The rage kicks in when you least expect it. You think you're fine. You can do without baseball. You have a life. Then with absolutely no warning, reality kicks you right in the backside. The dirty so-and-sos have killed the World Series.
No Country Slaughter steaming from first with the winning run. No Babe Ruth taunting the Cubs and hitting one over the wall. No Bob Gibson glowering in the shadows. No Bill Mazeroski heading for home with all of Pittsburgh about to climb on his back. No World Series. Just twitchy Bud and rigid Don. Just rage.
Both sides now. First it was the owners you hated, or maybe the players, but now it's both. Selfish, stupid, arrogant, boorish, pig-headed un-American whining weasels. They robbed us of the 1994 World Series.
It would have begun last night, much too late for fans in the East. The dopes who run baseball didn't even run it right when they were working. But at least you could have woken up this morning in Montreal or New York or Cleveland, or wherever the World Series might have been extra important this year, and mumbled, "Who finally won that game?"
No Reggie Jackson hitting three dingers in one game. No Kirk Gibson hobbling around the bases late on a Saturday night. No Grover Cleveland Alexander lurching out of the bullpen. No nothing.
I didn't mind not going to the World Series, grumpy writers like me standing around the batting cage in raincoats, waiting for 8:38 P.M. October has been a delight in New York. I never watched a second of the Ken Burns series. Nostalgia for what? Baseball doesn't want me, I don't want baseball. That's my theory. My friend Rob held a softball game on his own field of dreams. Expos vs. Indians "for all the marbles," he said. I played third base. I could still make the throw to first. Excuse me, but I thought about Brooks Robinson in 1970. Rob hit a shot over the left-field fence and I thought about Joe Carter in 1993. October. Memories. World Series. Rage.
Rage isn't good for anybody, so I did the most pacific thing possible. I called Mookie Wilson, whose gentle wisdom was a delight when he played for the Mets. He still works for them as a roving minor league instructor and community-relations specialist, which means people can look at him and say, "Here, this is what baseball can be, at its best."
The reason I called Mookie Wilson, of course, is that eight years ago this Tuesday, he was the central figure in the most stupendous sequence I ever saw at a sporting event, a World Series turning completely around on two freak plays, both nubby little incidents, altered by millimeters. What made them so stunning was that they happened on the potential final pitch of a World Series.
"I guess we won't have any memories like that this year," Wilson said with his high-pitched Southern voice.
I asked Wilson about his earliest World Series memory. "I wasn't what you'd call a baseball fan when I was growing up, " he admitted, "but in 1975 I was in junior college in Spartanburg, S.C., and I watched every game in our dormitory. I was rooting for the Big Red Machine of Cincinnati. Foster. Morgan. Perez. Rose. Griffey. Concepcion. Bench. They had a great team."
Is there one 1975 moment Mookie Wilson remembers best? He chuckled at the other end of the phone line. " Fisk's home run," he said. "Naturally." He meant the 12th-inning shot down the left-field line that Carlton Fisk made stay fair by waving his arms like a carnival magician performing hocus-pocus. It is one of the defining moments in all those World Series. It won the sixth game. Eleven years later, Mookie Wilson would also have a defining sixth game.
"During the season, you always say, 'We can come back tomorrow and win,' " Wilson said the other day. "But during the post-season, the atmosphere is different. You get to a point, it could be your last game. You don't want to play catchup ball in the World Series. The tradition, the media, the atmosphere, make it different. I was so excited being there, it made me more relaxed."
On the night of Oct. 25, Mookie Wilson became immortal -- although he doesn't act immortal. He was due up sixth in that 10th inning, the far side of the moon, the way it appeared. Two quick outs. The Red Sox moved up the dugout steps, ready to roll. "It's funny," Wilson said, "but the only thing I can remember from that inning is Oil Can Boyd on the top step, his foot on the dirt, another player looking at him. That's the only picture in my mind."
Three straight singles. Oil Can Boyd removed his foot from the dirt. The Red Sox began to edge down the steps. Mookie Wilson levitated himself to avoid being hit by Bob Stanley's inside pitch; some Boston fans still blame Rich Gedman for not stopping it. By ducking the wild pitch, Wilson allowed the tying run to score from third. Had he been hit by the pitch, the bases would have been loaded, the Mets still down a run. (Trivia question: who was on deck? Answer: Howard Johnson. Supply your own alternate ending.)
With the winning run on second, Mookie Wilson slapped a magical mystery grounder toward Bill Buckner, who was playing deep behind first base. The ball squibbed through (I always like to write it this way) the gnarled wickets of Buckner. The game was over. Revisionist history is starting to say that Wilson would have beaten Buckner to first even if Buckner had fielded it.
"The pitcher was pretty well out of it," Wilson said. "We'll never know, will we?"
We only know that 1986 is remembered best for Mookie Wilson's at-bat. We only know that 1975 is remembered for the Carlton Fisk body-english home run. We only know that 1947 is remembered for Cookie Lavagetto breaking up Bill Bevens's no-hitter, and Al Gionfriddo robbing DiMaggio with a great catch in left-center, and doggone it, the Yankees still won the Series and the Brooklyn Dodgers had to "Wait 'til next year," as always.
Back then, "Wait 'til next year" had a romantic notion to it, like the Lost City of Atlantis or Brigadoon. Now we are totally out of romance. This year will produce no Mookie Wilson, no Carlton Fisk, no Joe Page, no Mickey Lolich, no Sandy Koufax sitting out the Jewish holy day and then pitching the Dodgers to the world championship, no Mantle hitting one off Barney Schultz, (my man Taxerman waded through all this Met stuff just to make sure Koufax and the Mick got their due).
This year will be remembered for nothing. No valuable lessons, no moral victories, nothing. The two sides colluded, in their own dance-of-the-morons, to have no World Series. Wait 'til next year? Who cares? The owners and the players will either work it out next year, or they won't. Baseball will never be the same. They stole a year from us, they stole the World Series, they stole baseball. We try to shrug it off, and then the rage kicks in.
