THE old tune is supposed to be mournful, something slightly more cheerful than a funeral dirge, a wistful gaze back at what used to be, specifically what used to be here.
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And while there is no data to officially back this up, it is safe to say that every time in the past 36 years that a wrecking ball has made contact with an old stadium’s already crumbly walls, and every time a film crew was there to record it for posterity, you heard the song that, in 1973, oozed out of Joe Raposo’s typewriter and through Frank Sinatra’s vocal chords …
“And the sky has got so cloudy
When it used to be so clear
And the summer went so quickly this year
Yes, there used to be a ballpark right here … ”
Only, if you are a New Yorker, and if you drive along the Grand Central Parkway now, or if you take a spin down Northern Boulevard, or if you’re descending into LaGuardia Airport, it’s likely you have given the song and its sentiment an entirely different emphasis.
As in: There used to be a ballpark here?
It isn’t just that a pile of rubble has replaced the building that housed two World Series winners and a Super Bowl champ, that gave the grandest stage in rock and roll to The Beatles and The Who and The Clash and The Police, that ground its way through 44 years of disrespect and disaffection even from those who loved it the most. No … in many ways, it’s hard to even envision what Shea Stadium used to look like. It’s gone. It’s all gone.
And in its place is a brand new brick palace, Citi Field, its very name a reminder of the times in which we live and its very appearance a reminder of just how badly the Mets hope to revise and revamp what they are and what they’ve been. Because it wasn’t only the ballpark that got a titanic dose of TNT in the offseason.
“Brand new days everywhere you look!” Jerry Manuel said early in spring training, in that Sunday-school, leave-your-cares at the doorstep way of his. “We got a whole lot of fresh slates and new starts around the New York Mets this year!”
The Mets roster received a similar treatment to the stadium in which so many of the disasters that dotted the past two years took place. Gone — practically without a trace — are Aaron Heilman, and Scott Schoeneweis, whose portraits could well have been affixed to the bullpen gate when the whole place collapsed into a pile of dust.
In their place — in their stead — stand Francisco Rodriguez and J.J. Putz, the cornerstones of the Mets’ offseason renewal, the obvious answers to what had been the Mets’ most obvious need, but in their own way the same kind of symbolic presence that Citi Field is: where the old stadium was an odd, and not altogether pleasing, amalgam of sights and sounds, odors and oddities, Citi Field looks, and feels, like a car still parked in the showroom.
No need to be more tactful in describing the Mets of last September and the September before: they flat-out stunk. Fumigating the stench was Job One this offseason, and if nothing else, the Mets accomplished that.
Now they try to do something else, to do something real, to establish inside their new playpen a team and a ‘tude that says something other than: we owe you one (or two) (or three).
“I’ve been in the new stadium, and even before it was finished you could tell there would be an entirely different energy, a different feel, than what we were used to at Shea,” David Wright says. “I think the folks who watch us play will feel the same thing.”
He hopes so. They all do. Symbolism only goes so far, and so do new buildings designed to help pave over past disappointments. You drive past the place where Shea used to stand, all you see is a vast emptiness standing beside the fresh newness of Citi Field. If the season can go in some similar fashion, the Mets may well begin to breathe again.