NY's Weirdos Will Miss You, Shea

NYC bids adieu to its home for eccentric, earthy fans
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 27, 2008 2:45 PM CDT
NY's Weirdos Will Miss You, Shea
New York Mets fans look skyward for a fly-over at the end of the national anthem on Opening Day at Shea Stadium in New York.    (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson, File)

Shea Stadium may lack the grandeur of Yankee Stadium and look like a tacky concrete donut, but that's what made the New York Mets' home great, writes Harry Bruinius in the Christian Science Monitor. “Shea is a circus in a way Yankee Stadium could never be,” and gave the city's eccentric, less button-down baseball fans a place to watch the game.

“Shea was the funky alternative to regimented, uptight Yankee Stadium, a place where ‘characters’ reigned,” one lifelong fan told Bruinius. “It was a ballpark for the rest of us.” While Yankee fans got a “silver spoonful of championships,” the Mets "root for the underdog, we care about justice,” another fan said. That may change temporarily in the Mets' new home, Citi Field—"but don’t expect us to change our fundamental natures," Brunius writes. (More New York Mets stories.)

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