86

This October marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 1986 New York Mets World Series win.  That summer, that year, are forever etched in my memory.  I hadn’t planned on writing about that team so early this summer but the other day Hall of Fame catcher Gary “the kid” Carter announced he was being admitted to Duke University Medical Center to have four “small brain tumors” removed.  Later, word came out that the tumors were malignant.  Carter, age 57, has brain cancer.

What does all that have to do with me?  A good deal.  I saw my first pro baseball game live in 1968 at Shea Stadium.  The Mets were playing the Giants with Willie Mays – my boyhood idol – patrolling center field.  My aunt – my dad’s younger sister (eleven years which can seem like a generation) was a Mets fan.  She and her then husband, with my dad and me in tow, headed out to Shea.  Willie Mays had a good game, a couple of hard singles back up the middle.  But it was the Mets that I fell in love with.  From that day forward, I lived each summer following the Mets:  their amazing 1969 upset of the powerhouse Orioles: Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Bud Harrelson – weighing all 120 lbs. of him in s Superman shirt, Art Shamsky, Tommie Agee, Nolan Ryan.  The list of players and the seasons went on and on.  More often than not they broke my heart.  Bad play, bad trades; still, each spring I believed “this is the year”. 

Fast forward to 1986.  I was in my third year of law practice and my fifth year of marriage.  For the prior few seasons I’d watch the Mets slowly rebuild with a combination of young ballplayers like Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry and Lenny Dykstra, and star veterans like Carter, Keith Hernandez and Ray Knight.  In 1986 they tore through the National League winning 108 games.

This team wasn’t like other Mets teams.  They were brash, cocky and damn good.  We spent July 4^th in Atlanta that year and took in the Mets four game series against the Braves.  One evening my wife and I found ourselves in the hotel bar.  There they were, the best players the Mets had, kicking back beers and shots, just hours after throttling the Braves.  They played hard; they partied even harder.  Later that evening we climbed into the hotel elevator to go to our room.  Already on from an earlier floor:  one of the Mets’ starting pitchers and a beautiful young “professional” woman, flaunting her attributes.

Every baseball fan knows what happened in Game Six of the ’86 World Series:  the famous ball through Bill Buckner’s (the hobbled Red Sox first basemen) legs that allowed the Mets to stage the most dramatic two-out comeback in World Series history.

I lived that moment.  Throughout the entire series, no matter how far down New York was, I believed.  As a ten year old watching the ’69 Mets I became convinced God was a Mets fan.  They wouldn’t win every year; Mets fans would learn to be patient.  “Wait on the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage.”  But, ’86 was different.  They were the best team in baseball and as Game Six progressed, the Mets, down three games to two, were rapidly facing a series loss.  We were at a friend’s house watching the game, just a few short minutes from home.  With the game tied heading into the top of the tenth inning, Boston took a two run lead.  My wife told me we needed to head home.  We made the five minute drive in silence.  Arriving home, I quickly turned the TV on as the bottom of the tenth began.  The first two batters made outs.  New York was one out from elimination.  In the Red Sox clubhouse plastic was draped over lockers to protect clothing from champagne.  NBC announcer Bob Costas was in the clubhouse ready to present the World Series trophy.

In my living room my young wife, trying to be supportive, uttered the following:

“The game’s over honey.  They lost.  You have to accept it.”

To which I replied,

“Baseball is like life.  It’s not over ‘til the last out.”

I then stripped down to my boxers, tying my shirt around my head.  I took our sofa cushions off and lay them out like a baseball diamond.  I stood at my “home plate” and watched as Gary Carter came to bat.  I clapped and prayed and suddenly, Carter had a base hit (Carter, a man known not to swear, told reports later that as he stood at the plate he kept telling himself “I’m not gonna make the last f---in out of the series”).  Kevin Mitchell came up next.  I was now standing on “first” yelling at the top of my lungs as Mitchell lined another hit, this one a double.  Now Carter was at third, Mitchell at second with veteran Ray Knight at bat.

A single!  Knight hit a single and the two runners scored.  The game was tied!  Shea Stadium was literally shaking.  I was yelling as loud as I could, I believed!  And then up stepped Mookie Wilson.  A wild pitch put Knight on second and then, the impossible.  A slow routine ground ball down the first base line.  But Buckner had terrible knees.  He couldn’t get low enough and the ball slid underneath his glove.  Knight rounded third arms thrust upward to the heavens.  I fell to my knees, arms equally held skyward.  Behind me, my lovely, doubting wife who could only smile and mutter, “I was wrong”. 

The series wasn’t decided that night, but in reality, it was.  New York won Game Seven handily.

Twenty-five years later so much has changed.  Life has been difficult for so many of those Mets.  Dwight Gooden, perhaps the best right-hand pitcher since Bob Gibson had his career cut short by drug and alcohol abuse.  He’s been in and out of prison since.  Darryl Strawberry battled drugs and cancer.  Pitcher Bobby Ojeda was in a boating accident that seriously injured him and killed a Cleveland Indian pitcher.  Wally Backman, during a bitter divorce and custody action was arrested for domestic assault.  Lenny Dykstra, “nails” for his aggressive play at all cost approach, had a gambling problem.  Millions of dollars in debt and bankrupt, he was recently jailed and indicted for fraud.  Add Gary Carter’s recent brain cancer and a host of other difficulties and you see the last twenty-five years have been tough on the ’86 Mets.  And the team, they’ve only been to the series once since then.  Their owner is in danger of losing the team (he was an investor in the Madoff schemes).  The Mets now “hover” near 500.

And me?  You know that story:  Successful lawyer, husband and father, now an inmate,  divorced from the only woman I ever loved, estranged from my two beloved sons.

As I read the story of Gary Carter’s battle with cancer I remembered that October night twenty-five years ago.  I remembered the young man who knew in his core that “the game” wasn’t over.

I have struggled mightily with depression these past three years.   There have been more days than I care to admit when I’ve prayed “just let me die, God, I can’t do this”.  As my friend Big S told me two weeks ago “you’ve been in a funk ever since that woman wrote you.”

I’ve questioned everything.  I’ve doubted everyone.  I’ve felt as though the last thirty years were a waste, that I’d invested my heart and soul into a relationship that didn’t matter.  “It was all bullshit”, I’ve thought.  She never loved me; friends really weren’t friends.  But Big S – who has heard more of my stories than I care to remember – reminded me “you aren’t a quitter, Larry”.  And you know, I’m not.  I never gave up on people I love, I never gave up on myself, and I’m not going to start now. 

“The game isn’t over ‘til the last out.”

I think Job was a Mets fan.  I also think that’s what Viktor Frankl meant when he talked about finding meaning in your suffering.  And I also think it’s what James meant when he wrote “consider it a joy when you encounter various trials knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance”.

I’m heartbroken, I’m discouraged, but I’m not ready to give up.  A few of the guys in here have recently thanked me for “not giving up on them” and “believing in them” when no one else did.  I told one of the guys, Todd, he should thank the Mets for that.  Being a Mets fan makes me a hopeless optimist.  And thanks to “the kid”, I remembered I’m not ready “to make the last f---in out”.