Jun 15 2013 07:52 PM
Re: going to the game 2013
| does anybody still do that anymore? sorry, i tried to find the thread, but nothing comes up. so, with that. tomorrow, i'll be celebrating fathers day in the citi. surely the mets will win, right? not sure if keith hernandez will be joining us this time. i can only assume so... |
Enjoy the game. And Happy Father's Day. But don't expect to run into the Glickson men.
June 15, 2013, 10:13 am 6 Comments
A Father’s Day Quandary: Go See the Mets or Not
By GRANT GLICKSON
| The prospect of attending a major league baseball game for free with my two sons and my Dad on Father’s Day would normally be as good as it can get. However, the tickets are for this Sunday’s Mets-Cubs game at Citi Field, which has created a debate among three generations of Glickson men, all loyal Mets fans. “As much as I’d like to spend the day with you and the boys,” said Larry Glickson, the man who started the tradition of rooting for a team that usually loses more than it wins, “I’d consider it my Father’s Day gift if you allowed me to pass on this game.” By my estimate, I have gone with my Dad to 35 of the last 40 Mets’ home openers. But after all this time, and despite the lure of free tickets, he just doesn’t feel like going. The recent run of really bad baseball by the Mets has gotten to him, as have ownership’s financial issues, which for some time have kept the Mets from spending like the big-market team that they are. There are other issues to consider here, too. The Cubs aren’t any better than the Mets these days. And if we all stay home, then we don’t have to fight through any traffic on the way from New Jersey to Queens, and back. Besides, we do have a swimming pool. Still, to my two sons, ages 13 and 16, the notion of passing on the game is unacceptable. After all, their grandfather is responsible for the fact that we all ended up Mets fans in the first place — rooting for the Yankees would be so much easier — and, to boot, that we have all endured years of aggravation cheering on the Jets, Knicks and Rangers. Kyle, 16, pointed out that we all dutifully went to last season’s Jets-Patriots game in solidarity with my Dad even though we all knew that the Jets were going to get blown out and that it would be freezing. By that measurement, Kyle said, my Dad should now go with us. Still, their grandfather is a skilled negotiator by trade — a union vice president — and as the family’s patriarch has asserted seniority rights in his refusal to go. “Look, you know that there is nothing I’d rather do than spend time with you guys at a baseball game,” he said. But just not now, with the Mets headed toward a fifth straight losing season and any real rebound off in the distance somewhere. When the Mets start spending again, he said, “I’ll be back.’’ But not until then. I pointed out that the tickets and parking were free — I am a union chairman at The New York Times but the Sunday offer was not connected to the newspaper — knowing that my father would counter that the hot dogs, ice cream and soda were not. So here we stand, in a Father’s Day standoff. Over the years, I have gone the extra mile for the Mets, keeping my sons from becoming Yankees fans in 2004, hanging in there when the Mets managed to ingloriously collapse in September 2007 and do it all over again in September 2008. And my reward is that my sons want to go to the game on Father’s Day — “I really miss Citi Field,” Ryan said. “We didn’t go opening day.” — and my father doesn’t. And I’m not sure what to do. Welcome to Mets fandom, 2013. |
http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/1 ... ts-or-not/
