(Originally
published on 8/3/19)
Yesterday
was the fortieth anniversary of Thurman Munson’s death. I was not a Yankee
fan—quite the opposite in fact—but it was nevertheless a real shocker and incredibly
sad day. I remember where I was—in Lavallette, New Jersey on a family
vacation—when I first heard the news. My father—a Yankee fan extraordinaire
from the DiMaggio-Berra-Mantle years—was listening to a game on the radio.
Sipping from a can of Schaefer Beer—the one beer to have when you are having
more than one—he was stunned and uttered not a word. Munson was a
hard-nosed baseball player from the old school—you do not see his likes
anymore. From my teenage perspective, baseball in the 1970s was the game’s
heyday. The summers then were defined by baseball—not just the professional
game, but the amateur brand as well that so many of us played in various
incarnations and in various venues.
Presently,
I am plowing through a 1969 “Miracle Mets” fiftieth anniversary read-a-thon.
Perfectly timed for a memoir onslaught, I have finished retrospectives by Art
Shamsky and Ron Swoboda. Right now, I am reading utility player Rod Gaspar’s account.
His baseball career did not amount to much, but the Rod Gaspar name will be
forever linked with the
Amazing Mets and history itself. And I have got
one more book in the bullpen:
They Said It Couldn’t Be Done by
sportswriter Wayne Coffey. Its subtitle: “The ’69 Mets, New York City, and the
Most Astounding Season in Baseball History.”
Now, I was
several weeks shy of my seventh birthday when the Mets achieved that miracle in
full on October 16, 1969. Soon after, I officially broke from family
tradition—and most of my Bronx neighbor baseball fans—by declaring allegiance
to the Mets. I do not actually remember choosing sides as I did, but I do know
that in the spring of 1970, I was watching Mets' games on the family's
black-and-white television set and listening to games on a radio, a gift from
my godmother for my "First Holy Communion." I wanted the radio solely
to listen to Mets' games, which totally mesmerized me.
Oddly
enough, I do recall being in Bangor, Pennsylvania—the home of my maternal
grandparents—at some point during the 1969 World Series. (That is First Street
in Bangor, circa 1985, in the above picture.) We were visiting friends of my mother’s,
and a game was on television. I later learned that my father lost a
forty-dollar bet on the series. That was a lot of money back then and a big
deal for a family scrimping by! Of course, he bet against the Mets. My father loathed
the Mets with passion solely because they were the cross-town rival Mets. I would—in
time—come to despise the Yankees with equal disdain because they were the
cross-town rival Yankees.
Baseball
was ingrained in our lives during those summers. On so many levels, it shaped
our days and nights. It forged relationships and repeatedly tested one's
fidelity. At the tenth anniversary of the 1969 World Champion Mets, the 1979
team was in last place and—when all was said and done—attendance at Shea
Stadium plummeted by two million. Courtesy of miserly, incompetent management,
it was a precipitous fall in a relatively short time. But I remained loyal to
the losers because I believed that being a fan was akin to being in a marriage—in
good times and in bad—and that better days were on the horizon. They were
indeed but it took longer than I would have liked!
I have now
lived through fifty-six summers. So much has changed, which is to be expected.
The game of baseball is a shadow of its former self—albeit an expensive, showy
one with five-inning starting pitchers and home run hitters who strikeout over
two hundred times. They make tens of millions of dollars, nonetheless. Like
countless players of his time, Rod Gaspar sampled a taste of the big leagues
but was out of the game in a few years. Back then, the window of opportunity
was a fleeting one for those fighting for finite jobs. Most of those guys had
to work real jobs in the real world during the off-seasons and after their
baseball careers.
And so
goes another summer. Some of my earliest memories of this season are of fun and
games —from Wiffle ball to stickball to box baseball—on the concrete and
asphalt of my home turf. During my first couple of summers on both Planet Earth
and in the Bronx, John F. Kennedy was president. He promised that America would
land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In the summer of 1969—during
that miraculous baseball season—Apollo 11 landed on the surface of the moon. My
mother hung a homemade paper banner outside that read, “Congratulations to
Neil, Buzz, and Mike,” the astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins. Many
summers have passed since and miraculous things do not happen as often anymore.
Not that anyone would notice anyway as they blankly stare into their devices,
thumbing and thumbing and thumbing while the seasons pass by.
(Photos
from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)
