Old timer’s return to Shea

In 1964, the very first game at Shea Stadium was between the Mets and Pittsburgh Pirates and Joseph Ramirez was there.
Recently, when staffers at the Margaret Tietz hospice facility in Jamaica asked the now-84-year-old if there was anything he wanted - it was to go to back to Shea before it was gone.
On Monday, August 11, Ramirez got his wish and then some. Tietz Center staffers approached Mets management, and Ramirez was escorted through areas few fans will ever see.
He was brought by wheelchair to “the tunnel,” a semi-circular passage under the stands leading to the team locker rooms and access to the field. There he was given a souvenir baseball, met and got autographs from two Met players, catcher Brian Schneider and outfielder Nick Evans.
Then he was brought to a field portal behind home plate - but could go no further due to the driving rain which threatened the game.
“I would have liked to go out there, but it’s okay,” he said. “Back in the day, we used to go on the field all the time - the cops couldn’t run for [beans] in those days.”
Next was a tour of the exclusive Diamond Club, for a close-up look at the World Series trophies and busts of Met immortals. He beamed like a much younger fan as he recalled them.
Baseball memories stand out in his mind - he once caught a pop-foul off the bat of Met first baseman, now sportscaster, Keith Hernandez - even among remembrances of life, love and war.
The second of three sons being raised by their father, he started out on the lower east side of Manhattan. “[The Great Depression] was so bad he had to put us in a home.”
Through the Edwin Gould Foundation, he was taken in by Janet Waring, sister of Fred Waring, leader of a popular big-band, the Pennsylvanians. “She was my mother,” he said.
In 1941, he lied about his age (16) and joined the Navy. “It was a couple of months before my birthday. My mother found out and reported me, so they threw me out.” Afterwards, he went to his father for permission to enlist. “He said the only way he’d sign was if I joined the Merchant Marine, so at least I’d get paid well.”
Before his first abortive attempt to enlist, he met a girl from Mulberry Street in Little Italy -15-year-old Virginia Rizzo. Two years later, they married. “They thought I was a Waring,” he recounted. “When they found out I was Puerto Rican, they wanted to rub me out,” he said, perhaps in jest.
Over the years, he and “Jean,” as she was called, had nine children. The oldest, Joey, died in Vietnam in 1968. “Georgie and Nick died early,” he said, looking away.
Two years ago Jean passed away. Recently, Ramirez left his Astoria home for the Margaret Tietz hospice. But this day, he was coming home to Shea Stadium.
For a time, he took up a job offer to work in an auto-related business off Willets Point Boulevard “just to be close to the stadium,” and starting with that first game, attended frequently.
“You could sit almost anywhere you wanted in those days,” he recalled from his perch in a handicapped section behind home plate. “But these are the best seats I’ve ever had.”
“Television is great with all the replays and coverage, but there’s nothing like the game in person,” he said with a smile as he took in the panorama of the grandstands and Citi Field beyond the bleachers. “It reminds me of Ebbets Field - we went there all the time when we lived in Brooklyn.”
Despite an early Met lead, Ramirez perceived that on what might be his last game at Shea they would lose to the Pirates, as they did at that very first game. The Mets lost, 7-5. “Maybe next time,” he sniffed.
The time came when the group of Tietz residents and staffers had to leave; it was getting late and some were getting tired. Ramirez was philosophical as he was being wheeled away from the scene of so many memories.