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Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 17 October 2010 12:48 am Welcome to a special weekend playoff edition of 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: Pacific Bell Park
LATER KNOWN AS: AT&T Park
HOME TEAM: San Francisco Giants
VISITS: 1
VISITED: July 6, 2001
CHRONOLOGY: 24th of 34
RANKING: 8th of 34
As Stephanie and I took our seats in the last row of Pac Bell Park —the View seats as they were cleverly dubbed — we came upon one of the few imperfections detectable in an otherwise magnificent setting. There were stickers on each cupholder advertising an online grocery concern, blights that were soon going to have be removed as that company, Webvan, was declaring bankruptcy, ending its grocery runs. The tech boom was going bust in 2001, and locally headquartered Webvan would go down with it.
 A shame for the people who worked there. Tough luck for the Giants losing a sponsor. But the presence of the stickers for such a theoretically forward-thinking outfit was somehow appropriate given the Silicon Valley zeitgeist surrounding Pac Bell Park, a park that (under another name) would later become the first Wi-Fi field in the majors. This place was Retro Version 2.0, an upgrade from the generation of trendsetting ballparks that preceded it. Pac Bell was evidence that nothing was static in this fast-moving era, that progress was only a mouse click or a Barry Bonds swing away.
Camden Yards had been state-of-the-art just eight years earlier. Now baseball seemed poised to trade in their Camdens for Pac Bells.
That’s how it felt up in the last row. As hackneyed an expression as “state-of-the-art” had become by 2001, it fit Pac Bell. Actually, maybe you could make do just by calling it “art”.
Wow, what a venue for baseball. Privately financed, as the lady P.A. announcer saw fit to mention, which maybe explains why they decided to besmirch it with the unsightly Webvan stickers. But it was a small blight on an otherwise pristine landscape.
Why shouldn’t San Francisco’s ballpark be up to San Franciscan standards?
If I may detour slightly from my ultimate destination and fall for some well-worn propaganda, San Francisco is such a gorgeous city, I could almost forgive it for absconding with the Giants. My parents lived there when they were first married in deference to Uncle Sam stationing my father in the area during his army stint. They became enamored of the place. Years later, we took several family trips out there, the last of them concluding the day after my 14th birthday. Except for one business excursion, I hadn’t spent any quality time in San Fran in 25 years when we decided to knock Pac Bell (and the Oakland Coliseum) off our to-do list.
When we touched down on the Fourth of July, San Francisco turned out to be the sweatshirt in the back of the closet that somehow still fit. It felt familiar to me in ways that it shouldn’t have. I had never lived there and had only visited a half-dozen times, yet I somehow knew San Francisco for the few days we were there. San Francisco’s air is its own. Maybe it’s Fisherman’s Wharf, maybe it’s the sourdough, maybe it’s the lightheadedness from walking up all those damn hills. But boy did I enjoy being back.
Had things broken correctly three or so decades earlier, this series would be called Take Me Out to 35 Ballparks, because I almost talked my parents into taking us to Candlestick Park one of the summers we were out there. We could see it from the highway and there was some definite interest gathering on their part. I don’t remember why it was ultimately rejected; they weren’t fans, but they were usually up for adventures on vacation.
Just as well, maybe, that we didn’t go since by universal assent, Candlestick may have been the worst place on the planet for baseball, deserts and oceans included.
The weather, by Roger Angell:
The game that Stoneham and had fixed upon was a midweek afternoon meeting between the Giants and the San Diego Padres — a brilliant, sunshiny day at Candlestick Park, it turned out, and almost the perfect temperature for a curling match.
The atmosphere, by Richard Grossinger:
It took him a number of trips in different seasons to see that Shea was still relatively good-natured compared to Candlestick. The Giants of that era evoked racist anger and redneck fervor from an urban area generally thought of as hip and liberal. It wasn’t. The South San Francisco gay-bashing crowd were as ornery and mean a group of Americans as there are. Add in the Daly City/Brisbane low-rider tailgate partiers and you have a zoo. I don’t think at Shea you’d find the fat woman who sat behind me one day, drinking beer and kicking my seat with some force because I was rooting for the Mets. “You’re in public now, you prick,” she said, in answer to my objections. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
Can’t say I was sorry to have missed Candlestick. But I didn’t want to miss Pac Bell. It was so sumptuous in my first glances at it on SportsCenter in 2000 that I actually took a personal day during the Mets’ first trip in so I could watch a day game live on FSNY. I’ve never been one for remarking on the greenness of the grass at a given ballpark, but Pac Bell, on TV, had the greenest grass I ever saw…and it’s not like I had a high-definition television in 2000.
The Mets got swept in their one four-game set that May. Then they lost in irritating fashion to Liván Hernandez in Game One of the NLDS, another telecast I stayed home from work to watch. Pac Bell was Turner West where the Mets were concerned, but I still loved to stare at it through the screen. The Pac Bell curse lifted in Game Two moments after it truly, nearly did us in when J.T. Snow snuck a score-tying three-run homer just over the right field fence off Armando Benitez in the bottom of the ninth. Jay Payton and Darryl Hamilton (and John Franco) rescued us from twenty kinds of hell in the tenth, but I have a sense I still would have wanted to have seen Pac Bell before long no matter how the playoffs played out.
It was just too damn pretty.
The very day in February that Giants tickets went on sale, Stephanie jumped online and ordered two for a game against the low-demand Brewers from tickets.com. That’s not a small detail. The A’s tickets we ordered the same day came in no time at all. But the Giants’ didn’t. We waited and waited. April became May became June and our flight was just around the corner. Finally, she got in touch with customer service. They told her the tickets had been sent to her address…in Medford, Oregon. Seems somebody with the same first name and last name ordered tickets to the same game.
As San Francisco Giants fan Charles Schulz would have had somebody say, “AAUUGGHH!!” What blockheads.
We were told to show up at a certain ticket window with proper ID and we’d be taken care of. As Mets fans, we didn’t believe it, but we had our plane reservations, so we followed through. Flew to San Francisco; wandered through Chinatown; took cable cars; made a BART excursion to Oakland; took a bus to what we refer to as the “other” USF (University of San Francisco, unwitting sister school to our alma mater); met with friends in Haight-Ashbury; lingered in Golden Gate Park; and eventually got on the MUNI light rail, getting off at palm tree-lined 24 Willie Mays Plaza, just off of downtown San Francisco.
There it was: Pac Bell Park. And it took my breath away for a minute. Then I had to get it back for the interminable wait at Will Call and the argument we were in for with the snarling clerk behind the counter.
Except the line moved quickly and it was a perfectly amenable transaction. The Giants were sold out every night, they didn’t need our 3,000-miles-away business, but they were competent and courteous as they resolved the ticket snafu.
Imagine that. And wouldn’t Will Call be a good name for a mascot?
That extraordinarily vital task completed, now we could get back to sizing up Pac Bell and letting go of our breath.
Gorgeous…just like the city. So gorgeous I didn’t mind the lamp post banner featuring J.T. Snow triumphantly rounding first after his homer off Armando (what the hell, we won). So gorgeous I didn’t hear anybody snorting at my 2000 World Series Mets cap “in public” (what the hell, we won). So gorgeous that I could have caressed every brick.
What a happy, ignited place Pac Bell was to circle in the summer of 2001. Every game was sold out; every night was energized by a home run chase — Bonds outpacing McGwire; everybody, you sensed, feeling lucky to be where they were. Indeed, this was the place to be, to explore, to not rush inside from.
So we strolled. We strolled to the Willie Mays statue, an event unto itself. I grew up hearing San Francisco never fully appreciated or accepted Willie as their own because he had the temerity to bring his star with him from New York. I guess that wore off after a while because the Willie Mays statue was a pretty damn popular attraction. Inspired by Willie, or perhaps the NY on my black cap, I sort of elbowed others out of the way so I could take a picture in peace with Mr. Mays.
We left Willie but then spent plenty of time/currency in the store constructed in his shadow. It was two levels and it was brimming with merchandise I had no idea I needed. Stephanie was charmed by the selection and came away with a San Francisco Seals t-shirt. She had no idea who the San Francisco Seals were, but once I told her the shirt was a nod to the city’s Pacific Coast League past, she was even more charmed. Likewise when we visited Seals Plaza with a seal statue (actual mascot name: Lou Seal; I like Will Call better). This brought us to the cusp of already renowned McCovey Cove, where fly balls occasionally dropped in for a drink. Some folks had parked themselves on the water, setting themselves to wait for a potential homer. We waved to them. They waved back. Then we turned around and kept walking, eventually peeking inside the chain link fence the Giants carved out beyond right field for passersby who wanted a glimpse — free! — inside the park while the game was going on.
This was an incredible baseball canvas the Giants painted. And we weren’t even inside yet.
It was pretty freaking great within the walls of the park, too. I missed whatever escalator they have and led us up too many stairs for comfort (though the hills had been good practice). Good thing this was one of those “intimate” parks where the climbing wasn’t as endless as we would have suspected. Finally, we reached our level and…garlic fries! I heard about those, too. Then I saw the line and passed. I will, per Tony Bennett, climb halfway to the stars while in San Francisco, but I won’t wait long for fries, no matter how pervasive their aroma.
There were other places that would sell you food, at least one of them evoking the good old New York Giants. It was named for John McGraw. I didn’t partake, but I took it as a good sign — just like the sign out on one of the plazas that tells you how many miles you were from old Giant haunts, including the Polo Grounds. New York Giant nods were mixed in everywhere: the championship flags from back east; the retired NYs for Muggsy and Matty along with the numbers for Hubbell and Ott; and, in the 50th anniversary year of his Shot, a concourse banner celebrating Bobby Thomson.
I felt at home here.
This was all fantastic, and I still wasn’t in my seat. We had a little more hiking to do, all the way up to Row 18, the height of the View polloi…top row.
Magnificent.
They ain’t called View seats just to distract you from how far you sit from the field. It’s a great view. You get that green, green grass, so lush that I could imagine sleeping on it under Tony Bennett’s stars (and I’ve never gone anything like camping in my life). You’re overwhelmed by the lattice work of the scoreboard, the arches carved into the outfield walls, the perfectly placed clock. You get the water: the Cove, China Basin, San Francisco Bay…whatever it was we were looking at, it was intoxicating as sunset approached. Where, I wondered, was Steve Perry? I was playing A/V director for Pac Bell Park and decided that around the sixth inning or whenever it began growing dark that we should all hear Journey:
When the lights
Go down
In the City
And the sun shines on
The bay
Now that I read those lyrics closely, they seem to be more about morning than evening, but it fit the mood up there. (So does this right now.)
You know what else fit? Every warm piece of clothing we brought with us. I had heard continually over the first season-and-a-half that perhaps the best of all the good things about Pac Bell was it wasn’t as bone-chillingly windy here as it was at Candlestick, then we wouldn’t freeze our tuchuses off in this part of town.
Hogwash. It was freezing. It was Shea in October freezing. The last time I’d seen the Giants in person was nine months earlier when Bobby Jones was one-hitting them to close out the 2000 NLDS. I sat in the last row of Mezzanine in the second-to-last section of left field, and a gale from the general direction of LaGuardia iced me the entire game. I literally wore four layers on my upper half and my back still shivered.
This, in July, was almost as bad.
Granted, I hadn’t schlepped my parka to San Francisco, but I thought I had prepared adequately. While visiting the other USF, I purchased a green and gold lined, pullover windbreaker (their school colors were miraculously the same as our school colors). I understood San Francisco weather enough to know my hoodie from home wouldn’t be enough. But surely, now that I had a couple of articles of autumnal gear, I’d get by.
It was barely adequate, and only because we had traveled 3,000 miles to be here. Stephanie had a substantial jacket, but she wasn’t faring that well. I vamoosed from the 18th row to the first concession I could find to buy her a pair of black wool gloves with an orange SF logo. They helped, a little.
The cold kind of took the momentum out of us. We were into the game as much as we could be for two people who were marveling more at the scenery than the show. It was great scenery, but it just kept getting colder as the sun stopped shining on the bay. When you’re gathering icicles in July — July! — you begin to grow a bit impatient. You find yourself not loving everything. You find yourself annoyed by the Webvan stickers; and the P.A. lady’s slight overdoing every announcement; and her calling it “the best experience in the majors” (let us decide what’s best, thank you); and the cheering for Jeff Kent. True, he was a Giant player and these were Giant fans, but we need to maintain some objective standards.
Stephanie and I agreed to tough it out through the seventh-inning stretch, or until Bonds batted again. Our end point was his groundout to start the bottom of the eighth (Barry was in his one power slump of the season at that point; sorry kayakers).
We left our seats but not the park, opting to explore where it was a little less windy. We took in the view from an unrestricted concourse with a cutesy name (the Promenade) and it, too, was spectacular. We ambled behind the outfield seats, which was like a carnival without the creepiness. That’s where the kitschy oversized glove and the oversized cola bottle sit. There’s a parked cable car there, too. Lots of youths hanging around in there, bordering on restless, maybe even rowdy. I got a bit of a Candlestick vibe from that crowd, so I kept us moving until we were eventually back outside, riding the conveniently located MUNI to Union Square. From there, we hopped a cable car to our hotel. We listened to Brooklyn’s own Rich Aurilia drive in the winning run in the eleventh on KNBR in relative warmth.
A lot to see everywhere at Pac Bell. A fine, fine place to enjoy the game if you can stay focused on baseball; a person probably needs two games to fully appreciate everything it has to offer — and two parkas. Maybe it’s a bit precious or pretentious here and there, but Pac Bell Park wouldn’t have been San Francisco if it hadn’t been.
And it was, without a doubt, San Francisco.
In case you’re interested, a little more Giants history here, from my first piece for the New York Times Bats blog, regarding Christy Mathewson, NLCS Game One winning pitcher Tim Lincecum and the historical parallels that linked them in Philadelphia.
by Greg Prince on 16 October 2010 6:15 pm If you’re lucky enough to not be a Cablevision subscriber, enjoy Game One of the 2010 NLCS tonight on Fox. If you’re like me, you’re rushing off to a radio to hear Tim Lincecum square off against Roy Halladay in one of the few matchups that fairly screams “PITCHING DUEL!” in advance (which means it will probably be 8-7 after three).
As long as the two aces are evoking a time gone by (staticky AM reception included), take a trip back to 1905 with me, to the last time a Giants pitcher traveled to Philadelphia for a postseason game — I wrote about Christy Mathewson, the Philadelphia Athletics and some historical parallels with young Mr. Lincecum on the New York Times Bats blog on Friday here. I hope you enjoy it more than I’ll enjoy not being able to see Halladay and Lincecum tonight.
And happy tenth anniversary to this postseason classic, remembered here by Matthew Callan. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen Game Five of the 2000 NLCS on television either, but I had a good excuse.
by Greg Prince on 15 October 2010 8:23 am Our all-time favorite American League team since the other night, the Texas Rangers, will be making its first League Championship Series appearance in its 39 years of existence.
Just wanted to get that on the record — and let the second edition of the Washington Senators off the hook.
(Oh, the things one thinks about when one’s favorite National League team hasn’t played in twelve days.)
I’ve seen it asserted (by nimrods as well as decent people) that the Texas Rangers franchise has waited 50 years for this moment, but I don’t think that’s practically accurate or exactly fair. It’s not completely wrong to say it; it may even be technically right. Yet it doesn’t quite ring true.
The Washington Senators were refounded in 1961 as a sop to politicians who might have otherwise stripped away baseball’s antitrust exemption once the previous Washington Senators (1901-1960) were permitted to transplant their operations and assets — most notably young Harmon Killebrew and Jim Kaat — in Minnesota. While they and a few other promising players would go on to blossom in Bloomington, the second Senators were left to fend for themselves as expansioneers, one year ahead of the Mets.
Those Senators never blossomed. They barely filibustered. Eleven seasons of Senators II yielded no more than 86 wins in any one year — 1969, their only winning campaign — and not a single finish in what we used to call the first division. They didn’t win, they didn’t draw (never attracting as many as a million fans in a season to D.C./RFK Stadium) and they didn’t stay in Washington. In 1972, they became the Texas Rangers and ceased to be the Washington Senators.
Or did they? Well, yes…the uniforms and the locale said they were no longer the Washington Senators. That was the whole idea of moving. Owner Bob Short, not a glorious figure by any means, said he couldn’t make a go of baseball in the nation’s capital and resettled in Arlington, Texas. But the Texas Rangers — like the Minnesota Twins — didn’t materialize from thin air. They came from somewhere.
So at what point is a franchise that leaves a town and a name behind no longer that franchise? Is it that franchise into perpetuity? If the second Senators didn’t simply trail off into the ether but rather assumed a new identity, were they and are they not, on some level, still that Senators franchise?
On some level, yes. On a tangible level, no, not really.
My bible when it comes to such philosophical questions is the 2005 volume Total Ballclubs by Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella, an indispensable history of every single franchise that has ever been tabbed as major league: National and American as well as four defunct circuits: American Association, Union Association, Players League and Federal League. It is Total Ballclubs’ contention that once a team leaves its immediate geography, it’s not the team it used to be.
[A]nyone who holds that the Brooklyn Dodgers-Los Angeles Dodgers or Seattle Pilots-Milwaukee Brewers constitute the same club has not talked to a native of Brooklyn or Seattle.
I buy that reasoning more than I don’t. When a franchise maintains at least the same name and makes an ongoing effort to keep its chronology intact, it’s a nice gesture toward history. Walter O’Malley hauled the Dodgers to L.A. — not the shell of a failed franchise, but a brand brimming with equity, something that would attract Southern Californians beyond the mere concept of a blank slate baseball team. On the other hand, he killed the Brooklyn Dodgers. The aftermath couldn’t help but yield a substantially new entity.
Ditto for the Dodgers’ ancient rivals. You’ll hear much in the coming days that the Giants haven’t won a World Series since 1954. I’d counter that the San Francisco Giants have never won a World Series, but that the New York Giants won five, the last of them in 1954, three years before their colors and heritage were dragged ignominiously across the country by Horace Stoneham.
Yet I can see where some would see that differently. If they’re the Giants now, they’re directly traceable to the Giants then, whatever coast they’re nearest. The Giants, like the Dodgers, celebrate their past and never explicitly disavowed it. That should be worth something if not everything.
The Rangers, however, shed their Washington baggage as soon as they could. As Total Ballclubs points out, the two most saleable individuals Short brought to Arlington were manager Ted Williams and slugger Frank Howard. Williams led the Senators to that one winning season in ’69, and Howard — New York Met manager for 116 games in 1983, in case you’ve forgotten — hit 136 home runs from 1968 through 1970. Yet both were gone from Texas before 1973 began. The Rangers, for better, worse or primarily the same, were intent on ditching their Dick Whitmanesque past in Arlington (also, Short didn’t want to keep paying Williams and Howard).
The Texas Rangers weren’t automatically 25 Don Drapers just because they changed their name. They didn’t win very much for a very long time, but they elected to proceed as an essentially new franchise. View it within the realm of what the Rangers had been before 1972: a United States senator’s term in office is six years; the only Senator to serve that long, in uninterrupted fashion, in Texas, was Toby Harrah. He stayed a Ranger through 1978 and returned for a House of Representatives-length stint in 1985 and ’86. That put Harrah, a four-time All-Star, in the same trivial conversation with 1970s Mets Willie Mays and Bob Aspromonte. They were, respectively, the last active New York Giant and Brooklyn Dodger to play in the bigs, just as Harrah was the final Washington Senator. Jim Kaat, should you be wondering, was the last pre-Twin Senator on whom the gavel came down — Kitty came up in 1959 and hung on until 1983. Toby, though, finished up a Ranger, saying goodbye to America in a way Mays, Aspromonte, Kaat didn’t do with their once-transient franchises.
Last Harrahs not withstanding, it can’t be said Washington became a distant memory in Arlington, because Arlington had no reason to remember Washington in the first place. The Rangers were a new concern in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex; the Senators of 1961-1971 never happened for them, except, perhaps, at the bottom of the American League standings, assuming anybody in the area was looking for them. They didn’t use the Senators as a platform for growth as L.A. did with the Dodgers or San Fran sort of did with the Giants. What got shipped to Texas was indeed the shell of a failed franchise. The shell would be filled with more failure across most of the next four decades, but it was Texas-bred failure.
Now flip the coin: If the Washington Senators didn’t matter much to Texas fans, did the Texas Rangers merit sentimental attachment back in Washington?
Though they were jilted en masse by their franchise’s owners, handfuls of Dodger and Giant loyalists persevere to this day in our Metropolitan midst, never taking the opportunity to get on board the Amazin’ express, not in 1962, not ever. Some of those who hang in there gamely grew up with the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants, and some inherited the gene. The New York Mets fan in me finds living in New York while rooting for a California club kind of crazy, but the New York Giants fan I profess to have been in another life sort of understands it. There was a long and hallowed history there, and as one of my Giants friends once told me, he was a Giants fan as long as he could remember, long before 1958…why should he quit on them just because they quit on him?
But the Washington Senators? The Senators of 1961 to 1971, specifically? The Senators who couldn’t rise above fourth place and exceeded .500 only once? Did they inspire any residual hometown allegiance once they filed a change-of-address card? Could there possibly still be Texas Rangers fans in Washington, D.C., even now, 39 years after the Senators left and going on six years since the Nationals arrived?
Anything is possible, but somehow I doubt it. Some folks in Washington cling tightly to their memories of both versions of the departed Senators (each of whom the ex-Expos acknowledge as municipal and spiritual forebears), but Texas was Texas, and the Rangers were quickly something else altogether. Perhaps it’s best to defer to the great Tom Boswell on this matter:
Washington baseball fans have had prickly Ranger feelings for ages. They, and especially under-financed, incompetent owner Bob Short, who moved the Senators to Texas after the ’71 season, are a primary reason the town went without a team for so long.
Boswell, for so long a bard of baseball in a town that lacked a team, betrays no latent attachment to the Senators Emeriti, even if he thinks it’s fine they’ve reached their heretofore unreachable star. “Good for the Texas Rangers,” he wrote in Thursday’s Washington Post. “They suffered long enough. At last, they’ve won their first postseason series. It took 39 seasons. […] To me, 39 seasons is just about right for stealing my childhood team and damaging Washington’s reputation so much the town did not get a club for decades. See, I’m not the type to hold a grudge.”
Tom Boswell says the Texas Rangers required 39 years before making it to an LCS — 39, not 50. Long enough for Tom, long enough for Texas, good enough for me.
Now on to winning their first American League pennant.
by Greg Prince on 14 October 2010 6:21 am There is a mathematical formula that can be applied to offseasons that follow bad seasons:
(Rumor X Big Name) + (Frustration ÷ Impatience) = Desire – Logic
Usually you do the math, multiply it by too many years and add a big, fat $ in front of it. It’s how you get weighed down by contracts like those currently held by Jason Bay and Francisco Rodriguez. It’s how you wind up hoping your team will give one just like it to Carlos Delgado or Juan Gonzalez. You feel cared for when it’s signed, begrudged when it’s not.
That’s in December or January. There’s no telling how you’ll feel in July or August. Or the July or August that comes a year or two or three later, depending on how much you signed the person in question for and how long you committed.
Yet I understand the impulse. It’s a twitch in your system born of losing, or perhaps not winning enough. Somebody’s out there, he’s on your radar, he’s being talked about…Go Get Him…NOW!
Which brings us, maybe, to Sandy Alderson.
I’ve lived this long and have never before given more than the most passing thought to Sandy Alderson. I’ve only typed his name for public consumption twice, in these last two paragraphs. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on the subject of Sandy Alderson, not based on these now three typings of his name.
But he’s undoubtedly the biggest name in the only free agent pool that matters at the moment, the one swimming with general manager candidates. A critical mass seems to be gathering behind Alderson’s candidacy, as if it couldn’t be anybody else; that if it’s anybody else, it would be a letdown. Like pursuing Delgado and winding up with Mientkiewicz.
I’m sure I don’t know if Alderson’s the guy for the Mets. He sure sounds good in the beau ideal sense. Who among us hasn’t wanted a bona fide grown-up, a sheriff to clean up this mess? When was the last time it felt as if somebody upstairs really knew what he was doing, and that our GM — Minaya, Duquette, Phillips — wasn’t on the outside looking in at his supposed peers? So often in the past umpteen years, the Mets give the impression that they’re not run like a genuine baseball operation. They’re run like the Mets.
Thus, it’s tempting to want to hand the reins to an accomplished Baseball Man, someone Widely Respected, someone with a Track Record. Alderson hasn’t even interviewed, yet I’m already sensing a disappointment in the making if he doesn’t get/take the job.
Which is probably the wrong instinct. GM’s aren’t ballplayers. They don’t have statistical profiles on the backs of their baseball cards (I don’t think they have baseball cards, either, which is kind of surprising). We can make educated guesses based on anecdotes from their previous postings and the records of their old teams, but there’s no video. There’s no knowing for sure if their circumstances were their own. How do you account for what owners were like at the last stop, or scouts, or underlings? And does any of it matter when what you really need next are ideas for where the Mets go from here?
Alderson may be the guy. Or maybe somebody with less of a name is a better option. Maybe somebody’s future will outshine Alderson’s past, and that person’s stature will grow as the Mets win. Or maybe Alderson’s best days are ahead of him, in Flushing, turning a quality front office career into a legendarily great one.
The Mets are taking their time deciding, which is fine. It’s recommended. This is a long-term decision, and the Mets shouldn’t be pressured or bullied into arriving at a conclusion because of a perceived lack of inaction. The offseason isn’t going anywhere. A GM will be chosen. A manager will be chosen. Players will be dispatched. Players will be acquired. An offseason will morph into a preseason before we know it. I want to head in that direction under the guidance of the best possible general manager available.
Whoever that may be.
No matter how swimmingly the Alderson interview goes today, stay in the water as long as you need to, Mets. Keep searching until you’re satisfied you’ve found with what you’re looking for…and then give it one more hard stare just to be sure.
Speaking of big names, a reluctant but fond farewell from Faith and Fear to our esteemed blolleague Coop as she clicks off the lights at My Summer Family and reverts to being a non-blogging Mets fan. We look forward to seeing you again next summer (or sooner) in real life, but will surely miss you always in these parts.
by Greg Prince on 13 October 2010 2:37 am I’m a diehard Texas Rangers fan since just after 11 o’clock last night.
HOOK ’EM HORNS! Or whatever it is we diehard Texas Rangers fans have been known to say.
Ten things I know and like about the Texas Rangers besides the obvious…
1. Mike Shropshire wrote two of the funniest books ever written about a team that had never won a postseason series until just now: Seasons in Hell and The Last Real Season. To the extent you’ve ever considered Pete Broberg, you’ll never think abut him the same way again.
2. Dan Ziegler from the sadly dormant Lonestar Mets was a helluva blogger circa 2006 and an extraordinarily nice guy to boot (as they presumably say in Texas). When I learned his favorite A.L. team was the Rangers, I told him how much I liked the Ballpark in Arlington. He said it was fine there but that those retro parks didn’t hold a candle to Shea in terms of the passion generated. Dan wrote in April 2006 that “Shea Stadium is a wonderful stadium and, although few will admit it, will be missed in 2009.” This from someone who had just made his first trip to Flushing in 21 years.
3. The Ballpark in Arlington, or whatever it’s called this week, is a great place to watch a ballgame, too, based on my lone experience there. It’s a strong No. 17 on my countdown, held back mostly by its middle-of-nowhereness and the volumes at which they cranked the P.A. in 1997.
4. Stephanie’s cousin Lisa couldn’t have been lovelier in getting us those tickets 13 years ago. I hope she gets to an ALCS game (if she wants to).
5. Jeff Burroughs, 1974 A.L. MVP. Mike Hargrove, 1974 A.L. Rookie of the Year. Billy Martin, 1974 A.L. Manager of the Year. Ferguson Jenkins, 1974 A.L. Comeback Player of the Year. I was crazy for the Texas Rangers in 1974. They improved by 28 games over 1973 and gave the Oakland A’s a run for their dynastic money all summer long, pulling to within four games of first in the middle of September. It didn’t happen for them, but they captured my 11-year-old imagination as few American League teams ever have.
6. Lenny Randle‘s proto-Francisco Rodriguez actions (punching out not his girlfriend’s father but his manager Frank Lucchesi) made him available to any taker early in the 1977 season and the Mets, of all teams, took a shot on (not at) him. Randle instantly became the Mets’ most dynamic player — which wasn’t saying much in 1977, but he was the goods for that one year: .304 average, a then team record 33 steals, the misfortune of batting when the lights went out during the July 13 blackout (admitting later he thought the Lord had come to get him). Lenny Randle went on to have a mediocre 1978, and that would be that, but for one year, the one year we needed somebody or something not to be dismal, Randle was the man.
7. Ron Darling and Walt Terrell for Lee Mazzilli. Thanks!
8. Bobby Valentine honed his managerial skill set in Texas. I seem to remember reading that as he led the Rangers into first place for a while in 1986 that he was in greater demand in the Dallas-Fort Worth area than any Cowboy. Those folks showed some good taste.
9. Jeff Francoeur actually said in the victorious clubhouse after Game Five last night that he always wondered what it would be like to play in the playoffs in New York, and now he perversely gets to satisfy his curiosity. At least Frenchy gave the subject some thought when he was a Met. By the way, Jeff continues to work his personable magic on the local media, whomever they may be. This from Barry Horn of the Dallas Morning News: “Loosest of loose bunch of pregame Rangers was Jeff Francoeur, who started in right field after sitting out last three games. His looseness didn’t translate into much production on the field (he was 0-for-4 and grounded into a double play), but it did help keep the team in the right frame of mind.” When a Francoeur team goes to an LCS, everybody’s frame of mind is right.
10. Cliff Lee: another great pitcher to watch and drool over in this pitching-rich postseason. And what better use for him than what lies ahead?
I sure hope there are four of seven even better reasons to know and like the Texas Rangers soon enough.
by Greg Prince on 12 October 2010 5:48 am Dad, I beg you to reconsider! Tractor pulls! Atlanta Braves baseball! Joe Franklin!
—Bart Simpson, imploring father to continue to steal cable, “Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment,” February 7, 1991
The most comforting thing about watching Bobby Cox’s tenure as Braves manager end — besides knowing the Braves had lost, I suppose — was where I was watching it: on TBS.
It was lovely and all that Cox could go out in front of the home crowd at Turner Field Monday night (though 8,752 fewer fannypackers showed up than had Sunday), but the real sentimental touch, however unintended, was that it aired where Braves games always used to air. It aired where Bobby Cox became a living room presence via the outlet that allowed Atlanta to become a regional team.
That region was America.
The TBS through which Ted Turner shared the Braves until they became — with only mild exaggeration — America’s Team isn’t exactly the same one it was when the concept of a “superstation” was something of a phenomenon. That TBS was WTBS of Atlanta, formerly WTCG, the Turner-owned independent channel that aired Braves games locally. Ted got himself a satellite in the 1970s and suddenly he was a genuine programming provider.
The Braves were the programming; that and a flood of old sitcoms, none more repeated than The Andy Griffith Show. If you tuned into TBS to see baseball and you were thwarted by rain, that was OK, because the superstation would entertain you with an endless supply of Andy Griffiths. Rain being as common as it is down south come summertime, you were as likely to see Barney Fife in Mayberry talking wistfully about a weekend in Mount Pilot as you were to watch a tarp being pulled in Atlanta.
Manager Bobby Cox filled the role of beloved Sheriff Andy Taylor in the Brave dugout quite amiably unless you were a short-fused umpire or a frustrated fan of a divisional foe. Cox became that kind of Griffithesque staple on TBS, same as Brave wins. Just ask a San Francisco Giants enthusiast with a long memory to recall tuning in the Superstation down the stretch in 1993. If you lived on the West Coast on the final day of that season’s scorching pennant race, you could tune in the Rockies and Braves live from Fulton County Stadium at 9:05 AM (TBS broadcasts always started five minutes later than every other frequency’s) and find out very early what kind of day you were going to have. Atlanta beat Colorado 5-3 to notch their 104th win of the year and take a half-game lead over San Francisco in the last divisional duel guaranteed to leave the second-place team emptyhanded. The Giants took on the Dodgers after the Brave result went final and got whupped badly at L.A., 12-1. The Giants wound up going 103-59…and home for the winter.
Giants fans might be feeling a measure of latent redemption for 1993 after taking this NLDS against the Wild Card Braves, a designation that was not available to their club seventeen years ago. They can be proud of their team for winning a taut — if not defensively tight — series of four one-run games and maybe more proud for the way their team took a moment from hugging and dogpiling to turn toward the Brave dugout and applaud the departing pilot of their vanquished opponents.
Twenty-nine seasons of managing were technically over for Bobby Cox once Melky Cabrera grounded to third with two out in the bottom of the ninth (and Juan Uribe didn’t throw the ball past Travis Ishikawa), yet he couldn’t disappear from view the way managers of losing playoff teams generally do. The TBS cameras caught him ducking into the runway, but the Braves fans called him back out, even as the Giants players were still on the field celebrating their victory.
Cox had to return and acknowledge that he was being acknowledged. The Giants then had the good taste to momentarily halt their obligatory orgy of self-congratulation to turn and face the Brave dugout. Suddenly the NLDS winners were applauding the man they beat. It was appropriate and it was beautiful. Cox didn’t milk it for long and the Giants soon enough beat a retreat to their clubhouse to give each other alcohol baths. In an instant, the only people you noticed wearing uniforms were members of the Turner Field grounds crew, tending to the area around home plate (what’s the rush, fellas?). The image of the 25-man cap tip in Cox’s direction, however, left everybody watching on TBS a perfect grace note to take from this postseason round and perhaps cherish during the five-day interregnum now ensuing in advance of the next postseason round.
Baseball, Keith Olbermann reflected at the outset of Ken Burns’s The Tenth Inning, is “the only sport that goes forward and backwards.” Other sports have histories, but only baseball’s is an ever present past. Cox’s past was all over Game Four of this Division Series. You couldn’t help but watch this game wind down, once the Giants took a lead in the seventh, and not think about Cox finishing up.
It reminded me of when the Mets went to the bottom of the ninth on the last day at Shea — after all the talk about how the stadium would be closing at season’s end, and how unimaginable it felt to consider that it wouldn’t be there the following year. I’d thought and thought and thought throughout 2008 of facing a future without Shea Stadium, and now there were three outs separating me from that inevitability. Maybe the Mets could score a couple, could win in extras, could play a tiebreaker against Milwaukee, could go on a postseason run…but it probably wasn’t going to happen. The inevitable was becoming that reality.
I see Bobby Cox and, though I understand his record earns him a spot on managerial Mount Rushmore (or Mount Pilot, if you will), I don’t necessarily get all the fuss about what a sweetheart and humanitarian he is. It could be because I don’t necessarily see TBS Bobby Cox, where he was the home team sheriff (and Leo Mazzone was cast as his lovable deputy). I guess I see Prime Time Bobby Cox, from the 1999 NLCS and recall how the sight of him and his seemingly impenetrable Braves angered the blood beyond healthy levels. I’m not a Braves fan and I didn’t love Bobby Cox hovering in the other dugout all these years. I surely didn’t go for how most Mets-Braves games concluded when seasons hung in their balance.
But Cox was always there, continuously since 1990, intermittently since 1978. He was on TBS almost every night for six months and then, come October, took his act to CBS or ABC (The Baseball Network, anyone?) or NBC or ESPN or Fox. TBS rebranded itself a few years ago and stopped beaming Braves baseball into every cable home in America. It became the home of the Division Series in 2007, providing a platform to promote shows nobody would ever want any part of after being inundated by an endless loop of commercials for them — where have you gone, Frank Caliendo? — and enough videotaped rope with which clueless Chip Caray could hang himself. What TBS didn’t have once October got going in ’07 and ’08 and ’09 was the Braves of Bobby Cox, which was fine. For a few nights this month, however, they did. Just in time…and just like old times, if not always great times, depending on your rooting interest.
Bobby Cox taking his final bow on his old station was indeed comforting. Jarring, on the other hand, was watching his postgame press conference, which for losing playoff managers is usually quick and dirty business. We lost, they won, that’s it is usually the extent of the public reflection. But this wasn’t going to be an ordinary Q&A for Cox. No questions about strategy. Nothing about what next year looked like. Everybody knows next year will be different in Atlanta. All the inquiries were of the “how did you feel?” variety.
It was obvious how Cox felt when he couldn’t continue with one of his answers. The man who wouldn’t stop squawking at umpires all those years couldn’t spit anything out, not for a few very long seconds anyway. “A grown man shouldn’t do this,” he said as he stood on the brink of his own rain delay. Then Bobby Cox did what they sooner or later managed to do all those nights when the Braves starred on TBS.
He pulled back the tarp and got on with the baseball.
“I can’t say enough about Derek Lowe,” Cox saw fit to interject, even though nobody had asked him about Derek Lowe. “He’s going to be a 20-game winner next year, I think, if they get him any support at all.”
It wasn’t jarring that Bobby Cox nearly broke down while conducting his final media session as a major league manager. It wasn’t jarring that the assembled media members sent him off with an ovation, prohibition on press box cheering be damned. What jarred, in the end, was that Bobby Cox referred to the Atlanta Braves as “they”.
They, not we. Their team will go forward, but without their manager.
You’ve been watching Atlanta Braves baseball on Superstation TBS. Stay tuned for Andy Griffith.
by Greg Prince on 11 October 2010 6:00 am You may recall that the one element Bobby Cox always lacked as he led the Braves through their almost endless divisional dynasty was a certifiable steel-toed, kick-ass closer. He was never able to hand the ball to a National League version of Mariano Rivera — not that there are too many of him lying around — or Dennis Eckersley. He didn’t even have a Trevor Hoffman or a John Franco, in-their-prime relievers piling up tons of saves if not inspiring the masses with confidence as they danced between baserunner raindrops. Cox had to improvise October after October, early on with ex-Mets who either weren’t that good or were no longer nearly as good as they once were.
Alejandro Peña was plucked from the wreckage of the 1991 Mets to serve as temporary savior during the modern Braves’ very first pennant drive, replacing the injured Torre-era Met relic Juan Berenguer (I can still hear the not-quite-all-there older brother of a junior high friend of mine referring to him as “Beren-jower” circa 1978). Jeff Reardon then swooped in in 1992 to pick up for the faded Peña. Reardon was a great closer a decade earlier, but by the time he alighted in Atlanta, he wasn’t the same flamethrower the Expos fleeced from the Mets in exchange for Ellis Valentine.
The record should show it was ex-Mets who sabotaged Brave hopes of obtaining the ultimate prize their first couple of chances; if only current Mets in a given year could have been so effective once the Coxmen moved from N.L. West to N.L. East.
Peña was the losing pitcher in what many consider the greatest World Series game ever played, the ten-inning, 1-0 Game Seven triumph of the Twins over the Braves in 1991, the night Jack Morris went the distance. Alejandro’s activity was overshadowed, but it occurred. After unjamming a mess of future washed up Met Mike Stanton’s making in the ninth, Peña got into his own trouble — allowing a leadoff double to Dan Gladden — and never recovered. (It’s true: the Minnesota Twins used to find ways to not lose postseason series.)
A year later, with Reardon as Cox’s trusted right arm, the Braves were three outs from taking a 2-0 World Series lead on the Blue Jays. Reardon retired his first batter in the ninth inning, but then walked future Met yachtsman Derek Bell. Bell sailed home when Ed Sprague took Reardon deep to give Toronto a 5-4 lead which their closer, Tom Henke, maintained. The Jays never let go of that momentum and the Braves wound up losing the Series in six.
Bobby Cox stayed away from ex-Mets as closers after 1992 but he never really found a pitcher to nail down that role for good for another decade. Instead, he rode hot hands as far as they would carry him, which worked only once — Mark Wohlers, in 1995. Wohlers couldn’t preserve a three-run lead in the eighth inning of the fourth game of the 1996 World Series and there went the Braves’ chance of repeating as world champs (which is fine until you recall who started their own dynasty as a result). Wohlers eventually gave way to Kerry Ligtenberg who gave way soon enough to lovable John Rocker who charmingly talked his way out of Atlanta. The Braves finally deployed big-time closer when Cox converted ace starter John Smoltz — Morris’s opponent from Game Seven in 1991 — into a reliever toward the end of the 2001 season. Smoltz, who came to relieving after a severe injury knocked him from the Brave rotation, definitely had an Eckersley thing going on for a while (144 saves from 2002 to 2004). It was fun while it lasted, but it was destined not to last because:
a) Smoltz was 34 years old when he reluctantly took on the role of closer;
b) Smoltz was essentially on loan to the bullpen until he could get back to doing what he wanted to do and was designed to do all along, which was start…and start very well despite a five-year hiatus from starting, which was one of the most remarkable retransformations any pitcher has ever made.
The last N.L. East champion Braves club, 2005’s, reverted to piecing together its ninth innings from spare parts; anybody remember Chris Reitsma and Danny Kolb? Perhaps Cox did. Maybe they and their non-Eck ilk are why he sought proven ninth-inning insurance for 2010, the year the Braves returned to regular-season glory.
That’s how Billy Wagner wound up in Atlanta. Despite his injury history and the many miles on this former Met closer, Wagner was enough of an answer to satisfy Cox after his own five-year hiatus from the postseason. Billy, 39, helped keep his latest team in first place much of the season while getting them into the playoffs as the Wild Card by the margin of a single length over San Diego.
Then, as we saw Friday night, he was gone. Wagner strained his left oblique muscle, exited Game Two in San Francisco and was removed from the Braves’ NLDS roster before Game Three — all of which combined to make the top of the ninth inning Sunday evening at Turner Field a little extra fascinating to contemplate.
Here was Bobby Cox, trying to extend the last days of his managerial career. Here were his Braves, one inning from outlasting the Giants, having withstood a marvelous outing from Jonathan Sanchez, magically taking a 2-1 lead in the eighth inning thanks to a two-run pinch-homer from the human good-luck charm Eric Hinske. Here were three outs that stood in Atlanta’s way.
The same three outs Peña didn’t get in the seventh game in 1991.
The same three outs Reardon didn’t record in the second game in 1992.
The same three outs that were supposed to be Wagner’s, according to the grand plan.
No plan now, however. Cox said he was going to improvise based on matchups, and he was good to his word.
It didn’t work. It almost did, but it didn’t.
Cox started the ninth with Craig Kimbrel. He was successful (popping up loathsome Cody Ross), then he wasn’t (walking Travis Ishigawa), then he was (striking out Andres Torres), then he wasn’t (giving up a single up the middle to Freddie Sanchez on a 1-and-2 count).
For better or worse, a big-time, big-name, big-money closer of the stature of a Billy Wagner would stay in to finish this chapter. Instead, Cox is desperate to write the ending, so he removes the pen from Kimbrel’s relatively hot right hand and passes it to lefty Mike Dunn.
Which totally doesn’t work, as lefty Aubrey Huff singles to right, scoring Ishikawa from second, knotting the game at two. So Cox does the matchup fandango again, removing Dunn and inserting righty (and Met bête noire) Peter Moylan to face righty Buster Posey. The matchup was a boon for the Braves as far as Moylan inducing a ground ball to second, but Cox didn’t factor in the matchup of ground ball versus overmatched second baseman Brooks Conrad. Posey’s grounder merely visited the area between Conrad’s feet — just passin’ through! — before E-4’ing its way into the outfield. Sanchez scored, the Giants led, and that would essentially be that for the Braves…though Cox did bring in one more reliever, Kyle Farnsworth, to get the final out of the top of the ninth.
No closer, four relievers, two runs, a 2-1 series deficit. Tough, hauntingly familiar luck for a franchise whose fairly recent history of excellence always did seem to stop at the edge of ultimate victory.
Wagner was unavailable, so no point posing a “what if?” on Billy’s behalf, but what if Cox had simply left Kimbrel in to face Huff? What if a manager who is lauded in all precincts for showing unmatched loyalty to his players had stuck with one live arm to capture one more out? What is it about ninth innings that make even a Cooperstown-bound skipper so goofy?
There wasn’t much to recommend the final third or so of the 2010 Mets season, but I personally adored the way the Mets never missed their high-priced closer once he landed simultaneously on the shelf and court room docket. I was a fan of Frankie Rodriguez. Though I’m sympathetic to arguments that teams rely way too much on closers — I’ve made them myself on occasion — I watched 2008 melt away once Wagner went down and believed we needed somebody not just dependable but stellar to take ninth innings. Rodriguez was coming off a record-setting 62-save season in Anaheim. Though he could be nerve-wracking as an Angel and showed signs he was anything but angelic in terms of temperament, I couldn’t argue at all with the Mets grabbing him off the open market.
He had his ups and downs prior to partaking in K-Rod Smackdown 2010. He was sometimes horrible, sometimes reliable, no more aggravating than any of his 1990s and 2000s predecessors. Then after one fit too many, he was out of the picture. The Mets were pretty much out of the race at that point, so it didn’t matter immensely who would pick up for him, but, still, I hoped somebody would.
And Hisanori Takahashi did. He was the anti-Frankie, the non-Billy. There was nothing exciting about Hisanori Takahashi except that he generally got results. Pulses didn’t quicken when he appeared. Music didn’t blare. The words prima and donna didn’t go steady in his presence. He was simply the guy who was given the ball to close out ninth innings when the Mets had a lead, and he went about his business professionally and effectively.
What it means for 2011 is unknown. Takahashi will be a free agent and he wants to start. He won’t be a starter with the Mets. He put in some nice yeoman work in that role when called upon, but didn’t seem to have the stuff to persevere as such once teams got a look at him. Hisanori was quite valuable as the closer pro tempore but the new manager, whoever that soul will be, wouldn’t likely be penciling him in. Rodriguez’s status is unclear for next year, but he is owed a closer’s ransom. Francisco throws hard and causes a fuss…for anybody else, that would be reflexively considered an asset; with this guy, who knows? And if K-Rod is otherwise detained (or dismissed), there will be sentiment mounting to give Bobby Parnell a long look, though he didn’t seem quite ready for the added responsibility in August.
In any event, what the Mets have experienced across their pre-Takahashi late innings and what the Braves are going through as a pressing concern right this very minute shows, perhaps, what a crap shoot the concept of the closer truly is. Unless you’ve got that stiff from the Taco Bell commercials, you really do have to kind of touch and feel your way through ends of games. You might get lucky with a Craig Kimbrel, or you may be right to feel impatient. You might miss your Billy Wagner or Frankie Rodriguez, or you might come up with a Hisanori Takahashi and be surprised how little stress you feel in the process. Bruce Bochy no doubt counted his lucky stars that Brian Wilson could get three outs Sunday after cursing the darkness Friday that he couldn’t get six.
Makes a baseball fan appreciate the following fellows even more:
• Mariano Rivera. Grrr… My friend Kevin and I like to remind each other that the guy universally considered untouchable in October gave up a series-turning home run to Sandy Alomar in 1997, a killer soft liner to Luis Gonzalez in 2001 and was unable to slam the door shut at Fenway Park in 2004. Those failures would tase closers who didn’t have other opportunities to make up for them. Rivera’s had a zillion and he’s converted, I think, a zillion. Grrr…
• Cole Hamels — also not a favorite here, but what better way to avoid relief troubles than by avoiding relievers? Hamels Sunday night tossed a five-hit, nine-strikeout series-clinching shutout that, to date, stands as only the third-best starting pitching performance of this postseason. More Hamels, more Halladays and more Lincecums, and you’d have less nonsense in ninth innings.
• Tug McGraw, for what he did 37 years ago yesterday. With a tiring Tom Seaver having loaded the bases with one out in the top of the ninth in the deciding game of the 1973 NLCS, Yogi Berra called on his indefatigable fireman to secure the Mets’ second pennant in five years. Sure enough, on October 10, 1973, Tug popped Joe Morgan up to short and grounded Dan Driessen to first. The Mets won 7-2, took the series 3-2 and successfully bolted to their clubhouse with their lives intact in the face of onrushing Shea hordes (who had a funny way of showing their love back then).
All the other lifesaving Tug had done in the previous six weeks was figurative, but it was just as valuable to the Met cause. His final five saves down the stretch in ’73 — when all that was at stake was Met survival — were recorded in outings that lasted 2⅓; 3; 3; 2⅓; and 3 innings, respectively; the last of them was the division-clincher in Chicago. During that same fifteen-game span, McGraw picked up a pair of wins after pitching 1⅓ innings and 2 innings of shutout baseball.
We’re so used to doubting our closers, you may be surprised to learn we had no problem believing in Tug McGraw as 1973 was becoming 1973. We encapsulate his essence in a pitch-perfect slogan, and we revere his singular personality (while we continue to try to derive some good from his untimely passing), but something else is worth noting about Tug McGraw, particularly if you weren’t around to see him in action during his signature season as a Met:
That screwball could really pitch when it really mattered. You have someone who can do that in a given September and October, you don’t take it lightly, and you never forget it.
Thanks for that, Mr. McGraw, wherever you are.
by Greg Prince on 9 October 2010 7:57 pm Funny how little you know about a baseball team until you spend some time focused on them. The San Francisco Giants, for example, disappeared from my radar screen the moment the Mets were mistakenly awarded a victory against them in the middle of July. And the Atlanta Braves? We saw them as recently as the third weekend in September, but they were playing the role of opponents. Opponents never fully capture my comprehension.
Now both the Giants, a team that’s always been on my take-or-leave pile, and Braves, a team I wish had been left in their pre-1994 division so they never would have grown into quite such a Met obstacle, are teams I’m following closely. I have little choice if I want to watch baseball in October.
What struck me about these particular playoff combatants as the drama in their NLDS ratcheted up exponentially late Friday into early Saturday is how many familiar names and faces dot each roster. Yes, they look familiar and they seem familiar, but the context is strange. I may have been intellectually aware that these individuals were presently wearing Giants uniforms or Braves uniforms, yet to see them competing as Giants or Braves when it mattered most…it was jarring. This isn’t about intellect. It’s about instinct.
I instinctively know these guys can’t be who they say they are.
Pat Burrell, Giants: Pat Burrell powered the Giants to an early 3-0 lead when he took Tommy Hanson deep to left in the first inning. HUH? Pat Burrell is that phucking Phillie Met-killer who started hitting home runs at Shea in 2000 — including the longest one I ever saw (it bounced over the back fence of the visitors’ bullpen and into the parking lot) — and hasn’t yet stopped. What do you mean he hasn’t been a Phillie in two years?
Edgar Renteria, Giants: Edgar Renteria laid down a beautiful bunt to start what appeared to be the winning rally in the bottom of the tenth. HUH? Edgar Renteria drove in the winning run in the 1997 World Series, seventh game, eleventh inning, single through the middle to plate Craig Counsell. Edgar Renteria is a world champion Marlin, a real budding star. What do you mean he’s 34 and on his sixth team?
Troy Glaus, Braves: Troy Glaus turned one of the gutsiest double plays I’ve ever seen, going around the horn with Buster Posey’s one-out, bases-loaded grounder to end the bottom of the tenth instead of firing home. If anything goes wrong on the attempted 5-4-3, the game is over and the Giants win. HUH? Troy Glaus breaks Giants hearts, sure, but he does it as the slugging Anaheim Angel who won the 2002 World Series MVP award by bashing three homers and hitting .385. What do you mean it’s been almost a decade since Troy Glaus was besting Barry Bonds for all the marbles?
It felt like this all night as the Giants’ 4-0 lead melted into the Braves’ 5-4 win. Freddie Sanchez isn’t a Pirate? Aubrey Huff isn’t a Devil Ray? That little bedbug Cody Ross gets to be in the playoffs? The most dramatic examples were the two ex-Royals whose stays in Kansas City all but escaped my attention earlier this season.
• Kyle Farnsworth was the winning pitcher. Last time I thought about Kyle Farnsworth, I was advising some Yankees fan in the winter of 2005 that no matter how fast you think he throws, you don’t want to trust this new setup man of yours with anything of substance (I was right then, less so now).
• Rick Ankiel was the winning hitter. His story is too famous to facilitate disingenuousness regarding what he’s been doing for the past ten years, but the name “Rick Ankiel” will always mean pitcher, not hitter to a Mets fan — tragic figure from 2000, not hero in 2010…not until last night anyway.
When Ankiel pulled a J.T. Snow of sorts (speaking of ten years ago), my right arm, the one I use for raising in triumph, shot up on his behalf. That surprised me, as I wasn’t rooting for the Braves, but I guess I liked the great story suddenly unfolding — both in the sense of scatter-armed phenom hurler having completely re-established himself as an offensive force in postseason play, and because it was good to see somebody come back on anybody this month. Winning teams were ahead in their League Division Series by a collective seven games to zero entering this particular contest. With Burrell’s homer and then some in the books, it looked like the orange-clad Giants had relegated the Braves to hopeless pumpkin status and we would be lulled to sweep everywhere in this round. But the Braves were making a set of it after all, down by four, now ahead by one. That alone seemed worth cheering for.
As would be the return, somehow, of Braves closer Billy Wagner, should we be lucky enough to see it.
If Billy hadn’t been a Met, I might have the same cognitive dissonance issues with him as I’ve had with all the other mercenaries on the field last night (whaddaya mean he’s not an Astro anymore?), but once you’re a Met, you’re a Met all the way, and I keep tabs to your last playing day. Like anybody else even slightly sentient this season, I knew Billy Wagner was saying goodbye to America whenever he got through pitching in 2010. When he came on to start the tenth, I treated his appearance like I have every Billy Wagner appearance since he came to be one of us in 2006 — I greeted it with ambivalence.
Oh, of course I wanted him to succeed as a Met when he was taking our big innings, just as I rooted against him as a Brave when he was facing us this year, but I’ve never decided how I really feel about him. I read wonderful stories like this one Michael Bamberger wrote in Sports Illustrated and I want to cheer him on. Then I remember how he got on my nerves for multiple reasons as a Met — mound-related mostly, but occasionally for not sticking up for a teammate. There was one game in 2008 when Oliver Perez simply didn’t have it (big surprise, I know) and Wagner called him out in the press for the crime of making the bullpen work overtime that afternoon, a day game after a taxing night game. You mean Perez wanted to blow up early? I’m no fan of Ollie — who is? — but even I assume a pitcher would rather succeed than fail. It seemed like the sort of criticism you address in private, not in the papers.
Then again, there was something to Billy Being Billy that couldn’t help but be appealing. He apparently said what he apparently meant. In this David Waldstein Times story on the potentially waning days of the Los Mets brand, for example, there seemed a good opportunity for Wagner to take a parting shot at certain former fellow Mets and pile on the Mets at a moment when piling on the Mets was de rigueur. But he didn’t go for it. I appreciated that.
His Met pitching? Like any other closer’s, I appreciated it when it wasn’t hair-raising. When it was, hoo boy. After the recent Ken Burns documentary aired on Channel 13, they ran a New York-centric version in which fans of all four NYC teams shared their baseball recollections. One of them, a Mets fan, chose to elaborate on the atrocities of May 20, 2006 — Pedro Martinez’s seven sparkling innings (four hits, eight strikeouts), Duaner Sanchez’s clean eighth, the Mets leading the Yankees 4-0 and in came Wagner.
Single. Walk. Run-scoring single. Flyout. Walk. Run-scoring walk. Run-scoring hit by pitch.
Seven batters, six baserunners, three scored, three willed to the next guy, Pedro Feliciano, who couldn’t prevent the score from being tied. The Mets went on to lose in eleven.
Fuck PBS, I thought as I watched it all over again. And fuck Billy Wagner, I thought that Saturday afternoon (and the Sunday morning after) four years ago and not a few times during his Met tenure. The horror shows wrought by closers are never fully countered by the saves, particularly the saves that don’t come easy. No matter what he did after May 20, 2006, Billy Wagner was always the guy who let a 4-0 lead over the Yankees dissipate into a 5-4 loss. Or the guy who entered a tied second game of the ’06 NLDS and allowed a leadoff home run to So Taguchi and two runs after that. Or the guy who very nearly let life-or-death Game Six slip away (another 4-0 lead, this one cut to 4-2 — Taguchi doubling home Juan Encarnacion and Scott Rolen). Or the guy who disappeared down the stretch in 2007 and couldn’t remain in one piece in 2008.
Mad at a closer I didn’t trust for not staying healthy so I could not trust him some more? It’s a little short on logic, but it comes with the highly compensated three-out territory.
 Billy Wagner, too close to Y.A. Tittle territory for comfort. When Wagner came on Friday night, I was sort of rooting for him to succeed, sort of not. What I wasn’t rooting for was him straining his left oblique muscle while fielding Renteria’s bunt in the tenth. Nobody noticed he had hurt himself and Billy didn’t say anything. Everybody noticed he had hurt himself after his next pitch was put down for a sacrifice by Andres Torres. Billy threw it to first and then went down on one knee grabbing his side. He didn’t look a whole lot different from Y.A. Tittle in his bloodied, beaten, can’t go on any longer moment made iconic by this photograph, taken by Morris Berman in September 1964…though Tittle actually kept quarterbacking the Giants for another dozen games before calling it quits.
Can Wagner pick himself up, dust himself off and relieve all over again? They’ll check on his well-being tomorrow, but it doesn’t look good for the NLDS or, almost certainly, the NLCS. Maybe the World Series.
But the Braves would have to get to the World Series. That was Wagner’s stated reason for working his way back from the elbow miseries that sidelined him as a Met in 2008 and signing as a Brave in 2010: one more shot to get where he never quite landed as an Astro, Met or Red Sock in six previous postseason attempts. Can the Braves get that far without their closer? Well, they won their first Division Series game after Wagner was compelled to limp away. The dirty little open secret of last night’s extra-inning drama was Billy bequeathed to Farnsworth a man on second with one out. Had his oblique been fine, you think Wagner would have kept Renteria from scoring? Would have provided an opportunity for Ankiel to homer into McCovey Cove and send the series back to Atlanta 1-1 instead of 2-0 Giants?
I don’t. But maybe that’s Billy Wagner the Met I’m seeing out there.
by Greg Prince on 8 October 2010 8:58 pm 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: Turner Field
HOME TEAM: Atlanta Braves
VISITS: 1
VISITED: April 5, 1998
CHRONOLOGY: 20th of 34
RANKING: 9th of 34
By the final Sunday of the 1998 baseball season, I’d have nothing good to say about the Atlanta Braves nor anything good to think about their home ballpark — we would be swept there to end that star-crossed season and we would be defeated six out of six times in Dixie when all was said and done that year. But those feelings were still nearly six months from fully materializing on the first Sunday of the 1998 baseball season. I spent that first Sunday at Turner Field in Atlanta, and I came away thinking nothing bad at all about a team I was about to spend the next half-decade truly loathing and a stadium of which would provoke in me nothing but Met fear.
But this particular afternoon wasn’t about fear or loathing and it wasn’t more than peripherally about the Mets (who were represented by the cap on my head and my inveterate applauding of the visiting first baseman, ex-Met icon Rico Brogna). It was about extreme satisfaction with a venue and intoxication by the performance put on within.
Turner Field was that good that day. And the game was even better.
I developed a theory about Turner Field after spending nine sublime innings in its company. It had to do with the name on the door. Something about Turner Field looked and felt uncommonly perfect for baseball. It transcended what we were already calling “retro”. Turner Field didn’t feel retro. It felt traditional, like if you had to conjure a “ballpark” in your mind, you might come up with how this one looked while you were sitting in it.
Ted Turner, I thought. Ted Turner’s in the entertainment business. Ted, I decided, put his best showbiz people on Turner Field. He called in his set designers after the 1996 Olympics were over, before the stadium would be converted for the Braves’ use, and said give me something that allows our patrons to get lost in baseball as they watch our games: not gimmicky, nothing distracting, just appropriate.
If that’s the way it happened, then thanks Ted; it worked. And if it didn’t go down that way at all, it’s enough that I believe it.
Maybe it was the seats I had (Loge-like) or the shadows enveloping home plate (as they will anywhere in early April) or, ultimately, the kind of game I had the good luck to draw out of a proverbial hat when I ordered my tickets in the offseason (the date was keyed to a craft brewers conference I just had to cover for my magazine). However it happened, it all came together. My circumstances coalesced magnificently at Turner Field. Perhaps mine was a unique experience, as I’ve rarely heard anybody else include the Ted as one of the best ballparks going.
Turner Field went light on many of the flourishes on which its contemporaries rely. It’s got plenty of bricks (1.265 million of them, according to my copy of Braves Fan Magazine & Scorecard) and it features terraces and plazas and its share of modern-day distractions, but I never sensed any of it getting in the way of the game. Those things were there if you wanted them — I loved that there was a wall of TVs showing all other in-progress games from around the majors, particularly Pirates at Mets — but they didn’t pull you away from the action.
I also loved that only so many molds were broken in the building of this ballpark, architectural peer pressure be damned. Intimate? From my seat, absolutely, but the capacity was a shade over 50,000. What good is a team that wins its division with disgusting regularity if you can’t have everybody over whenever they want to drop by? And the dimensions of Turner Field were close to symmetrical: 335-380-400-390-330, not a sharp corner in sight. This wasn’t a popular tack to take in the 1990s, as everybody was going for quirky, desperately evoking what street grids made unavoidable when the old century got going. It was charming to a point, but it struck me as pretentious after it was repeated endlessly in ballparks that went up in parking lots. I appreciated Turner Field not forcing the matter.
It may not have been a lyric little bandbox à la Fenway and it may not have produced 289 different angles off its scoreboard like Ebbets, but it didn’t have to. Those places were the way they were because of where they were built. Turner Field did fine being what it was without being overly cute about it. It hit its marks is what it did.
It also served as a soundstage for what I’ve always referred to internally as The Duel in the Sun, which is probably the most compelling reason I left Turner Field feeling so good about the place. The starting pitchers for that Sunday game between the visiting Philadelphia Phillies and the homestanding Atlanta Braves were Curt Schilling and Greg Maddux.
How great does that sound? Not nearly as great as it actually was.
I was still glowing from the first game I saw in 1998: Opening Day at Shea, a classic in its own right. The Mets won 1-0 in 14 innings over those same Phillies. The starter for us had been Bobby Jones, the starter for them was Schilling. We won, but their starter pitched most sensationally: 8 innings, 2 hits, 1 walk, 9 strikeouts. That it was the first game of the season made it all the more impressive — aren’t these guys supposed to take it easy coming out of the gate?
Now I was following Schilling to Atlanta and realized Opening Day was just a warmup for him. As for Maddux…he was Maddux. He went eight innings against Philadelphia that sunny, shadowy Sunday at Turner Field: in 96 pitches over 8 innings, he allowed just 5 hits. His only walk was intentional and that was in service to untangling an eighth inning that went like this:
• Chipper Jones error on an Alex Arias grounder
• Curt Schilling sacrifice bunt, Schilling safe at first
• Doug Glanville sacrifice bunt
• Intentional BB to Gregg Jefferies (2-for-3) in hopes of teasing a ground ball double play out of Scott Rolen
Rolen overcame Bobby Cox’s strategy by lifting a fly ball to right for the second Phillie run — unearned. It broke a 1-1 tie. Philadelphia earlier scored on a 4-6-3 DP. So Maddux didn’t allow any opposing batter to drive in a run off of him. Pretty darn good, huh?
Nevertheless, Schilling, a very different type of pitcher, was better and it was still barely enough to top Maddux. After he struck out his first two hitters in the first, he gave up a pretty convincing home run to Chipper/Larry. Then he struck out Andres Galarraga, and he never looked back. Curt Schilling outpitched Greg Maddux in the fifth game of the season, just as he outdid himself from Opening Day against the Mets: 9 innings, 5 hits, 1 walk and just that solo blast early for the only Brave run.
And 15 strikeouts.
The thunderous Atlanta Braves couldn’t touch Schilling. Galarraga alone struck out 4 times. Jones and (bafflingly) Rafael Belliard were the only starting Braves who didn’t K. It was phenomenal watching this battle of styles unfold. Maddux the craftsman, Schilling the power thrower. On this unbelievably perfect early April afternoon in what would become the year of the home run, pitching ruled.
So did Turner Field.
by Greg Prince on 7 October 2010 8:17 pm There are three postseason games scheduled this October 7. By definition, they are all lacking a certain something. What is it? Oh right — us.
Once upon a time the Mets played postseason games on October 7. Once upon three times, actually…or thrice upon a time. However you measure it, let us recall the three best October 7 games in Mets history (all tied for first):
October 7, 1973. Tom Seaver had been sublime in the National League Championship Series opener, striking out 13 Big Red Machinists, walking none and allowing just six hits in a complete game. Alas, the last two safeties on his docket were a Pete Rose home run with one out in the bottom of the eighth and a Johnny Bench home run in the bottom of the ninth. As the totality of the Met attack that day at Riverfront Stadium was accomplished via a Tom Seaver double, the result was a heartbreaking 2-1 Met loss. Thus, on October 7, the next Met pitcher would somehow have to be even better than Seaver. And he was. Jon Matlack quelled the Reds even more effectively than his more celebrated rotationmate. The sophomore lefty struck out nine, walked three and surrendered no hits at all to the likes of Rose, Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez. He did give up two hits to the likes of journeyman right fielder Andy Kosco, but nobody wearing red scored that Sunday. The Mets were about as blue offensively as they had been the previous afternoon, clinging to a 1-0 lead most of the game (thanks to a solo home run off the bat of Le Grand Orange), but they finally broke it open with four much-needed runs in the top of the ninth. Appropriately cushioned, Matlack went out to complete the game: Morgan flied out, Perez flied out, Bench struck out. Mets win 5-0, tie NLCS 1-1.
October 7, 2000. Sure, I could tell you all about this one, too, but I’ve done that before. You’ll recognize it as the Benny Agbayani Game, the one our electrifyin’ Hawaiian won with one swing of his magic bat in the bottom of the thirteenth inning. For a fresh perspective/special treat, I direct you to Amazin’ Avenue, where Matthew “Scratchbomb” Callan has been expertly recreating the entire 2000 season and postseason these past few weeks. You’ll get tenth-anniversary chills when you read his account, appropriate given not just the subject matter but how cold it grew in the Upper Deck of Shea as that particular Saturday turned to night turned to ice. Don’t worry, you’ll feel warm all over by the end. Mets win 3-2, lead NLDS 2-1.
October 7, 2006. Has it been four years already? I’m afraid it has. The Mets returned to Dodger Stadium for their first playoff game in Los Angeles in eighteen years. The last one hadn’t worked out so well, but this was going to be different. Orel Hershiser wasn’t on the mound for the Dodgers and the Mets’ backs weren’t against the Chavez Ravine wall. With a 2-0 series lead, Willie Randolph handed the ball to Steve Trachsel. Trachsel…he was no Matlack, but his opposite number, the late-period Greg Maddux, was no Hershiser. The Mets piled on the relief pitching and the runs and slightly before midnight EDT they avenged 1988 with a rousing victory that sent them soaring to the NLCS. Several hours earlier, the Detroit Tigers won their ALDS matchup, which would be neither here nor there, except the Tigers ushered New York’s other baseball team to the postseason exit, which made us understandably and uncontrollably giddy. The legend of Holy Saturday (fleeting but fantastic) was thus born. Mets win 9-5, win NLDS 3-0.
 One month from the marathon, Sharon Chapman keeps running for Tug. Speaking of births and October 7, Faith and Fear in Flushing wishes a most happy birthday tonight to a reader whom we hope enjoys a longer and ultimately more successful run this fall than the aforementioned beloved Mets clubs did in their respective autumns, Sharon Chapman. She’s one month from lacing up her running shoes and taking on the New York City Marathon and, as you may know, she’s been making her strides under the auspices of official blog sponsor FAFIF. She’s got the wristband to prove it, as she showed just the other week while acing Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue Mile.
Most inspiring of all, Sharon has used her year on the run to raise funds for the Tug McGraw Foundation, which is devoted to fighting the scourge of brain tumors. You can read about their great work here. Thanks to Sharon and everybody who has contributed to her cause — including readers like you — nearly $6,000 has been raised to help battle the disease that felled 1969 and 1973 Met hero Tug McGraw and remains too much of a factor for too many others. The Foundation seeks effective treaments and attempts to make the lives of those who suffer tangibly better. It isn’t easy, and they need all the help they can get.
You know how you’re not spending a dime on Mets postseason tickets or gear in 2010? If you could take just a smidgen of that windfall (let’s call it the Fourth-Place Dividend), whatever you can afford, and direct it toward the Tug McGraw Foundation here, I think you’d find yourself revisiting that “warm all over” feeling once again.
You Gotta Believe you’ll like how you feel, no matter who’s not playing ball this October 7.
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A shame for the people who worked there. Tough luck for the Giants losing a sponsor. But the presence of the stickers for such a theoretically forward-thinking outfit was somehow appropriate given the Silicon Valley zeitgeist surrounding Pac Bell Park, a park that (under another name) would later become the first Wi-Fi field in the majors. This place was Retro Version 2.0, an upgrade from the generation of trendsetting ballparks that preceded it. Pac Bell was evidence that nothing was static in this fast-moving era, that progress was only a mouse click or a Barry Bonds swing away.
