And it all begins tomorrow

Happy Opening Day. I'm beginning my 5th baseball season with this blog (hard to believe) and the 5th season at Citi Field (also hard to believe), and I'm pretty much recycling some of my special posts (but they still have meaning, such as an anniversary).

This one I'm taking from my Opening Day post from last year, where I shared a few Opening Day memories. I will except the very short story and sound bytes from Opening Day 1998, which is hard to believe was 15 years ago today.

I remember cutting class during my sophomore year in college to watch Opening Day 1998 (like 2003, also a March 31 opener, and like 2007, against the Phillies) when Bobby Jones started for the Mets.

Here's how the game started.


And this is how that game ended.

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It's Opening Day at Shea

It's Opening Day, and for the first time since 2006 and for only the second time in the past 7 seasons, the Mets are opening the season at home. While Dave Singer over at NY Sports Dog takes a look back at 48 Mets Opening Days, I look back at a few seemingly random things that I remember about Opening Day. Sound Byte Alert: After reading through that, I deliver an obscure Opening Day sound byte from Opening Day 1998 at Shea.

• 1987 was my first Opening Day. It was also the most memorable in my memory, and it started what I'll be calling "the second 25 (years)" in Mets history. It was "banner day" at Shea, when the new World Championship banner was raised and the players were introduced to their World Series rings. I think after ESPN Classic finishes playing Game 7 of the '86 Series, I'll pull that DVD off the shelf and watch the Opening Day ceremony.
• On Opening Day 1988, Darryl Strawberry hit the roof at Olympic Stadium
• Opening Day 1992 - Mets win in 12 in St. Louis on a weird Opening Day night game
• 1993 was the inagural game for the Colorado Rockies
• 1996 brought us the magical defense of Rey Ordonez. He had a great defensive play throwing out a runner at the plate on a relay throw from LF from his knees (that was also the day that NL Umpire John McSherry had a fatal heart attack during the traditional opener in Cincinnati)
• 1998 saw the Mets win in 14 innings 1-0 on a hit by a backup catcher in their first March Opening Day
• In 2000, the Mets opened the season against the Cubs in Tokyo with a "home-and-home" 2 game series that took place while other clubs were still in Spring Training
• 2003 brought on the Art Howe era and new star pitcher Tom Glavine. I was at Shea in person for my only Opening Day to witness a horrible game, even by the low standards of the 2003 Mets.
• 2004 had the Mets starting on the road with Kaz Matsui leading off the game with a home run.
• In 2005, Matsui followed up his season-leading-off homer with a first-at-bat homer on Opening Day in Cincinnati.
• 2006 marked a new era in watching the Mets with SNY taking over at the Mets TV partner, and the last Opening Day at Shea
• 2007 was a Sunday Night opener in St. Louis, matching up the World Champs against the team they beat to win the NL Pennant

Some of these Opening Days for me have seemed to coincide with a Passover Seder. Funny how the mind works. In my adult years, I would try to work at home and arrange my schedule to be without meetings (tought to do on a Monday) so I could watch not just the Mets but all the games. I went out to Shea in 2003 for my only in-person Opening Day. It was a cold March 31 at Shea. The result on the field made the day worse. I do remember a different case when I was in College in 1998, when I cut class so I could stay in my dorm room at Hofstra in order to watch the game against the Phillies. And the game kept going. 9 innings. 10 innings. and so on. It reached the point where I had to grab my walkman, head across campus to go to work, and miss the end of the game. Below is really the only offensive highlight of the day.




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Spring Training 2010 is here

Back when I was a bit younger (we'll call it the late '80s and early-mid '90s, a time when I wasn't quite a teenager), I remember running home from school on the day that Spring Training games finally began, or at least the day of the first broadcast on WFAN (for some reason, I had no, or chose not to use, a walkman). I would look forward to hearing the voices that I knew meant baseball for the first time after the long offseason.

On the eve of the fist Spring Training game, I bring you two treats.

First up is a 1 minute audio clip from the Mets first broadcast on WFAN from Spring Training 1998. I won't say any more, other than the voice is forver the voice of the Mets...


Second is about 6 1/2 minutes in length, coming from another 1998 Spring Training game. This one is most of half of an inning from a road game against St. Louis in Jupiter's inagural season. The play-by-play voice again belongs to Bob Murphy with Gary Cohen along side.


I invite any readers to submit or link to their own Spring Training audio and video from the 1980s and 1990s.

There is also a bonus audio clip on the facebook page for Remembering Shea that was posted as a teaser in advance of this post.


Leave a comment or drop me a line at DyHrdMET [at] gmail [dot] com.
Become a fan of RememberingShea on Facebook.
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Spring Training is here

Back when I was a bit younger (we'll call it the late '80s and early-mid '90s, a time when I wasn't quite a teenager), I remember running home from school on the day that Spring Training games finally began, or at least the day of the first broadcast on WFAN (for some reason, I had no, or chose not to use, a walkman). I would look forward to hearing the voices that I knew meant baseball for the first time after the long offseason.

On the eve of the fist Spring Training game, I bring you two treats.

First up is a 1 minute audio clip from the Mets first broadcast on WFAN from Spring Training 1998. I won't say any more, other than the voice is forver the voice of the Mets...


Second is about 6 1/2 minutes in length, coming from another 1998 Spring Training game. This one is most of half of an inning from a road game against St. Louis in Jupiter's inagural season. The play-by-play voice again belongs to Bob Murphy with Gary Cohen along side.


I invite any readers to submit or link to their own Spring Training audio and video from the 1980s and 1990s.

Update: These audio clips use HTML5.

Shea's glory days

I'm watching a Mets Classic on SNY right now. It's Mike Piazza's first game as a Met. Aside from how different the TV broadcast looked and sounded (Howie Rose on TV with Fran Healy), just looking at how Shea looked.

This was 1998, before Shea was overrun with advertising. There was some (like the rotating ad behind the plate, higher up than it was in the final days), but it didn't stand out like it did in the final years. You could really see how blue the ballpark was.

I was there for the game. Field Box (back when it was affordable to sit there and fairly easy to get), right about on 3rd base behind the aisle. I remember sitting there a lot back in the 90s. This was actually the first game I went to early where I could catch Mets batting practice and try to get autographs (before Willie banned player-fan interactions). I was actually at the game before the new Mets star.

Update - there's a lot more advertising than I may make it out to look like there is, but it just didn't stand out like it did in the past few seasons.