It would be fair to say my first vivid memory of the New York Mets, as a fan, happened 25 years ago today. On a Saturday afternoon, as a six-year-old, I watched Lenny Dykstra’s game-winning home run next to my father. As I recounted in my book, Taking the Field, my father proceeded to dance in celebration, singing “The Mexican Hat Dance” as he did so. We then took a trip to the Camden County Library’s book sale, where I loaded up on baseball books, with a pile that reached nearly to my eyes. I’d guess that’s how my link between baseball and writing about baseball formed.
This morning, I started re-watching the game with my 18-month-old daughter, Mirabelle. She’s certainly picked up the game earlier than I did. Recently, at a frozen yogurt shop, while holding my daughter, I had the following exchange with the woman behind the counter:
WOMAN: Can she say Mommy and Daddy?
ME: You know the New York Mets?
WOMAN (uncertainly): Yes.
ME: Mirabelle, who’s the Mets catcher. Josh…
MIRABELLE: Thole!
She can actually do this for the entire makeshift starting lineup from September (Justin… Turner!), and starts to sing “Jose, Jose Jose Jose” when I say the word “shortstop”. No one can quite figure out if this is adorable, or signs that I’m successfully brainwashing my daughter in an unholy way.
To which I respond: can’t it be both?
But all I’m really doing here is laying the groundwork. No, we won’t be watching any postseason games this year involving the Mets. But by the time we do, I’m hoping she’ll manage to experience the same level of excitement about them that I did when I was six years old, and truth be told, that I’d feel today at age 31. We’ll certainly be watching with my father when that happens. I’m going to assume, when it does, that he will dance again, and this time, so will she.
3 Comments
Nice story. I remember a young Nolan Ryan that the Mets gave up on because he couldn’t find the plate. Remember, too, the glory days of Mantle, Snider and Mays, all here in NY and readily available to see performing in person. And I remember the young Seaver, Koosman, Matlack, Gentry, McGraw, who shocked the baseball world. Ah youth, ah beauty!
My dad, originally from Germany, couldn’t stand baseball but I learned to love the game in spite of his disinterest. At first (in the ‘70s) I liked the teams that other kids liked in my neighborhood: the Reds, the Dodgers, and the Yankees (depending on who won the World Series). When the team du jour was the Pirates I remember getting laughed at for liking whichever team won the World Series. And they were right. I had to pick a team and stick with them to be a fan. And so I picked the team closest to me in Long Island. I watched Ralph Kiner and listened to Joe Murphy over and over call games that the Mets would lose over and over. But I never gave up on them no matter how bad they were and it’s what I think my son bought into that makes him a Mets fan too. We don’t give up. We endure and hope for the next game, the next half of the season and of course next season.
Thought she’d say “Metsie, Metsie”!!!