Playoff baseball has been a solitary experience for me or a long time, watching other teams play and other fans celebrate while a dog slept near me and the family snoozed out of yelling range. But it never meant as much as it did Thursday night in Los Angeles. In California it was over by 8:30 p.m. Let them all hug communally in despair. Let them hold Chase Utley’s hand as he awaits sentencing 10 days after he broke lil’ Ruben Tejada’s ankle on that dirty slide. Let Utley rot.
Here it is after midnight and work first thing in the morning, but I had to put pen to paper, so to speak, to tell you about a memory. I’m not really sure how it goes, but it’s sad and it’s sweet… well, you know.
P. and I were in the upper tank at Shea Stadium, October 9, 1988. We were just so sure that the Mets were going to wipe the floor with L.A. and then beat Oakland as revenge for the 1973 World Series. Instead we saw Mike Scioscia smoke a ball into the bullpen over the head of Randy Myers, who should have been in the game pitching to the squatty body catcher not known for power. We stayed for extra innings. We sipped from a flask, poured it into Cokes in Harry M. Stevens cups. P. tumbled down the emptying rows, stopped by a couple from Commack before he reached the bottom. (P. gave me permission to retell this after finally beating L.A.–somehow 2006 does not feel like it counts because it was too easy.) We all got beat up by L.A. that week. At the time my sister and brother lived in Los Angeles and I’d spent a couple of weeks traveling around out there after graduating college, but you know what, I hate L.A. As we all sang to parody the Randy Newman song. (Don’t look for a link to “I Love L.A.,” I got your link right here.) I haven’t been back to L.A. since my siblings moved away in the 1990s. Those Dodgers fans are so disappointed they want to go to bed… but it’s only 9 o’clock. Sleep tight.
I’ll be out late Saturday night for the NLCS opener, my treat to myself for prudently ending a streak of 23 consecutive Mets home postseason games I’d attended, a streak that started the day before P. and I climbed (and barely stayed in) the upper tank in 1988 and ended Tuesday night, which was good because Monday was the worst Flushing traffic I had ever encountered at a non U.S. Open, fireworks, or Shea closing forever game. I got home at 3 a.m., another record for nights that did not involve a few bar hop stops on the way home. But they won and I did get to work at 8 the next morning. We’re all working hard this time of year.
Forcing myself to end the silly and costly streak was the best thing I could do. Like Cal Ripken, suddenly our voice of October with Ron Darling, taking himself out after proving his point 2,632 games later. It doesn’t matter how many you go to in a row. It matters how many you win. And though the Mets went 15-8 during my run, we know where it got them. The last time I had missed a postseason game was 1986, and they managed to win those last two games without me around.
What I love about now is that you don’t know what the future will bring. That’s OK. Enjoy Murph and Yoenis and Clippard and Kelly and Uribe and everyone who’s having to call the landlord and tell them they will be staying another week.
We’ve heard for years about how great it’s going to be when everything comes together for the Mets. The future is now. Who knows when it ends? Drink it in.