] New home run apple at core of Mets' new ballpark BY Anthony McCarron & Adam Rubin DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS It looks like it will be a fresh apple rising after the Mets belt home runs at Citi Field. The Mets had hoped to keep their intentions quiet for now about whether they would transfer the apple from Shea to their new stadium or commission a new one. But they inadvertently upstaged their own announcement. An official with ties to the team revealed on a late-night airing of a special about Citi Field on SNY that it will, in fact, be a new apple celebrating longballs. The apple is a nine-foot mass of fiberboard slathered in red paint that, whenever a Met blasts a homer, pops out of a 10-foot, upside-down black top hat made of plywood. The Mets logo on the apple lights up and blinks. The phrase "home run," which replaced the original "Mets Magic," an offshoot of the Mets' old "The Magic is Back" campaign, is visible on the top hat. The apple, all 582 pounds of it, appeared behind the fence, to the right of the 410-foot mark in center field, during the 1980 season.