If the Mets still called Shea Stadium home, Major League Baseball probably wouldn't let them host next week's All-Star Game, one of the sport's premier events.

Taken at its best, Shea stood as a nostalgic remnant from a kooky bygone era by the time the Mets vacated the old place following the 2008 season. Most people probably didn't read that much into it: They just referred to it as a dump.

But dismissing Shea Stadium as nothing more than an ugly blue semicircle surrounded by a sea of auto-part shops—and it certainly fit that description at the end—ignores the building's influential role in ballpark history.

When the All-Star Game last came to Flushing in 1964, the three-month-old Shea represented a bold vision of the future. It just so happens that "the future" became "the past" far quicker than anybody imagined....