Met fans never entered the equation. Everybody in baseball, except us Met fans, hated Shea, so it had to go. CitiField is a duplicate of a stadium loved by the Wilpons. It never occurred to them to include tributes to players and events dear to Met fans’ hearts. The flap over Doc’s scrawl in one of the CitiField bars crystallized the situation and embarrassed the Mets into reluctantly beginning to allow homages to actual Mets. Of course, they began with the Gil Hodges gate. Hey, I’m not complaining; you can’t go wrong with the greatest leader in Mets history. But I’m still waiting for some memorial to a player who isn’t primarily remembered for his association with the Dodgers. I guess that will happen with the upcoming Mets Hall of Fame inductions.

CitiField is a botch job in a lot of other ways. The fabled Rotunda is basically a small room with a big escalator. Instead of a bronze statue of Jackie Robinson, the Wilpons settled for a big plastic 42. Hell, even the Pirates sprung for a couple of statues! Like the outfield wall, the black corridors are gloomy and distinctly un-Met like. The confusing hierarchy of clubs and seating categories creates a complex caste system that contributes to the fact that CitiField never rocks like Shea. The message seems to be “if you’re willing to spend enough money, you won’t have to be around anyone who spent less”. And the flaws in the playing field have been well-chronicled. I’ll just say that I don’t think that stadium architecture should deliberately change the way the game is played, but that edict has been ignored by many of the new crop of stadiums.

Of course, the timing of CitiField could not have been worse. The Wilpons could not stand even one more season in Shea, so they decided to open the new place the same year that the Billion Dollar Megalopolis opened in the Bronx. If they could have waited a year, they could have had the spotlight for a time, instead of just being a footnote. I just wish the Wilpons themselves didn’t buy into the “second class” image of the Mets. They’re content with second-best and they don’t even pretend that we’re prepared to compete with the Yankees, the Dodgers, or any of the more established franchises. It’s perhaps the most disheartening thing about being a Met fan in 2010.

We’re supposed to be grateful for our World Class home, and we do appreciate the improved concessions and other enhancements. And it will get better over time. Shea may be a “static standard” now, but it was never that when it was hosting live events. Scarcely a season would go by without the addition of an apple, neon ballplayers, the skyline, colored seats, giant player posters in the rafters, or something else that improved the place. In 1964, Shea opened as an enormous, but relatively staid ballpark with only an innovative scoreboard and some kooky puzzle pieces to give it character. By the end, virtually everything had changed, including the color scheme inside and out. Shea acquired its personality over the years, and the changes almost magically reflected the scrappy underdog/occasional miracle personality of the team itself.

So there’s hope that CitiField will eventually become our beloved home. A big comeback in 2010 wouldn’t hurt.