Whoa. Our cup runneth over with coverage of the new Mets stadium from our friend Scott Turner, writer, designer and Rocky Sullivan's Pub Quiz planner. As usual this post is sponsored by MissWit
, a Brooklyn tee-shirt company.
Greetings, Pub Quiz Carrie Prejean Society Members…
Meet the Mets, meet the Mets/Step right up and greet the Mets…
The opening lyrics to the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club's fight song, older than the club itself.
"You know" said Diane George, my wife, as the old tune reverberated through Citi Field, the Mets ridiculously overhyped and underwhelming mallpark, "you can't really step right up and meet the Mets anymore."
That, friends, is the last time you'll see that corporate stadium name used in this space.
In the Mets' two previous homes — the Polo Grounds and Shea Stadium
— anyone could meet the Mets. Any ticket holder sitting anywhere
could journey down to the field level seats and watch batting practice,
try for autographs, crowd close to the dugouts, smell the freshly
watered turf, chase an errant batting practice ball fouled into the
stands, exchange a greeting with players from both teams, and in
general see what Major League Baseball is like up close. When
batting practice was over, the batting cages were rolled away and the
announcement wafted through the stadium: "Batting practice is over.
Please return to your seats." Which everyone did.
In the Mets' new stadium, only the rich get to experience this
pre-game ritual. Everyone else is invited "to watch batting practice
from your ticketed seat."
And that is pretty much all you need
to know about who the Mets covet and who they could care less about in
the new post-Shea Stadium era.
But this being the Rocky Sullivan's Pub Quiz Quizmail, and me being me, there's a lot more to prattle on about. So strap yourself in…it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
I'm already on record as being really sore at the Mets about:
- the death of Shea;
- the hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars that paid for the new stadium;
- the endless contrivances that make the new stadium feel more like a baseball theme-park mall than a place to watch baseball;
- the ugly alliance with Citi Corp;
- the clear embrace of rich fans at the expense of working-class fans;
- the vilification of business owners across the street in the Iron Triangle; and
- the obscenely expensive tickets;
In other words, the manyfold aspects of the Mets' nasty and soulless policy making lo these last several years.
The ballpark itself? I didn't wanna be one of those foamy-mouthed protesters outside The Last Temptation of Christ.
Protester "THIS MOVIE IS SACRILEGIOUS!"
Interviewer: "How do you know? Have you seen it?"
Protester: "NO!!! AND I'M NOT GONNA!!!
Inverviewer: "Then how do you know it's sacrilegious?"
Protester: "BECAUSE IT IS!!!"
Up
to this point, it's been fair play to critique the Mets' malfeasant
policies. They've done so many bad things — culturally, politically,
fiscally. But the ballpark itself had to wait until I saw it in person.
That happened this Sunday past.
Diane's from Pittsburgh, a diehard Buccos fan. We took the opportunity to purchase a single pair of tickets to witness the Mets-Pirates clash. $45 for two ducats on a Sunday afternoon in May somewhat well after the turn of the century.
It was a gorgeous day: sunny, crisp, maybe a little chilly when the
breeze turned to wind. That's always been an issue out at Willets
Point. Still, a really beautiful day.
…and the place was
several thousand seats short of full-to-the-brim. It's a troubling
trend for the Mets — a sparkling brand-new "world class home of the
New York Mets" (their oft-repeated phrase), a beautiful mid-May weekend
afternoon, a team on a six-game winning streak, a metropolitan area of
18 million people and all the world's tourists coming to the Big Apple,
and the Mets couldn't fill a 45,000 seat venue.
It's gotta be more than simply "the economy." But that's a good
place to start. How many people are simply reticent to buy into what
is now a luxury item — a baseball game.
The Mets have diluted
the actual game, possibly past the final retrieval point. A half-dozen
restaurant clubs patterned after business-class lounges at
airports..multiple food courts with endless varieties of trendy
cuisine…mall stores galore…kids games sequestered away from the
actual field…a never-ending procession of corporate promotional
tie-ins involving text-messaging, cell-phone-photo uploading, Pepsi Party Patrols and video-game contests.
So perhaps there were more fans in the house than it appeared.
These days at major league stadiums, "in the house" doesn't guarantee
"in the seats."
Yankees owner George Steinbrenner,
at the height of his insufferable bully-boy arc, waxed malpoetically
about "putting fannies in the seats." Nowadays, MLB owners don't care
about yours or my fanny, unless they're right next to the wallets in
our rear pockets.
The new Mets stadium was weirdly quiet on Sunday. And this was on
a day when the home team created some excitement with an 8-4 win.
Shea's ballpark buzz has gone missing. Theories have been advanced:
fewer people total (57,000 capacity reduced to 45,000), fewer raucous
fans due to the paucity of affordable seats, fewer kids (see
affordable seats, paucity), the empty seats in the money-bags sections,
and the huge number of in-stadium opportunities to not watch the game
at all. When there was cheering, it sounded more like an encore at the opera than the roar Shea used to generate.
It is believed that they're having the same problems at that new joint atop Macombs Dam Park in the Bronx.
Before
this gets to far on, there are some positives. The new stadium is
obviously designed for baseball, not the multipurposes of so many
stadiums in the '60s (all gone now). The Mets have made some efforts
at the whole thing being more "fan-friendly." (Though replacing ushers
with polo-shirted "SECURITY" bruisers works surprisingly poorly as a
"fan-friendly" touch.) And early in its first season, fans are excited
to see the new place.
But the new stadium is run through with misfires, miscalculations
and poorly executed strategies. There's no way this place is a
"world-class home of the New York Mets."
For starters, what's
that mean, "world class"? Can this new place host bullfights, sumo
tournaments and UN General Assembly meetings? Is there an
international body that gives out "world class" accreditation?
If there's one new-stadium descriptive the Mets throw around like beads from a Mardi Gras
float, it's "intimacy." The problem is that the Mets, their
announcers, the media and a lot of fans confuse "intimacy" with
"smaller," or "proximity." Just because a venue isn't as big as its
predecessor or has fewer seats, doesn't make it more intimate.
Say you're having a drink at at bar. A hottie the very next stool
over is also having a drink. Just because you're inches apart doesn't
mean the two of you are intimate. A lot more needs to happen before
"intimate" comes into play. In fact, a lot of classic stadiums weren't
intimate at all — fans were a long ways from the action, or the joints
were simply functional and pedestrian, and nothing more.
In fact, the new edifice's biggest intimacy destroyer the Saturn-V
screeching of the new stadium's loudspeakers. Good frakkin' grief!
The Mets in 2009 are loathe to let fans simply take in the game.
Advert after advert, before and during the games, fill every moment of
downtime. Fans aren't trusted to absorb the game on our own.
Baseball's a sport that lives and breaths nuance and subtlety. That
makes for a lot of downtime. At the post-Shea palace, that means
relentless ear-splitting at-bat music, Just For Men commercials, text-messaging contests and theme-songs for every conceivable situation. An afternoon at the new Shea — or TARP Field, as my friend and fellow Spunk Lad John "Reggie Mental" Sharples calls it — is like watching a game in a subway station as the express train passes by.
Except louder.
By the way, if you don't like the new stadium's insidious corpo name, you can wear your displeasure by visiting No Mas — a Brooklyn tee-shirt company that follows our beloved MissWit
in the run for the sassy roses. A percentage of the sales on this item
goes to local food banks. I've been told that 700 of these babies have
flown off the shelves. Good for the food banks, bad for Citi.
Much
has been made about all the food options at the new stadium. I can't
report on it. I'm a diabetic vegetarian with no interest in trendy
Manhattan restaurants like Shake Shack, and a recession-era lack of
money to spend on them at a baseball game. If a day at the ballpark
includes waiting in line for this, you'll love the Mets new home:
As for the shopping opportunities…well, that darned baseball game got in the way, and I never did make it to haute couture locations like,well, let's have the Mets website describe the Touch by Alyssa Milano Shop:
Ladies looking for a dash of fashion with their sports will find
themselves at the Touch by Alyssa Milano Shop. With everything from
tank tops and hoodies to jewelry and purses, Touch brings a feminine,
stylish approach to sports apparel inspired by actress and lifelong
baseball fan Alyssa Milano. Every item in the store sparkles, shines
and is sure to impress!
"whoever wants to know the hearts and minds of America had better learn Alyssa Milano" — Jacques Barzun
The Mets and the MTA have
come together to make every straphanger's arrival at the new stadium an
awe-inspiring epic vista. The old approach from the subway to Shea:
…and the new, improved stadiumscape:
Goodness…Mets owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon and the MTA have really outdone themselves with this collaboration.
Once inside the new stadium's Jackie Robinson Rotunda
— named in honor of a desperate bid to deflect criticism over
corporate naming rights. This sign is the last time anyone who can't
afford $400 tickets will be led to believe they have access to all
levels of the new stadium
Looking more like the Lincoln Memorial
than a baseball stadium, the Mets spoon feed fans with Robinson's
message. The "Arbeit Macht Frei" placement of Robinson's
message…yeah, a little hamfisted.
At each and every game, fans are crazy to have their photo taken with a gargantuan plastic "42."
You can pose with baseball greats Roberto Clemente In Pittsburgh, Ernie Banks in Chicago, Stan Musial in St. Louis…
and in the Mets' Epcotian Jackie Robinson Rotunda…you get plastic numbers. If the Wilpons know anything, it's how to pay tribute to a great American.
lookin' good, Jackie Robinson's numbers, lookin' good!
Want to see Jackie Robinson himself? The Mets have afforded him pride of place over there, um, somewhere…
The Mets are very excited about the new stadium's airy, open concourses…
As first reported in Paul Lukas's brilliant Uni Watch, the new stadium's Bottled Beer stands sell — wait for it…wait for it — canned beer. YES!
As we head up to our upper-deck– er, "Promenade" seats, another set of gates to another exclusive ticketed-entry-only club fades into the distance…
After searching desperately for food I could afford, I finally found a stand offering something in my price range!
Coming dangerously close to an actual beautiful view of Flushing Bay, the Marina and it's odd Candela Structures,
and the charismatic whimsy of planes taking off and landing, the
Wilpons erected a massive advert board with scores and information that
only sporadically detract from the Budweiserian granduer.
Hey, how'd this bird get better seats than we had?
On the plus side…Pittsburgh Pirate LF Nyjer Morgan's excellent stirrup socks.
This was the seating situation during the first inning. That's a lotta green seats costing the Wilpons a lotta green
kinda view do $20 tickets get you? Well, sons and daughters, if you're
very lucky, you too can watch the Mets through a metal'n'glass balcony
thingy between you and home plate…and first base…and if you stop
leaning forward, the pitcher's mound.
And
while it was awfully nice for the Mets to place storm windows between
the action and the fans, it was harder to see through the constant
parade of fans…
.
Annie Reiser, Rocky Sullivan's Pub Quiz's Hollywood Guest Round
expert, has also taken in a game at the new stadium. What'd you think,
Annie? "Nice bathrooms," she replied. And they are. Of course, these
flushless Olympic torch-shaped commodes were really special. Fans are
expected to only pee on the wall below the orange line.
…and here I am, happy to have spent the day in the Mets' new digs.
There you have it. Enjoy the new stadium, Met fans.
After all…you paid for it.