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ABOUT US
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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by Jason Fry on 21 October 2024 12:19 am The Mets lost, and their season is over.
Sean Manaea didn’t have his putaway stuff, Phil Maton looked gassed, and Kodai Senga turned in one good inning but not a second. Meanwhile, the hitters worked solid ABs and kept creating traffic, but couldn’t get the big hit they needed: They were 2 for 9 with runners in scoring position, and left 13 men on base. And — because it’s not always about us — the Dodgers were relentless and effective, with a new fearsome hitter popping up for every formidable one a Mets pitcher dispatched. The Dodgers beat us; they earned their pennant and the opportunity to renew their ancient grudge match against the Yankees.
Emily and I are in Tacoma visiting the kid, a trip put on the calendar before anyone could imagine our rocket ride through Atlanta and Milwaukee and Philadelphia and L.A. The three of us wound up watching in a bar in our hotel, without sound (not a big deal as I’ve heard enough John Smoltz for a lifetime), while everyone else around us was fixated on Jets-Steelers.
It wasn’t the strangest arrangement of the series: I watched Game 5 on the plane from JFK to SEA, relying on my laptop, MLB.tv and Delta’s Wifi. (The seatback TV’s lineup of live channels didn’t include FS1.) Occasionally I was watching in full HD; most of the time the feed was blurry and blocky; multiple times it failed entirely, including with two outs in the ninth. Fortunately the Mets had a reasonably comfortable lead at that point, meaning I was only seriously agitated by having to wait 15 minutes for the Wifi to come back so I could find out what had happened. If the game had been in the balance, I suspect an air marshal would have wound up writing up an incident report.
Emily and I would have watched Game 7 the same way, probably with the same obstacles. There’s the tiniest of silver linings, I suppose. Well, that and the fact that I’ll fly back to New York wearing clean clothes — the lucky 7 Line jersey and Mookie shirt were getting a little suspect.
The Mets are done. We’ll have more to say about that in the days and weeks ahead. But right now I know this much: This team will be loved. Loved, and remembered fondly, and cherished years from now.
Playing October baseball doesn’t guarantee such fond remembrances: The chilly, vaguely misaligned ’88 Mets aren’t loved despite their many ’86 alumni; the ’22 Mets’ season-ending fizzle and quick exit ensured we’d rather not talk about them. And failing to secure a title doesn’t consign a team to also-ran status: The ’99 and ’15 Mets fell short but will be source of joy as long as there are Mets seasons to chronicle.
So it will be with this team, the Mets of Grimace and OMG and “My Girl” and Zesty Mets celebrations, the Mets of unlikely resurrections and unforeseen comebacks. They gave us a magical summer and a joyous fall. Did we want a little more than we got? Of course we did. But I will always think back on what we did get and smile.
Thank you, Mets, from the bottom of this fan’s orange and blue heart.
by Greg Prince on 20 October 2024 12:05 pm Twice, they’ve been intended to wrap things up; once, that worked. Four times, they’ve been meant to stave off an ending; that purpose was served thrice. Now, the seventh time. We’re striving for staving.
Welcome to the two most underrated words in sports: Game Six. Game Seven gets all the laurels before it becomes necessary. Quite understandable, though the fuss over a Game Seven reminds of Fonzie (Henry Winkler, not Edgardo Alfonzo) explaining to Richie Cunningham on Happy Days why he didn’t bother going out on Saturday nights: “I like to stay home on amateur night.” Judging by the Nielsens, Game Seven attracts the lookie-loos. The networks love Game Seven. Game Six can be the emotional pinnacle for those of us who’ve been tuned in since Opening Day and lived and died the Full 162 and then some. Game Six is something you couldn’t have imagined, can’t take for granted.
That’s where we are.
The first Mets Game Six was supposed to be a wrapper-upper. The Mets led the A’s three games to two in the 1973 World Series. We couldn’t have imagined any of it, not when we were in last place on August 30, not when Dave Augustine hit that ball that was surely going out, not when rain soaked Chicago for consecutive days at the end of the schedule, not when the Big Red Machine got to chugging. Not, for that matter, when mighty Oakland made off with Games One and Three by a run apiece. Yet here we were, in the sunny Coliseum, one Tom Seaver start from our second world championship. Somehow, Seaver — and his opposite number Catfish Hunter — are reduced to asterisk status in the regretful retellings of the first Mets Game Six. It usually boils down to a pitcher the visiting manager didn’t use. Maybe a Stone’s throw would have made all the difference. As was, Seaver gave up a pair of runs over seven innings, with Tug McGraw allowing another in the eighth. Catfish, as much a legend as Tug and ever bit the Hall of Famer Tom was, scattered four hits in seven-and-a-third of one-run ball. The omnipresent Darold Knowles and the Cooperstown-bound Rollie Fingers finished up. A’s 3 Mets 1. There’d be no wrap on the Series that day. There’d be a rap on Yogi forever after.
The second Mets Game Six did wrap things up. Not nice and tidy, but whaddaya want after sixteen innings fueled by an intense desire to not face Mike Scott the next day? 1986 National League Champion Mets 7, 1986 National League Runner-Up Astros 6. No matter what happens in L.A. tonight, the 1986 National League Championship Series remains for the foreseeable future the only postseason series the Mets have ever taken in six. Of all the Mets Game Sixes, this, to the Metsnoscenti, can be referred to as simply “Game Six,” and everybody in earshot oughta know which one you mean.
 No real argument. Unless you mean the third Mets Game Six, which was also a doozy. The other team was the one looking to put a wrap on the matter at hand. If there’s a Game Six, somebody is one game from clinching. In the 1986 World Series, it was the Red Sox, up three games to two, not to mention up five runs to three with two out and nobody on in the bottom of the tenth, Gary Carter coming to the plate. This is the Levy’s Rye Bread of Game Sixes: you don’t need to be a Mets fan to know it (though it helps if you want to love it). They even made a movie out of this Game Six. It wasn’t a good movie, but the real-life footage of Mets 6 Red Sox 5 will always be timeless.
 Real life was better. The fourth Mets Game Six did its job. It staved off elimination. I’m comfortable in asserting that “nobody” talks about it or remembers it. Of course some people don’t have selective amnesia, but when the 1988 National League Championship Series stirs conversation, it’s rarely to revel in recalling the 4-for-4 performance of Kevin McReynolds that included a homer and three RBIs, or the way David Cone redeemed his idiotic ghostwritten column by going the distance (a.k.a. nine innings, lest you not believe such pitching stamina is impossible) in defeating the Dodgers, 5-1. It happened. You can look it up. Actually, you don’t have to. I just told you about it. You can go back to spitting at the thought of Mike Scioscia now.
The fifth Mets Game Six was a Viking funeral for a saga of a season that could be properly laid to rest only by setting it ablaze at sea. That’s what Braves 10 Mets 9 slamming shut the 1999 National League Championship Series felt like to me. It’s still the grippingest Mets game I’ve ever experienced, and that includes the aforementioned “Game Six”. I was crushed and I was elevated. Even the Game Sixes that get a little lost to the mists of time can do that.
The sixth Mets Game Six, and the most recent, started with a bang in the form of a Jose Reyes leadoff home run. Who doesn’t like a tone being set? The Mets needed to win this Game Six if they wanted a Game Seven in the 2006 National League Championship Series. They built a 4-0 lead, they carried it to the ninth, and Billy Wagner, bless his heart, gave half of it back. Whoever bought the red Shea Stadium seat I sunk into at the instant of the final out of Mets 4 Cardinals 2 probably wonders what that residue they can’t quite scrub clean is from. It’s from the portions of my soul that seeped out of my body as Wagner made the game we needed closer and closer and closer. That’s why they call them closers. John Franco came out to wave a towel prior to Game Four of the 2024 NLCS, and I was delighted to see him, because it wasn’t a late inning in some year when Franco was a Met. I know Franco piled up tons of saves. I know Wagner piled up tons of saves. I know Franco and Wagner are two of the best lefty closers ever. I’ll applaud Billy should he make the Hall this January. I think Johnny deserved a closer look. But Jesus H. Alou, does every outstanding Met closer have to be the way they are — close your ears, Edwin — especially in a Game Six? Franco gave up a crucial run in 1999’s. Armando Benitez did the same. As for Wagner, he never saw action in Game Seven of the 2006 NLCS. And no Shea Stadium seat can claim to be 2006 World Series-used.
So there you have it. Six Game Sixes thus far. Four Mets wins. Two Mets non-wins. In the seventh Game Six, only one result is an option. When we get it, we’ll invite the lookie-loos over for Game Seven, no hesitation.
But first, Game Six.
by Greg Prince on 19 October 2024 12:19 pm Thursday night I came home from Game Four of the National League Championship Series resigned to the 2024 Mets season being imminently over. Friday morning I awoke thinking only that there’d be a baseball game come late afternoon and that the Mets would be playing in it, and between the regular season and the postseason, the Mets had won ballgames 95 times this year, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe they might win another. I didn’t stress about it. I didn’t worry over the odds of coming back from down three-one. I didn’t shrink at the specter of Ohtani and Betts and Muncy (oh my). I just knew the Mets would be playin’ some ball, and that the Mets have some pretty good ballplayers, and, well…play ball!
So the Mets did. They played the hell out of ball in Game Five, hitting balls particularly hard and in a timely fashion, while their pitchers stopped throwing quite so many balls. It all added up to a glorious chorus of “Stayin’ Alive,” which you could hear in the echoes of “My Girl,” which was actually performed live by the Temptations pregame. “My Girl” was for Francisco Lindor, who doesn’t come to bat without the song’s first verse echoing through Citi Field. “Stayin’ Alive” was the mission.
Mission accomplished. For Game Five, that is. The temptation is to look beyond the Mets’ 12-6 throttling of the Dodgers — is it possible for a score to simultaneously not indicate how close and not close a game was? — and think about what it will take to win the next two contests and therefore the pennant. Tamp down that temptation. The next mission is Game Six and Game Six solely. Peer too far ahead and you’re standing on shaky ground.
But we ain’t too proud to beg for a whole lot more of what kept us alive in Game Five.
Pete Alonso, in his third final-ever game as a Met at Citi Field, changed the tenor of this NLCS in one mighty swing, golfing a Jack Flaherty pitch to the western edge of the 7 Line Army seats, where the night before, I can personally attest, it grew chilly and hopeless. Francisco digs the Temps. Pete raises the temperature. Two Mets had been on when Alonso attacked, meaning the Met lead was 3-0. The message to Dave Roberts, regarding his starting pitcher who stymied us in Game One, was (and I’m borrowing this Karl Ehrhardt-worthy line from author Michael Elias) Flaherty will get you nowhere.
Go back, Jack, and do it again, the Mets lineup had to be thinking. The second inning saw a leadoff double from Francisco Alvarez wasted, except for the notion that Alvy was suddenly off the schneid, but the third crumbled Dodger pitching in Sensurround. Flaherty walked his first two batters, proving that it’s not only Mets pitchers who do that. Starling Marte, very much living up to his first name’s first syllable, doubled both runners home, and it was off to the Met races. With two outs, there was an Alvy single, a Lindor triple, a Brandon Nimmo base hit, and an 8-1 Met lead lighting up the Citi scoreboard. Yeah, the Dodgers had snuck a run up there off recurring lifesaver David Peterson in the second, but who was worried about the Dodgers when the Mets were ahead, 8-1?
Everybody, obviously. Have you seen these Dodgers? I saw them with my own eyes in Game Four and I considered looking away. Geez, they’re dangerous. For two nights, they were Murderer’s Row taking batting practice in-game, and the Mets might as well have been the 1927 Pirates calling it a day, per legend, before a single pitch was thrown in competition. Except we know the 2024 Mets are not a give-up crew. Maybe they wouldn’t be a champion crew, but they weren’t going to go down without a fight.
Nor would the Dodgers. They indeed got to Peterson enough to rattle Carlos Mendoza’s nerves sufficiently to call on Reed Garrett to protect what was now an 8-2 lead in the fourth. But then Jesse Winker added an RBI triple to the one Lindor hit the inning before (because triples are just that easily come by), and good ol’ Mets fan favorite Jesse got driven in by the blessedly active Jeff McNeil. Winker and McNeil replaced J.D. Martinez and Jose Iglesias in Mendoza’s lineup once Mendy remembered Jeff and Jesse are his guys, too. Gotta love an adaptable skipper.
Garrett now had an eight-run lead to safeguard, until it was a five-run lead, courtesy of Andy Pages’s second home run of the game. Pages was L.A.’s nine-hitter. If their last batter can swat two home runs, I’d hate to see who they have batting first.
Oh right, Ohtani. Mendoza knew that and brought in Ryne Stanek to strike out Shohei to end the fifth. Excellent plan.
Stanek, more or less the Mets’ primary setup man, stayed into the sixth, which started nervously with a Mookie Betts homer, but then settled down via three quick outs and not a single base on balls. Peterson had walked four and Garrett one, but the bullpen was now out of the carousel business. It made a world of difference. From a throat-clearing advantage of 10-6, McNeil contributed his second sac fly of the day to provide an extra firm cushion, and, in the eighth, Marte’s fourth hit brought home the Mets’ twelfth run. By then, Edwin Diaz was in the midst of succeeding Stanek’s two-and-a-third of scoreless ball with two superbly effective frames of his own, and, yes, the Mets were alive. Certainly not dead yet.
Big change from the night before when I felt compelled to wake my wife around one in the morning and debrief her on the somber scene at Citi. Yes, it was fun for many reasons, and I was delighted to get the call from Jason to join him in the center field orange grove — and thanks to not-my-first-rodeo layering, I didn’t even shiver very much — but yeesh. The joint was half-empty when it was over, and who could blame the Mets fans who didn’t want to push midnight just to take in every last inch of a 10-2 debacle that had pushed us to the brink of elimination? At least their departure made the diehard trudge to the subway a breeze.
Anyway, that, along with every trip to the edge of every 2024 abyss, feels distant in the wake of Game Five, a Game Five that now precedes a very necessary Game Six. The way the Mets do the things they do might eventually end us. But they also keep us going.
by Jason Fry on 18 October 2024 10:11 am With the Mets batting because they had to in the eighth inning of Thursday night’s game, I got out of my seat at Citi Field and took a walk.
The immediate reason was straightforward, but there were other reasons, too. My feet were cold. My legs were stiff. I was upset. And I knew that for various reasons it was unlikely that I’d see Citi Field again in 2024.
I wound up circumnavigating the lower level, going from my seat with the 7 Line low down in 141 past the postseason Fox pavilion and over the Shea Bridge, along the first-base line around to the top of the rotunda, up the third-base line, then through the plaza of eateries and back to my seat. Five innings earlier that would have been a foolhardy mission guaranteed to chew up multiple innings. But now it was easy: Most of the crowd had departed, leaving behind Dodger visitors and Met diehards. It reminded me of a meaningless game in May, one that hadn’t drawn too many people in the first place because it was a little cold and had seen the attendance diminish from that low base because things weren’t going the Mets’ way.
If that sounds like a terrible comparison to wind up making in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, well, you’re right in some ways and not in others.
The Mets had fallen behind as early as one can on a leadoff line-drive home run from Shohei Ohtani, but tied the game in their half of the first when Mark Vientos cracked a homer of his own off Yoshinobu Yamamoto. But the Dodgers got two more in the third and kept battering away at Jose Quintana and the Mets pen; by the time I took my walk they were up 10-2 and Danny Young was on the mound, left to absorb whatever further harm L.A. had to administer.
As fans our natural inclination is to see losses as failures. The sports-talk radio version is to filibuster about desire and will; the sophisticate’s version is to spotlight various guys on our side who didn’t get it done for various reasons to be explored via analysis. The former is straightforwardly stupid; the latter looks smart but is often misguided.
Out in center field in the 7 Line’s orange domain, there was muttering that Quintana was being squeezed. I couldn’t tell from ~450 feet away, where I was sitting between my father-in-law and Greg (our first game together since last June), but between innings I peered at previous Dodger ABs on Gameday and found no obvious signs of injustice.
What was happening was more telling: Quintana succeeds by not throwing strikes, with his pitches darting or drifting out of the confines of the zone with hitters enticed to follow, leading to swings and misses and weak contact. That worked against the Brewers and Phillies but not against the Dodgers: They refused to expand the zone, either taking free bases or forcing Quintana to relocate those pitches to where they could be squared up.
Calling that a failure of Quintana’s is a stretch; it’s far fairer to give credit to the Dodgers. Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Tommy Edman all had big nights, while Max Muncy set a postseason record by reaching base in 12 straight plate appearances before Young finally (and mercifully) retired him in the eighth. Watching the Dodgers’ relentless lineup reminded me of watching the Mets during their joyous summer run: AB after AB driving up pitch counts and squeezing out an enemy pitcher’s margin for error until the breakthrough felt inevitable.
A few Mets heard it from the crowd, most notably J.D. Martinez, but that was mostly frustration needing an outlet. The team looks tired, and understandably so — I’m exhausted and all I’ve done is watch them. And the nagging injuries look like they’re piling up: Brandon Nimmo literally limped through the evening and delivered one of the Mets’ two runs by beating out the tail end of a double play on basically one foot, which is the kind of thing that will get lost amid bigger storylines but shouldn’t.
But again, turn that around: The Dodgers squeaked past the Padres nagged by worries about their starting pitching, which is in tatters after the kind of season that called for a MASH unit. They’re on the brink of the World Series because of that relentless lineup but also because they’ve had three suspect pitchers — Jack Flaherty, Walker Buehler and now Yamamoto — come up big.
The TLDR of the above, offered by Greg in an aside that was gloomy but clear-eyed: Maybe they’re just better.
All of this was competing for space in my brain when I took my walk. I stopped for a moment in the plaza beyond the home run apple, looking up at the frieze above Shake Shack and remembering it in its old place atop the scoreboard at Shea. (Its reclamation was one of the few things we agreed the Mets had got right while Citi Field was in the growing pains of its first few seasons.)
Those Mets had been on my mind all night, partly because Robin Ventura and Edgardo Alfonzo had returned for the first pitch and John Franco had led a pregame hollering of LET’S GO METS. But looking up at the old frieze with its remembrance pin over the outline of the World Trade Center, I realized I wasn’t disparaging the 2024 Mets by comparison. I found I wasn’t angry at them, or dismayed at seeing their season shoved to the brink. All of a sudden it really did feel like a May game, one that hadn’t unfolded the way you wanted but still meant a night at the ballpark, which always feels like getting away with something.
I know myself well enough to grasp that some of my acceptance is me trying to outfox the baseball gods: During my walk a fan yelled “Mets in seven!” to no one in particular and I smiled and thought, “Well, why not?” And some of it is stubborn faith in how often this edition of the Mets has delivered a surprise; on the subway I nodded at Francisco Lindor‘s postgame declaration that “if you have no belief, you shouldn’t be here.”
I won’t be there Friday afternoon — not with the 7 Line, and not on my couch. I’ll be on an airplane heading for Seattle, investigating seatback channel options and hoping I don’t have to spring for in-flight Wi-Fi. But if I have to, I will — and you better believe I’ll be wearing my Mookie shirt under my 7 Line jersey, with Derpy Flag in my lap and talismanic utterances on my lips.
In other words, I’ll be there in the way we always are, in the way that matters. There’s clear-eyed assessment of one’s chances and there’s belief. I’ve got room for both.
by Greg Prince on 17 October 2024 11:20 am Sometimes when I go grocery shopping, I’ll grab an item that I’m pretty sure we’re out of, only to come home, start putting things away and discover, oh, we didn’t need another of these.
The Mets can surely relate. They went out and mindlessly tossed another NLCS Game One in their cart on Wednesday night at Citi Field when what they really needed to grab was a fresh NLCS Game Three. Instead, they rolled down the aisle with a hope-depleting 8-0 loss that was far too much like the series-opening 9-0 defeat from Sunday at Dodger Stadium.
What are we supposed to do with two of practically the same thing?
Check the shopping list a little more closely tonight, fellas. Seriously, we truly don’t need another game that begins to get away a couple of innings in; stirs here and there like something good might happen; fizzles; and then altogether drifts out of reach. As in Game One, slippery defense, unclutch hitting and relief pitching that doesn’t keep things close constituted a recipe for futility. The wrinkle differentiating Game Three from Game One, besides autumn’s chill back East and a diving Tyrone Taylor evoking Tommie Agee at the warning track, is we had a known 2024 quantity on the mound in Luis Severino, as opposed to Kodai Senga pitching for the third time all year. Severino wasn’t absolutely dreadful à la Kodai, except in the field (apparently Francisco Lindor’s Gold Glove nomination was accidentally forwarded to him). Between Sevy’s and his batterymate Francisco Alvarez’s combining for three misplays, two Dodgers scored in the second and an eight-ball instantly appeared in front of the Mets.
Also, neither the pitcher nor catcher did a damn thing at the plate. Sevy’s excuse is the DH exists. Alvy’s? He found his way to Citi Field, but is otherwise lost. Can’t even blame the wind for his lack of hitting. A couple of Met fly balls that might have flown farther seemed to have gotten caught in gusts, preventing the Mets from competing early, but those are the sorts of things a fan points to when his team had nothing else going for it on offense. And the Mets had nothing going for it on offense.
Walker Buehler, still in something of a post-Tommy John phase, navigated four scoreless innings and then turned matters over to that Dodger bullpen we’d heard so much about. We’d hear more about them if we could hear over the sound three Dodgers sluggers made with their bats off Met relievers. Kiké Hernandez — POW (if just barely over the left field fence). Shohei Ohtani — BAM (with runners in scoring position, natch). Max Muncy — ouch (there wasn’t much noise left to be made by then).
The only good thing about a series that has produced a 9-0 loss and an 8-0 loss is there was a Met victory in between. The lopsided shutouts feel like microsweeps, but they’re each just one game. Just two games out of three thus far, with as many as four to go. Math class doesn’t need to be in session to tell you how many of those the Mets need to win.
The correct answer is one tonight. Without that, the cart might as well roll into the parking lot as empty as it was when our trip to the postseason supermarket began.
by Greg Prince on 16 October 2024 1:12 pm The first pitch that will carry the most weight in Game Three of the National League Championship Series will be thrown by Luis Severino. Our emotions will ride on that pitch and however many more Luis throws, each guaranteed our overwhelming support — despite Luis’s fondness for the black jerseys that will infiltrate our heretofore purely orange and blue postseason at Sevy’s behest (“I like black,” the starter shrugged.) But should FS1 deign to treat home viewers to the full gamut of pregame ceremonies, the first pitches certain to hit with their own kind of emotional power will be delivered by players who haven’t worn a jersey of any Met shade in competition for quite a while.
Minutes before Severino adjusts his cap to confirm he’s on the same PitchCom wavelength as Francisco Alvarez, Darryl Strawberry will set and fire to Dwight Gooden. Thursday night, in advance of Game Four, it will be Robin Ventura doing the honors, with Edgardo Alfonzo on the receiving end. And before Game Five Friday, Matt Harvey will look in at the target set by Yoenis Cespedes. You live long enough, even Matt Harvey and Yoenis Cespedes are old guys you bring back for special occasions.
Also, you live long enough, and you can’t help but notice that you begin to run out of older guys.
Is it really a Mets postseason extravaganza without the 1969 Mets and the 1973 Mets represented at Citi Field except on the flags they earned? It is, apparently. Time inevitably nibbles away at the front end of what you consider ages ago. The 1986 guys Straw and Doc, they’re the ones from way back now. Robin and Fonzie have matured into fellas from a past that doesn’t carry a patina of present anymore; the turn of the century, when they thrilled us most, is suddenly about a quarter-century gone. Harvey and Yo? They played in the majors as recently as 2021 and 2020, respectively, which is barely a blink. Yet they’re representing 2015, a fabulous Met year that occurred nearly a decade ago.
Perhaps a Met or two from an October more than fifty years ago will make the Citi scene if there’s more autumnal scenery to adorn beyond the NLCS. 1969 Mets and 1973 Mets were always first-pitch staples when later Met clubs attempted to live up to their accomplishments. Perhaps a family member of some player or manager since departed and still missed will be announced to the crowd and accept in Dad’s absence the warm embrace of a chilly 44,000. I don’t doubt outreach has been made. I also don’t doubt it’s not as easy as it used to be to get a 1969 Met or a 1973 Met to the mound or for those gentlemen to toss a ball to their liking. Too many we cheered for, not only when they were winning pennants but when we were trying to win more, simply aren’t around in as great numbers as they once were. For those who are, maybe the trip to Flushing is not one easily traversed.
Fifty-five years ago today, the 1969 Mets became world champions. No living 1969 Met is younger than 76. As we’ve been reminded repeatedly in 2024, too many 1969 Mets are no longer with us. That’s just the way it goes across 55 years. The distance from 1969 to 2024 is the same as the distance from 1969 in the other direction to 1914. I couldn’t tell you how many world champion Boston Braves from that year (“Miracle Braves,” no less) were showing up at ballparks and delivering ceremonial first pitches in 1969. On the other hand, what happened on October 16, 1969, is forever young. The Mets were in their eighth season. Winning at Shea Stadium was a wholly new phenomenon. You can’t look at photos or film clips or video footage from then and not feel as if something eternal had just been born. In my case, it was lifetime fandom for this franchise. That, I’ve learned anew of late, is also forever young.
Reaching October, succeeding in October, the possibility of once again winning it all in October transcends the wear and tear of chronology. It’s 1969 forever. It’s 1986 forever. It could be 2024 forever.
It’s definitely time for another first pitch.
The latest episode of National League Town adores Mark Vientos and feels pretty good about his teammates. You can listen in here.
by Jason Fry on 15 October 2024 10:54 am Eight pitches.
They were the first sign that Monday afternoon’s Game 2 might go better than Sunday’s steamrolling. Happily, they weren’t the last.
Leading off against Ryan Brasier, the first man in a parade of Dodger relievers, Francisco Lindor worked a 2-1 count, then fouled off four sliders and fastballs. Brasier, possibly a little frustrated to see the debut hitter chomping away at his small allotment of pitches, opted for a cutter and didn’t throw a good one — Lindor walloped it into the right-field bullpen, which I’ll always think of as Daniel Murphy Land, the place where a ball thrown by Clayton Kershaw once returned to earth with Murph’s first name literally burned into it by the contact with his bat.
Mets 1, Dodgers 0, and the sigh of relief was audible all over Mets Land.
That sigh got a little deeper and easier once Sean Manaea reported for duty and looked sharp, erasing Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts, then retiring Freddie Freeman on a first-pitch fly ball after a walk to Teoscar Hernandez.
Before we return to our usual battle with Mets-fan anxieties, consider this series from the Dodgers POV: In April they lost the first two games against us at home before administering a 10-0 corrective; they then curb-stomped the Mets at Citi Field at the end of May, with the finale featuring Jorge Lopez writing his own pink slip with a glove tossed into the stands.
They must be thinking, “Who are these guys?”
All that came before OMG, before Grimace, before the Zesty Mets, before all the other delightful oddities of a cherished summer. To shift from narrative to W-L statistics, it was before the Mets rose from the dead to the top of the MLB ranks the rest of the way. And it was before Manaea saw Chris Sale at work on the mound and thought, “maybe I should try that.”
When Manaea was on, which he was for most of his Monday tenure, he had a terrifying lineup looking frankly befuddled, with Ohtani unbalanced by his cross-fire mix and Betts unable to square anything up. It was odd — odd with a side of delightful if you’re a Mets fan — to see the best hitter on the planet and a fellow perennial MVP candidate groping for answers.
With Emily stuck on a Zoom call for work (she was far more horrified than you are, so cut her some slack), I watched all this from the unfamiliar confines of our downstairs bedroom, but with every cherished talisman either on my body or close to it. 7 Line jersey with the Mookie shirt beneath? So clad. When a Met was in scoring position I called upon the powers of Derpy Flag, a somewhat wan little felt Mets pennant handed to me by Mr. Met himself. And of course I had my usual exhortations aimed at players on the other side of the continent: look for your pitch, don’t help him, eight guys behind you, hit it to anybody, and of course plenty of hang with ’em and c’mon babe and you got this.
All that worked very nicely in the top of the second, with Landon Knack (whom I knew only from a not particularly distinguished tenure on my fantasy-baseball roster) replacing Brasier. After a first-pitch single from Starling Marte, Jesse Winker wrung out a walk. Jose Iglesias popped up, but Tyrone Taylor smacked a double down the left-field line for a 2-0 Mets lead. An overeager Francisco Alvarez popped up his first pitch, leaving a precious gimme run on the table, and Dave Roberts ordered Knack to put Lindor on first and face Mark Vientos.
Vientos then put together one of the best ABs of his burgeoning young career, hunting fastballs while fouling off sliders in the zone and ignoring ones below it. Knack’s ninth pitch was not only a fastball but a middle-middle bullseye, and Vientos whacked it over the fence for a grand slam and a 6-0 Met lead.
(I’ll pause here for a bit of wisdom from Ryne Stanek in the Athletic, offering a pitcher’s perspective on long ABs: “You only have so many tricks. It makes the at-bat substantially harder when you’ve exposed everything you’ve got.”)
Six-zip in the second and then slowing pull away is an excellent recipe for scoreboard success and calm fans, but would that it were so simple.
The Mets kept putting together good ABs — Pete Alonso had a 10-pitch one before being called out on what might or might not have been a strike, and even Alvarez looked more disciplined in his last go-round — but they couldn’t get the big hit against the next two acts taking the stage at Relieverpalooza: former Met Anthony Banda (“Banda MACHO!” I hollered, as I did when he was pitching for us with considerably less success) and Brent Honeywell Jr., whose career is a study in perseverance. (He’s also the cousin of former Met Mike Marshall — the dogma-defying pitching guru, not the former Met first baseman and hulking ex-Dodger. Though genealogy suggests Honeywell is likely a more distant cousin of that Mike Marshall too — not to mention, quite possibly, you and me and Greg and Charlemagne.)
While the Mets slumbered in key spots, the Dodgers started to do what a lineup like theirs will do. (I had moved upstairs post-Zoom call and will accept that I changed the luck and should be castigated, since I Ought to Know Better.) Max Muncy hit a solo shot off Manaea in the fifth and Betts and Teoscar Hernandez opened the sixth with walks. At which point the Mets defense sprung an ill-timed leak: Iglesias started a double play before he had properly secured a Freeman grounder, one that came with an added degree of difficulty after kicking off the back of the mound. Instead of two outs Iglesias had none, the bases were loaded with nobody out, and oh boy.
Exit Manaea, enter the affectless Phil Maton. Maton coaxed an infield pop-up from Will Smith and then got another grounder, this one from Tommy Edman in the hole between first and second — a difficult play to begin with, made harder by Freeman screening Alonso. The ball went under Alonso’s glove and it was 6-3.
Maton walked Muncy and had to face Kiké Hernandez, who’s infamous for being death to baseballs in the playoffs. Maton got a hard grounder to Vientos, who bobbled it for about the 8,000th heart stoppage of the inning before regaining his grip and starting a double play, which the Dodgers challenged for reasons best known to them.
With the Mets still unable to tack on, Stanek took over for Maton in the seventh but looked like he ran out of gas in the eighth, yielding a two-out single to Edman and walking Muncy. Which meant it was time, yet again, for us all to be strapped into the Edwin Diaz Rollercoaster, and with Kiké Hernandez at the plate as the tying run, no less. The same Kiké Hernandez who’d hit into that big double play.
Oh boy.
Diaz’s fourth pitch was a slider that sat middle … and which Kiké got under for a harmless fly ball.
The Mets finally scratched for a badly needed run in the ninth off Edgardo Henriquez, who looks like he’ll be wipeout reliever but is still finding his way a bit. And so it would be Diaz against Andy Pages to lead off the ninth, followed by Ohtani and his attendant Furies.
Diaz’s first three pitches to Pages were distressingly high; the third was hit just hard enough to float over the infield for a leadoff single. Diaz then walked Ohtani, with his pitches elevated and looking a little flabby.
Oh boy yet again, but unlike against the Phillies, Betts wasn’t the tying run. (Thank you and bless you, Starling Marte.) And Diaz found his fastball and punched Betts out. Then he threw all fastballs to Teoscar Hernandez, erasing him on six pitches. That brought up Freeman, who looks more formidable playing on one leg than most guys look on two. Diaz worked the count to 2-2 on fastballs, then uncorked a beauty of a back-foot slider, which Freeman swung over to put the game in our column.
Can 6-0 feel like not enough? Yes. Can 7-3 feel too close? Also yes. Did the Mets win the game and even up the series? Three times yes. Three times yes, a big exhale, and back we come to New York and whatever awaits. Gather your talismans, find your center … and buckle up.
by Greg Prince on 14 October 2024 9:48 am You have to laugh it off. “Ha.” There ya go.
Seriously, though — the Mets just endured their worst-ever postseason loss in terms of run differential, and it wasn’t even close. Dodgers 9 Mets 0. The Mets had never lost in the spotlight portion of October by more than six. Few teams get beat by a lot in October. Teams that get to October tend to be skilled at keeping games close.
We know that the true worst postseason losses are the heartbreakers, the choke jobs and the eliminators. This was none of those. This, the now fifth October 13 loss in Met postseason history against no October 13 wins (but who’s superstitious?), was just an old-fashioned blowout, old-fashioned like 2017 when the Mets visited Dodger Stadium for regularly scheduled ass-kickings and none of us who could keep our eyes open blinked when the Mets would lose, 12-0, behind Robert Gsellman, or 8-2 behind Tyler Pill. The 2017 Mets weren’t supposed to be the historical precedent filtering into my head during the first game of the 2024 National League Championship Series, but there they were. Goodness knows the 2024 Mets didn’t show up.
Everything about Game One was off, starting with practically every pitch Kodai Senga threw and didn’t get over in his inning-and-a-third of woebegone work. Whatever Senga found as he ramped up his on-the-fly rehab program in Philadelphia vanished once the Mets went west. His many bullpen buddies varied in their degrees of effectiveness, but, boy, did a lot of them get used. Maybe the Mets didn’t pick the right day to subtract an additional arm from their relief corps.
There was virtually no Met hitting. Jack Flaherty saw to that. There was lousy Met baserunning on those rare occasions when Mets made cameos on the basepaths. Jesse Winker saw to that. The Mets defense also managed to create holes for the Dodgers to burst through, and like the Rams and Chargers on any given Sunday, they repeatedly crossed the plane of the goal line. For ill measure, Brandon Nimmo — the only Met extant from the aforementioned Gsellman and Pill outings — let it be known he’s dealing with a touch of plantar fasciitis, in case you wondered why he was limping. You’re forgiven for not noticing if you didn’t, as the Mets were collectively in limp mode.
Overall, it was as dismal an opener to a vital series as could be imagined, except it wasn’t a heartbreaker or a choke job and certainly not an eliminator. It was the opener. One of seven games, the first of seven games. In the second, Sean Manaea will start. It’s an afternoon game in L.A. Manaea has been dependable for months, awesome under the sun. Remember that flirtation with perfection versus the Orioles in August? Sean shone brighter than anything in the sky amid that sunny matinee. Remember that makeup game in St. Louis? It was also a Monday in daylight, also a beauty. That was the day it occurred to me that Manaea could be a postseason ace for this team. Here’s his chance. Here’s our chance. We still have a big one.
We had a big one on Sunday night and it blew up in our faces, but that’s over. Consider it laughed off.
by Greg Prince on 13 October 2024 3:10 pm The hours before first pitch of a series that determines who goes to the World Series, regardless of time zones or network dictates, drag longer than any other hours on any clock anywhere.
The Mets are going in Game One with a pitcher making his third major league start of 2024. His manager acknowledges three innings is his limit. And we all treat this as normal. Hopefully every Kodai Senga inning will be worth its weight in ghosts.
Fresh from loosening up in the Arizona Fall League — a circuit usually referenced only by fans of teams who don’t have anything else going on in a given autumn — Jeff McNeil has been added to the NLCS roster. I’m pretty sure I worried about what his absence would mean to the Mets’ depth when he went on the IL in early September. I’m also pretty sure that, as was the case with Senga, I’d all but forgotten about him in the going-forward scheme of this team while he was gone. Here’s to injured players working their way back to viability in the shadows of a postseason sprint and then contributing to the remaining legs of its marathon.
To make room for McNeil, Adam Ottavino was elbowed off the active roster. Despite muttering to myself, “may that be the last pitch Adam Ottavino throws as a New York Met,” at the end of one of his particularly non-stellar outings a few weeks ago, let the record show that Otto set down the Braves in order in the seventh inning of the opener of the September 30 doubleheader in Atlanta; you know which game that was. He was in line to be the winning pitcher once the Mets put six on the board in the eighth, a statistical nicety that vanished once the Braves regrabbed the lead (a turn of events that itself became the stuff of trivia once Linsanity reigned in the ninth). Ottavino, 39 next month, was a rock of this bullpen for two seasons before tumbling downhill this year. Carlos Mendoza didn’t invite him throw a pitch in either the NLWCS or NLDS, so his potential utility for the next helping of playoff alphabet soup seemed vague at best. Good outing or bad, the guy has emitted excellent-teammate vibes every step of the way. The Mets seem to inspire those in one another, and they don’t come out of thin air. Veteran leadership sometimes appears in the form of a sweeper/sinker specialist working his way through difficulties as much as it does an obvious MVP type. Whatever happens next, appreciate ya, Adam.
Whatever happens next? Are we any closer to Game One? Presumably yes, but my clock has barely moved since three seconds ago when I last checked it.
by Greg Prince on 12 October 2024 1:52 pm We knew it would be the warm California sun glowing amid local start times of 5:15 PM Sunday and 1:08 PM Monday. We just didn’t know in which part of the Golden State Ol’ Sol would be splashing down on the Mets. Now we do. It’s glamorous L.A., it’s gleaming Dodger Stadium, it’s the hallowed Dodgers.
In the spirit of brushing aside the Braves, where we couldn’t possibly beat them; taking care of the Brewers, who started the season by shoving us into an 0-3 hole; and flipping off the Phillies, for whose fans flipping off is the national bird, I say to the Dodgers, “Bring it.”
Or I’d say it, but it’s already been broughten.
They have the most famous and accomplished baseball player in the world, one who would, if his health allowed him, pitch while he isn’t hitting and running like nobody has ever hit and run (you save a lot of energy not fielding). They have the other most versatile superstar of modern times, a high-caliber outfielder who became a representative infielder and then went back to the field from which he came as needed, his offense never to be sneezed at. They have a slugging first baseman who has haunted Met pitching since Met pitching meant Pat Misch, Dillon Gee and a journeyman righty named Jeremy Hefner. They have all kinds of irritants infesting their lineup, a bullpen hyped as unhittable, and an ace we tried real hard to sign before he passed on us to go to them.
They won 98 games, the most in baseball. They’re the one-seed, five notches higher than us. They have home field advantage. They’ve been in the playoffs a dozen consecutive years, annually arriving in comfort, never having to cross their fingers and toes that they’ll survive through the last day of the schedule and then hold their collective breath regarding the day after the last day.
Bring it on. Bring on the starpower one witnesses while staring down at the lights of L.A. Bring on the New Balance commercials that would make me despise “Hollywood Swinging” if it hadn’t established itself as such a great song in my head in 1974. Bring on Joe Davis, voice of the Dodgers doubling as the voice of Fox. Bring on as many clips as producers care to show of Mike Scioscia going deep and Jorge Lopez losing control.
I would have been glad if it had been the Padres emerging from the other NLDS and taking the West Coast version of the Unity Cup/Sewing Machine/Pen. Not any more or less glad than I am that it turned out to be the Dodgers. To me, it didn’t matter and doesn’t matter. I’m here for the Mets. The Mets are here for this. Maybe the Mets owed the Padres a little payback for October 2022. Maybe the Mets owe the Dodgers a quick thanks for May 2024. They were the opponent when Lopez lost his mind and glove in rapid succession. The Mets spent a month bottoming out. Losing all three games of a series to Los Angeles when L.A. visited Queens in May marked the spot from which the Mets had to begin bouncing back. I know the debacle that left us 22-33 removed my from thinking the notion that we were still living in the aftermath of the remains of 2022, just waiting for one more injury to heal or one more slump to lessen. The slate needed wiping clean, and getting swept by the Dodgers when we did was the wet rag that did it.
Best record in either league after the game when Lopez’s glove landed in the Citi Field stands? The six-seed Mets, at 67-40. Also, we took two out of three at Dodger Stadium from them in April, outlasted them in the 2015 NLDS, swept them in the 2006 version, and mended millions of hearts broken in Brooklyn and beyond when we came along in 1962 to supplant their borough-abandoning asses. (If we’re gonna go for history, let’s go all out.)
Just so there’s no confusion, first pitch Sunday is 8:15 PM New York time. Monday it’s 4:08 PM New York time. That’s right — our time.
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