Why did the Mets build a shrine to the Dodgers?

By Brian Biegel

Friday, March 13th 2009, 4:00 AM

For the last three years, like many curious New Yorkers, I've been driving by Citi Field, just southeast of LaGuardia Airport, and eagerly gauging the progress of the new home of the Mets. It's a nice stadium - and a proud $600 million addition to the city.

But one big thing puzzles me: Why the new field - with its dark-painted steel, red brick, limestone, granite and cast stone - looks and feels much more like an homage to Ebbets Field and the Brooklyn Dodgers than to the Polo Grounds and the New York baseball Giants. The Mets have a far stronger connection to the Giants than to the Dodgers. Always have, always will.

Consider: The Mets played their first two years of major league baseball (1962-1963) at the Polo Grounds. Their cap logo, orange color and all, is identical to the logo used by the Giants in their final years. The Mets founding owners, Charles and Joan Payson, were formerly minority owners of the Giants.

So why doesn't Citi Field resemble in the slightest the unforgettable horse-shoe shaped Polo Grounds?

Maybe it's because the Mets are betting on that marketable, "old-school" feel that's been behind successful throwback parks from Cleveland to Baltimore. Fans like the intimacy - and the sight lines. An Ebbets Field-style ballpark qualifies in that respect.

But the Polo Grounds, that unforgettable stadium and its treasure trove of baseball memories, deserves its due, too. It housed the original N.Y. Metropolitans from 1880-1885. The Yankees played there before their own stadium was built in 1923, then the Giants, and finally the Mets. It was where Bobby Thomson hit the Shot Heard Round the World to win the N.L. pennant in 1951. It was where Willie Mays' "The Catch" propelled the Giants to a Game-One victory in the 1954 world series against the Cleveland Indians.

And here's another odd choice: The main entrance to Citi Field is called the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, and looks more like a museum of the legendary Dodger than a place where the Mets will play 81 games a season.

It'd be preposterous to try and diminish what Robinson meant to baseball and America. There should be photos and statues of him displayed in every ballpark in the country. But at the place the Mets will call home, why isn't equal respect paid to Willie Mays? The Say Hey Kid spent his whole career with the Giants, except his final two years (1973-1974) when he transitioned to become an aging hero for the Mets. He retired wearing a Mets uniform.

And so, while Mets fans will be reminded of the Dodgers as they enter Citi Field, with architecture inspired and closely resembling the masonry used at Ebbets, both in color and texture, I will be thinking of the Giants.

I'll be thinking of former Giants director M. Donald Grant, who became chairman of the board from the day the Mets arrived in New York in 1962. I'll be remembering that he and Joan Payson had been the only members of the Giants' board to oppose the team's move west - and were the driving force behind bringing National League baseball back to New York.

I'm too young to remember the Giants playing in the Polo Grounds, or the Mets' first world championship in 1969. But I'm old enough to know that Citi Field should be more about the Giants than the Dodgers.

It's too late to change that, though. The cement has dried. Soon everyone at the new Ebbets Field will hear the umpire shout "Play Ball!"