The blog for Mets fans
who like to read
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.
Got something to say? Leave a comment, or email us at faithandfear@gmail.com. (Sorry, but we have no interest in ads, sponsored content or guest posts.)
Need our RSS feed? It's here.
Visit our Facebook page, or drop by the personal pages for Greg and Jason.
Or follow us on Twitter: Here's Greg, and here's Jason.
|
by Jason Fry on 21 March 2011 11:25 pm Back in mid-February, we all pretty much knew Luis Castillo and Oliver Perez were going to be released. Which, come mid-March, led some of us to wonder what the heck was taking so long — and to start concocting the usual woe-is-me Mets fan scenarios. The Wilpons won’t allow Sandy to eat those contracts. Slappy will hang around forever because Murphy and Emaus and Turner and Hernandez look so bad. Ollie will do just decently enough to make the roster, ensuring that he will suck harder than the mutant bastard child of Doug Sisk and Rich Rodriguez, while Jason Isringhausen signs on with the Yankees and pairs with Feliciano to be deadly setup men. We are dooooooomed.
Eh, whatever.
Maybe I’m just still starry-eyed that my team is no longer run by executives who made it rain with ridiculous option years, but I think Sandy & Co. knew exactly what they were doing, and handled the departure of Castillo and Perez capably and professionally. They had at least three constituencies to satisfy, and they managed to do right by all of them.
Fans. We were the easiest. We wanted Luis and Ollie gone, and as long as that got done before we started panicking en masse that maybe it wouldn’t get done, we were going to wind up satisfied. Everything before that point was noise, and not to be worried about. Heck, it gave us something to do: Fan anxiety helps pass the time when there’s nothing else to talk about except dead-arm periods and St. Patrick’s Day hats.
Ownership. The new regime communicated clearly to the first 637,240 people who asked that they were allowed to ditch bad contracts, and a certain firmness of tone to the answers strongly suggested that bad contracts would indeed be ditched. All the same, general managers in that position have a decidedly unenviable task when talking to ownership. “You know those truckloads of money you let my predecessor give to crappy players, making 100% of the media and 90% of the fans say that you’re dumb as a rock? I want to release those guys so everybody talks about how dumb you are all over again, and you’ll have to keep paying those crappy players to play for somebody else for basically nothing, and it’s possible they might have decent years and beat us and then everybody will say you’re even dumber.” Would you like to deliver that message? Me neither. The Alderson regime waited long enough so that the media didn’t instantly demand to know why Omar hadn’t been allowed to turf the Terrible Two, gave the Wilpons sufficiently long looks at Luis and Ollie to make it clear that they deserved what they were getting, and waited long enough for credible alternatives to suggest themselves. (It would be easier if some second baseman was tearing it up, but things aren’t always easy.)
Players. You think it’s easy being an incumbent Mets second baseman and knowing Brad Emaus is in camp at the urging of an Alderson lieutenant — Brad Emaus who has never done anything to make people at Citi Field boo him? Even if you aren’t an incumbent second baseman, you think it’s easy knowing you’re a product of the tainted old regime, and the new men in charge never saw you hit that walk-off or work extra in the cage or drill to improve your footwork? The new bosses gave Luis and Ollie every chance — something Luis may not have wanted to admit, but Perez did. They didn’t cut them loose for vengeful political reasons (though if I were Sandy, I would have bit my lip about Luis and fan reaction), they actually used them in spring training instead of half-heartedly running them out there alongside guys wearing pinned-on numbers, and they even did what they could to minimize the humiliation of being pink-slipped. Mets present and future will have taken note.
Yes, the Mets seem to have finally grasped the principle of sunk costs, and stopped wasting two roster spots. For which the cheers have been well-deserved. But they’ve also walked through a minefield and gotten to the other side unscathed. That deserves cheers too.
by Greg Prince on 21 March 2011 11:01 am Some Mets I can’t wait to see go. Roberto Alomar in 2003, T#m Gl@v!ne in 2007, Luis Castillo from June 12, 2009 to last Friday…those departures represented addition in my soul via subtraction from the squad. I didn’t much want to pull for them as Mets and I was eventually delivered from that basic responsibility of fandom. There simply came a juncture with all three when the mere sight of each in the uniform of the team I’d called my own since I was six years old saddened to sickened me. It transcended the “surely we can do better for a catcher than Brian Schneider” judgment, wherein you’d like to see a severely limited player replaced by a potentially higher-ceilinged one. You want to root for every Met, yet sometimes it just feels wrong to have to root for someone you have no rooting interest in.
It wasn’t that way with Ollie Perez. Mind you, I’m plenty happy that he’s been instructed to receive his $12 million at an address that isn’t the New York Mets clubhouse. I’m relieved that the new regime extricated itself from somebody else’s lingering mistake. I’m elated, really, that the “24 + 1” construction that became necessary last year when Ollie wouldn’t accept a Bobby Jones/Steve Trachsel-style fix-trip to the minors won’t occur this year. We may have lousy pitchers in the pen in 2011, but we won’t be shackled to them the point of utter uselessness.
Still, I’m not overcome by the urge to dash into Times Square and kiss the first pretty nurse I encounter now that Oliver Perez has been released. I liked Ollie — or wanted to — until he rejected taking the team-first tack of attempting to sort out his continual pitching woes at Buffalo for a few weeks. Would it have worked? We’ll never know. It surely didn’t work having him around cluttering up the roster. He surely couldn’t consistently get batters out for two full seasons. Whether he was acting out of insecurity or selfishness or principle, I lost most of my sympathy for his (well-compensated) plight when he wouldn’t try to partake of a latter-day Norfolk Miracle Cure.
Nevertheless, Perez showed up to camp this spring and I thought maybe he could get some of it back, provide a fraction of the effective innings he gave us in the desperate hours of October 2006 and then often enough in 2007 and 2008 so that he cashed in come 2009. He was never going to be a Mets starter again, but I bought into his potential as a reliever. He wasn’t so old. His success wasn’t so far removed from the present. He had been a lefty with baffling stuff. That’s always too enticing to dismiss cavalierly.
It didn’t happen for him, not how it had to. At his best this month, he flashed signs of adequacy. Then Saturday, facing successive righties on the Nationals, he provided a strain of rocket fuel that the engineers at nearby Cape Canaveral must have envied when trails of it appeared in the Space Coast sky. I have to confess I kind of involuntarily clapped when Jeff Frazier and Brian Bixler took him deep and deeper because I could hear the Band-Aid being ripped off in two easy swipes. It was inevitable Ollie would be going. Now the moment would have to be at hand.
Released from the Mets, Ollie can move on (if, in fact, his Blassification isn’t irreversible) and so can we. We are suddenly blessed with a team from which we’re not sitting around waiting for extractions. We’re not reminding each other and anybody who’ll listen that $18 million spent on Castillo and Perez is spent whether they’re here to soak it up or not. Two guys who aren’t them will be here instead. On the first actual day of spring, that’s as fresh a start as we can ask for.
The Mets might be better in 2011 than they were in 2010. They might be worse. They might be tangibly the same when 162 games are over. Right now, however, they feel different in a very good way. I’m beginning to get a grasp on this year’s model. Up until recently, the names that bubbled up from the bargain bin — Young, Capuano, Harris, Hairston, Byrdak — represented a blur of austere allocation and indifferent aspiration. Now they, combined with those who carry on from seasons past, are the Mets to me. There’s nobody here I’m wishing would get lost, which in itself is kind of new: new and most welcome. I haven’t liked not being behind everybody on my team. It’s not why I decided to have a team to call mine.
Let’s Go Mets. All of them.
by Jason Fry on 19 March 2011 12:18 pm For several years now Topps has released a set it calls Heritage, spotlighting modern players on card designs from the past.
Depending on how these have been handled, my reaction has varied from “that’s cool” to “that’s a cynical cash grab.” But 2011 Topps Heritage? It’s an absolute winner, because the approach to the cards and history — specifically Mets history — is pitch-perfect.
  First off, the cards themselves. They’re done in the wood-grain style of the ’62 cards, and produced using plain old cardstock. They aren’t glossy, or festooned with holograms, or otherwise Jetsonized in some unfortunate way. Yes, there are some acknowledgments of the modern age: They have a (subtle) Topps Heritage logo, they say New York Mets® instead of N.Y. Mets, and the backs have a bunch of lawyerese, a web address, and the logos of MLB and the MLBPA instead of the ’nuff-said © T. C. G. P R I N T E D I N U. S. A. of another age. But that’s admissible — when nostalgia won’t be satisfied with anything less than perfect recreation, it’s crossed the line into mania.
The images are great too — they have that simultaneously static yet rich painterly quality of old Topps cards, and the poses are static, not action frames captured with a close-to-lightspeed modern shutter. The backs are wonderfully reproduced, too, with statistics boiled down to a brusque YEAR and LIFE and the little cartoons terrific recreations of a half-century-old style. (If you’re curious why Topps originally opted for YEAR instead of 1961, the answer was so holdover packs of ’62 cards might still sell in ’63.)
But here’s where it starts getting really good. There are 16 Mets in the ’11 Heritage set, plus two Rookie Parade cards featuring Jenrry Mejia and Mike Nickeas (first Met card!) as disembodied heads alongside those of other aspiring pitchers and catchers. Of the 16 Mets, nine are hatless, staring past the camera with the red badges of cap marks on their foreheads and vaguely sheepish expressions. Only one of the guys in a cap is visible to the waist.
The hatless shot is an old Topps standby, taken so a Topps artist could mock up a new uniform (sometimes with comical results) in case of a trade or some other move. There are hatless guys on other teams in ’11 Heritage, but a hasty and admittedly unscientific look around eBay finds many more hatless Mets.
This almost certainly isn’t a mistake or a statistical quirk: It’s Topps knowing its history, and offering an additional homage to 1962. Then, of course, the Mets were a brand-new team, with a dearth of photographs of players in heretofore-unseen blue and orange. Topps had to populate its Mets set with shots of guys in their old uniforms, and that was easiest if hatless shots were used. The ’62 Topps set has 21 guys and three Rookie Parade cards. Of the 21, 16 are hatless, three are wearing hats with the team logos removed, one guy (Al Jackson) wears a Mets hat, and one guy (Ed Bouchee) appears in full uniform. (For the trivia-minded, Don Zimmer wears a Mets hat on a Cin. Reds card, while Bobby Gene Smith wears Mets gear on a Cardinal card, but his cap is angled so you can’t see the NY.)
The percentages aren’t exact, but Topps has got the spirit wonderfully right. After I decided I loved the set, I spent 20 minutes irritably hunting around on eBay and the web looking for the Mets team card. Had Topps forgotten it? No, they hadn’t — I was the forgetful one. The ’62 Mets hadn’t had a team card. And so neither do the ’11 Mets.
Appropriately then, my hat’s off to them.
(Happy aside: The ’11 Heritage set, like us, also lacks Luis Castillo.)
by Greg Prince on 18 March 2011 11:45 am  Kiss me! Luis Castillo has been released! By noon on Friday almost every man, woman and child in Metsopotamia was sure the war on second base was over. But most felt that they already lived through a sort of V-E-4 week, and across the great Roosevelt Avenue of Queens there was only a little cheering. In Woodside a housewife telephoned a newspaper: “Shall I go ahead and bake a pie for tomorrow?” In Astoria, N.Y., as in most of the Metropolitan Area’s towns and villages, it was another Friday and another washday. But on this Friday, Astoria got the news that four more second basemen were still in a battle.
In Manhattan, the most effervescent Metsopotamia borough, the carnival sights and sounds bubbled spontaneously, then subsided, then fizzed again. For a while on Friday, torn paper and ticker tape by the ton fluttered from skyscrapers, and the streets turned white. Half a million people clotted Times Square, sober and undemonstrative, waiting for somebody to start the fun. Nobody did.
The people milled for five hours, until in late afternoon Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s voice barked over a loudspeaker: “Go home … or return to your jobs.” Most of the people drifted away. The flags over Citi Field, half-staffed since the Wilpons began seeking minority partners, fluttered limply.
In the interest of accuracy, the above is a doctored description from Time magazine, May 1945, detailing America’s reaction to V-E Day as World War II neared an end. The news that’s just come down regarding the release of Luis Castillo may not be viewed in some quarters as quite so momentous, yet it does feel epic. One is tempted to note Castillo’s occupation of second base in Flushing lasted about as long as America’s involvement in the European Theatre, but let’s maintain some sense of proportion here.
Luis Castillo: not a scourge, not a villain, surely not a war criminal, just an overpaid, underperforming second baseman who (save for being in the right place at the right time with the rightest contract imaginable) couldn’t catch a break in New York. He certainly couldn’t catch a pop fly in the Bronx.
Luis Castillo: vouched for, practically up to the moment it was reported the Mets were surrendering to common sense, as a decent fellow who didn’t deserve to be disdained so vociferously. A former colleague of mine who grew up during World War II used to remind me that “hate is for Hitler.” Well…yeah. I didn’t hate Luis Castillo. I disliked his being signed to the MegaMillions Jackpot and waited for the day someone would redraw the roster so he wouldn’t be on it anymore. And now it is done.
When I first found out, I wanted to bolt straight into Times Square and kiss the first pretty nurse I saw, but then I remembered that (besides being married) the iconic image to which I refer occurred in response to V-J Day, three months after V-E Day. That was when the war was over in Japan, thus over for good. Here on V-E-4 Day, we can rejoice that Luis Castillo is no longer in the running to play second base for the New York Mets in 2011, but it’s not like we have achieved peace in our time, either.
Murphy…Emaus…Hernandez…Turner. Right now, it reads like a platoon of earnest grunts who are about to be ambushed by an enemy barrage of breaking balls out of the zone and sharp grounders in the hole.
Godspeed, boys. Godspeed.
by Greg Prince on 17 March 2011 12:52 pm  Sharon Chapman took the FAFIF wristband to the Top of the Rock (by stairs!) in February. March 17 seems like an ideal day to recall Met reliever extraordinaire Tug McGraw, who was known to enjoy every day like it was St. Patrick’s Day. Our friend Sharon Chapman has done a phenomenal job of keeping his memory alive by running in several events as a member of Team McGraw, raising funds for the Tug McGraw Foundation’s fight against brain cancer. She’ll be running that way again this season in Philadelphia (of all places) during the Broad Street Run on May 1. As well, Sharon will be sporting the same cap Tug wore from 1965 through 1974 and her Faith and Fear wristband, which makes us a little extra proud. Read more about the great work of the Tug McGraw Foundation here and donate whatever you can, if you can, here.
In the meantime, we wish Sharon the luck of the Irish and everybody else this weekend in the New York City Half Marathon.
by Jason Fry on 16 March 2011 1:20 am Depending on what you read, Johan Santana either remains on pace for a return in July or is actually already dead and the Mets are just covering it up.
Oliver Perez, meanwhile, continues to show unmistakable symptoms of being still around, a malady the Mets should probably cure.
Stillarounditis also continues to be exhibited by Luis Castillo, who hasn’t been medevac’d out of here mostly because no one else has shown any particular talent for playing second base. Not Daniel Murphy, the People’s Cherce despite an uncertain pedigree. Not Brad Emaus, who arrived with a Ricciardi stamp of approval but hasn’t hit. Not Luis Hernandez, appointed the starter by the New York Post but not apparently by Terry Collins. Not Jordany Valdespin, because the Mets appear to have learned their lesson about wasting a year of development, particularly for young players whose names are hell to spellcheck. Not Ruben Tejada, whose skills with the leather aren’t matched (yet) by utility with a length of ash. Not Justin Turner, Nick Evans’ed last year for no apparent reason.
If second base is the disease, we don’t seem to be getting any closer to the cure.
And heck, Willie Harris and Ike Davis have even been in traffic accidents.
As for the club’s financial health, don’t ask.
But lest you think Alderson & Co. have inherited not only bad contracts but also the grim little black cloud that’s followed the Mets around since September 2007, look west, at the other Florida coast.
This is what’s happened to the Phillies so far this spring:
Chase Utley — bad knee, is yet to appear in a spring-training game.
Domonic Brown — broken hamate bone (a bone that only exists to sideline baseball players), surgery, out for a month.
Brad Lidge — biceps tendinitis.
Placido Polanco — hyperextended elbow.
And Cliff Lee and Antonio Bastardo shut down their offseason regimens at certain points before camp.
None of this is desperate news for the Phillies just yet. Their pitching staff is still enviably deep and strong. And they battled a rash of injuries early in 2010 and came through it all just fine. But if what was happening in Clearwater was happening in Port St. Lucie, we’d be near-deaf from the lamentations and thuds of chest-beating, and getting ready to boo the trainers again.
Bad stuff happens to everybody. Even teams that aren’t the Mets.
by Greg Prince on 14 March 2011 7:07 pm “Mr. Met, can you come in for a minute?”
“Sure!”
“Have a seat.”
“What’s up?”
“Well, Mr. Met, you know we might be having some problems selling tickets this season.”
“Really? That sounds unlikely.”
“Believe it or not, Mr. Met, not everybody’s as big a Mets fan as you.”
“I don’t see why not. I love the Mets! They’re all I think about.”
“That’s why we love you, Mr. Met. And that’s why real Mets fans love you, too.”
“You’re too kind. How can I help with the ticket situation?”
“See, that’s so Mr. Met of you. I just mention there might be a problem, and you don’t wait to be asked what to do about it. That’s why we didn’t wait to ask.”
“Oh? Whad’dya do?”
“We created Mr. Met’s Landing.”
“Mr. Met’s Landing? Hey, that’s me! Tell me what that is!”
“It’s real nice. It’s Sections 338 and 339. In Left Field Landing. Except now it’s Mr. Met’s Landing — not the whole thing, just those two sections.”
“Gee, I’m honored!”
“Tickets will be ten bucks for kids, twenty bucks for adults — every game…except for the Marquee games.”
“Well, those are Marquee games.”
“Exactly what we were thinking. Then it’s $20 for kids, $30 for adults. But the rest of the time, it’s ten and twenty, plus service charges.”
“That’s pretty good of us!”
“We think so. We’ve never officially sold any ticket for less than $11 since we moved into Citi Field, and all of those were in Promenade, so it’s a good deal, we think.”
“I think so, too. I’m proud to have my name attached to that.”
“We thought you would. And you’ll probably want to know what exactly makes this Mr. Met’s Landing.”
“Now that you mention it, I was kind of curious.”
“”Mr. Met, you’re always thinking. A lot goes on in that head of yours.”
“All Mets, believe me. Now what do you need me to do?”
“You know that dedicated escalator we have for Left Field Landing?”
“The one that doesn’t stop anywhere else and often confuses people trying to get to Promenade?”
“Precisely. Your job will be to take a ride up there once a game and visit with everybody who’s seated in Mr. Met’s Landing.”
“That’s it? That’s not a job, that’s a treat! I love Mets fans!”
“Mr. Met, you’re an inspiration to everybody who works here.”
“I only wish I could visit every section during every game.”
“That’s the kind of team spirit we can always use more of around here.”
“Aw, shucks. I sometimes worry I don’t do enough for the Mets.”
“Mr. Met, if anything, we worry sometimes we ask you to do too much.”
“Me, too much — for the Mets? You’re kidding, right?”
“Well, we do ask a lot of you.”
“What do you ask that’s so much?”
“Let’s face it, Mr. Met, we deploy you every chance we get.”
“You do?”
“You haven’t noticed?”
“I’m Mr. Met. I’m happy to do whatever I’m asked. I’m happy in general.”
 Mr. Met, doing some of his best work. “No one can accuse you of being a pessimist, Mr. Met, but our concern is that whenever we’re in a bind or stuck for an idea, we lean on you.”
“How so?”
“We’ve got you out and about inning after inning. We have you throwing t-shirts around. We have you leading ‘Take Me Out To The Ball Game’. We renamed the DynaMets Dash for you. We have you in commercials for Citi and Xerox. We’ve loaned you to ESPN. We send you to weddings and Bar Mitzvahs if there’s no game going on. We run you out for appearances at who knows how many internal functions. We license the absolute heck out of you. We’re making you our Opening Day bobblehead. And now we have this Mr. Met’s Landing.”
“And?”
“And. quite frankly, I wonder if we’re draining the brand equity out of you just a little.”
“Look, I don’t know what that is, but I do know I’m Mr. Met, I love the Mets, I love appearing on the Mets’ behalf and meeting the Mets fans…”
“Which we appreciate.”
“…and they seem to like meeting me.”
“That they do, Mr. Met.”
“Honestly, there was only one time I wasn’t quite sure I was being…what’s that word you used before?”
“Deployed?”
“That’s it — there was only one time I wasn’t quite sure I was being deployed appropriately.”
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“September 28, 2008.”
“Yeah, we feel bad about that, too.”
“I mean, I was flattered — totally, totally flattered — you let me remove the ‘1’ on the outfield wall on the last day at Shea. But there was something about it that didn’t feel right.”
“Say no more.”
“People have never not cheered me, but that day, I don’t know. Maybe it was the solemnity of the occasion and how it demanded more than a mascot, or maybe it was the tone-deaf blitheness of unveiling a corporate logo at such an emotional juncture or maybe everybody was just upset about our having lost the game and our chance to make the playoffs…”
“Mr. Met, really, we know now it wasn’t the best of platforms from which to display your immense charms and deep talents…”
“I never heard boos while I was on the field before. I didn’t like it at all. Gosh, I really got how Mel Rojas must have felt all those years ago.”
“We’re sorry about that, Mr. Met, we really are.”
“That one moment aside, though, I’m fine with everything. I want to be there for the Mets. I’m Mr. Met, after all.”
“Mr. Met, we’re glad you think so, because we’re mulling over some other situations where we think you can help the organization in a big way.”
“I’m all about helping the organization.”
“We knew you were, but we thought we should run a few of these by you before signing off on them.”
“That’s awfully nice of you, but don’t worry about it. I’m game.”
“So you wouldn’t mind, for example, making some Skype calls to help move ticket packages?”
“Skype? The thing where there’s video?”
“Yes.”
“Then it sounds like something I can do.”
“And if we’re a little shorthanded for middle relief now that Pedro Feliciano isn’t here anymore?”
“Look at me. I’m as longhanded as it gets.”
“You might have heard, too, that we can’t quite settle on a second baseman, so maybe if we can juggle your schedule a little…”
“You want me to play second?
“It’s a contingency, mind you. The union will have to agree, and we’ll have to work out the logistics…”
“Hmmm…if I can make my Mr. Met’s Landing visit during a half-inning when I wouldn’t be in the field and when I wouldn’t be due up at bat right away, I don’t see why not — if it’s for the team, of course I’ll do it.”
“Mr. Met! You’re a prince!”
“You can bat me ninth if you want. I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings.”
“They always say Mr. Met has a big head, but no ego. It’s true.”
“No ‘I’ in Mr. Met is my credo.”
“Well, technically there’s an ‘i’ in mister.”
“Huh?”
“You know, m-i-s-t…”
“Check my trademark. I’m Mr. Met. No ‘I.’”
“Oh, I hope I didn’t offend you.”
“No offense. I just prefer accuracy.”
“What about security?”
“I feel very secure.”
“No, I mean, how do you feel about providing security?”
“I’ll do whatever you want, but don’t you already have security? All those guys in the Phillie-colored golf shirts?”
“Well, this is a little different. See, compensation commitments being what they are, we may have to retain Oliver Perez on the roster, and we’re a little skittish about having him show his face unaccompanied.”
“I think I get it. You need me to provide a little cover for Ollie.”
“Mr. Met, you catch on faster than Ike Davis did at first base. Ollie’s a pretty fragile character — whereas you’re such a sturdy character. We’ve given you all kinds of makeovers over the years, and you’ve taken them like a champ. And we know if people see you next to Ollie, they wouldn’t dare boo…that much.”
“Unless we’re in the outfield unveiling corporate logos.”
“Right. And they wouldn’t attack him if he’s hanging out with you. We can even reimagine him as Mr. Met’s Special Pal.”
“Of course Ollie’s my special pal! All the Mets are my special pal!”
“Did I mention what a team player you are, Mr. Met?”
“For this team, I’ll be anything.”
“How about an enormous distraction?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you might have read we’re having a little legal trouble.”
“I don’t read much. I have to squint to make things out. Twitter really gives me a headache. But yeah, I heard something about lawsuits and finances and such.”
“Then you know we might need you more than ever in 2011.”
“You mean to be relentlessly cheerful and smiling and take Mets fans’ minds off everything that’s swirling around the team?”
“That, too, but we want you in on the meetings and hearings and anything else that comes up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it, Mr. Met. The prosecutors, the mediators, the media, they’re going to be all over us. But if they see Mr. Met in court or at a press conference or wherever, who’s going to remember what they were so upset about?”
“Gosh, I don’t know if I can be that distracting.”
“You’re our best option, Mr. Met. Whaddaya say? Will you sit in on some meetings for the Mets?”
“For the Mets? Shoot, I’m Mr. Met! Hand me a stack of t-shirts and point me to the conference room!”
“Mr. Met, you really are the best. Just one more favor for now, though.”
“Anything.”
“Can you keep quiet about this?”
“Hey, who do you think you’re talking to? I’m Mr. Met!”
by Greg Prince on 11 March 2011 10:49 pm Chico Walker, Charlie Neal, Tom Veryzer, Rod Kanehl
Jerry Buchek, Shawn Gilbert, Elio Chacon
Kelvin Chapman, Billy Cowan, Bobby Klaus, Billy Almon
Keith Miller, Chuck Hiller, Jose Moreno
During the 1996 presidential election campaign, Richard Ben Cramer, who had written about Bob Dole with incredible depth and sensitivity, was asked to characterize the Republican nominee’s policy agenda if he theoretically took office. Given that Dole didn’t really go in for grand pronouncements, Cramer answered, “I think if you shot Dole up with truth serum and asked him what is a Dole presidency going to be about, you know what I think the answer would be?
“‘Ah, something’ll come up.’”
Well, entering the 2011 baseball campaign, the Mets’ second base situation couldn’t appear more doleful. It’s sad. It’s cheerless. It’s full of grief. And it carries the same odds of improving by Opening Day that Bob Dole does of ever cutting the ribbon on a presidential library. Yet, y’know what?
Something’ll come up. Somebody’ll be the starting second baseman three weeks from tonight. Whoever the winning candidate is, he won’t be ideal, but he won’t necessarily be unideal. He may even grow in the job.
This is not the freshly squeezed Florida OJ (optimism juice) spring should bring. I’m still clinging to a patina of hopefulness that the Mets will somehow be more glittering than ghastly in the coming months. And if they’re not, I can’t necessarily blame second base’s black hole. I spent several Marches of my adolescence convincing myself that a starting lineup three-quarters comprised of Stearns, Flynn, Taveras, Henderson, Mazzilli and Youngblood was such a sure thing that the uncertainties floating around a given vacant position couldn’t possibly hold us back. Somehow I don’t think it was the case of Maddox v. Mankowski that ruled against the 1980 Mets decisively blossoming when April rolled around.
So I’ll buy into the good cheer wrought by the presence of six fairly to very well-known quantities — Josh Thole, Ike Davis, Jose Reyes, David Wright, Jason Bay and Angel Pagan — and imagine that 33-year-old right fielder Carlos Beltran will return from experiencing “good” soreness before July and play great at a position he hasn’t played since he was 23. (Or that Lucas Duda in 2011 could be Ron Swoboda from 1965 cross-pollinated with Benny Agbayani c. 1999.)
And second base? Let the unideal chips fall where they may. Let the next verse of the Mets’ second base parody of “We Didn’t Start The Fire” be written. Given the stormfront through which our keystone stackers come and go, you’d have to imagine there’s already an extended mix on somebody’s iPod.
Jeff Kent, bad fit, spent four seasons in a snit
Kevin Collins, Heidemann, Leo Foster, Wigginton
Tatis, Relaford, Alvarado, Ashford
Matsui, Bart Shirley, can’t forget Ralph Milliard
As of March 10, we didn’t have a second baseman, per se. I counted as many as nine potential options for Opening Day and, just as crucially, all the days after. We had practically a minyan, though when you’re nearing double-digits for a single, solitary position, it probably means you don’t have a second baseman. Instead, you have a committee, and I’m pretty sure that’ll get you flagged for having too many men on the field.
I’ve never heard the “you can’t have too many pitchers” dictum applied to second base. You probably can have a surfeit of secondary sackers. What you can’t have, according to the rule book and common sense, is no second baseman.
I was growing antsy over the nine second basemen on March 10, and somebody in St. Lucie must have heard me, because now we’re down to seven, if minor league reassignments are to be believed. Gone from our midst is Jordany Valdespin, 23, whom I had gone into camp confusing within the blur of Kirk Nieuwenheis, Kai Gronauer and Jeurys Familia (eight names, counting firsts and lasts, and the only one I’d ever heard before was “Kirk”), and Ruben Tejada. I was developing a little fondness for Valdespin, especially after he blasted a three-run homer Thursday. Naturally, he is taken from me just as I was thinking of getting to know him.
And Tejada…boy, I liked him last year and hoped his inevitable demotion might get lost in the paperwork. I must have been watching a different Ruben Tejada than the rest of Metsopotamia in 2010, because I was penciling him in alongside Ike for the rest of the decade on the right side of the infield. Apparently I’ve been as blinded by his stellar defense (at a new position to him, no less) as I was once upon a time by Rey Ordoñez’s. It took me years to acknowledge Rey went from being not much of a hitter to never being much of a hitter. I had somehow convinced myself that by 1999 (60 RBIs at the bottom of a loaded lineup), Rey had gotten the hang of the other side of the ball.
He didn’t. But the new kid might. The first-year offensive numbers between shortstop Rey and second baseman Ruben were scarily similar. In a full 1996, Rey-Rey posted a .257 BA/.289 OBP/.303 SLG; his OPS+ was 60, or, as I’ve come to understand it, lousy. In half a 2010, Rube-Rube slashed a .213/.305/.282, making for a similarly lousy OPS+ of 62. Yet Tejada seems to have had a few things going for him that made his viability more than a figment of my second baseman-starved imagination.
• He picked up the pace in September (.284/.364/.433), highlighting his output with a new type of walkoff hit: The Ruben™, a heaping helping of hope sandwiched between two slices of despair.
• The Mets were six games over .500 in the 78 games he played (and, for what it’s worth, ten games under in the 84 he didn’t).
• He’s 21 and conceivably has a chance to improve with the hitting. Ordoñez was 25 his rookie year and pretty well settled into sub-mediocrity when not fielding.
Sadly, Sandy Alderson is ruining my Homegrown Infield dreamscape by sending Tejada to Buffalo to Gain Valuable Experience at shortstop, code for taking Jose Reyes’s spot when we trade him/don’t re-sign him. At least that’s what the prevailing winds suggest. Logically I’m not utterly averse to facing the future without Reyes, given that there may (may) be something to be said for cutting cords, moving on, proclaiming “we finished out of the money four consecutive years with you, we can invest our money elsewhere.” But emotionally, I hate it, hate it, hate it, mostly because Jose Reyes is Jose Reyes and a little because I really believe Ruben has a chance to clear away that second base stormfront.
But that’s another matter for another night.
Keppinger, Cairo, Anderson Hernandez
Doug Flynn, Phil Linz, Seton Hall’s John Valentin
Junior Noboa, New York’ll love Pecota
Marco Scutaro, that awful Jose Offerman
Rich Puig, Bob Heise, Gardenhire, Al Weis
Tommy Herr and Jay Bell, Alomar went straight to hell!
Seven other potential second basemen continue to prowl Digital Tradition J. White Stadium after the first eight plodding months of Spring Training, though we should probably eliminate Chin-lung Hu immediately, less because he’s more of a utility type and more because, as everybody knows, what — not Hu — is on second.
(Sorry. Had to do it once.)
OK, down to six, one of whom, I must confess, I completely forgot had been a second baseman. I knew there was something familiar about Willie Harris besides his being found guilty of Grand Theft Mets Win. Indeed, he was a fairly regular second baseman for the White Sox as recently as 2004 (more recently than Beltran was a cameo right fielder), and played 19 games there as a Nat in 2009. It’s not inconceivable Willie Harris might play second for us and stab somebody else’s sizzling ninth-inning liner.
But that’s not why we want him on our side. We want some outfield payback. We want Willie Harris to go Willie Harris on another team’s ass. Preferably all of them.
Luis Hernandez didn’t look at all terrible taking playing time away from Ruben Tejada last September (except that he was taking playing time away from Ruben Tejada). He hit more home runs than all other Met second basemen combined in 2010. Granted, it was two, but that second one — right after he fouled a ball off his foot and broke a bone in the process...it was a beaut’. He might have a better shot at winning the second base job in St. Lucie if he weren’t still rounding the bases in New York.
Justin Turner exists, I believe, to elicit a low buzz of outrage over how Justin Turner doesn’t get a legitimate chance, and then only if Nick Evans makes the team, thereby depriving us of gnashing for Nick. Somebody’s got to be the unproven quantity who seems worth the shot he’s simply not receiving. What makes Turner particularly worthy of filling this role (besides his five-year, 500-game line of .309/.373/.442 in the minors) is he has an option. An option, save for a spectacular Turner of events, is the same as a window seat on a late-March flight to Buffalo. In all other endeavors, we cherish having options. To Justin Turner, it’s merely gum on the soles of his shoes.
And oh yeah — what a raw deal that guy is getting!
Brad Emaus looms as a bargain-basement steal, except he’s more basement than bargain, thus far — and on the Mets, that’s saying something. The Mets’ front office would love, you’d figure, to confirm their brilliance by having plucked a starting second baseman in the Rule V draft, and Mets ownership would probably prefer 25 Rule V salaries constitute their payroll right about now. But Brad Emaus is thus far forgetting the first rule of Rule V draftees: prove your worth at some facet of the game.
This leaves us with the two guys it was probably going to come down to all along, the people’s choice, Daniel Murphy, and the pox on our soul, Luis Castillo; the relentless hard worker and the energy-saving appliance; the guy with the worst luck possible last year and the guy who stepped into a pile of cash four years ago.
In the land of the unideal, Murphy and Castillo are the princes of inadequacy. Daniel’s biggest problem as regards second base is he isn’t a second baseman. When they try to let him be a second baseman in the minors, he’s victimized by a dirty slide and he’s out for the season. When they try to let him be a second baseman in Spring Training, not a single double play grounder is hit while he’s in the field. The man whose name adorned so many green t-shirts in 2009 is the baseball equivalent of a no-leaf clover.
Luis Castillo has been a second baseman his entire career, and somewhere back in the earliest portions of it was plenty adequate. He was even rated in some quarters as stellar. His cleverness lies in having maintained his listing as a top-flight second baseman when Omar Minaya needed to replace a fallen Jose Valentin in the summer of 2007. Castillo wasn’t much help down the stretch, so you just had to thank Luis for giving it something approaching his best and move on.
But that’s not what Omar did. Perhaps haunted by the glut of itinerant second basemen who clogged Met rosters in the aftermath of Edgardo Alfonzo’s ill-advised shift to third base in 2002 (to make room for an alleged future Hall of Famer), the GM granted Castillo a lifetime services contract; fortunately, Commissioner Bud Selig voided it and a sympathetic arbitrator reduced Castillo’s Met term to four years. The first three years took a literal eternity to unfold (literally!), but the fourth year has arrived at last. Castillo is owed more than the Mets are worth. He gets paid no matter what he does in 2011, no matter where he does it.
Here’s the thing: Castillo, despite being almost completely useless in 2008 and across-the-board unimpressive in 2010 — and committing Bucknercide in the middle of his one decent Met year, 2009 — is a professional second baseman. It’s on his baseball card and everything. If he Rasputins his way onto the roster and into the lineup, we know what he’ll do.
He’ll suck, but he won’t suck nearly as badly as we assume he sucks. And that, in its own insidious way, will suck even more. Those of us who can’t stand to look at Luis Castillo in a Mets uniform — and that, I suspect, would be 110% of us — would be forced to admit that, no, Luis Castillo doesn’t bat .000, reach base at a .000 clip, slug to the tune of .000, and his Ultimate Zone Rating cannot be expressed as “I Don’t Care what his Ultimate Zone Rating is, Luis Castillo SUCKS!”
Whatever modest production, utility and element of pleasant surprise Luis Castillo is capable of providing the New York Mets in 2011 might not be worth being deprived of such certitude.
Daniel Murphy didn’t have a position when he had a position. That he can ease into starting at second, even if we allow for the notion that defense is overrated and that Murph can hit like it’s August 2008 again, seems well-meaning fantasy if not pure folly. Brad Emaus thus far isn’t worth the dollars we exchanged for Loonies at the First National Bank of Toronto. Justin Turner will have to go a long way to allow his option to be left untended. Willie Harris is an outfielder. Luis Hernandez is an afterthought. Chin-lung Hu isn’t much, really, let alone what the Mets need on second. Jordany Valdespin is relegated to a back field. Ruben Tejada is Reyes insurance. And, as long as we’re mentioning everyone under the St. Lucie sun, Reese Havens is an injury waiting to heal.
I’d still prefer any of them over Luis Castillo. But we’ve been saying something to that effect practically forever.
by Jason Fry on 9 March 2011 9:00 am Update: Here’s video. (And a Febreze ad, oh boy.)
The Mets, as various wags noted, manage to lose twice by one run yesterday, dropping split-squad decisions to the Astros and Nationals. The team continues to maintain a huffy silence amid no shortage of evidence that its owners are in dire financial difficulty. Luis Castillo and Oliver Perez are still on the roster. Frankie Rodriguez’s ridiculous vesting option continues to hover out there as a grim inevitability. Oh, and now Carlos Beltran isn’t going to play for the next four or five days because of tendinitis in his left knee — the one that wasn’t surgically repaired.
But he’s fine. Really he is.
Uh-huh. We all know Carlos Beltran is about as fine as the Wilpons are financially stable.
It wasn’t the greatest day to be a Mets fan — and yet, I enjoyed my one dip into fandom rather thoroughly.
I was typing away in my office with the TV on behind me and one earbud plugged in, halfheartedly monitoring the game except when the earbud would pull free of my apparently misshapen ear canal. Every so often I’d pick it up off the floor to listen to an at-bat, or turn to see what was going on there down in Port St. Lucie, shaking my head at the sight of the Mets wearing their regular-season white uniforms and the stadium people pumping up the get-psyched music and canned taunts like the sunbirds were at little Citi Field. (Seriously — why? It’s March in the middle of an anonymous tract of Florida scrub. Wear the blue mesh tops and let some old biddy play a rinky-dink organ. Spring training doesn’t need to be such a freaking production.)
Anyway, it was late in the afternoon, time for nameless players with uniform numbers in the 90s to get their licks, when something caught my eye. It was a big kid with a quiet stance at the plate. He was somehow familiar and I fumbled for the earbud, trying to figure out who he was. My knowledge of Mets prospects is somewhat less than encyclopedic, but I was pretty sure I’d seen him before.
WHAM!
The kid put a perfect swing on a ball thrown by a National with the you-need-a-nickname-honey moniker of Atahualpa Severino. (I will now declare with some confidence that this is the lone player to share a name with our WordPress theme.) Balls fly out to left in Port St. Lucie anyway, but this one might have been out even without the jet stream. It was socked, and I applauded quietly but happily as No. Ninetysomething cruised around the bases trying not to look as happy as he was.
And then they identified him, and I remembered: It was Cory Vaughn.
Last summer Vaughn was the star slugger for the Brooklyn Cyclones, and Joshua and Emily and I saw him several times down on Coney Island — a big kid with a cannon arm and the kind of bat that produces a sound that makes you look up at the hot dog stand, asking “Who was that?”
Vaughn isn’t a can’t-miss prospect, largely because there’s too much swing-and-miss in his game. But there’s potential there, and the kind of pedigree (Greg Vaughn is his dad) that will ensure he gets every possible shot to climb the minor-league ladder.
Will Cory Vaughn patrol the outfield at Citi Field one day? I have no idea — he might not make the majors in any capacity. But not so long ago, he was warming up in the Coney Island outfield while kids from Bay Ridge and Mill Basin competed in dizzy-bat races in front of the dugouts. And yesterday, even if it was just because half the team was on a bus somewhere, there he was wearing a Mets uniform, putting a gorgeous swing on a ball and touching them all.
Such moments are the raw material of spring-training dreams and brief office reveries, and the antidote to thoughts about clawback suits and contract options and tendinitis. Thanks, kid — I needed that. We all did.
by Greg Prince on 8 March 2011 10:32 pm
 Anthony Crater, No. 10, presumably in tribute to Rusty Staub. My alma mater won’t see the Big Dance. It will be lucky to see a square dance. I’m guessing that by this time tomorrow, all they’ll be seeing is the plane home to Tampa. But by gum, after trailing Villanova by 16 at the half on the opening night of the Big East tournament, the University of South Florida Bulls stampeded back and, with 5.1 seconds left, took a one-point lead, thanks to the clutchest of layups from No. 10 (above), Anthony Crater.
We held on from there and won. USF won, that is. I realize for most if not all of you, “we” doesn’t apply to this institution. It’s my school and, technically, it hasn’t been my school since Rusty Staub was diving for sinking fly balls. But indulge me for a moment.
I had given up at halftime. I believe I e-mailed a friend the following message when I tracked down the midpoint score from a remote location:
USF down by 16 at half. Glad i’m not at msg. So no suspense there.
Then I made use of my spiffy little electronic device and saw they/we were down by 8. Then by 4. Then I raced to a television (the Bulls on television…what a conference!) and saw them/us commit two horrific turnovers in the final two minutes and pull it out anyway.
I’m a lousy college basketball prognosticator, I’ll happily admit. I pulled a VILLANOVA DEFEATS TRUMAN, and couldn’t be happier about it.
I’m a lousy college basketball prognosticator probably because I hadn’t intently watched a college basketball game in approximately 52 weeks. I attended my first college basketball game in a Staub’s age a year ago when USF played DePaul at the Garden in the 2010 Big East tourney’s opener. We won that afternoon. Stephanie and I were so ostentatious in our school spirit that we were picked to be the fans who moved down from so-so seats to closer seats. Also, we were the only ones in our section. Or our tier. At a quarter to twelve in the morning for a game involving low-seeded schools from Tampa and Chicago, you’re going to stand out in New York when you’re sitting alone.
I was charged up by our win last year. We were actually pretty good — good enough for me to notice we were in the Big East tournament (to which they nowadays invite everybody, I learned). I was so stoked I made a point of watching our second game on ESPN the next day, which was a rather predictable loss to Georgetown.
And I’m pretty sure I hadn’t watched any college basketball from last March until this March, unless catching a glimpse while channel-changing counts. I watched the last few minutes of the Bulls getting their tail kicked by St. John’s the other night on SNY, but really I was just waiting for Mets highlights to come on.
So I don’t know anything about college basketball at large. I really don’t. But I know we’re still in this tournament. And I know giving up never pays in sports. I should’ve remembered that from who knows how many happy recaps I’ve been fortunate enough to absorb, but it’s always nice to get a reminder about that.
Oh, and this — this, too, is nice. It’s from the AP writeup of tonight’s game:
The Wildcats squandered a 16-point halftime lead, completing their collapse when Wayns threw away an inbound pass with 22.8 seconds left that Crater converted into a go-ahead layup.
Why is that nice? Because somebody else collapsed for a change. A team I was rooting against for a couple of hours did the collapsing, not mine. That it was a team based in Philadelphia…well, that in basketball is what they call the bonus situation.
At least I think it is.
|
|
