Game 6 of the ALCS is just underway as I’m writing this; I for one was rooting for a rain-out, since I don’t know about you, but I don’t really have five hours to commit to these games every single night.
At any rate, my college pal Dan got married on Sunday, and the wedding falling right in the middle of the League Championship Series got me thinking five years back to 1999, when we were in school in Boston, and the three teams primarily rooted for by Brandeis students (Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox) all made the LCS round in the same year. All my friends were regularly journeying to Fenway and/or down to New York for the games, and I was constantly deluged with requests for tickets, since my roommate at the time happened to be the son of the president of the MLB players’ association.
Two things I’ll always remember about that postseason, and both involve this weekend’s groom: the Braves/Mets series followed the same trajectory as this year’s ALCS: the “bad guys” (the Braves) jumped out to a 3-0 lead, after which the good guys (the Mets) won the next two, with Game 5 going a ridiculous amount of extra innings. Dan, a Mets fan, was trying really hard to get tickets, and while he wasn’t able to score any for the three Shea games, he did get seats for the if-necessary Game 7- in Atlanta. I was asked if I wanted to drive down- though I'm a lifelong Braves hater, a length-of-I-95 road trip probably would’ve been too much. At any rate, the Mets lost Game 6- during which we had "Shea Stadium Night," complete with burgers, brats, and hot dogs (all kosher, natch) cooked on Dan's George Foreman Grill.
The week before that, the Red Sox were facing the Cleveland “Baseball Team” Indians in the first round, and after losing the first two games the Sox won the next two at Fenway, forcing a deciding Game 5 back at the Jake. The night of Game 5 was the 21st birthday of one of our friends (Seth, one of Dan’s groomsmen), so a bunch of us decided to go to a bar to celebrate- and since a semi-injured Pedro Martinez had entered the game and was in the process of pitching six perfect innings to seal the series victory, we made our way towards Fenway.
The area was hopping- even though the game was in Cleveland- and the celebration began in earnest as soon as Pedro recorded the final out to force an historic ALCS against the Yankees. A non-stop “Yankees Suck” chant began almost immediately, morphing into “that guy sucks!” when a lone Yankee fan emerged (the chant later evolved into “Jeter Fucked Him In the Ass- Doo-da! Doo-da!). After about twenty minutes, police emerged to quiet the crowd and tell them to either get in line for playoff tickets or go home. The crowd was finally silent, until a lone homeless man emerged, singing:
“Boom Boom- Let Me Hear Ya Say Pedro- PEDRO!”
Then we spent the next few hours at the Cask & Flagon. I’m still a Twins fan, but I believe that night was when I first began to identify with Red Sox Nation, and to this day I’m rooting for them to finally get past the Yankees and into the World Series.
As for Dan and his Mets, the following year, he and I finally made it to Shea for the NLCS, and saw the Mets win the pennant against St. Louis.
That’s it for stories; Mazel tov, Dan and Marti!
Posted by Stephen Silver at October 19, 2004 09:36 PMAhh...baseball at Brandeis, the memories. I've got a ton of those
Posted by: jaws at October 19, 2004 11:31 PMMarti loved those stories. And I miss those days.
Perhaps next year a road trip with Marti to a Mets Braves NLCS (I can dream can't I?)