I am not a fan of the New York Mets — the pain of 1969, years before I was born, is still too near — but as a student of history, I am pained on their behalf by this ad that I saw on Facebook yesterday.
The Mets. 1962. Shea Stadium.
Set aside the fact that it’s a hideous Hawaiian shirt — Facebook thinks I’m interested in hideous Hawaiian shirts — the image of Shea Stadium pains me.
The Mets played in the Polo Grounds in Manhattan in 1962.
Shea, built on the Valley of Ashes so memorably described in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, didn’t open until 1964.
Polo Grounds forever! Shea Stadium never!
In other news, we edge ever closer to Denmark invoking NATO Article V against one of its own NATO allies, the United States.
Denmark is “in crisis mode” following a phone call between convicted felon Donald Trump and Denmark Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in which Trump was “aggressive and confrontational” about Greenland, threatening tariffs against Denmark.
I keep quoting Fred Dalton Thompson’s Admiral in The Hunt for Red October: “This business will get out of control. It will get out of control, and we’ll be lucky to live through it.”
Let’s end this on a happy note.
Here are some more ugly baseball Hawaiian shirts Facebook thinks I want. I do not.
“Don’t miss out,” the ads say. Oh, I can totally miss these, thanks.
The Nationals shirt looks like a 1950s bowling shirt, but the cartoon image of a Nationals player is a mirror image. Everything is backwards–the logos, the jersey as a whole, everything.
The Cubs shirt… I have no comment on that. It’s interesting, I guess.
Neither of these will find their way into my closet.
But at least I have more interest in these than the Mets shirt.