Photo fun: That's a red apple!

I've wanted to try this technique for a while now, but the lack of Photoshop and patience kept me from giving it a shot. But I had the hankering to give it a whirl recently, so I picked a simple shape and got decent results. More to come, perhaps.

Hello Citi

Shiny and new

The Mets' home opener this year was a night game because the team preferred to play the game on a Monday and leave Tuesday open, probably for two reasons: To hold its annual Welcome Home Dinner and to have the flexibility of pushing the game back one day in the event of rain. That way, fans who bought tickets specifically for the home opener would have them, rather than those who bought tickets for Game 2 of the season lucking into the first game at the new ballpark.

By choosing Monday, the Mets were told it had to be a night game because their opponent, the Padres, played on the West Coast on Sunday. MLB or the Players Association (or both) would not force San Diego to play Sunday afternoon in California, fly to New York that night and play the next afternoon.

Too bad -- it probably would have worked out better for the Mets if they had.

So it didn't quite feel like Opening Day in New York on Monday. I didn't have to get up too early after working Sunday night; I didn't have to be ready to go when my mom arrived at the house. The Mets were opening the gates at 4:30, two and a half hours before first pitch, so we were in no rush. Figures that we arrived in Manhattan with no delays and found free street parking on the first block I turned onto. Our wait on the 74th St. platform in Queens was long because we just missed a departing 7 train, but we still arrived at Willets Point at 4:10, and the crowd outside the Jackie Robinson Rotunda was already filling up the fanwalk.

Of the 42,000-plus fans who attended the sold-out opener, probably half that arrived before 6 p.m. When we walked in, we made our way around the field level concourse to make our way to Danny Meyerland behind the scoreboard in center field. Mom wanted a Shake Shack burger in her first Citi Field experience, and who was I to suggest otherwise? We crossed the Hell Gate Bridge, gazed upon the old Home Run Apple, and waited a mere 10 minutes for a pair of perfect burgers, fries and two beers. We shared a picnic table with an older father and son and, once finished, continued our walk around the field level.

The temperature hovered in the 50s, but the warm sun made it feel like a pleasant 60-something. If only it had been a day game. In the end, though, whether it was a truly mild night, or the roof over our heads in the upper reaches of the Promenade level kept some body heat in, or the park's construction cuts down on the wind gusts coming off the bay, I walked out of there at 10:30 feeling the warmest I can remember after attending every Mets opener -- all of them day games -- since 2000.

Overall, there was a weird feeling to the game. Yeah, it was the Mets' first official game back in New York since last September, but with the St. John's-Georgetown game (which I attended) and the two Red Sox-Mets exhibitions at Citi Field (which I did not go to), this one didn't feel quite as significant. Maybe the late date played a part, and the fact that Spring Training went so long and included the somewhat meaningful games of the World Baseball Classic put me in midseason form back in March. But despite the significance of the game, I didn't have the Opening Day butterflies of anticipation I usually have.

Yet at the same time, once Mom and I climbed up to our seats, I didn't want to leave. I got hungry later, but didn't bother to go get the nachos I was interested in trying. We had peanuts with us, but I didn't feel like waiting in line for a beer. I didn't want to miss much of the action, so I'll save more exploration and taste testing for future games.

It wouldn't be a Mets game, though, without the bitching. Fans behind me, fans in the bathrooms, fans on the concourse -- they all found something to whine about. Yeah, the concourses were a bit crowded, but that's to be expected for the first game in history. Not many of the 42,000 tickets went unused, I'm sure. Now imagine 15,000 more people at Shea, where you couldn't see the field from any of the concourses (with the exception of behind home plate on the limited-access field level), and Citi's walkways are boulevards.

Exiting is a bit cramped, with thousands of people making their way through relatively narrow doorways to descend switchback stairways, but again, nearly 42,000 people waited until the last out, not wanting to miss the potential for a comeback. There won't be too many games in which 98 percent of the people in attendance go the distance. There are always the early exiters, those who want to beat the rush to the subway, the LIRR, the parking lot. That's the only thing about which I would raise even the slightest gripe.

I'm sorry -- as much as I enjoyed going to games at Shea, the new place is better. It was needed. It was time.

The Home Run Apple: A solution

Here comes the 7

There's no denying that Shea Stadium is a drab, uninspiring piece of sports architecture, a run-down 43-year-old stadium that leaves little room for improvement. The bright orange seats in the field level and the layers of paint cannot hide the fact that the home of the Mets was build in 1964 as a multipurpose facility that has become obsolete in these high-tech and lucrative times.

The team has done what it can (except in the area of in-game music, where the CD catalog seems to reach only up to about 1987), but it can do no more. In a little more than a season -- and a mere 97 regular-season games (and hopefully the full allotment of postseason tilts) -- Shea Stadium will host its final game, and a gleaming new state-of-the-art ballpark (in the truest sense of the word) will open just to the east of Shea's site.

Everything about the ballpark will be new, including the surrounding chop shops and garages, which will eventually be bought (or seized), torn down, and replaced with housing, offices, retail space, restaurants and a hotel. Though not in time for Opening Day 2009, Citi Field's surroundings will soon join the ballpark as a gleaming Queens treasure.

And so, as a devout Mets fan and a student, historian and lover of the great game of baseball, I think it would be wrong to move iconic Home Run Apple from Shea Stadium to the Citi Field outfield.

Hear me out.

The Citi Field drawings show an apple of some sort in the outfield, but the team has so far balked at declaring whether it would be the same old -- the operative word here -- homemade version or a new one. One online group wants to preserve the original apple in the new ballpark. I'm all for preserving it, just not within the walls of Citi Field.

Instead, the Mets should install beyond the outfield wall whatever shiny new apple they feel fits the character of the new ballpark. The original Home Run Apple should stay exactly where it is.

Exactly.

It can be removed while Shea is demolished around it, but once the old stadium is gone, put the apple back in its place. It's exact place, or six feet from it. A look at the final image of Citi Field on the Mets homepage -- the image entitled "Site Plan" -- shows Citi Field's placement in relation to Shea. A close look at the diagonal orange line that represents the current scoreboard shows that its left edge reaches to the sidewalk outside Citi Field. The apple currently rests near that edge of the scoreboard, if a little bit in front of it. Put the apple there, on the sidewalk.

Preserving it in this way should allow everyone to have their apple and eat it too. The Mets can have their new mechanism in their new ballpark. The fans who love the old thing can see it every time they come to Citi Field -- whether there's a home run or not. They can walk right up to it, touch it, stand by it and have their pictures taken. They can look out across what will be a parking lot and imagine Shea Stadium's home plate some 380 feet away.

I'm a big fan of historical sites, of visiting a landmark or a site where important, watershed moments took place. In locations where neglect or decay have forced demolition of the old structures, I stand in the spot and imagine what was. To see the apple in its original location would provide a lasting memory of Shea, of the mountain of seats that rose to the sky and provided a hurdle for the planes taking off from La Guardia. It would leave a piece of the past behind, a reminder of the stadium that used to stand there.