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Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 10 June 2011 5:07 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 consisting of the “best” 58th game in any Mets season, the “best” 59th game in any Mets season, the “best” 60th 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 058: June 12, 1977 — Mets 3 ASTROS 1
(Mets All-Time Game 058 Record: 20-29; Mets 1977 Record: 24-34)
In so many ways, it was typical of every fifth day in the Mets’ life for the previous decade: a tight game in which great pitching beat good pitching and made up for light hitting. The starter went the route, as he had 165 previous times. He gave up one run in compiling his complete game, the 90th occasion in which he gave up no more than that while finishing what he started. He earned the win, as he had in 188 previous outings.
Yes, a 3-1 victory over Floyd Bannister and the Houston Astros, achieved by allowing only five hits and two walks while striking out six opponents was typical of what Tom Seaver had given the Mets approximately every fifth day since 1967.
Yet this was hardly just another game.
It would be the last appearance for Seaver in a Mets uniform until…well, nobody could say for certain this Sunday at the Astrodome. Certainly nobody wanted to. The hope was no more than another five days would pass before the ace of the Mets’ staff took the ball from manager Joe Torre the way he customarily had, same as he had taken it from Joe Frazier and Roy McMillan and Yogi Berra and Gil Hodges and Salty Parker and Wes Westrum. Tom Seaver was the single most reassuring fact of life for Mets fans. His nickname was The Franchise, but what he really was was our rock. Upon this rock we had built our dreams.
That rock wasn’t long for this land, however, and if everybody didn’t or couldn’t yet fully or officially acknowledge it, we knew the earth was moving under our feet.
Oh, you couldn’t necessarily tell it by listening to WNEW-AM that Sunday afternoon, where Bob Murphy, Ralph Kiner and Lindsey Nelson proceeded to tell the tale of the game inside the Dome, not the larger story that was roiling the world outside it. If you had read no newspapers that morning and picked up on none of the surreal trade talk surrounding the Mets’ best pitcher, all you would discern from the Mets’ original three announcers was that Seaver came to the bottom of the ninth with a 3-1 lead — one he helped construct with a sacrifice bunt in a two-run top of the eighth — and that he proceeded to get Jose Cruz to line to Dave Kingman and then a grounder back to the mound from Willie Crawford, which he handled himself and tossed to first baseman John Milner. That put Tom Seaver and the Mets two outs from the end. But then Joe Ferguson singled to left and Cliff Johnson worked a four-pitch walk.
As Wilbur Howard came into pinch-run for Johnson, Skip Lockwood continued to warm up in the Mets’ bullpen and Torre visited Seaver on the mound. “Seaver’s gonna stay in the ballgame,” Lindsey Nelson said matter-of-factly. “They wanted to talk it over.” Seaver finished talking with Torre, offered a word or two to home plate ump Frank Pulli, and turned his attention to the next Astro batter, righthanded second baseman Art Howe, hitting .288.
“Seaver is set. Runners lead first and second. Pitch is swung on and fouled off to the right side. It’s strike one.”
Howe fouled off the first four pitches he saw, before Tom wasted a fastball high and away to make the count 1-and-2. Seaver then looked into catcher John Stearns before firing a sixth pitch. “Again, Seaver comes set,” Nelson announced, before calling the next and final delivery of the day:
“Kicks and fires, and the pitch is swung on, HIT WAY BACK in left field…going back there is Kingman, he’s at the wall…KINGMAN MAKES THE CATCH! Leaning against the wall and the ballgame is over! Kingman at the three-ninety sign, made the catch leaning against the wall! As that ball is really leaned ON by Art Howe. When it left the plate, looked as though it might be out of here! In which case it would have been a win for the Astros. Instead Kingman went across the warning track, reached up, leaning against the wall at the three-ninety sign, he pulled it in to end the ballgame in favor of the New York Mets.”
Lindsey sounded pretty excited, though he didn’t mention that there was anything extra noteworthy about the ending, just that it worked out for the Mets. “Seaver gets the win,” Nelson reported, “he struck out six and he walked two in getting his seventh victory of the year. In the ninth inning, no runs, a hit and a walk, two left. We’ll be back in a moment with the final summary and totals. Right now, the final score of the game is the Mets three and the Astros one.”
This was June 12, 1977, just another fifth day in the life of the New York Mets. Life as we knew it, however, would not see another fifth day like it until April 5, 1983. But if you listened to Lindsey and willfully ignored everything else you had heard in the preceding weeks and months about a star player and a front office engaging in an intractable feud, you would have sworn it was just another typically terrific fifth day, courtesy of Tom Seaver.
ALSO QUITE HAPPY: On June 8, 1998, the antennae went up again, as 24,186 at Shea could swear they felt it coming. A no-hitter…no, make that a perfect game was in the air this Monday night. The signal had crackled in the atmosphere before, but this, surely, was coming in loud and clear. Rick Reed, a master of control, had the Tampa Bay Devil Rays under his spell. Think about it: the Devil Rays were an expansion team — not the most pathetic ever, necessarily, but certainly ripe for the taking by a pro’s pro who could paint the corners like a Da Vinci or (as the comparisons went) a Greg Maddux. Reed had the Devil Rays cornered on his canvas, all right, and could do no wrong. After retiring the Rays in order twice, Reed drove in the Mets’ second run of the game to put himself up 2-0, heading to the third. From there, he struck out two of his next three batters to give him five for the game thus far. Still no Tampa Bay baserunners. Reed stayed perfect through five innings. His flawlessness was contagious — his catcher, Mike Piazza picked up on it and belted his first Shea Stadium home run since coming to the Mets a few weeks earlier. And Piazza, in turn, continued to do an excellent job catching Reed. Through six, the soft-spoken West Virginian had collected eight K’s and allowed absolutely nothing to the visitors from Florida. Yes, the signals were clear. Tonight would be the night. A Quinton McCracken pop fly to Carlos Baerga…one out. A Miguel Cairo grounder to Rey Ordoñez…two out in the top of the seventh. Rick Reed was seven outs from immortality. But he was also facing a Hall of Famer in waiting, Devil Ray third baseman Wade Boggs. And Boggs doubled, which meant the Mets were still waiting for their first no-hitter. But Reed, a month from making it to his first All-Star Game, hung in to complete a three-hit, ten-strikeout, 3-0 gem. It wasn’t perfect, but what Met starter ever has been?
GAME 059: June 9, 1999 — METS 4 Blue Jays 3 (14)
(Mets All-Time Game 059 Record: 21-28; Mets 1999 Record: 31-28)
There was no disguising what a strange ride the 1999 Mets’ season had been to this point in their schedule. A promising start (17-9) gave way to a stretch of competitive doldrums (10-11) that was nonetheless punctuated by some dramatic moments (Robin Ventura’s two grand slams in one doubleheader; a five-run ninth inning that beat Curt Schilling). But then, without warning, the bottom fell out.
The Mets played three games at Shea versus the West-leading Arizona Diamondbacks. They were swept all three, two by one run, one by nine runs. The Mets then hosted the Cincinnati Reds for three…three losses, as it turned out. A six-game losing streak, considering all the offensive talent the Mets had gathered in an effort to overcome the near miss that haunted them from the conclusion of the 1998 season (when they dropped their final five contests to let slip their first playoff berth in ten years), was considered an ominous sign. Worse yet was the next point in their schedule, their shortest geographic road trip of the year.
It was off to Yankee Stadium, home of the crosstown rivals they never asked for, and the timing could not have been less propitious. The defending world champions were doing their usual cruising toward another A.L. East title and took the first two games of the Subway Series, 4-3 and 6-3. The Mets had now lost eight in a row, and that was that, just about, where the Mets hierarchy’s patience was concerned. Manager Bobby Valentine, considered on the hot seat, got to continue to sit where he sat, but three of his coaches were ordered to take a hike. Out went Bob Apodaca, Randy Niemann and Tom Robson. In came Dave Wallace, Al Jackson and Mickey Brantley. A press conference to announce the changes was held at Yankee Stadium, replete with an interlocking “NY” microphone emblem provided by the home team. It made Bobby V appear, an observer noted, as if the Mets’ skipper was starring in a hostage tape.
Were the new coaches necessarily better suited to their respective tasks at hand than their predecessors, or was this just general manager Steve Philips’s heavy-handed warning shot at Valentine that he’d better shape up lest he, too, be instructed to ship out? Whatever the answer, 55 games had passed since the season’s beginning, and the Mets were a limp 27-28. Nobody thought a continuation of that trend would result in more episodes of revolving coaches. More losing would mean a new manager. As Valentine’s seat heated up further, he put his cards on the table, publicly stating if the Mets couldn’t win 40 of their next 55 games, he deserved to be gone. And just to ratchet up the stakes for himself, those 55 games began with the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball Subway Series finale at the Stadium, with Roger Clemens on the mound for the Yankees.
And the Mets, written off to the edge of oblivion, won, with Al Leiter besting Clemens, 7-2. It was one game, but it was a start. Interleague play continued the next night at Shea, where the Blue Jays winged into town. The Mets won that game, and the next. It was three victories since the coach-axing/message-sending and the Mets were responding. But it was only three games. This momentum could stop anytime, and Toronto brought to Flushing the man capable of ruining any good party, David Wells.
Wells was one of the mainstays of the Yankees’ rotation as they romped to their 1998 title, but he was jettisoned like he was just another pitching coach when his former employers saw a chance to provide a soft landing spot for the antsy Clemens, suddenly unhappy despite pitching very well in Canada. The Bronx Bombers bid adieu to their dependable if flaky large lefty, sending him to Toronto with a massive chip on one or both of his sizable shoulders.
It wasn’t a homecoming for Wells, since Shea had never been his home, but he did have his supporters in the stands, including not a few women who resembled him in bearing and manner, save — perhaps — for his trademark mustache. His first two months in his second Toronto go-round hadn’t been terribly successful, but Wells was surely on this New York night. For eight innings, the Mets couldn’t touch him, garnering just five singles and no runs. The Jays appeared on their way to an easy 3-0 win as Wells prepared for the bottom of the ninth and, it was reported, a quick jaunt to one of his old Manhattan haunts, the China Club (Toronto was off the next day and had Philadelphia next on its itinerary).
Well, there was to be no party for David Wells on this Wednesday night. The Mets woke up against their nocturnal nemesis in the ninth, scoring a pair off Wells on a Robin Ventura two-out, two-run double (preceded by a Mike Piazza steal of second). Wells exited one strike from his complete game shutout and then saw his win dissipate altogether when Brian McRae doubled home Ventura versus rookie reliever Billy Koch, a Long Island native.
After eight relatively calm innings and an uplifting ninth, things would get hairy for the Mets as extras arrived. For one, they were undermanned, having lost hot-hitting rookie Benny Agbayani when Benny lined a batting practice pitch off the cage and onto his face. They were also without Bobby Bonilla, of whom Valentine wanted no part given the sulking reserve’s insubordination the night before when Bonilla refused to pinch-hit. The Mets, then, were down two players when their manager found himself also no longer eligible to play his role in the game.
Home plate umpire Randy Marsh made a catcher’s interference call against Mike Piazza in the top of the twelfth, awarding the Jays’ Craig Grebeck first base and sending baserunner Shannon Stewart to second with one out. Valentine argued the case with Marsh and found himself ejected. In situations like those, managers are supposed to completely disappear from view.
But Mets fans had long before learned Bobby Valentine wasn’t a manager who did was he was supposed to, so no wonder television viewers were treated to a glimpse of Bobby V in the bottom of the twelfth. Valentine, against all rules and regulations, poked his head into the Mets’ dugout. Oh, he was wearing a t-shirt and a non-Mets cap and hid his eyes under sunglasses and, oh yes, took a couple of strips of eyeblack and crafted himself a mustache that would soon become more famous than Wells’s. But there was no disguising that it was Bobby Valentine.
“I tried to loosen up the team for just a minute,” Valentine would say later.
Did it work? Or were the real catalysts behind the Mets’ eventual 14-inning 4-3 win Pat Mahomes’s three shutout innings of relief and Rey Ordoñez’s single to score Luis Lopez with the decisive tally? As with the coaching changes, one couldn’t definitively say. But the Mets could say they had won four straight after losing eight in a row, and 1999 had just gotten even more interesting.
ALSO QUITE HAPPY: On June 6, 2003, two remnants of the Mets’ suddenly distant if relatively recent glory days came face to face to settle the outcome of an unlikely Friday night matchup in Flushing. It was the Mets and the Mariners, two teams who had never before played a regular-season game, though they had very nearly crossed transcontinental paths a mere three years earlier. The Mets had won the National League pennant on October 16, 2000, and awaited their World Series opponent the next evening. It could very well have been the Seattle Mariners, already in New York. All the M’s had to do was win a pair of games in the Bronx, and they and the Mets would soon board flights bound for the Pacific Northwest to begin the 2000 World Series. But winning a pair of games in the Bronx was a tough task in those days, and down 3-2 in the American League Championship Series, the Mariners failed to win one. Hence, it wouldn’t be until 2003 that the Mets and Mariners would get a modestly meaningful look at each other, and most of the meaning for Mets fans was derived from the return to Shea Stadium of one of their favorite players from the club’s late ’90s surge to prominence, first baseman John Olerud. Olerud, allowed to leave by GM Steve Phillips as a free agent prior to 2000, was greeted warmly if not universally by the not quite 27,000 on hand for the novelty of seeing Seattle. Fate would have it that the former Met hero came up in the ninth as the potential go-ahead run versus someone else with a Met postseason pedigree, Armando Benitez. The closer from the 1999 and 2000 playoff teams had long ago lost the goodwill of the Shea faithful — along with his location — but now Mets fans with any kind of memory were forced to choose: root for Olerud, who in the collective Met mind represented the untarnished good times, or stick with Benitez and all his baggage. The only argument against pulling for Olerud to knock in Bret Boone from first base with two out was he wore a Seattle Mariners uniform, while Benitez, reviled as he was, was still the Met closer. When Armando delivered a 3-2 pitch and Olerud swung through it to end the game as a 3-2 Met victory, it was clear where a cheering Shea crowd’s priorities lay.
GAME 060: June 9, 2000 — Mets 12 YANKEES 2
(Mets All-Time Game 060 Record: 22-27; Mets 2000 Record: 34-26)
It had started innocently enough. The Mets were playing the Blue Jays at SkyDome in one of those Interleague matchups that came with the territory. Nobody clamored for Mets-Blue Jays, but in the early years of N.L. vs. A.L., it was decided parallel divisions should annually play one another. Thus, it was New York (N.L.) at Toronto on a Tuesday night, top of the first, two out, when the Mets’ designated hitter Mike Piazza — getting a night off from catching, thanks to Junior Circuit rules prevailing —faced Blue Jays starter Roger Clemens for the first time.
It was nothing special, certainly not for Piazza. He grounded out to short to end the inning. Mike was 0-for-1 against Roger, though before the night was out, he’d be 2-for-4. Not that it much mattered to Clemens, one would figure. The Rocket would strike out eleven batters and throw a six-hit complete game (complete games coming much cheaper in the DH league) to defeat Mike Piazza’s Mets, 6-3. Still, the great hitter had gotten a little bit of the best of the great pitcher. No other Met had collected more than one hit off Clemens.
The next time the two superstars met, the atmosphere was heightened. By then, in June of 1999, Clemens had engineered a trade out of Toronto (for whom he had won two Cy Young awards but where he ascertained there was no hope of legitimately contending for a postseason berth) and onto the defending world champion Yankees. The Subway Series had arrived at Yankee Stadium. Mets-Yankees was what Commissioner Bud Selig had in mind when he authorized Interleague play two years earlier. The intracity matchups had been so successful that this year the “natural rivals” would play two sets, home and home.
It was a big deal, per usual, and in the game within the third game of the first set, Piazza picked up where he left off against Clemens in Toronto: a double in the second inning instrumental in building a 4-0 Mets lead, then a two-run homer in the third inning to make the score Mets 6 Yankees 0, setting the stage for an early Clemens exit. The eventual 7-2 Mets win snapped Roger’s personal 20-decision winning streak that dated to his Blue Jays days. And, for what it was worth, Mike Piazza now possessed a career .667 batting average versus the Rocket.
The Subway Series passion play moved to Queens a month later. It was the Rocket’s second regular-season appearance at Shea, having pitched there once with the Jays, in 1997. His history in Flushing, however, extended back to October 1986, when young Roger Clemens started the sixth game of the World Series, a game his Red Sox lost in memorable fashion despite his own stellar pitching. It was ages ago by 1999, but Mets fans had long memories and they didn’t particularly care for what they remembered of Clemens from when Clemens was a Red Sock. They showed it in ’97 when he visited as a Blue Jay. Now that he was showing up at Shea as a Yankee. You could say his newest uniform wasn’t winning him any new admirers.
Despite a good won-lost record (he was, after all, pitching for an offensive juggernaut), Clemens had been struggling toward the midpoint of 1999. His ERA sat at 4.50 when he took on the Mets, and he wasn’t all that sharp in this go-round, giving up a run-scoring single to Rey Ordoñez in the second and a solo home run to John Olerud in the third. If it was of any solace to Clemens, he had held his nemesis Piazza at bay in two at-bats, grounding him out twice.
But Mike emerged from the bay in the sixth. With Edgardo Alfonzo on second and Olerud on first, Piazza laced into a 2-1 offering from Clemens and sent it soaring deep over the left-center field fence to give the Mets a 5-2 lead and the Rocket another unwanted early shower. The Mets would go on to defeat Clemens for a second time in 1999 and Mike would finish his season’s encounters versus Roger with a lifetime .556 batting average.
It was only three games’ worth spread out over two seasons, but it was becoming clear to anyone paying attention: Mike Piazza owned Roger Clemens.
Clemens no doubt was paying attention as the 2000 edition of the Subway Series pulled into Yankee Stadium on a Friday night in June. Its first stop was another Rocket vs. Mike matchup. The first encounter went Clemens’s way via a called strike three in the top of the first. The second, in the top of the third, was a different story.
Recently recalled rookie left fielder Jason Tyner, the Mets’ first selection in the 1998 amateur draft, reached first when Yankee catcher Jorge Posada made an errant throw to Tino Martinez. Clemens then walked Derek Bell on a 3-2 count. Posada allowed a passed ball to move up both baserunners before Edgardo Alfonzo took first on another 3-2 walk.
The bases were loaded and nobody was out when Piazza approached the plate. Mike took one ball and then took Roger Clemens clear over the Yankee Stadium wall for a grand slam home run. The Mets’ portion of the Bronx sellout crowd erupted. Clemens silently seethed. And the Mets led 4-0.
The next time Clemens saw Piazza, he was behind 5-1 in the top of the fifth. Piazza greeted him with a leadoff single and came around to score the Mets’ sixth run when Todd Zeile drove him in from second. Their next meeting was called off by Yankee manager Joe Torre after a Bell RBI double and an Alfonzo two-run homer shoved Clemens into a 9-2 hole in the sixth. Mike was due up next, but it would be Todd Erdos, not Roger Clemens who would pitch to him.
Piazza treated Erdos as if he were Clemens, though maybe not quite as harshly. He singled, though he didn’t score. Once the Mets build their lead to 12-2 (Erdos surrendering a three-run jack to Bell), Bobby Valentine removed Piazza, too, giving his catcher a breather. By then, the Mets were safely en route to a 12-2 victory — their widest margin in any Subway Series win — and Piazza had upped his lifetime batting average versus Clemens to .583. In a dozen at-bats, Piazza had raked seven hits, walloped three home runs and driven in nine Met baserunners.
Roger Clemens was one of his generation’s finest pitchers. Maybe one of the finest ever. But against Mike Piazza, he was just another Todd Erdos.
ALSO QUITE HAPPY: On June 17, 1985, it was time for the Mets to commence getting even with the team that cost them the previous season’s National League East title. They were playing the Chicago Cubs for the first time all season a season after the Cubs’ unexpected resurgence trumped their own 90-win feelgood story. Though the Mets held a 4½ -game lead over the Cubs as late as late July in 1984, the Chicagoans — a generally older bunch reinforced at the trade deadline by a slew of mercenary types — blew by them as August dawned; they outlasted the young Mets by 6½ games when all was said and done. But now it was a new year and it was an opportunity for the Mets to say and do something else altogether. By this point in the ’85 campaign, the Mets’ attention was focused more squarely on their newest competition for divisional supremacy, the St. Louis Cardinals, but the Cubs still loomed as formidable and were still in the thick of a four-way battle for first with the Mets, the Cards and the Montreal Expos. And that bitter 1984 ending still lingered in the Met consciousness. Come this edition of Monday Night Baseball (ABC aired the game for the whole nation to see), the Mets began to make amends. Gary Carter, acquired by the Mets for battles like these, homered off ’84 Cy Young winner Rick Sutcliffe to give the Mets a 1-0 lead in the fourth, and Danny Heep doubled in Wally Backman to extend the lead to 2-0 in the fifth. Sutcliffe didn’t give up anything else, but Ron Darling gave up nothing at all, defeating the Cubs 2-0 in a five-hit, seven-strikeout complete game. Advantage: Mets…with three more games to follow at Shea.
Thanks to old friend Mark Simon for providing audio from the game of June 12, 1977.
To support Roger Hess’s climb up Denali to raise funds for the Tug McGraw Foundation in honor of his friend David, who has fought so valiantly to beat his brain tumor, please visit here.
by Jason Fry on 10 June 2011 3:20 am Jason Bay is on the bench. David Wright and Johan Santana are on the shelf. Jose Reyes is being poked and prodded like a prize steer by 29 other covetous baseball teams. It’s an unsettling time to be a Mets fan. (Maybe you’ve heard.)
Yet quietly, some of the less-expensive and less-discussed Mets are making strides, refining their game in ways that make you think about 2012 and 2013 and imagine good things, instead of some threadbare version of the Marlins North or the Royals East fighting over canned goods in a tattered, dingy Citi Field.
Jonathon Niese, for instance, is more and more a pitcher you trust. Tonight he was awesome, dazzling the Brewers with variations on a deadly curveball. Would you like a swooping parabola, or a knee-buckling rainbow? Oh, why decide — how about both? Niese undressed Carlos Gomez rather cruelly in not one but two at-bats, leaving Go-Go staring helplessly at everything happening down there on the black and at his knees. But nothing was more fun than the Jonathan Lucroy at-bat to close the seventh. Niese was looking mortal, having began the inning giving up a hit in the hole to Ryan Braun and walking Prince Fielder. But he then got Casey McGehee to fly out and retired Yuniesky Betancourt and his ridiculous name thanks to a nifty play by Josh Thole, and then it was 2-2 on Lucroy, representing the tying run.
Niese threw him a curve, of course. It was absolutely unhittable, denting the outside corner at the knee, and led to one of my favorite sights in baseball. Once in a while, in that situation, the pitcher throws a perfect pitch when the hitter’s either helpless against it or looking for something else. The pitcher sees the batter locked in place, knows the ball will be a strike, and begins to exit the mound before the umpire even has his say. The catcher knows the same thing and catches the ball with his momentum headed dugoutward. Actually, this is pretty much the stuff of illusion — the pitcher maybe takes a half-step a split-second early and the catcher sensibly stays where he needs to be. But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like the pitcher, catcher and their teammates all leave way before the pitch goes where it’s supposed to, leaving the poor batter standing on an empty field in lonely contemplation of just how out he is while the umpire almost apologetically signals the coup d’grace.
Niese wasn’t alone Thursday night — the Mets continued their gnat attacks on enemy teams, buzzing the Brewers for single after single and building a lead that shouldn’t have felt safe, given what happened the night before, but somehow did. And alongside Niese in the spotlight was another Met growing in leaps and bounds as we watch.
Ruben Tejada has been a silky-smooth fielder since he arrived, but last year he was pitiful with the bat. Seeing him clearly overmatched, none of us had any particular objection when the Mets were firm about sending him to Buffalo with the apparent intention of leaving him there. It was a fine plan, until everything that’s happened happened. Now, bizarrely, Tejada is pushing to the front of a second-base line that’s proved a lot longer than we figured back in March. He doesn’t have the pop of Justin Turner or Daniel Murphy, but he no longer looks overmatched, to put it mildly. He looks like he has an idea of the strike zone, a quick bat, and confidence that he isn’t just here for his glove. He looks like he belongs.
To support Roger Hess’s climb up Denali to raise funds for the Tug McGraw Foundation in honor of his friend David, who has fought so valiantly to beat his brain tumor, please visit here.
by Greg Prince on 9 June 2011 12:11 pm What are we as Mets fans but our collective sense of self? Or our sense of what we’re not? Consider the case of David, a man I encountered last summer for the first time through my friend Jeff at Citi Field when we, along with Jeff’s son Dylan, attended a Mets-Phillies game together.
David struck me as a really decent human being — plus he wore a Shea Stadium Final Season pin on his golf shirt. I liked him immediately. And he liked Citi Field enough to come back with his wife and two daughters a couple of weeks later to see the Mets play the Marlins. Describing a bottom-of-the-ninth rally that came up one hit shy, David wrote to Jeff, “I never felt so excited and hopeful, and in the next minute, ‘What happened?’ It got real quiet.”
This was in August. Come early September, Jeff sent me horrifying news: David was in Colorado, on vacation with his family, when he experienced a seizure. His wife took him to a hospital where he was told he had suffered an aneurysm and was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.
Stunning. Terrible. Blatantly unfair. David could not have appeared any healthier when we parted ways on the 7 Super Express in August. Now this. Just miserable, miserable news. Talk about real quiet.
But there was this slender blue and orange lining, as related by Jeff:
“When the Colorado doctor saw that he was from New York, he asked if he was a Yankees fan, and David, despite his condition and pain, objected and said that he was a Mets fan.”
Yeah, this is definitely a Mets fan we’re talking about. And he’s a Mets fan who, through resolve, treatment and some kind of faith, we’re still talking about very much in the present tense. That is to say I saw David at Citi Field in early May. He plans to drive his oldest daughter to college in August. He intends to run the New York City Marathon in November. He is, in the face of overwhelming odds, alive and — all things considered — relatively well.
I wouldn’t be sharing any of this with you except for the actions of another friend of David’s, a fellow I’ve never met named Roger Hess. Roger and David go back to first grade. Roger doesn’t just go back, though. He’s going forward with a helluva plan to go up. Next week, Roger will begin a climb up Denali, in Alaska. You might have learned its identity as Mt. McKinley not long after you were in first grade. Under any name, it’s the highest peak North America has to challenge any climber.
But Roger’s not just any climber. He, too, is a Mets fan. And what makes his climb not just impressive but beautiful is that he’s dedicating it to David, and to Tug McGraw, who was diagnosed in 2003 with the same kind of brain tumor David’s been fighting. As such, Roger is using his climb to — as our friend Sharon Chapman has with her distance running — raise funds for the Tug McGraw Foundation.
We’ve written a lot about Sharon’s efforts over the past couple of years, and in doing so alluded to the work the Tug McGraw Foundation does to fight brain cancer. Sometimes when you hear about another victim, such as Gary Carter, you’re left to wonder what all the work all the organizations like that add up to.
Well, I think David’s a good answer. David wasn’t necessarily supposed to make it to a Mets game in 2011. He wasn’t necessarily supposed to be able to look forward to that drive with his daughter. He wasn’t necessarily supposed to be able to train for a marathon. But here he is, because of resolve, treatment and some kind of faith…and because of the kinds of advances there have been in cancer research since Tug succumbed in 2004.
There’s no cure, but there is hope, and that is exciting. And as Mets fans, we know from hope. We hope for the best for Gary Carter as he gets treated for his brain tumors. We hope for the best for Roger Hess as he approaches base camp at Denali. We surely hope every day that our fellow Mets fan David meets all of his goals.
We hope, too, that if you can, you can contribute to Roger’s fundraising. We’ve asked you to help the Tug McGraw Foundation on more than one occasion, and many of you have. We ask again because there’s still more that needs to be done and David represents a sign that the Foundation’s kind of work does make a difference to many.
We also ask because we’re proud to be Mets fans because it means we’re on the same side as guys like David and Roger.
To support Roger Hess’s climb up Denali to raise funds for the Tug McGraw Foundation in honor of his friend David, who has fought so valiantly to beat his brain tumor, please visit here. Thank you.
by Greg Prince on 9 June 2011 6:42 am I liked the parts I watched, which is to say my splintered Wednesday night attention served me well for roughly 8½ innings. I was watching when Ruben Tejada slickened a tough grounder into a 4-3 double play. I was watching when Randy Wolf proved reassuringly human and balked for the first time ever (ever!). I was watching when Jose Reyes added a couple more cha-CHING!s to his initial negotiating session. I was watching when Big Pelf made like a stampeding elk to beat wispy Nyjer Morgan to first. And I was watching most heartily and happily when Ronny Paulino rediscovered the lost species known as the New York Mets Three-Run Home Run.
It was such an oddity that even Jason Bay emerged from his fainting couch to see what one looked like.
Yeah, those were the good parts. The bad parts I had the good timing to avoid as I immersed myself in reruns of Modern Family and the DVR’d season finale of South Park. I didn’t watch Prince Fielder take Mike Pelfrey on one of his patented bratwurst-powered thrill rides. I didn’t watch Pedro Beato implode and Jason Isringhausen get sucked into the very same vortex of bullpen futility. Whereas I had watched every one of the Mets’ six runs cross the plate, I managed to miss Milwaukee matching them.
But through the magic of the remote control, I got the gist as things moved along.
My keen sense of timing betrayed me when I flipped back to SNY for the bottom of the ninth. Responsible reporting demanded I monitor every pitch. Personal satisfaction suggests I should have stuck with The Daily Show. Hence, I watched a Bison too far, a.k.a. Dale Thayer, entrusted with a 6-6 tie. I watched Craig Counsell — whose every sighting since about 2004 compels me to ask, “Craig Counsell is still playing?” — single with one out. I watched Paulino get tangled up in Rickie Weeks’s strikeout but not tangled up enough to throw to second and earn an interference call that would have sent Counsell back to first.
I watched Thayer’s journeyman essence again and sensed imminent doom. I watched Morgan — as good an advertisement as has ever been for the well-placed purpose pitch — drive Thayer’s last delivery down the right field line to score Counsell. I watched Morgan hop, skip and jump like he’d just won the sausage race. I watched what was about to be an exhilarating 6-2 triumph dissolve into a miserable 7-6 defeat.
Then I flipped to Jon Stewart and tried to forget what I just saw.
by Jason Fry on 8 June 2011 2:07 am Over the years I’ve had the honor — and the anxiety — of introducing a few people to their first baseball game. While I’m sincere in my belief that baseball is the highest art form yet to spring from the human mind, not all baseball games are created equal. For someone’s first three hours of baseball, what you most want is a barnburner — ideally, a 6-5 affair with several lead changes, a few highwire acts, a great play or two, a managerial rhubarb, an odd play that has to be explained and a certain amount of bad blood and/or bitter history.
What you don’t want is a 4-1 or 3-0 yawnfest where you can’t decide if the starters are doing well in an underwhelming way or the hitters spent too much time out on the town and are playing like they’re underwater. For all its pleasures, baseball offers a fair number of games like that — if a season is an epic Russian novel, those are the parts where you skip over a lot of very long names and wait for something else to happen.
If you’re not going to get a barnburner, though, the next best thing would be a taut, well-played little affair — a game exactly like tonight’s.
Consider:
- It had great pitching from Chris Capuano and Shaun Marcum, not to mention a trio of beleaguered Mets relievers.
- Speaking of Capuano, how about that very fine stand-and-deliver moment against Ryan Braun with Rickie Weeks on second in the bottom of the fifth? Braun looked like he expected Capuano to pitch carefully to him, spotting corners, but Capuano came right after him, dismantling him on five pitches.
- It had superb defense from Jose Reyes, Ruben Tejada and most especially Carlos Gomez, whose Spider-Man catch denied Carlos Beltran what was either going to be a home run or a run-scoring double.
- It had a little history between Capuano’s return to Miller Park (he was warmly received) and former Met Go-Go greyhounding it out there in center field, to the dismay of his old mates.
- It had Prince Fielder hitting one to the moon and Jose off to the races.
- It had missed opportunities to mourn, and that added to the tension. Jose inexplicably came home standing and was tagged out, followed in short order by Gomez’s catch off Beltran. Yell at Jose to slide and kick Beltran’s line drive a foot higher and it would have been 5-1 Mets with the possibility of more to come.
Still, all ended very nicely. The Replace-Mets have won three straight and crept back to two games below .500, and if they keep playing like this pretty soon we’ll get excited and make fools of ourselves. But even if you’re not inclined to spin unlikely scenarios (let’s see — Wright and Ike return and are healthy, Bay regresses to the mean with a vengeance, Johan rides to the rescue, David Einhorn says how happy he is that his first appearance as new minority owner coincides with Jose Reyes’s extension, and Brandon Nimmo rises through the system to….), little gems like tonight’s are to be savored even in troubled seasons.
And somewhere out there, some foreign exchange student or visiting academic or overseas tourist in a bar was seeing baseball for the first time.
I bet she liked it.
by Greg Prince on 7 June 2011 2:59 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 consisting of the “best” 55th game in any Mets season, the “best” 56th game in any Mets season, the “best” 57th 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 055: June 14, 1980 — METS 7 Giants 6
(Mets All-Time Game 055 Record: 25-24; Mets 1980 Record: 27-28)
An advertising campaign can only do so much if the product being sold is objectively judged subpar. But when public perception turns on the availability of fresh evidence, then you’re not just advertising. You’re telling the truth.
“The Magic Is Back” couldn’t have been farther from the truth when Della Femina, Travisano & Partners pitched it to the Mets as a slogan to lure fans back to deserted Shea Stadium as the 1980 season dawned. The Mets had been unquestionably unmagical across the three previous years, and there was no hocus-pocus performed on the roster that would convince any sane observer this year would be any different. What Della Femina was going for was more mood than substance. New owners had taken over the Mets. The Doubleday Publishing-backed group was going to levitate the franchise, not so much with sleight of hand but solid, down-to-earth rebuilding, led by an experienced and successful general manager, Frank Cashen.
But that would take a while. In the interim, Della Femina’s nostalgia-tinged ads suggested, the “New Mets” would at least feel improved…or feel like they would be trying to improve. The Magic, such as it was, was more about a sense of what could be than what actually was. It was about an ideal for Mets baseball, one whose precedent was set in 1969, one whose emotions were embedded in the sepia-toned pre-Mets era of 1950s New York.
One of the print ads used an image of a dejected Ralph Branca and said the New Mets and their magic were somehow “dedicated to the guys who cried when Thompson [sic] connected with Branca’s 0 and 1 pitch.” A New York Times advertising column noted, “Fred Wilpon, the new president of the team, approved the advertising for the team over the weekend.” A television spot, meanwhile, evoked the Mets’ eleven-year-old world championship through audio clips of the ’69 Series, but ran it over film of an empty, almost haunted contemporary Shea Stadium and mixed the sounds of triumph with an eerie, whistled version of “Take Me Out To The Ball Game.”
“The truth about the Mets is that they and their fans really want to win,” ad man Ron Travisano told the Times, though it’s interesting (and not just in hindsight) to note Wilpon signed off on this campaign without thinking to link his New Mets to a photo of a jubilant Bobby Thomson or relate them wholeheartedly to some moment of uplift and triumph. “You’ve got to make them believe they can win,” Della Femina, Travisano executive vice president Arnold Wechter said in the Times, but the Mets seemed to be sending mixed messages through their advertising.
They were much clearer about their intentions on the field once the 1980 season started. The New Mets apparently intended to hark back to the not so old Mets of 1977, 1978 and 1979, stumbling to a 9-18 mark and eliciting snide comments at every turn about the thudding lack of magic and patrons at Shea Stadium. When the Mets barely drew 2,000 for an afternoon game against Montreal in April, the Post delighted in printing a picture of a nearly empty ballpark under the headline, MAGIC GARDEN.
No kidding, the 1980 Mets weren’t very good or magical. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, their fortunes began to turn. On May 14 in Cincinnati, Craig Swan and Jeff Reardon surrendered a four-run lead to the Reds in the bottom of the ninth. Forced to extra innings, Jerry Morales singled home John Stearns with two out, and the Mets won 7-6 in ten. This was a turnabout from the night before when the Mets were demolished 15-4 as Ray Knight homered twice in one inning. That was the game that sent them to their 9-18 start. The Morales hit (and Reardon’s subsequent recovery) brought them to 10-18.
Not magic. Not yet, but a start. Something was happening with these cellar-dwelling Mets. For one, they escaped the cellar on May 21 when Pete Falcone beat the Astros at Shea, 5-1. Shortly thereafter, they experienced a week of almost uninterrupted success, taking six of seven games. On the eve of the season opener, Frank Cashen volunteered to the Times’s Dave Anderson that he agreed with his manager Joe Torre that, “I think this club could play .500 ball if everything goes right.” It was lip service in early April. As June got rolling, it was pure prophecy. After taking four straight from St. Louis and defending world champion Pittsburgh at Shea, the Mets crept to within three games of the break-even point. And when the Dodgers came to town, something more happened.
The Mets swept Los Angeles out of first place in the West. Two of the wins were of the one-run variety (one of those featuring bench-clearing hostilities touched off when Ron Cey took exception to a Pat Zachry knockdown pitch). The other was taken in ten innings when Mike Jorgensen, in his second term as a Met, blasted a two-out grand slam off L.A. reliever Rick Sutcliffe. With the sweep, the Mets had remade themselves into a fourth-place club, sitting just one game from a .500 record.
And one word was on everybody’s lips: Magic. Headlines now allowed that it might be real. Banner Day entries on June 8 extolled its properties. And Torre? He took it in stride when reporters asked if something a little otherworldly was going on at Shea:
“Magic? I’ve told you all before that’s just public relations. I don’t care what they do upstairs. If we keep playing like this, that’s all I care about.”
Improved fundamentals and dogged determination are fine in explaining why a terrible team with few prospects for improving suddenly improves, but a little romance doesn’t hurt. Fans, seeing the Magic advertising backed up by an unlikely reality on the field, suddenly remembered where Shea Stadium was. The final game of the Dodger series, for example, was an unscheduled makeup from a rainout earlier in the week, yet drew 19,501 — or almost 10 times as many people who showed up on April 16 to see the Mets and Expos. Torre didn’t mind that at all. “The fans help,” the manager said. “I haven’t seen crowds like this since I came in here with another club.”
At the same time, though, he wasn’t seeing a whole lot of power out of his charges. When Jorgensen launched that grand slam off Sutcliffe, it was only the Mets twelfth home run of 1980, an incredibly lightweight total for one-third of a season. Typical of their attack was the second inning of their June 6 win over the Pirates: 6 singles, 4 walks, 2 steals…and 8 runs. Steve Henderson, who was batting .340 through 54 games, yet had confined his slugging thus far to doubles and triples, dismissed the notion that this was a Met drawback.
“Home runs,” Hendu declared, “are overrated.”
On Saturday night, June 14, the Mets tested their offensive theories against John Montefusco and the Giants before 22,918 at Shea. If anything appeared provable, it was that maybe Mets Magic was overrated. The night before, on Friday the 13th, San Francisco lefty Vida Blue stopped the Dodger-sweepers cold, 3-1. “I didn’t encounter any Mets magic,” sniffed the former phenom. Montefusco was having just as easy a go of things. The Mets’ hit count versus the Count was easy to count through five innings. They had zero…which is just about what Mets starter Falcone had in the way of stuff. The Giants jumped the Brooklynite for four in the first (three on a Rennie Stennett home run) and another in the second before Torre pulled Pete in favor of rookie Mark Bomback. The man they called Boom-Boom — an unflattering reference to his penchant for surrendering the long ball — mostly tamed the Giants, but did give up an additional run in the fifth, deepening the Mets’ deficit to 6-0 by the time they batted in the home sixth.
The Mets guaranteed they’d avoid being no-hit when Doug Flynn led off with a single. They guaranteed they wouldn’t be shut out when Claudell Washington, acquired a week earlier from the White Sox for minor leaguer Jesse Anderson, in Cashen’s first trade, drove in Flynn from third to make it Giants 6 Mets 1. Doug had arrived on third after a one-out error by Stennett and a bunt base hit by Frank Taveras. That’s how the Mets were building runs in June 1980.
Ed Glynn replaced Bomback in the seventh and kept the Giants off the board for another two innings. In the bottom of the eighth, it was another Met rally of 1980 vintage. Lee Mazzilli singled to center. Frank Taveras scratched out an infield hit. A Washington grounder forced Frankie at second, but moved Mazz to third. Henderson hit one to short and beat the play at first as Lee scored. Another homerless uprising, another run. Giants 6 Mets 2. Jeff Reardon pitched a scoreless ninth, giving the Mets one last chance in the bottom of the inning.
With Greg Minton having replaced Montefusco, the Mets didn’t get off to an auspicious start when Elliott Maddox grounded out to shortstop Johnnie LeMaster. But Flynn bunted his way on. Another grounder to LeMaster, this one by Jose Cardenal, moved Flynn to second. Doug was in scoring position, but there were two out. Mazzilli singled up the middle to score Flynn and cut the Giants’ lead to three runs. Minton then walked Taveras before allowing a single to Washington (so new to the Mets that his No. 15 uniform conspicuously lacked his last name) that drove home Mazz. Suddenly, it was a 6-4 game.
Giants manager Dave Bristol had seen enough of Minton and brought in Allen Ripley, the former Red Sock. Ripley was essentially the sixth starter in Don Zimmer’s five-man rotation during the 1978 season when Boston held such a large lead in the American League East that Zimmer bemoaned having little opportunity to use the rookie righty. Despite some flashes of promise, Ripley was sent down midsummer and wasn’t around for the Sox’ epic collapse. After not impressing in the second half of ’79, Boston sold him to the Giants just before the 1980 season commenced. A 5-0 record at Phoenix of the Pacific Coast League won him a promotion to the big club in late May. Bristol had used him out of the bullpen three times in the previous three weeks before calling on him to face the next Met batter, Steve Henderson.
Henderson became a Met almost exactly three years before this game, on June 15, 1977. He had come over from Cincinnati with Flynn, Pat Zachry and Dan Norman in exchange for only the best player the Mets ever had, Tom Seaver. It was the Seaver trade as much as anything that depleted all remaining reserves of magic from Shea’s confines. The breach of faith in trading a pitcher known as The Franchise is what drove attendance to historic lows in the late ’70s, though the undeniably dismal play of the home team didn’t provide any great advertisement for rushing to Flushing. Nevertheless, there was no guilt by association for Henderson, who earned the admiration of Mets loyalists with an outstanding partial rookie campaign in ’77 (he finished second to Andre Dawson in N.L. Rookie of the Year balloting despite playing only 3½ months) and his all-around hustle. The fans may have still missed Tom Terrific, but neither that fact — nor Hendu’s complete and total lack of home runs through a third of the 1980 season (none since July 13, 1979) — stopped them from embracing Stevie Wonder.
Henderson, who had struck out three times against Montefusco before singling to LeMaster in the eighth, stepped in against Ripley. Ripley started him off with a curve, which fooled Steve for strike one. Hendu called time to gather his thoughts. He was looking fastball and berated himself for feeling “tight” and not concentrating properly.
Ripley gave him something to concentrate on: a fastball under his chin, one that knocked him off his stride, but focused his energies completely. “I try to keep my temper,” the left fielder said, “but when somebody does something like that to me, throwing too close, I sort of turn into a monster.”
Sort of? One can judge by the results just how monstrous Steve Henderson could get when two pitches later, on a 2-1 fastball, he unleashed the fury within.
Or was it Magic?
Bob Murphy, on WMCA:
“Steve Henderson takes a deep breath, trying to relax himself in a very tense spot. Ripley makes the one-second stop at the belt. And the pitch. And a high fly, to right field, it’s very deep, going back…it may go…”
Steve Albert, on Channel 9:
“It is going…it iiiissss…”
Murphy:
“HOME RUN!”
Albert:
“GONE! THE METS WIN! The Mets have won! Unbelievable!”
Murphy:
“The Mets have won the ballgame!”
Albert:
“What an incredible finish! The Mets win seven to six on a three-run homer with two out in the bottom of the ninth by Steve Henderson! Here’s another look, off Allen Ripley, to right-center field! And into the bullpen!”
“Listen to the crowd!” Murph would advise after a 21-second pause to let the mass ecstasy pour through the AM speakers.
“They’re carrying Steve Henderson off the field on their shoulders. Five runs in the last of the ninth inning. A three-run homer by Steve Henderson landing in the right field bullpen. The Mets defeat the Giants seven to six. They were behind six to nothing!”
Albert, delighted to note Henderson’s opposite-field home run was caught by reliever Tom Hausman, added that the Mets “have come from behind once again, for the seventh time on this homestand to win a ballgame!”
Noise still surrounded Murphy on the radio:
“Crowd clamoring for Steve Henderson! They’re demanding Henderson come out and take a bow! The crowd standing and clamoring. They want Steve Henderson. They want him to come out for a bow. Steve did not have a home run all year long. Playing in his forty-fifth ballgame of the year, two outs in the last of the ninth inning, the tying runs on first and second, the pitch by Allen Ripley, Henderson hit it, high into the air, deep to right field, it just kept carrying, over the right field wall and into the bullpen. The most dramatic win of the year for the amazing New York Mets. Yes, the Magic is Back.”
They stood. They clamored. “They’re waiting for Steve Henderson to come back out,” Albert reported as the WOR-TV cameras focused on the Mets’ dugout. “Fred Wilpon, the president, just went into the clubhouse. It is delirium, pandemonium…here he comes!”
Henderson, that was. Not Wilpon. The slugger took his curtain call, high-fiving the team president at its conclusion.
Albert:
“Another magical moment here at Shea Stadium.”
Thanks to Stevie Wonder, everything was alright, uptight, out of sight, just like that 2-1 fastball from Ripley.
“I knew it was out,” Henderson said after belting the Mets’ 13th home run of the season, “and I loved it.”
“The ones over the Pirates and Dodgers were nice,” Flynn appraised the recent run of dramatic wins, “but this one was unbelievable.” And as for the crowd and all their clamor, Torre said, “It’s really revving people up. Nobody left the park, even when they’re behind by six runs.”
Nobody left Saturday night, but seemingly everybody in town showed up Sunday afternoon. Mets Magic, after that 7-6 startler, was contagious. Because of ongoing stadium refurbishments, large chunks of seating were unavailable to potential paying customers. The homestand finale (a 3-0 loss to Bob Knepper) was played to a sellout crowd of “only” 44,910. So compelling were the Mets that management issued a public apology to the more than 6,000 people who had to be turned away from Shea’s gates because there were simply no more tickets to sell.
“We have a long way still to go,” Wilpon said, “but two months ago I never anticipated that we’d get the public’s attention to this degree.”
Fred must not have thought much of the very marketing campaign he OK’d, but after Steve Henderson’s walkoff wizardry, nobody dared bring suit against the Mets for false advertising.
ALSO QUITE HAPPY: On June 7, 1963, the old guy from Brooklyn transformed himself into a new hero in Manhattan. Such a role for prematurely gray, seventeen-season veteran outfielder Duke Snider would have been unimaginable as recently as six years earlier, but so would have been the Mets in 1957. The longtime Dodger star glimmered at the even longer-time home of the Giants, socking a one-out, bottom-of-the-ninth, three-run homer off Diomedes Olivo of the Cardinals to pull out a 3-2 Mets win at the raucous Polo Grounds. Prior to the ninth this Friday night, the Mets had collected only two hits against St. Louis starter Ron Taylor and appeared on their way to wasting a complete game effort from Al Jackson. But after retiring Jim Hickman to start the ninth, Taylor gave up a single to Frank Thomas (pinch-run for by Rod Kanehl) and walked Ron Hunt. Johnny Keane opted to replace Taylor with Olivo, whose work for the evening consisted of a passed ball that moved the baserunners up to second and third and the 399th home run of Snider’s illustrious, multiborough career.
GAME 056: June 12, 1979 — METS 12 Reds 6
(Mets All-Time Game 056 Record: 22-27; Mets 1979 Record: 23-32-1)
Onslaughts are tough to predict accurately in weather forecasting. You might know it’s going to snow, but who can say for sure how much will fall? It’s even more of a guessing game in baseball.
When will the Mets score ten runs in one inning? It’s a question that might not have been asked much in 1979, but it’s likely had one attempted to divine an answer, it would not have included “sometime this year”. These Mets would wind up third from last in the National League in team batting average; second from the bottom in home runs and runs scored; and playing 99 games when they didn’t score as many runs as their opponents, the worst sum in the N.L. by five losses. Except for stealing some bases when they managed to get to first to begin with, the 1979 Mets had just about nothing going for them as an offensive unit.
Yet the ’79 Mets answered that question about scoring ten runs in one inning by doing just than in the bottom of the sixth on an unassuming Tuesday night at Shea. It was an absolute onslaught — an avalanche for the ages.
And it was preceded by a pretty impressive rockslide in the top of the sixth. The Cincinnati Reds piled four runs on the ledger of hapless southpaw Pete Falcone and another on that of righty reliever Mike Scott to take a 5-2 lead. Cincy may not have any longer been home to the classic Big Red Machine by the tail end of the 1970s (Tony Perez and Pete Rose were gone, Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan weren’t playing), but with a lineup that included Davey Concepcion, Dan Driessen, Ray Knight and George Foster, they were still a pretty formidable force when they batted. Hence, the Reds scoring five runs in an inning was hardly unfathomable.
But the Mets responding with ten runs in an inning was. Yet it happened.
It really did.
Staked to a three-run lead, Reds starter Bill Bonham gave up a leadoff double to John Stearns and then walked Steve Henderson. Cincinnati skipper John McNamara removed Bonham in favor of Manny Sarmiento, which seemed the right move as Sarmiento induced Doug Flynn, a .215 batter entering the evening, to ground to Junior Kennedy at second. But a potential double ball play turned into an E-4, loading the bases. Sarmiento then walked pinch-hitter Ron Hodges to make the score Reds 5 Mets 3. Sergio Ferrer came in to run for Hodges and stood on first watching Joel Youngblood pop up to Kennedy for first out of the inning.
Still Reds 5 Mets 3. But not for long. Frank Taveras doubled to plate Henderson and Flynn and send Ferrer to third. It was 5-5. Lee Mazzilli, who drove in one of two New York first-inning runs (and began the night batting .343), was intentionally walked by McNamara’s latest relief solution, Dave Tomlin. Maybe another double play grounder would present itself and the Reds could get out of things with the score tied.
Didn’t happen. Richie Hebner singled in Ferrer and Taveras as Mazzilli zipped to third. Mets led 7-5. Willie Montañez flied to Foster in left, but Foster didn’t bother to catch the ball. Mazz raced home from third on what was scored a sacrifice fly and an error. Hebner went to second as Montañez took first. It was the Mets’ eighth run of the game and sixth run of the inning.
The Reds had batted around in the top of the sixth, and now the Mets had done the same. John Stearns came up for his second plate appearance of the frame, only to fly to Cesar Geronimo in center. Geronimo actually caught it. With two out and the end in sight, Tomlin reared back and fired to Henderson. Henderson fired back with a single to center. Hebner scored from second, Montañez ran to third. Mets 9 Reds 6.
Flynn, who had tripled in the fourth (but was left stranded) and hit the grounder Kennedy couldn’t handle earlier in the sixth, belted one to deep center. Geronimo, a four-time Gold Glove winner who had just come into the game this inning as defensive replacement for Paul Blair (who had won eight Gold Gloves as an Oriole), found himself out of position in right-center. He caught up with the ball, but couldn’t actually put it away. It fell in for an inside-the-park three-run home run, the first ITPHR by a Met at Shea since Ron Hunt turned the four-base trick in 1966.
The Mets cleared the bases as they scored their record-tying eighth, record-setting ninth and record-extending tenth runs of the inning. And they were still batting. Ferrer, the least-used player on the worst team in the league, rapped a Tomlin delivery down the third base line, and it looked like McNamara’s misery would continue into eternity — Channel 9 announcer Steve Albert marveled that “even little Sergio” was about to get a hit — but Knight made a nice diving stab and threw Ferrer out by less than a step at first.
Sergio Ferrer would finish 1979 batting .000 in seven at-bats and the New York Mets would finish 1979 seventeen games out of fifth place, but the ten-run sixth they posted en route to a 12-6 win over the Reds proved enduring. The Mets wouldn’t match it for 21 years and wouldn’t exceed it for 27. It also proved stunning to all involved.
“It’s amazing that no ball left the park during all that scoring in the sixth,” said George Foster, who hit a cosmetic conventional solo home run in the eighth inning. “But the Mets have a lot of singles hitters. They never emptied the bases [except for Flynn’s inside-the-parker], and they always had something going. It takes some wind out of you when a team does that to you, especially the Mets.”
Especially the 1979 Mets.
ALSO QUITE HAPPY: On June 2, 2011, Terry Collins was likely still fuming from the Mets’ inability to put away the Pittsburgh Pirates the night before. “I’m running out of ideas here,” the manager vented after a 2-0 seventh-inning lead crumbled into a ghastly 9-3 loss. “Do we play hard? Absolutely. That’s not the issue. The issue is not effort. That’s not it. It’s about execution. We have to add on some points when we get the lead. And I’m not looking for home runs. I’m looking for quality at-bats. We can’t make careless mistakes. We do. We give up at-bats. We can’t do that. We don’t have that kind of team.” He also didn’t have the kind of team that looked prepared to overcome the 7-0 hole starter Mike Pelfrey dug the Mets by the third inning of the next afternoon’s game.
Yet it turns out he did. That Thursday, despite injuries to Ike Davis and David Wright — and all kinds of ownership-related controversy swirling about Citi Field — the Mets came back. A three-run homer by Carlos Beltran (one of the players Fred Wilpon sideswiped in an ill-advised New Yorker interview) in the bottom of the third; four runs (on three hits, two walks, an error and a passed ball) in the home sixth; and a pair of scores (aided by a balk, a wild pitch, an intentional walk, three unintentional walks and a go-ahead sacrifice fly off the bat of Ruben Tejada) in the eighth erased Pelfrey’s self-inflicted damage and the lingering bad taste from Wednesday night’s loss.
Thus, a Thursday that began so drearily wound featuring the second-largest comeback in Mets history and a 9-8 victory over Pittsburgh. It marked the third time in a half-century of Mets baseball that the club had wiped out a margin of seven or more runs and the first time they had done so in eleven years. The winning pitcher was Jason Isringhausen, who had last tacked a “W” next to his already many-lettered name for the Mets in 1999. “You’ve got to play nine innings,” Pirate manager Clint Hurdle complained. “We weren’t able to do that. We scored early, they scored late. We weren’t able to answer them.” Must have been nice for Collins not to be the manager obligated to give that speech.
GAME 057: June 13, 1990 (2nd) — Mets 9 CUBS 6
(Mets All-Time Game 057 Record: 21-28; Mets 1990 Record: 29-28)
Wrigley Field isn’t Gold’s Gym, but the Mets flexed their muscles and gave their bats the most thorough of workouts during an extended iron-pumping session on the North Side of Chicago, one that encompassed two days, three games and 25 sets of bulging biceps. Certainly Met self-esteem had to grow when the team looked in the mirror and liked what it saw.
Under Davey Johnson, the 1990 Mets played roughly a quarter of the season like proverbial 98-lb. weaklings. Johnson was dismissed from his post after six generally muscular seasons because the contenders he was supposed to be training suddenly couldn’t hit (or pitch or field) their own weight. At 20-23, they were getting sand kicked in their face. Enter unto the manager’s office, someone who would never be mistaken for Charles Atlas: Bud Harrelson, 160 pounds soaking wet when he played. Diminutive in size, Harrelson nonetheless lifted the burden of pumping up the Mets onto his slender shoulders and the players soon discovered strength they had forgotten they possessed.
“The change was needed,” Ron Darling said. “Not because of Davey, but because a change was needed.” Good ballplayer logic there, but Darling explained further: “Buddy’s a real friend to the players. He defines your role better. With Davey, the guys had to figure it out for themselves. But the bottom line is winning. I still don’t know my own role, but I’m not going to argue with success.”
Following Johnson’s firing (which occurred despite his never guiding the Mets home any lower than second in six full seasons), Dave Magadan told Sports Illustrated, “We more or less had the attitude that we’re too talented, and the season’s too long, for us to give up after 50 games.” So the Mets stopped giving up. Once they got rolling under Harrelson, their play fell in line. “We don’t think there’s a team in the league that can beat us,” said Mackey Sasser.
Among those who tried and failed in June was the Cubs, defending National League East Champions on paper, but a team that spent a trio of contests in full retreat from the rampaging Mets. After Magadan drove in six runs to key a 19-8 whooping in the opener (and send previous first baseman Mike Marshall heading for the bench and, ultimately, the hills as the Mets jettisoned the grumpy, unproductive veteran), the Mets opened a windy Wednesday Windy City doubleheader by slotting nearly as many runs into Wrigley’s hand-operated scoreboard, good for a 15-10 pasting of the home team, with Howard Johnson’s top-of-the-ninth grand slam sounding the final note of the Cubs’ death knell.
Sadly for Chicago, they still had another game to play that day…and sadder still, it was against these same white-hot Mets.
The team that had such a hard time getting out of the gate in 1990 was now packed with bona fide closers. Clinging to a 4-3 lead heading to the ninth, the Mets poured it on once more. With Gregg Jefferies on first and two out, here came the visitors, as rude as could be to righty reliever Dean Wilkins. Daryl Boston doubled home Jefferies. Kevin Elster doubled home Boston. Orlando Mercado singled home Elster (it was the backup catcher’s third hit of the game). Harrelson sent up lefty Tom O’Malley to pinch-hit. Cubs skipper Don Zimmer countered with lefty Joe Kraemer. OK, said Buddy, try righty Mark Carreon on for size.
Carreon fit the Mets’ purposes just fine, belting a two-run homer to left and putting the Mets up 9-3. Some characteristically poor relief work by Jeff Musselman allowed the Cubs some meaningless tallies, but John Franco slammed the door for a 9-6 win, a doubleheader sweep and a series that played more like pinball than baseball for the Mets’ offense. In three wins, the Mets scored 43 runs while banging out 57 hits. The Mets batted in 27 innings and scored in 16 of them — totaling four or more runs in six of those frames. Even better, the Mets had won of eight of their last ten and leapt over the .500 mark for the first time in a month…and showed absolutely no signs of looking back.
“I don’t want the credit,” Harrelson said after the Mets put away their smoking bats. “I think it would have happened eventually. Maybe it happened sooner. Sooner than what? All right, sooner than if we hadn’t made a change and brought in somebody the players know.”
It was happening now, and with more than a run-and-a-half crossing the plate every inning in Chicago, that’s all that mattered to the 1990 Mets.
ALSO QUITE HAPPY: On June 9, 1963, the Mets couldn’t give away a ballgame no matter how they hard tried, so after a fashion, they just stopped trying. The Mets made four errors in this Sunday twinbill opener at the Polo Grounds, accounting for four unearned St. Louis runs in addition to three the Cardinals gained on their own steam. Mets fans (and pitchers) were used to watching their defense spring leaks, but they weren’t used to emerging from the flood of mistakes unscathed. Yet it happened. Despite three first-inning miscues (one on a pickoff attempt by starter Carlton Willey and two more by first baseman Cliff Cook) and a ninth inning boot by shortstop Chico Fernandez, the Mets prevailed over St. Loo, 8-7. It seems the Redbirds were no great shakes on fundamentals, either. With the game tied 5-5 in the bottom of the seventh, the visitors were kind enough to bestow upon the Metsies a bases-laded walk by Bob Humphreys, a bases-loaded error on a ground ball to first baseman Bill White and a bases-loaded wild pitch from Diomedes Olivo, who had replaced Humphreys after the aforementioned bases on balls. The Cardinals had the tying run on third and the go-ahead run on first in the ninth, but Galen Cisco grounded Julian Javier to third for the final out, and the 1963 Mets accepted their regifted win in their usual gracious fashion…by dropping the nightcap, 10-4.
Thanks to FAFIF reader LarryDC and old friend Mark Simon for providing video and audio, respectively, from the game of June 14, 1980.
by Jason Fry on 6 June 2011 1:56 am The Mets remain the confoundingest team in the world. Tonight they beat the Braves rather handily behind R.A. Dickey’s fluttering knucklers and Jose Reyes’s regular dose of high-octane awesomeness. They did so by scoring runs early and often against Tim Hudson — enough runs to withstand their own late-inning swoon, as Manny Acosta reminded us why he wound up on the discard pile and Frankie Rodriguez surrendered a home run to Diory Hernandez that looked like it had been launched by a cruise missile. K-Rod righted himself, ending things with Chipper Jones on deck, and so the Mets go on to Milwaukee after a 5-5 homestand that might have been 10-0 with better penwork and more offense.
So it goes: We’ve crept back to within three games of .500, which isn’t great but isn’t horrible, particularly considering David Wright and Ike Davis are sidelined. Here’s desperately hoping they’re not joined by Carlos Beltran, who crumpled in a heap after fouling a ball off his shin. X-rays were negative, but then they usually are with this team, and we know 2011 Mets who have wound up in the morgue after suffering injuries apparently less dramatic. The Buffalo Soldiers keep bobbing along, somehow afloat despite themselves. You give up on them and they come back to thrash the Pirates, or send Dillon Gee and Dickey out to throttle the Braves. You start believing in them and they gag up leads in the late innings or stop scoring runs or the owner says something horrifying or someone else exits with a minor injury that proves major. You could get whiplash just trying to keep up with your own expectations.
Sitting out behind the Great Wall of Flushing, it struck me that most of the fire has gone out of Mets-Braves. Tonight Bobby Valentine was up in the ESPN booth and Bobby Cox was home being cranky about something, and only Chipper remains to draw the boos. Still, it’s always fun to jump the Atlantans, and the Mets did so rather handily against Hudson.
As for Sunday night baseball, well, today’s game was supposed to be a 1:05 start, one I was going to go to with Joshua before ESPN snatched it away. That’s happened to my kid far too often over the years, and while he’s getting older and more accepting about the world disappointing him, it’s still a lousy thing to have happen to a boy. (I brought home a batting helmet for him, at least.) But when scheduled so as not to betray children, Sunday night baseball’s kind of cool: You know you’re the only game still rolling along, so you have baseball to yourself, the last show before the curtain closes. The crowd was pretty good given the schedule switcheroo, a boisterous bunch who chanted for Jose not to go away, for the Atlanta fans cheering Brian McCann’s homer to sit down and shut up already, and for good things in general and the celebration of them.
And it was a beautiful night, a little cool for early June but not cold. I attended with my friend John, a Citi Field newbie, who raved about the food (he was also a Shake Shack newbie) and the overall feel of the park. I found myself pointing that we couldn’t see the left fielder, and told him about how the Mets stuff had been missing for most of the first year, and then … and then I wondered what exactly I was doing. It was a beautiful night and the Mets were bashing out hits and we were having a good time, so why was I determined to run things down and weave a little Metsian black cloud above our heads?
So I stopped.
In the bottom of the fifth we took a tour, revisiting the Left Field Landing and walking across the Shea Bridge and up to the Promenade and stopping for a beer in the court atop the rotunda. I pointed out the Pepsi Porch, and we paused by the long exit ramp behind third base to take in a postcard-quality view of the Sound and the Manhattan skyline. It was a beautiful night, you could follow the game from TV to TV and screen to screen as you walked, and in no time we were back in our seats and the Mets had scored another run.
I suppose you could ask for more than that, but why on earth would you?
by Greg Prince on 5 June 2011 3:26 pm Before I forget, from Nathan’s cap night, a hot dog vendor showed up in our section in the top of the seventh. Kind of late, but not unheard of…though it seemed to me he was intent on being not heard. Softly he made his pitch:
“Hot dog, anyone? Hot dog, anyone?”
There were no takers. I don’t think anyone knew he was there.
Seventh-inning stretch arrives stealthily. Quick-moving 0-0 game combined with “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” duties being handed over to two Greek Heritage Night instrumentalists kept me from realizing we had arrived at our ritualistic juncture. When I saw Joe rise, I asked him if he needed me to get up so he could get by. No, he said, it’s time to stretch.
So it was.
We stretched, we sang of our desires to be taken out to where we already were (because the Greek fellas didn’t), we Lazy Mary’d, we monitored the flight of t-shirts, we sat down and then we enjoyed the hell out of the five-run bottom of the seventh and the ensuing shutdown half-inning that followed.
Bottom of the eighth rolls around, and guess who else does…on little cat feet.
“Hot dog, anyone? Hot dog, anyone?”
Anything can happen. A five-run lead is no guarantee of a happy ending. We’ve seen the Met bullpen ignite calamity and implode precipitously. But the Braves have only three outs left with which to wreak havoc. No matter how many unnecessary pitching changes Terry Collins will make in the top of the ninth (one), it’s unlikely we’re going to be here much longer. I don’t get overconfident but I was willing to allow myself confidence that a five-run cushion in the bottom of the eighth was going to prevent evening-extending discomfort in the top of the ninth.
In other words, none of us was going to need a hot dog to tide us over this — literally — late in the game.
And if we were going to be convinced otherwise, this guy…
“Hot dog, anyone? Hot dog, anyone?”
…wasn’t going to be the one to do it.
I grew up in Madison Square Garden enthralled by strolling cries of “BEEAH HEEAH! BEEAH HEEAH!” When I moved on to Shea, I loved being asked, in a bellowing fashion, “WHO’S DRINKIN’? WHO’S DRINKIN’?” even if my tastes ran more to “ICE COLD SODA! ICE COLD SODA!” As recently as last Saturday, a vocal vendor (a.k.a. “hospitality attendant”) marketed his wares so effectively — “HOT PRETZELS! THEY’RE HOT!” — that I topped off my Gold Glove supper with a salty $6.50 dessert.
Salesmanship is everything. It’s the difference between deciding, “Nah…” and “Yeah, OK.” Rarely have I needed what’s being sold. Only sometimes have I desperately wanted what’s being sold. But if I can be sold on the contents of those trays and bins, then buddy, you’re making your quota and collecting your commissions and getting out of your job what you put into it. We are a captive audience. All you need to do is captivate us.
“Hot dog, anyone? Hot dog, anyone?”
That’s not gonna do it. That, in fact, didn’t do it. Our introvert drew no more business and probably even fewer glances in the eighth than he did in the seventh.
Pedro Beato and Tim Byrdak set down the Braves in order of the top of the ninth. We all cheered and left. I wonder if the world’s least-suited hot dog vendor came back out to start the tenth.
by Greg Prince on 5 June 2011 4:08 am Day-night doubleheader Saturday. Day portion was somewhere in the middle of Connecticut. Nightcap was where it usually is.
Dana Brand’s family organized a public memorial to their husband/father/brother in Newtown, Conn., to which hundreds showed up. Where’s Newtown? Somewhere that adds to my admiration of Dana. He commuted daily to Hempstead from up there? He drove regularly to games in Flushing from there? Newtown, Conn., sits on the outskirts of a Metropolitan Area, I’m sure, yet I rather doubt it’s New York’s.
But somewhere in the middle of Connecticut is where the Brands put down roots, so that’s where the memorial was and that was where I was going to be no matter that getting there presented as many challenges as certain teams face lately holding seventh-inning leads. My sincere gratitude, then, to a thoughtful and convivial trio of Hofstra University colleagues of Dana’s for making room in their ride for a highway-challenged stranger. And my thanks to Sheila, Dana’s wife; Sonia, Dana’s daughter; and Stefanie and Jennifer, Dana’s sisters, for inviting me to say a few words on behalf of Mets bloggers everywhere regarding Dana’s essential place among us. I wouldn’t dare be presumptuous enough to suggest any one person can speak for a diverse community of chroniclers, but I doubt I’d receive any substantial flak for the conclusion I reached:
Given the angle from which he came to our subculture, Dana couldn’t help but be a little anthropological in his writing. “Who are these Mets fans and what is this Mets thing?” was a recurring theme of his. But being that he was present at the creation of the Mets and found himself immediately ensnared by the charms of the Mets, he subjected himself as much as anybody to his quest to understand this strange tribe of which he was a charter citizen. “What’s with me being a Mets fan and why does this Mets thing mean so much to me?” was just as constant a theme in his writing.
Dana could put distance between his heartfelt passion for the Mets and his intellectual curiosity about the Mets, yet he never, ever condescended regarding what the Mets meant: not to others, not to himself. That Dana was an accomplished academic — and the rest of us weren’t — meant nothing to him in this context. That Dana was a Mets fan who wished Carlos Beltran had connected off Adam Wainwright and won us a pennant meant everything to him — that and that there were so many in our blogging community who clung to those kinds of Metsian desires as deeply as he did; and that there were so many who joined him in aching to put those kinds of Metsian emotions into words; and that we all came back to the Mets with him, spring after spring, season after season, to love out loud alongside him.
Dana loved that. Dana loved being a Mets fan among Mets fans, a Mets blogger among Mets bloggers, a Mets writer writing for Mets readers. We loved that he loved it and we flat out loved him.
Like one of those long-running TV series that loses a singular cast member, the show will go on. We’ll still have our enjoyable episodes, we’ll still churn out quality entertainment, we’ll still present all the high drama and low comedy that New York Mets baseball has to offer. But I gotta tell ya: every one of us who remains in the cast will know something’s missing.
Yet thanks to our time with Dana Brand, we’ll also know something Amazin’, Amazin’, Amazin’ will always be with us.
What a splendid celebration of a rich life this memorial was, with friends, relations and comrades of Dana’s, going back to his childhood, testifying to his distinctiveness and his decency and his thousand other enchanting attributes. More than once I had to edit thoughts like, “I have to remember to send Dana Brand an e-mail about this — he’d really enjoying hearing all this stuff.” I’m pretty certain I wasn’t the only one in that frame of mind.
On the other hand, I think I was the only one determined to make a day-night of this particular event, with the second half unfolding at the other place I will probably repeatedly find myself thinking, “I wish Dana were here to take all this in.” I surely thought it on Thursday when the Mets came back from oblivion to beat the Pirates, and I thought it again Saturday night as Dillon Gee dueled Jair Jurrjens. I’d love to tell you I’d planned it this way, the Newtown Meeting House in the afternoon, the Flushing Meeting House in the evening, but the truth is the ticket for the game was secured before Dana’s passing. And at the risk of playing the “he would have wanted it this way” card, I didn’t think myself too terribly rude or callous to inform the fellas from Hofstra that, uh, I kind of need you to drop me off at Citi Field after we’re done in Connecticut.
They’re good guys, the Hofstra Three, and they did just as I requested, getting me down I-684, over the Whitestone and to the cusp of the left field parking lot gate by 6:50. It left just enough time for me to pass through security; absorb positive feedback from the wand man regarding the t-shirt I’d worn special to Newtown (“Shea Stadium — good old Shea Stadium!”); accept one of 25,000 complimentary festive orange (mostly) caps; load up on Daruma and Mama’s at World’s Fare; and land in my Section 404 seat next to old friend Joe just as Martin Prado was fouling off Gee’s first pitch.
It can be done, but I wouldn’t want to commute from Newtown, Conn., to Flushing, N.Y., as a matter of course. No wonder Dana grew a beard. Who had time to shave with all that driving?
 One good beard... Dana Brand’s beard came to mind in the bottom of the seventh, after Gee had pitched seven scoreless frames; after Alex Gonzalez made the kind of play on Jason Bay’s predictably routine grounder that the other Alex Gonzalez once made on a Miguel Cabrera grounder to make Steve Bartman unfairly infamous; after Josh Thole doubled; and after Ruben Tejada took one for the team. The bases were loaded, nobody was out and, in Gee’s place, Terry Collins called on Jason Pridie to pinch-hit.
 ...deserves another (and maybe a pinch-hit RBI). Pridie has a beard. Dana had a beard. Was it unfair to now play the “it sure would be appropriate…” card? A bearded Mets player should come through with a hirsute hit just because a revered Mets writer was spoken of in glowing terms approximately 69.2 miles to the north and east six or so hours earlier? Would it have been inappropriate had Tejada, instead of getting hit, gotten a hit? Would have I had to have checked Ruben’s high school transcripts to decide his literature curriculum would have met with Prof. Brand’s approval? You’ve got to be careful with this line of thinking. On the day we learned that our friend died, somebody on a board I frequent suggested it would be nice if the Mets could stage a comeback and win one for Dana. The Mets lost 9-3 to the Cubs.
An intense internal debate ensued over the ethics attached to invoking the spirit of the departed in order to gain a desired sporting result on this mortal coil and how dirty I should feel about really wanting exactly that to happen, but — unlike a pair of Metsian beards — it was cut mercifully short when Pridie lashed Jurrjens’s final pitch of the night into right to score Bay and put the Mets up 1-0. “Yeah! The guy with the beard did it!”
Is that so wrong?
Jurrjens exited. Scott Proctor entered. Jose Reyes tripled. Everybody scored. Scholarly beards gave way to flying dreadlocks. Mets up 4-0. The dreads flew home on Justin Turner’s bright red sac fly. 5-0 Mets. Between innings, the big screen played its classy Get Well Kid video for Gary Carter, the man who wore his perm as proudly as he did his chest protector. A spontaneous GA-REE CAR-TER! chant broke out in a distant section. And the Mets held on to shut out the Braves.
No, nothing wrong with that at all.
Dana Brand photo by Sharon Chapman.
by Jason Fry on 4 June 2011 12:27 am The little black cloud narrative of Mets fandom has been overdone in recent years — our team was one good swing away from the World Series in 2006 and played highly meaningful games on the last day of the season in 2007 and 2008, which the good people of Pittsburgh and Kansas City would take in a heartbeat. But games like tonight, sheesh. They’re inarguably bag-on-the-head stuff, and there have been far too many of them recently.
At ESPN New York, Adam Rubin passes along Elias’s grim note that the Mets have had the lead in the seventh or eighth inning in their last six home losses, setting a major-league record. It’s kind of a dopey record, one of those “sixth-place hitters on a daytime Tuesday” notes that rock-ribbed traditionalist fans used to mock before the advent of sabermetrics. What jumped out at me was that the Mets hadn’t scored more than three runs in any of those games when the roof began to sag: They’d scored three runs twice, two runs twice and one run twice. If you get to the seventh or eighth scoring that few runs, you’re going to lose your share, with when the other team scores their expected allotment more the stuff of detail than of tragedy. This is what happens when Ike Davis’s permitted activity is fishing and David Wright’s is lying in an MRI machine — injuries that have now followed the usual depressing Met trajectory from apparently minor to indefinite.
Tonight it was hard to point fingers at those we’d prefer to scapegoat, though it is true that Jason Bay did his usual nothing and Willie Harris struck out pathetically to end the game. (My question: Why was Harris pinch-hitting for Ruben Tejada, whom Terry Collins just praised for his discipline and improvement as a hitter?) This time, the key failures came from the players we’ve come to trust. Jason Isringhausen, one of the best stories of this weird season, walked a guy in a key spot. Jose Reyes, having perhaps his best season, let the grounder that would have ended the eighth roll under his glove to tie the game. And Francisco Rodriguez, a model citizen so far and pretty effective on the mound, was anything but in the ninth, giving up a homer to Eric Hinske and a two-run double to Freddie Freeman to cement the loss.
Painful, but of course it had to come with embarrassing ironies.
Reyes gagged up the difference-maker while being cheered on by passionate rooters who responded to the call to make this Don’t Trade Reyes Night. Bag.
K-Rod got credit for finishing a game even though what he did was more like killing one, moving him a step closer to his toxic $17.5 million option. Head.
Oh, and as an additional kick in the nuts, Sandy Alderson had to deliver the news that Wright will be inactive — as in doin’ nothin’, not as in not here — for another three weeks. Sandy cracked that David’s first game back might coincide with Johan Santana’s first start, which is the kind of line that’s better left to sarcastic/suicidal bloggers than it is coming from the general manager.
Yes, Jonathon Niese was wonderful — Niese continues to evolve into a complete pitcher, one you can imagine slotting in as a capable No. 2 starter if he keeps it up. But he’s not going to get far if his teammates continue to score a run every three innings.
None of us are.
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