Workers in Minnesota are putting the finishing touches on the Mets' new Home Run Apple, a bigger, shinier and more advanced version of the Shea curio that inspired strong feelings among fans who either adored or hated its hokiness.
The new apple will be installed at Citi Field in early February, according to Mark Silvera, who designed it along with fellow engineer Andrew Agosto. Look for the Mets to have a ceremony when the apple is unveiled, although the team declined comment Wednesday.
"I guess somebody has made a giant pop-up apple before, but when we were going through the process, we wanted to have it be bigger, better and more reliable," said Silvera, an engineer at Uni-Systems, the Minneapolis engineering firm hired to build it. "It'll be exciting to see it installed and then see how fans respond to it."
The fresh apple, made of fiberglass with a foam core, is 16 feet tall and 18 feet in diameter, meaning it would tower over the 9-foot-tall original. The new one weighs 4,800 pounds, but adding the hydraulics and guideframes underneath means the total weight lifted will be around 8,500 pounds. The old apple weighed 582 pounds.
When a Met hits a homer, the apple will rise 15 feet. It's slated to make the trip in just three seconds, but the Mets may be able to tweak the timing once it is installed.
The original apple first appeared at Shea to the right of the 410-foot sign in center field during the 1980 season as a marketing ploy to inject some excitement into a dreadful team that finished 67-95, in fifth place in the NL East. That team didn't hit many homers, either - Lee Mazzilli led the way with 16, while the Mets finished with just 61 and were mocked by a Daily News graphic that measured their homer output against Roger Maris' 1961 total. The Mets and Maris finished tied.
But the apple morphed into a symbol of the franchise, its lumpy, red fiberboard frames plucking fans' heartstrings, and Met officials long wanted to have the apple represented in some way in the new park.
While the apple has been famous and/or notorious in New York, depending on your point of view, Minnesotan Mark Hagelberger didn't know apple lore. Hagelberger's company, Fiberglass Fabricators, Inc., was hired to build the new apple's shell and he Googled the Met apple to learn. "Wow," he said Wednesday, "this is a big deal."
To some fans, so is the final resting place of the original apple. Good news, Hagelberger says - it's likely to go on display somewhere at Citi Field. "That's the plan I heard," Hagelberger said.
1 comment:
Oooohhhh! Pretty apple!
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