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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Jason Fry on 20 September 2013 11:33 pm Imagine if the men who rule baseball reduced each team’s schedule to its most elemental struggle. The Yankees and Red Sox would play each other 162 times — 81 in New York and 81 in Fenway — with at least 130 of those games shown on ESPN or FOX. (This would lead to only a slight uptick in media coverage.)
This current incarnation of the Mets would be best shown crawling in and out of MRI tubes and nervously eyeing debtholders, with the media tut-tutting about the former and ignoring the existence of the latter. But failing that, we could play the Phillies 162 times — all of them at Citizens Bank.
Hear me out: It would work. Citi Field would become a combination Brooklyn Dodgers museum and Shake Shack, with lots of seats and the occasional concert by some has-been band. Now that Ruben Amaro Jr. has lost his mind, Phillies fans are beginning to return to the sour apathy they’ve displayed for most of their 130 seasons. A couple more bad seasons and their park will be half-empty, leaving plenty of room for what’s left of our tattered fan base. So we’ll bring our road grays, Mr. Met and play 162 down there.
The games we play at Citizens Bank generally aren’t superb displays of baseball. They’re more like pro wrestling — you’re basically guaranteed a ludicrous reversal of fortune or two, a conspicuous display of boneheadedness, a controversial call, and some grousing and woofing before it’s all over. Sometimes they beat the crap out of us, sometimes we beat the crap out of them, and sometimes we beat the crap out of each other until eventually one guy crawls away. It’s high drama and low comedy at the same time, and generally pretty fun.
Take tonight. No, there wasn’t much juice in the meeting. Both teams are trudging to the finish line of sub-.500 seasons (in a division where only one team will want to remember 2013) and the lineups were not exactly marquee matchups. Surveying the lineup, I thought to myself, “Well, I see Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley, but who are the rest of these idiots?” I’m sure I could have rung up a Phillie pal or 10 who’d ask about the seven dwarfs following around Daniel Murphy and David Wright.
But, again, Mets-Phils in Citizens Bank Park. Even with the JV out there, it worked.
It worked because David Wright is awesome in Philadelphia, no matter the state of his legs. (Remember, he’s awesome everywhere.) He stepped off the disabled list, took one pitch for old time’s sake, and then smacked the second one into the right-field seats to give the Mets a 3-0 lead and Wright second place on the club list for career homers, taking over from Mike Piazza. (I’d like to say Wright will overhaul Darryl Strawberry next September, but his recent injury history suggests May 2015.) Eric Young Jr. stole his 40th base (32nd in blue and orange), Daniel Murphy stole his 20th (20th in blue and orange) to go along with three hits, Daisuke Matsuzaka pitched decently enough despite some dopey defense behind him, and Juan Lagares looked lost at the plate but made one of his usual graceful, quietly awesome Beltranesque grabs. Most importantly, the Mets won.
Meanwhile, Cole Hamels hasn’t pitched well against us since running his mouth in late 2008, and his failings are always wonderful to watch. Hamels was down 3-0 before he recorded an out, did his best to annoy umpires and was his usual gawkily truculent self. He pitched poorly but the Mets couldn’t knock him out, got a new lease on life when the Mets commenced to play stupid, and then wound up the loser anyway. Baseball like it oughta be, in other words.
Mets 6, Phils 4. Not much to play for — in fact, given the reverse race for protected draft picks, you can debate whether it’s worth winning at all — but who doesn’t walk with a lighter step and an easier smile after beating the Phillies in their own house? Let’s do it again tomorrow. Hell, next year let’s play 162.
by Greg Prince on 20 September 2013 2:08 pm Forty years ago tonight, the Mets were hosting Pittsburgh, tied for third place, 1½ games behind the front-running Pirates in the N.L. East with a record of 75-77…and they were about to post one of the 500 most Amazin’ wins of their first 50 years.
From The Happiest Recap (First Base: 1962-1973)…
***
It was time to carefully remove the m-word from the ark in which it had been kept undisturbed for nearly four years, for the Mets were about to perform the most sacred act the faith of their fans permitted.
It was time for a miracle.
But first, the relatively mundane from this about-to-be extraordinary Thursday night at Shea Stadium:
• Jerry Koosman pitched eight innings, struck out eight Pirates and allowed only one unearned run, which unfortunately put him behind, 1-0, because Jim Rooker had held the Mets scoreless through seven.
• Jim Beauchamp, making the final regular-season appearance of his ten-year career, pinch-hit for Koosman to lead off the bottom of the eighth and singled. After he was pinch-run for by Teddy Martinez, and Martinez was bunted to second by Wayne Garrett, Felix Millan singled home the tying run.
• Harry Parker, usually a rookie revelation in Yogi Berra’s bullpen, came on to preserve the tie in the top of the ninth but couldn’t quite do the job. Two runners were on when Dave Cash doubled one of them in to return the Pirates to their lead, 2-1.
• Bob Johnson, who pitched two games for the 1969 Mets, was tabbed by Danny Murtaugh to finish off his old team. A win here would erase the Mets’ recent momentum, leaving them 2½ back with a scheduled nine to play. It wouldn’t clinch anything for the Pirates, because others were still alive and contending, but it would put a crimp in the Mets’ plans, no matter much they Believed. But Johnson allowed a leadoff pinch-single to Ken Boswell and a sacrifice bunt to Don Hahn before exiting for Ramon Hernandez.
• Hernandez struck out pinch-hitter George Theodore for the second out of the ninth, but another pinch-hitter, Duffy Dyer, delivered a double, scoring Boswell to tie the game at two.
• The two teams went to extra innings, as Yogi Berra went to veteran swingman Ray Sadecki. Sadecki gave Yogi three perfect innings. The Mets, meanwhile, failed to score against Jim McKee and Luke Walker. The game would go to a thirteenth inning, when Sadecki, with one out, would allow his first hit, a single to Richie Zisk. After he retired Manny Sanguillen for the second out of the inning, he faced September callup Dave Augustine.
This is where The Miracle occurs.
This is where it’s best left to Bob Murphy to deliver The Word:
“The two-one pitch…
“Hit in the air to left field, it’s deep…
“Back goes Jones, BY THE FENCE…
“It hits the TOP of the fence, comes back in play…
“Jones grabs it!
“The relay throw to the plate, they may get him…
“…HE’S OUT!
“He’s out at the plate!
“An INCREDIBLE play!”
If you’re scoring at home, the interpretation would be 7-6-2, Cleon Jones to Wayne Garrett to Ron Hodges, the rookie catcher who ascended to the Mets’ starting lineup for much of the summer from Double-A Memphis because of injuries. Zisk, the runner from first, tied a piano to his back when he took off around the bases. The man was slow. But The Man Upstairs was quick-thinking. He (or Something) prevented what looked like, on Channel 9, a certain goner for Augustine from landing in the left field bullpen for what would have been his first — and only — major league home run. Had the ball made it past the wall, the Mets would have been down, 5-3.
But it didn’t go quite far enough, at least from a Pirate perspective. It bounced off the very top of the fence and caromed right back into Cleon’s glove. He made a strong throw to Garrett, who made a strong throw to Hodges, who made a strong stand in front of the plate, bringing down an emphatic tag on Zisk.
“The ball hit the corner and it just popped up to me,” Jones recounted. “I didn’t think he hit it high enough to go over. I knew the ball was gonna hit the fence, but it could’ve gone anywhere.”
Garrett, who had moved to shortstop from his usual third base in the tenth after Bud Harrelson had been pinch-hit for, aimed low when he made his relay throw to Hodges. “I wanted it to hit the ground,” Wayne said, and he got his wish. The ball arrived in Hodges’s mitt the same time Zisk was charging into Hodges’s body. The kid catcher held the ball, and home plate ump John McSherry held his right arm upwards, signaling the lumbering Pirate runner out.
“It has to be one of the most remarkable plays I ever saw,” Garrett swore.
***
What happened next?
You’ll find out when you read The Happiest Recap (First Base: 1962-1973).
Print edition available here.
Kindle version available here.
Personally inscribed copy available here.
Pick up The Happiest Recap and get the whole Amazin’ story of the Mets’ most unbelievable stretch drive ever…and everything else.
by Greg Prince on 20 September 2013 1:34 pm I wonder what Mets ownership thought as it looked out the windows from its counting house Thursday afternoon and observed a Citi Field whose live gate was probably 70% (at least) Giants fans. I’m guessing there were two competing thoughts besides, “Hey, look — people!”
1) “What a disgrace that our team has fallen so far by so many measures that the only way we can place posteriors in seats is to be fortunate enough to play an opponent with an unusually rabid following.”
2) “First thing tomorrow morning, let’s call Bud Selig and petition to be realigned into the N.L. West so we can get two more visits a year from these guys. The Giants are gold!”
Maybe I don’t want to know the answer.
Tuesday night there was a vocal and visible Giants fan presence. Wednesday it grew louder and larger, even if it was subdued at the last minute. Thursday, the Mets might as well have dressed in road grays.
I’ve sat outshouted and close to outnumbered in Flushing from time to time by Yankees fans, Phillies fans, Cubs fans and McGwire fans. I felt a bit inundated by the latter-day Giant hordes on the heels of their 2010 world championship early in the 2011 and 2012 seasons. But I swear, never in my 567 regular-season and postseason home Met games, had I found myself so relegated to de facto visitor status in my own park.
There was no fighting it, not without a replay of Zach Lutz and Josh Satin rising to Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda levels of performance,…and we didn’t get that during Thursday’s more typically deflating ninth inning. We tried. As Matt den Dekker actually reached second base, I was joined in ginning up a representative “LET’S GO METS!” by my companions for the day, prolific Met author Matt Silverman and ace WFAN update anchor Bob Heussler (the fella Mike Francesa affectionately/condescendingly refers to as “Mr. Met”; head-size differences notwithstanding, the moniker is well-earned), but we and whatever other hardy souls who rose to orally defend the homeland were no match for that which was black and orange and heard all over. The noise meter, intended to rouse the Flushing faithful, only brought out richer and deeper chants of “LET’S GO GI-ANTS!” which is not how it’s supposed to work.
Matt, Bob and I were none too happy with the proportion of Giants fans to Mets fans, particularly the gaudy dimensions of their accoutrement. (What Bob suggested he’d do to the Giants flag waving nearby if he could have gotten his hands on it is something that could only be aired on seven-second delay.) Of course we didn’t approve. It’s bad enough when your team is concluding a 4-7 homestand and packing a 68-84 record for its final road trip of the year. But to have to wonder where the hell this alleged home game was transpiring was just too large an insult to add atop the overflowing hamper of injuries.
Now that I’m 24 hours removed from exposure to Giants Fever, I’m not quite as riled about it, but I’m convinced it wasn’t a good sign for the long-term health of Mets baseball. I could decide I truly hate the San Francisco Giants, but once Santiago Casilla struck out Anthony Recker (with physically unable to play Justin Turner no doubt spooking Bruce Bochy from the on-deck circle), they went back to essentially harmless and perhaps helpful. I instructed one clump of self-satisfied San Francisco fans to “make yourselves useful this weekend in the Bronx.” They promised, “We’ll kick the Yankees’ ass like it’s the 1962 World Series!” (Great, they’re gonna lose in seven heartbreaking, rain-soaked games.)
I can’t blame Giants fans for materializing in droves when their team comes to town. Their record is nearly as bad as ours, but it didn’t diminish their enthusiasm one iota. From whence did this invasion emanate? Who composes this mob? My guess is Northern California expatriates; front-runners who don’t check the standings too often; kitschy-culty types who latch on to Timmy and Panda and Angel; old-time New York baseball Tories and/or their descendants; and perhaps San Franciscans splurging on a six-day big city holiday. However they came to converge, busloads of Giants fans saw fit to descend on Citi Field on a Thursday afternoon, and Citi Field had no legal means of turning them away.
If the thousands and thousands of Giants fans weren’t there yesterday, that would leave the hundreds and…no just the hundreds of Mets fans who attended. The theoretical cause of filling Citi Field with nothing but the cream of Metsopotamia, thereby precluding the admission of enemy ass, is a noble one, but it’s not mandatory in our free-market system. It may not have been convenient let alone desirable for a critical mass of Mets fans to have shown up on this particular weekday afternoon. Besides, around here, folks tend to check the standings on the reg.
The larger issue isn’t that the secondary ticket market or Internet-enabled travel makes a nominal Mets home game an ideal destination for a visiting fan. It’s that the Mets have lost with disturbing frequency in 2013 much as they lost in 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009. Nuance aside, every year has felt pretty much the same by the time September is groggily getting itself over with. There is no winning tradition attached to Citi Field, which has established itself five seasons in as — to borrow a phrase from Stephen Colbert — a haunted house of loss and regret.
It’s never more evident than it is in September, a month that has yet to do more than technically exist in a Metsian vein since the current ballpark replaced the former ballpark. These recent anticlimactic endings might have unfolded just as sadly at Shea as they have at Citi (lord knows Shea wasn’t always rocking in September, no matter what Fran Healy excitedly reported), but at Citi, we have no precedent to know what a September with people and possibility feels like. Unless those people are Giants fans and that possibility is a protected draft pick.
Fred Wilpon is ruefully reminded of his unintentionally classic “meaningful games in September” line every year that the Mets’ chances to contend expire well short of the pocket schedule’s final boxes. What’s missed in that easy shot is every September game the Mets have ever played at Citi Field has been meaningful. Most days and nights have meant the Mets are a miserable product and Mets fans would prefer not to invest another scintilla of their valuable time and limited money in it. The Giants series, on the other hand, meant that no matter how numb you think you are to the indignities inherent in remaining loyal to this mud-stuck enterprise, you can still be taken aback by how much the continual losing and the echoing loneliness stings.
by Jason Fry on 19 September 2013 10:44 pm After last night’s thriller, today’s game was almost certain to be a letdown — but unfortunately it was worse than that. It was the inverse of last night, with the key plays going minutely but decisively the Giants’ way. Omar Quintanilla and Daniel Murphy were just a bit slow trying to turn the double play with runners on the corners and one out in the fourth, giving San Francisco what would be a decisive second run. With the tying run on third and two out in the sixth, Wilmer Flores cracked a hard grounder off Madison Bumgarner’s foot that took a funhouse bounce to Buster Posey at first. And with two out in the ninth and Matt den Dekker at second, Anthony Recker’s bit for Satinesque glory was denied — the hard shot he hit down the third-base line was foul by a couple of inches.
So it goes sometimes, in good years and bad. And now we’re down to the Mets’ pursuit of being bad enough to sign free agents without surrendering a first-round pick (because we’re of course going to sign notable free agents), and to awaiting the arrival of Wilfredo Tovar, slated to be Met No. 968 in The Holy Books. (Call off your vigils — he had a 2012 Bowman Chrome card I’d missed.)
Oh — and we’ll get David Wright back, probably tomorrow night in Philadelphia. Wright’s apparently still sore, but determined to give the few remaining fans some chunk of their money’s worth. (He’d also like to hit in Philadelphia — David Wright is no fool.)
If that seems like thin gruel as the fire burns down and winter begins to growl at the door, don’t mutter. You’ll tell your grandchildren how David Wright was one of the few things that kept us going through these lean years, and how awesome it was to see his faith and ours repaid with those three consecutive titles. Well, at least the first part.
Earlier this summer a little moment reminded me of why I should never take Wright for granted. The Mets were in D.C., and Wright wound up near the stands, in possession of a ball that had landed foul. He looked into the seats and found himself a few feet from three fans — a pretty young woman wearing a Nats top and two dudes in Mets gear who could charitably be described as nondescript.
The woman in the Nats top beamed at Wright. The dudes kind of stood there. Wright looked at her, hesitated — and handed the ball to one of the Mets fans.
We don’t deserve him, I thought — not for the first time, and not for the last.
by Greg Prince on 19 September 2013 10:14 am Forty years ago tonight, the Mets were hosting Pittsburgh, sitting in fourth place, 2½ games behind the front-running Pirates in the N.L. East with a record of 74-77…and they were about to post one of the 500 most Amazin’ wins of their first 50 years.
From The Happiest Recap (First Base: 1962-1973)…
***
These two contenders go back and forth in the early innings. The Pirates strike first on a leadoff home run by Rennie Stennett off George Stone. Cleon Jones one-ups Stennett by smacking a two-run homer off Nelson Briles in the second. Advantage Mets. Stennett returns with a vengeance in the third by tripling and scoring on Dave Cash’s single to left. Advantage Pirates? Felix Millan grabs back the momentum on behalf of the Mets when he singles home the .271-batting Stone, who had led off the inning by helping his own cause (something decent-hitting Mets pitchers were known to do for much of the first half-century of Mets baseball).
The Mets’ 3-2 lead grew by a run in the fifth when Jerry Grote doubled, Bud Harrelson singled and Stone grounded to second. That insurance policy became a smart buy when Stone was befallen by an act of Pops: Willie Stargell, who hit more home runs against the Mets than any opponent in the team’s history, delivered per usual. Luckily, Stargell’s sixth-inning blast was a solo job, so the Mets still held a 4-3 lead when George left after six.
Stone’s successor was Tug McGraw, Yogi Berra’s favorite reliever in September — everybody’s favorite reliever in September, but it was Berra who wouldn’t or couldn’t wait to use him. Firemen, as closers were known then, weren’t kept on ice for the ninth. McGraw came bounding onto the mound in the seventh and wasn’t particularly sharp. He walked pinch-hitter Gene Clines and surrendered a pinch-single to Fernando Gonzalez. The runners wound up on second and third with one out, but Tug stiffened as he almost always did in September 1973, popping up Stennett and grounding out Cash.
***
What happened next?
You’ll find out when you read The Happiest Recap (First Base: 1962-1973).
Print edition available here.
Kindle version available here.
Personally inscribed copy available here.
Pick up The Happiest Recap and get the whole Amazin’ story of the Mets’ most unbelievable stretch drive ever…and everything else.
by Jason Fry on 19 September 2013 12:09 am After eight and a half innings, I had a little roadmap of tonight’s post scrawled on a bit of scratch paper:
- Another chapter of Mets payroll football, starring Sandy Alderson as Charlie Brown
- Criticism of/sympathy for Matt Harvey, with Qualcomm jokes
- Tip of the cap to Gary Cohen, memories of his jubilant calls from 1999
- Oh yeah, the game was could-break-spies horrible
- Except for Juan Centeno
- 1999 sure was more fun than 2013
Does that sound fun to read? It didn’t sound fun to write, either. As Andrew Brown stepped in against Santiago Casilla, with Brown’s resume for the evening showing two Ks, a flyout, a horrible error and (though not yet revealed) breaking Ruben Tejada’s leg, I gave a little sigh and tried not to regard the soon-to-be-written recap like a lunchtime trip to the DMV. I love baseball and I love to write. It stinks dreading both.
Well, GET ME BLOG REWRITE!!!!
I don’t like writing about depressing stuff. I hate unwinnable arguments about incomplete front-office plans, and typing M-A-D-O-F-F, and saying mean stuff about Bud Selig, and feeling disconsolate about tomato-can placeholders like Aaron Harang.
What do I like writing about?
I like writing about baseball’s milestones and rituals, even when times are bad. Centeno’s debut made the mini-catcher No. 967 965 in The Holy Books and the last of 2013 barring something truly strange (Edit: see comments for the truly strange). We also got his first hit, complete with the inevitable need to alert the opposing team and watching the now-anointed young big leaguer trying to be cool at first base instead of flopping down and making dirt angels. Nice stuff, but noting that rocket off Sergio Romo was Josh Satin’s first walkoff hit is even nicer.
I like writing about the sight and sound of the hardy faithful, that shrunken band of brothers and sisters, who went from defiant wishing to desperate imploring to a full-throated happy roar as the Giants fans slunk away with their smugness shredded.
I like writing about Brown and Zach Lutz and Juan Lagares and Matt den Dekker and Omar Quintanilla and Josh Satin working good counts and zeroing in on good pitches to hit. Brown, Lagares and Lutz each saw seven pitches, den Dekker and Quintanilla each saw six, Satin saw five. Brown took his hacks on 2-1 and 3-2; Lagares on 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2; Lutz on 2-2 and 3-2; Satin on 2-2. Casilla had to throw 17 pitches; Sergio Romo had to throw 25. The only truly bad AB in the frame was Lucas Duda’s — Quintanilla didn’t get it done, but he did battle back nicely against Romo and put the ball in play.
I like writing about how the tiniest things separate glory from misery in baseball. Consider that bottom of the ninth. Lutz and den Dekker both took fateful pitches that were just off the plate, and correctly called as such. Lutz’s double down the line was just out of the reach of Joaquin Arias’s dive at third. Brandon Belt just missed grabbing a little roller by den Dekker before it went foul, turning a sure out into another chance. After a late stop sign from Tim Teufel, Lagares just got back into third base ahead of the tag. On Centeno’s little paddle shot to deep short, Lutz just reached third ahead of Brandon Crawford’s throw. Change any of those things slightly in the Giants’ favor and the Mets lose. A game of inches? Sometimes the margin’s a lot smaller than that.
I like writing about Gary Cohen getting to be excited at least one more time in 2013, with this voice rising but not cracking and his words coming fast but not crashing into each other: “2-2 to Satin … and he LINES ONE, A BASE HIT!!! LUTZ SCORES! HERE COMES RECKER! Recker coming home … HE SCORES AND THE METS WIN IT! … Josh Satin with a two-run walkoff hit in the bottom of the ninth, the Mets score FOUR and BEAT the Giants’ bullpen, FIVE to FOUR!” (Watch it here. I’m on my fifth time.)
Yeah, I like writing about that stuff better.
by Greg Prince on 18 September 2013 2:18 pm Forty years ago tonight, the Mets were visiting Pittsburgh, sitting in fourth place, 3½ games behind the front-running Pirates in the N.L. East with a record of 73-77…and they were about to post one of the 500 most Amazin’ wins of their first 50 years.
From The Happiest Recap (First Base: 1962-1973)…
***
Game two of their five-game series loomed as a turning point either way. For eight innings this Tuesday night, it appeared to be turning clearly in the direction of where the Allegheny and the Monongahela met to form the mighty Ohio. Pittsburgh took a 4-1 lead off Jon Matlack in the third inning, knocking out the talented lefty one night after having their way with Tom Seaver, and the score remained unchanged through the eighth. Ray Sadecki and Tug McGraw had pitched well to keep the Mets in the game, but New York hadn’t done anything with Pirate starter Bob Moose or his successor Ramon Hernandez, who stood two outs from saving a victory when he fouled out Bud Harrelson to start the Met ninth.
Ed Kranepool was due up next, but Yogi Berra pinch-hit with Jim Beauchamp, a righty batter versus lefty pitcher decision. It worked, as Jim singled. Then Wayne Garrett, in the midst of a career month (OPS 1.015) doubled. Felix Millan, who would establish a new franchise record for hits in 1973 with 185, got his most important hit to date: a two-run triple that cut the Mets’ deficit to 4-3. After Hernandez walked Rusty Staub, Danny Murtaugh pulled Hernandez in favor of his fireman, Dave Giusti.
But Giusti only inflamed the Mets’ rally, giving up a pinch-single to Ron Hodges to tie the game at four. Teddy Martinez ran for Hodges. Cleon Jones followed with a walk. And Don Hahn, who played more center field than any Met in 1973 despite never being fully entrusted with the full-time job by Berra, singled in Martinez and Jones.
The Mets led the Pirates, 6-4, heading to the bottom of the ninth. Clearly, the tide had turned away from the Three Rivers and toward Flushing Bay. But first, a little business would have to be taken care of. Three outs had to be nailed down, and this was where Tug and his Belief would come into play.
Except Berra had to pinch-hit for Tug in the eighth. So he went to as untested an arm as he had: 23-year-old Bob Apodaca, a righty being asked to make his major league debut in the makest-or-breakest situation imaginable.
***
What happened next?
You’ll find out when you read The Happiest Recap (First Base: 1962-1973).
Print edition available here.
Kindle version available here.
Personally inscribed copy available here.
Pick up The Happiest Recap and get the whole Amazin’ story of the Mets’ most unbelievable stretch drive ever…and everything else.
by Greg Prince on 18 September 2013 1:02 pm And you remember
The jingles used to go
—The Buggles
Sunday afternoon September 29 should be earmarked for nostalgia, a state our 52-year-old franchise embraces sporadically and reluctantly. The Mets resist embracing their past as if they don’t have enough of it or they doubt a substantial proportion of their loyalists treasure it. In this month when we’re exactly 40 Septembers removed from perhaps the most dizzying rush any team has ever put on toward achieving a league title, the organization charged with tending its legacy has mostly ignored it.
But September 29 has potential, no matter how little 1973 gets mentioned at Citi Field these nights. It will be Closing Day and all that implies. It will be Mike Piazza Hall of Fame Day, rightly honoring the signature star of the last certifiably sensational epoch of Mets baseball. And it will be the final day when a game is brought to you on the WFAN Mets Radio Network.
That last one is both a milestone and something of a technicality. In one sense, all that’s happening when Mets baseball stops airing on WFAN is a contract expiring and not being renewed. Mets baseball will air somewhere in 2014, it is universally agreed, and the chances are as rock-solid as can be that the game broadcast itself will sound 99.99% similar on a frequency to be named later. Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy and Ralph Kiner changed stations more often than the Mets changed pitching coaches during Rube Walker’s long reign as arms chief (1968-1981), but come the top of the first, it was still Lindsey, Bob and Ralph telling us who threw what. Likewise, there will still be books and Howie Rose will still command positive results be put in them after a successful last pitch is thrown.
Yet it is a milestone, one someone as historically inclined as I am may not have completely appreciated upon the announcement that 660 and 101.9 won’t add up to Mets baseball anymore. For me and my 45 years of fandom, WFAN represented the longest pause I ever took tuning up and down the dial in search of the game, yet for others somewhat less tenured (but certainly fully vested) in the ways of Metsdom, WFAN has been it. If you took up the Mets as your cause 26 or fewer years ago, you poor bastard, you’ve never known a world championship and you’ve never known anything radiowise but WFAN.
I have to confess I was surprised by how many people I’ve heard from who tell me they’ll miss this: “LET’S GO METS! F-A-N!” It’s been aural wallpaper to me, a signal that I have a couple of minutes to think about something else while Remax is trying to sell me a house or somebody else wants me to donate my K-A-R to KIDS, but radio is so deceptively personal a mass medium that its most inconsequential elements worm their way into your bloodstream before you can receive inoculation against their effects.
Hence “LET’S GO METS! F-A-N!”…I get it.
More tangibly, the Mets in the WFAN era have been about a handful of voices describing moments great and small. Bob Murphy’s voice led the way when, on July 1, 1987, 1050 AM stopped taking listener requests to hear Reba McIntire and began taking listener calls demanding to see Randy Milligan. Murph was just doing what Murph had always done; he was simply doing it under new call letters, and he’d do it full- and part-time clear to the end of 2003.
Murph is obviously no longer on the air, but his two greatest acolytes remain vocal and vibrant. They are — with nods of appreciation to Gary Thorne, Ed Coleman, Josh Lewin, Jim Duquette and, what the hell, Todd Kalas, Ted Robinson, Tom McCarthy and Wayne Hagin — the living voices most associated with 27 seasons of Mets baseball on the FAN. Howie Rose still anchors the radio broadcasts. Gary Cohen, who was slowly but surely handed the microphonic baton from Murphy, has slid over a few feet to handle the same responsibilities on television.
What I’m wishing for on September 29 is that the two thriving flagship voices of Mets baseball, each connected by deep roots to the flagship station of Mets baseball, are paired once more on WFAN.
And SNY.
Let’s get a simulcast going on Closing Day. Let us, for one hopefully sunny Sunday afternoon, make at least part of experiencing a Mets broadcast listening to Howie Rose and Gary Cohen together, the way we did regularly for a couple of golden years in the mid-’00s (Piazza’s last ones as a Met, as it happens), the way I assumed we would for decades to come before the invention of SNY in 2006.
It is the understatement of the 21st century to declare Gary, Keith and Ron (with a helping of Kevin and a dash of Jerry) have been a boon to the TV side. Their telecasts are the best show on television most nights, no matter how full of holes the plot down on the field can be. It was for the best that SNY as we came to know it between 7 and 10:30 every evening emerged as it did, even if it broke asunder the perfect Mets radio team. Meanwhile, starting in 2012, a beautiful radio rapport blossomed between Howie and Josh. I’m very glad Mr. Lewin came aboard to join Mr. Rose when he did.
But if a nostalgic Mets fan had his druthers, if not a time machine, Howie and Gary…well, you can’t exceed perfect synergy. Not on September 29 you can’t.
Status quo would suffice on Closing Day, FAN contract expiration or not, but the status quo will not be in effect. Josh Lewin, I’m assuming, will be off to San Diego to take care of his autumnal business as he does every Sunday this time of year. So that opens up nine innings alongside Howie, space which I assume will be filled, as it was this past Charger Sunday, by Ed Coleman. Eddie C has been an intrinsic part of the Mets radio experience, too. He’s hosted the pregame and the postgame, he’s reported trades and injuries and he’s filled in for everybody dutifully as needed. His FAN-employed voice is the one that I suppose is in a bit of limbo as the FANless future encroaches.
Fine. Let Eddie do most of the game with Howie. And let Gary do his usual TV with Keith and Ron (assuming they’ll both be on hand for the finale). But for let’s say two innings — one to get used to the idea, one more so we don’t spend the whole thing caught up in the novelty — let’s simulcast. Let’s have Gary come on over to the Bob Murphy Radio Booth and sit next to Howie. Let’s plug in SNY’s transmitter. Let the TV audience — the people who watch every Mets game as if it’s the last Mets game they’ll ever see— in on a chunk of the final WFAN broadcast. Read the commercials that need being read, let the billboards and the bumpers take their course, service the advertisers and promotional considerations as needed. At the top or bottom of the hour, tell us we’re listening to the WFAN Mets Radio Network even as we’re watching SportsNet New York.
But mostly give us, the fans, a couple of innings of Howie and Gary.
While the Mets and Brewers wind down their 2013s, let Rose and Cohen reflect on what it meant for the Mets to be on America’s first all-sports radio station for 27 years and what the connection might have meant to their listeners. Let them reminisce a bit about Murph; about Piazza; about Coney and Fonzie and Endy and Dickey; about working with Eddie and the immortal Chris Majkowski and filling rain delays with the Schmoozer Steve Somers and each other. Let them each call some balls and strikes and invoke their childhoods with transistor radios under the pillow and their later loathing of Richie Hebner.
Then Gary can return to the Ralph Kiner Television Booth and finish out the proceedings with Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling, and Howie and Ed can put a button on the Met days of 660 AM.
And then, when it’s over, we can, in the immortal advice of Larry Sanders, flip. At the close of baseball on September 29, I imagine many of us will channel Laraine Day from 1948 when it comes to our personal relationship with the FAN. When she was informed by reporters that her husband Leo Durocher was transferring his managerial abilities from Brooklyn to Manhattan, Mrs. D considered her radio, which was at that moment airing the Dodger game, and asked, “Then why am I listening to this?”
At which point Laraine turned off the damn thing.
But we can be Laraine Day when Closing Day concludes. When it commences, give us a wisp of well-earned nostalgia. Give us Howie and Gary on radio and TV for a couple of innings. If the Mets and affiliated parties can’t untangle a couple of details and get something like this done on Closing Day, then somebody’s just not trying.
by Greg Prince on 18 September 2013 3:20 am Nine innings took three hours and fifty-five minutes to complete. It only felt longer.
There was nothing good about Tuesday night’s Mets-Giants game except that it was played. And that was a good enough reason to rouse me from what otherwise would have been four-plus hours on my couch — because what’s an endless game without a heaping helping of preview and review? — and get me into the ballpark once again in 2013.
I plan to be back at least a couple more times between now and Home Game 81, so it wasn’t as if it was Tuesday night or never. But a thorough examination of calendars and schedules led me to realize just how quickly (relatively speaking) time seemed to be running out on this season. As well it should. If you found this season in the back of your fridge, you’d take one whiff and toss it into a Hefty Bag. Nevertheless, who wants to live in a world where there isn’t a Mets game to go to on a Tuesday night?
Soon we will live in that world. That world can’t be stopped. It’s a deadly asteroid aimed straight at our heart. It’s called the offseason and it’s a far colder place than even fourth place.
I wasn’t ready to move to that world as this particular Tuesday night approached.
So I went. Plucked a very reasonable ticket off of StubHub! Between how little a choice spot in Promenade goes for this time of year and that relentlessly advertised Citi Tuesday thing encompassing more than Ashley’s reveal of her inclusion on the no-fly list (flash your Citi card, get a $10 voucher good just about anywhere in the ballpark; it really works), it almost doesn’t pay not to go — and I do believe I’ve lined up my double-negatives properly there.
My added incentive was Tuesday was going to be New York Baseball Giants Nostalgia Society Night in Queens. My compadres from NYBGNS would be on hand in force. Though I hadn’t gotten around to signing on to the group outing, I figured I wouldn’t have a hard time finding them among the clumps of San Francisco supporters infusing our building with uncommon amounts of orange and enthusiasm. Took me no more than two batters to figure out where they were and I spent most of the evening watching the game with them, even if I was not exactly of them for the duration.
They’re swell fellas and I’m glad I’ve gotten to absorb their tales of the Polo Grounds over the past decade. But the “nostalgia” in the group’s title is a little misleading because on an occasion like this they’re very much about the now. These guys don’t wallow wistfully in recollections of Mel Ott and Monte Irvin when Yusmeiro Petit is tamping down Met rallies and Angel Pagan is turning Met stomachs. In real time they continue to root for the franchise that abandoned them despite its continent-shattering relocation 56 years ago this month. I’ve enjoyed their enjoyment of the Giants’ two recent world championships. They deserve the happiness. They stuck with a team that didn’t stick with them geographically, yet they somehow endured to live giddily ever after.
My generosity of spirit, however, turns tepid when I’m embedded among a contingent of visitors to my ballpark cheering my team’s misfortune. And the Mets were leaking misfortune like a sieve through Tuesday. Ott or not, I had taken all I could of their hootin’ and hollerin’. I don’t like any team that batters the Mets no matter how much I happen to adore their backstory. Hence, I bid the Bobby Thomson Boys adieu as the Giants took an 8-4 lead in the ninth and I slipped off to a mostly deserted Promenade Box to take in what was left of the worsening carnage.
Funny thing is the San Francisco beat actually came up shy of a certifiable blowout, Pagan’s most vengeful intentions notwithstanding. Somehow the Mets trailed by a conceivably surmountable four runs entering the bottom of the ninth. Woodside beckoned, but I had already devoted more than three-and-a-half hours to this slog. Why leave now?
Then the fifth Giant pitcher of the night, the heretofore unknown to me Sandy Rosario, walked Ruben Tejada to lead off the ninth. A flicker of hope? But wait — something was apparently wrong with Rosario. Here came Bruce Bochy and a trainer. There went Rosario. Here came Sergio Romo, Giant Pitcher VI, who would be given all the time he needed to warm up.
Well, of course he would. Time was not this game’s concern. But it was becoming mine. There was an 11:19 to be caught, a direct train. No changing at Jamaica. Late at night, that is immensely preferable to standing and peering down the tracks. So is getting every ounce of baseball I can as the unplayed stockpiles dwindle…but between how much I had seen and how little I had paid for the privilege, I think it’s fair to say I got my money’s worth.
So I left.
Natch, as soon as I decided after five glances over my shoulder that I’m gonna leave, I began to regret it. Met baserunners materialized as if from another, more successful era. Tuesday night was the 27th anniversary of the Mets’ third division title. The Mets coming to the plate against Romo weren’t Carter or Strawberry or even young Dave Magadan, but as I’m exiting Citi Field, I’m hearing Howie and Josh tell me about Satin singling and Brandon Crawford booting one and now the bases are loaded with one out.
Did I just leave the greatest comeback in modern Met history? One that will dwarf the Steve Henderson Game (Mets 7 Giants 6)? One that might catch and pass the 23-Inning Game (Giants 8 Mets 6, but 23 innings)? And is this a bad thing, necessarily? Perhaps it took my premature departure to properly reset this team’s karma. I’d been to 31 games in 2013. I’d stayed to the end a lot. It hadn’t gotten the Mets or me very far; we’re both sporting hopelessly sub-.500 records on the year. Now Murphy is singling Tejada home and it’s 8-5, with the bases remaining loaded. I’m whooshing toward Junction Blvd. Lucas Duda is up. He has “Pepsi Porch power,” Rose and Lewin attest. And if Duda can’t do it, Andrew Brown is on deck.
This is gonna happen without me, isn’t it?
Long-game story short: Duda didn’t do it. Neither did Brown. I did not miss the greatest comeback in modern Met history. No, I simply left an 8-5 loss a little early. I was sorry I didn’t live to regret it.
I’m not sorry I went, though. It’s still the Mets. It’s still baseball live and in person. It’s still the antsiness of the slow inbound 7 as first pitch approaches. It’s still the delight of a surprise stop-n-chat or two along the way. I finally got to meet Jon Weber from The Ballclub blog — one of the best around — and that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gone (and the 7 hadn’t lagged). Later I had the pleasure of shaking freshly dried hands with FAFIF commenter kjs. Instead of commiserating that Zack Wheeler (and six Met relievers) didn’t have it tonight, we praised what R.A. Dickey had goin’ on in Toronto.
You go to the game and you get an entire out-of-town scoreboard to watch, a digital town crier bringing you the distractions of distant pennant races without draining your smartphone battery. You wish somebody were watching their scoreboard to see what’s going in your game, particularly when the air turns crisp enough to recall ghosts of clinchings past. You wish it weren’t so darn easy and cheap to show up on a whim on September 17, because you’ll always associate “September 17” with “1986,” though for now you’ll take the bargain rates and smooth logistics. You accept that the best news surrounding any Met Tuesday was that which emanated from a Met who hasn’t played in weeks and still might not play next year, but if anyone can defy the odds inherent in ligament roulette, you’re willing to bet it’s Matt Harvey. And you go to the game because to not go to the game when you can go the game will never make much sense to you.
The Mets were eliminated last week. I’m still in there somehow.
by Jason Fry on 17 September 2013 11:14 am Bud Harrelson looked bored.
I looked again, to make sure. Yes, Derrel McKinley Harrelson definitely looked bored.
The Mets icon turned Long Island Ducks co-owner was standing in the parking lot of Citi Field, leaning on a metal barrier set up around a stretch of asphalt that had been turned into a Wiffle ball field. No one was talking to him, or seemed about to. He was just watching Wiffle ball … well, sort of. Actually, I thought, Harrelson looked like he was watching asphalt, his mind somewhere else.
I let him be for a good three minutes, then four.
As has been discussed before, in recent years our blog has changed from an enterprise with no connection to the Mets to one that has an occasional connection. The Mets’ media folks have arranged for us to chat with Bob Ojeda and R.A. Dickey and Dwight Gooden, among others. (Sunday’s event wasn’t organized by the Mets.) Such conversations have always been welcome and appreciated, and they’ve often been fun, but my reaction has always been strangely ambivalent.
 You think this looks fun? Well, someday I’ll get to chat with a blogger in a parking lot. It’s taken me a while, but I’m finally able to just admit this: I have no particular interest in meeting current or former Mets.
That’s weird, right? I’m probably the second-biggest Mets fan you know. So why wouldn’t it be a thrill to chat with someone who’s worn the colors I’ve only bled, whose long-ago or very recent successes and failures can still lead me to stare at the ceiling on sleepless nights or walk around in a happy daze on some random winter day?
Don’t get me wrong — I’m grateful for the opportunities. But they’re not things I’ve ever sought. (In similar vein, I’ll resort to deceit to deprive you of a New York-Penn League foul ball but have never had the slightest interest in autographs.)
I think part of it is that I decided years ago to stay a fan rather than becoming a sportswriter — since there was no cheering in the press box, I wouldn’t go in there. Once I made that decision I stuck to it, never guessing that the technological democratization of publishing and my own weird journalistic travels would eventually make me a de facto sportswriter anyway. As I grew as old as the players and then older than them, I was more and more content to keep a distinction between what those players were on the field and who they were on the rest of the planet. The former was my domain; the latter I’d leave to others.
So there I was, waiting to play Wiffle ball for a good cause — Nesquik’s giving $10,000 to the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club, as chronicled by our pal Michael Garry here. And there was Bud Harrelson.
But I didn’t have anything to do. And Harrelson looked bored. And dammit, he’s Bud Harrelson. It struck me that not actively seeking chances to talk with Mets was understandable, but working to avoid such chances was a little strange.
So I introduced myself and asked Harrelson if he ever thought they’d build a Wiffle ball park on the site of Shea. He laughed politely and we got to talking — a little awkwardly at first, then less so, until finally we were just talking.
By now Harrelson has endured about a million retrospectives and signings and grip-and-grins and rubber-chicken dinners. He must have an oil well’s worth of Lucite whozits and an art gallery’s worth of framed pictures of folks he can no longer remember. I imagine he’s spent a couple of months of his time on Earth recounting the Pete Rose fight and talking about the quiet leadership of Gil Hodges and the supernatural drive of Tom Seaver and the folksiness of Yogi Berra.
I tried to avoid those things, because I figured he’d switch over to retelling mode and because I knew the answers already, having grown up with them imprinted on my brain. So I asked him what Shea was like for the players. (He has the reverence for Shea you’d expect, but admitted disliking that it was essentially “a football park.”) The conversation drifted to his favorite players growing up (Mantle and Mays), about the perils of Willie McCovey, about the pressures of playing in New York for a country boy like Mantle. He told an entertaining Mantle story or two.
I was wary of monopolizing his time or boring him, but he had nothing to do but watch Wiffle ball, and he seemed happy to chat. I’m not sure how long we talked — maybe 10 minutes — but it was until I had to excuse myself for my own Wiffle ball turn. (Yes, I stopped talking to Bud Harrelson to whack mostly ineffectually at a Wiffle ball in a parking lot. You’re right — it’s ridiculous.)
Anyway, it was fun — not because I was talking to a childhood icon, but because I got to talk baseball with someone who’s got it in his bones, who has a million things he knows about it and was willing to share a few.
Maybe I ought to try it again sometime.
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