The Score

Never can Shea goodbye

They aren't going to change the name of the new Yankee Stadium because they just won't. They don't dare. They can sell it off in pieces, like the Wonder Bread Bleachers or the Progresso Garbonzo Beans Visitors' Bullpen or the Preparation H Broadcaster's Booth, but the Stadium's name is too important a piece of history to fool with.

Not that place in Queens, though. William A. Shea Municipal Stadium, its full name, opened for business at the start of the 1964 season — Pirates 4, Mets 3 — and the Mets are sure to pull in several million dollars when they sell the naming rights to the new park. That gives New Yorkers until 2009 to Shea goodbye.

Maybe you're wondering who this Shea person was, and how he came to have his name on a baseball stadium. He wasn't an owner — see Turner Field, Wrigley Field, Busch Stadium, Kaufmann Stadium — or a beloved politico (RFK Stadium, Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome) and he never hustled juice (Tropicana, Minute Maid).

Bill Shea was born in New York 98 years and five days ago. He played baseball at George Washington HS. When the basketball season came around, and because the school didn't have a team, Shea and his buddies called themselves Fort Washington Prep and convinced, or conned, other schools into playing them.

After decades as one of the city's major attorneys, often described as a power broker, Shea was appointed by Mayor Robert Wagner to find a National League team that would move here and fill the gaping hole left by the Giants' and Dodgers' departure. When Shea asked other franchises to consider relocating, their answer was no. When he asked the league to expand and include New York, he heard the same answer.

So Shea, who created an imaginary prep school, created the Continental League. The National League noticed, and stopped saying no. They awarded franchises to New York and Houston in time for the 1962 season. And when the new stadium was ready to open, a grateful Wagner put Shea's name on it. Here it is, 41 years later, still Shea.

He died in 1991. Several years before that, there was a charity luncheon at the ballpark — I forget the charity and the menu — but I do remember Joe Garagiola introducing the attorney as "Bill Shea Stadium."

Shea, when he spoke, said he well understood that "15 minutes after I die they'll change the stadium's name to honor Casey Stengel or Jackie Robinson." The line got a laugh. But nobody expected Shea's end line.

"What you don't know," he said, "is that when they do change the name, and they remove the cornerstone that bears my name, I have it rigged so that the entire stadium will collapse."

He was, I'm pretty sure, kidding.