Ahhh yes, 1955, the destination year to which Marty McFly traveled back in time in Doc Brown's Delorean time machine. In baseball, New York simply was the town. The Yankees, led by Manager Casey Stengel, won four straight World Championships to start off the decade (five dating back to '49). The New York Giants won it all in '54, and the Dodgers in '55. 1956 belonged to Mickey Mantle and the Yankees again (Mantle won the league's Triple Crown Award, and Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in World Series history en route to revenge on the Dodgers in seven games the year after Dem Bums' only date with destiny). The Yanks would also win it all in 1958.
Also in 1958, sadness ravaged the baseball community in New York when the hearts of millions of Dodgers and Giants fans crumbled like the concrete of Ebbet's Field and the Polo Grounds when it met the wrecking ball. Gone would be the nightly street arguments of who was the best center fielder: Mickey, Willie (Mays), or The Duke (Snyder). The Dodgers and Giants both packed up and headed west for Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively.
The National League fans of New York, however, got a bittersweet consolation prize in 1962 when the expansion Mets became a team (and subsequently lost 120 games that season), but many still had feelings of outrage over the departure of Dodgers and Giants four years prior. The Miracle Mets would bounce back by the end of the decade, winning the World Series in 1969, and again in 1986.
Flash forward to 2009. The Mets left Shea Stadium about 45 years after it opened to head to their brand new Citi Field digs nearby. It features relics to the Brooklyn Dodgers, including the Jackie Robinson rotunda, and an exterior modeled after that of the old Ebbet's Field, and a large #42 for Robinson in the stadium as well. Jackie was an all-time great, a hall-of-famer, a pioneer, and he became integral part of the Civil Rights Movement when he broke the color-barrier in 1947 with the Dodgers. A great American in all respects.
Citi Field created an instant memory in its first homestand when new-Met Gary Sheffield hit his 500th home run- a typical Sheffieldian bullet shot hit close to the left field foul pole. New ballpark, state-of-the-art amenities, new memories already, can't go wrong, right??? So far from the truth. There are obstructed seats that the fans complain about, and faulty plumbing that the players complain about.
Aside from that, a new controversy has arisen, concerning Sheffield's uncle, one-time Met great Dwight Gooden. According to Yahoo.com, Gooden was on hand for the Opening Day festivities when a worker asked him to sign a wall outside of a bar (called Ebbet's Club) in the stadium. Happy to be back, Gooden obliged and signed it: "Dwight Gooden 84 R.O.Y. 85 Cy Young, 86 W.S. Champs" in reference to his 1984 Rookie of the Year Award, his '85 Cy Young Award, and the '86 World Series victory over the Red Sox.
Mets' brass reacted to this with outrage. This is what Jay Horowitz, Mets' VP of Media Relations told the New York Post:
"It's a brand-new building, no one is supposed to write on the wall. It's going to be erased."
Doc Gooden had his fair share of problems in the past. He was too busy sucking up lines of cocaine like a Hoover vacuum to attend the '86 championship parade in New York's "Canyon of Heroes." This hero would go on to fall deep into the grandest of canyons of addiction and run-ins with the law. This incensed Mets fans. A decade later they were further incensed when he returned to the Big Apple after a couple seasons in Cleveland to throw a no-hitter for the cross-town Bronx Bombers in 1996, contributing to the Yankees' return to the promised land that year to start their eventual dynasty.
This made Doc reluctant to return to Shea during its final game last September. He worked up the courage to come back to the inaugural game this year to a good reception from the fans (even Bill Buckner got a nice reception from the Fenway faithful last year for their home opener, after two World Championships, though); who says you can't go home again?
WFAN's Mike Francesa said it right when he suggested that the Mets should protect it by screwing a piece of plexiglass in front of it. Another complaint about the new ballpark is the fact that there are a shortage of Mets' memories throughout.
It's time to wake up and smell the coffee, Mets. Your franchise is NOT the Brooklyn Dodgers, and your new stadium is NOT Ebbet's Field. It's time to embrace your own history, from Casey Stengel to Tom Seaver, to Darryl Strawberry and Gary Carter to Mike Piazza, and onto David Wright. Be proud of your history, don't try to be another team. The Los Angeles Dodgers are going to feel like they are playing a home game when they come to NY, and Joe Torre grew up in Brooklyn in that era. Jackie Robinson deserves every ounce of respect he earned, but he did NOT play for the Mets- EVER!!! And he probably wouldn't even have agreed to play for the Mets anyway because he got traded to the Giants after his last season with Brooklyn and retired without playing a single game for them. And the Mets play in Queens, NOT Brooklyn. The blind front office of the Mets should take one long look in the mirror and realize who they really are.
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