Shortly after Shea Stadium completed its sixteenth season of operation as home of the New York Mets, it was busy being the home of the New York Jets. The Mets were done for the year by October. This was 1979. Competitively, the Mets were done for the year by April.
Citi Field is currently in the Shea equivalent of 1979 chronologically and in no other way. Citi’s sixteenth season, 2024, turned into the sweetest sixteenth imaginable. Beyond the Mets fan imagination, really. Opened in 2009 to high anticipation, the facility became known among frequent visitors as home of the meh. The aesthetics sparkled. The baseball wasn’t much to look at. Gleaming doesn’t cut it for very long if the team in residence doesn’t extend its seasons very often.
It took until Citi’s seventh season, 2015, to get Shea up in here. By the time Shea had been around seven seasons, Shea had established itself as the home of miracle and wonder. Season Six was 1969. The World Series came to Shea. The world championship, too. Three clinching celebrations in a span of just over three weeks trampled the grass. Maybe the groundskeepers minded. Surely the Jets — contractually dispatched to a lengthy away schedule — weren’t thrilled. But Shea, from 1964 forward, was where we had fun even before we won. Then we won, and there was no place on Earth like it. Could you blame us for digging up some earth?
Citi needed a modicum of success to tap its potential. That’s where 2015 came in. That’s where postseason baseball came in. That’s where fun came in. The Mets have never clinched anything at the ballpark that succeeded Shea, but starting in 2015, they began to get the hang of keeping it open in October. Seven postseason games that fall; one the next fall; three two falls ago, when there was a very hard fall. Victory at Citi has been intermittent in autumn (statistically speaking, 5-6 might belie the concept of home field advantage), but save for the San Diego finale in 2022, the vibes have been immaculate.
Nobody was shocked when Shea rocked. I think we were all taken aback that Citi could shimmy and shake. We who were there nine Octobers back changed the reputation of Citi Field. It wasn’t the building that was blah. It was the baseball and our response to it. Shea invited you to be giddy for the sake of giddiness when it opened. Citi wished to show you a menu. Once settled in Queens, Mets fans were ready for 1969 long before 1969. Come the next century, the Met mood had to find its place in its new place.
Open for postseason business…and fun.
Since 2015, we know Citi Field has a pulse and a heartbeat. Each throbs extra loud when it hosts extra games. Through their respective sixteen seasons of operation, Citi actually leads Shea, 11 to 10, in serving as a site for Upper Case October Baseball. Today and tomorrow will make it 12 and 13 for Citi. Shea sizzled in October 1969 and October 1973 (teeth chattered in the latter month’s World Series, but we’re talking Met-aphorically). Then it went on a long autumnal hiatus…except for the Jets, and even they took off after a while.
Shea came back strong in October 1986. Later, there’d be a handful of Octobers when mojo rose, if not as high as desired. Still, it was always a handful for opponents, thanks to the building and its occupants — players and fans — working their respective magic. I’ve never much associated Citi Field with magical properties. Some magical moments, absolutely, but it was too stately in its construction to include pixie dust. Yet these 2024 Mets are nothing if not magical, and we know damn well they’re not nothing. To us, the way they’ve gotten to October and fought into October, they’re everything. Until today, they’ve been everything but the home team.
The world’s longest road trip of Atlanta to Milwaukee to Atlanta to Milwaukee to Philadelphia, with an impending hurricane and two champagne showers thrown in, is over. The Mets went everywhere and all they brought us was this wonderful opportunity. Citi Field’s gates open at 2:30 this afternoon, 43,000-some sets of vocal cords shortly to follow, no doubt reaching an apex pitch before first pitch at 5:08. The din will erupt from deep within. We’ve waited long enough to express our in-person postseason’s greetings.
I’m such a sap; I love baseball so much.
I’ll be 61 years old next month and I’m having trouble concentrating for work this morning bc I’M GOING TO THE GAME TODAY WOOOOOOOOO.
lucky you!
if you *weren’t* having trouble concentrating
i’d think you were too young to be so jaded!
Sixteen days since our last home game, and a five city road trip where we went 5-6. Seems like we did much better than that, right? Well we won all of the big ones. Back in a New York groove tonight — LFGM!
i’m going to the game, but that start time! i get off work at 6, won’t get there till 7 … i’ll be lucky to get three innings in.
no matter. LFGM!!!
i heard you’re going to have to attend to a minor emergency around 4pm…you’ll be back at work tomorrow;0]
great production of stoke, greg.
i’d gotten over sunday and am excited about tonite, but you cranked things up nicely!
hmmm, i’ll see what i can come up with…
5:08 (or 5: or 6: anything) is a ridiculous time for a weekday Playoff Game. This is all because they want Ohtani in Prime Time.
Shea Stadium — to quote Joni Mitchell, they paved paradise, put up a parking lot.
To be clear, Shea was a dump, but it was *my* dump and my team won 2 World Series there.
RIP Shea.
Shea was never a dump. Ever.
It was a beautiful gleaming stadium 100 times better looking than the miniature thing they put up in it’s place.
It looks like a dilapidated parking garage from the outside.
The sightlines at Shea were better, with a beautiful view of the sky all the way out past the outfield.
Agreed. If Shea was a ‘dump’, I never experienced that. I still prefer Shea Stadium to Citi Field. The more fancy bells and whistles and flashing lights and expensive foods are added to Citi Field, the more I prefer Shea Stadium.
I had wonderful times at Shea also, but it was a football stadium. The seats were parallel to a football field and in a clever design were on wheels to angle out for baseball. And that meant you had to sit sideways to see the infield. The team needed a baseball stadium. Should have had more seats is my only complaint.
“Yet these 2024 Mets are nothing if not magical, and we know damn well they’re not nothing. To us, the way they’ve gotten to October and fought into October, they’re everything. Until today, they’ve been everything but the home team. … We’ve waited long enough to express our in-person postseason’s greetings.”
Yes. This post captures what I was thinking today while anticipating the 1st Mets home game of the 2024 post-season. When the Mets left Citi Field on September 22nd, it wasn’t like 2015 and 2022 when we knew long before the regular season ended that there would be playoff games at home. On Sept 22, they still needed to win a wildcard and then a wildcard series to play at home again in 2024. It was just as likely as not on Sept 22 that the next Mets home game would be in 2025. But they competed hard for this game at every must-win step since Sept 22 and they earned it.
Finishing the 162 with a 3-way tie with the Diamondbacks and Braves. The tie-breakers, the comeback wins. Every inch was needed to reach today’s game. In a few hours, I’ll care foremost about whether the Mets beat the Phillies today. But for now, I can just appreciate the 2024 Mets with gratitude that today’s game has manifested at all.
@eric1973 – Hard to disagree with the overall assessment. I miss the openness of Shea. And the sightlines were mostly better. It took a while for them to get Citi to a place that felt like that Mets played there and not the 1950s era Dodgers, but I eventually began to like the place. The one unforgivable, yet completely avoidable, thing I cannot stand about Citi is the left field upper deck obstructions. Because of the pitch, and how close it is to the field, you can’t see half of the OF. They also have some poorly placed rails and plexiglass near the stairwells.
You are totally right, Chris. The openness and the scenery and the 50,000 people that filled every seat when we were in a pennant race.
Just because people like to pig out on the food, and the suites they now have for those who do not care to watch the game.
And in this modern ‘dump,’ you cannot even see the whole field from your seat, like you could at Shea.
FOX is a real trip.
While I am grateful not to hear the comedic styling of Gary and the clown show, FOX really sucks at the basics.
After Tyrone Taylor threw out the runner at 2B, we couldn’t get enough closeups of Marte.
And after OMG got his 2 RBI hit, the graphics said 7-0, and they kept it there when they went to commercial, even though it was actually 6-0.
And the absolute last person I want to hear give opinions on the Mets’ postseason is Adam Freaking Wainwright.
I think I’m 11 years old again. I love this team!
Best comment of the day award: “I think I’m 11 years old again. I love this team!”
When the camera showed Vientos, after his amazing defensive play, standing at third with that white jersey I had a flashback to my youth. Mets have some magic momo going on.
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