If Willie Mays makes a play in centerfield and you are too young to remember it, does the crowd still roar?

My sincerest apologies for mixing existentialism, metaphors, and worst of all, nostalgia. But as you will soon understand, it is indeed a serious and mind-wrenching question that's plagued me for over three decades. And since it is Shea Stadium's final year before being reduced to a parking lot adjacent to the Mets new stadium, it's a timely topic as well.

Here's the story, as I remember it.

The year was 1973, of that much I am sure. Reason dictates that it must have been September because it was the end of the baseball season. The stadium was packed because it was Willie Mays' last game. That's just logic.

How could Shea not be filled to salute the baseball legend whose career was launched as a N.Y. Giant not too far away in the Polo Grounds? It was the end of an era, a final bow, a curtain call which demanded a celebration. Scalpers were making a fortune reselling tickets outside the stadium. That's economics and hindsight speaking.

And I was there. Despite my short lifetime of only 3 years, I was in attendance at this once-in-a-lifetime event. Somewhere in the crowd, squeezed into a Shea seat between my father and my seven-year-old brother, I was cheering, saluting and seeing-off the great Willie Mays. (Must have been the upper deck because I can't imagine my dad overpaying for tickets. Chalk that one up to experience.)

Our neighbor Ray Bentley and his two sons Chris and Eric were there too. They had a photograph from the game hanging in their basement. The picture showed all three of them with a sign that said "Thank You Willie." I'm not in the picture. I was told I was behind the sign, eating ice cream when it was snapped.

But I don't need a photograph as evidence. I know I was there. I have a program and a banner to prove it, and I have no plan to auction them on eBay. I may not remember much about that day. But I have tangible proof and eyewitness accounts that I was, in fact, in Shea Stadium for Willie Mays' last game.

Okay. I was young. I don't remember much about that day, if anything, but that's to be expected from a toddler. Who knows when memory starts? Who can remember?

I can. That's who. I was there alright. No question about it. I was in a jammed Shea Stadium in September 1973, eating ice cream and cheering Willie "The Say Hey Kid" Mays with my older brother and my father who was too cheap to spring for good seats, and the Bentleys with their obnoxious "Thank You Willie" sign blocking my view of the field.

And I can visualize that ice cream even now. It was a chocolate and vanilla swirl served in a Mets batting helmet. Not to be confused with the strawberry ice cream served in a Yankees helmet my dad bought me when we went to the World Series when I was 11.

Wait. Maybe it was the strawberry ice cream at Shea and the swirl at Yankee Stadium. Yes. I think that's it. It's been a long time and I was just a kid. So it's tough to get every detail straight. But I know ice cream was involved.

And I'll never forget it.