Faith and Fear in Flushing

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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The Happiest Recap: 091-093

by Greg Prince on 19 July 2011 1:00 pm

Welcome to The Happiest Recap, a solid gold slate of New York Mets games culled from every schedule the Mets have ever played en route to this, their fiftieth year in baseball. We’ve created a dream season that includes the “best” 91st game in any Mets season, the “best” 92nd game in any Mets season, the “best” 93rd game in any Mets season…and we keep going from there until we have a completed schedule worthy of Bob Murphy coming back with the Happy Recap after this word from our sponsor on the WFAN Mets Radio Network.

GAME 091: July 22, 1975 — METS 3 Reds 1
(Mets All-Time Game 091 Record: 23-26; Mets 1975 Record: 47-44)

If you were a pitcher who just watched your team engage in record-setting offensive futility, you might very well be determined to take your fate into your own hands.

Or feet.

To understand what Jerry Koosman might have thought he was up against, you have to rewind the Mets clock some 24 hours from this Tuesday night, to the way the Mets found to lose to the Astros, or at least how they undermined themselves.

After Dave Kingman exploded for two homers and six ribbies on Sunday afternoon, Felix Millan took his turn at being the offensive star of Shea Stadium Monday night, collecting four singles in four at-bats. Yet all of Millan’s best efforts went to waste as the hitter who followed him in the order, Joe Torre, hit four ground balls in four at-bats, every one of them to a spot in the infield that meant death to the Mets’ attack.

1-6-3.

6-4-3.

4-6-3.

6-4-3.

That’s four twin-killings. Four ground ball double plays. Four erasures of Felix Millan and, of course, quadruple-futility for Joe Torre in what became a 6-2 Mets loss. The four GIDPs established a National League record nobody in their right mind would want any part of. Nobody ever accused Torre of lacking sanity, so the third baseman joked to keep all of his.

“You gotta be lucky to hit into four double plays.”

“I couldn’t have set a record without Millan. He ought to get an assist.”

“When I retire, I’m gonna buy a shortstop and put him in my den. At night, when I’m lonely, I’m gonna go down there and hit grounders to him.”

Laugh, Joe, laugh if that’s all you can do besides create eight outs in four swings. Jerry Koosman couldn’t have been all that amused contemplating how the Mets could rustle up 11 hits yet score only two runs. And with Reds-hot Cincinnati coming in to open a series at Shea on his night to pitch, Kooz had to know not to take any run-generating opportunities for granted.

Leading 1-0, Jerry batted against Jack Billingham in the bottom of the third and singled. Jerry Koosman getting a hit was not unheard of in 1975; he was batting .184 entering the evening’s action. But what happened next was unheard of.

Jerry Koosman stole second base.

Credit Kooz with paying attention, and not just to the Mets’ offensive anemia the night before: “Their shortstop and second baseman were laying pack. And I figured it would be easy for me to do.” Perhaps he noticed that Johnny Bench was taking the night off, too. The catcher for the Reds that night was Bill Plummer. Plummer, who didn’t get much playing time behind Bench, attempted to throw out Koosman. Unfortunately for him, neither Dave Concepcion nor Joe Morgan was covering second.

So Plummer’s throw sailed through to the outfield and Jerry Koosman went on to third. He scored what proved to be the decisive run of the game when he came home on Wayne Garrett’s fly ball to left. Spurred on by his legs, Kooz went the distance on the mound, tossing a six-hitter and striking out eight in defeating the Big Red Machine in their greatest year, 3-1.

“We certainly didn’t give him the green light to steal,” manager Yogi Berra said after the game. “When he did, I said, ‘Uh-oh, he’s out.’ But as it turned out, it was a good play. Of course, if he had been thrown out, I would have given him hell.”

But because he was safe and because the Mets won, the team gave him something better. In a pregame ceremony the next night, Tom Seaver (who stole four bases as a Met himself) presented his teammate the very bag he pilfered, complete with the number 2 — for second base. The number 2, however, would be absent from Koosman’s career stolen base ledger. He’d retire in 1985, with exactly that one stolen base to his credit, one of nineteen swiped by Mets pitchers in the fifty years there have been Mets pitchers.

Koosman’s bag was the last swiped by a Mets pitcher until Tim Leary would dare to take one in 1984. No Mets pitcher has been similarly gutsy on the basepaths since Oliver Perez stole second against the Reds in 2008.

ALSO QUITE HAPPY: On July 21, 1991, Dwight Gooden was notching K’s at Shea Stadium while Darryl Strawberry was looming as a home run threat, yet something was wrong with this picture. Doc was a Met, but Straw was visiting with Los Angeles. Straw was one of three former Mets dotting the Dodger lineup this Sunday, joining starter Bobby Ojeda and catcher Gary Carter — and before the Dodger box score was complete, a fourth, Juan Samuel, would appear in the game (as would four future Mets: Eddie Murray, Brett Butler, Dennis Cook and Lenny Harris). But the main attraction was Doc and Darryl, facing each other for the first time in their respective superstar careers.

The results? A single for Darryl in the second; a strikeout for Doc in the third and, in their final-ever head-to-head at Shea, victory for the Doctor. Gooden had Strawberry oh-and-two as he reared back and fired a strike by his old buddy, who swung and missed, much to the delight of Doc’s new buddies, Daryl Boston and Vince Coleman, each cheering vociferously from the Mets’ dugout. Doc revealed later that he wouldn’t look directly at Darryl as he pitched against him. He said he learned his lesson after making eye contact with Wally Backman the first time he faced him and “he stuck his tongue out at me” before singling.

Gooden’s strikeout preserved an 8-3 lead that became a 9-4 win that served as a milestone in retrospect. It raised the Mets’ record to 53-38 and kept them four behind the Pirates for first place in the N.L. East. The team then left for the West Coast, lost twelve of fourteen and would sink below .500 within a month. The Mets wouldn’t be as many as fifteen games above break-even again — or legitimately compete for a playoff spot — until the summer of 1997. By then, Strawberry and Gooden would be playing baseball regularly in New York…but in uniforms that made them appear far stranger than Darryl looked as a Dodger.

GAME 092: July 16, 2006 — Mets 13 CUBS 7
(Mets All-Time Game 092 Record: 28-21; Mets 2006 Record: 55-37)

A haunting orange glow fell over Wrigley Field in the top of the sixth inning, attributable to an unusual 5:11 PM local starting time, arranged in deference to ESPN’s desire to air the ESPYs immediately after Sunday Night Baseball was over. The sun was doing its setting, but the Mets were just getting started — and they were painting the Chicago skies their own shade of orange and blue.

The first-place Mets were prime time players in 2006, all right, and their sixth inning this particular early evening probably should have caused the ESPYs committee to reconvene on the spot to bestow upon them some kind of award. Best Lead-In to a Meaningless Exhibition of Self-Congratulations, perhaps. But since the Worldwide Leader in Sports wasn’t about to do that, the Mets created their own award and presented it to themselves.

Most Prodigious Inning in Franchise History.

When it was done, there were no other nominees. The Mets came to bat in the sixth trailing 5-2 and when they were done batting, they stood as the only Mets team to ever put an 11-spot on a scoreboard.

Prior to this trip to Chicago, there was no evidence anybody even made 11-spots. The Mets’ record for most runs in an inning had stood 27 years to that point — set in 1979 and tied memorably in 2000 but never surpassed. It was 10. There was no topping it for the longest time.

But this 11-run inning went on long enough to push the ESPYs past their projected starting time (good thing they were taped days earlier). This 11-run inning also went on long enough to encompass another unprecedented single-frame Mets feat: a pair of grand slams clouted before three outs could be recorded by the opposing pitcher(s).

The Mets, as was the case when they fired up their ten-run innings in ’79 and ’00, trailed heading into Elevenland. They were down 5-2 as the sixth started, with Sean Marshall of the Cubs in relative control of the situation. His first batter was Chris Woodward, who flied out to center. His second batter was Carlos Beltran, who grounded to second, and…whoops! Todd Walker couldn’t pick up the grounder and Beltran was safe on the E-4.

And with that much of an opening, the Mets busted through the Ivy.

Carlos Delgado singled. David Wright singled. With the bases loaded, Cliff Floyd homered. Grand Slam No. 1 put the Mets ahead 6-5.

With the bases cleared, Xavier Nady walked. Dusty Baker got around to removing Marshall and replaced him with Roberto Novoa, who began his job competently by grounding Ramon Castro to third. Except Aramis Ramirez went for the force at second, which meant another misadventure for Walker, Todd encountering another ball he couldn’t handle (yet another E-4). The misplay putting Nady on second and Castro on first. Endy Chavez pinch-hit for reliever Pedro Feliciano and singled Nady home, with Castro hustling to third.

Then, with that fifth run of the sixth in, Endy stole second and Jose Valentin scratched out an infield single to reload the bases. Chris Woodward, up again, did not take full advantage of whatever was afflicting the Cubs, grounding to Ramirez at third, resulting in Castro being cut down at home.

Beltran, on the other hand, understood he was in the midst of a Met inning of a lifetime and took a mighty cut at Novoa’s 3-2 pitch and sent it soaring above Wrigley’s left-center field fence, giving the Mets Grand Slam No. 2 and runs six through nine. The visitors now held an 11-5 lead.

And Baker, for reasons best known to him, left Novoa into pitch to the rest of the heart of the Met order. Delgado doubled and Wright homered — not a grand slam, but quite good enough to provide the Mets their tenth and eleventh runs of the inning, the most ever generated by any Mets club.

At which point, Dusty took out Novoa and called on Will Ohman to pitch. The Mets kept coming to the plate for a while, as Floyd and Nady each walked and Castro gave a 1-1 pitch an impressive ride to deep center. Alas, mercy intervened and allowed Juan Pierre to catch it for the third out of the eleven-run inning.

The Mets led 13-5 and would win 13-7. Interestingly, in this first series after the All-Star break, they did it without two of their four everyday All-Stars. Jose Reyes was out with a hand injury and Paul Lo Duca was getting the night off. You could say the Mets scored eleven runs in one inning with two All-Stars tied behind their proverbial back — and it was their replacements, Woodward and Castro, who made the only outs. What’s more, between the leadoff flyout from Woodward and the final flyout from Castro, the Mets sent fourteen batters to the plate and every one of them landed on base in some shape or form, whether via error, walk, fielder’s choice, hit or very long hit.

All told on ESPYs night, the top of the sixth would have to be recognized as the best performance by a team in a leading role — leading the National League East by a dozen games, that is.

ALSO QUITE HAPPY: On July 17, 1978, Skip Lockwood did it all closing out a doubleheader split for the Mets, including one thing he didn’t want to do, one thing he hadn’t done in seven years and something he did with regularity for several seasons as a Met. Nursing a 6-3 lead in relief of Dale Murray at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium this Monday night, Skip got two quick outs upon entering in the bottom of the seventh before giving up a home run to Darrel Chaney. The Mets’ lead was cut to two, but Lockwood maintained his composure and retired pinch-hitter Joe Nolan to end the inning. He pitched a perfect eighth, and Joe Torre had no one he’d rather go to finish the game. Therefore, when Lockwood’s spot in the order came around in the top of the ninth, he let his closer bat for himself with two out.

Good move by the skipper where Skip was concerned. Lockwood, whose major league experience included 42 games as an infielder for the 1965 Kansas City A’s, homered off Atlanta reliever Dave Campbell. In launching his first dinger since 1971 and the third of his career, Lockwood extended the Mets’ lead to 7-4, gave himself a comfortable three-run cushion and — once he set down Jeff Burroughs, Biff Pocoroba and Dale Murphy 1-2-3 in the bottom of the ninth — went into the record books as the only Met relief pitcher to homer in a Mets win. Tug McGraw went deep after coming in from the bullpen in 1971 at Montreal, but that was in a blowout loss. Here, Lockwood notched his eleventh save of the season, one of 65 he accumulated as a Met between 1975 and 1979. When he left the club as a free agent, only McGraw had more Met saves. Though Lockwood’s ranking in that category has fallen to ninth, no Met reliever has homered since Skip went yard.

GAME 093: July 25, 1990 — Mets 10 PHILLIES 9
(Mets All-Time Game 093 Record: 25-24; Mets 1990 Record: 55-38)

In a perfect world, large late-inning leads are never precariously whittled and beloved announcers calmly bring their listeners the blissfully mundane details en route to an easy win. But as one of the sport’s all-time beloved announcers knew, we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a Metsian world. And on a Wednesday night in Philadelphia, Bob Murphy had no choice but to describe it for what it was.

In doing so, he made himself as much the story as the game itself, which was not Murph’s desire. Yet because it was so totally off-the-cuff and so totally out-of-the-blue, this aberration became part of the collective memory of Robert Allan Murphy. And nobody who ever listened to him minded a bit.

Before the ninth inning, no Mets fan would have suspected anything particularly memorable was afoot beyond a comforting blowout win. The Mets were up 4-0 early and seemed to put the Phillies tidily away in the sixth during successive at-bats by Dave Magadan (RBI single), Gregg Jefferies (two-run triple) and Darryl Strawberry (two-run homer, his 25th of the year). Sid Fernandez gave Bud Harrelson seven solid innings of two-run ball, striking out nine. When Mackey Sasser drove home Kevin McReynolds to make it 10-3 in the top of the ninth, the RBI appeared no more than icing on the proverbial cake.

Come the bottom of the ninth, the cake started to fall.

Rapidly.

Charged with getting the final three outs, rookie Wally Whitehurst proved sadly unequal to the task. He surrendered five consecutive singles that produced a pair of runs and left the bases loaded with nobody out when Harrelson pulled him. Julio Machado was sent in to clean up Whitehurst’s mess but just made matters worse, giving up two more singles, the last of them to eighth-place hitter Tom Nieto. Nieto’s hit drove in two and quite suddenly, the Mets’ lead was reduced to 10-8. Seven Phillies had batted and all seven hit safely. Five of them were in and two of them were on. Nobody was out.

It was a serious enough situation to compel Harrelson to bring on his closer John Franco. Phillie manager Nick Leyva countered with pinch-hitter John Kruk. Franco worked him to 3-2…and walked him. The bases were loaded and, to repeat, nobody was out. Up next was Lenny Dykstra, a little more than a year removed from being a Met himself. Though drama would suggest Dykstra might do something heroic, he grounded into a most welcome 4-6-3 double play. It scored another Phillie, but at least it got Franco closer to escaping what shaped up as a heretofore unimaginable circle of Met Hell. Nevertheless, Nieto had moved to third on the DP, meaning the tying tally was ninety feet away in an inning that began with a seven-run Met lead.

Tommy Herr, who started the inning with a single off Whitehurst, was up again. After taking one ball from Franco, he ripped into the next pitch. It sizzled toward Met shortstop Mario Diaz, up recently from Tidewater. Over WFAN, Murphy, almost overwhelmed by how close the Mets were to blowing almost all of their 10-3 lead, described it in quick, instinctive and honest terms:

“Line drive — it’s caught! It’s over! They win. The Mets win the ballgame. They win the damn thing by a score of ten-nine!”

Soon enough, nobody remembers Magadan or Jefferies or Strawberry or Fernandez or Sasser or Whitehurst or Machado or Franco or even Diaz where this game is concerned. What everybody remembers is Murphy and the night the forever upbeat voice of the team since its founding in 1962 uttered a four-letter word on the air that wasn’t “Mets”.

Bob Murphy curse? Even a little?

“Andrew ‘Dice’ Clay,” Marty Noble noted wryly in Newsday, “need not worry.”

“In all the years in the business, I never used profanity,” Murphy told Noble the day after the 10-9 win. But the onetime United States Marine didn’t plead temporary loss of his faculties or beg anybody’s forgiveness. “I knew exactly what I saying. It was spontaneous. It was deliberate.” True, Murph “felt a little funny about it,” but he referred to it as a “natural reaction. Honest emotion. As a broadcaster, I’ve never had a tougher half-inning.

“I don’t think I offended anyone. I hope not. It was pretty calm if you’re used to listening to Imus in the Morning.”

If “they win the damn thing” didn’t exactly usurp the place of “the happy recap” as Bob Murphy’s most identifiable catchphrase, it did become embroidered into his Hall of Fame broadcasting legacy. Thirteen years after he said it, the damn thing came up in conversation as Murphy prepared to retire. He had announced nearly every Mets game for 42 years, yet what was it George Vecsey wanted to ask him about in the New York Times? What the columnist referred to “as the greatest moment in his Mets career…the night in 1990 when he truly spoke from the heart.”

“People still ask if I did it purposely,” Murphy reflected for Vecsey in 2003. “But the truth is, it was an honest emotion. I thought about it. I had confidence in using the word. I hadn’t used it before and I haven’t used it since. I just felt it was something I had to say.”

It was only what every Mets fan was thinking.

ALSO QUITE HAPPY: On July 13, 2003, in the midst of the Mets’ most dismal season in a decade, everybody who cared about them was reminded what it was like to believe in them. This was the Sunday afternoon the Mets held a 30th-anniversary celebration for its 1973 National League champions, and the timing wound up making it more poignant an occasion than anyone in attendance would have preferred.

Nobody was more readily identified with that unbelievable pennant push than fireman Tug McGraw, and no 1973 Met was more top of mind in 2003 than the very same man, at this point battling brain cancer. His condition was announced to a stunned baseball world in Spring Training and fans everywhere hoped he could recover. Ultimately, he couldn’t, but as it happened, he was going through a period of remission in early summer, allowing him to attend the reunion that preceded a game between his two former clubs, the Mets and Phillies.

Tug was introduced last among the old-timers and made the kind of entrance only he could, emerging from Shea’s right field bullpen in a 1973-style cart — topped, of course, by a blue Mets cap — chauffeured by the then-current model of No. 45, John Franco. As the crowd of more than 30,000 roared its approval, the cart rolled down the right field line. Mets outfielder Timo Perez stood along its path and offered Tug a high-five, which Tug was happy to return…just as he was happy to return to the scene of his most enduring glory, where his spirit became synonymous with never giving up and never giving in.

McGraw accepted the embrace of his teammates and the adoration of his fans before throwing the ceremonial first pitch to Jerry Grote. One more hearty round of applause ensued. After the closer of pennant races past opened the day with that kind of flourish, it was only fitting that the afternoon end with a 4-3 Mets win. True, the contemporary Mets closer, Armando Benitez (in what turned out to be his final game as a Met), blew a ninth-inning lead, but a rally in the Mets’ last at-bat, capped by Jason Phillips’s bases-loaded single, ensured the home-team victory on what turned out to be Tug’s last visit to Shea Stadium.

Only a Day Away

by Jason Fry on 19 July 2011 2:36 am

The Mets were horrible again. Stripped of a flu-ridden Carlos Beltran in addition to everybody else, they made Clay Hensley look like a shoo-in for Cooperstown, mustering one cosmetic run in falling to the just-passing-through Marlins.

Though, in fairness, they got an assist from Angel Hernandez, everybody’s favorite umpire. With two outs in the third, Chris Capuano threw Hanley Ramirez — whose theatrical sulking and glacial tempo once again reminded me why he’s my least-favorite player in baseball — what sure looked like strike three. Angel didn’t see it that way, and Ramirez wound up singling for the Marlins’ first hit, after which Gaby Sanchez walked, Mike Stanton doubled and Mike Cameron singled. Those three runs proved too big a hill for the Mets to climb; they’re now under .500 again and 9 1/2 out of the wild card, with the curtain perilously close to coming down on the competitive part of the 2011 season.

With all this gloom in the sticky air, the only real amusement of the game was listening to Keith Hernandez gleefully abuse Angel Hernandez. When Angel rushed out to break up a meeting at the mound, Keith noted that he “always has to stick his nose in” and then said he was always trying to get exposure for himself. Later, after Angel punched out Ruben Tejada on a swing that had pretty clearly been checked, Keith wanted him to know that Smith & Wollensky stayed open late. Gary Cohen was mostly silent during all this, but I’m assuming that’s because he was laughing and had his cough button on. Please, SNY — don’t call Keith on the carpet for this one. It’s Angel Hernandez — as far as I’m concerned, games should begin with Keith burning him in effigy.

(Speaking of which, who let Angel and serial call-blower Greg Gibson on the same crew? Baseball should add C.B. Bucknor and Phil Cuzzi to that squad and just warn all comers that they’re paying to see baseball roulette.)

If you wanted some actual joy from baseball on Monday, you had to go south, to Coney Island, and be there around noon. That’s where I was, playing hooky from various writing responsibilities to watch Jose Reyes suit up for the Brooklyn Cyclones.

A Cyclone cameo.

It was odd seeing Reyes in Cyclones togs, and odder to see him standing at shortstop with the decrepit Shore Hotel and the Wonder Wheel behind him. Odd, but great — his temporary teammates’ eyes were constantly jumping to him, to see what he would do. While he was going through his running drills in the outfield, several Lowell Spinners (their hitting coach is Rich Gedman, by the way) came over to pay their respects.

It would be easy to say the Spinners looked very much like the pop-eyed kids crowded up against the right-field fence where I was sitting in the second row. It would be evocative in a Norman Rockwell way, and you’d be able to see the scene perfectly well in your mind, and maybe drift into an idle bit of fancy about today’s kids growing up to be tomorrow’s hopeful young A-ballers.

Except that wasn’t true. The crowd I found myself an unwitting part of was more Hieronymous Bosch than Norman Rockwell, and it made me much more sympathetic toward pro athletes who are boorish or merely standoffish in public. The crowd at the fence did contain a very few kids who seemed genuinely in awe of Reyes and just wanted to be near him, but they were vastly outnumbered by nakedly mercenary fans of all ages bragging about what they’d manage to extract from Reyes and plotting how to get more — or decrying him for having the gall not to take time and enrich every member of the mob. The fact that Reyes was a Met, or an honest-to-goodness big leaguer, or the most exciting player in baseball, meant nothing — everything was about how to cadge a ball, or extract a signature, or bully the WPIX cameraman into making them feel important for 15 seconds. I’d tucked a ball in my pocket before the game, thinking that maybe I’d ask Jose to sign it as a nice surprise for Joshua, but I wound up feeling embarrassed that I’d brought it, and left it in my pocket.

But as is so often true (and thank goodness for that), the beauty of the game trumped the boorishness of the spectators. Watching Reyes out there on the field, I found myself wondering about the balance between individual preparation and the team game. Reyes couldn’t have known anything about his double-play partner Brandon Brown, or Cole Frenzel, the first baseman throwing him grounders between innings, yet he slotted in just fine with them, taking part in the age-old rituals. When Cyclones skipper Rich Donnelly came to the mound after his pitcher had yielded a long homer to a Spinner, Reyes joined the grim meeting, and I wondered what a moonlighting Met could possibly have to say in such a situation. (“You should probably forget that thing I said about our maybe being teammates one day?” “Are you related to Aaron Heilman?”)

Reyes went about his business for six innings, collecting one double off the wall (it’s hard to drive a ball out of MCU Park, too) and making one routine play in the field. The hamstring looked fine, as did the billion-watt smile and the Predator ‘do. Then he was gone, replaced by Ismael Tijerina, and once he was gone it was hard to ignore that the Cyclones were getting pounded, it was hellishly hot, and the hordes of day campers (Camp Avnet included) were putting their Thundersticks to use with terrible efficiency.

But though Reyes moved on and the Cyclones lost, it was still daytime baseball under a summer sky, which was to say it was pretty great. The Cyclones kept showing current Mets in their Brooklyn uniforms, which made me realize that these days there’s an impressive crop of matriculated Cyclones at Citi Field, or at least in the trainer’s room: Besides original Cyclone heartthrob Angel Pagan, there’s Ike Davis and Dillon Gee and Daniel Murphy and Bobby Parnell and Nick Evans and Lucas Duda, with Carlos Beltran and now Reyes on the list with asterisks.

I don’t know if the likes of Danny Muno and Richard Lucas will join them one day, but we can hope. And in the meantime, it was great fun to be there for a Jose Reyes Cyclone cameo — and even better to know that tomorrow he should be back in Citi Field, where he belongs.

At Least He Leads the Team in Something

by Greg Prince on 17 July 2011 7:48 pm

“I’m more frustrated than anybody.”
—Jason Bay, July 17, 2011

I swear this is getting to be like George Fostermania: not George Foster, but an incredible simulation.

Except left fielder Jason Bay seems to try real hard. And left fielder George Foster was — in the traditional definition of productive as we understood it via home runs and RBI circa 1983 — actually fairly productive in his second Met season. He hit 28 home runs and drove in 90 runs that year. His Wins Above Replacement was nothing special, but I don’t recall it being mentioned on Kiner’s Korner back then, so I’m giving George a pass on that stat.

Saturday marked 162 Mets games played for Bay. He came through his virtual first full season at .250 BA/.337 OBP/.374 SLG. Bay’s WAR added up to 2.0, which as I understand it, is borderline between a bench player and a nondescript starter.

You can get Jason Bay numbers for a lot cheaper than you’re getting Jason Bay. Though to be fair, he has 19 steals in 20 attempts…and that’s not even counting all the megastar money he’s made off with since signing in December 2009.

Jason Bay played his 163rd Mets game Sunday. It didn’t enhance his value by any metric imaginable. He grounded out with two on in the first. He grounded out with a runner on in the third. He flied out with nobody on in the sixth. He walked in the eighth when everybody was else was walking (but he was the lead out on a double play that immediately followed). And he fouled out in the ninth with a runner on.

Oh, and he couldn’t catch a fly ball hit right at him, which led to a three-run inning that put the game pretty much out of reach.

Jason Bay, reminding Mets fans of George Foster and basketball fans of the Charlotte Hornets logo.

So it wasn’t a good “first” season or equivalent thereof for Jason Bay as a Met. And the “second” season isn’t off to a roaring start. And the Mets owe him compensation too daunting to contemplate on a Sunday night.

But he does hustle. He usually fields. Nobody’s more frustrated than he is. And you keep thinking he’s gotta start hitting and not stop.

He’s gotta, doesn’t he?

Rolling in the Deep

by Greg Prince on 16 July 2011 11:57 pm

I feel so bad for baseballs that are launched on a trajectory toward the top of the so-called Great Wall of Flushing. In most other ballparks, they’d be destined for their ultimate reward: some grateful fan’s loving mitts and a digit of immortality — anywhere between a 1 and a 4 — on the scoreboard. At Citi Field, the baseballs headed in that general direction mostly fall short of optimization, and even when they break free of the surly bonds of stifling architecture, they look like their little tongues are hanging out from all the effort it takes to surpass that hundred-or-so-foot-high fence. I swear I can see the sweat beads forming on the horsehide as it tries its darnedest to metamorphose into a home run.

This, however, was not a problem for Scott Hairston’s mountain of a fly ball in the seventh inning Saturday. That baby, carrying the fates of two baserunners on it as it elevated, called to mind Crash Davis’s line about anything that travels that far having a damn stewardess on it…except in the case of Hairston’s homer, I’m assuming NASA assigned an entire crew to its journey.

Scott Hairston piloted this mission perfectly. His ball did not look exhausted when it arrived in the Left Field Landing — and I can report first-hand it really did land up there, hard as it is to believe that a) it’s not still going and b) a Met homer can clear that wall that decisively.

I saw it for myself, not with a telescope but from a section or two away in the very same Left Field Landing. Until Hairston decided to give a random representative of Rawlings a three-run tour of the deepest precincts of Citi Field, I don’t think I’d seen anything happily land in the Landing. Luis Castillo improbably landed a home run up there two Augusts ago, but I was asleep when he did it, so I maintain it was a dream. My handful of games up there never involved flying baseballs. Before Scott scoffed at the laws of gravity, the only thing I knew about Left Field Landing is that it’s harder to get to than Carnegie Hall.

You can practice, practice, practice, but eventually you find yourself hiking up or down some back staircase because the Left Field Landing — cut off from the rest of its tier by the fancy folks dining finely in the Acela Club — was quite possibly designed by R.E.M. You can’t, not easily anyway, get there from here.

“It’s like the Citi Field annex,” Stephanie decided after boldly leaving and attempting to return in four or five fell swoops.

Oh, there’s an escalator (literally one escalator) intended to ferry you Scottward, but when Stephanie and I confidently attempted to board it, we found it barricaded off. In the great tradition of escalators in this region of Queens, it wasn’t working. Surprisingly, somebody (literally one person) was attempting to repair it. In the meantime, we were cordially directed to several nearby flights of stairs. There’s also an elevator that will get you there — good information to have if you’ve just shared in a hearty bounty of World’s Fare for lunch — but somehow nobody cordially mentions that.

The best feature of the Left Field Landing, as attended this Saturday, is you could plainly make out the Mets’ kicking of the Phillies’ ass (and, given the recent proliferation of interlopers clad in red, that’s an entity in continual need of a few swift boots). Hairston’s home run occurred after the Mets had already constructed a sturdy six-run lead, thus making it, in the words of C.J. Cregg, the punch Ali never gave Foreman when he was going down. But we haven’t exactly been The Greatest lately and the Phillies aren’t the kind of team that takes the count easily.

So Hairston’s coup de grâce was by no means inelegant. And his two doubles, while not as high, far and handsome as that three-run homer, were by no means unappreciated (may Scott Hairston always be this healthy when Carlos Beltran is feeling not so hot). Daniel Murphy’s shot over another difficult fence to hurdle — aren’t they all? — gave us a powerful hint that today wouldn’t be close, and Nick Evans provided a sense that we might be hearing a little more Tom Petty in the days to come. Good ol’ Nick: his batting average before he tripled in the fifth was so low, I wouldn’t have blamed him had he blocked our access to it with a privacy setting.

What a good 11-2 day. Jon Niese earned his ninth win. Stephanie broke her personal five-game losing streak. Citi Field was graced by the presence of a true American hero, United States Army Staff Sergeant Leroy Petry, recipient of the Medal of Honor (plus he got to meet Jose Reyes!). And the reason the whole day felt even better than a nine-run margin would imply was because of the way it started, well before we climbed those golden stairs to the Left Field Landing.

Saturday was the day the friends and family of Dana Brand gathered on the site of Shea Stadium’s home plate marker to remember Dana together. That’s an important clarification, for nobody among us has stopped remembering him since his passing in late May. But to come together, especially on a slab of such sacred cement, was an inspired tribute dreamed up by GKR/Pitch In For A Good Cause’s Lynn Cohen. It was inspirational, too.

We spoke, we listened, we laughed, we downed a little ingeniously purchased RC Cola (official cola of your World Champion New York Mets twice) and when we were done — before ascending to the Left Field Landing, where we would eventually form our critical mass of Metsdom — we launched dozens and dozens and dozens of orange and blue balloons. It’s what the Mets used to do on Opening Day and sometimes on Closing Day at the stadium that’s now a parking lot.

Not only was it a perfect emotional sendoff for the man so many of us think of when we see the phrase Mets Fan, but I’m willing to bet one or two of those balloons lingered in Citi Field airspace just long enough to distract Ryan Howard from catching Murph’s popup in the first inning. It doesn’t show up in the box score, but I’m not betting against it having happened.

It’s unions like today’s that make me extra proud to be a Mets fan, to know so many Mets fans, to keep meeting more Mets fans, to write for Mets fans, to read what other Mets fans have to write, wherever they write it. I’m just as proud to have participated in a just-published book of remembrance called Mets Brand. It’s the brainchild of Ray Stilwell, author of the reflective and keenly clever blog Metphistopheles, and an extraordinarily empathetic soul. Despite never having met Dana, he felt a genuine connection to him through Dana’s work and wanted to do something special in his memory.

Thus, he set out to collect the many essays written throughout the Mets blogging community in the days following news of Dana’s death and, in what seemed like no time at all, he and a very generous graphic designer associate of his created a beautiful chronicle — fronted by a photo that truly captures the warmth of our subject. It is available in electronic and print formats and is filled with wonderful words from wonderful writers regarding an absolutely wonderful person who shared an interest so close to all of our hearts. I strongly recommend you make it part of your baseball library. Any proceeds generated by the sales of Mets Brand will be donated to GKR, which does great work in its own right.

Funny thing I noticed as I leafed through it on the train home Saturday evening: the preponderance of the phrase “despite the loss,” as in “what a great experience it was to go to the Mets game with Dana despite the loss.” On May 25, we all suffered a loss where Dana Brand was concerned, yet despite it, we all feel like we won something more important just by knowing him.

And at a Mets game we dedicated to his memory, the Mets won. I have to say it’s kind of nice to not have to qualify it as anything but a great experience.

Not Everything Was Terrible

by Jason Fry on 16 July 2011 2:43 am

Not everything about Friday’s night trip to Citi Field was terrible. Let me make a list of things that did not, in fact, suck:

1. It was nice spending an inning on the Shea Bridge with two old friends: longtime Faith and Fear reader Charlie Hangley (who’s now a pretty fair blogger in his own right over at Mets 360) and his wife Sarah, making her first-ever visit to Citi Field.

2. The night was gorgeous — perfect temperature, next to no humidity. Then, in the late innings a full moon that was so beautiful it looked fake rose majestically behind the stadium for us to ooh and ahh over.

3. I got to enjoy three hours in the company of my lovely, wise, baseball-mad wife.

4. El Verano Taqueria is always a good thing. Plus we’ve hit upon a winning strategy: three orders of carnitas for two people. One order isn’t enough; two orders is too much. “Genius” is sometimes an underutilized term.

As for everything else, “terrible” would actually be an understatement — it was a total suckfest. The Mets couldn’t field, betraying R.A. Dickey on two double-play balls that led to five runs. The Mets couldn’t hit, particularly with runners on base. Ryota Igarashi couldn’t pitch, which isn’t news — when he went 2-0 on John Mayberry Jr. I groused to Emily that “here comes the meatball,” then was out of my seat and stalking off before Mayberry arrived at second base. (Figures Igarashi was the Japanese hurler who got an extra year for his Omarpalooza gift, while the actually useful Hisanori Takahashi decamped for Anahaim.) The end result? We’re one bad weekend from being more than 10 out in the wild-card hunt, which essentially means a Do Not Resuscitate order for our playoff hopes.

A loss wasn’t a great way to start the second half, but not all losses are created equal. This one alternated being boring and being annoying, with most of the offense a side effect of inept defense. Only Angel Pagan’s catch of Ryan Howard’s deep drive and Carlos Beltran’s uncatchable homer were plays you’d conceivably want to see again, let alone things that could lead you to wax rhapsodic about baseball’s majesty. For the first couple of innings I was happy because there was baseball again and I got to see it up close. For the next few innings I was bored. Then I was pissed. And then I went home.

Sigh. Did I mention the moon?

The Happiest Recap: 088-090

by Greg Prince on 15 July 2011 5:10 am

And, if we may borrow another Murphism in light of the epic nature of the games in today’s spotlight…fasten your seatbelts.

GAME 088: July 10, 1999 — METS 9 Yankees 8
(Mets All-Time Game 088 Record: 23-26; Mets 1999 Record: 50-38)

When intensity is invoked as it pertains to the six annual Subway Series matchups, this is the game that is implied.

This is the gold standard of Interleague baseball.

This is the indisputable proof that there is a Mets-Yankees rivalry.

The argument that the teams play in different leagues and only six times head-to-head, therefore they aren’t really rivals, is rendered hollow when this game enters the conversation.

The reasonable notion that two series per year between the Mets and Yankees are at least one too many crumbles into absurdity when this game is added to the intracity equation. Watch this game and you’d be convinced the Mets and Yankees are wasting their time playing anybody else the other 156 dates of the year.

If you factor out games that have had a direct impact on potential pennant positioning, this game would almost certainly have to go down as the most thrilling win in the half-century existence of the New York Mets — and it may be precisely because the Subway Series has no head-to-head impact on the standings that it stands out as unrivaled when it comes blending emotion and entertainment. Strip away whether you’re gaining or losing ground in N.L. East or Wild Card race, then you have to judge a Mets game on its own isolated merits.

This one takes all the merit badges it can pin to its chest.

For validation.

For redemption.

For exhilaration.

For indelible imagery.

For unrivaled ending.

OK, maybe not for pitching, but you can’t have everything.

The Subway Series was still young as this overcast Saturday afternoon at Shea Stadium approached. The Mets and Yankees had played all of ten games against each other. The Mets won the first of them, in 1997, and the most recent of them, the night before. Overall, the Mets trailed the all-time series 6-4. In public perception — as portrayed by the New York media, certainly — the Yankees presumably won all ten games to date. It was 1999, the year after the Yankee world championship of 1998, three years after the Yankee world championship of 1996. It was a time when the Yankees were presumed winners in any matchup until proven otherwise, especially against the Mets.

The Mets? What were the Mets? The literal answer would have been a very good team as of the morning of July 10, 1999. They were eleven games over .500, four games behind Atlanta for first place in their division and a hair behind the Houston Astros for the National League Wild Card. Since snapping out of their mysterious 0-8 rut in early June, they’d been on a roll, going 22-10, topping that roll with a most decorative toothpick, a 5-2 win on Friday night, Al Leiter and Mike Piazza sticking it to Roger Clemens. Throw in the Mets’ status as a perennial contender for three consecutive seasons and how they fortified their ranks heading into 1999 with the likes of Gold Glove third baseman Robin Ventura, speed merchant Roger Cedeño and living legend Rickey Henderson, and this was a solid, solid team.

That was the literal answer. The rhetorical answer — asked and answered by the papers, the radio and the TV — was less kind and didn’t get overly hung up on accuracy. What were the Mets in that context?

They weren’t the Yankees, so why bother?

The headlines were condescending (Times: “Yankees Show the Mets How to Win in New York”; Post: “Twenty-Five Reasons Why Yankees Own City”). The history was myopic (as if baseball had only been played in New York since 1996). The hype would get short-circuited, since after all, these were the Yankees, 24 championships stashed in a vault somewhere in Switzerland, a 25th assumed en route. They were playing who now? The Mets?

What were the Mets again?

That was the backdrop for this game. The Mets had won Friday night, but they’d won one in each of the previous three-game series only to drop the other two games every time, so it might have been assumed by those who didn’t spend a lot of time contemplating the depth and the texture of the home club that there wouldn’t be much suspense to figuring out who would win Saturday. But assumptions, like leads, wouldn’t be safe across this Shea afternoon.

Nor, would be the pitchers.

Start with Rick Reed, generally reliable righthander for the New York Mets. Three batters in, he gives up a two-run home run to Paul O’Neill.

Flip to Andy Pettitte, revered as one of the clutchest hurlers in either league. Four batters in, he’s allowed an RBI double to Piazza and the Mets are down 2-1.

Reed strikes out the side in the second, but Pettitte isn’t so careful. With one out, he walks Cedeño. This is where the speed merchant peddles his goods. Roger steals second. Roger steals third. Rey Ordoñez drives him home with a sacrifice fly. Now we’re tied at two.

Nobody scores in the third…the only inning of which that will be able to be said by day’s end.

Reeder enjoys another 1-2-3 in the top of the fourth, but the bottom of the fourth jump-starts the scoreboard again. Benny Agbayani beats out an infield hit. Ventura doubles him home to make it 3-2, Mets. Cedeño bunts Ventura to third and Ordoñez delivers another valuable fly ball. Robin runs home and it’s 4-2, Mets.

Then, trouble. Reed’s first batter in the top of the fifth is Ricky Ledee. He homers. Reed’s second batter in the top of the fifth is Jorge Posada. He homers. The Yankees have tied the Mets at four.

By the sixth, Reed is removed in favor of Greg McMichael. But McMichael does the Mets no favors. He gives up Paul O’Neill’s second homer of the game. The Yankees lead, 5-4. McMichael puts two more runners on and he’s removed in favor of Rigo Beltran. Rigo restores order, striking out Chad Curtis and Posada to extricate the Mets from the jam.

It’s still 5-4 when the seventh begins. Joe Torre has gotten six innings out of Andy Pettitte. They haven’t been great ones, but they were enough for a lead. He pinch-hits Jeff Manto and Beltran strikes him out. Rigo Beltran is emerging as Bobby Valentine’s secret weapon, it seems, but then he’s exposed. Chuck Knoblauch homers off him. It’s the fifth Yankee home run this Saturday and it puts the visitors ahead, 6-4. Beltran strikes out the next batter, Williams, but then gives up a double to O’Neill. After intentionally walking Derek Jeter, Rigo departs and Dennis Cook comes on to face Tino Martinez, who grounds to Edgardo Alfonzo for the third out of the inning.

Time to stretch. And, if you’re a Mets fan, time to wonder if the Mets can maybe make use of the home run ball.

In the bottom of the seventh, it is learned Brian McRae cannot; he grounds out against Ramiro Mendoza. Rickey Henderson, however, doubles, but Alfonzo lines to O’Neill in right for the second out. John Olerud walks (the fifth Met walk of a day when they’ll collect nine). That makes if first and second, two out, the Mets down by two.

The batter is Mike Piazza. The broadcasters are Bob Murphy and Gary Cohen.

MURPH: The two-one pitch…HIGH FLY ball hit deep to left field…way, way back, it’s going…yah, there it goes! Mike Piazza, a three-run homer!

COHEN: Oh my goodness!

MURPH: Where did that land?

COHEN: It hit the picnic tent, beyond the left field bullpen, about halfway up the picnic tent roof!

And the Met majority among the 53,792 in attendance were halfway to heaven. Piazza had done it. He had done it in the sixth the night before to Clemens and he just did it again to Mendoza here in the seventh. Two games against the Yankees, two three-run blasts.

Blasts: Not an expression, not hyperbole. They were launched, and Mets fans were riding Piazza’s lunar module an estimated 482 feet to utter nirvana as the Mets took a 7-6 lead. Nothing could possibly bring them down.

In the eighth, the Mets and their fans were brought down.

Cook was still pitching. He walked Scott Brosius, retired Curtis and then faced the other catcher in the game, Posada. Posada didn’t hit anything as high or far or as deep as Piazza had, but pedestrian home runs counted, too, and Posada had just hit one of those, his second of the game. The Yankees led the Mets, 8-7.

Heaven was over, and the Yankee minority, returned to their familiar state of ascension, was suddenly quite vocal in their approval of the turn of events.

Turk Wendell cleaned up after Cook and kept the score 8-7 heading to the bottom of the eighth. Mike Stanton replaced Mendoza and did the same. Pat Mahomes entered in the ninth, and the Mets’ long man pitched a scoreless inning despite Yankee runners reaching first and third.

Now, the bottom of the ninth.

Now, Mariano Rivera.

Now what?

What are the Mets? What are their chances? What can they possibly do against the closer who is already, in his third season in the role, talked about as the best in the sport? What has been the point of this back-and-forth, heavy-artillery ping pong match if all it’s going to come down to is the wretchedly predictable? The Mets have faced Mariano Rivera on four previous occasions. Mariano Rivera notched a save in each of those meetings.

Is he perfect? Nobody’s perfect. Even Mariano Rivera isn’t perfect. He’s blown two saves in 1999. The first one was on April 25 against the Blue Jays. The Yankees won anyway. The second was just four days ago, in Detroit. The Yankees won anyway. They won 9-8. A real slugfest. This one was like that. It was 8-7. The Yankees had more slug through 8½ innings than the Mets. They were three outs away from having the entire fest.

Update: They were two outs away once McRae, batting in the nine-hole following a double-switch in the seventh, led off by grounding to Knoblauch at second and Knoblauch didn’t throw it wide of Martinez at first.

If Mariano Rivera was emerging as the best closer ever, it was appropriate that the Met lineup turned over and revealed the best leadoff hitter ever, Rickey Henderson. Henderson came to the Mets a 40-year-old and immediately proceeded to halve his age. It wasn’t so much that Rickey was ageless. It was more like Rickey didn’t bother with calendars. What he knew was baseball: what to do on the basepaths (he was the one credited for harnessing Cedeño’s speed and turning it into honest-to-god skill) and how to get on them. Rickey’s expertise had been on display all day long.

First inning: Henderson singles and scores.

Third inning: Henderson walks.

Fifth inning: Henderson singles.

Seventh inning: Henderson doubles and scores.

Ninth inning? Henderson walks.

Rickey Henderson is on base for the fifth time today. The base in this case is first.

But it’s about to be another one, as Alfonzo lifts a fly ball deep to center, toward the wall. Bernie Williams, who will be rewarded with the third Gold Glove of his career in 1999, is fooled by the height or the trajectory or the appearance of the sun or the presence of molecules in his midst, because Bernie Williams has no clue where Fonzie’s fly ball is going. Hence, it ticks off his Gold Glove for a double. Henderson, leaning on the side of caution, proceeds with something shy of abandon, and takes third.

The tying run is ninety feet from home plate. The winning run is ninety feet behind the tying run. And John Olerud, as trustworthy a hitter as Bobby Valentine could wish to have up in this spot, comes to the plate.

Yet Mariano Rivera grounds John Olerud to first. Caution prevents Henderson from breaking for home. There are two out. But Mike Piazza, he of extraordinarily recent three-run homer fame, is the batter.

Like hell he is. Of course Torre tells Rivera to walk Piazza. There’s an open base and Piazza’s theoretical run doesn’t matter a whit. What matters is the next batter is slated to be Melvin Mora.

Mora? The rookie? The kid…not really a kid — he’s 27 — the guy who’s batting .067 on the season? This is what the Mets are about to come down to? Mariano Rivera versus Melvin Mora, who came in for defense in right way back when Piazza had put the Mets up 7-6?

Like hell it will. Mora and his 15 major league at-bats are called back to the dugout and Matt Franco is sent to the plate. Matt Franco is the Mets’ best pinch-hitter, 10-for-36 thus far in 1999.

Mariano Rivera is the planet’s pre-eminent closer. The loading of the bases hasn’t changed that. Henderson may have walked. Alfonzo may have doubled. Piazza may have loomed. But look: the Yankees are still winning, and Mariano Rivera is still pitching.

Then again, that is Matt Franco up there. It may not be a name that strikes fear into the heart of the pinstriped nearsighted, but he’s Valentine’s best option, and it’s pretty amazing that in a game that’s gone past three hours and forty-five minutes and that’s included 15 Yankees and 18 Mets, Bobby V has managed to preserve a nineteenth player…and exactly for the spot he’d want him up in, too.

Pretty good managing.

Franco swung at the first cut fastball Mariano Rivera threw him and fouled it to the backstop. Matt considered it “my pitch to hit” and was distressed he didn’t do anything with it.

Franco swung at the second cut fastball Mariano Rivera threw him and didn’t touch it. “I had a couple of good swings at the first two pitches,” Franco said. “I felt I was right on him.”

Franco took the third cut fastball Mariano Rivera threw him, just below his knees.

It was low, according to home plate umpire Jeff Kellogg.

It was not, barked Joe Torre.

It was life, knew Matt Franco, who acknowledged that his heart “skipped a beat” as he waited for Kellogg’s ruling.

“It was low,” Valentine confirmed. “It was low when Dennis Cook was pitching. It was low when Rick Reed was pitching.”

“I thought I had it,” Mariano Rivera countered. Well, of course. Yankees were used to having it all.

“It felt down,” Franco explained. What Franco felt was correct, per Kellogg. And, as a result, Franco was still up.

And a fourth cut fastball was coming.

COHEN: Now Rivera brings the hands together…runners take a lead at all three bases. One-two to Franco…LINE DRIVE base hit into right field! Henderson scores! Here comes Alfonzo…here comes O’Neill’s throw to the plate…Alfonzo slides…he’s safe, the Mets win it! THE METS WIN IT! MATT FRANCO WITH A LINE DRIVE SINGLE TO RIGHT AND HE’S BEING MOBBED BY HIS TEAMMATES! Matt Franco, a two-run single off Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the ninth inning, and the Mets win it, nine to eight!

Yes, the Mets win it, nine to eight.

Not just any 9-8 win…as if there is a vast enough subgenre of Mets’ 9-8 wins to shunt any of them off to the side as merely routine.

Not just any walkoff win in which the Mets were down to their last strike…though they were, weren’t they?

Not just any win against the team that was said to own its city and be exclusively capable of teaching its neighbors how to triumph…though it was the first one to clinch the Mets a given Subway Series.

Not just an unsurpassed ending, but a hellacious middle and uncommonly busy beginning…both of which were destined to get lost amid the fifth and final lead swap.

Not just momentum shifts and mood swings, but hot flashes, cold sweats and a veritable change of life undergone by thirty-some-odd-thousand Mets fans in-house and who knows how many millions more following along from afar.

Not just another nine innings of midseason baseball, that’s for sure. All of it jumbled together and coalesced into an extended outburst of pure, ecstatic joy on behalf of the home team, peppered by a hearty sprinkling of Sheadenfreude as regarded the overbearing visitors (and their twenty-some-odd-thousand acolytes) from one borough away.

There were Henderson and Alfonzo hosting a victory party at home plate, where the first guest was Ventura, the on-deck hitter who didn’t have to do a thing besides kvell when his services were no longer required.

There was McRae leading — and Ordoñez bolting from the dugout to join — a welcoming committee charged with letting Franco know he could sit anywhere he wanted once they all got back to the clubhouse.

There were the knots of orange- and blue-drenched souls in every section of Shea Stadium, likely accounting for no more than 65% of the tickets sold this day, yet now making 100% of the noise (save for a little instinctive whining among the begrudging 35% who weren’t terribly joyful, but hey, that’s life in the big two-team city).

And there would be, in a town where print still ruled your reading, paragraph upon paragraph in the Sunday papers commemorating what had just transpired on this Saturday in this park. Phrases flew off the pages the way balls flew out of Shea.

• “Put yesterday’s game in a time capsule as a tribute to baseball at its best…”

• “One of the most incredible games any of them will ever play…”

• “This game will be etched into the archives of this city’s baseball history with bold, brilliant strokes…”

• “If it’s overkill, that’s only because it’s now OK to die knowing we will never see a better game…”

• “Occasions don’t get any bigger in July…”

• “You have a living, breathing case to commit the next man who declares six duels between the Mets and Yankees as three too many…”

Who said all that? Everybody. And they were all as accurate as this game was phenomenal.

ALSO QUITE HAPPY: On July 12, 2007, the Mets gave new meaning to getting off to a good start as their very first two hitters after the All-Star break each homered. Jose Reyes belted the third pitch he saw from Reds starter Bronson Arroyo out of Shea Stadium and, four pitches later, Ruben Gotay followed suit. Two batters, two homers, two runs. At that pace, the Mets would still be batting, but the homer parade ended there and the Reds eventually tied them. Fortunately for the Mets, Gotay would single home Lastings Milledge in the fifth to give the Mets a 3-2 edge that Orlando Hernandez and three relievers made hold up. The two homers right out of the gate was a Met first and demonstrated interesting timing for another reason. The club had dismissed hitting coach Rick Down over the break and had yet to name Howard Johnson as his replacement, thus nobody was officially tutoring Reyes or Gotay this Thursday night. As students, they proved pretty adept self-starters at independent study.

GAME 089: July 17, 1973 — Mets 8 BRAVES 7
(Mets All-Time Game 089 Record: 17-32; Mets 1973 Record: 39-50)

Yogi Berra doesn’t require any extra quoting, but here goes, nonetheless. When he was managing the Mets, Ken Boswell allegedly went to him for help in solving himself of a bad batting habit, namely that, “I keep swinging up at the ball.”

To which, Yogi replied, “Well, swing down.”

Not quite up there with other Yogi gems, but if we can craft a Yogi-ism from that exchange (and the man does claim, “I never said most of the things I said”), it might be that you have to stop doing what’s not working if you want to stop doing what’s not working. That perfectly sound Berra logic was put into play this Tuesday night in Atlanta when the most important element of the Met bullpen was offering his team virtually no relief.

Tug McGraw was a National League All-Star in 1972, when giving relievers such honors was a relative rarity. American League manager Earl Weaver thumbed his nose at bullpens everywhere by taking nine pitchers — all starters — while his counterpart, Danny Murtaugh, made McGraw one of his staff’s two lefties (Steve Carlton, in the midst of his 27-10 season for the 59-win Phillies, was the other).

“Earl certainly doesn’t recognize us,” McGraw lamented.

Tug turned out to be the winning pitcher in the ’72 All-Star Game at Atlanta Stadium, throwing the ninth and tenth and keeping the score tied at four until Joe Morgan singled in Nate Colbert with the winning run. His several years as one of baseball’s best relievers should have been evidence enough that McGraw belonged, but the Mets’ fireman didn’t necessarily feel completely at ease.

“I started getting nervous when they introduced Mays and Aaron before the game,” Tug admitted. “That got to me and I realized where I was. Later, I caught myself being extremely nervous and told myself the only reason I should be nervous is if I’m scared and I’m not scared. So I took myself on a confidence trip.”

He had no problem making that sort of psychic sojourn in 1972. His confidence was born of his success: Tug posted his second consecutive ERA of 1.70 and his 27 saves were second-most in the N.L., behind fellow All-Star Clay Carroll of Cincinnati. Confidence trip…smooth sailing…whatever you wanted to call it, Yogi knew if he called on Tug in the late innings, he’d probably have no regrets when the game was over.

Fast-forward a year, and the only trip Tug was on when the Mets came to Atlanta was a bad one. McGraw was in the midst of “my famous slump of 1973”. As he recalled it in his book, Screwball, it was no fun whatsoever:

“I couldn’t figure out what had happened to me. I couldn’t even say to myself, forget about it, you’re human. Tug, you’re human. I wanted to figure it out, hassle it out. But I was so wild that they weren’t even trying to hit my pitches. So I wanted to know what the hell had happened: why?”

Tug couldn’t answer it. Yogi couldn’t answer it. Nobody could answer it. All anybody could divine was Tug’s bottom line by mid-July. He was 0-4, he had blown seven saves (while recording only eleven) and his ERA was just a smidge below six. He was having an awful season and, not surprisingly, so were the Mets. They were in last place, twelve under .500 and eleven games out of first. It was a year straight out of the early portion of Tug’s Met career, except prior to 1969, there were no expectations for him or them. These 1973 Mets were supposed to be contenders. They appeared to be dead.

“I didn’t have any feel for the baseball at all. I didn’t have any idea how to throw the baseball. It was as though I’d never played before in my entire life. I just felt like dropping to my knees and saying: Shit, I don’t know what to do. Don’t know what to do. Cannot hack it anymore.”

So for a night, Berra decided McGraw didn’t have to, not as a reliever, at any rate. After being skipped in a Monday night 8-6 loss when the Mets clearly needed relief help, Tug showed up at Atlanta Stadium on Tuesday to discover a baseball sitting in a shoe in his locker. It was the manager’s way of telling Tug he was going to be that night’s starter.

It wasn’t unprecedented in McGraw’s career. He made 25 starts from 1965-67 and four more in early 1969 before Gil Hodges decided Tug would better serve the team (and his career) as the lefty complement to Ron Taylor in the Mets’ bullpen. Except for a token start in the second game of a doubleheader late in 1971, Tug transformed exclusively into a reliever for the next four years, making 229 of his 230 appearances out of the ’pen. There was no reason to think he’d ever return to the Mets’ rotation. But nothing was working for Tug and little was working for the Mets, so, in essence, why not start him?

Tug was surprised by this assignment, but tried to play it cool, even kidding Yogi that he’d been on a bender the night before. Whether Berra got the joke or not, he had a message for McGraw: “You’re starting tonight and you better do a good job.”

There had been no bender, but there wasn’t much clarity. Tug did not take comfort in taking the mound in the bottom of the first. “But then,” he wrote, “I gave myself the old pep talk: Got to fight your way out of it. Can’t feel any different just because you’re starting the game instead of finishing it. Get hold of yourself, beginning right now.”

The uplifting conclusion to the story would be that McGraw fought the good fight, figured out what he was doing wrong and pitched the game of his life that night. But baseball is no fairy-tale world. What really happened was Ralph Garr hit his first pitch over the center field fence. Yet Tug did take some solace in falling behind 1-0. “At least it can’t get any worse,” he decided, opting to view his start as “an experiment: one pitch, one run. Maybe I can get the next guy out.”

He did. Marty Perez flied to John Milner at first for the first out. McGraw escaped the inning without further damage. But it wasn’t really happening for him out there on the Atlanta mound, at least not as discerned from the scoreboard. A wild pitch scored Paul Casanova in the second; Dusty Baker and Davey Johnson drove in runs in the third; and with the Braves ahead 4-1 in the sixth, Tug gave up a two-run homer to Perez and a solo shot to Henry Aaron, the 698th of Hammerin’ Hank’s career.

Most of America was zeroing in on Aaron’s chase of Babe Ruth’s lifetime home run mark that summer, and Tug’s gopher had allowed 39-year-old Bad Henry to move within sixteen long balls of the Bambino. To Aaron, the important thing was he put his team up, 7-1: “I felt like when I hit it, it was just another run, like icing on the cake.”

As for McGraw, you might say he was wearing a hit-eating grin. Yes, he’d given up the three homers, the seven runs, had hit Darrell Evans and unleashed that wild pitch — and yes, he had his team in a six-run hole — but Tug could feel himself hacking it again: “I was just beginning to relax. I thought what the hell, I’ll just have a ball tonight, whatever they do.” Despite the ugly pitching line, he judged himself having had “a fair night” and left after six.

That appeared to be that for Tug, enjoying a small, intangible private victory amid yet another dispiriting Met defeat in a season crammed with them.

Except for this: John Strohmayer pitched a perfect seventh for the Mets; Buzz Capra pitched a perfect eighth for the Mets; and the Mets offense still had to bat in the top of the ninth.

Braves manager Eddie Mathews didn’t see trouble ahead. He pulled Aaron and his 698 home runs (25 of them hit in ’73) from left field and sent Carl Morton out to bid for a complete game. Wayne Garrett singled to lead off the ninth, but ex-Brave Felix Millan lined out. Rusty Staub homered, but that only made it 7-3. Morton stayed in the game to face Cleon Jones, who singled. He stayed in to face Milner. Milner homered.

The Mets trailed 7-5.

Mathews had seen enough of Morton and brought in Adrian Devine, who got Ron Hodges to ground to Johnson at second. Two out, nobody on…the Braves appeared to be in Devine shape.

But Don Hahn singled to keep the game going. Pinch-hitter Ed Kranepool walked, and was pinch-run for by Teddy Martinez. Jim Beauchamp was Berra’s next pinch-hitter and he singled. Hahn raced home, Martinez went to third. Now the Mets were down 7-6, with runners at the corners. They had batted around and knocked out Devine. Matthews chose Tom House to pitch.

And Yogi Berra chose Willie Mays to hit for Garrett.

Unlike his longtime superstar contemporary Aaron, Mays was no longer producing like his young self. Willie was 42 and batting .214 as a part-timer. It was clear Aaron had outlasted him. But two other things were just as clear as Mays stepped in to take on House:

1. Willie Mays was batting, while Hank Aaron was out of the game.

2. Willie Mays was batting.

That’s an aspect of a baseball game that can never be underestimated, as Tom House discovered. Mays worked House for a 3-2 count, which meant the Mets’ runners were in motion when Willie swung and lined a single into deep right field. Martinez scored easily to tie the game at seven. Beauchamp, nobody’s idea of pinch-runner, had a more difficult challenge as he took off from first.

“It was lucky it was a 3-2 count on Willie,” Jim said, “because I got a big jump. Halfway between third and the plate, I ran out of gas.” It wasn’t a fortuitous moment for an energy crisis, but Beauchamp had a little more in the tank than he suspected. Garr’s throw from right was high and Jim slid in safely with the Mets’ seventh run of the ninth inning. In the final game in which Willie Mays and Hank Aaron both appeared, the Mets went ahead, 8-7.

This would have been an ideal time to bring in an accomplished closer like Tug McGraw, but McGraw was obviously not available. So Berra went with his third reliever of the night, rookie Harry Parker. Due up first was Evans, and Parker struck him out. Due up next should have been Aaron, except Mathews’s routine substitution in the top of the ninth meant Harry would face not Henry, but Sonny Jackson. Sonny struck out. Finally, Baker fouled to Milner and Parker joined Strohmayer and Capra in having pitched perfect innings, ensuring the Mets’ 8-7 win.

Blowing a six-run lead in the ninth couldn’t have gone over well in the Braves’ clubhouse, where the volatile Mathews was known to “hurl a tray of Church’s Chicken” at the wall, according to Tom Stanton, author of Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America. Aaron himself, however, was more philosophical than furious.

“That’s baseball for you,” he said.

McGraw, meanwhile, was in the midst of a much happier scene, one in which the poultry was treated much better. “The clubhouse man,” he wrote in Screwball, “had fried chicken on the table in the locker room and we gobbled up all the beer he had, too, and went out and had a big time. We felt we had to do something crazy to get back into contention, and that night we did.”

Contention was still a ways away, actually. The Mets were still in last place and McGraw’s ERA was up to 6.17. But Tug was thinking positively — believing, if you will — and now there was a positive result to get his and his team’s confidence trip going again.

“We got seven runs in the ninth and won it, 8 to 7,” Tug wrote. “Amazing Mets, my ass.”

ALSO QUITE HAPPY: On July 20, 1975, the Mets learned how handy it was to have a genuine slugger on their side, particularly when your customarily reliable pitching fails you. The team that came at opponents more than half the time with Tom Seaver, Jon Matlack and Jerry Koosman was trying to get by on odd fifth days with rookie Randy Tate. Tate was no Seaver, no Matlack, no Koosman…he wasn’t even Randy Tate this particular Sunday at Shea as the Houston Astros whacked him around pretty good, chasing him and then Ken Sanders with a five-run fifth to build a 7-1 lead.

To the rescue rode Dave Kingman, who maybe didn’t make much contact — striking out 68 times in 70 games played — or court many friends — “Hey, who gave me an error?” he was reported to bellow after the game, instantly fingering shortstop Jack Heidemann for a third-inning throw Sky King couldn’t handle at first base — but nobody questioned what he could do if he got hold of a pitch. And that he did in the bottom of the fifth, launching a three-run homer to pull the Mets to within 7-4. Three batters later, Heidemann compensated for his non-error by tripling in two runs on a ball to center that Cesar Cedeño lost in the sun. It cut the Astro lead to 7-6. Unfortunately for the Mets, Hank Webb, another of the non-Big Three starters, came on in relief and gave the Astros back a pair of runs to make it 9-6, Houston.

But come the eighth, still facing starter Dave Roberts, the Mets obliterated the Astro advantage on an RBI double by Felix Millan, a run-scoring single from Joe Torre and, finally, a two-run homer off the bat of David Arthur Kingman. Added to an RBI groundout from the first inning, that gave Dave six runs batted in to go with his two home runs on the day. Most importantly, the Mets had a 10-9 lead after being down 7-1. Harry Parker relieved Tom Hall (2.2 IP, 0 R, 1 H, 1 BB, 5 SO) and shut down the Astros for his second save of the season.

“This was one of those days when everything went right,” Kingman said of his performance, and nobody could question his assessment of that, either. It was the first time Dave hit two home runs in one game as a Met, giving him 18 on the year in the Mets’ 89th game of the season. It may not have concerned him as much as being charged with that error he thought should have been Heidemann’s, but Kingman was now six games ahead of Frank Thomas’s pace for most home runs by a Met in a single season. Thomas, who mashed 34 in 1962, didn’t hit his 18th until the club’s 95th game that inaugural campaign — and Thomas was a regular, whereas Kingman, given his propensity for striking out and his lack of what you might call defensive prowess, had played in fewer than four of every five games to date in 1975.

With days like this one too good to ignore, Dave Kingman was about to become a full-time starter. “My mistake in San Francisco,” the ex-Giant reflected, “was that I listened to too many people rather than rely on my own instincts. It takes a long time to learn that some days will be bad and some good, and that each day is new.” If Kingman was going to be playing every day the rest of the way, chances were the Met home run record was going to be new, too.

GAME 090: July 22, 1986 — Mets 6 REDS 3 (14)
(Mets All-Time Game 090 Record: 19-30; Mets 1986 Record: 62-28)

Howard Johnson blasted a three-run homer in the top of the fourteenth inning that proved to be the difference in the Mets’ eventual 6-3 win this Tuesday night in Cincinnati, but y’know what? It was maybe the fifth-most noteworthy aspect of what was probably — and this is saying a ton — the most bizarre game the New York Mets have ever played.

We have to say “probably,” because it was only 382 days since the other most bizarre game the New York Mets have ever played, the one that had started 383 days before and required a night and a third of a morning to complete. That was the 19-inning rain-soaked Fourth & Fifth of July marathon in Atlanta the Mets won 16-13 after Rick Camp tied it in the eighteenth with…well, you know. Yeah, that might have been more bizarre than this one, but this one did a fantastic job of compressing its weirdness.

For the first eight innings, this game’s only really strange quality was that the first-place Mets were losing, 3-1. Bobby Ojeda scored the Mets’ only run in the fifth, and Darryl Strawberry was ejected for arguing a called strike three in the sixth, but otherwise, it was just another tepid Tuesday.

Then the ninth and a different kind of Fireworks Night erupted.

Reds player-manager Pete Rose had the right pitcher in the game to end things routinely. Ron Robinson was 7-0 on the season and began the inning as a perfect pitcher might, by striking out Johnson, who was pinch-hitting. But his catcher, Bo Diaz, dropped the ball and HoJo kicked it away, ran inside the baseline and was hit by Diaz’s throw. He was ruled safe anyway. It might have been just the spark the Mets needed, except Robinson grounded Mookie Wilson into a 4-3 double play, leaving him with just one out to attain.

Robinson, however, walked Dykstra and gave up a double to Tim Teufel to put runners at second and third and compel Rose to make a pitching change. He called on his tough lefty closer, John Franco. Franco had been pitching quite effectively of late. Back in his hometown of New York just two weeks earlier, he garnered a save and a win at Shea against the team he rooted on from the upper deck when he managed to clip enough milk-carton coupons. Franco threw two-and-a-third and two innings in those respective outings. Here his task figured to be briefer, if challenging: get Keith Hernandez to make the final out of the game.

Franco did his part. Got a simple fly ball out of Hernandez. Couldn’t have been any simpler. It was lofted to right field, almost directly to the sure hands of Dave Parker, three times the winner of a Gold Glove award. All Cobra, as he was known, had to do was snare the kind of ball he no doubt hauled in with ease thousands of times in his life. If you were the impatient type, it was a real Warner Wolf “you could have turned your sets off right there” kind of moment.

But if you’re the kind to stick with a ballgame all the way through, then stay tuned.

Parker — whose two-run homer off Ojeda in the third gave the Reds a lead they hadn’t surrendered clear to the moment Hernandez swung — dropped the ball. Or, technically, he didn’t catch it. It glanced off his glove. He didn’t use two hands. He said he was concerned about having a play on Teufel if it came to that and stumbled a bit in his approach. Whatever. The ball was not caught. Dykstra scored. Teufel scored. Hernandez was on second on an E-9.

The right fielder’s error pulled open the curtain on a whole new ballgame, one so determined to leap off the charts in its bizarreness that Parker’s misplay would have to rank as maybe the fourth-most noteworthy aspect of the night.

Because, really, the Mets and Reds were just getting rolling.

Gary Carter left Hernandez on second to end the visitors’ ninth. Doug Sisk, Davey Johnson’s fourth pitcher of the game, was entrusted with getting the Mets to extras. Two Reds reached, but Sisk escaped the bottom of the ninth. After one out in the top of the tenth, Sisk was due to bat. Davey looked down his bench and saw little from which to choose. The circumstances of the first nine innings had strained the resources of his 24-man roster. He had used three pinch-hitters, made one double-switch and was forced to replace Strawberry upon his ejection. So for the fourth time in 1986, Davey called on Rick Aguilera (the previous night’s starter and winner) to pinch-hit. And for the first time in 1986 in that role, Aggie reached base when Franco walked him.

The Mets were in good shape that was getting better. Ray Knight singled Aguilera to second, and Franco wild-pitched both of them up a base. HoJo, however struck out. Rose ordered Mookie intentionally walked and, with the bases loaded, Franco struck out the side when he fanned Lenny Dykstra.

Jesse Orosco replaced Sisk on the mound and struck out Parker to start the bottom of the tenth. Pete Rose called on his favorite pinch-hitter in the entire world, Pete Rose, and Rose came through for himself, singling to center for the 4,247th hit of his 24-year career, setting the all-time major league record for hits for the 56th time. Rose thought less of his baserunning skills at the age of 45 than he did his hitting, so he removed himself and inserted Eric Davis to pinch-run for him.

Rose made a good bet betting against himself. While Eddie Milner batted, Davis stole second without incident. He then took off for third.

Where there would be incident.

Davis was running for Rose but might have been channeling his manager circa 1973 when he slid hard into Ray Knight just as Rose took aim at Buddy Harrelson thirteen years earlier, precipitating a legendary NLCS melee at Shea. Now, Harrelson was the Mets’ third base coach and had a ringside seat for arguably the fiercest regular-season donnybrook in which the Mets had ever engaged.

Not that fights were new to the 1986 Mets. They’d been in three of them already. It seemed to come with the first-place territory or perhaps the methods by which the Mets laid claim to the top of the heap that season. The Mets gave more than lip service to taking no prisoners as they pillaged their merry way through the National League. Tom Niedenfuer of the Dodgers, Rick Rhoden of the Pirates and David Palmer of the Braves had all incurred the Mets’ wrath in the preceding two months. The Mets offered each of those opponents fist service. They had developed a reputation.

And they had no compunction about living up to it.

Davis’s hard slide struck third baseman (and former Golden Gloves boxer) Knight as unnecessarily hard. The players pushed each other and said a few things. The last thing Ray said was, in essence, “POW,” via a right hook to Davis’s pretty — and pretty enraged — face.

“He said, ‘You pushed me,’” Knight recounted. “I said, ‘I didn’t push you on purpose.’ He said, ‘Don’t push me again, you so-and-so.’”

This round of he said/he said could only say so much. “He came at me,” Knight continued. “His eyes looked like he was mad. He was moving toward me, so I popped him. It was just reaction.”

The Mets didn’t need much provocation to react when pushed, and every one of Knight’s teammates poured on the field to defend Ray’s honor — everybody but apparent pacifist George Foster. All the Reds came rumbling in, too, and the main event was on. It was like one of those cartoons in which Popeye and Bluto went at it, except there were approximately two-dozen Popeyes and two-dozen Blutos taking swings and nobody needed any spinach.

It was a fight for the ages, though probably, at best, the third-most noteworthy aspect of the game. Its real significance came into focus just after everybody stopped punching everybody else. For when the infield-cutout dust settled, the Riverfront Stadium turf was deprived of the company of four ejectees: Knight and Davis, quite obviously, along with Reds pitcher Mario Soto and Mets right fielder Kevin Mitchell.

Which was a problem, because Mitchell, unlike Soto, was playing in the game at the time, and he was playing because Strawberry had been thumbed four innings earlier. Remember, Davey Johnson was so hard-pressed for reserves in the top of the tenth that he had to use a pitcher to pinch-hit. Now, with Mitchell (who would take on Popeye, Bluto and Olive Oyl at the drop of a hat) ejected, Johnson had a problem.

Wally Backman had started at second, but Teufel pinch-hit for him in the seventh. Danny Heep had started in left, but Wilson replaced him in a double-switch in the eighth when Sisk took over the pitching from Randy Myers. Foster had earlier pinch-ht for Ojeda. Rafael Santana was the starting shortstop, but that’s who HoJo was pinch-hitting for in the ninth. Straw, as mentioned, got himself thrown out by Gerry Davis; Mitch drew the same punishment when he attempted revenge on Eric Davis.

That left Davey with the following players in the game: Carter behind the plate, Hernandez at first, Teufel at second, HoJo at short, Wilson in left and Dykstra in center. He just lost his third baseman and right fielder to crimes of passion, and he had but one position player on his bench, backup catcher Ed Hearn. Johnson hated to not have a catcher in reserve because if your last catcher goes down, then what? Even in the 19-inning game in Atlanta, Davey managed to hold out Ronn Reynolds altogether. But he had no choice here. Hearn would have to come in.

Which was fine, but that gave Johnson seven position players and he needed to fill eight positions…and not to be picky about it, but he has two catchers yet only three infielders at this point. And still no third outfielder.

Let’s see, then…Hearn was a rookie catcher, so he was told to go catch. Carter, a veteran catcher, once played one inning of third base for the Expos eleven years before, when he was a rookie. So he became the Mets’ 80th third baseman right then and there. It may not have been ideal, but it literally covered the Mets’ bases.

But still no third outfielder. How to compensate for that shortfall?

By inventing one, of course.

Davey Johnson made like Dr. Frankenstein and created a right fielder comprised of the most useful parts his two relief aces. While lefty Orosco was finally allowed to continue his figurative battle with Eddie Milner, righty Roger McDowell was directed to right field. McDowell was a pitcher, but even a team that holds a double-digit lead in its division encounters desperate times across the vast expanse of a 162-game season. This was one of them, and Johnson responded to it with a plainly desperate measure.

Two of them, actually, because once Orosco struck out Milner (with pitcher Tom Browning on third, running for Davis), Davey made a defensive change unprecedented in the quarter-century history of the New York Mets. He sent Orosco to right and brought in McDowell to pitch. It was desperation born of lefty-right discomfort, for sure — not of concern for lefty-righty pitching matchups but for whether lefty or righty Reds were likely to hit a ball to a pitcher playing right instead of left.

Yet it was audacious, too. It seemed of a 1986 piece with the slamming down of bats and the charging of mounds and the inevitable curtain calls that made the Mets appear “arrogant” to the rest of the outclassed league. Let other teams running short on arms and legs struggle with their personnel depletions. The Mets would bask in theirs and turn them into opportunities. Seriously, the only thing that would have made Johnson moving his nine pieces around more perfect would have been Roger and Jesse high-fiving as they literally passed in the night.

Oh, and McDowell struck out Wade Rowdon to end the tenth inning.

Would you believe that the Jesse-Roger tango, repeated several times (and eventually incorporating Mookie, who gamely shuttled between left and right when Davey tried extra hard to hide a hurler), was probably only the second-most noteworthy aspect of this game?

Maybe nothing beat it for peculiarity — a sense enhanced when Rose flipped through a rule book in the Reds’ dugout in an effort to protest Orosco being allowed to throw warmup tosses when he and McDowell switched in the midst of the eleventh inning — but the presence of a pitcher in the outfield didn’t truly define the classic this game was about to become.

That defining moment arrived in the bottom of the twelfth. It was still 3-3, the two-headed pitching outfielder experiment proceeding apace when Orosco allowed a leadoff single to Buddy Bell. As McDowell scurried from right to left and Wilson glided from left to right, lefthanded slugger Parker singled up the middle. The Reds now had first and second with nobody out. Carl Willis, the Cincinnati relief pitcher, was up in a clear bunting situation. It was Willis’s first plate appearance of 1986.

But it wasn’t Keith Hernandez’s first rodeo at first base. The best defensive first baseman anybody had ever seen was not shy about playing close in on bunts. He was, as the cliché went, close enough to the lefty-batting Willis to shake hands…or, more accurately, pick his pocket.

Willis got down his bunt. Hernandez pounced and fired to the third baseman, who, let us not forget, was a catcher. In the bottom of the twelfth of a game that was all but over in the top of the ninth, though, Gary Carter wasn’t interested in labels. He had already proven himself a quick study by handling two balls cleanly in the eleventh, so he was a third baseman now. And third baseman Gary Carter took Hernandez’s lightning-fast throw for the force on Bell and then zipped a throw of his own across the diamond to Teufel, who was covering first on the bunt play. The throw nabbed Willis.

The Reds went from two on and nobody out to one on and two out on the 3-5-4 double play of a lifetime. Its brilliance and beauty, engineered by two of the top players of the decade, have to make it the most noteworthy aspect of a game where the notes piled up almost as high as the worthiness. Though you could take the Orosco-McDowell business if you like. Orosco kept pitching, flying Milner to center to end the twelfth after that sparkling DP, and later returned to fielding, catching Tony Perez’s liner to right to help McDowell record a 1-2-3 thirteenth.

It was more than Dave Parker had done for John Franco when Franco could have used a little help.

Hearn, who had come in only because Davey had to break the glass on the EMERGENCY case in which he preferred to leave his last catcher, doubled off Willis to start the fourteenth. After Orosco walked for the sixth time in his seven major league seasons, Rose took out Willis and brought in the intimidatingly named Ted Power, who fanned McDowell for the first out of the inning. Howard Johnson, however, wasn’t intimidated at all. The 1986 Mets never were.

“We’re probably the cockiest team in the league,” HoJo said after speaking power to Power in the form of a resounding three-run homer to give the Mets a 6-3 lead. “You can’t push us around.”

Nor could you beat them, even if you held a two-run lead with two outs in the ninth; even if you attempted to shove their players from the game; even as you forced them to resort to their wits in a pinch. These Mets had those in spades and were no more hesitant to use them than they were their fists. They had Orosco and McDowell pitching a combined five innings in non-consecutive fashion. They had Carter, a man who crouched for a living, standing tall at a corner so hot four guys had just been thrown out from it. They had Hernandez, a deceptively selfless soul who wouldn’t allow an opponent to even think about sacrificing.

Geez, they even had two pitchers, Aguilera and Orosco, drawing walks in extra innings.

Most of all, they had a 6-3 win in fourteen innings in one of their, let’s say, two most bizarre games ever. It was either this one or the 16-13 spectacle from the year before. That one had twenty more runs, five more innings, went several hours later and you can’t forget about Rick Camp and the 4:00 AM fireworks. This one had…well, let’s ask the manager who won both of them.

“This is the strangest game I’ve been involved in,” Davey Johnson declared in picking the set-to in Cincy over the jaw-dropper in Georgia. “Even stranger than Atlanta. I’m out of pitchers, and I’m out of extra players.”

Yet never out of whatever it took to win. For the 1986 Mets, there was nothing strange about that.

ALSO QUITE HAPPY: On July 13, 1997, the Mets completed their first series at Turner Field and came away thinking it wasn’t such a bad place. And why would they view “the Ted” as anything but friendly territory considering the way they finished up their mostly happy weekend there? After taking two of three from the first-place Braves, they fell behind 6-0 in the bottom of the first when their All-Star pitcher, Bobby Jones, showed himself to be decidedly less than stellar. Yet somehow Bobby Valentine didn’t view Jones as a lost cause and left him in there to battle Atlanta. He wound up giving his manager six more innings and the Braves no more runs.

In the meantime, the Mets’ offense didn’t give up. Most determined to keep the Mets in the fight was right fielder Butch Huskey, who reached Denny Neagle for a two-run homer in the second and a three-run bomb in the fourth. A Manny Alexander double, followed by a Mark Lemke error in the fifth made it, suddenly and shockingly, a 6-6 game. It stayed that way into the tenth when pinch-hitter Alex Ochoa homered off Mike Bielecki to give the Mets a 7-6 lead, one John Franco protected for the New York win. The Mets left Turner Field with a lifetime record of 3-1 in the former Centennial Olympic Stadium…though maybe they should have been suspicious when the locals seemingly hospitably urged them to come back down anytime, y’all.

Mets: The Final Frontier

by Greg Prince on 14 July 2011 5:54 pm

The Faith and Fear shirt made it to Space Mountain not too long ago, courtesy of the truly happy to be there Jason Fingerman. And if you have space in your t-shirt collection, you know how to fill it.

TWO Closers? How Would THAT Work?

by Greg Prince on 14 July 2011 2:59 pm

In a telephone conversation Wednesday afternoon, Roenicke said he intends to use both Axford and Rodriguez in save situations and both in setup situations.
–Adam McCalvy, mlb.com

John Axford was the closer for the Milwaukee Brewers. When the phone rang, he knew it was for him.

AXFORD: Hey, I got this.

But Francisco Rodriguez was one of the game’s most celebrated closers. When the phone rang…

RODRIGUEZ: Hey, I got this.

Then one day, Francisco Rodriguez was traded to Milwaukee.

AXFORD & RODRIGUEZ TOGETHER: Hey, I got this.

AXFORD & RODRIGUEZ TOGETHER: I said I got this!

MILLER PARK PA ANNOUNCER: Now pitching for the Milwaukee Brewers…uh…

PRINCE FIELDER: What the…?

BOB UECKER: Say, there’s something you don’t see every day — two closers on one mound! Looks like the Brew Crew is gonna hafta get six outs here in the ninth. Ax and K-Rod go into their windups…

ANGEL HERNANDEZ: Strike! Ball!

MATT HOLLIDAY: Man, you really are a bad umpire.

RYAN BRAUN: This counts as only half an appearance for Rodriguez, right?

UECKER: Ju-u-ust a bit unorthodox.

Learn what happens when two closers from different worlds try to share one job…and end up sharing each other’s hearts.

That is if they don’t beat each other to a bloody pulp first.

They’re the pair of TOOLS every baseball fan needs to win this summer!

Will Ferrell is John “Ax” Axford.

“I’m the closer around here. Why don’t you set me up with a beer?”

John Leguizamo is Francisco “K-Rod” Rodriguez.

“You’re lucky I underwent court-mandated anger management or I’d treat you like a member of my family!”

Ray Romano is beleaguered Brewers manager Ron Roenicke.

“Fellas, c’mon. You can’t both have balls. Wait, that’s not what I meant.”

With Bob Uecker as himself.

“Ax strikes ’em out! But K-Rod gives up the grand slam. It’s a single-game split for the Brewers here at Miller Park.”

Ax & Rod…the baseball comedy with TWO endings — maybe even one of them happy.

AXFORD: Save isn’t the only thing you’re blowing, buddy.

RODRIGUEZ: You wish.

ROENICKE: Fellas…

AXFORD & RODRIGUEZ TOGETHER: WHAT?

ROENICKE: Forget it.

Ax & Rod…you’ll be CLOSER to the edge of your seat than ever before.

This tandem is not yet rated. May not be suitable for winning divisions.

Omar, Is That You?

by Jason Fry on 14 July 2011 1:52 am

Funny, Frankie Rodriguez gets traded and I keep thinking about Omar Minaya.

And not entirely in a negative way, either.

In thinking about the confounding yet entertaining 2011 Mets, you can’t miss that a number of the team’s more encouraging success stories — Jonathon Niese, Daniel Murphy, R.A. Dickey, Dillon Gee, Justin Turner and Ruben Tejada — were either Minaya acquisitions or developed under his regime. (Hopefully we can put Ike Davis back on that list before season’s end.) When we get into Little Black Cloud mode, we wail and moan that the Mets are perennially unlucky, that our lists of player arrivals and departures is thick with Heath Bells. Which is true, but every so often we get an R.A. Dickey. And Omar brought him here.

But while Omar could be pretty good at spotting amateur talent, sixth starters and fourth outfielders who had something better in them, there was his bizarre, panicky habit of bidding against himself for bigger-ticket players. Which is where Sandy Alderson has had to trudge into the Augean Stables of Flushing with a huge shovel and ammonia rubbed under his nostrils. So long, Luis Castillo, Oliver Perez and now Francisco Rodriguez. As Greg noted earlier, K-Rod performed a lot better than either Castillo or Perez, but in none of the three cases do I recall the Mets emerging triumphant from an exhausting bidding war. (Correct me if I’m wrong; it happens.) Rather, Omar would take the stage looking pleased with having given Player X at least one and sometimes two more years than anyone else seemed likely to offer, and/or having thrown in an insane vesting option. (Omar made it rain when he signed Jason Bay too, saddling us with another time bomb.) It was so frustrating that once upon a time I wondered if Omar didn’t understand mirrors and was constantly outbidding the mysterious Ramo who showed up to thwart his every move. That wasn’t particularly nice, but then I’d been antagonized into acting out.

Anyway, K-Rod is gone, the Omarpalooza vesting option now joins clogged arteries as an issue for the good people of Wisconsin, and the Mets now have more flexibility to pursue retaining Jose Reyes, or whatever else they choose to do in a few months’ time. Conscious of Scott Boras arriving and the market for closers getting crowded, Sandy moved even before the American Leaguers (featuring those Yankees who could be troubled to show up) had left Chase Field in defeat. It’s a smart move, and one unlikely to cause the heartache that trading Carlos Beltran may bring, if he decides to go that route. Yes, K-Rod was mostly good this year — but closers succeed most of the time, and tend to be made, not born. If you don’t have one of the truly great ones, better to create one out of a Bobby Parnell or return a Jason Isringhausen to the role. Odds are he’ll do pretty well, because those are the odds.

So anyway, I was feeling more kindly about Omar — and then I read David Waldstein’s Times piece about Parnell, which reminds us that the Mets had an opportunity to try him as a closer during garbage time last year, which is what a responsibly run team would have done. But Jerry Manuel was managing to try and save his own bacon, even though that bacon was in the trash with the eggshells and the coffee grounds by then. Manuel managed for the short-term, to the long-term detriment of the team, and Omar did nothing to stop him — perhaps because he was worried about his own job, or perhaps because paying attention was false hustle, or perhaps …

You know what? Who cares — onward we go. The man is gone, even if some of his messes remain. As well as a good thing or two that he did.

Shirts So Good

by Greg Prince on 13 July 2011 5:59 pm

We probably won’t be updating the world-famous Faith and Fear t-shirt to incorporate “75” into its world-famous design, but as long as we’re throwing the phrase “world-famous” around, we have a couple of relatively recent examples of the shirt out in the world, both from way back when Francisco Rodriguez was still a Met.

Here is our old pal Charlie Hangley from a Hawaiian adventure a few months back. The connotation of disaster that Pearl Harbor evokes…well, this picture was taken before Terry Collins worked his magic on Charlie’s psyche.

And here are two other friends of FAFIF, Kevin and Ross Chapman, following the Mets to Arlington, Tex., last month. They (and photographer Sharon) showed up and the Mets scored a Texas-size mess of runs. So we thank them for that. And the wearing of the shirts.

Really makes you want to get yours, doesn’t it?

Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.

Amazin' Again Book

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.

The Happiest Recap Vol. I

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 Book

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.

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