NY's Weirdos Will Miss You, Shea

Shea Stadium may lack the grandeur of Yankee Stadium and look like a tacky concrete donut, but that's what made the New York Mets' home great, writes Harry Bruinius in the Christian Science Monitor. “Shea is a circus in a way Yankee Stadium could never be,” and gave the city's eccentric, less button-down baseball fans a place to watch the game.

“Shea was the funky alternative to regimented, uptight Yankee Stadium, a place where ‘characters’ reigned,” one lifelong fan told Bruinius. “It was a ballpark for the rest of us.” While Yankee fans got a “silver spoonful of championships,” the Mets "root for the underdog, we care about justice,” another fan said. That may change temporarily in the Mets' new home, Citi Field—"but don’t expect us to change our fundamental natures," Brunius writes. (More New York Mets stories.)