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On a dreary and foggy Monday night at Shea, John Franco goes for his 300th save a dozen years to the day after he notched his first save—for the ’84 Reds. Against the ’96 Expos he gets No. 300 in classic Franco fashion. With two outs in the ninth, the Mets up 3-2, and the tying run on base, the immortal Sherman Obando bats for the pitcher. Obando launches a long flyball that Lance Johnson catches at the wall to end the game. Many hugs and high fives ensue. Franco, who will rack up 424 career saves (now fifth all time) will be honored with John Franco Day at Shea on May 11, where he earns another distinction—getting ejected on his own day from a game he was not pitching during a brawl with the Cubs.

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Shawn Estes will always be remembered by Mets fans as a one-hit wonder. He was the one Met who had a chance to take revenge on Roger Clemens in the batter’s box and he missed him in June of 2002. Never mind that Estes won that game, humiliated Clemens by homering off him, and was far from the reason the Mets had a lousy year.

On this day in 2002 Estes throws his lone complete game as a Met with a 1-0, one-hit gem against the Brewers at Shea. And he beats the man whose spot he took in the rotation, Glendon Rusch, who also tossed a complete game for Milwaukee. Estes is perfect for six innings, but Eric Young (father of the future Mets speedster of the same name) singles for the only hit of the game in the seventh. Estes walks only one and fans eight. Jay Payton provides all the offense with a home run. It is the 23rd Mets one-hitter in history and the first since Rusch combined with Armando Benitez for one in 2001.

With the Mets irretrievably out of the race on August 15, just two weeks after they traded Jay Payton and future All-Star (though not as a Met) Jason Bay to shore up the pitching staff, GM Steve Phillips sends Estes to the Brewers and got back Pedro Feliciano, among others. Though pitching just 23 games as a Met, the name Estes conjures up plenty of Mets memories. One-hit wonder indeed.

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Shawn Estes will always be remembered by Mets fans as a one-hit wonder. He was the one Met who had a chance to take revenge on Roger Clemens in the batter’s box at Shea and he missed him in June of 2002. Never mind that Estes won that game, humiliated Clemens by homering off him, and was far from the reason the Mets had a lousy year.

On this day in 2002 Estes throws his lone complete game as a Met with a 1-0, one-hit gem against the Brewers at Shea. And he beats the man whose spot he took in the rotation, Glendon Rusch, who also tossed a complete game for Milwaukee. Estes is perfect for six innings, but Eric Young (father of the future Mets speedster of the same name) singles for the only hit of the game in the seventh. Estes walks only one and fans eight. Jay Payton provides all the offense with a home run. It is the 23rd Mets one-hitter in history and the first since Rusch combined with Armando Benitez for one in 2001.

With the Mets irretrivably out of the race on August 15, just two weeks after they traded Jay Payton and future All-Star (though not as a Met) Jason Bay to shore up the pitching staff, GM Steve Phillips sends Estes to the Brewers and got back Pedro Feliciano, among others. Though pitching just 23 games as a Met, the name Estes conjures up plenty of Mets memories. One-hit wonder indeed.

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After Endy Chavez’s remarkable catch in the previous year’s NLCS, Shea was still in love with the outfielder with the great glove and the the ability to leap tall fences in a single bound. I was at this game, watching Orlando Hernandez shut out the Rockies for seven innings. The game remained scoreless into the 10th when rookie Troy Tulowizki tripled home the first run of the game. Damion Easley answered the call, homering with two outs in the bottom of the 10th to tie the game. In the 12th inning, Shawn Green walked, was sacrificed to second, and was balked to third. With two outs, Endy stunned the crowd—and the Rockies—with a drag bunt to beat the band and win the game.

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A year after winning the Cy Young Award, 25-year-old Tom Seaver seems to just keep getting better. He ties the major league record of 19 strikeouts—set a year ago by Steve Carlton, against the Miracle Mets, no less. The second-year San Diego Padres are no World Series contender, but they do tie the game in the second inning on a home run by Al Fererra. The Mets take a 2-1 lead on Bud Harrelson’s RBI triple. Seaver shut the door like no one before him—or since.

Seaver finishes off the sixth inning by catching Ferrera looking. He starts the seventh by fanning the best bat in the weak Padres lineup: Nate Colbert. The next three batters go down looking. Pinch hitter Ivan Murrel’s K to end the eighth broke the club record of 15 set by Nolan Ryan—four days earlier.

In the ninth Seaver fans Van Kelly for the third time that day. Cito Gaston, who would later win two world championships managing the not-yet-created Toronto Blue Jays, manages to take strike three. Up steps Ferrera, whose homer accounts for San Diego’s only run in this one-run game—Dave Campbell had the club’s only other hit off Seaver. By now, catcher Jerry Grote has stopped even calling pitchers and just lets Seaver throw the heater. He fans Ferrera for his 10th straight strikeout and the 2-1 win. Nine straight strikeouts had not stood since Mickey Welch did it for the New York Giants in 1884. Eighty-six years later the record falls in front of in front of 14,000 fans on a Wednesday afternoon at Shea.

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Exactly one year after Tom Seaver’s first major league victory, Seaver wins the first game of his sophomore season. In Gil Hodges’s first homestand as Mets manager, Seaver and Dodger Bill Singer lock up in pitcher’s duel in front of just under 20,000 on a Saturday afternoon at Shea Stadium. The “Singer Throwing Machine” is on his game, but the big right-hander misses a stich when Ron Swoboda clubs a home run with two on and two outs in the sixth. Former AL MVP Zoilo Versalles collects a two-out, two-run single for the Dodgers to make it a 3-2 game in the eighth. The Dodgers mount a rally against Seaver with two outs in the ninth, but Rocky Swoboda, who had thrown out a runner at the plate in the fourth inning, quickly gets to Rocky Colavito’s double and pinch runner Cleo James holds at third base. Danny Frisella, “The Bear,” comes in and gets Paul Popovich to ground out for his major league save.

 

In the Year of the Pitcher this is a big offensive day for the Mets. As Seaver would later say of pitching for the offensively-challenged Mets: “If they score one run for you, you might win; if they score two runs for you, you should win; and if they score three runs for you, you’d better win.” In 1968 Seaver would match his team record 16 wins set as a rookie in ’67.

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Fifty-five years ago Shea Stadium opened to a packed house—and a predictable result. Shea opened with a 4-3 loss to the Pirates, but Shea was everything for the early Mets. The man it was named after—big-shot lawyer Bill Shea—did the legwork and heavy lifting to bring the National League back to New York. And there would have been no team if the city hadn’t ponied up for a stadium. It was used for at least a year by the Mets, Jets, Yankees, and Giants (the football variety). More than 100 million fans would stream for its doors for sports—and their concerts were pretty memorable, too. Want to read more about it? Try Rising Apple for the longer version of this tale. And check out Shea Stadium Remembered for the whole story.

The Mets’ season already seems to be hanging by a thread. At 3-9 they face the Dodgers on the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s momentous debut. President Bill Clinton, Rachel Robinson, and Acting Commissioner Bud Selig all address the 54,000 at Shea when the game is halted in the fifth inning. Robinson’s number will be retired forever in a stunning announcement. Minutes after the game resumes, Lance Johnson, hoping to rise to the momentous occasion, singles home the first two runs of the game. Toby Borland pitches the last four innings to save the 5-0 win for Armando Reynoso. From that night on, Bobby Valentine’s 1997 Mets will go 84-64 and contend until the final week.

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Tom Seaver makes his major league debut at Shea Stadium. Facing a Pirates lineup with three future Hall of Famers (Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, and Bill Mazeroski), plus the defending batting champ (Matty Alou), and a former MVP (Maury Wills), the 22-year-old Seaver goes 5-1/3 innings and leaves a tie game. His first strikeout is future Mets teammate Donn Clendenon—and it comes with two on in the first inning. Though the Mets pull out a 3-2 victory, Seaver does not get the decision—reliever Chuck Estrada gets the last win of his career, ironically. There will be plenty of wins for Seaver, 311 to be exact (198 as a Met); all of them seemingly by the same tight 3-2 score.

Excerpted from Shea Stadium Remembered

You could say that Shea’s extraordinary happenings of 1969 began by being the first major league stadium required to provide a rendition of  “O, Canada.” (Canadian opera star Maureen Forrester did the inaugural honors at Shea.) But the song was performed thousands of times at ballparks after that. What happened two days later was a singular performance.

The moment was not caught on film and was witnessed by just 8,608 souls on a Thursday afternoon at Shea, but the first of Tommie Agee’s two home runs on April 10, 1969 lives on. And if the ball hadn’t landed in the upper deck in left field, maybe it’s still going.

Larry Jaster of the expansion Expos never lost in eight career starts at Shea—except on this day. The southpaw’s 3-1 pitch in the second inning exploded off the powerful Agee’s bat. “It was a low fastball, kind of in, and he hit it almost like a golf ball,” Jaster recalled in the New York Daily News, several years after Agee’s untimely death from a heart attack at age 58 in 2001.

Agee’s blast was the only home run to land in the upper deck in Shea’s 45-year history. Though the upper deck could hold 20,376 people—more than the field and loge levels combined—the top deck never held another fair ball. Shea was not enclosed, and the top deck had perhaps 1,500 seats combined in the corners on the fair side of the foul poles. The angle trajectory for a fair ball to land there put even fewer seats in play. Even more impressive is that the feat was never duplicated by a Met or a visiting slugger in the 39 years that followed, especially with the likes of Dave Kingman, Darryl Strawberry, Howard Johnson, and Mike Piazza—all of whom hit far more Mets home runs than Agee’s 82.

Later estimates of the blast to upper deck section 48 were in the neighborhood of 480 feet. That neighborhood was eventually painted with Agee’s name, number, and the date of the blast. Only one other Mets player ever had his uniform number honored at Shea in any way besides Tommie’s 20—and that was Tom Seaver’s 41. Pretty good company. Especially for a ball that few people actually recall seeing, except for the guy who gave it up. “A lot of times, you don’t watch ’em,” Jaster said. “That one I had to watch because I knew it was hit pretty good.”