A Memorable Baseball Conversation With My Dad
New York Mets Firsts is probably the most challenging book I have written, for various and often unforeseen reasons. Getting into a groove to write has always been a thing for me. Late nights, on the beach, at a desk, in hotel rooms, all successful options of the past that never quite felt right this time. However, I was inspired many times to make this book the best I have written, with the most inspirational moment coming on July 26, 2022.
My dad and I made the drive we had made so many times before— from my house to Citi Field to watch a Mets game. Before we made that drive, we had made the almost identical drive from my house to Shea Stadium many times. Thanks to COVID, this was the first time we were heading to a game together since the summer of 2019.
My life as a Mets fan has been a rollercoaster, just as it has been for many other fans who grew up in the 1970s. The Mets were terrible, until they started to get good in the mid-1980s, culminating with a World Series title in 1986, followed by two years of what could have been, followed by 10 or so lost years. By 1999, they had gotten good again, reaching the second World Series I can remember them in in 2000. Good years popped in and out of bad years, collapses, surprises, and more. There was 2006 and 2015 and 2016. Finally, there was 2022 when everything seemed possible.
So on that very warm July evening we were driving to Citi Field to see the first-place Mets take on the first-place New York Yankees. The two teams had not been in first place so late in the season in more than 30 years. We were ready to watch some baseball.
In the car, we always talk about a million different things, my kids— his grandchildren—my job, life in general, and, of course, the Mets. It was right around the time I was getting off of the Long Island Expressway and onto the Grand Central Parkway that I learned I had been mislead- ing people my entire life. I say misleading because I was sure I had the correct information; it was not a case of lying or making up a story. It was simply stating a fact. I am not sure how often it had come up over the course of my life, but it had been a significant amount of times. Why was I a Mets fan? My answer always came quickly and clearly and rarely wavered from the verbatim, “when you are growing up you either you follow the team your dad roots for, or you root against the team your dad roots for. Me and my dad have always been close, so I am a Mets fan like he has always been.”
There didn’t seem to be anything controversial about that—not on its face, not when you dig in. My dad and I have always loved the Mets and hated the Yankees. It was as simple as saying, I love Diet Coke and hate Diet Pepsi. But I was incorrect.
My dad had grown up as a fan of the New York Baseball Giants. His man was Willie Mays, who broke into the majors when my dad was nine years old. There was no Willie, Mickey, and the Duke for my dad, there was only “Say Hey” Willie Mays. However, his fandom predates Mays, who was a rookie, in the on-deck circle, when Bobby Thomson hit his shot heard ’round the world. One of my favorite days was driving me and my father to a sports card show in New Jersey so that he could meet Thomson and Ralph Branca, the man who threw the fateful pitch. I didn’t tell him what we were doing until we got there. That was a fun day.
However, the Giants abandoned New York City, and my dad, when they moved to San Francisco following the 1958 season. My dad was 16, disillusioned, and without a baseball team. He has told me that the first couple of years the Giants were in San Francisco he continued to root for them. I think I would have too. So when the Mets were founded in 1962, Dad was still a Giants fan, understandably.
In 1967, he married my mom, went to serve in Vietnam, and returned home when his mother passed away in 1969. The Mets were not the highest of his priorities. I came along in 1970, and started to understand what baseball was about six years later. We always had catches, me and my dad, I always collected baseball cards, and from when I was around seven or eight, always remembered going to see the Mets play at Shea Stadium. I have vivid memories when I was a little older, maybe nine or ten, of waking up on a Sunday morning and my dad lying in bed and asking me and my sister if we wanted to go see the Mets. It was not hard to get seats at Shea in 1979 and 1980. I remember seeing Tom Seaver pitch more than once during his return in 1983, watching the team start to improve in 1984, getting really good in 1985, and then legendary in 1986. We went to games together in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when I was in college. I didn’t throw as many remotes at the wall in frustration as I got older. He would always just shake his head. I do remember one game when John Franco blew a save and my dad stood up and exclaimed, “oh, he sucks!” This is from a guy who never cursed at a time when the word sucks qualified. In 1996, I got married. In 2002, my son was born and, in 2008, my daughter made her debut. My Dad and I attended Mets games almost every season. We were passionate fans.
So on this July drive, as we were approaching the ballpark, he said— almost matter of factly—“you know, you’re not a Mets fan because of me, I am a Mets fan because of you.” How can that be, I thought to myself. “I really got into baseball because you loved it so much.” How can that be, I thought to myself again. It turns out, he had drifted away from the sport he once loved and only returned when I took to the sport like a fish to water—not as a player, but as a fan. That was when Dad jumped on for the ride. And it’s been the best ride I have known. Through wins, and losses, and losses, and wins, I will always maintain that I am a Mets fan because my dad is a Mets fan. I am sticking with that. Even if the reverse might be true.