The Seventh Game

In October 1973, I was 11 years old, and in love with my New York Mets.  That season, they snuck into the playoffs, squeezed past the mighty Big Red Machine from Cincinnati in the NL Championship, and held a 3 games to 2 lead over the defending World Series Champion Oakland Athletics.  The series returned to Oakland for the final 2 contests, and the A’s MVP slugger, Reggie Jackson, was guaranteeing victory.  I knew he was wrong, and that my Mets were destined to win their 2^nd world championship in 4 years.  “Ya Gotta Believe” was the rallying cry, and I did.

We lost.  Oakland won the next 2 games, and the world title was theirs.

37 years later, and I still carry the bitterness of that loss.  I replay and lament all the crucial details.  Why wasn’t Bud Harrelson called safe at home in extra innings when Gene Tenace CLEARLY missed the tag?  Why couldn’t the weather have been overcast so Willie Mays wouldn’t have lost those fly balls in the late afternoon California sunshine?  Sometimes I wonder what is more pathetic – that the Mets choked, or that I still care?

Professional sports is a touchstone for the days of my youth, and I know that for many men of my generation, the sports team loyalties and the seminal sporting events of our formative years shape us in ways that are sometimes hard to see, but are nonetheless real.  The scars from the defeat of the teams that became one with our identities are still there, still healing with time as the only balm.  I heard a sports commentator once say that everything he knows about sports he learned between the ages of 10 and 14, after the passion for cartoons ended, and before the passion for girls began.  I guess that’s true.  Sports is life when you are a young boy.

Last night, I watched my 11-year-old son invest himself in every moment of the Washington Capitals 2-1 loss to the 8^th seeded Montreal Canadiens in Game 7 of their first round playoff series.  I witnessed the fresh wound to his innocence, as his team couldn’t come through for him.  As I sat there, I felt the haunting memory of Tom Seaver failing to throw the no-hitter that I desperately prayed for, as my little man saw his hero, Alex Ovechkin, fail to score the hat trick he needed to carry the day.  Thomas and I can share this moment together, 37 years from now, regardless of what happens in the intervening years.  The memory will be bitter, but we’ll share it and the burden will be lighter.

We’ll always have Game 7.