I stumbled into Shea Stadium just after 10 a.m. last Monday, successfully beating the traffic that would soon envelop Flushing. It was the Mets' home opener -- against the Braves yet -- and the fans would soon be showing up by the tens of thousands.

I am hardly a Mets fan, mind you. I root for the other New York team, the one that's won a few important ballgames over the years. Still, here I was at Shea, bright and early, wearing a Mets cap and a bright-yellow shirt with a Mets logo.

What was I doing? Just trying to make a few bucks hawking 20-ounce Pepsis in the far reaches of the upper deck, way out in leftfield.

Now, I've had a few food-service gigs in my time. Busboy at 14, promoted to waiter soon thereafter. Bartender, barback -- if it has to do with food or alcohol, I've pretty much been there, done that.

Never vended before, though -- and I wasn't missing much. The job pretty much sucks.

When my parents whisked me off to college a few years back, I don't think they envisioned me one day schlepping cases of soda up and down the many steps that occupy the upper deck at Shea. I think they were thinking more along the lines of, say, owning the company that makes those steps. Ah, potential unfulfilled.

But times are tough, and a buck is a buck. So I pulled a few strings, and here I was back at Shea, where I had worked back in the late '80s. But never as a vendor.

Piazza went deep twice, huh? I didn't learn about that till reading the paper the next day, when I also found out the final score (Mets 9, Braves 4). See, a successful vendor never gets caught up in the game. You work strictly on commission. Sell 14 sodas, you walk home with around seven bucks. Sell 250, you've made a cool $122. The keys: keep your back to the field, your eyes on the potential customers, your feet moving and your voice howling. And there are plenty of worries to keep you from paying even the slightest bit of attention to the game. Namely, that some drunken nut will realize I'm packing a load of cash (we don't cash out till the bitter end), and not packing any weaponry.

So, after the game ended, and I had made my 13% commission (if you must know: $97.50 on 200 sodas), me and my sweat-filled shirt and beaten-up feet headed home, having made two important decisions:

1. In my next lifetime, I think I'll go to business school or law school rather than try my hand in the unstable world of sports journalism.

2. More important, the next time I'm at a game and I hand a vendor four bucks for a $3.75 soda, I'll gladly let him keep the quarter -- and offer him my condolences.

Michael Rubin is a copy editor for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at michaelirubin@yahoo.com.