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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 30 June 2015 12:00 pm  Your correspondent, taking a whirl at Beating the Booth, for fun and self-flagellation. Beat the Booth, the thoroughly Metted game show that pairs Howie Rose and Gary Cohen and therefore offers plenty of reason to watch, is at last coming to an SNY near you. It will air tonight and tomorrow following your regularly scheduled baseball matches. Then it will air periodically every three hours for the next eight to ten months, which may not be enough for some of us. And to everyone who has asked since the promos first aired for it, no, I am not a contestant; I never was a contestant; nor did I audition to be a contestant.
Officially, that is. But I’ll get to that in a moment.
In case you’ve missed the commercials or haven’t heard it brought up by the denizens of the booths themselves, Beat the Booth will bring Howie and Gary, our peerless radio and TV broadcasters, into mentally armed conflict with two teams of two fans, one duo per night. All will be asked questions about the Mets. Cash prizes, charitable donations and, presumably, Metropolitan credibility will be at stake.
If it’s half as good as last summer’s Battle of the Broadcasters, it will be the 29th-best non-Mets game telecast SNY has ever aired. In a 27-way tie for first are every edition of Mets Yearbook, which are unassailable in their ranking. Then Battle, which you’ll recall was hosted by a stick-mic wielding Kevin Burkhardt, who sported a plaid, three-piece suit that strangely does not hang in the Mets Hall of Fame and Museum but should. Messrs. Rose and Cohen were the standout performers, but Burkhardt’s wardrobe is what stands out most in the collective memory.
This season’s host is Chris Carlin. This season’s format pays homage to the “most memorable game shows of yesteryear”; one of the games within the game, for example, is entitled Flushing Feud (good answer, good answer!). It sounds like fun, even if word on the street is the mood grew a little intense during the taping.
How could it not? How many tests of one’s Methood is one administered in a given week? And how many are recorded for future broadcast? This isn’t some life-or-death nonsense we’re talking about. This is knowing your Mets.
Perhaps that attitude is why so many well-meaning folks asked me if I was going to be a part of this, other than as a viewer. Perhaps that attitude is why I decided not to be. To me, knowing “Mets trivia” isn’t trivial, because, to me, there is no such thing as Mets trivia. My Mets fandom is a state of being. At the core of that state is an expectation I’ve developed for myself without really thinking about it.
I expect myself to know all there is to know about the Mets. When I learn all there is to know, it becomes my obligation to learn more. This is my perpetual journey of discovery. There are satisfactions in the moment of being able to answer a “who did this when…?” type of question, but my quest is for knowledge, not reward. The knowledge — along with the knowledge that I have come to know something — is, in essence, the reward itself.
This is all very Zen. Or Zen Boswell, if you will.
The one Met question I never know how to respond politely to is, “Why do you know that?” as opposed to, “How do you know that?” The “how” is easy. I know something because I learned it and I remember it. I only know that’s an unusual trait because people tell me it is. The “why” eludes a definitive answer. I perhaps unconsciously at an early age decided it was important to absorb and process all the Mets facts I could. Some of what results informs my writing and my chatting. Some is just stuff that hangs around in my brain or on my computer. It might very well be crowding out other information that I could use in other facets of my life. I may never know, given that my mind is otherwise occupied retaining a random recollection regarding Ron Taylor or Ron Hodges or Ronn Reynolds or Rod Barajas.
So, no, I did not try out for Beat the Booth. But I did think about it, mostly because I was encouraged to. It was nice to be thought of in this realm. Better than there being a game show called What an Idiot and being told repeatedly, “Hey, you should try out for that!” I went as far to touch base with one friend who’d expressed a slight interest in our teaming up (the auditions called for pairs), but he wasn’t fully up for it and I let it go.
Not long after the official audition period passed, I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse. It was SNY asking me to, in tones more affable than menacing, come out to play. Not as a prospective contestant, but as media. The idea was I’d go through the paces as if actually trying out and would thus be able to better understand (and then communicate) what it’s like to compete on a game show whose categories include Flushing Feud.
That was too good to pass up, so I went for it — alone. I tried to find a partner, but it was a little last-minute to round up someone for a Thursday 9:30 AM call, and, besides, I feared the only person I could work with in this sort of setting was myself.
I showed up at SNY world headquarters at the appointed hour. The place wasn’t unfamiliar to me, having appeared on the old Mets Weekly show several times and having passed through for other reasons over the years. No stage fright, I figured. Still, when I did get on set, I was impressed with how it was dressed. The very same Beat the Booth logo I’d seen in the commercials was all lit and ready to go. The producers treated this — and the second round of authentic auditions that were going on that day — as the real thing.
Before proceeding to the set, I met some other early arrivals, two would-be teams packing a veritable baseball library of research material. I’m pretty sure I saw a 1963 yearbook in somebody’s bag. Since there were no stakes for me, I did no more in the way of homework than glance at a page of all-time leaders in the current media guide the night before. I figured I was invited on based on whatever somebody there assumed I knew, so I would go with whatever I was already carrying around.
I didn’t watch anybody else audition until after I was done. They’d be hearing some of the same questions I would, so that made sense. Just meeting those contestants, however, convinced me that if I was truly trying to make the cut, it would not be easy. These are people who took the challenge very seriously and were working to meet it. They might have known less than me, as much as me or more than me, but I knew (from a Mets fan’s sixth sense for these things) they were capable and committed.
Sure enough, I was informed that one of those teams that went in before me answered every question flawlessly…and if I’ve read the pre-show coverage correctly, those fellows weren’t finalists. SNY told me 60 teams showed up at Citi Field for the initial open tryouts, and there were loads of competent answerers. Factor in those who earned auditions through other channels (answering questions over WOR, for example), and the producers had many qualified candidates from whom to choose. Met knowledge trumped all, but when decisions had to be made, comfort in front of a camera as well whatever qualities make a person “passionate, funny and entertaining” factored in strongly.
I have no idea where I’d have fallen on that scale. The contestants I witnessed all seemed wonderfully watchable. And if they knew from Tim Harkness, well, that’s pretty a formidable skill set.
In the ten o’clock hour I was ushered into the studio, had a microphone attached to my shirt and was told where to stand. From there, I had to put my money where my Zen was.
The questions came in bunches. Seven on general Mets history. Then seven more. Then one of those deals where you have to name as many as you can within a particular subject without getting as many as three wrong. Then, at last, a Pyramid-style bit in which you are given clues and you have to figure out what your partner is getting at. (Since, I didn’t have a partner, a producer filled in.) All of it was timed.
I believe I was asked to answer the equivalent of 46 questions. I got 42 of them right. You may see that and think that’s pretty good. I see that and remain disappointed (if not devastated) with myself that I got four wrong. I only vaguely recall those I got right in three of the four categories. In my mind, I’m supposed to get them all right. My inner Professor Kingsfield glares at me sternly when I stumble.
In the first round, I was asked what Met has scored the most runs in World Series play. That’s something I didn’t know off the top of my head. I’m not automatic on individual Met postseason totals, probably because when those postseasons are in progress, I’m thinking intently of the team and only the team. So this had to be a matter of drawing a conclusion based on the available evidence in my head. I thought, “has to be someone who played in more than one World Series…that means it has to be someone who played a lot in 1969 and 1973…there was Grote…there was Harrelson…Harrelson scored a lot of runs in his career…”
I said Harrelson. I was told it was wrong.
Cleon Jones. Of course. Cleon Jones was hit in the foot by Dave McNally, for Gil’s sake. Then Clendenon homered him in. Overall, Jones scored seven World Series runs for the Mets to Harrelson’s (and Grote’s) three. I needed to think the entire thing through, but you’re on a set, you’re on a roll, you’re conscious of the clock…it’s not so simple once you’re in the game.
In the second round, I was asked what Met pitcher last led the National League in strikeouts. I said Johan Santana, thinking he had done so in 2008, a year when he finished third in the Cy Young balloting. I remember when that season was over being surprised he’d ranked as high as he did in various pitching categories. Mostly I remembered him struggling a bit early and coming on like crazy late.
I was wrong. And as soon as they told me I was, I asked, “Dickey?” And of course it was, in his Cy Young year of 2012 (Johan came in second in K’s in ’08). I knew that in real life. But a game show is not real life. On a game show, you tend to answer a second or two too soon (and in real life, you have Baseball Reference).
Later in the second round, I was asked what Met has played the most career games in the outfield. This one I’m kicking myself over more than I am from the aforementioned two because a) if I’d thought it through, I would have gotten it; and b) it’s the same answer as the first one I got wrong. It was Cleon Jones. I said Darryl Strawberry, probably for the same reason I said Johan on the strikeouts question. When I glanced at the media guide the night before, I noticed Darryl’s name and decided I tend to overlook how high Darryl ranks on all-time franchise lists besides home runs. So when I heard “outfield,” I already had Strawberry planted in my brain.
This time I knew I was wrong as soon as I said it. “It was Cleon Jones,” I added as soon as they said Strawberry was incorrect. I feel bad because it was avoidable and I feel worse because Cleon was one of my Met idols as a kid. He was the only outfielder with any staying power, so of course he leads the team in games played (though it’s closer than I would have guessed: Jones 1,101; Strawberry 1,085, according to Ultimate Mets Database).
I’m sorry, Cleon.
In the fourth segment, the Pyramid part, I got everything right. My ad hoc partner did his best but admitted he was having trouble cluing me in on the last one. He said “1986 rookie second baseman…” and I’m thinking there was no 1986 rookie second baseman, unless he means Kevin Mitchell, but Mitch never played there. Then he came up with “swung his bat underwater,” and I got it: Gregg Jefferies (whose first appearance came in September of 1987).
Back to the third segment, the “name all of these” portion. My subject was the 2000 World Series roster, which had 25 answers. I got 24 in the allotted time, the length of which I don’t remember but it wasn’t long. I felt this was too easy because they used this topic on Battle of the Broadcasters, but since we were just screwing around, what the hell?
The one I missed is more amusing than irksome. I failed to name Timo Perez, generally the first name that comes up with ire to explain how the Mets didn’t win that particular Fall Classic. I’d love to say I’d blocked out his identity so as to preserve my sanity, but the real reason I think I missed him stems from a previous segment in which Jay Payton was an answer. Therefore, when this one started, Payton was on my mind; because Payton wasn’t on the field when the 2000 pennant was clinched (he was hit by a Dave Veres pitch and had to leave Game Five against the Cardinals), it was left to Perez to move over to center and catch the final out. In the course of answering the World Series roster question, Payton became Pac-Man and gobbled up Perez.
But as mentioned, I got 24 of 25, including the other immediately identifiable culprit of the Subway Series defeat, which is where things got interesting on the Beat the Booth set.
I listed Armando Benitez. I was told it was incorrect.
Without breaking stride, I told them it was most certainly correct. I calmly recounted Game One, the endless at-bat of Paul O’Neill, how Armando lost him on a walk, how that led to a tie game and extra innings and, well, whatever happened thereafter. I also threw in (because nobody seems to remember much about the lone game the Mets won in that Series) that Armando earned the save in Game Three.
I was told Benitez wasn’t on the list provided by Elias.
I replied I didn’t care, I was right, “and now I’m eating into my time,” returning to rattling off the rest of the names who composed the 2000 Mets bullpen.
Later, somebody went and checked. Yes, Elias had included Armando Benitez on its list. It was somehow copied wrong. I was right.
Of course I was. I say that not out of hubris but, c’mon…Armando Benitez and the 2000 World Series are inseparable. As Tom Kean might acknowledge, they’re imperfect together.
That was my faux-audition. I did well, they said. They liked my poise and were taken my breadth of Mets knowledge. They didn’t understand why I didn’t try out in the first place. I heard their kind words and appreciated them but couldn’t get past not answering Cleon Jones. All this happened more than a month ago and I’m still annoyed.
I’m more annoyed by Timo breaking into a trot and ball four to O’Neill, but you could have guessed that.
I stuck around to watch the next team try their hand (and was reminded six or seven times to not blurt out answers). They were likable but a little overmatched. I felt bad when they answered obviously incorrectly, not so much because I was rooting for them, but because I was rooting for accuracy. Which is what I shall do when Howie and Gary and their competitors appear on SNY tonight and tomorrow night. I want everything answered right by everybody.
It’s Mets knowledge. It should always be handled with the utmost care.
by Greg Prince on 29 June 2015 4:14 am Previously on The Mets…
“Eleven in a row! This is the year, baby!”
“Oh no. Who’s hurt now?”
“Sure, the pitching’s great, but they can’t score to save their lives.”
“They’re never gonna win another game, are they?”
“We’re making a roster move and adjusting our rotation accordingly.”
“We don’t need another pitcher. We need a bat.”
“He’s from around here, you know. Grew up a big fan. And they say he can hit a little.”
“I can’t believe they’re gonna try playing through this rain. I’m soaked!”
“Suspended? What does that mean? And what about the concert?”
“He debuts tomorrow. Right after they finish yesterday’s game…whenever that is.”
And now: The Mets.
***
Rain, rain didn’t go away so easily. It wasn’t Saturday in the park rain, but it was present as Sunday at Citi Field began. Or continued. Not sure why I bothered going home in between. Not sure why I didn’t bring a full-fledged jacket when I returned. Not sure why I put so much stock in it being late June when it feels only nominally summery out there.
Joe and I chose this game long ago for no particular reason beyond prospective convenience. Its curiosity factor — off the charts as of Sunday morning — didn’t exist when he asked me if I wanted to go on June 28 and I said sure. Who knew it would loom as an idiosyncratic’s delight? They were ending a game that began the day before; they were beginning a career from scratch; they were presenting the architects of three No. 1 hit records, for goodness sake. All we were expecting to reach out and grab were Lucas Duda Growth Charts and all we were hoping for was to maybe not get so wet.
We got our charts. The wetness seemed predestined until a text from another friend offered an overhang. Sharon had cleverly rainchecked (from an “official game,” no less) her way into six dry seats. It might not rain all day Sunday as it did Saturday, but why find out? Joe and I accepted the gracious invitation to avoid unfriendly skies. Turned out we wouldn’t have been more than aggressively misted upon. After Saturday, though, who needed it? My schlep bag is still damp from that downpour.
***
There was indeed a game to complete, the one from the steady deluge. After a slight precipitation delay, it was offered to us almost cheekily. A ceremonial first pitch was thrown out even though we were picking up the action in the seventh inning. The national anthem was sung, too. Had Bobby Valentine been in the visitors’ dugout, he would have threaded a needle through the rule book and found the Met in violation of some sort of strict midgame protocol. Bryan Price was in the visitors’ dugout. Bryan Price has bigger problems. Bryan Price manages the Reds.
The Reds considered scoring in the top of the resumed seventh but ultimately rejected the concept as incompatible with their brand. They came pretty close anyway. It took three relievers — including both Tsuris brothers — to quell their advances. Then we seventh-inning stretched (more cheekiness). Then Skip Schumaker stretched as far as he cold to rob Ruben Tejada of a double in the left field corner. Then Skip Schumaker unstretched Lucas Duda’s double into a single and a 7-4 putout. The sun would make cameos, yet Skip Schumaker emerged as Sunday’s version of rain.
In the eighth, Juan Lagares robbed Jay Bruce of a home run. The Mets and Reds probably would have liked to have scored, but the Reds and Mets kept getting in their way.
***
And on these nudnik teams went. One could credit more defense and bullpen as stringent preventors of tallies, but one chooses not to. The Saturday leftovers were growing stale. The novelty was fading. The suspended game was making a nuisance of itself. It was great for fans of pop flies specifically and offensive futility in general. Also, if you liked the idea that time keeps on slippin, slippin’ into the future, it was ideal. If you didn’t like the idea of everything you were waiting for getting pushed back, this wasn’t your game.
Unless you were there, in which case it was all yours. Unlike me, Joe wasn’t there Saturday, and that fact confronted him with a conundrum. Joe scores every game he goes to. Sunday he was going. Saturday’s six innings were going to be there to greet him. How could a fiercely committed scorer start scoring a game in the middle of the action? Joe did the only sensible thing he could do, the sensible thing I guessed he would do after knowing him some 25 years. He retrofitted his scorebook with the six innings he hadn’t originally scored so he could set the stage for the seventh, eighth and ninth and any extra innings that happened to amble along through the mist.
Amble they did. The Mets didn’t score in the ninth when, with two on and two out, Michael Cuddyer remained under contract to the team that signed him last November. The Reds’ scouting report, the one that suggested, “pitch to Michael Cuddyer every chance you get — even if you’re playing someone other than the Mets or a sport other than baseball” — proved prescient.
Hey, whaddaya know: extras! The Reds threaten in the tenth, but don’t make good. The Mets use John Mayberry in the tenth to ensure an eleventh.
Let’s make like Schumaker and skip over the eleventh and twelfth. Suffice it to say they transpired and resulted in a thirteenth inning, thus ensuring more of Saturday’s game took place on Sunday than it did on Saturday. Because the Mets can’t hit, they were stuck on one run. Because the Reds can’t cope, they allowed the Mets to load the bases with nobody out in the bottom of the thirteenth. It was a rally for the ages; a rally for this age, at any rate. Dilson Herrera walked. Curtis Granderson singled past an inadequate Brandon Phillips leap. Ruben Tejada grounded to a shortstop who looked less comfortable than Wilmer Flores.
Duda from the growth chart was up. Dozens of growth charts got themselves unfolded, waved and mysteriously hung from the rafters (who thought to bring so much Fun-Tak to a ballpark?). The positive energy was too much for Joey Votto to bear, for when Lucas bounced unto him the absolutely perfect ball to fire home to force Herrera, thereby setting up Cuddyer’s inevitable inning-ending DP, he instead muffed it like crazy. Votto — who had earlier performed as a Bill Buckner tribute band called E-3 when he let a Granderson grounder scoot through his generous legs — couldn’t handle the bounce and the Mets, in spite of themselves and their 0-for-15 RISP inaction, won. They won Saturday’s game Sunday. They won despite scoring no more than two runs in thirteen innings, no more than two runs apiece across three games. Hell, they won each of those three games, all in a row.
Idiosyncratic, all right. And by the time Sunday’s baseball activities were concluded, those thirteen innings and the twenty-four hours at Le Mets that preceded them would be, if not totally forgotten, then mightily obscured.
Because we were ready to be formally introduced to our latest savior.
***
I figured Steven Matz would be bringing loads of family to the actual Sunday game for his major league debut. But who were all these other people wearing MATZ 32 tees before he’d thrown one pitch at this highest baseball level? They were, I decided, people who have been conditioned to expect deliverance in the form of one young arm after another. Such thinking has provided the subtext of the past four seasons, including the current edition.
We can’t wait for Harvey until we can’t we wait for Wheeler until we can’t wait for Syndergaard, not to mention we at least modestly anticipated the arrival of deGrom and Montero, though we’ve revised history a little to claim we had no idea the former existed (and we’ve lately lost track of the latter). We believe every morsel of hype fed to us where young pitchers are concerned. Every one of them will rise to the majors and succeed immediately. Then we’ll have too many pitchers, all of them great. The excess will be so obvious to all that somebody somewhere will be compelled to send us a low-cost power-hitting infielder who can actually field.
Funny how no trade is ever made and we can never concretely determine how much pitching is enough. We know we can’t have too many saviors, though. Never mind that pitching we’ve got and hitting we need. You can never have too much pitching. It’s why among our eight or so outstanding starters, one is on the DL, one is in Las Vegas and one has been grafted onto a rotation that seemed to have no vacancies.
But you can always make room for a savior. You can always find space in your t-shirt drawer for a MATZ 32. After Sunday, they’re not going to be able to make enough of those models to satisfy demand.
***
Who says the Mets never produce a hitter? They produced Steven Matz, perhaps the most productive hitter ever to come out of any box, certainly the best to emerge from a box marked pitcher.
He’s not misfiled, either. Pitching is clearly what got him here. Hitting, however, is why we will always cherish his maiden appearance in the big leagues.
Sunday’s de facto second game wasn’t necessarily poised from its late-afternoon first pitch to feel any different from those contests that had directly preceded it. We’d gotten so used to stellar starting pitching that we were only marginally impressed by it. What really got our attention, not to mention our goat, was the invisible hitting. We weren’t overjoyed that we’d just won games by scores of 2-0, 2-1 and 2-1; we were miffed that we couldn’t score more than two runs in any of those games. What good is winning if only some of your dreams are coming true?
Thus, we decided Steven Matz’s first game was, regardless of the savior possibilities inherent, an act of desperation. No matter what the kid does, it’s not like we’re gonna hit. And it’s not like we really know for certain what the kid’s gonna do.
Then we knew: he’d throw a terribly wild pitch to commence his career and moments later surrender a short, replay-certified home run to Phillips, the best Shea Stadium/Citi Field player who ever lived. The Reds were ahead, 1-0, after one batter; Matz’s ERA dwarfed Garrett Olson’s franchise-worst 108.00; and the 999th Met in team history might not save us from ourselves after all.
Or he might. We’d have to give him his entire start in order to find out.
***
This is what we found out about Steven Matz after he fell behind by a run.
• He’s a better pitcher than Garrett Olson. Way better. His ERA clambered down from unmeasurable to manageable to sparkling…if, in fact, an ERA can be said to matter after one game. Except for one pitch that Todd Frazier launched definitively over the left field fence, Matz did nothing wrong on the mound. He got out of what little trouble did arise, he fielded batted balls cleanly and he showed poise and command into the eighth. If his debut wasn’t the stuff of Dick Rusteck (still the only Met to pitch a complete game shutout in his first MLB appearance), it was right up there with Harvey’s and Wheeler’s and so forth. He belongs.
• He’s a better hitter than probably every one of his teammates, no matter any individual’s job description. It might not last — it probably won’t because it almost never does when the hitter is a pitcher — but have you ever seen a rookie come to bat and bring home runners like Matz did? Don’t bother sorting through phenoms past. You haven’t, within the realm of one-game sample sizes, seen a new Met like Matz at bat ever. He recorded three hits, drove in four runs, broke up a double play and…what? What else do you need, besides a revised lineup card next time he pitches, because how on earth do you justify batting someone of Matz’s potential and/or credentials behind the Mets’ relentless parade of eight-hitters? Booming double; well-placed singles; situational alertness; not bothering with batting gloves, even. Holy Don Robinson, this pitcher gave us the idea he can hit with the best of them and convinced us he can outhit the worst of them (a.k.a. the rest of the Mets’ batting order).
• He’s a happening. He’s a happening because he brought 130 friends and family from Suffolk County and because he’s been working his way back from Tommy John so long that the general manager who drafted him was Omar Minaya and because his favorite adolescent baseball memory involves Endy Chavez and he’s 24 yet looks 14 and he knows to professionally tip his cap when thunderously applauded and he lived up to every expectation we had for him and he built new expectations along the way and he exceeded those. We who were grumpy from a lack of offense even after Duda’s growth charts flapped victoriously roared without reservation for Steven Matz. We were holding out for a hero. We received a folk hero.
• He’s proof, as if we needed any more, that the designated hitter rule belongs on the ash heap of history. If, say, Cuddyer as hypothetical DH had gone 3-for-3, we might be curious what kind of hallucinogenics they were using at Blue Smoke, but we wouldn’t otherwise be terribly moved beyond vague approval. But Matz going 3-for-3? The pitcher? Never mind the Colon sideshow. This is a pitcher not just helping his own cause. This is a pitcher defining the cause. Let other pitchers pray for run support. Matz answered everybody’s prayers before they could be formulated.
How sophisticated do we all feel in the moment a pitcher makes solid contact? Look at me, I know enough to treat this event as extraordinary. How stimulated does that sensation leave us? The pitcher swings…the pitcher hits…the pitcher runs…the pitcher is on first…maybe second. Oh god…oh god…OH GOD!
Seriously, witnessing a pitcher truly fill the role of hitter may be the closest thing baseball has to adult entertainment.
Every National Leaguer’s soul soared when Matz connected and reached base for a third time. Every one of us knew we had found the silver bullet to refute every silly argument to be made for not letting the pitcher hit. If the pitcher didn’t hit, then all we would have had out of Steven Matz was an encouraging outing presumably going to waste because — oh, by the way — the rest of the Mets continued to mostly not hit in that second game Sunday. With Matz pitching and Matz hitting and Matz doing it all, the Mets discovered a run total higher than two and a win streak that reached four.
It helped that the Reds are brutal. It helped that their scouting reports didn’t factor in Matz’s hitting ability. It helped that they’ve been playing shabby baseball for close to a year. It helps, too, that the Mets are as dependably able at Citi Field as they are astoundingly inept away from it.
But mostly Steven Matz helped himself and helped us all and it was only his beginning.
***
Poor Steve Miller. Rained out. Postponed. Rescheduled. Abandoned. Maybe 2,000 of us remained to watch him and his band perform postgame. The Mets showed this rock and blues legend so little respect that while he sang, the ribbon board flashed an ad for the Heart postgame concert next month, as if that’s the one you should stick around for. They couldn’t have waited until the act they’d been plugging for months had unplugged their instruments?
If they felt like afterthoughts, they didn’t show it. Fifty minutes, a dozen songs, solid musicianship, two band members wearing Mets jerseys, enough relevant patter to assure you they weren’t mailing it in. Steve Miller dedicated “Abracadabra” to “Stevie Matz” for all the “magic’ he made before they came on, though if you think about it, “Swingtown” would have been more appropriate. Mr. Miller even told us we were going to the World Series, presumably on a big ol’ Met airliner.
We probably have to start winning some games on the road first. Gosh, I hope Matz travels as well as he hits
by Greg Prince on 27 June 2015 9:04 pm Welcome to your recurring state of suspended animation, last visited approximately two years and one month ago. The Mets haven’t lost and they haven’t yet lost. I suppose the same could be said about winning, but I just sat in the rain for what seemed like several hours, but it was just several innings and it must have warped my time-monitoring sensibilities. As I undampen far from the soggy ballpark, I can’t fathom the concept of winning, given the wetness of the context.
The Mets and Reds played six innings on Saturday afternoon. They were supposed to play at least nine and then give way to the Steve Miller Band, whose hitmaking in recent decades has slowed to Metlike levels, but I’m guessing they can still play. Hell yes, I wanted to hear Steve Miller. Hell yes, I wanted to see Mets baseball. Hell no, I don’t want to get drenched.
There was no Steve Miller. There was a shortfall of baseball. There was plenty of drench.
Can you blame the Mets for starting a game that had little meteorological chance of proceeding to its end point? I can blame the Mets for anything and usually do, so yeah, it was crass and presumably revenue-driven to not take the raincheck portion of Saturday’s tickets literally. Then again, you get the Reds in for one series and you presumably had a large crowd planning on this particular date happening and what’s being a Mets fan without a modicum of cockeyed optimism?
Somebody cockeyed read the radar, because all of New York knew it was going to rain, yet they started on time, or about four seconds before the weather morphed from annoyance to hindrance to obstacle. Those of us whose seats were uncovered — and that includes the pitcher, the catcher, the batter and so forth — were the most annoyed, hindered and distressed. Those of us who had umbrellas but nothing of a structural nature covering us did battle with those of you sat under overhangs and whined, “Excuse me, I can’t see…I can’t see…your umbrella is blocking my view…I have my choice of a thousand empty seats right now, but you who are sitting in the rain should get extra wet so I don’t have to move three feet.”
The preceding re-enactment was brought to you by Citizens Who Brought An Umbrella, Screw You If You Didn’t — and I approve this message.
It was a losing battle, no matter where you were. This wasn’t baseball like it oughta be, and that’s never minding that another Harvey Day was wasted, that Curtis Granderson is useless even when he’s proving himself indispensable and that there is nothing more quintessentially Metsian than one dope, sitting by himself in a downpour, huddled inside a giveaway poncho he’s been holding in reserve for four years, beseeching somebody, anybody to Let’s Go Mets…and the Mets not going at all.
I thought maybe the fifth would do it. I thought maybe Familia should’ve come in for the obvious neo-save situation. If the 1-0 lead Granderson gave us before Granderson conspired to take it away could have held up through four-and-a-half, I’m convinced they’d have halted it directly and they’d have called it immediately. I also thought maybe this would be the day Brandon Phillips wouldn’t get a hit against us in Flushing, something he’s been doing since he began making business trips to our neck of the woods. Alas, come rain or shine, he’s gonna do what he’s gonna do — Phillips RBI double after a Granderson misplay — and so we’re gonna pick this up tomorrow at 1:10, 1-1.
The top of the fifth refused to get put in the books. We played the bottom of the fifth with another opportunity to win under rain-shortened rules, but we didn’t. And then the sixth. And then nothing. And then, later, the announcement that we were suspended and should come back tomorrow for three going on twelve innings of Mets baseball — a portion of them Matzian — plus Steve Miller, plus that long-promised Lucas Duda growth chart. I wonder if it will measure how big a ninny one is to sit in the rain and expect not to get wet.
I can take a hint, though. When it got too chilly (on June 27!) to bear the rain, I squeezed into the Caesars Club. When the tarp finally covered the field at the beginning of the seventh — Harvey gone, score tied, one of the Tsuris Brothers ready to ply his trade — I left. Actually, I waited through a few sweet Mets Yearbook excerpts playing on the fabulous 62%-bigger scoreboard and then I left. Who can walk away from Jackson Todd describing how after chemotherapy his previously straight hair came in curly? But who can resist a chance to make one’s train out of Woodside and seek warmth, dryness and a go get ’em tomorrow?
Which I will. Because, damn it, I am that quintessentially Metsian dope.
Thanks to those dear friends who provided me entrée and companionship at various points of my sporadically solitary sojourn to suspended animation. You folks make days like these more fun than they have a right to be.
And if you’re wondering what good rain is to a baseball team, learn more about the flora, fauna and so forth that are tended to by June showers at Citi Field. James H. Burns writes about a Mets garden tradition that dates back to Joe Pignatano’s tomato plants here.
by Greg Prince on 27 June 2015 9:17 am Steven Matz graduates to the big time on Sunday. Or the Met time, at any rate. The efficacy of Sandy Alderson’s doctoral thesis in mathematics — the GM contends six starters will fit snugly into five slots — remains to be seen, but official confirmation that the last lavishly hyped pitching prospect of the current generation is indeed on the cusp of arriving atop a major league mound was cause for joyous celebration Friday night.
So we celebrated. And it was joyous.
To be fair, Matz’s impending promotion served primarily as happy coincidental backdrop for the real reason festiveness was in the air at Citi Field. Steven Matz was on the way and Noah Syndergaard was on the hill, but center stage belonged to another young star: Melanie Spector. Someday you’ll find Melanie in your program at the Met, her budding vocal talents having been honed at the Manhattan School of Music, an institution that will be fortunate to number her among its ranks come fall. Until then, you can find this freshly minted graduate of Leonia (N.J.) High School at the Mets.
 Talk about having your priorities straight! Melanie’s been a Mets fan since birth. I’ve seen the pictures. I’ve seen her in action. I’ve seen her keep score. I’ve seen her repurpose the rituals of prom night and put them to vivid use for Harvey Day. And now I’ve seen how she puts a bow on her high school career.
Steven Matz leaving Las Vegas has nothing on Melanie Spector taking Manhattan.
Friday night, Stephanie and I were honored to attend Melanie’s graduation party, which of course took place at Citi Field — she and her parents Garry and Susan wouldn’t be anywhere else on an evening the Mets are home (assuming there’s no conflict with the Metropolitan Opera, where Susan plays oboe and Melanie takes copious notes). The occasion called for a grand setting, so they booked an Empire Suite. Actually, any spot in the ballpark is grand when it’s chock full of Spectors, but the suite was an excellent touch. It was right behind home plate; it came with a buffet from which Shake Shack burgers let forth a siren song of fierce temptation; and premier cultural icon Mr. Met dropped by to say hello, albeit extremely sotto voce. Mr. Met, like our hosts, demonstrates excellent taste.
The Mets provided only two hits against their Red nemeses, but one of them was a leadoff home run from Curtis Granderson and the other was a catalytic triple from Dilson Herrera. The three-bagger, legged out in the fifth, led to the quintessential June 2015 Mets rally: a two-out walk followed by a two-out walk followed by a two-out walk. Three good eyes, twelve helpful balls and one additional run. Staked to an enormous 2-1 lead, Syndergaard protected its honor through the eight before Jeurys Familia closed the production with equal dollops of verve and panache.
Bravo for the Mets! Brava for Melanie! Our thanks to her for thinking to include us on such a special night. She is destined to experience many special nights ahead in whatever venue she chooses. We were truly tickled to have been a part of this one.
by Jason Fry on 26 June 2015 1:29 am The Mets won a game today, and in case you had any doubt, winning most definitely feels better than losing.
So how’d they win? By the skin of their teeth, actually. They got their usual terrific starting pitching, with Jacob deGrom throttling the Brewers. They got just enough hitting — TWO WHOLE RUNS, MA! And they didn’t screw up defensively.
(Though they tried. DeGrom spoke for every Mets fan on Earth when he turned away from Darrell Ceciliani and Michael Cuddyer having narrowly missed a collision that would have George Theodore‘d them both and probably ensured a defeat.)
By the midpoint of the game, however, the buzz was all about what’s happening next: The Mets are calling up Steven Matz, apparently to start Sunday.
The six-man rotation is back, and won’t have to stick around too long to have had a longer tenure than the last six-man rotation. After the game, Terry Collins simply muttered that there’d be an announcement on Friday, which seemed unnecessarily mysterious. Perhaps he was told to leave the talking to Sandy Alderson. Perhaps there’s a trade in the works. Perhaps Jeff Wilpon wants to anoint Matz with oil and spices. Who the hell even knows with this bunch?
I’ll be glad to see Matz, though unfortunately he’s unlikely to be the answer at any of the other positions where the Mets are plagued by uncertainty, which right now would be seven of the eight. The one thing the Mets don’t particularly need right now is more starting pitching, not that that’s any reason to keep a kid in the minors who doesn’t seem to have a lot left to learn.
Given what happened to poor Dillon Gee last time there seemed to be more starters than slots, I’m not going to get too worked up about any of this. (Gee, by the way, got pounded for Las Vegas tonight.) It’ll be fun to welcome Matz to the big club, and record him in The Holy Books as (presumably) the 999th Met in franchise history.
And then we’ll see. Maybe he’ll be Jerry Koosman and maybe he’ll be Tim Leary. Nobody really knows, which is where both the anxiety and the fun come from.
What I do know is this: Matz is the last of a very exciting crop of heralded young pitchers to arrive. That group started with Jenrry Mejia, with Matt Harvey, Jeurys Familia, Zack Wheeler, Rafael Montero and Noah Syndergaard following one after the other, like they were rolling off a pitcher assembly line. (I don’t count deGrom, not to slight him but because absolutely nobody saw him coming.) None of the young pitchers has been a true washout; all have shown at least flashes of the potential that led fans to demand they be sprung from the minors and could still be impact players, either in relief or as starters.
The Mets have other good young pitchers in the system, but Matz will be the last from this era. Once he arrives, our hope — and our impatience — will focus on the system’s hitters. Dilson Herrera‘s the vanguard, arriving early and quite possibly headed back down for more seasoning. Brandon Nimmo and Michael Conforto are the big bats we’d like to see (and that some are already agitating for); perhaps they’ll head a hitting class that includes Gavin Cecchini, Amed Rosario, Dom Smith and Jhoan Urena.
And perhaps they won’t. A pessimist would predict that the hitters from that group who do prosper in the big leagues will start arriving as the Mets have to start to sell off their young hurlers, leading to a ridiculous see-saw era of solid Mets offense and terrible pitching.
But that’s for future agonized blog posts. The Mets won. We deserve a rest from pessimism. The Mets won and Steven Matz is coming. Let’s enjoy both those things.
by Greg Prince on 25 June 2015 8:57 am The Mets, losers of seven consecutive ballgames, will win again. They may win their next scheduled date this very afternoon against the Brewers. Jacob deGrom is still one of the finest pitchers around and the Brewers are still — despite taking the first two games of this series — a last-place team with the worst home record in all of baseball.
And if they don’t win today, there’s always tomorrow. There are 89 tomorrows remaining in their 2015 journey. It only feels as if the suddenly sub-.500 Mets will lose them all. They won’t.
Comforted? Probably not. The Mets’ strengths are starting pitching and a schedule that includes as many potential patsies as existential threats. Starting pitching hasn’t prevented them from losing seven in a row, nor have the Brewers. Nor has the time-honored team meeting. Terry Collins took a page from the Frankie Goes To Hollywood playbook and told his team to relax. Nine innings later, Frankie Rodriguez Who Went To Milwaukee relaxed the Mets off to dreamland. Prior to our old closer closing the door, it was the generically named Jimmy Nelson taking care of our former first-place team on two hits over eight innings. Jimmy Nelson was not a household word even inside the Nelson household before Wednesday night. I’m guessing “spatula” had a higher Q rating.
Opponents seem immaterial at the moment. Words seem immaterial at the moment. Collins himself suggested team meetings, like his hitters, don’t do much of anything. This one didn’t. Nor did the resting of certain underachieving regulars in favor of massively unproven reserves…as if one can tell them apart anymore.
What strikes me as strange about these Mets who need to be told to relax is the lack of any sense of urgency surrounding them. When you listen to their manager postgame or their general manager anytime, the message always seems to be we did everything right, it’s just the darn scoreboard that didn’t cooperate. Players prepare, coaches coach, scouting reports are compiled, issued and devoured. Nobody performs.
It doesn’t help when your presumably prepared players are incapable performers. Do you get mad at your cats for not calculating sales tax? No, because you know they can’t. And the Mets are loaded down currently with players who can’t in general. It would have been nice to have had a foolproof contingency plan in case key players became unavailable in the course of the season, as occasionally (or often) happens. The Mets didn’t have one of those. The Mets’ bench when this campaign commenced consisted of Anthony Recker, John Mayberry, Ruben Tejada and Kirk Nieuwenhuis. The ranks have thinned unmercifully from there.
Perhaps someone is working the phones to acquire Grade B talent to reinforce the outer edge of this roster. Grade B would be an improvement. Again, though, the Mets give the impression that you’re the crazy one for wondering why Eric Campbell is the default answer every time there’s a personnel shortfall. Or why of all the positions Wilmer Flores is minimally qualified to play he is continually assigned the one he finds most baffling. Or why their only operative power hitter, Curtis Granderson, isn’t deployed in a traditional power-hitting spot in the lineup on the off chance another Met reaches base in front of him. Or why Juan Lagares’s once-beautiful throwing arm is allowed to strain itself worse before succumbing to inevitable surgery.
We are allowed to wonder these things. It would be easier to slough it all off on the perpetually murky state of the Wilpons, their financial follies and MLB’s blatant negligence regarding the New York National League franchise’s inability/unwillingness to compete vigorously in today’s bustling baseball marketplace, but then what are you left with? You’re left with 89 games worth of abyss, from K-Rod to Que Sera, Sera, and it’s not like we’re ever going to stop staring down into it and gauging where it might level off. To say “no chance, it doesn’t matter” to the people who buy the tickets, subscribe to the packages, provide an audience for the sponsors and care because there is no alternative to caring doesn’t work. For better or worse, it’s too late to turn back now. Whatever will be, will be, but it’s our constitutional right as fans to keep wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’ it will be at least marginally better before it grows prohibitively worse.
Anything can happen with 89 games remaining. Even a Mets win, sooner or later.
by Jason Fry on 24 June 2015 12:36 am I’m not sure what the point of this recap is. Just go read this one — because the Mets just replayed Friday’s game, down to the comedy of errors on a good bunt to third.
Once again, the key figures were Ruben Tejada, pressed into service at an unnatural position, and the pitcher — then it was Jacob deGrom, this time it was Jon Niese.
Give Tejada credit for thinking, at least. On Friday he overcommitted, was caught off third and the Mets had no play. Tonight, in the sixth, he saw Niese go for the bunt and retreated to cover third … except the bunt was better and Niese doesn’t field as well as deGrom. End result: the same, Mets with no play at third, and fans left to chuckle bleakly on their couches.
The rest? Must we? The Mets got good pitching, lousy fielding and didn’t hit. Perhaps you’re familiar with this losing formula.
Niese, my designated 2015 Jonah and favored whipping boy, did nothing wrong — well, all right, he did get caught spectating instead of covering first, but he was probably just trying to make the rest of the infield feel better. He pitched well enough to win, as he has for four starts now, and got nothing for it.
The defense was putrid once again, with that sequence the middle of the mess. Gerardo Parra led off the sixth with a single, and it looked like Kevin Plawecki would throw him out at second … except Dilson Herrera made a weirdly nonchalant tag and Parra was safe. Niese walked Hernan Perez. Then came the botched play on Hector Gomez‘s bunt, which loaded the bases with none out. Jean Segura lifted a fly ball to medium center, the kind no runner would have dared try to score on a year ago — except a year ago’s Juan Lagares doesn’t play for the Mets. Parra trotted home with the tying run.
An inning later, Sean Gilmartin gave up a double to left, the ball caromed cruelly and comically between Michael Cuddyer‘s legs, and the Brewers had the winning run.
The offense? What offense? The Mets didn’t collect a hit after the third inning. They struck out 12 times and showed more life barking at home-plate ump Larry Vanover than they did trying to touch up Milwaukee pitchers. Lucas Duda looks absolutely lost. Cuddyer, brought in to be a complementary player, looks like he’s crumbling under the load of a larger burden than that. And Travis d’Arnaud is back on the DL, possibly for some time.
I’m not going to break down what’s wrong with this team, because I already did, nothing’s changed and nothing’s going to change.
But that said, I read this Amazin’ Avenue article today and found myself nodding.
This bunch isn’t going to win — the Nationals look like they’ve righted the ship, and the Mets are inferior to the other wild-card contenders. The injuries continue to mount … and then linger. There are no season-changing trades to be made and no payroll to be added.
2015 is over as far as contending for a postseason spot goes, and we should just admit it.
I suspect Sandy Alderson knows this — in fact, I think he knew it a lot earlier than the rest of us did. Since it’s his unenviable job to try to thread a financial needle every season, he ought to pack this season in.
What does that mean?
Most urgently, it means figuring out what’s wrong with Lagares and doing what has to be done to fix it. The Mets are trying to baby him through his injuries, but why? If he needs Tommy John surgery, do it now so he’s back for Opening Day next year — particularly since we’ve seen far too many Mets try to handle injuries conservatively and wind up losing valuable recovery time.
Beyond that? Figure out a plan for the infield and what the best course of action is for Wilmer Flores and Herrera and what the backup plan for third base is. And then make it happen.
Finally, sell off whatever you can. Which, granted, right now is Bartolo Colon and nothing. Maybe a few more good outings by Niese can entice a trade-deadline buyer, or Dillon Gee can get himself together at Las Vegas, or Daniel Murphy can return and get converted into a prospect. (Assuming you don’t now need Murph to replace David Wright.) The return won’t be much, but it’s smarter than playing for a pennant that’s going to belong to someone else.
That leaves the Mets talking about next year again — a next year that keeps retreating, like we’re all in some baseball version of the hallway from Poltergeist. I know it sucks and I know we’ve been here before. But the Mets aren’t going to win, and it would be counterproductive to pretend otherwise. So let’s just get on with it.
by Greg Prince on 22 June 2015 6:52 pm It was the “Mambo No. 5” game. That’s one of the two ways I differentiate it from all the other games I’ve attended. In the seventh-inning stretch, they played “Mambo No. 5,” the very contemporary and very kitschy song Lou Bega was making famous late in the summer of 1999. I don’t know why they went with Bega that Sunday afternoon at Shea. Maybe the other Lou — Monte — needed a blow. It was a day game after a night game. If a little rest was good enough for Mike Piazza, it was good enough for “Lazy Mary”.
This was the only time I remember “Mambo No. 5” following “Take Me Out To The Ball Game”. It is a very silly song, but I liked hearing it that day. The mischievous bravado, the extensive roll call of Bega’s romantic interests and the bouncy trumpet break in particular fit the prevailing Zeitgeist between the top and bottom of the seventh. The Mets, winners of 15 of their previous 23, were ahead of the Rockies, 6-2; if they held on, and if the Diamondbacks could come back on the Braves (which they would), we’d pull to within 2½ of the Eastern Division lead. The mood in the park was truly festive. A party atmosphere had pervaded Shea since the bottom of the fifth.
That was when the party started. That was when the other way that differentiates the game of September 5, 1999, came to the fore. That was when Darryl Hamilton made an enormous difference in the fate of the 1999 Mets.
That wasn’t the only time, mind you. Darryl had come over in one of the flurry of deadline deals Steve Phillips pulled off. Hamilton was the new part-time center fielder, arriving from Colorado — coincidentally the opposition on September 5 — in exchange for Brian McRae. There were others in the deal, but it was basically McRae, a lingering disappointment, for Hamilton, a veteran brought in to shore up a squishy position. Hamilton, a lefty, shared center with another newly minted Met, righthanded-hitting Shawon Dunston. The platoon took. From the moment they became Mets to the end of the regular season, Hamilton batted .339, while Dunston hit .344.
Yet it was during the fifth inning on September 5 when Hamilton inscribed his signature on the 1999 season. The bases were loaded, the Mets were up, 2-0, and he swung at a one-oh pitch from Darryl Kile. It left the ballpark. The Mets’ lead increased to 6-0 on Darryl Hamilton’s grand slam.
Just as there was never a party like a Shea Stadium party, there is no home run like a grand slam home run. Darryl Hamilton was why “Mambo No. 5” could play over the PA two innings later and it could feel so apropos. With a little bit of Hamilton in our lives, we were winning by a comfortable margin. Masato Yoshii returned to the mound in the sixth and gave back two of the runs when he surrendered a homer to Vinny Castilla, but otherwise, the Met edge was safe. Hamilton provided four runs and the Mets won by four.
It was just one win in a season when the Mets got through 162 games with 96 wins. Except without Darryl’s slam, maybe the Mets lose on September 5. Maybe it’s a 2-2 game when Lou Bega takes center stage in the middle of the seventh. Maybe the Rockies find a third run in extra innings and the Mets don’t score again and, as a result, on October 3 the Mets have 95 wins. That would have been a very damaging development in retrospect, because the Mets needed every last one of their 96 victories to ultimately tie the Reds for the Wild Card. With 96, they got to a 163rd game. With a win in that 163rd game, they got to the postseason. From there, we had ten more October games in which magic would be manufactured and memories would be made — memories that warm our hearts to this very day and will no doubt continue to for as long as we take baseball to our hearts.
It was six weeks from Hamilton’s grand slam home run to Robin Ventura’s grand slam single. Theoretically we’d have gotten to the latter without the former, but somehow I doubt it.
When we ask ourselves during less rewarding spans why we remain fans, we know it’s because of years like 1999 and stretch drives to which every Met contributed, whether they were a part of our team while it was coming together or showed up just in time to give it that extra nudge to get it over the top. It’s quite conceivable that without Darryl Hamilton, the phrase “1999 Mets” doesn’t mean what it does to us today.
It’s just as conceivable that without Darryl Hamilton, the title “2000 National League Champions” belongs elsewhere. Instead, because of the instant Hamilton came off the bench; delivered a two-out, tenth-inning double off Felix Rodriguez in San Francisco; and scored on Jay Payton’s succeeding single, the pennant eventually became ours. This was Game Two of the NLDS. The Mets had lost Game One. Armando Benitez gave up a gut-punch three-run shot to J.T. Snow in the bottom of the ninth, one that allowed the Giants to tie the second game at four. The momentum had shifted. The Mets couldn’t afford to go home down oh-two in a best-of-five series.
Though we can’t deal definitively in what-ifs, we do know what did definitively happen. Hamilton doubled, scored and put the Mets ahead. The Mets won that game. They won the next two. They won that series and the series thereafter and they ended a 14-year World Series drought. That was the last time the Mets got that far in any year.
We indulge the cliché that it takes 25 men, usually more, to win anything meaningful in this game. One of those men, two years running, was Darryl Hamilton. He was a part of two of the most wonderful teams this franchise ever produced. In years when everything had to go right for them to go as far as they did, Darryl made the kinds of differences you can put your finger on…the kinds of differences you know by heart.
Today, we learned Darryl Hamilton, 50, was killed by his girlfriend in a murder-suicide in Texas, leaving behind a baby boy barely over a year old. It is horrible news from a human standpoint. It would be no matter who we were talking about. It turns out we’re talking about a ballplayer whose name stays with us, whose image we can call up instantly, whose accomplishments in the uniform of the team we call ours meant something special to us.
Nobody who knew Darryl Hamilton personally from his playing days or his more recent broadcasting career is recalling him with anything but heartbroken affection. He was, by all accounts, a good man. He is, in our recollections, a vital Met who helped make us feel like winners. It’s hardly the most important thing by which to measure a life, but when you know of somebody primarily because of what he did as a baseball player, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to recall.
by Greg Prince on 22 June 2015 9:57 am I must have been inspired by the incessant promotional buzz generated by those Steve Miller Band concert spots, because in the spirit of the narrator of “Abracadabra,” I tried to conjure some rah. Maybe even some rah-rah. Undeterred by the six deadly frames that preceded them, I threw myself into the seventh, eighth and ninth innings Sunday.
I rode Matt Harvey’s right arm as far as it would take me.
I took solace in Alex Torres’s left arm making things bad but not measurably worse.
I dared to dream John Mayberry could deliver PDQ (or at least RFD).
I saw in Carlos Torres a savior and a harbinger.
I believed Curtis Granderson could be transcendent, Juan Lagares an agent of change, Lucas Duda a genuine threat and Michael Cuddyer…
Well, I wasn’t terribly confident Michael Cuddyer was going to do much of anything, but I also didn’t think he’d hit into a 5-4-3 double play to end the ninth, the game, the series and the weekend with absolutely nothing to show for it in the win column and a surfeit of dreck stuffed into the doubt column.
There is much to doubt in these second-place Mets, starting with their ability to ever see the light of first again. They probably won’t. Using the three-game series just completed and thoroughly lost in Atlanta as a gauge, they’ll be lucky to be the second-place Mets by this time next week. True, they’re playing the lousy Brewers at Steve Miller Park next, followed by the lousy Reds at Citi Field — where they apparently benefit from reduced proneness to exhaustion — but then again, those teams will be playing the Mets.
The Braves may not be an authentic contender, but when you sweep the team ahead of you and you pull to within a half-game of that team, who is to doubt the Braves? With the lost weekend now over, they’re only relevant in that if the Mets don’t find somebody or figure out something, they’ll be one more team shoving the Mets further back in the playoff processional, and once you’ve faded from first and drifted from Wild Card territory…well, you know what all those years we’ve just gone through felt like?
Welcome back to the age of jive.
There are no doubt sophisticated metrics by which it could be shown the Mets aren’t nearly as bad as I’m convinced again that they are, let alone as bad as they’ve demonstrated themselves to be on this 0-5 thus far road trip (a.k.a. Gary Cohen’s brilliantly timed vacation). You could start with 36-35, a record that indicates this very team has won more game than it has lost since the commencement of the current season. That, like Harvey’s right arm, will only take you so far. Since cresting at 13-3, the Mets have won 23 games and lost 32. That extrapolates over 162 games to horrible.
The truth of the 2015 Mets probably lies somewhere north of the 68-win pace they’ve operated at since April 24, but I don’t see holding them to the standard of their record over slightly more than a third of the current season as somehow unfair. This is the team that’s going out and playing the games that count. In a parallel universe in which all variables are delightfully controlled, nobody vital has been injured, everybody worthwhile has been inked to sub-market contracts and distant potential has translated into immediately pleasing reality, the Mets are probably kicking Atlanta ass and taking Washington names.
In this one, they’ve scored 13 runs in their past 66 innings and looked like rank amateurs for the better part of a week.
Sunday was what certain segments of the northeastern United States used to celebrate as Harvey Day. The remnants of its sacred implications could be easily inferred, as its namesake persevered through two stressful innings then cruised through the next four. The seventh presented the Rubicon challenge — Ryan Lavarnway doubled with two out, pinch-hitter Pedro Ciriaco up — and the pitcher was unable to cross it successfully. The pinch-hitter singled to center, the center fielder with a once thunderous arm that seems destined for surgical rejiggering couldn’t throw out the torpid runner at home and that was that for Matt.
Until this point in the game, I was resigned to another one of these types of losses, yet I let out a truly anguished “NOOO!!!” when Lavarnway’s molasses-like form blobbed across the plate. Two nights earlier, it was dismaying to watch Jacob deGrom removed for some chump reliever when the game was better off in his hands. Now Harvey was getting the chance to keep the Mets alive. It didn’t pay off.
I assumed Alex Torres would make things worse as soon as he could, and he tried, issuing consecutive walks to load the bases, but when he got Kelly Johnson to fly out instead of grand slam, I thought maybe I’d been too hasty in judging the Mets totally futile. When Eric Campbell doubled with two out in the top of the eighth to raise his batting average to a rousing .177, I thought maybe we weren’t done. John Mayberry came up and I really began to imagine crazy things. Didn’t Mayberry hit a home run here in April? Doesn’t Mayberry have some kind of track record that made him appealing enough to sign in the offseason? Aren’t there fairies flying through the air who watch over babies and puppies and kittens and baseball teams with adorable baseball-headed mascots?
Yeah, I was carried away with the Mayberry fever. Johnny struck out. But so did Nick Markakis and Juan Uribe, victimized by Carlos Torres to start the bottom of the eighth, and when ol’ Central Time (my personal nickname for the reliever with the initials CT) teased an easy grounder back to the mound from Andrelton Simmons, I thought I saw something fantastical developing. The Mets would rally in the ninth, Parnell would come on for the save, we’d bemoan Harvey’s non-decisioned fate, but otherwise talk about character and resilience, and with Milwaukee and Cincinnati on the schedule and the knowledge Max Scherzer can’t flirt with perfection more than once every five or six days, everything that wasn’t hunky would be dory. The Maverick is back!
I can convince myself of anything if I really want it. I wanted Granderson’s leadoff single to augur great things. I wanted Lagares’s breathtaking bunt to represent a marker in the turnaround of 2015, one that would be featured in the highlight download narrated by Len Cariou this November (“When things were at their bleakest, it was Juan who found a way to set up a win…”) First and second, none out, Lucas Duda, who hit 30 home runs last year and rates a growth chart next week, up. Has Lucas Duda grown enough to produce what Cariou and the rest of us would call the biggest blast of the season?
No. Just another flyout. But still two outs to play with. And once Cuddyer didn’t completely kill the ninth by not hitting into a DP, maybe Flores, the focal point of so much frustration of late, would…
What’s that? Cuddyer did the one thing he absolutely couldn’t do in that spot? He grounded into a game-ending double play?
Oh.
The Mets went back to sucking with that ground ball. Or they never stopped sucking despite amassing three base hits in their final two innings. They lost, 1-0. Harvey, who pitched extremely well, joined deGrom, who also pitched extremely well, as an absorber of loss in Atlanta. In between them, Noah Syndergaard had his ERA fluffed up a bit. Thus, your three shiningest hopes on this otherwise mostly dim roster had their utility snuffed out. And if deGrom, Syndergaard and Harvey are going to start three consecutive games and the Mets are going to win none of them, what exactly is there to expect from the remaining 91 games?
“Anything” is the correct/hopeful answer. A three-game sweep at the hands of a divisional rival whose signature chant evokes such pleasant associations (genocide, Chipper Jones) only seems prohibitive in its prevention of possibilities. I distinctly recall a similar weekend in Atlanta from fourteen years ago. Technically, it was a weekend at Shea, but I was in Atlanta on business watching on TV. The 2001 Mets were flailing and failing. The Braves were that era’s Nationals. Alex Escobar was that year’s Michael Conforto, the guy we couldn’t wait to bring up. In fact we brought up Alex Escobar.
He didn’t help. Nothing did. The Mets lost three straight, fell double-digits out of first and all looked lost. A Mets fan spending a weekend in Atlanta found it was a destination that provided limited fun then, too. Three months later, however, the Mets were in the thick of a September pennant race against those very same Braves. There’s not a huge moral to this, given that the 2001 Mets came up short in their valiant last-minute run at a division title, but they did make it more exciting than we could’ve imagined in June and at this point, I’d take having something to look forward to beyond constant entreaties to come out to Citi Field this Saturday to watch somebody who hasn’t had a big hit since 1982.
I’m referring, of course, to Michael Cuddyer.
Disgust and frustration at least make for lively conversation. Hear for yourself as I join Jason and Shannon Shark for the non-Star Wars portion of the latest episode of “I’d Just As Soon Kiss a Mookiee” here.
by Greg Prince on 21 June 2015 12:16 pm The Mets work on Father’s Day, so it’s not surprising to look back and find they occasionally did something memorable come the third Sunday in June. Marv Throneberry legendarily didn’t touch first (or second) in 1962. Jim Bunning didn’t allow any Met to touch first in 1964. Somewhere in the middle of the 1980s, Ralph Kiner forever altered Mets fan greetings across the generations by wishing all you fathers out there a happy birthday. At the end of that decade, the Mets sent Lenny Dykstra and Roger McDowell on a Father’s Day journey to Philadelphia.
Mike Piazza made a late Father’s Day gift out of an immensely whackable Sunday night Carlos Almanzar pitch in 2001. Robinson Cancel arose from astounding obscurity to deliver a doubleheader split in 2008. In 2013, Kirk Nieuwenhuis blasted a three-run homer with two out and the Mets down two to Carlos Marmol and the Cubs in the bottom of the ninth. That touched off a raucous home plate celebration that in turn touched off Bob Costas’s “decline of Western civilization” dig that in turn touched off a reassuring surge of Mets fan indignation (we could make fun of us, but screw that guy).
Then there was Father’s Day 1990, which you might not remember as a milestone — the Mets beat the Pirates in Pittsburgh, Doc’s fastball measuring 100 MPH on the overamped Three Rivers gun — but I sure as hell do, because that was the day that my mother died. In terms of these sorts of Hallmark events, that removed Mother’s Day from my personal calendar forever after. By Father’s Day 1991, however, things were back to fairly normal on a personal level. I wished my dad a Happy Father’s Day and he said thank you.
Twenty-five years later, we continue that particular annual exchange, but it’s not so simple this year. As you might know from reading this blog over the last month, my dad underwent very serious surgery in May. It’s safe to say it pre-emptively saved his life. A month later, he’s still on the comeback trail, so when I see him later today, it will be in a different space than usual, both literally and figuratively. But he continues to come along, so for that I am grateful, just as I am grateful to those of you who continue to inquire into his well-being.
As you know, because the Mets need to play another team whenever they do have a game, other teams work Father’s Day, too. I thought it appropriate to share with you the thoughts of another son, a fellow Long Islander whose father brought him into baseball, albeit not into Mets baseball, but given the geography and the history, a version spiritually close enough.
Gary Mintz is the president of the New York Giants Preservation Society and quite the San Francisco Giants fan (not to mention quite the good guy). He never saw the New York Giants play, but he’s made it one of his life’s priorities to preserve their legacy. It all goes back to his dad.
I’ll let Gary tell the rest of the story in what he calls An Ode to a Real Giant.
Seems to be there are a lot of giants worth wishing well to today.
***
My dad was Louis Mintz. Family man, librarian at the New York Public Library for over 40 years, father, Giants Fan. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of him. He was always upbeat with an infectious smile that stayed with him even as cancer ravaged his body. Nobody ever said a bad word about him, the testament to his greatness. He loved my mom, loved his three boys, my wife, and worshipped the ground of his three granddaughters (his girlies, my daughters) and his grandson.
Then there were the Giants. His love of the New York Giants somehow continued when the orange and black moved to San Francisco. I, wanting to be like him, started following the San Francisco Giants in 1969. Up until 2010, I claimed it was the only wrong thing my father ever did. That all changed of course when Nelson Cruz swung and missed on a Brian Wilson pitch on November 1, 2010. It was the most compelling moment of my sports life as a fan. Forty-one years I waited, forty-one years!! In one night, all the hurt and pain was suddenly gone. Then viola!! The Giants stun the baseball world by winning it all again in 2012. Two World Championships in three years!! UNBELIEVABLE!! Then 2014!! Make it three World Series championships in five years!!
My only regret is that “Sweet Lou” wasn’t around to savor it with me as he passed in 2003. I wish we could have talked about it, laughed about it and reminisced about it. When the World Series Trophy Tour stopped in Manhattan in January 2011, January 2013, and January 2015, he surely would have treasured the moments as I did with my wife and my daughters. To think he would have met and shook hands with his idol Willie Mays. Willie Mays, the GREAT ONE!! How was I allowed to take a photo with him? That was supposed to be something my dad did!!
I became associated with the New York/San Francisco Giants because of my love and admiration for this man. Growing up I would hear him say things that would just pop out of the air for no apparent rhyme or reason. There would be the names that he would spew. Alvin “Blackie” Dark; Monte I“rrrrrrrrr”vin, whom he called at times the “Orange Cutie” (evidently Monte Irvin’s nickname); Bobby Thomson, “The Flying Scot”; Sal “The Barber” Maglie; Bill “The Cricket” Rigney; and just plain “Willie,” no need for any other name as I knew who he meant. Then there were the little sayings, the old “PG’s,” “The June Swoon,” and as Frankie Frisch would say, “Oh those bases on balls.” Occasionally he would sing the Giants theme song, “We’re calling all fans, all you Giants ball fans, come watch the home-team going places, round those bases.” He in fact once wrote a letter to the San Francisco Giants asking them for the recording, unfortunately to no avail. Then there was his mimicking Mel Ott’s leg lift and Hoyt Wilhelm’s grip. Legendary!
Dad would often tell me how the fans had to leave the stadium through the center field gate which meant walking on the field. He told me that he was once spiked by Johnny Beradino near the second base bag. He would also see doubleheaders often going from the Polo Grounds to Yankee Stadium (or the other way around, not sure) via the Macombs Dam Bridge to see both the football and baseball Giants on the same Sunday afternoon.
My dad left me and his family way too early.
When the Giants finally won in 2010, I planted a little World Series Flag by his grave. It still waves proudly there today along with the 2012 flag and the recently added 2014 flag, a trilogy so to speak. I needed him to know his impact on me and how “we” finally did it. I miss the many times, even as an adult when he would say to me after I was forlorn over a loss, “What are you worried about? Do they worry about you?” Although I am now somehow middle-aged, I still hope I can be half the man he was. There were the Giants from the Polo Grounds, the Giants in San Francisco, and all the legendary players who donned the Giants uniform in both places. For my money though, my dad, Louis Mintz, was the greatest Giant of them all!
Happy Father’s Day to you all!
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