Shea Stadium Remembered: The Mets, the Jets, and Beatlemania

by Matthew Silverman

Overview

Few remember that Shea Stadium—and indeed the Mets baseball club itself—arose out of a dispute between two oversized egos: New York City official Robert Moses and Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley. While O’Malley wanted complete control over a new stadium and all of its concessions in Brooklyn, Moses insisted that the stadium be built by the city in Queens and leased to the Dodgers. The impasse led to the Dodgers following the Giants out to the West Coast, where The City of Los Angeles granted O’Malley all of the concessions he had sought in New York. With now no National League team in the New York area, the National League office awarded a new franchise to the city in 1960 on conditional that it fund and build a new stadium, which the Mets (and later the AFL Jets) would lease. The stadium was named in honor of William Shea, the person most responsible for returning National League baseball to New York.

Over its forty-four year existence Shea Stadium witnessed a colorful cavalcade of sporting and entertainment events, all detailed in this lively, skimable tribute to a memorable New York landmark.

It’s all here: the memorable games; the unforgettable characters such as Tom Seaver, Joe “Willie” Namath, and Seinfeld buddy Keith Hernandez; and even the solemn moments such as when Shea was used as a staging area for first responders after 9/11. By the time of its demolition in 2008, the Mets had played more games at Shea than the Dodgers had ever played at Ebbets Field, and the stadium had hosted seven National League Championship Series, four World Series, three Jets playoff games, and the American Football League Championship game in 1968.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493060870
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	04/01/2022
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	659,389
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.70(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Since 2007 Matthew Silverman has written Mets Essential, 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die (hardcover 2008, paperback 2010), Shea Goodbye (with Keith Hernandez), New York Mets: The Complete Illustrated History, and Best Mets. He is also author of Baseball Miscellany and Golf Miscellany. He has co-authored Mets by the Numbers, Cubs by the Numbers, and Red Sox by the Numbers. He blogs regularly at metsilverman.com. An avid baseball fan growing up in White Plains, New York, Silverman went on to be a newspaper reporter and editor before joining Total Sports Publishing, eventually becoming associate publisher and heading the reference division. He was managing editor for Total Baseball, Total Football, and was lead editor for Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia, a volume of 2,000 baseball biographies. The Village Voice wrote, "It's possible that the last time so much essential information was gathered in one volume was The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Silverman also served as managing editor for books on the Packers, Cowboys, 49ers, and Steelers, among other teams, plus Total Super Bowl. He later served as managing editor for first editions of The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia and The ESPN Football Encyclopedia, along with subsequent editions. He edited all four editions of the Maple Street Press Mets Annual with Greg Spira. He lives in High Falls, New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Our Dump vii

1 The Bums' Rush 1

2 Up from the Ashes 4

3 The Name Is Shea 6

4 Ma and Pa Met and Their First Home 9

5 "Twisted and Bent" 14

6 The Architecture of Multipurpose 17

7 Bunting, Bunning, and Banners 20

8 Blink and You'll Miss It: All-Stars Come to Shea 24

9 The World vs. Moses: Fair or Not? 26

10 The Beatles and their Stadium 28

11 Keeping Busy 31

12 Broadway Joe Brings War and Peace to Shea 33

13 Howie Rose's Shea Stadium 37

14 Tom Terrific Lands at Shea 40

15 Super Jets 44

16 Everything on the Ball at Shea in '69 48

17 Last Call for the AFL 55

18 Too Sudden, Too Soon 57

19 Shea Hey Kid 61

20 Believe 63

21 Long Games, Longer Home Runs 70

22 The Bowels and Meows of Shea 74

23 The Yanks Are Coming 76

24 1975: Make It Shea Every Day 79

25 Grant's Tomb 83

26 Shining Light of the Blackout 86

27 Bless This Mess: Hebner to Mettle to Pope 88

28 Sleight of Hand 91

29 Panel Discussion 94

30 Sack It to Me 97

31 Strike One. Strike Two 100

32 The Big Board and the Big Apple 104

33 The Prodigal Seaver Returns 106

34 Mayor's Trophy: New York's Rivalry without Enmity 108

35 "Good Luck in the Swamp": The Jets Exit Shea 111

36 Making a Loser Win 114

37 The Place to Be 118

38 To Make the Dream Work 121

39 Inside Shea: Top to Bottom 126

40 Cards Beat Full House 131

41 Hershiser Fixation 134

42 When Management 86ed the '86ers 138

43 A Change at the Top, a Fall to the Bottom 140

44 What's with All These Planes? 144

45 The Worst Team. Period 146

46 Dumb Struck 149

47 Mr. Met and Shea Names You Shouldn't Forget 152

48 Generation K Goes Down Looking 156

49 Let's Play Two. And Then Let's Not 158

50 Bobby V. Brings New Life to Shea 160

51 Catch as Catch Can: Dishing Up Piazza at Shea 162

52 Food, Not So Glorious Food 164

53 The Walkoff, the Wild Pitch, the Grand Slam, and the Single 166

54 Met Sounds: Pennant Edition 170

55 Subway Shutdown 173

56 More Than a Game 176

57 Wilpon v. Doubleday 178

58 Shea's Last Last-Place Finish 181

59 The New Mets 183

60 The New Shea 185

61 The Team, Almost the Time 187

62 End of Shea's Days 190

63 Requiem 194

Appendix 199

Shea vs. Citi 199

Shea Stadium Ail-Time Records 200

Teams That Called Shea Home 202

The Last Days at Shea-Dana Brand 207

Acknowledgments 210

Bibliography 211

Index 215