Faith and Fear in Flushing

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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Grow Some Saves of Your Own, Ideally

by Greg Prince on 10 July 2010 8:51 pm

Saturday afternoon…we were never in that. Mike Pelfrey briefly masqueraded as Washington managerial superhero Wriggle Man, wriggling in and out of trouble until he could wriggle no longer. Jose Reyes grimaced while fielding a grounder in the hole and became, in that instant, a non-playing All-Star. Tim Hudson threw a river of unhittable pitches. Jason Bay made another ocean of outs. I don’t want to talk about Saturday afternoon on Fox very much. Kevin Millar did all the talking any human could possibly do regarding this 4-0 debacle.

Friday night, even if it was by merely a two-run margin, also felt like one of those Games You’re Gonna Lose from start to finish — particularly at the finish.

You can’t say the Mets beat themselves very often in 2010, but they sort of did Friday, and it started in the year when they were beating themselves constantly, 2009. This wasn’t about base-missing, down-falling or one-handing. This was about taking care of business and, technically, their obligations.

Billy Wagner was under contract to the New York Mets during the 2009 season. As such, the Mets were obligated to provide rehabilitation facilities and counsel for him. It would almost certainly contain no benefit for them, but Wagner was technically a Met and the Mets had to help him.

It worked too well, apparently. I heard Billy, in chats with Wayne Hagin and Kevin Burkhardt, praising to the high heavens the Mets and for helping him regain his strength in his left elbow. Yup, he never could have made it out of Tommy John surgery and all those arduous days in St. Lucie without the Mets’ training staff.

Now he pays us back by throwing harder and more effectively than Tommy John ever dreamed of throwing.

We saw it for ourselves in the series opener when Alex Cora, Rod Barajas and Angel Pagan came up and went down most noneventfully in the ninth inning. Actually, it was an event for Wagner — a most recurring event.

Billy the former Met required just nine pitches to retire three batters and register his 20th save Friday (whereas Saturday he needed ten pitches, but it wasn’t a save opportunity). He was so brutally efficient that I couldn’t help but think, “How come he never did that for us?” Turns out he did, though not nearly as often as he does it for the Braves.

Let’s invent a save-based statistic because we all love saves so much. Let’s call this one the IS, or Ideal Save, in deference to what is we really want out of our closer.

What is it we really want out of our closer anyway?

We want an Ideal Save: Enter to whatever music tickles your innards but exit quickly and triumphantly. Ideally, that’s three up, three down, no more than nine pitches.

Why nine? As they say on MLB Network’s Prime 9, because that’s baseball: nine players, nine innings. More saliently, it’s how many pitches Wagner required to retire Cora, Barajas and Pagan. It was just so quick. Any more would have been…not so quick. It would have been double-digits. Nine, however, is idea. It’s conceivably three Gas House Gorillas strikeouts:

One. Two. Three strikes, you’re out!
One. Two. Three strikes, you’re out!
One. Two. Three strikes, you’re out!

Of course to achieve an Ideal Save, you’re probably not striking out three batters. You’re enticing the opposition to swing, yes, but you’re also you’re using your fielders. The swings find your guys.

A simple grounder to first, like Wagner got out of Cora.
A harmless grounder to second, like Wagner got out of Barajas.
A gentle popup to second, like Wagner got out of Pagan.

Nine pitches. Seven strikes.

One. Two. Three Mets, they’re out.

Wagner’s Friday ninth caught my attention because it was so unusually methodical. Or unusual if you’re used to watching Met closers and their Met-thodical ways. Yet it wasn’t so unusual for Wagner the Brave to produce, I’ve learned. This was his fifth IS — Ideal Save — of this season, his first on the road, as if had been saving it just for us. Four previous times in 2010, the disinterested onlookers at Turner Field got what we’re convinced we never, ever get: the no-sweat, no-doubt save.

But we have gotten it a handful of time over the past decade or so. We even got it from Wagner. But boy, is it rare, and we’ve never, since 1999 — the first year from which fairly complete pitch count totals are available — gotten it five times in one year before the All-Star break.

In three seasons as Mets closer of record, Billy Wagner gave us nine Ideal Saves. That means he entered a game at the beginning of the ninth inning in a save situation (lead of one, two or three runs) and retired three consecutive batters on no more than nine pitches. No muss, no fuss, no stress, no storm. That’s not the Billy Wagner who resides in the collective Met memory, I’ll bet, but it did happen once in 2006, thrice in 2007 and five times in 2008.

It’s true: sometimes Billy Wagner didn’t drive us crazy. Sometime he let us drive (or take the train) home sane.

You know that sense of dread that’s seemingly innate as a Mets fan at a Mets game in the ninth inning with a slight lead? Wagner didn’t cash it in for us four times at Shea. No kidding. On April 11, 2008, for shiningest example, he threw seven pitches for seven strikes to three Milwaukee Brewers and recorded three outs for an Ideal Save.

How great is that? And how unusual is that? You know in your blue and orange bones that it’s as rare as a big late-inning hit from Jason Bay. When you think of Wagner as a Met, I’ll bet you don’t think of Billy mowing down Milwaukee in April. You think of Billy not closing out the Yankees in May or the Phillies in July or the Cardinals in October. You remember the blown saves or the saves that took more exertion than you personally could stand. The Ideal Saves aren’t differentiated from the other kind in the boxscore, but somehow you’re convinced they should be.

It would certainly make everybody’s lives easier if they were. Your body wouldn’t clench in dread if you were sure an eventless ninth inning was just ahead. Your mind wouldn’t run away with nightmare scenarios. You would take saves seriously if they were compiled ideally.

Billy’s enjoying an almost All-Star season (he was on the All-Star Final Vote ballot but lost to Joey Votto). Racking up Ideal Saves, particularly being on the shelf for the final third of 2008 and all but a month and change of 2009. has to be helping his cause.

Surely it’s hurting ours.

And speaking of Frankie Rodriguez, he’s got two Ideal Saves in 2010, one at Baltimore (which counts) and one against the Nats at Citi after the six-run Met eighth that made his appearance necessary. He needed only six pitches and an Ike Davis flip that magical night. He had none in 2009. The reason it feels a bit dicey when K-Rod joins a game in progress is because it is literally almost never easy when he pitches. Frankie usually gets the job done, but by the nine-pitch, three-batter IS standard, it is literally almost never ideal.

Before Wagner, there was Braden Looper, the first in our trilogy of storebought closers. Looper was not as glamorous a purchase as Billy or K-Rod and he wasn’t an Ideal Savior either. Two seasons, four Ideal Saves, three at Shea, the best of them a surreal eight-pitch quelling of the Cubs in 2005. Then again, it’s kind of surreal Braden Looper was sought out by a major league team to be its closer.

No discussion of save quality since 1999 would be complete without a look at Armando Benitez’s checkered career. Armando is still the all-time, single-season Met save leader, having piled up 43 in 2001, breaking his own record of 41 from 2000. How many were Ideal?

Surprise — not many.

But there were a few…five, to be precise. In the Home Opener of 2000, for example, Armando had to throw only seven pitches to put down three Padres. We all left Shea thinking nothing but highly of Mr. Benitez. Exactly one year later, chastened from one full season (and postseason) in Closer Benitez’s company, we were bracing for much worse on Opening Night from Atlanta. But he did it again, earning a three-out, six-pitch save. He’d be Ideal twice more in ’01 and once in ’02, two of those three occasions at Shea. He never did it in 1999 or 2003, meaning we got five Ideal Saves out of Armando Benitez in the approximately four-year span that he was our closer, and we only got them three times at home. Hence, that feeling in the pit of your stomach at Shea probably wasn’t from the pretzel.

Since we don’t have full inning-by-inning pitch count information from the 1990s, it would be tough to put John Franco under this “he never makes it easy” microscope, but we can see, during his final days as a closer in the first half of ’99, he did not make it easy. Johnny put together two Ideal Saves that April, one at Wrigley (9 pitches, 7 strikes) and one at Shea (9 pitches, 5 strikes). Then he stopped being ideal clear to July, when a bad finger cost him his spotlight.

That’s 11½ seasons, 5 primary closers and 21 Ideal Saves. Billy Wagner of Atlanta has 5 in a 30-game span. In case you’re wondering, since he’s the guy we all inevitably have in mind as the ideal closer, Mariano Rivera had 9 in 2001, back when his godliness went routinely unquestioned (until Game Seven of the World Series, at any rate).

Perfection’s an order taller than Mike Pelfrey himself. We’re just happy when a win is preserved. But imagine a supremely clean and confident ninth inning occurring more than just now and then.

Better yet, imagine not having to go outside the organization for those ninth innings. Imagine growing a closer of our own. In the same vein that we don’t, in the moment, really care whether a Met reliever needs 9 or 39 pitches to nail down a win, we don’t ask about his pedigree. Still, think how uplifting it might be to someday not have to scour the free agent market to secure a closer with too many miles on his arm, to not have to pay top dollar for a Rodriguez, a Wagner or a Looper…to not have to peel a player off our roster to find a Benitez…or to not have to give up a budding star for an established star as we did when we received Franco in exchange for Randy Myers.

Randy Myers…now there’s a name. He came up through the Met system a flamethrowing starter, was switched to relieving and became, requisite agita notwithstanding, a flamethrowing closer the likes of which we haven’t had since his 1987-1989 heyday. Randy was coming into his own as a Met, not coming off his peak as something else. He was on the way up. He could have been here for years, improving with age.

Instead, he was traded for the surer thing, Franco. Franco was at his peak in the late ’80s, a great bet to finish games for Pete Rose’s Reds. Then the Mets got him and he became…Franco, and all that implies to Mets fans. Not that he didn’t have a fine Met career, not that he doesn’t have more saves than any Met pitcher, not that he wasn’t Johnny From Bensonhurst, not that the trade didn’t, in its own way, benefit both clubs (Randy’s won the World Series in his first Nasty year)…but there’s just something about one of your own getting the job done that makes it that much sweeter. It’s also less of a chore than finding somebody from somewhere else. Less expensive, too.

Our homegrown infield is in place. Our homegrown catcher Thole may be beginning to take tentative root. Two homegrown starters, Pelfrey and Niese, make up 40% of our rotation. Pagan, one-quarter of our looming semi-regular outfield, is homegrown, even if he grew wayward for a time in Chicago. These are all heartwarming and encouraging trends in the re-emergence of a franchise.

But you know what would give me even more cause to hope long-term? A homegrown closer. We haven’t had one in several baseball generations. We’ve barely had any saves that didn’t come delivered in a battered box rerouted from Cincinnati or Philadelphia or Anaheim or wherever since the Mets traded Randy Myers for John Franco.

Consider that when Randy Myers was The Man and Roger McDowell and Rick Aguilera took turns as his right hand, so to speak, we grew our saves in abundance. In 1989, 36 of 38 Met saves were homegrown. It was 42 of 46 in 1988. The system worked very well.

Since 1990 and the coming of John Franco, can you guess what homegrown Met has recorded the most saves of any homegrown Met? Probably not.

The answer is Anthony Young.

Yes, that Anthony Young. The guy known mostly for losing as a starter (and some as a reliever) wasn’t an altogether awful closer. He was pretty good filling in for Franco during one of Johnny’s extended absences. AY filed 15 saves in 1992 and 3 more in 1993. He was good at closing that they made sure to return him to starting as soon as they could, assigning him the role that he was least suited to fill.

Young’s 18 homegrown saves are twice as many as the homegrown Met with the next most: Aaron Heilman, with 9. In 2005, when Willie Randolph was desperate enough, he gave the ends of games to Aaron and Aaron, who would have preferred to have started, gave us 5 saves. He picked up 1 more in 2007 and 3 in 2008. If he’d been consistent at it, he likely would have kept closing down at least one of those stretches. Last I heard, Aaron was the closer in Arizona, though there hasn’t been much to save for the Diamondbacks lately. I guess we’ll see for ourselves on the next trip.

There have been only 16 other games saved by homegrown Mets since 1990, all of the scattered variety: 5 by early ’90s middle-innings workhorse Jeff Innis; 4 by reigning lefty specialist Pedro Feliciano; 2 by rookie Pete Schourek en route to starting; 1 apiece by future A’s/Cards closer Jason Isringhausen, Grant Roberts, Bobby Parnell, Raul Valdes and, in the 20th inning one very long April Saturday, Mike Pelfrey.

That’s 43 in total in 20½ seasons. All other Met saves in the past two decades have been imported. They’ve been nervous, too. We cringe when we see our closer, whoever our closer is, start to warm. We hear excuses about being used too much or being used not enough. We are told whatever’s wrong has been caused by “mechanical flaw,” when we believe in our souls the only mechanical flaw where Met closers are concerned is that the bullpen phone isn’t broken.

Closing’s not an easy gig, but how hard would it be to

1) sign, develop and bring up somebody to close games?

and

2) watch a final inning unfold without the certainty that the world is about to end?

We refer to horribly memorable blown games by closer. That game in Pittsburgh in 2005 was the Looper Game. That Subway Series game in 2006 where Pedro’s eight innings went to waste was the Wagner Game. What should have been the Strasburg game (as in Dickey beating him) is now the K-Rod Game. There were probably at least a dozen Benitez and Franco Games in their time. The time has come for a closer who is perpetually poised to give a game a name other than his own.

Something like that might be ideal.

Though after having lost three in a row, I’d settle for a ninth-inning lead and taking my chances from there.

Monday, July 12 is AMAZIN’ ALL-STAR MONDAY, with Marty Noble and Howard Megdal. Come out to Two Boots Grand Central at 7 PM. It’s in the Lower Dining Concourse of Grand Central Terminal, 42nd Street and Park Avenue, accessible via Metro-North as well as the 4, 5, 6, Times Square Shuttle and, of course, the 7 train. Phone: 212/557-7992. Full details here.

LET'S ALL PANIC! (Oh Wait, Let's Not)

by Jason Fry on 10 July 2010 1:18 am

So the Mets lost a tight one to the Atlanta Braves tonight … and you’d assume it’s time for us all to jump off a bridge. Four games out and the Phillies came off the gurney to beat the Reds and Cliff Lee’s a Yankee Ranger and ohgod ohgod ohgod ohgod ohgod.

Except I can’t seem to bring myself to panic.

Part of being a baseball fan is learning to be greedy. After a bad stretch you go into spring training thinking it would be fine to be .500, play the game it should be played, and have hope for the future. Then if that looks like it will work out you want to be five over, because then hope becomes a thing that doesn’t have to be talked about using the future tense. Then if that works out you want to be 10 games over. Then if that works out you want to be in first place — even if it’s just for a day. And then, well, of course you want it all. (Unless you’re a Yankees fan, in which you’re only familiar with the final stage of this process.)

I’m all for baseball greed, but some perspective is in order too. Yes, it’s disappointing to think that we could have gone into the All-Star break tied for first and will instead wind up somewhere between two and six games out. But honestly, back in March I would have signed on eagerly and instantly to that possibility, without bothering to check what was behind Door #2. The Mets still have work to do, lessons to learn, albatrosses to be shed and demons to confront, but I no longer fundamentally distrust them, wait for the anvil to fall on their heads, or weep for the future.

Nor did the various things that went wrong tonight strike me as particularly auguring doom. The amazing R. A. Dickey pitched quite capably for 6 2/3 innings and hit pretty well too, but he threw two knuckleballs that didn’t knuckle, and the unlikely power duo of Melky Cabrera and Omar Infante swatted them a very long way. But that’s part and parcel of throwing the knuckleball; it was bound to happen to Dickey one of these nights. Josh Thole and Ike Davis looked uncharacteristically like rookies on a poorly executed bunt into the teeth of the wheel play, but then they are rookies, and it’s not shocking to discover they did not, in fact, materialize from Buffalo as fully formed major-leaguers. Jason Bay looks like he desperately needs some time to lie in a cool dark room and think about nothing, but he’d certainly agree that sounds like a good idea right now. Jose Reyes looked good some times and awful other times and uncomfortable all the time, leaving me simultaneously glad he was here for a big series and thinking he and we would be better off if he sat the next two out and watched the All-Star Game on TV. But remembering the wreckage of Jose’s 2009, I understand his reluctance to sit out any length of time with anything less than a severed leg. Particularly when first place is on the line.

I almost wrote “when it’s against the Braves,” and of course that’s what it is. But these aren’t really the same Braves. Yes, Chipper is still there (though shelved tonight) and Bobby Cox is still there grousing and grumping, and the Braves are putting together a pretty stirring title run by way of a farewell. With Chipper and Cox possibly and definitely heading for the golf course after the season, respectively, this should be an epic showdown between old gunfighters, or samurai settling a decades-old feud. And perhaps before 2010 comes to a close it will be. But for now, I’m not feeling it. We’re so long from the days of Rocker and Maddux and Glavine and Smoltz and Klesko and all those bogeymen of ages past. The guard has changed more than a few times, and things have gotten pretty jumbled up: Glavine famously became a Met and morphed into Gl@v!ne, Kevin Millwood was on our radar before we hurled him bodily out of his audition in Baltimore, and even Michael Tucker played out the string as a Met — the same Michael Tucker who a long time ago took us into the break in excruciating fashion with the connivance of the loathsome Angel Hernandez. (Though, it should be noted, I hated that little bastard even when he wore our colors.) Billy Wagner’s over there, following the same road trod by Matt Franco and Todd Pratt in their time.

Not to mention that the old Braves never would have suffered the presence of a player as jaw-droppingly stupid and prone to self-sabotage as Yunel Escobar.

The Braves are a good team, and they’re in our way. But they feel like any other good team in our way, with the exception of cameos from Chipper and Bobby. And even that hatred has mellowed with time, somehow. Chipper’s grin once struck me as the embodiment of evil, a toothy V stolen from the Joker; now it just makes me wonder if his face hurts when he does that. Bobby Cox’s crabby trudge out to be ejected by another umpire once filled me with rage; now I just think, “My God, he looks old.” I used to wonder why each Mets-Braves showdown wasn’t represented on the pocket calendar by brilliant red squares, since we all knew there would be blood and thunder and Armageddon; now I’m like, “Oh yeah, these guys again.”

Though should Martin Prado spike Josh Thole at home plate on Sunday and get called safe by some crooked ump, disregard all of the above. Because it will be so fucking on.

Take Me Out to Miller Park

by Greg Prince on 9 July 2010 2:48 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: Miller Park
HOME TEAM: Milwaukee Brewers
VISITS: 1
VISITED: August 31, 2007
CHRONOLOGY: 31st of 34
RANKING: 18th of 34

There was nothing I didn’t like about Miller Park, save for one enormous detail: you had to go indoors to watch baseball. Going indoors to watch baseball is a downer. Place Miller Park outdoors, and I think I’d have loved it.

Instead, it’s consigned to form the foundation of the Liked It A Lot pile or, perhaps, it tops the bunch that could be better if only one enormous detail had been altered. Either way, we’re approaching the halfway mark of the countdown and Miller Park is a good representative for this juncture. See, there’s nothing wrong with going to a ballgame, but if you can make it better, then everything would be right about it.

Got that?

Miller Park could have been better had they left the roof on the drawing board where it belonged. Of course I’m not the one tromping out to Brewers games in April, happy as hell I’m not getting snowed out. There have been fleeting April moments in the first two seasons of Citi Field when I’ve rethought my instinctive objection to roofs over baseball fields, but then I’ve bucked up, buckled down and shivered Metfully, knowing it was the right thing to do — and that summer would be here eventually. If baseball can be played topless, it’s just better.

The roof was open over Miller Park three late Augusts ago when Stephanie and I returned to town for our third visit. It was appreciated but it didn’t help immensely. Retract all you like, it’s still an auditorium, an arena at best. It’s not a stadium. A stadium exists as an outdoor structure. Miller Park isn’t that.

But it’s about as good as it gets when you factor out that enormous detail.

We like Milwaukee. If you were to ask us to choose a medium-sized Midwestern city in which we’d like to be plopped down if we had to be, we might very well choose that one. It seems livable. It was definitely walkable (if you avoided the dodgier parts of town…which we didn’t). Thanks to a very negotiable grid and a reliable bus system, you don’t get lost without a car (though we did, when I misinterpreted the bus map and guided us into one of the dodgier parts of town). We liked it when we were there to see County Stadium. We liked it when we were there on beverage business and the Brewers were on the road. We liked it in 2007. It figured Miller Park would fit into its likeability equation.

Despite a reservoir of like for Milwaukee from our previous visits, Miller Park wasn’t altogether on our radar during its first six-plus seasons of existence. There was always some city to go where we hadn’t been before. It wasn’t even all that present in our thoughts until midsummer ’07 when I found myself reading accounts from what seemed like every other Mets blogger in the universe about having gone to Milwaukee to follow T#m Gl@v!ne’s quest for his 300th victory (in retrospect, a strange priority). Gl@v!ne didn’t get it there, but I began to feel like a bit of a piker for not having seen this place already. Call it virtual peer pressure — peppered by my own sense of growing stale inside the four walls of my home office — and suddenly I just had to go to Miller Park before Labor Day.

So we went. It was one of the more memorable sojourns we’ve ever taken, not so much for the ballpark but for the adventures surrounding it. For example, we nearly got killed on the way to our hotel. Well, maybe not nearly got killed but our airport shuttle driver was so busy playing tour guide for us and the other couple in his van that he didn’t notice he was about to drive through a barricade and literally off the highway. It’s one of those maneuvers that works a lot better in, say, The Blues Brothers than it does in real life.

The driver was yapping about all the sights we should see. The old lady in the other couple, in town for a World War II reunion, was yapping about Fred Thompson, who had just declared his ultimately sonorous candidacy for president. Stephanie had her earbuds in and was glued to her then new iPod. I was absorbing, from my phone’s prehistoric Web browser, the details of how a game that had been NYM 10 PHI 9 when we landed turned out NYM 10 PHI 11. The only one on the ball, just as he had no doubt been more than 60 years earlier, was the WWII vet husband of the yapping Fred Thompson lady.

“There’s a barricade straight ahead,” he plaintively told the driver just in time for the driver to swerve. The driver admitted he hadn’t seen it — clearly it was the one sight in Milwaukee he hadn’t seen.

We arrived alive at our hotel that Thursday afternoon, but discovered not long after a thriving nest of spiders hovering over our window. It was quite a welcome, and we were still a day away from Miller Park.

The hotel gave us another room and we settled in comfortably from there. We found a brewpub that made sensational root beer. We unearthed one of the last coffee shops in America whose menu still offered Freedom Fries. We reacquainted ourselves with the campus of Marquette University. We discovered Carlos Santana had donated one his Grammys to the Public Museum (leading us to decide Carlos Santana isn’t all that impressed with his Grammys).

Miller Park would be an easy commute from our downtown lodging. There was a bus that stopped practically at our front door. My, how I love public transportation to the ballpark. We got on a mostly empty Wisconsin Avenue bus and figured maybe the Brewers and Pirates on the cusp of Labor Day wasn’t that big a draw, or that only tourists didn’t drive and tailgate. But then we made the Marquette stop and everybody and his fraternity brother got on. The Brewers had some sort of Friday night college student deal, and these college students, barely back for fall semester, were into it. Lots of Brewer jerseys and Brewer caps. Lots of boisterousness. Couldn’t tell whether that was from being young or being Brewers fans.

It was probably a little of both. Our bus pulled into the Miller Park lot, and there was a lot of energy present. The Brew Crew was having its best season in 15 years. It was a holiday weekend. There would be baseball and plenty of beer available. The nighttime sky would be evident from indoors. Even if it was indoors, it was going to be a good time. You could just feel it. Hell, you could smell it, as tailgaters were plying their passion everywhere.

The Brewers built Miller Park next door to County Stadium and made great use of both spaces. County Stadium lives on, sort of, as Helfaer Field, a youth baseball field that was in use as we showed up. What a great idea! Better than paving it over and slapping down five markers and forgetting about it (for example). The area is also commemorated by a tribute to the Milwaukee Braves, original County tenants. Another great idea, remembering those who came before you even if they weren’t your direct descendants. Every Milwaukee N.L. player from 1953 to 1965 is listed out there on the plaza.

For random comparison’s sake, not a single New York N.L. player from 1883 to 1957 is acknowledged as such in any way outside or inside Citi Field, but we’re just little old New York, not history-rich Milwaukee.

Miller Park’s exterior was allegedly influenced by Ebbets Field. I suppose you can see it in the bricks and arches if you’re not looking for a carbon copy of what made Brooklyn famous. It’s attractive, all right, as are the statues for Brewer icons Robin Yount and Hank Aaron. Yount won two MVPs for the Brewers. Aaron played out the last two years of his career alongside the young Yount. He’s bronzed, however, for having begun his journey to 755 home runs as a Milwaukee Brave as much as he is for ending it as a Milwaukee Brewer. As we took pictures of Bad Henry, nobody came by to point out, “He was only a Brewer for two seasons.” Instead, people seemed to embrace their team’s and city’s association with one of the game’s true greats, same as New Yorkers and Mets fans might draw a similar connection to New York Giant, New York Met and baseball legend Willie Mays if he were given similar treatment at the Mets’ ballpark.

There was a memorial for the three workers who died in the construction of the park (involving installation of the roof). There was a Walk of Fame outside the park, honoring Milwaukee greats who were maybe a notch below Yount and Aaron in the local pecking order: Rollie Fingers and Paul Molitor; Cecil Cooper and (don’t laugh) Bud Selig; Bob Uecker (laugh if you like — he’d appreciate it) and a few others. In fact, we had stumbled into Walk of Fame Night. Pregame, on-field ceremonies would honor Warren Spahn, Eddie Mathews and GM John Quinn, all from the Braves. It was the 50th anniversary of their only Milwaukee world championship, perfectly synched to the 25th anniversary of the Brewers’ only pennant, from their American League stay. Every Friday night at home, the team was wearing its 1982 unis and giving out miniature bobbleheads. Stephanie and I were handed a pair of Pete Vukoviches — one home and one road.

I never much cared about Brave or Brewer history, but Miller Park drew me in with its tributes and monuments. There were more inside, too. There were displays recognizing Wisconsin-born ballplayers (Tony Kubek sticks out in my recollection). There was one for the All American Girls Professional Baseball League…the Racine Belles were another Wisconsin contribution to the game. Gosh, the Brewers did a great job with this kind of stuff.

They did a great job on fan-friendliness all around. I had a hard time buying a program because they gave them out for free! I eventually found a standard scorecard for my collection and it only cost a dollar! The team store was an attraction unto itself. Merchandise wasn’t free or particularly cheap, but it was plentiful and imaginative. I took home a pair of t-shirts saluting a team for which I never had any affinity. I couldn’t help it.

Stephanie tried to talk me into spending a couple of bucks on a foam Prince Fielder crown — she wanted to take a picture of me in it (Prince, get it?). I declined. I have my limits. Maybe even a shred of dignity.

Oh, and the food! It’s America’s Dairyland, so we had to try the fried cheese curds. I regret to inform you that fried cheese curds are delicious. I regret it because I don’t feel they should be endorsed by a responsible adult. (So much for my shred of dignity.) The nachos, if not exactly a Milwaukee specialty, were as good as I’ve ever had. There was probably a sausage split between me and my wife in there, too. When it came, it did not disappoint. I think it was bratwurst, though I wouldn’t swear to it.

And how can you not order up a beer at Miller Park? Mine was a Leinenkugel Honey Weiss, and honey, it was crisp and refreshing. (The beer vendors were very voluble; the soda vendors seemed almost ashamed they weren’t hawking beer.)

I have the sense I’m leaving something out…maybe it’s the baseball game. Yeah, that’s it. It was good, too, I guess. My interest in the Brewers and Pirates was about what you’d expect from someone who spends next to no time tracking either team in the course of a season. But the folks were into it — more than I would have imagined. Peppy, peppy crowd. J.J. Hardy had a squealing teenybopper rooting section. Yovanni Gallardo won plaudits all around for homering as the starting pitcher. Two fellows invested in customized jerseys that read, when they sat together, “NED YOST WORLD’S BIGGEST CUBS FAN.” Yost’s managerial magic was running out as September approached and rival Chicago was opening a lead. Very Midwestern expression of dismay. Very nice.

The sausage race was as big a deal in person as it was on TV. They hyped that sucker hard. Only two innings away! When it came, it did not disappoint. I think Italian won, though I wouldn’t swear to it.

Oddity of the night: We sat next to a father and son from New York — Mets fans like us. The dad had his mobile device up and running to track the Mets in Atlanta, home of the former Milwaukee Braves. Maybe I should have made an effort to talk to a Brewers fan, but this seemed too fortuitous. We checked in with mets.com now and again to fill in the blanks on the Miller out-of-town scoreboard. Mets won. That I’d swear to.

It was a super fun evening in a really well-conceived facility. The only thing that holds it back from greatness is it’s an indoor facility. We did a 360 walkaround before the game and it drained some of the enthusiasm I’d gathered outside. The curse of the auditorium. Watching the game while it was still light out felt all right, but once it was a nighttime sky, I felt claustrophobic again. I’d wanted a ballpark trip to get away from feeling enclosed. Miller Park needed to breathe. It needed to step outside and make everything feel a little less cold and industrial. It should have been a fantastic showplace for baseball. It almost was.

Stupid retractable roof.

The Brewers won, their fans — even those who doubted Ned Yost’s loyalty — were sated, we gathered our matching Vukoviches and we found the downtown bus right where they said it would be. We gave ourselves one more day in Milwaukee and used it to take an expensive cab ride to the Steak ‘n’ Shake in Wauwatosa (definitely worth it) and then tool around by bus (which is how I briefly got us lost in that dodgy part of town, but didn’t nearly get us killed, though I thought I might; we sort of laugh about it now). All told, a rich weekend for the memory bank. We need to hit the road again one of these summers and take another ballpark vacation; we haven’t done so since this one. But if you have to have one to let linger top of mind until another comes together, you could do a lot worse than Miller Park, roof or no roof.

You'll Rarely Manage in This Game Again

by Greg Prince on 8 July 2010 8:55 pm

With Bobby Valentine’s non-hiring as manager of the Florida Marlins proving once again his predecessor’s 1973 utterance about it not being over until is over oh so true, one wonders if the key credential on his managerial résumé is the item that quietly did him in. Bobby V won a pennant for the Mets, yet the Mets seem to use up the viability of their managers for potential future Major League Baseball employers — particularly if those MLB teams had no prior history with those managers.

Nineteen different men have skippered the Mets. One of them is their current manager. One of them tragically died in office. One of them was 75 when he broke his hip and limped, after spending 54 of his previous 56 years in uniform, into retirement. Thus, you can’t count Jerry Manuel (since 2008), Gil Hodges (1968-1971) and Casey Stengel (1962-1965) as managers who couldn’t get another job after they were done with the Mets.

As for the other sixteen, ten were never tabbed to lead a team in what we tend, perhaps jingoistically, call the big leagues. That includes four interim managers — Salty Parker (1967), Roy McMillan (1975), Frank Howard (1983), Mike Cubbage (1991) — who apparently didn’t make enough of an impression to get a full-time shot anywhere else. Cubbage was named caretaker manager for the Red Sox during the offseason between 2001 and 2002, but never managed a game for them between Joe Kerrigan and Grady Little.

There were six full-time Mets managers who, to date, never again appealed to anybody, at least not enough to get hired: Joe Frazier (1976-77); Bud Harrelson (1990-91); Dallas Green (1993-96); Valentine (1996-2002); Art Howe (2003-2004); and Willie Randolph (2005-2008). To be fair to the last two, they were collecting some fine paychecks after being dismissed by the Mets with time remaining on their respective contracts, so why rush back onto the hot seat? Both became bench coaches — Howe was let go by Texas after 2008, Randolph is still advising Ken Macha in Milwaukee. Maybe Randolph will attract attention again someday given that he did win a division title. Howe, despite three consecutive playoff appearances as A’s manager, probably won’t.

Joe Frazier sank from major league sight once he was axed after his Mets’ horrible start in ’77. He managed one year, 1982, in the Cardinal system, but otherwise stayed out of demand. I was nevertheless pleased in 2008 when Lee Mazzilli, then SNY’s postgame analyst made a reference to Frazier as his first manager, and Matt Yallof smirked like it was a joke. Mazz lowered his voice and reprimanded Yallof with “Joe Frazier was a good man.” Joe Frazier was the on-field steward of the Mets’ downfall, but it seems he deserves a little love for bringing the 1976 Mets home with 86 wins, at the time the second-most in team history.

Buddy Harrelson serves as an example of when your team is hot, so are you. While the Mets were in dynastic fettle in the late ’80s, Harrelson, bench-coaching for Davey Johnson, was mentioned as a leading candidate for other jobs. The Blue Jays were eager to interview him for an opening. Then Buddy gets his chance, leads the Mets from the April-May doldrums to nearly a division title in 1990, is befallen by a lousy team in ’91 and is never mentioned again at that level. He eventually helped give birth to the Long Island Ducks and was restored to Met icon status. Good for Buddy.

Dallas Green came off as a blustering bully who belongs in the Phillies organization. Sure enough, he continues to be listed as a senior adviser to general manager Ruben Amaro.

For the six Met managers who went on to become MLB managers again, five of them benefited to a great extent by who they knew or where they’d been when they got their next shot.

Wes Westrum (1965-1967) went into managerial witness protection until 1974 when Horace Stoneham hired him to lead the San Francisco Giants on their perpetual journey through mediocrity. Stoneham was famously loyal to old Giants and Westrum’s name was made as a solid Jint catcher under Coogan’s Bluff in the early 1950s. Stoneham sold the team in 1976, but Westrum hung on more season at Candlestick.

Yogi Berra (1972-1975), it has become easy to forget, wore a Mets uniform for most of eleven seasons as a player, a coach and a pennant-winning manager. But when M. Donald Grant decided it was time for Yog’ to go, Yog’ knew where he was going: back to the Bronx, where he had worn a Yankees uniform even longer. The Hall of Fame catcher and serial mutterer of observations that sort of made sense settled into coaching and seemed destined to be an eternal background fixture to multiple firings of Billy Martin when George Steinbrenner, forever in search of good publicity, remembered Berra won that pennant for the Mets in 1973 (and one for the Yankees, in 1964) and named him manager for the 1984 season, succeeding Martin. The Yanks were blown away by the Tigers but Yogi kept his job for 1985. They got off to a shaky 6-10 start, which was obviously Yogi’s fault, for he was fired after sixteen whole games…and was replaced by Billy Martin. Berra never managed again, though he did catch on as a bench coach in Houston, a result of his neighbor from New Jersey, John McMullen, owning the Astros…and a result, one supposes, of his being Yogi Berra.

Joe Torre (1977-1981) was not damaged by his Met association, at least not in the eyes of Ted Turner who saw a young, promising pilot who did the best he could with faulty Queens equipment when he scooped him up to manage the Braves in 1982. It didn’t hurt that Torre had name recognition born of several All-Star seasons in Atlanta as a player. Torre turned the Dale Murphy Braves into winners for a couple of seasons before they reverted to pre-Torre form. Turner got itchy and removed Joe in favor of Eddie Haas, kind of the Braves’ version of Joe Frazier — long and meritorious record of service to the organization. Safe to say you’ve heard more of Torre than you have of Haas lately.

Joe, still the only Met manager to become somebody else’s Leader of Men immediately after being bounced out of Flushing, actually had to wait a while to get back into managing. After announcing Angels games to finish out the ’80s, the Cardinals hired him in 1990 when they were at one of their rare nadirs. Torre’s past helped him out again: he won an MVP for the Redbirds in 1971 and remained popular in St. Louis. He never returned them to glory, however, and was let go midway through the ’95 season. His next job came about mainly through a connection he made as a Met. All-purpose front office fixer Arthur Richman was now working for the Yankees and persuaded Steinbrenner that this was the guy who was going to halt his managerial merry-go-round for good. It loomed as bizarre, but Arthur Richman knew from whence he spoke. Torre enjoyed a dozen highly productive seasons in the Bronx before bolting to L.A. and, arguably, the first managerial post he earned since leaving the Mets without relying on “who ya know”.

George Bamberger (1982-83) got the Met job because he knew Frank Cashen. Cashen had to convince Bamberger to take it. Cashen made some good calls as Mets GM. Bamberger wasn’t one of them. The man couldn’t have looked or acted more frustrated as the former Oriole pitching coach and Brewer manager looked up and down the Met bench and could find no sign of anybody who bore resemblance to Jim Palmer or Robin Yount. Less than two years after resigning from aggravation of the Mets, he was lured once more out of retirement for a second go-round in Milwaukee. In the late ’70s, George had molded the Brewers into contenders for the first time. His second tenure as Kegmeister General didn’t go down so smoothly and was over, as it had been with the Mets, before two full seasons elapsed.

Davey Johnson (1984-1990) was successful enough in New York that he didn’t require an extraordinary “in” to obtain his next managing gig, helming the Cincinnati Reds in 1993. The Reds were a mess and Davey pulled them out of it, taking them to first place until the strike hit in August 1994 and to an N.L. Central championship in 1995. Unstable owner Marge Schott, however, saw fit to bestow lame duck status on Johnson before that season was over, promising the job to Davey lieutenant Ray Knight for 1996. Knight and the Reds foundered (they’re only now recovering) and Davey gravitated to a former professional home, Baltimore. He was as good managing the Orioles as he had been playing second base for them, guiding them twice to the postseason. Unfortunately, he ran into another lunatic owner, Peter Angelos, and was let go after 1997; the Orioles have not been seen on the competitive landscape since. Johnson got one more shot, in Los Angeles, new territory for him. Following a disappointing 1999 and a contending 2000, he was axed.

Jeff Torborg (1992-93) never played or coached for the Montreal Expos, but he was elevated to a top job in Canada nonetheless on something less than merit. Anyone who watched the ’Borg run the Mets into the ground would have figured a personal connection was at work. His sudden reappearance in a dugout eight years after presiding over immolation at Shea wasn’t because he knew something. It was because he knew somebody — Expos owner Jeffrey Loria. The two were described in multiple articles written upon his 2001 hiring as “friends” since the ’80s, back when Torborg was a Yankee coach and Loria was a Yankee season ticket holder. Loria infamously packed up the plantation and moved it to Florida in 2002, taking his staff with him, Torborg included. The Jeffs accomplished nothing of substance together and Loria turned his back on his “friend” much as he turned his back on Montreal. Jack McKeon then came in and led the Marlins to an unlikely 2003 world championship, proving a better manager than Jeff Torborg can make a positive impact on an otherwise despicable franchise. Torborg returned to broadcasting, a discipline at which he excelled to the very same extent he did at managing.

And that brings us to Bobby Valentine, arguably the most famous “former Mets manager” to remain in baseball after having been Mets manager.

Sure, Yogi Berra is more famous, but (despite uttering his best bromide in orange and blue) isn’t really famous for having been a Mets manager. Casey Stengel was more famous for having been Mets manager than most anybody will ever be for being anything, but by the time he was former Mets manager, Casey was not actively in baseball, fancy “vice president” title he held until his death in 1975 notwithstanding. Like Yogi is Yogi, Casey was Casey; curriculum vitae was just detail. Davey Johnson has one more World Series ring than Bobby Valentine, but he was never quite as famous. Joe Torre is pretty famous, but we’re the only ones who immediately remember he was our manager. Gil Hodges never had the opportunity to be recalled as a former Mets manager as opposed to “the late Mets manager”. If he had stayed on the scene, he might be have a plaque alongside Stengel and Berra in Cooperstown. (And the history of the Mets would have likely played out much differently.)

Bobby V is still around, as evidenced by his star turn on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight. He’s still looking to fulfill his destiny as a major league manager, and he remains top of mind for such a role despite having gone an amazingly long time since his last such gig.

How long has it been since Bobby Valentine managed in — no offense to our friends in Japan — the major leagues? It’s been longer than Wes Westrum waited for a second chance…and there were six fewer teams back then. Westrum went seven years from quitting the Mets to leading the Giants. Torborg was in exile eight years, almost as long as Valentine’s been to date. Yogi Berra was let go by the Mets in early August of 1975 and was at the Yankee helm come April of 1984. Yogi may have been beloved and revered, but it seemed fairly absurd he was being resurrected as he was after so much time. If someone doesn’t hire Bobby Valentine by May 2011, Bobby will be out of the saddle in North America longer than Yogi was.

Is Bobby V destined to go the way of Joe Frazier and never again manage in the majors?

The Marlins seemed so close…as close as the Heat were to LeBron James in the hours preceding the King’s People Of Earth announcement. Loria, who owned the Rangers’ top farm club when Bobby was managing Texas, knew him and allegedly wanted him very badly. Jon Heyman reported it as done and word spread that it would be any minute now. The only detail to be settled was when. Edwin Rodriguez might be given the series versus the Mets in Puerto Rico in deference to his heritage — but that was just interim stuff; Salty Parker with a Spanish accent. Then the longer it didn’t become official, the more one got the sense it wasn’t going to happen at all. And it didn’t. Loria gathered his employees around in San Juan and told them Rodriguez is the manager for the rest of the year.

Maybe “who ya know” doesn’t always work.

Bobby Valentine…the most famous former Mets manager who’s ever been…the most famous available manager there usually is…remains unattached to any team save for ESPN. How did that happen?

Bobby blamed the Marlins: “If this is a major league process, I hope I’m never in the process again.” He referred to his Florida dalliance as “very disturbing, confusing and…insulting at times.” The Marlins, not surprisingly, refute the characterization of their methods as bush league. Their president, David Samson, said it was never as done a deal as it appeared from the outside and that certain unfortunate aspects of the negotiations were “unavoidable”.

Anyone not on the inside can’t know exactly why a done deal gets undone, but think about the Florida Marlins for a sec: this is a franchise that has lingered in a mostly empty football stadium whose name changes more often than Cal Ripken took days off; that moved a three-game series with one of its better draws off the mainland in search of a few extra fans; that fired Joe Girardi, its National League Manager of the Year in 2006, right after he won the award; that features Hanley Ramirez, a superstar whose decision not to hustle helped oust the generally highly regarded (if not by all of us) Fredi Gonzalez; that has never parlayed its two championships into any kind of lasting brand equity; and that only gets revved up if another team’s season is on the line.

Thus I’m guessing, whatever the details of the process behind the scenes, that the Marlins were pretty bush in their approach to Bobby Valentine.

For what it’s worth, Joe Capozzi’s Palm Beach Post post-mortem indicates the Marlins baseball people didn’t want to cede control over personnel decisions. And why ever would they want Bobby Valentine, who built a two-time playoff team largely out of spare parts and Mike Piazza, to have definitive say over who’s on their team? I’m disillusioned that an industry like baseball can’t figure out a way to make the best use of someone who should be one of its captains, not one of its analysts. His superlative work on Baseball Tonight only makes me yearn more for him to be back where he belongs. He dissected B.J. Upton’s bout of me-firstism in Tampa Bay so beautifully the other night that for a fleeting moment I wished he was managing the Rays. It’s a waste of a great mind to keep Bobby Valentine out of his natural managerial habitat.

But I’m not exactly sorry he won’t be managing a division rival. That I feared. I feared the Marlins growing legs under Bobby V and I feared how much I was going have to loathe him in teal and black. I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t like rooting against Davey Johnson when he brought the Reds and Dodgers to Shea. I did it because self-interest trumps all, but it’s not a clause in the fan contract I particularly relish.

Still, Valentine should be managing somewhere. He resuscitated the Rangers. He sparked the Mets to long abandoned heights. He was a legend and Chiba’s champion in Japan. Yet general managers and owners steer clear of him in the U.S. in 2010. He inspires passion on both sides of the Bobby Valentine debate. He inspires a Bobby Valentine debate to begin with. Was there ever really an Art Howe debate? Few managers or head coaches are capable of electrifying their sport. Bobby is one of them.

Somebody should try and capture that electricity, and soon. He’s suddenly 60, and while that’s not necessarily prohibitively ancient the realm of managing (ask McKeon, a month shy of 73 when he took his champagne shower with the Marlins), perceptions about a person harden the older a person gets and the longer that person is away from the center of the action. Valentine is no doubt helped by being on ESPN. The players on his next club, assuming that club exists, will know who he is. But after a while, they may just know that he’s some old guy coming in to tell them their business. Then all bets are off.

Meanwhile, the Mets are humming along all right under Jerry Manuel. I haven’t noticed him garnering an ounce of credit for their surprise contention, yet I’ve gotta believe he’s doing something right. Have you noticed the Mets are not running the wrong way or throwing to the wrong base this year? Have you noticed they literally touch all the bases this year? And has anybody here ticked you off because they’re not running hard this year?

Not much and not lately. Is that Jerry’s doing? I haven’t heard it mentioned, but I’m thinking it isn’t organic. His lineups are criticized, his penchant for bunting is criticized, his bullpen juggling is criticized (often loudly), nothing about what he does is praised, but Jerry Manuel’s team is three behind the great Bobby Cox’s in the East and tied with the raging Rockies for the Wild Card lead as we speak.

You know that phrase “Skill Sets,” of course. It was popularized in the Met lexicon by Fred Wilpon as his nebulous rationale for firing general manager Joe McIlvaine at the precise moment when the team McIlvaine put together — in concert with Bobby Valentine — had emerged from its perpetual morass to compete for a playoff spot in the summer of 1997. McIlvaine was judged not to have the skill sets to serve as GM, but Steve Phillips allegedly did. Perhaps that meaningless bit of corporatespeak wouldn’t have resonated so resoundingly had Wilpon not chosen a ludicrous point in time to off Joe Mac. The team whose construction you’ve overseen is competing beautifully — you’re fired!

In that vein, it would be unfair to Jerry Manuel, whatever his perceived shortcomings, to see Bobby Valentine wasting away in Bristol and bang a drum for his return to Flushing. The current occupant of Citi Field’s home manager’s office has apparently done a great job. Manuel was the pilot in 2008 when the Mets surged from their post-Randolph malaise into first place. He was also the manager when they fell from first (as Wagner, Maine, Easley and Tatis all fell from active duty as well). He was the manager during the blah-storm of 2009 and the bumbling start of 2010 when his exit seemed just a matter of losses mounting. It’s a mixed bag to be sure, but he’s still here and, based on the record, deserves to be here.

But I’d sure like Bobby Valentine back with the Mets. Maybe not as manager right this very minute. Maybe not as manager-in-waiting (as documented during Steinbrenner’s Martinian machinations, that never works). Maybe not as general manager (if we have to tip our caps to Jerry, we have to begrudgingly nod toward Omar Minaya, too — I’ll leave it to Howard Megdal to do otherwise). But in the year when the Mets have FINALLY gotten around to doing the right thing and are inducting Davey Johnson into their Hall of Fame, it’s a little creepy how much of a non-person Bobby V is in the Mets’ official telling of their own history.

Have you seen a Bobby Valentine banner on any of the lamp posts outside Citi Field? I have not. Gil Hodges and Casey Stengel have them, as they should (and praise be for they and Seaver gracing the VIP entrances). Davey has them. I’ve spotted Yogi, who, like Bobby, managed the Mets to a National League pennant. Haven’t seen much of Bobby represented in the museum, either. Not in the constantly looping film, not among the installations, not in any of the murals and montages that make the museum so intoxicating for Mets fans. His players are highlighted, his years are given their due, the moments he was a part of are a big deal…but nothing jumps out and tells you Bobby Valentine was one of the Mets’ most significant characters in their half-century of operation.

Maybe there’s something about managers and their proximity to ownership that creates a necessary arm’s-length distance after they’re gone. Or maybe it’s just this ownership — the dark side of “who ya know” is knowing someone who decides he doesn’t want to know you anymore.

Traded Mets are often welcomed home graciously. Fired managers are not. None has ever gotten a second term (though McMillan, Howard and Cubbage all went back to Met coaching). Few are even welcomed back for the hell of it without a ton of Sturm und Drang. Casey may have been given a lifetime sinecure, but they apparently broke the mold thereafter. Once he was no longer their manager, Wes Westrum is curiously absent from Mets yearbook photos of the 1971 Old Timers Day celebration of the 1951 pennant race, the one in which he played a stalwart role. Anybody recall Joe Frazier being asked to wave to the crowd at any Shea reunion? George Bamberger? When he visited as the Brewers’ bench coach last year, did the CitiVision camera find 2006 N.L. Eastern Division champion manager Willie Randolph?

The Mets remained icy toward Davey Johnson for two years before bringing him back by popular demand to what was then known as Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball Night in 1992 — and from there it took a scant 18 years to elect their winningest manager ever into their Hall of Fame. Buddy’s shortstop genius precluded him from getting a cold shoulder for his tepid skippering. Yogi, on a few occasions, has been welcomed back for being a Met/national treasure. But otherwise bygones seem to take forever to become bygones in this realm.

It’s never happened for Bobby Valentine, which is ridiculous. He’s not managing a divisional rival. He’s not managing an intracity rival (which can a real mood killer — was Joe Torre even asked to remove an actual Shea countdown number in 2008?). Whatever falling out he experienced in October 2002 is now nearly eight years in the past. Steve Phillips is gone. Art Howe is gone. Only the Wilpons remain, so we’ll assume one or both bears the grudge toward the last man to guide their team into a World Series (and that the feeling may be mutual). Hasn’t enough water flowed under this bridge?

Or, where Bobby Valentine is concerned, is there always going to be just too much bridge over the water?

It would be poor conduct on ownership’s part to not have this man back at some point in time, if not in an official capacity then as something more than an unspoken presence in their history. Next rain delay, pay close attention if SNY is showing Mets Yearbook: 1978 or Mets Yearbook: 1984. Bobby is a featured player in the former and has a key walk-on in the latter. Both times he steals the show.

In ’78, he’s zestfully detailing his bubble-blowing game plan much as might explain why Tsuyoshi Shinjo is batting cleanup on a given evening. I love when he raises his eyebrows in the telling, as if earning Topps’ bubble-blowing crown is no less important than moving a runner from first to second (I also love Ed Kranepool’s runner-up scorn over having lost to Valentine). In ’84, he’s the third-base coach frantically waving Mookie Wilson home with a winning run. “C’MON MOOK! C’MON MOOK!” Within a year he’d be off to Arlington, but he looked perfectly at home at Shea, clearing a path to victory.

There aren’t many people we’ve come across who strike me as Born Mets in the very best sense of the phrase. Bobby Valentine tops that list. The old footage and ripening memories — player, coach, manager — reinforce the romance (and make me hazy on the way his clubhouse devolved into a snitfest toward the end of his tenure…though I tend to think that was the players more than it was their manager). I was in love with his thrilling, lively baseball mind. By all indications, that mind is still functioning at levels the rest of us can only dream of. I hope it’s eventually given its due.

MLB GAMES MANAGED BY FORMER MET MANAGERS
(after leaving the Mets)

Joe Torre 3,542 (through 7/7/2010)
Davey Johnson 1,027
George Bamberger 313
Jeff Torborg 309
Wes Westrum 247
Yogi Berra 178

Note: Bobby Valentine managed 837 games for the Chiba Lotte Marines of Japan’s Pacific League.

You’ll probably boo Chipper Jones this weekend. But would you boo him if you knew you were never going to see him again? Jason and I join a host of Mets fan queried on that topic by ESPN New York’s Mark Simon here.

It's the Little Things

by Jason Fry on 7 July 2010 11:07 pm

Believe it or not, some baseball games aren’t hell-for-leather affairs won by furious rallies, lost by closer meltdowns or somehow turning on a dread manifestation of Willie Harris. Sometimes a game walks along a tightrope for a while and finally tips one way or the other because of some little thing. And eventually you come to appreciate those games — not because they’re particularly memorable, but because they’re quietly and unfussily fair. These fundamentally even, somewhat mundane contests are the foundation upon which extraordinary games are built.

Or maybe I’m just looking for something to say about this one.

Look, it was a close game, OK? Jonathon Niese and Bronson Arroyo were well-matched. Niese made a couple of mistakes, but two of them were to Brandon Phillips (home run and double), which hardly counts given that being victimized by Phillips is basically inevitable if you’re a member of the Mets and playing baseball against him. (Niese’s other mistake turned into a home run by Chris Heisey, who must frustrate his teammates by already having his own not particularly imaginative nickname as a last name. We’re a long way from the Sultan of Swat when the best we can do is stick a letter in front of “Rod.”) The other elements of Niese’s destruction were what can be technically termed garbage: a worm-killer by Drew Stubbs and a parachute bunt by Arroyo.

On the other side? Well, Angel Pagan matched Phillips with a first-inning home run. Then, the little difference: With the game tied 1-1 in the sixth, Jason Bay hit a screamer up the gap that would have scored David Wright from first — except that Heisey barely caught up with it. If Bay swings a split-second earlier or if Heisey is a split-second slower reading the ball off the bat, it’s 2-1 Mets. (The booing of Bay, by the way, is ridiculous. He’s consistently either driving in runs or hitting line drives that are just caught. Save it for Ollie. Or K-Rod.) But nope, Heisey had just enough time and/or Bay’s ball lacked just enough velocity, and that was that.

Things weren’t perfectly symmetrical: Niese helped short-circuit two rallies for his own cause, first by trying to cross to third on a grounder to the shortstop (convenient, as Joshua and I were discussing mental errors) and then by striking out with runners on second and third and one out. The latter will happen sometimes; he needs to stop doing the former. The Mets made some noise in the ninth, but Francisco Cordero smothered Alex Cora on the eighth pitch of a lively at-bat to end it. A remarkably even game, just one where a couple of things ticked the needle over from W to L. Little things happen. Sometimes in your favor, and sometimes not.

Selectively Prescient But Perfectly Satisfied

by Greg Prince on 7 July 2010 3:23 am

I’m sure I’ve been wrong more than twice recently, but two instances in particular call for a public correction of the record.

Eleven days ago, I worried aloud about whether Johan Santana was definitively on the downside of his career. A pair of sterling efforts later, it appears he is not. I’m perfectly happy to admit to gun-jumping in writing him off.

A few hours ago, I was far louder and far more adamant in my assessment of Jerry Manuel’s managing acumen. When he emerged from the first base dugout and jogged toward the mound, I screamed from atop Section 508 of Citi Field as well as my lungs, “MANUEL, YOU’RE A FUCKING IDIOT!”

I retract my statement, at least as it pertained to his handling of Santana in the ninth inning of a steamy, sultry, shvitzy pitching gem that begged, like a weary traveler checked in to the Marriott, not to be disturbed.

Johan, having proven my previous assessment of his moundsmanship as “mortal” inoperative, had gone from allowing the Cincinnati Reds absolutely nothing to a ghost of a chance. Two runners were on (one via Jason Bay choosing a fine time for his first error since 1943) and only one out was recorded. Manuel, a veritable Will Rogers when it comes to save opportunities, thought he’d met one. His team led by three, ergo it was time to bring in…

Let me say, my personal Saturday evening meltdown notwithstanding, that I’m predisposed to root for Frankie Rodriguez. I discovered him the same time most baseball fans did, in the 2002 postseason. Then he was 20, electric and disposing of Yankees, Twins and Giants at the very moment I decided the Angels winning the World Series was of paramount importance to me. I wouldn’t say I fell in love with K-Rod, but I followed him with a bit of ardor from that October forward. He would establish himself as one of the elite closers in baseball, though every time I saw an Angel ninth inning, Frankie was tiptoeing above it on a tightrope. He generally made it through and I continued to pull for him.

When he became a Met, I expected an upgrade from where we stood with Closer Pro Tempore Luis Ayala, certainly, and figured, given his youth and health, he was a better bet than Billy Wagner to shut doors well into the 2010s. Nevertheless, I also expected to be made terribly nervous because I’d seen him teeter in Anaheim and because he would now be a Met closer. Frightening the NY off your cap is just what they do. Still, with the exception of this past weekend in Washington, I was generally fine with him working our ninth innings and did not regret my March 2009 good faith purchase of a RODRIGUEZ 75 t-shirt.

I bring this up because if I’d had that shirt with me Tuesday night, I might very well have (in my fantasies, at any rate) raced downstairs and choked Manuel with it if he tried to bring in Frankie Rodriguez to replace Johan Santana when Johan Santana was two outs from pitching a shutout. And if they hadn’t dragged me away, I would have choked K-Rod with it right after.

But, as you probably know, Jerry Manuel was just out to stretch his legs in the ninth. He trotted to the mound, he was informed he was not particularly welcome there, and he moved along. Nothing to see here. One neat Ike Davis dive and one David Wright Player of the Month grab and throw to second later, everything was copasetic.

Thus, because he did not remove Johan Santana in favor of Frankie Rodriguez in blind, robotic obeisance to the currently accepted Way To Go, I indeed retract what I said: In this particular instance, Manuel, you were not a fucking idiot. Or as Ron Swoboda told Newsweek in 1969, “Met fans boo out of frustration, not viciousness.”

Now that I’ve flogged my mistakes, let me tell you how brilliant I can be.

It’s the bottom of the third, Ruben Tejada is on first. With Johan Santana taking ball one, Tejada — now officially, upon the return of Jose Reyes to the starting lineup, part of the longest-running homegrown infield in Mets history — takes off for second. Mustachioed Corky Miller, taking a break from playing the Michael Imperioli role in Life On Mars, throws him out. And I say to my co-blogger the following:

“What a shame. Now Johan Santana’s first home run as a Met will be a solo shot.”

Matt Maloney then proceeded to throw eleven more pitches to Johan. Six were fouled off. One was ball two. Then three more were fouled off. Then Johan Santana hit his first Met and major league home run.

It was, as I had projected nearly a dozen pitches earlier, a solo shot.

That’s the kind of thing I like to be right about.

With a 3-0 victory sealed shut by its progenitor, everything was right at Citi Field Tuesday night, no matter how many digits the park’s temperature contained. My soup-to-nuts experience was of the Ice Cube today was a good day variety: good company for Jason and me provided by our hosts Sharon and Kevin; good judgment on the part of Citi security not making folks discard their open bottles of water at the entrance (“we’re showing some mercy tonight,” my favorite guard told me…and yes, after 50 games at Citi Field, I have a favorite guard); good random LIRR meeting with a good dude who read my book and told me he liked it (which, quite frankly, I never get tired of hearing); good and cold Blue Point Toasted Lager from Catch of the Day; good Mets lamp post banner sighting while I nursed my Blue Point — Marv Throneberry in his Polo Grounds finery (and who was celebrated on more Polo Grounds banners than Marvelous Marv?); good and respectful Reds t-shirt sighting, too — SEAVER 41 in Cincinnati’s current font.

And Jerry Manuel didn’t even have to use his AK…or his K-Rod. I got to say it was a good day.

Best of all, from a statistical standpoint, the Mets and I are now on a twelve-game winning streak together. The Mets in real life have never won more than eleven in a row. They accomplished their longest flawless stretches in 1969, 1972, 1986 and 1990. Next to the elusive no-hitter, the one thing I’ve been waiting for my entire life as a Mets fan is for the Mets to win a dozen consecutive games. Until it happens where everybody can see it, the next best thing, for me anyway, is that it’s happened on my watch.

I never would have guessed I’d get twelve wins in a row. But I did call Johan’s shot.

Nice Job, Atta Boy, Way To Go

by Greg Prince on 6 July 2010 11:00 am

NEW YORK (FAFIF) — Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig has announced the implementation of several statistical changes in pitching categories, effective for all Major League Baseball games immediately following the 2010 All-Star break.

• “Wins” will cease to exist as an individual statistic. Starting pitchers will now be credited with Nice Job if they, in fact, do a nice job. It won’t matter whether they pitch fewer than five innings or leave with their team in the lead. All that will be required of them is a nice job.

• Relief pitchers who don’t finish games but aren’t judged to have contributed to their team falling behind or losing when they do pitch will now be credited with Atta Boy. For example, a relief pitcher who pitches a middle inning and doesn’t give up a run will be told, “Atta boy.”

• Relief pitchers who finish games will now be credited with Way To Go. There will be no delineation among lead sizes or number of runners on base and no thought given to batters on-deck representing tying runs. The relief pitcher who finishes a game that his team wins when he throws that game’s last pitch will receive a Way To Go.

“That’s it,” explained Selig at a press conference at MLB headquarters Monday. “That’s all you need. No more compelling managers to manage to meaningless measurements. No more worrying about keeping in a starter who’s pitched well for four innings but is struggling in the fifth. No more of the pitcher who pitched seven shutout innings pouting because he isn’t credited with a win. The team win is the important thing. All the starter can be asked to do is a nice job. And that’s what we’re recognizing here — Nice Job.”

Selig abolished the save rule because he believes it was making a mockery of late-inning managerial strategy.

“The goal of every team is winning the game it is playing,” the commissioner declared. “The only reason a manager should use a pitcher is because he thinks that pitcher can help the team win. It doesn’t matter which outs a pitcher records. Every out is important.” Still, Selig acknowledged there is a certain cachet to the final out.

“Winning is surely the way to go” the commissioner continued. “A pitcher who secures the last out of a win represents a logical extension of ‘that way’. Thus, his accomplishment can be summed up accurately as Way To Go.”

As for the Atta Boy designation, it replaces holds, though Selig admitted he had no idea what a hold was.

“Never heard of it,” he said. “Are you sure that was a real statistic?”

The repercussions of the commissioner’s edict are being felt around baseball as statisticians, historians and player agents scramble to convert previous barometers to the new yardsticks. For example, the Elias Sports Bureau has ceased tracking possible membership within the 300-win club and has instead announced several veteran pitchers are on the verge of joining the 400 Nice Job guild. Topps is recalling its 2010 update set to clear space on the backs of its cards for Atta Boys. And at Citi Field, New York Mets manager Jerry Manuel was reshaping his time-tested bullpen philosophy.

“You can get an Atta Boy in a tie game in the seventh inning, but not the eighth,” Manuel said as his team prepared to face the Cincinnati Reds. “That’s when you use your Atta Boys with a lead or if you’re behind, but not if you’re tied. And not on the road. Then you have to use your Way To Go. That’s the Way To Go pitcher’s job, but only in the ninth and only at home. What I’m mostly concerned about is making sure we get a Nice Job out of our starter and then a couple of Atta Boys before we hand it off to Frankie and hope we get a Way To Go. That’s how it works in baseball.”

Manuel then chuckled maniacally and turned away from the scrum of microphones and notebooks.

Monday, July 12 is AMAZIN’ ALL-STAR MONDAY, with Marty Noble and Howard Megdal. Come out to Two Boots Grand Central at 7 PM. It’s in the Lower Dining Concourse of Grand Central Terminal, 42nd Street and Park Avenue, accessible via Metro-North as well as the 4, 5, 6, Times Square Shuttle and, of course, the 7 train. Phone: 212/557-7992. Full details here.

An Interesting Way to Lose

by Jason Fry on 6 July 2010 12:42 am

A day after playing a stultifying, graceless mess of a game that they won, the Mets played a bizarre, quietly fascinating game that they lost.

After you’ve watched enough baseball games, you find yourself wondering if the baseball cliché about seeing something you’ve never seen before should be retired. Because, really, how can that be? I’m comfortably above 3,000 games watched by now, and I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff: dropped third strikes, four strikeouts in an inning, winning runs balked in, 9-3 putouts on unsuspecting pitchers, catcher’s interference, runners missing bases, runners passing each other, balls hit through gloves, balls hit up outfielders’ sleeves, cycles, no-hitters, three home-run games, innings with two grand slams, 10-run innings, even an unassisted triple play. But then you’re minding your own business and sure enough, you see something you’ve never seen before.

I’ve seen batters hit with the bases loaded. I’ve seen batters awarded first base with only the fabric of their uniforms suffering impact. I’ve seen the two in combination — heck, I remember the Mets winning a game on a ball that wound up in Daryl Boston’s shirt. But what happened involving Scott Rolen and Mike Pelfrey and Jerry Meals and Rod Barajas and Dusty Baker and Jerry Manuel tonight was a new one on me. For posterity, with the bases loaded and nobody out (ulp) in the top of the fifth, Pelf nearly hit Rolen with a 1-2 pitch. Then he threw another one a little more inside. Rolen thought it hit him and started for first base, only to come to a startled stop when he realized Meals, the home-plate ump, had just called him out. Apparently he’d tipped the ball into Barajas’ mitt. Out came Dusty Baker, who nearly collided with the bat boy (what is it about Dusty and bat boys not paying attention, anyway?) in his haste to argue with Meals. But wait a minute, the umpires had to caucus. And after a long, doleful conversation, they decided Rolen had been hit after all. Barajas went ballistic and had to be taken away by teammates and coaches. Jerry Manuel came out to rant and rave, looked like he was running out of gas, realized he hadn’t been ejected and ranted and raved some more until finally he was. Most peculiar.

Oddly, the calmest person in the whole mess was Pelfrey.

I wasn’t too worked up, because whatareyagonnado. The ball definitely wasn’t foul-tipped; it was either ball three or grazed Rolen’s shirt. Not even the fabled Coors Freeze-Cam could say for sure. I don’t particularly blame the umps for getting together for a discussion when they clearly think something’s gone wrong — I much prefer the sight of that to one ump swearing he’s right while everybody screams bloody murder, the fans watch a nearby monitor and boo, and the other umps all intently study the grass. But if we’re going to go this far, why not go a sensible step further? Put an ump in a booth, call him up, ask him what he saw, and in 30 seconds or so we’re good. We review home runs and the world hasn’t spun off its axis, half the park already effectively has instant replay, and within a few years we’ll all have it on our smartphones or our tablets or our holographic implants, so let’s just stop pussyfooting around already and do what we all know will eventually get done.

Anyway, Pelf managed to get two outs without further damage, but then Meals turned what was clearly strike two on Drew Stubbs into ball one, and when Pelf spun to stare disgustedly into the outfield, you kind of knew things weren’t going to end well. WHAM! Single to left for Stubbs. Then BAM! Double hugging the line for Corky Miller, who has a ridiculous name as well as some goofy facial hair. (Hey Steve Reynolds, doesn’t he look like a mutant version of Casino Hayes?) Then KABOOM! A triple for the friggin’ pitcher, horses out of the barn which has in fact burned down, and thanks for showing up on a blast-furnace night everybody, because it’s 7-1 and this one’s over.

Except it wasn’t. No, the Mets promptly turned a David Wright anywhere-else home run Citi Field triple and a goofy Ike Davis roller and a Jeff Francoeur walk (????!!!!!) and a Barajas single and an Alex Cora double into a 7-6 game, and it was only the fifth. So of course they got one cruddy hit the rest of the way and lost.

Baseball, man. Go figure.

Couple of parting observations:

Somebody put Joey Votto on the All-Star team before he kills us all. Votto is really impressive, and not just for the fact that he swats baseballs into the stratosphere — his bat is very quiet and his hands are ungodly fast. Speaking of All-Star games, by the way, somebody tell Charlie Manuel that being honest about why you did something doesn’t count if what you did was simultaneously stupid and douchey .

Fernando Nieve should go out tomorrow and kiss every brick in Citi Field. Yeah, he gave up Votto’s second home run of the game in the sixth, but in another park he might have given up back-to-back-to-back-to-back homers and now be on the DL with neck strain and PSTD.
Arthur Rhodes, goddamn. Every year I lose track of him, and then he shows up late in games to throttle left-handed Mets hitters. He’s one of those baseball bit players who I fervently wish would retire already, while knowing that in three or four years I’ll kind of miss him. Rhodes has been very good at a very specific, very important thing for a long time, and that’s worth acknowledging.

Citi Field tomorrow with Greg, who will be pitting his streak of the Mets winning because he’s attending against his streak of the Mets losing because he’s recapping.* Something’s gotta give. But for now, time to lie very still in front of a large fan. Careful out there, folks.

* causal link not scientifically proven just yet.

And remember: Monday, July 12 is AMAZIN’ ALL-STAR MONDAY, with Marty Noble and Howard Megdal. Come out to Two Boots Grand Central at 7 p.m. It’s in the Lower Dining Concourse of Grand Central Terminal, 42nd Street and Park Avenue, accessible via Metro-North as well as the 4, 5, 6, Times Square Shuttle and, of course, the 7 trains. Phone: 212/557-7992. Full details here.

AMAZIN' ALL-STAR MONDAY is Coming

by Greg Prince on 5 July 2010 12:00 pm

Just when you were dreading being without Mets baseball for three long nights next week comes the event that will make the All-Star break not just tolerable but terrific.

It’s AMAZIN’ ALL-STAR MONDAY at Two Boots Grand Central, Monday night, July 12, at 7 PM. Our regular reading and rallying series moves to a special day for a very special bill of fare. Please join your hosts Greg Prince of Faith and Fear in Flushing and Jon Springer of Mets By The Numbers when they welcome their guests:

• Marty Noble, Mets beat writer extraordinaire for more than 35 years.

• Howard Megdal, pretty fair Mets chronicler himself and, at the moment, a declared candidate for the unelected office of New York Mets general manager.

You know Marty from his work for MLB.com and, before that, Newsday (and, if you’re were in North Jersey in the late ’70s, the Bergen Record). Few have seen or written about as much of Mets history as Marty — how many others have covered Mike Vail and Mike Pelfrey? — and we are honored that he will be sharing his perspective with us. MBTN spent some quality time with Marty a couple of years ago and it still makes for a fantastic read here.

Howard has written about the Mets for myriad publications, online and otherwise, and is the author of The Baseball Talmud: The Definitive Position-by-Position Ranking of Baseball’s Chosen Players. He now seeks being chosen to succeed Omar Minaya in the Met front office. You can follow his passionate and not altogether unserious campaign at his Web site and hear from him on Monday night as to why he believes everything about the Mets needs shaking up.

We thank Phil Hartman, Mets-loving owner of Two Boots Grand Central, for the opportunity to host this special evening (as well as for the logistical upgrade from our previous event there so folks will enjoy a more comfortable and audible experience). Phil continues to show his Amazin’ spirit by offering one beer in exchange for one Mets baseball card.

The first night of the All-Star break is usually agony. You can sit home and ask yourself, “Why am I watching this insipid Home Run Derby?” or you can join us for a lively evening of Mets talk and camaraderie (with the insipid Home Run Derby on in the background if you can’t bear to be without it). We hope you’ll join us, Monday night, July 12, at 7 PM. It’s the next best thing to the Mets playing ball.

Two Boots Grand Central is in the Lower Dining Concourse of Grand Central Terminal, 42nd Street and Park Avenue, accessible via Metro-North as well as the 4, 5, 6, Times Square Shuttle and, of course, the 7 trains. Phone: 212/557-7992.

It's a Cruel Game

by Jason Fry on 5 July 2010 12:53 am

Admit it: When Cristian Guzman came to the plate to start the bottom of the ninth, you thought, “Oh crap, here we go again.”

When Guzman then wound up on first, you thought, “You have got to be kidding me.”

When Ryan Zimmerman singled, making it a save opportunity, you weren’t the least bit surprised to see Jerry Manuel obediently pop out of the dugout to manage to the dictates of a stupid rule that invented another stat that doesn’t measure what happens on the field in a way that’s accurate or interesting. Actually Jerry looked hesitant and unhappy, but perhaps that’s because he knew the ghost of Jerome Holtzman was forcing him to bring in Frankie Rodriguez.

After innumerable K-R0d-related disasters, I know how he must have felt.

Baseball is a cruel game, and not just because (to reference the great 20th-century philosopher Rod Kanehl) the squibbles go for hits and the liners are outs. It’s cruel for the uncanny way in which one game’s situation is revisited the next day, or upended, or given a twist, so that a single at-bat seems like the culmination of something much larger. What were the chances that the Nats would creep back into view and Guzman would lead off the ninth? You might think they’d be 1 in 9, but if you’ve watched baseball for very long you knew that was pretty much a lock.

All credit to K-Rod for manning up that Saturday was “the [bowdlerized bad word] worst performance I’ve ever had in my entire life. … I think I should be ashamed of myself. I’m so embarrassed. I just want to apologize to the fans that were watching that.” That was appreciated — and all too rare in a major-league clubhouse. He could have, say, thought we needed a lecture in perspective and parsed the difference between “devastated” and “disappointed.” But as Greg noted, I’d gladly trade a Frankie who was a chiseling weasel in the clubhouse for one who was more of a stand-up guy between the lines, who fielded his position instead of indulging in histrionics, didn’t habitually allow runners by the bushelful, or have a penchant for walkoff grand slams. (Saturday was almost Frankie’s third in less than a year. If I had Elias on speed dial I’d inquire if that would have been a record.)

Yes, Frankie finished the game today — language not accidental, as I immediately and irrevocably renounce giving a shit whether someone gets a save or not, since the save rule is simultaneously fucking stupid and encourages witless, agent-driven managing. Yes, he looked better, getting Adam Dunn to ground out and erasing Josh Willingham on a nice pitch at the knees on the outside corner. But first off, could he conceivably have looked worse? And without a full-length dive and great feed from Ike Davis, Roger Bernadina singles in Ryan Zimmermann, Dunn moves to third, Adam Kennedy is the tying run and who the hell knows.

I have never trusted Frankie; I dread the idea of seeing him out there in September or October with our season on the line. To say nothing of the fact that we will be in all likelihood stuck with him through 2012, that final year a massive, $17.5 million rotting albatross of an easily obtainable option. The muscles you’ve developed accepting Luis Castillo as an unfortunate fixture on the roster will come in handy in two years, when an even older, rounder, less-effective K-Rod is blowing games in a role he no longer deserves but can’t be removed from because a) he makes too much money and b) is a veteran.

I’m sorry, I know we won and I’m ranting like we didn’t. But Jesus Christ do I loathe K-Rod.

Maybe it’s also that Saturday was a wonderful game that turned horrible, while Sunday was just kind of horrible.

Seriously, Saturday was a wonderful day until that happened. I was all set to write a follow-up post asking if there was any way to quantify smart play (a honest question, not an effort to bait the stats crowd) after watching Alex Cora work counts and take bases and torment Stephen Strasburg. Cora led the way — the Mets had smart at-bat after smart at-bat, relentlessly driving the rookie’s pitch count up, up, up and working him into situations where they knew what was coming. And meanwhile there was R.A. Dickey, the butterfly still drifting along on the wind currents after the F-15 had pancaked into the earth.

And then it all turned to shit, and never mind.

Sunday, on the other hand, started off with a barrage of Mets hits, but then came a barrage of Nationals hits, with both teams piling up whiffs. It was endless and alternately boring and irritating, like watching two crappy football teams shove each other’s defenses all over the field, or a Michael Bay spectacle on grass: tons of action, a deplorable lack of anything resembling elegance.

But it wound up in our column, the Expat/Ex-Expos road trip from hell is mercifully extinct, and the Braves’ loss allowed us to creep back to within two games of a decidedly unexpected NL East lead. It might not have been pretty. It might have come with more bad omens. But it’s a win to start the second half. And so I will shut up and wait for tomorrow.

Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.

Amazin' Again Book

Amazin' Again: How the 2015 New York Mets Brought the Magic Back to Queens by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.

The Happiest Recap Vol. I

Volume I of The Happiest Recap: 50+ Years of the New York Mets As Told in 500+ Amazin' Wins by Greg Prince is available in print and for Kindle on Amazon.

Faith and Fear Book

Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History by Greg Prince (foreword by Jason Fry), is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.

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