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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 November 2012 9:57 am Prince (no relation) once referred to an electric word, life — “it means forever, and that’s a mighty long time,” he said. True enough. In my nearly half-century life, just the last fifth of it, I’ve seen four-year (Bay) and six-year (Santana) and seven-year (Beltran and, come to think of it, Piazza) deals all careen toward their conclusion looking undeniably too long for anyone’s comfort, including the superstars on their respective receiving ends. Life goes on and, with it, uncertainty gathers. You start out thinking one thing, yet through the magic of ever-changing circumstances, you wind up thinking all sorts of things, not that many of them necessarily good.
But today, with definitive word that David Wright has agreed to a mighty long and mighty lucrative contract extension that projects to enshrine him as that rarest of breeds, a Met for life, it’s all good.
The Mets haven’t gotten better by maintaining Wright’s services at third base and within the middle of their lineup through 2020 for a total of approximately $138 million over the next eight seasons, but they’ve kept from tumbling ever further into their bottomless abyss, and that, brothers and sisters, is a victory unto itself. In a world in which musts must be doled out judiciously, this was something that just about had to be done.
I’ve been constructing rationalizations in my head for two years in case things went the other way, seeking the Wright-expunging deal that would have made sense in the long term and limited the post-apocalyptic damage in the short term. We could’ve moved Murph to third and imported a package of young stud outfielders and another big-time arm to grow alongside Harvey’s and Wheeler’s…but it never went anywhere, even in my theories. Because you couldn’t, at this stage of his career or this franchise’s development, separate David Wright from the New York Mets.
We needed a Met for life. We needed this Met for life. We need something to count on, something to rely on, somebody to believe in. We need to wake up day after day knowing one-ninth of what we’re about in practice and a whole lot more in spirit is solid. We needed David Wright to stay a Met, to keep being the first Met we think of when we think of our Mets, to be the Met who didn’t go away, who wasn’t sent away, who stayed and stayed until we can say he stayed his entire career.
We need a whole lot more than that, too, but one miracle at a time. A franchise that couldn’t have retained David Wright was the last franchise we could have trusted to have gathered the pieces to build a team after David Wright left. Franchises are in business, from their fans’ perspective, to win ballgames and compete for championships. The Mets haven’t done enough of either in the current era. The next level of their obligation is to give us somebody to root for. Not re-signing David Wright would have been the opposite. They would have been taking away somebody we rooted for — the Met we’ve rooted for longer than anybody still here, the Met we’ve rooted hardest for among all current Mets, someone who’s never given us cause to regret getting behind him.
Sans David Wright, the Mets would’ve been a four-letter word with a fancy plot of land. With him, at the very least, they are something approximating real. They are still very much capable of meandering in mediocrity in 2013 and 2014, but they didn’t challenge oblivion to another arm-wrestling match, at least. They will feature the same best player they’ve promoted since 2004, the same best player who has all too often personally prevented them from taking up permanent residence in the abyss. It’s been bad. It could have gotten a whole lot worse.
There’s more to do. There’s always more to do. But this has been taken care of. David Wright’s as Met for life as one can be a few week shy of thirty years old. Sometime between the celebratory sigh of relief that this news elicits and the final tip of his cap we all envision when this contract expires, not a few of us will mutter about this deal’s length and the burden it represents against the Mets’ ability to make other vital deals. That’s how these things go. But let’s not pretend we can control those circumstances. Let’s not pretend we know the details of the future, either. We can’t say for certain that the veteran Wright will be rewarded for his steadfast Metness by eventual success or whether we’ll all wonder what his career would have been like had he left Flushing for more competitive pastures that never blossomed around him in New York.
We don’t know. But we do know David, and we do like David, and we do have David. It’s a lot of money and it’s a lot of years, but it’s a lot of win.
Go crazy, Mets — punch a higher floor.
Sirius/XM subscribers: Listen tonight to Mad Dog Radio, 9 PM, as I join Dino Costa to discuss The Happiest Recap and other Met matters.
by Greg Prince on 28 November 2012 10:46 am I don’t see much point in getting hackles raised over what’s said while a lucrative contract extension is up for grabs, because negotiations are an ends to a means, and the means are what’s meaningful in the end. Thus, when David Wright’s future as a Met went from glide path to word jumble in a matter of hours Tuesday, I shrugged it off as the fog of money, the kind of money none of us will ever see (unless we had Marvin Miller advocating on behalf of our profession at some point in our lives).
Mets reportedly make big offer! Mets reportedly make bigger offer! Wright calls reports inaccurate! When Adam Rubin’s telling me white smoke is emerging from the Acela Club one way or the other, then I’ll take it deathly seriously. Until then, it’s all numbers and rumors and November. It’s not news.
But I did like this on-the-record comment from David himself, cited in an e-mail requested to “clarify” matters, as relayed by mlb.com’s Anthony DiComo:
“It was important to me from the very beginning that these negotiations remain confidential and private. I plan on sticking to that.”
Loud leaks may be a fun way to kill time between the last pitch of the World Series and the first catch of Spring Training, but the Wright way strikes me as the right way to conduct these things. Why am I not surprised that’s David’s process?
by Greg Prince on 26 November 2012 6:25 pm Doing a little holiday shopping for the Mets fan in your life? For yourself? Happiness is only one click away when it leads you to The Happiest Recap (First Base: 1962-1973). It’s the Mets as they keep getting better, and even when they don’t, they always win.
And the book’s not even fiction!
A few Happiest notes to pass on besides, once you calm down from the euphoria attached to the Brandon Hicks deal:
• Kindle version coming soon — but the print edition, available right now, surely belongs in your baseball library.
• Appreciation to Amazin’ Avenue, 2 Guys Talking Mets Baseball, Mets Police and the Pedro Beato Fan Club for making mention of this first volume in the Happiest Recap series on their respective and wonderful blogs.
• Keep an ear open to MetsBlog radio Wednesday night as I discuss The Happiest Recap and other Met matters with Vinny Cartiglia.
• If you’re a Sirius/XM subscriber, I’ll be joining Dino Costa on Mad Dog Radio, Channel 86, Friday night at 9 for more Happiest and Mets chat.
• Saturday, December 15, NOON TO 2 PM (that’s a time change), Sharon Chapman and I will be hosting a little Baseball in December get-together at Foley’s in Manhattan to celebrate the launch of The Happiest Recap (and, grudgingly on my part, my impending 50th birthday). We’ll have copies of the book available and the author will be happy to sign or leave them pristine even. Come on down, get your Mets on and help us get closer to Opening Day while I inevitably get older. Some more details here.
• People “Like” all kinds of crazy things on Facebook, so why not The Happiest Recap? Like it here — and like Faith and Fear here while you’re at it.
by Greg Prince on 25 November 2012 4:40 pm  What’s wrong with this picture? Let’s instead go with what’s right about it. This card was brought to my attention a couple of months ago and I can’t get it out of my head. It’s a veritable diner placemat that urges you to find all the things that are wrong with it while you tear open another package of melba toast and wait for your cup of chicken consomme with matzoh ball and/or noodles to arrive.
Never mind that the two-toned black and vaguely lavender cap seems to be missing a Colorado Rockies logo from the distant future. Never mind that the next time the Pittsburgh Pirates sport light blue pinstripes will be the first time. Never mind your instinct to inform the photo’s subject that, “YO! HOME PLATE’S OVER THERE!” These reality-warping techniques were pretty standard stuff for Topps in its monopolistic heyday, which 1969 — the year of issue for this card — was smack-dab in the heart of.
What blows my mind, to invoke 1969 patois, is that the catcher in the middle of the card, Original Met Chris Cannizzaro, is squatting in the Polo Grounds. To squat in the Polo Grounds in 1969, you’d have to take the measure of the New York City Housing Authority Police Department, because they would probably have thrown you out, much the way Chris Cannizzaro once threw out thieving baserunners on the same plot of land.
As I don’t think I have to tell you, the Polo Grounds, home of the first two Mets teams, was the domicile of non-baseball players by 1969. The Mets vacated their temporary digs at the end of the 1963 season and moved to Queens. The city, as it had planned to do before Bill Shea and Branch Rickey conspired to invent a new National League ballclub that needed an old National League ballfield, finished tearing down the stadium that sat on Eighth Avenue between 155th and 157th Streets on April 10, 1964, one week before Shea Stadium opened. A housing project went up in the Polo Grounds’ place. It retained the Polo Grounds name, perhaps for reasons related to sentiment or familiarity, perhaps so when New York Giants romanticists like myself would trek uptown to find it, we wouldn’t get too lost.
The Polo Grounds Towers opened as public housing on June 30, 1968. The Mets didn’t live there anymore. Cannizzaro didn’t get his mail there anymore, either. According to Baseball-Reference, Chris was spending most of his 1968 as a Columbus Jet, grooming the Triple-A pitching staff of the Pittsburgh Pirates. After rediscovering his mojo in Ohio, the catcher who hadn’t been a major leaguer since late 1965 (he caught part of the Rob Gardner/Chris Short 18-inning 0-0 tie on October 2 and the Closing Day doubleheader nightcap that game’s curfew necessitated on October 3) was reportedly happy to be recalled to the Bucs in August. On September 14 and 15, Chris donned the so-called tools of ignorance, got behind the plate and caught a pair of games in New York…at Shea Stadium, not the Polo Grounds. To do so at the Polo Grounds would have been bad form, as throwing the ball back to the mound might have entailed hitting some lady bringing home her groceries.
Brooklyn-based Topps seemed to shoot most of its in-season National League photos in those days at Shea. Chris Cannizzaro was available for framing as a 1969 Pirate in September of 1968. Otherwise, it would use pictures captured during Spring Training. Chris, I’m pretty sure, attended the rites of spring every year he was bouncing among different organizations and trying to make a big league club. Topps occasionally dipped into its archives and plucked out a photo that had clearly been taken a couple of years earlier. For example, you can’t miss the NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR patch on Al Jackson’s 1969 card. The World’s Fair closed in 1965 (a season when Chris played 57 games at Shea), but at least we know the stadium it was built next to was still standing in 1969.
The Polo Grounds wasn’t. Yet there is Mr. Cannizzaro, on Card No. 131, quite clearly ready to put down fingers in a stadium that was no more. He’s dressed as a Met. He’s identified as a Pirate. He’s airbrushed as a proto-Blake Street Bomber. And he’s in a place where there’s been NO GAME TODAY for more than five years.
Some call it spooky. If I stumbled upon this card at a tender age, it probably would have frightened me. Anything that wasn’t incredibly up-to-date seemed askew to me when I was a kid. But now, knowing the Polo Grounds lived on an Original Met’s card deep into the Shea Stadium era strikes me as nothing short of Amazin’. It could be construed as good luck, too, as Chris caught a significant break toward the end of 1969’s Spring Training. Just as kids were opening their wax packs and being convinced Cannizzaro was, contrary to almost all graphic evidence, a Pirate, Pittsburgh traded him to that new team in San Diego. As a retread Pirate pushing 31, he wasn’t likely to see much action behind budding star Manny Sanguillen even if he did make the Bucs out of Bradenton. But as an Original Padre, Chris Cannizzaro saw the most playing time (134 games) of his long and heretofore, shall we say, underdistinguished career.
In 1969, Chris Cannizzaro was named to the National League All-Star team. Granted, it was one of those “we gotta pick a Padre” choices, with Chris batting .245 and collecting 2 home runs and 23 runs batted in by the All-Star break, but it was a long-in-coming response to those who doubted his credentials as a Met, including his first manager. As David Bagdade recounted in A Year In Mudville, Casey Stengel referred to Cannizzaro — a name he unfailingly pronounced as “Canzoneri” — as “the only defensive catcher in baseball that can’t catch”. And Casey was just getting started in his appraisal:
“The pitcher throws. Wild pitch. Throws again. Passed ball. Throws again. The ball drops out of the glove. And all the time I am dizzy on account of these runners running around in circles on me and so forth.”
This particular scouting report, whatever its accuracy (Chris could throw — he nailed 20 of 36 runners who tried to steal on him in 1962), was no doubt historic. Casey ranted on until he found himself wondering aloud, “Can’t anybody play this here game?” Jimmy Breslin came along directly and twisted the Stengelese ever so slightly and invented the signature question that has stayed with the Original Mets ever since: Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?
On the 1969 Padres, relative to teammates who were building a 52-110 record that looked good only when compared to the Mets’ 40-120 of seven years earlier, Chris could. He was the All-Star. He was third among all N.L. receivers in Caught Stealing, halting 41 runners who had ideas about taking bases that didn’t belong to them (Jerry Grote was fourth, with 40). True, he was also third in most bases stolen against, with 58, and he wound up the season batting .220, but on a 52-110 enterprise, Cannizzaro could squat proudly as someone who wasn’t necessarily one of the primary culprits.
Chris hung on as a Padre, a Cub, a Dodger and a Padre again through 1974, lasting as long among Original Mets as anyone. His final MLB game came on September 28, 1974, more than two months after Jim Hickman was released by the Cardinals and the same day Bob L. Miller threw his last pitch as a Recidivist Met. It was their (and, though he wasn’t Original, Ed Kranepool’s) longevity that helped reduce my personal fright factor where “ancient” Mets history was concerned. When I discovered the Mets in 1969, I couldn’t grasp the idea that they existed in such a dismal state, standings-wise, in those years when I was too young to have witnessed them. Yet with Cannizzaro, Hickman and righty Bob Miller still on the scene, even as opponents, Bob Murphy, Lindsey Nelson and Ralph Kiner were compelled to explore each player’s backstory. Still couldn’t quite reckon that players from way back then, just before I was born, could have been members of my team at its very beginning and still be active, but it began to sink in bit by bit. Nowadays I write books that in part celebrate that portion of my team’s history.
Before a very nice guy named Paul posted anachronistic Cannizzaro from 1969 on Crane Pool Forum in September and got me thinking about him, there was another reason the man who caught in the company of Choo Choo Coleman, Sammy Taylor, Joe Pignatano, Hobie Landrith, Harry Chiti and the recently deceased Joe Ginsberg in 1962 had been rattling around in my head. It came via a story from two Mays ago, just after the killing of Osama bin Laden. As Spencer Fordin reported for mlb.com, a Staten Island boy who wasn’t yet a year old when he lost his firefighter dad on 9/11 threw out the first pitch of the Mets-Dodgers game at Citi Field on May 6, 2011. He was ten by then and a completely rabid Mets fan. His name?
Christopher Cannizzaro. No relation by blood or marriage to the catcher who will turn 75 in 2013. It was more visceral than that. Both his parents, Brian and Jackie, were huge Mets fans and if their last name was Cannizzaro, then what else were they going to name their kid, especially one who was born during the 2000 Subway Series? Brian went so far as to place a Chris Cannizzaro card in his son’s incubator when he was born. Christopher’s route to fandom was just a matter of time and destiny from there.
The card that accompanied the infant in his first days probably wasn’t the 1969 Topps with the illogically lingering image of the Polo Grounds, given that the Original Met was labeled a Pirate in that edition and one would guess Brian preferred to introduce Christopher to Chris in non-airbrushed Met form. But that’s OK. Spirits live on in all sorts of ways.
Image courtesy of Wrigley Wax.
by Greg Prince on 21 November 2012 10:52 am These days SNY’s broadcasts are a showcase for not only horrific baseball but also acres and acres of unoccupied green seats. The Mets are touting increasingly desperate ticket plans — you can get into Citi Field for a steep discount by bringing a child, a Pepsi can, enthusiasm for R.A. Dickey or, quite possibly, a white flag. None of this matters, because StubHub is cheaper if you actually want to go.
—Jason Fry, “Death Spiral,” September 13, 2012
The innovative $63 Promenade ticket the Mets proudly introduced for Opening Day — when the traditional time-honored raising of the NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST FOURTH PLACE FINISHERS banner is sure to unleash a surge of Mets Pride that will resonate from the $63 seats atop Section 501 clear around to the $63 seats in the last row of Section 538 — makes perfect sense to the visionary organization that launched it into the marketplace Monday. Why, who couldn’t read a clear and cogent explanation like this…
“We made a limited number available that are not in packs. So if people want a cheaper price for Opening Day, they can buy it as part of a package. Obviously, there are other games in that mix as well. But some people may think that’s a better value. That’s why that’s an option.”
…and not be impressed by the cutting-edge salesmanship and marketing that went into the decision? And who among the Mets-consuming populace wouldn’t be motivated to act immediately on such a decent proposal? You can either purchase distant seating to this one game for an unusually large amount of money, or you can wait a bit and purchase the same seating for perhaps less money but you’ll also need some more money to buy tickets for other games you didn’t realize you wanted to go to.
Plus service charges.
So even though the Mets are visionaries with the pricing and the packaging and the explaining, and you can’t blame a Mets fan for thinking about laying out $63 per pop (plus service charges) to attend Opening Day 2013 — or perhaps snapping up sets of tickets, one of which is for this annually attractive affair while the others are not, it’s a shame the Mets won’t eventually sell you a far less expensive, more available ticket for some other game during which the Mets will also play baseball and pursue fourth place.
Oh, but they will. According to a reliable source, multiple transactional opportunities (or “Mets games”) will exist in 2013 after Opening Day. They won’t be Opening Day, but they can be if you make it so. Here’s what ya do: don’t go to Opening Day; pick one of the 80 home games that isn’t Opening Day; and make it your Opening Day. Sit in the Promenade for less than $63. Squint until you’re pretty sure you see festive bunting. Or just wait for a Mets runner to reach first when the home team trails late and you’re sure to see plenty of bunting. Experience as much Mets Pride as you like.
It might not be April 1, but given the savings and self-respect, you’ll feel a bit less the fool.
by Greg Prince on 20 November 2012 8:34 pm If I learned anything from the contestants who vied for the Fifty Sheas of Krane grand prize of the New York Mets 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition DVD Set from A+E Networks Home Entertainment/MLB Productions is that if they devoted themselves to designing a similar contest for me to take, I’d be hard-pressed to match the performance they put forth in taking mine. They’re that good.
Proving themselves worthiest — so worthy that I had to declare the contest a virtual tie and award each of them the DVD set that is available for purchase here — were Gabriel Panek of New York and Peter from somewhere down the East Coast (Peter prefers to remain a Metropolitan man of mystery for the time being). They each filed 47 of 50 correct answers on November 14, and since, as you will see, I did a less than perfect job in asking a few of the questions, I’m not comfortable saying one of them didn’t win. So they both win.
Also very worthy, with 47 of 50 right sent on November 15, was Chris Valentino of New York. He earned the terrific A+E Networks Home Entertainment/MLB Productions release, New York Mets 50 Greatest Players, plus a copy of the sensational new book, The Happiest Recap by…oh, will ya look at that…by Greg Prince. And coming in with 46 of 50 right just under the deadline — and with the most entertaining footnotes imaginable attached to just about every answer — was the talented Studious Metsimus author Ed Leyro. Somebody with his encyclopedic mind deserves the new and data-packed team encyclopedia Total Mets, written by David Ferry, with foreword by…no kidding, Ed Kranepool.
Those are our winners and runners-up. Thanks to all who gave it a shot, whether you hung in to the end of the test or spent a few hours on it before cursing me and Ed Kranepool out.
On to the answers…
***
1. Who was the first player to pinch-run for Ed Kranepool?
Rick Herrscher, September 23, 1962, after the kid’s very first base hit, an eighth-inning double off Don Elston.
2. How many future Met coaches played in the last Polo Grounds game in which Ed Kranepool collected a base hit — and who were they?
Two: Bobby Wine (1993-1996) and Cookie Rojas (1997-2000) played for the Phillies on September 17, 1963.
3. What was Ed Kranepool’s postseason batting average against future Hall of Fame pitchers?
.100 — Ed went 1-for-10 vs. Phil Niekro (1969 NLCS), Jim Palmer (1969 World Series) and Rollie Fingers (1973 (World Series); the lone hit against these immortals-to-be was a fourth-inning single in Game One of the ’69 playoffs off Niekro. Kranepool homered in the game Palmer started in that year’s World Series, but against Baltimore reliever Dave Leonhard.
4. What future Detroit Tigers pitcher attended the same high school as Ed Kranepool?
Izzy Goldstein (who pitched for the 1932 Tigers; he was not, incidentally, a teammate of Hank Greenberg, who appeared briefly with Detroit in 1930 and came up to stay in 1933).
5. In which year’s Mets highlight film — as featured on SNY’s Mets Yearbook — does Ed Kranepool discuss his second-place finish in the team bubble gum-blowing contest?
1978. (Ed was runner-up to winking Bobby Valentine, who gleefully revealed how he endeared himself to the lady judges.)
6. How many hits did Mets wearing No. 7 collect before Ed Kranepool wore it?
149, as collected by Elio Chacon (87), Chico Fernandez (29) and Amado “Sammy” Samuel (33).
7. How many home runs did Ed Kranepool have to hit to set the all-time career Mets home run record (which he held for more than a decade) and whose mark did he surpass?
This was a messy question that lacked thorough due diligence on my part. As a result, any of the following were accepted: 61 and Jim Hickman; 70 and Ron Swoboda; or Cleon Jones and 94. Ed rose and dipped at the top of the Mets’ all-time home run chart several times between 1969 and 1976, when he secured the franchise lead for the rest of his career and then some.
8. Chronologically, what future Met was born closest to Ed Kranepool without being born after Ed Kranepool?
1981 Pitcher Dave Roberts, who was born on September 11, 1944. (The Met born closest to Kranepool, albeit afterwards, was Tom Seaver, on November 17, 1944 — belated Happy 68th to the Franchise!)
9. How many players who played in Ed Kranepool’s final big league game had already been part of losing American League World Series teams and who were they?
Two: Bernie Carbo (1975 Red Sox) and Elliott Maddox (1976 Yankees). A couple of other players in that game would go on to play for American League World Series teams afterwards, but we were looking only for those who “had already been”.
10. The Eddie Kranepool Society, unofficially the longest-running blog in all of Metsdom, regularly refers to the current chairman and chief executive officer of the Mets by what nickname?
EKS proprietor Steve Keane has been consistent in referring to Fred Wilpon as Skill Sets or some variation thereof in tribute to Wilpon’s vague excuse for firing GM Joe McIlvaine in 1997, during the Mets’ first contending season in approximately an eon.
11. What percentage of his major league hit total did Ed Kranepool accumulate before the first presidential election in which he was eligible to vote?
44.36%. That’s based on the 629 base hits Ed accumulated — out of his lifetime total of 1,418 — through the 1968 season. The minimum voting age in the United States was 21 until the passage of the 26th Amendment in 1971, thus Kranepool couldn’t vote for president until November 5, 1968, when he was a few days shy of 24. (For what it’s worth, Richard Nixon won the 1968 election with 43.42% of the popular vote, or a lower percentage than Kranepool registered in the answer to this question.)
12. Ed Kranepool once shared a Topps baseball card with his manager. Who was the manager and what was the headline over the image on the card?
Casey Stengel — CASEY TEACHES. It was a 1964 card and Ed didn’t appear to be the world’s most attentive pupil.
13. Who were the two future Hall of Fame pitchers against whom Ed Kranepool hit three home runs apiece?
Ferguson Jenkins and Gaylord Perry.
14. How many Mets played their final game as Mets before Ed Kranepool played his first game as a Met?
Sixteen. There was no requirement that they all be named, though most of our contestants were happy to list them. One, it bears noting, was Joe Ginsberg, who recently passed away at the age of 86. Joe was the longest-surviving former Met, his final game having come April 15, 1962, which was the franchise’s fourth-ever game. His passing whittles the number of living members of the Mets’ first team to 28.
The other fifteen who were done as Mets before Ed’s debut on September 22, 1962: Hobie Landrith, Gus Bell, Don Zimmer, Ed Bouchee, Herb Moford, Clem Labine, Jim Marshall, Sherman “Roadblock” Jones, John DeMerit, Bobby Gene Smith (who now holds the record as the longest-surviving former Met, having played his final Mets game on April 24, 1962), Dave Hillman (the oldest-living 1962 Mets and second-oldest living Met overall, behind Yogi Berra), Harry Chiti, Wilmer “Vinegar Bend” Mizell, Gene Woodling and Bob G. Miller.
15. How many Ed Kranepool teammates managed the Mets and who were they?
Seven: Gil Hodges, Yogi Berra, Roy McMillan, Joe Torre, Bud Harrelson, Dallas Green and Bobby Valentine.
16. The last time the Mets sent Ed Kranepool to the minors, what prospect did they bring up to take his spot on the roster?
Ken Singleton, in June of 1970. Ed had been a Met mainstay since May of 1964, when he returned from Buffalo in time to play in the infamous 32-inning Memorial Day doubleheader, which the Mets infamously (naturally) dropped to the Giants. Six years later, he spent the bulk of the summer at Tidewater after his average dipped to .118. He came back to New York in August and revived his career the following season.
17. In which year’s Mets highlight film — as featured on SNY’s Mets Yearbook — does Ed Kranepool visit his old high school?
1977. This was the same film that had Joe Torre holding court at a dude ranch of some sort, insisting that someday the Tom Seaver trade would be known as the Steve Henderson trade.
18. How many hits did future teammates of Ed Kranepool get against the Mets in the first full big league game Ed Kranepool played — and who got them?
Five: George Altman (4) and Ken Boyer (1), members of the Cardinals on Opening Day 1963, when Ed went the full nine for the first time. Both men joined the Mets in 1964.
19. What is the “first” that connects 1938 Reds pitcher Johnny Vander Meer to 1964 Mets center fielder Ed Kranepool?
Inaugural night games in New York. Vander Meer’s famous second consecutive no-hitter came during the first night game at Ebbets Field, June 15, 1938. The only time Ed Kranepool was a center fielder was May 6, 1964, which was the first night game at Shea Stadium.
20. What Met made the first pinch-hitting appearance wearing No. 21 after Ed Kranepool stopped wearing it?
Warren Spahn, the all-time great pitcher and pretty decent hitter (35 career home runs) for whom Kranepool was compelled to surrender his first set of major league numerals. Spahnie pinch-hit unsuccessfully in the ninth inning at Candlestick Park on April 24, 1965, a game the Mets would go on to win on Danny “Vive La France!” Napoleon’s pinch-triple.
21. Ed Kranepool collected 1,252 hits while wearing No. 7, including 85 as a pinch-hitter. It took more than a quarter-century, but eventually the sum total of Mets who wore No. 7 after Ed Kranepool exceeded that total of 1,252. In the game in which the 1,253rd hit collected by the sum total off all Mets who wore No. 7 after Ed Kranepool was recorded, what extraordinary feat did a Mets pinch-hitter (a lefty batter like Kranepool, but not someone who wore No. 7 as a Met) accomplish that no Mets pinch-hitter had done before? And what was the date of the game in question?
Marlon Anderson produced the first pinch-hit inside-the-park home run in Mets history on June 11, 2005, the same night Jose Reyes garnered the 1,253rd hit by a post-Kranepool No. 7 Met player. (And I fully admit this question was the work of a madman.)
22. How many men were inducted into the Mets Hall of Fame before Ed Kranepool?
Twelve, the twist being there were thirteen members — including Joan Payson — named before Ed made it in 1990.
23. How many hits did future teammates of Ed Kranepool get against the Mets in the first big league game in which Ed Kranepool collected a pinch-hit — and who got them?
Five: Donn Clendenon (4) and Bob Friend (1), Pirates when Ed singled hitting for Galen Cisco on June 1, 1963. Friend became a Met in 1966; Clendenon, of course, in 1969.
24. For what political candidate did Ed Kranepool appear in a television commercial wearing his old Mets jersey after he was retired as a player?
U.S. Senator Al D’Amato, running for re-election in 1986, when the Mets were so popular that everybody wanted to be associated with their brand. The Mets asked the commercial, in which Ed wore what appeared to be his last uniform top (it had the collar and cuffs trim the Mets introduced in 1978), be pulled as they didn’t want to be seen endorsing a political candidate of any stripe. D’Amato won re-election over Mark Green that November, eight days after the Mets won their second World Series.
25. When he made his major league debut, Ed Kranepool became the 45th player in Mets history. Who was the 44th?
Larry Foss, whose first Mets game occurred September 10, 1962, a dozen days before Kranepool’s.
26. Ed Kranepool pinch-ran three times in his 18-season big league career. Who were the three Mets for whom he pinch-ran?
Frank Thomas (1963), Ron Swoboda (1966) and George Theodore (1973). Nobody guessed “Mo Lasses,” probably because Ed Kranepool wasn’t any faster than molasses.
27. What part of the baseball field inspired the name of the Amityville restaurant co-owned by Ed Kranepool and Ron Swoboda in the early 1970s?
The Dugout.
28. What unlucky distinction do Ricky Romero, Edinson Volquez and Kent Tekulve share when it comes to a Met hitting milestone Ed Kranepool was the first to reach?
Only pitchers to give up an unlucky Mets-career 1,300th hit to a Mets batter. Kent Tekulve gave up Ed’s 1,300th hit in 1977; Edinson Volquez gave up Jose Reyes’s semi-controversial 1,300 hit — his last in a Mets uniform — on the final day of the 2011 season; and future Reyes teammate Ricky Romero gave up David Wright’s 1,300th hit in Toronto this past May.
29. What Met stranded Ed Kranepool on base after Ed’s first pinch-hit?
Jimmy Piersall, who lined to center fielder Bill Virdon with two out at the Polo Grounds in the sixth inning on June 1, 1963.
30. In what feature film, released after he played his final Mets game, did Ed Kranepool appear as himself?
It’s My Turn, the 1980 Jill Clayburgh vehicle that produced Diana Ross’s Top 10 single of the same name. Ed and Bud Harrelson were among the retired major leaguers to line up and tip a cap at Yankee Stadium during Old Timers Day. (Ed was also the Mets’ first baseman in the triple play scene in 1968’s The Odd Couple.)
31. Who was the last Ed Kranepool teammate to play for the Mets?
Alex Treviño, who made a brief return to his original team in 1990; Alex and Ed were teammates in 1978 and 1979. Jesse Orosco was the last Kranepool teammate to play in the majors, but wasn’t a Met after 1987 (he was reacquired following the 1999 season, but his presence in a thousand more longevity-themed trivia questions was thwarted in 2000 when he was traded to St. Louis for Super Joe McEwing during Spring Training).
32. Ed Kranepool appeared on one National Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, alongside five former Met teammates. Who were those teammates?
Jesus Alou, Ken Boyer, Dock Ellis, Mickey Lolich and Joe Torre were, like Ed, on the Baseball Writers’ ballot in 1985 and, like Ed (who collected zero votes), weren’t elected. None is in the Hall of Fame as of this writing, though Torre, reportedly, became a genius many years later.
33. Who is the only Met to have shared a birthday with Ed Kranepool?
There were two correct answers to this question despite the wording: Jose Offerman and Shane Halter. My database mysteriously had Offerman listed with a different birthday (some Latin American players have had their official birth dates changed for the record over time), which is why I thought Shane was Ed’s sole fellow November 8 Met baby. But Offerman is listed at Baseball-Reference and other sources as having been born on November 8, so he’s as correct an answer as Halter. (We also reluctantly accepted Edgardo Alfonzo, whose birthday for years was listed as “11/8/73,” and interpreted in the U.S. as November 8, but which was eventually clarified as “8/11/73,” or August 11 — Fonzie’s actual birthday.)
34. Who gave up the home run that knocked Ed Kranepool from the all-time career Mets home run lead?
Rick Rhoden gave up Dave Kingman’s 119th Mets home run on June 9, 1982, definitively erasing Ed’s 118 home runs as the most in Mets history.
35. In the last game he played in the big leagues as a 17-year-old, who did Ed Kranepool replace on defense?
Marv Throneberry, though on September 30, 1962, the Mets’ signature blunder wasn’t any of Marvelous Marv’s doing. A half-inning after Ed entered the last game of the Mets’ first season, Joe Pignatano hit into a triple play.
36. Who else scored on the same Jim Hickman two-run single that produced Ed Kranepool’s first Shea Stadium run?
Larry Elliot, who crossed the plate behind Ed in the seventh inning on April 18, 1964, the second game ever played at Shea.
37. What future major league manager attended the same high school as Ed Kranepool?
Charlie Fox, who managed the 1971 San Francisco Giants to the N.L. West crown.
38. For what brand of shaving cream did Ed Kranepool appear in a television commercial late in his career?
Gillette Foamy. (We accepted “Gillette” or “Foamy” as correct, too; we’re not heartless here.)
39. In which year’s Mets highlight film — as featured on SNY’s Mets Yearbook — does Ed Kranepool sit down and reflect on his Mets career?
1976. The excuse for the sedentary trip down memory lane was the Mets had just completed their fifteenth season. The larger excuse was there were usually never enough actual highlights to fill up these films.
40. What future Met gave up a hit to Ed Kranepool in an official game that ended in a tie?
Nick Willhite, in the second game of a doubleheader at Shea, June 7, 1964. Willhite, then a Dodger, would join the Mets for four games in 1967.
41. How many future Hall of Famers played in the first big league game in which Ed Kranepool played two defensive positions — and who were they?
Four: Duke Snider, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda. Snider and the Mets beat those star-studded Giants at Candlestick on May 18, 1963, in a game that saw starting right fielder Ed Kranepool shift to first base after Hot Rod Kanehl pinch-ran for that day’s starting first sacker, Tim Harkness.
42. Who scored the winning run in the first game Ed Kranepool started?
Choo Choo Coleman, bub, on Frank Thomas’s walkoff single, September 23, 1962. It was the day of Ed’s first start (though he was out of the game by the time the Mets won it, 2-1) and it was supposed to be the last-ever baseball game at the Polo Grounds…except Shea Stadium wasn’t ready in time for the 1963 season, so the Mets played on in Upper Manhattan.
43. Ed Kranepool once shared a Topps baseball card with a teammate. Who was the teammate and how were they described on the front of that card?
Ron Swoboda; METS MAULERS. In the year they were featured as such, 1967, Ed and Ron combined to maul National League pitchers for 23 homers and 107 RBIs.
44. How many other Mets played their final game as Mets in Ed Kranepool’s last game and who were they?
Three: Richie Hebner, Gil Flores and Bruce Boisclair.
45. In the book, Bad Stuff ’Bout The Mets, what does author Chico Escuela claim Ed Kranepool borrowed “and never give back”?
Chico’s soap. For those of you who can’t find Escuela on Baseball-Reference, he wore No. 5, was a longtime Met infielder, baseball was “berry, berry good to him”…and he was a character portrayed on Saturday Night Live toward the end of the non-fictional Kranepool’s career by Garrett Morris.
46. In his very first big league game, Ed Kranepool was a defensive replacement for who?
Gil Hodges, in the top of the seventh on September 22, 1962. Ed handled his very first chance, a grounder from the Cubs’ Billy Williams, which he flipped to pitcher Larry Foss to record the first out of the inning.
47. Rufus King was the last Federalist Party nominee for president. What does this have to do with Ed Kranepool?
King lost the 1816 election to James Monroe, who went on to inspire the naming of James Monroe High School in the Bronx, eventual alma mater of Edward Emil Kranepool, breaker of records previously set by Hank Greenberg. (No major leaguer has ever come out of Rufus King International High School in Milwaukee, but it, unlike Monroe, remains in operation; Ed’s alma mater closed its doors in 1994.)
48. Who is the only Met to have played as a Met with a teammate of Eddie Kranepool and a teammate of Eddie Kunz?
Turns out there were two. The one I was sure about was John Franco, who played with Krane ’mate Alex Treviño in 1990 and Kunz ’mates David Wright, Jose Reyes, Aaron Heilman and Pedro Feliciano at various junctures of 2003 and 2004. The other was David Cone, who played with Jesse Orosco (1979 Met) in 1987 and overlapped for a few days with Feliciano in 2003 (I thought Cone was gone before Pedro returned that year; silly me).
49. How many players who played in Ed Kranepool’s final big league game had already been part of winning National League World Series teams and who were they?
This question was both overinterpreted and underinterpreted by most of our contestants. The overinterpeting won’t count against anybody since I didn’t word it as specifically as I had intended. I had wanted to know about players who played in the World Series their teams had won before the game in question, but I wasn’t crystal clear on that point. Thus, submissions that included names like Doug Flynn, Joel Youngblood and Frank Taveras weren’t necessarily wrong, but they weren’t exactly right. Those guys were members of Reds or Pirates teams that went on to win World Series, but they didn’t actually play in those World Series. No harm, no foul. The number I was looking for was three and the players who HAD to be included, because they played in those winning World Series efforts, were Richie Hebner (1971 Pirates), Lou Brock (1964 and 1967 Cardinals) AND…and this was key…ED KRANEPOOL (1969 Mets). The “three” part I have to throw out, as I asked it inexactly, but I can’t accept as correct any answer that doesn’t include the subject of this test as someone who was part of a winning National League World Series team prior to the very same test subject’s final big league game.
50. Who pinch-ran for Ed Kranepool following Ed’s final big league hit?
Gil Flores effectively ended Ed Kranepool’s 18-season Mets career when he pinch-ran for Kranepool in the seventh inning at Busch Stadium on September 30, 1979. Krane had just pinch-hit for John Pacella and doubled off Bob Forsch of the Cardinals. Ed’s first hit was a double and his last hit was a double.
by Greg Prince on 19 November 2012 7:38 am Have I got a book for you. Four of them, actually — one now, three later. And make no mistake: they’re all for you, my fellow Mets fan who likes to read. They’re for us.
I’m proud to introduce to you the Banner Day Press book series The Happiest Recap: 50 Years of the New York Mets as Told in 500 Amazin’ Wins, written by Greg Prince (that’s me), beautifully designed by Jim Haines and informed by the spirit of Bob Murphy, whose signature phrase and inextricable optimism we celebrate in the title and concept. The books are based on the string of blog posts I offered here in 2011 under the same name. The project has evolved since then, but my underlying goal of exploring Mets history through the prism of the greatest games the franchise has ever won remains its heart.
 The initial volume of The Happiest Recap — First Base (1962-1973) — is available on Amazon right now in paperback; it covers 127 Mets wins, runs 224 pages and sells for $16.95. We’ll have information regarding Kindle and other eBook availability shortly. The three succeeding volumes — Second Base (1974-1986); Third Base (1987-1999) and Home (2000 & Beyond) — are planned to follow in 2013.
I’m preternaturally reluctant to promote myself personally, but I have no such compunction against promoting my work if I believe in it, so I’ll tell you right now, at the risk of unnecessary self-aggrandizement, that you’ll never enjoy reading about your favorite baseball team’s first half-century more than you will when you read The Happiest Recap. I’ve never seen a team’s history captured quite this way. I’ve certainly never read the Mets’ history in this type of format. Taken one at a time, the games I’ve chosen to chronicle serve almost as 500 bedtime stories for Mets fans. Taken across the sweep of four volumes and five decades, it coalesces into nothing less than an American sporting saga.
(OK, so maybe I’m not that reluctant to self-promote.)
We usually get our histories presented to us via familiar narratives or consensus storylines or through the “Great Man” theory. Yet when it comes to baseball, we have this rich source material known as baseball games that tend to be utterly underappreciated in the long view. But The Game’s the thing…y’know? The Game’s what we look forward to all day and that game’s what we talk about the next day while waiting for the next game. While it’s still fresh, The Game is the biggest thing to which we fans devote our conscious thoughts.
We love our games when they’re good. We love our games when they’re bad but something good happens in them. Statistics can be fascinating, trade speculation can be intriguing (if occasionally unnerving) and biography can be compelling, but when you get right down to it, we want to watch or listen to or go to The Game, and we inevitably dwell on The Game — until we have to make an unconscious decision that we can only keep so many games where we dwell.
The problem, if we can call it that, is that when baseball is in season, games come at us in a relentless bounty: more or less one a day, six or seven per week, approximately 27 every month, 162 every year, a couple of handfuls more in October if we’re really fortunate. Call it a blessing overload. As a result, some games we frame as classics and hang prominently above the fireplace forever, but too many games we loved in the moment can’t help but slip behind the dressers and between the sofa cushions of our minds.
The Happiest Recap aims to reach deep into those shadowy spaces, dust off the heretofore “neato!” stuff you’d all but forgotten about, or perhaps never knew was back there, and arrange it not just chronologically but contextually in the family album. To what end? When The Happiest Recap concludes, you will have the richest, most textured accounting available of what it was like to live as a Mets fan during the first fifty years there were Mets — what those 500 wins were about: not just what happened in them, but what they represented; who came to light; who faded away; what was transpiring around them. If I’m doing my job as Mets fan and Mets author, then you will be living games you haven’t seen in years, hopefully feeling games you never knew existed.
And let me reiterate: Every game lovingly lingered over in The Happiest Recap, even when extracted from years when the team loss total reached triple-digits, is a WIN. Where else ya gonna get the Mets to go 500-0 for ya?
I’m sure I’ll be coming back to this subject plenty as I find my self-promotion comfort zone, but for now, I’ll remind you the first volume of the Happiest Recap series is available on Amazon, it makes a seriously great gift for the Mets fan in your life and an equally great read for you. If you’re on Facebook, please swing by The Happiest Recap page and give us a Like if you like.
Also, if you’re in the New York Metropolitan Area on Saturday afternoon, December 15, there’ll be a graciously organized (by Friend of FAFIF Sharon Chapman) Happiest Recap launch party at Foley’s, 18 W. 33rd St., between Fifth and Sixth Avenues — two blocks east of Penn Station — from 1 to 4 PM. Copies will be for sale that day, a drink special will be in effect and the author will be happy to sign books and talk about anything Mets-related, which doesn’t sound like a bad way to spend a few hours in the middle of December. Hope you can join us.
Thanks to all who entered the Fifty Sheas of Krane contest. The winning entry, along with the answers, will be announced Tuesday.
by Greg Prince on 16 November 2012 4:51 pm  Not so much coming soon as actually here now. Will have a fuller and richer pitch for you on Monday, but I need to let you know that my new book, The Happiest Recap: First Base (1962-1973), is available for purchase on Amazon RIGHT NOW. And damned if I’m not going to advise you to purchase it as soon as you can.
Thank you.
by Greg Prince on 15 November 2012 1:55 pm The name “R.A. Dickey” has become to us Mets fans what “Maria” was to Tony in West Side Story.
Say it loud and there’s music playing
Say it soft and it’s almost like praying
Now, with the 2012 Cy Young Award voted R.A. Dickey’s way by veritable landslide, suddenly that name will never be the same again.
It’s only gotten bigger and better in the seven weeks since Dickey essentially clinched the prize the Baseball Writers Association of America announced was his Wednesday night. R.A. Dickey has been in nonstop ascent in our esteem from the Wednesday night he first fully appeared in our midst, high socks and all, in Nationals Park, May 19, 2010. He took over a spot in the Mets’ starting rotation from John Maine and surprised us then with six innings of two-run ball.
Soon enough, it stopped being surprising that he pitched well. The interesting part about him was what happened when he spoke after pitching. A few had come along out of what we on the sidelines consider nowhere to succeed on the ballfield. And a few had opened their mouths to reveal multisyllabic words forming complex thoughts in the unlikely forum of the postgame media scrum. It doesn’t reflect badly on the players who couldn’t pull it off. The required skill set is baseball, not eloquence. But R.A. could do the first and he possessed the second. He wowed us so completely that in an otherwise dreary year he was our runaway choice for Most Valuable Met of 2010.
We hadn’t — we would learn in grammar R.A. Dickey himself would likely reject— seen nothin’ yet.
The BBWAA celebrated R.A. last night. We do it every five days for six months out of every year. And we’re doing it again like we did it in ’10, as we ape Jack O’Connell and declare a bit of history. For the first time in the eight-season history of this blog, Faith and Fear in Flushing awards Most Valuable Met status to somebody for the second time.
Of course R.A. Dickey is our MVM for 2012. That’s an “of course” in the face of competition conceivably as compelling as Clayton Kershaw within the context of what we tend to think about here. Conceivably, we could have tabbed David Wright (who won it in 2007) for rewriting the uppermost lines of the Mets record book while carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Or we could have chosen Johan Santana (2008’s winner) for a reason that will never have to be explained to anyone who lived it. Or we could have instituted a no-repeat rule on the fly and cleverly saluted somebody who symbolized something or other among the valiant if overmatched vast second tier of New York Mets players.
But that would be crazy, because of course it’s R.A. Dickey. R.A. Dickey is the Cy Young winner. R.A. Dickey is our winner. R.A. Dickey is our heroic figure whose stature within the borders of Metsopotamia isn’t so much larger than life as it is otherworldly…accessibly otherworldly, somehow.
We’ve never had anybody like this guy. We pretty much knew that before. We know it for certain now.
It seems superfluous in the shadow of 20 victories, the most strikeouts in the National League, the second-lowest ERA, two consecutive one-hitters, the redefinition of the knuckleball as a quasi-power pitch and the All-Star start that wasn’t his but clearly should have been to recount what makes R.A. Dickey extraordinary besides all that.
Like the best-selling, emotionally searing memoir. Like his advocacy on film and in real life of the pitch that transformed his career and the pitchers who blazed his trail. Like his literally breathtaking climb up Kilimanjaro, both for the immense physical feat and the cause for which it was undertaken. Like the gleefully geeky hobbies he doesn’t mind sharing with his fans. Like the bond he has forged with us overall, a two-way appreciation street between the man who gets how overwhelming the support on his behalf was as it crested in September of 2012 and the supporters who were so grateful to have a Met so worthy of sincere boosterism in yet another otherwise dreary year.
He’s still that articulate clubhouse voice from 2010, but we almost don’t notice the use of language anymore. We take R.A.’s participation in his dialogues with reporters as kind of a baked-in value-added asset to his total package by now. And we’d known for two years prior to 2012 that he could pitch (if not necessarily pitch like this). Perhaps what’s grown, aside from the depth of his baseball accomplishments, is our understanding of his singularity.
There’s never been another Met like R.A. Dickey.
There will never be another Met like R.A. Dickey.
As fans, we often lean on precedent to express ourselves. In the early R.A. days, we might have pointed to Terry Leach’s 1987 or Rick Reed’s 1997 and said this is what Dickey reminds us of, another journeyman who zipped from low-risk to high-reward. As we made a habit of listening to his actualities or reading his quotes, we might have harked back to Keith Hernandez or Todd Zeile or Cliff Floyd to remember what it was like to want to hear what a person who wore a Mets uniform was thinking as he peeled off his jersey. This year, as the numbers piled up with most pleasing constancy, we were invoking the likes of Al Leiter (17 wins), Bobby Ojeda (18), eventually Frank Viola (last Met to 20). And now, as R.A. Dickey makes room between his pair of Faith and Fear MVMs for his Cy Young — though, to be honest, our award will look best on his mental mantel — we are moved to accurately mention Met royalty. Tom Seaver won three Cy Youngs. Dwight Gooden won one. So has R.A. Dickey.
R.A., though, I believe is going to transcend that kind of reflexive listing, even as “Seaver, Gooden and Dickey” will be very valid (and a helluva trinity of which to be part) and “Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Dwight Gooden, David Cone, Frank Viola and R.A. Dickey” are very much the only six Mets to have been 20-game winners as Mets. Yet Dickey’s in his own dimension as a Met. There’s not much use grouping him with anybody else because, assorted statistical accomplishments and surface characteristics aside, who else has been R.A. Dickey?
Nobody. And maybe that’s why we love him so much. He’s singular and he’s ours (contractual/transactional status pending, but let’s not think about that right now). We discovered the R.A. Dickey who became a Cy Young. Not some other team or some other team’s fans, but we did. Technically, R.A. Dickey came up with himself and the Mets were smart enough to cloak him in their regalia when they (or anybody) probably had no true idea what they had, but it all comes out in the laundry and on the bottom line of the back of the baseball card:
R.A. Dickey, New York Met.
Another Met rolls out two one-hitters in two straight starts, chances are we’d high-five twice and move on. Another Met works the kinks out of a heretofore novelty pitch, we’d dwell on where the knuckleballer fits in among the fireballer, split-fingerer and change-of-pacer. Another Met takes 12-1 to the All-Star break and it’s not necessarily a slap in the face to all for which we stand that a non-Met National Leaguer takes the ball first in the All-Star Game. Another Met, we should live so long, edges up on 20 wins, maybe we remember to tune in on a Thursday afternoon to see how he’s doing.
R.A. Dickey, New York Met, we treat much more affectionately, carefully and with a great deal more proprietary handling.
When R.A. Dickey went for No. 20, it was Feast Day for the Metropolitan Soul. It amounted to, as few things have in the Met era that’s more or less dripped along since before Dickey got here, nine incandescent innings. We weren’t Mets fans on September 27. We were Team R.A. We weren’t rooting for a pitcher. We were pitching. We were striking out 13 Pirates until we had nothing left. We all spoke volumes that required an Oxford English Dictionary app stay open. We all gripped the seams in an unorthodox manner. We had all broken through at age 35 and we were all emerging as the best in our business at age 37 in an arena where that simply doesn’t happen.
We all held on for dear life when Alex Presley took Jon Rauch deep and we all exhaled into a roar when Mike Baxter nabbed a tricky liner off the bat of Jose Tabata and we were all a 20-game winner and a Cy Young recipient-to-be. Then we came out and tipped our cap at ourselves as we chanted our name because we’d grown ever fonder of it the more we got to know it.
We set a precedent, R.A. Dickey and us, in 2012. Good luck matching it, future.
FAITH AND FEAR’S PREVIOUS MOST VALUABLE METS
2005: Pedro Martinez
2006: Carlos Beltran
2007: David Wright
2008: Johan Santana
2009: Pedro Feliciano
2010: R.A. Dickey
2011: Jose Reyes
Still to come: The Nikon Camera Player of the Year for 2012.
by Jason Fry on 13 November 2012 9:43 pm If you’ve been with us a while, you’ve probably noticed that I hate the Marlins. As in, I really, really, really hate the Marlins. Every three months or so, I have a frothing-at-the-mouth tantrum about them. Since this will be the third of 2012, I’ll keep it fairly short.
To review, though: Back in April I anointed the Marlins the tackiest franchise in the history of sports, taking aim at everything from their horrible owners to their cynical fire sales to their nonexistent fans to their ghastly rodeo-clown uniforms.
Then, at the beginning of September, I’d once again had enough, ripping Jeffrey Loria and his little friend Bud Selig, who collaborated on the shameful destruction of the Montreal Expos and then held Miami at gunpoint for a new stadium, which might be the worst thing ever made by human hands. Amazingly, Loria couldn’t make it through the new park’s inaugural season before having a fire sale; more amazingly, he’s now doubled down, sending Jose Reyes and Josh Johnson and Mark Buehrle and Emilio Bonfiacio to Toronto for a bundle of kinda-sorta-maybe prospects. It doesn’t matter what the Marlins got, because anyone good will get sold before he matters.
Incredibly enough, the problem with my earlier freakouts about the Marlins weren’t that they were overly cynical and built from sentiments generally suitable for the interior of a blast furnace — it’s that I wasn’t nearly cynical or vicious enough.
So let’s make this plain.
Jeffrey Loria? I used to think Loria was a dead-eyed grave robber, a fit replacement for that scabrous garbageman Wayne Huizenga. But it’s much worse. Loria is a shambling colony of amoral excrescence disguising itself with the skin of a human being. It no longer eats, as it gains all the sustenance to perpetuate itself from the ruined dreams of children.
Bud Selig? He will inspire arguments for a generation about his tenure as a commissioner, with every pro being met with a con and vice versa, until you get to contraction and the shameful starving and execution of the Expos and how he rewarded Loria’s dirty work by giving him a new franchise to despoil. At which point it’s game, set, match to the Selig haters. If Selig had an iota of shame, he’d contract the Marlins on the spot; ban Loria, David Samson and the next five generations of their descendants from any major-league stadium; and forbid anyone from ever mentioning the Marlins again in any context. But ask anyone in Montreal if Selig has an iota of shame.
The Marlins? They are the worst collective entity ever. They are flesh-eating mosquitoes surrounding an orphanage in some ruined part of the world, bred by cannibals laying land mines. Not only that, they are the worst collective entity the world will ever see.
In fact, the Marlins are…
…worse than the New York Yankees.
Yes. It’s true. They are.
The Yankees have values, and a code built from those values that they live by. To be sure, they’re twisted and evil values, ones that teach their fans that the appropriate soundtrack for the death of decency and fair play is laughter echoing throughout the icy halls of an empty palace. But, well, they’re values. The Yankees stand for something, however reprehensible that something is to good-hearted people.
The Marlins? They stand for nothing. They embody the void — nihilism given terrible shape as a franchise, devouring everything touched. The Marlins are the entropic cackle that greets the death of everything.
In matters unrelated to ravening hate:
• Identify our Fifty Sheas of Krane and win the greatest Mets DVD set ever.
• The Mets’ food drive to help victims of Sandy (the storm, not Alderson) takes place tomorrow at Citi Field; details here.
• David Cone lends his mixology talents to storm relief at Foley’s Thursday night; details here.
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