Faith and Fear in Flushing

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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It Happens Every Spring

by Jason Fry on 11 April 2015 10:45 pm

For the first few games of the season happiness at having baseball back outweighs what actually happens on a given night. But then there’s a game that leaves you disgusted and sputtering profanities. Baseball, you think, is being very, very bad to you.

For me, tonight was that night. It was Dillon Gee handing out doubles like party favors in a fifth inning that blew up on him, and the Mets’ rally getting short-circuited by balls that were hit hard but right at people, and the offensive output consisting of two Lucas Duda hits and a Baltimore chop. Enough went right against Washington to put a certain spring in our collective step, but plenty’s gone wrong against Atlanta, the reports of whose demise seem to have been somewhat exaggerated. (And whose stadium can’t be knocked down soon enough, even if it means being party to another shameful bilking of taxpayers.)

So yeah, tonight’s game was no fun and — unlike last night’s — had nothing particularly admirable about it.

Speaking of neither fun nor admirable, say a half-season’s farewell to Jenrry Mejia, who will get 75 more games to rest his balky elbow now that he’s been suspended for stanozolol, which you may know better as Winstrol. It’s an old-school steroid — the stuff Brian McNamee said he injected in Roger Clemens‘s booty, to quote a famous line that I fear will be the last thing rattling around in my brain as I’m expiring in a nursing home one day.

Mejia, oddly, is the fourth pitcher in two weeks to test positive for this retro-steroid, which makes you wonder if someone changed the formula in some dubiously legal supplement or if people have come down with a case of the stupids.

I ran out of things to say about performance-enhancing drugs a long time ago — I’ll just let the last thing I remember writing stand. Well, all right, here’s a bit more: I’m disappointed and irked that Mejia did something dumb, but except for practical reasons I’m not more disappointed and irked about it because he’s a Met. I wish we could stop talking and worrying about this stuff, but at least the penalties have become pretty steep: Mejia’s out half a season and $1.1 million, which has got to hurt even if you’re a young millionaire, and is the kind of thing that you’d assume would make you think twice.

Well, until four players disappear from rosters in two weeks.

A suggestion for the Mets, besides volunteering to take sledgehammers to Turner Field to make it disappear even sooner: Next year, don’t name a closer for Opening Day. Just shrug and make vague harrumphing noises and tell people to come to the ballpark. Bad things happen to Met closers, and those bad things happen quickly.

Oh, and here’s a weird way to assess whether you’re optimist or a pessimist: Mejia’s mistake means he’s ineligible for the postseason.

A Mental Game

by Jason Fry on 11 April 2015 12:52 am

Baseball’s a mental game. Perhaps you’ve heard.

For a maddening, frustrating game this one was actually kind of fun. Wait, hear me out on that.

The Mets lost because multiple members of the team made physical errors, followed by multiple members of the team making mental errors. Those weren’t the fun parts.

But these parts were pretty neat:

back-to-back home runs from David Wright and John Mayberry Jr.;
an collision at home between Andrelton Simmons and Travis d’Arnaud that was adjudicated by pre-Sabean norms, with both players admiring each other’s effort instead of sniping about unwritten rules;
Simmons adding to his very long career highlight reel with a jaw-dropping robbery of d’Arnaud from the outfield grass on the wrong side of his third baseman;
great confrontations between Rafael Montero and Cameron Maybin and Phil Gosselin; and
a duel between Jason Grilli and Lucas Duda that ended with one of the more evil sliders you’ll see.

Not all of those moments went the way we wished. But if you need a steady diet of MINE MINE MINE, baseball’s not for you. The season you’ll cherish your entire life is still going to have 50-odd nights that end with you grumbling about a loss. That’s a lot of futility to sign up for, so you learn to appreciate the game even when it doesn’t go your way.

But let’s get back to those physical and mental errors. Jon Niese‘s performance did nothing to dislodge him from his hard-won status as my least favorite Met since Michael Tucker, but consistently throwing a ball to the corner of home plate is a lot harder than it looks from the couch, so I’ll give him a pass for one night.

Are Wilmer Flores‘s errors physical or mental? The responsible answer would be How the Hell Do I Know?, but I can’t be the only armchair psychiatrist who noticed that Wilmer looked wide-eyed and dry-mouthed and uncertain of hand whenever the ball arrived for a visit, like it had just transformed into a shot put that he somehow had to transport to first base. We’re still in that part of the season where you can remember every important moment of every game, which means we’re trying to make patterns from what might just be blips. But early blips can turn into yips, self-fulfilling prophecies that can wreck a player’s confidence.

The game crumbled, though, because of mental errors committed by guys you’d expect would know better. First was Juan Lagares, who dove for a leadoff 8th-inning single by Chris Johnson that not even he could catch, turning it into a double. Lagares is a wonderful center fielder but not actually capable of flight.

Jace Peterson ran for Johnson, and Montero rebounded nicely, fanning Christian Bethancourt and getting a ground ball to third from Simmons. Except Wright — inexplicably and shockingly — tried to reverse field and tag Peterson instead of throwing to first for the second out. Insult to injury: With the other Mets arrayed to back up the expected play, everyone was left staring in horror at the unguarded second base, which Simmons promptly took possession of.

Montero intentionally walked Alberto Callaspo and prevailed in a nifty duel with Cameron Maybin, fanning him for what should have been the third out. Instead, he had to face Phil Gosselin. The seventh pitch was a fastball, low but with too much of the plate, and Gosselin rifled it into center. Too many fastballs with not enough wrinkle on them? Perhaps, but I thought Montero showed poise when he could have indulged in Niesean sulking and unraveling, and I’m not going to kill him for a pitch he never should have had to make. Hand a team an extra out and two free bases in an inning and bad things will generally follow.

There were some more moments to be admired before all was said and done, but that gory eighth inning was the ballgame. And it was no fun at all.

Our Team. Our Time.

by Greg Prince on 10 April 2015 3:31 pm

Welcome to FAFIF Turns Ten, a milestone-anniversary series in which we consider anew some of the topics that defined Mets baseball during our first decade of blogging. In this eighth of ten installments, we swing by a year that we hope the current season evokes comparisons to real soon.

They edged Washington to start their season. They lost in irritating fashion the next night. They finished off their opening series by sticking it but good to those pesky Nats.

Welcome to 2015, which has kicked off exactly as 2006 did, if you take your parameters narrow (and if it helps, know that the Mets finish this year against the Nationals, which they also did in 2006). More to the point of this particular stroll down Has It Really Been Ten Years? Avenue, though, is that the above paragraph also describes the first three games of 2006, the best season to date of the Faith and Fear Era.

I polled 30 Mets fans and bloggers — all of them me — and asked them to vote on which season was the most fun to root during and the most fun to write during. It was almost unanimous. 2006 received 29 of 30 first-place votes. The only dissenting ballot listed 2005 on top.

As you can imagine, a talk radio and social media uproar ensued that there was even a single outlier. “He should have his vote taken away!” “What kind of joke is that?” “Doesn’t he know how to count?” “He probably thinks RBIs are important, too!” I contacted the me who voted for 2005 and he explained his reasoning:

“I understand and appreciate that 2006 was a more successful Mets season, but taking into account the sense of discovery inherent in diving into near-daily blogging as well as the emergence of certain personalities and storylines that fueled the Mets’ rise into the ranks of Wild Card contenders…well, there’s something about 2005 that will always be near and dear to me. Plus I knew 2006 would win in a walkover, so I didn’t mind throwing a little sentimental support to a year that gets overlooked as a matter of course.”

The GPWAA has been asked to begin proceedings that would strip that version of me of my vote. But I wouldn’t expect any punitive action. We’re all entitled to our opinions — even 1/30th of me.

What shouldn’t be obscured by all the noise of that manufactured controversy is how far 2006 stands above all other seasons in the FAFIF Era and how it is the only season we covered in our first decade that comes up in conversations that center on the best Met seasons ever.

That’s because it was among the best Mets seasons ever. The 97-65 record of 2006 is the fifth-strongest in team history, topped only by 1986, 1969, 1988 and 1985. Given that 1985 brought no playoffs (despite much joy) to Flushing and 1988 didn’t contain a playoff series victory, you can argue that of all Mets teams that didn’t win a pennant, 2006’s was the best. Emotionally a majority of me would be inclined to vote for 1999, but 1999 — one-half game behind 2006 in the regular season — didn’t include a division title and it didn’t get quite as close to the World Series.

If one were to vet between the lines, one would detect a tap dance around the elephant in the room…the elephant that was last seen standing very still as an 0-2 curveball broke across home plate. For the purposes of this exercise, we’re going to treat the elephant as something of an illusion, like it’s pink and we had one too many, even if the Mets won one too few. Much of the foundation of my post-October 19, 2006 blogging has been built on revisiting how that night ended. I’ve grappled with it and I’ve analyzed it and I’ve surely bemoaned it.

Not today. I prefer to celebrate what preceded it.

There’s a reason 2006 was voted No. 1 by 29 of 30 of me. There are lots of reasons. The record and the division title and the League Division Series make most of the case, but unlike the cases presented by most of our seasons, there is serious delight to be mined from the details of this one.

So let’s mine away…

• The Mets blazed to their best 12-game start ever, going 10-2 and creating a ball of dust behind them. Left in it were the eternally defending National League East champion Atlanta Braves, five games back in second place with 150 to play. No team in the divisional era had buried its division so thoroughly so soon, not even the ’86 Mets.

• The Mets won April series in San Francisco, where they were rarely successful, and Atlanta, where they were legendarily cursed. They set a tone and they kept it in tune.

• The Mets kept coming up with contributors nobody had much considered before the year began, some more transient than others, but all of them part of what forges a formidable team. Anderson Hernandez’s brief reign at second yielded a web gem for the ages. Brian Bannister rose to the rotation and the occasion until (like Hernandez) an injury got the best of him. Jose Valentin evolved from failed pinch-hitter to power-packing infielder. Xavier Nady was one of those professional hitters you hear so much about. Julio Franco wasn’t just old, he was hot. Endy Chavez proved the world’s greatest fourth outfielder across seven breathtaking months. Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez parachuted in from Arizona to stabilize the starting pitching. Dave Williams threw a few good games. Alay Soler threw a shutout.

• The Mets made winning exciting. They established themselves as walkoff specialists in May. They demonstrated a knack for scoring early and often in June. They won behind players who were already stars and players who were becoming stars.

• The Mets essentially wrapped up the East in June on a road trip that remains quite possibly the best any Mets team ever played: two of three in Los Angeles, four of four in Arizona, three of three in Philadelphia. That last set, at Citizens Bank Park when it was still reliably Shea Stadium South, was the divisional dagger. With the Brave mini-empire was already in rubble, the Phillies’ aspirations were snuffed out accordingly. On June 15, following the Mets’ sweep, 9½ games separated the Jersey Turnpike neighbors. We were to the north and we were going to stay there.

• The Mets were laden with All-Stars: six, more than any Mets team before or since. David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran and Paul Lo Duca were voted in as starters. They shared the cover of Sports Illustrated with Carlos Delgado who could have easily made the midsummer trip to Pittsburgh, too. Pedro Martinez and T#m Gl@v!ne got ASG nods as well. No team in the big leagues was a bigger deal.

• The Mets scored eleven runs in one inning. It was the Sunday after the All-Star break, an early-evening start at Wrigley Field for the benefit of ESPN. The Cubs led, 5-2, through five. Then the Mets decided to tear their playhouse down. With one out, second baseman Todd Walker erred on Beltran’s ground ball. He shouldn’t have done that. Delgado and Wright singled and Cliff Floyd homered them all in. The Mets pulled ahead, 6-5. After a walk to Nady, a pitching change and an error that placed Ramon Castro on first and Nady on third, Chavez pinch-singled in the fifth run of the inning, with the not particularly speedy Castro taking third. Endy stole second. Valentin beat out an infield hit. The bases were reloaded. Chris Woodward — playing for a precautionarily sitting Reyes — accounted for his second out of the inning (he’d flied out to start the sixth) by grounding to third and allowing Castro to be cut down at home. The bases were then unloaded when Beltran hit one out. That made it two grand slams in the inning and nine runs overall, one short of the Met record that had been notched in 1979 and renotched dramatically in 2000. A Delgado double and a Wright homer broke the record. Eleven runs, for goodness sake. It was our scoringest inning ever, certainly my personal favorite offensive inning of the last ten years. Because it didn’t air on SNY, it doesn’t get any Mets Classic play, but nothing could have been more quintessentially 2006 than the Mets pounding an opponent into the gloaming.

• The Mets were usually on a network to call their own. The SNY announcers became rock stars. A weekly program profiled the players and the fans. A monthly program was designed especially to indoctrinate the kids. Mr. Met got tons of play. Games were reaired. Never enough of them and never often enough (except for some old ones that would soon be run into the ground), but this was, at least in theory, Mets TV. It was a good year to launch that sort of programming.

• The Mets had two songs produced in their honor before the season was two months old. Each of them could be termed charitably as energetic. First came “Our Team. Our Time.” Sample lyric: “Billy Wagner comin’ through/he’s throwin’ heat, no doubt.” It had the blessing of higher-ups in the marketing department who hoped “that fans catch on to ‘Our Team. Our Time’ as a rallying cry for the start of a thrilling season at Shea.” It wasn’t very good and they didn’t. Shortly thereafter, Lucas Prata retrofitted his dance hit, “And She Said…” into “And We Say…(Let’s Go Mets!)”. Sample lyric: “Billy Wagner closes/throwing heat at you.” It wasn’t much more inspiring than the other song, but the Mets took their cue and indeed kept going atop the N.L. East. Most encouraging about the existence of each of these recordings? Only clubs on a roll get serenaded energetically let alone in multiplicity.

• The Mets pitched well in relief. They pitched very well. While injuries forced them patch their rotation over and over, the later innings were held down by long man Darren Oliver, submariner Chad Bradford, lefty deluxe Pedro Feliciano, seventh-inning stud Aaron Heilman, eighth-inning rock Duaner Sanchez and aforementioned heat-throwing closer Wagner. Ultimately there’d be some shaking up of this classic corps when somebody ill-advisedly got into a cab in Miami, but we’re casting a warm glow on 2006 here, not a harsh glare. The Mets wouldn’t have such stellar relief pitching again until the final months of 2014 (and most of those guys are injured as we speak).

• The Mets had intriguing up-and-comers. Lastings Milledge, Phil Humber and Mike Pelfrey, the club’s three previous first-round draft picks, all made their debuts. The most delectable impression was made by Milledge, who demonstrated a lightning bolt for a throwing arm and a bat intermittently inhabited by thunder. Lastings also high-fived the fans in right field right after he homered for the first time, drawing the ire of Floyd and skipper Willie Randolph — plus he didn’t meet the veteran “know your place, rook” standards of Wagner — but he sure was fun to project dreams onto. Also making their first Met appearances were two talented righties, John Maine and Oliver Perez, soon to be bulwarks of the Met postseason.

• The Mets were in the postseason. They timed one of their rare losing streaks perfectly so they could clinch their first division title in eighteen years at Shea, and clinch they did, on September 18, against the overmatched Marlins. Cigars were lit, champagne flowed, fans embraced fans. Thirteen games remained, to be followed by playoffs during which the Mets — owners of the best record in the National League — would hold home-field advantage.

• The Mets began the playoffs with a flourish, taking both of their home games from the Dodgers, the first on an all-time defensive play (two runners tagged out literally one after the other when Shawn Green relayed to Valentin who relayed to Lo Duca), the second on sound veteran pitching from Gl@v!ne. The Mets went west and swept the LDS in L.A., with Steve Trachsel holding up under duress and Greg Maddux beaten down by Met bats.

• The Mets yielded some spectacular numbers. Beltran tied Todd Hundley’s single-season home run mark of 41 and knocked in 116 ribbies. Delgado drove in 114 runs and blasted 38 homers. Wright was a 25-116 man himself. Reyes owned the leadoff slot, with 17 homers, 19 triples and 64 steals. Lo Duca, asked to succeed the legend of Mike Piazza, hit .318. Sports Illustrated chose its cover boys well.

• The Mets hosted Piazza as a Padre, and Mike got hits and homers and standing ovations and the Mets won, so it was all good. That wasn’t long before the 1986 team came home and was lavished in love and provided a backdrop for the Mets to take three straight from the Rockies. That was just before Delgado hit the 400th homer of his career as part of a hopeless come-from-behind effort against the Cardinals, except it wasn’t hopeless because Beltran hit one off Jason Isringhausen and the two Carloses trumped everything Albert Pujols had been doing to us and the Mets won, 8-7, after trailing, 7-1. Not too many weeks later, Jose went around the bases for an inside-the-park job that he could file alongside his cycle and his three-homer night. And how about that time…

Yes, how about that time? It was the best of our times. Until we have better times.

Harvey Days and Thursdays

by Greg Prince on 9 April 2015 5:28 pm

I like the part where perhaps the best righty in the league comes back and pitches like he never paused for an elbow operation and subsequent rehabilitation.

Matt Harvey is ComebacKKKKKKKKK Player of the WeeKKKKKKKKK. With nine strikeouts after a twenty-month layoff, can month, year, decade and century be far behind?

“Just one start” is one of those things you say because a) it’s accurate and b) it’s sensible, yet never has “just one start” felt like a whole lot more. Our ace returned to resume His Aceness. He threw hard. He changed speeds. He baffled batters. He won.

As did the Mets. There’s likely a connection there.

The Mets played a wonderful game in support of/alongside Harvey. David Wright went the other way at bat and implicitly declared through his defensive actions his intention to compete for a Gold Glove. Travis d’Arnaud continued to hit like Johnny Bench and began to throw like Jerry Grote. Michael Cuddyer made with an RBI. Curtis Granderson reached base like Rickey Henderson in his prime. Daniel Murphy made a nice play. Wilmer Flores slid in expert fashion. Ian Desmond played for the other team.

The whole lot of Mets played supremely while Matt Harvey pitched. Matt Harvey pitched six innings, struck out nine and allowed no runs. It was 6-0 when his 88 pitches were completed. It was 6-3 when the game was over, partly because the bullpen doesn’t include Harvey, partly because you can only keep a good team scoreless for so long. But it was a Mets win over the Nationals, something that occurred only four times in all of 2014 and now has happened half as many times in extremely early 2015.

Harvey Days and Thursdays never get you down when they go like this.

Not nearly pitching at Matt Harvey’s level was Stephen Strasburg, which would be considered a shame by impartial observers, but given our partiality, that’s fine. On the same day the Masters began in Augusta, it was reasonable to expect two guys at the top of their games teeing off at 1:05 in Washington. But only one pitcher turned out to be a master of the mound this Thursday afternoon. Strasburg was…well, two years ago this month I was part of a crowd that delighted in chanting that HARVEY’S BETTER.

Today it would seem unseemly to point that out. Really, it’s kind of implied.

But amid the cool and the clouds (and the unwanted Tim Leary flashbacks I was experiencing) Harvey was definitely better. I had anticipated a little something along the lines of Pedro-Smoltz from the first week of 2005 or Santana-Josh Johnson from around the same juncture in 2009. Instead, it was Harvey versus whoever. We can’t complain when a dissolved duel tilts in our favor, though it’s a little disconcerting to realize it wasn’t five years ago that arbiter of Western Civilization Bob Costas was informing the rest of us that Walter Johnson should prepare to move over, there was a new monument in Washington. The hype for Strasmas in D.C. used to be comparable to anything we gin up for our Harvey Day folkways. Now, from the looks and sounds of things, it’s primarily Mets fans who make sure to be at Nationals Park when Strasburg pitches — and not because Strasburg is pitching.

Then again, Strasburg’s been a highly effective person on the mound since returning from his own interaction with Tommy John. Maybe you can apply the “just one game” qualifier to him for this outing. Still, when you consider our nation’s capital is about 150 miles north of Appomattox, where 150 years ago today Lee surrendered to Grant and ensured our nation’s capital would remain our nation’s capital (and our nation would resume being our nation in full), it’s instructive to remember that Lee at least showed up.

Strasburg was barely a factor on a Thursday that was all Harvey Day all the time. The hope here is that the calendar continues to register one Harvey Day after another, every fifth human day on the fifth human day, even if it’s just six innings and 90 pitches per appearance until Matt is deemed totally physically indestructible again.

On this Harvey Day, hope gloats. Hope is entitled to gloat today. Hope was on the disabled list for the final month of 2013 and the entirety of 2014. Hope has returned to defeat the prohibitive divisional favorite Nationals on their home field the first chance hope got.

Hope is a good thing, according to Andy Dufresne, maybe the best of things. And Harvey is an outstanding pitcher — with maybe the most marvelously rehabilitated of arms.

The Hits Just Stop Coming

by Greg Prince on 9 April 2015 1:01 am

“Bobby Knight told me this, ‘There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.’ In other words, a good offense wins.”
—Dan Quayle, Vice President of these United States for four years

Pitching and defense are splendid, except when they’re deployed against you. Jordan Zimmermann and three National relievers outpitched Jacob deGrom and Rafael Montero Wednesday night. Washington’s fielders, when called upon, thwarted Met hitters. They weren’t called upon all that often. Nobody scored very much, but the Nationals scored just a little more than the Mets.

That’ll sully an undefeated season right there.

The Mets, despite the too many cooks who are or aren’t preparing their lineups, didn’t hit. When they did hit, it was right at somebody. No doubt there’s an advanced metric that suggests they did what they were supposed to do but dumb luck got in their way. As did the occasional well-placed Washington glove.

DeGrom could have been sharper yet was still plenty effective: six innings, six strikeouts, a two-run homer to Ryan Zimmerman and nothing else of substance. Perhaps he was taken out of his groove by the rained-back starting time, but that would assume Zimmermann didn’t have to deal with the same meteorological issue. He dealt just fine.

There was one promising inning-top at Nationals Park. It was potentially beautiful before it became incredibly frustrating. Down two-zip with one out in the second, Murphy singled. Then Lagares singled. Then d’Arnaud singled. Bingle, bingle, bingle, here comes a run. Then here comes the eight-hitter, who looked a lot like the pitcher.

Why, it was the pitcher. Or maybe that should be phrased as “why was it the pitcher?” I’m still not sure how this gimmicky little LaRussian wrinkle is supposed to yield wonders, but the Mets — at the behest of Collins or Alderson or mystery guest Bob Geren — continue to pull that adorable rabbit out of their hat now and then. Here and now, with runners on first and second and still only one out, was the time for Jacob deGrom to make the supposedly clever bunny appear brilliant.

What was up, Doc? Nothin’ good.

Jacob the decent-hitting pitcher was ordered to bunt and he bunted badly and Zimmerman (the first baseman with one ‘n’) dove and caught it before it could at least bounce foul, meaning there were two out and two runners unable to advance. Nine-hitter Wilmer Flores, who’s apparently the starting shortstop for his range, next cued an infield single to load the bases.

Curtis Granderson then came up and, with a full count, took strike three from Zimmermann (the pitcher with two ‘n’s). Strike three bore a striking resemblance to ball four; it was probably separated at birth from a pitch that was correctly called high for a bases-loaded walk in another stadium somewhere. Didn’t matter down by the ol’ Navy Yard, though. The Mets slapped the side of this ketchup bottle of a half-inning with four base hits, yet could get no more than a lone run to trickle out.

They proceeded to collect two hits over the next seven innings. Neither was proximate to the other and neither of them was a home run. The manager had referred to the lineup card as his “hammer” during the pregame. He neglected to use the adjective “Nerf”. DeGrom persevered and Montero took to his new role, but those performances served as consolation prizes amid the cold and the damp and the offensive futility of a 2-1 defeat. The sizzling bats of Port St. Lucie never seemed so far away.

Three observations to leave behind alongside the first loss of 2015 (besides the cloying Terms of Service reminders you’ve probably already clicked on yourself, including but not limited to it’s just one game; you can’t expect to win them all; Zimmermann’s an extraordinarily tough customer; sometimes you just gotta tip your cap; lineups don’t really matter; managers have practically no impact on outcomes; yada; yada; and yada):

1) There doesn’t seem to be a National of tenure who isn’t automatically described as “a real Met-killer”;

2) Sean Gilmartin has three first names, not even counting his middle name Patrick;

3) Matt Harvey is about to have himself a Day. Haven’t been able to say that in a while. Win, lose or no-decision, TGIHD.

The New Old Normal

by Jason Fry on 7 April 2015 1:42 pm

I’m getting old. It happens to everybody, to their astonishment. I’ll be 46 in a month — which isn’t ancient if you’re 56 or 66 or north of there but unfathomable at 16 or 26.

A funny thing about age, as I lean into it: Your frame of reference for time changes so thoroughly that you can barely believe it. I can recall being the same person I am now except that I thought a month was a long time and a year was unfathomable. Now a month is a blink, and when I think of some milestone a couple of years off I know it’ll be here very soon. It’s simultaneously comforting and scary, if such a thing is possible. The good part is you don’t get too worked up. The bad part is you don’t get too worked up.

Last year I went to Opening Day at Citi Field. You may remember it — Bobby Parnell blew a save and a ligament, the Mets lost, and we got our first of 15 unwelcome looks at the big bad Nats.

It was a bummer, but Opening Day’s the one day your team can lose a game and you’re still reasonably happy. (Not true if you get waxed 10-0, as the Brewers did yesterday.) There were 161 to play, and I’d be back soon enough.

And so I went back … well, I didn’t.

That was it — Opening Day was the entirety of my Citi Field season.

This had never happened since I moved to New York 20 years ago. Heck, it had never happened in the years I lived in D.C., hours farther off.

I don’t know what happened exactly. I didn’t give up on the team and I wasn’t boycotting the Wilpons. But I think it has to do with the passage of time. I was busy, traveling a lot. April became June and I hadn’t been back for one reason or another, and then June became August and I hadn’t been back for one reason or another, and then it was mid-September and I realized I wasn’t going back, not in 2014.

It wasn’t like I was ignoring baseball. If the Mets were on TV I was watching, or at least keeping an eye on them, enjoying the ballgame like a loyal dog asleep at your feet while the night or afternoon winds along. I went to games elsewhere, adding Chicago and Oakland and Phoenix and Houston to my visited stadiums and checking in with the Cyclones and the Staten Island Yankees. (Here’s an oddity: I saw the Nationals three times live in ’14, compared with once for the Mets.)

I was busy over the winter too — I seem to be permanently busy these days, with one book deadline replacing another. And over the winter I didn’t think much about the current Mets, truth be told — largely because the current Mets didn’t give us much to chew on. (Even in these precincts, there’s only so much one can say about Michael Cuddyer and John Mayberry, Jr.) And I have no use for the loud pointlessness of spring training any more — I noted Zack Wheeler‘s busted elbow and Daniel Murphy‘s musings on lifestyles and other than that I waited for April.

But the Mets of bygone days were on my mind whether it was December or February. I spent the gaps in my winter schedule finding photos of obscure Mets who never got baseball cards and correcting those injustices. I’ve got tales that I’ll share one of these rainy days — cup-of-coffee guys like Bill Graham and Shaun Fitzmaurice and Joe Grzenda turn out to be a lot more interesting than you might have thought. I made a card for interim manager Salty Parker and another for tragic Met ghost Billy Cotton. It’s impossible to say the Mets aren’t on your mind when you’re proofreading how many doubles somebody collected at Pompano Beach in 1970.

The difference is that those Mets are now old or dead, swept along by the flow of time carrying us all along in ways I’m only beginning to understand. The young Mets? I didn’t worry why they occupied so little of my gray matter, but I certainly wondered about it.

Which is a big part of why Opening Day was such a pleasure for me, even with Jenrry Mejia possibly playing the role of Bobby Parnell. It was a pleasure for the obvious reasons: once again there was baseball that counted, and three hours before the game I was wandering around happily thinking that life had its proper definition and rhythm back.

But Opening Day was also a pleasure because I could feel myself reconnecting with the current Mets, the ones whose deeds lie ahead of us instead of behind us. Lucas Duda looked confident and aggressive and Travis d’Arnaud started the day as if he was trying to grind his bat into sawdust but finished it with a key triple and Wilmer Flores proved surer at shortstop than Ian Desmond and Bartolo Colon was his rotundly Zenlike self and Buddy Carlyle was the unexpected hero.

Oh, and the Mets won.

The Mets won and I was happy. Sometimes baseball’s no more complicated than that. But there was something else too. I had to get on a plane this morning, and I’ll have to do it again next week. There are tons of deadlines as usual. But everything seemed better because baseball is back, writing new chapters in its history. And while relaxing into that, I had a welcome thought: It’ll be fun to go to a game and see the Mets again.

Wrighthood

by Greg Prince on 7 April 2015 12:18 am

Welcome to FAFIF Turns Ten, a milestone-anniversary series in which we consider anew some of the topics that defined Mets baseball during our first decade of blogging. In this seventh of ten installments, we consider the one player who was there on our first Opening Day and who’s still here on our eleventh…and use the occasion besides to commence covering the new season just begun.

If he plays 148 games at his position in 2005, David Wright will be the No. 11 Met third baseman in terms of service at his position. Ever. He’s 179 games away from being No. 6 on the list. If he stays on track and healthy (and if he doesn’t, we’re all screwed anyway), he will be almost indisputably the greatest third baseman the Mets have ever had by his fourth season.
—“The Great Wright Hope,” February 22, 2005

He was batting seventh that day, a Monday in Cincinnati, April 4. There was talk from his manager during the spring that he’d be dropped to eighth, not because he had done anything wrong, but because he hadn’t yet done enough. His entire major league résumé was 263 at-bats, 77 hits, 40 runs batted in and 41 runs scored. It made for a promising debut in 2004, but it was relatively brief. Willie Randolph, newer to managing at this level than his third baseman was to playing, indicated someone entering his first full year in the bigs should earn a spot in the heart of his batting order. He had finished 2004 as the Mets’ No. 3 hitter, but that was under Art Howe. Randolph penciled him in to hit seventh.

So that’s where David Wright hit on his first Opening Day, in 2005. Lodged between Doug Mientkiewicz and Eric Valent, David doubled in the fourth, grounded into double plays in the second and the sixth and couldn’t do anything to keep Braden Looper from giving up ninth-inning home runs to Adam Dunn and Joe Randa. What appeared to be a glorious debut to the New Mets era of Pedro Martinez (6 IP, 12 K) and Carlos Beltran (3-for-5, HR, 3 RBI) wound up a profane 7-6 loss to the Reds.

When the season ended, David Wright had played in 160 of 162 games, batting fifth almost exclusively by August. He was a .306 hitter, a .912 slasher, the 19th Most Valuable Player in the National League by the reckoning of BBWAA voters for a team that finished over .500 (if just barely) for the first time since 2001. He was converting theoretical promise to actual. He even caught a ball with his bare hand one night in San Diego.

“It was over my right shoulder,” the 22-year-old explained. “I couldn’t reach it with my glove, so I took a stab at it.”

A simple analysis from a player who was making immediate success look easy.

David Wright can’t win the Cy Young Award as a third baseman, but he does hear unrelenting chants of “MVP!” at home, and having watched him turn Rogers Centre into yet another House of David, they don’t seem terribly exaggerated.
—“David Terrific,” June 24, 2006

He was batting fifth, per usual, after the newly acquired Carlos Delgado and ahead of the previous year’s rejuvenation story Cliff Floyd. The biggest bat of David Wright’s second Opening Day belonged to the No. 7 hitter, new Met Xavier Nady, who went 4-for-4. The biggest play of the Shea afternoon came on defense, when another import, Paul Lo Duca, sold a critical tag of Royce Clayton at the plate, even though replays showed Lo Duca dropped the ball somewhere along the way. The call held, though, and the Mets began their 2006 season on April 3 with a 3-2 win over the Washington Nationals.

They’d keep winning early and often. Fortified by the trades and signings executed by Omar Minaya and bolstered by the experience Wright and fellow homegrown rising star Jose Reyes had gained, the Mets express turned into a runaway train early. As May was winding down, Wright had his average at .332 and had knocked in the winning walkoff run on four separate occasions. By mid-June, with David excelling on offense and defense, the Mets had buried the rest of the National League East. In July, Wright was announced a starter in the All-Star Game and a participant in the Home Run Derby. He came in second in the latter before homering in the former.

His year-end statistics were a near-replica of 2005’s, another 116 RBIs, a slugging percentage again well over .500. He’d finish ninth in MVP voting for 2006, but his season wasn’t done. The Mets had won a division title, giving Wright ten more games to play. His numbers were solid against Los Angeles in the NLDS, less so versus St. Louis in the seven-game series loss for the pennant. Still, it was hard to imagine David and the Mets wouldn’t have a chance to return to the postseason stage soon. The 23-year-old third baseman could afford to be gracious in defeat.

“Give credit to Molina, give credit to the Cardinals,” he said. “They deserved it.”

“David Wright has now hit in 24 consecutive regular-season games, tying the franchise record set by Hubie Brooks in 1984 and equaled by Mike Piazza in 1999. Wright has done it across two seasons, which makes it a different animal from its predecessors, so even if he hits in a 25th straight tonight in Florida — which would be excellent — Hubie’s notch on the Mets’ statistical bedpost appears safe…for at least a couple of weeks.”
—“Hang On, Hubie,” April 18, 2007

The Mets and Cardinals were ESPN’s featured Opening Night attraction to kick off 2007. Of course they were. They were the two teams that dueled to a standstill the previous October, at least until Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright drew final blood. Despite the disappointment of how 2006 ended, there was no doubt who was favored to make it to the playoffs again.

David Wright was as much of a fixture in the Met lineup as the Mets seemed to be atop the N.L. East. He was batting fifth at Busch Stadium on April 1 — this time in front of Moises Alou — to start the season and contributed a base hit to the Mets’ 6-1 romp over the defending world champs. They’d sweep in St. Louis and threaten to run roughshod over the East all over again as the year unfolded. David hit well out of the gate, stretching his two-season hitting streak to 26, though a few bumps in his and his team’s offense would arise.

Not quite the same power hitter following his Derby appearance in Pittsburgh the summer before, David failed to homer in April. His average dipped to an uncharacteristic .239, but then Wright and just about all his teammates shaved their heads. Was it Samson in reverse? The Mets were a 33-17 club on May 29 and David would be hitting over .290 when he headed to San Francisco to start another All-Star game.

The numbers were typical Wright by season’s end: a .963 OPS, fourth in the MVP voting, his first Silver Slugger and his first Gold Glove. He batted .394 in August, .352 in September, a sensational testament to the old bromide about how it’s not where you start, but where you finish. Alas, that applied to the Mets as a whole as well. They never did build up an impregnable lead in 2007, and even when the one they held in mid-September looked safe, it crumbled. The Mets missed the playoffs by one game. Wright, at 24 the media’s go-to guy, groped for an explanation.

“It’s obviously painful,” he said after the final game eliminated them. “It hurts. But at the same time, we did it to ourselves. It’s not like it blindsides us. We gradually let this thing slip away. In all honesty, we didn’t deserve to make the playoffs.”

Hardhatted David Wright, as unreluctant a Met third baseman as Richie Hebner was reluctant, endorsed world-class Citi Field on DiamondVision with all 32 of his teeth showing and I posited that, if asked, David Wright would endorse a virus.
—“It Comes Down to Reality,” August 8, 2008

When 2008 dawned, David Wright was batting third, between Luis Castillo and Beltran. He contributed two hits and three runs batted in to support Johan Santana’s successful March 31 Mets debut (7 IP, 8 K), a 7-2 win over the Marlins at Dolphin Stadium. Wright enjoyed a typically good start to his fourth full season, but the Mets stumbled as if hung over from the way 2007 ended. On June 17, David found himself playing for his third manager, once Jerry Manuel replaced Randolph. When David found himself slumping a week later, Manuel benched the third baseman who hadn’t taken a day off all year and would never think to ask for one.

Refreshed, David elevated his game enough to earn late replacement selection to his third All-Star Game, a Yankee Stadium affair that went 15 innings. If it had gone 16, manager Clint Hurdle’s pitcher of last resort — since he’d gone through all of his hurlers — was going to be Wright. It never came to that. David returned to his natural position of third and helped lead the Mets out of their June doldrums and into first place before July was over.

As the summer wore on, the Mets began to be plagued by injuries: Fernando Tatis, Damion Easley, John Maine, Billy Wagner were all either out for the year or significant swaths of what was left. Wright kept on leading whoever took their place. By the team’s final homestand at Shea Stadium, ad hoc lineups featuring the likes of Ramon Martinez at second, Robinson Cancel catching and Nick Evans in left field were playing alongside him. The Mets were barely holding on in their quest to topple the Phillies for the division lead or the Brewers for the Wild Card.

One of their best chances came on September 24 when rookie Daniel Murphy led off the bottom of the ninth with a triple in a tie game against the Cubs. Wright was up next with a chance to win it with no more than a fly ball. Instead, he struck out. The Cubs got out of the inning, Luis Ayala surrendered three runs in the tenth and the Mets lost the one game that again proved the margin between their making the playoffs and their going home.

In the final half-inning of baseball Shea would ever see, the very last opportunity these Mets had, Wright led off by popping out to second. For the first time, David heard a torrent of boos at home. At that moment, his career high 33 home runs, his team record-tying 124 runs batted in, his .302 batting average, his ultimate seventh-place finish in the MVP voting and his pending pair of Gold Glove and Silver Slugger prizes, cut no ice with a riled-up crowd. The 25-year-old, considered as clutch a player as could be hoped for for most of his time in the big leagues, had not come through when the Mets needed it.

“We failed,” Wright acknowledged. “We failed as a team.”

Saturday my bête noire was Eric Karros. Can Fox please send him out for coffee for nine or more innings? How inane and generally incommunicative does an ex-ballplayer need to be to become a backup Fox baseball broadcaster? In the production meeting, was Eric instructed to treat every viewer as utterly unfamiliar with the sport and its participants? […] Eric Karros seemed to believe he had a secret discovery in David Wright, as if it was time for America to meet the wonder. “He’s the future of this team,” Karros babbled. “Mike Piazza introduced me to him when he came up and…” David Wright came up five years ago. David Wright was the future of this team in 2004. David Wright is the present of this team in 2009. His present is scheduled to endure for quite a few more seasons, knock wood or whatever substance constitutes Brian Wilson’s glove. David Wright is a three-time All-Star, two-time Silver Slugger, et al, et al. Even folks going to the trouble of tuning in a baseball game outside of New York have probably heard of him and know something of what he’s been up to since he shook Eric Karros’ hand a half-decade ago.
—“Nine in the Afternoon,” May 17, 2009

David Wright’s fifth Opening Day represented a return to the scene of the crime, if you will. It was Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, where his first Opening Day had gotten away. This year the idea was to start to get back what had slipped from the Mets’ grasp on the Closing Days of the two immediately preceding seasons. Slotted third between Murphy and Delgado, Wright collected a hit and two walks in the Mets’ 2-1 win that was most notable for the great job the revamped bullpen did in holding that lead. Sean Green, J.J. Putz and Frankie Rodriguez combined for 3⅓ scoreless innings on April 6.

It was the Home Opener that Mets fans anticipated most, the first to take place at Citi Field, the park where Wright, Murphy and Evans took a little under-construction batting practice in 2008 to test out its roomy dimensions. According to Jeff Wilpon, his players liked it just fine. “Evans put it halfway up the left field deck,” the COO said. “It’s totally reachable.” The actual proof of how power would play came when the Mets opened the park for real on April 13 and Wright, appropriately enough, lashed the first Mets home run in its history. Discouragingly, it came in a losing Met cause, as the home team fell to the Padres, 6-5.

Met losses at Citi Field would become familiar sights in 2009 as the team got its collapsing out of the way early, finishing a distant fourth under a mountain of injuries and a general sense of malaise. Also infrequent were Wright homers to right. The new field seemed to be playing games with his swing. Though he earned another start at third in the All-Star Game, the 26-year-old’s slugging wasn’t quite what it had been at Shea Stadium. Then, with only eight home runs on his ledger in mid-August, the worst hit of all occurred when Matt Cain of the Giants beaned him. David visited the disabled list for the first time in his career, and when he came back, he didn’t seem to be at ease at the plate. He still hit over .300, he was still getting on base close to 40% of the time, but this season was a lost cause for Wright from start to finish.

“In the back of your mind, it’s there,” he admitted in September regarding the memory of being beaned. “I think it’s only kind of natural, kind of normal. Hopefully the more at-bats you get, the more comfortable you feel. There wasn’t necessarily anything prohibiting me from going in there and doing what I did before I got hit, but of course you see a ball that kind of comes up and in, it makes you flinch a little more than normal.”

Somewhere along the way Washington scored a run. Later, the Mets scored a run. At all other intervals nothing else happened, unless you count Jerry Manuel — the imminently erstwhile Chief Logistics Officer for Bizarre Inc. — pulling his two star players from the game in the top of the ninth while the game’s outcome remained completely in doubt. Neither David Wright nor Jose Reyes was retiring after Sunday, neither had broken a cherished record, neither was the Pope or anything like that. Yet Jerry treated his two best players as if they were Hank Aaron and Cal Ripken at an All-Star Game. Earth to Jerry: The game counted. It was 1-1. We could have used our two best players to theoretically help win it. That would have been nice. Instead, it was six innings of Mike Hessman and Joaquin Arias — fine fellows, no doubt, but not David Wright and Jose Reyes in a 1-1 game. Not even close. Maybe the Mets still would have flailed without success for several more innings and hours with Jose and David remaining active, but I’d prefer watching my team go down with its best as opposed to the pronounced opposite. Which brings us back to Ollie.
—“A Product of Bizarre Inc.,” October 4, 2010

The 70-92 disaster of the year before did not dim David Wright’s enthusiasm when his team gathered in Port St. Lucie to prepare for 2010.

“We’re expecting to go out there and win the National League East and go deep in the playoffs and win the World Series,” he said in February. “That is the expectation I’ve gotten from the guys who are here early, and I [expect] this team to get back to where we are winning the National League East.”

It seemed either admirable enthusiasm or a touch of delusion had overcome Wright in the Florida sun, and his forecast looked no more realistic when Manuel filled out his lineup card for David’s sixth Opening Day, at Citi Field, on April 5. With Reyes slow to recover from a thyroid condition, Alex Cora was the leadoff hitter, the relentlessly disappointing Luis Castillo was batting second and retread Mike Jacobs was the cleanup man. Down the order would be a pile of other people’s castoffs, including Gary Matthews, Jr., Jeff Francouer and Rod Barajas. Yet solidly ensconced in the three-hole was Wright, and he was whole again. In the first inning, David lined a ball over the right field fence to boost Santana to a 2-0 lead en route to a 7-1 win.

The Mets made some personnel adjustments along the way — Angel Pagan went to center, Ike Davis was called up to play first — and they found their collective footing, competing for first place for much of the first half. The biggest reason was 27-year-old Wright, who, for the most part, returned to his pre-2009 groove. His batting average was only .283 and he struck out a career-high 161 times, but his slugging percentage rose back over .500 and he garnered enough votes to start another All-Star game and enough writer support to show up in the MVP rankings. He even began driving around town in Lincoln commercials that aired regularly during SNY telecasts.

Not a bad showing for a player whose prognostication didn’t pan out. The Mets fell apart in the second half and came nowhere near winning the National League East or much of anything else. It ended up costing both GM Minaya and manager Manuel their jobs.

“At the end of the day,” he said when another losing season was over, “it’s tough to really enjoy anything [when] we…don’t make the playoffs again.”

David Wright is one second opinion away from going on the Disabled List. MRI reveals lower back stress fracture. Examination of Mets roster reveals no obvious alternatives for third base or the batting order. True, he was mostly sucking, but just as true, he’s David Wright.
—“Wright Out, Fright In,” May 16, 2011

Playing third, batting third. New manager Terry Collins had much to think about as he took over the Mets for the 2011 season, but David Wright wasn’t an issue. Collins could simply pencil him in after left fielder Willie Harris and let David do his thing on April 1. Unfortunately, his thing was an 0-for-4 on the first night of the season, as Mike Pelfrey and the Mets lost in Miami to the Marlins, 6-2.

The Mets and Wright shared miserable starts, with Collins’s crew scuffling out of the gate to a 5-13 record and Wright plummeting to a .226 average in mid-May, when a back injury sustained in a play at third (the Astros’ Carlos Lee fell on top of him in April) got the best of him and sidelined him for two-plus months.

In his absence, the Mets caught a little bit of fire, led by Wright’s “baseball brother” Reyes, who successfully chased down a batting title, a Mets first. Wright’s return to the lineup on July 22 preceded their fall from the cusp of contention by about a week. It was right around then that Beltran was traded to San Francisco for prospect Zack Wheeler. The season’s end would mark the conclusion of Reyes’s New York tenure, as the free agent shortstop was headed for the free-spending Marlins. David, at 28 the last of the three core members of the team that came so close to making the World Series five years earlier, wound down his quietest season yet, batting an unsightly .254.

David’s most memorable moment of 2011 came when Fred Wilpon saw fit to single him out in an infamous interview with the New Yorker, most of which was devoted to dissecting his relationship to Bernard Madoff. Though the Mets had promoted him as the face of their franchise almost from the time they brought him up in 2004, regularly encouraged comparisons to crosstown shortstop Derek Jeter and had asked him to shake every hand and pose for every picture, Wilpon identified Wright as merely “a really good kid” and “a very good player,” but “not a superstar”. He was also less than effusive about Beltran and Reyes.

“Fred is a good man and is obviously going through some difficult times,” was Wright’s restrained response to his embattled owner. “There is nothing more productive that I can say at this point.”

I took a fantastic pregame nap Saturday afternoon. It was fantastic because I awoke to the sound of David Wright playing, David Wright batting and David Wright going way deeper than I’d been sleeping. No, Howie and Josh assured me, I wasn’t dreaming. David was not on the DL, despite what everybody and his Twitter account was insisting would be a sure and depressing thing as regarded our third baseman’s right pinky. Bison Josh Satin prowled the Met clubhouse, but was not activated. No need for his emergency services. David was able to grip everything he needed, so he grabbed a bat, gripped the hell out of it to homer some 428 feet from where he stood at Citizens Bank Park. He was playing through the pain — he swore he could tolerate it — and he was putting the Mets into an early lead, one which increased as the day progressed. David kept playing and kept batting and kept getting hits. He even gripped the ball and threw it fine.
—“Live from Philadelphia, It’s David Wright!” April 14, 2012

It was one of those days…one of those exquisite Opening Days Mets fans could wrap their hopes around. Following moving ceremonies that honored the recently deceased Gary Carter, Santana returned to the mound for the first time since 2010 and led the Mets to a 1-0 win over the Braves to start 2012 in style. Making a less dramatic but definitely impactful contribution on April 5 was Wright, who recorded two hits from the three-hole, including the single that brought home leadoff hitter Andres Torres in the sixth.

The Mets won their first four games, tying the franchise record, and stayed reasonably hot into early June, a 31-23 bolt whose crowning moment came June 1 when Santana threw the team’s first-ever no-hitter. While Johan and R.A. Dickey drew much of the attention during the Mets’ productive early months, it was Wright who keyed the attack. With no Beltran and no Reyes, David was the undisputed best player on the team, batting over .400 as late as May 24. Though he was jobbed out of a starting spot on the National League All-Star team when the Giants banged the drum resoundingly for Pablo Sandoval, he was named to his sixth squad.

Things turned predictably sour for his team after the All-Star break, as the Mets disappeared again from the Wild Card race, Santana went on the DL and the remaining talent level proved underwhelming. The Mets were headed for another fourth-place finish, but Wright upheld his end of the bargain. On September 26, he beat out the infield single that pushed him past Ed Kranepool on the Mets’ all-time list (1,419) and the next day he struck the three-run homer that propelled Dickey to the first Met 20-win season since 1990. For his troubles, David came in sixth in the N.L. MVP voting. He’d have preferred another trip to the postseason, but that wasn’t coming.

Still, the hit record was nice, especially since it came to him in a moment of collective triumph. “Obviously, it’s humbling, the 29-year-old said, “A little more exciting — we won today. […] To be able to do it here at home was extra special.”

David Wright as Mets captain? Don’t be silly. David Wright’s not a captain. David Wright’s an ambassador. David Wright puts the Mets’ best foot forward. David Wright makes everybody feel good about the Mets, including all those new Mets to whom he shows apartments, restaurants and the ropes. David Wright represents the Mets in other places, even to other countries. Look what he did while wearing a USA uniform versus Italy and Canada. Whatever people in those strange lands thought of the Mets before (if they thought them about them at all), they’re thinking one thing above all now: That’s the team that has David Wright. How bad could a team with David Wright be?
—“Ambassador Wright,” March 12, 2013

Before David Wright ever got anywhere near Opening Day 2013, he was already having a spectacular season. First, he was playing under a new, $138 million contract that was slated to keep him a Met into 2020, thus squashing talk that he’d be the next high-profile Met out the door. Next, he flirted with national icon status, starring for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic and gaining the nickname Captain America in the patriotic process. Finally, the role long envisioned for him by fans, teammates and managers alike had come to pass: he was named the fourth captain in Mets history, joining Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter and John Franco in the annals of anointed leaders.

He took the field on April 1 without a C on his chest (no need, he decided) but to a thunderous ovation in recognition of all the 30-year-old third baseman had meant to a franchise that hadn’t had anything else of lasting value to applaud during his time. David batted third, drove in a run, scored a run and enjoyed the 11-2 romp over the Padres engineered primarily by starter Jon Niese (6.2 IP, 4 H) and heretofore unknown center fielder Collin Cowgill (a grand slam).

The good vibes didn’t last. The Mets slipped under .500 to stay in April and Wright spent the final two months of the season battling hamstring woes. As a result, he was limited to 112 games, though they were pretty good ones when he was healthy. He racked up a .307 average, a .904 OPS, 18 homers and his seventh All-Star selection.

This one was special. The All-Star Game of 2013 was played at Citi Field, where nothing quite so big had ever been scheduled. It was important to the Mets that Wright gain election to start, and he did. Not only was he in the field when the game began — behind pitcher Matt Harvey, no less — he served as captain of the National League’s Home Run Derby contingent. It wasn’t of much concern that he didn’t come close to winning it this time. The point was that in the middle of July, with all of baseball paying attention, Wright was at the sport’s center. The epic applause he received from the Met-leaning crowd was enormous that blazing hot Monday evening. The greeting would be echoed when he was introduced before the main event Tuesday; when he played ceremonial catcher for Tom Seaver’s first pitch; and again when he came to the plate in the second inning against the White Sox’ Chris Sale.

“To have that kind of ovation when your name’s called — that’s every kid’s dream playing Little League,” Wright exulted. “Hearing your name called and the crowd going wild. That’s really special, and I can’t thank these fans enough.”

Missing from the lineup and all lineups for the duration was and will be David Wright, who will do something most people aren’t tempted to do these days: he’s going to take a seat at Citi Field. That shoulder of his that either was or wasn’t bothering him and was or wasn’t hindering him, well, guess what: it bothered him and it hindered him and now he’s going to rest it. One wants to applaud his determination to play through the pain. In a short series of major import, that would be admirable. Down the stretch in a fierce battle for the playoffs, it would be monumental. When your team has been wallowing below .500 and marking time toward next year or whenever, you weren’t helping. Put another way, when does playing in a diminished state make you a better hitter and how does it boost your team’s chances of winning? Gentle admonishment complete. Feel better, David.
—“A Good Hair Day,” September 10, 2014

“Losing,” Wright declared in January of 2014, “is unacceptable.” The Captain was espousing the kind of optimism that five consecutive losing seasons hadn’t beaten out of him. “Although it was a great run in 2006, I think that we’re in store for an even greater run in years to come.”

That was the voice that made David Wright the undisputed leader of the Mets players, and before his tenth Opening Day rolled around, his visage would have a good run of its own, being named “the Face of MLB” in a fan Twitter poll. Wright, who never seemed to want to make much out of anything that wasn’t a Mets win, took the selection in stride, thanking his parents for the good genes that presumably led to the victorious face.

He wouldn’t be able to make one of those when the next season began. On March 31, batting third between Juan Lagares and Curtis Granderson, the newly married 31-year-old was close to celebrating another successful season-opener at Citi Field, but a ninth-inning lead got away from Bobby Parnell and extras loomed. Wright homered in the bottom of the tenth, but what sounds heroic turned out meaningless. The Nationals had scored four in the top of the inning and prevailed, 9-7.

Neither the Mets nor Wright could get untracked in 2014. For the team, it was a familiar story. For Wright, it was more disturbing. He was hitting with virtually no power and was nowhere near .300. The Face of MLB admitted to a left shoulder of woe (it was roughed up on a slide at second). Refusing to yield much playing time and not wishing to make excuses, he kept going. But it didn’t get better and he finally shut it down on following the game of September 8. His totals were distressingly ordinary: a .698 OPS and only eight home runs.

“I think that there were times where I should have done better, that I could have done better,” he said. “It’s obvious this season has left a sour taste in my mouth, as far as both the injury side of it and the production side of it. But I’m confident after getting healthy and going through as normal of an off-season as possible that I’ll return doing what I firmly believe that I’m capable of doing on the baseball field.”

There’s a gathering critical mass of position-playing ability in Flushing. It hasn’t fully come together yet, but Cuddyer pushes it toward coalescing. I’d be a bit more excited if our core wasn’t leaning a bit heavily on older guys who you hope haven’t aged too much and younger guys who still need to completely ripen. Those who are approaching their prime (Lagares, d’Arnaud) and those who are drifting past it (Wright, Granderson, Cuddyer) surround a couple of guys (Duda, Murphy) who are as at high a level as they’re probably gonna get. Somewhere amid these demographics, there is a best-case scenario developing, with bases being reached and runs being scored and an offense that isn’t so shaky or shallow anymore.
—“Aiming Higher With Michael Cuddyer,” November 11, 2014

Did it matter to David Wright that on his eleventh Opening Day, at Nationals Park, his manager decided to bat him second, somewhere he’d never been slotted on Opening Day or too often on any other days, certainly not recently?

Does stuff like that ever matter to Wright? Or if it does, would he ever cop to it?

“‘Terry,’” he said he told his manager during Spring Training 2015, “‘I don’t care. Just bat me wherever you think is best to help this team win, whether it’s second, third, sixth, seventh. It doesn’t matter.’ I don’t think it’s a big deal at all.”

Thus, on April 6, 2015, David batted second in a starting lineup for the first time since August 31, 2010. Did it make a difference? Well, the 32-year-old third baseman went 0-4, so you might think something was up, considering how good he’d been through all the Opening Days and Nights of his lives. Prior to Opener No. 11, the Mets tweeted these figures:

• .361 batting average
• 4 home runs
• 11 runs batted in
• And as soon as this game was official, 11 starts, tying him with Tom Seaver and Buddy Harrelson for the most in team history.

Mosts in team history were nothing new to David Wright as 2015 approached. His updated major league résumé through 2014 included 5,707 at-bats, 1,702 hits, 939 runs batted in and 907 runs scored. No Met has totaled more. He is or figures soon enough to be first in just about everything that isn’t intensely speed-related. The non-pitching section of the franchise record book might as well as have his face on cover.

Even if Fred Wilpon still wishes to argue the superstar point, what’s not up for debate is Wright’s status as an institution, both in Flushing and throughout baseball. The “one constant” line from Field Of Dreams surely applies to him. He is the last captain extant on any team. With Jimmy Rollins having moved on to Los Angeles, David has played in more games as a homegrown, one-team player than anybody active. Given that his first game came in July of 2004, when Olympic Stadium was still in use and the Expos were still in Montreal, he may go down as the last player to play a National League game on artificial turf in North America.

Between 2005 and 2014, what I like to think of as the first decade of the Faith and Fear era, 261 different players played as Mets. Some, like Reyes and Beltran and Santana and Dickey, will be long remembered. More seemed to be just passing through. 260 of them can be thought of as teammates of David Wright. After Opening Day in 2015, when Michael Cuddyer (recruited by old chum Wright to join as a free agent from the Rockies, which provides neat symmetry to Wright having been drafted by the Mets via a compensation pick provided them when their free agent, Mike Hampton, signed with Colorado in 2000), John Mayberry, Jr., and Jerry Blevins made their Met debuts, the all-time Met count reached 987. So that’s 263 Mets teammates for Wright since his first Opening Day, plus a couple of handfuls who were here when he arrived in ’04, but didn’t make it to ’05: your John Franco, your Al Leiter, your Joe Hietpas, even.

(Hietpas, famous for catching the final half-inning of the 162nd game of 2004 and doing literally nothing else in the majors, is one of 70 players to have made his MLB debut as a Met since Wright broke in.)

However you add it up, more than a quarter of all the players who have ever played for the Mets have played with David Wright, the one who — to paraphrase from Roger Kahn — stayed in Flushing. Many have been led by David Wright, whether formally as captain or by simply taking their cue from the guy who’d been around the longest and accomplished the most and didn’t make “a big deal” out of any of it, save for his desire to win. He still talks about 2006 as the high point of his career. “Now,” he said on the eve of 2015, “you understand just how much it means.” He rarely cares to mention any individual feats.

On his eleventh Opening Day, against the long-ago Montreal Expos who became the Washington Nationals the same day he played his first Opening Day in 2005, Wright didn’t get a hit. But he did hit the ball. In the sixth inning with two out and Granderson on first, Max Scherzer was outdueling Bartolo Colon and no-hitting the Mets for a 1-0 lead. Wright didn’t appear to help Colon’s cause when he popped a ball into shortest right field.

But you learn a few things in your twelfth season and on your eleventh Opening Day.

“I hit it and I was upset that I popped it up,” he said. “But then I made my way down to first. I try to run everything out.”

David’s running was no false hustle. There was miscommunication between the new National second baseman Dan Uggla and the old National shortstop Ian Desmond. Uggla seemed to have the ball. Then Desmond called him off.

Then Desmond dropped it.

“As I hit first going to second, I saw a little confusion,” Wright recounted after the game. “So I wanted to make sure I got to second, at least.”

He did, while Granderson landed on third. Because they got where they were going, Lucas Duda was able to take full advantage when he delivered the first base hit off Scherzer, a line single to right that plated both of them and gave the Mets a 2-1 lead.

“We were fortunate,” Wright said.

Colon went six innings, yielding only a solo home run to Bryce Harper. Travis d’Arnaud tripled in a third run in the seventh. Carlos Torres and Jeurys Familia took care of Washington in the home seventh and eighth. All that remained was for Jenrry Mejia to run in from the visitors’ bullpen and pitch the ninth.

Except Mejia was feeling elbow pain and the Mets’ designated closer was suddenly out of action for nobody knew how long. In this age of specialization, where every reliever desires to know his role and every manager strives to clarify it, Collins was forced to vamp. In came ex-Nat Blevins to retire Harper. Exit Blevins, enter Buddy Carlyle, the incredibly well-traveled vet who was barely in the Mets’ plans until approximately 48 hours earlier. Carlyle had been pitching on and off in the big leagues since 1999 and had never recorded a save. He had never pitched on Opening Day until now.

A Mets game isn’t truly a Mets game until a Mets fan braces for the worst. Here in the bottom of the ninth, we had ourselves an official ballgame.

Carlyle will never rival Wright in the Mets record book — he is more likely to land among the Collin Cowgill curiosities — but he was having a moment in this spotlight. One ground ball from Ryan Zimmerman to shortstop. Another ground ball from Wilson Ramos to shortstop. Wilmer Flores, at one point a budding third baseman in an organization where there’s been no future in that job title since July 21, 2004, handled both of them cleanly, firing them to Duda for the second and third outs.

For the first time in his major league career, Buddy Carlyle was a closer. For the eighth time in his major league career, David Wright was a winner on Opening Day, 3-1. The mighty Nationals were 0-1. The 2015 Mets were 1-0.

It might not be any kind of sign of things to come. Wright’s high-fived at the end of seven other Openers. There was no pot of World Series gold at the end of the rainbows that followed. Most of the seasons that unfurled from those initial happy recaps offered no rainbow at all, just dark clouds of the unpuffy variety. Which is not to say it’s not worth winning on Opening Day. It’s just that you can only do so much in one game.

Except Wright endeavors to do more in every game every day, just like you get the feeling he cares more and acts on his concerns more. He can’t secure a playoff berth by himself, but if he can move to make a person’s life better, he will. Take the way he took it upon himself to host Justin and Jaden Ramos, the sons of Rafael Ramos, one of the NYPD officers brutally murdered in December. It was more than a hello, how do you do that Wright gave them at Spring Training this year. The boys got lockers in the Met clubhouse and a big piece of the third baseman’s time. Wright’s a son of law enforcement himself and doing the, well, Wright thing is just what he does.

“Justin and Jaden are Mets fans,” Governor Cuomo said at their father’s funeral, “which tells us a lot about them. It means they are really tough, and really committed, and really, really, really loyal.” To Wright, it didn’t matter that the kids were Mets fans, but it was true and that made his gesture all the more meaningful. “In fourth grade,” Justin Ramos said, “he was like my biggest idol,” and now he was having dinner with him. Said their mother, “It’s actually brought a smile to my face to see them so happy.”

You know Wright wants to spread more happiness and he wants to do it through the power of winning and he wants smiles on the faces of all who root for him. I used to think there was something robotic about his reflexive proclamations that the Mets were going to win this year or at least be positioned to win. If I could see that was nonsense, how come he couldn’t? I’ve now come to see Wright is a romantic. He talks about growing up a Mets fan in Norfolk. Only a Mets fan could be the kind of believer he’s been this long with so little to show for it.

“I fully expect us to be in the playoffs,” he said in January. He has to say that, not because somebody forces him to, but because he’s gotta believe.

We know how that goes. Especially after beating the Nationals on Opening Day.

Time Passages

by Greg Prince on 6 April 2015 10:40 am

I’ll let you in on a little secret about the endless period between baseball seasons:

It does end.

Who knew?

I’m not sorry to see the stretch that commenced with the last out of the last Met season and concludes with the first pitch of the new Met season expire, though since I’ve been doing this stuff here, I’m always amazed at how much I don’t get to across those six barren months. Every year I have all kinds of “offseason posts” lined up in my mind for when the playoffs play out, for when the Hot Stove sizzles, for when the snowy void blankets our field of vision, for when we’re all making the same Rogers Hornsby allusions, for when Pitchers & Catchers report, for when Pitchers & Catchers & their teammates then proceed to jog in place for weeks upon weeks.

Then Opening Day arrives and I realize I got to several of them but never all of them. Some of them will spill into the new season, some of them will keep as evergreens, many of them will become inscrutable notations in my currently 54-page “blog ideas” MS Word document that I’ve been adding onto for the past eight years. (For example, my previously unpublished 2010 concept for a Ben & Jerry’s flavor called Angel Pecan probably goes no further than this parenthetical sentence.)

Oh well. As of 4:05, there’ll be new games to spawn more ideas, some ingenious, some dubious, some that will never be expanded upon but get jotted down in a moment of Metsian passion because I don’t want to forget it.

We all forget things that seem excruciatingly important in the moment. I’m told I have a Marilu Henner-style memory for what the Mets were doing and when, yet I forget things, too. The Mets are about to enter their 54th season (55th, if you count 1981 as two seasons, which is something few ever stop to consider doing). They’re too far along historically to be summed up in detail on the fly, though you can still probably condense their essence down to a bulging paragraph.

The New York Mets were founded in 1962, were very bad in their early stages, shocked the baseball world with an unforeseen championship in 1969, maintained a level of competitiveness for the next several years — which included a surprising pennant in 1973 — and then fell into their old dismal ways for an uncomfortably lengthy spell. They revived by the mid-1980s, capturing another thrilling championship in 1986 and remaining one of the sport’s top clubs (with a 1988 division title to their credit) into the next decade. Most of the 1990s represented another fallow period, though they climbed back to prominence as a new century approached, reaching the postseason in consecutive Octobers and a fourth World Series in 2000. After another dip in fortunes, they returned to the top of their division in 2006. Within a few years they were struggling again, though optimism for a bright future coincided with the coming of the 2015 campaign. However well or poorly they performed in the standings, their most dedicated fans have always embraced them.

It will get harder and harder to tell the Met story in brief given time’s tendency to pile up. It’s also impossible to use indelible ink for how it ends, because — unless you’re plagued by a Walter O’Malley — it thankfully never ends. You can rattle off with certainty everything that you’re reasonably sure is in the past, from “Casey Stengel lit up the Polo Grounds” to “Bernard Madoff cast a shadow over Citi Field,” but you have to allow for provisional penultimate sentences. Previous eras give you concrete results. Eras in progress get by on contemporary mood because you just don’t know what you’ve got on your hands right now. You don’t necessarily precisely understand what you had on your hands a few years ago. Someday you’ll be able to define what it’s all meant, but for now it’s still being processed in service to a bigger, undeveloped picture. 2015 could answer for us what was coming by way of, say, 2013, or it could be another breadcrumb on the way to 2017…or whenever.

Ideally, 2015 will explain itself as 1969 and 1986 still do, and the years prior 2015 will fill in their blanks accordingly, presumably in Prelude To Greatness fashion. The Mets, you may have noticed, rarely traffic in the ideal, but if you can’t be an idealist on Opening Day, then when?

So we won’t know how exactly this new year fits along the great Met timeline for a while, except that it is following 2014 and is scheduled to precede 2016. Nevertheless, we’ll start to get the slightest inkling around 4:05 this afternoon, which was the whole point of those six months between seasons when I never got around to writing all I’d hoped to write. And however well or poorly our Mets perform in the standings, their most dedicated fans will always embrace them.

L’Sheanah tovah. May we be inscribed and sealed for the Happiest of Recaps.

The Life Gil Hodges Lived

by Greg Prince on 5 April 2015 5:28 pm

Buddy Carlyle, baseball professional since 1996 yet a veteran of portions of only eight major league seasons to date, knows from whence he speaks when he says, “Baseball goes on. That’s the hardest thing to realize…it goes on without you.” It will go on with Buddy Carlyle on the Mets’ Opening Day roster Monday, just as it will go on without Eric Campbell, the utilityman who earned a spot two springs in a row but got squeezed out of Day One consideration both times.

The man called Soup understands what it all boils down to: “It’s a business.” Matt Harvey c. 2007 couldn’t have said it better to Jeremy Schaap. Campbell’s not a major leaguer on Monday because Carlyle’s and Sean Gilmartin’s contractual statuses got in the way. Mets baseball will almost certainly go on with Campbell before too long, though. In the past ten Opening Weeks, off the top of my head, I can recall Mike Cameron (2005), Andres Torres (2012) and Bobby Parnell (2014) all hitting the DL before the ceremonial bunting had time to be folded up and put away properly.

We wish everybody on the 25-man roster the best of health and all the success in the world. May they, at the very least, make it difficult for Soup to stir. But Campbell will be back. In the interim, however, the whole thing goes on without him.

Carlyle’s quote resonates beyond the current personnel situation for me in light of a book I recently finished reading, Mort Zachter’s ambitious biography called Gil Hodges: A Hall Of Fame Life. If anybody symbolizes how baseball’s irresistible force ultimately plows through any one person’s place in it, sadly it is Hodges. Nobody could have been a bigger presence for the team he managed than Gil was for the Mets. As a kid, I would have found it impossible to imagine anybody but Hodges as manager. Other teams replaced their skippers. Some were fired. Some resigned. But Gil seemed as permanent as Shea Stadium itself.

Forty-three Easter Sundays ago, we learned different. Word filtered north that Gil Hodges suffered a second heart attack and died instantly in West Palm Beach. Just like that, he was gone. A few days later, once some (but hardly all) of the shock cleared away, we learned somebody else was going to manage the Mets.

Because baseball goes on.

That’s the hardest truth to avoid as you read Zachter’s book. You know what’s coming at the end of Gil’s story. You want a different ending. You want something else to happen on April 2, 1972, yet you can’t have it. It can’t help but cast a pall over your reading.

On the other hand, there’s the life Gil Hodges lived, and that’s something that’s wonderful to visit. Zachter is an able tour guide who commits to his self-appointed duty. The author steers us from Hodges’s Indiana youth to his entry to pro ball to the detour dictated by World War II, all of it us giving the foundation to appreciate the rest of the journey during which Hodges becomes Hodges.

Not a symbol, not a saint.

Technically, Hodges was always Hodges, which is the beauty inherent in the story Zachter tells. Though he wasn’t comfortable being portrayed as saint or symbol, Gil was held up in his day as an ideal baseball man in and out of the sport. Long before Spike Lee made Brooklyn the setting for Do The Right Thing, Hodges made that his de facto credo during the years he called the borough home, first as the highly decorated first baseman on the championship Dodgers, then as the miracle-working manager of the championship Mets. His is illustrated as a very Golden Rule life, though one gets the impression he treated others well as a matter of course, not particularly worried about what was coming his way in exchange…unless he was being done explicitly wrong. In those instances, including within a marvelous anecdote Zachter recounts about an M. Donald Grant underling’s attempt to mess with Hodges’s box seats, you can be assured Gil didn’t lightly accept shabby behavior.

What is good to be reminded of, via Zachter’s extensive research of his playing and managing career, is Gil Hodges was very much a human being. He wasn’t a great driver, for example. He had a dry sense of humor. He now and then rubbed a player the wrong way. And 1969 notwithstanding, he didn’t manage every team under his authority to a World Series championship. In fact, he lost a lot more than he won overall — not his fault, given the talent he inherited in Washington and the slow development of what preceded him in Flushing, but a very human outcome.

Even saints and symbols sometimes come in third.

We know about Gil’s legendary 1969 and we understand what Gil did in 1968 to alter for the better the trajectory of the franchise. Less discussed since April 2, 1972, is that in 1970 and 1971 the nominally contending Mets fell disappointingly short. Hodges likely wouldn’t hide the fact that he was the manager then, too, and not everything he did was imbued by a magic touch. He preferred certain American League veterans too much and didn’t necessarily communicate optimally with some of the youngsters on his watch. Most of his players swore by him or came to with experience — Ron Swoboda still kicks himself for not processing his manager’s advice more effectively in real time — yet he who serves as boss is going to have his detractors. Gil had his. Zachter even goes so far as to suggest that with ’72 looming as the final year on his contract, it wasn’t a certainty that Hodges would return to manage in ’73 and beyond if his Mets didn’t start winning again ASAP.

Zachter avoids hagiography, instead delivering a legitimately positive portrait, one rich in details if a little short on literary grandeur. I got the feeling the Hodges he gives us doesn’t measure out to larger-than-life proportions because Gil Hodges was most at ease being a man who was simply trying to do his best in a demanding atmosphere. The author certainly gets that sense across.

(I do wish he and his editor had been more careful about spellings. Mike Jorgensen, Rockville Centre, the Gowanus Canal, Jay Horwitz and one reference to Whitey Lockman were all muffed, plus there was a misstatement about where the first All-Star Game played on Astroturf took place. If Gil had proofread the manuscript, I have to believe he would have issued fines for such avoidable errors.)

As for the phrase regarding the Hall of Fame his publisher emblazoned on the cover, Zachter devotes a final chapter to the topic that burns up the Internet and gets our goat every few winters. Not surprisingly, he makes a convincing case for Gil’s induction into Cooperstown, though it was hardly the point of the book. Those who have declined to vote Hodges in might decide otherwise should they read Zachter’s work, but there’s a more important takeaway to be had from Gil Hodges: A Hall Of Fame Life. There’s a reason we still talk about Gil in reverent terms 43 years after his death.

It’s because he deserves it.

If you’re interested in what a Seder plate might have had to do with home plate — and what any of it has to do with Gil Hodges — I’d recommend this article from the Tablet that was recommended to me by an old friend of Gil’s (and more recently mine), David Kaminer. A version of the story is told in Zachter’s book as well.

Three On A Mic

by Greg Prince on 4 April 2015 4:01 pm

Welcome to FAFIF Turns Ten, a milestone-anniversary series in which we consider anew some of the topics that have defined Mets baseball during our first decade of blogging. In this installment, we appreciate the best reason to have continued watching game in and game out even when the seasons have pretty much gone to hell.

“[You’re] a great broadcaster. And what I mean by that is you have respect for the audience. You have respect for the audience and you have understood what a responsibility having this show every night for an hour means. And you have been a great caretaker of this time. […] Day to day, day to day, you have been a great broadcaster and I just wanted to say that…”

Al Franken said the above to David Letterman the other night. With no more than a couple of tweaks, any of us could have repeated the exact same sentiment to Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling.

Letterman is ending his show next month. Gary, Keith and Ron aren’t going anywhere as far as we know. As long as they’re not, I won’t be going anywhere, either.

Try to imagine these past six seasons without GKR. Try to imagine these past nine seasons, including the ones that weren’t mostly miserable from start to finish. The SNY booth made the Mets more Amazin’ when they were good and elevated them above intolerability when they were awful.

Gary, Keith and Ron have given us Augusts that shouldn’t have been nearly as august and Septembers that we didn’t want to end no matter the tenor of the seasons barely any longer in progress.

They gave us truth and insight and friendliness and intelligence and hilarity and baseball talk like it oughta be. They’ve been a talking miracle. They narrate the often sad and lame machinations of a franchise struggling to be less sad and less lame and have been encouraged and allowed to shine as if they’re nightly counting us down toward a magic number.

On my cable system, the magic number is 60, the setting for SportsNet New York. It’s not much of a channel when the Mets aren’t on, though it’s an adequate frequency when the Mets are making a little off-field news. You can’t argue with live cutaways for free agent signings, Rookie of the Year announcements and such. You can’t help but peek in on any show that has “Mets” in the title. But the real Mets and potatoes is 7:10 on most weeknights from early April to early October, give or take a week, a matinee or an unwelcome intrusion by Fox or ESPN (Channel 11’s OK, I guess, but the SNY-produced games airing there never feel quite as kosher).

Gary, Keith and Ron start to speak. The Mets play in front of them. The Mets also misplay in front of them. That’s all right. They talk us through the three-two counts that become ball four, the mental errors, the lapses in judgment, the baserunners who take off too soon from first or turn the wrong way around second or are find themselves out at third. They hold our hands when the bullpen gate swings open and we don’t want to see who is coming in next.

They also talk us through base hits to the gap and jams escaped and what do you call those things again, where saves aren’t blown? Wins, that’s it. There are never enough wins since Gary, Keith and Ron have been coming to our psychological aid, but when they do occur, boy do our guys make the most of them.

SNY — and we’ll include the crack production team along with the dear, departed Bobby Ojeda and Kevin Burkhardt under that rubric — manufactures the most satisfying three-plus hours of nightly television this side of my Mad Men DVDs. The Mets may have been letting us down with regularity since late 2007, but the given Mets game we watch never does. Gary, Keith and Ron don’t talk down to us and they don’t oversell unto us what we ain’t in the mood to buy. They are the Mets fans we are even if we were never the players two of them were and few anywhere could be the broadcaster their lead voice is. They avoid the unprofessional “we,” yet we know they’re in this with us. We feel it, which is why we don’t click away and rarely dare to turn them off.

I’ve stayed glued to so many Mets games on television because of them. Yeah, I’d look in anyway, especially since we blog them, but they making watching fun. It’s appointment television, destination television, immersion television. It’s television a relatively sane person talks back to the screen during, not because the person in question has a problem with the broadcast but because he sort of senses he’s welcome in the booth. He’s come to anticipate what Ron will say to Gary and what Keith will say to both of them, yet he maintains the capacity for surprise and delight. He’s sorry some Mets games drag on and on from an aesthetic standpoint, but he’s rarely rooting for the curtain to come down on SNY for the evening.

I love the show these guys put on, probably because they’ve convinced me somehow that it’s not a show. It feels so genuine, so authentic, so real. Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling embody the Mets as we wish them to be. They present them to us in a way that lets us look at our team and see our reflection and fill with elation that we are, from our respective couches, a piece of this action. When you get that much out of one cable channel, how could you not want to lock in on that?

Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.

Amazin' Again Book

Amazin' Again: How the 2015 New York Mets Brought the Magic Back to Queens by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.

The Happiest Recap Vol. I

Volume I of The Happiest Recap: 50+ Years of the New York Mets As Told in 500+ Amazin' Wins by Greg Prince is available in print and for Kindle on Amazon.

Faith and Fear Book

Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History by Greg Prince (foreword by Jason Fry), is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.

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