The roads of Rome stood for two thousand years and more; who would predict less for the roads of Moses? Who would predict less for his Shea Stadium, a structure consciously shaped to resemble Rome’s Colosseum…?
—Robert Caro, “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York,” 1974
The DiamondVision menu was classed up for the postseason. Instead of bombarding us with various iterations of “You there, what’s in the box?” and “Uncle Jack’s Steak Sauce Presents: Which is closer, Greece or Albany?” as it did from April through September, the big screen featured a few muted presentations, including an infomercial of sorts.
It started with Gary Cohen explaining that the Mets played their first two years in the Polo Grounds. As the camera came up on the Rheingold sign in the deep, deep center on the northern edge of Harlem, I clapped real quickly. I had to — the image faded in a few seconds, sort of like the first home of the Mets seems to have in the official memory. It ended with a lavish tour of CGI Park, the computer-generated portrayal of what we have since learned (thanks, fast and first, to Hotfoot) will be called Citi Field. On the two occasions the bit was shown while I was sitting next to my co-blogger, Jason applauded heartily at the New Ballpark pitch. I think he was afraid they would cease construction on it if he didn’t.
I toasted history as I tend to do. He cheered progress as is his prerogative. Nobody did much of anything for the here and now. The script, you see, also paid lip service to Shea Stadium, noting it became the home of the Mets in 1964 and that many fine things had happened in it. Shea, like the Polo Grounds, was in the picture to pave the way to the future, to Citi Field. This wasn’t an educational filmstrip. It was hype, and that was fine.
It’s going to be fine, too. Citi Field, on which ground is at last officially broken (a mere five months after the new day actually began rising), doesn’t roll off the tongue probably because after 43 seasons, anything that plays home to the Mets and isn’t called Shea Stadium is going to sound and read bizarre. If you’re a devotee of South Park, perhaps the second thing, after “really?” that crossed your mind when you learned what the naming rights bidding yielded was Tuong Lu Kim, the recurring Chinese character who operates City Wok. He slurs the soft-c into more of a “sh” when he answers the phone “City Wok!” and encourages you to try his specialty, the “City Beef”.
Let’s try not to think about that (though now I’m stuck with it in my head until at least 2009). Let’s not worry that other, less kindly disposed observers will find the easy rhyme. After being subjected to a zillion choruses of a Yankovicked “step right up and beat the Mets,” big deal. Let’s not pay any attention either to the predictable chorus of columnists who between now and October 2008 will sniff that tearing down renovated Yankee Stadium is a crime against nature (the Babe and Larrupin’ Lou will be aghast on their Bill Gallo cloud, though it will be tough to tell by their expressions) while demolishing Shea is a public service. Have the good sense to ignore them, too. I’ve never heard a Mets fan, not even my technically accurate friend Jason, put down Shea the way those who don’t pay for the privilege do. The press elevator must really work in the new parks.
Anyway, don’t fret at what sounds like “Citi”. Be glad instead that 1) $20 million a year will flow into the Mets’ no-fee checking account before being laundered into Scott Boras’ pockets; 2) There is an implied NYC feel to the sponsor even though I recently received a Citi statement from the city of Sioux Falls, S.D.; 3) I’ve heard of this company and so have you; 4) This company’s name is probably not going to change substantially any time soon; 5) The joint won’t be named for a chain of pet supply stores unless Petco buys out Citi Group; 6) No ATM fees for me…presumably.
Listen, I advocated going for top dollar and avoiding utter embarrassment if possible. The Mets seem to have achieved the first part, and while the second part is a matter of taste, Citi Field — albeit a little generic to the point of fictional and rather resonant of a minor league facility in Islip — isn’t a total disaster. As Mets fans, we’ve conditioned ourselves to treat noncalamities as moral victories. Score one for us.
The park…I mean field itself? We’ll see. You can draw up all the virtual realty you want. No way of knowing how extraordinary or how extraordinarily disappointing the new digs will be until we’re inside. I reserve judgment while fervently hoping for the best.
That leaves us with Shea Stadium, which is where I want to go right now. That’s where I went in 2006 on 29 separate occasions (30, counting my wishful World Series jaunt). That’s where I’ve been going to see Mets games since 1973. Unless you were in the vanguard of the New Breed in ’62 or ’63, it’s the only home you as a Met fan have ever known.
Shea Stadium is my Nikon Camera Player of the Year for 2006, winning the honor that went to our soon-to-be-sundered radio team in 2005. Shea of course is slated to disappear after 2008. This award doesn’t portend longevity, does it?
Often derided as maybe the worst ballpark in the Majors, I’ve decided Shea Stadium was the best thing about a very good season, at least for me…and it’s my award. The Mets won 50 regular-season games here in ’06, two more in the NLDS and two in the NLCS (though the home-field advantage kind of lapsed at the end). That certainly helped its cause, but I came to love and regard Shea more than I have in ages for two other reasons.
One was, predictably and sentimentally, that it was suddenly living on borrowed time. It’s not right to speak ill of the nearly deceased. The other reason it became my cause was given to me by somebody I met for the first time this year at, not ironically, Shea.
In April, Dan Ziegler, who you may know as the consistently enjoyable lone star of Lone Star Mets, was visiting the home of his favorite team for the first time in 20 years. He lives in Arlington, Tex., but remains as loyal to the Mets as he was in his New Jersey youth. It was a very big deal for him to fly to New York for the sole purpose of taking in two Mets games in April, less than two weeks after the plans for Shea’s successor were unveiled.
Naturally, the subject of ballparks came up. Dan is a regular visitor to Ameriquest Field, home of the Rangers. Opened in 1994, it was one of the first retro delights in the Majors — a Priti Field, if you will. Dan told me he likes it fine (as did I on my one visit in 1997), but said Shea was better. You’d be surprised, he told me, how fast the novelty of a new park wears off. Shea, old and scruffy as it is…now this is a place to watch and feel baseball. The “energy” was what Dan kept coming back to. It was so strong, so real. The ballpark in Arlington, whatever it was called that week, couldn’t hope to match it.
“Everybody gets buck wild over here when they watch a ballgame,” somebody else — Benny Agbayani — once said of Shea. “This is the most exciting place that I’ve been to, where the fans are into the game from the first inning to the ninth. I can just imagine the people who don’t have tickets, at home. They probably wreck their TVs.”
Perhaps it’s unfair to compare the commitment of Mets diehards to Metroplex timepassers, Rangers fans likely just checking their watches to see when Cowboy camp kicks off. So if we are who we are, not where we sit, the stadium shouldn’t make a difference. Whether at Shea or Citi, we’ll still be in New York and we’ll still take baseball seriously. Just because we’ll be a little more comfortable and far less sardined doesn’t mean we’ll forget how to root, root, root for the home team.
Yet Dan’s sentiments stayed with me all season. Despite my occasional and pungent discontent with Shea, I realized in 2006 what a special place we will lose come 2009. That makes letting go unexpectedly difficult and hanging on to what remains all the more imperative.
Whether Shea Stadium is afforded the cachet in death it’s been deprived in life remains to be seen. Its backstory — a municipal stadium situated among the parkways, amenable to several types of events, ideal for none — is 410 feet removed from the musty tatters of the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field (former home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, in case you hadn’t heard). Shea probably won’t be bygone enough in our time to evoke objective wistfulness. The second the Mets can’t gin up nostalgia to sell everything from it that would otherwise go into a Dumpster, they’ll barely mention it. Thus, it’s on those of us who sat in it, stood in it, leaped in it and high-fived in it to give it the round of applause it’s earned…to love it in the present-tense while we still can.
We know the superb and the supernatural have occurred here. You can run down the catechism with minimal prompting, Casey to Mookie, Rocky to Robin, Agee to Endy, Del Unser to Delgado, John Lennon and Paul McCartney to John Maine and Paul Lo Duca (not to mention Jim Bunning to Jeff Suppan…sigh). We all know, too, our own histories: the first time we were brought here as kids; the first or last time we took our loved ones; that time it was so cold or so warm (sometimes in the course of the same week or same game, depending on your ticket); and, oh, that time it was so much fun. Say Shea and you’ve probably said all you need to say to conjure countless memories and umpteen emotions.
What I think is easy to overlook is how well we — counting us as Mets — and it go together. Hell, by the end of Game Six against St. Louis, I couldn’t tell us apart. Where was that corporate vibe that was going to quiet everybody and everything in October because every other fanny in every other seat would belong to a well-connected frontrunner? The place was more alive than I’d ever heard it or felt it. After Billy Wagner put out his final fire of 2006, we were sweating, we were trembling, we were barely able to stand. In other words, we were Shea and Shea was us. In tandem, we were just trying to hang on for one night more than we’d been told we had left.
Into each life a little rain must fall. Rain pours on Shea. Wind howls into it. It was allegedly supposed to be covered by a dome or at least be closed off. It didn’t and it wasn’t. If you believe Robert Caro’s assertion that Shea was Robert Moses’ “answer to the Colosseum of the Caesars,” it was never going to.
Hence, Shea is immune to nothing. Nor are we. We sit outside too long. We sniffle. We hurt. We don’t hold up perfectly in the course of a long year. Our calves go south at the worst possible juncture. Whether we throw or we house or we cheer, we’re all bound to be a little rickety in our forties.
But we are who we are. We don’t march in lockstep. We are not of one mind. We don’t all don navy windbreakers or red caps. We’re a little raggedy around the edges. We are individuals with our own quirks. Half a row loves the Met who’s at bat, the other half is actively demanding he be packed off to Seattle ASAP. The bon mots share vocal space with the You Sucks. We are individuals woven together for common cause. Shea, in that sense, is one of us.
I don’t see a cookie cutter — unless a chunk of cookie got stuck in the pan. Quick, how many other stadia have looked like Shea? Even in the multipurpose ’60s, nobody else mimicked the Colosseum. Credit/blame the vision of master builder Moses or architects Praeger-Kavanaugh-Waterbury or Mayor Wagner for spending $25 million and getting a three-quarters complete facility a year late for New York taxpayers’ money (John Franco, who grew up in the Marlboro Houses of Bensonhurst and knows a little something about such handiwork, suggested anything built by the city wasn’t going to be all that nice). Shea may not measure up to the antiquities its generation replaced in terms of stone originality, but it was also never the Vet or Three Rivers. It was open. It was inviting. It was distinctive, even.
Before the Cardinals built the current Busch Stadium, they toyed with renovating the old one, specifically ripping open the outfield to provide a good glimpse of the Mississippi. Some computer models were worked up, one of which was dismissed by management as looking “too much like Shea Stadium.”
As if that could be a bad thing.
To really get Shea, sit in the upper deck, in left field. From high on in Section 36, say, as I did on a July afternoon seven years ago. From there, you see it all. You see why we’re where we’ve been since 1964. You see the lush green Moses yearned to develop into New York City’s premier park…the highways that link to create the heart of the Metropolitan area…the Long Island Rail Road station — “your steel thruway to the Fair gateway,” as it was advertised in the 1964 yearbook — originally opened to usher visitors to baseball over here and Peace Through Understanding over there…the IRT, also known as the 7 train, because, well, this was a City field.
That day, as prelude to Matt Franco zinging Mariano Rivera, I understood as I never did before the great truth of Shea Stadium. It was built for us. It was built for us kids, many of whom had parents who moved east, from Brooklyn, from Queens. It was meant to be our playground, our day care center. “I used to say,” Ron Swoboda once recalled, “that the Mets were the biggest babysitting service in the city.”
We raised a fuss and made a racket, but that was all right because we helped drown out the planes (does anybody even still notice the planes?). There’s a reason, I decided, home plate more or less faced Long Island — Great Neck, maybe — without decisive obstruction. It was gesturing toward us kids to come on over and come on in and come play. It was big but not daunting. It was colorful: yellows, later oranges. It had to be designed for or by children. “Tinker Toy architecture,” George Vecsey described it. The ballpark, like the team, was a gift to us, the kids who toddled out of the early ’60s. Did it have to be left open at one end? Let’s just infer that Mr. Moses and Mr. Wagner simply didn’t finish wrapping it in time for Christmas morning, April 17, 1964, and we were too anxious to wait another minute.
Shea’s youthful exuberance, even in middle age, remains its charm. Where else could have…
HoZAY!
HozayHozayHozaaay!
HOzay!
HoZAAAY!
…taken off as it did in 2006? Jose Reyes heard those chants in Japan. He said they reminded him of Shea Stadium. So did Manny Acta. So did Ryan Howard, not altogether cheerfully.
That’s how we roll. We’ve never needed ThunderStix. We don’t really require the cues from DiamondVision. We know enough to get out of our chairs and go to the window, as it were. It’s what we do. We brought the ethic of Roger Angell’s “‘Go!’ Shouters” over from the Polo Grounds and expanded upon it.
Has there ever been a purer exhortation of faith than LET’S GO METS!? It’s concise without being neat, raucous without being threatening. It can’t be contained, which is why it’s ideal for a horseshoe like Shea. It’s three easy syllables, perfect for the kids and the kid in each of us. The scoreboard need never rev it up again for it to be generated twenty times a game. It rises when we’re hitting and when we’re fielding. It squirts out with nobody on and it rocks the Queens night when the bases are loaded. It’s ours. I’m sure it will survive the trek across the parking lot but I can’t imagine it will ever translate to as much a part of home after 2008.
William A. Shea, the superlawyer whose Continental League machinations led to the formation of the Metropolitan Baseball Club of New York (we should really name something after that guy), was a renowned mover and shaker. That makes sense because if you’ve sat in the upper deck for a playoff game, you know it moves and it shakes. I stood still for it in 2000, frozen when I assumed my demise awaited me below, somewhere in the mezzanine. But we survived. When things started quaking again this October, I joined in the jumping. If me adding my full force to a condemned structure couldn’t kill it, what could?
Oh yeah. Progress. We’re back to that.
Dammit, I wanted to look forward to this new ballpark without reservation. I’ve been craving this on some level since 1994, the first time I stepped off a MARC train from Washington at Camden station in Baltimore and took a long look at the red bricks that formed the back of Oriole Park, particularly the sign that greeted me: WELCOME HOME. I swear I channeled Ned Beatty in Rudy when he saw Notre Dame Stadium for the very first time:
This is the most beautiful sight these eyes have ever seen.
Everything I had salivated over in the two years that I read about Camden Yards was exceeded. How often does that happen? “They got it right,” I kept muttering to myself. “They got it right.” I didn’t care a whit about the Orioles. I was just so impressed that a ballpark could look like a ballpark. I wanted the Mets to have one of these.
So what happened between 1994 and the present? 2006, mostly. Dan Ziegler’s insightfulness. The realization that progress implies what you cherished before was not the ideal. That what was built for my youth and my adolescence has been deemed obsolete by those who operate it. That a stadium constructed in 1963 and 1964, when I was still learning to spout “Metsie! Metsie!” stands no chance of standing 50, never mind 2,000 years. The physical focal point of the single constant of my sentient life, my default destination if I had to pick anywhere I wanted to be at any given moment, will vanish before the next decade dawns.
Citi Field’s pending glory is a reminder of Shea Stadium’s undeniable doom. It can’t beckon without mocking. And boy will it be weird come April when what were barely stakes in the ground when we last craned our necks to check out the activity beyond centerfield will have grown into the actual skeleton of a structure. It was already weird in June when it was just stakes.
Plus, change frightens me. Encountering change is like facing Suppan with the season on the line. It scares me hitless.
More than all that, though, more than the chilling metaphor of a ballpark just a little younger than myself returning to the ash heap from which it rose, the thing about 2006 that makes the end of Shea an almost stunningly melancholy affair is the times that were so much fun.
I’m not talking about my childhood. I’m talking about now. Last month. The month before. April in the cold. June in the humidity. August in a drizzle. At a stage of my life when a blue-ribbon commission should be issuing reports that my concourses are too narrow and my pipes are in danger of bursting and that we’ve really got to do something about your seat size, I enjoyed myself too much to notice what cried out for replacement.
It helps when your team wins lots of games and such but I’m the guy who brought bad luck to the good Mets. It didn’t matter. I was riding high. Row V high. Orange…blue…green…skyward red. It didn’t matter. Snaking lines for the men’s room? It didn’t matter. Trip from the upper deck to the elevated platform so long that I should have earned credit card miles? It didn’t matter. Overofficious jerks barring me and my bride from Daruma delicacies? Even that didn’t matter, no matter how insulting.
There was an evening when a strikingly blonde fellow in a Brazilian soccer jersey and a very unofficial-looking Yankees cap neared me at Woodside (Shea’s outer boundary for my psychic and commutation purposes). He approached me as I waited for the 7. When he saw my suspicion at what was on his head, he took it off. He was visiting from the Netherlands and just wanted directions to Shea. Is this the train? Yes, I said. Follow me.
It wasn’t a tough assignment. The 7 pulled into Willets Point. I told him we get off here, he said thanks and I lost him in the crowd. I met up with Jason, we watched Shawn Green record his first Met hit and the Mets sweep the Cards. Hours later, I saw the Dutch guy leaving with whomever it was he was meeting. The Yankee cap was nowhere in sight. Neither he nor his friend carried a backpack or a bag. I deduced that a night at Shea made him realize he was in the right place with the wrong hat and discarded it. I don’t know what became of him after, but at the very least, William A. and I helped prevent one soul from trending wayward.
Just a small moment in a year of momentous ones, a small moment like the other small moments that add up if you’re careful enough to relish them.
Like the lady who refused to stand at her aisle seat one more damn time to let pass the endless stream of foot traffic that was ruining her night.
Like the chirpy staff photographer who offered my co-blogger and me the opportunity to have our picture snapped in the bottom of the ninth with the tying run batting (we declined, though I had the right item to feature if she clicked).
Like scolding the kid who was kicking my seat and the kid stopping.
Like Mike of Mike’s Mets gently explaining to me that, uh, Dontrelle Willis is hitting those home runs lefthanded, not righthanded like I thought.
Like Dan of Westchester (not to be confused with Dan of Texas) and I suddenly deciding, on a victorious ramp, that “Takin’ Care Of Business” was the best song ever.
Like Laurie contorting herself from Maddux fan back to Mets fan in the time it took Grady Little to change pitchers.
Like the two roars that told me both Kent and Drew had been tagged out by Lo Duca when I couldn’t quite see the plate.
Like the tens of thousands of cheers for Mike Piazza walking in from the bullpen and the tens of thousands more for Ed Hearn and his erstwhile teammates walking in from the stands.
Like the Fandini whose appeal escapes me but I had to have and the Dunkin’ Donuts quarter-holder that was OK, I guessed, but felt compelled to fill.
Like the metallic blue beer bottle I was determined to keep and the cobalt blue champagne bottle I will never discard.
Like the bus lot full of eager seniors.
Like Gate E, where, before Game One of the NLCS, I saw dozens of satin, Davey-era jackets wrapping torsos that weren’t alive during the Johnson administration. Our franchise was now old enough, I divined, to have fathers passing down sacred Mets garments to their sons.
Like the boardwalk — the wooden thruway to the Shea gateway — from the LIRR stop onto which I gained entry by flashing the same ticket to inattentive conductors all year long. Every time I rode the Port Washington line in October, the boardwalk, that great bridge between Shea’s World’s Fair roots and its immediate World Series hopes, was jammed with Long Islanders like me. LET’S GO METS! and HoZAY! sprung up every few feet, petered out and renewed themselves over and over. These fans grew up in the ’60s and the ’70s and the ’80s and the ’90s and the now. They, in the parlance of Terry Cashman, were rushing to the stadium in Flushing because nothing could be more important than the Mets and loving them toward another win. Every one of them was sure this was going to be the year at Shea.
They were right. It was.
 
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans. Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here. Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here. Got something to say? Leave a comment, or email us at faithandfear@gmail.com. (Sorry, but we have no interest in ads, sponsored content or guest posts.) Need our RSS feed? It's here. Visit our Facebook page, or drop by the personal pages for Greg and Jason. Or follow us on Twitter: Here's Greg, and here's Jason. |
The roads of Rome stood for two thousand years and more; who would predict less for the roads of Moses? Who would predict less for his Shea Stadium, a structure consciously shaped to resemble Rome’s Colosseum…?
—Robert Caro, “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York,” 1974 The DiamondVision menu was classed up for the postseason. Instead of bombarding us with various iterations of “You there, what’s in the box?” and “Uncle Jack’s Steak Sauce Presents: Which is closer, Greece or Albany?” as it did from April through September, the big screen featured a few muted presentations, including an infomercial of sorts. It started with Gary Cohen explaining that the Mets played their first two years in the Polo Grounds. As the camera came up on the Rheingold sign in deep, deep center on the northern edge of Harlem, I clapped real quickly. I had to — the image faded in a few seconds, sort of like the first home of the Mets seems to have in the official memory. It ended with a lavish tour of CGI Park, the computer-generated portrayal of what we have since learned (thanks, fast and first, to Hotfoot) will be called Citi Field. On the two occasions the bit was shown while I was sitting next to my co-blogger, Jason applauded heartily at the New Ballpark pitch. I think he was afraid they would cease construction on it if he didn’t. I toasted history as I tend to do. He cheered progress as is his prerogative. Nobody did much of anything for the here and now. The script, you see, also paid lip service to Shea Stadium, noting it became the home of the Mets in 1964 and that many fine things had happened in it. Shea, like the Polo Grounds, was in the picture to pave the way to the future, to Citi Field. This wasn’t an educational filmstrip. It was hype, and that was fine. It’s going to be fine, too. Citi Field, on which ground is at last officially broken (a mere five months after the new day actually began rising), doesn’t roll off the tongue probably because after 43 seasons, anything that plays home to the Mets and isn’t called Shea Stadium is going to sound and read bizarre. If you’re a devotee of South Park, perhaps the second thing, after “really?” that crossed your mind when you learned what the naming rights bidding yielded was Tuong Lu Kim, the recurring Chinese character who operates City Wok. He slurs the soft-c into more of a “sh” when he answers the phone “City Wok!” and encourages you to try his specialty, the “City Beef”. Let’s try not to think about that (though now I’m stuck with it in my head until at least 2009). Let’s not worry that other, less kindly disposed observers will find the easy rhyme. After being subjected to a zillion choruses of a Yankovicked “step right up and beat the Mets,” big deal. Let’s not pay any attention either to the predictable chorus of columnists who between now and October 2008 will sniff that tearing down renovated Yankee Stadium is a crime against nature (the Babe and Larrupin’ Lou will be aghast on their Bill Gallo cloud, though it will be tough to tell by their expressions) while demolishing Shea is a public service. Have the good sense to ignore them, too. I’ve never heard a Mets fan, not even my technically accurate friend Jason, put down Shea the way those who don’t pay for the privilege do. The press elevator must really work in the new parks. Anyway, don’t fret at what sounds like “Citi”. Be glad instead that 1) $20 million a year will flow into the Mets’ no-fee checking account before being laundered into Scott Boras’ pockets; 2) There is an implied NYC feel to the sponsor even though I recently received a Citi statement from the city of Sioux Falls, S.D.; 3) I’ve heard of this company and so have you; 4) This company’s name is probably not going to change substantially any time soon; 5) The joint won’t be named for a chain of pet supply stores unless Petco buys out Citi Group; 6) No ATM fees for me…presumably. Listen, I advocated going for top dollar and avoiding utter embarrassment if possible. The Mets seem to have achieved the first part, and while the second part is a matter of taste, Citi Field — albeit a little generic to the point of fictional and rather resonant of a minor league facility in Islip — isn’t a total disaster. As Mets fans, we’ve conditioned ourselves to treat noncalamities as moral victories. Score one for us. The park…I mean field itself? We’ll see. You can draw up all the virtual realty you want. No way of knowing how extraordinary or how extraordinarily disappointing the new digs will be until we’re inside. I reserve judgment while fervently hoping for the best. That leaves us with Shea Stadium, which is where I want to go right now. That’s where I went in 2006 on 29 separate occasions (30, counting my wishful World Series jaunt). That’s where I’ve been going to see Mets games since 1973. Unless you were in the vanguard of the New Breed in ’62 or ’63, it’s the only home you as a Met fan have ever known. Shea Stadium is my Nikon Camera Player of the Year for 2006, winning the honor that went to our soon-to-be-sundered radio team in 2005. Shea of course is slated to disappear after 2008. This award doesn’t portend longevity, does it? Often derided as maybe the worst ballpark in the Majors, I’ve decided Shea Stadium was the best thing about a very good season, at least for me…and it’s my award. The Mets won 50 regular-season games here in ’06, two more in the NLDS and two in the NLCS (though the home-field advantage kind of lapsed at the end). That certainly helped its cause, but I came to love and regard Shea more than I have in ages for two other reasons. One was, predictably and sentimentally, that it was suddenly living on borrowed time. It’s not right to speak ill of the nearly deceased. The other reason it became my cause was given to me by somebody I met for the first time this year at, not ironically, Shea. In April, Dan Ziegler, who you may know as the consistently enjoyable lone star of Lone Star Mets, was visiting the home of his favorite team for the first time in 20 years. He lives in Arlington, Tex., but remains as loyal to the Mets as he was in his New Jersey youth. It was a very big deal for him to fly to New York for the sole purpose of taking in two Mets games in April, less than two weeks after the plans for Shea’s successor were unveiled. Naturally, the subject of ballparks came up. Dan is a regular visitor to Ameriquest Field, home of the Rangers. Opened in 1994, it was one of the first retro delights in the Majors — a Priti Field, if you will. Dan told me he likes it fine (as did I on my one visit in 1997), but said Shea was better. You’d be surprised, he told me, how fast the novelty of a new park wears off. Shea, old and scruffy as it is…now this is a place to watch and feel baseball. The “energy” was what Dan kept coming back to. It was so strong, so real. The ballpark in Arlington, whatever it was called that week, couldn’t hope to match it. “Everybody gets buck wild over here when they watch a ballgame,” somebody else — Benny Agbayani — once said of Shea. “This is the most exciting place that I’ve been to, where the fans are into the game from the first inning to the ninth. I can just imagine the people who don’t have tickets, at home. They probably wreck their TVs.” Perhaps it’s unfair to compare the commitment of Mets diehards to Metroplex timepassers, Rangers fans likely just checking their watches to see when Cowboy camp kicks off. So if we are who we are, not where we sit, the stadium shouldn’t make a difference. Whether at Shea or Citi, we’ll still be in New York and we’ll still take baseball seriously. Just because we’ll be a little more comfortable and far less sardined doesn’t mean we’ll forget how to root, root, root for the home team. Yet Dan’s sentiments stayed with me all season. Despite my occasional and pungent discontent with Shea, I realized in 2006 what a special place we will lose come 2009. That makes letting go unexpectedly difficult and hanging on to what remains all the more imperative. Whether Shea Stadium is afforded the cachet in death it’s been deprived in life remains to be seen. Its backstory — a municipal stadium situated among the parkways, amenable to several types of events, ideal for none — is 410 feet removed from the musty tatters of the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field (former home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, in case you hadn’t heard). Shea probably won’t be bygone enough in our time to evoke objective wistfulness. The second the Mets can’t gin up nostalgia to sell everything from it that would otherwise go into a Dumpster, they’ll barely mention it. Thus, it’s on those of us who sat in it, stood in it, leaped in it and high-fived in it to give it the round of applause it’s earned…to love it in the present-tense while we still can. We know the superb and the supernatural have occurred here. You can run down the catechism with minimal prompting, Casey to Mookie, Rocky to Robin, Agee to Endy, Del Unser to Delgado, John Lennon and Paul McCartney to John Maine and Paul Lo Duca (not to mention Jim Bunning to Jeff Suppan…sigh). We all know, too, our own histories: the first time we were brought here as kids; the first or last time we took our loved ones; that time it was so cold or so warm (sometimes in the course of the same week or same game, depending on your ticket); and, oh, that time it was so much fun. Say Shea and you’ve probably said all you need to say to conjure countless memories and umpteen emotions. What I think is easy to overlook is how well we — counting us as Mets — and it go together. Hell, by the end of Game Six against St. Louis, I couldn’t tell us apart. Where was that corporate vibe that was going to quiet everybody and everything in October because every other fanny in every other seat would belong to a well-connected frontrunner? The place was more alive than I’d ever heard it or felt it. After Billy Wagner put out his final fire of 2006, we were sweating, we were trembling, we were barely able to stand. In other words, we were Shea and Shea was us. In tandem, we were just trying to hang on for one night more than we’d been told we had left. Into each life a little rain must fall. Rain pours on Shea. Wind howls into it. It was allegedly supposed to be covered by a dome or at least be closed off. It didn’t and it wasn’t. If you believe Robert Caro’s assertion that Shea was Robert Moses’ “answer to the Colosseum of the Caesars,” it was never going to. Hence, Shea is immune to nothing. Nor are we. We sit outside too long. We sniffle. We hurt. We don’t hold up perfectly in the course of a long year. Our calves go south at the worst possible juncture. Whether we throw or we house or we cheer, we’re all bound to be a little rickety in our forties. But we are who we are. We don’t march in lockstep. We are not of one mind. We don’t all don navy windbreakers or red caps. We’re a little raggedy around the edges. We are individuals with our own quirks. Half a row loves the Met who’s at bat, the other half is actively demanding he be packed off to Seattle ASAP. The bon mots share vocal space with the You Sucks. We are individuals woven together for common cause. Shea, in that sense, is one of us. I don’t see a cookie cutter — unless a chunk of cookie got stuck in the pan. Quick, how many other stadia have looked like Shea? Even in the multipurpose ’60s, nobody else mimicked the Colosseum. Credit/blame the vision of master builder Moses or architects Praeger-Kavanaugh-Waterbury or Mayor Wagner for spending $25 million and getting a three-quarters complete facility a year late for New York taxpayers’ money (John Franco, who grew up in the Marlboro Houses of Bensonhurst and knows a little something about such handiwork, suggested anything built by the city wasn’t going to be all that nice). Shea may not measure up to the antiquities its generation replaced in terms of stone originality, but it was also never the Vet or Three Rivers. It was open. It was inviting. It was distinctive, even. Before the Cardinals built the current Busch Stadium, they toyed with renovating the old one, specifically ripping open the outfield to provide a good glimpse of the Mississippi. Some computer models were worked up, one of which was dismissed by management as looking “too much like Shea Stadium.” As if that could be a bad thing. To really get Shea, sit in the upper deck, in left field. From high on in Section 36, say, as I did on a July afternoon seven years ago. From there, you see it all. You see why we’re where we’ve been since 1964. You see the lush green Moses yearned to develop into New York City’s premier park…the highways that link to create the heart of the Metropolitan area…the Long Island Rail Road station — “your steel thruway to the Fair gateway,” as it was advertised in the 1964 yearbook — originally opened to usher visitors to baseball over here and Peace Through Understanding over there…the IRT, also known as the 7 train, because, well, this was a City field. That day, as prelude to Matt Franco zinging Mariano Rivera, I understood as I never did before the great truth of Shea Stadium. It was built for us. It was built for us kids, many of whom had parents who moved east, from Brooklyn, from Queens. It was meant to be our playground, our day care center. “I used to say,” Ron Swoboda once recalled, “that the Mets were the biggest babysitting service in the city.” We raised a fuss and made a racket, but that was all right because we helped drown out the planes (does anybody even still notice the planes?). There’s a reason, I decided, home plate more or less faced Long Island — Great Neck, maybe — without decisive obstruction. It was gesturing toward us kids to come on over and come on in and come play. It was big but not daunting. It was colorful: yellows, later oranges. It had to be designed for or by children. “Tinker Toy architecture,” George Vecsey described it. The ballpark, like the team, was a gift to us, the kids who toddled out of the early ’60s. Did it have to be left open at one end? Let’s just infer that Mr. Moses and Mr. Wagner simply didn’t finish wrapping it in time for Christmas morning, April 17, 1964, and we were too anxious to wait another minute. Shea’s youthful exuberance, even in middle age, remains its charm. Where else could have… HoZAY! HozayHozayHozaaay! HOzay!
HoZAAAY! …taken off as it did in 2006? Jose Reyes heard those chants in Japan. He said they reminded him of Shea Stadium. So did Manny Acta. So did Ryan Howard, not altogether cheerfully. That’s how we roll. We’ve never needed ThunderStix. We don’t really require the cues from DiamondVision. We know enough to get out of our chairs and go to the window, as it were. It’s what we do. We brought the ethic of Roger Angell’s “‘Go!’ Shouters” over from the Polo Grounds and expanded upon it. Has there ever been a purer exhortation of faith than LET’S GO METS!? It’s concise without being neat, raucous without being threatening. It can’t be contained, which is why it’s ideal for a horseshoe like Shea. It’s three easy syllables, perfect for the kids and the kid in each of us. The scoreboard need never rev it up again for it to be generated twenty times a game. It rises when we’re hitting and when we’re fielding. It squirts out with nobody on and it rocks the Queens night when the bases are loaded. It’s ours. I’m sure it will survive the trek across the parking lot but I can’t imagine it will ever translate to as much a part of home after 2008. William A. Shea, the superlawyer whose Continental League machinations led to the formation of the Metropolitan Baseball Club of New York (we should really name something after that guy), was a renowned mover and shaker. That makes sense because if you’ve sat in the upper deck for a playoff game, you know it moves and it shakes. I stood still for it in 2000, frozen when I assumed my demise awaited me below, somewhere in the mezzanine. But we survived. When things started quaking again this October, I joined in the jumping. If me adding my full force to a condemned structure couldn’t kill it, what could? Oh yeah. Progress. We’re back to that. Dammit, I wanted to look forward to this new ballpark without reservation. I’ve been craving this on some level since 1994, the first time I stepped off a MARC train from Washington at Camden station in Baltimore and took a long look at the red bricks that formed the back of Oriole Park, particularly the sign that greeted me: WELCOME HOME. I swear I channeled Ned Beatty in Rudy when he saw Notre Dame Stadium for the very first time: This is the most beautiful sight these eyes have ever seen. Everything I had salivated over in the two years that I read about Camden Yards was exceeded. How often does that happen? “They got it right,” I kept muttering to myself. “They got it right.” I didn’t care a whit about the Orioles. I was just so impressed that a ballpark could look like a ballpark. I wanted the Mets to have one of these. So what happened between 1994 and the present? 2006, mostly. Dan Ziegler’s insightfulness. The realization that progress implies what you cherished before was not the ideal. That what was built for my youth and my adolescence has been deemed obsolete by those who operate it. That a stadium constructed in 1963 and 1964, when I was still learning to spout “Metsie! Metsie!” stands no chance of standing 50, never mind 2,000 years. The physical focal point of the single constant of my sentient life, my default destination if I had to pick anywhere I wanted to be at any given moment, will vanish before the next decade dawns. Citi Field’s pending glory is a reminder of Shea Stadium’s undeniable doom. It can’t beckon without mocking. And boy will it be weird come April when what were barely stakes in the ground when we last craned our necks to check out the activity beyond centerfield will have grown into the actual skeleton of a structure. It was already weird in June when it was just stakes. Plus, change frightens me. Encountering change is like facing Suppan with the season on the line. It scares me hitless. More than all that, though, more than the chilling metaphor of a ballpark just a little younger than myself returning to the ash heap from which it rose, the thing about 2006 that makes the end of Shea an almost stunningly melancholy affair is the times that were so much fun. I’m not talking about my childhood. I’m talking about now. Last month. The month before. April in the cold. June in the humidity. August in a drizzle. At a stage of my life when a blue-ribbon commission should be issuing reports that my concourses are too narrow and my pipes are in danger of bursting and that we’ve really got to do something about your seat size, I enjoyed myself too much to notice what cried out for replacement. It helps when your team wins lots of games and such but I’m the guy who brought bad luck to the good Mets. It didn’t matter. I was riding high. Row V high. Orange…blue…green…skyward red. It didn’t matter. Snaking lines for the men’s room? It didn’t matter. Trip from the upper deck to the elevated platform so long that I should have earned credit card miles? It didn’t matter. Overofficious jerks barring me and my bride from Daruma delicacies? Even that didn’t matter, no matter how insulting. There was an evening when a strikingly blonde fellow in a Brazilian soccer jersey and a very unofficial-looking Yankees cap neared me at Woodside (Shea’s outer boundary for my psychic and commutation purposes). He approached me as I waited for the 7. When he saw my suspicion at what was on his head, he took it off. He was visiting from the Netherlands and just wanted directions to Shea. Is this the train? Yes, I said. Follow me. It wasn’t a tough assignment. The 7 pulled into Willets Point. I told him we get off here, he said thanks and I lost him in the crowd. I met up with Jason, we watched Shawn Green record his first Met hit and the Mets sweep the Cards. Hours later, I saw the Dutch guy leaving with whomever it was he was meeting. The Yankee cap was nowhere in sight. Neither he nor his friend carried a backpack or a bag. I deduced that a night at Shea made him realize he was in the right place with the wrong hat and discarded it. I don’t know what became of him after, but at the very least, William A. and I helped prevent one soul from trending wayward. Just a small moment in a year of momentous ones, a small moment like the other small moments that add up if you’re careful enough to relish them. Like the lady who refused to stand at her aisle seat one more damn time to let pass the endless stream of foot traffic that was ruining her night. Like the chirpy staff photographer who offered my co-blogger and me the opportunity to have our picture snapped in the bottom of the ninth with the tying run batting (we declined, though I had the right item to feature if she clicked). Like scolding the kid who was kicking my seat and the kid stopping. Like Mike of Mike’s Mets gently explaining to me that, uh, Dontrelle Willis is hitting those home runs lefthanded, not righthanded like I thought. Like Dan of Westchester (not to be confused with Dan of Texas) and I suddenly deciding, on a victorious ramp, that “Takin’ Care Of Business” was the best song ever. Like Laurie contorting herself from Maddux fan back to Mets fan in the time it took Grady Little to change pitchers. Like the two roars that told me both Kent and Drew had been tagged out by Lo Duca when I couldn’t quite see the plate. Like the tens of thousands of cheers for Mike Piazza walking in from the bullpen and the tens of thousands more for Ed Hearn and his erstwhile teammates walking in from the stands. Like the Fandini whose appeal escapes me but I had to have and the Dunkin’ Donuts quarter-holder that was OK, I guessed, but felt compelled to fill. Like the metallic blue beer bottle I was determined to keep and the cobalt blue champagne bottle I will never discard. Like the bus lot full of eager seniors. Like Gate E, where, before Game One of the NLCS, I saw dozens of satin, Davey-era jackets wrapping torsos that weren’t alive during the Johnson administration. Our franchise was now old enough, I divined, to have fathers passing down sacred Mets garments to their sons. Like the boardwalk — the wooden thruway to the Shea gateway — from the LIRR stop onto which I gained entry by flashing the same ticket to inattentive conductors all year long. Every time I rode the Port Washington line in October, the boardwalk, that great bridge between Shea’s World’s Fair roots and its immediate World Series hopes, was jammed with Long Islanders like me. LET’S GO METS! and HoZAY! sprung up every few feet, petered out and renewed themselves over and over. These fans grew up in the ’60s and the ’70s and the ’80s and the ’90s and the now. They, in the parlance of Terry Cashman, were rushing to the stadium in Flushing because nothing could be more important than the Mets and loving them toward another win. Every one of them was sure this was going to be the year at Shea. They were right. It was.  21 comments - (Comments closed) | |  Print This Post |  Nikon Camera Mets Player of the Year, Shea Stadium The silver shovels have been lowered and raised, the symbolic dirt has been flung, the pols have grinned, the hands have been gripped, Mets on Apparent Permanent Retainer Reyes and Wright and Maine have smiled for the cameras (somebody let these guys go home!), and the new place has a name. The silver shovels have been lowered and raised, the symbolic dirt has been flung, the pols have grinned, the hands have been gripped, Mets on Apparent Permanent Retainer Reyes and Wright and Maine have smiled for the cameras (somebody let these guys go home!), and the new place has a name. And not a bad name, to my mind. CitiField. Well, OK, it is a field in a city. As my co-blogger notes, could have been worse. Could have been a lot worse. CitiField is far better than all the parks named after drinks and dot-coms and telephones and cellphones. Just imagine Banco Popular Stadium or Nymex Field or the Donald Field at Trump Meadows. Heck, the Arizona Cardinals had to fend off a restaurant chain that wanted to name their park Pink Taco Stadium. Yes really. How would that one have sat with us? Should it have not had a corporate name at all? Maybe. But for better or for worse, this is the modern world: For all but a very few parks, a corporate moniker is practically the law of physics, and the parks that are exceptions have a history and character that not even Shea's most-avid partisans could claim for it. No one who hasn't been huffing paint thinner would ever call Shea a lyric little bandbox, or refer to its friendly confines. The Yankees, actually, are an exception to the exception: They play in a park made pedestrian by a bad makeover, yet still couldn't get away with a corporate name. So be it — let their mystique and aura and all that cost them a little money for a change. Besides, you just know they'll make up the difference by unveiling the Enterprise Rent-a-Car Captain Derek Jeter Intangibles Celebrity Pavilion and the Red Envelope Twenty-six Rings Baby Parking Complex, or similar atrocities that will test my co-blogger's newfound calm. Jackie Robinson Field? It would have been disappointing if the Mets had reached back to Ebbets Field with only an architectural salute. But I think they did enough — and Rachel Robinson, hardly a shrinking violet at 84, said she was satisfied. For Jackie Robinson and Arthur Ashe to face off across the 7 tracks would have been satisfying, no argument there. And if the Mets played in Brooklyn (as I once dreamed they might), I'd campaign loudly for the idea. I saw 42 put on the outfield wall on a frozen night. I live just blocks from a plaque on the site of the old Dodger offices, commemorating where Branch Rickey and Robinson inked his big-league deal. It's a plaque facing a big, empty street corner that could use a statue to join the one outside Keyspan and the one that will be in the CitiField rotunda. But that's another post. For now, in my book, the Mets did enough. As for those certain-to-heard taunts of ShitiField? Ha. I'm not worried. Because let's face it: That's where we play now. I have many, many cherished memories of things that happened at Shea. Ordonez's debut. The Mets' last fight. Piazza's first game. The 10-run inning. Clontz's wild pitch. Pratt hitting it over the fence. The Grand Slam Single. Agbayani's dinger. Bobby Jones flirting with perfection. Timo jumping up to make the pennant arrive more quickly. Piazza's last game. The 2006 clincher. John Maine's season-extender. And those are just some of the big ones. I have many, many cherished memories of seeing these things that happened at Shea with people who are dear to me: my wife, my little boy, my good friend and co-blogger, my fellow travelers in orange and blue, my pals just along for a day's ride. But these things, these memories, are not Shea itself. That, sadly, is something else. It's broken seats and sticky concrete and bathroom lakes and escalators that don't work on Opening Day and a general, grinding crappiness that wears you down. ShitiField, in other words. And I'm ready for an end to it. This new park? It may not be your thing if you think the retro ballparks with their bricks and their trusses have run their course. I harbor no fantasy that the decrepit ushers and lemon-pussed security guards and Aramark drones will show up for their first day of work with attitude transplants. Our park being our park, the contests on the videoboard will be a mix of illogical and insultingly easy, we'll be shown Rangers-Royals highlights, and several Met-related facts will be incorrect. But the park itself won't be shitty, if only because it'll be a modern ballpark, with all the seats actually facing the field and the action visible while getting concessions and a host of other little things other fans have been able to take for granted for years. I can't wait. And that corporate moniker comes with a not-to-be-overlooked bonus. Twenty million dollars a year, every year. Money for a Carlos Beltran-level free agent, every year for a generation. That in itself is no guarantee of anything — Al Harazin and Jeff Torborg could have come in last with it — but it's awfully nice to have working in your favor when free agents come to visit and the draft pick you want has hired Scott Boras and the deadline deals come with contracts needing to be restructured. Does it risk turning us into the Yankees? We don't like to admit this, but to outsiders we already are. Closer to home, we've got a shortstop and third baseman who play this game with such joy you want to laugh out loud, and they've got a shortstop and third baseman who seethe and plot against each other like they're putting on some pinstriped version of “Heathers.” I'm not the slightest bit worried about us turning into them. CitiField and SNY filling the coffers, Wright and Reyes wearing the colors. I've got a name for it: The Golden Age. Let's get it started. Could have they come up with a worse name? Could have they come up with a worse name? Yes. Absolutely. Examples are abundant. Safeco Field. Petco Park. McAfee Coliseum. Yadier Molina Memorial Stadium (though I am partial to the memorial aspect). It could have been worse. That's the best I can say for CitiField, future home of your New York Mets, at this early date. I've been living with it for 24 hours — practicing it, imagining it, mulling it and wow, it gets less likable every time I say it. CitiField. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to CitiField. The Mets return home tonight to open a three-game set with the Cubs at CitiField. We go live to Bruce Beck out at CitiField for more. And at CitiField, the Mets topped the Phillies 3-2 on a Carlos Beltran home run. Good news for the CitiField faithful. It's going to be an exciting weekend at CitiField. No, stay on the 7 and get off at the CitiField stop. I'll just meet you at CitiField, OK? This is going to take some time. I suppose we'll have plenty of it. Reminder: The final piece of the 2006 retrospective, conveniently touching on a very related subject, is lumbering around third in Ramon Castro fashion, but will arrive soon. “Hey Greg.” “Hey Greg.” “Yeah?” “Who's got the rings?” “Huh?” “The rings, baby? THE RINGS!” “You mean like ringtones on a cell phone?” “C'mon! You know what I mean.” “I give up. What the hell are you talking about?” “I'll give you a hint: 26!” “26 what?” “26 rings BABY!” “I worked as a telemarketer in college and we were instructed to hang up after five rings.” “That's not what I'm talking about and you know it!” “Honestly, Yankee Hegemony, I'm busy doing other things and haven't the vaguest idea what you're talking about.” “Damn Greg! I'm talking about World Series rings!” “Oh.” “That's right, 'oh,' as in 'oh, who's got THE RINGS, baby?'” “The Cardinals, I guess.” “No way!” “Not yet, I suppose. I'm not crazy about it, but they're due to get them on Opening Day.” “I'm not talking about the Cardinals!” “Fine with me.” “Think harder, baby. Who's got THE RINGS?” “Well, the most recent recipients would be the White Sox. They won the World Series before the Cardinals did.” “Stop it!” “Stop what? You're the one who asked me, YH.” “C'mon. I said 26 rings! And I'm not talking about the phone.” “Uh…26…Kingman? Brogna? El Duque?” “NOW you're getting warm.” “What, El Duque? He wore 26 for the Mets last year. So?” “Yeah…and who did El Duque win a WORLD SERIES RING with?” “The White Sox. Pitched really well for them in 2005. Are we through?” “DAMN! WHY WON'T YOU ACKNOWLEDGE ME?” “I'm answering your questions as best I can, YH. I'm just not seeing your point.” “You're playing with me.” “I'm not playing with anybody. It's November. I'm looking forward to the Mets playing in April, but that's a long way off, so mostly I'm replaying the Mets' season in my head and thinking of the stuff that really mattered and the stuff that I've come to realize doesn't matter much at all.” “HA!” “What do you mean 'ha!'?” “The Mets suck!” “How do you figure?” “Mets suck!” “That's not an answer.” “TWENTY-SIX RINGS BABY! METS SUCK!” “I'm not following.” “GREG!” “Why are you yelling at me?” “You're frustrating me!” “How so?” “Aw, you know why.” “Seriously, I don't.” “Man, you used to be easy for me to rile up. I'd go on about how great I was and how much the Mets sucked and it would preoccupy your thoughts for weeks. Months sometimes. Now I'm getting nothing out of you. Nothing!” “I'm sorry, YH. It's just that after 2006, a visit from Yankee Hegemony is…how should I put this?” “Overwhelming?” “No…” “Upsetting?” “No…” “Intimidating?” “No, that's not it either.” “Then what?” “Oh, I know! Irrelevant.” “IRRELEVANT? ME? HOW DARE YOU? I'M YANKEE HEGEMONY!” “Look, I want to be polite…” “Mets suck!” “You can do that all you want…” “METS SUCK!” “…but you're not going to bother me.” “Aw, why not?” “Because you don't bother me anymore.” “I don't?” “No.” “Not even a little bit?” “Not in the least.” “Why the hell not?” “YH, have you taken a good look around lately?” “Twenty-six-time WORLD CHAMPIONS!” “Uh-huh. And when was the last time you got yourself one of those world championships?” “Um…” “I'll tell you. 2000.” “Beat the Mets…who SUCK!” “Yes, the Yankees beat the Mets in the 2000 World Series. A given. Congratulations.” “HA!” “But YH, do you know what season we're coming up on?” “Um…” “Don't strain yourself. It's about to be 2007. Subtract that from 2000 and you've got seven years.” “So?” “That's seven years since the Yankees' last world championship.” “So?” “So it means the Yankees…how can I break this to you? The Yankees don't matter.” “TWEN…” “Stop it. Give me something more recent.” “Um…” “I'll even help you. American…League…” “CHAMPION!” “Close. American…League…East…” “CHAMPION!” “Way to go. You're the American League East champion.” “Yeah! And…hey, wait a minute! That's not that impressive-sounding.” “It's all right. I mean you beat out the Blue Jays. That's something to be proud of.” “No it isn't. That sucks!” “Suit yourself. I thought you guys had a pretty good year.” “Yeah, we did! BEST LINEUP IN BASEBALL HISTORY!” “If you say so. How did that best lineup in baseball history do in the postseason?” “Um…” “You guys are always going on about how important the postseason is, how nothing matters but…what were you talking about when you came in?” “The rings.” “Yeah, that was it. Did that best lineup in baseball history get you any rings?” “Um…yes?” “YH…” “No?” “No, you guys lost to the Tigers.” “THE TIGERS SUCK!” “They do?” “They don't?” “Well, they beat you.” “Oh.” “Uh-huh.” “Greg?” “Yeah, YH?” “Can I ask you something else?” “Sure.” “Why aren't you more excited?” “Whaddaya mean?” “Well, the Yankees lost.” “Yeah, I know. I just told you that.” “That's a big deal.” “It's OK.” “What do you mean, OK? You live for that!” “I used to.” “You USED to?” “Oh, don't get me wrong. I still enjoy it. But it's not the be-all, end-all of baseball for me anymore.” “Why not?” “Well, for one thing, you guys haven't won in so long, the novelty of your losing has worn off.” “But the Yankees are the Yankees!” “Yes, but the Mets are the Mets.” “The Mets su…” “Let me stop you there. The Mets don't suck. The Mets won 97 games and the National League Eastern Division title.” “Hey, that's no more than the Yankees!” “Yeah, but we don't beat ourselves up over such things.” “No?” “No. Also, we won our first-round series against the Dodgers, the same one you lost to the Tigers.” “You did?” “Yeah. Got a whole lot closer to the World Series, too.” “Really?” “Yeah. So you can see I've got better things to think about than you.” “But you still hate us, right?” “Oh, that'll never change.” “It's because we're so great!” “No, I just dislike the fact that you exist, but I've always felt that way, even when the Mets were far better.” “That's never happened!” “You don't think so?” “The Yankees are the greatest team ever and win every year…except for last year.” “And the year before that.” “And that one.” “And 2004.” “Ouch.” “And 2003.” “Stop.” “And 2002.” “Cut it out!” “And 2001.” “AAUUGGHH!” “Sorry. I forgot how sensitive you can be.” “But the Mets have always been second to the Yankees.” “YH, you know that's not true.” “It's not?” “No, of course not. The Mets have enjoyed long stretches of being more popular and better than the Yankees.” “LIES! LIES!” “You can look it up. The Mets outdrew the Yankees as a matter of course in the '60s and the first half of the '70s and most of the '80s and into the early '90s.” “They didn't say that on YES.” “They don't say everything on YES.” “Yeah, but you're talking about a long time ago! The Yankees have owned New York since 1996!” “I won't argue the distant past with you. 1996 was a big year for you guys and, yes, you had the upper hand for quite a while.” “HA!” “But that's changing.” “IS NOT!” “No, it is.” “IS NOT!” “Seriously, it is.” “It is?” “Yeah.” “How do you know?” “Oh, the little things. You guys have deep pockets and can sign all kinds of free agents…” “Yeah! We're gonna get the Japanese pitcher!” “Probably not.” “And Zito! And Soriano! And…” “Maybe you will.” “HA!” “But let me ask you this, YH: What difference will it make?” “Huh?” “Every winter, the Yankees grab some superhyped free agent and you just get further and further from winning the World Series.” “That doesn't make any sense.” “Maybe, maybe not. But I've watched Mussina, Giambi, Matsui, Sheffield, Rodriguez, Johnson and Damon come in, and nothing changes.” “No, I suppose it doesn't. But we have Jeter!” “Uh-huh.” “What do you mean, 'uh-huh'? He's JETER!” “Yeah?” “He's awesome!” “If you say so.” “Of course I do! HE'S JETER! Haven't you seen his ten-part Yankeeography?” “I missed it, but I did see something interesting a few weeks ago.” “What? There's an eleventh part?” “No, it was a discussion on another channel about this whole tired Jeter-Rodriguez thing…” “A-Rod kind of sucks, actually.” “Whatever. Anyway, it was three sportswriters and a broadcaster and they were blaming Jeter for not drawing Rodriguez out of his shell or something and one of the panelists said he watched Jose Reyes fire up his teammates during the playoffs and they all agreed Reyes seemed to be the better teammate.” “But Derek Jeter's Derek Jeter!” “I don't doubt that's true. But when the conventional wisdom begins to seep away, bit by bit, when the media starts to turn away from its old truths and finally discovers new ones, I think it means things are changing.” “What's changing?” “We're gonna enter next year with two New York baseball teams on at least equal footing.” “Yankees and Mets?” “Actually, I'm thinking Mets and Yankees. More than it's been since before 1996, people are going to be saying it that way.” “Is that allowed?” “YH, I think it is.” “No kidding?” “No kidding. The Mets will be getting at least half the attention. Probably more.” “Really?” “I'm only basing it on recent success, present appeal and future promise.” “And the Mets have all that going for them?” “Appears so.” “Is it guaranteed?” “Nothing's guaranteed. Things could go terribly wrong for the Mets and go very well for the Yankees and I'll be back to sulking and schadenfreude.” “Told ya!” “But really, it doesn't look like that's going to happen. The Mets have the two shiningest stars in New York, maybe in all of baseball.” “Who?” “Reyes and Wright.” “We got Jeter!” “Old news. You watch. The ass-kissing will ease at last.” “But I count on that ass-kissing to inflate my self-esteem.” “I know. You've still got John Sterling, though.” “Y'know, Greg, it's not like the Yankees suck, I mean really suck like the Devil Rays.” “No, not at all. You guys are going to have your following and get your wins. I acknowledge that.” “And that doesn't bother you?” “Every time the Yankees score a run, it annoys me, but they're so far down my list of baseball priorities that I don't give them much thought.” “Are you sure? You got pretty worked up during the last Subway Series.” “Those are rivalry games. I'm sure Michigan and Ohio State get all hot and bothered against each other even when one or the other isn't doing all that well. So, yeah, for six days next season I will hate the Yankees with all the passion I can muster.” “I knew it!” “I'll also hate the Phillies 19 times and the Braves 19 times and so on.” “But we're the Yankees!” “Thing is I used to look around and see people wearing your stuff — which I don't see as much anymore, by the way — and it used to get on my nerves.” “Yeah!” “Since the playoffs, however, it doesn't really.” “No?” “I see a Yankee cap and it's just, 'oh, another team.' For that matter, I see a Mets cap and it doesn't feel unusual the way it did even in '99 and 2000 when we were the lost tribe in our city despite how much we were accomplishing.” “Good times.” “Now I'm pretty sure we're here to stay.” “Yeah, well…how many RINGS you got?” “I don't want to go around in circles — or rings — about this. Let's just say you're not bringing anything of substance to the table at this point.” “I'm not?” “You're supposed to be Yankee Hegemony, but you don't win the World Series anymore, your so-called superstars are either not as good as they used to be or were never that great to begin with and you pose no credible threat to my happiness. You're just hard to take seriously now.” “You don't care about me at all?” “I don't like you, but you're not really worth my time anymore. My team got right near the top in 2006 and I want to see them get all the way up there in 2007. I'm going to be concentrating on that for a while. A lot of us are. For quite a while.” “That's it?” “Yeah. You can go now. You're through.” “Greg, do you think for old time's sake, that maybe you could…” “YH…” “Please? It makes me feel like the big deal I used to be.” “Very well. Ready?” “Ready!” “OK, here goes: Yankees suck.” “YEAH BABY!” Up next from 2006: Touching home. We didn't have any great, great superstar players where one guy got all the shots. It wasn't that kind of a team. We didn’t have any great, great superstar players where one guy got all the shots. It wasn’t that kind of a team.
—Willis Reed to Dennis D’Agostino, “Garden Glory“ My earliest, most serious sports allegiances were to the 1969 Mets and the 1969-70 Knicks, both champions in the making. I haven’t stopped since ’69 where the Mets are concerned but I was never again the Knicks fan I was at ages 6 and 7. I can’t say I’m a Knicks fan at all these days. Haven’t been remotely enthusiastic about them for more than a decade. Why? Lots of reasons, but the one that comes back to me now is I was spoiled at an early age. Not so much by the success but by the personalities. My introduction to basketball was Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Dave DeBusschere, Bill Bradley and Dick Barnett. The starting five. After your first exposure to something comes at its highest, most sublime level, maybe everything that follows is bound to disappoint. I can still see and hear those Knicks. My parents were huge fans and holders of season tickets not that many rows from the floor. When they weren’t at the Garden, they had the radio on and we’d listen to home games during dinner via Marv Albert on WNBC. If the Knicks were on the road, we’d watch on Channel 9. It was an article of faith in our house that Willis was exactly what his title said he was, The Captain; that Clyde was one cool customer; that Dave The Butcher (which is what I could swear they were calling him on TV) was tougher than Gus Johnson; that Dollar Bill was brilliant; that quiet Dick Barnett with his “fall back, baby” jump shot was every bit as important as his more celebrated teammates. Every week the Post printed a list of the league scoring leaders. There never seemed to be any Knicks at the top of it. I once asked my father about it, and he explained it was because Red Holzman didn’t want any of them to score all that much. He wants them each to pass the ball, to play smart, to hit the open man, to keep everybody involved, to play as a team on offense and to get back on defense. If the players wanted to, he said, they were each capable of scoring 30 points a game. The math as processed by my unnuanced, six-year-old way of looking at things — five guys each scoring 30 points every night would mean the Knicks would have 150 points in the bank — didn’t add up to anything bad, but whatever Red was doing was working. The Knicks of Reed, Frazier, DeBusschere, Bradley and Barnett started the year 5-0, lost to the San Francisco Warriors and then won their next eighteen, an NBA record. They were 23-1 in a blink. If none of them scored as much as that Al Cinder guy from Milwaukee everybody made such a big deal about (turned out his name was Lew Alcindor and he would eventually become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), it didn’t matter. They won together. Neither basketball nor the Knicks ever captured my fancy the way it did the first time around, but I still revere that starting five to a degree that remains almost unmatched in my affections. If I love how much larger than life the ’86 Mets were (and I do), it was the way the ’70 Knicks were perfectly lifesized — one inch equaled one inch — that stays with me to this day. I don’t know that I’d seen anything like them until now. But now I have. The first five batters of the 2006 Mets composed a unit within a unit that I’d imagine has set an unreasonably high standard for Mets fans who have just taken their first steps on the orange and blue brick road. As marvelous as the entire team effort was, in the same sense that those champion Knicks needed the Minutemen contributions of Cazzie Russell, Dave Stallworth and Mike Riordan (and even backup center Nate Bowman whom my mother dismissed as if he were a proto-Danny Heep), the 2006 Mets were defined in black ink by those who hit first through fifth most every night. Isn’t every good baseball team, though? I suppose. You can’t talk about 1986 without Dykstra, Backman, Hernandez, Carter and Straw, right? No, you can’t. But Lenny and Wally were often spelled by Mookie and Teufel, and Ray Knight batted sixth and there was some very impressive pitching mixed in there. The ’69 Mets were a platoonist’s dream. Even the ’99 Mets, who crafted their own ideal top of the order with Rickey, Fonzie, Oly, Mike and Robin, had everybody from Orel Hershiser to Pat Mahomes to Shawon Dunston saving their bacon when the pressure was on. This past year was absolutely a team effort as well. That wasn’t just lip service paid to Greatest 2006 Mets Nos. 49 through 6. Glavine was important. Chavez was crucial. Pedro was Pedro. You could argue that Wagner, Sanchez and Heilman comprised the firewall that maintained the sanctity of the fortress. I wouldn’t argue against the bullpen as an MVP candidate unto itself. Yet who was irreplaceable? No starter stayed healthy for the duration. Duaner gave way to Guillermo. And Endy…Endy was great. We don’t win as much as we did without Endy. Or Valentin. Or, believe it or don’t, Trachsel. Ah, but the Top Five was really the Top Five on this team. When I think of the Knicks of my childhood, I don’t immediately think of Dave Stallworth, y’know? So when I think of the Mets who were the Mets as I settled into middle age, the first five guys who come to mind will be the first five guys on Willie Randolph’s lineup card. 2006 was 2006 because somewhere within the first twenty minutes of any given game, depending on the site, Jose Reyes strode to the pate, Paul Lo Duca loosened in the on-deck circle, Carlos Beltran waited in the hole, Carlos Delgado hung around the bat rack and David Wright took practice swings. Those actions right there…that’s why we had the kind of year we had. Individual players in other uniforms rolled up gaudier stats. Somebody from somewhere else will be named the National League’s Most Valuable Player next week. But I’ll take these five, our five, over any other five, starting last April and into eternity for as long as I’m capable of remembering 2006. Easy enough to point to the milestones they reached, but what impresses me about (in alphabetical order) Beltran, Delgado, Lo Duca, Reyes and Wright is they knew what they were doing. Talent? Sure, loads of it. But these guys knew how to work counts, where to hit to, why they should take and what they should be looking for. They knew who they were. You didn’t hear it enough, but they were five smart players. They played both sides of the ball. We think of them as hitters, but they could defend. All right, Delgado isn’t much of a first baseman, but after a half-decade that included more Vaughn and Phillips and Piazza and Jacobs and Offerman than Mientkiewicz, he was a pro. The rest were more than above average at their positions. Beltran earned his Gold Glove by floating through the air with the greatest of ease. Lo Duca was a ballast behind the plate. Wright and the third base line had an interesting relationship but when he closed the gap between him and it, it was something to see. Reyes? He’s pretty handy in a hole. None of them was one-dimensional, not on the field, not off it. Wright was a touch wide-eyed and Reyes’ joie de ball was as innocent as it was contagious, but you know they didn’t get this far this soon without being savvier than their years. Beltran was stoic, but not beyond smiling widely when relaxed, which he usually was for his and our good. Delgado was the brains of the outfit, a de facto life and hitting coach, but the emotion of making it to a playoff series positively glittered off of him. Lo Duca was tough, was hot, was indomitable. One also assumes that with his divorce and his diversion making unlikely headlines, he was hurting. He did a good job of hiding it. Delgado (38 HR, 114 RBI) made the lineup dangerous. Lo Duca (.318 as a catcher batting second) replaced an icon and never looked back. Beltran (41 HR, 116 RBI, 127 R) radiated excellence. Wright (116 RBI, .311) demonstrated some mighty strong shoulders. Reyes (122 R, 64 SB, 17 3B, .300 along with 19 HR, 81 RBI from the leadoff spot…leadoff!) keeps running. These five, from the guy who finally learned to take four balls to the guy who was never stressed out by two strikes, acted as one. They built rallies. They built streaks. They built a season. Sports Illustrated picked the right five to feature when it wanted to spotlight the intrepid Mets. So who was the greatest Met of 2006? I’m tempted to say it didn’t and doesn’t matter. One lit up the basepaths and roused appreciative choruses. One lured the malleable into our lair and created an army of loyalists. One powered up at the plate and wrote down everything he hit. One demonstrated an uncommon facility for every aspect of his trade. One yielded not a single speck of ground to those who’d charge toward him or those who’d call him out. I like the sum, but each part has its merits. Take your pick if you must. If I wanted to give it to Carlos Delgado for providing all kinds of heart to the order, I wouldn’t be wrong. I have him fifth. If I wanted to give it to David Wright for busting out of the gate and fronting the franchise, I wouldn’t be wrong. I have him fourth. If I wanted to give it to Paul Lo Duca for playing through every kind of pain and never not producing, I wouldn’t be wrong. I have him third. If I wanted to give it to Jose Reyes for creating a renewable energy source and electrifying all of our fanly impulses (not to mention being so irresistibly serenadeable), I wouldn’t be wrong. I have him second. I want to give it to Carlos Beltran. I have him first. Carlos Beltran should have stood up sooner for that first curtain call and shouldn’t have stood by staring at that last pitch, but otherwise, for my money, he did everything to the best of his ability in 2006. And his ability is enormous. When the Mets ascended to the mountaintop, when they emphatically put the rest of the division and the league behind them in May (10 HR, 25 RBI) and June (8 HR, 25 RBI), it was Carlos Beltran who planted the flag so it and they would not be moved. When the Mets buried the curse of Turner Field once and for all in late July, it was Carlos Beltran who turned over the heftiest spade of dirt (12 games vs. Atlanta, home & away: 9 HR, 19 RBI, .318). When the Mets refused to succumb in Houston, it was Carlos Beltran who pulled the plug on his old team, putting to rest his own personal demon even if it meant taking on a Minute Maid wall to deliver the last rites. He swung the single most dramatic swing of the year at home, the one that trumped Pujols and the Cardinals. He ended the longest game of the year, the one against Madson and the Phillies. He hit more home runs, recorded more extra-base hit and scored more runs than any Met ever had. He answered almost every ball dialed into his area code and was rightly awarded by N.L. managers and coaches for it. He rose up from the kind of first New York year that would have crushed lesser spirits and made everybody just about forget it ever happened. He wasn’t completely healthy in April or September, yet he had maybe the best year any Met has ever had. In a sport that values strength up the middle, it’s no coincidence that Carlos Beltran hits third and plays center. Whatever surge or slump the two teammates who batted before him and the two teammates who batted after him were enjoying or enduring, every pitcher who faced the Mets had to worry about the man in the middle. I think I’m right in declaring Carlos Beltran the Greatest Met of 2006. But however you choose among Beltran, Reyes, Lo Duca, Wright or Delgado, I know you couldn’t possibly go wrong. Up next from 2006: Something that doesn’t matter anymore. |
Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers. 
Amazin' Again: How the 2015 New York Mets Brought the Magic Back to Queens by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers. 
Volume I of The Happiest Recap: 50+ Years of the New York Mets As Told in 500+ Amazin' Wins by Greg Prince is available in print and for Kindle on Amazon. 
Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History by Greg Prince (foreword by Jason Fry), is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers. |
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