The blog for Mets fans
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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 25 July 2018 10:45 am It was, admittedly, one of those Everything Has to Go Perfectly ideas: Emily and I were landing at JFK a little after 4, taking the subway home to drop our luggage, then turning around and getting back on the subway to meet her father and our niece at Citi Field to see the Mets take on the Padres.
Everything Has to Go Perfectly plans do occasionally work, even in New York City, and when they do you feel like you’re at the head of your own triumphant parade. But not this time. The plane was late leaving Logan, sat on the tarmac at JFK while a gate was cleared, the A train was slow to come, the A train was slow to advance, the 7 train was a local, the 7 train inched into Mets-Willets Point at the end of its journey, and then — inexplicable and maddening — the 7 train sat at our destination, doors stubbornly closed, for a good three minutes or so.
By which point it was 7:40 or so and the only gate taking mobile tickets was the rotunda, a Mets customer-service change I’d forgotten. We got in through McFadden’s using the tickets I’d printed as backups (that’s a genuine customer-service improvement, at least), but it took a while and by the time I joined a long line for tacos and realized the kitchen was both understaffed and moving with the urgency of a sweet summer stroll, I was thoroughly annoyed.
What made it worse was I’d glimpsed the score during our trudge around the stadium and seen a 3. The Mets were already down 3-0. Fantastic.
And then, in the taco line, everything changed.
I saw Wil Myers single and Manuel Margot slide into Devin Mesoraco at home, his foot pushed off home by Mesoraco’s knee. Out, singled the ump. Mesoraco, aware of replay-era baseball’s uncertainties, fired down to third to nab Carlos Asuaje as he sauntered into the base like he was auditioning for Citi Field food prep. The first replay showed me and the surrounding Mets fans that Margot had pretty clearly been safe. But what to do with Asuaje? Declare him out with a lecture about assumptions, or replant him on an unoccupied base given that he might have considered the inning over?
While the umps huddled, my fellow taco seekers and I did the same. After a brief exchange of views, our conclusion was unanimous: fairness dictated Margot be called safe and Asuaje out, ending the inning. Which, miraculously, was what happened.
The tacos were still being prepared by too few people moving too slowly. But my impromptu seminar with fellow Mets fans had chased away my being annoyed by travel bobbles and Wilponian customer service. The world is a better place when the people around you care about a weird play in the early innings of a meaningless game between also-ran teams and the importance of Getting It Right.
Oh, and I’d noticed something else: that crooked number I’d spotted wasn’t against the Mets, but for them. Rather than being 5-0 Padres, it was 3-2 Mets. That made me feel better too.
As my life’s Waiting for Tacos period finally reached its conclusion, the crowd roared. Michael Conforto had driven a two-run homer over the fence below where my party was waiting in the second row of the Coca-Cola Corner. 5-2 Mets. I arrived and found the night had turned breezy and coolish if not exactly cool — the front that had threatened to rain on the game had instead knocked down some of the humidity.
Things had turned, and the rest of the game was calm and soothing. The Mets added another run on a Amed Rosario triple and an Asdrubal Cabrera single, a combination likely to soon become impossible and so best enjoyed while still available. Zack Wheeler, having emerged from his bumpy inning intact, pushed through seven innings of fine work. Before the top of each inning, Jose Bautista tossed the ball he’d used to warm up into our sections, serving as his own one-man Pepsi Party Patrol or whatever its new name is.
I realized that my having been absent from the premises since last April (!!!) meant I was getting my first in-person look at the likes of Rosario, Brandon Nimmo and other Met stalwarts. And Jeff McNeil appeared, to my surprise — he’d been recalled while I was piloting rental cars and being piloted on airplanes. McNeil, as if making up for lost Reyesian time, liked the look of the first pitch he saw as a big-leaguer, served it into center field, and tried and failed to look cool about things while he stood on first and the ball was removed from play. If I watch baseball until I’m 99, I will never get tired of that little ritual.
Oh, and the game was concluded in a crisp 2 1/2 hours or so, allowing us to wind our way back along the 7 and fall into bed in Brooklyn by a reasonable hour.
Maybe this isn’t the greatest season in Mets history, but it was a pretty fun night. Maybe I ought to do this more often.
by Greg Prince on 24 July 2018 12:46 pm On a night when the Daily News didn’t send a reporter to Citi Field to cover the Mets, the Mets didn’t necessarily make news worth covering. That is if you subscribe to the theory that mundane “dog bites man” and “Mets bite in general” events don’t much amount to news.
You wouldn’t want to be the man who gets bitten by that dog, though, and right now you wouldn’t go out of your way to link your happiness to the fate of this baseball team unless the habit of tuning into them was hammered into you at an early age. Those of us who tuned in decades ago don’t know how to tune out. The best we could do on a deathly quiet night like Monday was watch from a distance with diminishing interest.
Which was more than any of the few reporters still associated with the News was directed to do.
Nevertheless, there’s always something to write about with this team, no matter how little of it is flattering. On those nights when the grind of constant losing got to him, Casey Stengel, the essence of good copy, didn’t hesitate to refer to the Mets he was guiding deeper into the basement as “a fraud”. The description, within the context he offered it, still seems to fit. The Mets as currently constituted are indeed a fraud. Or would that be “frauds” plural? I’d ask a copy editor at the News to weigh in on proper usage, but thanks to cold corporate calculus, the desk is suddenly shorthanded.
The decidely non-fraudulent Jacob deGrom pitched Monday night, which is usually cause for a heightened sense of engagement, even in the latter half of 2018 when we already know the story of the season as a whole and can pretty much guess the outcome of any given contest. DeGrom was very, very good. Unfortunately he dared to allow some Padres to hit the ball just enough for his defense to undermine him — as if his offense wasn’t handling that task with aplomb. Three runs were scored by San Diego in eight innings en route to their 3-2 victory over the best pitcher in professional baseball. Two of them were earned. Only one of them wasn’t helped along by a Met miscue. The league-leading ERA that began the evening at 1.68 finished it at 1.71. So, yeah, Jake was slightly off his game.
There are other sets of numbers that shed light on the dichotomy between deGrom’s brilliance and the Mets’ dimness when the former hurls his heart out for the latter. I will conscientiously object to disseminating them here. It’s too depressing. As if watching the Mets play dead on a Monday night wasn’t already depressing. As if absorbing the fate of the Daily News wasn’t already depressing. The Mets at least sometimes win one when not preoccupied by depressing defeats, unprecedented disabled list assignments and tortured medical explanations. The News has been cast by its ownership into apparent utter irrelevance. I say “apparent” because it’s not like I’m running out to buy a copy to confirm that it’s something not worth buying let alone reading.
True, I wasn’t running out to buy a copy in the days immediately preceding yesterday, before half of the editorial staff, including most of the sports department, was dismissed by an entity unimpressed by the concept of journalism. The News could have staffed last night’s game with the reincarnations of Jack Lang, Phil Pepe and a pre-embitterment Dick Young and I wasn’t dropping a buck-fifty at any newsstand for it. Same for the print editions of its rivals. I stopped buying the papers every day in 2007, which made me a late unadopter in the scheme of media consumption patterns. Before then, I was a loyal customer. A habitual customer, you could say. Like the Mets, the newspaper habit was hammered into me at an impressionable age. My dad bought the News mostly on Sundays, mostly for the comics. I adored the whole package and began seeking it out on weekdays. As Curtis Granderson might have posited, true New Yorkers read the News. Via my distribution of coins, I was determined to be one of them.
Most all of us hold dear some gauzy childhood memory of the connection between ourselves and a newspaper. That explains to a great extent how we became Mets fans who love to read. But it doesn’t say anything about continuing to buy newspapers. I stopped with the News and its peers because I realized I was getting what I needed via computer, whether it was posted by the newspapers themselves or by others conveniently aggregating on their behalf. Besides, I was paying for an Internet connection. I had only so many coins to distribute. Eventually I’d ante up for a digital Times subscription and, recently, for access to The Athletic, which has been a boon for sports coverage, national, regional and local. Sometimes I see tweets from sports fans aghast that they can’t read Ken Rosenthal’s freshest column for free. I guess they’re not old enough to remember the candy store owner who burned holes through you with his eyes to remind you he wasn’t running a library here.
Well into the 2010s, when Stephanie would go out for drug items and bagels on Sunday mornings, she’d bring me back the papers because we’d always bought the papers on Sunday. I never asked her not to continue purchasing them and I cherished the ritual of digging into her CVS bag and fishing them out. Around 2015, I told her don’t bother with the Times anymore, we’re already paying for it online; I read most of these stories three days ago. But she kept picking up Newsday and the News. They were less expensive than the Times; Newsday had enough local reporting to make having a copy seem worthwhile (even though our cable/Internet provider, which owns Newsday, magnanimously lowers the paper’s dot-com paywall as part of its Silver-level service); and the News…the News was what instinctively lit up Sunday mornings for me for as long as I could remember. I’d grab the comics as soon as my dad was done with them. I’d read every column inch in the sports section. I formed a portrait of what the city and its citizens were all about from that weekly foray into New York’s Picture Newspaper.
That was the Sunday News to me when I was a kid. As an adult nearly half-a-century later, it was a thin curio. I already knew the sports and I didn’t keep up with the comics. Everything else it printed I had gleaned the essence of elsewhere. One Sunday morning last summer, when we were out early, I made a point of picking up the News and Newsday because it felt wrong not to have them on hand. Seven days later, I told Stephanie not to bother with those papers anymore, either. I still reflexively look in the CVS bag for them, kind of missing them in ritual, not missing them at all in reality.
Despite no longer being their customer, I definitely miss the idea of the News covering everything the News has always covered, last night’s Mets game included. Sometimes I’d click on their game stories, features and columns and be enlightened. It was often compelling as content and it was surely comforting that it was there. At some point, however, seeking it out — never mind paying for it — stopped being habit for me. I’m surely not the only one who can say that.
by Greg Prince on 23 July 2018 4:05 pm Should there be a rain delay (or a pause for injury) tonight during the Mets-Padres game, flip over to your PBS affiliate at 9 o’clock EDT. Whatever the state of the skies, set your DVR accordingly, either for its premiere airing or later in the week when it’s scheduled to be rerun at some off hour, because you should definitely catch the latest installment of American Masters, Ted Williams: The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived. If you’re a baseball fan, you already kind of know the story, but when you watch this crisply paced one-hour film, you will be glad you got to know it in detail. You’ll meet Williams the Mexican-American, Williams the young San Diegan, Williams the toast of New England, Williams the war hero, Williams who didn’t doff his cap when his playing days were over, Williams who fished like he hit and Williams who hit like nobody else. Even if his career was before your time, you’ll understand why his story needed to be told anew in the 21st century.
And, to be parochial about it, you should see what a Mets fan can do on PBS, because this edition of American Masters was directed by Nick Davis, not only a talented auteur but a lover of all things orange and blue (including this blog). Nick did a great job incorporating modern touches into a classic baseball tale and does all Mets fans proud as he spotlights the quintessential Red Sox legend.
Even if he wasn’t a Mets fan, Nick’s movie is worth watching. It’s that much better because he’s one of us. Seriously, check it out.
by Greg Prince on 22 July 2018 3:49 pm To borrow a phrase favored by Josh Lewin, what did we learn on Saturday afternoon watching the Mets lose in the Bronx, other than Saturday afternoon Subway Series conflicts have diminished in appeal since Matt Franco was in fullest bloom?
We learned the phrase “den Dekker” is Dutch for “not Lagares”.
This is linguistic clarification gleaned after the Mets center fielder of the moment lost three fourth-inning fly balls in translation. Mets fans with memories longer than a Yankee Stadium short porch home run will recall Matt den Dekker was originally cast as the can’t miss defensive whiz in the attempted 2013 reboot of the Mets as a competitive baseball entity. Turned out den Dekker did miss — loads of time, due to the injury which opened the gates for Lagares to take his projected Gold Glove role — and could miss, specifically a trio of not easy yet not impossible chances hit in his general direction Saturday. They went for a triple, a double and a single, but when measured by cringe factor, the first was a boot and the next two were reboots. Given that Matt is 0-for-17 since his surprise recall from obscurity, one wonders what his particular major league acumen is at present. Someday, some kind soul might rediscover Matt den Dekker and lovingly recall him as the Billy Murphy of his time. That day is not today.
We learned Ron Hunt’s spiritual grandson Brandon Nimmo owns a record that somehow wasn’t Ron Hunt’s when the day began.
Brandon, when not leading with his grin, has spent 2018 putting his body into enough pitches to gain first base without swinging or taking. Standard-issue players only get hit incidentally. Brandon is clearly custom-made. By uncomplainingly accepting two more plunkings, Nimmo moved past not Hunt but Lucas Duda to claim the mark for most hit-by-pitches in a single Met season. He has fifteen marks overall on his body, not counting the couple he tried to sneak in when the umpires were being picky and ruled he made no attempt to elude what was coming at him. Some give some; Brandon gives all.
Hunt, the godfather of taking one for this team, did establish the franchise HBP record in 1963 with 13 and held it alone until 1997, when John Olerud unassumingly tied it. Duda’s impression of a tree trunk fooled pitchers into dinging him on the anatomy fourteen times three years ago. Nimmo has taken bruising to a whole new level. Congratulations?
We learned everything and everybody conspires against the Mets.
Not just those pesky Yankees batters who hit balls toward den Dekker. Not just those flinty Yankees pitchers who throw balls toward Nimmo. No, the whole universe. Why else would umpires eject two men wearing Mets uniforms who were, at most, only half-involved in the outcome of the game? First, home plate ump Larry Vanover tossed Pat Roessler, the hitting coach, for daring to point out what a crummy job Vanover was doing calling balls and strikes. Then, Hunter Wendlestedt thumbed Asdrubal Cabrera from the proceedings because Cabrera still gives a damn. Cabrera was called out on appeal of a checked swing and reacted in disgust, spiking his bat to the ground. Instead of Wendlestedt admiring that somebody assigned designated hitter participation for the day still has enough of a pulse to remain engaged in the outcome instead of strolling detached from defensive duties back to the dugout as presumably most DHs do in the overwrought softball league, the umpire who decided he himself is the attraction removed Asdrubal. Not pictured: Mickey Callaway racing to his player’s defense. Cabrera would be replaced with Devin Mesoraco. Not pictured: Devin Mesoraco doing much in the way of hitting, designated or otherwise.
Also conspiratorial, as long we’re into conspiracy theories, was Miguel Andujar being awarded second base despite fan interference on ball he hit to right. Some dope representing everything we identify with fealty to that facility’s host team reached several feet over the fence with a glove and treated his find as a home run caught. Proving we’ve come a long way since Jeffrey Maier was hailed by a besotted city for his precocious ingenuity, Andujar was penalized two bases and awarded only a double. He should have been ruled out. So should have a majority of the 47,102 in attendance just on principle.
We — or at least I — learned there is no hope for the hopelessly hopeful.
What a crummy game this matinee had become by the ninth inning, with the Mets trailing, 7-3, and Aroldis Chapman on the mound to nail down the non-save. Kevin Plawecki, who keeps his usefulness to himself, walked to lead off. Amed Rosario poked an infield single under Andujar’s glove (serves him right for conspiring with that doofus the right field stands). Still, what’s gonna come of it? Ty Kelly was sent up to pinch-hit for Matt den Dekker…is a sentence you wouldn’t expect to read from a description or account of a Major League Baseball game, but, you know, Kelly walked on four pitches to load the bases. Son of a gun, it brought Jose Reyes to the plate with at least a chance to do the very same thing. Four balls, none close to being ruled strikes by even this pack of crooked umps, resulted in a Mets run. Nimmo was next and Nimmo did a Nimmo, which is to say he set that hit-by-pitch record. It was now 7-5 and I wouldn’t get up from where I sat. Understand I wanted to get up for a diet cola refill a dozen or so pitches earlier, but I got it in my Mets fan head that something was happening, so I better not budge. The All-Star closer on the other side was wild as a March hare in July and if the Mets could figure out a way to stand by while he continued to self-immolate, well, call me Matt Franco in 1999!
Except it’s not 1999. It’s 2018. Chapman was pulled by his manager. Mesoraco’s manager, having little if anything to choose from on his bench, left Devin in to wreak havoc versus Chasen Shreve. Havoc wasn’t having it. Mesoraco slapped his way into a twin-killing One more run scored, but the bases all but emptied. There was a little fuss at the end, with Wilmer Flores up and Reyes on third, but the chemistry was not right. The game ended in an undesirable 7-6 decision. For all it mattered, I could have budged.
We learned the identities of two Oakland Athletic minor leaguers who are now two New York Mets minor leaguers.
Meet third baseman Will Toffey and relief pitcher Bobby Wahl. Meet them eventually, I suppose. Toffey is a Rumble Pony, Wahl a 51. Neither is a flaming hot prospect. Both are our concern because they — along with a satchel crammed with International Slot Money — were traded by the A’s to the Mets for more or less the best righthanded reliever we ever had, Jeurys Familia. Familia registered 123 saves as a Met. The only righty closer with more for us was Armando Benitez; I’ll take Familia. I would have continued to have taken Familia, especially had there been myriad saves to be had in our near future. Few are on the horizon, so business is business, and business dictated farewell to the arm that touched off more celebratory soirées than any in Mets history. Jeurys was on the mound when we clinched everything we clinched in 2015 and 2016, four preludes to champagne showers in all. The Mets have only poured bubbly over one another twenty times. Close your eyes and you’ll see Familia in the highlight reel of your mind.
Maybe those two minor leaguers will become major contributors. Maybe that International currency will be invested wisely. Yay, if any of it works out for us. I’m never thrilled to say goodbye to somebody who helped us prevail, especially when we’re doing so little of that of late.
These are the saddest of possible words:
Toffey and Wahl and slot
A pair of A’s and a bucket of bucks
Toffey and Wahl and slot
Exchanging our closer from all those wins
Not that Jeurys was devoid of sins
But Familia memories should elicit grins
Toffey and Wahl and slot
We learned Yoenis Cespedes has a couple of heels giving him hell.
We learned that late Friday night, actually. Callaway learned it later Saturday morning. Or so he said. Or he clarified that he knew what was up all along. I don’t know. Who listens to what Mickey Callaway says in hopes of learning anything anymore? While the Cespedes mess indeed represents a blob of bad form on the part of this disorganized organization, I think it’s worth remembering a player who lifted us to unimagined heights in 2015, in conjunction with Familia and a cast of characters that is no longer extant, is hurting. Imagine this franchise, under this ownership, going to the World Series. It’s beyond the imagination in 2018. It wasn’t on the radar as late as 2014. It was barely wishable as late as this date in 2015. But along came Ces on July 31, and up the ladder we went.
In light of Yoenis’s contributions to the Mets briefly standing for something better than they did before and do now, I lean toward thinking he’s not solely at fault in whatever communication mishap has bogged down his return to action. In West Wing terms, Yo’s actions align with President Bartlet keeping his MS quiet. The lot of us has responded as Toby Ziegler did: in stunned disbelief that nobody thought to mention it until now. None of us has been Donna Moss asking if the president is in pain. Maybe that strain of thought, whatever the heft of President Cespedes’s contractual status and the irritation inherent in his characteristic diffidence, should cross our minds a little. In non-TV terms, I hope he feels better soon.
Ces did return on Friday. Homered and everything. Then he revealed his heel problems and reported that if he opts for the surgery he indicated he ultimately needs, he’ll be out quite a while, deep into 2019. By no means is that what anybody wanted to hear, nor was it the avenue by which we would figure something like it would be said. We were reminded Saturday what a Met lineup without Yo looks like. Callaway used two DHs and got nothing for his trouble but one ejection and a devastating double play. When we get back to baseball played like it oughta be, Cespedes will have to stand on two aching heels and man left field or first base. Also unimaginable. We’ll see what an MRI and a visit to a specialist yields. Maybe the Mets will put out a press release when they know something. They don’t at this time retain a general manager who speaks on issues fans would want to know about.
They still have fans, somehow.
by Jason Fry on 21 July 2018 12:13 am Break up the Mets! They’re 2-2 against the Yankees!
Actually that already appears to be happening: the Mets left Robert Gsellman in to throw a ton of pitches against the Yankees Friday night while Jeurys Familia sat in the bullpen in a sweatshirt, got hugs from teammates and was spoken of evasively in postgame interviews. He’s either been traded or is about to be traded, and we all know he won’t be the last ’18 Met to get a new address.
If Friday was Familia’s last game as a Met, at least he saw an exciting one. Exciting and nauseating — it was more bar brawl than athletic contest. Noah Syndergaard, Seth Lugo and Gsellman all labored mightily to hold the Yankees at bay, with none of them recording a 1-2-3 inning. (Plus Syndergaard departed after a drop in velocity, a mound visit and extensive conversations with Dave Eiland and the trainer. Mickey Callaway says he’s fine, but this is the Mets we’re talking about.)
The three pitchers got — stop me if you’ve heard this one before — no help from their defense, with Amed Rosario a particular culprit. Rosario had one of those games that make you grit your teeth and mutter platitudes about growing pains, ending his night with a throw to first that came after the game was over. Better to get an out you don’t need than to need an out you don’t get, I suppose, but yeesh nonetheless.
Fortunately the Mets outhit the ill-advised things done or not done with gloves. Asdrubal Cabrera (speaking of Mets likely on the move) and Michael Conforto led the charge, with Yoenis Cespedes returning and sneaking a home run off the foul pole. The Mets built a 6-1 lead, but the Yankees kept coming, leaping out of closets and dropping out of attics like a particularly stubborn slasher-movie villain. Devin Mesoraco‘s quick footwork kept the game from being tied 6-6 in the 8th, and Cabrera’s leadoff single in the 9th led to a much-needed insurance run and eventually an enormous sigh of relief. It felt like the Mets were going to lose this one, but somehow they didn’t. We’ll take it.
Still, every good slasher movie has a sequel or 12, and these two teams will be back at it for a Saturday matinee. I’d advise everyone wearing blue and orange to lock their windows and doors and sleep with a gun under their pillow.
Oh, and playing better defense might help too.
* * *
Even disappointing seasons go on — oh boy, do they go on. As Mets fan, we’ve got plenty of experience with watching a team play out the string — and at least for me, this is about the time nostalgia makes an appearance on the calendar. It’s a survival instinct, I suspect: if the current Mets aren’t going to offer much to get excited about, I look for solace in remembering previous iterations of the team.
I regard nostalgia a bit warily — the novelist Don DeLillo once called it “a product of dissatisfaction and rage” and “a settling of grievances between the present and the past.” But one nice thing about it is that it blurs losses and disappointments.
I’ve rattled on a few times about making custom cards for those Mets who never got Met cards, or cards of any sort. I’ve made more than 100 by now, filling out The Holy Books with cardboard memorials to September callups, May unconditional releases, momentary acquisitions and lost-cause roster fillers. Which means I avidly watch Topps’s auctions of old slides from previous decades — sometimes to buy, other times just to admire. Those Topps shots offer rare glimpses of momentary Mets (including some who only suited up in spring training), and many of them are wonderful baseball photos even if you don’t care about bubble-gum cards.
By now I can spot a classic-era Topps shot at a glance — there’s a quality to the lighting and the poses that’s unmistakable, down to the photographers’ habit of composing portraits so the player is level instead of the horizon. (This is known among baseball-photo dorks as the “Topps lean.”)
 Joe Nolan collected 11 plate appearances in September 1972, when a rash of injuries left the Mets in need of catching help. (Nolan’s first hit would have to wait until he reappeared with the Braves three years later.) For a momentary Met, Nolan’s been amply photographed, so I wasn’t too excited when Topps unveiled two new Nolans last week.
But one of those shots caught my eye not because of Nolan, but because of who else was in it. No. 54 is longtime Mets coach Rube Walker, No. 14 is of course Gil Hodges, and No. 20 is Tommie Agee. That’s three Miracle Mets, legends all, captured as bystanders as a kid who’d never appeared in a big-league game pantomimed a big-league swing.
Nolan’s minor-league record and the look of the photo (trust me on the latter) fix the date of the photo: it’s spring training 1972, meaning it was snapped in the final weeks of Hodges’s tragically short life. I still can’t believe I’m older than Gil Hodges ever got to be — he died two days shy of his 48th birthday. In some better universe Hodges lived and is now a stooped but still sharp man of 94. Perhaps he handed the managerial reins over to protege Davey Johnson, and is greeted rapturously by Citi Field crowds when he throws a first pitch before heading upstairs to spend an inning talking baseball with Gary, Keith and Ron — who inevitably marvel that his big hands are still strong.
Billy Murphy is the opposite of Joe Nolan — present on a roster for an entire season  but rarely photographed. Murphy was a Rule 5 pick who spent all of 1966 with the club, as per rules at the time; he got a high-number card in the ’66 Topps set, which he shares with another Bill, the somewhat better-known Bill Hepler. It’s one of the more expensive cards in that set, featuring Murphy squinting up at something — whether it was a pop-up, zeppelin or interesting Florida bird is something we’ll likely never know.
When I made a custom card for Murphy, that small photo was all I had. So I grafted Murphy’s head and shoulders onto the body of Cleon Jones, as captured on his iconic ’69 card. Which was itself quite possibly shot in 1966 — when the players’ union started flexing its muscle in the late 1960s, one of its first showdowns came with Topps. Numerous players refused to pose for Topps photographers unless they were paid more than the standard agreement, leaving the card company stuck using older images.
A couple of weeks back, Topps put up a pair of Murphy images for auction — a hatless shot (taken for insurance in case of a trade) and a pretty good portrait with cap.
 I won the latter, and it came with a fun bonus: the half-envelope Topps had used in its filing system. It tells us that Topps had (in this folder at least) three Murphy shots: one each of Head, No Hat and Action. I wonder if the action shot was the one used for his 1966 card — if so, the slide would have been physically cut down to fit the space. That half-envelope also gives us the name of the photographer: Jim Laughead, a legend who essentially invented the basics of sports photography. (Laughead called his standard football poses “the huck ‘n’ buck.”)
But you’re probably wondering: who’s Billy Murphy? Nicknamed “Murph the Surf,” he was born in Pineville, La., but grew up in Tacoma, Wash., where he was a three-sport star at Clover Park High and caught the eye of Yankees scout Eddie Taylor. Murphy struggled in 1963, his second year in the Yankees’ system, missing a month with blood poisoning, of all things: he cut himself sliding and, with no trainer available, treated the injury himself. 1964 was a washout, but Murphy rebounded to hit .291 with power and speed for Binghamton in 1965, a performance that caught the Mets’ eye.
Murphy didn’t play a full game with the Mets until a month of the season was in the books; he collected his first three hits on May 13, when he came in for Jim Hickman against the Giants. His first hit was a three-run homer off Ray Sadecki in the fourth; he then singled in the 12th off Frank Linzy and in the 16th off Bob Priddy. (The Mets lost an inning later on a Jim Davenport homer off Murphy’s fellow Lost Met Dave Eilers.)
Murphy’s other ’66 highlight came in Philadelphia on Aug. 20: with the Mets and Phillies tied 4-4 in the 11th, Murphy ran headlong to center field with his back to home plate, snagging a long drive by Richie Allen as he smashed into the fence 430 feet away. The ’66 Mets being the ’66 Mets, Murphy’s great play only delayed the inevitable: Bill White immediately doubled off Dick Selma, Tony Gonzalez singled him in, and that was that.
Murphy never made it back to the big leagues, bouncing around with in the Mets, Cardinals and Cubs farm systems before retiring after the 1970 campaign. But he’s a Met, a proud member of The Holy Books, and it makes me happy to recall him while holding a little bit of baseball-card history.
Weirdly, that’s not the only reason the 1966 Mets have been on my mind. I was looking for footage of Pete Harnisch getting into a fight in May 1996, which led to John Franco being ejected on John Franco Day, a spectacle Emily and I watched from the Shea stands on a sparkling spring day. (Doug Henry blew the game in the ninth; Rico Brogna won it with his second homer of the day in the 10th. It’s amusing to try and find the fight in this Baseball Reference game log.)
I didn’t find a clip of the fight, but I was offered something else: a broadcast of the Sept. 17, 1966 game between the Mets and Giants at Candlestick, with Juan Marichal facing Dennis Ribant. I started listening out of curiosity, but what I really liked was I had no idea who’d won. (And I’m not going to tell you: Google the date at your own risk.) Ralph Kiner is on the mic, his voice welcome and familiar, there are lots of commercials for Rheingold, Giants fans blow vuvuzelas throughout the game, and you get little gems such as Ralph marveling at the speed of young Bud Harrelson and looking forward to a start in Houston by 19-year-old Nolan Ryan, who at that point had all of two innings of big-league ball under his belt. (The Astros would knock Ryan out with four runs in the first.)
And the broadcast began with something I certainly didn’t expect: a Mets jingle I’d never heard before. Here are the lyrics, which I swear I am not making up:
In all Baseball Land
There are no fans so grand
As our Mets fans
When we play other teams
Oh what blood-curdling screams
That’s our Mets fans
But when Mets fans shout “Go!”
What they mean we all know
We’ve got no place to go … but up!
I’ve been at this a while. I’ve heard of Homer the Beagle, lived through Mettle the Mule, heard “Meet the Mets” bastardized as cheesy soft rock and then restored, and endured “Our Team, Our Time.” But that one was new to me. Listen for yourself.
by Greg Prince on 20 July 2018 3:35 pm Perhaps the reason the Mets seem on their way to their worst season since 1993 is they have too many Mets born in 1993.
I wouldn’t expect a Major League Baseball team to discriminate on the basis of anything other than baseball ability (which is an area where the Mets haven’t been particularly discriminating), but at this moment in time, maybe our club might consider easing up on any further addition of players who’ve turned or are turning 25 in 2018. Nothing wrong with employing ~25-year-olds on your baseball team. The 1969 Mets’ World Series roster was 24% filled by guys born in 1944.
But this isn’t about age. It’s about vintage and critical mass. There’s such a thing as asking for trouble. Asking the Mets to succeed with players born when the Mets were at just about their worst as a franchise seems to be giving fate every excuse to laugh in your face.
The 2018 Mets reached the All-Star break sixteen games under .500, thirteen-and-a-half games from first place and loaded down with players born in 1993. The 1993 Mets reached the All-Star break thirty-three games under .500, twenty-nine games from first place, ten games from sixth place and populated by twenty-five players probably wishing to remain anonymous as they rushed to make their planes after losing to the Dodgers on Sunday night, July 11, leaving their record to molder for a few days at 27-60. If you could, you’d want to keep the 1993 Mets’ DNA as far from your future as possible.
Instead, it’s as if the Mets scouted maternity wards from Seattle to Belfast to resuscitate the spirit of the year from hell a quarter-century after the fact.
The first 1993-born Met was the pride of the Pacific Northwest, Michael Conforto, who became the one-thousandth Met ever when he debuted three years ago next week. The Mr. 1,000 milestone is what got our attention when Michael was called up, but while we high-fived over the 2015’s pending improvement, a cosmic parameter was quietly breached. A living symbol of 1993 was back in the house in a tangible fashion for the first time since John Franco last threw a Met pitch. Still, given Conforto’s immediate contributions to what turned out to be a National League champion, the youngest Met’s birth year seemed barely worth noticing.
The next 1993-born Met replaced the first one, indicating somebody was conscious that you wouldn’t want too many of them hanging around Flushing at once. The Mets called up Brandon Nimmo in late June of 2016; to make room for him, they demoted Conforto. Within a matter of weeks, they reversed the transaction sheet, leaving Michael to represent the Class of ’93 by himself. Before long, however, Conforto would be sent down to Vegas again (they loved doing that with him) and Nimmo would be back and forth a bit. While the Mets were cleansing themselves of any connection to the 103-defeat debacle on the position player side, they allowed a couple of 1993-born arms onto their pitching staff, first briefly welcoming Gabriel Ynoa to the bullpen and then, out of desperation, Robert Gsellman to the starting rotation.
By September, Conforto, Nimmo, Ynoa and Gavin Cecchini were ensconced alongside Gsellman. Five 1993-born Mets dotting an expanded roster wasn’t enough to disturb the gods, and the 2016 Mets roared unabated to the National League Wild Card. Then, perhaps understanding they shouldn’t push their luck, the Mets sold Ynoa to the Orioles and proceeded to mostly forget about Nimmo and Cecchini, burying each youngster at Vegas until June injuries necessitated their 2017 returns. Karma proceeded to recognize the confluence of 1993 babies, however and shortly thereafter directed Gsellman and Conforto to the DL.
Twenty Seventeen was already a lost cause when the Mets visited storm-ravaged Houston at the dawn of September and unwrapped 1993-born Jacob Rhame, paving the way for another final month with the annus horribilis’s pixie dust sprinkled all about. Gsellman, exiled to Vegas for a spell, returned in short order to join Rhame, Cecchini and Nimmo. Missing from action was Conforto, who went out for the season in late August. Four Mets among many amid the 2017 debris didn’t seem alarming.
But this season, if you keep close track of roster comings and goings, represents a hair-on-fire situation. Nothing personal, mind you. We were glad Conforto was pronounced healthy sooner than projected. We were thrilled when the nonsensical April optioning of Nimmo to Triple-A didn’t last long. It was great to see Gsellman carve a niche for himself as a reliever. And we’ve developed no animus for Rhame and have by no means wished on him the itinerary he’s endured to date:
March 29: Opening Day roster
April 13: Optioned to Las Vegas
April 27: Recalled from Las Vegas
April 28: Optioned to Las Vegas
May 15: Recalled from Las Vegas
May 30: Optioned to Las Vegas
June 7: Recalled from Las Vegas
June 17: Optioned to Las Vegas
July 9: Recalled from Las Vegas as 26th man for day-night doubleheader
July 10: Optioned to Las Vegas
July 11: Recalled from Las Vegas
Never mind how he pitches. How does he sleep?
While the other Jacob was pinging hither and yon, the Mets were injecting more 1993-born blood into their stream. Corey Oswalt, P.J. Conlon, Drew Smith and Tyler Bashlor all made their major league debuts as 2018 Mets. Despite their big league roster showing all the staying power of a Snapchat video, the Mets did manage until very recently to have almost all of these young fellas together in our midst. With one series to go before the break, the Mets were carrying seven 1993 kids (everybody but Smith). They chose last Friday — Friday the 13th, no less — to cut back by one, sending P.J. Conlon to Vegas to make room for Noah Syndergaard, who had the good sense to first see light in 1992.
Conlon, the Belfast-born baby, likely needn’t worry that he’ll be gone for long. The Mets waived him; watched the Dodgers snap him up; and apparently experienced separation pangs, for they claimed him right back a few blinks later. Oswalt has been sent down in advance of the Subway Series, but he’s been replaced by Drew Smith (while 1995-born Dom Smith goes down to clear space for Yoenis Cespedes). There’s even word that the mostly forgotten Cecchini is working his way back from the injury that has kept him out of minor league action these last two months.
The Mets don’t know how to quit 1993, which is a shame because 1993 really was as bad as we remember it, maybe more so. The sins of the 1993 Mets shouldn’t really be visited upon the sons of the 1993 parents who innocently brought into this world Conforto & Co., but this present conglomeration of birth dates is a little unsettling. You know the broad strokes of 1993: a manager was fired; a general manager resigned; a reasonably competent pitcher extended an already endless losing streak into something both epic and historic; a former Cy Young-winning pitcher pumped a Super Soaker full of bleach at a passel of reporters; one outfielder threatened an individual reporter; another outfielder exploded what amounted to a quarter-stick of dynamite into a crowd of fans, injuring a two-and-half-year-old girl in the process; and, believe it or not, so on and so forth.
Perhaps 1993 is best summed up by the phrases the second manager, Dallas Green, used to describe his team after his charges were steamrolled by the Rockies on a Sunday afternoon at Shea in late August when their record dropped to 45-85: “defeatist, dead-butt approach,” “we’ve had enough fear,” and “they just don’t care because they think the season is over.” At that point, the season had 32 games remaining. Or perhaps Joe McIlvaine, the second general manager, wrote its epitaph most honestly and accurately when he began a November letter to season ticketholders by telling Met customers, “Everyone from the butcher to David Letterman has taken shots at our ballclub as it underachieved and made as much news off the field as on it in 1993. I am as disappointed as you are about the past season…”
McIlvaine wound down his letter by expressing a wish we all surely shared: “May we see another Championship Flag over Shea very soon.” Shea has since disappeared and that Flag, assuming he meant the World Championship variety, never flew. Twenty-five years later, the stadium after Shea hasn’t gotten one of those, either, but it does contain a slew of demographic reminders of the season for which the Mets saw fit to apologize. They don’t do that every year.
May the Mets born in 1993 emerge as avenging angels very soon.
by Greg Prince on 18 July 2018 11:28 am All-Star Jacob deGrom got taken deep by All-Star Mike Trout in the third inning of Tuesday night’s All-Star Game. Regrettable outcome, as was the final score, but somehow everybody was elevated by the experience. Trout doesn’t need much more elevation, except for maybe a deep postseason run or two so casual onlookers in all time zones can get a feel for what harder-core baseball fans have been telling each other for the balance of this decade about the greatest player of the contemporary era. Trout hitting a pitch very hard and very far is his version of plucking a business card from his wallet and shaking hands.
DeGrom’s pitches prior to the one Trout sent on a tour of the left field bullpen at Nationals Park landed where Jake intended. Mookie Betts flied out to Bryce Harper in center (who was in the midst of a scintillating chat with Joe Buck while patrolling his pasture). Jose Altuve popped to Nolan Arenado at third. Then a one-and-two count on Trout, prelude to an immaculate frame, it seemed…until the Angel from South Jersey reached to the outside of the plate as if for the last slice of pork roll. That’s a tough spot from which to pull a pitch, especially from where Trout was fishing. Nevertheless, Mike caught it and released it into the wild.
Officially, it was a 92 MPH sinker that didn’t sink as desired (or perhaps a changeup that went through one too many changes). “He hits the low ball well,” the lone 2018 Met All-Star said later. “Two strikes, probably should’ve gone fastball up. But he got me.”
It happens. It happened a lot to pitchers on both sides of the All-Star divide. The game ended after only ten innings were played and ten homers were hit. The American League prevailed, 8-6, as the American League tends to do these days. Perhaps it’s the recent Midsummer Classic sample size (AL 6 NL 0, dating to 2013) combined with this last year-and-a-half of shall we say Mets baseball that’s led me to expect the worst from whichever team I’m rooting for in a given moment, but I expected the NL to lose. The NL, if you read what Players Association executive director Tony Clark had to say Tuesday, may be stumbling toward acceptance of the abomination of the designated hitter (ptui!). If that’s how they’re gonna be, the National League probably doesn’t deserve much in the way of institutional allegiance.
DeGrom, though, deserves all the adulation we can muster. As if standing up for the integrity of baseball, Jake gathered himself after Trout’s trip around the bases and struck out the American League’s DH, J.D. Martinez. Thus the inning ended honorably if not spotlessly.
Given his lack of Met accompaniment, Jake’s imperfect outing constituted our All-Star highlight for 2018 — that and Nationals fans booing him during the introductions (not a classy response, but respectful of his status within the division in its own way). Now the best pitcher in the National League can get back to doing that for which he is suddenly most famous: being the subject of trade talk.
One night among his peers. Now a return to the mire.
Jacob deGrom will be a Met until he isn’t, which is a time span that appears likely to fall short of forever. DeGrom’s agent, Brodie Van Wagenen, expressed sentiments Monday that it sure would be nice if the Mets and his client could forge a “long-term partnership that would keep him in a Mets uniform for years to come.” So far, so good…which would also understate deGrom’s tenure as a Met to date.
Ah, but when was the last time you learned a player’s agent’s name and came away with “good” as the predominant adjective? Van Wagenen went on to make his larger point:
“If the Mets don’t share [the] same interest, we believe their best course of action is to seriously consider trade opportunities now. The inertia of [the] current situation could complicate Jacob’s relationship with the club and creates an atmosphere of indecision.”
Meaning? Meaning almost every possible outcome will probably take a turn we don’t care for.
• The Mets trade deGrom soon, as in before July 31. We’d hate that. I don’t care if we got back the next Mike Trout. As soon as your premiere player is no longer yours, something’s missing.
• The Mets trade deGrom eventually, as in the offseason. We’d hate that. The haul could restock the system and project to pay dividends down the road, but we’d still feel a tangible loss. No more Jacob deGrom, except in memory. The next time we see him, he’ll be wearing the uniform of fill-in-the-blank. Cringing yet?
• The Mets don’t trade deGrom but don’t move to extend him. That would hang over our heads, especially now that the agent has spoken and it’s obvious a bone of contention exists between team and star. Without resolution, there is uncertainty. The statements grow less anodyne. The parties become more touchy. The agent lurks in our consciousness. The tension rises.
• The Mets let deGrom walk following the 2020 season. Pending the course of the next two campaigns, we’d likely hate that, no matter the juicy draft pick it would net us. Compensatory draft picks once in a blue moon grow up to become David Wright. Often they become Kevin Plawecki, and that’s if you’re lucky. Meanwhile, deGrom — two-time (at least) All-Star, Rookie of the Year, perennial Cy Young candidate, winning pitcher thrice in the postseason — becomes an ex-Met.
• The Mets sign deGrom to a lucrative long-term contract. Everybody’s happy…until it sinks in just how long the contract is for and how much the contract is for and how the length and the size of the contract impact the Mets’ ability to enhance the rest of the roster. Performances drop off. Injuries occur. Things go wrong. It happened with Piazza, Beltran, Santana, Wright. It’s happened with Cespedes. And none of them was a pitcher beyond 30 years of age. Past disaster is by no means indicative of future debacle, but after what we’ve been through, we have evolved into a breath-holding people. As with rooting for the National League in All-Star Games, there is a tendency to wait in expectation of what is about to go awry.
Or, you know, things could work out fine somehow. It’s possible. It’s just hard to imagine. In the meantime, Jacob deGrom is still a Met, still pitching sensationally, still getting out most everybody who isn’t Mike Trout, which leaves a pretty large pool of hitters flailing at his stuff.
We can deal with that for now.
by Jason Fry on 16 July 2018 11:34 am The first half of the season, which is actually a bit more than half, ended Sunday with the 2018 Mets deciding to remind us that yes, they’re the 2018 Mets.
Ya want yer solid starting pitching, zero offense and a bullpen from hell? Here ya go.
Actually I don’t remember ordering that combination or asking for a reminder that it’s once again the Daily Special — I’d been enjoying the Mets’ spurt of vague competitiveness. But that’s what the Mets slopped down on my plate and everybody else’s.
Corey Oswalt turned in his second-straight abbreviated but admirable performance, with the Nats and Mets each tallying a run when runners were safe on the back end of attempted double plays. (Not exactly an advertisement for baseball thrills, but that’s a post for another day.) The teams ground along until the top of the 7th, when Anthony Swarzak took over pitching duties and everything came up Metsy.
Swarzak has been reliably and inexplicably awful this year, the second coming of Ramon Ramirez. He walked Juan Soto, then had him picked off but threw wide of second base, converting a free out into a free base. He then walked Anthony Rendon, which led to Swarzak’s exit for awfulness and Asdrubal Cabrera‘s exit with an injured hand. (Thanks, Swarzak!)
Enter Tim Peterson, who surrendered a single to Matt Adams to load the bases and pinch-hit two-run single to old friend Daniel Murphy. Peterson got actual outs courtesy of a sacrifice bunt and a flyout, but Mickey Callaway opted for the other half of this year’s tandem of Unexpected Awfulness. Jerry Blevins somehow hit consecutive batters and then surrendered a two-run single to Trea Turner, by which point everything was academic and the faithful were booing anything blue and orange that moved.
I went numb a long time ago, so that’s enough about Sunday’s debacle. But looking ahead to the second half I’ve moved on to acceptance — and the first flickerings of stubborn, stupid hope. The Wilpons seem determined to sacrifice some other player’s development so that Jose Reyes can continue making out with the regularity of a cursed metronome, but that farce aside, it’s clear that in the coming weeks the team will shed payroll obligations and the veteran players that go with them, to put things in an order that matches ownership’s priorities.
Cabrera will go, assuming Swarzak’s latest ineptitude hasn’t injured him. Jeurys Familia will go. Perhaps the Mets will find a taker for reclamation project Jose Bautista, or swing some sort of deal involving Steven Matz, Zack Wheeler or Wilmer Flores. (Which would hurt, and going bigger by trading Jacob deGrom or Noah Syndergaard would be insane, but anyone else … well, we’re 16 games under .500, y’all.)
With veterans off to what I hope will be greener temporary pastures, the Mets will probably give us a look at Peter Alonso, just seen hitting to the moon in the Futures Game, and possibly Jeff McNeil if they can remember that he has in fact played positions where they need help. Maybe Amed Rosario will keep looking like he’s found his footing, Brandon Nimmo will show he’s adapting to the rigors of everyday play, we’ll be convinced Michael Conforto‘s shoulder is reknit, and Matz and Wheeler will keep building on their successes and remain pain-free. In which case maybe September won’t look so bleak, and maybe we’ll find ourselves idly playing with 2019 rosters and thinking that maybe something good could be happening.
Or, alternately, Tim Tebow will get called up, because this year of greasepaint and pratfalls could use one more circus. Alonso and McNeil will sit on the bench next to Dom Smith while Reyes makes even more outs for his BFFs in the owners’ box and Jay Bruce limps around in right.
But for now, let me have this vision of something different, which might look like hope if you squint. Because I need it.
by Greg Prince on 14 July 2018 10:15 pm All right, who’s in for the Mets to become buyers? We’re talking about a team that has won seven of thirteen, producing its best extended stretch since Mickey Callaway’s managerial acumen was considered a growth stock. And these last two games, encompassing one professional baseball victory after another…why, it’s like watching a team that isn’t so much buried in fourth place as it’s like watching a team that’s studiously avoiding fifth place.
Progress! Sweet, relative, infinitesimal progress!
So desperate for Met developments that don’t amount to a wall of sadness, I’m almost willing to believe that beating a sluggish Washington unit twice within twenty-four hours tells us we’ve got enough going on to, if not actually become buyers (I didn’t get that much sun sitting in Promenade Saturday), then not sell, sell, sell stray Mets like they’re going out of style. For most of this season, the Mets were indeed unfashionable. Amazingly, they now resemble a team capable of taking down select comers. No wonder I’m in no rush to part with the contracts that belong to the players who are finally making me feel something different from disgust.
Pride? I wouldn’t go that far.
Joy? You’ll have to remind me what that is.
Satisfaction? I’m not as immensely dissatisfied as I’ve been, so sure, let’s say satisfaction was the Saturday special at Citi Field, served up on the same plate as the Mets’ delicious 7-4 defeat of the not-so-pesky Nats.
Nobody deserves to feel more satisfaction as the All-Star break approaches than Zack Wheeler, a mostly effective pitcher for weeks, yet one who’s looked at Jacob deGrom’s record and wondered how that guy got so lucky. DeGrom’s been stuck on five wins despite living the Cy life. Wheeler has been good enough to earn a third win since early May, yet hadn’t until the Mets pounded a rookie pitcher instead of vice-versa. While Wheeler and his teammates pasted seven big ones on the previously virginal record of Austin Voth, Zack kept the Nats embedded inside their mucilaginous malaise. From Section 417, I saw a pitcher who appeared in command from beginning to almost end.
Kudos to Callaway for leaving Zack in to retire Bryce Harper in the eighth. It was a tableau we’d been waiting a long time to unfold. As the National League East was reshaping its constellation of young stars in the early-to-mid 2010s, we wouldn’t have been crazy to have imagined repeated showdowns of Harper vs. Wheeler as more than incidental. Battles between the likes of them should have been signature throwdowns for individual and divisional supremacy. Both were young and on the rise. Harper, no matter the repellent properties of his resting Bryce face, rose to become one of the sport’s most recognizable stars. Wheeler didn’t rise at all.
Unlike his compatriots in all those group glamour shots of Mets Pitchers Who Can’t Miss, Zack missed out on most of the fun surrounding Mets pitching. Not only was he unavailable to take part in back-to-back playoff pushes, Wheeler didn’t come out of the box setting down batters and building up credentials. He had a big reputation as a first-round draft choice and prize acquisition, but his major league storyline was different. Wheeler was more Dillon Gee than gee whiz. He was a guy who was going to have to learn to get better, who would have to experience losing some to start winning consistently.
Harvey, deGrom, Syndergaard and Matz were all varied shades of phenomenal as we got to know them. Initial stabs at hype notwithstanding, Wheeler had to find himself. His 2013 and 2014 was akin to what 2017 and 2018 have been for Amed Rosario, a reminder that no matter your prospects, success isn’t automatic at the highest levels of the game. Those first two years of Wheeler were about ups and downs and promise waiting to be fulfilled. The next two years were about absence. Last year should have been about return; it wound up dominated by detour.
At last, Wheeler is performing within the realm of a pitcher a legit contender would trade in order to land a Carlos Beltran. And now that he’s finally got it going on, we’re supposed to shop him and ship him? I understand the impetus for moving Asdrubal Cabrera and Jeurys Familia, though even their status as obvious trade bait is beginning to bug me. What are we, the Kansas City Athletics? We take our useful players and hand them over to our betters and say thank you for the magic beans? I gravitated to professional sports over college sports as a kid because I could never quite cotton to the idea that after no more than four years a player simply gets up and disrobes from your laundry. There were trades in baseball, of course, but those seemed organic, part of the ebb and flow of how a team got or stayed competitive. Nowadays, especially in July, it’s preposterous to believe your so-so team wouldn’t consider offing everybody in sight in the name of a nebulous shining tomorrow.
Maybe I’m just missing the reserve clause.
Catch me when we’re back to our usual losing ways and I’ll be happy to work the Flushing yard sale. I’ll provide used grocery bags, I’ll make change, I’ll help carry contenders’ purchases to their cars. I’ll be unsentimental as all get out and say “get out” to spare relievers, infielders, maybe even starting pitchers who are peaking in value. I’ll buy into the usual song of the also-ran, that we’re finishing last with these fellows, maybe we can finish higher with new blood next year or the year after that.
At the moment, though, on the heels of a second consecutive convincing win, I love all my Mets and you do not have my consent to easily pry them from my sudden loving embrace.
by Greg Prince on 14 July 2018 7:43 am In a haughtier season, we might file away Friday night’s 4-2 victory over the Nationals as a nice, boring win. We’re not in a haughty season, however, so let’s not too hastily dismiss the delights of dullness. Besides, how low-key can any game started by Noah Syndergaard come off as? Noah, even when playing it cool, carries a Reggie Jackson-style “magnitude of me” to the mound. You can’t miss him when he’s in town. The eye finds him first, the same way you spot the observation towers overlooking what remains of the New York State Pavilion as you drive along the Grand Central.
Whereas Jacob deGrom has been our Unisphere this year — he’s the world to us — Noah has been mostly been something to behold in theory. A sprained index finger sidelined him for a start, then two, then, because every Met injury heals only when it’s damn good and ready, seven weeks. Theory begat Thor and, suddenly, the Mets had two top-notch starters again. The Mets were a few games above .500 when Noah disappeared into the cornfield on May 25. Is it possible that missing a consensus preseason Cy Young candidate could have something to do with a team completely falling apart in June?
It wasn’t like they weren’t already decomposing from the middle of April onward, but lacking Syndergaard couldn’t help but gape the growing void. We have him back and we are better off for it. Noah threw five sharp innings. Not suffocating — the Nats kept putting their first batter on base — but unquestionably professional. Yes, that’s the word for what the Mets were Friday night. Professional. Getting hitters out while in the field, pushing runs across while at bat, very little exploding in their faces no matter who the Nationals sent to torment them. Daniel Murphy’s not moving so well. Bryce Harper isn’t interested in legging out grounders. Tanner Roark hasn’t much roar. We’re having a terrible year, but they’re relentlessly disappointing. For one game we were bound to float by them.
As with any visit to the old World’s Fair site, you could get a sense of what used to draw people to Flushing and why people made such a fuss. Syndergaard (a five-game winner — just like deGrom!) limiting the opposition to a single run, or as many as he himself drove in; Lugo and Gsellman competently carrying the load to the end of the line; the top of the order efficiently generating three runs in the first; Rosario burning up the basepaths in the thrilling fashion the tout sheets said he would…these were the 2018 Mets from when the 2018 Mets were a certifiable attraction rather than the remnants of something rusting embarrassingly alongside the parkway.
Too bad you can’t go see them like that all the time.
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