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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 30 April 2013 5:40 am Bruce Springsteen once advised you can’t start a fire without a spark. Monday night and Tuesday morning, there was no spark in Marlins Park. And for several days before, there was no yield at Citi Field. The Mets can’t get anything going in any sense anywhere. They are stuck in place…fourth place, to be precise, unless the Marlins accidentally get out of their way and let them descend into last.
Give the Mets a few more extended engagements and there might be no stopping them in their pursuit of pathetic. For five straight games they’ve gone hard after losses and they’ve achieved them with élan. Or so it feels and looks when you decide to watch them presumably try and fail to win.
Perhaps there was an outlier cockeyed optimist or a super drunk five-year-old who thought the Mets were going to contend in 2013, but I think it’s safe to say the consensus was this year was going to be more about inching forward rather than growing by leaps and bounds. There is supposed to be a future on the horizon; that’s the tradeoff for our peeling patience. You know: the great pitching prospects, the catcher-in-waiting, valuable innings for our prospective co-ace — plus the supporting cast that’s partially on-site. If you could forge a foundation for 2014 and then work in the young comers and be good enough to add pieces as 2015 approaches…
If, if, if. Whatever. Either the master plan is coalescing in the shadows of the Las Vegas strip and its Binghamton, St. Lucie and Savannah equivalents, or it’s all a crock. Give me a jingle in two years and let me know that my cynicism as April 2013 wound down was misplaced. Right now the blue and orange appears terribly tinged by jaundice.
The Mets have lost five in a row. They’ve scored 10 runs in those 51 innings. Their starting pitchers have flirted with adequate on each occasion, only to run out of gas and have their tires slashed by a marauding band of relievers. Nobody has stepped up for more than a moment or two. The manager hasn’t made a single move that could be described as having paid off meaningfully, except, perhaps, for the Dodgers, Phillies or Marlins.
Five bad games, better known as a teamwide slump? Or an indicator of one bad team that counts within its 25-man ranks no more than a few outstanding talents? Is the manager just having a bad week or has the combination of strategic and motivational magic so often attributed to him simply had its day? It’s hard to believe Terry Collins is the man to lead this team toward — never mind to — the promised land. Then again, it’s hard to believe more than a couple of the souls he’s shepherded over this past month are among those best qualified to make such a pilgrimage.
To accept in advance that a season won’t provide much in the way of bottom-line affirmation, you have to trust in the future. But you also have to see signs that a bit of the future is revealing itself right now…a bit more than one bit, you might say. Matt Harvey, whatever his relative “struggles” Monday night, has proven himself a pick to click. If you can’t believe in Harvey, you might as well find another sport.
OK, that’s one. What else ya got to get us through this road trip and the next homestand and the hundred-plus games after that?
Not a lot. Somebody might get a big hit. Somebody might make a nice catch. Somebody besides Harvey or Jon Niese might go deep and be consistently effective. Some parade of those who pitch behind them might succeed without eventually cracking. Maybe a ball won’t fall in in front of some unnecessary sixth outfielder. Maybe most every runner who reaches scoring position won’t be abandoned there. Maybe there’ll be multiple innings of multiple runs. Maybe a strong throw will be unleashed. Maybe all those pitches taken won’t lead to self-defeating passivity at the plate. Maybe one-two counts won’t be seen as excellent opportunities to issue intentional walks. Or maybe the other team will screw up a little more than the Mets, though if you can’t get the Marlins to cooperate in that regard, and if you can’t hold a 2-1 lead over Miami in the ninth or a 3-2 lead in the fifteenth…
Once a game passes let’s say the twelfth or thirteenth inning, especially in these days when managers burn through their bullpens and leave themselves with no long-man options, it may not be fair to infer conclusions from them. As it gets later, a war of attrition sets in, even if both sides in this particular fifteen-inning theater of the dispiriting ran short on supplies, rations and vital ammunition fairly early. When the innings pile up, it’s not a matter of who’s better. It’s about who finds a way to win.
Or in the case of the Mets versus Marlins, a way to lose. And the Mets somehow found it against an opponent whose stated business plan is to shed itself of assets. They only have one left of any note and he went out with an injury in the tenth. Bereft of Giancarlo Stanton for the final five innings, Miami brought to bear only the curse of Greg Dobbs and…I know, that’s usually enough, but c’mon — they’re the Marlins.
Though I imagine wherever a hardy band of Marlin faithful gather, the thought process across the many hours this game took was likely “c’mon — they’re the Mets.”
Yes. Yes they were. In this era, which is either a continuation of the same old same old or a prelude to brilliantly disguised greatness, that sometimes says it all.
Harvey will have better nights. David Wright’s pain in the neck will ease up. Others will perform to a higher standard than they have for the past five games and maybe their improvement will coincide with those who aren’t currently floundering fending off their own respective if inevitable ebbs. A five-game winning streak might unfold at some point and, depending when it hypothetically occurs, we might look at our Mets as world-beaters on the verge of something spectacular. We’re myopic that way. We’re supposed to be. We’re fans.
But an aberration here or there aside, do you see anything beyond Harvey as truly encouraging? Do you see even the inching forward? An escalation of decay, to borrow a phrase from the latest episode of Mad Men, certainly seems to have set in where this season is concerned. We can be 2014’ed and 2015’ed until we’re giddy in the face, but how much 2013 are we supposed to accept as the cost of doing business next year and the year after? When the Mets return home next week, what are the odds more than a minyan shows up to greet them?
I’m not a huge proponent of invoking precedent because every situation is different (though the Mets have definitely begun to not score enough for Matt Harvey like they traditionally never scored for Tom Seaver), but Mets teams that wander through their second month gaining no traction have been known to Do Something.
• When attendance fell through the floor in May 1983, the Mets called up Darryl Strawberry to sweeten a dour 6-15 proposition.
• When masses failed to materialize in May 1998, despite a reasonably capable 23-20 product, they thought big and netted Mike Piazza.
• The Mets of May 1981, wallowing at a truly miserable 13-26 mark, traded promising young Jeff Reardon for proven if slightly shopworn Ellis Valentine.
• The Mets of May 1990 scuffled to 20-22 and fired Davey Johnson.
• The Mets of May 1977 sank to 15-30 and dismissed Joe Frazier.
• The Mets of May 1993, doomed at 13-25, bid Jeff Torborg adieu.
And the Mets of May 2013? They will enter the month no better than 11-14, with not a single home gate of 30,000 under their belt since Opening Day. They have one player worth making the extra effort to come out to see (if you’re not already inclined to go see the lot of them) and he pitches only every fifth day — and Matt Harvey’s not yet, in all honesty, an actual drawing card. After the Marlins and mighty Braves on the road, it’s the White Sox and the Pirates in Flushing. Despite the chance to step right up and greet the only American League team that’s never visited us for a National League game and then hoping decent passion is summoned for the second edition of Banner Day 2.0, the turnstiles probably won’t much turn from May 7 to 12. If the eleven games ahead of us don’t generate a remarkable change in fortunes either in attendance or in the standings, it’s hard to conceive of this already-decaying campaign proceeding without somebody Doing Something.
Zack Wheeler in the rotation. Wally Backman in the manager’s chair. Bryce Harper kidnapped in the dead of night. Two-dollar hot dogs for all. Not something for the sake of Doing Anything but something constructive. This perpetual Aldersonian holding action is losing its grip on our better angels. And we’re the diehards, for cryin’ out loud.
***
Oh, by the way, I still love the Mets more than life itself. My proof is two conversations in which I recently participated: one with Metsbhoys, who I’m confident declaring conduct the best Scottish-based Mets-themed podcast of all time; the other with Instream Sports, which couldn’t have asked questions more eclectic or enjoyable. You can listen to the Metsbhoys and me here; you can read Instream and me here. Both are engrossing enough to make you forget there was ever a fifteen-inning loss to the Marlins.
And if you want to be reminded how much fun the Mets can be when they’re not losing five in a row, visit a place where they’re in the midst of a 500-game winning streak: The Happiest Recap, available via Amazon in print or for Kindle; you can also obtain a personally inscribed copy through the Team Recap eBay store (a.k.a. my lovely sister and her swell husband).
by Jason Fry on 29 April 2013 12:41 am Opening Day is, needless to say, the finest on the calendar. That’s true even if you’re a fan of a bad team, or one whose best-case scenario comes down to “can assemble some of the pieces required for a better future.”
The second game of the season, though, might be even nicer than Opening Day. The bunting’s no longer crisp, they don’t line up assistant trainers and visiting clubhouse attendants on the foul lines to be ignored by the crowd and you probably had to grouse about the in-case-of-rainout off-day, but Game No. 2 is the day of the baseball calendar that makes you believe this is real again. Oh my God, you think, there’s going to be baseball pretty much every day for the next six months. There’s so much baseball coming that you can barely contain your own happiness. Get lost, winter. Shut up, football. Get it over with, hoops and hockey. The summer game is back, and there’s so much of it yet to come that it’s intoxicating.
For me, this being mildly drunk on baseball generally lasts about two or three weeks. I love the early days of the season when you can remember the outcome of every game, before wins and losses and series and opponents start to blur together. Every win is a hint of unexpected grandeur, while every loss is acceptable, because baseball.
Then, well, things begin to change.
While the Mets were doing nothing praiseworthy on the field Saturday, I was keeping up with them on my iPhone in Sheepshead Bay. Robert Carson came in and Jimmy Rollins did things I wished he hadn’t done and then so did Ryan Howard and when Domonic Brown hit one over the fence, I silenced MLB At Bat in disgust, and didn’t turn it back on. It was a pleasant day in South Brooklyn, and the Mets were not adding to the proceedings. In fact, they were subtracting from them.
Today Emily and Joshua and I were out in Red Hook with friends, and I’d forgotten my headphones, but no matter — I could hear Howie and Josh burbling away down there in my pocket, and when the pitch of their voices indicated some urgency was afoot, I brought them up to ear level to hear what was going on. This is something I love about baseball too — the way the game can be a companion during chores or sightseeing or anything else, providing amiable company while waiting for you to stop being so darn distracted and pay close attention, and then allowing you to go back to whatever it is you’re doing when danger or delight has passed. Baseball is marvelous when every pitch is followed with ravenous interest, but it also works awfully well when the sounds of the game are pleasing background noise. This was the first day of 2013 when baseball was like that, and for a while I was very happy to have arrived at another old familiar station of fandom.
Happy, except for the fact that things were not going swimmingly at Citi Field. Even with half an ear I could tell that: Cole Hamels was handing out free passes with admirable generosity, but the Mets were doing nothing with them. Jon Niese was pitching capably enough, but you could sense disaster hanging back and waiting for him to falter.
And when I got home and gave the game my full attention, disaster caught up quickly.
It started so innocently: With two outs and none on in the seventh, Laynce Nix lofted a little foul pop in front of the Phillies dugout. John Buck pursued it, but the batboy was a bit slow collecting his chair and his thoughts, and David Wright was charging in with great zeal but from an odd angle, and whatever the reason the ball hit Buck’s glove but then hit the ground. A reprieved Nix then singled, Rollins did the same, and suddenly Niese was in the dugout looking understandably perturbed. Enter Scott Atchison, the world’s oldest-looking 37-year-old, whose arrival summoned Ryan Howard as a pinch-hitter, which led to a 2-0 pitch that Howard drove to the wall, which untied the game permanently.
What happened? How did such a little mistake become such a big mess? You could argue the misplay caused Niese to lose his focus, a problem he’d seemed to put behind him last summer. You could argue he was simply tired with an elevated pitch count this early in the year. You could argue he was just unlucky. You could even argue the Phillies were just good at baseball, though let’s not. All of these arguments are plausible, as well as unprovable and thus useless. An out wasn’t made, it led to bad things, and the Mets lost.
Other things are less arguable. Like positing that Terry Collins managed the Mets into peril instead of out of it — saying that you’d rather have a tired Niese facing Kevin Frandsen than Atchison facing Howard struck me and a lot of others as more of a first-guess than a second-. Or that whatever one things of Collins’s in-game maneuvers, the Mets’ offense has been unreliable and their bullpen has been reliably awful. (You’d think that a smart fellow like Sandy Alderson would occasionally get some spaghetti to stick to a wall.)
Anyway, the joy of April baseball is the realization that it’s a long season and there’s a lot of baseball left. That’s true even when you’re a fan of a team that’s not fated to be playing in October. But sometime in late April, there comes a game that makes that moment of joy curdle a bit — and for me, this was the game and the day.
It’s a long season and there’s a lot of baseball left.
by Greg Prince on 27 April 2013 11:16 pm Some positive developments for the Mets Saturday. Shaun Marcum got his throwing in, working his way up to 71 pitches. He only lasted four innings, but it’s not like anybody was counting. Then Terry Collins experimented a little and brought Robert Carson in for the fifth, which isn’t where you’d expect to see him, but roles are still undefined, so it didn’t really matter. The Phillies brought their A-club with them and Carson was kind of roughed up. Still, it was good experience for him. Terry stretched out LaTroy Hawkins for two innings, which was interesting to see. Scott Rice got two innings, two.
The manager also experimented by using the same lineup two days in a row, something you don’t usually get from him this time of year. Some of the fellas didn’t look too sharp. Mike Baxter, for example, had trouble with a fly ball to right, which may be something to think about once the season starts. It doesn’t look like they know quite what to do with Collin Cowgill yet, but figuring it all out is what this time of year is for. Ruben Tejada made both a great play and a bad play. Maybe if he’d reported sooner, it would have been a great play and a routine play, but who knows? There was some hijinks with Ike Davis’s glove when he couldn’t get a ball out and turn a double play — probably the result of a prank, since the next thing you saw was Justin Turner trying to fix it. (That guy’s hilarious).
The Mets didn’t hit much against the four pitchers the Phillies used. Since they weren’t exactly big names, I’d be concerned if this was already April, but since the Mets are just getting the feel of things, losing 9-4 wasn’t the big story. They’re taking pitches, they’re working counts, they’re learning Terry’s system and no doubt Sandy Alderson will have a crack 25-man roster in place come Opening Day.
Can’t wait for that to happen.
by Greg Prince on 27 April 2013 3:35 am Perhaps I’d forgotten how baseball seasons work since the last one concluded and the current one commenced, but I would have sworn through the first twenty games of 2013 that each and every one of the Mets’ first ten wins was brilliantly uplifting while each and every one of the Mets’ first ten losses was totally miserable. For a sport where you’re not supposed to get too high or too low, viewing the daily results this way can be hazardous to your mental health, particularly when you root for a team whose best hope (generously apportioned) is breaking even.
All the wins thus far have indicated that the Mets can be truly exciting or at least highly competitive. The five Harvey starts and the Harveysteria they stirred speak for themselves (with Jordany’s McReynolds-style ending Wednesday night adding its own piece of flair to the proceedings). Opening Day was a run-fueled festival. So was the first night in Minnesota. And how about that walkoff comeback when we were throwing Aaron Laffey at his diametric talent-opposite Jose Fernandez? Or those John Buck specials when we couldn’t believe this guy was this guy?
On the other hand, how did the Mets not sweep the Marlins and the Padres? What the hell happened in Philly when Harvey wasn’t eclipsing Halladay? What about that frozen disaster of a week at Coors Field? How could they let that game get away against the Nationals last Saturday? And, oy, the bookends of the Dodger series!
Finally, Friday night we got what I’d almost call a reassuring loss. Mind you, there was nothing reassuring about being blanked by Kyle Kendrick, 4-0. The Mets have, save for two of their last fifty frames, forgotten how to score more than one run in a given inning. Not many Met runners have crossed Citi Field’s plate, period, since Adam LaRoche told them what they could do with their five-spot seven days ago. They patiently worked all those plate appearances off Gio Gonzalez in the fourth and then they dutifully took a nap that continued mostly without interruption. In the succeeding aforementioned fifty innings, they’ve scored a total of fourteen runs. Four came on that marvelous Valdespin grand slam, which means mostly they haven’t scored at all.
So how exactly is losing 4-0 reassuring? It’s not. The Mets generated not a shred of offense against somebody who’s supposed to be Philadelphia’s fourth starter, while Dillon Gee has developed a serious allergy to Ryan Howard (where’s Pedro Feliciano when you need him?). Friday’s duel became a dud the sixth-inning instant Mr. Subway practically reached the 7 tracks. As was the case last Sunday, Gee functioned effectively for a while, but then he needed to be gone. By the time he was — like Howard’s long-distance voyager — outta here, it was too late.
The reassurance, then? It’s that these sorts of games happen. You’re not used to complete game shutouts that are signed, sealed and subpoenaed in 2:35 these days (and that was with the lengthy timeout devoted to Brian O’Nora’s pinch between his cheek and gum reportedly taking an unfortunate detour down his throat), but they happen. That’s the reassurance. There are slumps and there are shutouts and there’s no avoiding them. There was, when you get right down to it, nothing about this game that could be helped. Terry Collins rearranged his tepid hitters and they went frigid. Kendrick may have been too good this particular evening regardless. You could be disgusted — as no doubt anyone who encountered O’Nora in his moment of distress must have been — and you could be frustrated, but you couldn’t let it get the best of you.
Friday wasn’t Thursday, when Jeremy Hefner pitched his heart out to no avail (while thousands of nearby residents rooted for opposing pitcher Hyun-jin Riu because being from Korea perennially tops living in Flushing). It wasn’t Tuesday, when you worried about Jonathon Niese’s knee and then sat and sat and sat through the mournful bullpen parade that followed. It wasn’t like so many games this young year that have, per Gladys Knight & The Pips’ great hit from the Claudine soundtrack, gone on and on. It was just one of those dim losses you’re going to encounter across the Big 162. You know the drill: a third you’re gonna win, a third you’re gonna lose, a third will tell your tale.
This one told you to get over it right away and get on with it the next afternoon.
by Greg Prince on 25 April 2013 11:48 pm Some nice person to whom I had just been introduced in the Citi Field parking lot on Opening Day asked me, regarding the 81 games that were about to be played in the building adjacent to where we stood, “Do you have a plan?”
“Yes,” I said, matter of factly. “My plan is to go to as many games as I can.”
I’ve stuck to that plan for a long time, so why stop now? Starting with Saturday, September 9, 2006, and going through Thursday afternoon — including the one postseason encompassed by this time period — the Mets have played 515 home games. I’ve attended 218, or approximately 42.3% of them.
As many games as I can, whether I actually can or not. Prioritizing, y’know? There’s me and there’s the Mets. I prefer to not keep us apart for very long.
It wasn’t always something I could do. I’m sure in theory I would’ve gone to as many games as I could have in 1991, but I only went to two. I can’t say for sure there were 79 others I absolutely couldn’t have. Probably not; it just worked out that way. Two games that counted in one season (though there was also an exhibition game) tied my record for fewest games attended in one season as a reasonably full-fledged adult. The only other post-junior high year in which I made it to Shea no more than twice was 1988. I had tickets for a third game in ’88, but that was the weekend right after my mother was diagnosed with cancer, so I passed.
I was every bit the Mets fan in 1991 that you’ve come to know in 2013, but whether it was time or money or logistics or priorities or a paucity of decent game-going company, I just didn’t find myself at Shea very often. I was 28. Work was all-consuming and my wedding was imminent. I watched the Mets, I listened to the Mets, I ruminated over the Mets. I just wasn’t physically in the same space as the Mets that season. The sum total of my interaction with them, thus, was that I went to a loss in May and a win in June. The loss in May hasn’t come up in conversation at all in 22 years. The win in June?
Why, it bubbled up from the pages of my Log and the archives of my subconscious to the surface of topicality in a big way just this week.
On Wednesday night, Jordany Valdespin won the Mets a game with a grand slam. Before I was done jumping up and down in section 123 — certainly before Jordany’s smiling face met with a resounding shaving cream greeting from John Buck — it was announced that this was the first time the Mets had won a game in such a fashion since June 25, 1991, when Kevin McReynolds hit the grand slam to beat the Expos that night, 8-5
Hey, I said to Jason amid a flurry of high-fives, I was at that game!
That statement, coming from yours truly, wouldn’t carry quite as much punch (or pie) if Valdespin had done something equally wonderful that hadn’t been done since, say, 2008. I attended 44 games at Shea Stadium in its final season, so chances were I was going to witness more than half of all memorable events in Flushing five years ago. I then went to 36 in Citi Field’s inaugural campaign, never making fewer than 27 in a season since. I’ve already been to half of the dozen the Mets have put in the books in 2013.
It’s not a boast. It’s just what I do. It’s what I always wanted to do from the time I was old enough to know what the Mets were and that they played baseball somewhere. Across the years, Shea, then Citi, became accessible to me and I made a habit of accessing it all I can. But in 1991, I accessed it so rarely that if I was on hand for one Mets win that somebody was destined to bring up more than two decades later, of course I’d be bound to remember it instantly.
That is also what I do.
Why that night of all nights in 1991? I can recall no particular magic attached to Tuesday, June 25, as it approached. There wasn’t any great desire to see the Expos as opposed to any other opponent. There was a good pitching matchup, to be sure: Dwight Gooden versus Dennis Martinez. But I’m pretty sure that was a bonus.
What facilitated a game if not necessarily this game was what I now realize was an offhanded comment by someone I didn’t know all that well and would fairly soon not know at all. This was a guy who worked where I worked, but only briefly, just for a few months. He was more a baseball fan than a fan of any given team. Liked the Giants, now that I’m thinking about it, but not excessively. His memory for baseball specifics wasn’t particularly refined, either. One idle chat had him placing the You Gotta Believe pennant-winning Mets of 1973 in 1971.
Perhaps it was that kind of limited attention to detail that doomed his continued employment as a reporter on the magazine I helped edit. However it came to be, he was let go. Since we’d been friendly if not exactly buddies, I got in touch with him after it all went down to express my sympathy. However awkwardly that talk went, it ended on a fairly upbeat note. Knowing my overarching interest dovetailed in what he enjoyed casually, he told me, “I’d love to take in a game with you sometime.”
He probably meant that in the way other people mean it when they say they hope it’s not going to rain on the way home, but I filed the remark away as if it was a commitment that demanded fulfilling. When the next baseball season rolled around, I called him up and reminded him, hey, if you’re still up for that ballgame… I guess he was, because we picked June 25, chose a meeting place and rendezvoused at Shea Stadium.
At first, it was a great game. How could it not be? The Mets jumped out to an immediate 4-0 lead off Martinez. Dave Magadan homered, which he generally seemed to do in front of me (Mags hit seven homers at Shea during a three-year span when I attended a mere ten games there, yet I was a witness to three of them…and the other two were walkoff jobs). A Gregg Jefferies single and steal, two walks and two more singles — from Hubie Brooks and Mackey Sasser — ensued. Hubie would be out at home on a Garry Templeton bouncer snared by Martinez, and Doc would ground out to end the inning, but we’d batted around. The Mets led by four runs. What a great night I picked!
And it was all pleasing small talk and big lead for the next several innings. Sure, El Presidente settled down, but what did it matter? The Doctor was operating. Montreal did nothing against Gooden and continued to trail, 4-0, through four.
Then came the fifth. The Expos woke up or the Doctor’s beeper sounded or something went wrong. The visitors put together four singles and two doubles. Marquis Grissom stole a base and scored on a wild pitch. Dennis Martinez batted. Dave Martinez batted. Everybody but Teddy Martinez batted. Montreal sent nine men to the plate and produced five runs. Gooden, so impregnable for four innings, was now down, 5-4.
Here’s something that would never happen today: Gooden stayed in. As did Martinez. These were aces being allowed to deal. And deal they did, even if — according to contemporary accounts that I’ve either forgotten or denied — “we” booed Gooden when he came to bat in the sixth. “We” the crowd did, but not me. I wouldn’t have booed Doc. I wouldn’t have booed Dwight. I wouldn’t have even booed the porous infield defense of Magadan, Jefferies, Templeton and HoJo, a unit Joe Sexton in the Times described as “suspect,” in light of how various Expos were “dinking” and “roping” hits past and over them.
Yet Gooden stayed in through eight, perhaps a reflection of manager Buddy Harrelson’s undying confidence in him, perhaps an indication that his bullpen was just as suspect as his infield. Martinez gave Tom Runnells seven innings. The whole thing went to the bottom of the ninth at 5-4, the potential Montreal save in the hands of future Met relief washout Barry Jones.
The Mets, stymied since the first, went to work in their 1991 fashion. Templeton, spending his final months as a major leaguer in a Met uniform, lined a ball that Expo third baseman Tim Wallach couldn’t convert into an out. It went for a single. Keith Miller ran for Templeton and got himself picked off first by Jones but escaped embarrassment when Barry couldn’t close the deal. An error on the pitcher placed Miller on second. Tommy Herr struck out, but Daryl Boston walked. With two on and one out, Runnells replaced Jones with lefty Scott Ruskin. What I assume was a botched hit-and-run became a successful double steal. Magadan, as was his wont, walked to load the bases. Jefferies, however, popped up.
Two out, McReynolds up. A deep drive to left-center. If Grissom caught up to it (and it seemed to remain in flight long enough to circle LaGuardia), then the bases were loaded to no avail. But if it kept going…just a little more…just a little more…
GONE! Kevin McReynolds won the Mets a game I never thought they should have been trailing, 8-5. There was happiness if not bedlam. Bedlam was Jordany on Wednesday night. McReynolds was (and probably still is) the anti-Valdespin in terms of temperament. Whereas JV1 is the most electric icon the Mets have had since the Keyspan sign at Shea, Big Mac would routinely lock his pulse away with his wristwatch and car keys during ballgames. Nonetheless, nobody not affiliated with Les Expos wasn’t satisfied with the grand exit Kevin had arranged. That included me; my generic fan friend; and however many of the other nearly 29,000 who showed up and stayed to the end. I remarked that it seemed like a middling crowd for such an outsized pitching matchup, but my former colleague, still looking for steady work, thought maybe the economy had something to do with the attendance.
Either way, those who came got a good result, and just in time. My companion said he wasn’t going to stay for extras. I don’t know if I would’ve been polite and left with him, or steadfast and endured, as I almost certainly would today. I didn’t go to enough games in those days to have a fixed template for such situations. Glad I didn’t make like McReynolds and attempt to beat the traffic. It had been five years since the last time a Met ended a game on a grand slam. It would be 22 more before it would happen again (give or take a Grand Slam Single). This 1991 grand slam was, of course, a dramatic as hell resolution, but it didn’t seem all that over the top as it unfolded, not like it did Wednesday night via Valdespin, and not just because Jordany’s such a lightning rod. The Mets of 1991 were routinely contending for a division title, just as they’d been doing year in and year out since 1984. They were supposed to beat the Montreal Expos. Kevin McReynolds was supposed to crush the Scott Ruskins of the National League East. A grand slam was simply a slightly more novel method of taking care of business.
Soon enough, we wouldn’t take the Mets winning more than they lost for granted. While Dennis Martinez had cemented a piece of baseball immorality for himself by throwing a perfect game at Dodger Stadium in late July, Dwight Gooden was on his way to ending his season early. He’d go out for the year in late August with an aching right shoulder. His record, which stayed 7-5 on June 25 once McReynolds took him off the hook, wound up 13-7. He’d never compile another annual mark above .500 as a New York Met. His club would find itself in a similar predicament. The third-place Mets, who raised their record to 36-32, 4½ behind the Pirates, on the strength of K-Mac’s grand slam, would collapse altogether in the season’s final laps and not truly rise again for another six years. McReynolds, Jefferies and Miller would be packaged for Bret Saberhagen and Bill Pecota (New York was going to love him) in December. The great Metropolitan transformation of the 1990s was on and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
Between the night of my only win of 1991 and the night the trade with Kansas City was consummated, I would see the guy with whom I took in that ballgame one more time. I invited him to my wedding. He came, he drank, he enjoyed himself. He gave Stephanie and me a nice card. Unfortunately, I seemed to have lost whatever he included with the card. In a bit of a panic, I called him to let him know that I was really sorry, I must have misplaced his gift and I didn’t want this to be a problem, so if he wanted to cancel the check, which I could have sworn I had seen…
“Uh, Greg,” he told me sheepishly, “there wasn’t anything in the card. I’m going to have to get the gift to you a little later.”
Well, I felt like a jerk. I wasn’t calling to shake him down. I really thought a check fell out of the card and disappeared. Three months later, a lovely vase arrived at our home. I sent him a thank you note and I think that was it for us. No more Mets games. No more phone calls. Just nothing more for us to talk about, I guess. Out of curiosity, in the wake of the Valdespin grand slam, I did a search of his name Thursday morning. He’s up to something that has nothing to do with writing (or baseball) and seems to be doing well. I’m very glad.
I’m also glad to have been at the last two games the Mets won on walkoff grand slams. Ask me in 22 years about the Jordany game and I’m confident I’ll remember quite a bit about it. After all, I more or less remember the McReynolds game. I remember that we won both quite theatrically. On the other hand, I don’t remember anything about what happened in the game that came after June 25, 1991. I didn’t attend that one. I didn’t attend Thursday’s matinee loss to the Dodgers, either. I know we lost. I know I wasn’t happy that we did.
So I decided to just think about the wins for now.
***
You’ll think about a whole lot of Amazin’ Mets wins when you read The Happiest Recap: First Base, the first installment of an unprecedented, unparalleled exploration of the first half-century of New York Mets baseball. This volume covers the wonder years of 1962 to 1973, including a pair of games from 1963 won on what we now refer to as walkoff grand slams. The thoroughly Met-minded blog Studious Metsimus is anything but bearish on the series, praising The Happiest Recap for “paint[ing] a colorful picture” of Mets history, filled with “unabashed love and…passionate words” for the team around which so many of us have come to plan our lives.
First Base is available in print or for Kindle from Amazon. Personally inscribed copies are available from the Team Recap store. I really hope you’ll choose to read it and touch all the bases that follow.
by Jason Fry on 25 April 2013 1:59 am Even great baseball teams lose an annoying number of games.
The runaway-train teams — your ’86 Mets and ’98 Yankees and ’01 Mariners — are still going to lose 15 or 20 games that make you want to lie down in the road. Which means 45 to 60 hours of your time will be dedicated to an outcome you’ll look back on not at all fondly. Double that — at least — for more run-of-the-mill teams. And multiply it by some really horrible number for the bad ones. Even in the dream years, that’s a lot of baseball predestined to leave you enraged, devastated, bitter, surly, morose or just deeply annoyed.
From the perspective of non-fans, this is obviously insane. Why would anyone sign up to receive such slings and arrows? But if it’s too late for you — in other words, if you’re the kind of person who reads this blog — you accept it and even look forward to it. You don’t look forward to the pain of losing, exactly — that would be weird — but to the familiarity of losing. A bad loss in April aches, but it’s a lot better than the void of winter, during which one feels nothing at all. Plus, as I wrote Tuesday night, even a lousy baseball game will deliver moments of beauty or interest or curiosity to those who care to look. And very occasionally something remarkable happens, and the virtuous fan who sticks with a punishing game is rewarded.
This probably sounds like way too much to put on a game where the Mets were down two runs at worst and came back from a one-run deficit. And it is — this wasn’t one of those crazy affairs where the veterans are excused by the middle innings and watch in awe as the scrubeenies stage a ragtag revolution. But, well, you have to factor in a few things.
1) It was a Matt Harvey game, and those are already becoming events at Citi Field. There’s every indication that he really is that good, and the smart thing to do is get to the park when he’s pitching, before it becomes a very tough ticket. The latest manifestation of Harveyism brought me out to the park during a month when I regard night games as an excess of adventure. It also brought my blog brother (for the first Faith and Fear meetup of ’13), my wife, my father-in-law and a decent number of similarly intrigued fans, all of us with expectations somewhere between “high” and “completely unfair.” Harvey struck out seven over six innings in which he gave up three hits and walked one. Most pitchers would call a pretty good line, which it was. But it was mortal, and though it’s a terrible thing to say, we’re already used to more than that.
2) It was cold. Not Mets-in-Colorado cold, not Jackie Robinson Night cold, but cold — the kind that gets into your bones and refuses to leave. (I’ve been home for nearly two hours and I can still feel it.) Was I thrilled when the Mets forced extra innings? Of course I was. Would I have managed to get on with my life if they’d lost in regulation and I’d been able to cram into a nice warm subway car a little earlier and go the hell home? Forgive me, but yes. When it’s cold enough, getting to escape can reduce a tough loss from … well, from devastating to disappointing.
3) The Mets looked snakebit. It was one of those games that looks like it will be decided by a few plays wobbling this way instead of that way, only you’re pretty sure all the breaks will belong to the other guy. First the Dodgers scored a cheap first-inning run on two singles and a fielder’s choice just a bit too poky to be a double play. Then Jerry Hairston Jr. went airborne to take a double away from Ike Davis (showing signs of life), in an inning where Lucas Duda rammed a double of his own up the gap. (Hairston wasn’t done — more from him in a bit.) Most of all, Ted Lilly mesmerized the Mets hitters, as it seems rehabilitating junkballers always do. The big hit wasn’t there and wasn’t there and wasn’t there, until you were pretty sure it wasn’t going to arrive.
So, yeah — it was 3-2 heading to the bottom of the ninth, but it felt like about 7-2.
But there’s a reason I’m still writing and you’re (one hopes) still reading. Leading off, Mike Baxter hit a low liner to left that Carl Crawford misplayed twice, first letting the ball clank off the heel of his hand and then pursuing it so indifferently that Baxter raced for second, which was not a good idea but worked out. Ruben Tejada bunted Baxter to third as the tying run (how novel to applaud a Terry Collins bunt), setting the stage for Daniel Murphy, who no longer feels like a miscast work in progress but like a reliable regular. Murph worked a 2-0 count and then spun a low liner towards the third-base seats. Hairston, to our horror, nabbed it with a nifty backhand while ramming into the photo-box rail.
In a lot of parallel universes the game ended with Baxter trying to score on a 75-foot sac fly, only to be rounded up after a bit of fuss somewhere between third and home, like a cat being taken to the vet. In this one, happily, Baxter scampered a few feet down the line, then reconsidered and belly-flopped back into third. But with the Dodgers an out a way from victory, David Wright promptly rammed Brandon League’s first pitch for a game-tying single to right-center.
An inning later, John Buck (at the plate when Wright was caught stealing to end the ninth) led off with a single and Ike walked, setting up an endgame everyone in the park could see coming. Marlon Byrd sacrificed the runners to second and third (check) and the Dodgers intentionally walked Duda (check) to bring up Jordany Valdespin with the bases loaded. Except first Don Mattingly — who’d repeatedly spent an eternity in frostbite-inducing meetings at the mound — brought Luis Cruz in as a fifth infielder, which one normally sees in conjunction with a coach pitching.
I wasn’t all that happy with the match-up, and not just because I was frozen. Duda has made himself into a tough out, combining a discerning eye for the strike zone with prodigious power, whereas Jordany is equally capable of marvelous things that leave you dumbstruck and dumb things that you just marvel at. In the eighth, in fact, he’d come up with the tying run on third and two out and immediately tapped a weak grounder to first — a rather brainless at-bat, to say the least.
But this time things were different. Josh Wall wasn’t particularly sharp, and Valdespin patiently maneuvered him into a 2-1 count, then hammered a high fastball. The game was won, absent some blockheadedness on the basepaths (which seemed by no means impossible), but then it was gloriously won — Valdespin had hit it over the fence.
A great win, to be sure — on the subway back into the city I happily watched the highlight several times surrounded by beaming Mets fans. But the thought came to me immediately: Because of this game, I will keep watching years’ worth of games in which nothing good happens whatsoever.
And you know what? Right now that seems like a perfectly good trade to me.
by Jason Fry on 23 April 2013 11:46 pm Which of these seems less likely?
Scenario 1: Middle reliever Rob Carson steps in with nobody on and two men out for his first plate appearance in the major leagues. Sixty and a half feet away stands the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw, an assemblage of long limbs borrowed from a Hindu deity, stop-start motions filched from a wind-up toy, hellaciously good pitches ported over from hitters’ nightmares, and a beard grafted from the jawline of an Amish teen. Carson will get a close call in his favor and work out a walk, to Kershaw’s consternation. This will cost the perennial Cy Young candidate 24 more pitches and two runs, driving him from the game early and costing him both a win and some measure of his equilibrium.
Scenario 2: Mark Ellis, a 35-year-old with 99 home runs over 10 big-league seasons and the kind of career that’s serviceable with a bit of a shrug, goes 4-for-5 with two homers and a hard ground single that knocks Jon Niese from the game with a “leg contusion,” which is a fancy way of saying “bruise” except pitchers are precision machines who sometimes compensate for pain in one area of the body by subtly changing what they do with another part of the body, potentially leading to all sorts of trouble and MOTHER OF GOD DON’T YOU REMEMBER DIZZY DEAN HAD A TOE BROKEN IN 1937 AND HE CHANGED HIS MECHANICS AND HURT HIS ARM AND HUNG EM UP IN 1941 AND DIED IN 1974 UNDOUBTEDLY OF COMPLICATIONS AND NIESE WAS OUR ONLY RELIABLE STARTER OTHER THAN THE DIVINE MANIFESTATION OF HARVEYISM AND AUUUGGGGGHHHHHH WE ARE SO SCREWED. Hell, Mark Ellis had such a good day that A. J. Ellis hit a two-run double just because he had the same last name.
Both scenarios happened (more or less), which is why you don’t ever try to outthink baseball.
Once Josh Edgin finished his work, which one senses is soon to resume in Las Vegas, this one was a bare-bones feast even the diehards picked at halfheartedly. There were little bits of interest of course, like brand-new Met Juan Lagares showing off a sweet swing and collecting his first hit, and the intriguing motion of the Dodgers’ Paco Rodriguez, whose dice-shaking glove and delicate pivot of the hand behind him look like something from a “Karate Kid” training regimen.
There are always little rewards like those for sticking with a baseball game, and thank goodness — you need something to savor when all is lost, when two long shots have both wound up in the money and you’re shaking your head and smiling at the one but just shaking your head at the other.
by Greg Prince on 23 April 2013 3:56 pm As Mets fans, we hope our tentatively planned deluxe apartment in the National League East sky will be ready for occupancy in a couple of years. As New Yorkers who made it through Superstorm Sandy, we understand projecting living arrangements can become a precarious matter when nature intrudes in the rudest fashion possible. Almost six months after the storm left an enormous scar in our landscape, the rebuilding effort goes on, and like the one that involves Matt Harvey and other prospective prodigies, the Mets are playing a vital role.
Rebuilding Together NYC is a non-profit organization that provides repairs and modifications to low-income homeowners in the five boroughs. Its focus these days, not surprisingly, is on Sandy-impacted areas and, as such, Rebuilding Together NYC has partnered with the Mets on a special effort for this Saturday, April 27.
It will be Rebuilding Together NYC Day at Citi Field, held in conjunction with the Mets attempting to hammer the Phillies. A $55 ticket buys you a seat in Left Field Reserve, with a portion of the proceeds directed toward the group’s rebuilding efforts. If you’d like to cheer on the Mets and maybe cheer up your neighbors, consider the offer here.
***
 What home looked like 50 years ago. Rebuilding is often as much about preservation and restoration as it is rehabilitation or transformation, so another thumb up for the Mets taking part in a terrific episode of making New York whole again. The Mets, along with the Yankees, the Jets and two teams of Giants have chipped in to make passable once more the John T. Brush Stairway, the last physical connection remaining to the cradle of your New York Metropolitans.
The staircase — which connected the 1911 version of the Polo Grounds to the road above it on Coogan’s Bluff — was presented to the City of New York by the baseball Giants in memory of Brush, their then recently deceased owner, one hundred years ago this July. And one half-century ago this month, the Mets commenced their second season in that same staircase’s shadow; 1963 marked the last spring and summer the grand old ballpark would be filled with fun and frolic (not to mention 34 wins for the good guys). A year later, one week before Shea Stadium opened, the Polo Grounds succumbed to the wrecking ball. While a housing project rose, everything else came down…everything but the stairs, though those fell into terrible disrepair. You could still make out the dedication plaque that was etched into one of its landings if you were in the neighborhood, but climbing the steps could be hazardous to your health.
Recognizing the historical value of maintaining this piece of New York lore, each professional baseball and football team that at one time or another called the Polo Grounds home (along with Major League Baseball), was prevailed upon to contribute a generous sum and each came through. Other donations were solicited and the New York City Parks and Recreation Department — prodded by concerned parties like Gary Mintz and the New York Giants Preservation Society — undertook the restoration. Soon, the stairs will scalable, the plaque will be readable and the spirit of Casey Stengel will be gratified to learn that when it comes to preserving a significant municipal monument, some people here can play this game.
***
The Mets, of course, gave unexpected life to the Polo Grounds in 1962 and 1963. The place was considered done forever for baseball on September 29, 1957, when the Giants played their final game, against the Pirates. Since it was assumed nobody would need the diamond again, many of the relatively few on hand decided its contents were fair game.
Which brings us to a fellow named John Barr, who a little while back sent us this answer to a question worth asking: whatever happened to home plate that day? Barr, a Giants fan since 1947, knew and wrote about it.
Let’s let his reporting take it from here.
***
Ray Smith grew up in Linden, New Jersey, as a New York Baseball Giant fan.
“My Dad was a Dodger fan so I became a Giant fan,” Ray said. “My Dad always took me to Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds to see one game a year at both parks between the Dodgers and my beloved Giants.”
Ray was fifteen years old when both the Dodger and Giant owners announced that 1957 would be the last year in New York City before the teams moved to Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“I was angry, upset and felt betrayed that my beloved Giants were leaving and felt that I had to attend the last game played by the Giants at the Polo Grounds on September 29 against the Pirates,” said the very mad Giant fan.
Young Ray Smith took a bus from Linden to the New York Port Authority and then the subway to the Polo Grounds. It was easy for a fifteen-year-old back in those days. He purchased a ticket in the lower deck between the dugout and first base.
“I had gone to many games at the Polo Grounds by myself and after the games I would run on the field and try to catch up with my heroes as they headed for the center field clubhouse,” Smith said. “Willie Mays was my favorite and it was a thrill to have him say anything to me.”
The Giants lost that game to the Pirates by a score of 9 to 1, only scoring that lonely run when Dusty Rhodes hit a sacrifice fly scoring Don Mueller from third base. Willie went 2-for-4, and Bobby Thomson, who had returned to the Giants, had one hit. The Giants that day only had a total of six hits. The Giants used a total of five pitchers while the Pirates only needed Bob Friend who wrapped up his 14th win. Johnny Antonelli took the loss, bringing his record to 12-18. The attendance was only 11,606.
“When the last out was made several fans jumped onto the field and were caught by the ushers,” he recalled. “I saw an opening between ushers and scampered onto the field, first and second base were guarded so I headed to the pitchers mound and tied to dig up the rubber to no avail, as it was too deep”
Ray then realized that home plate was the soul of the ballpark. Willie Mays had run over, slid across and thrown strikes to it from center field. If Ray couldn’t keep his Giants in New York then he wasn’t going to let them take home plate with them. It was there for the taking. The following events followed as remembered from September 29, 1957:
“I ran to home plate.
“There was a bunch of people standing around doing nothing.
“I took out my Boy Scout knife — that’s the truth — and started digging.
“Someone stepped on my hand closing the knife and giving me a big cut.
“I dug and dug and finally home plate was loose.
“The plate had five coarse-threaded metal inserts.
“While I was digging and tugging everyone stood around watching — no one helped.
“Then when I got it out they tried to grab it from me and all hell broke loose.
“One older kid grabbed it from me and I jumped on his back and when he tried to punch me I took it back.
“I then took off running as fast as I could.
“A photographer spotted me and asked me to pose for a picture with home plate as others tried to take it from me. That picture appeared on the front page of the now-defunct New York Mirror on September 30, 1957, entitled the ‘Last Steal’.
“After the picture was taken, I was home free and left by the centerfield exit with my prized possession.
“I’d had the crap beat out of me. My glasses were broken and long gone, my finger was bleeding, my shirt was ripped and I realized I had been in quite a fight to keep home plate.
“The next challenge was getting it back to Linden.
“I must have looked a little strange, a disheveled fifteen-year-old hanging onto what looked like a home plate.
“I couldn’t see without my glasses so I had to ask strangers to tell me when the subway stop arrived for the bus terminal.
“But I made it home with my treasured possession.”
Whatever happened to home plate after that, you might wonder. Well, Ray Smith joined the United States Air Force in June 1959 after graduating from Linden High School and served on active duty until 1981. Home plate traveled with him to assignments in Wichita, Kansas; Germany; Knoxville, Tennessee; Scott AFB, Illinois; Athens, Greece, Washington, DC; and Colorado.
“It didn’t accompany me to Vietnam”, he added. “It now occupies a place of honor in my house over looking the Rocky Mountains.”
***
Thanks to John (and Ray) for a reminder of what home means to us, whether it’s physical, spiritual or a plate to grab hold of. Again, if you’re looking to go to bear witness to Shaun Marcum’s first Met start on Saturday and want to help somebody who’s not a Phillie baserunner be safe at home, please check out Rebuilding Together NYC’s special day at the park.
by Greg Prince on 22 April 2013 9:52 am What a marvelously well-behaved afternoon the Mets provided those of us who filed into Citi Field on Sunday. Our Ron Darling bobbleheads awaited us in a pleasing stack; our fish tacos didn’t take any longer than the “few minutes” the notoriously pokey Catch of the Day promised; our shadow-situated seats were convincingly but not excessively chilled; and our pitching completely shut down a prospective division champion.
Dillon Gee finally lived up to his No. 3 starter potential, which was a gratifying sight. He’ll never be as electric as Matt Harvey (or as acoustic as Jon Niese), but we’ve seen him bulldog his way past batters and out of jams more often than not since late 2010. The guy who couldn’t do anything with the Phillies or the Rockies wasn’t Gee. The Gee who tamed the Nationals was more familiar and most welcome. Post-clot, expectations for Dillon are necessarily leavened with patience, which one can magnanimously draw upon when the pitcher has earned your faith and your team is still in the exploratory stage of its season.
Given Dillon’s ongoing quest to find the feel of competitively throwing every fifth day again, perhaps the 98 pitches he compiled across 5⅔ innings were as far as he needed to be pushed, particularly since the last 11 he delivered resulted in walks to Bryce Harper and Adam LaRoche. Ball four is sometimes the better part of valor where these two Met-killers are concerned, but I suppose it was reasonable to infer Gee was kind of losing it at that point. Nevertheless, my inner Ojeda was beseeching Terry Collins to let a young pitcher pull himself from his own quicksand and to break him and all Met starters who drift into trouble out of the habit of looking over their shoulders at the bullpen.
I also didn’t want to look at the bullpen because it rarely behaves marvelously well.
Gee’s 2-0 lead, built on a John Buck blast (I’m assuming he has now passed Johnny Bench and is bearing down on Carlton Fisk for most home runs in a career by a catcher) and a Mike Baxter sac fly, appeared ready for shredding. Did it matter who was coming in? Do you trust any reliever Collins brings in during any inning, particularly if you’d never been forced to think about him before this season? If Jerry Seinfeld was using his luxurious box Sunday, he would have asked as I’m certain we all have since the new fellas flew up here from St. Lucie, who are these people?
To date, they’re Mets relievers, which is a terrible thing to call any group of human beings, but if the epithet fits, by all means spew it. We’re used to it. We’re so used to Mets relievers, particularly of the nebulous “middle innings” variety, exacerbating shaky situations that it’s almost not worth memorizing their names and numbers. You figure they’ll all be delisted from our roster soon enough.
Hence, when Gee left and LaTroy Hawkins made his 880th major league appearance (his first occurred against Baltimore, when Cal Ripken was still behind Lou Gehrig on the consecutive games played list…but, surprisingly, not while Gehrig was still active), I prepared not so much for the worst but for the usual. It was Hawkins versus Ian Desmond. It could’ve been Hawkins vs. Ian McKellen. The point was it was another Met bullpen retread tasked with preventing an opponent’s rally from reaching fruition. How was that gonna work?
Quite well, it turned out. Hawkins struck out Desmond to end the sixth and the Nationals’ threat.
No, really, he did. And Brandon Lyon, who I thought was supposed to be the “setup man,” came on in the seventh and set down the Nats in order. And Scott Rice, whose fifteen minutes as a feelgood story elapsed weeks ago as he settled into the role of one more bullet in the Mets’ ongoing game of bullpen roulette (in which Aaron Laffey was Saturday’s unluckiest victim), put his left arm to extraordinary use, allowing two baserunners before making with his bread and butter, grounding Jayson Werth into a slick 6-4-3 double play, striking out the prodigy Harper — “Marty,” screams Doc Brown in the upcoming Back To The Met Future, “don’t let Bryce Harper’s parents meet!” — and leaving LaRoche to fester in the on-deck circle. Inning over, Mets lead in progress.
Finally, with the lead still 2-0 (because who needs more runs anyway?), it was Bobby Parnell in for the save, and am I crazy, or has Parnell actually become something akin to a dependable closer? I was going to say “lights-out closer,” but I figured that’s asking for trouble from the bullpen gods. However one measures Parnell’s effectiveness, it was in effect. The ashes of the Nats’ hopes scattered into the ninth-inning wind in order.
Big, bad Washington lined up Strasburg, Gonzalez and Zimmermann for a weekend in the outer boroughs and left losers of two of three. Succumbing to Harvey, as the rest of organized baseball is learning, is standard operating procedure. The Nats’ one win was a function of the Mets’ putrid relief pitching. But their second loss? It was a function of the Mets’ sublime relief pitching. It took four relievers working 3⅓ innings, which in a vacuum is too many doing too much on a given day given how many days there are in a season and how quickly it all adds up, but it worked. One day after even the say-no-evil Captain expressed his polite disgust at the Mets’ inability to hold an opponent in check, they did it. Hawkins, Lyon and Rice neutralized the Nationals, validating Gee’s effort and paving the way for Parnell.
Almost flawless relief pitching from the New York Mets…they should keep it on the Citi Field menu. It’s even better than the fish tacos.
by Jason Fry on 20 April 2013 8:08 pm A day after a downtrodden people gathered to bear witness to Harveyism and declare that henceforth its tenets shall be their faith, the less-exalted Jeremy Hefner took the hill for New York. The more you know about Hefner the more you root for him, but he’s not Matt Harvey, which isn’t any kind of insult. Like many starters who have come before him and many who will come after him, Hefner can be very effective if he has all his pitches working and can hit his location, but is generally ineffective at all if he doesn’t. In three of his four appearances this year, the latter’s been the case — and this time Hefner was up against Gio Gonzalez, who has a 20-win season on his resume and the Nats’ offense supporting him.
But what could easily been a post-Harvey hangover game turned more interesting than that. Hefner wasn’t great, but neither was Gonzalez — the Mets worked their usual patient at-bats, driving Gonzalez’s pitch count up and up with an assist from Gio himself. They harried him in the bottom of the fourth, putting up five two-out runs, with the most impressive at-bat probably Ruben Tejada seeing 10 pitches (one of which tore Kurt Suzuki’s glove off his hand) in working out a walk as a pinch-hitter.
Alas, with Hefner out early the Mets called on Aaron Laffey, who’s no Matt Harvey and no Jeremy Hefner either. Laffey got the first two, but then walked the hideous Jayson Werth, gave up a double to Bryce Harper and then served up a 1-2 pitch to Adam LaRoche, one of those guys who kills you without attracting his fair share of notice. LaRoche turned it into a three-run homer. Harvey is Harvey and Jon Niese has matured into a generally reliable pitcher, but the back of the Mets’ rotation is a mess, to put it charitably. Dillon Gee deserves more time and patience as he works back from an injury, but otherwise we’re left hoping Shaun Marcum gets here soon, after which the best-case scenario is that he’s Shaun Marcum.
After Laffey did what he did, the game turned into one of those long grinds, with teams poking at each other in search of a weakness. That turned out to be Josh Edgin. Edgin has not looked good so far this year, but he pitched a clean seventh (much-needed for him and for us), after which the Mets grabbed the lead on a Daniel Murphy hit (Murph was safe by an eyelash on an eyelash), a John Buck double and a Harper bobble that prevented Murph from being roadkill at the plate. But as before, the good feeling lasted about six seconds — Harper utterly demolished an Edgin delivery for his second homer of the day, and this one should have counted double: It re-entered the atmosphere above the Shea Bridge, and I’m pretty sure I saw a LaGuardia-bound 747, a communications satellite, a near-Earth asteroid and a dislodged chunk of the Bifrost Bridge plummet down in its wake.
The Mets looked like they had a chance in the ninth against a wild Rafael Soriano, but their lessons in admirable patience seemed to desert them when they were needed most. Justin Turner worked a 3-1 count, fouled back what might have been Ball 4 and wasn’t his pitch even if it weren’t, then lined out. Murph grounded out on a 3-1 pitch. David Wright worked out a walk — and Buck promptly tapped the first pitch to short.
So … yeah. Interesting game turned disappointing. You can lament that our current rotation is Harvey, Niese and a collective shrug, and you wouldn’t be wrong. You can wonder what’s wrong with Edgin, and ask if Sandy Alderson’s thoughts are turning to Pedro Feliciano or Robert Carson. You can wish the Mets had shown just a bit more of that wise restraint in pursuing errant baseballs at the end.
All of that would be true, but there’s such a thing as overthinking stuff. Bryce Harper is a star at 20, and if nothing goes amiss it’s absolutely terrifying to think what he’ll be at 25, and how many years he’ll stay that way. Let’s face it: If Buck had worked the count to 3-2 and blasted a double up the gap to score Wright and make it 7-7, Harper would have hit a third homer off Bobby Parnell or Scott Rice. The Nats version of this recap would be MOTHER OF GOD BRYCE HARPER IS FREAKING AWESOME, and that would be correct and hit all the truly important points.
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