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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Mike Pelfrey’s still here, isn’t he? And if he’s still here, he’s going to be Mike Pelfrey, isn’t he?
It’s a fact of life. Pelf’s gonna go out there and drive us nuts. He’s gonna put somebody on the twelfth pitch of a 3-2 count that he started ahead 0-2, he’s gonna balk him over to second, he’s gonna wander around behind the mound wondering if he left the stove on, he’s gonna contemplate the dryness of his fingers and…
That’s the thing. You just don’t know. Pelf is very capable of building himself a mess yet attaching a secret exit we can’t believe he had the sense to include in the blueprints. He might throw thirty pitches in that inning, yet escape relatively unscathed. Or he might remain in that inning long enough so that it swallows the entire game whole. He might kill us or he might save us. It’s rarely neat and it can be as agita-inducing as any Met closer’s ninth, except with Pelf, it can come in the first as easily as the third or the fifth.
If he sees the seventh, it usually means he’s left trouble behind him. Or it didn’t seem worth the trouble of getting Elmer Dessens up a third time.
We’re talking about 2011’s Opening Day starter here, a guy who flirted with All-Stardom in 2010 and seemed practically corner-turned as far back as 2008. Mike Pelfrey is not unskilled, untalented or wholly unsuccessful. But boy can he suck the life out of a day or night at the ballpark.
He doesn’t even need to wait for the season to start. Just a couple of days ago he was eminently uninspiring in one of those games that doesn’t count. I heard it dissected by two gentlemen of advanced age as I stood in the checkout line at Waldbaum’s that very night.
“Didja see it today?”
“No. What happened?”
“They lost. Pelfrey was terrible.”
“Uch.”
“If it wasn’t for Pelfrey in the first inning, they would’ve won.”
As enamored as I am of the concept of being allowed to cancel out the inning of our choice so as to promote better results for your team (as long as others can’t do it to us), I was more impressed that Mets fans aren’t waiting for the regular season to be discouraged by Mike Pelfrey. And it ain’t just Waldbaum’s talking. Promenade Reserved groans as Pelfrey struggles. Twitter shifts into oversnark. Eyes everywhere roll.
At age 28, Big Pelf has found his niche. He’s our pitching scapegoat, our figurative punching bag, our default reason (besides ownership) why things aren’t better around here. Jason Bay, too, I suppose, but they’re lowering and bringing in the fences for Bay, so reasonable judgment must be reserved at least another couple of months on his behalf. Plus he runs hard and once took on a wall with his face.
Pelfrey? His thoroughfare to rational forgiveness is closed to emotional traffic every fifth day. For example, consider those shorter and closer fences. Batters in non-Mets uniforms get to swing at them, too. Theoretically it shouldn’t matter that much to a sinkerballer like Pelf, but wait for the one grounder that eludes the combined efforts of Tejada and Murphy. Experience as empathetically as possible the spiritual journey that unfurls as the pitcher tries to come to grips with the unideal situation at hand. Watch him with digits tensed (yours, his) until he gets one up to Hunter Pence or some other divisional irritant.
Yeah, the fences’ll matter. Everything’ll matter. And unless Pelfrey has harnessed his command while quelling his his doubts, he will make us all nuts.
Pelf’s blame niche is not one to take lightly. It’s different from being simply reviled the way Oliver Perez was or derided as Steve Trachsel was or wearing out his welcome as John Maine did. The critical mass for Pelfrey is different, befitting someone who has come up through the system, carried large hopes on his broad shoulders and largely left them unredeemed. It’s not that Pelfrey is an object of hatred. He’s too likable to inspire genuine vitriol. But he does demonstrate a knack for inviting blame.
When strikes aren’t thrown and outs aren’t collected, who ya gonna blame? Before ya start throwing bodies from the bullpen, I mean?
You can’t blame Santana. He was Santana before he got here, and whatever’s gone wrong is presumably more the fault of the Mets being the Mets than Johan ceasing to be Johan.
You can’t blame Dickey. Dickey’s entire Met oeuvre is thick, fascinating gravy, and it comes accompanied by a half-dozen beguiling biscuits besides.
You can’t blame Niese, because Niese is a lad of 25 and lefthanded and maybe has been held back only by not being able to breathe correctly, a situation to which he’s apparently tended (with an assist from an old teammate).
You can’t blame Gee, because honestly, you barely knew who Gee was before September 2010 and you only noticed Gee was faltering by late summer 2011. Give the kid a chance! He won’t be 26 until April! It’s not like he’s Pelfrey and 28!
Somebody’s inevitably gotta blame somebody. It’s the nature of the fan-beast. And Pelfrey’s perfect for the assignment. He’s taller than almost everybody. He was drafted higher than almost everybody. He’s been here longer than almost everybody. He’s almost broken through to the point of consistency but keeps backsliding to the point of madness. Not a few of his outings have shared the Seaver quality of “you’re gonna get to him, you’ve gotta get to him early,” yet they never feel the least bit Terrific, even those you look up from during and realize it’s the sixth, he’s still in there and he’s not losing or at least it’s not over.
Pelfrey’s career trajectory reminds me a bit of the last homegrown righty of extended tenure, Bobby Jones’s, except Jones was dependable when nobody expected much out of him, a fright to watch when we assumed he had taken the next step and then delightfully surprising just after we gave up on him altogether. Jones also had the good sense to get out of town two starts after his signature 2000 playoff one-hitter. If Bobby Jones comes up among Mets fans a dozen years later, it’s to be toasted for shutting down the Giants and instigating a celebration. It’s not to mention what a frigging disappointment he had been for most of the previous three-and-a-half years when not falling apart might have meant at least one more playoff spot, possibly two.
There has been no defining great start in Mike Pelfrey’s career. He beat the Braves in Turner Field at the dawn of September 2007 but was otherwise implosive the rest of that accursed month. He was outpitched by Brett Myers in one of his must-have games in early September 2008 and made like Mike Paltry the final weekend of the season versus his unyielding Marlin nemeses. There haven’t been many occasions to which to rise since, and Pelfrey’s made the least of those, too.
If you’ve gotten used to blaming Pelfrey, you may have to go in another direction soon. Slated to be the fourth-highest paid Met on the 2012 roster, he’s signed to a one-year deal worth not quite $5.7 million, about 44% more than he was paid for 2011. If he makes it through another year making his starts and piling up his innings (a compensable skill set unto itself these days, regardless of the caliber of the innings), he’ll be up for a substantial raise heading into 2013. Free agency looms beyond that, as do — it is hoped — Matt Harvey, Jeurys Familia, Zack Wheeler and the second coming of Jenrry Mejia. Even if Big Pelf rekindles his 2008 or 2010 best, he might be on track for the Big Squeeze in terms of payroll.
There’s always the chance that the man makes himself indispensable this year. It’s March, so that’s perennially a pleasing conclusion to broach before a season has yet to commence. But we’ve been here with Big Pelf a whole lot since 2006. If the revelatory grip or arm angle or boost of confidence comes and sticks (instead of comes and goes), then swell, of course.
I haven’t had the opportunity to open a freshly waxed pack of 2012 Topps baseball cards yet (it won’t truly be spring until I do), but I got to do something just about as good, probably better, a couple of weeks ago when my friend Sharon and I visited the Met.
Not the Mets, the Met.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art dipped into its legendary Burdick Collection and set up an exhibit devoted to those ballplayers responsible for Breaking the Color Barrier in Major League Baseball. It takes up but a veritable speck of space inside an immense cathedral, but what it features is larger than life: Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige and dozens of other greats in their late 1940s Bowman and early 1950s Topps best, streaming ahead in time to future Met Pumpsie Green, pictured as a 1961 Red Sock. (Boston was the last team to integrate, in 1959, thus his inclusion among the immortals.)
Implicit in the display is respect for these pioneering players and a reminder that baseball, like America, sure took its time getting on the right track when it came to justice for all. But let us not undersell what beautiful work these baseball cards were and are. There’s no mistaking why they have a home in a place like the Met. They are art. Those 1953 Topps above, in particular, drew me in to a point where I think I could have produced a few raindrops of my own on a misty day.
Man, I thought after being disgusted all over again that the most wonderful sport ever invented blocked its doors to gifted athletes based not on fielding, hitting or throwing but on skin tone, can you imagine getting a pack of these in 1953? Can you imagine being a kid and opening one? Topps had just gotten into the baseball card business in 1951, had produced its first legitimate set in 1952. By 1953, wow, did they nail it.
Say Hey, still the stuff of imagination.
Oh, and Willie Mays, New York Giant then, New York Met eventually, Say Hey Kid always. Imagine having him drop out of your pack in 1954, the year he returned from the army and ascended to the top of his game, where he’d stay for the rest of eternity. Imagine Willie and Monte Irvin and Hank Thompson — each represented at the Met — composing the Giant outfield in the first game of the 1951 World Series at Yankee Stadium, the first time three black players manned left, center and right in any “big league” ballgame, let alone in the Fall Classic. Imagine how many people saw a trio of African-Americans on such a grand stage and, a moment later, realized it never should have been any bigger a deal than three white men playing the same positions. Imagine if the Giants were still in Manhattan, and the next time I was heading uptown, it wouldn’t be to a museum on Fifth Avenue but to a ballpark at 157th Street and Eighth Avenue.
I did a lot of imagining during my brief visit. I guess that’s what art is supposed to make you do. Share in the imagining and visit this brilliant exhibition honoring our national pastime. You can find it, fittingly, in the American Wing of the Met through June 17; information here.
Photos (and gallery admission) kindly provided by Sharon Chapman.
***
Jason and I didn’t have to imagine too hard to come up with The 10 Best Things About Being a Mets Fan. The real challenge was limiting ourselves to 10. See for yourself at Yahoo! Sports Big League Stew.
Monday night I did something I’m certain I hadn’t done since the twilight of Fran Healy. I turned down the sound on a Mets-generated telecast so I could listen to the game on radio. GKR heresy, I know, but I gave Gary, Keith & Ron part of the exhibition season opener off so I could get a taste of Josh Lewin’s debut.
WFAN became a revelation for those innings, though not for the reason one might intuit. It’s not that I fell in love with Lewin all at once on his own merits, though he certainly did nothing to make me want to tune him out (which is a victory unto itself given what’s transpired in that booth since Gary Cohen vacated it). It was that I fell in love all over again with Howie Rose because of how he meshed with Josh Lewin. I’d go as far to say I might fall in love all over again with the Mets on the radio again given the simpatico these two seemed to have right off the bat.
At some point between pitches, Josh invoked the 2002 Mets as an example of when things don’t go very well in Flushing. A little later, he brought up the 1984 Mets as evidence that sometimes things go better than expected. Howie warmed to both subjects instantly. Of course he did. He’s Howie Rose. He’s every Mets fan’s rabbi, disseminating our Old Testament — the Book of Stengel, the Book of Hodges, the Book of Frank Howard even — when not tending to balls and strikes.
Think Wayne Hagin ever played to Howie’s strengths? Oh good lord, Wayne Hagin…I so wanted to not detest him if only to push against the popular tide of anti-Haginism that developed as soon as he opened his mouth in these parts in 2008. In four seasons, I never met a single Mets fan who told me, “Y’know who I like? Wayne Hagin.” The nicest thing I ever heard anybody say about Wayne was when I would hear myself say, “At least he’s better than Tom McCarthy.” The second-nicest thing was my characterization of Hagin as someone who knew his baseball and brought a useful outsider’s perspective to this thing of ours. We already know what Howie knows because Howie has been knowing it since 1962 and has been telling it to us in various capacities since 1987. Howie knows what we all know, but at a depth the rest of us could never hope to attain in this lifetime. So, I reasoned at the outset of Hagin’s tenure, let’s hear what somebody who knows other stuff has to say.
It was occasionally enlightening, but mostly it was slow. I’m pretty sure there are galaxies that Hagin’s description of a double play ball from 2010 is just now reaching. And as for that dandy outsider’s perspective, after a while hearing stories about what Dante Bichette or Jim Edmonds would do in this situation lost its charm. By last year, I was as awash in the popular anti-Hagin tide as anybody: get Hagin out of here, I insisted to my radio.
What I disliked most about him was he sapped the sparkle out of Howie’s voice. Half the time, it seemed Howie was explaining the Met way to Wayne, reminiscent of Ralph Kiner drawing Lorn Brown a verbal diagram of Banner Day because Lorn had never heard of perhaps our most beloved tradition (which wouldn’t have disqualified the late Mr. Brown from working in the Mets marketing department over the past decade, I’m guessing). The other half of the time, Howie edged into kvetchiness. Not uncalled for kvetchiness — to the contrary, it was often righteous kvetching (the black uniforms, the Sunday night start times). But it was taking a toll. Between McCarthy for two seasons reminding me he was no Gary Cohen and Hagin disturbing Howie Rose’s chemistry, I grew to consider my hours away from SNY as some kind of Radio Nowhere purgatory.
Which bummed me out no end. Put aside the sublime GKR trinity and how you’d never want to skip their nightly baseball buffet if you didn’t have to (it was so cute listening to them catch up with each other Monday night like they were eighth-graders returning for the first day of school). Mets games on the radio were a cherished way of life for me from the moment I discovered they existed. I almost never felt like I was missing anything if I couldn’t be by a TV, not in the Original Three days, not when Bob Murphy became exclusively audio in the company of Steve Lamar and then Gary Thorne, certainly not in the long and amazing heyday of Murph and Cohen. When Murph retired and Howie Rose was named his successor, and we were granted 162 audiences with Howie and Gary…honestly, I’m not sure why I kept paying my cable bill.
Then our world changed, all for the better where television was concerned, generally for the worst on WFAN. McCarthy was not a worthy partner to Howie. Hagin was not a worthy partner to Howie. It had gotten so bad that I almost didn’t mind Ed Coleman subbing…and every time Ed Coleman says “cut on and missed,” an angel tears out his wings.
Monday night, though, I was living in a double-dream world. There were five announcers on two media (along with amiable roving reporter Kevin Burkhardt) who totally got the Mets thing. Gary and Howie are lifelong Mets fans. Keith and Ron are all-time Mets idols. Josh, we’ve learned, grew up a Mets fan way the hell upstate, choosing Willie Montañez as his favorite hitter, Nino Espinosa as his favorite pitcher and Nino’s afro as his favorite hairstyle. If we didn’t know that about Lewin before Monday night, it was there to pick up on throughout that maiden broadcast.
It was only a few innings of a spring game, so nothing was at stake, but geez he and Howie sounded at ease, and when you get right down to it, that’s what I want. I want two guys with whom I relish spending an evening; the business of home run calls and hit-and-run analysis tends to take care of itself. Howie was the Howie who spent those five-hour shifts edifying and entertaining me when the FAN was new and sports talk could be intelligent. He was the Howie who thrived in 2004 and 2005, when he and Gary broadcast on a special high-pitched frequency only true Mets fans could really hear. He was Howie Rose in full revival, a little like Bob Murphy was when Gary Thorne (and the 1985-1988 Mets) showed up to nudge him back to total Murphness, a state of being every Mets fan intrinsically understands as transcendent.
Part of me still feels a bit bad that we couldn’t hack it with Hagin. It almost seems the easy way out, hiring a Mets fan who sprinkles just the right amount of Metnip in Howie’s vicinity. So many who didn’t have to sit through Hagin’s labored play-by-play or his alien intonations swore he was a sweetheart. I have no reason to doubt it. For all I know, Howie loved him. But I didn’t and we didn’t. Yet I wonder if we as Mets fans have gotten to the point where we have to be spoonfed with blue and orange flatware. Everybody who announces to us comes at us with a Met pedigree. Is that what it takes to satisfy us? If young Bob Murphy arrived here from Oklahoma on a flight with Tennessee’s Lindsey Nelson and Pittsburgh Pirate great Ralph Kiner in tow, would we snarl because we’d assume they don’t get us?
I don’t think it’s geography. Ted Robinson and Tom McCarthy had grown up as Mets fans, and it didn’t buy them much goodwill. Maybe their mistake was shoving that part of their identity deep within their souls in the name of some bland, nebulous quality labeled professionalism. We want professionalism, of course, but we want people, too. Rose and Cohen are people — Met people, as it happens. Murph was people. Tim McCarver, with no Met connection whatsoever prior to joining us in 1983, was more people than younger viewers could probably fathom now. I suppose there are matters of taste and perception involved with cottoning to announcers. But we the consumers deserve to cotton to whom our ears and our brains are attracted. I probably won’t be turning down the sound on SNY this season as I once did routinely with MSG and the defunct Fox Sports Net New York (Healy…there’s another all-time mystery), but I will no longer be cringing when left to my Mets radio devices.
Johan Santana lives! I saw it for myself via two innings of televised encouragement Tuesday. He pitched to the Cardinals, he emerged with his left arm attached to his left shoulder and he wasn’t diagnosed with a rare tropical disease on his way to the clubhouse.
Talk about a super Tuesday. Everything else pales in comparison to the news that your ace is still in a position to be your ace after a year-plus of surgery, shelf and setback. If it wasn’t the Mets and I wasn’t conditioned to expect the worst, I’d swear this is good news.
Meanwhile, here’s some news I recognized as excellent as soon as I came upon it Tuesday: the return to regular blogging from one of the best in our business, Mike Steffanos. Make (or remake) Mike’s Mets one of your regular reads. You won’t be sorry.
Tonight shortly after six, when Dillon Gee faces the Nationals’ Roger Bernadina with the first pitch that pretends to matter in 2012, strike one would be most preferable. Shortly thereafter, when Long Beach’s own John Lannan returns the favor sixty feet and six inches from Andres Torres, our new center fielder is advised to take it and work studiously from there.
That’s Terry Collins’s short-term dream scenario for what we commonly call a meaningless exhibition game, so it’s mine, too. Terry wants fundamentals attended to tonight. I know that because he told me during last week’s blogger conference call (kindly transcribed by Chris McShane at Amazin’ Avenue). Granted one question to ask the Mets’ manager, I asked what he looks for from his players during the early fake games versus the later fake games. Terry, who had a good answer for every good question, said pitchers need to “pound the strike zone” and hitters have to make sure “we’re seeing pitches”. Start executing the fundamentals that have been the focus of drills thus far. In a couple of weeks, velocity for the pitchers and bat speed for the hitters come into play.
As I thanked him for his insight and he moved on to another inquiry, I was buoyed that Collins had injected meaning into these supposedly meaningless games. Command the strike zone now, throw hard later; work the count now, swing hard later.
Something like that.
I’ll try to keep that in mind as SNY’s signal transforms from filler to vital. I might forget by the second inning, given that the mere presence of something very much approximating baseball appears on the old not-so-flat screen downstairs. As with what managers look for from their players, the needs of fans change as Spring Training gets going and gets old. Thirty-five years ago, I was so excited the Mets’ first Saturday game of March, versus the Cardinals, was being broadcast from Al Lang Stadium over WNEW-AM that I devoted two pages of loose leaf paper to scoring it, inking (inking!) in every substitution Joe Frazier and Vern Rapp made. I never did it again, not that spring, not in any game since. I satisfied myself in March 1977 with the sounds and occasional sights of baseball activity. It’s probably what I’ll wind up doing tonight after Terry’s guidance wears off.
After a hardcore group discussion of fundamentals, et al, with the Mets manager, it was intoxicating to think about pitchers hitting their spots and hitters waiting for their pitches, but in the days that have passed since that conference call, David Wright’s got a rib cage issue, Scott Hairston’s oblique is acting up, Zach Lutz has been plunked and what isn’t wrong with Ike Davis? Ike’s valley fever (a damn poor substitute for pennant fever) isn’t supposed to be a big deal, but this is the same strapping young man who fell down in Colorado last May and didn’t get up for the rest of the season. Plus a judge says the Mets’ owners owe a trustee roughly the equivalent of their 2012 payroll and thus –pending appeals, of course — provisionally cleared the way for a jury to add a whole lot more to their tab. One could be left to wonder if there’ll be enough left in the kitty by June to cover REO Speedwagon’s expenses.
Injuries. Madoff. Whatever. Throw strikes, take balls, and if any Met reaches base, take it on the run. For one night the rest will take care of itself.
Thanks again to Amazin’ Avenue for transcribing the aforementioned blogger conference call. Read the entire enlightening Q&A session here.
Think of one’s attitude about the 2012 Mets as a scale. Let’s say the stuff that’s bad, depressing, worrisome, etc. goes on the left, and the good, happy, optimistic stuff goes on the right.
BAD STUFF
The team is broke
Bud Selig is going to keep looking the other way instead of doing anything about it
How quickly and thoroughly the team gets un-broke will be determined by lawyers
Those lawyerly determinations will probably take a long, long time
We finally have a smart GM — and he doesn’t have any money
Help from the farm system is probably at least a year away
The Mets play in a division with a very good team, a pretty good team, and two improving teams
Even if everything breaks right, forget about obtaining pricey veteran help
The Yankees are an aggravating, omnipresent point of media comparison
The starting pitching is in all likelihood going to be somewhere between mediocre and bad
Key players are coming off injuries
Other key players are trying to reverse scary declines
Smart Mets fans reflexively assume anything said by ownership or the business side is untrue
Did I mention the team is broke?
GOOD STUFF
The Mets are playing spring-training games next week
But hang on. Let me put that the way it came to me, lying in bed this morning:
OH MY GOD YOU GUYS THE METS ARE PLAYING SPRING-TRAINING GAMES NEXT WEEK! YOU CAN SEE IT RIGHT ON THE SCHEDULE AND EVERYTHING! WE CAN WATCH THEM! THERE WILL BE GREEN GRASS AND INFIELD DIRT AND SUNNY SKIES AND THE POP OF CATCHERS’ MITTS AND THE CRACK OF BATS AND RUNNERS TAKING LEADS AND GUYS WORKING COUNTS AND DUDES IN THE DUGOUT SPITTING SUNFLOWER SEEDS AND UMPS BRAYING BALLS AND STRIKES AND FANS YELLING HUM BATTER AND MANAGERS AND COACHES CLAPPING AND SAYING SILLY THINGS! THERE WILL BE METS! THERE WILL BE GAMES! THERE WILL BE METS GAMES!
And all of a sudden the scales are all the way over there on the right — CLANG! — on the good side. And somehow, at least for now, none of that stuff that fell off the bad side of the scales matters.
Right away you get Keith Hernandez’s final Mets plate appearance. At 2:24, Gary Carter catches for the final time at Shea. And seconds later, Kid is swinging in Flushing for the last time. Watch the at-bat and listen to how Steve Zabriskie describes him. Pretty much sums him up.
And so this doesn’t leave you as blue as all those classic Starter jackets crammed into the Mets dugout, stay tuned for how the game ends. Ah, Jefferies, we hardly knew ye, apparently. In any event, fantastic 1989 Shea Stadium time capsule. Many thanks to Larry for tipping us off.
I was thinking about t-shirts before Jeff Wilpon hung one in every Met’s locker today. On Friday I finally got around to enhancing my t-shirt drawers with Super Bowl XLVI wear. Meant to run right out after the Giants won and stock up…but I didn’t. That was all right for two reasons:
1) When I finally got around to going to Mo’s, the prices were reduced dramatically. Modell’s over-order? Perhaps they need the space for Linsanity merchandise (still full-priced)? Whatever, I got my bargains.
2) As I expected, my glow from the Giants’ victory had dimmed over the three weeks since it occurred. It was bound to happen since football tends to fall from my radar as soon as the last one is put away. The Giants had their parade, and suddenly (for the first time in about ten years) I was watching the Knicks. Then I was mourning Gary Carter. Then it was Spring. Yet once in the store, being assaulted by shirt after shirt declaring my favorite team in a given sport — even if it’s not my favorite sport — reignited my spirits all over again. “Hey, that’s right! I root for a world champion in something! Ooh, only ten bucks!”
I love my Giants Super Bowl shirts and am wearing one proudly right now. But I’d rather be able to buy a “Champions” shirt that says Mets…and I’m not looking for another throwback model.
As it happened, I plucked out of my drawer over the weekend one of my 2006 N.L. East Champion shirts, the only one that remains in rotation. It still fits and the Mets are still 2006 N.L. East Champions, so despite some misgivings about it having become an unintentional throwback, I keep it among the active and put it on a few times a year. It’s less and less current and taunts me a little more with every wearing, but I can’t consign it to the shelf of history. Even if it’s a reminder of the 2006 followup shirts that were never commercially distributed. Even if it almost inexplicably lists Dave Williams on the back.
Or as probably all of the players wondered, “Who?”
The sentiment is supposed to be the Mets are underdogs, like that eminently rootable cartoon pup from the 1960s who only appears to be humble and lovable Shoeshine Boy, but in reality is a superhero bent on saving Sweet Polly Purebred from Riff Raff and Simon Bar Sinister and whatever vile villainy they prepare to pull. I found Underdog quite the hoot when I was five or six. The Simpsons got a big laugh out of how ancient and obscure the character and the series were in 1990.
So anyway, the Mets of 2012 are almost universally picked to finish last, which makes them, in the sporting sense, underdogs. And Jeff Wilpon, who is nothing if not a man of the people, arranged for these shirts to…well, now I’m lost. They’re underdogs, as Mets teams often have been over their half-century of existence, and Underdog would wind up the winner in his adventures…
I’m still lost.
It wasn’t that the villains doubted Underdog’s ability to fight them when he showed up with his speed of lightning and roar of thunder (both of which the Mets lineup could use). When Underdog appeared, it was more or less all over for his rivals. The Mets, on the other hand/paw, won’t step into a phone booth and put on their superhero costumes. They’re not humble and lovable Shoeshine Boys, no matter how affable and disregarded they may be. They’re the Mets. They’re underdogs because they’re undermanned.
Which makes J. Wilpon’s message what exactly? That everybody doubts them? That nobody knows their true identity? That if we can just channel that doubt into can-do spirit, boy won’t those bastards from Philadelphia to Miami be surprised?
Knute Rockne can rest easy. His motivational mantle is not about to be usurped.
Thirty-three years ago, in a spring much bleaker than this one, the Mets sought inspiration from a t-shirt. John Stearns ordered garments emblazoned with a slogan he (and maybe only he) fervently believed:
WE CAN WIN
Every Met got one. Then, to raise the stakes, Stearns, who did not take losing well, made a revision. He taped over “CAN” and replaced it with “WILL”.
WE WILL WIN
The 1979 Mets, as always seems to be the upshot of these recollections, didn’t win much. But for the few days “WE CAN WIN” and “WE WILL WIN” made the papers, gosh, what a boost to the morale of the fan base. It was thrilling knowing one of our own took it upon himself to personally attempt to raise the sights of everybody in his clubhouse (oh how the newly acquired Richie Hebner must have rolled his eyes into a migraine that first week).
Jeff’s shirt seems more like the wearable equivalent of the morale-boosting memo everybody in the office is supposed to pin prominently in his or her cube. It’s inane, but it’s the boss’s…or boss’s heir’s prerogative to do inane things. If it weren’t for saturation coverage of Spring Training and instantly transmitted backlash to anything Wilponian — much of the backlash richly deserved — these shirts would probably meet the same fate another set of shirts once met in a Met clubhouse.
It was the end of 1998 and Turk Wendell helped himself to a stack of tees the Mets wouldn’t be using. They declared the Mets the Wild Card winner in the National League. Don’t look for confirmation on the left field wall should you dynamically price yourself into Citi Field this season. The Mets lost their last five games and blew the playoff spot the shirts were meant to celebrate. Nobody was going to be spraying champagne on these babies. Nobody was going anywhere with them, save for Turk, who must have figured a shirt is a shirt.
“I’ll take one,” John Franco was witnessed to have said as he grabbed a shirt from Wendell’s pile. “I could use something to clean my house.”
As has become annual custom here on the day following the night the Oscars are presented, the Academy would like to pause for a moment to remember those Mets who have, in the baseball sense, left us in the past year.
MICHAEL PATRICK “Mike” O’CONNOR May 7, 2011 – June 1, 2011
Impressive too was the work of Mike O’Connor (who looks vaguely like an accountant out there but so far succeeds)…
—May 21, 2011 (Free Agent, 9/29/2011; Signed with Yankees, 11/16/2011)
DALE SCOTT THAYER May 28, 2011 – September 27, 2011
I watched Thayer’s journeyman essence again and sensed imminent doom. I watched Morgan — as good an advertisement as has ever been for the well-placed purpose pitch — drive Thayer’s last delivery down the right field line to score Counsell. I watched Morgan hop, skip and jump like he’d just won the sausage race. I watched what was about to be an exhilarating 6-2 triumph dissolve into a miserable 7-6 defeat. Then I flipped to Jon Stewart and tried to forget what I just saw.
—June 9, 2011 (Free Agent, 10/21/2011; Signed with Padres, 12/5/2011)
TOBI NEAL STONER September 10, 2009 – April 18, 2010
Former Cyclone could really help the Mets sell more merchandise to snarky college kids. We’ll have to reserve judgment on what he might contribute in actual games.
—October 20, 2009 (Still in Mets organization at last check, but hasn’t pitched for the major league club since April 2010; split 2011 between Single-A St. Lucie and Double-A Binghamton — compiling a combined 6.05 ERA; and was not invited to big league camp this spring. For the purposes of this feature, Tobi Stoner is considered no longer with us. UPDATED TO NOTE TOBI STONER WAS RELEASED ON MARCH 25, 2012.)
JESUS FELICIANO June 10, 2010 – October 3, 2010
Perfection is a fourth outfielder, Jesus Feliciano, tripling to lead off the ninth and thereby imperil a 4-4 tie. And, as if packing Hisanori Takahashi, Manny Acosta and Jesus Feliciano onto the same roster isn’t a perfect enough display of personnel, perfection is taking a piece of Kirk Gibson strategy — walking Angel Pagan and David Wright to load the bases to get to some nonentity named Carlos Beltran — and pumping a fist at it after a no-doubt sacrifice fly by Beltran renders it stupid.
—August 1, 2010 (Free Agent, 11/2/2011; Signed with Rays, 1/19/2012)
BRADLEY MARK “Brad” EMAUS April 1, 2011 – April 17, 2011
Brad Emaus looms as a bargain-basement steal, except he’s more basement than bargain, thus far — and on the Mets, that’s saying something. The Mets’ front office would love, you’d figure, to confirm their brilliance by having plucked a starting second baseman in the Rule V draft, and Mets ownership would probably prefer 25 Rule V salaries constitute their payroll right about now. But Brad Emaus is thus far forgetting the first rule of Rule V draftees: prove your worth at some facet of the game.
—March 11, 2011 (Returned to Blue Jays, 4/21/2011)
BLAINE THOMAS BOYER April 1, 2011 – April 10, 2011
In the bottom of the fifth, Blaine Boyer was victimized by a Victorino check-swing double, a little parachute by Placido Polanco that evaded Carlos Beltran by six inches or perhaps another three weeks of right-field experience, and a Ryan Howard grounder that Boyer deflected to land 20 feet in front of a horrified Emaus. Buzzards’ luck, to be sure, but an inning later Boyer was greeted by a Ben Francisco drive that might have landed in Portugal if it were summer.
—April 6, 2011 (Free agent, 4/13/2011; Signed with Pirates, 4/18/2011)
CHIN-LUNG HU April 1, 2011 – May 16, 2011
Everybody is your favorite player when your team is winning. You stop asking Chin-lung Why.
—April 29, 2011 (Free agent, 11/2/2011; Signed with Indians, 1/11/2012)
TAYLOR BUCHHOLZ April 1, 2011 – May 29, 2011
Buchholz went on the DL at the end of May with shoulder fatigue, but stayed there because he was battling depression. Not so long ago, the Mets’ reaction to Ryan Church sustaining a concussion was basically to tell him to man up; this year, faced with something that might have seemed more ephemeral, they did far better.
—November 3, 2011 (Free agent, 11/15/2011; Voluntarily out of professional baseball)
LUIS A. (Mendoza) HERNANDEZ August 28, 2010 – September 18, 2010
Thus, technically, Luis Hernandez’s last act as a New York Met batter (if he never puts one foot in front of the other en route to the plate for us again) was to swing, to connect and to go deep. Now that’s showmanship. When you hit that high note, per George’s pal Jerry Seinfeld, you say “good night” and walk off. Or, in Hernandez’s case, limp off.
—March 29, 2011 (Free agent, 10/14/2011; Signed with Rangers, 11/30/2011)
RYOTA IGARASHI April 8, 2010 – September 27, 2011
Ryota Igarashi is a day closer to no longer being a Met.
—August 22, 2011 (Released, 10/19/2011; Signed with Pirates, 12/20/2011)
CHRISTOPHER RYAN “Chris” YOUNG April 5, 2011 – May 1, 2011
Someday when I again run into one of those big-time Mets fans with whom I spent Tuesday night, we might be moved to remember that time we watched the Mets beat the Phillies at the Pine and Chris Young became the first Met pitcher to collect two hits in the same inning, but I have a hunch that will be far down the list of Met topics that occur to us organically. First we’ll remind each other of disappointments ancient and recent. Then we’ll implicitly congratulate ourselves for sticking with our guys anyway. Then maybe Chris Young, big-time hitter and pretty good pitcher for at least one start in Philadelphia, will arise as an example of how good it used to be, in 2011, when the Mets would beat Cole Hamels like a drum…
—April 6, 2011 (Free agent, 10/30/2011; Currently unsigned; UPDATED TO NOTECHRIS YOUNG SIGNED A MINOR LEAGUE DEAL WITH THE METS ON MARCH 26, 2012.)
PATRICK THEODORE JOSEPH “Pat” MISCH June 24, 2009 – May 26, 2011
The Mets’ next five starts in real life are scheduled to be taken by Mike Pelfrey, Tim Redding, Pat Misch, Bobby Parnell and Nelson Figueroa, though Jerry Manuel told Joe Benigno and Evan Roberts that if he has to use Misch in relief to win a game tonight or tomorrow (because using Pat Misch is such an ironclad guarantee of success), he’ll go with Lance Broadway on Friday. Stephanie asked me if Lance Broadway was actually somebody’s porn name.
—August 26, 2009 (Free agent, 9/29/2011; Signed with Phillies, 11/29/2011)
JASON ORVILLE PRIDIE April 22, 2011 – September 28, 2011
An intense internal debate ensued over the ethics attached to invoking the spirit of the departed in order to gain a desired sporting result on this mortal coil and how dirty I should feel about really wanting exactly that to happen, but — unlike a pair of Metsian beards — it was cut mercifully short when Pridie lashed Jurrjens’s final pitch of the night into right to score Bay and put the Mets up 1-0. “Yeah! The guy with the beard did it!” Is that so wrong?
—June 5, 2011 (Free agent, 11/11/2011; Signed with Athletics, 11/18/2011)
RONNY LEONEL PAULINO April 29, 2011 – September 28, 2011
Ronny Paulino’s fifth hit in seven attempts and Taylor Buchholz’s outbreak of effectiveness kept this game from stretching into the absurd category. I was glad. Lengthy was OK, but absurd would have been disrespectful.
—May 2, 2011 (Free agent, 12/12/2011; Signed with Orioles, 1/30/2012)
WILLIAM CHARLES “Willie” HARRIS April 1, 2011 – September 28, 2011
Pujols popped to Nick Evans at first for the second out, but Berkman lined a ball that had “gap” written all over it, just above Bud Selig’s signature. Only thing was it seemed to travel for an eternity, as if it hadn’t been given clearance to land. Which was when Willie Harris reappeared. I don’t mean Willie Harris showed up in the picture from left field. I mean Willie Harris arrived from approximately 2008. The Willie Harris we’d been waiting for finally decided to don a Mets uniform, rob somebody else of a sure run-scoring extra-base hit and quite possibly ruin somebody else’s season.
—September 22, 2011 (Free agent, 10/30/2011; Signed with Reds, 1/23/2012)
CHRISTOPHER FRANK “Chris” CAPUANO April 3, 2011 – September 27, 2011
Chris Capuano has been…how to put this? Workmanlike? Distressingly predictable? He’s had a habit of looking very good early, giving up a run or two in circumstances you want to shrug off as unlucky, and then imploding hideously. But not tonight. Tonight all of the mysteries of baseball were an open book for him. His fastball, change-up and slider were all superb, borderline untouchable. He knew it, the Mets knew it, the nicely appreciative crowd knew it, and the Braves certainly knew it.
—August 27, 2011
(Free agent, 10/30/2011; Signed with Dodgers, 12/2/2011)
JESUS FERNANDO (Alvarez) MARTINEZ May 26, 2009 – July 2, 2011
I suppose I’m disappointed Fernando Martinez isn’t a staple of the Mets lineup the way he was projected to be when he was signed out of the Dominican at the age of 16. I’m sorry in a general sense that things haven’t worked out for some kid I’ve never met, and I’m sorry in a Met sense that my team eternally gropes for some semblance of outfield stability. Yet “disappointed” may not quite describe my reaction to a big-deal prospect fizzling. Reyes and Wright notwithstanding, I just don’t expect Mets prospects, save for the ones whose potential looms as extremely loud and incredibly close, to pay off.
—January 12, 2012 (Selected off waivers by Astros, 1/11/2012)
NICHOLAS REGINALD “Nick” EVANS May 24, 2008 – September 28, 2011
Do you remember Nick Evans? The Mets brought up him up when they were desperate for outfielders in 2008 and he doubled three times, knocked in two runs, played a respectable left and helped the Mets break a losing streak. It was pretty exciting. Whaddaya suppose ever happened to Nick Evans?
—May 24, 2008 (Free agent, 11/16/2011; Signed with Pirates, 11/29/2011)
LUIS ANTONIO (Donato) CASTILLO July 31, 2007 – October 3, 2010
Luis Castillo? Until Friday night, not the Mets’ biggest problem. But he’s bearing the brunt now. Luis Castillo did not help the Mets win a very big ballgame. In fact, he lost it for them not because he isn’t good enough but because he didn’t play well enough. There’s a difference. If you’re not helping us win baseball games, you’re hurting us. If you’re hurting us, you shouldn’t be here. I don’t know why anyone would run a baseball team any other way.
—June 13, 2009 (Released, 3/18/2011; Signed with Phillies, 3/21/2011)
OLIVER (Martinez) PEREZ August 26, 2006 – October 3, 2010
Ollie Perez made fourteen starts in 2009 before his season ended, murkily, on the Disabled List. He wasn’t what you’d objectively call good in more than five of them. He made seven starts before being pulled from the rotation in 2010, and was undeniably dreadful in five of them. His ERA as a starter over the past two years is 6.53. Perez has now made four relief appearances in which he has faced a total of 26 batters. Thirteen of them have reached base via hit (7), walk (5) or hit by pitch (1). He was getting worse and worse as a starter. He isn’t getting any better as a reliever. He won’t consent to a professional intervention. And he gets paid regardless. I’d love to be the one to tell you something different from what you’ve already figured out for yourself. But my conclusion is likely the same as yours: Let Oliver Perez go collect his enormous fucking paychecks somewhere else.
—June 1, 2010 (Released, 3/21/2011; Signed with Nationals, 3/23/2011)
FRANCISCO JOSE “Frankie” RODRIGUEZ April 6, 2009 – July 8, 2011
But then, suddenly, it’s the top of the ninth, and the main video monitor heats up, and “Sandungueoso” stirs and the bullpen gate swings open and all at once Francisco Rodriguez from all those breathless tabloid stories is Frankie the Met closer again. There was nothing to close — just a can of worms to open. As it dawned on however many of the 39,000 in attendance still on hand who was entering the game, I could feel a tangible pause in the air. “Look,” I could hear us think. “It’s him.” And then? Boos, mostly…though a few people stood and applauded as if he had persevered through a difficult personal ordeal — which one could say he had, if one were to apply a very generous reading of the circumstances.
—August 15, 2010 (Traded to Brewers, 7/12/2011)
ANGEL ANTHONY PAGAN March 31, 2008 September 22, 2011
That brought up Pagan, who looked at a ball, fouled one off and then got a fastball from Zavada that was high and not particularly fast. He sent it deep into the left-field seats, one of those bolts that brings everybody with a modicum of baseball sense to their feet even before an irrelevant outfielder kicks helplessly at the grass. It was Pagan’s first home run since July 2007, his first as a Met, his first grand slam ever. As Zavada dispiritedly went to work on Luis Castillo we were all standing and cheering and yelling. Everybody wanted a curtain call, but I’m not shy to say I wanted it most of all. Heck, I’d only been thinking of something like this since the early days of the Bush administration. Pagan bounced up the stairs and pointed at the crowd, smiling hugely, and it was exactly like Emily and I had imagined it, in Coney Island once upon a time.
—August 2, 2009 (Traded to Giants, 12/7/2011)
JASON DERIK ISRINGHAUSEN July 17, 1995 – July 31, 1999; April 11, 2011 – September 6, 2011
But for now, Izzy is a Met again. Izzy from Shea. Izzy from the selectively idealized past. Izzy from when things were about to turn a corner. Izzy, perhaps, from when things will turn a corner again. “Mets” on the front of his chest. “ISRINGHAUSEN” crammed between his shoulder blades. It’s pretty special.
—April 12, 2011 (Free agent, 10/30/2011; Signed with Angels, 2/22/2012)
CARLOS IVAN BELTRAN April 4, 2005 – July 26, 2011
Carlos Beltran’s grace came off better when he had two good knees and a few fewer years than the 34 he carries around now. Grace’s value has diminished since Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away, since SportsCenter came on the air, since a critical mass of opinion formed that it wasn’t so much what you did but how interested you looked while you were doing it. If you did it the hard way and succeeded, you were that much more impressive. If you made it look — because that’s just how you rolled — easy, and you made the mistake of not succeeding every time out…well, why isn’t that guy giving it his all? We can only guess how difficult it’s been for Carlos Beltran to give it his all since his legs began to betray him a couple of years ago. It didn’t look that easy for him trying to come back from too much injury in 2009 and 2010. The obvious effort didn’t necessarily translate to the desired results. Yet he didn’t much let us see him sweat. Carlos Beltran isn’t given to the grimace. He has maybe two expressions: the one that’s practically blank and the one where he smiles. He wears the former about 95% of the time. He wore the smile after Thursday’s game in Denver. It wasn’t a gloat, but there was definitely a twinkle to it, just a touch of “I could tell ya so, but I think my bat just did.”
—May 12, 2011 (Traded to Giants, 7/28/2011)
JOSE BERNABE REYES June 10, 2003 – September 28, 2011
With that, there’s a swing and a drive to left and — yes! It’s in the gap! Here comes Pagan from second. Here comes Pelfrey from first (Christ, don’t get hurt on a play at the plate). Is Mike gonna score? He is, which is great and all, but now I want to know what I really want to know. And then I know because Howie Rose tells me: Jose Reyes slides into third with his first triple of the season. Jose Reyes with a triple. The 74th of his major league career, more than any Met. The first he’s collected since April 29, 2009, almost a year. There had been triples at Citi Field since then, but none by Jose Reyes, he for whose bat and legs and particular talent for creating triples this park was designed. Earlier, in the first, there had been a single. Later there’d be two more, plus a stolen base. But for now there was a triple. A Jose Reyes triple. I don’t know how much or even if they were singing at Citi Field. But alone in the car, I sure as hell was.
—April 21, 2010 (Free agent, 10/30/2011; Signed with Marlins, 12/7/2011)
Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
Amazin' Again: How the 2015 New York Mets Brought the Magic Back to Queens by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
Volume I of The Happiest Recap: 50+ Years of the New York Mets As Told in 500+ Amazin' Wins by Greg Prince is available in print and for Kindle on Amazon.
Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History by Greg Prince (foreword by Jason Fry), is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
