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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 19 June 2012 6:22 am Did the Citi Field scoreboard start every Oriole batter’s count at 0 balls and 2 strikes Monday night? You know, just to save time?
I’ve seen hitters obviously overmatched by pitchers. I’ve seen hitters who it could be assumed had little chance against dominant pitchers in ungodly grooves. I’ve seen hitters who had to know it would take a near-miracle to get good wood on an approaching baseball when it left the hand of a pitcher on his best night.
But I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve never seen hitters so absolutely defeated across the entirety of every encounter with a given pitcher. I’ve never seen so many endings appear determined in advance since those scenes in Quiz Show where you knew the contestants had been given the answers. I’ve never seen a pitcher carry a veritable shutout into the (how appropriate) 43rd inning of what amounts to an extended game of catch with Mike Nickeas and Josh Thole.
I’ve never seen anything like what R.A. Dickey is doing to opposing batters.
When he began throwing from Olympus rather than a mound in late May, it was pretty standard stuff within the realm of competition. They tried to hit him and they couldn’t. We’ve seen that before. These last two starts, though? Somewhere in the midst of Dickey’s one-hitter against the Rays and through all of Dickey’s one-hitter against the Orioles, the other side simply sent its regrets that it could not attend. I’m not saying a series of professional hitters gave up rather than attempt to make serious contact with Dickey’s assortment of devastating knuckleballs and complementary fastballs. I’m saying it was like they weren’t even at the party.
Which makes Dickey’s starts fairly easy for the Mets to win, provided a hitter or two on our side does something to the other team’s pitcher, who doesn’t necessarily have to be R.A. Dickey to get them out. For five innings, Jake Arietta posed as much of a statistical obstacle to Mets batters as Dickey did to the O’s, in that the Mets couldn’t put anything but 0s on the board against him. Arietta was no Dickey — nobody is a Dickey but Dickey these days — but it was getting a little uncomfortable out there. Here’s R.A., having just completed a string of 13 consecutive hitless innings, yet he’s locked in a nothing-nothing duel as if he is somehow capable of being matched by any pitcher.
We know different. We know that it can be Jake Arietta or it can be Matt Cain or it can be Denton True “Cy” Young. We know nobody can measure up to the R.A. Dickey of this very special moment in the life of the New York Mets franchise. But Dickey wasn’t winning, and if he wasn’t winning, the chance remained, no matter how preposterous, that he could lose.
Which would just be wrong.
Fortunately, all potential for wrong was righted by Ike Davis, who owes his pitchers a few grand slams and started paying them back by belting the decisive blow with the bases loaded and two out in the bottom of the sixth. Most nights that would be a pretty big story unto itself. Ike was scuffling under .160 ten days ago and now he’s speeding toward the exit of the dreaded interstate, driving the ball with the kind of power we vaguely recall from his younger, more robust days. Maybe Ike Davis, 25 and wanting no part of Buffalo, is back.
Surely, R.A. Dickey, 37 and barely of the same planet as the rest of us, is present. He is here as much as the Baltimore batters were absent Monday night. Oh, they could be seen at the plate, standing in the box, watching the ball go by, even swinging sometimes for effect. Dickey struck out 13 Orioles, a few of whom scowled unhappily at Eric Cooper’s interpretation of the strike zone. Most of them, however, knew what was coming and accepted the outcome with minimal physical resistance.
They could have tried harder to hit his unhittable pitches, but what would have been the point of that?
by Jason Fry on 18 June 2012 3:40 am Sunday was Father’s Day. My kid woke me up with a card he’d made. It showed us in the stands, with the figure in green with a mitt on one hand and a ball descending toward the two figures’ outstretched arms. The card read HOME RUN! Pretty nice way to start the day.
We got to the park early because it was Keith Hernandez Bobblehead Day. Tons of dads and kids — young kids, older kids, former kids. Lots of moms too. The crowd was generally agreeable from the get-go — Mets gear of all eras, including doofy ballpark-only variants, a sprinkling of mild-mannered, well-behaved Reds fans in pinstripes and snow whites and t-shirts (but weirdly no solid red togs), the occasional outlier in a Pirates or Giants or even a Yankees hats. Cyclones gear spotted here and there. (Monday’s Opening Day!) A Brooklyn Dodger hat now and again. New York baseball garb on parade, in other words. Nice to see.
We went in the bullpen gate, which I’ve decided (provisionally) is the new go-to Citi Field entrance. No line, plenty of bobbleheads. Very different than, say, the magnetic-schedule disaster of Opening Day. Nice start.
The Keith Hernandez bobblehead, in truth, looks kind of like Howard Johnson with a longer, vaguely Keithish nose. And the arm fell off Joshua’s after minimal nine-year-old poking and prodding. But it was well-packaged, the uniform is faithfully rendered, and Keith’s promo bobbling his own head made me laugh every time I saw it for a good week or so. Not perfect there, but pretty nice.
The Verano line was too long, but the Box Frites wait was tolerable. Joshua got two Frites Dogs — if you haven’t had them, I’d rank them well above Nathan’s in terms of quality, if not tradition. I got the sweet potato fries with some kind of deplorably addictive bacon sauce. And the summer shandy rules. To be honest, the speed, friendliness and competence at the various Citi Field eateries has slipped to a worrisome extent since a good start back in 2009 — but the guy behind the Box Frites counter was super-helpful, fast and friendly, ending by wishing me a happy Father’s Day. Thanks, man — that was nice.
We got to our seats after a batter or two. The fans around us were fine — which was a relief, since these were seats usually used by Emily and her Dad, and they’re often thick with visiting fans. Didn’t matter for the Reds; can be really annoying with the Phillies; I don’t even want to think about what a Yankee game would be like there. The woman in front of us, in fact, was the kindest neighboring fan I’ve ever seen at Citi Field. She switched seats with her husband because she was concerned Joshua couldn’t see over her. Then a guy farther down the row accidentally dropped ice cream on the elbows of a guy and girl in the row in front of him, walking on in ignorance of what he’d done, and she fished around and found napkins for them. Next time I’m stuck in front of Braying Drunken Guys Who Want to Fight, or next to Terminally Bored Girls Who Are Going to Go to the Bathroom Again or Walk Around or Something, or behind Angry Man Who’s Had It With These Millionaire Ballplayers Not Hitting Home Runs Every Time, I will remember today’s fan and remind myself that the Republic is not, in fact, on a one-way express elevator ride straight to hell. She was amazingly nice.
Joshua and I had a good time chatting about the ballgame. We analyzed Kirk Nieuwenhuis’s epic, smart, ultimately disappointing battle with Johnny Cueto. We marveled at the fact that Cueto could look good so early and then manage to walk a pitcher who’s nearly seven feet tall. We talked about Chris Young and why he might be hard to hit. We talked about prospects and hopes and how those hopes may or may not turn into reality. We cheered David Wright’s diving catch and Daniel Murphy’s nice over-the-shoulder grab and hurried throw home and Josh Thole’s interception of a bunt attempt. We noted that Lucas Duda in motion looks remarkably like his Bunyanesque video-game self. I told him that yes, David Wright’s dad really was named “Rhon.” Very nice.
We were in the shade, and actually got pretty cold. So we decided to find some other vantage points for the last few innings. We hit the Promenade for some chocolate ice cream, watching Young and the Mets on the big screen up there and singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” together. Then we saw the last couple of innings from atop the Pepsi Porch. I think the Pepsi Porch might be my favorite non-premium place at Citi to see a game. I love the angle, though I’m still adjusting a bit to a view that didn’t exist at Shea. While I implored the Mets to do something, Joshua scuffed around in the standing-room areas under the watchful but not overly censorious eye of a young usher. He was nice. The Pepsi Porch is nice too.
Surveying the pigeons waddling across the field, we discussed what would happen if one of them got hit by a ball. I told Joshua that had really happened, and sent mild imprecations in the way of Dion James, whereever he might be. The fan standing next to us brought up Randy Johnson and the HBP that put a dove on the infinite DL. Dave Winfield and the seagull never came up. We missed the squirrel, though I suspect Dusty Baker sent his young pitchers up the tunnel for four-hour stretches to try and corral it. Young arms are strong and elastic; no point babying them. After the game, Wright remarked that it had been like a petting zoo out there. Nice quote.
For the ninth, we exited the bullpen gate and got on the line for the Mr. Met Dash. It was long, but everyone was friendly — the Dad next to me told Joshua about seeing a young Dwight Gooden, and the tomato plants in the Shea bullpen, and other bits of Mets history that are part of a kid’s education. After 20 minutes or so the line began to move, policed by maroon-clad Citi security guys. They were great — genuinely friendly, instead of freaking out about brief breakaways to take pictures or overly excited kids trying to kick up chalk on the foul line or Dads gawking, or acting like the extra event was a huge imposition. Joshua ran the bases, slapped hands with a guy in a Mario suit (Nintendo World was sponsoring the run or something), and proclaimed it good. I didn’t run the bases, but I did get to walk on the warning track at Citi Field and see everything up-close. I’ve been lucky enough to do that a few times; I will always think that it’s pretty nice.
After exiting the Stengel gate, I quizzed the kid on the identity of the Mets adorning the exterior walls. He needs a little work on the ’69 team, but got Gooden and Carter and Piazza right away. And he noted that surely the walk will soon have a big black commemorative square for Johan Santana and his no-hitter. Good point, and nice job, kid.
The 7 train came right away and whisked us home, to where Mom was waiting and the time was getting to be just about right for Sunday grilling and eating in the backyard. Always nice.
* Whatever was going on down there on the field wasn’t particularly nice — it was alternately boring and annoying and frustrating, as it’s been since the Mets left St. Petersburg. But one good thing about baseball is you can be in junky seats surrounded by more than your share of annoying fans and be irritated with the ushers and uninspired by the food and a great game can redeem it all. Another good thing about baseball is that a crummy, forgettable game can be redeemed by sunny skies and nice folks and a good hot dog and talking about your favorite team with someone you love. Can’t have everything, but all in all, very nice.
by Greg Prince on 17 June 2012 10:38 am “I’m not sayin’ he should’ve killed her. But I understand.”
—Chris Rock on O.J. Simpson
Jon Niese threw one very bad pitch very early, Jay Bruce hit it very far and Saturday night’s ballgame was very over. Unfortunately another 8½ innings needed to be played and another 8½-thousand content-free words had to be needlessly issued via the flapping Red-tinged tongues of yappy Fox hounds Thom Brennaman and Sean Casey before the Mets could just leave all their runners on base and call it a night — a very blah night.
The Saturday Night at the Metsies miniseries, which began last weekend and runs for the next two weekends, is revealing itself as a prime-time disaster. Before Fox got its 7:15 PM hands on us, we were 8-1 on Saturday afternoons. Darkness, when enmeshed with Foxness, does not become us.
Nor, to go back to Friday night, does booing our left fielder when he’s going all out to haul in a deep, tailing fly ball, diving onto the warning track in his futile pursuit and inadvertently ramming his battle-scarred noggin into the base of the outfield wall to halt his skidding forward motion as the ball trickles away for an inside-the-park home run (Bruce’s, of course), leaving him to lay helplessly in the corner.
Jason Bay took a nasty spill and it elicited a nasty reception. The failure was jeered despite the effort involved in trying to execute a fairly hopeless catch. The result was loudly derided because who wants to fall behind when the bases had been empty and nothing traveled over a fence? And, quite clearly, the man in left was booed…and kept being booed while waiting to be medically attended to.
When the Mets got Bay on his feet and helped him off the field, there was some applause. Some, not a ton. Let’s say it wasn’t unanimous. Just as not everybody booed an injured Met at Citi Field, not everybody clapped in support of a banged-up Met who looked to have just courted another bout of head trauma. Brushing with broad strokes would be a mistake here.
Yet it’s clear two rules of baseball etiquette — unwritten Commandments, you might say — were breached by Mets fans or whoever goes to Mets games when they draw 34,716:
1) You don’t boo a guy when he is literally down;
2) You don’t not cheer a guy when they finally get him up.
It doesn’t matter that times have changed. It doesn’t matter that the main attraction at ballgames is apparently the electronic device in the palm of your hand. It doesn’t matter that Citi Field, like all modern fields, seems designed to detract from the traditional ballgame-going experience and certainly doesn’t nurture certain time-honored traditions. There are just things you don’t do and there are things you are compelled to do. There was poor behavior on both ends where Jason Bay’s second concussion in three seasons was concerned.
You don’t boo Jason Bay when he is down. And you don’t not cheer Jason Bay when he gets up.
It doesn’t matter that Jason Bay has been a deeply dug hole for tens of millions of dollars since 2010 and he’s owed tens of millions more through 2013.
It doesn’t matter that Jason Bay has shown next to no power and little production despite power and production being exactly the items for which he’s being handsomely compensated.
It doesn’t matter that Jason Bay has missed significant chunks of time in each of his three Met years to date — even managing to contract flu-like symptoms the moment he was restored to the active roster this season — meaning we always seem to be wishing him speedy recoveries and banking on his next fresh start to set everything right.
It doesn’t matter that while his performance has been utterly unlikable, his persona couldn’t be less worthy of bile and therefore Mets fans of decent upbringing can’t quite bring themselves to pour vitriol on his star-crossed coconut because Jason Bay is always hustling, always trying, always making the effort and never saying anything outwardly insulting (if not exactly saying anything inspiring).
It doesn’t matter that most of us have been trying our best to temper our criticism of him personally even as we legitimately excoriate his performance because Jason Bay doesn’t come off as a self-absorbed mercenary or a preening jerk, yet for all our thoughtful self-editing, he won’t return the favor and simply hit like he’s supposed to.
It doesn’t matter that every isolated now and then, he teases us with a taste of what we thought he’d do as a matter of course and then reverts to the Jason Bay form as we’ve come to know it.
It doesn’t matter that one game after Jason Bay helped the Mets sweep Tampa Bay, he immediately played a role in putting the Mets behind Cincinnati.
It doesn’t matter that when you see another player risk his well-being to make an impossible catch and then hurt himself, your instinct is to care deeply and support him wholeheartedly, yet somehow when it’s Jason Bay, you feel you’ve been around this cul-de-sac on multiple occasions, thus you’re incredibly frustrated just thinking about him and your empathetic baseball-fan instincts betray you.
None of it matters. Even if you don’t want to, you have to not boo Jason Bay when he appears to injure himself and you have to applaud Jason Bay when it is confirmed he hasn’t killed himself.
That’s just what you have to do — even for Jason Bay.
by Greg Prince on 16 June 2012 4:14 am  From hauling in the last out to partaking of the first slice, he’s still Cleon Jones. 10. Jason Bay. Ohmigod, wasn’t that awful? Naked Gun awful. I’m surprised the poor bastard’s head didn’t roll into foul territory. What’s left to say?
9. Scott Hairston. The Man for a night, albeit a lousy night on the field. But Scott’s a gamer coming off that bench where few Mets sit for long. Give ’em hell, Hairy!
8. Mike Baxter. Every conversation since June 1 is better because I can use the phrase “since the no-hitter” or words to that effect. Two weeks and I haven’t fully come down. Why should I? That’s all Baxter’s doing (well, his and Johan’s). Hoping the getting better is proceeding. And I hope I never receive another offer for a reprinted $50 ticket for a game for which I turned down a real one of lesser face value.
7. Dave Kingman. A visitor to four positions as a Met, a fixture at none, but when I envision Dave Kingman The First Time, I definitely see him as a left fielder. That tenure ended 35 years ago yesterday, June 15, 1977, which is hardly ever remembered as The Day Dave Kingman Was Traded.
6. Steve Henderson. Nor is June 15, 1977 remembered as The Day Steve Henderson Was Traded For. Nor should it be. But, oh, that home run 32 years and two days ago…
5. Cliff Floyd. I thought of Cliff as Rob Emproto and I discussed David Wright’s Met future in one of the nine innings in which the Mets looked hopeless Friday night. I wondered if the Mets’ bush-league appeal of the one hit in R.A. Dickey’s one-hitter might be remembered by David at contract time the way the mob remembered Tommy’s unauthorized whacking of Billy Batts in GoodFellas, though I agreed that ultimately money talks and nobody walks. Anyway, this got me thinking about how David has spent so many postgame media scrums as the sole go-to guy and how he’s often been left to explain away Met misfortunes and I remembered what a nice relationship Cliff and David seemed to have in David’s early days, and I began to miss ol’ Cliff.
4. REO Speedwagon. Pretty left field choice for a postgame concert in Flushing, Queens, New York in 2012, no? But they rocked…THEY ROCKED! per Beavis. I was glad to see and hear them as was Rob, who’s an ace classic rock guy in addition to being a baseball wise man. I get the group that gave us You Can Tune A Piano, But You Can’t Tuna Fish is not everybody’s cup of early ’80s tea, but what I didn’t get pre-Friday was how their impending Citi Field presence inspired so much snark of the “who can even name an REO Speedwagon song?” variety. Well, there was “Keep On Lovin’ You,” which was played every six minutes during my three final high school months. And there was “Keep The Fire Burnin’” which was on my car radio frequently as I drove back to Florida for my sophomore year of college. And there was “Roll With The Changes,” which received a recurrent life on multiple FM formats once Hi Infidelity hit. And there was überballad “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” which spent three weeks at No. 1 as winter 1985 became spring 1985. Turn your nose up at the Wagon if you must, but never be proud of not knowing something.
3. Endy Chavez. (No exposition necessary.)
2. Bernard Gilkey. His 1996 star turn as Mets RBI machine is vaguely recalled, but everybody remembers his 1997 Men In Black cameo.
1. Cleon Jones. Holy fudge, I stood right next to Cleon Jones as Cleon Jones took a bite of a slice of pizza named for Cleon Jones and when Cleon Jones wasn’t enjoying his Cleon Jones pizza, Cleon Jones was answering questions about 1969 being posed to him by a small cadre of shall we say senior bloggers (within a somewhat larger cadre of bloggers of all ages) that included me, and again I was reminded of how helpful it is to shed one’s cynicism and allow oneself to be impressed should the impulse present itself.
Brother, was I impressed to be standing inches from Cleon Jones.
See, he’s Cleon Jones, who hit .340 for the World Champion Mets and caught the ball that ensured they’d forever be referred to as such. I’m me, some little kid watching on a tiny Sony as it unfolded, except now I’m older, apparently. Yet on a Friday night in the same general vicinity where that catch was made a mere 42 years and eight months ago, we came into a proximity measured in inches and bridged by baseball. Cleon talked about Gil Hodges, Donn Clendenon, challenging for a batting title, being hit by Dave McNally, dealing with a midseason injury on a slick Shea surface and Gil Hodges some more, of whom he seems particularly fond still.
As it happened this Blogger Night, my little pastime here brought me into contact with Jerry Koosman and Edgardo Alfonzo (along with Cleon they helped City Harvest do a good deed, repacking sweet potatoes for NYC food pantries on Mets Plaza); Kooz again, this time with R.A. Dickey (meeting as scoreless inning maestros); top draft picks Gavin Cecchini and Kevin Plawecki (your Mets of tomorrow, tasting a bit of their future yesterday); and Randy from The Apple and Joe from Mets Merized Online (two of the many nice folks within the blogger cadre brought together by Mets media relations). Plus I was hooking up with Rob a little later for the actual game plus concert.
Yet chatting with Cleon Jones in front of the Two Boots in center field — reasonably interrupted now and then by a double-take, a gawk and an “excuse me, but you’re my favorite player…” autograph request — six days after I saw a fictional Cleon Jones make the last catch of the 1969 World Series in Men In Black 3…good lord, Cleon Jones! Cleon Jones! It’s not that Cleon Jones was my favorite player growing up. It’s that Cleon Jones was Cleon Jones and, better yet, still is.
So he wins.
by Jason Fry on 15 June 2012 2:52 am Good luck outguessing baseball: After kicking the ball around and losing two out of three to the Nats and then getting kicked around by the Yankees for a horrifying sweep, the Mets absolutely flattened the Tampa Bay Rays for a sweep of their own, turning an imminently horrific 1-5 road trip into a respectable 4-5 affair. They did it with booming hitting, mostly OK defense, mostly good bullpen work, a ridiculously dominant performance by R.A. Dickey, bad defense for the other guys and pretty much every advantage one can grab in winning a baseball game. The Rays walked away from Ben Zobrist’s final called strike three looking shellshocked, and with reason.
Johan Santana still doesn’t look good — he was missing his spots, and only some very effective pitching from Jon Rauch prevented Johan’s final line from looking a lot like it did following that mess in the Bronx. The narrative that we sold Johan’s shoulder for a no-hitter will continue to be explored unless or until Johan returns to his generally effective pitching of April and May; I’m certain it will rear its head in these parts again. For now, though, it’s something worthy of idle wondering rather than active worrying.
If your taste runs to active worrying (and you’re a Mets fan, so you’re at least acquainted), you’ll want to consider the defense, again. Ike Davis botched a pickoff of B.J. Upton, leading to a run. Then, with a 9-5 lead in the ninth and two outs to go, Omar Quintanilla inexplicably tried to race Desmond Jennings to second base instead of taking the 26th out at first. Fortunately, the bats had enough juice in them to make up for all that: Kirk Nieuwenhuis went deep twice, David Wright was on base four times, Davis reached base three times and even Jason Bay, the Charlie Brown of the gang, hit one out.
The Mets may not continue their winning ways; if I had to bet I’d wager that they won’t, as I suspect their ineffective bullpen and porous defense will do them in. Which won’t necessarily make the year a failure — not if some of the young Mets make the transition from prospects to pieces, if the minor-league arms keep developing, and if the financial future remains brighter than it’s been. (And hell, even if that looks iffy, we got a no-hitter. We’ll always remember 2012 fondly for that.)
Speaking of the financial future, Bay’s recent injury makes it unlikely that he’ll reach 500 plate appearances this year, which would turn his ridiculous $17 million Omarpalooza vesting option in 2014 into a $3 million buyout. (Well, unless he collects 600 PAs in ’13.) The Mets will also almost certainly buy out Santana’s 2014 $25.5 million deal for $5.5 million. Spending $8.5 million to have two players go away (accompanied, for Johan at least, by our devout thanks) is expensive, but it beats spending $42.5 million to watch them give you what would almost certainly be a lot less value than that.
So those are reasons to be hopeful, even while we search for a shortstop and hope Rauch has more days where he nods at Twitter praise instead of retweeting venom. The season will ebb and flow, with good days and bad — that’s the game. But I can think of another bright spot here: The Mets are doing more with less, I think, because they’ve bought into Dave Hudgens’ smart, patient approach to at-bats. They work counts, spoil pitches, tire starters out, and wait to take advantage of the diminished stuff brought about by elevated pitch counts or the less-effective arms of middle relievers. They did it to Alex Cobb on Tuesday night, to David Price yesterday (not that Dickey needed much help) and then to Jeremy Hellickson today.
Take the top of the fourth, 32 pitches of torment for Hellickson. Bay led off, looked at three balls, then flied out on a 3-2 pitch. Josh Thole grounded out on a 1-0 pitch, but Quintanilla then battled Hellickson through a tough nine-pitch at-bat, including four fouls on 2-2. He reached on an infield hit, then scored on Nieuwenhuis’s homer off a 1-2 pitch. Hellickson then hit Jordany Valdespin in the foot with an 0-1 pitch. He was clearly crumbling, and Joe Maddon started stalling. Wright then worked Hellickson for eight more pitches, yet another sign that the anxious, wildly swinging Wright of previous Citi Field seasons has been banished. Wright walked, and Maddon left Hellickson in against Lucas Duda. Faced with a tired, frustrated pitcher, Duda turned the game plan on its head, sensing that Hellickson might try a get-me-over pitch that would give him a 0-1 advantage and a better chance at escape. It was the right time to be aggressive, and Duda blasted Hellickson’s first pitch off the center-field wall. It was the last pitch Hellickson would throw.
There will be good days and bad, sure. But being smart is about as close to slump-proof as one can get — and with bats in their hands, so far the Mets look pretty smart.
by Greg Prince on 14 June 2012 3:11 am From: Clueless Editor <cluelesseditor@limitedimaginationpublishing.net>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 21:40:43 -0400
To: George Plimpton <gplimpton@celestialillustrated.com>
Subject: Re: Book Proposal
Dear Mr. Plimpton:
We are in receipt of your book proposal, The Curiouser Case of R.A. Dickey and regret to inform you it does not suit our needs at this time.
While your lead character R.A. Dickey is richly drawn, and his backstory is potentially appealing, we here at Limited Imagination agree there is no way he could exist. Since you insist on setting Dickey within the milieu of major league baseball, there needs to be at least some semblance of reality attached to your protagonist, and quite frankly, your Dickey may be the least fathomable sports character we’ve ever read.
 Truth stranger than fiction? (Photo by Sharon Chapman) According to our research department, most successful baseball pitchers attain a level of peak performance in their 20s, but your Dickey is supposedly a career journeyman derailed by the lack of an essential component in his throwing arm who attempts to learn a magic pitch in his 30s, takes years to master it and then, quite suddenly, takes it to a whole other level where he becomes all but impossible to hit. The sports reader may “root” for the unexpected, but that demographic is more and more grounded in statistical probability and the Dickey you describe in the latter chapters begins to do things that sound impossible.
We could accept a certain literary license in making Dickey fairly articulate as a contrast to the usual ballplayer, but having him write a searing memoir that lands on the New York Times bestseller list in advance of creating this pitching alchemy again stretches credulity (though I did chuckle at the idea of “R.A. Dickey” signing his book at a museum named for Yogi Berra — quite clever). More troubling is your climactic scene in St. Petersburg where your protagonist has the night of his professional life.
Where to begin with what’s wrong with this?
• First, you mention his team, the New York Mets, has recently had a no-hitter. Longtime baseball fans will immediately detect the inaccuracy there.
• Second, your key moment in the telling of the big game happens way too early. The first inning, Mr. Plimpton? And having the team’s All-Star third baseman make the mistake? That seems to be pushing it.
• Next, Dickey goes on to set a team record in the middle of all this. You might want to rethink pouring on so much melodrama.
• Also, the part where you have Dickey’s masterpiece disturbed once more by the same third baseman…you might want to do a little fact-checking to see if that is even possible.
• Finally, the aftermath of the one-hitter seems just plain bizarre. You have Dickey’s manager insisting the team will challenge the scorer’s big decision, and Dickey having the presence of mind to use a word like “purview” in his live postgame TV interview, and for some reason you layer on top of this a perfect game pitched across the country hours later by the same pitcher who once “beaned” the star-crossed star third baseman who made the two bad plays to cost Dickey his own bid at perfection.
Your conclusion carries with it its own set of holes. Where you indicate Dickey’s perfect game not being a perfect game is beside the point because the bigger victory is that he’s pitching so incredibly well throwing the magic pitch that maybe next time he’ll throw the perfect game — and even if he doesn’t, a string of shutouts and near-shutouts that are on par with what the best pitchers in his team’s history have done is plenty?
No disrespect, Mr. Plimpton, but we here at Limited Imagination Publishing wonder if you have any concept of telling a good sports story.
Nevertheless, we do see some promise in certain elements of The Curiouser Case of R.A. Dickey. I would suggest that instead of making him an intellectual Southerner who struggled for years in the minor leagues before emerging as a sensation in New York, you convert him to a different kind of protagonist. He could have an Eastern religious bent along the lines of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha. Since they have nicknames in baseball (by the way, “R.A.” isn’t much of a baseball name), you could shorten “Siddhartha” to maybe Sid. Or Sidd, even. I was thinking about how you worked Berra into your proposal, so let’s say He’s A Pitcher, Part Yogi And Part Recluse; Impressively Liberated From Our Opulent Life-Style, Sidd’s Deciding About Yoga — and his future in baseball.
This is just something that springs to mind. Hmmm, “springs”…say, here’s another suggestion: you may want to set your story in spring training. You already have the Mets in Florida. Maybe you can check and see if the Mets ever trained in St. Petersburg and play off that location (but in a venue more interesting than a domed stadium, which I’m pretty sure they don’t even have in baseball anymore; placing the action in the middle 1980s might solve that problem, but that’s up to you). St. Pete might be fertile ground for “Sidd” to do eccentric things like play the French horn and throw the baseball outlandishly hard.
Admittedly, it’s a little off the charts, but the idea that a fictional pitcher can get batters out with devastating fastballs at least seems, as they say, in the ballpark. This “R.A. Dickey” and his magic pitch that nobody’s ever thrown the way he’s throwing it in your book?
Honestly, Mr. Plimpton, who’s going to believe that could happen?
Good luck,
Clueless Editor
Limited Imagination Publishing
by Jason Fry on 13 June 2012 12:54 am It’s not a good sign when you miss nearly all of the Subway Series, then are relieved that your team has an off-day.
I was at my 25th high-school reunion over the weekend, and so the Debacle in the Bronx was reduced to occasional bleary, baleful glowers at my phone, with the exception of a couple of painful innings I heard while waiting for and sitting on the Delta Shuttle back to New York. The captain has indicated it’s time to switch off all electronic devices? No problem, ma’am — this one’s giving me nothing but pain as it is.
Tonight’s renewal of the thrilling rivalry between the Mets and Rays didn’t immediately promise a much better outcome. Besides the fact that the Rays are really, really good, the Mets played the first couple of innings like a dispirited team walking straight into another uppercut to the chin. Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Lucas Duda lost balls against the weirdly colored, weirdly canted Mad Max roof that feels like it’s going to slide off the top of Tropicana Field, with Gary Cohen’s sympathy extending up to but not including the fact that every other visitor plays in the same conditions. That was bad; worse, Chris Young couldn’t locate his curveball, leaving various Rays waiting on his rather pedestrian fastball. Forget bringing a knife to a gunfight — poor Young was facing a Wild West showdown with an empty holster.
But Young persevered, the Mets stopped dropping balls, and eventually they figured out that Alex Cobb was basically armed with nothing but his own fairly ordinary fastball, which he kept aiming at the hands of left-handed hitters. Perhaps the Mets heard Keith Hernandez howling about this rather metronomic plan in the booth, when he wasn’t registering crabby opposition to Moneyball, video review and Twitter. That last one was perhaps the least surprising statement in the universe for Tuesday, June 12, 2012 — Keith Hernandez Has No Use for Twitter — but an unfortunate one nonetheless, as Keith would be phenomenal on Twitter. I imagine his Twitter persona as a mix of Bill Murray and Buzz Bissinger — hell, I’d pay to follow him. The only thing more entertaining would be a Keith Hernandez reality show, which would instantly win “Keep Until I Delete” status on my TiVo. Surely SNY can make this happen. Option Keith TV and cancel, say, Loudmouths, and think what a better place the world would instantly be.
Anyway, Jordany Valdespin thrived at his natural position, racking up four RBIs, Ike Davis blasted a three-run homer into the seats, Daniel Murphy came through with the bases loaded and Jason Bay … well, Jason Bay tried his hardest. There were dicey moments as Young’s pitch count climbed above 100, with Terry Collins perhaps wondering whether a one-armed Young might be more effective than anybody he might bring in from the bullpen. (Honestly, it’s neck and neck.) But Jon Rauch got the last out in the sixth, ensuring he’ll have to retweet minimal amounts of cyber-venom, and after the commercial the rout was on.
We can’t know what tomorrow will bring, except that it includes the ferocious talent and heat of David Price (in what ought to be fascinating Strasburgian matchup with R.A. Dickey). But at least for tonight the Mets had what they and we sorely needed — a laugher.
While we’re being Twittery, you can follow me at jasoncfry and Greg at greg_prince. You know, if you want. C’mon, it’s fun.
by Greg Prince on 12 June 2012 1:07 pm We know best-selling author R.A. Dickey is a person as well as a top-notch pitcher, and we like that about him, because it gives us one more reason to find him, as he likes to say, trustworthy. If you’d like to discover more R.A. for yourself, as I did, he’ll be signing copies of Wherever I Wind Up at the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center at Montclair State in Little Falls, Thursday night, June 21, 6:00 to 7:30.
When you read Brian Costa’s profile of Andres Torres in the Wall Street Journal, you’ll learn our slumping center fielder is a person, too. Costa explores Torres’s ADHD, which helps explain why succeeding at baseball can be extra challenging even for a person who is a gifted athlete. It’s more rewarding knowing Dickey overcame personal obstacles to become a stellar Met than it is understanding Torres is held back by personal obstacles and has been an unproductive Met, but person-ness comes with the territory.
If you’ve followed any Metsian doings on Twitter in the past 24 hours, you’ve probably noticed Jon Rauch being a person — a person trying to laugh off the attacks of, technically, other persons. Rauch is one of several Mets very active with social media interactivity, which is all very lighthearted and friendly when things are going well (or at least not going badly), but can emit toxic overtones when things are a mess. By Rauch’s own admission, the end of Sunday’s game, when he gave up a home run to Russell Martin, was a mess. Surprise, surprise, Rauch was the subject of loathsome Tweets for his troubles. Rauch handled the onslaught not by checking out of Twitter when the criticism grew insanely nasty — as Josh Thole did last year — but by ReTweeting them to show, in every sense possible, he’s a bigger person than his most virulent detractors could dream of being.
Yeah, tattooed relief pitchers who give up walkoff homers are people every bit as much as soulful knuckleballers who are 9-1 and center fielders struggling with hyperactivity. Mets are people. (Rumor has it Yankees are people, too, but that can’t be confirmed at this time.)
I’m not sure how I feel about this revelation. We are party to uninhibited honesty from Dickey, insightful reporting on Torres and edgy but measured response from Rauch, and it helps us immensely in understanding we’re rooting for people, not names and numbers. Yet, let’s face it, this being informed and enlightened chips away at the barrier we had when we could sit back and mindlessly express our briefly considered opinion of who sucked and who sucked more. Not everybody worries about those barriers, as illustrated by the Tweets sent Rauch’s way, but for the rest of us, having to realize guys who screw up on “our” team are just people is a little bracing.
I’m charmed that many of my fellow Mets fans Tweeted to Rauch’s defense, telling him, in essence, you’re all right, you’re a good guy, you’ll get ’em next time, the jerks are just being jerks. That speaks to good fellowship and sportsmanship and decent humanity, yet I can’t help but suppress a grin because I know these good-hearted Mets fans, if they were not in some semblance of contact with a Met reliever who’d just allowed a Yankee to finish off a series sweep, would be muttering horrible things about Jon Rauch precisely because he’s a Met reliever who’d just allowed a Yankee to finish off a series sweep. But that’s Jon Rauch the Met. As Mets fans, we get mad at our Mets and impulsively declare them deserving of the most horrible of fates.
Twitter, however, has provided a sense of Jon Rauch the person…and maybe a taste of “knowing” Jon Rauch the Met. So, yeah, the Met who gives up a ninth-inning walkoff homer in the Bronx is going to inspire a little reflexive vitriol when he’s an abstract figure tethered to a 4.88 ERA. But good ol’ @jrauch60? He’s a good guy! Get off his sizable back!
I totally get it. It’s one thing to harass a Met from the stands or the couch. It’s another to mistreat a person who plays for the Mets. Once in a while, when it’s not the bottom of the ninth inning and the score isn’t being untied by a person who plays in another uniform, I even plan to remember that.
by Greg Prince on 10 June 2012 10:03 pm  And this was before the Subway Series. Movies are almost always better when there’s a Mets element to them, whether it’s outsized, as in the key 1969 scenes from the current release Men In Black 3, or subtle, as in 1987’s Moonstruck, which had nothing explicit to do with the Mets back in the day when it seemed everything had something to do with the Mets, but did offer a lingering shot of a Darryl Strawberry poster in the bar where Loretta Castorini (Cher) agrees to join Ronny Cammareri (Nicolas Cage) for a post-opera drink.
Though nobody mentions the Mets anywhere in Moonstruck, one of the eternal truths as regards the object of our ongoing affection was expressed in this exchange between Loretta and her mother Rose (Olympia Dukakis) when Rose learns Loretta and Ronny are engaged to be married:
“Do you love him, Loretta?”
“Aw ma, I love him awful.”
“Oh God, that’s too bad.”
Rose had earlier explained, when Loretta planned to settle and marry Ronny’s schlemiel of a brother, Johnny (Danny Aiello), “When you love them, they drive you crazy because they know they can.”
If you exulted with the 31-23 Mets last weekend, you know you love them. And if you’ve been tearing out what’s left of your hair for most of the past 1-6 week, culminating in the baldness-inducing sweep-capper in the Bronx Sunday afternoon, you know Rose Castorini must have had a Darryl Strawberry poster tacked up somewhere in that enormous house of theirs, because like she said, they drive us crazy seemingly because they know they can.
Even when we should know better; even when perhaps we shouldn’t hold them to major league standards when they’re fielding primarily Buffalo Bisons and Jason Bay; even when we heard a little voice last December telling us the alleged bullpen upgrade was a fraud because alleged bullpen upgrades announced in December are always a fraud; even when we understand they possess no killer instinct in innings in which many of them become runners but hardly any of them become runs; even when we’re in our sixteenth season of trying to succeed yet ultimately failing against the likes of Derek Jeter, Andruw Jones and Andy Pettitte…no, not the likes of them, but actually them; even when we mock the dimensions of an overblown Little League park yet can’t manage to hit anything out of it ourselves; even when the pitcher with the disturbing heartbeat has more heart than all the teammates allegedly supporting him; even when the Mets are the Mets are the Mets and they pick the freaking Subway Series to emphatically remind us of that fact.
We love them awful, anyway, which is exactly how they played in the Bronx.
Oh God, that’s too bad.
by Greg Prince on 10 June 2012 6:17 am  We want the Mets to get up now... “I just kind of felt dead tonight,” said Dillon Gee after losing to the Yankees, 4-2.
Didn’t we all inside? Didn’t everybody in a Mets uniform, with the possible exception of provisional savior Omar Quintanilla, look like Dillon felt?
Enough playing dead. Rise from the dead already.
It’s Sunday. It’s as good a day as any for a resurrection.
Photo by Sharon Chapman.
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