you may have realized, commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. I wasn't alive in 1969 so I can't say with any degree of certainty that Mr. Met actually walked on the moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, but ya gotta believe, right?
The Mets were handing out the bobblehead to the first 25,000 fans in attendance. I was confident I would be one of those 25,000 fans, even though I would arrive late because of a prior commitment.
I met my friend outside the ballpark 15 minutes before first pitch. We waited on the security line. We waited on another line to have our tickets scanned at the gate. We waited in a third line to receive a bobblehead.
We saw an employee hand out one bobblehead from a large cardboard box, and then another and then another. As we approached him, we could see inside the box. It was empty. We looked to our left and to our right: Other employees had empty boxes, too.
Flushing, we have a problem.
The Mets ran out of bobbleheads. My friend and I were, quite literally, the 25,004th and 25,005th fans to enter the ballpark.
I couldn't believe it. I was so close to owning a Mr. Met on the moon bobblehead. One small step and one giant leap away from owning a Mr. Met on the moon bobblehead.
I'm really kicking myself over that one. That bobblehead would have looked so nice sitting in the back of the closet.
