You can go home again...

But someone else's shoes will be sitting on the welcome mat.

Baseball-wise, I grew up at Shea Stadium.

I saw my first major league game at Yankee Stadium, but Shea was close enough to our home in Brooklyn that my mom would let pre-teen me take the subway there with friends or pile into someone’s dad’s car. And the Mets, after many terrible years, had finally assembled some young talent and were cooler than the stodgy, old Yankees as the 1960s ended.

I learned to love baseball at Shea, learned to experience its many frustrations and its boundless joys. Every sports fan should have a season like the Mets did in 1969, a summer when even the most improbable wish came true. Everyone played a part: Tom Seaver (immortalized in the statue pictured above), Jerry Koosman, Jerry Grote, Ron Swoboda, Bud Harrelson, Al Weis, Ed (the Gilder) Charles, Ed Kranepool, Art Shamsky, and so many more. I was too young to realize how the odds were stacked against them or to feel any cynicism or doubt. Every day offered a new miracle or another unthinkable comeback, someone stepping up with a quality start, a clutch save, a timely hit, or a great fielding play. The possibilities were endless. That season helped me realize that I wanted to become a sportswriter, so I could write stories about games and teams and seasons like that.

I did become a sportswriter, and I had occasion to work at Shea Stadium and sit in the press box many times. I always tried to bring with me the sense of wonder I’d felt when I was a kid at the ballpark, learning about the rules and the people of the game and finding my place in the world. It might have been my 10th game that month but I always tried to remember that it was somebody else’s first game, the start of their lifelong relationship with baseball. And maybe their first encounter with the charming Mr. Met and Mrs. Met (originally Lady Met).

As time went on, Shea lost its physical luster. It needed constant renovations. Some things were never quite fixed properly: there always seemed to be long lines at the women’s rest rooms, for one. And once the idea of replacing the stadium became a reality, Shea was allowed to deteriorate into a sad reminder of itself during its final years.

Citi Field opened in 2009. When it came up in conversation, I refused to call it anything but Shea. And because I was no longer covering baseball on a regular basis, I managed to avoid visiting the place.

That changed last week, when I was in New York for a brief vacation and my brother and I went to a Mets game at Citi Field. He asked me what I thought of the place. I wasn’t quite sure how to answer.

It was….nice. The rotunda entrance, with its tribute to Jackie Robinson, is striking. It had lots of women’s rest rooms (hooray!) and lots of food options. And souvenir stores every few feet.

But it didn’t scream “Mets” to me, wasn’t unique to New York or to the Mets. It wasn’t home. It couldn’t be.

I didn’t grow up there, didn’t learn about the world through the prism of these Mets. It’s someone else’s home field now. I hope kids who are seeing their first games at Citi Field and are learning to love baseball can find the same wonder I felt at Shea Stadium all those years ago.

Being at Citi Field brought back memories of my husband, Dennis D’Agostino, who worked for the Mets’ public relations operations for several years, including during their 1986 championship season. He and I would have celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary earlier this week. Here’s what I posted on my Facebook page on Tuesday:

Twenty-five years ago today, with only an officiant, a photographer and a required witness watching, Dennis D’Agostino and I were married as the sun set behind us at Makena Beach on Maui.

I knew of at least a half-dozen people who got married in the summer of 1999. I think we were all afraid of being alone on Dec. 31, 1999, when the Y2K apocalypse was supposed to destroy computers and make the earth stand still.

But the timing was right for us in many other ways: Dennis was exhausted after years of long, intense seasons working for the Knicks, and I had wanted something more permanent than our cross-continent relationship. We both loved Hawaii, so Maui was the logical choice.

Neither of us wanted the fuss of a big wedding, though in later years, whenever I’d watch “Say Yes to the Dress,” he’d insist I watched it only because I secretly had wanted a big, poofy dress and all the trappings. Not so. We had a lovely sunset, a brief ceremony, and then a wedding dinner of fresh shrimp and fries at a casual little place on South Kihei Road. It was bliss.

We went back to Hawaii many times, though for a few years we had difficulty finding the tucked-away little beach where we had exchanged vows (or, as he called it, the scene of the crime). When we’d go back and visit, we’d often see other couples getting married at the same spot. Dennis would say, just loud enough for me to hear but not for the happy couple to overhear, “Don’t do it!” He didn’t mean it. At least, I hope he didn’t. He came to love California, though he always complained that he couldn’t take the No. 7 train to games at Dodger Stadium.

The years passed and the COVID pandemic changed everything. We couldn’t go back to Maui, and then we couldn’t find the time. We talked about it last summer, after we’d already made too many work commitments to fit in a trip, and we agreed we’d go back this year for our 25th anniversary and make an occasion of it.

He died of a heart attack last Sept. 16. I miss him every day. Never more than today.