THE players are overpaid, the games are too long, $10 doesn’t get you a seat in either New York ballpark and you can’t get even a beer in the Yankee Stadium bleachers anymore.
But I’ll be watching anyway.
Here’s why.
It was Oct. 25, 1986; I was 11. My father and I were in Newark, Del., to visit his close friend Dave Nelson, then the University of Delaware’s athletic director.
We watched the Fightin’ Blue Hens annihilate some Colonial League team on the football field, then adjourned to a Howard Johnson’s for the important events of the evening.
Game 6 of the 1986 World Series featured two of that year’s best pitchers – Roger Clemens and Bob Ojeda. If the Sox took the game, Boston would rejoice in its first world championship in nearly 70 years. A Met victory ensured seats at Shea two days later for 55,000 ticket-holders for the crown jewel of baseball – a deciding Game 7.
Two of those tickets sat atop the television in room 403 of the HoJo’s in Dover.
No win for the Mets, those tickets aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.
The game began in typical ’86 Mets fashion: Ojeda gave up one run in each of the first two innings, then settled in.
Clemens was unhittable through four innings.
The Mets tied it at two in the fifth, and each team scored a run in the last third of the ballgame, sending Game 6 into extra frames.
And that’s where the magic every baseball fan dreams of began.
The Sox scored two in the top of the 10th. Things looked bleak in the bottom of the inning, even before fly-outs by Wally Backman and Keith Hernandez all but sealed the Mets fate.
Until someone or something – the baseball gods, the curse of Babe Ruth or some other unknown power who likes nothing more than torturing the Boston Red Sox – showed up.
Gary Carter singled – not exactly a sign of a heart-stopping comeback, but not the end.
Then Kevin Mitchell singled – moving me upright on the base of the bed from my prone and sulking position.
By the time Ray Knight blooped a flair into shallow center to score Carter, the miracle was in full swing.
Then Mookie Wilson capped it: After taking a wild pitch that scored Mitchell and tied the game, he hit a slow roller up the first base line.
When the ball trickled through Bill Buckner’s glove (at least that’s what it looked like to an 11-year-old), father and son went nuts, jumping up and down on the twin beds, elated not only because of the win, but because we would be at the most important event in the world two nights later.
Because of that October night (the Mets’ unbelievable victory in Game 7 was somehow anticlimactic), I haven’t stopped watching since.
And that’s why, no matter how much the players make, how long the game takes to play and how much it costs for a hot dog, Opening Day is so special.
You never know when baseball magic will appear.
Thanks, Dad.
E-mail: sfriedman@btc365-futebol.com