Scoreboards

• The New York Mets began their 2009 season in unfamiliar territory: on one of the best baseball fields in the league
• The brand new CitiField, built on adjacent parking lot from the old Shea Stadium, sports a new baseball field layout that is fan friendly along with many special features

Having been at Shea Stadium since 1964, Mets fans had outgrown the place. The old Mets field was outdated, held too many seats, especially those far from the field and all of them too small. The Mets new stadium corrects all of these issues. The number of fans has been cut by 15,000 seats to a capacity of about 42,000 and those chairs have been widened up to 4 inches and have extended legroom for today’s bigger fan size. Fans are also better served by twice the bathrooms, a store that is three times larger and the true vestige of the modern sporting era: 54 brand-new luxury sports suites. For food, there is much more than the average dog and suds: they have added a new high-end restaurant, the Acela Club, that serves 350 patrons sitting high above the field with perfect views. For the concession crowd, there will be more choices with local shops selling there, including sushi, sandwiches and Belgian frites.

The changes will prove even more important in the Mets new stadium. The baseball field layout has been changed entirely. It is said to be much more of a pitcher’s park than the old Shea Stadium with a longer outfield and higher fences. Straight out into center field a home run shot will have to travel at least 408 feet, in one spot 414 feet, and fly a 16-foot wall. The popular left field homer for right-handed hitters is going to take more power to get over a 15-foot wall set out 379 feet. Far right field is closest at 330 feet as it flares out towards center field. The walls and length of the field may prove to be a challenge for batters at the Mets field.

The Mets organization also grabbed pieces of the past, as is popular today with new stadiums, to bring that era’s architecture and those glory days to the present. Since the Mets were essentially the city’s replacement for the Brooklyn Dodgers when they bolted for the West Coast in the 1950s, the Mets new field cops two of the greatest icons from that era as it own. First, the legendary Ebbets Field reappears in the old brick facade of the new CitField. Purposely meant to copy the old feel of that renowned ballpark, CitiField has large steel buttresses showing with brick and stone rubbed to look decades old (ironically it was the “oldness” of Ebbets field that drove out the Dodgers). The other icon is even bigger than the field he played in: Jackie Robinson. Robinson was of course the first player of color to step onto a Major League field when he did so at Ebbets in 1947 as a Dodger. The Jackie Robinson Rotunda greets fans at the entrance of CitiField with a life size statue of Robinson and examples of his famed nine values.

The Mets opening day at the new CitiField was April 13, 2009 when they hosted the San Diego Padres.