Shea Stadium

I have fond memories of Shea Stadium that date back to two days in 1986: September 17, and October 27. My father took me to see the Mets on both of those days.

On September 17, the Mets clinched the National League East championship and the crowd went nuts, storming the field and tearing up hunks of grass. I found a patch on the floor of the stadium and took it home with me.

October 27 was Game 7 of the World Series, the follow-up to the infamous Game 6 where Bill Buckner invented the Bill Buckner joke. The Mets won the World Series the night I was there, and it was quite something for a 9 year old to behold.

From 1986 onward, I was a Mets fan. And there was something special about being a Mets fan. Mostly it had to do with the team's scrappiness, their blue-collar feel, and the fact that most of their accomplishments seemed so improbable and many of them happened after amazing changes of fortune and luck.

The Yankees became the polar opposite of the Mets: the white-collar princes of Major League Baseball, riding a legacy of palpable legend and dominating the game in the late 1990s.

I could spend a whole evening recalling the specific moments of torment, heartbreak, and exhilaration that have marked my times as a Met fan, but today's final game at Shea nicely summarized most of it.

The season was on the line today. A victory would have propelled the Mets ahead to play another day. A loss would be the end of the season. And the game was a textbook Mets nailbiter. They were down by two, then tied it up, then fell behind by two, then had a chance to tie it up again... and squandered that chance.

As the bottom of the ninth progressed, pitch by pitch, hope by hope, the announcer commented how utterly silent the stadium of fifty-someodd thousand people seemed. Cameras panned around revealing people praying and resting their heads on their hands, unable to bear witness to the tension on the field, the feeling that dreams were right there to be snatched, but probably would not be.

Most teams would have lost this game by a larger margin. Most teams would not have prolonged the chance to win all the way to the final pitch. Most fans would have left the stadium well before that final pitch.

But the Mets carried everyone along, pitch by grueling pitch, keeping that dream alive but inches away from grasp.

If the Mets had pulled out a victory today, they would have ended the regular season with perhaps their most exciting coup and salvage yet. But, alas, Shea had already given the Mets the last of its magic, and it was the silent echo of broken dreams that marked the end of Shea Stadium, and yet another season for the Mets.

Damn.