The Sunday Memory Drawer - The Great World Series Ticket Mystery

As we are now knee deep in the tension of another baseball postseason, my mind wanders back to my very first baseball postseason.  This year, my team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, is in the hunt and I already have my World Series tickets in one hand and crossed fingers on the other.

Back then, my team, the New York Mets, were in the hunt.  And my World Series tickets?  

Well, that's an interesting story that still has no ending.

How did this young, fledgling baseball nut miss out on seeing his idolized group of nine play in their very first World Series?

It's still a mystery.   And the one person who might have had the answer is gone.

My father.

Let me start at the beginning.

The New York Mets came out of nowhere to suddenly become a baseball powerhouse.  Thanks to the efforts of manager Gil Hodges, Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Jerry Grote, Nolan Ryan, Cleon Jones, and Tommie Agee, they were going places in that very magical and memorable summer.

Me?  I was an integral piece of the puzzle.  At least I thought I was.  After all, the Mets got really good exactly one year after my dad hand purchased for me my very own ticket plan.  A Saturday plan with two phenomenal loge seats just to the right of home plate.  I felt like my money (okay, well, Dad's) had pushed the team over the top.  It was as if I was one of the principal owners of the franchise.

One year after we wisely bought into the Flushing Meadow dream, the Mets skyrocketed to the top.  And were suddenly bound to the first round of the baseball playoffs.  Their first task was to win three out of five games against the Atlanta Braves.   A victory in that series would punch the Mets' ticket into the World Series.

For several weeks in September, I could barely speak.  I was then overcome with emotion and exhileration.

The first two games were to be played in Atlanta with the final three slated for my home, Shea Stadium.  Here's where I thought my great insider status would cash in for me.  Prime tickets to it all.

As a partial ticket plan holder, we received the much-hallowed application in the mail.  It was for the first round.  Our response...and my father's money order...went back the same day.

When that first set of tickets arrived, I literally stared at it for fifteen minutes.  I was staring at a pot of gold.  I was going to see my team in the first playoff game ever to be played at then-new Shea Stadium.  

My father's glimpse of the tickets was a little less enthusiastic.

"These aren't your regular seats."

I knew that.  When you're only a partial plan holder, you can't possibly get your regular seats.  They will put you elsewhere.

In the case of my father and me, they put us in a Laguardia Airport flight path.  We were behind home plate alright.  But way above home plate.  Not only could you watch a baseball game, but you could also simultaneously watch the movie being shown that month on the Eastern Airlines Shuttle to Boston.

I was just happy to be going.  My dad?  Not so much.

His mood became a lot worse once the day of the game arrived.  Luckily, the Mets had taken care of the Braves in Georgia and now were just one win away from going to the World Series.  The first jolt of our reality happened when we realized we were entering in a gate different from our usual.  

"This is bad."

I didn't care.

We boarded one of the escalators and then realized we needed to take two more to get up to our seating level.  My dad looked out as the ground below kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

"They better win today because we're up too high."

Now, mind you, in the very second Met game I ever went to with my father, we sat on the very same upper deck.  But, in a few short years, he suddenly had become much less amenable to heights.  Maybe it was the price of the tickets.  Maybe he felt that, as partial plan holders, we deserved better treatment.  Whatever the case, my father was not a happy guy on this warm October Monday afternoon.

It was all so glorious for me.  The Mets won that day.  And I was as high as a kite.  Literally and figuratively.

I went home and waited for the next ticket application that would be my transportation to the next level of heaven.

And waited and waited and waited.  It sounds like a long time but it was probably just two days.  And I asked my father if we had gotten anything from the Mets yet.

"They're probably still working on it."

Oh.

But, my father's added comment should have been a clue to me.

"But if they're gonna put us up so high, I don't want them"

OH.

Two more days.  And I'm not hearing anything about a ticket application arriving in the mail.  Nor does my dad seem concerned.

Meanwhile, the Mets will be hosting their first ever World Series game in just five days.  It was hard for me to believe they were that behind in fulfilling ticket orders.  But, according to my father, they obviously were incompetent.

Two more days and I pressed my dad.   We should have received something by now.

"I'll check with the post office."

Oh.

I assume he did, although I never did actually see him go there.  But the answer he got from them was a little suspect.

"They think somebody saw what the application was and stole it."

Really???

Another day clicked off the calendar and my father finally did what he should have done a week earlier.  He called the Mets.  And, leaving nothing to chance, I stood next to him as he dialed the phone.

Well, according to the Mets, they send the application and, when no money was returned by the due date, the ticket offer expired.  My father asked if there were any tickets available.  The answer was obviously no.  I swallowed hard and teared up a little.  I have learned since that you never ever accept this answer from a baseball team.  There are ALWAYS tickets.

I was crestfallen and I think my dad was sad watching my world collapse.  He tried to console me.

"Well, the seats would have been lousy anyway."

Hmmmm.  Still focusing on seat location, eh?  My mother tried to help the situation. 

"Well, you have school anyway."

Seriously????

I watched the Mets win the World Series without me.   I listened to the first game on a transistor radio in English class with a really cute girl.  Okay, that helped a little.  She hugged me when Tommie Agee made his second great catch of the day.  Okay, that helped a lot.

On the day of the second game, we were off for teachers' conferences so Mom's great excuse blew out the window on that day.  And, for the Series winning game three?  I went home at lunchtime and never went back to school.  I watched it with Curt Gowdy, Lindsey Nelson, and nobody else.  After they won, I ran out onto the street to accept congratulations.  In this Yankee-centric neighborhood, everybody else was at school.  And didn't care.

Since then, I have heard many great stories from pals in college and beyond who actually were taken to that World Series.  I relive the joy vicariously through them.  And still wonder what happened in my house.

Was the ticket application really stolen?  Did we really wait too long to call the Mets?

And was my own father capable of pulling a fast one because he didn't want to sit in crappy seats?

I hate to think the latter.  But still do.

Meanwhile, I made sure to attend every Met World Series game at Shea in subsequent years.  There would be no more ticket snafus.  And wherever they chose to seat me, I would caress that location.  

And when the Dodger postseason ticket application came this year, it wasn't more than an hour before it went back into the mailbox.

You don't mess around when it comes to World Series tickets.

Or do you?  Dad?

Dinner last night:  Proscuitto and mozzarella panini at Fabiolus Cafe.