Friday, April 17, 2009

What do you think of Citi Field?

Over the past few days, I've been reading, and writing, my own reviews of Chez Amazin (a.k.a. Gil Hodges Memorial Park, a.k.a. Shea Stadium II, a.k.a. Debits Field, a.k.a. Citi Field). A lot of them have been pretty harsh. If you click over to my archive on the left side, as well as the links to the other blogs (you may need to go a couple days back to get various reviews from the Boston series and from this week), you can see what myself and others have thought (if you haven't already). As the games move on, more people will have had the chance to go and generate their own feedback. It may not get any better from there. Or we may warm up to it, finally, over a period of time. Who knows.

When the Mets can upstage the Yankees, that's usually a good thing. Especially when it comes at WFAN's live pre-game broadcast of the new Yankee Stadium (where you never expect to hear the word "Mets" uttered on air). But in a short piece I heard yesterday while out to find something to eat, I heard them bashing Citi Field. That's not the type of press the Mets needed.

So I ask a not-so-simple question to you, my loyal(?) reader(s). Are you surprised that the Mets built a ballpark that has received these bad reviews? Not so much asking if you're disappointed with it. I think a lot of the blogger community seems to be (maybe I'm not reading them right). Rather, I'm asking if you expected the Mets to build exactly this, with all the faults you find in it, or if the good and bad really did surprise you, and you honestly expected better from them (or maybe you had the bar so low that this is better than what you had expected). Comments are always welcome, but a simple "Yes", "No", "Not sure" response can be logged on the right-hand side of the page, as well as a 4th choice if you really don't think it's bad. I'll be fair and invite those answers as well.