The below is 100% speculation.
2006: The Mets announce a deal with Citi to sponsor new building.
TBD: someone somewhere mocks the Citi Building logo. People mock up things all the time. Maybe it gets considered, maybe it gets rejected. Maybe it gets immediately rejected with a “are you crazy???” Maybe someone emailed it to someone with a “how about this?” Whatever the internal discussion, it gets saved on a computer somewhere labeled something like logo.jpg
Note that the colors are “off” on this logo.
Off-season 2008-09: Citibank receives a government bailout. Several articles are written about the sponsorship of Citi Field. If the logo was ever considered at all it definitely does not go into circulation.
April 2009: Citi Field opens with traditional logo. You remember there were not a lot of “Mets things” in the park at first.
November 2013: someone updates the Facebook page, innocently grabs a logo that has been in the system for years. Doesn’t notice. Mets Police does not notice, you do not notice, nobody notices.
I think it’s just an old mock file and an innocent mistake.
To me the story isn’t the use of the logo yesterday or in November, the story is how it came to exist in the first place and what the possible intentions were. (or why a mock would have an R not a TM).
I don’t think this was a “float” at all. I think it’s just that a never-meant logo got out innocently.
I know a few folks are digging more, but that’s my working theory of what happened.
