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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 3 August 2013 4:02 am I’m pretty sure the Mets won their game Friday night. Score says they did. My memory says they did. Eric Young, Jr., tossing his helmet into the air before stomping on home plate amid a sea of orange-trimmed blue jerseys says they did.
So why doesn’t it feel more festive? Probably because, in descending order of significance, David Wright left with a hamstring injury; nine simple innings became eleven stressful frames; and why the hell are we decent Metsopotamian types rooting against the most innocuous franchise in baseball, the Kansas City Royals?
I don’t want to root against the Royals. I don’t necessarily need to root for the Royals in any given context, but what have the Royals ever done to me except fleece the Mets out of Amos Otis when I was six? Through their 45-year history, the Royals have existed in a Mets-free vacuum, save for two prior Interleague engagements completed long ago. They’ve either been not very good, pretty darn bad or achingly close to great. The ache was from when they were at their best, between 1976 and 1980, and I cheered my adolescent heart out for them during four Octobers when the Mets were nowhere in sight. In the first three, they couldn’t quite put away the Yankees. In the fourth, they did a magnificent job taking care of the ALCS but fell to the fetid Phillies in the World Series.
The Royals were the ultimate Not the Yankees/Not the Phillies enterprise in their time. Had they come along as such at the dawn of this decade, we’d all have painted our faces a simpatico shade of powder blue. And even when their time was running out, they did right by us, posting their only world championship by sticking it to our bitter enemies of the mid-1980s, the White Rat Redbirds. And then, as if they still felt bad about Otis for Foy, they sent us David Cone and asked only Ed Hearn in exchange.
I ask you, why do I have to gear up to be down on the Royals for some stray weekend now? The Royals are making a legitimate bid to become the Pirates of the American League (assuming the Pirates are secure in their newfound position as the Pirates of the National League), winning nine in a row before arriving in Flushing for their first series in our borough since 2002, which in turn was one year before their most recent winning season…which was a year before the only detour the Mets ever took to Kansas City.
So we’re talking about a team that from 2005 through 2012 wasn’t any good at all and not remotely on our radar. All these seasons since they were a little threatening or of any fleeting concern, we have to be all, “Ooh, the Royals…gotta beat those lousy SOBs.”
Just wasn’t feeling it Friday night. Wanted the Mets to prevail. Didn’t have any interest in seeing the Royals be their victims. They served their purpose as the guys in the non-Mets uniforms on the same field as the Mets in that they scored fewer runs than the Mets — as if that’s mathematically possible — but c’mon. The Royals? The Royals are not a rival and they barely qualify as an opponent. They’re more like kindred spirits who happen to share three boxes on the same pocket schedule.
The Royals will be here through Sunday. Bobby Parnell will not be in evidence during the same period. Stiff neck, they say, which would be a great setup for a joke about all the home runs he’s given up, but Bobby Parnell’s been quite reliable, so the joke was on the rest of the Mets bullpen having to play musical chairs and discover their comfort zones within new roles. They needed to do this for just two innings, as Dillon Gee was superb for seven before being left in to put a runner on to start the eighth. At 2-0, it became it became try-your-luck time in the pen.
The only problem reliever to pitch Friday was David Aardsma, which was a shame, since he was the one who had been promoted to Parnell’s spot. Aardsma’s been terrific since becoming a Met, so you knew…I mean you just knew he wouldn’t transition seamlessly to the promotion. It doesn’t matter that he’s closed games before elsewhere. It doesn’t matter that a batter is a batter is a batter. You could feel him overamped to get this game over with when he came on in the ninth, which was a surefire sign the game would continue beyond the ninth, meaning more pitchers from the pen — a Pedro Feliciano sighting! a Carlos Torres (a.k.a. Saturday’s supposed starter) sighting! — and more innings for everybody.
But less Wright. Oh boy, was there less Wright when David aggravated the same hamstring that was apparently giving him trouble in Miami a few nights ago. Then it was labeled a “cramp” for which Terry Collins suspiciously didn’t sit him after seeing. It reminded me of Art Howe looking at a 21-year-old Jose Reyes writhing in agony at Olympic Stadium and not thinking it was worth resting him because the kid hadta learn to play with pain.
Art Howe didn’t manage the Mets after that season.
Wright, of course, was giving it his all, just as he has for ten seasons. He was beating out a bad throw at first to start the tenth and couldn’t race to second because he could barely hobble to first. David left. He won’t be back for a while. And the Mets — whose only runs to that point had come on Wright’s two-run, Piazza-tying, 220th career homer in the first — didn’t score the winning run he originally represented, same as they didn’t score the leadoff runner (generated by the bat of an “Ike” somebody or other) in the ninth.
The Royals appeared poised to extend their winning streak to ten, if only because they had extended the game into a fifth hour and because their version of being on a roll has been demonstrably more impressive than the Mets’ version of being on a roll. The Mets got incredibly hot in June and July and almost made it to six games under .500 last week. The Royals got incredibly hot and thrust themselves above .500 and into their league’s playoff picture. Their league is the American League. Why we’re getting tangled up with an American League playoff contender in August is beyond me.
Anyway, for all that was aggravating or anomalous or just plain ominous about this game, the Mets won it. Eric Young hit his first Mets home run and the scoreboard titled definitively in our favor.
Nothing wrong with that part.
by Greg Prince on 2 August 2013 11:32 am Previously on The Newsroom…
SEPTEMBER 23, 2011
WILL
They’re caps, Charlie. Baseball caps. Baseball caps honoring the police, the fire fighters, all the first responders. They should’ve worn them. That’s all I’m saying. Nobody was ever hurt by a cap.
CHARLIE
Torre says different.
WILL
Torre was wrong, Charlie. Torre was wrong.
***
DON
Rzepczynski? Who? I’m gonna need a spelling. What do you mean “like it sounds”?
***
MAC
The Cardinals couldn’t hold a four-run lead against the Mets yesterday. If you can’t beat the Mets, how can you expect to make the playoffs?
WILL
It’s called playing the spoiler.
MAC
What?
WILL
The spoiler. It’s what you do when you’re out of it, but you haven’t folded it up.
***
CHARLIE
Bad news. Capuano isn’t going anywhere.
REESE
Who is that bad for? Not for me, not for my mother and not for this company.
***
JIM
Everybody up here is sure the Red Sox are collapsing. And I can’t get thirty minutes with Romney or Francona.
MAGGIE
I can’t hear you! Are you with somebody?
JIM
I’ve gotta go.
***
NEAL
He’s not just writing a book. He’s also starring in a documentary about his pitch. It could be explosive.
MAC
Like anybody’s going to want to read what a journeyman knuckleballer has to say.
NEAL
He’s more than that.
***
SLOAN
No way Reyes comes back. Flushing can’t afford a shortstop of his skill level in this market. Not after what the Madoffs did.
MAGGIE
So you’re saying…
SLOAN
I’m saying this is his last homestand.
***
WILL
Braun’s breathing down his neck. Kemp’s breathing down his neck. I tell ya, Charlie, the ghosts of Cleon Jones and John Olerud are breathing down his neck. This batting title is history in the making.
CHARLIE
History? These are decimal points we’re talking about.
WILL
History is written in decimal points, Charlie. Decimal points and half-games.
***
Now the HBO Series, The Newsroom.
INT. NEWSROOM — NIGHT
The staff is gathered around the monitor on NEAL’s desk, watching MLB Network, reacting to the momentous events of the final day of the 2011 regular season. Superimposed on screen is today’s date:
SEPTEMBER 28, 2011
WILL
This is what’s great about America, Charlie. It’s the uncertainty. We came to work this morning and there was no doubt — none — over who we were going to watch this October. Now the world’s turned upside down.
SLOAN
It’s revolutionary.
DON
How’s that?
SLOAN
When the British surrendered at Yorktown, Lord Cornwalis ordered the band to play “The World Turned Upside Down.”
WILL
You know that’s probably a myth.
SLOAN
We’re America. We need our myths.
WILL
You’re right. We need our myths. We need our folktales. We need the stories that bind us, whether we’re Republicans, like I am, or whatever you guys are. But we need to keep our myths separated from our news.
NEAL
One of the Occupy Wall Street leaders told me essentially the same thing, that it’s the myth of self-reliance that blinds decent Americans to their obligations to one another.
WILL
Look, Charlie, I know you go back a ways with John Henry. But look at the big picture. Two cities are enormously happy tonight. Two cities are inconsolably sad. We have a batting champion in this very metropolis.
CHARLIE
Posing on the dock of the World’s Fair Marina with a title reeled in fishily, if you ask me.
WILL
It’s a batting average, Charlie. Once Jose accumulated 502 plate appearances, it didn’t matter when they occurred.
CHARLIE
He bunted his way on.
WILL
He’s a leadoff hitter, Charlie. It’s what leadoff hitters do.
CHARLIE
He pulled himself in the first inning.
WILL
Regrettable but not illegal.
CHARLIE
Ted Williams wouldn’t have done it that way. That was a legitimate batting champion — and a top-notch fly fisherman to boot!
WILL
Correct me if I’m wrong, Charlie, but Ted Williams eschewed neckties and disdained the Boston press corps.
CHARLIE
What does that have to do with anything?
WILL
I’m saying if you require an example of good sportsmanship, don’t choose someone who wouldn’t come on our show or respect what we wear.
CHARLIE
So it’s a day of jubilee for you; for Reyes; and for the Rays and Cardinals. Everything is going your way at last.
WILL
Seventy-seven win season complete and winter’s approach notwithstanding, it would appear so. True, I have to confine my filthy nicotine habit to my office, where even there I’m technically in violation of New York City’s Draconian public health codes. And Leona and her hatchet-man son aren’t going to get off our ass anytime soon. And the Tea Party is coming for my scalp…
CHARLIE
Now you’re indulging in another myth where the Native American is concerned.
WILL
Indians, Charlie. Can we all agree to call them Indians? Just here? In the sanctity of the newsroom? Can we be regular guys here?
NEAL
You realize I’m the only actual Indian either of you know, and your seven-figure salary likely precludes your regular-guy status.
MAC
Wait, I’m confused. These Indians — they’re not in the playoffs, are they? And don’t think I didn’t notice that allegorical crack about Yorktown. If we’d had home field advantage, old Corny might have come from behind just like Tampa Bay did against the bloody Yanks and all of this post-match prattle would be of cricket.
SLOAN BEGINS TO RESPOND BUT FALLS BACKWARD IN CHAIR. MAGGIE RUSHES IN.
MAGGIE
I just got this e-mail from a blogger I know in Milwaukee.
WILL
Is it from Laverne or Shirley?
MAGGIE
He writes for Full Yount…
WILL (DISDAINFULLY)
Full Yount?
MAGGIE
You know, like ‘full count,’ three and two. It’s named for the Hall of Famer Robin Yount.
WILL
I follow. Believe me, I follow. I might not want to, but I do. What’s the matter, was “molitorcocktail.com” already taken?
MAGGIE
Full Yount has a tip about Ryan Braun.
WILL
That Jose Reyes was going to be uncatchable in the batting race no matter when he sat himself down this afternoon? Maggie, your basement buddy really needs to sign up for the Extra Innings package.
MAGGIE:
No. Not that. There may be something wrong with Braun’s urine sample.
THE OPENING STRAINS OF COLDPLAY’S “VIVA LA VIDA” BECOME AUDIBLE.
DON
My college roommate is Bud Selig’s assistant counsel. I just ran into him over the weekend when I went to see Moneyball.
CHARLIE
Any good?
DON
Not bad if you pretend the 2002 A’s never had Hudson, Mulder or Zito.
CHARLIE
I mean your roommate. Is he a good source?
DON
Solid as they come. He helped negotiate the last CBA.
NEAL
I have a contact inside one of the sausage costumes at Miller Park. The Chorizo. I’ll see what he knows.
WILL
I golfed with Bob Uecker when I was in the Bush Senior administration and he served on the President’s Council on Physical Fitness. Uke’s always said Braun was a pisser. I guess now’s the time to find out if he meant that literally.
MAGGIE
Also, Jim called in. Romney told a VFW hall in Nashua that he’s looking forward to being at “Fenway Stadium” next week “for the divisional World Series.”
CHARLIE
He said this after the Sox were eliminated by the O’s?
MAGGIE
Everybody else on the bus had already gone back to the hotel bar. Jim’s the only Romney embed who has integrity AND the governor’s gaffe on tape.
CHARLIE
I knew sending him up there would pay off!
MAC
So now we give priority to misstatements over the issues and policy debates of our time? It’s Casey Stengel all over again.
WILL
Anthony.
MAC
What?
WILL
Casey Anthony. We haven’t covered Casey Stengel in at least four decades. You could look it up.
MAC BEGINS TO RESPOND BUT FALLS BACKWARD IN CHAIR.
CHARLIE
Leona’s not gonna like this Braun business.
WILL
Are you kidding? They love scandal upstairs. Lowest common denominator and all that. Ratings through the roof! Delta Club seats for everybody next year! Even Neal.
CHARLIE
This one is different. The Koch brothers have a lot of interests in Wisconsin, and there are rumblings about a recall election for Scott Walker. Plus Big Dairy really likes the Brewers.
WILL
Charlie, can you handle Reese?
CHARLIE
Like Braun can handle a fastball.
WILL
Not the analogy I would’ve chosen right now, but OK.
SLOAN
The Wild Card is a big, sexy story, but the economic impact on St. Petersburg is overstated. I’m worried about Detroit. Their infrastructure is in tatters and they have no bullpen.
NEAL
I’ve collected some interesting data from the Society for American Baseball Research that suggests St. Louis will bear monitoring.
MAC
Against the Phillies’ pitching? The only thing that’ll bear monitoring is their pulse to see if they have one.
NEAL
According to SABR, the squirrel population has increased at Busch Stadium to a level of critical mass where one of them could actually trot onto the field during the course of play and affect the outcome with some sort of rally. It may be worth checking into.
MAC
If you think I’m shifting resources out of Philadelphia for one of your nutty squirrel theories…
MAC’S RESPONSE IS CUT OFF WHEN SHE FALLS BACKWARD IN CHAIR.
WILL
All right people, get your butts in gear. The postseason is about to commence. Let’s not get caught looking at strike one.
MAC SLIPS ON THE NEWSROOM FLOOR. EVERYBODY ELSE DELVES INTO ACTION. “VIVA LA VIDA” SWELLS.
FADE TO BLACK
by Jason Fry on 1 August 2013 4:22 pm One of these days Matt Harvey will have his revenge on the Miami Marlins, and it will be glorious.
One of these days his teammates will stop eyeing him with quiet awe and score runs for him, and that will be even better.
Until then, we’re left with days like today, games in which the Mets do nothing with the bats and leave Harvey with zero margin for error, so that one blemish of an inning beats him. We’re left watching them do nothing to counter the ranks of Marlins anonymous (Tom Koehler), notorious (Logan Morrison), rapidly becoming notorious (Donovan Solano) and vicious (Jeffrey Loria).
The Mets had their chances, true, but were undone by nice plays on the other side of the ball (great catch by Jake Marisnick), bad luck (Omar Quintanilla ripping a liner right at Morrison) and by the fact that Ike Davis and Harvey himself kept coming up with two out and baserunners in dire need of driving in.
Ike looks better; I’ll grant him that much. In the first inning he battled Koehler rather nicely, fouling off a succession of pitches that in the spring would have made short work of him, with the butt flying out and the arms windmilling and finally the Ike Face of dismay and surprise, even though nobody else was surprised. That didn’t happen, and hasn’t routinely happened in a while — Ike’s being more selective and making more contact. But, well, he still struck out.
As for Harvey, well, I thought on top of everything else he was another Mike Hampton with a bat in his hands, and he’s not. In fact, he’s pretty terrible. Something for our phenom to work on.
Anyway, the sixth inning was the one to watch, with Harvey dueling Giancarlo Stanton through a thoroughly entertaining sequence of inside fastballs and outside sliders, culminating in a slider on the corner that Stanton lingered briefly to consider before walking away, beaten and anoyed. That was the second out, and it suree looked like Harvey would leave Marlins stranded at first and third. But no, Morrison pulled one wide of Justin Turner (marking the first earned run surrendered by Harvey since the All-Star Break), Harvey hit Ed Lucas, and Solano battled through a lengthy AB before delivering the fatal two-run blow.
Yeah, it was fatal. The second the ball touched down you could hear the air hissing out of the Met balloon and knew they weren’t going to do anything, which they didn’t.
Watching the Marlins high-fiving, I flashed back to something I started thinking about during the Nats series. Baseball, famously, has no clock — you have to give the other guy 27 outs, and if you’ve only collected 26 nothing has been decided no matter what the score, the situation or the hour. It’s marvelous, and one of the reasons baseball’s the best damn game of them all.
But in another sense, baseball most definitely has a clock. The Mets are playing a lot better than they have been, and the teams above them in the NL East aren’t particularly impressive. Still, they’re 3-5 in their last two intradivision series, which is bad not just because of too few Ws and too many Ls, but also because it means they’re running out of time. The clock — the one that supposedly doesn’t exist — is ticking ominously. Fewer games left means the chance of winning shrinks to unlikely, and then to miraculous, and then to impossible. The Mets were already facing that first label, are rapidly approaching the second, and are almost certainly destined for the third. We already knew that (or at least strongly suspected it), and it’s the way the vast majority of seasons end, but it’s still disappointing to be reminded.
by Greg Prince on 1 August 2013 2:57 am Byrderers Row lives. Was it worth the call from the governor?
The energized, fun-size Mets…the ones with an honest-to-god top of the order…the ones whose outfield is no longer a punch line but is arguably a strength…they remain as they’ve been for the past six or so weeks. These are the Mets on which Marlon Byrd anchors right field and the cleanup spot, the Mets who win slightly more often than they lose, the Mets who aren’t automatically fighting Sominex for market share.
They’re ours from now ’til year’s end, whether we want them as such or not.
The competent Mets of Marlon Byrd’s unforeseen heyday aren’t Byrd’s alone. On defense he flanks super rook Juan Lagares — maybe not super like Yasel Puig this year or Bryce Harper last year, but as scintillating as any frosh Met outfielder has been since, geez, Strawberry in 1983? Dykstra 1985? Ochoa 1996? Agbayani 1999? Maybe Jay Payton. Jay came in third for Rookie of the Year in 2000, but it was a light year in the National League; Rick Ankiel came in second. The point is it’s been a long while since the Mets have had anybody come up from the minors and show more than the briefest of Nieuwenhuisian flashes out there, even if it’s been only a short while since Lagares laid claim to center field. He could be Pat Howell or Jeff Duncan for all we know. For now, he’s close enough to Tommie Agee.
Lagares, in turn, flanks Eric Young, Jr., who almost homered in Miami (weird fence for a weird park) and has definitely transformed the leadoff spot and left field into assets, or things other than liabilities. Even when slumping, he seems a threat to do something besides slump deeper. We’ve gotten too used to guys who succeed for a moment but can’t convince us they’re worth a damn.
But we come back to Byrd because unlike Young or Lagares or any other Met, he was the one we thought might have some trade value for a team that’s inching rather than racing its way out of Mudville as the final third of 2013 approaches. Get something substantial for Byrd and maybe it bodes well for 2014. Get something of a “something — anything” nature for Byrd, and at least we’re not moaning a year from now, “Can you believe we just let him walk?” Or do what was done, which was stay put, stand pat and stick it out. The 2013 Mets with Marlon Byrd figure to be a better bet than the 2013 Mets sans Marlon Byrd. But a better bet to do what, exactly?
Most of my constructions end with question marks because I don’t know. The Mets didn’t kick Byrd out of the nest. I’m not unhappy about that. I’m going to assume the presence of his name amid the prevailing swap chatter didn’t elicit a stampede to Sandy Alderson’s hold button. I’m not thinking this is the start of a beautiful long-term relationship with the 35-year-old Byrd or anything like that. I doubt it should be. The Byrd-led Mets have played about as well as one can imagine them having played since June 16, yet for all that they are 24-18, hardly the stuff of Rays on a roll. The Phillies and Nationals have gone largely catatonic yet we have somehow failed to pass either of them. Perhaps finishing a hyperdistant second to Atlanta isn’t much of a goal, but as long as we’re nearby, it would be nice to get there.
Alderson suggested Young-Lagares-Byrd has been, over the last month, “maybe the most productive outfield in baseball,” which, on the surface, sounds camera-ready to join “skill set” “meaningful games in September,” “lobby” and, most recently, “what outfield?” in the Mets Executive Hall of WTF? Yet there is a touch of evidence to back up Alderson’s assertion, as long as one accepts the terms of productivity as chronologically limited. Whether the Mets’ outfield is crushing it at a more consistent rate than its 29 peer groups is irrelevant. It’s better than what was expected out of left, center and right from the Mets, and the overall Mets experience has improved in accordance with the ascendance of our flycatching trio.
Doesn’t mean we’re set, and nobody said we are. This season has had a real “just go with it” quality from the start. There is no coherent executional philosophy in evidence, which is about par for an organization that doesn’t have enough pieces to set in place for such luxuries. Twelve pitchers? Thirteen pitchers? Four-man bench? Six-man rotation? No backup shortstop? This one sits for a week? That one plays for a week? “Momentum” is paramount? Just go with it. It’s only the 2013 Mets.
Yet it’s been kind of working. It didn’t work great in Miami Wednesday night, but did you really believe we could sweep the Marlins in the Loriatorium? Taking two of three there with one to go (guess what day it is…Guess What DAY IT IS!) may be a sign that the antiapocalypse is finally upon us, that the Mets aren’t Chad Quallsing their way to the end of the season. They may not totally fall on their faces as they have through August and September these past several anni. Shoot, they practically skated across July. Maybe they’ll finish second. Maybe they won’t. Maybe Terry Collins will be worth retaining. Maybe he won’t. Maybe all the Harvey Days and Wheeler Days and Días de Mejia will begin to pile up into whole weeks, then months of anticipation once the maturing starting staff is surrounded by position players we wouldn’t dare dream of desiring to trade just because it’s July 31.
We probably could’ve gotten a bag of balls for Marlon Byrd. But y’know what? This isn’t quite a bag of balls season anymore. I can respect that.
by Greg Prince on 31 July 2013 11:30 am Congratulations to proven Amazin’ research maven Mathias Kook and talented Metsian writer William Akers for understanding the 1986 World Series was a Fall Classic Sly Stone probably adored, for almost Everybody [Was] A Star. As noted here, 26 of the 43 players who played in the last truly great World Series — parochially speaking — made an All-Star team at one point or another in their major league careers. Their stellar ranks included three future Hall of Famers (Gary Carter, Wade Boggs, Jim Rice), five Most Valuable Players (Keith Hernandez, Kevin Mitchell, Don Baylor, Roger Clemens, Rice) and a couple of Cy Young winners (Dwight Gooden, Clemens) plus varied and sundry record-holders, defensive wizards and transcendent icons.
But that’s not what we wanted to know. We wanted to know who were the 17 Mets and Red Sox who saw action in the ’86 World Series who never made an All-Star team. Mathias and William were quickest to find and submit the correct answers and thus earned the 1986 World Series DVD set from MLB Productions. (Honorable mention to TJ O’Neill, who was just a shade behind those two in delivering the right responses.) Those answers are:
Roger McDowell, Bobby Ojeda, Doug Sisk (three Mets pitchers);
Oil Can Boyd, Steve Crawford, Al Nipper, Calvin Schiraldi (four Red Sox pitchers);
Marty Barrett, Spike Owen, Ed Romero, Dave Stapleton (four Red Sox position players);
Wally Backman, Kevin Elster, Danny Heep, Rafael Santana, Tim Teufel, Mookie Wilson (six Mets position players).
For the record, Backman, McDowell and Ojeda were all plausible All-Star candidates in 1986. But then again, what Met wasn’t? They were all All-Galaxy that summer.
Thank you to everybody who gave this quiz and/or the two preceding it a shot. Thanks to MLB Productions for again providing such terrific prizes for us to give away. Check out MLB on iTunes for all the baseball you can download there.
by Jason Fry on 31 July 2013 1:14 am Perhaps you’ve heard: Baseball is an unfair game.
I learned that as a kid, having read it somewhere in the collected works of noted philosopher Roderick Edwin Kanehl, known once upon the Polo Grounds as Hot Rod. Baseball, Prof. Kanehl explained, “is a lot like life. The line drives are caught, the squibbles go for base hits.”
Zack Wheeler was eight outs away from a no-hitter, instant elevation to Mets Valhalla and a pretty awesome mic drop in his presumably friendly rivalry with fellow phenom Matt Harvey. You’d think I’d know better after 44 years of Mets fandom, not to mention perusing The Teachings of Chairman Rod, but on my couch I was ready and very eager to see what No-Hitter No. 2 would feel like. And why not? Wheeler was so astonishingly dominant, and the Marlins are so bad, that the question had shifted from “can everything go right?” to “will anything go wrong?”
This wasn’t fan overconfidence, either. Man, was Wheeler ever a treat to watch — there’s his leaping motion, the way he drags his foot down the mound like he’s chasing the baseball towards the batter, and that darting slider, and most of all that diving, running fastball. You can see hitters gather themselves with a touch of resignation when Wheeler starts pouring those in — he has so much natural movement that he can just put the ball on the plate and watch it do its work. He’s already very impressive, and you can see him getting steadily better since his recall. It won’t be a perfectly smooth ascent — it never is — but if you’re not salivating at the thought of Wheeler a year from now, have an ENT check your glands. Because barring the usual pitcher you-never-knows, he’s going to be really good.
Hell, he’s already really good.
But then Ed Lucas singled — you had to figure it would be the 31-year-old rookie, because it always is — and that was that. It was nice to have it be a disappointment and not another invitation to ponder the universe’s grudge against Mets pitchers — thank you, Johan — but then a minute later Donovan Solano had singled and Jake Marisnick (who the hell are these guys?) had singled and not only was there no no-hitter, but the game was tied. Wheeler, to his considerable credit, got himself together and coaxed a double-play grounder out of Jeff Mathis, but five minutes had turned the game from the stuff of dreams to your run-of-the-mill Mets mess.
Never mind our great pitching — why the hell can’t any of these guys hit?
Wheeler departed and the Mets got down to Metsing. Marlon Byrd — the savior nobody saw coming — tripled, but a leadoff triple for the Mets is like a two-out single for anybody else. Marlon stayed rooted to his base while Ike Davis struck out and John Buck grounded out and Omar Quintanilla struck out, leaving Chad Qualls literally tumbling off the mound in excitement, and a familiar spot of discomfort in my stomach tried to blossom into a baseball ulcer. Because if you wanted another extra-inning affair against the Marlins in Lorialand, well, that made one of us.
So of course the Mets won tidily in 10 — just enough free baseball to settle things. Bobby Parnell didn’t look like himself, with poor location and a fastball missing some zip, but he got bailed out on nifty plays by Daniel Murphy and Wright. You know how it feels when you watch your closer walk off a loser on a flurry of bloops and a swinging bunt? (Not that that’s ever happened at Soilmaster.) Well, this was the opposite — gloves flung out like cestas, coming up with balls and turning them into outs.
Like Hot Rod said, it’s an unfair game.
by Greg Prince on 30 July 2013 1:53 pm ***WE HAVE OUR WINNERS. THANKS FOR PLAYING.***
The 1986 World Series was quite literally a star-studded affair. Now all of it can be yours — even the parts not so stellarly studded. For as you’re about to find out, sometimes you have to search beyond the stars in order to grab what glitters most.
MLB Productions is providing us with two copies of The 1986 New York Mets World Series Collector’s Edition DVD Set. That’s the ENTIRE World Series, all seven games plus a bonus disc featuring the final game of the 1986 NLCS (spoiler alert: we won) and a fistful of extras. Slap any of the eight discs in your DVD-playing device any time you need a historical pick-me-up. Even the losses aren’t so bad because, hey, we won in the end.
Why are these people being so generous? Because they want you to know a torrent of titles from the Major League Baseball Productions Film & Video Archive are now available digitally on iTunes and are willing to have us give you a chance to win a great prize like this to do so. We’re on board with that and will now ask two Faith and Fear readers to take advantage of their generosity.
 You will win the 1986 World Series boxed set if you can answer our little quiz about the last fully satisfying Fall Classic.
As mentioned above, the Mets-Red Sox clash was a star-studded affair. Of the 43 players to appear in that World Series, 26 of them were selected to at least one All-Star team at one point or another during the course of their respective major league careers. That means only 17 of them weren’t.
Those 17 are the fellows who interest us at the moment.
What we need to know to award you this prize is:
1) Who were the three (3) Mets pitchers who played in the 1986 World Series who NEVER made a National League or American League All-Star team?
2) Who were the four (4) Red Sox pitchers who played in the 1986 World Series who NEVER made an American League or National League All-Star team?
3) Who were the four (4) Red Sox position players who played in the 1986 World Series who NEVER made an American League or National League All-Star team?
4) Who were the six (6) Mets position players who played in the 1986 World Series who NEVER made a National League or American League All-Star team?
Remember: We want the guys who weren’t All-Stars. If somebody made an All-Star team — whether as a Met, a Red Sock or member of some other MLB franchise — he’s not who you’re looking for.
Know your helpful resources and be among the first two contestants to E-MAIL all four correct answers to faithandfear@gmail.com and you will win the entire 1986 World Series, just as the Mets of 27 years ago did.
Promotional considerations furnished by MLB Productions, who want you to know what you can find at MLB on iTunes:
Aside from MLB Bloopers and Prime 9: MLB Heroics, available programming includes The Best of the Home Run Derby and Prime 9: All-Star Moments; Official World Series Films dating back to 1947, including the 1969 and 1986 films; the first season of This Week In Baseball, which originally aired in 1977; a documentary offering a fresh perspective on Jackie Robinson’s life and career; recent productions, including a comprehensive film chronicling every era of World Series play and documentaries created to celebrate notable anniversaries for the Mets, Astros and Red Sox; bloopers titles highlighting the funniest MLB moments; and many other titles. Any of these films can now be downloaded from the iTunes store. Prices range from $1.99 for individual episodes of Prime 9 and This Week in Baseball to $19.99 for the Official 2012 World Series Film in HD.
Good luck!
***WE HAVE OUR WINNERS. THANKS FOR PLAYING.***
by Greg Prince on 30 July 2013 2:42 am If you want to swim with the sharks, you’ve got to learn to outlast the Marlins. Or something like that. And son of a Rich Renteria, Monday night we sure as Orestes Destrade did.
On the twentieth anniversary plus one day of the evening Anthony Young didn’t just not lose to but actually won against then-expansion then-Florida, the 2013 Mets unbaned their existence by not just not losing but actually winning in Miami.
Will wonders ever cease? Well, perhaps by tonight we shall find out that they do. But for the time being, we are riding a one-game unbeaten streak at Monstrosity Park, not letting a game that was getting away fully get away, not allowing a tying run to tie it up in the ninth, not permitting a save situation to get blown to lime green smithereens.
I watched the Mets build a lead, fall behind, surge ahead and then not get caught, yet I couldn’t tell you how it happened. Sure, I could throw names like Marlon Byrd, Bobby Parnell and Ike Davis (IKE DAVIS?) at you and elaborate on their roles in the 6-5 victory, but that doesn’t explain what in the name of Bret Barberie transpired to reroute the Mets’ road to ruin.
Our boys had prepared a trap door for themselves in the ninth. Two were out. Two were on. Giancarlo Stanton was up. The Mets, improbably ahead by one, were about to slide down the chute of inevitable recriminations. For Pat Rapp’s sake, the Marlins had their primary trap door button-pusher at the ready. All Stanton had to do was give it a tap. An old foe, Juan Pierre — pinch-running for Greg Dobbs of the Bastardly Greg Dobbses — crept closer and closer to home. A new foe, Christian Yelich — 21 going on 12 by the looks of him — had used all of the veteran savvy at his disposal to work a full-count walk. Giancarlo Stanton…
C’mon. Too obvious.
Maybe that was it. Maybe the trap door had one too many glaring lime green arrows pointing to its entrance. Fool the Mets once, shame on them. Fool the Mets five times in six games played against the last-place Marlins to date at the Loriatorium this season and perhaps they get a clue. Whatever. Stanton swung at Parnell’s first offering and grounded it to Daniel Murphy. Contrary to all Metsian-Marlinian intuition, Murphy picked up the ball and threw it to Davis without incident. Apparently, the Mets forgot to lose.
What a great game to pack up and fly home from! Sadly, three more contests remain down Clevelander way before our escape from implicit doom is scheduled. Wonders will need to continue if we’re ever going to stop assuming the worst about the Mets at the Marlins. Monday night notwithstanding, they’ve provided us ample ammunition for assumption. Then again, there was once a night when Anthony Young was surely headed for 0-14 inside the friendly confines of beautiful Shea Stadium, yet was rescued in the bottom of the ninth when the likes of Jeff McKnight, Dave Gallagher, Ryan Thompson and Eddie Murray (one of these names is not like the others) galloped to his aid. AY’s reward? He didn’t just not drop to 0-14. He rose to 1-13 and snapped a two-year, 27-decision losing streak in the process. When the Mets pulled it out on their historically beleaguered hurler’s behalf, I thought, “I’ll be a Charlie Hough’s uncle — Young finally didn’t lose!”
Whether in 2013 when visiting the Marlins or in 1993 when wallowing through six months of shit-smelling foulness you can’t even imagine, or maybe you just don’t want to, you have to revel in your redemptive triumphs where you can find them.
by Jason Fry on 28 July 2013 10:25 pm Yeah, OK. I don’t want to do this and you don’t want me to do this either, because today’s game was unpleasant and relentless. The only saving grace was Gary and Ron, long after any sensible person had fled for other channels, showing off their knowledge of former presidents: Ronnie went for William Taft’s post-White House career on the Supreme Court, Gary noted William Henry Harrison’s brief and star-crossed time in office, and then they both speculated about the truculent John Adams as a mascot. Even when the score’s a disaster, our announcers are so much better than anyone else’s that it’s amazing.
As the weekend’s dreams turned to dust, I kept thinking about that play in Friday night’s second game — of Justin Turner’s glove flip to Daniel Murphy, and Murph’s heave into the body of a startled Wilton Ramos. Nothing has gone right since then, and while I don’t mean to lay it on Murph, I keep thinking of the time-space continuum splitting at that point, and find myself wondering wistfully what’s going on down the other fork.
In some other universe, Murph nodded at Turner, took a breath, put Josh Satin in his crosshairs and completed the double play. Matt Harvey won 1-0, and Davey Johnson and the Nats spent too many of the next 20-odd hours explaining why they weren’t collapsing. The Mets took the field behind Dillon Gee on Saturday and survived his wildness and Lance Barksdale’s strike zone thanks to three home runs by David Wright, each of which just stayed fair. Then they walked onto the field today confident that the reeling Nationals had no interest in putting up a fight, against Carlos Torres or anybody else. They finished the weekend with the Phillies in the rearview mirror, the Nationals in their sights, the Marlins up next and the Braves … well, it’s too early to talk about it, but the Uptons and their pals are certainly visible up there at the head of the NL East train.
None of that happened, and what-ifs will kill you. But that universe sounds like a pretty awesome place to be.
by Greg Prince on 27 July 2013 10:35 pm Saturday was just mild disgust, the kind that’s been de rigueur in Metsopotamia since 2009. You know how it goes: our starting pitcher is taken early and often into distant seating sections, our lineup falls easy prey to his opposite number and it rains before it can end. The Mets indeed played one of their patented period stinkers, which haven’t been abundant the past couple of months but certainly are familiar to anybody who’s spent recent seasons in the company of this team.
Friday, however…Friday was interesting. Friday provided, if you faithful readers will pardon the expression, something of a flashback. On Friday, the Mets won one resoundingly and lost one excruciatingly. Yeah, that part was interesting, but what really got me was that I didn’t shrug at either result. I took them both to heart. The win ignited my imagination. The loss dampened my reality.
That may sound obvious, but this was different from what I’d become accustomed to in this era of diminished expectations. I actually expected the Mets to sweep that split doubleheader. I actually reveled after the first game. I actually rode a wave of adrenaline into the second game. I was actually let down when it didn’t work out.
I’ve been happy from isolated positive results since the last time the Mets were in a pennant race but I haven’t been much hot or bothered by things going wrong on a given night. They’re the Mets, I reasoned. What did I expect — for them to win?
On Friday, July 26, 2013, yes. Yes I did. The stakes struck me as not quite enormous but significant. How significant? When Ross Ohlendorf popped David Wright to short to end the fifth inning, thus leaving Daniel Murphy on base with the run that would have increased Matt Harvey’s 1-0 lead, I thought, “Great, just like Cone getting Piazza to pop out in the fifth inning of Game Four.”
That’s Game Four of the 2000 World Series, the contest that’s held to determine the champions of the baseball world. That’s where my head was racing in the wake of Jenrry Mejia elbowing his way into a rotation dripping with talent during the opener. That’s what I was thinking as the Mets strove to pull within six games of .500. Not within six games of first-place Atlanta, just a scooch closer to statistical respectability.
Following that turn of events, I should find myself reporting that I was crushed in the same fashion LaTroy Hawkins’s final fastball was by Ryan Zimmerman to conclude Friday eighteenth inning and, woe is me, why did I fall for this again? But y’know what? Letdown didn’t equal crushed. The sensation of taking these Mets ultraseriously only lasted for a few hours, but I liked the feeling that these games mattered. I liked calculating the likelihood of leaving our nation’s capital in second place. I liked looking at our schedule for September and weighing it against the Braves’ schedule (yes, I did this between games Friday). I liked elevating the outcomes of Mets games to a whole new level of mattering.
Or a whole old level. This was how I was when every pitch was crucial, every swing held possibility, every flicker from the out-of-town scoreboard dispatched vital information that held the fate of our world in its bulbs. We haven’t had that for real since the end of 2008, since the end of Shea Stadium. We’ve only had a handful of pennant races and playoff pushes pay off in our favor, but gosh, what fun it is just to take part in one. I mean really take part in one. Not early only to fade as in 2012. Not on spec only to discover pennant fever was hypochondriacal as in 2011 and 2010. But deep and lasting and absorbing to the point where little to nothing else penetrates your consciousness. How could anything else measure up to the Mets driving hard to late September with a legitimate eye toward early October?
When a team is good enough, that team’s fan is not satisfied by anything less than a world championship. When a team isn’t quite that good, that team’s fan still wants the ultimate prize but can be bought off by a pennant or a division title or a Wild Card berth. When our team is where it’s been for five long seasons, all we can ask for is the first step: get better. Improve. Win in encouraging proportion to how often you lose. Then win as much as you lose. Then win more than you lose. Then win more than most or all of your divisional competitors. Contend for something beyond promise. Then make the playoffs and climb the ladder it offers to the stars.
I’m not delusional enough to think we and our team are taking all those steps at once. But for a few hours one Friday in late July, during a year when we had yet to definitively exit the road leading to a fifth consecutive losing record, it really felt like we were in the midst of honest-to-Metness progress. The feeling wore off when the night was over. Saturday did nothing to rekindle it. What Sunday brings is unknown. But I swear I tasted it. Or I dreamt I tasted it. And I believe another, more substantial sample is en route — maybe not soon, but for the first time in ages, sooner than later. Too many things have looked too good for two months to believe otherwise.
We’re movin’ on up. A piece of the pie can’t be far away.
Relive a couple of pennant races that worked out very nicely and some of the seasons that set the stage for them: The Happiest Recap: First Base (1962-1973). It’s Amazin’ reading for all Mets fans and great practice for when we really are blessed with games full of extraordinary meaning one of these Septembers.
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