Sep 12 2023 07:49 PM
Re: IGT, 9/12, ARI@NYM, Launching the Stoins Era!
The story sounds familiar, my recollections of all-stuff Mets is not what it used to be. |
| It was September 1, 1983, but because the Tides were still making a run at the championship and because the Mets were so far out of contention that they didn't exactly need reinforcements at the big league level, not a lot of my other teammates had gotten the call along with me. In any case, no one else joined the big club on the same day. Clint Hurdle came the following week, along with Mike Fitzgerald, but for the time being, I didn't really know anybody. I kept to myself; I remember that. And I was careful not to say or do anything too stupid or rookie-like; I remember that most of all. My keep-a-low-profile strategy didn't prevent me from standing out. On my very first day with the team, I put on my crisp, clean new uniform and made my way to the Mets dugout, about thirty minutes before anybody else. I wanted to soak it all in. It was a warm, sultry night. After a while, my new teammates started to trickle in. I'd been to spring training that year, so I knew some of the guys, but I wasn't about to say a word. I wanted to stay out of everybody's way, that's all. I sat by myself on the bench, but no one else was sitting. Guys were fooling around, roughhousing, talking about their post-season plans. I hardly noticed, to tell the truth. I was just so excited. I must have looked like such a rube, sitting there the end of the bench in my too-white uniform, too chickenshit to talk to anyone, but I didn't care. I was just happy to be there. Finally, Ron Hodges headed in my direction. He'd been a catcher for the Mets for years and years—since the team's “You Gotta Believe!” 1973 season, when they nearly won the World Series. He wasn't in the lineup, but he'd just finished warming up the pitcher and he'd come back to the dugout to stow some of his gear. He looked at me; for a beat or two I thought he might come over and introduce himself, maybe welcome me to the team. Sure enough, he did walk over, but he didn't introduce himself. Or maybe he did, only not in the way I was expecting. He just gave me a sidelong look and spit a think wad of tobacco juice onto my clean white pant leg. He didn't say anything. He just spit, and the tobacco juice left a huge, ugly brown stain. Then he walked to the other end of the bench and continued to put his equipment away. I wanted to crawl under the dugout bench and die. Today's ballplayers are issued two or three sets of pants with each uniform, but I had only that one pair. I couldn't go back to my locker and change. I had to sit there, all through my first game as a professional baseball player, with my jacket draped over my pants to hide the stain. It would have been funny if there had been a couple other veterans around to take in the scene—a textbook example of rookie hazing. At least I would have had the chance to be a good sport about it. I might have even understood it if Ron had said something to me afterward. I could have shrugged it off, like it was nothing at all. But I don't think anyone else was even watching, and Ron didn't say anything either, so it was just a weirdly mortifying, humiliating moment. It put me in my place—to be taken down a couple of notches for no good reason but the perverse pleasure of it. It seemed so cruel, so arbitrary. But that's baseball, I guess. It builds you up like nothing else, and then it knocks you right back down again. |
Ron Darling
Pp. 27–28
Alfred A. Knopf (New York), 2009
