This is a picture taken by Marc Levine of the Mets Thursday that looked much, much better before my clumsy attempts to make it small enough to fit on a blog post.
If you look very closely you can make out the top of my black SportsChannel hat (with a red bill) in the row in front of Gary Cohen. I wore it as a nod to the nostalgic feel of the telecast, and I suppose as a nod to my soon-to-be new employers.
Thanks to everyone for the comments and e-mails sharing your own Shea memories, by the way.
Click below for a bunch of leftover stuff from Thursday. I have to write my Sunday newspaper column now.
Enjoy the 1988 PBA "Hammer Open" on ESPN Classic at noon.
Howie Rose recalling taking the bus to games at age 12 with his friends from Bayside:
"We'd have a bag full of salami sandwiches. For a 2 p.m. game we'd get here before 12 and sit in Section 1 right behind home plate, in the first row behind the boxes. Until about the early '70s the entire upper deck was general admission except for the boxes. You could get a pretty good seat as long as you moved quickly."
Gary Cohen recalled sitting in the extreme upper leftfield corner for Game 3 of the 1969 NLCS, where "you could see straight down into the visitors' bullpen. Somehow that day when they won I managed to make it all the way down to the field and took home my piece of turf that I saved."
Cohen said he first encountered Shea driving by it en route to the World's Fair. "This ballpark, when it was built, was state of the art,'' he said. "The fact it was so huge was considered an asset at the time. The sensibilities have gone in the other direction over the past 40 years and people want a more intimate setting, which they’ll get at Citi Field. But when this place is full and it's humming and the stands are shaking and the team is playing well, it’s a great place to watch a game."
Cohen on his most memorable game sitting in the upper deck: "Tom Seaver's return to Shea after he got traded to the Reds in '77. I know a lot of people remember Giacomin's return to the Rangers [with the Red Wings], but this was very similar. The entire stadium was rooting for Seaver as opposed to rooting for the Mets. That struck me because it was so different from anything I’d ever experienced here."
Ron Darling on going to Fenway as a child: "The only place we really could sit in Fenway was rightfield, where it was $2 or $1. Our seats were always up top, where you could barely see the rightfielder in front of you."
Keith Hernandez on the view from the upper deck: "These guys don't look very big from up here. They look tiny. They look like field mice down there."
Hernandez said when he was a child his father usually bought good seats at Candlestick, but Hernandez did recall once watching a game from the very last row of the Oakland Coliseum.
Comments (4)
Neil
Nice job wearing the Sportschannel hat - my house is stuffed with Prime Sportschannel and Metro Channel apparel (two former employers of mine). I still wear them, semi-proudly, from time to time.
And I have to add, as frustrated as I am about the current state of the Mets, I couldn't be happier with their current TV broadcasting team. Listening to Ron when he worked for the Nationals compared to where he is today is like night and day. And I can't remember a time when there was better chemistry in the booth.
There was that Bob, Ralph and Lindsay team that hung around for a few years :)
Eric
Of course, but not a whole lot in between. Unless of course you're a member of the Steve Zabriskie fan club.
The chemistry in the booth now is fabulous. But as for anything in between, I have to say that I really did enjoy listening to Steve Albert and Art Shamsky around 1980. They were often very funny and they did make the Mets worth listening to back in those dark days.