07/07 — By now, you’ve already heard about Jets Night at Shea Stadium. The Mets’ game with the San Francisco Giants tomorrow evening will certainly have a Green & White tint.

A number of Jets alums will appear at a 5:30 p.m. pregame fundraiser in the picnic area to benefit area charities both the Jets’ and Mets’ foundations. Then the Jets will be saluted during an on-field pregame ceremony that will include the first pitch and the "Shea Countdown" of games to be played in the stadium's final season. For full details, click here and read away.

I’ll be making the short trek to Queens for some of the festivities. The Jets, who called Shea home from 1964-83, are headliners one final time at the old ballpark. In this NYC sports era marked by beautiful new stadiums popping up left and right, the Mets’ Citi Field (just a short throw from Shea) is currently under construction and promises to be ready for action next spring.

My memories of Shea are dwarfed by my literary compadre, Randy Lange.  (The hard-working Lange is vacationing this week, but the guy never breaks and is working from his Jersey Shore bungalow.) He covered football battles at Shea while I was just a youngster growing up in Western New York, watching the Bills with my father. Buffalo actually won a playoff game at Shea back in 1981, a 31-27 contest, but I can’t tell you I actually remember watching that postseason matchup.

As we head into Jets Night, I’d like you — Jets Nation — to share your fondest Shea memories with us. We’ll post them right here throughout the day tomorrow, so keep them coming.

I still have the ticket stub of my favorite. Just a few years back, my cousin, Geoff Geary, was promoted to the Philadelphia Phillies and one of his first big league stops was Shea. I was able to obtain a pregame field pass and I yelled his name once he came trotting off the grass at the end of batting practice.

Sporting an incredulous look, he did a double take because he had no idea I would be in attendance. We talked for at least 10 minutes until no player from either team remained and Geoff, a young rookie at the time, had to jog back into the clubhouse before he was shipped back down to Triple A.

It was a pretty surreal moment, congratulating your cousin — the kid you used to throw the ball around with on summer days at Grandma’s cottage in Fort Erie, Ontario, the youngster who was always an adept stickball player on the blacktop in South Buffalo — on making it to the Big Leagues. I guess you have to give credit to my uncle and my aunt for moving him out of the Lake Effect to Southern California when he was just an infant. (Props to Geoff, who's now in his fifth year in the majors, holding a respectable 2.81 ERA for the Houston Astros, in case you need a quality middle reliever for your fantasy teams.)

We’ll get to the Meadowlands in due time and I’m already getting fired up thinking about that. I quickly trace back to the ’02 campaign when you guys made the earth shake against Green Bay (the way that place roared when it was announced New England had beaten Miami, thus giving the Jets a shot to capture the AFC East) and then that Indy playoff shellacking. That was like two consecutive weeks of Pearl Jam concerts where Ed Ved supplied you with a seat on one of his speakers.

Ah, I’m getting ahead of myself. I get caught up in the memories and look forward to the new moments, the smell of the air in the fall and the freshness of another football season. But tomorrow we look back. Please share with us your great Shea memories.