A Night With the Cyclones

Few things beat a Brooklyn Cyclones game on a fair June night, as far as untarnished New York summer joys go. I look forward to my first game of the season every year.

They have Brooklyn Lager in cans this year, as well as on tap, which is an improvement. (Buy why must you hunt and search for the one stand that has the taps, while Bud and Coors Light are at every stand?) Still waiting for them to get some Six Point in. Then they could actually earn that big poster that brags about "craft beer."

Like amusement parks and state fairs, ball parks seem to implicitly give everyone license to eat badly. Corn dogs, cotton candy and, of course, fried dough with butter, cinnamon and sugar. Me, I head for the Glatt Kosher food stand, where the chow is better, or, at least, more in tune with New York.

One of my favorite sights at the Cyclones ballpark is the Daily News stand, which is always manned by an absolutely enormous, and peaceful-looking man, as unmovable and content behind a folding table as Jabba the Hutt. He hawks subscriptions to the tabloid, though I've never seen him utter any sort of pitch or witnessed anyone sign up. He's the very picture of the type of old-school newspaper union man you'd expect to sell you a subscription to the News.

Don't come to the game without cash, and don't come with any fancy ideas about ordering special stuff on your dogs.

On some nights you get lucky and there are fireworks. This adds to the usual nightscape of neon provided by the Wonder Wheel, Cyclone, Parachute Jump and other rides.

Watching the people watch the fireworks can be fun, too.