Yesterday, I had the good fortune to go to the second of two exhibition games between the Red Sox and the Mets at Citi Field (thanks, Mike!). Though the regulars were all out of the lineup by the fourth inning, I don’t think anyone was really there to watch the game anyway – the real star was the stadium. My photo essay of 9 innings at Citi follows:

Approaching the stadium along the Whitestone Expressway. I can already tell it’s going to be an Amazin’ time:

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K-Rod the builder?

It hasn’t been a good couple of days for Citigroup. After being publicly chastised by President Obama for seeking to buy a $50 million private jet after receiving a $45 billion bailout from the government, the ugly controversy surrounding its deal for the naming rights to the new Mets stadium has reared its head once again.

This time, it’s everybody’s favorite inquisitor, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), along with representative Ted Poe (R-Texas), both of whom sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner requesting that the deal between the Mets and Citigroup be “dissolved.”

From Newsday:

In an interview yesterday, Kucinich said the financial behemoth is in no position to lay out cash to have its name on the Queens stadium. “It’s just totally unacceptable that Citigroup should be able to spend $400 million in naming rights when they’re the recipients of a massive federal bailout,” he said.

Kucinich and Poe wrote that Citigroup’s financial footing “has changed drastically” since the naming rights deal was struck in 2006. The agreement calls for Citigroup to pay $400 million over 20 years for the naming rights.

The Mets “are fully committed to our contract with Citigroup,” said Jay Horowitz, the team’s spokesman.

UmpBump readers were put to a vote as to what Citigroup and the Mets should do last time this little pickle was tickled, and the feeling (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) was that the stadium name ought to in some way reflect the fact that it was subsidized with public funds.

The sticky part about this whole mess is the inconvenient truth that Citigroup has yet to pay the bulk of the agreed upon amount. So while it continues to operate heaviy sedated with tax-payer money, it will be under contractual obligation to pay the Mets for naming rights for the next 20 years.

Given the recent, uhm, lapse in judgment about its ability to manage its financial priorities, however, Citigroup is in less of a position to just brush this PR fiasco away (much like the Mets did), and the truth of the matter is that as public outcry continues to grow, the Mets would rather have a packed nameless stadium, than an empty Citifield.

Citi Field it is...

As expected, the Mets are going to keep their $400 million (thank you) and not rename Citi Field.

“The company is still an ongoing company and a vital company that is doing business around the globe,” Mets chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon said Tuesday. “The taxpayers are backstopping what’s going on in the global economy. It’s not really Citi’s fault that they’re in this problem. There are a lot of other banks in the same situation — with naming-rights deals, also.”

Last week I asked UmpBump readers whether the Mets should rename Citi Field given the current economic turmoil surrounding Citigroup (the people obviously behind the naming rights).

Though not an overwhelming majority, 34% of you did vote for a name change that would somehow allude to the fact that the government dipped twice into tax payers’ wallets, first by subsidizing construction of the ballpark and most recently by bailing out Citigroup.

Here are the final results.

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I voted for the “I don’t give a crap” option, not because I didn’t think the Mets should’ve renamed it, but because I believe there are bigger things at work here. Like, uhm, a crumbling economy. And I also happen to think that a multi-million dollar naming-rights deal by a financial institution getting bailed out by Congress is an example of said crumbling economy. But I digress…

As the financial turmoil surrounding Citigroup unfolded this past week, resulting in the proposed bailout by Congress (and you and me), a very pertinent question that at one point seemed a settled matter popped into the minds of many: Is it fair that the word “Citi” as in “Citigroup” is associated with the Mets’ new stadium, aka Citi Field?

In 2006, Citigroup signed a 20-year deal with the Mets, worth $400 million, in order to provide a name and a sponsor to the team’s new home. Now that the financial institution is the latest behemoth to fall prey to the mortgage crisis and the bad economy, that deal is begining to rub some people the wrong way – especially so after Citi announced massive layoffs of historic proportions.

So far Citi has maintained that their “commitment to the Mets and [the] new ball park is firm,” as Jay Horwitz, the team’s Vice President for media relations, told mlb.com last week.

Steve Silverman, spokesman for Citi, told the New York Times that their commitment to the Mets is firm; “it’s important to us,” he said.

But the Citi bailout isn’t going down easy. This week’s announcement that Citigroup would be given a helping hand by the government, was the second such injection of cash in a span of a couple of months, and understandingly, people are pissed.

What’s more, NY politicians are pissed, as two Staten Island councilmen, Vincent M. Ignizio and James S. Oddo, have proposed renaming the stadium “Citi/Taxpayer field:”

“Perhaps a name change is in order, since it will be the taxpayers of the country who will foot the bill for not only part of stadium, but for the company itself,” Mr. Ignizio said. “The taxpayers are spending billions for this company to maintain its operations and deserve the recognition for their largess.”

Mr. Oddo quipped: “Not naming the field after Jackie Robinson in the first place: mindless. Tom Seaver stepping onto the new mound for the first time: timeless. Actually acknowledging the contributions of the hardworking taxpayer: priceless.”

Now, Taxpayer Field doesn’t have that nice of a ring to it, but it would be a more accurate reflection of the financing behind the stadium given the situation. Let’s follow the money: The construction of Citi Field is being subsidized with about $450 million in public funds, and now Citigroup is getting a shot in the arm of tax payer money, so yea, maybe a nod to taxpayers is in order. Stadium name changes aren’t unheard of, you are aware that Minute Maid Park was once called Enron Field?

Let’s put it up to a poll, shall we? Now that Citigroup is being rescued, it’s tentatively safe to asume it’ll stick around, but it’ll have the specter of the bailout hanging over its head:

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I realize this is some kind of insidious corporate ad campaign, but this site has some pretty awesome computer animated flyby videos of the five new ballparks currently under construction in Oakland, New York (both Mets and Yankees), Washington, and Minnesota.

http://www.mlb.com/mlb/fan_forum/cisco/

It’s interesting to see how much the new Yankee Stadium is going to look just like the old one. The new Mets stadium, Citi Field, seems dispiritingly boring and non-distinctive to me, virtually indistinguishable from all the other HOK parks, but then again, maybe that is fitting since it is replacing the dispiritingly mediocre Shea Stadium.

I hate writing this on the heels of Coley’s recent post about the fan-friendly seating at Turner Field.

Thanks to my brother’s generosity, I’ve been going to Shea Stadium this year on the Saturday Ticket Plan, where the purchase entitles you to keep the same seat all season for every Saturday home game. It’s a pretty fair deal considering that if each game were to be purchased individually, the prices continually vary based upon who they’re playing.

Due to this relatively frequent sojourn to Flushing, Queens, I’ve been able to see the progress of the construction for Citi Field, which will be the new home of the Mets starting the 2009 season. As I come out of the Willets Point subway stop on the Number 7 line each time, the new stadium’s infrastructure is the first thing I see, since it stands literally right next to Shea beyond the centerfield wall. It’s a pretty exciting thing for us fans, seeing as even our home-team biases can’t quite disguise our feelings for the lackluster facilities of Shea (it’s our piece of crap, but a piece of crap nonetheless).

But along with this excitement also comes a dose of reality. We Mets fans know the deal. Citi Field will have 42,000 seats, which is basically 3/4 of the current capacity at Shea of 55,000. With the team’s success over the past couple of seasons come the bandwagon jumpers armed with more dispensable income than I or millions of other New Yorkers could ever have. Do the math.

Newsday’s Wallace Matthews tackles this very issue in his latest article. He talks to an elderly fan named Henry Goldman, who along with his wife have attended games at Shea for decades and they currently enjoy a similar ticket plan as I do. Problem is, the Mets are yet to assure the fans that affordable ticket plans such as these will even be available at Citi Field.

Matthews writes:

Henry Goldman’s fear stems from the stated policy of the Mets ticket agents stationed throughout Shea Stadium that the partial season ticket plan he and his wife have enjoyed for a quarter-century will no longer be available at Citi Field. “Being senior citizens, we can’t afford to go to every game,” he said. “Weekends are our time to go. If we can’t get that plan anymore, we’re finished. We won’t be able to go.”

What it basically comes down to is that as of this writing, the Mets have not announced their intention to create ticket plans aside from full season tickets. It’s either buy a seat for the full season or fight for individual tickets, which will no doubt affect the ability of many fans to see the Mets in person.

I know that it seems like I and people like Goldman are dramatizing the issue. But do consider the fact that so far in 2007, the Mets have averaged over 44,000 fans per game, which is already 2,000 more people than Citi Field will accommodate. When the new stadium opens, the interest generated by the novelty will create a tougher competition for the tickets themselves. The Mets can hike up the price of tickets quite a bit before they will find a lack of interested parties. As if that were not enough, NY State legislature has made scalping legal, which will no doubt exacerbate the issue.

I am not so naive as to make this out to be armageddon, or to paint devil horns on owner Fred Wilpon’s picture whenever I see it. I understand that this is a business and that in this multimedia age, there are many options out there where I can continue to follow my team even if I may not be able to attend the games as often as I would like. The Mets have a business plan to increase revenue, which I’d like to think will improve the quality of players on the field.

It’s just a far cry from the baseball I loved as a Little Leaguer, I suppose.