METS FANS SHARE THEIR MEMORIES OF THE JULY 4, 1968 GAME:
Jim Eckert
February 23, 2011
I attended this game with my best high school buddy, who was a Pirate fan. We were scalped at the gate by some googly-eyed old guy who kept staring past us and never once looking us in the eye, but who kept pestering us to buy from him "the best seats in the house, the best seats in the house!" He wanted an outrageous $5.50 per seat when the normal general admission price back then was around 3-something, I think. We caved in, but the seats wound up being about 6 rows apart. Maybe it was a good thing though. Rabid Pirate fans and rabid Met fans may not be the best seatmates at Pirates/Mets games. It's quite possible Don Bosch had his career game that day. He was 4 2 2 2 with his 3rd and last Met homer in a 4-3 Met's win, so he had to be the Man that game. He had 9 RBI in 94 career Met games, so that was 22.222222etc. % of them right there. After that game he went just 2 for 17 the rest of his Met career and never drove in another run. This game was the second of a twin bill where Don was a more typical 3 0 0 0 for the first game. I was almost glad the twin bill was just a split. In those days for a Met fan - whew - more than good enough! The Mets had never had a good team to this point, and my friend could not bear Met wins over his Pirates. For him a Pirate sweep was the required expectation, a split was a misfortune that with time and therapy could be gotten over, a Met sweep!? It would have been a long glum tense July-4th-traffic drive back to Pennsylvania.
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