Ira Socol
May 27, 2003
I was barely seven years old and this was my first baseball game. The year before I had asked to go see the Yankees but my dad (an absolute Giants fan, though he grew up a block from Yankee Stadium and had stories of Bill Dickey umpiring games for him and his friend when he was a kid) told me that "there is no baseball in New York." In March of 1962 I put my name in a drawing at the Daitch Shopwell supermarket near my house and won two tickets to this double-header! We drove to the end of the subway and took that to the Polo Grounds and I remember being surprised that it "had Met logos (the NY) all over it" and couldn't understand what my dad was talking about when he kept referring to the Giants. I don't remember anything about the game except being sure, to the very end, that somehow the Mets would come back and win. Of course they didn't, but it made no difference, I've been a Mets fan ever since.
Joel Goldberg
November 26, 2024
I was 16 years-old and went to the game at the Polo Grounds with my father. Mays made an error on a Ritchie Ashburn hit. The crowd seemed to be mostly Mets fans even though the Giants used to play their home games there. The crowd booed Mays for the error.
In Mays’ next at bat he hit a mammoth home run over the left centerfield bullpen. It boomed off the facade hanging below the roof! The crowd was stunned into shocked silence by the crash of the ball into the metal facade. Then, there were cheers for the Willie Mays they all loved (even from the old-time Dodger fans like me who were there).
Even after more than 60 years I recall that home run.
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