Goodbye, Sweet Fruit; Old Mets Home Run Apple To Be Thrown Out, Not Forgotten

Of all of baseball's quirky stadium landmarks, the Mets' Home Run Apple has to be the wackiest of all. And after impassioned fans formed a Save the Apple committee and gathered more than 9,000 signatures to save their beloved figerglass fruit, it appeared that it would be preserved and moved from Shea Stadium to the team's new home at Citi Field. But no. Now we learn that a brand new apple will be installed in the new park, and the old apple is to be auctioned for charity. Only in New York could this be a controversy. From the New York Daily News:

The Mets had hoped to keep their intentions quiet for now about whether they would transfer the apple from Shea to their new stadium or commission a new one. But they inadvertently upstaged their own announcement. An official with ties to the team revealed on a late-night airing of a special about Citi Field on SNY that it will, in fact, be a new apple celebrating longballs.

I've never seen the Home Run Apple in action, but this description delights me no end.

The apple is a nine-foot mass of fiberboard slathered in red paint that, whenever a Met blasts a homer, pops out of a 10-foot, upside-down black top hat made of plywood. The Mets logo on the apple lights up and blinks.

No doubt someone was taking a lot of peyote when he dreamed this up. New Home Run Apple At Core Of Mets New Ballpark [New York Daily News]