I’ve been to Shea Stadium many times, and I’ve never left unhappy. Unlike at Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park, the other two places where I’ve witnessed many major league baseball games, the stakes were never very high for me at Shea. Although I rooted for the Mets there, it never mattered that much to me if they didn’t get the job done. I was only ever there to get out of the day. In that way it’s a special place to me, a friend who never demanded anything but who was always there if you needed someone to hang out with. A mensch. I’ll be sad to see it go.
You don’t hear that much about this being the last year of Shea, at least not compared to the bombast of the extended elegaic farewell being offered to the other stadium in New York. They call that other place The House That Ruth Built, a moniker that communicates the deep aura of history and legend surrounding that structure. They don’t call Shea anything and never have, at least as far as I know. But maybe in this its last few weeks, to parallel the more well-known stadium in the Bronx, it can become known as The Building Where Ed Kranepool Resided for Quite a While.
For many, many years, Shea Stadium did not exist without Ed Kranepool, a member of the original Mets in 1962. He is shown here in 1976, fourteen years later and still with a ways yet to go in his Mets career as a part-time first baseman. He has just completed his best year, batting .323 in 325 at-bats, but one gets the sense from his expression that he is not putting much stock in the sizzling batting average. Some days you do OK, some days you don’t. This is the unflappable credo of Kranepool, the tough, humble survivor, the reliable friend, the mensch.
Anyway, I’m going to be taking the next week to travel. No work, no writing. Part of the trip will be one last happy baseball game at Shea. I’m bringing this card of ol’ Ed Kranepool with me.
Cardboard Gods 