Linked Forever to Sports Moment

To the Editor:
If you’re a sports fan like me, the big moments are always embedded in your brain as if by a computer chip. You recall in vivid detail where you were and what you were doing like when Duke’s Christian Laettner drained the last-second bucket to beat Kentucky at the buzzer.
For me, the moment which has loomed the largest over the last 30 years is none other than the sixth game of the 1986 World Series. I am a diehard, if not rabid, Mets fan who had been unmercifully teased by family and friends about my affection for an essentially beleaguered team, the lovable losers who had not garnered a title since 1969. So you can imagine my unbridled delight to stand witness, at long last, to a winning season.
I was glued to my TV for nearly every second of that series against Boston except for one game … the 6th game. Why? I was doing something that I had not done before or since that time … camping with friends. I loathe camping, the food, and the “accommodations,” but I acquiesced when the plan was made weeks before, just trying to be social. I should have taken a closer look at the calendar.
So there I was on that damp October night, pacing the dirt, biting my nails, straining to hear the announcer above the static of an old transistor radio, being shushed by my fellow campers who were trying to sleep.
Down to their last strike, I was ready to crumble beneath the weight of fan disappointment. But no, Gary Carter wouldn’t let that happen … a base hit. The rally had begun. Kevin Mitchell and Ray Knight followed, and then the game’s hero … Mookie Wilson … who not only saw from a home plate perspective a wild pitch bring in the tying run but who battled foul after foul off pitcher Bob Stanley to finally hit that famous soft grounder through the legs of Billy Buckner to win the game … not the series. But the momentum had shifted. Once on the brink of elimination, it seemed a Mets championship was, then, a foregone conclusion.
Thirty-plus years later, the memory of that game still engenders a thrill. When I saw that Mookie Wilson would speak at The Lighthouse Church April 8, I knew I would be nowhere else.
He said, “Baseball has been very good to me.” And that precious baseball memory has been equally good to me.