By Denis Engel
One of my earliest Mets’ memories is Game 5 of the 1969 World Series. My second grade home room teacher, Mrs. Goudey, let us watch the game on a clunky old black and white television she wheeled into the classroom on a tall metal cart. When she turned on the game, Jerry Koosman had already let up three runs and Dave McNally was pitching a shutout for the Orioles. Then things started happening. Al Weis. Donn Clendenon. I arrived home twenty minutes later, just as Ron Swoboda hit a line drive down the left-field line. Not long after, Cleon Jones caught a fly ball in Left Field and we were the winners of the World Series.
I was seven. Convinced that the Mets would be winners forever, I eagerly awaited the 1970 season. Nope. The year after that, Gil Hodges died. 1971 and 1972 weren’t much better than 1970. 1973 was awful until the last two months. In 1976, at the dawn of free agency, the Mets won 86 games. They were in the hunt until the last two weeks of the year. But ownership wasn’t willing to invest in the team and then – in 1977 – the Dark Ages began. Rooting for the Mets was really hard. Until 1983.
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