Shea Stadium (Site) - New York City, New York | baseball park / stadium World / USA / New York / Saddle Rock World / United States / New York baseball park / stadium, historical layer / disappeared object Home to the New York Mets MLB team from 1964-2008, William A. Shea Municipal Stadium was replaced by Citi Field in 2009. Originally built as a multi-purpose stadium, Shea was also the home of the New York Jets football team until 1983. The Mets inagural season (1962) and their second season were played in the Polo Grounds in Manhattan. It was originally to be called "Flushing Meadow Park Municipal Stadium", the name of the public park on which it was built, but a movement was launched to name it in honor of Bill Shea, the man who brought National League baseball back to New York. On August 15, 1965, The Beatles opened their 1965 North American tour at Shea Stadium to a record audience of 55,600. On 02/18/09, a demolition crew pulled down the final section of the structure.

Nearby cities: Newark, New Jersey, Town of Huntington, New York City, New York Coordinates: 40°45'20"N 73°50'51"W Citi Field | Baseball Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia 41,800 New York Mets Ballpark's Citi Field is a professional baseball stadium located in Queens, New York. It is the home baseball park for Major League Baseball 's New York Mets . Citi Field was built as a replacement for the adjacent Shea Stadium , which was itself constructed in 1964 adjacent to the site of the 1964-1965 World's Fair. Citi Field was designed by HOK Sport, and is currently named after Citigroup, a financial services company based in New York City. The $850 million baseball stadium is being funded by the sale of New York City municipal bonds which are to be repaid by the Mets plus interest. The payments will offset property taxes for the lifetime of the park. The first game at the stadium took place on March 29, 2009, with a college baseball game between St. John's Red Storm and the Georgetown Hoyas .

[1] The Mets played their first game at the stadium on April 3, 2009 , in a charity exhibition game against the Boston Red Sox [2] [1] , and the first regular season home game is scheduled for April 13, 2009, against the San Diego Padres . [3] The Mets are bidding to host the 2013 All-Star Game at Citi Field, which would bring the game to the Mets' home field for only the second time; the first was at Shea in its 1964 inaugural season. [4] Contents Edit The original plans for what is now Citi Field were created as part of New York City's 2012 Summer Olympic bid. After plans for a West Side Stadium fell through, New York looked for an alternate stadium to host the opening and closing ceremonies. The Olympic stadium project was estimated to cost $2.2 billion with $180 million provided by New York City and New York State. If New York had won the bid, the stadium would have been expanded to host the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as other sporting events.

Construction File:YankeeSheaDay 033.jpg The projected cost of the new stadium and other infrastructure improvements is $610 million, with the Mets picking up $420 million of that amount. The agreement includes a 40-year lease that will keep the Mets in New York until 2049. On March 18, 2006 , the New York Mets unveiled the official model for the new stadium. By July 2006, initial construction of the new park was underway in the parking lot beyond left-field, with a projected finish ahead of Opening Day 2009 in late March. As of April 13, 2008, all of the structure for the Jackie Robinson Rotunda was in place with the arched windows receiving their paneling and glass. By August 2008, the New York Mets and Daktronics installed 12,000 square feet of integrated scoring and video boards throughout the stadium. [5] By September 2008, most of the Citi Field signage had been installed.

[6] By December 1, 2008, all of the seats and the playing field had been installed. [7] Features Edit The new stadium has a planned capacity of 45,000 (42,500 seats, ~2,500 standing room), approximately 12,000 fewer seats than Shea Stadium. The exterior facade and entryway rotunda are reminiscent of Ebbets Field (which was long sought by Mets owner Fred Wilpon , a Brooklyn native). Citi Field will join Coors Field and Safeco Field as modern ballparks with approximate replicas of the Ebbets Field rotunda. The formal dedication of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda will be held as part of Major League Baseball 's official celebration of Jackie Robinson Day on April 15, 2009 . Citi Field's interior design is primarily influenced by PNC Park , which was the favorite ballpark of Mets COO Jeff Wilpon . Other influences include Tiger Stadium , Great American Ballpark , Coors Field and Citizens Bank Park .

[8] Shea Stadium was the only ballpark in the Major Leagues to feature orange foul poles instead of the standard yellow, a unique characteristic that will make its way into Citi Field, along with the Mets' own Home Run Apple (a new apple has been constructed for Citi Field that is more than four times the size of the previous one and was designed by Minneapolis-based engineering firm Uni-Systems [9] ). Delta Air Lines signed a multiyear deal on September 15, 2008, to sponsor an exclusive section in Citi Field. The Delta Sky360 Club is a 22,500 square foot restaurant-cafe-bar-lounge complex that also houses 1,600 premium seats behind home plate stretching from dugout to dugout. [10] The Pepsi Porch is a 1,284 seat area located in right field and extends over the playing field. A 37 foot by 89 foot Pepsi Cola sign, reminiscent of the one located in Long Island City, sits atop the Pepsi Porch. [11] Taste of the City is a food court located in the left center field section of the ballpark.

It is run by restaurateur Danny Meyer and includes several of his franchises such as Shake Shack and Blue Smoke. [12] Access and transportation Edit Citi Field is located in the borough of Queens, adjacent to the neighborhoods of Corona, which lies to its west, and Willets Point and Flushing to the east. Flushing Bay is to the north, and the rest of Flushing Meadows–Corona Park is to the south. Because it lies within the Flushing postal zone, and because of its location in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, its location is frequently referred to as Flushing. Citi Field is adjacent to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center , where the annual US Open grand-slam tennis tournament is held. Since the construction of Citi Field began, satellite parking lots in Flushing Meadow Park (access from College Point Blvd) have been opened. Naming rights Edit On November 13, 2006, it was officially announced that the stadium would be called Citi Field, named for Citigroup Inc. Citigroup will be paying $20 million a year for the naming rights to the park over the next 20 years.

This made Citi Field the second major league sports venue in the area named for a corporate sponsor, (after Continental Airlines Arena (now Izod Center) in the Meadowlands, but preceding Prudential Center in Newark and Barclays Center in Brooklyn), officially becoming the first in New York City itself, aside from two minor league ballparks ( KeySpan Park in Brooklyn, and Richmond County Bank Ballpark in Staten Island). The deal includes an option on both sides to extend the contract to 40 years, and is the most expensive sports-stadium naming rights agreement ever, subsequently equaled by Barclays' $400 million deal with the New Jersey Nets for their planned arena in Brooklyn. [13] At the groundbreaking for Citi Field, it was announced that the main entrance, modeled on the one in Brooklyn's old Ebbets Field, will be called the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, possibly due to campaigns to forego naming rights and name the ballpark after Robinson. The Mets are spending more than $600 million for the new stadium, which New York City and New York state are also supporting with a total of $165 million for such costs as infrastructure and site preparation.

On February 24, 2008, the Mets and Citigroup unveiled the new Citi Field logo. [14] Controversy of Naming Rights Edit Both Citigroup [15] and the Mets [16] maintain that the naming rights deal is secure, despite Citigroup's economic troubles. This deal has been criticized in light of the economic crisis of 2008-2009 and the $45 billion of taxpayer funds allocated to Citigroup by the US Government in two separate rescue packages, prompting New York City Council members Vincent Ignizio and James Oddo to suggest that the new ballpark be called "Citi/Taxpayer Field." [17] Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who serves on the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, stated in regards to the Citi Field naming rights deal, "This type of spending is indefensible and unacceptable to Citigroup's new partner and largest investor: the American taxpayer....

I strongly urge Citigroup to find a way out of this contract and instead spend that $400 million on retaining its employees and restoring confidence in its operations." [18] [19] [20] On January 29, 2009, congressmen Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Ted Poe of Texas sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner urging him to scrap Citigroup's $400 million naming rights deal. "We request that you intervene and demand that Citigroup dissolve the agreement they have with the New York Mets," reads the letter. "Absent this outcome, we feel strongly that you should compel Citigroup to return immediately all federal monies received to date, as well as cancel all loan guarantees." [21] [22] However, Geithner rejected congressional demands to cancel the naming rights deal. [23] The Wall Street Journal reported on February 3, 2009 that Citigroup considered breaking the naming rights deal. Citi has stated that no government TARP funds would be used in the sponsorship deal.

[24] Uniform patch File:MetsCitiFieldSleevePatch.png On January 14, 2009, the Mets unveiled the Citi Field Inaugural Season sleeve patch, to be worn on the players' right sleeves for the 2009 season. As Major League Baseball rules prohibit corporate names on uniforms, the standard Citi Field logo could not be used. [25] The patch echoes the shape, colors and orientation of the Citi Field logo, with the name replaced by "INAUGURAL SEASON 2009". Reaction to the patch was immediate and negative from Mets fans and critics alike, [26] with ESPN Uni Watch writer and blogger Paul Lukas calling it the "worst sleeve patch in MLB history". [27] Several fans have pointed out a resemblance between the sleeve patch and the logo for Domino's Pizza, [28] and the patch was mocked on an episode of The Colbert Report. [29] In February 2009, the Mets unveiled a different patch, to be worn on the side of the caps and featuring the arches of the Jackie Robinson rotunda.

[30] Stadium comparison The Ballparks: Shea Stadium, Queens, New York 1964—National League 7, American League 4 Bet You Didn't Know... Shea Stadium is the only major league facility named after a lawyer—or, at least, one who didn’t own the team. Besides the 1974-75 seasons, the Yankees also needed Shea for a 1998 game after a chunk of concrete fell at Yankee Stadium. Only a handful of seats from the five-tiered Shea Stadium bowl wrapped beyond the foul poles—and only once was the upper deck reached by a home run when the Mets’ Tommie Agee went deep there on April 10, 1969. In the animated Godzilla: The Series, a cartoon version of Shea Stadium was severely damaged by Godzilla and his adversary for the day, Crackler. Shea Stadium was used as a relief center in the days following 9-11. Shea Stadium Queens, New York Never mind the jet packs and monorails.

Shea Stadium represented the Space Age to New Yorkers freed of their rotting baseball relics of yesteryear, proudly serving as the center of the Gotham entertainment universe until early neglect threatened to turn it into a black hole. Good times or bad, you could always count on a high-decibel din courtesy of diehard Mets fans and the airliners roaring overhead. The noise. That’s what a lot of people remember most about Shea Stadium over its 45-year lifespan. The Beatles certainly remember it. The screaming fans, 60,000 of them, were so loud that the Fab Four couldn’t even hear their own instruments. The suave, self-assured quarterback Joe Namath brought out the ladies as well, adding to the surge of sound whenever the football Jets took to the Shea turf. And then there were those other jets, taking off from nearby La Guardia International Airport and buzzing Shea as they almost always seemed to do when the stadium’s main attraction, the New York Mets, came out of the dugout to play a brand of ball that ranged from amazing to miraculous to just plain dreadful.

The Mets and their faithful, some of the craziest baseball fans you’d ever run across, witnessed all sorts of objects fly within the airspace of Shea Stadium—very few of them being fly balls that seldom went deep off the bats of an occasionally tin Mets offense. The airliners kept a safe distance—most of the time. One mistook the outfield light towers for La Guardia landing lights and buzzed the stadium by a reported 1,000 feet, though players warming up for a game swear it was much closer than that. There was the day the Goodyear blimp, covering the U.S. Open tennis tournament nearby, decided to take a joyride over Shea, casting an ominous shadow over the field and frightening players and fans into thinking they were about to relive Black Sunday. And there was the flying saucer based at the adjacent World’s Fair—it never was an observation tower, folks—that sprang loose and caught the eye of awed Mets outfielder Lance Johnson as recalled in Men in Black. Only one aerial object ever crashed into Shea; a remote-controlled toy plane that lost control and flew into a section of football fans—one of whom was killed—during halftime of a 1979 Jets game.

When it opened in 1964, Shea Stadium was hailed as the future of modern stadiums. Sadly, the optimism was proven right. The semi-circular, multi-purpose facility helped ignite the Cookie Cutter Monster movement that would rule the next 25 years of American stadia, providing a compromised, municipally funded comfort level that left fans sitting more far than near to the action. Yet at first, Shea Stadium was hugely embraced by New Yorkers. And for good reason. Ebbets Field had been torn down. The Polo Grounds was rotting toward a similar fate. The original Yankee Stadium remained in use—but its aging edifice, lacquered with a tiring coat of snobbery, turned anyone not obsessed with pinstripes completely off. With all due respect to Madison Square Garden, Shea Stadium was the place to be within Gotham over its first five years. There was, of course, the Beatles, whose summer date with Shea in 1965 gave birth to stadium rock. There was, of course, Namath and his Jets, who captivated the sports world with a stunning Super Bowl triumph in 1969.

And there was, of course, the Mets, a hapless-to-date ballclub who, nine months after the Jets’ shocking upset of the mighty Baltimore Colts, doubled down and performed their out-of-nowhere miracle magic in the World Series against the mighty Baltimore Orioles. From Shame to Shea. The irony of Shea Stadium is that it was originally conceived as the new home for the Brooklyn Dodgers. That was back in the mid-1950s, when New York politicians panicked amid rampant rumors that the Boys of Summer were California-bound. When Walter O’Malley, Dodgers owner and baseball’s Lord of Flatbush, was offered the site at Flushing Meadows—a marshy expanse of land that sliced through the heart of Queens, eight miles to the north—he declined, saying it made no sense for a Brooklyn team to play in Queens. O’Malley’s comment sounded loyal to Brooklynites in its context, which to them made it all the more maddening when he darted off to Los Angeles with the Dodgers. The loss of the Dodgers and the New York Giants—who were also offered the stadium site—to the West Coast took an enormous bite out of the Big Apple of baseball and left local authorities scrambling.

Mayor Robert Wagner set up a four-man committee dedicated to returning National League baseball to New York; heading up the group was prominent lawyer William Shea, once described by New York magazine as a “roomful of a man,” a powerful and efficient multitasker and who once was listed alongside O’Malley on the Dodgers’ org chart—before the latter was promoted to the top and began his mechanizations to move the franchise west. Infuriation with his former colleague only gave Shea added incentive to acquire a team for the city’s proposed stadium. Having seen the Dodgers and Giants stolen away, Shea wanted to steal back; it was his only option, given that major league expansion wasn’t on the table. He phoned the Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates and Philadelphia Phillies and asked if they were happy playing in aging facilities with little or no parking. They all said yes.

NL president Warren Giles certainly seemed happy himself with the status quo, rubbing salt into Gotham’s wounds and publicly pronouncing, “Who needs New York?” Across town, the Yankees—highly content with their baseball monopoly within New York—dissed the Flushing Meadows site, with co-owner Dan Topping telling The Sporting News: “Sponsoring a new club housed on the Meadow would be a great way to go broke.” Flat out of both options and patience, Shea went on the offensive. Late in 1958, he announced that if the National League didn’t want to return to New York, he’d start his own league, a third circuit called the Continental League that would tap into a list of emerging postwar cities itching for major league action; Toronto, Buffalo, Denver, Houston were among those with investors ready to get on board. The established two leagues yawned, even after Shea hinted that he had a notable “mystery” baseman man on his side with organizational and political clout. When that man was revealed as Branch Rickey—father of the modern farm system, emancipator of the game and rescuer of struggling franchises in St.

Louis, Brooklyn and Pittsburgh—perspiration began to show on the faces of major league execs. The sweat intensified when Rickey went to Washington and started chatting with prominent U.S. Congressmen about abolishing baseball’s antitrust exemption. The double-barreled threat of the Continental League and Congress proved too much for baseball to ignore, forcing the game to accept expansion for the first time. Undoubtedly, New York would be on that short list, but the NL pointed a stern finger at Shea and the city demanding that they better have a new facility ready. Shea pointed his own finger at a map of Flushing Meadows and replied that, boy, do we have a ballpark site for you. Tomorrowland, Today. The location of Flushing Meadows Stadium, as Shea Stadium was originally named, was ideal if not romantic—easily approachable for those driving from New York’s outlying boroughs, so long as the traffic from parkways and freeways that surrounded the site didn’t become a clogged nightmare, which it often did.

The swampy area-turned-landfill nicknamed the Valley of the Ashes provided a good chunk of acreage for the 1939 World’s Fair, a popular exposition whose promise of the “Dawn of a New Day” was shattered on the eve of the Axis’ temporary wrecking of the world. As designs for the new stadium were being drawn up, so were those for a new World’s Fair next door, one that would promote “Peace Through Understanding,” as hope for progress toward an optimistic future. The new stadium was to be a reflection of that progress, a modern convenience New Yorkers were starving for at a time when the city was growing more old, rust-ridden and mean. Improved freeways would ferry fans in faster. A sea of parking would allow for easier auto access. Escalators, a touched-on novelty at a few other new stadiums, would be located everywhere and quickly get people to their seats, no matter how far from the gate. Mercury vapor lamps would light up the venue. Compared to the dusty, aging relics of Yankee Stadium, Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds, Shea would be Tomorrowland. William Shea wanted to take the modernity a few steps further.

He envisioned a massive, enclosed stadium with 100,000 seats and a retractable dome, but even he couldn’t coax the extra money to make it all work. And besides, the New York Mets, newly born in 1960, weren’t too keen on Shea’s grand ambitions. With their urging, the project was ultimately scaled back to an open-air, partially open stadium with no seating whatsoever behind the outfield fences to give it breathing room and the feel of a ballpark, not a coliseum. An understanding Shea spun, “New York fans are entitled to fresh air,” even if it was some of baseball’s iciest and meanest winds outside of Candlestick Park as Mets fans would eventually discover during early and late season games. Just getting the building, however it was going to look, up and running proved to be an exercise in avoiding gray hair and frayed nerves. The first shovels were held back from hitting the ground in early 1961 when the New York State Assembly surprisingly refused to okay the funds to build the stadium. A startled Mayor Wagner, along with Assemblyman Anthony P.

Savarese, the bill’s sponsor, started talking to the naysayers; the two must have promised them a free trip to Shangri-La, as 40 lawmakers changed their minds the next day, took a second, more successful vote and cleared the biggest financial hurdle for the stadium. The construction stage proved to be even less of a picnic. Two subcontractors went bankrupt. Faulty construction was discovered. Poor access roads bogged down the trucks hauling in materials. Labor stoppages—17 in all—led to many stops and starts. Even Mother Nature wasn’t forgiving; unusually cold winter weather slowed things down. The Mets were originally hoping to move in and begin play at the new stadium for their inaugural 1962 season, but the 1962 deadline became a 1963 deadline, which became a 1964 deadline. The Yankees said no to sharing Yankee Stadium in the interim, so the Mets had no choice but to blow the dust off the Polo Grounds, unused by the majors for five years. Complementing the Fair. Intensive work continued right up to Opening Day, but smiles were abundant.

Shea “christened” in the stadium by taking two bottles of water—one from the Harlem River near the Polo Grounds, the other from the Gowanus Canal near torn-down Ebbets Field—and poured it on the playing field, the last rolls of which were still being laid down while players took batting practice. No word on whether the Gowanus water—legendary for its stifling toxicity—killed the grass. Shea was said to protest, albeit with obliging diffidence, one of the last requests from City Hall regarding the stadium: That it should be named after him. It was a fitting tribute to the man whose absence from the scene would have left New York City without NL baseball the way Los Angeles would later go without pro football for several decades. Shea Stadium, gracefully standing out amid the Flushing Meadows panorama, opened a week before the 1964 World’s Fair; it would, at the time, hold its own as a worthy complement to the architectural splendor next door.

On the outside, a series of equally spaced switchback ramps stuck out from the main structure and created a wavy pattern that gave the structure a harmonic flow of concrete; the ramp structures were randomly shaded by rectangular metal panels—half of them orange, the other half blue—that clanged in the wind and appeared from a distance like chads spit out of an IBM punch card. Topping it all was the crown-like recessing of the upper deck that overhung the main structure wall at an angle, an external feature made all the more sleek by the absence of light towers with most of the lamps embedded within the rim of the upper roof. Within the bowl, Shea Stadium rose upward with five levels of seating (if you include the press balcony); the lowest level consisted of two arch-shaped sections of field boxes that moved on tracks below to be properly positioned for either baseball or football, with seats at the top the arc kissing the loge level above. The vast majority of seating was positioned between the foul poles, which might make for great promotional fodder aimed at the anti-bleacher crowd, but the truth is there was a great deal of nosebleed views to be filled in the voluminous (and steep) upper deck.

Also, all seats—which, in antiquated fashion, were wooden—were aimed at the center of the field; maybe that was wonderful to watch a coin toss before a Jets game, but the bulk of a baseball game takes place between home plate and the pitching mound, not short center field. The lack of bleacher seats also allowed optimal viewing of the main right-field scoreboard, a massive display of information spanning 175 feet wide and 86 feet tall, topped by a 18’x24’ rear projection screen—essentially, a giant, old-fashioned TV. Compared with today’s hi-def assault of visual noise at today’s ballparks, the Shea video screen was quite crude—it was essentially of no use during the day as the sun neutered its weak range of brightness—but in the 1960s, it was quite novel. Matinee Crowds, Serial Losers. Even though the subway conveniently stopped nearby, it seemed everyone decided to take the car to Shea Stadium for its inaugural 1964 contest as parking lots overflowed and spilled into the adjacent Iron Triangle, a slum of auto parts shops and junkyards that remained a neighborly eyesore throughout Shea’s long lifespan.

Despite the transportation headaches, the reviews were glowing for a stadium even as the Amazin’ Mets—all sarcasm intended— lost on cue, 4-3 to the Pittsburgh Pirates. The New York Daily News’ Dick Young asked and answered: “You take a shabby downtrodden bunch of Mets, and you wrap them in a spanking new ballpark that cost somebody $25 million bucks and what have you got? A shabby, downtrodden bunch of Mets, still losing…thereby christening Shea Stadium with tears of defeat.” Other writers got a little carried away in their praise of Shea. The Sporting News’ Carl Lundquist, for one, bragged about the facility’s “elegance” to the point that it should be referred to as “Chez Stadium.” Regardless, the opening of Shea brought relief to local baseball fans who tired of carefully tip-toeing through deteriorating inner city neighborhoods to watch major league ball in deteriorating ballparks. Baseball’s leadoff season at Shea was full of memorable moments.

At the end of May—and perhaps into early June—the second game of a doubleheader between the Mets and the San Francisco Giants lasted 23 innings and a NL-record seven hours and 23 minutes, a marathon showdown recalled (among other things) for being the first game in which Giants pitcher Gaylord Perry used his infamous spitter. Three weeks later, another future Hall of Famer, Jim Bunning, came to town with the Philadelphia Phillies and tossed the NL’s first perfect game in 84 years. The Mets naturally lost both of those games, but it was on the winning side—with a ton of help—when it hosted what would be the only All-Star Game in Shea history, with the NL scoring four times in the bottom of the ninth to win, 7-4. No Mets were involved in the making of that rally. As expected, Shea would not immediately turn the fortunes of the Mets toward a positive direction; in fact, the team would log losing home records in each of its first five years at the new stadium. But the fans didn’t care.

Young and old—many of them seemed to act like the former—they streamed into Shea like kids let loose at a movie theater to view a couple of crummy matinees; it didn’t matter that the Mets sucked, it was their palace to take over and cut loose. And cut loose they did, in big numbers, giving Shea Stadium its “raucous soul” as author and long-time Mets fan Dana Brand once wrote. Mets fans were loud, boisterous and, in the classic New York tradition, never afraid to express their opinions. Banners were one way to get their voices heard, and many were brought in; the Mets were okay with it, even occasionally holding Banner Day at Shea—in stark contrast to the no-banner policy nearby at buttoned-up Yankee Stadium. From this crowd came Karl Ehrhardt, the “Sign Man” who fashioned a whole cache of pre-printed messages in big bold letters and proudly held them up in the air—he always seemed to have the right message for the right moment—from his field-level seat. While broadcaster Red Barber was telling TV cameras to pan a near-empty Yankee Stadium (and getting fired for it), Shea Stadium always had a crowd.

In each of their first ten years at Shea, the Mets easily outdrew the Yankees—playing tired, burned-out ball out at an aging ballpark. In fact, the Mets outdrew all other major league teams except, barely, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Not bad for a franchise that was horrible for half of that time. For sheer character, Mets fans were probably more wild and crazy than those who showed up at Shea for the many rock concerts that took place there. And that’s saying something. The Beatles, of course, kicked things off with their legendary 1965 gig at Shea—the first ever performed at a major outdoor sports facility. Here’s just how nuts it was to have 55,000 people watch the lads from Liverpool; when Elvis Presley was the rage in 1957, the most he ever drew to any one concert was 16,000. The Beatles, and Shea, defined modern stadium rock. Rock music at Shea reached high times, figuratively and perhaps chemically for the crowds, during the early 1980s. A riveting 1982 gig featured The Who on their first farewell tour—with punk rock pioneers The Clash as the opening act.

A year later, The Police played in what lead man Sting recalled as the high point of their career—and yet, they were nearly overshadowed on the day by a then-obscure first act from Georgia called REM. The Miracle Light…And Then, Darkness. The Mets worried that as the new stadium smell wore off and the team continued to lose, attendance would wane. But the first, futile five years of the Mets at Shea Stadium would be followed by the next five, a period bookended by the franchise’s first two pennants. There was, of course, the Miracle—some would say inexplicable—1969 team that came out of nowhere to win 100 games, the NL flag and the World Series over the high-powered Orioles. Great defense (particularly by outfielders Ron Swoboda and Cleon Jones) would benefit the Mets much the same way bad defense (Bill Buckner) would benefit them 17 years later during their second championship run, but excellent pitching would be king of these times; ace Tom Seaver emerged as the epitome of a new kind of Met, one who didn’t find losing funny as original manager Casey Stengel might have thought.

Seaver was also very, very good, and a huge fan favorite; nobody won more games (104, against just 57 losses) and accrued more strikeouts (1,370) at Shea than Tom Terrific. The energetic fans who followed the Mets into the 1970s went into emotional overload in response to the sudden winning; they did a fair deal of damage to the stadium after the 1969 triumph, and they nearly rioted during the 1973 NLCS after long-time Mets favorite Bud Harrelson got into a violent dust-up at second with Cincinnati star Pete Rose; it took a delegation of Mets stars (including Seaver and Willie Mays, back in New York for his career twilight) to approach the faithful and calm them down. Shea was at its busiest in the mid-1970s when the Mets and Jets were joined by the Yankees and football Giants, both of whom were in need of a temporary home while Yankee Stadium received a makeover. The Yankees were not always gracious guests; before one contest in 1975, a pregame military tribute included a 21-gun salute that accidentally knocked down part of the center field wall.

Later in the season, Yankee outfielder Elliott Maddox sued everyone in sight after hurting his knee on a Shea turf beaten up from everyday use between April and October. The case remained open for ten years until Maddox finally lost. (Ironically, Maddox played the final three seasons of his career…for the Mets.) In the late 1970s, as New York City spiraled toward bankruptcy and the surviving remnants of the Mets’ original ownership group refused to accept baseball’s new era of free agency, Shea Stadium descended into its darkest days. It got especially dark when the infamous New York blackout in the summer of 1977 put a halt to a Mets-Cubs game. The city had little if any money to provide upkeep of Shea, while the Mets had little inclination to spruce it up. M. Donald Grant, the Mets’ chairman, seemed less interested in winning and more interested in angering the fan base—most especially when he traded Seaver in a 1977 move that generated the need for a bodyguard by his side while moving around Shea.

Before long, there weren’t too many fans to worry about bumping into; by 1979, attendance reached under a million for the first and only time at Shea (the strike-shortened 1981 campaign excluded). Even Karl Ehrhardt, the Sign Man, stopped coming to Shea after Mets security gradually grew more hostile at some of the less flattering banners. Compounding the Mets’ woes was that the Yankees, playing at renovated Yankee Stadium, had reclaimed their glory and recaptured the hearts of New York baseball fans under the turbulent but rewarding ownership of George Steinbrenner—who unlike the Mets took advantage of free agency and were winning as a result of it. A New Doubleday at Shea. To the rescue in 1980 came new ownership, and not a moment too soon. A turnaround on the field would take its time, but the new regime—led by Nelson Doubleday, a descendent of disputed baseball inventor Abner Doubleday—didn’t waste any time giving Shea an aesthetic upgrade. The wooden seats were replaced with plastic ones. The pastels and grays were painted over with brighter hues, principally orange and blue from the Mets’ brand palette.

Bleachers were added behind left field, and panache was added behind center as the Mets debuted the “Big Apple” structure, in which a giant red apple with a Mets logo rose from a black top hat—many thought it was a giant pot—whenever a New York player went deep. In the decade to follow, more alterations were made; 50 luxury boxes were added, the faded “chad” panels adorning the outside ramps were removed and the portion of the facades in between the pedestrian ramps—which had exposed the concourses with vertical poles that looked like prison bars from afar—were completely covered with deep blue paneling decorated with giant multi-colored abstracts of ballplayers lit by neon. The giant scoreboard was updated, with the tube TV long gone—replaced with a more detailed variation of the illustrated New York City skyline used in the Mets’ logo. One modification was ultimately made to the skyline when, after 9-11, a memorial ribbon was placed over the outline of the World Trade Center. Throughout Shea Stadium’s long existence, the playing field and its fair, symmetrical dimensions never changed. The outfield wall went through some modifications, not including those forged by the 21-gun salute in 1975.

The original 12 feet of brick created confusion because it was topped by four feet of wire fencing—which, if hit on the fly, was deemed a home run per the ground rules. (This begged the question: Why put the wire there in the first place?) An orange line was painted atop the bricks in an attempt to give the wall procedural clarity, but that didn’t work. So finally in 1979, an inner eight-foot wooden fence was placed in front of the original wall, reducing dimensions by three feet across the field. Still Crazy After All These Years. Under Doubleday and his successor, Fred Wilpon (who went in with Doubleday as a 1% minority investor), the vibe so badly missing since the height of the Seaver Era gradually returned to Shea Stadium. The fans, back in record numbers, were still crazy after all these years—and they wrapped themselves around a new breed of Mets players who might have been even crazier. On and off the field, the Mets’ rosters of the 1980s and 1990s seemed tailor made for salivating headline writers at the New York Post.

There was the 1986 championship team, which seemed to relish every opportunity to physically take on an opponent. There was David Cone, a 20-game winner who inspired Mets fans to wear “Coneheads” and was notorious for performing a different kind of warm-up in the Shea bullpen within the presence of a young woman. There was Keith Hernandez and Darryl Strawberry, who got violent with each other while posing for the team photo. There was class clown reliever Roger McDowell, who fictionally spat the Magic Loogie at Seinfeld’s Cosmo Kramer and Newman the Mailman in the Shea parking lot after they harassed Hernandez for a costly error. And there was, sadly, Hall-of-Fame careers derailed when Mets phenoms Strawberry—whose 127 homers at Shea were the most hit by any one player—and pitcher Dwight Gooden descended into drugs and other unwanted chaos. There were even moments to satisfy those masochistically yearning for Casey Stengel’s “Amazin” days of yore. Hard-luck pitcher Anthony Young lost a major league-record 27 straight decisions, while catcher Mackey Sasser struggled to make a simple return throw to the pitcher.

Opposing players who believed they could take on Shea’s fans quickly realized how off their rocker they were. Like John Rocker, the outspoken Atlanta closer who in 2000 visited New York with the Braves shortly after making offseason—and off-color, to say the least—remarks about New Yorkers. Rocker required about as much security at Shea as the Beatles, as fans similarly wanted a piece of him—but for entirely different reasons. When the Mets took their fourth (and last) Shea pennant that year, the Rocker experience was not lost on their World Series opponents, the Yankees; they desperately tried to keep Roger Clemens, who earlier in the year knocked out Mets star catcher Mike Piazza with a fastball to the head—and left the veins of Mets fans popping with vengeance—from pitching at Shea during the series. They succeeded. Other opponents simply let their bats and arms do the talking—and there was little Mets fans could do but shake their fists at them in frustration. Say “Chipper Jones” to Mets fans, for instance, and you’ll likely be met with an angry gnashing of teeth.

The Atlanta infielder so enjoyed playing at Shea (where he hit .313 with 19 homers in 88 games) that he named his third child Shea. But Jones was hardly the most potent visitor at Shea. Among those who fared much better were a couple of San Diego Padres, Gene Richards and Hall of Famer Dave Winfield, who respectively hit .389 and .385 for the two highest averages among non-Mets with 100-plus at-bats. And not only did Willie Stargell hit the first-ever home run at Shea, he hit more than any other visitor with 26—except Mike Schmidt, who in later years would tie him. As Shea Stadium’s life wound down and its replacement, Citi Field, rose beyond the outfield for all to see, Mets fans packed the joint as never before, as if they knew they were going to miss the place when it was gone. In Shea’s final season of 2008, the fans practically maxed out the 55,000-seat capacity for every game—leading to a franchise-record four million fans, making the Mets the second (and last to date) NL team to do so.

The Mets weren’t the only folks packing them in that year: A final concert, entitled “The Last Play at Shea,” featured an all-star cast of legends and rockers (not John Rocker) that included ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, Tony Bennett, the Who’s Roger Daltrey and Garth Brooks. The Mets’ own last game at Shea was bittersweet in more ways than one, as for the second straight year they lost to the Florida Marlins to knock themselves out of playoff contention on the very last day of the regular season. Overall, the Mets won more games (1,859) than they lost (1,713) at Shea and averaged 26,500 per game, well above the major league average for the same period. Despite all that great pitching, the Mets never threw a no-hitter at Shea (nor anywhere else, for that matter), but they did perform five triple plays—one of those missed by Odd Couple sportswriter Oscar Madison when he had to take a call from roommate Felix Unger warning him not to eat frankfurters at the ballpark, because he’d be making them for dinner.

While many stadiums from the era of multi-purpose monstrosity are quickly scorned like the big, outdated tube TV discarded to the front sidewalk with “Free” taped to its side, Shea Stadium seems to be the one exception, one that remains cherished in the minds of Mets fans in spite of its drawbacks. Citi Field, the Mets’ current home, is nice and modern and contains all the expected bells and whistles, but it just hasn’t seemed to catch on with fans who see it as soullessly corporate. (That the Mets posted losing records in each of their first six years there didn’t help.) Maybe, in time, Citi Field will catch up and match Shea, emotion for emotion. But it has its work cut out. Share this page with a friend. Have a comment, question or request? Contact us at This Great Game. © 2017 This Great Game. Photos credited Flickr—Gary Dunaier are © Gary Dunaier and are used with permission of the photographer. Shea Stadium | stadium, New York City, New York, United States | Britannica.com stadium, New York City, New York, United States THIS IS A DIRECTORY PAGE. Britannica does not currently have an article on this topic.

Pope John Paul II at Shea Stadium, Queens, N.Y., October 1979. USN&WR—Thomas J. O’Halloran/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-U9-38282-12) Learn about this topic in these articles: in New York Mets ...of the 19th century American Association. The team, also known as the Amazin’ Mets or the Amazins, began play in 1962 at the Polo Grounds; after two seasons they moved into the brand-new Shea Stadium. (In 2009 the Mets began playing their home games at Citi Field.) in stadium: Design innovations ...was the interference with visibility by the columns supporting the roof. Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles was the first tiered stadium to provide column-free views from all seats (1959), followed by Shea Stadium in New York, which added field seat sections that rotate around the stadium to permit conversion from a baseball to a football arrangement (1964; demolished 2008). Several other...

13MLB: Stadium Demolition - ESPN ESPN Saying Goodbye: The Last Gasps of Ballparks We've Lost Grid Shea Stadium: 1964-2008 Photograph By Rich Pilling/MLB Photos/Getty Images They started tearing down the home of the Mets in October of 2008, dismantling it because a New York City law prohibited its implosion. By Feb. 10, 2009, this is what was left. Eight days later, it was all gone. Shea Stadium - History, Photos & More of the former NFL stadium of the New York Jets SHEA STADIUM SHEA STADIUM Flushing, NY Throughout the Jets 40 year history, the team has never had a stadium of its own. After the loss of the New York Giants (MLB) in the late 1950s, New York City had only one baseball team. Four lawyers, including William Shea were appointed to acquire a baseball franchise for the city. Meanwhile in 1959, the Jets, originally known as the Titans were founded. They played their first game at Polo Grounds in September 1960.

By the early 1960s, New York was awarded a baseball franchise, the Mets. However one stipulation was that the team would play at a new stadium within the Mets first several years of existence. The main reason why the Giants (MLB) left for San Francisco was because Polo Grounds was deteriorating rapidly. By November 1961, construction began on a multipurpose stadium in Queens, NY. Both the Jets and the Mets shared Polo Grounds for two years. Originally known as Flushing Meadows Park, the Mets played the first game at the stadium in April 1964. The New York Jets made their debut at the stadium on September 12, 1964 against the Denver Broncos. The five tiered stadium seated nearly 60,000 fans for football. It was the first stadium of its size to have an extensive escalator system, being able to convert from a football gridiron to a baseball diamond by two motor operated stands and in which every seat was directed at the center of the field. The Jets and Mets shared Shea Stadium for 19 years.

After failing to get money to renovate Shea Stadium, owner of the Jets, Leon Hess decided to move his team to Giants Stadium , home of the New York Giants (NFL). The Jets played their last game at Shea Stadium on December 10, 1983. The New York Mets continued to play at Shea Stadium for over 25 years. In 2009, the Mets moved to Citi Field , constructed adjacent to Shea Stadium. In winter 2009, Shea Stadium was demolished in order to create additional parking for Citi Field. SHEA STADIUM Merchandise A long, colorful history: New York has hosted big games - USATODAY.com A long, colorful history: New York has hosted big games Posted Enlarge 1954 AP photo Ebbets Field, located in the Pigtown section of Flatbush, served as the home park of the Brooklyn National League franchise, known as the Bridgegrooms, Superbas, Robins and ultimately the Dodgers.

FOUR OTHER NOTABLE NEW YORK BALLPARKS Hilltop Park -- In life: It took six weeks to erect this 15,000-seat wooden stadium for the American League's New York Highlanders in 1903 atop a rock formation in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. The Washington Senators' Walter Johnson pitched three shutouts in three starts over four days there late in the 1908 season. The Highlanders allowed the New York Giants to play 28 games at Hilltop Park early in the 1911 season after a fire broke out at the nearby Polo Grounds. After the Highlanders left for the Polo Grounds starting in 1913, they changed their named to the Yankees. -- In death: Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center's maternity ward stretches along what was nce the first-base line. Union Grounds -- In life: In the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, it was the home to four pro teams, including the National League's New York Mutuals in 1876. Opened on May 15, 1862, it is believed to be the USA's first enclosed park.

The Star-Spangled Banner was heard before the inaugural game, which attracted 8,000 fans. -- In death: An armory built in the late 1800s and a school occupy the ballpark site. Washington Park -- In life: From 1884 to 1891, fans attending games there had to evade street cars along Fourth Avenue, helping give birth to the Brooklyn team's nickname Trolley Dodgers, which was eventually shortened. From 1898 to 1912, Brooklyn's NL clubs played at a second Washington Park, located across the street. To the chagrin of team management, beer-drinking fans watched games for free from rooftops and fire escapes. -- In death: At the site of the first Washington Park, kids play baseball on a concrete field. A portion of the second stadium's wall stands as part of a power company's storage yard. Eastern Park -- In life: Brooklyn's NL club played at this site in the East New York section of Brooklyn from 1891 to 1897. The field was the site of illegal Sunday games in the 1870s, when fans risked a $10 fine.

-- In death: The site is an industrial area near the junction of two subway lines. Capitoline Grounds -- In life: Several pro clubs played on this field in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn that was flooded for ice skating in the winter. The New York Mutuals played there in 1876, the National League's first year. -- In death: It's the site of a New York City high school and houses of worship. By Bob Kimball YANKEE STADIUM Panoramic photos: Views of new Yankee Stadium. By Stephen Borelli and Bob Kimball, USA TODAY The new Yankee Stadium is modeled on the stadium's original 1923 version and the Mets' Citi Field with a nod to the Brooklyn Dodgers' former home of Ebbets Field. A look at Ebbets Field and the other classic New York City ballparks. Ebbets Field •Home teams: Brooklyn Dodgers (1913-1957; known in various seasons as the Bridegrooms, Superbas, Robins and Dodgers) •In life: The move to Ebbets Field put owner Charles Ebbets into the big leagues.

He had paid $60,000 for Washington Park 15 years earlier but needed $750,000 — and two new partners — to fund his 18,000-seat double-decked palace in a land-filled section of Flatbush known as Pigtown. PHOTO GALLERY: New Yankee Stadium The new facility, which was served by nine trolley lines, featured gilded ticket windows and a marbled entrance called a rotunda with a 27-foot-high ceiling. Ebbets Field opened on April 5, 1913, with the Superbas posting a 3-2 exhibition victory vs. the New York Highlanders, who became better known as the Yankees. The real National League schedule kicked in four days later when 12,000 fans watched the Phillies win 1-0. Ebbets had its share of characters that mirrored Brooklyn's often-boisterous population. Casey Stengel, a fan favorite when Ebbets opened, returned in 1918 after a trade to the Pittsburgh Pirates, soaking up the fans' applause as a bird flew out from under his cap.

Hilda Chester rooted the Dodgers home with a loud voice and a cowbell. Gladys Gooding played the organ, while the fans' "Sym-phony" band provided off-beat entertainment from the seats behind the home dugout. Ebbets Field fans also had front-row seats to history. The stadium's first night game on June 15, 1938, also marked the second of Johnny Vander Meer's record back-to-back no-hitters. Three years later, the Dodgers stood one out from tying the World Series when catcher Mickey Owen's passed ball on a third strike sparked a four-run rally for the Yankees, who won the game 7-4 and the Series the next day. Jackie Robinson integrated baseball as the 20th-century's first black player on April 15, 1947. Robinson's arrival also boosted the standings and the bottom line as the '47 Dodgers won the NL pennant and sold an Ebbets Field-high 1.8 million tickets. Only winning teams took the field in the final 13 years at Ebbets, as six clubs won NL pennants, and three others were alive on the final day of the season.

Brooklynites also visited Ebbets to watch college and professional football, soccer and Negro leagues baseball. •In death: The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles after the 1957 season. The park was demolished in 1960 and was followed by construction of Ebbets Field Apartments. A plaque was placed in one corner of the building to note the ballpark. *** Polo Grounds •Home teams: New York Giants (1891-1957); New York Yankees (1913-1922); New York Mets (1962-1963); National Football League's New York Giants (1925-1955); American Football League's New York Titans (1960-1963; became New York Jets in 1963) •In life: The name Polo Grounds drew its roots from a ballpark at the northern edge of Central Park that featured polo, but also New York Giants baseball from 1883-1888.

The Giants then migrated north to two more sites in Manhattan, settling on the familiar spot on the Harlem River at Coogan's Bluff between 157th and 159th streets. The bluff rose high above the rear of the ballpark, allowing freeloaders to catch games at a distance. That tradition went up in smoke when a fire burned down the structure in 1911. This last manifestation of the Polo Grounds was built with a grandstand tall enough to deny the bluff-climbers. The park's horseshoe look was a byproduct of owner John T. Brush's desire to build a "mammoth structure" and model for future ballparks. While the palatial Polo Grounds was designed with baseball in mind, its shape would have favored polo. The left and right foul poles were 277 and 258 feet from home plate, respectively, while left-center, center, and right-center fields ranged from 445 to 483 feet from home.

But had the wall not been 483 feet to dead center field, Willie Mays wouldn't have had room to grab a blast from the Cleveland Indians' Vic Wertz over his shoulder in front of the wall in 1954. Mays' Giants went on to win their seventh World Series. The franchise hasn't won one since. The touchstone moment in franchise history occurred at the Polo Grounds in a year (1951) the Giants didn't win the Series. In the tiebreaking game of a best-of-three series to decide the National League pennant, the Giants' Bobby Thomson drove a pitch from the Brooklyn Dodgers' Ralph Branca into the left-field stands in the bottom of the ninth inning, giving the Giants a 5-4 win and completing a four-run, ninth-inning rally. Babe Ruth graced the Polo Grounds from 1920-1922, after which the Yankees moved just across the Harlem River into new Yankee Stadium.

When the Mets played at the Polo Grounds their first two seasons, the attraction was manager Casey Stengel, who muttered "Can't anybody here play this game?" as his players lost 231 games in the team's two seasons there. The Polo Grounds hosted Army-Navy as well as other big college football games that featured local teams. But the largest crowd in the park's history (more than 82,000) watched champion Jack Dempsey get knocked out of the ring by Luis Angel Firpo in the first round of their 1923 heavyweight bout. Dempsey got back in with the aid of ringside news reporters and KO'd Firpo in the second round. •In death: The Polo Grounds was destroyed in 1964 by the same wrecking ball that razed Ebbets Field. In its spot today stands a large apartment complex called the Polo Grounds Towers.

*** Shea Stadium •Home teams: New York Mets (1964-2008); New York Yankees (1974-1975); New York Jets (1964-1983) •In life: When Shea Stadium was completed in 1964, it provided a gleaming contrast to Yankee Stadium for some New York baseball fans. Yankee Stadium's product, which by 1965 had turned into a second-division team as Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Roger Maris and others aged, decayed more than the stadium. NL fans in the city, who never liked the Yankees when they beat up on their Giants and Dodgers, headed to Shea to throw their support behind the Mets, who outdrew the Yankees from 1964-1975, including the two years the clubs shared Shea. Shea was named after New York lawyer William A. Shea, who was instrumental in bringing NL baseball back to New York. It was built near the site of the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing, Queens.

The stadium was designed during the Astrodome age with the intention of having a dome put on top of it, but the city realized the foundations wouldn't support the roof. An open-air Shea resulted in frequent noisy interludes as jets took off from LaGuardia Airport. The noise from the crowd could also be deafening when the Mets reached the postseason, especially during the 1969 and 1986 seasons, when the Mets won their two World Series titles. The gritty '69 "Miracle Mets" improved by 27 games from 1968 to go 100-62 and toppled the favored Baltimore Orioles in the Series. The '86 Mets, flush with stars from Keith Hernandez to Gary Carter to Darryl Strawberry to Dwight Gooden, won 108 games but needed the help of Bob Stanley's wild pitch to the Mets' Mookie Wilson and Bill Buckner's error on Wilson's slow roller in the bottom of the 10th inning of World Series Game 6 for a 6-5 victory.

Shea went mad, much as it had for the Beatles in 1965 during those days when it was regularly getting the better of its more famous counterpart in the Bronx. The band returned for an encore in 1966 but never performed at Yankee Stadium. •In death: Shea has been torn down to make room for the completion of Citi Field, which debuts this season. (For more on Citi Field, see Page 51.) The former site of Shea will be a Citi Field parking lot. Sources: Ballparks of North America, by Michael Benson; Classic Ballparks, by James Buckley Jr.; Diamonds: The Evolution of the Ballpark, by Michael Gershman; Lost Ballparks, by Lawrence S. Ritter; Take Me Out to the Ballpark: An Illustrated Tour of Baseball Parks Past and Present, by Josh Leventhal; Green Cathedrals by Philip J.

Lowry; Baseball Memories 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen; Ballpark Sourcebook: Diamond Diagrams, by Oscar Palacios, Eric Robin and STATS, Inc.; baseball-reference .com; ballparktour.com; ballparks .com; New York Yankees; Los Angeles Dodgers; New York Mets. Posted E-mail | Print | To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones . For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com . Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com . Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more .

Question: Which New York Stadium was home to the New York Mets from 1964-2008, and was demolished in 2009?
Answer: Shea Stadium