Today is the birthday of my favorite baseball player ever, Gary Carter. He played in the best World Series I ever cared about, the 1986 series that pitted the Mets against the Red Sox. In his honor, here’s the story of my brief baseball fandom.
My brother Josh was (and is) an avid Boston Red Sox fan. I didn’t really care too much about baseball, except that I liked to play wiffle ball with Josh and the neighbor kids and Major League Baseball on our Nintendo NES. But, being a sister, I took to the idea of being a fan of a different team than my brother. Just out of the blue, I picked the New York Mets. My best friend Erin also chose the Mets, while her brother Matt was into the Red Sox. So it was pretty much perfect, until I discovered that our teams would never actually play each other. There went the fun of rooting against my brother, right?
Basically that season I picked a couple of favorite players, Gary Carter (catcher) and Lenny Dykstra (outfield). Both of them had great seasons. I kind of stopped liking Lenny though. His personal life was too controversial for me. Also, putting his name on a t-shirt just seemed kind of … out there.
Then I discovered the little section of the paper that listed the teams in the 2 leagues, east and west divisions. I followed them religiously, and they eventually led to the playoffs, which led to the World Series! Imagine that, our two teams were going to play after all! I was elated. So was Josh,although possibly for different reasons.
I don’t remember much of the series (thus proving that I was and am not an actual fan, but rather a mere dabbler), except the whole Bill Buckner debaucle. Gary Carter, I can now read, performed admirably. I was proud of my Gary Carter card collection, which I still have in those plastic card pages you put in 3-ring binders.
After the series, Erin and I had some serious ammunition against our brothers. That was a great fall and winter in that respect. The next year, neither of our teams made the series, and Erin and I jumped off the Mets ship. I decided to pick the Oakland A’s and follow that team. I can’t remember why that particular team allured me. It may have been something to do with Jose Canseco and Mark McGuire, who were slamming baseballs as The Bash Brothers or something like that. Plus, the A’s now had Don Baylor, who had been on the Red Sox in 1986, so ha HA!
Then the A’s won the World Series against the Dodgers. Wow! I was some kind of a baseball oracle, choosing which team would win when I knew nothing at all about baseball! I was awesome.
And what was Gary Carter doing in 1988? Umm, I have no idea. Checking the wiki, I see he was still on the Mets.
1989. The A’s won again! Rock on! (This was the year of the earthquake in Candlestick Park at the beginning of game 3, remember?)
Then, 1990. Alas poor A’s. This was also the year I had my first real boyfriend (all the previous ones had been imaginary?), causing me to lose my interest in baseball and in taunting my little brother.
So that’s my baseball story. Happy birthday, Mr. Carter! And thanks for not, you know, having DUIs and assault charges and stuff. Or obvious steroid use. We love you for that. And you’ll always be a Met in my eyes, if only for the fact that I followed baseball for those few years.
Any historical errors in this post are here because I have a bad memory and I never knew much to begin with.