The Sunday Memory Drawer - When Your Baseball Team Loses

As Yogi would say, it's deja vu all over again.  The pain.  The anguish.  You think you get used to it.  You don't.  And yet you still come back for more.

I don't have to time travel too far back to pull this mental picture into my foreground. This is also on my mind since I just attended a Game 5 NLDS clincher for the Nationals at Dodger Stadium. It was perhaps the most excruciating game I have ever attended since Game 4 of the NLCS 1988 when Mike Scioscia of the Dodgers which I then hated hit a ninth inning homer off Dwight Gooden of the Mets which I then loved.   Momentum swung like a pendulum and I remember screaming in the mezzanine as Gooden began the ninth inning.

Take him out.

Just like I was doing last Wednesday night from the Dodger Stadium Loge when Dave Roberts managed the Dodger bullpen as if his life didn't depend upon it.  

Take him out.  

Momentum always swings.  In 1988.  In 2019.  This was an October that I thought I would be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Mets World Series with a similar victory from the Dodgers.  Um, not this year.

I happened to be in the bathroom when Howie Kendrick hit his grand slam that put the hydraulic brakes to the Dodgers' postseason.  When I came out of the men's room, it was like somebody had yelled "fire" in a crowded disco.   Mass exodus.  No parting of the Red Sea required.

Fans would have to suck it up one more winter.   But isn't that how a baseball fan is born?  By coping with the pain so that the victory down the road will taste so much sweeter.

I remembered a previous moment from my baseball life.

Thursday, October 26, 2000. Unbeknownst to us at the time, this would be the last World Series ever to played at the now-dismantled Shea Stadium. For the first time ever, it's the Yankees versus the Mets in the Fall Classic---a Subway Series in its truest sense.

We're at Game 5 and the Mets need to win to prevent the Yankees from clinching it all. In a very tight game, the Yankees manage to pull it together in the top of the ninth. As future Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera attempts to close it out for the Bronx contingent, the final hopes rest on the shoulders of Mike Piazza. He offers one mighty swing and sends one soaring to the centerfield wall. 

On most nights, this is a home run. 

But, in the late October misty air of Flushing Bay, the moisture holds the ball in the air long enough for it to be pocketed by centerfielder Bernie Williams. The Yankees celebrate at Shea Stadium, of all places. Manager Joe Torre is hoisted aloft, sobbing all the while. Another great Fall for the Yankees. Another mighty fall for the Mets.

Watching from the third base of the mezzanine level are yours truly and my best friend from high school, Danny. Being true baseball fans and sportsmen, we did not skulk into the night with disgust. We stayed and watched the festivities. Next to us were two Yankee fans. 

A dad and his eight-year-old son. The youngster is decked out in the warmest of Yankee apparel. He is grinning from ear to ear. Danny and I remember the feeling of being there in 1986 when our own team was doing all the whoop-de-doing. We leaned over and shook the boy's hand in congratulations. He thanked us and continued to bask in his life's most significant moment to date.

It was the dad's response that has always stuck with me.

"This is great and all, but, for his sake, I hope they lose one of these years."

Huh?

He continued in the role of Hugh Beaumont as Beaver's wise old dad.

"Ever since he got interested in baseball, the Yankees win every year. They need to lose so he can finally understand what it is to be a true fan."

Sheer brilliance and wisdom amidst the hot dog wrappers of Section 22. A father who truly knew how to balance life with fandom. I've taught about that exchange many times. Every time my team loses a playoff or a division title or a close game. And I think about that kid who, in the very next year, probably learned and cried a lot when the Yankees blew Game 7 of the 2001 World Series to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

I wonder if the kid is still a Yankee rooter. I should do hope so. Because that would make him a real fan.

This memory came back to me as I mounted the Loge stairs of Dodger Stadium for the last time in 2019.  Also leaving are a dad and two young sons.  Decked out in Dodger blue.  And as crestfallen as possible.   This time, I decided to be Hugh Beaumont.

I said to the two boys that this is why we are fans.  Because it will be so great when it finally does happen.   The kids looked at me like I had two heads.

But the dad smiled.  He got it.

So that's the bi-polar nature of the tale.   The boy in 2000 who had only tasted victory.  And the two boys in 2019 who have only endured defeat.  

And a bunch of adults trying to make sense of it all.  And never really managing to do so.

That's why we are fans.   

Dinner last night:  Turkey burger at the Westside Tavern.