31: To Cheer Again

(This is the latest installment in an ongoing series at Y2K focusing on topics raised in Matthew Silverman's "100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die". Today's installment? Number 31: To Cheer Again.)

Why 31? The Monster.

On a scale of 1-to-10, necessity of knowing or doing before you die? 10.

One of my most regrettable attributes is that I've always been humiliatingly prone to choking up. You show me a sweet moment of redemption or accomplishment, or a sad moment of loss and my throat will start lumping up on swoll. It's been that way as long as I can remember, and I take some measure of solace knowing that's just the way it is.

This past season, the many tributes to Shea and Mets history were filled with mistiness-inducing moments. The vast majority of these moments could only have choked up the Glass Man, but there's one I didn't feel bad about, and it's the one chronicled in Chapter 31 of Matthew Silverman's book.

September 21, 2001 was the day professional sports returned to New York City after 9/11, and the night Mike Piazza added his signature moment as a Met.

Piazza's signature moment as a Met... I've never thought about it that way until now. It's a big statement, but as I sit here I can't think of another moment from Piazza's tenure that is it's equal. Certainly the only moments that are nearly as famous are the ones involving Roger Clemens, but those are no fun.

No, Piazza's signature Mets moment came in the first game back in New York as a Met. By now, Howie Rose's home run call is mostly what I recall of that moment. But where my mind belongs is in that dinky old common room on the third floor of Sage A my freshman year, where I sat, throat belumped, for 9 innings of Mets-Braves September baseball.

Your world changes when you go off to college. You leave the familiar behind, including your routines, your parents and your friends. Ten days after I left for college, everyone's world changed. They said baseball would be a way for some people to feel like a modicum of normalcy had returned, and shallow as it sounds, I was one of those people.

It was a perfect night for baseball, only it was a night that had very little to do with baseball at all. The Mets and Braves, heated rivals, were united in solidarity by something much larger than the sport. It was a night for seeing past all the petty differences that drive people apart.

And then Piazza came to the plate with the Mets down a run in the bottom of the 8th, and he sent a drive to centerfield that "cleared the throats of everyone who had watched the game but hadn't known what to think or do. They cheered. It was all right to cheer. Never forget, but remember how precious each moment is. That moment certainly was," (Silverman, 85).

The Mets won that game 3-2. In the end, Piazza's shining moment wasn't enough to lift the Mets into a heroic playoff berth, but that's no matter: "That night remains one of the most heartfelt in the history of the Mets, the stadium, and fans of both the team and the city" (Silverman, 85).

And when I remember that night, I like to think that as it drew to a close my thoughts were far away from lower Manhattan. I like to think they were in Queens or in dreams, guided by a drive to centerfield that somehow hadn't landed yet.

- A.F.O.M.G.