Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Judge This Book By Its Cover

I meant to post this last night. I'm just relaying information from another blog that came out last night.

Noted author and Mets fan has a new book coming out. The Last Days of Shea: Delight and Despair in the life of a Mets fan. That's not new news anymore. We've known about his book for a while. Yesterday on his blog, Dana showed the world the cover. It's beautiful.



Let's dissect it. He has a great picture of Shea, with a beautiful blue partly cloudy sky serving as backdrop for the text. It's Shea, beautiful old Shea, with its symmetry and geometry as seen from probably the last row in the Upper Deck straight behind home plate. And the kicker - there's no Citi Field in the background.

I've always said that no good photo of Shea has Citi Field in the background. He used what I consider to be a classic shot of Shea (of any ballpark really) - what I call the "postcard shot". Get as high up as necessary to get the widest shot, as even as possible with the line drawn from home plate, through the pitcher's mound, and straight away center field, and shoot, and in the age of digital cameras and large memory sticks, shoot a lot.

I actually have a 1000 piece puzzle, put together and framed, in my living room, of Shea Stadium from a photo taken at the 2005 Home Opener from a similar vantage point. Just about any photo taken from there before the construction will be beautiful. You can buy the puzzle at amazon.com for a lot less than I paid for it in Port St. Lucie last year.