Oct 15 2006 05:48 PM
Today's New York Times
October 14, 2006
Generations
An October Surprise Worth Waiting For
By MARCIA WORTH BAKER
AS the Mets charged into this year’s postseason, their city-skyline logo suddenly appeared on magazine covers, on pencils displayed near grocery checkouts and on bumper stickers sold at gasoline stations. But just a few months ago — and for many years before that, through thick and mostly thin — there was hardly a trace of Mets gear to be found.
My son James and I would trudge from store to store in search of a Mets backpack or even just a lunch box, deliberately ignoring the racks and rows of Yankee tank tops, change purses and dog sweaters. Last year, the manager of a large, local sports warehouse — truly trying to help — asked, “Have you considered rooting for the Yankees?”
James, who was 6 at the time, and I had a long, silent, thoughtful ride home. Even then, of course, Mets-emblazoned tchotchkes and memorabilia proliferated online — and a few clicks did bring us the coveted backpack — but seeing that favorite team’s logo out in the world, as Yankee fans always do, validates that loyalty, makes it seem meaningful and widespread, which is important for a child.
This year, of course, meaningfulness doesn’t need a logo. But it does need a perspective. As both James and I know, this thrilling season would never be so truly, so characteristically amazing without the struggles that preceded it. And I don’t mean the team’s struggles.
Before he started first grade, James had already learned that it’s tough to be a Mets fan, especially in Yankeeland. Here in South Orange, N.J., trick-or-treaters often resemble the Yankees’ starting lineup. Yankees-themed parties, with the birthday boy in the Derek Jeter role, are not unusual. Our daughter’s American Girl doll wears a Yankee uniform (a promotional giveaway from a game she attended). Even our local history looks toward the Bronx: Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig played an exhibition game here in 1929. Now the town team wears shirts that say, “South Orange: Where Legends Played” in big letters across the back. Ambitious batters, from T-ball first-timers to college varsity veterans, aim at an apartment building on a town thoroughfare, hoping to break a window as legend says Gehrig did.
Still, we never wavered. Even as children, the fans I know accepted the Mets as their destiny. Like being left-handed, it’s occasionally inconvenient, but it’s a way of life. For me, it’s a familial trait. I was raised National League by a Mets father and a Phillies mother. When the family landed in northern New Jersey, my brother and I gravitated toward Shea Stadium, where I learned to count change at the concession stand and to score a game correctly, filling in the spaces with satisfying K’s when the opposing team’s batter struck out. My father took us to several seasons’ worth of Mets games, enough to establish a lifetime loyalty to the team.
Even as their fortunes waxed and waned, and I lived in many places, I answered questions about team preference with, “Mets, of course.” If I had carried a backpack, I would have wanted a Mets logo on it, which is why I’ve been willing to travel hopefully from store to store each year, much as the Mets approach those first road games each season.
The peculiar pull of this team is the repeated disappointment that punctuates its big-league credentials. I’ve always seen myself in the players — the way they blow opportunities, make spectacular errors and sometimes, just barely, catch a break they either don’t deserve or deserve more than any other team in the world. That’s baseball’s equivalent of missed deadlines, bills paid late, children’s homework hastily done and the occasional glorious day when either none of that matters or all of it does.
On the best of good days, I’m Willie Randolph, my children are a well-trained team, and my suburb is a sold-out night game at Shea. More often, my Met life is a rainout followed by a grueling double-header on the road and bad news about the pitcher’s throwing arm.
My high school buddy, a Queens transplant, and I used to listen to Mets games on a transistor radio in his yard when his mother sent us outside to weed the vegetable garden. I remember lying in spring’s damp grass, which dried to nothing in the heat of late summer and revived for the playoffs. Even then, back in the 1980’s, it was an apt metaphor for the Mets’ seasons.
This year, for the first time in recent memory, I look forward to reading the sports pages. After the Mets swept the division title, their logo swept the stores with equal bravado, often replacing large Yankee displays. Entire windows of sporting-goods stores in New York City are now filled with Mets gear. Mets T-shirts are being advertised in South Orange — advertised! — at several stores, along with enough backpacks for every child in the tri-state area.
I see myself less clearly in this success story, but that’s O.K. If my Mets have a golden season, there’s reason to think that I’ll have the same. So I’m feeling an unfamiliar exuberance. In gleeful anticipation of — dare I say it? — a World Series title, I decide to buy some party clothes, a new T-shirt for myself and a hat for James. As a veteran fan, though, my exuberance is tempered, just slightly, by experience.
Browsing through the array of Mets gear, I choose a backpack that I hide from James. It’s for next year — just in case we’re all disappointed and it’s back to the same old and the Mets logo vanishes from sight like a foul ball into a fan’s mitt.
Because being a Mets fan means celebrating victories — a stolen base, a favorable call at third or a division title — when we can, and pragmatically planning for errors. It’s the lesson of the legacy; it’s the hard-won wisdom that distinguishes us from fans of that other New York team. It sets us apart. Well, that and the backpacks.