Citi Field Looked Like the Polo Grounds on Wednesday

When Citi Field first opened, one of the biggest complaints about the building was that it celebrated the history of New York's departed National League teams more than it celebrated the Mets.

The team took steps to remedy that problem in the last two years, but all of those moves seemed like a waste of time on Wednesday night. If you were watching the game with no idea about whether the Giants or Mets were the home team, you certainly would have guessed that it was the Giants.

There were hats and shirts with the interlocking "SF" everywhere you looked in a stadium that was much fuller than normal as a result of their presence. All of those extra fans meant that Tim Lincecum's each and every move gave rise to the kinds of shrieks and shouts normally reserved for the Justin Biebers of the world.

Those sounds kept getting louder over the course of the 2-0 victory as Lincecum authored the kind of gem that's made him one of the most popular players in all the land and there were probably even a few Mets fans joining in before all was said and done. He was just that good, striking out 12 and making the Mets lineup look even more boyish than the man emasculating them with his fastball.

It was hard not to admire watching that emasculation, even if Mets losses fill your heart with pain. Jason Fry of the essential Mets blog Faith and Fear in Flushing captured that feeling well, writing that, like so many of us who love baseball, he loves Lincecum but that he loves him a lot more when he's tormenting someone else.

Marveling at Lincecum is something you can't avoid, but you also can't avoid the larger backdrop to Wednesday's loss. We're only 30 games into the season, but the Mets are already eight-and-a-half games out of first and seven-and-a-half games out of the Wild Card spot.

At some point it stops being early in the season and at some point the fanbase turns itself off once and for all. We'll stop short of saying the Mets have reached either of those points based on last night, but it sure didn't feel all that far away as Citi Field celebrated the victorious visitors.