Book Excerpt:
PARK OF MANY USES
LIKE ITS TEAM AND ITS FANS, SHEA HAS CHANGED PLENTY SINCE ’64
Shea Stadium was the ballpark of the future when it opened, and it’s the park of the past now. Not the kitschy, asymmetrical past that the new parks of today commemorate, it’s more a functional past when people thought, “What good is a new stadium if you can only use it six months a year?” Baseball, football, soccer, boxing, wrestling, concerts, religious events, flea markets, and even a summer Ice Capades…you name it, and Shea has tried it.
Yet Shea has always been, first and foremost, a baseball stadium. And in today’s era of cozy parks cuddling up to power hitters, pitchers are thankful for Shea. The ballpark’s dimensions in 2008 are nearly the same as they were when it opened on April 17, 1964. As crowds thronged to Shea from the New York World’s Fair next door, the spanking-new stadium was thought to be relatively fair for both pitchers and hitters, certainly fairer than the Mets’ first home in the Manhattan. The Polo Grounds had short decks down both lines that gave way to 483 feet in center, making it a pitcher’s best friend and worst enemy simultaneously. The right-field foul pole at Coogan’s Bluff was some 225 feet closer to home plate than dead center field. The Mets led the league in home runs allowed both seasons at the Polo Grounds—no surprise given they were the worst team of the century—but three National League teams allowed more home runs than the Mets the year Shea opened, including the world champion Cardinals. And it wasn’t as if the Mets’ pitching had really improved.
Shea gave signs of its pitching dominated future from its infancy. The Mets played a 23-inning game a little over a month after the place opened—part of the longest doubleheader in history (almost 10 hours)—and lost both games to the Giants. (Gaylord Perry, at the time a struggling young hurler with a 5-7 career mark, went 10 innings for the win in the nightcap while successfully using his spitball for the first time.) Less than two months after its christening, Shea had its first—and to date, only—perfect game. Jim Bunning’s gem was the first NL perfecto since Montgomery Ward threw one in Providence in 1880. Shea might have had something to do Bunning’s feat, but the sad sack Mets lineup played a more pivotal role. Two generations later, the Mets are still waiting for their pitcher’s park to produce just one no-hitter for the home folks.
Shea began life marked at 341 feet down the lines, 371 in left and right, 396 in the alleys, and 410 in center. Not much has changed in that regard. The ground rule has changed so that the fence is now separate from the stadium itself. Originally, a ball pulled down the line in left or right had to clear the brick wall 16 feet above the playing field (as compared with the 8-foot high fence that encircled the rest of the outfield). After some controversy that first year, an orange line was painted at the bottom of this section, above the brick wall 12 feet above the playing field. So if a ball hit the fence that protected the customers in the field level, it was a home run. Joe Torre may not have won many games as Mets manager between 1977 and 1981, but he was victorious in his battle to have the 8-foot wall extended the length of the outfield fence in 1979. That reduced the distance to 338 feet down the line, but the new fence made things abundantly clearer to player, manager, umpire, and fan alike.
As for where a ball might land, automobile owners are no longer in the trouble they once were in the parking lot. When the Mets first moved in, there wasn’t much but empty space between the bullpen and the lot. By the mid-1970s, Dave Kingman was taking steady aim at buses foolish enough to park within 500 feet of home plate. With distance markers beyond the fence, another first for Shea, it was easier to judge just how far these moonshots travelled. After Kingman was traded, the Mets had enough trouble with hitters clearing the wall, much less worrying about how close a ball came to the 442 mark at the base of the light stanchion in left-center. Those long-distance indicators—others were 428 at the back of the visiting bullpen, 420 at the bottom of the scoreboard in center, and 405 on the board in right-center—were installed in 1973 and came down after the 1979 season. When Kong returned to Shea in 1981, he could take aim at the Picnic Area. Located in the same place as temporary outfield seating that accommodated Vietnam veterans in the 1969 World Series, the Picnic Area represents Shea Stadium’s only permanent bleachers structure. It has generally been made available only to groups.
THE BIG BOARD
New York is a town of scoreboard watching and the Mets have kept fans happy for 45 years with one of the biggest in the game. At 86 feet high and 175 feet across, it covered more ground than two Mets outfielders in 1964. It required 28,000 lights and 80 miles of wire, according to Popular Science magazine. (1) Lamps were arranged in clusters to form letters and numbers. That came in handy to spell “Tom” for the great Seaver and later “Hendu” for Steve Henderson, one of the men who came in tragic 1977 trade for The Franchise.
During Shea’s first two years, a 24-foot screen on top of the scoreboard could display images of players as they came up to bat. Alas, it was ahead of its time and was replaced by the Mets logo in 1965. By 1982, however, the future arrived with the advent of Diamond Vision. At 35 feet high and 28 feet across, the giant screen ushered in the video age to East Coast baseball (Dodger Stadium had installed the first giant screen in 1980). Shea’s screen showed statistics, special features, and, ugh, promos. It also offered replays. At first it showed the replays everyone wanted to see, like close plays. But during an early season game in ’82, an ump’s blown call that cost the Mets a big inning was replayed on Diamond Vision. Fans were furious. So were the umpires…at being shown up. Henceforth, video screens would not show replays of close calls. Yet another baseball innovation courtesy of Shea.
The exterior of Shea featured unique blue and orange steel panels for its first 16 seasons, but those came down with the change of ownership in 1980. Shortly, thereafter, however, a touch was added that has since become a Shea signature—the home run top hat rising whenever a Met goes deep. Still, the outside of the stadium felt a bit naked, so it was dressed up prior to the 1988 season with neon outlines of players: a catcher, a pitcher, a fielder, a runner, and two hitters. The wooden outfield walls were also padded for the first time. The pennants of their NL opponents that had graced the wall since 1980, changed to circular logos. Those were later replaced with advertisements for “the Gap,” to be followed by more ads in the field of view. In 1988, the scoreboard was modernized. The new one fit in the shell of the original, but it has yet to make an announcement along the lines of the message the old one displayed twice: “The New York Mets are world champions.”
Seats got more comfortable—and colorful—during 1980. The original Shea seats were made of wood and looked faded…and empty. The
Mets replaced the wood with plastic ones and changed the color seating scheme. Previously, the lineup was yellow for the field level, orange for the loge, blue for the mezzanine, and green in the upper deck, with different hues for the box seats in each level. Since 1980, it’s been orange, blue, green, and red, in ascending order. Seats come with a thin layer of padding and cupholders in lower field boxes closest to home plate. Many new stadiums have these type of amenities for every seat in the park.
Shea was the biggest stadium in the National League when it opened. Though surpassed by some of the concrete doughnut clones it helped spawn, the park originally drawn up as Flushing Municipal Stadium—and named for William A. Shea, the man who helped land the franchise—has outlived its imitators and again has the largest NL capacity at 57,343. The Mets have added seats as time has gone by, but the type of seats that increase the bottom line more than the stadium capacity. The ring of box seats around the press level was replaced with 50 suites in 1988. Eleven years later came a tier of pricey blue seats that ate up space directly behind home plate, while the addition of seats along the foul lines during that postseason proved popular enough to make them the new permanent front row down the lines.
Though they were actively trying to replace Shea by the late 1990s, Mets management continued to modernize the old joint right up to the moment the first piles for Citi Field were driven into what had been the center field parking lot. In 2003, the Mets honored their most glorious past by adorning their outfield façades with collages celebrating 1969 (right field) and 1986 (left field, although it disappeared in 2007). Dioramas hang in the corridors to remind fans of great moments and favorite players.
Such continual refurbishing may have pleased the eye in Shea’s last years, but the ear has always gotten the loud end of the straw. Though LaGuardia’s air traffic may be an unavoidable fact of neighborhood life, it is club management that supplanted the classy stylings of Jane Jarvis on the Thomas Organ with an ever blaring sound system designed to squash both polite conversation and spontaneous cheering. It is to the credit of Mets fans that they’ve never really needed electronic prompting to maintain their longest-standing aural tradition, the chant of “Let’s Go Mets” that originated in the Polo Grounds, flourished at Shea Stadium and figures to live on in Citi Field. That is one sound that nobody seems to mind turning all the way up.
BEYOND BASEBALL
In the first two decades of its existence, Shea took on a different life when the bats and gloves were put away. Many events came to Shea, from Army and Notre Dame football in 1965 to Ice Capades in June 1967 (they only tried that once) to Pope John Paul II in his first trip to America in 1979, but the only multiple-year tenant other than baseball—the Yankees were at Shea during 1974 and ’75—was the New York Jets. Though the Mets and Jets squabbled for years about football games being played at Shea during baseball season, the Jets drew well at Shea and built a Long Island fan base that remains strong a quarter of a century after the team moved to the Meadowlands. The three Pro Football Hall of Fame members honored by the Jets—head coach Weeb Ewbank, quarterback Joe Namath, and wide receiver Don Maynard—spent large parts of their careers at Shea. The Jets, like the Mets, began life at the Polo Grounds. The American Football League club was known as the Titans for four seasons before moving to Shea and becoming the Jets. The franchise spent 20 seasons in Flushing and played three playoff games there.
Fans of rock concerts have had little reason to complain about Shea, unless it’s to say it should have had more gigs. The legendary Beatles concert in 1965 was the largest outdoor show to that point. The sold-out concert and the sensation it caused resulted in the biggest rock acts performing at large stadiums across the country. (Multi-use has its advantages.)
The Beatles took the infield for their memorable show on August 15, 1965—they came to Shea once more the following year—setting up stage at second base. Grand Funk Railroad, which sold out faster than the Beatles, had a similar configuration in July 1971, but sophisticated spotlights trained in on a far more elaborate stage than the one employed by John, Paul, George, and Ringo. The Who had retirement on the brain when they came to Flushing for the biggest U.S. dates on their 1982 farewell tour. They played Shea twice in October—no worries about conflicting postseason dates, certainly—but they erected a massive covered stage in the outfield and seats were sold on the tarped field. The Who, who’ve since made several more “final” tours, provided a blueprint for the Police concert the following summer. With the help of a new ticket ordering system, 70,000 fans crammed into Shea for that concert on August 18, 1983. The Police trashed the last-place team’s field worse than the Jets.
While Shea has been derided by some as less than ideal for baseball, a veritable rock ’n’ roll hall of fame has gotten loads of satisfaction at Shea. In addition to the Beatles, Grand Funk, the Who, and the Police, the home of the Mets has opened its gates for Janis Joplin (at the 1970 Festival for Peace), Jethro Tull, Simon & Garfunkel, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Elton John, and—following an 11-year moratorium on concerts because of the toll taken on the grass—Bruce Springsteen. Billy Joel agreed to host the last concert at Shea in July 16, 2008. Then after the show sold out in just over an hour, a new “Last Play at Shea” date was added on July 18. Though, if you want to be accurate, the final concerts at Shea will come after the games on July 25 (Merengue Night) and August 22 (Fiesta Latina).
Shea represents more than just another listing on the back of a concert T-shirt for some of the greatest bands in rock history. The Stones set a New York record by selling a quarter million seats in a single day for their October 1989 tour, and responded to demand by adding an extra date after the Mets were eliminated from the NL East race. At the 1983 Police concert, Sting thanked the Beatles for “lettings us use their stadium.” He decided that night that he could no go no higher in his chosen field than Shea Stadium. “During the performance I thought, ‘This is it, you can’t do any better than this.’ That’s the point I decided to stop.” (2)
John Lennon once confided to a promoter, “I saw the top of the mountain when we were at Shea Stadium.” (3) The people who sat in those multi-colored seats for so many events, maybe even some of the 3,600-plus Mets games at Shea, were right there on the mountain, too.
Endnotes
1. “At Least Mets’ Scoreboard Is a Champion,” Popular Science, 1964; courtesy of Baseball-fever.com.
2. “Police Play Shea Stadium,” BBC-TV’s Seven Ages of Rock, www.bbc.co.uk/music/sevenages/events/stadium-rock/police-play-shea-stadium/
3. “40 Years of History at Shea Stadium,” New York Mets Baseball 2004 Official Media Guide.