the story of my baseball fandom, or “how, despite 1986, I learned to stop loving the Mets and love baseball”

And now where I explain how and why I don’t really have a team that I root for anymore.

As mentioned in my inaugural post, I got hooked on baseball in 1986 watching the New York Mets.  Hell, I may have even watched a little Mets baseball in late 1985, but I don’t remember.  I was 7 years old, and up until around that time I recall that sports did not really interest me.  Sure, I played sports at school and in the ol’ schoolyard, and I think I had even started playing instructional league baseball or “pee-wee league baseball” as I guess most of the rest of the country calls it.  But up until I was about 7, sports on television to me was not at all appealing: I didn’t really understand all the rules, it was 3 hours long (which is far too long for a 7 year old, even before the internet, mtv and a.d.d.), and I just generally had no idea who anyone playing was and what was happening.    At some point though in late 1985 into early 1986, I definitely started developing an interest in both playing and watching baseball.  My first game was in 1986- Orioles vs. Yankees at Yankee Stadium.  Why the Yankees?  Well, my older brother had gotten into baseball too at around the same time (as often can happen), and I guess had made the first request to my parents to go to a game…at Yankee Stadium.  The Orioles won 18-9, and a guy named Lee Lacy hit 3 home runs.  Maybe we thought all games were like this, maybe we didn’t, but either way, we were hooked.

So my brother had decided he was a Yankee fan and loved Don Mattingly.  Naturally, I gravitated across town to the Mets.  I’m sure it helped that they were by far the best team in the majors in 1986, and that my older brother and occasional tormentor was rooting for the other team in New York.  Less than a month after that June 8 Yankee game, we went to a Mets-Astros game at Shea on July 4.  I was far too young to appreciate it, but I got to see Dwight Gooden go the distance in dueling Nolan Ryan, winning 2-1.  Three months later, the Mets were world champions by winning one of the most dramatic, entertaining, and downright amazing World Series in history.  It looked like I’d be a Mets fan for life.

(to be continued)