Category: New York Mets

Not to keep picking on the New York Times’ Ken Belson, but it’s just so easy, especially when he writes stuff like this:

Every time the Mets compile an impressive homestand, they undo the good feeling with an atrocious road trip. And because many fans consider the team’s most recent performance when deciding whether to attend a home game, the Mets’ buzz-killing road losses (including the game-winning grand slam that sunk the Mets on Wednesday in San Diego) have taken their toll. … It seems the team’s contrasting home and road records are making it harder for fans to justify running out to Citi Field.

The notion that fans are staying away from Mets games, not because the team was terrible last year or ticket prices are too high or the stadium honeymoon has worn off, but because they win too many games at home might seem too plainly demented to debunk … but I’ve done so anyway for the Village Voice. The short version: All teams coming off of lousy years draw lousy, and the Mets’ attendance was artificially inflated last year already with curiosity-seekers looking to check out their new digs. But why settle for facts when you can instead choose the contrarian wisdom that Mets fans are being driven away by the bad taste of giving up 18 runs in a road game that ended at 1:20 am local time?

The New York Mets have seen the largest drop in attendance from last year of any MLB team, and somebody thinks they’ve spotted a trend:

“The problem is last year the tickets were really expensive and the team stunk and that can really stick with fans for a while,” said Jon Greenberg, the executive editor of Team Marketing Report, an industry publication.

In the mid-1990s, Greenberg said, teams could count on new stadiums to help them boost ticket sales for several years, but that trend has ended.

“Stadium fatigue sets in much faster than it did before,” Greenberg said, noting that new stadiums built in Baltimore and Cleveland in the early 1990s led to long periods of increased attendance for both franchises. “When Camden Yards and Jacobs Field were built, they were a big deal and were a complete change. The novelty has worn off.”

That last note about stadium fatigue isn’t entirely untrue, but it’s also worth noting that the Orioles and Indians both got really good on the field around the same time they opened their new stadiums, which is the main reason their attendance honeymoons were so long. Cellar-dwelling teams have not been so lucky: The Pittsburgh Pirates jumped 41% in attendance the year they opened PNC Park, then fell 28% the next year after losing 100 games in 2001; the Cincinnati Reds had a similar but less-dramatic drop two years later.

Some of this is no doubt stadium fatigue &mdash Camden Yards could have drawn fans in the early ’90s even if the Orioles had been playing like, well, the Orioles — but mostly it’s just an expression of the same principle at work as always: If your team is winning, you can stretch a honeymoon out for a few years; if not, it’ll likely fizzle in two to three. Every stadium draws curiosity-seekers its first season, and every stadium is pretty much back to baseline attendance levels ten years down the road. Florida Marlins, you have been warned.

Because everyone is emailing me about it: The New York Post ran an “exclusive” report yesterday that the Mets used contractors with suspected mob ties in the construction of Citi Field:

The Mets shelled out $51.6 million in taxpayer money to contractors shunned by the city for their ties to the Mafia, labor corruption or bribery, The Post has learned.

At least seven contractors the city avoids were hired by the team to build Citi Field between 2006 and 2009, according to government records.

The tainted companies were paid from a $91 million pot the city Economic Development Corp. gave to the Mets.

This is big news — or at least, it was back in April, when the New York Times first reported it. The Post did uncover some additional names of questionable companies that worked on Citi Field, though these were because of bribery allegations and other unethical practices, not specifically mob ties. But then, the Post has a notoriously hazy notion of what constitutes an “exclusive.”

The New York Mets sent out a press release over the weekend announcing that they’re naming Citi Field’s VIP entrances after former Mets greats, renaming the stadium’s outfield footbridge “Shea Bridge,” and otherwise adding more Mets-specific stuff (orange-and-blue flowers in planters!). This should please Mets fans who’d griped that the new stadium seemed to have more homages to the Brooklyn Dodgers than to the pre-2009 Mets, though as the blog Loge 13 wonders: “This is all great news but it is stunning that everyone else but the Mets realized this was a good idea long before Citi Field ever got built.” One possibility: Mets execs may not have wanted to rename entrances for the likes of Casey Stengel and Gil Hodges before they’d seen if they could sell off naming rights to corporate sponsors first.

With the New York Mets‘ season long since having passed the laughingstock stage, the media have turned their sights on their new stadium: Yesterday’s New York Post reported that the new $830 million stadium “has been plagued by water damage to several luxury suites — including Jerry Seinfeld’s — as well as mold, falling signs and concrete, flooding in outfield seats, faulty electrical wiring and shoddy tile work, sources said.” One “insider” (hey, remember when newspapers weren’t going to rely on anonymous sources anymore?) told the Post: “Shitty Field — that’s what we call it.” Get in line, pal.

To be fair, this is the sort of thing a lot of new buildings go through when they first open, and all the problems seem fixable. Still, after taxpayers devoted more than $600 million to building the place, water dripping on Jerry Seinfeld’s head must seem like adding insult to injury and injury and injury…