I come to you with a premise that the t-shirt people aren’t going to like. Citi FIeld’s outfield sucks.
I know, right?
Yes I know there are 850 people who like to sit 550 feet from home plate and good on them, but Citi Field’s OF sucks.
Take a look at those OF seats in LF. Never mind the ones upstairs where you can’t even see the LF, let’s focus on the lower bowl.
Look how set back those seats are. Look how high they are above the wall. Look how you have a deck hanging over some of the seats.
Now let’s look at Wrigley. (This photo is from 2013 and the pre-renovated bleachers, although the new ones sit the same way).
Look how tight you are to the game. As if you’re in a PARK not a mall that happens to have a baseball game in it.
Going around the horn – yeah the bridge is cool, but again look at all that space between the bridge and the fence? What if we filled those with LOW seats where you could feel part of the action (maybe there is a batter’s eye concern).
As for the bullpens, maybe stick them where the whatever the Mo’s Zone is called now in RF.
Here’s another angle…what if we ripped out all that lower bowl and moved fans closer? I will give you your choice of leaving the bullpen where they are and making seats lower to the fence where the Modell’s sign is – or putting the bullpen in RF and filling in under the bridge.
Then there’s the porch itself. There probably was a good idea here, but that section feels like Citi Field Siberia. It’s not easy to get to, and feels disconnected to everything else. Maybe there is another approach to be had? Maybe more of a landing? A bar/food/hangout plaza – especially for cold days when that’s one of the few places with sunshine.
Here’s Anaheim…
Then there is the scoreboard. Honestly, it’s too much, It’s too big, it adds to the feeling that I am at the mall, and it’s surrounded by too many ads. I get that there is money to be mad, but it’s visually unappealing.
Here’s Wrigley’s relatively new scoreboard in RF. What I like it about it is they matched the aesthetic of the park. It is a video screen, but they didn’t go bananas and they keep the white on green.
In between innings that becomes a video board for commercials.
Overall, here’s the look of Wrigley from this summer, and remember we are talking outfield between the poles here, isn’t this a much better aesthetic than the walls of Citi?
Here’s Anaheim again – not as low as I’d like but still better than that trapped feeling of Citi
And the noise in Queens…
Which do you like better? I vastly prefer the Wrigley PARK feel and not the visual noise of the Mets version, not to mention the seats are more set back.
What about the players?
“We don’t know why, but something is going on in this ballpark and the way we play here,” Roessler said at Citi Field recently. “We’re trying to find out. One thing I’ve heard is that the centerfielders will tell you sometimes they can feel the wind at their back, coming in from both sides of the [centerfield] scoreboard. But that’s just one anecdotal thing.” (via Sports Illustrated)
I know the Mets don’t give a hoot that I don’t like the outfield, but maybe if they see a baseball reason they might maybe re-visit it some day.
