Shea Stadium will be remembered for a lot of things.
It hosted four World Series, was the site of the beginning of the 1969 Cubs collapse, it was a great place for guys like Bobby Bonilla and Rickey Henderson to play cards during the 1999 NLCS, and there was a giant apple that lit up any time a New York Mets player hit a home run.
But in a recent interview with Dan Patrick, former pitcher Al Leiter revealed that it also had another, much less notorious feature that some ex-Mets players perhaps miss even to this day.
A porn room.
That’s right — Shea Stadium was reportedly home to a porn room somewhere in the bowels of the stadium. How this is just coming to light right now is beyond me.
Video of Leiter’s interview after the jump.
Patrick is the one who brings it up about ten seconds into the clip and the level of discomfort in Leiter’s voice is palpable.
The rather uncomfortable exchange goes as follows:
Patrick: “Wasn’t there a ‘porn room’ at Shea Stadium?”
Leiter: “There might’ve been. <laughter> Why do you ask like you don’t know?”
Leiter then goes on to deny that there was a porn room seconds after seemingly confirming its existence before lamenting that today’s players are too robotic and that the game lacks the kind of characters it had when he was first coming up. Patrick never says how he learned of the room’s existence although the look on his face when he asks the question seems to indicate he knows more than he’s letting on.
I’ve seen a lot of things in Major League clubhouses and heard a lot of rumors about what goes on, but never in my life have I heard about a room devoted specifically to porn. The most scandalous thing I’ve seen was then-Brewers manager Ned Yost watching an episode of Friends two hours before a game when I went to deliver him a lineup card. In other words, while I’m sure things happen behind closed doors, never has anything as raunchy as this come to life.
A quick search of the internet reveals little more about the existence of a porn room at Shea Stadium beyond links to Leiter’s interview. But it begs the question — where was the porn room? How did the Mets beat writers not know about the existence of this X-rated hideaway — or perhaps even more scandalous, did they in fact know about it but refused to report on it for fear of being denied future access to the adult wonderland? Does Citi Field have a similar room? And could this porn room be the reason why the team did so poorly in the 2000 World Series against the Yankees (probably not)?
All that is of course speculation. Leiter is the first Mets player to speak on the record about such a room and will likely be the last. The Mets’ PR department will likely deny refuse to comment on the rumors and as well they should. And maybe, in the long run, the less we know about this mythical porn room the better. That being said, if players on other teams knew about this room, it’s amazing the Mets weren’t a more popular destination for free agents in the late ’90s-early ’00s.
