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captainsblogOf all the heroes who marched through that canyon after today's misfiring of our final cannons, I totally surprised myself by the one who brought me to tears.
Despite being all for equality, and generally sensitive, I just don't cry. Not at weddings, funerals or even my own child's birth. The times I can remember from the past 20 years can be numbered on as many fingers as you'd need to count our runs from the final game. One was slushily sentimental, the other a blast of mostly fear. No, I'm not going into either unless you believe there are 50 minutes in an hour.
When the final blast from the final Met fell Oh So Short as so many of them did all year- just as Schoenweis's eighth-inning disaster was fatalistic once his leadoff strikeout of Wes Helms fell a millimeter away from being called as such- I turned the television off and the DVR on. I wanted to enjoy the memories of my only real baseball home on another night, without the ill feelings of these past five hours interfering.
By 6 or so, my wife was home from work and dinner was ready, so I checked to see if the festivities were over, and there was the parade to home plate. Of heroes and characters from so many years gone by, coming down the lines and touching home. These being the Mets, exactly half of them doing it all wrong.
Seeing the lines nearing their ends, I had to keep watching. I smiled for most of the '86ers, and whooped when Buddy jumped triumphantly on the plate- appropriate as the only man there to be on the Mets' side of the field for both Series clinchers at Shea- and felt sad seeing the age that's caught up to Willie Mays and even more to Ed Charles. But it was the original Number Eight that got my waterworks going for only the second time this century. Seeing Yogi in the only uniform that will ever matter to me, in the stadium where he was always welcome, and at an age where he outlived every other Met older than he, and both the closing of That Other Hell across the river and the life of the man he taught to Gotta Believe? That is what made me cry.
The following footsteps of Rusty and Keith and Mike and Tom, and the scripted moments involving those latter two? Icing on my tears.
Then Copland. What better way to close out the life of a ballpark in a public park than with "Fanfare for the Common Man," and the real thing rather than the Emerson Lake & Palmer switched-on version I actually think of first (until someone invents a musical cure)? For 45 summers, this horseshoe was the home of New York's common man, not the corporate headquarters several miles away with the much more impressive annual reports. It almost always welcomed all comers, and made them feel they were in a special place, not out of entitlement or in deference to legend, but because the Mets stood for everything and everyone. Winning in the finest of fashion on occasion, but way more often losing, but just as often going down in defeat while trying their damndest, as Johan did yesterday and Endy once again did in defeat in the early innings of this game. (Note to Omar: do you think maybe we could've made up a game on the Brewers SOMEWHERE in there when you were insisting on playing "more experienced outfielders" over his enthusiasm? Yeah. Me, too.)
The only other ballpark I witnessed the "last game" at was Rochester's old stadium, a dozen Augusts ago. It was a touching and dignified ceremony, yet it had some emptiness to it, since the Wings had made the IL playoffs that year and we all knew there were at least a couple of games still to be played there. In its own way, having today bring closure- to the season and the ballpark at the same time- seemed right for this team, especially this year's version. They did not collapse as their '07 cousins did- not over the past 17 games, and certainly not today. They lost by inches rather than by miles this time, even though history will record far more similarity.
We may be closing Robert Moses's Pandora's Box for good, but I Gotta Believe that we're not going to be bulldozing the hope along with it once we pave it all over.
Despite being all for equality, and generally sensitive, I just don't cry. Not at weddings, funerals or even my own child's birth. The times I can remember from the past 20 years can be numbered on as many fingers as you'd need to count our runs from the final game. One was slushily sentimental, the other a blast of mostly fear. No, I'm not going into either unless you believe there are 50 minutes in an hour.
When the final blast from the final Met fell Oh So Short as so many of them did all year- just as Schoenweis's eighth-inning disaster was fatalistic once his leadoff strikeout of Wes Helms fell a millimeter away from being called as such- I turned the television off and the DVR on. I wanted to enjoy the memories of my only real baseball home on another night, without the ill feelings of these past five hours interfering.
By 6 or so, my wife was home from work and dinner was ready, so I checked to see if the festivities were over, and there was the parade to home plate. Of heroes and characters from so many years gone by, coming down the lines and touching home. These being the Mets, exactly half of them doing it all wrong.
Seeing the lines nearing their ends, I had to keep watching. I smiled for most of the '86ers, and whooped when Buddy jumped triumphantly on the plate- appropriate as the only man there to be on the Mets' side of the field for both Series clinchers at Shea- and felt sad seeing the age that's caught up to Willie Mays and even more to Ed Charles. But it was the original Number Eight that got my waterworks going for only the second time this century. Seeing Yogi in the only uniform that will ever matter to me, in the stadium where he was always welcome, and at an age where he outlived every other Met older than he, and both the closing of That Other Hell across the river and the life of the man he taught to Gotta Believe? That is what made me cry.
The following footsteps of Rusty and Keith and Mike and Tom, and the scripted moments involving those latter two? Icing on my tears.
Then Copland. What better way to close out the life of a ballpark in a public park than with "Fanfare for the Common Man," and the real thing rather than the Emerson Lake & Palmer switched-on version I actually think of first (until someone invents a musical cure)? For 45 summers, this horseshoe was the home of New York's common man, not the corporate headquarters several miles away with the much more impressive annual reports. It almost always welcomed all comers, and made them feel they were in a special place, not out of entitlement or in deference to legend, but because the Mets stood for everything and everyone. Winning in the finest of fashion on occasion, but way more often losing, but just as often going down in defeat while trying their damndest, as Johan did yesterday and Endy once again did in defeat in the early innings of this game. (Note to Omar: do you think maybe we could've made up a game on the Brewers SOMEWHERE in there when you were insisting on playing "more experienced outfielders" over his enthusiasm? Yeah. Me, too.)
The only other ballpark I witnessed the "last game" at was Rochester's old stadium, a dozen Augusts ago. It was a touching and dignified ceremony, yet it had some emptiness to it, since the Wings had made the IL playoffs that year and we all knew there were at least a couple of games still to be played there. In its own way, having today bring closure- to the season and the ballpark at the same time- seemed right for this team, especially this year's version. They did not collapse as their '07 cousins did- not over the past 17 games, and certainly not today. They lost by inches rather than by miles this time, even though history will record far more similarity.
We may be closing Robert Moses's Pandora's Box for good, but I Gotta Believe that we're not going to be bulldozing the hope along with it once we pave it all over.