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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Jason Fry on 16 September 2012 10:24 am Apologies to anyone who wanted a late-night recitation of Metly things — your correspondent fell asleep somewhere between the conclusion of the game and the beginning of the chronicling.
Honestly, it was the proper reaction to the one of the longer, more pedestrian, less elegant baseball games you’ll see: terrible pitching, bad baserunning, lousy fielding. Particularly in right field, where Norichika Aoki was oddly insistent on playing right field practically in the corner by the foul pole — the same approximate point where you kept seeing VALDESPIN 1 as our right fielder chased yet another ball exploring the limits of Miller Park. I sometimes muse that come January I’d pay a good chunk of money to watch any baseball game, but I think I’d pass that one up even with three feet of snow outside. My word, to quote Keith Hernandez.
Keith and Gary had fun at least — they generally do — though depressingly little of it was related to baseball. At one point Keith was chattering merrily along about a bunch of books he’d just bought, and I really thought the broadcast was about to turn into an earnest discussion of the Marshall Plan and scholarship about it. It would have been preferable.
If you want bright spots for the Mets, I suppose you could count an Ike Davis homer, more solid hitting from Daniel Murphy, and signs of life from Lucas Duda. Though, really, I suspect the Ike homer is the only thing actually of note. Bobby Ojeda discussed it in the postgame (it’s one of my final evening memories before the “nap” that ate the night), but a lot of what’s ailed Ike during a very strange season could just be rust — the rust of a season that was lost and then followed by a less-than-full spring training. As we get to know Ike, it’s becoming apparent that we’ll always have to live with his flailing at off-speed pitches on the outer half and his self-defeating Grote-esque insurgency against the wickedness of umpires. He can make up for that if he’s reasonably productive otherwise and returns to his early consistency at first base, where his soft hands, long reach and calm demeanor have done wonders for all his infielders but most particularly David Wright. Every game gets Ike closer to shaking off the cobwebs of a lost year, so so much the better.
Murphy and Duda? I find it hard to believe their evolution as players has that much further to run. Murph has worked enormously hard to make himself into an adequate second baseman, which here isn’t meant as a disparaging term — he’s come a long way despite no natural knack for the position, full-bore media and fan pressure and the memory of two seasons ruined by knee injuries. A lot of people didn’t think he could do it; he did. But for all that, his defense probably tops out at so-so, and his moderate power of a few years back has disappeared. He’s a few degrees shy of Dan Uggla at a position where you want defensively challenged players to at least be Dan Uggla. Still, with this franchise needing a Marshall Plan of its own (and a treasury to fund it), Murph is the least of our worries. Good teams figure out how to solve Daniel Murphy’s shortcomings; bad teams are glad they have his strengths.
Lucas Duda, on the other hand, is a mess. He can’t play any outfield position, he’s blocked at first base, and as I’ve discussed before, he doesn’t seem to be one of those players who can blithely keep adding runs with his bat while not worrying about subtracting them with his glove, as Dick Stuart and Pedro Guerrero could. When he’s right, Duda has both tremendous power and a discerning eye for the strike zone — but I don’t think he’s going to be right until he’s a first baseman or a designated hitter. I suspect he’ll be traded over the winter in an underwhelming package, then thrive in another uniform. We’ll carp and complain, without remembering that a) his defensive worries had hurt his offense, diminishing his trade value and b) he wasn’t going to do any of that good stuff for us, unfortunately.
Finally, there’s Jenrry Mejia. His outing was a disaster — too many walks, too few missed bats — but the victory was simply being on the field. Garbage time is pretty useless for assessments, but it was made for players such as Mejia — zero-pressure settings in which they can get innings and experience with an eye toward reducing the learning curve when it will matter. Mejia ia still awfully young and has talent. Let him pitch, leave him alone and never, ever say the name “Jerry Manuel” or “Omar Minaya” if he’s within earshot.
Oh, and the game was briefly interrupted by a giant, masterfully folded paper airplane that soared over the field and came to rest near a bemused Murphy. You shouldn’t ever throw things on the field, but once in a very great a grudging exception to the rule — we’ll call it the Michael Sergio Exemption — can be allowed. Murph removed the airplane with a certain careful appreciation for its craft, handing it to a Brewers employee who took it away rather gently.
So it really is true that if you watch baseball faithfully, on a given night you might see something you’ve never seen before. My word.
by Jason Fry on 15 September 2012 1:57 am So this simultaneously struck a chord and was no fun at all. What might improve things?
1) Make a date to see Knuckleball! It’s a terrific movie — a smart, sweet baseball valentine, and a wonderful character study of our own R.A. Dickey, Tim Wakefield and their forerunners as knuckleballers — Phil Niekro, Charlie Hough, Wilbur Wood, Tom Candiotti and Jim Bouton. Plus it uses footage running backwards to heartbreaking effect. (But don’t worry — only once.) I caught an early screening this week; the documentary by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg opens Sept. 20 at the IFC Center right here in New York. Don’t miss it.
2) Because you can never get enough R.A., read this by Emma Span. Emma gets a lot of things that go missing in a lot of the Dickey narratives, such as his insane competitiveness and the fact that he’s very far removed from your “typical” let-go-and-let-God knuckleballer. Plus I loved R.A.’s thoughts on a female knuckleballer: Anne Dickey is as much as hero of Knuckleball! as her husband is, and towards the end of the movie we see R.A. playing catch with his daughter. Hey, wouldn’t that be something? Please make her a Met!
3) Read this post by Howard Megdal. Howard’s superb reporting was referenced in my depressing post; in his gracious response, he notes that he still finds joy taking his daughter to Citi Field, and suggests I do the same with my son, whose faith may be wavering but should still enjoy a night at the ballpark. And in fact that’s exactly what I’m doing; Joshua and I will be there Monday night.
4) Read this post by our own Greg Prince. It’s about Ed, who was born to be a Mets fan but found his birthright delayed == but not denied. Welcome, Ed! L’shanah tovah indeed!
5) Whaddya know? The Mets actually won one! David Wright got two hits, moving him within eight of passing Ed Kranepool. Jonathon Niese pitched well, overcoming the Brewers, Larry Vanover’s magical strike zone and his own sometimes less-than-enthusiastic interest in his craft. Lucas Duda hit a home run; so did Daniel Murphy. And Murph and Ruben Tejada combined for one of the niftiest double plays of the year.
by Greg Prince on 14 September 2012 12:20 pm To paraphrase the sentiments first expressed on the cusp of the Great Depression by folk musician Blind Alfred Reed, how can a Mets fan stand such times and live? The Mets rarely win after the All-Star break; they never win at Citi Field; they haven’t won more than they’ve lost in four years; they haven’t won anything of substance in six years; they haven’t won a league championship in 12 years; they haven’t won a World Championship in 26 years; there is no undeniably reassuring indicator at this 65-78 juncture in time that they will win anything ever again. And that’s just the on-the-field picture.
Yet we’re still Mets fans. We may reach bending points but our spirit generally doesn’t break. At worst, we recede from the ever-mounting wreckage when it threatens to topple onto our battered and bruised psyches, and even then not so far away from it that we’re incapable of being pulled back into the daily Met orbit at the first sign of semi-legitimate encouragement. It feels like a curse in this fourth consecutive barren September, but come April, I swear it will feel like a blessing.
Why? Because we root for the Mets. We prefer success, yet we don’t root for it under any given name. We root for the Mets to succeed because that’s who we are. In a sense, we root for ourselves when we root for the Mets — we root for an intermingling of those two entities who have so effectively if mystifyingly become one in our souls.
And sometimes we root for the Mets fan we might have been.
You would wonder who besides small children who’ve yet to discover standings would suddenly take wholeheartedly to this team in its current state of competitive disarray. Who would decide in 2012 to engage, let alone embrace a franchise that its longest-time, most diehard fans can barely stand to face 19 more times before its current edition crumples up and blows away?
I found somebody who can tell me.
His name is Ed, a demographic contemporary of mine, and he has a different kind of story than I’m used to hearing. Ed wrote to me from South Florida last week ostensibly to tell me he liked my book, which was kind of him. I enjoy receiving those sorts of notes (what writer wouldn’t?), but what made his stand out was why he liked my book. It wasn’t because, as I’ve been told a number of times, that my story of being a Mets fan was a stand-in for the reader’s story of being a Mets fan. It was because Ed hadn’t been a Mets fan — should’ve been, could’ve been, but wasn’t.
Here’s Ed with the explanation.
I was born the same year as you in Brooklyn. When you turned 6, you discovered the Mets and became a fan. When I was nearing 6, my father died. Our family moved to Florida, and because of the weirdness of my mom, we were not allowed to talk about my father or life in New York, and we were cut off from my father’s family. I harbored memories of my father and what life would have been like had he not died. Specifically, I thought I would have come to know and love sports had my father not died, both as a player (although how good could I have been being Jewish?) and as a fan.
I was never interested much in sports. However, recently I have been reviewing my life and found out that my father was a Mets fan. I realized as I was approaching 48 years old (and finally in therapy) that I could just dive in and feel a link to my past and my father. So a Mets fan (me) was born 42 years after the fact. It was like you were going back in time to get me at 6 years old, taking me by the hand, and leading me through Mets history so that I could join them in the present.
That the present happens to be 2012 when the Mets have tumbled from a modestly promising start to a horrifyingly familiar finish hasn’t mattered to Ed. How could it to someone who just experienced two thrilling World Series wins for the first time? Who just discovered Shea Stadium, a building he never entered, yet for which he now feels a “great loss”? Who, after more than four decades of tragic remove, sees in a baseball team “my past, lost family, a chance to reconnect” and cherishes a “link to my father and a past I never had…I still get a bit choked up watching the Mets play no matter how they are doing, and I have been watching a lot thinking about my father. It is in my blood, even though I didn’t realize it until recently.”
The link was locked in on Sunday, September 2, when Ed and his wife attended the third game of the Mets’ three-game sweep at Marlins Park. It was the first game of his life. Now, at last, “I was part of their history.” And his role in their history will continue on October 3 in Miami, when — in kinship with his perennial Game 81 brethren and sistren in Queens — he will attend Closing Day. “I have tickets to the Mets’ last regular game of the season,” he says. “Whatever happens, it is going to be a great game.”
And when he’s not at the ballpark, Ed stokes his passion via digital device (“thank G-d for MLB TV which lets me watch the Mets almost anywhere they play”) and wears his passion on his head.
Ever since I have discovered my connection to the Mets, I almost always wear a Mets ball cap. It is amazing how many people talk to me about the Mets: anything from a “Let’s Go Mets” to conversations about families, personal history, etc. A guy in a local store even told me that his father was a secret Mets fan and that he wouldn’t admit it to anyone. Down here in Florida, one doesn’t see too many Mets hats and the Yankees fans seem to far outweigh the Mets fans. But like I tell them, it’s easy to be a Yankees fan.
Ed adds that he has taken to wearing his Mets cap to shul for services instead of a yarmulke. I’m not sure if he’ll keep to that particular kippa for the upcoming High Holy Days, but anything that gets the Mets closer to a Higher place than fourth couldn’t hurt.
Speaking of temples, Ed plans on making his first pilgrimage to Citi Field next season, and I plan to be there to greet him, to show him the Shea Stadium bases and, if he likes, to stroll on over to Flushing Meadows Corona Park with him so he can have a close-up look at the Unisphere, a.k.a. “the huge globe from the World’s Fair” he remembers his family driving by so many times but never saw up close. Of course I’ve been looking over the just-released 2013 schedule and I’ve been getting preliminarily excited about the coming year even as I struggle between wanting to be rid of the current one and reflexively not wanting it to go away so soon, no matter its epic lousiness. This hasn’t been the best year to be a Mets fan, but as Ed from Florida has had the serendipitous timing to remind me as I’m immersed in its day-to-day defeats, there’s never truly a bad year to be a Mets fan.
How could there be? You’re a Mets fan.
As far as a pennant goes, as you have said: there is always next season. But regardless, it is still our team, there is spring training, farm leagues, and then the regular season coming up. And this round, I will be there from the beginning.
L’shanah tovah, you might hear in the days ahead. It means for a good year.
by Jason Fry on 13 September 2012 12:33 am I’m at my low point as a Mets fan.
It seems crazy to say it, but I really think it might be true.
There have been disasters before, of course.
I became a Mets fan in 1976, not knowing the team was about 14 months from becoming the baseball equivalent of North Korea. But I was a child in the late 1970s. I had hope, even if it was a child’s irrational hope. I thought the Joel Youngbloods and Lenny Randles and Craig Swans of the world were the basis of a championship team. I thought we would win the NL East until the math said we could not. I’m glad I thought such things at the time, because my fandom might never have taken root if I’d known better.
I was a Mets fan in the early 1990s, when sour free agent signees threw quarter-sticks of dynamite at children and Dallas Green watched the horrors on the field with his mouth hanging open. But that team had money. The horrible free agents got traded and money was spent more wisely and by 1995 there were reasons to hope.
I was a Mets fan in the early 2000s, when Mike Piazza was asked to play first base and Jason Phillips was allowed to play baseball. But that team had money. It eventually was able to escape its own mistakes, and by the mid-2000s there was hope.
I’m a Mets fan now. The team is horrible. It’s astonishingly horrible night after night after night. The stat’s being repeated ad nauseum, but it deserves to be: Since the break the Nationals and Braves both have more wins at Citi Field than the Mets do. No one can catch, no one can play the outfield, and no one can hit. The team is an embarrassment off the field too, so craven and corporate that it won’t even stand up to MLB suits in defense of its own admirable homegrown tradition about honoring local heroes by wearing their caps during one game a year.
None of this is any fun, but how is this disaster different than previous disasters? Because this time there is no money.
For Exhibit A, consider David Wright. What we’re hearing right now through the media is an almost note-by-note re-enactment of the Jose Reyes drama, in which the Mets said blandly hopeful things and then let their star shortstop go to another team. I said then and I maintain now that letting Reyes go was the right thing to do — the Marlins’ contract was insane, and a pretend offer from the Mets wouldn’t have made me feel any better. But Wright is different — not just a more valuable player but also the face of the franchise, or at least the only bit of star wattage left. And the Mets are making the same noises, forcing poor Sandy Alderson to mouth reassurances while others offer evasions and non-answers to rudimentary questions about payroll.
Losing Reyes was sad but understandable; losing Wright would be both symbolic and symptomatic.
The Mets’ ownership escaped a death sentence in the Madoff affair, but they seem to have crawled away from it bleeding out instead of decapitated. At least that’s how I now read the state of affairs — that Howard Megdal has been right all along, even while saying things I didn’t want to believe. Really, the tipoff should have been the team’s typically amateur-hour effort to smear and disenfranchise Megdal: The Mets are never more shrill and self-righteous than when someone has revealed a truth they wanted to keep hidden.
In the absence of even vague candor from ownership, the Mets’ strategy seems to be to tread water next year while they clear the Omarpalooza contracts of Jason Bay and Johan Santana, sign Wright and R.A. Dickey to 2014 deals, and build around those two players and pitching prospects such as Matt Harvey, Zach Wheeler and Jeurys Familia. But even that relatively meager plan depends on a whole lot going right. And I don’t think enough of it will.
Harvey certainly looks very impressive, but prospects have a way of turning into suspects. Go check the price of a Paul Wilson rookie card if you don’t know what I mean. And even if the Mets do get good results from their young arms, what about the rest of the team? What about the spaghetti-against-a-wall bullpen? What about the pathetic inability to field a major-league outfield? Harvey was terrific tonight, but it didn’t matter — his feckless teammates did nothing to support him, he lost, and the fans who bothered showing up at all trudged home in misery or apathy. It’s a familiar outcome and sight: 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. And why would you? Harvey has one more start before he’s shut down. Dickey is two wins away from 20, which suddenly seems like an iffy proposition. Those things aside, what possible reason is there to watch this team lose? I’ve often said baseball’s beautiful no matter what, but the baseball played by the Mets for the last nine weeks has been anything but: The team is inept and listless, sometimes aggravating but mostly profoundly boring and unwatchable.
It’s not a new pattern, and it’s killing this team and its fanbase. The Mets’ 2011 second-half collapse and silent offseason hurt their attendance and bottom line this year; the disaster of this year’s second half and another do-nothing winter will hurt 2013’s attendance and bottom line; a season of watching Harvey and Wheeler lose 3-1 and 2-0 games will hurt 2014’s attendance, and in the middle of that year a mountain of debt comes due. (Here’s Howard Megdal again.) If you’re David Wright, why on earth would you sign up for that even if an offer were forthcoming? Why would you choose to grow old unprotected in a lineup of minimally paid has-beens and never-will-bes? If you’re R.A. Dickey, why would you agree to throw to interchangeable terrible catchers and lose 2-0 games when you could win somewhere else?
Over the last month or so watching the Mets has become a chore. For the first time in my life, I find myself thinking that I have other things to do — things that won’t leave me angry or sad. My kid, raised in a rabidly blue and orange household, increasingly doesn’t watch at all. He’d rather read, or play with Legos, or do anything else. I don’t bother arguing — watching Andres Torres once again forget how many outs there are isn’t exactly going to make him back into a fan. Joshua goes to sleep under a framed picture featuring shots of Reyes and Wright. We haven’t replaced the Reyes picture, because who would the replacement be? When Wright is also an anachronism, I suspect the picture will just come down, with no replacement at all.
I know, I know: The end of the 1982 and 1993 and 2003 seasons were just as bleak. But, again: This time there is no money. The plan, to the extent there is one, appears to be more about survival than resurrection. I doubt even that will work. Eventually the math will finally catch up with the Wilpons, Bud Selig will be finally unwilling to extend them another lifeline, and they will sell. But when will that be? 2014, maybe. But what if it’s 2015 or 2016, or later than that? How much more damage will have been done to the franchise? How long will it take to fix it? And will the new owner even care to do so? What’s going to bring my kid back to the fold, to reignite his guttering fandom? And what about me — probably the second-biggest Mets fan you know?
The Mets are caught in something that looks very much like a death spiral, and for the first time in 36 years I find myself wondering whether it would be better not to go down with them.
by Greg Prince on 12 September 2012 1:07 pm In 2003, when Roger Clemens was riding high as a power pitcher throwing hard well beyond his years (somehow), he let it be known when the Hall of Fame came calling for his inevitable membership, he’d insist on going in as a Yankee. If Cooperstown dared portray him as a Red Sock, well, he just wouldn’t show up. He’d have his own party in Texas, screw you Abner Doubleday.
Something happened on the way to guaranteed immortality and now, nine years later, Clemens is trying to pitch in the majors again. He’s been working out his kinks, so to speak, in the Atlantic League, and the current Sugar Land Skeeter may be a Houston Astro by the time this season ends. Nobody’s watching the Astros in their final N.L. weeks (literally), so their new owner figures, what the hell, let’s throw the ol’ Rocket out there and see if anybody will bust down the doors to have a gander at this fifty-year-old freak of nature/chemistry.
But not so fast there, says the fastballer of yore. You can’t start me against just any team, for I am Roger Clemens, delusional sonofabitch who hasn’t thrown a Major League inning in five years, and you must pitch me against a contender, or I won’t play, just as I wasn’t going to come to my own Hall of Fame ceremony in 2009, which it turned out wasn’t the year of my induction because I kept retiring and unretiring and so forth until the Mitchell Report came out.
This is one of the most distasteful men to ever excel in baseball. Still.
Don’t ever give this man a painting of Shea Stadium. Not even a crappy one.
by Greg Prince on 11 September 2012 11:55 pm If R.A. Dickey had counted on the Met offense to act as his Sherpas when he set out to climb Kilimanjaro, he’d still be at base camp.
Tuesday night’s foiled attempt at scaling Win No. 19 goes down instead as Loss No. 5 for Dickey, which isn’t out of line with the reality of the game he threw. He pitched well enough to win until Tyler Moore associate-produced the pinch-homer that turned a 2-1 lead into a 3-2 deficit, at which point it could be said he pitched well enough to need a little help. Dickey was not his sharpest self for segments of seven innings, but he bore down when he could’ve cracked up, and he definitely could’ve been bailed out by a few more supportive swings of Met bats.
Fat chance. It was all the Mets could do to muster two runs (in one inning, no less!), then leave their knuckleballer twisting in the National wind. And that’s no sea breeze. The Nats are a frighteningly good team. R.A. called their lineup highly “functional” and the margin for error against them “minute,” both accurate assessments. Also, I think it’s safe to project that the bloggers of 2030 or thereabouts will spend some September weekend debating whether the Mets should really be presenting a crappy interpretive painting of Citi Field to Bryce Harper considering how he’s been killing us since 2012. No, a win versus these Nationals is not as automatically attainable as a win against these Mets. Yet for the second night in a row, Washington’s starter struggled enough so our fellas could be in position to kick the Nats’ door down.
But the Mets only tap lightly twice.
Jordan Zimmermann lasted five innings and permitted nine baserunners. Though one imagined Justin Turner was arranging his whipped cream pies to celebrate the Mets breaking their month-old one-run-or-less skid in the fifth (I truly hate this club’s “let’s pat each other on the head for doing anything well” culture), the two runs knitted together by Ruben Tejada, Daniel Murphy and David Wright were all they had to show from six hits and three walks . And of course the bottom of the seventh, the Mets’ last chance to give their starter a boost, was like something out of The Sopranos — a big no-show job, that is; there was certainly no National pitching whacked.
The Mets don’t exist to serve R.A. Dickey’s quest for 19 or more wins, let alone his Cy Young candidacy, but geez, what else is there to strive toward with four handfuls of games left? The night had extra bite to it. Every face R.A. made had purpose. Every runner the Mets left stranded had sting. Every chance the Mets let blow by had consequences, even if it was for just one man out of however many guys are on the roster currently. When Moore’s home run took off for distant precincts, I actually heard myself caterwaul as I might have in other, more pressing Septembers. For a couple of hours I forgot the Mets had nothing to play for, perhaps because for a couple of hours the Mets had something to play for.
by Greg Prince on 10 September 2012 11:55 pm I thought it was swell that the Mets told those of us who held rain checks from Saturday’s soggy yet official game against the Braves that we could come back to Citi Field and trade them in for shiny new tickets to Monday night’s game against the Nationals. And I had a half a mind — to use too obvious a straight line to pass up — to take advantage of their goodwill. I wasn’t exactly planning to go see them for a third day in a row but I just kind of assumed my momentum would carry me there. The Mets play, I seem to materialize.
But I couldn’t do it. Could not pull the trigger. Could not bring myself to subject myself to another live and in-person look at them, even though as a Mets fan my default mode is to avail myself of every live and in-person look at them I can get. I mean, c’mon, it’s the Mets game…and it’s free.
Ultimately, it wasn’t free enough. I don’t want to say they would’ve had to have paid me to spend three more hours with the 2012 Mets, but even at a ticket price of $0.00, this wasn’t going to be a cost-effective visit.
Not unless the Mets were going to comp my transportation. And food. And beverage. And mental health coverage.
Yes, I had a half a mind to go see the Mets again Monday night. Thank goodness the other half of my mind stuck up for sanity.
What did I miss by not paying what the Mets of September 2012 are worth when R.A. Dickey isn’t pitching?
• R.A.’s Cy Young rival Gio Gonzalez looking not remotely Dickeyish yet winning handily. He gave the Mets five walks in six innings, and the opportunistic Mets made him pay by…no, actually, Gio, like the Saturday set, didn’t have to pay. The Mets cashed in no opportunities. Scott Hairston hit a solo home run, but by then, Collin McHugh had spotted the Nats five runs, and the score was what it was going to be for the rest of the night, 5-1.
• Kelly Shoppach dropped a foul pop that extended a Kurt Suzuki at-bat long enough to turn it into a home run, which reminded me of an observation I made while sentenced to ten innings of Mets baseball at Citi Field on Sunday: if there is one modern-day player who seems likely to get caught up in a Black Sox-like scandal, my nominee would be Kelly Shoppach. That’s not to say I think he was throwing the game. I don’t think any of our catchers is capable of throwing a game, let alone a baserunner out at second.
• The Ramirii, Elvin and Ramon, were effective, as was Jeurys Familia. I don’t know if their combined four innings of no-hit ball means anything in the scheme of 2013, but good for them. It didn’t do the Mets any good since their batters did nothing to three Nationals relievers for three blankety-blank innings, but the Mets, per Terry Collins’s delusional postgame comments on “positives,” would like us to believe what good we see is good, and the rest can essentially be ignored.
• The Mets tied their mark for uninterrupted home-game offensive futility by not scoring three runs in an eleventh consecutive Queens contest and they came up with something I didn’t even know existed besides: they’ve now gone 106 innings in a row without scoring more than one run in any given Citi Field inning. That’s the worst for any team since 1909, back when catchers probably did drop foul pops per arrangements with the gambling community. What’s the 2012 Mets’ excuse?
• Official attendance was a shade less than 22,000, presumably including the tens and tens of Saturday tickets exchanged for Monday. Based on the photos I saw online and the wide shots from the center field camera on SNY, I wish to congratulate the Mets’ official attendance counter on submitting the winning entry for this year’s Pulitzer Prize for distinguished fiction by an American author. If R.A. doesn’t win the Cy Young, at least we’ll have that.
by Greg Prince on 9 September 2012 8:55 pm The first predictable part was the Mets scoring no more than three runs Sunday, a total they haven’t exceeded in their own ballpark since Robert Moses wore short pants, a span covering their three most recent Citi Field series (and, presumably, the late Robert Moses’s legs). They scored two, extending the frayed string in question to ten games, or one shy of the record for such things. Twice in their history, the Mets have scored no more than three runs in eleven consecutive home games. I could note the years those streaks occurred, but really, when you start invoking these sorts of anti-achievements, it all kind of speaks for itself.
The other predictable part was the Mets scoring one fewer run than their opponents Sunday, in this case the Braves. The Mets lost to the Braves. It took ten innings, but they stayed consistent. They lost all weekend to the Braves. They lost before and after frightful weather on Saturday and they lost in beautiful weather Sunday. They lost Friday, too. They’ve been losing to the Braves like crazy since opening the season by sweeping them and getting us giddy with a 3-0 start. Perhaps they lulled us into a premature state of euphoria. Bastards!
The unpredictable part was Chipper Jones got himself a pretty decent hand for his cameo appearances Sunday from a fan base conditioned to detest him. Fredi Gonzalez, killjoy extraordinaire, kept Chipper from the starting lineup because he (Gonzalez, that is) is a tightass with zero sense of occasion, but did deign to send No. 10 out with the lineup card, which rewarded the observant fan with the chance to reward The Enemy with a ripple of recognition. It was all very sweet, two No. 10s (Chipper joined by Terry Collins) shaking hands heartily at home plate — that’s where the runs score, in case the Mets have forgotten — and the two of them posing for pictures with the four umpires. Later, Chipper pinch-walked and was greeted kindly just for coming to the plate and then warmly for getting his ass the hell off first base when Gonzalez inserted the currently far more villainous Reed Johnson in his place. True to my plan, I stood, I applauded appreciatively, I booed instinctively, I sat and I LAR-RY’d throughout Chipper’s final moments with us and felt perfectly clean for the effort. Johnson didn’t score, thus I judge my acknowledgement of a Metsian-tinged legend and Hall of Famer to be worth it.
And that was basically Sunday’s game. While waiting in vain for Mets runs and inevitably for Braves runs and curiously for Chipper sightings, Kevin from Flushing and I (each wearing our 1999 playoff shirts in honor of the impending deChipperization of the vicinity) passed the time wondering, among myriad other things, which current Mets player was most likely to fall for the hidden ball trick. Then we switched our focus to which current Mets player was most likely to not fall for the hidden ball trick because we decided that basically every current Mets player is quite capable of falling for the hidden ball trick. We eventually exempted Ruben Tejada from our consensus that we’re not generally blessed with fundamentally sound players.
Sunday’s player of the game? Not adieu-bidding Chipper Jones, not homer/sac fly practitioner Brian McCann (bastard!), not freakishly effective Johnny Venters (three strikes to Ike to end the sixth, four pitches to Duda, Turner and Torres to eviscerate the seventh, and that was with Duda singling), but the guy in the Jets jersey who defied LIRR illogic and held the door to the Babylon train open at Jamaica long enough so those of us who were transferring could board. See, there’s a Long Beach train from Woodside that gets to Jamaica in time to allow you on the Babylon train that’s right freaking there across the platform, but the LIRR pretends the connection doesn’t exist and lets that Babylon train pull away from you so it can make you stand around and wait for the next Babylon train. And while you wait, you can stew over how the Mets never score more than three runs at home and how your 2012 record has plunged from 8-2 as of June 3 to 10-12 as of September 9…though that sounds about right, considering the Mets have lost 19 of their last 23 home games and it’s highly unlikely any loyal spectator’s 2012 Mets record is any good of late.
But the Jets guy held the door to the Babylon train and I slipped in and got home around 5:30 instead of around 6 o’clock…which may not sound like much, but neither is a three-run maximum. So ya take what can ya get on losing Sundays like these.
by Greg Prince on 8 September 2012 11:35 pm 1) It appears impossible to all but give away tickets to a Mets game in September, and that includes trying to all but give away tickets to people outside Citi Field who seem determined to go to the Mets game about to be played. Saturday afternoon was my annual Mets game with Jeff from Washington who, as a result of a communications snafu with another member of our game-going group, got stuck with two extras. First he just wanted face value for his trouble. Then he was willing to settle for two-for-one. Some guy on the gameday ticket line thought what Jeff was asking was too much, even though he was in line for tickets that would plainly cost more. Somebody else thought Jeff was trying to pull a fast one by making the same offer, leading to one of the great unintentional setups of all time from my friend the lawyer who works comedy clubs in his off hours:
“I’m not some sleazy guy — I’m an attorney!”
He got stuck with the extras.
2) How sad is it that every September since Citi Field opened reminds you how alone you are as a Mets fan who is excited to attend a Mets game at Citi Field? I still can’t get over how something that’s such a headline attraction on Opening Day devolves into a surefire punchline by September, and that’s with taking into account how perennially bad the Mets are by September. Yes, the Mets lost to the Braves, 11-3. Yes, they appear destined for a fourth consecutive sub-.500 finish and yes, it will likely be only the incompetence of the Marlins that clinches them a fourth consecutive fourth-place finish, but it’s still the Mets and it’s still the game of baseball and it’s still summer technically and the Mets offer deals and non-sleazy attorneys are practically giving away tickets…yet it seems laughable that anyone would actually want to go.
What also seemed laughable was how on Friday night, when Stephanie and I joined Jeff and a couple of friends for dinner after Jeff killed at his New York club date (that is to say he was very funny, not that he committed a felony), we had to go to extreme lengths in order to get a waiter to find a remote control for the restaurant’s TV and change the channel to SNY after repeated requests. Jeff thought our diehard attempts to watch the Mets swing and miss against Atlanta would make for a good story. I’ll bet the waiter had a better story:
“You’ll never guess what some customers kept asking for Friday night!”
3) In his killer act, Jeff tells jokes about being a dad. What he doesn’t mention is what a good dad he is…what a good Mets dad he is. We’re in the team store on his one and only trip to Citi Field this year, and we’re inspecting the player-number t-shirts. Jeff whips out one of his phones (he’s like Walter White carrying multiple cells) and calls his youngest son at college.
“You want a Matt Harvey t-shirt? No? OK, bye.”
After hanging up, I’m told he was told, “He has ‘enough Mets shirts.’” Then he grabs HARVEY 33 by the hanger. “I’m getting it for him anyway.”
Inspired — by both Jeff and HARVEY — I get off the fence and ante up for the very same shirt I’d been putting off purchasing for three homestands, deciding I wanted to have some skin (or fabric) in the game where future Mets success is concerned…though as soon as I brought it to the counter, I could feel myself investing in WILSON 32 in 1996 and not knowing what to do with it by 1998.
Except player-number Met t-shirts weren’t so readily available back then. But if I’d seen a WILSON 32, trust me, I would’ve gone for it.
4) The Mets’ second-half MVP of 2012 is clearly Pat LaFrieda. Just about every game I’ve gone to in the past five weeks has involved somebody asking, “Is the steak sandwich really that good?” Try for yourself is all I can advise. Jeff joined the club Saturday. He feared a long line. But this is September at Citi Field; the only lines in evidence are adjacent to first and third bases. No line for Pat. Too many onions for Jeff. Oh well.
5) It was Sterling Awards day, a good chance to get our eyes checked…oh wait, that’s Sterling Optical. Well, it was a good day to get our hopes unchecked as Howie Rose boomed with enthusiasm as the Future Stars of the Mets jumped from the back pages of the official yearbook to be recognized in a pregame ceremony that drew the riveted attention of absolutely nobody. Again, a paradox. Your hardcore Mets fan (and who the bleep else is at one of these September games?) salivates over “prospects” like they’re Pat LaFrieda steak sandwiches, but when a fistful are paraded before us for our perusal, nobody really looks. Granted, Zack Wheeler in a suit is less interesting than Zack Wheeler on a mound, but there he is, getting his award for being the best Binghamton Met of 2012 and it doesn’t cost any extra to pay him a little mind.
Yet the crowd went mild. Jeff and I clapped for our future. Few others did. They could have been handing Pat Cawley the State Farm Agent of the Day award for all the buzz that was being generated. No way a Wheeler could look at a stadium about one-tenth filled and one one-hundredth engaged and think, “Wow, this is the big leagues!” He said something to that effect in an interview, but how could their reception not be underwhelming to him or to overall Sterling Player of the Year Wilmer Flores or to whomever else they selected either on merit or out of a desire to pump up trade value.
In the minutes before a September Mets game at Citi Field, Flushing is little more than a big Binghamton.
6) Add to those things that seem larger in theory than September Citi Field reality the reception accorded Chipper Jones amid the second part of his final Sheatropolitan Area visit. First AB: light applause, playful booing, one Laaarrryyy!!! (mine). Second AB: same, except less so and I didn’t bother with the Laaarrryyy!!! And so on. Nobody cares about anything when your team is losing and you’re struck by the sensation of being an oddball at a Mets game versus being a “normal person” anywhere else.
Of course when I overheard two guys on the inbound 7 train mention they were going to the U.S. Open and, implicitly, not the Mets game, I grumbled what I always grumble to myself whenever I learn somebody could be at a Mets game but isn’t:
“WHO CARES ABOUT TENNIS/FOOTBALL/LIFE? THE METS ARE PLAYING!”
True, I’m reaching the point where I don’t believe I’m grumbling such things, but I still do it anyway.
7) One of the incessant, bleating, between-innings announcements that finally drove me to comment after hearing it 20 times previously this season was that we should come to McFadden’s later for the “legendary” postgame party.
The postgame party at McFadden’s qualifies as “legendary”? You mean the stuff of legend? Like generations gathered around campfires recalling in trembling voices the time that dude ordered that Coors Light? How cut-rate have our legends become?
1969 is a legend. 1986 is a legend. McFadden’s is a bar from which you can’t re-enter the ballpark.
8) Inevitably, it rained. Common sense came pouring down in buckets over Section 526 (where there had been plenty of good seats available). The annual game dissolved. Our party of eight — including two children who seem to understand the Mets aren’t very good but, bless their adorable souls, aren’t much moved by that unpleasant fact — scattered. After a round of goodbyes to Jeff and everybody else, I actually lingered at Citi Field for the first 15 or 20 minutes of the rain delay. At first it was to time my escape optimally between the briefly torrential precipitation and my train at Woodside, but then, as the rain slackened, it was to wonder whether I should stick around and soak up the final three innings by myself, whenever they were to be presented.
I walked the perimeter of the covered portion of Field Level, stepped around small knots of Tomahawking Braves fans (dopes, obviously, but oh to be fired up about something besides steak sandwiches), ruminated on how there aren’t many innings left, how I’d yearn to be here in winter, how it’s the Mets and baseball and all that…and I made an executive decision to get the fudge out of Dodge. Losing 8-2, about to be 19-35 between July 8 and September 8, carrying no hint of a promising immediate future except for the HARVEY 33 in my bag, that sentimental crap wasn’t going to cut it.
I left through the Rotunda, checked Twitter and saw an approximate (if ultimately overly optimistic) restart time listed. “Damn,” I thought. “Did I do the right thing?”
Yeah. Sometimes ya just gotta accept it’s not quite your day at the ballpark. Just ask the team that’s lost 35 of 54.
9) What should appear on the TV at the Jamaica station Air Bar (an oasis of civility designed to serve Air Train customers yet they let mere LIRR types like me loiter) but a resumption of the game I left? It was the top of the seventh and there was Jeurys Familia and I was ever so slightly kicking myself for missing his Citi Field debut despite the ticket in my pocket that indicated I was there. The satellite feed delivered a jumpy picture and Familia surrendered three straight hits, but I — and nobody else — watched him just about get out of his mess. I was so immersed in Familia meeting his challenge that I almost forgot I had a train to catch.
By the time I was on the train, with my earbuds plugged into my trusty, low-tech pocket radio, I learned Familia gave up a key hit and now it was 10-2. I stopped kicking myself.
10) I was home in time for the ninth inning, which was about as discouraging as the previous eight. Terry Collins used six relievers behind the spectacularly ineffective Jeremy Hefner. With Chris Young pitching Sunday, I worried for three seconds that the bullpen wouldn’t be well-rested enough to pick up for Young when he bails after five. Then I stopped worrying and began laughing internally as much I laughed externally at Jeff’s act Friday night, because with the Mets nine games under .500 and 21 games out of first place, WHO CARES who pitches after Chris Young tomorrow?!?!?!?
Still, I watched down to the final out on Fox and then flipped to SNY for the postgame show because I so hoped Terry would tear his team a new a-hole — or any hole, really. But Terry did no such thing. He just sat with his arms folded and fielded softballs about how not terrible Lucas Duda looks lately. I guess the manager figures his team has enough holes as is.
11) I’m going to Sunday’s game to acknowledge Chipper from Atlanta and to hang with Kevin from Flushing and to be the creature of habit that four consecutive hollow Septembers haven’t prevented me from remaining. And I could turn my rain-soaked ticket from Saturday in for a complimentary admission for Monday because the Mets are just that gracious and, one presumes, Citi Field looms as just that empty. The sick, sad part is I’m kind of thinking about it.
I mean if the Mets can’t give away a Mets ticket to me, what’s the point of there being Mets games the rest of this year?
by Jason Fry on 7 September 2012 11:55 pm The interesting part of the first game of Chipper Jones’s farewell to Citi Field and Mets fans? It was over long before the teams took the field. The Mets lost, 3-0, doing absolutely nothing with bats in their hands. The pitching was good — Jon Niese and Jenrry Mejia made a bad pitch each, and Bobby Parnell got betrayed by his defense — but they had nothing to work with. It was a dull, grinding, boring game. Forget kids going free to Mets games in September — by rights the team should have paid any Mets fan who stuck this one out for nine innings instead of opting for any of about 50 million better ways to spend a Friday night in New York City.
As for Chipper, he was candid and interesting (for an athlete) in his press conference, as he generally is. The Wilpons gave him a painting of Shea that wasn’t really my thing (not that anyone cares, or should), but was a nice gesture and no doubt will brighten up a few square feet of wall somewhere in one of the Jones manses.
I don’t get the hue and cry about the Mets doing something for Chipper as part of his farewell tour. Lots of other teams have given him gifts, acknowledging a generation’s worth of fine baseball from a remarkable player. The fact that Chipper’s exploits did the Mets a fair amount of harm shouldn’t exclude them from this ritual.
Look, Chipper put together a Hall of Fame career playing for one team. Such players have traditionally been accorded accolades as they visit cities for the last time — Carl Yastrzemski and Robin Yount and Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken got such tours, to name a few. Other teams would never do that for a Met? Sure they would — if a Met put together a Cooperstown career wearing nothing but blue and orange, which has never happened. I don’t mind Chipper getting a painting. I wouldn’t mind recognition beyond that from the Mets.
Yes, the sight of Chipper’s Joker grin will burn forever in the minds of those who were Mets fans in the late 1990s. (How did he get the corners of his mouth to go completely vertical, anyway?) Sure, he said that thing about Mets fans going home for the World Series and putting their Yankees gear on. Yep, he made our lives a living hell tons of times. And OK, he did name his kid Shea.
But Chipper was never a boorish thug and a flash-in-the-pan talent like John Rocker. When he said or did something provocative, he was at least clever. And on the field he did what he was supposed to do, as a guy wearing the other team’s uniform. If you’re any kind of baseball fan, years ago you probably started admiring the player while still hating what he did to us.
Unfortunately, I can’t be there Sunday, for what presumably will be Chipper’s last at-bat before a Mets crowd. But I wish I could be. If I were there for that final AB, I’d give Chipper a standing ovation — for his Cooperstown career, for his long run of service to one and only one team, for being a worthy adversary, and because in a weird way I’ll miss not having him around to boo and dread.
With Chipper gone, the great era of the Mets-Braves rivalry will be finally, officially over. That era was mostly marked by glory for them and dismay for us, it’s true. But goodness, what a time to be a Mets fan. Those were electric days, and some of my greatest memories of Mets fandom came from them — Mike Piazza’s exclamation point in the 10-run inning, Olerud ending the Mets agony against Maddux, the Grand Slam single, the first home game after 9/11. Today, in these diminished days of meager payrolls and meek surrenders to MLB bureaucrats, such memories burn brightly. Chipper’s departure will only reinforce that those days are gone.
And if I could be there, having applauded with all that going through my head I’d then take my seat and cheer desperately for whatever Met was standing on the mound to get Chipper Jones out.
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