BATTER UP AND PASS THE COOKIES!

The kid in the middle

Years ago, when I was still conscious, I had a teenaged partner who would watch the Mets or Jets and even the Islanders and Knicks with me on TV. He was a baseball fan first and foremost and knew his stats and also the agony of defeat, almost daily.

So rather than suffer through a total year of competitive failures, he took up college basketball and started watching the games, tracking the ‘March Madness' and the ‘Final Four'. On the couch, he would station himself and one could hear the roar of the crowd. Then one day he packed his bags and took off for North Carolina to be a Tar Heel. Mamma and I looked around the house and noticed how quiet it was as Mom casually mentioned how she missed the "Roar of the crowd".

After all these years, we watched a Mets game once again recently. All the agony and disappointment was there except for the ending, which resulted in a Mets victory, but just barely! It was nice to go back to those years, on a different couch, the same kid only older.

His old man is a little slower now, doesn't get as excited anymore and does very little snacking, but the moment shared was better than ever before.