A Humble Proposal

Three days and no real games. It's funny how a winning streak affects a fan- I, for one, turn into a baseball crazed junkie, desperate to catch my next fix of Pelfrey dominating or Tatis driving in a game winner or even Delgado hitting a high fly over the wall. If you offered me a three day break after the San Diego San Disaster, I couldn't have taken it fast enough. Right now, I feel like Bob Saget in Half Baked; except for baseball, not coke. Okay, maybe not exactly like that, but close to it.

Anyway, with all this time between games I needed to work on my Mets-related fix somehow. What I came up with is a humble proposal for Citi Field, or more specifically, a section of the Citi Field parking lot.

So the Stadium I've grown up with is being torn down for a shiny new ballpark of the future of the past. I've come to grips with that. While there are a couple of reasons to like Shea without needing to put on Met-colored glasses (the sheer capacity of it, for one), the consensus among non-fans is that it's a bit of a dump. I may not agree with them, but there's really no sense in fighting the future at this point. I'm going to go to a few more games at the old purple monster, take lots of pictures, try to get everywhere I've never been, and generally enjoy it while I can.

I don't have much of a problem with them tearing Shea down after it closes, either. As we've seen with Tiger Stadium, leaving an old, dying stadium out to rot is just depressing. So tear it down, I say sadly. Unplug the the life support and allow Shea to be remembered in the shape it is today, rather than lurk over the shoulder of Citi Field, filling up with dust and weeds.

No, I don't have a problem with tearing down the building, but I do have a problem with what's happening to the field itself.

Check out this picture:

As you can see, the field itself is going to be replaced by a section of parking lot. That's it. That's it? The field of my childhood dreams? The field of the hopes of millions of fans? The source of our anxieties and elations? All that magic, all that belief and all that, um, Amazin-ness will be turned into asphalt and paint and oil stains? That's it?

As far as I can estimate from the picture above and this one, the section of parking lot replacing the field will hold about 400 cars, more or less. That's nothing to sneeze at. 400 spots at 15 dollars a piece (or whatever ungodly amount they'll be charging) for 81 games a year is about a half-million dollars worth of income for the team. That's enough to pay one rookie's salary. The location of these spots is also worth noting- they're some of the best spots in the lot.

I don't care. No way that field, the field that Seaver and Tug and Mookie and Doc and Fonzie and, heck, Timo called home should be turned into the land of car fires and fender benders and calling AAA because you left your keys in the ignition.

Here's my idea: turn those 400 parking spots into a picnic area. Let the grass continue to grow green on the place of our memories. Let fans grill dogs and listen to the pre-game on portable radios on Mr. Wilpon's front yard. Let kids play catch on the spots where their parents' and grandparents' heroes played. Put up statues of Ron Swoboda's and Endy Chavez's catches, of Mookie Wilson hustling out his ground ball, of Jesse Orosco kneeling, holding his arms over his head in a victorious 'V'. Plant a tree where robins can nest on the spot the Grand Slam Single came down. Heck, I'd love to see a little statue commemorating a certain cat.

It can be done- a nice, grassy, tree-shaded grove for the fans who loved Shea and their blue and orange clad descendants. There's been plenty of parking available, even during Citi Field's construction; and that was for a stadium with a much larger capacity. The new stadium will hold fewer fans and cost them more money than Shea. Give us something back, Fred.

Give us Shea Park.