Oh, What A Summer

It was Fathers' Day, several years ago. My family and I were travelling to RFK STadium here in DC for the baseball game that day between our hometown team and the visiting New York Yankees. For me, it was a delayed dream, a long time in the making, come true. For even though I had grown up in New York, on Long Island, as a Mets fan, what had happened to the American League franchise in our nation's capital 30 years earlier was a crime I long waited to see undone.

I had even gone so far, back in the 80's, on my first trip to Cooperstown, to purchase a Washington Senators sweatshirt, that became a staple of my fall and spring wardrobe. Long after any true grown up should have thrown what was left of that old sweatshirt away, I refused, on principle, to do so, at least until the injustice was undone, and I could buy a shirt for the NEW Washington baseball club.

That chance should have come the preceding July 4th. However, my recovery from quadruple bypass surgery had me lying at home, watching on television as my wife, kids, and a family friend got to attend the game between our new home team and my beloved Mets. So the following Fathers' Day was an even bigger deal for us!

On the Metro on the way to the game, I patiently explained 2 truths that were already clear. First, although our Nationals were, technically, the home team, the likelihood was that we would be outnumbered by Yankee fans. And while my only in person experience of the World Series had been at Yankee Stadium during the 1999 series, and had taught me that not ALL Yankees' fans are loud and obnoxious, the odds were pretty good that there would be at least one unhappy interaction upcoming that day with some rude visitor to our fair city.

The second truth grew from the first. Whatever they heard around them, I explained, we would be role models. I did NOT tell them they could not boo the visiting team. I DID, however, make very clear that there were 3 visiting players who they could not boo, no matter what, because they were just too good. It was a lesson I had learned in my youth at Shea Stadium, when my father, a converted Yankee fan, would go out of his way to take me to games against the Giants, so he could cheer Willie Mays on his return "home," as well as the incomparable Willie McCovey. Those three Yankee players whose ability and performance had earned them this right were Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, and (still at that time before the admissions of steroid involvement) Alex Rodriguez (who, ironically, at that moment, was struggling through a slump that had most Yankee fans booing him!).

That game made it onto the commemorative t-shirts given out at the close of RFK after the next season, for that was the game which ended with a memorable walk off home run by Ryan Zimmerman, a single swing which reduced 25,000 rowdy, obnoxious Yankees' fans to stunned silence.

And it was the first of now 4 capacity crowds I have been a part of at Nationals' games over the years. There was also that last game at RFK, when the game on the field mattered not in the least, we were all there to celebrate history. There was opening day this season -- that embarrassing debacle in which the Lerner's were so desperate for a sellout, that they sold blocs of tickets to Philadelphia bus companies and tour companies who turned it into a Phillies' home game.

And there was that game this summer between the Mets and Nats. Two struggling underachieving franchises -- just another of the many games that make up a season. Yet, the stands were full -- all because of one player -- the phenom pitcher! And, for the first time, the capacity crowd was actually watching the game, and rooting for the home team -- sort of.

They were rooting for the kid -- and they had picked the wrong day. For this was the day of the first hint that all was not right. He struggled with his control in the first inning, left the game early having given up several runs, facing a loss. I had another commitment I had to make, so I was leaving after the 6th inning, no matter what. But with Strasburg's early departure, the bulk of the crowd left with me.

And they, and I, missed the ridiculous ending, as the Mets gave notice that they would not be a serious player the rest of the way, squandering the lead in the 9th inning. It would have been nice to be able to report that the crowd that remained was appropriately raucous in their admiration for the grit of the comeback. But I don't know -- I was on the Metro! With too many other locals for me to be comfortable making the above statement!

And it wasn't long after that day that the Strasburg story turned tragic, and with it, all the excitement was sucked out of the Nationals for the rest of the season. Now we wait, and pray that the comparisons to JR Richard and Mark Fidrych do not turn painfully tragic as well.

It was that kind of summer in sports -- filled with the expected and the unexpected; the joyous and the painful. More reflections to come -- and not just from me.