Wait Till........Well, You Know the Rest

They used to say it in Brooklyn.   They say it now in Los Angeles.

If you're a baseball fan, the end of any season has a bit of a mourning process.  Indeed, with as many teams there are in the major leagues, it is really a survival contest.  How long can you last?  How deep can you play into October?  And, if the players go on strike for a few weeks every so often, how deep can you play into November?

On the last day of the regular season, a lot of teams and fans drop out all at once.  I know that sensation quite well.   I was a New York Mets for several decades.  Meanwhile, nowadays, there are then eight teams still standing.  A week later, there are only four teams still hanging around.  A week later, only two and they play each other in the World Series.  Essentially, the first baseball team to win 11 more games in the postseason is the World Champion.

And so it goes.  And off we all traipse into the winter.  

This year, the Los Angeles Dodgers were in the final four.  I was at a baseball game on Wednesday, October 16, which just happened to be the anniversary of the date when the New York Mets won the 1969 World Series.   Lots of fans would love to be still able to attend a baseball game in mid-October.  I was lucky this year.  This was a great year to root for the Dodgers. 

And, indeed, I was already thinking ahead to the delicious symmetry of 2013 World Series games being held in the National League park on the nights of Saturday, October 26 and Sunday, October 27.   I, too, was at a baseball stadium on those dates in 1986 when the Mets won the World Series.  Okay, I'm cheating on October 26.  Game 6 actually started the night before on October 25.  But it ended in the wee hours of October 26 when Bill Buckner and Mookie Wilson joined hands for their ride into baseball history.

But there will be no more magic for me this year.  At least at Chavez Ravine.  The stove will be getting hot as it does every winter.  You'll think about the future and next April when, at one single moment, everybody will be tied for both first and last place.  I'll look forward to new memories because they are always being manufactured when you're a baseball fan.

All of my usual sensations and feelings will accompany this lonely winter as you await the spring.  This year, however, I am wondering if I have messed with the baseball gods just a little.  An unwitting break in tradition that I hope doesn't disrupt the universe.

As a long time seat holder with both the New York Mets and now the Los Angeles Dodgers, I have had a bizarre little ritual at the end of the last game I will attend.  I usually turn my back to the field and, just before leaving, I tap the back of my seat three times.  Sort of a pat on the back for this furniture serving me so well for yet another baseball season.  

I remember back to my Saturdays at Shea Stadium.  Even my seat buddy and high school best friend Danny would do the same.  Of course, with the annual mess at Flushing Meadows, you always knew that the last game was indeed the last game.  And, in the happenstance they did make the postseason, I never wound up in my own seats anyway.

I transferred this little love tap to Dodger Stadium as well.  Except, this year, I screwed up.  

At the end of the League Championship Game #5 last Wednesday, I simply left the ballpark.  I actually thought about this when I was out in the parking lot.  I had forgotten to say goodbye to my seats.

Of course, this bothers me even more now.  And I wonder if this tradition, now disrupted, will have dire consequences.

Or maybe it's just the misstep that's needed to alter the Earth's axis.  If the Dodgers indeed win the World Series, I might have contributed to the solution.

Or created a bigger problem.  Yes, gang, this is what a fan does in the winter when there's no baseball every night.

Dinner last night:  Ziti and meatballs.