baseball messiah
(excerpted from "Baseball Messiah: a Tomboy Justifies Her Life" originally printed in AJoP #2)
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While it seems pertinent to go deeply into the machinations of the 1986 NLCS, I, well, I can’t. It’s too hard. Oh, the melodrama, but seriously, people, realize that I was pretty much a shell of a girl after that series. I sobbed. I didn’t understand and couldn’t get my mind around the concept of a moment—nay, a season—gone. Over. And it would never come back. I had broken two arms at once so that the Houston Astros could have that one shot at greatness, and they’d let me down.
I bought a large, glossy, collector’s edition book-thing of the championship-season-that-wasn’t-quite, and I read that thing until the staples came out, searching for answers:
Was it the jinx of gaining home-field advantage, even though the Mets were technically supposed to have it? The Astros and Oilers shared the Astrodome in the early fall, and unfortunately, on the Sunday of the NLCS, the Oilers were scheduled for a home game. The only answer was to flip-flop the series schedule, starting in Houston instead of at Shea—totally unfair, I will admit. But my god, who, when scheduling the Astrodome for the fall, would have envisioned the need for playoff games? Why not allow the hapless Oilers to hold a game smack in the middle of the series—no one thought there would be a series. So no, that wasn’t the Astros’ fault. We’ll blame the Oilers for that one.
Was it Game Two, a game the ‘Stros flat-out threw away, stranding nine runners on base to lose 5-1? I can’t imagine those unused runs were the problem. Maybe the scoreboard—oh, that beautiful scoreboard, with its snorting bulls and lassoing cowboys—was having difficulties. Maybe the organ was broken. Something was clearly a little off.
So perhaps it was the ninth inning of Game Three, when the Mets’ Wally Backman bunted, and then ran way the hell out of the baseline to avoid a tag, sparking a rally against the quietly heroic Dave Smith. If he hadn’t gotten on base illegally, there’s no way anyone hits a two-run homer to win the game. Oh, how these types of things would make me start crying in the middle of math class that fall.
But no, I think it all comes down to Game Six, to the last at-bat of the sixteenth inning… and maybe right down to the fact that in the end, I wasn’t enough.
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 photo by Michele McCarthy |
Last summer, I went to Shea Stadium for the first time in my entire life. The game was Mets vs. Astros, Cain vs—oh, forget it. The Astros lost, all right? I was the only person sitting in Shea wearing a ‘Stros hat (circa 1986, none of this modern star crap, I want orange, I want huge), cheering my brains out when they announced the lineup, and then I think the Houston boys went out there and gave up something like 12 runs in the first inning, I mean, it was a bloodbath, plain and simple, maybe the most emphatic win the Mets had this whole season.
But falling behind 12-0 in the first allows one to maybe stop worrying so much about the game and take in one’s surroundings, and as I leaned out over the upper tier railing and looked around, I started to have the strange feeling that I’d been here before, in this very ballpark. There were the multi-colored seats: red, orange, and blue, in honor of the Mets’ colors. There was the tacky-yet-wonderful scoreboard paraphernalia: a giant apple that rises out of a hat in honor of home runs. There was the parking lot and highway out past the center field wall. There was the… roundness of it all.
And that’s when it hit me: put a lid on this park and Shea becomes the Astrodome. And talk to any one of the fans walking out the gates and they can tell you stories of loss and pain and haplessness that would rival my own—and then come back with a story about how in 1986, they were wearing a Mookie Wilson t-shirt the day he slapped that ball between the legs of Bill Buckner to force a Game Seven and go on to a Mets World Series victory for only the second time in club history and how it was meant to be and they just knew it because they’ve always felt a special connection with their team…
…and I sort of figured out that my gift isn’t really so much of a gift at all, but rather the magic of baseball extended into my life so far that it’s become a part of me. And listen, ever since 1993, I’ve been a Yankee fan. People forget: they were not a very good team in 1993. But when I moved to New York (on Reggie Jackson Day, no less), something changed. Thus, so long as the Yankees keep winning, I can keep claiming to have something to do with it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all. I am the Baseball Messiah.
And wow did the Mets suck last year. Ha ha.