Superlatives ran amok at last night's opening of the Mets' new ball yard in Queens, but ironic was not among them.
A pity, really, because there is a wonderful, if little known tale that explains a great deal about the new and handsome Citi Field -- how and why it came to be, and why it looks and feels as it does.
The new park has risen in what was the parking lot of the late and barely lamented Shea Stadium, which when it opened in 1964 represented the apex of stadium design: airy and modern and with only the vaguest hint of brick.
Shea is gone, as is the Vet in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh's Three Rivers, Cincinnati's Riverfront, even the Eighth Wonder of the World, the Astrodome. Do I spot a tear? I think not.
In their place, of course, are ballparks that are meant to transport us back to a simpler time, when men wore straw skimmers to the ballpark, and neckties, too. The new parks are smaller than the big bowls they replaced, a downsizing in scale -- though not in ticket price -- designed to create a sense of intimacy, ironic (there it is) in that that was the very quality that places like Shea were built to eradicate.
The Shea-to-Citi connection is juicy stuff from an anthropological point of view. In the beginning -- which is to say, in the early 20th century -- there was Ebbets Field (there was also the Polo Grounds, but it is hard to take seriously a ballpark with a center field so deep that it ended with a ladder that led to the clubhouse). Ebbets Field was small and cramped and it had no parking, and it was these deficits that compelled the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Walter O'Malley, to search for new digs. Preferably in downtown Brooklyn -- yes, Brooklyn sentimalists, the old SOB really wanted to stay; I read the letters; it's no lie -- and failing that, Chavez Ravine.
When O'Malley departed, taking the pliable Horace Stoneham of the crosstown Giants with him to California, New York was left without a National League club. The city fathers, chagrined at losing not one club but two -- ah, what Oscar Wilde would have done with that one -- dispatched an emissary, William Shea, to scour the land for a National League club that might want to relocate.
Shea set out bearing a gift: the promise that the city would build a new ballpark in Queens. Emphasis on the new. Because in the late 1950s new is what people wanted. New homes in new towns built near new highways.
Long story short, Shea found no takers. But he did gain enlightenment. The owners had no intention of moving, or of expanding. Rather than return home empty-handed, Shea sought out the wisest counsel in the land, Branch Rickey, the most forward-looking executive in the history of the game.
Rickey, then in unwelcome retirement after five losing seasons in Pittsburgh, preached boldness. Don't go begging for an extra team or two, he advised. Better to start a whole new league, with clubs in New York and seven cities that had tried and failed to secure membership in the big leagues.
The story of that league -- the Continental -- and how the owners worked feverishly until they killed it, will wait for another day. But suffice it to say that the key to the whole enterprise was New York, and that the key to New York was that new ballpark in Queens. And that the key to the ballpark in Queens was that it look and feel nothing like Ebbets Field.
Yet here we are, 50 years later, and standing hard by the Grand Central Parkway is a ballpark that approximates the look and the feel of -- don't all shout out at once -- Ebbets Field.
Tastes do change. But that misses the point. Fifty years ago the prevailing view was that Americans wanted nothing more than to get away from each other -- a little space, a little green, life looking not out from the stoop, but to the backyard. But in the years that followed, baseball did not blossom in those big new parks.
Indeed, something was lost in the move to places like Shea -- and here is that word again: intimacy. Shea was selling the park that was to bear his name as something altogether different than what had come before: he was not merely selling grand (because, yes, parks like Yankee Stadium were grand). He was selling was selling space and air and distance.
Last night, in an arena where Shea's name fittingly joins the retired numbers of Seaver, Stengel, Hodges and Jackie Robinson, baseball witnessed a return to the past.
We're back where we started, in Ebbets Field, rotunda and all.
Citi Field - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mets open Citi Field with a dud, fall to Padres - Baseball ...
Ebbets Field - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ebbets Field and Shea: Short-Lived, Well Remembered - Bats Blog ...
While I appreciate the desire for a new ballpark, and the owner's love of those same Dodgers,Citifield doesn't evoke any nostalgia in me. If I moved from a 40+ year old, four bedroom house where I raised a family to a brand-new, two bedroom empty-nest condo, I guess I'd appreciate the modern amenities and the intimacy of my new digs. But whatever touches the builder put into the condo to resemble his boyhood home would certainly not make me feel instantly comfortable in a place where the only things that look familiar are the jerseys and Jay Horowitz.
I'll get used to it, and may even come to love it. But my "good old days" were spent at the place so many called a dump and wished good riddance.
Anaheim Stadium was also new in 1965 and it was relatively more intimate than the multipurpose parks east of the Mississippi. There were no outfield seats until the Rams moved in and ruined the ambiance of what was a pleasant place to see a game.
Getting back to the Dodgers leaving, though, I understand how that happened. It is talked about at length in Fetter's "Taking on the Yankees." To be frank, I think the right decision was ultimately made to deny O'Malley a new park. Of course, it also benefited me, a native Southern California guy.
And if you stopped watching baseball because the players wanted a piece of the revenue they help generate, then you were never really a fan to begin with.
Oh, give me a break. Even with the Giants and Dodgers leaving, (which was GREAT for baseball, by the way) baseball fans in NY still had the Yankees; it's not like they took professional baseball away from New York.
Besides, who cares? It was 50 years ago. Stop whining about it and being such a provincial crybaby.
Fenway Park is NOT the "oldest professional baseball stadium in the country." That honor, as I know, belongs to Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama. I've been there, seen an old Oakland As minor league play there featuring Reggie, Blue Moon, and Catfish (at least I think they were all there at the same time). It was in the 1970's before the Birmingham Barons pulled out of Rickwood and moved to nearby suburb Hoover.
But Rickwood Field remains - with one minor league game played there each year - continuing to make it a professional league stadium. If you're interested, which I hope you are, check out their website. The stadium is a throw-back. The lights are the same as in 1936. It's incredible.
http://www.rickwood.com/
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There's no denying the role racism played in decisions by MLB teams. but I don't think it applies as much here. Now if you want to talk Griffiths pulling the Senators out of DC, well, okay.
Don't we pay enough already for baseball tickets?