New York Mets: Cardboard cutouts of fans? You can’t be serious

The New York Mets debuted cardboard cutouts of fans Saturday night in Citi Field

I am writing this while watching a replay of Saturday night’s New York Yankees vs New York Mets practice game at Citi Field. While many questions about both teams’ preparation for this week’s star of the short 2020 season linger, the telecast settled issue beyond all reasonable doubt.

Those cardboard fan cutouts look really, really stupid.

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A couple hundred of the cutouts positioned in the seats immediately behind home plate were visible on camera. The Mets are one of a handful of teams debuting the idea of fan cutouts, presumably with an eye toward improving the game ‘atmospherics.’

The cutouts may accomplish one or good things. Mets officials said they are charging non-season ticket holders $86 to have a cutout of themselves placed in the stadium. The proceeds go to the support of Mets charities; that’s obviously a good thing.

The fans who choose to pony up the $86 are required to display some form of Mets gear in the photo used as a basis for the cutout; that’s a marginal thing.

The cutouts also rest in the seats at funny angles, leaving the impression of fans slouched, tilting, partly asleep, or otherwise unalert.

But the truly desperate aspect is the team’s attempt to sell the notion that the cutouts somehow improve atmospherics either for the fans watching at home or for the players themselves, who otherwise would be playing in an ‘empty’ stadium.

This just in: They ARE playing in an empty stadium. The cutouts aren’t real people. Duh.

The only way to make the atmospherics worse – which is to say more artificial – would be to pump in pre-recorded crowd noise.

It may not have dawned on team executives that even veteran major leaguers have plenty of experience competing in virtually empty stadia. That’s what most of Little League, high school, travel, college, and minor league ball is about.

Those who got to the major leagues did so because they did not need large, roaring crowds to motivate them to play well. The raw spirit of competition – the chance to prove you’re better than the other guy, which is the essence of any sporting contest — did that.

So to the extent the Mets or any other team feels a need to dress up the atmospherics in an empty stadium by adding artificial visible or audio elements in order to intensify the experience for players, that’s just a sad commentary on the front office’s belief in the attitude of its players.

And if it’s being done to intensify the experience of fans at home, I promise most of them will look at the cutouts and see a cartoonish distraction from what’s going on in the field rather than an enhanced experience.

The only legitimate justification, then, is as a charitable fund-raiser. If that’s the team’s entire motivation, it is, to a degree laudable. But if so, team execs should have the decency to focus on that instead of attempting to simultaneously couch it as some sort of morale-boosting effort.

If your team needs to have its morale boosted by cardboard cutouts, I’ve got you down for last place.