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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 31 March 2011 6:52 pm Aaron Heilman has been thwarted in his latest attempt to make a starting rotation and will pitch in relief for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Adam Wainwright is officially on the 60-Day Disabled List. Oliver Perez is feeling his way through a minor league contract with the Washington Nationals. Jeff Suppan has been released by the San Francisco Giants. Endy Chavez is a member of the Round Rock Express. Yadier Molina is catching and batting seventh for the St. Louis Cardinals against the San Diego Padres. Carlos Beltran, gingerly entering his thirteenth big league season on two questionable knees, is about to attempt to become a full-time right fielder for the first time in his professional career.
This is what Five Years Later looks like sometimes. This is what happens when a half-decade does its thing and the “army of steamrollers” (per Field of Dreams) flattens time. This is where the primary actors from the last surpassing drama in Mets history have landed.
And here we are, about to start 2011, at significant remove from 2006, no longer in any way, shape or form in the same era, really, as 2006.
That’s too bad, I suppose, but it was also inevitable.
***
Met eras, as expressed broadly through results and expectations, don’t last as long as they used to.
• 1962–1968: 7 losing years
• 1969–1976: 7 winning years in 8
• 1977–1983: 7 losing years
• 1984–1990: 7 winning years
• 1991–1996: 6 losing years
• 1997–2001: 5 winning years
• 2002–2004: 3 losing years
• 2005–2008: 4 winning years
• 2009–2010: 2 losing years (to date)
If you burrow into the substance of these “eras,” you could easily and accurately quibble with the chronological associations. 1968, and its inkling of better times to come, didn’t have much in common with the hilarious hopelessness (or hopeless hilarity) of 1962 and 1963. Things were surely looking farther up by the end of 1983 than they were in the depths of 1979. Most of 2001 felt like a harbinger of the three years ahead of it rather than the four years that preceded it. And we didn’t enter 2009 aware that the relatively good times we’d just experienced were completely over.
So take these eras as inexact shorthand, if you like, but you have to acknowledge the Mets generally tend to get themselves into either a groove or a rut. By 2006, there was no doubt we were in one of our best grooves ever. It seemed incomprehensible that it wouldn’t be one of our deepest, too. The ’02–’04 sphere dissipated suddenly, but nobody was complaining. We broke out of some very serious doldrums in 2005, took a great leap forward in 2006 and had every reason to believe the good times would still be rolling at least into 2011 if not later.
Yet here we are, clearly out of 2006’s gravitational pull. Three Mets remain from our last postseason — Beltran, Wright and Reyes — plus one (Pelfrey) who checked in briefly during the division-winning year. The Mets haven’t come within seven victories of the 97 they put on the board in 2006. They famously spent most of 2007 in first place as well as a significant interval of 2008 there, but vacated the penthouse at the absolute worst junctures imaginable. Their October aspirations melted twice in late September, and then barely materialized thereafter.
It’s been nothing but clear-cut misery since 2009 began to reveal our myriad organizational shortcomings, and though we have taken some encouraging off-field steps to exit it, we can’t be sure until the next 162 games are played whether we have truly left the most recent hateful era of New York Mets baseball.
Where did our love go?
***
You’ll hear now and then as the season unfolds that this year is the 25th anniversary of 1986. I suppose that should make me feel old. It doesn’t. It’s just how time works. I’m sorry there’s been an uninterrupted string of non-championships from then to now, but I cherish that 1986 occurred, that it holds up as beautifully in retrospect as it did while it was transpiring and that I remember as much of it as I do.
To me and the milestone prism through which I few anniversary seasons, I’m feeling more like 2011 is the fifth anniversary of 2006 than it’s anything else. I thought it was appropriate that 1986’s twentieth birthday took place when it did because nothing since 1986 felt more like 1986 in my bones than 2006. There were more Mets wins in 1988 and icier Mets chills in 1999 and a longer Mets run in 2000, but 2006…I swear I thought we were going to do it. I swear I thought the twentieth anniversary was going to be the charm. I swear I walked around 2006 like it was almost 1986 all over again.
Almost. Almost haunts the Mets fan whose mind wanders back a half-decade. It was almost as good in 2006. It wasn’t quite neck-and-neck (you only get one 1986 in a lifetime), but it was the best we’d had in what seemed like forever. I’ll testify to that in a court of emotion.
The major similarities between 1986 and 2006 could be found in definitive success and in depth of personality. 1986 became 1986 for keeps by April 30 (13-3) and just got more so as the calendar wore on (20-4 on May 10; 31-11 on May 30; 44-16 on June 16; 60-25 on July 17; and so on). 2006 wasn’t heralded with quite the same ferocity as the anticipation surrounding Davey Johnson’s “we’re gonna dominate” killers, but they manufactured their hypeworthiness as they went: 10-2 (with an unprecedented 5-game divisional lead) on April 17; 31-19 come May 29; 42-23 by June 15; an unreachable 63-41 after sweeping the former nemesis Braves on July 30.
And so on.
It wasn’t just that 2006’s margins — above .500 and in front of the pack — were impressively impenetrable à la 1986. It was the way both versions of first-place Mets went about their business: with color, with style, with passion and with people you couldn’t take your eyes off.
Wright and Reyes; Beltran and Delgado; Wagner and Lo Duca; Martinez and, yeah, Gl@v!ne when he was still Glavine. All those extra characters, too: Cliff Floyd, not what he was in 2005 in terms of health, but still who he was in terms of being Cliff Floyd; Endy Chavez, from the scrap heap to anywhere he needed to be in the outfield; Julio Franco, a million years old and worth every one of them; Lastings Milledge, instant charisma; Jose Valentin, the third and ultimately best option at second base; El Duque, from out of nowhere; Chris Woodward, from off the bench; Ramon Castro, as if from a cartoonists’ inkwell; Chad Bradford and Pedro Feliciano, the right and lefty I tended to confuse because they were so perfectly complementary; even boring old Steve Trachsel seemed interesting in this milieu.
The 2006 Mets weren’t pillagers but they were personable. They earned that Sports Illustrated cover. They were baseball’s best story for the first several months of the season. They were legitimate heirs, lack of “bad guys” notwithstanding, to Darryl and Doc and Mex and Mookie and Wally and Nails and that whole gang. They had a large enough lead to withstand the cab-it-all-to-hell loss of Duaner Sanchez. They could cover up the trade of rock-solid right fielder Xavier Nady. They could shuttle in and out the Jose Limas, Geremi Gonzalezes and Alay Solers as necessary. They could plug in underwhelming but promising Oliver Perez and underwhelming but experienced Shawn Green and never particularly whelming Dave Williams. They could even fit unsavory anti-Mets like Guillermo Mota and Michael Tucker for Mets uniforms and make it work.
The whole was a revelation. The sum of the whole’s parts was nonstop fun to be around. The 2006 Mets were on the verge of becoming a historical brand name for the ages, synonymous with one of the three best years the Mets ever had.
1969. 1986. 2006. I could feel it.
Then I couldn’t.
***
The trip from the zenith of early September (35 games over after 139 played) through, the ritual N.L. East crowning (14½ up with 13 to go) through the stampede of the NLDS (a messy but convincing enough sweep of the dangerous Dodgers) to, at last, how it ended — which is what tends to get remembered…I dunno. I wasn’t feeling nearly as certain by Game Seven against the Cardinals as I had been most of 2006. There was a shakiness to the postseason, and not just because the Upper Deck literally quaked. The Cardinals were supposed to be a detail en route to the World Series. They’d been 83-78 and barely hung on in the Central. They were Albert Pujols and whoever as far as most of us were concerned. Walk Pujols and we’ll be fine. The Cardinals were a perennial October element, but this wasn’t supposed to be their year.
And it wasn’t their year. 2006 was our year. But four of the final seven days we played were claimed by St. Louis. Turns out the Redbirds were the ones with the knack for detail.
Game Seven no longer seems relevant in the present. Of course it doesn’t. It isn’t. We’re in a different Mets era. The lead players are mostly out of view anyway.
But not totally. Never totally.
I wish no ill will on Jeff Suppan, but when I noticed on the MLB Network crawl that the starting pitcher who limited the Mets to one run and two hits across seven innings couldn’t make it past the end of Spring Training, I’ll confess to the slightest crease at either end of my lips. When I learned Adam Wainwright and his devastating curve ball will be out for the season, I never did run out to buy a Get Well card. And every moment Yadier Molina continues to draw breath I count as a personal defeat. But that’s neither here nor there.
As for the main guys from our side from that fateful night, Ollie’s reasonably brilliant de facto emergency start (6 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 very long fly ball) was long ago clouded over by dozens of regularly scheduled horrible outings; Endy’s legend will be endless, even if he hasn’t played in the majors since 2009 and is destined to start 2011 in Triple-A for Texas; Heilman…stopped being my problem after 2008, stopped maintaining my sympathy following the home run pitch to Yadier Molina; and Beltran? The man who did everything magnificently for six months five years ago but is saddled with the image of having not done anything at the last possible instant? I hope he goes out Metwise as on top as he can, though I have my pangs of doubt where right field and bad knees and age 34 are concerned.
***
Beltran was really something in 2006. Forty-one homers, 116 runs batted in, all the WAR you could want. Jose Reyes was really something, too. Everything we still love about him coalesced that (almost) championship season. And David Wright — he was the one we had expectations for when 2006 got underway and he began delivering on them immediately. Carlos Delgado was the perfect vet to bring into that lineup and, it was reported, that clubhouse. Paul Lo Duca couldn’t have been a better successor to Mike Piazza. Pedro Martinez, before the injuries began to bite him, got that team off to a huge start — he and, as I used to spell it, Tom Glavine. Wagner…he’d drive us crazy but mostly he’d calm us down, certainly relative to his predecessors. It was a grand collection of stars and a fantastic supporting cast. Willie Randolph directed the whole production with élan. You couldn’t have asked for a more savvy producer than Omar Minaya.
And it was only the beginning. 2005 was a nice warmup. 2006 was when it took off for real. We’d win in 2006 and from there, the sky would be the limit. We’d take baseball by storm. We’d take over New York. We’d be unstoppable and we’d stay unstoppable. What an era we were about to take up residence in.
***
It didn’t work out that way. 2006 had only so much 1986 in it, though I have to tell you any substantial quantity of 1986 is way better than none. That’s why I’m never fully on board when the 1986 documentaries offer the coda of the dynasty that never was. Screw that. 1986 was plenty. I wish there were more of them, but that’s a mathematical impossibility. I wish there had been more of 2006 and more to 2006, too. I wish Beltran could have worked Wainwright. I wish Reyes’s sinking liner had fallen in. I wish Valentin and Chavez could have made hay with the bases loaded after the Endy Catch. I wish we could have gotten to Suppan. I wish there had been a constitutional limit on Molinas.
But I’m glad I had what I had of 2006. In more ways than not, it’s the best we’ve had in the past quarter-century. That it’s only accessible by reaching back through one miserable mini-era and the back half of what morphed into a severely star-crossed era…that’s the way it goes, I guess.
2011 arrives imminently. Let the next great era begin now.
by Greg Prince on 29 March 2011 8:18 pm To paraphrase an old joke, when Terry Collins is on the phone, Terry Collins is ON the phone. That is to say he’s “on,” I’m guessing, whether there’s a phone line open or not.
The Mets were kind enough to conduct another blogger conference call this evening, this time with the Mets’ manager as our subject of gang-interrogation. Terry answers questions all day long from beat reporters. He answered questions from us to start his evening. I imagine if one of those alligators that occasionally patrols the swamps beyond the minor league complex in St. Lucie wanted to know his thoughts on employing a shift against Ryan Howard, Terry would clearly and forcefully articulate his theories on defensive strategy to the Treasure Coast’s reptile community and then tell a turtle what he wanted to know about D.J. Carrasco.
The man can and does answer baseball questions. That’s a baseball man, as they say. I can’t think of a better way to end Spring Training and prepare for the season than by listening to a baseball man tell me how things work.
Actually, that’s what my question was about: how do things work? Specifically, we hear about who makes the roster and who doesn’t, but I was wondering how that works from a skipper’s perspective, and what it’s like for a manager to deliver both the good news and the bad news.
Collins, not surprisingly if you’ve been listening to him since he was hired, wanted to emphasize the “positive side” first. There was, he said, “joy” in the Mets clubhouse this week for and from the guys who had never made a major league roster before and for and from the guys who had no guarantee of making this one when camp commenced.
When he told Brad Emaus he was going to be the Mets’ second baseman, he could see his eyes “light up”. When he informed Pedro Beato he’d be part of the Mets’ bullpen, there was a sense of “oh my god, it was worth all the work and all the bus rides.” Blaine Boyer’s reaction at joining Beato and the other relievers on the major league squad was he’d wanted to make teams in the past, but never wanted to make one as badly as this. “He really likes being here,” Collins reported. Willie Harris, who’s been around, was as stoked as any rookie, telling his manager, “Skip, I gotta tell ya how much fun it’s been,” and assuring him he’ll do whatever it takes to be successful.
These, to me, are the gold coins in the pot at the end of the long, boring Spring Training rainbow. Yes, it’s way too endless. Yes, we stopped pretending that the pretend games mean much after about a week of them. But four men who weren’t Mets before and were never assured of being Mets are smiling like kids because they get to be Mets — because they get to play for our favorite team. None of them as of yet has struck out with runners on or picked the worst possible moment to walk somebody. All they know is they are ridiculously happy to be Mets.
That makes me happy as someone who looks forward to rooting for them.
As for the opposite of the positive news (I can’t picture Terry Collins wanting to say, let alone be “negative”), well, “it’s never fun” to tell someone he hasn’t made it. Collins was released as a player himself and hasn’t forgotten the feeling. “There’s no good way” to impart that kind of information, but the Mets’ manager tries his best. He tells the man who hasn’t made it to keep on working; to continue honing the talents that brought him to camp;, to play hard wherever he’s playing in the short-term; and to take nothing for granted. The overall message is “you can do it.”
If focus and positivity are infectious enough to be spread by phone, then what the hey — I’ll say Terry can do it, too. What “it” is right now defies quantification, but as long as the Mets play the game nearly as relentlessly as their manager talks it, I’ll be a happier Mets fan than I’ve been in several seasons.
• Michael Baron’s transcript of the highlights of the conference call is already up at MetsBlog. The effort and output is much appreciated.
• Jose Reyes’s Met future has become prime remains-to-be-scenery. As his contract nears expiration, Adam Rubin and I offer different answers at ESPN New York as to whether Friday will represent our shortstop’s final Opening Day as a Met. Adam uses logic, I employ hope.
• I’m distressed when blogs I really enjoy go on extended, unannounced hiatus, but that just means I’m incredibly delighted when they return to the land of the living. Two of my favorites from before 2010 are back in time for 2011. Do yourself a favor and reacquaint yourself with Mike Steffanos’s Mike’s Mets and Paul Vargas’s Section 528. They’re both very much worth your time and attention.
• You cannot overrate the terrific Most Underrated Mets biographical series rendered by Studious Metsimus this winter. It’s been a great distraction from the last 13 weeks of barren, baseball-deprived living…and it’s topped off by the 13 who will always be 1st among 2nd basemen in my heart. Go read up on the Met life of Edgardo Alfonzo, as told by the talented and dedicated Ed Leyro.
• Tuesday night, the tireless Matt Silverman is having some Mets fans over to the Mets-loving Pine Restaurant at the Holiday Inn on 114th Street in Corona. That’s the one across the Grand Central from the Shea Stadium Memorial Parking Lot — former home to Bobby V’s if you go back that far. The occasion is the celebration of the release of this year’s best-ever Maple Street Mets Annual along with the Mets’ first visit to Philadelphia this season. I’ll be there with Matt as will some of your other favorite Met writers. Please join us from 6 to 10 for food, drinks, baseball conversation and, sonofagun, actual baseball. The Pine is one stop before Citi Field on the eastbound 7, a short walk from the 111th St. Station.
by Greg Prince on 29 March 2011 2:30 am Luis Hernandez’s imminent professional fate doesn’t appear to include a spot on the Mets’ 25-man roster. The largely blank slate that is Brad Emaus has been all but coronated our starting second baseman (good luck, kid; don’t turn into Don Bosch if you can help it) and Chin-lung Huuuuuuu! can be rightly identified as the utility infielder of record. With those spots spoken for, Hernandez has reportedly headed for the waiver wire. By Friday night, when we’re focused on mauling the Marlins, it’s likely Luis will be something other than a New York Met.
If his playing time in the organization is over and we never again see him in the blue and the orange, then we have, I believe, genuine reason to salute this otherwise ordinary journeyman baseball player (besides the fact that each of us would kill to make a living as an “ordinary journeyman baseball player”). Our motivation revolves around the only thing any of us will remember about Hernandez a year or ten from now.
We now turn the podium over to former prospective director of Mets scouting George Costanza so he can explain why what Luis did the last time we saw him so special:
“I knew I had hit my high note, so I thanked the crowd and I was gone.”
Luis didn’t follow George’s example to the letter. If he had, after fouling a ball off his right foot and breaking a bone and then — after being tended to by assistant trainer Mike Herbst — homering to right last September 18 against the Braves’ Tim Hudson, he would have limped around the bases and then simply hobbled out of sight. Instead, silly man that he is, Luis rehabbed his foot and came to Spring Training. But Spring Training, as we shall learn when real games resume, is merely Brigadoon. Its games don’t actually exist. Thus, technically, Luis Hernandez’s last act as a New York Met batter (if he never puts one foot in front of the other en route to the plate for us again) was to swing, to connect and to go deep.
Now that’s showmanship. When you hit that high note, per George’s pal Jerry Seinfeld, you say “good night” and walk off.
Or, in Hernandez’s case, limp off.
Though nobody else was quite as dramatic in his staging of the Costanzan philosophy, Luis Hernandez did have predecessors in making a last Met swing count for as much as one could. There were at least five previous instances of a New York Met stepping up to the plate, launching a home run and never coming to bat as a Met again. I say “at least,” because these five (plus potentially Luis’s) are the ones I know about. You’re welcome to inform me of others.
• There was much excitement at Shea Stadium the day Mike Cubbage hit his first, last and only Met home run in his final Met swing, though the excitement had little to do with Cubbage’s feat of October 3, 1981. That Saturday afternoon is better remembered in baseball annals for the Montreal Expos clinching their first, last and only postseason berth, as winners of the second-half division title of the strike-sundered 1981 season. That would come after the bottom of the ninth inning. In the bottom of the eighth, however, with one out, Cubbage was sent up by manager Joe Torre to pinch-hit for Doug Flynn. It was Cubbage’s 51st appearance as a pinch-hitter, and it was clearly his most powerful. Mike’s home run off closer Jeff Reardon cut Montreal’s lead to 5-4 but did not substantively impede Montreal’s impending celebration. Reardon retired the next five batters, and a passel of other Expos with past or future Met ties — Gary Carter, John Milner, Mike Phillips and Jerry Manuel — dogpiled him on the Shea mound.
Cubbage’s slugging swan song as a major leaguer served as prelude to a long coaching career inside the Mets organization, highlighted by a 3-4 stint as interim manager at the end of the 1991 season. That week when he replaced Bud Harrelson allows Cubbage to be mentioned in the same breath with Joe Frazier for two reasons. Besides sharing inscription on the Mets wall of managers, Cubbage and Frazier each homered in their last big league swings. Frazier — batting ahead of young Brooks Robinson — did so for Baltimore in 1956.
• It’s one of the best trades the Mets ever made. The Mets sent Ed Hearn, Rick Anderson and Mauro “Goose” Gozzo to Kansas City for minor league catcher Chris Jelic…and pitcher David Cone. OK, so it’s not particularly known as the Chris Jelic Trade, but a good deal is a good deal, and by the time Coney established himself as a top-flight Met starter, anything the Mets got out of Jelic would be gravy. And a drop of gravy, served at the very last instant, is better than none. Jelic’s ladle came out to play on October 3, 1990, the final game of that season. The Mets had been eliminated from contention a few days earlier. so what loomed as a division-deciding showdown with the first-place Pirates was merely the last bit of string the team was playing out. Yet the game was not without consequences. Frank Viola, who generally avoided winning meaningful games in September, entered the afternoon with 19 victories. A win wouldn’t help the Mets catch the Bucs but it would ensure David Cone would not go down as (likely) the last 20-game winner in Mets history.
Viola wasn’t particularly sharp, but the Pirates didn’t particularly care what happened. As regulars like Barry Bonds and Andy Van Slyke took their cuts and called it a day in order to rest up for the playoffs, Sweet Music persevered. The Mets gave him a 4-3 lead in the seventh when Pat Tabler tapped his happy talent for driving in runners with the bases loaded (he was hit by a pitch, scoring Viola). One inning later, Jelic, as the starting left fielder, gave Frankie V a little cushion with his first major league hit…a home run to left-center at Three Rivers Stadium off Doug Bair. Having extended the Mets’ margin and raised his batting average from .000, Jelic helped close Viola’s season on a pitch-perfect note while ending his own Met and major league career in style.
Chris Jelic didn’t mean to do that, though. Not the homer, but the ending. The Mets released him and he caught on with the Padres, but they stuck him in the minors for the next three seasons, never seeing fit to bring him up to San Diego. While Jelic disappeared from view, two of his post-Met managers are still in the majors: Jim Riggleman, helming the Nats, and Bruce Bochy, defending the world championship he achieved with the Giants.
• The first time most us noticed Chico Walker, we were struck by his ability to generate a crowd. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth and his team trailing the Mets 4-2 on September 17, 1986, the Cubs’ right fielder grounded to Wally Backman and in an instant, the flash mob was born. The throngs that stormed the field at Shea Stadium that night were less thrilled by the presence of Walker than the clinching of the Mets’ first division title in thirteen years.
And that’s where we left ol’ Chico, as the answer to a satisfying trivia question, the kind that already encompassed Joe Torre and Glenn Beckert and would later expand to include Lance Parrish, Dmitri Young, Keith Lockhart and Josh Willingham. What other reason would there ever be for Mets fans to take note of Chico Walker except for his having made the last out of a game that sent the Mets to a postseason?
The Shea infield was long cleared of intruders when Chico Walker next got our attention. It was 1992 and Walker was now a Met. He’d stay a Met through the end of the 1993 season, which was the next time he’d do something particularly noteworthy. The scene was Joe Robbie Stadium (as it was known about eight-dozen names ago) in Miami. The first-year, sixth-place Marlins are dueling the 32nd-year, seventh-place Mets on the last day of the only season in the history of divisional play when there can be seventh-place Mets; it’s a battle of titans, it is. With Pete Schourek nursing a 4-2 edge, Ryan Thompson leads off the top of the ninth by doubling. Dallas Green goes to his bench for a pinch-hitter…so deep into his bench, in fact, he’s in his rotation. Dwight Gooden’s the pinch-hitter. Thrilled to live up to his reputation as a good hitter, and not just a good hitter for a pitcher, Doc triples home Thompson. The rout is now on. The Mets are up 8-2 when Chico Walker makes like the cherry atop this otherwise dismal Sunday and homers off Matt Turner.
Per Warner Wolf, you could have turned your sets off right there. Seriously. It was raining in Miami, the Mets would get to the middle of the ninth with a 9-2 lead, the Marlins would send up one batter and…the tarp came on the field. The umps waited and waited and waited, and while they waited, Chico Walker was released. Well, it only seemed like he was gone before the game was officially called. Whatever the sequence of events, Chico’s last swing was a home run swing.
And Dwight Gooden would never again triple or pinch-hit.
• When you think of definitive Met endings involving home runs or something like them, you can’t go too long before the name Todd Pratt springs to mind. After all, the catcher we knew as Tank rolled up an entire National League Division Series with one thundering swing off Matt Mantei of the Diamondbacks on October 9, 1999. Eight days later, Pratt would add another signature action to Met lore by tackling Robin Ventura in the midst of an aborted fifteenth-inning home run trot of note.
Not nearly as famous was Todd Pratt’s last Met home run. Good reason, too. It came with no fanfare, to little cheer, amid no sense of occasion. The Phillies were leading the Mets 10-0 at the Vet on July 20, 2001. Two were out, nobody was on, it was the top of the ninth. Ex-Met Robert Person was thisclose to tossing a shutout when Tank broke it up with potentially most meaningless solo home run of all time. Pratt rounded the bases (nobody stops you before you reach second when you’re down by double-digits) and, four pitches later, Todd Zeile struck out and the game was over, just another desultory 10-1 loss for the going-nowhere Mets in the summer of 2001.
Unknown to anybody still listening or watching was that would be that for the walkoff hero of the ’99 NLDS. Following the Mets-Phillies series, the Mets and Phillies arrange a trade, backup catcher for backup catcher, Todd Pratt for Gary Bennett. If you blinked, you absolutely missed the entirety of Bennett’s Mets career (1-for-1 before being sent down and eventually dealt to Colorado). As for Pratt, he had 23 more home runs in him as a Phillie and Brave through 2006. Though last swings suit his legend most, it’s worth noting his first Met at-bat, on July 4, 1997, produced a home run. And just as his last Met homer came off an ex-Met, that first Met homer came off a future Met: Al Leiter, then of the Marlins.
• Todd Zeile couldn’t have choreographed his goodbye any better had he been Gower Champion. The veteran of 127 different major league teams chose Shea as his farewell stage on October 3, 2004. What a production: some pregame ceremonies, some theatrics in which he strapped on the catching gear of his youth; and then, in the sixth, with two on and nobody out and the Mets leading the about-to-be-extinct Expos 4-1, Zeile took his last swing as a major leaguer, versus future Met Claudio Vargas, and turned it into three-run home run that brought the house down and the audience to its feet. Todd Zeile wasn’t really a Met icon in his time, but for one day, nobody was more of a leading man.
Luis Hernandez will likely catch on somewhere and swing for somebody before long. When he does, here’s hoping he does it pain-free.
UPDATE, MARCH 30: Luis cleared waivers and has been outrighted to Buffalo. Not a Met, but not necessarily never again a Met. Way to step on your own great ending with two good feet.
Tip of the cap to Baseball Almanac and Baseball Reference for their assistance in compiling research for this article.
by Jason Fry on 28 March 2011 1:18 am The Times’ baseball preview brought along a column by George Vecsey that couldn’t have been better calibrated to infuriate Mets fans.
Vecsey writes that we are conditioned to accept a magical season every generation or so, but know nothing of the sort is in the cards for 2011. “Absolutely not this year,” as he adds for emphasis.
He goes on to suggest as a positive that our team will continue to exist since there’s no relegation in the National League, though he imagines the possibilities of the Mets and Pirates fighting it out in September to avoid taking up residence in the International League.
After some blather about the Yankees, it’s back to us:
The Mets, who open Friday night in Florida, have truly hit the skids, as the owners seek a minority partner. They are saddled with the salaries of the departed Luis Castillo and Ollie Perez, and the injured and expensive Johan Santana, Frankie Rodriguez and Carlos Beltran, and also have a long investment in Jose Reyes, who may never be more than occasionally exciting. Even with Ike Davis, David Wright, Josh Thole and Angel Pagan, the Mets could be a last-place team under Terry Collins, who sounds like a competent baseball lifer.
Then it’s on to a second mention of Bernie Madoff, annnnnd scene.
To the extent that columns are supposed to provoke a reaction, this one worked, because by the time I finished it my blood was pretty much at full boil. But there are columns that provoke with unwelcome truths, that work because they afflict the comfortable — and then there are columns that provoke because they’re clinically brain-dead, and you’re embarrassed to find them in the New York Times. (Insult to injury: This is the same George Vecsey who wrote the marvelous Joy in Mudville once upon a time, a book I read more times than I could count as a Mets-obsessed kid.)
Where to begin? The Mets do not have a long investment in Jose Reyes — that’s just flat-out wrong. Reyes is up at the end of the season, as is Carlos Beltran. (I’ll give Vecsey Santana, and he could have made more of Frankie Rodriguez’s nightmare option for 2012, AKA the Omar Special.) Yes, the Mets are saddled with money owed to Castillo and Perez — but unlike the last two seasons, they have accepted that those are sunk costs, and will at least derive some value out of formerly wasted roster spots. As for the team’s financial mess, I’ll choose to believe Sandy Alderson that the team can add payroll this summer if it needs to — though I doubt our new GM is privy to all that’s rotten in the House of Wilpon, I haven’t caught him lying to us yet. If anything, so far he seems to err on the side of truths another executive might varnish a bit more.
Moreover, Vecsey himself notes that last year he predicted fire-and-brimstone doom and the Mets won 79 games, which might have suggested a more rigorous testing of assumptions this time around. Judging by WAR, the Mets look to be a 79-to-85 win team. That’s not keep-October-free territory, but it’s not the stuff of relegation either. Could the 2011 Mets finish last? Sure. But if a few things break the Mets’ way and they make some smart moves, they could win 88 or 89 games, and then who knows?
It may be too much to ask George Vecsey to deal with WAR and other sabermetrics, but he ought to be capable of realizing that the Mets won 79 games last year despite starting the season with a horribly constructed roster that wasted playing time on the likes of Mike Jacobs, Alex Cora and Gary Matthews Jr., not to mention the black holes of Castillo and Perez on the roster. No, they don’t have Johan Santana for the first half of the year (and maybe more), but they have a full year of R.A. Dickey, two decent back-of-the-rotation bets in Chris Capuano and Chris Young, and reason for optimism with Jon Niese. It’s not crazy for them to expect a better year from Jason Bay, or to think Beltran may settle in as a right-fielder, or that Thole and Davis and Pagan will continue to perform well. Is it a lot to ask for all of those things to break right? Maybe — but it’s not impossible, or even that improbable. Moreover, as Vecsey himself notes, the Mets have a competent manager now, not to mention a front office that seems much more likely to make wise choices. Even without delving into advanced stats, all of that would suggest the Mets can expect to be about as good as they were last year, and might be better.
Ah, but what about Madoff? Well, what about him? Last time I checked he doesn’t play for the Mets. To suggest he nonetheless has some effect on the players — evoked poetically but not terribly convincingly as sulfurous fumes that still pollute the team — is to either warn that players’ paychecks will bounce, which would indeed probably have a deleterious effect on the on-field product, or to veer into psychobabble. Really, invoking the black cloud of Madoff is just the inverse of the Pollyanna column that rabbits on about leadership or intangibles or knowing how to win. (In other words, 90% of columns about Derek Jeter.) One may anger fans while the other puts a spring in their step, but they’re equally nonsensical.
Maybe I’ve gone Pollyanna myself, but I’m not that worried about my team. I’m really not. As Will Leitch wrote last week in New York, the Mets were going to be retrenching financially this year (and maybe next) anyway, even without Madoff and Picard and all the rest. The time they spend doing that — which, again, they were most likely going to do anyway — is time for the current legal mess to sort itself out. Which will happen, one way or the other. When it does, the Mets may or may not be controlled by new owners, but they’ll still be a club in the baseball and media capital of the world, with a new stadium and a regional cable network as money generators. They will be immensely valuable and well-positioned to spend. Except in the fever dreams of George Vecsey, they aren’t going to be the Pittsburgh Pirates.
And in the meantime? I think my team is being run wisely. That should help ensure they’re in the best possible position once the retrenching is over. And if things should break right, and they somehow head into September with a wild card within reach? Well, then I’d like to see how the current braintrust deals with a little good news.
by Greg Prince on 27 March 2011 2:04 pm I believe there’s a reason above all others that Ed Kranepool resonates like no one else in the Met mythology: He was here from the first year through the eighteenth year of the franchise uninterrupted. Ed Kranepool’s entire Mets career (his entire major league career, for that matter) can be expressed via a simple en-dash.
Ed Kranepool 1962–1979
Ed began with the Mets in a particular season, ended in another season and that was that. Put aside the spiritual notion that Ed Kranepool’s Mets tenure is eternal, and what strikes you is not just the length — longest in Mets history — but the continuity. No interruptions. Ed Kranepool put eighteen consecutive Met seasons on the board. Oh, he occasionally had to dip down to the minors to hone his craft (as late as 1970, when he was still a veritable lad of 25), but he was never gone for the duration of an entire major league campaign. There was no chronological break in his action.
If there were, then Ed Kranepool would be something else altogether. He’d be a Comma Met.
There is no shame in being a Comma Met. Some of the greatest Mets who have ever been are Comma Mets. Should there ever be a revival of the House Un-Metropolitan Activities Committee and witnesses are asked, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Comma Met party?” there should be no shame in answering, “Yes…yes I have.”
There are three ways you can become a Comma Met:
FIRST WAY YOU GET A COMMA
You become a Met, you’re traded away (or are released or leave as a free agent; whatever) and then you come back some other season. This, in FAFIF terms, makes you a Recidivist Met, and it earns you a not altogether uncommon Comma.
Tom Seaver 1967–1977, 1983
See how that works? Tom Seaver shouldn’t have had to have punctuated his Mets career with anything but an en-dash (and an exclamation point) but the horrid fates intervened and a Comma became necessary. Of course his retrieval — the luster of which was diminished by some hare-brained scheme that makes 1983 look awfully lonely — should have earned him a double en-dash on either side of his Comma. That’s what you get when Recidivism among Mets works for the best.
Rusty Staub 1972–1975, 1981-1985
Rusty is the very model of a modern Recidivist Met, a starting stalwart in his first go-round, a wise role player of continuing service in his second. Staub’s Comma Met path is one rarely replicated as neatly.
Lee Mazzilli 1976–1981, 1986–1989
Alas, Second Acts of Metdom don’t always work out for the best. Some Comma Mets, hot starts notwithstanding, just seem destined to flame out a second time as they did the first.
Dave Kingman 1975–1977, 1981–1983
And those that were clearly ill-advised, such as the cases in which the first act had no one clamoring for an encore, should have been avoided at all costs.
Bobby Bonilla 1992–1995, 1999
The homecomings don’t always have to be so Bobby Bo traumatic. Sometimes they don’t do any great harm, but they don’t provide much in the way of help.
Hubie Brooks 1980–1984, 1991
Sometimes the Comma is just the mark of mundane journeymen not being all they were cracked up to be the first time around.
Mike Jacobs 2005, 2010
Once in a while, though, you get a Met who earns his Comma status in unorthodox style, such as by bouncing out of sight and out of mind. Sometimes they bounce to Japan and you don’t even notice they were gone. But they were for a year, and they are apparently better off for it in the surprisingly long run.
Pedro Feliciano 2002–2004, 2006–2010
Until they sign with the devil and then that’s their problem.
SECOND WAY YOU GET A COMMA
You are brought up from the minors and become a Met, probably in September. You are young and you have great things forecast for you. You are sipping your very first cup of coffee. Thing is, you may not be old enough for coffee (or whiskey or whatever). So you’re back down where you came from the next April and you’re not seen again for the course of an entire season. You may have not done anything wrong, it may just be that your time has not yet fully arrived.
But it will.
Cleon Jones 1963, 1965-1975
Cleon was 21 when he got his first shot at the Polo Grounds in September of ’63. Technically it was his last shot at the Polo Grounds because there’d be no more Polo Grounds to shoot at come 1964. It wasn’t a stellar audition (2-for-15) and Buffalo beckoned…and then rebeckoned. Jones spent most of two seasons growing strong as a Bison. Thus, when he returned to stay in September ’65, en route to winning the starting center field job in April ’66, he wasn’t going away for the longest time.
It seems almost cruel to give a prospect a first taste and then withhold the whole plate for another season, but sometimes the plate is hard to find.
Nolan Ryan 1966, 1968–1971
Sometimes the Comma can represent a career-reset for a Met who thought he had made it but found himself on the verge of unmaking it.
Tug McGraw 1965–1967, 1969–1974
Tug was part of Casey Stengel’s Youth of America (by pitching until 1984, he survived as the last Stengelite active in the bigs) and etched his name into Met lore his rookie year by becoming the first in our colors to paint an “L” on current Mets Spring Training gadfly Sandy Koufax. It wasn’t a nonstop upward trajectory from there, however. McGraw’s stint in the Marines was a factor as was his own callowness. His unreadiness for prime time as a 21-year-old sophomore and 22-year-old junior in 1966 and 1967, respectively, eventually showed. By March 1968, he was trying to impress new manager Gil Hodges and he was failing.
So it was back to Jacksonville for the flaky lefty, but not off to obscurity by any means. Tug earned another chance the following spring, reinvented himself as a reliever by May and recarved his niche in Mets history from the bullpen (to say nothing of the heart).
It’s become less common to see a minor leaguer brought up to the majors in September and then disappear until two Aprils later, but as with McGraw, the results can contribute to the stuff of legend.
Kevin Mitchell 1984, 1986
Though not always.
Bartolome Fortunato 2004, 2006
THIRD WAY YOU GET A COMMA
The least desirable way to earn Comma Met status is not by transaction or demotion but by injury. You’re sailing along in your Mets career, everything’s relatively swell and then…ouch.
John Franco 1990–2001, 2003–2004
Franco’s Met career came to a screeching halt at age 41 for Tommy John surgery. The old lefty stood in front of a press conference and broke down emotionally over his physical breakdown, talking about how his then ten-year-old son wondered whether it was a game of catch between them that left his elbow injured.
You might have thought John Franco was through, but they make ’em tough in Brooklyn, and on May 30, 2003, Franco trotted in from the bullpen for the first time since the Brian Jordan horror show of September 29, 2001 (the second one, that is). Johnny received a huge Shea ovation for his perseverance when he returned and hung in there for the remainder of two seasons.
And that son from the sad story? Drafted by the Mets in the 42nd round of the 2010 amateur draft.
Indeed, injuries can be transformed into Commas. But it’s not easy.
Bill Pulsipher 1995, 1998, 2000
The first member of Generation K to make the majors saw his future curtailed in Spring Training 1996 and it didn’t get any better any time soon. Ligaments send Bill’s left elbow to the sidelines and depression kept him moored in the minors until June of ’98. The return was a feelgood story but the results weren’t spectacular and the second stay was short-lived. Come the 1998 trading deadline, Pulse was shipped to Milwaukee.
And then, in 2000, Pulsipher earned a second Comma — not unheard of, but also not indicative that a career is going all that well. Sure enough, Pulse’s hybrid Comma Met status — once from injury, once from reacquisition — came to fruition on May 1, 2000 when he started in San Francisco for his once and future team. Alas, the Met future for Bill Pulsipher didn’t last a week. He got wracked by the Giants and then, five days later, cuffed around by the Marlins. That was it for Bill Pulsipher and the Mets. He’d be traded again, this time to the Diamondbacks, within the month.
And this month, Pulse, 37, is in camp with the Somerset Patriots of the Atlantic League.
Pulsipher’s resolve may be touch to match, but his Double Comma Met status isn’t unprecedented.
Mike Jorgensen 1968, 1970–1971, 1980–1983
Jorgy, as he was known, had some bad timing from a Met perspective. Earned a glimpse as a twenty-year-old phenom at the tail end of 1968, but was handed a Comma the following season, ensuring he couldn’t claim even a little piece of 1969. He got a long look in the two years that followed. Mike (a Queens native, no less) loomed as a potential first baseman of the Met future but, along with Ken Singleton and Tim Foli, was sent to Montreal on the eve of the 1972 season for future Comma Met Rusty Staub. Staub helped lead the Mets to their 1973 pennant. Could have Jorgensen and the other youngsters have done something similar and maybe more?
That’s not a matter for Commas. That’s for question marks and, maybe, ellipses to discern.
Mike Jorgensen would return to the Mets for the 1980 season (as Tim Foli did in 1978–1979) and contribute to the Magic Is Back revival of June with a game-winning grand slam against the Dodgers. His glove was as golden as ever but as he hung on as a pinch-hitter and defensive replacement — which first baseman/Comma Met Dave Kingman definitely required — the Mets didn’t tangibly improve. In fact, the move that pushed the Mets toward legitimate contention is the one that pushed Mike Jorgensen out of Flushing for good. The Mets acquired first baseman Keith Hernandez on June 15, 1983. Keith Hernandez rendered obsolete the concept of a defensive replacement at first base. Thus, on the same day Mex became a Met, Jorgensen was sold to Atlanta, meaning he again missed the chance to participate in some of the best Met years ever.
Jim Gosger 1969, 1973–1974
But the key, from our perspective, is to participate as a Met, period. Two Commas are on the verge of being issued as this spring winds down. If the Met record books are adorned by them, it will represent a triumph of the human spirit as much as punctuation.
Daniel Murphy 2008–2009
Murph seems assured of earning his Comma. He was never supposed to be straining for one so soon. The kid will be 26 on Opening Night and he’ll be very happy to celebrate it on the Met bench at Sun Life Stadium if he can’t do so in the field. The field hasn’t been Murphy’s best friend since he proved inadequate in left, superfluous at first and unsuited for second. And the basepaths that have eaten him alive. He suffered a season-delaying injury just about a year ago between third and home, and then another that took him out completely when a baserunner’s unsportsmanlike slide (to put it kindly) ended his year at Buffalo.
When Murphy makes the Mets this week and gets his first at-bat over the weekend, he earns his Comma. There’ll be no 2010 on his Met line, which no doubt hurt while he was missing it, but in the long run, he didn’t really miss anything.
Jason Isringhausen 1995–1997, 1999
A Comma wouldn’t be anything new to Izzy, having endured a route similar to Pulsipher’s when he was young and his future was limitless. He missed most of 1997 and then all of 1998 before a truncated return to his original team in ’99.
A dozen years later, Isringhausen’s almost pitched his way back in. If he makes it — elbow troubles and contract conflicts might prevent a happy ending — he’ll go to the front of the Comma Met class in one sense. By potentially appearing as a Met twelve season since last appearing as a Met, Izzy would break the record set by Original Met Bob L. Miller in 1973 and tied by Kelly Stinnett in 2006. Stinnett was a backup catcher in 1994–1995 and then went on his merry journeyman way until just enough things went awry to reinsert him behind the plate as the Mets were about to clinch their most recent division title. Kelly’s homecoming flew under radar in plain sight. Izzy’s, on the other hand, has been a very sweet story. It would be nice if it could continue.
Even if, eventually, the en-dash closes on every Met’s career.
by Greg Prince on 26 March 2011 8:49 am Fall was when the leaves fell and you had to go back to school.
Winter was when it was cold and snowy and you were still in school.
Spring was when it got warm again and you were still in school.
Summer was hot and sunny and lasted about fifteen minutes.
—Brendan C. Boyd and Fred Harris, The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book
Spring began nearly a week ago. It was 26 degrees this morning anyway. We convince ourselves that Pitchers & Catchers means spring. But then it’s still as likely to be 26 degrees as it is anything else. We ratchet up our excitement incrementally when position players report; when full-squad workouts commence; when Sandy Koufax alights from the heavens and lays his immortal left paw on this year’s southpaw reclamation project; when an intrasquad scrimmage ensues; when the inevitable pros vs. college boys score filters northward; and when, at last, the Mets play another major league team in a game that counts for absolutely nothing.
And it’s still 26 degrees. The Mets play the Marlins. They play the Nationals. They play the Braves. They play the Cardinals. They mix in a few other teams just to say they have, but mostly they play the Marlins and the Nationals, the Braves and the Cardinals. The Mets who we’re sure will be Mets play for two innings, three innings, five innings at most. By the sixth inning, No. 79 is pitching and No. 97 is around in right. We sort of pay attention to what’s going on but we sort of don’t, because we know No. 79 and No. 97 will probably never have names on their backs where we can see them.
And it’s still 26 degrees. The regulars play longer. There are fewer higher numbers. There are fewer bodies in general. The feature stories about what the old vet did to get in shape over the winter and how the young phenom plans to prove he was no fluke fade. Now everything is about Getting Ready and Getting This Over and paring down the roster that once brimmed with possibilities but is now coming into focus. Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two spots are set. Now it’s just a matter of who’s that eleventh or twelfth pitcher; who’s that extra infielder who can maybe fill in in left; who’s got an option; who’s got an out; who’s fully healthy; and who, heaven forbid, needs to start the season on the DL.
And it’s still 26 degrees.
Spring Training began more than a month before spring. Spring has been actual spring for nearly a week but you couldn’t tell from stepping outside. It couldn’t be staler, the whole thing. Yet you also have this: In less than a week — six days! — the kabuki is over. The Mets will still be playing the Marlins, except there will be no Digital Domain and you won’t hear of anyone named Roger Dean. You don’t know what the stadium will be called by the time you tune in, but the Mets will be playing at the actual home of the Florida Marlins. And it will count. They’ll play on Friday night and again on Saturday night and then on Sunday afternoon. They’ll all count. Come the following Tuesday, the Mets will be in Philadelphia, which usually sounds gruesome but right now sounds glorious. Three games there and then it’s the Mets’ turn to be home, first of 81 times.
It’s coming. It really is. It’s still 26 degrees, but it won’t be forever.
by Greg Prince on 24 March 2011 8:29 pm Was on another Mets-arranged blogger conference call with Sandy Alderson tonight. Of course those are splendid opportunities for the likes of we who write about the Mets yet traditionally haven’t been considered Mets writers. Downside is you’re on the phone with 15, 20 other bloggers. They’re not downers by any means — to the contrary, they’re solid folks with solid blogs who ask very solid questions.
Too solid, maybe, for by the time I get to ask one question and one question only (per the rules), some questions that were burning a hole in my mind have already gotten asked. What fun is that? So when my turn came up, I scrapped my incisive queries on second base and Rule V in order to avoid redundancy. I went instead for the semi-philosophical, wondering aloud to the general manager of the New York Mets if he was feeling substantially less like an outsider than he did when he took the job and started answering questions from curious New York Mets writers, New York Mets fans and everybody else up here with a passion for the New York Mets.
Five months in, I’m still getting used to Sandy Alderson being the individual with his hands on the wheel of my fan fate. That’s not to say I miss Omar Minaya in any way, shape or form (you know what I’m sayin’?). It’s just that Sandy still has that new GM smell to me…not 100% Met, not quite broken in, not quite yet. Specifically, then, I wanted to know how much does he still feel like a stranger in a strange land — could there be any stranger land to a savvy baseball man than Metsopotamia? — or is the transition complete and are the New York Mets, for lack of a less dramatic term, Sandy Alderson’s team?
“There’s still a little getting-used-to-itness,” is how the general manager put it, going on to explain what a big help the concentrated nature of Spring Training is in melting away lingering unfamiliarity. The focus for six weeks is baseball, baseball and, as much as it can be when you’re talking about the Mets, nothing but baseball. Everybody’s together by necessity, thus it’s something of a de facto corporate retreat every day (my phrase, not his).
The major league staff is in one place. The PR staff is in one place. The training staff is in one place. Alderson gets to see more of the minor league staff than he will for the rest of he season. “Cross-fertilization” occurs and newness evolves into a comfort level. Everybody becomes “knit together” as a unit. This is all very positive to building an organization.
And, he added, it helps that in Port St. Lucie, “there’s not a lot to do.”
All these years, it never occurred to me the legendary dullness of what Marty Noble termed “Port St. Lonesome” was a Met asset. Maybe the problem was the Mets never treated it as one. Goodness knows clusters of Mets have found trouble hard by those swamps and pizza parlor parking lots. yet maybe Alderson and his lieutenants have unlocked a secret about the place where bowling is king when baseball is over. Maybe it’s great that the Mets are relatively isolated from the more intriguing aspects of civilization. Maybe they’re really getting to know each other and their craft that much better because that part of Florida has nothing much to recommend it.
This afternoon, the Mets pounded out 16 runs and 23 hits. Could it be an outgrowth of St. Lonesome’s godforsaken nature? Do they know each other’s tendencies extra well because few other interesting people cross their paths with distractions like lively conversation? Are they so bored from playing basically the same four teams that they’ve come to like and rely on each other more than the average team that plays in a hotbed of temptation like Kissimmee? What are they mixing into the shooters at Duffy’s and why has it given everybody a keener batting eye?
The chamber of commerce may not care for the characterization that there’s not a lot to do in St. Lucie, but Sandy Alderson’s endorsement may be the best advertisement I’ve ever heard for it.
Expansive transcript from the conference call, covering all the bases, available at MetsBlog and Amazin’ Avenue.
by Greg Prince on 24 March 2011 1:58 pm In addition to falling into the second base job (because legally you can’t just place an orange traffic cone between short and first), Brad Emaus seems to be the frontrunner for an award that is probably no more familiar to you than, well, Brad Emaus. He certainly qualifies as the favorite, which speaks less for Emaus and more for the lack of competition — sort of like second base.
Sometime in the next week it is likely to be announced Emaus, or Lucas Duda, or maybe Pedro Beato or…can’t think of anybody else…has been voted recipient of the John J. Murphy Memorial Award, given annually to the top rookie in Mets camp.
I’ve been assured the award still gets announced, as it has most every year since 1972, but word doesn’t seem to readily seep out about it. Last year’s winner was…ya don’t remember, do ya? Don’t feel bad. I missed it entirely when it came down, and I pay attention to this stuff. The 2010 John J. Murphy Memorial Award, as voted on by the members of the media who cover Mets Spring Training like a tarp, was Ike Davis. Ike enjoyed a hellacious spring a year ago — batting .480, socking three homers, driving in ten runs — and won an all-expenses-paid trip to Buffalo to start the season.
When the Murphy — named for the general manager who helped build the 1969 World Series champs and died the following offseason — was first instituted, the winner received a Omega Dynamic wristwatch from the good folks at Clive Jewelers. It was a big enough deal that the New York Times reported not just the announcement that John Milner was the inaugural recipient, but the statistics that earned it (.296, 3 HR, 12 RBI) and the vote total (Hammer 8, Buzz Capra 2) that made it official.
It was never much more than a one-day blurb, befitting anything that happens in Spring Training. By the time the real season began, it was something for Ralph, Bob or Lindsey to mention a couple of times, and then it would be tucked into the press guide for posterity. Still, I always liked to learn who won it. It used to be a staple of late March and early April Met reportage.
Has it proved predictive of rookie success? Sometimes. Milner had a fine rookie campaign in 1972, though interestingly, his teammate Jon Matlack, who received no Murphy support in spring, won the National League Rookie of the Year Award (while Milner placed third). No offense to Clive Jewelers, but that’s a more impressive piece of hardware. Darryl Strawberry, who had to endure an Ikelike detour to the minors before taking the Senior Circuit by storm in 1983, pulled down the only Murphy-ROTY double win in Met history. Dwight Gooden, Rookie of the Year by November 1984, however, was aced out of the John J. Murphy in March by Ron Darling…who would go onto finish fifth in N.L. Rookie balloting.
Other Murphy winners who garnered Rookie of the Year support included Roger McDowell (1985) and Kevin Mitchell (1986) in addition to Davis. Conversely, some of the more noteworthy Mets rookie outings of the past four decades were overshadowed in the runup to Opening Day. Hubie Brooks’s 1981 was stellar (.307 batting average, third to Fernando Valenzuela and Tim Raines in Rookie of the Year balloting), but it was Tim Leary’s sensational spring that attracted Murphy voters (en route to his career-altering injury in the chill of Wrigley Field on Opening weekend of that fateful April). Gregg Jefferies won ROTY votes in both 1988 and 1989 yet in neither spring did he take home the Murphy, coming in behind Kevin Elster in ’88 and Mr. March himself, Darren Reed, in ’89. Jason Isringhausen would spring to rookie prominence in the summer of ’95, but it was Edgardo Alfonzo who carried the month of April the year Spring Training was strike-delayed. And when David Wright was first opening eyes in March 2004, it was the legendary Orber Moreno who put up what was judged the superior spring.
Moreno’s Murphy was presumably the only award the forsaken righthander ever won at the major league level (on the other hand, Orber pitched in 40 more games than I ever will). He beat out not only Wright but Kaz Matsui, which was probably a bad sign for Kaz — and if you’re thinking maybe Kaz wasn’t considered rookie enough for John J. Murphy voters because he wasn’t “really” a rookie, Japanese league veteran Tsuyoshi Shinjo won the award in 2001, as did Masato Yoshii in 1998.
Is Orber Moreno the most obscure John J. Murphy winner? Define obscure. These are the Mets, and their media horde has also been blinded by the Florida light provided by the likes of Mike Bruhert (1978), Mario Ramirez (1980), Doug Simons (the Emausish Rule V draftee who shared JJM jubilation with Pete Schourek in 1991; Ron Gardenhire and Charlie Puleo were the other co-winners, in 1982), Mike Draper (another Rule V’er, in 1993), Steve Bieser (1997) and fellow Subway Series hero Dae-Sung Koo (2005). Kelvin Chapman was so dazzling in St. Pete in March 1979 that he won not only the Murphy but the second base job, making him the last second baseman with zero major league experience to start for the Mets there since (presumably) Emaus. Kelvin proved not so hot at second in ’79, but redeemed his Murphyness five years later when he re-emerged from the discard bin to serve as Wally Backman’s effective platoon partner for parts of two contending seasons.
Some Murphmeisters, as in the case of Strawberry and Davis, don’t make the team out of spring but make a mark later. Jose Reyes won the award in 2002 as a 18-year-old, but wouldn’t see the Mets for another year (nobody won the award in 2003, the second time in the bling’s history that happened; a labor-stoppage curtailed Spring Training in 1976, and no award was given then, either). Jon Niese, at 21, whetted Met appetites with a strong spring in 2008 then disappeared into the minors until September. Melvin Mora tore up St. Lucie in the March of ’99, but wasn’t truly ready for his closeup until October 3 of that magical year. Others who left a calling card the previous September — Lee Mazzilli in 1976, Anthony Young in 1991 — maintained their cup-of-coffee momentum and seized the Murph the following spring.
Only one winner of the John J. Murphy Memorial Award never saw game action in the regular season, not as a Met, not as anything. Yet he had more big hits than Ramirez, Reed and Chapman combined: the 2000 recipient of the award, Garth Brooks.
Yes, Spring Training games are taken so seriously within the industry that a celebrity who alighted in Mets camp on a goodwill, fundraising mission on behalf of his charitable foundation…a country music megastar who went 0-for-17 in exhibition games…was voted the top rookie in Mets camp.
Did it do any harm? Other than to the psyche of Jason Tyner and any other freshman hoping to make a meaningful impression that spring? Well, the Mets were so distracted by Brooks’s participation in their contests that they went out and won the National League pennant in 2000. Through his visibility in March ballgames, Brooks’s Touch ’Em All Foundation elicited the aid of 120 MLB players and millions more dollars for his philanthropic endeavors. Upon Brooks’s departure from St. Lucie, Bobby Valentine referred to Garth as “one of the most special people I’ve ever been around”.
Garth Brooks was a bigger attraction than Mike Piazza that March. He didn’t contribute to a single Mets win, but essentially nobody minded. He didn’t collect one lousy single, yet they were happy to present him with a trophy (prior to the Home Opener, no less). Hard-bitten writers and broadcasters looked past his 0-for-17 and went along 100% with the spirit of his briefly “being” a Met.
By next week, we’ll know the identity of this year’s John J. Murphy Memorial Award winner. And by the week after, we’ll have probably forgotten. In the meantime, in case you’re tempted to take any Grapefruit League result close to heart in the next several days, remember that Garth Brooks once won an award that Hubie Brooks didn’t, and it wasn’t a Grammy.
by Jason Fry on 23 March 2011 10:56 pm The idea that there can be losses that are also moral victories is a trap sentimental sports fans need to avoid: Nobody gets an extra win because they had an exceptional year in the LMV column. But chiefly in March, there is such a thing as a clarifying loss.
You know what I mean: You hear that the Mets have lost a spring-training game, and your first thought isn’t about the W-L record or the standings or the upcoming schedule. It’s to hope is that some scrub got pounded or made a frightful error. Let the blame fall on a poor schmo with a number in the 70s whose real clock doesn’t start for a couple of years yet, or on some moth-eaten veteran in camp for a sympathetic look-see, or on some replacement-level player who doesn’t particularly matter in the moderate scheme of things.
For instance, today: The Cardinals beat the Mets, 5-3, in a game I saw not one second of. R.A. Dickey did just fine, giving up one earned run in 5 1/3. The goat was Manny Acosta, helped out by Luis Hernandez, who made an error. Tim Byrdak pitched OK. And that’s a wrap, Mets fans.
Manny Acosta is eminently replaceable, a one-pitch reliever. Luis Hernandez is the kind of player so beloved by Omar Minaya that it’s a miracle he isn’t stuck with an option giving him $3 million if he has 11 at-bats. It’s never fun losing a game, but if you’re going to, best to have the loss be one in which on-the-bubble relievers and interchangeable middle infielders are the guys who lose it.
I’m not claiming this is science — spring training is entirely too small a sample size to be worthy of the term — but it’s clarifying. In all likelihood, that’s farewell Manny Acosta to the waiver wire, reducing the derby for last reliever to Izzy, Pat Misch and Blaine Boyer. And Hernandez’s gaffe should make Brad Emaus’s road clearer. Two fewer questions and a day closer to games that count.
You can have clarifying losses from April through October, too — of course. But those leave a mark. As losses go, I like these better.
by Greg Prince on 23 March 2011 6:22 am Even though Andy Martino asserts we’re racist, Mike Vaccaro implies we’re idiots and a market research company concludes we’re more fickle than Philadelphians, I still believe in us. I maintain bedrock faith in the faith of the Mets fan. I have a lifetime of experience as a Mets fan among Mets fans to back me up, but just as assuring, I have three examples handy of the depth and suppleness of the Mets fan mind at work.
You should have them, too.
Two annual publications and one commemorative book are out and I urge you to obtain all three: read them, absorb them, keep them close by, refer to them often. They’re not simply informative. They are, both in terms of quality and in the context of our times (or at least this week), revelatory.
What I like about Maple Street Press Mets Annual 2011; Amazin’ Avenue: The Mets 2011 Preview; and New York Mets: 50 Amazin’ Seasons is they are the brainchildren of Mets fans and largely the handicraft of Mets fans. The contents, therefore, are honest, analytical, entertaining, incisive and did I mention honest? That’s the thing about Mets fans. Give them free editorial rein and they don’t rah-rah you into sugar shock. Mets fans lack an amen corner. We’re too self-aware for that. Perhaps it’s why our best face isn’t always instantly interpreted by the world at large as one capable of smiling, laughing and enjoying our team over the very long haul.
We do. We really do. We just know too much to do it brainlessly and breezily. It’s why we write so much. It’s why what we, as a people, write is so often compelling to read. It’s what makes each of the editions alluded to here must-haves.
Maple Street and Amazin’ Avenue are season previews, per se, but don’t think their usefulness expires once Spring Training ends. The history sections alone make them keepers. It’s history processed and related by Mets fans for Mets fans. As is the case when Mets fans get together to talk, nothing is spoon-fed nor sanitized. You come away informed, not snowed. Amazin’ Avenue, in particular, dares to venture into the outside world a good bit for targeted third-party viewpoints of pressing Met issues and puts those perspectives to good use, but overall, whether it’s the state of the Mets in 2011 or what the hell the Mets were thinking in some other year, you have the sense that the editors have our interests at heart. In a cold, cruel, not always blue and orange universe, it’s a comforting feeling.
As for New York Mets: 50 Amazin’ Seasons, prepare to immerse yourself completely in a galaxy that is nothing but blue and orange (and, yes, a little black since 1998). To call it a coffee table book is to unnecessarily glorify coffee tables. This is a Mets book, through and through. This is practically the Mets Museum if you can’t make it out to Citi Field on a given evening. The reason it transcends attractive design (though it is attractively designed) is it was put together by a grade-A Mets fan who took not one iota of his assignment lightly.
Matthew Silverman has been through this terrain before, as the author of Mets Essential and 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die and editor of The Miracle Has Landed and, come to think of it, Maple Street Press Mets Annual. When you pick up this new volume, you realize it was all leading up to 50 Amazin’ Seasons, wherein every damn one of them is covered lovingly, thoughtfully and, yes, critically. Matt knows his stuff like few Mets fans I know, and he worries about his stuff enough to get it right. Inside this lavishly illustrated book, he practically recreates a half-century of good and bad, of hope and dismay, of, well, faith and fear. Matt absolutely gets what has made the Mets the Mets since their DNA commenced to coalescing with the departures of the Giants and Dodgers and he carries that ethos of “getting it” clear to the present.
I’m enhanced by having all three of these titles in my baseball library. You will be, too.
Semi-disclaimer: I wrote an article for Maple Street Press, as did Jason; we co-wrote another piece for Amazin’ Avenue. And Matthew was kind enough to acknowledge me in 50 Amazin’ Years. These glowing recommendations, however, are based on the entirety of the above works, surely not merely our contributions.
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