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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Come Monday, the Mets are slated to introduce nine men who’ve never been Mets before. When the names Scott Atchison, John Buck, Greg Burke, Marlon Byrd, Collin Cowgill, Latroy Hawkins, Brandon Lyon, Anthony Recker and Scott Rice are called, I’ll applaud because they are now part of my team. Some may disappear from the roster before making a lasting impression, some may become sadly synonymous with some regrettable misstep, some may legitimately earn their next hearty hand as they create the kind of tangible bond with me that I figure to recall fondly in this space in the years ahead.
Given how we become attached to certain players, it surprises me that it almost doesn’t matter who lines up and tips a cap on Opening Day. The group is the thing here more than its particular members when you’re considering the composition of a 25-man band. Obviously there’s always going to be a handful we take to heart in a given year or through a string of them, but I never insist on specificity of participants when it comes to going to see the Mets, Opening Day or any day. It’s the Mets. That’s all I need to know.
Not everything I love works quite like that.
The Spinners from the late 1970s on were Henry Fambrough, John Edwards, Billy Henderson, Pervis Jackson and Bobby Smith. Four-fifths of the group had been together from their beginnings in the 1950s, when they were known as the Domingoes, just kids dreaming of the big time in Detroit. Edwards was the veritable newcomer, replacing Philippé Wynne, who replaced G.C. Cameron, who replaced…well, there was one spot in the group that wasn’t always so stable, but the lineup remained remarkably intact for the longest time. When I finally got to see my favorite group perform live in 1997, the Spinners definitely had some mileage on them, but they were still the Spinners as they’d been for a couple of decades. And they were gorgeous.
I’m sorry it took me so long to experience them in person, but I’m grateful I caught them when I did. The Spinners couldn’t stay those Spinners forever. Edwards would suffer a stroke in 2000. Henderson passed away in 2007, Jackson in 2008. And earlier this month, Bobbie Smith — his glistening tenor as much the signature voice of the group as anybody’s — succumbed to illness at the age of 76. Fambrough is all who is left.
But there are still Spinners touring. There were in the weeks prior to Smith’s death and I imagine there will continue to be. Younger members picked up the mics in order to keep on spreading what I believe is some of the most beautiful music ever composed, recorded and performed. “I’ll Be Around”. “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love”. “One Of A Kind (Love Affair)”. “Ghetto Child.” “Mighty Love.” “Then Came You”. “Games People Play”. “Rubberband Man”. Music like that deserves to be played and heard.
Yet I have to admit that when the Spinners came to Westbury in February, as Smith was making what turned out to be his final rounds, I didn’t think much about seeing them again. The ratio was three new members, two originals. I don’t doubt they put on a fine show — judging by an episode of TV One’s Unsung from a couple of years ago, the new guys are talented and each member was still a trouper — but to me, the Spinners were the Spinners I saw in 1997, just in time. With the exception of Edwards, those were the Spinners who rolled out the hits with which I fell in love when I was a kid and grew to love even more as an adult.
Those Spinners can’t play Westbury anymore. But I’ll always have my boxed set. And its contents will always play for me.
The Mets I’ll go to see Monday? Like the Mets I went to see the last time they were in Flushing, they are what happens when the group doesn’t stay together, though I understand more readily what an impossibility that would be. Attrition, substitution, cold/calculating business decisions…when you get right down to it, none of it is really that much of an impediment to my being in their audience.
Santana’s done. Dickey’s traded. Reyes runs. Alfonzo walks. Gooden is not invited back. Seaver slips away twice. I say goodbye to Beltran, to Martinez, to Floyd, to Piazza, to Ordoñez, to Ventura, to Reed, to Mora, to Olerud, to Brogna, to Orsulak, to Strawberry, to Myers, to Hernandez, to Backman, to Brooks, to Flynn, to Henderson, to Grote, to Unser, to Staub, clear back to Swoboda. Guys I really liked and guys I truly loved stopped being Mets. Sometimes it was for better, sometimes it was for worse, sometimes it didn’t wind up making all that much difference. On Opening Day, a couple of dozen men identified as Mets will line up and tip their caps. I will applaud their presence, whoever they are.
I’m ready for another 162 fresh performances, because as much as I cherish the greatest hits, I’m dying to dig on the new material. I hope for harmony and high notes. I’ll settle for a good beat administered in the other direction now and then.
I’m not the most observant person in any room when it comes to physical attributes, but I was always taken aback by Johan Santana’s shoulders. Speaking strictly as a Mets fan, I could’ve spent a lifetime on those shoulders. They seemed capable of defying latitude and going on forever — which wouldn’t be worth observing except for the cliché about that very special ballplayer who can put a team on his shoulders and carry it by himself. It’s a phrase usually applied to home run hitters. Yet approximately every fifth day when things functioned as they were supposed to, Johan Santana elevated us like nobody else in our midst could.
We rode atop those shoulders intermittently across five years. Why just intermittently? Because things function as they’re supposed to only that often around the New York Mets. One look at Johan Santana at his best or simply as his standard-issue self would tell you he wasn’t a natural fit for their uniform. They probably had to special-order him a jersey. The Mets aren’t accustomed to having someone with shoulders quite so broad on their side. Everybody’s usually too slender or slumps too much.
And I’m not talking physique here.
Johan carried us when he could, which became an increasingly infrequent circumstance until it reached a point where his carrying a baseball and firing it to a catcher posed a clear and present danger to himself. But on those occasions when he really picked us up and transported us to places Mets fans rarely got to visit, he made sure we’d never forget it. I can’t actually confirm “never,” because we haven’t had the chance to test our memories against eternity — plus most memories don’t measure up to the task of remembering everything that doesn’t deserve forgetting — but I feel pretty confident in declaring Johan gave us at least a couple of ironclad forget-him-nots in the half-decade he spent now and then towering over our otherwise low-rise landscape.
There was an afternoon in September. There was a night in June. The fact that I need not elaborate one iota says what needs to be said about the width and breadth of Johan Santana’s shoulders, his skills, his stamina, his stuff. Toss in heart and guts and whatnot. There were some other sparkling performances, too, but before you could spend much time lingering on those nights and days, there was always a meniscus or an anterior capsule or some other less well-known body part lurking to ruin the view. You become a Mets fan, you learn about all kinds of anatomy you hadn’t heard of before. You join the Mets, something’s bound to go wrong with parts of you that seemed just fine in Minnesota or wherever. You subject yourself to repair, you rehabilitate as hard as you can, you make your way back and eventually something else doesn’t work to factory specifications. The people who pay you — and pay you very well — estimate you’ll return again any day or week or month now…or perhaps your career is over.
The Mets can never get their story straight when that happens. “You’ll see him when you see him” would be as good a status report as any to issue. “We don’t know — do we look like we know?” would be reasonably accurate, too. And if you’re contemplating the time frame the Mets suggest regarding any given player’s availability after injury, just multiply it by infinity so it will be a nice surprise should he return at all.
Somewhere in the current Spring Training, Johan Santana was the Mets’ Opening Day pitcher in waiting. Then he was out or in or being backdated or guilty of not being in shape or pushing himself unwisely to prove…well, whatever he was trying to prove, he needn’t have bothered. This was February and March. This didn’t mean a whole lot. He proved himself on an afternoon in September, a night in June.
Two games on those shoulders unlike any we’d ever seen. Two games that transcended everything about his team and the era it limped through on those fifth days when neither he nor anybody could carry us quite so surely, serenely and stratospherically. Is it any wonder one of those shoulders finds itself unable to carry on any longer?
Need a boost? The Happiest Recap: First Base (1962-1973) will lift you up, Amazin’ win after Amazin’ win. Check it out here.
Congratulations to our three contest winners: Matthew Fillare, Kevin Connell and Franco Salandra, each of whom hunkered down and earned a DVD copy of Knuckleball, courtesy of the good folks at MPI/FilmBuff. If you didn’t win one but want to own one, that, too, can be arranged.
Here are the answers to our R.A. Dickey quiz:
1. R.A. Dickey pitched three one-hitters as a Met. Who were the culprits who broke up each potential no-hitter in those respective games?
Cole Hamels of the Phillies on August 13, 2010; B.J. Upton of the Rays on June 13, 2012; and Wilson Betemit of the Orioles on June 18, 2012. Only Upton’s was the subject of a Met appeal regarding the scoring decision (it was denied).
2. In R.A. Dickey’s first season on the Mets, he led all starters on the staff in ERA. Who led the team in wins and strikeouts, respectively? In 2010, R.A. Dickey pitched to a 2.84 ERA, Mike Pelfrey won 15 games and Jon Niese struck out 148 batters (while Johan Santana led the staff with four complete games despite missing the final month of the season). The previous time the three Met pitching triple-crown categories were topped by three different pitchers was 1997 when Rick Reed had the lowest ERA, Bobby Jones had the most wins and Dave Mlicki totaled the most strikeouts.
3. Which two longtime Mets broadcasters of yore hailed from R.A. Dickey’s home state? We’re talking Tennessee, and announcers Lindsey Nelson (1962-1978) and Tim McCarver (1983-1998) were the most famous Volunteer Statesmen associated with the Mets before Dickey. The most famous Met player from Tennessee prior to R.A.’s emergence? Collierville’s Marvelous Marv Throneberry (1962-1963).
4. In the only game R.A. Dickey pitched at Shea Stadium, who was the one player to register three hits off him? Fernando Tatis, starting at third base in one of only three games David Wright didn’t that season, went 3-for-3 as Dickey threw seven shutout innings in the Mariners’ 11-0 win of June 24, 2008.
5. Who joined Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez in the SNY booth the night R.A. Dickey beat the Detroit Tigers at Citi Field in 2010? (Hint: the answer is not Ron Darling.)
Jerry Seinfeld sat in, called Jose Reyes’s fifth-inning home run and gave Mets fans watching at home a great show as R.A. and Frankie Rodriguez teamed on a five-hit shutout on June 23, 2010.
6. Two future Mets besides R.A. Dickey were selected in the first round of the 1996 amateur draft — who were they? Before the Rangers chose R.A. with the 18th pick in the nation, the Pirates, at No. 1, took Kris Benson and the Cardinals used the third pick on Braden Looper. They’d be teammates on the 2004-2005 Mets. (Rob Stratton, taken 13th by the Mets in the first round, never made it to the majors.)
7. What name did Gary Cohen assign the series in which R.A. Dickey won his first game as a New York Met as soon as that series was over? The Goose Egg Sweep; the Phillies failed to score across 27 glorious innings between May 25 and May 27, 2010. Six of those innings were R.A.’s, making his Citi Field debut in the series opener.
8. R.A. Dickey pitched a minor league one-hitter that facilitated his getting called up to the Mets. Who got that one hit against him? Fernando Perez of the Durham Bulls, who led off with a single on April 29, 2010. His last professional action, according to Baseball-Reference, came in 2011 for the same Mets’ Buffalo Triple-A club for which R.A. pitched the year before.
9. Who were the respective first and last batters R.A. Dickey struck out as a Met? First: Cristian Guzman of the Nationals on May 19, 2010. Last: Gorkys Hernandez of the Marlins on October 2, 2012.
10. What did you love most about R.A. Dickey’s tenure as a New York Met? (No correct answer — I’m just curious.) Every Mets fan loved/loves R.A. in his or her own way…
• Matthew: “After several dark years, he single-handedly brought my love of baseball back stronger than it had ever been. And that the love we Mets fans’ had for him — even in his now absence — ultimately came together and bore this fruit that pines for our former loves but understands that some birds aren’t meant to be caged.” (And then, as if angling for extra credit given my fondness for a particular prison-set movie, Matthew included this incredibly appropriate image and one word that explains it all: “Zihuatanejo”.)
• Kevin: “Can’t really put into words why I loved him so much, the emotions are too strong. Quick story on when I knew it was all-time Met love: I remember thinking when I went to see him for the first time in 2012, “this guy is really special, on and off the field,” and then I heard him come to the plate with the Game of Thrones theme playing, and I just quivered. Jocks aren’t supposed to love stories about, well, dungeons and dragons — only geeks like me are!”
• Franco: “Humble, gamer, loved the team and the town.”
Thanks to each of our winners for sharing their Dickeyest thoughts. Thanks once more to MPI/Film Buff for promotional considerations. You can check out more about a terrific documentary/romance here; if you want to complete your Dickey libR.A.ry, the paperback edition of Wherever I Wind Up is now available as well.
And one more time before our no longer caged bird flies north to Toronto to start 2013, thanks R.A. Sometimes it’s hard to believe it was real, but it was.
There’s a press release getting play here and there trumpeting a magical “index” of Sports Fan Loyalty, the kind of thing that comes around on the eve of a new season. It also tends to lunge at the native lingo by suggesting “it’s critical that team marketers do accurate scouting regarding the strategic ball they intend to pitch to fans,” as if anybody in baseball or the world has ever spoken like that. Nomenclature notwithstanding, this index claims to offer a handle on why fans are loyal to whatever degree they are to their team. Three of the four factors boil down to, essentially, “a team needs to win a lot and triumph noisily enough in order to sate a disproportionate share of frontrunners in its standard metropolitan statistical area.” In other news, the sun is coming up in the east tomorrow.
Yet the fourth factor cited in the release is one I find legitimately interesting.
History and Tradition: “[Are] the game and the team part of the fans’ and community rituals, institutions and beliefs?”
The biggest slice of the press release’s pie chart — 35% — is devoted to History and Tradition, implying that nothing could be more important in this particular scheme of things. Even if you put aside the unlikelihood that sports fan loyalty can be accounted for so neatly and accurately, it would figure intuitively that if you’re talking about the state of being loyal, you’d need something abiding to be loyal to. That, in turn, would seem to jibe with how deeply a given team and the sport it plays have burrowed into the local bloodstream.
And the M-E-T-S of New York town? They rank 26th of 30 MLB teams in engendering fan loyalty by this study’s standards and methodology, though I’m not sure if that’s supposed to mean Mets fans are to be considered the 26th most loyal in Major League Baseball, ahead of only the Mariners, Pirates, Royals and Astros. Since the company putting out this release wants to offer its services to sports franchises (so as to share the proprietary secrets of pitching better strategic ball, presumably), I’d say the fault lies not in ourselves, but in our star-devoid team, along with its implied failure to weave itself effectively into the indigenous culture.
Because if there’s one thing an actual as opposed to theoretical Mets fan is, it’s bleeping loyal. There may not be as many of us in and around New York as there were when the Mets won more consistently than they lost, but don’t imply that our “base” or “core” hasn’t outperformed the product it’s been sold these past several years.
The press release claims its index measures “intensity” of fan support. Well, who’s more intense than us? Who gets more wrapped up in this stuff than we do? The release invokes “emotional drivers” — who gets more emotional than a Mets fan? This identity isn’t based on quantitative factors like championships, playoff appearances and reflected glory. We love the Mets because we love the Mets. I wouldn’t call our love unquestioning, given that we are a relentlessly inquisitive bunch, but I would call Mets fan loyalty unshakable at its core and at its base. It will be on vivid display in a hundred different ways one week from today inside and outside a ballpark in Flushing, but all ya gotta do, really, is visit a hundred different sites, blogs and feeds to see it in action right this very minute.
(I can’t speak to the frontrunners among Mets fans. Given the prevailing competitive conditions, I haven’t seen too many in our ranks lately.)
It’s not us saddling you with a bad-looking grade in this press release, dear Mets organization. It’s you. We’re the history and tradition unto ourselves because we’ve had to be. On some counts you’ve caught up with us, but only after you allowed your brand equity to fade into the woodwork, rejecting too much history and too many traditions for too long. You’ve brought back some cherished iconography but only after you hid it away or forgot about it completely. It was we who questioned you and reminded you like it mattered to us…which it did. I’m glad you responded. I’m sorry you needed the nudge.
In the wake of the just-announced departure of Dave Howard (on whose watch certain traditions disappeared but, thankfully, later re-emerged), the Mets should soon name a new head of business operations. I hope that person — as well as the ownership to which he or she reports — views Mets history and Mets tradition as a living, going priority, not merely a box to be perfunctorily checked once in a while. Ya do that, ya get ticket prices in line and ya keep cultivating that young pitching, I’d say we’re a good bet to rise out of the bottom five any year now.
Knuckleball is classified as a documentary, but that’s not quite right. At the very least, it should be cross-referenced as a romance. When you watch the DVD — three copies of which we’re happy to offer those who win our contest below — you’ll fall in love with R.A. Dickey all over again.
This may be a dangerous time to remember how fond you were of Dickey, in case you’ve somehow forgotten. R.A.’s in Toronto, and all we have left of him are our memories and what stand now as two welcome memorials to his time here.
Dickey’s book, Wherever I Wind Up, is out in paperback. It includes a new epilogue covering 2012: his climb up Kilimanjaro; the reaction to his published revelations of the child abuse he suffered; his experience on the bench watching Johan Santana throw the Mets’ first no-hitter — wherein somebody sadly/sloppily attributed Lucas Duda’s home run to Kirk Nieuwenhuis; and his Cy Young season (he loved us appreciating his 20th win as much as we loved appreciating it). Nothing about the trade or the contract-extension negotiations that went awry in advance of it. As if to remind us a year has gone by since Dickey’s journey was literally and figuratively elevated to dizzying heights, the cover of the paperback edition features R.A. in no immediately discernible uniform, whereas the front of the hardcover version, discussed here last summer, portrayed him as a Met.
As does Knuckleball, the movie released to festivals and art houses in 2012, when it was impossible to imagine R.A. Dickey as anything but a Met. Even if you read Wherever I Wind Up and soaked up every iota of Dickeyana that came along as he was regularly befuddling opposing batters (it’s hard to say they were hitters), you’ll want Knuckleball anyway. You’ll want R.A. Dickey as a Met, lovingly and gorgeously preserved in action. You’ll want R.A. talking the knuckler and being the knuckleballer. You’ll want to hear him address and evince that certain “otherness” that made him so attractive to us. That’s the heart of the movie, that this is a pitch almost nobody throws (even if, as R.A. says with the tiniest speck of resentment, almost everybody thinks they can) and, ergo, nobody can really understand what it means to throw.
R.A. and his fellow knucklers get the pitch and they get each other. It’s what binds the fellowship among Dickey, Tim Wakefield, Charlie Hough and Phil Niekro. We meet them, too, though there’s no doubt who we’re most interested in. Those guys are important to the story nonetheless. Anybody with enough strength can throw a fastball. It takes a village to deliver a knuckleball.
But all it will take to get a copy of Knuckleball delivered to you is to win our contest, sponsored by MPI/FilmBuff, which is graciously providing three DVDs for Faith and Fear readers. The package includes not just the movie but a couple of hours of absorbing extras: a lot of Jim Bouton, a helping of Tom Candiotti, a visit to R.A.’s high school, some chat from some managers and so forth. Yes, you will want to win one of these.
And how can you do that? By answering a not terribly long, not terribly difficult (if reasonably challenging) Faith and Fear quiz, presented here:
CONTEST UPDATE: WE HAVE OUR WINNERS
1. R.A. Dickey pitched three one-hitters as a Met. Who were the culprits who broke up each potential no-hitter in those respective games?
2. In R.A. Dickey’s first season on the Mets, he led all starters on the staff in ERA. Who led the team in wins and strikeouts, respectively?
3. Which two longtime Mets broadcasters of yore hailed from R.A. Dickey’s home state?
4. In the only game R.A. Dickey pitched at Shea Stadium, who was the one player to register three hits off him?
5. Who joined Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez in the SNY booth the night R.A. Dickey beat the Detroit Tigers at Citi Field in 2010? (Hint: the answer is not Ron Darling.)
6. Two future Mets besides R.A. Dickey were selected in the first round of the 1996 amateur draft — who were they?
7. What name did Gary Cohen assign the series in which R.A. Dickey won his first game as a New York Met as soon as that series was over?
8. R.A. Dickey pitched a minor league one-hitter that facilitated his getting called up to the Mets. Who got that one hit against him?
9. Who were the respective first and last batters R.A. Dickey struck out as a Met?
10. What did you love most about R.A. Dickey’s tenure as a New York Met? (No correct answer — I’m just curious.)
The first three sets of correct answers (do not leave No. 10 blank) to be sent to faithandfear@gmail.com by Thursday, March 28, 11:59 PM EDT will win the DVD from MPI/FilmBuff. And if you don’t win, or you want to take the easy way out, you can purchase Knuckleballhere.
And if you’re looking for the revised edition of Wherever I Wind Up, you can check it out here; it’s worthwhile despite that Nieuwenhuis/Duda mixup.
Thanks to Knuckleball, you can still have a little Dickey now…and, presumably, a lot of d’Arnaud later.
I’ve decided there are three junctures of the Spring Training schedule that make the endless nature of the exhibition interregnum worthwhile.
First, there’s that inaugural Spring Training broadcast, when those voices you value most greet you for the first time in a proper context in months. You might have heard them announcing hockey or college basketball but, respectfully, screw that. You are baseball to us. Thank you for speaking as you should.
Next, there’s that moment when March’s behavior seems utterly normal. It means we’ve been at it just long enough to get comfortable with the season whose pieces are being put into place but not so long that we can’t stand to more than glance at fake games that don’t count. There was a night a few weeks ago when I told my wife I’d get to something as soon as I knew for sure that this game I’m watching is going to be called a tie — that’s Spring thinking, and you know you can’t live like this much longer. (I believe the formal name for this condition, when you realize what a crock Spring Training has become, is Stocker-Home Syndrome.)
Finally and best of all is the spring game that waves you around third base, when the whole thing feels closer to real than it did the game before and the calendar confirms you’re not kidding yourself. From this game on, you can tolerate staring at St. Lucie and the insertion of random minor leaguers to fill out eighth innings and going without otherwise engaged Howie or Gary for another day because you know the berm is turning.
Saturday was my “finally” day, the day the plates started shifting from store-brand plastic to the good china. On Saturday, 2013 began to inch closer not in theory, but in “only nine days to go!” actuality. On Saturday, the radio wasn’t wasting my time with substitutions and diversions, but was engaging me with an almost authentic baseball game. On Saturday, the sun filtered through the living room window as if to get the lighting right for what have gone from numbingly repetitive rehearsals to legitimate out-of-town previews. There are a few performances left to get the kinks out and then the curtain rises and stays risen for six months.
It’s so close, I’m looking for a spoon with which to taste it. I can even detect a soupçon of confidence in the outfield if I swish the ingredients around in my head enough.
They’re all we’re getting, apparently. Lucas Duda, Collin Cowgill, Marlon Byrd, Mike Baxter and my man Jordany Valdespin (the more they write about was a misfit he is, the more I’m determined to go down in flames with him) will constitute, by definition, a major league outfield very soon because in 1960, a franchise was awarded to some rich New York people and membership dues have apparently been kept up ever since. That is to say that when Terry Collins writes whatever combination of the above names into left, center and right, these cats no longer loom as elements of the worst outfield ever.
No, they get every chance to prove it. Or prove they’re not it. They can stop depressing us on paper and begin impressing us on grass. Or they can get on with the business of sucking out loud volubly enough that next thing ya know, Kirk Nieuwenhuis will be deemed fully healed and Matt den Dekker judged competent to hit. If we comport ourselves like real ladies and gentlemen and eat all our convenience fees, Stand-Pat Sandy Alderson — who was going to get Michael Bourn or Justin Upton so much that he didn’t need to keep Scott Hairston around — might even grope about 29 other organizations for a marginal upgrade.
It’s an unfortunate “army you have” situation as we enter the 2013 campaign, but our outfield won’t always be so Rumsfeldian in nature. Maybe it will be the army we wish to have if enough things don’t go wrong, never mind actually go right. Duda’s back to walloping and allowing us to dream he’s concocted from the same Chemical X that made the Powerpuff Girls so formidable. Everybody’s in love with the way Cowgill “plays the game,” what with running hard and stuff (doesn’t take much to get a reputation, apparently). Byrd, we’ve been reminded by management, was an All-Star as recently as the dawn of this decade. Baxter is Mike from Whitestone, so lay off. And Jordany’s only done everything right on the field all Spring long despite being abandoned on the bench by Collins last September when that would’ve been a good time to see what he could do on a daily basis besides wear the wrong shirt into the clubhouse and no cup outside of it.
Individually or together the supposedly Feeble Five could surprise some cynics. Or the lot of them could play to common expectation. But the good part of that possible outcome is their performance will be on the record and it’s not likely they’ll be planted in the outfield forever. Occasionally Alderson does act for the present, like when he discharged several underperforming relievers in early 2011 as soon as it was disgustingly obvious they were not helping matters. Two years later we’re still constantly shuffling the bullpen deck, but who even notices when the outfield is so terrible? Or not so terrible, maybe it will turn out.
Don’tcha see the beauty, though? We’re going to get a handle on whether the anti-hype is accurate. We really are. We may not like the handle…or the handle that comes after it…or the one after that. But in just over a week, it will be a real handle discerned from real games in the real season.
For better or worse or somewhere in between, the five Mets outfielders and I are ready.
Congratulations to David Wright, named Mets captain after a distinguished, classy nine years on the field and the usual tatty nine weeks or so of Mets mini-drama, replacing what should have been a couple of hours behind closed doors.
I was briefly amused by Wright’s decision not to wear a captain’s C, as if the Mets uniform is or ever has been an exemplar of understated, classical design. I didn’t pay attention to every pixel and stream yesterday, but it’s somewhere between possible and likely that Wright was talking uniforms while wearing a blinding two-tone cap with a mascot on it.
But then I decided Wright was (w)right, and therein lay a lesson. He exists in a world where the Mets are better than this, from their uniforms to their way of dealing with the media, fans and their own players to their W-L record. At times he has been the only hint that such a world is possible. Yet he sees those possibilities, and has invariably tried to make them realities, whether it’s speaking to one more reporter or being kind to one more kid or playing through one more injury. At the risk of simultaneously grabbing a shopworn phrase and using it for small reasons, he has been the change he wants to see in his baseball world.
And that’s a C anyone can see.
* * *
Yesterday, with the Mets on the field in Port St. Lucie, I found myself thinking about a Met who’s rarely been front and center: Jeremy Hefner.
Hefner just turned 27, and for much of his admittedly short Met career I’ve thought of him as an equally poor man’s Pat Misch, which is mean but didn’t seem off the mark. Hefner’s been one of those guys with a lot of pitches — fastball, slider, change — and good command, but no true out pitch. Occasionally guys like that turn out to be Greg Maddux (or Rick Reed), but most of the time they don’t. Most of the time they bounce up and down between roles and levels, settling in as roster-fillers somewhere. You root for them — it’s hard not to — but you also don’t expect them to stick around.
I also pegged Hefner as the Met most likely to express profound relief once he was no longer a Met, based on my first glimpses of him as a devout Oklahoman who was visibly nervous about an in-game interview with Kevin Burkhardt. There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with any of those things, but they seemed like a mismatch for New York, and I assumed Hefner would be a lot happier in Texas or St. Louis or Kansas City, where the media aren’t quite so ravenous and the klieg lights aren’t quite so blinding.
But every player who ascends to major-league baseball is both a world-class athlete and a monstrous competitor. And though we can generally tell a lot about a player by their 27th birthday, that crystal ball is not perfect. Sometimes guys figure stuff out. Not many of them, it’s true, but it does happen. A Dillon Gee evades his statistical fortune and becomes a reliable big-league starter. A Ronny Cedeno rethinks his approach at the plate and gets on base. Or recall that when Terry Collins arrived, a lot of us reviewed his jittery tenure in Anaheim and set our watches for when his freakouts would alienate the Mets. Two years into his time as manager, if anything we’ve criticized Collins for not freaking out at the Mets enough.
But back to Hefner. On a dreary September night he retired not one single Phillie as the Mets got beat by 15, and I was worried about him when he faced the cameras afterwards looking like a cracked egg. Five days later, he went seven innings against the Pirates, holding them to three hits and no runs. Nobody much noticed, but I was impressed. It must be awful to fail horribly at your craft in public, and then to answer a million questions about it and prepare for the next time amid more questions and go out and try again, all in public. That’s pressure I’ll likely never experience, and can’t imagine. Hefner went through it and came out the other side having crafted a satisfying little baseball moral.
And this spring? He’s been quite capable — and looked like something of a different pitcher, using an improved cutter to miss bats in bushels.
Word of that cutter will get out, as it does. Hefner could pitch lights-out and still find himself in the pen or in Las Vegas once Johan Santana returns. It’s entirely possible that his March possibilities will be forgotten amid June realities.
But still: Sometimes guys figure stuff out. In forecasting the Mets’ Plan B rotation, the conversation has gone from “or Jeremy Hefner I guess” to “Jeremy Hefner, obviously.” That’s a testament to Hefner’s hard work and a reason to hope — for him and for us.
And after all, isn’t that what spring training’s for?
Not sure whose brilliant idea it was to place the first days of spring so close to the last days of winter, but if you require something to warm you up as March’s lionlike weather persists, consider that we sit and shiver on the precipice of the 40th anniversary of the 1973 National League Championship, a pennant won memorably at Shea Stadium, no matter what the Mets do to commemorate it at Citi Field this season (which, based on announcements made as of this writing, will be nothing…but then again, they’ve been so busy putting together such an outstanding team).
Two parties, however, are paying homage to the resonance of 1973, and Mets fans are better off for it.
A credo for all Mets fans for all time, even these times.
If you’re the running kind, you’ll want to know that a limited-edition blue-and-orange singlet bearing the credo Ya Gotta Believe is available from the Tug McGraw Foundation, an organization devoted to fighting the effects of brain cancer in the name of our 1973 closer and emotional leader. You can get an idea how this beautiful and eternal message plays in its native colors here, as modeled (and photographed) by TMF runner and FAFIF favorite Sharon Chapman.
Long may their flag wave.
If you’re the reading kind — and you’re on this blog, so you must be — I offer an early endorsement of Swinging ’73, Matthew Silverman’s just-released visit to the days of four decades ago, when baseball was wild, the world was more so and the Mets turned both on their heads for six Amazin’ weeks. The Oakland A’s also show up in a co-starring role. I’ll have more to say about this book in short order, as it deserves more than a perfunctory mention, but it deserves all the mentioning it can get as soon as possible, so look into it here.
(And look here, too, while you’re at it. One great year deserves another book that spends quality time in the same chronological space.)
Doing anything vital tonight? Since the season hasn’t started, of course the answer is no. So assuming none of the rest of your life is calling, why not check out the WBC final on MLB Network?
I’ve been watching the tournament off and on this spring despite not trusting it during its first incarnation and deploring it during its second. They’ve had only two until now, which is what makes the occasional reference to “this is the first time Team Whichever has done this or that in the World Baseball Classic!” seem rather lacking in perspective. Christy Mathewson set records during the 1905 World Series that still stand, but they weren’t impressive because they had never been done in any World Series previously — it was only the second World Series.
The baseball’s not the problem with the WBC. The WBC never losing its self-consciousness is the problem. You can’t tune in a game without hearing the WBC’s mouthpieces tell you how the WBC is really coming along. It’s the Watched Pot Classic. The baseball is real enough, give or take a couple of weird rules instituted because it’s March (like with pitch counts), but the continual in-game hyping of the brand, the product and the merchandise harks back to nothing less than the made-for-TV XFL. That was the one-year football league from 2001 in which the whole point was convincing you that what you were watching was incredibly fantastic, not simply better than nothing. Perhaps the common denominator is the mind-numbing presence of voice-activated mannequin Matt Vasgersian as lead announcer. He’s Fran Healy, except without as much talent, wit or insight.
But don’t let the continued high-profile employment of a dolt like Vasgersian deter you (especially since Bob Costas will be calling the final). Don’t let any of your ready-made prejudices against the WBC discourage you. Don’t even blame the WBC for David Wright’s rib maladies. Like the Ambassador couldn’t have slept wrong in St. Lucie? Like a Met doesn’t get hurt just looking the wrong way anywhere?
It’s fun baseball, it’s spirited baseball, it’s baseball played by players who play with nationalistic zeal and fervor you’d rather see applied to sports than geopolitical conflict. The two teams that are left, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, have treated this tournament like they’re on a mission. They take this stuff pretty damn seriously (and their fans take it pretty damn loudly, as those beeping airhorns will attest). It’s not a grim endeavor, though. All these teams have lit up the screen with their zest for baseball and life, in roughly that order. Team USA, whoever was missing from it, was really into it, but they just couldn’t advance. They lost Captain America and they were helpless against the worldwide phenomenon known as Nelson Figueroa, our once-upon-a-time proto-Dickey. Figgie, who you’ll recall grew up in Brooklyn rooting for the Mets, pitched Puerto Rico into the semifinals at the expense of Team USA. And what Brooklyn kid doesn’t dream of sticking it to his own country?
(Figueroa, by the by, isn’t and looks nothing like Team Puerto Rico third baseman Andy Gonzalez, something the MLB Network’s sideline reporter Heidi Watney couldn’t figure out despite the presence of names on the backs of uniforms, as this most gruesome clip will attest.)
I only semi-understand how Puerto Rico, part of the USA, gets its own team and I only semi-understand why someone from the five boroughs of New York City gets a starring role on the team going up against the country New York is in and I’m only semi-invested in the overall outcome, but that’s OK. The WBC is worth a piece of my baseball attention. I loved watching Wright and Dickey play for the USA, I loved watching Reyes simultaneously play and cheer for the Dominican but now that we’re down to two, I think I’m loving Team Puerto Rico most of all. Partly for the Island of Lost Mets effect — Figueroa, Beltran, Jesus Feliciano, the wins-wherever-he-goes Angel Pagan — but more because it seems like it will give Puerto Rican baseball a boost. When the Mets turned Thunder Island into Blunder Island in 2010 as they traveled extra south to play the Marlins, we were informed that the state of the commonwealth’s once signature sport was in disarray. That saddened me. The land of Roberto Clemente? The land of Felix Millan? The land of Roberto Alomar? (OK, strike that last one.) Maybe the WBC was designed in part to sell caps and jerseys, but if its broader mission is to spread the baseball gospel internationally, then I’m all for the place where it’s going to do the most good.
Unless I look deep into Jose’s beard tonight and forget all that and root for the DR. Or I’m overwhelmed by yet another note that more WBC history is being made in this, the Classic’s third incarnation EVER,and I flip to WKRP In Cincinnati on Antenna TV instead.
Nah, I probably won’t do that. It’s baseball. It’s competitive. It’s at beautiful Phone Company Park in San Francisco. It’s without Matt Vasgersian. It’s with Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran. It’s a safe distance from David Wright’s torso. “Classic” may be overstating its case, but it’s got nothing beat by a mile.
Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
Amazin' Again: How the 2015 New York Mets Brought the Magic Back to Queens by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
Volume I of The Happiest Recap: 50+ Years of the New York Mets As Told in 500+ Amazin' Wins by Greg Prince is available in print and for Kindle on Amazon.
Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History by Greg Prince (foreword by Jason Fry), is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
