Nothing has gone right for the poor Metropolitans in this calendar year. From the ownership down to the bat boys, the entire organization has been beset by financial issues, management missteps, injuries, errors, poor timing, and just plain bad luck. Every week seemed to bring a new crisis or terrible disaster and through it all, they constantly found inventive and entertaining ways to squander victory. And there's still a month left!

Join us now on a journey through the outer borough's season of hell, as we look back on the losingest bunch of losers who ever lost a baseball game.

January 15: The Mets kickoff 2009 by unveiling a commemorative patch for the upcoming season, their first at spanking new Citi Field. It is roundly and swiftly denounced.

February 3: Citigroup, which got its name on the stadium via a 20-year, $400 million licensing deal, considers backing out the agreement because they can no longer afford it. Suggested name change: "Taxpayer Field"

February 17: OF Carlos Beltran declares the Mets the "team to beat" in the NL East and in response to Philadelphia's Cole Hamels (who referred to the Mets as "choke artists") says, "Hopefully we kill him, and then he'll have to deal with the situation." Beltran, who will make $19 million in 2009, plays just 67 games before going on the disabled list for10 weeks (and counting.) [Photo: AP]

February 18: The last remaining piece of Shea Stadium is knocked down.

April 6: SP Johan Santana wins his opening day start against the Cincinnati Reds. Two days later, the New York Times reports that the Mets no longer offer group discounts to Little League teams that visit Citi Field, as they did at Shea Stadium in previous years.

April 12: In Santana's second start, OF Daniel Murphy drops an easy fly ball in the second inning against the Marlins, allowing two unearned runs to score. The Mets lose, 2-1. Santana says after the game: "It's one mistake that he made. It cost us the whole ballgame, but it's part of the game ... This is not going to be the first time. I don't think it's going to be the last one, either." That's called foreshadowing.... [Photo: New York Daily News]

April 21: One week later, Murphy badly misplays a flyball in the eighth inning against St. Louis, allowing the eventual go-ahead run to reach base on a triple. On June 24, after being moved to first base, Murphy makes another costly error that contributes to another Mets loss. (He did manage to make one nifty play this year.) [Video: MLB.com]

May 10: The Mets beat Pittsburgh, 8-4, and move into first place in the NL East. The three-game sweep of the Pirates gives them a seven-game winning streak, their longest of the season. They remain in first place for 8 more days, leading by as much as 2 games before dropping back to second. It is the high water mark of their season. [Photo: AP]

May 13: All-Star SS Jose Reyes hurts his right calf. He makes 7 more plate appearances before being placed on the DL and does not play again in 2009.

May 16: 1B Carlos Delgado is placed on the 15-day disabled list, after just 26 games played. Three days later he has arthroscopic surgery on his hip and does not play again in 2009. [Photo: New Jersey Star-Ledger]

May 18: The Mets commit five errors in an 11-inning game against the Dodgers. The game ends when 1B Jeremy Reed throws the ball away attempting to force out the winning run at home plate.

May 20: A fan gets her arm stuck in a Citi Field toilet, while trying to retrieve a dropped gold tooth. Plumbers must be called to the stadium to free her. [Photo: A Helluva Town]

June 4: RP J.J. Putz, acquired in 3-team, 12-player trade during the offseason, has surgery to remove a bone spur from his elbow. While on a rehab assignment in August, doctors discover a slightly torn ulnar collateral ligament in the same elbow. He will not play again in 2009. [Photo: Canadian Press]

June 12: SP John Maine is placed on the 15-day disabled list with "shoulder weakness." He does not play again in 2009. [Photo: NY Daily News]

June 12: Leading the crosstown rival Yankees by one run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, 2B Luis Castillo needs only to catch a routine fly ball to end the game. He drops it, allowing both the tying and winning runs to score. [Video: MLB.com]

July 2: On a one-game road trip to Pittsburgh the Mets are booked into the Westin Hotel. The hotel is also hosting Anthrocon, the "galaxy's largest Furry convention." [Photo]

July 3-5: Trailing the division leaders by just one game, the Mets head to Philadelphia for a crucial three-game series. They are swept, scoring just three runs all weekend. They fall to fourth place and are never closer than four games behind the rest of the season. [Photo: AP]

July 12: Mets fans boo their giant mechanical "Home Run" apple after it fails to rise in celebration of a Fernando Tatis dinger. [Photo: AP/Star-Ledger]

July 22: The New York Daily News reports that while visiting the Mets Double-A farm team in Binghamton, Vice President for Player Development Tony Bernazard took off his shirt and challenged minor league players to fight him during a locker room tirade. One day earlier, Bernazard loudly berates an assistant in front of scouts and fans at Citi Field, because someone else has taken his seat during a game. Five days later, Bernazard is fired.

July 27: At the press conference announcing the dismissal of Tony Bernazard, general manager Omar Minaya accuses Daily News beat writer Adam Rubin of "lobbying for a player development position," implying that Rubin's coverage of Bernazard was influenced by his desire to secure a job for himself in the Mets' front office. Minaya apologizes the next day, at the behest of Mets COO Jeff Wilpon.

August: In one of the season's few bright spots, 3B coach Razor Shines takes a stand against hiney-fingering.

August 4: Luis Castillo sprains his ankle after slipping and falling down the dugout steps during a game. The Mets lose in extra innings. [Photo: New York Post]

August 15: All-Star 3B David Wright is hit in the head by a fastball from San Francisco's Matt Cain. During the two weeks he spends on the disabled list, the Mets fall 5.5 more games in the standings. [Photo: AP]

August 20: Former closer Billy Wagner returns from injury and appears in his first game in over twelve months. He is immediately placed on waivers and (after waiving his no-trade clause) is sent to Boston within a week. [Photo: AP]

August 23: Adam Goldstein, better known as DJ AM, throws out the ceremonial first pitch at Citi Field. Five days later, he is found dead of a suspected drug overdose. [Photo: Reader Greg B.]

August 23: Trailing 9-7 in the bottom of the ninth inning against the Phillies, the Mets have runners on first and second with nobody out when OF Jeff Francoeur lines into the 15th unassisted triple play in Major League history. It's only the second time ever that a MLB game has ended with an unassisted triple play. [Video: MLB.com]

August 25: The Mets announce that Johan Santana, who will make $19 million in 2009, will have arthroscopic elbow surgery and is placed on the DL for the remainder of the season. [Photo: AP]

August 28: Erin Arvedlund, author of "Too Good to Be True," a book about jailed hedge fund manager Bernie Madoff, asserts that Mets owner Fred Wilpon will be forced to sell the team within the next year. Wilpon and his family lost an estimated $700 million as a result of Madoff's fraudulent schemes. The Mets deny the claim.

September 1: With one month remaining in the 2009 season, the Mets begin the day 17.5 games behind the Philadelphia Phillies.

[Video: MLB.com/Mike Byhoff]

Shea rebellion: I direct your attention to Chapter 2 of Who Is This Tory Muppet and Why Is He Yammering About Baseball? George Will's subject is the birth in the 1960s of the multi-purpose stadium. He writes: "Almost everything about the 1960s, from politics to popular music to neckties, was marked by wretched excess." Now, one should remember that George Will is a pundit who seems to have a built a political philosophy out of a profound and unshakable fear that he was the only guy not to get laid in the '60s. (He is also maybe the only person on earth who'd place Shea Stadium on the same continuum as, say, Procol Harum.) George Will, to state it plainly, doesn't know dick. Not about the '60s. Not about baseball. He is wrong. Wretchedly, excessively wrong.

And yet, remarkably, the public seems to share Will's view that the old doughnut stadiums were some misguided fashion of a thankfully bygone era, a sort of architectural Flock of Seagulls. No ballpark's closing was as little lamented as Shea's, even though what replaced it, the enormous Geico advertisement known as Citi Field, is far more soulless, aloof and, yes, excessive than Shea ever was. (I'll grant Citi this: It is fully cognizant of the team's rich history; unfortunately, that team is now located in Los Angeles.)

It's too bad. For all their faults, Shea and its multi-purpose cousins represented an idea of a sports facility — versatile and utilitarian and forward-looking — that we might eagerly embrace today if owners hadn't spent the past 30 years convincing us they were all uninhabitable blights. I asked stadium guru Neil deMause for an estimate as to how much a Shea replica might cost today. He e-mailed: "I remember a calculation from the '90s that to rebuild Wrigley from scratch would cost something like $100 million — add in inflation and that Shea is bigger, and maybe $250-300 million? Certainly far less than Citi's $600m, anyway."

"There were no excesses in those stadiums," architecture critic John Pastier says of the multi-use stadiums. They were "economically very sensible," he says. "The Kingdome cost $70 million and could house every possible activity you could think of, and then they spent well over a billion dollars to replace it with three different structures and they actually lost functionality. You could no longer do Final Four basketball the way they had before. You could no longer do political conventions."

The doughnuts were egalitarian (despite the usual claims that Citi is more "intimate," the seats at Shea were actually closer to the field). They were built for mass entertainment of all kinds, which is why Sid Bernstein and the Beatles chose Shea for their first U.S. concert venue. They were cheap and ugly and did their job at relatively little cost to the common weal, and they were quickly supplanted by big, bright shrines to the kind of wretched excess George Will can get behind: making money.

The view from the stands (everything sic'd):

I'm from Philly but live in New York. A couple friends and I went to the game in early June when the right field corner would ultimately be christened "Utley's Corner."

First of all, it's ridiculous that Mets fans continue to talk shit to us at all after 2007 and 2008, but there we were, being told over and over again that the Phillies "suck." It was like walking through 1946 Berlin and having people talk shit about the Luftwaffe to you.

Anyway, during the game, the Mets took an early 4-1 lead, but my friends and I didn't bat an eyelash as we were, y'know, playing the New York bastard Mets. Of course the Phillies came back to force extras. Before I go on, the stadium itself is a piece of shit and looks like it was designed with Legos by a kid with ADD. Just these weird random shapes jutting out everywhere with no sense of symmetry whatsoever. Also, the food blows.

Anyway, the whole place started to empty out around the 7th, despite it being a tie game. No idea what it would take to sell that place out and fill it up because, as seen on TV, not only do the seats behind the plate stay empty for the entire game, but so did most of the rest of our row, and section. And if they can't fill it up for the WFCs, one of their most hated rivals, in the middle of what was, at the time, a pennant race (hahaha), what does that tell you? When asked, most of the fans around us identified themselves as Yankees fans. All except one.

Around the 3rd inning, a dude in a Mets cap and his friend in a Phils cap came in two rows ahead of us. I recognized the guy in the Mets cap immediately as Finch from American Pie.

For the rest of the game, whenever something good happened, my friends and I were whooping it up and cheering with his Phillies friend because he was literally the only other non-Mets/Yankees fan in the section. And while a few people were getting their picture taken with him, we completely ignored Finch. But my friends and I agreed, "When we take the lead (as if there were ever any doubt), lay into Finch." Long story short, after Chase hit that bomb, Finch from American Pie gave us the finger.

It was one of the most gratifying moments of my life as a Philadelphia sports fan. Thanks Citi Field! (Brendan Burke)

Some of the largest signs in the outfield are: Buy and sell golduscoins.com, Arpielle equipment (read tractor) rentals, and freecreditreport.com. What, exactly, does this say about the people of New York? (Matt D.)

Let's go with the obvious one: it's the home of the Mets, yet it took them until August to actually have more reminders of the Mets than the Brooklyn Dodgers. I walked in the main entrance, and could've sworn I heard the ticket taker say "Welcome to Ebbets Field." Yes, we all know Fred Wilpon would rather have bought the Dodgers and moved them back to Brooklyn so that his daddy would say that he loves him. But leave the Dodger love to, oh, I don't know... the Dodgers, perhaps? (Ron Baker)

I went to an auction of Shea Stadium memorabilia last month. Mets fans were there, times were had. Among the lots was the vinyl banner of the artist's rendering of Citi Field from 2006, when the Wilpons were still selling the public on the idea and construction was just starting. The thing went for ~$60, which was ridiculous considering I got two other banners and three pieces of the box seats for the same price, and it was an auction of Shea Stadium stuff (a lot of good stuff went that day, Tom Seaver's locker chief among them), but that's not the issue here. The issue, as pointed out to me by another fan, was that the artist's rendering had more to do with the Mets then the real Citi Field does. Supposedly, they've recently renovated the stadium so that it's more Mets-y, but shouldn't a stadium designed for the Mets (unlike Shea, which was multi-purpose) be designed with the Mets in mind? (Zach)

When you first walk into the Jackie Robinson Rotunda you notice how much it looks like the pictures of Ebbets field you've seen. As you walk in, you see the six foot tall "42" statue in bright, Dodger blue. Then you look up and see a picture of Robinson and couple of other Dodgers in mid-celebration of their '55 World Series Title. Look right from there and you see a picture of Robinson with Walter O'Malley, then a picture of Robinson is his UCLA track uniform at a long-jump event a the Coliseum.

What do all of these things have in common? The Dodgers (even the Coliseum). Now, as an L.A. native and big time Dodger fan (yeah we exist) living in New York, I should be honored... and I am. For the Mets to honor Robinson in the city that he broke the color barrier is amazing and I have nothing bad to say about it. But I found it a bit insulting (to Dodger fans AND Mets fans) to see the tribute as such a big tribute to the Brooklyn Dodgers. You already stole your logo from the Giants, now you're stealing history from the Dodgers? (Scott B.)

We have a tribute to Jackie Robinson who never played for us (the son-of-a-bitch retired rather than play for the Giants for God's sake). We have a "Pepsi Porch" although taste tests prove we vastly prefer Coke. We have a big Modell's sign but I'm not sure why. We have GIGANTIC OUTFIELD WALLS so we'll never see a homer-stealing catch (only one of the most exciting plays in baseball along with the triple, the steal of home, and anytime that stripper with the big boobies runs out on the field to kiss the third-base coach).

What we don't have is any sense of our own history. Apparently our history is a gigantic apple, the neon frieze that used to be over the scoreboard, and Ralph Kiner (another SOB who never played for us).

I know, it takes a lot of lovin' to make a house a home but I'm not so sure I have enough love in my heart for this place. (Mmole)

Citi Field looks like it was the aborted love child of countless different stadiums. "Oh let's put an overhang in the outfield like Tiger Stadium!" "Busch Stadium's brick entrance is nice, lets use that!" Only the Mets could manage to take the best parts from some of the most beautiful and classic stadiums and have the end result look like absolute shit.

Some other things to note: There are over fifty advertisements from foul pole to foul pole in Citi Field, likely a side effect of Mr. Wilpon's lack of understanding Ponzi schemes. The team's championship banners were on a brick wall facing away from the stadium, invisible to anybody watching the game, until they were finally moved about a week ago. The bullpen is under a fucking canopy for some reason. The entire outfield wall lacks any semblance of symmetry, and throughout the whole field there must be about a hundred different heights for the outfield fence. The tops of the dugouts are red and black. Why? Not a fucking clue. And when faced with criticism about the field, the Wilpons sloppily added a third video monitor in the right field corner, apparently hoping that they could distract the fans form the shittiness of the stadium by just adding more shiny TVs.

It would take me too long to describe how almost every non-field level seat has an obstructed view of some sort either from unnecessary plexiglass or an abundance of poorly constructed railings, but by now you probably get the idea. Lets just say that the aesthetics of Citi Field make it perfectly deserving of that hideous and embarrassing Domino's Pizza logo it was adorned with. I miss Shea. (David V.)

Went to see the Reds on a Sunday afternoon. Brian Schneider hits a HR,...everyone goes ape shit....the Apple makes an appearance for the first time in the previous eight home games. Fernando Tatis then goes yard for back to back HR's. But no Apple! Where's the F'n Apple? People get restless,...then the chants start..."we want apple....(clap clap...clap clap clap), we want apple...(clap, clap....clap clap clap). No Apple. Then people get mad...and they start booing....THE APPLE!!! Make no mistake, they were booing the Apple!!! Newsday did a story about it the next day. Apparently it takes the apple 105 seconds to recharge after it is "deployed", at least that was the official explanation given as to why the apple could not rise again after the second HR,....but that doesn't explain why a good ten minutes went by before the Apple came out again..., between innings if I remember correctly.. (Jim H.)

I went to Citi Field a few weeks ago to catch the day game of a double header against the Rockies. I am not a Mets fan but I was excited to see the new ballpark. Aside from the painfully awkward shrine to Jackie Robinson, a great player who never played for the Mets and played for a team that STILL EXISTS, the stadium is what you'd expect. Corporate, boring, and no sign that the Mets actually play there. However, my favorite part of the game was during the national anthem when the videoboard scrolling the words crapped out and flashed a giant question mark during the entire song. (Catherine R.)

yeah, i have a citi field experience. i watched the new york mets play during the 2009 season. (dylon)

Photo via beau-dog's Flickr account.

Next up: Dodger Stadium. Got any horrible experiences to share? Send them to craggs@deadspin.com.

Stadium security had to call in a plumber to rescue a woman whose arm had become stuck in a toilet at Cit Field last week. How did that happen? She somehow dropped a gold tooth into the water and just had to get it back. Big mistake. Her arm became lodged as the ultra-low-flow toilet repeatedly and loudly flushed over her.

The woman did not recover her tooth, but was plenty relieved just to leave the bathroom. The Mets and Cardoza Plumbing declined to comment.

Some low-flow toilets use powerful vacuum suction to minimize the amount of water needed, but it's unlikely that contributed to the woman's hand being stuck, a Queens plumber said. "The truth is, this kind of thing happens all the time — usually with wedding rings or cellphones," he said.

"People have probably been getting their hands stuck in toilets as long as there have been toilets."

Indeed. Now, I'm sure the Citi Field toilets are quite luxurious when compared to the dungeons of Shea, but the place ain't exactly the Seibu Dome. Maybe let it go next time, okay?

WOMAN GETS ARM STUCK AFTER DROPPING GOLD TOOTH IN CITI FIELD TOILET [New York Post]
Nightmare Flushing for Mets Fan [NBC New York]
Mets Fail: Oh Like YOU'VE Never Had Your Hand Stuck in a Stadium Toilet [The 700 Level]

During Friday night's Mets game, a fan named Ramon Batista held up a sign reading "Fire J. Manuel." Batista was sitting along the first base line in the $105 seats. He claims that Mets' second baseman Alex Cora found the sign distracting and next thing he knew, he had to turn over his uninspired orange poster board handiwork.

Ok, this is what happened, Alex Cora (second baseman) saw the sign and started pointing towards me and told something to the security on the field and then they started looking at me and then called another security. I thought they were going to take me out of the game and asked me if I was the one with the Jerry Manuel sign and he needed to take it with him and hoped I understood the reason (they never gave me one). So i just gave it to him cause I didn't want to get thrown out, I didn't want to loose my $230 in tickets.

Animal got in touch with Mets' PR maven Jay Horowitz who had this to say about the incident: "We don't have a policy on signs, but if they're really negative or incite-ful (sic)we might ask that they take them down."

He's even made up his own word! Ok, Mets, we get it: You want the new ballpark to be a welcome wagon to the well-to-do, so stifling supposed riff-raff is a top priority, but this is overdoing it. If they start throwing people out for booing this season, then the attendance will drop by 97%. Pepsi will be pissed if that happens.

Citi Field Won't Tolerate Even The Most Mundane Of Heckling [Animal NY]

This was just one of several shots from the Mets-Padres broadcast where Erin Andrews revealed the charms of the sparkling new stadium as young men hovered near her painfully attempting to play it cool. You can almost see the thought bubbles above their heads, most of them saying some variation of, "Omygodthat'sErinAndrewswhatdoIdo?" Even the cat that ran on the field during the third inning was more calm and collected.

Oh yeah, the cat. The Mets lost the game and a Padre hit a home run in the first at bat, so even though the cat wasn't black I'm pretty sure that means the team is cursed forever.

Cat Runs Around On Field During New York Mets Citi Field Opener [Sports Rubbish]

Chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon took the press on a tour of the Mets' new home on Tuesday, and there was plenty to delight the senses. The New York Times has dubbed it "the Anti-Shea," and looking at these photos it's easy to see why.

Citi Field has many nooks and crannies that are nothing like Shea's tired symmetry. The grandstand that hangs over right field, for instance, was inspired by the old Tiger Stadium, which Wilpon visited with his grandparents as a child. Fans in center field will get a bull's-eye view of the bullpens, with Aaron Heilman only in the visitors' half, which is on a slightly raised level, with some protection from fan saliva.

OK, that's a confusing paragraph. Ticket prices are not as mysterious; you're going to need a loan to attend a game, and you're not going to get one from CitiBank. It's $40 to $50 to sit in the best outfield seats, upper deck boxes run around $75, and it goes up from there. $100 to $275 for field level seats. God knows what hot dogs are going for.

And they've only got a couple of weeks to get rid f that snow: First game is March 29, a college matchup between Georgetown and St. John's.

Photo: New York Times

Dark Cloud Over City Field [The Sporting News]
Mets' New Home Is The 'Anti-Shea' [New York Times]

Many, many years ago, before our nation became a blighted economic hellscape, the bank signed a 20-year, $400 million deal to place their name atop the new Citi Field in Queens. In fact, the name is already up there! The stadium is nearly complete, the team is ready to open it for business in a couple months, and they have this sweet patch, so it seems kind of late to take down all the signs at this point. On the other hand, the federal government just gave Citigroup eleventy-billion dollars of your money and you were probably hoping that it wouldn't be used to support the Mets.

Who knows how this will all play out, but I think this "man on the street" interview sort of sums up the whole situation for everyone involved. In fact, I'm guessing that the local NY1 news team didn't have to go far in Flushing to find someone willing to express this sentiment.

In other words, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it will still collapse in late September.

Citi Explores Breaking Mets Deal [WSJ]

Failed insurance company AIG currently pays Manchester United $125 million dollars to have their rather bland logo appear on the chests of its players. Of course, AIG would not exist right now if it weren't for the $150 billion that the U.S. government gave them to stay afloat. The New York Mets' new stadium isn't even open yet, but Citigroup is on the hook for $400 million over the next 20 years to have their named permanently affixed to it. That's a lot of money—almost enough to pay the salaries for some of the 52,000 people they plan to lay off in the next year.

Of course, to the companies this is merely advertising money and even crappy businesses need to advertise, right? Unless the advertising goes to greedy sports companies and their prima donna athletes, and no one wants that. That's partially why General Motors ended their luxurious partnership with Tiger Woods before putting their hand out. They wouldn't want Congress to think that they need a government check, just so they can turn around and hand it to the Richiest Rich on the planet. Have you seen his wife? Isn't that enough?

On the other hand, if the Mets couldn't charge $20 million for the name on their stadium, they would "have to" charge $500 for the seats inside it. (Wait, they already do. Make that $500 more.) Plus, an extra $30 to park next to it and another $2 added to the price of that beer. And the AIG ads would now be on the soccer field instead of the players, and the TV timeouts would get longer, and your cable bill would get higher, and one way or another Jerry Jones ends up with your money.

In other words, government, business, sports are really all part of the same greedy monster that is actively working to screw you out of your hard (and not-so-hard) earned money. So just lie back and enjoy it, I guess.

Bailed-out companies AIG, Citibank have no plans to cancel expensive sports sponsorships. [Think Progress]
Failed Companies On Your Stadium or Kit [I Dislike Your Favorite Team]
PGA Tour, other players to feel effects of Tiger Woods, Buick break up [ESPN]
We Now Own The Mets [Five Tool Tool]
AIG Using Taxpayers’ $150 Billion To Annoy Comedy Blog [Wonkette]
S.I. Pols Say CitField Should be Citi/Taxpayer Field [Gothamist]
End of an Era: GM’s Sports Advertisement Budget and Billion Dollar Stadiums