The fading of eras

And now it is the fall of '69 again, suddenly.

It's the fall of '69 and my lungs are shallowing up, and out toward the elementary school the acorns are flying again. We peg one another with them because we know Coach Nash can't see us back here, and we have to do something to break up the monotony of cross country practice for the hallowed Vikings of Village Woods Junior High.

It's the fall of '69, and I'm in ninth grade, and I look like what Ant Man would look like if the shrinking process stopped halfway. I have no speed and no endurance, and so I and a couple of other tail-enders have been dubbed the Rinky-Dinks. But that's OK.

I have my heroes that fall, anyway.

They are the New York Mets. And they have been the laughingstocks of baseball for seven years.

Now they're in the World Series, somehow, and they're supposed to get crushed by Earl Weaver's mighty Baltimore Orioles, who won 109 games that summer and have Frank Robinson and the impeccable Brooks Robinson and Boog Powell and Paul Blair, and a three-headed hydra of flamethrower arms: Palmer, McNally, Cuellar.

The Mets?

The Mets have Tom Seaver.

He's the Arm, the Talent, Tom Terrific. He was not quite 25 that fall and he led a staff that included Jerry Koosman and Nolan Ryan, and somehow they beat the Orioles in five games. Someone named Donn Clendenen hit some home runs and someone else named Al Weis, who reminded me of me, hit a big home run despite batting only .219 for the season with just one other home run.  A couple of other someones named Ron Swoboda and Tommie Agee made some miraculous catches in the outfield, and Tom was Terrific.

And now he's gone, as September comes in and fall again beckons.

He departed in the half-light of Lewy body dementia, a filthy SOB that steals a man's life by slow degrees, and he died from complications of that and the Bastard Plague. Though he pitched a no-hitter and was a two-time All-Star for the Cincinnati Reds, he is remembered best as a New York Met.

This is because the Mets became a baseball team while he was taking the bump for them every four or five days, becoming first the Miracle Mets of '69 and then the Sequel Mets of '73, when they again reached the World Series but lost to the Oakland A's. Trading him to the Reds in 1978 has gone down in history as one of the worst decisions in baseball history.

That he would find wall space as a plaque in Cooperstown was never in doubt, and he went in in 1992. Only two pitchers in history have ever compiled 300 career wins with an ERA under 3.00 and 3,000 strikeouts. The other is named Walter Johnson.

But he was more than that, to those of us of a certain age. He also  represented an entire era that seems especially golden because we were all young and coming of age, and everything seemed golden. So there was Seaver and the Big Red Machine and the Lumber Company Pirates and the Charlie Finley A's, and there was also the Dallas Cowboys and the perfect Miami Dolphins and Kareem and Clyde Frazier and Pistol Pete -- and the zany ABA with its red-white-and-blue basketball and it 3-point shot  and of course the Indiana Pacers.

Pieces of that era have been taking their leave for awhile now. Tom Seaver is only the latest, but he's a big piece.

Stupid time. It just keeps passing.