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Greg Prince and Jason Fry
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.

Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.

Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.

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Now Our Problems Are Crystal-Clear

A while back Emily and I lucked into a little windfall — not win-the-lottery stuff by any means, but enough for a bit of irresponsibility. Whereupon I broached the idea of HDTV.

Where HDTV was concerned, I'd been waiting for next Christmas for several Christmases now, determined to get a big flat-panel set with various bells and whistles for a bargain price. Somewhere along the line, I'd grown comfortable with next Christmas turning into next Christmas, forever and ever amen. I wasn't an HDTV refusenik, I just understood what I wanted and was waiting for the world to come to me. Or so I told myself.

When I raised the possibility of HDTV post-windfall, Emily agreed immediately. So immediately that I quickly realized something: My wife had been ready for HDTV for some time now, and with other things to do with her time, had resigned herself to waiting for her stupid husband to come around. I'd gone from our house's technology tester to its Luddite laggard without even noticing.

Last week I finished my due diligence and bought a 46-inch Sony Bravia LCD TV and a whole lot of gear to go with it, some of which we might actually need. When I told a colleague who made the HDTV plunge years ago, he asked how I liked it and looked aghast when I said I wanted to wait until I had all the gear on hand before I hooked things up. He shook his head pityingly and said, “That's another game you're not watching in HD.”

And he was right. Since getting things cabled and labeled and assembled, I've watched some Discovery HD (dude, that beach looks soooo real) and a DVD (“Pirates of the Carribean 2,” arrrr) and they were cool and all, but they're just distractions from the real purpose of HDTV, which is to watch baseball.

Tonight was my first chance to really sit back and take in a game in HD, and it lived up to the hype. The first thing I noticed was that I could see the spray pattern of the blue airbrushing on the Mets' helmets, and the little ridge of the NY decal. Then I saw I could practically read Ron Darling's score card. Sweat, dirt, rosin, stubble — all seemed like they might jump out of the set. I could count the growth rings on Jamie Moyer and Tom Glavine, those oldsters who used to never face each other and now do all the time, and Antonio Alfonseca's sixth finger was finally not just a blur of pixels that I felt vaguely guilty for trying to stare at. But the real jaw-dropper was looking at the live shot from that camera high behind home plate, the one that surveys the entire field, and realizing I could read the out-of-town scoreboard.

Alas, what I saw with this hallucinatory clarity was a mess. Not an unexpected mess, but a mess nonetheless. We're not hitting, between whatever's wrong with Wright (could Keith Hernandez just go chat with him, or at least buttonhole Rick Down?) and whatever's wrong with Delgado and Beltran coming back from injury. And say what you will about the limitations of Moises Alou and Shawn Green and Jose Valentin, but without them guys like Damion Easley and Endy Chavez are exposed for what they are: supremely useful players and members in good standing of a championship-caliber club, but not everyday players.

This isn't to say we should overreact, or even react too much. All teams slump. All teams have to fight through injuries. Even superb setup guys (like, say, Pedro Feliciano and Joe Smith) are going to roll snake eyes now and again. We're not the Phillies, at least — my goodness, remember when Pat Burrell was scary, instead of this pitiable lummox who can't field and runs the bases so poorly that his manager didn't trust him not to screw up trotting home from third? We'll come through this, maybe tomorrow or this weekend or next week or on the other side of Hell Month, and I'll be surprised if we're not in good enough shape to put the hammer down and head for October.

But we're not there yet. And being confident the down nights will soon pass doesn't make them any more fun to watch. Even when you're marveling at the details.

8 comments to Now Our Problems Are Crystal-Clear

  • Anonymous

    HDTV is very addictive. Before SNY I was watching meaningless September Yankee games instead of the Mets because the YES HD is so good, God help me.

  • Anonymous

    Yeah, on Monday night Emily and I were watching Yanks/White Sox for a bit, and we were so HD-entranced that we forgot to boo, hiss and make religious signs averting evil. It's sneaky that way.

  • Anonymous

    Hi Jason,
    CONGRATULATIONS on stepping up to HD. Compare the HD picture to that of SNY standard defiition and you'll wonder how you ever lived without HD in the past. Hope you've hooked the audio up to a 5.1 receiver so you can really get the feel of being at Shea while on your couch – in fact, we were at a night game (the two balk El Duque farce against Philly last year) sitting in the lower mezzanine above home plate and decided to record it on our DVR as well. When watching the recording we thought we were back at Shea, especially when the home plate camera was used. It is that realistic!
    Please know only Met home games are transmitted in HD – road contests are standard definition only (bummer cause they have a better record away from Shea). All Yankee games are in HD, home and away.
    I strongly suggest you catch the series of HD test patterns broadcast on INHD (mojo) Sunday mornings at 7:00 AM to properly adjust the contrast, brightness, color, convergence, etc. in order to get the best picture quality possible with your new set. You would be surprised what a slight change here or there can do…, you might even be able to catch one or two strands of grey hair not covered by Keith Hernandez!
    Enjoy!

  • Anonymous

    I can't wait for your followup post pondering why, exactly, away games aren't in HD.

  • Anonymous

    In whatever definition it was broadcast, I didn't care for Willie's moves last night. My considerable gut had Ben Johnson doing something good in the ninth but there's Endy, who could really use a night off, pinch-hitting. Unnecessary, I thought. Ditto for the one-inning-and-out rule Randolph instituted for Schoeneweis, Wagner and Mota; never thought I'd be asking for two innings from Scott Schoeneweis. The whole thing could be chalked up to not-our-nightness (felt more like a Citizens Bank game save for there being only one longball instead of thirteen), but it was there for the freaking taking and it was left right there…by Wright, by Lo Duca, by Delgado, by the whole bunch of 'em.

  • Anonymous

    In all fairness, Endy missed a bunt base hit by the width of a blade of grass.

  • Anonymous

    Yes, but Ben Johnson was going to win the game with a home run, according to my plan.

  • Anonymous

    I just assumed it was only a matter of time before the Phillies bobbled the game away.
    On HD one could see Reyes was out by a half-step to end the contest.