48,736 See Bucs Flush Mets at New Shea Stadium

AP Shea Stadium from the top as the Mets play their first game in the new ballpark against the Pirates.(Originally published by the Daily News on Saturday, April 18, 1964, written by Dick Young)

You take a shabby downtrodden bunch of Mets, and you wrap them in a spanking new ballpark that cost somebody $25 million bucks and what have you got? A shabby, downtrodden bunch of Mets, still losing, this time 4-3 to Pitt, and thereby christening Shea Stadium with tears of defeat.

For a time yesterday, the 48,736 howlers wallowing in the excelsior freshness of the luxurious ballpark, believed their beggars had become princes, but a 3-1 lead was eventually blown, a run at a time, as Willie Stargell, a…