Today Paul and I attended our first game at Citi Field, the new home of the Mets. By my count that makes 23 baseball stadiums where I have seen a major league baseball game (sometimes I have my doubts whether what I have seen in Baltimore is major league baseball). That includes two ballparks for the Mets (as of today), the Phils, Reds and Tigers. Paul is a couple ahead of me, but he wants to see a game in every park which is not my goal. I have also been in both the Diamondbacks stadium and the Astros facility, but did not see a major league game there. With the new Yankee Stadium plus Milwaukee and the White Sox field to come later this summer that will get me up to 26. Not close to my cousins who will visit their 50th ballpark this year, but not bad all the same.
Both Paul and I liked the new stadium. The Ebbets Field like outside along with the rotunda were very nice touches - even though I never made it to Ebbets Field. After that to me the park was very much like Citizens Bank Ballpark in Philadelphia, especially the way the upper deck seats that we had were laid out. It is interesting to see a new ballpark at the same time that we have prepared a proposal to edit a book about Ebbets Field. Reading a chapter in the first book in the series about Forbes Field, one of the writer commented on how when PNC park in Pittsburgh was built, Pirate fans liked the nostalgic touches based upon Forbes Field. Yet when Forbes Field (as well as the rest of that generation of stadiums) was built, the prevailing attitude was not nostalgia, but looking forward to celebrate the new technology.
I understand that a number of Mets fans are unhappy with Citi Field. Part of it has to do with the sacrifice of the ability to see some portions of the field so that seats could be closer. Our seats, for example, were down the left field line and we couldn't see into the left field corner. There is also apparently some dissatisfaction with all of emphasis on the Dodgers and not enough emphasis on the Mets' traditions. The latter point is fair and should certainly be something that can be fixed.
The dissatisfaction with the emphasis on the Dodgers is, I suspect, to some degree due to the fact that the Giants and Dodgers have been gone for more than 50 years and only a minority of today's fans remember seeing them play. It needs to be remembered, however, that the Mets are the heirs to National League baseball in New York, something that goes back into the nineteenth century. I think the longest four years of my life as a baseball fan was the period 1958-61 when there was no National League baseball in New York and all we could do was root against the Yankees. I remember when the Mets started in 1962, as horrible as they were, I wanted to watch them over the Yankees, something my father couldn't understand even though he was no Yankee lover.
Mentioning my father reminds me again of the long four generation tradition of male Zinns being baseball fans. Paul and I have shared so many baseball memories dating back to his first Mets game in 1986 running through today. I had a chance to go to the Mets third game at Citi Field, but couldn't go because of a conflict. I was really disappointed at the time, but now I am really glad that Paul and I were able to go there together for the first time. It was made even more special by the fact that we met outside the stadium and walked through the Jackie Robinson rotunda for the first time together - another great father and son memory.
No comments:
Post a Comment