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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 30 June 2013 8:58 pm Someday we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny.
—Bruce Springsteen
Getting off my train after witnessing a 13-2 Mets loss in person — my personal-worst ninth consecutive loss at any of the ballparks the Mets have called home — I noticed a few people were arriving back on Long Island from New York’s annual Pride Parade.
Man, I thought, I’d love to someday return home from a parade full of pride for the Mets. That day is probably far off. It felt farther off than usual Sunday despite the focus on one of the leading indicators that better days are directly ahead.
Zack Wheeler couldn’t have been better in his first Citi Field inning had his name been Matt Harvey. Actually, Harvey was stomped on by the Braves in his first home inning of 2012: a walk, a fielder’s choice and a home run blasted by Jason Heyward. Harvey settled in thereafter for six unremarkably effective innings, but whatever glow was extant for the kid who had set the Diamondbacks on fire in Phoenix was briefly extinguished in Flushing. Of course it would go on to spark bigger and brighter than we could have imagined, and we all lived happily ever after every fifth day, but it was definitely on hold last August 10.
Wheeler drew a bigger crowd and set off more excitement as he paraded to the mound on the last day of June 2013, probably because the Harvey precedent has made us salivate our heads off at the idea that we could maybe get another one of those, whaddayacall, superstars practically out of the box. Zack received the same “Feels Like The First Time” introduction from the AV department that Matt did last summer and lived up to the novelty of so-called Wheeler Day immediately. Denard Span struck out. Anthony Rendon struck out. Ryan Zimmerman grounded out. Zack Wheeler, clad in the 45 made famous by McGraw and Franco and Martinez, was making it all look very easy.
But this pitching to big league hitters only looks that way, especially at the beginning of the trail. The Mets treated Wheeler like Harvey in the bottom of the first in that they put two runners on with one out and didn’t score. Then the paths of the phenoms diverged for now. The Nats beat up on Wheeler in the second and the third and the fifth, his last inning, the one he didn’t finish. By his performance, you’d never know there were special musical cues (I would’ve gone with “Heart Like A Wheel” by the Steve Miller Band over John Lennon’s “Watching the Wheels,” whose context is a bit too wistful for someone over whom we’re so hopeful), ticket deals and orange t-shirts devoted to him. You suddenly forgot Tug and Johnny and Pedro and were left to remember that 45 was also worn by Brent Gaff and Paul Gibson and Jerry DiPoto and that the one sight you’ll never see on a pitching mound is a sure thing.
Zack Wheeler wasn’t a budding ace Sunday. He was an unready rookie. That’ll happen when, perhaps, you’re an unready rookie.
We 33,366 who came out to celebrate the birth of a local idol chose instead to incubate him until he is ready. Zack was not hooted off the mound. We applauded warmly upon his removal with two on and two out in the fifth. We’re impatient by nature but we’re not idiots. We wish for Harvey II: Wheeler’s Revenge to open to rave reviews in Queens as it did on the road, but we realize boffo box office doesn’t necessarily lead to immediate critical acclaim.
Then we got back to being idiots, sitting through intermittent showers, invisible offense and Brandon Lyon. When your day’s highlight morphs from “I’m at Zack Wheeler’s first home start!” to “All right, Anthony Recker’s gonna pitch!” you should probably check and see if your health insurance covers stupidity.
What had hinted at a brighter future around 1:10 was, well before 4 o’clock, best left to the chronically dim, myself included. It became one of those days in which you and your companion debate which horrid game this is most like in your vast Met-going experience. I couldn’t decide if I was reliving the 10-1 debacle of September 2011 (a convenient precedent, as the Nationals were the opposition that gray Thursday afternoon) or the second game of the season-crushing doubleheader loss to the Diamondbacks in August 2002. That one — started by Wild Card insurance policy John Thomson — went so bad so much that my friend Joe agreed we should give up and get out, which is something Joe never does.
I was with Joe on Sunday and we stayed to the Recker end. He and I were giddy to be in on Citi Field’s first episode of Met position player pitching, but the misguided euphoria lasted all of two batters, or time enough for 11-0 to become 13-0. Once Ian Desmond landed Recker’s first strike (following six straight balls) square in the middle of the Acela Club’s Market Table, Joe capped his pen and shut his scorebook. If you know Joe as I do, that’s his version of Laurence Olivier ripping a piece of cloth from his suit jacket to signify that his rotten modern son Neil Diamond is dead to him in The Jazz Singer.
Yet we’re too stupid to stay mad at the Mets or leave them before they’re done losing more than once every decade or so. Thus, we stayed to watch Recker sew back a shred of our dignity by setting down his next three batters and John Buck hit his utterly unapplaudable home run to give us a final score of 13-2, a tally that was tangibly better than 13-0 only in that brought to mind another blowout the Mets absorbed — their first, actually. I wasn’t on hand for it, having made the mistake of not being born as of April 18, 1962, but I cherish it, thanks to Leonard Shecter’s account and description in Once Upon The Polo Grounds:
It was a cold and miserable day at the Polo Grounds and the Mets were down 15-5 with two out in the ninth. A fan stood in the aisle in right field, his shoulders hunched against the cold, his hands deep in his coat pockets. He jiggled up and down for warmth and all the time he was rooting. “C’mon,” he said, almost to himself. “C’mon, one more run, just one more run.”
“Why one more run?” he was asked.
“That would make it six,” he said. “Then you could say if they got any pitching they woulda won.”
The fan turned back toward Don Zimmer, who was at the plate. “C’mon,” he said. “Just one more.”
Zimmer popped up to the catcher.
The fan shrugged his shoulders. “Ah well,” he said. “I’ll be back tomorrow. No use giving up now.”
As a matter of fact, I will be back at Citi Field Monday night, with every possible chance that I’ll be racking up my tenth consecutive loss. But Shaun Marcum was 0-9 as of last week and he stopped his streak. And Shaun Marcum is pitching versus Arizona!
Like the man said, no use giving up now.
(P.S. Joe took the cap off his pen and reopened his scorebook for the bottom of the ninth. I knew he would.)
If you want more heartfelt Mets talk from a crazy person, listen to the interview and audience Q&A Jay Goldberg conducted with me last week at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse when he graciously invited me over to discuss The Happiest Recap. Find the podcast here or on iTunes.
And when you see one, get yourself a 2013 All-Star Game program to read what I have to say about David Wright and John Franco as part of a wonderful article on Mets captains through the years, written by Jon Schwartz. The whole thing is a worthwhile $15 investment, actually (you can find my thoughts starting on page 269).
by Jason Fry on 30 June 2013 1:53 am On Friday night, after getting to be part of a conversation with Dwight Gooden, Greg and I were in the right-field stands, watching Matt Harvey finish up his domination of the Nationals.
“How is it this team isn’t in first place?” I asked him. “Doesn’t it feel like they should be?”
That’s what a 7-4 road trip that could easily have been a 9-2 road trip will do to you. That’s what happens when you feel uplifted by the subtraction of guys who hadn’t been getting it done and the addition of guys who have yet to disappoint you. That’s what happens when the rest of your division is a morass of meh — two underwhelming contenders by default, a rebuilding project that hasn’t figured out that’s what it is, and a cynical fraud perpetrated by a shameless huckster. That’s what happens when it’s the 40th anniversary of a little team that could despite most of a year in which it couldn’t — an anniversary that we hold dear even if the people who run the Mets aren’t interested in giving it its due.
Greg didn’t gently suggest that I’d had a few shandys too many, or point out any of the approximately 75,000 flaws with my argument, starting with the standings. We chatted happily about the resurrected Mets, as David Aardsma (“first in the Baseball Encyclopedia and in our hearts”) retired a pair of Nats.
We were still chatting dreamily about what might be when Terry Collins strolled to the mound and signaled for Josh Edgin.
* * *
150 years ago next week, two massive armies met at Gettysburg, a little town smack-dab in the middle of territories now claimed by the Pirates, the Phillies and the Orioles. The Confederate army was led by Robert E. Lee; the Union army by George Meade. They fought for three days. On the third, in the mid-afternoon heat, some 12,500 Confederates assembled to attack Union positions across a thousand yards of open field. Their charge ended with a few soldiers in gray reaching a jog in a stone fence called the Angle before being thrown back by Union reinforcements. That place is known now as the High-water Mark of the Confederacy — the closest Lee’s troops came to forcing an ending to the war different from what actually occurred, and different from the ending that became inevitable when the assault on the Angle was thrown back, with nearly half the troops who set out across the field never making it back to their lines.
I’ve stood at the Angle. It’s a sobering place. But looking across the field, you realize that no sane person would call the High-water Mark of the Confederacy the high-water mark of anything. Rather, it’s apparent that it was the horrible culmination of miscalculations, mistakes and the delusion that beating long odds was a character trait instead of a brief-lived pattern. The men who made that crossing didn’t have a chance, and their commanders shouldn’t have sent them. The disaster was foreordained.
* * *
I don’t know why I brought that up. Must just be that the anniversary’s near.
* * *
Anyway, the Mets lost on Friday night. They won today. Dillon Gee pitched well. Josh Satin looks good — amazing what young players can do when they actually get a chance to play. The Mets bullpen didn’t do anything that made you want to scream. Daniel Murphy had an adventurous, pratfall-rich trip from second to home that involved balls bouncing off infielders and caroming off Murph himself and rolling through the grass while umpires and coaches scattered. Until the play was finally over it was impossible to say with the slightest degree of certainty that Murphy would be out or safe; he was Schrodinger’s Baserunner.
It was fun. The Mets looked good. The Mets look better than they have in a while, in fact, and that’s a relief after the horrors of the spring.
They’re not going to be in first place or anywhere close to it at the end of the year, so let’s not throw anything valuable away on a lost cause. But it’s something.
by Jason Fry on 29 June 2013 12:38 am In the early 1980s the Mets were bad, baseball lost an entire summer to a labor war, and I was becoming a teenager, a transformation I navigated with the grace and self-confidence that have launched a thousand family sitcoms. Put those three things together and something not particularly surprising happened: I drifted away from the team I had loved as a child, watching less avidly, then less frequently, then not at all. I was around for the Mets of Ricky Sweet and Rusty Tillman, but they’re as theoretical to me as those of Choo Choo Coleman and Tim Harkness.
And it could easily have stayed that way. I could never have found my way back. Perhaps today I’d be your co-worker who sees your Mets gear and talks awkwardly about Rusty Staub and Lee Mazzilli, calls Citi Field Shea, then tries to segue into some vague point about the Madoffs or Ike Davis.
What brought me back was Dwight Gooden.
I can’t remember exactly when I heard about this young pitcher who’d appeared and who, I realized, wasn’t really so much older than I was. Things were different then — something caught my eye in the paper, or I heard about him at school, or caught some chirpy feature on the evening news. By May or June I was watching his starts, and starting to get excited about his teammates, who were winning games again. By July I was back in the fold — and nervous as a cat when 19-year-old Dwight Gooden, our Dwight Gooden — went to the mound in the All-Star Game at San Francisco. This was the chance for America to get a look at Dr. K outside of “This Week in Baseball” and see what we were so excited about back in New York. I was desperate for him to do well — full of jittery hope that he might and anxiety that he might not.
He struck out the side. I felt like we’d won the World Series.
Two years later, we did.
By then, of course, Gooden wasn’t anybody’s secret anymore. He’d put up one of the more astonishing seasons in baseball history in 1985, one recognizable by a single number. And, though we didn’t know it yet, seeing him in the pile after Orosco’s glove went skyward, his story was already changing. Over the years that followed I would cheer for Gooden and try to disdain him, pity him and write him off, glower at the sight of him in a Yankee uniform, applaud his moments of glory and mourn his setbacks. It got complicated, but it was always personal — because of the joy he’d brought me, and the sense of betrayal and despair he’d engendered, but underneath it all because he was the one who’d made me care again.
I say all this to explain why having Dwight Gooden walk over and sit down with us last night wasn’t just another moment in the Mets’ outreach to bloggers. I’ve been a journalist for a long time, and no longer get nervous if I’m near famous people, or talking with them. I’ve even seen Gooden up close before — as a teenager I lived a couple of blocks from him in St. Petersburg, Fla., and he shopped in the same Albertson’s that we did. But this was different. This was Doc, for goodness sake.
Gooden’s promoting his memoir, a frank look at his struggles with addiction and his efforts to overcome it. He talked with us about that, but also about Matt Harvey, and his own career, and pitching, and a lot besides.
On his memoir: He said he wrote it partially as therapy for himself, and to encourage himself to come clean with things in his past he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about. But he said he also wrote it in hopes that it will help someone else draw lessons from the mistakes he made.
On learning to pitch: He said he was fortunate that his Dad knew a lot about pitching, teaching him the grip for the fastball and curve when he was 10, and was able to effectively serve as his coach until he went to high school and got drafted. He said that Mel Stottlemyre always challenged him, insisting there was still room for improvement — and added that it was very important to have Stottlemyre in that same role with the Yankees, even though Doc was a very different pitcher by then.
On Gary Carter: He “was like a security blanket for me and our other young pitchers,” Doc said, adding that he played with catchers who’d mope and “just put down whatever” signs when not hitting. He said Carter wouldn’t tolerate it if his focus wandered — say if the Mets were up by seven or eight runs and Doc wanted to fool around with his change-up, and would also buck him up if he didn’t have his good stuff. “He’d make me believe I had better stuff than I had,” Doc said.
On the crowds at Shea: He got adrenaline from the rising cheers when he had two strikes on a batter, and said with a smile that yes, he looked up at the Ks being hung to check how many he had.
On hitting: He acknowledged being a pretty good hitter despite never being allowed to hit left-handed, which was his natural side. Noting that he’d hit eight homers as a righty (with a .196 career average), he bet he could have hit twice that lefty. He said he’d told Davey that he hit lefty, but all thought of him doing so stopped after Rick Sutcliffe drilled him during a Mets-Cubs beanball war and he had to come out of the game.
On his 2000 start against the Mets: He was at his most relaxed and funny talking about this odd homecoming, saying he’d been working with Yankees pitching guru Billy Connors in Tampa after getting released by the Devil Rays. “I had nothing,” he said, and so when Connors called him into his office he figured he was getting released again — only to be told he was going to New York to start against the Mets. Warming up at Shea, he said, none of his pitches was working; it was so hopeless that Stottlemyre stopped offering suggestions about what to try, and Doc saw all the relievers heading down to the bullpen, which they never do that early. Then Joe Torre told him to give the Yankees whatever he had, whether it was one or two or three innings — something Doc noted managers never say. With everyone expecting him to get lit up, he said, he somehow found his pitches, scattering two runs on six hits over five innings.
On perspective: He acknowledged disappointment with himself, saying he used to beat himself up thinking how he might have won 300 games and gone to Cooperstown. But he said he’d come to think of things a little differently, remembering that as a kid his dream was to get to the majors and have a long career. He did that, won three World Series rings, and “every award a pitcher can win.” You know what? He’s right about that.
On returning to Shea for its final game: He was very nervous about returning, not knowing how he’d be received by Mets fans, and was cajoled into it by Gary Sheffield. When it rained that day, he admitted, “Part of me was like, ‘Wow, I hope they get rained out so I don’t have to go on the field.’ ” But he said he knew it would be OK before the ceremony when fans caught sight of him and some other Mets greats and started cheering — in response, he said, he got chills and teared up. He then extended an arm to us, noting that “I get goosebumps now just thinking about it.”
And after that? Well, Greg and I headed upstairs and spent a couple of innings in the press box (where he stifled a happy bleat and my fingertips came together in one abortive clap) before heading back downstairs and taking in the game from the stands. Matt Harvey, Gooden’s spiritual heir in the age of Twitter, was on the mound and he was 1985 Doc — striking out 11 over seven innings and taking a no-hitter into the fifth, which is an absurd thing to have gotten used to.
After seven it was Mets 4, Nationals 1 … and then my mind goes curiously blank. I must have hit my head or suffered some other trauma, and I have a vague worry that something awful may have happened. But how could that be true, after such a night?
by Greg Prince on 28 June 2013 10:45 am You don’t gotta believe or anything crazy like that, but you gotta take stock of what’s been going on in the National League East since May 26:
New York 15-14
Miami 14-14
Atlanta 15-16
Washington 14-15
Philadelphia 14-17
If that’s not 1973 in miniature, I don’t know what is.
We bemoan the lack of a 40th anniversary tribute from the organization that directs our favorite baseball team. We cringe that they seem oblivious to the resonance of one of the most uplifting achievements in franchise history. We’d love to cheer those who blessed us and defined us and made us demi-miraculous, but at this point we’d settle for a commemorative logo emblazoned on a “Collector’s Cup”.
But the current players themselves — only one of them even born when Tug and Rusty and Tom and Wayne and Cleon and Jon and Kooz and Buddy and Willie and Ron (Hodges, of course) were making indelible history — have taken it upon themselves to stage an homage to 1973, assisted by four divisional cohabitants who have expertly played the proper supporting roles.
For those of you who haven’t committed partial National League East standings from four decades ago to everlasting memory, they looked a lot like the set above did, except these records were compiled after nearly five months of limp competition:
St. Louis 68-65
Pittsburgh 63-65
Chicago 64-67
Montreal 62-70
Philadelphia 62-71
New York 61-71
The names have changed (he says with a touch of lingering melancholy for what once was but hasn’t been for quite a while) yet the premise was largely the same: a division that could be viewed as vigorously contested…or a bunch of mediocrities who couldn’t get out of each other’s way. To the juncture at which the above snapshot was taken in 1973, through the action of August 30, the Mets hadn’t been in anybody’s way. Ten games below with thirty to go while stuck in last place would indicate a) a pretty lousy season just dying to get done and b) no hope whatsoever for what remained.
Ah, but look at what transpired from August 31 onward, as delineated by Baseball-Reference:
New York 21-8
Montreal 17-13
Pittsburgh 17-17
St. Louis 13-16
Chicago 13-17
Philadelphia 9-20
And when you added it all up once wet grounds and common sense postponed the second half of a makeup doubleheader at Wrigley Field on October 1:
New York 82-79
St. Louis 81-81
Pittsburgh 80-82
Montreal 79-83
Chicago 77-84
Philadelphia 71-91
That’s a division title right there. That’s as unbelievable as it gets when a short-term brushfire blazes through acres of mediocrity. And that, my brothers and sisters, is why we still remind one another that You Gotta Believe whenever we’re given the slightest morsel of evidence that our faith is merited.
Is it now? Probably not.
So is being the best team in their division for a month — the only one with a winning record, for Grote’s sake — more a comment on the indifferent performance of their N.L. East rivals than it is on how not bad they’ve been in this span if you forget the part where they lost ten of twelve, including five of five to the stupid Marlins?
Probably and who cares? The pesky overarching truth is that while the Braves, Nationals and Phillies have spun their wheels from late May up to now, the Mets look good mostly because they were buried in mud prior to May 26 and have only recently reached the wheel-spinning phase of their season. It would have helped the 1973 Reincarnated scenario immensely had the Mets not lost 29 of their first 46 games. Last I checked, those count, too.
But we already knew that. What we didn’t know was this particular edition of the New York Mets could make us tingle just enough to forget how implausible they are — and if you didn’t tingle in the shadow of a setting Colorado sun Thursday night, then you should get something in your soul checked.
The 1973 Mets burst into contention once their lost battalion of injury victims marched off the disabled list and into active duty. Conversely, the 2013 Mets have risen from dismal to whatever they are now by systematically eliminating a surprising proportion of players on whom they counted. Removed from the roster by choice or physical necessity since May 26, either temporarily or permanently:
Niese. Tejada. Davis. Turner. Duda. Baxter. Carson. McHugh. Cowgill. Atchison. Burke. Ankiel.
Miss them?
It’s an unfair question. First off, there’s a good bit of chronological overlapping where those guys and recent success — 8 wins in 12 tries most recently — are concerned. Second, when you win, the circumstances surrounding victory make all the sense in the world no matter how little sense they actually make. For example, the Mets won in Denver after Terry Collins chained David Wright to the bench for the first time all season. He didn’t start, he didn’t pinch-hit, he didn’t come in for defense. Third base was handed over for one late Mountain Time Zone afternoon to Zach Lutz, making him the 150th Met ever to man the hot corner (a count few bother to keep up since David, at No. 129, rendered the mythic “the Mets can never find a regular third baseman” narrative inoperable). With Zach Lutz in for David Wright, the Mets prevailed in stimulating fashion, 3-2. Thus, according to the reliable Zach [Squared] minus David [Rested] formula, the Mets are better off with Lutz over Wright.
Yeah, sure they are. But Zach didn’t hurt the Mets in his cameo, not even when he and Josh Satin teamed up on some comical pre-May 26 defense to help shove the Mets in a 2-0 hole early. Lutz didn’t look back a runner and Satin thought Lutz was covering left field. One could sense from two-thirds of a continent away the imminent rationalizations that it had been a good trip and this scheduling was very difficult and the important thing is we gave David a blow and whodaya think the Mets are, anyway — the best team in the National League East for the last month?
Ah, but that’s stinkin’ thinkin’ of a pre-5/26 (or, really, pre-Decline of Western Civilization) mindset. The Mets were ill, not dead. Then they lived long enough to cobble together one of the slowest developing runs you’ll see in the course of a ballgame, as a Satin walk, a Lutz single, a beautiful Lagares bunt, a questionably conceived fielder’s choice on a Recker groundout and a Hefner non-DP got the Mets on the board. And oh, by the way, Jeremy Hefner is more or less the second-most dependable starting pitcher the Mets have these days, which, unimaginably, is not intended as a disparaging assessment of Mets starting pitching.
Hef went six. Forty-year-old LaTroy Hawkins — who we’ll infer cheered the Mets toward their 1973 pennant from his crib — took care of the seventh. Marlon Byrd did all the heavy lifting thereafter, first via a two-run homer (didn’t home runs used to be the norm at Coors Field?) and then via an absolute peg from right to nail a salivating Michael Cuddyer at second in the ninth. Scott Rice and Bobby Parnell assisted in the win as well. So did Daniel Murphy. And I wouldn’t discount Eric Young, Jr. Or Omar Quintanilla. Or anybody else on the Mets as we speak. Team ball. Team effort. Team with the best record in the National League East since May 26. Team that just won ballgames in four different cities away from Flushing and didn’t lose any of the series in which they were played.
Team clearly descended from the 1973 Mets, if just for a moment or a month.
You gotta believe that I was thrilled to join Jay Goldberg for the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse podcast Wednesday night and honored by the attendance of those Mets fans and readers who dropped by to hear more about The Happiest Recap. Jay has posted the interview and Q&A session that followed for your listening pleasure. And if you are enamored of this game of ours, be sure to visit Bergino when you’re in the vicinity of 67 E. 11th Street. You can even pick up a signed copy of First Base: 1962-1973 there!
by Jason Fry on 27 June 2013 2:16 am It’s summer. Basketball’s done. Hockey’s endless rounds of playoffs have ceased. Football training camps have not yet stirred. Baseball rules the land. And all is well.
Proof? Here are some good things for us all to appreciate:
1) Your 2013 New York Mets, even with Shaun Marcum.
Marcum hadn’t been great before tonight, but he hadn’t been 0-9 bad. (3-6 bad, maybe.) He’d been undone by being asked to toe the rubber in anger before he was really ready, by horrible Mets defense, and by plain old-fashioned bad luck, but he hung in there and won the fans over, I think, with his futile but principled Tiananmen Square opposition to the Marlins during that 20-inning disaster. Tonight he was very good, and so were the Mets. They might be the Plan C Mets, Plan A being too expensive at the present time (which may last until the trade deadline, this winter or the day when the sun goes out, depending on whom you ask and how pessimistic you are), but these Plan C Mets have been fun to watch — take a pinch of suddenly spicy Eric Young Jr. and a sprinkle of Josh Satin and a shake of Juan Lagares and the resulting dish is surprisingly tasty, at least for now. No, these Mets are not always or even usually going to play defense like they’re trying to recreate one of our favorite SI covers, but they’re watchable again — and not just with Harvey or Wheeler on the mound. Amazing how baseball is more fun when you’re not feeling surly and/or defeated before the first pitch.
2) Baseball is everywhere these days.
Last night I was invited to a book reading in Gowanus, so I hiked through the sultry streets of Brooklyn and back with earbuds in place, listening to At Bat. I cackled madly in the bodega as various White Sox did Castilloan things to a game-ending pop-up, got home and fired up my cable-TV app on the iPad in time to watch the bottom of the ninth. (LaTroy Hawkins had a bad night at the office, but let’s not blame technology.) Tonight I was at another book reading, after which I listened to some of the game, watched the Gameday recreation in a bar while having a quick burger, went back to the audio, strolled into the house and turned on the TV. As I write this I’m listening to Phillies-Padres from the other side of the country, because I can.
Back in the mid-Nineties I lived in suburban Maryland, just at the edge of WFAN range, and I used to make bizarre tin-foil extensions for radio antennae and spend occasional Saturday afternoons parked by the Potomac River. (I never understood why, but the water amplifies the signal.) It’s fun to imagine going back in time and telling my younger self, “You know, pretty soon you’ll be able to have every baseball radio feed on a phone in your pocket.” Younger Jace would have scoffed at the idea of spending thousands of dollars on such a luxury, then gone silent when Older Jace said that no, that would cost $20 a year. And what about putting your TV signal on a little portable screen the size of a book? Or just watching the game old style on a massive TV whose picture is so clear that it feels like a hallucination? I’d have jumped for joy at the idea of such a wonderful world. And with good reason.
3) This is the golden age of baseball writing.
I’m not just talking about the web, though I love checking in with the various Mets communities for their take on a win or a loss. I also mean old-fashioned books, like the those discussed over the last two nights. On Tuesday the attraction was Fan Interference: A Collection of Baseball Rants and Reflections. It’s an anthology of pieces from Zisk, an honest-to-goodness paper fanzine about baseball, pop culture and everything else, one that I’ve enjoyed for years. Fan Interference has Dave Kingman, and Rusty Staub, and Jose Valentin, and a mash-up of Yankees-Red Sox with “Pretty in Pink,” not to mention an offseason encounter with Bobby Cox, interviews with Geddy Lee and Emmylou Harris (who turn out to be really smart fans) and lots more besides. Get yourself one here, and find out where to catch Zisk writers on the road here.
Tonight I moved on to the super-cool Bergino Baseball Clubhouse for a podcast with Mr. Prince and Jay Goldberg. I’ll leave the details to the man of the evening, but if you don’t have a copy of The Happiest Recap yet, get one — it’s great fun whether you’re recalling a game you saw long ago, or learning about a classic you’ve never heard of, with star turns for guys you’d written off as bums.
Summer. Baseball to watch, and read about, and mull over, and listen to. (Philadelphia and San Diego have obligingly opted for extra innings while I write.) All good things.
by Greg Prince on 26 June 2013 5:01 am The Mets used to go down to defeat pretty easily. At best, they practiced a form of passive-aggressive behavior that dared otherwise reluctant opponents to remain on the field long enough to incidentally vanquish them. It often manifested in 15- or 20-inning episodes of offensive ineptitude, but you didn’t leave those losses feeling that if not for this, that or the other thing, they might have won. You knew in your bones they were going straight to L.
Your relatively new and slightly improved Mets have learned to inject doubt into their outcomes. Tuesday night on the side of Chicago where they hadn’t ventured in eleven years, you honestly couldn’t tell whether the Mets were going to win or lose until they actually lost. I wouldn’t call it a moral victory, but it made for a more suspenseful, entertaining setback than the kind we grew used to in the days of Cowgill, Ankiel, Laffey and whoever else is suddenly long gone.
Come to think of it, the predictably vagabond aren’t the only ones whose deletion from the blue and orange tableau have coincided with the club’s recent quasi-winning ways. We’re temporarily deprived of presumed staples Tejada, Duda, Davis, Niese and Turner, yet we’re having as close to a blast as we’ve had in ages. No offense Ruben, Lucas, Ike, Jonathon and Justin. We’re fairly certain we’ll need you in the long term and that the journeyman types with whom we’ve grown modestly infatuated lately are going to wear out their welcomes as their key stat lines plummet intolerably, but…um…hey, get well, you familiar fellows! I’m sure it’s not your fault that I’ve come to associate each of you with the morass of dull and constant losing and I don’t miss any of you at the moment.
In the meantime, the Mets of Eric Young, Josh Satin, Andrew Brown, David Aardsma and Carlos Torres, to name five contributors who weren’t much or at all on the radar when June commenced, are getting it done or nearly getting it done or deluding me into believing they’re nearly getting it done. How can you not love the once-lethargic Mets of 2013 morphing into the Go-Go Sox of 1959? OK, the Mets struck out as much against Chris Sale as Nellie Fox did against the entire American League the year the Pale Hose won the pennant, but when we occasionally got guys on, they wreaked a little havoc and somehow scored four runs.
The fourth run, after Sale mercifully departed, was the doozy of the bunch. David Wright — who has fit snugly with every group of Mets dating back to the one that included Shane Spencer, Richard Hidalgo and current White Sox third base coach Joe McEwing — was on second after singling and stealing, the Mets needing one to tie in the ninth. Marlon Byrd (who earlier made a catch Ron Darling correctly compared to Ron Swoboda’s) didn’t drive David in. Nor did Satin, who had brought Wright home in the first. The last chance the Mets had was Daniel Murphy, pinch-hitting as you imagine he might if he ever lands on a serious contender. Murph seemed poised, in my mind anyway, to deliver big off the bench.
Well, he didn’t. He delivered high, though: a mighty pop fly a shade southeast of the mound. Sox closer Addison Reed…and how the hell is there an “Addison” in Chicago not pitching for the Cubs?…pointed toward the sky, confirming for his infielders that, yes, a ball was up there somewhere. It wasn’t much in the way of guidance, but how much was necessary? Somebody simply had to call it, catch and put it in the wrong set of books.
That somebody was an amalgam of third baseman Conor Gillaspie and second baseman Gordon Beckham, which is to say Gillaspie called it and Beckham tried to catch it but instead transformed from a middle infielder into a free safety, tackling Gillaspie around the ankles and allowing the ball to touch U.S. Cellular grass. Wright ran his All-Star legs off and crossed the plate. Son of a gun, it was a tie game.
Then it was a loss in the bottom of the ninth for the third time on this trip, when LaTroy Hawkins did what one generally expects LaTroy Hawkins to do, which sounds rather pessimistic but really means that when he exceeds expectations it’s quite the joy. Alas, there was less joy in Soxville than there could have been Tuesday had Sale not fanned 13 would-be hitters over eight innings. The Mets were walked off upon again and rookie sensation Zack Wheeler strangely resembled some 23-year-old pitcher making his second career start (the nerve of him).
But Young speedily manufactured a run in the first and Brown homered in the fifth and Torres and Josh Edgin effectively held the fort and Jordany Valdespin and a repositioned Young each made nice plays at second while Murph rested and Wheeler probably has at least one more career start to prove himself worthy of immediate official t-shirt distribution. The Mets continue to be highly watchable and somewhat plausible. When your team is 30-43, faint praise beats no praise at all.
As long as we’re trying on our old optimism to see if it still fits, come join me at Manhattan’s conveniently located Bergino Baseball Clubhouse (E. 11th St. between Broadway and University Place, just south of a multitude of Union Square subway stops) for a discussion of The Happiest Recap at 7 o’clock tonight and stick around to watch Shaun Marcum earn his first win in a New York Mets uniform. OK, I can’t guarantee that result, but I’ll go out on a limb and declare that if you drop by, you’ll have a good time in good company.
by Jason Fry on 24 June 2013 6:15 pm Late June is a great part of the baseball season as it is — springtime has turned into summer, the pennant races are taking shape, the draftees are reporting to their first professional clubs, and short-season ball returns. (I just made my first trip back to MCU Park. More on that in a future post.)
It’s also a great time for The Holy Books — Topps Series 2, Topps Pro Debut and the minor-league team sets all arrive around now, meaning established players get a chance at new and improved cards to represent them, guys who previously had minor-league cards get enshrined as big leaguers, and fill-ins and phenoms alike show up in the Triple-A set, waiting for promotions real and cardstock. Ruben Tejada is sporting a handsome new Mets card, John Buck has been Photoshopped into orange and blue by Topps worker bees, recently departed Collin McHugh has his first true big-league card, and Greg Burke, Andrew Brown, Carlos Torres and Zack Wheeler are all Las Vegas 51s. Other cards are being put away for the future: Noah Syndergaard, Wilmer Flores and Travis d’Arnaud all have Pro Debut cards, while the likes of Brian Bixler, Jamie Hoffman and Brandon Hicks are ready for duty with aliens on their caps.
The 51s are an oddity in that last year they were Toronto’s Triple-A team, meaning d’Arnaud got traded between franchises that play 300 miles apart but was able to keep his locker and apartment. (I’m sure he did neither, but you know what I mean.) When I saw the 2013 51s set was available, I idly looked at the 2012 checklist — and an unexpected name caught my eye.
It was Ryota Igarashi, the Rocket Boy who went from the Yakult Swallows to the Mets and fizzled. I’d lost track of Igarashi once he was no longer a Met, as one tends to do with middle relievers who post 5.74 ERAs. I looked him up and saw he’d gone from the Pirates to the Blue Jays and then to the Yankees, with no more success than he’d had a Citi Field. But he’d gotten a 2012 51s card — and it suddenly occurred to me that in the Holy Books, Igarashi was represented by an oddball Japanese card I’d unearthed from the depths of eBay.
The 51s had reduced the 2012 set to $8, but that still seemed like a lot for a Ryota Igarashi card. (Or anything connected with him, come to think of it.)
But I looked idly at the rest of the checklist, and began to smile.
Here are some other 2012 Las Vegas 51s from that set:
Travis d’Arnaud: As discussed above
Ruben Gotay: He hasn’t played in the big leagues since doing not much for Atlanta in 2008, but Gotay is still plugging away, having been granted free agency no less than six times without returning to the land of room service in hotels, white balls for batting practice, and women with long legs and brains. (Not to mention the ungodly breaking shit.) Since the end of 2008 Ruben’s been a Pirate (on paper), a Cardinal, a Marlin, a Diamondback, a Brave again, a Blue Jay, a Brave for a third time, and then a recidivist Cardinal. He’s currently hitting .305 in Double-A, which might make Ike Davis feel better about being PCL player of the week.
Aaron Laffey: Yep, there he was, a premonition of the wait for Shaun Marcum, which hasn’t really ended.
Tim Redding: Wha? Redding hasn’t played for a big-league club since his quietly resilient 2009 campaign with the Mets. But he’s been around, signing minor-league deals with the Rockies, Yankees, Dodgers, Phillies and Jay. He’s 35 and has seen service with two Mexican League teams this season.
Bob Stanley: No, he’s not still active — he’s 58 years old, for Pete’s sake. But he was the 51s’ pitching coach last year — a task he also performed in our organization for six years in the late 90s and early Aughts, with stops at Pittsfield, St. Lucie and Binghamton.
Chris Woodward: Since leaving the Mets after 2006, Woodward’s played a full season with the Braves, then turned up for cups of coffee with the Mariners, Red Sox, and Blue Jays (52 games in all), with minor-league duty for the Brewers and Phillies on his CV as well. He’s 37 and has no 2013 stats listed, meaning his 2012 season and card were apparently his last.
What makes Tim Redding ride the bus in the Mexican League at 35? What makes a 32-year-old Chris Woodward trade his Nashville Sounds duffel for one with the logo of the Lehigh Valley IronPigs? Why does Bob Stanley keep preaching pitching to kids as he approaches 60? (And to reach further back in Mets history, what kept Blaine Beatty and Rich Sauveur following a nomadic existence?)
Because it’s a job, of course — a job that offers a chance at a very big paycheck if everything goes right. But that can’t be the entirety of it. To stick with the game that long, and that far from the bright lights, all of those veterans must really love baseball. As fans we don’t have much in common with the athletes we watch and write about, but we do have that.
$8 was a lot for a Ryota Igarashi card. But $8 for a trip through Mets history and a reminder of a valuable old lesson? I’d call that a bargain.
by Greg Prince on 23 June 2013 8:32 pm Rules I can’t believe baseball maintains:
1) The bit about transferring the ball from the glove to the hand after the ball is effectively caught.
2) Allowing Matt Harvey to face mere mortals.
Both items worked to our advantage Sunday, so sure, we’ll take ’em. There’s really nothing illegal or immoral about pitching Harvey every fifth day, though I imagine anybody who has to bat against him feels differently. Cue Mets fan playing world’s tiniest violin.
Harvey was great, if that’s not redundant. As long as the Mets got him a run — and sudden showers held off through five — he was going to win his seventh game of the year with ease. A tally was manufactured early, spurred by Eric Young, Jr., who’s in that honeymoon phase of making you forget why he was available for Collin McHugh in the first place, and once Harvey was up, 1-0, the Phillies were down for the count. The Citizens Bank Park grounds crew’s diabolical plan to pull the tarp on the field just long enough to force Terry Collins’s hand toward ace-removal came too late. The 20-minute rain delay might have provided Harvey with an early seat, but by then he’d gone six, struck out six, allowed two hits, walked but one, shut down his victims thoroughly and knocked in a run as long as he was batting.
The Mets were up, 6-0, when Harvey exited, en route to the 8-0 victory that raised Matt’s mark to 7-1. David Wright, now your league’s leading candidate by votes as well as merit to start at third base in the All-Star exhibition showcase, burnished his credentials with a couple more extra-base hits, while Marlon Byrd, who I thought might need a breather, showed staying active keeps you vital when you’re pushing 35. There were plenty of contributions from plenty of Mets, because everybody on your team looks like the supermodel girlfriend of the best pitcher in the world when everything is going mysteriously well.
Meanwhile, at least one member of the other team looked not so good doing nothing in particular, which one supposes is where his afternoon went awry.
The Foxwoods Resort & Casino Turning Point of the Game was quite clearly when Collins penciled “Harvey” onto his lineup card, but within the confines of the action, everything veered definitively for the best when Juan Lagares led off the visitors’ fifth with a fly ball to deep center, tracked down and secured in routine fashion by the Phillies’ Ben Revere. But wait — was it really secured? We guess not, because what transpired next transcended the mundane. Revere got to the ball, all right, but instead of simply reaching into his glove with his bare hand and throwing it back to the infield (the ball, not his hand), he intentionally dropped the ball out of his glove and toward that bare hand’s palm.
Well, what a crime against good taste that turned into. What didn’t appear anything more than supremely ordinary sprung a Mets-friendly leak as the ball never reached his right palm. It dropped to the grass, and Lagares — who really is beautiful when he’s hustling — never stopped running. Juan landed on third with a three-run error that I have to admit I joined Charlie Manuel in thinking was nothing at all. The catch had been made. There was no existing baserunner to chase back to a base. The play seemed over. Lagares seemed out.
But I’m not a member of an incredibly erratic umpiring crew, so what do I know? Revere was accused, tried, convicted and hanged by Gary Cohen and Ron Darling for masquerading in broad daylight as a “stylemaster,” which sounds like one of those contraptions for which SNY airs commercials at off hours, right after they hawk the Pocket Hose. I didn’t think Revere was guilty of anything except a momentary fumble far less gruesome than, say, a second baseman not using TWO HANDS! to catch what should be the final pop fly of a ninth inning. The kid probably had gotten in the habit of sliding the ball from his glove to his hand that way and it finally bit him. As egregious styling at the expense of sportsmanship (never mind fundamentals) goes, it wasn’t exactly Jeffrey Leonard circling the bases with one flap down.
Y’know what, though? Not my problem.
Lagares was doubled home by Harvey; Harvey was doubled home by Young; Young was doubled home by Wright; it’s quite possible Agbayani doubled home Ventura who doubled home Piazza who doubled home Alfonzo who doubled home Perez in the midst of that sequence. It was a twice-as-nice flashback to better Mets days, as has been this whole week. From the burst of Nieuwenheis last Sunday through the awareness of Lagares this Sunday, the Mets have won six of nine. Even the two walkoff losses felt more like admirable efforts than ugly implosions.
There was a week a little like this thirty years ago at practically this moment in time. Thanks to a surfeit of rainouts, the Mets played a ten-game homestand in seven days — six against the Cards, including a pair of twinbills, and four against the Phillies, winding up with a scheduled doubleheader (if you can believe such a thing used to exist). The Mets had just traded for Keith Hernandez, Darryl Strawberry was finally getting comfortable at the plate, Jesse Orosco was establishing himself as a closer, Rusty Staub was tying a pinch-hitting record, Tom Seaver was going the distance…it all felt like it was coming together just like we dreamed. The Mets took four of six from the defending world champion Cardinals and one of four from the eventual National League champion Phillies. But 5-5 for a team that began that week 23-38 was a legitimately encouraging development. Those 1983 Mets would backslide again, then begin to coalesce and you probably know what came to be in 1984. That’s the template and the hope for what’s ahead right now.
Then again, this 6-3 week in 2013 also reminds me of a 7-3 stretch in late May of 1981. A rookie came up then, too: Greg A. Harris (the “A” was for ambidextrous). And a trade was made for a big name: Ellis Valentine. The 7-3 turnaround on the heels of a horrible 8-24 start would be negated by a 2-7 slump and then completely obliterated by a midsummer strike. Not every oasis in a losing season leads to anything, but they sure are delightful places to stop off and get refreshed, no matter what they portend for the immediate or distant future.
It’s been a fun week to be a Mets fan. I’ll be happy if we can say that again at this time next week.
You can make your Mets week that much more fun by joining me Wednesday night, 7 PM, at Bergino Baseball Clubhouse for a discussion of The Happiest Recap, followed by the Mets and White Sox, live from the South Side of Chicago. Details here.
by Jason Fry on 23 June 2013 1:38 am To quote the old song, baseball has so many ways to be wicked. There are blowouts you find yourself on the short end of, making a hash of a pleasant afternoon. There are epic struggles that wind up with your side exhausted and vanquished. There are nail-biters that wind up with teeth in the quick. And sometimes, if you’re particularly unlucky, there are losses that combine various flavors of awfulness.
Like today’s.
The Mets were done, toasted. Dillon Gee had nothing, particularly when Ryan Howard was at the plate, and the Mets were stumbling around the field when his teammates were out there. It was 7-1 with the Mets down to their last nine outs, and a wise fan’s fondest hope was that no one would get hurt out there.
But the one suffering was Jonathan Pettibone, whose back had tightened up on him. Pettibone left without throwing a pitch in the seventh, and a parade of Phillie relievers arrived, determined to invite the Mets back in the game. Omar Quintanilla, Eric Young Jr. and Jordany Valdespin got the Mets to within 7-5, and there they stayed when Daniel Murphy was caught looking at a 97 MPH fastball from someone named Jake Diekman.
But Murph would get his chance. In the ninth, Valdespin rocketed a one-out homer off Jonathan Papelbon, who’s having one of those closer dry spells that leave remote-shaped dents in living-room walls. (JV1 even ran around the bases without annoying any veterans.) Down to their last out, the Mets had David Wright on first courtesy of an error — which set the stage for a marvelous little bit of baseball clockwork. Wright broke for second, Jimmy Rollins left short to cover, and Murph smacked the ball where Rollins had been, leaving him looking mournfully and helplessly over his shoulder. Even better: the ball was slowly hit, allowing Wright to steam all the way around from first. The Mets had tied the damn thing, 7 to 7.
Which brings up an old baseball question: When down six runs, is it better to just expire quietly, or would you prefer a frantic comeback that then turns into a loss anyway?
Going gentle into that good night inconveniences no one and allows the salvaging of an afternoon for activities that don’t lead to gnashing of teeth. On the other hand, coming back puts a scare into the enemy, passes the time admirably, and offers moral instruction in not giving up, eating elephants a bite at a time, and so forth.
But remember, we’re talking about wickedness here. We’re talking about the baseball gods’ little eyes lighting up while they’re walking you through hell.
So then: Is a comeback worth it if it ends in a brutal loss?
How about if it ends in a brutal loss two pitches after all that work to get even?
How about if it ends in a brutal loss two pitches after all that work to get even and Citizen Bank Park’s hideously annoying bells toll for about an hour and you think the only way they could be worse would be if they also had a recording of John Sterling stuttering in triumph?
by Greg Prince on 22 June 2013 6:39 am Oh, hi. You’re still here. No, that’s great. I’m glad you stayed. I just wasn’t sure. I mean last night was so amazing…or should I say Amazin’…that it almost felt like a dream. I mean here we’ve been, hanging around the same team for what must be a couple of months now and yet it’s like I never really noticed just how beautiful you can be. Yeah, people talked: “You really oughta check out Lagares. Lagares can really go get ’em. You like defense, don’t you?”
Sure, I like defense. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t noticed the glove on you. I mean, c’mon, I’d be blind not to. But until last night, you never really wore it like that. Three on, tie game, deep fly, I figured, “Well, it was fun while it lasted,” and got ready to go to bed disappointed. But you really knew what you were doing out there. I have to admit I began to look at you in a whole other light.
And maybe I’ve just had my head in the wrong place, but I didn’t know you could wield a bat the way you do. Nobody told me you were into that! It was like, what, four hits? Three? Yeah, only three, I guess — but believe me, they felt like four. They were big ones, all right. The kind of hits that really make your night. Well, they made my night. Made me wanna have more nights exactly like that with you.
But now it’s the morning. I’m looking at you in this light and I realize it’s been practically forever since I felt this way about a center fielder…hell, since I felt this way about an outfielder at any position. I don’t want to spoil the moment, but I’ve been hurt before in these relationships. Good-looking young players like you come on like gangbusters, then they just disappear on me. Maybe I get one or two of those Amazin’ nights and then it just becomes emotionally draining when they either stick around too long or I don’t get to see enough of them to know if it’s real. Next thing I know, I’m left alone, on my couch, and I have to hear it through the grapevine that that outfielder I thought was really special moved on to Vegas or some crazy place like that without a word.
Will I even get to see you again? Will you be in the lineup every day? Will my desire for you go unrequited as you hide in the shadows at the end of the bench? And what if we’re actually moving too fast? What if I’m blowing up in my mind what might have been just one magical night into something much longer-lasting? There’s no guarantee I won’t get sick of you just like I got sick of too many of the rest. I have to warn you, I can be kind of a jerk that way.
I don’t know. I just wanna bask in this feeling I have right now and believe that maybe there’ll be more of it this weekend. And then we’ll see. But honestly and sincerely, I hope that what we shared doesn’t end up being just another Juan night stand.
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