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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 9 June 2012 11:25 am As one who wasn’t keeping up on the Astros’ day-to-day machinations from 1994 to 1996 nor the Angel melodramas of 1997 to 1999, I have to admit I knew little about Terry Collins during his first two tenures as a major league manager, other than he looked kind of miserable in Houston and it ended rather miserably in Anaheim.
The Terry Collins who won few plaudits as the returns on his management style chronically diminished seems to have been left behind in the last century, replaced by a kinder, gentler, wiser, more empathetic character about whom nobody has a bad word to say personally (a few bunting and bullpen calls aside). Check out Ken Rosenthal’s piece on the Met-amorphosis of a skipper, from “notoriously high-strung” to someone who’s succeeded via “remarkable transformation” for a well-deserved pat on Terry’s back.
Recalling erstwhile Met David Cone’s assessment that the Yankees got him when he was in his calmer, more mature yet still effective “second husband” phase while we had him when he was wild and at least once wanted by the law, it’s nice knowing that for a change we got somebody at the stage of his career when he’s at his best. Not only is this Terry Collins preferable to the Astro/Angel model, he’s worn way better than his three predecessors — Jerry Manuel, Willie Randolph and Art Howe — and become the manager to finally put an end to the residual pining many of us long maintained for their predecessor, Bobby Valentine.
Can you feel the “but…” coming?
The but is more a sense than a complaint, because I have no concrete complaints with Terry Collins or the overall job he’s done. But my sense is he overcompensates sometimes for the manager he used to be, the well-meaning results coming out, well…weird.
Terry threw himself full-force under the bus for removing Jose Reyes a half-inning too soon for comfort on Closing Day last year. It was such a strange episode to begin with, and it got only stranger in the postgame when Terry attempted to explain his culpability in letting Reyes bolt from the box score in the top of the first to preserve his league-leading batting average. The premeditated protection of .337, fairly standard in baseball folkways, was far less the issue than the timing of Reyes taking a seat before many fans had a chance to take theirs. At least have him go to short, tip his cap, get a few more people in the ballpark for what turned out to be a Met icon’s last day on the job. As someone who grumbled in the right field stands over the incredible, disappearing shortstop, that’s all I wanted.
The manager took responsibility. Fine. He took the blame. Fine. He broke down and made an enormous and emotional admission of what it took for him and his staff to earn their players’ respect and if his star wanted to go out on these terms, then that was the way it was going to be, blame him the manager. It was human and thoughtful and, besides, it was Closing Day. If you can’t show yourself as blatantly sentimentally introspective as a baseball season is ending, what’s the point of being what they call a baseball man?
A few weeks ago — though it seems longer — Terry jumped on another grenade after another questionable decision involving another star player. That was the Brewers game in which D.J. Carrasco had so much trouble locating his sinker that it rose high enough to smack Ryan Braun in his left arm. Coming as it did on the heels of a Carrasco-surrendered home run in one of those (several) games the Mets were losing by a ton of runs, it all looked a little peculiar, intentionwise. Soon enough, Carrasco was an unmissed ex-Met, but not before another weird interlude in which Collins pulled David Wright from the lineup in advance of his imminent at-bat. SNY’s cameras found the manager and the .408-hitting third baseman in an animated exchange, the upshot of which didn’t require lip-reading expertise. It was clear David Wright did not want to come out of the game because David, de facto captain serving under Colonel Collins, did not want to be seen as ducking potential retaliation from Zack Greinke or not taking one — or, per usual, everything — for the team.
Right move for Collins? Maybe. The Mets, you may have noticed, are prone to injuries and if there was any risk to the N.L. batting leader at that moment, the season would have been on the endangered species list. There’s no telling what the Brewers were thinking, but my guess was Greinke, pitching a shutout and being Greinke, wasn’t going to headhunt just because Carrasco, immediately ejected (to only modest on-field objection from Collins), plunked his MVP teammate. But that was just a guess. It was 8-0 in the seventh inning. Never-say-dieness notwithstanding, the Mets weren’t coming back. Why not take David out for a little rest?
Better yet, why not, when the carnivorous gentlemen of the press asked what was up with that, answer, “I was resting my player. David’s been playing with a fractured pinkie and giving his all. He wanted to stay in, he’s such a competitor. That’s all there is to it. Next question.” Collins could have winked, the reporters could have rolled their eyes a little and baseball as we’ve known it for decades would have been served. Instead, the Full Terry 2.0 was on display as every ounce of angst seem to come pouring out of him, suggesting the Brewers might have wanted to have hit David…which made the manager and the Mets look guiltier than the actions of a lone wolf ineffective reliever should have. Yeah, the dugout discussion between Collins and Wright appeared fierce on TV, but as David himself said, as he is prone to as an expert issuer of controversy-defusing quotes, “You get caught up in the moment and things probably looked a lot worse than they really were.”
It all blew over as Carrasco was immediately DFA’d, the Brewers left town and new mini-dramas came and went, but by the next day I began to think that Terry Collins, for all the praise he’s rightfully received and for all the progress he’s admirably extracted, may not last as manager beyond this season. I just get the feeling this being a changed man business is way harder than it looks, that the combination of characteristic intensity and extra care he takes to watch his step and publicly blame himself when things go periodically awry isn’t good for a person.
Friday night in the Bronx, I sensed it again when Collins stood in front of the veritable Tiananmen Square tank and insisted Johan Santana’s lousy outing in a stadium where he’s historically been abymsal was all his fault. The extra day of rest, which became a huge story not just because of Johan’s huge last outing but because Terry so sweated and bled the arbitrary pitch count the previous Friday, apparently backfired. Johan, said the skipper, didn’t have a bad game in surrendering four home runs over five innings…the skipper had a bad game:
“I am responsible for the way he pitched. He was rusty. The command of his stuff was not as sharp as it’s been the past three or four or five starts. It was my doing tonight. We erred on the side of caution, and it cost us the game.”
Hiroki Kuroda and his seven innings of one-hit ball notwithstanding, it’s likely Santana was a little too well-rested, however understandable the precautionary fervor given his post-rehab status. If rotations really turned at their most optimal on that much rest, why are none of them regularly of the six-man variety? Teams carry twelve, sometimes thirteen pitchers. Every pitch is monitored as if it could be the last of a pitcher’s career. If this really worked, I bet somebody would try it and stick with it instead of saving it (as Valentine did in the late ’90s) for extraordinary circumstances.
Let’s say everything Collins says is true, that’s it all his fault, that Santana was merely an instrument for his managerial malfeasance, that the balls whacked by Cano, Jones and that dipstick Swisher were predetermined by Terry’s horrendous miscalculation, not because sometimes those things happen.
Even if we say all that, it’s a loss. It’s one loss. Even if it’s an unattractive 9-1 Subway Series loss, it’s just one demerit in a season when there’s plenty of goodwill and chits to go around and nobody’s falling out of a playoff race because of it. Johan was undeniably lousy, but he hung in, his arm didn’t fall off, we still have the Friday night from the week before and, better yet, we have today. Managers are always preaching the importance of putting it behind us and moving on. I suppose this is Terry’s attempt to do that. Yet why does it feel he’s laboring far more than Santana did against the Yankees?
Again, I really get the armchair feeling that Terry is trying so dadburn hard not to be who he used to be and is so dadburn dedicated to being New Age Terry that it’s not good for him. The “respect” thing he talked about last September seems to have paid off in how his players (who, blessedly, have no obvious prima donnas or malcontents in their visible ranks) view him and play for him, but I hope Terry has enough respect for himself to not tie himself up in unnecessary knots every time a star-related pothole materializes on the long season’s road. Because as I said, I don’t think it’s going to wear well ultimately, and if a team that’s played hard and responded to him falls out of contention and winds up in a competitive free-fall the way his team did last year anyway, I can imagine it not wearing at all.
I was wrong that Terry Collins would likely be a bad fit for the New York Mets. I hope I’m wrong again.
by Greg Prince on 8 June 2012 4:16 pm Just a reminder to the Mets: Increasingly, we fans say we don’t particularly care about the Subway Series, that the novelty wore off long ago, that six games a year is too many, that Interleague’s an unnecessary disruption to baseball’s beautifully synchronized rhythms and that the whole thing is played out. These statements may accurately reflect how we view the world philosophically, but from a visceral standpoint…not so much. Hence, when you’re playing these three games this weekend, do your best to win them.
I know you do your best to win all your games. But you know what I mean. Really do your best. Really.
Thanks.
by Jason Fry on 8 June 2012 1:39 am I’m off to Red Sox country for my 25th high-school reunion tomorrow, so today’s game was a radio affair while working, with Howie and Josh painting the word picture from their perch in the ionosphere above Nationals Park. With R.A. Dickey on the mound, the game passed by like the cool breeze from an ambling, unhittable knuckleball. Dickey is on a remarkable roll: He’s the first in the big leagues to nine wins, which is one win more than he had all of last year; he’s pitching to an ever-diminishing 2.44 ERA; he’s striking out hitters in bushels and hardly walking any; and next week he has a shot at matching Jerry Koosman’s club mark of 31 2/3 scoreless innings. (I could also mention Mike Pelfrey’s streak of 27 scoreless innings, but I’m working assiduously to edit Mike Pelfrey out of my personal Mets history.) If Dickey keeps pitching the way we’ve come to expect that he will, he seems like a lock for the All-Star Game, which would be great fun to see unless you’re Yadier Molina or Buster Posey.
We’ve said it before, in various ways, but it bears repeating: I sometimes have to pinch myself by way of reminder that R.A. Dickey is a real person, and not the figment of a blogger’s overheated imagination. W.P. Kinsella once wrote a short story called “How I Got My Nickname,” in which the ’51 Giants are all well-read intellectuals who declaim like Ken Burns talking heads. It’s an amusing fantasy designed to appeal to baseball eggheads like me, but Dickey would fit right into that imaginary dugout. Yet he’s not some professorial bit player — he’s the Mets’ best starting pitcher, a ferocious competitor and (lest we forget) a phenomenal athlete. He just happens to throw a strange finesse pitch, and have the intellect and temperament for analyzing how he does it.
Lucas Duda’s two-run shot was enough to back R.A. up — it was 2-0 for most of the afternoon but felt like 20-0 — and the Mets played sound defense for a change, with a particular tip of the cap going to Omar Quintanilla, playing with a finger that needed X-rays before the game and will get another set tomorrow. Quintanilla’s not who we’d like at shortstop, but he’s what we have for the next week or so until Ronny Cedeno gets back. (And if Quintanilla should join the ranks of the disabled, please God bring up Sean Kazmar or Wilfredo Tovar or shift over David Wright or do anything that doesn’t involve Jordany Valdespin making errors at Yankee Stadium. There’s only so much I can take.)
The Mets didn’t need this game any more or less than they need any win on the way to however many victories they’ll amass in 2012 — but with two sluggish, dispiriting losses behind them and the Subway Series looming, it was sure nice to have have it. Thanks to the math of the standings, they leave D.C. only a game worse than they arrived — well ahead, as Greg noted, of any place we could have reasonably expected to find them by now.
A last note before we see the Nats again: I came into this season expecting to loathe Bryce Harper, having heard the tales of his batting-box rituals and his Braveheart eyeblack and his minor-league antics. But after watching him in the first few games after his callup, I found I couldn’t do it. Loathe Harper? Hell, I loved him. Besides having a Mickey Mantle package of skills, Harper plays baseball the way you’d hope to see it played. I’m not talking about his adherence to baseball’s nebulous code, as enforced by a meathead like Cole Hamels. Rather, it’s that Harper plays the game hell for leather, devouring it with equal parts joy and greed. To reuse Pete Rose’s famous line, he looks like he’d walk through Hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.
Harper was a muted factor in this first series against the Nats with him in attendance. Yeah, he won the first game, but on a little humpbacked liner that Vinny Rottino couldn’t get to — a hit more well-placed than well-struck. It won’t be the first time Harper beats us, or the most impressive way he’ll do so — before he’s done he’ll beat us with majestic home runs and liners up the gap and laser-beam throws, too. I’m not going to enjoy any of those recaps — in fact, I dread thinking how many times it’ll happen. But at the same time, I’ve got a feeling that in a 20 years or so I’ll regard the Mets being beaten by Bryce Harper the same way I came to regard the Mets being beaten by Tony Gwynn: I didn’t like it, but I also knew I’d tell my grandkids about it.
by Greg Prince on 7 June 2012 8:24 am “What is happiness? It’s a moment before you need more happiness.”
—Don Draper
The rockheads were at it again Wednesday night, and again it was the Mets who pulled more rocks than the Nationals, losing once more in frustrating fashion and falling a little further away from first place in the National League East, a perch nobody…nobody…envisioned them approaching as the season passed the one-third mark.
Of course it’s irritating to stick close on a night when a rockhead play by the hustling, well-meaning second baseman sets up a three-run homer and the pitcher who gave up the homer (your temporary No. 6 starter, mind you) hangs in there and offers six solid innings thereafter. Of course when you lose 5-3 you can find all kinds of opportunities that went awry. But as Terry Collins said, sometimes the other guy beats you, and Edwin Jackson held the Mets to three hits (if four walks) in seven innings, so on neither side of the ball were the Mets really finding a way in.
That’s one game. And this is one series that never…never…shaped up as looming mutually large in the scheme of things when the pocket schedules were finally printed. But it did. A battle for the top of the division between the Mets and the Nationals was just one of the items I didn’t expect to materialize in 2012. But then the Mets went and changed our expectations.
• A win in Toronto when you would have expected them to get swept by blowing a slender ninth-inning lead.
• Two wins in Pittsburgh after their requisite charitable donation of a PNC game they had in hand.
• Three wins over the Padres following an opener in which they sloshed around helplessly in the muck.
• An invigorating win on the backs of Jeremy Hefner and Omar Quintanilla, of all people, versus the Phillies.
• Then, just as if it seemed we were buried under a pile of Chris Schwinden, three magnificent pummelings of the world champion Cardinals, followed by two shots at moving into sole possession of first place.
The first shot went awry, but you said, OK, that’s the way it goes, it was a fun and historic homestand. The second shot was aimed at our head and it was tougher to be nearly so philosophical. Last night demanded we refind our footing on the carousel, yet we failed to grab even the diminished brass ring.
We’ve lost three in a row by a total of four runs, and the sense of fun fades and the sense that maybe…maybe…we’re in a position to make a charge at some more history is in peril. That really takes the wind out of one’s sails when one was just beginning to believe that this season could be one of those seasons.
I’m tempted to say this is what the Mets do to you when they make you care about them.
Except for this:
1) There are still 105 games left to play and anything can happen. That includes anything bad, but also the other kind of anything, so stay tuned, it’s not like there’s anything more pressing for a Mets fan to do.
2) More specifically, the Mets weren’t supposed to be anywhere near where they are, which is 2½ out of first and a piddling half-game from the second Wild Card, even after what feels like mathematical elimination based on the discouraging display to which we’ve borne witness at Nationals Park for two nights.
This is not to suggest they are still in great shape to make a pennant run. They’re probably not, for reasons myriad and obvious to anybody monitoring how they’ve been forced to burrow through their already shallow depth thus far, gutsy, never-say-die (unless a ball is hit to short) determination notwithstanding. But back in the land of “supposed to,” this year was never about contending. If it continues to be about contending, then fantastic. If it’s not, it can’t be considered a disappointment in those terms.
The disappointment would be a failure to progress for the young core of this team, the players who first came up between 2008 and 2010, none of whom is older than 27: Murphy, Niese, Parnell, Thole, Tejada, Davis, Duda, Gee — and throw in Nieuwenhuis as he gets a longer look than planned this year (and maybe Valdespin, if you can resist the temptation to throw him in the Potomac). I’ve mentioned these names before in this context, and I’ll mention them again. These are the guys you’re attempting to grow this year, just as described on one of those runner-up banners from Banner Day.
Sweep aside the journeymen relievers, look past the soon-to-lapse free agent megacontracts and put on hold for a moment the question of David Wright’s ultimate destination, and you’re left with figuring out what kind of team you’re going to build around at the major league level. Do you have a second baseman? A catcher? A shortstop? A first baseman? A right fielder? A center fielder? A solid lefty starter? A dependable righty starter? A potential eighth- or even ninth-inning man? Because if you do, my gosh, you’re that much closer to being in business for the long haul than previously imagined.
And if you don’t, square one’s going to be a pretty annoying place to start over.
The Mets have already committed to Niese, so he’s in the rotation for the next couple of years as long as he’s healthy. I doubt Gee ever factored into their plans at the same level their budding crop of minor league hurlers does, but he hasn’t pitched himself out of anything. Parnell’s an enigma, but the potential remains, and kudos to anybody who emerged from Monday night’s miscue-laden tenth inning as he did. Thole and Murphy give you reasons to feel cautiously optimistic if not necessarily secure about their positions. Tejada’s turned himself into a question mark by not being around. Duda keeps coming along, albeit in sporadic bursts. Davis keeps struggling, despite his weekly encouraging at-bat. Nieuwenhuis is having Davis’s 2010, so it’s too early to honestly determine what he is. And Valdespin, in brief glimpses, has been the best and worst of all worlds.
I keep coming back to this bunch because they loom as the future. They are the team David Wright will lead or depart after next year. I think each side in that negotiation has to be keeping an eye on their collective development. Mets management has to decide whether the financial commitment to Wright will be about keeping together a potential contender or just a bow to popular sentiment (though it’s not like people are coming out to Citi Field just to see David…check the attendance figures this year). And David, who can get paid anywhere, will have to decide whether, for all the appeal of being a Lifetime Met and a permanent almost Seaveresque icon for the franchise with which he grew up, it’s worth committing his early thirties to a team that isn’t materially any closer to potential postseason participation in 2013 and beyond than it was from 2009 to 2011.
If a majority of the young, homegrown Mets succeed in 2012, the record and the standings will take care of themselves, and that will be a bonus. This division has talent, but we’ve seen the first-place team in action for two nights and they’re not world-beaters even if they’ve been Met-beaters. We’ve seen the Braves and the Phillies and the Marlins, and they’re all, at best, pretty good in their present state. At best, we’re pretty good if maybe not deep enough to withstand a turnstile at short, zero production at first and the perpetual training-wheels placement of the second baseman in shallow right. We still have Santana (a well-rested Santana, at that), we still have Dickey, we still have Wright and, for whatever reason, we still have Bay. No need to throw in the towel or wave as much as a beige flag after three hair-tearing losses in June.
But keep an eye on the kids and keep reminding yourself that what they do is what counts most for where we are next June and the June after that.
by Jason Fry on 6 June 2012 3:00 am This just in: Bud Selig has declared first place in the National League East vacant, pending location of a geographically suitable team that can play three hours of anything resembling baseball.
That description suited the Nationals somewhat more than it did the Mets, as the two clubs bashed away at each other spastically, exchanging errors and wild pitches and poor decisions, before the Nats prevailed on an 0-2 single from Bryce Harper that fell a couple of feet in front of a diving Vinny Rottino, who tried to sell it as a catch. Given that Three Stooges incompetence had even ensnared the umps by then (ask Xavier Nady about one particular strike call), it was a good try; mercifully, the umps declared the game over.
Long before that, I had tweeted that you could smell K-Rodesque walk-off debacle all over this one. I didn’t know how right I was, or how painful the slide into disaster would be.
Forgive Bobby Parnell if he’s not particularly inclined to join any of his infielders for breakfast. The Mets rallied to escape a 3-0, taking the lead on an Andres Torres triple in the eighth, then watched Frank Francisco yield a game-tying single to Ian Desmond in the bottom of the inning. In the 10th, a Henry Rodriguez wild pitch scored Scott Hairston for a 5-4 lead; out came Parnell to try and secure the save.
So what happened? Parnell got Ryan Zimmerman to hit a grounder to short. Jordany Valdespin booted it. So Parnell got Adam LaRoche to hit a grounder to first. Ike Davis booted it, turning a double play into a fielder’s choice. Parnell, understandably unnerved, threw a wild pitch to move Zimmerman to third. After a walk to Michael Morse, Parnell got Desmond to ground to short. Valdespin, amazingly, booted that one too, allowing the Nats to tie it up. If you’re scoring at home, that’s four extra outs handed to the enemy. Parnell, to his credit, did the only sane thing he could do after all that, striking out Danny Espinosa and Rick Ankiel to keep the Nats at bay. Worst inning of 2012? Why stop there? It might have been the worst inning of the millennium.
The 11th belonged to young Elvin Ramirez, thrown into the deep, shark-infested, acid-filled end of the pool. Ramirez showed a precocious awareness of the game by embracing the principle of pitching to his defense, meaning he struck out three Nats rather than allow any of his incompetent teammates to touch the ball. It seemed Ramirez would be rewarded in the 12th, when Hairston mashed a home run off Ross Detwiler, but he looked gassed in the bottom of the frame, with Terry Collins out of relievers and unwilling to call on Jeremy Hefner, tomorrow’s starter. There were instant back-to-back doubles for the tie, a wild pitch, Ramirez attempting to lose the game by nearly tossing the ball to the backstop on an intentional walk (yes really), an unintentional walk to Detwiler (who baffled everyone by repeatedly trying to bunt ball four), and eventually Harper’s fatal two-out hit.
A brutal loss, but at least on my couch it didn’t hurt as much as it should. The game had become a ludicrous farce by then, with Keith Hernandez so unhinged that I thought he’d fetch the SNY sherpas to carry him down from Nationals Park’s Everest-like pressbox to yell at everybody involved. (A demerit to SNY for briefly turning the camera on Johan Santana, looking faintly horrified in the dugout. It was gauche to drag Johan into this disaster even if it was only by association.)
Besides, the Mets thoroughly deserved to lose: Daniel Murphy messed up a double-play ball earlier in the evening, while Omar Quintanilla handed the Nats an extra run by overthrowing Josh Thole on a play at the plate, plus there was Josh Satin striking out with a runner on third and one out, and Ramirez doing the same. At least Elvin had the excuse that it was his first professional at-bat. It was that kind of game.
After the finale against the Cardinals, I was disturbed that the loss of Mike Baxter prevented the Mets from being able to send down Davis while continuing to push Lucas Duda into some semblance of a right fielder. Tonight, that has to go on the backburner in favor of a much bigger worry: The Mets have no one who can play shortstop competently. Ruben Tejada’s still on the DL, as is Ronny Cedeno, as is Justin Turner, whom you didn’t want out there a couple of weeks ago but now seems like Rey Ordonez. We’re stuck with Quintanilla manning the position, and he’s more than demonstrated why he’s the fourth-stringer you’d never heard of. Quintanilla’s lone qualification to play short is that he’s better than Valdespin, who has no business being out there whatsoever.
Amid such gloomy calculations, as if on cue, came word that Tejada had left of his Triple-A rehab start with tightness in his injured quad and was headed to Port St. Lucie. We thought we only had two more days of hiding under the bed when anything’s hit between Wright and Murphy, but instead we have … well, no one really knows, but it’s far more days than is advisable.
Yeah, it was that kind of night.
by Jason Fry on 5 June 2012 12:32 am Bulletin: The Mets’ starters have been recalled from Cooperstown, to which they were headed with Johan Santana’s authenticated gear.
The record will show that the agent of said recall was the St. Louis Cardinals, rising up in semi-indignation after a long weekend in which their only run scored was off of a guy making his big-league debut. But the wound was self-inflicted: With Monday’s matinee tied at 1-1 in the top of the 7th, St. Louis put runners on the corners with no one out courtesy of an Allen Craig walk and a David Freese single. (Which was so much better than a David Freese single late Friday evening, but context, people.) Daniel Descalso tapped a ball back to Dillon Gee. Gee turned to start what should have been a double play, and Craig — who does some interesting things when he’s not hitting — got confused and didn’t break for the plate.
Two out, runner on third … but wait. Gee alligator-armed it into the dirt at Omar Quintanilla’s feet, the ball trickling into the outfield, and Craig trotted home with the go-ahead run. Next came another ball Quintanilla didn’t make a play on, and the Mets had given the Cardinals three extra outs in the space of about a minute. Gee (who actually pitched very well) struck out Matt Adams, but the apparently ageless, ever-detestable Rafael Furcal brought in another run on a fielder’s choice to make it 3-1.
Annoying, but I wasn’t worried — the Mets are in one of those dizzying stretches during which you’re surprised your team actually loses. I predicted they’d come back, and they did almost immediately, with Scott Hairston slamming a pinch-hit two-run homer to even things at 3-3.
Unfortunately, one of the hallmarks of the Mets’ recent run of success has been that their highly flammable bullpen has been mostly limited to cheerleading. Jon Rauch came in and promptly gave the Cards the lead again, surrendering a no-doubter of a two-run dinger to Craig.
I offered no smug tweets after that one — I had the feeling that climbing the hill again was going to be too tough a task. Darned if the Mets didn’t almost prove me wrong, though — Andres Torres golfed a ball to right-center that was almost a three-run homer, and wound up being a sac fly. In came Jason Motte with four outs to go and a simple game plan: I’m a big hulking closer, and I’m going to throw this ball as hard as I can. When you throw 97 to 99, the animal simplicity of such a plan becomes elegance. Motte got David Wright after a lengthy duel, with Wright hitting a line drive that found old friend Carlos Beltran waiting at the other end. In the ninth, Motte then got Lucas Duda to pop one up, worked up a sweat to fan Daniel Murphy, and barely broke one fanning Jordany Valdespin. Ballgame.
Taking three of four from the world champs is a perfectly good way to spend four days, even if you don’t make history in the process. And yet even as I saw the positives in what Gee and Hairston and Duda had done in a one-run loss, I couldn’t help remembering that other recent Mets squads have struck me as likeable and scrappy in June, only to run out of gas in the summer and wind up exhausted and dispiriting in September. The Mets’ offense and starting pitching have both been better than expected, but their defense isn’t very good and their bullpen is terrible, failings that tend to outweigh neighboring successes and leave a team exposed as also-rans.
More worrisome is depth. The Mets have been awfully lucky this year in getting contributions from bench guys and rookies pressed into service: Kirk Nieuwenhuis, Mike Baxter, Rob Johnson, Ronny Cedeno, Jeremy Hefner, Justin Turner and Hairston have all been pretty good when called upon. But they’re on their fourth-string shortstop, it’s both unfair and unwise to expect miracles from Chris Young, Baxter’s out until the All-Star break and none of the admirable fill-in work has helped the bullpen.
The loss of Baxter really hurts, in my opinion: I don’t think any of us want to rewind the tape and see Baxter turn and play Yadier Molina’s drive cautiously off the wall, but without him it’s harder to bite the bullet and send down Ike Davis, which seems like a good idea no matter what promises have been made. Yes, Duda could move from right to first, and arguably help the overall defense right there. But if Duda’s medium- and long-term future is in right, better to leave him out there to learn as best he can rather than yo-yoing him around the field. Baxter got only a cursory mention as a potential first baseman when the Ike to Buffalo watch was on in earnest, but he has plenty of minor-league experience there, and so struck me as a good potential answer. Without him, the Mets are dipping deeper into an already-depleted well, hoping for good things from Josh Satin and perhaps soon looking for another reliever, now that Rauch is reporting elbow tenderness.
I’m sorry to be gloomy: The Mets are playing well, they seem to have an organizational plan, and there are good reports from the minors. But I worry that they’re something of a Wile E. Coyote team: They’ve run halfway across a canyon with nothing but air beneath their feet, which is pretty amazing but functionally the same thing as saying they’re suspended above a mighty big drop with no proven means of locomotion. Don’t look down, fellas.
* * *
I’m not going to leave you on that grim note — not even a Mets fan can stay depressed after Friday night.
Tonight I chased the matinee out of my head by sitting down for SNY’s encore of Johan making history, with no need to crane my neck in a sports bar or stay superstitiously silent about what might be happening. Despite it being an encore, by the eighth inning I was grimacing and groaning and muttering, actually nervous, and when Santana sneaked a change-up past Freese tears ran down my face, about which I am not the least bit embarrassed, because if you don’t put baseball up there behind family, friends and country you’re doing it wrong.
Some random thoughts from a more leisurely look at what we never thought we’d get to discuss:
* Gary Cohen’s “it has happened” received plenty of ink and pixels, and deservedly so, but the whole SNY team should get credit for handling a gripping endgame marvelously — the eighth-inning pan of each fielder behind Santana was particularly great. They didn’t quite make it to Duda before having to return to pitches being thrown, meaning No. 21 popped up a moment later to complete the montage. I don’t recall going rigid with fear on Friday night at the sight of poor Lucas having to defend right field with the souls of Mets fans in the balance, which I assume means I was so terrified that I immediately blocked it out.
* After the encore, I griped on Twitter that Justin Turner could have skipped the whipped cream — I much preferred the champagne soaking Johan received in the dugout. My heart was in the right place, but on further review this was dumb: I wanted Johan treated like a demigod sent down to light our way, but I bet he was happy to be treated like a teammate. What was Turner supposed to do, hobble over and hand him a scepter?
* I think the now-famous interloper fan is getting a collective pass from us for a few reasons: a) he’s obviously a die-hard Mets fan with his heart in the same places ours were; b) we all at least momentarily felt a pang of envy that we couldn’t be out there whooping and hugging; and most importantly c) he was wearing a CARTER 8 jersey, just the most obvious portent of a whole bunch of spooky 8 numerology on display Friday night. On the other hand, the interloper fan was doing something dumb, didn’t belong out there, and reportedly got himself banned from Citi Field for life. If his back had been adorned with TRACHSEL or BONILLA or LOOPER or BENITEZ, we’d be screaming that he’d polluted a great moment and should be drowned by Mayor Bloomberg in a giant tank of soda. The lesson, as always: Don’t wear jorts.
Greg’s Huffington Post piece on Johan and history is here. For Faith and Fear on regular-season game 8,020, go here, then here, then here, then here, then here. From the world outside F & F, two Johan pieces I particularly loved were penned by Brian Costa and Mike Vaccaro.
by Greg Prince on 4 June 2012 4:52 pm Before Jason examines today’s not-quite-a-win in the series finale, I wanted to direct your attention to a piece I wrote on the Huffington Post in which a Mets fan’s sportsmanlike joy for the no-hitters of others morphs into full-out reveling over one of his own. You can read it here if you don’t mind being reminded of the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History just a little more.
by Greg Prince on 4 June 2012 3:04 am Not only do I root for a team that’s pitched a no-hitter in its life, but that team’s current iteration more or less seems to be in first place. It’s a three-way tie, and some percentage points don’t work in its immediate favor, but one-third of the season is complete and the New York Mets are more of a first-place team on June 4 than we ever would have dreamed on April 5.
They’ve certainly been playing like one, eh?
The only Met to win a World Series game in the past quarter-century had kind things to say about them before Sunday night’s demolition of the allegedly big-deal Cardinals. As part of the speech he delivered to mark his induction into the Mets Hall of Fame, John Franco compared the 2012 Mets to the 2000 Mets — said they’ve got spunk and guts and verve and panache…something like that.
I’m sure Franco picked 2000 as his point of reference because that was the year he pitched in his only World Series. I must admit as I listened to him from the Big Apple seats as part of the GKR extravaganza (Shake Shack served buffet-style; goody bags galore; G ‘n’ R themselves pressing the flesh; what a treat!), I was surprised by the comparison because, well, who compares anybody to the 2000 Mets?
That’s not a slam on a team I believe forged, when all was said and done, the third-best soup-to-nuts campaign in Mets history. Yet despite Franco’s assertion that the 2000 Mets were a scrappy bunch that nobody picked to win nothin’, they were coming off a playoff season, had just strung together three years of 88 wins or more and were certainly not written off in advance the way the 2012 Mets were.
But what the hell? If Franco wants to remember 2000 like it was 1969, 1984 or 1997, he’s earned the right, just like he earned the plaque that bears his image (which looks nothing like him, by the way). No way you could have a Mets Hall of Fame for very long without John Franco becoming one of its members. Sunday night’s ceremony on his behalf was as inevitable as it was touching.
John brought enough friends and family to field a softball league, which was a reminder of his most charming qualification for the august body which I remain thrilled exists in full. He’s from around here and he’s one of us. That might not have cut much ice when corners were being nibbled and counts were being run and our heartbeats were in greater need of monitoring than Jon Niese’s. Reconsidering Franco’s 14 seasons of razor’s edge relief reminded me that from 1990 to 2001 and again in 2003 and 2004, the three-word phrase I uttered most constantly during ballgames wasn’t “Let’s Go Mets,” and it wasn’t “You Gotta Believe.”
It was “come on, John,” and not in a particularly supportive tone of voice.
This is where I feel obligated to say something like, “Sure he drove us crazy, but in the end, he always came through.” That, however, would feel like a lie. John Franco came through a lot but not always. Not close to always. No way. A ton more saves than blown saves, to be sure, but plenty of ninth innings gone to hell. Plenty. I could look up how many, but that would be as pointless as pointing to all his saves. John Franco’s tenure as a save collector made me decide saves are the most overrated stat in baseball. Sometime by the late ’90s, I began to equate saves to extra points in football: somebody’s gonna get them eventually, but when you don’t get them, hoo-boy.
If this sounds harsh on the night a guy with indisputable Met longevity and genuine Met affection was given the greatest honor the Mets have to give (and again, I’m elated the Mets have resumed giving it, for maintaining an active hall of fame is what a self-secure baseball franchise does), it’s probably my dormant passive-aggressive relationship with Franco coming to the fore. All those years, amid all those saves, I didn’t hate Franco, but I can’t say I loved him. Thing that got to me was the Mets always seemed to be insisting we should, like there was a Department of Franco where we had to line up and get our papers stamped. John Franco got his 300th save — we’re having a day for him! John Franco got his 400th save — we’re having another day for him! Don’t you just want to lavish John Franco with prizes and praise?
I never much did, not until it got to the subject of his localness and his loyalty and the throat-lumping story of how he wore the orange Sanitation Dept. t-shirt underneath the uniform for his dad and how he clipped the Borden or Dairylea coupons because it was the only way he could afford to come to the games from Bensonhurst when he was a kid worshipping Tug McGraw, the guy whose 45 he borrowed when 31 was bestowed on Mike Piazza.
Then I was totally into John Franco, the best darn human interest story in town: the one who deserved to make the postseason at last in 1999; the one who deserved the W next to his name in the NLDS clincher against Arizona (after not having won a game of any kind since 1997); the one who secured a strain of Santana/Baxter-style eternal immunity by striking out Barry Bonds (called, of course) at a critical juncture of the 2000 NLDS; the one who is indeed the last winning World Series pitcher we have. Incidentally, the save that night, in Game Three against the Subway Series opposition, went to Armando Benitez, who was more dominant than Franco ever was as a Met closer and ten times more flammable on average.
By the early 2000s, John Franco was lovable without being hazardous (usually). He was as New York as it got for the New York Mets when the city and the team meant more together than maybe it ever did in the baseball aftermath of 9/11. You hated John Franco giving up a grand slam to Brian Jordan, but you didn’t hold it against him quite as much as you would have without benefit of the bigger picture of which he was clearly a vital part. You rooted for him to come back from Tommy John surgery. You wished he could have gone out in less ragged fashion than he did when Art Howe stashed him in the back of the bullpen for most of the second half of 2004. It was strange that Todd Zeile, he of being from everywhere, got a legitimate sendoff on the last day of his last season as a Met, but John Franco, 99.9% certain to be leaving that same day, was given a third of an inning and only half-hearted official acknowledgement that his time was up.
The Mets compensated for it Sunday night with the spiritual equivalent of a 500th or 600th or 10,000th save party. The extended Franco family was on hand. Lou Carnesecca was on hand. An array of Franco teammates from across the multiple Met eras he spanned was on hand: Doc and Darryl and Cone (who’d never come back for anything since his own 2003 comeback expired) from when Johnny arrived from Cincinnati; Jeff Innis and Bret Saberhagen from the period the Mets usually pretend didn’t exist at all; Leiter and Zeile and Fonzie from when there was a team good and/or scrappy enough to hoist Johnny on its shoulders and help him to the playoffs in the same sense that he was helping it get as far as it could.
John Franco can’t come out of the bullpen and torture us en route to saving us anymore, so it was all good for a special night. I was so exhilarated by his appreciation for making the Mets Hall of Fame that when I learned they were selling replicas of his Sanitation Dept. t-shirts (with FRANCO 45 on the back), I didn’t hesitate to snap one up.
He drove us plenty crazy in his day, but isn’t that what your own do to you sometimes?
by Greg Prince on 3 June 2012 6:09 am Saturday: a solid Mets win featuring a shutout from starting pitcher R.A. Dickey, a home run from David Wright and slick infield work from the unlikely double play tandem of Omar Quintanilla and Daniel Murphy.
Friday: History.
I’m guessing you’ll indulge me if I’m not quite ready to move on to extended consideration of Saturday’s solid Mets win.
We have not yet arrived at the blasé juncture where R.A. and his endlessly fascinating persona making it to 8-1 — with the Mets nearing a third of the season seven games over .500 and in possession of a National League Wild Card spot — is to be shunted into the Diamond Dust paragraph of your team coverage. But unless Dickey, who allowed the Cardinals five fewer walks than the five they scraped together the night before, was also going to give up seven fewer hits than he actually did to embellish his effort, then there was little chance I’d be shaken from my Friday night afterglow by 4:10 the next afternoon.
It was just as well that after not sleeping much in the hours that followed history, I nodded off for a couple of innings Saturday. I wasn’t giving R.A.’s gem the attention it deserved, which I felt a little bad about, but in all the scenarios I ever dreamed up for the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History, it never occurred to me to include a day after.
Nearly a decade ago, I made a list of what I referred to as my One Hundred Greatest Baseball Experiences. Ninety-nine of them — pennant races, playoff games, distant ballpark journeys, brushes with the utterly unexpected — had, in fact, occurred. I could pin those down, when, where and how they happened. The hundredth, however, was an amorphous amalgamation of all the near-misses that had failed to result in the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History. I listed the date as To Be Determined.
Which is why I’m in no particular hurry to heed Howie Rose’s advice and put June 1, 2012, in the history books. It is history, obviously. It is delightful history, the most anticipated if hardest-to-project historical event in the 51 years in which the New York Mets have played baseball. We didn’t know when cycles or three-homer nights were coming either, I suppose, to say nothing of balls finding holes between first basemen’s legs or catchers tackling third basemen as they attempted to touch second after thinking they’d slammed grand, but those things transpired in the course of Metropolitan events. The stuff that was swell but kind of standard simply happened. The stuff that was extraordinary we couldn’t have imagined anyway.
The no-hitter each of us imagined. Each of us dreamed of the day. I literally dreamed of the day. In 2003, I dreamed the Mets’ first no-hitter would be a joint affair: Al Leiter and John Franco, which seemed odd to me while I was dreaming it since Franco was no longer the closer by then. (I’m sure they’ll confirm whether or not it was really just a dream at his Hall of Fame induction tonight.) Those no-hitters that seemed so real in real life for five or six or seven innings but were destined to wind up one- or two- or eight-hitters lingered in the first layer of our Mets consciousness — unlike the relatively pedestrian seven-hit, no-walk shutouts like Dickey’s from Saturday — because they offered us a glimpse into what he hadn’t had and had decided on some level we couldn’t have.
I first took a pew in the Church of Baseball in the weeks following the night Jimmy Qualls became Jimmy Qualls, so my Metsian catechism always included a line about how we’d never had a no-hitter. Some years it was a fact that you accepted, like the sky being blue. Some years you wondered why the sky wasn’t green. Other years it positively pissed you off you couldn’t have a green sky.
The Joe Wallis-type episodes aside, I don’t think the no-hitter deprivation really started getting to me until the mid-1990s, when we began reaching a point of saturation in terms of seemingly everybody receiving one but us. The Marlins had two before they turned five. Hideo Nomo rustled one up for the Dodgers at Coors Field, where nobody ever got anybody out. The Cardinals got a pair out of Jose Jimenez and Bud Smith, each of whom was, respectively, Jose Jimenez and Bud Smith. The Twins had to play a game at like eleven in the morning to accommodate college football at the Metrodome, so Eric Milton woke up early and no-hit the Angels. Nomo got a second no-hitter, this time for the Red Sox. Derek Lowe, who had been a closer the year before, also got one for the Red Sox.
And of course every year that the Yankees were winning a World Series, they garnished it with a no-hitter. And also of course, none of these could be simple propositions. They couldn’t pull any old former Cy Young winner battling substance abuse problems off the scrap heap in 1996. It had to be Doc Gooden, ex-Met hero, with his ailing father being prepped for surgery while he was striking out Mariners to make it that much more compelling. Self-anointed character David Wells couldn’t merely no-hit Minnesota. He had to perfect-game them. David Cone — a former teammate of Gooden’s, you might recall — had to do Wells, who went to the same high school as Don Larsen, one better: Cone pitched his perfect game against the Expos (the Expos?) in front of Don Larsen on the day grudge-dropping Yogi Berra returned to the Yankee fold, because Berra caught Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series and here it was, 43 years later, on the same sacred patch of sod in the Bronx, blah, blah, blah.
This was the period during which I came to resent our lack of no-hitters enough so that on my first trip to Cooperstown in twenty years, I ostentatiously refused to as much as peek at the no-hitter exhibit. Not until we’re represented there on the right side of history, I told Stephanie.
Now we will be. We got as shiny a no-hitter as we could have hoped for. The Jimenezes and Smiths demonstrate all it takes is nine innings of stuff and luck once in a lifetime, but a Johan Santana extracts all the flukiness from the equation. A Johan Santana indicates there’s no mistake about this being a no-hitter (no matter what an Adrian Johnson does or doesn’t observe with the naked eye). A Johan Santana wins you the front page of every tabloid and ensures you’re the talk of the town.
If fate had dealt the no-hit hand to Dickey, it would have been a fantastic story, because what about Dickey isn’t a fantastic story? If it had fallen to Jon Niese or Dillon Gee, their Q ratings would have shot up briefly in non-Mets households. Jeremy Hefner or whoever the next Jeremy Hefner is being the no-hit guy would have ultimately fallen somewhere on the same curiosity scale where Dick Rusteck (only Met rookie to debut with a shutout) and Dave Mlicki (conqueror of pinstripes in the first Subway Series encounter) sit; a Hefnerian pitcher wouldn’t be forgotten, but eventually he’d need to be explained. The one thing that seems safe to guess is that for each of these fellows, throwing a no-hitter would be the crowning achievement of his career.
Johan Santana’s career, on the other hand, has been predominantly crowning achievements. I’m still getting it through my head that this was as big a deal for him personally as it was for us collectively. Johan had never thrown a no-hitter before? That might be the best argument for no-hitters not being that big a deal. If Johan didn’t have one, how splendid could they be?
That, though, overlooks the forty miles of bad road Johan had to overcome to pitch at all in 2012, which is what informed the garment-rending Terry Collins did in determining whether an extra 19 pitches beyond a made-up, arbitrary pitch limit was going to do in Santana before Santana could destroy our 50-year gnawing void. It also pretends Johan isn’t human and wouldn’t want a no-hitter to tuck in among his Cy Youngs and other superlatives.
The bit about Johan “taking the decision out of Terry’s hands” by telling him, in so many words, yo, I got this after six innings Friday brought to mind a story I adore from Loose Balls, Terry Pluto’s kickass oral history of the ABA. Kevin Loughery was coaching the Nets and drawing up the final play of a tight game when Julius Erving laid one of his enormous hands on one of Loughery’s shoulders and assured him, “Kevin, I’ll take the last shot.”
Loughery was amenable to that strategy, but wanted to have a contingency plan in place. “OK, guys,” he told his players, “if Doc misses…”
“The hand came back on Kevin’s shoulder,” goes the anecdote, “and Julius said, ‘Kevin, I won’t miss.’”
That settled that. And Dr. J didn’t miss. And Johan wasn’t coming out of that game no matter the pitch count. And we weren’t going to be waiting any longer for that first no-hitter.
So now that we’ve got it, what’s next? I feel like I’m in the car with Holly Hunter and Nicolas Cage after Edwina and Hi kidnap Nathan, Jr., in Raising Arizona: “Everything’s changed!” In the case of the movie, Hunter’s Ed was trying to convince Cage’s Hi not to hold up convenience stores any longer. Our everything changing looms as more cheerful, but a marks a fundamental shift in our lives nonetheless.
When a Met pitcher has a Santana going in the sixth or seventh inning, what will that be like? We’ll want it, natch, but how badly? What will it be like rooting for the second no-hitter in New York Mets history? If it’s Niese or Gee or Harvey or Familia or whoever, will the impulse be more “I really hope he gets this” as opposed to the reflexive “I really want us to get this”?
And what’s left of a never-got-one nature to ache for anyway? Put aside a World Series championship even if you’ve never seen one before, because the Mets have two of those. They have cycles, triple plays, a 6-for-6 night, 10 consecutive strikeouts, a batting title and now a no-hitter. What is left hanging out there on the vine that can be attained on the field? An MVP has to be voted on, so that’s not it. A perfect game would be something, but that’s like waiting for the clouds to rain candy. Not everybody has one of those, so it’s not as if the Mets are being left out. Ditto for a four-homer performance. We’ll love if it happens, but it’s rare enough to advise against holding breath for.
The phrase “the end of history” was thrown around a bit as the Cold War faded, but history just kept on coming. We no longer have our one glaring quest to intermittently preoccupy us, but I’m sure a singular outcome we hadn’t anticipated anticipating will take the place of the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History. As biographer Richard Ben Cramer suggested Bob Dole’s governing priorities would have been had he been elected president, “something’ll come up.”
While we get used to having a no-hitter in our backstory, we’ll also be figuring out where Johan Santana’s gift to Mets fans will stand in our eternal esteem. Right now, it’s the greatest thing that ever happened, but a little of that is the euphoria talking. When it’s not yesterday’s headline but something that happened a while ago, where will the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History…I was going to say “rank,” but that cheapens the thought process. I’m not looking to say it’s better than this but not as good as that; I prefer to love every wonderful thing that happens to us without choosing among them.
I’m mostly curious if the no-hitter from 2012 will come through the years unblemished or if it will be battered by circumstances we can’t yet fathom. I’ve been witness to so many moments, games and seasons that while they were going on were universally embraced yet after a while were shunted into obscurity or, worse, came to be dismissed or derided because they weren’t enough.
Will Santana’s night of transcendence hold up as the singular episode we know it to be right now or will we decide (because we are the way we are) that there’s a “Johan’s Curse” attached to it because Mike Baxter got hurt preserving it and Ramon Ramirez got hurt celebrating it? If Terry’s fretful instinct proves right and Johan isn’t able to go five innings in his next three starts, do we view June 1 as the mountaintop or the beginning of the next tumble downward? If by August Dickey or Niese throws a perfect game, does Santana’s measly no-hitter seem merely adequate? How soon will it take for a fan at Citi Field to hold up the sign with the wrong letter when a party patrolman asks him to name the pitcher who threw the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History? (And how galling will it be that he’ll win the prize pack anyway?)
I’m resigned to accepting that not every Mets fan is destined to remember great Mets moments as they happened. I’ve been in too many conversations with too many people I like who were with me when such great Mets moments happened in which I’ve learned they not only didn’t retain the salient details but they forgot they were there altogether. So I don’t know in which direction the narratives of others will take the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History. It is my blessing and curse to have what I’ve been told is an unusually uncanny memory. Inside my head, it’s not a chorus of names and dates that take center stage, for anyone with Google can look those up. What makes my memory a pageant of pungent recall is my ability to recreate the feeling of — to paraphrase Walter Cronkite — the way it was. It’s knowing that something happened, that it unfolded as it did and that it carried a particular meaning in its day that needs to be understood later on if it is going to be appreciated in context.
Hence, years from now, if the first time a Mets starting pitcher went nine innings and gave up no hits to the opposing team is remembered as anything less than the essence of sublime, I’ll know it will be a disturbingly inaccurate portrayal of the way it was.
But I’ll also have to concede that when it comes to time, interpretation and retention, that’s the way it is.
Not incidentally, the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History has been great for business, as Faith and Fear’s WordPress-era viewing records have been shattered since Johan Santana changed history. Thanks for thinking enough of us to come here for what Jason and I were thinking in the wake of the night we were never sure we’d really see. And thanks just as much for sharing your own thoughts on this event like no other. The comments of the best blog audience in all of Metsdom have never been more of a pleasure to read.
by Jason Fry on 2 June 2012 5:20 pm Given my choice, of course I wouldn’t have been in Orlando.
Nothing against Orlando, or Disney World (where I’m staying while signing books at Star Wars Weekends), but on the night Johan Santana freed us from our ancient, unwanted distinction, my first choice would of course have been to be in the stands at Citi Field, or failing that to be on the couch with Emily, listening to Gary, Keith and Ron and trying to read tea leaves in everything.
But work is work, and so there I was, a good 1,100 miles south of Citi Field. But thanks to the digital world, I still felt connected to the team, to Emily, to Greg, to all the fellow fans and bloggers.
I’d had a premonition of this, oddly. On Thursday night I was by myself in the hotel restaurant, which can be a lonesome proposition. (Though better than room service in that respect.) My Twitter feed was full of sports fans reacting to ESPN’s coverage of the spelling bee. I couldn’t see that, but for fun I started imagining a Mets spelling bee, with Nieuwenhuis and Mientkiewicz as the obvious championship-round words. Other folks picked up on that (or maybe someone already had the idea), and before too long Greg was tweeting things and Andrew Vazzano was having fun with a quiz of tough-to-spell Mets players, and fans of other teams were jumping in and goofing on it, and soon I was done with dinner, having had a grand time.
Last night, I tuned into the game on At Bat sometime around the second inning. I noticed neither Santana nor Adam Wainwright had allowed a hit — I’m a Mets fan, I always notice that. I’d forgotten my headphones, so I tipped the butt end of my phone up to my ear, transistor-radio style, and listened while waiting in line for the Aerosmith rollercoaster, and while wandering around Hollywood Studios, and while in the line for the boat back to the hotel.
I didn’t get nervous until Johan was through five. My friend Erich (a Yankee fan but a decent person for all that) was with me, amused by my obsessiveness while saluting the passion. I heard Carlos Beltran’s fair ball get called foul and had that thought, that Mets-fan thought that we’d all had without purpose for so many years: Hey, wow, that’s the kind of play that makes you wonder. I didn’t think anything was tainted — we ought to have instant replay for calls like that, but we don’t yet, so there was a certain justice in Jim Joyce/Armando Galarraga there and Adrian Johnson/Johan Santana here. Or at least an acceptance that there’s a certain randomness at work here that we all must live with, for better or for worse.
Now Johan was through six. I was starting to panic. Should I go back to the hotel room? Hurriedly subscribe to At Bat’s premium service? Erich and I were headed for the ESPN Club to meet someone, and for some reason I was sure that the ESPN Club would only show the various flavors of ESPN. “I might have to find a TV,” I muttered.
Erich pointed out, quite reasonably, that if the game wasn’t on in the ESPN Club, it wasn’t going to be on in the hotel. Normally I would know this, but this was no longer normal. Mike Baxter had just made what sounded like a circus catch, and I’d had that thought once again: Hey, wow, that’s the kind of play that makes you wonder. The funny thing was that Erich had no idea that Santana hadn’t allowed a hit. He just thought I was being doggedly and a little excessively true to the orange and blue. I wanted to tell him, to explain, but of course I couldn’t do that, of course I wouldn’t do that.
We were a step into the ESPN Club, joined by our friend, and Erich pointed. There were the Mets, on a little TV wedged in between big sets showing the Heat. We found a table where I could crane my head upwards. Seemed perfect to me.
Six to go, I muttered. I’ve done that for years, counting down the outs by threes after the first as long as there’s a reason to do so.
Twenty-four to go.
Twenty-one to go.
And so on.
Six to go.
Just another number, but it was almost a whisper.
The funny thing was my phone. It was silent, inert. And that told me more than anything that this was serious business. A few weeks ago someone noted on Twitter that he always knew the Mets had won because their fans were silent instead of bleeding out messily in cyberspace. Now I could feel a fanbase holding its breath. No tweets at me. No tags in Facebook. No “Are you watching this?” calls. The only exception was a text message from a friend not deeply versed in such superstitions. I looked at the green rectangle on my phone’s screen in horror, replied neutrally. At least he hadn’t used any of the dreaded words. I forgave him, conditionally.
The top of the eighth ended with a ridiculous near-collision between Daniel Murphy and Omar Quintanilla. I could feel my heart seize in my chest, and yet it just made me love those Mets even more. They looked tight, terrified. In the background the fans were a waving, hands-on-head mass of hope and fear and disbelief. I wanted to teleport myself there. I knew I couldn’t.
Three to go.
I forced myself to make conversation for the bottom of the eighth, apologizing that my mind was elsewhere. My tablemates hadn’t figured out what was happening. No way I was telling them, not now. They’d understand soon enough, when it was over. Whichever way it would be over.
Johan finally went back out there. I saw the pitch count, saw Terry Collins looking tense and miserable in the dugout. The wind whipped the uniform back and forth on Johan’s thigh. I knew there was bad weather in the area. The fans in the stands looked like they were going to fall down or take flight, or be caught between the two and explode.
I’d never gotten to three to go. I didn’t know what to do. I decided I’d do what I’d always done during ninth innings with leads. I’d hold up fingers. Index finger for one, then it and the pinkie for two, and if three were significant it wouldn’t matter what I was doing.
Matt Holliday hit the ball hard. It looked like a tough catch off the bat. Or maybe it wasn’t. I had no idea anymore. Andres Torres snatched it out of the air. I screamed something and held up that one finger. No one else in the ESPN Club seemed to know what was happening. I looked for a blue cap, for someone else riveted, but it was just me. Me and my in-the-dark friends and my phone, heavy with anticipatory, superstitious silence. Except I realized my phone wasn’t actually silent. I heard Howie Rose and fill-in Jim Duquette, still talking quietly down around my thigh. I’d never turned off the At Bat audio. I went to turn it off, then pulled my finger back in near-panic, like I’d almost touched a burner on the stove. My God, what are you, a total fool? I put phone and narrative back in my pocket.
Allen Craig lined out to left, Kirk Niewenhuis taking a slightly odd, frightened-stepped route to the ball. I was standing again, with no memory of getting to my feet. Now David Freese was up. Santana was exhausted, control fraying. Freese was a World Series hero. How cruel would that be?
The at-bat went on and on. I think it lasted about a week. I forced myself to sit, jamming my rear end back into the seat. Three straight balls, then a strike, then a foul. I registered that Yadier Molina was on deck, the same Yadier Molina who’d hit the ball Baxter had caught, the same Yadier Molina who … but never mind that right now. Just like Wainwright had been on the mound and something odd and slightly unfair had happened to Beltran. Bizarre and spooky? Not really, not if you watch a lot of baseball. Baseball specializes in such surrealism.
And then Freese swung, sort of, maybe, YES HE HAD and Josh Thole tagged him and it was real, it had happened (to quote Gary Cohen) and we were in another world. I was standing and screaming now, people looking at me in mild wonder. I told Erich what had happened. He looked stricken, then amused, then offered heartfelt congratulations. I fell back into the seat, exhausted, unbelieving.
My phone, silent for so long, had begun to twitch and leap in my pocket. Text message, text message, text message, tweet, tweet, tweet, on and on and on. I answered everything, sent out my own messages. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely type. (My phone would fail a few minutes later. Erich very kindly let me borrow his and add my Twitter account to his app. His Yankee fandom was redeemed right there.)
People had noticed what had happened now, but it was just another baseball game to them. So what? Who cares? I went out into the night and screamed at the moon, nearly dropping my phone in the manmade lake. I called Emily. “I wasn’t watching,” she said, caught somewhere between happy and horrified. That was only technically true — she’d had a trying day, watched a movie, switched over with an out to go and sat riveted, instantly a part of the drama.
We said goodbye and I leaned on the railing, staring into the dark water. I thought of how many times I’d watch Gary’s call, hear Howie’s. How I’d read all the columns and blog posts. Watch the SNY encore. There would be time for it all.
I hung my head, not in dismay but because the weight of the happiness was too much. Yes I was far away, unable to put on my Mets gear and parade down Henry Street, whooping and crowing. But my dying phone was still leaping and buzzing in my pocket, trying to keep up with the great flood of well-wishing and purest, simplest joy that had been undammed and was now roaring across everything in its path. I let it wash over me, alone on the boardwalk in Orlando, and I wasn’t lonely at all.
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