By SETH KUGEL
Published: June 18, 2006
NYTimes.com

IN New York City, the second baseball season  the budget-friendly, tourist-friendly and kid-friendly game of minor league baseball  starts Tuesday and will last all summer. Think of it as the Off Broadway version of hardball.

For the money it costs to buy a family of four decent seats to take in the Bronx Bombers, about $200, the same family could buy the best tickets in KeySpan Park, the Brooklyn Cyclones’ charming Coney Island home. And there would be enough money left over to ride the roller coaster the team is named for, gorge on Nathan’s Famous hot dogs, visit the New York Aquarium and grapple with candied apples on the storied boardwalk  oh, and buy the best seats in the house to see the Staten Island Yankees play the next day.

Out-of-towners have five chances this summer (July 8-9, July 29-30, Aug. 5-6, Aug. 26-27 and Sept. 2-3) to see both teams in one weekend trip, and to take in some of the city’s best-known attractions.

The Yankees and the Cyclones play in the Class A New York-Penn League. Most of the players are fresh out of college, playing their first professional games and getting paid less than $1,000 a month. But what’s more important is that both teams play in sparkling stadiums that have views of the water. And both serve up the madcap minor league mayhem that keeps the kids (and bored spouses) entertained: theme nights, contests between innings and goofy mascots with names like Scooter the Holy Cow and Pee Wee.

REMEMBRANCE OF TIMES PAST

The team formerly known as the Pittsfield Mets, and still a Mets farm team, came to Coney Island in 2001, capitalizing on local nostalgia for  sigh  the long-lost Brooklyn Dodgers. Many games sell out, but some tickets are almost always available on game day, according to the team’s media relations manager, Dave Campanaro.

Making a full day of a trip to the Rockwellian landscape of Coney Island is never a challenge. In Astroland Amusement Park, there is the Cyclone, perhaps the most famous roller coaster in the nation; for those sensitive of stomach, neighboring parks have a Ferris wheel and go-karts. The New York Aquarium (the city’s only one) is nearby, and the Coney Island Boardwalk writhes with places to get a hot dog or candy apples or a beer (or even a carrot-beet-celery juice). Everything is within easy walking distance. Or, you can laze the day away on the beach, and around game time pick up your towel and stroll to the stadium.

The stadium has about 7,500 seats, all good, and a small museum dedicated mostly to the Brooklyn Dodgers; it is open before, during and after the game. The landmark Parachute Jump, built for the 1939 World’s Fair, looms beyond the right-field foul pole.

For a meal, what else? Nathan’s Famous, is just two blocks away, for hot dogs and crinkle-cut cheese fries. For more formal eating, there is Gargiulo’s, which Mimi Sheraton said in The Times in 1998 was “probably the best outpost of home-style Neapolitan cooking in the entire city.”

A YANKEE STADIUM WITH A VIEW

The Staten Island Yankees play at  take a deep breath  Richmond County Bank Ballpark at St. George, and like their big brothers in the Bronx, they are pinstriped, too. It’s a two-minute walk from the Staten Island Ferry, an attraction itself for tourists who hop on, bask in the view of the downtown skyline and Statue of Liberty, get off on Staten Island and catch the next ferry out. One problem: it’s the same view on the way back.

But not if you hit a Staten Island Yankees night game. By the time you’re on the way back, night has fallen and the skyscrapers are shimmering. The skyline also defines the stadium  it’s always there, past center field. Home runs sometimes appear to arc right toward Manhattan, and with a booster rocket they just might make it.

The stadium also offers free amusements aimed at the stroller set and their older siblings. There is a Moon Bounce and a machine that measures the speed of your fastball; clowns and face-painters roam the stadium at will. Perhaps the best nonbaseball entertainment, though, comes from the unexpectedly mammoth container ships that sweep through New York Harbor just beyond the outfield fences.

There is less to do outside the stadium than at Coney Island, although the memorial to Staten Islanders who died in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is worth a visit. The No. 44 bus from the ferry terminal will take you right to Port Richmond to Denino’s Pizzeria Tavern, a local legend of cheese and crust. The Times critic Frank Bruni has called the pizza “great and merely good, depending on how many toppings it had” (Mr. Bruni found the fewer the better).

Otherwise, Manhattan, and its thousands of choices of restaurant, is a mere 25-minute ferry ride away.