End of an Era: SHEAD STADIUM EDITION POST ALL THE CHOKES YOU GOT

It's pretty sad that in this modern day of beisbol, in order for your stadium to be "timeless," it has to not have a shitty corporate name attached to it. That's how Shea Stadium, venerable garbage dump and former bangspot for Mike Piazza, became one of the "crown jewels" of Major League Baseball.

However, the AMAZINS are moving into a crappy new ballpark, CitiCorporateSponsorToBeNamedLaterPark. Yes, in between being swindled by Ponzi schemes and making the Royals look like a respectable, well-run organization, the Mets have been building a new field to demonstrate proper choking techniques in.

This is how Shea used to before a bunch of union guys took crowbars to it. Yes, this is perfect proto-60s architecture, bland as bland can be. They totally nailed the toilet bowl look most appropriate for any Queens establishment. Seriously, who the fuck thought this looked good? I know people usually don't look at stadiums from above, but give me a fucking break. I'm not one who usually complains about building aesthetics but this gives me a headache just looking at it.

Fortunately, this eyesore is being torn down:



I don't know when they plan on finally imploding the thing, but it can't be too much longer. They only have like five months left, after all. Maybe the razers will choke as well and the thing won't be detonated until opening day, hopefully engulfing the new stadium in choking, blinding dust. The fans probably won't notice too much, though.



Hmmm, empty seats at Shea... what a surprise!

Here is the shitstain that will go up in its place (almost):



Ah yes, from soulless 1960s architecture to soulless prefab modern architecture.

???? Field may be technically competent and may be objectively "good" looking, but like Neo Yankee Stadium, it has no charm. No soul. No CAJONES!!! (ai ai ai!) It's Petco Park east. Goddamn people, there is a place where grown men play professional baseball, called PETCO PARK.

PETCO PARK.

That said, the deat of Shea Stadium is still somewhat sad. As terrible as it was, it was at least partially historic. It was over 40 years old and the franchise is pretty well established as the whipping boy of the New York baseball teams.

My own memories of Shea are rather nondescript. I estimate that I was there four times, and the only thing I can remember with any certainty was a game against the Pirates where Bobby Bonilla hit a homerun and was fat.

You can't imagine Shea without smelling piss, I think. Wait, let me check.... No, it's not coming from me, it's definitely the memory causing that odor. Okay? YOU'RE JUST IMAGINING SHIT, AS USUAL.

The new field looks like shit, which goes without saying. At least it's not Washington Nationals' stadium level of shittiness (seriously, the thing looks like the god of banality took a massive cube shit in D.C., stood up, folded up his newspaper, looked down at his creation and said, "Ah yes, five days of nothing but cornmeal. I am satisfied!"

The architects were deliberately emulating Ebbetts Field, a real field that is sadly no longer real because it was blown up. I've never been to Ebbetts Field, and I'm almost 100% sure it was cooler than whatever this place will be.

Here's the problem, Mets: you're not the Dodgers. You're not even in Brooklyn for Christ's sake! And don't give me that, "Well you see, the Mets are like the team for New Yorkers who were Dodgers and Giants fans, so you see, we're like both!" No you're not. You're the NEW YORK METS. Not the NEW YORK GIANT DODGERS. If you wanted to callback the Giants and Dodgers, then call yourself the Giant Dodgers. It's that simple. But you wanted to be the Mets, so now you're the Mets.

The whole "WE'RE LIKE THE OTHER TWO NEW YORK TEAMS" gimmick is stupid anyway. The Mets have their own stupid identity and they should stop pretending that they're anything like the old NY NL teams. All it does is reinforce how solidly the Yankees own this town and how the Mets/everyone else will always be pretenders.

So why ape the Dodgers? Because it's "tradition." Yes, I know, an expansion team acting on the behest of tradition is a laugh riot. LAUGH IT UP, FAT BOY. But there is no tradition with Citi Field. It's brand new. Trying to add significance to it by copying Ebbetts Field is retarded. It'd be like if they decided to tear down the White House and rebuild it with a model that reflects Buckingham Palace or some shit. Or it's like how Las Vegas has its own Statue of Liberty. It adds nothing to anything, just a lame facsimile of the real thing. Nobody has guided tours of the LV Statue of Liberty because everyone there knows it's a joke. Someone tell the Wilpons that Citi Field is a joke, too!

With Shea and Yankee Stadium now fading into history's memory, that leaves Camden Tards, Fenway Barf, Coughman Stadium, the Metrodome Mausoleum (one more year!), Anaheim Stadidump (aka some shitty nonsense gay name now), Oakland-Alameda County Correctional Facility (now McAfee slowing your computer down for a shitty virus check Stadium), Dolphin Stadium (until 2011, when hopefully the Marlins will be wiped from human memory), Wrigley Field and Chavez Ravine as the only stadiums with any real history left.

The dumbasses who made Citi Field apparently don't understand what makes a stadium, or any building for that matter, great. It's its history. The Parthenon isn't just a pile of rocks, some serious shit went down there. Or something. You can't just copy the Parthenon's design and have the same significance no matter where you build it. This is something 2-year-olds can understand (I checked, he definitely understood my point. "Ice!" is how toddlers concur what you say). It will take decades for Citi Field to build up any character.

But even still, its growth is stunted. It's just bland and probably overly clean and totally devoid of anything that sets it out from the rest. Miller Park has a giant slide where the Brewers mascot (a drunk man, aka any average person who is caught in the horror show known as the state of Wisconsin) slides down every time someone hits a homerun or someone gets arrested for DUI or something. Also the stadium is modeled after a giant failing liver. See? That's unique. Decades from now, that drunk will still be sliding down the slide, his pants around his ankles, drooling all over and wondering why the fuck he just can't get a kiss around here. UNCLE TIM, YOU CAN'T GET A KISS BECAUSE YOUR DICK IS HANGING OUT AND WE LEFT THE BAR AN HOUR AGO AND WE'RE RIGHT NOW IN THE SUBWAY AND THAT HOMELESS MAN IS NOT INTERESTED.

Or take Chase Field, the DiamondBacks' home stadium. It has a motherfucking pool beyond the outfield wall. Yes it's a gay gimmick, but decades from now, assuming Arizona has not been baked dry by climate change, people will revere it as an awesome tradition after they celebrate their 50th Chase Field drowning.

Neo Yankee Stadium is trying something of the same thing. Just build the old white frieze and put Monument Park in center field (under a freakin' restaurant, Jesus) and it'll be just like the old stadium! But it won't! There won't be any smell of piss, which every stadium eventually acquires. Unless they line the stadium with piss smell. But that would just be gauche and it would probably offend all the CEOs going to the game.

New stadiums of any sport tend to futuristic, hyper-sanitized office-like areas, which is pretty gay. Only the onslaught of time can wear that shit down until it feels less like you're going to a conference and more like a baseball game. Only after enough people have pissed in the hallway, only after enough tiles on the walls have fallen off and cracks in the mortar have formed, only after a few billion beers have spilled in the seats and aisles will the stadium even begin to acquire the proper ambience.

Until then, we're stuck on a showroom floor watching Derek Jeter give a lecture about how dreamy his eyes are (the dreamy quotient has gone up 45% year-over-year! SYNERGY! WE NEED MORE POS TECHNOLOGY!!!!!!).

P.S. I don't think I'll ever be able to afford tickets to New Yankee Stadium, and even if I did, I wouldn't be close enough for Scot Schoenweis to hear me laugh out loud at him actually warming up in the bullpen. Ahahahahah, THE SCHO IS OVER!!!!!!