"The Most Cynical Ballpark in the Major Leagues"

[G-Fafif]

Jay Caspian Kang in Grantland appreciates Dodgers Stadium, but includes a passage that I think nails a couple of other parks pretty well.

Since 1992, when Camden Yards in Baltimore ushered in a new era of stadium design, nearly every ballpark in America has been built under the same principle � old-timey knickknacks like manual scoreboards get stapled onto a gleaming hulk of scalable, corporatized concrete and metal because nostalgia is a powerful purchasing device and drives fans to buy all sorts of useless stuff, from miniature bats to the now-$8 hot dogs they ate when they were kids. This is not to say that every ballpark built in the past 20 years is some horrific monstrosity that callously manipulates our most tender memories, but I do think we pay a psychic toll whenever we access nostalgia through a modern, corporatized avenue. [...] When I lived in New York, my friend Eric and I went to dozens of Mets day games at Shea Stadium.1 The Mets were unreasonably bad back then, trotting out some combination of Cliff Floyd, Mike Piazza, and a bunch of Triple-A players. But Shea Stadium was a comfy old heap that fit the team's personality. Citi Field, which opened in 2009, is a different sort of dump: the most cynical ballpark in the major leagues, complete with a Jackie Robinson rotunda (Robinson, of course, never played for the Mets), silly constructions like "the Great Wall of Flushing" and the Shea Bridge, a faux-industrial walkway modeled off the Hell Gate Bridge that connects Astoria and Randall's Island. There is a history of New York in Citi Field, but the same could be said about the New York-New York Casino in Las Vegas. When you go to a Mets game now, you're not so much reminded of the past or Shea Stadium as much as you're reminded of corporate strategy. It's a horrible place. I know the typical response here is to talk about the need for luxury boxes and modern amenities and walkways that make any sort of sense. And if you're a Wilpon or if you're the sort of person who needs to watch a baseball game from inside a luxury box, I'm sure you see the necessary evils of Citi Field. But if you're one of the millions of people for whom this is neither an option nor a desire, what, exactly, do ballparks like Citi Field offer other than efficient escalators and better garlic fries? I'll strike an old refrain here: Given the amount of money coming into baseball teams through television revenue and the always-escalating price of tickets, why would the average fan ever care about the fiscal viability of a ballpark? And for those who would argue that the next generation of kids will connect with a place like Citi Field and create their own memories, let me say that not everything is quite so relative. Everyone loses from corporate cynicism � Shea Stadium might have been a dump, but it was, at least, a colorful dump.

I made my peace with Citi Field once they turned the outfield walls blue and human-scale. It's no longer on trial in my mind. The probationary period is over. I bought in, it's my ballpark. But the Wilponian cynicism, as Kang expressed it, remains baked in.

[stevejrogers]

To be fair, no one officially called it The Great Wall of Flushing, the way they slapped "SHEA BRIDGE" onto the Bridge out there. That was an unofficial moniker that Howie Rose tabbed it.

I do agree with the sentiments though, about the faux retro trend that Citi is very much a part of. Especially the trying to fit in parts of the culture of the city that the stadium is a part of.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Kang's on-point, I suppose... but isn't such crit-- "corporatized history," e.g.-- of the modern ballparks a little pointless? With the amount of money going into stadium design/construction, and the amount of money the new parks are counted on the generate, that sort of thing is unavoidable these days, though, innit? It's like pointing out how every food item in the truck stop is either stale or loaded with preservatives-- that's kind of the nature of the place, isn't it?

[Lefty Specialist]

The Rotunda will always irritate me. It told me, "I may own the Mets, but I've never really stopped being a Dodger fan".

It's like Bloomberg at The Mausoleum pretending he's a Yankee fan while secretly delighting in the fact his Red Sox are kicking ass.

[Theoldmole]

I went to games at Ebbets Field, and I love the rotunda.

[Ceetar]

I love Citi Field and it has nothing to do with luxury boxes. I love the Shea Bridge, it's a wonderful place and I'm not really sure what there is to knock about it.

The Rotunda's nice. It's barely inside the stadium. It's actually one of the few places in the stadium you can't see the game. I don't feel like I'm in Citi Field until I'm through it, when I go in that way at all.

Yes, it's overly corporate and expensive and all that. but you know what? So is baseball. If the Mets had kept Shea and kept tickets at the prices people think are right, they'd have a small market budget in truth rather than a temporary layover. I know I don't _need_ to eat and drink 'fancy' food and drink at the ballpark, but I spend so much time there it's nice that I don't have to worry about packing a dinner when I go.

Honestly, if you told me I'd wake up tomorrow and Citi was never built and I'd be going to Shea Stadium..I'd be upset.

[Fman99]

Lefty Specialist wrote: The Rotunda will always irritate me. It told me, "I may own the Mets, but I've never really stopped being a Dodger fan".

Yep.

The rest of it is a jaded asshole reporter making his dumb points to fill a column.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Ceetar wrote: I Honestly, if you told me I'd wake up tomorrow and Citi was never built and I'd be going to Shea Stadium..I'd be upset.

yabbut that sorta misses the point of the huge opportunity they missed.

[Ceetar]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Ceetar wrote: I Honestly, if you told me I'd wake up tomorrow and Citi was never built and I'd be going to Shea Stadium..I'd be upset. yabbut that sorta misses the point of the huge opportunity they missed.

I don't know if there's a 'huge opportunity' missed though. there's a different opportunity. but different is not better.

[Edgy MD]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Kang's on-point, I suppose... but isn't such crit-- "corporatized history," e.g.-- of the modern ballparks a little pointless? With the amount of money going into stadium design/construction, and the amount of money the new parks are counted on the generate, that sort of thing is unavoidable these days, though, innit? It's like pointing out how every food item in the truck stop is either stale or loaded with preservatives-- that's kind of the nature of the place, isn't it?

He's on point and I felt this way before I ever saw brick one of Citi Field, but I'd like to hear how this is true of the place in a way that it's not true of the Great American Ballpark or Chase Field or Petco or someplace.

The huge opportunity was to make a place that was everything Shea was, only betterer.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Citi Field is a nice enough place to watch a ballgame, but architecturally, it is, as Johnny said, a missed opportunity. It's Disney architecture, which I hate. I haven't seen much of the new parks in Miami and Minneapolis, but to their credit, they didn't decide to go with the umpteenth "retro" stadium. It was a nice idea when Baltimore did it, but it's been way overdone by now. Don't build an early 20th Century stadium in the 21st Century. Making the stadium look like Ebbets Field was silly. Honoring Jackie Robinson is a nice and worthwhile idea, but it would have been better done with a statue or a plaque than a whole rotunda. (And really, it should have been at the Brooklyn Cyclones' park rather than at the Mets home in Queens.)

[metsmarathon]

it's not so much that it's an attempt at an early 20th century park that was made in the 21st century, its that its a disneyification of a early 20th century park that was made in the 20th century. actually, i think disney could've come up with something more authentic looking.

the real problem is that its design cries out for it's lack of authenticity, and for its lack of actual architecture. its all modern facade with modern materials in kindof the style of an old ball park. and that's why it falls flat.

camden yards appears to have captured more autheniticity, although surely much of that is the actual authentic warehouse out in right feild.

i actually like shea bridge, though it really is a missed opportunity. in fact, the first time in the stadium, i missed it. i had to go back and look for the bridge that i had already crossed at least once. it could be so much more than it is, so much more architectural, so much more substantial, so much more authentic, but it just isn't. it's just kindof there.

[G-Fafif]

One thing they never addressed well and may not be able to is how much of the field one misses from too many seats -- an old gripe but a relevant one if you were sitting in left field Promenade, down the third base line, and tried to watch Collin Cowgill's extra base hit on Monday. Is it out? Is it in? What happened? You are just cut off from too much, which I've learned to roll with, except earlier in the game, when I'd dropped by a friend who was also sitting upstairs but basically behind home plate, I marveled at how much better the view of the field was. Not different, better. Not for panoramic reasons, but for baseball. How they couldn't get the geometry to work in so much of the park is the functional black mark against this enterprise. Plus with three video boards available, none was showing balls in play when you needed them to.

Anyway, Cowgill's ball was a homer, to my surprise. Which was great (I loved watching him leg it out just in case), but it would've been nice to have seen it from my seat as it was happening, even on a screen. Then they cut the replay short (perhaps to discourage the Padres from arguing...though it was the right call, I could confirm after the game) and then, when they did the Delta promo wherein a kid gets an autographed ball from the player who just homered, we saw Cowgill swing and we saw Delta featured but not the actual home run fly over the wall. As the 10-year-old girl sitting behind me observed, "they won't show us the home run but we get to see an airplane."

[batmagadanleadoff]

Ceetar wrote: I don't know if there's a 'huge opportunity' missed though. there's a different opportunity. but different is not better.

You think that's the best they could've done?

Citi Field represented a tipping point for me, where suddenly, all those newfangled retro baseball stadiums looked the same. From my initial televised impressions, CF didn't look much different than Citizen's Bank Park or the Rockies Stadium, whatever its name. Same brick wall behind home plate ... same scoreboard cast in that erector set framing. And that's a shame. Because in the grand scheme, there are so relatively few major stadiums, and so many millions of dollars invested in these ballparks, that there's no reason why they shouldn't all be unique artistic triumphs instead of the mostly repetitive iterations that they are. For this reason, I agree with Grimm in that my favorite new ballparks are the ones in Minny and Miami. Now those are bold, daring and innovative stadiums. Citi Field is, to me, an unimaginative contrivance. What the hell is a Shea Bridge? Is a bridge supposed to evoke memories of Shea? Was Shea mostly associated, or ever associated at all, with a bridge? About a year ago, at one of the presentations held at the Mets 50th anniversary Hofstra Convention, I sat next to an architect for the company that designed most of the new stadiums. We struck up a conversation and eventually, I asked him if he worked on the planning or design for Citi Field. He rolled his eyes at me, as if begging me to never think such thoughts lest his reputation be soiled. He made sure to establish that he had nothing to do with that stadium.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I was in Promenade Reserved section 512, almost directly behind home plate. It's a pretty nice place from which to watch the game, and it's very convenient to the food court that's atop the rotunda.

And they're among the cheapest seats in the park, too.

[batmagadanleadoff]

G-Fafif wrote: mark against this enterprise. Plus with three video boards available, none was showing balls in play when you needed them to. Anyway, Cowgill's ball was a homer, to my surprise. Which was great (I loved watching him leg it out just in case), but it would've been nice to have seen it from my seat as it was happening, even on a screen.

Of course it would've been nice to see it on the field. Otherwise, the point of attending is diminshed.

[G-Fafif]

Emotional attachment to Shea aside, I think if Citi Field came along more or less as was in the late '90s or thereabouts (save for the lousy obstructed views and some other unfortunate drawbacks), I would have greeted it more warmly than I did in 2009. BML cites Coors Field. Coors Field was novel in 1995, when it opened, the fourth of the Retro models. The early 2000s comers seemed to improve on that generation whereas Citi Field felt like a design left in the drawer right around then and dusted off when they got the funding approved a decade later. I really do believe the Wilpons, Katz, Dave Howard, whoever just assumed having Not Shea would be enough to make their fans and customers (particularly their high-end customers) swoon in unison.

[G-Fafif]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: G-Fafif wrote: mark against this enterprise. Plus with three video boards available, none was showing balls in play when you needed them to. Anyway, Cowgill's ball was a homer, to my surprise. Which was great (I loved watching him leg it out just in case), but it would've been nice to have seen it from my seat as it was happening, even on a screen. Of course it would've been nice to see it on the field. Otherwise, the point of attending is diminshed.

No doubt. I thought the third screen, installed in August of the first season, was a reasonable fix to an unreasonable flaw. But on OD it wasn't doing its thing.

[G-Fafif]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I was in Promenade Reserved section 512, almost directly behind home plate. It's a pretty nice place from which to watch the game, and it's very convenient to the food court that's atop the rotunda. And they're among the cheapest seats in the park, too.

Agreed that you can't do much better than roughly 512-517 if you don't mind knowing you can't duck in to a club during a rain delay or cold snap.

[Ceetar]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: G-Fafif wrote: mark against this enterprise. Plus with three video boards available, none was showing balls in play when you needed them to. Anyway, Cowgill's ball was a homer, to my surprise. Which was great (I loved watching him leg it out just in case), but it would've been nice to have seen it from my seat as it was happening, even on a screen. Of course it would've been nice to see it on the field. Otherwise, the point of attending is diminshed.

I think this is my only real gripe. They favored close to the action 'on top of the field' stuff instead of full visibility. The game happens in the valley of the stadium, even if you're on the field level, whereas at Shea and some other parks the walls into the outfield stayed pretty low and they added more foul territory so that the field level didn't interfere with the upper deck view (which was probably mostly incidental). It's nice that if you sit in the outfield seats in the promenade you don't feel like you're watching from the Empire State Building (although it's not _close_ by any means) but I'd have rather them moved me back, packed in another 20k seats on top somewhere, and not worry about whether or not the last seat in the last row feels like it's part of the stadium or not.

but that's fine too. Very few stadiums, maybe none, have no bad sections. I know where the good features of Citi are and I buy my tickets are stand in the appropriate section. There's very little missing from my experience when I go to a game. (outside of the ..you know..winning..)

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

G-Fafif wrote: I really do believe the Wilpons, Katz, Dave Howard, whoever just assumed having Not Shea would be enough to make their fans and customers (particularly their high-end customers) swoon in unison.

No shit. They after all had the most to gain from the notion that Shea was a "dump" that needed to be replaced in the first place. I don't think CF is appreciably worse than other new parks I have seen, but surely they screwed it up badly with a design that lacks authenticity and wasn't even appropriate for baseball. They could have and should have done much better.

I decided at some point last year that I would endeavor never to get a seat in CF that wasn't between the bases. Watching baseball from the outfield just isn't for me.

[Ceetar]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I decided at some point last year that I would endeavor never to get a seat in CF that wasn't between the bases. Watching baseball from the outfield just isn't for me.

If you're bored one day, or it's a blow out or something, check out the front row of the last section in the Left Field Landing. I don't know if it's because it's basically the view we're accustomed to on TV via the center field camera, but I've always found it an interesting viewpoint. Not sure I'd watch the whole game there, but there's something to be said for watching the fly balls fly AT you. (and laughing when the crowd goes wild for fly balls that are so obviously outs to you)

[Edgy MD]

I think it's important to distinguish "most cynical" from "worst."

The issues with the rotunda, I think, underscore this. I don't see this as a team-betraying tribute to the Dodgers. I think it's an important part of what Fred wanted, a celebration of a great New York park that went before. I don't think in any way that it was conceived with Jackie Robinson in mind. That was an afterthought --- a defense against demands that the whole park be named for Robinson, and definitely the sort of statement that helps you build and maintain the sort of coalition it takes to free up public money and approval to get a stadium built.

>>> "I don't see why, with all the problems this city has, we should be supporting bending over backwards for this ballteam and these very rich men."

>>> "Did you see this part? The Robinson Rotunda!

>>> "Yeah, and that's great. But I don't see how that's..."

>>> "What? Do you hate Jackie Robinson? We're trying to end racism here.

So, yeah, I'd say cynical is fair tag. While I believe Fred admires and respects Jackie Robinson to a degree, I don't see this as a tribute to or advancement of Robinson's civil rights struggle, so much as the Mets and MLB advancing their own ends by wrapping it in the civil rights struggle.

I love Jackie Robinson and support tributes to him, but if you really cared thoughtfully about his legacy, would you really build a statue of a number? That's such an afterthought.

[Ceetar]

the statue of the number ties into the MLB thing. MLB has made the number important. But numbers are important in baseball, so it's an interesting tie-in. It's certainly MLB-advancing first and civil rights second, but that doesn't diminish the civil rights part of it nor does it make it cynical.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Edgy MD wrote: I love Jackie Robinson and support tributes to him, but if you really cared thoughtfully about his legacy, would you really build a statue of a number? That's such an afterthought.

I forgot to mention that. That big blue number 42 is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. I was reminded of that on Monday when I saw people waiting to have their photo taken with the 42.

I also think that the new movie about Jackie deserves a much better title. Calling the movie "42" is as lame as that "statue".

[batmagadanleadoff]

G-Fafif wrote: I really do believe the Wilpons, Katz, Dave Howard, whoever just assumed having Not Shea would be enough to make their fans and customers (particularly their high-end customers) swoon in unison.

Or maybe they thought for themselves rather than for the fan-base that simply not having Shea around would've been enough. They're cheesy, tasteless baseball philistines and nary a year goes by that this isn't confirmed. From trucker hats for the old-timers to hideous black uniforms that were the ugliest in all of baseball during their time to a stadium whose focal centerpiece celebrates a Brooklyn Dodger that never played for the Mets.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Edgy MD wrote: I love Jackie Robinson and support tributes to him, but if you really cared thoughtfully about his legacy, would you really build a statue of a number? That's such an afterthought. I forgot to mention that. That big blue number 42 is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. I was reminded of that on Monday when I saw people waiting to have their photo taken with the 42.

Amen, brother! Tell it.

[Edgy MD]

Ceetar wrote: the statue of the number ties into the MLB thing. MLB has made the number important. But numbers are important in baseball, so it's an interesting tie-in. It's certainly MLB-advancing first and civil rights second, but that doesn't diminish the civil rights part of it nor does it make it cynical.

I agree that ties into the MLB thing. MLB has declared 42 eternally retired (except when it's not) and a blue 42 is displayed on the inner fa�ade of every stadium, and that makes the Robinson rotunda sort of the national capital of that statement. But a sincere statement doesn't really need a capital, and by doing it advance MLB ends and curry favor with MLB powers, that speaks to cynicism as well.

MLB has made the number important. But numbers are important in baseball, so it's an interesting tie-in.

I love numbers, but I'd say they're disproportionally important when a randomly assigned two-digit number is the best we can do to make a monument to sum up the great man's legacy. Jean-Luc Picard would scratch his bald head if he visited a planet where the citizens built monuments to their esteemed progenitors and what they stood for in the form of giant numbers.

It's certainly MLB-advancing first and civil rights second, but that doesn't diminish the civil rights part of it nor does it make it cynical.

Well, yeah, I'd say advancing MLB first and civil rights second while pretending to be exclusively the latter does exactly exactly those two things. Come on! Exactly exactly!

[batmagadanleadoff]

Excerpt from Paul Goldbberger's somewhat dismissive though polite New Yorker review of Citi Field:

As for the retro-classic side of Citi Field, the Mets, having no ancient ballpark of their own to evoke, have appropriated someone else�s. The architects, whose Camden Yards design incorporated features of several historic ballparks, have here wrapped an imitation of the fa�ade of the much mourned Ebbets Field around the southern corner of the new structure, and the old Brooklyn stadium likewise inspired the form of the entry rotunda. The Mets treat the National League�s New York history as if it were abandoned property, which, in a way, it is. But does that mean it is there for the taking? True, the identity of the Mets�whose colors combine the blue of the Dodgers and the orange of the Giants�has thrived on a magpie element, but there�s something a bit dishonest about naming the rotunda for Jackie Robinson, who never wore a Mets uniform. A pastiche of the Dodgers� former field in Brooklyn pasted onto the fa�ade of a different team�s twenty-first-century ballpark in Queens is less a historical tribute than it is an act of make-believe. Historically, ballparks have been urban places, gardens in the middle of the city. The greatest of them�Wrigley, Ebbets, Fenway, Forbes Field, Shibe Park�emerged out of the form and shape of their cities. Fenway has the Green Monster, the thirty-seven-foot wall that compensates for the truncation of left field; at Griffith Stadium, in Washington, D.C., the center-field wall was notched inward because the owners of houses next to the stadium refused to sell. Ballparks weren�t the same because the urban places they belonged to weren�t the same. One football gridiron is identical to another, but a baseball field, once you get beyond the diamond, is not�which is part of the reason that even the ugliest ones are loved so fiercely by the fans and become such repositories of civic feeling. A baseball outfield, technically, has no outer limits, just as a baseball game has no set time to end. The outfield stops where the stadium�s builders decide it will stop. Urban ballparks had fa�ades in front, to fit in with neighboring buildings, but were usually left low and open in the outfield, which had the effect of weaving the park into the neighborhood, so that, from the right place, you might catch an enticing glimpse of the green paradise within. [***] At Citi Field, conversely, the Ebbets Field fa�ade, stuck in the middle of acres of parking (as Shea was), seems more like a theme park than it would if it were in the middle of the city. HOK has tried to make the stadium feel more urban by placing a long brick building, containing the Mets� offices, just beyond right field, along 126th Street, where it faces a favela of auto-body shops in Willets Point. But, since the site is defined mainly by expressways and parking lots, the architects are fighting a losing battle. It�s a pity that the Mets didn�t build on the far West Side of Manhattan, where Colonel Ruppert first thought of putting Yankee Stadium, ninety years ago, and where the Jets recently tried to build a football stadium. A football stadium doesn�t need to be in the middle of a city, but a baseball park, smaller and used much more often, does. A stadium is a stage set as sure as anything on Broadway, and it determines the tone of the dramas within. Citi Field suggests a team that wants to be liked, even to the point of claiming some history that isn�t its own. Yankee Stadium, however, reflects an organization that is in the business of being admired, and is built to serve as a backdrop for the image of the Yankees, at once connected to the city and rising grandly above it. ?

[Benjamin Grimm]

His use of "make believe" and "theme park" underscores my own point about Disney architecture.

I would have loved it if they had built the new park in Manhattan, or even closer to Manhattan. If they could have found a spot in Long Island City, that would have been nice. But I don't think they ever considered other locations. The Shea location isn't bad; it was especially convenient when I lived on Long Island. You have the LIE and the Grand Central and the LIRR and the 7, but a place in or near Manhattan would have been more convenient to more people. I especially feel that way now that I approach the ballpark from the other side of the city.

Oh well. I'm almost 50 years old. I suspect this will probably be the last "home of the Mets" during my lifetime, so if they do a better job the next time around I don't expect that I'll be alive to see it.