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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 13 April 2013 1:10 am OK, not quite … but it sure felt that way.
I would love to get an up-close look at Target Field, which I’ve seen praised as a wonderful park and the anti-Citi for its generous portions of Twinsiana. And one day I will. But tonight I was happy to be 1,200 miles away huddled on a nice warm couch in weather that merely resembled Scotland’s instead of Hoth’s.
From the sight of Terry Collins standing like a plastic figure in a snow globe to the umpires bundled in balaclavas to the hardy (or crazy) Minnesota fans hanging around with their team down 11 on a horrid night, it was an evening for someone who abhors the cold to simultaneously savor and deplore. Sure, there’s a brain-damaged grandeur to football players peering through blizzards and the wreath of their own breath to look for another guy to crash into, but baseball’s designed for long pauses and stretching out under summer skies. Opening Day can be cold because it’s winter’s rearguard action, and October can be cold because you’re playing for a title. But playing in snow flurries in Minnesota in April is just ridiculous. (And judging by the weather forecasts, it may be the second-nicest day the Mets get on this trip.)
Given the conditions, nearly everybody involved in tonight’s mess deserves a pass — the baseball had to be like a cue ball out there, and it looked like it as Vance Worley face-planted into a historically bad line (7 ER in 1 IP leaves a heckuva mark) and Jon Niese kept trying to fall off the tightrope. Ruben Tejada threw one ball away and wound up spinning like a top over another, while the Twins couldn’t catch anything. (Except possibly their death of cold.) Just ugly all around.
But ugly can be fun, particularly when the good guys put up five in the first, five more in the second and then slowly pull away. And when there are little redemptive mini-dramas along the way. My favorite was the Murphy-Tejada double play in the third, one of the prettiest I’ve seen in years. You can review it here, but it really needs to be seen in slow motion to be appreciated — I missed the first batter of the next inning because I was watching it again and again on TiVo’s super-slow mode. Tejada catches the ball facing center field, dragging a toe of one foot behind him to locate the bag, then spins to throw to first, and in doing so drags a toe of the other foot to record the out, with the pirouette bearing him smoothly out of Ryan Doumit’s line of fire, save for a final gentle leg lift to let Doumit’s thigh pass beneath him. Disrupt Ruben’s timing by a fraction of a second or move him half an inch out of alignment and the whole thing would fall apart into a missed bag, a nasty collision or both, but none of that happened and what we got instead was seemingly effortless, tossed-off grace. And baseball crafts these little jewel boxes in each and every game, handing them out to fans who are paying attention.
I notice those tiny margins of error more and more as I grow older and get more games under my belt. John Buck blasted his nightly home run, this one a grand slam that escaped even the mysterious gravity of Target Field. Buck has now hit more home runs in 2013 than last year’s catching corps did all year, which is celebration of the now and indictment of the then all in one. But what was easy to lose in the merry Buckhanalia was what a near thing his latest blast had been. Pedro Hernandez’s eighth pitch to Buck was the fatal one, but the accessory to murder was the sixth pitch, a 2-2 offering that Buck fouled into Joe Mauer’s glove, where it nestled for a split-second before plopping to the dirt. Foul ball, and two pitches later a 6-2 Mets lead that we all knew was shakier than it looked had become a 10-2 countdown to the inevitable. Those missed chances and near things? They’re as much part of baseball as the beautiful moments where everything meshes perfectly, like it was always meant to be.
by Greg Prince on 11 April 2013 9:44 am Just trade Jordany Valdespin so we can get to the part where the Mets gave up on him too soon. When he has a good game or a string of them or, for all we know, a career of them, we can just throw the Valdespin trade on the pile with Jeff Kent and Jeromy Burnitz and whoever the Mets in moments of pique decided wasn’t worth the trouble of tolerating growing pains or unorthodox personalities. Or if he fades from the scene due to a lack of refinement and/or maturity, Valdespin can be Lastings Milledge or Fernando Martinez, guys who legendarily never got the message.
But if you’re not going to trade him, let him play and do his thing. Work with him on adjusting his thing if his thing is so overwhelmingly offensive to the delicate sensibilities of the people who contract the vapors every time this guy claps his hands or makes a face or shows a pulse. Jordany Valdespin, like every position player who isn’t John Buck, is a flawed Met, but he’s an exciting Met and, at the moment, a generally effective Met. In Wednesday night’s Hefnerrible loss, Jordany recorded the following: three infield hits; two diving catches; one jog between third and home that wasn’t consequential given Daniel Murphy’s misguided sense of direction yet not exactly an endorsement of headiness; and one bases-loaded, full-count, caught-looking, inning-ending, rally-dousing strikeout on a filthy Kyle Kendrick pitch that caught the inside corner of the plate after Hefner was mysteriously sent up to bat in a situation that cried out for a pinch-hitter.
He may have also worn a t-shirt on the team bus. I’m not sure.
This was all the night after Valdespin tripled to maybe spark a little life into a dormant attack in a ballpark where we’re constantly reminded no lead is safe (the Phillies led by six in the fifth) in a sport where we’ve been told a triple is the most fabulous play there is (better than sex, according to a noted expert). Valdespin congratulated himself on the triple. Everybody else admonished him for enjoying the moment, even after he directly scored on a passed ball. He had brought the Mets a little closer in a game where the object was to win and we watched in the hopes the Mets could win. Yet Valdespin upset the unwritten code or perhaps darted into the visiting clubhouse to try on another t-shirt.
Maybe the guy is a royal pain in the rear when you’re actually around him. Maybe he’s just that caustic in close quarters. Maybe he’s the “1” in Steve Phillips’s old “24 + 1” A-Rod equation but doesn’t have the goods to back it up. Maybe he’s impenetrable to the wisdom the Mets unfirable corps of coaches dispenses, assuming they dispense wisdom. Maybe the Ambassador, in his role as Captain, has given him numerous talkings-to that just won’t take. It’s also possible that Jordany Valdespin plays the game the way it was played by the national team that won the World Baseball Classic, given that he’s from the same place, and it doesn’t always translate. Team Dominican Republic exuded “passion”; Jordany displays “histrionics”. Maybe it’s all about context.
Several of the Mets’ announcers can barely conceal their contempt for him. Most of the beat writers run their Thesaurii ragged to take nonlibelous shots at him. His manager can barely stand to look at him and has to force himself to write his name onto the lineup card, whether he produces or not. At the moment, he’s producing. The Mets outfield, despite Terry Collins’s stated preference for everyday assignments, is a six-card monte affair most nights.
Lucas Duda’s commenced an assault on National League upper decks. Collin Cowgill was last week’s catalyst (or cattle-ist), is this week’s afterthought. Marlon Byrd had a big hit a few days ago. Kirk Nieuwenhuis isn’t a backup infielder, which would make him more useful. Mike Baxter, he of the historic great play, made one pretty bad play and one pretty lucky play last night. And Jordany Valdespin, hitting .400, robbing opposing batters and being, shall we say, fascinating in the process, isn’t simply sent out there every game for several games in a row for some reason. Or for obvious reasons. Or reasons obvious to those who make decisions but not to me.
Give him a chance to succeed and grow up. Or give him a ticket out of here if his presence bothers you so much. Maybe you can exchange him for a fifth starter. We have a pile of those, too.
by Jason Fry on 9 April 2013 10:38 pm Look, just forget about that one.
Certainly Dillon Gee would like to.
I came out of Gee’s nightmare of a second inning thinking that Objects on Scoreboard Are Less Dire Than They Appear — several of the hits had just found holes, the Mets were driving balls off Cliff Lee, and it was Citizens Bank Park.
But then came Gee’s nightmare of a third inning, in which a quarter-mile worth of home runs did substantial harm to such optimism. It was the alternate path to the same lousy destination, speedy and overwhelming instead of gradual and cumulative, but equally awful. Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses? Gee can say he’s duked it out with the baseball version of both and neither one was pleasant.
At 7-0, well, you could still dream — but then Cliff Lee relaxed or found himself or remembered he was Cliff Lee, and then aside from the heroics of John Buck and the histrionics of Jordany Valdespin this one was over.
We’re still at the point in the season when you can remember every game and are just glad that baseball is a nightly habit again, meaning games like tonight’s don’t hurt so much as they’re just kind of annoying. 5-3 on the season, back at ’em tomorrow for the rubber game (weather permitting), grounds for optimism and all that.
But still, let’s have no more like this one, OK?
by Greg Prince on 9 April 2013 9:24 am The Mets taking it to Roy Halladay is a great thing. I’m not sure that’s who they beat up Monday night, however.
That couldn’t have been the Roy Halladay who gave the Mets and the rest of the National League fits in 2010 and 2011 after owning the American League for years prior. This was the Roy Halladay who encountered back and shoulder miseries last year and clearly hasn’t shaken the aftereffects. If the Phillies want to send Roy 2.0, bugs and all, to the mound, then I have to be all for the Mets exterminating his pitches with extreme prejudice. He’s a pitcher in a Phillies uniform, period. Yet I surely didn’t derive any extra pleasure from the fact that the back of the uniform read HALLADAY 34.
’Cause that couldn’t have been the same guy who wore that uniform so vexingly for so long.
The 7-2 result, with seven earned runs charged to Halladay in four-plus innings? That’s for keeps, and we’ll keep it. But c’mon, that wasn’t the two-league Cy Young winner out there, not the man who threw one of the only two postseason no-hitters in captivity, definitely not the guy who entered Monday with a 9-2 lifetime record versus the Mets, neither of the losses having transpired over the past decade. Of course I wanted the Mets to prevail over the great Roy Halladay — but knocking around this fellow of deteriorating physical abilities didn’t fulfill that desire. I wanted the Mets to stick it good to the Halladay they had on the ropes but couldn’t quite knock out the last time I was in Philly, three years ago. I wanted the Mets to avenge the Halladay who dropped a Saturday night masterpiece on my buddy Jeff and me one weekend later. I wanted to get even with the Halladay who refused to be gotten to the day before SEAL Team 6 got to a far more offensive enemy.
Let me stress again: I’ll accept the victory on behalf of the New York Mets. I’ll thank John Buck for continuing his MVP campaign, Daniel Murphy for stoking the hit-maker machinery behind the popular score and, most of all, Matt Harvey for being the kind of pitcher fans of other teams dream of getting to but can only dream (7 IP, 3 H, 2 BB, 1 ER and 9 K without being nearly as suffocating on the Phillies as he was on the Padres). Yet disposing of this Halladay so effortlessly…it wasn’t bitter, but somehow taking him over the wall and relentlessly pinning him up against it didn’t feel particularly sweet.
This twinge of not-quite-rightness doesn’t apply elsewhere on the Phillie staff, mind you. Slice and dice Hamels until he’s Cole slaw? Pass me a plate. Unsteady Kendrick until he has no choice but to keep on truckin’ toward the showers? I’m the red ball express of lovin’ for that. Make Lee surrender tonight? Please use Citizens Bank Park to re-enact the Battle of Appomattox Court House, a conflagration which went into the win column for the team from the north 148 years ago today.
The Roy Halladay of 2013, who looks suspiciously like the Johan Santana of the part of 2012 when he stopped looking like Johan Santana altogether…it wasn’t as much fun watching him get hit hard as it should’ve been.
But I’ll take it.
And I hope you’ll take a listen to my and Matt Silverman’s 1973-centric appearance from Sunday night on SportstalkNY Live, via podcast here.
by Jason Fry on 8 April 2013 1:33 am On Sunday afternoon a strange thing happened at Citi Field: The Mets won the kind of game that used to constantly go the Marlins’ way.
Seriously, if you’ve been a Mets fan for 10 years or so, look at this sequence out of context and tell me it doesn’t conjure up Soilmaster Stadium, Luis Castillo, Antonio Alfonseca and all matter of South Florida horrors: One-run lead, one out in ninth. Hit by pitch, single to short left, runner on first beats throw to third, trail runner takes second on throw, little bounder eludes third baseman, jubilation for home team.
Except this time we did it to them.
A win’s a win, but it’s also true that the Marlins have been stripped by Jeffrey Loria to the point that they barely resemble a major-league team — there’s Giancarlo Stanton, who’s either in an early-season slump or feeling the weight of carrying eight teammates, and nobody else of note. Worse than that, though, there are things that make you wonder what exactly is going on with this franchise beyond savage downsizing. Like why was the Marlins’ bullpen catcher jogging out to the bullpen on Saturday with a reliever desperately needed? Why were the Marlins insisting on playing the stone-legged Ruben Tejada like he was going to zip to first after bunting to third? And why in the world did Mike Redmond bring the infield in Sunday with one out, the tying run on third and the winning run on second?
The Marlins aren’t completely hopeless, as 20-year-old Jose Fernandez demonstrated — despite making the rather abrupt jump from Single-A, the rookie mixed an impressive fastball with an evil curve and cameos by a pretty fair change-up, striking out Mets in droves. He didn’t look raw or scared out there — if anything, he looked like he was having fun, chomping gum and going about his business with cool efficiency. The Mets made contact off Fernandez in the first but came up short, making you think they’d soon find the range and drive the rookie from the game. But in the second, Fernandez fanned Ike Davis, followed by Mike Baxter and Lucas Duda. (Granted, the first of those feats isn’t particularly noteworthy.) After that he was cruising. The fifth was particularly impressive: Duda went down again to start the inning, frozen by a nasty curve that caressed the outside corner. With a runner on first, Fernandez floated an errant curve to Anthony Recker for the Mets’ first run. He then went right back to that pitch, tearing up Marlon Byrd on another beautiful breaking ball and extracting a harmless pop-up from Collin Cowgill.
The Mets countered with Aaron Laffey, revealed as an unprepossessing ham-and-egger with an odd habit of seeming to genuflect in the direction of the plate after pitches and a broad face that beneath a baseball cap makes him look a bit like Charlie Brown. Laffey didn’t irreparably harm the cause, leaving the Mets down three with one out in the fifth, but 10 hits over 4 and 1/3 does not make for enthusiasm — he was a bit of bad luck (or a better lineup) away from resembling Charlie Brown after a barrage of line drives leaves him lying on the mound in his skivvies, surrounded by clothes and socks and those Peanuts shoes that (rather charmingly) resemble dinner rolls. Afterwards, Terry Collins was kind about Laffey’s performance, noting his lack of work in the spring and saying he’d start again, though when, exactly, is not clear. Personally, I’d rather see Collin McHugh given the next chance, but since we won let’s be charitable and hope the Mets brass sees something in Laffey beyond this not being his first rodeo.
The hurler I did not want and still do not want to see was Zack Wheeler. Wheeler was shaky in his Las Vegas debut, for one thing, and for another keeping him in Sin City until midsummer will give the Mets an extra year of his services and ensure his salary doesn’t escalate rapidly through arbitration. Even without the Wilpons’ woes, this seems like a no-brainer in a year when a postseason berth is highly unlikely, and service-time calculations are rapidly becoming part of baseball’s financial laws of physics. So then why was Jose Fernandez — drafted one pick after Brandon Nimmo — on the mound for the Marlins? If I had to guess, it’s because the Marlins no longer have any kind of philosophy whatsoever, beyond gaming the system. Player development? Salary structures? Oh come now: In Lorialand there is no long-term future for anybody except the owner, sulfurously a-slumber in his garish swindler’s fortress on a mound of pocketed revenue.
With Fernandez out of the game the Mets began a slow-motion comeback that was apparently doomed until the wacky ninth, helped by stalwart work from the bullpen and then by smart play from two players badly in need of a gold star or two.
After a Steve Cishek pitch just brushed Tejada’s jersey with one out in the ninth, Kirk Nieuwenhuis came to the plate. Nearly a year ago, Nieuwenhuis became a cult hero by beating Heath Bell, then of these same Marlins. But that was before he began swinging at anything and everything, amassing strikeouts at a frightening rate and getting passed on the center-field depth chart by more or less everybody. With a 1-and-2 advantage on Kirk, Cishek tried to lure him into swinging at a breaking pitch slithering off the outside corner. Last summer it would almost certainly have worked; this time Nieuwenhuis took it for a ball. After a foul, Cishek took aim at that corner again, but this time the ball slithered the width of a mitt too far into the heart of the plate and Nieuwenhuis whacked it into left for a single.
Fielding the ball was Juan Pierre, who continues to be employed by general managers despite a complete lack of power, a failure to understand that one can also reach first base on a walk, and the worst arm in the big leagues. Tejada had held up thinking the ball might be caught, but alertly steamed from the near side of second all the way to third despite being in Pierre’s sights. Worse for the Marlins, Pierre’s throw to third was wide and handled indifferently by Chris Valaika, allowing the similarly alert Nieuwenhuis to streak into second. That prompted Redmond to inexplicably play the infield in, and two pitches later Byrd smacked a little bounder down the third-base line.
If Valaika had been playing back, he might have thrown Tejada out at home, or froze him and nipped Byrd at first, or trapped Kirk between second and third, or done something else to make us groan in dismay. (Or maybe everyone would have been safe. Hard to say.) As it was, the ball skipped down the line, banging off the stands while Nieuwenhuis followed Tejada home, and we had done unto the Marlins as they have so often done unto us.
by Greg Prince on 7 April 2013 1:01 am It’s the golden hour for John Buck right now, that fleeting interregnum when the journeyman is master craftsman. It is a time to be savored.
John Buck drives in nine runs in five games, four of them in his fifth game to propel the Mets to a Saturday victory.
John Buck draws a roughing the catcher penalty the likes of which struck everybody as completely novel.
John Buck offers pitchers wise counsel, teammates unyielding support and every fanny in sight a manly slap for a job well done.
All things considered, John Buck is the best Met we’ve seen this year until he’s not — which is swell for now and whatever it is for later.
Let’s enjoy the swell. Let’s enjoy every professional at-bat that produces all manner of RBI, from two-run double to two sac flies against the Marlins to move the Mets back above .500 and Buck to the front of the National League ribeye steak line. We have a hitter who leads the league in something. Didn’t see that coming…certainly didn’t see it coming from the same place that fancy mask and innovative glove gear emanated.
I’m loving the unexpected offense, of course. I’m loving whatever it is Buck has whispered in the ears of Matt Harvey, Dillon Gee, Jeremy Hefner and Jonathon Niese twice now to make the Mets’ starters among the stingiest in captivity. I’m loving the role of super-involved veteran this guy seems to have been born to play. After Daniel Murphy scored Saturday, who delivered the heartiest congratulations? After Jordany Valdespin was whacked in the elbow and immediately thereafter picked off Friday, who checked in with him pronto? After an underwhelming carousel of callow and crumbling catchers left home plate virtually unmanned these past couple of seasons, who’s so present that you can’t miss him?
John Buck. That’s who.
It’s appropriate that Buck was at the heart of the turning-point play Saturday and that he was there by dint of simply doing his job. This was after Niese was removed following his usual yeoman six innings. Juan Pierre was on second (where he’s been, against the Mets, for about a decade) with two out in the seventh, the Marlins down by one. Josh Edgin came in to face Greg Dobbs, which had losing battle written all over it, given that Dobbs is Dobbs and it doesn’t really matter who Edgin is. Sure enough, Dobbs was Dobbs, singling hard to right. There wasn’t going to be a play at the plate, but Pierre wasn’t taking any chances. He slid hard into Buck with the tying run. Thing is, Buck wasn’t at the plate, but about ten feet beyond it hailing down Mike Baxter’s off-line throw
Do you remember Mark Gastineau barreling into Bernie Kosar in an ill-fated Jets playoff game 26 years ago? Well, Buck equaled Kosar here and Jim Joyce threw a flag. Pierre scored, there was no doubt about that, but Dobbs, who did nothing worse than torture another Mets reliever, was out on runner’s interference. The runner in this case was Pierre — 2013’s version of Gastineau.
Juan’s momentum carried him into John (who was noble enough to lend his opponent a hand as both were getting to their feet), but the Marlins’ momentum evaporated on the spot. Edgin wriggled out of the inning with no earned runs, but it was such a freakish escape that when the Mets took the lead in the bottom of the seventh on Murphy’s triple, Edgin’s pitcher-of-record status cut no ice with the official scorer, who credited what eventually became the 7-3 Mets win to Brandon Lyon.
Feels like it should have gone to Buck, who’s made a great case for MVP of the five-game season. I watched him homer Wednesday while guiding Harvey to new heights; I watched him homer again Thursday after bringing Gee along nicely. Now I’ve had a chance to follow him on TV and it’s just as impressive seeing him do the little things as it is the big ones. Best of all, he hasn’t even yet taken on his largest task, which will be to show Travis d’Arnaud the big league ropes and then shed himself of all ego as he reverts to caddying for the heir apparent. By then, Buck probably won’t be leading the league in anything that shows up in the box score and we’ll likely be more relieved than disappointed that John isn’t catching for the Mets every day.
But for now, it’s April, and John Buck is a helluva Met. Not a damn thing wrong with that.
Tune in to WLIE 540-AM on Long Island or log on to SportsTalkNY Live Sunday night at 7 when I join Mark Rosenman and AJ Carter to discuss The Happiest Recap book series and all matters Metropolitan. If you’d like a personally inscribed copy of the first volume of this one-of-a-kind trip through fifty years of New York Mets history, you’ll make my sister and her husband very happy if you purchase it through their eBay store.
by Jason Fry on 6 April 2013 12:21 am The Miami Marlins are horrible.
Besides being a cautionary lesson to the next fanbase extorted into building a Xanadu for a sharp-elbowed gazillionaire owner (which is a fancy way of saying “an owner”), the Marlins have no hitters besides Giancarlo Stanton and Greg Dobbs, who wouldn’t count except we all know Greg Dobbs could still connect for a hit as a blind 80-year-old if it meant that hit would come at the expense of the Mets. Their relief corps features an excess of downy-cheeked youths who should still be enduring growing pains before 500-odd fans in a park with wooden bleachers. They run the bases like they’re drunk and/or asleep. And their fielders spent half the game looking askance at each other, pirouetting away from near-collisions or trying to fall down.
Unfortunately, at least for one night the Mets were horribler.
No, that’s not a word. But then it was a stretch to call what happened Friday night a ballgame, particularly the part that involved Mets.
Jeremy Hefner is excused from the critical fusillade. He was very good making his first start of the season, just as Dillon Gee was in the finale with the Padres, and like Gee that fine performance came to naught. We’ll also excuse Daniel Murphy, who blasted a three-run homer and made a couple of superb plays in the field that let the Mets creep back into the game, causing the end result to move up the Hierarchy of Suck from “Lipstick on a Pig” to “Sloppy, Aggravating and Doomed.”
The rest of the Mets, hmm. Lucas Duda just missed another Pepsi Porch homer, but he also more than just missed two catchable balls in left. Duda is trying his hardest, but it’s cruelty to put him anywhere besides first or DH — cruelty to the fans, the ERA of pitchers and most of all to Duda himself. Ruben Tejada, on the other hand, has no excuse for a night where he looked like he was playing shortstop with a meat cleaver. Greg Burke was victimized by his defense but also by himself. LaTroy Hawkins had nothing. Jordany Valdespin kept trying to get picked off first until he finally succeeded, which at least might quiet unnamed veterans sniping that he lacks perseverance. Bushelfuls of Mets reached base but nobody could drive them in.
You got an unhappy premonition of nights like this in the final innings of Matt Magnificent the other night, as porous defense gave the Padres too many cheap runs. It won’t be the last time, either: The Mets’ starters may wind up front and center this year, both for cheering us with their development and for becoming the poster children for FIP.
In the meantime, well, we’re .500 against two not very good teams. Small sample size and all — the ’11 and ’12 Mets had better starts than this, but who cares — but it was galling that the second loss was the first win for the Marlins, whose owner and front office thoroughly deserve to go 0-162. Somewhere in south Florida, Jeffrey Loria is fleecing a taxpayer by way of celebration. Should you find that way too harsh, seeing how it’s not like Jeffrey Loria is a war criminal, let me remind you that Loria’s never had the opportunity to be a war criminal. We all know he’d be great at it.
by Greg Prince on 5 April 2013 5:43 pm We may lose and we may win
But we will never be here again
So open up, I’m climbin’ in
—Glenn Frey, The Eagles
And I said to myself, this is the business we’ve chosen.
—Hyman Roth, The Godfather
If you told me I was going to three games in a four-day span in the middle of the season, I’d say, yeah, and what else is new? Ah, but it’s not the middle of the season! It’s the beginning! And at the beginning, three games in four days is the season in its entirety to date, which is a ton of baseball to digest at once when you haven’t consumed even a teaspoon of baseball for more than six months. Doctors, trainers and public health authorities would urge caution when undertaking such a feverish ramp-up in intake considering how dormant the game-going muscles had become. My late mother would have warned me, your eyes are bigger than your stomach, don’t put so much on your plate right away.
My rationalization in response? This amounts to only three games in…let’s see…late September, October, November, December, January, February, March…three games in 189 days. Gosh, it’s like I hardly ever go see the Mets at all.
Well, that’s taken care of. I’m fully immersed again. No complaints. I woke up on the fifth day rather tired, a little achy somehow and more than the least bit weatherbeaten given the prevailing winds whipping off Flushing Bay — but no complaints whatsoever. I could’ve been lacking sleep and stood out in the cold without baseball, too. This is much better.
Of course it is. That’s why when e-mails that say things like…
• “The tickets have been printed, so we are confirmed to see the Mets on the 1st of April. Let’s go, Mets!”
• “Susan will be missing a number of games in April with opera conflicts. If you’d like to join Melanie and me for a few games, we’d love to have you.”
• “I set up a date to do a book talk/sell/thingee at Bergino Baseball Clubhouse in the village on April 4. That happens to the be the night following a Mets-Padres day game. If your dance card is not filled for this day and you’re willing to brave potential cold or mediocrity, I can see if my source has seats in the Promenade behind home plate. Or we can buy Stub Hub seats for $1.50. Who knows? Maybe John Buck lands one in the LF upper deck and it becomes a top 10 game.”
…I tend to say “why, yes, outstanding, thank you very much.” Those conversations, played out across the offseason, became the first three games of the on season. When you’re lucky enough to know people who send you e-mails like those, you don’t think about tired, achy or all that much about the weather. You’re all about seeing them and seeing the game in roughly that order.
The games went well two times out of three. The seeing them and everybody else went much better. Like Justin Turner, I’m batting something close to a thousand for 2013.
DAY ONE: HAPPY MURPH DAY TO US
Too many Yankees fans on my train to Woodside. I figured as much. Two Openers in one day. What city does that? It only matters in that the LIRR will have to ferry us and ferry them part of the way, and I’m not interested in sharing mass transit with so many of them. Only one of them is outwardly overbearing, I have to admit, but all it takes is one. He’s the guy who got on the stop after mine with his Mets fan buddy. They each have a different Opener. They each have a different approach. The Mets fan is quiet and contemplative. The Yankees fan won’t shut up. He’s reliving drunken glories (“I was so sick after the parade in ’09 and I didn’t even drink that much!”) and offering patronizing piffle (“you guys were right there in 2006, just one swing away”). Woodside never looked so good.
I meet Joe on the platform. He’s the guy in the jaunty hat, holding those print-at-home tickets that are our gateway to 2013. It’s the 20th anniversary of his last Opener and my first: 1993, the birth of the Rockies, the resurrection of the Doctor. Joe’s been busy on Opening Day since the last time Dwight Gooden looked quite so good. This is my 14th; I’m thus far 11-2, a set of numbers that will become joyfully relevant again in a few hours. As we wait for the LIRR to “Mets-Willets Point,” or as any sane person knows it, Shea, we’re handed a handbill urging us to sing “happy birthday” to Daniel Murphy, who turns his own relevant number today. This is a 7 Line Army project. Judging by the snappy orange shirts the entrepreneurial general Darren Meenan has distributed, the 7 Line Army is everywhere today. We’re all spiritually enlisted in the 7 Line Army. We all want Daniel Murphy to enjoy the happiest of 28th birthdays. We’re all #with28, hashtag optional.
On the platform, some are already supporting America’s leading brewers, as if the first day of baseball isn’t intoxicating enough on its own steam. On the train, thoughtful Joe presents me with my own birthday gift (it’s not belated; we’re all born again on Opening Day): a framed photo of the 1905 World Champions: Mathewson, McGinnity, even a fellow wearing a jersey identifying him as Mascot. All of McGraw’s Men. Joe and I share the New York Giants affinity. His stretches back deeply into the dead ball era. Yet today, dreaming of another New York National League entity earning the same honorific those New York National Leaguers achieved, we are unquestionably alive.
After the train and my brief but vital revisitation with my brick, we spin left through the parking lot. I pause to tap Shea Stadium’s home plate marker with my cap to let Gary Carter know we’re still thinking of him and then seek out the vantop flag that will guide me to Opening Day’s other home plate: the Chapman tailgate. In past years I’d need a call or a text for directions. Now, like the Mets will some autumn in the not-too-distant future, I simply go for the flag. Even with parking compromised by Cirque du Soleil (as if the Mets aren’t acrobatic enough) and the lot sizzling with grills, I find our way home.
It’s the Kevin Chapman annual tailgate extravaganza and it’s Randy Medina with his The Apple/Captain Shorts tailgate joining forces, which is only right, proper and convenient, especially for me, because I get to see a whole bunch of Mets fans I know and a whole bunch more I don’t. But it’s Opening Day, so we all know each other: bloggers, readers, photographers — none more prolific or talented than the enthusiastic Sharon Chapman, natch — and did I mention Mets fans? We’re always all in this together, but in the hours leading to Jonathon Niese’s first pitch, it’s never more literally true. There’s food, there’s drink, there’s enough conviviality and hospitality to inspire Clyde Frazier to totality.
If you’re a Mets fan, you’re in your element here, whether you know most of the faces, as I do, or encountering most of them for the first time, as Joe was. Since Joe’s neither the biggest of eaters nor drinkers and we were standing amid an onslaught of what were to him relative strangers, I asked him if he wanted to get going. Absolutely not, he basically said. This was Mets fandom immersion and he was enjoying the sensation. I thought I caught a Karen Hill vibe from the wedding scene in GoodFellas:
It was like he had two families. The first time I was introduced to all of them at once, it was crazy. Paulie and his brothers had lots of sons and nephews. And almost all of them were named Peter or Paul. It was unbelievable. There must have been two dozen Peters and Pauls at the wedding. Plus, they were all married to girls named Marie. And they named all their daughters Marie. By the time I finished meeting everybody, I thought I was drunk.
Cinematic mob weddings have nothing on Mets Opening Day. Nor does the Easter Parade, speaking of rites of renewal, spring and so forth. The day before, at least on Turner Classic Movies, Fifth Avenue was filled with bonnet upon bonnet, all the frills upon it. No match for the Mets fan procession, though. So much blue. So much orange. So much thought devoted to which satin jacket, which Starter cap, which 7 Line sweatshirt, whose number dons whose back. It’s like wandering inside a Uni Watch column. Fashion Week also has nothing on Mets Opening Day.
Eventually, the stream of WRIGHTs, DAVISes, REYESes, SANTANAs, DICKEYs, HERNANDEZes, SEAVERs and — my favorite — GUNDERSON (singular) seeps away from the lot and into the park. You could linger and tailgate all day if someone would have you (and I’m pretty sure Kevin Chapman would), but there’s a ballgame in there. There are only 25,000 magnetic schedules to be grabbed and Gil help me if I’m gonna be No. 25,001. First I spy my favorite bag-checker, the guy who’s guaranteed not to do damage to my 1905 Giants. Then we get in his quick-moving line. Then he does right by me. Then it’s time for the necessary frisking and wanding, except I’m not wanded but I’m frisked to high heaven. I’m frisked so much that if I was the 1905 Giants picture, I would’ve cracked. I’m frisked so much that I can’t believe Jordany Valdespin has to be reminded to wear a cup because, quite frankly, the guard doing the frisking seems to be checking for one.
I blame the Yankees for this. I’ve never seen this frisker before and it occurs to me that with two Openers in one city transpiring simultaneously, the people who normally work both ballparks are spread thin. Reinforcements had to be called in. Clearly the Mets contacted Rikers Island and asked if they could spare an extra pair of roving hands.
Or as the hardest cons in New York City would say, watch where you’re frisking there, buddy.
Violated but otherwise upbeat, I am handed my schedule and, after a few quick detours, it’s off to the seats. I’ve missed the Shea Family floral horseshoe presentation, but I applaud it when I hear it announced by Alex Anthony while I’m finishing my last detour. Everything else I catch. And once the game starts, the Mets catch everything, hit everything, do everything well. Joe and I watch the lead build: 2-0; 4-1; 7-1. Niese is 2-for-2, which sends our National League hearts fluttering. The margin over the Padres is secure enough for me to do a little social butterflying. The Easter (or Nieseter, per my friend Coop) Parade continues. That’s Opening Day’s value-added, saying hi to so many I haven’t seen since last September 27. Whatever it’s sapping from my on-field observation — Brandon Lyon pitched? — is made up for by reminders that all of us being in this together makes it so much more worthwhile. There’ll be plenty of time for solemn vigils over middle relief later.
Two crowning touches to the game remained by the time I refound my seat next to Joe. First, there was Collin Cowgill, unwitting avatar of the “why can’t the Mets get anybody we’ve heard of?” offseason. Collin Cowgill answered that once and for all by embroidering himself forever within the Mets fans consciousness by fully making himself heard of. With the bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh, he ripped a pitch to deep left. From our seats in the same general vicinity of the ballpark it was…what was it? Dave Howard’s grand experiment in geometry failed us. Joe and I and everybody in our midst thought Cowgill had hustled his udders off to lash a brilliant, three-run triple, except as we exulted, we noticed his journey continued on. “Did the Padres throw the ball away?” I asked. No, it was actually a home run — a grand slam! That in itself was fantastic, but that Collin never slowed, never hesitated, never “took anything for granted,” as announcers like to commend…that was fantastic. That was all that “he plays the game the right way” stuff come to life.
Less fantastic was we couldn’t make out from Section 526 that Cowgill had indeed cleared the blue wall and banged Brad Brach’s ball off the black backdrop. For what the Mets charged on Opening Day, the least they could do is provide a geometrically sound view. Old news, I suppose. But where was the live-action look on any of the multiple video screens lining the outfield? Nowhere. And where was the conclusive replay? Cut off right before the ball reached its destination. And what about the next half-inning? Delta sponsored the presentation of a Collin Cowgill-autographed baseball to One Lucky Fan. For the rest of us? We would’ve been fortunate to see a replay of the mysterious triplish hit that spurred the gift. But all we saw was Collin swing and an ad for Delta. Or as the wise beyond her years little girl sitting behind us commented, “They don’t show the home run, but they show an airplane.”
Second crown jewel: ninth inning; the wind kicking up Dave Howard’s memorial good-time garbage; and entering our conversation for the first time in a Mets uniform, Scott Rice. Many have left Citi Field in deference to the hour, the score and recurring chill (because luxuriating in a ninth-inning, nine-run blowout is apparently a hassle), but this is a treat for those of us who have stayed. Scott Rice, drafted into professional baseball so long ago that Bobby Bonilla was on the Mets payroll not as a running joke but as a pinch-hitter, is making his major league debut. His uniform pants are billowing in a bitter gale. His crowd can be better described as a gathering at this point. These circumstances resemble a hopeless September afternoon more than the one day of the year the Mets tend to be perfect, but would you tell Scott Rice this is anything other than ideal? We wouldn’t. So Joe and I and hundreds of others stand and applaud as he’s announced. Or, more or less as Steve Zabriskie greeted Gary Carter on a similar occasion 28 years earlier, “Welcome to New York, Scott Rice!”
Scott got three outs, the Mets got their traditional 1-0 start and we got, in contrast to Mick Jagger, satisfaction. The Mets won their umpteenth Opener in umpteen tries. I moved to 12-2 and then to the Rotunda, where I said goodbye to Joe and hello to my buddies the Chasins over by the 42. We couldn’t hook up during the game. Ryder and dad Rob were stuck in a suite of some sort, the poor bastards. While we chatted and Ryder continued to grow even taller since I last saw him, I noticed that rarest of species clumping nearby: Padres fans. But it was clear they weren’t random San Diegans. Their Opening Day finery included several custom-made GYORKO jerseys. It didn’t take a Mets Police to deduct that this was Jedd Gyorko’s family. Jedd, almost exactly seven years younger than Scott Rice, also made his major league debut here at Citi Field today. He was on the damning end of the 11-2 result, but for a band of proud Gyorkos, could anything be wrong with having a newly minted big leaguer in their brood? When I went home later and watched the pregame show that I had recorded (of course I did), I heard Bobby Ojeda counsel, “There’s nothing like a debut.”
That goes for Scott Rice of the Mets, for Jedd Gyorko of the Padres, for 2013 for all of us.
While Joshua Fry celebrated what remained of Daniel Murphy’s birthday craving more Cowgill, I alighted at Sunnyside to meet Stephanie for our second annual Queens dinner after the Opener. We chose a diner near her place of business, I ordered a cup of chicken soup as I did following the winning debut in 2012 and she snapped a picture of me ready to sip on the spoils of victory, thus establishing a perennial ritual. As I did last year, I posted it to Facebook. When the Mets have won, everybody is filled with chicken soup for the soul.
The diner’s big screen airs the YES postgame show. Red Sox 8 Yankees 2. My soul is full.
DAY TWO INTERLUDE: NO NO-HITTERS (REVISITED)
I planned to watch Johan Santana no-hit the Cardinals on the cruelly imposed off night between Games One and Two of the season. SNY said it would air it as a Mets Classic. They changed their minds, maybe because the “50 Greatest Mets” show needed to run a thousandth time, maybe because the Mets have decided the man who led them from the no-hitter wilderness (leaving the Padres there to sulk alone) is now a non-person in their esteem. I missed Johan on the mound Monday. He belonged there. If we couldn’t have Johan — and that pesky anterior capsule pretty much dictated we couldn’t — I would’ve loved R.A. But you want to talk about an officially vanished non-person? At least the yearbook had a page on “NO-HAN!” The guy who won 20 and the Cy Young for the 2012 Mets? “NO-THING!” except for the same tiny square every Met All-Star ever got. R.A.’s now Mets history, just like Ron Hunt, Joel Youngblood and T#m Gl@v!ne, but he’s gone from the present.
Time marches on, and “NI-ESE!” has stepped up, but wow, that was quick. If I wanted Santana, I’d have to slip in my DVD. If I wanted Dickey, I’d have to avail myself of the MLB Extra Innings preview, where R.A.’s Canadian currency didn’t exchange so successfully during his Blue Jay debut. If I wanted masterful pitching Tuesday night, it would have to come from Yu Darvish, Texas Ranger, blanking the eminently blankable Houston Astros on no hits, no walks, no flaws whatsoever through 26 batters. But the 27th out, which seemed a formality for a hurler so formidable, eluded him in the same fashion Marwin Gonzalez’s hot bouncer between his legs did. Not even the overzealous security guard from Opening Day could have gotten his hands on that ball.
Poor Yu, I thought in my best Livia Soprano. So close to immortality, but he’d have to deal with near-invincibility. I actually felt a little good for the Astros. Gonzalez, who we last saw being blocked at the plate by Kelly Shoppach late last August (time has marched on real good, huh?), maintained Houston’s dignity, most of which was stripped away when they were banished to the American League. Their fans are going to suffer terribly this season and for several seasons. Being perfect-gamed by their cross-state rivals in the first series of the year? Losing 7-0 was plenty.
So was what Johan did for us last June 1. How different it is to watch a no-hitter in progress from distant precincts knowing we put one in the books. For a Mets fan, that’s not a game-changer. That’s a veritable life-changer.
Yes to the question that will always linger about Johan Santana should his expensive left shoulder never throw another baseball in service to the New York Mets. Yes, it was worth it.
DAY THREE: HEADLEYLESS PADRES IN TOPLESS PARK
“Hey Greg, how was the soup?”
Mets fans who like to read (and go on Facebook) are everywhere, including Citi Field when the sensible place to be on the coldest bleeping baseball night since the 1973 World Series would be by a kettle on a stove. But we had all winter for that sort of thing, didn’t we?
It’s no longer Opening Day or anything like it. There are no Yankees fans on my train and there are relatively few Mets fans. If there’s tailgating, it’s out of view. The rent-a-cops are gone. I’m frisked lightly and unintimately. No magnetic schedules (or pocket schedules). Just some regular Mets and Padres coming up a few minutes after I arrive at the ballpark.
That’s fine. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Opening Day is when we continue. The second game of the year is when we simply keep going. The normality is as bracing as the wind. Actually, nothing’s as bracing as the wind tonight. I just got here and despite taking Gary Cohen’s advice when I heard it on the Monday night replay that I should bring my “woolies,” I’m feeling it.
At least it will make me sympathetic to the San Diego Padres, should I feel so generous of spirit. As I hoof it from World’s Fare Market with my Mama’s of Corona turkey and mozzarella hero (first Citi Field bite of the year, thanks to being sated at the Chapman/Medina tailgate Monday), Matt Harvey is on the mound creating more stiff breezes. “Seven pitches, seven swinging strikes,” I hear from the monitors. It’s the only breeze we want more of in this uncovered stadium. And there’s only going to be more of it.
When I settle onto my graciously provided, perfectly positioned Excelsior perch, I ask my host Garry Spector what I missed. “Seven pitches, seven swinging strikes,” he said.
Matt Harvey gives us something better to notice than the goddamn wind tonight. But we notice the wind and the cold and how much it’s like the 1973 World Series and so much more. Garry’s the one who invited me to join him and his daughter, Melanie, because his wife, Susan, author of the intermittently updated but always invigorating Perfect Pitch blog (the gene runs in the family), had to be at that other Met thing of hers. Susan’s an oboist for the Metropolitan Opera; she had to make like the wind Wednesday and blow at Lincoln Center. La Traviata’s gain became mine as well because I got to take third chair alongside Garry and Melanie in the Spector Season Ticket Orchestra.
This is a family that knows how to watch a Mets game. They’re at most of them, they keep score, they listen to the broadcast, they eyeball the gamecast and they know enough to bundle up with a blue and orange blanket on nights like Wednesday’s. Melanie and Garry were well-stocked with hot chocolate. I took warmth from my hero — the sandwich, I mean. Matt Harvey’s not my hero, but give him another start or two.
As you already know, he was captivating. I had Caesars Club access, but who wanted to go inside when Harvey was outside? I’d hoped the team from San Diego, especially since they lacked their one big hitter Chase Headley, would be intimidated by a combination of the elements and the pitcher. They were. Or they were simply overpowered. They met a demise as certain as — spoiler alert! — Violetta did in La Traviata.
I worried a little that Harvey was being overexposed to the cold and wind. After a couple of innings, I was worried the cold and wind were being overexposed to Harvey, who emerged Wednesday as the personification of climate change. As he threw and we roared, he certainly transformed the atmosphere at Citi Field. Seven innings, one hit, no runs, ten K’s…not only were we on our way to the easiest of 8-4 victories, I’m pretty sure I could see a fully heated future arriving.
Like summer, it can’t get here fast enough.
DAY FOUR: TRUANT TO THE ORANGE AND BLUE
Thursday’s another day game. It’s warmer but not warm. It’s not my birthday, but it could be by the Mets’ reckoning. If you read your press releases carefully, you learn the darnedest things.
As a happy birthday present from the Mets, fans can receive a complimentary ticket to that day’s game to celebrate their birthday at Citi Field. Fans can show a valid form of identification (birth certificate, driver’s license, passport, etc.) at the Citi Field Ticket Windows on their birthday to receive a ticket, subject to availability. Offer does not apply for games on Opening Day, April 1, the Subway Series May 27-28, or after September 29. For those celebrating their birthday when the Mets are on the road, on an off day, in the off-season or on non-eligible games, their complimentary ticket can be redeemed for games on April 3-4, 23-25 and September 13-15.
Got all that? I did, meaning that despite Matt Silverman’s suggestions of other routes to entry, I dared my friend — like me someone born on a day the Mets are not at Citi Field or playing high-demand affairs there — to join me in seeing if this thing actually worked.
Guess what…it actually did. We met at the Apple, trooped to a ticket window, brandished our driver’s licenses and said we were here for the birthday offer. I half-expected to be frisked unmercifully or stared at quizzically, but no, the Mets were more or less prepared for someone to take them up on this. The nice man behind the window did initially hesitate, because we were his first customers to invoke the birthday clause. He checked with a supervisor, was given instructions and we (sans body cavity search) were issued complimentary ducats. I assumed they’d be on the roof. But they were Stan Isaacs-type seats: out in left field.
My fellow author and I were shocked and delighted. Mostly delighted. Kind of shocked. The Mets’ something-for-nothing come-on gave us something even if the Mets’ offense gave Dillon Gee nothing. Gee, though, gave us more of that pitching hope we’d been feasting on all week. He was injured and out half of 2012, remember? It didn’t seem like it as he held the punchless Padres mostly in abeyance. Sadly, that annoying Eric Stults, who used to eradicate us as a Dodger, masked our offensive capabilities quite effectively. John Buck gave us something close to a LF upper deck shot, maybe one of the top 10 homers I’ve seen for oomph! at Citi Field, but it was a lonely solo shot and the Mets lost, 2-1.
But so what? Matt and I were at the ballpark on a Thursday afternoon that wasn’t Opening Day, which is as baseball as it gets. All in this together with us was just about every other blogger under the warmish and welcome sun. At Sharon’s urging, a whole bunch of us got together on the portion of the bridge Ike left standing the night before in the fifth: me and Matt gearing up for his date at Bergino; Gal Coop and Studious Ed; John who is Metstradamus; Steve who couldn’t be anything but Eddie Kranepool; Sam who Converted. Darren from the 7 Line, albeit sans his Army, dropped by, too, his hand unfortunately bandaged, presumably from leading so many true believers into battle on Monday. Other special guests wandered through our fan clump and made the afternoon that much better for it.
The game wasn’t a whole lot of fun: too many pitching changes, too many double-switches (though we still love our league), obviously not enough runs. But what…you expected 162-0? We were congregating and laughing and talking Mets, even watching them not score now and then. I didn’t get this experience all winter. That’s what I seek the season for, as much as I do Cowgill hustling, Harvey blossoming or Gee returning. We were a slew of reasonably responsible adults playing something akin to hooky. I looked at all of us and wondered how we all managed to be at a baseball game in the middle of a Thursday when the rest of the world wasn’t.
My condolences to the rest of the world.
If you’ve never been to the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse on East 11th Street, just off Broadway, what are you waiting for? Jay Goldberg displays an array of artwork and provides the appropriate atmosphere. And you’ll find me there on June 26 to discuss The Happiest Recap series with Jay. Come on downtown and we’ll watch the Mets take on the White Sox afterwards.
If you’ve never been to 1973, Matt Silverman can take care of that.
If you’re looking to get in the mood for the debut of Mad Men Sunday night, take your own time machine back to somewhere between 1962 and 1973 as Jim Haines and I join Mark Rosenman LIVE AND IN STUDIO on WLIE 540 AM at 7 PM (podcast, too) to discuss The Happiest Recap. Matt will be calling in to give his own Swinging take on ’73.
If you’ve never been to Citi Field…or been there plenty…Jason and I offer some tips on maximizing your Metsness at Yahoo! Sports Big League Stew.
If you want to relive the excitement of Opening Day morning all over again, listen to me chat with Sam Maxwell on the Rising Apple podcast as I’m walking to my train and he’s riding his. It’s evidence that neither he nor I can go anywhere without talking Mets baseball.
And if you haven’t clicked on enough links, check out something mildly optimistic I said about the Mets in The Wall Street Journal the other day.
by Jason Fry on 4 April 2013 10:36 am In discussing my kid and his flickering hopes for the future, I left out one other new Met he’s excited about. It’s the same Met you went into last night excited about. Which means this morning we’re all giddy with a chance of liftoff.
And rightly so.
Matt Harvey was … well, words fail even this word-obsessed blog.
Spectacular. Filthy. Ridiculous. Unhittable. Majestic. Remarkable.
Let’s start there.
When Everth Cabrera mercifully singled, banishing the specter of a precious arm laboring far above 100 pitches for a shot at immortality, Harvey just looked briefly perturbed. Then he picked Cabrera off and went back to eviscerating hapless Padres with a buzzsaw slider, precisely placed off-speed stuff and above all else that seething fastball. San Diego had no chance, which is no insult to them — when a power pitcher of that caliber is executing at that level, no baseball nine has a chance beyond praying its tormentor will go away.
You could hear it in the frozen crowd, whose yips and yowls had the added benefit of keeping their throats from icing over. It was a special sound, one that went way beyond root, root, rooting for the home team. This was an audience of diehards in full appreciation of what they were seeing. Harvey’s champions started off exulting in each strike three, but when that proved insufficient they began to coronate strike twos with anticipatory acclaim, and finally first strikes were earning delighted huzzahs.
Harvey was so good that I didn’t waste time resisting the potentially heretical thoughts: He looked Seaverian out there. He was Goodenesque.
I saw the Seaver part last year — it’s not just the classic arsenal and the way Harvey uses his butt and legs as its engine, but also his attitude on the mound and in the clubhouse. He is his own taskmaster, expecting the best out of himself and proving surly and stern when it isn’t achieved. Once shorn of the rookie fuzz of being seen and not heard, you know his teammates will take heed of that insistence on being better, staying on their toes for every pitch and working counts in less-than-crucial at-bats, then mumbling to reporters that something about Harvey demands playing hard from start to finish. From the beginning of his tenure, Tom Seaver made it clear that he was better than the mess around him, and would not be held back by the mistakes and misfortune people tried to tell him he’d inherited. You’ve had that same vibe from Harvey ever since Arizona.
It was the Gooden parallels, though, that made me float off to a happier place. Listening to a few thousand sound like many more, I remembered the frenzy that greeted a young, electric and apparently immortal Doc, several baseball generations ago in a now-dismantled stadium. You heard an echo of that last night, and I began to wonder.
What would this sound like with a full house on a summer night with something to play for?
It no longer seems quite the stuff of fantasy, for Harvey wasn’t alone — Lucas Duda socked a home run halfway up the Pepsi Porch and even smiled, John Buck cracked a liner over the fence and Ike Davis squelched early talk of a Vegas visit by checking in on the Shea Bridge instead. The Mets aren’t going to go 162-0, of course — for one thing, an excess of balls snuck through the infield late in the proceedings — but if you were dreaming that our bright future isn’t as far-off as we thought during the dark winter, you’re excused. Because you might be right.
And because as my thoughts turned to hoping Terry Collins would excuse Harvey and his thunderous arm from further exposure to the cold, I remembered something else — and began to grin.
My God, they say Wheeler’s even better.
by Jason Fry on 2 April 2013 6:30 pm Before I became a father, one of my many reasons for not wanting to take that step was that I thought parenthood meant life would be static. You had a kid and disappeared, sitting at home waiting for your child to grow up into someone interesting. By the time that happened, you’d be fossilized and waiting for the lights to dim. Fzzzt — thanks for playing!
Parenthood, I was relieved to discover, wasn’t like that at all. With a little planning and mutual understanding, neither you nor your spouse have to disappear from the rest of the world. Yes, the first few months are tedious — you’re an unpaid attendant for a squalling, helpless lump. But kids get interesting a lot more quickly than I’d thought — they’re soon revealed as surprisingly sophisticated little beasts, with nuanced personalities, complex social lives and very adultlike gifts and flaws. And in creating the adults they’ll one day become, they change a lot — the problem you’re wringing your hands over today may be licked in a month, while the part of child-rearing you think you’ve got under control now may crater in a few weeks. A wise parent neither declares victory nor concedes defeat.
Joshua has been raised by two fairly lunatic Mets fans. The Mets have been a daily presence in his life since his earliest memories, helping dictate his parents’ schedules and driving a steady flow of clothes and gifts. Before he was born, his grandfather fashioned a rather amazing cradle for him, with one end painted like the Mets logo and the other painted like a baseball, with baseball bats for handles. It’s safe to say he never had a choice of allegiance.
The Mets’ shocking fall from relevance, though, has been tough on him. On the final day of 2007, I knew once Ramon Castro’s drive fell short in the bottom of the first that we were beaten. But Joshua was not yet five, and he really believed the Mets would win until the F in the line score dictated that they could not. A certain Braves pitcher may have been disappointed, but Joshua was devastated. He was befuddled and sad when the same scenario played out the next year, and then the Mets collapsed, undone by injuries, financial nuclear winter and the routine cold-eyed baseball calculations. Taken together, these things stripped the team he knew of the players he’d loved. Carlos Delgado retired. Carlos Beltran was traded. Jose Reyes left for the mayfly millions of Miami. R.A. Dickey won a Cy Young award and a ticket out of town. Johan Santana’s aged shoulder betrayed him. Only David Wright stayed — but by then Joshua was old enough to question the value of a single star surrounded by a wan supporting cast.
It was a brutal winter for questions. We talked about how players age and injuries snowball on them, no matter how hard they work and want to compete. We discussed why gaining years of Zack Wheeler had been worth sacrificing months of Carlos Beltran. We argued about the offer the Marlins had made Jose and whether matching it would have made sense even if the Mets had been capable of doing so. We explored the future of R.A. Dickey versus those of Travis d’Arnaud and Noah Syndergaard. We delved into what had happened to the Wilpons and their money. We discussed whether Sandy Alderson was savior or enabler or something in between, and when we might be able to say for sure.
At one point the kid got mad at me — I don’t remember if it was about Reyes or d’Arnaud or Wheeler or just some abstract principle. He said that what I was saying made sense, but I didn’t understand how much this hurt, how awful it was to see player after player depart and wonder if this fandom thing was even worth it.
Oh yes, I said, I understand.
I said I know what it’s like to see your favorite player, the one you remember your mom cheering for when you couldn’t have been more than three or four, traded to the American League for a tubby pitcher who retired to run a doughnut shop, then unretired when safely away from the Mets.
I said I know what it’s like to wake up and see the Mets on the front page because they’ve traded the greatest player in team history, a public suicide that announces your team is now baseball’s North Korea.
I said I know what it’s like to learn your downtrodden team’s one intriguing player has been shipped off for a pair of Texas minor-leaguers you’ve never heard of and can’t imagine ever caring a hill of beans for.
I said I know what it’s like to learn your supernaturally gritty, amusingly addled centerfielder has been turned into a Phillie, along with the jokester reliever everyone loved, in return for a guy you’re pretty sure is already out of position.
I was the calloused fan hardened by knowing about payrolls, and drunken owners at the free-agent troughs, and Super Twos, and it being better to trade a guy a year too soon than a year too late, and bad luck and mistakes and everything else. The questions my kid was asking called for answers that reflected that knowledge, but I hesitated at passing it on. Because my kid was a kid, and that has a value we don’t appreciate until it’s too late.
So there we were on Opening Day, beneath a sunny sky and a brisk wind, and I was hoping for a Mets win — not just for all the obvious reasons, but to sweep away the mess and muck of winter, replacing abstruse talk of finances with the simpler, happier stuff of high fives and risen apples and scoreboard entreaties to clap, clap, clap your hands.
Joshua and I got all that and more, as the Mets ambushed Edinson Volquez and the Padres early, then poured it on. It was what I needed, what we all needed, but most definitely what my kid needed. There was Jon Niese, looking not at all dull with a baseball or a bat in his hands. There was Daniel Murphy, swinging the bat on his birthday like sitting out spring training was the best idea in the world.
And there, best of all, was Collin Cowgill.
Yesterday morning I probably would have misspelled Cowgill’s first name, and I doubt Joshua would have recognized either first or last. By yesterday afternoon, the kid was a charter member of Team Cowgill. There was the grand slam, of course, a laser to reconfigured left field that came with a brief, Santosian delay before it could be celebrated in full. But there was also the sight of Cowgill turning a single and Carlos Quentin’s misadventures into a double, his sensibly policing Lucas Duda’s galumphing around left, and the general impression of barely contained mayhem left by our pint-sized, curiously cat-eyed new outfielder.
To me, Cowgill’s number says Dykstra while his hustle says Miller with a side of Cangelosi. To Joshua, he’s just Collin Cowgill — and that’s good enough.
Baseball is humanity’s greatest artform, played by a never-ending succession of boys of summer. That’s its glory. The sadness creeps in with the fact that those boys of summer arrive with built-in expirations, unknown to us or to them but inevitable nonetheless. New boys of summer are always arriving to take their place, which is glory and sadness intertwined and inextricably tangled.
I was thinking of all of that yesterday — of arrivals and departures. So was Joshua. By the end, though, he was thinking only of arrivals. And that was as I desperately wanted it to be.
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