The Mets Police

Holy cow – I know I am digressing from the Mets (but I assume y’all are local-area sports fans) and long-time readers know my problem with obstructed views – take a look at this article in the Post about obstructed views in the new football stadium.  You have to see the picture to believe it.

My head is going to explode.  When you get done with the Post and want to focus on Citi Field here’s a collection of obstructed views at Citi Field for you to take a look at. And videos. Of course obstructed views are a Mets tradition that dates back to 1962.

For newer readers, I take Mets EVP David Howard to task for the quote he gave in 2009:

The way we characterize “obstructed” is if you have an obstruction, something in front of you — a beam, a pillar, something that’s blocking your view. That’s not the case here. It is a function of the geometry of the building. And it is a conscious decision that we made along with the designers and the architects, that we wanted people to be lower and closer to the field, and have great views, and great views of the action. By doing that in fair territory, you are going to have situations where you are going to lose certain blind spots in the deep outfield of those sections. That is something we understood to be a factor. It is true in every new ballpark that has seating in the outfield …”

And I maintain that the plexiglass/staircase issues are not geometry.  It’s one thing not to see the corner of the outfield, it’s another when a railing blocks your view of the batter and pitcher.  I still await the day Mr. Howard revises that quote.

On twitter yesterday I recieved this @metspolice from @nybd:

Dave Howard said they always planned a Mets HOF in 2010 on Mets Weekly your thoughts?

I will take Mr. Howard at face value.   I will also trust that Mr. Howard said something like that on Mets Weekly which I haven’t seen.   Assuming all that is correct, I do wonder why Mr. Howard chose to take a pounding in 2009 about “Mets history” rather than tell us a museum was coming.

Around this time last year, Mr. Howard told Mike Francesca:

We’re extraordinarily proud of our history … We’re still sort of doing the refinement here. We’ll have appropriate … oh, uh, we’ll roll out additional elements … we’ll recognize that, celebrate that … “

So perhaps the museum was on his mind and he chose not to share.  Regardless, we have it now and it’s a great thing.

Another quote I enjoy is this one about Old-Timer’s Day:

“It wasn’t popular, it wasn’t effective, fans weren’t responding and it wasn’t selling very many tickets,” Howard says. “The fans spoke volumes. It’s a very expensive promotion and it wasn’t producing the sales and marketing results we wanted for that investment.”

That’s a shame.  Fans, if you want to see more old-timer’s day type events, so they Mets can see a return on investment, be sure to support that Hall of Fame game on August 1st.  I have my tickets.

For more quotes from Mr. Howard, check out this article on Mets Today from about a year ago.

Nobody loves dogs more than I do.   Bark in the Park seems like it was tremendous fun, I hope they do it again on a day when Mrs. Mets Police will let me go to a game (and hoo-boy that ain’t today, notice I’m a little slow on the posts this morning.)

Apparently dogs can walk around the field without destroying it, but it’s impossible to let little kids walk around with banners.   Seems odd.

As for the dog on the left, he seems like an awesome cool dog (named Murphy!) with a bad taste in jerseys. Well, we can’t pick our owners.

Actually, it appears black jerseys look good on dogs.  Dogs of course are civilians and not actually playing Major League Baseball so it somewhat makes sense.  More photos here.

Here’s a cool video:

Uni Watch which does a far better job about ripping black uniform than I’ll ever do has a nice article today (part 2 of 2) about what they call Black for Black’s Sake.

“Black For Black’s Sake” — or BFBS — it’s the second entry in the Uni Watch Glossary. It’s defined in there as “a reference to teams that gratuitously add black to their uniform design even though black was never one of their team colors.” Fittingly, the example is the New York Mets, the poster child for this seemingly endless fashion statement.