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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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 hisThe 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’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 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.
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.
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.
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.
“And possibly…everybody’ll say, ‘Well, OK, let’s project the positive side of life again,’ you know? The world’s been goin’ on a long time, right? It’s probably gonna go on a long time.” —John Lennon
Two long-running dramatic television series I watched from beginning to end over the past decade (Six Feet Under and Big Love) concluded with a time jump. In both cases, the show’s primary character had met a tragic fate and everybody else was left to make sense of the lingering sadness. But so as not to leave the audience on a down note, we were shown what eventually happened to the survivors. The message in each case was one of hope: life goes on, things get better, we smile again.
In some way, as I took my final steps through Field Level before descending the staircase of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda following resoundingly successful resolution of the first game of the 2013 baseball season, I would have sworn I had suddenly entered a similar epilogue, that after months of barrenness and doubt, this was what it was all leading to: a veritable state of grace not available to our day-to-day comprehension when baseball isn’t being played. On paper, Monday was a beginning — a grand beginning, to be sure — but as much as an Opening Day Mets triumph is, by definition, a start, it felt to me more like we were on the other side of “to be continued…”
The victory, every bit as much as Mets 11 Padres 2, was that baseball was happening and we were happening all around it — and that we got through another offseason. That, I’ve decided after enduring so many of them, is not a feat to be taken as a given.
In a substantive sense, we just endured the autumn of Sandy and the winter of Sandy Hook. If that’s not an offseason to get through, I don’t know what is. The return of the Mets to Citi Field by no means solved problems of such dense and terrible proportions. Amid his introductions of visiting and home team players, Howie Rose read some beautiful words thanking those who helped their neighbors in the struggle after Sandy, all the while pointedly reminding us the work goes on. He read some more beautiful words about those who were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Nothing has been done to prevent another episode like it from occurring somewhere else. Yet here we were in a baseball stadium, nudged to remember the worst of times before we would allow ourselves to fully engage what we treat as the best of times. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that it all briefly coalesced in ceremony that touched both borders of the emotional spectrum. Life is necessarily more than baseball, but we’re the ones who strive to substitute baseball for life. This was our big chance.
For however long an offseason holds sway, its darkness envelops us so entirely that we’re almost fully convinced it will never end. Yet on Opening Day, by our reckoning, it ends.
And we continue.
In the relatively mundane Mets sense during the offseason now completely vanished, we grappled with the franchise’s usual financial issues. We witnessed our beloved Cy Young winner’s deportation to another country. We weren’t given the opportunity to join a welcome wagon greeting some glittering star enticed to enhance our cast. Mostly we sat and brooded about the grim near term while attempting to lean forward and rationalize that it’s all in service to a brighter long term. The truly fanatical among us picked apart every iota of an offseason seemingly designed to break our hearts or maybe just tear away at our anterior capsules.
Then early one April afternoon, the Mets ceased being a theory to stew over and became a baseball team to cheer for. There was a 2013 Mets about to do something besides exist in concept. There was a baseball season…another baseball season. The season is every baseball fan’s raison d’être, providing the fiber of our very being. Know any non-baseball fans who divide their lives into just two seasons, one of them scornfully dismissed as unnaturally “off”?
We were on Monday, though. We were dressed to the 5’s (and not a few 43’s). We wore grins 162 games wide. We conveniently forgot that the final 161 are always the hardest. I didn’t bother mentioning to any of the many fine people with whom I had the pleasure of sharing the day that this very same ballpark was just as jammed last year at this time, yet was largely deserted four and five months later, even though the same basic thing that drew us in April 2012 was still transpiring down there on the exact same grass and dirt in August and September. I surely didn’t see any need to elaborate that a similar scenario is likely to play out again. You won’t have to grumble about overpriced Promenade tickets when starting pitchers aren’t hitting like position players, homers aren’t being legged out like triples, journeymen relievers aren’t appreciated like crazy and the Mets aren’t routinely squashing anonymous bands of opponents. Practically everything will be marked to move by the middle of August and almost nobody won’t declare they don’t have something better to do in September. It’s how it’s worked for the Mets for several seasons when the seasons themselves are what threaten to never end. The realm of possibility leaves little wiggle room for it to not happen again this season.
But p’shaw! to that kind of thinking on the first day we continue with our baseball. We were too busy congratulating each other on having the good sense to embrace what was directly in front of us. “It’s Opening Day,” we told each other again and again, as if that explained it all…which it pretty much did.
The Mets winning by nine happily explained the rest.
I’ll be fortunate enough to be watching somewhat up close and personal in Flushing today, but for those who aren’t among the 42,000 or so who will account for yet another of those magical Citi Field attendance records management is so fond of periodically revealing, the New York Mets will be on TV in one of their usual time slots on one of their usual channels this afternoon, and that, of course, is spectacular. I’m generally happy to see the Mets appear on television in other non-SNY contexts as well (there’s an award that recognizes the phenomenon, you know), and anything that, shall we say, shakes up the roster is a welcome development. But this much-ballyhooed reality show the Mets are collaborating on with Fox Sports 1? It seems…I don’t know…
I think the term for it is “trainwreck”.
Or is “undignified” the word I’m groping for? This is a franchise that once spent a season trotting a reportedly incontinent mule around its stadium’s warning track, so to deem anything post-Mettle as not quite up to vaunted Metropolitan standards might be harsh, let alone historically myopic. And if I look at the bright side (which seems the right place to look on Opening Day), maybe this whole idea that they’re guaranteeing one lucky fan a spot on the Mets before this season ends is truly what this team has always been about.
After all, the name of the show speaks volumes. They’re calling it Anybody Here Can Play This Game, which explains why they’re asking aspirants to show up at the Casey Stengel entrance on the third base side today starting at 11 AM to sign up. I like the democratic nature of the proposal: You, too, can be a New York Met. I like that it’s not a gimmick, or a gimmick within a gimmick. It’s a pretty straightforward proposal:
• You go to the portal marked STENGEL
• You tell them you’re here for the reality show
• They take your information
• They tell you at what point Tuesday to come back to try out
• They hand you your Amway Courtesy Card, redeemable through the sixth inning only, and wish you luck
It all sounds a little cheesy until you read the fine print and see they’re not kidding around, no more so than the Marlins were when they did their one decent thing and signed Adam Greenberg. Skeptics said that was about entertainment or whatever, but Greenberg got in shape and got his at-bat (against R.A. Dickey…somebody else who benefited massively from a big break). The big difference here is Fox Sports 1 is opening Anybody Here Can Play This Game to, appropriately enough, not just anybody with professional baseball-playing experience, but anybody at all. Or anybody who’s a Mets fan who signs the appropriate waiver.
So the first round of tryouts begins Tuesday, and the coaches/producers go about their whittling and their interviewing (including a “Mets Knowledge” test for which I apparently provided a few questions after they contacted me in rather vague fashion asking for “some help on a special project”) and the whole thing circles back to Citi Field during the All-Star Game. That’s when the outgoing Mr. McCarver and the intolerable Mr. Buck announce the winner in the middle of the fifth inning, right after the tribute to Mariano Rivera when David Wright or whoever’s representing the Mets changes his uniform to No. 42 for the rest of the night and everybody else follows in turn. Then it’s off and running for the chosen one: a couple of weeks at St. Lucie, a couple at Binghamton, some finishing school with the Las Vegas 51s and, when September rolls around and the 25-man becomes the 40-man, that person (actually, they haven’t said the winner will necessarily be a man, so maybe we’re in for more history than we realize) will be the starting center fielder for the New York Mets in a regulation Major League Baseball game.
Maybe there’s a caveat in the covenant among the Mets, MLB, News Corp. and the creative team (those would be the same guys who promoted Greenberg’s story so effectively) that if the team is somehow in the pennant race on September 1 that the deal is off, but given how much Fox is hyping this program and how much they need Fox Sports 1 to garner legitimacy after its debut this summer — not to mention how little leverage lame duck Terry Collins or his interim replacement would have by then — I doubt it.
I also doubt the Mets will be in a pennant race on September 1, but one miracle at a time.
A show like Anybody Here Can Play This Game should ideally be something to celebrate. It’s about striving and making dreams come true. It harks back to the oft-told tale of John Pappas, who wheedled his way into a tryout in St. Petersburg that very first Met spring of 1962. He insisted he’d been getting his arm loose under the 59th Street Bridge and was ready to solve the expansion team’s projected pitching woes. Johnny Murphy, then the chief of scouting, tried to brush him off, but the beat writers needed a good story (because Casey Stengel wasn’t enough of one) and Pappas got his moment in the sun, even if it was over in a blink.
Pappas never made the bigs, but Murphy you’ll recognize as a New York Mets Hall of Famer, the general manager who put the finishing touches on the 1969 World Champions. He definitely had a different, perhaps more focused or serious view of his job than its current, nuanced occupant, Sandy Alderson. I’ve honestly enjoyed my brief interactions with the dry-witted executive in whose hands we’ve entrusted our long-term baseball hopes and happiness, but consider that Alderson…
a) was always a little too eager on those blogger conference calls to talk television with our friend Shannon Shark — and by the way, let us add our congratulations to the chorus of hosannas for the erstwhile Mets Police maven on his well-deserved appointment to succeed Dave Howard as the club’s head of business operations;
b) goaded Jay Horwitz into taking a more outsized public role, the results of which have included his incessant, inimitable Tweeting, the rash of stories about his cell phone mishaps and his star turn dancing the Citi Field Shake; and
c) transformed into a veritable Sandy C.K. this winter as he went on the record with those killer bits about his outfield’s shortcomings.
Or “what outfield?” as the GM fancies asking.
Now it all comes together. Alderson’s offseason was essentially one long establishing shot: he releases Jason Bay; he eschews Scott Hairston; he goes to great lengths to imply Michael Bourn might be en route (including all that talk about draft picks); he throws in some asides about one Upton or another; and then he conveniently comes up with a heretofore unknown named Collin Cowgill, which is as made-for-TV a name as you could imagine. Then the Mets go through this whole charade of auditioning one outfielder after another in St. Lucie, with den Dekker getting hurt, Nieuwenhuis not hitting and Valdespin somehow managing to “forget” to wear his cup against Justin Verlander. All of that just to wind up with an alliteration, a reclamation and a defensive miscalculation as the supposed everyday starting outfield?
When I read that it was going to be, from left to right, Duda, Cowgill and Byrd, no platoon (because who could possibly crack that tough a troika?), it seemed like something you could purchase at Catch Of The Day…a little too fishy, if you will. But now that we know about Anybody Here Can Play This Game, it all adds up. The stage is literally set for the center fielder who’ll come out of this reality show competition a real live Met, eligible for induction into The Holy Books and everything. What wouldn’t have been the least bit believable anywhere else, not even in Houston — where Fernando Martinez couldn’t stay healthy long enough to play on Opening Night — makes all the sense in the world in its own very Metsian way.
It doesn’t have to be a trainwreck. It doesn’t have to be undignified. But yes, somehow, it does have to be the Mets, doesn’t it?
Think about it, though, as the Mets return to being part of our regularly scheduled programming at 1:10 PM. Who else could it be on this day of all days?
Oh, it’s time to start livin’
Time to take a little from this world we’re given
Time to take time
’Cause spring will turn to fall
In just no time at all….
—Berthe, from Pippin
“Hey Greg.”
“Hey Winter.”
“I’m making some sugar-free cocoa. It’ll be ready in a minute.”
“That’s OK. I don’t want any.”
“And I’m gonna fix that tear in your parka.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I left the shovel by the door, right where you can get to it.”
“Listen, Winter, you have to get going.”
“Hold on, I’m turning up the thermostat. Ooh, cocoa’s ready.”
“No, I told you.”
“Fine. You want tea?”
“Winter. It’s over.”
“What’s over?”
“You. Me. We. You’re out of my life.”
“Don’t be silly. Our six-month anniversary is this week.”
“We’re not celebrating it.”
“What are you talking about? You love commemorating anniversaries.”
“Not this one. We’re through.”
“But what about all the fun we had?”
“It wasn’t fun.”
“How could you say that? Think of all the good times we’ve had since that night in early October I moved in?”
“I let you in because I had no choice. You showed up the second last season ended and I couldn’t turn you away.”
“And you’re glad you did.”
“No, I’m not. It was always going to be temporary. It just felt like an eternity.”
“Oh, come on. What about all those nights we spent watching TV?”
“That’s because there was no Mets game on.”
“We went to that Jets game together.”
“Because there was no Mets game to go to.”
“And that Nets game — you loved Barclays Center.”
“I liked it fine but would have been nowhere near it if the Mets had been playing.”
“Are you telling me all those sports meant nothing to you?”
“Compared to baseball, no. They didn’t.”
“Not even March Madness?”
“Not even March Madness.”
“And when we watched other stuff?”
“Would’ve rather watched the Mets.”
“And when we went out and did things?”
“I didn’t care very much about any of it. I was just passing the time with you. And by the way, I hated going out in your weather.”
“That again? You’re bringing up my weather? How could you be so insensitive? That gets to my essential nature!”
“Your essential nature sucks.”
“Take that back!”
“When you take back your stupid superstorm and your early nor’easter and your crazy blizzard and your howling winds and your miserable black ice I slipped on that night in January outside the train station.”
“You’re going to bring that up again?”
“Ice! Frozen into the street! Who leaves ice frozen into the street where you can’t see it?”
“What’s wrong with ice? It’s bracing!”
“It’s deadly! And you’re insane!”
“Oh, you’re just mad because I forgot to turn on the Islanders game for you.”
“I don’t want to watch the Islanders.”
“They have Howie Roooose…”
“I’ll have all the Howie Rose I want starting tomorrow.”
“This is about baseball, isn’t it?”
“Of course it’s about baseball! Do you know me at all after six months?”
“We had baseball.”
“What baseball? When?”
“The playoffs! The World Series!”
“Not the same.”
“The awards!”
“Filler.”
“The transactions!”
“Filler. And depressing, mostly.”
“A full slate of exhibition games!”
“Didn’t count.”
“The WBC!”
“The what?”
“The World Baseball Classic. You said you liked it!”
“I was desperate. I don’t even remember the WBC anymore.”
“What about all these preview magazines I got you when you were complaining about my temperature? Here, I’ll read you something about the Mets if it means that much to you…‘With Johan Santana poised to make a comeback…’”
“Now you’re embarrassing yourself.”
“I did everything I could for you.”
“You couldn’t do anything for me.”
“You’re an ungrateful bastard!”
“You’re a cold bitch!”
“I told you! That’s who I am! I was born this way!”
“Go be born that way somewhere else. I’m leaving for the ballpark tomorrow morning. As soon as I’m out that door, you’re not going to be here anymore.”
“Y’know, it’s not like it doesn’t get chilly at Citi Field.”
“Oh, there may be a chill in the air, but at least I know IT knows when to get out of my life.”
“Fine. I’ll go. But I’ll be back.”
“Winter, I’m gonna be so overjoyed tomorrow that I’m gonna forget I’m ever going to see you again.”
Come Monday, the Mets are slated to introduce nine men who’ve never been Mets before. When the names Scott Atchison, John Buck, Greg Burke, Marlon Byrd, Collin Cowgill, Latroy Hawkins, Brandon Lyon, Anthony Recker and Scott Rice are called, I’ll applaud because they are now part of my team. Some may disappear from the roster before making a lasting impression, some may become sadly synonymous with some regrettable misstep, some may legitimately earn their next hearty hand as they create the kind of tangible bond with me that I figure to recall fondly in this space in the years ahead.
Given how we become attached to certain players, it surprises me that it almost doesn’t matter who lines up and tips a cap on Opening Day. The group is the thing here more than its particular members when you’re considering the composition of a 25-man band. Obviously there’s always going to be a handful we take to heart in a given year or through a string of them, but I never insist on specificity of participants when it comes to going to see the Mets, Opening Day or any day. It’s the Mets. That’s all I need to know.
Not everything I love works quite like that.
The Spinners from the late 1970s on were Henry Fambrough, John Edwards, Billy Henderson, Pervis Jackson and Bobby Smith. Four-fifths of the group had been together from their beginnings in the 1950s, when they were known as the Domingoes, just kids dreaming of the big time in Detroit. Edwards was the veritable newcomer, replacing Philippé Wynne, who replaced G.C. Cameron, who replaced…well, there was one spot in the group that wasn’t always so stable, but the lineup remained remarkably intact for the longest time. When I finally got to see my favorite group perform live in 1997, the Spinners definitely had some mileage on them, but they were still the Spinners as they’d been for a couple of decades. And they were gorgeous.
I’m sorry it took me so long to experience them in person, but I’m grateful I caught them when I did. The Spinners couldn’t stay those Spinners forever. Edwards would suffer a stroke in 2000. Henderson passed away in 2007, Jackson in 2008. And earlier this month, Bobbie Smith — his glistening tenor as much the signature voice of the group as anybody’s — succumbed to illness at the age of 76. Fambrough is all who is left.
But there are still Spinners touring. There were in the weeks prior to Smith’s death and I imagine there will continue to be. Younger members picked up the mics in order to keep on spreading what I believe is some of the most beautiful music ever composed, recorded and performed. “I’ll Be Around”. “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love”. “One Of A Kind (Love Affair)”. “Ghetto Child.” “Mighty Love.” “Then Came You”. “Games People Play”. “Rubberband Man”. Music like that deserves to be played and heard.
Yet I have to admit that when the Spinners came to Westbury in February, as Smith was making what turned out to be his final rounds, I didn’t think much about seeing them again. The ratio was three new members, two originals. I don’t doubt they put on a fine show — judging by an episode of TV One’s Unsung from a couple of years ago, the new guys are talented and each member was still a trouper — but to me, the Spinners were the Spinners I saw in 1997, just in time. With the exception of Edwards, those were the Spinners who rolled out the hits with which I fell in love when I was a kid and grew to love even more as an adult.
Those Spinners can’t play Westbury anymore. But I’ll always have my boxed set. And its contents will always play for me.
The Mets I’ll go to see Monday? Like the Mets I went to see the last time they were in Flushing, they are what happens when the group doesn’t stay together, though I understand more readily what an impossibility that would be. Attrition, substitution, cold/calculating business decisions…when you get right down to it, none of it is really that much of an impediment to my being in their audience.
Santana’s done. Dickey’s traded. Reyes runs. Alfonzo walks. Gooden is not invited back. Seaver slips away twice. I say goodbye to Beltran, to Martinez, to Floyd, to Piazza, to Ordoñez, to Ventura, to Reed, to Mora, to Olerud, to Brogna, to Orsulak, to Strawberry, to Myers, to Hernandez, to Backman, to Brooks, to Flynn, to Henderson, to Grote, to Unser, to Staub, clear back to Swoboda. Guys I really liked and guys I truly loved stopped being Mets. Sometimes it was for better, sometimes it was for worse, sometimes it didn’t wind up making all that much difference. On Opening Day, a couple of dozen men identified as Mets will line up and tip their caps. I will applaud their presence, whoever they are.
I’m ready for another 162 fresh performances, because as much as I cherish the greatest hits, I’m dying to dig on the new material. I hope for harmony and high notes. I’ll settle for a good beat administered in the other direction now and then.
I’m not the most observant person in any room when it comes to physical attributes, but I was always taken aback by Johan Santana’s shoulders. Speaking strictly as a Mets fan, I could’ve spent a lifetime on those shoulders. They seemed capable of defying latitude and going on forever — which wouldn’t be worth observing except for the cliché about that very special ballplayer who can put a team on his shoulders and carry it by himself. It’s a phrase usually applied to home run hitters. Yet approximately every fifth day when things functioned as they were supposed to, Johan Santana elevated us like nobody else in our midst could.
We rode atop those shoulders intermittently across five years. Why just intermittently? Because things function as they’re supposed to only that often around the New York Mets. One look at Johan Santana at his best or simply as his standard-issue self would tell you he wasn’t a natural fit for their uniform. They probably had to special-order him a jersey. The Mets aren’t accustomed to having someone with shoulders quite so broad on their side. Everybody’s usually too slender or slumps too much.
And I’m not talking physique here.
Johan carried us when he could, which became an increasingly infrequent circumstance until it reached a point where his carrying a baseball and firing it to a catcher posed a clear and present danger to himself. But on those occasions when he really picked us up and transported us to places Mets fans rarely got to visit, he made sure we’d never forget it. I can’t actually confirm “never,” because we haven’t had the chance to test our memories against eternity — plus most memories don’t measure up to the task of remembering everything that doesn’t deserve forgetting — but I feel pretty confident in declaring Johan gave us at least a couple of ironclad forget-him-nots in the half-decade he spent now and then towering over our otherwise low-rise landscape.
There was an afternoon in September. There was a night in June. The fact that I need not elaborate one iota says what needs to be said about the width and breadth of Johan Santana’s shoulders, his skills, his stamina, his stuff. Toss in heart and guts and whatnot. There were some other sparkling performances, too, but before you could spend much time lingering on those nights and days, there was always a meniscus or an anterior capsule or some other less well-known body part lurking to ruin the view. You become a Mets fan, you learn about all kinds of anatomy you hadn’t heard of before. You join the Mets, something’s bound to go wrong with parts of you that seemed just fine in Minnesota or wherever. You subject yourself to repair, you rehabilitate as hard as you can, you make your way back and eventually something else doesn’t work to factory specifications. The people who pay you — and pay you very well — estimate you’ll return again any day or week or month now…or perhaps your career is over.
The Mets can never get their story straight when that happens. “You’ll see him when you see him” would be as good a status report as any to issue. “We don’t know — do we look like we know?” would be reasonably accurate, too. And if you’re contemplating the time frame the Mets suggest regarding any given player’s availability after injury, just multiply it by infinity so it will be a nice surprise should he return at all.
Somewhere in the current Spring Training, Johan Santana was the Mets’ Opening Day pitcher in waiting. Then he was out or in or being backdated or guilty of not being in shape or pushing himself unwisely to prove…well, whatever he was trying to prove, he needn’t have bothered. This was February and March. This didn’t mean a whole lot. He proved himself on an afternoon in September, a night in June.
Two games on those shoulders unlike any we’d ever seen. Two games that transcended everything about his team and the era it limped through on those fifth days when neither he nor anybody could carry us quite so surely, serenely and stratospherically. Is it any wonder one of those shoulders finds itself unable to carry on any longer?
Need a boost? The Happiest Recap: First Base (1962-1973) will lift you up, Amazin’ win after Amazin’ win. Check it out here.
Congratulations to our three contest winners: Matthew Fillare, Kevin Connell and Franco Salandra, each of whom hunkered down and earned a DVD copy of Knuckleball, courtesy of the good folks at MPI/FilmBuff. If you didn’t win one but want to own one, that, too, can be arranged.
Here are the answers to our R.A. Dickey quiz:
1. R.A. Dickey pitched three one-hitters as a Met. Who were the culprits who broke up each potential no-hitter in those respective games?
Cole Hamels of the Phillies on August 13, 2010; B.J. Upton of the Rays on June 13, 2012; and Wilson Betemit of the Orioles on June 18, 2012. Only Upton’s was the subject of a Met appeal regarding the scoring decision (it was denied).
2. In R.A. Dickey’s first season on the Mets, he led all starters on the staff in ERA. Who led the team in wins and strikeouts, respectively? In 2010, R.A. Dickey pitched to a 2.84 ERA, Mike Pelfrey won 15 games and Jon Niese struck out 148 batters (while Johan Santana led the staff with four complete games despite missing the final month of the season). The previous time the three Met pitching triple-crown categories were topped by three different pitchers was 1997 when Rick Reed had the lowest ERA, Bobby Jones had the most wins and Dave Mlicki totaled the most strikeouts.
3. Which two longtime Mets broadcasters of yore hailed from R.A. Dickey’s home state? We’re talking Tennessee, and announcers Lindsey Nelson (1962-1978) and Tim McCarver (1983-1998) were the most famous Volunteer Statesmen associated with the Mets before Dickey. The most famous Met player from Tennessee prior to R.A.’s emergence? Collierville’s Marvelous Marv Throneberry (1962-1963).
4. In the only game R.A. Dickey pitched at Shea Stadium, who was the one player to register three hits off him? Fernando Tatis, starting at third base in one of only three games David Wright didn’t that season, went 3-for-3 as Dickey threw seven shutout innings in the Mariners’ 11-0 win of June 24, 2008.
5. Who joined Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez in the SNY booth the night R.A. Dickey beat the Detroit Tigers at Citi Field in 2010? (Hint: the answer is not Ron Darling.)
Jerry Seinfeld sat in, called Jose Reyes’s fifth-inning home run and gave Mets fans watching at home a great show as R.A. and Frankie Rodriguez teamed on a five-hit shutout on June 23, 2010.
6. Two future Mets besides R.A. Dickey were selected in the first round of the 1996 amateur draft — who were they? Before the Rangers chose R.A. with the 18th pick in the nation, the Pirates, at No. 1, took Kris Benson and the Cardinals used the third pick on Braden Looper. They’d be teammates on the 2004-2005 Mets. (Rob Stratton, taken 13th by the Mets in the first round, never made it to the majors.)
7. What name did Gary Cohen assign the series in which R.A. Dickey won his first game as a New York Met as soon as that series was over? The Goose Egg Sweep; the Phillies failed to score across 27 glorious innings between May 25 and May 27, 2010. Six of those innings were R.A.’s, making his Citi Field debut in the series opener.
8. R.A. Dickey pitched a minor league one-hitter that facilitated his getting called up to the Mets. Who got that one hit against him? Fernando Perez of the Durham Bulls, who led off with a single on April 29, 2010. His last professional action, according to Baseball-Reference, came in 2011 for the same Mets’ Buffalo Triple-A club for which R.A. pitched the year before.
9. Who were the respective first and last batters R.A. Dickey struck out as a Met? First: Cristian Guzman of the Nationals on May 19, 2010. Last: Gorkys Hernandez of the Marlins on October 2, 2012.
10. What did you love most about R.A. Dickey’s tenure as a New York Met? (No correct answer — I’m just curious.) Every Mets fan loved/loves R.A. in his or her own way…
• Matthew: “After several dark years, he single-handedly brought my love of baseball back stronger than it had ever been. And that the love we Mets fans’ had for him — even in his now absence — ultimately came together and bore this fruit that pines for our former loves but understands that some birds aren’t meant to be caged.” (And then, as if angling for extra credit given my fondness for a particular prison-set movie, Matthew included this incredibly appropriate image and one word that explains it all: “Zihuatanejo”.)
• Kevin: “Can’t really put into words why I loved him so much, the emotions are too strong. Quick story on when I knew it was all-time Met love: I remember thinking when I went to see him for the first time in 2012, “this guy is really special, on and off the field,” and then I heard him come to the plate with the Game of Thrones theme playing, and I just quivered. Jocks aren’t supposed to love stories about, well, dungeons and dragons — only geeks like me are!”
• Franco: “Humble, gamer, loved the team and the town.”
Thanks to each of our winners for sharing their Dickeyest thoughts. Thanks once more to MPI/Film Buff for promotional considerations. You can check out more about a terrific documentary/romance here; if you want to complete your Dickey libR.A.ry, the paperback edition of Wherever I Wind Up is now available as well.
And one more time before our no longer caged bird flies north to Toronto to start 2013, thanks R.A. Sometimes it’s hard to believe it was real, but it was.
There’s a press release getting play here and there trumpeting a magical “index” of Sports Fan Loyalty, the kind of thing that comes around on the eve of a new season. It also tends to lunge at the native lingo by suggesting “it’s critical that team marketers do accurate scouting regarding the strategic ball they intend to pitch to fans,” as if anybody in baseball or the world has ever spoken like that. Nomenclature notwithstanding, this index claims to offer a handle on why fans are loyal to whatever degree they are to their team. Three of the four factors boil down to, essentially, “a team needs to win a lot and triumph noisily enough in order to sate a disproportionate share of frontrunners in its standard metropolitan statistical area.” In other news, the sun is coming up in the east tomorrow.
Yet the fourth factor cited in the release is one I find legitimately interesting.
History and Tradition: “[Are] the game and the team part of the fans’ and community rituals, institutions and beliefs?”
The biggest slice of the press release’s pie chart — 35% — is devoted to History and Tradition, implying that nothing could be more important in this particular scheme of things. Even if you put aside the unlikelihood that sports fan loyalty can be accounted for so neatly and accurately, it would figure intuitively that if you’re talking about the state of being loyal, you’d need something abiding to be loyal to. That, in turn, would seem to jibe with how deeply a given team and the sport it plays have burrowed into the local bloodstream.
And the M-E-T-S of New York town? They rank 26th of 30 MLB teams in engendering fan loyalty by this study’s standards and methodology, though I’m not sure if that’s supposed to mean Mets fans are to be considered the 26th most loyal in Major League Baseball, ahead of only the Mariners, Pirates, Royals and Astros. Since the company putting out this release wants to offer its services to sports franchises (so as to share the proprietary secrets of pitching better strategic ball, presumably), I’d say the fault lies not in ourselves, but in our star-devoid team, along with its implied failure to weave itself effectively into the indigenous culture.
Because if there’s one thing an actual as opposed to theoretical Mets fan is, it’s bleeping loyal. There may not be as many of us in and around New York as there were when the Mets won more consistently than they lost, but don’t imply that our “base” or “core” hasn’t outperformed the product it’s been sold these past several years.
The press release claims its index measures “intensity” of fan support. Well, who’s more intense than us? Who gets more wrapped up in this stuff than we do? The release invokes “emotional drivers” — who gets more emotional than a Mets fan? This identity isn’t based on quantitative factors like championships, playoff appearances and reflected glory. We love the Mets because we love the Mets. I wouldn’t call our love unquestioning, given that we are a relentlessly inquisitive bunch, but I would call Mets fan loyalty unshakable at its core and at its base. It will be on vivid display in a hundred different ways one week from today inside and outside a ballpark in Flushing, but all ya gotta do, really, is visit a hundred different sites, blogs and feeds to see it in action right this very minute.
(I can’t speak to the frontrunners among Mets fans. Given the prevailing competitive conditions, I haven’t seen too many in our ranks lately.)
It’s not us saddling you with a bad-looking grade in this press release, dear Mets organization. It’s you. We’re the history and tradition unto ourselves because we’ve had to be. On some counts you’ve caught up with us, but only after you allowed your brand equity to fade into the woodwork, rejecting too much history and too many traditions for too long. You’ve brought back some cherished iconography but only after you hid it away or forgot about it completely. It was we who questioned you and reminded you like it mattered to us…which it did. I’m glad you responded. I’m sorry you needed the nudge.
In the wake of the just-announced departure of Dave Howard (on whose watch certain traditions disappeared but, thankfully, later re-emerged), the Mets should soon name a new head of business operations. I hope that person — as well as the ownership to which he or she reports — views Mets history and Mets tradition as a living, going priority, not merely a box to be perfunctorily checked once in a while. Ya do that, ya get ticket prices in line and ya keep cultivating that young pitching, I’d say we’re a good bet to rise out of the bottom five any year now.
Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
Amazin' Again: How the 2015 New York Mets Brought the Magic Back to Queens by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
Volume I of The Happiest Recap: 50+ Years of the New York Mets As Told in 500+ Amazin' Wins by Greg Prince is available in print and for Kindle on Amazon.
Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History by Greg Prince (foreword by Jason Fry), is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
