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 8 July 2008 3:00 pm The Mets didn't look good winning. Sure as hell beats looking great losing. When they issue style points, I'll worry.
—April 5, 2006
I still haven't seen the plus/minus column that tracks style points. Give me a shout when those count as tiebreakers.
—May 6, 2006
Style points are still not issued and style points still don't count. Good thing. Surely we lead the league in shoddy victories.
YES, YES, YES, a W is a W is a W. Nothing changes that if we've mysteriously accumulated more runs at the end of the evening than the other guys. Got it. But still, don't ya sometimes look at a win like last night's and feel deep down that it, like several others this year, wound up in our mailbox by mistake? That by all rights you should hand it back to your letter carrier so it reaches its intended recipient?
Could have the gods really wanted us to win this one? Why would have they forgotten to tell Damion to slide Easley, slide? Why would have they turned Ryan Howard's interference double into an on-second-thought homer? Why would have Tatis stretched a single into an out? Why would have Gary Cohen fate-temptingly referred to Pat Burrell's inevitable infliction of power and punishment as fleeting and innocent? Why would have that comedy of mental errors known as All-Star closer Billy Wagner's twentieth save unfolded in so demented a fashion? It wasn't, we are happy to acknowledge, a Phillies walkoff; it was, we must admit, a Mets slinkoff. Hope they slinked off the field, out of the clubhouse and onto the bus before the official scorer noticed there were only two outs when the game ended.
Damn Things are fun once every eighteen or so years, but this continues to be mildly ridiculous. We have become the Motels of the senior circuit, walking the loneliest mile, smiling without any style and playing altogether wrong — no intention, indeed, of doing this, whatever this is, the easy way.
Maybe the Mets' psyches would be better off if they tried one of those “cooperative games” your do-gooder social scientist types recommend for children, activities in which the bottom line is:
• Everyone plays
• No one gets hurt
• Everyone has fun
• Everyone wins
That sounds nice. Let's get them one of those enormous inflatable earth balls and let's work on building up their self-esteem. Otherwise, we are destined to be sucked right back into taking seriously 25 Sisyphii whose boulder is the National League East standings. Handling it as the Mets do, it's bound to roll downhill sooner or later and it's likely to crush us all in its wake. No wonder Ryan Church has such headaches.
But wins remain wins and yeah, we are 2-1/2 out of first on a three-game winning streak. Can't say we don't beat the Phils, 'cause we do. Can't say we're not in contention, 'cause we are. Can't say boo tonight, 'cause the Mets who take the field against the Giants are doing exactly what they're supposed to do: they're putting together wins or at least avoiding losses slightly more often than they're not.
There is nothing in the rule book that says they have to do it with verve and panache. If they want to be lousy at being swell, that's their prerogative. It would be easier to lengthen leads instead of yielding most of them, far less taxing to prevent comebacks instead of enabling them, but what do we know? We just watch them almost come apart over and over again. They're the ones who somehow keep it together.
Let's Go Mets. You're the only Mets we've got.
by Jason Fry on 8 July 2008 3:18 am Holy shit.
I'd say “the Mets win the damn thing, 10-9,” but of course Gary and Howie beat me to it. (Can't outblog either one of those gentlemen.)
I mean, oh my goodness. We were headed for an easy walk down Redemption Road with Pedro J. Martinez, who took the mound with a hint of doom showing on his gunslinger's face but then had much better location and a month's worth of run support for Johan Santana. And that easy stroll was just fine with me.
Oops.
In the sixth, Damion Easley came gently into home plate after Pedro singled up the middle off R.J. Swindle, who looked like he was about five feet tall, and seemed to shrink with every ball lashed off of him. Easley offered Chris Coste the gentlest of how-do-you-dos, and who could blame him under the circumstances? Turning 10-1 into 11-1 isn't worth it with 12 outs to get, not if it means a collision and the possibility of Plan C at second base after Plan A wasn't exactly a capital idea. (I suppose Plan C would be Argenis Reyes, who the other night was standing next to a furious, possibly injured John Maine and staring out at something, transfixed with a big smile on his face. The camera coincidentally pulled back and revealed that the Other Reyes was watching the Kiss Cam. Or maybe the Phillies too had named an official pudding, and Argenis liked the idea of taking in a ballgame while snacking on a glob of thickener and sugar. Either way, I'm not sure he's on the same planet as the rest of us.)
Anyway, these are the kind of thoughts that go through one's mind in the middle of such a game — in a laugher, some runs are more sacred than others, so don't get yourself worked up.
Or so you'd think. While I slunk off to catch the rest of the radio, R.J. Swindle seemed to grow two feet taller, Pedro got tired, Tony Armas looked mortal and Aaron Heilman started channeling his spring self, whom I'd be willing to wager neither of us had missed. The Mets were seven up with eight outs to go, and it was barely enough. I returned hastily to my proper station in front of the TV for the ninth, by then numb with terror. Our bed is one of those platform things with drawers underneath, which I've always liked until tonight, when I realized that means there's no way to hide under it.
Of course Billy had to confound every one of the 1,000 expectations I threw his way while reminding myself to breathe. Victorino doubled and we were doomed, doomed, doomed. The SNY guys were making much of Charlie Manuel taking Utley out when it looked like a long night for the varsity, but I wasn't fooled — and sure enough Bruntlett walked. Tying run, Howard at the plate. With the baseball gods now having made plain that they were on some sort of sadistic acid trip, of course Billy vaporized Howard with sliders and got Pat the Bat to pop harmlessly to Endy, if anything hit more than 15 feet in the air can be said to be harmless in this broom closet of a stadium. Two outs and against Pedro Feliz Billy looked genuinely on instead of perturbed and uncomfortable, quickly getting to 0-2. Which of course meant he'd give Feliz something too good when he was protecting and it would be 10-9 and of course Jayson Werth was up again. Honestly, I wouldn't have been surprised if Werth had won it with another blast, or by running all the way around the bases on a dropped third strike, or if the Rapture had occurred. It was that kind of night.
And on top of it all, they've pulled me back in, the stupid sexily mediocre Mets. All they had to do was whisper to me of being 2.5 back, of who the hell were the Marlins, of Pelfrey rounding into form and Easley and Tatis finding the fountain of youth, of how the season can never be chronicled until it's over, of the fact that it's baseball and they know I'm addicted and they've got what I need even if I'm far from sure this is the year to want it too feverishly.
You just know now they'll get swept by the Giants.
by Greg Prince on 7 July 2008 8:54 pm You know that Kozy Shack they hand out outside our own cozy shack of a stadium before some games? Next time you accept one, you can spoon yourself with the reassurance that you're sampling the Official Pudding of the New York Mets:
The creamy treat, available in rich chocolate and original rice pudding flavors, will be on sale at Shea Stadium throughout the baseball season, adding a delicious natural choice to the menu of popular, classic stadium snacks, like hot dogs, pizza and peanuts.
The turnstiles (which remind some of us by the squeezing we do to get through them to lay off the creamy treats) were already emblazoned with the Kozy Shack logo. I was wondering if that was a renegade action. Nope, it's official. We've got ourselves our own pudding…the Roy Hobbs kind.
Natural.
The Phillies long ago had a player named Puddin' Head. Tonight let's not play his descendants as if with tapioca stuck between our ears.
by Greg Prince on 7 July 2008 1:41 am A presidential candidate once tried to win votes by suggesting his opponent had shown poor judgment in selecting a running mate. The candidate, Hubert Humphrey, ran an ad that revealed a television screen bearing the message “Agnew for Vice-President?” accompanied by the sound of hysterical laughter. It’s considered a classic of the genre.
Of course, Humphrey lost the election, Agnew became vp, Nixon wound up president and, as ridiculous as it sounds after the events of the ninth inning in Philadelphia this afternoon-turned-evening, Billy Wagner is the Mets’ representative in the upcoming Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
Not Ollie Perez, who threw seven sparkling shutout innings.
Not Carlos Beltran, who drove in the Mets’ only two runs of regulation.
Not Fernando Tatis, who crushed the twelfth-inning homer that gave the Mets a blessed reprieve.
Not Joe Smith, who gutted out 2-1/3 innings of solid relief for the win.
Not Jose Reyes, who went 3-for-6, stole two bases and scored what loomed clearly as the insurance run.
Not David Wright, who barehanded a potential stick of dynamite in the eleventh.
Not Carlos Delgado, who calmly worked a walk to set up Tatis’ clutch swing.
Not Damion Easley, who bunted Delgado over to exert pressure on Chad Durbin.
Not Scott Schoeneweis, who recorded ten strikes in twelve pitches to secure two lifesaving outs.
Not Pedro Feliciano who waited out a 2:48 rain delay and re-emerged to fan Ryan Howard in one-two-three fashion.
Not Aaron Heilman who finished off the eighth after Feliciano got his man.
Not Endy Chavez, who made a sensational catch before the rains poured down.
Not Brian Schneider, who crouched for three innings more than it appeared he would need to.
Nope, none of those who contributed to the Mets’ dramatic 4-2 win over the first-place Phillies were named to the National League All-Star team Sunday. Billy Wagner, who served up a two-out, two-strike, game-tying home run in the ninth inning to Jayson Werth, much as he was serving ’em up with regularity to various Padres and Diamondbacks a month or so ago? He, for now, is your sole 2008 New York Met All-Star.
Because we won, it’s to laugh.
by Greg Prince on 6 July 2008 6:40 am I like Brian Schneider with a beard. He seems far more dynamic than the clean-shaven Brian Schneider. It’s like parallel universe Brian Schneider à la Eric Cartman from the parallel universe or “hella” episode of South Park, which was in itself an homage to the “Mirror, Mirror” episode of Star Trek, which I must confess I’ve never seen. But in the South Park in question, Cartman from the other universe had a beard and was everything he normally was not: considerate, caring, thoughtful (though I guess those are all more or less the same things). When he didn’t have the beard — when he was regular Cartman — he annoyed everybody per usual…plus he insisted on using “hella” as the adjective to describe everything he liked.
Schneider in real life? He recently grew a beard and suddenly delivered a clutch pinch-hit. He made the difference in Saturday night’s game by standing at the plate instead of squatting behind it. After hearing and occasionally seeing what a defensive stalwart Schneider is and then generally cringing at every 4-3 grounder he rolled, it was indeed the stuff of other worlds watching him go gap on Tom Gordon.
I won’t go as far to say the Mets pounding the Phillies was out of science fiction. The Phillies, despite manning first place, aren’t stratospheres better than the Mets, yet it was not just refreshing but kind of interesting watching how the Mets got the best of their neighbors. For example, balls hit to the outfield were not tracked and caught by Shane Victorino. It’s not that they were hit directly to him, but when has that mattered? It’s usually the Phillies finding gaps and the Mets finding leather. Not last night: Schneider, Easley, Delgado and Tatis all rung up purchases from the gap and left as satisfied customers.
It’s also usually the Phillies’ pen frustrating Mets’ bats, as if there’s a law enforcing such behavior. Saturday represented quite the pleasant flip-flop for the Mets, strategically abandoning their usual principled position of late-inning fealty to the Philadelphia relievers, the one that normally has them treating Romero as if he were actually another J.C. Not this time, praise be. Romero didn’t have it, Gordon didn’t have it, even old man Moyer didn’t have it. Gosh, maybe it was a parallel universe down there.
That Schneider was even called on felt seismic. I’ve liked that Jerry Manuel has been playing Castro. Castro’s been too often treated like a secret weapon. If he isn’t hurt, he’s buried. But the gut even more than the book called for Schneider to face Gordon, lefty vs. righty. Pinch-hitting for the catcher with the catcher? Without Robinson Cancel lurking in the shadows for the emergency that never comes?
Why not? Win a game, why don’tcha? Jerry opted to go for it and Brian validated the decision. Even if it hadn’t worked, our Manuel would have been owed a kudos or two for having the sense to do what too many managers never try.
We hope, meanwhile, that the two guys who had to leave the game not through managerial wizardry aren’t gone for more than an instant. I’m not sure what it says that Maine had a cramp in his non-pitching arm and that Church had to take a seat from a non-concussion migraine. Not at all to lessen the severity of whatever they were feeling, but their ailments remind me of why Chris Rock said he liked Bill Clinton:
He don’t got president problems, he got real problems like you and me.
I get aches and pains like Maine and Church apparently do. It’s so rare you can view athletes and feel you have anything in common with them, yet I could relate to their reported maladies. I wake up with a cramp in my right foot now and then like Maine got in his left arm. I want to howl. I have a cabinet full of medications for my head as Church must. When I get a cluster headache, I can’t stand and wait for a bus never mind a fly ball. These two ached not from being athletic, just from being human. Again, I wish them immediate recoveries but somehow it makes me like them more that they have people problems, not just Met problems.
As for Schneider, I’ve never been able to grow a beard. Haven’t tried in ages. It looked hella terrible when I did.
by Greg Prince on 5 July 2008 5:10 pm Perfect. Perfect bookends to a perfect year. Waking up on July 4, 2008 to read that Jose Reyes reportedly engaged in a “heated” confrontation with Keith Hernandez on board the Mets' flight a few nights earlier from New York to St. Louis — Keith didn't like the way Jose reacted to his throwing error during the final Subway Series game and let it be known in the course of that day's telecast — could only remind the overwrought Mets fan that we'd been down the what's-up-with-Reyes? road almost exactly a year before.
It was on the field, not on a plane…and in plain view, not via conflicting accounts…that we saw Jose Reyes tap a weak grounder down the third base line in the eighth inning at Minute Maid Park on July 6, 2007. Reyes thought it would go foul. He didn't run to first. Mike Lamb fielded the ball fair and threw him out by 80 or so feet. Willie Randolph immediately pulled him to teach him a lesson. Jose didn't look too happy about being schooled in so public a fashion, but he said more or less the right thing afterwards.
“It's my fault there,” Reyes declared in accepting his medicine, “but that thing can happen to anybody.”
Funny the things that happen to and around Reyes since then.
On a team for whom no more than half ever seems to go right, Jose Reyes' past year has veered to disaster far more often than not. That's taking into the good and wonderful stuff that's occurred since July 6, 2007: the All-Star laying on of hands by Willie Mays which seemed so appropriate in the emotion of the moment; the leadoff home run right out of the gate to open the second half, a sign — it seemed — that the momentary lapse of judgment in Houston was more molehill than Tal's Hill; the August crime spree of 17 consecutive successful steals, one of them setting the team record for thefts in a single season with more than a month to go; and this season's post-April statistical renaissance, culminating in current batting, on-base and slugging totals legitimately comparable to Jose's sainted 2006.
But who remembers any of that now? Now that Jose is…
• The guy who had to be benched because he didn't hustle;
• The guy who went into the tank in Philadelphia in late August and never climbed out for the balance of 2007;
• The guy who tried to steal third with Wright up and two out and there, hindsight says, went the season;
• The guy who didn't steal anything else except his paycheck the rest of the way;
• The guy whose intrinsic joy for the game was processed in too many quarters as chronic immaturity;
• The guy who celebrated too much or not enough;
• The guy who welcomed his new manager with a top-of-the-first tantrum;
• The guy who got himself picked off second by Andy Pettitte;
• And the guy who not only pulled Delgado off the bag on Melky Cabrera's grounder but took it out on his glove and his wristband on the field for all to see.
Now he's the guy who allegedly got into it with Keith Hernandez. I say allegedly because this was reported by the same beat writer who blew up Jerry Manuel's silly “fertilizer” remarks into a front-page scandal and I say allegedly because calmer, more reliable observers say that while Jose indeed expressed dismay to Keith and Keith took issue with Jose's interpretation, it didn't exactly amount to a Met melee among the clouds (I'm thinking it's telling that this happened Sunday night yet didn't make the paper in question 'til Friday).
But something did happen, and it happened to or around Reyes. Reyes worries about what somebody told him an announcer said. Reyes leans too far toward third. Reyes doesn't listen to Jerry Manuel. Reyes dances to his own beat without regard to consequence. Reyes raises his rabbit ears a little too high. Reyes runs to first now but didn't run then.
It's been quite a year for Jose Reyes since that Friday night in Houston. It is said as he goes, the Mets go. Over the last year, the Mets have gone nowhere.
by Jason Fry on 5 July 2008 2:10 am Well, that one might be shown as a future episode of Phillies Classics.
The rain didn't really show up (I had visions of Gavin Floyd, Xavier Nady and Aaron Rowand), but neither did the Mets' bats. Johan Santana showed up all right, pitching a dazzling game … with the exception of that sixth inning. For all his wonderfulness, Johan seems to have these occasional mini-Leiter episodes, two-batter or one-inning spurts in which his location goes on the fritz and he seems as puzzled as you are by it. (Maybe it was that he was wearing a patriotic-looking cap that clashed hideously with his uniform. Seriously — if you tried to leave the house wearing that color combination, your wife would call you back in a no-quarter tone of voice.)
While we're dwelling on Santana's (very small) faults, he also arrived with a reputation as a Hamptonesque hitter. And when he came up with the bases loaded and none out in the fifth, I was sure his Mike Hampton moment had arrived. He was going to hit a double up the gap, maybe even channel his inner Felix Hernandez, and tomorrow's papers would be all about how Johan had figured out the way to win was also to do the hitting. My baseball radar was off all night. Instead, Santana turned in the kind of saucer-eyed at-bat you'd expect from a pitcher just arrived from the American League. Reyes, Chavez and Wright managed to scratch out two runs when we should have had more (Wright and Beltran looked overanxious all night, I thought), and it was bite-your-nails time. Johan's Leiter episode followed, Chad Durbin was masterful in relief, and Duaner couldn't find that third out. Ballgame.
The other night, in that back-and-forth game against the Cardinals, Wright tripled with one out in the eighth and the Mets up 7-5. Beltran struck out looking and the score stayed 7-5. I briefly mourned the duck who'd been allowed to keep paddling around on the pond, but I figured it was OK. We were going to win, right?
We weren't. We didn't get the run home then, just as we didn't get it home tonight with Reyes on third and one out in the first. There's a valuable reminder in that of the meaning of baseball life, I suppose. If you'll allow me a little Monty Python, every run is sacred, every run is great. If a run is wasted, the baseball gods get quite irate.
And so, I imagine, does Johan Santana.
by Greg Prince on 4 July 2008 6:26 pm 
| The New York Giants entered the National League in 1883. The Statue of Liberty was dedicated in 1886. This was the original design.
No, not really. If you haven’t noticed, MLB is putting up baseball-themed SOLs up all over Manhattan to promote the All-Star Game which is being held…somehwere. The NYG version is in front of the Toys “R” Us in Times Square (44th Street). They also managed to remember the Brooklyn Dodgers down on Whitehall Street, home of Topps.
The Mets, you ask? One for the Mets in Penn Plaza, Seventh Avenue between 32nd and 33rd; and one for Shea (in which Lady Liberty appears to be holding a box of commemorative popcorn) in front of the SNY studios, 51st and 6th. A map to where all 42 are lifting their lamp is here, and, because this is Major League Baseball, a way to order miniatures of the statue(s) of your choice is here.
Thanks to Hotfoot‘s Mets Photostream for getting us curious about all this Liberty on the Fourth of July. |
|
|
by Greg Prince on 4 July 2008 5:00 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 374 regular-season and 13 postseason games to date. The Log records the numbers. The Tales tell the stories.
5/15/82 Sa Los Angeles 1-1 Puleo 1 6-13 W 6-4
7/22/87 W Atlanta 2-2 Darling 4 19-27 W 4-3
8/7/01 Tu Milwaukee 5-0 Chen 1 126-94 W 3-0
With Shea gone, where will the Rick Monday Guy go?
The Rick Monday Guy is also the Billy Smith Guy. Either way, where will he (or they) be if there’s no Shea anymore? Where will I turn to hear a drunken Rangers fan take out his hockey frustrations on an opposing baseball player? How does he exist without Shea?
The Mets were playing the Dodgers. The Mets were actually beating the Dodgers, yet the occasion, a perfectly pleasant Saturday night, wouldn’t have been complete without the Los Angeles centerfielder being informed of one undeniable fact from this one fine fellow in my Mezzanine midst:
“HEY MONDAY! IT’S SATURDAY!”
Not once, not twice but to infinity and beyond. The soul of wit and the personification of repetition were activated in the service of reminding Rick Monday his surname matched one-seventh of the week, one of the sevenths it wasn’t that night. Poor sap, his ancestors never knew what he’d be coming up against.
“HEY MONDAY! IT’S SATURDAY!”
Didn’t Fred Flintstone use a line like that on prehistoric Tuesday Weld stand-in Tuesday Wednesday? Hey, maybe the Rick Monday Guy worked for Hanna-Barbera. Their cartoons were just that clever.
For good measure, the Rick Monday Guy loved the Rangers. Or, more accurately, hated the Islanders. The teams played a predictable playoff series that spring, the Islanders prevailing as they tended to in the early ’80s. This must have been under RMG’s skin, because he linked Rick Monday of “HEY MONDAY! IT’S SATURDAY!” fame with the Isles’ Stanley Cup-winning goalie.
“HEY MONDAY! GO PLAY WITH BILLY SMITH!”
There may have been something mentioned about what exactly Rick Monday could go play with Billy Smith. “Between his legs,” I think the gentleman suggested. I don’t think it was hockey.
While there were no Rick Monday fans per se in Mezzanine, I believe it was the sight of an explicitly clad Islanders fan — we did used to exist in visible numbers, believe it or not — that set him off. There may have been cross words between RMG and the Islanders fan. There may have been a little more action than the Mets scoring four in the first even. It felt a little tense up there. Joel and I hoped we wouldn’t have to square off based on hockey allegiances since he liked the Rangers and I liked the Isles; after all, we thought we were there to watch the Mets. I don’t remember if RMG was eventually hauled off or simply passed out. I doubt the former. Shea made few pretensions toward being family-friendly in 1982.
***
With Shea gone, where will the “can of corn!” guy go?
There was a denizen of Cliché Stadium who in 1987 had to, just had to greet every single fly ball Ron Darling teased from Atlanta batters in the second and third innings with the hoariest baseball banter in the books.
Gerald Perry flies to McReynolds…”can of corn!”
Andres Thomas flies to Mookie…”can of corn!”
Bruce Benedict flies to McReynolds…”can of corn!”
By the next inning, when Glenn Hubbard was skying one to center, Joel and I knew what was coming…”can of corn!” We giggled and snorted and asked loudly enough to be heard, “CAN OF CORN?” Yes, we were familiar with the expression. But no, we had never heard it repeated so incessantly, not even on SportsChannel.
I think we hurt the “can of corn!” guy’s feelings. He turned around and gave us this beaten look. “Well,” he said. “That’s what it’s called.”
After that, he kept his cans of corn to himself.
***
With Shea gone, where will the Todd Zeile petitioner go?
There was a freelance chanter prowling the Mezz in 2001, a young man who was going to solve our summerlong Todd Zeile problem by working us all into a frenzy one row at a time.
This guy comes up to Jason and me, who are minding our own business, and asks if we’ve had enough of Todd Zeile grounding out and being generally useless. Sure, we said. Everybody’d had enough of Todd Zeile, few having had more of him than us in our Tuesday/Friday plan year.
Well, the guy said, this is what we have to do: Start a chant. It’s gonna go like this:
TRADE
TODD
ZEE-EEL!
[clap-clap…clap-clap-clap]
C’mon, he said, if we all do it, the front office will have to listen.
TRADE
TODD
ZEE-EEL!
[clap-clap…clap-clap-clap]
I kind of nodded. Jason said something to the effect of uh, I dunno about that. But our new friend, as if presaging by two years the recall effort staged against California Governor Gray Davis, was sure he was onto something.
TRADE
TODD
ZEE-EEL!
[clap-clap…clap-clap-clap]
The petitioner moved on to another row, seeking more converts. He eventually took up the chant and the rhythm on his own. A few joined in. I might have tried it once for novelty’s sake. Jace was steadfastly having none of it. As if I couldn’t have guessed, clap-clap-clap was not part of his vocabulary.
In the following offseason, however, Todd Zeile was traded.
***
Shea Stadium hasn’t been just about big moments and momentous interactions. It’s been about the jerks, the weirdoes, the strange dudes. It’s been about those you wish would move to another section or get thrown out. They are as much a part of Shea Stadium as the feral cats. No one’s sure where the cats will go when Shea is torn apart. The jerks, the weirdoes, the strange dudes? Citi Field will have some 13,000 fewer seats than Shea Stadium. Something tells me people like these will find their way in with no problem. They always do.
And they almost always sit near me.
by Greg Prince on 4 July 2008 9:09 am 
Though my junkiedom leaves me susceptible to shamelessly obsessing on the “horse race” aspects of politics, I believe it despicable that the political press covers the presidential campaign like it’s a sporting event. Nevertheless, I have to admit I find Topps’ presidential candidate trading cards to be unbelievably cool. Happy Fourth of July. And wherever you stand, don’t forget to stand in a voting booth on the Fourth of November.
|
|
