The video is either amusing or appalling, depending on your point of view: Dozens, maybe hundreds, of Miami Heat — what’s the word, clients? Customers? Consumers? Surely not fans, but for lack of a better term we’ll use it — “fans” banging on the doors as Game 6 of the NBA Finals took an upside-down turn for the better for the home team.
And security not letting them back in, no matter how hard they banged on the doors.
There are any number of reasons why you might leave a sporting event early. Your wife might be going into labor, for instance. You might be going into labor. It may well be that you need to show up within the hour to collect your Powerball winnings or lose your fortune forever. The series finale of “Breaking Bad” is on and your DVR is busted.
Those are acceptable reasons.
Semi-acceptable reasons? It’s a regular-season game and you hear traffic on the Belt is unbearable. It’s a regular-season game and traffic on the Cross Bronx is at a standstill. It’s a regular-season game that started 2 1/2 hours late because of rain, and you have to get up for work in the morning.
Note: Under these circumstances, it is mandatory to start with “it’s a regular-season game …”
Now, if you ever wondered whether God really cares about what happens in sporting events, you have an answer, because a just and righteous God would never, ever, ever, allow the Heat to win a championship — or, better, allowed their customers/clients/consumers to enjoy a championship — two days after such a shameful exodus. So if there’s one consolation, it is this memo to everyone: God doesn’t care who wins and who loses. He takes no great joy or sadness out of a ball drizzling through a first baseman’s legs or a puck taking a similar path through a goalie’s pads.
He has better things to worry about.
We are left to simply seethe about the secular unfairness of it all, at the maddening reality that those same customers/clients/consumers who fled for the exits when all seemed lost in Game 6 — and who tried, hilariously, to break down the doors when it all came back — were among the many citizens who shut down downtown Miami when the Heat won Game 7.
Look, Miami isn’t the only place where fans abandon their teams regularly to get a head start on a night at a joint such as the Clevelander. From the moment the Dodgers showed up in Los Angeles, the big joke about SoCal fans was they arrive late and depart early. And maybe there were fans who would do the same thing back in the day at Ebbets Field, but …
Oh, who are we kidding? Brooklyn fans wouldn’t do that.
All I could think of as those fly-by-night Heat customers/clients/consumers evacuated the arena at the end of Game 6 in their white linen suits and their deep-fried tans was my old man, who always preached this: If you bought a ticket, you stayed to the final out/buzzer/horn/race/curtain call. And it made me happy I was raised right.
I’ll say this: The last time I saw Springsteen at the Meadowlands, I had an early flight the next day, and I had been standing for six hours straight, and I finally gave in and left during a monologue in the first encore … and I still feel terrible about that, still feel like I might get a knock in the middle of the night and be served notice I never again will be allowed to witness live music.
And here’s the thing: If that happened? I’d deserve what I had coming.
Whack Back at Vac
Joseph Pollicino: I know it’s fashionable to say Patrick Ewing deserves a head coaching job, but I think he would be totally overwhelmed by the media, and his answers do not sound like someone who you would put in charge of your multimillion dollar asset like your basketball team.
Vac: That’s usually the reasoning you hear for why he doesn’t get hired, and that may well be a very fair assessment of how he would do as a coach. But I’ve also talked a lot of basketball with Patrick through the years. I would still roll the dice. But it’s not my money, and it’s not my team.
Mark Garabedian: I believe Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler have the talent to at least approximate Seaver and Koosman, assuming both stay healthy. I’m not delusional, we still need offensive help in the offseason, but having these kids will make this season more bearable. “Ya gotta believe!”
Vac: There really are a lot of impossible-to-crush fans out there, of all our New York teams, and it’s gratifying in my job to see them emerge from hibernation. Knicks fans have been doing that for three years. Islanders fans did this year. Mets fans will eventually, too.
@redseadweller: Just watched the 1977 Mets yearbook highlights where Mets wives were playing softball against the cast of “Happy Days.” Potsie had good glove.
Vac: That’s actually very true: Next time you see an episode from the Jefferson High years, check out Richie and Potsie turning the 6-4-3 in the opening credits.
Andy Romanic: A few weeks ago, the Mets’ radio announcers were talking that since the banning of “greenies” in MLB clubhouses, the day games after a night game has produced some really bad baseball. Your thoughts?
Vac: I think they’re right. But I also think it’s better to have sluggish baseball without amphetamines than sharp baseball with them.
Vac’s Whacks
Maybe what we saw Friday night out of Zoilo Almonte was a peek at a brilliant career to come, or maybe it will be the only time he’ll ever cross our consciousness. Either way, only baseball provides these unexpected tales so regularly.
* Will you hate me if I tell you I’m still watching “The Killing”?
* Haven’t been able to get this lyric out of my head since early Wednesday evening: “Things ain’t been the same/Since the blues walked into town …” Godspeed, James Gandolfini.
* When you’ve had the kind of relentlessly pedestrian baseball career Jon Rauch has, wouldn’t it behoove you to be a better guy?