Turning Tom Seaver

It was full-blown baseball nerdiness, but we enjoyed it anyway. It was the kind of thing you’d never figure out unless you lived in our world. And we only did it whenever one of us had a birthday.

My brother Eric, my friend Ron and I had a mutual passion for baseball that far exceeded anything our mid-1980s world had to offer. So we expanded that world on our own. We went to stores and had our T-shirts silkscreened with Yankee uniform numbers and names long before sporting goods stores started selling those shirts. We joined fantasy baseball leagues long before those statistics could be compiled by web sites. We played Wiffle Ball for hours with make-believe lineups made from major-league teams.

And then there was this birthday thing. Instead of saying “Happy 17th, Warren,” my brother and friend would say to me, “Hey, you’re Mickey Rivers this year.” Instead of being 23, I was “Don Mattingly.” And instead of wishing one of them a happy 31st, I’d tell them they’d reached “Dave Winfield.” I guess when you’ve got so many uniform numbers floating around amid your baseball memories, you’d might as well find a use for them. So, during each birthday, we’d connect our years-old to the numbers worn by those pinstriped heroes we used to cheer for every summer night.

And during those years when there were no great Yankee uniform numbers attached to our new age, it was even more fun to try and remember lesser-known players who’d worn those digits. “You’re Bob Shirley,” one of us would say when we’d reached age 29, harkening back to the left-handed reliever of the mid-1980s. Or “Happy birthday, Kevin Maas” when we turned 24, referring to the slugging first baseman who started off his Yankee career like a superstar, then quickly became a much more pedestrian hitter.

I am pretty sure that the woman who would eventually marry me heard some of these conversations, and yet she chose to remain with me. You’d have to ask her why. I guess the important thing to tell you is that as I stand two days shy of 41 years of age, I do not partake in this nonsense anymore. I don’t sit around and think about the ballplayers who have worn the number my aging body will be donning throughout the year. That’s really kids’ stuff, to be honest.

Tom Seaver. Eddie Mathews. Sterling Hitchcock.

OK, so maybe I do think about it a little bit. Just for a minute. Then I move on to other, more mature stuff. Like writing a blog about baseball and life.

Number 41 is not a big Yankee number. There have been somewhat effective pitchers with the number, such as Hitchcock and some guys from my childhood, like Joe Cowley and Shane Rawley. But it’s not a number you’ll see on a pinstriped uniform for sale at Modell’s. Over in Queens, however, Number 41 means an awful lot. Even more than it does in Atlanta, where Eddie Mathews’ number 41 is retired. Mathews was a great player, but he played nearly all of his career in Milwaukee, before the Braves moved south. For the Mets, however, Number 41 represents the only player in team history ever to have his number retired.

They called him “Tom Terrific,” and Tom Seaver lived up to every bit of that nickname. In a 20-year career, Seaver won more than 300 games and became one of the best pitchers of his era. He spent 11 of those years with the Mets, and most New York fans will tell you that the Mets should never have let him go. As a Yankee fan, I always followed Seaver from a distance, except when he showed up as a Yankees broadcaster after his retirement. But when I’d go out on the field to pitch, I’d always hear coaches comparing my delivery to that of Seaver. I had the full windup, the “drop and drive” delivery that saw my right knee scraping the ground and my right foot pushing off the rubber, followed by the overhand delivery with the good follow-through. Just like Seaver.

Of course, that delivery was the only similarity you could find between my pitching style and that of Tom Seaver. Once the ball left my hands, you might compare me to, say, Charlie Brown. But for an average pitcher, I was apparently pretty to watch. A vague reminder of a classic.

So that brings us to age 41 – a little more vintage than I envisioned myself being back in my pitching days. But here I am, Tom Seaver in age. I’m not dropping and driving anymore. Just workin’ for a livin’, raising a couple of kids, and still in love with the cute redhead I met back when I was still pitching and making those corny birthday jokes.

It’s not the kind of thing they retire uniforms for, I guess. But I’ll take it. And as for the growing older bit, why worry? There’s lots to look forward to. After all, I’m only one year away from Mariano Rivera. Three away from Reggie Jackson. And five away from Andy Pettitte.

Plenty of numbers to throw around for a good long while. Baseball nerds unite. And blow out your candles.