Fifty-Six Years of Summer

(Originally published on 8/3/19)

Yesterday was the fortieth anniversary of Thurman Munson’s death. I wasn’t a Yankee fan—quite the opposite as a matter of fact—but it was nevertheless a real shocker and very sad day. I remember where I was—in Lavallette, New Jersey on a family vacation—when I first heard the news. My father—a Yankee fan extraordinaire from way back—was listening to a game on the radio. Sipping from a can of Schaefer Beer, he was stunned and said not a word. Munson was a hard-nosed baseball player from the old school—you don’t see his likes anymore. From my youthful perspective, baseball in the 1970s was the game’s heyday. It seemed that the summers were defined by baseball—not just the professional game, but the amateur kind as well that so many of us played in various incarnations and in various places.

Presently, I’m in the midst of a 1969 “Miracle Mets” fiftieth anniversary read-a-thon. Perfectly timed for a memoir onslaught, I’ve finished retrospectives by Art Shamsky and Ron Swoboda. Right now, I’m plowing through one by utility player Rod Gaspar, whose baseball career didn’t amount to much, but whose name will be forever linked with the Amazing Mets and history itself. I’ve got one more book in the bullpen, too: They Said It Couldn’t Be Done by sportswriter Wayne Coffey. Its subtitle: “The ’69 Mets, New York City, and the Most Astounding Season in Baseball History.”

Now, I was several weeks shy of my seventh birthday when the Mets realized that miracle in full on October 16, 1969. Soon after, I officially broke from family tradition—and most of my Bronx neighbor baseball fans—by declaring allegiance to the Mets. I don't actually remember choosing sides like I did, but I do know that in the spring of 1970 I was watching Mets' games on the family's black-and-white television set and listening to games on a radio, a gift from my godmother for my "First Holy Communion." I wanted it solely to listen to Mets' games, which totally Metsmerized me. And most of the players from the 1969 team were on that team!

Oddly enough, I do recall being in Bangor, Pennsylvania—the home of my maternal grandparents—at some point during the 1969 World Series. (That's First Street in Bangor, circa 1985, in the picture above.) We were visiting friends of my mother and a game was on television. I subsequently learned that my father lost a forty-dollar bet on the series. And that was a lot of money back then and a big deal for a family scrimping by! Of course, he bet against the Mets. My father hated the Mets with a passion just because they were the cross-town rival Mets and I would—in due time—come to hate the Yankees with equal disdain because they were the cross-town rival Yankees. And I think for other reasons, but that's another story.

As previously noted, baseball was so ingrained in our lives during those summers. On so many levels, it shaped our days and nights. It forged relationships and repeatedly tested one's fidelity. At the tenth anniversary of the 1969 World Champion Mets, the 1979 team was in last place and—when all was said and done—attendance at Shea Stadium plummeted by two million. That’s a rather precipitous fall in a very short period of time. But I remained loyal to the losers because I believed that being a fan was akin to being in a marriage—in good times and in bad—and that better days were on the horizon.

I’ve now lived through fifty-six summers. So much has changed, which is not unexpected. The game of baseball is a shadow of its former self—albeit an expensive, showy one with five-inning starting pitchers and home run hitters, who strikeout over two hundred times, making tens of millions of dollars. The cork in baseballs has been replaced by a super ball. Like countless players of his time, Rod Gaspar sampled a taste of the big leagues but was out of the game in a few years. In those days, the window of opportunity was a fleeting one for those fighting for the finite jobs. And, as things turned out, most of those guys had to find real jobs in the real world after their baseball careers.

And so goes another summer. Some of my earliest memories of this season are of fun and games —from wiffle ball to stickball to box baseball—on the concrete and asphalt of our home turf. When I was very young, a “victory garden” across the street supplied me with a portal into a past that—I didn’t realize then—would soon only be a memory. When the Mets won the World Series in 1969, the garden endured, but its days were numbered. There were a whole lot of insects around my part of the Bronx back then—lots of bees, butterflies, and ladybugs. Fifty summers later and their numbers—for a whole host of reasons—are drastically diminished.

During my first couple of summers on both Planet Earth and in the Bronx, John F. Kennedy was president. He promised that America would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In the summer of 1969—during that miraculous baseball season—Apollo 11 landed on the surface of the moon. My mother hung a homemade paper banner outside that read “Congratulations to Neil, Buzz, and Mike,” the astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins. This woman who always put up such things on special occasions so fascinated the local rabbi’s wife. I’m not certain what else Mrs. Turk was referring to, but she was definitely a fan. Many summers have passed and miraculous things don't happen anymore. Not that anyone would notice anyway as they blankly stare into their devices, thumbing and thumbing and thumbing while the summers pass them by.

(Photographs from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)