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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 7 August 2012 8:40 am When I meet a Mets fan from anywhere outside the Metropolitan Area, my instinct is to ask him or her how he or she got to be One of Us. I did so with a Mets fan from Australia a couple of years ago. He gave me the strangest answer imaginable.
He said it was because of Bobby Bonilla.
I’d literally heard people swear off the Mets on account of Bobby Bonilla being on the club (especially the second time around), but this was a new one on me. It would have been a new one from me. As begrudgingly willing as I am to give Bonilla his props as not necessarily all that bad an offensive player during parts of his first term with the Mets, he wasn’t someone for whom I relished rooting from 1992 to 1995, and I know I’m not alone in that perspective, given the plethora of well-known episodes that made Bobby Bo’s Met Hell credentials impeccable before he was invited back to burnish them. Bobby Bonilla’s ultimate Met exit, following his 1999 tenure, brought out in me the same sentiments I had regarding my fourth roommate in college — when he moved out, I did a Mark Gastineau-style sack dance in the hallway of my dorm.
But I didn’t have the experience the fellow from Down Under had. I found his tale fascinating and, when it came up again recently, I asked him if he wouldn’t mind sharing it with Faith and Fear readers. Let’s call it the first entry in an occasional series entitled, Every Met is Somebody’s Favorite Met. I don’t know if there will be a second. I don’t know if anybody else can match this one.
To preserve his viability within the international Mets fan community, our guest author has requested his name be withheld. Just know he’s the guy whose favorite Met is Bobby Bonilla. There’s more to him than that, but for our purposes, that’s plenty.
***
1993 was an unlikely year for anybody to fall in love with the Mets. What perhaps was even more unlikely was the source of this infatuation.
My mother moved to Montreal in 1992 on a three-year work assignment. I had just started my college years, so the opportunity to go on exchange in a different country was too good to pass up. I arrived in Montreal just before the end of the NHL regular season with the city gripped in Stanley Cup delirium (the Canadiens’ last championship, as it turns out). Though I managed to attend a few games, Habs playoff tickets at the Montreal Forum were rarer than tartare aller-retour, so my attentions turned elsewhere.
After dealing with the disappointment of not being able to acquire tickets for the opening two games of Wales Conference Finals (which coincidentally involved the New York Islanders), a work colleague of my mother’s asked if I’d be interested in going to watch the Expos with him.
At this point baseball was not foreign to me. It enjoyed its peak popularity in Australia in the mid-’80s to the early ’90s during the heyday of its first professional league. The Sydney Metros (who also played in orange and blue and compiled a miserable 3-36 record in the only season of their existence) played their home games literally a 10-minute walk from house. My only previous exposure to American baseball was the major league playoffs, which were screened on television on delay at ungodly hours. While I appreciated the game’s beauty and idiosyncrasies my allegiances were uncommitted. The Expos (naturally) and Orioles were the two teams that initially competed for affections.
The visiting team on my fateful day at Stade Olympique was the New York Mets. Even though it was still early in the season, the team was reeling 7 games below .500. Frank Tanana was the starting pitcher for the Mets that day; suffice it to say the team had few likeable qualities. The only player on the team I recognized was Bobby Bonilla, from preceding years’ NLCS tussles with the Reds and the Braves when he was a Pirate. I recall the Montreal media was particularly scathing at the state of the Mets in the lead-up to the series and in particular Bonilla’s slow start.
Most of the game was a blur. As far as I was concerned, this was a one-shot deal, so towards the end of game I took the opportunity to walk around sampling every vantage point around the stadium. In the top of the 9th, with the Mets trailing by two runs, Bobby Bonilla stepped up to the plate and crunched a monster home run off Mel Rojas (a player who would haunt Mets fans several years later) to right-center field, which must have travelled at least 450 feet.
The ball landed about 15-20 metres from where I was standing and was hastily devoured by another fan. However, the ball’s proximity to me was the baseball equivalent of Cupid’s arrow — as if it was a proposition of marriage to the team. Even though the Mets eventually lost the ballgame, that event forged a bond with the club that was never broken.
I attended the following two games by myself completely ignoring the hockey series being played that several days earlier I was pining for. They say love is blind and I was certainly oblivious to the Mets’ copious deficiencies (living in Montreal I was somewhat sheltered from the negative press the Mets were receiving in New York on a daily basis). The Mets were swept in the series but my disturbing infatuation had taken over logic and reason.
I missed the Mets’ return to Montreal later that year as we had taken summer vacations overseas. However, I made plans to visit New York in late August. I purchased a ticket for my first game at Shea on August 30th, my 19th birthday. (The fact I was prepared to forgo legally drinking, again, in favour of watching the Mets provides a pretty good insight into where my priorities lay at that point in time).
A major hitch to my plans came from my mother, who was reluctant to allow me to travel to New York City on my own, primarily because of the World Trade Center bombings earlier that year. This became a significant source of friction in our relationship at the time. I boycotted my own birthday party in protest and watched the game with an unused ticket in my pocket at some seedy sports bar in Montreal.
Bonilla did “come to the party” for me, so to speak, in that game with 3 RBIs and a HR in a narrow victory over the Astros. What added significance to this was the fact when I returned home after the game, my mother, who was totally ignorant about anything baseball-related, said to me “The Mets won on your birthday and Bonilla had a great game tonight.” This went a long way to mending our relationship. In fact, if you recall the episode of Seinfeld where Kramer asks Paul O’Neill to hit 2 home runs for a sick kid, well, I harboured some inner, albeit delusional belief that my mother had reached a similar arrangement with Bonilla as recompense for not allowing me to travel to New York.
All this just made my yearning to see the Mets and Bobby at Shea even stronger. I realized more drastic measures needed to be taken. So I met a fictitious girl from Toronto and told my mother I intended to travel there to meet her. In reality, I purchased three tickets to a meaningless series in September against the Cubs at Shea and a flight to LaGuardia (fulfilling my fantasy of seeing Shea for the first time from the air.)
When I arrived at the ballpark I was so overwhelmed by the intense atmosphere of Shea, notwithstanding the murmurings of discontent that at that point in the season were deafening, that I didn’t realize Bonilla wasn’t in the line-up. “No problem” I thought, “He probably has the day off. He may pinch hit or I’ll see him tomorrow”.
When I came to the ballpark the next day and realized he was again absent from the line-up, a panic set in. I asked a few people and didn’t get particularly helpful responses. (In the pre-Internet days tracking a player’s status was not as simple as it is these days). When he was absent again for the final game of the series, my heartache was complete (ameliorated only by a masterful four-hit complete game shutout by Sid Fernandez.).
So I was resolved to return to Montreal without seeing my hero play at Shea. For my last night in NYC, I met up some with people I knew from McGill University who took me to a prominent Manhattan nightclub at the time. (This was the first and only time in my life I used a fake ID).
In the nightclub, there was a VIP area cordoned off from the rest of the club, filled with people I didn’t recognize. I overheard somebody say: “What a bum. He’s okay to go out clubbing but can’t play,” or words to similar effect. My heart skipped a beat at the remote possibility they were talking about Bonilla, and when it was confirmed that they were, I knew I would never get another chance to see him. I never believed in fate or destiny until that night.
However, between me and my hero was a large burlesque, menacing-looking “attendant” standing in-front of the VIP area. In those days I was a shy and timid young lad and, after 15 minutes of deliberation, I finally mustered enough courage to approach him. I said:
“Hi, I’m a huge fan of Bobby Bonilla and would like to say hello”. I probably sounded like a giddy little schoolgirl to him.
In a stern voice he replied: “Bobby don’t like to speak to fans outside the ballpark. This is Bobby’s private time. Please vacate this area.”
I walked away dejected and once again heartbroken. I was so close to him. It was as if my moment of destiny was abruptly altered.
I stared at Bonilla across the room as if I was looking into the eyes of my Maker. I caught his leering, disapproving eyes. I bowed my head. I had to try again. If all else failed, I thought it would make for a really cool story telling my friends how I got beaten up by this rather large attendant, in an effort to meet Bobby Bonilla. I decided my last hope was to play the Australian “card”.
In an exaggerated Australian accent I approached the attendant again and pleaded my case:
“Look, I travelled all the way from Australia just to see Bobby. I was devastated I didn’t see him play, but I believe it is destiny that brought me to this place tonight.” The last part clearly wasn’t a lie. “I just want to say hello to him.” This time my voice reeked of desperation. He thought about it for half-a-second and the look on his face suggested another rejection was incoming.
“Wait here” he said, as he entered the cordoned off area. He walked towards Bobby, bent over and spoke into Bobby’s ear, pointing to my general direction. It was a glimmer of hope, but I was certain that Bobby would reject any contact, based on his well-documented feelings towards the Shea boo-boys.
Bobby initially looked irate, hesitated for a moment and then got up. He began to walk towards me. I was still under no illusions. As far as I was concerned, he coming to me “to show me the Bronx”. I was genuinely scared and regretted initiating the whole episode.
As Bobby approached, his eyes seared at me, like he was trying to ascertain the plausibility of such an implausible story. “Did you really come all the way from Australia to see me?” was the first thing he asked me.
Tongue-tied, partly because I was awestruck and partly because I could not bring myself to confess to the lie I had just told to my idol, I could only nod my head. Then I sensed a look of pride in his eyes that became tattooed in my brain. It was as if his faith in Mets fans had been restored.
He asked the attendant for a pen and signed a drink coaster and shook my hand. I was touching the same hand that held the bat that inflicted so much hurt on opposing pitchers!
Then he said: “Order whatever you like and put it on my tab.” (For the record, I ordered an Appleton’s and Coke — probably in an effort to confirm my “Aussieness”. Dark rum and Coke is like Australia’s national cocktail.)
Indeed, he had showed me the Bronx, but in a different way. There was no turning back for me now. The Mets were my favourite sporting organization in the world. The whole meeting may have lasted just over a minute but it will live with me forever. For a 19-year-old kid, this was the thrill of an eternity.
I politely thanked him and then blurted out: “I love you Bobby. I’ll never wash this hand again.” He smiled as he turned and walked away.
My experiences with Bonilla led me to believe that the Shea faithful never gave him a fair chance. I am often perplexed and reviled by the level of vitriol and indignation shown by Mets fans towards Bonilla, despite the fact he led most offensive categories during his first tour with the Mets. At a time when the club is burdened by gross ineptitude of Jason Bay, it is somewhat of an injustice that Bonilla holds such a negative place in Mets folklore. It often makes me wonder whether we deserve the cruel twists of fate we are all-too-often subjected to.
by Greg Prince on 6 August 2012 9:01 pm ***WE HAVE OUR WINNERS. THANKS ALL FOR PLAYING.***
You haven’t lived until you’ve listened to the Spanish-language call of the ninth inning of the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History synced to the video. And if you’re wondering where you can do that, boy do we have a DVD for five of you!
 Watch. Listen. Love. Meet the latest Metsian must-have Baseball’s Greatest Games release from A+E Home Entertainment/MLB Productions, the one from June 1, 2012, the one with Johan Santana’s no-hitter. It’s got the entire SNY telecast; it’s got Gary, Keith and Ron (who was never better than he was in this ninth inning); it’s got the WFAN audio of Howie Rose and, in relative morsels as the night wore on, Josh Lewin fill-in Jim Duquette; and it has the little-heard by non-Latino listeners call from Max Perez Jimenez and (subbing for longtime en Español voice Juan Alicea) Nelson Rosario, as heard over WQBU-FM.
You know from Gary. You know from Howie. And, language barriers notwithstanding, you should know from their compadres. Based on a small sample, the Spanish-language Mets broadcasts sound like a veritable throwback party, from using the Glenn Osser Orchestra version of “Meet The Mets” to introduce each inning to picking up an onslaught of crowd noise that leaks happily through the broadcast’s background. My one (minor) disappointment with the SNY and ’FAN broadcasts of June 1 was I never really got the sense that the crowd was as excited as Gary and Howie were in their own professional way. My friend Kevin — whose invitation I cleverly declined that fateful Friday — told me the “buzz” was kind of a mixed bag in the stands. Then I read two stories from reporters who rather effetely downplayed the significance of being there. I began to wonder if anybody besides Gary, Howie and my buddy Kevin was thrilled to have attended the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History.
Thanks to La Qué Buena’s feed on this disc, I can feel the excitement that much more, even if I can’t understand much more Max is saying in the ninth besides “¡johansantana!” and “¡citifield!” — and that’s despite my having taken six years of Spanish from seventh through twelfth grade. I’m not sure why WQBU transmitted more of the crowd noise than its counterparts. Perhaps they planted a microphone outside their booth’s window.
Anyway, the audio tracks are merely a bonus to this DVD. The heart of it is the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History, which remains as breathless an experience now (DL visit for its protagonist be damned) as it was two months ago. And thanks to A+E Home Entertainment/MLB Productions, you can own it for a very reasonable price…or you can have it for FREE if you are one of the first five Faith and Fear readers to correctly answer all the questions on the following quiz and e-mail your answers to faithandfear@gmail.com. (These contests usually run pretty quickly, but if we don’t have five completely correct sets of answers by Friday, August 10, 12:01 AM EDT, then we’ll take the ones that come closest that we received first.)
Each question is at least tangentially related to the subject of this game: the glorious outcome; the franchise’s history in seeking such an outcome; the Mets’ opponent that night; the pitcher we welcome back to the Mets’ rotation this weekend. Each answer, you’ll discern, has a recurring theme. My only guideline is if you know your online resources, this will go pretty smoothly.
But you don’t need to know how to speak Spanish.
***
***WE HAVE OUR WINNERS. THANKS ALL FOR PLAYING.***
THE QUIZ
1) The last time a Mets lefty threw a one-hitter, I played left field for the losing team. Who am I?
2) I caught the last no-hitter a St. Louis Cardinal pitcher threw. Who am I?
3) Johan Santana didn’t get to bat in his first major league game because of the silly rule the American League has about such things. But I batted because I was the designated hitter on Johan’s team. Who am I?
4) You know how frustrating it was to watch all those pitchers for other teams throw no-hitters but not see a Met throw one? Well, you wouldn’t have minded me throwing one in that regard because I threw the last one in the majors before the Mets existed. Who am I?
5) I made the last out of the first inning Johan Santana pitched as a major league STARTER. Who am I?
6) The last time the Mets threw a combined one-hitter, I was the staring second baseman for the losing team. Who am I?
7) I was the losing pitcher in the last no-hitter pitched by a St. Louis Cardinal. Who am I?
8) I was the only teammate of Johan Santana’s on Johan’s first professional team to later play for the Mets. Who am I?
9) The last time a Mets pitcher didn’t give up a hit for the first seven innings of a game against the Cardinals that eventually became a one-hit victory for the Mets, I was the Cardinals’ second baseman. Who am I?
10) I drove in the go-ahead run that stood up as the winning run in Johan Santana’s first major league victory. Who am I?
11) We are the only THREE Mets who played on June 1, 2012, who, as of August 6, 2012, have been on the Mets’ active 25-man roster every day of the 2012 season. Who are we?
12) I was the leadoff batter for the team that lost the last major league no-hitter thrown before the Mets existed. Who am I?
13) I made my major league debut for the losing side in the last game in which the Mets were victimized by a no-hitter. Who am I?
14) I was the losing pitcher in the game in which Johan Santana gained his first major league win. Who am I?
15) I made the last out of the first inning Johan Santana pitched as a Met. Who am I?
***
Best of luck! And if luck doesn’t do it for ya, try links:
This one, this one and this one, in particular.
And if you don’t want to be bothered, there’s always this one.
***WE HAVE OUR WINNERS. THANKS ALL FOR PLAYING.***
by Greg Prince on 5 August 2012 7:59 pm It wasn’t Matt Harvey’s day, but then again 2012 wasn’t supposed to be Matt Harvey’s year anywhere higher than Buffalo.
There was still plenty likable to be mined from his limp, extra base hit-laden line, but five runs in five frames is what the box score says it is. At the moment, Matt Harvey is a 1-2 pitcher with a 3.86 ERA after throwing almost nothing but excellent innings in his first two starts yet only a few in his third. Sunday at Petco, you can say he was…
• admirable in the second for stranding a leadoff triple;
• alert (and a little lucky) in getting out of a first-and-third, nobody out jam on a pounced bunt, decent toss and two strikeouts;
• and good enough to survive the fifth despite a deeply driven double.
The first and the third, though, encompassed real damage in which doubles begat homers and five Padre runs crossed the plate. There’s only so much squirming a pitcher can do in his third major league start. The lesson for the young pitcher is don’t get into squirmable situations so much.
See, I say it here and then it just happens. Because it’s that easy.
Despite command being a slippery eel for a pitcher whose years on earth don’t measure many more than his days in the majors, I liked watching him work. I didn’t like watching the Padres wail, but I liked the escapes. I liked the high fastballs away. I liked the smoke. I liked imagining that a few starts from now he will figure out how to command those secondary pitches and treat the San Diego Padres of the National League like they’re the Toldeo Mud Hens of the International League.
It might take more than a few starts, but with Harvey setting off the Cholula meter and lacking nothing visible in the poise department, I’m more than willing to wait. Genuine promise contains a vast reservoir of goodwill that way.
In a totally unrelated development that occurred prior to the Mets’ boarding their charter home, Terry Collins had Jason Bay’s name placed on the no-fly list, because…hmm.
by Jason Fry on 5 August 2012 1:01 am This time I saw it coming — a brutal regression to the mean in the second half of what had been a heartening season.
Funny thing is, it didn’t make any difference.
Once again I went to kick the football of postseason hopes, and once again the Mets pulled it out of the way, and once again I howled AUUUGGGHHH! and landed on my back, abashed and amazed.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, and I must be a fucking Mets fan.
For a while I was mad. Mad at the bad defense, the terrible bullpen, the sudden bouts of inattention and leadassdom, and most of all mad at myself for spending half a season admiring the fine raiment of naked wanna-be NL East emperors. And then I tried to convince myself that I didn’t care, which wasn’t true.
But not all old patterns are bad. Because somewhere between last night’s horror show in miniature and tonight’s entertaining little victory, I got back to the second-half-of-the-season Mets place I needed to be. I accepted what the Mets are, and what they’re not, and I let go of the rest.
Last night, thanks to Greg’s astute post, will go down as the last night we thought Josh Thole could be the answer at catcher. I was on a bar crawl with friends, and so glimpsed the emerging nightmare somewhat dimly on an overhead TV in Williamsburg. I fell asleep with the Mets making some pointless noise in the eighth, woke up, confirmed they’d lost, sulked briefly at a replay of the Quentin play and then got on with my day. But around 6 or so tonight, I found myself thinking: “8:35 start. I’m recapping. Hefner-Volquez. Cool.”
Which it was. Edinson Volquez was wild, the Mets were patient and aggressive in the right portions, and Ruben Tejada and Ike Davis and Daniel Murphy all had good games at the plate. Mike Baxter had a pretty good game too, arriving at first five times on walks. Jeremy Hefner continued to impress, giving the Mets six pretty good innings and not looking like he was going to throw up from nerves talking to Kevin Burkhardt. The Mets won, and assured themselves a winning record on a trip that seemed certain to be their season’s walk to the gallows.
It wasn’t a perfect game: Most notably Bobby Parnell was horrible again, turning in an all-too-typically head-shaking outing. I don’t know if it’s his own fault or he’s being badly coached or what, but Parnell just seems confused on the mound, unable to execute any kind of game plan and perform the way his talent should allow him to. He’s his own worst enemy, in Pelfreyesque fashion, and it’s gone from irritating to verging on Maybe This Should Be Somebody Else’s Problem territory.
But, again, acceptance. It was a fun game, one we’ll remember as the night Baxter drew all those walks and everyone laughed at poor Tejada because he couldn’t get the donut off his bat.
And with acceptance comes being interested in the answers to certain questions again. Like if the Mets can get some value out of Hefner, who certainly deserves to continue to get the ball in some role. Like seeing if Josh Edgin can keep it up and be the reliable reliever sought for so long. Like seeing Jason Bay finally put out of his misery as a starter so that Jordany Valdespin can show what he can do as an everyday player. Like hoping Murph finishes a comeback season in style, hitting .300 and continuing to improve at second base. Like seeing what David Wright and R.A. Dickey and Tejada can do with the rest of their superb seasons. Like seeing Matt Harvey take the ball every fifth day and remind us of the future that’s coming. Like seeing if .500 or a bit better is attainable.
The Mets’ fundamental problems won’t be fixed by the answers to these questions — that will take time for some players to develop further and some front-office work to get new players. But I’m looking forward to seeing what we find out the rest of the way. And I’m looking forward to baseball. Which is the whole point, right?
by Greg Prince on 4 August 2012 6:42 am Sure the season is shot, but at least we get a chance to take a good, long look at Josh Thole!
Never mind throwback uniforms from 1989 (technically 1988 to 1992 for us, but it was the Padres’ party, so whatever). It’s 2010 all over again on the Mets’ schedule. It might as well be in the sense that we’re hanging around .500 at the two-thirds juncture of the season and our early aspirations of contending for a playoff spot have diminished to the edge of extinction. We were actually doing slightly better (54-53 then vs. 52-55 now) and were slightly closer (6½ back in the division, 8 behind the Wild Card leader then vs. 11½ and 9 now) two years ago, but nobody was fooled into thinking there was anything meaningful for which to play.
Except for next year. With a third-of-a-season to go, we were ready to loosen our grip on 2010 and move on to 2011. The Mets soon agreed and jettisoned their starting catcher, slumping Rod Barajas, and gave the bulk of the playing time behind the plate to young Josh Thole. Josh, a converted first baseman, was called up in September 2009, didn’t seem any worse than whoever we were happy to eschew then (Brian Schneider and Omir Santos), tantalized us with his tomorrow-ness if nothing else, and when ’10 went definitively down the chute, it was goodbye Barajas, cool your defensive heels Henry Blanco, and let’s see what the kid can do.
It’s two years later and I don’t think there are too many Mets fans who don’t wish we had another Josh Thole on the horizon. Not a carbon copy of this Josh Thole, god forbid, but a catching prospect deemed more or less ready to compete at the major league level; one at whom we could take yet another good, long look; somebody we could invest our hopes in for 2013 or whenever.
Because the last thing anybody’s in the mood to look at right now is more of Josh Thole catching. Or batting. Or doing anything.
Of course this is a gut reaction to the play that turned Friday night’s game from something akin to those recent tilts with the Giants you figured the Mets might win in spite of themselves to one of those contests you knew the Mets would somehow find a way to lose Petco-style. The whole team felt culpable to some degree, but nobody was more front and center in regard to defeat than the catcher who, in his second full season, feels no more ready to compete — or at least compete effectively — at the major league level than he did in the summer of 2010. And for all the personnel changes on the field and off that have transformed the reputation of this franchise from reflexively ridiculous to vaguely competent, Thole may well have proven himself the apotheosis of the Mets as they dip into their standard August sag.
It was that bad a play.
But it’s also been that dim a season for Thole, and that’s taking into account his not-so-incidental participation in the most historic Met occasion imaginable. There’s forever a gold star affixed to his permanent record for coming off the disabled list on June 1, going into a crouch and coming away, two hours and thirty-five minutes later, clutching the last out of the First No-Hitter In New York Mets History. Since Johan Santana didn’t earn that milestone by pitching stickball — specifically the kind whose strike zone is a box chalked on a schoolyard wall — we have to assume Thole had something significant to do with his achievement. He was his catcher. Thole was also R.A. Dickey’s catcher for two one-hitters. When you think of Tim Byrdak casting a glare in Thole’s direction for pitch selection gone awry and Pedro Beato casually assigning blame to Thole for not blocking a blockable wild pitch, you have to pause and think of the good times, too.
Those, however, don’t seem representative of the Thole oeuvre overall and that’s before we get to Josh’s hitting, which is something he hasn’t done. Thole’s batted about the most hollow .264 you’ll ever see, not getting on base much otherwise (.316) and goodness knows slugging not at all (.329). He’s driven in 14 runs, or only four more than Jason Bay, the ultimate barometer of offensive futility.
Josh Thole’s .264/.316/.329 isn’t tangibly better than Rod Barajas’s .201/.279/.352 for Pittsburgh or Henry Blanco’s limited-duty .197/.234/.295 for Arizona (though Barajas’s and Blanco’s teams are still in playoff races despite their decrepit backstop backsides taking up respective Pirate and Diamondback roster space). Nobody’s rushing to reacquire the Class of April 2010, but nobody of a Met front office stripe has denied they’d like to find a catcher. Ramon Hernandez’s name has come up. John Buck’s name has come up. If they could get Alex Treviño back in game shape, he’d be a viable option compared to what they have currently, Treviño’s impending 55th birthday notwithstanding.
Oh, all right. I’ll concede Thole could probably outplay someone who hasn’t caught since the Mets were wearing those “1989” uniforms for real, but I doubt he could outhit him. And when it comes to making a play like that which turned Friday’s game irrevocably in favor of San Diego, I’d take my chances in 2012 with Treviño over Thole. Or Santos over Thole. Or Schneider over Thole. Or Blanco over Thole. Or Barajas over Thole. Or Butch Benton, Luis Rosado, Dave Liddell, Chris Cannizzaro…you get the idea.
When you’re invoking the litany of Met catchers past who aren’t of the Grote-Carter-Piazza pantheon (let alone the Stearns-Hundley-Lo Duca sub-pantheon), you’re probably stalling, hoping the play you saw was just a late West Coast start fever dream. Alas, it actually happened.
In case you didn’t see it or hear a Mets fan near you scream when it occurred, the Mets were in a 1-1 duel with the Padres in the seventh. It had been 1-0 until the sixth when they were tied on a run Everth Cabrera set up on a delayed steal of third (we’ll forego the identity of the catcher who didn’t come close to throwing him out so as not to pile on). Dickey was pitching very well if not exactly upper-tier brilliantly, but it should have been enough. He’d allowed only one hit, albeit with three walks, through six. The Mets, though, were in that mode of huffing and puffing without ever quite being able to blow Clayton Richard’s house down. That’s why it was only 1-1.
With one out in the seventh, Carlos Quentin (whose All-Star name was familiar to me though his current identity as a Padre surprised me, as does almost every Padre’s almost every year; I don’t know if it’s the time zone, the reliably lousy record or the refusal to pick a uniform and stick with it, but I’m pretty sure “Padre” is Spanish for “obscure”) singled. Yonder Alonso then lifted a fly ball to no man’s land, or as it’s otherwise known, the Mets’ outfield. Andres Torres in center clearly wasn’t going to get to it. Scott Hairston, playing right, maybe had a shot at it, but…no, not really. But he did have a shot at preventing what was about to happen.
Scott, whose continued presence on the Mets is intended to guarantee our arrival amid the promised land of 82-80, dove with the gutsiness of Ron Swoboda and the judgment of Ronald McDonald. Alonso’s ball fell in and bounced past Hairston. Quentin, who appears to keep his association with speed to a minimum, chugged onward from first. Torres got to the ball and flung it to Cedeño. Nice save on both gentlemen’s part. Quentin kept chugging, though it was now more like lumbering. Cedeño then turned and fired on a bounce to the plate. Great throw! Quentin’s chug didn’t have much vigor left to it as the ball arrived within Thole’s personal space. All Quentin — who was a telephone exchange if not an area code away from the catcher when the ball arrived — could attempt to do was charge into Thole. All Thole had to do, given the head start Cedeño’s throw and Quentin’s innate gradualness gave him, was hang on to the damn ball.
Here came Quentin.
There went the ball.
There went the game.
Thole had one thing to do and he didn’t do it. He didn’t so much not hold the ball but basically failed to merge it, his bare hand and his gloved hand into a cohesive Quentin-tagging package. So Quentin tagged Thole instead. Tagged the hell out of him. All legal, clean and convincing. It convinced me Thole isn’t much of a catcher.
To be fair, if Thole had handled the ball properly — and he acknowledged that’s what it boiled down to (nothing to do with post-Wigginton syndrome) — I wouldn’t be telling you what a fantastic catcher Josh is because he completed an 8-4-2 putout on an approaching baserunner. It was one of those things a catcher does or doesn’t do, and he didn’t do it.
Even acknowledging that you don’t see that many blocks of granite bearing down on home plate with the kind of determination big ol’ Carlos Quentin brought to the play, it wasn’t a hide-your-eyes collision. It was a guy doing something right succeeding against a guy doing something wrong. And because it changed the score from 1-1 to 2-1 en route to a 3-1 loss, it stood out like a…well, like a Josh Thole extra base hit (of which there have been 13 thus far in 2012). It was one of those moments that crystallizes what you’ve been sensing for the longest time but haven’t wanted to say out loud because you’d so rather believe the Mets haven’t wasted the last two years at the position — but per a fabled emperor and his alleged new clothes, the catcher has no chest protector.
Or to bring the discussion full circle, two years ago, we anticipated Josh Thole’s extended audition. Two years later, there seems little evidence that he’s passed it.
by Greg Prince on 3 August 2012 12:30 am The Mets scored nine runs Thursday afternoon. Really? They scored nine runs one night after leaving everybody on in San Francisco but Tony Bennett. Thursday they had one fewer baserunner than they did Wednesday but crossed the plate seven more times despite hitting one less homer — or zero. And they won both games. REALLY!?!
Ronny Cedeño drove in five runs. Really? The guy who nobody remembers is on the 25-man roster…and that includes his blood relatives. He hit a ball that clanged off Melky Cabrera’s glove, or as the Giants’ official scorer calls that sort of defensive lapse, a double. REALLY!?!
The Mets won this series. Really? The Mets, who only fly to California after the All-Star break for funerals, and then only for their own. They took three of four from the first-place Giants and are 4-1 since losing 14 of 16. And Terry Collins attributes the turnaround to having had “a meeting” in Arizona…like it was the most effective meeting since the Constitutional Convention. REALLY!?!
The big story to come out of the last game at Phone Company Park wasn’t Cedeño’s sudden liberation from the witness protection program or Chris Young pitching seven innings when his outings are normally as short as any of our Olympic gymnasts, but a t-shirt — Jordany Valdespin’s t-shirt. Really? The Mets have a policy against their baseball players, who wear baseball jerseys as part of their jobs, wearing t-shirts as they walk into the clubhouse…where they’ll take off whatever they’re wearing and put on those jerseys in about five seconds. All Mets are instead supposed to wear a shirt with a collar because each of them is expected to emulate Herbert Hoover because being a Mets fan doesn’t already conjure associations with the word “depression”. REALLY!?!
Valdespin left his shirt in his locker Wednesday only to find it cut up and written on by his anonymous veteran teammates. Really? Those are the veterans who are supposed to be older and wiser, not kindergarten bullies gone wild with scissors and magic markers after one too many Oreos. This behavior was condoned by their teacher/manager on Thursday because it was Valdespin who made “an error in judgment,” according to him. This is the kind of error that Terry Collins worries about, not the one he makes every time he spells “Bay” correctly on his lineup card. REALLY!?!
Met veterans reportedly don’t like Valdespin’s supposed “brashness” and “cockiness” because he’s a rookie. Really? Of course that could be a problem in a sport that hinges on competition. The last thing you want is a teammate who acts as if he expects to succeed in any situation…and then often succeeds in the most pressure-packed of situations. Between cultivating young men who will preach unquestioning adherence to rules rooted in ancient dogma that can appear bizarre to the outside world and this obsession with collars, the Mets almost seem less interested in building a winner than they are in running a seminary.
Really.
by Jason Fry on 2 August 2012 2:19 am A game this weird really demanded to be played in the middle of the night.
The Mets had 20 baserunners, putting guys on in every inning except the sixth. They turned that into a total of two runs, which came on a leadoff homer by Ruben Tejada (of all people) and a bases-loaded fielder’s choice by Jordany Valdespin in the second. And then, well, it was time for the funhouse ride to begin.
Here’s hoping we don’t see a run of futility like this one again any time soon:
In the third the Mets had first and second with nobody out. Jason Bay — who had another miserable night — struck out. Mike Baxter then struck out on a questionable pitch with the runners in motion, meaning Ike Davis was thrown out by approximately 85 feet.
In the fourth the Mets had a runner on second with two out, and Valdespin lashed a Matt Cain offering over Gregor Blanco’s head in center field for a sure RBI. But Blanco dove and just snared it in the webbing as he crashed to the ground, making a catch you’ll see on highlight shows as long as there are highlight shows.
In the fifth the Mets had David Wright on second with one out, and Daniel Murphy grounded a ball to Marco Scutaro at third. Wright, for some ill-advised reason, tried to go to third and was tagged out by a probably startled Scutaro. Emboldened, Murph then got thrown out trying to steal second.
In the sixth, somehow, nothing happened to the Mets. 1-2-3 inning.
In the seventh Tejada walked with one out and Valdespin hit a sure-fire double-play ball to Ryan Theriot at second. Theriot, apparently auditioning to be a Met, let it go between his legs to put runners at first and second. Wright walked to load the bases, so Ike obligingly hit into the double play.
In the eighth the Mets loaded the bases with none out thanks to two walks and a Victorinoesque HBP by Baxter, who got away with it. Josh Thole grounded to Brett Pill at first, who fired home for one out. Buster Posey’s throw to first hit Thole in the shoulder, sending Mets scampering homeward — but Thole was called out (correctly) for interference. Justin Turner walked to reload the bases, so of course Tejada grounded out.
In the ninth, the Mets had the bases loaded with one out and Bay hit a rocket right back to Brad Penny, who doubled off Murph for the double play.
Meanwhile, Jon Niese was looking good — but he was also Jon Niese, whom I refuse to trust despite his obvious talent. Niese’s body language is reliably terrible when things don’t go his way, which is something I should really get over, as there’s no column in the standings for Deportment. More tangibly, Niese has a bad habit of letting ill luck and lapses snowball, creating disastrous starts where everything caves in and he waits for someone to end his suffering.
A 2-0 lead turned into a 2-1 lead in the sixth when Posey cracked a hanging curve off an ambulance parked behind the fence, but Niese hung in there, bad body language and all. In fact, he pitched a pretty great game before departing after seven (aided by several nifty plays from Wright) and leaving things in the rather iffy hands of Tim Byrdak and Jon Rauch.
Byrdak and Rauch emerged unscathed, so the Mets handed the ball over to Bobby Parnell, who’s a magnet for weirdness and ill fortune even when it isn’t befalling his teammates in each and every inning.
So what did Parnell do? Pitched a 1-2-3 inning for the save, of course.
Baseball. Good luck outthinking it.
by Greg Prince on 1 August 2012 10:52 am If a pitcher can be deemed “major league” after two starts, Matt Harvey would seem to be it. His lifetime mark has dropped to 1-1, which isn’t an accurate reflection of how well he pitched against the Giants Tuesday night and — whatever we think of the usefulness of pitchers’ won-lost records — probably doesn’t foretell how the rest of his career will unfurl.
Nothing really does yet. It’s two starts. Even the swell record he set for most strikeouts by a Met pitcher in his first two outings (one of those records you didn’t know existed to be broken) doesn’t mean much. He passed three guys: Tom Seaver, Dick Selma and Bill Denehy. One guy is Tom Seaver and all that implies; the second guy had the epitome of a journeyman career (42-54 with six clubs in ten seasons); and the third guy’s name endures primarily as the answer to “who did the Mets send to the Washington Senators as compensation for hiring away Gil Hodges?” and, secondarily, for keeping Tom Seaver company on his rookie card. Nobody looking at Harvey is thinking, “He could be another Dick Selma or Bill Denehy!” but we just don’t know.
Pitching, more than any skill in the sport, is a lifetime journey and never-ending adventure. The great Tim Lincecum presents his own evidence that you can never quite know what the next start or the next string of starts is going to bring. At the same stage of his career when the Nieses and Gees and Pelfreys were still getting the hang of pitching at the highest level of baseball — a hang none has yet to fully and completely grasp on a consistent basis — Lincecum was winning a couple of Cy Young awards. Yet at a moment when he couldn’t be any more established as one of the premier pitchers in the game, he couldn’t seem any more vulnerable or hittable.
Except against the Mets, natch, but that’s a whole other story.
The fact that Matt Harvey is making some of us think of Tom Seaver is plenty for right now. It’s not the 18 strikeouts in two starts or Keith Hernandez’s exultation over his “drop-and-drive” delivery or even that he successfully gritted up when betrayed by his fielders while learning to mix pitches that aren’t necessarily his best. What made me believe in Matt Harvey as a major league pitcher in every sense of the word Tuesday night was watching him conduct his postgame media scrum. He was no-nonsense, all-business…you might say drop-and-drive.
I’ve watched hundreds of pitchers field thousands of questions after they’ve pitched. The exercise rarely produces stunning dialogue, but I find the nuances fascinating. Some guys look as if they had to be reminded in Spring Training that this is part of the job and, given their druthers, win or lose, they’d rather be left alone. Some can dissect the key at-bats to within an inch of their lives. Some use these sessions as forums to blend personal philosophy with baseball analysis. Others very subtly, maybe not so subtly, shift the blame for whatever went wrong to their teammates.
Harvey doesn’t know enough to do that last one. He could have. It wouldn’t have endeared him to anybody in his clubhouse, but he wouldn’t have been wrong. His fielders Metted him over but good in the second inning, yet I don’t think it occurred to the kid that it mattered, not if you listened to him after the game.
“In my eyes, if we scored one run, I should have done my part and gotten zeroes, but I didn’t do that tonight,” he said with utmost seriousness. “I didn’t do my job.”
That, of course, is ridiculous. He did his job fine. He got undermined by Met gloves and outpitched, a little, by Lincecum. You can’t throw shutouts every time it’s your turn to go. He’ll learn that if he hasn’t already.
But oh, what a jolt of adrenaline he provided just by putting it all on his shoulders. The words weren’t delivered in self-flagellation, either. It wasn’t “oh god, it’s all my fault!” insecurity. It was the opposite. It was, literally, a declaration that he’s here to win. Nothing about feeling good or being happy to have made his pitches or any of that stuff that drives Bobby Ojeda and, to a lesser extent, me crazy.
“I don’t like to lose,” Harvey said of the outcome, “so obviously I’m not happy about it.”
In that summation I heard Tom Seaver. Specifically, I heard what Seaver said when he was presented with the news that he had won the 1967 National League Rookie of the Year award after his first full year in the majors, a year when his team lost more than 100 games for the fifth season in its six-season existence:
“I want to pitch on a Mets pennant winner and I want to pitch in the first game in the World Series. I want to change things…I don’t want the Mets to be laughed at anymore.”
Harvey didn’t go quite that far. He doesn’t have the standing to say such things, not in MLB service time, not from personal experience. He’s been a Met for a week. He hasn’t observed first-hand how a season starts surprisingly promisingly and then fade into oblivion. He may have some inkling about how this franchise has struggled competitively (because standings are standings) and financially (because Scott Boras is his agent) but none of that was his problem. He’s just a kid with two starts and 18 strikeouts to his ledger.
Making the Mets whole again, however, is something I can picture Harvey making his responsibility, or as much of it as one pitcher can every fifth day. I don’t get the feeling he’s going to be about incremental progress. I wouldn’t rush to slide him into the Seaver category in terms of future performance, because we know there are far more Selmas and Denehys than there are Seavers, but I now carry a hunch that when we read about Harvey, we’re going to be reading less about bad routes to line drives and double play balls thrown away and more about players who insist they play better on those days when Matt Harvey is pitching. That’s what can happen when you have a pitcher who not only doesn’t like to lose but clearly expects to win.
Which is something this franchise hasn’t expected to do in a long time and has yet to demonstrate more than incremental progress toward doing in the long term.
It’s a sad reflection of where the Mets have been that there was genuine disappointment among a swath of its fans that the guy who hit two huge home runs for them on Monday night wasn’t traded by Tuesday afternoon. That’s not how it’s supposed to be. When you root for a team and a player wins you a game, the default instinct is to want to see more of him, not pack his bags.
But when free agent-to-be Scott Hairston showed up at Phone Company Park in San Francisco and dressed in his Mets uniform a day after excelling for the Mets, it was something of a letdown. The prevalent strain of thinking at the trade deadline — which is an hour of mostly evanescent hyperventilation, yet nevertheless a potentially impactful one — was if there’s a way for the Mets to improve themselves meaningfully, do it.
The question becomes, when you’re 50-53 going on 50-54, what do you mean by meaningful? If the cards are stacked a certain way, say so that your record doesn’t sit all that far from a playoff spot, it means getting at least goddamn reliable reliever in your bullpen. If the house of cards has already crumbled, say to the tune of 14 losses in 16 very recent games, it probably means cutting your losses and seeking help less for the current year than for one of the next ones.
Thus, not trading Scott Hairston’s presumably attractive righthanded power bat to a contender for [fill in the blank] was more letdown than relief. I can’t say definitively that it was the wrong move not to make because Sandy Alderson doesn’t let me listen in on his conversations with other GMs, but when the dust settled and Scott Hairston — nice guy, generally solid offensive contributor in a part-time role on a team that exceeded expectations for a while — was still in place, it was fair to ask, “What’s the point?”
The point is always to win the game that’s in front of you, and as long as Scott Hairston is around and is as hot as he’s been lately, he stands a good chance of helping the Mets win games in which lefthanded pitchers are forced to face him. The Mets’ outfield has been a thin stew of part-timers, underdone youngsters, injury victims and Jason Bay. Hairston’s not much of a fielder and he doesn’t necessarily pose a threat to righthanded pitchers, but he’s about as good a bet as the Mets have got out there right now (yet another sad reflection of how things have unraveled).
And if Scott Hairston wasn’t around? Terry Collins would find somebody and play him somewhere. If Hairston was gone and the apparently marginal prospect Alderson maybe could have gotten for him went to Binghamton and developed or didn’t develop, what would be the damage?
Alderson’s explanation during a post-deadline conference call was the 2012 season isn’t over, which is technically true.
“I think there’s a lot of value in, for example, making a run, even if it’s unrealistic. I think there’s a lot of value, for example, in finishing well over .500. I think there’s a lot of value in finishing over .500. I think those things create a perception. What happened or didn’t happen on the deadline may be largely forgotten if a team is able to create a positive impression the second half of the season.”
If making a run is “unrealistic,” then you’re not really making a run. If four months of Scott Hairston on the Mets has helped the Mets be 50-54 instead of 48-56 (his WAR to date is 1.8), perhaps it is fair to conclude Scott Hairston’s value to the Mets, as opposed to a team that is much closer to the postseason, isn’t that great in relative terms. You might even say evaluating him as part of a Mets run as July turns to August is unrealistic.
Perception is an interesting element of Alderson’s answer, though. For argument’s sake, let’s imagine Hairston was traded for whatever Alderson could get to a contender that makes the playoffs. Let’s imagine further that Hairston’s new team is in the Wild Card game and Scott comes up in the eighth inning, with a tie score, and homers off some tough lefty and that team wins. For one day, Scott Hairston will be a big story — and in New York, the spin will be “the Mets traded a postseason hero and got somebody in return who nobody’s ever heard of and won’t likely hear of again,” or something comparably uncomplimentary.
Tough perception. But, like the overkill anxiety attached to the trade deadline, it may be “largely forgotten,” except by those who insist on remembering. Reading between the lines, I get the sense Alderson just doesn’t want the bonus grief that may come with the imaginary middling prospect he received in the imaginary trade for Hairston.
The middle part of his statement intrigues me most, the business about finishing over .500. To my surprise, as a Mets fan who can rattle off without pause every won-lost record the Mets have ever posted (including the two split-season records from 1981), I find myself unmoved by the chance that the Mets might break their three-year string of finishing with a losing record if they can muster 32 wins in their final 58 contests.
The pre-Alderson Mets of 2010 leapt from 70-92 to 79-83 under Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel. Nobody perceived much progress in the improvement or the proximity to .500. If anybody had, Minaya and Manuel would have been around in 2011. Alderson and Collins ran a club that won fewer games, dropping from 79-83 to 77-85, yet they created a perception of legitimate progress. The seasons followed somewhat similar arcs — tepid start, injection of excitement, eventual dismay — yet 2011 was seen as the platform for genuine growth.
Genuine growth isn’t five more wins in 2012 than 2011, not when the arc doesn’t much change, not when the bottom-line result doesn’t much change, not when the distance the Mets maintain from the heart of the action in the National League pennant race doesn’t much change. Barring a supernatural short-term turnaround by this team (9½ out of the Wild Card at the moment) and concurrent collapses by the five teams ahead of them (all of them with winning records, in case you’re harboring 1973 fantasies), the perception is pretty much set for this season: the Mets looked good for a while but then fell apart; they need help if they’re ever gonna look good longer and not fall apart so readily. And the perception for next season won’t be altered by a subtle improvement over the final two months of this season.
The perception of the Mets that Alderson ultimately wants created is, presumably, that of a consistent winner, one for whom a record above .500 is implicit. Should the Mets be 80-81 heading into Game 162, .500 will be my goal for them. Should they be 81-80, finishing above .500 will be that goal. Otherwise, I’m not interested in statistical consolation prizes. When I do the historical rundown in my head, and I go from 70-92 to 79-83 to 77-85 to whatever 2012 brings, I want totals that shatter .500, with additional games tacked on long after the scheduled 162.
That’s progress. That’s winning. They’re not there yet. They don’t seem close to it. I don’t know when they will be. It’s a sad reflection of where the Mets have been and a sad reflection of where the Mets are.
That’s my perception anyway. I don’t like to lose, so obviously I’m not happy about it.
by Jason Fry on 31 July 2012 3:10 am When it was all finally over and the Mets convened at the mound for a rather muted celebration, Manny Acosta kind of rolled his eyes up at the sky and spread his hands in equal parts thanks and exasperation. It was an entirely appropriate response to his own pitching — in the 10th he walked two guys, gave up an RBI single, and recorded outs on a pop-up and two long drives tracked down by Jordany Valdespin, the last one while staggering on to the warning track.
Or maybe Acosta was just afraid of being eaten by seagulls. Which would have been appropriate too.
Acosta was bad, but he was far from alone — the Mets played an infuriatingly shoddy game that they thoroughly deserved to lose. There was Ronny Cedeno botching a tailor-made double play, Bobby Parnell throwing straight fastballs down the heart of the plate, David Wright flailing at balls nowhere near the strike zone, and a generally deplorable lack of focus. Ike Davis’s night was particularly amazing — he failed to plug the hole, froze on a potential double play, muffed a grounder to set up extra innings and managed to strike out four times. I’ll give you 10-to-1 odds Ike’s dropping his iPhone in the john right about now.
The Mets were saved by a few things:
They had Jeremy Hefner pitching about as well as one could have asked of a man sent to the mound with a half-awake defense. I like Hefner, who looks like he knows what’s he doing out there, whether he’s got a ball or a bat in his hands.
They had Tim Byrdak and Jon Rauch doing their jobs, and Josh Edgin turning in a gutsy performance after Parnell faltered.
They had Valdespin kicking up the energy level as always and Mike Baxter returning and chipping in and Jason Bay quietly having an OK game after a poor start — if Bay hadn’t pushed it and taken third on Baxter’s pinch single in the 10th, that run Acosta gave up would have made it 7-7, and then God help us. (Remember, Baxter never buys a beer in NYC again. We owe him.)
They had the Giants playing equally horrible baseball, with Ryan Theriot and Melky Cabrera and Clay Hensley looking torpid at key moments and Sergio Romo and Santiago Casilla reminding us that we do not, in fact, have a monopoly on sucky bullpens.
And most of all the Mets had Scott Hairston, who saved Hefner with one homer and then rewarded Edgin with his second one. You know how much we hate Shane Victorino in New York? That’s how much my friends who are Giants fans hate Hairston. The Mets ought to do the wise thing as well as the decent thing and trade Hairston to a better place, but in the meantime, I’m sure glad to have him.
Anyway, every year brings a few games that are so hideous that the best thing to do would be to scrub them from highlights shows entirely, for fear that they might infect other baseball teams. But they count too, and it’s your best interests to win them. The Mets did that, and that’s good — even if it felt a lot more like survival than triumph.
by Greg Prince on 30 July 2012 6:54 am Dear Mom & Dad,
Things are going OK at baseball camp, I guess. We just finished playing the kids from Camp Diamondback and we did pretty good. We played four games and won two which is better than we’ve done in a while.
A bunch of the kids on our team did real good. That kid Robert Allen who uses all the big words won a ribbon for throwing a lot of strikeouts on Sunday. That kid David who’s kind of a kiss-ass but is basically a good guy won a ribbon for driving in a run. That kid Daniel won a ribbon for getting more hits. That kid Ike won a special ribbon for all the home runs he hit the other day. That kid Ruben got the “Catch of the Week” ribbon as they call it. That kid Kirk got a haircut and went home. That kid Scott may be going to another camp for the rest of the summer but he’s still here and still getting ribbons for being a righty. That kid Tim hasn’t had any more fights with anybody, not even that kid Josh who the counselors don’t really trust but let play a lot (probably because they couldn’t find anybody else to take his place). That new kid Matt I told you about in my last letter hasn’t won any more ribbons since Thursday but they gave him a pretty big one anyway.
I got another “participant” ribbon which I am enclosing so you can put it with my “attendance” ribbon, my “effort” ribbon, the doctor’s note that says I’m OK and the letter from Coach Terry saying how much he and Head Counselor Sandy and all the other campers like me. Maybe I’ll get one of the other kinds of ribbons before camp is over. Or maybe not.
We’re gonna play the kids from Camp Giant next. I’ll let you know if anything happens. It probably won’t, but you never know. Maybe I shoulda stuck with hockey camp.
See you soon,
Jay
P.S. I forgot to tell you…I GOT A WALK!!!
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