Saint Matthew's

When Roger Daltrey of “The Who” hits the stage and Billy Joel smashes a guitar in pure “Who” style, there is only one thing to say: “The Last Play at Shea” concert on Friday, headlined by Billy Joel, was out of this world!

I have been a big Billy Joel fan for years. I have a number of his albums and have enjoyed his fun music for years (my favorite song of his is “Captain Jack”). Back earlier this year when tickets for the second “Last Play” concert went on sale and I somehow was able to garner two tickets (OK, I paid $227, so I guess that isn’t really garnering them), I just knew this thing would be a blast.

But calling it a blast doesn’t do it justice.

Tony Bennett, Garth Brooks, Steven Tyler of “Aerosmith,” and Daltrey made special appearances, all of which were topped when Sir Paul McCartney took the stage. He brought down the house. And when he sang “Let It Be” to end the concert in the third encore, there was nothing more to say. Leaving Shea Stadium after witnessing that magnificent concert, my heart was happy.

If I had to rank the special appearances, I really liked Daltrey and McCartney. But Steven Tyler, belting out “Walk This Way” was particularly fun. Garth Brooks sang “Shameless,” a song he borrowed from one of Billy’s albums and made it a country hit. Tony Bennett was, well, Tony Bennett when he dueted with Joel on “New York State of Mind.”

I believe Kristine and I would agree — “The Last Play” was a concert experience we will not soon forget.

Getting home was another matter. I should have figured it out when the Mets warned everyone not to drive to Shea and instead take mass transit. When you end a concert of 63,000 people at midnight and most of them took either the 7 train or the LIRR (which we took), there is going to be a LONG, LONG, LONG line. Thankfully, we were able to snake our way up to the train in a little over an hour. We eventually caught the train and got back into the city by 1:40am.

By the time I got home at around 3am, I couldn’t fall asleep. It actually took me about an hour and half to doze off. I couldn’t get Joel’s “The Entertainer” out of my head. Hopefully those whom I visited on Saturday didn’t notice the bags under my eyes.

This morning, I got a little lucky – I was able to purchase a couple of tickets for Billy Joel’s July 18th concert at Shea Stadium. Even though I wanted to pick up 4, getting 2 was pretty good.

After waking up, I came downstairs and fired up my iMac and opened the Safari browser and pointed it to www.507tixx.com. This is the site the Mets were using to sell tickets for the concert. Last Saturday, when they put tickets for the July 16th concert on sale, almost immediately the concert was sold out. I guess it would have been since it was being billed as the final concert ever at Shea Stadium and people wanted to get their hands on the tickets. They offered them first to Mets’ season ticket holders, who ended up scarfing them up. Some were left over for us little people and surprise, almost as soon as they went on sale, they were sold out.

I hopped over to Ticketmaster, who was holding an auction for a few tickets, and to Stub Hub, where people who bought tickets were legally scalping them (what else would you call it when $95 tickets are being “sold” for over a 1000 bucks?). Unsuccessful there, I joined the untold numbers of Billy Joel fans who were ticked off at the entire process. Someone in the Mets organization heard the cries of angry fans and were able to get Billy to schedule another concert, this time two days later on Friday night, July 18th. So the first concert, which was billed as the final concert ever at Shea Stadium, was not so final.

So this morning, considering that a lot of Billy Joel fans were angry and also sitting in front of their computers, I didn’t have much hope of getting tickets, but I labored on, opening up the browser and 11 tabs pointed to www.507tixx.com. To my surprise, less than a minute after the tickets went on sale, I was able to log onto the site. The only problem – I didn’t know I had gotten into their sales page because I had so many tabs open. I was flipping through them when I got in. It took me about 20 seconds to realized that I had logged on.

I tried to buy four tickets, but was unsuccessful. Then I tried three, also to no avail. Hoping beyond hope that I could still get any kind of ticket, I tried for two – and I got them! But I had a five minute time limit that was ticking away fast. First, I had to create an account with 507tixx.com. They I had to pay for the tickets ($227 for two seats). I got my payment in under the wire (a little less than 1 minute left before they would release the tickets). The seats are on the floor, section A1. If you look at the stage, A1 is over on the left side near the third base fair line. But they are on the field where the Metropolitans play baseball. Pretty good seats, I would say.

What got me is that they charged $37 in fees for the two tickets. Sixteen dollars in “fees” and another $5.00 in ordering charges!! Ugh. Even though I was not happy about the added fees, I can’t be too upset. I got the tickets.