LIRRI grew up a couple of blocks north of the Massapequa Train Station.  I was close enough to hear the evening train whistle on summer evenings.  I also grew up watching Met games.  On hot summer evenings, my dad would take a small black and white tv onto our breezeway (do you even hear that term anymore?) and watch baseball games.  This was before cable and there were only a few stations available.  Channel 9 (WOR) came in pretty clear despite the use of rabbit ears.  My father would only watch tv out there when the summer was at its warmest.

By 1970, I was already a devotee of the Mets. The first Mets game I ever went to was in 1970.  My father and I took the Long Island Railroad to Woodside and then the number 7 train to Shea Stadium.  I can still feel the anticipation of walking to the train station, waiting for the train, making the local stops all the way and then walking up the steps to the elevated section and the second part of the journey to Shea.

As I grew up, my friend Richie and I finally got an opportunity to go to a game together without parental supervision.  Because we had the LIRR, we didn’t have to wait for one of us to get a driver’s license or own a car.  Because of the LIRR, our parents just had to have enough faith and trust in us to travel the railroad on our own.  In retrospect, I think they knew that they didn’t have to worry too much since we were both so excited about going to the game, they knew we weren’t going to miss that opportunity.  We sat along the third base line and close to an older gentleman with red hair; we both agreed that he had to be Rusty Staub’s father (I hope we didn’t annoy him too much).  We still talk about him to this day.

After my tour of duty in the United States Army and after college, I got a job in New York City.  I traveled the LIRR’s Babylon (green) line back and forth to Penn Station.  During rush hours, trains don’t make every stop; more often than not, we’d cruise right past the Woodside stop but I swear that not a time went by that if even for a millisecond, I didn’t think about how I was passing by the gateway to Shea Stadium.

During the early eighties, when Tom Seaver returned for a season with the Mets, the team promoted his return by putting up billboards on their platforms.  On the Massapequa platform, the Seaver billboard had a tear at its base.  It was half-pulled out of its frame and hung like that for a couple of weeks.  One night after work, when getting off the train, I noticed that someone had pulled it the rest of the way out of its frame and it was just sitting there next to the garbage.  I have to admit that I picked that billboard up and rescued it from the dumpster.  I still have that billboard.  Its been trimmed down a bit in size but now its mounted in my garage. It has been there for years. We stored my children’s basketballs, soccer balls, and baseballs in a toy chest directly in front of Seaver’s image.  Each time, I came home from work and picked up a ball from the backyard, I put it in that toy chest.  Each time I did that, Tom Seaver looked back at me.  My kids are all grown up but the billboard and the toy chest (and much of their equipment) remain.

So in the long run, I’ve carried the memories of the Long Island Railroad and the Mets with me all the way to New England.

PS: I’m not really at liberty to discuss how I acquired my 1986 “Baseball Like it Oughta Be” LIRR billboard but I’ve got one of those too (in my basement).

13 comments on “The Long Island Railroad, the New York Mets, and me

  • Chris F

    Awesome story Jim!

  • Jim OMalley

    Thanks Chris F!!!!

  • Jerry Grote

    For real … I share that story completely.

    Lived on Charles Avenue in Massapequa Park, graduated from Berner High in 1975, Dad was a motorman on the NYC subways, and taking that same #7 train to see the Mets play.

    We started during the World’s Fair, but it was always the train into seeing the game.

  • Jim OMalley

    Wait a minute. I graduated from Berner in 1975!

    • Jerry Grote

      No kidding!

      Alex Skabry … I played on the soccer team. Berner High School, McKenna Junior High, East Lake Elementary. Lived on Charles Avenue, between Euclid and Pittsburg.

      Your name sounds familiar, but I can’t quite place you.

  • Charlie Hangley

    Very cool, Jim!

  • Jim OMalley

    Alex Skabry…sure. I think maybe Spanish class? Do you know Tim Murphy, Kevin McQueen, Rich Grogan, Jeff Schilling?

  • Jim OMalley

    And thanks, Charlie!

  • Jerry Grote

    Nope, I took German … Kevin McQueen is a really familiar name to me as well.

    I never get back there anymore – I live near Niagara Falls now – but when I do Google Maps it looks like every single house on my block changed. I didn’t leave LI, I escaped to U/Buffalo and never looked back.

    Completely cool, to find a classmate from almost 40 years ago on a Mets fan site.

    I think this whole Internet thing might work out.

    • jeff schilling

      Hey Alex, I saw the Jim Omalley post and i sure do remember you from Berner. Im also a big met fan as well. Becoming a met fan in 1969 and what a year. Glad you’r well. Jeff

  • Patrick Albanesius

    It’s like a family reunion in here! Awesome story Jim, and I had and still use the term breezeway, even if time has passed it by.

  • Jake

    Jim
    Your best article so far. I too graduated from Berner, in 76. As for breezeways, we had one in our house on Ocean Ave in Massapequa, in fact, on Pennsylvania Ave there was a house exactly like ours except everything was opposite. My friend Jim and I always got a kick out of that. I remember watching the Met games with my Nana at her apartment in Brooklyn, She was a big Met fan…we watched Seaver’s almost perfect game together. My first Met game was in 1971, I went with my friend Craig, we took a bus with the Little League…funny but I had to pee real bad when we arrived and that leak famously became known as the longest(not farthest) pee in history. I’ve been fortunate to take the Woodside route many times too. By the way, I am a Yankee fan but oddly always liked the Mets and preferred going to Shea,,,,In fact, in 2013, I got special permission from Yankee fans and Met fans to actually make the Mets my primary team….I may continue the experiment in 2014. Glad to hear Jerry Grote went to Berner too. Small world
    Jake Fitz

  • Jake

    Jim
    By the way, thank you for your service to our Nation. I remember when my buddy Jim joined the Army….A lifetime ago…The night before he went, we watched Monte Python with Army equipment on at his house.
    Wish I had a time machine
    Jake

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