The Rotten Apple In The Big Apple

By Deb McIver
Posted Sunday, August 12, 2007

I’m really getting sick of tired of seeing all these posts on all these Mets message boards professing all this love for the Home Run Apple at Shea Stadium, and hearing people threaten everything from boycotting CitiField to slashing their wrists, their fathers’ wrists, their mothers’ wrists, their… well, you get the idea here, if The Home Run Apple isn’t dragged, kicking and screaming, over to the Mets’ new home in 2009.

And I really fail to understand all this; I really do. And I have tried really, really hard to. Because I feel like somehow, maybe I’m missing something, something good, something tres New York, some monumentous (remember that word, monument, I’ll get to it later, I promise) piece of Mets history that for some reason I just don’t seem to appreciate as much as many, or even most, of you….

Hey, listen, I’m as much a fan of tradition and memorabilia and kitsch and baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and… well, you know the rest of it. But, psssst! I hate to break it to you, lovely readers, but has anybody ever really taken a good look at that awful and much worshiped thing they call The Home Run Apple?

Take a look; a GOOD look, go ahead, go ahead, I’ll wait. That’s right, a nice, loooong look.

And tell me you haven’t seen the insides of Petri dishes that looked better than that stupid apple.

And tell me it doesn’t look like something a bunch of preschoolers happily slopped up and stirred up and spit up and ultimately created in a mad dash to the finish line during a Crafts Gone Horribly Wrong Field Trip!

I mean, TAKE A LOOK AT IT! It’s horrid! It’s ghastly! It’s paper mache, for crying out loud! It’ll melt in the rain, just like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz. I’m meeeeelting….. It’s a PIECE OF GARBAGE. In fact, it might even be MADE of garbage, knowing the ingenuity and creativity of New Yorkers!

So, why the love? Why the worship? Why the elevation to cult status?

And why the threats of boycotting, suicide, dismemberment, violence, murder and mayhem, huh?

And why the websites devoted to saving this horrible reminder of the cement boondoggle of an outdated fortress that is Shea Stadium?

Well, according to savetheapple.com, one of the main reasons many fools wish to save the apple is that you’ll never see it at Yankee Stadium. Well, whoop-tee-doo! Here are a couple of other things you’ll never see at Yankee Stadium: Shea’s scoreboard; Shea’s seats; Shea’s concessions, Shea’s dugouts; Shea’s watercoolers; Shea’s clubhouses… do we want to save those things too????? I mean, really, following that logic, anything that isn’t in Yankee Stadium is good enough for Mets fans! Is that the best you apple lovers can do for a reason?????

And here’s another gem – The Apple apparently reminds some of you to have fun.

Well, dear fans, if you need that stupid apple to have fun at a ballgame, well then I suggest one very simple thing – BECOME A FAN OF SOMETHING ELSE, because quite simply, baseball and you – NOT perfect together!

They then go on to talk about all the symbols and icons the Yankees have of their, well, Yankeedom. Like Monument Park, for example.

Wait a minute, did somebody just mention Monument Park and The Home Run Apple in the same sentence? That’s kind of like comparing the art on my wall at home to the art in the Louvre. That’s nuts! That’s so pathetically out of whack as to border on the ridiculous, and the insane. Not to mention I have to seriously scratch my head and keep from laughing out loud at the sheer nerve of that comparison! That’s how pathetically the Apple stacks up to Monument Park in comparison -- historically, symbolically, iconically, and in just plain every other way. Not even close. Not even in the same, excuse the pun, ballpark!

I have to marvel at logic such as that; I have to just shake my head in amazement and wonderment, and try to figure out who in the world has the time to come up with this nonsense.

How pathetic this is….. it’s not bad enough we compete with the Yankees in every other way; now we’re down to competing over“symbols,” and “icons.” One of which, of course, is; and the other of which, of course, we WISH was!

I’ll give you three guesses which is which, and the first two don’t count!

My final comment on The Home Run Apple - BLOW IT UP ALONG WITH SHEA STADIUM.

In fact, I think I’ll send a detailed map of how to locate the Apple to, say, one of our Middle Eastern enemies, and suggest ever so nicely that they take out all of their aggressions on this one particular symbol of capitalism and New York -- THAT ROTTEN APPLE!