Goal Met: See All NJ/NY Sports teams

Sitting down and trying to come up with 50 goals for a year is not as easy as you think it would be. Once I got up to 30 or so I started to slow down and really struggle to come up with goals that were interesting and actionable (something you can measure with experience or learning). I had thought maybe seeing if I could cross of a few more baseball stadiums from my bucket list to visit all the stadiums might be a worthwhile goal but with kids there was no way to guarantee I’d find the time to accomplish it since the remaining stadiums are in far flung places like Minnesota or Kansas City. That got me thinking about sports and goals and I landed on seeing every NJ/NY based sports team in a 12 month span.

The first step is filtering out what sports to include, and what teams qualify and which teams to eliminate based on location or other factors. I landed on the big 5  (Baseball, Football, Basketball, Hockey, and Soccer) and constrained the teams to New Jersey and the 5 boroughs of  NYC. This eliminated teams like the Bills and The Islanders as they were outside of this scope. I also decided to not cheap out on seats. While I wasn’t going to spring for the $500 seats I also wasn’t going to sit at the top of the upper bowl. If I was going to do this I was going to find a good seat to enjoy the game from.

The list of teams confirmed I set about looking to fit these games into my already hectic schedule. Times when I was in New York for something else I always checked to see if any teams were playing and a few times I lucked out and was able to attend a game as a tack on for some other things I was doing. I also tried to ensure I went to games when the weather was nice. That meant midsummer for baseball and early in the football season. The first time I failed in this was going in early March to a Red Bull game but that was to see Messi. However, he pulled out of the game last minute due to hamstring issues so I sat in the freezing rain and never got to see him play. The second was going to a Jets game in December – I just couldn’t get any of the earlier dates to work because for some reason they had the Jets on primetime a bunch in the first few months and that conflicted with work and events for the kids.

I really enjoyed this goal. I don’t get to many games due to the costs and logistics so I was just used to watching the games on TV (Which, to be honest, is a great way to experience them – 4K on a large flat screen is a pretty sweet experience) so getting out there in the crowds and being part of that energy was really fun. I didn’t enjoy the cost however. Some sports were cheaper than others but they all were pretty pricey. The food and drink was also ridiculously priced and rarely was good enough to justify that cost. Also getting to these places can be a bit of a challenge as traffic into New York is always a problem and the trains/subways  can take upwards of two hours to get to Queens or the Bronx.

I think I’ll go back to relaxing on the couch with my kids watching the games and cheering in the comfort of my home. I’ll still try to go to a few Yankees games a year because I’m a diehard fan but for all the other teams and sports – I’ll see you on my TV screen.