Shea Stadium

In 2002 my fantasy baseball league (the BRBL) drafted in New York. For me it was a phenomenal baseball weekend including opening day at Shea, opening day in Philadelphia, the second home game of the season for the Yankees, and a trip to Cooperstown. This was the only game I saw at Shea. The Mets had just signed Mo Vaughn and Roger Cedeno. Other Mets included Mike Piazza and Roberto Alomar. Despite the free agent signings the Mets underachieved that year finishing last in their division. They played the Pirates who had Aramis Ramirez and Jason Kendall (while Kendall was still good). While the Mets underachieved that year, the Pirates managed to finish fourth in their division while winning three fewer games than the Mets. Of the 8 opening day position starters for Pittsburgh, 4 had major league careers that lasted less than 10 years.

The night before the game, most of the league owners went out to dinner at a nice Italian place. There was a lot of good, and expensive, wine consumed by my friends. I don’t drink alcohol but when the bill came everyone decided to just split it evenly rather than figure out who owed what. At the game, one of my friends realized that I spent a lot of money on wine that I didn’t drink. So as a way of making amends he bought me (and another friend) Mike Piazza bobble head dolls. While I certainly appreciated the sentiment, Mike stayed in the original packaging until I threw him away in a move.

Why all of this discussion without mentioning the stadium? Because Shea was a boring stadium. We sat in the upper deck on the first base side. The game was uneventful. The Mets won on a good outing by Al Leiter. The only event of significance for this game is that BoCJ bought Basu (a Mets stuffed rally monkey) at this game and someone took pictures of the monkey sticking out of the zipper of BoCJ’s pants. Basu has attended every BRBL draft since then but to this day, BoCJ’s sister-in-law Grace refuses to handle the monkey.