GAINESVILLE, Fla. – As a lifelong baseball fan who still wakes up a lot of summer mornings and glances at the big-league standings and last night's box scores, a common theme has developed this season.
I check to see what the New York Mets did. Somewhere,
Michael D. Enoch is probably having a good laugh.
First, why the Mets? Well, rookie
Pete Alonso is the culprit for my unusual curiosity. The Tampa product, who three years ago was
Amazing Alonso for the Gators, is making a strong case for National League Rookie of the Year.
Alonso homered again Saturday at Wrigley Field and now has 26 on the season. The only player in the majors with more is reigning NL MVP
Christian Yelich.
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Alonso's emergence as one of the game's top sluggers has inspired flashbacks to Alonso's final stretch with the Gators in 2016. Alonso returned from a broken hand late in the season to help the Gators make a run to the College World Series.
"I honestly feel every time he comes to the plate, he is going to hit a home run," Gators coach
Kevin O'Sullivan said at the time. "It's remarkable. Every time he comes to the plate, everybody in the dugout gets quiet, everybody in the stands is watching."
Alonso's tape-measure home runs have created similar sentiments three months into his major league career. With 26 home runs, Alonso has already tied the Mets' franchise record for home runs by a rookie – set by
Daryl Strawberry in 1983 – and the season is less than half over.
Next, who is
Michael D. Enoch? He remains the biggest Mets fan I've ever met. He would be thrilled by Alonso and consider him must-watch TV each time he steps into the batter's box.
And he would be amused at my sudden interest in the Mets.
You see, I've been a diehard Braves fan since first falling for the sport as a young boy in East Tennessee, where you rooted either for the Reds or Braves. Those were the closest major league teams. Since my paternal grandmother lived in the metro Atlanta area and my dad spent part of his childhood there, my allegiances revolved around what happened at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.
The Braves of my youth still pop fresh in the memory. I might have trouble recalling how many yards Gators quarterback
Feleipe Franks threw for last season, but I can still recite ex-Braves outfielder
Dale Murphy's battling line from 1983, the second of his back-to-back National League MVP seasons: .302/36/121.
By the time I moved to Florida and started working for Enoch as a teenager in Orlando in the mid-1980s, the Braves were dismal and the Mets were winning a World Series. A Queens-born native New Yorker and fun-loving sports fan, Enoch constantly ribbed me about the discrepancies between our teams' fortunes.
I can still see him bursting into my hotel room at an arts festival in Cocoa Beach when
Mookie Wilson's grounder slid under
Bill Buckner's glove and
Ray Knight scored to force Game 7 in the 1986 World Series.
We connected through baseball and when I was 16, I started traveling the country for two months each summer to PGA Tour stops and other events where his food-service company served as the primary concessionaire. It was hard work and long days, but the experiences added up much more than a summer job around the corner from my house. We made regular stops in Williamsburg, Va., Bethesda, Md., Westchester, N.Y., Pittsburgh, Ann Arbor, Mich., Chicago, Detroit and Memphis.
I once served
Walter Payton an Italian ice at the Buick Open in Grand Blanc, Mich. Breaking down a tent following the 1989 PGA Championship north of Chicago, two men drove up in a golf cart as the sun began to fade following
Payne Stewart's victory. I didn't recognize the driver, but the passenger was
Jack Nicklaus. He asked if I had any ice cream left. I gladly dug out a bar from the freezer. My last summer working for Enoch,
Bob Costas stopped by for an ice-cold lemonade at the PGA Championship outside St. Louis.
The off-days were the best. That's when we looked at the MLB schedule and tried to find a game. It was during those summers I went to my first games at Yankee Stadium and Wrigley Field, and to Three Rivers Stadium and Comiskey Park.
Time passed and I finished college and started my career. Enoch continued to operate his company based in Orlando, primarily at art festivals throughout the state in the winter and spring before he headed out on the road for the summer. He eventually remarried and began to split his time between Chicago and Orlando.
Meanwhile, I moved around the state and eventually started to cover the Devil Rays, traveling around the country living out a childhood dream, filing stories from Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park and Safeco Field. We lost touch over the years and last saw each other by chance in December 2009 at a Christmas festival he was providing food service for in downtown Tallahassee.
I introduced him to my wife and newborn. He shared news of his recent heart surgery. Still, he looked good and had the same upbeat demeanor I remembered. We said we would stay in contact. We both got busy and lost touch once more.
It wasn't until a recent Google search that I discovered that
Michael D. Enoch, age 60, had
passed away five years ago this month. I felt sad and reached out to his wife. It was his heart.
I've thought of him many times since, but more so lately whenever I check to see how the Mets did last night and whether Alonso hit another one. Of course, I always check the standings first.
The Mets are eight games back of the Braves this morning in the National League East. He'd have something to say about that. We would definitely agree on one thing: Alonso is amazing.
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