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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 12 May 2013 5:52 pm All right, people. We’ve all get better things to do with what’s left of our day than complain about this listless horrible team. Start reading and we’ll rip this Band-Aid off quick as we can.
Matt Harvey: He was clearly struggling — the fastball velocity was down and the location was off, leading to very few swings and misses. It wasn’t odd to see him out there grimacing and fuming, because that’s the way Harvey pitches even when he’s got all his pitches working and going exactly where he tells them to, but it was odd to see him out there in charge of a repertoire that qualified as merely good. But he toughed it out — he scrapped and scrambled and improvised and wound up with a very good pitching line. That’s impressive any time a pitcher has to do it; for a sophomore pitcher it’s even more so. The legend of Matt Harvey grows even when he has far from legendary stuff.
Everybody Else: What a horror show. Mets swinging and missing, swinging and missing, tapping out, hitting weak fly balls, swinging and missing, tramping back to the dugout looking sad, squinting as they pull off their batting gloves, swinging and missing some more. And don’t try to lay this on Dave Hudgens — it’s not the hitting philosophy that’s lousy but the quality of the student body. Offensively, this is a bad team with one star who does himself no favors by trying to do too much, two guys who might grow into complementary players but might not, and a bunch of guys who are one-dimensional, miscast, too old, Triple-A quality or some fretful combination of those things. The Pirates — the Pirates — just thoroughly outplayed this sad disaster of a club; one shudders to think what damage the Cardinals will inflict over the next four days.
What Not to Do: Bring up Zack Wheeler. First of all, what kind of a reward is it to be chained to an oar as this pathetic ship takes on water? Second of all, given the financial uncertainty around this team and the certainty that they’ll be nowhere near the 2013 playoffs, why put him on the road for escalating paydays in arbitration? Bring Wheeler up in late June or the second half. Perhaps by then his future teammates will only be striking out nine or 10 times a night.
Silver Lining: Uhhhh … Juan Lagares made a catch you’ll see on ballpark highlight reels long after Juan Lagares is forgotten? Seriously, it was neat.
Another Silver Lining?: Nope, that one was already kind of a reach. Go be nice to your mothers. None of this was their fault.
by Greg Prince on 11 May 2013 9:39 pm  I’m just back from the village green of our small town, a town that likes its baseball and may even field a professional team one of these days.
 It’s got this quirky little parade it runs now and then, sometimes too early in the year for its own good, but the folks who march in it wear these big grins after they’ve carried their hopeful, sweet-natured signs, so it’s all in good fun.
 I try to show up in time to give ’em all a big hand, since otherwise there doesn’t seem to be anybody else around to watch ’em wave their homemade placards and such. The organizers aren’t too reliable about saying when the darn thing’ll start, however, so some years — like this year — I catch only the tail end. Maybe the tail end was about the same size as the front end. Either way, I saw the grins.
 The town doesn’t lack for eats, which is nice. My wife’s treating an ulcer — maybe or maybe not related to watching our unprofessional team — so we couldn’t really partake of the big picnic. There was a girl selling gluten-free goodies, though, and she couldn’t have been nicer steering my wife through what she might be able to sample in her condition. Same for the lady inside the market right next to it. The niceness of the folks doesn’t always extend to the people who have to work in our town, but Saturday, we found quite a few kind souls.
 Funny thing about our town is though the baseball team can’t rightly be called professional, the people who put the team out there sure want to make you feel like they’re a big deal. Used to be there was just one enormous-headed mascot, but now he’s got company. Some fella dresses up as a coffee cup and all the folks try to help the one person who’s supposed to find him find him.
 It’s not much, but our town’s pretty small.
 We’ve had the team so long, that it’s hard to remember how good it’s sometimes been. Now and then they tell us “facts” about what happened to the team on whatever date the day happens to be. It’s not uncommon for something to be wrong with the facts by the time they put ’em up where everybody can see ’em. For instance, they said our then-professional team split a doubleheader in Los Angeles 41 years ago Saturday. Actually, that doubleheader took place right next door to our current village green, and the kicker was it was the first day-night doubleheader our team had ever played at home. But they didn’t mention that.
 Easy mistakes to make if you’re not careful looking things up. The folks who run our village green are sometimes kind of careless that way. But we keep coming back anyway. I’m a bit of a stickler about details, yet I’m not all that particular overall. If I were, I probably wouldn’t be so fond of our unprofessional team.
 Yeah, you can call out this or that mistake or that or this silliness, but it’s our little town, with its peculiarities and oversized coffee cups, so you tend to let it go. You try to enjoy the grins instead. You see folks you know, and you chat, and you catch up on life away from the village green. You talk about the local team and its unprofessional performance, too, of course. You can’t help but notice it — or that ever since the village green was built, the team hasn’t had itself a winning season.
 Saturday it played another team that built itself a pretty little park and has never had a winning season there, either, but my word! That team played like champions against our little band of amateurs. I wonder if they’ve suddenly gotten really good or if they just happen to benefit from the good fortune of having been visitors to our village green today.
 Our boys’ record isn’t what you’d call good right now, but I’ve seen it worse. Still, I can’t say I’ve seen them be worse in a very long time. Hmm…I suppose these things go in cycles.
 Say, you know who played for our little team that has yet to requalify for professional status Saturday? Neither do I. The lineup our manger sent out there reminds me of the kinds of packs of baseball cards I got when I was a kid. I’d open the wax paper, let the smell of the freshly planted gum waft over me and then watch the players tumble out randomly before me. Always wished I could’ve gotten better players. Instead, it was either the same old discouraging faces or some no-names that left me wondering who stuffed them in the pack in the first place.
 Our players didn’t play too good Saturday. Our manager didn’t do anything much to help. One of our boys — one of the few we’ve got who’s come through for us lately — got hit with a baseball, but nobody seemed to mind. Not the longest stream of banners. Not many grins after what banners there were got put away. The girl with the gluten-free food was nice, though. And everybody pitched in to help pick out the coffee cup fella. It rained, but not to excess. Then we all dispersed.
 Just another day in our town. Just another season like the ones directly before it.
Photographs by Sharon Chapman.
by Jason Fry on 11 May 2013 12:14 am Sometimes you really want to take a rolled-up newspaper to this mutt of a team.
A night after a taut, inspiring win, the Mets were horrible, from Shaun Marcum’s little bit of Jekyll and a whole lot of Hyde to the hitters’ grinding futility when it mattered. The highlight of the game was Gary, Ron and Kevin holding a respectful and open-minded discussion of sabermetrics — my only moment of disappointment was the disdain for BABIP, which isn’t a perfect stat (such a thing doesn’t exist) but in my opinion is a useful indicator that a player’s run of success or failure is unlikely to last. Nice to see, but when the highlight is something involving the announcers you can guess the game wasn’t anything you’ll want to remember for very long.
So where do we start?
I suppose we should remember that for Marcum’s arm it’s mid-March, and so not be too harsh about his inability to get through five innings, let alone do that having accomplished something positive. But man is it frustrating, and it’s getting old in much the same way Marcum is 31 but looks an Atchisonian 51.
Beyond that, well, if I were an opposing pitcher I’d consider immediately putting the first Met hitter in each inning on base, since that seems to terrify his teammates. The Mets got a leadoff double in the fourth, followed by a groundout and two pop outs; followed Anthony Recker’s leadoff home run in the fifth with a double, then flopped through a strikeout, pop out and groundout; got a leadoff single and a trio of groundouts in the sixth; and then got a leadoff single in the eighth followed by a groundout and a GIDP. See frustrating and getting old above.
Finally, why on earth are Mike Baxter and Jordany Valdespin limited to pinch-hitting roles? The Mets’ outfield is terrible (perhaps you’ve heard), but it’s not going to get better with two guys who have actually earned real playing time sitting on the bench. Sure, they’ve both shown a knack for pinch-hitting, but maybe that’s because they have a knack for hitting — Matt Harvey would undoubtedly be a solid ROOGY, but that’s not the same as it being a good idea. Baxter has never shown any ability against lefties, but he destroys righties, knows how to get on base and is an acceptable defender. Valdespin has had success against lefties in the minors, has shown that he can make adjustments and become a smarter hitter in the big leagues (which is really rare), and is a lot better outfielder than anyone thought. Isn’t their development more important than taking a flyer on Andrew Brown or watching Marlon Byrd get another day beyond whatever his peak was? Baxter should be platooning and Valdespin should be playing every day; I’m genuinely baffled that Terry doesn’t see this and the front office isn’t insisting that he do things differently.
On the plus side … well, the umpires had to go under the stands for a replay, emerged and made the proper call. Joe West can watch TV correctly, which is more than our old nemesis Angel Hernandez can say.
by Greg Prince on 10 May 2013 3:13 am In the heart of the communications capital of the world, I couldn’t say for sure what was going on one borough over. You can wire yourself up to the gills so you know everything at every minute the minute it happens, but if you find yourself one story beneath the sidewalk in an edgy Greenwich Village nightspot immune to the charms of 3G or 4G, then you simply have to accept sporadic word regarding Dillon Gee. There’s a TV on the wall, but it’s off. Does it even get SNY? There’s a radio in my bag. Could I even tune in the ’FAN here?
Wait a second…I’m not supposed to be watching or listening or browsing. I’m supposed to be reading — reading aloud. I asked other Mets fans to come be in an audience for me. But I did it while a Mets game was in progress. Surely this is a violation of the Greg Commandments, a sacred document handed down from Mt. Sinai (or was it Mt. Sadecki?) in ancient times, long before I had a book to promote.
Thus, for a couple of hours, I tried to make the most of temporarily Metless Thursday by filling its void with games where I knew the scores and eagerly transmitting the details that led to their satisfying conclusions.
Guys! Tommie Agee made two fantastic catches in the same World Series game…and I am on it!
Guys! Mookie Wilson hit a huge home run in this pennant race you’ve probably never of…and I am on it!
My games were old games. Great games — great wins (of course) — but games whose scores were established well in advance of Thursday night. 10/14/1969: Mets 5 Orioles 0. 9/20/1981: Mets 7 Cardinals 6. They and approximately 498 other great wins are lovingly described and contexted like crazy in my epic team history, the one I won’t come right out and demand “YOU GOTTA HAVE IT IF YOU LOVE THE METS!” because I’m not that kind of blogger, but between you, me and the home run apple from when the top hat was emblazoned with “Mets Magic,” I do think you gotta have it if you love the Mets.
You do love the Mets, right? And if you love the Mets, you love the hell out of the Mets. And if you love the hell out of the Mets, a four-volume history covering 50+ years and 500+ wins is not a surfeit. It’s a minimum. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed that each and every one of you hasn’t already written an epic team history.
But that’s OK, you can read mine.
You can also tell me the score of the game in progress on this rare occasion that I don’t have two eyes, two ears and assorted other senses and body parts committed to its proceedings. Here and there, in bits and pieces — to say nothing of dribs and drabs — I was able to make heads or tails of the action between the Mets and the Pirates through the kind updating of kindred spirits.
• Mets were up 1-0 early. Byrd with an RBI, apparently.
• Pirates tied it. Don’t know how.
• Gee taken out in the sixth. Probably the right move, it was hastily explained.
• 2-2 in the seventh, Ike allegedly with a big hit. (Note to self: must confirm Ike still capable of hit of any size.)
The deadlock is what I take into the street once the reading-aloud portion of the evening has reached The End. The flickering ESPN app beams that it is still tied in Queens. Or perhaps my phone claims it’s 2-2 but it isn’t updating. Curse you, technology, and how little I ultimately trust you. And why do I not spy a single television set in the window of a dining, drinking or other retail establishment doing its civic duty and showing the freaking Mets game?
But wait! The radio! Let me get out the radio! For the first time all night, voices that can directly guide me to the most current information possible! Josh Lewin! Ed Coleman!
Still 2-2! In the ninth! Parnell on in a tie game!
Then I’m underground. Then I’m technically still underground but in a spot where there is the slightest hint of AM reception. And then there is Joshie whispering in my ear what I needed to know and what I wanted to hear. “A happy final,” he says. “A walkoff,” he adds. A summation, he withholds until the postgame show, which will be airing while I am sitting on a train on a track under a station where I will just have to imagine what it entails, for there is no radio and no Internet to be had until the train leaves the station and the tunnel begins to give way to the fresh air of that borough where the mysterious doings of the reportedly victorious Mets unfolded in broad nightlight.
At last, the saving grace of #MetsTwitter: Umpteen #Mets fans and #Mets media communicating unto me the same welcome #Mets development in gratifying unison: Whitestone-Wondrous Mike Baxter was yet again the pie-faced pinch-hitter who made the happy final possible. Also, Parnell is 4-0. Also, Lagares did some fancy catching out in center. Maybe not Agee against the Orioles, but enough to put down the Pirates.
That’s basically all I needed and wanted to know. That’s basically all anybody who loves the hell out of the Mets needs and want to know.
Immense thanks once more to Gelf Magazine for inviting me to Varsity Letters and my gratitude to all who resisted the Mets and Pirates in favor of me and The Happiest Recap. Props as well to Christopher Frankie for surviving Lenny Dykstra and living to tell about it and Matthew Callan, who I could listen to Yell about 1999 and 2000 all night some night the Mets aren’t playing in 2013…and probably many nights when they are.
by Jason Fry on 9 May 2013 2:17 am Maybe there’s another world in which tonight’s game went down in history as the Juan Lagares game — the contest in which our young centerfielder hit a game-tying home run off Addison Reed, which led to the Mets winning the game in extras, Lagares securing a job with the Mets he’d never surrender, multiple World Series rings and No. 12 going up on the wall one evening in the 2030s.
But in this world Lagares struck out and this dull Mets loss will be remembered, if anyone actually bothers, as “wasn’t that the game where Justin Turner fell on his face?”
It was all that and less — torpid and annoying, over in a relatively tidy 3:09 yet seeming to last several hours longer. In terms of on-field happenings, Jeremy Hefner was unlucky and the Mets didn’t hit (again), which is sufficient recap because a very small number of fans were there and a far smaller number paid any attention. I’d normally tut-tut about such behavior, but the yappers and tappers of smartphones had the right idea tonight. If you ever get a chance to introduce someone to baseball, you pray to God that you aren’t stuck with a never-risen souffle like this one.
I was at the park for a blogger event, so I had a credential. But I decided I didn’t want to spend the game in the press box — unless it’s your workplace, the press box is interesting exactly once. Instead I wandered around Citi Field, changing levels and sitting in seats and sections I hadn’t seen in a long time, and then seeking out vantage points I’d wondered about but never gotten to investigate up close. (I didn’t try to get into the fancy clubs, terraces like the Party City deck, or the cushioned seats behind home plate where rumor has it they deliver Shake Shack — that would have been rude and wasn’t what I was interested in anyway.)
So off I went, spending a half-inning here and a half-inning there. First I headed for the Pepsi Porch, plopping myself not far from where Lucas Duda’s home run had landed a few minutes earlier. Then I hung out at the Shea Bridge and had some steak tacos and a beer. Then I marched upstairs, to the Promenade in left field, then worked my way around to the deck above the rotunda. Then it was down to try various spots on Field level. I sat in an oddly canted row of seats down the left-field line, then in the seats by the Home Run Apple that are normally taken by groups. (Not a problem tonight — “group” was a relative term and I could sit anywhere I fancied.) From there it was on to Utleyville, where I may have found the worst seats in Citi Field — Seat 2 in each row is directly behind the foul pole. Then I worked my way down the first-base line, trying out the oddball rows of two seats where the angles of different sections come together. And finally, I camped out right next to the mural of Gary Carter and Willie Mays (great views, it turns out), where I saw Turner fall down and the Mets kind of rally but not really.
For a while, Citi Field’s shortcomings and the differences between it and Shea were a topic of major conversation on this blog. (Here are two examples. There are many more.) But walking around tonight, I was struck by how much that has receded in my memory. Sitting up above left field in the Promenade, it’s true that I was left wondering once again how a team could design a park with vast swathes of seats from which a good chunk of the outfield is invisible. But I’ve gotten used to these things, just like I came to accept Shea’s North Korean prison vibe anywhere you couldn’t see green grass, and the Dallas police recruiting posters in the upper deck’s Superfund-worthy bathrooms, and many other horrors of the Mets’ old home. Shea had things I liked about it, of course — the happy march down the ramps after a win, the views of the distant city at sundown, and most of all the way the unassuming cement bowl would flex and reverberate and roar when enclosing a capacity crowd. By now I’ve come to like all sorts of things about the new place, too: the cheerful, rollercoaster-on-the-first-drop feel of the Pepsi Porch, the sharp angle of the Promenade stands above you as head for the plaza with the big baseball, the Shea Bridge with its constant tide of friends meeting and helloing, as well as the green seats and the graceful curve of the lights and the maroon and beige brickwork.
Mostly, though, I like that it feels like home — it’s where there’s baseball, even on nights when that baseball is indifferent and not particularly absorbing. I don’t go to ballgames alone very often, but I don’t think I’d feel lonesome if for some reason I did. There’s never a shortage of people to talk to and even the most tongue-tied fan is surrounded by conversation-starters. (Here are two: “Wow, Matt Harvey.” “Wow, Ike Davis.”) And even if you’re not in the mood to chat, you’re surrounded by baseball. You’ve got the familiar sounds of the game and the park, the rituals of players at bat and marketers between innings, and of course the many and varied rhythms of the game, from the ball being thrown around after a strikeout to the ump trudging out to intrude on a manager tending to a spooked-horse pitcher to the frantic carousel of a bases-loaded double. Whatever the park and whatever the angle of the seat, it’s the game. And being surrounded by it is a pleasure.
* * *
On Thursday night, Greg will return to Gelf’s Varsity Letters sports literature series, where he’ll be reading from and discussing The Happiest Recap. The event starts at 7 at Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St. in Manhattan; directions are here. Also reading (and keeping things Metsie Metsie Metsie) will be Christopher Franke, author of Nailed!, an account of Lenny Dykstra’s rise and fall. As a warm-up, check out this interview of Mr. Prince conducted by Max Lakin.
To my sorrow, I can’t go. But you should.
by Greg Prince on 8 May 2013 2:01 pm I sat for a really fun interview regarding The Happiest Recap with Gelf Magazine’s Max Lakin, the results of which are here. Gelf runs the terrific Varsity Letters sports literature series, where I’ll be reading from and discussing The Happiest Recap Thursday night, starting at 7:30 (doors open at 7:00). The location is Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St. in Manhattan; directions are here. I’ll be joined on the bill by Christopher Franke, author of Nailed!, an account of Lenny Dykstra’s rise and fall, along with Amazin’ Avenue blogger par excellence Matthew Callan. It will be a very Metsian evening and I hope to see you there.
by Greg Prince on 8 May 2013 2:23 am  Matt Harvey was not the only man in a Mets jersey to have the whole world in his back pocket Tuesday night. It could have been more perfect, I guess. There could have been a little less hole for Alex Rios’s seventh-inning two-out grounder to edge into. Ruben Tejada could have been overcome by a pre-emptive vision that shifted him just a touch more to his right. First base could have been planted 91 or 92 feet from home plate. Mark Carlson could have contracted a staggering case of the Tim McClellands and made the wrong call. The runner could have moved less like Rios and more like Adam Dunn.
Yet other than that slightest of infield-hit mustaches on the Matthew Lisa, the nine innings of pitching was flawproof. Matt Harvey did nothing wrong and everything right Tuesday night. It’s not often you can say that and mean it. But Matt Harvey defies hyperbole. There is no elevatory fact about Matt Harvey that isn’t true or doesn’t at least seem probable.
• Only David Cone’s 19-strikeout performance on the final day of 1991 produced a higher nine-inning game score — Bill James’s metric for measuring pitching dominance — among Mets starters than Harvey’s 12-K, one-hit bonanza. (That’s true; Cone’s was 99, Harvey’s was 97.)
• According to Elias, nobody in the past century besides Harvey has piled up at least 125 strikeouts while permitting 25 or fewer earned runs in the first 17 starts of his career. (That’s also true.)
• Iron Man was spotted at a local multiplex coming out of an early showing of Matt Harvey 3. (Maybe not true, but we could start a very credible urban legend and, really, who’d dispute us?)
It’s a shame Rios’s ground ball was just a little too wayward for Tejada to handle in time to throw him out at first. It’s a shame the Mets succumbed to coonskin-cap coiffed Hector Santiago in the same essential fashion the White Sox succumbed to Harvey and therefore had to hand a 0-0 tie to Bobby Parnell. There is no shame in winning 1-0 in 10 on Mike Baxter’s Whitestone Wondrous pinch-single, but it’s shameful that all Matt has to show for making the mound run red with the blood of White Sox outs is our undying admiration and continuing awe. A perfect game would have been, of course, perfect. A win for the starter would have been perfect justice.
Actually, what would have ratcheted up the perfection quotient a notch or two by my reckoning was my being at Citi Field to see Harvey awarded his W, and I don’t mean that at mere face value or even because I had a ticket for this game I didn’t get to use. See, long before it was known that Tuesday was going to be Harvey Night, it was supposed to be the day I stepped right up to greet one particular Mets fan.
Late last season, I shared with you excerpts of an e-mail I received from a Floridian named Ed Witty, someone who was born to be a Mets fan the way Matt Harvey was born to be a Mets ace. Ed, a contemporary of mine, read my memoir and reached out to tell me it helped awaken in him a latent sense of Metsdom, an allegiance traceable to his late father having been a Mets fan. His dad died when he was very young and, subsequently, sports weren’t part of his life growing up. Then the Mets came roaring back from the depths of his subconscious to his everyday thoughts. A Brooklynite by birth, Ed went to see the Mets visit Miami. He went to see the Mets train in St. Lucie. His next and biggest goal was to come home and see the Mets play at Citi Field.
My goal was to be the Mets fan who went with him. After a bit of back-and-forth over potentially ideal dates, we chose one that looked good: May 7 (when the White Sox would also finally be taking in their very first Mets home game). Ed planned to fly into LaGuardia and stay at a nearby hotel. I planned to meet him in the lobby and guide us on an expedition of our native terrain. Ed wanted to see “the big globe,” so I mapped out our route to the Unisphere. Ed wanted to see where Shea stood, and I was salivating to present it to him. And Ed wanted a Mets game where the Mets play for real, an experience I’ve enjoyed and occasionally endured hundreds of times.
Ed got all that Tuesday night, but not with me. Oh, I followed through on my end of our plans. I scoped out exactly the tickets I wanted and purchased them. I had it down to the half-hour which train I’d take and close to the minute when we’d shake hands. I did my due diligence.
But ultimately there was an unavoidable circumstance, and the game I was so focused on attending with the person I’d been so eager to meet became something I simply couldn’t make. I sent the tickets on ahead, wrapped in regrets and apologies. Ed, however, was totally cool about it. “You know what they say,” he reminded me. “Man plans and G-d laughs. I am not sure why that is, but maybe to remind us that we are not in charge.”
In my absence, Ed enlisted his wife (who was already in the on-deck circle for Wednesday night’s game) and he made the rounds around and inside Citi Field, now and then multimedia-texting to me to express the excitement only a Mets fan can feel — a Mets fan at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.
There was Ed, adorned in blue cap and pinstriped jersey, standing in front of the big globe.
“You look very much at home,” I observed of the first of the pictures he forwarded.
“I feel like I am,” he responded.
Then came Ed and his wife with Citi Field in the background.
“This is the MECCA!!!!” he raved. (And Ed, mind you, is an Orthodox Jew.)
One image later, Ed and wife were sitting in 326, perhaps my favorite section of the ballpark.
“This place is unbelievable! Love the seats! Great view!”
And at the conclusion of ten victorious innings which came a couple of decelerated footsteps from going down as the first perfect game in New York Mets history, “Whoop hooo!!! What an experience!!!” It was “a shame Harvey gets bubkis in the win column,” Ed acknowledged, but a walkless, error-free Harvey-Parnell one-hitter would do quite nicely for a personal Flushing debut…though I imagine a happier homecoming for Robin Ventura, Joe McEwing and young Santiago — the Newark-bred Mets fan who picked the wrong night to try to craft a great pitching story of his own — wouldn’t have palpably dampened Ed’s enthusiasm.
“Yes it is worth coming up here for a few days just to see the Mets at home,” reported our expatriate. “There is nothing like it.” Marlins Park is fine by “Florida standards,” Ed allowed, “but it is nothing like the real thing at Citi. LGM!!!!
“And we get to do it all again tomorrow!”
In the opinion of the unofficial scorer, Ed Witty had himself a perfect game.
Come have a perfectly Metsian time Thursday night as I read from and discuss The Happiest Recap as part of the Varsity Letters sports literature series. Details on the downtown event here.
by Jason Fry on 5 May 2013 11:39 pm Sigh.
Let’s be honest with each other.
I don’t particularly want to write about today’s deplorable suckfest against the Braves, and you don’t particularly want to read about it. Because if you saw it, the afterimage of lousy pitching, vandalism afield and crummy hitting is probably still burned onto your retinas, and why on earth would you want to relive such a hideous way to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon in New York? And if you didn’t see it, the score tells you that you were lucky, and a glance at any recap or quick word with a Mets fan in the know tells you the same thing.
Those of you who were mercifully absent, we’re not going to delve into the fact that the Mets — HAHAHAHAHA — committed no — HOHOHOHO — I repeat not a single error — HEEHEEHEEHEE — in playing the Braves today.
Wow. Excuse me.
No, it’s true. We don’t have a single error to discuss. There was no error when Marlon Byrd and Jordany Valdespin let a Dan Uggla drive go up the seam between them. Nor was there a big E after Lucas Duda broke in on a ball zooming over his head. No run went from earned to unearned when David Wright boxed one around FIVE FREAKING SECONDS after Terry Collins came to the mound and yelled at Jon Niese and everyone else in range of his voice that they could forget about the postgame trip to the Tastee-Freez. No defensive lapse was observed when John Buck let balls go through his legs. Every Brave hit was sparkling clean, the product of pluck and resilience, and there is no truth whatsoever to the base and vile rumor that the Mets have been asked to cover the logos of glove manufacturers for fear of damaging those companies’ public image.
As for all those walks attached to Niese’s line, yeah, they were what you think, and it was freaking horrible to witness.
Whoa, sorry about that! Like I said, we’re not going to talk about today’s game, because it was awful. It was awful, and it was pathetic, and it made you angry, and it left you feeling sorry for all involved, and it left you cackling at the sheer pitiable horror of the baseball being played, and it took forever, and by the time it was over you were just sad.
So we’re taking a mulligan.
But only this time.
Next time the Mets walk the ballpark and swing at sinkers heading to China on full counts and play the field like they’ve been encased in cement, you’re going to have to relive each and every horrible miscue and dunderheaded mistake and moment of bad luck. Fortunately, that will never happen again — not with so sound a defensive team and such a deep rotation and such a talented lineup.
Right?
by Greg Prince on 4 May 2013 8:29 pm If you’re among the millions of Mets fans not attending Thursday night’s Mets-Pirates tilt, consider for your evening’s Metsertainment a trip downtown to The Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St. (between Sullivan St. and Thompson St., convenient to a whole bunch of subway lines) where I’ll be reading from and discussing The Happiest Recap as part of the Varsity Letters sports literature showcase, starting at 7:30. Also appearing will be Christopher Frankie, author of Nailed!: The Improbable Rise and Spectacular Fall of Lenny Dykstra, a player you can expect to show up when The Happiest Recap rounds “Second Base” and summons the Met spirits of 1974 to 1986.
Since I brought it up, here’s a sneak peek at the cover of the second volume:
Banner Day Press art director Jim Haines, who’s been making me look good in print one way or another for more than a decade, is feverishly italicizing, bolding and preparing the text for “Second Base,” which we plan to have ready for you very soon. On Thursday night, I’ll be reading an excerpt from the new volume as well as something special from “First Base (1962-1973),” copies of which will be on hand for your purchasing and personal reading pleasure.
The Happiest Recap is your favorite baseball team as never before presented, bringing together 500 Mets wins in 500 Mets stories, all told by someone who cares about the Mets as much as you do. I look forward to you joining me at Varsity Letters Thursday if you can, and I continue to appreciate the incredibly generous feedback on the series to date.
(If you can’t make it, The Happiest Recap is available on Amazon in paperback and for Kindle. Inscribed copies can be ordered through the Team Recap store on eBay.)
by Jason Fry on 4 May 2013 2:10 am Baseball games, like most series of events we sort into stories, can usually be made to fit into a narrative arc when things are finished. We were close but it was obvious all night we weren’t going to get any breaks. Man, you knew those leadoff walks were going to bite us in the hinder eventually. A game this sloppy you don’t deserve to win. And so forth.
But games like tonight’s resist formulas. What started as a weird but not particularly memorable little affair took an abrupt exit to Crazy Town, with the Mets somehow proving most impressive when it looked like they were about to expire. It was as fun as it was delightful, but most of all it was unexpected.
First, the weird part — and I’m not just talking about the horrible spring-training uniforms both teams were wearing. (I don’t mind the Mets’ blue tops now and again, but we’re seeing far too much of them. The Braves’ red shirts and tomahawk hats, on the other hand, should be burned.) Mike Minor, unassuming but deadly in the fashion of too many Braves hurlers over the years, allowed a total of three hits, walked nobody, and retired 18 Mets in a row. One of those hits was a little parachute that Ruben Tejada wisely wafted over to Jordan Schafer in a capricious wind, but the other two were home runs by John Buck and Lucas Duda. Minor did almost nothing wrong — Duda’s home run would probably have been caught on the warning track on a calmer night — but still wound up three runs in arrears.
Meanwhile, Shaun Marcum was scuffling and scratching, which seems like his MO. It isn’t fair to lump Marcum in with your typical junkballers — his change-up and slider are both plus pitches and his curve’s not bad — but he’s still dependent on deception and location, because his pedestrian fastball can’t overpower anybody. He’s also still working his arm into shape, having been waylaid by a near-Biblical plague of ailments so far this year. Marcum was given a 3-0 lead, but I had a bad feeling about it from the start. Marcum was gone after 4 1/3, and one B. J. Upton sacrifice fly later so was the lead.
You, me and everybody else kind of figured the Mets would lose at some point after that, with the coroner’s report reading DEATH BY BULLPEN. And the Mets certainly tried to do themselves in. First Scott Atchison brewed up a run allowed out of two walks, a wild pitch and a grounder that was a hair too slow to be a double play. Then, not to be outdone, Brandon Lyon pulled a Miami by falling behind with one pitch, this one a homer by hulking Atlanta cult hero Evan Gattis, whose backstory seems borrowed from mid-career Jen Capriati. (Poor Anthony Recker had nothing to do with it, though it’s possible that he was cheering wrong or something on the bench.)
But the Mets somehow kept messing up everybody’s storyline. No sooner had Atchison gotten into trouble than Marlon Byrd — whom I may or may not have been hoping would be released earlier in the day — got the Mets even with a homer off the normally reliable Eric O’Flaherty. And no sooner had Lyon gotten into trouble than David Wright delayed the Mets’ execution with a certifiably majestic 464-footer off the normally utterly reliable Craig Kimbrel.
Ah, but surely that just meant the Mets would blow it in more excruciating fashion, making you remember Wright’s drive fondly while wondering if it had really been worth it. If you thought that, you’re forgiven — but you were also wrong. The Braves started the bottom of the ninth with a leadoff double off Lyon, followed by a sacrifice to third and Lyon’s departure. But Bobby Parnell got Schafer to fly to center, with the Braves rather foolishly passing up a chance to win the game on a sac fly, walked Andrelton Simmons, and then got Justin Upton to ground out.
Rather nicely done, and it got me thinking about Parnell and the concept of Proven Veterans (TM). As you might guess, I’m generally leery of veterans and their intangibles — a two-year deal to Alex Cora will do that to you. But Parnell has discussed how Jason Isringhausen helped him by teaching him the knuckle-curve, which he substituted for his slider and its worrisome tendency to flatten out, and one imagines that sitting at Izzy’s knee was valuable in calming Parnell’s late-inning nerves as well. I’ll never have to put this statement to the test, but I have a feeling the pre-Izzy Parnell would have walked off as the Braves celebrated, whereas the new improved model has been reliable unless betrayed by his defense. I’m suspicious of what you can’t measure in baseball, as it opens the door for endless Just So Stories about Heart and Grit and Playing the Game Right, but lessons like Izzy’s certainly seem to have some value, however unquantifiable.
After Parnell, it was Terry Collins’ turn. Terry’s been guilty of overmanaging recently, for which I blame him not a bit — if you were handed this unassuming roster you’d probably futz with the lineup and outfield and bail out of pitching matchups in the middle of at-bats too. In the 10th he got his LaRussa on, leaving Parnell at the plate with two out and Jordany Valdespin on first — at least until Valdespin stole second, at which point Terry popped out of the dugout to hand the bat and Parnell’s 0-1 count to Mike Baxter. The Whitestone Kid got hit in the foot, after which Ruben Tejada drove in Valdespin and Daniel Murphy then drove in Baxter, leading to hosannas in Brooklyn Heights. The idea, as Gary and Keith guessed and Collins later confirmed, was that Parnell would keep pitching if Valdespin were caught stealing but stand aside if he got into scoring position. I’m not confident that will work the next time Collins tries it or the next 99 times after that, but for one night it was marvelous.
Marvelous except that the bottom of the 10th arrived with Jeurys Familia pitching and Valdespin at second, where I trust him about as much as a bastard child of Gregg Jefferies and Keith Miller. (Which is to say more than I trust him at shortstop.) So of course Familia was spotless, Valdespin merely a spectator and the Mets won with minimal bother.
Honestly, after all that it would have been weirder if something had gone the way any of us expected.
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