Shea Goodbye: A Fitting End

I know that I don't have to recap what happened. You all watched and you all lived and died with this team, just as I did this year.

As soon as Ryan Church's fly ball was caught, my heart felt as though it were a balloon someone had just let all of the air out of. I was deflated. I was disappointed. I was a whole bunch of other 'd' words that I've yet to realize.

But, as I discussed with a good friend of mine and many relatives, this end was better than we could have ever hoped for back in May and early June, a time when all Mets fans were just hoping to finish above the Nationals and one other team.

Did I want to win the NL East? Absolutely. Did I want to force a playoff with the Brewers? Heck yes.

But most of all I wanted this team to finish out the year in a respectable manner and the New York Mets did just that.

I was at the game that Santana pitched on Saturday and I was with my mother, who had been present at Game 6 back in 1986. Even she admitted that while the game did not top Game 6, as it should not have, it was up there.

As a college student, it doesn't take a lot of guessing to realize that I was not born yet when the Mets last won a World Series, so my main memories of the game revolve around Mike Piazza's arrival to the New York Mets. I was at Game 4 of the NLCS in 1999, I was at the doubleheader that Robin Ventura hit a grand slam in each of the games, and I was at many more memorable moments at Shea. Perhaps, my favorite of all, was this last game I ever attended at Shea, the last win ever at Shea Stadium.

And watching the final arrival at Shea of everyone I remembered from most of my childhood, including my favorite boys: Piazza, Ventura, and Fonzie, I couldn't help but think that this was a fitting end for Shea. If the Mets had won, I wouldn't have watched Piazza and Seaver close the centerfield wall with tears in my eyes, the finality of it all sinking in. Maybe, the Mets' year ended the way that it should have. Maybe, just maybe, Shea really got the send off she deserved.

Part of me feels as though I would have loved to see the Mets extend the final game at Shea into the world series, while the overwhelming majority of my heart knows that even if they got into the playoffs, with a bullpen like ours, we could never have won it. 

Perhaps it is time for the Rays to finally turn the tables on all of the reporters who made the team the joke of the day in their columns. Or maybe it's time for the Cubs to follow in the footsteps of the Boston Red Sox and reverse their outstanding curse.

I'm not really sure. All I can tell you is that I can take solace in the fact that this season is nowhere near as storied as 2006. After watching Beltran look at strike three in Game 7 against the Cardinals, I felt as though I'd been punched in the stomach. The story was over... and it did not have the ending it deserved. I was still waiting for Cliff Floyd to hobble to the plate and hit the game-winning home run to send the Mets to the World Series. I can still remember yelling at my friend on the phone for jinxing the game by saying they'd definitely make a comeback. I remember the bitter taste I had in my mouth that I had for all of 2007, every time that I watched Carlos Beltran step to the plate.

Yet, in my heart and in my soul, I know that 2008 was not our year to win.

Still, my heart goes out to the members of the New York Mets roster. Just because I'm not nearly as disappointed as I thought I'd be doesn't mean that they're heads aren't hanging as they walk down the street.

Everyone looked horribly upset... Reyes, Delgado, Beltran. They all looked like they just wanted one more chance at bat to change everything. And Santana would have pitched today if he could have.

The story that Ron Darling relayed long after those boys had gone home, of how the 1986 team rallied around Howard Johnson in the clubhouse to console him, truly touched me in a way I never thought it would.

I hope that someone can help David Wright get over this final game of the season. I know that when the team loses, he loses sleep over it. I know that sometimes, he takes it harder than anyone else on that field does because while most players leave the game on the field, he takes it with him. Call it a weakness, call it a bad decision, call it whatever you want, but David is a prime example of a guy that just eats, breathes, sleeps, and loves the game of baseball.

Watching him speak to reporters after the game, unable to look into the lens of the cameras as his eyes grew red and watered with tears, my heart truly broke. I know that the wait until March is a very long one and I know that until around January, when you have to start thinking about Spring Training, you're going to wake up every morning, hoping, that by some miracle, you've traveled back in time to relive your last at-bat one more time. 

But it is time to move on... from 2007, from 2008, and from Shea Stadium. You've given the members of the Shea Faithful some hope for the future, along with franchise players like Reyes and Santana, and hopefully Murphy, Evans, and some of the other younger guys out there. 

As the Mike Piazza era came to a close in the last few years of his contract, a wonderful thing happened in 2004... hope happened. And it happened in David Wright, a player whom New York Mets fans everywhere would come to adopt as Flushing's own son, a young man we are proud to watch grow up and mature like he was our own.

So with the closing of Shea Stadium, we say goodbye to memories of the '69 and '86 Mets, black cats, the stars of men, like Tom Seaver and Mike Piazza, that may have dimmed, but never faded, bloop singles, passed balls, grand singles, catches that will forever live in infamy, the miracle up the first base line, and the magic they lent to us all, and look forward to the moments stored in baselines, foul poles, and outfield walls that CitiField is just waiting to offer.

So long, Shea Stadium... and thanks for the memories.