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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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Mystery Mets

Who are these guys and what have they done with the 2023 Mets?

Actually, don’t answer that, because who cares? And don’t look for them, because this is fine.

Unlike Wednesday’s heroic, up-off-the-mat victory, there wasn’t a lot of sweat expended Thursday in urging the Mets across the finish line. The game was essentially over in the first, when Pete Alonso followed a Francisco Lindor triple with a laser beam over the left-field fence. That gave the Mets a 2-0 lead, and they were just getting started: Alvarez homered again, Daniel Vogelbach was heard from, and Lindor went 5-for-5, missing a double and a cycle by a couple of degrees of angle off the bat. (Points to Todd Zeile, who noted after the game that Lindor might well have had the cycle if the D-Backs’ ballboy hadn’t made a startlingly athletic move to avoid one of those two triples.)

With Met hits raining down all night — 17 of them, a whole week’s worth in June! — it was easy to miss Carlos Carrasco completely smothering the Diamondbacks, who looked befuddled early and then dispirited late. (In part, alas, because the marvelous rookie Corbin Carroll suffered a scary-looking injury to a shoulder that’s cost him considerable time in his young career.)

Carroll’s health aside, it was a laugher, when we’re all still reeling from a June that featured barely a guffaw. A night to hope for cycles and tut-tut about benches clearing (an overreaction) and admire young rookies and appreciate old veterans, instead of waiting for something else to go wrong.

Everything worked all night, after a month when pretty much nothing worked. I’d say go figure, but baseball will make you look foolish all the time. It sure is a lot more fun when you’re surprised by things going well, though.

8 comments to Mystery Mets

  • Joe D

    Gotta be a real arsehole to complain about anything tonight, but I’ll take a kick at the can…

    Buck was going to bat Canha for Lindor in 9th, with Francisco needing a 2B for cycle and a 6-hit game (against a position player on the mound). Could it be Buck wasn’t aware?

    Thank goodness Pham was retired making this moot!

  • Matt in DE

    Only caught the first three innings because, you know…work. Glad I caught most of the fireworks (7-0 at Zzzzz time).

    Still…woke up this morning expecting to see a 10-8 loss because, you know…June.

    Sometimes it is good to be wrong, and hopefully the Mets can somehow get the ship righted.

  • Seth

    This was really nice — because the D-bags are a good team, they’re not one of the bottom teams, and they hadn’t been shut out all season. So OK sure, let’s blame it on the change of calendar. Or maybe it’s the phases of the moon that affect the Mets’ performance?

  • Guy K

    It’s incongruous that Lindor would get less acclaim for the night he had (coming off his deathbed, no less) than if he’d hit for the cycle. He had 12 total bases last night — that’s two better than a cycle.

    Just one of those oddities (like the fact that Johan Santana’s no-hitter in 2012 was just the third-best game thrown by a Mets pitcher that month, behind both of R.A. Dickey’s one-hitters).

  • K. Beltran

    Johan’s “no-hitter” was not a legit no-hitter, Beltran’s ball kicked up chalk, and the Mets and Johan both would have been better off if the umps had gotten it right and saved Johan’s arm from the damaging 138 pitches. In my mind, the Mets have still not had a complete game no-hitter.

    • Seth

      You’re correct, it wasn’t a real no-hitter. But the call was blown early in the game, so it’s not like the umpires knew what was ahead. Blown calls are part of the game — also I believe that call would not be reviewable even if replay rules had existed then.

  • Blair M. Schirmer

    “Who are these guys and what have they done with the 2023 Mets?”

    Consider me even further baffled by the Mets 7-5 win tonight (this morning, I guess), where this plucky band even benefited from Tommy’s ego—you could tell Buck wasn’t all that eager to get into it with reporters over a throw Pham won’t repeat all that often against a smart, fast, plus baserunner in Kim.

    As Keith said the previous night, ‘Mets fans, we have a pulse.’ Yes we do. In a season that hasn’t been much fun, the last week has been a genuine pleasure, and not just because the team went six and oh. From Buck’s inevitable salt to Lindor’s postgame interview this morning and the battle of haircuts, to Alvarez’s unalloyed pleasure in his own success, something that seems more genuine somehow than most preening round the bases, it’s finally fun, for however long it lasts.