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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 6 August 2008 8:28 am So I'm working on a computer I haven't used in years, one that dates back to Aaron Heilman's rookie year. Back then, this computer seemed very promising. Now it's outdated and clunky and the only reason I'm using it is because until my usual computer is pronounced fit, it's all I've got.
Hit you over the head much? No more than the Jody Gerut did to Aaron Heilman. We won, so bygones can be bygones for a night, but ninth innings are obviously not Aaron's bag, baby. Until he becomes a free agent and signs with the Cardinals and Tony La Russa converts him to a starter (or a shortstop; it is La Russa), he's stuck in the bullpen with the rest of the well-meaning schlubs who couldn't close a jar of Taster's Choice, let alone a baseball game.
But I like Aaron. He gives me no reason to, but he seems not unlikable. Forlorn, actually, is what he seems. He struggled his first couple of years, was turned to amid desperate straits in early 2005 and threw a complete game one-hitter. There is not a single Mets starter in our pretty good rotation who has thrown a nine-inning one-hitter for us. Yet they're all still in the rotation. Aaron was asked to leave the rotation not two months after his one-hitter and was never invited back. He got pretty good at pitching a given inning, whether it was the seventh, the eighth or, on occasion in '05, the ninth. As with this computer (which I schlepped home as part of a severance package because I once read an article that said if you're laid off, demand your computer), I thought that was only the beginning, that this thing is going to keep unveiling marvels and wonders for us all to enjoy. Instead, Aaron, like this 2003 iMac, peaked quite a while ago. Now and then he gives it his all and it's a big, big help. Other times he gives it his all, and a four-run lead grows lonely quickly.
Aaron Heilman has been a Met pitcher longer on a consecutive basis than any other Met pitcher (Pedro Feliciano, up in 2002, never pitched for another big league team but he did wander outside the organization a couple of times). That puts Aaron in Jose/David territory as far as homegrown pitchers who never pitched anywhere else go. But that's about as far as that analogy will fly. Aaron Heilman, No. 1 draft status and all, has never been a golden boy on this team. He's never had a role that quite suited him. He may still produce wonders and marvels in his career, but it won't be as a Met.
But I have a consolation prize for him. I've been rereading one of my all-time favorite baseball books, Ballpark by Peter Richmond. It's about how Oriole Park at Camden Yards came to be, about what a unique idea it was, how all involved took great pains to create (not imitate) the retro ballpark style, why it replaced locally beloved Memorial Stadium. Columnist John Steadman wrote during the period when not every Baltimorean was sold on the Camden charm, “If it's being built to look old and rundown, we already have one of those.”
As the Memorial finale approached, it became a sentimental mission in Baltimore to have Mike Flanagan throw the final Oriole pitch. Flanagan, a 23-game winner for the A.L. champion Birds of '79, came up in 1975. He was the next in a long line of great Oriole pitching products. He lasted a dozen years before being traded to Toronto in a classic deadline deal in which a veteran is sent from a lousy team to a contending team. The Oriole Way by then, 1987, was just a memory. In 1991, at age 39, he came home to Baltimore to relieve and, by his own admission, maybe throw that ultimate Memorial Stadium pitch. On that Sunday afternoon, the fans clamored to have him come in from the bullpen and finish off an era. He did, and it was, Richmond recounts, beautiful.
When I reread that passage, it got me thinking about who should start the final game at Shea. I mean really should. If we leave out fantasy picks like Seaver and Gooden (who's only 43, y'know), I concluded, sadly, there's no obvious choice. None of our current starters has that kind of Met tenure that demands the ball. Yeah, I thought, Pedro, kind of, but…ah, not really. I'm more concerned that Pedro has a next start, not a last start. Santana, as much as we're relying on him for now and beyond, doesn't speak to Shea's history. Pelfrey is mildly appealing in this context as potentially the next righty flamethrower to dominate the National League, an extension (we hope) of the Tom & Doc lineage. It's not a great fit, but it would do by default. (And unless you're yearning for time to almost literally stand still on September 28, I don't think there's enough of an emotional connection to sign Steve Trachsel to a one-day contract.)
Tuesday night, however, it hit me. It hit me like Gerut hit Heilman. Let Aaron do it. Let Aaron have that final start at Shea Stadium. Let Aaron, who was a batterymate of Piazza, who was on the same staff as Leiter and Franco, who was drafted by the defending National League champions, who threw a complete game one-hitter, take the ball. Let Aaron Heilman have one final moment he can enjoy at Shea Stadium. Aaron's sucked up a lot of thankless innings (and, yes, given up a lot of long home runs), but he's likable enough. Give him the ball.
Besides, if we're gonna rely on him to close anymore this season, it's not like that final game is going to have implications beyond the sentimental.
by Greg Prince on 5 August 2008 8:28 pm Funny thing about the Apple Store: it doesn't feature a gigantic top hat and has nothing to do with home runs.
My Mac is on the fritz. Might be MIA for a bit. You can all go about your lives in the interim.
Let's Go Mets.
by Greg Prince on 4 August 2008 6:45 pm Two things are wrong with the 75 Greatest Moments at Shea Presented by Nikon ballot.
1) The non-baseball stuff.
2) The baseball stuff.
Otherwise, it’s perfect.
Only kidding. There’s lots wrong with this vote — or “multimedia platform” as the press release refers to it — to determine the greatest moment at Shea Stadium, starting with the definition of a “moment”. According to the Mets and Nikon, a moment could be one blink in time or it could span days, even months.
It is also burdened by hindsight. Much of what is listed is of the “ya don’t say!” variety. Shea had the Ice Capades? A title fight? Jethro Tull? Ya don’t say! Even the baseball choices are flecked with after-the-fact trivia, items that didn’t strike the contemporary observer as great but are wedged in now to show somebody did his homework.
The Mets announced this promotion on July 22. They waited more than a half-season to get it going and are giving fans all of 24 days (through August 15) to vote to determine the Top Ten; from there a second vote will determine the order of those ten. I don’t understand why they didn’t get on this earlier. I also don’t understand why they limited themselves to 75 moments as opposed to 100 or why it’s not a baseball-only ballot. I get that Shea has hosted other very notable events but this is a ballot directed at Mets fans. Why not, on the off chance that this is supposed to be taken seriously, have a blue & orange-ribbon panel present the ten biggest non-Mets things and leave the baseball voting to the fans?
Why send out a fleet of car dealers to count down Shea’s final days? But we’ve been down that road.
Non-Baseball
Twenty-six of seventy-five spots on this ballot were given over to events that had nothing to do with the Mets. That’s more than a third. That’s excessive bordering on disgraceful. That leaves 49 slots for the Mets: 49 slots to cover 45 years.
Here’s how the non-baseball stuff breaks down.
• Jets: 4
The four Jets “moments” chosen were the first Jets game at Shea; the AFL championship game that sent the Jets to Super Bowl III; the first Monday Night Football telecast from Shea; and the final Jets game in Queens.
Can’t argue with the win over the Raiders. Without it, there’s no guarantee in Miami. As you’ll see, many of the firsts on the ballot are overblown, but the first Jets game in the gleaming new stadium in New York (after four years of struggling in the Polo Grounds) was a milestone for both the franchise and the American Football League. I’ll give them that.
First MNF game? Trivial. Final game? Sad. Sad doesn’t keep it from being historic, but they could have done better. Much better. How about December 20, 1981 when the Jets earned their first NFL playoff berth by sacking the Packers and in the process dragging the Giants into the playoffs for their first playoff appearance in 18 years? Or November 22, 1981, the thriller for the ages when Richard Todd, wearing a flak jacket to protect his cracked ribs, led the Jets downfield in the final three minutes — hitting six different receivers — to eclipse the hated Dolphins 16-15? Or Broadway Joe’s New York debut on September 18, 1965? Or October 1, 1967 when Joe Willie Namath threw for 415 yards en route to a milestone 4,000-yard passing season? Or, though you wouldn’t really want him back as a guest, December 16, 1973, the day O.J. Simpson passed the 2,000-yard rushing mark?
I’m not that big a Jets fan and I could figure out there was more to their Shea stay than what the ballot lists.
• Other Sports: 8
Two college football games, two soccer matches, two title fights, the Ice Capades and the first Giants home game in 1975.
Throw out the two college football games, the two soccer matches, the two title fights, the Ice Capades and the first Giants home game in 1975. It’s all worth noting in some context (we gave a college QB, a boxer, a goalkeeper and a Giant cameos in our Countdown Like It Oughta Be), but none of it comes close to constituting one of the 75 great moments at Shea. It’s amusing that the Ice Capades brought its show to an outdoor facility in June, but so what? This hodgepodge, even the Giants’ Flushing cameo, has been lost to the mists of time. A Greatest Moments ballot with a finite number of spaces is the not the venue for rescuing them. I appreciate the impulse to nod toward the mutipurposeness of our longtime home, but this smacks of someone having flipped through the neat Shea history inserts that have appeared in a couple of Mets yearbooks this decade and thinking it would be cute to include these episodes. It’s not.
But if you are going down this road, why no professional rasslin’? Andre The Giant took on boxing’s Bayonne Bleeder, Chuck Wepner, at Shea in 1976, the same night Muhammad Ali threw down against Antnio Inoki — boxer vs. wrestler — in Tokyo, which itself was shown closed-circuit at Shea. Now that was an event.
None of these, save for a Rickrolling, will be chosen as one of the final ten. But being considered, being on the ballot at all, should signify something beyond “look what we found in the attic!”
• Spiritual: 2
Billy Graham brought his crusade to Shea in 1970. Pope John Paul II rallied the youth there in 1979. That’s some name-brand religion right there. I can see why they’re on the ballot. The Jehovah’s Witnesses (’78) and the Promise Keepers (’96) also brought in the masses, but they go unmentioned. Everybody seems to remember the Papal visit. The others, rightly or wrongly, are ya don’t say! But I can see John Paul and the Rev. Graham as legitimate entrants; they’re religious rock stars.
Speaking of which…
• Concerts: 12
This is a tough category because if you saw Jethro Tull in 1976 or Elton John with Eric Clapton in 1992 or looked in vain for Jimi Hendrix at the Festival for Peace in 1970 (he wasn’t there, every eyewitness swears, but Janis Joplin sure was), then I’ll bet it was a great moment at Shea (well, maybe not Tull). But does every big concert rate the same treatment? I’ve heard over the years how awesome the Who and Clash were, how captivating the Police were, how seismic the Stones were, how breathtaking Bruce Springsteen was and I experienced for myself the incredible spectacle Billy Joel produced. Grand Funk fortified Shea’s rock legacy and having Simon & Garfunkel homeward bound in Queens after all their years apart was pretty special.
But can we agree there’s the Beatles’ first show in 1965 and there’s everything else? And if we’re talking about Greatness, there’s the Beatles’ first show and nothing else — not even the Beatles’ followup in ’66 — could possibly match it? Seems to devalue the concept of Great Moments when everything is granted equivalency. Beatles ’65 in a class of its own. Everybody else, from Janis to Billy? Maybe not the Ice Capades, but not the Beatles ’65.
Baseball
Now the fun starts. And if you remember that was the 1983 marketing slogan, you’ll be stunned to find out what’s been omitted by your New York Mets. We’ll get to that in, as they say at Nikon, a moment.
There are 49 baseball-related moments on the ballot. One is tangentially Mets and it is also the most unwieldy entry of them all: “1975 Sports Season,” alluding to the Mets, Yankees, Jets and Giants sharing Shea for a season while construction projects proceeded apace in the Bronx and East Rutherford. Beyond “1975 Sports Season” making for a clumsily defined moment, this is, again, trivia in context. The all-hands-on-deckery is a groovy footnote to a comprehensive history of Shea, but there was nothing great about either football team that year; something tells me if the Giants hadn’t won the Super Bowl in 2008, they wouldn’t show up twice on the ballot.
This entry also seems to be a backhanded way of acknowledging that the Yankees called Shea home for two seasons. It’s a little more than ya don’t say!, a little less than Great Moments material. I’d prefer to make the ballot Mets-exclusive, but if you’re doing it this way, then let’s be menschen about this and offer an actual Yankee moment at Shea (and no, not the time a cannon in a pregame military ceremony took out the centerfield fence). You could choose from Catfish Hunter’s Yankee debut on April 11, 1975 (a huge harbinger of things to come regarding free agentry and the power of the pinstriped checkbook); Billy Martin’s first managerial homecoming (Old Timers Day, August 2, 1975) or even April 6, 1974, their first home game in our park.
I know, it’s strange that I’m being magnanimous toward them, but as long as we’re doing this aspect of Shea history, let’s do it right.
That leaves 48 Mets Moments on the ballot. One of them is the 1964 All-Star Game, technically not a Mets game, but with Ron Hunt starting and Shea receiving its first national audience (and Johnny Callison slugging a walkoff winner for the N.L.), it absolutely belongs. So really that leaves us 47.
Here’s how the rest of it breaks down.
• Postseason: 18
Need more, not less. You can’t go wrong with playoff and World Series highlights. The only one that surprised me a little was the inclusion of Game Five of the ’73 World Series. It was a perfectly neat 2-0 victory over Oakland and it put the Mets up 3-2 (with a promise on the scoreboard that Miracle No. 2 was 3,000 miles away), but Games Three and Four were livelier and, in their way, more Shealike. But we lost Game Three in eleven innings — you might faint if reminded in this process that the Mets aren’t perfect — and Game Four, which featured a Rusty Staub homer and the Mike Andrews ovation, was overlooked.
All four 1969 games are in. The two wins over the Reds from 1973 are in. The two heartstoppers against Houston, Games Three and Five, are in. Buckner and the almost incidental Game Seven from ’86 are in, of course. The überclassics from the Valentine era (Pratt, Robin, Benny, Bobby Jones) are in. And the unforgettable fire of Lo Duca’s Double Tag and Endy’s Catch (from a loss!) make it as well.
Not in? Besides an additional A’s game? Nothing from the ’88 NLCS, which is semi-understandable. Game Three in the muck was an exciting win, but maybe it’s just too much of a reminder of what followed in Games Four and Five. Nothing from the 2000 World Series, which I find childish. Game Three? Benny delivering in the clutch? C’mon. I know the rest didn’t turn out well, but to ignore the Subway Series is revisionist nonsense. I also wonder where Game Four against the Braves from ’99 went; rallying off John Rocker to avoid the sweep and force the Grand Slam Single game was monumental.
• Clinchings & Such: 5
The “such” refers to October 3, 1999, the Melvin Mora Game, whose presence on this list utterly delights and kind of shocks me. It clinched only (only) a tie for the Wild Card, but those of who attended knew it as deliverance. It’s clinching enough to be mentioned alongside the securing of division titles in ’69, ’86, ’88 and ’06. I can see leaving out the 2000 Wild Card clinching as it was a tad anticlimactic, but if you weren’t wasting our time with ice follies, there’d be room for it.
• Retirement Ceremonies: 5
Tricky terrain. Jackie Robinson Night? Absolutely; the President of the United States was on hand, on the field. Tom Seaver Day? Absolutely. Still the only player to get the treatment and Tom made it all the more memorable by jogging to the mound and bowing in every direction toward the fans.
But Gil Hodges and Casey Stengel is equivalency in action. They retired No. 14 during Old Timers Day in ’73. It was a great gesture, but not one that seems to have been remembered down the corridors of time. Everybody knows 14 was retired — I’d be willing to bet few had any idea when exactly it was retired. And Casey? Casey’s number was retired on a Thursday afternoon in front of almost nobody. It was hours before gametime. The photo of him limping off the field with thousands of empty seats behind him may evoke melancholy but not so much a great moment at Shea. I wouldn’t begrudge Mr. Hodges or Mr. Stengel their numbers, but as “Great Moments,” each of these feels like a well-meaning reach.
(Wrote Robert Creamer in Stengel: His Life and Times, “His uniform shirt was put on display in a glass case in the stadium’s Diamond Club, although Casey said before leaving the ballpark, ‘I’d like to see them give that number 37 to some young player so it can go on and do some good for the Mets. I hope they don’t put a mummy in the glass case.'”)
You want to honor Gil as part of this? Try July 30, 1969, the day he ambled out to left field and pulled Cleon Jones for not hustling. It was stern, it was definitive, it was professional, it’s what everybody pointed to, even then, as a turning point for the young Mets. Casey? His 74th birthday party, when he received a rousing on-field chorus of “Happy Birthday To You” from the Dodgers seems more festive than the solemn episode that was selected.
Though the number 24 wasn’t taken out of circulation, Willie Mays’ Say Goodbye to America farewell was quite possibly the most moving ceremony in Shea Stadium history. If you watched it as it happened and then went out for a 35-year smoke, you’d be shocked to find out 24 wasn’t retired. Good call getting this on the list.
• Records: 7
Interesting company here. Seaver’s ten consecutive strikeouts still boggle the mind. Of course that belongs. The 23-inning game (7:23) that was the second game of a doubleheader is still, I’m pretty sure, the longest National League game ever by time. No arguments with its inclusion (even if it was a Mets loss). Since it was a big deal in its day and it set a team record (albeit since tied), Todd Hundley’s 41st homer in 1996 can stay, even if Javy Lopez later broke the catchers’ single-season mark and Hundley was implicated in the Mitchell Report. The Mets have since scored more than ten runs in one inning, but little in Shea’s 45 years was as electric as the ten-run inning the Mets hung up in the eighth against the Braves on June 30, 2000, especially the three-run shot Mike Piazza blasted to put the Mets ahead. (It was the Mets’ second ten-run frame; the first, in ’79, goes missing.)
Piazza setting the all-time catchers’ career mark in homers strikes me as only borderline Mets-historic. At least Hundley’s 41st established a Mets record. I recall being far more excited when Mike hit a walkoff shot the next night in the eleventh. I was also more excited when Mike was traded to the Mets and made his debut at Shea in 1998, which I bring up because that was one of the Ten Greatest Moments in team history as determined by fan balloting in 2000, yet it’s not listed here at all.
Yet Ice Capades is.
Tommie Agee’s longest-ever home run? This was a lost classic — urban myth almost — for a quarter-century until Howie Rose’s campaign to have it marked in the Upper Deck reached fruition on July 15, 1994 as part of that weekend’s 25th-anniversary celebration of 1969. It’s nice to have it in here, but if Howie hadn’t succeeded, no way, in light of the lack of film, does it resurface as a Greatest Moment.
Finally, there are Robin Ventura’s two grand slams in the doubleheader of May 20, 1999. I was at that doubleheader. It was a notch on my fan belt to say I saw the second grand slam (twinbill began at 4:40 on a Thursday). We all wondered if it was a first and we were impressed when it was announced that it was a singular feat. Swell. But three days later, John Olerud capped a five-run bottom of the ninth by singling home the winning runs off Curt Schilling. The Mets came back from 0-4 to win 5-0. That was a way bigger moment than either of Ventura’s May 20 grand slams. And it’s not listed. I’d substitute at once.
• Iconography: 10
First game at Shea (albeit the first Mets loss at Shea); first win at Shea (though not as well known as the first loss because it was the third game); Seaver’s near-perfecto; the black cat; Willie’s Say Hey homer to beat the Giants in his first game since 1957 playing for New York; the Ball Off The Wall play that sank the Pirates; the blackout of ’77 interrupting Lenny Randle’s at-bat; Gary Carter’s Opening Day walkoff home run to beat Neil Allen; Piazza post-9/11.
Of course to all nine of the above. The tenth is a misfire:
1981 Season — The Home Run Apple Hat “arrives” before the 1981 campaign
Please. You’re joking.
This isn’t about disliking the Apple. I like the Apple. I would take it rather than leave it. But “1981 season” as its moment? While I credit whoever did this for finally getting the season right (it’s often referred to as arriving in 1980), the Apple, like the Agee Upper Deck blast, picked up steam after the fact. The Apple’s a bit of a cause célèbre these days, but when it and its hat were plopped down beyond right-center, it was a silly little gimmick. It remained so until kitsch became king in this decade. The Apple’s planting was no more a story in the spring of ’81 than the erecting of Kingman Fallout Zone signs in the parking lot (management not responsible for flying baseballs).
The Apple was an offshoot of The Magic Is Back ad campaign of 1980. That resonated because, as I’m fond of pointing out, the 1980 Mets played with a little otherworldly spirit for a few months that summer. The Magic was symbolized by Steve Henderson’s two-out three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth on June 14, 1980, the one that capped a five-run rally which brought the Mets all the way back from down 6-0 to win 7-6. It was, as I’m also fond of pointing out, a night like no other in that era. The curtain call may have been invented that evening. That’s your Magic moment. But it’s not on the ballot.
If you’re going to honor the Apple, add “Mets hire Joe Pignatano as bullpen coach” because Piggy planted tomatoes in the pen and those tomatoes were the signature produce of Shea long before (and even after) the Apple came along.
Inconsequential Trivia: 2
The April ’98 emergency doubleheader that placed the Yankees at Shea in the afternoon when the Mets were scheduled to play at night: marginal at best. If you’re going to play it up, mention at least that Darryl Strawberry hit a homer for the other “home” team and that the Apple operator, as if by habit, raised the Mets’ Apple in homage (halfway before realizing it was probably bad form).
The first Interleague game at Shea against the Red Sox in 1997 is the single worst Mets choice on the ballot. I was there. There was indeed an air of significance in the ballpark, I’ll give them that. But you use this as your representative Interleague moment and you ignore the Matt Franco Game? Never mind the Marlon Anderson Game or the 14-inning comeback against the Blue Jays. YOU IGNORE THE MATT FRANCO GAME but make eligible a game no one ever talks about, a game whose result, I would venture, isn’t automatically known to Mets fans. (We lost.) I don’t know how this slipped onto the list or how the glorious MATT FRANCO GAME, a staple of Mets Classics on SNY of all channels, failed to make the cut.
But as long as the Ice Capades made it.
Incidentally, as with Piazza’s Met debut, the Matt Franco Game was on the Ten Greatest Moments ballot in 2000 but isn’t here. A few other Shea moments seem to have been disappeared in the intervening eight years as well:
• Tug McGraw coining “You Gotta Believe,” pegged then as July 9, 1973 (I’ve seen various dates, but all agree it was at Shea)
• Doc’s one-hitter against the Cubs in ’84
• Doc striking out 16 Pirates one start later to set a rookie record (that K Korner was far more iconic than the Apple in the ’80s)
• HoJo reaching the 30-30 milestone in 1989 (it wasn’t the first time he’d done it and it was the day Willie Randolph Pendletoned Don Aase, so I wonder why it was on the ballot last time)
• John Franco’s 400th save (I didn’t care then, I don’t care now, but this organization used to hold John Franco Day every three years)
Though not specifically a Shea moment, the 2000 ballot also included “Terrific Debut,” for Tom Seaver’s rookie season. For our 2008 purposes, we could — though it would require a touch of hindsight — include April 13, 1967, Tom Seaver’s first-ever game, a Mets win. It indeed occurred at Shea Stadium. He’s only The Franchise.
Which brings me to Now The Fun Starts. Like I said, that was the ’83 slogan, hilarious in retrospect given the 6-15 stumble that sent that season into the pits immediately. But the very first game of 1983 you could not argue with as fun…as momentous…as historic…as emotional…as a milestone…as one of the Greatest Moments at Shea by any objective or sentient accounting.
Except by the Mets’ or Nikon’s.
April 5, 1983 — Nearly six years after the trade that sent him to Cincinnati, Tom Seaver returns to the mound for the New York Mets on Opening Day in a 2-0 win over the Phillies.
There are many, many, many great Mets moments at Shea that have gotten the shaft in this process. If I start listing those I haven’t mentioned already, I’ll be here all week. But Tom Seaver’s return was as Shea a moment as you could hope for. The king no longer in exile; his subjects overjoyed; the world righted.
Steve Wulf captured the energy of the afternoon for the cover story in April 18, 1983’s Sports Illustrated, starting with the banners that fans flew to salute George Thomas Seaver:
WELCOME BACK, TOMMY TERRIFIC
WELCOME HOME, TOM
GT CAME HOME
Then the first official acknowledgement of what was at hand:
The introduction of the starting lineup was made at 1:20. After the eighth batter, Catcher Ron Hodges, was introduced, Public Address Announcer Jack Franchetti said simply, “Batting ninth and pitching, now warming up in the bullpen, Number 41.” No name, just the number. The cheering began.
At 1:29 No. 41 finished his warmups. His catcher, rookie Ronn Reynolds, asked him if he kept his warmup ball or took it to the mound with him. When Seaver asked why, Reynolds explained that there was a handicapped boy near the railing in the right field corner who’d asked him for a ball earlier, and maybe Seaver could give the kid the ball.
“I thought it might make his day,” said Reynolds. “Heck, maybe it’ll make his life.” The fans were already on their feet and cheering when Seaver walked over to the stands to give the ball away. “That showed me so much,” said Reynolds. “I had a tear in my eye.”
Seaver then began his procession to the dugout. In the crowd were his wife, children, three sisters, mother and father. He tipped his hat, placed it back on his head, tipped it again, waved it twice, put it back on, tipped it once more, this time thrusting it skyward, and disappeared into the dugout.
“I knew it would be emotional,” Seaver said later, “but I didn’t think it would be that emotional. I had to block out a lot of it because I was pitching, but if I wasn’t, I would have cried. I know my mother lost it.”
Seaver then “went the length of the Mets dugout,” Wulf wrote, “shaking hands with everybody on the bench, wishing each of them luck, pumping them up.” One club employee said the gesture of the Hall of Famer to be reaching out to each of his teammates is “what really gave me chills.”
And that was all before a single pitch was fired. Tom threw six shutout innings. The Mets beat Steve Carlton 2-0. A stadium long moribund was unquestionably reignited.
That, according to the Mets-Nikon ballot, is NOT one of the 75 Greatest Moments at Shea.
But how about them Ice Capades?
Next Monday: A chance to get Essential.
by Greg Prince on 3 August 2008 11:18 pm Evans! Murphy! Kunz! The future is now!
Some of it anyway.
It may not have been planned this way, it may not have been conceived as a winning strategy for 2008, but three Mets prospects, if such entities exist, walk, talk, hit, catch, run and throw among us. In the last two days, Nick Evans has gained big-time seniority within the kiddie corps. In the last two days, a kiddie corps has formed: Evans and Murphy and Kunz.
Evans, 22, and Daniel Murphy, 23, are the co-starting leftfielders. Eddie Kunz, 22, is the closer. These arrangements may be temporary or they may be a harbinger of what is to come. Either way, it's going on right now in the midst of what is still, despite recent evidence to the contrary, a pennant race.
It could be short-term disastrous because kids have to learn the ropes and rope-learning can be a lengthy process. It can start, as it did for Murphy Saturday night, with a base hit and an Endylicious catch at the left field wall. It can start, as it did for Kunz this afternoon, with a bunt tossed high of Delgado's head. It will probably continue for both of them as it has for Evans, whose unforeseen Rocky Mountain High debut in May was more aberration than indicator where his immediate 2008 fortunes were concerned.
But this may not be about 2008 anymore. We're at the Elmer's Glue-and-stamp hinges stage with this team. Maine's on the DL. Wagner's in for an MRI. The Mets admirably burrowed through July without more than (by Jerry Manuel's admission) two authentic outfielders and perpetually short a starting pitcher. The bullpen gave us their all and it appears they have little left to give. Luck — illustrated by Saturday's bizarre anti-Double Tag play in which Mark Loretta and Hunter Pence came out winners in a three-legged race whose finish line was Ramon Castro's ankle — seems to have been placed on irrevocable waivers. The Mets have lost six of eight. First they were losing heartbreakers. Now they're losing every way and everybody.
So it's pre-2009 a little. It's Evans and Murphy platooning in left because Manuel can't keep rotating old infielders out there. It's Kunz en route to closing because Billy's left forearm's feeling the strain of all the innings it's thrown and all the saves it's blown. It's potentially Jonathon Niese, 21, come Friday if the Zephyrs don't overwhelm his pitch count Monday. It's Fernando Martinez, 19, you've gotta figure, sooner rather than later if he stays out of harm's way.
It's the real Citi Field Preview Center at Shea in August and September should there be a protracted shortage of Maine and Wagner and Church. It's not impossible to win some games that way if the veterans who are still standing don't fall apart. It's not utterly implausible that the Mets — 2½ out pending the ESPN action tonight — can ride the Youth of America to continued contention. But recalling past Augusts when injuries mounted and neophytes were inserted, I wouldn't rush to get my hopes up.
For 2008, that is. For 2009 and beyond, with Kunz and Murphy and Evans and maybe Niese and Martinez on display, getting our hopes up early might be the wise move to make.
by Greg Prince on 3 August 2008 7:25 am For ten
Marvelous
Exciting
Tremendous
Spectacular
games, everything went the
Marvelous
Exciting
Tremendous
Spectacular
way.
Pitchers' duels. Slugfests. Late and close. Early and often. Go-ahead runs. Tack-on runs. Baserunners stranded. Dominant starting. Sterling relief. Almost everything going right.
Lately, it's been
Miserable
Enervating
Torpid
Slack
Not sure exactly where it started. Since the ten
Marvelous
Exciting
Tremendous
Spectacular
games, the
Miserable
Enervating
Torpid
Slack
ledger amounts to 6-8. That's fourteen games. That, by any calculation, is longer than ten games. Of more immediate concern, over the past seven games, the
Miserable
Enervating
Torpid
Slack
record is 2-5, with every one of the
Miserable
Enervating
Torpid
Slack
losses turning on plays that have gone against the
Miserable
Enervating
Torpid
Slack
Pitchers' duels. Slugfests. Late and close. Early and often. Go-ahead runs. Tack-on runs. Baserunners stranded. Dominant starting. Sterling relief. Several things not going right.
Numbers are numbers. The
Marvelous
Exciting
Tremendous
Spectacular
margin was one game ahead of the pack a week ago. Now, suddenly, the
Miserable
Enervating
Torpid
Slack
can be found in third place, two games out.
Numbers are numbers. What is quantifiable can shift quickly in baseball. Numbers comprise the bottom line yet may not necessarily signify much for the long haul. Yesterday's 10-0 is today's 6-8 or 2-5. But there's something more alarming about the empirical turn the season has taken. For one night, maybe two, you can chalk it up to the balls not falling in where they fell in last week, the call not being made where it was being made. You don't have to infer the be-all and end-all from the bottom line of the moment. But you string it together over enough time, and you can feel the season very slowly getting away. It's not so much the lagging that brings you down from 10-0 to 6-8 — or its subset of 2-5. It's not just a matter of having been one up in first to being, a week later, two out in third. It's something in the course of events that is hinting to you what was
Marvelous
Exciting
Tremendous
Spectacular
has morphed as if via time-lapse photography to
Miserable
Enervating
Torpid
Slack
Pitchers' duels. Slugfests. Late and close. Early and often. Go-ahead runs. Tack-on runs. Baserunners stranded. Dominant starting. Sterling relief. Almost nothing going right.
Almost; but what goes wrong…hoo boy, does it ever.
It's a little chilly for this early in August. But it's still early August. Plenty of time left to return to
Marvelous
Exciting
Tremendous
Spectacular
Really there is.
by Jason Fry on 2 August 2008 5:42 am Pedro Martinez looked ragged. Brandon Backe looked ragged.
The Mets had a promising inning immediately snuffed by a somewhat unlikely double play. The Astros had a promising inning immediately snuffed by a somewhat unlikely double play.
The Mets loaded the bases with nobody out. It looked like they might get nothing from such endeavors, but then with two out Carlos Delgado smashed a ball to left … and into Carlos Lee's glove. The Astros loaded the bases with nobody out. It looked like they might get nothing from such endeavors, but then with one out Mark Loretta hit a grand slam.
I liked it better when the parallel was holding.
The Marlins and Phillies lost, so we didn't lose any ground — but neither did we make any up. Is this a dip? A blip? A rut? A slide? You never know till later, when Good King Hindsight has ruled and the dots have been connected. Let's hope they're continuing to head up the mountain, rather than back into the valley.
by Greg Prince on 1 August 2008 4:36 am 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 380 regular-season and 13 postseason games to date. The Log records the numbers. The Tales tell the stories.
8/3/02 (1st) Sa Arizona 5-4 Trachsel 8 143-106 L 8-5 (10)
Holy fudge, the season is two-thirds over and August has begun. Summer is going again, isn’t it?
Damn.
The ancestral impulse is to shudder at this annual development. Summer’s half gone, probably more. It used to span late June to the Tuesday after Labor Day. Then on the Wednesday after that, school. The beginning of August meant the masochistic counting of the days until summer was truly over. Back-to-school commercials inundated the airwaves. TSS and Echo Stationers were lousy with school supplies. My mother went on about my getting new slacks for school. Every bleeping sentence had the word “school” in it.
I haven’t been required back in school the Wednesday after Labor Day since 1980, haven’t had any kind of school year loom in the ever-shortening distance since August 1984, yet I still shudder when July becomes August, when only a third of a baseball season remains. Summer will end. Baseball season will end. I’m hardwired to recoil at the dual thoughts. Summer and baseball season were all I ever looked forward to in the course of a year. Every year they came. For a while they converged, and it was everything I wanted. Then they left, without fail, in rapid succession. Taking their place was nothing. Acres of it, spreading before me as cold and empty and awful.
It’s been nearly a quarter-century since I answered to the job description of student. It’s longer than that since I was a kid. But I’m still that person. My values haven’t changed one iota since I discovered baseball and summer. They’re still what I look forward to when they’re not here. They’re still what are taken away too soon after they embed themselves for what you think is going to be the long haul. Summer and baseball season wind down and disappear.
The cold and the empty and the awful — those you can count on putting down roots.
But both summer and baseball season are still here. They’re here and they’ll dig in for these next 31 days as a matched set. It will change come September because September changes everything. It can’t help itself, it’s what it does. September will yank the summer out of the sky and the warmth from our air (don’t be fooled by residual atmospheric conditions like humidity; summer’s about more than weather). September will then take an axe and murder what’s left of the baseball season. A few lucky participants will escape the carnage and live to see October, but that’s mostly a TV show. It’s fun to watch, it’s even more fun to be in, but it’s not the baseball season. It’s a fab party thrown by the executioner is what it is. And when it’s over…cold and empty and awful.
I can’t say for sure when I first met baseball as a daily, going concern. I don’t have a date I can offer you, and I sure do like to pinpoint things. But I do know it was in summer, the summer I was 6, the summer of 1969, the first summer — based on a year of interacting with my kindergarten class — I dreaded going back to school. Might have been July, might have been August. I know I was hooked by September. Whichever month or week or moment it was, it’s safe to identify the August we have just entered as my fortieth August with baseball.
An article I read in Sport magazine when I was no more than 12 informed me that August represented “the dog days” in baseball, when players dragged from the heat and the accumulation of innings and, if their team was out of it, the sense of futility that enveloped them. That article is where I learned about greenies: amphetamines, the uppers that would sit in bowls on clubhouse tables as if they were M&M’s. It was said that come August, players routinely grabbed for greenies. Except for one team in one August. Ron Swoboda was quoted in that article as saying the Mets of 1969 didn’t need any artificial stimulation. It was so exciting to be a Met that year, that month, that everybody passed on the pills. They, like us, were high on being part of something miraculous.
Those ’69 Mets turned it on in August. Even if I didn’t grasp all the details in real time, theirs was the legend I took with me into the ’70s: 9½ back of the Cubs, dipped to third place on August 15, two weekend doubleheaders with the expansion Padres on tap, school starting in a little less than three weeks. They sweep the Padres twice at Shea, they take care of the Giants and Dodgers and then they go to California and they win three more in San Diego. On August 27, the Mets are in second, 2½ behind Chicago and no wonder nobody’s turning green in the clubhouse.
An August like 1969 makes you look forward to September even as you dread it. An August like 1969 skews your expectations for Augusts to come. It allows you to hold tight in the immediately succeeding Augusts that don’t amount to much and it lets you read with hope dispiriting standings that have the Mets sixth of six on August 30 and it permits your eye to wander to the Games Behind column where you reason, sure you’re in last, but you’re only 6½ out of first and nobody in front of you is more than three over .500 and we don’t have such a bad team, do we?
We don’t, and staying barely afloat through August 1973 skews your expectations some more. You dread September because it will unveil to you the fresh hell of fifth grade, but you embrace it because you will arrive with as good a chance as anybody to be division champion.
You are, as they say on the Television Without Pity boards, completely spoiled now. You know what’s going to happen. Or you think you do. You think every August can work like two of your first five, that you can rise from the dead whenever you feel like it because it’s August and that’s what the Mets do. But the Mets don’t in 1974, when they have no realistic shot at it; and they don’t in 1975, when they absolutely do have a shot; and they don’t in 1976, when they play like they have a shot but they waited far too long and let the Phillies get too far ahead for it to substantively matter.
Augusts take a holiday thereafter. You’re insane to think that any of the next seven Augusts will work to your advantage. You’re willing to believe once or twice, putting your credibility on the line in ’80, which feels a bit like ’73, or ’75 at least, but isn’t anything of the kind. By the end of August 1980, the last August when you have to listen to someone harass you about the need for new slacks, it’s 1979 all over again. And ’81 — they rigged the system in ’81. They’re going to give you a do-over because they ruptured your summer with their heinous strike and you think that with a good start (and you do go 8-5) you can forge a mini-’69. But you don’t. Augusts revert to the dog days for a couple more years and you try not to wonder how many Mets are popping how many pills.
But August gets close to what it’s supposed to be in ’84. All of ’84 is what it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be 1969 every year, every August. This is how you came up when you were 6, with the Mets erupting in August and the rest of the National League taking cover. Except the ’84 Mets peak too soon. Their climax was in July: a little premature. Oh, it was still fun…a blast! But the Mets are going the wrong way as August ends, as your summer ends, as you head back to school for the final time in your life, when heading back to school means not waiting for a bus at the corner but packing your car and hauling your ass more than a thousand miles.
You graduate the next April but August is still August the next August. It’s strange to not count the days until school starts. You feel the phantom anxiety anyway. If you’re not going back to school, exactly where are you going? And can you just watch the game in peace? Because this August is the one you’ve been waiting a dozen, maybe sixteen years for. You are blazing through August, the first couple of weeks for sure. You flirt with first place the whole month. Without school to harsh your buzz, you look forward to September. You dream of October. You have no idea what you’ll do with yourself come November, but never mind that now. It’s 1985 and the Mets are in a pennant race!
Your dreams are dashed. Though September was a rush, the first few days of October are the definitive buzzkill. Your baseball season ended. Your summer didn’t last. Your summer never lasts. Your summer never really generates the heat it once did when you could feel it tangibly slipping away, slipping into school, where someone said you had to be the Wednesday after Labor Day. It was always cold and awful and empty once August and baseball season were gone. Now it lacks instructions, too.
What are you going to do with yourself ’til next summer?
Well, you’ll just wait, because that summer is 1986 and that makes everything better. Summer begins early in 1986 and it frolics clear into fall. August of ’86 is a rampage. It started 15½ up; it ended nineteen ahead. It’s so easy. You’re old enough to know better that this August, more than ’69, more than ’73, is the aberration. You know you can never have another one like August of ’86. It’s too easy.
Yet if it’s so easy, how hard could it be to have something maybe not quite as awesome but still pretty good? Why can’t August of ’87 morph into August of ’86? It just can’t, that why. Why can’t August of ’88 springboard into a September and October like ’86? It can, but only to a point. Why can’t August of ’89…it won’t, OK? Get over ’86 before another decade settles in. It’s not gonna happen again. August ’86, like all of ’86, is once in a lifetime. Put another way, your lifetime is primarily the Wednesday after Labor Day until some Friday in late June — 1986 is your one summer in the middle of it.
Your Augusts, after 1990’s last gasp of ’86ish expectation, decline into dismal routine. Every one of them peters out of relevancy by midmonth. August is very much like every other month, just stickier. Your Mets are, for the most part, exhausted by August. Your baseball season has been long punctured. Summer’s a technicality by now. You still don’t want it to end, but like the baseball season, it’s pretty much as dreary as everything else. For you and the Mets, it’s always the Wednesday after Labor Day, it’s never that Friday in late June.
1997 alters the scheme of things. The scheme of things had to swerve at some point. When you were younger, summer had been about ancillary concerns as much as watching baseball. You did go outside sometimes. You did ride your bike to get somewhere. You played ball almost as much as you watched it. You were a kid, though you were loath to admit it since you were always kind of waiting around to be an adult, even though you had no clue what adulthood had in store, and once you got there you never really knew what to do with it. In 1997, it felt like summer for real. The Mets were alive in August, as alive as they’d been since 1990 when they let you down, but did so late enough in the game that you’d recall it fondly when the present gave you nothing. You’d have given anything through the arid Augusts of 1991 to 1996 to have been let down hard as long as you weren’t let down early.
So it came to pass in ’97 that your Mets hung around. In retrospect, they weren’t as close as you thought — it wasn’t even first place they neared; it was a Wild Card — and, no, they didn’t pull a ’69 or a ’73. But you thought they might. That’s what you needed in August, that’s what you needed to fend off September or at least to face it like a man. You needed a shot. You got your shot in ’97. You didn’t convert it, but you took it and it reminded you of why you so looked forward to summer and to baseball season. You looked forward to them both lasting as long as they could, like in a Country Time commercial. In 1997, your Mets made lemonade.
And that was just the beginning. Every August up the road a piece from there stopped time in its way. Every August after ’97 didn’t exclusively bode the cold and the awful and the empty. Those Augusts made September a potential destination, made October more than an outlandish fantasy. Those Augusts, a couple of them in particular, you could see yourself walking right by the bowl of greenies. Who would need artificial stimulation when you had the 1999 Mets and the 2000 Mets?
Who could stay sober through the Augusts that Augusts became far too soon after? Who could have dreamed that you’d begin August 2002 within 4½ of the Wild Card — a chance — and that you’d end August sixteen games away from it, stranded in last place, staring September in the fist as the laughingstock of your sport? Yet who didn’t know deep down that it would turn out this way when on August 3, your Mets took a 5-4 lead over the defending world champion Arizona Diamondbacks in the bottom of the eighth inning when your favorite Met, Edgardo Alfonzo, whacked a two-run homer, and minutes later, in the top of the ninth, your closer, Armando Benitez, gave the homer right back to the Diamondbacks’ supersub Craig Counsell? Counsell was more sub than super in the power department. It was his second home run of the season. It was hit in August. It beat August’s brains in. It would take a tenth inning and another reliever to ice the Mets in the stats, but you knew right there, in right field, in Mezzanine, that an era had ended. 1997 was over. 1999 was over. 2000 was over. Summer was over.
It was only the first game of a doubleheader. Of course the Mets lost the second game. Of course the Mets lost every game at Shea that August. Of course the Mets’ record for August 2002 would be 6-21. Of course the Mets were done as a competitive entity until 2005. It was that big a blow by Craig Counsell off Armando Benitez. It ended August before it could commence. It ended the five Augusts before it and it ended a couple that followed it.
You grew used to seasons curling up and dying by August again, just as you had in the late ’70s and the early ’80s and the mid ’90s. You got it in your head that August indeed represented the dog days. You waited for an August that wasn’t an embarrassment, a September that wasn’t any more of an abyss than nature and school superintendents nationwide insisted it had to be. August got good, at last, in 2005. Your season shut down around Labor Day, but things were looking up. 2006, all of it, did a nice impression of 1986: not convincing enough to ward off that which is cold and awful and empty — and inevitable — but it was, really, very nice. 2007 was not. Its August was rather iffy. Its September is legendary for its certainty.
Summer and baseball season continue to be all I ever look forward to in the course of a year. This is my fortieth August with baseball. I’m on the right side of it, the beginning of it. The Mets are in second place, one game out. They have a chance, a shot, a genuine one. Are two-thirds of the season gone or is there one-third still to come?
by Greg Prince on 31 July 2008 7:50 pm The Mets aren't sellers at the trade deadline. If they're gonna be buyers, now or later, they're keeping it quiet. Manny Ramirez has been traded and untraded several times* since last night, since he signed with the Red Sox actually, so I never know what to make of July 31.
But you know what you can make of August 22? A good choice. August 22 is the next Gary, Keith and Ron Night at Shea, when the organization that has formed to help others can help you see the Mets play the Astros. Mezzanine tickets are $12 apiece for those who have bought GKR t-shirts, net proceeds — as with their now famous tops — go to the charities supported by each of our three SNY announcers:
• Gary Cohen: Women's Center of Greater Danbury, which “provides free and confidential services to prevent or lessen the trauma associated with domestic violence, sexual assault and other major life transitions.”
• Keith Hernandez: Cobble Hill Health Center, “a nonprofit skilled nursing facility located on Henry Street in the historic Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn…at the forefront of innovative and progressive treatment for the elderly and disabled for almost 30 years.”
• Ron Darling: Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International, dedicated to finding a cure in its role as “the leading charitable funder and advocate of type 1 diabetes research worldwide.”
Those are the causes GKR was set up to aid and, judging by the proliferation of their shirts around Shea, they're making some inroads. Help them make some more by checking out and buying a t-shirt or two. They're pretty sweet, actually, as you can see for yourself. Plus they have some other other neat stuff. I'm an “It's Outta Here!” man, but you might be all about the mustache or something else altogether.
As Ron Darling himself has been known to say, wherever he goes, he makes sure he's comfortable. You'll be comfortable in one of these shirts and you'll feel good about who it's helping.
*Manny did get traded, to the Dodgers in a three-way with the Pirates that sends Jason Bay to the Red Sox. On behalf of 1776 fans everywhere, I formally request Boston's new leftfielder be referred to as Massachusetts Bay.
by Greg Prince on 31 July 2008 7:48 pm 
Miss Gary, Keith and Ron on an off day? Never be without them again. Gary, Keith and Ron is the charitable organization formed to help promote good causes near to the hearts of our announcers and foster a sense of community among Mets fans. GKR sells t-shirts and other neat stuff and is planning another night at Shea for its supporters. Learn more atgarykeithandron.com.
by Jason Fry on 31 July 2008 2:48 am Once upon a time, we lost to the Marlins and were left hoping that a Nationals comeback against the Phillies might save us from second place.
It didn't work then. It didn't work tonight.
But — setting aside the Well Durr facts that a) the season isn't over and b) T#m Gl@vine isn't around to lecture us — it doesn't hurt right now. Doesn't feel bad at all, in fact. Because that team that once relied on the Nats for rescue — the Mets of smug and sloth and sulk — ceased to exist this month, when the new manager flipped on the lights, opened the closet door, rooted around under the bed and frog-marched out the things that had gone bump in so many sleepless nights. July 2008's 18-8 exorcism might be the pivotal stretch in a season that returns us to the playoffs. Or it might just be the best part of an also-ran year. But either way, it was the end of the Anti-Mets who'd haunted us since Memorial Day '07. Ultimately, it wasn't Gl@vine's departure or Santana's arrival that broke the spell, though we tried to convince ourselves of both. No, it was Jerry Manuel being Jerry Manuel. Thank the baseball gods for him, and for our deliverance.
Oh, tonight's loss hurt. You knew Mike Pelfrey wasn't going to be Cy Young for the rest of his days, but it was no fun watching him stare into the outfield as flares and rockets alike found grass and dirt instead of gloves. Carlos Delgado's depth charge, coming on the heels of Damion Easley's heroics, looked like it might tie the game, but instead it was only good for supplying a very accurate sounding of the deepest cranny of Soilmaster Stadium. And then minutes later Joe Smith was a portrait of misery, looking fixedly plateward lest the mere sight of Dan Uggla's screamer into the mid-Atlantic turn him into a baseball pillar of salt.
But it wasn't it for the Mets, not hardly. A third hit with two outs from a one-legged batter, the kind of countdown you'd like to see from the oft-lamented Marlon Anderson. A little floater from Brian Schneider. A high-velocity liner by Ramon Castro. And the tying run on first with José José José at the platé platé platé.
And that was it? It didn't work? We're in second place? Well, hell. We'll give the Astros everything they can handle and then some this weekend. The Phillies better enjoy it while they can — and who knows, maybe the Nats will have something to say about this race tomorrow night. I'm disappointed, but I'm sure not devastated. And I'm sure as hell not looking back to that dark time when these four teams had standings to sort out between them. Not for fear that something might be gaining on us, but because that infuriating version of our team is finally dead and gone, and the one that's taken its place is very much alive.
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