What Year Did Shea Start To Suck?

I wasn’t around in 1964, but from what I read Shea Stadium was amazing back then.

You compare it to pictures of the Polo Grounds and Ebbetts Field, and you can see that it must have seemed huge and space-age. It had a gigantic scoreboard and it seemed futuristic.

For comparison, here’s the last out in Brooklyn (in front of 6,000 fans so can we shut up about that team yet?)

Look how great the place looks in ’64!

The Mets outdrew the Yankees in 1964. You’ve heard of the ’64 Yankees, they were the end of the dynasty. I guess going to the World Series got boring after 15 years. Was the Worlds Fair that good?

The ’65 Mets outdrew the NYY’s by a half million!

The ’66 Mets almost drew 2 million!! (1.932 and again outdrew the NYYs)

You know about ’69

The 1970 Mets drew 2.6 million! The Mets continued to outdraw the Yankees all the way until 1977. That shows you what winning (and losing) will do for a franchise. Imagine if Steinbrenner were around in ’72 when the Mets drew over 2 million and the Yankees didn’t even draw one?!

Anyway by the time I got to Shea in ’77 the Stadium already seemed kind of inferior. I used to enjoy watching the scoreboard operator struggle to put up a message. It seemed like it would take an hour for something to go up and would have tons of typos (MXTS being one of my favorite). The letters had to go up one at a time, kind of like putting your “name up” on a game of Asteroids.

For you kids, the scoreboard I’m talking about has long been covered/replaced by a Budweiser ad. Oh wait, I’m living in the past, it’s not there at all now, is it? Let’s watch the scoreboard collapse together, shall we:

Anyway, the place seemed kind of old by the time I got there. Yankee Stadium was newer and cooler but really scary – it was in The Bronx (the Bronx of Summer of Sam and runaway fires). The Yankees had a neat black and white video scoreboard.

Then I saw “Bad News Bears” or whichever sequel where the Bears played at the Astrodome. The Astros had turf and a roof, how cool was that! (I wasn’t ten and didn’t know better). Astros fans had a cool color video scoreboard with a cool cartoon of a bull blowing smoke.

Shea had planes flying overhead, weird squares on the outside and Lee Mazzilli.

The place seemed like it got better for a while – DiamondVision (the original) one-upped the Yankees and their crappy black and white screen. Then Gooden & friends and winning came to Shea and the place seemed OK. Even so, I remember talking with friends in the late 80’s about a “new stadium.” Teams like the Orioles, Blue Jays and White Sox (oops) were designing these new parks, and Shea seemed stuck in 1964 and not in a good way.

So when exactly did Shea start to suck? I’m not sure if it was 1977 and the losing. Maybe it was 1991 and the even more annoying losing. Any opinions out there?

Shea old friend, I already miss you.

(Question for old-timers. In the 1964 video, the third one in this post, go 3:08 in. There seems to be a video screen up top of the giant scoreboard. I don’t recall that being there at all. Can anyone tell me anything about it?)

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