The topic continues to be the Mets. Following my own advice..."living in the moment"...I have been enjoying each and every game this season. However the past few days have been extraordinarily special. Johan Santana's no-hitter - the first in Mets' history - and the following two victories against the Cardinals have summoned back some of the good feelings from 1969. And as long as I don't get ahead of myself, that's OK. We lose a lot in the transition from childhood to adulthood and even more as we approach late middle age. A sense of wonder, of unmitigated excitement...enthusiasm sans inhibitions...these are personal qualities I have worked hard to maintain. The Mets continue to provide important reinforcement...The little boy inside me seems to have temporarily taken charge - and that's a good thing. I can barely contain myself when discussing/thinking about Santana's pitching masterpiece. But the no-hitter itself, wonderful a game as it was - and discussed endlessly by in the media over the past few days - is just a part of the story. Or at least a part of my story...
A no-hitter pitched by a Met? For me it begins way back in 1962. I would reach my ninth birthday during that summer. Confession: in the Mets' first season I was a Yankee fan. Everyone was in my neighborhood in East New York, Brooklyn. The Yankees were The Team, In the middle of their streak of five consecutive American League pennants and just a season removed from their epic 1961 campaign. One of the best teams ever. Roger Maris and his 61 home runs. Mickey Mantle. Elston Howard. Yogi. Tommy Tresh. ("Tommy Trashcan" we called him. Kids.) Whitey Ford. All the kids - even the ones who would later be diagnosed as "learning disabled" - could recite the Yankee lineup backwards and forwards. That new team with the funny name? The Mets? We looked at the players on their baseball cards and laughed. Their manager is as old as Grandpa! (Almost.) The older kids all knew. They held up the baseball cards of the Mets players. "These guys are all...really old" they said. "They were around when my parents were still teenagers!" We all got quite a kick out of looking at the lifetime statistics on the back of Rod Kanehl's baseball card. "Ten years in the minor leagues!" These guys were going to be bad. Really bad.
I don't remember even watching a Mets game for much of the season. The M&M boys...Yankee Stadium. "The House That Ruth Built." That's where the action was...
In 1962, however, the social phobias that would prove to be so difficult to overcome began to hit me hard. The other guys were growing; I was still very tiny. Some of them were tough. I was a wimp. Few of them wore glasses; I'd been wearing glasses since I was six. And some of them thought they were...cool. I wasn't cool. I couldn't keep up - and fell behind. I still recall feeling as if I was on the outside looking in...even if I wasn't. I believe that's when I began to identify with the underdog, the downtrodden.
It was June 30, 1962. Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Mets versus Dodgers. We were visiting our parent's friends, the Povills, somewhere down Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn. It was late, I was tired. And bored. Dad brought me upstairs to a bedroom where there was a TV. The late game from the coast was being televised (Mets/Dodgers...the same Dodgers who had abandoned Brooklyn just five years before). Mets/Dodgers was still a novelty - probably drew good ratings. (Rarely if at all would late games from the West Coast be televised.) The Mets? But it was baseball (the Yankees game was long over). Dad turned the game on...probably he thought I would fall asleep quickly.Wrong! Sandy Koufax...the great Koufax - the most dominant pitcher of the early to mid-sixties - was on the mound for the Dodgers. He was opposed by Robert L. Miller. (The Mets had two Bob Millers on their pitching staff that year. They were both pretty bad.) The Dodgers fielded a team of stars: Tommie Davis, Willie Davis, Maury Wills...the Mets? Their lineup that evening consisted of players well past their prime but still relatively productive (Ritchie Ashburn, Frank Thomas) - and a string of minor leaguers masquerading as major leaguers: Felix ("Wrong Way") Mantilla, Cliff Cook, Elio Chacon. The young Jim Hickman (who had two or three good years with the Cubs years after leaving the Mets), Chris Cannizzaro (Casey Stengel could never pronounce his hame correctly.)
The Mets had no chance. Sandy Koufax?...It was lights out. Up to the plate marched the Mets. A few moments later - completely over matched - they returned to the bench. Koufax struck out thirteen Mets. It wasn't a fair fight. It wasn't a fight at all...I took this all in...watched the Mets' determined expressions as they went to bat against Koufax. "I'm gonna solve this guy...I'm gonna do it!" And then I watched the frustration on their faces as they returned to the dugout. Failing again. I was nine years old - and identified with their failure. (I did write in an earlier post I have gone through lots and lots of therapy!) In two hours and four-six minutes it was all over. (Koufax walked five batters, Met pitchers walked six and gave up eleven hits.) The final score was 5-0.
On that night a Mets fan was born. I don't remember much about the second half of the season. But when the 1963 baseball cards came out the following spring I grabbed as many Mets cards as I could find. They had become my team. And so early in the 1963 season, very ill and home from school, I asked my Dad to bring the little portable television into my bedroom so i could watch the Mets game. The Mets were killed, one of those games in which all of their pitchers were hit very hard. Didn't matter. When I returned to school I proudly told anyone who would listen "I am a Mets fan!" The cool kids in PS 213 were still all Yankee fans. Of course. (The first of many times that I would go my own way.) Didn't matter. The Yankees were history so far as I was concerned!
At some point I remember telling my Dad that someday my Mets would throw a no-hitter. Dominate...like Koufax had dominated them. I repeated this sentiment when Jim Bunning of the Phillies pitched a perfect game against the Mets on Father's Day in 1964. "Who would it be" I wondered? Al Jackson? Roger Craig? Tracy Stallard? Jack Fisher?
Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman were still in High School. David Cone?...he was a baby in 1963/1964. Doc Gooden was born after the 1964 season ended. Johan Santana? He wouldn't even be born until 1979...
Fifty years ago - June 1962 - there was one no-hitter. In June 2012...there would be another no-hitter.
We got one. Dad...we got one!
I wish he could understand.
More to come on this subject. Till then,
Stevenn
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