Triple Play for Opening Day
Hurry up and come on down...
MLB Opening Day appeared on the calendar seemingly out of nowhere this year. Was spring training all of a week long? No matter; here comes the full season whether we’re ready or not.
I grew up a gigantic baseball fan, my childhood bookended by the Mets’ improbable run in 1986 and the Yankees’ complete domination of the sport into the early 2000s. It was a great time to love baseball, especially if you were young and impressionable and had enough time to really dig into the fine details of the careers of men like Turk Wendell and Oliver Perez. I still bring a scorecard to the ballpark every time I go, but it’s difficult to find the time to let baseball take over your late Junes when you’re older.
Plus you pretend to have hope but then you look up the headlines and Justin Verlander is headed for the injured list before he’s even thrown a pitch. Light a candle that it isn’t one of those Mets seasons.
So in honor of this always-wonderful day, here are three great moments in New York sports history to commemorate and to kick us off, starting with…
Derek Jeter Gets Some Help
All due respect to everybody on that ‘96 team, but this wasn’t and continues to still not be a home run. Could they have beat the Orioles without this run? Would the resulting matchup have led to the continued dominance of the Braves and an even more insufferable fanbase in Atlanta? (Did you know they do the Tomahawk Chop every time someone gets on base? It’s pathological.) Perhaps there are some timelines we should never explore.
Mike Piazza’s Home Run
I was back on the college tour the week after 9/11, which seems insane in retrospect. But we just got on with it. I flew down to Davidson University to introduce myself to professors and take interviews, do everything a teenager with their life on fire could. So I watched this game in some little restaurant in North Carolina while eating the best home fries I’d ever had in my life. Things were gonna be different. Certain things wouldn’t change. So many things happen in our lives every single day that trying to make a narrative out of it is often overwhelming. That’s what’s so great about sport. There’s always catharsis one way or the other. Someone always wins. And for a moment everything was exciting. For a moment the Mets were mathematically alive. And I guess I was too.
The Strength to Be There
Speaking of momentary victories! The Mets lost this game on a called third strike, one decent swing of the bat away from the World Series, so thanks for that, Carlos Beltran. But they stayed in it for most of the game on the strength of this insane catch by Endy Chavez. You couldn’t have choreographed this better if you had a month and all the resources in the world. Sometimes miracles happen right in front of you. I spent the entire rest of the game perched like a gargoyle, unable to move from in front of the TV because of the Dave-Barry-esque Visible Concern Rays shooting out of my head. After watching this catch I was sure I could lend my psychic powers to the Mets’ drive for their first World Series title since 1986.
There’s always next year.