Shea goodbye: Mets will move, memories stay
It was fashionable last week to get emotional over the last days of Yankee Stadium, and the Yankees --like the Montreal Canadiens -- know how to stage a touching tribute. With all that history and the Hall of Fame players they can trot out, how can you miss?
I'd like to take a few minutes, though, to offer a tribute to Shea Stadium on its final regular-season weekend (and maybe final weekend ever if the Mets choke).
Yes, Shea Stadium, with planes flying so low en route to nearby LaGuardia Airport that you could almost see the pilots at the controls.
Unlike Yankee Stadium, visiting Shea left few people misty-eyed. But I'll miss it when it's gone because it was a link to my childhood, to my first steps toward independence.
Shea Stadium was one of the first places my mom would let me take the subway to by myself. From my remote corner of Brooklyn, that meant taking a bus to the LL line, as it was then known, and taking that to Lorimer Street. Then, transfer to the GG to Roosevelt Avenue-Jackson Heights, and transfer there to the 7 train to Willets Point-Shea Stadium.
My friends and I would go during Easter vacation and someone's dad would pick us up after night games. We'd buy cheap seats and try to sneak down to the field level, which didn't happen often.
I learned about impossible dreams by watching the 1969 Mets win the World Series, and about sorrow when Gil Hodges, the Mets' manager and still a hero in Brooklyn from his Dodgers days, died way too young of a heart attack in 1972. I learned about baseball and so much else.
Shea was never a palace, and in recent years it became terribly rundown. But I'll miss it--and for only $869 (plus a $10 processing fee) I'll soon own two seats.
As a kid, I never understood why my parents would sometimes take us for a drive and show us where they used to live or point out empty lots that were sites of relatives' homes or long-gone stores. I think I know now. It's not the bricks or concrete that you miss, it's the connection to the person you once were.
-- Helene Elliott
Photo: One view of Shea Stadium. Credit: Nick Laham / Getty Images
