Waiting On The Kid
When I was 10 years old, I spent a lot of the summer waiting on pins and needles.
I don't remember much about that summer:
I don't remember if my family and I traveled.
I don't remember what we did for my 10th birthday in July.
I do remember that I watched a lot of Mets games...waiting for Gary Carter to reach a special milestone.
I had no idea that 1988 marked the beginning of the end of Gary Carter's baseball career - or at least his days as a power threat.
But had you told me that then I would have denied it up and down and defended Carter with the blind faith that may or may not still color my sports fanaticism.
All I knew that summer of 1988 was that Gary Carter was on the verge of home run number 300 - a more significant number back then than it may be today.
How significant? I can tell you that he became the 59th player in baseball history to reach that plateau...but I can also tell you that it took him 225 at-bats before he broke a home run drought to get #300.
I can tell you this because I have in front of me the yellowed piece of paper on which the 10-year-old me wrote down all of the stats regarding the fading 34-year-old future Hall of Famer's chase.
He hit the homer off Al Nipper, pitching for the Chicago Cubs, to left-center in the 2nd inning of a game the Mets won, 9-6, at Wrigley Field. Carter was 1-for-5 in the game (that fell in the 'What-for-what' category of my homemade stat sheet), which took place on August 11, 1988.
I remember that home run - and the anticipation of it - as I spent that summer watching and waiting for big news on Gary Carter.
I couldn't help but draw that parallel with the recent news that new tumors were found on Gary Carter's brain.
In the year I now turn 34, it is Carter who is fading again - this time in a much different way than at the end of his baseball career.
Once again I'm on pins and needles, constantly hoping for good news on Gary Carter.
And dreading hearing the big news that seems inevitable.
