Mets Ready for New Beginning

The New York Mets open up the season on the road April 6 against the Cincinatti Reds.  They play three games in Cincinnati and then a three-game set with the Marlins in Miami.  Then they arrive at their new home to face the San Diego Padres for the their long-awaited opener. 

This home opener is a big thing for the Mets and their loyal and die hard fans. The players and the fans will use this to mark a new beginning and forget the past two seasons, which can only be described as major letdowns and disappointments. Though for the organization and the younger Met fans the home opener is bigger; it's a start of our own team.

The Mets will forever be in the shadows of their cross-town rival Yankees until the day the Mets can build their own dynasty.  Both teams are opening a new stadium, and of course a new Yankee stadium will always be a bigger deal because they are the Yankees.  But for us younger Met fans, this could be our start of something big, something real. 

The Mets now have the younger stars, with Wright and Reyes, alongside all-star veterans Santana, Beltran, Delgado, and K-Rod.  But the Yankees will always be there; they own the 26 World Championships and, well, they have the resources to spend $250 million even when the economy is at a low.

But the time is now for the Mets to make a name for themselves.

For Met fans, Shea was home. For baseball fans and other teams, Shea was ugly and a horrible place to play due to the wide opening that let the wind do whatever it wanted.

Citi Field changes that. It's a beautiful stadium, and sure it's open, but not nearly as much.  It also doesn't have the ugly colorful seats that Shea had.  Yes, they are all green and that's nowhere close to the Mets color, but Wilpon put it best, saying, "the guys on the field are the ones that will bring out the blue and orange in Citi Field."

So the Yankees have their championships and of course their new stadium, and I'm sure it's a masterful piece of art, because it is the Yankees after all.

But now the Mets have their own masterpeice to compare.  They put their money into it and really did a heck of a job.

But it can't stop there. Now the job has to be winning at Citi Field, and having this great new venue become the new home of the World Series.

It would be great to take that away from the Yankees, and then maybe, just maybe, the shadow of the new Yankee Stadium won't cast over Citi Field, like it did at Shea. 

Maybe New York can finally be a two-team city. But that's only if Citi Field doesn't carry the September ghost from Shea Stadium with it.