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 19 September 2008 4:00 pm Welcome to Flashback Friday: Tales from the Log, a final-season tribute to Shea Stadium as viewed primarily through the prism of what I have seen there for myself, namely 395 regular-season and 13 postseason games to date. The Log records the numbers. The Tales tell the stories.
10/2/88 Su St. Louis 4-3 Darling 5 22-28 W 7-5
I watched on television when Cleon Jones wrapped his glove around Dave Johnson’s fly ball to the left field warning track on October 16, 1969. I had the same long-distance view when Marty Barrett swung through Jesse Orosco’s final pitch on October 27, 1986. Both events took place at Shea Stadium, but I wasn’t there. I was happy, exhilarated, overjoyed. But I wasn’t there.
I’ve been there to see the Mets win a pennant, two division series, a division title, a Wild Card and the right to play for a play-in game for a Wild Card. None of those clinchings, as stupendous as they were to witness, left me with the feeling that the Mets were indisputably on top of the world. Only winning the World Series could do that.
The closest thing I’ve experienced was the day I was sure they were on their way there.
Seven banners are displayed above Shea’s right field fence to signify seven postseason appearances. The least loved among them, I am certain, is the one representing the 1988 National League Eastern Division championship. Show “1988” to a Mets fan, and it’s not a Rorschach test. There’s nothing left open to interpretation. Everybody sees roughly the same thing:
Scioscia.
Hershiser.
Gibson.
Belcher.
The Dodgers.
An LCS that couldn’t have possibly gone wrong but did.
The dynastic Mets stopped dead in their tracks.
The turning point of the franchise that went, in a seven-game span, from dominant to disappointing.
A team commencing on a long march to mediocrity and worse.
A playoff drought that wouldn’t find a drop of hydration for more than a decade.
I see that, too. I see how 1988 could be taken that way. I mostly take 1988 that way, partly because losing to the Dodgers (against whom, as every schoolchild knows, we won 10 of 11 in the regular season) as we did was so shocking and painful and partly because 1988 as a year was, for me personally, so shocking and painful. If the Mets had beaten the Dodgers as they were supposed to and then went on defeated the Athletics, I don’t know if 1988 would have felt materially better, but at least the banner above right field would have a little more oomph to it.
Which would have been welcome in 1988.
I didn’t get out to Shea much that year. My first game was a Saturday night in early July. I had bought two tickets but couldn’t get anybody to go with me. So I went by myself. Drove and found murderous traffic to go with full parking lots. Parked in Corona in a private lot for the ungodly sum of five dollars. Wondered if my car would be there when I got back. It was. I returned to it with a win, courtesy of Dwight Gooden (five-hit shutout) and Darryl Strawberry (two-run homer off Bob Knepper in the first) and rewarded myself with a Mr. Softee cone. But it was a very lonely night in a very lonely summer.
Commencing around then, my life pretty much fell apart. My freelance writing career was in tatters, as my two primary clients each dropped me in a hairtrigger huff over a competitive misunderstanding that was exacerbated by some heroic ass-covering on the part of individuals of low degree. So I was basically making no money and still living at home three years after college. Before I could be completely consumed by moping over what the hell I was going to do next, my mother’s chronic back pain (along with her propensity to panic out loud) went into overdrive. After three excruciating weeks, she agreed to be checked into the hospital. Within a week, she was diagnosed with cancer.
The first-place Mets, meanwhile, alternated as background noise and welcome refuge. Those ’88 Mets were good if maddeningly inconsistent. They had maybe more talent than any Mets club ever, even ’86, and they burst out of the gate as if bent on proving the cigarless second-place finish of ’87 was a typographical error. By May 22 — at the end of a Houston-California trip no less — they were 30-11, leading the East by 5½ games. Surely it would be a cruise from there.
The cruise, however, slogged through choppy waters. Carter pressed for his 300th homer and slumped. Hernandez pulled a hammy. The pitching was flat awesome but the offense was plain flat. If it weren’t for Darryl regularly going deep in the first and the starters making it hold up, I swear they would have sunk. The young Pirates of Bonds and Bonilla rose above their station and challenged the mighty Mets, always coming up a bit short but never quite going away. Three months had passed since the Mets left Los Angeles 30-11 when they returned to Chavez Ravine in late August. Their record since then was a most pedestrian 41-41. Pittsburgh was 3½ back. Even with Gooden, Darling and the breakout season of David Cone…even with Darryl Strawberry truly living up to his monster notices, the Mets were well-positioned to blow a sure thing.
Instead, they took off. Mookie Wilson was given center field full-time and Gregg Jefferies was recalled and the Mets became unstoppable. Starting August 22, they won 23 of 28 and, exactly a month after appearing exceedingly vulnerable, they were division champs. The Mets were peaking at what seemed like the perfect time.
I watched the Mets beat the Phillies and clinch the division with my mother at home. She was released from the hospital before Labor Day and was going in for outpatient treatment every day: radiation. It was said to be working. She wasn’t in terrible pain. She wasn’t in a total state of dread. Everybody was calming down a little. I still wasn’t writing much of anything for a living, but I guess I felt secure enough financially to buy a ticket to the final game of the regular season. I knew I needed to get out of the house and feel, for a few hours, good about things.
In the only mildly lucky break I’d come across in ages, I received a seat upgrade. I’d asked Joel if he wanted to go, but Joel was bringing his girlfriend. He’d even gone through a ticket broker to get really good field level seats. So I checked with Fred and he said sure and I got pretty lousy upper deck tickets, all that were available. But then Joel’s girlfriend decided Joel and she had to bring along her little brother and his friend (two kids Joel wanted nothing to do with). Joel’s loss was my gain. He traded me his two good seats for my two lousy seats, which were easier to combine with two other lousy seats upstairs.
I don’t know if it mattered where I sat on the final day of 1988 as long as it was at Shea. It probably mattered that the Mets won. The Mets might have clinched already, but I sure as hell needed a win. And I’m not talking about The Log.
There were plenty of milestones floating about. One more win would give the Mets 100 for the third time in their existence. Two rainouts were never made up, so 100-60 would account for an even better percentage than 1969’s 100-62. Darryl came in on the cusp of all kinds of round numbers. One steal would give him 30. He didn’t get it, but that’s because he didn’t spend nearly enough time on the basepaths, rounding them as he did. Straw homered twice, which got him to within one dinger of 40 and shot him past 100 RBI; he finished with 101 (the same as his run total for the year). Kevin McReynolds came into the game with 99 runs batted in and stayed there. Ron Darling notched his career-high 17th win to leave him at 17-9, same as Jerry Koosman in ’69…not a round number, but highly Metsian.
The Mets built a 7-0 lead. It all seemed pretty safe. It all seemed worthy of the contemporary hit that played during a pitching change: “Don’t Worry Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin. I kind of silently bopped along with it, surprised when Fred said this was one song he couldn’t stand. I dunno, I thought. I kind of like the idea of not worrying and being happy for one day.
Giving up a 7-0 lead on an October Sunday at Shea was the stuff of Jets, not Mets. Alas, the Cardinals did put up some impressive yardage late in the game, closing the gap to 7-5, but you never really thought the Mets back then could blow a big lead. And they didn’t. It wasn’t quite as comfortable as it should have been, but the Mets maintained control clear into the ninth. Randy Myers came on to get the final three outs and was two-thirds of the way home when Mackey Sasser visited the mound and, after a bit of stalling, Davey Johnson jogged in from the dugout.
It looked strange. It was strange. It was, in fact, a setup the likes of which I never saw before and haven’t seen again. The Mets cooked up a scheme to lure Davey — he had never been Dave since he’d been a Met — onto the field so the P.A. could hail the fantastic job he’d done as manager since 1984 and all of us could be asked to show him our appreciation. And we did, 42,000-some standing as one and applauding. It struck me as a little presumptuous, but well-deserved. I hoped it wouldn’t blow up in our face karmawise. Randy walked the next guy but the third out was recorded soon enough and the most successful manager in Mets history had his second hundred-win season.
That wasn’t it for us, though. We got the final-day video treatment. This year’s theme was “Back In The High Life Again,” one highlight after another showing how 1988 was a lot like 1986 and nothing like 1987. On DiamondVision the Mets swung and connected, pitched and baffled, won and won again. Bobby Ojeda’s face materialized and there was an extra cheer. Bobby O nearly cut off his finger while clipping his hedges in September. He would live even if he wouldn’t pitch again until 1989. But we had Gooden (18-9) and Cone (20-3) and Darling and Fernandez. We could lose a pitcher and keep winning.
The general adoration morphed into purposeful encouragement. I thought of it at the same time tens of thousands of Met minds did. We chanted it with no prompt from the scoreboard.
BEAT L.A.! BEAT L.A.! BEAT L.A.!
OK, so we borrowed it from Boston, from basketball, but it was appropriate to the occasion. We had beaten the Cardinals. We had beaten the Pirates. We had beaten back the disappointment of ’87 and avenged the indifference of summer. We bookended that lackluster 41-41 midsection with a 30-11 start and a 29-8 finish. If you put the pieces together correctly, you’d have to say that the 1988 Mets, for half a season, were, at a staggering 59-19, the best Mets ever. Now all we had to do was doom the Dodgers. They had Orel Hershiser and his 59 consecutive scoreless innings, sure, but we had taken care of them 10 of 11 times. We had Darryl Strawberry, MVP in waiting. Him or McReynolds. We had Gregg Jefferies en route to the Hall of Fame. We had it all.
We just so overflowed with confidence when we left Shea that day. As Fred and I headed toward the train, we saw a crowd lined up by the player parking lot. They were chanting at a bus, presumably a bus that was going to carry the Mets to LaGuardia for a plane that would carry them to Los Angeles from whence they would carry home a couple of formality victories, setting the stage for a pennant to be won at Shea by the next weekend.
BEAT L.A.! BEAT L.A.! BEAT L.A.!
I wouldn’t be here for that, but I was here for this, this feeling that the Mets couldn’t be stopped. They were 100-60, the last time they would reach the century mark while calling Shea Stadium home. I was 2-0, the last time my record for a season at Shea would be perfect. I still had no career of which to speak. My mother, radiation and remission notwithstanding, still had cancer. 1988 as a year still sucks whenever I think about it. But for a few moments that first Sunday afternoon in October, that final day at Shea two decades ago, I swear I was on top of the world.
by Jason Fry on 19 September 2008 3:36 am These days, it counts as a minor miracle when our bullpen only allows five baserunners in two innings, as happened tonight with Joe Smith, Scott Schoeneweis and Pedro Feliciano backing up Johan Santana, who maintained his dignity even when Kevin Burkhardt asked if he could watch once he came out of the game. (I would have forked over a fair amount of money to hear him say something like “Well Kevin, I'll tell you what I'm going to do — I'm going to stand next to the relievers' lockers with a pair of hedge clippers, a lighter and a gas can, and if they blow this one, we'll see how they like flying to Atlanta with nothing to wear but still-smoking rags.”) No closer? That's the least of our problems — plenty of nights we don't have a reliever who can reliably get anybody out at all.
On Wednesday night at Nats Park my friend Cooper was agitating to get going when Aaron Heilman entered a 9-5 game. He considered that safe; I stared at him in dismay. “This,” I told him, “is the equivalent of the point in the slasher movie where the co-ed realizes they forgot the puppy AND GOES BACK IN THE HOUSE.” Sure enough, Heilman promptly gave up a ringing double and a sharp single, leaving me to bay at our distant, dismal reliever in drunken fury while Cooper stared at me in disbelief. Was I a prophet? Nope, just a Met fan.
It's a useful comparison, though — if you want to properly prepare yourself for the late innings of a 2008 Met game, cue up some wretched early-1980s slasher movies, the ones starring nubile co-eds in their underwear at night and the dullard cops sent to rescue them, with the whole crew picked off one by one by a masked killer with something extremely sharp in one gloved hand. The rhythms and themes are pretty much the same: That first hitter to reach against that first bad Met reliever is the rustle of leaves somewhere in the woods behind the laughing girl drinking beer at the campfire, a sound barely noticed and quickly dismissed by everybody except the agitated audience. And so it goes until REEEEEE!!!!! REEEEEE!!!!!! REEEEEEE!!!!! THE TYING RUN IS ON THIRD AND IT'S A 2-0 COUNT!!!! AND THE BLOODY KNIFE IS FILLING THE SCREEN!!!!!! AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Will at least one co-ed stagger off to safety? Or is this one of those nihilistic movies where the killer winds up triumphant? Let's meet our cast:
Carlos Muniz — Didn't really have any lines, killed off before anybody was on their guard. When the credits roll, sole identification will be under the group heading OTHER SORORITY SISTERS. (See also: Jorge Sosa, Matt Wise, Tony Armas Jr.)
Eddie Kunz — Hot pledge with just a couple of scenes, struck down in some particularly cruel, messily ironic way that's played for laughs. And we thought that one had potential.
Bobby Parnell — Has somehow made it to the final reel despite having had only one line and never being identified by name. If you've seen any of the other movies in this series, you already know this won't end well.
Duaner Sanchez — Ever notice how slasher movies are motivated by a pitiless medieval morality? How the girls who do drugs, get drunk, or have sex are fated to vanish in a river of blood, with the virtuous wallflower the only one who'll limp her way to the sequel? Well, Duaner's the slutty blonde who was mean to the girls who were scared to smoke pot, and then wobbled off early for a shower. OH GOD, A MACHETE!!! I totally saw that one coming, you guys.
Scott Schoeneweis — Has some brains, gives you hope by knowing enough not to get stoned in the woods or to sneak off and make out with the hot counselor from the camp across the lake. But inevitably slips in the wet grass and then scrabbles helplessly in a vain effort to get up as the escaped lunatic fires up the chainsaw. Oogh. That was gross.
Al Reyes — Cut from the movie. I hear the ironic death scene will be on the DVD.
Ricardo Rincon — Not a co-ed (would you want to see a co-ed who looked like Rincon?), but the veteran cop who appears to have restored order. (Often played by Joe Don Baker or one of those nameless, ubiquitous character actors.) Currently walking confidently over to open the closet doors to show the terrified girls that everything is fine now. But the old guy is never the male lead, so — OH MY GOD! DID YOU SEE THAT? THE CHAINSAW CAME RIGHT THROUGH THE LOUVERS!!!!
Aaron Heilman — Will this particularly hapless co-ed be decapitated by a windowpane? Hanged from a showerhead? Run into the clothesline and wind up in pieces in the old well? Judging from the way it's been going, it could be all three.
Pedro Feliciano — Wow, with a pitchfork? Ehhh. That one was too klutzy to put much faith in anyway.
Billy Wagner — The chaperone whose unexpected ambush made you think that jeez, maybe none of these girls will get out of the house alive.
Joe Smith — Such courage! Such spunk! Such basic decency! OH NO! THE MENTALLY DISTURBED LITTLE BROTHER IS LEFT-HANDED!!!!!
Brian Stokes — The handsome young police officer who took that staticky yell for help seriously, drove out to the lake, coolly fired a slug from his .38 right through the hockey mask and then even found a blanket to wrap around the shivering survivor. And now he's comforting her — everything is going to be fine! BUT WAIT! SOMETHING IS MOVING BEHIND HIM! AND HE DOESN'T KNOW!! OFFICER STOKES!!!! TURN AROUND!!!! NOOOOOO!!!!
Luis Ayala — Escaped the ax by leaping through the upstairs window. Now hopping on one good leg down the driveway. But wait! There's the killer, shambling slowly but relentlessly in pursuit! HE'S STILL ALIVE! AND HE'S GAINING!!!
Oh my God you guys, I'm so freaked out. I can't look anymore, not even through my fingers. Somebody tell me how it ends.
by Greg Prince on 18 September 2008 5:36 am To address my lingering virus that developed in the wake of the day-night doubleheader against Philly, I was prescribed some cough syrup Wednesday. Some very good cough syrup. It's got some very good stuff in it. It makes you quite drowsy which is the way to watch the Mets these nights.
I took it a little before Capital One Pregame Live. As a result, I wasn't as in-game lively as I might have been otherwise. I didn't really have the wherewithal to cheer the two first-inning homers. In fact, I nodded off at Mets 2 Nats 0 and woke up from the longest 15-minute nap of my life with it Mets 7 Nats 1. My alertness waxed and waned until I began to have these visions of relief pitcher after relief pitcher marching in from the bullpen while Gary, Keith and Ron grew grimmer and grimmer. Next thing I knew, Jerry Manuel was cracking wise about the crowd not wanting to see him blazing a path from the dugout to the mound and Johan Santana having to throw a complete game Thursday, even if it takes 170 pitches. I guess he was being funny. It was hard to tell, legally medicated as I was.
It took seven relievers gritting their teeth across four innings to quell the Washington Nationals, but the Mets held on 9-7. I didn't feel a thing.
by Jason Fry on 17 September 2008 6:00 pm OK, so that didn't work. Never has a 1-0 game seemed so unclose. Never has a supposedly close game's ending with the wrong result felt so unsurprising. Nationals Park was, by my thoroughly unscientific estimate, about 30% to 35% Met fans. But we were a numb, hushed bunch from pillar to post, with only a few half-hearted Let's Go Mets chants to betray our presence. The sight of all those backs adorned with CARTER and DYKSTRA and STRAWBERRY and ALFONZO (invoking the angels of the past, or betraying discontent with the present?) would have been comforting, if the shoulders hadn't been slumped forward around misery. (There were sights of REYES and WRIGHT and SANTANA too, but the body language was about the same.)
The company, at least, was pennant-winning: I went with my old friend Megan, who very kindly put me up and even lent me this laptop, and we were joined by Liz (another old friend and longtime Met fan) and her friend Rob. In the middle innings I headed off to commiserate with Jeff, who'd been Greg's host here back in April. Whether I was in short left or the right-field corner, there was puzzlement and muted despair over the utter lack of offense on the field and the sickening see-saw between PHI/ATL. (And then MIL/CHI, which I belatedly realized was becoming very important.) When David Wright tipped a ball foul with two strikes in the ninth, my chin dropped to my chest before I realized he wasn't out. No matter; he was a minute later. Carlos Beltran rifled a liner to center that Lastings Milledge was playing deep enough to corral without incident. And then with two strikes, Carlos Delgado swung and missed at a ball that eluded Wil Nieves. I watched the ball spinning in the dirt and thought dully that we hadn't lost yet. But I knew and Nieves knew and Delgado knew and everybody else knew that was a formality, and I was already getting to my feet by the time ball was retrieved and quietly applied to slugger. Ugh. Waiting for the Metro, I grumbled to Megan that it was rarely a good sign to be able to recite your team's hits immediately from memory. Double ugh.
If you haven't been to Nationals Park, Greg's impressions from late April should be your first stop. I was too angst-ridden to take in much more than the slow throttling happening down on the field, so I'll limit myself to a couple of updates/first takes: The big, beautiful HD scoreboard now dispenses relevant info, as well as a-bit-too-excited exhortations to the crowd. (Strike two isn't consistently important enough to get agitated about, fellas.) Vendors and greeters and other folks were consistently friendly and more or less on the ball — as a Shea denizen, I stared in bemused disbelief when I was handed a Coke with the soda cap still attached.
As for Nationals fans, they're still a vaguely defined, placeholder kind of rooter — there are stalwarts (the guy in front of me in a VIDRO uniform shirt was raucous and worked up, as he should be), but most of them seem like they're still learning the ropes: They take way too many cues from whatever the scoreboard's suggesting they do, and embarrassingly few of them have figured out that the secret of not mistaking a pop to left-center for a home run is to look at the fielders, not the ball. Oh, and the Nats really need to find place for the outs on their otherwise-excellent out-of-town scoreboard.
Several folks have offered variants on Greg's observation that Nats Park feels like an overgrown minor-league park, with none of them meaning anything snide by that. I had the same impression, and I think maybe it's the breaks in the levels. If you were a young baseball fan between the late 1960s and the end of the 1980s, your first experiences of a baseball stadium almost certainly involved an all-purpose donut, with an unbroken ring of seats arcing from at least foul pole to foul pole. Things like that get into your head as a sort of Platonic reality (“ideal” seems too strong), and become the standard against which everything else is judged, whether you're conscious of it or not. Broken concourses seem off to us and unfinished, while younger fans may well praise them as allowing more of a connection between a stadium and the city surrounding it.
At least that's my half-assed theory. Regardless, Nationals Park is clean, bright and new. Great place to see a game. Even better place to see the Mets win a game, if that's possible right now. We'll try again tonight.
by Greg Prince on 17 September 2008 10:09 am 
So the Mets have lost three in a row. So the Mets have fallen into second place. So the Mets may be reduced to hoping the Brewers maintain a steeper decline than their own. So Fernando Tatis is out for the year. So Damion Easley is nowhere in sight. So John Maine probably won’t be of much use. So Luis Castillo is signed through 2011. So the country is going to hell in a handbasket.
What was my point again?
Oh yeah. Look at my pretty kitty Avery. It will make you feel better a little.
by Greg Prince on 17 September 2008 8:09 am This year's 150th game, a loss to the Nationals in Washington, is last year's 150th game, a loss to the Nationals in Washington.
This year's team meeting before the 150th game is last year's team meeting before the 150th game.
Odalis Perez is Chris Nabholz.
Willie Harris is Willie Harris is Willie Harris.
Fernando Tatis is Damion Easley.
The Phillies relentlessly edging in front are the '99 Braves.
The Brewers suddenly on our radar are the '99 Reds.
Ramon Martinez pinch-running is Jay Payton.
Brandon Knight spot-starting best not be Brian Lawrence.
One day lately is just like the other.
by Jason Fry on 16 September 2008 7:00 pm Never fear, the crumple is coming to an end. Because I, Jason Fry, bearer of Faith and banisher of Fear, am on my way to Washington, D.C., to give the blue and orange troops the support and tough love they obviously need, lest the hordes of Cheesesteak City blight another October. With yours truly poised like a rock of Gibraltar in the stands, victory is assured. Relievers will not give up infuriating tack-on runs. Young All-Stars will not snuff delicate rallies by hitting into double plays. First basemen will not field like tipped-over refrigerators. Pudgy second basemen with ludicrous contracts will not jump like their bodies have the density of neutron stars. Sanity will be restored. All will be well.
Ah, who am I kidding? Look tonight and tomorrow and maybe you'll catch sight of me bawling and banging my head against the seats in abject panic while my companions pretend they don't know me.
by Greg Prince on 16 September 2008 5:47 am The Mets aren't collapsing. They are deflating. There's a difference. Time remains to pump them back up. But if they don't get the air back into the balloon, there's no shame attached. I did not dream amid the mess of April, May and June that the Mets would be clinging to the remnants of a division lead in mid-September. For the better part of July and August, even, I kind of waited for the inevitable sag. Maybe this isn't it. Maybe it is.
I'll accept the raised if potentially false hopes of summer as fleeting if indeed they do not translate further. And I'll take an explicable September crumple — no fifth starter per se, a fourth starter in name only, the wrong second baseman unavailable, temp closers nursing their groins — and not look upon it an overly harsh manner.
We know what last September was. This, however it turns out, isn't that. This barely had a chance of being where it is. This was wing and a prayer territory and look how far both got us. It got us a half-game ahead of (and fuck you Mike Schmidt, I'm not talkin' to you) a deeper, more talented and healthier rival. The Phillies ain't perfect but they do have Brad Lidge and they do have Brett Myers and they do have Ryan Howard and all of them are on fire. True, we have Johan Santana and we have three stellar hitters with a hundred RBI apiece and we've got heart, but we've also got deficiencies and then we've got nights where we forget to pack the bats for the road trip.
I could be wrong. I could be very wrong. I could be thrillingly wrong. I can't wait to be wrong. But I swear when I saw Elijah Dukes' home run flying toward the left field stands at Nationals Park, I decided we aren't winning this thing. Sanchez delivered. Dukes swung. And there I was…wavin' Two Thousand Eight goodbye. You can only write off an unreliable pen for so long before you have to put it in the books as possibly not meant to be.
We are, on the other hand, still in first. We do, on the other hand, still have 13 games to go. The Phillies, Lidge and Myers and Howard notwithstanding, ain't Superman and they ain't God. And no matter how you phrase it, this ain't an encore of you know what. That's not the way this one goes down.
I shall not permit it.
by Greg Prince on 15 September 2008 8:51 pm Over the summer, I contributed a bit of research to a very exciting project regarding the history of Shea Stadium. I pass along from the people with whom I worked an announcement that might be of some interest to you.
Maritime and Spitfire Pictures, producers of LAST PLAY AT SHEA, a documentary feature based on Billy Joel’s historic final concerts at Shea Stadium, are inviting fans to share their most beloved Shea memories from 1964 to 2008.
Whether your memory is of the Mets, Jets, a concert, special event or anything else that underscores Shea’s special place in your heart, we want to hear from you.
Select fans may be chosen for interviews for possible inclusion in the documentary.
Please submit your “Shea Memories” to Glen Zipper at Spitfire pictures (glenzipper@spitfirepix.com). Please be sure to include your full name, age and best contact phone number. Those selected for interviews should be prepared to make themselves available the week of September 22.
Faith and Fear readers sharing their Shea memories for posterity? It's a natural. Get in touch with Glen if you'd like to find out more.
by Greg Prince on 15 September 2008 10:00 am So for the reasonable price of $10,000, I joined the Shea Stadium Premiere Club. Didn't think I could afford it, but it turns out if you go to a game without buying a pretzel or a soda, your savings mount up rather quickly. Thus, with the extra 10 G's I saved Sunday by buying nothing, I became a Platinum member and got first crack at the historic artifacts that will be saved from Shea before it is dismantled to make way for Citi Field.
This is not a fee, by the way, but a non-refundable deposit toward my intended purchases. Like I said, incredibly reasonable. MeiGray, the company that's handling the memorabilia sales, heard about my decision to attend every remaining home game and figured I must be their target demographic. They took my money right away and gave me the very first exclusive tour Sunday evening.
They took me through their entire inventory of what they're offering up front. Those gigantic banners of the great players and moments in Mets history are $2,000. The door from the Bob Murphy radio booth is $4,000. A letter from the main SHEA STADIUM sign goes for $5,000. The column that says Gate E is $10,000. David Wright's locker is $15,000. A foul pole is 25 large. The '69 and '86 world championship flags are 50 grand a pop.
For a big spender like me, they said, they could wrap up whatever I wanted so I could take it home on the LIRR right away.
Very nice, I said, but I wanted to see the good stuff, the exclusive stuff, the stuff nobody else knows about.
Well, they said, that would cost me an extra $10,000. If I gave them that, then they could upgrade me to Double Platinum Chrome membership in the Shea Stadium Premiere Club. It wouldn't be a fee, but a non-refundable deposit toward my intended purchases.
Since the pretzels weren't ready Saturday night, I had an extra $10,000 just taking up space in my wallet, so I said of course and gave it to them.
They pocketed my $20K and told me to follow them.
We went deep into the most feral catacombs of Shea Stadium. Very deep. You entered through Gate F, but that's all I know. This was where no one goes. In fact, they had to blindfold me so I couldn't tell anybody the way. (The blindfold was an extra $5,000 — not a fee, but a non-refundable deposit toward my intended purchases — but it was spare change to me, having brought my own beverages Sunday.) I did hear a lot of myowling.
They removed my blindfold and gave me the Double Platinum Chrome tour.
I was stunned.
“I've never seen any of this before,” I said.
“No one has,” my guide told me.
First there were the banners:
1987 National League East Champions
1998 National League Wild Card Winner
2007 World Champions
“But the Mets didn't make the playoffs those years,” I said.
“Keep looking,” said the guide.
Beyond the flags that didn't fly were other, even rarer items:
• A broken heart from the 1988 playoffs…
• A tortured soul from the 2000 Subway Series…
• A mind bent permanently out of shape, signed by Armando Benitez, John Franco and Brian Jordan…
• The swings never taken in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded on October 19, 2006…
• The Mets' intestinal fortitude from last September 30 (mint condition, not game-used).
“Whoa,” I said. “How much we talking?”
“Let's not talk price just yet,” the guide said. “There's more to see.”
A fog rolled in to the depths of Shea Stadium. Everything grew hazier and hazier until I was taken to what was called the piece d'resistance: a ghostly image — a hologram, actually.
It was Greg Norton launching a three-run bomb off Luis Ayala in the ninth inning on September 14, 2008.
“Whoa!” I said again. “This is already here? This is here with everything else that has destroyed our spirits and represents all that has gone wrong at Shea Stadium over the past twenty-plus years? You're already listing this in your catalogue of horrors?”
“If you hand us an extra $100,000,” my guide said, “we will let you know in two weeks.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Really. See, it's not a fee, but a non-refundable deposit toward your intended purchase.”
“Well, I was thinking about an Italian sausage for the last homestand, but that does sound like quite a deal…”
I'll let you know what to make of that image when I know. They promised me I'd be the first to find out.
Membership, you see, has its privileges.
|
|
