The New York Baseball Museum

Changing Citi Field's seats to Shea Stadium colors is a great idea, but the stadium should also honor the Mets' baseball forefathers.

If I were Steve Cohen, I don’t know if I would last on Twitter. Mets fans can be impatient and demanding, which isn’t a surprise after the Wilpon years, and social media brings out the worst in all of us. So I can’t imagine what Cohen’s Twitter mentions must look like.

“What changes would you like to see made to Citi Field?” he’ll ask. 

“STOP worrying about the stadium and make the team better! You’re wasting time!!” someone will promptly respond.

“Steve t his is wilponzi.stuff be better,” someone else will say.

“Steven Cohen, are you interested in becoming a YouTube star? Click here to subscribe!” a third person with no profile picture will chime in. 

So no, if I were Steve Cohen, I don’t think I’d be soliciting suggestions for Citi Field improvements on Twitter. But I’m glad he did. Cohen made the request on Twitter two days ago, and at press time has received more than 7,000 responses. But one, as featured on SNY’s Twitter feed, stands out. It’s a proposal that I’ve made before: change the color of the Citi Field seats. Change the dull, monotonous green to tiers of red, green, blue, and orange, in tribute to the decks at Shea Stadium, which shined beautifully beneath the summer sun.

I fully endorse this proposal, which makes sense, since I’ve proposed it in the past. But it gets at a deeper, more controversial issue, which might not be obvious to many on either side of it.

The green seats at Citi Field are a throwback to the Polo Grounds, the Mets’ first home and for decades the home stadium of the New York Baseball Giants. Combined with the exterior, built to resemble the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ebbets Field, the stadium is a throwback to New York’s National League baseball heritage. Both teams, of course, left New York for California after the 1957 season, devastating the city’s national league fans, and when the Mets came along in 1962, they absorbed many of those fans whose teams had abandoned them. 

Some Mets fans will disagree, but I love using the stadium as a throwback to New York baseball history. The problem is that green seats aren’t a great way to harken back to the Polo Grounds, but they are a huge opportunity missed to remember Shea. Most people, even Mets fans, probably don’t even know that the seats at the Polo Grounds were green. What would you say if someone stopped you on the street and asked, “what color were the seats at the Polo Grounds?” You might respond “green, and they’re now honored at Citi Field.” But it’s far more likely that you would say “I have no idea — and why are you stopping people on the street to ask?”

So yes, change Citi Field’s seats to the Shea colors. But there’s also room to add additional elements to Citi Field that increase its’ acknowledgement of New York’s National League heritage. The Mets Hall of Fame and Museum should be much bigger — and part of the expansion should be an exhibit on the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, where they played, why they left, and what happened next. They may not have worn Mets uniforms, but the Dodgers and the Giants are undeniably enormous parts of Mets history.

The Brooklyn Dodgers, especially, were the Mets’ spiritual forerunners. They got their name from the streetcars the players had to dodge as they made their way to Ebbets Field. Doesn’t that sound — thinking back to Duaner Sanchez — like something the Mets might do? Dodgers fans were mocked mercilessly by Yankee fans, because the Dodgers kept playing the Yankees in the World Series, and the Yankees kept winning. Doesn’t that sound familiar? The Dodgers were an outer borough team with personality, a team known for having to wait ‘til next year, but a team that, in 1955, finally finished the job. They’re the Mets’ direct ancestors, and it barely seems debatable. 

Meanwhile, the Mets played in the Giants’ iconic stadium for two years. Besides the Dodgers, that’s a stronger connection than the Mets have to any other team. Shea Stadium was also the site of Giants’ legend Willie Mays’ long-awaited return to New York. The Mets have the Dodgers and Giants at least partly to thank for their history and baseball heritage. That much is obvious. 

So certainly, change the seats back to the Shea colors, and add more orange and blue to Mets the whole park up. But the Dodgers and Giants deserve their spots too. Baseball is nothing without its history, and the Dodgers and Giants are part of what make the Mets who they are. Of course, some Mets fans may disagree, and that’s fine. Just bear in mind that I won’t be reading responses on Twitter.