An incredibly emotional closing of our beloved Shea Stadium today. I am still reeling from todays loss but getting to watch all the great moments was a reminder that I have so much to be thankful for.

Here are some clips that you can get a full sized version of by clicking on.

The Franchine and The Doctor

Darryl joins Keith, Ron and Gary in the booth.

Mike and Tom begin the walk to close the stadium.

Tom and Mike take one last look from the warning track.

Emotions running high right about now.

Goodbye.

Keith Hernandez said it best. It feels like a punch to the gut. Carlos Beltran hit a 2 run homer to tie the game and Endy Chavez made another amazing catch to keep the Marlins from scoring but the Mets bullpen once again let them down with Scott Schoeneweis and Luis Ayala each gave up solo home runs late to give the Marlins another victory on the final game of the season to end the Mets playoff dreams.

Its a tough pill to swallow and us fans will again have to endure a long offseason wondering what if. What if the bullpen didn’t blow so many games? What if the offense didn’t fall asleep again over the last week. The season now ends, and we will all need to find a way to move forward.

What I do have to look forward to is a beautiful new stadium, Johan Santana pitching every 5 days (or less if necessary) for the foreseeable future, and an emerging fine young player in Dan Murphy.

I know it has to be tough right now, and I feel awful, but I will try and think back to all the great memories we have had a Shea and hope we can make some new ones next year at Citi Field.

Even when it seemed that all was lost, thanks for believing.

Word over at Mets Blog is that there is a good chance Dwight Gooden will join the Mets for their farewell to Shea ceremony on Sunday. The very idea of Doc and Darryl Strawberry, two of my childhood idols together, arm and arm at Shea on stadium gets me a bit emotional for a number of reasons.

Doc and Darryl were baseball royalty to me. Doc, the most dominant pitcher in baseball, who could have possibly been one of the greatest of all time had things turned out differently off the field. Darryl Strawberry, with his sweet golf swing, teeing off and dispensing baseballs with such effortless force it seemed like he was driving them with a three wood. While they faded soon after their stars ascended, the impact they had on me as a kid has never dulled and in fact burns brighter as the years go by.

I’ll watch quite emotionally if both of my boyhood idols do indeed arrive together at Shea one last time, and a goodbye to this field of dreams will feel a whole heck of a lot more complete.

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.

In a booze filled doubleheader, fans found new ways to stay entertained. Here we submit for your enjoyment, one of the many activities taking place, as a drunk, sleeping fan is used as a human Jenga. Some of you may elicit fond memories of college.

Hat tip to Martin Bell for the video.

Maritime and Spitfire Pictures, producers of LAST PLAY AT SHEA, a documentary feature based on Billy Joel’s historic final concerts at Shea Stadium, are inviting fans to share their most beloved Shea memories from 1964 to 2008. Whether your memory is of the Mets, Jets, a concert, special event or anything else that underscores Shea’s special place in your heart, we want to hear from you. Select fans may be chosen for interviews for possible inclusion in the documentary.

Please submit your “Shea Memories” to glenzipper@spitfirepix.com. Please be sure to include your full name, age and best contact phone number. Those selected for interviews should be prepared to make themselves available the week of September 22^nd.

Hot Foot’s own Andrew Beaton was the first to let us know about the good time the Texas Rangers had sliding on the tarp during yesterday’s downpour at Shea. In this video you can see the fun they had and hear the chants of ‘Lets Go Rangers’ from the fans who loved watching it.

Hat tip to mvn.com for the video.

One of my regular stops each morning is Newsday’s very entertaining blog The Final Score. Jim Baumbach, Anthony Reiber and Chicago Norm are informative, funny and entertaining. Today, Chicago Norm tells a story that should have every Mets fan ‘up in arms’. While Yankee Stadium was undergoing renovations in 1974 and 1975 the Yankees called Shea Stadium their home. Just typing that blasphemy nearly makes my head explode. 33 years ago today, June 10, 1975, the Yankees added to the horror of their mere presence in our home park. They nearly blew it up…

Shea Stadium was looking like a war zone before the opening pitch of the Yankees’ game against the California Angels…the Yanks presented a 21-gun salute in honor of Army Day. The cannons were filled with blanks, but the blast was so powerful that part of the outfield wall was toppled, some windows broke and another section caught fire. Shea was filled with smoke and the game was delayed.

Pic also via The Final Score.

In a recent study of Ballparks and Food Safety, Shea Stadium did surprisingly well. While evidence of mice was found, there were only a mere 58 violations, nothing compared to the almost 800 of Dodger Stadium. Information courtesy of Conde Naste Portfolio.

Considering the size of Shea, the amount of food served, and that the hot dogs taste suspiciously like Jose Valentin, who no one’s seen in weeks, 58 violations isn’t that bad. Especially since its in the same city that had a KFC where rats were videotaped running rampant. Lets face it, its a miracle half the beer doesn’t contain jet fuel particles that filtered down from LaGuardia. Hopefully they’ll have this number down to 40 once Citi Field is open.