Here’s a transcript from an interview amNewYork did with former Mets All-Star pitcher Ron Darling as part of our coverage of Shea Stadium's final home opener.
Darling, now a Mets television analyst for SNY, played for the Amazin’s from 1983-91.
What were your first impressions of Shea when you first saw it in person?
The first time I saw it, to me, it was heaven. It was the Holy Grail. It was everything you wanted it to be, because I was 22 years old, just called up to the big leagues and Tom Seaver’s in the locker right across from mine. I just thought I’d gone to heaven. What in my right mind do I deserve to be in this big league ballpark with a big league uniform on?
And then my first Opening Day in 1984, I just always thought was an amazing day. From that time forward, 1984 to now, I’ve always considered … Opening Day day 1 on my lunar calendar.
As far as the new stadium, do you think it’s time for something new for the Mets?
“I’ve said the most difficult part is you’re driving a VW Bug and you’ve got a Maserati in the driveway. It’s just really hard to compare both stadiums. I will say this, the Mets and the Wilpon family have done an amazing thing because I think not since Camden Yards has a ballpark tried to capture the old with the new, and new to the lay person means luxury boxes, it means Wi-Fi, it means more bathrooms, it means sexier food. But for baseball fans like myself, for them to try to encapture what it was like in a neighborhood field to have Ebbets Field and that rotunda for Jackie Robinson, I mean, what other team in baseball has ever thought about doing that?
It seems like the Mets are always in the Yankees’ shadow, and especially Shea has always been in Yankee Stadium’s shadow. Do you think the new stadium will help the Mets compete for respect in New York?
“Things go and come around. When I was playing on this Met team in the ’80s, the Yankees were fighting for a dollar. So things can go and come around. That being said, the history and legacy of the Yankees is without peer. Yankee Stadium has a history like no ballpark in America — I don’t care about Wrigley, I don’t care about Fenway Park, both places I love. To put the Mets up against that, I think you’re always going to come up a little short.
But that being said, maybe it’s a nice time, with these new ballparks, that all that gets washed clean. Maybe it’s a new slate. It’ll being interesting to see how both teams go forward because I think both teams are trying to do what they’ve always done, and the Yankees have always been perennial winners and the Mets have always aspired to that. But I would say now both teams are about the same, and I’m not saying one team is better than the other. But both come in every year with a chance to win, and that’s all you can ask of your ballclubs.
I want to ask what your most memorable moment was at Shea Stadium. I’m guessing you’re going to say 1986, maybe Bill Buckner.
I’m not. Two memories of Shea Stadium: One is the most positive, not even close to any other memory …. My memories are of the people who worked there. … To this day the warmest memories I have are when I threw my last warm-up pitch, I would walk through the bowels of the stadium. Everyone from the lady that was in charge of the room where the wives and girlfriends stayed, to the police officers, security officers, you’d make this gauntlet walk between all these people of about a hundred yards, where they would all shout encouragements, slap you on the back, shake your hand before you went out to the arena. I’ll never, ever forget that because that’s real people working real jobs working real hard, a lot of them working two jobs, caring enough to wish you well in this journey to try to win a ballgame. That to me, is always the warmest memory.
As far as baseball is concerned, the warmest memory I’ve had -- and I’ve only told a handful of people this story -- is that in 1987, I had a no-hitter, I think, through five innings against the Cardinals. We were trying to chase them down. Vince Coleman, with one out, bunted, and I caught the ball, tried to get him out, but I broke my thumb at that time. So I got two more outs, then went to the bench. By that time, my thumb had blown up, so I no longer could pitch, need surgery, the whole thing. So as I was walking out after getting it iced and looked at and tweaked, I was walking out to my car, which was parked behind the apple -- I used to always protect it behind the apple because it was convertible. Terry Pendleton, who hit that famous home run in ’87 off Roger McDowell that beat us that night, hit my car and then hit me. I thought it was kind of funny that I not only broke my thumb that night, but that it was a double-whammy that Pendleton’s home run ended our chances and double-hopped and hit me as I was going to the hospital. “
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