Shannon,
During the rain delay the other night, I caught an old “Mets Yearbook” from 1982. It took me back to my earliest visits to Shea in the mid 80s. I distinctly recall the deep blue fence with pennants from every NL Club painted on the wall. I’d love to see this look revived at Citi Field. There are a few things standing in the way:
· Major league parks now rival Minor League Fields in outfield wall billboard space.
· The Mets have received enough criticism (and rightly so) for honoring other teams in their park.
I’d like to see a modern update on this design. Here’s what I’m thinking:
· Make the Citi Field fence a deep royal blue.
· Eliminate all current retired number and championship banners from the wall.
· Condense the billboards into the left and right field areas. (There’s plenty of room on the 16 foot left field wall), leaving a significant area from left center to right center clean.
· Bring back the pennants! They should stretch from left center to right center. However, instead of NL Clubs, the pennants should represent #37 Stengel, #14 Hodges, #41 Seaver, Shea, #42 MLB Jackie Robinson, the 1969 World Series, the 1986 World Series, the 1973 NL Championship and the 2000 NL Championship. (Sorry, no wild cards or division titles. Aim higher).
· An alternate, more advertiser-friendly design would be to place the pennants where the current numbers and banners reside on the top half of the left field fence, leaving those valuable billboards in place.
Who wouldn’t love to see a nod to the salad days at Shea? Know any graphic designers or photoshop junkies that would like to take a crack at this?
-Jeff
So class, what do you think?
One thing I do like is that the bar for “walldom” should be an NL Championship or World Series championship. Wild Card Schmile Card. Oooh you beat the Reds in a one game play-in. Who cares?
1. Citi Field is not Shea Stadium. Get over it already.
2. Why not go with “real” Mets history, and paint the walls green, like Shea Stadium was originally.
3. Refer to statement 1.
4. Outfield walls cluttered with advertisements is not “minor league,” and suggesting it is, is merely editing historical facts.
I agree with the “green” walls. I grew up going to Shea in the late 60’s – 70’s and it was green. I thought the blue was ok, but I’m not tied to it. I would also like the seats to go back to the more colorful look and not the drab green like they were in the Polo Grounds. How many Met fans actually remember the Polo Grounds ? A personal pet peeve of mine is the $5 Footlong sign from Subway. Get rid of it. How do they have the audacity to advertise $5 footlongs on a sign, but when you go to the Subway concession in CitiField they charge you almost $9 ? Talk about your false advertising. Maybe it should say “$5 footlongs, but not here…”
as kid i remember when the fence was light green color and the dimension numbers were black.the pennants along the out field were corny looking and a few friends of mine who were playing for the mets at the time said it was a distraction picking up the ball thrown in from the out field.
the ebbets field exterior is great looking.what they should have done instead was this..
a friend of mine is a computer animator and he put together an exact replica of the first shea exterior..in his vision,the orange and blue squares were iluminated at night. it looked incredible!!
i know shea is not “you-know what-field”
i saw shea being built from the ground up every day. the new park is just another “new stadium.”
as a matter of fact,watching mets home games,looks like a road game to me.
no memory of early shea to be found.
a lot of new stadiums have statues out side the ball park.
give me one good reason why a statue of tom seaver was not erected with the new stadium.
And move the fences in to resemble the depth of Shea’s fences
Citifield is ruining the HR hitting right hand hitters on this team (bay and wright)
Reyes is the only Met who is benefiting from his “home field advantage”…and our GM is being directed to trade him. Only the Wilpons could justify that idiocy to themselves….
I think Jeff should buy a 2011 BMW & put 10 bumper stickers across the back.
As for statues, I think its weird when they are put up for living people. 30 yrs from now when Tom passes, a statue would be appropriate
hello corey.
seaver as many others should be alive to enjoy it.
if the city of philly waited until rocky balboa died,the italian stallion would not be happy about it.
clubber lane,yes,rocky,no 🙂
I like the retired uniform numbers few as they maybe and i like the pennants like you said blue wall ok but thats all cosmetic we need the fenses lower and pulled in a bit.
BTW, ads on the wall aren’t “minor league” the had them in the majors seemingly forever, with the exception of the 60’s-80’s.
Great discussion …
Definitely need to go back to a green wall, sans team pennants (they did look corny, although pennants commemorating the retired numbers and non-Wild Card titles would be OK.)
Chris, is there any way you can post your friend’s computer graphic here? I always felt the new park was an opportunity to right the unforgivable wrong of removing the colored panels. An opportunity lost, that is.
Finally, I recall in the 70s there were pennants for the other MLB teams (or at least the NL teams) lining the top rim of Shea. I would be all for this at Citi. There is no need for that many American flags to be placed around the top of the ballpark.
The Giants really got the wall ads thing going when they put the Gap ads on the walls of Candlestick… In the gaps of course.
I think te walls should stay black. If they are painted blue it’ll clash with the rest of the stadium. If the Mets were winning the walls could be Yellow and no one would care. It’s only an issue because the team has been bad the past 2+ years. Move them in though. I still advocate that.
I’m at a loss for words at your proposal to remove the 1999 banner. Such an action would be utterly criminal.
Heartstrings aside, any motion to remove ANY piece of Mets history at Citi Field is mind boggling. Think about what you’re saying!
Hanging a wild card banner is a move of a second tier organization. While they’re at it, they might as well retire a “10th Man” jersey for the fans. I’ll refrain from citing the Yankees as an example, so I will instead point out the total lack of division title and playoff appearance banners hanging from the rafters at Staples Center and TD Garden. Excellent organizations celebrate excellence. If you want to relive a good 2nd place season that ended in a Braves Pennant and a Yankees championship, check out the museum in the rotunda. I’m sure they’ve got Ventura’s black jersey behind the glass.
We are not an excellent organization. Your argument is invalid.
I feel that the changes needed to Citi at a minimum are:
1) If the walls are not coming in, at least make them all 8 feet high.
2) Blue walls with less advertising would work well.
3) Please renovate and give the fans a Tom Seaver Rotunda. Jackie Robinson can be memorialized in any open 8′ x 8′ section of the stadium the owners chose.
The outfield walls should be moved in and reduced in height to mirror Shea. Nobody ever complained that Shea wasn’t a fair park for hitters even though it was more of a pitcher’s park.
True, Citi isn’t Shea, but at Shea for 45 seasons you knew the minute you stepped inside the stadium and later when you went to your seats that is was unquestionably the home of the Mets.
Citi is an Ebbets Field redux and feels like a Mets road game thanks to Jeff Wilpon who takes all the credit for the design and construction.
Citi is a lifeless, spiritless, ballpark lacking any soul.
I think the Wilpons should sell the Mets to new owners and use that money to buy their beloved Dodgers from McCourt.
Please, don’t make the walls the ugly blue of latter day Shea – what an ugly color! The black walls with orange numerals look so classy, and make a great backdrop to watch racing outfielders – and for tracking the small white baseball.
Cluttering up the walls with painting of pennants is very minor league.
Finally, I’m growing really tired of these threads that ASSUME all of us Met fans hate the black walls, hate the Jackie Robinson Rotunda and don’t like Citi Field because it doesn’t look like Shea Stadium. I’ve been a Met diehard since ’63, and I love Citi Field – a smaller, more intimate ballpark instead of a large, ugly, generic multi-sport cookie cutter stadium. Most Met fans really like the park pretty much the way it is. You can’t tell from these posts, because it’s the complainers who speak up; that’s human nature. People who like things the way they are simply less likely to go to the trouble of writing posts saying “don’t change it”. That’s human nature, too.
If the Mets are going to keep the walls black, can they at least make the ads black to blend in with the wall?
Here’s my fixes:
1. I am totally on board will getting rid of the Wild Card Banner. I have been saying the same thing as Jeff about it being “2nd class”. I loved that team but I have my memories and the team is well documented in the proper places like history books, removing the banner doesn’t take that away.
2. Fix the ads on the wall by removing the background color in them & making th background the same color as the wall.
For example, rather than having a Bud ad with a red background with white letters, make the lettering red & white on a black background. Other teams have it this way, Nats Park comes to mind off the top of my head.
3. If the wall must be changed to any color, change it to green to not only go back to the way Shea was intended but it also matches the seats & grass.
Most teams do not have team color walls. Do the Phillies & Cardinals have bright red walls? Do their fans complain that they aren’t team color?
That blue shown is not the right blue for CitiField. See the current real dark blue that they use in seating locations markers and in some ads, that the blue to use. With the orange HR line it would look great. The black is awful. Plus its already looks faded.
And the height of the wall in LF. Its does not have to be padded above 8 feet. If they want some kind of old time look used like those metal signs above the eight feet in left field. Take away the retired numbers and banners on the wall. Put them somewhere else where it be more respected in there importance to the meaning to the team. One spot is the curbed blank area behind and above the bridge. There the retired numbers should go. Maybe the championships banners can go where the WISE signs are over the bullpen.
Plus the main American Flag. Its kind of lost in stadium. Should be tall main one somewhere toward the middle of the field.
And not to go crazy but in off season move home plate up 6 feet. Everyone talks about not wanting a small home run band box. But the homers were flying out at the new Yankee Stadium and Citizens Bank and that did not stop from the Yanks and Phils winning in 08 and 09.
And what happened to the green around the apple from the first game st johns game in 09? I know its probably was not good for the batters eye, but its just too boring around the apple.
To add, you cant make the walls green. With the orange HR line (think Mets are only team that can uses orange) it would truly look worse with green walls.
Moving walls in is too much work. More easy to move home plate up.
I have no problem with Rotunda. But would like to see on those TVs that play the same loop over and over again, to add footage of Mets history.
Also a statue of Seaver is needed in front of stadium. Along with statues of Nelson, Kiner and Murphy.
In parking lot like to see a statue of Cleon Jones making catch in LF to end 69 WS and a statue of Orocso in this victory stance to end 86 WS. These in their placement add to the memory of Shea Stadium too.
sorry for typos and such. typing too fast here……….lol.
I was dragged to Citifield. I myself will never again go to a ballgame in that park. That ballpark was a disgrace to Mets fans.
I had so much love for Shea stadium, their was nothing there to remind me of Shea. Let us not forget who brought baseball back
to New York. That stadium will always be a disgrace to even think about going to . I will sooner see a Met game on the road before I set foot again into that monstrosity of a stadium.