Take a Ride on the Cyclone

Main entrance to KeySpan Park, Jul-2001.

The luxury and press boxes sit on stilts behind the main seating bowl.

The Astroland amusement park is right here, as is the ocean.

• Location: Surf Avenue and West 19 Street, Brooklyn, N.Y.
• Opened: 2001
• Home team: Brooklyn Cyclones, New York-Penn League (2001-present)
• Capacity: 7,500

Chronological Tour: Stop 200

Rating: 3 baseballs

Just a few blocks west of the Nathan’s Famous hot-dog stand at Stillwell and Surf avenues sits the newest addition to the Coney Island scene, KeySpan Park. It was built to accommodate a team purchased by the New York Mets in 1999 and moved from St. Catharines, Ont. They played the 2000 season at St. John’s University in Jamaica, calling themselves the Queens Kings, before moving into their new facility in 2001. KeySpan, the naming sponsor, is an energy delivery company whose primary holding is the old Brooklyn Union Gas.

The park, like many others, is built with a lower-level seating bowl and an upper level consisting of suites and the press box. Like Staten Island, there is no mid-bowl walkway. Unlike many other parks, though, the concourse is open (although it’s covered), so if it rains and there’s any wind, there is no sheltered spot. This is similar to the setup in El Paso, but El Paso doesn’t get as many sea breezes and driving rains as Coney Island. A warm night becomes pleasant here; a cool night becomes unbearable. It’s a good thing the season doesn’t start until mid-June.

Two sets of bleachers were added in right field after the season started, to accommodate the throngs that have approached the gates here. Like the rest of the park, they fill quickly on game nights.

There are two attractions here. One is the return of professional baseball to Brooklyn after 44 years. The other is the location, a block from the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent to the Astroland amusement park, which includes the Cyclone roller coaster that gave the team its name.

The park was built to blend into the area, with colored screens for the fluorescent lighting on the concourses mimicking the amusement park. There are sufficient food stands, although a Nathan’s hot dog costs more here than it does down the block at the original stand (and the order of fries is smaller). The souvenir stand is built on two levels (street and concourse). And it’s the first place I ever saw that has a scoreboard with all red lights. Still, the park itself seemed a bit underwhelming. Fortunately, the atmosphere makes up for it. Brooklynites know how to have fun at the ball game.