Citi Field is a baseball stadium located in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, in the borough of Queens, New York City, United States. Opened in 2009, Citi Field is the home of Major League Baseball’s New York Mets. The ballpark was built as a replacement for the adjacent Shea Stadium, which had opened in 1964. Citi Field was designed by the company Populous. The $850 million baseball park was funded with $615 million in public subsidies, including the sale of New York City municipal bonds that are to be repaid by the Mets with interest. The payments will offset property taxes for the lifetime of the park. The first game at Citi Field was on March 29, 2009, with a college baseball game between the St. John's Red Storm and Georgetown Hoyas. The Mets played their first two games at the ballpark on April 3 and 4, 2009 against the Boston Red Sox as charity exhibition games. The first regular-season home game was played on April 13, 2009, against the San Diego Padres. Citi Field hosted the 2013 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, marking the second time the Mets have hosted the event (the first being in 1964, the inaugural season of Shea Stadium). The naming rights were purchased by Citigroup, a New York financial services company, for $20 million annually.

History

Planning

Since the 1990s, the Mets were looking to replace Shea Stadium. It had originally been built as a multi-purpose stadium in 1964. While it had been retrofitted as a baseball-only stadium after the NFL's New York Jets left for Giants Stadium after the 1983 season, it was still not optimal for baseball, with seating located farther away from the playing field compared to other major league ballparks. The team unveiled a preliminary model of the ballpark in 1998; it featured a retractable roof and a movable grass field, which would have allowed it to host events including conventions and college basketball. The Mets also considered moving to Mitchel Field or Belmont Park in Nassau County, Long Island; Sunnyside Yard in Queens, or the West Side Yard in Manhattan. In December 2001, shortly before leaving office, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani announced "tentative agreements" for both the Mets and the New York Yankees to build new stadiums. Of the $1.6 billion sought for the stadiums, city and state taxpayers would pick up half the tab for construction, $800 million, along with $390 million on extra transportation. The plan also said that the teams would be allowed to keep all parking revenues, which state officials had already said they wanted to keep to compensate the state for building new garages for the teams. The teams would keep 96% of ticket revenues and 100% of all other revenues, not pay sales tax or property tax on the stadium, and would get low-cost electricity from New York state. Business officials criticized the plan as giving too much money to successful teams with little reason to move to a different city. Michael Bloomberg, who succeeded Giuliani as mayor, exercised the escape clause in the agreements to back out of both deals, saying that the city could not afford to build new stadiums for the Mets and Yankees. Bloomberg said that, unbeknownst to him, Giuliani had inserted a clause in this deal that loosened the teams' leases with the city and would allow the Mets and Yankees to leave the city on 60 days notice to find a new home elsewhere if the city backed out of the agreement. At the time, Bloomberg said that publicly funded stadiums were a poor investment. Under Bloomberg, the New York City government would only offer public financing for infrastructure improvements; the teams would have to pay for the stadiums themselves. Bloomberg called the former mayor's agreements "corporate welfare". Giuliani had already been instrumental in the construction of taxpayer-funded minor league baseball facilities MCU Park for the Mets' minor league Brooklyn Cyclones and Richmond County Bank Ballpark for the Staten Island Yankees. The final plans for what is now Citi Field were created as part of the unsuccessful New York City 2012 Olympic bid. After plans for a West Side Stadium fell through, New York looked for an alternate stadium to host the opening and closing ceremonies and track and field. The Olympic Stadium project on the West Side was estimated to cost $2.2 billion, with $300 million provided by New York City and an additional $300 million from New York State. If New York had won the bid, Citi Field would have been expanded to Olympic events while the Mets would have played at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx for the 2012 season. By then, however, the failure of the West Side Stadium proposal had effectively ended New York's chances of winning the 2012 games.

Construction

The projected cost of the new ballpark and other infrastructure improvements was $610 million, with the Mets picking up $420 million of that amount. The agreement included a 40-year lease that would keep the Mets in New York until 2049. The Mets own the stadium through a wholly owned subsidiary, Queens Ballpark Company. On March 18, 2006, the New York Mets unveiled the official model for the new ballpark. By July 2006, initial construction of the new park was underway in the parking lot beyond Shea Stadium's left-field, with a projected finish of late March ahead of Opening Day 2009. By April 13, 2008, all of the structure for the Jackie Robinson Rotunda was in place with the arched windows receiving their paneling and glass. By September 2008, most of the Citi Field signage had been installed. By December 1, 2008, all of the seats and the playing field had been installed.

Modifications

During the 2010 off-season, the bullpen area in right-center field underwent a complete renovation. When the edifice opened in time for the start of the 2009 MLB season, the Mets' bullpen was in front of the visiting bullpen, leading to an obstructed view of the field from the visiting bullpen, which the San Diego Padres complained about during the Mets' first regular-season home series. The bullpens were turned 90°, with pitchers throwing toward the field instead of parallel to it. More Mets team colors, player banners and logos were also added throughout the ballpark, including revamping the "Let's Go Mets" slogan on the Citi Vision board so that the word "Mets" appears in its traditional script instead of the same font as the rest of the slogan. Additionally, the height of the home run boundary line directly in front of the Home Run Apple in center field was reduced from 16 ft to 8 ft in an attempt to produce more home runs. During its first three seasons, the large field dimensions caused Citi Field to play as an extreme "pitcher's park", and home-runs at the stadium were among the fewest in the Major Leagues. Mets' general manager Sandy Alderson changed Citi Field's dimensions in time for the 2012 MLB season in order to make it more friendly to hitters. Changes included building an 8 ft wall in front of the high 16 ft wall in left field that many had dubbed the "Great Wall of Flushing", removing the nook in the "Mo's Zone" in right field, and reducing the distance in right center field from 415 ft from home plate to 390 ft. The new walls are colored blue in order to address fan complaints that the old black walls with orange trims did not reflect the colors of the Mets. The Mets have also created a new seating section located in between the old and new left field walls called the Party City Party Deck, renamed the M&M's Sweet Seats in 2016 after change of sponsorship, and can accommodate 102 additional fans. The center and right-center outfield wall were brought in to 380 ft for the 2015 season. On March 21, 2019, the Mets announced on Twitter that Citi Field's permanent address would be changed to 41 Seaver Way, in honor of former Mets Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver whose number was 41. The ceremony was held on June 27, 2019, and was part of the weekend set aside for celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 1969 World Series champion Mets. In 2023, the right field fence was moved in 8 ft, removing the nook and creating a new fan experience, and the scoreboard in center field was replaced with a new one measuring 17,400 sqft, the largest in any MLB ballpark.

Features

Citi Field has a capacity of 41,922. It has over 15,000 fewer seats than Shea Stadium. The majority of the seats are green – an homage to the Polo Grounds, longtime home of the baseball Giants and the original home of the Mets – as opposed to Shea's orange, blue, red and green assortment. The exterior facade is reminiscent of Ebbets Field (which was long sought by then-Mets owner Fred Wilpon, a Brooklyn native). Citi Field's interior design is primarily influenced by the Pittsburgh Pirates' PNC Park, which was the favorite ballpark of Mets COO Jeff Wilpon. Other influences include Great American Ball Park, Coors Field, and Citizens Bank Park. Citi Field is the only ballpark in Major League Baseball to feature orange foul poles instead of the standard yellow, a unique characteristic that was carried over from Shea Stadium. Citi Field features an overarching bridge motif in its architecture, as New York City is linked by 2,027 bridges and is reflected in the Mets logo, as the team is the symbolic bridge to the city's past National League teams, the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. In the outfield section of the ballpark, there is a pedestrian bridge named Shea Bridge that resembles the Hell Gate Bridge. Similar to Shea Stadium, Citi Field's field dimensions ensure it is a pitcher-friendly park. The Coca-Cola Corner, originally known as the Pepsi Porch, hangs over the field in right field, extending far beyond the indentation of the Clubhouse and is inspired by Tiger Stadium's right field porch. The Pepsi sign that sat atop the area (2009–2015) was modeled after the one alongside the East River in Gantry Plaza State Park; it was replaced by Coca-Cola's logo in 2016 upon assuming the role of a Mets sponsor. In 2012, the Mets added the Party City Party Deck in left field because they moved the fences in. The Party Deck is very similar to The Royals' Pepsi Party Porch. Delta Air Lines signed a multiyear deal on September 15, 2008, to sponsor an exclusive section in Citi Field. The Delta Sky360 Club is a 22500 sqft restaurant-cafe-bar-lounge complex that also houses 1,600 premium seats behind home plate stretching from dugout to dugout.

Jackie Robinson Rotunda

The front entrance of Citi Field features a rotunda named after Brooklyn Dodgers legend Jackie Robinson and honors his life and accomplishments. Engraved into the rotunda's 160 ft floor and etched into the archways are words and larger-than-life images that defined Robinson's nine values: Courage, Excellence, Persistence, Justice, Teamwork, Commitment, Citizenship, Determination and Integrity. Robinson's famous quote: "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives" is engraved into the upper ring of the rotunda. There is also an 8 ft sculpture of Robinson's number 42. The formal dedication of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda was held as part of Major League Baseball's official celebration of Jackie Robinson Day on April 15, 2009.

Home Run Apple

Another tradition from Shea Stadium carried over into Citi Field is the Home Run Apple. When a Mets player hits a home run, a giant apple, which has a Mets logo on the front that lights up, rises from its housing in the center field batter's eye. The new apple that was constructed for Citi Field is more than four times the size of the previous one and was designed by Minneapolis-based engineering firm Uni-Systems. During the 2009 season, the original Shea apple was located in Bullpen Plaza, just inside the Bullpen Gate entrance. In 2010, it was relocated outside the ballpark in Mets Plaza to the area between the Jackie Robinson Rotunda and the entrance to the Mets–Willets Point subway station.

Tom Seaver statue

On April 15, 2022, at their season home opener, the Mets unveiled a statue of Tom Seaver, created by sculptor William Behrends. It is located in Mets Plaza, next to the Shea Stadium Home Run Apple.

Grimace seat

On September 16, 2024, the Mets installed a purple seat in Section 302, Row 6, Seat 12 to honor the McDonaldland character Grimace, who has been embraced by the fans when the team went on a seven-game winning streak after he threw the first pitch on the June 12, 2024 game against the Miami Marlins.

Amenities and facilities

Behind the center field scoreboard is the FanFest area, an expanded family entertainment area that includes a miniature wiffleball field replica of Citi Field called Mr. Met's Kiddie Field, a batting cage, a dunk tank, video game kiosks and other attractions. Citi Field offers a wide choice of eateries. Taste of the City is a food court located in the center field section of the ballpark. It features food from restaurateur Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group and includes a variety of stands, including Shake Shack (burgers, fries, shakes), Blue Smoke (barbecue), El Verano Taqueria (Mexican cuisine), Catch of the Day (featuring seafood from chef Dave Pasternack of Esca), and Box Frites (Belgian French fries); the Shake Shack stand also has the New York skyline replica that topped the old scoreboard at Shea Stadium above it. The World's Fare Market is located on the field level in right field and features sushi from Daruma of Tokyo, sandwiches and pastries from Mama's of Corona, Chinese cuisine from Tai Pan Bakery and Korean food from Café Hanover. Citi Field also offers a choice of fresh fruit at several stands around the stadium. In 2010 Citi Field upgraded the food choices on the Promenade Level behind home plate. Blue Smoke BBQ and Box Frites both open a second location. Restaurants and clubs are also available in every level of the ballpark. The 350-seat Acela Club (now Porsche Grill) located in left field on the Excelsior Level, is the dining highlight of the new park and features a full view of the playing field as well as food from Drew Nieporent's Myriad Restaurant Group, renowned for Nobu and Tribeca Grill. Admission into the high-end luxury Porsche Grill and Delta Sky360 Club, and including the other semi-luxury clubs are exclusive to high-end ticket holders only, and some restaurants enforce that reservations be made. A McFadden's Restaurant and Saloon opened at Citi Field in 2010. It is located directly under the Good Humor FanFest and is open to the public year-round.

Mets Hall of Fame & Museum

The Mets Hall of Fame & Museum is located adjacent to the Jackie Robinson Rotunda on the first base side and opened on April 5, 2010. The museum includes plaques honoring the inductees of the New York Mets Hall of Fame, the team's World Series trophies from and, as well as artifacts on loan from noted collectors, former players and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The museum boasts several displays including autographed memorabilia, original scouting reports on players such as Darryl Strawberry, and handwritten notes from the team's first manager Casey Stengel. In addition to this the team has installed interactive touchscreens, television screens, and timelines that guide visitors through various aspects of the franchise's history.

Public opinion

Business Insider praised the stadium for its aesthetics and named it one of the top 100 venues in sports, while BaseballParks.com called it "perfect" and especially lauded the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. Reviewers also praised the many culinary offerings at Citi Field's concession stands. Despite the modern amenities, the new Citi Field was not without criticism. Fans complained of obstructed views and an overemphasis on the celebration of the Brooklyn Dodgers' legacy over the history of the Mets. Mets owner Fred Wilpon, a Brooklyn native, had grown up a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and admitted to going overboard. Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin wrote in The New Yorker, When Citi Field opened, the Brooklyn focus drew some criticism. After all, the Dodgers left Brooklyn in 1957, and Ebbets Field was demolished shortly thereafter. Only the very oldest fans have any first-hand memory of the place. The Mets, who had been in existence for almost a half century, were virtually ignored in their own home. 'All the Dodger stuff—that was an error of judgment on my part,' Wilpon told me. In response to these criticisms, the team installed photographic imagery of famous players and historic moments in Mets history on the Field and Promenade levels as well as the display of team championship banners on the left-field wall during the 2009 season. They also constructed a Mets Hall of Fame and Museum prior to the 2010 season, located adjacent to the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, and changed the color of the outfield wall from black to Mets blue prior to the 2012 season, which many Mets fans had campaigned for. The team also worked on fixing the obstructed views in the Promenade level. During its first three seasons in existence, Citi Field played as an extreme "pitcher's park", and was cited as the cause of the decreased offensive production of David Wright and Jason Bay. Wright hit only 10 home runs in 2009 after hitting 30 or more in each of the previous two seasons, while Bay had the worst offensive production of his career in his first season with the Mets in 2010, hitting only 6 home runs, with an on-base percentage of just .347, and a career low .402 slugging percentage. Jeff Francoeur, who played with the Mets during their first two years at Citi Field, criticized the ballpark's dimensions, calling it "a damn joke". During the 2011 season, Citi Field allowed 1.33 home runs per game, the third lowest total out of the 16 National League ballparks. The team responded by altering the ballpark dimensions for the 2012 season, creating a much more neutral ballpark. Wright's 2012 offensive numbers improved due to the alterations. "It's a huge difference", Wright said. "It allows you to relax and know you don't have to try to hit the ball a mile to see results. And at the same time, if you do hit the ball well and you see results, instead of a 400 ft flyout, you're 1-for-1 and feeling good about yourself."

Access and transportation

Citi Field is located in the borough of Queens, adjacent to the neighborhoods of Corona, which lies to its west, and Willets Point and Flushing to the east. Flushing Bay is to the north, and the rest of Flushing Meadows–Corona Park is to the south. Because it lies within the Flushing postal zone, and because of its location in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Citi Field is frequently referred to as being in Flushing proper. Citi Field is accessible via the New York City Subway via the IRT Flushing Line at the Mets–Willets Point station, the Q48 bus, and the Long Island Rail Road station on the Port Washington Branch, also called Mets–Willets Point. The park is also close to several major thoroughfares, including the Grand Central Parkway, the Whitestone and Van Wyck Expressways, the Long Island Expressway, Roosevelt Avenue, Northern Boulevard and Astoria Boulevard.

Park and rides

Since the construction of Citi Field began, satellite parking lots in Flushing Meadow Park (access from College Point Boulevard) have been opened. Some of these have been designated as park and rides, used by commuters connecting to the trains and the, and buses. In 2020, Columbia Transportation started a commuter service, the to the Southfield Parking Lot, mainly for commuters from Queens to go to before boarding the bus to Columbia. This service was discontinued in December 2021.

Attendance records

Overall

Bold indicates the winner of each game.

Regular season

Bold indicates the winner of each game.

Progression

Bold indicates the winner of each game.

Naming rights

On November 13, 2006, it was announced that the ballpark would be called Citi Field, named for Citigroup Inc. Citigroup will be paying $20 million a year for the naming rights to the park over the next 20 years. This made Citi Field the second major league sports venue in the New York metropolitan area and the first in the city itself to be named for a corporate sponsor. At the time, the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey's Meadowlands Sports Complex had carried the Continental Airlines name. The deal includes an option on both sides to extend the contract to 40 years, and is the most expensive sports-stadium naming rights agreement ever, subsequently equaled by MetLife Stadium's $400 million deal. At the groundbreaking for Citi Field, it was announced that the main entrance, modeled on the one in Brooklyn's old Ebbets Field, would be called the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, possibly due to campaigns to forgo naming rights revenue and name the ballpark after Robinson. The Mets spent more than $600 million for the new ballpark, which New York City and New York state are also supporting with a total of $165 million for such costs as infrastructure and site preparation. On February 24, 2008, the Mets and Citigroup unveiled the new Citi Field logo.

Controversy

The Citigroup naming rights deal, the most lucrative in history to that point, was criticized during the 2007–2008 financial crisis, while $45 billion of taxpayer funds were loaned to Citigroup by the U.S. federal government in two rescue packages. Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who served on the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, stated in regards to the Citi Field naming rights deal, "This type of spending is indefensible and unacceptable to Citigroup's new partner and largest investor: the American taxpayer.... I strongly urge Citigroup to find a way out of this contract and instead spend that $400 million on retaining its employees and restoring confidence in its operations." The Wall Street Journal reported on February 3, 2009, that Citigroup considered breaking the naming rights deal. Instead, Citi stated that no government TARP funds would be used in the sponsorship deal. The naming rights controversy reemerged in a New York Times opinion piece when details about owner Fred Wilpon's involvement in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme came to light and a lawsuit was filed on behalf of victims of Madoff's investment scandal in 2011. Citigroup paid back the loan in full, with interest, by 2014.

Notable events

Notable baseball games

Soccer matches

Citi Field has hosted international soccer friendlies since shortly after it opened. It was a host venue for the 2011 World Football Challenge. New York City FC played Major League Soccer matches at Citi Field in 2017 and 2019, when conflicts with the Yankees' schedule caused their regular home Yankee Stadium to be unavailable. Beginning with the 2022 season, NYCFC has used Citi Field as a part-time home field, hosting nearly half their home matches. The club plans to construct a soccer-specific stadium across the street named Etihad Park, slated to break ground in 2024 and open in 2027.

Other sports events

Concerts

Mets Concert Series post-game concerts (2012–2016)

Between 2012 and 2016, the Mets had a post-game concert series entitled "Mets Concert Series" after selected games. Unlike the concerts where the performance was the sole attraction of the evening, "Mets Concert Series" events were considered promotional dates, and admission to the concert was included in the price of the game ticket. The stage was set up in shallow center field.

COVID-19 pandemic

On January 12, 2021, the Mets and the Mayor Bill De Blasio announced that Citi Field would become a mass vaccination center during the COVID-19 pandemic beginning on January 25. Originally located in the Delta Club, the location was later moved to the former site of McFadden's. Run by the city's public hospital system, the site administered over 200,000 vaccinations.