Long before baseball teams started giving away bobbleheads and souvenir cups like candy, there was Helmet Day at Shea Stadium. Some 54,424 spectators, the largest crowd of the season, packed the ballpark in Queens for a New York Mets game and a free helmet on May 30, 1970.

“They gave out 37,212 plastic batting helmets to the small ones in the crowd on a cool and sunny Memorial Day afternoon,” wrote The Times after the Mets beat the Houston Astros, 4-3. “They have had bigger crowds in their history — a dozen bigger ones, in fact — but they have never had a bigger one on a holiday, and they rewarded the customers with a tantalizing show.”

To attract spectators, ballclubs originally used discounted admissions to events like Ladies Day and Family Night. Those promotions gave way to the wildly popular Bat Day in many stadiums in 1964 and 1965. But the Mets invented Helmet Day, or at least had the first one at a Major League stadium in 1968. The initial Helmet Day was so successful that Shea Stadium had to turn away 10,000 fans. Youngsters 16 years of age and under who went through the gates received a replica “batting helmet.” It wasn’t the batting helmet of today — it lacked a protective earflap and interior padding — but it was the blue and orange of the Mets, and kids wore them proudly.

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