The IP Weekly
I don’t remember the first baseball game I attended as a child. I don’t remember the first game I watched on television either. I do remember the first game I took my son to, the first game I took my son and my father to, the opening day games together, playoff games and World Series games. I can also say that I have no idea what the final score was in any of those games. In some I can’t even say if the Mets won.
I am a lifelong, proud Mets fan. I have endured their many, many bad years. The years when they finished in last place, the years when almost no one attended the games. I survived the collapse years when it seemed impossible that they wouldn’t make the playoffs only to prove their fans wrong. And I have basked in the glory of a World Series win along with 2 other appearances when I was beyond excited even if winning seemed unlikely. I love the Mets.
Attending Mets opening day with my father and my son, however, is a better memory than any final score of any game. It was cold that day in April, 2015. We had no idea that the same threesome would stand together for another cold picture in October, 2015 for the World Series. Three generations sitting together with ballpark food in hand, almost silent while the games unfolded is just special, beautiful.
As Shea was getting ready to close I remember being at the last few games. Before one game my son and daughter had a chance to be standing at second base when the Mets took the field (having children at each position to greet the Mets and receive an autographed ball was a pre-game feature at Shea). There they stood on a field I worshiped as a child, a field I had never stepped on now had my own children standing on it. I don’t know who the Mets played that day, let alone the final score.
Not long before that my son wanted to wait for one game to end so he could walk the warning track before running the bases (a Sunday post-game tradition in those days). We walked the warning track to first base. My son was a bundle of energy, reaching to touch the outfield wall and I was in tears. It never occurred to him that it could take a lifetime to walk on that track. To him it likely felt normal, why would dad by crying?
The Mets lost over the weekend and it was disappointing. My son, now 22 years old, and I spent time on the phone discussing the lineups and pitching matchups before games. We debated strategy and lamented their failures. My father and my son watched game 3 together, I couldn’t be there. I can close my eyes and imagine the two of them, almost 60 years apart, sitting on the couch in almost silence as the game progressed. When I see them in my mind’s eye I don’t see the game at all just the gift that baseball, that the Mets have given to me and my family.
Yes the Mets lost and, for some, the hand wringing begins. For too many the goal of any season is a championship. I believe that one day we will win another and I hope, when we do, that my son and my father are with me somewhere celebrating together. No championship, no playoffs, no game will be as important or as special if we aren’t.
