A trip to Citi Field

13May09

Disclaimer: I have a really crappy cameraphone.

The more perceptive of you may have noticed that I’m a Mets fan. I grew up following the team, though I fell out of watching sports in college. I quickly picked it back up when I moved back to New York, and I haven’t stopped since.

Why the Mets? Same reason most other people follow a team; they’ve been my team my whole life. The only way I’d stop being a fan of a team is if they pulled some crazy, stupid real-life political messiness. Thankfully, the Mets tend to leave their messiness on the field, so I remain a fan, despite all the daggers they stick in my heart.

They’re a strange team to follow. They’re certainly not the #1 team in town, but you can’t be an underdog with the second-highest payroll in baseball. So they’re in this quasi-world of not being good enough to be the clear favorites, but not being downtrodden enough to be a plucky fighter. They’re not the sexy cheerleader or the big bully; they’re the snot-nosed little brother of the rich, obnoxious, and most popular girl in school.

A team in a large market has so many fans, so much revenue, and so many expectations that they tend to spend freely, especially in free agency, and hire a team of mercenaries. While it must be annoying to be a fan of a small-market team and watch the local homegrown talent always flocking to the coasts for the big bucks, it doesn’t seem to work out to well for the big spenders.

Even the Yankees didn’t win four straight championships by snagging every free agent they could. They did it on the backs of homegrown talent. It was only after they started spending freely on the likes of Giambi and Damon that they started to stall in October.

The Mets are no stranger to this phenomenon of spending, but since they’re notorious for poor scouting (over the last few years, we’ve shelled out big bucks for the likes of Robbie Alomar, Mo Vaughn, and Tsyoshi Shingo, while saying goodbye to Scott Kazmir and Heath Bell), they’ve become the Wile E. Coyote of MLB. Every year, we get that shiny package from Acme with the best superstar money can buy, and every year, he blows up spectacularly somehow.

So maybe it’s the high drama I like. It’s interesting to see the different flavors of misery the Mets can inflict. There was the torpor of the Howe era, with a team that once took home league championship hardware unable to fight back with any passion or spark. There was the tragedy of 2006, which ended much sooner than we wanted. And there’s the absurdity of today’s team, where a bunch of talented players find incredible new ways to lose, with the inevitability of gravity.

Anyway. All this to say that I made my first trip to the Mets’ new digs last night. I’ve been to quite a few games at Shea (I’ll estimate about forty, over the span of twenty years and change), and as dumpy as it was, it felt like home. It was that torn-up pair of jeans you had in high school. Unpresentable, but comfortable.

But we all must grow up and cast aside childish things, and there’s a construction zone where Shea used to be. I understand there’s going to be parking there, although they’re leaving home plate. Good move.

Shea was a technological wonder (did you know that the field level seats were on rails, and moved parallel to each other for football games? You can find out all sorts of trivia about the Mets’ one-time eighth wonder of the world here, which is where I got the picture above), but Citi Field is a welcome update.

Of course, it’s going to feel like a visitors’ ballpark that just happens to be your home stadium for now, and maybe that’s going to last for awhile. But there’s enough attention to detail, that I don’t think the transition is going to be difficult. For example, Citi Field’s foul poles remain obstinately orange. It and Shea are/were the only major league stadiums with non-yellow foul poles.

There’s also the Apple. Man, I love the apple. If you don’t know, the Mets’ slogan for the 1980 season was, “The Magic is Back.” (They went 67-95 that year, so I’m a little fuzzy as to exactly what kind of magic had returned. I’m thankful that magic left six years later.)

That year, the team installed a large, upside-down top hat just beyond the center field wall. Every time a Met hit a home run, a huge apple flashing the Mets’ logo would rise out of the apple. It was just about the tackiest thing you could see, but it hit just the right level of kitsch for the team. When they announced that the apple would not be moving to Citi Field, the fans all but threatened self-immolation.

Management buckled. They installed a huge home run apple in the batters’ eye in center field, and moved the original apple behind Citi’s center field wall, in a little party area. After the game, fans can walk up to it, touch it, and take pictures. It’s nice to be able to make contact with a childhood memory.

At this point, I have to talk about the stadium food. Oh, man, the food. They clearly wanted a “foodie” feel to the stadium, and they got it. You can have breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Citi, and still want to come back for more. It’s the polar opposite of the slop they served at Shea.

I had a Shake Shack burger, while my brother had tacos. Both are very good, miles beyond regular stadium food. We followed it up with mayo-dipped frites and a hot chocolate. Next time, I might try the brick-oven pizza.

The main food court is beyond center field, although, unlike Shea, you can always see the field as long as you’re on the field-level concourse. A small bridge (modeled after the Hellgate bridge) from the stadium leads to the main food court, with the Shake Shack, Blue Smoke barbeque grill, the taco place (Keith Hernandez raves about it during Mets telecasts) and a host of other surprisingly good eateries. There’s also a kids’ area with a wiffle ball field (modeled after Citi Field) and lots of tables and benches where you can eat.

One awesome bit of detail is that when you’re in the food court, you’re facing the opposite side of the huge center field scoreboard. Rather than just have blank space, there’s a large jumbotron there, so you can continue to watch the game, even if you’re on line for a hot dog.

The sound of the stadium is much more pleasant, too. Shea veterans will recall that the speakers were all out in the batters’ eye in center field. The sound arrived at the fans’ ears swooshy, because it kept getting caught in the wind. Citi Field’s speakers are all along the stadium structure, so the sound is actually coming from behind you. That means it’s better-sounding and nowhere near as imposingly loud, while still being fairly clear (it sounded a little digitally data-compressed, like a suboptimal cellphone connection). A definite improvement.

The ushers and vendors behave differently. They’re not surly or rude like the Shea employees. Maybe it’s just new stadium glee, and maybe it’ll fade by next year. But it’s nice to have for now.

Oh, and the game? Mets beat the Braves, 4-3, in the 10th inning on a bases-loaded walk. That doesn’t quite make up for 1999, but it’ll do.

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