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The framing is unfortunate to the naked eye, but the article is another excerpt from the previously discussed Devin Gordon book, and Devin Gordon is one of us.
The sight of Ray Knight rounding third base with the winning run of Game 6 in the 1986 World Series against the Boston Red Sox—completing a two-run, two-out, two-strike comeback in the bottom of the tenth inning—was the greatest moment of my life, and I have two kids. I will cherish the memories of my sweet, gorgeous, magical children drawing their first breaths until the day I draw my last. I'll just cherish them ever so slightly less than my memories of that Game 6.
I was 10 years old, and it was after midnight, and I'd already bleated so many times during the first nine and a half innings that I was under penalty of death if I woke up anyone else. By the top of the tenth, the noises coming out of me had turned dark and guttural. The Mets were down three games to two. A loss here tonight would end the series, and my childhood. Then right away in the top of the tenth, Red Sox outfielder Dave “Hendu” Henderson, who'd crushed us that whole series, crushed the second pitch so hard off the facade above the left-field wall that it ricocheted 50 yards back into left-center.
He hit that ball so hard that its essence went clean through my chest, and I didn't feel it until I saw the baseball-size hole where several of my vital organs used to be. Phonetically, the sound I made was nngyuuuh. It was the sound of a 10-year-old boy learning that life is shit. Boston up 4–3. And then, as the light in my eyes went out, Sox third baseman Wade Boggs clubbed a double in the gap, followed by light-hitting second baseman Marty Barrett singling him home—Barrett's 12th hit in six games, lifting his World Series batting average to .418. Boston up 5–3. Game over. Childhood over.
Knowing what I know now, about life, about losing, about giving your heart to a team like the Mets, I ache for those Red Sox fans, belligerent and insufferable as they were, because here we are all these decades later, and they're still haunted by the sight of Mookie Wilson's hard grounder sneaking through Bill Buckner's legs. The late, great Shea Stadium was built on a fetid ash heap, and it took just 12 minutes for the Mets to rise from it, roar back, and win the game, 6–5.
As I processed what was happening, I uncorked one of those silent shrieks where you're going berserk but no sound is coming out. The clashing forces of the air trying to leave my body and me trying to hold in the sound caused a sudden rush of oxygen into my head. I remember the feeling of my brain expanding in my skull and getting super warm as Ray Knight stomped on home plate, and I know for certain that if it happened again today, I would stroke out. |
Sometimes clicking fills in blanks.
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/04/mets-are-losers/618470/
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