Citi Field

I have attended one game at Citi Field so far. I happened to see this game on Memorial Day – right after going to my first two games at the new Yankee Stadium. Perhaps it was a difference in expectations, but as disappointing as Yankee was, Citi was really impressive. From the outside the park is OK. A friend described one side as looking like the outside of a NASCAR track. The rotunda entrance behind home plate is fairly impressive. I attended this game with my friend Joe and we decided to enter through the rotunda. As we were walking in, people are talking about the Jackie Robinson statue. Robinson got his start in New York and he’s the only player to have his number retired by all major league clubs. All around there are pictures of Robinson on the interior walls. As we make it past the turnstiles I walk to the back of the rotunda and there is a giant 42. WTF! I figured this was in addition to the Robinson statue. Sadly this was the Robinson statue. This was disappointing. We made our way to the seats. We bought club-level tickets and sat close to home plate.

 
The inside of the park is nice. They seemed to go to a great deal to make the retro feel and pulled it off. One of the interesting things was putting the out of town scores above the upper deck in left field. The tendency for most new parks is to put the other scores near field level. The stadium staff were friendly and so were the fans. I should mention my friend Joe is more of a Met fan than a Yankee fan. The food was also pretty good.

The game I saw was against the Nationals. The Mets were considering contending for the division but they eventually finished fourth in the division. New York looked better on paper than in reality. They had good offense in David Wright and Carlos Beltran. For pitching they had Johan Santana and the newly signed Francisco Rodriguez. The Mets also had Jose Reyes who was injured a few days before the game I saw. He would miss the rest of the season. They were playing the Nationals who had the worst record in the majors last year and would have the worst record this year too. The Nats had pretty good offense but terrible pitching. They had Adam Dunn and Ryan Zimmerman. For the first half of the season they had Nick Johnson and towards the end they picked up Nyjer Morgan. Not surprisingly, this game went to the Mets. Of note for this game, the 40yo Gary Sheffield had a home run and FRod got the save.
 

One of the things that impressed me the most was the waterless urinals in the men’s rooms. If you consider how many men attend a Mets game over the season. Presume they use the restroom once per game at one gallon per use and that’s an impressive amount of water saved. It’s not as though the men’s room was going to smell any worse.

If you’re in New York and you can only see one game, I’d recommend Citi much more than the new Yankee stadium. 

UPDATE 09/24/2012: I was in NYC for a business trip and had the chance to catch a game with my friends CJ and Grace. It was the last home stand for the Mets who had been eliminated from the post-season for a while. The Mets were playing against the Pirates who had been eliminated from the playoffs even earlier. The result was an empty ballpark. Attendance was announced as 22,000. I think they were including ballpark employees, the Pirates staff, and people who happened to drive too close to the stadium. We sat in the lower level just past 3rd base in good seats. The good news about empty parks is no lines for anything. We entered the stadium through the rotunda [behind home plate] and walked around to left-center field looking for food. CJ mentioned that Citi was known for having really good food. The stadium does have a wide selection of offerings. I settled for hot pastrami on rye with a knish. I was impressed. For ballpark food this was really good…a little better than the game itself. This match-up featured two September call-ups pitching against each other. Perhaps one day I can say, "I saw Kyle McPherson pitch against Jenrry Mejia” as they battle each other for the Cy Young but I’m guessing not. The highlight of the game? With no fans in the park, the Mets teamed up with a local drug store for the “Get $2 off detergent if the Mets hit 2 home runs in the game” promotion. Thanks to Ike Davis I was a winner that night!