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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 3 August 2017 2:33 am They’ve played big-league baseball in Colorado for nearly a quarter-century now somehow, which means it’s lost its capacity to shock. There have been some refinements along the way — fences, humidors and the like — that have dialed the videogame-gone-mad experience of early games against the Rockies down to levels approximating baseball on Earth.
Note I said “approximating.” Baseball here is still strange, just in more subtle ways. Balls still find their way to and over walls faster than you’d expect, carve out higher velocities into the gaps than you’d think possible, and generally speaking just behave differently. The lunatic sensation that you’re spinning a prize wheel at a carnival each half-inning is gone, but this is still a place where you eyeball the score and do the baseball equivalent of currency conversion. One run means nothing, five is about two and a half, and nothing short of a double-digit lead feels comfortable.
It’s an odd place to make a big-league debut, or a second appearance. But then I imagine any big-league park is odd after a steady diet of Binghamton and Las Vegas. Crash Davis rhapsodized about white balls for batting practice and other people carrying your bags, but then he was a couple of generations too early for TVs the size of sedans, clubhouses the size of parking lots, nap rooms and aromatherapy lounges.
Chris Flexen is no longer the newest Met, but he’s pretty much new to me — I only got a cursory look at him during his first appearance in San Diego. A longer second look yielded no particular impression: Flexen has the classic power pitcher’s big butt and legs, a standard fastball/curve/change repertoire, and generic features that look like they were chosen from a Young Athletes Pattern Book. But that’s all right — Flexen’s reported for duty early because of the Mets’ plague of injuries, and no one should pay too much attention to what pitches do or fail to do in Colorado. Assuming neither a blister nor altitude-induced PTSD fells him, we’ll see Flexen in more normal conditions over the next few weeks (or next year or never again, baseball being a chancy business) and adjust our impressions accordingly.
Amed Rosario, meanwhile, is finally risen and now riding the tiger of small sample sizes, which he’d tell you beats the hell out of riding a bus in the Pacific Coast League. A night after the game looked a little fast for him at a crucial moment, he recorded his first extra-base hit, RBI and run in rapid succession, showing easy speed and sound baserunning skills. In the field he continued to showcase a strong arm and a certain ineffable something that’s reassuring after watching horrors at shortstop all year — more often than not, his hands and feet do what they’re supposed to before the brain has to intervene.
(Oh, and the just-recalled Chasen Bradford — old hat given that he made his debut in June — pitched effectively for his first career win and the first appearance of the Mets Crown in too long.)
But while I was focused on the new guys, it was the old warhorses who delivered the game for the Mets: Asdrubal Cabrera chipped in three hits, Yoenis Cespedes showed signs of life with glove and bat, Jay Bruce homered and Curtis Granderson untied a recently far-from-tied game with a three-run homer that left Tyler Chatwood glowering and steaming on the mound.
Which will happen in Colorado as balls soar above walls and sizzle into gaps. Whether you consider that a bug or a feature on a given night depends on what the scoreboard says.
by Greg Prince on 2 August 2017 10:16 am The Amed Rosario Era commenced Tuesday night in Denver. Also, the Michael Conforto Era, the Steven Matz Era, the Jose Reyes Era and all the other eras on which we blithely bestow the names of the callups whose debuts we breathlessly anticipate continued. We don’t necessarily think of those as eras in progress. The unalloyed delight is in the debut. The unforeseen bedevilment is potentially in all the details that follow. When you’re dealing in potential, you are compelled to take every possible outcome into account.
Rosario — No. 1 on your scorecard, No. 1 on our must-see-ASAP list — shifted from concept to reality by taking the field, taking his cuts and, ultimately, booting a ground ball that set up the losing run in the ninth inning. Somewhere down the road, on a night when we no longer notice that we’re in the midst of the Amed Rosario Era any more than we notice now that we’re still in the midst of the Wilmer Flores Era and the Travis d’Arnaud Era we ushered in eleven days apart four Augusts ago, one ground ball not played cleanly in one random ninth inning won’t much register except maybe as backstory.
Remember when Rosario made his debut at Coors Field against the Rockies? Remember that ball DJ LeMahieu hit with Charlie Blackmon running from first after Hansel Robles walked Blackmon on a full count to lead off the ninth when it was tied? Rosario broke one way, and then the other, and he couldn’t recover, and he couldn’t smother the ball, and next thing you knew, Nolan Arenado dropped a ball into center and Blackmon came home with the winning run. Remember?
Maybe you will remember. Maybe you won’t. Maybe it will stick in our collective mind to serve as convenient counterpoint to how dependable let alone spectacular Rosario became, how he absorbed a defensive lesson and kept improving in all facets of his game as he grew into the superstar we all knew he was destined to be. Or maybe we’ll come to see the seemingly innocent misplay as the harbinger of how Rosario really wasn’t ready and was never going to live up to his outsize hype. Probably it was just a ground ball at the end of a first game in the majors that you wouldn’t have given much thought to beyond “damn, that sucked,” if it was any other shortstop booting any other ball. The Mets were so far out of the race in 2017, what was another loss in the middle of a losing summer anyway?
A win would have been highly preferable on what we wish to consider an auspicious occasion. A win was within reach — not only within reach of Rosario, but all of his teammates who combined to lose, 5-4, in frustrating walkoff fashion. The Mets as a whole couldn’t quite get their mitts around this game any more than Rosario could grab hold of LeMahieu’s grounder. If they had been capable of swooping up more close ones prior to the dawn of August, Amed might still be honing his craft in Las Vegas.
Though we wouldn’t have cared for that, either. He’s here, we cheer, get used to him.
When we get our initial glimpse at one of these megatouted youngsters on whom we’ve been waiting patiently or otherwise, we are conditioned to look for the good. There was plenty of good from Rosario on Night One. The first Met born in the year 1995 (!) got to other ground balls. He was credited with one putout and seven assists. He showed a strong arm. He could have shown a quicker release on what wound up the first hit Matz gave up, in the fifth, when Steven had us believin’ that his recent troubles were disappearing into literal thin air. In his fourth at-bat, Amed beat out an infield hit and scurried to second when the throw that wasn’t going to nail him got away. One AB earlier, he’d taken a three-two pitch that was too close to lay off, but at least he didn’t betray an alleged antsiness to swing too much. In general, he looked quicker than any Met has looked this season — certainly less lethargic within the infield — and seemed no less promising than universal analysis of his prospects indicate he truly is.
Rosario didn’t make good on all his promise in one game. Nobody does. Even the best of Met debuts (remember Matz’s?) aren’t all-encompassing perfect. Raw rookies can always get better. The good rookies who do get better are the ones who keep us coming back for more. We will be back for more Amed Rosario. His era has only just begun.
I’ll be in Sharon, Conn., this Friday evening, taking part in the Hotchkiss Library’s annual summer book signing. If you’re interested in attending, check out the details here.
by Greg Prince on 1 August 2017 4:45 pm I’m not the type to carelessly leave a hat on a train, but on Sunday, I apparently carelessly left a hat on a train. I came home, realized I didn’t have it and inferred it rode the LIRR eastbound without me. If I wore hats regularly, I suppose I would have found it on my head. Outside of winter, I wear hats basically never, unless the hat is a baseball cap.
The hat on the train was indeed a baseball cap. A Mets cap, you won’t be surprised to learn. A Mets cap with a 2015 World Series patch on one side, to be specific. I wore it for a spell on Sunday while making a surprise visit to the observatory deck of the 86th floor of the Empire State Building. I hadn’t been up there in 47 years, so I’d definitely have to term the visit a surprise. Stephanie and I were meeting up with her cousin, who was in from Texas with a whole bunch of blended family. They were all really nice folks, and really nice folks from Texas like to do things like ascend to the high floors of tall buildings we New Yorkers don’t give second looks to lest we look like tourists. I brought the 2015 World Series cap along because a) it was sunny and b) knowing how tourists can be (I don’t mean my wife’s cousin and her crew — they know better), I wanted to make sure people from around the world got a look at what a real NY baseball cap looked like.
I don’t know if out-of-towners cared, but I got a couple of Let’s Go Metses from Empire State Building employees. One of them grumbled to me that you could barely make out Citi Field when you looked north and east from the 86th floor. You could if you squinted. It was vaguely visible adjacent to the gaudy white roof of Arthur Ashe Stadium. Finding New York’s other large ballpark, the one tourists have probably heard of, was a comparative breeze, at least once the Let’s Go Metsing ESB guy guided my gaze. I didn’t look at it for long. Didn’t want to turn into a pillar of yeech.
Fun fact: the Mets skyline logo is based on the New York skyline that one stands in the middle of when one is on the premises of the Empire State Building. The New York skyline is very impressive from 86 floors up, its lack of proper baseball perspective notwithstanding. I’m glad I interrupted my blasé approach to soaring architecture to go up so high; every New Yorker should do it every 47 or so years. I’m sorry I lost my Mets cap later that day, but I’m glad I wore it on the 86th floor. I’m sorry I forgot to take a picture of it next to the 86 sign. I’d have had to have explained the connection to our Texan cousins and most everybody else there, but you and I would have gotten a kick out of it.
I miss that cap. It was the second Mets cap with a 2015 World Series patch I purchased, but the only one I liked. The first one was adjustable and unstructured, bought because it was readily available after the NLCS was captured. Adjustable is OK. Unstructured turned out to be a drag. It just kind of lays on my head. I wore it to the 2015 World Series, but I haven’t worn it since. The second one was fitted (7 7/8) with a crown that topped my noggin proudly like the antenna tops the Empire State. It was on sale at Modell’s after the Series was over. I grabbed it and had worn it as much as I’ve worn any cap since November of 2015. Unless it magically reappears, I guess I won’t anymore.
It was just a cap, but it communicated good things. I’d look at it and think about October of 2015, the unlikely run that got us to a World Series and me to Citi Field for that World Series. Any other October prior, you could have squinted all you liked and not seen a World Series there. I’d think about my father and how we watched two of the games together in the nursing home where he was living out what turned out to be his final months. On the other hand, in the wake of losing a cat last Thursday and attending a funeral Monday, I have reluctantly concluded it was just a cap. I have the memories of the 2015 World Series inside my head and my heart. They will do.
 Pictured: Chrysler Building.
Not pictured: Many 2015 Mets.
Coming into view: The future. Similarly, I will remember the 2015 National League champions even if I’m unable to see them every day any longer. Time’s failure to consult with any of us has resulted in a current Mets roster from whence you can barely discern the outline of the Mets who won us a pennant, even from the vantage point of a well-situated observatory. Look over there…there’s deGrom, d’Arnaud, Cespedes, Conforto, Granderson, Matz, Flores, Robles…uh…can you tell if that’s Syndergaard or is that the Chrysler Building?
Twenty-five men constituted the 2015 Mets’ World Series roster and eighteen of those men will not be suited up and ready to go in Colorado tonight. The disabled list explains several absences, but mostly it’s time doing what time does. No baseball team, league champions or not, resists progress for better or for worse. Lucas Duda, 2015 Mets first baseman, was sent away just last week, same day I lost Hozzie. Addison Reed, the last eventual pennant-winner added to the roster (waiver-period trade at the end of August), is the latest to be dispatched. Addison went to Boston yesterday for three minor league pitchers who might be parts of headfilling, heartwarming memories of the future. Or not. Their names are Stephen Nogosek, Jamie Callahan and Gerson Bautista. Their ranking within the Red Sox farm system is no longer relevant, but they were ranked somewhere in there. They’re all righties, they all throw hard, they are all, until further notice, mysteries to us.
I mentioned I was at a funeral on Monday. I learned about the Reed trade on my way there. The service was for the mother of one of my oldest friends. He’s not particularly old, but our friendship is. When we became friends, I would have needed to have taken a picture on the 69th floor of the Empire State Building with a Mets cap to make the same point I meant to make the other day on the 86th. And I would’ve had to have brought a roll of film to my neighborhood drug store to have the picture developed. So it’s been a long time. His mother lived to be 95. Now that’s a long time, and, as I was reminded through her family’s beautiful eulogies, boy, did she fill it well. My friend made a stirring documentary about the glorious town in Greece she came from, the absolute evil unleashed on its people during World War II, and how she and her brother somehow survived the horror en route to starting new and blessed lives in America. I knew this woman for decades as my friend’s charming mother. We exchanged pleasantries. After that movie — and again after the warm remembrances offered by her sons, nieces, grandchildren, everybody on the sad occasion of her passing — I realized she was, no kidding, as close to a superhero as I’ll ever know.
I kind of forgot about caps and trades as I thought about my friend’s mother. But baseball has a way of finding me, especially on trade deadline day, often when awkward silences give way to small talk. Later in the afternoon, at the shiva for my friend’s mother, I fell into conversation with another friend, part of the same high school-era group with whom I’ve stayed reasonably close all these years. This friend went to college in Boston and eventually settled there. Not obviously affiliated in New York, he became a Red Sox fan. Natch, he wanted to know about Addison Reed. I told him that unless Terry Collins worked his arm off that they got themselves a dependable reliever who can set up or close or will do anything he is asked and probably do it well. Oh, he said with a tinge of excitement, I have to show you something. Up on his phone came an image of a framed 2013 World Championship banner. It is authentic, he said. Somebody connected to somebody he knows is the somebody who makes the flags and banners for Fenway Park (confirming Boston is still a town where everybody knows your name). This somebody made a slew of such banners for various presentation purposes the last time the Sox won the World Series and one was left over. My friend was asked if he wanted it.
He did. It’s in his living room. It’s a pretty good keepsake. Beats my unstructured cap with the 2015 patch, let alone the “86” at the Empire State Building.
Later at the shiva, I met a man from the Midwest (“I’m a Chicago Ashkenazi trying to fit in with a bunch of New York Sephardics”) who wanted to let me know, once somebody told him I write about baseball, that he’s a Cubs fan. He didn’t brag on their still-current title at all. He lived through too many of the 108 years between world championships to have developed a trace of cockiness. Anyway, as with my friend from Boston, we talked a little baseball as we eased from solemnity to something resembling normality. You do that at a shiva. Plus we noshed. You do that, too, at a shiva.
After I extended my best to my old friend in mourning and wished a safe trip home to my old friend from Boston, I walked down the block, returned to my car and learned Amed Rosario was going to be called up at last. There’s no first baseman on the roster, but some out-of-position infielder will handle it. There’s no closer, either, on the off chance we have late-inning leads. If coffee is for closers, closers are for contenders. Boston, a bona fide contender, has ours, and they already have Craig Kimbrel. They’re covered for closers. But at last we have our shortstop in view. The one who’s supposed to be able to do everything and exude a ton of joy while doing it. We won’t need to squint to see him from a distance. He’ll be up close in living color for many nights, the first of them tonight. I maintained patience during his elongated prospect phase. I shed it in an instant, probably faster than I shed my suit jacket in the parking lot outside the funeral chapel.
Duda’s gone. Reed’s gone. The 2015 National League Champion Mets melt away. No time for sorrow, though. Rosario’s here. I always look forward to the next Mets game. I really look forward to this one.
by Jason Fry on 31 July 2017 1:23 am Not much.
The Mets meandered their way to the West Coast, as I had, playing below me (in San Diego) and above me (in Seattle) while I attended to business in San Francisco. I caught up with them when I could, but it was an inning here and an inning there. I couldn’t attend to their doings properly until I got home Saturday night, and then I wished I hadn’t — they played the kind of dull, listless baseball one would expect from a mediocre team spinning its wheels.
On Sunday Seth Lugo was bad, Neil Walker couldn’t field, nobody could hit, and newcomer A.J. Ramos had a crummy debut. If you want more go here, but why would you want more? It doesn’t matter. No scores matter until some undetermined date in the future. You’ll know when we’ve reached that date, trust us.
Ramos’s arrival, lackluster though it was, at least represented progress — he’s an actual part of an actual plan for next year. Same with the departure of Lucas Duda, whom I was glad to see go because he was out of tomorrows here, but sad to see go because I enjoyed many of his yesterdays. Simultaneously good-humored and laconic, Duda offered no complaints about being yo-yo’ed between corner outfield spots, worked hard to become a pretty serviceable first baseman, and it was a lot of fun when he connected.
And another shoe should drop soon: Addison Reed has most likely thrown his last inning as a Met, headed elsewhere before the Mets resume business in Colorado on Tuesday. Hopefully the price for his services will be something of future consequence.
If that’s it, the Mets will still have too much deadwood — trade talk is cool around Walker, Jay Bruce, Curtis Granderson, Jose Reyes and Asdrubal Cabrera. And that’s where I get annoyed. If those guys are still here in August I’ll root for them because they’re Mets and I want the Mets to win, but that’s about all the engagement I’ll be able to muster. When the score of a Mets game matters again, those players (with Bruce a possible exception) will probably be wearing other uniforms — or on the golf course.
Want me to care about what’s left of the 2017 Mets? Then show me Amed Rosario and Dom Smith already. Give me a glimpse of the future I need to know is out there — even if that comes with a bumpy present.
That sneak preview should have come in June, when it was apparent to even the most besotted orange-and-blue observer that the 2017 campaign was lost. I’m tired of vague reasons it’s been delayed — just as I’m tired of watching lame-duck Mets trudge through interchangeable, meaningless games. Or not watching them do that, as was the case for most of the last week.
Give me a reason to care — and to hope, and to dream a little. Is that too much to ask?
by Greg Prince on 29 July 2017 11:29 pm I really wanted Jacob deGrom to set the Mets record for most consecutive starts with a win, especially once I discovered that such a record exists and that Jake had tied it. I’m keenly aware of many Mets records. Some it’s never occurred to me to commit to memory. Most Consecutive Starts Won lands a little shy of canonical in that regard.
Most wins in a row in one season is different. That one I grew up with. I knew forever that Tom Seaver won 10 in a row in 1969 and that the Seaver standard held firm until Dwight Gooden blew by it with 14 straight in 1985 (Doc’s streak reached 11 on the same Sunday Tom won his 300th…ah, symMetry). I never really stopped to think about the no-decisions in between, which is what separates that record-keeping from the record-breaking Jacob was attempting. I also didn’t dwell on how wins assigned to a single individual in a team game is rather absurd, probably because when Seaver in 1969 and Gooden in 1985 earned wins, they earned wins.
Jacob deGrom earned eight consecutive wins in eight consecutive starts prior to Saturday and they all brought out the best in a flawed statistic. Jake was no accidental winner, no slogger through five for whom enough runs were scored to forgive his shortcomings. DeGrom’s comings were as long as his locks, and he was a lock to make the Mets look better than they did on the two days before and the two days after Jake pitched.
Saturday in Seattle, the ninth consecutive start with a win, a mythical Met creature for 56 seasons, again failed to appear. One bad inning, a few unfortunate pitches and three Mariner runs saw to it that Jacob would be pitching from behind for too long. He was down, 3-1, when he left after seven and the Mets edged only to within 3-2 after nine. So not only no W for deGrom (a.k.a. FUCKIN A), but also his first L in nearly two months — since the last time he got mixed up with an American League opponent in an American League park. Clearly Jacob isn’t fully comfortable unless he knows he’s going to bat.
The franchise record remains eight straight starts with a win, shared by four Mets of renown who were in the midst of probably the best stretches of their illustrious careers: Seaver in ’69 (en route to 25-7, a Cy Young and a World Series ring); David Cone in ’88 (finishing up at 20-3 and headed to the playoffs); Bobby Jones in ’97 (ascending to All-Star status as the Mets contended for the first time in ages) and deGrom in this Met year that doesn’t fit with any of those Met years. Each of those Met years was a very, very good Met year, while this one struggles to maintain mediocrity, save for when it’s fabulous, which is on the day deGrom pitches and usually wins.
Usually. Not always. It only seemed like it was going to be always.
by Greg Prince on 29 July 2017 12:55 pm A few impressions from a late night in Seattle absorbed via the television in New York before I drifted off to a dreamland in which the Mets don’t linger in distant American League cities where the designated hitter is de rigueur.
• The DH bites. We’ve been through this before. We’ll be through it again. I’m glad we had a good DH in Curtis Granderson on Friday night. I’m saddened we had a DH at all.
• Interleague blows. I have to worry about the Mariners? The Mariners? I opened some packs of cards in March of 1977. Seattle Mariners were included for the first time. Their upside-down trident was clumsily airbrushed onto the caps of vaguely familiars and total strangers. I was charmed. I never personally worried about the Mariners, give or take a playoff series, until they were deposited for a weekend set at Shea Stadium in 2003. Since then, every few years they wander onto our schedule, we onto theirs. Let us not treat the Mets playing the Mariners as normal. It is not. Nor should it be.
• Friday night’s win — up 4-0, down 5-4, triumphant at 7-5 — was the kind that would be rousing as get-all in pursuit of a playoff spot. Otherwise it was just tough to stay awake through, depending on your level of sleepiness (mine was high). The Mets are really good at winning when they do win. It’s the losing that’s holding them back. Where else do you get analysis like this?
• Rafael Montero turned in a performance that places him in the same company with the DH and Interleague. Well, he was good for four innings, whereas those other items are an affront at all times. Rafael was an affront by the fifth inning. He’s also our third-best starter right now. No wonder we’re not in pursuit of a playoff spot.
• Michael Conforto is from the state of Washington, in case you hadn’t heard. Hits well there, apparently.
• Someday I’ll look back on Neil Walker’s Met stats and be surprised he played in more than a dozen games. In my mind he’s been on the disabled list or just coming off of it for two years. Also, he’s from Pittsburgh, in case you hadn’t heard.
• They sell toasted grasshoppers at Safeco Field, we learned from Gary Cohen, who finds them delicious; and Keith Hernandez, who finds them repulsive. I’m gonna side with Keith on this one.
• Daruma of Great Neck, which makes and sells delicious sushi in the World’s Fare Market, should create an I’ll Hide My Eye Roll in honor of Tom Goodwin. Maybe that doesn’t sound any more appetizing than toasted grasshoppers, but it would show somebody is paying attention.
• The Mets have added to their bullpen AJ Ramos, acquired from the Marlins for two low minor leaguers of some promise, which is what all low minor leaguers have, even Tim Tebow, until proven otherwise. Boy, will I be upset if the guys we traded become good. Boy, will I be upset if the guy we traded for allows a surfeit of baserunners and runs. Boy, am I otherwise without strong feelings that aren’t conditional on the worst possible outcomes. I understand Ramos, a veteran, is a marker for next year and might influence the trade market to make Addison Reed a more valuable commodity. That sounds good, I guess. I’ve gotten really zen about this stuff. As previously stated, I’ll root for whoever they put in front of me unless they put in front of me one too many DHs (which, for the record, would be one).
• Distracted as I was by personal matters, I didn’t issue a proper bon voyage to one of the signature Mets of the current decade, Lucas Duda, upon his trade to the Rays. I get how these contract-driven, future-thinking things work come late July, but I am genuinely sorry to see the big lug go. Stand-up guy, class act, heckuva slugger in spurts…and the last of Jerry’s Kids, those Mets who came to the majors under the tutelage of Mr. Manuel and stuck around to make a significant impact on the course of Metsian events. His 2014 production was a revelation, his 2015 contributions were essential, his eight seasons as one of ours a delight. He’s hit one home run for Tampa Bay already. I hope he hits many more soon. I mean really soon.
• Thanks to those good friends and thoughtful readers who have turned out to show their support at my recent appearances on behalf of Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star. Same for those who tune in when somebody finds me worthy of interviewing and, really, anybody who has bought/read the book. I write for my fellow Mets fans, so it’s gratifying to know when I’m reaching my fellow Mets fans.
• Thanks even more for the kind sentiments regarding the passing of our cat Hozzie, who I continue to miss deeply. It means a lot to Stephanie and me that people who never met him would share their condolences. It would mean a lot to Hozzie’s brother Avery, too, but I don’t think he reads the blog that much.
by Greg Prince on 28 July 2017 5:38 am Don’t trust what you see in September, they say. What I saw in September 2002 was a sign that life went on. It went on for almost another fifteen years. So maybe trust a little what you see in September.
 Hozzie the Cat, fifteen years a champ. Hosmer Mountain Beverage Cat Prince — known popularly as Hozzie the Cat — was our September callup, our glimpse of the future, our augmentation to the team that you hope positions you for the seasons ahead. Hozzie was given the opportunity to break in because there was a void in the Prince family lineup. We had been a two-cat family for nearly a decade. We had Bernie, and then we had Casey, which is to say we had Bernie & Casey. They were separately adopted brothers in arms. Or front legs, if you want to get technical about it. God, we loved them together.
In June of 2002, Casey’s time was up, the end of a long, heartbreaking goodbye. Bernie was left to solo. Not that he couldn’t handle it. Not that he couldn’t carry the load. But our emotional quota was two cats. Nobody could ever replace Casey. Someone would be called on to succeed him.
Enter Hozzie the Cat on September 24, 2002, the 33rd anniversary of the night the Mets clinched their first division title, apropos in that Hozzie was a miracle unto himself. You have to understand that the first stab we took at installing a Casey successor, two days before, went awry. Somebody tipped us off to “a cat in need of a good home”. We bit. So did the cat. That cat didn’t need a good home. That cat was fine being feral where he was, which we figured out after he couldn’t stand being inside our home. He wasn’t a bad cat, but he was definitely a bad fit.
Desperate for answers for what to do with a cat who didn’t want any part of his new people (or his would-be brother; Bernie was spooked by the interloper and hid under the bed for two days), Stephanie visited our local pet store. Instead of coming home with advice, she came home with a kitten who was up for adoption. She grabbed him under the “best athlete available” principle of drafting.
We didn’t need a third cat. We needed that cat.
I discovered the kitten’s presence when I came home that night, opened the bathroom door and saw him atop the throne — lid down, eyes up. This little gray tabby my wife found looked at me like I was joining him in the waiting room for whatever it was that lay ahead. It was the stuff of President Bartlet on The West Wing: What’s next?
Hozzie was next. We arranged an unconditional release for the miscast feral interloper and recalibrated who we were. Us, featuring Bernie & Hozzie. It wasn’t necessarily destined to click. Bernie was the established veteran, a ten-and-five man, to say the very least. I’d heard of older cats who wanted nothing to do with fresh kittens. But Bernie, who had once welcomed Casey into his lair, did the same for young Hozzie. Hozzie was an eager protégé, Bernie a patient mentor, us ebullient to have it confirmed that life went on. We lost Casey. We gained Hozzie. We gained Bernie & Hozzie. We loved them together.
Three years later, nature’s cycle essentially repeated. We lost Bernie in May of 2005. The goodbye was sudden, though no less cruel. Again, we were down one cat. Another September arrived after another summer of mourning. This time we got our furry miracle on the first try: Avery the Cat, little brother to Hozzie. Hozzie & Avery. The dynamics were distinct from those that informed the previous collaborations. Avery as a kitten was a pistol, a pioneer in interactivity. Laps and chests and heads were his furniture. Hozzie, meanwhile, had matured into an adult who mostly wanted to be left alone. Eventually they forged a cordial working relationship despite their creative differences. We loved them together, too.
Avery has never stopped being a kitten. Hozzie, more than any of the four cats I’ve known, seemed born to grow old. That he did. He grew to be fifteen years old. That’s as far as he got. Hozzie’s journey ended on July 27, 2017, the day Chris Flexen made his major league debut to little avail in a park named Petco, the day the Mets traded Lucas Duda — another September callup with a quietly pleasant disposition — to Tampa Bay for pitching prospect Drew Smith. Hozzie’s goodbye wasn’t as drawn out as Casey’s, nor quite as sudden as Bernie’s. We knew something like it was coming, as he’d been dealing with issues for a while. We just didn’t know it was coming all at once when it did.
On Thursday afternoon, I found Hozzie in the hallway outside my office, all stretched out. Barely any movement, barely any breathing. This, I deduced, was no standard upstairs midday nap. I rushed him to the vet across the street. They said he’d suffered a seizure when I’d had my back turned and, oh by the way, he has a mass “the size of his fist” in his abdomen. It never occurred to me a cat could make a fist, but it also never occurred to me cats could get tumors until they kept finding them inside Casey.
You live and you learn. We lived through Casey’s cancer fight. We learned you can’t fight feline cancer for very long nor very effectively. We lived through Hozzie’s feline diabetes and various infections. He battled. We facilitated. He somehow set all the Prince Cat longevity records, but he could go on only so long. By Thursday evening, Stephanie and I were across the street at the vet with Hozzie, in the back where they had him hooked up to an I.V. We knew we’d be coming home without him. This was the first time we had to let go of a cat via euphemism (“a graceful farewell,” the vet called it, as we signed off on what needed to be done). The sensation was right down there with our previous experiences organically parting with Casey in 2002 and Bernie in 2005. You live and you learn. You learn that it’s always awful saying goodbye to the ones you’ve lived with and loved so much.
Yet oh how happy you were to have said hello and to have said so much else and experienced so much else for having said hello fifteen years before. Hozzie could drive me crazy, particularly amid my twilight slumbers, especially when he discerned scratching at my leg jarred me awake and goaded me to the kitchen. He ran on his schedule, not ours. When he decided a certain spot was ideal to perform certain necessary bodily functions, well, good luck convincing him there was a box set up for that sort of thing, go use that, Hozzie. Let me not overly idealize my late, beloved cat. He often revealed himself a self-absorbed pain in the ass, sometimes because he couldn’t help it, sometimes because it worked quite nicely for him.
And I miss him anyway. It’s only been hours, but I miss the determined meowing; the pedestrian obstacle he doubled as in darkness; the recurring admonishments that he not do that nor that nor think about going there; and the mano a mano over the poultry on my plate that he decided was intended for him. I miss the entire Hozzie package. I miss Hozzie & Avery. I adore Avery. Avery, bless his sinewy soul, is still going strong. Avery is a people’s cat in a way that Hozzie never was. Avery can most assuredly carry the emotional load. But you get used to a duo, especially this duo, even the half you purported to have had it up to here with. You get used to hearing those cries, to looking into those eyes, to offering your knuckles for his pheromones. You remember the first time you met, him and you, and inferring that, yes, life would go on.
Which it did and I suppose it will some more.
by Greg Prince on 27 July 2017 2:42 pm A few impressions that remain from another late night in San Diego absorbed via the television in New York:
• The San Diego Padres of this century, no matter their episodic success, always come off as extras in a not particularly believable baseball movie. “Why couldn’t they use a real team? Padres? What the hell are those?” This current edition of Padres, who excelled on Wednesday night/Thursday morning, may grow into a roving band of West Coast marauders, but I stand by my sense that they don’t really exist.
• Steven Matz will be the subject of next week’s ABC Afterschool Special, “The Lefty Who Lost His Way,” set on Long Island, but filmed in Vancouver for budgetary reasons. He said that despite his sickly looking performances of late that he’s feeling fine, so I assume something is terribly wrong. Based on how he’s pitched, something is terribly wrong. Whether it’s physical, per se, or just, you know, something wrong…well, something’s wrong.
• Randy Jones was a welcome middle-innings guest on SNY. He’s doing better than he was a few months ago and doing better than Matz, by all indications. The Padres’ premiere lefty of days gone by is in possession of Jerry Koosman’s 1976 National League Cy Young Award, but we won’t hold that against him. Nor will we dwell on his Mickey Lolich Lite tenure as a Met in 1981 and 1982. Some guys pass through your premises, some guys have legacies somewhere else. Keep throwing that soft stuff, Mr. Jones, and getting ’em out San Diego way. You were a helluva pitcher. (Maybe have a word with our Steven if you can spare it.)
• Chris Flexen starts tonight for the Mets. Clean slate. Fill it with outs, young feller.
• We’ll be rockin’ in Rockville Centre Friday night at 7:00, talkin’ Piazza and all that good ’90s Mets stuff. Come on over to where I’ll be speaking of the ex-Padre and eternal Met. The place has books and wine and, for a spell, me. Would love to see you. Thanks.
by Greg Prince on 26 July 2017 1:45 pm Perhaps the reason Yoenis Cespedes accessorizes like he’s part of a road work crew — highway-cone orange elbow and ankle pads outlined in traffic-redirecting neon yellow — is he likes driving his team toward victory. Just because he hadn’t done much of it lately didn’t mean he’d lost his taste for it.
Perhaps it was just a matter of time before he got behind the wheel of the Mets’ bus again. Perhaps it was being so relatively close to Oakland that has shifted him to another gear. Whatever it is that’s gotten Yo hitting like Yo, Yo is hitting like Yo. Two nights in California, two nights of Cespedes extra-base flair. Suddenly you notice him not just by all the stuff wrapped around his limbs or hanging from his neck. In case you’d forgotten, this fella can hit a bit. Can hit a lot when he’s hot.
Right now, he’s hot.
Tuesday night in San Diego, Cespedes’s sizzle was palpable. A homer to start the Mets’ scoring in the first. A double to tie the game in the fifth. A triple that untied it in the seventh, featuring a Padre error that allowed Yoenis to come all the way around as Mets have been doing delightfully regularly recently without bothering to hit balls that leave the park. The so-called Little League home run, the third the Mets have engineered with a little help from their foes since the All-Star break (and the only kind I ever managed in tee ball), put the Mets up, 6-4. That extra run would become more than a marine layer of icing on the cake in the ninth once Addison Reed came in to further diminish his trade value. Addison gave up an RBI double to Dusty Coleman, who I believe San Diego acquired from a random baseball-name generator, to cut the New York lead to 6-5. But that was all that would be given back. Reed got a save, Seth Lugo and the Mets got a win and Cespedes…
Where did Ces go? Not back to the loving embrace of Bob Melvin, not yet anyway. Terry Collins removed his re-emerging superstar after his home-to-home dash because Archie Bell & the Drells phoned in from Houston, Texas, to dedicate the “Tighten Up” to Yo’s quad. Cespedes looked great yet didn’t feel quite right, so, cycle possibility or no, better safe than sorry.
Not sorry Cespedes is a Met for a few more years, regardless of last month’s cold spell, the lower body parts marked fragile and the general sense that he’s marching (hopefully not limping) to his own drummer. Anything could go wrong physically at any time, one supposes, but plenty can go right competitively when Cespedes is all in one piece.
He’s a helluva piece to have.
Helluva time ahead at Turn of the Corkscrew, 110 N. Park Ave. in Rockville Centre, L.I., Friday night, 7 PM. I’ll reading from and discussing my book Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star. Copies will be for sale from the fine folks at this fine books & wine establishment, but admission, conversation and inscription will be gratis. If you’re in the vicinity, I do hope you’ll drop by.
by Greg Prince on 25 July 2017 2:43 pm Jacob deGrom might be confused when he arrives at his locker on August 25 and sees a different name over the number on the back of his road uniform. August 25 to 27, when the Mets are in Washington, is MLB Players Weekend, a three-day period when players can, in the name of fun or something like it, wear their nicknames on their jerseys. The Mets have several players who, should they be on the trip, have obvious choices. Noah Syndergaard would be THOR. Matt Harvey would be DARK KNIGHT. Zack Wheeler would be THEY DL ME TOO.
DeGrom? If he filed for one, it was probably JAKE or JdG or perhaps deGROMINATOR. Yet all will be rejected, whether Jacob is informed in advance or not, in favor of the people’s choice.
Fuckin’ A.
Or, as it will appear on fabric, FUCKIN A 48.
This assumes that whoever at MLB headquarters is responsible for nickname compilation was up late Monday night listening to the repeated satisfaction-laced exhortations of Mets fans like myself as deGrom threw his usual superb start in San Diego.
Jacob strikes out the side in the first?
FUCKIN A
Jacob throws a double play ball to escape the second?
FUCKIN A
Jacob leaves single runners on in the third and fourth?
FUCKIN A
Jacob retires seven in a row to get through six with a 4-0 lead?
FUCKIN A
Jacob strikes out the side in the seventh after surrendering a solo home run to Hunter Renfroe?
FUCKIN A
Jacob leaves after eight innings, having given up only two runs, is in line for his eighth consecutive victory in eight starts, perseveres through nagging foot discomfort, remains in command throughout, asserts himself like few pitchers in the league and no other pitcher on the Mets?
FUCKIN A
Addison Reed nearly gives back what was a seemingly secure 5-2 lead, allowing another leadoff home run to Renfroe and getting very lucky when Jabari Blash comes within inches of Jabari-blasting a three-run shot to right that goes ever so slightly foul, before holding on for a 5-3 final over the pesky Padres?
OH FOR CRISSAKE
MLB probably won’t need to ship the Mets an OH FOR CRISSAKE 43 jersey to hang in Reed’s locker come August 25. Chances are he’ll be traded by then.
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