By the time I was 5 I would come to understand that Superman, Batman and Spider-Man were not actually somewhere outside our apartment on West 10th Street.
That wasn't true of Tom Seaver. He was the superhero we could go see in Queens.
The best pitcher in the game was on my team, had my name, wore the same cap I had. He would certainly understand why I took a black felt-tip pen and, with great deliberation, consecrated the back of my pinstriped Mets shirt with a ragged "41."
I never forgave my parents for leaving New York City to move to Iowa (long story), but even in that foreign land, when I traced my finger over the raised orange stitches of the "NY" on my cap, the same as his cap, with "Tom Seaver" scrawled under the brim in black felt-tip pen, I knew he was out there.