Taking the E train out of midtown and transferring to the eastbound 7 somewhere over the rusting scrap heap rainbow of Queens this week, you could still peer through the 7's windows into the imminent corpse of Shea Stadium.

A couple of generations of baseball fans met the Mets there, and still the hulking half shell at Willets Point in Flushing engendered so little affection that it's almost comic to imagine the way its final months will play out in comparison to the last royal summer at Yankee Stadium.

The Pirates were to make their final visit here this week, but the Monday game was rained out and rescheduled for Aug. 11. Celebrations were muted, if not profane.

Had the final New York act by the Pirates been Wednesday's 13-1 victory, it might have represented, in one view, the long arc of artistic balance. Shea Stadium was, after all and among a compelling tapestry of other events, the place where they tried to get Roberto Clemente to pretend to hit into a triple play.

He refused.

On June 27, 1967, filmmakers at work on "The Odd Couple" asked the cooperation of The Great One in a scene in which Walter Matthau would be called away from his seat in the press box for a phone call from Jack Lemmon, asking what he wanted for dinner. In those seconds, Matthau would turn his back on a triple play.

Clemente would not abide failure even in make believe. Bill Mazeroski had to pinch hit.

Growing up within the fledgling cable reach of WOR-TV, Mets broadcasts and the soothing Southern murmur of Lindsey Nelson were a summer staple in our house. Even before the Miracle Mets who'd win the World Series in 1969 and bring the baseball up to standard, the broadcasts held their own urgency because they were all headed ultimately to Kiner's Korner, where anarchy reigned.

Ralph Kiner, the great Pirates slugger reincarnated as a Mets' color man, somehow generated the kind of postgame show that will never be matched.

"Hello everybody, welcome to Kiner's Korner, this is, uh, I'm, uh ...," Ralph once began. Then he'd introduce some hapless Met, some of whom were not the best interviews in baseball, such as alleged catcher Choo Choo Coleman.

"Choo Choo, what's your wife's name and what's she like?" Ralph asked amiably.

Coleman replied, "My wife's name is Mrs. Coleman and she likes me, bub."

By the time I made it to Shea as a baseball writer Shea was as foreboding a place as existed in the National League, not to mention pretty much abandoned. The 1979 Mets averaged 9,740 customers that summer, winning only 63 games. They won 67 in 1980, but were clearly going nowhere under a highly suspect young manager, one Joe Torre.

One night, Aug. 2, 1979, I looked out from the press box to check the Phillies' defense behind Kevin Saucier and noted that shortstop Larry Bowa was facing the scoreboard in left center, his hands on his hips, not the way you'd typically play Joel Youngblood.

There was a one-sentence announcement on an otherwise blank message board. Yankees catcher Thurmon Munson had been killed in a plane crash. Bowa turned around. Saucier delivered. The Mets went on to win 2-1. Afterward, everyone kind of wondered why they'd done that.

Surrealism always seemed to have its place in and around Shea. The baseball went for long stretches without being especially memorable, then would turn unforgettable in a blink.

A bar fight erupted at second base Oct. 8, 1973, when Pete Rose got up after a slide into second base and started punching Mets shortstop Bud Harrelson in the head. Harrelson, who was about as big as Rose's right leg, fought gamely until both dugouts emptied, ensuring that no one would be hurt thereafter. Rose got tortured by the New York audience, needing protection to reach his hotel, and the Mets went on to win that best-of-five before losing to the dynastic Oakland A's in the World Series.

On the night of Oct. 25, 1986, I wasn't overly enchanted with my press box seat, which was near the foul poul in right field, the "aux" box, for auxiliary press. It was almost 250 feet from Bill Buckner.

But in the bottom of the 10th inning, the big board momentarily flashed a congratulatory message to the Boston Red Sox, who'd all but won the World Series, then turned it off. Did I actually see that? Uh-uh. Someone in Shea control had pulled the trigger early.

The Red Sox scored twice in the top of that 10th, but the Mets got those back in this half inning, and now Mookie Wilson was about to tap out to first. Instead, he tapped out the launch codes for a decades-long nightmare for Buckner. Wilson's grounder leaked between Buckner's creaking ankles and the winning run scored.

There is no cheering in the press box, no screaming either, but apparently there is leaping to your feet, grabbing you head, and yelping "Oh! Oh! Oh!" Because that's what we did in the aux box.

Though that merely tied the series at three games each, and though the Red Sox had a 3-0 lead in Game 7 they wasted as well, New England would not forgive Buckner until last month.

Still, no one's going to hold any grudges for the guys who'll knock down Shea Stadium in October.

That is, almost no one.