The View From The Rear View Mirror

The View From The Rear View Mirror - Shea Stadium

by Michael Jawitz, AKA: Grubby Glove

Shea Goodbye. There are two things that I noticed immediately about this card. First, I love that the only player who appears on it is Tom Seaver. This is as it should be. No other Mets player is more strongly identified with Shea Stadium than Tom Terrific. 

The other thing that jumped out at me is what appears to be a soda can on the right side of the card, just next to Tom’s elbow. I was curious and put out a hail to my friends at the True New York Mets Group’s Facebook page to ask for some insights about it. As usual, the gang came through. At that game the Mets set up large cardboard pictures of players in the outfield as part of the farewell ceremony. This one looks like a picture of a player with a large # 1 foam finger on it. I can’t make out who the player is. One person mentioned that it took a long time to set them up and the fans got tired of waiting for the ceremony to begin. However, once the ceremony got started, the fans really got into it. That, ladies and gentlemen, sounds like our common Shea Stadium experience; we learned to take the good with the bad. Looking at this card brings back a lot of memories, some of which I’ll share now.

My last game at Shea was on Friday, June 2, 1989, when the Mets hosted the Pittsburgh Pirates. I know that was long before the curtain came down, but I was living in San Francisco and wasn’t going back east very often. Dad, my brother in law Sid and I went to the game. It was a classic night for us. Off from Huntington, stopping at a diner in Queens for a bite, then on to the Big Shea.

It was a good crowd, not quite a sellout, but the lower rim where we sat was full. In fact, we were in the last row, right above the kitchen where the hot dogs were prepared. This explained why I felt hungry in the first, third, fifth, eighth and tenth innings.   

Rick Aguilera started for the Mets. The Pirates scored a run early in the game, and the Mets tied it later. It was still knotted at 1 apiece after nine so the game went into extras. The Pirates scored a run in the top of the eleventh, which brought some smiles to their dugout; I remember seeing them on some of the players’ faces. Many fans in attendance were displeased at this turn of events, included a nasty, nearby group of so called Mets supporters, one of whom uttered a loud and sarcastic “they suck” as the inning concluded. The same group was all smiles a few minutes later when the home-town nine scored two runs in the bottom half to win the game, 3 to 2.

We three believers were mighty pleased and listened to the post-game wrap up as we drove back to “6,” which is what we called the family home. Once there, we sat down at the kitchen table and had another bite while we talked about the game. That was a classic night for us; eat, Mets game, eat.   

Another lasting recollection centers on the coupons Borden’s used to put on their milk cartons. If you were 12 and under and collected ten of them you were admitted to a Mets game in the designated “Borden’s” nose-bleed section. I remember being treated well by the Mets when I went to these “free” games. There was a place where we congregated outside Shea, so that we could be admitted en mass. On at least one occasion we were escorted to a spot adjacent to the Mets dugout and a player came over and talked to us. I remember the player was Larry Bearnarth, a relief pitcher from 1963 to 1966. He spent a lot of time giving autographs to us as well. I remember he signed my program on the cover, which was a real treat back then. Shortly after that a couple of grown-ups escorted us to our section, where we watched the Mets lose, which they did a lot back in the day.

Just thinking about all of those losses brings so many other memories back, it’s difficult to sort them all out. I’ll do that somewhere down the line, and share a few more of them at that time.