Ebbetts Country Club II

If the Los Angeles Dodgers meet the New York Mets in the National League Championship this year, a definite possibility, the Dodgers will have a distinctive home field advantage, no matter which team had a better regular season record. They'll have three or four at home in L.A., and three or four more at what will strike them as very familiar territory - the Mets' CitiField.

When the Dodgers' team bus pulls up to the stadium, the players will recognize a facade in perfect imitation of Ebbetts' Field, the Brooklyn Dodgers' home when they played in New York half a century ago. Then, they'll walk in the front doors to see an enormous tribute to Dodgers legend Jackie Robinson, including a huge display of "42," Robinson's number.

The Dodgers are already the best home team in baseball, and Citi's friendly confines will only add to it. All this so Mets' owner Fred Wilpon can relive his boyhood as a Dodgers fan before the team abandoned the city.

Mets fans are not ignorant of Wilpon's obvious tribute to the Dodgers. Many have complained that CitiField is devoid of any Mets history or team pride. Anything not dedicated to the Dodgers is blatant corporatism, from the Pepsi Porch to the Delta Restaurant in left field to Caesar's Lounge behind home plate. Worse, most of the prime seating behind home plate is dedicated to an emperor's throne luxury terrace for Wilpon and his family, and the rest to more luxury boxes.

Fans are not even allowed to explore the stadium despite paying outrageous prices for tickets. You are only allowed to walk on your own level.

Baseball is not supposed to be a country club where you sip whiskey and relax in lounge chairs. A baseball game is about a couple of franks and what's happening on the field. Tennis and golf are supposed to be the elite's entertainment, but Wilpon wants to kill baseball and turn our Queens Metsies into the Southhampton Metropolitans.

But Wilpon can't hide his intentions to remake the Mets as the Dodgers, even if he can segregate fans with idiotic rules. There was a trivia text poll at the game on Sunday. It asked, "Where did the Mets first play home games?" - Shea Stadium, Ebbetts Field, or the Polo Grounds?

On the scoreboard, they showed live updates as the votes came in. At first, the tally was overwhelmingly for the correct answer - the Polo Grounds, at 88 percent. Shea and Ebbetts came in at 6 percent each.

But then, fans realized it was their chance to send a little message. Without any organization, they started texting away to vote for Ebbetts field, in a clear display of displeasure that Wilpon built Ebbetts Field II instead of a new home for the Mets. The next update showed Ebbetts field at nearly 60 percent, and the stadium crew stopped showing the results, switching to a silly poll about "Where would you like to go on vacation?"

The message, however, was clear. Mets fans did not want Dodger stadium. But Wilpon did, along with his fancy country club, and that's what we got.