Sean's Sports : Changes are coming to Citi Field

Changes are coming to Citi Field - What took so long?

Everyone complained about the Mets' new Citi Field this year. Whether it was the cavernous dimensions that made it "Petco East" or the complete lack of attempt to honor franchise history* or the unnecessary "quirks" inserted along the walls to make it seem like a stadium of old, there were people coming out of the woodwork to take the Mets to task for botching the opening of the new stadium.

* Or the fact that, you know, the Mets played in. No matter how well they'd done the stadium, that's bound to make the place look pretty bad.

When I first heard about "changes" to Citi Field, I was worried that they were going to change the dimensions based on just one season of data -- not nearly enough to know for sure how much of a pitcher's park the place is. But, fortunately, that's not part of the changes they're going to make.

The changes are all about history:

Renaming parts of the stadium after Casey Stengel, Gil Hodges, Tom Seaver, and William A Shea
Re-formed the Mets Hall of Fame Committee, and increasing the number of visuals commemorating great players and moments
Additional imagery and team colors in and around the ballpark, including full-color banners of Mets players in front of the stadium, and blue & orange flowers in the gardens of Mets Plaza

I think these changes are all positive, and should ameliorate a lot of the complaints people had about the stadium.

My only question is this: why didn't they do this last year?

When the Yankees opened their new stadium in 2009, team history was a huge part of it. And it's not just the Yankees and their penchant for glorifying their past; the Twins are opening a new stadium in 2010, and honoring former Twins teams and players was a key part of the planning from the very beginning. This is simply what teams do when they open a new stadium.

Unless, you know, the team is the poster child for the worst possible way to run a franchise.* Like the Mets.

* I wish someone could explain to me how a team as ineptly run as the Mets could get Johan Santana from the Twins for Carlos Gomez (terrible 4th outfielder for two years, traded), Phil Humber (sucked in AAA and the majors, released), Kevin Mulvey (mediocre at AAA, traded), and Deolis Guerra (used to have promise, but is rapidly losing his prospect sheen ... and his fastball). Because "Bill Smith is more of an idiot that Omar Minaya" makes me feel pretty shitty.

Assuming the Mets actually care about their fans and their team history, I'm going to guess they didn't come up with the idea that this type of stuff is unnecessary or pointless. My best guess is that they either ran out of time as a result of poor planning, or they thought they'd run out of money thanks to the Madoff brouhaha a year ago -- and now that it turns out that ownership didn't actually lose very much money, they've decided that they can afford flowers and banners.

Either way, it's been a bad few years to be a Mets fan.

Posted by Sean Schulte at 2009-11-21 16:11