WORST DAYS

..1. 1973 NLCS Game 4: Nearly my best game ever. This was just my second Met game ever. Had they won, they’d have finished off powerful Cincinnati and I would have gone into the locker room with my uncle and Mayor Lindsay. The Mets were leading 1-0 after six when Lindsay’s bodyguard said of Tony Perez, “This guy can tie it with one swing of the bat.” He did.

A variation of this line was repeated only once—in the 12th, as in “Pete Rose can win the game with one swing of the bat.” He did.

I was too distraught (and exhausted) to really appreciate how lucky I was to have been at the game at all, much less to have traveled there by helicopter and police car with the mayor.

..2. 1986 World Series Game 1: I gladly made the long drive in from college and the freezing cold but watching Tim Teufel let the winning (and only) run roll through his legs… well, let’s just say, it makes it easier to imagine what Boston fans felt in Game 6.

..3. Mets score ten in one inning to win, 2000 (page 257). A great game, sure. But I was there… until the eighth. My friend, who shall remain nameless (Sean, that’s you), decided he didn’t want to miss the next LIRR train. “This is over,” he said. “Leave with me,” he said. I never left games early. But that time I did. Walking to the subway I heard cheers; waiting on the platform I called my wife Sharon. The Mets were coming back, but I figured they had too far to go to justify racing back. I called again from 74th Street. She narrated as Edgardo Alfonzo tied it up and Mike Piazza blasted that memorable homer.

..4. Mike Piazza wins the Mets’ first game after 9/11, 2001 (page 255). Speaking of memorable homers, I had tickets for this game and was really looking forward to going… until my wife made plans to go away for the weekend with a friend… a rare treat when you have two kids under three. So I watched on TV and imagined what it must have felt like.

..5. A toss-up: David Cone’s perfect game, 1999 (page 48) or Mets Opening Day 1990. For the Cone game I have no one to blame but myself. I was up in the Bronx doing a walking tour of the Grand Concourse as research for a book (“Blue Guide: New York”). The tour itself ended at 161st Street and I mused aloud about walking over to the Stadium and buying a ticket. Instead, I continued on my own to do another twelve blocks worth of research that could easily have waited until after I’d witnessed a slice of history.

Opening Day 1990 was a disaster: Dwight Gooden got shelled, the offense was flat and then in the ninth inning with the score already 10-3, Andy Van Slyke and Bobby Bonilla hit back-to-back homers, the latter a rocket into the bullpen that made Met officials dream about how good Bonilla would look in a New York uniform. The dark days were just beginning.

WORST ON THE ROAD

Mets-Phillies, Veterans Stadium,1985.

I went to visit my sister Hope, who was attending college in Philadelphia, for her Spring Fling. My friend David and my future-brother-in-law Bill were supposed to come too and we planned to start the weekend by watching young phenom Dwight Gooden face off against the aging Steve Carlton. But after David and Bill bailed, staying at Albany for the Guinness Book of World Records’ largest game of musical chairs, my sister begged off, saying she’d rather go watch an air guitar contest. Carlton had been awful that year but he rose to the occasion on that night, nearly matching Gooden, who fired a three-hitter (with Jesse Orosco pitching a 1-2-3 ninth, a miracle in and of itself) and prevailed in a 1-0 duel, courtesy of a Keith Hernandez ninth-inning RBI single…. all of which I missed.

My sister felt so guilty that she went with me to the Vet two days later. Hope had a dizzy spell and needed medical attention in the middle of the game, but she toughed it out so we could stay and watch in the seventh inning as a 6-6 tie turned into a 10-6 Philly win courtesy of Doug Sisk. Ouch.