The VW Bus and the Maserati
In an article today (3/30) in the New York Times: “Shea in ‘64: The Planes Above, the Mets Below” by Ben Schpigel, Ron Darling is quoted as saying this about what it’s like to be at Shea, with Citifield looming right next door:
“It’s like driving a VW bus with a Maserati in the lot.”
Ron’s metaphor is perfect.
A Volkswagen Bus is built to contain as much as it possibly could. It is made with an optimistic sense that it’s good to be big, that big things contain more, that they encourage the forming of a community, the inclusion of everybody. They beckon. They say, “Come on, everybody, hop in! We don’t know where we’re going, but we’re going for a ride!”
It was for this reason that the Volkswagon Bus, like Shea stadium, became a symbol of the Sixties. The Sixties were all about getting everybody in, getting everybody together, so that you could have happenings, and Summers of Love, which is exactly what we had in Shea stadium in the Sixties. And even after.
Volkswagon Buses have faces. They look a little like Mr. Met. They’re goofy, and tacky, and silly. Just like our dear old Shea.
A Maserati is smaller. It won’t hold much more than a couple of people, who are going to have to be very rich to have the privilege of getting into it. It doesn’t say, “Hop in!” It says, “Aren’t I cool? Get out of my way.” A Maserati is much prettier than a Volkwagen Bus, but it would be much harder to live in, and it might be harder to love.
In order to love something, it helps if it is not state-of-the-art and super cool. It helps if there’s something pitiful, bedraggled, disappointing, and fallible about it. You have to want to root for it. You have to put it in first place yourself, in your heart. It can’t come into existence looking as if it deserves to be in first place.
Shea is the Mets. Maybe the Mets will now be something different. Maybe they’ll be a Maserati, a reliably superior product. Maybe that will be something good. And maybe it won’t.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:24 pm
It’s not the stadium, it’s the team. Just look at the Orioles.
March 31st, 2008 at 11:50 pm
I thought the Times’ “tribute” to the stadiums sucked. It treated Shea like a footnote, and was condescending and dismissive. Of course, this is the same paper convinced the Red Sox are a third NYC team, so I shouldn’t expect much. I usually think some Mets fans overblow Yankee bias in this town, but that section was disgraceful.
That said - WAY TO GO METSIES! Lets Get ‘Er Done in 2008! Good start!
April 1st, 2008 at 1:17 am
I agree, Anonymous. I’ve rarely seen such a contemptuous dismissal of the importance of our team. There was more about the Cubs, and we were treated as a footnote. While I actually thought that there were a lot of interesting and good things in Schpigel’s article (Darling, Cohen, and Rose expressed themselves well), it made me sad to see NY’s National League franchise treated as irrelevant even though it has been around for almost 50 years and has been as popular as the Yankees for most of its existence. Why we are treated as chopped liver when there have always been more National League baseball fans than American League fans in New York is beyond me.
April 1st, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Dana:
“Anonymous” was me. Sorry - my computer lost a bunch of pre-saved information. Anyway, I agree entirely with your followup comments. I don’t know that I agree that in the past decade there have been more NL than AL fans in the New York area (I would guess at best its about 50%, with advantage still Yankees if ticket sales and TV ratings are any indicia), but regardless, “contemptuous dismissal” sums it up perfectly. I was truly flabbergasted at how sneering most of the section was. No serious baseball fan would ever try to argue that Shea Stadium compares with Yankee Stadium in terms of history - it would be a ridiculous and unfair comparison. But the fact that Shea holds a special place both in terms of the fabric of the City generally, and in the hearts of Mets fans, seemed utterly lost on the editors.
I have no idea why the Times would take such a sneering and dismissive attitude. Perhaps someone in the Mets media relation department pissed them off - who knows. But given that the section was presumably intended as a keepsake for true fans, perhaps something one would show to children years from now, it was incredibly disappointing.