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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 23 September 2010 7:41 am [T]he ending always comes at last
Endings always come too fast
They come too fast
But they pass too slow…
— Jimmy Webb
The Mets began this baseball season by playing the Florida Marlins. They suffered their first loss while playing the Florida Marlins. They absorbed their first serious body blow when they were swept by the Florida Marlins. They kick-started their best stretch of baseball by sweeping the Florida Marlins. Then they started drifting aimlessly out to sea while playing the Florida Marlins in Florida Marlin home games far from Florida. Wednesday night, they finished playing the Florida Marlins.
And they never stopped losing to the Florida Marlins.
I think it’s fair to say if I never see Gaby Sanchez, Dan Uggla, Mike Stanton or any of the Florida Marlins again, it will be too soon, though the Mets’ first game of 2011 will be against the Florida Marlins, and, by then, I’ll be carping that I can’t wait to see the Mets play anybody — even the godforsaken Florida Marlins.
The final Met loss of the penultimate season at Soilmaster Stadium, on what was technically the last night there was summer, would have been a memorable train wreck had anybody any reason to keep an eye on the tracks. This was the kind of game — fall way behind immediately; scratch and claw enough to make you believe redemption is getting loose in the on-deck circle; find a way to fall cruelly and viciously short at the end — you fume about for ages if it means anything in the standings or if it’s the middle of May or if you’re 15 years old and haven’t yet fully learned what the Mets will do to you if you watch them too often and too closely. As was, in as meaningless a context as the Mets are capable of providing them, it was still pretty bad.
 Seriously, this is what I think of every time they show Niese in profile. Jon Niese, pictured at left, got knocked silly in the first inning. Well, he knocked himself silly by walking three Marlins en route to digging the five-run hole from which my momma done tol’ me the Mets were never going to emerge. Overall, Niese has been a feelgood story for the 2010 Mets, but it feels now like he ought to take a seat as soon as possible. The kid from Defiance has defied the odds to a great extent this season, logging 165.1 innings to date, far more than we could have counted on coming off last year’s gruesome leg injury. It was to his credit that after the five-run first he bore down and was mostly effective until he left in the bottom of the sixth. But it would probably be to his detriment to ask much more out of him and his not-quite 24-year-old left arm.
Hopefully his final two starts — his because on the attrition-addled, Ollie-saddled Mets of September 2010, nobody else is available to take them — won’t represent some kind of workload tipping point per his long-term well-being. Maybe worrying about another dozen or so innings is unnecessary fretting, but he hasn’t been particularly effective in a month, and there’s more to Jon Niese’s Met future than the Brewers on Tuesday and the Nationals on the final Sunday.
There’s almost certainly nothing left to the Met future of Jerry Manuel beyond October 3 except one final press briefing in which he sheepishly grins, shakes his head and says something you’d laugh along with if you found anything about the team he leaves behind amusing. Of course he won’t be back next year. It’s an open secret, which nonetheless doesn’t make it polite to speak about in decibels above a whisper when Jerry’s in the room.
A few weeks ago Wally Backman seemed to be openly coveting Jerry’s job when he answered some questions for the Post. Last Sunday, Mike “Talk to the Back” Pelfrey couldn’t resist speculating what it might be like playing for Joe Torre if Joe Torre was managing the Mets. And Torre himself briefly let it be known he wouldn’t be averse to considering such an opportunity before “closing the door” on it when informed he appeared gauche being so openly amenable to taking another man’s job.
The last big game Jerry Manuel managed was, not surprisingly, against the Florida Marlins, two years ago next week. The Mets didn’t win that one either, though it’s tough to pin it on Jerry’s managing. Consensus had it Manuel came into a tough situation midway through 2008 and made the best of it, leading the club through a 40-19 revival at one point and guiding also-runners to almost-winners. When his status was shifted from interim to permanent, it was a popular choice.
Everything since then has gone horribly wrong under Manuel. He earned the shot in 2009 through what he had done to get to the end of 2008 in contending shape (I still have no idea how we led the Phillies as late as we did). He earned a chance at redemption in 2010 because 2009 didn’t seem a fair reflection of his skills in the wake of all his players’ injuries. 2010 is clearly the end of the line. He hasn’t motivated the Mets, he hasn’t strategized the Mets out of their continual malaise, he couldn’t slow the Mets’ post-Puerto Rico tumble from making its inevitable downhill descent.
On merit, Jerry Manuel doesn’t deserve to return. But he does deserve to go out as one of thirty major league managers — the kind who isn’t talked about or talked to as if he already isn’t there. I won’t feel bad when somebody else is managing the New York Mets (unless it’s Art Howe again), but I do feel bad that Manuel can’t get to the finish line without his dismissal being cavalierly treated as a foregone conclusion. When Willie Randolph’s managerial tenure was on the clock and Gary Carter publicly leapt at the chance to not just throw him under the bus but to back the bus up over his still employed body, it was a cringeworthy incident. There’s a code that says you don’t do that. It’s fine for the rest of us to grease the skids, as we’re just watching from a distance, but when you’re in a profession, it’s simply bad form to join a conga line intent on kicking a colleague to the curb.
“I don’t know” is a good all-purpose answer to give for the record when somebody asks about replacing a manager who’s already in office if you’re either a prospective replacement or one of the players who’s still being managed by that guy. And if you’re a person talking to that guy, take it easy on him. You can hear it in the voices of the Mets’ beat reporters when they question Manuel about almost anything, with the implication embedded in every inquiry about next year being you’re not going to be here but…
Every Wednesday, Jerry Manuel is paid to sit on the phone and chat with Mike Francesa (because who would voluntarily want to talk to him?). Francesa doesn’t need much prodding to come off as obnoxious and self-important, but yesterday he was amazingly matter-of-fact in his patronizing tone, referring to the Mets in the third-person plural to Jerry, as if he was talking about a team already skippered by somebody besides the person on the other end of the line. At one point, Manuel got very terse and asked, in essence, is it OK if I still use “we” here?
At that moment, even Mike Francesa sounded as if he felt shame. And if you can shame Mike Francesa, you must have some marketable skill, even if managing the Mets in 2011 isn’t it.
by Greg Prince on 22 September 2010 1:00 pm One of the sadder things about elimination day is how you now know you’re going to have to wait another year for the possibility — and nothing more — that you’ll finally get those things you spend the offseason wishing for and the balance of the season rooting for. Elimination comes along and you’re forced to set the clock forward. You haven’t gone four years since your last playoff appearance anymore; it’s five, because the theoretical soonest you can see playoffs appear for the first time since 2006 is 2011. That decade since the last time the Mets were in the World Series is now that decade (plus one). Actually winning it? Your Silver Anniversary Season Has Come.
Five years; eleven years; twenty-five years. We’ve done this too much, and we are compelled to do it too soon. “We shake hands till we see each other next season,” is what Coach Buttermaker in The Bad News Bears tells Amanda Whurlitzer ballplayers do when another year goes by. “Then we go fishing or hunting, make some personal appearances, get to know the wife and kids again.” True enough. Leaves gotta fall, pumpkin’s gotta frost, seasons gotta end. It’s fine that we do it eventually, if eventually means after a rollicking October and early November. It sucks that we, with eleven games remaining, are doing it for all intents and purposes now.
Again.
The competitive portion of the Mets’ season didn’t close shop when they lost their 77th game Tuesday night. That was what eliminated them mathematically. Spiritually they’ve been gone a long time. Spiritually, we’ve been gone a long time. When was the last time you found yourself absolutely gripped by a Mets game? Not just watching it, but absorbed in it, not letting go of it?
It’s been a while here, and I watch/listen to/attend virtually every Mets game. I pay less and less attention as the ramifications dry up and the numbness sets in, but I dutifully turn on the TV or radio pregame show at 6:30 and try to engage. I have to admit I don’t try that hard. The Mets don’t, so why should I?
Habit, however, isn’t eliminated as easily as the Mets, Last night, I wasn’t giving it my all, but when I had to run an errand in the neighborhood heading into the top of the eighth, I grabbed my portable radio for the duration of my absence from the couch. The Mets have been effectively out of contention since Tisha B’av, but the idea of going without them for a couple of blocks…anathema to my faith.
While I walked, David Wright walloped the homer that temporarily tied the game. In full view of whoever else might have been passing by at that instant, I raised a fist in the air. A fist to what? To 2-2? To potentially picking up ground on the Marlins? To another day of statistical life support?
I doubt it. It was, I suppose, a fist raised from muscle memory. Met hits a homer, I’m making extraordinary effort (relatively speaking) to follow it, I have been validated. Yay! My right arm probably also shot up to salute 42 seasons of this — 42 seasons of living and dying with the losing and the thing that’s the opposite of losing but I can’t remember at the moment what that is exactly. As seasons cease to sparkle and commence to fade, we don’t raise our fists for our team. We raise our fists for ourselves.
For those about to insist on walking to the drug store with a Mets game affixed in their ears, I salute me.
When the 2010 schedule was issued, I doubt I zeroed in on September 21 at Florida or September 14 versus Pittsburgh or anything that would be going on around now. It doesn’t work that way. When the preliminary 2011 schedule saw light last week, a lot of people I know tingled with excitement. Who are we playing Opening Day? Who are the Interleague opponents? Why is the All-Star Break FOUR days? I want to take my road trip HERE and HERE and, if I can swing it, HERE! Nobody dares squint hard at those orange and white boxes (presumably to be shaded metallically once the geniuses behind Better Seats Lower Prices get their grubby mitts on them) and envision one hollow September night after another after another.
Baseball’s all good before any of it’s played. Hard to believe our favorite sport our favorite team is drowning in drool this September is the same one that will amp us up in the days leading to April 1, 2011. We’ll dream of what might be and gloss over what has most recently been. We’ll tell each other all the things the rebirth of baseball means to us, completely forgetting it often means Septembers like that which drag interminably through seasons like 2010.
There’ll be plenty of time for reality to reintroduce itself in 2011. The clock has been set forward, but there’s no need to get ahead of ourselves too soon — or behind everybody but the Nationals yet again.
by Greg Prince on 22 September 2010 12:00 pm SNY gets back in the memory business Thursday evening at 6:30 with the debut of Mets Yearbook: 1967, celebrating the major league debuts of Joe Moock, Al Schmelz, Les Rohr, Billy Wynne and…I think I’m leaving somebody out. Oh, terrific, I can’t come up with the name.
 Easy to lose track of all those 1967 Mets, as there were a record 54 of them, or nearly two for each loss. Those Mets went 61-101, finished tenth and were led by two managers: the put-upon Wes Westrum and the eminently interim Salty Parker. I won’t pretend to be a Winik Brother, but I’m guessing there’ll be something toward the end about the guy whom the Mets acquired for another of their distinguished 1967 rookies, Bill Denehy.
Denehy, as I assume they teach in the schools, was the pitcher sent to the Washington Senators (along with a reported $50,000) as compensation for their manager Gil Hodges. Shocking that two years later, Hodges would lead the Mets from 101 losses to 100 wins and then some.
It’s not like Gil did it alone. He had some help, most prominently one of those pitchers who came up in ’67 — a righty. And that man’s name was…
Terrific. I forgot it again.
Ever wonder about the contents of those yearbooks whose cover images we feature? Read more about this one here.
by Jason Fry on 21 September 2010 11:30 pm Hate to break it to any of you who were keeping your October clear, but my co-blogger’s scenario has been thwarted, and the Mets have been eliminated from postseason play.
It’s fitting, somehow, that we’d be eliminated in a game that descended from taut but aggravating (rejuvenated Lucas Duda hitting an artillery shell of a home run but his teammates consistently being cut down at second base) to merely aggravating (David Wright stumbling in ungainly fashion over a double down the line, then breaking the wrong way on an infield error to put Mike Pelfrey in a hole, with Jose Reyes contributing a cosmetic but ghastly five-hole error of his own) to predictably tragic (Elmer Dessens, aka the Last Bullpen Toy Jerry Manuel Gets to Play With Till It Breaks, giving up a Gaby Sanchez home run that could have brought down a satellite).
Oh, and of course it was in Florida, against the consistently aggravating Marlins in their awful stadium, which should live on as a memorial to the millions of ulcers it’s bred in Mets fans. The only kindness was that they didn’t drag us to San Juan for our public execution.
Sigh.
Next year, by all indications, this club will have a different manager and a different general manager — which is entirely proper, given the recent run of disappointment and dysfunction and disaster and finally pervasive dullness. Whether the team will be run differently is another question entirely. It’s one that will be very much on all our minds this winter, and about which much more will be written by me and by Greg.
But if you’ll forgive me, after what feels like the eleventy-billionth dispiriting loss of the After Yadier era, it’s a question I can’t stand to think about right now.
* * *
The record will show that the night before the Mets’ season was handed from hospice worker to undertaker, I watched a baseball game from the kind of seat I probably will never sit in again: seven rows behind home plate, all food and (non-alcoholic) drink free, an army of people on hand to fetch things.
This seat, however, was in Yankee Stadium, courtesy of my friend Amanda, whom I hold in such high esteem that it only makes me grit my teeth moderately to write that she is simultaneously a rabid Yankee fan and a very fine person. Amanda and Wayne and I attended a game at Citi Field a while back, with Amanda amiably offering her observations of enemy territory; this was the sequel to that night, except when the three of us made these plans we had no idea that it would be the night the Yankees unveiled George Steinbrenner’s monument.
Arriving in the Bronx and finding myself surrounded by Yankee fans, I felt like Frodo when he and Sam were trudging across Mordor in their lame-ass orc disguises. This was silly, of course: If you don’t count the look of wary chagrin, I bore no outward sign of Mets allegiance. Yet I found myself moving furtively through the Yankee hordes, waiting to be exposed.
This didn’t happen — in fact, everyone connected to the Yankees was perfectly nice, including Joba Chamberlain’s father, of all people. (How did we meet him? Amanda is the kind of person who will befriend everyone in a room inside of 10 minutes and have a grand time doing so, which means this stuff happens to her.) After a bit of milling around, we got armbands and descended into the subterranean Legends Suite Club, which is two levels of dining rooms and bars and the kind of spread that might impress even Nero. I believe I started with sirloin, mashed potatoes with goat cheese and duck medallions, and moved from there to cheeses and figs and sushi. Later there were garlic fries involved, and much later coconut cream pie in mini-helmets, chocolate-dipped strawberries and assorted truffles. I realize that sounds like some absurd flight of fancy, but I’m not exaggerating. Hell, I probably left out a confit or something. At one point I found myself sitting in my padded, teak-armed seat drinking a Bellini. Why? Because I freaking could, that’s why.
It was the kind of other-side-of-the-velvet-rope night you very occasionally luck into in New York and soak up, knowing you’ll soon awaken and be back in normal life. The lone disadvantage (other than now being much fatter) was that I didn’t explore any other part of new Yankee Stadium, because that would have leaving a place where you thrust out a plate and people put wagyu beef on it. (To be fair, the club also offers plenty of normal ballpark fare.) Amanda and I agreed we’d come another night, sit in seats for mortals, and walk around. Until we do that I can’t offer any assessment of Yankee Stadium. The part where I spent my night was spectacular, but of course it was.
I did get to witness the dedication of Steinbrenner’s memorial, though, and it was … interesting. First of all, the Yankees do spectacle better than the Mets do, which isn’t particularly a surprise or something to be envied. It was intriguing to play Kremlinologist based on what the Yankees showed fans on video: Joe Torre got plenty of close-ups, but the A/V people kept returning to Don Mattingly, who was cheered rapturously. The team, Steinbrenner family members and dignitaries made their way out to Monument Park via the warning track, which seemed like a misstep to me: There would have been a lot more visual impact had the procession gone from home plate to center field. But besides the problem of golf carts encountering a pitcher’s mound, the roundabout route meant much more contact with fans, which I suppose is a point in the Yankees’ favor. (Aside: It’s odd to realize you can’t scream vile things at Bud Selig because he’ll not only hear you but know it was you.)
What struck me — and struck lots of other people — was how big Steinbrenner’s plaque is. It’s 35 square feet — far bigger than the plaques accorded Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle, to name just four. To me it looked ludicrous — and, frankly, ill-advised.
The Yankees have always been about exceptionalism — something I don’t mean as a compliment, though I understand why some of their fans consider it one. They’ve always stood out from the rest of baseball: When some veteran becomes a Yankee, it’s different than his becoming a Mariner or an Astro or even a Dodger or Red Sock. It’s the one franchise that diminishes its stars as it elevates them into the ranks of the bazillionaires — they wear the same uniform worn by all those men with plaques, with no name above the number, and have to prove themselves against all those forebears and all those rings (baby). Personally, I think all that adds up to an obnoxious cult, but it’s a pretty effective one even if I have no interest in being a member. I expected the Yankees to honor Steinbrenner with a memorial that would fit in with those accorded Ruth and Gehrig and Berra and Munson and the others; instead, they unveiled something big enough for the man to actually be buried in. And by doing that, the Yankees took the oldest, cheapest cliche about the Boss and made it true: He’ll forever be bigger than the team.
by Greg Prince on 21 September 2010 9:42 pm From the Department of the Painfully Obvious, the New York Mets have been eliminated from postseason contention following their 5-2 loss to the Florida Marlins. Time of death: 9:38 PM EDT, but really, they’ve been done since Puerto Rico. Record before San Juan: 43-32. Record from San Juan on: 31-45.
Autumnal equinox is tomorrow night. Very windy right now here where I am. Very barren where the Mets are. Late summer has never felt later.
by Greg Prince on 21 September 2010 7:32 pm Lucas Duda just blasted one out of Whatever It’s Called Stadium, his second homer, meaning Club Hessman loses yet another temporary member. Population of One Met Homer Village: 69 again.
If only it was ’69 again.
In other updating-type news, the war of attrition has claimed another victim: Bobby Parnell, out for the season with inflammation and stiffness in his pitching elbow. That’s four Mets who have been lost in September: Santana, Mejia, Hernandez, now Bobby. Also, Ollie Perez and Luis Castillo don’t seem to be available, ever.
Which is OK.
by Greg Prince on 20 September 2010 10:42 pm With our friends at Citizens Bank Park frantically waving white towels, the Atlanta Braves surrendered a 3-1 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies, reducing the Braves’ tenuous Wild Card lead over the New York Mets to a paltry 11½ games — 11 in the loss column. The Mets have 12 games remaining, Atlanta 11.
For the Mets to storm from behind and win the National League Wild Card, the following needs to occur:
• The Mets (74-76) must go 12-0.
• The Braves (86-75) must go 0-11.
• The Marlins (74-75) must go 3-0 against the Braves, 0-2 against the Mets; their other games are immaterial.
• The Reds (85-66) must go 3-0 against the Padres; their other games are immaterial.
• The Cardinals (77-72) must go at least 3-1 against the Rockies, no better than 5-4 against everybody else.
• The Rockies (82-67) must go 0-3 against the Giants, no better than 1-3 against the Cardinals, no better than 2-4 against everybody else.
• The Padres (83-66) must go 0-3 against the Giants, 0-3 against the Reds, no better than 2-5 against everybody else.
• The Giants (84-66) must go 3-0 against the Rockies, 3-0 against the Padres; their other games are immaterial.
Under this scenario, the Phillies, the Reds and the Giants will capture their respective division titles. The Mets and Braves will finish tied for the Wild Card at 86-76, necessitating a one-game playoff.
And the Mets will have to win that game to win the Wild Card at 87-76.
That’s all.
by Greg Prince on 19 September 2010 8:48 pm Come back Pirates! We promise we’ll show up! We’ll even clear the tornadoes out of the area for you!
Drat the luck that we had to play a good team with something on the line this weekend. For 24 dreamy hours before the Braves replaced the Pirates on the Citi Field scoreboard’s top half, we were a winning team again, our record floating three ethereal one-thousandths of a point over the .500 mark. We were 74-73, with 81-81 seeming graspable, 82-80 not looking so crazy and at least one delusional blogger wondering for approximately one-millionth of one microsecond, “What if we sweep the Braves? Is it even possible…”
No, it wasn’t possible. The Braves weren’t the Pirates. More substantially, the Mets — tragic number for playoff elimination: 1 — aren’t much of anything when they’re not playing the Pirates or their American League doppelgängers, the Orioles and Indians. When the Mets faced those three plucky if undersized baseball squadrons in 2010, their record was a tidy 12-1. When they didn’t, they’ve been a mess: 62-75. They all count, but after a while, you’re forced to pick on someone your own size. The Mets’ true calling, alas, has been swaggering bully against three teams, pliable punching bag for all the rest.
Another statistic to note: 0 vs. 12, as in the Mets have hit no grand slams this season but have surrendered a dozen. Is it even possible? Apparently it is, but it’s pretty much unprecedented. ESPN says no team has ever finished a season with this kind of ratio slamming them in the face over and over and over (times four) again.
You don’t have to be some journeyman junkballer to have gotten in on the action; two-time Cy Young winner Johan Santana gave up three grand slams on his own. Most of the four-run homers, however, have been served up the ham-and-egger corps of Met middle relievers, including two by the generally competent if quickly forgettable righty Manny Acosta. The former Brave didn’t exactly have it goin’ on Sunday against his old club when he entered a tie game in the top of the seventh. The bases were loaded, two were out (a situation facing seven of the previous eleven grand slam pitchers) and Acosta worked Derrek Lee to 3-and-2.
Manny threw a strike, and Lee struck it.
Twelve grand slams given up by Met pitchers this year…and the Mets’ record in those twelve games?
0-12, of course.
It seems almost unfair to equate these Mets of suddenly late September with the Mets who occasionally raised our hopes during frisky portions of April, June and those four games last week. These Mets are dropping like flies…or opposition grand slams into second decks of stadiums. Since this month dawned, Santana, Jenrry Mejia and Luis Hernandez have all gone out for the season. Even with an expanded roster, the Mets are losing the war of attrition.
Yet these Mets are technically those Mets, at least as far as the disappearing slate of 162 games in concerned. As things stand now, these/those Mets’ final record for 2010 will fall somewhere between 74-88 and 88-74. I think it’s safe to say it won’t be 88-74 and, even after getting swept by the Wild Carding Coxmen, it will probably be better than 74-88. Here’s what’s left to play and to ponder:
• 2 @ FLA (Mets 0-4 in Miami plus 1-2 in regrettable San Juan)
• 3 @ PHI (Mets 2-4 in Philly)
• 4 vs. MIL @ home (the Brewers haven’t been to Citi Field since April 19, 2009; have you missed them?)
• 3 vs. WAS @ home (Mets 2-4 in Queens against the Nats — a last-place team we can’t handle with ease)
If you’d like to accurately remember this season as a winning proposition, the Mets will have to go 8-4 in their final twelve. If you believe the Mets’ win one/lose one ethos should be properly reflected for posterity, they’ll need to put a 7-5 on the board. And if you’re pretty sure 2010 can be summed up by the way they’ve allowed grand slam after grand slam while hitting none, then you probably assume they’ve lost about a hundred games already.
They haven’t. It just feels that way when they’re not playing the Pirates.
by Greg Prince on 19 September 2010 7:00 am The Mets will honor Bobby Cox today, and that is right and proper. Cox, set to retire whenever the Braves stop playing in 2010, has more wins managed under his name, including those from which he was ejected before completion, than all but three men in major league history. Enough of them came at the expense of the Mets. As Mark Simon of ESPN New York outlined, nobody has managed more wins — 198 in the regular season and four in the 1999 National League Championship Series — at the Mets’ expense. Nobody else is close. Nobody else has managed long enough, often enough and successfully enough against the Mets to make it close. I’ve been grumbling at Bobby Cox for most of the past 15 years, but there are days when caps require tipping. This is one of those days.
Little bad is said of Cox in these closing weeks of his no-doubt Hall of Fame career. Why should there be? He took over a Braves club whose level of despair was de Rouletian in 1978 and steered it to the edge of respectability when he left in 1981; he boosted Toronto from stumbling toddlerhood in 1982 to A.L. East champs in 1985; and he drafted and traded devilishly well as Atlanta GM from 1986 to 1990.
Then his career really took off.
Bobby Cox has managed the Braves a second term since June 23, 1990. From 1991 to 2005, his club won every division title that was available to them, the last eleven of them in the National League East. It became such old hat after a while that every time Atlanta fizzled in the playoffs — which became a rite of autumn in the early 2000s — it was considered a glaring failure. Considering Cox had taken the Braves to five Fall Classics in the ’90s and led them to the world championship in 1995, it’s little wonder that standards shifted and bars rose.
But before Cox took over the Braves a second time, they were a glaring failure six months out of every year. There were no playoffs. There were 96 losses annually as a rule. The Braves were the Pirates as we’ve come to know the Pirates. Bobby Cox, more than anyone else, made the Braves the Braves as we’ve come to know them since 1991: perennial contenders, chronic winners, bad news for us.
While the Mets have been going through Bud Harrelson, Mike Cubbage, Jeff Torborg, Dallas Green, Bobby Valentine, Art Howe, Willie Randolph and Jerry Manuel, Bobby Cox has been a constant. His players swear by him, not at him. Former Brave Henry Blanco told the Daily News, “He is the best,” ignoring his current manager in his assessment. “He’s a great communicator, and you need communication.”
Anecdotes about Cox’s communications skills and what they have meant to his players keep coming as farewell hosannas are thrown his way. One is from Thomas Lake’s outstanding Sports Illustrated profile in July, harking back to his first stint managing the Braves, in 1979. It involved an infielder a the end of the line, Darrell Chaney. Cox hadn’t been playing him, and let him know the Braves wouldn’t be bringing him back the following season. But with two weeks remaining and the Braves going nowhere, Cox promised Chaney he’d play him daily to give him a chance to impress other teams. Thus inspired, Chaney, whose average had sunk to .111, went out and batted .333 the rest of the way. He then retired.
Chaney already loved Cox for beating up a toilet at Shea Stadium after he was ejected for arguing on the shortstop’s behalf. Writing him into the lineup every day was better. Players famous and forgotten always felt Bobby Cox was managing for them. Pitcher Tommy Boggs told SI in 2010: “I’ll be loyal to Bobby Cox for as long as I live.” Tommy Boggs last pitched for Bobby Cox in 1981.
Maybe the highest praise I’ve heard for Cox — the highest praise baseball men can give another baseball man, I imagine — may have come the last time the Mets were at Turner Field. It was a few minutes before gametime and Gary Cohen and Ron Darling were paying tribute to the home manager’s accomplishments and longevity, when they noted a special room had been built in the ballpark just for those occasions when Cox, the most ejected manager in baseball history, gets himself thrown out of games. Instead of making him stand in the tunnel to relay orders, Bobby gets to go to kind of a personal lounge where he can watch the game on TV in comfort and, presumably, dictate strategy with his feet up.
The room, just off the Brave dugout, also serves as something of a second office for Cox. You can go see him there before a game and, Gary explained, “he’ll talk baseball with anybody.”
I’m not sure what else you’d talk about with a baseball man at a baseball stadium, but I take it there’s something about routine and process that make this brand of putting others at ease unusual. There’s enormous pressure on a manager on a day-to-day basis. I suppose that’s why Jerry Manuel has one pregame gaggle for the media and then doesn’t want to be bothered with extraneous questions once BP begins. Every captain is entitled to steer his ship as he sees fit. Still, the way Gary put it — “He’ll talk baseball with anybody” — made the experience of chatting up Bobby Cox in his natural habitat sound absolutely transcendent.
Would I want to talk baseball with Bobby Cox? In theory, sure. Early this season, I met a retired player (not a Met) who went into television. It was a chance encounter and he was talking to somebody else, but I was on the scene and, quite frankly, I wanted in. Not because I had anything useful to say and not because I really wanted the ex-player’s insight. I just wanted to, you know, talk baseball with a real baseball man. When I sensed an opening in the conversation, I ducked in with a half-assed opinion. The retired player countered. I nodded.
And it was great!
Talking baseball with someone who actually knows baseball — who is in baseball — is an incredible sensation. Talking baseball with someone who’s been in baseball the way Bobby Cox has been, forever and brilliantly, must be as good as it gets. Yet what would I say to Bobby Cox if star-struck nervousness or reflexive ass-kissing didn’t kick in?
Probably something at odds with all the nice things everybody’s been saying about Bobby Cox all year, because the mere sight of him makes me sick.
Ohmigod, I can’t stand this guy. This guy beat us like a drum for most of two decades and he’s still doing it. I see Bobby Cox and I see this smug bastard who is pushing buttons and pulling motivational strings and irritating umpires and I see him winning. Him winning and us losing. I see him outmanaged by Bobby Valentine, our only manager who’s truly mattered since Cox has been ensconced in Atlanta, and he still wins. He wins when it matters deeply to both sides, as in 1999; he wins when it matters to us but not to him, as in 1998; he wins for the hell of it when it doesn’t matter to anybody. Needless to say, he wins yesterday when it matters to him and not to us.
And, at least until today is over, he’s omnipresent. He’s always managing the Braves. He’s managing them in 1990, in 2000, in 2010. He’s managing them from a little air-conditioned room after he’s told he can’t manage anymore. He’s managing to infiltrate Shea in 2007 when Atlanta is in Philadelphia because we’re having T#m Gl@v!ne Day in honor of the Manchurian Brave’s 300th win the week before. The Mets produce a video featuring all of the important baseball people in T#m’s life congratulating him on his milestone. Naturally just about all of those people are Braves.
I’m sitting at Shea and I’m watching the Mets project an image of smiling Bobby Cox telling T#m Gl@v!ne how wonderful it was to have him pitch for him and win for him and, if you listen between the lines, beat the Mets a lot.
When I see Bobby Cox’s face now, I see that. I see October 1999. I see September 1998. I see various and sundry outtakes from 198 regular-season losses dating back to the late ’70s. I’ve seen enough.
Tip your cap to Bobby Cox today. It’s right and proper. Then, for god’s sake, just once, send him out of here a loser. He’s been the other thing plenty.
by Jason Fry on 18 September 2010 11:28 pm The Twins, I read in passing elsewhere, have reduced their magic number to six.
The Mets have no magic number, just a day-at-a-time march through the rest of a shrinking schedule.
Which is OK.
Actually, it’s not OK. It’s more like its not-OK-ness doesn’t matter for the rest of September and the sliver of October that’s left to us. There will be time enough for recriminations and I-told-you-sos and fan-written plans and dire warnings and idle threats. Now there’s just a little bit of baseball left — and reminding ourselves that even baseball that doesn’t matter is better than its absence.
So Dillon Gee pitched well but proved mortal. It doesn’t particularly matter: Gee gave up a ton of home runs in the minors and you never trust September. Yet he looks like he knows what he’s doing out there, and that can make a guy with unimpressive stuff useful in the back end of a rotation. And it’s baseball. Pretty soon Dillon Gee will be sitting home like the rest of us.
So Lucas Duda keeps hitting. The monster’s out of the cage, delightfully free of the weight of the world and turning on balls and hitting them hard. Again, doesn’t particularly matter — Duda has a long way to go to escape the interstate, and looks lumbering and uncertain in left field. But it’s baseball. Pretty soon I’m going to miss Lucas Duda, feasts and famines and all.
Carlos Beltran made a splendid stumbling catch in short center. Didn’t save a game, let alone a season, but it was nice to see his old instincts and a touch more mobility. Given all the bad feeling of late, Carlos Beltran might be wearing another uniform come April, and looking dignified and faintly annoyed to be surrounded by New York reporters trying to get him to say the wrong thing, which will also be known as what he thinks of the Mets’ treatment of him. Still, it’s baseball. For now, he plays it for us, and I will miss him when he’s gone whether that refers to the offseason or the rest of his career.
Luis Hernandez broke a bone in his foot fouling a ball off. On the next Tim Hudson pitch he saw, he swung in a rather curious fashion, cringing and almost lifting his wounded front foot off the ground. The ball, somehow, left the park; the hitter, somehow, got around the bases. It was Kirk Gibson, except what Kirk Gibson did mattered. Still, it was an impressive display, and Hernandez earned well-deserved cheers as he limped to the dugout and likely to inactivity and some other team. I won’t particularly miss Luis Hernandez, as he was the kind of Quadruple-A player the Mets give too many at-bats to. Still, it’s baseball. I’ll miss seeing things like that, and marveling at them.
Tomorrow, given the way this series has gone, Billy Wagner will face the Mets for the final time. Bobby Cox will argue balls and strikes in a Mets game for the final time, and possibly be thrown out of a game against us for the final time. Chipper Jones won’t get on the field, but will make what could be his final visit to a Mets stadium in a baseball uniform. If all goes well for the Braves, I’ll see those three men on TV in October. If it doesn’t, I’ll never watch them on TV again. I’ll miss Billy, for his cussedness and sometimes ill-advised honesty and the way he willed a career for himself despite long odds and cruel luck. And I’ll miss Bobby too, for giving me all those years in which I hated him as an opponent and little by little came to respect him. (The same for Chipper, if his time has come.)
That’s baseball too: making enemies, and respecting them, and applauding them when they finally step aside.
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