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Ted Berg's Eulogy to Shea

Fman99 Oct 01 2008 10:43 AM

Quite a nice read, from the [url=http://web.sny.tv/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080929&content_id=1477210&oid=36018&vkey=31]SNY web site.[/url] What I'll miss about Shea Stadium Looking back after Mets' last game at old home By Ted Berg / SNY.tv I don't talk about my brother much because he's dead and it's awkward. So when people ask me if I'll miss anything about Shea Stadium, I talk about how it's underrated, and point out how the sightlines are good and you never have to climb over too many people to get to your seat. Both good things, for sure, and in fact both things my brother Chris, an engineer who far favored function over form, always cited when defending the decaying, royal-blue monstrosity that would be an eyesore if it weren't nestled in a sea of eyesores. But that's not really what I'll miss about Shea Stadium. That honor belongs to the summer of 1995. Chris had just graduated from college and most of his friends were still in school or scattered around the country. The job market was tough and he could only find work in a Long Island factory that made make-up cases. He was miserable; he was brilliant and wildly overqualified for the position and missed fraternity life. I didn't care. His asylum was Shea Stadium and he let me tag along. I was 14 years old and I couldn't think of anything I'd rather do than head to Mets games -- lots of them -- with my older brother. He got off work around 6:30, so we never made it for the first pitch. The Mets stunk that year, and by the time we got to the game, they were usually already losing. We didn't care: The score gave us leverage with the scalpers in the parking lot desperate to get rid of their last few tickets, and we could always find a pair for 10 bucks. Attendance was sparse that summer and it was easy to sneak down to the loge section. We'd sit in right field in home-run territory and hope Todd Hundley would hit one our way. We'd fantasize about the futures of the Mets' young pitching staff -- Generation K call-ups Bill Pulsipher and Jason Isringhausen and dominant Triple-A force Reid Cornelius -- and Chris would fret about how Edgardo Alfonzo was the first Met younger than he was (at least according to the roster). And we spent a lot of time reminding Jeff Kent of how much he sucked. Thanks to a strong September, the Mets made a late run and finished in second place in a terrible division. We didn't care that they ended up six games under .500. Second place was exciting to Mets fans then, and the players seemed pretty geared up about it too. Except Kent, of course. He was a jerk throughout. That offseason, Chris moved to Boston. He found a job and a girl and eventually -- sacrilege! -- a Red Sox hat. A couple of months after we found out his melanoma had spread to his lymph nodes (wear sunscreen, kids), we went to a Mets-Sox game at Fenway and Chris, in a misguided attempt to impress his future wife, actually rooted for the Red Sox. We watched one of our favorites from 1995, Carl Everett, get tossed from the game for head-butting an umpire, and Chris cheered when his replacement, future Met Brian Daubach, hit the go-ahead home run. It felt like my still-beating heart was being ripped from my chest, like in Mortal Kombat, except more gruesome and without the awesome music. Of course, losing him as a Mets fan paled in comparison to losing him as a brother, and as a human. But the good thing about memory is that it's selective. I can forget about that game like I can forget about Chris' illness, and the chemo and surgeries and tumors and all the horrifying things that went along with it. And just like that, I can forget about how Shea Stadium stunk like crotch and peddled crappy food for exorbitant prices. And I can forget about all the heartbreak. In 27 years as a Mets fan, there's been no shortage of that. When I remember Shea Stadium five, ten, or god willing, 50 years from now, I'll remember the summer of 1995 and my brother Chris, inextricably linked. I'll remember praying for Chris Jones to get an opportunity in a big spot and revering all five of Alex Ochoa's tools. I'll remember speeding to the park in Chris' white Buick station wagon, inherited from our grandfather, and careening over the divide that separated the Interboro Parkway from the Grand Central because Chris always missed the exit. And getting lost in Flushing and buying fireworks off some kid on the corner. And I'll remember being inside, craning to see the scoreboard from the right-field porch. Leaning over the bullpen wall and calling out to John Franco on the perch. Heading up to the empty upper-deck section and starting a mocking two-man wave. It wasn't pretty, but it was damn fun. I understand that shaving 10,000 seats in capacity is a sound business decision, and that luxury boxes and high ticket prices at Citi Field will pay for Johan Santana and everything. But Shea's charm, to me, always rested in how two kids could show up on any given day, pick up a pair of upper-deck tickets on the cheap, and take in a Mets game. I suppose it shouldn't matter to me now, credentialed for the press box and without my brother to sit with, but it does. Because to me, being a fan has nothing to do with sitting in cushy seats with reasonable legroom and cupholders and many fine dining options. And it has nothing to do with showing up to see a competitive team, as the Mets seem to field every year nowadays. Being a fan is sticking through the summer of 1995, trying to see promise in failure, finding the purity in a game with no postseason implications, and maintaining hope and passion and faith in a team that's just not very good. Chris taught me all of that, and no matter what happened to him or what will happen to Shea Stadium, I'll always keep them both close. Because though this career -- one that Chris never got to be a part of -- forces me to fake some degree of professionalism, I'll forever be a 14-year-old kid at Shea Stadium, just thrilled to be watching baseball at a bargain rate. And though he's probably headed for the Hall of Fame, Jeff Kent will always suck.

G-Fafif Oct 01 2008 10:50 AM

Lovely. Truly lovely.

Iubitul Oct 01 2008 10:58 AM

Great, great stuff.

bmfc1 Oct 01 2008 03:59 PM

This one is good as well--not as good as Berg's but worthwhile: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=moehringer/080929&sportCat=mlb

G-Fafif Oct 01 2008 05:00 PM

SI's [url=http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1145960/index.htm]take[/url] from this week's issue, not personal, not bad but too much "it's not MFYS II..." angle. Every writer who leaned on that crutch should have been fined five bucks. Then we could take the money and buy Tom Seaver's $41,000 locker and display it somewhere. ]IN CASE you missed it, and many have, Shea Stadium, the big leagues' fifth-oldest ballpark, is to be leveled this off-season. "Overshadowed by Yankee Stadium? You could say that," says Bob Mandt, the Mets' former VP for Stadium Operations, who has worked at Shea since its inception. "That's how it is. It hurts sometimes, but we're used to it." The twin killings are coincidental, though the timing is fitting for Shea, defined over its 44 years in part as the lesser neighbor to baseball's most hallowed ground. There's no area at Shea to browse plaques of Hall of Famers (the Mets, in any event, have just one); no majestic facade; no 26-title tradition. Shea occupies three acres of un-prime real estate in the stepsister borough of Queens, N.Y., smack in the flight path of LaGuardia Airport. ("When I got here," says Mets infielder Damion Easley, "I kept looking up all the time.") This is the house that the boys at Carlin-Crimmins construction built, and if Shea could talk, it would do so in the local vernacular: "Fellas, fuhgeddaboutit. Don't worry 'bout me. I've hadda good run." A few distinctive features may be preserved when Shea comes down. The mini New York City skyline over the scoreboard; the fat red apple that rises frivolously out of a top hat when a Met homers. Yet something important will be lost in the dismantling that begins later this month: a place where an identity—in which tentative hope braces against deep trepidation—was carved. Shea opened on April 17, 1964. Usherettes in seersucker suits greeted fans. Guy Lombardo's band played. The Sporting News reported that "Almost all among the 50,312 in attendance ... could be heard to gasp such tributes as 'beautiful,' 'fantastic,' 'fabulous,' 'miraculous,' 'the best ever.'" Even then, as the Pirates won 4--3, such superlatives for the $28 million stadium seemed excessive. Yet imagine a desert wanderer describing even a lukewarm glass of water. Shea was an oasis for those abandoned when the Giants and the Dodgers bolted for California in 1957, fans weaned on Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays who had minted the phrase "Wait till next year!" and shouted it every October after the Yankees had won again until, in '55, next year finally arrived. Though the losing in the early years was prodigious, attendance grew. Shea was "an alternative to the cold, machinelike excellence of the Yankees," observed Bill Veeck in '64. From the start, folks liked to say, "I've been a Mets fan all my life." Shea has worn over the years. Its cantilevered stands and narrow aisles seem outdated, its sight lines poor. Though Shea is painted the deep blue of the Mets' color scheme, many fans call it, affectionately, "the big purple dump." "But it's their dump," says Mets COO Jeff Wilpon. "It holds their memories." Of this: the Miracle Mets of 1969; the Mets who rallied to the World Series behind reliever Tug McGraw's Ya gotta believe! mantra in '73; the '86 Mets, who with an extraordinary revival in Game 6 of the Series (Mookie Wilson, Bill Buckner) seemed to validate that decade's slogan: The Magic Is Back. Shea is where baseball held its first game in New York after the 9/11 attacks. Mike Piazza won it with a home run that sent a ripple through the sport. "The only game in my career I did not mind losing," says Braves manager Bobby Cox. "That night belonged to this place." The losing has been equally vital to the lore. The Mets are often "Amazin'," an adjective affixed—and meant ironically—by Casey Stengel in the 1960s. At Shea the past is ever present, in corny slogans, in happy-go-lucky Mr. Met walking the stands. There's no pretense. Winning is regarded not as a given but a gift. Shea has hosted others of course. The Jets were tenants from 1964 through '83; Joe Namath's Super Bowl III team sprang from Shea. The Beatles came in '65, playing a 30-minute set before 55,000 crazed fans. "Oh, that was wild," says Pete Flynn, a groundskeeper who drove the band out of the stadium. When Paul McCartney returned to Shea this July, to play at Billy Joel's farewell concert, he needed a ride again, this time to the stage in a golf cart through Shea's weathered tunnels. Flynn, still working the grounds, still keeping the infield three quarters of an inch high, still chalking the base paths, provided the lift. "I told Paul McCartney, 'Welcome back.'" The new park, Citi Field, opens in April and is designed to evoke Ebbets Field, the Dodgers' old home. Fans will walk through tall archways into the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. The seats will be larger, with more legroom. There'll be fancy food prepared by star chefs. The building will cost some $800 million. Ticket prices have soared. "Sure, I'm sorry to see Shea go," says Willie Rodriguez, a sheet-metal worker from Bay Shore, Long Island. Rodriguez is 47, born in Queens. He comes to a half-dozen games a year. "We all grew up here. But I'll go to games in the new place—if I can afford it. I mean, I've been a Mets fan all my life."