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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 23 August 2013 5:51 am Find Cuppy, which should be familiar to any recent visitor to Citi Field, is one of those things that’s so absolutely stupid that it begins to grow on you to the point where you kind of look forward to it. For the out-of-town or inattentive, between half-innings early in every Mets home game, public address announcer Alex Anthony directs our attention to CitiVision to introduce us to the contestant who is going to sit behind a video camera and zoom in on the promotion’s sponsor’s mascot.
That’s Cuppy. He’s an oversized cup of coffee with eyes. He’s almost always waving hysterically from the Party City Deck or the Shea Bridge. Now and then he’s visiting Left Field Landing. (I once saw him wandering the bowels of the stadium, but that’s a whole other story.)
Sometimes we root our contestant home successfully. Sometimes he or she just can’t focus fast enough. Sometimes Cuppy’s so elusive to the guest camera operator that it seems safe to infer Cuppy is out having a smoke. Eventually Alex reveals Cuppy’s whereabouts, a valuable sponsor’s prize is presented regardless of who or what gets found and we return to our ballgame…better known as the non-commercial interlude between Find Cuppy and the bit where the auto parts company sponsors Anthony Recker laughing hysterically at Dillon Gee’s knock-knock jokes. (“Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “You, if by ‘there,’ you mean Las Vegas.”)
I find Cuppy himself not at all endearing — perhaps because I never developed a taste for coffee — but the mild absurdity of the exercise has drawn me in. Consider the hopes and dreams of the people filling whatever portions of the stands at Citi Field are filled during a given game. Think how many want or wanted to be ballplayers. Think of how many think they could manage or umpire or broadcast.
Who thinks it would be fantastic to operate a video camera at a baseball game? Somebody must, because people do that for a living, but you’d sort of figure that would be less aspirational than vocational. If your dream is to operate a video camera at a baseball game, you’re probably not imagining doing so; you’re probably working to make it happen. And it’s a fine thing if you are — it would be hard to enjoy the game from the comfort of our homes without you.
Wednesday afternoon, however, I was getting by superbly without the aid of Citi Field’s cameras, plugged instead into my radio as I tooled about the greater Astoria area. Howie Rose and Josh Lewin occasionally rely on a video replay. I occasionally rely on them. We go well together. My only problem with their word picture Wednesday was I kept taking my eye off the ball at crucial moments of the Mets-Braves game they were telling me about. I had the radio off when Josh Satin homered. I had the radio off when Jason Heyward went down. But I had it on as the bottom of the ninth commenced.
The timing and setting couldn’t have been more fortuitous.
By the bottom of the ninth, I was on the third floor of the Museum of the Moving Image, a place Stephanie and I last visited in 1992. We said we’d come back one day and 21 years later we were as good as our word. Swell place, highly recommended in-season or offseason. The best part Wednesday was how well 101.9 FM came in (the FAN simulcast has been a radio reception dream). I had no difficulty hearing Justin Turner double with one out and represent the winning run. Ditto for the Wilmer Flores grounder that moved Turner to third. I allowed myself to believe the Mets were on the verge of prevailing in this stubborn 1-1 tie.
They had to. I had an extra karmic boost going for me, I figured. See, I had stumbled upon a wall that replicated a bank of video monitors. That’s par for the course at the Museum of the Moving Image. What made this bunch of screens stand out was they were 100% Metcentric, displaying nothing but baseball from Citi Field. Yet they weren’t transmitting the game that was transpiring mere miles away in Flushing; rather, they were beaming what was identified on the wall as the bottom of the second inning from the afternoon of June 10, 2010, the first half of a day-night doubleheader. Officially, this is the installation that caught my eye:
A simulation of a live TV control room, taking visitors inside the room where director Bill Webb called the shots for the broadcast of a game between the New York Mets and San Diego Padres.
It was part of Behind the Screen, the museum’s core exhibition, “a one-of-a-kind experience that immerses visitors in the creative and technical process of producing, promoting, and presenting films, television shows, and digital entertainment.” Most of it had nothing to do with baseball. But this bit of business had everything to do with baseball…Mets baseball! In a non-baseball museum!
I sat down, waved over Stephanie (who no longer finds it peculiar that I discover Metsiana no matter where we wind up) and we watched 21 pitches in the life of a long-ago game from every angle possible.
You’ve heard Mets announcers dating back to Tim McCarver sing the praises of Bill Webb or Webby. This was a chance to discover what all the fuss is about. The job he does is indeed fussworthy. In this simulation, you are taken inside the truck with Webb and his associates. He is mic’d so you can hear him literally direct his army of camera operators. We see what he sees: about a dozen different takes on the action and inaction at Citi Field. One monitor is fixed on Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez. Another is on the mound. Center field’s camera stays on the batter. Everybody else — every screen is numbered and identified by the operator who’s at the controls — is keeping an eye on just about everything else.
So I’m listening to Howie let me know that Fredi Gonzalez has opted to intentionally walk John Buck and pitch to Travis d’Arnaud. But that’s got only a third of my attention. Because I’m also listening a little to Gary mention how much the fan base appreciates these Mets’ — these 2010 Mets’, that is — renewed commitment to fundamentals, which is when the “PROGRAM” monitor displays leader of men Jerry Manuel thinking hard in the Mets dugout. I’m mostly listening to Webb deploy his battery of cameras. If Webb wants Alex Cora or Jeff Francoeur or Mike Pelfrey, that what Webb gets and that’s what Webb shows.
As you might gather, the afternoon of June 10, 2010, provides an Amazin’ time capsule. Granted, you weren’t nostalgic for this particular game or season or team, but you can’t pass it up. It’s practically a Mets Classics outtake. Blessedly, it’s not Endy Chavez drag-bunting on the Rockies for the 83rd time. It’s something you haven’t seen in more than three years if you saw it all, so it’s fresh and invigorating. It’s our baby ballpark with charcoal walls, far-away dimensions and now-ancient ads; the gaudy gold Caesars billboard in the left field corner might as well be Abe Stark’s “HIT SIGN WIN SUIT” in right at Ebbets Field. We’re reminded of problems that are no longer our problems via tight shot on Jason Bay. We’re reintroduced to Mets we’ve mostly forgotten about. “Now batting,” says 2010’s Anthony, “the catcher, Henry Blanco.”
Gonzalez’s plan to pitch to d’Arnaud doesn’t help Atlanta’s cause and Travis walks to fill the bases. Meanwhile, Mat Latos can’t quite retire Blanco to get out of his inning, either. Webb is now and again impatient. The maestro occasionally barks at his orchestra. Tony on Camera 6 absorbs a scolding for missing something deemed obvious. Rob on Camera 1 is sardonically welcomed back, asked whether he thought he needed an invitation to join us. Mostly Webb gets it done. He commands a low-level picture from the first base side that encompasses all the umpires and it appears, complete with graphic identifying the day’s men in blue. Gary and Keith discuss Stephen Strasburg’s major league debut from the night before and the statistics that perfectly complement their conversation magically materialize.
Finding Cuppy is a breeze compared with what the director and his crew pull off. I would have guessed the nearly seamless SNY production we are treated to almost daily is harder than it looks, but this installation teaches us what an achievement it truly is to sort through a dozen moving images plus a baseball in flight and create from all that a coherent visual narrative on the fly. No wonder Bill Webb needs a second truck for all his accolades. The talented professionals who obtain him his pictures deserve an SUV’s worth themselves.
Finally — and that’s Webb’s word, as Blanco’s at-bat takes 10 nearly interminable pitches to resolve — something happens. With David Wright (the only 2013 face plainly visible in this trip to 2010) on, Blanco strokes a ball to deep left. It’s going, going…it’s outta here! Henry Blanco muscles the Mets a 2-0 lead…which is more than Juan Lagares can do with the bases loaded in 2013, sadly. But never mind what’s going wrong in the present. In the recent past, Webb has a home run to manipulate. We see Blanco. We see Latos. We see everybody because, like the director, we have every screen available to us. And when my vision sets upon one of them, I get so excited that I momentarily forget the Mets and Braves are right this very minute dragging toward a tenth inning.
“Hey!” I tell Stephanie. “Look! Somebody’s wearing a Faith and Fear shirt!”
A beat passes.
“Hey! That’s Jason!”
Sure enough, my blogging partner, sporting those iconic retired numbers, is on camera. He and his son Joshua are celebrating Henry’s homer. At first I think they or somebody near them caught it, but no, that’s impossible, they’re seated behind first base. They’re just happy it was hit; they’re good Mets fans that way. Wow, I think, Jason and Joshua were on TV! How come I never saw this? How come I never heard about it?
 The back of an iconic shirt (top center). Then I realize they weren’t on TV. They were on Bill Webb’s bank of monitors. Camera 3 — Frank — picked them up, but Webby declined to put them on the air. If you didn’t eventually go the Museum of the Moving Image, you wouldn’t have known they were captured by SNY.
But I did, so I do.
The 2013 Mets received no karmic boost from my find — and I managed to miss the radio call of all the fun associated with Jerry Layne’s sound judgment. As for the 2010 Mets, their three-year-old 2-0 lead eventually dissolved into a 4-2 loss that never matched the excitement produced by Blanco’s blast, according to the man who exulted in it with his kid. Later came the night portion of the twinbill, when Jon Niese didn’t quite throw the first no-hitter in New York Mets history but came pretty close. Hence, the bottom of the second inning from that June afternoon got obscured pretty quickly. Yet its moving image and everything that went into transmitting it lives on in a loop. You should go take a look at it sometime. It’s more fun than looking for an oversized cup of coffee.
by Jason Fry on 22 August 2013 12:48 am In the bottom of the ninth, with one out, the score tied and the winning run on second, I was deliriously certain that Wilmer Flores would single, making the Mets walkoff winners and getting himself mobbed at first. When Flores grounded out instead, I was not particularly disheartened: The Braves walked John Buck (not sure why) and I was certain Travis d’Arnaud would single, making the Mets walkoff winners and getting himself mobbed at first. When d’Arnaud walked to load the bases, I was certain Juan Lagares would single, making the Mets walkoff winners and getting himself mobbed at first.
None of that was actual certainty; I’ve watched enough baseball to know better. But with Lagares at the plate against Luis Avilan, I was certain about one thing: Daniel Murphy had as much chance of batting in the bottom of the ninth as I did. Only Murph was in the on-deck circle at Citi Field and I was sprawled on my couch with my kid.
There was no scenario in the universe that would allow Murph to bat in the bottom of the ninth — Lagares’s AB was guaranteed to result in either a run, in which case the game would be over, or an out, in which case Murph’s next job would be to go out to his position for the top of the tenth. But there he was with his helmet on, taking practice swings and sizing up a pitcher he couldn’t hit against.
It’s silly, but it’s the rule — there has to be a guy in the on-deck circle even if he’s there for no conceivable purpose.
I decided we really need a name for this player waiting for a bus that cannot arrive, and so of course turned to Twitter. Here were my off-the-cuff ideas:
- the virtual batter
- the designated bystander
- the donut warmer
- baseball Godot
Not great, but the idea was to get brighter minds to weigh in. Which they did. Here are a few refinements:
- the sliding coach
- the Invisible Man
- dead man swinging
- Schrodinger’s batter
- the Vice-President
- Prince Charles
I think I like those last two the best, and would give the nod to “Prince Charles,” which makes you think a bit and has a certain Dada charm. (Tip of the cap to Patrick Donnelly.)
What I didn’t like and couldn’t guess was that Murph wouldn’t bat again — and not because Lagares delivered. (He didn’t.) In the top of the 10th, Andrelton Simmons singled with two out off Scott Atchison, prompting Terry Collins to call for Scott Rice to tackle nouveau Met-killer Freddie Freeman. Rice got Freeman to hit a comebacker, which hopped off his glove and trickled down the backside of the mound. Rice pounced on the ball and heaved it to Josh Satin at first, beating Freeman by less than a beard but more than a whisker.
Jerry Layne called Freeman safe.
Enter Terry, exit Rice, enter Greg Burke, exit pitch thrown to Chris Johnson, with the ball last seen vanishing into the left-field stands for a three-run homer as Craig Kimbrel waited vulturelike in the Atlanta pen. In other words, ballgame. Before Johnson even reached third base, Murph turned to bark at Layne, who promptly ejected him, bringing Terry back onto the field for his own eventual ejection, after which he stalked off without his just-flung cap. (It was one of those stupid orange-billed things; I’d have abandoned it too and gone off to get a real Mets cap.)
So. A few things regarding Mr. Layne, how we reached this unhappy place and where we’re headed.
1. It wasn’t that bad a call. It was a bang-bang play, and Layne got his bangs in the wrong order. A few years ago, before crystal-clear HD, we would have shrugged, tried to parse Rice’s reaction and written grumpy things about Burke.
2. Still, Layne got the call wrong. And the job of an umpire is to get the call right.
3. Technology has put umpires in a very bad place. There’s already instant replay in at least half the park — if I’m at Citi Field my head reflexively turns to find an overhead set after a close call. Pretty soon everybody in the park will have instant replay on his or her seatback or phone. I bet you umpires already know they’ve blown a call about 45 seconds after the play — because that’s how long it takes for the replays to be shown from multiple angles until a definitive judgment is rendered by the broadcast crew. That judgment is visible to a good chunk of the crowd and swiftly communicated to the dugouts and the field through renewed booing or surly silence. The umpires know; these days everybody does.
4. Baseball needs to fix this. The Mets lost today’s game because Jerry Layne blew a call. It’s more complicated than that, of course: They couldn’t get a hit with a runner in scoring position, and Jon Niese was understandably rattled after breaking Jason Heyward’s jaw with an errant fastball, with the stunned silence afterwards horrifying to witness. But it’s not wrong to say the Mets lost today’s game because Jerry Layne blew a call. So what was my reaction? I fussed and cussed a bit, but didn’t freak out too much — because I now expect some umpire somewhere will blow a crucial call pretty much every day. This level of numb acceptance is really bad for the sport.
5. Baseball is determined to fix this. Next year, apparently, managers will have a set number of challenges, like football coaches do today. When Terry came out to remove Rice, Justin Turner even helpfully piped up about this on the mound. Replied Collins, both philosophically and crabbily: “Yeah, well, that doesn’t help us today.”
6. Baseball’s idea for fixing this is stupid and half-assed. I’m not in favor of anything baseball does to make itself more like football, but I’m particularly opposed to a challenge system, because it takes an alarming amount of what sucks about football and rolls it up into one little red hankie — it’s bureaucratic, tedious and ultimately arbitrary. The idea is to get calls right, not to force managers to add game theory to their list of skills. If umpires blow more calls than a manager has challenges, nothing has been solved. If an umpire blows a call and the manager doesn’t challenge it, nothing has been solved. And does anyone really believe that a manager out of challenges will stand in the dugout in stoic acceptance of a blown call? It’s ridiculous, and surely the baseball brass know this.
7. If you’re gonna have an eye in the sky, use the damn thing. Guys at MLB headquarters watch every game. They buzz the on-field umps after a close call and consult an umpire on duty at headquarters. The on-field umps tell everyone to sit tight for a minute. The headquarters ump affirms the call or overturns it. Play resumes. Would there occasionally be judgment calls about where to put runners and other problems? Sure. But players would quickly learn to complete a play that might wind up disputed, and the new uncertainties would be better than what we have now.
8. But we’d still be looking for that first no-hitter! They’re not going to retroactively deprive us of it. Just deal.
9. Didn’t Angel Hernandez look at video of a blown home-run call and still blow it? Yes he did. Angel Hernandez is such a bad umpire that he can’t even watch TV correctly. This doesn’t really have much to do with the argument made above, but I’ve worked Angel Hernandez’s incompetence into far less relevant conversations, so there was no way I was missing this opportunity.
by Greg Prince on 21 August 2013 9:02 am Every year it seems we play one team far more often than we play anybody else. Or maybe every week it seems that way. Four games in San Diego felt like an eternity, and it was long ago proven the Padres don’t actually exist. Either way, WTF’s with having to play the Braves every five minutes in 2013?
This afternoon will mark the 14th time the Mets will have thrown down against the Braves over their last 81 contests. That’s more than one of every four six games in a half-season of baseball dedicated to taking on a single opponent. That’s roughly one Braves game per week if one chose to apportion them as such.
Which I don’t. I see the Braves coming and going. Suspended games. Makeup games. Walkoff games. Games in which horrific injuries are sustained, games in which first wins are gained, games in which first hits are obtained. And all the while, Braves, Braves and more Braves.
Enough already with the Braves.
Not enough already with beating the Braves, which the Mets somehow held on to do Tuesday night behind Zack Wheeler starting; Scott Rice, Gonzalez Germen and LaTroy Hawkins relieving; Eric Young and Daniel Murphy running; Marlon Byrd and Ike Davis (!) slugging; and Travis d’Arnaud naud longer going 0-for-evah. Naud complaints there. If the Mets could be said to have some contender’s number, you might say 25 guys in Flushing are carrying around a scrap of paper that has scribbled upon it a 404 area code. While the Braves have blazed to an insurmountable first-place lead, they are saddled with a losing — 7-8 — record against our intermittently scrappy ’tropolitans. You might go as far to say that the one team Atlanta wouldn’t want any part of in October would be the Mets if the stars were to align, an apocalypse were to overcome the planet, Shawon Dunston were to be activated and Wheeler could take the ball in Games One, Four and Seven.
You might, even if it would be a stretch worthy of Willie McCovey, but I like having something to feel good about amid the Braves’ march to their first National League East title in eight years, which, incidentally, looms more like their 15th divisional crown in 23 seasons. Yeah, that sounds more accurate. Has a team that’s failed to finish first for seven consecutive seasons ever seemed less deserving of “finally” getting back on top?
If you had no dog in the fight, you could imagine generating empathetic cheers for, say, the Cubs when they made their first postseason in 39 years (though it was a disgusting episode to us, since we were the ones they leapt over to do so in 1984). You could think in 1995, hey, the Yankees haven’t been to the playoffs in 14 years, there are a lot of fans who’ve hung in there with some bad teams, good for them (I didn’t think that, mind you; those are dangerous thoughts, as 1996 would prove). Completely devoid of attachments, you could look at the 2007 Phillies, out of the money every season since 1993 and…we’re not gonna do that, but you know what I mean.
But the Braves? Let them go wander in the desert for another generation. The Braves don’t know how to suffer. Their N.L. East dynasty crumbled after 2005 and they were perfectly fine by 2010. They collapsed in a heap worthy of the 1964 Phillies (and 2007 Mets) in 2011 and were back on their feet, angst-free, in 2012. They lost the first-ever Wild Card Game amid one of the most controversial postseason calls in recent memory and they picked themselves up, dusted themselves off and got on with their business. In the face of the alleged Washington Nationals behemoth, they raced out of the gate this year to a 12-1 start. Their high-priced sibling outfielders fizzled? They played indifferent ball for three months? They saw their inspirational ace go down in look-away pain? Their stone-handed second baseman used his personal days to go in for Lasik surgery? They had to replace their Hall of Fame third baseman?
It doesn’t at all matter. They’re the Borg or the Terminator or whatever science fiction thing that is grim and unrelenting, at least until the leaves start to change colors. Somebody always finds their number come October. But they sure do know how to blot out a summer.
By Friday night, the Braves will have departed Citi Field and Social Media Night will have arrived. Buy a ticket, get a Jay Horwitz bobblehead, find out if the Mets have the Tigers’ number, listen to Third Eye Blind and, mostly, lend a hand to one of the best causes imaginable: Hope Shines for Shannon, which is raising funds to help Mets communications person extraordinaire Shannon Forde in her fight against breast cancer. Please check it out here.
by Greg Prince on 20 August 2013 2:19 pm Marlon Byrd joined the Mets’ 20-home run club Monday. As exclusivity goes, it’s an honor that falls somewhere between the United States Senate and one of those Facebook groups that requires an invitation. It’s not that incredible that you’d get in, but making it there probably says something about your interests and perhaps your capabilities.
Byrd was interested in proving he was still capable of playing in the major leagues in 2013. Just getting an invitation to camp from a team whose lead executive wondered if he had an outfield at all was a small victory for Byrd. He’s certainly piled up the wins, for the Mets and for himself, ever since. With Byrd having done more as a slugger and a fielder than we would have dared dream, many among us have transitioned from wanting the soon-to-be 36-year-old wonder swapped for whatever he could bring back to mildly pining for retention of his services in 2014.
It’s not all about the 20 homers, but they help. Twenty home runs isn’t really much of a milestone for a hitter. Pitchers go for 20 with gusto. We went berserk for R.A. Dickey’s 20th victory. We mostly nodded approvingly when Marlon took Jared Burton over Target Field’s left field wall. If you still have your notes from last September, you know Dickey became the sixth Met two win a 20th game, crafting the ninth Met season in which the feat was accomplished.
The cachet for 20 home runs isn’t quite the same. Twenty isn’t a widely recognized standard for powerful performance, but within the realm of the New York Mets franchise, it rates something a bit weightier than agate type because, let’s face it, these are the Mets. They’ve rarely hit home runs by the ton, bushel or bucket.
Byrd plays right field. Right field is considered a power position. Henry Aaron played right field and hit 755 home runs. Babe Ruth played right field and hit 714 home runs. Marlon Byrd won’t be confused with either of those gentlemen, but he’s a lot closer (albeit in miniature) to their standard than any Met right fielder since Richard Hidalgo launched 21 across only 86 games in 2004. Hidalgo rode a magic carpet from Houston to Flushing. He wasn’t hitting at all as an Astro. He went gangbusters for one month as a Met (10 HR in July, including one per game in five consecutive games, three of which were Subway Series affairs) and then just kind of Daughters of the American Revolution busters the rest of the way. By the end of ’04, Victor Diaz had replaced Hidalgo as the object of our affection in right and there was no popular fervor to re-sign Richard, whose life and career took all kinds of detours after a 2005 stay in Arlington.
Before Hidalgo, Butch Huskey hit 24 home runs playing mostly right field in 1997. Technically, Butch went yard 14 times as the right fielder, 4 times as the first baseman, 3 times as the left fielder, once as the first baseman and twice as a pinch-hitter. To look at his impressive frame, you wouldn’t think Butch Huskey was as versatile as Super Joe McEwing, but you would think he’d rack up loads of home runs. Twenty-four, however, was his Met and MLB high.
The other Met right fielders to slug approximately in the tradition of Aaron and Ruth were a little more predictable. Bobby Bonilla hit 34 playing a little more right than he did third in 1993; Dave Kingman spent most of a summer in right in 1976 and belted a then-Met record 37; and Darryl Strawberry topped 20 home runs every single season he played for the Mets, walloping between 26 and 39 home runs annually between 1983 and 1990.
Straw was a singular Met when it came to four-baggers, not just among right fielders. But hoo-boy, did he break the mold as soon as he cast it. Four right fielders in 21 post-Darryl seasons have hit 20 or more home runs. That’s where the Timos, the Churches, the Frenchys, the Cedeños, the Ochoas and Greens and Burnitzes and ultimately disappointing Victor Diazes come home to roost but not to score on one swing of the bat. You don’t have to have a right fielder blasting home runs if you’re deriving your power from multiple sources elsewhere on the diamond (think Piazza, Ventura and Alfonzo all together in one place), but Byrd getting to 20 and likely beyond is a pleasant reminder that sometimes the Mets can do what other teams can do on offense.
Overall, the Mets have had only 34 players hit 20+ home runs in a season, adding up to 78 20-homer seasons in all. Strawberry leads all comers with eight such powerful campaigns. David Wright’s compiled six, same as Mike Piazza. Howard Johnson put up five. Other names you’d likely expect to see appear in multiples, too, among them Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran, Kevin McReynolds, Gary Carter, Todd Hundley and George Foster as well as SkyKing and Bobby Bo. The intriguing entries to me are the 16 Mets who did it once and never again, at least not as Mets. They don’t include some of the names you might guess. No Cleon Jones. No Keith Hernandez. No Rusty Staub. No Lee Mazzilli. Authors of some of the finer seasons of their eras, these Mets icons hit in the teens, but not in the twenties.
Byrd, Hidalgo and Huskey, however, are in the Twenty & Out Club. Frank Thomas founded this fraternal organization, swatting a pre-Kingman standard of 34 in 1962 before coming back to the pack in ’63. Scott Hairston was the club’s previous inductee prior to Marlon and quite the surprising entrant given his part-time status. Hairston some of us sort of wanted back in 2013 after he reached 20 homers on the final day of 2012. The Mets remained undecided on the matter long enough for Scott to sign with the Cubs. They’ve since dealt him to the Nationals. If you’re a fan of cautionary tales, he’s a dozen home runs short of 20 as we speak.
Ike Davis has one year of 20 or more home runs, also from 2012; we’ll see if he gets another. Bernard Gilkey topped 20 once; he’s widely understood to have had the season of his life for us in 1996. Eddie Murray never looked happy in his two Met seasons; he was presumably satisfied to take his business elsewhere after mashing 27 taters in 1993. Donn Clendenon took out his Scripto Pen and signed his name across the 1969 World Series with three homers to earn the Fall Classic’s MVP award; No. 22 came back and stamped 22 regular-season circuit clouts in the books in 1970.
Mo Vaughn hit 26 home runs in 2002 despite widespread rumor that Mo Vaughn didn’t manage to take the field 26 times as a Met.
That left fielder Cliff Floyd hit 34 home runs eight years ago still gratifies me. That center fielder Mike Cameron hit 30 home runs nine years ago still surprises me. That Brian McRae hit 21 home runs fifteen years ago probably speaks for what was going on throughout baseball c. 1998. That Todd Zeile hit 22 home runs as John Olerud’s first base replacement diminishes slightly my theory that Todd Zeile sucked as John Olerud’s first base replacement in 2000. That Rico Brogna hit 22 home runs in 1995 reminds me I was furious that the Mets dared replace my favorite player with some washout from Toronto. (Oly topped 20 twice as a Met and won me over pretty quickly.)
And then there’s Charley Smith, which is to say “Charley Smith?” Yes, Charley Smith. That’s Charley with an “ey,” which you don’t see much anymore. Two years in a row I’ve gotten caught up in a discussion of Mets who hit 20 or more home runs at least once as Mets and both times I completely whiffed on Charley Smith being one of those fellows. (I also forgot about Zeile — and this year Hairston.)
I won’t accept Charley Smith’s career predating my personal baseball memories as an acceptable reason for overlooking his 20 home runs from 1964. I didn’t see Frank Thomas sock any of his 34, either, and I’m plenty conscious of Frank Thomas’s slugging. I became fully aware of Smith during the Mets’ Old Timers Day in 1990…something that couldn’t happen today, I suppose. The theme of the celebration was a salute to many of the men who had manned third base as Mets in their not quite three decades of existence to date. Since the advent of Wright, we don’t grope for full-time third basemen; we grope for full-time right fielders. But it was an instant element of the Met mystique that this silly team could never find a steady third baseman and, even deep into the age of HoJo, the image stuck.
Anyway, the Mets, working with dedicated MLB sponsor Equitable, staged their Old Timers festivities around third base. Smith was a participant. Howie Rose informed the attentive listener that Charley had held the record for most home runs hit by a Mets third baseman before Johnson came along. He communicated this data with a bit of disbelief, not that Smith had once knocked 20 out of the park —erstwhile trivia answer Eddie Bressoud long held the Met shortstop home run record with 10 — but that when it came time to play the actual Old Timers game, Smith was asked to suit up with the “opponents” instead of Met alumni.
I instantly agreed a miscarriage of history had been executed…and then pretty much stopped thinking about Charley Smith. But moved by Byrd’s 20th home run Monday, I grew curious about where Smith stood in the club. Well, he was the second Met to join it, two years after Thomas. He would be the last Met to hit as many as 20 until ultimate two-timer Tommie Agee did so in 1969. By the time of the season Agee and his teammates were scaling the heights of bigger and better things that fall, Smith had taken his last swing in the bigs. His career spanned the Mad Men era, beginning in ’60, ending nine Aprils later at the age of 31 as, of all things, a ’69 Cub.
Charley, who would pass away in 1994, missed the Mets-Cubs rivalry that was about to sprout. He missed every pennant race of which he was ever in the chronological neighborhood, actually. He started with the Dodgers in one of those rare years when they weren’t going anywhere. He was a Phillie a little before they almost won the National League title. He bounced to the Yankees during their blessed fey period. His season in St. Louis (from whence he was sent packing for Roger Maris) occurred between World Series appearances. And the team that traded him to the last-place Mets, the White Sox, dispatched him early in 1964 and then sped off to win 98 games.
You might say Smith had terrible timing, but when it came to etching his name onto the Twenty & Out Club’s membership parchment he was as clutch as they came.
On Saturday, October 3, 1964, Smith hit his 19th home run of the season in service to spoiling one of his future employers’ pennant chances. The night before, Al Jackson — another guy who kept missing the big prize — shut down Bob Gibson and the Cardinals, 1-0. Now, on the second-to-last day of the schedule, the Metsies jumped all over 20-game winner and Met-to-be Ray Sadecki in a 15-5 massacre. George Altman homered. Ed Kranepool homered. Bobby Klaus homered. Joe Christopher homered. And Charley Smith added to the carnage by taking it to Miracle Met-in-waiting Ron Taylor.
Chaos loomed as the Cardinals suddenly couldn’t beat the Mets. If Casey’s boys could pull off one more October miracle on Sunday the Fourth, it was likely you’d have the Redbirds, the Redlegs and even the collapsing Phillies all tying for first. Could they wreak enough havoc to shake the senior circuit to its core and force a round-robin playoff for the flag?
No. They were the 1964 Mets, not the 1969 Mets. But although Gibby would emerge from St. Louis’s bullpen and quell the final Met threat of their 109-loss season, leading his team to an 11-5 triumph and the pennant, Smith got his. In the fourth, Charley homered off starter Curt Simmons to knot the score at one and give himself 20 dingers for the year.
How significant was it? Hell, we’re talking about it today, aren’t we?
Of surpassing significance this Friday night: Social Media Night at Citi Field. Buy a ticket, get a Jay Horwitz bobblehead, watch Marlon Byrd chase 30 home runs and a new contract, determine how good the Tigers are, listen to Third Eye Blind and, mostly, give a hand to one of the best causes imaginable: Hope Shines for Shannon, which is raising funds to help Mets communications person extraordinaire Shannon Forde in her fight against breast cancer. Please check it out here.
by Jason Fry on 19 August 2013 6:56 pm That’s the way the baseball season works — you get snowed out in a somewhat farcical early-spring trip, the makeup date gets stuck on the calendar so far off that it might as well be science fiction, and then the makeup date comes around after all, leaving you mildly surprised to realize the season has shrunk to a relatively short engagement.
The Mets picked up in Minnesota right where they left off, beating a rather horrible Twins team in their beautiful and thankfully snow-free ballgame for a three-game sweep interrupted by two-thirds of a season. Dillon Gee was superb again, Travis d’Arnaud kept getting on base despite not getting hits (just call him the Anti-Francoeur) and best of all Juan Lagares ran down everything in the outfield.
And I do mean everything. If you were a Twin, you couldn’t hit it into the gap without Lagares overhauling it like a cheetah on a motorcycle. You couldn’t hit it onto the warning track without Lagares aiming first his shades and then his glove skyward to snag it. You couldn’t hit it to the fence without Lagares being there, ball rattling around in the glove and body rattling against the fence. I’m surprised there wasn’t a hold on traffic into Minneapolis-St. Paul because of a Mets centerfielder pawing at the noses of jets that dared fly too low.
We’ve talked before about Gee, how earlier this season it looked like he’d be shunted aside, only to have him convincingly reassert his case to be a mainstay of the Mets’ rotation. Looking ahead to 2014, that side of the Mets is in very good shape indeed: Matt Harvey is Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler is growing with each start, Jon Niese looks gratifyingly like the pitcher he was after his post-Toronto scolding in 2012, and Gee has shaken off the rust of surgery and stands alongside them. For a fifth slot, you can try Jeremy Hefner (assuming he isn’t felled by Tommy John surgery), Jenrry Mejia (assuming that bone spur is shaved successfully), or mix and match until Noah Syndergaard or Rafael Montero are ready for their hotly anticipated debuts. As baseball problems go, finding a fifth starter for half a season isn’t one to keep you up at night.
All to the good, until you naturally contrast the glittering rotation with the Mets’ rather dingy offense. But I suspect the contrast is more about luck than planning.
Before the season, the best-case scenario for the Mets involved the young pitchers developing and a trio of hitters — Lucas Duda, Ike Davis and Ruben Tejada — making strides to build on successful campaigns. The young pitchers have passed that test with high marks. The hitters, though, have flunked it.
Before he got hurt Duda was successful at getting on base but at little else, and both he and the Mets seem to have accepted that it’s cruel to him and his pitchers to put him in the outfield.
Davis’s recent rebound has been welcome, but that’s grading on the curve. Ike has shown little power and his defense has regressed, making him resemble the pre-injury Duda to a disturbing degree.
As for Tejada, he came to camp out of shape and now occupies the Met doghouse, which he might escape only because Omar Quintanilla has shown pretty conclusively that he’s not an everyday starter.
Nobody assumed those three players were going to be stars, but it wasn’t unreasonable to imagine all three developing into solid complementary players.
If that had happened, where would we be?
David Wright would still be the Mets’ lone superstar, but his reliable complement wouldn’t begin and end with Daniel Murphy. Alongside Murph you’d have Duda, Tejada and Davis, with Lagares’s unexpected claim on center field and Marlon Byrd’s one-year cameo coming as very nice surprises and d’Arnaud ready for his big-league audition. In which case the lineup would look pretty impressive, and the Mets might be in the wild-card hunt, with our fantasies of 1973 redux involving more than a late charge to a mediocre record.
None of that happened, but I don’t think that’s the failure of a plan so much as it’s baseball happenstance. Sometimes things work out, and sometimes they don’t. It’s fortunate that so far the young pitchers have developed about as well as anyone could have expected. It’s unfortunate that the relatively young hitters have come in near the bottom of expectations. The conclusion I draw? It’s that life is uncertain.
With d’Arnaud up and innings limits looming for the Mets’ Triple-A hurlers, there’s not a whole lot left to find out about this edition of the club. We want to see Wheeler keep learning his craft, for d’Arnaud to get a hit and learn a pitching staff, and to get a better read on Wilmer Flores. Beyond that, though, there’s not much beyond a cameo (with more crabbing about uniform lettering) for Matt den Dekker, which means soon we’ll be having debates about nearly half of the 2014 starting nine:
- Where do the Mets get two outfielders to flank Lagares?
- Who’s going to play short?
- Can you cobble together a decent first baseman from some combination of Davis, Duda, Flores and Josh Satin?
It’s a lot. But at least we can stop worrying about Dillon Gee.
by Greg Prince on 19 August 2013 8:58 am Unlike Bono’s testimony from when Matt Harvey warms up (at Citi Field, anyway), I can close my eyes and make it go away. Matt’s casual excellence on Sunday Harvey Sunday — 6 innings, 6 hits, 0 walks, 6 strikeouts, just enough untamed action to permit 2 Padre runs in the fifth — was going to be sufficient to earn him a win once Andrew Brown doubled as his pinch-hitter and put the Mets up, 3-2.
With the Harvey part of the story ended after the infield and the bullpen couldn’t quite smother San Diego, Matt was eventually left no-decisioned yet again. Also, the Mets lost, dropping them ten games under .500 for the year and two games under .500 on the trip, with this afternoon’s excursion to Minneapolis pending.
I literally closed my eyes and made it go away, which is to say I fell asleep last night before getting around to blogging, but it works when I’m awake, too. My eyes are figuratively closed. Yesterday’s loss…gone. This season’s trudge to contemporary oblivion…gone. The sense that all these maudlin August results will forever be interchangeable…
…going?
At first glance Sunday, the Met lineup was its usual underwhelming self, partly a function of David Wright’s uncooperative hamstring, partly attributable to the “who?” factor. I knew who these guys were, but who were these eight guys piled atop Harvey exactly? You step back from your day-to-day immersion into all things Met and you’re sorting among journeymen and unknowns. One or two of the journeymen have provided a legitimate boost to the proceedings in 2013; one or two are filling slots that weren’t supposed to require filling, but these things happen.
It’s the unknowns who entice if you keep your eyes closed. Four through seven in the order were four rookies: Satin, Flores, Lagares, d’Arnaud. Satin is hard to think of as a rookie since we had glimpses of him the past two seasons, but the other three are all still in their first tours and two carry that distinct fresh-from-the-farm aroma. Lagares the glove man now has enough experience to have a hot streak and a cold snap inked on his ledger. He’s the veteran among in-season freshman callups. Flores goes back a good couple of weeks, or long enough to make you forget he’s never been on a road trip before this one. D’Arnaud is at the very beginning of his sentence, the part that’s upper-case. The novelty of d’Arnaud simply being here hasn’t come close to wearing off.
You take in a lineup half-stocked with the rookiest of rookies and no, it’s not going to overwhelm. There’s not enough of a portfolio to tell you what you’re watching, so you kind of assume you’re not watching anything yet. But with those eyes closed, maybe these are the vague outlines of tomorrow sharpening today. Or maybe when d’Arnaud lets a passed ball bounce under his squat, Flores chooses to throw to the wrong base and California law expressly forbids Lagares from buying a hit, you close your eyes because you can’t bear to look.
Open ’em up and take a gander for the next forty games not at what these kids can’t do but at what they can do and might do. Will it be enough to help the Mets gain a steady stream of wins? To get Harvey into double-digits already?
Keep watching.
Friday night would be a good time to watch in Flushing on Social Media Night. Buy a ticket, get a Jay Horwitz bobblehead, look at some rookies finding their sea legs, determine how good the Tigers are, listen to Third Eye Blind and, mostly, give a hand to one of the best causes imaginable: Hope Shines for Shannon, which is raising funds to help Mets communications person extraordinaire Shannon Forde in her fight against breast cancer. It all adds up to a victory before you have a hint as the final score. Please check it out here.
by Jason Fry on 18 August 2013 1:20 am Remember the bottom of the first, when Travis d’Arnaud crouched down behind the plate in his very old-school catcher’s gear and made his major-league debut?
That was awesome.
Too bad the rest of the game sucked.
And it did suck — it was a sloggy, groggy mess that took the better part of forever while being alternately depressing and deeply boring. This was the kind of game you pray isn’t in the offing when you’ve got a baseball newbie on your couch or next to you at the park. It grieves me to think that was someone’s first baseball game — that unfortunate is off to MMA or Tic-Tac-Toe or something more interesting and elevating for the human spirit.
As for d’Arnaud, it feels more than a little stupid offering a scouting report off one night, but well, this is a baseball blog and I suppose the historical record compels me to put down a few thoughts. He came up empty with a chance to get the Mets back into the game but worked a couple of walks, seemed to frame pitches well, and looked nimble behind the plate. Yes, the Padres ran wild and too many balls wound up caroming around behind him, but Jenrry Mejia and David Aardsma seemed basically indifferent to the very idea of runners on first, and the Mets’ staff didn’t exactly cover itself with glory tonight. Mejia looked off from the very beginning, hanging sliders and looking fidgety and unsettled, and so it wasn’t an enormous surprise when he departed with his elbow barking. Just that bone spur those bone chips ticketed for off-season removal? Let’s be optimistic for once and assume so. As for Aardsma, was terrible, continuing a recent rocky stretch, but he was also the saacrifical laamb, brought in hurriedly and then left to take a beating. We’ll give him a paass.
D’Arnaud? Let’s say he was patient, and that impressed me. He worked counts and he made a nice play on Edinson Volquez’s spinning bunt, letting it pirouette its way into foul territory. On the day he’d have been forgiven for being jumpy and not letting the game come to him, he kept his cool.
And as we all know, if you’re going to be associated with the Mets, keeping your cool is a virtue.
Plus his parents seemed like really nice people.
by Greg Prince on 17 August 2013 11:27 am If you don’t count the L.A. portion of their itinerary, the Mets have done a nice job of sticking it to the National League West this season. Against the Giants, Rockies, Diamondbacks and Padres, their combined record after Friday night’s 5-2 win over San Diego is 15-7. So if we can just avoid drawing the Dodgers in the first round of the playoffs, we’ll be fine.
Amazing what a two-game winning streak can do for your morale and to your perspective. The Mets didn’t lose to the Padres Friday, just as they didn’t lose to the Padres Thursday and — despite so many individual Mets striking me as fodder to fill as yet undesigned Padre uniform combinations (which is to say sinking into a state of noncompetitive 10:10 PM oblivion where few north of La Jolla and east of El Cajon will be aware of their existence) — I’m feeling pretty decent about my team at the moment. This season, at roughly the three-quarters mark, is holding serve…or is not allowing its inherited demons to score, since I suppose you should use some sort of baseball metaphor if you’re going to be discussing baseball.
It’s dangerous to float too far above a state of curbed enthusiasm with these Mets, for they tend to let you down the instant your thumbs rise up. They went 16-9 from the moment Kirk Nieuwenhuis hastened Western Civilization’s decline through the sweep of the defending world champions in San Francisco. Since that exhilarating stretch, they’ve gone 16-16, the very definition of inconsistency: win one, lose one sixteen times. A month and change of .500 ball looks good when you haven’t hurdled over that bar for a full year in five years — and it’s not bad when your captain is down and your closer is out. But it’s still .500 for a month-and-change after playing at a .640 clip for a few golden weeks.
Of course 2013 was never going to be about 2013, which is easy to say when you take the sophisticated long view but difficult to deal with when you’re in trenches for all 162. That’s probably why we get overly excited with anything that breaks up the 56-64 routine on the cusp of our team’s 121st game. That’s why the birth of Travis d’Arnaud’s major league career is a bigger deal to us than anything the newly arrived Bentley Buck does short of laying down a guitar solo in diapers like that suspiciously talented baby in the heavy-rotation Pepsi Next commercial.
Our long prenatal nightmare is over and d’Arnaud joins the Mets tonight at Petco Park. John Buck can take his time with his family and Anthony Recker can take a seat. Those who are expert at proffering such observations report Anthony Recker comes equipped with a very sweet seat, but when your backup catcher goes 3-for-3 and is still batting .193, his backside can go back up against some pine. It’s Travis time!
Naturally, I hope the best thing the Mets are projected to place behind the plate since sliced Grote meets, exceeds and obliterates expectations. I hope he aids and abets Harvey and Wheeler as Buck has for most of this year and hits as Buck did for most of April. I hope this is one of those positions we can legitimately stop wondering about for the rest of the decade. I hope Travis d’Arnaud is charging out from under his mask to greet one of our fully matured young guns halfway to the mound after the Mets notch their biggest win since 2006 or 2000 or the 20th century.
If Ike Davis is a part of all that, that would be swell. I wouldn’t bet on it. I’d like to. I’d like to trust in Ike the way we wove him into our championship fantasies when Ike was the one whose promotion to the bigs signaled a brighter Met future. Ike Davis was Travis d’Arnaud in April 2010. It’s August 2013. Ike Davis is barely Ike Davis anymore.
Friday night, he was, if just in passing. In the third inning, just after Marlon Byrd homered to give Jon Niese a 2-0 lead, Ike blasted off like Ian Kennedy was Cape Kennedy. It was ground control to major GONE! They’ve brought the dimensions in at Petco Park. They could’ve pushed them back. Wouldn’t have mattered. Ike was unstoppable in that swing.
There haven’t been too many of those kinds of Ike Davis swings. Ike’s troubles have been closely monitored and well-documented. His conversion into an on-base percentage machine lately, as pleasant as it’s been, has been operated by wind turbine, with no traditional power source apparent. Ike Davis, whose portfolio bulged with 32 home runs produced in 2012, now has all of seven in 2013. For as much as he’s shed the patheticism that sent him to Las Vegas in June, he’s batting .204 and slugging .324. It’s been a slog on top of a trudge on top of valley fever on top of an ankle that crumpled in Colorado. He’s not the Gold Glove first baseman we thought he’d be. He hasn’t collected the Silver Sluggers we dreamed he might. Albert Pujols’s departure for Anaheim did not clear a space on the National League All-Star roster for him.
And when he starts to click a little, instead of being encouraged that this is it, he’s turning the corner, I mope to the opposite field. There’s something about Ike since he came back that tells me he’ll do just enough to tantalize us — we’ll be sure that finally he’ll live up to where we saw him ascending in 2010 before inevitably settling into the rut that’s defined him post-2011. We’ll instinctively anger at someone who seems like a genuinely good guy and appears to be an outstanding teammate (have you ever seen one Met offer so many other Mets “go get ’em” pats to the shoulder, back and assorted body parts?). We’ll look at Ike and dwell on what we thought he could be, not accept what he is. It’s an old Met story that could apply to almost any Met who was called up to great fanfare but delivered ultimately spotty results. Right now, recent OBP and Friday night moonshot notwithstanding, that well-worn tale feels like it looms as Ike Davis’s destiny.
Thank goodness Travis d’Arnaud could never possibly disappoint us like that.
by Greg Prince on 16 August 2013 10:20 am You know what Doc Gooden’s typical pitch count was when he was regularly registering double-digit strikeouts in 1984? Neither do I. It never occurred to me to ask. The only pitches any Mets fan was counting 29 years ago were the ones that resulted in strike three. That was the fun of the greatest new toy a Mets fan ever unwrapped and never got tired playing with.
Zack Wheeler struck out 12 Padres in six innings Thursday night in San Diego. Then he came out, because he had already thrown 115 pitches. That gets counted assiduously now. It gets counted so assiduously that it seemed surprising that he didn’t depart after five innings when he had recorded 10 strikeouts yet had already thrown 99 pitches. In 2013, letting a rookie who’d pitched that much pitch the sixth seemed to be pushing it. In 1984 — when Gooden was the last rookie Mets pitcher to strike out more hitters than Wheeler struck out last night — it likely wouldn’t have occurred to anybody to take out a pitcher with 12 strikeouts after six innings. Tom Seaver had once struck out 19 Padres in nine innings, a figure matched in Mets annals only by David Cone. Wheeler was theoretically mathematically alive to make some real team history at Petco Park.
Of course, Terry Collins wouldn’t have gotten back to the hotel alive had he thought to let him try.
Mind you, our current rookie phenom wasn’t ex-Zack-ly necessarily operating on Dwight’s level. Doc shut down the opposition totally and completely once he got rolling in his 16-K performances versus the Pirates and Phillies in September of ’84. Zack, on the other hand, gave up seven hits in his six innings and was saved from trailing only because of nifty defense on a couple of the pitches the Padres touched. Eric Young played some volleyball at the top of the left field wall in the third inning and batted Rene Rivera’s sure home run down to the ground to hold the .188-hitting catcher to a triple. It may be the only ball Young has batted with any success lately, but it was huge. So was Juan Lagares practically Puiging Tyson Ross out at home to prevent San Diego’s pitcher from scoring the go-ahead run in the fifth. Juan’s on-the-fly peg to John Buck was a beautiful strike in its own right…as beautiful as Ross’s slide into Buck’s shoes was ugly.
And speaking of ugly, how about that objectively unattractive two-out call at first blown by Brian Knight? Josh Satin had grounded to Ronny Cedeño (remember him?), who made an off-balance throw to Yonder Alonso to end the top of the fourth, except Knight mysteriously decided Alonso’s foot wasn’t on the bag, even though it probably was, and Daniel Murphy characteristically decided to keep running from second and thus crossed the plate safely. That this latest episode of human error unfolded amid a lively SNY discussion of MLB’s spectacularly flawed plan to institute instant replay on more close plays next year made the whole incident that much more delicious. That the fairly apparent mistake went in the Mets’ favor…hey, like Keith said, human error’s part of the game!
You had Young leaping. You had Lagares firing. You had Murphy with an assist from Knight. You had Mike Baxter graciously getting hit on the foot by Luke Gregerson, Murphy dutifully accepting a poorly conceived intentional walk and Marlon Byrd doubling clear over Chris Denorfia’s head in the eighth to break a 1-1 tie. You had Scott Atchison for one inning and Gonzalez Germen for two giving up nothing of substance. You even had Buck step away from Infant Watch ’13 to give birth to a bouncing baby bomb over the left field fence (it’s a solo shot!). So you had a lot of good things to count up Thursday night en route to the Mets’ 4-1 win.
But mostly you had the starter’s 12 strikeouts. Seven strikeouts swinging. Five strikeouts looking. An incredible slider working brilliantly if not overtime. The rookie’s pitch count topped a hundred in the sixth. Who would let a rookie who’s gonna need his right arm every fifth day over the next umpteen years go even that far usually? If the Mets had their usual allotment of seven ready relievers — which is to say if LaTroy Hawkins didn’t share at least one unfortunate equipment choice with Jordany Valdespin — Zack’s probably out of there after five, never mind that he raced to 10 Ks. He was definitely going to be out of there after six, his Wheeler’s Dozen notwithstanding. You don’t get rookies striking out 16 like in young Doctor Gooden’s day for two very reasonable reasons.
1) They don’t really make ’em like Dr. K anymore.
2) Even when they do, they know what the pitch counts are. They know ’em, they watch ’em and they swear by ’em. They ask for trouble when they don’t abide by ’em. They have loads of data supporting why this makes all the sense in the world. We are conditioned to nod and agree that a rookie who strikes out 12 batters in six innings almost certainly should never come back to the mound and try to strike out any more in the seventh. We understand what we didn’t decades ago that this would be reckless and that taking that kind of chance with this kind of arm would be irrational.
Progress can be a real shame sometimes.
by Jason Fry on 15 August 2013 3:18 am Every now and again your baseball team goes on a run. Maybe it’s a good run, where the players look loose and up in the stands or out there on your couch you’re confident that they’ll keep cruising to victory or come back and win. Maybe it’s a great run, which is all of the above but intensified so that all involved feel like they’re walking on water. Maybe it’s even a not-for-decades run that just has everybody shaking their heads, and leaves you walking around with the dazed grin of a lottery winner.
I wouldn’t know about the last variety, but ask a Dodgers fan to tell you what it feels like.
There isn’t much shame in getting swept by this Dodgers club right now — it would be like considering yourself unworthy for being hurled skyward by a tornado or falling down in an earthquake or getting incinerated by a volcano. They’re that good, that lucky, that on the right side of a crazy statistical anomaly, that whatever you want to call it.
The funny thing is for a while there tonight it looked like we were seeing the Dodgers’ luck finally run out. In the fourth, a bad call on Carl Crawford and some lousy baserunning by Adrian Gonzalez meant L.A. had four hits in the inning but didn’t score, and you could hear the mutters of disbelief all around Dodger Stadium — wait a minute, we fell out of a boat and actually got wet!
But it was not to be, despite Marlon Byrd’s three-run shot (the 100th of his career), another terrific start by Dillon Gee and a strong performance from Andrew Brown, who really ought to get a chance to play now that Eric Young Jr. once again resembles Eric Young Jr. Andre Ethier, perhaps auditioning for a trade to the Mets, slammed a pinch-hit home run off LaTroy Hawkins with two outs to go, sending the Mets to the familiar trudge of extra innings and the inevitability we all knew was lurking out there somewhere.
That it came via Yasiel Puig wasn’t really a surprise either. Puig’s erasure of Byrd at third base in the second inning was good enough to spark a “Holy mackerel!” from Vin Scully and an “Oh my goodness” from Howie Rose. I just shook my head, amazed above all else that Puig didn’t really cock his arm to throw — he gunned Byrd down on what looked like a short-arm. In the 12th, Puig hit a little bounder with some spin up the middle. Omar Quintanilla would have been better off if he hadn’t just tipped it with his glove, causing the ball to die in the outfield grass as Juan Lagares sprinted in and Daniel Murphy signaled frantically. Too late — there was no way to get Puig. A Gonzalez shot down the line followed, and it was good night Mets and good luck everybody else.
Don’t pinch yourself, Dodgers fans. Because why would you want to wake up from this?
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