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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 24 August 2012 2:50 am “Pack it up. Pack it in.” Those are the words that usually play over the Citi Field loudspeakers when the Mets’ best player comes to bat. I’ve noticed the song before but was never quite moved to put the lyrics into proper context until Thursday, when I sat again through nine gnawing innings at the house of pain and watched the Rockies anesthetize the Mets for a fourth straight game — or would the proper term here be euthanize?
No, because the Mets have yet to be put out of their or our misery. They owe their fellow National Leaguers 37 chances to get their momentum on against them. It worked wonders for the Rockies, who didn’t look like world-beaters in effecting their four-game sweep, but they weren’t taking on the world. They were taking on the Mets. All they had to do was wait out another superb starting pitching performance and…that was basically it.
Let’s review:
• Monday night, R.A. Dickey throws seven innings of one-run, three-hit ball. Mets lose, 3-1.
• Tuesday night, Chris Young begins his evening by throwing five perfect innings. Mets lose, 6-2.
• Wednesday night, Matt Harvey strikes out nine while giving up one run and three hits over six innings. Mets lose, 5-2.
• And on Thursday afternoon, a beautiful day for a ballgame if only the Mets had decided to take part in one, a young fellow named Collin McHugh made his major league debut, shut out Colorado for seven innings on two hits while striking out nine. Mets lose, 1-0.
To be fair, the Mets were facing Christy Mathewson, Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax and Randy Johnson, which would explain why they scraped together only five runs over four days.
Correction: the Mets were facing Alex White, Jhoulys Chacin, Jeff Francis and Tyler Chatwood, which didn’t really seem to have anything to do with the Mets’ inability to score. Those guys — none sporting a remotely impressive WHIP or ERA+ in 2012, could have been any guys Jim Tracy picked up outside the Flushing Home Depot for a day’s work. The Mets who weren’t Dickey, Young, Harvey and McHugh conducted themselves across four games as if they’d packed it up, packed it in and prepared to jump on the first plane to their autumnal hunting and fishing trips.
McHugh looked very solid, albeit against the Rockies, who somehow have a worse record than the Mets, but men with bats are men with bats, and those men wearing the purple tops (which always appear blue on television) didn’t do a thing with the kid. Conversely, the Mets apparently did a few things with Chatwood, Adam Ottavino, Rex Brothers, Will Harris and Matt Belisle, though they were only commendable in the version of baseball in which getting to second base — as a Met did in seven of nine innings — is considered an outstanding achievement. Perhaps Coach Terry is handing out self-esteem ribbons for advancing 180 feet, but the rules by which everybody else plays dictate trips to third and home are prerequisites for success, and the Mets opted not to visit either of those sites Thursday.
The defense, this time in the guise of second baseman Jordany Valdespin in center field, committed its customary lapse; the bullpen, represented by hard-throwing liability Bobby Parnell, found a way to not hold the fort; and Terry Collins undermined what tiny chance of redemption his group had by calling for a sacrifice bunt in the ninth inning because the Mets can easily afford to give up outs. Baserunning was also abominable, as admirable Mike Baxter, whom we promise to ply with pilsner in the offseason, staggered tipsily between first and second on a fly ball just tricky enough to trick him into an out.
All this sizzling 1-0 action took 190 minutes to complete, which gave me plenty of time to engage in baseball and sundry conversation with fellow blogger Sam Maxwell on my right and award-winning photographer Sharon Chapman on my left while we occupied a shady swath of seats out in left field. It was midday human contact I surely appreciated (just as I enjoyed my time with several swell Mets fans Monday and Tuesday nights), but I really wouldn’t have minded a little yappus interruptus so we could ooh and aah at some Met home runs. Or run-scoring hits of any kind. Or runs generated by any means necessary. Or maybe a first-and-third situation.
There was none of that. Just a canyon of zeroes accompanied by the steadiest of dull aches.
by Greg Prince on 23 August 2012 2:42 am There are several numerical ways to flesh out the state of the Mets after Wednesday night’s rerun of Tuesday night, which was a carbon copy of Monday night (assuming that creepy dude from W.B. Mason still sells carbon paper), which wasn’t materially different from Sunday afternoon’s defeat, if you can remember back that far in this abysmal blur of a second half. The differentiator most recently was Matt Harvey’s tough, brilliant, faultless six innings of nine-strikeout pitching. No other Met meaningfully distinguished himself. The Mets lost, 5-2, after losing, 6-2, after losing, 3-1, after losing, 5-2.
Or you could say they’re losing, 19-7, and will likely resume losing at 1:10 this afternoon.
The Mets have lost 28 of their last 39 games, just about all of them by a score of 5-2, or so it seems. Their last comparable extended stretch of second-half futility occurred in 2009, the year when everybody was seriously injured or spectacularly inept, occasionally both. They stumbled to 27 losses in 37 games at one point. The 2004 Mets lost 29 times in 40 games down what others would call the stretch but what we recall as the last days of Art Howe.
That’s the company your 2012 Mets are keeping right now. Also, the Houston Astros. That is to say that unless there is a dramatic reversal of fortunes, the Mets and the ’Stros will go down as the only two National League teams to have not compiled a winning record over any of the last four seasons. With the welcome ascension of the Pirates and the unstoppable surge of the Nationals, everybody else will have had at least one 162-game span of competence in the current quadrennium. But nobody from the Expansion Class of 1962.
The bullpen has at least a little something to do with the Mets’ tragic number for ensuring a fourth consecutive non-winning campaign is suddenly 14. Here’s something to chew on that — unlike Tums but like the Mets — will give you no relief: The Mets have eight pitchers on their books in 2012 with ERAs over 6. Some are no longer here, some are very much here, some of the samples are thankfully small, but each pitcher in question did his worst to contribute to the damage:
• Frank Francisco: 6.42
• Elvin Ramirez: 7.30
• Robert Carson: 7.36
• D.J. Carrasco: 7.36
• Manny Acosta: 8.39
• Pedro Beato: 10.38
• Chris Schwinden: 12.46
• Garrett Olson: 108.00
Schwinden absorbed most of his blows in two starts, and Olson’s three-digit earned run average was compiled in all of one-third of an inning, but when you’re talking 12.46 and 108.00, the moment for niceties has passed. Speaking of which, after Francisco raised his ERA from 6.06 Wednesday night, he took his frustrations out by hurling a Gatorade cooler as hard as he could.
Naturally, some random Rockie rookie lined it to right for a double.
Overshadowing miserable Met relief pitching and even Harvey’s singular progress was the news that the Mets came up with a relatively graceful way to shut down Johan Santana for the rest of 2012. They took an MRI, they found something not good but (supposedly) not terrible with his back and now he’s on the disabled list. This is what passes for good news in the August 2012 Mets’ world. I had hoped Johan could be eased off the mound for the year after throwing five solid innings — consecutively, not cumulatively — but I’ll accept that he was periodically capable for a few batters at a time over his last five historically horrid starts so that we don’t have to spend all winter wondering if he has anything at all left.
I’m sure he does, but everything since Reed Johnson crunched his ankle on July 6 has been such a nightmare that one is entitled to wonder if rest and rehab is going to bring him back to the pitcher he was for the first three months of 2012. It’s such an eerily familiar refrain: Johan will go to Florida and get ready for Spring Training. It’s as if “Florida” is where the Mets tell kids where their favorite injured players went — kind of like That Farm Upstate. This makes it four of five years that he’s been a Met when a season ends with Santana long absent from their rotation as the year ends. The cycle of long-term contract grief just goes round and round in that regard.
But it had to end this way after he slid from three perfect frames to start against Washington last Friday to frighteningly ineffective over the next two. He stood bravely in front of his locker later saying he planned to make his next start, the one that will now be assumed by Collin McHugh. I didn’t believe it when Johan said it. I don’t believe Johan believed it when Johan said it. When I saw Johan say it, I thought of Spencer Tracy as aging Mayor Frank Skeffington in The Last Hurrah, voted out of office after an eternity of dedicated service to his constituents. In his concession speech, Tracy announced he planned to run for governor.
A couple of scenes later, he was dead.
Which brings us back to the Mets and how they’ve played this August and every August since 2009. They’ve participated in 103 games in these past four Augusts and lost 64 of them. The Mets of 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 haven’t necessarily been great from April through July, but when make-or-break time rolls around, the Mets roll over. Translating that 39-64 mark to a full MLB season, they’ve howled their way to a 61-101 pace, or as “dog days” as it gets.
Make no mistake: “dog” is an appropriate phrase to apply to this August edition of the Mets, and not in the man’s best friend sense. The Mets haven’t just given up. The Mets give up over and over. The Mets do not play hard. The Mets do not play to win. The Mets do not play not to lose. The Mets play to get it over with. You can see that on SNY and WPIX (unless Cablevision prevents you from the latter). I saw it from very up close Tuesday night as I was privileged to sit next to some of my favorite folks in one of those cushy seats three rows behind home plate — which is part of a nicer story that deserves telling in a sunnier context — and observe from as near a vantage point as one can what a baseball game really looks like when the home team is neither trying nor succeeding.
The Mets looked so beaten from the start, so overmatched — by nine guys wearing Rockies uniforms, eight of whom I’d never heard of before Monday night. What killed me about it, as I watched each Met take his on-deck swings; study the opposing pitcher; step to the plate; and theoretically compete was how little effort seemed to inform their approach. There was very little hustling to first base. There was very little hustling in general. There was an air of que sera, sera to the whole enterprise and very little ability visible to the not wholly untrained eye. Sure, I show up in a good seat and now I’m an expert, but I’ve been watching the game for 44 years. I’d recognize a spark if I saw one. I saw none.
Then just to make sure my eyes weren’t lying to me, I watched Wednesday on TV to see if I was missing something in person. I don’t think I was. These guys these last two nights, excepting Harvey for six innings and Chris Young before he hit his predictable wall, are lacking purpose. They show up at the office because they have to. I watched BP Tuesday night from the field, not the first time I’ve done that in this current malaise period. BP may rightly be described as a “colossal waste of time,” but whose fault is that? If you play for a team that’s lost massively more than it’s won for more than a month, why on earth wouldn’t you use your time seriously and intensively to improve yourself? The Mets come on the field, get in the cage, do what their routine dictates and prepare to be beaten by teams as good as the Nationals and as bad as the Rockies.
That’s how it looks from here, anyway. When Terry Collins insists his teams don’t play fundamentally unsound baseball, he’d be advised to take a look, too. Because the only team he has does play fundamentally unsound baseball. Their lack of talent — which even Sandy Alderson explicitly acknowledged to Mike Francesa Wednesday afternoon (can somebody tell me his vaunted “plan” again?) — is forgivable on an individual basis. But a) not doing things full-out and b) not doing things correctly are the baseball equivalent of sinful. Alderson is charged with constructing a representative roster, which he and his staff haven’t done (due partly to lingering Minaya and Madoff effects and partly to his own staff’s misjudgments). Collins is charged with having the players who are here en pointe, as they say in ballet. He should have them ready to go from the first pitch and ready to fight to the last pitch.
He has them ready to go home. Or they’re ready to go home, and he and his staff haven’t done enough to maintain their readiness. Collins isn’t responsible for the first two dismal Augusts noted above but the last two are all his, especially this one. Collins was congratulated far and wide for having this bunch playing the right way in April, May and June. There’s nothing to recommend whatever he’s doing since July got going and August proceeded to sink its claws into the Mets’ will to live. I’m not calling for the manager’s head, because honestly I’m tired of regime change, but as a longstanding advocate for and customer of this team, I am yearning for some kind of shakeup. He’s gotta do something different now, just as Alderson has to get him a whole lot of somebodies different eventually. The pixie dust from the season’s first third has left no residue. It’s another awful August in another awful era.
And man, it is awful. Sunday afternoon, in my de facto drug-induced state, I listened to Eddie Coleman take calls while he sat in Nationals Park riding out the rain delay. A cheer went up behind him. It wasn’t the tarp coming off the field, he explained, but the crowd reacting to the Dodgers doing something to the Braves on DiamondVision. The Nationals are in a pennant race. Their fans — whatever their caliber of fandom — have something to cheer about, something to be invested in this August. The Braves fans have that. The Phillies and Marlins fans don’t, but at some point in the past four years, they’ve been able to take their team varying degrees of seriously. Across the National League Central and West in August from 2009 to 2012, acolytes of every team but the Astros have been able to pay attention to the scoreboard like it matters in at least one August because it has mattered to them.
It hasn’t mattered to us since 2008, which is now a very long time ago. Never mind how 2008 and 2007 ended in shame. At least we had an August. We’re barren now. We’re reduced to straining to eavesdrop on others’ Augusts. Good for the Nationals fans. Good for the Braves fans. No good for us now or lately.
Yet I do watch and I do listen and I do attend, even when there are no cushy third-row seats waiting for me. I was at three consecutive Mets-Marlins game two weeks ago. I will be at today’s Mets-Rockies game after having been at Monday’s and Tuesday’s. I will be at Saturday’s Mets-Astros game. I’m there with people like me who don’t give up our affinity just because the Mets have taken away the significance of our Augusts. We love our team and our habit too much, no matter that we are shy of a logical reason why we should. We love the game even though the games are detestable. We love the ritual no matter that losing has uncomfortably become part and parcel of it. We love baseball and we’re not severely interested in anybody else’s version of it except ours.
It is our blessing when we anticipate it and arrive to be immersed in it, and it is our curse as it unfolds unhappily before us. Yet here we are caring about it, because once August becomes September and September becomes a memory, lousy Mets baseball will be vaguely preferable to none at all. Not by much, but by enough.
Still, it shouldn’t be this way. This fan base deserves better. Every fan base would say so on its own behalf, but it’s really been so long since our Augusts bristled with anything but disgust that one can objectively say it’s our turn to have a whirl in the pennant race spotlight. The Nats are finally getting theirs. The Pirates are finally getting theirs. The Orioles in the other league are finally getting theirs. The Mets are getting nowhere except deeper into their annual August nothingness.
Run to first, at least. Run to first and sprint to September. It won’t kill you and it can only make us stronger.
by Jason Fry on 22 August 2012 12:32 am As I wrote yesterday, the Mets do nothing and then they do bad things and then they do dumb things. That was true again tonight, except it was far worse. Yesterday’s game was depressing and discouraging. Tonight’s was infuriating — a bone-headed, brain-dead disaster that was sickening to witness.
The Mets are utterly horrible and completely unwatchable. This is the worst stretch I can remember since the Mo Vaughn days of winless months at Shea, in terms of a team plummeting through apparent rock bottom after apparent rock bottom. It’s true that bad teams — and by now it’s clear that’s what the Mets are — have stretches like this. But there’s a danger to this 11-27 disaster beyond what it does to the club in the standings and to our blood pressure in the stands.
This isn’t the last two weeks of the season — the Mets have 39 games left, which will be played over the next 43 days. That’s a long time — longer than God made it rain to wash everything off the Earth that wasn’t on an ark, to invoke a disaster that right now seems only slightly larger. If you average out speedy games on getaway days and extra-inning slogs, it’s a good 117 hours of baseball yet to play.
One hundred and seventeen hours is a lot. At a comfortable pace you could use that time to walk from Manhattan to Pittsburgh, or see the entire run of “The Sopranos,” start over and get halfway through it again. If the Mets are going to play 117 more hours of lethargic, horrendous baseball — which right now seems all too likely — those 117 hours are going to have a corrosive effect on a fan base that is already battered and cynical. It will obscure the message that there is a long-term plan aimed at restoring the Mets to respectability and contention. The effect will be measurable in tickets not renewed and fans who wait to come out to see Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler and other names we don’t know yet, or who never turn out at all. It will make things that are hard enough even harder.
Yes, this was fundamentally a year about stepping away from the old, bad Mets of Omarpalooza contracts, and not yet a year about putting finishing touches on a winning team. The horror of the second half doesn’t invalidate that plan — though the fundamentally disappointing or derailed campaigns for Ike Davis, Lucas Duda, Josh Thole and Dillon Gee sure don’t help. But it makes it a lot harder to sell the future to free agents and fans and everybody else. Waiting for the future demands patience, yes — but there’s patience, and there’s enduring a disaster of these proportions. The latter makes it a lot harder to ask for the former when you need to.
I don’t know what the hell the Mets ought to do, but they need to do something — even if it’s just for the sake of doing something. Maybe it’s firing coaches, or putting dirt on the corpse of Jason Bay seven months early, or dispatching players who can’t seem to pay attention to baseball for three hours to Buffalo or the unemployment line. Would any of that fundamentally change the product on the field? I doubt it. But as Terry Collins noted in a different context tonight, in denying/admitting/waxing philosophical about whether his team had quit or not, sometimes perception is reality. The perception around the Mets right now is rotten to the point of dangerous. That can’t be allowed to become reality any more than it already has.
by Jason Fry on 21 August 2012 11:43 am Because we’ll all be happier if we don’t dwell on the wreckage of the 2012 Mets, I thought I’d expand a tweet about my bandwagon teams. (If you want to wallow in last night’s unpleasantness, post is here.)
This part of August is a funny time: If you root for a good team it’s still early, like terrifyingly early. And if you root for a bad team it’s hideously late. But with the early caveat out of the way, let’s rank some potential bandwagon teams.
Quick standings review: In the AL, the Yankees are up four games over Tampa Bay, the White Sox are up two on Detroit, and Texas is six games ahead of Oakland. Your AL wild cards right now are the Rays and Orioles, with the A’s a half-game out and the Tigers 1.5 back. In the NL, the Nats are up six over Atlanta, Cincy is up 6.5 on the Pirates, and the Giants are half a game ahead of the Dodgers. Your NL wild cards right now are Atlanta and Pittsburgh, with L.A. half a game back and the Cardinals 1.5 back. (The Angels and D-backs are still vaguely in the mix, but we’ll leave them out for now.)
Here, right now, are my bandwagon teams in order of preference, with a bit about why. If you’re game, do the same exercise in the comments.
1) Pirates — If you have to ask why, you apparently have a heart of stone — and it’s not a soft, workable stone but the granite stuff that bends bulldozer blades. Anyone without a rooting interest should be singing some AutoTune’d remix of “We Are Family” at the top of their lungs. No other answer is acceptable. BE HUMAN, YOU!
2) A’s — Downtrodden, kept from a decent home by the selfishness of the Giants and the sluggishness of MLB. Smart and resourceful — Moneyball is still a worthy rallying cry all these years later. Great tradition — have always loved the white elephant.
3) Rays — Moneyball East, the triumph of the thoughtful over the rich. Joe Maddon is hugely entertaining. A Rays win would make Jeffrey Loria look like an even bigger tool and piss off Yankees fans.
4) Nationals — I still love Davey Johnson, and if the man had had the wild card available to him, he’d never have left and David Wright would have had to wear some other number. Bryce Harper is an enormously fun player to watch. Good core they’ve built the right way. The Strasburg drama is fascinating. But if they win, they must immediately restore the Expos’ retired numbers and other heritage. Because for shame, people. Speaking of which, points off for the presence of Jayson Werth.
5) Rangers — A powerhouse, but they’ve never won anything, and five decades in the wilderness is enough. Plus can you imagine having to live through last fall’s heartbreak?
6) White Sox — Fun out-of-nowhere team, and I’d love to see Robin Ventura drenched in champagne as a rookie manager.
7) Braves — CONTROVERSY! To my surprise, I have a soft spot for Chipper in his final go-round. Plus Bobby Cox is gone. Totally understand if your mileage varies dramatically.
8) Orioles — Major points added for a downtrodden fan base, a la the Pirates. Minor points added for the potential to make Yankees fans gloomy. Major points subtracted for the presence of interfering troglodyte Peter Angelos. They wind up in the middle.
9) Tigers — Getting into meh territory, but great team, town and tradition. I love Jim Leyland though I despise Miguel Cabrera.
10) Reds — Another great team and town, and it’s amazing that they’ve stepped on the gas harder without Joey Votto. But I really dislike Dusty Baker. A Reds win would let him destroy young arms and chew toothpicks for another decade. Shudder.
11) Dodgers — Would be a nice comeback story from the horrors of recent years. But their fans are either entitled, ditzy know-nothings or thugs trying to beat people to death in the parking lot. And they now employ both Hanley and Victorino. We’re definitely in “enemy of my enemy” territory now.
12) Giants — Still too drunk on Cinderella memories to be an acceptable bandwagon team. Plus Brian Sabean is a cretin. Still, fabulous park and town.
13) Cardinals — Just won. Tired of the whole “best fans in baseball” wankery. Yadier Molina. On the plus side, Carlos Beltran with a ring would be a nice sight. And at least La Russa is gone.
14) Plague/Famine/A Rain of Asteroids — I don’t have to explain this, do I?
by Jason Fry on 21 August 2012 12:54 am Annie, I’ve got a lot of time to hear your theories, and I want to hear every damn one of them. But now I’m tired, and I don’t want to think about baseball and I don’t want to think about quantum physics. I don’t want to think about nothing. I just want to be. — Crash Davis, Bull Durham
There are very, very few things that I love more than baseball. My family, my friends … that’s probably it. Baseball is the filled-in spaces on my calendar for the nine months of the year in which it’s around, and the unhappy absences when it’s not. Baseball is, for all intents and purposes, my religion.
Yet as with all religions, there comes a time when heresy shoves aside faith. Watching baseball played ineptly and tepidly for day after day after day after day does not inspire love. It does not make you look forward to 1:10 and 7:10. It makes filled-in spaces on calendars seem like extra trips to the DMV and or dentist. It makes “I got recap” sound like a chore.
That’s being a Mets fan right now. They are awful — reliably bad in the box score and the standings. But worse than that, they are boring. They aren’t a tragicomedy like the clubs overseen by Casey Stengel or Joe Torre or Dallas Green once upon a time. They’re Art Howe boring and bad — they darken the room.
I was at a wedding this weekend, which was a wonderful time — but by the end I missed my Mets, and never mind that they were getting beaten by the Nationals. I was happy to have a game to take in tonight — for about an hour. By the end of that hour I was mad, and spent the next two tweeting mean things about the team. It didn’t make me feel any better. By the time Mike Baxter flied out, I was just glum and tired.
It’s a familiar feeling, given that the Mets are a horrifying 11-25 since the break, even worse than I’d feared. Given that, I can think of exactly three reasons to watch the Mets until 2013 gets here:
1. David Wright is a home run away from 200. Wright is, of course, a fine player having a good year at the plate (despite a second-half swoon) and an excellent year in the field. More than that, he is decent and patient and loyal — at our last blogger event at Citi Field, I kept my eye on Wright and was amazed at how many times he was asked to sign something or shake hands with someone or chat about something or do this one more thing. It was exhausting to watch, and we weren’t even at game time yet. Wright did it all without complaining or looking like his energy was flagging. It was, in its own way, as superhuman as being able to hit a fastball traveling 95 miles an hour or managing to spear a sizzling grounder that’s already behind your glove. He deserves our thanks and recognition for a well-earned milestone.
2. R.A. Dickey could win 20. At the moment it looks like winning 16 will be a struggle, given how little help Dickey’s getting most nights. But if the Mets step up their mighty post-All-Star-Game winning percentage to a cool .333 or so, that ought to get R.A. to 18 wins or so, and hey, who knows? Dickey is having a remarkable year, one that might be significant not just for him but for the evolution of the pitch he throws. Win or lose, he is a ferocious competitor and a fascinating thinker, and always worth watching.
3. Matt Harvey is good. Harvey is an old-school power pitcher with tremendous potential. He’s got a ways to go, but he looks like he’s learning quickly on the job, and his mindset includes that certain arrogance that comes with being an effective power pitcher. He’s a preview of a better future, and God knows we all need as much of that as we can get right now.
The rest? You can take it. I’m no longer interested in grading Ike Davis’s tantrums after his latest horrible at-bat, or wondering what numbnuts thing Andres Torres will do next, or surveying the pitiful ruin of Jason Bay’s once-proud career. There’s nothing left to see except further evidence that what we see now better not be what we see next April. Which both we and our front office knew some time ago.
The Mets do nothing, and then they do bad things, and then they do dumb things. That’s their blueprint for most games now, as you saw tonight. Dickey pitched well, with the exception of a lone floating knuckler that Tyler Colvin banged off the facing of the Pepsi Porch to tie the game at 1-1. He got no help other than that lone run, and was pulled for a pinch-hitter (the affably useless Justin Turner) in the seventh. Josh Edgin came in for the eighth and in rapid succession made a dismal throwing error, passed up an out at third and then fired a wild slider past Kelly Shoppach to give the Rockies the lead. The Mets tried to fight back in the bottom of the eighth, and Jordany Valdespin came within an eyelash of driving in the tying run with a grounder past first, but he inexplicably slid into the base, slowing himself down enough to be nipped by Colorado’s Matt Belisle on a bang-bang play that Adrian Johnson (he of June’s momentous gift call on Carlos Beltran) got right — and stuck to with quiet dignity while Valdespin raged sufficiently for most umps to throw him out. Good moment in a bad year for MLB umps; bad moment in a so-so year for Valdespin.
So here’s your blueprint for the rest of season: Start figuring out your bandwagon team, wait for Wright to hit No. 200, and then check and see if Dickey or Harvey is pitching. And if they’re not? Go ahead and date that nice woman from the bar, whether she’s proposing Tuesday night or any other evening. Your doctor’s right that you have no time to waste — hell, not mooning over this shipwreck of a team will probably improve your health anyway. No-fly list? Pffft — except for a tasteless Red Grooms montrosity or two, Miami’s awesome. Get on the plane, Ashley.
Or, if you must, get thee to StubHub — we’re probably one more bad homestand from $1 seats at Citi. Look at it as the cover charge for getting that awesome new Pat LaFrieda steak sandwich the bloggers keep going on about. Get there early and eat up. Then figure out something more worthwhile to do with your evening.
by Greg Prince on 20 August 2012 2:25 pm  Thursday night at 6:30, SNY favors us with the 25th installment of the Mets Yearbook series, the 1974 edition. If the editing hasn’t been too fierce, you can look forward to not just highlights not of the 1974 Mets season, but the Mets’ postseason trip to Japan (during which the recently acquired Joe Torre made his Mets quasi-debut). Why would a fifth-place, 71-91 team be invited to represent Major League Baseball? Because the invitations for such things would go out well in advance, and when the Mets were invited, they were still defending National League champions.
The aura of that crown wore off after about three seconds of 1974, the first losing campaign I ever experienced as a Mets fan (but, oh, surely not the last), yet as we’ve seen most of the 24 other times we’ve gazed lovingly upon a freshly revived Mets Yearbook, highlights are in the eye of the beholder of the highlights film viewer.
Which is to say bring on Mets Yearbook: 1974, the greatest public service any regional sports channel has ever rendered to its loyal viewers. Then stay tuned for an SNY special visiting with one of the kids who no doubt watched those 1974 Mets, recently inducted New York Mets Hall of Famer John Franco. It airs at 7:00.
Image courtesy of “Mario Mendoza…HOF lock” at Baseball-Fever.
by Greg Prince on 20 August 2012 1:44 am “You again, my man! What can I do ya for?”
“Cut the crap. You know what I need.”
“I thought I setcha up last night.”
“I need more. C’mon, c’mon…”
“What’sa matter? Last night not enough?”
“It wore off. I need more. C’mon…”
“I dunno…”
“Whaddaya mean you don’t know? Set me up!”
“I’m just playin’ with ya, bro. I knew you’d be back.”
“Great, great, whaddaya got? It’s raining, I’m going crazy waiting.”
“Nothin’ wrong with a little rain. Helps the crops, right?”
“Don’t gimme that! Rain means I gotta wait! The delay is killing me!”
“How about some of this fresh batch of ‘Pregame’? Got it straight from Eddie C.”
“‘Pregame’? That shit’s weak! I need the real stuff!”
“Patience, my man. I think we got some ‘Howie and Josh’. Yeah, tarp’s off this shipment, bro. Help yourself.”
“‘Howie and Josh’? Wasn’t it ‘Howie and Jim’ last night? ‘Howie and Jim’ was real good last night! What happened to ‘Howie and Jim’?”
“Relax, amigo. This stuff’s better. Street name’s ‘Flagship’. Just came in overnight from San Diego. Give it a taste.”
“Oh yeah…oh yeah! ‘Howie and…’”
“‘Howie and Josh,’ that’ll get ya through ’til Monday night.”
“What else? What else? What else ya got?”
“Maybe you’d like to sample a little ‘Hefner’.”
“What? Whofner?”
“‘Hefner’.”
“Never heard of it. Any good?”
“They’re calling it ‘Sixth Starter’ on the street.”
“‘Sixth Starter’? I never heard of no ‘Sixth Starter’. Sounds weird.”
“No, man. Try a hit.”
“Ugh! That’s no good!”
“I’m tellin’ ya, bro, ya gotta let it kick in. In Washington, they get one hit off ‘Hefner,’ and then it’s like…BAM! One hit after another!”
“I can’t wait for something like that to work. What else ya got? I’m Jonesin’ here. I need somethin’ better. The shit I’ve been gettin’ lately ain’t shit! I used to see pictures, man. I used to turn on at 7:10 and see pictures! I ain’t seen pictures since Friday night! I need somethin’!”
“Hold on, hold on…try this.”
“What’s that?”
“Just got it in from my Boston connection. It’s called ‘Shoppach’.”
“‘Shoppach’? What’s ‘Shoppach’?”
“Its street name is ‘the UnThole’. Think of it as a change of pace. Like 7UP back in the day.”
“It’s good?”
“I’m tellin’ ya — it’s different. Not what you’re used to. It might take a second, but it comes highly recommended.”
“Enough sales pitch. Just gimme some.”
“Here ya go…”
“Whoa! This is different! Not amazing different, but different. I can feel it hitting…and kinda like…”
“Catching?”
“Yeah, that’s it, catching!”
“See? That’s why they call it ‘the UnThole’.”
“Whatever, man. Let me get some more of that ‘Shoppach’. It’s better than that weak-ass ‘Nickeas’ shit you were pushing on me earlier this year.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. Thought it would be better.”
“How much? How much?”
“Just gimme back some of that bullpen stuff from last month if you still got it and we’ll call it square.”
“Done. Hey, can I borrow your phone?”
“My phone? What you want my phone for?”
“I dunno, man. I tried this ‘Shoppach,’ and now I gotta borrow your phone.”
“I’m not givin’ you my phone. Use your own phone.”
“No way, man! I gotta send a text but it can’t be from my phone!”
“Hey, you all right? There might be some side effects from ‘Shoppach’.”
“I can’t use my own phone! Then they’ll know it’s from me!”
“Yeah, one of the side effects might be paranoia or somethin’. Man, take it easy on that ‘Shoppach’. Try a little of this instead.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s good, man. It calms ya down.”
“What is it?”
“It’s, uh…”
“What? WHAT?”
“The street name is ‘Abyss’.”
“‘Abyss’? Didn’t you try to get me hooked on that before?”
“Ya got me. It’s ‘Bay’.”
“No way.”
“Don’t be like that, bro! You know how highly valued this shipment was?”
“Oh no way, man. You tried that on me before. Ain’t my fault you can’t get rid of that ‘Bay’ shit.”
“Bro, think of it as the equivalent of really good rum.”
“Rum?”
“You know, like 151-proof.”
“Really?”
“Well, more like .151, but c’mon, give it another chance.”
“I need somethin’. Fine. Gimme that ‘Bay’ shit again.”
“Here ya go. Now remember it works real slow.”
“I don’t feel nothin’.”
“Nah, man. That means it’s workin’.”
“Nothin’ I’m tellin’ ya. Total zero. What the fuck?”
“Hey man, you said you wanted it.”
“I didn’t want no ‘Bay’!”
“Too late, man. You just had a whole ’nother season of it.”
“I did?”
“Three-quarters of a season. Same thing.”
“Damn. I don’t remember any of it. What just happened?”
“Lost, 5-2. Sorry, bro.”
“Really? It’s all a blur.”
“See? It worked. You’re so into what I got that you probably didn’t even notice it’s 25 of 36.”
“Whatever. I got my fix. I’m good. I’m not messing with any of this anymore.”
“See ya tomorrow night.”
“You’re not hearin’ me. I told ya, I’m good. I’m done with you.”
“Sure, bro, though maybe you forgot about this week.”
“What’s so special about this week?”
“I’m getting some of that stuff in that you like.”
“You mean…”
“Yup. ‘Homestand’.”
“‘Homestand’…nah, man, I don’t care about that. I’m done.”
“Got tickets for ya. Right here…”
“Not interested. Well, lemme just see ’em…”
“Go ahead, bud. Hold ’em for a minute. Feel good in your hands, don’t they?”
“They kinda do. Maybe I’ll take just one…”
“Seven games, bro…”
“Nah, that’s crazy. I’ll just take a couple. Who’s playin’?”
“Rockies. And Astros.”
“Hey, they’re not too good! We could begin to make up some ground! Gimme all ya got!”
by Greg Prince on 18 August 2012 10:52 pm Strange world we live in when the Mets game on what we used to call “free TV” isn’t readily available via the service millions pay for because…well, ya got me. Two corporations are in the middle of a pissing match and it’s the loyal customers who get spritzed.
So what else is new?
 When I took to Twitter to vent over the sudden Mets blackout in my coaxial neck of the woods, the company that owns the cable system to which I susbcribe reached out to let me know it was the fault of the company that owns the channel that airs “free” Mets games, while the company that owns the channel that airs “free” Mets games reached out to let me know it was the fault of the company that owns the cable system. Great moves — transparent, buffoonish PR maneuvers are so much more impressive to the Metsless viewer than cobbling together a settlement.
 Is this what it’s like to be the parent of petulant twins?
Well, the Mets played without my eyes on them but my ears all over them, just as if it was a contention-free Saturday night in August of 2002 or 1992 or 1982 or 1972. In 2012, the Mets weren’t going anywhere, but neither was I, except to my radio, which is not a bad bargain in the post-Hagin era. My devotion to Gary, Keith, Ron and live televised images notwithstanding, I’m always happy to be immersed for a few innings in Howie and Josh. Alas, Josh was off to do a football game somewhere (one that doesn’t count, at that), so it was Howie and Jim Duquette for a few innings and then some. Happy was downgraded to content, but Duquette is amiable and informed and he’s not Wayne Hagin. Plus Howie is always Howie, which is a godsend in any medium.
From what they were telling me, Jon Niese was fairly close to Jon Matlack, Ike Davis channeled the bright side of Dave Kingman, Mike Baxter patrolled deep right like Joel Youngblood and Frank Francisco Skipped in from the bullpen to Lockwood down a save for a change. Only the names of the Expos have been changed to protect the impotent, thus we’ll say the final was Mets 2 Nationals 0 and hope to listen to another good game on Sunday. It is being televised on that channel I suddenly don’t get, so I’ll listen to a bad game if necessary, same as it ever was in 2002 and 1992 and 1982 and 1972.
As Chauncey Gardiner said in another satisfying tale set in Washington, I like to watch. But I’m content to listen. For a true baseball fan, the radio is always like being there.
by Greg Prince on 18 August 2012 5:54 am “I can still play football. I look at films day after day, week in and week out, and I know I can still play. I feel good throwing — there’s not a pass in the book I can’t throw. My arm is good no matter what people say and my legs are okay. I’ve had problems with my knees just once this year. But what can people expect when you get knocked down eight out of 10 times? What the hell do you do?”
That was 33-year-old Joe Namath on December 12, 1976, following a 42-3 Jets loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. Joe threw 15 passes that cold day at Shea. Four of them were completed. Four of them were intercepted.
“You know, my season has been a rollercoaster. A lot of ups and downs. Good days. Bad days. But I’m very positive about everything because I’m coming back from a major surgery, and I’ve been able to be out there every five games. […] Right now my shoulder is fine. I don’t have any issues with it. It’s just that it has been a long season for me.”
That was 33-year-old Johan Santana on Friday night, following a 6-4 Mets loss to the Washington Nationals. Johan set down all nine batters he faced in his first three innings at Nationals Park, but proceeded to give up six earned runs and nine hits in the fourth and fifth, including a grand slam to Michael Morse and a two-run homer to Bryce Harper. He’s allowed at least six earned runs in each of his past five starts, something no Met pitcher has ever done.
Namath, who led the Jets to their greatest glory before injuries overtook his brilliance, never played another game for New York after the debacle against Cincinnati. He was signed by the Rams in 1977, started four games for L.A. before being benched and retired at the end of his thirteenth professional season.
Santana, who is under contract to the Mets through next year (his thirteenth major league season), has crafted a career that can also be described as both brilliant and injury-riddled. While his significance to the Mets franchise is not nearly on a par with what Namath meant to the Jets, he has been, for reassuring stretches and incandescent moments, immensely important around here since 2008. It is his outsized presence that has made his periodic absences resonate so thoroughly. And as with Namath, it is the vivid memory of what Santana has done in a Mets uniform that leaves a Mets fan incredulous that he can look perfectly fine for a while and speak nonchalantly of how perfectly fine he feels afterwards, but somewhere in the middle of that rendition of reality is the starker version: another short outing, another ton of runs, another bushel of passes that wind up in the hands of the Bengal secondary.
When Namath was done as a Jet, his most glorious times were eight years in the past. There would be flashes after Super Bowl III, but it was never the same. The injuries wouldn’t let it be. Johan’s only been a Met for five seasons, and one of those was spent furiously recovering from surgery…as was the offseason that followed it. Really, there was no offseason when it came to rehabilitation.
“I’ve been throwing baseballs since December 15,” Johan mentioned after losing to the Nats, maybe as a legitimate excuse for running on empty in the fourth and fifth innings, maybe as a stream of consciousness an all-time great emits as he tries to figure out why he’s not only not pitching like an all-time great but isn’t pitching remotely passably as of August 17. He says he feels good. Terry Collins says “his command was good” for three innings. Dan Warthen says, “It’s just a matter of building that arm strength back up.” Johan’s been at it since December when everybody else has been throwing baseballs since February. Nobody among those who have a say came out and said Friday that it’s time to call August October and give Johan a rest. But nobody in that group was ruling it out, either.
You never want to rule anything out with guys the ilk of a Namath or a Santana. You’ve seen them do too much to think they’re no more than one pass or one pitch from getting it together and resuming their careers in uninterrupted fashion at the level to which you and they have become accustomed.
Sometimes that’s the problem.
by Greg Prince on 17 August 2012 2:43 pm You know how your various Mets come on the big screen early in the game and tell you not to run on the field and such, and then David Wright caps it off by reminding us that “Mets fans are the greatest fans in the world!”? Here are a few opportunities (besides continuing to support this team through thin and occasionally less thin) to confirm our third baseman’s flattering assessment.
• Saturday, before you go home to your Cablevision household where you will not, as of this writing, be able to enjoy the Mets on Channel 11 (or even if you’re able to see the telecast you’re paying for by some other means), you can give blood at Citi Field. I know, you already give sweat and tears, but the Mets are joining with the American Red Cross on a blood drive from 9 AM to 5 PM in the Caesars Club. Open a vein, help your fellow man and get a pair of tickets for the Mets-Phillies game on September 17. (The Mets maintain a two-game lead on Philadelphia — never mind for what.) Details on the humanitarian effort here.
• On Saturday, September 8, Mets fan Tommy LaBella, who passed away earlier this year at the way-too-soon age of 22, will be remembered at the first annual Tommy LaBella Softball Tournament at D’Onofrio Field in New Rochelle, beginning at 9 AM. Proceeds will benefit the Tommy LaBella Sky’s The Limit Fund — whose mission is to “allow Tommy’s spirit to continue to touch the lives of many by giving back to his community” — and the New Rochelle Little League. There’ll be a silent auction of sports memorabilia and all kinds of fun and games to honor the memory of someone who remains in the hearts of those who knew him best. Visit the fund’s Facebook page here for more information on the event and get a sense of what Tommy meant to his loved ones here.
• Ike Davis, an occasionally threatening presence to National League pitchers (just ask Homer Bailey), is really quite the good-natured lad, and you can help him help others on Sunday, September 9, by attending A Night With Ike Davis (And Teammates), a benefit concert for Solving Kids’ Cancer and the Liddy Shriver Sarcoma Initiative. it takes place at City Winery on Varick Street. Details here.
• Don’t forget our friends who will be running soon to raise funds for the Tug McGraw Foundation in its fight against the scourge of brain cancer: Taryn Cooper, in the New York City Marathon on November 4; and Sharon Chapman, this time in the Trenton Double Cross Half Marathon, on November 10. Give Coop a hand here and Sharon here as they each devote their feet to a great cause.
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