Write for God

Shea Stadium in Queens, NY is no more. In less than 30 seconds, the home of the NY Mets was demolished to make way for a corporate abomination to be named Citi Field. I haven’t wanted to watch the implosion because I have too many good memories of Shea and the 1969 Mets that won the World Series when no one expected them to.

Last year, our Tampa Bay Rays almost pulled off a Mets-like Series championship against the Phillies. Here in the Tampa Bay area, the community went crazy following our worst-to-first team that had sound leadership and talented young players, just like the 1969 Mets. We will always remember the Rays’ pennant chase as the time when we were spending our days and nights at our daughter’s bedside while she was in a coma. One night, we watched the Rays with the hospital staff cheering the team on from Tally’s bedside. I’m convinced Tally heard us.

The 1969 Mets had a great pitching staff:  Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman and Nolan Ryan won games and made us Miracle Mets believers. We kids loved the Mets because they were about as old as we were; there wasn’t a long history from the days that seemed to be the Stone Age as was the case with the Yankees and the other ”old teams.” One fateful day, our teacher, a Dominican sister who was a huge baseball fan, promised us that we could forget about our mountain of homework that night if the Mets pulled off a playoff win. She might as well have told us to forget about genuflecting at Mass. A day without homework in parochial school in 1969 was truly a miracle.

The Mets stole the World Series in underdog style from the Baltimore Orioles, who had the fearsome Brooks Robinson on third and we skipped another night of homework from our teacher. I’ve always thought Dominican prayers from a certain sister helped seal the Mets’ victory.

I still have an autograph book signed by many of the 1969 Mets, including their manager Gil Hodges. My best friend’s father was a waiter at the Hilton in Queens where the team had one of its victory dinners. Elisa’s father sneaked us in through the kitchen. We cornered the players as they were coming in and most were kind enough to sign our autograph books. That was another miracle during a year when the Mets were truly blessed.

Growing up in Queens, I remember visiting Flushing Meadows, site of the Mets’ stadium and the former location of the New York World’s Fair in 1964-1965. I ice-skated there for the first–and last–time. We had family picnics at Flushing Meadows that we traveled to on the subway. My brother, sister, our cousins and I jumped into the reflecting pools around the Unisphere, a model of the globe that towered over the park in the shadow of Shea Stadium. I always loved the cheesy orange-and-blue geometric shapes on the exterior of Shea back in those days. I still think of those as Mets colors when I see them together. Even though I live in Florida, they will never really be Gator colors to me.

And so Shea is now a victim of progress and corporate sameness. Those of us who were Queens kids in the 1960s and 1970s will always have good memories of the plucky Mets who pulled off the greatest triumph in baseball in 1969, when Dominican sisters ran orderly classes with more than 50 girls crammed in a single room and we kids believed in a miracle called the Mets. Long live Shea Stadium!