By LIZ GOFF

Shea Stadium’s been in Flushing for nearly 30 years. Bob Mandt’s been there from the beginning.

He’s the vice president of Special Projects. When the Mets came to the meadows of Flushing, he was the ticket manager.

When the team came to Queens they also brought along Mr. Met, baseball’s first mascot.

Mandt knows the story of how it came to pass that Queens became the home of a Major League team. It seems that the location of Shea had been offered by Robert Moses to a certain baseball team that chose to desert Brooklyn. But a man named O’Malley wanted to put the place at the corner of Flat-bush and Atlantic, which would have created a traffic nightmare. So O’Malley and his team of bums ended up in Los Angeles, an empty wasteland ended up where Flatbush and Atlantic meet, and Flushing ended up open.

"The land was there," Mandt said. "I don’t think it was anything more arcane than that."

First, the National League didn’t want to give New York an expansion team. So a bunch of business people considered creating the Continental League, which would have included the Mets and teams formed across the country. The National League got scared, and a franchise was granted to New York.

They named the stadium Shea, after lawyer William A. Shea, who worked hard to broker the compromise. They broke ground in October 1961.

Mandt is unsure these days of what it means to the people of Queens to have the Mets in their midst.

"It’s hard to say," he said. "I think it means a great deal to some, and yet sometimes I think it’s taken for granted."

Mandt remembers showing the partly completed stadium to a New York Post reporter.

"We were showing areas where the seats would be put in," he said. "The reporter and I were climbing in the upper decks like goats. I was late winter and I remember him asking me, "Is this place gonna be ready on time?"

"And I said," ‘Of course it will.’"

In 1964, the Mets played their first two games, on the road, and then on April 17,1964, went against the Pirates in the first Shea game ever. Forty-eight thousand, seven hundred and thirty-six people decided to show up.

"We just about finished building the place the day before," said Mandt. "The paint on the fence was still wet. There was a phone strike and only one phone in the place worked. We had water problems. But, we got through it. It was exciting, brand new."

They were tied 3-3, when a Mets relief pitcher named Ed Bauta threw the losing pitch. Since then, it’s been up and down in Flushing.

Lately, there’s been talk of knocking down Shea, replacing it with a virtual reality palace, and building a new Shea next door. Mandt called the proposal "an exciting idea, a concept great for Queens." Would he miss the old place, should it come to pass?

"I probably would," he said. "Yeah. But I like new things, too."

–Noah Greene contributed to this article