As team sports go, the regular-season collapse is a phenomenon unique to baseball. After all, there isn't much sense getting too worked up over whether a team blew its chance to be the No. 8 seed in the NHL or NBA playoffs, or one of two wild cards in each conference in the NFL.
If you happened to be thumbing through the Newsday sports section on Thursday, you may have noticed an unusual box score: Mets 4, Cubs 0, in New York. Time of game: 2 hours, 2 minutes. Then you read the not-so-fine print: the game -- a Tom Seaver one-hitter -- was played 40 years ago, when the Mets were becoming the Miracle Mets, winners of the '69 World Series. Newsday is paying tribute to the team.
So often, David Wright can seem unflappable. It comes from the confidence of youth, the arrogance of success and the competitiveness of all great athletes, who are always measuring their performance against not just what their peers do but what they think they should be doing.
If you're covered in wrinkles, whiskers and cobwebs, perhaps you fondly remember haberdasher Abe Stark's Hit Sign, Win Suit billboard at the base of the right-field scoreboard in Brooklyn's legendary Ebbets Field. Chances are you feel more fondly about it than the ads that assault the senses in today's arenas.
Mets higher-ups were accepting compliments Monday night for their stunning new ballyard, Citi Field, which has nothing in common with the former, dreary, dumpy ol' Shea Stadium aside from its location near the intersection of the Grand Central Parkway and Roosevelt Avenue. "It's a ballpark, not a stadium,'' Mets COO Jeff Wilpon said of the new digs.
It's almost all gone now, almost completely vanished from sight if not from memory. A few square feet of the rubble of what used to be Shea Stadium is visible not far from the glittering Jackie Robinson Rotunda of the Mets' new home at Citi Field. That rubble is all that remains from the stadium's collapse this offseason, a destruction that was far more welcome than the one enacted the last two Septembers by the club that had inhabited the aging ballpark. All other traces of the monstrosity that was Shea Stadium have almost magically disappeared, and if the Mets are quickly trying to bury their past then who can blame them? They opened a spectacularly beautiful new ballpark on Monday night, and in so doing, hoped that they were opening a new chapter in their checkered history. If Shea Stadium closed with heartache, then Citi Field opened with hope. Indeed, the $800 million facility might be a gleaming, 21st-century edifice that allows the Mets to compete -- and, presumably, win -- in
Glory to those $2,625-per-game seats at the new Yankee Stadium! Huzzahs to the spiffy bathrooms and Shake Shack in the food court at Citi Field, new home of the New York Mets! (In the old days at the predecessor ballpark, Shea Stadium, overbeered patrons in overcrowded men's rooms just used the sink.) Both Taj Mahals, opening next week, are the toast of the major leagues and what the fiscal overlords of the game hope you'll be noticing.
As part of an ongoing series, SI asked prominent sports bloggers to give us their 10 all-time favorite SI Stories (to see choices from other bloggers, scroll to the bottom). Here are the responses from The Sports Hernia: How Wrestling Got TV In Its Clutches By William Taaffe, April 29, 1985
NEW YORK (AP) -- Omar Minaya is staying as general manager of the New York Mets. Jerry Manuel is likely to remain as manager. Players, however, could be on the move.
NEW YORK -- Most of the crowd of 56,059 that packed Shea Stadium for what turned out to be the final time were still standing and cheering over an hour after the game, and the Mets' season, came to a disappointing and all-too familiar end. Of course, they weren't mourning the loss by the 2008 Mets, but celebrating the players who had starred at Shea over the course of its 45 seasons.
As team sports go, the regular-season collapse is a phenomenon unique to baseball. After all, there isn't much sense getting too worked up over whether a team blew its chance to be the No. 8 seed in the NHL or NBA playoffs, or one of two wild cards in each conference in the NFL.
If you happened to be thumbing through the Newsday sports section on Thursday, you may have noticed an unusual box score: Mets 4, Cubs 0, in New York. Time of game: 2 hours, 2 minutes. Then you read the not-so-fine print: the game -- a Tom Seaver one-hitter -- was played 40 years ago, when the Mets were becoming the Miracle Mets, winners of the '69 World Series. Newsday is paying tribute to the team.
So often, David Wright can seem unflappable. It comes from the confidence of youth, the arrogance of success and the competitiveness of all great athletes, who are always measuring their performance against not just what their peers do but what they think they should be doing.
If you're covered in wrinkles, whiskers and cobwebs, perhaps you fondly remember haberdasher Abe Stark's Hit Sign, Win Suit billboard at the base of the right-field scoreboard in Brooklyn's legendary Ebbets Field. Chances are you feel more fondly about it than the ads that assault the senses in today's arenas.
Mets higher-ups were accepting compliments Monday night for their stunning new ballyard, Citi Field, which has nothing in common with the former, dreary, dumpy ol' Shea Stadium aside from its location near the intersection of the Grand Central Parkway and Roosevelt Avenue. "It's a ballpark, not a stadium,'' Mets COO Jeff Wilpon said of the new digs.
It's almost all gone now, almost completely vanished from sight if not from memory. A few square feet of the rubble of what used to be Shea Stadium is visible not far from the glittering Jackie Robinson Rotunda of the Mets' new home at Citi Field. That rubble is all that remains from the stadium's collapse this offseason, a destruction that was far more welcome than the one enacted the last two Septembers by the club that had inhabited the aging ballpark. All other traces of the monstrosity that was Shea Stadium have almost magically disappeared, and if the Mets are quickly trying to bury their past then who can blame them? They opened a spectacularly beautiful new ballpark on Monday night, and in so doing, hoped that they were opening a new chapter in their checkered history. If Shea Stadium closed with heartache, then Citi Field opened with hope. Indeed, the $800 million facility might be a gleaming, 21st-century edifice that allows the Mets to compete -- and, presumably, win -- in
Glory to those $2,625-per-game seats at the new Yankee Stadium! Huzzahs to the spiffy bathrooms and Shake Shack in the food court at Citi Field, new home of the New York Mets! (In the old days at the predecessor ballpark, Shea Stadium, overbeered patrons in overcrowded men's rooms just used the sink.) Both Taj Mahals, opening next week, are the toast of the major leagues and what the fiscal overlords of the game hope you'll be noticing.
As part of an ongoing series, SI asked prominent sports bloggers to give us their 10 all-time favorite SI Stories (to see choices from other bloggers, scroll to the bottom). Here are the responses from The Sports Hernia: How Wrestling Got TV In Its Clutches By William Taaffe, April 29, 1985
NEW YORK (AP) -- Omar Minaya is staying as general manager of the New York Mets. Jerry Manuel is likely to remain as manager. Players, however, could be on the move.
NEW YORK -- Most of the crowd of 56,059 that packed Shea Stadium for what turned out to be the final time were still standing and cheering over an hour after the game, and the Mets' season, came to a disappointing and all-too familiar end. Of course, they weren't mourning the loss by the 2008 Mets, but celebrating the players who had starred at Shea over the course of its 45 seasons.
The former Beatle tells how he astonished 63,000 fans – and the Piano Man – at Shea
I was born in a town called Flushing. When you have something like that in your past, you feel a little silly pretending to be a man of great refinement. And so, I will freely admit to preferring a dive bar over a five-star restaurant, a worn-in pair of jeans over a tailored suit. I don't need fancy, I don't need trendy, I don't need scenic. Maybe you see where I'm going with this. Flushing. Plain. Basic.
"She was smiling so much," an onlooker says at the final concert at New York's Shea Stadium
Every year around this time, the familiar wanderlust rises again. As if carried on a summer breeze, it floats in and wraps itself around us, pulling us toward the open road. The lucky ones among us give in to the urge and allow it to take us across the country, from stadium to stadium, ballgame to ballgame. The rest of us dream of the journey, promising ourselves that one of these days we'll get out there and discover America, one ballpark at a time.
NEW YORK -- Atlanta Braves star Chipper Jones was removed from the lineup after reinjuring his back while dressing for Saturday's game with the New York Mets.
The daughter of a man who died after falling four stories at Shea Stadium said her father was not sliding down the escalator when the accident happened, as police reported.
Expectations about what Johan Santana is going to do in Shea Stadium couldn't be higher. But those anticipating Santana to put up a Bob Gibson 1968 type of season are probably in for a disappointment.
NEW YORK -- When the end mercifully came, when the greatest late-September collapse in baseball history was complete, all Willie Randolph could do was stand alone -- his arms at his side, straight as pipes -- and say nothing.
When Dontrelle Willis was just a kid -- which, really, wasn't that long ago at all -- he'd watch Tom Glavine pitch for the Braves every chance he'd get. He not only appreciated Glavine's sneaky talents and brainy style of pitching, he appreciated how he competed, too. Every time out.
The playoff picture in the National League today is no clearer than it was a week ago. The Mets are falling, but they still have a fingernail hold on the NL East lead. The Phillies are rising -- they, too, have a grip on that same lead -- but they haven't won a thing. The Rockies are as good, right now, as any team has been all season long, yet they're still trailing in both the NL West and the wild-card races.
This story was originally published in the Dec. 24, 1973 issue of Sports Illustrated.
Early in the evening, just about suppertime on the first leg of a lifelong-overdue Cooperstown pilgrimage, the voice is pure country. It's the voice of baseball in America. No, not Vin Scully, silly. It's the small-town Virginia radio voice of Cliff Dunn.
The ARAMARK Team Shea Stadium, Flushing, N.Y.
In case you used your commencement as an opportunity to catch up on your sleep, here's what you missed from this year's graduation speaker circuit ...
One day last week, San Francisco righthanded pitchers Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum, who can make Giants fans dream of Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry (or maybe, for now among the more grounded dreamers, John Burkett and Billy Swift), walked into Shea Stadium and down a hallway toward the visiting clubhouse and . . . kept right on walking. It wasn't until they wound up near the leftfield bullpen that the young pitchers realized they had walked far past the clubhouse. Cain, 22, and Lincecum, who turns 23 on June 15, doubled back and paused at a door with a security guard. The guard stopped them from entering.
Jake Peavy is one of the top starters in the National League, and he would be in any ballpark. However, the Padres' ace -- and all pitchers -- benefit from the generous dimensions of Petco Park. Since opening in 2004, Petco has established itself as the second-best yard in the majors for pitchers, trailing only RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C.
Pretty soon I'll be on my sabbatical from Sports Illustrated, the six-months break to write my memoirs, as previously explained. These are the rules. I'll still do a mailbag column once every week or so, just to keep my hand in the game. And now, to kick off this installment, we have Sarah P. from Brooklyn, who submitted the following:
Besides a knee-buckling curveball that froze MVP candidate Carlos Beltran for the final strike of the National League Championship Series and a mid-90s fastball that overmatched the Tigers in the World Series, Cardinals righthander Adam Wainwright also has plenty of humility. When asked last week about the difference between last spring and this one, he replied, "Last year you could pick maybe two people off the street that knew who I was, and that was probably my mom and my brother."
1. Run, Charles, run: He may or may not try to become governor of Alabama, but Charles Barkley is being drafted for a different kind of run. USA Today is reporting that TNT has proposed that Barkley race 67-year-old referee Dick ("Knick") Bavetta on Feb. 17, the day before the NBA All-Star Game. Barkley has been riding Bavetta on-air for being too old and presumably too slow to get up and down the floor as a ref, challenging him to a match race. Sir Charles has even joked that Bavetta's tombstone will read, "He keeled over while racing the Chuckster." No word yet if Bavetta will accept, but this sounds more interesting than whatever that All-Star weekend "skills" competition is supposed to be.
Only one New York event is big enough to get the jets at LaGuardia to change their course: the U.S. Open, the fourth and final Grand Slam tennis tournament. Every summer--this year, from Aug. 28 to...
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