Haunted by Memories 

It’s a new week so it must be time for a new Sports Dude column!!! I know it’s been some of the toughest 168 hours you have ever spent, so just for you my loyal readers I have an action packed column that should really let you know what the dude is all about. A wise man once said (I think it was a drunken Norm McDonald) that you never really know someone until you’ve seen them at their worst times. While many of your have seen me in my drunken angst, I will instead refer you to those memories that truly haunt me, meaning the worst losses I’ve ever witnessed!

Ball Four! It was a time when I needed something to believe in. I was a wayward young man, devoid of rhyme and reason, wandering around in a daze. Earlier in the fall I saw my hopes for the Jets vanish quicker than the career of Jesus Jones, when lazy eyed Curtis fumbled a ball deep in New England territory in the first game of the season. Vinny Testeverde, apparently mistaking the football for a 12” Sausage Parmesan hero, made a futile attempt to recover the ball, rupturing his Achilles tendon in the process and thus crippling the Super Bowl-bound Jets. At the time of the injury, my beloved Mets were in the midst of a magical run that would lead them to claim the Wild Card playoff spot. They appeared to be a team of destiny, as witnessed by a dismantling of the Reds in the play-in game and more emphatically by Todd "I’ll never do anything close to hitting that series winning homerun in my life" Pratt taking Matt Mantei deep to catapult the Mets into the NLCS to face the hated Braves.

Unfortunately, the Braves led by the intellectual scholar Larry Jones and the eloquent John Rocker, took a 3-1 lead. But Mets fans never give up and you had to believe in that team! Game 5 started with a homerun by Johnny Baseball (aka Johnny Mushhead) off of Maddux. Small Paul and I were stuck in traffic leaving the Jet game, hoping to catch the last inning or so of the game. Little did we know we’d end up catching the equivalent of a whole game (note: this was when the aforementioned Small Paul and I were still on good terms, before he ridiculously refused to let me order Chinese food from his phone). As you all know, Robin Ventura hit the walk-off grand slam that wasn’t and the Mets won, setting up the instant classic that was Game 6.

To set up the scene of the game, I was watching the game in my sophomore year dorm room with some of the biggest Mets fans in the country, Rob Johnson and Kevin Martin and nouveau Met fan Tom Triola, a life-long Yankee fan who for a one week long span caught the fever that is Mets baseball. Our room, which was playoff headquarters, had a freshly shattered window thanks to Soccer Brian, who became a little overexcited when Edgardo Alfonso went ya-ya off the Big Unit in the previous round and proceeded to do a run-by punching out of our 2x5’ prison size window. The Mets went down big early in the game, but battled back thanks to the straightest athlete in NY sports history, Mike Piazza.

The Mets took a one run lead in the top of the 8 th, giving me and my fellow Met diehards a false hope. As he was prone to do, Johnny Franco was too busy daydreaming of his post game marinara sauce to concentrate on pitching and blew the precious one run advantage. Not to worry though because in the top of the 10 th spunky Melvin Mora ripped a single and Benny “Pineapple Head” Agbeyani beat out an Andruw Jones throw to give the Mets a one run lead and seemingly a ticket to Game 7!!! The dorm room was rocking and rolling as Armando Benitez strode from the bullpen looking like he was angry enough to beat up his wife. "I’ll Never Go Back to Georgia" (our unofficial theme music for Benitez during that series) by Joe Cuba, a salsa anthem that seemed to never end blared from my speaker, as Kev, Rob, Tom, and I did the "Armando Benitez dance" which consisted of throwing an arm up in the air as Benitez would do after a strikeout or a save.

Was the celebration pre-mature? Indeed, as Benitez who had been untouchable in the series, gave up a series of hits to the likes of Keith Lockhart and Ozzie Guillen (Murderer’s Row 1999) to tie up the game. Little did we know at the time that this would be the first in a series of big game blow-ups for Ol’ Armando. Though certain victory had been snatched from our near riotous hands, the game was not over. They’d scored nine already against the Braves pontificated pitching staff, and we were sure they’d score ten. But that tenth run for the Mets would never come, as wunderkind Stevie Phillips big time midseason acquisition (yes bigger than Billy Taylor and Chuck McElroy) stepped up to the mound in the form of slow pitch lefty Kenny Rogers. Now many don’t remember the bases were loaded when Rogers came into the game, which is a tough position for any hurler. But no excuses for Kenny will be made.

Watching ball four sail out of the strike zone and walking home the Braves’ winning run was the equivalent of simultaneously getting kicked in the balls and watching your dog get run over, or perhaps something far worse. Faces turned white, not a voice was heard. It was utter shock and disdain. A tear is about to well up in my eye as I write this. It’s tough to watch a Mets-Braves game without thinking of ball four. It’s tough to see Kev and Rob without thinking of Ball Four. I haven’t listened to "I’ll Never Go Back to Georgia," since that game, neither has Rob or Kev, hell I don’t think anyone has, not even Joe Cuba himself. I like to tell myself that if they had won that game, they would’ve won game seven easily as the Braves were running scared. I like to tell myself that the momentum would’ve carried over to the Subway Series with the Mets (a stronger Mets team than 2000) would’ve handed the Yankees a humbling loss. Though we’ll never know because they never went back to Georgia.