Baseball bliss, every 50 years
Let’s go Mets! (1969) Let’s go Nats! (2019)
One of the highlights of my childhood came in 1969 when the New York Mets miraculously overcame their historic awfulness and defeated the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.
Now, a half-century later, baseball bliss has arrived once again with the Washington Nationals’ improbable World Series victory over the heavily favored Houston Astros.
Let’s start this tale of infrequent gratification in the first inning of my life, so to speak.
As a boy growing up in upstate New York in the 1960s, you were either a fan of the Mets or the Yankees. My friends were all backers of the Yankees, the juggernaut of Mantle and Maris. I cast my lot with the woeful expansion team formally known as the Metropolitans.
Rooting for the underdog
Why I did this is hard to remember. Maybe I just wanted to be contrary. Maybe I liked rooting for the underdog. Or maybe because my parents, who hailed from Brooklyn, saw the Mets as filling the bitter void left when the Dodgers decamped to Los Angeles.
In any event, as my friends celebrated pennant after pennant, I suffered. The early Mets weren’t just terrible; they were historically terrible. In their first season, they lost three games for every game they won. “Can’t anyone here play this game?” manager Casey Stengel famously moaned.
By the late 1960s, however, the Mets were approaching respectability, thanks to players such as pitchers Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman and outfielders Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee.
In the summer of 1969, the summer of the moon landing and Woodstock, the Amazin’s began their pennant run. Back then, children, it was difficult to follow the race on TV, at least where I lived. There was a “game of the week,” which might or might not include your favorite team. So I tracked the Mets on a device known as a transistor radio.
After so much disappointment, the Mets’ unexpected championship was all the sweeter — even as some of my Yankee-loving friends annoyingly became fair-weather Mets fans.
The following year, I made the Little League 13-year-old all star team, and I figured my career path was set. I’d sign a big contract with the Mets and play before adoring crowds at Shea Stadium. This delusion was shattered a few years later, however, when I was unceremoniously cut from the high school varsity team. Plan B — journalism — quickly became Plan A.
In 1980, after moving from New York to Washington, D.C., to pursue opportunities in the news business, I promptly joined the local Mets fan club. A few years later, when my wife, Ellen, was pregnant with our first child, I semi-seriously lobbied for the name Cleon. By the 1990s, however, my ardor for the Mets — and baseball in general — began to wane. The games were too long. The players were juiced. The 1994 strike was a particular low point. As it dragged on, I tried to explain the salarycap dispute to my 8-year-old son, Scott (not Cleon). He pondered this for a moment and replied, “Dad, you mean they get paid to play baseball?”
Then, in 2005, Washington got its first major league team since 1971. I joined a group to share season tickets. And I got hooked all over again.
To everyone’s amazement, the old Montreal Expos, repackaged as the Washington Nationals, finished the season’s first half in first place before fading. That Sept. 1, we saw a promising rookie get his first major league hit. His name was Ryan Zimmerman.
Another team of destiny
In the ensuing years, however, there was little to cheer for. The Nats went through a few seasons when they were almost unwatchably bad, like the old Mets. The only consolation was Father’s Day outings to the new Nats Park where three generations bonded (and listened to the grandparents complain about the concession-stand prices).
The fallow years led to top draft choices, which led to winning teams, which led to a series of crushing disappointments in the first round of the playoffs. Last year, the Nats didn’t even make the playoffs, and this season, thanks to injuries and a toxic bullpen, they started 19-31.
Then, astoundingly, everything turned around. Clubhouse chemistry improved, as did the bullpen. The wonderfully diverse players danced in the dugout after home runs. The fans clapped to infectious “Baby Shark” singalongs. Suddenly, these Nats seemed to be a team of destiny.
Through the team’s post-season run, I wore my lucky Nationals shirt every game because, well, they played better when I did. Astonishing comeback followed astonishing comeback.
And now Ryan Zimmerman & Co. are World Champions, a unifying force in an otherwise polarized capital. The “Let’s go Nats!” chants echoed the “Let’s go Mets!” chants of my youth.
1969. 2019. I can hardly wait until 2069.