Shea isn’t the prettiest park in baseball. It doesn’t have the long tradition of Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park. The concessions are downright awful. However, Duk at Big League Stew perhaps best summed up why I, and I suspect many others love Shea Stadium so much,

“the charm about Shea is that it’s a neighborhood bar.”

Shea Stadium is our neighborhood bar. As we move into CitiField, most folks will be corporate, white collar types who can afford the exorbitant prices they’re charging and will make up a good portion of the crowd. However, the history of Shea’s audience is distinctly blue collar. The team, the stadium, and their fans are a scrappy bunch, and all you have to do to understand why is because they’ve chosen this team over the far more successful one in the Bronx.

You see Mets fans love their team for more than just wins and losses, it runs far deeper than that, Mets fans connect with their team on a deeper emotional level and considering the roller coaster history of the team, they’ve gained an emotional maturity fans of the other team in town cannot understand. To be fair, there is the die hard base on both sides of town, and then there is that wide swath of fans who float between whatever team happens to be successful at the time. Yankee and Met fans can agree on one thing, and that is an acute disdain of those types of fans.

But I digress, this is an ode to our lovely lady Shea. The home of our childhoods, of the Buckner ball, of Dykstra’s heroic NLCS home run, of Darryl’s moon shots, Piazza’s emotional post-9/11 home run, Ventura’s grand slam single, Endy’s miracle catch and so much more. These things we get to take with us. The memories. While they auction off every square inch of the stadium, the pieces of Shea will scatter among the fanbase, but we get to share the things that matter most, the moments. No wrecking ball can ever remove those from our collective psyches.

The neighborhood bar that we all came to know and love, the stranger who became a new friend sitting in the row behind us or in the adjacent box. The knowing that this stranger has endured the same soul crushing defeats and life affirming victories. A shared knowledge that most of the folks on the other side of town were pretending while we were authentic fans, who knew real pain and for that the victories were that much sweeter.

Shea is more than just the stadium itself, but the people who came, and may not all be able to come when the new stadium opens. Shea is the culture, the current and past fan base. The folks who walked up and bought tickets the day of games, who likely won’t have that chance next year. This is Shea Stadium, not just the structure but the people.

So if you wonder why I describe people, and not just this architectural behemoth, it is because this baseball sanctuary is more than just a thing but a living breathing organism of hopes and dreams that do not die when the building disappears. The soul of the stadium remains, perhaps in limbo, as the bodies that the soul inhabits may not have the resources to move with it to its new home.

Here’s to the soul of Shea Stadium.