As someone who grew up about a mile from Shea Stadium on 77th Street and Northern Boulevard in Jackson Heights, Queens, I have a particular affinity/hatred and disgust for Shea Stadium. Since I’ve been 10 years old I have attended Mets and Jets games at Shea and I have vivid memories from both baseball and football contests.
As opposed to New York Post columnist Kevin Kernan who is the ultimate optimist and managed to find - and extol - the many virtues of Shea, on this last Opening Day ever at Shea – a Met 5-2 loss to the Phillies - I’ve chosen to limit my Shea praise. Particularly because Shea really is the worst place to watch any event of any kind, featuring a ball, bat, helmet or equipment or apparatus of any kind.
I had been told by people that the Oakland Alameda Stadium – where the Oakland A’s play – was as bad as Shea. Several years ago I had the chance to go to both Pac Bell Stadium and Oakland Alameda, and where Pac Bell is a beautiful Caribbean island and Oakland Alameda is, let’s say Miami, Shea is the middle ring of the seventh level of Hell. You know, the place guarded by the Minotaur and populated with Harpies.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, “The coldest football game I ever sat through was an Opening Day for the Mets.” Last year the Mets opened the season against the Phils and won in a dramatic and stirring late-inning comeback, and I was in attendance. Since it was about 3 degrees sitting in the shade of the mezzanine I heard about the Met comeback riding the train back to Grand Central Station. As my feet and hands thawed out on the train ride back to Manhattan I consoled myself by thinking that the win would serve as a great omen for the season. Opening Day omens and baseball are a bad mix.
Another bad mix is the combination of the April winds whipping off Flushing Bay, watching baseball at Shea, and jet aircraft screaming overhead. For as bad as it is in April, you haven’t been tortured until you’ve sat through a meaningless September night game at Shea. There were tons of those in the mid-to-late '70s and early '80s. The horror…
Article comments
1 - Hairynipples
Interesting you mention Elliot Maddox who tore his knee up at Shea on a sprinkler head while playing for the Yankees earlier in the 70's while Yankee Stadium was being refurbished - I never forgave the Shea grounds keepers and I am sure it led to Steinbrenner's long lasting desire to out do the Mets every chance he got. And for the most part he did. Mantle and Maris; Murcer and Maddox never came about.
Also, didn't the jets have Johnny "Ham" Jones??
2 - sal m
i'm not sure about ham jones, but i recall a great high school soccer player, dexter "scrapple" somethingorother...
3 - Mike
Thanks for mentioning some names I haven't heard in years. As an Orioles fan, I can still feel the sting administered by the "Miracle Mets" of 1969 when I was a little kid. Had no idea the conditions there were so bad.