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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Jason Fry on 23 April 2015 1:10 am I’ve been thinking of this one game. I was in Connecticut. The Mets were in Atlanta. They were playing the Braves on a Saturday night and Dillon Gee wasn’t very good.
Since that game I’ve driven back to New York, worked my butt off for three days and nights, flown to California where I spent three days at a Star Wars convention, flown back and gotten un-jetlagged. I’ve done a lot of things. You have too. There are Mets fans who’ve come down with really nasty flus, been laid out, started feeling better and declared themselves fit for duty. Somewhere out there babies have been born, watched over in hospitals, sent home and their parents are getting the hang of this wonderful new thing. At least three big movie trailers have set the Internet a-flutter. I haven’t paid attention but I’m sure at least three eye-rolling political kerfuffles have done the same. Another Saturday night’s come and gone and now another one’s in view. The aforementioned Dillon Gee’s rested up, started another game, rested some more, had a heart-to-heart with his manager and started yet again.
You know what hasn’t happened during that time when lots of other stuff has happened?
The Mets haven’t lost.
Not once. Not at all. They’ve won 10 in a row. They’re playing .800 ball on the season. They’re in first place by a but-wait-it’s-April 3 1/2 games.
They’re playing nearly perfect baseball, and they’re doing it despite losing guys like it’s World War I.
These are pinch-me days and nights.
Last night was a perfect example. The Mets seemed flat after a half-hour’s rain delay, falling behind the Braves 1-0 and then 2-1. But they hung in there. And they kept making plays. And things kept happening that made you raise an eyebrow.
Like Ruben Tejada making a leaping catch at second that ended with the ball perched atop a waffle cone of glove. As he returned to Earth, Tejada snapped his mitt and the ball nestled itself obediently into the leather, because that’s what happens when you’re winning 10 in a row.
Or Gee facing trouble in the fourth, springing off the mound to seize a grounder, firing the ball to second base at an awkward angle, not taking off the umpire’s head and pumping his fist at the 1-6-3 double play.
Or Wilmer Flores looking brave afield and stalwart at the plate, rifling a home run into the party deck to draw the Mets even.
Or Juan Lagares making a catch for the ages, somehow looking behind him and tracking a ball cutting to his left and putting his glove in the perfect position to reel it in. “That’s over his head,” I said to Emily with the ball in flight. “The heck it is,” said Juan Lagares.
Or Sean Gilmartin running into trouble retiring lefties, which is the sum total of his job, and exiting to have Buddy Carlyle coolly dispatch Jonny Gomes. Carlyle would be rewarded with a W, and deservedly so.
Or Curtis Granderson getting his Eddie Gaedel on, crouching beneath a 3-2 pitch and completing the journey from 0-2 count to base on balls. (And, along the way, serving as Exhibit A if you need to explain to your kid why batting average is a dumb stat.) Of course Lagares then executed a perfect hit-and-run, with poor Jace Peterson reversing for the ball he could no longer reach, like an extra in a Bugs Bunny cartoon and Lucas Duda smacking the go-ahead single.
Trouble? Nah. Jeurys Familia dispatched the Braves with no drama in the ninth, and the good guys had won, again.
We’ll now to the obligatory cautions. This isn’t to avert the baleful eyes of the baseball gods, but because the only way to survive baseball is to remember it’s an unfair game.
The Mets aren’t going to win five out of six one-run games the rest of the year. They had a 10-game winning streak in 2008, a year that ended about as painfully as one might imagine. The 2010 Mets went 21-7 over one giddy stretch in a thoroughly ungiddy season. The ’72 Mets started out 30-11 and didn’t win a thing. There will be weeks where nothing goes right and you can feel doom tiptoeing closer with every ball booted and batter walked. The manager and the players will talk about grinding it out and being a little flat and we will scoff and mutter and call for heads to roll. When those days arrive — and arrive they will — remembering how we floated through April will be no comfort whatsoever. Keep that in mind now so you’re not so torn up by it later, even though you will be.
But that’s not to say you shouldn’t be enjoying what’s happening now. You should be enjoying it even more. Go outside and laugh into the blue sky. Grin at Yankee fans. Declare to everyone who asks and even those who don’t that you’re a fan of the best team in baseball. (Hey, you could look it up.) Suggest that hey, let’s play two. Take your broom to Citi Field.
Baseball’s an unfair game. Right now it’s being unfair to our opponents. Just enjoy the pinch-me days, however long they last.
by Greg Prince on 22 April 2015 7:47 am If you’re a sports fan, the best Aprils are the most stressful Aprils. In competitive context, such Aprils are the least cruellest of months, but they can play on your nerves.
The two teams I root for in winter, the Nets and the Islanders, have made it to spring’s playoffs. It beats their having to go home with the Philadelphia hoi polloi — which is often on their respective agendas this time of year — but their graduation to postseason doesn’t come without a cost. Every inbounds pass, every puck not cleared, every turn of momentum is a potential killer. One too many wrong moves and their Aprils are suddenly over. For that matter, any given right move is tricky to emotionally handle. When the Islanders grab a one-goal lead or the Nets improbably slice a lead to a single bucket, I just assume everything’s going to be French fries and gravy from here on out. They’ll win this game, they’ll win this series, I wonder how much I should put aside for commemorative t-shirts. I simply can’t envision anything going awry, so when the slightest thing inevitably does go off course, I am practically shattered inside.
And that’s just hockey and basketball, which are mere diversions from my true fan calling.
The Mets on a nine-game winning streak in April is approximately nine kajillion times better than the Mets on a nine-game losing streak in April. That’s probably understating the difference given the time of the season we’re in currently. You get this hot this early then you’re atop the heap from practically the get-go (for proof, please examine this morning’s edition of the 2015 National League East standings). On the other hand, a nine-game winning streak that plops itself down toward the tail end of a campaign that’s already been spayed or neutered serves mostly to stick its tongue out at you. Where, I can remember asking myself as the Mets went on hollow win binges in the latter stages of 1992 and 2002, was this when we needed it?
To approach the kind of finish for which the Nets (unlikely) and the Islanders (who knows?) are angling, you need to have a massive rollout. The proportions of the Met start to date are positively and historically ginormous. Everything’s coming up Howie Roses, you may have noticed.
At Citi Field against the second-place Braves Tuesday night, the night when the first-place Mets won their ninth game in a row, 7-1, and extended their record to a nearly unprecedented 11-3 — a standard happily shared with 1986 — they were their typical unstoppable selves. Jon Niese (6.1 IP, 1 ER) was smooth enough to pass for silk. Curtis Granderson remembered to retrieve his bat from cold storage and drove in four runs, thus increasing his season total to exactly four. Kevin Plawecki…well, what can you say about a major league debut that includes two hits, a bullet of a throw to second and the handling of five pitchers who gave up five hits among them?
We already had a fairly state-of-the-art catcher, yet you know how it is when they release the sleeker, shinier model, especially when the not so old one gets a little dinged around the edges and needs to be reset; it’s just hard to resist such an enticing upgrade. Right now you can’t blame us for being mesmerized by the Plawecki demo. Might we still come across some bugs that will impede its apps? Ah, ring it up and we’ll figure that out once we get it home.
Transfer the rate at which the Mets are going to a participant in the NBA or NHL playoffs and you’d have a team legitimately on the verge of a championship. But April in baseball is only the beginning, and that beginning, no matter how it sizzles, leads to a whole lot of middle that isn’t nearly as neat to forecast. I can’t imagine the Mets will maintain their 9-0 or even their lesser 11-3 pace forever, but the thing is, when they’re going this well, I can’t imagine they won’t.
That’s a scary way to think. Fun, but scary.
by Greg Prince on 20 April 2015 5:20 am This, I thought as I sat in Promenade Box 405 during the sun-soaked bottom of the fourth on Sunday, is where the dream has at last arrived to meet reality. All those computer-generated images of bustling new Mets Ballpark from 2006 tried to capture what the future would look like. It would have people and enthusiasm and, presumably, winning. It was what everything was leading up to.
 There used to be the idea of a ballpark here. At last, it actually exists the way it oughta be. The path, we know, went astray. But now, nine years after we were shown our first glimpse of the concept that would soon be dubbed Citi Field — and six since everything about the team and the facility it inhabits had begun to reliably disappoint us — the course corrected itself.
Met after Met was reaching base.
Run after run was crossing home plate.
Seat after seat was filled.
Cow-Bell Man, modeling the jersey of the day’s starting pitcher, was hustling from section to section and leading whole groups in chants of LET’S GO METS!
Whole groups were responding to his cue.
The Mets, in turn, were responding to them.
To us.
I wanted to freeze the moment. I have, I suppose. I will keep it with me for at least the rest of this season. The fourth inning on April 19 was the instant when either:
a) the Mets once and for all transcended the miasma that had defined them for more than a half-a-decade and elevated themselves onto a whole new level of competence, competitiveness and contention that would stoke our inner fires for the foreseeable future and make us proud for the rest of our days; or
b) the Mets experienced their high point of 2015, because it was all about to go achily downhill from there.
It was a fine half-inning, that bottom of the fourth. The Mets just kept coming against the Marlins until they couldn’t be held back. Singles and walks and singles and walks and a booming three-run double and the starting pitcher lining out and another walk and another single and when the dust cloud that had been hovering over the joint since 2009 evaporated, the Mets were leading the Marlins, 7-1.
They were in first place, they were undefeated at home, they were riding their longest winning streak in five years and they had their ace taking the ball to protect a six-run lead against an surprisingly inept and seemingly demoralized opponent. We, the fans, had found our voice in the preceding week, remembering what it was like to pour ourselves into baseball games again, taking our team seriously and blissfully.
Going to the fifth, how could it get better than that?
It couldn’t. It could only get worse.
The good news, when the afternoon was over, was that the Mets remained winners. They secured (barely) their eighth consecutive victory, matching two such spurts from 2010, a season nobody associates with uninterrupted winning, but it actually happened. It happened in the first half. The Mets went to hell in the second half. We weren’t surprised. Here, in 2015, we’ve seen the calendars and understood it was April, but we’ve proceed in the vein of “if April’s like this, we can’t way for May and June and everything that follows.”
And maybe we still will see it like that when our schedule resumes Tuesday night against second-place Atlanta. If you were in Promenade or anywhere at Citi Field on Sunday as I was, I suspect you maintained that vibe when Jeurys Familia was grounding out the perpetually looming Giancarlo Stanton to seal the four-game sweep and create the eight-game streak. You couldn’t have not been caught up in the momentum that was still in the air from the bottom of the fourth, when those seven runs scored and the ball was returned to Matt Harvey to make the rest of the affair academic.
At the same time, your life as a Mets fan had gone through myriad changes in the innings it took to complete the journey to eight straight.
First, there was the matter of Harvey himself, who it turned out was pitching under the influence of some horrible virus. Mind you, he wasn’t getting lit up by the Marlins the way had had been the last time I sat in Promenade to see him pitch. That was in 2013, against the Tigers, the day he didn’t have it, the day that led to the announcement he wouldn’t be on the mound again for an indeterminate period of eternal waiting. But the Marlins were getting hits, and I couldn’t help but think, “I sure hope the Mets add to this 7-1 lead.”
Second, there was the Mets lineup not adding to that 7-1 lead. Harvey got a hit. Juan Lagares got one later. That was it. The unstoppable Mets from the fourth went into sleep mode from the fifth onward.
Third, the effort to push Harvey through the seventh backfired. We didn’t know he’d been sick that morning. We just figured he ran out of gas. That’s OK. He is still technically coming back from an extended absence; it just seems like he’s been throwing shutouts without pause forever.
Fourth, after Harvey exited with two on, nobody out and his lead down to 7-3, Jerry Blevins entered to settle down our simmering nerves. He retired Ichiro Suzuki on a little line drive to first. He then induced a liner to the mound from Dee Gordon, and it, too, resulted in an out. Well, two outs, sort of. The ball bounced off some element of Blevins’s body and he was able to glove it and toss it to first to get the runner. So Gordon was out.
Fifth, Blevins was out. That liner fractured Jerry’s left forearm, the one he uses for pitching. We didn’t know that yet in Promenade. We just saw him leaving for what we decided were precautionary reasons. It had to be a precaution, right? You can’t be too careful with the newly obtained glue to your bullpen. Besides, it was still a four-run lead, we were still headed toward an eight-game streak and (for some of us) there was the added bonus of learning the Islanders had just defeated the Capitals in overtime. I was in YES YES YES mode. I did not want to insert an OUCH into the middle of my Sunday euphoria.
Sixth, Alex Torres replaced Blevins in one of those “he’ll get all the time he needs to warm up” situations, which never sit well. Sure enough, Torres threw a wild pitch that made it 7-4 before striking out Christian Yelich.
Seventh, why didn’t Lucas Duda blast a three-run homer to cap the bottom of the fourth when he had he chance? Three innings had passed since he had the golden opportunity to put the game away (as if a six-run edge and Matt Harvey weren’t reassurance enough) and I was still desperately mentally seeking tack-on runs.
Eighth, Brad Hand started the bottom of the seventh hitting Travis d’Arnaud’s hand. I would’ve preferred Travis d’Arnaud had hit Brad Hand’s d’Arnaud. It doesn’t work that way. D’Arnaud was instantly removed. This didn’t look like a precaution. This looked like a truckload of trouble.
Ninth, Buddy Carlyle, the bullpen savior from Opening Day and Saturday night, had nothing in the eighth, but where was Terry Collins going to turn? He’d already used his top two lefties, he was saving his closer for an inning later and what happened to our overloaded eight-man bullpen anyway? Even our seven-man bullpen, now that Blevins was being examined somewhere in the stadium bowels, seemed amazingly inadequate to the task of extinguishing the Miami Marlins. Buddy, who’s been persevering in baseball since Dallas Green was making the calls to the Met bullpen, persevered to finish out the inning, which was great. Less great: It was now 7-6.
Tenth, my briefly recharged phone had enough juice left in it to bring me up to speed on the Mets missing in action. Blevins had suffered a fracture. D’Arnaud had suffered a fracture, too. His right hand was broken. Anybody within earshot of me who didn’t know this news knew it soon enough by my repeated use of a particular four-letter word. The Mets were going for eight wins in a row. I may have racked up a dozen consecutive expletives.
Eleventh, the Marlins got the tying run to second off Familia. It all came down to Stanton. It always comes down to Stanton. Fortunately, the final encounter in which he was involved came down on the side of Familia and the Mets. What was once a 7-1 romp ended a 7-6 nailbiter…with casualties.
A win being a win, I was more celebratory than mournful. I willfully ignored what happened to our budding star catcher and our essential lefty reliever. I tried to forget that d’Arnaud and Blevins had joined the unparticipating ranks of Edgin, Wheeler, Black, Mejia and Wright. I temporarily overcame my inevitable tetherance to the past and tamped down my impulse to invoke 1972, the year when a superb Met start (25-7) was obliterated by an outbreak of injuries. I wondered a little about what Kevin Plawecki would show as the new catcher and Hansel Robles would add to the bullpen, but neither of those pending callups would appear at Citi Field until Tuesday, and on Sunday that was a world away.
I wanted to stay in the world we’d been building since last Monday, when the Mets came home and took three of three from the Phillies and four of four from the Marlins while we urged them on with the kind of passion previously thought to have fallen victim to deep-seated cynicism and a diligent demolition crew. I wanted this week to go on forever, or at least into next week. I wanted the fourth inning to stay with me.
It did. It has. It will.
by Greg Prince on 19 April 2015 10:21 am When I fell asleep last night, the first-place Mets had won their seventh in a row and held the best record in the National League. When I woke up this morning, the still first-place Mets had still won their seventh in a row and still held the best record in the National League.
So this isn’t a dream. Good to know.
Inevitably we drift from the territory known as Pinch Me into the harsh light of day where we are spurred by habit and necessity to actually worry about what happens in a given baseball game. All this may feel different, but Saturday night’s ninth inning was a reminder that the eerily familiar lurks around every bullpen corner. Saturday night’s result was a better reminder, though, that better than previously experienced outcomes can become familiar without turning eerie.
Jacob deGrom didn’t have his best command against the Marlins. Jacob deGrom hasn’t had his best command in three starts, actually, yet except for a home run in his very first inning of his season’s work, Jacob deGrom hasn’t been touched in a meaningful way by any opposing hitter. When I think of the term unflappable, I think of a pitcher whose bearing down is etched onto his face as a non-verbal warning of “OK, you’re not gonna get me, ’cause I’m gonna get you.”
I don’t get that when I look at Jacob deGrom. I look at Jacob deGrom and I see one of the guys from down the hall grabbing his Frisbee on the way to the quad. Did he finish that paper? Doesn’t he have studying to do like the rest of us? Isn’t he stressing over his grades?
What stress? Jacob’s just one of those guys who’s got the situation under control. C’mon, he says as he tosses you the Frisbee, we’re gonna mess around for a while and then a bunch of us are going in on a Busch suitcase and after that, I dunno, it’ll be fun. And he’s right. It always is when he’s throwing.
The Marlins had their moments, all of them frustrating. Three replay challenges — one ours, two theirs — went Miami’s way and none of them particularly helped the Fish cause. Giancarlo Stanton, whose continued menacing presence in the middle of the Marlin order is made possible by a grant from the Wilver Stargell Foundation (and viewers like you), tried to fire up his teammates, but for eight innings they seemed as immune to his charms as deGrom and Buddy Carlyle were untouched by his bat. Three strikeouts and a fly ball to right that for a change didn’t fly clear to College Point Blvd. were all Giancarlo could inspire.
The Mets, on the other hand, were led by everybody. While deGrom was being totally cool for seven innings, Travis d’Arnaud and Wilmer Flores were depositing baseballs over the left field fence, Eric Campbell was filling in for David Wright so seamlessly that he could’ve been voted acting captain and Daniel Murphy lunged to cover second at the precise moment a runner on first wasn’t stealing, thus creating a hole to put two on when a double play ball was rolling rolled to where Daniel had just been standing. No, that wasn’t an actual asset, but the point is a Met made a mistake and the rest of the Mets overcame it.
Winning teams do that.
The lone visitor at raucous, sold-out Citi Field to be a real pain in our ascent was Dee Gordon, who fits the profile of irritating Marlin perfectly, in that he wears a Marlin uniform. As if inhabited by the spirit of Juan Pierre, Hanley Ramirez and old Joe Robbie himself, Gordon came up five times and recorded a hit five times. For most of the game, he was no worse than a thorn in our side, the kind of prickly sticker deGrom might notice on his sock while catching the Frisbee and pluck from the fabric with no fuss.
It was Gordon who was in the middle of the Met challenge that failed in the first. Gordon was ruled safe but then thrown out almost immediately at second by d’Arnaud.
It was Gordon who was in the middle of the Marlin challenge that succeeded in the third, but only to a point. Gordon was ruled safe at first but the confusion during the marathon review session constrained Adeiny Hechavarria, who had taken off from second, from scoring although he had crossed home plate during the third out that ultimately wasn’t the third out (and then he was stranded there when deGrom struck out Christian Yelich for the actual third out).
It was Gordon who was the Marlin on first when Murph acted out his phantom stolen base prevention strategy in the sixth, allowing him to take second despite Daniel’s best/worst instincts, yet he was left there as deGrom proceeded to set down his Frisbee, Stanton and Martin Prado in that precise order.
Dee Gordon was Wile E. Coyote for three at-bats, never getting the upper hand he sought or thought. In the eighth, he saw Sean Gilmartin pitching and responded with his fourth hit, a double that drove Jeff Baker home with the first Miami run. It seemed no more than a harmless footnote, given that the Mets had already scored five times and Carlyle came on to extricate New York from the tiniest spot of jam Gilmartin left behind. Even when the Mets had a sixth run disallowed when the third extended replay challenge of the evening tilted toward the Marlins — Campbell not safe at first in the eighth — it was all going the Road Runner’s way. The Mets were safely ahead, Billy Joel had confirmed it was a pretty good crowd for a Saturday, the manager had no reason to not give us a smile…all that remained was for the dynamic duo of Jerry Blevins and Jeurys Familia to nail down the win per usual and for Citi Field’s Bang Cap fireworks squadron to do their faintest imitation of your favorite Grucci Brother.
What’s that? The Mets’ most dependable relievers to date weren’t available? Terry Collins noticed that if you drive an arm into the ground it might not be terribly resilient when you need to dig it up later? Oh.
Well, that’s all right. We have Carlos Torres. Carlos Torres is always available. Carlos Torres almost always comes through for the Mets.
Almost.
Saturday’s ninth was not Carlos’s time. Michael Morse took him out of this park and three others to make it 5-2. Marcel Ozuna singled. Though Ichiro Suzuki struck out (amid the sound of 40,000 diaphragms exhaling), Hechavarria singled, and then there was a wild pitch to put runners on second and third, and why, era of good feelings notwithstanding, is Carlos Torres still pitching? Why was Buddy Carlyle removed when he got two clutch outs in the eighth? How does a frigging Hall of Fame pitcher give up seven runs in the first inning to a bunch of ragtag bottom-feeders with the entire season on the line?
An existential crisis is always getting loose in the on-deck circle when the Marlins come to play the Mets. Yet Torres rallied to strike out J.T. Realmuto, leaving only one Marlin to be reeled in.
That Marlin was Dee Gordon, who was as despicable to the Met cause Saturday night as his namesake G. Gordon Liddy was a couple of generations before to the cause of participatory democracy. G. Gordon was convicted for his role in the Watergate scandal. Dee Gordon was allowed to face Torres with two runners in scoring position after collecting four hits and, tactically, it was a scandal. Carlos predictably gave up Gordon’s fifth hit of the night, a two-run single to cut the Mets lead to 5-4. Yelich, who’s good, was up next. Stanton, who’s Stanton, was up after him.
Good night, Carlos Torres. Good evening, Alex Torres. Wearing a protective cap unlike any other ever worn by a Met pitcher before, this Torres hadn’t been dependable at all, but if Terry was going to avoid overworking Familia and Blevins, then it was going to have to be Alex Torres (or Erik Goeddel, who at the very least should have been fresh, not having pitched at all since the Mets clinched our provisional affections).
You know what happened next. The Marlins weren’t the Marlins. Instead, the Mets were the Mets. Alex Torres, odd hat and all, struck out Yelich. It was like he did so in slow motion. The bat slipped from Christian’s hands on his swinging third strike, leading to an instant where the entirety of Metsopotamia stared in horror before recovering to confirm, “he’s out, though, right?” Yes, he was out. The signal was made; the pyrotechnics, such as they are, could be loaded; and the Mets couldn’t be stopped. It wasn’t as easy as we might have suspected, but Dee Gordon wound up sleeping with the rest of the Fishes.
As bedtime Torres go, Alex gave us a pretty nice one.
by Greg Prince on 18 April 2015 1:53 am Are you supposed to know when you’ve been born again? Because I’m pretty sure I have been, fanwise.
Somewhere between Thursday night, when I expected everything to go wrong but it didn’t, and Friday night, when it never occurred to me anything would go wrong and it didn’t, I underwent some kind of transformation.
Perhaps Bartolo Colon dunked me three times in a vat of Rheingold and performed a baseball baptism on me when I wasn’t paying attention. It’s totally plausible that he did. He does everything else.
Call it a spiritual rebirth, a renewal of faith, a state of enlightenment. Call it 8-3, six in a row, another day dawning with the Mets in first place. I’m calling it different from whatever directly preceded the way I’m feeling now. I’m calling it different from anything I’ve ever felt before in a lifetime’s devotion to the cause of the New York Mets.
Seriously. I’ve experienced better records, longer winning streaks, extended stays at the top of the division. But I’ve never quite experienced this sense of joyous calm about it. I’m excited and enthusiastic, yes, yet I’m not anxious about it. It simply feels right.
The Mets are winning game after game. I love it. I love them. I love us. I feel no ire as I usually do. In recent years I couldn’t even enjoy the intermittent bouts with victory because they felt almost pointless. I knew we’d go back to losing sooner rather than later and that the losing would never truly end.
I know no such thing right now. I don’t know what’s going to happen during the rest of 2015. I’m not worried about it. I do know nothing about the Mets bothers me at this moment.
For example, on Friday afternoon, I learned they assigned Danny Muno No. 16. Most days I believe No. 16 should receive reverential treatment; if they’re not going to retire it for Dwight Gooden, then hold it in reserve for a player of veteran distinction or particular promise. I still believe that. I don’t believe a random rookie utility infielder should be handed Dr. K’s number. But I can’t get riled up about it.
The Mets don’t rile me up in the present. All the peripheral issues that generally gnaw at me are on hiatus. The ballpark? It’s a gem. The manager? He’s a genius. The owners? I forget their names.
The team is good. How good? In the long run, I have no idea. In the near term, they are a pleasure to watch. I see them fall behind in the top of the first when Colon gives up a home run to Giancarlo Stanton and I’m unperturbed. Sure Stanton’s killed us with regularity. Sure he’ll have several more opportunities to continuing killing us tonight.
But so what? I’ve been born again. You’ll have to do better than Giancarlo Stanton and his lethal bat if you want to take me down.
The Mets were being no-hit through four? Also so what? Is David Phelps really going to throw a no-hitter tonight? There were Friday nights when I would have strongly considered the possibility. It never crossed my mind on this one.
Sure enough, the Mets started hitting in the fifth and they tied the score at one. Colon not only hadn’t give up anything else to Stanton or any Marlin, but he drove in that tying run with a well-struck sacrifice fly. I told you he does it all.
He and Gold Glover Juan Lagares, that is. Lagares accepted his 2014 award before the game and earned his 2015 award during the game via three catches that were progressively Juan, Juaner and Juanest. You know the old saying: Two-thirds of the earth is covered by Bartolo Colon — and Juan Lagares is a sensational center fielder.
The fifth was fun. The sixth was more fun. Two more Met runs crossed the plate. Colon pitched seven. Jerry Blevins replaced him and was perfect in the eighth. Then Daniel Murphy, one of the few Mets who hadn’t contributed much to the winning ways of 2015, got on board and drove in a fourth run. Then Jeurys Familia did the rest.
I enjoyed the 4-1 win fully and embraced the result without hesitation. I didn’t worry that it’s no more than a prelude to a regression toward the mean and I didn’t attempt to link it to any obvious April precedent. I couldn’t, because this is like nothing I’ve felt before. Forty-seven seasons into my Mets fandom, I’m learning I can feel them in unprecedented ways.
That, to me, is more amazing than an 8-3 start.
You can draw parallels and comparisons with previous seasons and their encouraging beginnings. You can project out from the best of the past anything you want. Yet I’m not tempted to. I’ve spent most of my existence keeping close tabs on this franchise and I’m telling you: this feels different.
I feel equally untethered to the unrelenting sour times of the recent past and the occasionally glorious times of the distant past, and I don’t mind. I take comfort in knowing it’s all back there and that it all informs what we expect and how we react. Trust me, I know where to find it should I need it. This 2015 journey, though, is its own thing: kinda young, kinda now…kinda free, kinda wow.
That last part is from an old perfume commercial, but this spiritual or emotional or whatever it is rebirth that stems from the Mets winning the way they are is pretty sweet, so what the hell…y’know?
by Greg Prince on 17 April 2015 9:50 am In most parallel universes, the Mets lost Thursday night. They had to.
They were playing the Marlins.
Giancarlo Stanton went traditionally deep.
They were playing the Marlins.
Martin Prado added his own four cents.
They were playing the Marlins.
Dillon Gee pitched gamefully but not quite well enough to fully extricate himself from his last tangle of trouble.
They were playing the Marlins.
Rafael Montero’s control deserted him at a most inopportune juncture.
They were playing the Marlins.
Twice deficits were overcome only to have go-ahead or tying runs registered in immediate response.
They were playing the Marlins.
Ichiro Suzuki was disinterred from the great beyond to a) triple and b) score in time-lapse fashion.
Did I mention they were playing the Marlins?
This was so a Mets game waiting to be lost — and it was.
It was lost by the Marlins — because they were playing the Mets.
Welcome to the only universe that counts, the universe in which it’s 2015 and the Mets win games like Thursday night’s, 7-5, to take sole possession of first place.
You say it’s early? I say the Mets are in first place. I also say we’re both right. I will add that if you take out your pocket schedule and carefully apply an X-Acto knife to each and every box printed, you will wind up with a pile of 162 boxes representing 162 games and they will each weigh the same: the boxes from the first weeks of the season; the boxes from the last weeks of the season; the boxes from everywhere in between.
Now line them up sequentially. Onto the box marked April 16, scrawl a W. It will look perfectly in place alongside the W’s you can also legitimately enter onto the preceding four boxes, just as the Mets look perfectly in place in first, thanks to winning games that are as important to win now as they’ll be important to win later.
Five wins in a row. Seven wins out of ten overall. A half-game lead over idle Atlanta. A three game lead over consensus favorite Washington. One-hundred fifty-two games to go, to anticipate, to wonder what wonders they’ll bring.
Or, y’know, just one game that didn’t get away the way you’ve come to expect games like Thursday’s against the Marlins to get away because Stanton and Prado and Suzuki did the kind of stuff that usually dooms the Mets in these matchups.
What you might not have expected prior to extremely recent developments also happened, though.
You might not have expected Gee to recover from his gopher lapses and strike out seven in five and two-thirds.
You might not have expected Lucas Duda’s emergence (.395/.439/.632) as a five-tool badass.
You might not have expected Wilmer Flores (three-run homer) to have remembered he’s in there for his bat.
You might not have expected Eric Campbell to replace David Wright so seamlessly that the promotions people are calling the printers to find out if they can airbrush him into Sunday’s giveaway posters.
You might not have expected the truncated right field dimensions to hold J.T. Realmuto’s obvious sixth-inning grand slam off Montero or Curtis Granderson to Lagareshly track it down and turn it into a crucial third out.
You might not have expected a sequence of daggers — Ichiro’s matter-of-fact pinch-triple, Daniel Murphy’s amazingly awful throw home on Dee Gordon’s grounder, the agonizingly slow replay review process that reversed the Ancient Mariner’s out at the plate into Miami’s tying tally — to not completely maim the Mets’ momentum.
You might not have expected Jerry Blevins to exemplify grace under pressure, throw a double play ball and decisively stanch Marlin momentum.
You might not have expected John Mayberry to rather routinely steal a crucial base to set up the ultimate go-ahead run.
You might not have expected Michael Cuddyer to be earning his “this guy is totally clutch” bonuses so soon.
You might not have expected Jeurys Familia to take without trauma to the ninth inning, but take it he did. In conjunction with his teammates, Familia took down the Marlins, the Mets took over first and Ace Frehley took care of business in the New York Groove.
The Mets are 7-3 against National League opponents this year and overwhelming against expectations to date.
On a personal level, I was delighted to exceed expectations when I got to meet FAFIF reader and commenter Left Coast Jerry last night. As the name implies, Jerry lives across the continent but happens to be visiting this side of the map this week. He had contacted me with the idea we go to a game while he’s in his own New York groove and that sounded so splendid, we actually did it. I expected it would be a good time. It was that and then some. I thank Jerry for his company, his rental car’s passenger seat, his instructive stories of scholastic umpiring somewhere east of L.A., his fond memories of his very much with us in spirit late brother Louis, his eyewitness account of the unparalleled Met debut of Dick Rusteck and his perfect perspective when an edgy squabble broke out in our section between one of New York’s three Marlins fans and a presumed Mets loyalist who, judging by his LUNDQUIST 30 garb and demeanor, took a wrong turn on his way to ineffectively taunting Sidney Crosby at Madison Square Garden.
The Marlins guy was annoyingly giddy over the tide briefly turning in his team’s favor. The Mets/Lundquist guy tried to bring him down by informing him there were more people at Citi Field this evening than he’d see at Marlins Park all year…and there was basically nobody at Citi Field. The Marlins guy responded with his version of it’s all about the rings (baby), which is pretty sad, considering the Marlins have two and the Mets have two and none of them has been awarded for more than a decade.
I suggested to Jerry that somewhere Cardinals and Giants fans must be laughing their heads off at this exchange. Yes, Jerry said, but fans of the Cubs — a team whose last World Series was won so long ago that rings weren’t yet awarded to champions — would probably be jealous of all of us.
Hostilities simmered down as quickly as they’d been inflamed. Neither of our ammunition-deprived combatants stuck it out to the end. But we did. And the Mets did. And they gave us the idea they might continue to do so.
Better reattach those boxes to those pocket schedules. We might actually need all 162 of them this year.
by Jason Fry on 15 April 2015 10:41 pm The Mets playing a relatively ho-hum game wasn’t the worst thing in the world, after the emotion and intensity and wall-to-wall zaniness of whatever that was last night. Of course, a ho-hum game is a satisfying thing provided you win. Which the Mets did rather handily.
Some quick takes and then we’ll get on to the thing that’s been on my mind since last night:
- The Phillies are not just a tire fire, but a tire fire visible from space. They can’t really do anything well and have years yet to go of elephantine contracts sitting on their collective chest. Chase Utley remains a consummate pro, silly bunt attempt aside, and the same goes for Carlos Ruiz. But the rest of the roster … man oh man. Well, OK, Odubel Herrera looks like a keeper — the guy can hit and has some jump in his step that’s sorely lacking elsewhere in the lineup. He’s a Rule 5 draftee playing center after being a second baseman in the Rangers’ system, which is very Phillies, but it just might work out. Certainly the Phillies have nothing to lose — if there’s a team that afford to carry an out-of-position Rule 5 guy all year, it’s this one.
- Put a big “it’s the Phillies” asterisk on this one, but my favorite Met Jon Niese managed to contain his Nieseness despite various teammates trolling him. The sixth was particularly cruel: Niese gave up a leadoff single but then coaxed a double-play ball from Cameron Rupp … which Ruben Tejada promptly muffed. So Niese got another ground ball from Ben Revere, which Lucas Duda turned into a perfectly acceptable fielder’s choice, leaving runners on the corners. Niese then got a comebacker from Andres Blanco (I don’t know who the hell these guys are either), so he whirled and threw it to … a horrifying Human Centipede made up, somehow, of both middle infielders. Tejada was there and pointed in the right direction, but Daniel Murphy decided to involve himself, snapping the ball practically out of Tejada’s mitt and reorienting himself away from third to complete the double play. Call it your routine 1-
6-4-3 double play, and be kind the next time a Met pitcher seems wary of throwing to second.
- Lucas Duda is going to have a monster year. Duda just looks confident this year in a way he really never has before, whether it’s picking pitches to drive or fielding his position. He was the player I most wanted in my fantasy league this year, but missed out on because I somehow forgot when Draft Day was. (Um.) My loss is someone else’s gain; I don’t know what’s going to happen this year but I’m pretty sure watching Lucas will be fun.
- Poor Rupp. The Phils’ catcher lost a ball in the dirt at home plate, which rolled between the feet of home-plate ump Dan Bellino, who lingered at home and perfectly blocked Rupp’s view while Eric Campbell eventually strolled down to second. I imagine catchers have actual nightmares about this exact scenario — it’s the backstop version of realizing you forgot to drop a class and the final is today, except it actually happened to Rupp. Jeepers.
On to the Met Who Wasn’t There. Call it early-season Pollyannadom, but perhaps we’ll look back on the moment David Wright removed himself from the game as critically important to this season. Wright will always be known as the guy who played forever with a broken back, so you probably had the same reaction I did when he came off the field: Oh God, he must be really hurt. (Followed immediately by Who the hell is gonna play third?) It was odd that Wright then seemed fairly mobile, but that’s the good part. Two years ago Wright treated a pulled hamstring like he generally treats every injury that isn’t a severed limb, which is to say he ignored it. He quickly did more damage and was out seven weeks. An absence stretching that long would almost certainly be a death blow to our fragile hopes, but losing Wright for three weeks seems survivable. Like a lot of guys who aren’t as young as they used to be, David may be realizing that sometimes playing smart is better than playing hard, not just for him but for everybody else too.
Here’s something to think about as we navigate 2015: With the Mets’ Opening Day roster all having entered service, there have now been 989 men to play for the franchise. (Not counting nine ghosts, one inaugural Met draftee sent elsewhere before Opening Day ’62, spring-training flyers, etc.) No. 989 was reliever Sean Gilmartin; who will be No. 1,000?
And will anybody but us notice? Clip-n-save this and play along!
by Greg Prince on 15 April 2015 4:53 am Before the manager had to deliver the news that something “major” had happened to his indispensable player’s hamstring…before a backup catcher presumably said a prayer that nothing be hit to him in his unforeseen debut as a third baseman…before baseballs brushed back batters hither and yon…before replays weren’t reviewed even though it sure as hell seemed like they were…before one piece of lumber in particular wasn’t interfered with even though the one person who mattered sure as hell seemed to think it was…before old nemeses, old friends and new dimensions launched five horsehide spheres bearing the new commissioner’s signature over pulled-in fences…before the man for whom the Night was named and a Dark Knight is namesaked could be alternately heroic, breathtaking and just plain plucky…before the Mets could make certain their six runs would withstand the five compiled by the Phillies…
Before all that, there was the noise. The noise of Citi Field. It’s the ballpark’s newest feature of all.
The Mets win in imperfect fashion. They likely lose David Wright for an undetermined period of time because the Captain slid awkwardly in stealing a base that he probably wishes he had left unpilfered. They find Matt Harvey’s comeback trail from Tommy John surgery might not be an uninterrupted march to Lower Broadway. They discover the Phillies may be dead, but there’s still no known cure for Chase Utley. They make nailbiters out of prospective romps. They burn through a short bench and reveal a startling lack of depth. They get by without their bantam rooster of a fearless leader who is never more popular than when he is being banished into the shadows by a numbskull umpire. They send you to your car or your train or whatever mode of transportation you chose wondering what the hell just happened.
But the uncertainty they tend to bring to bear couldn’t quiet the noise, at least not in my mind.
I want to say I went to Citi Field and Shea Stadium broke out, but that wouldn’t be wholly accurate. I’m not sure I ever heard Shea Stadium so determined to make polite conversation impossible. Oh, it was louder at Shea Stadium when the occasion warranted it. There were lots of occasions that warranted it. At Citi Field, there’s been mostly nothing to rev up the volume over. It’s been too quiet for six seasons.
At the outset of the second game of its seventh season, its inhabitants decided to change that. Why? Ostensibly because Matt Harvey was continuing his cinematic return — he cooperated with the preferred narrative, if not as neatly as he had the week before in Washington — but mostly, I suspect, because they could. Mets fans going to a Mets game decided they’d kept mum for too goddamn long.
So out came the sound that had been missing since Shea. We’re here, we cheer, get used to it.
I was happily perched behind home plate in the first row of Excelsior for my 2015 onsite debut, delighted to join my dear friends in the Spector family, and I heard things I had heard hardly at all through the Citi Field years. I heard “HARVEY! HARVEY!” I heard “LET’S GO HARVEY!” I heard “LET’S GO METS!” with no cue whatsoever from the 62%-larger scoreboard. I heard a general, recurring loudness that urged on nothing more than the idea of loudness for loudness’s potent sake. These were Mets fans — legitimately more than 35,000 of them, if not quite the almost 40,000 listed as the paid attendance — being Mets fans, tired of being something less. These were Mets fans buying into not only Harveysteria’s reboot and their team’s very recent winning ways but buying into themselves. If they’re gonna take back New York, they seemed to have figured out as one that they first need to take back Citi Field.
Not from the Phillies, but from inertia. The joint refused to jump for six years. It barely budged. Compared to its predecessor (and judging by the unsolicited opinion some dude offered me on the inbound 7, the comparisons won’t go away until there’s a September that supercedes the sadly established norm of the first half of the 2010s), Citi Field suffers from rigor mortis.
Or it did until Harvey took the mound and struck out his first, second and fourth hitters and the Mets, on Lucas Duda’s stinging three-run double, eventually took a lead that was continually challenged yet never overcome. The Phillies threw everything they had at Harvey, which is to say Utley and some dim officiating. Harvey lasted six innings. His eight strikeouts and zero walks were the stuff of a second win on the season. His determination to let one slip just enough to let Chase know he wasn’t dealing with a soft touch, though, became his UPS Delivery of the Game (I’m assuming some corporate entity sponsors something like that).
Benches were warned? So was the National League.
Phillies starter David Buchanan, who entered with an ERA as high as Pennsylvania native James Buchanan’s ranking as a president is low, had plunked, accidentally or otherwise, Wilmer Flores and Michael Cuddyer. Cuddyer had to leave the game. Citi Field didn’t care for that. It already didn’t care for Utley, who — besides reminding us he was Adam LaRoche before shuddering at the sight of Adam LaRoche was cool — dared to ruin Harvey’s perfect game with two out in the first.
Yeah, we were getting ahead of ourselves, but what’s the fun of having a Matt Harvey if you’re not convinced that he’s going to retire every Phillie from here to Granny Hamner? And if the Dark Knight is compelled to put an opponent on base, why waste four intentional balls when one pitched purposefully at a certifiable demon can do the trick so much more efficiently?
That’s what Harvey did in the fifth when Buchanan, who had the nerve to double, was on third; there were two out; and Ryan Howard (one of the few troubled American financial institutions the government didn’t bother deeming too big to fail) was on deck. Whoops! Pitch musta got away…just like Buchanan’s did when he’d hit Flores and Cuddyer. Hitting Utley removed the threat of Utley hitting and it told Utley’s pitchers, you hit two of ours, we’ll hit essentially the only one you got.
Citi Field liked that and made plenty of noise.
Citi Field was less appreciative of the BS catcher’s interference call that followed as Howard got in the way of Travis d’Arnaud’s attempt to throw Utley out on a stolen base attempt. Collins came out to argue with Alfonso Marquez, having gained no satisfaction earlier when he requested a replay review after Harvey was ruled to have hit Freddy Galvis despite pretty clearly not hitting Freddy Galvis. It took five minutes for the umpires to review the situation and tell Terry, no, you can’t have a review.
First that, now this. Howard was on first. Collins was ejected and then, as the saying goes, got his money’s worth, which was pretty cool to witness since replay review has kind of killed that tradition. Citi Field was very supportive of the manager and his actions at that moment. I suspect more than half of the 35,000-plus would gladly usher Collins to a waiting cab out of general restlessness, but we do love when our skippers stand up for our interests. Add “TERRY! TERRY!” to the chants of the evening.
Meanwhile, Harvey waited to resume pitching. As he involuntarily cooled his heels, I wondered how many heads off of how many live animals he would’ve bitten off if given the option, but the man has composure along with several out pitches. With the bases now loaded and Bob Geren his temporary manager, Matt popped Carlos Ruiz — the last remaining Phillie position player anybody outside the Delaware Valley could guess is currently a Phillie — to third, where Wright caught it to end the threat.
How comforting to have Wright out there. Little could Citi Field imagine it would see David voluntarily leave the game during a prospective eighth-inning rally because he felt something. As Collins implied later, that’s a guy who only comes out if an appendix bursts…and then the Captain would probably tell Ray Ramirez to spray some Bactine on it. By then, the 4-3 lead he’d helped protect had grown to 5-3 when Duda proved the niftiest of baserunners, sliding home safely on a d’Arnaud single and then lunging to touch the plate a second time when Marquez was initially too busy updating his Facebook status (“At the Mets-Phillies game, y’all! Umpiring is hard! LOL!”) to make a call. It blossomed to 6-3 when Daniel Murphy became the fourth Met to homer in 2015’s first eight games. But then it shrunk to 6-4 as Utley wreaked more of his home run havoc on Sean Gilmartin, a reliever whose performance would have pleased neither Gil Hodges nor Billy Martin.
After David left the game and Recker became his pinch-running and defensive substitute — the Mets’ teeny-tiny four-man bench had plumb run out of players — the extant spirit of weird-ass Met-Phillie games past, Jeff Francoeur, came up and homered to make it 6-5 in the ninth. Frenchy’s a Phillie now if you hadn’t been keeping up on his whereabouts. The fellow who in Citi Field’s first campaign lined into that year’s Mets-in-a-microcosm offensive escapade, Eric Bruntlett’s notorious Unassisted Triple Play. It was to 2009 Met rallies what Luis Castillo’s one hand clapping was to 2009 Met lockdown ninth innings.
Good times.
What was supposed to be Harvey Night and nothing but Harvey Night had subtly shifted to hang on for who knows what’s going to happen next, with Anthony Recker as your third baseman, Chase Utley in the on-deck circle and Jeurys Familia morphing from trusted setup man to Not Another Mets Closer. But then Familia struck out Galvis and the Mets of this year edged the Phillies of some other year but definitely not this one.
At which juncture Citi Field made more beautiful noise. It’s apparently what we do there now.
by Jason Fry on 14 April 2015 2:01 am In the first couple of weeks of April, emotions are subject to the perils of small sample size just like everything else. Win and you feel like your team is a lock to win 125 games, with various newcomers locks to hit .400, slug 50 homers, retire every tough lefty and turn every double play. Lose, and someone needs to call up the surviving ’62 Mets and tell them to start monitoring box scores, because the errors and strikeouts and injuries are going to snowball into an avalanche that wipes out everything in its path.
There’s nothing wrong with this — we’re talking spectator sports and not, say, nuclear negotiations. All that pent-up emotion from a cruelly baseball-less winter has to go somewhere. But we should remember that it’s silly. And for once, this is where we can learn something from baseball’s Proven Veterans™. They know in their bones the cliches we forget every April — that all the games are the same, that it’s a long season, that you gotta take ’em one day at a time.
Someone today asked Michael Cuddyer something along the lines of whether it was time for the bats to get it going, which is one of those daily baseball questions so Platonically inane that it should be counted as heating and redistributing air and not as actual speech. Cuddyer coolly replied that he didn’t think various Mets hitting .150 at the moment would keep doing so, which dispensed not only with the question but also with the foolish franticness behind it. The man’s been playing baseball for a long time, and he knows that a week is no basis to use for assessing anything. We should all keep that in mind, whether it’s April or August. Hot streaks will come and go, luck will ebb and flow, and we’ll make up stories to explain it all that will be triumphant or despairing, while Cuddyer and David Wright and Curtis Granderson and the grizzled vets measure out their marathon pace and remember — another useful cliche inbound — neither to get too high or too low.
But that said, few things are more fun than a home opener. Neither Greg nor I were there, but it was glorious watching the crowd bathed in sunshine, and seeing the happily dopey pomp and circumstance, complete with giant flags and Howie Rose barking out names and Mets waving, tipping their caps or practicing stoicism. (The faithful booed Bill de Blasio, which is what happens to elected officials of any ideological stripe; Ray Ramirez, which was childish but funny; and Ruben Tejada, which was just childish.) Bartolo Colon was cheered like a conquering hero, which was as it should be, while Matt Harvey received what was probably the loudest ovation ever accorded a pitcher with 13 career wins, a point I make in jest but I’m sure some talk-radio troll got half an hour out of. (I wouldn’t know, because the things I have to do with my time that would be better uses of it than listening to WFAN et al include stapling myself in the crotch and gargling with strychnine.)
And then, when all that was done, the Mets played a taut, interesting little game against the Phillies, one they came away from as winners.
It was an interesting game for a lot of reasons.
First of all, the ball wasn’t carrying at all, leaving Gary, Keith and Ron to ponder the mysteries of winds in that part of Flushing, an investigation now entering its sixth decade. If this game had been played in summertime, I suspect it would have been 5-3 early and relievers would have been a-scurry everywhere. Instead, it was one of those days where you got the feeling the game would come down to a compact little rally, a mistake, or both. And, indeed, that’s what happened: The Mets converted their first run when Aaron Harang caught his spikes trying to field a little squibber by Juan Lagares, and their second run after Chase Utley — who was the biggest tire on the Phillies’ fire today — let a double-play ball go right through his legs. Jacob deGrom benefited from not just the good luck but also the conditions — our favorite hirsute sophomore was admittedly not terrific, but hung in there with what he had and walked off with a win and a deceptively sparkling pitching line. Baseball, to quote the noted philosopher R. E. Kanehl, is an unfair game.
Ben Revere‘s fifth-inning snag of Curtis Granderson’s sure double goes in the file labeled Things You Didn’t Enjoy But Should Admire Anyway. Revere played a superb OF all day in tough conditions, though his popgun arm wasn’t enough to prevent Cuddyer — who’d somehow tripled — from coming home on a Travis d’Arnaud sac fly in the eighth. Small sample size alert: Don’t pencil Cuddyer in for 22 triples.
One New York fan added something neither enjoyable nor admirable to Daniel Murphy‘s fourth-inning double, waiting to douse Grady Sizemore with beer through the fencing of the Mo Zone. Here’s hoping he was not only ejected but banned from Citi Field. What’s hard to understand about this? Booing the enemy is your prerogative. Trash-talking (within the bounds of decency) is perfectly acceptable and can even be good sport. Interfering with a player in the field of play? Completely unacceptable. Plus from a replay it looks like he missed. Whoever you are, dude, you even suck at being a dick.
Spare a good word for Jerry Blevins, who has an unenviable assignment: For each series, he can identify the fearsome lefty hitter or two that he’ll be called upon to confront with the game on the line. Today Blevins was perfect, erasing Odubel Herrera (who’s awfully young but looks pretty good), Utley and the still-animate corpse of Ryan Howard in a flawless eighth. Blevins has retired all eight batters he’s faced so far this year, which we’ll forget when he hits a week in which bearding lions in their dens proves more difficult.
Oh, and how about the ninth inning? If your recipe for escaping a no-out, tying-run-at-the-plate jam was for a double play put together by Lucas Duda, Wilmer Flores and Jeurys Familia, you’re a braver fan than I am. It’s nice when things work out, isn’t it?
by Greg Prince on 12 April 2015 9:50 pm In case you don’t remember, baseball is back. A week ago at this time, you could barely sit still in anticipation of its annual arrival. Now it’s part of the woodwork.
I like the woodwork this way. I like baseball this way. I like when it keeps us company this way, embedded so smoothly into the everyday life. Opening Day and its Home Opener cousin are dandy, but anything that MLB Inc. crafts a logo for and hits you over the head with loses its innocence after a few decades.
This first road trip, the inherent ebbs and flows of 3-3 notwithstanding, made for an enormously satisfying week. I didn’t hang on every pitch. I couldn’t. Nobody can. But the pitches were there to return to and take as seriously as I wanted. Miss an inning?
Don’t worry. They’ll make more.
This is baseball in April, hold the pomp, circumstances to be determined. When the Mets win as they did Sunday afternoon in Atlanta, all is right with the world again, no explanations necessary. When the Mets lose in April, as they had Friday and Saturday nights, all could be better, but a Mets loss in April beats a Mets nothing in winter.
Before Michael Cuddyer introduced himself to the ranks of Met power hitters (he and John Mayberry are currently tied for last on the list of most home runs hit for the franchise alongside 72 one-dinger wonders who span Gus Bell, Hobie Landrith and John DeMerit from 1962 to Bobby Abreu and Taylor Teagarden in 2014); before the Mets made the most they could possibly make from a walk, a steal, a walk, a sacrifice bunt, an intentional walk and a sacrifice fly (Terryball in action!); and before two-tool player Bartolo Colon (three-tool, counting the vault of savvy he no doubt stores upstairs) put his bat in the way of a ball and accidentally authored his first RBI in ten years, the Mets were having a below-average weekend.
Niese Night was a comedown from Harvey Day and the Gee interregnum guaranteed the first losing streak of 2015. The closer had tested positive for some banned substance that had somehow infiltrated his system (he “honestly” has no idea how it got there). The captain felt compelled to tongue-lash his teammate in the third-person to the media. The shortstop was inspiring several nicknames, none of them flattering.
• Wilmer Porous
• Non-drelton Simmons
• Wilmer T. Flores (as in “WTF — he’s at short?”)
Yeah, bad Met times in a bad news ballpark. And it was still better than blank Met times in winter. I’ve realized this week, during the three Met losses I’ve seen most if not all of, that I rather don’t mind being annoyed by the Mets losing when I haven’t been annoyed by them for real for six months. I’d prefer being spiritually enriched by their endless excellence and their six straight wins to start the season, but deprived of that option…WTF, y’know?
It’s not about “panicking”. The silliest thing that can be said to a fan who is unhappy with an early-season slump is “it’s too early to panic” unless you’re talking NFL. Personally, I wasn’t panicking when the Mets were 2-3, and not because the 1986 Mets started 2-3 and rallied to win 106 of their next 157. I was simply fleetingly miffed — and damn glad to be so. Guy on third doesn’t get driven in? That doesn’t call for a state of Zen. It calls for geez, get the runner home, OK? Likewise the flat fastball that’s spanked into center when the other team has the bases loaded or whatever else doesn’t constitute the teamwork to make the dream work.
It isn’t fatal, it’s just not ideal. And it’s perfectly within the bounds of civil behavior to point it out, if just to oneself. Give yourself and your fellow fan credit for perspective. The next day, it can be all good. The next day after the two-game losing streak, Sunday, it all was. More good days than bad days will keep the annoyance in check. But when the bad days come around again, as they inevitably will, there’s no sense denying how much you don’t care for them.
If I have to be dealt a loss, allow me to enjoy despising it. It helps remind me how much I enjoy the wins.
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