9/18/2009
Citi Field in Queens is the brand new home of the New York Mets. Like Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, it opened this year and is beautiful. It replaced the aging Shea Stadium to much fanfare, though by most accounts, anything would have been better than continuing to watch games at Shea.
I got there by taking the 7 train from Times Square – a true New York experience. This is probably the best way to get there, as New York drivers are quite aggressive and parking is expensive. All of the maps on the Subway still refer to the stop as “Shea Stadium” and the station itself is now called “Mets Baseball,” as the City decided against the expense of re-doing all of the signage.
As soon as you get off the train, you are greeted with the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, which is the signature element of the stadium. Inside, there are pictures and quotes of the American hero, as he broke the color barrier in nearby Brooklyn. This area of the stadium tries to pay homage to Ebbets Field and the Brooklyn Dodgers, and does a nice job acknowledging New York’s baseball past. This would all be awesome if the Dodgers played at Citi Field, but they don’t. The Mets do, and it isn’t their history, it’s the history of a team that plays 3000 miles away.
The Mets history is adequately represented, but not as prominently as the Brooklyn Dodger history in the rotunda. The markers of Shea Stadium are in the parking lot, so you can stand where home plate and the pitching rubber was. The old home run apple from Shea Stadium is on display in a concourse, and the skyline from the old scoreboard hangs above a concession stand in Center Field.
However, nothing about the stadium really screams “the Mets play here.” What I absolutely loved about the new parks in Detroit and the Bronx, was that there was absolutely no doubt that you were about to see a Tiger or Yankee game. Here, you’re not quite sure if you’re going to see the 2009 Mets or the 1947 Dodgers. Which might actually be a good thing because the 2009 Mets, well, suck. The only real thing that you can point to is the giant home run apple in center field that rises whenever a Mets player hits a home run, but it seems that’s happening only about once every two weeks these days.
Citi Field DOES have all the great amenities of modern stadiums. There is about as big a selection of food as there is at Yankee Stadium, and a Shake Shack in Center Field. I had a Shake Shack burger, because they are all the rage. Usually there are lines that last innings to get one, but since the Mets are now mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, there were minimal lines. The Shake Shack is sort of becoming New York’s answer to In n Out Burger. It’s an OK burger, but I wouldn’t wait the hour in line for it like some people have reported. I prefer the Double Double.
The field of play at Citi Field is massive, and the Mets offense has paid the price this year, hitting noticeably fewer home runs. Tonight, David Wright tattooed a ball to left-center field, but because the distance out there was 384 feet, it fell just short of the wall for an out. It would have been a home run in any other ballpark.
Citi Field is a beautiful, beautiful new ballpark, but kind of lacks a soul at the moment. Something about the place just didn’t feel very comfortable to me, maybe because of the fact that the naming rights for the place is being funded by the American taxpayer. It may just need time, and a few good Mets teams (that might take a while), but it just doesn’t feel like the “Home of the Mets” to me. I liked it, but it could use a few tweaks.
All my photos from Citi Field are here, but please forgive the quality. The battery on my camera died, and I was forced to use the iPhone for pictures.
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