I know people right now with health problems. I know folks who are unemployed. Still one or two others are dealing with personal losses. So, I should be thankful that I am feeling fine, working, and generally happy.
Except when the Mets play the Dodgers. The annual inner torture began anew this week with the Flushing gang showing up in Chavez Ravine. And it tore at my psyche all over again.
Not to prolong the agony this season, I sold my season tickets for two of the three games played in Los Angeles this week. So, I slated myself to go only to Monday night's opener of the series. And that brought to bear one more tentacle of an already unwieldy emotional octopus.
Chad Billingsley, a solid young pitcher who I have followed through the Do
dger system, was starting. Now, I have a Chad Billingsley shirt that I wear whenever he is set to pitch a game I am attending. And that little quirk has paid off. Because Chad has won every game when I wore the shirt.
Why was this tormenting me? Because, previously, I have set a pretty rigid criterion whenever I attend a Met-Dodger contest. I traditionally wear "non team specific" wardrobe. I certainly wanted to honor that as my little tip of the nodescript cap to my dual fandom. But, at the same time, I actually considered whether that was fair to Chad Billingsley.
I also thought an awful lot about how stupid I was being about all this.
I have had alleged friends chastise me for actually rooting for two different baseball teams. I have been called a traitor and a turncoat. There have been threats of tar, feathers, and evenings relegated to listening to nothing but Rosie O'Donnell.
I think about the many years I spent bleeding Met blue and orange (never black). I consider my Saturdays in Section 7 of the Loge at Shea Stadium---a love affair that will be immortalized in print this June in a magazine devoted to the closing of the Flushing ballpark. I remember the people that sat alongside me for so many games and so many life moments. Leo (not a Met fan in the day, but a good friend). The Bibster. Malcolm. Danny. My father. For one game as she displayed her baseball knowledge as passed along by then-Met announcer Tim McCarver---my mother. I wonder how I could do this. Perhaps be just a little biased by rooting, for shame, against the Mets.
And I muse about my adult life in Los Angeles. When I didn't know too many people and badly needed to. And a friend from church shepherded me into her Sunday Dodger tradition with two other nice ladies always decked out in royal blue. And that all expanded my life so richly.
Yet, whenever I see a clip of the home run that Dodger Mike Scioscia hit against the Mets' Dwight Gooden in Game 4 of the 1988 National League Championship Series, I have an ache in my stomach that hurts as much as it did when it happened on that cold October Sunday night. So, the Met pain still lingers, even though I now smile whenever I see how the Dodgers won the World Series two weeks later.
I realize that, perhaps, my baseball home the rest of my life just might be Loge, Aisle 144, Row G, Seat 1 and 2 at Dodger Stadium. It likely will never be at Citi Field as us lowly Saturday ticket plan holders at Shea may not pass the financial smell test of the Wilpon ownership. I go back and forth. The past, the future. The past, the future. The past, the future. The first wife, the second wife. The Mets, the Dodgers. Tugging, tugging, tugging always.
This will always be an internal dialogue. A lifelong struggle. Certainly not life or death or illness. But, to me, important nonetheless.
So, Chad Billingsley won Monday night as the Dodgers beat the Mets, 5-1.
And, yes, I did.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick...
Dinner last night: Roast chicken with rice, mushrooms, and broccoli.
6 comments:
So where is the play about a Mets fan going to games with his Dad?
Because my dad went to one game a year whenever the Mets played the Giants. Other than that, he was happy for me to go on the subway with a friend so he didn't have to get stuck in traffic. We didn't have preferred parking like I do at Dodger Stadium.
In the name of Joan Payson and Pearl Bailey, I urge you to think positive about a Saturday plan at Citi Field. If it doesn't happen, then I can't say I blame you for rooting for a team that wears blue every day.
And if you do get Citi Field seats but they are in the outfield, remember what Casey said: "One inning you see them on the right field line then the next inning they're on the left field line. And they're carryin' placards."
I'm looking forward to our last game in Shea this season and our first game across the street in 2009.
Here's to another 40 years in Citi Field, plus 40 more at Chavez Ravine. And in 40 years you too may not want to get stuck in traffic.
Or at least by then you will have dropped the collision.
I am hoping against hope that there will be a Saturday plan offered to me for Citi Field. I am also hoping against hope that the actual seats will be in the same zip code. But, if they are offered and they are somewhere in the neighborhood of Flushing, I would definitely sign up. No question. The struggle will never end for me, but perhaps that is something I should be proud of. Not many folks can say that they have experienced some golden baseball moments as a fan of two great franchises.
I never do forget NY, even if I am at Dodger Stadium. On those evenings when I don a Dodger cap, it is always emblazoned with a "B."
I don't get the Pearl Bailey reference.
During the 1969 Championship season, Pearl Bailey was a huge Met fan and went to the games all the time. She sang the National Anthem frequently while doing Hello Dolly on Broadway.
Post a Comment