It has been a couple of years, but I have a new book coming out. The publication date for Shea Stadium Remembered is January 15, 2019, though it’s available before the pub date if you order it online or through your book store. Or you can drop me a line and I will arrange a signed copy for you.
What’s the book about? Shea Stadium. Lyons Press, which has published my last three books, asked for me to take on the subject. I jumped at the chance to tell the story of the place I spent way more than 1,000 hours and sat in every seating area from the Press Box to the Picnic Area. The only team that called Shea home that I did not see play was the Giants, one of four teams to host games at Shea in 1975. I saw the Yankees, Jets, and—yes—the Mets all win home games there. I missed Shea’s two landmark Beatles concerts—and was grounded instead of seeing the Who in ’82—but I did see The Police and was in the crowd for the “last play at Shea” with Billy Joel in 2008. I attended the ’86 World Series, the Subway Series, saw Lenny Dykstra’s remarkable blast in the ’86 NLCS, Todd Pratt’s home run and Bobby Jones’s one-hit masterpiece that clinched Division Series a year apart, and I saw the Mets clinch the 2000 pennant as Shea swayed.
I saw too many blown leads than I care to count and I saw Shea go down in defeat on its final day. But I walked out with my head high after the postgame tribute, which outdid any other ceremony the place ever saw—though I was at home, oblivious, doing my elementary school homework on Willie Mays Night in 1973, so maybe that was a better night. At least they won that night—and almost ran off with ’73 world championship. But that’s a story for another book.
I don’t bring that up to brag, but to lay down my bonafides. I have written numerous books on sports and the Mets, but Shea Stadium is where I came to know sports, the camaraderie among people sharing the same (misguided) passion, and I feel fortunate to be able to pass on the history of the place for people who may not have known it as well—or at all. And while I may denigrate the place now and again—it wouldn’t be accurate if I did not—I feel Shea was my home as much as it was Swoboda’s or Seaver’s or Koosman’s or Kingman’s or Mazzilli’s or Stearns’s or Strawberry’s or Doc’s or Keith’s or Carter’s or Bobby O.’s or Bobby V.’s or Leiter’s or Piazza’s or Reyes’s or Wright’s. It belonged to us all. And Shea may be a decade gone, but the stories live on. They shine again for a second every time someone poses in front of the original Home Run Apple or strolls across the Shea Bridge. Welcome back home.