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Citi Field Articles - The Stadium is the Star

batmagadanleadoff Apr 05 2009 11:39 AM Edited 2 time(s), most recently on Apr 05 2009 12:08 PM

With Citi Field expected to be the focus of quite a few news articles in the coming days, I thought I'd start a thread dedicated to media coverage of our new stadium. It beats giving Wally Matthews his own thread. Here's the first: Ballpark Pioneers Witness Citi Field’s First Pitch By GEORGE VECSEY Published: March 29, 2009 No matter what comes later — say, in the last week of the season, that recent and ghastly Mets tradition — there could only be one first game, when the gates open and the people enter. Fans streaming into the rotunda at Citi Field, an architectural homage to the one at Ebbets Field. A loop of highlight videos plays on two large screens inside. This was not opening day, when the games count. This was not even the first Mets exhibition, which is Friday against the Red Sox. But it was the first real game of baseball, St. John’s against Georgetown, and the real star of the day was the new ballpark. It is handsome and functional and full of nooks and crannies to explore. The Wilpon family knew what it was doing. This is not the municipal dump that used to be next door. If anybody had dared to play “There Used to Be a Ballpark,” that Sinatra chestnut, I would have laughed out loud. The new place opened on a misty Sunday in very early spring. As damp as the weather was, it was hard to extricate the hope of spring from the rush of a new baseball season from the curiosity about a new ballpark, where many things will happen, some of them joyous, some of them dreadful. Suspend for a day the rightful thumb-sucking about whether any of this largesse is good for the general population. This is, after all, a project that cost approximately $800 million, not including the extras tossed in by the city and the tax breaks and all that murky stuff. Suspend for a day that the name of the field is currently Citi Field, named for a banking company that has pledged $400 million over 20 years in naming rights while pocketing a gigantic bailout from the government, that is to say, from us. While the economy and the future of Citigroup sort themselves out, a new ballpark is a different issue. Not having been on this site since the Florida Marlins put the Mets out of their considerable misery six months ago, I was eager to see the new place. Shea Stadium is gone, reduced to a pile of rubble. The venerable No. 7 elevated line has a covered promenade leading straight toward the ballpark. Traffic flows more freely. What’s to miss? I took a stroll around the ballpark, past young trees, pleasant benches, formidable walls and doors — not many opportunities for a kid from Corona, like Omar Minaya, to slip inside to watch a few innings after school, on his life’s path to becoming general manager. Behind closed gates was the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, built by the Wilpons in homage to the Italianate rotunda of Ebbets Field, where Brooklyn Dodgers fans used to meet. Under other circumstances, this ballpark could have been named for Robinson, despite the specious argument that pops up that Robinson never played for the Mets. And who knows, the stadium may yet be named for Robinson. With any luck, heroes outlast banks. In the endless video loop on two large screens in the rotunda, Robinson steals home in the 1955 World Series, and Yogi Berra hops up and down in dissension. When Yogi visits the rotunda sometime this season, he will surely hop up and down all over again. Near the rotunda, John Booth, a teacher from Greenwich, Conn., inspected the commemorative bricks with inscriptions like “Gets By Buckner” and “I Saw Todd Pratt’s Walkoff 1999.” Booth’s group had bought a brick that said “NY Mets = Life!” This early spring day seemed to reaffirm that sentiment. Inside the gift shop on the ground floor, the air smells like money, from the cushy Gooden and Carter jerseys on sale. In the food court out behind right field, the air smells like sauerkraut. I bought a hot dog, and a pleasant concessions worker actually doled out a generous helping of sauerkraut at the condiment stand. How thoughtful. In the broad corridors, where one can watch the game while noshing, Jim West was telling family members how he played hooky from Junior High School 16 in adjacent Corona on April 17, 1964, for the first home game in the Mets’ new park. “It was a mess,” West said. “It was chaos.” The bathrooms didn’t work, and they never got any better in the 45 years of Shea. Things mostly worked on this day of discovery. The clunky press elevator, where I must have spent a year of my life waiting, has been replaced by a smooth, modern machine. Wearing a bright jacket that said Mets Construction Team was Mike Smith, a technology director for Hunt-Bovis, the company that built the new place. He was escorting his family to the game at the stadium he helped build. Smith’s father, John, was an usher in the Polo Grounds and Shea Stadium, and when the new place opens for the Red Sox on Friday, he will be working at his third Mets ballpark. Amid all the new touches, there was a familiar face. John Franco marched out to deliver the first pitch, peeling off his blue Mets warm-up jacket to reveal a bright red jersey from St. John’s, his alma mater. Franco promptly threw his pitch into the dirt, but the fans applauded him anyway. They were in a benign mood on this day of exploration, this day of hope. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/sport ... ey.html?em

batmagadanleadoff Apr 05 2009 11:42 AM

Stadium Food: Not Nouvelle, Not Nedick’s, Chow for Now By FLORENCE FABRICANT Published: April 2, 2009 A $5 hot dog was often the default meal at Shea Stadium and the old Yankee Stadium, since there were few better choices. But food is not an afterthought at their replacements. Skip to next paragraph Rebecca McAlpin for The New York Times A branch of the Blue Smoke barbecue restaurant will serve pulled pork sandwiches ($9). Rebecca McAlpin for The New York Times Citi Field’s El Verano Taquería has chili marinated skirt steak tacos, above, with pumpkin seed and chicken mole. Even the bleacher creatures at the new Yankee Stadium will be able to get steak sandwiches from a premium butcher. And at Citi Field there will be lobster rolls and barbecue, with beer and wine flowing more freely. Is that cheering we hear from the nosebleed seats? Of course, those with plush seats closer to the action will be able to dine on dishes like heritage pork porchetta over kielbasa sauerkraut, and crab cake with a cauliflower and tomato relish from the $48 prix fixe menu at the terraced tables of Citi Field’s Acela Club. The restaurant overlooks left field, where the chef is Michael Sobelman, formerly of Tribeca Grill. It is one of several high-end restaurants in the new ballpark. In Yankee Stadium’s high-priced sections, fans will have a chance occasionally to watch marquee chefs like Masaharu Morimoto and April Bloomfield, as well as Food Network personalities, serving their specialties at more than 15 cooking stations in several dining rooms. To pamper big spenders, food is included in the price of tickets to the club seats and suites at Yankee Stadium. This program, a sports arena trend, will not be offered at Citi Field, where top prices for seats are lower. Both new stadiums have elite Delta Sky 360 Clubs, with the one at Citi Field run by Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group. But fans in the cheaper seats have not been forgotten. At Citi Field, an open-air food court called Taste of the City, with a dozen concession windows, sprawls along the concourse behind left-center field. With expansive views, it is quite a change from Shea Stadium’s back of the hand for hungry fans, the tunnel-like corridors where they were forced to grab a bite. Early in the season, at the Mexican stand, El Verano Taquería, Floyd Cardoz, the executive chef of Tabla in Manhattan, who said he is a “huge Mets fan,” expects to be on hand frequently, checking on his soft tacos, with pork carnitas, skirt steak or pumpkin seed and chicken mole ($7.25 each). He will also be serving Mexican-style corn on the cob dusted with cheese and mayo for $3.50. The Union Square group, which runs the taquería, has also brought a branch of Blue Smoke, its barbecue restaurant, which will serve Kansas City ribs ($10), pulled pork sandwiches ($9) and chicken wings ($8). Shake Shack, the company’s popular hamburger ($5.75 to $8.75) and milkshake stand, will also be at the food court, along with Box Frites, with fries ($6.50 and $7.50) and a choice of five dips, including smoky bacon. Nearby, Catch of the Day, run by Dave Pasternack of Esca, another Mets loyalist, will remind fans that Queens segues seamlessly into Long Island, with lobster rolls ($17), fried local flounder sandwiches ($8.25), blackened shrimp po’ boys ($12.50), fried calamari ($9), and clam and corn chowder ($4.50). And those steak sandwiches ($15) at Yankee Stadium will be carved at a rotisserie cart on the main concourse, and at two Triple Play carts, from beef supplied by Lobel’s, the carriage trade butcher on Madison Avenue, which is also the meat purveyor for the restaurants serving the better seats. Legends Hospitality Management, the company the Yankees formed with the Dallas Cowboys and Goldman Sachs to run food services, hopes food lines will be shorter. The number of concessions will be about the same, but they will have about 50 percent more registers, all accepting credit cards. Aramark, which runs the concessions at Citi Field, has increased the number of stands to 66 from the 50 at Shea. Legends has doubled the number of food service employees, including vendors who sell in the seats, to about 2,500, up from about 1,200, and at Citi Field the number has gone to 1,700 from 1,200 at Shea. And more of what people will be waiting for will be freshly prepared. In the old Yankee Stadium, only 14 percent of the food carts and concessions could cook. But now about 70 percent of the food stands will be grilling, frying and baking, including places like Brother Jimmy’s barbecue, Johnny Rockets burgers and shakes, Latin Corner with pressed Cuban sandwiches, and Soy Kitchen, a Bronx purveyor of Asian food. At Citi Field, 23 stands will be cooking, up from 7 at Shea. Most of the food stands on the concourses, which circle each stadium, and in other areas, have been set up so the field is visible. Both stadiums also have market areas where prepared foods and even fresh produce can be purchased. Easing ticket-price pain, some concession-stand prices are lower at Citi Field than they were at Shea: $5.75 for a regular hamburger, down from $7.50, and $3.75 for a knish, instead of $5.25. Yankees fans will be given no such relief. Both teams have even paid attention to wine. Throughout Citi Field, there are wines by the glass from lists that Zachys Wine and Liquor, in Scarsdale, N.Y., has suggested. “For the first time, wine is available for those in general-admission seats,” said Andrew McMurray, the executive vice president of the store. A five-and-a-half-ounce pour costs $9. And, after a nine-year drought, fans in Yankee Stadium’s bleachers will be able to buy beer, as well as wine, which is completely new. Glatt kosher food is also available, from Ouri’s, a kosher caterer in Brooklyn, at various locations in Yankee Stadium, and from Kosher Sports of Englewood, N.J., at Citi Field. As for those hot dogs, at Citi Field, stands will be selling Nathan’s skinless and natural casing dogs, as well as corn dogs on a stick, plus, from Shake Shack, a Chicago dog ($5.75), a New York City dog ($5) or a smoked chicken bratwurst ($6). Nathan’s skinless franks will be hawked for $4.75 in the seats, $5 at Yankee Stadium. The Stadium will also have natural hot dogs and corn dogs, Hebrew National hot dogs, a glatt kosher hot dog and, for $3, a smaller frank. Many of them will be grilled. Also, for Yankees fans who want a sit-down meal without springing for the expensive seats, there is the NYY Steak House above the Hard Rock Cafe, with a street entrance open all year. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/dinin ... ref=dining Citi Field’s El Verano Taquería has chili marinated skirt steak tacos, above, with pumpkin seed and chicken mole.

batmagadanleadoff Apr 05 2009 11:45 AM

Mets' Citi Field and new Yankee Stadium step up to plate with unique eats BY Nicole Lyn Pesce DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Saturday, April 4th 2009, 2:31 AM Most Mets and Bombers fans filing into Citi Field and Yankee Stadium for the first time were hungry for baseball, but I was craving on the food courts. Luckily for me, I didn't have to miss much of either game Friday night as I satisfied my appetite with everything from tacos to sushi. At Citi Field's Taste of the World food court off the third base line, fans mobbed restaurant impresario Danny Meyer's venues, which include Blue Smoke for barbecue and the Shake Shack for burgers. I wanted something new, something that you wouldn't normally find in an American ballpark. I followed my nose to El Verano Taquería, where for $7.25 I got the tastiest tacos north of the border - or at least in Queens. Succulent pieces of chicken mole filled two soft corn tortillas and were topped with just enough chopped onions and cilantro to give the dish a picante kick. I was tempted to stuff myself at El Verano, but I held back in order to try the $17 lobster roll at the Seafood Catch of the Day. I sunk my choppers into a hearty garlic roll and for a moment dreamed of a Maine lobster shack. The roll was filled with a generous portion of half-dollar size chunks of crustacean meat. I noticed that even when I turned away from the field to order a $7.50, 16-ounce Stella beer, I could still watch the game on one of numerous video screens. The Acela Club overlooking the Citi Field home plate was filled with fine dining muckety-mucks eating $48 prix fixe, but I hadn't made a reservation. To work up another appetite, I took the No. 7 train to the No. 4 train to Yankee Stadium. The Bronx ballpark lacked a little of the diversity of Citi Field, but easily offered enough eclectic food to appease the picky. At the Soy Kitchen off the third base line, I ordered the $9.70 spicy tuna roll, which tasted as fresh and filling as any Manhattan sushi house. "It's not Nobu, but it's not bad," said Kelly Chin, 42, of Paramus, N.J., who was sitting near me. The Stadium also has a Hard Rock Cafe and a Johnny Rockets, but I decided to stick to an Asian-influenced theme, ordering an $8.50, hot noodle soup at Noodle Bar. The soup was the perfect dish for a drizzly spring night of baseball. Daily News reporter Nicole Lyn Pesce digs into a chicken mole taco at Citi Field's El Verano Taqueria. http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseb ... ium_s.html

batmagadanleadoff Apr 05 2009 11:50 AM

Citi Field Unveils Comforts and Quirks John Dunn for The New York Times Bat met ball, sending it soaring to deep left-center field, and the crowd rose and unleashed a throaty yell. History — the Mets’ first home run at Citi Field — seemed a few seconds away, and Fernando Tatis, the answer to that trivia question, tagged first base and followed the ball’s trajectory. Rather than landing in the seats, the ball ricocheted three-quarters of the way up the 15-foot wall, a good 400 feet away, and Tatis stopped at second. Nine outs into the Mets’ inaugural game at Citi Field, a rain-delayed 4-3 victory against the Boston Red Sox, and a preliminary answer to their new ballpark’s most pressing riddle — how will it play? — had emerged. The definitive verdict will not come for at least another few months, after the temperature changes and wind patterns are tracked, but the learning process had begun for Tatis and the Mets. That process would have started much earlier Friday had a steady rain not forced batting practice indoors, preventing the outfielders from gauging caroms off the fences, the hitters from adjusting to a new batter’s eye and everyone from tracking balls in the angled light banks. The players’ spare hours, then, were spent admiring the creature comforts — “I’m still trying to get the high score on the pinball machine,” Ryan Church said — and answering questions about their new acquisition, Gary Sheffield. Swiping their own headlines, the Mets added Sheffield to their lineup for little money — the major league minimum of $400,000 — in a move that generated plenty of questions. How useful can he be? Can Sheffield, 40, adequately play the outfield? What are the implications for Church, ostensibly the Mets’ starting right fielder? Those answers, too, will come in due time. Sheffield was scheduled to be introduced Saturday. Church, wearing his blue “I ♥ NY” T-shirt, arrived at the stadium at 11:45 a.m. without a thought about Sheffield and with every notion of getting acclimated to the vast expanse of outfield green and the unique angles in right field. He wanted to throw balls off the fences to see how they react. Razor Shines, the Mets’ third-base coach, wanted to pound fungoes for his outfielders. Then it started pouring. So, pinball it was. “I would have loved to get out on the field, for sure,” left fielder Daniel Murphy said. “I need to work the wall, get out there with Razor to get a feel for what the ball’s going to do when it caroms down the line. It looks like there’s not a lot of foul territory. A ball shot down the third-base line, it might ricochet off onto the playing field.” Murphy was correct; there is not much foul territory, especially in comparison with Shea Stadium. The reduced room seemed to catch Luis Castillo by surprise. The game’s second batter, Dustin Pedroia, lofted a pop-up to shallow right field, perhaps 10 feet behind the infield dirt. Castillo chased after it at full speed, and the ball deflected off his glove a few feet inside the foul line. Castillo’s momentum carried him forward and sent him tumbling over a concrete wall a couple of steps into foul territory. “That’s good,” Castillo said during the rain delay. “I now know how it feels. Next time I’ll be ready to catch that ball.” No other such mishaps happened, although Boston’s Jason Bay had to feel for the wall as he ranged beneath José Reyes’s deep drive in the fourth. Carlos Beltrán appeared to misread Chris Carter’s fourth-inning double, taking a step forward before watching the ball rocket over his head and land at the base of the center-field fence, beside the 408-foot marker. Afterward, Manager Jerry Manuel said the Mets would have to start paying more attention to their defensive alignments. “Here, it might be more beneficial, regardless of the hitter, to bunch and move everybody closer to the gaps than you normally would,” Manuel said of a strategy the Mets employed in San Francisco’s spacious AT&T Park. “Once that ball hits in that gap, that’s an automatic triple for almost anybody.” Some players wondered about the batter’s eye in center field, above the Home Run Apple, which in the afternoon showed rotating advertisements. The ads stopped once the game started, much to the relief of Red Sox outfielder Mark Kotsay, who was inspecting from the dugout. “It looks a little big,” Kotsay said. “It’s not the typical new ballpark — that small feeling when you walk into Cincinnati or Philadelphia. This park is well-represented in its dimensions. I love it. It’s a great setup the way the field’s laid out.” The Mets’ introduction to Citi Field began late Thursday night when, fresh off their flight from Florida, they explored their new home. Once outside, everyone looked up, almost instinctively, and then out, toward the fences, scoping out the dimensions. A bunch of pitchers walked in the grass toward the bullpen, as quickly as their suits and dress shoes would allow them. Every few feet, J. J. Putz stopped, pointed the camera on his cellphone and snapped. On Friday, flashbulbs popped from all corners of Citi Field as fans — even those wearing Red Sox jerseys — captured the signature moments: the first pitch, thrown by Liván Hernández (a ball), at 6:14 p.m.; Reyes’s first at-bat (pop-up); and the Mets’ first run, scored in the fourth by Beltrán on a Bobby Kielty single. “For sure, it’s big,” Hernández said of the field. “You can see from the walk from the bullpen to the dugout.” Many among the 37,652 fans barely made it to their seats to watch the game. Instead, they wandered through the concourses, stood on the Pepsi Porch in right field and watched their children run the bases at the whiffle ball field. They also lined up to take their pictures in front of the old apple, which sat behind the center-field fence at Shea. They sampled the food, including the chili-marinated skirt steak at the El Verano restaurant in center field. Most of them liked the new stadium, particularly the seats, which they said were closer to the field than the ones at Shea. “It takes your breath away when the Mets are on the field,” said Chris Swann, 25. Some grumbled that their view was obscured. Will and Marlena Chang, from Woodbridge, N.J., said they missed plays in deep left field from their seats in the upper deck. Still, most fans — even Red Sox fans like Bill and Diane Anderson from Connecticut — appreciated the new stadium: “Everyone hates the Yankees here.” Alan Schwarz and Ken Belson contributed reporting. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/sport ... ts.html?em Flashbulbs popped from all corners of Citi Field as fans captured moments of the Mets’ exhibition game against the Red Sox.

batmagadanleadoff Apr 05 2009 11:59 AM

Mets Fans Bask in History and Luxury at Citi Field By COREY KILGANNON Published: April 4, 2009 “We’re making history,” said Ryan Cabrera, as he hurried along Roosevelt Avenue on Friday afternoon with his father, David Cabrera, 57, of Yonkers. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image John Dunn for The New York Times Some Mets fans barely made it to their seats at Citi Field, choosing to wander the concourses and inspect the grounds. Here was father taking son to their first game at Citi Field. Of course, it was the Mets’ first game at their new home, too. Mets games at Shea Stadium were a staple of David Cabrera’s childhood and of his relationship with his son, 10, but Shea was something the Cabreras were forced to love because it was their team’s home field. They came upon where Shea once stood, an expanse of dirt hills and tractors. Beyond that field of dirt was their new field of dreams, the smart new brick ballpark called Citi Field, with its handsome exterior of brick and smooth, tan concrete. Ryan’s eyes lit up. “It’s the new Mets mecca,” he said, trotting through the parking lot, with the smell of new asphalt mingling with whiffs of barbecue from fans tailgating in the new lot. One tailgating group was the Silver family — originally of New York City, now of Rockland County — who had arrived hours before the first pitch and laid claim to a parking stall near the ballpark. Mark Silver — with his wife, Marlene, and son, Scott — cooked burgers and hot dogs, and watched as fans were greeted by cheery parking-lot attendants and welcomed by official Citi Field greeters. The place had all the cheeriness associated with a team that had not yet lost a game. “First Met program at Citi Field — don’t get left out,” yelled a vendor. Inside, there was still that new stadium smell. A group of fans conveyed by escalator up from the spacious Jackie Robinson Rotunda and tested the ballpark’s acoustics with the first strains of “Let’s Go Mets.” In short, the new ballpark met with resounding approval. In fact, many fans offered the sentiment that the spiffy new stadium seemed like a makeup call for all the shortcomings of Shea. “It’s hard to believe the Mets are going to play here,” said Marc Samet, 29, who stood with Mike Petriano, 54, overlooking the outfield. Samet and Petriano, two schoolteachers from Westchester, were doing the calculus of the new field — with 408 feet to the center-field wall, they pronounced it a serious challenge to long-ball hitters. “And with a 24-foot-high wall, that’s tough,” Samet said. Mike Leggett, 54, from Brooklyn, inspected the seats closest to the infield and pronounced the ballpark “incredibly intimate.” “Shea did not have this intimacy,” he said. A ballpark organ jingled a Bruce Springsteen song, and the grounds crew peeled back the rain-soaked tarp from the infield. Even as the game got under way, crowds lingered in the thoroughfares, scouting the views and kicking various tires. Many seemed more engrossed in the amenities than the game. They looked around almost timidly, like partygoers invited to the home of a rich relative. Many seemed pleased — some almost bewildered — by the level of luxury. They could buy a quick seafood dinner or make restaurant reservations. On the Excelsior level, a young boy ate a hot dog on a leather couch. In the rest rooms, men stared at sleek, silent urinals and listened to a recorded welcome to a ballpark that was both “21st century” and “state of the art.” And get this: Many condiment stations were equipped with a pair of attendants, for fans seeking help dressing their hot dogs. “Come back in September and see if they have anyone manning the condiment table,” said Chris Glynn, 28, of Staten Island, who with Kevin Scott, 27, of Hoboken, N.J., was exploring the new ballpark before checking out their new season-ticket seats in the upper level behind home plate. There were reminders of Shea. Fans leaned out of open-air areas to smoke cigarettes. There was grousing over the news that the Mets had acquired the 40-year-old Gary Sheffield. Many fans compared the park to Ebbets Field, including an elderly man with a Brooklyn Dodgers jacket who availed himself of the condiment assistance and then took stock of the place — with its spacious souvenir stores, specialty food counters, and large, private “family” bathrooms. “One thing Ebbets Field did not have,” he said, “was all this merchandising.” Some Mets fans barely made it to their seats at Citi Field, choosing to wander the concourses and inspect the grounds. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/sport ... f=nyregion