In the waning days of 2008, a bunch of Loge13 readers got a late holiday present: their Shea seats.
After being delayed for weeks, giant crates began arriving on the doorsteps of those fans willing to drop $869 on two authentic Met behind-holders.
At least one reader was not pleased with his package.
Gerard wrote in a comment: I got my seats today and there is on one way to describe them...RIP OFF!!!!!
The seats are dirty, have to somehow be modified so that you can
actually sit in them and have nothing on them to indicate that they are
authentic.
The Wilpon's must need the money from these seats to offset their investment losses to Bernie Madoff.
So far, Gerard seems to be in the minority. Ron Hunt called me as soon as his Loge level honeys arrived and sent along these photos and his thoughts:
My Loge Shea Stadium seats arrived today and I
must admit that while I was very excited when the email came with the
delivery date but after seeing them and SITTING in them, I'm beside
myself.
Having to drag these 95 lbs beasts from my driveway,
into my basement and then up the stairs to my living room, I felt in
the season, like I had the power of ten Grinch's plus 2.
My
"new Loge" seats, numbers 3 & 4, are kinda worn, they look like
they lived on the third base line loge box or left field loge box
seats. They are faded from the sun - which went down that foul line -
unlike my pristine Loge13 seats covered by the press and suite level
from the climates. But faded Shea seats seems appropriate...and they
are in my living room.
The armrests have been stripped and repainted. On either side are
remnants of the hardware from the seat bottoms of the seats next to
you. They did a nice job of adding these black L - brackets to
accommodate for the fact that the seats were previously attached to the
cement risers and not the floor. I'm thinking mahogany or teak for
under my seats, your thoughts are welcome. And, yes - they may never
make it to my backyard, they are too cool in my living room. My own
bleachers!
The best thing was sitting in them, it was an immediate feeling
of, I've been here, and very comforting. We've all been in many stadia,
but these are Shea seats, no doubt. It was great to sit back, put my
arm over the empty seat and relax, close my eyes and think of Shea,
imagining the old section and park.
Just in my mind and with a lot more legroom.
Congratulations Ron!
Comments
My blue seats look as if they tore the stadium down first and were dug from the rubble later.
The seat backs have a nice layer of concrete dust or paint that gave them more of a confederate gray look. To make matters worse, some heathen scraped the word Yankees into one of them, most likely with the edge of his crackpipe.
The seat part is nice and blue though. I'm thinking of all the cleaning and buffing that I'm going to have to do for an item that I know was clean on the last day of Shea