I've written previously about my unconventional upbringing. I grew up without a father at a time, the 1960s, when one parent households were still fairly uncommon, especially in a neighborhood full of working class Catholics.
If you're a kid without a Dad, you really don't have anyone to help you understand sports, or guide you into rooting for a team. I pretty much had to figure it all out by myself. This was back in the days before cable TV, so you were fairly limited in teams to follow. I started with New York Giants football because they were on in my area every week. Football was also a fairly easy sport for a young kid to understand on his own.
The only New York channels we received at all were 5, 9 and 11. The Mets were on channel 9, the Yankees were on 11. The year was 1969, and the Mets were becoming quite a story. I found baseball somewhat more difficult to understand than football, but I picked up enough to follow it. When the Mets won the World Series that year, I figured that would happen again all the time. Boy, was 10-year-old me in for a ride awakening.
My grandmother, who I lived with, was not a baseball fan at first, but had been a huge hockey fan when the New Haven Blades had played in the Eastern Hockey League. That was quite a rough and tumble brand of hockey. If you're not familiar with it, the movie Slapshot was supposedly based on that League.
I remember as a very young kid accompanying my Grandmother to Blades games at the New Haven Arena. My Grandmother only understood the most basic facets of hockey, but was well known to Arena regulars as someone who would cheer the home team on loudly and enthusiastically until the end, whether they won or lost. Her favorite players were the ones that got into the most fights. If you liked a good hockey fight, you loved EHL hockey.
The Blades were long gone by the time I found the Mets. My Grandmother's natural inclination to cheer a team on transferred to the baseball team from Queens. In time, she became as loud and enthusiastic about the Mets as she had been for the Blades. It didn't slow her down a bit that we were in our living room rather than at a live sporting event. She rooted the only way she knew how, loudly and passionately. (I'm sure she missed the fights, however.)
When I started watching Mets games with my Grandmother, my brother and, at times, my Mom, we were all fairly uninformed about baseball. Both my brother and I were fairly smart, and also more adaptable to picking up things, and I quickly came to understand some of the nuances of the game much better than my Grandmother. Growing up smarter than most people around me and, at the same time, incredibly insecure, I allowed myself to take an obnoxious, superior attitude towards her when we watched games together.
Looking back with some hard-earned wisdom I've managed to attain over the years, I really regret my inability to see my Grandmother clearly. She was literally the only one in the house that was always on my side. She was not very sophisticated perhaps, but was actually very intelligent in a way that a preteen dumbass like me was unable to see. Also, I wasn't nearly as smart as I thought I was. One thing that it took me many years to understand, long after she was gone, was that the way she rooted for a team was a type of genius that was far beyond my understanding.
The Mets were, at best, a mediocre team with great pitching and little offense in the years following the 1969 Championship Team. If a Mets pitcher was handed a 1-run lead, he damned well better not give that run back if he hoped to secure a win. If the pitcher went out without his best stuff and gave up a few runs early, he knew that it was highly unlikely that he wouldn't be hung with a loss. If Tom Seaver had played how whole career with a better offensive team, he might have won 350 games. Certainly more than 311.
As I grew older, and grew in my knowledge of baseball, I came to understand that the Mets being down by a few runs late meant a loss was inevitable. Being an insecure kid who wasn't great at handling losing, I always wanted to turn the game off when things got hopeless. Since there was only one TV in the house, that wasn't my call. There just wasn't any way my Grandmother would turn off any game before the final out was recorded.
I thought that it was just stubbornness that kept her tuned in until the bitter end. When I got a little older and learned a little something about reading people, I came to appreciate what a great fan my Grandmother really was. Her attitude towards winning and losing saw each game as complete in and of itself. It mattered little if the Mets were competitive in the Division or hopelessly out of it. The game being played that day was everything.
To my Grandmother, a victory in the most insignificant game in the worst of Met seasons was something to be fully enjoyed and treasured. A loss was just a momentary setback that could be remedied tomorrow. The saddest day of her time as a fan was October 21, 1973, when the Mets dropped Game 7 of the World Series to Oakland, and I had to explain to her that the You've Gotta Believe season was over. Not that anybody ever needed to tell her anything about believing.
If there was one game that defined her fanhood, it was a game earlier in that 1973 season, when the Mets were far back in the standings and pretty much out of it. It waz July 17, 1973, and the Mets were in Atlanta. They weren't the rivals that they would become years later, as the Braves were in the Western Division at the time, having moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta seven years earlier.
The Mets record was 38-50 going into the game, they had quite a few injuries early in the season and their offense was horrible. They had great starting pitching: Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, John Matlack - but it seems like they lost every game 2-1. They're playing in Atlanta, down 7-1 going into the ninth inning. I was frustrated and just wanted to turn the game off. I knew the Mets had as much chance of scoring 6 runs in an inning to tie the game as I did of finding a Leprechaun's pot of gold.
I was 14 years old and knew and understood this, my Grandmother was 65 and "didn't get it" at all. As I said, she never felt that the Mets were going to lose a game until after the final out. She wouldn't let me turn the game off - she was certain the Mets were going to win. I was mad and basically told her she was an idiot. I stuck around so I could do an "I told you so" after the game. Yeah, I was kind of a douche at 14.
Anyway, this team that averaged less than 4 runs a game, a team that hit 85 home runs for the entire 1973 baseball season, gets 2 2-run home runs to make it 7-5, later gets a pinch-hit single from the 100-year-old Willie Mays that drove in the tying and go-ahead runs, and holds on to win the game 8-7. I was the recipient of the "I told you so", and after that day knew that there was no turning off any game until the final out.
Willie Mays may have been a bit over the hill when he came to play for the Mets, but he was still WILLIE MAYS. I don't regret a single inning of play he got for a struggling team that needed to click on every cylinder to make it to the World Series.
ReplyDeleteWillie brought a lot of excitement when he came back. Joan Payson believed in star power as a way to fill the ball park. That's why they paid Tom Seaver the highest salary for a pitcher (until free agency hit) and why they went out and got Willie at the end of his career. Had she lived, they probably would have been active in the free agent market.
ReplyDeleteMy Grandmother loved Willie Mays. She didn't even know he was a Hall of Famer before he got to NY. He still had charisma and she recognized it, I guess. I remember the single he hit to win the game I wrote about here. It was one of those 15-hoppers that somehow found a hole. As far as my Grandmother was concerned, it was a scorching line drive.
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