Citi Field started as an ode to Dodgers, but now it's a Mets stadium

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Citi Field was having an identity crisis.

When its doors opened in 2009, it had a few defining characteristics: a facade emulating the one at Ebbets Field, a large rotunda dedicated to Jackie Robinson, and many, many nods to a Brooklyn Dodgers team that moved to the West Coast in 1958.

But it also was defined by what it didn’t have: a true tie to the team that played in its confines.

“In the beginning, we got criticized a lot for the Brooklyn Dodgers stuff,” said Jay Horwitz, Mets team historian and vice president of alumni relations. “We didn’t really pay enough homage to our past. I think as the years went by, we realized that we had to get away from other teams and talk about our teams [as well]. We just tried to make it so fans [were surrounded] by Mets history.”

The modifications began in 2010 and have continued throughout the years. There are banners and more Mets colors. The entrances are named after the great Mets of the past, and the stadium now has a team Hall of Fame.

It still has a certain Ebbets Field quirkiness, but it’s also less beholden to the long shadow cast by that hallowed baseball ground.

“I was almost insulted by it,” said Harvey Sherman, 89, of Plainview, a retired stockbroker who attended hundreds of games at Ebbets Field. “Gil Hodges married a Brooklyn girl. They all carpooled coming to the game. It got very, very personal [for fans. It was a] neighborhood place. Citi Field is a corporate place. Yankee Stadium always was a corporate place. Ebbets Field was not a corporate place.”

Part of that sentiment comes from the name itself — the rights were purchased by Citigroup — and the fact that baseball has simply become more corporate. Like most ballparks, Citi Field is loud and full of in-game entertainment, and “at Ebbets Field, it’s the fans that brought the fun to a great degree,” said Kevin Baker, author of “The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City” and an upcoming book on the golden age of New York baseball, coming out next year.

That said, while “I think there’s room for improvement, I do think it’s come into its own,” Baker added. “At least the fans are relatively close to the field, it seems more so than at Yankee Stadium. And I think this is the start of a great era for the Mets. They have a smart general manager, a smart manager and an owner willing to spend, so that's a very good combination, historically, in New York or anywhere. That will bring some memories and bring more of a feeling.

"It’s funny — it’s more a Mets park now. Ebbets Field has been gone so long, it's hard for anyone to remember it really at this point.”

That process started in earnest in 2015, when the Mets made it to the World Series, and continued in a rollicking 2024, when an improbable run to the NLCS turned the stadium into a raucous circus.

Ebbets Field shook, Sherman noted.

“Shea Stadium shook,” said Ethan Wilson, the team’s executive director of communications. “And 2015 was the first time Citi Field really shook.”

Then-manager Terry Collins agreed.

“When you put good teams there, the fan base is off the charts,” Collins said. “The energy levels at some nights at Citi Field — I mean, I've been in other places when with good teams, it's never like that. The game is about the fans. There's a time when you're happy for them. [Their] passion comes out with the signs, the little kids, the energy level is just, I didn't feel any place like that. I've never been in a place like that.”

And though it will never be Ebbets Field, its allure has made its mark. When Freddy Peralta, who is strongly considering a contract extension, was traded to the Mets, he mentioned the atmosphere at Citi Field. Hailing from the Dominican Republic, he was pleased, too, that the fan base reflected the diversity of New York itself.

“You feel that you’re in a different place,” said Peralta, who spent his entire major-league career in Milwaukee. “Everything’s changed — the vibes, the people, the fans. For me who was in another city for a long time, when I get to New York, coming to the Mets, you feel it — you’re going to the Mets.”

To the Mets, not the Dodgers. To Citi Field, not Ebbets. To a stadium that slowly has become its own place.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.