The blog for Mets fans
who like to read
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.
Got something to say? Leave a comment, or email us at faithandfear@gmail.com. (Sorry, but we have no interest in ads, sponsored content or guest posts.)
Need our RSS feed? It's here.
Visit our Facebook page, or drop by the personal pages for Greg and Jason.
Or follow us on Twitter: Here's Greg, and here's Jason.
|
by Greg Prince on 20 February 2009 1:23 pm Welcome to Flashback Friday: I Saw The Decade End, a milestone-anniversary salute to the New York Mets of 1969, 1979, 1989 and 1999. Each week, we immerse ourselves in or at least touch upon something that transpired within the Metsian realm 40, 30, 20 or 10 years ago. Amazin’ or not, here it comes.
And there used to be rock candy
And a great big Fourth of July
With the fireworks exploding
All across the summer sky
—Joe Raposo, “There Used To Be A Ballpark”
Scouring the baseball-reference page devoted to the schedule of the godforsaken 1979 New York Mets is like going to Andy Dufresne’s big hayfield up near Buxton. It’s got a long rock wall with a big oak tree at the north end. It’s like something out of a Robert Frost poem. Find that spot. At the base of that wall…I mean in the middle of that schedule, you’ll find a game whose paid attendance has no earthly business on a listing of 1979 home games.
It’s June 16, a Saturday night against Atlanta. The paid attendance is 28,313. The night before, the Mets drew 9,805. The next afternoon, they attracted 12,133. For the six games encompassing the two series preceding it, against the Astros and the Reds, paid attendance was, Friday to Wednesday, 12,196; 10,499; 15,879; 4,917; 9,805; and — following a game in which the Mets scored ten runs in a single inning which you might think would meaningfully goose walkup sales — 12,468.
Those six games added up to 65,764, or 10,961 per date. In June. Against two contenders. One of whom had Tom Seaver on its roster.
Typical. Typical 1979. The Mets averaged 11,433 in paid attendance each time they opened Gates E through A that year, 69 times in all. That includes one tie — The Fog Game of May 25 that was called in the eleventh — and thirteen doubleheaders, only four of which were scheduled ahead of time. A lot of fog and rain descended on Shea Stadium in 1979, and it kept the fans away in proverbial droves. In fact, the more the Mets played, the less the fans came. Weather forced the Mets into four doubleheaders in a five-day span in September. The paid attendance for each buy one/get two special was 4,233; 4,973; 4,229; and, on a Saturday, 8,492.
If you used 1979 and its indelible total attendance of 788,905 as your gauge, you’d wonder why the Mets would build their next stadium with as many as 42,000 seats. It’s not like you’d ever use more than two-thirds of them.
Ever.
That 28,313 on June 16 was the top attendance of 1979. It beat, by 59 souls, the crowd that bought (and used) tickets for Old Timers Day, which was a relatively huge deal in ’79 because it was the tenth anniversary of ’69, which looked enormous in the rearview mirror considering how small 1979 was.
But 1979 blew up on June 16. Literally. It was Fireworks Night at Shea Stadium, the first one.
How could the Mets resist? They had seen firsthand how successful Fireworks Night was in Philadelphia where they provided the opposition on the Fourth of July in 1977. Fireworks Night was enormous at the Vet, never more so than in ’77 when the Phils sizzled and the Mets fizzled while 63,283 bore witness. 63,283? That was practically a week’s worth of business at Shea in the late ’70s.
So the de Roulet Mets got an unlikely promotional clue and scheduled their own. They even borrowed from the Phillies’ playbook and scheduled a team that wasn’t much of a challenge or a draw: the Braves. In 1979, the Braves were the Western Division’s equivalent of the Mets. Then again, it wasn’t like anybody was showing up at Shea to see any opponent in particular. The Mets were a very effective repellent against frontrunning.
But fireworks created a crowd. 28,313 thought Fireworks Night was worth the hassle entailed by putting up with the 1979 Mets and the 1979 Braves. Kevin Kobel made the fuss as minimal as possible by taking only 1:57 to outduel Mickey Mahler. And then…
KABOOM!
It wasn’t a premature attempt to implode Shea. It was the Grucci Brothers (proclaimed for weeks in advance by Murph, Ralph and Steve Albert as the best there were) in action. Fireworks lit up the sky over Flushing. The fans oohed and aahed. Then everybody left and not very many of them would come back to take direct part in the segment of the 63-99 campaign that remained.
But Fireworks Night would return. It was a hit in New York like it was a hit in Philadelphia. Over the years, Fireworks Night maintained its place as the volcanic glass in the Shea hayfield. The Mets in any given season might not be very good and they might not appeal to too many people, but folks would show up for those colored lights, for those resounding bangs, for whatever it is that makes people stare up at the artificially bright night in fascination.
July 6, 1980: Fireworks Night vs. Montreal draws 51,097.
Night before? 12,585.
Day after? 21,880.
July 5, 1982: Fireworks Night vs. L.A. draws 38,270.
Day before? 20,897.
Night after? 20,816.
July 3, 1993: Fireworks Night vs. San Fran draws 44,160.
Night before? 20,811.
Day after? 22,641.
By ’93, incidentally, attendance figures became a bit of a sham as it began to reflect tickets sold (formerly the American League standard), not paying customers who bothered to appear. But there were always more fans — Mets fans, fireworks fans, spectacle fans — who materialized for Fireworks Night at Shea than there were for the generally lousy baseball in those years. More showed up than for the first Fireworks Night in ’79 because you couldn’t have less.
Except in the wake of 1993, which was truly 1979’s bastard nephew.
In 1994, the club scheduled not one, not two but three Fireworks Nights. The scheduling was done after the 59-103 disaster of ’93, so anything that could serve as a distraction loomed as a decent idea — in triplicate, no less. But it was just more, not merrier. The first Fireworks Night of 1994, the Friday of Memorial Day weekend versus the Reds, drew a mere 23,303. Even the Gruccis couldn’t blast away the residue of 1993. And the July 4, 1995 exhibition of sparklers and such couldn’t light up the dark post-strike sky, as only 21,611 dropped by. Better than the 15,993 the night before and the 14,377 the night after, but not classically Gruccilicious by any means.
Certainly not like 1986 when if you had a great team and a great promotion, you rated an extraordinary crowd. The Mets and Astros lured 48,839 — a legitimate 48,839 — to Shea for all kinds of fireworks on July 3, particularly in the tenth inning. Down 5-3, Darryl Strawberry homered with one on before Ray Knight unleashed a cannon shot to win it. When the postgame fireworks came, they weren’t anticlimactic. They were an embellishment. That right there was the golden age of Fireworks Night, back when Channel 9 would stick around afterwards and have George Plimpton, New York City’s unofficial Fireworks Commissioner, give color commentary. Anything beyond “that one there just went boom!” was beyond my interest level, but I loved the feeling that everything the Mets touched was worth commenting upon.
In later years, when Mets Extra with Howie Rose became required listening, I became disappointed by Fireworks Night. Because it was so darn loud, Howie rushed through his postgame wrapup and beat it out of Dodge. Same aural fate would befall Eddie Coleman later on, but I didn’t consider that such a deprivation.
However, one night Eddie stayed on and valiantly recapped over the oohs and aahs, all of which were clearly anticlimactic. That was June 30, 2000, the Friday night when the Mets began the proceedings in the eighth inning down 8-1 to the Braves and finished it up 11-8 over those very same Braves (of course it was still against the Braves, but it always bears repeating). 52,831 of us were unofficial deputy commissioners that night, exultant that Mike Piazza got to wield the big gavel.
Even in 2000, during a season and an era when the Mets weren’t at all hard up for seatfillers, Fireworks Night was a draw that outdrew the games before it (46,998) and after it (44,593). It had survived its mid-’90s malaise to establish itself as the event that brought in those who didn’t go to Shea very often otherwise. Every year, I swear, somebody would tell me about the woes he encountered in taking his family to the game on this night and only this night; how he and his wife and his kid(s) got caught in an impossible traffic jam; how — because much of the main lot was blocked off as the spectacular’s staging ground — they were redirected somewhere south of the tennis center; how they had to pay some astronomical fee to park; how they didn’t get to their seats until the fourth inning; how the game invariably sucked. On those occasions, I never heard all that much about the fireworks.
I was always tempted to say, “they don’t make those ‘take mass transit’ pronouncements for nothing, y’know,” but I resisted.
After the Piazza Brothers lit up Flushing in 2000, what else was there to see that evening? With the Braves subdued, I bolted. I stayed for the literal fireworks the first two times I went to a Fireworks Night, in ’93 and ’95, because I was in situations like those my frustrated friends described, with family on hand solely for what would come after the baseball. In my case, it was my explosives-loving sister and her indulgent husband joining Stephanie and me. My wife and I would arrive by LIRR in time for the game while Suzan and Mark showed up in the fifth or thereabouts, packing sandwiches and utter disinterest. The fireworks were their thing and they’d be giving us a ride home, so what the hell?
In ’96, on one of those lightly attended May Friday Fireworks affairs (24,751), the Mets lost by so many runs (12) it was not at all attractive to stick around, so I didn’t. That became custom for me. As with the Merengue concerts that coincided with Mets games, I discovered I liked the rare treat of beating it out of Dodge ahead of the pack as extraneous noise began to build. I saw the Mets. What else was there to see? Somehow, I enjoyed the happenstance fireworks glances I took in from a distance on the train home more than I would have from my paid-for seat, I’m convinced.
My last Fireworks Night was the last official Shea Fireworks Night of them all in 2006, July 3 — 54,111 for one of those horrible 11-1 losses when everybody complained about the lack of parking. The main lot would be filled to capacity in 2007 and 2008 by a new ballpark, thus putting the kibosh on any more genuine Shea pyrotechnics. The last unofficial Fireworks Night was September 13, 2008, when by sitting in the Upper Deck for the second game of a makeup doubleheader (and seething over your failure to secure a between-games pretzel) you could sneak a peek at a pretty substantial fireworks display going on to the east.
I like fireworks that I’m not expecting. Stephanie and I agree that an unannounced exhibition set off in Washington as part of pre-Inauguration festivities on a cold January evening in 1993 was one of the greatest sights we ever saw. With no advance billing, something illuminated the sky. There was music. Then there were fireworks. Maybe fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour. Everybody on the Mall just stopped and watched and was awed. Kind of like it must have been for those who would line the 7 extension over the right field fence on Shea’s Fireworks Nights; or the impromptu displays that grab our attention when we scan the skies from our upstairs bathroom window every Fourth of July — but grander. It was the kind of thing that takes your breath away and you never forget.
Not as luminescent or earth-shaking as Piazza against Mulholland, mind you, but memorable nonetheless.
The Mets seasons that went boom and the Mets seasons that went bust light up the pages of the upcoming book Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available for pre-ordering now via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other fine retailers.
MLB Network Alert: Opening Day 1985, highlighted by Gary Carter’s “Welcome to New York” blast, is scheduled to air Saturday at 11:00 AM. Thanks to Joe D. for the tip.
by Greg Prince on 18 February 2009 7:30 pm 
Shea, there it is. And will always be, somewhere.
Thanks again to David G. Whitham for letting us feature his wonderful Shea Stadium portfolio in the winter of its deconstruction. Bet he makes the next joint look just as memorable.
by Greg Prince on 18 February 2009 6:21 pm “You’ve got your new address here. There really isn’t anything else you need.”
“Hold up. That’s it?”
“Sure. You’re golden now.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It’s not unexpected. You’re not the first one to move here and be a little frazzled from the whole experience. But honestly, you don’t need anything else.”
“How about an explanation?”
“That’s fair. I tend to forget you new guys aren’t acclimated.”
“You can say that again. The whole last few months have been a fog. Even worse than the one that used to roll in off the bay.”
“No worries.”
“What do you mean no worries? I get the feeling I’m not really myself anymore.”
“Au contraire, mon frère. If anything, you’re more yourself than you’ve ever been.”
“Once again, I’m lost.”
“I told ya: You’re golden now. We all are.”
“I need more than that.”
“Not really, but I’ll try to clear it up.”
“Great.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I don’t know. A lot of noise. And a lot of pain. Like I was missing pieces of myself. And they kept taking more of me.”
“Yeah, that’s common. But what’s your last really strong memory?”
“It’s gotta be the cheering. Some booing. A lot of booing, actually. But the cheers eventually drowned out the boos. Some pyrotechnics, I think. Billy Joel, too. ‘New York State of Mind,’ if I’m not mistaken. Yeah, I’d know that song anywhere.”
“And before that? I don’t necessarily mean right before, but you know, in general.”
“Lots of cheering. Mixed with booing, but definitely more cheering. Real noisy, but in a good way. Not like what I’m remembering from the last few months. Sure, some of it over the years was annoying, like the canned stuff over the PA…”
“We didn’t have that in my day.”
“…and those planes.”
“I wasn’t near the planes, but I heard you had those.”
“I bet you could hear those planes all the way up here.”
“You’d be surprised at what you can hear up here. They tell me that afternoon I had in ’51 rattled all kinds of clouds, which makes sense seeing as how it was heard ’round the world — just like that Saturday night you had in ’86 that kept all of us up.”
“You could hear that here?”
“Drowned out the planes even.”
“Really?”
“Tell me more about what you remember.”
“Well, noise. Put aside the unnatural stuff from the PA and the planes — and the bats and balls and all that — and I mostly remember the people.”
“The people?”
“You know, the, uh…oh what were they called again? I’m still woozy from everything going on these last few months.”
“Relax, you’ll get your bearings back in no time. Are the people you’re referring to ‘the fans’?”
“Yeah! That’s it! The fans! They made all kinds of noise!”
“What kinds?”
“Cheering, like I said. And booing. You wouldn’t believe how much booing sometimes. But there was this laughter. It was always there, like a steady stream. The people — those fans — they were so happy usually. I kind of remember the team not always being so good, but it was almost…”
“Beside the point?”
“Yeah! Like whatever the team’s record, it almost didn’t matter in the long run. People, especially the young ones, came to have fun. Like it was their first time.”
“Y’know what?”
“What?”
“At some point, it was their first time. You gave lots of people their first time.”
“Gee, I never thought of it that way.”
“That’s why you’re golden now. Are you getting it?”
“A little.”
“Let me help fill in the blanks. You know that laughter and the chatter and the sense of…”
“Fun?”
“Yes, the fun. That’s what they’re gonna remember you for now.”
“They are?”
“Absolutely.”
“‘Cause I gotta tell ya, I didn’t have the best reputation down there.”
“None of us did in our time.”
“You don’t understand. They called me some pretty nasty names toward the end, made it sound as if they had to play one more inning in me that the world would come to an end.”
“Listen, I heard it in my day, too.”
“You did? I find that hard to believe.”
“We all heard that stuff.”
“No way! People talk about you in such revered terms. They talk about all of you with reverence.”
“Yes, now they do. That’s because we’re not there anymore.”
“That makes a difference?”
“All the difference in the world. Down there, our blemishes show. Up here, the only thing people see or feel are their memories. And y’know what?”
“What?”
“Their memories aren’t about the blemishes.”
“They’re not? ‘Cause, honestly, I had my share of ’em.”
“Their memories are those first times they went. The first time is why they wanted to go back a second time, then a dozen times, then a dozen more times. And those made new memories, more memories, good memories. They didn’t go back to you because they didn’t like you. They may have found things to complain about, but that all paled in significance to the happiness you gave them.”
“I did that?”
“You sure did.”
“And that’s what they’ll remember? Not the nuisances or the inconveniences or whatever wasn’t working on a particular day or night?”
“They’ve already begun to forget.”
“Wow.”
“I think you’re coming around.”
“So that’s why you keep telling me that I’m…”
“Golden now. As of today, you exist solely in memory like the rest of us up here do. People don’t want to remember what they didn’t like about us. They want to remember what they loved. That’s why we all look so good up here.”
“That’s why we’re golden now.”
“You’re catching on.”
“So all that hacking away they were doing to me the last few months until there was nothing left of me?”
“Not an issue. Up here you’re yourself again. Better than new.”
“Do I look brand new? Or like I did later?”
“You look exactly the way the people choose to remember you. Some are going to want to see you as you were when you came to be or when you came into their lives or when you gave them their strongest memories inside you. That’s how they view me now. That’s how they view all of us. And how they view us in memory is all that matters anymore. That’s why I was saying all you need to know from here on out is your new address.”
“I don’t live at 123-01 Roosevelt Avenue anymore?”
“You live here now. You’re home.”
***
Shea Stadium lives on in the upcoming book Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available for pre-ordering now via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other fine retailers.
by Greg Prince on 16 February 2009 8:08 pm We’re a team. We win together, we lose together, we celebrate and we mourn together. And defeats are softened and victories sweetened because we did them together.
—Toby Ziegler
It was fairly early in the life of this enterprise, which turns four years old today, that I coined the phrase that passes for its mission statement: the blog for Mets fans who like to read. It’s probably one of the most succinct complete thoughts I ever committed to print.
Thing is, back on February 16, 2005, that description was a theory, an aspiration at best. The blog for Mets fans who like to read? You needed readers to validate that appraisal.
Soon enough, we got ’em. We got you, which is all we ever needed. Then we got so much more.
On February 16, FAFIF Day (a Federal holiday since 1971, provided it falls on the third Monday in February), I like to take a few moments and think about who we are and what we do. We write, yeah, but more than that — what makes me smile most about Faith and Fear in Flushing — is that we gather. We gather everybody around this particURLar campfire and we tell each other stories. Not just Jason and me, but all of us. You like to read and you like to write back and we respond in kind. It’s the circle of blog life.
It works. It works here in a way I’ve never seen it work anywhere else where the world is viewed through orange & blue-colored glasses. I’m a devoted and enthusiastic reader of dozens of Mets-themed blogs, but this is the only one that feels, on both sides of the digital railing, like a community in which I would choose to live, a place where I kind of do.
Just before the inauguration of President Obama and in anticipation of the Super Bowl, Newsweek‘s Howard Fineman, a native of Pittsburgh, used current events as an excuse to salute his beloved Steeler Nation, “one of the planet’s most populous and intense sports-fan cohorts” and, eventually, draw a larger point:
[S]uch groupings — what might be called “voluntary tribes” — are assuming a new importance in America. As neighborhoods and schools become more diverse, marriages become more mixed and social hierarchies break down, old lines are getting blurry. Voluntary tribes are a way of recreating a sense of community.
Fineman’s black & gold-tinged conclusion reminded me of an article I read in the Times five years ago this month, about the trend toward making funerals less about traditional religious rites and more about what made the deceased’s life his or her own; Humanists call it “a celebration of the life”. Some clergy grumbled that the “personalization” movement was an affront to what made a funeral a funeral. Said one theologian, ”It’s not as if old rituals are evolving to absorb new needs. It’s as if we’ve broken with tradition and people make things up.”
Which is fine with me, in death or life (which is always up for grabs if you’ve survived two consecutive seasons of Mets relief pitching). I cast my lot with my team a long time ago and I’m most at peace when congregating with those in my tribe, here or elsewhere.
Particularly here.
Leigh Montville wrote a wonderful story in Sports Illustrated in 2000 about what the end of Mile High Stadium would mean to a group of Broncos fans who had autumned together in the South Stands and grown close as a result. One of the regulars summed up the arrangement:
“Everybody knows everybody else in our section. It’s nice. Sometimes you don’t see these people anywhere else except at the games. But when the next season starts, you pick right up.”
During my brief forays into partial ticket plans and packs, I never felt that way about those who wound up by chance my recurring neighbors (a point hammered home by the “BULLPEN IS PIG PEN!” guy on the Final Day), so when the Mets ticket rep called last week to ask if I planned on “coming out” this season (which is a pretty personal question for a ticket rep, even one from the Mets), I continued to pass. I don’t know enough about The Field @ Shea Point, as the Other Jason calls it, let alone a particular section’s inhabitants, to want to commit to as many as fifteen games in the same spot.
But I’m good right here. I’m good here with you guys. I’m good that we, without as much as a memo, subtly shifted Faith and Fear from a blog about a team by its fans to a blog about the fans of a team — and their team. I’m glad that with our fifth Spring Training underway, I don’t feel compelled as I did during our first Spring Training to remark on every little development that drifts north…though Luis Castillo won’t bat leadoff for long if ever and Livan Hernandez won’t make or break this rotation. I’m proud that I can read a comment by one of our regulars and generally detect who left it before confirming the identity of the commenter, and that sometimes I know something’s been written by Anonymous before I see for sure that it indeed went unsigned (I would ask those mystery readers if they plan on “coming out” this season). I’m gratified that a mile-high level of discourse runs through our comments concourse; it runs like Reyes. I’m thrilled that ruminating for rumination’s sake is accepted as currency of the realm by those Mets fans who like to read, who like to read us.
I’m a Mets fan who likes to write. Thanks for playing along at home for another year.
Ruminating on Mets fandom like no book before it, Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets is available for pre-ordering now via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other fine online retailers.
by Greg Prince on 16 February 2009 8:07 pm 
Charlie Hangley, one of the readers who makes our Faith and Fear community such a nice place to live, recently cruised to Curacao to have a word with Andruw Jones, resplendent (if a bit shadowy) in 37, 14, 41 and 42. Buy a Faith and Fear t-shirt and see the world…or just sit around the house. What you do when you wear it is up to you.
But be prepared to answer questions and deflect misconceptions if you’re far from where Shea used to stand.
“We were walking to the beach,” CharlieH says of his and SarahH’s trip south with the shirt, “and the woman behind me said, ‘Faith and Fear in FLUSHING??? What is that?’ So I told her and she said, ‘Oh. I thought it had something to do with the Plumbers Union or something.’ And at least three people I know thought the numbers were from Lost.”
by Jason Fry on 14 February 2009 6:02 am Spring training 2009 is finally here, but last night and tonight I found myself in another season and another year.
I'm not normally much moved by baseball rebroadcasts, much as I wish it were otherwise. No matter how improbable the comeback or triumphant the victory, knowing the end result robs the game of its tension and its drama — I wind up waiting around for the denouement instead of enjoying the story.
But for whatever reason, on Thursday night I knew what I wanted to see. It was the Essential Games of Shea, Game 5 of the 1999 National League Championship Series, Mets trailing the Braves, 3 games to 1. You know the one. The Grand Slam Single.
I can't tell you why, exactly. I wasn't consciously aware of the fact that that season is somehow now a decade old, though perhaps Greg's efforts slipped into my subconscious. It wasn't a sudden burst of affection for Robin and Fonzie and Oly and Big Mike and Tank and Turk and Bobby V., though that thrilling, exuberant team has few if any rivals in my heart. It wasn't sentiment for Shea, so soon now to be reduced to an outline in a parking lot, an apple in a museum and a scattering of souvenir parts. For whatever reason, it just felt right.
I was at the Grand Slam Single with Emily and her dad — the ticket stub says Upper Deck Section 48, Row O, Seat 11, which was high enough that the players were ants, back enough so if you leaned in the direction of Row P you were just under the lighting truss (this would prove important) and down the left-field line enough so there was no view of the DiamondVision and the speakers were all aimed away from us. There was no video to be seen and the PA exhortations were muffled thuds — I remember that during quiet moments you could hear the mumble and buzz of WFAN from handheld radios in row after row around us. Diehard territory for a diehard game, in other words.
On Thursday night Joshua wasn't exactly thrilled with this choice; around the third inning he told me solemnly and with more than faint disapproval that this wasn't very interesting to him because he didn't know these players. Stick with it, I suggested. You might change your mind. By bedtime (106 minutes into the DVD, which is shorter than it was on NBC because the commercials and pitching changes and goofing around in the on-deck circle are curtailed), Joshua was insisting that I write down where he'd had to leave so he could see the rest. As I'd expected.
Tonight I picked the game up from that point and just watched, enjoying a close-up view of a game I'd seen from afar, a warm indoor viewing of a game that had unspooled in increasingly cold and foul weather. I watched and noticed things and remembered.
Like the way the game seemed to encompass an entire autumn: It began in daylight and dry weather, with the crowd looking comfortable and relatively unbundled, then slid gradually into the dark and the cold and the wet, until in the 15th swathes of the box seats were empty (faithless weaklings!) and everybody left was huddled in whatever they brought to wear or bought from the clubhouse store.
Like Rocker and his constant police escort whether he was warming up or just sitting there waiting to do so. Rocker was this game's bomb in the suitcase; you kept waiting for him to appear and being teased by his refusal to do so. I'd forgotten a lot of his infuriating tics: the audible grunt of a released fastball, the stalking around in front of the mound, the shoulder shrugs, and most of all how his eyes (set slightly too close together) seemed to whirl like pinwheels when he'd look in for the sign. Or the way he'd stare into the crowd coming off the mound, walking on the very balls of his feet with a slight smile on his face, obviously trying to hear every last bit of the abuse, and you were never sure he wouldn't suddenly go barreling into the stands and sink his teeth into someone's throat.
Like wondering how many of these guys were on steroids. I'd bet $10,000 that several Mets and Braves (including Mets I loved and love) were juicing. Then there are the Mets and Braves whose name on some list wouldn't surprise me. Which leaves the ones whose presence on a list would surprise me, but not nearly as much as it once would have, because who can believe anything anymore? This line of thinking began to depress me, so I consciously shut it off.
Like the sheer desperation of countering Greg Maddux, that soft-as-silk killer, with Masato Yoshii. How did we ever think we'd get out of this one?
Like catching a glimpse, in the 15th inning, of Maddux and Yoshii on their respective benches. If not for those pesky rules, they probably could have gone back out there.
Like glimpses of non-roster Mets barely remembered. Hey, it's Luis Lopez! Who the hell is that? I think it's … Billy Taylor?
Like Bobby Valentine pacing in the dugout like a caged animal, his brain almost audibly whirring in an effort to extract his team from its predicament. Bobby was a storyline all to himself in this one, from the use of Dennis Cook for two pitches of an intentional walk (tactically understandable though regrettable come the wee hours) to the do-si-do with Matt Franco and Octavio Dotel and who was going to bat.
Like Orel Hershiser, standing beside Bobby for most of the game, as if he were co-managing. Come to think of it, that's a conversation I'd love to have been able to listen in on.
Like all the strands of baseball history you can trace backwards and forwards from the Grand Slam Single. Hershiser, who'd brought the Mets' expected dynasty to a decidedly premature end in 1988, now pitching to keep 1999 alive. Terry Mulholland and Mike Piazza would meet again memorably. So would Brian Jordan and Armando Benitez. We still haven't heard the last of Chipper Jones. A fossilized Gerald Williams would later clutter up a Met roster for an interminable period, an object lesson in how paleolithic baseball front offices can be. Jorge Fabregas would be a Met for about a week. Brett Boone and Andres Galarraga would walk away from baseball during or after Met spring trainings. Five Mets from that '99 team would become Yankees in later years — Ventura, Olerud, Benitez, Dotel and Pratt would all test our affections by donning the Raiment of the Beast, though Tank had the good grace to be cut in spring training. Four of those Mets — Pratt, Dotel, Matt Franco and the despicable Bobby Bo — would return to try and do us harm as Braves.
Like Bobby Bo's pinch-hitting appearance, with the disgust of Shea palpable at his appearance, followed by reluctant and then defiantly reluctant cheering. I suddenly, vividly remembered lecturing myself in the upper deck that if Bobby Bo hit a home run to win the game that was not a bad thing. He struck out. By the way, thanks to his deferred contract, Bobby Bo is still being paid by the Mets. Assuming the Mets have 26 pay periods a year and Bobby's in the top tax bracket, he just got a check for somewhere around $20,000 for 14 days of doing absolutely nothing. He'll get another one before it's March. Why doesn't Dennis Kucinich badger someone about that? (Update: This is wrong. See the comments.)
Like the cruelty of the game being slammed onto the unready backs of Dotel and Kevin McGlinchey, two rookies pitching amid steady rain and a howling mob with the whole world watching. Dotel was just 25. McGlinchey was 22, though he looked 52 by the time Ventura connected. McGlinchey was out of the big leagues at 23.
Like the unlikely heroics of Hershiser and Kenny Rogers. Rogers will always be reviled for throwing ball four in Game 6, with his able pitching in Game 5 remembered only by those watching the DVD as I did. I can feel myself forgetting already.
Like thinking that Bobby Cox looks really young. I never thought of Bobby Cox as ever being young — I figured he came out of the womb looking like a smaller, equally grumpy version of his current self. But go look.
Like the utter, unfathomable uselessness of Rey Ordonez with a bat in his hands. In retrospect, it's amazing how we twisted ourselves into knots trying to convince each other that his bat didn't matter.
Like the terror that I still felt seeing Keith Lockhart barreling around third and Melvin Mora's throw from right take a hard, flat bounce as it skipped home — the kind of throw that all too often winds up tipping over the catcher's mitt and going to the backstop. Piazza snared it, intercepted Lockhart and he was out and we were safe. Whew!
Like the sleepy, sad face of Shawon Dunston, at the plate in the rain wearing Ken Boswell's number. That would be 12, as in the number of pitches Shawn saw from McGlinchey, dragging the Shea fans up the ladder from resignation to rote defiance to admiration to hope to enthusiasm to pandemonium. By the end of his at-bat I was up and stalking around the living room, never mind that earlier stuff about denouement and story.
Like remembering how frightened I was, back in 1999, that Pratt — our burly, beloved, ridiculous and improbable Tank — would hit into a double play, an all-too-possible horror that I was achingly sure would leave me to slump into the soaked upper deck and stay there until around January 2000.
Like how instead Tank walked and flipped his bat in glee, so hard that it went over the stands and is rumored to have come down knob-first in the windshield of an illegally parked 1988 Ford Escort. OK, I made that last part up. But I didn't see it come down. I think it's up there somewhere with Jesse's glove.
Like the final release of ecstacy and astonishment and farce of Robin hitting McGlinchey's pitch “back to Georgia” — with Brian Jordan dugout-bound before it even touched down. Looking back, I love how Ventura tries to remain the cool, collected field general amid the tumult, pointing Roger Cedeno to home (if any '99 Met could have peeled off early or been distracted by, say, a shiny penny or an ice cream, it was Roger) and only giving up once Pratt had him three feet off the ground. God bless you, Robin Ventura, whereever you may be.
Like the fact that there will be another Game 5. Not another one quite like that, goodness knows — that particular mold is broken — but another game that takes you from the bleakest despair to the wildest glee and makes you tuck the ticket stub away and shout YEAH! and YES! like an idiot and cover your eyes and kick your feet and just breathe it all in and you're left exhausted but knowing you'll be up until 4 replaying video and listening to the FAN anyway, just soaking in it. You know, one of those.
I can't tell you when it'll be, just that it's getting closer all the time. And we'll love it and talk about it and get really excited the first time it's on SNY and get somewhat less excited the 41st time it's on SNY and wait for it on DVD and show it to our kids and before we're quite ready we'll be amazed that it's 10 years ago. Amazed, but glad we were there, and glad that we'll always remember.
Want to read more about 1999 (and lots more) in 2009? Get Greg's book, up for pre-order from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
by Greg Prince on 14 February 2009 1:07 am 
One of the talented photographers capturing what’s left of Shea Stadium and posting the evidence on the Shea Demolition page at Baseball-Fever, johnql, shot an Amazin’ image today, that of an exterior that is down to one neon Met flanked on either side by a few ramps. You can see the whole thing for yourself here. I prefer to focus in on the pitcher. Shea Stadium was built on pitching. Appropriate that the last Met to leave the building is 1 on your scorecard and 9 in the batting order.
View johnql’s entire Friday the 13th album here. Cap tip to him and his compatriots for having been such dogged photojournalists of the deconstruction process.
by Greg Prince on 13 February 2009 9:17 pm Welcome to Flashback Friday: I Saw The Decade End, a milestone-anniversary salute to the New York Mets of 1969, 1979, 1989 and 1999. Each week, we immerse ourselves in or at least touch upon something that transpired within the Metsian realm 40, 30, 20 or 10 years ago. Amazin’ or not, here it comes.
All my life I’ve been a wanderer
Not really
I mostly lived near my parents’ home
—Paul Simon, “Darling Lorraine”
A while back, a couple of years ago now, I received an e-mail from my kindergarten teacher. Maybe second-graders can say that and not raise an eyebrow, but seeing as how I haven’t been a kindergartener for a very long time, count me as astonished when it happened.
I shouldn’t have been. It’s the world we live in.
People find you when you mention their name on a blog. I learned that once the first season we did this when I related some modestly amusing anecdote about the first Yankees fan I ever got to know (and all that implied). I heard from the guy less than two days later. Still a Yankees fan (and all that implies).
We go through life not necessarily wanting to remain enmeshed with whom were thrown in by fate as we grew, matured and moved on — besides, that’s what Facebook is for. Nothing against the guy from the anecdote, per se. It was just strange…as strange as it was, probably, for him to be reading his name in my blog. Fair enough.
But your kindergarten teacher? Kindergarten teachers have a statute of limitations, don’t they? And kindergarten teachers inevitably have great names, the kind of names you want to use in your charming reminiscences. So I did. I told, just after Thanksgiving 2005, of my experience just after Thanksgiving 1968 when my kindergarten teacher went around the room to confirm that each of us had turkey for the holiday. When she got to me, I innocently reported my mother made meatballs, which seemed normal to me because I had a poultry allergy. Except I didn’t mention the allergy, just the meatballs.
Give a room full of five-year-olds reason to scoff at any way you are different from the lot of them, and they will scoff at you. Even my teacher was surprised that somebody in her class did not partake of the traditional dinner option (especially after we took such care to trace turkeys from the outlines of our hands the previous Wednesday). At that meatball moment, I was the social misfit Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons when Ralphie couldn’t use those harmless scissors they make for kids. My teacher was, in essence, Ms. Hoover:
The children are right to laugh, Ralph. These scissors couldn’t cut butter.
The meatballs incident came up in November 2005 as a conduit to discuss the just-completed acquisition of Carlos Delgado from the Marlins, in case you were wondering why I ever invoked my kindergarten teacher’s name on a baseball blog at all. Despite having it stuck to my mind grapes for 37 years to that point, I can’t say the poultry ostracism that threw me for a loop at five really altered the course of my human development down the road. Shoot, it took the trade of a near Hall of Fame first baseman to the Mets to bring it out.
Then more than a year later, I got an e-mail at the Faith and Fear address from my kindergarten teacher. She somehow read what I wrote about that long-ago Thanksgiving and felt really bad about it, apologizing for making me feel bad when I was five. No problem, I responded, really. I may wallow in the past from Friday to Friday, but I had grown, matured, moved on…got over my poultry allergy, too.
When I received her note in January 2007, I didn’t feel bad about being laughed at in kindergarten, but I did feel kind of bad from this new source of guilt that had worked its way from November 1968 to the present by way of November 2005. It wasn’t my intention to make my teacher emeritus feel bad by bringing up the meatballs. All I wanted to do was talk about Delgado for Jacobs. Oh dear, I thought, why did I have to go and bring up my teacher’s name and give her something to worry about from almost four decades ago?
Then I had an epiphany: this new guilt didn’t count because I’m not responsible for anything that happened before I was a Mets fan.
I wasn’t a Mets fan when I was in kindergarten, which encompassed the school year 1968-69. Sometime the following summer, definitely before first grade kicked in, I was on board. I wish I could point to the AHA! moment, the absolute microsecond when I stopped wasting my time on everything else and started wasting my time mostly on the Mets, but I can’t. I have a rough timeline for when they flickered into my consciousness 40 years ago, but as for a precise starting point, it is, unlike those meatballs, completely forgotten.
Since 1969, I’ve progressed on a straight line. To know me is to know a Mets fan. I became who I am today when I became a Mets fan. It doesn’t explain everything, but it explains enough. I recognize the person I was at 6, at 16, at 26, at 36 because today, at 46, I maintain that continuous identity, that unbroken affiliation. I am a Mets fan in 2009. I was a Mets fan in 1969. No blanks to fill in thereafter.
The meatballs, the turkey, whatever happened before…everything else is gravy.
***
In looking at life through the lens of before and after 1969, I can’t recommend enough a book I’m reading presently, The Amazin’ Mets, 1962-1969 by William J. Ryczek. Talk about filling in a few blanks. As much as I’ve read about that period, no book has ever demystified the birth and growth of the Mets into champions the way this one does. The first 7½ seasons of the franchise have always felt distant to me because I didn’t experience them first-hand; no, I was too busy screwing around with kindergarten.
I feel much closer to the Mets of ’62 to ’69, thanks to Ryczek and the dozens of interviews he conducted with Original Mets, Polo Grounds Mets, Early Shea Mets, Wes Westrum Mets and, at last, Miracle Mets. He moves beyond the broad strokes you’ve seen before and makes the Mets of the ’60s come alive as the daily entity they were. It’s akin to viewing the first bunch of pages of The Holy Books in 3-D. You know about Casey and Marvelous Marv, more or less, but Ryczek (who also wrote the definitive account of the New York Titans, which includes great stuff on the post-Giants, pre-Mets Polo Grounds) adds depth. You know Yogi Berra and Warren Spahn did time as Mets players, but how much, if you weren’t there for it, did you know about those slices of their careers? You know the Mets never had a good record until they were world champions, but do you have any idea what they were like besides subpar? Do you have any idea about the original Met youth movement and the youths who weren’t Kranepool, Swoboda and McGraw?
If you’re a Mets fan of any vintage and possess the slightest sense of team history, you’ll find The Amazin’ Mets fascinating. And if you’re a Mets fan of a particular generation — coming of age with the Mets in the early ’70s as I did — you might want to check out another relatively recent release, From First to Worst by Jacob Kanarek. His focus is 1973 to 1977, spanning from the season the Mets made us Believe through the season the Mets made us want to forget.
Kanarek’s book relies mainly on recaps of game stories from series to series and homestand to road trip, the cumulative effect of which can be a bit numbing. But as one who lived those seasons, seeing the details in print — including the occasionally damning real-time quotes from the Seavers and Matlacks and so on who could feel the team sliding helplessly toward oblivion — is like having your subconscious mined. Maybe you don’t think you want to have the Pepe Mangual canal of your mind grapes tickled, but if you’re a Mets fan who remembers Mangual and Dwyer coming over for Unser and Garrett, then you can’t help but be intrigued.
Ryczek’s book — examined in-depth by Mets Walkoffs in December — is practically essential for your baseball library. Kanarek’s, complemented by a funky Web site, comes with the caveat that you probably have to have lived through that era to be pulled in completely to its swirl of detail. Either or both is/are a fine “also bought” purchase if you’re determined to be one of those “Amazon customers who bought this item also bought…” types.
Which is to say, first (please) PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other fine online retailers. Then, if you want another Mets book or two, consider those mentioned above. (I might have felt guilty about disturbing my kindergarten teacher’s retirement, but an author’s gotta hone the instinct for self-promotion.)
MLB Network alert: The ’69 World Series Highlight film is scheduled to air Saturday at 9:30 AM and 6:00 PM.
by Greg Prince on 12 February 2009 9:37 pm The longest offseason in human history is about to end, giving way to the longest Spring Training in human history (thanks, WBC). In about eight minutes, the thrill of Pitchers & Catchers will wear off when it occurs to us all at once that they're tossing, they're drilling but they're not playing. Soon enough, they'll be pretend-playing, which will seem really cool for a good two days before we're back to staring at our sundials and waiting for the Opening Day Solstice.
But right now in Port St. Lucie, late winter is morphing into early spring — on the precipice of Valentine's Day, no less. You gotta love the timing. And you gotta love these Mets. I gotta, anyway.
What's the point of not loving these Mets as they're just beginning to stretch?
They're not always the easiest bunch to embrace, given how they like to turn early fall into the dead of winter. And individually, I've spent many of the days since September 28 not exactly ordering them Vermont Teddy Bears. But that's pre-2/14 thinking. The 2009 Mets commence to reporting for good in two days. It's time to think of them in only optimistic terms.
There was a moment back there during the first few years of this endless offseason that I contemplated a post tentatively titled “Falling Out of Love With Jose Reyes,” the gist of which was the guy who was my favorite player was no longer held in such high esteem for reasons I no longer remember or care to enumerate. Then at the end of December, the Major League Baseball Network began airing promo after promo as it prepared to launch, and the first recognizable player you'd see was Jose Reyes, rounding first. All at once, whatever bugged me about Jose Reyes didn't bug me anymore. I'm as back in love as I need to be.
David Wright…intermittently throughout the winter I'd roll my eyes at the thought of David Wright opening his mouth; and roll my eyes some more when hearing what he actually said. I think the last time I heard him say something of a Wrightomatic nature was, when asked about the Mets getting or not getting Manny, he dared to use the phrase “World Series,” as in “my goal is for us to get to the World Series.” There was something about hearing Wright's voice and that phrase. David hadn't gotten us to a World Series yet. Maybe he might have had he driven in Daniel Murphy in from third against the Cubs when the score was tied in the ninth and nobody was out, but he didn't.
The time has come to stop holding David Wright's worst at-bat ever against him. The time has come to stop rolling my eyes at the best everyday player this organization has ever produced. The time has come to appreciate all over again the way David Wright has turned Pitchers & Catchers into Pitchers & Catchers & David. I love this kid again.
We re-signed Oliver Perez when we couldn't quite nail down anybody better. We paid Oliver Perez too much. Oliver Perez pitches great in some big games. He pitches pretty well in some other big games. And he lets down like crazy plenty. But Oliver Perez is going to put on a Mets uniform and pitch for the Mets pretty soon. I'll be glad to see him do so.
I'll be glad to see Mike Pelfrey, one fine three-month stretch and a slightly shaky September to his credit. Pelfrey took a while to convince me he wasn't going to be every disappointing young Met righty from Hank Webb to Tim Leary to Paul Wilson. I'm convinced for now, for the middle of February.
Did Carlos Beltran say something about being the team to beat again? Or am I still hung up on last year? Either way, he's Carlos Beltran. He doesn't say much off the field. I can't wait to watch him on it.
The other Carlos, Delgado, may have been playing for no more than getting his option picked up last year. That's the cynic's way of viewing it. No cynics allowed on the eve of Pitchers & Catchers & David. Delgado was the offensive MVP of this club in 2008. Why not believe in him for 2009?
Why not believe in Luis Castillo? What's it gonna cost us? He's gotta get better 'cause he can't get worse.
John Maine was a question mark this winter. Now he's recovering — ahead of schedule, he says. Who are ya gonna listen to on February 12: your doubts about his self-diagnosis or the rosiest scenario possible?
Johan Santana will be pitching on two good knees. He was pretty awesome on just one. By my calculations, he'll go 32-14 this year. At least.
One of the happiest moments of my offseason that didn't involve remembering Johan taming his aches and the Marlins was when I read Brian Schneider might be traded. I had no idea how much I sought a world in which Brian Schneider was no longer the Mets' catcher. It appears Brian Schneider is still the Mets' catcher. Ah, what the hell? Welcome back Schneider.
And Ramon Castro. Read something about him maybe being traded. Wasn't distraught. But as long as he's here, I'll be whatever the opposite of distraught is. Traught, perhaps.
And Jose Valentin! He'll be in camp. Nobody was really frothing for his encore, but I always have a soft spot for veterans who haven't been in the bigs since the July before last. In February I do.
Marlon Anderson remains under contract. I'll be damned. Maybe he won't be this year. Damned, I mean.
Ryan Church looked more lost toward the end of the season than he did found at its beginning. I can believe he'll find himself unconcussed soon enough.
Fernando Tatis a one-year wonder? I sort of thought so until I realized it was time to think differently. He can do it again.
It's not that Daniel Murphy is largely unproven. It's that he's begun to prove himself and he can continue to do so this year. Nick Evans, too. Maybe Niese? Maybe not…but maybe yes?
Pedro Feliciano still a Met? Really? Duaner Sanchez joining him? They're not part of that bad old bullpen. They've got new company. It could do something good for them.
Nelson Figueroa still works here. Angel Pagan does also. Here's to giving the old guys you pretty much forgot existed a shot. And here's to the new guys…K-Rod, Putz, Green, Reed, Redding, Garcia, Cora, whoever else is invited to the party. You guys didn't blow 2007 or 2008 for us. Grab a glove, grab a ball, grab a bat. Let's see what ya got.
There'll be plenty of time to grumble at all the recurring irritations that being a Mets fan in the winter of 2009 encompassed. All the sideshows, as a blolleague called them, won't go away all at once. But Spring Training is about to begin. So yeah, actually, they will go away.
All at once.
by Jason Fry on 12 February 2009 12:38 am It's no fun when the world forces you to be a better person than you want to be.
I mean, Jesus. Even with the bottled tears still freshly spritzed on A-Rod's face, this is really something. Robbie Alomar might have AIDS? And possibly have been insanely negligent about it?
My first reaction was shock. Then I reflexively tried for Schadenfreude, but barely even got through the first syllable before realizing that wasn't appropriate. To invert the title of our reaction post about A-Rod, It Wasn't Funny Even Though It Was Happening to Him.
I hate Roberto Alomar. Three years ago, inaugurating Met Hell, I assigned him to the Eighth Level, with only one Met receiving a harsher eternal sentence. (And honestly, that was kind of on a technicality.) According to Dante, the Eighth Circle of Hell was Malebolge, inhabited by hypocrites, thieves, false counselors, sowers of schism and falsifiers — all apt descriptions for Robbie Alomar, whose farcical tour of Met duty proved beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt that he was a malingerer, liar, and a bad teammate. The idea that he'll be inducted into Cooperstown disgusts me — now and then I've fantasized about making the trip up there and picking the perfect moment to be a lone voice booing vociferously while everyone turns around in shock and disgust. As I was led out I'd scream about the game where Alomar blamed everything on rookie pitcher Jae Seo, and how he wouldn't stop freaking bunting, and how he quit even bothering to try and turn the pivot, and how Gary Cohen was right to call him a disgrace, and how….
But now I'm imagining it's July 2003 and I'm facing God, who in this particular imagining has assumed the form of a particularly dour and fearsome schoolmarm. And our conversation goes something like this….
“Sit down, Jason. You hate Roberto Alomar, right?”
“Do I ever! I'm so glad we finally traded that worthless sack of quit! Why, remember the game where he blamed everything on –”
“That will do. So it's true that you hate him.”
“In spades! Why, did something happen to him? Oh boy! I hope it's something bad!”
“It is. Sit down.”
“Ummm … OK.”
“Jason, do you hate Roberto Alomar enough to want him to develop severe fatigue, sores on his mouth and throat, a constant cough and an infection of the esophagus that is associated with AIDS?”
“What?”
“Do you hate him enough to want him to have purple skin, foam at the mouth, be too sick to walk and need a wheelchair to get around at the airport?”
At this point, I imagine I'd be looking down at my shoes and speaking in a rather small voice.
“Umm … no.”
“I DIDN'T HEAR YOU!”
“I … umm … well, of course … what …”
“LOUDER! STOP MUMBLING AND LOOK AT ME!”
“NO! I don't hate Roberto Alomar enough that I want him to develop severe fatigue, or turn purple, or … or all that other stuff you said. I don't think I hate anybody who isn't an actual murderer or war criminal or terrorist that much. Because I'm not insane, OK? I mean, there's sports hate, and I really do sports-hate Roberto Alomar a lot, but I don't hate him for real. Well, actually I probably do hate him for real, but not that much. No, nowhere near that much. Not really very much at all in any way that actually matters, and –”
“That's enough. You were doing better before. OK, read this Associated Press story. And then look me in the eye, and tell me what you'd tell him.”
“Umm … do I have to?”
“Yes, you do! You've said hateful things about Robbie Alomar for years and written hateful things about Robbie Alomar for years, and now I want to hear what you'd tell him if he were here right now.”
“Umm, well … Robbie, I hope none of that is true. I hope you didn't really treat your girlfriend that way. And if you did, I hope you've had some pretty heavy counseling to ensure you don't treat any significant others that way anymore. I, um, hope you weren't raped by guys in New Mexico when you were 17. And if you were — that sucks, and I hope you got help with it somehow. Umm, I hope you're not really HIV-positive. And if you are, I hope you're dealing with it and you're healthy and you stay that way. And this isn't really the point, but … if it's true I hope maybe some people who were your fans but think they hate people with AIDS think about that now and realize they don't, so that at least some good comes of something so awful.”
“Is that it?”
“Yeah, I think so. Um, was that OK?”
“It will do. I think you actually meant that, Jason.”
“You know what? I think I did, too.”
“OK then. You can go.”
“OK. Thanks. But … umm, can I ask you something?”
“What is it?”
“Is there anything wrong with Luis Castillo?”
“What?”
“I mean besides being fat and bad?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“Well, because I have to have some outlet for being low and vile, and if you're taking Robbie Alomar away from me, I'd hope you'd at least leave me that, because –”
“JASON! GET OUT!”
|
|
