Victory Rain

The hero who refuses to age strode into the stadium from the bullpen. Thousands of the visitors, dressed in navy blue and white, stood to hail his arrival. Their thunderous applause only momentarily paused their day-long tormenting of the home team’s faithful. We sat glumly as we watched the hideous farce.

It’s a familiar story. The Yankees are used to dominating other teams – the Mets are no different. Rooting for a perennial winner must be nice. I wouldn’t know anything about that. Mets fans have had their moments of elation, but in comparison, those moments have been few. Six times a year, we cheer, we hope, and we pray for them to shed the ‘loser’ tag against the mighty Yankees. Most of those games end – just as this one was about to – in disappointment.

For many Yankee fans, winning all of the time just isn’t enough. They feel the need to laud it over everyone, all of the time. Even when they lose, they don’t accept it graciously. Instead they go to their fallback position: “We have 27 championships, how many does your team have?”

They are, without a doubt, the most insufferable fans in all of sport.

Maybe it’s not their fault. Like any spoiled child, it’s often the rearing that is to blame. One insufferable generation breeds the next, and so on. A semblance of humility, for most Yankee fans, is never part of the deal.

“It’s only one run,” I said to my daughters. I was technically correct, but knowledgeable fans knew better. With Rivera on the mound in the ninth, the game was as good as over.

My youngest held her hands up to catch the raindrops and apparently saw an omen in it.

“Victory rain!” she said.

I liked that.

The first two Mets went down quickly. With two strikes on the third batter the visitors rose. It got very loud as they hooted and hollered for strike three. There were so many of them that you would have thought that we were in Yankee Stadium instead of Citi Field.

Ball four!

What? That’s not what’s supposed to happen. I felt emboldened and waved the standing fans down. It wasn’t over yet. There was hope. More importantly, there was victory rain.

When Mariano yielded a single to the next batter the atmosphere in the stadium shifted.

We had the mojo now.

My oldest daughter hadn’t been to a game since she was a child. She’s not a big baseball fan, but she looked forward to spending the day with her sister and me at the ballpark. I kidded her during the drive in that she would be treated to both a rain delay and extra innings. The start of the game was delayed by 90 minutes.

A base hit tied the game and took us to extra innings.

By the time that the Mets loaded the bases in the bottom of the 10TH, the visitors had lost their swagger. They looked worried. Mets fans, who ask for so very little, urged the team on.

“Little hit, come on, just one little hit.”

We got what we wanted and jumped up and down as the line drive settled in right center field.

Victory rain!

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Tagged as: citi field, july 3 2011, mets vs. yankees, mr. met, ray's blog, subway series 2011, victory rain

Author Bio:

Ray Colon has written 136 posts on Ray's Blog.

He works with numbers for a living, but don't judge - boring accountants need love too. His blog has no niche (unless writing about things that are important to him is a niche). Some folks cringe when he gets “all political” on them, but he does it anyway when he's in that kind of mood. Sometimes, he writes something nice about someone, but you shouldn't get used to that. His first book, the one he hasn't written yet, is not available on Amazon. Subscribe to Ray's Blog via RSS  or Email.

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