Shea Stadium was seemingly enough to make a sadsack New York National League club buried deep in the league basement suddenly appear legitimate. They may have still been hopeless losers on the field, but at least the fledgling Mets now had a state-of-the-art facility in which to entertain fans in the nation's baseball capital. Patrons could now watch their beloved stumblebum Mets in considerable luxury and could boast one of the finest stages for watching big-league games anywhere in the nation. And if there was no other advantage to the new digs, at least now it was the ballpark and not the tenants that might draw the bulk of the media and fan attention. It also didn't hurt Mets fortunes any that the crosstown, powerhouse Yankees were now suddenly finding themselves in a disastrous tailspin of their own. The days of nostalgia in the decrepit Polo Grounds were finally over, and the spanking new venue signaled a new direction aimed at hopefully building a pennant contender. The first positive sign of a changing aura around the club was the surge in attendance, with 1.7 million paying customers drawn into the new park, a dramatic increase of nearly 700,000 over the final Polo Grounds season. Over in the Bronx, the pennant-winning Yankees were packing only 1.3 million into the House That Ruth Built. It was the first but not the last time that the turnstiles now officially showed the Mets and not the Yanks to be the city's favored ball club.

It also didn't take long for the new venue and the club that occupied it to witness some unique games. Shea Stadium itself celebrated a noteworthy, if not entirely successful, debut on April 17, 1964, when Willie Stargell's second-inning homer (the first ever at Shea) was the difference in a 4-3 Pittsburgh victory. A near-capacity throng of slightly over 50,000 witnessed the Mets' Tim Harkness register the first base hit and Jack Fisher hurl a called strike on the historic game's first pitch. The first in a series of truly momentous games, however, came on the road at Chicago's Wrigley Field. On May 26, the sadsack Mets inexplicably rose up and routed the more potent Cubs by a shocking 19-1 count. Little-used outfielder Dick Smith fell only a homer short of hitting for the cycle, the Mets chalked up a club-record 23 safeties, and Jack Fisher decided to make the issue indisputable by tossing a four-hitter. The story would circulate throughout New York the next day that when some disbelieving Mets fans heard their team had somehow posted 19 runs, they immediately phoned newspaper sports departments to find out whether the team had actually won.

Back at home on May 31, the Mets made sure that the new park also had its first taste of the truly historic. In the nightcap of a Sunday doubleheader, it would take 23 innings for the home club to finally lose 7-6 to the San Francisco Giants. This may have been the most unforgettable single game of early club history; it featured a Mets triple play (initiated in the 14th when Roy McMillan snagged a liner off the bat of Orlando Cepeda) and a marathon relief stint by the Giants' Gaylord Perry, who entered in the 13th and stayed on for 10 innings. Three weeks later, there was another taste of the rarest of moments when Jim Bunning threw a perfect game at the Mets on Father's Day, only the ninth such masterpiece in big-league history. No matter how bad their team still was, Mets fans didn't lack for considerable entertainment during that inaugural summer of precedent-setting baseball in Shea Stadium.

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