This should not be read by Gretchen Randolph. The wife of the Mets manager need not know her husband's regard for Shea Stadium. She would do well to remain unaware that her husband doesn't "get all gushy" when he thinks about the end of the ballpark, that he has no fuzzy feelings about the place he works, the place he played as a member of the Mets in 1992.
The place Willie Randolph took Gretchen on their first "legitimate" date.
But that's how the manager feels. He was a Mets fan before he was a Pittsburgh Pirate and then a pivotal figure in all that Yankees winning in the second half of the 1970s and into the '80s. He wears No. 12 as the Mets manager, partially because Kenny Bowell wore 12 as member of the Mets in the late '60s and into the '70s when Randolph was a Brooklyn kid going to games at Shea with his uncle.
Clearly, a place in Randolph's heart exists for the Mets, but, evidently, not for their soon-to-be-replaced place of business. So you'll understand Tuesday when the manager doesn't get all teary during the pregame ceremonies -- the final opening home-game ceremonies for Shea -- his mind will be on the Phillies and Oliver Perez and, no doubt, some payback, too. The arena will be quite secondary.
"I know great things have happened there, and I'm proud to be the Mets manager and I hope we play one more World Series there," Randolph said last month. "But it's just a building. It's the people and what they did there that are important."
Source:Mets.com
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