ROBBINS NEST ,The New York Extra/TheNYExtra.com
By Lenn Robbins
I first noticed it while shaving on Sunday, a feint red mark on my forehead. The last time it was present was back in 1994, quite a lapse, so forgive the faulty memory.
And I’ll forgive you.
Because we know where this love takes its first breath – between the bite of a hot dog and the gulp of a beer, the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd. This love hibernates in the heart like a teen romance. It may end but it never completely disappears.
That red mark had blossomed into a scarlet letter by Tuesday night. It was an “S,” for Sucker.
You, me, our friends and relatives, even the fans of the teams we despise, we’re all in this together. We’re suckers.
From Queens to Houston and The Bronx to Seattle, millions of baseball fans wear that red “S” today – right between the eyes. Because we saw this coming.
Three years ago, when word that the Collective Bargaining Agreement uncivil war between baseball owners and players was getting ugly, to the pandemic-shortened season when both sides shamed themselves, we saw this coming.
And now it’s here. Bloody Tuesday.
Baseball has canceled Opening Day and the first two series of the season. We lost most the season in 2020 to COVID-19. The pandemic this time is the variant known as greed. The filthy greedy owners and plain-old-fashioned greedy players have been unable to come to agreement on a new CBA.
My tickets for Opening Day, March 31, Nationals at Mets, are worthless, they can be folded in quarters and propped under the short leg of the dining room table. Yes, that’s how I still think of tickets. Now, of course, they appear on my phone and disappear, which is exactly what might happen to this entire season.
It’s hard to determine who to root for in this showdown between the swine owners and the pig players but the former gets my vote. It’s ironic because as a long-suffering Mets fan (redundant), it’s been a thrill watching Steve Cohen hand out monster contracts with no regard for the luxury tax.
Cohen also grew up a Mets fans and now he’s hell-bent on bringing (read buying) a first World Series title to Citi Field, a magnificent ballpark. I was 26 when the Mets won in 86; sat in the cheap seats in Shea Stadium, the left field pigeon shit seats, one row in front four drunk and obnoxious Red Sox fans (again, redundant.)
They were serenading us with all manner of insult and abuse, a raucous foursome reveling in our misery as the game headed to the ninth. Mets fans who weren’t even born know what happened.
That hard chopper up the first base line, through Bill Buckner’s legs like a perfectly placed crochet shot and into right field crisp. An explosion of joy and disbelief not seen since the Apollo 11 moon landing brought thunder to the October night.
Game 7 was a fait accompli. My knew friends, The Forlorn Fenway Foursome, sullenly said before the first pitch that the series was over. Something about the Bambino’s Curse.
But so were we.
The Mets hadn’t won a World Series since 1969, when something truly amazing happened – a franchise that new only travesty experienced triumph. That was the only championship until 1986 but it held. It instilled in all of us a dedication and devotion that demagogues like the jerk in Russia yearn for.
We waited almost two decades but kept supporting the Mets because they had brought us a joy matched by what?
The birth of a newborn? The good news from a surgeon? The arrival of a college acceptance letter?
Even as the finances of the game changed we hung to the memories of the Amazing Mets of 69 and the Hell-Raising Mets of 86 like a family portrait over the fireplace.
Owners began demanding tax breaks for new stadiums, threatening to move their franchise to any whore city that was willing to spread its legs and say, “Come on in!” Occasionally that threat became a reality and suddenly a city had an appendage of the soul ripped away.
At the same time many players began raking in monster salaries (Will the Mets ever stop cutting Bobby Bonilla check? Have the Yankees finally stopped paying Jacoby Ellsbury?) Some of those players were outed as frauds (see Alex Rodriguez, Jose “The Pacemaker” Altuve, Matt Harvey).
Greedy owners. Spoiled players. Still, we kept showing up.
Ticket prices rose because someone had to pay the owners and players. We kept paying.
Games got moved from the afternoon, to prime time, to the Alaska Time Zone. We kept watching.
How do you watch your first love these days: MLB.com, TNT, Fox, ESPN, Yes, MSGNetworks? Hulu anyone?
Now, as the future of the 2022 season hangs like a Clayton Kershaw curveball that stays up, take a hard look in the mirror. Do you see a red “S” on your forehead? Ask yourself, “Why do I stay with this unfaithful, unreliable partner?”
Is there nothing that will make us leave for good? Cancel the entire 1994 season? No worries. We’ll return.
The owners and players might be pigs but we’re the lambs. As baseball screws us again ask yourself if you enjoy being the silent lamb. Then act accordingly. Turns out the pigs need us lambs.
Well, no more mutton for baseball.
Toss a baseball cap over your forehead and cover up that scarlet letter. It will fade. Maybe if we never return, we’ll never again see that red “S.”