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ABOUT US

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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Do Get Me Started

One of my least favorite conversational tics is somebody rebuffing me with, “Don’t get me started.” We’re having a conversation. We’ve by definition started. Don’t get you started? It’s too late, Billy Crystal. We’re already in progress.

I got started on one of the longest conversations of my life eleven years ago today, February 16, 2005, when Faith and Fear in Flushing signed on the air. We’re still talking. We’re not stopping. Why would we?

Truth be told, valued reader, you are getting only part of the conversation. It’s not as if I’ve been intentionally holding back; rather, I just don’t write everything down. The deepest oral history of the New York Mets as regards their past, present and future (but mostly their past) has gone unrecorded, for it consists of me wandering around at any given hour of the day or night talking to myself about the Mets. These sessions usually occur when I’m on the verge of doing something else, but instead of doing it, I put it off because I’m too heavily engrossed in a spontaneous Metsian monologue that would pass for a dialogue if only it wasn’t just me going back and forth. This spoken stream of consciousness usually spans a multitude of things that happened many years before, though occasionally a handful of things that are due to happen scant hours from now, whenever now happens to be.

The subtopics are varied, but the umbrella subject is inevitably the Mets. Even when it begins about something else, it transitions into the Mets. The Mets are what I’d rather think about, so the Mets are what I tend to wind up talking about, even if it’s only the furniture, the cats and my inadvertently present ears that end up hearing it. For all I know, these talks might be vastly entertaining. They might be better than TED Talks and at least as good as Teddy Martinez talks. I’m too much in the middle of them to objectively assess.

I’ve been co-authoring a blog for eleven years, yet I still talk to myself much of the time about the Mets. If I didn’t have this outlet, I suppose I’d be doing it all of the time. So thank you for making my behavior on the whole at least marginally socially acceptable.

It’s no coincidence that our twelfth year of conversation commences with the onset of another preseason. The pause button that was tapped no more than lightly in winter gets its definitive push ahead. Press play. Follow the favorite mantra of Texas Ranger minor league invitee Ike Davis.

Start us up. If you start us up, we’ll never stop.

We love a sport in which the clock plays a marginal role, yet we love to count down. We count down to Pitchers & Catchers (increasingly a misnomer, since a majority of Mets, regardless of position, flock to Port St. Lucie ahead of instinctively ballyhooed reporting date). We count down to the first exhibition game, a.k.a. game that doesn’t count. We count down to the first real game. We count down Magic Numbers when we’re lucky enough to be dealt a stack. Baseball may be timeless, but ain’t it funny how time keeps slippin’, slippin’ into the future?

Predictions and projections dot the landscape. How are the Mets gonna do? How many are they gonna win? How many are they gonna win by? How many will they have to win in order to have a shot at winning more than they won the year before, when they almost won it all? Much as we pretend what happens in Spring Training counts for a ton, we pretend to have a handle on what will happen when the games really do matter.

And we don’t know. We just don’t. Sometimes that’s frightening. Sometimes it turns out to be exhilarating. All of the time it keeps us engaged, whether it’s in the welcome company of others who share our preoccupation and conversation or quietly to ourselves when nobody’s listening, except for ourselves.

11 comments to Do Get Me Started

  • Inside Pitcher

    Happy Blogoversary Greg and Jace, and thank you for all that you have given us!

    Let’s Go Mets!

  • Kevin From Flushing

    Here’s to 11 more (at least!)! I’m so happy this blog is a part of my life.

  • That Adam Smith

    And so it begins. A big year (hopefully). And you are not the only one who talks to yourself, out loud, about the Mets. Thanks for writing so much of it down for us.

  • The irony of Ike’s walk-up song resonated so much, as the music would cut off leaving “Don’t make a grown man cryyyy-y-y” unspoken, but hanging in the silence over his at bat as a cruel coda for that low outside pitch he would end up flailing at.

    It was complemented by Justin Turner’s brief experimentation with “Call Me Maybe”.

    Oh, my goodness….the things we saw.

  • Dave

    And as somebody tweeted a couple of days ago, we won’t get to hear the Dropkick Murphys several times at each home game anymore. I’ll miss that more than Call Me Maybe, even if those particular Murphys are a 3rd rate imitation of the Pogues. But I digress.

    But yes, Ike or no Ike as a lefty bat off the Rangers’ bench or in Tulsa or wherever their farms teams call home, start us all up. Tis the season.

  • APV

    Doesn’t one of the Mets use Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold” for walk-up music? Time to crush some opposing pitchers’ faces.

    Call Me Maybe; oh my lord, more like call me never. Seriously, one of the worst songs of all time. Right down there with Ice Ice Baby and the Macarena.

    Happy Anniversary Greg and Jason! Here’s to another 111. :)

  • SkillSets

    But we in the NL East always used to look forward to Braves camp, and Ted Turner Talks. Congratulations and keep the Mets fun flowing!

  • DAK442

    Congrats and thanks for 11 years of excellence. You guys play no small part in my Mets life and helped make the choke years and the empty ones following more tolerable.

  • BlackCountryMet

    God Bless Baseball! And thank you to FAFIF for constantly improving my knowledge of the Mets. CANNOT wait for this season, it has the ability to be EPIC