Futility Infielder: Jaffe: The Stadium Within

Jay Jaffe remembers...and I guess I owe him another sweet Chu-Bop!

Last weekend, showing my brother-in-law around the dump that is Shea Stadium for the first time, I was reminded of the fact that even the lousiest ballparks have a certain soul to them. Seriously, who even among the most ardent Mets fans doesn’t loathe certain facets of that stadium, the sound of La Guardia’s air traffic overhead, the appallingly poorly considered vista of parking lot (now thankfully blocked by the new stadium), the upper-level seats so removed from the field, hell and gone from any shot at snagging a foul ball and askew at angles ridiculous for watching a game? Fan of the Mets or not, if you’ve ever been to Shea, you’re allowed to commiserate with the millions of others who’ve shared that experience.

Ballparks, even da woist of dem, bring people from all walks of life together to create communities, vast civic and regional networks of like-mined fans, with satellites spread all over the country and even the world. Particularly in an age when we’re becoming more and more fragmented, less able to connect on a mass scale, ballparks are the practically the last arenas to help us to form shared memories, and in doing so, even the diviest of dives manage to transcend their own crapulence. Forget the mystique and aura of Yankee Stadium for a moment and think of the miracles that happened at Shea in 1969 and 1986, the unlikelihood of their occurrence and the way they shocked the baseball world, and tell me there won’t be something lost when that park is gone, memories that people pine for in the same manner they pine for the bygone days of Ebbetts Field and the Polo Grounds.