22
2009
Does Anyone Miss Shea As Much As I Do?
An article by 
The inaugural season for Citi Field ends in a few weeks and to say the least it was a very disappointing first year for the Mets new ballpark. At the start of the 2009 season I was hoping that with a new ballpark that had not witness disappointments over the last couple of years the slate would be clean and we could start making new histories for the new ballpark. Unfortunately for us the memories of 2009 will be depressing as we wait for 2010.
The last couple of weeks Mets Weekly, a magazine show that airs on SNY on Saturday’s they have been counting down individual Mets all-time best seasons. They have featured Mike Piazza and his 1999 season as well David Wright’s great 2007 season that is highly under-appreciated by fans and writers given the collapse of 2007 as well as Jose Reyes’ 2006 season. Carlos Beltran, Tom Seaver and Daryl Strawberry are also in the countdown. What these have in common is that Mets Weekly while showing clips of these former and current Mets all-time best seasons at Shea Stadium and I admit seeing all the clips have gotten me nostalgic for Shea Stadium again.
My favorite memory of Shea was Piazza’s homerun on September 21, 2001, 10 days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But it’s not just this one memory that makes me miss Shea. It’s the look of the place, the energy that stadium had over the years for players like Seaver, Koosman, Jones, Hernandez, Carter, Gooden, Strawberry, Piazza, etc…
Now Citi Field is beautiful, don’t get me wrong. It’s state of the art, the restaurants are nice, the fan walk is cool and the Jackie Robinson Rotunda is nice to experience but it does not seem like home. To me it just seems like a new ballpark, no matter who plays there. Now I’m not going to go over the lack of Mets history, I only mention it now because I know that it will come up in the comments and in the chat box, I’m talking about some sort of overall feeling I get from the place.
Shea had it’s problems, it was not state of the art, it was not pretty to look at but I sometimes think you can say the same things about the Mets over the years. Even through the bad times it always felt exciting to me. Whether it was filled or if there were only a couple of thousand people there was an energy in that stadium. It was a blue collar place for a blue collar team with mostly blue collar fans.
I don’t know if it’s just that this season has been terrible for the Mets but I don’t feel any emotional attachment to Citi. It’s not for the lack of history either. When I see the clips on Mets Weekly or think back to the games I see I feel happy and a bit sad knowing that we will not see another game at Shea or that we can’t see the stadium anymore since it’s gone. Even while the Mets were playing decent ball you just didn’t get a sense of the energy you would experience at Shea.
Obviously Citi Field doesn’t have the history Shea did as it’s less than one year old. It hasn’t experience the miracle that was ’69. There was no black cat circling an opponents dugout. A Beatle has played at Citi Field but The Beatles did not grace Citi with their beautiful music. Citi has yet to experience a routine ground ball go through the legs of Bill Buckner. Citi Field has not experienced a Robin Ventura grand-slam single. Citi Field has not experience the joy of a Mike Piazza homerun that made people forget the horrors for a few minutes and just smile, something that we had not done in over a week, a homerun that made children and grown ups cry in joy not in terror or sadness.
Memories will be made over the years at Citi, I don’t doubt that but the history of Shea is just part of why I miss that stadium. It was the character that stadium had. The battered old blue outside of the stadium. I miss the Blue and Orange seats, I miss the Blue walls in the outfield, I miss the old scoreboard and the old facade that is now on display above the Shake Shack. I miss the old apple coming up even though we have an apple now at Citi that is new and bigger.
As the deconstruction of Shea Stadium got underway I refused to look at the pictures and the video’s. I didn’t want to acknowledge that the place where my Mets played and I watched them play was going to be a parking lot. It wasn’t until the final piece of Shea Stadium feel that I watched the video. As I much as I didn’t want to see it I felt I had to see it, I thought perhaps that would give me some closure and get me ready to welcome Citi Field. I didn’t experience the closure I was looking for. I felt a little emotional, I could feel tears forming in my eyes but I did say goodbye to Shea that afternoon but I was wishing that it was not goodbye.
Maybe I just don’t like change, maybe I’m just trying to forget this 2009 season but I miss Shea. I hope to one day feel the same way about Citi Field. I want to feel like I’m at home at that park, that it gives me a feeling that the New York Mets are playing there the way Shea does/did. I know there will be some disappointing seasons as well as some good seasons and I hope that the ballpark where the Mets play will help me enjoy the good seasons more and somewhat soothe me when the Mets don’t have a good season but I will always have a spot in my heart for Shea.
Shea was not much to look at but it she was home.
About the Author: Greg Pomes
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I refused to watch all those videos of tearing down Shea too. It was like losing an old friend. I havent bonded with Citifield as of yet.
I feel the same way about Citi and Shea. For me Shea was home and the memories that filled that place were fantastic and could never be repeated. And I understand that one season cannot replace 45 years of memories but Shea was indeed special. Now, Citi still does not feel home to me, and no offensive the career and life of Jackie Robinson, but the Jackie Robinson rotunda does not add the the Mets experience. Like many people have said before, he did not play for the Mets. It would be better if it had Mets stuff, and called something like the Gil Hodges rotunda or something to honor our history. Hopefully Citi gets its share of Amazin’ memories, and Mets stuff is put up around the stadium, but nothing can match the feeling felt at Shea Stadium.
Greg,
Excellent post and you pretty much summed up my feelings. To me Shea Stadium is like that first girl friend, you never forget her. So many good times and laughs at Shea, that’s what I miss the most. For younger fans (borrowing Keith’s line), Shea Stadium was the most happening place to be in the mid 1980′s. How Shea rocked back in 1986, with the Curley Shuffle being played at the 7th inning stretch. To me, going to Shea last season was like going to wake.
This isn’t a knock on Citi, and it will have more than it’s share of special moments, but Shea will always be the Mets home to me.
I think it is difficult to bond and make this new field feel like home when the team has sucked as bad as it has. If the mets were having the kind of year the Yankees are, we would all be talking about how much we love citifield. Since the first yr has been such a nightmare for every fan, that vibe goes with the field as well
This is a truly great article that expresses so well what we Mets fans feel. I just can’t get Citifield into me the way that Shea is in me. Citi seems to be all gimmicks amnd frills without substance. Shea was great with its simplicity and its symmetrical field appropriately dimensioned. There was no strange wall going up and down and in and out. Just a straight blue wall that was simple and understandable. It allowed straight forward baseball to be played there. It was baseball as baseball should be. At Citi it’s not baseball, it’s BS. It’s modern day marketing run amock. I don’t care about the Pepsi Pavilion or the Modell’s boondoggle in RF, or the Subway sign and the overhang or the convoluted bullpens with the prison cage screening, or the modern Apple that can’t recognize back to back homers (back to back homers: what are those in a world of Small Ball?), or sitting in the Promenade and having to watch much of the game on a screen in replay mode. It’s all sugar coating substituted for substance. Shea was real; Citi is some strange fantasy land where people come to buy shakes and fries and nobody knows how to play baseball.
Wilpon’s you ruined it and I hope you go broke on it! I have my souvenir of the first game I attended at Citi: a section of toilet paper from the Men’s room in the Promenade that I folded and put in my scorebook. That’s it; the perfect souvenir of Citi: a 12″ long strip of toilet paper! What could be more suitable? Maybe someday, I’ll get Fred to autograph it!
Yeah, I kinda missed Shea. First game was back in 1993 against the Expos sitting on the Loge section on the third base side. It was a Junior High field trip for me and my friends before graduation day. Despite the Mets losing to the Expos that day, I had a good time.
Does Anyone Miss Shea As Much As I Do?
Yeah….how about David Wright?
I miss Shea, too. Sure Citi is a soulless shopping mall; sure a lot of crowd energy is siphoned off by the giant cluster **** behind center field with all those people spending money and not watching baseball; sure it’s a network of separate little luxury areas where it’s hard to generate crowd unity.
The thing I personally dislike most about Citi Field is its capacity of 41,000, which will prove to be a nightmare if Wilpon (or whoever owns the team next) ever manages to build a good team. If you think the Mets charged a lot for tickets this year, wait until you have a good team in New York in this day and age with a 41,000 seat stadium.
I miss Shea. My blog is called “RememberingShea”. I miss Shea. Fans miss lots of things about Shea. IF they’re getting 15,000 right now at Citi Field, they’d be getting 30,000 at Shea with this team (not even considering last year’s “final season” rush on tickets.