Shea Stadium did it all in 1975 — one man helped make miracle possible

Fifty years ago Sunday — Aug. 3, 1975 — they played two baseball games at Shea Stadium, the Yankees hosting Cleveland for an old-fashioned, single-admission doubleheader. The old yard — which in 1975 was just 11 years old, even if it sometimes felt like it predated the Polo Grounds — was still abuzz with what had happened the day before.

That day, for the first time, Billy Martin was introduced as manager of the Yankees. He would go on to manage 941 games for the team, and win 556 of them across five different tenures. But that first time, it felt like the Yankees, old and new, were whole again. And a sizable gathering of 43,968 offered their loud appreciation for that.

A day later, fewer than half that number — 21,083 — reported to Shea to see the Yanks split a pair with the Tribe, and to fall 10 ½ games behind the Red Sox. It was an especially long day for a gentleman named Pete Flynn, in the middle of the longest year of his life.

Flynn was in his second year as the head groundskeeper at Shea, a native of County Leitrim who’d first joined the Mets as a handyman at the Polo Grounds in 1962. He worked for the team in three different stadiums for just under 50 years.