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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 Greg Prince on 31 July 2015 1:53 pm One look at the dark clouds encroaching from the west led me to an unassailable conclusion, which I shared with my friend Joe as we sat waiting in the third row of Promenade, section 508, for the top of the ninth inning to commence Thursday afternoon.
“End times,” I declared mostly seriously, “are coming.”
Joe glanced up from his scorebook, assessed the atmosphere and tacitly agreed.
“It’s been nice knowing you, Greg.”
Then there was a clap of thunder emanating from, I’m guessing, the Mr. Softee cart in the food court behind us. It was a little too close for comfort, especially considering how little comfort had been available to us all day. A six-run Mets lead had recently been whittled to two; I was drenched in enough sweat that you’d have thought I’d just hustled over from opening for Bette Midler at the Continental Baths; and Camp Day — because the Mets aren’t camp enough every day — was still going surprisingly strong and surprisingly loud. Since 12:10 Camp Day kids had been responding to every Noise Meter tickler the Citi Vision board had put before them, as if they needed the challenge. Their screams weren’t as loud as the thunder, but they were unnerving in their own way. They were still screaming nearly three hours after they’d begun.
Put it all together, and it was enough to drive a diehard toward a life preserver.
“I’ll meet you down in the concourse after the last out,” I told Joe, hoping “last out” wasn’t to be taken literally, as in the last out prior to the impending rapture.
I watched Jeurys Familia make quick work of two Padres and get one strike on a third — Derek Norris, the devil Friar who personally changed the score from 7-1 to 7-5 two innings earlier — from veritable safety. I could see it was starting to rain, but baseball games with only an instant or two left to them could withstand a shower, even a downpour. The Dodgers eliminated the Phillies from the NLCS in that kind of rain in 1977. The Giants did the same to the Cardinals in 2012. This was just the Mets and the San Diego Padres in the heat of nothing more than a summer’s day. Surely they could dance another couple of steps between the raindrops and give Joe and me and campers from all over the Metropolitan Area something to enjoy on our respective ways home…assuming we weren’t all being Called Home in a different vein.
There would be no next instant for Familia, no oh-one pitch for more than half-an-hour. The weather started getting rough; Citi Field was tossed; if not for the courage of the Mets ground crew, the infield would be lost.
The next thunderclap was more like a standing ovation, and not for a shortstop who thought he’d been traded. This one said get out of the stands, get off of the field, get out of the monsoon that is about swallow Flushing whole. I was met down in the concourse by Joe and by everybody else. Hundreds of campers remained and now needed to be corralled by counselors who probably didn’t sign up for this particular duty. Every boom of thunder, every crack of lightning was met with shrieks you hadn’t heard since Luis Castillo circled under a pop fly one borough away.
The counselors tried to distract their campers by leading them in repetitious chants, somehow skipping Let’s Go Mets. At their and our feet, lagoons like you’d see at Shea Stadium…lagoons the size of Shea Stadium…formed. To call them puddles is to refer to the Atlantic Ocean as your bathtub. The rain blew in horizontally. Security shooed the curious from sticking as much a head out from under for a clearer look at the thick, gray skies. They could not be held responsible for your imminent extinction if you did.
The video screens showed 1986 Mets: A Year To Remember, as if to give us one final pleasant memory before we were washed away for good.
As it turns out, the rains subsided, then evaporated. The camp groups were able to depart. Citi Field grew quiet, save for Larry Keith’s expert narration and the Duran Duran soundtrack that emphasized just what wild boys Lenny Dykstra and Wally Backman were back in the day. Dozens remained along the first base side of Promenade, Joe and I among them. The seats were too wet to sit in, but that wasn’t a big deal. We weren’t going to be long.
At 3:15, when we’d been standing around for about 20 minutes, it was announced the two teams would retake the field at 3:30. One more out would be recorded and we could all go home. The grounds crew was diligently sweeping away the water that sat in front of the Padres dugout, which I thought was a lot of trouble to go to for just one out’s worth of baseball. This, I suggested to Joe, must have been what it felt like at Yankee Stadium that night in 1983 when they opened the place up to play the final four outs of the Pine Tar Game.
Around 3:25 the field looked fairly immaculate. We were antsy to see the end of our 7-5 Mets win. Did they really have to wait until 3:30? Couldn’t Norris get his ass up to the plate now? Couldn’t Terry send in…
Hey, who was Terry going to send in? Familia looked fine getting those first two outs, but we were staring at something like a 35-minute delay. Jeurys was going at it in the Flushing tropics and then he was sent, I’m guessing, to cool his heels in an air conditioned room. Aren’t pitchers supposed to not be left to their own devices for that long a period? Wasn’t Carlos Torres fresh and capable of a single out with nobody on? (Yes, I realize I was advocating for one of the Tsuris Bros. over our de facto All-Star closer, but this was a first guess based on circumstances more than personalities or track records.)
Familia returned to the mound. Oh well, I tried to rationalize, Terry might actually know his pitchers better than I do. Maybe the rain delay won’t have an effect on Jeurys. “Water and rain have always been a blessing to me,” Pedro Martinez said in his memoir, referring to the night Shea’s sprinklers surprised him in the midst of pitching. “That’s what this felt like.” Perhaps it would feel the same for Familia.
Six minutes later, all blessings had turned cursed. As we stood behind an unoccupied Promenade Box section, Norris stayed alive on an oh-two count before dropping a hit into short right field; he was now 5-for-5. Matt Kemp, who’s been around long enough to have played in a playoff series against the New York Mets (but didn’t, despite having been a rookie on the 2006 Los Angeles Dodgers), poked a fast grounder through a hole just right of Ruben Tejada at short. Next up was Justin Upton, or “The Upton,” as Joe and I would come to label him in short order when we decided his secret identity could be that of Batman archvillain.
Not so secret, I suppose. The Upton lined Familia’s second pitch far and deep to center, through the raindrops — for they were falling anew — and over the fence.
The Mets were trailing the Padres, 8-7. The only worst-case scenario we had conjured while waiting in the concourse had come to pass. It might as well have been end times.
Familia got the third out.
Joe, as peaceful a sort as you’d be fortunate to know, punched the hell out of an abandoned Goose Island Beer cart.
The rain intensified.
The grounds crew attempted to unroll the tarp.
The tarp attempted to devour the grounds crew.
The game was on pause yet again.
We weren’t. We decided we’d had enough.
Joe hardly ever bolts before the conclusion of affairs — I think our last mutual early exit was the nightcap after the Craig Counsell Game in 2002 — but there was no sign the rains would ever slacken and there was no stomach to endure what was likely to occur if they did. Joe’s got this great optimistic streak. Every one of his freakish hypotheticals always has the Mets coming back to win, but even he couldn’t sell that kind of sunny outcome to himself. I’m not nearly as sanguine. I was there the night before, which should indicate that my goodwill toward best-case scenarios was already well frazzled.
Wednesday represented my annual moment of Ben. Ben is a friend who was good enough to stop on his way to starting law school to invite me, as he does every year, to see a game with him. Ben’s an optimist, too. Ben was an undergrad at the University of Arizona and cheered his heart out for their teams, most of whom did a lot of winning. I don’t want to tamp down his enthusiasm as he tries to apply the ol’ school spirit to the occasionally amateurish Mets. Thus, when we watched from 310 on Wednesday night, I attempted with every sweat-covered ounce of enthusiasm I could muster to partake in his patented six-run rally in the bottom of the ninth way of thinking. Once we saw Lucas Duda sock his third home run, it didn’t seem all that crazy.
Then, of course, it did.
Alas, all I wound up with at the end of the 7-3 Met loss was a little more shvitz and a lot more wear on my phone’s battery, as together we tried to follow the Wilmer Flores saga, featuring Carlos Gomez and guest-starring Zack Wheeler, from our seats and then the 7 Super Express. We were among those who made Wilmer emotional by standing and applauding him on his presumed way out. We thought we were contributing to a beautiful, spontaneous moment of fan support. We didn’t know we were part of some nefarious social media plot to undermine our manager’s and general manager’s best-laid plans or lack thereof.
I’ve been asked several times since Thursday’s inevitable loss went final — the Mets waited about three hours to make three more outs, by which time I was home and slightly drier — if this had been the worst or strangest or Metsiest 24 hours I’d ever seen. That’s a lot to put on one blown six-run lead (granted, the first of its kind in Queens since 1970) and one colorfully aborted trade. As is usually the case with those kinds of questions, the answer is if you’re having the conversation, it doesn’t really matter where it ranks. What matters is you’ve been motivated to have the conversation.
Thursday they lost. Wednesday they lost. Wednesday you know from in terms of the Met trade that wasn’t, the Met internal communications that went every which way but between anybody who could have clarified things internally and the Met infielder who still is a Met infielder until otherwise notified. There’s no need for me to add to the abundance of analysis of what is bound to wind up in public relations class text books as a “what can go wrong will go wrong” case study for a generation to come. But I will say I wish the Mets had handled the aftermath differently.
Instead of harumphing it away, the Mets should have embraced their debacle. You’ve heard the expression, “Stranger things have happened”? This is a franchise built on the strangest things. And the day after the story broke would have been perfect. It was July 30. July 30 is a charmed date in Mets history. On July 30, 1890, Casey Stengel was born. He’d grow up to manage Mets who drove him to (probably) ask, “Can’t anybody here play this game?” It’s a query that’s never far from our tongues as we watch his Amazin’ descendants. On July 30, 1969, the Mets were getting blown out of a doubleheader at home against Houston. Gil Hodges didn’t like the level of Cleon Jones’s defensive commitment. Hodges marched out to left field and removed Jones at once. Long story short, a message was sent and from that nadir grew ultimate victory, with Cleon standing in the same vicinity of where he’d been unceremoniously removed, this time catching the year’s final fly ball. Like Casey’s pithy quote, Gil’s purposeful march to left is legend.
The night we thought Wilmer Flores had been traded, moving us to move him to tears, is already legend. I say expand on it. Here’s what I would have done yesterday, July 30, 2015:
• Put Wilmer Flores merchandise (if there is any) on closeout special in the team stores, but just for one inning. Attribute the sudden sale to an unavoidable misunderstanding
• Splice 2007 Carlos Gomez highlights into the usual rally reels and see if anybody notices.
• Retire Wilmer’s No. 4 in a touching pregame ceremony…and then unretire it in a slightly less touching pregame ceremony five minutes later.
• Record a PSA in which Terry Collins urges all fans to use their mobile devices with utmost caution — “or better yet, just watch the game while you’re at the game.”
• Get Wilmer to endorse GroundLink Transportation, the official ground transportation provider of the New York Mets: “I may not know whether I’m coming or going, but I can always depend on GroundLink to get me somewhere.”
• Set a montage of Wilmer’s home runs (assuming they are adaptable to modern technology; he hasn’t hit one since kinescopes) to a loop of Gary Cohen’s “OUTTA HERE!” calls. And then bring the soundtrack to a screeching halt.
• Make Zack Wheeler the answer to every trivia question, since it seems we’ve all kind of forgotten who he is. Or was.
Instead, the Mets pretended nothing happened, built a six-run lead, blew a six-run lead, waited and waited and waited and lost. Ben, glutton for Metishment, was at Thursday’s game, too, but unlike Joe and me, he stuck around to the bitter, bitter, bitter end. I predict that when he graduates from law school, he will pursue a career in which he tirelessly advocates for the underdog.
Though I skipped that final half-inning, I’ll keep rooting for the team that came up short. End times? Ha! Once you get into this, there is no end to this. This week marked two personal Met milestones that absolutely nobody forced on me. Thursday was my 200th game at Citi Field — that was fast — and Wednesday was five years since the last Mets game I entirely missed. I napped through the action of July 29, 2010, also a 12:10 start, except one that followed a thirteen-inning marathon the night before that I got home from late, wrote about until dawn and then stayed up some more to drive my wife to the station and then resume my other work. I then opted to lie down for just a few minutes that became the entirety of a swift R.A. Dickey start, one I blogged anyway.
Since then, I’ve watched or listened to or attended at least a small portion (usually more; usually most) of every regular-season Mets game that’s been played. Regardless of what else I’m doing, it’s what I seem to do. It’s a hard habit to break. As disgusted as I was after The Upton foiled Familia, I’m not seeking to break it. I’d just like possibly positive trades to be consummated; seemingly prohibitive leads to be maintained; and potential pennant race showdowns with the likes of the Nationals to live up to their tentative billing.
After these past five years of uninterrupted observation, when only massive rains and astounding frustration have served to sidetrack me, I don’t think that’s a lot to ask for.
by Jason Fry on 30 July 2015 12:16 am OK, so …
Hmm.
Umm.
Seriously, how the hell do you start?
Wednesday night’s game was weird before it began, but we had No Idea.
Even before Will Venable headed for the plate to start the top of the first, Twitter was buzzing with rumors: The Mets were close to a deal, and it was for a bat — a big bat. The actual game against the Padres was a sideshow — you could hear the tension in Gary Cohen’s voice, and imagine him between innings demanding to know what the heck was going on.
Then, even as Bartolo Colon was unraveling and Lucas Duda was taking aim at fences, the buzz turned into an apparent fact. The Mets were acquiring Carlos Gomez. For Juan Lagares was the first fragmentary report, followed by something definitive: The team had traded Wilmer Flores and Zack Wheeler to Milwaukee.
A Post columnist tweeted news of the deal, followed by a Daily News beat writer. The Brewers beat writer had it too. The national guys had it. From the Brewers’ plane, catcher Martin Maldonado tweeted a photo of teammates saying farewell to Gomez. On SNY, Gary and Keith began talking about the deal. Soon enough we even learned that the Brewers had wanted Dilson Herrera but settled for Flores instead. It was all following the script for a deadline deal in the Twitter age.
Nothing was official pending the usual review of medical reports, but those are formalities. And in an age where most fans have a powerful computer in their pockets, Citi Field was no sanctuary from the news. The fans knew the deal had happened. They chanted Gomez’s name, and, in your nightly reminder that we live in times that seem borrowed from “The Jetsons,” they told Flores he’d been traded.
Which led to one of the more surreal sequences I’ve ever seen: First, Flores got a mini-ovation in what certainly appeared to be his final Met at-bat. We all waited for him to be pulled from the game and get goodbyes from his teammates — #HugWatch is how it’s now described on Twitter — on his way to the clubhouse, street clothes and a Brewers uniform.
Except Flores wasn’t pulled. He stayed in the game, reduced to tears. For which no one with the smallest shred of a heart could blame him: Flores signed with the Mets at 16, busted his butt to make the major leagues, was assigned to a position he’d been told he couldn’t play, played it variously not so well and well enough, was taken off that position, struggled with his hitting and was now being traded. All of it in public, in the cauldron of attention and noise and opinion that is New York City.
It seemed unimaginably cruel that he was still in the game, and at the position where he’d been left to struggle so publicly. What on earth were the Mets doing? How had they managed to turn a great story — a deal for an All-Star, prodigal son and potential pennant-race difference-maker — into yet another self-inflicted embarrassment?
The Mets finally finished losing — the ballgame was all but forgotten before it concluded, even though it saw Colon self-destruct to continue a worrisome trend and Duda club three homers to (possibly) accelerate a hopeful one. Terry Collins addressed the media in full Get Off My Lawn mode, decrying fans looking at their cellphones on a game, players getting distracted by the business side of things, and repeatedly noting that no one had told him anything about a trade.
And then, just when the narrative was seemingly cemented as the Mets making an audacious move but being cruel to one of their own in the process, everything changed.
Sandy Alderson — an obviously angry Sandy Alderson — said there was no trade and would be no trade.
Which is where the needle got pulled off the record, and everyone — players, reporters and fans alike — just sort of stopped and looked at each other in disbelief. Had all that really happened?
It did. But what was the real story of the night the Wilmer Flores era didn’t actually end? We’ll have to wait to find out, while accepting the possibility that we may never know. But here’s my guess: The deal was done as described, and both front offices thought the review of medical records was a formality, as it usually is. So people in both front offices started talking to reporters. Then, with the whole world already knowing about the deal, the Brewers decided they didn’t like something in Wheeler’s reports and pulled out. That infuriated Alderson, to the extent that he’s swearing he won’t revisit a deal with Milwaukee.
Do I have that right? Maybe, maybe not. It’s the best fit for the facts that I can see.
[Updated Already: Maybe not. Now there are reporters saying it was the Mets who backed out, over Gomez’s hip. Which might mean Alderson was mad at the Brewers for something in the medical reports, or for talking early. Or he was mad at social media, or the beat writers, or at Buddy for pooping on the carpet. Good God, what a mess.]
Feeling dizzy? Then brace yourself. Because what happens tomorrow, when the Mets arrive bright and early for a businessman’s special against the Padres? Flores will still be a Met, somehow — and can be forgiven for wondering what on earth will happen to him on Thursday. Travis d’Arnaud will be back, preparing for the Nats series. David Wright will be hanging around on the field, doing baseball-like drills that will get us too excited. Perhaps Lucas Duda will keep swatting balls to Portugal.
The Mets will still be close enough to the Nats that we should be excited. They’ll probably be working on other trades for a bat. Beyond that, though? I’m not even going to speculate — not after five hours that were spectacularly weird even by the surreal standards we’ve grown used to around here.
by Greg Prince on 29 July 2015 7:50 am Noah Syndergaard had a perfect game going. I wasn’t particularly nervous about it. I figured he was going to get it. When the perfect game was broken up by Will Venable’s leadoff single in the seventh inning, I wasn’t particularly upset about it. I figured he’d just keep going for the win and maybe pitch a no-hitter or better somewhere down the road.
That’s when you know you have pitching.
June 1, 2012, pretty much took care of the churning stomach acid where zeroes under the scoreboard’s ‘H’ are concerned, though you’re never going to turn down another one, let alone a perfect one. It would have been sweet to add July 28, 2015, to the pantheon of Met dates, but residing in that golden zone where an outing like Syndergaard’s against the Padres feels more like the norm than the aberration is reward enough. So the rookie (hard to believe, given his poise) goes eight, gives up three hits, strikes out nine, walks nobody and the Mets win, 4-0. That, as Tom Seaver advised Nancy long ago on the heels of a similarly imperfect shutout, is hardly reason to shed a tear.
Lucas Duda ensured there’d be enough runs when he launched, blasted and rocketed — the more verbs the better — a baseball deep into the Big Apple or Apple Reserved or Apple Orchard section, whatever it’s called these days, to stake Noah to an early 2-0 lead. Curtis Granderson removed any ancillary offensive worries with a two-run shot of his own late. Tyler Clippard made us think of him as a helpful Met pushing us along rather than an old nemesis waiting to explode in our faces by keeping the ninth as tidy as it needed to be. James Shields was by no means bad, but Syndergaard was out of this world.
End of story, except for what occurred right before it began, which was the second suspension of Jenrry Mejia after Mejia tested positive yet again for banned substances. These were PEDs, though it reminded me of the night 21 years ago when Dwight Gooden was found to be back on cocaine. The reaction in 1994 versus 1987 for Doc was striking. The first time it had been mostly he’d make a mistake, he’d get his head on straight, he’d come back and we’d welcome him to the mound to pitch for us. The second time it was WTF, goodbye. Although it appeared he’d been keeping his nose clean during the intervening seven years, the second suspension, which ended his Met tenure, seemed inevitable in retrospect. Also in retrospect, it seemed inevitable it would be mostly forgotten in the long run because Doc was Doc — the Thor of his time — and we wanted to embrace him more than shun him.
Mejia isn’t an outsize character in Mets history as Gooden remains, so there isn’t quite the emotional tug here. He made what is generally agreed to have been a dopey error in judgment by taking PEDs (and then getting caught) the first time, but everybody makes mistakes, and once the season got rolling and bullpen depth became an issue, it was sure going to be nice to get Jenrry going again. As recently as Sunday it was very nice.
Then came Tuesday and the announcement that he’d be ineligible for the next 162 games after having been found to have ingested in some form the anabolic steroids Stanozolol and Boldenone. MLB had already gotten him on the former, so the league was testing him a little extra, meaning the chances of Mejia getting caught seemed pretty good.
For the most part we process addiction to a drug like cocaine as a disease and if we are patient and forgiving and haven’t been directly wronged by someone under its pull, we encourage the addict to seek treatment and perhaps salvation. On paper it all looks pretty easy. We look at what we know about PEDs — they can enhance an athlete’s performance and thus enrich his lifestyle but have deleterious side effects that have led to their prohibition within the game — and slap our heads that somebody would keep taking them when the profession they have chosen explicitly forbids it. I can almost hear Norm MacDonald deliver the news: “Mejia was suspended for taking PEDs after the pitcher was told by Major League Baseball to do one thing: ‘Don’t take PEDs.’”
So the sympathy level is understandably low from all concerned, though maybe a little empathy is in order. We all do dumb things. We occasionally do them twice, though probably not so soon after we do them once and were caught for them and were issued a warning that we’d be watched very closely to make sure we didn’t do them again.
I liked watching Jenrry pitch. I liked that his jams were never too tight and he usually wriggled out of them with a flourish. I liked that a kid who grew up shining shoes in Santo Domingo could grow up to polish off the final outs of baseball games in New York City. I liked watching him play Santa for the kids at the Mets holiday party last December. I liked thinking he’d “learned his lesson” and was back to contribute to the Mets’ chase of the Nationals, which finds them only one game out of first at the moment. Jenrry wouldn’t be eligible for a potential postseason appearance, but he could give us a hand in getting there and he’d prove essential to the team he’d been pitching for through injuries and multiple role changes since 2010.
You never can tell, but we probably won’t see him pitch for the Mets again. Nevertheless, I’d like him to simply stop doing that dumb thing that got him suspended a second time, even if “simply” stopping probably isn’t quite as simple as it sounds. It won’t matter in the course of our team’s fortunes. This is just human empathy speaking.
by Greg Prince on 28 July 2015 2:15 pm The Mets’ hypothetical reacquisition of Jose Reyes always goes very well in my head, at least until he pulls a muscle getting off the plane at LaGuardia. I regularly try to see his homecoming happening but I can never see it going well. But now that our all-time shortstop is sort of in flux — having been sent almost as packing peanuts with prospects from Toronto to Colorado for Never Met Troy Tulowitzki — Reyes seems more hypothetically available than ever.
In the sense that he might be traded again by an organization that isn’t necessarily interested in keeping him around, he’s out there for the taking, or at least the talking. As this is the week when even the most nonsensical deal is one phone call from making all the sense in the world, do we want Jose back?
In my heart, yes.
In my heart of hearts, absolutely.
In my heart of heart of hearts…geez, did he just strain a ligament sliding into third heart?
That’s the problem, besides all the compensation he is owed and the ownership that is enormously unlikely (and probably unwilling let alone unable) to court it. Something will go wrong if we rebook the services of 32-year-old Jose Reyes, who only seems forever 23 because that’s how we remember him. If you close your eyes, nobody’s ever been younger longer. When you open them, no matter how much you loved him then and maintain at least a flicker of a torch for him now, Jose isn’t quite the Jose of Jose-Jose-Jose halcyon days.
Maybe he doesn’t have to be. Diminished Jose (Jo-Jo-Jo?) might automatically become, like everybody else who’s come aboard with a bat lately, the best player the Mets have. In essentially a two-month season, his job would be to help our team make up three games. It’s perfectly conceivable he’d hit leadoff like a leadoff hitter, he’d run more than anybody here is capable of, he’d be an upgrade over the revolving incumbents at his position and he’d make us damn glad to meet him again.
Until we regretted reigniting the whole thing, because, as if it needs repeating, he’s not the Jose-Jose-Jose anymore. He could stay in one piece but struggle regardless. Triples of yore could become close calls at second. Defensive outs could become singles. What was once that grin of impetuous youth could, after a week of not succeeding despite really trying, turn sullen, which would be a human reaction, but with Jose, you’re sort of paying for the smiling as much as the stealing.
Also, it’s not going to happen. This ownership only sanctions the slightest of midseason contractual commitments and this front office reportedly has its eyes on everybody but Jose Reyes. If it somehow could happen, I would welcome him back with open arms — and then brace to catch him when he slips, falls, does something to his hamstring and waits to be examined by Ray Ramirez.
Because of our provinciality where Jose is concerned, I might be missing the bigger story, namely that Tulowitzki was shipped internationally in the dead of night. I enjoyed believing for a few minutes this past winter that he might become Troy of Flushing. I thought of him hard when I heard this portion of a Zach Galifianakis monologue in Birdman:
“As soon as we announced he was taking over, the advance doubled, and that took less than a day…this is about being respected and validated, remember?”
This was post-Cuddyer, when anything seemed possible, including the renaissance of Michael Cuddyer (think the Rockies would take him back for Reyes?). I pictured Tulo as a latter-day Gary Carter in terms of stirring up excitement, strengthening the offense, leading us to the edge of the promised land and making us a surefire contender. Now he’s a Blue Jay and we seem to be a contender anyway.
What gets me a little is Tulowitzki was The Man in Colorado and there he goes, off to Canada. That must be a blow to Rockies fans. I’m sure there’s a sophisticated cluster in Denver that will tell you it’s an excellent move for bloodless reasons A, B & C, but he was basically their David Wright and they unloaded him and his sizable contract because he wasn’t getting them any closer to where they ultimately need to go.
It killed me in December of 2011 when Reyes was allowed to walk. It relieved me in December of 2012 when Wright was secured through 2020. I wanted both of them to be careerlong Mets, something we know almost nobody of consequence (ahem) has ever been. Reyes was a really good player, Wright was a really good player and I was a really sentimental fan.
I still am, but the comings and goings of trading deadline time make you think. Juan Uribe got my attention twice this weekend, once for the game-winning hit on Sunday, once for something he said afterwards regarding his new best friends:
“This is my team. It’s a good team. In baseball, you never know.”
That could have been just boilerplate, but consider Uribe’s past. He was part of a White Sox team that had all but plummeted through the floor in September of 2005. A month later they were world champions. In the middle of 2010, he was with the Giants, who were languishing behind the Padres all season long after being playoffless since 2003. They made a few moves, stayed close and clinched their division on the final day of the year. Soon enough, Uribe was wearing a second ring.
Obviously he’s due for another in 2015. Beyond that sound chronological assessment, it strikes me that for all the great Giants of generations past, it was Juan Uribe, Cody Ross (ick) and Pat Burrell (also ick), among others, who brought San Franciscans what they’d been waiting forever for. And for all the legendary White Sox who wore the Pale Hose, it fell to the likes of Juan Uribe, Scott Podsednik and old friend Carl Everett, among others, to end an 88-year drought.
Yes, in baseball, you never know, except you can kind of guess your cast of characters won’t be exactly who you think it will be when you envision the day your fondest dreams come true. You won’t ask for ID as the ticker tape falls, though. You’ll cheer Juan Uribe, Kelly Johnson, Tyler Clippard and whoever else (hypothetically) does it for you.
Trading deadline frenzy coincides with Hall of Fame weekend, which makes for a pair of reminders that baseball is a business, sentimentality be damned. Randy Johnson, the greatest lefthander of his generation, has the names of six franchises engraved on his plaque. Pedro Martinez has five, including ours. John Smoltz, forever and ever a Brave stalwart, has three. Craig Biggio, nothing but an Astro, was the outlier. Craig Biggio never won a World Series. His three contemporaries all won one, then went on to be employed elsewhere. Immortality is no guarantee of permanence, whether you crave it or not.
Meanwhile, as we are borne back ceaselessly into the present, Jose Reyes moves along to his fourth team, possibly en route to a fifth, probably not about to return to his first. Juan Uribe is on his sixth, Kelly Johnson his eighth, Tyler Clippard his fourth. Reyes remains one of my favorite players ever, regardless of fabrics and colors. If he’s still a Rockie when the Rockies come to Citi, I’ll give him a nice hand and root for him to not do all that great. Uribe, Johnson and Clippard I’ve given no more than passing thought to until very recently. I’ll be rooting for them constantly as long as they’re here. I’ll root for whoever Sandy Alderson gets next, too.
Let’s Go Mets, whoever you are.
by Greg Prince on 27 July 2015 7:27 pm We love our Mets so much we can’t wait to replace as many as of them as is viable. Sandy Alderson apparently feels the same way.
No complaints here.
After patching together a roster with masking tape, postage stamp hinges and remainders from fractions homework, the GM has stayed busier than a jaded observer would have expected. Add to Michael Conforto, Kelly Johnson, Juan Uribe and Yutz the Wonder Buffalo (just seeing if you’re paying attention) the notorious T.L.C., a.k.a. Tyler Lee Clippard, infamous for beating the Mets as a Yankee eight years ago and never being forgiven for it.
We’re letting bygones be bygones for now, because Tyler’s done some solid relief work since 2007, even if most of that was for the Nationals and much of was to our pre-2015 detriment. But he comes to us now, from Oakland, to help us attack Washington like a Tea Party congressional candidate. We gave up Casey Meisner to acquire Clippard. If you knew who Casey Meisner was before this trade and have information that augurs future regret for us, please keep it to yourself. Once upon a time, getting Doyle Alexander and Larry Anderson were instrumental in springing contending teams toward playoff positions. That John Smoltz and Jeff Bagwell were surrendered in the process didn’t seem so bad in the moment.
In the moment we’re in now, in case you’ve forgotten, we’re two games out of first place and nine years removed from our previous postseason. Our lineup improved exponentially with the promotion of Conforto and the additions of the ex-Braves. We now lean a little on a former Yankee and National to strengthen a bullpen where Bobby Parnell and Jenrry Mejia are still finding their way back and Jeurys Familia is most always on call. Meisner’s hypothetically marvelous days to come will have to be risked to get us where we need to go this year.
Now, maybe, another bat or glove so this race stays real? Deadline’s not till Friday. Keep the new Mets coming, Sandy. We’ll learn to love them, too.
by Greg Prince on 27 July 2015 4:36 pm I had Pedro Martinez on my back Sunday as I visited the same summer place on Flushing Bay I’ve been frequenting since 2009. MARTINEZ 45 normally sits on my t-shirt retirement shelf, but it felt appropriate to unfold it and ceremonially reactivate it in honor of Pedro Martinez entering the Hall of Fame with a plaque that devoted one half of one line to his time pitching for NEW YORK, N.L. 2005-08. Those seasons coincided with the final years I spent at my previous summer place on Flushing Bay, the one I’d been visiting since 1973. Pedro was kind enough to drop by the current place my first summer there, though I’m compelled to note he was dressed all wrong for the occasion.
True to 2005-early 2006 form, Martinez as immortality inductee didn’t let us down. When it came time for him to mention the period when he sold mountains of merchandise to the likes of us, he embraced us from afar. “The Mets fans,” he said to the Cooperstown crowd, “well, if you look at me and you see me going wild, that’s a Mets fan.” He offered a happy little dance, evocative of the night he was accidentally spritzed by the Shea Stadium sprinklers so we’d know what he meant by “wild,” then concluded his brief explanation.
“That’s how we are. So Queens, I love you too!”
Sweet of Pedro to find a way to identify with his legion of mid-2000s acolytes. If that’s how he chooses to vaguely recall us — as soulmates under the 45s — that’s beautiful. It might not be wholly accurate, but I’ll take it.
By the top of the ninth Sunday, while Pedro, Craig Biggio, John Smoltz and Randy Johnson were soaking in their well-deserved adulation, I was decidedly going less than wild for what was becoming of a 2-0 Mets lead. It had been, to that moment, a beautiful day, the kind of day you tell people about down the road, that day Jacob deGrom not only outpitched his fellow All-Star Zack Greinke but personally drove in the run that halted Greinke’s consecutive scoreless innings streak. Usually “scoreless” and the Mets go hand-in-hand, but not like that.
If you wanted a fastball that could cut glass…“y’know, razor sharp,” as Mark Wahlberg as Eddie Adams turning into Dirk Diggler would’ve put it…Jacob deGrom was your man. He was so bright and so sharp and so powerful for seven-and-two-thirds innings. Greinke was mostly Greinke, but that didn’t mean so much when we had deGrom, even if deGrom wasn’t permitted to display quite the extraordinary length that made Dirk Diggler famous in Boogie Nights.
Jacob came out after his 113th pitch, following a performance that encompassed eight strikeouts, no runs, two hits and two walks. The only sign of trouble was the second walk came in the eighth inning, to Jimmy Rollins (who you’d rather see walk than do that thing he did over the right field fence in the previous three games). DeGrom retired Alberto Callaspo directly thereafter, but Joc Pederson was due up and you have Jeurys Familia and it was 113 pitches and pretty warm, so OK, you do what managers do in this era. It’s not like they weren’t doing in the latter stages of the days of Martinez, Johnson and Smoltz.
Familia gets out of the eighth and it’s fine. The Mets don’t increase their 2-0 lead in their half, and it’s all right, you guess. I mean, yeah, more runs is better than fewer runs — witness the joy of excess from Saturday night — but try not to be so prickly, you tell yourself. The Mets are up by two and they have their de facto All-Star closer on. He wasn’t named to the squad, but you know he should have been. Jeurys has got this.
You tell yourself that, but you’re not quite believing it.
What is making me uneasy? Is it the inability to cope with the Mets’ version of prosperity, which as of the top of the ninth Sunday is a one-game winning streak? Is it reflexive worry that accompanies the participation of every Met closer from Skip Lockwood forward? Is it Familia’s recent unsharpness, during which he seems to be cutting glass less automatically than he was in the first half?
Actually, it’s something happening in the stands, where Pedro Martinez would be moved to reappraise his assessment of Mets fans.
On this Family Sunday, as the marketing department insists on labeling it, there appears to a brood of relations sitting around me. It’s hard to say who exactly is doing the sitting, as I’m in one of those spots (Section 107) where people seem to be shifting their seats all day. At one point, a lady with two kids shows up and asks if the chairs to my right are taken. I have to confess to her that I really can’t tell. She plops down anyway.
By the ninth, a father and two kids perhaps attached to this woman (perhaps not) are in front of me, and in front of that guy is an older man. We’ll call him the grandfather. I can’t say this bunch was paying attention to the game all day. I’d been paying attention to the game all day, so they could’ve been distilling moonshine for all I knew. What suddenly matters is they’re not paying attention to the game at its most critical juncture.
With one out in the ninth and me trying to focus on Familia, my trance was interrupted by the grandfather figure. He wanted his son and grandsons to pose for a photo. His back was to the part of the stadium where the featured match was still very much in progress; dad and the boys were facing forward, but not looking in on the action. Adrian Gonzalez and his .900 OPS were up.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” I screamed in my head at the amateur shutterbug was who was turned the wrong way at a potential turning point of this ballgame we were all ostensibly here to see. “TAKE THE PICTURE LATER! TAKE IT WHEN THE GAME IS OVER! WAIT A FEW MINUTES AND SET IT AGAINST THE FIELD! IT’LL MAKE A BETTER PICTURE ANYWAY!”
I didn’t say any of that out loud. I didn’t have to. Adrian Gonzalez’s big stick did all the speaking. He doubled off the wall, bringing up slugging sensation Justin Turner, formerly a lightly regarded Met utilityman, you might have heard. Natch, Turner doubles and Gonzalez scores and if a picture is taken of the dad and his sons in the row in front of me, I’d hate to see the face I was making in the background.
It is a matter of public record that Yasmani Grandal shot the game-tying single down the third base line past Juan Uribe, which is just cruel, and it was now 2-2. What was being said in my head once the score was knotted isn’t fit for the Off Day Monday after Family Sunday.
Familia then gathers the two outs that had to wait just long enough to trash deGrom’s decision. The Mets can win it in the bottom of the ninth, but they’re not going to. I know it. Everybody knows it. Nobody is going wild. That’s what got me later about Pedro’s portrait of us. Perhaps we should have been willing our team toward the tiebreaker, letting them know it was just one of those half-innings, they happen, and now we’re gonna go get ’em, LET’S GO METS!!!!!!!
That would have been wild. Instead we went mild. Michael Conforto — Mr. 1,000 — walked to start the bottom of the ninth, but then Kirk Nieuwehnhuis was ordered to attempt a silly bunt, which wound up in J.P. Howell’s glove before it could ever touch the ground. Kirk has worked his ’Heis off to get his average to Mendoza levels and this is what you do with one of your hot hitters? So he becomes an out and Citi Field grows eerily quiet. You’d never have guessed the potential winning run was on base. You’d never have guessed a team that recently scored fifteen runs in a single game was batting.
I exhorted nobody, not even in my head. Everything had been so pleasant. Now it was just miserable. These were the Mets being the Mets of too many ninth innings past. I was attending my 600th regular-season home game, both Queens summer places combined, and this felt so familiar. It was that game against the Braves in 2001. It was that game against the Brewers in 2011. There was an Expos game from 1998 mixed in there, too, I’m pretty sure.
The game against the Dodgers from 2015 was joining the ugly crowd. And, as if to accent the awfulness of the affair as the bottom of the ninth was expiring without success, it was starting to rain.
This was not only my second consecutive game, it was my wife’s. Stephanie isn’t quite as committed to the completion of every contest as I am, but if she can be comfortable and have a sense that it will eventually end, she’s good to stay. But make it rain, close off the escalators that take a ticketholder to air-conditioned refuge on Excelsior and estimate the time of departure as “whenever,” then it’s not so good.
Not that she said anything, other than “where to now?” as it rained just hard enough to chase us into the Field Level concourse. We camped out somewhere a bit beyond first base, peering and (personally, seething) among others who sought dryness. Jenrry Mejia let Rollins roam as far as third base, but no further. The Mets could win this in the bottom of the tenth. Or the bottom of the tenth could merely preface more innings that would — as the previous Sunday’s encounter with the Cardinals did — expand beyond the orange and blue horizon.
I wasn’t going to do that to Stephanie. I wasn’t going to do that to myself. I wasn’t going to put up with it from the Mets. I can’t hit for them, I can’t pitch for them, I can only cheer so much for them. But I can now and then vote with my feet. I said, “If they don’t score in the tenth, we can go.”
That’s as close to a nuclear option as I carry to the ballpark (I hope security doesn’t read that literally). I don’t believe I’ve walked out of Citi Field before a non-suspended conclusion all year. Why would I? In my previous fifteen games at Citi Field, the Mets were 11-4. Losing is rarely an impediment to endurance. Rain, within reason, isn’t a dealbreaker. And I’m only so chivalrous toward my wife. This was essentially a protest. You’re going to blow an almost-sure win just as I was beginning to take you seriously? Then you’re going to have to do it without me watching.
Heckuva protest, huh? But it’s all I had. Exit velocity would be my version of turning my back to the field.
The bottom of the tenth did turn out to be our final half-inning, but for the surprisingly right reason: Granderson slashing and zipping until he was at second; Granderson not getting doubled off (though not advancing) on another inane bunt attempt; Daniel Murphy walking via the intentions of Don Mattingly; and Juan Uribe — who I’d already decided might wind up being more Tony Phillips than Donn Clendenon in the pantheon of midrace acquisitions — shooing away the last of the passing shower’s raindrops with a double that rang off the wall and into the books…the history books!
Well, my history books, in that I don’t remember ever before traveling from gloom and doom to boom and zoom while courting so much emotional whiplash. There was an extended episode of jumping up and down in the concourse and enough yelling to maybe require a stash of Sucrets be kept on hand for future euphoric outbursts. I thought we were good going into the ninth; I assumed we were crushed going into the tenth; I discovered a heretofore untapped vertical leap once it was confirmed there was no need to storm out prior to the eleventh. There was no eleventh inning. There was a 3-2 win in ten, a two-game winning streak, Greinke conquered, nearby Dodgers fans not so smug and a 4:57 at Woodside in case flying without wings was technically impossible.
If you go to a Broadway show, I suggested to Stephanie on the way home, you probably know not long after the curtain goes up whether or not you like it, whereas this baseball game was for the longest stretch terrific, then briefly horrific, yet ultimately life-affirming. After three disparate acts on top of a ceaselessly rousing production the night before, she who got her 19 innings’ worth over the previous 24 hours was compelled to agree.
Before Pedro Martinez spoke on Sunday afternoon, Craig Biggio delivered a decidedly lower-key Hall of Fame induction speech (no dancing whatsoever). “Tomorrow,” the eternal Astro from out east said, “is not guaranteed.” Biggio was talking about always playing hard, but his words also provide a useful lesson for general managers who have waited several years to be one hyperactive trading deadline from lunging for an eminently lungeable playoff spot. But what Craig might have missed is that for the fans, there is pretty much always tomorrow. We hang on to tomorrow as long as the schedule says we have a tomorrow. When Pedro was first a Met, I distinctly remember us giving up on him and his teammates right around this time of year…and circling directly back into their corner when their pulse beat just fast enough to get us going again.
I was ready to give up on the Mets in the tenth inning Sunday. I was ready to get the hell away from them. I was also ready to pull my old-fashioned transistor-type radio out of my schlep bag and tune it to 710 AM because I vote more with heart than my feet, no matter how much ire is racing through my brain.
That, too, is a Mets fan. That, too, is how we are.
by Jason Fry on 27 July 2015 8:30 am Three days ago, a thrilling game against the Dodgers would have ended a bit differently. Rather than Juan Uribe staring out at Kenley Jansen, it would have been Eric Campbell or Darrell Ceciliani or Johnny Monell or John Mayberry Jr. or someone else we’ve written about more often in sorrow than in celebration.
That isn’t fair. Perhaps Ceciliani would have hit a long drive into the seats, or Campbell would have … oh, screw it. We know better, don’t we?
It was Uribe who got an 0-2 pitch that arrived at a greater elevation than Jansen had planned, and Uribe who sent it arcing off the top of the wall — short of a home run by a disappointingly slim margin, tall enough of a double to send disappointment packing and Curtis Granderson scampering home.
I was listening on At Bat up at my folks’ summer place in Maine, and Uribe’s bat hitting ball made The Sound — a crack that causes heads to pop up from whatever’s occupied them and people in the next room come to see what the fuss is.
I’ve been coming to this house on the Sheepscot River since 1980, first with my folks and now when multiple family schedules allow. There’s no TV up here, so games are followed by radio. For years that meant WFAN, with a signal that would yaw and pitch and wail while the sun was up and then strengthen once darkness had fallen, which in late July means the sixth inning or so.
New technologies began elbowing over-the-air radio aside nearly two decades ago — my parents still remind me of the night I listened to a Valentine-era Mets’ radio feed via AOL dial-up, none of us knowing that I’d accidentally picked a long-distance number and so was paying north of a dollar a minute to hear a leisurely run-of-the-mill summer game. Now I don’t even know WOR’s call letters — At Bat simply fetches the bits from whereever they reside in Digital Land and brings them to me. (The concept of a long-distance call no longer exists, but I am doing damage to my data plan.)
I’ve listened to enough over-the-air radio under questionable conditions to glean information from the smallest snippets of context: a sudden acceleration in the rhythm of the announcers’ voices, or chatter where the flow of the game would normally have yielded silence.
Digital connections, though, don’t erode. They vanish — you’re either listening to the game or fiddling with a setting. Though this can lead to oddities of its own: Driving up on Friday, Emily and I were listening to At Bat through our rental car’s sound system, and when we hit a cell dead zone the car would helpfully cue up the first song stored on the iPhone, at impressive volume.
That first song turned out to be, I kid you not, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” by Ella Fitzgerald.
That’s a fine song — I’d be happy to hear it instead of “Piano Man,” though I’d also say that about the Mets playing three minutes of a car alarm — but it will now be forever linked in my mind with wanting to hear the Mets but not being able to.
Anyway, Sunday afternoon was spent sitting in the dining room watching the rain in the trees and listening to Jacob deGrom and Zack Greinke strike people out. You could hear the buzz of the Citi Field crowd handing out huzzahs to deGrom and heralding Michael Conforto for standing still at the best possible time … until things went awry for Jeurys Familia, whose misadventures stopped the party and left Josh Lewin and Wayne Randazzo narrating over a disconsolate hush.
I sighed and accepted what had happened — Familia won’t always be effective and Uribe won’t always smother what comes his way, though going forward he will now expect his closer’s occasional quick-pitch.
Familia faltered, but Jenrry Mejia held the line against Joc Pederson an inning later, chasing and capturing a key strikeout to keep the game tied. And then, in the bottom of the 10th, we were reminded that the Mets have finally rearmed, first with Conforto’s summoning to the field of battle and then with the import of Uribe and Kelly Johnson, neither of whom will be the Least Consequential Met when revealed later today.
Should he choose to write one (which he won’t), Sandy Alderson would produce a great tell-all book about his time as GM of the Mets. What was he told about the Wilpons’ finances at various points, and how did he respond? Why, after having to make nonsensical pronouncements about payroll, did he choose another tour of duty? Why did the team play with 24 guys so many times? Was the Mets’ long undermanned slog through the summer of 2015 a product of a slow-to-develop trade market, the owners’ pockets being sewn shut, or Sandy’s own … for now let’s call it “patience?” Did that patience turn into stubbornness in the face of repeated bad luck and fan/media yowling for action?
Whatever the case, the narrative in Panic City had become a new breed of toxic in recent weeks, with fans bemoaning that a division was there for the taking but the Mets seemed willfully determined not to put in a claim on it.
That corrosive storyline went away with the arrival of Conforto, Johnson and Uribe. Which won’t deliver the division to the Mets — another bat would be a big help, and an unhappy part of me still expects the Nats to finally find their focus and accelerate away from the rest of the NL East.
But.
As in, but the Mets will soon have Travis d’Arnaud back again, hopefully this time not to be hit by a pitch or a runner or the 10:30 from Woodhaven. As in, but David Wright is beginning baseball activities, that most hopeful of nebulous pronouncements. As in, but some of David’s more underwhelming teammates have ceased baseball activities, at least while wearing blue and orange at the major-league level. As in, but the Mets have survived a 10-game stretch against top teams and now begin an extended period of playing divisional also-rans.
None of this guarantees anything, but there’s an opportunity here — and the Mets are finally acknowledging that it exists, and taking steps to do something about it. After a summer of apparent inaction, that’s more than welcome.
Ya gotta conceive! It may not be a great rallying cry. But it’s a start.
by Greg Prince on 26 July 2015 4:40 am Consider this not a wet blanket, but at most a moist towelette: I attended the game in which Mike Bordick made his Met debut. In his first at-bat, he led off the bottom of the third and hit the first pitch he saw over the wall at Shea Stadium. At that moment, Mike Bordick — the surehanded shortstop who came to us from Baltimore in exchange for lovable but momentarily miscast Melvin Mora, as Gold Gloved Rey Ordoñez languished on the DL — was one of the best midseason acquisitions a contending Mets team had ever made.
Fifteen years later, on another Saturday in late July, the name Mike Bordick came up in idle conversation before that night’s Mets game. It wasn’t in a complimentary vein. A few hours after that, without any irony whatsoever, I leapt to my feet to applaud the first Met home run hit by Kelly Johnson in his first game as a Met. He was traded for on Friday. On Saturday, he and his fellow erstwhile Atlantan Juan Uribe went about transforming the Mets from frauds into legitimate contenders. At least that’s how I decided to see it from Section 329, where you could barely see anything that didn’t look like a pennant drive for the ages taking shape.
Welcome back, my friends, to the tease that never ends. These Mets, whose secondary logo is a .170 batting average, came to life on Saturday night in a way they’ve never lived and breathed at Citi Field. They set a stadium record for most runs (15), most hits (21) and most hope (tons). They pounded every Dodger pitcher not named Kershaw, Greinke or Ian Thomas. Almost incidentally, they had Matt Harvey pitching like Matt Harvey. It was easy to miss while reveling in everybody — Harvey included — hitting like hitting is something the Mets do every single day.
Oh good gosh, that was something to behold, wasn’t it? Was it all on account of the addition of Johnson (2-for-6, including that home run) or Uribe (1-for-2 and a fine diving play at third when inserted as a laugher replacement)? Maybe in some cosmic, karmic, veteran leadership sense those two altered the chemistry of the clubhouse and/or put everybody on notice that if you want to play, you have to produce. But when the box score is bulging with big, juicy, succulent numbers up and down the agate, it’s surely about more than a pair of rented strangers.
• Michael Conforto, the Met who preceded Johnson and Uribe by an entire day, was on base five times, four via hit, two via double, all via Binghamton (as if jumping up from Double-A was going to be an obstacle to so natural a talent).
• Kirk Nieuwenhuis, who once hit three home runs in a single game, you know, also registered four hits and drove in four runs — two of them carried by Conforto, who scored another two times besides.
• Lucas Duda gave up sheep-herding or whatever vocation he’d been pursuing in recent months and took up professional baseball again with a vengeance, launching two home runs and passing David Wright on the all-time Citi Field home run list, which it might surprise you to know exists (Duda 48; Wright 46…and unavailable to compete).
• Daniel Murphy hit a home run and drove in three runs, which sounds like something he used to do in other seasons.
• Ruben Tejada collected three hits and didn’t step on Conforto’s head or any part of the rookie sensation when he almost played modern-day Hahn to Michael’s Theodore.
• Harvey — remember him? — drove in runs in two separate at-bats, with a double and a single. He gave up a pair of solo home runs as well, which in the distant past of pre-July 25 would have saddled him with a 2-0 loss. But these are the Mets of Johnson and Uribe and Conforto, and they are freaking unstoppable.
Well, they were on July 25, and if that’s all this personnel overhaul adds up to, I’ll take it. I never before saw the Mets score 15 runs in person. Few Mets fans have. There was a Saturday at Shea in July 2006 (Mike Pelfrey’s debut) when they scored 17 runs. There were consecutive Shea Saturdays in July 1985 when they scored 16 runs apiece. And that’s the sum total of home games in which the Mets have scored more than 15 runs. They’d only scored 15 three other times at home prior to this Saturday night in July, none since 2000, a few months prior to their trade for Bordick, who was going to help them get to a World Series at last.
Actually, he kind of did. Or they got there in spite of him. Either way, in 2000, it didn’t hurt to have traded Mora for Bordick just as they were bringing in Bubba Trammell from Tampa Bay. From 2001 to eternity, it’s a different story, but sometimes you have to live in the moment. At this moment, the Mets have those two ex-Braves they got for two guys nobody ever mentioned as the next Harvey, deGrom or Matz. Johnson and Uribe could someday drift into oy, Mike Bordick territory. The could do it in a matter of weeks. Doesn’t matter. They gave us one hell of a boost and something tells me the boost isn’t over yet.
In the moment of July 25, everything was good and everybody was happy. As if we knew we were in for the offensive ride of this ballpark’s lifetime, we rollicked early. We saw Cole Hamels, not normally a popular figure on these premises, was angling for history in Chicago, and we oohed, aahed and cheered when he completed his no-hitter. The Phillies have contributed eight wins to our fifty; we can tune in to their fleeting moment of triumph and be magnanimous.
There were too many Dodgers fans among us — they effortlessly radiate smugness — but their quiet spoke delicious volumes. At last they presented us with a pitcher who a) we’d never heard of and b) pitched to his reputation.
Who’s Zach Lee? ’Zackly.
Lee was followed to the mound and into the feeding frenzy by Chin-Hui Tsao, and I can’t imagine it went uncommented upon on SNY that Chin-Hui Tsao cost Steve Trachsel the first no-hitter in Mets history a dozen years ago. I remember it like it took place in 2003, but I’m still annoyed that it was a pitcher who left the only speck of cork in Trachsel’s otherwise sparkling wine glass that afternoon. Why, yes, I can hold a grudge. Six earned runs on seven hits in two-thirds of an inning off any opposition reliever would have made me giddy. That it was off Tsao made me ravenous.
Which was a good thing since the next Dodger victim was Josh Ravin. He entered at 11-2. He exited at 15-2. I sure hope Tommy Lasorda was watching. To quote Chevy Chase as Fletch when he observes an adversary’s framed photograph, “Hey you and Tommy Lasorda.”
“Yeah.”
“I hate Tommy Lasorda!”
At which point Fletch smashes the picture. Or Ravin walks in the 15th Mets run. I forget which.
When you lead 15-2, you see a dreaded wave develop and you shrug. When you lead 15-2, you hear the forced frivolity of the “Piano Man” singalong and you join in full-force (not tough for me as a staunch Billy Joel advocate, but even I think this particular exercise should be given a rest). When you lead 15-2, the barley & hops-fueled idiots behind you who keep repeating, “This is the best game I’ve ever been to!” get on no more than your first nerve because it probably is the best game they’ve ever been to. It’s definitely one of the better ones in my portfolio, I tell you what.
The Mets had more hits than Heart played postgame, and Heart played a whole bunch of their greatest hits (as Wilsons wearing Mets jerseys go, Ann and Nancy were positively Mookie-esque). Do the Mets have the heart to keep it going and not make this merely a one-night stand? Do they have the hitters to keep the hits coming? Is Conforto really here? Is Duda really back? Is d’Arnaud really returning? Is there another trade in the pipeline? Are Johnson and Uribe difference-makers of the first order, whether or not they turn into Bordick/Bubba pumpkins when all of 2015 is said and done?
Try, try, try to understand. Or don’t bother and just enjoy whatever goes right on the off chance this spell doesn’t last forever.
Coming Monday: That least consequential Met ever. And, no, it’s not who you’re thinking of.
by Greg Prince on 25 July 2015 3:20 am “Daddy,” Tatum Niese might one day ask his father, “can you tell me about the night I was born?”
“No,” would be the appropriate reply from the pitcher who had no answers for the Dodger lineup Friday but at least he had an excuse — the birth of the actual kid in this hypothetical conversation.
Far be it from us to cut Jon Niese slack, but if you’re not going to look the other way from a six-run outing thrown by a man whose wife is giving birth during his shortest mound stint of the year, well, maybe you need to calibrate your priorities the tiniest bit. Tough to blame Niese for being distracted (I clearly remember the Mets benefiting from similar circumstances eighteen years ago when the new dad in question was Curt Schilling). Not so tough to blame the Mets for not having a tighter contingency plan in place than “you sure you wanna pitch tonight?” but blaming seems out of place on one of the better Met days to ever include a 7-2 loss.
Mazel tov to the Nieses, but we had our own blessed events to contemplate as the Dodgers were forcefully slapping Tatum’s daddy on the rear Friday night. For one, we had Met No. 1,000 inscribing himself in the book of life. Michael Conforto showed up, faced live pitching, hit the ball hard a couple of times, drove in a run with a well-placed grounder and created a major league batting average for himself. Granted, it’s an average of .000, but he looked like he knew what he was doing at the plate (something most Mets haven’t) and he’s got a promising career in front of him and us. Conforto is 22, yet I see that facial hair and I can’t help but think he grew it so he wouldn’t be hassled trying to buy beer.
And while we finally got the Met we’d been briefly but sincerely lobbying for, Sandy Alderson quietly went out and snagged us a couple more. In an order yet to be determined, we have tentative Mets Nos. 1,001 and 1,002 on deck. All the way from Atlanta, prepare to meet the even newer parts of the solution, Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson, acquired in exchange for minor league pitchers Rob Whalen and John Gant. Hopefully you’ll have gotten over the sadness of bidding adieu Danny Muno (demoted) and John Mayberry (DFA’d) and be happy to step right up and greet a couple of veteran ballplayers whose most attractive quality is they haven’t been in the Mets lineup already this year.
This is all we’ve been asking for: the guy on the farm who might be preternaturally capable of contributing and a couple of guys to solidify that which has been made of cottage cheese. Unlike Leah Niese, the Mets front office has been overdue to deliver. Since that dreamlike eleven-game winning streak in April that presumably took place in an alternate universe, the Mets have played the equivalent of a half-season of baseball that counts. In 81 games, they’ve won 36 and they’ve lost 45. If you double that, you get a full-season record of 72-90, not championship caliber in any league.
Good thing the 13-3 part of the season counted and good thing the Washington Nationals still have Mets-flavored gum on their shoes. They should be off in the stratosphere — or Strasosphere — by now, but they’re not. They’ve had injuries. They’ve had letdowns. They’ve had a schedule that doesn’t include nothing but the Mets. That’s their problem. The Mets have, despite pitching their hearts out, done almost everything wrong since late April, yet it’s still a race: a race played out between narcoleptic tortoises, but a race nonetheless. Who’s to say, when you have our pitching and a lineup that’s finally vamped, never mind revamped, that a three-game deficit can’t be made up?
It won’t happen if starters last three innings and the likes of Justin Turner lurks round every non-tendered corner as the default response to “Who’s Your Daddy?” but soon the schedule will be kinder, Uribe will be ensconced, Johnson will be versatile, Conforto will be comfortable and Niese will be less distracted, if less well-rested. It should be too late, but it’s not.
You probably know what was going on the night Jon Niese was born. It would be nice if we could arrange an occasion like that before Tatum Niese is eligible for the amateur draft.
While I prepare to reveal unto you The All-Time Met of Least Consequence, this seems an opportune juncture to introduce you to a swell new blog called MetsDaddy.com. It’s not specifically about the paternity issues faced by Niese and Zack Greinke this weekend, but the timing is eerily fortuitous enough to make us particularly excited to welcome this bouncing, baby blog to the literary precincts of Metsopotamia.
by Greg Prince on 24 July 2015 2:53 pm Are you ready for some history? Not real history, but a numerical marker of passing historical interest? Are you ready for the slight chance of a run or two being scored by the home team tonight?
Then you’re ready for Michael Conforto, suddenly (after weeks of wailing and wondering) recalled by your offensively bereft New York Mets in time for tonight’s game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, as one-knee wonder Michael Cuddyer at last yields his seat on the 25-man roster, despite it apparently being bequeathed him into perpetuity by Joan Payson herself. Assuming Conforto makes Terry Collins’s hard-to-crack starting lineup, and assuming rains or plagues don’t wash away five official innings, then young Mr. Conforto will go into the books as the One Thousandth Met of All Time.
There, that only took 53½ years.
What started with Richie Ashburn, leadoff batter in Game No. 1 on April 11, 1962, projects to continue tonight. Once Casey Stengel’s lineup got through its first go-round, everything was pretty random from there. Consider our Franchise Four: Tom Seaver was No. 130; Keith Hernandez, No. 348; Mike Piazza, No. 594; and David Wright, No. 736. The last Numerical Milestone Met was Scott Hairston, at No. 900. Hairston, despite likely being the best hitter on the pre-Conforto 2015 Mets, wasn’t Mount Metsmore material. The numbers just fell where the numbers fell.
Hopefully, the base hits will fall for Met No. 1,000 in short order and the runs will pile up or at least trickle in, which is something they’ve done with alarming irregularity to date this year. Good luck, kid. You’re gonna need it, and we’re gonna need you.
When we officially have our One Thousandth Met, we will reveal our choice for the No. 1,000 Met of All Time…not chronologically, but consequentially. Who is the Least Significant Met Ever? Tune in later and find out here.
In the meantime, tune in here to hear me call for Conforto’s promotion and go on about some other Mets stuff with the folks from the Rising Apple Report the other night.
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