Well, in a little while, the House that Ruth Built will host it's final baseball game as baseball's cathedral gives way to the House that George Built, with taxpayer help of course. In a week, hopefully more, Shea Stadium will host its final baseball game and make way for CitiField. As a life long New Yorker, living in the city and the suburbs, I'm sad to see both go. Shea Stadium may be a toilet but, as a Mets fan, it is my toilet. Yankee Stadium to me is Cooperstown South and I'm major league annoyed that it is being torn down to put up a parking lot.
Growing up in the 1970s I went to many Mets games, not only because we lived in Queens, but because the Mets had horrible teams in those years and my dad's office had field level box seats customers did not want. It was a horrible day in 1985 when I had to watch my first baseball game from the upper deck. I had seen a NY Jets game from there before, against the Baltimore Colts, on a cold November day (Shea Stadium in late fall, with the wind whipping off the waters is not a pleasant place) but never a baseball game. It was that day I understood why the football/baseball stadiums of the 1960s stunk. Although we froze in the upper deck, we had a great view of the football game, if but from afar. Baseball was little harder to watch, especially when the ball traveled out of view.
My memories of Shea, which I visited for the last time a week ago, and taught my son why it is best to leave before the 9th, when the Mets bullpen takes over and blows the lead, are many. There are too many games my father took my brothers and I to to remember with specificity. Same for games I went to with friends, including a few girlfriends who were also Mets fans. I'll have memories of moving down from the cheap upper level seats, including climbing the wall between mezzanine and field where the seats are right next to each other, to sitting in a box seat adjacent to the field at the end of a losing season during Keith Hernandez's and Gary Carter's last season with the Mets. I'll remember the double header I went to when we were sitting in the right field mezzanine seats and, after Howard Johnson got hit by the pitcher, looking down at the bullpen, watching John Franco pump his fist, a few times and yelling to him "you know you want to!" just before he ran out of the bullpen for a fight at the plate (I'm sure he didn't hear me, most likely he was waiting to see if a fight was about to break out). It is kind of sad I can't remember the games with my dad in detail, but those happened when I was younger and were more frequent so I don't remember them as anything special.
I suppose I will always remember the first Mets game I took my son to, which was just last year. You see last year was the first year he was old enough to really be into baseball. I tried to get him into baseball, taking him to Lakewood Blue Claws games, a single A game team of the Philadelphia Phillies, before, but he wasn't interested. Finally, when he turned 6, he became interested in the Mets. So the following season we went to our first game. The Mets kicked butt. My best story of Shea Stadium, and my first visit, more or less, comes from my mother. My parents and god parents scored opening day tickets to the 1968 season. My mother, was a rabid Brooklyn Dodgers fan and adopted the Mets as the Dodgers successor in interest (though she also started following the Yankees, she liked Micky Mantle). Actually she still defines herself as a BROOKLYN Dodger fan. She has never forgiven O'Malley for moving the team to LA.
In 1985, my dad had a business trip to St. Louis, where the Dodgers were playing the Cardinals in the playoffs and my mom went with him for a little teenager free weekend. My dad got tickets to a game so my mom borrowed my brother's baseball cap with a Cardinal with wings to wear. The Cards won and as my mom gleefully walked down the ramps with her cap she was seen by NBC; they got her on camera and asked her if she was a happy Cards fan. Her reply: "No. I'm from Brooklyn, NY and I came to root against the Dodgers." The next day at school was not good for my brothers, sister and me. Anyway, I degress.
The Mets home opener of 1968 coincided with my due date. My mother wasn't going to let that stop her and off she went. My godmother asked my mother what would happen if I decided to make my appearance during the 7th inning strength. Her reply, "We'll name the baby Shea." Though we're not Irish, we lived in an Irish neighborhood so the name Shea wouldn't have been a major problem for a boy, except if I was a girl and, perhaps, with the rabbi and, for sure, my father's parents. Fortunately I was a boy and more fortunately I was born two weeks late.
I have different memories of Yankee Stadium, mostly because, as a Mets fan, I went there less frequently. The first game I remember (I was taken to the older version of the Stadium but don't recall it) was during the 1977 season. My friend's father got a hold of some free left field Con Ed bleacher seats. I recall it rained, we were annoying the visiting team's bullpen and Lou Pinella won the game in extra innings (I think with a homerun). However, the first game I remember with my dad was better. It was 1978, the year the Yankees came back from 14 1/2 out. It was September, and the Yanks were either in first, or just about to get there, and my dad got 4 upper deck tickets for my brothers and me. Awesome tickets at that time. One problem, we were Jewish and it was Yom Kipper, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. My dad had grown up in a religious family. I don't remember who won, or even who the Yankees played. What I do remember is my dad telling my brothers over and over "Don't tell grandma we went to the game."
Other than that, my memories of the Stadium are more generic. I've been to many games with friends. I remember the first time I went by the 4 train and the subway emerged from underground to stare at the Stadium face to face. I remember going to a Mets Yankees game there and being very quiet, less I get killed as a Mets fan (those were the days the bleacher creatures would strip down a Red Sox fan and surf him over their shoulders around the park). I remember cutting out of work to meet my wife and her office somewhere in the upper deck. I remember my first visit to Monument Park, which wasn't open to the public when I was younger, and wondered why I ever needed to visit Cooperstown again. I think that is why I'm more bummed about the Stadium closing than about Shea. All that history - gone for something new and sexy.
Anyway, tonight is the night to Shea goodbye to our Stadiums. Next year we will be in new, more expensive ballparks. Though we'll move there, we will leave a part of ourselves behind.
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