Shea Quest '08: "Welcome Home Tom"

Shea Stadium Memory Countdown No. 4: April 5, 1983. Mets 2, Phillies 0

Opening Day of 1983 was the best game I almost saw.

I suppose I did get to watch part of it, the part of the field you can see from the train station that used to be just beyond rightfield.

But we could see the mound, and that’s all that mattered that afternoon. I needed visual confirmation that Tom Seaver was back where belonged and the world once again was turning on its proper axis.

My friends at Nassau Community College were well aware of my devotion to the Mets and to Seaver — it would be impossible for them to not be. We were a close group, all of us on the staff of the campus newspaper, and piled into the car to head to Shea to celebrate my birthday, which was two days prior.

Get tickets in advance? We were college kids! We didn’t plan things in advance. And besides, it’s not like the Mets attracted crowds. We even parked for free in our secret spots in Flushing Meadows Park. When you come from the park, you walk across a long, boardwalk-like bridge over the train tracks, and descend through the train stop.

We walked up to the ticket window and were stopped in our tracks by a hand-made sign reading, "SOLD OUT."

The Mets? Sold out? Are you kidding me?

I remember we slowly circled the stadium two or three times in a daze. I don’t know what we expected to find. But after all that driving and walking we needed to do something. And it’s not like we could go to some sports bar across the street to watch the game.

I guess I figured that somehow, some way we were going to get into that stadium. Tom Seaver was back, and we weren’t going to get to see it? Unthinkable.

Reality set in and we headed back, climbing the steps to go back across the bridge.

It was then we discovered that we could see a decent chunk of the field through the gap between the scoreboard and the right field stands.

My friends, none who whom were as fanatical as I was, knew how important it was for me to see Seaver, and humored my by sticking it out for a while.

From our vantage point, we could hear the crowd, and the introduction, "Warming up in the bullpen, No. 41...." with everything else famously drowned out by the cheers.

Eventually — and distantly — we could see Tom take the mound.

We close enough to see that there were new racing stripes on the uniforms. And even from that far away, Seaver’s’ motion was unmistakable. It didn’t make up for June 15, 1977, because nothing will. But that sight was special.

The game itself was probably the high point of the season for the Mets, the last year in the cellar before Davey and Doc restored respectability.

It was the final time Seaver and Steve Carlton would duel on Opening Day. And the Phillies — the eventual National League champs — boasted four Hall-of-Famers in their lineup, plus Pete Rose, who, well, you know. The others were Carlton, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez.

Seaver and Carlton matched zeros through the sixth, when Tom was lifted for pinch-hitter Wally Backman. Seaver had given up just three hits, replaced by Doug Sisk who was a couple years away from being renamed Doug "Bleeping" Sisk.

But in the seventh, Dave Kingman — also returning from exile — lead off with a single, followed by George Foster. Then Mike Howard, probably the least-heralded Mets Opening Day right-fielder since the 1960s, drove in the first — and winning — run. Foster scored a second run on a sac fly from Brian Giles, and that was enough for Sisk to close the door and earn the win.

Howard’s hit was the 12th and final of his career — he never played in the big leagues again.

Tom’s Opening Day was his 14th, tying him with Walter Johnson for the record. And as we know, it was his last with the Mets.

As we know, a front office goof allowed the White Sox to claim him — and the Nassau Community College voiced its displeasure on the editorial page.

At least the White Sox allowed him to break the record in 1985 and extend it by one in 1986, Seaver’s last year. The only years he didn’t take the ball on the first game of the year was 1967 — his rookie year — and 1984, when the Sox let Cy Young Award-winner LaMarr Hoyt do the honors.

We also learned why we couldn’t get a ticket: The attendance was 46,687, or almost three-quarters of the total attendance for the previous five opening home games combined.

So among the most important lessons I learned in college was to buy tickets in advance for games I really, really want to attend.

Bat-chuckers, moles and knowing the enemy

Moles are the Yankees of suburban lawn pests.

My community college newspaper adviser once suggested that I had a problem recognizing gray areas.

He said I quickly decided that someone was either good or bad. And once a person was deemed one or the other I was either fiercely loyal or an enemy until death.

He was correct. And he was quickly dispatched to the “bad” side of the ledger, where he remains until death.

Truth be told, it’s important to identify the enemy and move on. And this summer there are two.

1) Moles

No matter what you’ve heard, I’m not one of those suburban lawn maniacs who obsess about the quality of their grass.

I like to keep it tidy and trimmed to be a good neighbor, but I’m not out there every day dumping expensive chemicals and manicuring the spots around the flowerbeds.

And I tend not to care about what’s living under the lawn as long as it doesn’t upset what’s on top.

But for each of the last three days I’ve pulled out of the driveway and discovered massive dirt piles, evidence of the most vile lawn vandals there are – moles.

We have some small mole battles every year. I caught one alive several years ago and set him free on the soccer field next door. At least I assume he landed safely.

This year the buggers seem to have declared war. And the one in the front yard seems intent on destruction.

It is SO on!

I consulted a co-worker who prides himself on mole slaying. He recommends two types of traps. The first one is called a “strangler” where Lawnwrecker T. Mole climbs on through then hits a paddle that releases spring-loaded device that squeezes him toward the bright lights.

The other is more gruesome, with the paddle releasing spikes of death from above, leaving little time for his miserable life to flash before his eyes.

The thing looks like one of the elaborate machines used by the celebrity villains on the Batman television show.


You know, the ones where they’d knock out the Dynamic Duo, place them in the device then leave before seeing if the thing actually worked. Except that they’d never remove the utility belts with the convenient Bat-tools that allowed the Caped Crusaders to wiggle free – every week.

Note to celebrity villains: Use a gun.

I tried the strangler for the couple years and the only things that got caught were my fingers and one hapless vole, sort of a skinnier, less destructive cousin of a mole.

Note to voles: Don’t crawl into traps set for other animals.

As for the other trap, I figured if I had that much trouble setting up the strangler, anything with spikes of death would only be more difficult and too embarrassing to explain at the inevitable visit to the convenience clinic for stitches.

And don’t think every mole in the yard would not be laughing his furry ass off as I get that tetanus shot.

So this year I’ve opted for some less mechanical methods, poking holes in their trails and inserting poison pellets that are supposed to be as irresistible as Ring Dings. We’ll see.

2) Roger Clemens

OK, Bat-Chucker rolled over to the “bad” list around the time he forced the Blue Jays to trade him to the Yankees so he could pocket an elusive championship ring.

His subsequent beaning and near bat-pelting of Mike Piazza pretty much bought him legendary status on the all-time punk list.

But I must admit that I softened my stance on Clemens over the past several seasons.

I was surprised that he turned his back on the vile Yanks to come out of retirement to play for the hometown Astros.

I bought into the whole story that he wanted to play close to home to spend time with his family, and loved the whole yarn about joyfully playing in the same organization as his son.

And it was nice when he led the team to its only World Series appearance.

I dismissed all the talk this spring about whether he would return to the Astros or play for the Red Sox or Yankees. The whole point about coming out of retirement was to be near home, and the Bronx is pretty far from Houston according to most maps.

There is no forgiving Clemens for trying to impale Piazza, even if his post-game excuse – “I thought it was the ball” – was good for a chuckle.

But maybe, just maybe, there is good in him after all. Maybe the world is a little more complicated than my black-and-white vision allows.

Perhaps the college adviser was correct, and that there is a gray area where a person can exist with both flaws and strengths, and that we can tolerate the bad while hoping the good can rise to the top.

But I was watching SportsCenter Sunday night when they showed the Yankees stopping their game in the seventh inning so Clemens could announce his return from Steinbrenner’s private box.

So the bat-chucking bastard wants to remain home near his family unless the Evil Empire wants to lay out a check or $20 million to bail out their rotation of the living dead for two-thirds of a season.

There is no gray area! He is bad!

He’s probably sharpening broken bats as we speak so he can hurl them at Jose Reyes during the inter-league games next month.

All the same, Clemens being exposed for the punk we knew he was is somewhat comforting. I was right all along.

And there will be no apology sent to former college advisers 20 years later.

Next time, I'm walking

Don't the Yankees ever take cabs? What, does Steinbrenner haul them around in those stretch Hummer limos?

Needless to say, I’m distressed about our stud set-up man, Duaner "Filthy" Sanchez getting injured while riding in a Miami taxi early Monday morning.

We’ll know later this week whether Filthy is out for the season or whether he’ll mend a separated shoulder through sometime next month.

Meanwhile, excuse me if I take the train or the bus. I’ve always been somewhat leery of riding around in cabs. Oh, I’m sure the vast, vast majority of taxi drivers who are not Yankees fans are fine, upstanding people who just drive a little crazier than the rest of us.

But my experiences with cabbies, both real and fictional, has just not been good. Here’s a list of six very dangerous cab drivers.

Harry Chapin in the song "Taxi"

Harry was a good Long Islander, but a lot of his songs were kind of depressing with cradled cats and neglectful fathers and all. And the character in "Taxi" is typical Chapin. Remember?

"But we'd both gotten what we'd asked for,
Such a long, long time ago.
You see, she was gonna be an actress
And I was gonna learn to fly.
She took off to find the footlights,
And I took off for the sky.
And here, she's acting happy,
Inside her handsome home.
And me, I'm flying in my taxi,
Taking tips, and getting stoned,
I go flying so high, when I'm stoned."

Taxis can be scary enough with the thought of some guy trying to cruise through the midtown rush higher than a VW microbus full of Dead Heads making a post-concert pit stop at the Stop ‘n’ Rob to stock up on bagged burritos and rolling hot dogs to get through the munchies.

How about a song with a well-adjusted cab driver, who, while not in the occupation of his choice, safely takes people to their destination with nothing stronger in his system than Diet Coke? Or if he wants to be really sassy, he can try that new Pepsi Jazz stuff I saw in Meijer this week.

The Ghost of Christmas Past from "Scrooged."

In one of my all-time favorite Christmas flicks, David Johansen plays the ghost who takes Bill Murray back in time to see the Christmases of his past. He’s a taxi driver who crashes around in a smoky cab with Christmas decorations. And he gets to say "Go back to Joisey, ya bum!" which is just a classic line -- one of many in that film.

It’s all well and good, and Johansen, in pre-Buster Pointexder mode, is pretty funny. Except that I can’t knock free from my mind the photos of Johansen in his days as lead singer in the New York Dolls, a glam band that appeared on stage in drag. Fishnets, lipstick and a 5 o'clock shadow is just not a pretty sight.

Robert DeNiro in "Taxi Driver"

I confess that I’ve never seen the movie. My viewing habits are limited to films that are funny, happy, involve baseball or presidents. So I have no idea why Robert DeNiro is looking into the mirror saying "You lookin’ at me?" but the whole thing gives me the creeps. Even DeNiro's baseball movie, "Bang the Drum Slowly," was depressing, though it was filmed at Shea.

Lance, the New York cabbie

A group of us from the Nassau Community College newspaper were attending a college journalism conference in Manhattan back in 1983 and decided to be wild and crazy and go to Mcsorley’s, a legendary ale house that dates all the way back to 1854 and looks it. There were turkey wishbones hanging on light fixtures above the bar that had, without exaggeration, an inch of dust on them that looked like it could topple into someone's beer at any second.

The place was packed. We grabbed a table and one of us went to the bar to get a round. When he came back, the waitress was ticked because the rules were that if you were at a table, you had to order from her. Except that another one of us was at the bar getting the rest of the round when this conversation was going on.

When the bartender saw the beer headed back to the table, we were told "Drink up and get out of here."

We were pissed at first, and then it dawned on us that we just got tossed from the legendary Mcsorley’s — without having to get into a fight or anything.

We climbed in a cab and were excited about our adventure. One of the guys in our group was named Lance.

As we were talking, the cabbie turned around, furrowed his brow and said "How do you people know my name?"

"Ahh, we don’t."

"Well, some one keeps saying, ‘Lance, Lance.’"

Keep in mind, we were a bunch of suburban kids who didn’t have a lot of experience in cabs, much less late-night encounters with funny looking and slightly crazed cab drivers in the Village.

"His name is Lance," I said, pointing to my friend.

"Oh, OK. Me too." he said, and kept driving.

Next time, we took the train, where nobody says anything to anybody. Just seemed safer.

Rev. Jim in "Taxi"

"Taxi" started out as a nice little show, then Christopher Lloyd and Andy Kaufman got stranger and stranger. Before long, Judd Hirsch, Tony Danza and Marilu Henner had nothing to do except stand around and react to what the two nut cases did and watch their yellow Checkers drive up the ramp and over the shark.

Guy driving Tom Glavine in 2004.

Glavine hasn’t been able to eat corn on the cob since Aug. 11, 2004. Tom was not enjoying his experience as a Met at that point, despite a recent trip to the All-Star Game. But after a trip from Houston he decided to take a cab from LaGuardia to Shea, and the taxi collided into an SUV on the overpass of the Grand Central Parkway as he left the airport grounds. Glavine lost two teeth in the crash and also got stitches for a cut lower lip.

Meanwhile, we must encourage all Mets to avoid taxis and ride the team bus, hopefully the kind with DVD players with nice movies like "Field of Dreams" and not "Taxi Driver."

It's a Wonderful Life -- And the People Who Made it That Way

It’s a December ritual to watch Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed in "It’s a Wonderful Life."

My pastor this week told us how he can’t keep from being emotional when the angel saves George Bailey from jumping in the river and shows him what Bedford Falls would be like had he never been born.

I get emotional because I think there are indeed angels.

Maybe not like Clarence in the movie, looking to earn his wings. But I think there are people who come into your life for a short time and change it forever.

And looking back, you can’t imagine what your life would have been like had that person not been there at that time.

Let me tell you about one person in my life, Robert Block, a history professor at Nassau Community College.

In 1983, I was the editor of the college paper. I practically lived at the college, which was strange considering it doesn’t have dorms.

Nearly all college newspaper editors are rebels. I was different because instead of rebelling against the administration, I rebelled against our faculty adviser (who was incredulous that I wouldn’t attack the college president).

So when it came time to pick a school to transfer to for my junior year, the adviser was not going to be any help. And, in fairness to him, I would have rejected anything he suggested.

So I was tentatively planning to transfer to a university on Long Island. It’s an excellent school, but it doesn’t have a national reputation for journalism.

Block’s European History class was one that I really enjoyed, and one day he asked me to follow him back to his office a couple doors down the hall.

"What are your plans for next year?" he asked. I told him the university I was thinking about.

"No," he firmly said. "If you’re serious about journalism, there is only one place you want to be looking at. University of Missouri."

I thought he might be kidding, but he wasn’t a joking around kind of guy.

New Yorkers will back me up on this. We have kind of a Big Apple-centric look at the world. There are many states — probably about 47 of them — that are just not on our radar. Heck, we don’t always acknowledge that New Jersey exists, even though we can actually see it sitting there across the Hudson River. In my world, other states were there so the Mets had places to play road games.

New York, and some of the states we kind of acknowledge existing.

I told him that I didn’t think my parents would go for the idea. Heck, I thought it was crazy. New York is full of excellent colleges. I’m not sure anyone in the extended family had left the state for college, much less gone a half-continent away.

But he told me to research the school, and offered — all but insisted — to talk to my parents.

Flash forward 20 years, and I can see Professor Block knew what he was talking about.

I attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism, got my bachelor’s degree and it opened doors for an internship at a good-sized paper that hired me full-time after I graduated. Met my future wife at Mizzou, too. And I’m still close to my roommate, a role model and friend after all these years.

Being a reporter has allowed me to meet people from presidents and billionaires to the homeless and to experience things that I will carry with me forever. Through stories I like to think that we’ve been able to shape some decisions that have helped some small parts of the world or even just brought a smile to a reader’s face.

At the end of one hectic and eventful day last year, I was chatting with an editor and said, "Sometimes I just have to pause and say we get to do some really cool things. For all the griping we do, this really is a fun job."

"It’s a life lived," he responded. "We see things and do things that other people just don’t get to see and do." And, of course, our job is to be their eyes and ears and share those experiences with them.

I’ll never know how things would have turned out had I attended the other school. Perhaps things would have been better.

But I do know that I am plenty happy with the way things have played out. I’ve been blessed. And I can trace it back to a professor who, for reasons I can’t explain, one day took an interest in me.

I tracked him down this year to let him know how things turned out and to say "Thank you."

And I even learned that other states do in fact exist, and some of them are kind of nice.

In other words...

Greg Prince's "Faith and Fear in Flushing" is always a great read. But he's topped himself with his latest post, a reimagining of the song "These are a Few of My Favorite Things" from a Mets perspective. Give yourself a holiday treat and read it here.

"What So Proudly We Hail"

Rosa Parks speaking at Nassau Community College in 1984.

Sometimes I think we've come so far since Rosa Parks refused to budge from her seat on that bus nearly 50 years ago. Other times I think we've got so far to go.

The civil rights pioneer, as I'm sure you are well aware, was buried here in Michigan today.

I had the chance to see Mrs. Parks up close when she came to Nassau Community College in 1984. I was the editor of the campus paper at the time, which allowed me to slip into the event. I'm a history junkie and jumped at the chance to sneak a peek at someone so important.

I was impressed by the complete and total reverence she commanded, especially from the black students who sponsored the event and hung a banner reading "What so proudly we hail" over her head.

Mrs. Parks looked tiny and frail, and completely uncomfortable with the lavish praise being heaped upon her. We tend to think of heroes as big and strapping, drawn to the cheers and attention. Think of the athletes and politicians who are ready to grab the mantle or think they are entitled to it. Mrs. Parks proved that doesn't have to be the case.

I remember that she spoke, but I didn't recall anything that she said that day. She wasn't a particularly polished public speaker.

But that's OK, because we all know that her actions on that Montgomery bus in 1955 spoke louder than any words.

We've come so far that it is hard for me to imagine a world where people are so openly discriminated against. Separate drinking fountains because of someone's color? Are you kidding me?

My baseball-centric thinking often leads me to believe everything was swell once Jackie Robinson stepped in to the field in 1947. But Mrs. Parks' arrest came nearly a decade later, showing that things had not changed that much.

And perhaps its naive to think that things are as good today as I like to hope. Every once in a while something happens that reminds us how much further we have to go.
The infamous Number 7 train to Shea.

You knew this would get back to baseball. I remember the rant from former Braves pitcher John Rocker in Sports Illustrated in 1999.

Rocker derided a trip on the No. 7 train to Shea, saying he might be forced to sit next to assorted types of folks he finds objectionable.

Then he added: "The biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners. I'm not a very big fan of foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?"

Now, I feel no sympathy for any member of the Braves, much less a guy like Rocker. New York is certainly the place he describes -- and that is one its biggest strengths. We celebrate its diversity. I don't think they plunked the United Nations in the city because it has good access to a couple airports. The tragedy is that Rocker didn't understand that, and the loss is his.

I guess it is progress that instead of people telling people Rocker he was right, he was practically run out of the game. I'm not for that, either. You treat stupidity with education, not banishment.

Of course, I think that we New Yorkers are so used to diversity that we forget it is different in other places. It got me in trouble in Missouri. I was assigned to cover Homecoming -- hey, you can't be on the front page every day -- and interviewed the Homecoming king and queen, both of whom were black. I mentioned every thing about them except their race because, I thought, BFD.

Well, I got hauled into the editor's office. I was told that Missouri was a still kind of a Southern state, and in fact it was a big deal that two black students could be elected Homecoming king and queen. I thought it would be an insult to mention their race, they were insulted that I didn't. I was reminded that not every place is like New York. A lot of places have even further to go.

This week I went up in the attic and dug out the clipping from Mrs. Parks' day at Nassau.

I found this quote: "As I stand here today, I hope that as we move into the future, we shall find the freedom to accept one another. Any person of good can bring about positive change."

Amen.