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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 20 January 2010 9:52 am When acknowledging assumptions as mistaken, Bob Murphy philosophized, “That’s why they put erasers on pencils.” You can use the same device to erase all the 6-4-3’s you’d already scratched into your scorebooks for all the double plays Bengie Molina was going to hit into as the Met catcher this season. Scratch ’em out — Molina’s staying a Giant for less money than the Mets were offering.
Gosh, what a shame.
I’m sure I was missing the upside of Bengie Molina the whole time he was deemed a done deal for this and possibly next season. I know he produced 20 home runs in 2009 and 95 RBI in 2008. I understand he’s renowned for his defensive prowess and that he caught a pretty good staff the last two years in San Francisco, including the reigning two-time Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum. I know at the moment we’re improvising with an extra-large pillow strapped to a barrel instead of a catcher, but I’m not upset that Molina joins Yorvit Torrealba in a Never Met platoon at the backstop position.
I kept seeing the highlight package SNY kept showing in giving Molina updates and all I could think was, “This guy’s gonna kill one rally after another.” That’s a big assumption. It assumes the Mets were going to have rallies in progress, but I’m willing to go as far as to project a baserunner or two in 2010. What I couldn’t project was a 35-year-old (36 in July), plus-sized, righthanded hitting catcher slower than everybody on the field (and many in the stands) not grounding to shortstop with one on and one out. 6-4-3…6-4-3…I was already seeing it in my nightmares.
In a more optimistic would-be world, Bengie was going to whisper just the right calming advice to Mike Pelfrey, bark the perfect focusing command to Oliver Perez, figure out exactly how to keep Frankie Rodriguez from not giving up grand slams in ninth innings. We might miss all that. We might have to settle for the intermittently inspiring if mostly mediocre Omir Santos, wait impatiently for the development of young Josh Thole and spend more of a summer than we ever desired with Henry Blanco. Or maybe Chris Coste will earn his way onto the roster just so he can have a chance to chat with his beloved ex-Phillies teammates when they come to bat. Who will emerge as our regular starting catcher? Perhaps we’ll have to pretend to pay extra close attention to Spring Training to find out. Perhaps we won’t know for a while after that. Look at this way: Mike Piazza didn’t become our regular starting catcher until the 1998 season was almost a third over.
Now that’s looking at things with rose-colored glasses from behind a catcher’s mask. Until roster lightning strikes, however, the future’s so murky behind the plate, it’s gotta wear a chest protector.
by Greg Prince on 19 January 2010 2:52 pm Four for four: the Mets went 4-for-4 today. They resumed baseball activities with a bang.
The long-rumored, long-postponed, long-hidden Mets Hall of Fame announced its class for 2010, its first class in eight years, and it’s a doozy. It’s so good I have this feeling I’m writing one of those “wouldn’t it be nice?” fictional blog posts, except it really happened.
They’re inducting four Mets icons into the Hall come August 1…August 1, not April 1. No foolin’. To be enshrined are:
• Dwight Gooden
• Darryl Strawberry
• Davey Johnson
• Frank Cashen
I told ya 4-for-4. These are the four I would have put on my ballot had anybody asked me. These were the four I was planning on suggesting in the next righteous-fan piece that I’m happy to report I do not have to write. The Mets actually convened their Hall of Fame committee as promised and the committee did the exact right thing. They tabbed their two most overdue players and two most overdue guiding lights. They burnished the legend of 1986 perfectly.
The pitcher and the rightfielder who symbolized the journey from last place to first place. The manager who steered the ship in the right direction. The general manager who rebuilt the ship. Eight years since the Mets last paid proper attention to their past, they get back in the game with a bang.
There was no need to wait. I don’t mean they shouldn’t have put the Hall of Fame aside after 2002 (even though they shouldn’t have); I mean they shouldn’t have schlepped out induction for these four Mets one year longer. It’s a wonderfully crafted quartet, these men’s Mets accomplishments intertwined as they were. You can’t imagine the ’84, ’85 or ’86 Mets without Darryl and Doc. You can’t imagine them having come together without Davey or Cashen. Each of them is among the best the Mets have ever had at their particular jobs. Gooden was as great as any Met has ever been for a significant period of time. Strawberry was as spectacular as any Met has ever been for the length of a Met career. No conversation of Met managers can go more than two paragraphs before Johnson is mentioned. And go find me someone who put an organization together from ruins the way Cashen did.
This is exciting. This is genuinely exciting for a Mets fan who’s been waiting for the team to recognize itself. We recognize them far too often for the train wreck they’ve become in the moment. I love this chance to recognize them for the glory they achieved and the idea that they might achieve more of it.
Let’s Go Mets!
by Jason Fry on 18 January 2010 9:12 am Shortly before the Mets’ crack baseball folks heard about Carlos Beltran’s surgery and carefully aimed the rifle at the blasted remnants of their own feet, I spent a good chunk of time contemplating this post by Amazin’ Avenue’s Sam Page. Based on WAR, it showed the pre-Steadmanized Mets as an 83-win team. Page then offered some ways the Mets could add some more wins, through a combination of new moves and better luck in-house. A Joel Piniero signing would net 2 more. A trade of Luis Castillo/prospects for Brandon Phillips and Bronson Arroyo would be worth an eye-popping 5. The addition of any catcher (something even the Mets should be capable of) would be worth 1. In-house, better years from Wright, Reyes, Oliver, Pelfrey (far from impossible with a real infield), Maine and a breakout from Niese would add 7.
You can play with the possibilities yourself over at AA. Add them up, and the Mets are in the 90s, and quite possibly in the postseason. Yes, these same Mets who won 70 games last year and have since decayed in memory to Cleveland Spiders territory. None of the ways of ascending from 83 wins is from the WFAN crackpipe school (“Why doan we, uhhhh, trade Daniel Murphy and dat kid F-Mart to da Cardinals for Albert Pujols?”), as Piniero and the other pitchers discussed by Page are presumably within the Mets’ grasp, and the potential trade with the Reds is at least a possibility.
Maybe it was just the usual effect of changing the calendar and being able to think about spring training, but I was feeling surprisingly optimistic. And while the early-season loss of Beltran knocks a win off of that total, if the Mets make the right moves, they should still be better than OK.
Ah, but there’s that “if” — and that gets us back to Beltran.
The real problem with the Beltran news isn’t the loss of our center fielder until sometime around Memorial Day, though that’s obviously bad enough. It isn’t the risible he-said, he-said mess that’s been all over the papers of late, though that’s embarrassing. It’s that there’s no scenario you can reconstruct in which the Mets don’t look like bumbling fools. (For the record, I suspect Andee had it right the other day: The team doctors and Omar agreed with Steadman’s diagnosis and told him to proceed, only to have Jeff Wilpon freak out and order up a self-defeating media dumb show to assuage his anger.) Whatever the case, the Mets amply demonstrated their own mistrust in Omar, drove a wedge between themselves and one of their best players, and gave the universe of reporters, agents, baseball executives and fans still more evidence for suspecting they’d screw up a one-car funeral. Way to go, gang!
And that’s where all that WAR threatens to fall to pieces. If the Mets can’t manage an unfortunate but apparently straightforward situation in which Carlos Beltran needs knee surgery, can you trust them to swing a potential deal with the Reds that would greatly improve the club? Can you trust them to fill the rest of the off-season’s holes capably? (I was feeling better in this regard before. Now that’s gone.) Can you trust them to make the right moves come June? At the break? At the trading deadline?
For more and more of us, the answer is no. We don’t trust this team. We don’t trust that it’s being run effectively, and so we don’t expect it to win. And so, consciously or not, we harden our hearts and close our wallets.
Ultimately, that’s much more damaging — and harder to fix — than anything in Carlos Beltran’s knee.
by Greg Prince on 18 January 2010 12:46 am Who thought there could be three variations on essentially the same name and it would be the Jets who got the best of the lot? Since when do the Jets get the best of anything?
On the other hand, is it terribly surprising the Mets got the Shawn — not to mention the Sean — end of the stick?
We’re not here to bury Shawn Green, the diminished outfielder of 2006-07, nor Sean Green, the erratic relief pitcher of 2009. We’re here to praise the hell out of Shonn Greene, postseason running back extraordinaire.
I confess I’m just getting up to speed on the latest and greatest in Shonn Greene. Tuning out football until the wounds of baseball have healed (not that they ever really heal), I’m slow to know my local football squads beyond their marquee players. Shonn Greene? My research indicates he wasn’t truly top-of-the-bill material until the first Indianapolis game…as in there’s going to be a second real soon. I was watching the Jets in that must-win contest in December and heard something along the lines of “Shawn Green” and thought, “I must be mistaken. There couldn’t really be one on the Jets so soon after we’ve had two on the Mets.”
But there is. Thank goodness there is.
Shonn Greene is a damn sight faster than Shawn Green. He’s also probably a more reliable pitcher than Sean Green. Sean Green’s never thrown anything in the postseason. Shawn Green threw a bomb to Jose Valentin who matriculated the ball down the field to Paul Lo Duca who intercepted both Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew in the first game of the 2006 NLDS, but is otherwise October-remembered around here for falling down in the right field end zone against the Cardinals one round later.
The third member of our homophonous trio stays on his feet and scores. Shonn Greene rushed for 135 yards last week against the Bengals and 128 yards against the Chargers this week, with a touchdown in each affair. The Jets won and won again. He’s a rookie. Shawn Green was young once, too. He was quite good at the time (good enough to deserve an award that recently went to Kevin Youkilis). Then he got older and became a Met when he didn’t have a whole lot left. Pity. Sean Green has some years ahead of him. Maybe he won’t always hit batters with the bases loaded. Maybe.
Shawn, Sean and Shonn sound alike, but only one appears to be sixty minutes from a Super Bowl.
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Kirk Gimenez, the SportsNite anchor on SNY, was hired, as best as I can tell, for his ability to make wacky sound effects, kind of like that guy in the Police Academy movies. He doesn’t, however, communicate sports news very well. Gimenez reported at the top of Sunday evening’s telecast that the Jets have now won two postseason games in the same year for the first time since 1982. How long ago was that? According to Kirk, it was so long ago that Mark Sanchez, now 23, was only four years old.
The Jets won those games in January 1983. Mark Sanchez was born in November 1986, making Sanchez approximately zero minus three years and ten months…and anybody watching this show wonder how stuff like that gets on the air. If Sanchez had been four when Richard Todd was leading the Jets to the AFC title game 27 years ago, then he’d be a 31-year-old rookie at this moment.
One glance at the script or a roster would have told somebody at SportsNite that this was quite wrong. One glance at Sanchez would indicate the quarterback grew a beard only so he’d look old enough to buy beer.
To be fair, Kirk was probably meant to say “that was four years before Sanchez was born,” but how could Gimenez be expected to get that straight? He was too busy concentrating on spitting out, in one of his funny voices a beat or two later, that Sanchez is now “all growsed up” after beating San Diego.
Show the highlights, show the press conferences and then show Mets Yearbook. SNY should otherwise do away with the SportsNite anchor concept. It is not serving them well.
UPDATE: On the 1:00 AM airing of the show, Gimenez slowed down his delivery long enough to say Sanchez was “not even born yet” when the Jets last won two postseason games in the same year. And he didn’t do the “all growsed up” shtick either. Wow, somebody somewhere really does pay attention.
by Greg Prince on 17 January 2010 11:38 am While sitting here hopng the J-E-T-S will B-E-A-T the Chargers (and coming up with reasons to dislike the City of San Diego…stupid zoo), I’ve been kindly sent a link to a segment of vintage Art Rust, Jr. from 1981, at the beginning of his tenure on WABC. It’s a Spring Training show during which Art — whom we lost this week — forecasts unseasonably blue skies for the rapidly improving the Mets. Lots of guys who can “hit the rock,” a big comeback by “Swannie” and so much more.
Listen to this if you were a fan of New York’s only nightly sports talk fix from that era. Listen to this, too, if you missed him entirely. We were six years from WFAN, and he sounds nothing like WFAN. It doesn’t even sound that much like 1981 (which sources inform me was almost thirty years ago), but that was part of Art’s charm.
And look out for Joel Youngblood at the hot corner this year.
AUDIO HERE: Art Rust, Jr. on WABC
by Greg Prince on 16 January 2010 6:26 pm  Perhaps you’re familiar with the story of Jackie Robinson retiring rather than accepting the last transaction Walter O’Malley arranged for him, a trade to the Giants for Dick Littlefield.
The very thought! Jackie the ultimate Dodger going to the hated rivals! GASP! No wonder he quit!
Actually, Robinson had already decided to retire from baseball after the 1956 season to go to work full time as Chock full o’ Nuts’ director of personnel when the trade was made: Robinson to New York; pitcher Dick Littlefield and $35,000 to Brooklyn. The move was seen as a parting shot from O’Malley, who never liked Robinson.
Contrary to the myth that Robinson would have rather died than call the Polo Grounds home, Jackie — according to biographer Arnold Rampersad — maintained cordial contact with Giants owner Horace Stoneham after the announcement and even told one reporter, “I’ve got no hard feelings against the Dodgers but I’m going to do everything I can to beat them next year.” Perhaps it was a charade (Jackie had sold his “I’m retiring” exclusive to Look magazine and it hadn’t yet been published), but he didn’t immediately or publicly reject the trade out of hand. By this point in his career, however, Robinson was almost 38 and knew the end of the line had been reached. Still, it took more than a month after the trade was made for baseball’s trailblazer to tell his prospective new employer thanks, but no thanks.
“I assure you that my retirement has nothing to do with my trade to your organization,” Robinson wrote Stoneham in a letter making it clear he wouldn’t be reporting to Spring Training in 1957. “From all I have heard from people who have worked with you it would have been a pleasure to have been in your organization. Again my thanks and continued success for you and the New York Giants.”
Doesn’t sound all that vitriolic, does it?
It was a little late for Jackie Robinson to start switching teams, but that doesn’t mean somebody didn’t imagine he might have followed through. Last year, Topps created a special set of “Cards That Never Were” in the style of their 1959 releases for a sports collector’s show. Jackie as a New York Giant, swinging in black and orange as if he hadn’t retired, was in the set. This caught the eagle eye of my baseball card maven friend, Joe, who tracked it down for me for my birthday…which was awfully nice of him. (And yes, I do know my share of baseball card mavens.)
Jackie Robinson, pictured as a New York Giant: I’ll be looking for a reproduction in a Rotunda near me.
by Greg Prince on 15 January 2010 8:37 pm Omar Minaya has told Newsday…ah, y’know what? I was going to update the saga of the ‘scope, but honestly, what’s the point? Without getting into Minaya’s crystal-clear explanation that he did talk to Beltran but he didn’t tell Beltran to have the surgery but there’s no problem between the organization and Beltran even though the organization — which may be a misnomer since nobody running the Mets seems particularly organized — has gone to great lengths to express it does have a problem with Beltran, suffice it to say Omarspeak is having its way with clarity once again.
To sum up:
• The Mets are still without one of their most important players.
• It’s a wonder the people running the club don’t lock themselves out of their offices every night.
by Greg Prince on 14 January 2010 10:49 pm “I am totally surprised by the reaction to my recent knee surgery.”
Honestly, this is better than the Jay-Conan thing. I mean, yeah, I know, we don’t want to be without Carlos Beltran, and it won’t be the least bit funny come April 5 when Angel Pagan is waiting for a fly ball in left only to realize he’s supposed to be in center, but still…
“Any accusations that I ignored or defied the team’s wishes are simply false.”
First the Mets don’t know about the surgery. Then the Mets kind of know about it, but wanted to mull it over. And they need to talk to a lawyer.
“I also spoke to Omar Minaya about the surgery on Tuesday. He did not ask me to wait, or to get another doctor’s opinion. He just wished me well.”
Now the party of the knee part, Beltran, issues a statement saying, no, the Mets are a bunch of liars…either that or Omar Minaya should check with Drs. Steadman and Altchek regarding treatment for short-term memory loss.
“No one from the team raised any issue until Wednesday, after I was already in surgery. I do not know what else I could have done.”
Maybe Minaya didn’t realize it was Carlos Beltran on the phone. Maybe he thought it was Rigo Beltran (I heard those two were tight). Maybe calling the GM doesn’t count as notification. Or maybe Carlos is just in this to cause trouble. Incidentally, I hope Carlos is feeling up to attending the Baseball Writers’ dinner next week to pick up his Joan Payson Award for community service.
“The most important thing here is that the surgery was a total success and I expect to be back on the field playing the game I love sooner rather than later.”
Let’s be clear on something: As much as we love the Mets, this is not, as I heard it referred to Wednesday night, a disaster. Haiti’s a disaster. This is just embarrassing and semi-professional. And if the fallout isn’t all that amusing from the standpoint of rooting for the Mets to win ballgames, well, it is pretty much par for what has become the course with this organization, and if you don’t laugh at it (in January, anyway), you might cry from it. John Ricco, whom I guess Carlos Beltran didn’t call before surgery, said the Mets were “disappointed” by the process and/or the player.
Disappointed? Gads, that’s so last decade. Or did the last one never end? In any event, as the man said, the most important thing here is that the surgery was a total success and he expects to be back on the field playing the game he loves sooner rather than later.
From Carlos Beltran’s mouth to Omar Minaya’s ear.
by Greg Prince on 14 January 2010 4:29 pm The Mets wanted Carlos Beltran to get a third opinion? OK, here goes:
“Hey Carlos, your team needs starting pitching.”
Opinions are like Met injuries: There are plenty to go around. Today the Mets expressed, as blandly and nonlitigiously as possible (other than by just shutting up), the opinion that Carlos Beltran went behind their backs to fix his knee. That’s their opinion and they’re entitled to it. That knee is a big investment for them.
I don’t really know what the Mets were supposed to do once they couldn’t be ahead of the story from the start. Had they taken, as Mike Francesa lucidly suggested, the tack of “we don’t discuss our players’ injuries,” it would have fired up a PR storm that was already brewing. A PR storm is almost always brewing around the Mets. Twenty-four hours ago, the Mets’ PR waters seemed unusually calm. David Wright was sharing football insights with Francesa, and pitchers and catchers were creeping ever closer.
Now hobbled centerfielders and secret surgeons are reporting instead.
I also don’t know what reporters who cover the Mets are supposed to ask, but none of their questions elicited much in the way of revelations — bad for information junkies, good for the Mets not looking terrible, I suppose. I listened to the conference call with John Ricco, which boiled down to two essential exchanges:
“Can you tell us everything we want to know about your internal machinations?”
“No.”
And:
“Can you accurately forecast when an injured player will be fully recovered and playing baseball despite the horrendous track record attached to your usually wild and inaccurate guesses.”
“Twelve weeks.”
Other than that, the whole process has been characteristically enlightening.
The upshot I gather is Carlos Beltran has two knees and would like them both to function so he can perform at his job. He went to a really well-regarded doctor for an operation that apparently didn’t do him undue harm. He and his agent ignored his employer since the Mets’ default prescription for regular leechings and bleedings wasn’t making him feel any less pain. And now Angel Pagan will have to be directed to center field, which I’m guessing he’ll find nine of every ten times he lights out for it.
So…do the Mets still Believe in Comebacks?
by Greg Prince on 13 January 2010 11:04 pm Carlos Beltran is out for a projected twelve weeks — three or so months of not just not playing, but also not practicing — after surprise arthoscopic surgey on his right knee to address osteoarthritis that was causing him too much pain to continue offseason training. I say “surprise,” because it reportedly wasn’t on the Mets’ radar or at least wasn’t done with the Mets’ blessing.
Part of me doesn’t blame Beltran for avoiding the Mets’ hierarchy, given their uninspiring track record handling injuries. Still, you probably have to tell them.
Let’s hope Carlos is feeling spry soon. Let’s hope we’re looking all right with Angel Pagan or some other stopgap in center before Beltran is back. Let’s hope our walking 2009 wounded are actually on the way back in 2010 before we pencil them in as healthy. When it comes to figuring out what might happen with the Mets, it may be best to use disappearing ink.
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