And…thanks.

Around that time, I rode an elevator with the great man. He was bigger than I expected, and he was accompanied by Gary Thorne, his broadcast partner. Their interaction was exactly like that of the two dogs in the old Warner Brothers cartoon, the larger bulldog silent while the smaller dog keeps up a constant pandering commentary: “Whaddaya wanta do now, Tom? Are we goin’ to that party? Nah, that party’s lame, huh, Tom? Right, Tom?” (etc.).

I mean… jeez, can you imagine Tiger Woods taking a stance on anything beyond pushing Nike accesories?

About how I, too, mimicked him in schoolyard wiffle games, about how my childhood effectively ended that June day he was dealt to Cincinnati, about how I made my thus far only pilgrimage to Cooperstown on the day he was inducted.

Or even about how my feelings concerning the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are exactly the same as yours….

Good stuff.

I’ll only mention that Tom Seaver himself walked into the bookstore where we all worked one day. I can’t remember if it was 2000, or 2001. Or if it was before the Towers fell. Or if it was the holidays. Or what the weather was like.

But there he was. He was accompanying his wife Nancy on what was obviously a very, very long and tedious day of shopping in the city.

He was cranky. He was weary. His wife was off perusing mysteries and travelogues.
As I approached him tentatively to inquire if he needed help finding anything, he seemed slightly edgy and recalcitrant.

He didn’t say much, but as I offered my own hand I told him that I was a Met fan, and that I appreciated him.

The man I grew up idolizing looked bored and tired. Like he could not wait to catch a cab to Grand Central. He looked like any adult male who had spent a Sunday afternoon in midtown battling crowds and watching his spouse try shoes on.

And then he extended the most famous Right Arm in the history of the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club, Inc., gripped my own hand with the same fingers that had struck out over 3600 hapless batsmen, nodded slightly,and made my freaking day.

I even carried the boxscore of his no-hitter in my wallet for nearly twenty-five years, until my wallet went missing in Puerto Rico a few years ago.

Here’s another song for you. While not quite as awesome as John Prine’s, it was to us. A bunch of us wrote it on June 15, 1977, the dreadful day Seaver was traded to the Reds for Pat Zachry, Steve Henderson, Doug Flynn, and Dan Norman. It’s sung to the chorus of “Mrs. Robinson.”

“Where have you gone,
George Thomas Seaver?
A city turns its lonely eyes to you
Not Dick Young.

What’s that you say,
M. Donald Grant?
Tom Terrific’s left and gone away
to Cincinnati
for some crap.”

Hey, we were kids, and that was the best we could come up with.

Musicians take a lot of crap for speaking their minds about politics, and so do ballplayers. Curt Schilling is practically a fascist.

I loved what Delgado did. Look what happened to Sinead O’Connor when she refused to have the National Anthem sung before a concert.

And I’m also glad, Josh, that you also question the need for “God Bless America” at the seventh-inning stretch. They sell their agenda with fear and patriotism — or should I say, the fear of not being patriotic?

http://www.jpshrine.org/lyrics/songs/jpflagdecal.html