Welcome To Citi Field

When the corporate partnership with Citigroup was announced last year, and the name “Citi Field” was given to the new stadium, Mets fans were cautiously optimistic. After all, Citigroup is a NY-based company.

Many hoped that people would soon adopt “New York Citi Field” as the name, simply because it rolls off the tongue. Yet others are even tagging it “The Bank” which works on multiple levels, and more importantly, doesn't suck.

However, this logo does.

My first thought was that stupid looking logo looks like an edited version of the Domino's Pizza logo. It looks like a small company web site logo from 1995.

At no point in laying eyes upon this rectangular abortion do I see the words “New”, ‘York” or “Mets”. Nor do I see any design element that recalls Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, old-time baseball, or the great city of New York. The only red I want to see in this logo is a rusty, dented mechanical apple — not the stupid arch in the blatantly oversized Citi logo. Gotta love tradition, right?
I realize corporate sponsorship is a necessary evil in modern sports. In exchange for a crappy park name, we get to drink beers for less than $10 a pop. Fair enough.

But when a retro-styled stadium displays meaningless commercial logo treatments every five feet, it kills any sense of tradition and goodwill that the stadium designers had intended, and tradition is exactly what we want from this new ballpark.

Click Here for Citi Field Images.