The End of Winter

By Mike McGann
Posted Sunday, February 18, 2007

I never saw snow until I was five-and-half years old. A day or two after my arrival in Ridgewood, N.J. at my grandparents’ house — where myself, my older brother, infant sister and mother decamped to from Orange County, Ca. when things became a bit too complicated there, as things always seemed to do when it came to my father. It was then, New Years Day, 1970, I remember experiencing snow for the first time.

I wasn’t really dressed for it, those first few days of 1970. Being a California kid of no great means, the lone coat I had was a blue and red lined windbreaker, more than enough for frigid mid-50s that came with a SoCal cold snap. So, with a couple of hand-me-down toys from my cousins, I braved the seeming blizzard in the backyard of my Grandparents’ home on, ironically, California Street. Now, this blizzard was little more than a dusting, but to me, in that little jacket, it was startling and a bit frightening. And cold.

That afternoon was the embodiment of the shocking transition in my life going from the Technicolor intensity of late-1960s California to the gray, dank darkness of 1970 New Jersey. It was also about that time that I realized the loss of my beloved California Angels. Not being your typical youth, I learned to read at three, and rapidly became something of a stalker of all things Angels. At age three, without money or means, I set off on a mile-plus trek to the local Safeway to buy hot dogs, which included free tickets to Angels’ games. Only the kindness of a stranger kept me from trying to cross a six-lane street en route to the supermarket.

But back in that yard in Ridgewood, sunny and warm, my constant childhood companions, and the Angels, were all gone, and gone for good, it seemed.

By the summer of 1970, I discovered two things that made life in New Jersey tolerable: summer, and the drafty, old log cabin on a lake we moved into that summer when my father reappeared with promises (false ones, it turned out) of better behavior. The return of my father left me with one lasting thing: the team my father had rooted for in 1962 and 1963 before he took off for the coast, the Mets.

I didn’t really know or understand why 1969 had been important — beyond the moon landing; in California, my father had put the games on, but as they didn’t involve the Angels, it wasn’t enough to keep me away from my Hot Wheels or playing in the backyard. But the disappointment of the 1970 Mets season seemed a lot like being an Angels’ fan, so it wasn’t that hard to fall into living and dying for the team — being stunned on Easter at the death of Gil Hodges, going to my first game at Shea Stadium and thrill and lousy ending of the 1973 World Series.

Despite growing up in a part of the metro area 1,500 feet above sea-level, in West Milford, I never warmed up to the idea of winter, as it were. Winters were to be endured, survived and somehow lived through. The six or seven weeks between Christmas and Valentine’s Day were little more than an ordeal or a test of character.

Throughout my childhood and well into my adult life, winter ended exactly the same way: grainy film or video tape of the Mets working out in St. Petersburg, Fla. Marv Albert would trek from first Fort Lauderdale to see the hated Yankees and then make the drive cross state to see the Mets. Rarely, it was little more than what I’d later learn was called, B-roll of anonymous Mets playing catch and 15 or 20 seconds of question and answer with the current manager and maybe Tom Seaver (or after he was gone, Jerry Koosman, or one year, Elliot Maddox).

It wasn’t much, surely not as compared with this era of SportsCenter, SNY, and dozens of web sites like this one, but that 90-second segment was always enough to end winter in my mind. To some extent, even after having spent time at a couple of spring training sites, it somehow still has meaning to me, especially this year, with the snowstorm and frigid weather that came, seemingly, to taunt us all in the hours before pitchers and catchers reported in St. Lucie. And that meaning seems to be translating to the next generation. I asked my five-year-old son, Kenny, what holiday comes after Valentines’ Day (I was thinking of St. Patrick’s Day, having forgotten Presidents’ Day) and he blurted out: “pitchers and catchers day.” He was more right than he could have known.

As I write this, Mets’ pitchers, catchers and other dedicated position players like David Wright, have just finished their first workouts and are off to golf, or more frighteningly in Wright’s case, go bowling. We timed the formal birth of this site for the holiday my son cited, the day when all things are possible for the coming season and enthusiasm is infectious.

I hope this site manages to bottle that spirit and whatever we write, positive or negative, when it comes to the Mets, it’s 15 or 20 minutes you’re not thinking about those bills you have to pay, the looming deadline for school or professional work, or just the harsh and often painful realities that are modern life.

If you can’t drop everything and fly down to St. Lucie — or make it out to Shea during the season, we want this to be a place where you can feel almost like you’re there — either sitting at one of the tables in the stands down the left-field line at Tradition Field, during a sun-drenched spring game, filled with players wearing 80s and 90s, or sitting in the Mezzanine reserved arguing with your buddies about who ought to be in the rotation or remembering similar nights in the 1960s, 70s, 80s or 90s. If we can take you away from the less enjoyable things in your life for 15 minutes and transport you, then we’ve done our jobs. I've included a few random spring training shots of mine to help set the mood.

So fire up a couple of Nathans’ and pass a brew, we’ve got some baseball to talk about.

Originally published at Flushing University.com