Kids running the bases at Shea Stadium-Our last visit--Photos by OystergirlI was born in Brooklyn, and have long loved the stories the old guys told on the street about Ebbetts field--having a ball park in the middle of your neighborhood while growing up as a kid must have been wonderful! I have an Ebbetts field t=shirt that my poppi gave me, and also a Brooklyn Dodger cap that i proudly wear, even though i dont root for the Dodgers (booo Manny! lol) and i was born after they tore the field to oblivion and put up an apartment building in its place, that cast a shadow on the building a lived in as a child...so close and yet so far...
I have always LOVED baseball...anything baseball--but my very first game was at Shea Stadium when i was young...i dont remember the team, i dont remember the game, all i remember was going to this GIANT blue stadium and loving all the people there and the crowd and the ROAR when a ball went out of the park--and the hokey big apple popped up out of the giant top hat--it was magic...and it hooked me.
Years later, I found my American League love of baseball in the Red Sox, through my husband and love poppi, but the Mets were my first team--my National League Love--and believe me, we almost didnt marry in 1986 when my team WON...:)
Having been blessed to go to ALL the old ball parks in existence today--Wrigley, Yankee, Fenway and SHEA??? shea is THAT old? 1963 makes it OLD? wow...somewhere along the line people forgot about history--forgot about the FEEL of baseball--forgot that old can be a beautiful thing and instill a feeling of timelessness to the game...Fix it up instead of tearing it down i say...but that might just be ME...
And so, this past weekend, a group of us went to Shea Stadium for the very last time...It was quite moving to me--and i got to sit in the very seat that i had always wanted to sit in--when as a child i looked up to those upper reserved boxes and thought--that seat is so high--the one on the very end--almost like you were flying over the stadium like another jumbo jet taking off out of Laguardia...yep--884A...the LAST seat in the house...overlooking the visitors bullpen...and i was in heaven--and i remembered all the games i had seen there--and the time i saw the Rolling Stones there and had never SEEN so many people in my life, the whole stadium shook on its foundations...and i remembered how lucky my poppi was to get a ticket to a World Series Game there for the famous Subway Series...how much joy--and heartbreak that stadium had given me over the years--and in its demise--i feel somehow decreased...
The kids got to run the bases--and i got a tiny piece of the outfield grass and some of the dirt from the warning track--that i will have to share with my crazy lovely nutjob friend nor who is a rabid met fan...
Citipark looks cool--12,000 less seats--less cheap tickets for the regular guy--i am sure i will go--but it wont be the same as saying--hey, its nice out--lets go to shea and sit in the cheap seats...
Goodbye my giant blue friend--you will be missed....
You wicked rock! Oystergirl
