Fan-Natics!

Posted 8/21/12

This time of year brings all the sports fans to a hyper-state over which team to discuss first, because this is the “game on” season of sports. The evening quiet car on the 4:07 out of Hoboken is …

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Fan-Natics!

Posted

This time of year brings all the sports fans to a hyper-state over which team to discuss first, because this is the “game on” season of sports. The evening quiet car on the 4:07 out of Hoboken is anything but that. Alas, the conductors wind up apologizing to those passengers who are hoping for some quiet, asking the noisemakers to please move forward. Unfortunately there will be no peace in any car during these trips home. This week starts the basketball season, hockey got started a few weeks ago, and football season is in full swing. The worst part of all of this is the “Boys of Summer” are playing in the snowflakes of fall here in the Northeast. Double down on all this; the long-suffering Mets fans are ecstatic over their team being in the World Series for the first time in 15 long years.

Sporting events have many a commuter blurry-eyed in the mornings, too. Bad enough we have Sunday and Monday night football; now there are Thursday nights as well. A fan’s senses are simply overwhelmed by all the stats to be discussed in the wee hours of the early morning commute. The non-sports fan cannot escape being surrounded by a myriad of sports-fan gear not localized to the New York Metro area. Seattle fans sit in silence with their gear on, until other fans are drawn like a silent magnet to their side, myself included. Forget the confusion when I root for my other team, the New York Giants; this is greeted with a collection of snarls from others—Jets’ fans especially.

What’s making this fall even more frenzied is the addition of the Mets to the World Series. Growing up in Brooklyn, my dad was a loyal Dodger fan, making frequent trips to Ebbets Field on Flatbush Avenue. All those years of losing to the Yankees were hard enough, but when that traitor, Walter O’Malley, moved the team to LA, he was considered a sell-out by the Brooklyn fans. My uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters would have a lot of explaining to do to Dad, if we started to root for the Yankees—the only ball club left in town. Finally, in 1962, the Mets became one of baseball’s first expansion teams, playing their first two seasons at the Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan. Long the home of the Giants, who had also moved west in 1957, it was just not the same having the Mets playing at the Polo Grounds.

Finally the Mets found a new home at Shea Stadium, in the shadow of the Unisphere of the 1964 World’s Fair. This team was for believers and dreamers; being a Mets fan taught you to be patient and to learn the meaning of being a suffering fan. Finally fans were rewarded in both 1969 and 1986 with Mets’ wins at the World Series. Many other years were heartbreaks as they got just so close, yet the fans, ever faithful, never lost hope.

Flash forward to the fall of 2015: Marty McFly in “Back to the Future” once predicted the Cubs would be in the 2015 World Series, but the Amazings have changed history again. Needless to say there is no sleeping on the commuter trains coming or going as this goes on. These are truly the best of times as a Mets fan and can quickly become the worst of times. Let’s go Mets!

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