I missed this one during a busy week, but I don’t think it got much pickup in the blogosphere. It’s a good long read from which I excerpt. I wanted to excerpt the whole darn thing!
And yet it’s worth asking if a better roster and an improved record would actually cure what ails these Mets. They have seen their average attendance dip in each of their first four seasons at Citi Field. It’s still early in 2013, but all indications show that attendance at Citi Field will dip down even further this season. Matt Harvey might be the team’s new golden child, but brilliance hasn’t been able to bump up ticket sales.
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More importantly, interest in the Mets seems to be waning in New York, and many fans who identified strongly with the city’s “other team” have been turned off by the failure of the brand-driven, corporate identity the Mets took on in 2004, when they began a five-year free-agency assault under general manager Omar Minaya.
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The Mets fan used to be the jealous, braying, and always doomed little brother in New York, and although none of these words is a particularly positive way to describe oneself, the Mets fan wore them with pride. It’s impossible to blame the Wilpon family and Omar Minaya for trying to drive up interest through high-priced free agents that would bring the team into a new era at Citi Field, but when the model of the Mets-as-Yankees failed and left the fans with nothing but a soulless husk of a stadium and a roster of minor leaguers and David Wright, a new, uglier disaffection set in.
via The excellence of Matt Harvey and the misery of the Mets – Grantland.