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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 17 November 2010 7:34 am  Saluting No. 41 on the Empire level (couldn't find his statue). It’s amazing how the memory of Seaver’s greatness has faded in New York over the last 20 years. Pitchers whose accomplishments are anywhere near Seaver’s might have been expected to have gained in reputation from having pitched 12 seasons under the scrutiny of New York baseball writers. Seaver’s seems to have suffered.
—Allen Barra, The Village Voice, 5/19/2010
Tom Seaver is 66 today.
Tom Seaver was 41 for the first time on 4/13/1967.
Tom Seaver was 0 0 0 1 1 vs. Conigliaro, Yastrzemski, Freehan and Berry on 7/11/1967.
Tom Seaver was 2 0 0 0 5 vs. Carew, Yastrzemski, Oliva, Azcue, Powell, Mantle, Wert and Monday on 7/9/1968.
Tom Seaver was 0 0 0 0 11 for the first 8.1 vs. Kessinger, Beckert, Williams, Santo, Banks, Spangler, Hundley, Qualls, Holtzman and Abernathy on 7/9/1969.
Tom Seaver was 6 1 1 2 6 for 10 vs. Buford, Blair, F. Robinson, Powell, B. Robinson, Hendricks, Johnson, Belanger, Cuellar, May and Dalrymple on 10/15/1969.
Tom Seaver was 25-7 after 162 in 1969 and 2-1 after 8 more that October.
Tom Seaver was 19 on 4/22/1970, the final 10 of them in a row.
Tom Seaver was 20-10, 1.76 and 2.89 for all of 1971.
Tom Seaver was 0 0 0 4 11 for the first 8.2 of 7/4/1972.
Tom Seaver was 1 in ERA, CG, SO, ERA+, WHIP, H/9, SO/9 and SO/BB in 1973.
Tom Seaver was 200 for the 7th consecutive year on 10/1/1974.
Tom Seaver was 200 for the 8th consecutive year on 9/1/1975.
Tom Seaver was 0 0 0 3 8 for the first 8.2 of 9/24/1975.
Tom Seaver was 16 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 6 BB and 29 K in 27 IP on 7/17/1976, 7/23/1976 and 7/28/1976 yet came away from those 3 starts 0-2 with 1 ND.
Tom Seaver was 9+ on 18 regular-season occasions from 1967 to 1976.
Tom Seaver was 200 for the 9th consecutive year on 9/3/1976.
Tom Seaver was 41 for what seemed like the last time on 6/12/1977.
There isn’t a person in the world who hasn’t heard about Tom Seaver. He’s so good, blind people come out to hear him pitch.
—Reggie Jackson, Oakland A’s, 1973 World Series
Tom Seaver was 0 0 0 3 3 after 9 on 6/16/1978.
Tom Seaver was 3,000 on 4/18/1981.
Tom Seaver was 7-1 in the first half-season of strike-sundered 1981.
Tom Seaver was 7-1 in the second half-season of strike-sundered 1981.
Tom Seaver was 41 again on 4/5/1983.
Tom Seaver was 1 in 3B, with 2, after the games of 4/20/1983.
Tom Seaver was 41 for what, in retrospect, seemed like the last time on 10/1/1983.
Tom Seaver was 0 0 0 0 0 in the top of the 25th when the game of 5/8/1984 resumed on 5/9/1984.
Tom Seaver was 3 4 4 1 0 in 8.1 in the regularly scheduled game of 5/9/1984.
Tom Seaver was 2-0 on 5/9/1984.
Tom Seaver was 300 on 8/4/1985.
There is actually a good argument that Tom Seaver should be regarded as the greatest pitcher of all time.
—Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, 2001
Tom Seaver was 198-124 for us, 113-81 for others.
Tom Seaver was 106 over .500 from 1967 through 1986.
Tom Seaver was 2.86 after 4,783.
Tom Seaver was 2.62 for every 1 after 20 seasons.
Tom Seaver was 41 on 7/24/1988.
Tom Seaver was 98.8% on 1/7/1992.
Tom Seaver is 66 today.
Tom Seaver is 41 always.
by Greg Prince on 15 November 2010 5:41 am Bob Melvin. Terry Collins.
Terry Collins. Bob Melvin.
Really? That’s the best Team Genius can do for serious managerial candidates?
Seriously?
Yeesh.
Caveat: I haven’t interviewed Bob Melvin or Terry Collins. I haven’t worked with them. I haven’t spoken to their peers. I haven’t played baseball for either of them. Thus, I could be missing whatever it is that has catapulted them to the reported top of the list among candidates considered for the post of manager of the New York Mets.
That said, this is who it comes down to? Two retreads whose winning was limited in their previous engagements and whose reputations did not seem to make them particularly hot commodities within the industry during their time at liberty?
This is it?
Like many curious Mets fans, I suspect, I’ve found myself rereading Moneyball to discern the Alderson philosophies and have stared relentlessly at the most oft-cited passage regarding our new GM’s theories on what he wants — and doesn’t want — out of a manager.
“In what other business,” he asked, “do you leave the fate of the organization to a middle manager?”
The context for the remark was a discussion of Moneyball’s signature aspect, the value of on-base percentage, and how it was no simple task to implement it as the guiding principle from bottom to top within the Oakland A’s system since longtime (and undeniably successful) manager Tony La Russa had his own ideas about what he wanted his players doing. Downgrading a Hall of Fame manager to the status of midlevel apparatchik was Alderson’s way of saying the A’s weren’t necessarily La Russa’s players. They belonged to the A’s, and there was an A’s way of doing things that was to take precedence over any manager’s theories.
That was the idea, according to Moneyball, but La Russa stopped figuring in the equation once his contract was up and he split for St. Louis. The vacancy gave Oakland Art Howe, likely every Mets fan’s idea of a middle manager after he chalked up two ineffectual seasons in the Mets dugout.
Howe led (or middle-managed) Oakland to three consecutive playoff berths, so one can infer that the system worked better out west, or that the A’s had better players from 2000 to 2002 than the Mets did in 2003 and 2004. Not every situation syncs to every person, and Alderson indicated amid the press gaggle that followed his formal introduction at Citi Field on October 29 (as transcribed by ESPN New York’s Adam Rubin) that his entire thought process on managerial selection had not been fully reflected in Lewis’s nearly eight-year-old work.
I know there’s been some discussion about the three paragraphs in Moneyball that relate to me. I do believe, just putting it in a broader context, that a manager needs to reflect the general philosophy of the organization. That’s important not just for a manager. That’s important for a player-development system. It’s important for every element of a baseball operation to have some sense of consistency of approach, of philosophy.
At the same time, the manager is a very critical part of the overall leadership structure. His job is very different from mine, it’s very different from the director of scouting, etc. There are certain qualities that he has to bring. I have in my years worked with managers ranging from a Tony La Russa to a Billy Martin. So I can appreciate a fiery manager. And I think a fiery manager is actually quite desirable. I think that in some cases a manager is not only representing an organization, but the fans in maybe frustrating situations and acts as a proxy for all of us.
I also think it’s important for a manager to be somewhat analytical, but at the same time occasionally and sometimes often intuitive. We’re looking for somebody that is right for our situation. What is our situation? You start with the fact that it’s New York City.
We’re looking for somebody that fits intellectual requirements, but also intuitive and emotional ones. That manager may have experience, may not have experience at the major league level. We’re very open-minded about it at this point. But I do want to emphasize that whoever is selected is going to be the manager and making those decisions and needs to have a certain level of independence in order to accomplish what he needs to accomplish.
This was a little more than two weeks ago. Multiple candidates have been interviewed and what we’ve wound up with are Bob Melvin and Terry Collins.
Are either or both of them any or all of the following?
• Fiery
• A proxy for all of us
• Analytical
• Occasionally to often intuitive
• Suited for New York
• Meeting intellectual requirements
• Meeting emotional requirements
• Likely to maintain a certain level of independence
Last week he appeared on SNY’s Mets Hot Stove after the managerial interviewing was well underway (but before the consensus that Melvin and Collins as the favorites had publicly leaked), and this was his rather broad description of what he is seeking in a manager.
From a general standpoint, I think that what you’re looking at [are] the two basic aspects of leadership, which is professional competence and personal qualities, and [,,,] how they fit together into sort of a total package.
If you’re not professionally competent, it ain’t gonna work.
But also personal qualities are very important, and some kind of blend into the professional side. Things like communication and a sense of empathy, the ability to articulate a philosophy or an approach.
So there are these two basic areas — personal qualities and professional ability — that I think we try to plumb to see what’s there.
We’ve had pretty direct conversations with our candidates about their recent experiences and specific things related to their coaching or managing history, so we’ve learned quite a bit.
If we are to take the consensus of reporting as reliable and assume that is really is down to Collins and Melvin, do these sound like words that could be applied to either of these men?
• Leadership
• Professional competence
• Personal qualities
• Communication
• A sense of empathy
• The ability to articulate a philosophy or an approach
It’s all bland enough that it could apply to anybody in any job, and, given that it was his position after the first round of interviews, it (more so than what he outlined on the day he met the media en masse) likely serves as a barometer of what Alderson wants out of a manager:
The bare minimum.
That’s what it feels like. That’s what the search for the next manager of the National League franchise in the nation’s largest market has built toward — someone who won’t get in the way. In other words, a middle manager.
Maybe it’s the way to go. Maybe the Alderson-DePodesta-Ricciardi genius transcends personality in the clubhouse and dugout. Maybe it’s enough to transmit the idea that batters should take pitches and pitchers should throw strikes and not give up runs. Maybe consistency of approach is what the Mets have been missing these past several seasons when various actors definitely seem to have been ad-libbing their parts to the detriment of the entire cast, crew and production.
Maybe. But I can’t get past the idea that a manager does have an influence on the outcomes of seasons, and not just lousy managers managing teams into the ground by stubbornness, inscrutability or whistling past the graveyard.
If we are to accept the idea that running a baseball club is a “business,” per the quote from Moneyball, I’d ask in what businesses do middle managers march solely in lockstep with upper management’s directives?
Dreary businesses, I’d say. Dreary businesses where the middle managers and the rank-and-file employees dread coming to work because the life has been sucked out of them. Dreary businesses where there’s little creative tension and, probably, little creativity.
It’s not a perfect metaphor. It may not even be an apt one, because as logical as applying business principles to baseball may be for much of what needs to be done to build a solid foundation, baseball’s a game. It’s a game of people more than principles. It’s also a game whose greatest moments are its most unlikely ones. You can endeavor to minimize risk and plan to maximize results, but sooner or later you’re going to need somebody to come up with an idea…somebody in the middle of things…somebody who knows his people.
In trying to reckon what it might be about Bob Melvin and Terry Collins that have brought them to the forefront of the Mets’ managerial search, I’ve been thinking about the managers who’ve succeeded at the highest pinnacle a manager can succeed — those who’ve won a World Series. In the past decade, nine different managers have stood at the end of the postseason cradling the Commissioner’s Trophy. They’ve been a diverse group:
• Bob Brenly
• Mike Scioscia
• Jack McKeon
• Terry Francona (twice)
• Ozzie Guillen
• Tony La Russa
• Charlie Manuel
• Joe Girardi
• Bruce Bochy
Beyond the prize they’ve attained, I’m at a loss to determine a common denominator among them, but I never got the sense that any of them was a cipher. They lent their teams a sense of urgency. They never panicked. They were preternaturally serene. They fired up their troops. They were tough. They were reasonable. They laid down the law. They were players managers. They were just what was needed for this team, and now the whole world knows it.
Maybe we’ll be saying something similar someday for Collins or Melvin. Someday, perhaps, we’ll be writing that we didn’t know the inner fire that burned inside Bob Melvin, the desire to win that overtook him and spread quietly but effectively to his troops. Someday, it could be, we’ll be telling one another that Terry Collins took the hard road to this moment, that he ironed out the kinks that tripped him up at previous stops and learned a lot along the way and now it is we who reap the benefits. We might very well be saying that after Jerry Manuel, Terry Colins/Bob Melvin was exactly the antidote for the Mets’ malaise…and now the whole world knows it.
But I’ll bet, should we feel compelled to praise one of them to the high heavens because he has accomplished the most any major league manager can hope to accomplish, that we won’t be saying, “That guy was good the way he shut up and quietly went along with whatever the front office decided.”
There’s got to be more than that to managing, whether it’s managing innings or egos. There has to be a reason Bobby Cox had so many in the sport — Braves players past and present in particular — tipping their caps to him on his way out beyond how well he absorbed memos from John Schuerholz. “I’ll be loyal to Bobby Cox as long as I live,” a bit player from his earliest team said in 2010, and he wasn’t alone in expressing such enduring devotion. No mere functionary inspires those kinds of feelings.
There had to be a reason, too, that Sparky Anderson was eulogized so warmly upon his recent passing besides a predilection for next-generation Stengelese. Joe Posnanski, not surprisingly, wrote a beautiful remembrance of Anderson, featuring these thoughts from one of Sparky’s most celebrated players:
“I don’t know why we did the things we did for Sparky,” Pete Rose said. “But we all did. All of us. Johnny. Joe. Me. All of us.” In 1975, middle of the year, Sparky Anderson asked Pete Rose to move from the outfield to third base, a position he had not played in 10 years (and had hated when he did play there briefly). And Pete Rose moved. “We wanted to win for Sparky,” Rose said. “He just had this way about him.”
“We wanted to win for Sparky.” I don’t know whether that’s a sentiment Rose expressed upon hearing that his old manager died or was recorded when Posnanski was writing his book about the Big Red Machine. Either way, it’s telling, even if it describes a scenario from 35 years ago, from the tail end of the age when players had no choice about the manager for whom they played.
We wanted to win for Sparky. Not play for Sparky. But win for Sparky. Rose and Bench and Morgan and Tony Perez (who, on another occasion, used the exact same phrase) and the rest of the Machine probably wanted to win for themselves as well, but every possible motivation in the name of a championship is welcome.
(And, for what it’s worth, shifting Rose, a perennial All-Star left fielder to third base with the season a month old to create a spot for emerging slugger George Foster, was pretty gosh darn creative.)
Can you imagine any 2011 or 2012 New York Met declaring he wants to win for Bob Melvin? For Terry Collins? Can you imagine any 2011 or 2012 New York Met pledging lifelong allegiance to Terry Collins? To Bob Melvin?
Is this a little much to ask? Aside from the modern ballplayer being primarily loyal to himself, we are comparing two almost random former big league managers to two legends of the game, one who is ensconced in Cooperstown, one who will be at the first opportunity.
But is practical randomness the best the Mets can do for a manager? Are we to believe that it didn’t matter who succeeded Wes Westrum as fulltime Met manager in 1968, that Gil Hodges didn’t have a profound impact on the fortunes of this franchise? That Davey Johnson was not essential to the unprecedented long-term success that coincided with his appointment prior to the 1984 season and all but expired with his dismissal in 1990? That when the Mets snapped a veritable six-year losing streak in 1997 and contended every year through 2001 that anybody could have been filling out lineup cards and that Bobby Valentine’s handwriting and fingerprints were just incidental?
I just don’t buy that.
I have no hunch if the next manager will be Bob Melvin or Terry Collins or a late-breaking dark horse, but I’d sure like him to be ideal. I’d like him to be a difference-maker. I’d like him to turn this club around, to get it to play intelligently and passionately. I’d like him to outthink his opposite number. I’d like him to be managing in the sixth while Fredi Gonzalez and Charlie Manuel are still fumbling around with the fourth. I’d like him to take no guff from umpires when they make their usual spate of bad calls. I’d like to hang anxiously on his every pregame and postgame word. I’d like him to bunt only when it makes sense, to give the take sign because he’s picked up something the other team’s pitcher is doing, to shuffle lineups and personalities expertly. I’d like him to keep Pedro Feliciano’s left arm from falling off if Pedro Feliciano’s arm is still here.
I want frigging miracles, I suppose, yet I’m not going to get those. I don’t know what’s in store, but managerial miracles don’t appear in the forecast. Maybe I don’t know enough about Collins or Melvin as individuals, but I’m trying to imagine a moment when the Mets rally behind one of them and drive to glory. I’m trying to see one of these hired hands having his head doused by bubbly after he hands the Commissioner’s Trophy back to Alderson, and Alderson hands it to a Wilpon.
Bob Melvin. Terry Collins.
Terry Collins. Bob Melvin.
The picture comes up blank.
by Greg Prince on 12 November 2010 8:03 pm  A pretty darn good pitcher? Yes! Horizontal cards are weird because approximately 98.8% of their peers are vertical, but they can be beauties, too. In honor of the release of this year’s The Holy Books collection, I present, as captured on the cordoned-off walls of the Empire level at Citi Field last August, what I believe is my partner’s favorite card of all time, the 1974 Jon Matlack. I asked him once and I think this was the answer…and if it wasn’t, there are worse things to look at in the middle of November.
Jon Matlack was a great pitcher, not incidentally. I’m so Jonned up over him, in fact, I think I’ll reprint what I wrote about when I declared him the No. 39 Greatest Met of the First Forty Years:
Mystery guest, please sign in.
OK, let’s get started.
Is your middle name Trumpbour?
Yes.
Were you the second Met to win Rookie of the Year?
Yes.
Were you named to the National League All-Star team thrice?
Yes.
Did you get the win in one of those games?
Yes.
In your first five full seasons, did your record 75 victories?
Yes.
Was that the most any Met not named Seaver or Gooden ever totaled in his first five seasons?
Yes.
Was your ERA for those five years a mere 2.84?
Yes.
With the Mets trying to win a division in a five-team scramble on what was supposed to be the final day of the regular season, did you strike out nine Cubs in eight innings?
Yes.
Did you wind up losing that game 1-0 on a run scratched out in the eighth?
Yes.
Was this kind of run-support typical of what you received while you were a Met?
Yes.
Was the only game you pitched in a playoff series a two-hit shutout against one of the greatest-hitting teams of all time?
Yes.
Were those two hits collected by Andy Kosco?
Yes.
Not Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez or Johnny Bench, but Andy Kosco?
Yes.
Did you start three games in the ensuing World Series against another historically great team?
Yes.
Did you yield no earned runs in 14 innings over those first two starts?
Yes.
Did you pitch two more shutout innings in Game Seven before running out of gas in the third?
Yes.
Would have you avoided that situation had Yogi Berra pitched George Stone in Game Six, thereby saving Seaver for Game Seven?
Yes.
But you took the ball?
Yes.
And did you come that far in 1973 despite Marty Perez of the Braves whacking a liner off your head and fracturing your skull?
Yes.
Yet were you back pitching eleven days later?
Yes.
On June 29, 1974, did you pitch a one-hitter against the Cardinals at Shea Stadium?
Yes.
Was it the first win ever witnessed in person by at least one eleven-year-old Mets fan?
Yes.
Shouldn’t you be mentioned more often as one of the best pitchers the Mets ever had?
You tell me.
by Jason Fry on 11 November 2010 5:28 pm Yoo-hoo? Anybody miss me?
After a month of insanity (finishing a Star Wars book, grueling new freelance gig), I can finally think once again about my beloved New York Mets. (Nod to the beyond-awesome Citi ad set in Istanbul.) So let me sally forth by looking back — and giving a slightly overdue welcome to the THB Class of 2010. (Previous annals here, here, here, here and here.)
Here’s a recap for newcomers: I have a pair of binders, dubbed The Holy Books (THB) by Greg, that contain a baseball card for every Met on the all-time roster. (News flash: Binder #2 is now full. The Alderson Era will be a fresh start in more ways than you thought.) The binders are ordered by year, with a card for each player who made his Met debut that year: Tom Seaver is Class of ’67, Mike Piazza is Class of ’98, Jose Reyes is Class of ’03, etc. There are extra pages for the rosters of the two World Series winners, including managers, and one for the 1961 Expansion Draft. That includes the infamous Lee Walls, the only THB resident who neither played for nor managed the Mets.
 Welcome, new boys! If a player gets a Topps card as a Met, I use that unless it’s truly horrible — Topps was here a decade before there were Mets, so they get to be the card of record. No Met Topps card? Then I look for a Bisons card, a non-Topps Met card, a Topps non-Met card, or anything else. Topps had a baseball-card monopoly until 1981, and minor-league cards only really began in the mid-1970s, so cup-of-coffee guys from before ’75 or so are a problem. Companies like TCMA and Renata Galasso made odd sets with players from the 1960s — the likes of Jim Bethke, Bob Moorhead and Dave Eilers are immortalized through their efforts. And a card dealer named Larry Fritsch put out sets of “One Year Winners” spotlighting blink-and-you-missed-them guys such as Ted Schreiber and Joe Moock. (A new wrinkle: Topps has recently been selling off its stock of old photos, including ones of guys who never got proper cards. I was outbid for the Ted Schreiber, to my moderate but slowly escalating annoyance.)
Then there are the legendary Lost Nine — guys who never got a regulation-sized, acceptable card from anybody. Brian Ostrosser got a 1975 minor-league card that looks like a bad Xerox. Leon Brown has a terrible 1975 minor-league card and an oversized Omaha Royals card put out as a promotional set by the police department. Tommy Moore got a 1990 Senior League card as a 42-year-old with the Bradenton Explorers. Then there are Al Schmelz, Francisco Estrada, Lute Barnes, Bob Rauch, Greg Harts and Rich Puig, who have no cards whatsoever — the oddball 1991 Nobody Beats the Wiz set is too undersized to work. Best I can tell, Al Schmelz never even had a decent color photograph taken while wearing his Met uniform. (Here’s a crappy black-and-white photo I felt compelled to buy.) The Lost Nine are represented in THB by DIY cards I Photoshopped and had printed on cardstock, because I am insane.
During the season I scrutinize new card sets in hopes of finding a) better cards of established Mets; b) cards to stockpile for prospects who might make the Show; and most importantly c) a card for each new big-league Met. At season’s end, the new guys get added to the binders, to be studied now and then until February. When it’s time to pull old Topps cards of the spring-training invitees and start the cycle again.
Anyway, here they are, the final class of the already unbeloved Minaya regime:
Manny Acosta: Lanky reliever threw hard, but had problems hitting the plate and with dinger-related neck strain. This description suffices for approximately 73,541 relievers in baseball history. If not for having surrendered a couple of huge hits in big spots, I’d probably think of him more fondly. But he did and so I don’t. Manny gets a mock Topps ’52 card from a few years ago, on which he’s depicted as a Brave.
Joaquin Arias: Stats-minded Mets fans appreciated Arias for not being Jeff Francoeur, but I thought the Mets deserved praise for a different reason: It looked as if the Rangers organization had denied Arias food in Oklahoma City, which is mean. Seriously, the guy made post-Marines Buddy Harrelson look like an offensive lineman. Has since been waived, and possibly is being hand-fed gruel by Sally Struthers as you read this. Topps ’52 card as a Ranger.
Rod Barajas: Seemed like a fine acquisition when he was slugging clutch home runs, not so much when it became obvious that nobody had told him that Ball 4 = First Base. Still, a decent sort who was an interesting interview and kept the catcher’s seat warm for Josh Thole, whom the Mets didn’t hold back because someone with Veteran Leadership TM was on the roster. So no particular harm, no particular foul. Barajas got a Topps Update card as a Met, despite spending the last six weeks of the season employed by the Los Angeles Dodgers. While we’re on the subject, Alex Cora got a Mets Topps Update card despite being released two weeks before Barajas left town. I’m sure it’s completely unrelated that 2010 was the first year in three decades in which Topps was given a monopoly on major-league baseball cards. Competition, kids! It makes products better!
Jason Bay: Sitting in the stands at Citi, I noticed Jason Bay’s at-bat music — an odd, off-kilter riff leading into a metalesque singer who sounded a bit like David Lee Roth. To my surprise, the song was by Pearl Jam, which has always been a band I admire rather than like. Anyway, “The Fixer” became a favorite of mine, and I rehearsed a blog post in which I’d talk about the song and weave in its lyrics — which are about redemption and taking a problem on your shoulders and making things better — with an account of a big Jason Bay hit. All I needed was the big Jason Bay hit. Topps Update card.
Henry Blanco: Tattooed, imposing catcher did about all you could ask from a back-up catcher. Really good back-up catchers are like pleasant laundry rooms — they’re a nice thing to find in a house, but nobody’s ever stalked away from a showing because the laundry room was lacking. I’d call Henry Blanco a stacked washer-dryer with a sufficient supply of off-brand dryer sheets and maybe a plastic laundry basket that’s a no-longer-fashionable color but still serviceable. Blanco got a Topps Update card, which must make back-up catchers in Pittsburgh or Houston mad.
Chris Carter: The Animal was amusingly intense, got some big hits, and was also a welcome antidote to the assumption that baseball players’ mental activity away from the stadium pretty much consists of thinking about hitting baseballs. Carter went to Stanford, where he got a degree in human biology — in three years. He’s interested in things such as the dedifferentation of blood cells, stem-cell research and cloning. What does Carter get for this doubly impressive resume? A lousy Buffalo Bisons card — and it’s a dreaded horizontal to boot.
Frank Catalanotto: Catalanotto was given the heave-ho after showing very little as a pinch-hitter early in the year, which wasn’t particularly fair but is how things work: Pinch-hitters, like middle relievers, wind up unemployed if one of their bad stretches happens to come at the start of their tenure. Topps showed they were paying at least fitful attention by not giving him a Mets card seven months later, leaving THB to content itself with last year’s update card, on which he is a Brewer.
Ike Davis: Oh, Ike. Tall, outwardly amiable, and looked like an overgrown Nadia Comaneci with a dugout railing at hand. Ike swiftly displaced Mike Jacobs — part of the ample evidence in the case of Fans v. Omar Minaya — in the lineup and gained a spot in our hearts. He hit tape-measure home runs, he had some idea of the strike zone, and he was wonderfully sure-handed at first base. (He should’ve won a Gold Glove except for the award being a stupid popularity contest.) Best of all, he suffered through a rough early summer and then had a pretty fine September, which bodes well for future years. Topps snuck in a short-printed Series 2 of Ike after he’d been crowned with a shaving-cream pie, which I refused to buy because a) it was expensive and b) that kind of card is a Yankee thing. His Topps Update card will do just fine.
R.A. Dickey: Exhibit A in the half-hearted case made by the defense in Fans v. Omar Minaya. Dickey was one of the finest stories to come around these parts in years: a fireballer who got jobbed out of most of his signing bonus for the sin of being born without an ulnar collateral ligament, had to reinvent himself as a knuckleballer and somehow made it work. The Mets had never had a knuckleballer of any merit, but Dickey proved he was no novelty act: He was a student of pitching, a terrific fielder and a pretty fair hitter to boot. Plus he spoke like a character from a W.P. Kinsella story. Baseball players like this typically only exist in novels and overheated blog posts, but every time we pinched ourselves, Dickey was still there. His lone card is a Buffalo horizontal, a Topps oversight that upset me to an unhealthy degree.
Lucas Duda: With his huge frame, vaguely smash-faced visage and lumbering strides in left field, Duda looked like an 1990s Milwaukee Brewer or the understudy for Lennie in “Of Mice and Men.” And during September his brand-new career took a decidedly tragic turn — he collected his first hit in Chicago and then went so cold that you wondered if he’d ever get another one. He was 1 for 34, and you wanted to time your bathroom trips for his at-bats, not because you were mad at him but because his struggles were so pitiful that it felt cruel to watch. But Duda then broke out of it with a monstrous home run and went on an honest-to-goodness tear, hitting tracers out of Citi Field. Far too much baseball writing attributes getting a hit to character (or not getting one to a lack of it), but being 1 for 34 in the big leagues and staying even-keeled really does seems indicative of some measure of it. I don’t know if we’ll ever hear from Lucas Duda again, but I’ll remember the story of his September for some time. He gets a horrible 2008 Bowman Chrome card for now; here’s hoping for an upgrade down the line.
Jesus Feliciano: Feliciano toiled in the minor leagues for 13 seasons before finally getting his chance at the age of 31. That’s a lot of time staring at the ceiling of cheap motels and riding around on crappy buses in pursuit of a dream that must have come to seem like it wasn’t going to come true. It’s great that it did. All that makes me feel shrivel-hearted and small-souled for now pointing out that Jesus Feliciano wasn’t really very good. Topps Update card.
Dillon Gee: If you circled Dillon Gee’s big-league debut in Washington in red pen, you probably have the same last name as him. (And this is coming from a guy who drove from D.C. to Philly to see the Mets take the wraps off Bobby Jones.) But Gee took a no-hitter into the sixth in his debut and didn’t even get accused of not caring about injured veterans later. He pitched pretty well, all told, for the rest of the year — certainly well enough to merit a 2011 look. Gee is one of those guys who has to have very good location and command all his pitches to succeed, and guys like that generally sit at the back end of rotations and get hit. But sometimes they don’t: It’s overly optimistic assuming every change speeds/hit spots guy can be Greg Maddux or even Rick Reed, but it’s overly pessimistic to dismiss the idea that a guy like that has no chance. Got a 2010 Bowman card.
Luis Hernandez: Hit a home run with a broken toe, which is pretty impressive. Beyond that, I have trouble remembering much of anything he did beyond Not Being Luis Castillo. We can do better than that from now on, right Mr. Alderson? Depressing Factoid: Luis’s homer was the only one hit by a Mets second baseman in 2010. Yipes. His card is a Topps ’52 style Oriole. There were a bunch of those this year for some reason.
Mike Hessman: Late in 2010 I was trying to explain the concept of “Quadruple-A player” to my son. Once I used Hessman as an example he got it instantly. Represented by a Topps Pro Debut card.
Ryota Igarashi: Nicknamed Rocket Boy. Rockets that miss with the depressing frequency shown by Igarashi are generally destroyed remotely from the control room. Got a two-year deal, while Hisanori Takahashi got a chance to walk after one campaign. Good job, Omar! Represented by a 2008 Baseball Magazine Japanese card on which he is a Yakult Swallow.
Jenrry Mejia: There was Gary Matthews Jr. in center, Mike Jacobs at first, the stubborn insistence that John Maine and Oliver Perez would be just fine, and the continuing presence of Luis Castillo. But what really got the torch-bearing mob advancing on Castle Omar was sacrificing a year of the fireballing Mejia’s development while wasting him as a middle reliever. I’m annoyed all over again just thinking about it. Here’s hoping young Jenrry has a career good enough that I eventually think of him without automatically also thinking of Met front-office stupidity. Got a Topps Series 2 card that I’d be happier never to have seen, given why it existed.
Mike Nickeas: Minor-league journeyman makes average. His father sort of played for Liverpool. Got a 2005 Bowman Draft Picks card in which he was a Ranger. Curious amount of Mets-Rangers traffic this season.
Hisanori Takahashi: Wily, brave Japanese veteran who pitched capably as a middle reliever, starter and emergency closer. Headed elsewhere in 2011 after seeking what I’ll admit seemed like a lot of years to commit to a pretty old pitcher. We’ll miss him whenever Igarashi gives up a double in the gap or K-Rod punches a relative. Didn’t get a Topps Update card, but did get a Topps Chrome card. Damn it, Topps.
Ruben Tejada: Slick-fielding second baseman clearly wasn’t ready with the bat, but survived a grueling season and the existence of Jerry Manuel to put up encouraging numbers in September. His soft hands and precocious baseball instincts were a joy to watch, but one has to be realistic about that bat. Got a Topps Series 2 card.
Justin Turner: Showed flashes in a brief midsummer callup, but didn’t return in September. Given the collective wattage of the Mets braintrust in 2010, it’s possible they forgot he existed. (Reading this, Nick Evans squeezes the mouse too hard and breaks it.) Can we take another moment to sing hallelujahs that people with functioning cerebellums now run our club? Has a card as a 2009 Tide, which continues to startle me even though I know perfectly well the Tides were an Orioles farm team by then.
Raul Valdes: The definition of warm body. Has a 2006 Bowman card on which he’s a Cub and his name is spelled “Valdez.” This undoubtedly strikes him as more of an injustice than it does me.
by Greg Prince on 10 November 2010 12:27 am  Band on the run...or at the end of it. Sharon's right wrist and the rest of her savors the NYC Marathon finish line. Six hours, twelve minutes, twenty seconds. Six-thousand two-hundred forty-one dollars. Obviously you recognize those figures as how long it takes the Yankees and Red Sox to play seven innings and how much it costs to see them do so at Yankee Stadium. But there’s more to those numbers.
The first figure is how long it took Sharon Chapman — and her Faith and Fear in Flushing wristband — to traverse the 26.2 miles that coursed through all five boroughs Sunday, meaning she was good to her goal and finished the New York City Marathon. Good Metsopotamian that she is, her self-imposed time limit was six hours and fifty-three minutes, or the length of the inartful yet memorable twenty-inning staring contest that ensued between the Mets and the Cardinals last April. Sharon beat it by better than forty minutes, and no position players were compelled to pitch in the process.
It should be noted 6:12:20 was her running time, but the time spent on preparation was exponentially longer — not just intense training for the Marathon, but the heartfelt fundraising Sharon led in conjunction with her entry into the race. That’s where the $6,241 comes in — it’s the final total that has made its way to the Tug McGraw Foundation. It’s $6,241 committed to improving the quality of life for victims of brain tumors and for seeking out treatments and cures for brain cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. What blows me away beyond the 26.2 miles run in 6:12:20 is the $6,241 raised inside of 11 months. The sum and the effort it took to build it represents dedication and generosity and hope…and it’s fantastic.
Thanks once more to all of our readers who contributed to Sharon’s cause. Thanks to Sharon for making the Tug McGraw Foundation her cause and for engaging this humble blog to serve as her run’s decidedly uncorporate sponsor.
by Greg Prince on 9 November 2010 5:00 am I want to go to a 2011 Mets game. I can’t wait. I never can. Theoretically, I want to go to them all, but that’s a prohibitive desire, despite all the swell enticements the Mets are offering. Right now, with the days suddenly disgustingly shorter and the air disagreeably colder, I think I need just one 2011 Mets game so see me through the long night of winter.
The Mets are so busy trying to sell season tickets that they’re not officially doing anything yet with single-game sales, still I was hoping I could apply for early admission. Hence, I headed to Citi Field — the advance ticket windows. Go there and you don’t have to pay convenience fees. It’s much more convenient to avoid those, I find. Not surprisingly, there were no lines yet. Lots of windows, my choice.
But which one could sell me tickets? Would it make a difference
“Hello,” I said at the first window. “I know it’s only November, but can you sell tickets to Mets fans?”
“I don’t know if I can,” the vaguely recognizable face replied. “I’m Don Wakamatsu. I used to be manager of the Seattle Mariners.”
“Were you any good at it?” I asked.
“For a while there, I suppose,” he told me. “We had an 85-77 record my first year, 2009. Big improvement over 2008.”
“So what’re you doing here?”
“It didn’t work out in 2010 so good. We were 42-70 and I got canned.”
“And you think you’re gonna sell tickets to Mets fans?” I asked incredulously. “No thanks.”
Next window revealed a face that elicited a glimmer of recognition.
“Hi,” I said, a little more brusquely. “Can you sell tickets to Mets fans?”
“I can do any number of things in baseball,” this face said.
“You can?”
“You bet. I’m Bob Melvin. I was Manager of the Year!”
“You seem pretty proud of that.”
“You bet I am. I won 93 games in Seattle in 2003.”
“That was your Manager of the Year year?”
“No, I didn’t get an award for that. I took over a pretty good club after Lou Piniella left.”
“But going to the playoffs was its own award, I’ll bet.”
“Um, we didn’t go to the playoffs that year. Oakland was pretty good.”
“Then which year did you take the Mariners to the playoffs?”
“I didn’t. I only lasted another season. We lost 99 games and I was gone.”
“So the award…?”
“Oh, that was in Arizona. We had a swell team. Won 90 games in 2007!”
“Not bad,” I said, beginning to fish for my wallet. “You must’ve done some kind of rebuilding job. Who’d you take over for from 2006. Some sap, I’ll bet.”
“No, that was me the year before. And the year before that.”
I shoved my wallet back into my pocket before proceeding, though I allowed, “That’s still a pretty good year.”
“It sure was. We steamrolled Piniella and the Cubs in the division series.”
“Uh-huh. Then what happened?”
“Kind of got swept by the Rockies.”
“Too bad,” I said. “But at least you gained valuable experience and built on it the next year.”
“No,” he admitted. “We slid back to just over .500 in 2008 despite building a big lead in the early going, and they got rid of me in 2009.”
“So two good seasons in how many?”
“Counting the partial year, seven — two in seven. Then I got one of those organizational jobs ex-managers sometimes get, with the Mets. Now — how many tickets can I sell you as a Met fan?”
“Sorry Bob Melvin, I don’t think you can sell any Mets fan any tickets.”
Lots of windows were left from which to choose. Gotta be someone better suited than Don Wakamatsu and Bob Melvin to sell tickets to Mets fans for 2011.
Hey! I know that guy!
“You’re Clint Hurdle, aren’t you?”
“At your service!”
“Wow, Clint, I remember you from the Mets in 1985 and 1987. Always felt bad about your timing, missing 1986 and all.”
“Those are the breaks. I did OK.”
“I’ll say — you managed the Rockies and they went crazy toward the end of 2007.”
“It was crazy,” he beamed. “It was Rocktober!”
“Then more bad timing, huh?”
“You mean the long layoff before the World Series? Yeah, that kind of screwed us up. Still, National League pennant’s pretty impressive.”
I was indeed impressed. Clint’s Colorado Rockies were the only thing that could have drawn me even a little out of my September 2007 funk long enough to be into baseball that Rocktober: 14-1, including a 13-inning thriller to clinch the Wild Card, then sweeps of the Phillies and Bob Melvin’s Diamondbacks — 20 of 21 until the Red Sox took them in four straight.
“Congratulations on that,” I told him. “You should be proud.”
“Thank you. I am.”
“Just wondering, though, Clint…”
“What’s that?”
“How come none of your other Rockies teams ever did anything?”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“Well, Clint, you managed the Rockies for a long time, and you never so much as had a winning record until 2007. Then your team fell to earth in 2008 and you were bounced out of Denver before 2009 was two months old. The Rockies were so happy to be rid of you, they went on another roll without you.”
Clint didn’t seem so friendly anymore. “Look, can I sell you tickets to see the Mets in 2011 or what?”
“Um, I’ll get back to you,” I muttered as I backed away from his window.
Had to be somebody who wouldn’t make me think twice. Had to be a name, a face that wasn’t just familiar, but got me excited. I’m a huge Mets fan. If the guys they had manning these windows couldn’t sell me on coming to see them next year, how would they get anybody else to line up? I looked down the row of windows: DeMarlo Hale, Chip Hale, Dave Jauss, Ken Oberkfell…I passed them each by without a second glance. I suppose they might be good at this eventually, but here in November? Here when I need something to feel a pulse over? Not really.
At the next window I approached, the guy behind the glass was barking at me.
“You! Over there! Come here!”
“What?” I asked as I approached gingerly. “What do you want?”
“I want you! I’m Terry Collins! I’m no nonsense! Don’t let the stories of how the Angels players petitioned to get me thrown out of Anaheim scare you off! Don’t get worked up over how I never won anything there or in Houston! I worked for the Mets and I’m reportedly reportedly popular with ownership! Sandy Koufax reportedly thinks highly of me!”
I turned away as fast as I could. That guy wasn’t going to sell me a single ticket. Hell, I’d be returning my rainchecks last year if it were left to him to sell me on the Mets.
“You reportedly haven’t seen the last of me!” Collins wailed.
Not many windows left. One of them piqued my interest when I saw who was working it.
“Tim Teufel! Is that you?”
“Sure is.”
“I’ll be darned! What are you doing here?”
“I’ve been with the Mets for a whole bunch of years, actually.”
“Really? I guess I knew that, but it’s easy to forget.”
“You mean because…”
“Yeah, because you were always so easy to overlook as a player. You were the ‘other’ second baseman.”
“I get a lot of that.”
“No offense, but when I think of Met second basemen from that era, I think of…”
“I know.”
“You can’t blame me, can you? I mean you were so, I don’t know, low-key. And he was…”
“Fiery?”
“Yeah!”
“And passionate?”
“Ohmigod, so passionate! My friends and I still talk about him as the ideal ballplayer.”
“Just curious — does my name ever come up anymore?”
“Not really. Nobody says anything bad, it’s just…”
“Uh-huh.”
Now I felt bad. I didn’t want to hurt Tim Teufel’s feelings. He wasn’t a bad player, and I assumed he was all right at whatever he was doing these days. So I changed my tone.
“Good to see you, Tim. What exactly have you been up to lately?”
“Managing.”
“No kidding! Where?”
“Minors.”
“Ya don’t say. For who?”
“Mets. I manage in the Mets minor league system.”
“Wow, who knew?”
“The Mets. I’ve been managing for the Mets in the minor leagues for most of the last decade.”
“I have to tell you, Tim, they never mentioned that.”
“Sigh, I know.”
“Hey, you know who else is managing for the Mets in the minor leagues?”
“Sigh, yes.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve seen him lately?”
“Sigh, next window.”
“Excuse me, Tim. Um, I’ll be back later.”
“Sigh…”
Next window, there he was — Wally Backman. WALLY BACKMAN! One of my favorite Mets ever! One of everybody’s favorite Mets ever, at least everybody who saw him in his prime. You knew when Wally was in town. Him you couldn’t ignore. Him you couldn’t forget.
I ran right up to his window.
“Wally! Wally Backman!”
“Yes?”
“Wally, you were the best! You really were!”
“Thanks man, I appreciate that.”
“No, really! Lenny would lead off and get on and then you’d hit and he’d run and it would be first and third, and Keith would be coming up, then Kid, then Darryl!”
“Yup. We were something else.”
“Were? To me you’ll always be something else. Whenever the Mets look beaten, my friends and I invoke your name constantly. ‘If only we had Wally Backman out there, this wouldn’t be happening.’”
“Mighty nice of you to say.”
“Seriously, Wally. You’d do anything to win. You wouldn’t take any guff from anybody. The Cubs, the Cardinals, the Astros, the Red Sox…it didn’t matter. You’d give as good as you’d get, and you wouldn’t let anybody in the clubhouse off either.”
“Well, I tried.”
“Tried? You succeeded! Can I see your ring?”
Wally Backman showed me his 1986 World Series ring. It was awesome. I was sold. Out came my wallet.
“Wally,” I said, “I’ll take as many tickets as you have so I can come see you play again.”
“Listen,” he said, “I’d love that, but I’m obligated to read you a warning first.”
“Go ahead,” I said, figuring it was just a formality, like those terms of service agreements you click on when you want to buy a song from iTunes.
Wally cleared his throat. “‘The New York Mets officially notify you that Wally Backman will never play for them again…’”
My heart sank.
“‘Furthermore, while your memories of Wally Backman as a player can continue to glow warmly, please understand that Wally’s success as a player is not necessarily transferable to his abilities as a manager…’”
I was bumming out.
“‘Please understand that Mr. Backman may be a fine manager, but there are no guarantees that he won’t be a terrible manager. The New York Mets wish to remind you Mr. Backman has experienced some severe down moments since taking off his player’s uniform, and that whatever fond associations you have of him from more than two decades ago, he is accompanied wherever he goes by unusually heavy baggage.’”
Wally finished his mandatory spiel.
“Now that I’ve read that reminder,” Wally said, “can I still sell tickets to you?”
I wasn’t absolutely sure anymore, so I politely told Mr. Backman that I’d have to think about it. It was more than I was going to do for the men at the other nine windows, but it wasn’t a definitive yes.
And now I was out of windows. The Mets had lined up ten different candidates to prospectively sell me tickets to see the 2011 Mets, yet when I examined all of them, none of them could close the deal. None of them could get me revved up — not on track record, not on potential, not — except for how I idealized Wally — on personality.
How dispiriting, I thought, as I headed for the 7 to Woodside through the cold and the dark.
“Is this the best they can do?” I asked no one in particular.
“No,” came a voice I’d know anywhere. “They can do much better.”
I turned around. The face was as familiar as the voice.
“They can hire someone who’s won here before,” the voice continued. “They can hire someone who’s turned them around before. They can hire someone who’s acknowledged as one of the finest tactical and motivational minds in the game. They can hire someone who can sell tickets to this fan base, maybe the only person living and ostensibly available who fits that description. They might think he’s a little pricey or a bit of a wild card, but they can at least talk to him, give him a shot. It’s not like he’s doing anything better. And it’s pretty obvious they don’t have anybody unquestionably better.”
“I agree 100% with you,” I told the voice. “I never wanted you to leave. As the years have gone by, I’ve never been completely sure it would be a great idea to bring you back, but why wouldn’t they talk to you?”
Bobby Valentine didn’t know. And neither did I.
by Greg Prince on 5 November 2010 7:57 am Welcome to Flashback Friday: Take Me Out to 34 Ballparks, a celebration, critique and countdown of every major league ballpark one baseball fan has been fortunate enough to visit in a lifetime of going to ballgames.
BALLPARK: Shea Stadium
HOME TEAM: New York Mets
VISITS: 402 regular-season games, 13 postseason games, 5 rainouts, 2 exhibition games, 1 intrasquad game, 1 card show, 1 concert
FIRST VISITED: July 11, 1973
CHRONOLOGY: 1st of 34
RANKING: 6th of 34
How many Favorite Ballpark lists have you come across that rank Shea Stadium ahead of Fenway Park?
 I’m not going for shock value. I’m being true to my heart here. I wrote about Fenway last week and was reminded that despite admiring the hell out of it, it just couldn’t beat Shea. My first Fenway trip came one night after attending my 37th game at Shea. This is great, I thought in Boston, but I like Shea better. As if to confirm that I wasn’t deluding myself, my second Fenway trip took place two nights after attending my 155th game at Shea. Fenway’s still great, but I’d still rather be at Shea.
Neither Shea Game No. 37 nor Shea Game No. 155 was extraordinarily special, but they didn’t have to be. They were Shea.
What did it mean to be at Shea, for me? It meant exciting and it meant comfortable. It meant soothing as much as it meant electric. It meant simple and it meant brilliant.
It meant home.
Actually, in its way, it was better than home. You need a literal home, but you also need a place you just want to be…y’know? Home carries certain responsibilities, not all of them desirable, depending on what else is going on in your life. The place where you just want to be is there for you, free and clear of baggage.
That was my Shea. I sought it out and it accepted me. Every time I needed to be, I could be there.
When it was great, which was usually, I didn’t have to think about it. It was Shea being Shea. When it wasn’t, which was occasionally (and logistically), I could just write it off as, well, there goes Shea being Shea. I didn’t have to make excuses for it. Spend 400-some games with a ballpark, it will eventually explain itself.
Within the context of this countdown, it makes sense that the Dowager Queen from 1912 takes a back seat to our Municipal Mary from 1964. Fenway Park is the absolute best ballpark I’ve been to…of those that didn’t appeal to me as much as Shea did. It was just an instinctive feel. No knock on Fenway (not even with 1986 in our corner). No knock on the parks directly behind Fenway either. I admire the new classics like Pac Bell and Turner and Coors, but as alluring as they were, they couldn’t lure me from Shea if Shea was on one side of the street and one of those modern contrivances was on the other. I loved visiting that which beckoned and glittered, but I could never imagine wanting to stay away from Shea Stadium to spend more time in those places.
I wish I could spend more time at Shea right now. Two seasons of Citi Field haven’t dulled that desire. I’ve only recently managed to automatically go to Citi in my mind when I think “Mets game,” and it’s not instantly automatic. Sometimes it’s still Shea. In November, when I think of baseball, when I think of Mets, I think of orange seats and blue walls and perfect symmetry. I think of the speckles that preceded the 1980 makeover, like sprinkles on the cupcake I just had to take a bite out of the first time I eyed it from the Grand Central. I think of the murmur that began to pulsate with a runner on first and nobody out in the bottom of the ninth, the Mets down a run. I think of the likes of Lenny Harris being showered with plaudits for breaking the career pinch-hit record at the tail end of 2001 because when we speckled Shea, we were sincere in overdoing our appreciation for modest Met accomplishments.
I think of the aforementioned Game 37, from 1985. Rick Aguilera gave up a single in the first and then mowed down Expos inning after inning. When Tim Wallach doubled to lead off the eighth, there was a palpable awww in the stands. My god, we’re disappointed because our pitcher lost his bid for a ONE-HITTER. That felt uniquely Shea to me even though, until the next night, I’d never seen a game anywhere else.
I think of the aforementioned Game 155, a Thursday afternoon in 1999 against the Marlins, an appetizer for my mini-vacation in Boston. Took a half-day from work, barely made my train from Penn Station, got to my seat just after the game started. I remember I had brought an apple. Four-hundred plus games at Shea, and I never did that before or again. But it was lunchtime and I was on a fruit kick. I’m just gonna sit here and eat my apple and wait for the Mets to get the big hit they’ve been getting almost every game lately. One apple, one John Olerud double and one Robin Ventura single later, the Mets took the lead. Mostly I remember the apple, the serenity and the first good thing I ever saw Melvin Mora do. He made a splendid catch near the left field line of a fly ball struck by great-hitting pitcher Liván Hernandez. At the time, Mora was batting .000, so it was good to see him contribute.
Three months later, I’d see Melvin Mora define my favorite Shea Stadium game ever. I think of that, too. I think of the game behind it, Todd Pratt, same year, same month…same week. I think of 1999 when I think of Shea. I think of 2000 and 2006; and 1986 and 1985; and my first game in 1973; and my last game — its last game — in 2008.
I can’t think of all that and not think Shea beats almost everywhere I’ve ever been.
Almost.
Aside from being my Home Plus (and the permanent repository for my Big Love), Shea serves in this countdown as a true dividing line. It’s No. 6. So you’d have to figure that anything I see fit to place above Shea Stadium would have be to something extraordinary. And by my reckoning, five ballparks fit that description. They are the places that, on their given day, I decided I’d prefer to be instead of Shea.
Imagine that…I’d theoretically cross Roosevelt Avenue and willingly spend a game somewhere besides Shea Stadium. It’s true. It’s not an anti-Shea thing. It’s a ballpark thing. Five ballparks were just that captivating to me. I look forward to sharing my stories from those magical venues starting next week.
In the meantime, I’ll settle in at Shea, if only in my mind.
***
There were approximately 55,300 seats in Shea Stadium, and it feels like I’ve written that many appreciations of it and tributes to it ever since the announcement of April 6, 2006 that served to herald its death sentence. The following is an excerpt from one of those appreciations and tributes, first published on November 14, 2006.
***
Whether Shea Stadium is afforded the cachet in death it’s been deprived in life remains to be seen. Its backstory — a municipal stadium situated among the parkways, amenable to several types of events, ideal for none — is 410 feet removed from the musty tatters of the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field (former home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, in case you hadn’t heard). Shea probably won’t be bygone enough in our time to evoke objective wistfulness. The second the Mets can’t gin up nostalgia to sell everything from it that would otherwise go into a Dumpster, they’ll barely mention it. Thus, it’s on those of us who sat in it, stood in it, leaped in it and high-fived in it to give it the round of applause it’s earned…to love it in the present-tense while we still can.
We know the superb and the supernatural have occurred here. You can run down the catechism with minimal prompting, Casey to Mookie, Rocky to Robin, Agee to Endy, Del Unser to Delgado, John Lennon and Paul McCartney to John Maine and Paul Lo Duca (not to mention Jim Bunning to Jeff Suppan…sigh). We all know, too, our own histories: the first time we were brought here as kids; the first or last time we took our loved ones; that time it was so cold or so warm (sometimes in the course of the same week or same game, depending on your ticket); and, oh, that time it was so much fun. Say Shea and you’ve probably said all you need to say to conjure countless memories and umpteen emotions.
What I think is easy to overlook is how well we — counting us as Mets — and it go together. Hell, by the end of Game Six against St. Louis, I couldn’t tell us apart. Where was that corporate vibe that was going to quiet everybody and everything in October because every other fanny in every other seat would belong to a well-connected frontrunner? The place was more alive than I’d ever heard it or felt it. After Billy Wagner put out his final fire of 2006, we were sweating, we were trembling, we were barely able to stand. In other words, we were Shea and Shea was us. In tandem, we were just trying to hang on for one night more than we’d been told we had left.
Into each life a little rain must fall. Rain pours on Shea. Wind howls into it. It was allegedly supposed to be covered by a dome or at least be closed off. It didn’t and it wasn’t. If you believe Robert Caro’s assertion that Shea was Robert Moses’ “answer to the Colosseum of the Caesars,” it was never going to.
Hence, Shea is immune to nothing. Nor are we. We sit outside too long. We sniffle. We hurt. We don’t hold up perfectly in the course of a long year. Our calves go south at the worst possible juncture. Whether we throw or we house or we cheer, we’re all bound to be a little rickety in our forties.
But we are who we are. We don’t march in lockstep. We are not of one mind. We don’t all don navy windbreakers or red caps. We’re a little raggedy around the edges. We are individuals with our own quirks. Half a row loves the Met who’s at bat, the other half is actively demanding he be packed off to Seattle ASAP. The bon mots share vocal space with the You Sucks. We are individuals woven together for common cause. Shea, in that sense, is one of us.
I don’t see a cookie cutter — unless a chunk of cookie got stuck in the pan. Quick, how many other stadia have looked like Shea? Even in the multipurpose ’60s, nobody else mimicked the Colosseum. Credit/blame the vision of master builder Moses or architects Praeger-Kavanaugh-Waterbury or Mayor Wagner for spending $25 million and getting a three-quarters complete facility a year late for New York taxpayers’ money (John Franco, who grew up in the Marlboro Houses of Bensonhurst and knows a little something about such handiwork, suggested anything built by the city wasn’t going to be all that nice). Shea may not measure up to the antiquities its generation replaced in terms of stone originality, but it was also never the Vet or Three Rivers. It was open. It was inviting. It was distinctive, even.
Before the Cardinals built the current Busch Stadium, they toyed with renovating the old one, specifically ripping open the outfield to provide a good glimpse of the Mississippi. Some computer models were worked up, one of which was dismissed by management as looking “too much like Shea Stadium.”
As if that could be a bad thing.
To really get Shea, sit in the Upper Deck, in left field. From high on in Section 36, say, as I did on a July afternoon seven years ago. From there, you see it all. You see why we’re where we’ve been since 1964. You see the lush green Moses yearned to develop into New York City’s premier park…the highways that link to create the heart of the Metropolitan area…the Long Island Rail Road station — “your steel thruway to the Fair gateway,” as it was advertised in the 1964 yearbook — originally opened to usher visitors to baseball over here and Peace Through Understanding over there…the IRT, also known as the 7 train, because, well, this was a City field.
That day, as prelude to Matt Franco zinging Mariano Rivera, I understood as I never did before the great truth of Shea Stadium. It was built for us. It was built for us kids, many of whom had parents who moved east, from Brooklyn, from Queens. It was meant to be our playground, our day care center. “I used to say,” Ron Swoboda once recalled, “that the Mets were the biggest babysitting service in the city.”
We raised a fuss and made a racket, but that was all right because we helped drown out the planes (does anybody even still notice the planes?). There’s a reason, I decided, home plate more or less faced Long Island — Great Neck, maybe — without decisive obstruction. It was gesturing toward us kids to come on over and come on in and come play. It was big but not daunting. It was colorful: yellows, later oranges. It had to be designed for or by children. “Tinker Toy architecture,” George Vecsey described it. The ballpark, like the team, was a gift to us, the kids who toddled out of the early ’60s. Did it have to be left open at one end? Let’s just infer that Mr. Moses and Mr. Wagner simply didn’t finish wrapping it in time for Christmas morning, April 17, 1964, and we were too anxious to wait another minute.
Shea’s youthful exuberance, even in middle age, remains its charm. Where else could have…
HoZAY!
HozayHozayHozaaay!
HOzay!
HoZAAAY!
…taken off as it did in 2006? Jose Reyes heard those chants in Japan. He said they reminded him of Shea Stadium. So did Manny Acta. So did Ryan Howard, not altogether cheerfully.
That’s how we roll. We’ve never needed ThunderStix. We don’t really require the cues from DiamondVision. We know enough to get out of our chairs and go to the window, as it were. It’s what we do. We brought the ethic of Roger Angell’s “’Go!’ Shouters” over from the Polo Grounds and expanded upon it.
Has there ever been a purer exhortation of faith than LET’S GO METS!? It’s concise without being neat, raucous without being threatening. It can’t be contained, which is why it’s ideal for a horseshoe like Shea. It’s three easy syllables, perfect for the kids and the kid in each of us. The scoreboard need never rev it up again for it to be generated twenty times a game. It rises when we’re hitting and when we’re fielding. It squirts out with nobody on and it rocks the Queens night when the bases are loaded. It’s ours. I’m sure it will survive the trek across the parking lot but I can’t imagine it will ever translate to as much a part of home after 2008.
William A. Shea, the superlawyer whose Continental League machinations led to the formation of the Metropolitan Baseball Club of New York (we should really name something after that guy), was a renowned mover and shaker. That makes sense because if you’ve sat in the upper deck for a playoff game, you know it moves and it shakes. I stood still for it in 2000, frozen when I assumed my demise awaited me below, somewhere in the mezzanine. But we survived. When things started quaking again this October, I joined in the jumping. If me adding my full force to a condemned structure couldn’t kill it, what could?
Oh yeah. Progress. We’re back to that.
by Greg Prince on 4 November 2010 3:00 pm  Sharon bands together with FAFIF and Team McGraw.
Frank Edwin “Tug” McGraw
Pitcher 1965-1967, 1969-1974
The free-spirited closer whose catchphrase “Ya Gotta Believe” became the rallying cry for the Mets run to the 1973 World Series … The left hander saved 25 games and was an emotional leader in the clubhouse as the club captured its second National League pennant… A member of the 1969 World Series championship team … An All Star in 1972… Ranks among the Mets All-Time saves leaders with 86.
Inducted 1993
—Tug McGraw’s Mets Hall of Fame Plaque
The starting line is nigh for Sharon Chapman. In just three days, a year’s worth of preparation and training culminates in her 26.2-mile journey through the streets of New York.
Sharon, in case you’re just joining us, is running the New York City Marathon under the banner of Faith and Fear in Flushing…or running while wearing a wristband sporting our logo. We’re her official blog sponsor, and we couldn’t be prouder of her.
Aside from being flattered that she wanted to take a piece of the FAFIF Nation into battle with her, we are happy to report that her Marathon-linked fundraising for the Tug McGraw Foundation has drawn close to $6,000. That’s a total accumulated through the diligent work of Sharon (one of the most diligent people I’ve ever known) and the generosity of a lot of folks, including many of you.
On behalf of Sharon, Jason and myself, THANK YOU for caring enough to boost this great cause. We’ve gotten to the point of mentioning it almost in passing, but the Tug McGraw Foundation and its mission to combat the effects of brain cancer and provide a better life for those fighting their way through it is what this effort has been all about. We urge you to visit the Foundation’s Web site and read what they’re doing with contributions like yours. It’s impressive, it’s vital and — if you can lend it — it’s worthy of your support.
The touchstone for Sharon, for the staff of the Foundation and, I’d dare guess, for millions who have sought to chase a dream is Tug McGraw. He’s another figure we’ve gotten used to invoking by second nature. It’s no wonder. He hasn’t lived for six years, hasn’t played baseball for 26 years and hasn’t been a Met in 36 years, yet the spirit of Tug never leaves us — not if we’re Mets fans; not if we’re sports fans; not if we’re fans of not giving up.
It’s gotten to be a bit of a running (no pun intended) joke between Sharon and me as to whether the proper phrasing of Tug’s immortal rallying cry is “You Gotta Believe” or “Ya Gotta Believe,” yet either way you (or ya) look at it, it represents a powerful message. It said it all in 1973 for the Mets. It says it all every time we need it, whether we’re yearning for a hit, a strike or the ability to make it to the next mile.
Tug was such an inspirational figure and, at the same time, such a human being. He was a perfect figure for the Mets of the early ’70s: a little world-weary, a little overwrought by circumstances, a little uncertain of what lay ahead, a “flake” by his own reckoning…but ready to deal with anything through humor, grace and spectacular pitching when it really counted.
For Sharon, it counts this Sunday. We gotta believe she’s gonna go all the way.
If you’d like to contribute to Sharon Chapman’s run for the Tug McGraw Foundation and its fight against brain cancer, please do so here.
by Greg Prince on 4 November 2010 4:25 am Once upon a time, a five-year-old boy was pulled out of kindergarten by his dad to attend a weekday afternoon baseball game. It was his first baseball game, and it was the greatest baseball game in the world as far as he knew. Forty-five years later, he could recite the details lovingly — at least those details that would impress themselves upon a five-year-old’s brain…the kind of details that remain planted there forever.
It was the Mets and Pirates at beautiful Shea Stadium, September 29, 1965. It was sparsely attended, which wasn’t bad at all for a five-year-old boy, because fewer grown-ups meant you could get real close to your team. Why, your dad could snap Polaroid pictures of you and your brother with Mets players: you and Ron Hunt; you and Joe Christopher; you and Cleon Jones; you and a rookie shortstop just called up from Buffalo, a 21-year-old boy named Buddy Harrelson. You could sit close enough to first base so that your brother would grow quite amused that the coach who stood there while the Mets batted had a funny name: Yogi Berra. And your dad had room enough so he could “literally leap” over the first base railing and catch a foul ball.
Who won that game? Isn’t it obvious? It was the five-year-old boy.
His victory transcended mere National League standings. That game began a lifetime love affair with the home team. The kid grew up a Mets fan and, decades later, he found himself holding a job in which his actions impacted most other Mets fans. He got on the phone with a bunch of bloggers Thursday night to talk about his latest big decision.
The Mets have reset their ticket prices in advance of next year. Shake out all the particulars, and chances are you’ll pay less for admission to Citi Field in 2011 than you did in 2010 or 2009. It’s not as simple as an across-the-board cut — the very cheapest tickets are actually a dollar more than they had been — but the overall effect is to make prices lower and to make access to more sections of the ballpark more affordable more often.
Affordability is all relative. In 1965, a box seat at Shea Stadium to come see the 50-108 Mets become the 50-109 Mets (en route to becoming, by the end of the week and season, the 50-112 Mets) cost $3.50. A father could take two sons for $10.50, plus parking, snacks and, if he so chose, Polaroid film. The mere thrill of sitting in, standing at and leaping from those seats proved priceless and timeless to five-year-old Dave Howard, who is now the executive vice president of business operations for those very same New York Mets. At $3.50, a dad or a mom could pretty easily buy a thrill in 1965.
You don’t have to watch Mad Men to understand times have changed since 1965. Three dollars and fifty cents buys you maybe a small soda at a Mets game nowadays. A box seat in the neighborhood of where Razor Shines recently continued the Met tradition of memorable monikers among first base coaches is understandably going to cost a lot more than it did when Dave Howard was a kid. Why shouldn’t it? The average player salary 45 years ago was $14,341. Major League Baseball players in 2010 — the uniformed descendants of Hunt, Christopher, Jones and Harrelson — were paid, on average, nearly $3.3 million dollars for their services.
That’s only 230 times more than it was in 1965. Perhaps we are blessed, then, that tickets behind first base won’t cost $805 in 2011.
What will they cost? Ah, to comprehend that, you will require a jeweler’s eye loupe as you pore over the Mets seating and pricing chart, which still veers toward thoroughly complex. But it’s less like jewelry in that the segmentation that befuddled us in previous seasons has been replaced. No longer do Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze line up to the left of rockbottom Value on the Mets’ version of the periodic table of elements. Instead games that aren’t Value are labeled Marquee, Premium and Classic.
Much simpler, right? (We won’t get into how sections are still sliced and diced to within an inch of their lives, except to say there seem to be a few less delineations within the subsets.)
The best news to be discerned from the rebranding is that Value has become a much wider category. In 2010, Value was code for games the Mets might as well have marketed as Unattractive: Three weeknights in early April for the Marlins; three weeknights in early May for the Nationals; four weeknights in the middle of September for the Pirates — the same club that dealt five-year-old Dave Howard’s 1965 Mets a 4-2 defeat. Never mind that for the true Mets fan there is no such thing as an unattractive matchup. As long as the Mets are playing, we’ll be there.
If we can find a satisfactory ticket…that we feel we can afford…provided we think we’re not getting the shaft along the way. Winning more would help, too, but some of us aren’t that picky.
Just as the ticketing matrix is more complex than in 1965, so is our need state. The Mets recognized that after two increasingly empty years at Citi Field, the Value group required expanding. Thus, it now encompasses 30 dates — three times as many Mets games in 2011 will be sold by the Mets at their lowest price point, and not just the perceived worst of the worst. Essentially, the Mets stopped pretending there was something intrinsically more alluring about the Brewers on a Tuesday night in September than there is the Bucs on a Tuesday night in September, and they melted Bronze into Value.
I call that progress. I’m sure the Mets consider it a setback, less in the name of garnering more money (though that, too, I suppose) but because nobody could argue by September 2010 that the Mets were a solid buy. Howard told the Mets blogger conference call that on-field performance was “the most important factor” in determining the trajectory of ticket sales, which in turn helped determine the latest dip south in ticket prices. If the Mets had been in the playoffs the last two years, Howard said, “The tickets would have sold.”
But they weren’t and they didn’t, and now it’s time to move on. It’s time to move on to 2011 when every single Monday through Thursday game in April, May and June will be Value. A couple of Fridays in the first half of the season will carry that designation as well. Then it disappears until mid-September when it’s back seven more times.
The so-called Marquee games are the old Platinum, and those are the ones they’ll have no problem selling: Opening Day and the Subway Series. The Premium is what used to be Gold, while Classic is the ticket formerly known as Silver…except the Classic games on the first iteration of the schedule, as printed in a PDF of the 2011 ticket brochure, are actually colored bronze…and the Premium is silver…while Marquee appears gold.
Value, for the record, is still orange.
On Thursday afternoon June 2, you can see the Mets and Pirates play a Value date — $12 in Promenade Reserved.
On Friday night June 3, you can see the Mets and Braves play a Classic date — $20 in Promenade Reserved.
On Saturday night June 4, you can see the Mets and Braves play a Premium date — $28 in Promenade Reserved.
Just for fun, I’d bundle those three as the $60 Variety Pack and see if anybody finds the baseball noticeably different or better as the price rises day after day.
Howard spoke of “peak demand” as the reason summertime weekends will generally cost more than the rest of the grid. “Demand is greater on weekends,” he said. I couldn’t disagree with that, but it did make me wonder. The family of four that could get in the Rotunda door for $48 on Value Thursday (putting aside nettlesome convenience fees and such) is going to require $112 on Premium Saturday or Sunday. That’s a swing of $64 right there for the least expensive seats Citi Field has to offer.
To sit in pretty decent — not great but perfectly good — Promenade Infield seats, from which Citi Field’s unique geometry gives kids of all ages a better shot at seeing substantially more of the playing surface, you’ll pay $35 apiece on peak demand Saturdays and Sundays ($140 for our familial foursome). That’s $20 more than it costs on Value Thursday ($60) or, for that matter, $10 more than on Classic Wednesday ($100).
Johan Santana, Jason Bay, even Dillon Gee can look at those figures and call it tip money. People who want to take their entire family to a Mets game have to be selective.
I asked Howard about whether there’s a concern here about pricing out families by making the dates with the most family-appeal more expensive than everything that isn’t the opener or the Yankees. That’s how we got off on the subject of Dave Howard’s first Mets game, because this franchise, he said with conviction, is “founded on kids and family. It’s been a hallmark of the Mets from the very beginning.” From there, we were onto Ron Hunt and Joe Christopher and the wonders of September 1965.
Of course Dave Howard has a job to do, and his job includes helping the Mets maximize revenue. Though what Dave the former five-year-old remembered was charming as all get-out, Howard the current executive was politely frank in explaining people have choices to make within the realm of buying tickets. They can go on the weekend and dig a little deeper or they can go midweek (“off-peak demand”), assuming the whole family can make it.
Or, as was the case as 2010 wound down, they can go not at all. But Dave Howard and the Mets wouldn’t want that to be anybody’s default option, and the gist of their ticket announcement Thursday was to make all days of the week more appealing. Tickets in the tiers physically below and financially above Promenade have been reduced — not to bargain prices, but to slightly less unreasonable rates. Long-absent discounts on season tickets and partial season tickets have been implemented, with a break of 10% when you buy in bulk.
The partial plans are still being formulated. Howard couldn’t say for sure whether plans sold on the basis of Saturday games will, in fact, include every Saturday game or nothing but Saturday games. Nor has it been determined whether Promenade plan holders can gain access to one or more of the clubs (where, I didn’t get a chance to point out on the phone, they will likely spend more money).
Howard seemed most excited about touting the Amazin’ Mets Perks program. You buy full season tickets and pay for them in full by December 15, and you receive some serious goodies, and I don’t mean a Mike Piazza uniform pencil holder (or Headless Mike, as I referred to the 2002 partial plan premium). You’ll be on the field, you’ll be shagging flies, you’ll be taking BP, you’ll be dealing pinochle with Saul Katz…OK, I made the last one up, but you get the idea. If you’re laying down serious scratch seriously early, you’ll be taken care of.
What’s more, you become eligible for one of thirty different treats: schmoozing with the umps at home plate (if you get Angel Hernandez, you know what to do); sipping wine with Tom Seaver (or gulping — your call); receiving the jersey a player has just worn in a 2011 regular-season game (may it not be Oliver Perez’s for all that would imply about the 2011 regular season); and…well, it’s all good. If you’re willing to invest in 81 dates at Citi Field and pay for it up front, you’re entitled to a shot at this stuff.
One of the perks is dubbed the “Player Meet-And-Greet,” described in the ticket brochure as “Have a pre-game meet-and-greet with a current Mets player with a photo opportunity and a chance for items to be autographed.”
That’s a perk now? To think, in 1965, a five-year-old was able to get all that for $3.50 and get out of kindergarten for the day.
Want to know more? Check out the coverage from Mets Police (who’s been all over this ticket news for days) and Metsgrrl, who transcribed much of the conference call.
by Greg Prince on 2 November 2010 4:18 am The grizzled cabbie craned his neck out of the taxi window to survey the madhouse on Market Street. San Francisco’s busiest downtown boulevard, even on normal days, was teeming with thousands of jubilant Giant followers. Car horns were honking. Orange and black confetti was fluttering from the windows above. Strangers were shaking hands, then embracing. More than a few pedestrians were already drunk or headed in that general vicinity. The driver shook his head and proclaimed, “There hasn’t been anything like this since V-J Day.”
—David Plaut, Chasing October
Some years you just know the World Series was won by the right team. This was one of those years.
We won’t care about the San Francisco Giants come May 3 when they are the visitors at Citi Field. We didn’t care about them last May when they swung by to spend a weekend. I didn’t think I was looking at a team that within six months would be world champions when I saw Henry Blanco take Guillermo Mota deep to end a windy Saturday afternoon in breezy style. I didn’t think I was looking at anything more than a competitor for the Wild Card (if we fell much further behind the Braves in the East, that is) when I watched them take three in a row from the Mets in mid-July and Phil Cuzzi take one from them on our behalf before we continued along on our merry Pacific time zone death march.
 The Wild Card standings at the All-Star break...boy, was that a long time ago. Yet the 2010 Mets are ancient history and the 2010 Giants are the best team in the land. They are the right team to have earned that designation. They rolled over the Texas Rangers with methodical precision Monday night, as they did Sunday night, as they did in two of the three previous games of this World Series. Texas was the right team to win the American League pennant, but couldn’t have looked less capable of competing as their final Game Five outs slipped away. This was San Francisco’s stage, and they deserved to take the final bow.
Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner and the increasingly legendary Tim Lincecum were the genuine article in this Series. They and their black-bearded closer give them an excellent chance of winning any three games they pitch. They figure to be pitching for quite a while and they figure to be pitching to Buster Posey, who figures to be hitting for quite a while. As for the rest of this championship roster, who the hell knows? It’s the kind of collection you look at in any Spring Training and, if it’s yours, you think, “Well, I dunno, maybe if they all get their act together and we get lucky and enough things go wrong for everybody else…”
Do these San Francisco Giants have the figurative legs to go with their literal arms? That’s a private matter for Giants fans to fret. We won’t care by next season. All that mattered was in October and the very beginning of November, they were 25 easy pieces. They fit. They gave us an outstanding show and provided pleasant company before we’d be forced to face the fact that once Brian Wilson fired his final fastball, the baseball season would be finished.
It was done by our parochial reckoning just over four weeks ago, maybe just over four months ago, back in Puerto Rico, back where Cody Ross was a nettlesome Marlin getting all up in our grill. It’s hard to recall through the crisp autumn air and the equally crisp pitching of young Lincecum, Bumgarner and Cain that the Mets were once a part of the same season whose champion was crowned only hours ago. All we’ve had lately are press conferences and speculation.
Yet it’s all the same game, the same one we leaned into when Pitchers & Catchers strapped on their gear in February; the same one we relished that bright April afternoon when Johan Santana reeled in Ross’s Marlins to start us off 1-0; the same one that left us more and more jaundiced as the Mets fell further and further from competence. It’s still baseball, still what we love. It’s why some of us — if not nearly enough of us, by Nielsen’s accounting — stick with this game long after our side has taken a seat.
We brush off our personal disappointment and we turn our attention to eight brand new teams. Some are total strangers to us, some are disgustingly familiar. Some are the San Francisco Giants of 2010, fuzzy figures from May and July who suddenly come into focus and remake their introduction to us. They become the reason we can cling the slightest bit to the summer before. They serve as our motivation to keep reading and keep watching and keep writing.
I’m a romantic about the World Series. I yearn for the World Series to loom as more super than any Super Bowl in the public imagination. I absorb jealously descriptions like that proffered by Roger Kahn in Memories of Summer as regarded the first Fall Classic he covered, in 1952:
Six hundred of the best and most popular sportswriters in the world would cover every inning of every game. The ranks included […] Vincent X. Flaherty of San Francisco. The closest major league stadium, Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, stood 2,140 miles east of Flaherty’s home base, but the old World Series transcended geography. It was a front-page story across the country, especially exotic to people who lived thousands of miles away.
The World Series is no longer a national observance, not like that. NBC and the NFL garnered more viewers than Fox did with baseball. I knew they would, but I don’t get it. I don’t get sports fans who would choose run-of-the-mill football over championship baseball. I don’t get media that dismiss franchises based in San Francisco and next to Dallas as unready for prime time. I don’t get Mets fans who stepped around this postseason. I don’t get baseball fans who stepped around this postseason. If you love pitching (and who doesn’t?), you had to love these last four weeks. If you love endings that aren’t predestined, you had to love the Giants versus the Rangers as opposed to far grislier potential matchups. If you love baseball, you should love it as long as it’s there to be loved.
I’ve never been a San Francisco Giants fan, but I feel ridiculously good for those who are San Francisco Giants fans, at least the ones who weren’t obnoxious to a friend of mine who visited gorgeous Phone Company Park this year. I’ll brush those nitwits aside and consider instead my kind of fan. I always believe there is a version of me rooting for every team that’s gone too long without reward. The Giants who are redolent of dried champagne and are to be feted by parade and are to have their fingers measured for ring size…good for them, of course. They made it happen, I liked watching them ply their craft and all, but most of them will be people I root against next May 3.
The Giants fan version of me and of you…not the nasty ones, not the nouveau obnoxious, not the bandwagoneers, but those who wondered if this night would ever come…ohmigod, how can you not be thrilled for that Giants fan? That Giants fan who has his own war stories, who has his own tales of front office malfeasance and favorite players unfairly shipped away and Octobers that didn’t go nearly as swimmingly as this one.
On nights like these, I feel good for that fan, whoever he is.
I also feel sensational for a friend of mine whose love of the Giants dates to the Polo Grounds of Mel Ott. To use a phrase I heard a lot in college, Bill Kent is a trip. He’s the Gray Tornado, and there’s no stopping him. He’s wiry, he’s energetic, he’s got nearly 35 years on me and I wouldn’t bet against him outlasting me. Bill organized the New York Baseball Giants Nostalgia Society. It was founded out of the ashes of another group that was rendered dormant by lax management. There’s nothing lax about Bill. He got my phone number from the previous group, enticed me to a West Side warehouse on a hot July night in 2004 to eat terrible pizza and dine out on delectable stories of what it was like when there were New York Giants roaming the city.
There were maybe six of us sitting around a table under a buzzing fluorescent light that first evening. Then the warehouse became unavailable to us and Bill moved the meetings to a Chinese restaurant in Riverdale. Then an Italian restaurant across the street with a little more space because we kept attracting new members. It was word of mouth. Bill’s mouth mostly. Bill called and e-mailed and welcomed everybody who was interested in the Giants. New York Giants. San Francisco Giants. Anybody who might be Giants. If you wanted in, Bill wanted you. He still does.
We’ve lately met in a church annex in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. We are, I swear, turning into the modern equivalent of the Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game in New York, except the only stakes are ten bucks for slightly better pizza than we ate in the West Side warehouse. Bill has taken to inviting guest speakers: authors, historians, bat boys who once handled Don Mueller’s lumber, whoever knows something the rest of might be fascinated to learn. They’re all good, but what I like best, still, are the stories from the guys (and dolls) who chip in their ten bucks, the guys who, between slices, let on casually about the time they met Bobby Thomson.
Most of those fellas were New York Giants fans who stuck by their first allegiance even if Horace Stoneham didn’t stick by them. They morphed into San Francisco Giants fans who never gave the New York Mets a second glance. Some are the National League loyalist sons (and daughters) of New York Giants fans who carried on the family tradition, also immune to Amazin’ charms. There are a few camp followers like myself who find the New York Giants irresistible and the gang’s stubborn San Francisco fealty harmless in the context of modestly improved pizza and ever excellent stories.
Once Nelson Cruz swung and missed to end Game Five, I thought of Bill and I thought of the rest of them. I felt as good for them as I did the San Francisco version of me.
Fifty-six years for my senior compatriots in the New York Baseball Giants Nostalgia Society. Fifty-two years for those out west who fell into a misplaced New York institution. Too many years for any San Franciscan who decided sometime after 1958 that the Giants were the thing for them, that this team would be one of the touchstones of their lives, just as the Mets are a touchstone of ours.
Any year now, they thought after losing the World Series in 1962.
Any year now, they thought after losing the NLCS in 1971.
Any year now, they thought after losing another NLCS in 1987.
Any year now, they thought after being swept and shaken but definitely not stirred by the Earthquake Series of 1989.
Any year now, they thought after losing a division series in 1997 and another one (yay!) in 2000 and a seven-game World Series that seemed so close to being won in six in 2002 and one more damn LDS in 2003.
Any year now…and that year is now. Every fan who’s waited through enough of the above (to say nothing of the acres of years that weren’t nearly as good) deserves one of these.
If we can’t have it, that is.
Already, the 2010 World Champion San Francisco Giants are, per Don DeLillo, falling indelibly into the past. We are parting company, no matter how pleasant it’s been. The next time I take a good look at Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, Wilson, Posey and whoever remains from their ad hoc roster of castoff conquerors, it will be May, they will be the other team, and I will hope they lose three straight in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York.
Until then, good for them.
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