Players have talked about it. The manager has talked about it. Most importantly, the fans have talked about it and are making it happen. Citi Field is becoming that tenth man on the diamond.
For the first time since opening in 2009, Citi Field is finally seeing some serious September baseball. The place is rocking, and everyone feels it.
The crowd was not a sell-out Wednesday night, but they were felt. It was an electric crowd; standing, clapping and hoping for a win. This is starting to become the norm as the year goes on and the Mets march towards a possible NL East crown.
Team captain David Wright can feel what’s happening. “We haven’t experienced that here at Citi Field,” Wright told MLB.com. “It was few and far between, that type of electricity in the building.”
“Maybe the inaugural season, you had a couple games early on where the place was packed. The All-Star Game. But as far as these types of crowds — how rowdy they are, how loud they are, how into the game they are on a consistent basis — not even close to that since the building’s opened.”
For the first time, Citi is electrified, rocking and waiting for playoff baseball. This fanbase is hungry, starved even for a playoff berth and this Metropolitan team is aiming to give it to them.
This team is fun, loose and a pleasure to watch day in and day out. When the pitching is down, the offense has picked them up. And when the offense is stale, the pitching is right there to help out. This team is perfectly positioned right now to do what we all hope, and that is to punch their ticket into the 2015 MLB Playoffs.
“You can just tell how pumped up the fans are, the energy that they bring, and I think that rubs off on players,” Wright said. “You hope to try to take it to the next level on the field, because you feed off that energy.”
The years of collapse and six consecutive losing seasons are behind us now. This is a new stadium, a new team, and a new era in Mets baseball. There’s a new feeling throughout the organization of confidence and the players and fans are feeding off of it. This is what we have all been waiting for.
