The Mets at Citi Field

Baseball is known as 'America's pastime', and a lot of time definitely passed as it took over three hours for the New York Mets fall to defeat in my first experience of one of the country's Big Four sports.

Leaving Citi Field at the game's conclusion, I couldn't figure out why it is that Americans so willingly embrace this game whilst cricket remains so obscure in this part of the world. Both are essentially similar, but there are far more moments of excitement in the British game.

When I first got to the States I learned that our version of football didn't catch on earlier because there was a perceived lack of scoring involved. My experience of baseball posed something of a contradiction to that as there were five scoreless innings in a row lasting over an hour in total. Not much to celebrate there.

Although the eventual score was 5-6 in favour of the Miami Marlins, a ball was hit maybe once every four or five pitches. Compare that to cricket - where nearly every ball is hit and hundreds of runs are scored - and it is hard to see why Americans are in love with this bat-and-ball game whilst entirely disregarding our own.

That is not to say, however, that the game we watched wasn't enjoyable. In fact, we witnessed a bit of Mets history as pitcher Jacob deGrom struck out the Marlins' first eight hitters, thus breaking his team's record and equalling a Major League Baseball record that has apparently stood since 1986.

Thanks to this strong start, the Mets looked comfortable going into the final few innings but somehow the team from Florida managed to turn the game on its head to secure a 6-5 victory. I can't claim to know enough about baseball to say this with much confidence, but it looked to me as though the removal of deGrom from the pitcher's mound had something to do with it.

Mets rookie Jacob deGrom, wearing a specially-themed jersey to recognise the service of America's veterans (metsmerizedonline.com)

I've been in New York City for nearly a month and in Madison Square Garden and the Arthur Ashe Stadium I've seen two of the more stunning sporting venues this city has to offer. Citi Field could rival them in stature, but not in style.

Although it was an impressive structure, it looked as though the stadium had eaten too many adverts and vomited them all over one of its own corners.

To make matters worse, those parts of the stadium that weren't replaced by advertising hoardings were far from full with people. When I enquired as to why, I got the response that "we suck." It seems the team's own fans agree with Joey Tribbiani's assessment of the Mets on NBC's Friends.

Whilst it's true that the Mets' hopes of making the playoffs are over, it occurred to me that the fact there's a game virtually every night can't help attendance figures. Only the extremely committed (and well-off) could possibly dedicate eighty-one evenings and afternoons to these marathon games of baseball. Either way, the 40,000-capacity stadium couldn't have even been more than a quarter-full.

Although it can be a little slow at times, the appeal of baseball is clear: it is a simple game with a rich history. Even in Britain, the likes of Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio are household names. The New York Mets are not without their 'own' history either, as I found out upon leaving the ballpark.

I write 'own' in quotation marks because much of the celebration surrounds Jackie Robinson, who was a Brooklyn Dodgers before they moved to Los Angeles, and before the New York Mets were formed in 1962.

I must admit that I hadn't heard of Jackie Robinson in a baseball context before last night, but knew something of his significance in challenging the basis of segregation. As it turns out, when the Dodgers played him at first base in 1947 they were the first team to play a black man since the nineteenth century, thus ending the relegation of black players to the Negro leagues.

Robinson would go onto win the World Series with the Dodgers in 1955, before being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame seven years later. His impact was so far-reaching that, since 2004, every player on every team in the MLB wears Robinson's number 42 on 'Jackie Robinson Day'.

Since the Dodgers' move to LA, it seems the Mets have 'adopted' Robinson as one of their own, and it isn't hard to see why.

"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives" - the Jackie Robinson Rotunda