Citi Field: A Trophy Wife To Forget

By Mike McGann
Posted Sunday, May 31, 2009

FLUSHING, N.Y. -- It seems like, in the end, W.C. Fields had it right.

The comedian was famous for saying “all things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” A visit to the “world-class home of amazing” -- Citi Field -- seems to rapidly reinforce that old bromide.

Look, Citi Field is OK. While it lacks the primitive charm of Shea, it’s clean and a has a lot of amenities and so on. But, to be honest, it reeks of Second-wife syndrome. Your first wife maybe wasn’t the prettiest girl in town, maybe a little dumpy, and she had a bit of a temper (especially when you sold the lawn tractor to buy a set of Ping clubs) but it wasn’t until she was gone that you remember late nights with a good wine and Italian cinema (or that she could explain the Infield Fly Rule and drink most guys under the table) and she did that thing...well, never mind, you get the idea.

That was Shea. It was dumpy, but it was where we all fell deeply and truly in love.

Citi Field is the second wife. Blonde, thanks to her salon. A D-cup, thanks to her pricey surgeon, she is, at first glance, everything you (or your shallow friends) think is needed in a spouse. But, while she insists on driving that new Mercedes convertible and going on Fifth Avenue shopping binges to properly clothe her medically upgraded body, she also sees American Idol as a rich tableau of intellectual stimulation. And we haven’t mentioned the slightly too loud, still too nasal voice that screams Paramus more than the Upper West Side.

That, my friends, is Citi Field.

As compared with the best of the new stadiums, it has sort of a check-box feel. As in when it was being designed, Fred and Jeff Wilpon checked a bunch of boxes, but didn’t really have a feel for how the fans would interact with the new structure. Forget the playing field issues (which, by the way, need some fixing, too...but that’s for another column), this facility is poorly designed and lacks any real personality. And yes, it’s too expensive.

I’m lucky enough to have been to about 15 different Major League ball parks, including a number of the new generation parks. Sure, Citi Field is better than the Kingdome, Olympic Stadium, or old Jack Murphy Stadium. It’s better than the Oakland Coliseum (the first one has been rightly imploded, the second only hosts mime competitions and the latter are strictly for NFL fare now).

But it falls short, in my mind, against old parks such as Fenway and Wrigley, as despite the hype, it lacks the intimacy of those parks, unless you pay giant, giant dollars to sit downstairs behind home plate. And, frankly, it isn’t as fan friendly as Turner Field, Comerica Park, Nationals Park, Camden Yards or Citizens Bank Park. And Citi Field is pricier than all of those, by a large margin.

And forget for now, the in-game issues, extreme, conversation-killing audio (which Shannon Shark goes into greater detail on tomorrow) and the sense I had of attending a non-stop infomercial occasionally interrupted by baseball. The building is poorly designed.

On the Field Level concourse, it’s a little like being in a subway tunnel: the ceiling seems low and it’s kind of dark. It reminds me a lot of old Yankee Stadium and not in a good way. Unlike the very open first-deck concourses in other new parks, you get a closed-in feeling when it’s crowded. The upper level is rife with obstructed view seats. One fan filled me in on his upper deck partial seasons from which he literally couldn’t see half the field from.

But those glaring issues may not be the biggest fault of the new facility. It lacks heart.

It all feels just a little generic to me. Like I’ve seen it all before -- mostly, I suspect, because I have, in other parks. Most of you may not be able to remember the old Manufacters Hanover print ads (a staple in Mets yearbooks of the late 70s) featuring the Anycar, with random parts from various makes and models patched together to make one awful car. Citi Field reminds me a bit of that car. There’s no unifying character driving the vision behind the place.

Philly’s park, while a terrible place to pitch (and because of the way it was designed, can’t easily be reworked any more than it has), is a wonderful place to see a game, despite the fact that on a basic level, it shares a lot of things in common with Citi Field. One common feature is the second-level seating: Hall of Fame at Philly, Excelsior at Citi. Let’s move past the fact that Citi’s tickets are about twice the price as the same seats in Philly.

In Philly, the second-level concourse is carpeted. There are a wide selection of boutique foods and a wider selection of beers and there’s a real sense of being somewhere a little cool and exclusive. Excelsior? It has a bar. To get anything beyond the stock concession stand food, you must leave the level. And the concessions that are there are poorly designed with the lines running into each other. Wait times -- and complaints of most of the fans around us, who like us, paid $115 per ticket -- were surprisingly long, certainly as compared with what one sees in Philly, Baltimore or D.C. The view? Yeah, it was pretty good, but it seemed to be higher and further away from the field than on the same levels (except D.C., which has two levels of luxury suites between the first second decks, ruining an otherwise well-designed, fan-friendly ballpark). But yes, the bathrooms are nice.

I guess the sense I have is this: it’s a little like spending BMW 5-series money and getting a Hyundai Accent. Yeah, it’s nicer than the old Pontiac, which smoked and had a ripped driver’s seat, but somehow it just doesn’t feel like you’re getting what you paid for. Expensive? Yeah, it's New York, so that's a given. But it should be great and it's only okay, but it teases what might have been with better management and a little more thought.

Kind of like the Mets themselves.