Shea No More

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.'"