Firsts *
by
Jason
on Mon 14 Mar 2005 07:12 PM EST
Alas, my first game -- or at least the original version of it -- is lost in the mists of our family lore, which is not generally of the record-keeping variety. My memory is that it was a June 1977 game against the San Diego Padres, and Tom Seaver was on the mound. But this is based on a few pretty shaky things. Seeing how I was eight, of course I assumed Tom Seaver would be pitching -- what team would be foolish enough to send out Jackson Todd or Bob Myrick instead of Tom Terrific, particularly with me in the house? And my recollection that it was the Padres may be tangled up with the fact that as a child I thought Padres was pronounced "Parodies," which led to a lot of adult guffawing and invitations to say what I'd just said again.
A little detective work reveals that the Mets played the Parodies on May 11, 1977, three days after my eighth birthday. And lo and behold, Tom Seaver did start, against Bob Shirley. Score one for youthful memory -- except May 11 was a Wednesday doubleheader, and my parents viewed a trip to New York City like a combination of Gallipoli and the Iditarod -- we went once or twice a year after weeks of preparation, final calls to loved ones, and so forth. (When I started dating Emily again and found myself in New York City for the first time as an adult, I suggested that we drive out to Setauket so she could see my old houses, junior high and all that other silly crap. She couldn't understand why I kept insisting we should get up at about 6 a.m., and eventually gave up trying to convince me otherwise. We got in the car at like 6:15 and, to my astonishment, rolled into a still-sleeping Setauket at about 6:45. That night I called up my parents to yell at them.)
Another flaw with the 5/11/77 theory is the Mike Phillips factor. Mike Phillips had replaced the departed Rusty Staub as my favorite player, because I'd invented a superhero whose real name was Mike Phillips and was astonished to discover that A) there was a real person named Mike Phillips; and B) he played for the baseball team I was beginning to love. (You can't make this stuff up.) Mike Phillips hit a home run in on May 11, 1977, which clinches the impossibility of my having been there: I would have remembered that, and I wasn't that lucky a kid, karma-wise. (We lost both games of the doubleheader, by the way.)
So perhaps it's more likely that I attended Saturday, July 30th's game against the Parodies: Mike Phillips had been traded for Joel Youngblood by then, a good swap even if it did leave me newly aware of the chill emptiness of the universe. Nino Espinosa faced Dave Freisleben; and the Mets lost, 8-6. That sounds more like the kind of game I'd have seen.
I do remember attending a game in 1978 against the Cardinals, chosen because Mike Phillips and the rest of the Cardinals were flying into Shea, as the scoreboard might put it. I had seen fans with bedsheet banners and posters and such, and so I was ready with my own sign. It was addressed to Cards manager Vern Rapp, and it read HEY VERN! IF YOU WANT A BENCH WARMER GET A HOT WATER BOTTLE BUT DON'T USE MIKE PHILLIPS! accompanied by a not-bad drawing of Mike Phillips hitting a home run. (Heck, he did hit for the cycle once -- I certainly remember that day, because I spent it levitating.) My mother rather gently pointed out that my sign might not get the attention its passion deserved, since it was written in navy-blue ink on a piece of letter-sized dark green construction paper. I ignored her and held my manifesto proudly all game, aiming it at various distant cameras. I have no idea what game in 1978 that was, but I do remember Mike Phillips didn't play.
So that was the history I grew up with, however vague in the details, and the origin myth that helped form part of the foundation of my baseball fandom. Until last Christmas. We were sitting around my parents' house in Virginia talking with old friends of theirs, and Joe nonchalantly began talking of how they, my parents and I had gone to see the Red Sox play the Tigers at Fenway in 1970 -- my first baseball game as well as my mom's. What the? Fenway? Kaline? Yaz? Me? How had nobody ever seen fit to mention this in the 34 years since then? It's like forgetting to tell some guitar-crazed kid about how he was a babe in arms while Hendrix played Woodstock, or how, oh yeah, that nice Mr. Einstein used to help you count blocks -- maybe that's why you like physics.
But maybe it's a kindness not knowing. As you observed firsthand, Joshua's first game was no beaut, and he'll never be able to outrun this box score.
Past Lives Pavilion
by
Greg
on Mon 14 Mar 2005 04:29 PM EST
A ballplayer would have to have committed some awful, irredeemable transgression in his past baseball life to not be accepted into at least a temporary state of grace for the period in which he has chosen to embrace the light, a.k.a., the uniform of the New York Mets. Manny Aybar can get guys out for us? All is forgiven. (Just don't linger on cold nights, OK?)
Tom Glavine continues to operate under a cloud of karmic suspicion, due to not only his mega-Braveness, but because of his continued prickliness toward former replacement players (one in particular who pitched his heart out for us) long after everybody else in baseball had put that stuff behind them. I've tried to forget all that as he stands on our mound and does his best to earn us victories, but I can't quite shake the disdain. Paramount among the thousand or so reasons I desperately wanted us to prevail in Game Six was to set up a Game Seven in which the matchup would've been Reed vs. Glavine. I know who would've won that. I just know.
He's said all the right things, he's evaded the bait every time he's asked "Tom, do you regret...?" and he's pitched not altogether horribly. But peel away his civilized mien and, I'm pretty sure Tom Glavine is still a Brave and still an ass. He's never been Glavo or Tommy or, God forbid, Tom since he's been here.
When the no-hitter got away from him while I sat in the Broadway Theatre manipulating my Walkman during the first act of a Sunday matinee of Bombay Dreams last May, I was 99% shattered and 1% relieved that Kit Pellow saved the honor of the first Mets' no-hitter for somebody, anybody else.
Generally speaking, though, who you were in a past baseball life, as long as you are now a Met, doesn't concern me. Chris Woodward was a Blue Jay. Chris Woodward started at short and got two hits at Shea against the Mets on June 9, 1999, one of the wildest nights I ever spent in the confines of what John Kruk once referred to (in giving directions to a lost cabdriver) as the big blue thing. That was when David Wells returned to New York for the first time since he was traded by the other team that plays nearby and he shut us out for eight innings. He had his own cheering section of female David Wells wannabes, which is as frightening as it sounds. Leading 3-0, however, he couldn't get out of the ninth and the Mets rallied to tie it, going on to win in 14.
Aside from staying past midnight, rising for a fourteenth-inning stretch and witnessing Rey Ordoñez collect a game-winning hit, the game was marked for eternity by the infamous Bobby Valentine mustache-and-glasses disguise. Didn't know that until I saw the highlights later. But in the heat of battle, I hated the Blue Jays and by extension must've wished only bad things on Chris Woodward. But Sunday afternoon, as he emerged as superer than Joe McEwing, I heard myself call out to him, "WOODY!"
I assume that's his nickname. He was a Blue Jay, after all.
Pedro Martinez' past lives aren't going to be held against him either. Yeah, I remember the inside pitch to Mike and certainly held it against Martinez for the balance of that weekend, but Luis Lopez taking him deep seemed like swift and suitable retribution. Hey, we owned Pedro Martinez, he says with a chuckle. Before he was an icon, he was merely an awesome Expo with an awesome whammy on us, so it was quite a milestone in the coming-out party that was the 1997 Mets when Matt Franco took him deep in the eighth to secure a 2-1 win for Bobby Jones over him in early June.
We won't hold his failure to hold a lead against us in a past life against him either.
As for the beginning of this present life, you asked about my first game. It was July 11, 1973 versus the Astros. It was a 7-1 loss. Here are 10 things you don't really need to know about it:
1. I'd been watching games on TV since 1969 but as my parents weren't big fans, nobody acted to take me to a game.
2. They relented and got us tickets for the previous September but I got sick and my pediatrician, whom I've never forgiven, said I couldn't go. The Mets beat the Phillies that day while I watched and sulked in bed.
3. The kosher Camp Avnet of Long Beach was my ticket to ride. They piled us all into buses and took us to Shea on a gloomy summer morning. I didn't want to go to day camp, but the record clearly indicates that if I hadn't, I'd never have gone to my first game.
4. Our counselor, Marvin, saw a bunch of us waiting for the bus with our gloves and told us to go put them back in our cubby holes. "You'll just lose 'em," he said. To this day, I've never brought my glove to a game because Marvin said I'd just lose it.
5. When we got to the big blue thing (then the big speckled thing), the first thing I did was buy a yearbook. That was my assignment, having heard Lindsey, Ralph and Bob urge me three times every game to add one to my baseball library. The cover featured every 1973 Met who had ever been an All-Star. One of the All-Stars was Jim Fregosi. I looked up from the yearbook at the scoreboard where it was announced Jim Fregosi had just been sold to the Texas Rangers. I wondered if they'd put a revised edition on sale immediately. They didn't.
6. Tommie Agee hit a home run for the Astros. Jerry Koosman took the loss for the Mets. Willie Mays played first for us.
7. To beat traffic, we left before the game was over. That rubbed me the wrong way.
8. As our camp was kosher, we could only eat the box lunches that we brought along. I ate Camp Avnet salami on what turned out to be a very warm, very humid day. When I got home, I threw up. That rubbed me the wronger way.
9. More times than I would have imagined, I've been at midweek afternoon games in the heat of summer to find that among the many Metropolitan Area day camps welcomed on the big board is a contingent from good old Camp Avnet. I always applaud when I see the name.
10. On July 11, 1993, the 20th anniversary of my first game, I went with Rob Emproto to my only regular-season Sunday night affair. It was Mets vs. Dodgers, Gooden vs. Candiotti. The Mets held an early 1-0 lead and were threatening for more. The Dodgers brought in a rookie of whom I snidely remarked he's probably only on the team because of his brother. The ever-aware Rob told me "this guy's probably better than his brother." And with that, young Pedro Martinez slammed the door shut on the Mets and Gooden, with the Dodgers winning 2-1.
The way things are suddenly going for him, no past-life heroics are going to save Doc Gooden now. I'm thinking his Mets HOF induction just got lost in the mail.
