Good Writing

Sports of The Times
Holding Out Hope, Giving In to Nostalgia
new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/sports/baseball/29vecsey.html

By GEORGE VECSEY
Published: September 28, 2008
Somehow or other, nostalgia kicked in. It was pointless, really, since the Mets are moving a few dozen feet eastward to the handsome new building. Nostalgia was also pointless on this damp, miserable Sunday morning because the Mets still had a game to play that could bring delirious joy or abject misery to a fandom that has known both since the first Polo Grounds seasons of 1962-63.
I thought I was immune to nostalgia. I’m looking forward to the new place next year. But then I drove toward Shea, and WVUF-FM was playing a Mets medley of farewell songs and upbeat songs, and then made a segue into the voices of Lindsay Nelson, Bob Murphy, Ralph Kiner and Gary Thorne from the glory days of 1969 and 1986.
All of a sudden as I pulled into the parking lot, Donn Clendenon was hitting home runs from memory, and Lenny Dykstra was running the bases in the midday sun, shouting, “Whoopee! Whoopee!” and Nolan Ryan and Sid Fernandez merged into one awesome long relief man, and I got caught up in 45 years of Shea memories, including my father, finishing out his career with the Associated Press at the ballpark, muttering, “Turn down that blankety noise!” at the obnoxious sound system. I could only laugh at what Pop would have said about the Mets’ bullpen this past wretched month. And then 45 years of Shea swarmed all over me, despite my professional armor.
It all began in 1962 in the Polo Grounds, personified by rubber-faced, nimble-witted Casey Stengel, who advanced the brand of Metsies. Those years are the foundation of these Mets, who had very nearly blown the season in the last two weeks.
That first generation learned to love and laugh and hope and despair for a ball team. Those Mets were the reason Mets fans stood outside Shea on Sunday, middle-aged fathers taking pictures of sons who never saw Alvin Jackson or Ron Hunt or, dare we invoke his name, Marvelous Marv Throneberry, the erratic icon of the Polo Grounds.
Meanwhile, there was this game to be played, if the heavens cooperated. The Mets improbably still had a chance. Their season had ended right here in the old place the last two seasons — the called strike on Carlos Beltrán in the championship series of 2006 and the sky falling on the old pro, Tom Glavine, on the last day of 2007.
These last days have been exactly like the first year in 1962, with more talent and more high points, to be sure. One cold night in the old Polo Grounds, in that first hopeful spring, I was a young reporter witnessing the horrible Mets and horrible Cubs stumbling into extra innings, and I heard a fan say, “I hate to go — but I hate to stay.”
Ever since, the Mets have invoked ambiguity, and that’s what Mets fans felt in recent weeks as the relievers, a bullpen full of Marvelous Marvs, but not nearly as funny, coughed up lead after lead, almost as an experiment to see how many runs they could squander.
Early Saturday morning I got an e-mail message from a female Mets fan. It consisted of two words: “I quit.” But then came Johan Santana’s masterly three-hit, 2-0 complete-game victory on Saturday, after he had insisted on pitching on three days’ rest, the mark of an ace, who has inexorably taken command in his first season with this new team.
Santana’s compelling performance just might have been the best clutch game ever pitched for the Mets, given the circumstances. He left the team, and the fans, pretty much where Mets fans have always been — afraid to look, afraid not to look. This duality was part of the Mets — no high expectations, no haughty entitlement, as there is with teams we could mention.
The Mets have often given their fans the general sense that they shouldn’t count on too much, that we are subject to forces beyond our control, as shown in the current financial crisis, where people are at the mercy of government and corporations who never had their best interests at heart.
This is the Queens experience. Any young man who grew up in Queens and dated a girl from Manhattan knows the vague look of amusement at the idea that people actually live in the outer boroughs.
Even the old ballpark, perhaps in its final hours, reflected the lumpen pride of the franchise and its fans. Nobody has ever called it a cathedral. In style, it was more like the old warehouse or outdated movie theater that Korean worshipers have transformed into a church in the borough of Queens. Not a cathedral — but a place where people go to be fulfilled, nonetheless.
Now the two New York teams are about to move into new places, essentially next door. It’s hard to be nostalgic about that. But as the old Mets came home for a farewell, and the fans watched the leaden skies, hoping for one more miracle, nostalga kicked in.