I Want a Divorce….From the NY Mets!

(Part I)

I can still clearly remember the moment for some reason. It was October of 1967. The World Series that year featured the Bob Gibson led St.Louis Cardinals against the Boston Red Sox who’s leader was none other than Carl Yastrzemski. Yaz, as he was known. I remember watching on my black and white TV, the only TV in the home, this game called baseball. It was a weekday afternoon as there was no such thing as night games during the World Series back then. Yastrzemski had just hit a homerun and the announcers were singing his praise how he was keeping the Red Sox hopes alive. Something just struck me from watching that game that afternoon. It was the embryonic stages of what was to become a very long complicated romance with the game of baseball.

A little background on the Cimino family and baseball. Both my parents were long standing Brooklyn Dodger fans. Let me correct that a bit. My Dad followed the Dodgers and rooted for them. My mother on the other hand was what is known as a fanatic. She bled Dodger Blue as they used to say. Lived, cried and died with some of their painful losses to the hated crosstown rival New York Yankees. She suffered through being on the short end of the “shot heard ’round the world” as Bobby Thompson took her beloved Ralph Branca deep to end “Dem Bums” chance of getting into the 1951 World Series. How do I know all of this? Keep reading…..(also be sure to check out my Mom with her published article about her love of the game of baseball at the end of the blog)

After watching the 1967 World Series, which the Red Sox lost in seven games, I was hooked on the sport. I loved this guy they called Yaz and wanted to be a Red Sox fan. Funny even at that young age I was already more intrigued with the losing team than the winners. I’ll save those thoughts and what I think it says about ones personality for another blog.

A couple of weeks after the World Series I was with my mom in a small local grocery store in Ozone Park, Queens, called Circle “S”. As life would take me on its journey, I had my first paying job there about 10 years later. We were in the bread aisle and I saw this loaf of bread wrapped in white paper with the letters YAZ going across the side. Yaz!!!! That’s Carl Yastrzemski bread! “Mom, come on, you have to buy me this bread!” She looked at me and asked what I was talking about.

She really didn’t notice I was watching the World Series game a couple of weeks back. The moving of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles was just too painful for her to follow baseball any longer. It truly ripped her heart out. I won’t print here the things she would often say later in describing Walter O’Malley the man who made the decision to move her beloved Dodgers three thousand miles away.

To put it in perspective, I still have newspaper clippings she saved of the Brooklyn Dodgers, particularly from the late 40s into the 50s. Some of the pictures of her favorite players still have her lipstick print on them. I still get emotional just typing that sentence as I now am in possession of all these beautiful baseball memories of my mom. I remember repeatedly reading every article she kept, as well as the box scores. I can still smell the old newspaper scent. Seeing pictures of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella alongside Duke Snider, Gil Hodges and Peewee Reese. What an amazing team of Hall of Famers spontaneously playing together on one team. Even though they only beat the Yankees that one year, 1955 as the Brooklyn Dodgers, I was always a little jealous later in life that she got to see all of these great ball players.

Moving on with the story, needless to say Mom was not going to have her son be a Yankee fan or for that matter a fan of any team in the American League. So the only option at the time was the hapless and often circuslike New York Metropolitans. Born the year after me, let’s just say calling them a major league team those first few years was being quite generous.

I went to my first baseball game the following summer. I believe it was July of 1968. Interestingly enough it was the Mets vs LA Dodgers. My Aunt Annie at the time worked for a company that had these amazing box seats behind the Mets dugout. In fact I think they were just a couple of rows behind Mets Chairman at the time, M. Donald Grant, who later was nearly crucified for trading away the Mets franchise, Tom Seaver, as he was making $200,000 a season and wanted more. I laugh just thinking about that now. I digress.

I remember entering Shea Stadium and as you walked around behind the seating you could not see the field. Not until you were going into the opening that seemed like this magical tunnel transporting you to your seats. That first glimpse of the grass. Greener than any green I had seen or could imagine. All the colors were bursting and crisp and seeing the players on the field so close was surreal to me.

My Uncle Johnny, the other half of my favorite Aunt/Uncle combo(I know you’re not suppose to have favorites), greased the palm of some security guard and I managed to get a baseball off the batting practice field. I then got the autographs of a young rising star lefty pitcher, Jerry Koosman, also catcher Jerry Grote and another pitcher Dick Selma. I wasn’t able to get the autograph of my favorite Met, shortstop Bud Harrelson, but I did many years later. Needless to say I was over the moon. If this is what going to Met games was all about, then sign me up.

Lets just say the games I went to after this were mainly on give-away days, such as helmet day or bat day. The seats were generally nosebleed sections and you could not read the players names on their uniforms. Who cared? I was at a baseball game rooting for my sorry team, the New York Mets. I can remember suffering through a doubleheader loss to the Philadelphia Phillies where I think we were outscored 25-3 over both games. Some Phillies fan sitting behind us kept heckling me, a 7 year old, through both games. Finally the guys wife told him to shut up and stop acting like a jerk. Now that was funny!

I realize to complete this story and my reasoning for wanting a divorce from the New York Mets, this is going to take a couple of sessions at least. So I will end this part one on the miracle and joy I received after being a fan for just two seasons. The Amazin’s of 1969 and the miracle World Championship.

More on that and the highs and lows of my Met fan life when we meet again.

Thanks for getting this far. Sunshine Always!