A World Series pilgrimage: How I'll remember my maiden voyage to the Fall Classic

My father, Gary, and I up in Section 525 at Citi Field during 

Game 5 of the World Series on Nov. 1, 2015. 

With my hood pulled over my head and chin slumped on my chest, I descended the stairways of Citi Field with thousands of other Mets fans sometime after 12:30 a.m. Monday, while trying to quell the toxic combination of emotions coming to a steady boil in my chest.

The chants of Royals fans echoed from within the ballpark, as that unbearable feeling -- equal parts sadness, disbelief and loss -- flowed to every which corner of my body.

My first World Series game -- a night that started with so much promise and continued in exhilarating fashion for eight innings -- turned into a nightmare scenario. 

A Mets postseason run that at times felt destined to end with a World Series championship and Canyon of Heroes Parade came to a sudden and stunning halt early last Monday when the Royals rallied for two runs in the top of the ninth inning in Game 5 of the Fall Classic, before winning 7-2 in 12 innings. 

My father and I were there for it all, up in section 525 taking in the staggering turn of events in our first-ever live World Series game. We watched as the crowd of 44,000 began to thin out when the Royals seized a commanding lead. Then with the final out, the visiting team poured onto the field to celebrate its first World Series title in 30 years, ending a drought just a year longer than ours. 

On some level, the scene was my greatest fear when I purchased our tickets for a whopping $1,600 nine days earlier. But the transaction itself -- like the Mets' unexpected run deep into October baseball -- wasn't without a hint of serendipity. 

* * * * *

Citi Field shortly before Game 5 of the World 

Series

Several weeks earlier, my parents were on their way home from a weekend in Upstate New York when my dad spotted a license plate with his initials, followed by a sequence of numbers. A frequent lottery player, the self-proclaimed "No. 1 Mets fan" decided to play those same numbers, and sure enough, they were a winner. 

It was a modest payout -- a bit more than $3,000. But when the Mets clinched the National League pennant, my father's windfall became my best chance to convince him to buy world Series tickets with me. 

"Dad, you won that money for a reason," I told him, invoking some higher power or spiritual force that perhaps wanted us to attend a World Series game. 

"Let me think about it," he said several times, unsure if he was ready to part with that much money.  

But there wasn't time to think. The clock was ticking and if we wanted to be in the building for a game, we had to act. To force the issue, I resorted to fibbing. I told him that I had already bought the tickets. 

"Why don't you take a girl? It will really impress her," he said dismissively. 

Sorry Dad, Jessica Chastain is out of town this weekend, I should have quipped. Of course in reality, I only wanted to go with him and share an experience that we could potentially relish for the rest of our lives. 

So when he shot me down on my third attempt, I got desperate and enlisted the help of my father's mother, who took her best shot at him with a phone call. Yet, still afraid that my dad wouldn't relent -- even after getting a "talking to" from my grandmother -- I went to my closer: his wife. 

Sure enough, Mom got the job done, practically threatening divorce if he didn't come to his senses, put money concerns to the side and take advantage of this rare opportunity. What's more, he was even going to pay for my ticket. 

I got a text message from my mother the next morning relaying the message that Dad was in. I quickly logged on, punched in my credit card number and secured our two seats for Sunday's Game 5, with the hope that perhaps we'd get to witness the Mets clinch the title on their home field that night.

* * * * *

That was of course several days before the World Series had even begun. When the night finally came for Game 5, it was our team that was down three games to one, facing elimination. Yet, we were rewarded for our loyalty when Harvey authored a masterful performance through the first eight innings. 

For eight innings we chanted Harvey's name, rose to our feet in two-strike counts and erupted with every strikeout. We jumped out of our seats when Curtis Granderson blasted a leadoff solo home run in the bottom of the first inning and cheered confidently when our team padded its lead with a run in the sixth inning. 

Despite the way the series had unfolded up until that point, we were certain that we'd be walking out of the building with a win and getting ready for Game 6 Tuesday night.  

Then, in what felt like a millisecond, it all fell apart in the ninth inning. Harvey's armor began to crack after giving up a leadoff walk and then a run-scoring double. Before we knew it, Eric Hosmer was crossing home plate, scoring the tying run on an errant throw home from Lucas Duda -- a routine 90-foot throw that would have ended the game had it been on target.

I stuck around for a few moments and videotaped the
Royals rush onto the field to celebrate (yes, that's my
dad saying "C'mon, let's go find a diner" in the background).

As the throw sailed wide of catcher Travis d'Arnaud's mitt, my legs practically buckled 
from the incomprehensible disappointment. I fell into a crouch and stayed that way for several seconds while the gravity of Duda's error set in.

On one hand, the victory we were sure we'd be celebrating several moments earlier had slipped away, the potential for an even more exciting finish still loomed. If the Mets could somehow muster a run in the bottom of the ninth inning, we'd go home with a memory well worth the $1,600 tickets. 

But the cathartic moment never arrived. The Mets slogged through extra innings, picking up just one hit, which came in the 12th inning. By that time, Kansas City had already issued its knockout blow with a stunning five-run output in the top half of the frame. 

And just like that, the memory I was hoping to store forever turned into something far more complicated. 

* * * * *

Just over a week removed from that game, I still don't fully know how I feel about it.  

Make no mistake, after collapses in 2007 and 2008, and then four-straight seasons of putrid, losing baseball, this year's postseason run was tonic. In fact, I had a hard time fully enjoying it at times because it all felt so surreal. 

However, I can't just be satisfied with the fact that the Mets did things this year they weren't predicted to do. They made it to the World Series and held leads in all five games. In fact, they lost three games in which they led in the eighth inning, including Game 5.

That hurts.

I'm convinced I'll carry the pain of Sunday's loss with me for some time. But it's pain that I willfully hold on to, like the memories of 2007 and 2008. I've drilled it into my head that the more pain I suffer at the hands of the Mets, the more joyous the catharsis will be if and when the Mets finally win a World Series. 

But when will their next chance be? 

Sure, the Royals lost to the Giants in last year's World Series, but they became just the 15th team in MLB history to do so.

And sure, the future looks bright for the organization, with its embarrassment of riches in the starting pitching department. But Mets fans know well, there are no assurances this group ever gets back to a Game 5. It took the organization 15 years to make a return trip to the Fall Classic after losing to the Yankees in 2000. 

The closest the team came to a World Series during that span was 2006, when it won 96 games and reached Game 7 of the NLCS. 

But the success of that team guaranteed nothing for the following year. Fans who were hoping for a return trip to the playoffs were instead greeted with a historic collapse in September as the Mets missed the postseason for the first the first of eight consecutive seasons.

* * * * *

So do I regret going? Do I feel bad for practically forcing my dad to shell out half of his winnings for tickets to a game the Mets lost in excruciating fashion. Of course not.

In a way I'm glad I was there to experience the calamity that ensued firsthand. I'm glad I got to be feel the exasperation and anguish alongside my fellow Met fans, including my dad. 

In a twisted sense, the Game 5 debacle and the emotions that will forever be attached to it have already become a badge of honor of sorts. We were there. We got my heart ripped out, but we still love this team.

If and when the Mets make it back to the World Series and win it, I hope I'm there to see it. 
Up in section 525, with my dad. 

More than the NL East: What the 2015 New York Mets have meant to me

The Mets claimed the 2015 N.L. East Division title on
Saturday  after a 10-2 win over the Reds.

I’m not one for champagne in baseball clubhouses, except of course when it means the players dousing themselves in celebration are doing so as newly-crowned World Series champions.

That wasn’t the case on Saturday evening at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati after the Mets clinched the National League East title with a 10-2 win over the Reds. In fact, a part of me was a bit squeamish watching the players wildly celebrate as if the World Series drought that has spanned 29 years in Queens was suddenly over.

Yet, the moment was nine years in the making – nine long years since the organization’s last division championship and it needed to be the jubilant display it turned out to be.

For the players, Saturday was an important accomplishment after an emotional roller
coaster ride of a season. For the fans  – the long-suffering, manic depressive fans like myself  – the celebration meant even more. 

Rare and cherished for some, division titles are a simple formality for other teams and their respective fan bases. The Atlanta Braves won 14 in a row from 1991 to 2005, while the Yankees won nine consecutive A.L. East pennants from 1998 to 2006 and reached the playoffs 13-straight years.

The Mets have no such streak in their 54-year existence. In fact, the organization will appear in the postseason for just the eighth time, so forgive us Mets fans if we puffed out our chests a little more than usual on Saturday night.  

The shear frequency of postseason appearances  – or lack thereof  – is good reason for Mets players and fans to hold onto this moment. But maybe more important than what a division title grants the Mets – one of 10 spots in the postseason – is what it represents for fans like me.

The chance to move on.

Since 2007, the year the Mets missed the playoffs after choking away a seven-game lead with 17 to play, the organization has provided me little fulfillment, just sporadic moments of satisfaction. A Johan Santana no-hitter here; an RA Dickey Cy Young Award there. Other than those two feats, there wasn’t much to root for in the last six seasons.

First came shame of their then-historic collapse. In 2008 we got “The Collapse: Part 2” when the Mets fumbled away a 3½-game lead in September to miss the playoffs once again. The following season was marred by an almost comedic rash of injuries and included Luis Castillo’s epic drop in the bottom of the ninth inning of a Subway Series game against the Yankees. The Mets, who had been picked to win the World Series by Sports Illustrated that spring, finished the year with just 70 wins.

And as the franchise kept letting me down and continued to linger near the bottom of the standings for the next four years, my anger and disappointment gave way to the single most corrosive emotion a sports fan can have: apathy.

I accepted the status quo. I began to detach. I simply didn't care. 

But my juiced up cynicism began to subside this season. After finishing in second place last season, the Amazins continued to show improvement in 2015. After some shrewd acquisitions at the trade deadline, the Mets were suddenly a powerhouse and officially ready to contend for their first postseason berth in nine years.

Yet, the truth is I typed up portions of this column weeks ago, as the Mets continued to streak toward a division crown. The crux of the earlier version of this piece focused on how 2015 had been a season of healing for my inner Met fan – and surely thousands of other fans just like me. 

The simple fact that the team was competing and was once again in the mix meant something to me.

But then I pumped the brakes. The neurosis that had gone unchecked over the last six years kicked in.

What happens if they collapse -- again? I suddenly thought to myself.

If the team had a reprisal of its stunning collapses in 2007 and 2008 this season, surely all of the goodwill this incarnation of the team would be completely undone within my fragile fan pysche. The scars that formed over my invisible wounds would be torn open. 

Mets fans became all too familiar with tabloid covers like 

since the team's epic collapse in 2007.

If the Mets had suffered another calamity, I’d never forgive myself for writing the “It’s-time-to-make-amends” column.

After all, no one can hurt me quite like the Mets can.  

But the possibility of a collapse got less and less likely over the last few weeks. The team that I’ve loved – and at times, absolutely despised – finally returned to form on Saturday evening and punched their first postseason ticket since I was a sophomore in college.

More importantly, it means that I can finally let go of the anger and disappointment that I’ve so often attached to my baseball team.

So often I’ve tried to explain to friends how much just one World Series would mean to me. Not two or three straight. Not a dynastic run like the Yankees of the 1990s, or even the Red Sox' impressive run of three titles in 10 years.  

Just one.

Because when a measly N.L. East Division crown means this much to a fan base, imagine what a one world championship would feel like.

Two sides to every miracle: The fascinating story of the Soviet Union hockey machine

Jonathan Hock's "Of Miracles and Men" tells the
story of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" from the Soviet
Union perspective.

As the saying goes, there are two sides to every story, even the ones we cherish with fairytale-like zeal. 

The remarkable tale of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s miraculous victory over the Soviet Union in Lake Placid is no exception.

The American perspective is undoubtedly heartwarming, inspiring, and inevitably reminds us why we love sports. It’s the ultimate underdog story – how a rag tag group of 20-something-year-olds united to stun the Soviet Union, perhaps the greatest hockey team of all time, before going on to win the gold medal.

Sunday marks the 35^th anniversary of the United States’ epic 4-3 victory in sleepy Upstate New York. But for as much as we all love the story of the Americans’ impossible triumph, the Soviet narrative is more nuanced, complicated, and maybe, just maybe, more compelling than its American counterpart.  

Coming from an American hockey player, that might sound like sacrilege or high treason.

But for the first time, fans of American hockey – and America in general – are getting a glimpse of the other­ side of what’s been called the “greatest moment in sports history.” It comes courtesy of a pair of documentaries – Gabe Polsky’s “Red Army” and Jonathan Hock’s “Of Miracles and Men” – the latter of which premiered this month on ESPN.

(Note: I haven’t yet seen “Red Army” but the similarities are well publicized.)

As part of the network’s “30 for 30” series, Hock’s film takes an honest and comprehensive look at the rise and fall of Soviet hockey, delving far deeper than the country’s stunning 4-3 loss in 1980.

“It’s probably the greatest hockey team ever, and we only think about them because they lost,” Hock said in the introduction to “Of Miracles and Men.”

Hock’s film examines the post-World War II origins of the Soviet hockey program and spotlights its founding father, Anatoli Tarasov. A beloved and venerable figure in Russian hockey lore, Tarasov was appointed by Joseph Stalin’s son and charged with starting the country’s ice hockey program practically from scratch. Though he never played the sport, Tarasov knew that the Soviet brand of the game had to deviate from its Canadian equivalent. From that simple assessment, he crafted an innovative, new incarnation of ice hockey that seamlessly weaved on-ice individualism into a team structure.

The country soon became an international powerhouse championing Tarasov’s philosophy. Yet, his romantic vision of the sport eventually gave way to a different voice behind the bench when the hard-driving Viktor Tikhonov became the Soviet national team coach in 1977. A dictator on skates, Tikhonov exercised nearly complete control over his players, restricting them to a training facility 11 months out of the year and even choosing their living arrangements.

 

And while Hock spends a considerable portion of the film recounting the events that played out at the 1980 Olympics, the audience makes an immediate connection with former Soviet defenseman Slava Fetisov, a national hero profiled in the film.  

Yet, for an American hockey player who grew up playing once a year on the same sheet of ice in Lake Placid that once bore a miracle, I must admit Hock’s film creates cognitive dissonance in my mind. 

On one hand, I’ve seen Disney’s “Miracle” enough times to know why Ralph Cox wanted to “play cawlidge hawkee.” I can practically recite the movie word for word. The story is irrevocably a part of every American hockey player, regardless of age, occupying the same corner of their imagination where childhood fairytales dwell.

On the other hand, Hock’s documentary has changed the way I look at the Miracle on Ice. Suddenly, I admire the Russian players in the same light as the Americans. Suddenly, the Soviet team is no longer the lifeless, mechanical creation as it’s portrayed in "Miracle."

Slava Fetisov returns to Lake Placid and talks with his daughter
about the Soviet Union's defeat at the 1980 Olympics during
"Of Miracles and Men."

Instead, Hock tears down those perceptions and shines a light on the innovation and creativity that made Soviet hockey the machine it became. Most importantly, he does so while humanizing the Russian players who are depicted as mere robots in the Disney movie.

Even the most hot-blooded American hockey fan can’t help but feel for Fetisov, who is shown in the documentary taking a return trip to Lake Placid with his daughter in 2013. Footage of the Americans’ remarkable victory runs simultaneously to Fetisov quietly reliving the game inside the locker room that he sat in 33 years earlier.

Hock's crew is there as Fetisov picks at the emotional scar, reopening the wound that never quite healed. The pain and puzzlement are engraved on his face as he thinks back to his team’s stunning defeat. 

“I remember when we lose the game, it was kind of…” Fetisov says with a brief pause, “silent.”

“We couldn’t believe we lost it,” he adds. “Thirty years later and I can blame myself, not to be at the best at this moment. That’s for sure.”

His daughter listens intently as silence engulfs the room, surely as it had three decades prior. It's a masterful scene.  

Yet, one defeat did not undo an era of Russian dominance. Instead, the Soviets regained their stranglehold of the international stage by winning the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo and the 1988 Olympics in Calgary. In fact, the defeat in 1980 was the Soviets' first Olympic loss in 12 years.

Fetisov eventually won a Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings in 1997. But that could only happen when the government released him from military service (hockey players were soldiers in the Soviet Army) and unprecedentedly permitted him to leave the country and join the New Jersey Devils.

While the legend of the Americans’ achievement is neatly encapsulated in “Miracle,” the complexity and depth of the Soviet hockey tradition can’t be spun into a 100-minute Hollywood docudrama.
 
It would need its own HBO series.

The Miracle on Ice lives on in the hearts and minds of Americans, but if you’re a true sports fan, so should the Soviets’ remarkable hockey history. 

“In America, people always want me to talk about the ‘Miracle on Ice,’” Fetisov says at the beginning of the film. “But we made our own miracles and that’s what I want to talk about.”