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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Jason Fry on 5 May 2013 11:39 pm Sigh.
Let’s be honest with each other.
I don’t particularly want to write about today’s deplorable suckfest against the Braves, and you don’t particularly want to read about it. Because if you saw it, the afterimage of lousy pitching, vandalism afield and crummy hitting is probably still burned onto your retinas, and why on earth would you want to relive such a hideous way to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon in New York? And if you didn’t see it, the score tells you that you were lucky, and a glance at any recap or quick word with a Mets fan in the know tells you the same thing.
Those of you who were mercifully absent, we’re not going to delve into the fact that the Mets — HAHAHAHAHA — committed no — HOHOHOHO — I repeat not a single error — HEEHEEHEEHEE — in playing the Braves today.
Wow. Excuse me.
No, it’s true. We don’t have a single error to discuss. There was no error when Marlon Byrd and Jordany Valdespin let a Dan Uggla drive go up the seam between them. Nor was there a big E after Lucas Duda broke in on a ball zooming over his head. No run went from earned to unearned when David Wright boxed one around FIVE FREAKING SECONDS after Terry Collins came to the mound and yelled at Jon Niese and everyone else in range of his voice that they could forget about the postgame trip to the Tastee-Freez. No defensive lapse was observed when John Buck let balls go through his legs. Every Brave hit was sparkling clean, the product of pluck and resilience, and there is no truth whatsoever to the base and vile rumor that the Mets have been asked to cover the logos of glove manufacturers for fear of damaging those companies’ public image.
As for all those walks attached to Niese’s line, yeah, they were what you think, and it was freaking horrible to witness.
Whoa, sorry about that! Like I said, we’re not going to talk about today’s game, because it was awful. It was awful, and it was pathetic, and it made you angry, and it left you feeling sorry for all involved, and it left you cackling at the sheer pitiable horror of the baseball being played, and it took forever, and by the time it was over you were just sad.
So we’re taking a mulligan.
But only this time.
Next time the Mets walk the ballpark and swing at sinkers heading to China on full counts and play the field like they’ve been encased in cement, you’re going to have to relive each and every horrible miscue and dunderheaded mistake and moment of bad luck. Fortunately, that will never happen again — not with so sound a defensive team and such a deep rotation and such a talented lineup.
Right?
by Greg Prince on 4 May 2013 8:29 pm If you’re among the millions of Mets fans not attending Thursday night’s Mets-Pirates tilt, consider for your evening’s Metsertainment a trip downtown to The Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St. (between Sullivan St. and Thompson St., convenient to a whole bunch of subway lines) where I’ll be reading from and discussing The Happiest Recap as part of the Varsity Letters sports literature showcase, starting at 7:30. Also appearing will be Christopher Frankie, author of Nailed!: The Improbable Rise and Spectacular Fall of Lenny Dykstra, a player you can expect to show up when The Happiest Recap rounds “Second Base” and summons the Met spirits of 1974 to 1986.
Since I brought it up, here’s a sneak peek at the cover of the second volume:
Banner Day Press art director Jim Haines, who’s been making me look good in print one way or another for more than a decade, is feverishly italicizing, bolding and preparing the text for “Second Base,” which we plan to have ready for you very soon. On Thursday night, I’ll be reading an excerpt from the new volume as well as something special from “First Base (1962-1973),” copies of which will be on hand for your purchasing and personal reading pleasure.
The Happiest Recap is your favorite baseball team as never before presented, bringing together 500 Mets wins in 500 Mets stories, all told by someone who cares about the Mets as much as you do. I look forward to you joining me at Varsity Letters Thursday if you can, and I continue to appreciate the incredibly generous feedback on the series to date.
(If you can’t make it, The Happiest Recap is available on Amazon in paperback and for Kindle. Inscribed copies can be ordered through the Team Recap store on eBay.)
by Jason Fry on 4 May 2013 2:10 am Baseball games, like most series of events we sort into stories, can usually be made to fit into a narrative arc when things are finished. We were close but it was obvious all night we weren’t going to get any breaks. Man, you knew those leadoff walks were going to bite us in the hinder eventually. A game this sloppy you don’t deserve to win. And so forth.
But games like tonight’s resist formulas. What started as a weird but not particularly memorable little affair took an abrupt exit to Crazy Town, with the Mets somehow proving most impressive when it looked like they were about to expire. It was as fun as it was delightful, but most of all it was unexpected.
First, the weird part — and I’m not just talking about the horrible spring-training uniforms both teams were wearing. (I don’t mind the Mets’ blue tops now and again, but we’re seeing far too much of them. The Braves’ red shirts and tomahawk hats, on the other hand, should be burned.) Mike Minor, unassuming but deadly in the fashion of too many Braves hurlers over the years, allowed a total of three hits, walked nobody, and retired 18 Mets in a row. One of those hits was a little parachute that Ruben Tejada wisely wafted over to Jordan Schafer in a capricious wind, but the other two were home runs by John Buck and Lucas Duda. Minor did almost nothing wrong — Duda’s home run would probably have been caught on the warning track on a calmer night — but still wound up three runs in arrears.
Meanwhile, Shaun Marcum was scuffling and scratching, which seems like his MO. It isn’t fair to lump Marcum in with your typical junkballers — his change-up and slider are both plus pitches and his curve’s not bad — but he’s still dependent on deception and location, because his pedestrian fastball can’t overpower anybody. He’s also still working his arm into shape, having been waylaid by a near-Biblical plague of ailments so far this year. Marcum was given a 3-0 lead, but I had a bad feeling about it from the start. Marcum was gone after 4 1/3, and one B. J. Upton sacrifice fly later so was the lead.
You, me and everybody else kind of figured the Mets would lose at some point after that, with the coroner’s report reading DEATH BY BULLPEN. And the Mets certainly tried to do themselves in. First Scott Atchison brewed up a run allowed out of two walks, a wild pitch and a grounder that was a hair too slow to be a double play. Then, not to be outdone, Brandon Lyon pulled a Miami by falling behind with one pitch, this one a homer by hulking Atlanta cult hero Evan Gattis, whose backstory seems borrowed from mid-career Jen Capriati. (Poor Anthony Recker had nothing to do with it, though it’s possible that he was cheering wrong or something on the bench.)
But the Mets somehow kept messing up everybody’s storyline. No sooner had Atchison gotten into trouble than Marlon Byrd — whom I may or may not have been hoping would be released earlier in the day — got the Mets even with a homer off the normally reliable Eric O’Flaherty. And no sooner had Lyon gotten into trouble than David Wright delayed the Mets’ execution with a certifiably majestic 464-footer off the normally utterly reliable Craig Kimbrel.
Ah, but surely that just meant the Mets would blow it in more excruciating fashion, making you remember Wright’s drive fondly while wondering if it had really been worth it. If you thought that, you’re forgiven — but you were also wrong. The Braves started the bottom of the ninth with a leadoff double off Lyon, followed by a sacrifice to third and Lyon’s departure. But Bobby Parnell got Schafer to fly to center, with the Braves rather foolishly passing up a chance to win the game on a sac fly, walked Andrelton Simmons, and then got Justin Upton to ground out.
Rather nicely done, and it got me thinking about Parnell and the concept of Proven Veterans (TM). As you might guess, I’m generally leery of veterans and their intangibles — a two-year deal to Alex Cora will do that to you. But Parnell has discussed how Jason Isringhausen helped him by teaching him the knuckle-curve, which he substituted for his slider and its worrisome tendency to flatten out, and one imagines that sitting at Izzy’s knee was valuable in calming Parnell’s late-inning nerves as well. I’ll never have to put this statement to the test, but I have a feeling the pre-Izzy Parnell would have walked off as the Braves celebrated, whereas the new improved model has been reliable unless betrayed by his defense. I’m suspicious of what you can’t measure in baseball, as it opens the door for endless Just So Stories about Heart and Grit and Playing the Game Right, but lessons like Izzy’s certainly seem to have some value, however unquantifiable.
After Parnell, it was Terry Collins’ turn. Terry’s been guilty of overmanaging recently, for which I blame him not a bit — if you were handed this unassuming roster you’d probably futz with the lineup and outfield and bail out of pitching matchups in the middle of at-bats too. In the 10th he got his LaRussa on, leaving Parnell at the plate with two out and Jordany Valdespin on first — at least until Valdespin stole second, at which point Terry popped out of the dugout to hand the bat and Parnell’s 0-1 count to Mike Baxter. The Whitestone Kid got hit in the foot, after which Ruben Tejada drove in Valdespin and Daniel Murphy then drove in Baxter, leading to hosannas in Brooklyn Heights. The idea, as Gary and Keith guessed and Collins later confirmed, was that Parnell would keep pitching if Valdespin were caught stealing but stand aside if he got into scoring position. I’m not confident that will work the next time Collins tries it or the next 99 times after that, but for one night it was marvelous.
Marvelous except that the bottom of the 10th arrived with Jeurys Familia pitching and Valdespin at second, where I trust him about as much as a bastard child of Gregg Jefferies and Keith Miller. (Which is to say more than I trust him at shortstop.) So of course Familia was spotless, Valdespin merely a spectator and the Mets won with minimal bother.
Honestly, after all that it would have been weirder if something had gone the way any of us expected.
by Greg Prince on 1 May 2013 9:43 pm Help! I’m being held prisoner inside a Mets-Marlins series!
—Fortune cookie opened at Marlins Park this week, according to totally reputable urban legend
The Marlins were one of the two worst baseball teams playing at their eponymous park Wednesday afternoon. The Mets were the other one. Neither could be seriously described as the best of the pair. Yet one would emerge with a victory, if not exactly victorious.
Who would it be? The last-place Marlins, who positioned themselves expertly to take advantage of the Mets being the Mets for two absurd ninths and one mind-addled fifteenth? Or the next-to-last-place Mets, who have lately been all about the anvil, the head and being left in the dust?
Of such rivalries are legends averted.
At least thousands of schoolchildren seemed to be having a good time, judging by their intermittent screams. That was likely kids being kids when they’re let out of class for CBS4 Weather Day, or maybe simply the realization that their local baseball team had an excellent chance of sweeping a series.
Nah, probably just kids being kids. Hard to imagine there’s a generation of budding Marlins fans coming of age in Miami.
On the off chance the children were into the game and not just the noise, they had to like what their indigenous Fish were doing to Dillon Gee. They say if you’re going to get to a really good pitcher, you have to get to him early. The Marlins scored three in the first, so perhaps that rule applies to Dillon Gee as well.
Dillon was gotten to, and knowing the Mets’ adherence to the theory of passive resistance, 3-0 appeared a prelude to a matinee of misery. But when one of the worst teams on the field is vying with one of the other worst teams on the field, experience tells us no issue even approaches resolution until the ninth inning. Besides, the immortal Wade LeBlanc still needed to be heard from. The immortal Wade LeBlanc was Gee’s opposite number Wednesday, except he chose this afternoon to elevate his game. Wade started five previous outings this year and carried an 0-4 record into action, but it was a deceptive 0-4.
It should’ve been 0-5.
Against a starter with a 6.20 ERA and no interior statistic that indicated some hidden talent for pitching, did the Mets conk LeBlanc? Bonk LeBlanc? Get behind the wheel of their rental and determinedly honk at LeBlanc? Not during the first three innings they didn’t. The Mets’ best chance at a rally arose in the third when Daniel Murphy stroked a two-out single to bring up David Wright. It receded when Murphy promptly got himself picked off first.
Not a promising CBS4 Weather Day for the tourist trade.
It would be misleading and cheap to point out that when Wright homered to put the Mets on the board to start the fourth that his clout would’ve cut LeBlanc’s edge from 3-0 to 3-2 instead of 3-1 had Murphy not taken his Carnival Cruise to second — you most certainly can’t know the same pitch and the same swing would’ve occurred in the third as it did in the fourth — but there was Wright with a solo home run and there was Murph greeting him in the dugout. Plus 3-1 became 4-1 in the fourth when Gee couldn’t convert what little good fortune he’d been handed into momentum. In other words, don’t do that again, Danny boy.
It could’ve been worse than 4-1, really. Nick Green doubled with one out. LeBlanc helped his own cause (a National League angel earns its wings every time that phrase is invoked) by singling to center. Third base coach Joe Espada imminently subverted LeBlanc’s cause by sending Green. The conventional wisdom suggests, sure, why not, go ahead and test the arm of an unproven center fielder in that situation, but perhaps Jeffrey Loria didn’t trade the Marlins’ scouting reports and perhaps somebody in a professional situation should’ve known fresh-faced center fielder Juan Lagares can throw — or maybe Espada has seen so much of Juan Pierre he doesn’t believe any outfielder can throw. Anyway, Espada sent Green and Lagares threw him out comfortably.
LeBlanc, however, took second and Gee gave up another hit, this time to the peripatetic Pierre (like Savoir-Faire, Juan Pierre is everywhere!), and this time LeBlanc — sliding more aggressively than Green despite being a pitcher — found his way home to restore his lead to 4-1. He was slow to rise and the slide looked self-defeating for a moment, but he dispatched the Mets without much fuss in the fifth, so it could be said, for the first time in 2013, that yeah, I guess Wade LeBlanc is OK.
Well, it wasn’t like holding a lead had helped the Mets in this series. There were still four innings to come from behind and not fall from ahead. Could they do it? There wasn’t a Magic 8 Ball in the world that would give you better than REPLY HAZY TRY AGAIN odds.
Into the uncertain wilderness of a six-game losing streak rode Wright, who doubled to open the sixth; Marlon Byrd, who singled him home; Ike Davis, who joined Byrd on the basepaths; and, from whatever cozy compartment Terry Collins stashes him, pinch-hitter Jordany Valdespin, batting for Lagares once LeBlanc left and A.J. Ramos entered.
With all apologies to little Anthony from the Italian North End of Boston and his neighborhood’s fondness for strictly scheduled servings of Prince Spaghetti, the Mets hadn’t won in exactly a week, not since Valdespin belted that game-ending grand slam against the Dodgers. Thus, we now know Wednesday is Jordany Heroics Day. No. 1 on your roster and No. 1 in some of our hearts smacked a three-run pinch-jobbie over the right field wall, exuded mightily to the implicit consternation of I Don’t Care Who and gave Gee an almost stunning 5-4 lead. Y’know what the Magic 8 Ball had to say about that?
BETTER NOT TELL YOU NOW
Fair enough. A team that hasn’t won for seven days can’t be assumed out of the woods just because its lone sparkplug fired them up, just as it can’t be assumed Valdespin will be allowed to play consistently in an outfield where nobody has demonstrated airtight everyday capabilities. Gary Cohen referred to the Mets’ outfield as “a work in progress,” which would should win the Pulitzer Prize for Euphemism. Collins indicated later that it would be a shame to give Jordany every chance to gain traction as a regular because, darn it, he’s just so valuable coming off the bench.
I think scrawny crooner Alfalfa said something similar about himself on The Little Rascals when he wanted to avoid being put into a frighteningly rough football game.
After Valdespin completed his game-disrespecting sprint around the bases, Gee batted for himself with two out and struck out. He was then replaced on the mound by Scott Atchison despite being left in to hit because Terry obviously had to preserve his reserves for another potential fifteen-inning slog. That had to be why there was no pinch-hitter for a pitcher the manager planned to remove ASAP. The Mets’ one-run lead was slender, the South Florida geography was foreboding and Anthony Recker had to be long-tossing should he be called on to pitch (we already know he shouldn’t be called on to catch).
Scott Atchison, who gets ample play despite being Mr. Gray, kept the Fish at bay in the home sixth. In the seventh, Murphy sort of compensated for getting picked off earlier by singling. Then Wright singled. Then John Buck drove them both in to break Jeff Kent’s club record for RBIs in April if you’re willing to reclassify May 1 as April 31 and eager to wipe Jeff Kent’s name from the Mets record book. Alas, Buck would have to settle for putting the Mets up, 7-4; getting a jump start on a new month; and leading the entire league in runs batted in, that last note something no Magic 8 Ball would have advised you was any kind of possibility on April 1.
A 7-4 score appears commanding, but nobody who’d endured the first two games of this series knew there was anything commanding about these teams, so how could you possibly take 7-4 seriously. Sure enough, Atchison put two on with one out in the seventh and…
…and then the Mets outfield continued its “progress”. The culprit this time was Lucas Duda, to whom a Justin Ruggiano single took a tricky bounce (or just a bounce), and past whom it traveled to allow the two runners to make it home while Ruggiano wound up on third. This development changed the game to a far more Mets-Marlins appropriate score of 7-6.
CANNOT PREDICT NOW
Duda hasn’t dramatically cost the Mets much on defense in 2013 but one play is all it takes to remind you just how Duda he can be out there. He takes so many balls at bat yet they have a tendency to avoid him in the field. Lucas is an enigma wrapped inside a mountain. His slugging can be positively Denalian, yet he stands approximately one-sixth into the season with eight runs batted in off of five home runs. His on-basing produces a most impressive percentage, yet sometimes you just want to climb up a ladder, look him in the eye and tell him a walk’s not quite as good as a hit here. It’s been suggested quite rationally that Duda might make an ideal leadoff man in a revised Mets batting order. It’s not a terrible idea, except any lineup Collins makes out would still suffer from one fatal flaw: too many Mets in it.
Following Duda’s miscue and all the hell it seemed to represent, Wright niftily handled Marcell Ozuna’s tricky roller to third. David’s Gold Glovework, combined with Ruggiano’s indecisive baserunning, held the threat in check long enough for a) Ozuna to be nabbed at first and b) Atchison to stiffen — no, not from arthritis — and escape the inning without incident. While just doing what he normally does, David saved the Mets on defense, while collecting three hits and scoring three runs. As inept as the Mets can be collectively, their captain is never anything less than extraordinarily competent. Wednesday he was exceptional.
That’s what the money’s for, but still, it’s something worth appreciating now and then.
The Mets couldn’t get anything off the left arm of Brad Hand in the top of the eighth, so now it would be up to LaTroy Hawkins to keep Dillon Gee and his five innings of nine-hit ball in line for the win (a statistical oddity for which Jeremy Hefner would have been permitted to slap both Gee and any living descendant of Henry Chadwick). Naturally, more trouble stirred. Hawkins allowed a one-out double to Green, who moved to third on a grounder by the very slow Austin Kearns. The lead then shifted to the care of Scott Rice, the lefty charged with retiring — sacre bleu! — Juan Pierre.
Which, son of a gun, he actually did. Wow, could the losing streak truly be nearing extinction?
CONCENTRATE AND ASK AGAIN
The Mets avoided increasing their lead in the top of the ninth. Collins avoided avoiding Parnell in the bottom of the ninth, a nice change of pace from the night before when the skipper opted to rest his closer in a stone closing situation. Parnell was the opposite of thrilled with the decision, which I was glad to hear because he ought’ve been steamed. Hurrah for channeling his inner Joanie Sommers: Bobby get angry!/Bobby get mad!/Give Terry the biggest lecture/He ever had! Two innings or not the night before, how many leads is the guy entrusted to protect Met leads gonna be given to protect in the course of this sodden season anyway?
OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD
That’s for later. For Wednesday, Parnell looked quite good. He got three easy outs and the Mets got a 7-6 antidote to what had been ailing them for a week that felt like a month. Bobby with the save, Dillon with the win — which felt utterly unearned, but put it on the bookkeeping that things are filed that way — and for god’s sake, put the triumph as a whole somewhere where the authorities won’t confiscate it. No kidding, I was beginning to believe there was a prohibition on us winning, making this one of those victories that could ultimately be determined only by careful punctuation. Given all that had transpired over the first two games, I decided repeatedly, “no way this ends well,” yet it finished with me exclaiming, “No way! This ends well!”
The Mets didn’t blow a third consecutive ninth-inning lead to a team allegedly worse than them and it was a cause for midweek, midday, Valdespinetian celebration. Does it take only the slightest good Mets news to make a Mets fan happy when a Mets fan has been virtually starved for any good Mets news?
IT IS DECIDEDLY SO
by Jason Fry on 1 May 2013 12:15 am A night after losing one of the most horrible baseball games I’ve ever seen in head-shaking, gag-inducing fashion, the Mets took on the Marlins and played eight and a half innings of baseball that was punchless but didn’t make you want to pour lye in your eyes, which is to say it was an improvement. Jeremy Hefner was superb, in fact, outdueling fellow traveler in misfortune Kevin Slowey, and when he went out for the ninth inning it looked like Hefner was going to not only save the beleaguered bullpen but also earn himself a thoroughly deserved and quite heartening complete-game shut-out. Which would have been nice — Hefner’s one of those players you want to root for.
Ah, but this is the Mets we’re talking about. Hefner was doomed. We all knew it — we just didn’t know how he was doomed.
Chris Coghlan collected a leadoff single, then moved to second when Anthony Recker — beginning an astonishingly poor inning behind the plate — let a ball zip over his glove.
Juan Pierre, who is useless except at torturing the Mets, laid down a bunt, with Recker’s throw to third high and late. Coghlan — who, after all, is only a Marlin — overslid the bag and David Wright alertly kept the tag on his leg. But Tim McClelland — one of Major League Baseball’s many habitually incompetent, utterly unaccountable umpires — was poorly positioned and called Coghlan safe.
With runners on first and third and nobody out, Hefner was excused from further torture, sitting morosely in the dugout while Brandon Lyon came on. I like to imagine that right now Hefner and Slowey are sitting side by side in some soothingly dim and quiet Miami hotel bar, not saying anything and not having to. Lyon — who, after all, is only a Met reliever — immediately allowed a single to Donovan Solano, tying the game at 1-1 and moving Pierre to third.
The Mets then intentionally walked Placido Polanco, a straightforward transaction that Recker managed not to fuck up, and pitched to Greg Dobbs, which any reader of this or a dozen other blogs could have told you wasn’t going to work. Would Dobbs work a 94-pitch walk? Club a grand slam that would collapse the Red Grooms sculpture on top of Lucas Duda? Stand aside as Recker somehow strangled himself with his own catcher’s equipment, requiring rescue while Pierre almost apologetically stole home?
It was nothing so dramatic — Lyon’s first pitch was more than an inch from Recker’s glove, which tonight meant it was too far for him to corral. Ballgame.
Right now the Mets appear on course for a 10-152 season, and I don’t know what to say, except that rooting for this misbegotten outfit is as futile and soul-killing and occasionally darkly funny as rooting for Wile E. Coyote. They play a day game tomorrow, which ordinarily would be comforting — get right back on the horse and all that stupid bullshit — but tonight it seems cruel.
What will happen when Dillon Gee takes the hill against Wade LeBlanc? Hell if I know. Hell if I want to know. Perhaps Dobbs will hit six grand slams. Perhaps the Marlins will beat Bobby Parnell on an inside-the-park home run when Lucas Duda and Jordany Valdespin collide and knock each other unconscious, pinning Marlon Byrd beneath them. Perhaps LeBlanc will throw a 27-pitch perfect game. Perhaps Wright will wake up in an icy tub in the trainer’s room and discover Jeffrey Loria has drugged him and sold his kidneys. Perhaps the Mets will have been contracted by special order of the commissioner’s office, with Matt Harvey and Wright receiving therapy for PTSD before being reassigned to actual big-league teams.
You know what? It will probably be even worse.
by Greg Prince on 30 April 2013 5:40 am Bruce Springsteen once advised you can’t start a fire without a spark. Monday night and Tuesday morning, there was no spark in Marlins Park. And for several days before, there was no yield at Citi Field. The Mets can’t get anything going in any sense anywhere. They are stuck in place…fourth place, to be precise, unless the Marlins accidentally get out of their way and let them descend into last.
Give the Mets a few more extended engagements and there might be no stopping them in their pursuit of pathetic. For five straight games they’ve gone hard after losses and they’ve achieved them with élan. Or so it feels and looks when you decide to watch them presumably try and fail to win.
Perhaps there was an outlier cockeyed optimist or a super drunk five-year-old who thought the Mets were going to contend in 2013, but I think it’s safe to say the consensus was this year was going to be more about inching forward rather than growing by leaps and bounds. There is supposed to be a future on the horizon; that’s the tradeoff for our peeling patience. You know: the great pitching prospects, the catcher-in-waiting, valuable innings for our prospective co-ace — plus the supporting cast that’s partially on-site. If you could forge a foundation for 2014 and then work in the young comers and be good enough to add pieces as 2015 approaches…
If, if, if. Whatever. Either the master plan is coalescing in the shadows of the Las Vegas strip and its Binghamton, St. Lucie and Savannah equivalents, or it’s all a crock. Give me a jingle in two years and let me know that my cynicism as April 2013 wound down was misplaced. Right now the blue and orange appears terribly tinged by jaundice.
The Mets have lost five in a row. They’ve scored 10 runs in those 51 innings. Their starting pitchers have flirted with adequate on each occasion, only to run out of gas and have their tires slashed by a marauding band of relievers. Nobody has stepped up for more than a moment or two. The manager hasn’t made a single move that could be described as having paid off meaningfully, except, perhaps, for the Dodgers, Phillies or Marlins.
Five bad games, better known as a teamwide slump? Or an indicator of one bad team that counts within its 25-man ranks no more than a few outstanding talents? Is the manager just having a bad week or has the combination of strategic and motivational magic so often attributed to him simply had its day? It’s hard to believe Terry Collins is the man to lead this team toward — never mind to — the promised land. Then again, it’s hard to believe more than a couple of the souls he’s shepherded over this past month are among those best qualified to make such a pilgrimage.
To accept in advance that a season won’t provide much in the way of bottom-line affirmation, you have to trust in the future. But you also have to see signs that a bit of the future is revealing itself right now…a bit more than one bit, you might say. Matt Harvey, whatever his relative “struggles” Monday night, has proven himself a pick to click. If you can’t believe in Harvey, you might as well find another sport.
OK, that’s one. What else ya got to get us through this road trip and the next homestand and the hundred-plus games after that?
Not a lot. Somebody might get a big hit. Somebody might make a nice catch. Somebody besides Harvey or Jon Niese might go deep and be consistently effective. Some parade of those who pitch behind them might succeed without eventually cracking. Maybe a ball won’t fall in in front of some unnecessary sixth outfielder. Maybe most every runner who reaches scoring position won’t be abandoned there. Maybe there’ll be multiple innings of multiple runs. Maybe a strong throw will be unleashed. Maybe all those pitches taken won’t lead to self-defeating passivity at the plate. Maybe one-two counts won’t be seen as excellent opportunities to issue intentional walks. Or maybe the other team will screw up a little more than the Mets, though if you can’t get the Marlins to cooperate in that regard, and if you can’t hold a 2-1 lead over Miami in the ninth or a 3-2 lead in the fifteenth…
Once a game passes let’s say the twelfth or thirteenth inning, especially in these days when managers burn through their bullpens and leave themselves with no long-man options, it may not be fair to infer conclusions from them. As it gets later, a war of attrition sets in, even if both sides in this particular fifteen-inning theater of the dispiriting ran short on supplies, rations and vital ammunition fairly early. When the innings pile up, it’s not a matter of who’s better. It’s about who finds a way to win.
Or in the case of the Mets versus Marlins, a way to lose. And the Mets somehow found it against an opponent whose stated business plan is to shed itself of assets. They only have one left of any note and he went out with an injury in the tenth. Bereft of Giancarlo Stanton for the final five innings, Miami brought to bear only the curse of Greg Dobbs and…I know, that’s usually enough, but c’mon — they’re the Marlins.
Though I imagine wherever a hardy band of Marlin faithful gather, the thought process across the many hours this game took was likely “c’mon — they’re the Mets.”
Yes. Yes they were. In this era, which is either a continuation of the same old same old or a prelude to brilliantly disguised greatness, that sometimes says it all.
Harvey will have better nights. David Wright’s pain in the neck will ease up. Others will perform to a higher standard than they have for the past five games and maybe their improvement will coincide with those who aren’t currently floundering fending off their own respective if inevitable ebbs. A five-game winning streak might unfold at some point and, depending when it hypothetically occurs, we might look at our Mets as world-beaters on the verge of something spectacular. We’re myopic that way. We’re supposed to be. We’re fans.
But an aberration here or there aside, do you see anything beyond Harvey as truly encouraging? Do you see even the inching forward? An escalation of decay, to borrow a phrase from the latest episode of Mad Men, certainly seems to have set in where this season is concerned. We can be 2014’ed and 2015’ed until we’re giddy in the face, but how much 2013 are we supposed to accept as the cost of doing business next year and the year after? When the Mets return home next week, what are the odds more than a minyan shows up to greet them?
I’m not a huge proponent of invoking precedent because every situation is different (though the Mets have definitely begun to not score enough for Matt Harvey like they traditionally never scored for Tom Seaver), but Mets teams that wander through their second month gaining no traction have been known to Do Something.
• When attendance fell through the floor in May 1983, the Mets called up Darryl Strawberry to sweeten a dour 6-15 proposition.
• When masses failed to materialize in May 1998, despite a reasonably capable 23-20 product, they thought big and netted Mike Piazza.
• The Mets of May 1981, wallowing at a truly miserable 13-26 mark, traded promising young Jeff Reardon for proven if slightly shopworn Ellis Valentine.
• The Mets of May 1990 scuffled to 20-22 and fired Davey Johnson.
• The Mets of May 1977 sank to 15-30 and dismissed Joe Frazier.
• The Mets of May 1993, doomed at 13-25, bid Jeff Torborg adieu.
And the Mets of May 2013? They will enter the month no better than 11-14, with not a single home gate of 30,000 under their belt since Opening Day. They have one player worth making the extra effort to come out to see (if you’re not already inclined to go see the lot of them) and he pitches only every fifth day — and Matt Harvey’s not yet, in all honesty, an actual drawing card. After the Marlins and mighty Braves on the road, it’s the White Sox and the Pirates in Flushing. Despite the chance to step right up and greet the only American League team that’s never visited us for a National League game and then hoping decent passion is summoned for the second edition of Banner Day 2.0, the turnstiles probably won’t much turn from May 7 to 12. If the eleven games ahead of us don’t generate a remarkable change in fortunes either in attendance or in the standings, it’s hard to conceive of this already-decaying campaign proceeding without somebody Doing Something.
Zack Wheeler in the rotation. Wally Backman in the manager’s chair. Bryce Harper kidnapped in the dead of night. Two-dollar hot dogs for all. Not something for the sake of Doing Anything but something constructive. This perpetual Aldersonian holding action is losing its grip on our better angels. And we’re the diehards, for cryin’ out loud.
***
Oh, by the way, I still love the Mets more than life itself. My proof is two conversations in which I recently participated: one with Metsbhoys, who I’m confident declaring conduct the best Scottish-based Mets-themed podcast of all time; the other with Instream Sports, which couldn’t have asked questions more eclectic or enjoyable. You can listen to the Metsbhoys and me here; you can read Instream and me here. Both are engrossing enough to make you forget there was ever a fifteen-inning loss to the Marlins.
And if you want to be reminded how much fun the Mets can be when they’re not losing five in a row, visit a place where they’re in the midst of a 500-game winning streak: The Happiest Recap, available via Amazon in print or for Kindle; you can also obtain a personally inscribed copy through the Team Recap eBay store (a.k.a. my lovely sister and her swell husband).
by Jason Fry on 29 April 2013 12:41 am Opening Day is, needless to say, the finest on the calendar. That’s true even if you’re a fan of a bad team, or one whose best-case scenario comes down to “can assemble some of the pieces required for a better future.”
The second game of the season, though, might be even nicer than Opening Day. The bunting’s no longer crisp, they don’t line up assistant trainers and visiting clubhouse attendants on the foul lines to be ignored by the crowd and you probably had to grouse about the in-case-of-rainout off-day, but Game No. 2 is the day of the baseball calendar that makes you believe this is real again. Oh my God, you think, there’s going to be baseball pretty much every day for the next six months. There’s so much baseball coming that you can barely contain your own happiness. Get lost, winter. Shut up, football. Get it over with, hoops and hockey. The summer game is back, and there’s so much of it yet to come that it’s intoxicating.
For me, this being mildly drunk on baseball generally lasts about two or three weeks. I love the early days of the season when you can remember the outcome of every game, before wins and losses and series and opponents start to blur together. Every win is a hint of unexpected grandeur, while every loss is acceptable, because baseball.
Then, well, things begin to change.
While the Mets were doing nothing praiseworthy on the field Saturday, I was keeping up with them on my iPhone in Sheepshead Bay. Robert Carson came in and Jimmy Rollins did things I wished he hadn’t done and then so did Ryan Howard and when Domonic Brown hit one over the fence, I silenced MLB At Bat in disgust, and didn’t turn it back on. It was a pleasant day in South Brooklyn, and the Mets were not adding to the proceedings. In fact, they were subtracting from them.
Today Emily and Joshua and I were out in Red Hook with friends, and I’d forgotten my headphones, but no matter — I could hear Howie and Josh burbling away down there in my pocket, and when the pitch of their voices indicated some urgency was afoot, I brought them up to ear level to hear what was going on. This is something I love about baseball too — the way the game can be a companion during chores or sightseeing or anything else, providing amiable company while waiting for you to stop being so darn distracted and pay close attention, and then allowing you to go back to whatever it is you’re doing when danger or delight has passed. Baseball is marvelous when every pitch is followed with ravenous interest, but it also works awfully well when the sounds of the game are pleasing background noise. This was the first day of 2013 when baseball was like that, and for a while I was very happy to have arrived at another old familiar station of fandom.
Happy, except for the fact that things were not going swimmingly at Citi Field. Even with half an ear I could tell that: Cole Hamels was handing out free passes with admirable generosity, but the Mets were doing nothing with them. Jon Niese was pitching capably enough, but you could sense disaster hanging back and waiting for him to falter.
And when I got home and gave the game my full attention, disaster caught up quickly.
It started so innocently: With two outs and none on in the seventh, Laynce Nix lofted a little foul pop in front of the Phillies dugout. John Buck pursued it, but the batboy was a bit slow collecting his chair and his thoughts, and David Wright was charging in with great zeal but from an odd angle, and whatever the reason the ball hit Buck’s glove but then hit the ground. A reprieved Nix then singled, Rollins did the same, and suddenly Niese was in the dugout looking understandably perturbed. Enter Scott Atchison, the world’s oldest-looking 37-year-old, whose arrival summoned Ryan Howard as a pinch-hitter, which led to a 2-0 pitch that Howard drove to the wall, which untied the game permanently.
What happened? How did such a little mistake become such a big mess? You could argue the misplay caused Niese to lose his focus, a problem he’d seemed to put behind him last summer. You could argue he was simply tired with an elevated pitch count this early in the year. You could argue he was just unlucky. You could even argue the Phillies were just good at baseball, though let’s not. All of these arguments are plausible, as well as unprovable and thus useless. An out wasn’t made, it led to bad things, and the Mets lost.
Other things are less arguable. Like positing that Terry Collins managed the Mets into peril instead of out of it — saying that you’d rather have a tired Niese facing Kevin Frandsen than Atchison facing Howard struck me and a lot of others as more of a first-guess than a second-. Or that whatever one things of Collins’s in-game maneuvers, the Mets’ offense has been unreliable and their bullpen has been reliably awful. (You’d think that a smart fellow like Sandy Alderson would occasionally get some spaghetti to stick to a wall.)
Anyway, the joy of April baseball is the realization that it’s a long season and there’s a lot of baseball left. That’s true even when you’re a fan of a team that’s not fated to be playing in October. But sometime in late April, there comes a game that makes that moment of joy curdle a bit — and for me, this was the game and the day.
It’s a long season and there’s a lot of baseball left.
by Greg Prince on 27 April 2013 11:16 pm Some positive developments for the Mets Saturday. Shaun Marcum got his throwing in, working his way up to 71 pitches. He only lasted four innings, but it’s not like anybody was counting. Then Terry Collins experimented a little and brought Robert Carson in for the fifth, which isn’t where you’d expect to see him, but roles are still undefined, so it didn’t really matter. The Phillies brought their A-club with them and Carson was kind of roughed up. Still, it was good experience for him. Terry stretched out LaTroy Hawkins for two innings, which was interesting to see. Scott Rice got two innings, two.
The manager also experimented by using the same lineup two days in a row, something you don’t usually get from him this time of year. Some of the fellas didn’t look too sharp. Mike Baxter, for example, had trouble with a fly ball to right, which may be something to think about once the season starts. It doesn’t look like they know quite what to do with Collin Cowgill yet, but figuring it all out is what this time of year is for. Ruben Tejada made both a great play and a bad play. Maybe if he’d reported sooner, it would have been a great play and a routine play, but who knows? There was some hijinks with Ike Davis’s glove when he couldn’t get a ball out and turn a double play — probably the result of a prank, since the next thing you saw was Justin Turner trying to fix it. (That guy’s hilarious).
The Mets didn’t hit much against the four pitchers the Phillies used. Since they weren’t exactly big names, I’d be concerned if this was already April, but since the Mets are just getting the feel of things, losing 9-4 wasn’t the big story. They’re taking pitches, they’re working counts, they’re learning Terry’s system and no doubt Sandy Alderson will have a crack 25-man roster in place come Opening Day.
Can’t wait for that to happen.
by Greg Prince on 27 April 2013 3:35 am Perhaps I’d forgotten how baseball seasons work since the last one concluded and the current one commenced, but I would have sworn through the first twenty games of 2013 that each and every one of the Mets’ first ten wins was brilliantly uplifting while each and every one of the Mets’ first ten losses was totally miserable. For a sport where you’re not supposed to get too high or too low, viewing the daily results this way can be hazardous to your mental health, particularly when you root for a team whose best hope (generously apportioned) is breaking even.
All the wins thus far have indicated that the Mets can be truly exciting or at least highly competitive. The five Harvey starts and the Harveysteria they stirred speak for themselves (with Jordany’s McReynolds-style ending Wednesday night adding its own piece of flair to the proceedings). Opening Day was a run-fueled festival. So was the first night in Minnesota. And how about that walkoff comeback when we were throwing Aaron Laffey at his diametric talent-opposite Jose Fernandez? Or those John Buck specials when we couldn’t believe this guy was this guy?
On the other hand, how did the Mets not sweep the Marlins and the Padres? What the hell happened in Philly when Harvey wasn’t eclipsing Halladay? What about that frozen disaster of a week at Coors Field? How could they let that game get away against the Nationals last Saturday? And, oy, the bookends of the Dodger series!
Finally, Friday night we got what I’d almost call a reassuring loss. Mind you, there was nothing reassuring about being blanked by Kyle Kendrick, 4-0. The Mets have, save for two of their last fifty frames, forgotten how to score more than one run in a given inning. Not many Met runners have crossed Citi Field’s plate, period, since Adam LaRoche told them what they could do with their five-spot seven days ago. They patiently worked all those plate appearances off Gio Gonzalez in the fourth and then they dutifully took a nap that continued mostly without interruption. In the succeeding aforementioned fifty innings, they’ve scored a total of fourteen runs. Four came on that marvelous Valdespin grand slam, which means mostly they haven’t scored at all.
So how exactly is losing 4-0 reassuring? It’s not. The Mets generated not a shred of offense against somebody who’s supposed to be Philadelphia’s fourth starter, while Dillon Gee has developed a serious allergy to Ryan Howard (where’s Pedro Feliciano when you need him?). Friday’s duel became a dud the sixth-inning instant Mr. Subway practically reached the 7 tracks. As was the case last Sunday, Gee functioned effectively for a while, but then he needed to be gone. By the time he was — like Howard’s long-distance voyager — outta here, it was too late.
The reassurance, then? It’s that these sorts of games happen. You’re not used to complete game shutouts that are signed, sealed and subpoenaed in 2:35 these days (and that was with the lengthy timeout devoted to Brian O’Nora’s pinch between his cheek and gum reportedly taking an unfortunate detour down his throat), but they happen. That’s the reassurance. There are slumps and there are shutouts and there’s no avoiding them. There was, when you get right down to it, nothing about this game that could be helped. Terry Collins rearranged his tepid hitters and they went frigid. Kendrick may have been too good this particular evening regardless. You could be disgusted — as no doubt anyone who encountered O’Nora in his moment of distress must have been — and you could be frustrated, but you couldn’t let it get the best of you.
Friday wasn’t Thursday, when Jeremy Hefner pitched his heart out to no avail (while thousands of nearby residents rooted for opposing pitcher Hyun-jin Riu because being from Korea perennially tops living in Flushing). It wasn’t Tuesday, when you worried about Jonathon Niese’s knee and then sat and sat and sat through the mournful bullpen parade that followed. It wasn’t like so many games this young year that have, per Gladys Knight & The Pips’ great hit from the Claudine soundtrack, gone on and on. It was just one of those dim losses you’re going to encounter across the Big 162. You know the drill: a third you’re gonna win, a third you’re gonna lose, a third will tell your tale.
This one told you to get over it right away and get on with it the next afternoon.
by Greg Prince on 25 April 2013 11:48 pm Some nice person to whom I had just been introduced in the Citi Field parking lot on Opening Day asked me, regarding the 81 games that were about to be played in the building adjacent to where we stood, “Do you have a plan?”
“Yes,” I said, matter of factly. “My plan is to go to as many games as I can.”
I’ve stuck to that plan for a long time, so why stop now? Starting with Saturday, September 9, 2006, and going through Thursday afternoon — including the one postseason encompassed by this time period — the Mets have played 515 home games. I’ve attended 218, or approximately 42.3% of them.
As many games as I can, whether I actually can or not. Prioritizing, y’know? There’s me and there’s the Mets. I prefer to not keep us apart for very long.
It wasn’t always something I could do. I’m sure in theory I would’ve gone to as many games as I could have in 1991, but I only went to two. I can’t say for sure there were 79 others I absolutely couldn’t have. Probably not; it just worked out that way. Two games that counted in one season (though there was also an exhibition game) tied my record for fewest games attended in one season as a reasonably full-fledged adult. The only other post-junior high year in which I made it to Shea no more than twice was 1988. I had tickets for a third game in ’88, but that was the weekend right after my mother was diagnosed with cancer, so I passed.
I was every bit the Mets fan in 1991 that you’ve come to know in 2013, but whether it was time or money or logistics or priorities or a paucity of decent game-going company, I just didn’t find myself at Shea very often. I was 28. Work was all-consuming and my wedding was imminent. I watched the Mets, I listened to the Mets, I ruminated over the Mets. I just wasn’t physically in the same space as the Mets that season. The sum total of my interaction with them, thus, was that I went to a loss in May and a win in June. The loss in May hasn’t come up in conversation at all in 22 years. The win in June?
Why, it bubbled up from the pages of my Log and the archives of my subconscious to the surface of topicality in a big way just this week.
On Wednesday night, Jordany Valdespin won the Mets a game with a grand slam. Before I was done jumping up and down in section 123 — certainly before Jordany’s smiling face met with a resounding shaving cream greeting from John Buck — it was announced that this was the first time the Mets had won a game in such a fashion since June 25, 1991, when Kevin McReynolds hit the grand slam to beat the Expos that night, 8-5
Hey, I said to Jason amid a flurry of high-fives, I was at that game!
That statement, coming from yours truly, wouldn’t carry quite as much punch (or pie) if Valdespin had done something equally wonderful that hadn’t been done since, say, 2008. I attended 44 games at Shea Stadium in its final season, so chances were I was going to witness more than half of all memorable events in Flushing five years ago. I then went to 36 in Citi Field’s inaugural campaign, never making fewer than 27 in a season since. I’ve already been to half of the dozen the Mets have put in the books in 2013.
It’s not a boast. It’s just what I do. It’s what I always wanted to do from the time I was old enough to know what the Mets were and that they played baseball somewhere. Across the years, Shea, then Citi, became accessible to me and I made a habit of accessing it all I can. But in 1991, I accessed it so rarely that if I was on hand for one Mets win that somebody was destined to bring up more than two decades later, of course I’d be bound to remember it instantly.
That is also what I do.
Why that night of all nights in 1991? I can recall no particular magic attached to Tuesday, June 25, as it approached. There wasn’t any great desire to see the Expos as opposed to any other opponent. There was a good pitching matchup, to be sure: Dwight Gooden versus Dennis Martinez. But I’m pretty sure that was a bonus.
What facilitated a game if not necessarily this game was what I now realize was an offhanded comment by someone I didn’t know all that well and would fairly soon not know at all. This was a guy who worked where I worked, but only briefly, just for a few months. He was more a baseball fan than a fan of any given team. Liked the Giants, now that I’m thinking about it, but not excessively. His memory for baseball specifics wasn’t particularly refined, either. One idle chat had him placing the You Gotta Believe pennant-winning Mets of 1973 in 1971.
Perhaps it was that kind of limited attention to detail that doomed his continued employment as a reporter on the magazine I helped edit. However it came to be, he was let go. Since we’d been friendly if not exactly buddies, I got in touch with him after it all went down to express my sympathy. However awkwardly that talk went, it ended on a fairly upbeat note. Knowing my overarching interest dovetailed in what he enjoyed casually, he told me, “I’d love to take in a game with you sometime.”
He probably meant that in the way other people mean it when they say they hope it’s not going to rain on the way home, but I filed the remark away as if it was a commitment that demanded fulfilling. When the next baseball season rolled around, I called him up and reminded him, hey, if you’re still up for that ballgame… I guess he was, because we picked June 25, chose a meeting place and rendezvoused at Shea Stadium.
At first, it was a great game. How could it not be? The Mets jumped out to an immediate 4-0 lead off Martinez. Dave Magadan homered, which he generally seemed to do in front of me (Mags hit seven homers at Shea during a three-year span when I attended a mere ten games there, yet I was a witness to three of them…and the other two were walkoff jobs). A Gregg Jefferies single and steal, two walks and two more singles — from Hubie Brooks and Mackey Sasser — ensued. Hubie would be out at home on a Garry Templeton bouncer snared by Martinez, and Doc would ground out to end the inning, but we’d batted around. The Mets led by four runs. What a great night I picked!
And it was all pleasing small talk and big lead for the next several innings. Sure, El Presidente settled down, but what did it matter? The Doctor was operating. Montreal did nothing against Gooden and continued to trail, 4-0, through four.
Then came the fifth. The Expos woke up or the Doctor’s beeper sounded or something went wrong. The visitors put together four singles and two doubles. Marquis Grissom stole a base and scored on a wild pitch. Dennis Martinez batted. Dave Martinez batted. Everybody but Teddy Martinez batted. Montreal sent nine men to the plate and produced five runs. Gooden, so impregnable for four innings, was now down, 5-4.
Here’s something that would never happen today: Gooden stayed in. As did Martinez. These were aces being allowed to deal. And deal they did, even if — according to contemporary accounts that I’ve either forgotten or denied — “we” booed Gooden when he came to bat in the sixth. “We” the crowd did, but not me. I wouldn’t have booed Doc. I wouldn’t have booed Dwight. I wouldn’t have even booed the porous infield defense of Magadan, Jefferies, Templeton and HoJo, a unit Joe Sexton in the Times described as “suspect,” in light of how various Expos were “dinking” and “roping” hits past and over them.
Yet Gooden stayed in through eight, perhaps a reflection of manager Buddy Harrelson’s undying confidence in him, perhaps an indication that his bullpen was just as suspect as his infield. Martinez gave Tom Runnells seven innings. The whole thing went to the bottom of the ninth at 5-4, the potential Montreal save in the hands of future Met relief washout Barry Jones.
The Mets, stymied since the first, went to work in their 1991 fashion. Templeton, spending his final months as a major leaguer in a Met uniform, lined a ball that Expo third baseman Tim Wallach couldn’t convert into an out. It went for a single. Keith Miller ran for Templeton and got himself picked off first by Jones but escaped embarrassment when Barry couldn’t close the deal. An error on the pitcher placed Miller on second. Tommy Herr struck out, but Daryl Boston walked. With two on and one out, Runnells replaced Jones with lefty Scott Ruskin. What I assume was a botched hit-and-run became a successful double steal. Magadan, as was his wont, walked to load the bases. Jefferies, however, popped up.
Two out, McReynolds up. A deep drive to left-center. If Grissom caught up to it (and it seemed to remain in flight long enough to circle LaGuardia), then the bases were loaded to no avail. But if it kept going…just a little more…just a little more…
GONE! Kevin McReynolds won the Mets a game I never thought they should have been trailing, 8-5. There was happiness if not bedlam. Bedlam was Jordany on Wednesday night. McReynolds was (and probably still is) the anti-Valdespin in terms of temperament. Whereas JV1 is the most electric icon the Mets have had since the Keyspan sign at Shea, Big Mac would routinely lock his pulse away with his wristwatch and car keys during ballgames. Nonetheless, nobody not affiliated with Les Expos wasn’t satisfied with the grand exit Kevin had arranged. That included me; my generic fan friend; and however many of the other nearly 29,000 who showed up and stayed to the end. I remarked that it seemed like a middling crowd for such an outsized pitching matchup, but my former colleague, still looking for steady work, thought maybe the economy had something to do with the attendance.
Either way, those who came got a good result, and just in time. My companion said he wasn’t going to stay for extras. I don’t know if I would’ve been polite and left with him, or steadfast and endured, as I almost certainly would today. I didn’t go to enough games in those days to have a fixed template for such situations. Glad I didn’t make like McReynolds and attempt to beat the traffic. It had been five years since the last time a Met ended a game on a grand slam. It would be 22 more before it would happen again (give or take a Grand Slam Single). This 1991 grand slam was, of course, a dramatic as hell resolution, but it didn’t seem all that over the top as it unfolded, not like it did Wednesday night via Valdespin, and not just because Jordany’s such a lightning rod. The Mets of 1991 were routinely contending for a division title, just as they’d been doing year in and year out since 1984. They were supposed to beat the Montreal Expos. Kevin McReynolds was supposed to crush the Scott Ruskins of the National League East. A grand slam was simply a slightly more novel method of taking care of business.
Soon enough, we wouldn’t take the Mets winning more than they lost for granted. While Dennis Martinez had cemented a piece of baseball immorality for himself by throwing a perfect game at Dodger Stadium in late July, Dwight Gooden was on his way to ending his season early. He’d go out for the year in late August with an aching right shoulder. His record, which stayed 7-5 on June 25 once McReynolds took him off the hook, wound up 13-7. He’d never compile another annual mark above .500 as a New York Met. His club would find itself in a similar predicament. The third-place Mets, who raised their record to 36-32, 4½ behind the Pirates, on the strength of K-Mac’s grand slam, would collapse altogether in the season’s final laps and not truly rise again for another six years. McReynolds, Jefferies and Miller would be packaged for Bret Saberhagen and Bill Pecota (New York was going to love him) in December. The great Metropolitan transformation of the 1990s was on and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
Between the night of my only win of 1991 and the night the trade with Kansas City was consummated, I would see the guy with whom I took in that ballgame one more time. I invited him to my wedding. He came, he drank, he enjoyed himself. He gave Stephanie and me a nice card. Unfortunately, I seemed to have lost whatever he included with the card. In a bit of a panic, I called him to let him know that I was really sorry, I must have misplaced his gift and I didn’t want this to be a problem, so if he wanted to cancel the check, which I could have sworn I had seen…
“Uh, Greg,” he told me sheepishly, “there wasn’t anything in the card. I’m going to have to get the gift to you a little later.”
Well, I felt like a jerk. I wasn’t calling to shake him down. I really thought a check fell out of the card and disappeared. Three months later, a lovely vase arrived at our home. I sent him a thank you note and I think that was it for us. No more Mets games. No more phone calls. Just nothing more for us to talk about, I guess. Out of curiosity, in the wake of the Valdespin grand slam, I did a search of his name Thursday morning. He’s up to something that has nothing to do with writing (or baseball) and seems to be doing well. I’m very glad.
I’m also glad to have been at the last two games the Mets won on walkoff grand slams. Ask me in 22 years about the Jordany game and I’m confident I’ll remember quite a bit about it. After all, I more or less remember the McReynolds game. I remember that we won both quite theatrically. On the other hand, I don’t remember anything about what happened in the game that came after June 25, 1991. I didn’t attend that one. I didn’t attend Thursday’s matinee loss to the Dodgers, either. I know we lost. I know I wasn’t happy that we did.
So I decided to just think about the wins for now.
***
You’ll think about a whole lot of Amazin’ Mets wins when you read The Happiest Recap: First Base, the first installment of an unprecedented, unparalleled exploration of the first half-century of New York Mets baseball. This volume covers the wonder years of 1962 to 1973, including a pair of games from 1963 won on what we now refer to as walkoff grand slams. The thoroughly Met-minded blog Studious Metsimus is anything but bearish on the series, praising The Happiest Recap for “paint[ing] a colorful picture” of Mets history, filled with “unabashed love and…passionate words” for the team around which so many of us have come to plan our lives.
First Base is available in print or for Kindle from Amazon. Personally inscribed copies are available from the Team Recap store. I really hope you’ll choose to read it and touch all the bases that follow.
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