Where's The Love? (For Bill Shea, That Is)

By Taryn "Coop" Cooper
Posted Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Let me just preface this by saying, I love Jackie Robinson. Love what he did for baseball, love what he did as a player. I am convinced I was reincarnated from a Brooklyn bum who lived, breathed and ate baseball. Without Jackie, we don’t have him in the history books, yes, but we also don’t have Willie Mays, Juan Marichal, Bobby Gibson, Roberto Clemente…heck, we don’t have Jose Reyes or Carlos Beltran.

We see the changes Jackie Robinson made to baseball daily.

But I have to go ahead and sort of disagree with the Wilpons and their “nod” to Jackie Robinson in the new Citi Field.

Jackie Robinson was never a Met. He was a Dodger, and he doesn’t just belong to New York baseball. He belongs to ALL of baseball. Personally, I think it’s a little self-serving and a bit narcissistic to use his name in a rotunda area. It’s one thing if the nod is for the promotion and advancement in major league baseball, something I truly believe my generation takes for granted today.

But I think we Mets fans know the true ulterior motives of the Wilpons here.

The whole point of that rant is that Fred Wilpon has made it his sole purpose in life to make us remember that the Dodgers once existed in New York baseball. OK, we get it, Fred. With CitiField, though, where’s the nod to Mets history going to be? I mean, haven’t we been force-fed enough Brooklyn Dodger dogs?

The Mets exist as the National League representatives of Major League Baseball, in the here and now, and we have one man to thank for that. And that’s William A. Shea.

Without Bill Shea’s help, the Mets, simply, would not exist. They might be named differently, or play someplace else - out on Long Island or in Brooklyn - but in 1962, our beloved Mets were born.

Bill decided to almost singlehandedly play hardball with the baseball decision makers. A lawyer with a set of brass cajones, Bill almost DARED the baseball executives to expand the league by creating his own third competitive league, the Continental League, under which one of the “flagship” cities would be New York.

Hey, it wasn’t National League baseball, but it wasn’t the Yankees!

Shea’s decision to play hardball brought back another team to New York to feed the hunger of National League fans, who, as my dad has always told me, felt a stronger kinship in New York. Fans up until the Mets came along had to either root against the Yankees or not care about baseball. Think about the 1955 Dodgers, who finally beat those Yankees and had a parade up Broadway and a party to rival Mardi Gras? The home of the infamous “Shot Heard Round the World?” How could your dad or uncle or other loved one possibly root for a non-National League team after these historic events?

It’s a long running joke amongst Mets fans that the owner and operator of the club wants the hey day back from when he was a kid, dodging the cars on the Brooklyn streets, meeting up with his friend Sandy Koufax at Ebbets Field to catch a game (actually, I made that part up, but I know they played baseball together at Brooklyn's Lafayette High School — ironically, Wilpon was the pitcher and Koufax played first base).

This Mets fan isn’t surprised in the least that our new stadium will be modeled after the old Ebbets Field. And in the computerized model of the “Cit,” there is a prototype for “Duke’s Grill” out in Centerfield, for Pete’s sake! I know Duke Snider was on the Mets, but for one season, WAY past his prime. Let’s face it, The Duke is synonymous with the Brooklyn Dodgers. If we must go there, where’s Mookie’s BBQ Pit, if there will be a grill in the centerfield area? *YOU* know who Mookie is, the most popular centerfielder in Mets history?

While I don’t expect to have the new stadium renamed after Bill Shea, or Mookie Wilson, or Tom Seaver for that matter, I think it’s necessary that we give Bill Shea his props. Whether that’s a grill in centerfield or a play area for kids or a historical area like they have out at KeySpan in Coney Island, I don’t care. I think we are doing all future New York National League Baseball fans a disservice without letting them know who was responsible for the birth of the Mets.