The Annual Ritual of Saying Goodbye

These two stadium seats are long gone.  These were my Saturday Loge, Section 7, Row E seats at Shea Stadium for many, many years.   I took this snapshot on the Sunday that Shea closed in 2008.  I was not seated there on this game.   Those empty beer bottles underneath are not mine.   But I had been there the day before...a Saturday, natch...and a major part of my life ended that dreary afternoon.

I show this photo again because of the annual ritual that I went through every single year when I would sit in these seats for the very last time that season.  This was the Mets.   You always knew when your last game was because they so infrequently played in the postseason.   And, even if I did, my ticket rights were kicked up about 35,000 feet in the air next to a pilot landing a 737 at LaGuardia Airport. 

So, knowing that I was saying goodbye for the winter, I would tap the back of my seat twice.   Stay well, chair.  Endure the hard winter.  Try not to rust, although the metal frames surely did after years of neglect by the Shea maintenance staff. 

These seats had gotten me through another long season of baseball and anxiety and sheer comfort.  Sitting at a baseball game is my means of meditation.  Relaxing even if you know that the team was going to blow this one-run lead in the ninth inning.  Your body and mind ping pongs through extreme emotions.  Most people could not handle this crazy pendulum.  A baseball fan can.

Now, my world of green diamonds is based solely in Chavez Ravine.  Blue Heaven.  With a point-of-view that is almost an exact replica of what I enjoyed at Shea Stadium for a few decades.  There are season tickets.   It's not just Saturdays now.  Mostly Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.  I have new friends that watch me toil over a scorebook that is an integral part of my Zen experience.  I even go to games with one or two lifelong friends who actually sat in those Shea seats over the years.  Their presence provides the connective tissue that all lives should enjoy.

But another Dodger season has come and gone, this one slain on a Missouri field that Budweiser built.   There is hand wringing anew.  Fire the manager.  Fire the general manager.  Fire the janitor who cleans the bathroom on the field level.  You get to the postseason and you never know how you and your team will survive.  Except for one group of baseball nine that wins the World Series, there is ultimately heartbreak.  You obsess over what could have been.  You wonder just how wonderful it would have been to sit in "your" seats for a Fall Classic.

Instead, you just wonder.   And hope that Vin Scully has a hale and hearty and healthy winter. 

With this year's edition of the Dodgers, it is the bullpen that is the dastardly villain.  Reinforcements never came as expected.   In every seventh and eighth inning, you would look up and see gray uniforms on second and third with nobody out.  You're amazed how, with this mediocre band of relievers, the Dodgers managed to win 94 games at all. 

But I also worry about something else.   Embedded as I am in Dodger fandom, I am lucky at all to see October baseball as much as I have.  And, because of their recent postseason success, I realize that I never do get to say goodbye.

To my seats.

I never know when my last game will be.   As it turned, that happened last Saturday night.  I left unwittingly.   And, of course, I never did tap the back of my seat.

For some mystical reason, this bothers me.  I never get the opportunity to acknowledge the pleasure and calm that this Loge seat brings me every season.  It's like I forgot to say goodbye to a loved one or neglected to thank somebody for cooking me a fabulous meal.

I can only think about next season.   And seeing those glorious seats again.  In 175 or so days.

Now where's that book I started to read last March?

Dinner last night:  Grilled bratwurst and German potato salad.