What's Worser Than Shea?

A few years back, my father's late friend JB found a teachable moment when his infant son was gurgling in a Yankee bib and ripping apart a Mets baseball card and said, "That's right, Matthew, they suck. Here rip away on this Mike Piazza,"

And so began an elaborate and unarguable father-son "talk" where JB effused the simple New York sports maxim: "Matthew, all the -E, T, S teams suck." That is, the Jets, the Mets, and the Nets, with their shallow histories and guido fans.

Listening to JB espouse the wisdom to his drooling two-year old son made me realize his sentiment's profound objectivity: those teams really do suck.

My few experiences at Shea stadium were all fucking pathetic. The long, droning 7 Train out there, the soulless 70's kitsch atmosphere, the unironic greaser fans, the long, droning flyovers by LaGuardia-bound jets. Not to mention the JV National League competish and the hometeam lineup trying too hard to be the Yankees. All of that crap is magnified by the majestic U.S Open Tennis Center across the street, proving a meaningful sports experience can be had in a place called Flushing.

However, my opinion of Shea Stadium and its team as the worst of the worst, was pushed up a rung and replaced at the very bottom by FedEx Field in Landover, MD.

Do not go here. Even if you have good seats. Mine were on the 30 yard line, fifteen rows up. It's butt.

The Redskins are owned by some DC tycoon Dan Snyder, who bought the team and built the new stadium as part of some richboy moneygrab. I was at Woodstock '99, so I am quick to recognize egregious events whose sole purpose is to make money, and this stadium, on gameday, is the epitome.

Everything costs: the slow ass city buses from the far ass Metro cost 6 bucks each, and the beer and food cost more than at Yankee Stadium. A warmed over hamburger costs $12 dollars. Oxygen is two bucks.

And for what? FedEx was built hastily, away from the city and the metro, in some dead area of Maryland, yet, with all that space, they botched the transportation planning and there is stop and stop traffic everywhere, for miles, for hours. There are 90,000 seats, all filled, but the open design lets the crowd noise float upward and out, not contain the noise like the old, now curiously un-obsolete RFK. The bathrooms, always a line out the door, not just at halftime like regular stadiums, force people to snake around three corners before lining up for four widely spaced urinals on a wall, where there could have been easily been ten. Line the walls with troughs like Wrigley; that's worked for 110 years.

Then put some self-serious, first-down saluting douche fans around you while you sip a $9 beer after traveling two hours from downtown and paying $15 for public transportation, and watch from the 15th row and actually see the breathtaking size and speed of professional football for the first time, seething with bitterness.