Stickball, Seaver and the 70's: Rest in Peace Tom Terrific

From the desk of: HEAD-BUTTING MR. MET

My Brick at Citi Field Reads:

1977 STILL HURTS!

... along the third base side, check it out one day. 

The year 2020 knows no limits.

I'm devastated like all Mets fans are to learn of Wednesday's passing away of Tom Seaver.  I wish his family peace and calm through this very sad and difficult time, and offer my humblest prayers and sincerest condolences to all he loved and held dear.

Time has no mercy.  We know this well.  We're just never ready for news like this.  It needs a moment to sink in, then in rushes the heartbreaking sense of loss.  As I look back on my own life and contemplate some of the genuine influences in my life, Tom Seaver is in the conversation.  Rarely, if ever, would I include sports figures.  But Tom Seaver was different.  There was no one on my childhood television set representing themselves quite the way Tom did during post-game visits to Kiner's Korner.  I wasn't getting that from Looney Tunes, or Wonderama, Kaptain Kangaroo, Spider Man, or Happy Days, the Merv Griffin Show, Abbott and Costello or the Bowery Boys, certainly not from Archie Bunker or Mary Tyler Moore, not Godzilla, Evel Knievel, Planet of the Apes, or Richard Nixon, but maybe Morgan Freeman when he appeared on the Electric Company.  Seaver constantly preached accountability and championed camaraderie.  He always said something worth listening to, unlike, say, Don Rickles.  Alas, no one was demonstrating to me the level of comportment being put forth by Tom Seaver.

I pretended to be Tom Seaver when playing stickball against my cousin when we were kids.  Growing up watching The Franchise was like having a childhood coach by your side.  I tried imitating his motion the best I could.

Funny thing is my Pop and my uncle were Yankees fans, and my cousin and me were Mets fans (from our Moms' side of the family)!  We all spent equal time watching and going to see both teams.  However, my Pop was a particularly huge Tom Seaver fan and made it his business to ensure we took in as many Seaver starts as possible.  The Yankees fan that he was, we connected through Seaver.  I speak of the seasons spanning 1973-1977, until he was traded to the Reds.  I was coming up on my eleventh birthday, my cousin a year younger.  Tom Seaver's seasons pitching in that classic New York Mets uniform are ingrained in my mind forever.  Tom Seaver and company are the ones who gave this pinstriped blue/orange color scheme its pride and prestige.  That's why I hate when the Mets deviate from their traditional uniform.

In the lead-up to his Opening Day start in 1983, being there to witness him appear from the Mets bullpen and his ensuing walk down the right field line towards the dugout is one of the happiest moments I ever spent at Shea Stadium.  Tom Seaver in an interview once said in order to be successful there are three outs in any given game that you absolutely must execute.  Those words never rang more true for me than when I coached little league baseball for ten seasons.

As a baseball fan, I know this: Tom Seaver is one of the greatest craftsmen to ever toe a major league rubber.  Physically durable, powerful and pure genius on the mound, there are few pitchers who before or since have matched his absolute mastery with a baseball from sixty-feet six inches away.

He is also one of New York City's premiere titans of sport.

I'm otherwise a little short for words.  Another prominent figure of my childhood has moved on. 

The first pitch of his forever game is delivered ... the perfect game that never ends, begins.

Rest in Peace.

Love,
Mike

1944  ~  2020