The Last Home Opener at Shea
It’s 8:30 am on April 8, 2008 and I begin my drive down to the last home opener at Shea Stadium. It’s also the home opener of the 2008 season. These are two separate events, even though they are the same baseball game. I am grim and nostalgic about the first, fearful and desperately hopeful about the second. I know that I will see Citifield today for the first time close up. I am bracing for that. It’s a bright morning. It’s cold and I am not feeling the enthusiasm that all of these new beginnings call for.
I turn on WCBS-AM 880 to get the news, weather, and traffic. They are having a little sequence about the last home opener at Shea. The reporter asks one of the construction workers, a Mets fan, about his best memory of Shea. “Some girl,” the construction worker says. “Did it work out?” the reporter asks. “Yeah,” the construction worker says with a kind of chuckle. That’s it. I think of how I should be mad that that’s all they have about this very big event in the lives of so many people. But then I think of how this interview kind of sums it up. Who knows what happened to that guy? Maybe he married the girl, maybe they had dinner, maybe they spent a wild night in bed with each other. What means the most to us about Shea Stadium is what has happened to us there: what has happened over 44 years to tens of millions of people who’ve come to spend a few hours looking for something more than what life usually gives them. Is it any wonder that people have such a particular love for stadiums, and for amusement parks, and for bars and restaurants and all these other places where things have happened that aren’t the things that just happen at work?
I turn off my ignition in parking lot C around 10 am. So many people are here, eating hamburgers and sausages and drinking beer at ten in the morning. People are playing catch just for the symbolism of it. There is, as always, wind off the bay, and party tents shake and banners flutter. Here is Citifield. And there is Shea. Both of them are together now, side by side, for one year. Shea is so tall, all sharp blue angles and curves, all silly and funny and tacky. Citifield is short, broad, and graceful, classical columns and arches. It is a lovely thing, I admit sadly to myself. It is even prettier than I thought it was going to be.
I walk all the way around the two stadiums. Shea looks as it always does. It looks as if it has no idea that it is not going to be there forever. Citifield looks exactly like pictures I’ve seen of Ebbetts Field. It looks as if it should be on a street corner in Brooklyn in the ‘40s or ‘50’s. It doesn’t really belong on this windy plain off Flushing Bay. But it is here because Ebbetts Field meant a lot to someone. This is what stadiums are. They are things that, by containing our lives, become part of what we are. And when they die, they live only in our memories, like dead people. Unless we own a baseball team. Then we can bring the dead back to life. If I owned the Mets twenty years from now, would I rebuild Shea in the parking lot of Citifield? No, I wouldn’t. But I guess I’d want to.
So there is the new thing, with slender arches like waves. It looks like the Baths of Caracalla. Look at the keystones on top of the waves. Look at how where the waves end, a stately colonnade continues the march and the movement. Here is beauty. Here is architecture. And there behind it is my big old friend Shea. In his stupid clown costume. What taste in clothes my big moron friend has! Who let him in the building? Oh how embarrassing it is to be related to someone like him. How do I explain him? Did he even have an architect?
I’m sorry. I am loyal to Shea unto death. And when I finally get into the stadium and see that Citifield is only as tall as Shea up to the top of the mezzanine, I am angry as I have been angry for two years. Citifield is too small. It is. I don’t want to hear what the accountants have figured out about profitability. So they hired good accountants. They also hired good architects. The goddamn thing is beautiful. I haven’t changed my mind about it. But it is beautiful. And my new ambivalence does not make me feel any better.
I go inside and do my Shea things. I stand on the field level and look around. The arches overlook the apple. I get my hot dogs and knish and find my seat and sit and have lunch with my sister Stefanie. We talk and watch the goings on. There’s the New Milford High School Marching Band. There’s a ceremony to honor the Shea family who will now no longer have a stadium named after them and there is a very good little documentary narrated by Gary Cohen on the Diamond Vision about how William Shea forced Major League Baseball into expanding by threatening to found a new league and had a stadium named after him for his efforts. The teams are introduced and as always, the Phillies clubhouse staff takes the brunt of the booing by being announced before the players. Jimmy Rollins gets it because Mets fans still can’t get over him saying that the Phillies (the Phillies!) would be the team to beat in the NL East in 2007. I think we should just shut up about that already. “Friend of the Mets Michael Amante” gets to sing the Opening Day National Anthem AGAIN. And then some super duper Hornets or something wow us by flying over the stadium (Stefanie says to me “Yeah, like what Shea stadium needs is a flyover.”) The game begins. The crowd is into it. Fists pump into the air when Oliver Perez ends the first half inning with a strikeout.
Delgado hits a long home run and is now a fan favorite. The season will be different. We will be redeemed. You feel the hunger of the crowd for a great season. How glorious it is to be at the ballgame. How perfectly Perez is pitching. From my seat in the Mezzanine, far back in the cold dark shade under the Upper Deck, I watch as flatbeds of blue cotton candy float over the field and the boxes so bright in the early spring sunlight. I’m at the game. The last home opener at Shea. The beginning of a bright new season of memories, hope, and redemption.
The game is good and the crowd is happy. And then it all turns bad, just as the home opener suddenly did last year. And then you feel once again that feeling from last year. That sense that a three run lead by the opposing team is simply insurmountable. Oh you cheer and clap when the Mets come up. But although you don’t join the stream of people leaving between the eighth and ninth innings, you know that it is just not going to happen. The crowd is not filled with the despair you saw at the end of last season. But as we fall behind, it feels sullen, glum, hopeful, and fearful. It is a hard year already. We don’t lose hope over three ugly losses. But we’ve got something around our neck, something as big and as awkward as the blue and orange horseshoe of flowers presented to Willie Randolph by the Shea family at the start of the game.
What will get the yoke off? Jose Reyes flies out deep to end the game. The last home opener is over. The season is just beginning.
Please come meet me and see me talk about and read from my book Mets Fan on Thursday, April 10 at 7 pm at the Hillside Library in New Hyde Park, Long Island. I know there’s a game on, but I believe I can offer a more reliable guarantee of entertainment.
This piece is simultaneously posted on the great blog, Mike’s Mets.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:59 am
A phenomenal recap of the day’s events Dana. Despite the unfortunate outcome of the day it was still one of the most enjoyable Opening Days I have spent at Shea in a decade. CitiField looming in the OF is a very surreal sight.
April 11th, 2008 at 2:33 am
nice post Dana. Makes you feel like you were there. Great pics too.
April 11th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Yeah. It was a weird day with the mixture of excitement for Citi Field and sadness for Shea leaving. The smaller thing still pisses me off, but everything else is exciting.
I don’t know if you got as good a view from the greens, but It looks like they’re going to be able to have some sort of patio on top of the Rotunda, which should be pretty cool.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Excellent piece. I loved the following line:
“Citifield looks exactly like pictures I’ve seen of Ebbetts Field. It looks as if it should be on a street corner in Brooklyn in the ‘40s or ‘50’s. It doesn’t really belong on this windy plain off Flushing Bay. ”
My sentiments exactly. I went to opening night on Wed. evening, so also got a good look up close at CitiField. Setting aside the lunacy of a 45,000 seat stadium (which apparently is inclusive of standing room only tickets. Wed night’s game had over 47,000 attendees), although I agree that the new field looks terrific, once Shea comes down, I have this terrible feelings its going to look like this oddball fake old timey ball park plunked down in the middle of an open field/highway exit. And, because ballparks are prime examples of public architecture, I have an issue with this.
Camden Yards and Jacobs Field and whatever the hell the San Francisco ballpark is called this week work because they pick up and play off the surrounding architecture. Camden Yards is (for me) still the best of the new generation intimate ballparks despite being the oldest of them because it was brilliantly integrated into the surrounding industrial warehouse district and made use of the B&O Warehouse behind it. So too with the ballparks in Seattle, San Francisco, Cleveland. They understood that what makes Fenway or Wrigley work is how they blend into the surrounding area.
Yankee Stadium (as a matter of architecture) also understood that. Although the 1970s revamp sterilized it somewhat, it manages to both blend into the surrounding South Bronx area (touching on some of the art deco features and the Criminal Courts building, etc) while at the same time having a hulking, massive presence that reflects the team’s somewhat larger than life status. It remains a striking feature on the landscape when one drives up the East Side of Manhattan. Recognizing that, the new Stadium (from what I can tell) appears to carry on that tradition, (and, at least in some of the retro touches, may amplify it).
In contrast, we have Citizens Bank Ballpark in Philadelphia. Which, to be sure, is a great place to visit, great sightlines, etc. But archictecturally, it looks a little silly - just sort of plunked down in the middle of a large parking lot, without being framed by anything. (That is actually why most Philly fans wanted the stadium to be near the 30th Street Station yards). Plunking down an retro stadium in the middle of a parking lot has a weird effect. Sort of like Epcot Center in a construction phase.
That isn’t to say that I think ballparks should be plunked down in the middle of neighborhoods. The loss of parkland for the new Yankee Stadium stinks, and the eminent domain fights are a disaster. I think the Mets are doing the right thing in putting CitiField on the existing footprint for Shea, rather than relocating it altogether. As much as I think it would be aesthetically pleasing to have the ballpark in Long Island City or Astoria facing the Manhattan skyline, it would create all kinds of havoc with existing residences and businesses, and have long legal fights. Exhibit A - the new Nets arena in Bklyn.
But architectually, it seems to me that the model they should have looked to was not Ebbets Field or even the Polo Grounds. It is Dodger Stadium (which I saw one reviewer describe as looking 40 years younger than Shea Stadium despite being several decades older). Chavez Ravine’s topgraphy is different from Shea, but is comparable because its sort of a stand-alone. And it is a beautiful stadium that is unique and fits into its surroundings.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Hmmm JD, maybe Dodger stadium with graffiti and auto parts hanging off the side. In defense of the architecture, I thought they are doing a nice job blending with the many bridges that surround flushing. Frankly, I can’t wait for a ballpark that is not the laughing stock of baseball. Shea contains great memories, but, I am ready for change.
April 11th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Pete, I honestly don’t think Shea is the laughing stock of baseball. I lived in Philadelphia for a few years and attended many games at Veterans Stadium and there isn’t (for me) any comparison. My main complaint about Shea Stadium was the touch up that was done in the 1980s that should have been revised in the last 20 plus years. Both Dodger Stadium and the L.A. Angels ballparks have gotten touch ups and revamps that keep the parks looking fresh without a total tear down.
When Shea was built in 1964, it was praised by many. It was supposed to channel the Roman Colisieum, and succeeds in that goal to a good extent. It had a definite aesthetic that was absent in the parks that followed like the Vet, Three Rivers, Oakland, Cincinatti, etc.
And my own personal feeling is that, especially with only 2 teams in NYC now, the ballparks should be big, massive affairs. There is a risk that the place can look 1/2 empty, but when it isn’t, the experience is unbelievable. 57,000 versus 45,000 is a big difference, even in terms of the roar of the crowd. One reason Yankee Stadium has of late become a pilgrimage for baseball fans is the experience of sitting in it in close to a sold out house. The sheer massive size of the place, the sound, the intensity, makes it a unique experience, different from that of Fenway or Wrigley. So too Shea.
One other comment. Having gone to games at the Vet followed by CBP, and having attended a ton of games in Baltimore, I am very concerned of the amusement park aspect of the new generation of ballparks. At the old Vet, the main attraction was baseball, and when the Phillies were good in 1993, it was great. I think part of the reason that NYC baseball fans are incredibly smart and savvy about the game is because both Shea and Yankee Stadium are pretty no frills. You go there to see baseball - not to play on all the other distractions. To be sure, I don’t blame the owners for wanting to have attractions to keep customers entertained if the home team is flopping, and as one who takes a 4.5 year old kid to games, having some other distractions is very useful. But I do worry that something intangible will be lost in the new generation ballparks we’ll be getting here.
That said, CitiField does look nice.