How to Go to a Brooklyn Cyclones Game -- 2017 Edition

Brooklyn's Borough Hall

The 2017 season of the New York-Penn League -- formerly the Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York League, or "PONY League" -- gets underway next Monday night. As they have since 2001, the Staten Island Yankees and the Brooklyn Cyclones, New York City's 2 minor-league baseball teams, open their season against each other, first at one team's park, then the next night at the other's. This time, it's at Staten Island on Monday, and at Brooklyn on Tuesday. Both games start at 7:00 PM.

Before You Go. It's New York City. The weather and the time zone are the same.

Tickets. The Cyclones averaged 5,614 fans per game last season. That not only led the NYPL, but was over 1,300 more than the next-highest figure. You should order your tickets online, rather than just showing up on the day of the game and hoping forn the best.

All tickets are $17. So much for affordable family entertainment.

Getting There. It's 19 miles from Midtown Manhattan to MCU Park. If you're driving, take any route that gets you onto the Belt Parkway, then get off at Exit 6. Cropsey Avenue becomes West 17th Street, and leads right to the ballpark.

If you're taking the Subway, take the D, F, N, or Q Train to Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue, supposedly the largest subway station in the world, and celebrating its 100th Anniversary: It opened on September 5, 1917. Turn left on Stillwell, walk 1 block south to Surf Avenue, turn right, and walk 3 blocks to the ballpark. The address is 1904 Surf Avenue.

Stillwell Avenue Terminal

Once In the Borough. The Dutch settled what is now Brooklyn in 1636, naming it for a city in The Netherlands, Breukelen. Kings County was named for King Charles II, monarch of Britain when they took over from the Dutch in 1664, but the Dutch name "Breuckelen" (as it was spelled here) stuck. The Battle of Long Island was fought there in 1776, and the British Army almost wiped George Washington's Continental Army out, before they could escape. The U.S. reclaimed New York in 1783, and Kings County and it became the City of Brooklyn in 1834, and after 1898 the Borough of Brooklyn.

About 2.6 million people live in the Borough, making it, as the famous sign that used to be at the Brooklyn end of the Manhattan Bridge (now in Borough Hall) said, the 4th largest city in America. About 25,000 of those live in the Coney Island section. Landfill for highway construction turned the island into a peninsula in the 1920s. Aside from the fact that the Dutch came up with it, the source of the name "Conyne Eylandt" is in dispute. The leading theory is that "conyn" is Dutch for "rabbit," and there were then wild rabbits all over the place.

ZIP Codes for Brooklyn begin with the digits 112. The Area Code used to be 212, but in 1984, Area Code 718 was split off to serve Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. The Bronx joined it in 1992. 718 is now overlaid by 347, 917 and 929.

Going In. Named for the Cyclone roller coaster, which opened 90 years ago in 1927, 6 blocks to the east at 834 Surf Avenue, The Brooklyn Cyclones had been a Toronto Blue Jays farm team in St. Catharines, Ontario before moving to New York City. They were the Queens Kings, playing at St. John's University, in 2000 before KeySpan Park opened on June 25, 2001, giving Brooklyn its 1st professional sports team of any kind since the Dodgers packed up Ebbets Field in 1957, 44 years earlier.

Brooklyn Union Gas was founded in 1895, and was an iconic name in New York City, before the 1998 merger with the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) resulted in the creation of KeySpan. The company bought the naming rights to the Coney Island ballpark, sort-of connecting it to Brooklyn's past, just as references, both overt and covert, have been made to connect the Cyclones to the old Dodgers and the early Mets. In 2010, the Municipal Credit Union bought the naming rights, and it has been MCU Park ever since.

The ballpark was built on the site of Steeplechase Park, the legendary Coney Island amusement park that stood from 1897 to 1964. Standing over right field is the Parachute Jump, moved there after it was used at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair. It is no longer a functioning ride, but a serious renovation has ensured that it is no longer in danger of collapsing and killing someone.

Beyond the left field fence, the Cyclone.

Beyond the right field fence, the Parachute Jump.

Beyond that, Coney Island Channel and the Atlantic Ocean.

Parking is just to the west of the ballpark, and spaces are $6.00. Seating capacity is 7,000. The ballpark faces southeast, away from The City but toward the sea. Sadly, the field has been artificial turf since 2013. It is a hitter's park: 315 feet to left field, 412 to center, 325 to right. I can find no record of who hit the park's longest home run so far.

Oddly, the baselines have zigzag roofs,

much like the bleachers at Dodger Stadium,

the Los Angeles home of Brooklyn's former baseball team.

The Cyclones are now managed by Edgardo Alfonzo, 2nd baseman for the Mets' 1998-2001 dynasty-that-never-was. His brother Edgar was the team's 1st manager.

In addition to the Cyclones, New York University (NYU, NCAA Division III) plays its home baseball games there. This year, after 4 years at Hofstra University on Long Island, the reborn New York Cosmos began playing there.

Soccer setup

The park has also hosted professional wrestling cards. Concerts have included Phish, Def Leppard, Daft Punk Snoop Dogg, Furthur (with former Grateful Dead members Phil Lesh and Bob Weir), and Yo La Tengo, a band made up of Met fans and named for an incident with the original 1962 team.

Food. You would think that a ballpark in Brooklyn -- especially at Coney Island -- would have great food. Fortunately, you would think correctly. Both baselines have concession stands loaded with good stuff, including The Premio Sausage Stand behind Section 1, The Brooklyn Original Chopped Steak Sandwich behind Section 2, Arancini Brothers' Italian food, and Mini Melts -- their name for the desert sometimes also called Dippin Dots, Ittybitz or Molli Cools.

And, of course, they have the food permanently identified with ballparks, hot dogs. Of course, it's the hot dog permanently identified with Brooklyn in general, and Coney Island in particular: Nathan's Famous. I've never been a fan of Nathan's hot dogs -- or "tube steaks," as some people like to call them -- but I love their crinkle-cut French fries. Sometimes, if I'm watching the Devils at the Prudential Center or soccer at Red Bull Arena, I'll get the fries, load them with ketchup, and make a meal out of just that. The original Nathan's stand, greatly expanded from its 1916 opening, is 3 blocks east at 1310 Surf Avenue, about halfway between the Cyclone and the Cyclones.

Original Nathan's. Come in and get fat.

Team History Displays. The Cyclones won 5 Division titles in their 1st 10 years: 2001, 2003, 2004, 2007 and 2010. However, they haven't won any since. In their 1st season, 2001, they had advanced to the Final of the New York-Penn League Playoffs, and traveled to Pennsylvania and beat the Williamsport Crosscutters in Game 1. They were scheduled to play Game 2 at home on September 11. The series was never resumed, and the teams were declared Co-Champions.

That's the closest the Cyclones have ever gotten to a Pennant. There is no outward display of these honors in the fan-viewable areas.

The press box at MCU Park has a series of 10 honorees and their numbers:

* From the Dodgers: 4, Duke Snider; 14, Gil & Joan Hodges (Joan Lombardi was from Brooklyn, and because of her, Gil stayed there after retiring as a player); 17, Carl Erskine; 36, Don Newcombe; and 42, Jackie Robinson.

From the Cyclones: 6, Danny Garcia, a 2nd baseman briefly called up to the Mets in 2003 and '04, making him the 1st former Cyclone to reach the major leagues; 19, Brain Bannister, who reached the Mets in 2006, then pitched 4 years for the Kansas City Royals; 20, Dillon Gee, who pitched for the Mets from 2010 to 2015 and is now with the Texas Rangers; and 35, Ángel Pagán, an outfielder the Mets sold to the Cubs before reaching the majors, played for them in 2006 and '07, got back so he could be a Met from 2008 to 2011, won the World Series with the San Francisco Giants in 2012 and '14, and led the National League in triples in 2012.

Of these numbers, all are still available to be worn by Cyclones players, except for Hodges' 14 and Robinson's universally-retired 42. Also unavailable are 31, 37 and 41, because, like Hodges' 14, those numbers have been retired by the Mets, for Mike Piazza, Casey Stengel and Tom Seaver, respectively. (The Yankees do not do this for Staten Island: A "Baby Bomber" who wants to wear Derek Jeter's 2, Babe Ruth's 3, Mickey Mantle's 7, and so on, may do so.)

There's also a sign honoring the Dodgers' 1955 World Series win, and a sign calling the broadcast booth "The Catbird Seat," in honor of Dodger announcer Red Barber, who called his perch at Ebbets Field that.

Previously, that press box also held a tribute to the last game at Ebbets Field, on September 24, 1957, including mentions of Danny McDevitt, the Dodger pitcher who shut the Pittsburgh Pirates out that night; and Rube Walker, his catcher, who became a longtime Met coach. That display has since been removed.

Behind the home plate entrance is a statue honoring Robinson and Harold "Pee Wee" Reese, simulating the incident in Cincinnati in 1947 where the Reese, the Southern-born Dodger Captain, silenced the rednecks by putting his arm around his teammate, the 1st black player in modern baseball. There are some who say the incident never happened, and even Jackie's widow, Rachel Robinson, believes it might not have. But the statue is there, a symbol of baseball's brotherhood.

While not connected to the Cyclones, the ballpark also has the Brooklyn Wall of Remembrance, The City's 1st tribute to those lost on 9/11.

Stuff. The Cyclones have a team store on the 3rd base concourse, with items connected to them, the Mets, and the old Dodgers. Included are 2 books about the team's beginnings: When Baseball Returned to Brooklyn: The Inaugural Season of the New York-Penn League Cyclones, by Ed Shakespeare (no relation to William); and The Brooklyn Cyclones: Hardball Dreams and the New Coney Island, by Ben Osborne.

During the Game. It's not Yanks-Sox, or even Mets-Phillies. Even for a Cyclones-Baby Bombers game, your safety should not be in danger.

The Cyclones hold auditions for National Anthem singers, instead of having a regular. Their mascot is Sandy the Seagull, possibly named for Brooklyn's greatest native baseball legend, Sandy Koufax, or maybe just for the sandy beaches of Coney Island. Previously, I thought he was an eagle, named for the long-gone newspaper, The Brooklyn Eagle.

After the Game. There are lots of restaurants nearby, and gobs of food available on the Boardwalk. And, since the Subway runs 24 hours, you can take your time getting back to wherever you're going, which is unusual at a ballpark.

Sidelights. MCU Park is 19 miles from Times Square, 7 miles from the site of Ebbets Field, 16 miles from Citi Field, 20 miles from Yankee Stadium, 24 miles from the Meadowlands. The Mets, as you would expect, are more popular there than the Yankees. But despite the Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island connections, the Giants are more popular in Brooklyn, and in Coney Island in partiuclar, than the Jets; the Rangers more popular than the Islanders; and, despite having staked out the Borough as their own, the Nets are not more popular there than the Knicks.

Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn is where you can find several early baseball legends, including "The Father of Baseball," Henry Chadwick, America's 1st great sportswriter. (But not, as was long believed, the inventor of the box score.) His gravemarker is one of the more elaborate you'll ever see. So is that of James Creighton, the early player who appears to have been the first pitcher to purposely throw hard, thus inventing the fastball. He was the 1st real baseball superstar, but no sooner had he achieved that status than he died of causes still debated -- at age 21, in 1862. Charles Ebbets, Brooklyn Dodger owner and ballpark builder, is also buried there.

Non-baseball personalities buried there include composer Leonard Bernstein, longtime New York Governor and Senator DeWitt Clinton, sewing machine inventor Elias Howe, Constitution signer and 1st New Jersey Governor William Livingston, legendarily corrupt New York political boss William Tweed, painter and telegraph inventor Samuel Morse, abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher, artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, both Nathaniel Currier and James Ives, Louis Comfort Tiffany, mobster Albert Anastasia, actor DeWolf Hoppper (whose onstage recitation, in those days before most people had record players, popularized "Casey at the Bat"), Wizard of Oz portrayer Frank Morgan, piano manufacturers Henry and William Steinway, and songwriter Fred Ebb, who wrote the lyrics to "Theme From New York, New York." (You know: "Start spreadin' the news... ") Also the parents, uncle and first wife of President Theodore Roosevelt. And the namesakes of 2 of the major components of New Jersey's Rutgers University: Revolutionary War hero and philanthropist Henry Rutgers, and educator Mabel Smith Douglass. 500 25th Street, Brooklyn. N train to 36th Street.

Cypress Hills Cemetery straddles the Brooklyn-Queens "border." It is the final resting place of Jackie Robinson. An earlier Brooklyn baseball star buried there is Bob Ferguson, who, by the standards of his time, was such a good fielder he was known as "Death to Flying Things." It's also where you can find late 19th Century heavyweight champion Gentleman Jim Corbett, jazz pianist Eubie Blake, and actress Mae West. In case you want to "Come up sometime and see me," it's at 833 Jamaica Avenue. J to Cypress Hills.

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