A Personal History of Shea Stadium, part eight
The scent of money lures me to Colorado; John Rocker insults the 7 train; More culture wars from the 90s; I witness the second greatest baseball game of my life
Enjoy this occasional series, weaving together my life in NYC with the vicissitudes of baseball as it was played within the brutalist-adjacent concrete walls of Shea Stadium.
part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7 | part 8 | part 9 | part 10 | part 11
The 7 Train
In July of 1996 I left New York City (missing the last two games of our six-pack of tickets at Shea) for a job that promised real money. I’d been avoiding getting a full-time job at the place I worked for nearly a decade, knowing that if I became a salaried worker I’d have to kiss writing good-bye; I just wouldn’t have the time or mental energy.
“You are living paycheck to paycheck,” I told myself as I paced the floor of my apartment out in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It was late at night. I’d sold a few stories to New York Press at that point, and gotten the front page three times, which brought me a tiny bit of fame within my circle of friends and writers. It was just enough success to keep me hooked on writing, and no more, thus tricking me into living paycheck-to-paycheck indefinitely.
“You won’t ever have the money to start a family,” I continued, pacing. “You can’t put a down-payment on a house. You don’t even have a credit card. You’ll never be able to retire.
“You’re barely an adult,” I concluded, and I wasn’t wrong.
To the surprise of everyone, myself most of all, when a well-paying, full-time job was offered to me, I accepted. I was within spitting distance of the age of 40 and still did not have a steady paycheck, and while that used to engender a certain kind of pride, it now made feel anxious and uncertain about the future.
A salaried job meant two things. One, I’d be giving over most of my life to them, as it was clear the job they wanted me to do would require a lot of overtime. Two, the job was not in New York City.
It was in Denver, Colorado. I ran polling operations for Bill Clinton for the 1996 election, in what Time magazine called after-the-fact a “secret call center,” and a key to winning the election.
Bill Clinton won.
And I moved to Denver.
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I moved to Denver, but I returned to Shea Stadium in 1999 for two of the greatest games I ever witnessed.
By 1999 I’d burnt out of my well-paying but exhausting job in Denver, and took a calmer, happier job in academia at Colorado State University. I was living with the woman I’d ultimately marry within a year. We’d just bought our first home. I had a whole new life.
My friend Francis had a season ticket plan for the Mets in 1999, significantly better than the six-pack season ticket Simon and I had in 1996. He had season tickets not because they were needed—in the late 90s Shea Stadium rarely, if ever, sold out—but because they gave him access to post-season tickets. It had been over a decade since the Mets won enough games to play in the post season, so when the scent of a post-season berth presented itself, Francis offered a seat to me. The possibility of getting to the World Series was enough to lure me out from Colorado and back to Shea Stadium.
Francis had good seats, on the third base line, in the Mezzanine (the area just below the nosebleeds, perched above those treasured you’ll-never-get-to-sit-here-during-the-post-season Field Box seats).
I came to NYC for the 1999 NLCS, the National League Championship Series, the one that decides who gets to go to the World Series. A white-hot rivalry existed between the two teams meeting for the NLCS, my bad-boy, loveable-loser Mets and the stacked-with-talent, deeply-hated Atlanta Braves.
The rivalry had, frankly, been stoked mostly by how often the Mets lost to the Braves. But in 1999 the Mets showed signs of life, and the Mets had fragile hopes of becoming a good team. We had an all-star home run hitter in Mike Piazza, and an infield so good they only allowed 20 unearned runs all year—defensively the second-best infield in the 100+ year history of baseball (the best, for the super-fans out there, were the 1976 Reds).
Sadly, by the time I’d arrived in town the Braves had, in effect, already won the series. They’d won the first three games. In 100+ years no baseball team had ever come back from being three games down to win a seven-game series (the Red Sox eventually did it in 2004).
We showed up an hour in advance and hung out, buying the required merch, talking to the other fans. The crowd was humming with a weird shell-shocked energy. Everyone there knew no team had ever come back from an 0-3 start.
The game was scoreless (never say a baseball game is “zero to zero”) through the 5th inning. The feeling in Shea Stadium felt like static electricity, a nervous buzzing current in the air that clung to everyone and everything. When the Mets finally broke through and scored one run in the bottom of the fifth inning with a John Olerud homer, the intensity of the current only increased. No Mets fan, and perhaps no baseball fan, trusts the stability of a one-run lead.
Top of the eighth inning. When The Braves hit back-to-back home runs, scoring two runs (never say “points”) and giving them a one-run lead, all that nervous Mets-ian static-electricity energy turned to depression and loathing and a certain nightmarish it’s-happening-all-over-again sense of déjà vu, whereby our hopes were once again dashed by the Braves.
Bottom of the eighth inning. The Mets started off the frame with a hit from the speedy Roger Cedeno. The Braves pulled their starting pitcher and brought in a reliable reliever, Mike Remlinger, to shut the Mets down. He did get one out, by striking out Benny Agbayani. But he walked another speedy Met, Melvin Mora. The tying and winning runs were now on base, and victory seemed a possibility. The Shea faithful converted all their nervous energy from self-loathing resignation to a rebellious fighting spirit. We may not win this series, based on the 100+ year history of the game of baseball, but we are not going to lose tonight.
The Mets were down 2-1 when John Rocker ran onto the field from the Braves bullpen. My memory of the entire New York trip centers around a handful of images, and one of them is this: plastic water bottles and half-eaten hot dogs and other baseball ephemera flying high into the air as over-eager Mets fans threw them at the hated villain of this particular time and place. Sports rivalries are often the stuff of a long-shared history or the work of an effective marketing department, but this fan animus was based on something very specific: John Rocker had insulted the 7 train.
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“Imagine having to take the 7 Train to the ballpark looking like you're riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It's depressing.…" – John Rocker
The 7 train briefly curves through midtown Manhattan at the beginning of its route, but once it goes under the East River, it’s all Queens, baby, all the way to Shea Stadium. Even in my last apartment in New York, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, I’d walk up Greenpoint Ave. and over the weird little drawbridge that traverses Newtown Creek, one of the most polluted waterways in the country, and the official dividing line between Brooklyn and Queens.
Once in Queens, it was a short walk to the 7 train.
If there were a Mets game, the 7 train was really the only way to get to the game for all carless New Yorkers, from any borough. Thus, Mets hats and jerseys and the fans who wore them confronted you on every car of the train, from a few hours before the game to a couple hours after. If you got on the 7 line after a game, you didn’t need to ask who won the game. You could tell by the mood in the car.
Because the 7 line was the only way to get to the game, it threw together Mets fans of every possible stripe. The subway line threaded a very democratic journey, from stockbrokers catching the train in Times Square to the sprawling neighborhoods of Queens. Queens is the most diverse county in the nation, with 47% of its population born outside the U.S., speaking over 130 languages, and representing 120 different countries.
John Rocker pitched for the excellent late 90s Atlanta Braves ballclubs, and he did it well. I just looked up his career numbers and was surprised; I thought he’d only had a good year or two, but he has pretty impressive career numbers.
During the 1999 playoffs, a reporter asked him once if he’d rather play for the Mets or the Yankees. He said the words quoted above, and doubled down.
"The biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners. I'm not a very big fan of foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?" — John Rocker
John Rocker’s words were performative, intended to cause outrage. This is a common social media strategy in our current age, but back in the day it was a little more rare; we had to read his comment in the newspaper, or listen to sportscasters read those words to us. His comments hit the back pages of the Post and the Daily News like a Molotov cocktail. Mets fans were angry, and so were a significant percentage of the residents of Queens.
The entire city hated John Rocker at that point, even Yankees fans (or the ones I knew, anyway). For his part, Rocker would taunt the fans, pretending to throw the baseballs and then laughing, giving them the finger. In other sports, trash talking may be more common, but baseball is a sport with genteel origins. Baseball was unused to this level of hostility.
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So, to recap: Saturday night, Shea Stadium, 8th inning. We were losing to the Braves, 2-1, in a playoff series we were almost certain to lose.
John Rocker runs out onto the field in a hail of thrown water bottles and garbage.
“Quarters, bottles, batteries. I think somebody threw a bagel," Rocker said to ESPN later.
We’re losing. The crowd is screaming its disapproval at Rocker, but undergirding it is the fear that, once again, the Braves will win, because they always do, and we’ll have to suffer the indignity of watching them celebrate winning the NLCS on our turf. The tying run is on second base, in the person of Roger Cedano. Melvin Mora, the winning run, is on first. There are two outs. All Rocker has to go is get this last batter of the inning out, and leave the runners stranded. The ESPN Gameday synopsis I’m looking at now helpfully gives the New York chances of winning the game at this point at 22%.
Double steal! With Rocker on the mound, Cedano steals third base as Mora steals second. It’s a ballsy, risky move, but it’s the kind of risk needed to win a game like this. We now have runners on second and third; a base hit can score both runners and give New York the lead. The double steal energizes the fatalistic crowd: the sound of their cheers are now shaking the stadium.
John Olerud steps up to the dish.
First pitch from John Rocker, a fastball, and BAM! that’s all it takes: Olerud hits the ball up the middle. Both runners score. The Mets take the lead! Those two stolen bases prove crucial.
Rocker strikes out the next batter, but he’s one batter too late.
Our closer, Armando Benitez, comes in and shut the Braves down, one, two, three. The Mets win the game. Shea Stadium roars in approval.
It’s our first win of the series, but at least we won a game. It’s important to remember we are still down, three games to one. All the Braves had to do is win one more game. We have to sweep the next three to win, and move on to the World Series.
The next game is in 14 hours. We have tickets to that too.
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The 7 train back to Manhattan was a rolling party.
Francis and I made our way up to a 86th St. bar for a celebratory beer. We were both wearing Mets jerseys. As we headed toward what had become out regular spot for a post-game drink, we passed an attractive, poshly-dressed woman walking a tiny dog along the midtown sidewalk. In memory she was wearing a fur coat, but it’s possible my imagination is adding that detail after the fact.
She stopped us.
“Who won the game?” she asked. It clear who we are rooting for by out hats and shirts.
“The Mets did!” we inform her.
“Oh, I’m so glad,” she says warmly. “Congratulations!”
We accepted her congratulatory words, and asked her if she’d like to join us for a drink. She politely declined, gesturing to her tiny dog and explaining they had to finish their walk.
“But I’m happy to hear of your win!” she told us, as if we were Mets ourselves.
She continued along 86th St. with her dog, and we found our way to the bar.
Peace.
To be continued…