Five Reasons Why Shea Stadium is Synonymous With the 7 Train

The best way to have gotten to Shea Stadium was via the elevated train that runs through Queens. They had some things in common.

by Rich Watson 

The Shea Stadium site, says Google Maps, is seven minutes by car from the house I grew up in. Because I lived so close, I seldom relied on the 7 train to see my Mets. 

When I did use it, my perspective of the stadium changed. The sight of it, looming through the windows of the train car as it left the 111th Street station, inspired me. It recalled past glories, especially the 1986 championship season. It made me hope for future ones.

CitiField may be the Mets’ home now, but the ghost of Shea and the 7, in my mind at least, remain linked. 

They had a few commonalities.

Who was Shea anyhow?

After the 1957 season, the Dodgers and Giants had left New York for the west coast. Two years later a proposed Continental League sought to become a third major league, beginning in 1961. While such an idea had first popped up back in the twenties, this version was the product of attorney William Shea.

MLB responded by expanding, with new franchises in Washington, Los Angeles, Houston and New York. 

The nascent New York team was the Mets, owned by former Giants minority owner Joan Payson. Shea’s true goal was to bring National League baseball back to New York. Having achieved that, the Continental League folded. 

After playing two years at the Polo Grounds, the Mets moved to a new stadium in Queens, near LaGuardia Airport, named for Shea.

Shea Stadium history in brief

The story of the 1969 Miracle Mets is well known. The 1986 team is almost as familiar, for the way they dominated the National League during the regular season as for their improbable postseason.

• The Jets played there from 1964-83, and won a Super Bowl during that period. 
• In the mid-seventies, the Y*nk**s and football Giants temporarily stayed at Shea when their ballpark underwent renovations. For one year, 1975, Shea hosted four professional sports teams at once. 
• Outdoor stadium concerts became a thing thanks to the Beatles’ gig at Shea. 
• Spider-Man got married there. (Speaking of which, there’s a nice Spider-Man story that takes place at Shea.) 
• Shea appeared in the films Men in Black 3, The Wiz, Bang the Drum Slowly, Two Weeks Notice and The Rutles: All You Need is Cash. 
• The first New York sporting event after 9-11 was at Shea, on September 21, 2001. 
• Kevin James of the TV show The King of Queens even named his daughter Shea.

This post, though, is about the 7 train and Shea. Here are five ways in which they go together.

1. Robert Moses and the World’s Fair

In 1964-65, Queens hosted, for the second time, a World’s Fair in Flushing Meadow Park. In addition to the array of cultural and commercial exhibits from around the world, Shea had opened the same year, 1964. Both were accessible via the 7. The city had a special train model for the Fair.

In the book Tomorrow-Land: The 1964-65 World’s Fair and the Transformation of America by Joseph Tirella, Fair organizer and city planner Robert Moses considered Shea a de facto part of the festivities:

As far as Moses was concerned, the stadium was one more pavilion at the World’s Fair, an ingenious way of attracting tens of thousands of fans throughout the long baseball season, which, like the Fair, extended from April to October. Shea Stadium was also a key component of Moses’ post-Fair Flushing Meadow Park, which he promised would become “the most important park in the entire City, measured by size, usage, or any other yardstick.”

Moses played a part in Shea’s creation. In 1957, when the futures of the Dodgers and Giants remained uncertain, several proposals had floated around concerning how to keep one or both in New York.

According to Robert E. Murphy’s book about this period, After Many a Summer, Moses wrote a Sports Illustrated piece in which he made clear the only alternative to letting the Dodgers walk:

“…the Park Department came up with the only suggestion that makes sense…. It was no new thing…. It had been on the park program for many years, going way back to the expansion of Flushing Meadow and the basic improvements for the World’s Fair of 1939, 1940.”

The site was splendidly located with plenty of room for parking, and the stadium could be built for $8 million, $10 million with a roof, which he thought “impractical,” and could be ready for April 1959.

The Giants had their eye on Minneapolis as a new location at the time before deciding on San Francisco. As for the Dodgers, owner Walter O’Malley didn’t see the potential in a Flushing Meadow stadium that Moses did. Summer states that years later, in Los Angeles, O’Malley admitted he dropped the ball on Flushing Meadow.

2. Roosevelt Avenue 

 

Shea was on the northern side of Flushing Meadow and the World’s Fair, to the south. In between, and underneath the 7, was Roosevelt Avenue. The street runs for half the length of the train line, from Sunnyside to Flushing.

The 7–the Interborough Rapid Transit Flushing Line—started in 1915. By 1928 it had extended from midtown Manhattan through Long Island City and eastward, up Queens Boulevard and then Roosevelt. 

Named for former president Theodore Roosevelt, the street, in time, reflected the changes in Queens’ ethnic character after 1965, when Congress relaxed immigration restrictions.

As a kid, hanging out in Jackson Heights and hearing the variety of languages spoken on the streets, especially on Roosevelt, I didn’t think much of it. I knew New York City in general was a melting pot, with people from all over the world. I had thought this part of town simply reflected that. 

It does, but it wasn’t until the past twenty years or so that I appreciated how much Queens, over and above the rest of New York and the world in general, is a melting pot. No street personifies this more than Roosevelt— and in recent years, the Mets have begun to embrace this aspect of their borough.

3. Willets Point station

The name of the actual stop on the 7 where Shea resided was “Willets Point-Shea Stadium.” CitiField’s name has not replaced Shea’s on the sign. This was the most visible connection between the old ballpark and the train.

There’s an exit at the station which leads to a stairway with a longish platform. When Shea was around, you could’ve stood on that platform and peered inside the stadium from right field. 

It wasn’t the greatest view, but with a Walkman tuned to Bob Murphy broadcasting the game on the radio, you would’ve gotten a feel for the action. If you didn’t have a ticket, it was worth standing there to hear the roar of the crowd and to see the DiamondVision screen firsthand.

The way CitiField is positioned, this view is impossible now. I miss it.

WP is next to Flushing Bay. For a long time, a horrible stink emanated from it, a result of the pollution from the auto body shops. Every time you went over the water on the 7 heading into Flushing, you could smell it. 

The city is finally redeveloping WP and making it a real neighborhood. If they do nothing more than clean up that area, it’ll be plenty.

4. Casey Stengel

Casey, of course, was the Mets’ first manager. (He may have managed another team before that.) More than anyone else in those early days, he personified the seat-of-the-pants spirit of the lovable losers that were the Amazing Mets.

Across Roosevelt Avenue, under the footbridge connecting the Willets Point station to Flushing Meadow, there is a Long Island Rail Road station and the Corona train yard.

There is also an MTA bus depot. The NYC Transit Authority claimed it in 1947 from the North Shore Bus Company, who first built it. It was the Flushing Depot until 1992, when it took the name Casey Stengel Depot.

While this may not be a direct link to the 7, its trains are stocked at the Corona yard. The yard is adjacent to the bus depot. I think even Casey himself would say it counts.

5. Flushing

The neighborhood west of the Shea site is Corona, the 7 train station is called Willets Point, but Shea’s address was 123-01 Roosevelt Avenue, Flushing. Funny how that works out.

Today, Flushing, the final stop on the 7, is practically another Chinatown, a foodie’s paradise. As a kid, it was different. 

It was the Modell’s Sporting Goods shop on Main Street where I bought my first baseball glove. It was in a large bin on the lower level. I had to search to find a left-handed one.

• It was the RKO Keith’s movie theater on Northern Boulevard. 
• It was the Woolworth’s on the corner of Roosevelt and Main. 
• The Nobody Beats the Wiz record store. 
• The B. Dalton’s bookstore. 
• The Baskin Robbins ice cream shop. 
• The arcade. 
• The art supply store. 
• The shop that sold heavy metal posters and T-shirts. 
• The mini-mall that had a comic book shop. 
• The pizza shop on Roosevelt I went to with my best friend Jerry. 
• The YMCA on Northern. 
• The Q66 bus.

That was my Flushing. Whenever I picture it, I also think of Shea and the 7, because often, I either came from Shea via the 7, or was on my way to Shea.

From Shea to CitiField

Mets management wanted a new stadium as far back as the nineties. Shea Stadium’s demise began in 2001, when outgoing Mayor Rudy Giuliani announced “tentative agreements” to build new stadiums for both New York baseball teams. The city would pay for half the costs.

His successor, Michael Bloomberg, attempted to back out of the deal via an escape clause, citing budget limitations. Giuliani, however, had inserted a clause of his own allowing both teams to leave New York within sixty days if the city backed out. 

By 2006 New York came to agreements with both teams for new stadiums. The Mets paid the construction costs for what would become CitiField. The city paid for infrastructure improvements.

Shea was demolished in 2009. All that remains of it is the home run top hat (an apple would rise out of the hat when a Met hit a homer) and the sites for home plate and the bases.

The 7 train, fortunately, remains.

(I should also mention there’s a Mets apparel shop called The 7 Line that organizes a fan club called The 7 Line Army. It started during the CitiField era, however. They’re… rather ardent fans.)

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After a year and a half, I think I’ve gotten baseball as a subject out of my system for now. In two weeks we’ll begin a brand new topic: video games. It’ll last for less than a year and a half this time.

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Did you ever go to Shea Stadium?