TS: Mm-hmm. I mean, that's what it's all about. A career is all ups
and downs, but it's the sum total of the thing that's important. That's
life. We all work that way. And you can't just look at the bad and say
it's all bad. Because it isn't. One thing I've learned, you have to look
at the whole picture, not just a tiny part. You do that in a game, in a
season--and in a career, in your life. That's the most important lesson.
You can't go through life being 25-7 every year.
JM: What stays with you most about your career?
T.C. That I loved what I did. I loved pitching. I loved the
game.
Insights like these are why Seaver remains such a hero, and why he
was voted into the Hall this year (he goes in August 2) with the largest
percentage ever. It is also why a generation of 3O+-year-old men, in the
"middle innings" of their lives, still look to him as a role model, still
try to be more like him.
Ironically, I expected to be disappointed by him, in real life and
off the mound. I was ready for it. And then it didn't happen. What I did
feel, meeting Tom Seaver--who talked of Hodges and Koocman and Game 4 and
1969-- was a little of what I felt at 12-years-old again: tenta five,
drink with possibility.
Heroes don't replace our fathers because they're inadequate.
They're not. What they are is human--what we all become and learn to
accept for ourselves as grown-up men. (And, ultimately, what we'll he to
our sons, when the Dwight Goodens and Roger Clemens assume the status of
a retired Seaver and it becomes our turn to fall, temporarily at least,
short in their young eyes.) PerhaDs not ever until that mazic #41 is
retired with formality on a foreboding outfield wall surrounding the
playing fields of our youth.
And when that happens, as it must, we lose something, and gain
something, in the process. We jettison that 12-yearold boy who we thought
would last forever. And we hope, in years to come, to replay that
endless, timeless wish, that age-old fantasy of standing on the mound,
arm cocked, eyes beaded, one I knew scrapping the dirt
Once there was a time when I thought I could never be happy with
anything less than the Hall of Fame. Me and Tom. But it's easy, when you
grow up and find your gods become mortals, to live among the mortals
yourself. The trick is, when your gods stay gods, to still live with the
mortals, to number yourself among them, and be okay with that. Meeting
your god and finding out that he really is a god--what you feared all
along--is more terrifying. And more rewarding.
PHOTO (COLOR): Baseball Player
by James Mauro
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