The blog for Mets fans
who like to read
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.
Got something to say? Leave a comment, or email us at faithandfear@gmail.com. (Sorry, but we have no interest in ads, sponsored content or guest posts.)
Need our RSS feed? It's here.
Visit our Facebook page, or drop by the personal pages for Greg and Jason.
Or follow us on Twitter: Here's Greg, and here's Jason.
|
by Greg Prince on 27 March 2013 12:20 pm 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.
by Greg Prince on 26 March 2013 11:22 am 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.
by Greg Prince on 25 March 2013 5:36 pm CONTEST UPDATE: WE HAVE OUR WINNERS.
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 Knuckleball here.
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.
CONTEST UPDATE: WE HAVE OUR WINNERS
by Greg Prince on 24 March 2013 12:40 am 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.
by Jason Fry on 22 March 2013 2:08 pm 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?
by Greg Prince on 21 March 2013 7:03 pm I’m David Wright
I’ll be your captain
My club is the Mets
They’re not a nightmare I’m trapped in
My best’s what I’ll give
As I’ve always been doing
From the day I arrived
And met Joe McEwing
This is a great honor
No, I don’t need a “C”
But a little help in the outfield?
Well, that’s not up to me
My face is familiar
From my time in New York
Please don’t call me “our Jeter”
You sound like a dork
I once Captained America
The world was my stage
Though that was before
I strained my rib cage
The injury’s fine
It’s no big concern
Yet watching from the bench
Is a tough task to learn
When Terry can’t use me
I sit and I stew
Then I look at our lineup
And I sometimes ask, “Who?”
Ike’s on first
I Don’t Know’s the rest
Spring games don’t count
Which is all for the best
Taken from the top
Byrd’s leading off
A promising start!
(Cough cough cough)
Tejada at short
Don’t mind him a bit
As long as he remembers
That he knows how to hit
Then we’ve got Davis
Who’s healthy and hale
If he’s hurt again
This season’s a fail
Our power today
Comes from cleanup man Lutz
Plus he’s handling my sack
Let’s hope he’s no klutz
Duda bats fifth
And then dons a glove
When fly balls are aimed there
Seek help from Above
Behind the plate
Crouches John Buck
He’s got loads of experience
If not timing or luck
Fleet of foot
And sure of hand
Meet Matt den Dekker
As I’m sure you had planned
Playing second base:
Omar Quintanilla
Making a fraction, no doubt,
Of what Fred’s paying Bonilla
Hefner’s the pitcher
He’s still standing straight
Between Johan and Marcum
That alone’s pretty great
Our rotation’s not bad
It can go fairly deep
But listening to Niese
Tends to hasten team sleep
There’s much more to the Mets
We’re on our way up
I’ll bet I get to hoist a trophy
Before Jordany remembers his cup
I dig all my teammates
I’m happy they’re here
Yet why do I suspect
Another long year?
by Greg Prince on 21 March 2013 10:34 am 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.)
by Greg Prince on 19 March 2013 9:09 am 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.
by Greg Prince on 17 March 2013 2:23 am You never know, but now and then you’re overcome by an inkling, and at the moment I’m inkled that the Mets aren’t going to be the mildly surprising success story I sort of thought that maybe, if enough went well, they could be in 2013. The injuries, the traditional vaguely defined recovery periods, the thin layer of talent, the speed at which depth has gone shallow and something about how there’s always a “Mets official,” “Mets source” or “Mets person” willing to whisper a discouraging word in some reporter’s ear have combined to take the edge off the moderate state of sanguinity I could swear I was packing when Spring Training began five or six months ago.
On the positive side for the near term? The Mets are still 0-0…and you never know. Plus Matt Harvey.
But enough doom and gloom and fitting the Mets for a tomb. We weren’t expecting a surge from 74 wins to remarkably more than 74 wins, were we? It’s kind of pointless to put a number on these things at this stage anyway. The next time somebody offers up a bunch of all-knowing projections of exactly how many games 30 major league teams are going to win and lose, take out a calculator and see if the numbers add up to a collective .500. If they don’t, then they’re full of it. And if they do, they’re also full of it.
You can pick a number out of a hat during Spring Training and it’s meaningless. The team you’re contemplating in March will change and change again by September. The personnel will evolve. The competitive circumstances around them will evolve, too. The team you decided would be 12 games better than the Mets might itself be 20 games worse than you realized when you were assigning guesses to the unknowable. Yet another lesson in you never know.
So barring miraculous health, brilliant strategy, a lossless campaign and a romp through the postseason, here’s what I’d like to see from 2013: a much-improved arc over what we’re used to. Even if we can’t have a winning team, I want the sense that things are getting better — tangibly, I mean, not just because somebody is waving prospect rankings at me — and I want a reality that doesn’t feel worse in the interim.
I’m not asking for 1969 or 1984 or 1997, the three patron-saint seasons of delightful surprise. If a reasonable facsimile emerges against all expectations, I’ll accept it with relish (not to mention sauerkraut), but I’m not setting myself up to be disappointed. The Mets of those years produced 100 wins and a championship; 90 wins and a spirited second-place finish; and 88 wins and legitimate Wild Card contention on the heels of, respectively, years that produced 73 wins, 68 wins and 71 wins. You can’t expect to be delightfully surprised like that. You have to allow for the element of surprise to do its thing.
I’m not pegging my desire to a precise result. What I want is that better arc, something like 1994, a season I’m guessing nobody old enough to remember remembers much at all. And well you shouldn’t, to a certain extent. 1994 ended in the second week of August, and not just Metaphorically. The owners tried to be hard-asses, the players struck and it was a mess. The Mets played 113 games that year. If the Mets could’ve lopped 49 games off their dance cards the last three years, we’d probably think more kindly of their 2010, 2011 and 2012 accomplishments.
Nineteen years ago, the Mets finished 55-58. It wasn’t gorgeous, but it was uplifting. For one, it represented a massive turnaround from the year before, 1993, when the Mets went 59-103 and (according to one of my pet theories) dug themselves an image hole from which they as a franchise have never fully recovered. If our damaged self-esteem was going to be in need of intensive psychotherapy until Bobby Valentine came along, 1994 was at least a cup of chicken soup for the Mets fan soul: not all that filling, but at least we could warm up from those terrible chills we’d been feeling.
But it wasn’t just a 55-58 record that made 1994 a little nourishing. It was how the Mets went about compiling it.
• There was a start that was good — not set-the-world-on-fire good, but uncharacteristically positive for the era: 18-14. They were eight games better than they were a year earlier. They were in position for the newfangled Wild Card, though it was a little early to be tracking playoff spots (not that I wasn’t). They were a breath of fresh air, mostly. The Mets don’t suck!
• There was the inevitable backslide — a 15-29 stretch that disarmed any notions that a full-scale revival was underway. It came early enough so as not to undermine any seriously developed dreams but not so early that it crushed one’s Mets enthusiasm out of the gate. OK, the Mets are sucking, but at least it was fun there for a while.
• There was a reversal of form — a solid 22-15 ascent that catapulted the Mets into third place when the bats and balls were prematurely put away on August 11. Mind you, the Mets were a million miles behind Montreal and Atlanta and had generated no buzz in New York while summer was still in progress, but if you were a Mets fan, so what? You created your own buzz. Your team didn’t curl up and die as it had done at the back end of 1991 (24-46), 1992 (21-37) and 1993 (the whole damn thing, really). It showed just enough life to make you wish there was no strike beyond simply wanting baseball to continue. There was no guarantee another, more unfortunate reversal wouldn’t have transpired, but all you could do was go with what you had: a team that had fought its way out of the basement and close to a winning record. And while you cursed the strike, you thought about Hundley and Brogna and Kent and Vizcaino and bought into Pulsipher and Isringhausen and Wilson and…geez, the Mets were not terrible this truncated year and maybe they’ll keep getting better whenever they play ball again.
That’s essentially where I want to be when 2013 ends and that’s how I want to get there. I don’t want to be buried early as we were in 2011 (5-13) or 2010 (4-8). I don’t need to be suckered into believing there’s more going for us than there really is as was done last year (31-23) if it’s not going to take. I just need something decent to hang my hopes on early, something less than total dissolution in the middle and a nice comeback with which to conclude. Get me to the end of a season for the first time since 2006 where I’m actually looking forward to the next season convinced we’re going to build on what’s already there. Not another sorry winter of “we may have to keep sucking before we can get better,” but actual better-getting as the year ends, making it impossible to be reflexively cynical about this entire operation.
I’m not asking for 1969. I’m not asking for 1986. I’m asking for 1994. That’s really not so much to ask for.
And if you’ve ever asked to meet David Wright, here’s your chance (rib cage pending, one supposes) to make it happen, courtesy of the Ride of Fame and your own video creativity.
by Greg Prince on 15 March 2013 5:41 pm We ran into our across-the-hall neighbor the other day, which shouldn’t have been unusual as we live across the hall from each other, but neither Stephanie nor I had seen him in months. Just the way that goes sometimes. We converged at the elevator on the way up to our respective apartments and I noticed something different about him: he was wearing a Mets cap. I’d never seen one on him before. I’m pretty sure I’d seen him wearing some sort of Yankee garb, but not often and not obnoxiously, which is to say he never cracked wise about my own Mets stuff.
 Way to support New York? The Mets cap was one of those black-and-white numbers, the kind Shannon Shark at Mets Police would call on the carpet for all kinds of crimes against good Metropolitan fashion sense. As he should, regardless of my neighbor being a pleasant sort, because it’s one of those caps the Mets offer so they can sell something to non-Mets fans. It has to be.
A real Mets fan might wear it if (like Shannon) his closet was bulging with Met apparel, but if you lived across the hall from a real Mets fan for three years and had never once seen him sporting any kind of Mets gear prior to this elevator ride, you’d figure there was something less than hardcore going on here.
I was thinking all that as we exchanged pleasantries. Stephanie probably wasn’t thinking that deeply on the subject. She just saw the curly NY and said the friendly thing to say:
“That’s a very nice Mets cap!”
Our neighbor smiled and thanked her. She asked if he was a Mets fan. Well, he said, in the sense that he roots for all the New York teams — which is one of those admissions that used to make me cringe mightily but he’s a nice guy and I’ve come to accept that sometimes people don’t care enough to definitively choose good over evil. Our neighbor, I thought, wasn’t the kind to worry about Johan Santana’s relationship with the front office or David Wright potentially harming himself in the name of the USA or whether Jordany Valdespin was going to remember to make every night Cup Night. Not everybody who pokes the bill of his cap into this thing of ours immerses himself. Sometimes it’s as simple as somebody offering somebody else free tickets to a game and that somebody else buying a cap while he’s there.
Sure enough, that was exactly the story with our neighbor. A friend of his wife’s works at a law office or something like that. They get great tickets for everything, so last year he went and had a wonderful time. The seats they had…what really made them great was you didn’t have to get up to buy food! They came around and brought it to you!
Not that long ago I would’ve had to have controlled my impulse to scream — you’re not a fan yet you’re getting the royal Metsian treatment and you bought the absolute least Metsian Mets cap you could find? — but que sera sera, I decided. It’s not like our neighbor was depriving a long line of dedicated Mets fans from sitting wherever this seat was. I don’t remember looking around Citi Field in 2012 and noting to myself, “It sure is crowded here with phonies.” It wasn’t crowded there with anybody. If our neighbor found his way to Flushing and enjoyed a couple of hours of recreation while, to his mind, supporting the greater “New York” cause, good for him.
That was my internal rationalization doing its best to block out my disgust that this happens, but it’s a great big world let alone Metropolitan Area. Besides, like I said, he’s struck us as a perfectly nice guy in our scant interactions with him since 2010. We could say the same for his wife (on whose head I had occasionally noticed a very discreet “NY” cap of the non-curly nature), though we hadn’t seen her in an even longer time than we’d seen him. We knew she’d been ill and that her car had been parked permanently for what seemed like ages. Stephanie and I hadn’t discussed why we hadn’t seen her, but we each had a hunch.
So with the Mets cap having opened up a long enough stream of small talk to get us all the way up in the elevator and out into the hallway between our respective front doors, Stephanie asked what I swore I’d been meaning to ask all winter, but I never managed to run into the guy until now:
How is your wife doing?
Oh, you didn’t know? She passed away. Six months ago.
This tells you how little we see of our neighbors and how incredibly uninquisitive we can be. That she’d been in the hospital for three months before passing away…well, we really do keep to ourselves.
Now we were off Mets caps and Mets seats and Mets food delivery and onto how much he missed his wife, how difficult it was to get through this at first, how he’s still coming along, how they were childhood sweethearts. It was a conversation I’m sure he’s had countless times since last September, so the words came easily, whatever the emotion beneath them was. For us, there was nodding and monosyllabic confirmation that whatever he was doing was “good…yeah…that’s good” and sincere if ridiculously late condolences for a woman we liked fine without ever knowing all that much. Eventually, there was a slow extension of “if you need anything, we’re right here” goodwill from me, though I’m thinking six months after the fact, our neighbor’s figured out where to go and who to call as necessity dictates.
Then we sighed, we smiled and we exchanged a round of “have a good evening” or words to that effect. Soon enough, he was in his home and we were in our home, and I’m pretty sure I had the MLB Network on before long.
***
Mets fandom comes in many sizes, many shades and — even with Shannon Shark’s best efforts on behalf of the orange and blue — many color combinations. I mention this because if you’ve never been drawn into the Mets Police orbit, you should know Shannon has released an e-book called Send The Beer Guy. It walks a very familiar beat, that of what it’s like to be a lifelong Mets fan of the first degree, but Shannon brings his own engaging take to the task and produces a highly readable, not insubstantial brief trip through what the Mets have meant to him all these years. Some of it’s a little surprising, some of it’s very affecting. All of it is Shannon…and, as the author himself would be quick to point out, it’s only $3.99 for Kindle.
Since Shannon is one of my role models when it comes to effective/relentless self-promotion, my book, The Happiest Recap: First Base (1962-1973) is available on Kindle ($8.99) and in soft cover ($16.95) and you can arrange for an inscribed copy via the Team Recap shop on eBay. Like Mets Police and Faith and Fear in Flushing, these books are quite different yet share a lot of the same heart. You’ll enjoy them both.
Besides, think how much you’re already saving by not buying one of those black and white caps.
***
One other quick book-related note: Faith and Fear reader Rob Livingston has a swell Mets library that his living circumstances dictate must be lightened. His loss can be your gain, as he has dozens of great titles of all vintages available at bargain prices. (I’ve already vultured quite a few from him.) Hardcover books are five bucks, paperbacks just one dollar apiece. You pay book-rate postage, unless you’re in Bergen County and want to pick up your purchases in person. For info on titles and anything else, you can get in touch with Rob via rblivingston@gmail.com.
|
|
