youse should put a prawn on the bah-bee and join us he-ah.

In the last paragraph you used the word Snooty but its all good. Im glad you enjoyed my little tale. Could you imagine if it was Steingrabber instead? SECURITY ON THE DOUBLE !!!!! LOL

thanks for looking up those quotes. I am interested to hear why you still want wright to be moved to the outfield after posting violas quote.

the gm role is really by committee with the wilpons providing a general direction…and everyone kinda putting their 2 cents in…

i still say David Wright was all Jeff/Fred Wilpon…..esp with the All-Star being held here…

Can u imagine the embarrassment if we only had 1 All-Star …and it was someone who wasnt really deserving….but just a token selection :-/

imagine an all-star game with RA Dickey, Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes and David Wright…and none of them are wearing Met uniforms…

Actually Shea was indeed unique in appearance compared to those other cookie cutter mult-purpose stadiums.

All the others were double decked going around the entire perimeter. 96 percent of Shea’s seats were within the foul poles. The only park that resembled Shea’s interior was actually the Astrodome except for the roof and the bleacher seats.

One could hardly tell the difference if playing in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cincinnati and to a lesser extent, Atlanta. Shea Stadium, on the other hand, was built with an openness behind the outfield where one had a magnificent view of Queens, Long Island and the two suspension bridges. The view at night with all the lights sparkling – including those on the white shell behind the scoreboard – was truly breathless.

Shea wasn’t originally a dump – it was beautifully maintained those early years and if the same attention was given to it by the Wilpons, it could have remained clean and cheerful throughout – not drab, dreary and dark. Transforming that big scoreboard into mostly a big billboard was an eyesore.

Do you remember when the escalators actually went down at the end of the game?

Yes, it was a marvel of it’s time and because of that we kind of excused being further away from the action, being quite high up and even being unable to follow the flight of fly balls sitting the last two rows in the mezzanine due to the overhang (we saw the entire playing field and up to the auxiliary scoreboards and line score of the “stadi-o-rama” score board.

Because of this, I feel it had a charm all of it’s own that’s lacking at Citi Field. I love the old ball park feel sitting in the stands at Citi Field – I feel that is neat – and that it could eventually have a charm all of it’s own, however, in order for that to change there has to be less catering to those with more money at the expense of the the average fan (at least make most all entrances open to everybody instead of being exclusionary) not to mention the overwhelming commercialism as common to new ballparks today as the cookie cutter shape was to those of the sixties.

Perhaps many of us will find Citi Field a much warmer place once the Wilpons are no longer associate with it. Could just be that whenever we see it, we see Wilpon!

And I couldn’t agree more with this parting shot:

‘…with the Winter Meetings long wrapped up, it is time for Jeff Wilpon to excuse himself from the practical side of baseball matters, and slip into the background again, or a new role, and leave baseball to the baseball guys. Ten years later, a solid baseball acumen still lacks from his resume.’

I never was in it back in the days that the stands still worked, so only saw pictures of it set up for the Jets.

But no, it certainly was not any sort of unique place, being out of that round steel donut mold so popular back in the day.

My real point was that while Wilpon may have been misguided in using Ebbets as the inspiration for the facade of Citi, so what? They weren’t going to recreate Shea, and citi pretty much fits the mold of what stadiums look like these days. And I really don’t buy that it somehow destroyed the Mets!

Yes, I’d prefer you not mentioning anything about Shea. I still cry thinking of it and because I grew up with from the beginning and so even though that began with the Polo Grounds, Shea in my heart will always be the only real home of the Mets.

Despite it being a multi-purpose stadium, it was the only one that didn’t appear as so and though the seats were high and far away, it was still a ballpark, not a shopping mall.