It’s Always Something

To borrow an opening line from an impeccable source, it was twenty years ago today that Faith and Fear in Flushing began to play. With a little help from our friends who’ve read us, contacted us and been an essential part of us, we’ve kept playing. Just like the Mets. Just like some other players.

It feels appropriate that we mark exactly two decades of Faith and Fear on the very same day that an institution that’s been around in its field a lot longer is celebrating a half-century of itself. Tonight, NBC airs Saturday Night Live’s 50th-anniversary special. You know it will be special because it will be on a Sunday and in prime time. The first Saturday Night (when Howard Cosell still owned “live”) was constructed from the talents of famously Not Ready for Prime Time Players. They turned 11:30 PM into its own primo slot on the network schedule.

On February 16, 2005, Jason and I began FAFIF. On February 17, 2005, in my second-ever post for this blog, I made my first reference to SNL. That was a Thursday. On the ensuing Saturday night, the Mets showed up on the show. Fred Armisen played a Weekend Update correspondent named Tom Jankeloff interviewing people in Central Park about The Gates, the art installation that was, to the Mets fan eye, lots of orange in search of a dab of blue. Jankeloff did his filmed piece in a Mets hoodie, a small No. 31 visible. That was the extent of the Met content in the episode of February 19, 2005, but perhaps it was a sign of some sort regarding our potential staying power.

Or perhaps it just meant I’ve always been one for staying up late. I watched the second Saturday Night live, a seventh-grader who didn’t have school the next morning. Paul Simon hosted. The show, just like this blog in its early weeks, was still figuring out what it was. Within a few weeks, it found its voice and its pacing and has stuck around ever since. Thanks to the development of VCRs and DVRs, I have, too, as a Saturday Night viewer. Invoking it on these digital pages has been second-nature for me. SNL’s been in my head since October of 1975, or only six Octobers fewer than the Mets have. Of course they’re going to intersect.

The Mets as an institution and Saturday Night Live as an institution share common ground beyond where they’re live from. It’s not so much that the Mets infiltrate those 90 minutes all that regularly, though you will see a jersey or a cap now and then, and a handful of our icons have appeared there for authenticity purposes: Tom Seaver when he was an off-season NBC broadcaster, describing a 1983 in-studio rain delay; Ron Darling when he was a world champion, apologizing that Game Six of the World Series ran long and therefore dared to pre-empt SNL on 10/25/86; Todd Hundley leading a flotilla of active 1997 major leaguers invading young Chris Kattan’s bedroom. Some topical Weekend Update references or cheap shots will also grab a sleepy Metophile’s attention.

This past December, Marcello Hernandez played Juan Soto as a free agent considering signing with the Mets in order to help — as Dana Carvey’s resuscitated Church Lady suggested — “the needy and less fortunate”. Within 24 hours, Soto was accepting Steve Cohen’s contract offer and we could all agree, per Chico Escuela, SNL’s most indelible contribution to the Met pop culture canon, that baseball had been berry, berry good to Juan Soto.

Where SNL meets the Mets conceptually is as a widely beloved thing that just keeps going. Lorne Michaels has said his show goes on not because it’s ready, but because it’s 11:30. Sound like any ballclub you know some summer weeknights at 7:10? The casts change. Stars break out. Utility types chip in. Rookies don’t get a full shot and wind up cut. Bits recur because they go over big — then they’re run into the ground. Backstage gossip leaks. We’ll never survive somebody’s exit. We’ll never see this be as good as it used to be. Maybe you keep tuning in because you think it’s gonna be great. Maybe you tune in because it’s what you’ve always done at the appointed hour. But you do tune in.

At every stage of my life since seventh grade, I can remember getting into conversations in the weekdays ahead with classmates, coworkers, friends, and family about what happened on Saturday Night, no matter who and what Saturday Night was in a given season. It’s the same way I’ve shared the Mets since first grade. Different pitchers, different catchers, different newcomers, different old-timers, but always making it about the Mets: their exploits, their foibles, their utter Metsiness and however we chose to interpret it at that moment. For twenty years, I’ve shared the Mets here with you, or whoever was “you” before you yourself came along. I could just talk to myself about the Mets, but having an audience adds another dimension.

Thank you for continuing to read Faith and Fear in Flushing. Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow.