Citi Field: Wednesday Night Salt

Sorry to slack on the posts since Thanksgiving, but the Glass Man was down in New Orleans over the weekend and I've been slammed with work ever since.

Don't really have time to write an entire post, but a few things have been bothering me on the Citi Field front and I wanted to vent. So in no particular order:

1. The Citi Field naming rights controversy

What bothers me about the whole situation is not so much the situation at Citi itself. Yes, it leaves us open to all sorts of cracks about collapses, failures, etc., but you know, we were subject to those to begin with.

What's unfortunate, to my mind, is that the name risks eliminating that sense of refuge from the outside world, from its responsibilities and from its trials, that you can get at the ballpark.

At the ballpark it's supposed to be all about the game. When you involve a corporate sponsor, some element of that dissipates, it's now the game, brought to you by the corporate sponsor.

Bill Shea devoted a part of his life to bringing National League baseball back to New York; that's what passion's all about. So when they named the Stadium "Shea", it meant something. Over the years the story of Bill Shea became the dominion of oldtimers and Mets fans with a thing for history, so that eventually when people came to think of "Shea" there was really nothing else to think about but baseball.

Unfortunately with "Citi" right there in the name, that can never be the case for Citi Field. "Citi Field" will always be associated with baseball of course (the Mets will play there after all), but it will also be associated with the world of finance, high flying or troubled as the case may be.

I suppose some day when the boom years come back around (and if Citi is still in business), the "Citi" part of our new stadium's name won't be cause for derision, it might even be a source of pride. But one thing the "Citi" part will never be entirely synonymous with is the word "baseball". Those days are gone.

2. The Citi Field seats controversy

I'm heartened to see other websites take up the call for blue-in and orange-ing the seats at Citi Field.

Green seats work great in some stadiums, Fenway Park for one. But with its Irish heritage, green has always made sense for Boston.

Making the seats at Citi Field blue and orange (if not blue, orange, green, and red) would have been such a kiss for the fans, a reminder of the stadium they grew up in (and judging by the reaction to Citi Field at the "Shea Goodbye" ceremony, a stadium they didn't want to leave behind). Somehow it would have made the whole stadium feel more like home.

Instead we have the same generic dark green seats they have in Philly and Colorado and Arizona, and basically every other new ballpark you've seen lately.

In the end, a simple nod to the team's history was just too much to ask. I guess some people thought the orange seats were tacky, or something like that. For me they were vibrant, particularly on those sun-soaked days that baseball was made for.

3. The Citi Field logo controversy

I don't have much to say that wasn't said when the logo was first unveiled, but the Citi Field logo continues to confound all comprehension.

Here's the thing: whatever company designed this bland, lifeless logo would have submitted a few other potential designs. That's just the way the industry works; a company is selected to design a logo, they come up with maybe five designs and the interested party selects the best option.

Somehow, what you see above was deemed the best option available for the logo. Look at it again. You really have to wonder how that is even possible. (Does it all reflect more poorly on the company who designed the logo, or the team that selected it as the winner? Never mind.)

They say the blue part is evocative of a baseball diamond. It's not.

See the blue part above? That's evocative of a baseball diamond.

4. The Citi Field skyline silhouette controversy

Everyone else begged for the apple.

Here at Y2K, the main concern (people, the apple was a given -- even for the cabal running the Mets) is with the skyline that sat atop the old scoreboard at Shea.

I always loved that skyline silhouette; something about it has always appealed to my sensibilities.

For me, the skyline silhoutte captured something about the scale of the city and the million stories lurking in those randomly lit rooms amid the skyscrapers. It appealed somehow to the part of me that's always had an image of New York bathed in a certain shade of jazz-cool blue.

I want to say I read somewhere that they were going to be bringing the skyline over from Shea. I really hope they do. Sometimes the less obvious trappings of home are the ones that mean the most.

- A.F.O.M.G.