38 years ago today 12/10/83 was the last game at Shea

Discussion in 'New York Jets' started by GREG, Dec 11, 2021.

  1. GREG

    GREG Well-Known Member

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  2. ukjetsfan

    ukjetsfan Well-Known Member

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    The year before I started following the Jets. I always enjoy seeing film and photos of the old Shea Stadium days. I'm told it was a dump, but it did seem to have a character that Giants Stadium lacked. It was still shared, but with a baseball team so no rivalry, and the Mets-Jets dynamic worked.

    Question for people who followed back in those Shea Stadium days: did the Jets have more of an identity then?
     
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  3. Dierking

    Dierking Well-Known Member

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    It was a shithole, but it was our shithole.
     
  4. Br4d

    Br4d 2018 Weeb Ewbank Award

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    I'd go to games at Shea because it was a subway ride away.

    When I was still actively going to professional sports the breakdown the years I was going was like this:

    Liberty - 15-20 games a year. (Season Ticket Holder) Walking/Subway.

    Yankees - 10-15 games a year (Saturday Plan). Walking/Subway/Bus depending on where I was living.

    Rangers - 5-10 games a year. Subway.

    Mets - 5 games a year. Subway.

    Cosmos - 5 games a year. Subway to Bus to Tram.

    Jets - 2 games a year at Shea. Subway.

    From where I've lived the Meadowlands was a major trek and not worth the bother.
     
    #4 Br4d, Dec 11, 2021
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2021
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  5. mrjet80

    mrjet80 Well-Known Member

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    The game was a complete ass kicking …. Hard to believe 38 years ago.
     
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  6. Brook!

    Brook! Soft Admin...2018 Friendliest Member Award Winner

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    Did you go to games back then or no?
     
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  7. papapump

    papapump Well-Known Member

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    We loved going to Shea. The stadium, and the team had character. Sharing anything with the Giants sucks.
     
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  8. GREG

    GREG Well-Known Member

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  9. Br4d

    Br4d 2018 Weeb Ewbank Award

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    The Jets basically abandoned NYC when they moved out of Shea. The city was still in a huge financial funk and the Jets bailed when there was no public money coming their way for a stadium.

    The Giants had bailed a decade earlier and when the Jets followed them to the Meadowlands it was like the baseball Giants following the Dodgers out of town in the 50's.

    I remember being in disbelief that Hess would move the Jets instead of creating a stadium for them the way the Giants had in the Meadowlands. It seemed like such a short-sighted move, becoming a tenant of another NFL team.

    I think the key moment in the history of the abandonment is when the Giants were allowed to retain the NY label even though they had moved to NJ. If they had been forced to become the NJ Giants I think the jets would have had a stake in staying the NY Jets. Instead both teams were allowed to fudge the details for marketing purposes and NY lost two of their three teams in everything but name in the process.
     
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  10. Dierking

    Dierking Well-Known Member

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    I’d been to a couple. My dad had a business associate with season tickets so they were always available to us, but he hated going on account of the miserable conditions and generally deplorable product on the field. Every couple of seasons we’d get him to break down and take us to a game.

    Last time was the 81 wildcard game. Team is fucking cursed, no other way to look at it.
     
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  11. Brook!

    Brook! Soft Admin...2018 Friendliest Member Award Winner

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    Uncle D. It will be an honor to tailgate with you before a game at Metlife and attend a game together. No joke. Your ticket on me sir.
     
  12. Dierking

    Dierking Well-Known Member

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    I’m a married man bro
     
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  13. statjeff22

    statjeff22 2008 Green Guy "Most Knowledgeable" Award Winner

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    By the end it was a dump, and even before then games were often a very unpleasant experience in November or December, and I say that as someone who sold hot chocolate there (with a big heavy tank on my back) during the 1971 season.
     
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  14. jetophile

    jetophile Bruce Coslet's Daughter

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    It was a wind tunnel. The heaters in the restroom were full of lint and they were so loud you felt like you were in an airplane hangar.
     
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  15. GREG

    GREG Well-Known Member

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    My first heartbreaking loss. Bill Simpson's INT with seconds left saved the Bills. If I remember that play correctly Gaffney was wide open but Todd under threw the pass.
     
  16. hornblower

    hornblower Well-Known Member

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    I used to drive to Main St. and take the #7 one stop to Shea. It was $5 for standing room and I saw most games in the Super Bowl season. It was fun.
     
  17. jetophile

    jetophile Bruce Coslet's Daughter

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    Why didn't you ever post this fantastic tidbit before? Hot chocolate heaya! It was the most watered down garbage ever. You had to have had one of those old school cool change dispenser belts. I never saw anyone young, just a bunch of old geezers. This made my day.
     
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  18. jetophile

    jetophile Bruce Coslet's Daughter

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    The #7. Damn. The Queens local. Full on graffiti. You felt like you were gonna get tossed into space at every turn. The best were the Conductor announcements: "Next stop is cracklecracklehisscracklehiss." "What?"
     
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  19. statjeff22

    statjeff22 2008 Green Guy "Most Knowledgeable" Award Winner

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    I was a proud employee of Harry M. Stevens for the 1971 and 1972 baseball seasons and the 1971 football season. I started out on soda for the Mets, but I hated it - you were assigned to one particular area, and the trays were an unwieldly sticky mess, so I quickly changed to souvenirs. Thus, the correct phrase should have been "Hey, yeeahbooks heah! Souveneah baseballs!", which is exactly what a friend of mine wrote in my high school yearbook in 1972. I loved doing souvenirs because you could go anywhere you wanted to in the stadium. I would walk up to the upper deck (I picked up the stuff to sell on the field level up the third base line), and would often be the only person up there, selling souvenirs to all the kids ("Dad, can I have a yearbook?"). I would also sometimes go to the ballpark, enter the stadium to work at 11 AM, and then just go up to the upper deck, eat lunch, and watch the game. I typically made $20 - $30 a game (I would get around 10% of the sale price of what I sold).

    Football was a lot less fun. The only opportunity was hot chocolate, which was brutal back-breaking work, and messy, too. The only benefit was that the cannisters were warm, which helped when the wind came in from Flushing Bay in December.

    No change dispensers allowed. We had aprons with pockets in the front to put the money. They expected us to bring our own change, and depending on what you took out (whether it was souvenirs, soda, or hot chocolate), they expected you to bring back unsold merchandise or the appropriate amount of money. If you lost the money, or you got mugged in the stadium (a real possibility at a night game if you were selling souvenirs, but it never happened to me), you were out of luck, and had to pay them back the next game you worked. For night games we would quit in the 8th inning, and line up to check out, which took hours. Then it was onto the #7 train, change at 74 Street for the E or F, get off at 169 Street, and switch to the Q5 bus (no free transfer - another 30 or 35 cents), ride that for 15 minutes and then walk 1/2 mile to my house. I'd get home at around 1:30 AM, and for some reason my mother would always be awake when I did!
     
  20. jetophile

    jetophile Bruce Coslet's Daughter

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    This is so great.
     
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