Shea: A Final Goodbye
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From: Jim Burns on 9 Oct 2009 08:36 Going through some files, I realized I had never ran a few pieces, here... "Shea: A Final Goodbye" October, 2008 A few weeks ago, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED ran a feature fancifully imagined as if it had been written by a Yankee Stadium, congnizant of its demise. As I spent several days at Shea Stadium during ITS final week, I couldn't help but wonder if MY favorite old gal even knew she was dying. The sadness and trepidation that can accompany a visit to an ailing friend, were not new emotions for the Queens, New York ballpark: Too many Mets Septembers have edured a fan's sense of poignant regret. (But hope, and the lovely desire to watch a ballgame without any grandiose expectations, or sense of entitlement, may have been one of the stadium's, and its fans', nicest features.) To me, anyway, Shea was always memorable, and not as just as one of New York's last vestiges of the legendary, and futuristic, 1964 World's Fair, with which it opened. For this final season, I sat nearly everywhere, at times sacrificing the choicest of field boxes, to inhabit even the most outer of stadium echelons. (Some sections, I hadn't been in for over three decades, and shame on me for having forgotten how terrific the fans in the upper deck can be!) Its odd to realize that those highest of Shea climes will soon be only the air above a parking lot, and have NO equivalent in the new stadium, where over twelve thousand seats have been eliminated. I'm sure the Mets' next ballpark will be wonderful, but Shea was the place where so many of us were young, and that's also simply impossible to replace. Jim Burns (James H. Burns) October, 2008 |