Behind the ruins, I still saw the Van Wyck Expressway in the background, the chop shops that line 126th Street in Queens, the planes flying from LaGuardia overhead. Flushing.

And then the No. 7 slowly led me to the front door of Citi Field, the new $850 million home of the Mets, designed by HOK Sport, which is based in Kansas City.

I didn’t see any Shea blue. In fact, there isn’t much color on the stadium at all. There’s a brownish brick and beige-ish brick on its facade, and exposed trusses and fixtures within arches that surround the whole stadium that are a dark, steel blue—a foreign color. There was, however, some out-of-context Mets orange. And a red Citigroup logo. 

There was a blurb on A1 of The Times last week: “Good News, Baseball Fans: There is a lot to like about Citi Field. The Mets’ new stadium corrects many of the worst faults of Shea Stadium, the team’s old park, which is in ruins a few hundred yards away.”

The story that followed--"Mets' New Home Is the Anti-Shea," by Ken Belson and Richard Sandomir—was effusive.

It made many of the same arguments that Mets owners Jeff and Fred Wilpon had made for a new stadium—nicer food; nicer bathrooms; a nicer, dark-green-hued seating arrangement—all of which is perfectly … nice.

Some questions remained unasked, though. Does old-timey equal classy? Does quirky equal original? Are amenities and character mutually exclusive? Is this a stadium for the New York Mets?

The Mets, after all, are not the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Mets are not the New York baseball Giants. The Mets were born as a charmingly hideous hybrid of New York’s excised National League teams—a blue and orange mess.

Shea Stadium, a giant bowl with Technicolor-outlines of baseball players on the outside of the stadium, was the perfect symbol for it. It was modern (at the time) and brutally loud—the embodiment of a franchise that had racing stripes on its uniforms throughout the ’80s.

People can say what they want about the Mets, and about the losing, and the choking. But no one has ever accused them of being without an identity. The same was true, until now, of their stadium.

Shea had its problems. It was probably time for it to go. The question is whether Citi Field is a worthy successor.

The facade has been designed to recall Fred Wilpon’s beloved Ebbets Field, a stadium that was once an integral (if cramped and smelly) part of a densely built downtown neighborhood that was, and is, completely unlike Flushing by the water.

The seats in the Mets’ new stadium are not garish like the seats in Shea. Or festive.

“Dark green is the color of a classic ballpark,” said Mets executive Dave Howard to The Times when describing the color of the seats at Citi Field. The “candy-colored” seating arrangement of Shea had been disposed of, The Times noted.  

“Classic” is something that Mets executives are obsessed with. In 2003, even before we knew there would be a Citi Field, Jeff Wilpon complained to The Times that Shea had to be knocked down because “it’s no longer state of the art, and it’s certainly not a classic ballpark.”

Classic isn’t really something you can manufacture, though, is it?

SHEA, IN ITS WAY, was a classic ballpark. It had Banner Days. It had life. The foundation literally shook inside that place during the playoffs, as a nervous-sounding Joe Buck acknowledged as the Mets won the pennant in 2000, or when Endy Chavez leapt over the left field wall in 2006. It shook because it had a devoted fan base that didn’t give a fuck that Shea was a dump. It was ours. That’s classic.

Inside the walls of Citi Field there is yet more green. Green seats, green walls, a green scoreboard above the left field upper deck. There are quirky dimensions! The walls are taller, supposedly inspired by any number of the ball fields of yore—the old Crosley Field, Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, you name it. The overhang in right field is a nod to Tiger Stadium.

But this sparkling new stadium, if we’re being honest, doesn’t conjure the old Tiger Stadium or Crosley Field. It’s inauthentic—it’s a copy of a copy. And it’s a decade too late.

Camden Yards was a really neat idea, and it works. And now there are faux-antique baseball stadiums in St. Louis, Cleveland, Houston, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Arlington, Denver, Milwaukee, San Diego, Washington and Philadelphia, too. Between 1992 and last season, 18 teams moved into new ballparks, the vast majority of which are replicas.

Citi Field, in other words, could be anywhere. The Times’ writers noted, approvingly, that unlike Shea, the stadium is enclosed, shielding fans from views of the unsightly surrounding neighborhood. (Close your eyes and you’re in Philadelphia!)

“Sitting in their seats, few fans will see the chop shops in Willets Point, the cars roaring past on the Van Wyck Expressway, the subway yards to the south or the U-Haul sign,” they wrote. “They will still get a crystal-clear view of the planes on their final approach to La Guardia Airport. Some things never change.”

Ah, yes. Very thoughtful of those architects from Kansas City to still allow us the planes.

But, see, the stadium is in Queens. In Willets Point.

It’s the Valley of Ashes. It’s chop shops with signs that say CHEPE AUTO REPAIR and SAMBUCCI BROS. INC AUTO SALVAGE. It’s Flushing Meadows park, a grab-bag of World’s Fair relics and more recently installed amenities that now includes an unjustly underhyped New York panorama, a pitch-and-putt that serves beer, a highly enlightened zoo, a science museum where lots of Orthodox Jewish families go, an indoor swimming center where lots of Korean families go, and, still, somehow, the Unisphere.

The old adage goes that the Yankees are a corporate titan. They are winners, and their stadium—the Fucking House That Ruth Built, we get it—is a cathedral. 

Shea, by contrast, was merely the most democratic stadium in baseball. It was monstrously big, and, with rare exceptions, you could always find a seat. It was a bowl where you went to go watch baseball games.

Now, the Mets have given their fans Citi Field, a place where we’re invited to do lots of things that don’t really involve watching baseball. There’s a Budweiser beer pit. There’s a party spot called “Knothole Alley” (more old-timey-ness!) beyond the right field wall. There’s an auditorium for corporate events. There’s a spot to host birthday parties and bar mitzvahs. And there’s a restaurant named Caesar Club where you can get gourmet food and watch the game. On TV.

It’s not surprising the Wilpons went down this road: Indications of their new-franchise class envy have been unmissable for a while now. In 2004, for example, the Mets renamed Thomas J. White Stadium, their longtime spring training home in Port St. Lucie, “Tradition Field.” It was an unsubtle attempt to ape the Yankees’ facility, which is called “Legends Field.” It was sad.

AFTER MY TRIP to Citi Field this weekend, I boarded the No. 7 with the intention of getting off somewhere to get myself burgers and beer. I noticed that there were some other Mets fans who had gone to look at the new stadium. I joined them.

At the Cuckoo’s Nest, a Guinness bar in Woodside, we talked about the stadium, and I realized I might be the one who has to get a grip. These guys, like all the other Mets fans I’ve spoken to about the dawning of the Citi Mets era, were divided between those who loved Shea but are willing to give Citi Field a chance, and those who really do like Citi Field much better. (The ones, presumably, the Times writers were addressing in their cheery lede: “For those fans who hated Shea Stadium, fear not: Citi Field is nothing like its predecessor, the last bits of which lie in ruins a few hundreds yards away.”)

“You know, we took the 7, and we got to 110th street; I couldn’t believe Shea was gone,” said my new friend Tom McLaughlin, a 50-year-old travel agent. “But you know what? I thought the new place was really great. I feel like it has a lot of personality.”

“Shea had to go,” said Rob Pedoty, a 44-year-old born-and-bred Queens resident. “You know those forest-green seats they got in the new place? That was the same color of the seats they used at the Polo Grounds!”

Well, fine. But who cares.

jkoblin@observer.com

Citi Field, which will open next spring, will be the home of the New York Mets baseball team, and is being built next to Shea Stadium, which it's replacing. Shea, built in 1964, is like Queens itself: an aesthetic jumble, charmingly uncomfortable and unexpectedly lovable.

The design of Citi Field, though, is strange for a stadium located in one of the most diverse places on Earth. Citi is being built to look like Ebbets Field, the storied home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and it reflects a taste in new baseball stadium design for a retro look evoking some vague vision of Fifties, apple pie America. It looks like a set from A League of Their Own. Tourists from the Midwest might like it, but then they've already got parks like this.

On top of ticket prices, which will rise, and corporate boxes, which will grow in size and number, Citi Field will replace the vitality and variety of its home borough with the baseball equivalent of a T.G.I. Friday's.

Feh.

In their show review, they called Mr. Joel, "the city’s unabashedly cheesy and unexpectedly profound musical ambassador."

“Thank you, Shea Stadium,” he said, according to Jada Yuan, waving good-bye with a tear in his eye. “Don’t take shit from anybody.”

Baseball is, in many ways, a preindustrial 19th-century sport. Its pace is slow, leaving lots of time for beer and relaxed conversation between pitches and between innings. This week baseball came full circle. Billy Crystal may have stuck out, but he was a Yankee for a day. And this week both the Mets and Major league baseball went green.

The Met’s new stadium, Citi Field, will be built using recycled steel, water efficient plumbing and other green principles.

“The Mets understand that their responsibility to New Yorkers doesn't end with the third out in the bottom of the ninth," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "They've taken the initiative to be bold, innovative and environmentally responsible."

In another green baseball initiative, Major League Baseball and the Natural Resources Defense Council recently announced their Team Greening Program.

“Baseball is a social institution with social responsibilities and caring for the environment is inextricably linked to all aspects of our game,” said Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig. "Sound environmental practices make sense in every way and protect our natural resources for future generations of baseball fans.”

The Team Greening Program is a web-based software tool featuring advice and resources for every aspect of a Club’s operations.

“The commitment by our national pastime to enhance its ecological profile in a meaningful and public way marks a watershed in the history of baseball and the environmental movement,” said Allen Hershkowitz, Senior Scientist, NRDC. “No other sporting institution has influenced American culture as much as baseball and the League is once again putting that influence to very good use.”

What does all this mean? In some ways, it’s hard to evaluate. Is this the counter-spin to the steroid scandal? Is this any more than a bit of green-washed public relations?

A really green baseball might add a few more day games to the mix and try to play without needing those energy draining sun-like lights that illuminate the ball field each night.

Maybe some discounted tickets could be sold to customers who take the subway to the game.

Still, even little steps are meaningful when you think about how important baseball is to our history and national self image… So let’s give the Mets and the majors credit for paying attention.

So, now: how about the Mets' wealthy neighbors up in the Bronx? Hey, Steinbrenners: When are we going to see some green pinstripes?

This content was provided for use by The New York Observer, specifically on Observer.com by the scientists and researchers at Columbia University. Any other use of this content without prior authorization from Columbia University and The New York Observer is strictly prohibited.

In more Shea-related rock news, a new documentary called The Clash Live: Revolution Rock will air on PBS March 1 at 11 p.m. and March 5 at 2 a.m. It'll be a preview of the April 15 DVD release which will include clips from The Clash's famous 1982 performance at Shea. We were born that year but we'd give up a hearty "Piano Man" performance to hear "London Calling" in that stadium any day. Dang! At least we have PBS. Thanks to Brooklyn Vegan for the heads up on this.

"Shea Stadium is one of the most hallowed venues in rock and roll history and it's an honor to help throw Shea the ultimate concert farewell party," Mr. Joel said in a statement obtained by the Czar. "As a sports fan and a music lover, I will always have a place for Shea Stadium in my heart. I thank the Mets for giving me and my fans a chance to rock Shea Stadium one last time for the ages."

According to that press release, Mr. Joel's July 16 performance at Shea will put a punctuation mark on America's birthplace of stadium rock. Shea Stadium played host to the Beatles on August 15, 1965, the first concert to be held at a major sports arena. Other rock and roll hall of famers to play Shea include the Rolling Stones, The Who, The Police, Simon & Garfunkel, Elton John, Eric Clapton and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Even Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix made a little known appearance at Shea for the 1970 Summer Festival for Peace.

Tickets for "Last Play at Shea" go on sale Feb. 16 at 9 a.m. at www.507tixx.com.

Rachel, too, has always enjoyed baseball, but casually.

Finding a middle ground involves compromise. For example, I'll need to be updated by a groomsman on the night of our wedding. (Mets vs. Nationals starts 7:10, my wedding starts 7:30.)

Since becoming engaged, I've realized that developing Rachel into a passionate baseball fan might make everyone's life easier. In an effort to familiarize Rachel with our team, the two of us created a chart in the shape of a Shea Stadium. The players (represented by pictures, names, numbers) are positioned on the field on post-it notes. We change the starting pitcher daily.

Now, it's becoming a joy to watch baseball with Rachel because I'm watching with an insightful fan. For example, we braved the cold and wind to see the Mets take the Subway Series from the Yankees. In the eighth inning, down 4-2, the Yankees loaded the bases with nobody out. Derek Jeter hit a sacrifice fly to the right fielder Xavier Nady. With no chance to get the runner at home, Nady's throw to third kept the runner at second base.

As I started to explain she cut me off: "That's huge," said Rachel, already ahead of me, "a fly ball won't tie the game now."

An ex-girlfriend of mine once asked me, "What do you love more, me or baseball?"

Rachel doesn't even have to ask.

Whiffs of a contingency plan, though seldom aired in public, have permeated the local planning process for at least three years. In 2002, after the United States Olympic Committee demanded that U.S. contenders produce stadium-backup strategies, NYC2012 raised the possibility of building a stadium in Queens. Now that plans for a West Side stadium seem to have sunk into the Hudson River, some New York politicians and Olympic boosters hope that those early ideas may be revived. Of course, Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn't one of them.

"Well, there's no chance the stadium could be built elsewhere and help us to the Olympics, because the rules of the International Olympic Committee are you have to submit a plan. It can't have backups or anything," said Mayor Bloomberg during a Q.-and-A. session in Harlem on June 7. "It can have one plan, and you have to follow that plan."

The Mayor's perspective, however, differs subtly from NYC2012's official line. According to spokesman Laz Benitez, the issue isn't that New York can't have a backup plan, but rather that the city shouldn't have one.

"The I.O.C. doesn't require a backup plan," said Mr. Benitez. "Basically, to the I.O.C., a backup plan is a sign of uncertainty. That's not part of the bid process with the I.O.C. They want a commitment to one facility," he added, contrasting the I.O.C.'s method with selection process of the USOC, which does require a backup plan. "We could've taken it upon ourselves to include a backup plan, but with that said, that would've been frowned upon, because it's uncertainty."

Mere uncertainty, however, might be considered a luxury this week. Compared with the cut-and-dried despondency of the current equation-no West Side stadium equals no Olympic bid-it's hard to envision that simple uncertainty would feel worse. This is according to Brian Hatch, who was the deputy mayor of Salt Lake City during the preparation phase of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. Now a New York resident, Mr. Hatch is a consultant on transportation, municipal and urban-policy issues and has sparred against the idea of a Manhattan stadium on his Web site, www.newyorkgames.org.

"The bottom line is this: A Queens stadium is better than no stadium, and right now they have no stadium, and that is absolutely unacceptable to the International Olympic Committee," said Mr. Hatch. "You must have an Olympic stadium, as the Mayor and NYC2012 have been reminding us for two years."

Representative Anthony Weiner of Brooklyn, a candidate for the Democratic Mayoral nomination who would like to see an Olympic stadium in Willets Point, Queens, went out on a limb and wrote his own letter to the I.O.C. "The Olympic Committee wants a guarantee, so here it is," he wrote on June 7. "As mayor, I will guarantee that an Olympic stadium and broadcast center will be delivered on-time at an alternative location should the International Olympic Committee select New York on July 6." (The part about "should the people of New York select Anthony Weiner for Mayor" was left out.) Lest the declaration seem a bit presumptive, Mr. Weiner also urged his fellow Mayoral candidates to follow suit and pledge their commitment to an alternate stadium site.

So what exactly would a Queens stadium entail? Back in 2001, when the U.S. Olympic Committee demanded backup plans, representatives for NYC2012 toured several neighborhoods in Queens: Willets Point, Flushing Meadows/Corona Park, College Point and sections of downtown Flushing. According to an NYC2012 internal memo dated Jan. 22, 2002, the group concluded that the area's best options lay in the vicinity of Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadow. The memo proposed three different models for a possible Olympic stadium: a 75,000-seat football stadium in a parking lot west of Shea Stadium; an expandable 25,000-seat soccer stadium for later use by the New Jersey–based MetroStars, in the same parking lot; or a temporary conversion of Shea Stadium, which would have involved raising the field by at least a foot and extending the outfield wall.

Two months later, NYC2012 expanded the last of these three options into a more detailed plan, complete with sketches for a "temporary Olympic retrofit" of Shea Stadium. The plan read: "Based on a preliminary review, the existing Shea Stadium could be converted to Olympic use and returned to its baseball configuration after the Games. As a multi-purpose stadium and former home of the New York Jets, the main seating bowl is reconfigurable and [considerably] larger than other single-purpose built structures." It also noted that "the USOC does not want to discredit or jeopardize any existing stadium proposals, and therefore has not requested a formal submission" and that "the best alternative to the Hudson Yards Olympic Stadium is the Shea Stadium/Willets Point Vicinity."

In November 2002, New York triumphed over San Francisco to win the U.S. Olympic nomination. And as the city scrambled to structure its bid for the second and final heat of the race-judged by the International Olympic Committee-earlier notions of a backup plan were left behind. Shea Stadium slipped quietly off the table.

To wit, on May 4 of last year, Jay Kriegel, the executive director of NYC2012, sent a letter to Robert Yaro, the Regional Planning Association president. "In short," Mr. Kriegel wrote, "there is no Queens alternative. Each of these three proposed sites would not just weaken the bid but would probably be fatal to it." Along with the earlier plans, which had mentioned Shea Stadium as a possible location, he cited two other Queens contenders: Sunnyside Yards in western Queens, which would require the construction of a massive deck over the Amtrak rail yard, and Willets Point, home of the 80-acre "Iron Triangle," a desolate stretch of land inhabited by chop shops and an asphalt plant.

Mr. Kriegel argued that all three options would be at least as costly to build as the West Side stadium, if not more, and that none of them could be completed on the Olympic timetable. He also added that they "have no after usage and therefore run counter to the I.O.C. guidelines."

No Alternatives

This February, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff quashed the possibility of a Queens proposal yet again. "There is no alternate plan. There never has been an alternate plan," he told a New York 1 reporter. To be fair, in the context of the international Olympic bid rather than the domestic one, he may be right. Still, with the West Side stadium plan taking on water, local officials who originally favored a Queens stadium wonder whether it's too late to renew the call.

"Queens already has the transit infrastructure there, so it's accessible," said Jeremy Soffin, director of public affairs for the Regional Plan Association. "It's not a central business district, so it could potentially be more compatible with the uses there, which already include a stadium, obviously. And a lot of people have made the case that Queens is the natural host for the Olympics because of its tremendous diversity." He conceded, however, that while the Olympic clock ticks on, the hour is late.

"I think their strategy was to show no chinks in the armor, in an effort to pass a project that was very complicated. That may be a risky strategy, but it may also have been the only one that could have worked. Obviously, there were many people who pushed for a backup-and you can certainly argue that when it looked like it wasn't going to happen in time, that they could have gone to a Queens alternative. But they were committed," he concluded. "It's easy to question in hindsight."

What Mayor Bloomberg didn't tip us off to was the planned post–Election Day tax hike attendant to that message: You will pay more to get to work.

The fare increase (a tax hike by another name) is playing out as the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, appointed by Governor George Pataki and Mr. Bloomberg, holds hearings on a proposal to raise subway, bus and commuter rail fares. Board members are about to soak the workers of New York City with a regressive tax at a higher rate for city residents than for residents of Long Island and Westchester, who ride the M.T.A.'s commuter lines.

As Messrs. Pataki and Bloomberg do this, the city and state governments are in court suing seven states for polluting New York's air. The trustees of the city and state pension funds are writing to financial firms asking how they are prepared to help reduce greenhouse gases and tailpipe emissions through their investment policies. The immediate result of the fare hike will be an increase in air pollution as more people decide to get back into their cars. The borough most affected? Manhattan, where one million cars and trucks dump their poison into your lungs every workday. Does the word "asthma" (especially among young black children) resonate any longer in our celebrity-addled city?

Mr. Pataki's tax hike is an abandonment of his pro-environment campaign rhetoric and will eviscerate the most dramatic mass-transit/clean-air success of the modern era: the MetroCard discounts and free bus-to-subway transfer. Mr. Pataki once supported a bill to reduce the express-bus fare from $4 to $3-and ridership soared 30 percent.

The M.T.A. man who opposed that express-bus fare reduction was Marc Shaw, who is now Mr. Bloomberg's point man on transit. The pending fare hike is a foul ball when you consider that the Mayor hasn't even stepped up to the plate in a major pollution battle, cowering in the face of opposition to putting tolls on the four East River crossings (which would bring in an estimate $700 million a year in revenues). His one feeble attempt at creating a bus lane, on Church Street, is an abysmal failure.

In addition, Mr. Bloomberg is in no position to fight with the M.T.A.-he wants the agency to take a dive on selling air rights over his football playpen, which will also exacerbate pollution.

Ponder what else the two transit experts have in store: billions to whisk Long Islanders into Grand Central (as Mr. Bloomberg refuses to fight for us in restoring the $500-million-a-year commuter tax), a rail link from downtown to Kennedy airport, a Second Avenue subway, plus a new PATH station to replace the restored station downtown and an extension of the I.R.T. No. 7 line, the Mayor's train to the Olympics.

State Comptroller Alan Hevesi gave us the only reason we need to oppose every one of these boondoggles: the mobbed-up rehab of M.T.A. headquarters at 2 Broadway wound up costing $450 million-three times the estimate.

The corruption and waste don't stop there. In the case against go-back-to-jail Guy Velella, his bag man bragged about how he paid a $150,000 bribe to an M.T.A. boss "at the top" for a firm to paint the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. (The company went belly up.) The agency is spending $100 million for a signal system on the above-ground, two-track, 17-mile Staten Island Railway. M.T.A. bosses also spent millions for a new barbed-wire security fence for the same railway (though there was nothing wrong with the old one) to "keep people off the tracks," even though there are open stairwells at every station.

The tab at the Whitehall ferry terminal, under the leadership of our businessman Mayor, is $123 million, or $30 million over budget. One subcontractor is on his way to jail. Some $240 million has been spent planning the Second Avenue subway, and Mr. Pataki wants $400 million to build a platform the length of five subway cars and to install three new exits at the South Ferry terminus of the Nos. 1 and 9 lines.

The M.T.A. has become an organized-crime bastion, a modern-day Tweed ring. But at least William Marcy Tweed left a stunning courthouse, which is still standing 140 years later.

Thanks to Mr. Pataki and Mr. Bloomberg, we'll have a tax hike, dirtier air and congested roads as well as a nice rail link to downtown, where there may or may not be jobs 10 years from now, and a train to a stadium that may or may not be built as millions of us yearn to breathe free.