Mike has been sending me cool shots from his collection and here’s one he says is..
a very rare shot of the TV/Monitor working at Shea..It was meant to show a picture of the player up at bat and to show movies during rain delays..it was a little ahead of its time and never worked quite right. it was disconnected, left in place and covered with a white board and then a mets logo a few months into the first season. Click on the image for a bigger version.
That’s a great fun fact about Shea in the early days. Notice that photo is also before 1967 when they put plexiglass panels in the outfield so you could see who was warming in the bullpen.
I have a question…I have seen photos of Shea where the outfield wall was painted a very pale green with dark distance markers. I saw this also on SNY during Mets Yearbook 1967. Also in that film, we see Shea with the traditional dark green fences. I imagine they tried the pale color in 1967 and batters complained that they couldn’t pick up the pitches, so they changed it back quickly, but I have never heard the official story. Does anybody know the history of the pale green fence and how long they used it?
That’s a poor crowd shot..where is everyone?
The pale green fence was only used in 1967..there really is not much of a story behind it except it was a distraction for the batters..there is some footage on youtube that shows it during a game..i think seavers rookie year footage..i will look for it and post my findings…
Thanks Mike…I just found this…Paul from Uni Watch did an utterly fantastic piece on Shea around its last game, which talks about the pale green fence among lots of other facts…I recommend reading this whole piece:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=lukas/080926
Wasn’t the projector still inside the scoreboard when it was torn down in 2008? Does anyone know what happened to it?
In the video of the scoreboard teardown you can see the projector crash to the ground…
Shoot. I thought someone salvaged it.