Forty-One Years Ago

Forty-one years ago today, October 10, 1973, the New York Mets defeated Cincinnati's "Big Red Machine" in the National League playoffs at Shea Stadium. My beloved Mets were the underdogs to put it mildly—and the team that sent Pete Rose and company home for the winter. What I wouldn’t give to relive that day in, of course, my eleven-year-old body taking directives from my eleven-year-old psyche. The passion of youth made that day oh-so-special with my boyhood idol, Tom Seaver, on the mound and getting the win, and “Ya Gotta Believe” Tug McGraw coming in the ninth inning to douse the fire and record the save.

Sitting in the living room and watching the game on my family’s sole black-and-white TV, I won’t soon forget legendary Mets’ announcer Lindsey Nelson’s call of the game’s final out, and how he animatedly repeated three times: “The New York Mets have won the pennant…The New York Mets have won the pennant…The New York Mets have won the pennant.” He then described the “wild scene at Shea Stadium” as fans stormed onto the field in what was an era—to say the least—of lax crowd control. The wild bunch ripped the field to shreds and frightened Mets’ and Reds’ players alike, who hurried as fast as they could off the field. Fortunately, stadium groundskeepers had a full week to get it back in shape for the World Series.

With the convoluted and uber-expensive television rights that define today’s professional sports, it’s worth noting that the playoff games were carried in New York by the Mets’ local station, WOR-TV, Channel 9, as well as the network, NBC. Such a generous arrangement would be unthinkable in this day and age. I was thus able to listen to Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy, and Ralph Kiner do the play-by-play for the entire series. The Mets televised a lot of games on free TV back then. Lindsey, Bob, and Ralph became family. It was right and proper then that I got to hear Lindsey Nelson—family—put the icing on the cake of an improbable pennant in an October to remember. Baseball like it was once upon a time...and life like it really ought to be.