Every now and again, Loge13 readers will send in their memories of Shea. It’s great to hear other folks chime in about what Shea Stadium has meant to them over the years.
This weekend, one Loge13 reader (we’ll call him Bob) sent us this scan - his ticket stub from Game 3 of the '69 World Series:
As Bob said, it was the first World Series game ever played at Shea. He remembers:
I had a great view of Tommie Agee's first catch. I'll be shedding a tear when they knock down the old stadium in a few years....my Dad took me to my very first baseball game there in '65.”
He also sent along a scan of the 1969 Mets yearbook:
I always especially liked this yearbook, and not just because it is one of the few Mets annuals to feature Shea on the cover. There’s also a certain innocence about the 1969 yearbook. Nobody could have guessed that year’s edition of the Mets would pass into legend as the World champs. There are some short features about Gil Hodges’ recovery from his first heart attack, and a pictoral of Sister Francis Consuela, a Sister of St. Joseph’s in Brooklyn and a rabid Cleon Jones fan. But no chest-thumping predictions about how the team would triumph over the nascent NL East that year, as anyone who would suggest such nonsense would have been eliminated from the yearbook staff.
I also like this yearbook because my older brother defaced it. He turned 9 in 1969 and was so excited by the Mets becoming World Series champs that he went through the whole book and documented his thoughts (why didn’t he just post his musings in his blog like everyone else?). As a result, the yearbook’s probably only worth the 50 cent cover price but it’s priceless.
More excellent mementos from Bob tomorrow.
Comments
It is a very nice yearbook, although the cover is a bit surreal - three heads floating above Shea Stadium. Production values weren't quite as sophisticated back then, I guess....