Thing is, this doesn't usually matter. I have never gotten an out of memory error from a leak in Java. Now compare that to all the development time I've saved by not having to deal with pointer arithmetic. I consider it a huge win. It's all about the type of apps you're making.
Besides, there's too many variables in your anecdote. Is it a laptop from 1995? Is the OOM from a bug that could/should be fixed?
I've heard a story that Minecraft's RAM consumption got a lot worse after Notch stepped down. The new developers refactored the code for OOP best practices (such as passing a 3D coordinate as an object rather than "int x, int y, int z"), which tremendously increased the number of allocations and thus GC pressure and memory usage. So it's fair IMO to blame this to a language. Having good practices lead to such consequences is terrible design.
I don't do anything special to play; my sessions used to run into multiple hours, during my peak years of play.
I suspect that it's not fair to blame Java for whatever problem you were having, though.