Tim Brown has long been a baseball writer I've enjoyed reading. You may know him from his co-authoring Jim Abbott's biography, Imperfect or The Tao Of The Backup Catcher, or The Phenomenon, with Rick Ankiel or his time as a baseball features writer for Yahoo Sports. He has a new book out about Nolan Ryan, Nolan, The Singular Life of An American Original and in a recent interview with the podcast National League Town, Brown acknowledged that he'd grown up a Mets fan. So I reached out and asked if he'd answer a few questions about Nolan, the book, but mostly his Mets fandom. He willingly obliged.
What is the origin of your Mets fandom?
From somewhere in the late ‘60s, I’m pretty sure, I have a memory of my mother in the kitchen of our house in White Plains. A white T-shirt is on an ironing board, stretched taut. She is leaning into the iron, which is angry – hissing and steaming. After a few minutes like this, she holds up the T-shirt, inspects it, flaps it against the air to cool it off, smiles and hands it over.
The iron-on decal had come, I think, in the Sunday paper, tucked in with the ads and comics. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. A cartoonish Bud Harrelson, in his Mets uniform, was wielding the hose of a vacuum cleaner, sucking up a ground ball on a beige infield.
“Mom,” I said, holding up the decal.
She knew what to do.
I wore that shirt until caricature Bud Harrelson was little more than a ghost, until the corners of the decal had loosened and frayed, until the sleeves crept all the way to my bony shoulders. I swear at the end mom must have buried that thing in the backyard, but not before the Mets had won a World Series and not before I was hooked for life.
You were born in 1962, which means that in your high school years you went through one of the darkest periods in franchise history (1977-1980). What do you remember about those teams?
I remember Tom Seaver not being on them.
Early in the summer of 1977, I went to Germany as part of a month-long exchange program. When I returned, Bud Harrelson was batting, like, .169 and Tom Seaver was, like, gone. Just, gone.
The Yankees were great, the Mets could hardly win a game and my braces were carving up the inside of my mouth, none of which I thought was unrelated.
I know I worked on liking Doug Flynn, Steve Henderson, Pat Zachry and Dan Norman. I promise, I did. But they were always Not Tom Seaver to me.
What that era was about for me was the New York newspapers. I read everything, following the dramas and the occasional victories, becoming a fan of the men (and they were, then, always men) who wrote the stories and one day deciding I wanted to be just like them.
How did you feel about Tom Seaver?
Well, he was 1B to Bud’s 1A. I fancied myself as a shortstop and discovered that not only did I have his glove (or so I thought), but also his bat (which became a problem.)
As much as I admired the game’s great players, even when I was young I must have related more to those who struggled with it. Maybe I recognized – or sensed – the determination required to hold a job in baseball despite hitting .188. That there must be something special about that guy that I couldn’t see. I was always pretty sure they’d get a hit next time. Or the time after that.
Since you wrote a book about backup catchers, who are your favorite Mets backup catchers?
I liked Mackey Sasser. I liked Barry Lyons. And I loved Duffy Dyer.
You're 24 in 1986 and not yet a full-time baseball writer. How closely did you follow the 1986 Mets?
I didn’t miss a game. Those Mets were the most bad-ass baseball team I’d ever seen. I could hardly believe they were Mets.
Where were you when the ball went through Bill Buckner's legs?
I was in the top row of Larrabee Stadium in Ventura, Ca., covering a football game between Ventura College and Santa Monica City College for the Camarillo Daily News, my first full-time staff job. I was making $220 a week, so I had it made.
Someone nearby had a transistor radio, the same way I’d gotten World Series updates 17 years before.
“The Mets are going to lose,” the person said.
“The Mets just won,” they said then. “Something about Buckner.”
It wasn’t until I got back to the office that I got the details.
As a baseball writer you've had some encounters with members of the 1986 Mets over the years. Do you have a favorite story about one of them?
After seven years at the L.A. Daily News, I took a job covering the Reds for the Cincinnati Enquirer. I lasted seven months before moving on to cover the Yankees for the Star-Ledger. The manager of that Reds team, in 1997, was Ray Knight.
The Reds were interesting (Deion Sanders, Barry Larkin, Pokey Reese, Bret and Aaron Boone, Ruben Sierra, Pete Rose Jr.) and not very good. The general manager, Jim Bowden (I told you they were interesting), fired Ray in the middle of that summer.
Through a real estate agent I’d gotten to know, I found the address for Ray’s house and drove over. There was a hose stretched across the cement pathway to the front door. I knocked, unsure what would come next. On what must have been a miserable day for him, Ray opened the door, had me in and for at least an hour we sat in his living room and talked about the job, about life, about what might be next for him. And I’ll always appreciate that he didn’t throw me into the street.
Nolan Ryan has one of the best relief appearances in Mets history- 7 innings in Game 3 of the 1969 NLCS and he pitched in Game 3 of the World Series and was on the field for one of Tommie Agee's amazing catches.
What's the most notable thing he remembers about that?
What I asked Nolan about was Game 3 of the World Series. The bases were loaded with Orioles. Paul Blair was coming to the plate. Tug McGraw was warm in the bullpen. The Mets led, 5-0. And Gil Hodges, the manager who never quite got comfortable with Nolan, came to the mound. There was a short talk. Hodges returned to the dugout, leaving Nolan out there. And Nolan struck out Blair with a curveball, looking.
“Do you recall any of that conversation?” I asked.
“No, I don’t,” he said.
“Do you remember being surprised he left you in?” I asked.
“I don’t know that, either,” he said. “No.”
You know, every once in a while you hit a dead end.
Ruth, his wife, was in the ballpark for the Tommie Agee catch, which, of course, came shortly after her husband’s pitch.
“I thought it was probably going to be a hit,” she said. “But probably everybody did.”
When I write a book review, I usually end it with "This is a book for people who like ______" What's the fill in the blank for your Nolan Ryan book?
… stories about the people behind the numbers. Why they did what they did. Who they were when they were doing it.
Lastly, the day of Game 6 of the 1986 NLCS my mom made me go to Hebrew School with the Mets trailing 3-0. I got to listen to the 9th inning comeback there.
But 40 years later, I'm still mad that my mom made me go. Is that justified?
I don’t know, man. Everybody’s got a story about watching the game on TV, listening on the radio, sitting in the bleachers, watching a junior college football game. You, however, have the opportunity to tell everybody about the wonderful (if occasionally misguided) mother you had. What a gift!
I suppose that's fair (but I'm gonna keep asking people about it!)
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