Very Much At Home

I won't be at Game Seven tonight, but my stomach is already on a train and my heart is running on the express track.
Next stop…well, we'll find out pretty soon, won't we?
I like Willie Randolph. He said the extent of his pre-Game Six pep talk was to go over travel plans for Detroit. Nice. Willie's been a winner all his life (or haven't you heard?).
I haven't been a winner all my life, but I was very early on. My first experience with baseball was as a winner: six years old, 1969, on top of the world. There was nothing about it that suggested it was to be expected, so I didn't and it wasn't. I've only had three more cracks at it since then and only one that came through all the way.
But this is where I came in, a Mets fan whose team was going to the World Series. That's home for me. That is where I want to go again, that is where we are too close to not get to now. Starting late Tuesday night — that was Game Five if, like me, you've lost all concept of days of the week — the greatest thing there could be was Game Seven, specifically its existence. I've never been to a Game Seven. Most Mets fans haven't. I don't have to be there tonight. As long as the Mets are, that's sufficient.
Technically, the rules are the same as yesterday. Lose yesterday and it would be over. But yesterday was about survival. Today is Game Seven. We win and we go on to greater things. We lose and we don't, just like yesterday, but we're not thinking that way anymore, are we? It's both not as bad and a whole lot worse.
Yesterday I threw everything I had at survival, all my Faith, even the No. 41 throwback jersey I was given as a gift eleven years ago, something I'd never worn to Shea before last night because I didn't want to spill anything on it. I guess really I was just saving it up. I don't know that I have any clothing, any lyrics, any stats, any gimmicks anymore. I just have my team in Game Seven. We're both home.
And I don't intend on losing again.