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How the Grateful Dead Helped Me Understand the Mets
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/magaz ... ebook&_r=0
By DAVID VECSEY OCT. 9, 2015
I am a lifelong Mets fan. Literally: I was born on the day they clinched the National League East in 1969. My father was present for both — hospital in the morning, Shea Stadium that evening. Talk about being born under a good sign: a three-month stretch in which man would walk on the moon, half a million people would gather for Woodstock and the Mets would win the World Series. Life, you might have figured at the time, would be one long ticker-tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes.
But as 1969 was drawing to a close, the Grateful Dead unveiled a new song, “Uncle John’s Band,” in which they warned: “When life looks like Easy Street, there is danger at the door.” Sure enough, the Miracle Amazin Mets were terrible for the better part of my childhood.
It took me somewhat longer — 20 years, to be exact — to become a Deadhead. But lately it has occurred to me that getting on the bus has helped me to better understand my life as a Mets fan. They may be the two most irredeemable tribes in American popular culture, cultish in their devotion and often pitied for it by those with more respectable passions. In loving both the Mets and the Dead, you are willingly choosing “the other” over the establishment. But where many might see only inefficiency, sloppiness and directionlessness (take your pick), we see the potential for a shambling kind of glory, the ability to summon form out of chaos and the reward in loving something not in spite of its imperfections but because of them.
Life, for a Mets fan, is mostly a matter of waiting for other shoes to drop — late-season collapses, dropped pop-ups, blown saves. It’s a life of giving your payroll to a swindler; your star lefty snipping off the tip of his finger with hedge clippers; your All-Star outfielder and your Gold Glove first baseman throwing punches at each other while posing for the team picture. It’s Bobby Bonilla’s contract and the Seaver trade and the Dykstra trade and a 3-2 curveball that jelly-legs Carlos Beltran with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth.
I don’t think God hates the Mets. But God, as played by Morgan Freeman in the movie “Bruce Almighty,” did wear a Yankees cap. Newman, the loser neighbor from “Seinfeld,” wears a Mets cap. In “Pride of the Yankees,” Gary Cooper’s voice echoes throughout Yankee Stadium as he proclaims himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. But in “Sharknado 2,” Citi Field is ravaged by, well, sharks that fall from the sky like a plague they forgot to mention in Exodus.
Deadheads similarly exist in the popular imagination as out-of-touch drifters drenched in patchouli oil and subsisting on $2 kebabs cooked over the tailpipe of a VW microbus. Twenty years after Jerry Garcia’s death, people are often surprised to find out that the scene still exists; identifying yourself as a Deadhead elicits a mix of disgust and sympathy.
Like the Dead, the ragtag Mets amble about the country every summer, their play vacillating between the inept and the inspired. They have hot streaks and they have slumps. When they are off their game, they are almost unwatchable. But when they are on, they are a joy to behold. Either way, for three hours a night, you’re getting something you’ve never seen before. The unpredictability is fun. It can drive you nuts, but it’s fun.
I don’t think the Yankees are very fun, with their pinstripe business suits and no-beard policy. I do understand why people love them: They spend money, they win, they provide an experience that makes their fans feel important. They’re like the Rolling Stones. You go to a Yankees game, you’re getting the classics: “Honky Tonk Women,” “Jumping Jack Flash,” “Brown Sugar.” Mick points, Keith snarls and it’s “We love you, (your city here)!” And that’s O.K. There’s nothing wrong with liking the Rolling Stones. I like the Rolling Stones. But it’s easy to like the Rolling Stones. They’re the Greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Band in the World.
The Mets, to borrow Bill Graham’s assessment of the Dead, aren’t the best at what they do; they’re the only ones who do what they do. It’s all about the experience. At Yankee Stadium, fans line up to take their picture beside what look like tombstones of former Yankees greats. At Citi Field, fans line up to take their picture beside a little dog in sunglasses and a Mets jersey.
Rooting for the Mets is like rooting for any number of hopelessly down-and-out characters from Dead tunes: the drunk who vows to get up and fly away; the gambler who knows the next hand is a winner; the jilted lover who is sure the woman will take him back; or the hustler who is always one step behind the devil and only one step ahead of the law. You kind of know how it’s going to all turn out, and yet you want to believe.
In 1986, Mets fans finally had their faith rewarded again, when God stuck a finger down from Heaven and gave Mookie’s little squibber a nudge through Bill Buckner’s legs. I was there two nights later when they won Game 7, when Shea Stadium shook in sheer euphoria. Having waited my whole life for that moment, the 17-year-old me undoubtedly figured it would the first of many earth-moving moments for my Mets.
Then came Terry Pendleton’s home run in ’87. Kirk Gibson’s ridiculous falling catch in ’88. Kenny Rogers’s walk-off walk in ’99. Mike Piazza’s warning-track fly ball in 2000. Carlos Beltran’s frozen moment in 2006. Tom Glavine’s season-finale meltdown in 2007. And the total team collapse of 2008. Twenty-nine years later, we’ve yet to straighten up, draw the ace or get the woman.
Is this the year? I believe it is. Why wouldn’t I? But no matter how things unfold, the Mets’ 2015 Summer Tour was a joy to watch, filled with personality and verve, desolation and pain and resilience, successes and failures and strange circumstances. It has been a long, strange season, no doubt, filled with fireworks, calliopes and clowns. As Jerry Garcia purportedly said to Bob Weir backstage in Chicago in 1995, in what would be their last words to each other: Always a hoot.
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