"THE METS OPENING DAY STORY..."

Hi Friends!

When I decided that it was time to publicly express my thoughts using this venue (evidently like hundreds of thousands of like-minded individuals on the Web) it seemed like a very clever idea to title the posts with the catch-phrase "WHAT KIND OF BS IS THIS?" After all, there's an awful lot of nonsense out there I would like to comment on, making my own modest contribution to whatever dialogue exists on any number of subjects - big and small - that affect Americans in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Expressing myself in a different way than I could through musical composition for example. "WHAT KIND OF BS IS THIS?" seemed the perfect way to introduce most subjects - as well as adopt a kind of "wise-guy" persona in which to present myself to the world. Just one more "Boomer" talking trash.

Yes...a good idea, no? But - like with many things in life - there's a catch. First and foremost I am not a wise-guy and though I can act like one upon occasion - I have had several years of training as an actor after all - it's not really who I am. Secondly - or is it better phrased as unfortunately? - I am not disposed at this moment in time to rail against anything or anyone - big or small, powerful or weak, elected or not-elected, productive or useless, smart or stupid...because...hey...it's really been a terrific day, the New York sky is brilliantly blue, my ongoing and annoying middle-age physical problems have receded into the background (at least for the moment) - AND - it is major league baseball's Opening Day.

Opening Day! In Ken Burn's magnificent PBS series "Baseball" the point is made numerous times that baseball - the American game - serves as a mechanism by which people can renew their spirit and optimism and feel connected to their pasts. An absolutely dead-on (if admittedly simplified) description. But today - Opening Day for my team, the Mets - was proof positive. Middle-aged Stevenn - with almost fifty-nine years of baggage, physical issues, some residual emotional problems (not that I am advertising them), worried about friends and family facing serious personal issues, still recovering from the loss of my mother in February, and struggling to find meaning in his post-retirement world, had a simply glorious day. Baseball was back! The chance to start over - the opportunity to overcome adversity. The ability to change one's destiny, to experience the past even as one attempts to overcome its legacy...Opening Day!

On Opening Day....memories of April 1969 return. Fifteen years old, a skinny doesn't-have-a-clue kind of a kid, sitting alone in the bleachers at James Madison High School in Brooklyn, wind whipping through my body as I spend my free period fumbling with the small transitor radio that will bring me the first couple of innings of the Mets-Expos game. Yes, the Expos, who were playing in their first major league game, an expansion team! Certainly the endlessly losing Mets can beat the Expos in the first game of the season! Sitting in the bleachers, listening to the announcers painting the word picture...anything and everything seemed possible. Even in French class when Ms. Ruggiero reached over and pulled the radio plug out of my left ear, even in Social Studies when it was whispered that the Mets starter Tom Seaver had been hit hard and the team had been defeated, even during the chilly walk home when the realization set in that Opening Day was over - and that my team had inexplicably lost - it didn't matter, it simply did not matter! Because anything and everything was possible. The next day would be another kind of "opening day" - the opening of the window of opportunity. The team could win its game. Someone might actually acknowledge my small presence in the universe. I might actually pass Ms. Ruggiero's class. It could happen. Yes it could!

I realize how much Opening Day 1969 - and the season that unfolded - have shaped my sensibilities and way of looking at life. After all, my team the Mets ultimately won the World Series against the big and powerful Baltimore Orioles, in July men walked on the moon, in August half a million young people existed in peace and harmony at Woodstock (seemingly embodying the best qualities of the "generation that would save the world"). So what if my parents yanked me out of Brooklyn that June and dumped me at age sixteen in an alien Suffolk County environment, a change which took at least another decade to overcome? Anything and everything was possible. Things can get better. There can be success. Happiness even. It can happen. And- roadblocks are temporary.

All this is in way of introduction. In the weeks to come I will have plenty to say about all kinds of subjects. Important. Trivial. Personal. Just not today. Okay? Not on Opening Day.

Oh - the Mets won today. How about that?

More to follow, see you soon.

Stevenn