Home Opener IGT - San Diego Padres @ New York Mets

[bmfc1]

CF--thank you for your review. Benigno and Roberts ripped the park apart this morning: it doesn't seem like the Mets play there (i.e. not enough Mets stuff in the park); not enough Mets colors; it takes too long to leave from the top sections; lousy scoreboard; too much Brooklyn Dodgers, etc. They claimed that PNC Park, Citizen's Bank, Camden Yards and the SF Park are superior.

[Guest Edgy DC]

How fat and foolish have we become that a ballpark --- a place to sit and drink --- gets ripped because you can name four superior sit-and-drink baseball buildings.

[metsmarathon]

how... much mets stuff should there be? like, what's the level of expectation?

personally, i'm glad the entire structure isn't slathered in blue and orange paint.

if we walk from our seats to the concession, will we forget that the place we are in is the home of the mets if we don't see giant METS! METS! METS! banners hanging from each available rafter?

[Guest themetfairy]

Gwreck wrote: ="themetfairy"]Um, er, we were actually in the Ebbets Club. So we probably used the same staircase, but starting from different levels. I did scope out the egress from our regular Promenade level seats, though - there's a ramp and a staircase nearby. As opposed to getting out of the upper tiers of Citizens Bank, this is much, much better designed. I don't think the Ebbets Club seats had the same staircase. Don't those seats exit to the field-level concourse?

The staircase we took had people on it from higher levels.

[Guest themetfairy]

bmfc1 wrote: CF--thank you for your review. Benigno and Roberts ripped the park apart this morning: it doesn't seem like the Mets play there (i.e. not enough Mets stuff in the park); not enough Mets colors; it takes too long to leave from the top sections; lousy scoreboard; too much Brooklyn Dodgers, etc. They claimed that PNC Park, Citizen's Bank, Camden Yards and the SF Park are superior.

PNC and SF are my previous favorite parks. Citi is up there with them. When I'm more awake I'll consider the situation further, but Citi is a beautiful place to watch a game.

Citizens Bank is good, but with worse egress issues.

Camden Yards is overrated. At some point people will stop blindly lauding it and face the fact that the seats face the wrong direction. It was the first of the new breed, which is good, but the subsequent parks got right what Camden got wrong.

[metirish]

It seems to me that people are going out of their way to put Citi Field down and the Mets with it.

I'll take the word of people here and not give a fiddlers fuck what Beningo and his buddy think.



I can't wait to go.

[Guest 86-Dreamer]

Centerfield wrote: It wasn't a great crowd either. I'm not sure if the sound just doesn't resonate here at Citi, but I feel like it never got as loud as Shea. And there were certainly lots of people there last night that weren't Mets fans. People weren't standing with two outs, two strikes, the chants never really got going, etc. I thought it was shameful how lackluster the ovation was for Seaver and Piazza. That being said, the stadium is beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous. Lots of legroom in the seats, great views, great food, great atmosphere. During the whole time I kept thinking I was at someone else's park and found myself subconsiously thinking the Mets were the road team. They fixed that out-of-town scoreboard thing Gwreck mentioned so there is a little red dot indicating the team that is batting. Plus, it was hard to see from our seats, but when the seating goes all the way around, I guess that is unavoidable. My only complaint about the ballpark is the outfield wall. I hate it. The weird configuration. The recessed wall in right, the high wall in left, the stupid high wall in center to protect the apple. Nobody is ever going to clear that. Plus they have one of those lines so you'll need replay to determine whether it was a HR or not. Why not just put a regular fence out there so that everything that's over it is a HR, and everything that bounces back is in play. Plus the color scheme is weird. Orange and black on the outfield wall makes me feel like i'm in San Francisco. If the wall is black, put the numbers in blue. Or white. The new apple looks great. And the bridge, which I thought was a stupid idea, actually looks really cool. Lazy Mary made the trip over from Shea, which was great. Unfortunately, so did Sweet Caroline in the 8th inning, which I think sucks. Beer guys have to ID everyone, each time. So the old guy sitting in front of me had to pull out his license like seven times. "Do you think I'm getting younger as the night goes on?" .

The crowd was very quiet relative to Shea. I don't know yet if it is due to the acoustics or if there is truth to the theory that the enthusuastic fans have been replaced/priced out. I really dislike the lack of Met blue and orange - especially the outfield wall as CF points out. It is also sad to see how few field level seats there are behind home plate - the best spot in the house reserved for so few. And while, there are some great views, there are also way too many blind spots. My group of twelve last night was spread across three locations and we all reported blind spots. From Promenade 507 (btwn first and home), we could not see anything down the rightfield line. We also experienced major problems exiting the stadium. The waterless urinals are cool but disappointed that the Promenade mens rooms only had six urinals each.

I know I need to form my impressions over several more games, hopefully victorius ones. But my first impression is that they missed on the opportunity to build a unique home for the New York Mets. But they do seem to have built a clean and comfortable place to watch a game and eat some food. But it thus far is missing a lot of Metliness.

[G-Fafif]

A friend, whose opinion I respect in terms of going to a game without an agenda, was there last night and passed this review along:

]GOOD NEWS: Promenade Deck, Section 521, 5 rows from the top. Left field. Between third and home. Felt like the Mezzanine, not the Upper Deck. Bigger seats, wider aisles. Nicer vendors. The new scoreboard is so clear it looks fake. Fans happy. When the cat ran out there I thought of your Casey. Food good. I was warmer than I figured I would be. BAD NEWS: Clearly, some of this is �learning curve�. Promenade section signage near invisible. Small dark signs at rear of section. If people stand, they�re covered. Completely. I wandered in Section 522 balancing hot dogs and beer badly going up and down stairs. Asked vendor where I was. He had no idea. CROWDED. All that room we thought we have we don�t really have. I walked into the Rotunda, up the escalator and WHAM! Wall of people. Half touring, half buying food. Didn�t move. Claustrophobia beckons. Push and shove in the general direction of third base, find the escalator mobbed, find stairs and start climbing. And climbing. Glad my heart got a clean bill of health. Start to miss Sheascalators. After the game, hit a massive wall of people trying to walk down the stairs. Not moving at all. Really miss Shearamps.

[Guest themetfairy]

I think Pelfrey serving up a home run pitch to the first Padres batter of the game did a lot to subdue the crowd.

[Guest themetfairy]

D-Dad took video of Seaver's pitch to Piazza -




Once the National Anthem video is processed, I'll post that also.

On Edit - the National Anthem -

[G-Fafif]

Dave Howard on 'FAN all but scolding those who don't adore everything at Citi Field right now.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I thought the orange distance numbers and the orange wall stripe looked great -- at least on TV. Will see for sure at the park Thursday.