For the past two years Rob Salzer of U-Melt has been our go-to Mets fan. On the occasion of Shea Stadium’s closing and tonight’s U-Melt show at the Highline Ballroom, we asked the guitarist to share his thoughts on the Metropolitans home from 1964-2008. Take it away, Rob…

Many people say Shea is a dump, and needs to go. That may be true for current stadium standards, but also seems to be a superficial idea seeing as how the money needed to build Citi Field could actually feed an entire third world country.

That said (and I really think it needed to be said), I think more Mets fans loved Shea than otherwise. The very first baseball game I ever attended was in Spring of 1982, when I was all of three years old. Clearly, I can’t remember much about the experience – but I do know the Mets we’re playing the Cardinals and took the game to the tenth inning. Fittingly, they lost one to nothing against the then superior Cardinals.

READ ON for more from Rob about the closing of Shea Stadium…

I was fortunate enough to be at a Mets – Cards doubleheader in 1999- in the middle of McGwire’s steroid facilitated tear and the hayday of the Mets – Braves rivalry. I was fortunate because Mike Piazza crushed two home runs and John Olerud won the game in the 8th with a grand slam, and believe me, the whole stadium shook. It was pretty incredible.

I also had the misfortune of being at one of those quintessential Mets-blowing-the-lead-after-a- brilliantly-pitched-game by Johan Santana this year.

I’ve been to tons of games between all those memories, but the point is they’ve all been great times spent with friends and family – which I believe to be just about the most important aspect of life – and what the stadium looks like just doesn’t factor into that at all. So I loved the ugly dump in Flushing, despite the aesthetic flaws and failing infrastructure.

Now we look forward to Citi Field, which will certainly be state of the art, and the franchise can feel like it has a park to rival all the other new flashy parks. And it does look good; with the retro, almost Ebbets field look it will certainly resonate with long time residents of NY – especially those lucky enough and who have lived long enough to have seen a Brooklyn Dodgers game. It is truly a shame that many of these people won’t be able to afford to see the Mets at their new ballpark now, in all it’s modern glory. Let’s hope that the $600,000,000.00 ball park will last longer than the measly 44 years Shea did.

Thanks to Rob, and U-Melt’s manager Jason Greenberg for getting this together so quickly. And don’t forget to enter our quirky Gig Used Gear contest to win a batch of stuff from tonight’s concert.

HT Staff

Hidden Track was started in October of 2006 and features a team of dedicated contributors from across the country. This article was written by one of the newest members of our team or was a collaboration by more than one contributor. Want to contribute to Hidden Track? Send us a pitch to scott at glidemagazine dot com.

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