On the morning of June 16, 1978, one year after the Mets traded Tom Seaver to Cincinnati in a deal that came to be known as the Midnight Massacre, Seaver taught his 7-year-old daughter, Sarah, how to fill out a baseball scorecard. He showed her where to write the players’ names and explained what 6-4-3 meant, and BB, and FC, and all those backward Ks. By that night, at Riverfront Stadium, Sarah was putting her new skills to work as her father pitched for the Reds against the St. Louis Cardinals. “We got into probably the seventh inning or so,” she said recently, “and I notice Mom’s crying — every once in a while there’s a tear rolling down her cheek.
Even the greatest Met ever could have his heart broken by the Mets.
