Thursday, March 12, 2009

THEY JUST SHOULD HAVE KEPT THE OLD SIGNS.

Mets Decline to Buy Name for Subway Station at Citi Field

So on Tuesday, transit officials informed the Mets that when the subway station (currently named after the team’s former home, the now-demolished Shea Stadium) was rechristened, it would not actually use the name of the new ballpark.

Instead, the station, on the No. 7 line, will be called simply Mets/Willets Point. New signs will go up soon replacing the old signs, which say Willets Point/Shea Stadium.The nearby Long Island Rail Road station will be renamed in the same way.

The MTA shouldn’t do any of this. They should just keep the signs. The E train still terminates at the World Trade Center, and I am quite fine and rather happy that it does and that it was never changed. I’m not trying to compare the two, by any means, but in this time of budget cuts and the fact that it took me an hour and a half to get to work on a sunny, clear and dry day due to subway malfunction, I would be quite happy for the MTA to save their cash and not change the signs. Do they think it will confuse people? If someone doesn’t see the mammoth stadium out the window which has a large orange sign reading CITI FIELD, or are unable to take their cues to leave the train from the gazillions of people wearing Mets gear who get up en masse when the train pulls into the station, then there is no hope for them and no signage of any kind whatsoever will be able to assist. I would make jokes about the inability of fans of various rival teams not being able to read anyway, but those would be cheap and predictable. (You can make those yourselves. I will wait.)

It is irksome that the Mets organization could not cough up some kind of token fee for this, given the fact that the subway is what brings a large portion of the people who come to games to their front door. I am conflicted, however, because I am absolutely delighted that the subway station will not say anything about Citi. In the end, that’s a bigger win for me.