Citi Field 2013 - still a home run?

Citi Field is the Mets' beautiful stadium that opened in 2009, and my hometown ballpark for my favorite team. But is it still the home run that most people initially thought it was? I first visited in 2011 and finally made it back today - read on for my thoughts on the stadium in general, and how it's aged since my last visit.

First, let's jump back a tiny bit.

Photo by Mr. Kjetil Ree. (Own work) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons

(Sorry - I've been to Shea many times but apparently never took a picture of it myself!)

Shea Stadium, which Citi Field replaced, was a lot like the Mets themselves - the butt of jokes, originally unloved, but it developed a certain charm over the years, and a lot of unique history. Most Mets fans grew a little attached to it, and we were kind of sorry to see it go. (Yeah, kind of - I'm choosing my words carefully here.) Sure, it had an upper deck that was angled about 80 degrees and topped out seemingly about the height of the Chrysler Building, but it also had a giant outfield scoreboard that made a perfect target for Darryl Strawberry and Mike Piazza. The stadium was completely one with the team that played there - it was even fully painted in the Mets colors inside and out at the end. Whenever anyone thinks of the 1969, 1973, 1986 or 2000 Mets, they think of Shea.

All four Shea infield bases are still represented in the Citi Field parking lot, and I finally found them today. We actually parked today in what was center field at Shea.

We Mets fans were still excited to get one of those beautiful new retro ballparks we'd been jealous of ever since Oriole Park at Camden Yards was first built in 1989. Citi Field was designed as a retro-classic baseball-only park that evokes Ebbets Field (former home of the Brooklyn Dodgers), but with modern amenities and great sight lines from every seat - in short, everything Shea Stadium was not.

This is the famous Jackie Robinson Rotunda, modeled off the rotunda at the Dodgers' Ebbets Field. The Mets have defended this Dodger-fest as celebrating a "great American". Technically true but kind of disingenuous. Obviously, Robinson's being celebrated because he was a baseball player - and he's a baseball player that happened to play for a different team. The problem isn't that he's being celebrated - he should be - just that he dominates what is literally the main entrance to the Mets' stadium, and he was a Dodger. Don't the Mets have any "great Americans" to celebrate?

Visually, I have always wished the arches on the exterior extended all the way down the facade (see the exterior pic above), not just the rotunda.

Off to the right in the rotunda is the Mets team store and museum, which are connected. The team store is vastly overpriced but does have an insane amount of merchandise. The museum celebrates the great teams and players of the Mets past (and this solved one of the early complaints about Citi - in fact, the Mets museum is better than the Yankees museum in their new stadium!).

It was always a beautiful park, but in 2011 it didn't feel much like the home of the Mets, with the rotunda, the black walls and trim, etc. Most of the complaints have been well documented, so I won't go too deeply into the rest of them here. I was curious to see what improvements have been made over the past couple years, though, and if any more changes might improve the beauty and atmosphere of the stadium further.

First, there's that black wall - the 16 foot "Great Wall of Flushing" that was the Mets' contrived answer to Fenway's "Green Monster" - though a lot further from home plate. In 2011:

Pretty close to the same view (solely by chance!) in 2013:

Another angle that shows the lower, closer fence:

Personally, I don't like the way they did this. They did need to do something. Classic "jewel box" parks sometimes had fences like this to compensate for irregular dimensions dictated by exterior surroundings, but Citi Field already had a spacious outfield, so the 16 foot wall was really a contrivance that was unfair to hitters. In fact, two of the four home runs we saw today would have been doubles two years ago, but the method used to install the new fence feels like a Band-Aid. It's a brand new stadium that now has two fences because they messed up the first one. It reminds me a lot of the previous Yankee Stadium, which actually had three different outfield fences - but that stadium was fifty years old when that took place, so it was a little more excusable than on a stadium that was just built.

On the plus side, it does help the atmosphere that the new fence is blue.

Interestingly, this 2013 shot is also pretty much the same view as my pano above from 2011! I guess we like this spot - at Citi, none of the seats feel too far away, and on this side you have a perfect view of the scoreboards; from this height you also get a view outside of the stadium over the Pepsi Porch. (A little tip - avoid the first few rows of any section above field level at Citi. The railing gets in the way, and there's a chance the even more intrusive stairway railings could also obstruct your view.)

We had a little adventure today too - a 56 minute rain delay:

That song the organist's playing sounds really familiar, doesn't it? Hint: it's Purple Rain.

Other than this, the weather was very nice. And I don't think it kept many people away - it was sunny before the game and after this passed. I was joking with my wife during the storm that they should have built a dome.

But you will notice how few people are in my 2013 shots, and that brings up another point, which is that I'm a little concerned the Mets aren't making enough money to do proper upkeep. A lot of the stadium was dirtier today than 100 year old Fenway Park was when my wife and I visited a couple of weeks ago, and there were certainly no ushers at Citi to wipe off our seats before we sat down like there were in Boston. Many of the seats were covered in bird poop or just general dust and dirt (from lack of use). A lot of the walkways this time were strewn with garbage and gum or were starting to visibly chip and decay. Weathering and fading of paint is already happening.

I didn't see anyone cleaning, there generally wasn't a lot of staff around and the staff there was seemed apathetic. At the concessions, one clerk was actually eating lunch as she rang me up.

Some of this may be general depression over having such a crappy team and small crowds late in the season. I hope that's all it is, and that next year the stadium will be gleaming (and crowded) again. Shea Stadium went through its ups and downs too; by the early 80's it was already kind of a dump, but in the 90's after a very slight renovation it was actually pretty nice again. The quality of the team does seem to make a big difference to how well the stadium is maintained.

There might be another related correlation too - I'm really curious to know if there's a link between building a new stadium and a decline in team quality. Both the Mets and Yankees have visibly declined in quality since building their new stadiums. The Yankees still have one of the highest payrolls in baseball, but the Mets have gone from one of the highest in the 00's to one of the lowest now, and I have to believe it's because they're having to divert a lot of their (already-lower) revenue to paying off the new stadium.

I left empty-handed from the team store because despite the great selection, prices were literally 60% higher than I could find elsewhere. One example of something I was specifically looking to buy: a Gary Carter Cooperstown Replica Jersey can be had for $89 online, but was $140 at the team store.

No line at the Shake Shack today.

Food is also a big ripoff, and in fact, one fan randomly shouted his own complaint about that to us as we were buying ice cream! $6 for an ice cream cone, $8.25 for a beer. At Blue Smoke, for two sandwiches, one order of fries and two diet Pepsis, we spent $35. Both times I've gone to Citi Field, I've expected to gorge myself on the great food they have, only to end up barely satisfying myself because of the crazy prices. (ProTip: Blue Smoke is better than Shake Shack, though it's possible there's even better food hidden away - there's a lot of "hidden" stuff to find at Citi Field.)

So here are some suggestions I have for making Citi Field better, in case any Mets brass see this:

* Reduce concession and store prices. The Mets seem to be doing all they can to make back the $800 million cost of this stadium - and I haven't even mentioned the extreme amount of advertising! The problem is they are pricing people completely out of the things they need to sell in order to make that money. I might have bought that jersey for $100 or $110, and they'd still have made a profit (I know how much clothes cost to make) - but as it is, they got nothing from me. That's a net loss because the price was too high - you only get the profit when you get a sale.

Prices for baseball in New York have gone completely out of whack lately because of the two new stadiums, and everybody knows it.

* I actually think the entire outfield could use a bit of renovation both to really correct the fences and to make the ballpark an even nicer place. First, increase the slope of the field level seats in left, center and above the "Mo's Zone" in right so they can meet flush with the new fence. Ideally, remove the Promenade seats (the upper deck) in left - no one ever sits there past opening day, and removing that entire deck would make the stadium feel a lot more open. The reduced capacity can be partially made up by the added seats fixing field level would provide (and these seats generate more revenue). That second part may be more of a wish list item, but I think the first part is actually realistic.

* Probably not gonna happen as it's strictly a vanity thing, but add arches all the way around the exterior - I feel like it looks unfinished as it is now (and always has). This doesn't seem like it'd be a huge project - the frame of the stadium appears the same all the way around, and the arches just look like inserts. See here:

Past the rotunda, the facade has kind of a 1960's bus station look without the arches. It's not going to age well.

* Maintain both the stadium itself and standards for professionalism among stadium employees, even if the team stinks. During the lean years, the stadium is the only thing the team has to entice paying customers.

* Paint some more stuff blue or orange. There's still far too much dour black - Citi Field is oddly dark in its color scheme, and it goes towards the place still not feeling "Metsy" enough. It still feels like the people running this team are ashamed of it. At the very least, they don't understand branding - every nook and cranny in this stadium should scream "Mets" - like Shea did. A lot of the black is starting to fade to grey anyway - it needs to be repainted.

Partly I think these are regular sorts of issues that either crop up or make themselves apparent with any new stadium after a few years, and I also think that Citi Field will have a different feel after it's got some history behind it (and a team worthy of it). It still feels almost like the Mets are playing away games here. Even with no further updates to the stadium, that will probably change once the team makes some memories at Citi.

It's still a fun place to be, and I like it better than the new Yankee Stadium (watch for a post on it soon!). It's also incredibly easy to get to by any mode of transportation - people really don't give it enough credit for this! Try driving to Yankee Stadium (I have!) - it's a nightmare by comparison. It takes me 20 minutes to get to Citi from my house, and getting in and out of the parking lot takes literally 30 seconds from parking spot to the highway.

Oh, and I can't complain too much about prices - our tickets today cost six bucks each. It's ironic that the one bargain at this stadium is the price of the tickets to see the game - though that's largely reflective of the quality of the team.

Of course, the Mets lost.