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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 11 July 2008 9:19 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 375 regular-season and 13 postseason games to date. The Log records the numbers. The Tales tell the stories.
8/13/04 F Arizona 6-5 Benson 1 155-123 W 10-6
7/9/08 W San Francisco 10-2 Santana 4 203-172 W 5-0
I went to a game on a Friday night with three friends four years ago and had a really great time. We talked and talked and talked baseball. Each of those guys really knew his stuff, as did I, I think. Each of us posed hypotheses, all of us debated them, everybody learned from one another.
And except that it rained madly before the game and that I gave up my chicken tenders after the game (as Ron Burgundy said of milk on a hot day, chicken tenders were a bad choice), I don’t remember with specificity a damn thing we talked about. Like I said, I know it was good. It surely involved the starter, Kris Benson, and the trades that brought him and the great-looking starter from the day before, Victor Zambrano, over. No doubt Moneyball was invoked. Use of bullpens is always a hot topic, so I’m certain it came up, too. I’m also guessing these were asked:
When can we get rid of Art Howe?
Will David Wright be the real thing
Is Jose Reyes coming back any time soon?
Why’d we have to sign Kaz Matsui?
We’re not gonna blow this to the pathetic Diamondbacks, are we? We were up 8-0 and now it’s 10-6…
We didn’t blow it even if I did kind of blow it myself after getting home where those chicken tenders were concerned. I’m sorry that’s the only thing I can be specific about. My evening in a dry enough Mezzanine box with my friends Rob, Jon and Dan (Dan D., not Dan G., though he’s a swell guy, too) watching the Mets beat Arizona and talking baseball has faded in terms of the substance.
Too bad I didn’t have a blog then. I would have written it all down. But I do have a blog now, so I can inscribe a few of the salient details of the most recent game I’ve attended before they escape even my memory.
Wednesday night reminded me of that night in 2004. I was part of another foursome, party to another solid baseball conversation, maybe this one veering a little more to other aspects of life given the company and the occasion and the year. I was with three guys, two of whom don’t live anywhere near Shea anymore, one of whom who had been away from Shea for far too many years, all of them introduced to me through blogging, all of this taking place in Shea’s last season, which was the impetus for the get-together.
It was the first chance I would have to meet Dennis, known better to me (and probably you) as NostraDennis, now of Orlando, late of East Meadow. Dennis’ sense of the moment, of 2008, was keen enough to arrange a family trip north to see Shea Stadium two more times, once Wednesday night, once Thursday afternoon. He’d be joined by Ray, known better to me and many lucky readers as Metphistopheles, the Buffalo-based blogger who has proven distance is nothing when it comes to getting to the heart of all matters Met. Dennis and Ray go back to junior high where they were Mets fans like me, just a little older and a bit to my east. And they’d be joined by two of their online admirers, Mike (of the Connecticut Mike’s Mets) and me.
I love stuff like this. I love the idea that people who grew up somewhere and moved away from it care enough about the thing that’s about to get whacked to see it and sit in it one or two more times. I appreciate endlessly that Dennis, not in the house since Bonilla I, and Ray, with whom I spent a few innings on a June night in 2007 before mysteriously melting into the crowd, saw fit to let Mike and me know they were coming. I’m glad Mike and I made certain to join them — and I’m grateful that yet another upstanding member of the Met bloggerhood, Coop, arranged for us to get our hands on a pair of tickets that would have us seated in close proximity. The accommodations would come in handy.
Dennis saw us in the Mezzanine concourse before we saw him. He was in his FAFIF finery, which was cause for some kidding since he actually writes (very well) for Mike’s Mets. Mike feigned offense that Dennis tried to use one of his Faith and Fear t-shirt pix — he’s taken many — as his MM column photo. Ray and Dennis had picked up their dogs (hot dogs that is; Dennis actually left his real and real photogenic pup in a nearby kennel for the week) and followed Mike and me to the Coop seats. It was a Mezz box not far from the one I’d camped under four summers earlier. The skies threatened and an usher gently goaded, but we ignored both and we chatted up a storm.
About the Mets; about Long Island when Ray and Dennis and I grew up on it; about how Long Island, from Dennis’ vantage point after all this time, looks more like Queens; about radio, the industry in which Dennis works; about WGBB, the official station of snow days in Nassau County; about the Mets some more; about how we’re stuck with Castillo; about second basemen of the past like Kelvin Chapman; about the “Chapman Center” which is how Ray heard the commercials for the All-Star Fan Fest’s venue — no, I said, that’s not the Chapman Center, that’s the Javits Center; about old-time local politicians like Jacob Javits and Allard Lowenstein and Island Park’s Al D’Amato, from more or less my neck of the woods, lucky me; about how Easley’s doing a nice job at second; about how Dennis’ wife gives him a pack of baseball cards every Christmas…will ya look at the one Met he found on Christmas morning?
He showed us Willie Randolph hugging 300-game winner T#m Gl@v!ne.
I don’t remember if it was the sight of Mike Glavine’s brother, even in cardboard, or merely angry clouds that made the bathtub in the sky overflow and start drenching us all one out from an official game. Johan (Dennis had gotten two of him in December when he was still a Twin) had to hurry up and not lose his composure in the top of the fifth. The umpires had to maintain their poise, too, and let him finish off what might have to be an abbreviated 3-0 win. In the fourth, as Castro was blasting Mike’s called shot (Mike sees a lot of things coming, including ugly weather, as he and I had withstood a lot of it this year) and all was peachy, we agreed abbreviated games are a sham, that they should all be completed. In the fifth, as the soaking intensified, we agreed five-inning wins were legit.
Santana walked Ray Durham amid the floods. We grumbled and hunkered down under our respective umbrellas. When Santana got Randy Winn to fly to Beltran for the third out, we fled…one section over and a few rows up. Fortunately, Dennis and Ray were officially here with Dennis’ brother-in-law and nephew. But the nephew wanted to run up and down the stairs and his brother-in-law couldn’t have been nicer about the whole thing and the four of us waited out the rain together in covered Row E comfort.
With the break in the action, I headed down to the baseball card stand and bought four packs of 2008 Topps: one for Dennis, one for Ray, one for Mike, one for me (if I’d been on the ball, I would have taken care of the nephew and the brother-in-law, but they were otherwise engaged anyway). Let’s see if we can get a Met, I said, as if we were all 12 again because, well, what’s the point of sitting out a rain delay and remembering your real age? Mike got an Easley. Dennis promised to fling toward Row A any Yankee he got. But he got a commemorative Mickey Mantle and slipped him in his pocket. Hey, he said, it’s Mickey Mantle.
That was fine. As was the weather in a short time. The grounds crew removed the tarp beautifully even if Johnny McCarthy, as either Ray or Dennis noted, was no longer there to lead them as head groundskeeper. We stayed in Row E even if Johan didn’t stay in the game. We fretted the fret that Mets fans fret that Heilman would give it away, but he didn’t. We fretted theatrically that Wagner would enter and be as generous to San Fran as he’d been in Philly, but the Mets added two in the eighth and made Billy superfluous. We kidded and we kibbitzed and we saw the Mets win a very simple if briefly soggy 5-0 game over the sadsack Giants, a team, Mike keenly observed, with a batting order reminiscent of the overmatched 2004 Mets.
When it was over, Dennis headed off with his relatives. “They’re my ride,” he said. Mike, Ray and I ambled to the Super Express. As we stepped onto our car, a round of applause commenced. It wasn’t because Mike’s Mets, Metphistopheles and Faith and Fear in Flushing had been recognized. It was because the Mets had won and we had seen it. “We’re the real fans!” some souped-up teen declared. “We don’t leave in a rain delay! Let’s give ourselves a big round of applause!”
So we did. If you’d just had such a good time at Shea Stadium, wouldn’t you?
by Greg Prince on 10 July 2008 11:00 pm 
All hail the 1977 National League All-Star Team! Never mind that they beat the American League 7-5 at Yankee Stadium, for a) they were the most colorful bunch ever assembled on one team to judge by the Pantone rainbow formed by their road uniforms and b) they won despite the inability to look directly into a camera. Or perhaps whoever chose official photos was blinking when he picked this as the team picture. Maybe four guys in all are focused on the camera, though one of them, sort of, is honorary captain Willie Mays (a Met forever from then on out, you would have thought). No wonder Willie still wows ’em, even on the West Coast.
With next week’s All-Star Game taking place at the same facility as it did 31 years ago, the YES Network is showing the ’77 Starfest over and over (check local listings that you’d normally not be caught dead checking). The NBC telecast is a great time capsule, particularly given that in the introductions, the greatest applause goes to not Willie Mays, not honorary A.L. captain Joe DiMaggio, not to any of the multiple Yankees on the other side (Reggie Jackson actually gets booed), not even to ramrod-straight John Stearns or helper coach Denny Sommers, on loan from the Mets. No, the people in Yankee Stadium go absolutely nuts for Tom Seaver, five weeks removed from his dastardly trade to Cincinnati. In the above picture, he appears to be telling Willie Montañez, “…and then I’d string M. Donald Grant up the flagpole as high as I could.”
At one point in the game, Seaver is pitching (though not well) and he is supported in the field by four future Mets: Montañez, Ellis Valentine, Jerry Morales and Garry Templeton. That makes five future Mets at once because Seaver, he comes back to us eventually. Also on the team, if you’re not too blinded by the picture to examine it closely, are John Candelaria and George Foster, giving us seven Mets to be in one fell swoop. (Over on the American League page, you’d find 1992 Met second baseman Willie Randolph as well.)
See, that’s the problem. It’s fun to think of the N.L. All-Stars as a Mets farm club, but shouldn’t we be getting the talented guys as they’re becoming All-Stars, not incredibly long after the fact?
P.S. David Wright did not gain the Final Vote nod, so unless Clint Hurdle names him to replace somebody at the last minute, you are officially excused from watching the 2008 affair; if you’re thinking you should tune in out of habit or baseball fan obligation, this bizarre pinstriped wet dream of a column by Bob Klapisch should change your mind like a soft rain.
UPDATE: David’s a Star after all…named to replace the injured Alfonso Soriano.
And in all seriousness, our best to Bob Klapisch for a speedy recovery from a tough break.
by Greg Prince on 10 July 2008 10:20 pm The Mets did today something they haven't done all year. Well, I suppose they've done a couple of things new to them in 2008 if you take into account a sixth consecutive win, but what's shocking is that they just won their first home weekday afternoon of the season.
That sticks because afternoons at Shea during the week have been horror shows 'til now.
• The Home Continuer: A dispiriting reminder that last year wasn't over.
• The Water Main Break: Pipes weren't working and neither were the Mets against Pittsburgh.
• The Great Impotence: A 1-0 loss to yet another lousy team.
• The Disaster In Stark Relief: Billy Wagner to anything but the rescue.
I was at the first three of those and came home every time in “that was fun but it would have been a lot more fun if we'd won” mode. I watched the fourth afternoon nondelight with only one eye on the telly yet it told me Willie Randolph was no long a winner all his life.
Small sample, but they were four trademark 2008 horrendous games and nothing feels worse, all bad things being equal, than having your day ruined by the Mets and then having all night to think about it. Especially in the middle of the week, especially when the game is at Shea. Those are the games you live for as a fan, even if you can't make it out there, even if you can't devote the entirety of your attention to them. Weekday afternoon games at home are what separates baseball from all the other sports, from everything else in the world. It's so, I don't know…illicit. It's not supposed to be taking place, but it does. It's not supposed to call out to you, but you hear it. It's like whichever horrible SUV commercial from a few years ago where somebody's walking down Wall Street on a Tuesday with a surfboard. Hey, a bystander thinks, people work on Tuesday. There are probably people who surf on Tuesday, but I got it. It's the thrill of the temptation of hooky — except this is hooky that is cablecast, broadcast and Gamecast.
The Mets went to work this Thursday and their labors finally paid dividends. We can all enjoy our supper thanks to Fernando Tatis, Argenis Reyes, Carlos Muniz and maybe even guys you'd given a single thought to the last time the Mets won at Shea on a midweek afternoon (which, for the record was the five-run ninth laid on the Cubs, May 17, 2007 — is there anything that game can't do?). When we win a game in the middle of the week at home, you can say everybody did their job beautifully.
Undercooked opponent, sure. Long-term doubts, no doubt. Alou, of course he's got a seriously torn hammy (get well, Moises; even if we never truly got to know you, I always kind of liked you). But the Mets played at Shea this afternoon, a weekday afternoon, and sent everybody but the small covens of Giants fans home happy.
What else is there to do now except have a pleasant evening?
by Jason Fry on 10 July 2008 6:06 am Baseball makes an ass out of you.
It's a truism of the sport that teams are neither as bad as they look when they're stumbling around and getting beat nor as good as they look when they're rolling. And so it is with fans: When our team's bad, we can't imagine they'll ever be good, and yet a good week leaves us to blissfully forget all that's come before.
So it was that I managed to snooze through the last two innings of the Mets' rather convincing 5-0 defeat of the Giants. Though it should be said that the Giants hadn't given me much reason to fret. What we've been for long stretches since last Memorial Day, and could easily become again, is a mediocre team whose whole is somehow less than the some of its parts. That's frustrating, as we've chronicled in at least 100,000 words or so. But based on the evidence of the last two nights, the Giants would love to have such problems. They're plain bad, in an Is There a Plan Here? way. (You can leave nasty comments for me after they pound us in 12 hours or so.) Yes, Johan Santana was good — heck, he was very good. But the Giants helped by turning in limp at-bat after limp at-bat against Johan and three relievers, never looking like they were particularly interested in the task before them.
It was much discussed last night, but what on earth was Randy Winn doing in the fifth inning? Ray Durham had just worked out a walk despite possibly being in danger of drowning, because he knew it was in the Giants' interest to have the umps call for the tarp before the game was official. Durham probably didn't know that the monsoon pounding Shea was due to roll through in another 20 minutes, so he sensibly figured that if he could just prolong things long enough, the umps would put the fricking tarp on already and maybe the game would be washed away. (And if the umps knew the storm was going to roll through, I'd argue they showed too much deference to Santana. Not that I mind.) So Durham rather gamely watched Santana try to throw strikes (and remember a fastball could easily have slipped and approached his head at high speed in blinding rain) and wound up on first, to the almost-visible annoyance of Gerry Davis. So what does Winn do after watching this display of veteran savvy and baseball selflessness?
He swings at the first pitch.
Was Randy Winn the tying run? No. Is Randy Winn a veteran who should know better? Yes. Does Bruce Bochy need to go to Costco for comically oversized tubs of antacids? I'd imagine.
The Giants have pitching, Lord knows. Jonathan Sanchez made only one bad pitch all night, though why he made it to Ramon Castro with two out and Santana on deck is beyond me. And Tim Lincecum is wonderful to watch even on a bad night: His arms and legs come at the batter like sabres, a motion miraculously left alone by a succession of pitching coaches, and his thunderbolt fastball and CGI curve are even more dazzling considering he looks like the office intern whom everyone suspects disappears to huff printer toner.
But with their offense seemingly eager to ponder the joys of room service and a veteran like Winn making you wonder if he was watching the same game everybody else was, you have to feel for the likes of Sanchez and Lincecum and Matt Cain. By the looks of things, they're going to be fairly calloused up by the time help arrives.
by Greg Prince on 9 July 2008 6:15 am Mike Pelfrey went seven, but details, details…it was a complete game win for the Mets Tuesday night. Honestly, it felt like the first one all season.
The Mets were a complete team for once. They played with complete effectiveness, completely overwhelming the opposition. There've been a few other lopsided scores in their favor this season, but those felt like outliers. This felt like what we were sold and told before the year started.
The 2008 Mets were the undeniably better team on the field last night. They had Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado, and instead of that implying inning-killing at-bats, it meant power. Beltran delivered the keynote address with a three-run bomb in the first and Delgado all but sealed the deal in the sixth by launching one “deep into the New York night,” as goofy, unpredictable Wayne Hagin put it (aside: I really like goofy, unpredictable Wayne Hagin). The Carloses, 90 games in, are at last all asset and zero liability.
There were other goodies as well you didn't have to search too hard to find: another Tatis tater; Argenis Reyes' first base hit and first trip around the bases; the continued offensive blossoming of 38-year-old Damion Easley; Jose topping .300; the evisceration of SI cover boy Tim Lincecum; and, the real highlight in an evening of highlights, Mike Pelfrey winning his fifth consecutive decision. Pelfrey, intermittently grumbled at by certain impatient dopes earlier this season, is the Mets' ace in everything but title at the moment. More nights like this one and his reputation will catch up fast.
Two games above .500 doesn't exactly set the heart atwitter, but tied for second and one back in the loss column sure as heck makes the pulse race. Four wins in a row ain't bad either. It's a long way off the “roll” Matt Yallof was touting the Mets as on afterwards, but the Mets are at least on a croissant — the hot and flaky kind.
Those can be delicious.
by Greg Prince on 8 July 2008 9:16 pm Ryan Church is back on the DL (Evans returns as Alou gets a rehab start for Binghamton). His MRI came up negative, but I'm beginning to worry a bit over his long-term state, never mind what it means to right field. Migraines don't send you to the Disabled List. Migraines recede inside of fifteen days. Concussions, two in less than three months…who knows?
Get well Ryan.
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.
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