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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 16 June 2008 4:04 am You know what the Mets are? They're selectively desperate. They saunter and they mosey and they stop to smell the roses and pick at dandelions the great majority of the time, but then something suddenly lights a fire under them (to quote an old friend, “You know what burns my ass? A flame this high.”) and it's all for one and one for all and let's get hell-bent as all get-out.
But they're just not very good at it.
Game One revealed the schizophrenia. The Mets slept like England by JFK's reckoning most of the opener. Even as they rallied — showing some “fight” as Wayne or Howie or Gary or Ron or all of them called it — they approached the battle as ambivalent pacifists might. No point taking extra bases. No point thinking fly balls might not go out. Then, all of a sudden, it's every man to his station…double-time! Then the Mets cannot be stopped. You can only hope they will contain themselves.
That they did.
If the standings truly mattered anymore, there'd be a head-shaped dent in at least one wall around here. But Brian Schneider being urged by Sandy Alomar to think he can, think he can chug his way home on Milton Bradley's arm amid all the single-cheeked rallying the Mets did in the eighth and ninth — it was mostly amusing. Having already divined the best way to accept their shortcomings might be to to treat this crew as linear albeit better-compensated heirs to Marvelous Marv — the 1962 Mets also lost 8-7 in the opener of a Father's Day doubleheader through play that was less than brainy — these Mets surely merit fewer snits and more giggles.
Game Two's result was more pleasing, probably because I didn't see or hear a pitch of it. Since the nightcap was ladled onto the regularly scheduled afternoon affair, and since it was Father's Day, my plans took me away from the television, kept me away from the radio and made being at Shea prohibitive. Though I patted myself on the back for giving my father a few hours' of unMetted attention, I will confess to sneaking into a restaurant men's room to tap the little-used Web browser on my phone. It was there I saw we were winning thanks to Robinson Cancel.
Don't know if that meant the Mets were fighting, but they sure must have been desperate.
Well, what the hey. Most of our 2008 grace notes have been delivered by the likes of Nelson Figueroa and Nick Evans and Fernando Tatis. Why shouldn't Robinson Cancel join the parade of Mets who will never adorn the cover of the pocket schedule but can at least claim to have attached themselves to one of its squares? Or in Robinson Cancel's case, the unscheduled half of one.
Can't say I knew a bloody thing of Robinson Cancel's existence before this Spring Training, but Robinson Cancel and I had every reason to remember September 21, 1999. That was the night the Mets went down to Georgia with a division title on the line and Chipper Jones commenced to bury them. He hit a homer from the left side off Rick Reed, a homer from the right side off Dennis Cook and the Braves won 2-1, increasing their lead on the Mets to two games. Everything tumbled downhill from there, straight into a seven-game losing streak that put the Wild Card in peril.
I'm a big Mets fan, so I remember that date for Mets fan reasons. Robinson Cancel, one assumes, is a big Robinson Cancel fan, so he would remember that date for Robinson Cancel reasons: it was the date of his final Major League hit.
He played for the Milwaukee Brewers.
They played in County Stadium.
Bill Pulsipher was their starting pitcher.
The hit came off Chad Ogea.
The Brewers are still around, but County Stadium, Ogea and Pulse are long gone from the scene (Long Island Ducks notwithstanding). Yet somehow the hit Robinson Cancel delivered for the Brewers on September 21, 1999 is no longer Robinson Cancel's final Major League hit. It's merely his second-most recent hit, one that happened to have been delivered nine years ago.
Not everybody's heard. As of Sunday, Baseball-Reference still listed Robinson Cancel as having played his final Major League game on September 29, 1999, and they don't list final Major League games until they're good and sure a player has hung 'em up. When Robinson Cancel made an appearance in San Diego last week, my friend the Other Jason sent me a note that on September 29, 1999, Mets fans were marveling that John Olerud launched a grand slam off Greg Maddux, driving in Al Leiter, Rickey Henderson and Edgardo Alfonzo, each of whom had singled (just after Darryl Hamilton, Roger Cedeño and Rey Ordoñez had done the same). All of those guys are long gone, too, except for Maddux the six-inning Cy-borg…and he's older than Moises Alou. Other Jason's point was Robinson Cancel hadn't played in the big leagues in a very, very long time and what kind of team is this giving a roster spot to Robinson Cancel from the last century?
“Was he hitting like 4.200 at New Orleans?”
It never occurred to me to check. I suppose now that Robinson Cancel's become the latest savior to rise from these streets, we can waste our summer praying in vain that he is at least platooned with Schneider…or that another hit will help us before another nine years pass.
Chipper Jones is still around, too, come to think of it.
by Greg Prince on 15 June 2008 8:42 am Well, that was stupid.
There may be nothing dimmer one can do than go to Shea Stadium and wait out a rain delay that never ends. Nothing. And notice I said “Shea Stadium” specifically, not “the ballpark” generically. I don’t doubt that postponements in other places are lame, but I know for a fact that Shea-outs are as insipid as they come.
In retrospect, there was no good reason to seek this game out. In advance, however, there were at least three:
• First, it was the Texas Rangers, the only Rangers @ Mets series Shea will ever see. I collect Interleague opponents, at least one of each. I’ve been waiting since 2002, when the East-only rule for AL visitors was rent asunder, to collect ’em all. Entering this year, the Rangers and White Sox were my only outliers left. Oh to have them to show so I could ink them in The Log! By dint of the seemingly random dice-roll of the schedulemakers, the White Sox remain eternally at large, but I thought I’d finally gotten Texas lined perfectly in my sights. I had a mild other-league crush on the Rangers when I was 11 and 12 and, ironically, I had a chance to see them play at Shea versus the…gawd, I can’t even say it. There used to be another baseball team that played home games at Shea Stadium — temporarily, that is. A day camp trip to see the Rangers take on that team was arranged for July 7, 1975. Yet at the last minute, I begged off. I couldn’t stand the idea of going to see the Yankees in any ballpark, let alone as the “home team” in mine, so I sacrificed my fleeting Rangers fetish on the altar of righteousness. I stopped caring about Jeff Burroughs & Co. shortly thereafter…and 33 years later, I was paid back for my loyalty to principle by getting drenched.
• Second, they were handing out miniature Shea Stadiums to the first 25,000 fans, meaning the second 25,000 fans could, as official policy explicitly dictates, suck it. That was enough lure to get me there as early as the LIRR and the 7 would have me, and even then Laurie — for whom a little Shea is a lot appropriate — was already waiting in the security line. “I’ve been in this thing three times already,” trying to save us a spot so they wouldn’t run out of Sheas. We got ours and they are wonderful if not lifelike. For example, the miniature Shea doesn’t leak when it rains. The box is pretty neat, too (I can never bring myself to throw out the cluttering cardboard things like these and bobbleheads come in). It says “Final Season Shea Stadium” and “Replica”. I was worried that the box, in fact, contained a replica of 2008…which I think would violate health code ordinances if you tried to carry it onto a train.
• Finally, it was a baseball game.
‘Twas supposed to be anyway. Laurie and I were due in Row Q of Section 3 of the Upper Deck but never made it all the way up there. Monsoon season had come to Queens in the hours before scheduled first pitch (ants seeking safety swarmed Laurie’s leg at her bus stop), so it seemed foolhardy to climb those golden stairs only to run for more cover than Row Q would allow. So we did the only sensible thing one can do in the Upper Deck on a Saturday.
We ran for CharlieH, denizen of Section 22’s glamorous Row A since April 2007, a must-stop for me when I’m within hailing distance of it. Charlie brought his strapping nephew Scott, who I figured was in his junior year at Montclair State. In fact, he’s 14. (I cannot judge age.) Charlie and Scott waited out the rain in the rain when there wasn’t all that much rain. Laurie and I showed up and the rain returned. The rain we could handle with an umbrella, when I wasn’t accidentally poking young Scott in the back with mine. DiamondVision was entertaining us with the ’86 highlight film (“tell me McDowell isn’t loaded here,” Charlie astutely observed of the legendary hotfoot segment), the parking lot was entertaining us with mysterious billows of black smoke (either the excitement at Citi Field was already heating up or the traditional parking lot car fire coincided with Replica Night) and we were entertaining each other with nuanced appraisals of the Mets’ final season at Shea Stadium (consensus: “we suck”). The thunder, though, was quite jarring and the lightning seemed best avoided. Thus, the four of us moved our party to the concourse outside Section 22.
There’s so much to occupy your time while you’re waiting out a rain delay in the Upper Deck at Shea Stadium. For example, there is standing. There is getting out of the way of others. There is dodging raindrops. You don’t have to be outside at your seat to do that. The standard line you’ve heard spouted a thousand times since the Mets began to tell us how badly they needed to replace Shea is “it’s a dump, but it’s our dump.” I would like to qualify that.
It’s a dump because it’s been run like a dump. You’re gonna tell me somebody couldn’t have patched the roof or tightened a pipe or whatever the hell it is that makes the Upper Deck concourse the East Coast answer to the swimming pool at Chase Field? The whole place moans of neglect, no matter how many coats of red paint they’ve added, no matter how many men in orange golf shirts form a phalanx that is forever “coming through!” on their way to nowhere, no matter the black hole the Upper Deck obviously was in the planning of the future former home of your New York Mets. I excused myself for a bit from our gang to say hi to Mike and Lisa Steffanos of the Mike’s Mets Steffanoses who themselves were avoiding the tsunami at Section 5. Cow-Bell Man tried to fill the void by good-naturedly clanging away nearby, but without baseball as his backdrop, Cow-Bell Man’s injection of himself into a discouraging interlude like a rain delay creates merely a noisier rain delay. When I attempted eventually to wade back to 22, I encountered the most baffling bottleneck of customers and staff. It wasn’t that anybody was doing anything to cause a standstill; it was just that everybody was standing still.
If you squint real closely inside your Shea Replica, you can see there are still a few Upper Deckers waiting to find out if the game was postponed or what. I sure hope World-Class Citi Field provides world-class communications to its hoi polloi in the Promenade (the New Age term for Upper Deck as you’ll see if you roll your cursor over this bad boy long enough). Waiting out a rain delay at Shea Stadium is like sitting on a tarmac in a blizzard. Nobody knows when we’re gonna take off, nobody knows when we’re gonna land, nobody knows if we’re gonna fly at all. Nobody knows nothin’. It’s all rumors and speculation. The usher at Section 22 offers a different take from the usher at Section 20. It’s one big whisper campaign in lieu of solid or even mushy information. Yet it’s all we have. The monitors are showing golf (what, no Beer Money marathon?). The scoreboard flashes All-Time Save Leaders and somebody’s birthday. The PA features announcements from the faculty of Charlie Brown Elementary (mwah mwah mwah mwah). Nobody thinks to beam via closed-circuit a radar screen or hint that maybe we’re thinking of releasing you people on your own recognizance by ‘X’ o’clock.
When word came down that in fact there would be no baseball game Saturday night (sheet cakes of rain, the sky’s vertical hold askew, Shea Stadium rocking in ways Fran Healy couldn’t possibly imagine — who would have guessed it would be called?), it was no less confusing. Nobody believed they’d play a regular doubleheader, an “old-fashioned” doubleheader as it’s now sadly known. Nobody immediately grasped the process by which rain checks are exchanged for other games. You can be certain a measurable percentage of Saturday night ticketholders will show up Sunday afternoon expecting to be seated. Phil Mushnick will have a good time with this one.
Immediate physical logistics were no less clear-cut. Charlie and Scott bolted like Flushing lightning while I was fighting my way back from Section 5. Mike and Lisa caught up with Laurie and me. We all figured standing around a few minutes would help us wait out the foot traffic. Not really. Somebody in an orange jacket told us we couldn’t walk in the direction of right field, to the Upper Deck’s Gate E ramp sequence, the sanest direction to take for us subway-bound types desiring minimal laughter in the rain once on the ground. Why couldn’t we walk over there? “Ya can’t go there.” Oh. Fortunately, Laurie and I crossed up the system by veering off once we reached Mezzanine and then availed ourselves of the little-used food court ramps to make a beeline for Gate E’s only open portal.
“You realize,” she said, “that the same people will be running the new place next year.”
I’m a little less grumpy now than I was when I realized I’d devoted five hours of my life to commuting to; standing around under; and commuting from a storm with a baseball stadium somewhere inside it. Two baseball stadia, counting the replica. I don’t get to Log the Rangers as I didn’t actually get to seem they play ball. I thought about giving them a mostly blank line to commemorate that I gave it an honest effort, but after lying awake nights debating the Randy Tate situation, I decided this is no time to inaugurate weird precedent. Besides, the only Texan I spied with my little eye was Milton Bradley, who was signing a ball for a kid by their dugout (or, perhaps, penning him a threatening letter). Sunday’s old-fashioned doubleheader is inconvenient for me to enjoy even on television, let alone in person, so my Ranger-Met contact for the weekend will be fairly limited. But there was, as Anne Murray cried out for long ago, a little good news today:
The Mets didn’t play, but they didn’t lose.
You have no idea how many times we heard that on the ramps. “Hey, we didn’t lose!” “Hey, we picked up a half-game!” “Hey, Wagner didn’t blow a save!” (My mouth hung open in disbelief when I noticed Billy the Skid is this month’s program cover boy.) These rib-jabbing wink-winks started out as rank sarcasm, but as the trip down the ramps brought us closer and closer to Casey Stengel Plaza, you could sense palpable relief — almost happiness — that for all the standing around, all the getting wet, all the absolute lameness of a night when no baseball was played at Shea Stadium that, well, no baseball was played at Shea Stadium, no frustration with our team needed to be vented, no managerial deathwatch would be fed more fodder at least until between games Sunday when one assumes a loss in the opener will mean Jerry Manuel’s the skipper in the nightcap.
And though it is ridiculous what we fans willingly engage in when the elements are so obviously awful that they would preclude everyone but the clinically insane from leaving their homes — how could you possibly explain the culture of the rainout to someone who isn’t immersed in baseball? — there was the collective understanding by the voluntary participants in this psychiatric experiment referred to casually as rooting for the New York Mets that this is what we do. We show up when the ticket says we must. We gain our door prize or, if we are not alert enough, do not. We trudge to the general vicinity of where we’re supposed to sit so we can stand uncomfortably in a crowd. We while away a mandatory wait that in any other context would be considered rude and inconsiderate. We pony up for $4 pretzels and $7.50 beers without benefit of a ballgame to make them go down easier.
We’re suckers, I swear we are. But at least the Mets didn’t lose.
***Worth noting, as I dry off…
• Happy 20th anniversary to Nuke LaLoosh! Bull Durham, the best baseball movie ever, opened on this date in 1988 and Tim Robbins, the true Mets fan who portrayed the archetype 10-cent head/million-dollar arm phenom, describes his real-life allegiance and more to ESPN The Magazine in honor of the occasion.
• Happy 25th anniversary to Mex the Met! Yes, today is a quarter-century since circumstances conspired to send Keith Hernandez to New York from St. Louis for Neil Allen and Rick Ownbey (I still can’t believe that when Joel called me to report two Mets had to become Cardinals so the best first baseman in baseball could become ours that my first reaction was “we didn’t give up Bob Bailor, I hope”). Keith Hernandez and we were made for each other. On a night like Saturday night, I hope he avoided every gully that tempted him.
• Happy birthday to all the fathers out there. If John Maine or Pedro Martinez wishes to produce a Jim Bunning replica this afternoon at Shea Stadium’s unexpected final Father’s Day doubleheader, all the better.
by Greg Prince on 15 June 2008 8:41 am 
My first definitive “favorite” American Leaguers, other than whoever were playing the Yankees on any given night, were the surprising Texas Rangers of the mid-’70s. I took to them for nearly tripping up the Oakland dynasty in 1974 and seeming poised to overthrow the three-time World Champs in 1975 (though I liked the ’71 A’s quite a bit because of Vida Blue…cripes, am I really splitting hairs over this in 2008?). Anyway, while my interest in the Texas Rangers of today is nil, I kind of looked forward to seeing them play the Mets at Shea to satisfy my inner 12-year-old’s concept of the ideal World Series. The rain, however, put the kibosh on that plan.
Sometimes you just have to send your inner 12-year-old to bed without supper.
by Jason Fry on 14 June 2008 9:04 pm Well it's the biggest thing in my life I guess
Look at us all, we're nervous wrecks
Hey, we go on next
Joaquin Andujar, who may not be a sage on the Paul Westerberg level but has had his moments, once said that “there is one word in America that says it all, and that one word is, 'You never know.' ” Except we kind of do know, no matter how many t-shirts Willie Randolph hands out, no matter how much we discuss that it's June, no matter how much we talk about what the Rockies and the Phillies did (to us) last year. Take away unquantifiable qualities of the 2008 Mets — how much they do or not care, how excited or flat they see — and you still have a team that's not young enough to stay on the field and fulfill the promise of Plan A, not deep enough to execute a successful Plan B, and not positioned in terms of payroll and prospects to jump to a Plan C. Our chances of catching the Phillies seem poor at best — the Phillies have been through the absence of Jimmy Rollins, the dreadful early-season slump of Ryan Howard, are enjoying a career year from Chase Utley, and are in sync with Charlie Manuel. Heck, they remind me of the 2006 Mets. This, I strongly suspect, is their time, not ours.
Willie Randolph will probably get fired any of these days — or live on through the year as the manager of a disappointing team that will enter a beautiful new ballpark looking rather ragged. The Mets' core — Wright, Reyes, Beltran, Santana, Maine — look headed for years that range from somewhat disappointing to good but not great. That core will enter 2009 not as favorites for a division title, but as the nucleus of a team that demands respect and has a chance to win, provided the rest of the pieces fit right.
I think that's a realistic appraisal of where we're headed.
Arriving at that appraisal has been variously disheartening, excruciating and infuriating. And I've had enough of it, enough of trying to live in the gap between Met expectation and Met reality. Faced with that, there are two choices: invest your psychic energy somewhere else, or try to change your expectations.
Last night, without having put a lot of conscious thought into it, I started doing the latter. I went out for a couple of beers with a friend I hadn't seen for a while, then looked at the clock as we were leaving and thought, “Hey, the Mets are on.” Not as in, “Holy crap I missed first pitch” or as in “Some other sucker will watch crappy baseball,” but as in “Hey, the Mets are on.” Got home, turned on the set, and there they were, live in living color and playing their ancient blood rivals, the Texas Rangers.
I could easily write a post expanding on that joke, taking pokes at interleague play as manifested in the sublime pointlessness of a game between the New York Mets and the Texas Rangers. But last night, the Rangers were the perfect opponents. Mets-Rangers means no particular context, no historical depth, nothing but what two baseball teams actually do over their respective 27 outs. (For us, ideally, 24.)
Hey, they've got this Josh Hamilton guy, heard he's having a helluva year. Oh, and that's where Milton Bradley's gotten to. And Kevin Millwood — man, remember when he was the latest Brave pitcher to dismantle us and crush our hopes? Wonder how he's doing?
As well as more familiar thoughts, like the ballistics of a ball that might come down just over the fence or might return to earth in an outfielder's glove. Like how there's a seeming infinity of green grass broken only by eight little roving points, and yet hits are hard to come by. Like the way the pitcher unwinding himself from stationary on the mound to a blur of motion tugs all these other changes along behind it — the batter crouching and focusing, the catcher shifting his feet and glove minutely, the infielders bowing and doing a little crow hop of readiness, the outfielders leaning with the pitch, the umpires awaiting the need to pass judgment, the fans waiting to sigh or cheer or hold their breath a little longer. A little mini-drama with each pitch, repeated 300 times or so.
And the result of all this? Might be a Met win. Might be a Met loss. Might be a Met no-hitter, first ever. (Though probably not.) Might have something you've never seen before, or something that you've seen before but notice for the first time and file away for the time you'll see it again. Might just be a pretty good way to pass three hours on an early-summer evening. It's baseball, man. It'll make you scream for joy and scream in fury, it'll give you mornings of floating along happily and nights of dark blue funks, but it beats the hell out of nights when green grass and warm breezes and the sound of bat and ball are just a fantasy. And most of all it's fun, provided you let it be fun.
So. Ballgame tonight, weather permitting of course. Mets are playing. Wonder what'll happen. Those are my new expectations.
Wish us luck if you can't go
Playin' at the talent show
An empty seat in the front row
Might even win this time, you never know
It's too late to turn back, here we go…
by Greg Prince on 14 June 2008 10:41 am We know how to do disgust, despair, dismal, dismay, disillusion, derision, desperate, diatribe, depressed, disturbed…but I think we've forgotten how to do plain ol' dandy.
We'll give it a shot, though. Bear with us, as it's going to take a little while to recall how this works.
Friday night, the Mets…won?…yes…won.
They won!
Did we spell “won” correctly?
The win came only after they nearly blew…no, wait…they didn't nearly blow anything.
Tarnishing the win, however was the sad…no, nothing sad to report.
Shea's breath was collectively held in the late innings when Billy Wagner…correction, we're getting a correction…Billy Wagner didn't pitch, no breath was held.
Oliver Perez got himself in his usual…checking on that…say, he didn't get himself in anything! Pitched real well, apparently.
Honest!
The Mets' nonexistent offense left runners…hold on…the offense apparently did exist and, from what we can gather…yes, it's true…produced runs.
Several, it seems.
One bad break after another…sorry, was looking at an old script…no bad breaks. None.
Willie Randolph's mishandling of both the pitching and the lineup…didn't exist? It didn't? Really? Just confirming…yeah, it was fine. He was fine. Team managed well.
The bullpen, however, was another story…uh…no, actually same story. It was fine.
Casting a further shadow on the proceedings was an injury that will keep…huh? No new injuries? Oh.
Still, the depleted roster…what's that? New outfielder joining the team? A real one? Wow.
As a Mets fan, one is left to complain about and criticize…nothing. Absolutely nothing. For one night, everything was excellent.
Ya don't say?
For once, we do.
by Greg Prince on 13 June 2008 8:47 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 371 regular-season and 13 postseason games to date. The Log records the numbers. The Tales tell the stories.
7/2/82 F Philadelphia 3-1 Swan 7-14 W 8-4
8/3/86 Su Montreal 2-2 Ojeda 1 16-25 W 4-3 (10)
5/15/87 F San Francisco 1-1 Fernandez 3 18-27 W 8-3
5/3/97 Sa St. Louis 6-4 Reed 1 51-56 W 5-1
6/8/98 M Tampa Bay (A) 1-0 Reed 7 64-62 W 3-0
10/8/00: NLDS @ Shea Mets 4 Giants 0 SP-Jones
4-1 Mets win series 3-1
4/26/02 F Milwaukee 7-0 Estes 1 138-102 W 1-0
6/20/02 Th Minnesota (A) 1-0 Trachsel 7 141-104 W 3-2
9/29/07 Sa Florida16-13 Maine 10 195-162 W 13-0
5/15/08 Th Washington 4-8 Pelfrey 4 199-168 L 1-0
It all made so much sense. Every time. This had to be the night. Or the day. All the stars were aligned. I could think of so many reasons that the first Mets’ no-hitter was going to take place at Shea Stadium with me on hand to witness it.
Start with the most basic premise: Wouldn’t it be crazy if it happened while I was here? The franchise has waited since its inception for it, I’m at a minute percentage of games, yet it’s unfolding right here, right now…with me in attendance! What’re the odds?
I don’t remember learning definitively that the Mets had never had a no-hitter. It was just one of those things I knew. I don’t remember learning about America being founded in 1776 or that 2 + 2 equaled 4. You don’t learn it, you simply understand it and accept it and take it from there.
The Mets have never had a no-hitter. Of course they haven’t.
Funny thing, the second game I ever went to — my first win — was a one-hitter. Jon Matlack shut out the Cards on June 29, 1974 with such ease that his one-hitter seemed unremarkable. The one hit was by the St. Louis pitcher, John Curtis, in the third. By then the Mets were winning 2-0. By then I had watched my first Old Timers Day, most noteworthy for Maury Wills playing with a headset on as he covered it for NBC. My other big observation was the filling out of All-Star Ballots. I’m sure I voted for Johnny Bench over Jerry Grote because I took my responsibility serious as death. The observation part was two guys a few rows down from me arguing the point. “Grote over BENCH? You’re voting for Grote over BENCH?” The guy had to have said it a dozen times. I learned that people like to repeat themselves.
Matlack had a one-hitter. It didn’t seem worth mentioning let alone repeating. The Mets were always having one-hitters. Seaver had thrown approximately one a year for as long as I could remember (which at age 11 I have to admit wasn’t all that far back). One-hitters were Confederate currency in terms of pitching gems. I always laughed when announcers referred to pitchers losing a one-hitter, as in giving up a second hit. What’s to lose? It was right there with “he almost made a great play” in terms of achievement.
A no-hitter would be different. A no-hitter was rare, and not just for the Mets. No-hitters got their own list in the paper. Someone threw a no-hitter anywhere in baseball and it was on the back page. First sports record book I ever owned, a New York Times almanac that covered the events of 1968, printed the boxscores of every no-hitter from that year, The Year of The Pitcher. Catfish Hunter threw a perfect game. Ray Washburn and Gaylord Perry exchanged no-hitters against each other’s team on consecutive nights. Those were pitching feats. That’s what I wanted.
I would wait. I’d have been happy to have seen one on TV, heard one on the radio. I was not going to be even that happy. As the years went by, the yen grew a little deeper. TV…radio…no no-hitter. At Shea? C’mon, that was never gonna happen.
But the first sign that it possibly could have was exhilarating. It wasn’t just a no-hitter, but a perfect game. For three innings in 1982, Craig Swan gave up nothing to the Phillies. The Mets never held an opposing team off base for three consecutive innings, let alone to start the game. With one out in the fourth, Pete Rose walked. There, Joel and I told each other, goes the perfect game. But Swannie retired the next two Phils. No hits through four. No hits through five. We didn’t talk about it, but we were watching a no-hitter, the first no-hitter in Mets history take place.
Of course we didn’t talk about it. We knew better. We’d been schooled in protocol. Mets fans didn’t need a no-hitter in order to know how to act. Somebody slipped us the notes, probably somebody on the Astros where they had a no-hitter every ten minutes.
The silent act stretched into the sixth when, with two out, it was Rose again. He singled off Swan. There went history. We stood — everybody stood; it’s what you do — and applauded Craig Swan’s effort. The Mets were winning 7-0 by then and, honestly, did you really expect him to pitch a no-hitter?
Stronger no-hit bids emerged as the Mets improved. Doc Gooden came oh-so-close at Shea in 1984, surrendering just an infield hit to Keith Moreland of the Cubs, one that could have been scored an error on Ray Knight and nobody could have complained. That I watched on TV in Tampa, saying nothing to anyone in my dorm, but thinking no-no all the way. A year later, Sid Fernandez seemed en route to destiny at Shea against the Reds. I was so sure that this would be the one that after six spotless innings I unwrapped an audio cassette to record the final innings on WHN. Davey Concepcion led off the seventh with a homer, Sid fell apart and the Mets lost.
I was chastened. I not only was reminded not to say anything aloud, I learned that thinking it was bad news. But good thoughts are so hard to shoo away when the one great moment in Mets history that hasn’t happened is in sight. I couldn’t shoo away the thoughts in 1986 when Bobby Ojeda took his no-hitter into the seventh when with one out Luis Rivera singled. It was the magical year of 1986, I was with two of my best friends and a no-hitter seemed greedy, so I let it go. The following May, El Sid was doing it again. That no-hit stuff that was always being talked up was in effect. Five hitless for Sid. Then he leaves with a knee or a hip or the gout. That was Sid. The combined no-hitter died after 5-1/3 (thanks Sisk). But again, it was too good a night to mope about the no-hitter. It was my first date with Stephanie. I’d only begun to lightly hint that we were witnessing a possible baseball, never mind personal, milestone when it evaporated on the spot.
(The Sid bid lives on in our wedding video wherein best man Chuck reads the letter I wrote him after that night, me babbling on about Sid’s flirtation with history…and, oh yeah, my flirtation with this blonde I’d just met.)
No-hit attempts would come and go with me off-premise. Gooden took another one against the Cubs deep until Damon Berryhill ended it in the eighth in ’88. I swear I thought David Cone was going to nail his down in ’92 against the Astros, but Benny Distefano got a hit with five outs to go. Gooden and Coney seemed like such good bets for no-hitters, too. Anyway, I wasn’t at those games and by the ’90s, when a no-hitter appeared possible on television, I started talking it up while in progress. It wasn’t working the old-fashioned way, so what the hell?
However, when next faced with the actual possibility of a no-hitter in my midst, I clung to tradition. I thought for sure Rick Reed was going to do it in 1998. It was too good not to happen.
First off, it was the Devil Rays, the first-year Devil Rays, the horrendous 26-35 Devil Rays. What a setup! I was at the first Devil Rays game at Shea as part of my six-pack. I would have sought them out anyway for novelty’s sake, but still. Who thinks in terms of the Devil Rays? Even then?
So it was strange having them there, but strange is what you need, right? Plus Rick — the only Met I actually, sort of, kind of knew, friend-of-a-friend style at that point. Because of my once-removed relationship with Rick, wouldn’t it be fitting if he got us off the schneid and did it front of me? He was having a dynamite 1998 and nobody, by my reckoning, deserved it more. For what it was worth, he carried a no-no into the fifth when I and about 2,000 people watched at Shea the previous May. It seemed silly to consider a no-hit bid then, Reed a non-union interloper, the ’97 Mets only starting to find their footing. It didn’t seem silly in June of ’98.
I’m sure there were other reasons it seemed like a such good idea. Like Mike Piazza clubbing his first Shea Met home run that night. And Reed himself driving in a run. And the Mets never having had a no-hitter before.
Actually, it was a perfect game. Rick Reed had set down the Devil Rays twice through the order. It was that easy, it was that obvious. As the night went on, the electricity hummed. Slowly, through the fourth, the fifth, definitely the sixth, everybody figured out what was going on. My friend from work who joined me that night heard the cheering, looked at the scoreboard then looked at me and said “I just realized what’s going on.” That was the sixth.
Yes, we all realized what was going on. It was perfectly apparent. Perfectly!
Quinton McCracken popped out to lead off the seventh. A roar! Miguel Cairo grounded to Ordoñez. A mighty roar! Ohmigod, it’s really gonna happen! Tonight! It’s…
Wade Boggs doubled.
Shit.
We were up on our feet, as we were in 1982 for Swannie, as were in 1986 for Ojeda, as would have been for El Sid in ’87 had he not hobbled off because of injury. It was a helluva run for Reeder and it would wind up being a helluva game: 3 hits, 10 strikeouts, a complete game shutout. So close, but plenty good. On the way to the 7 turnstiles, some dopey kid held up a cardboard sign urging that if we wanted to see “real baseball,” we should go to 161st Street in the Bronx. I saw some of the realest baseball I’d ever see right here at 126th and Roosevelt.
Problem with coming close to a no-hitter is you kind of expect another chance soon. It’s like the time I caught a foul ball in my first Spring Training game. I assumed they’d just keep bouncing my way. They didn’t. As I started to go to Shea fairly regularly, I looked for it as I never looked for it before Reeder’s effort. Now I wanted in. It seemed the 36+ years had taken a toll on everybody’s psyche. It used to be the occasional wise guy would greet the first opposition hit with “there goes the no-hitter, chuckle, chuckle”. I’m sure I began to hear it a lot more around 1998. I know I said it to myself, oh, practically every day.
Yet when faced with the next legitimate in-person no-hit opportunity, I was too chicken to really take advantage of it. Well, it’s more up to the pitcher and his teammates, but as Game Four of the 2000 Division Series got underway and Bobby Jones began mowing down Giants, it was hard not to notice a perfect game in progress. If we were entering the fifth inning of any other Mets-Giants game at any time in the history of the world, of course I’d be there with my no-hit thinking cap screwed tight to my head.
But this was a potential clinching playoff game. Would it offend the gods if I rooted for a perfect game, even a no-hitter when there was more pressing business at hand? Job one was defeating the Giants and advancing to the next round. Now if Bobby should happen to decide to not allow any hits, that would be great, but to make that bargain would be mighty tricky, though on the other hand…
Kent led off the fifth with a double. My negotiations were for naught. On the very bright side, he threw a one-hitter, the Mets won the series and the non-no-hitter was no more than delightful trivia. Still, maybe if I’d had a little more confidence, the drought would have ended.
What’s confidence got to do with it? I was confident as all get-out in 2002 when newcomer Shawn Estes was taking care of the Brewers, another innately unlikely opponent, with ease. Too many things were happening. The Milwaukee pitcher was Glendon Rusch, an ex-Met. An ex-Met. Had to be a sign. Jay Payton homered in the second and nobody else scored. It was tighter than tight. Estes kept responding. Alex Ochoa was in the Brewer lineup. Another ex-Met! Rusch’s catcher was Raul Casanova…OK, it would be cheating to imply I knew Raul was a former Met farmhand let alone a future Met backstop, but still. The Brewers being in the National League had always seemed a mite absurd. And Shawn Estes? Shawn Estes was kind of my generic ballplayer name for when I needed an example of some pitcher who was a little above average. No, I wouldn’t trade him for somebody like Shawn Estes, I’d answer hypothetical swap proposals contemptuously. But now in 2002, the Mets had Shawn Estes and Shawn Estes was pitching the game of his and possibly my life.
Did I mention this was a perfect game for six innings, too? That Shawn was that good? That the leadoff hitter in the seventh for the Brewers was Eric Young, who I once heard grew up a Mets fan in New Jersey? That everybody at Shea was riding on every pitch, that nobody was saying a word as to why? That Young singled clean to left?
Shit!
The exercise would be repeated to a certain extent a couple of months later when the Twins came to Shea for the first Interleague time and the most absurd Met hurler of them all, Steve Trachsel, flirted with the feat that would not accept amorous advances. Another American League team on busman’s holiday; another eighteen up, eighteen down; another night of exchanging knowing glances and clearing throats. Steve Trachsel…the Twins…me here…it was too ridiculous to contemplate seriously.
Steve lulled Jacque Jones into a leadoff groundout in the seventh but then slowly gave up a line drive single to Cristian Guzman. Again, we stood and applauded. Trax pitched great, even fast, but this was now beginning to feel self-parodying. If Steve Trachsel, the Heinz Ketchup of the Mets’ rotation, could almost pitch a no-hitter…if I could be on hand for the longest, most baffling streak in Major League history to continue again…how bleeping hard it could be to actually see one of these damn things to its fruition?
I wanted our no-hitter. It didn’t have to be mine. It would belong to all of us. It would pop up as a possibility at Shea with me in other places. Trachsel would give it another shot the next year (I listened on the radio as I walked 23rd Street, convinced this was it); Gl@v!ne seemed unhittable while I sat through the opening number of Bombay Dreams (sure, it has to happen while I’m at a show…and it has to be him); Pedro, sweet Pedro, was as certain to bury the curse or the streak or whatever it was against the Astros as Cone was thirteen years earlier. Chris Burke took care of that dream.
Of course it didn’t happen in ’03 or ’04 or ’05, just as it didn’t happen in ’02 or ’98 or ’82 or any year you’d care to name. It wouldn’t come close for reals until the very, very end of the 2007 season when, à la Bobby Jones in 2000, John Maine pitched a must-win game with no-hit stuff. Maine and the Mets had to win, that was what was important. But the team was up by double-digits in runs and Maine kept a zero on the board under H and godammit, with September going as September had gone, wouldn’t it be nice — no, wouldn’t it be justice — if John Maine threw the first no-hitter in Mets history against the stupid Florida Marlins in Game 161 with just about everything on the line?
Absolutely would have been. Absolutely didn’t occur. This was the most agonizing non-no-hitter of them all in my Log. Paul Hoover, who I didn’t even notice entering the game (he replaced the ejected, repulsive Miguel Olivo after the other sidebar of the day, the Mets’ first brawl in eleven years), ended it with two out in the eighth on the slowest of nonentity rollers you’d ever want to shield your eyes from. When stupid Hoover reached base, the capacity crowd rose to give John his due. I clapped twice and headed to the men’s room. My superstition wouldn’t allow me to go there earlier. The men’s room also had a door I could slam against a wall.
I wasn’t really fooled when in the middle of May Mike Pelfrey teased me onto the same ride I’d taken so many times before. I was willing to hold it in for six innings. I was willing to find signs that this was the day (Gary, Keith and Ron broadcasting from the Upper Deck was a nice, surreal touch). I was willing to go through the nodding and winking motions with my companions. I was willing to believe the tenth time was a charm. That the Mets hadn’t scored yet added to it an ounce of legitimacy. It was like listening to Tom Seaver getting to two outs in the ninth of a nothing-nothing game in Chicago in 1975 only to hear Joe Wallis ruin everything. I was crestfallen that Aaron Boone ruined the illusion leading off the seventh. But I wasn’t surprised.
I’ve never seen a Mets’ no-hitter at Shea. I will never see a Mets’ no-hitter at Shea. Maybe in the next joint. Maybe in the next life. Maybe if I stop thinking about it altogether.
No matter where I stand, how I sit, what I do, if I whiz, the Mets keep not getting that no-hitter. History, too, likes to repeat itself.
by Jason Fry on 12 June 2008 9:07 pm booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
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booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
/deep breath
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
/stare at own feet
by Greg Prince on 12 June 2008 9:07 pm Something about the way the sun hits Shea in late afternoon when almost everybody's gone home appeals to me. Probably because it reminds me of the playground at East School. That's where I did most of my balling, if you could call it that, in my youth. It's where I played kickball and stickball and softball and basketball and football when I was in my single-digits and teens.
Never mind that I wasn't any good at any of it. Never mind that there was often some character of low degree waiting to target and harass the contemplative and unathletic. Never mind all that. I liked the East School playground, something about the way sun hit it in the late afternoon when almost nobody was around.
That's Shea at the end of a weekday afternoon like this one. That was Shea today. It looked a lot like it did at the end of April when almost everybody vacated the premises via good sense. Then it was 13-1. Today it may as well have been.
I stand by my statement of clarity: the Mets suck. A team does not have this stretch of games without internal suckitude defining its very soul. A team does not get the trademark Johan Santana start for which all had been waiting and then throw it away without some incredible suck.
Billy Wagner…somebody check his middle initial. I'll bet it's an S.
Let's not completely blame the bullpen. Let's blame the offense, too, the one that finds ways to leave tack-on runs forever untacked, the one that aims its line drives at Diamondback gloves until all it has left to give are wan popups. Let's blame Willie for whatever it is Willie did or didn't do while we're at it. There are no innocents when 4-0 leads are blown and 5-4 losses appear in their stead.
So much for momentum. So much for saving up energy by not effusively mobbing last night's game-winning hitter. So much for whatever illusions linger about the 2008 Mets. They are as scattered as the tenth-inning spectators were at Shea Stadium today, the playground abandoned, the sun setting on this very sorry team.
by Greg Prince on 12 June 2008 6:57 am The Mets were pretty darn fired up. And eventually they were ready to go…though by the time they were ready, a good bit of the thrill had already gone.
Mike Pelfrey, that ol' sonofagun, clear outpitched Brandon Webb Wednesday night. It was a performance to behold as I listened to much of the first eight innings on radio; the most explosive sound of the season had to be Howie Rose declaring “pitch count, shmitch count!” in lobbying Willie Randolph to leave him in to start the ninth.
Pelf earned it. You might even say he earned the chance to pitch out of trouble, if you consider a leadoff single when up by three runs a heap of trouble. Willie did and out went Pelfrey (8 IP, 5 H, 2 BB, 8 SO) after 112 pitches/shmitches.
Billy Wagner is supposed to be able to collect three outs with a three-run lead more readily than Pelfrey. Except Pelfrey was pitching better than he ever has and Wagner's been pitching about as badly as possible. Conventional wisdom says call on the closer and Willie, after five straight losses, wasn't about to get unconventional.
While listening on the radio, I heard Wayne Hagin non sequitur one of Howie's points by noting Frank Robinson was in the ballpark. I thought of that watching in the ninth when Wagner hit Mark Reynolds on the shoe and Jeff Nelson failed to find shoe polish on the ball. Frank Robinson's been around Shea for shoe polish incidents, you know. Reynolds was denied the base replays indicated he was entitled to. So what happens next?
Let's just say the Mets aren't always as lucky as they seem where shoe polish plays are concerned. Reynolds' having to stay at the plate didn't do Frank Robinson any good but it nearly sunk the home team to even deeper depths. Goodness knows the Billy Wagner Fan Club meeting broke up early, right around the second Reynolds' three-run bomb disrupted air traffic into LaGuardia. And boy did Shea go quiet. As Gary Cohen astutely pointed out, the Mets got runners on in the bottom of the ninth, potential winning runs, and the dugout was stone silent. The crowd, too. This might have been a good night to shut the automated cheerleading off. It was tacky.
It became one of those games after a fashion when somebody was going to have a worse relief pitcher than somebody else and for last night (with Jorge Sosa nowhere in sight), it was the Diamondbacks and Edgar Gonzalez, he who entered with a 6.87 ERA, served up a two-run game-losing homer to Carlos Beltran and left with his earned run average lowered.
Beltran circled the bases triumphantly and was met by crickets at home plate.
No, not really. There were a good three or four of his teammates waiting for him. All right, I'm exaggerating low. Jason tells me he TiVo'd it and counted a dozen Mets. That means a dozen Mets weren't there. That fact doesn't show up in the boxscore any more than half the roster didn't show up for the traditional plate jump, so it's probably a meaningless statistic. Still, only the 2008 Mets could bring us a thirteen-inning walkoff blast and have us groping around at how horsebleep they looked celebrating it.
Wonderful night for Pelfrey. Smashing night for Beltran. Winning continues to edge losing. But somehow, victory pried from the jaws of defeat pried from the jaws of victory notwithstanding, typical night for the 2008 Mets.
“Fuck this team,” my partner wrote to me minutes after they emerged atop what was technically a thriller. “One walkoff home run changes nothing.”
I tend to agree. I raised a fist for Carlos and churned acid for Pelf — it was probably as into a game as I'd been all season — but it was one grain of smooth sand against a tidal wave of tepidness. The Mets have been sucking for a long time and they're going to need more than thirteen innings to turn that tide.
Sometimes, said Freud, a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes, we find, a fantastic finish is not a prelude to a monster winning streak. Sometimes it's just a fantastic finish. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but sometimes you need to see a lot more to not believe the Mets are through sucking.
Until further notice, the Mets do not appear to be done sucking. Yet you know what I don't completely mind about it? The clarity it has wrought for me.
I have to admit that while I do by instinct still spout a stray curse word and occasionally pound a couch cushion when things go wrong for the Mets (which is almost invariably), it's really not eating away at my insides as bad stretches did in almost every other season I can remember.
For example, when the Mets dipped below .500 in June 1999, I was morose. I'd assumed we'd never win another game once our losing streak reached eight. I'm not kidding. I couldn't see a way out and I was miserable.
The Mets are below .500 in June 2008. I'm not morose. I assumed we'd win another game even though we'd lost five in a row and Billy Wagner pushed the envelope ridiculously close to a sixth. When they and we do break losing streaks, I'm less thrilled than relieved to the extent that I emote at all. I'm more like unmoved.
Don't take this as some sort of white flag of latent maturity on my part. I'm not going to tell you that I've suddenly discovered there are more important things than baseball, more pressing matters than the Mets. Screw that; there aren't. But in 1999, to continue with that example, I believed…Believed…the Mets were better than their Ralph Wiggum of a record. How could my team not be playing to its capabilities? Mets fail baseball? That's unpossible!
Pick another year and I'll tell you a similar story. The Mets were down and I couldn't and wouldn't accept it. That's been my M.O., my Metus Operandi since I was six.
It isn't at the moment, even a moment that includes a 5-3 win a little while ago and Johan Santana in fewer than a dozen hours.
The Mets suck. And I know it. And not only doesn't it really bother me in a transcendent way, I almost — almost — find comfort in knowing it.
This is not one of those 1979 scenarios in which I understand completely the Mets suck but I hate living in an epoch that is defined by hopelessness. This is not one of those 1993 situations from which the bottom has not only fallen out of the Mets but conked a polar bear when said bottom hit Antarctica. I hated having to be a fan of the 1993 Mets, but I never questioned that I had to cheer them on to each and every one of their 59 stirring victories. This isn't even a 2003 doppelgänger, the kind of year when I don't feel too terribly bad that they're losing a ton because it will mean the end of an arrogant general manager I don't want around and the dispatch of a malingering ballplayer I can't stand to watch. The best part of 2003 that didn't include Jose Reyes' promotion was the end of the tenures of Steve Phillips and Roberto Alomar. To maintain their dual elimination as sincere and abiding personal goals indicated I cared deeply about what happened to the Mets.
In 2008, I don't have that. I don't expressly want Omar Minaya and Willie Randolph dismissed, but I won't shed tears if they are. And while I'm not aching for any particular player to be released or traded, I don't particularly care if any particular player stays beyond tomorrow.
To be honest, no matter how bad I felt about Pelfrey's effort swirling down the Billy drain, I haven't cared with great conviction whether the Mets win or lose any given game this year.
There, I said it.
I'm not sure I understood until now that this is my 2008 Mets thought process. I've known something's been awry since Opening Day when my annual enthusiasm felt surprisingly forced, yet I've held back on taking this “Tastes Great!”/“Less Filling!” internal dialogue public. I'm aware that even as some of you are quite forthcoming about expressing your pointed dismay over the Mets' many shortcomings, there are others among you who prefer the positive be accentuated always. I don't think either camp is wrong in its approach to fandom. I'm often in both at the same time. I don't want to play Paulie Pollyanna and tell you I see great things in Mets baseball but I don't want to be Captain Bringdown either. My default position has always been “I just want the Mets to win.”
I still do…I guess.
Don't mistake this for “I've had it with baseball.” I haven't. Baseball's my thing. I wouldn't sit here and churn out however many words a week about baseball that I do, labor-of-love style, if it weren't. Trust me: I don't have anything better to do or anything I'd rather do. And don't mistake this for a resignation of my commission from the United States Mets Corps. It's not. I don't consider myself one bit less a Mets fan at this juncture of this season than I would say I was in any other season. God knows I'm not switching sides or doing anything repulsive like that. I can't even say that I'm giving up on 2008 per se. The Rockies of '07 were no better in their June, the Astros of '05 measurably worse, and see where they wound up.
Then again, their respective rebounds were considered quite unlikely.
Last month, Steve Keane of the Eddie Kranepool Society, in one of the thousands of angst-ridden posts conceived within the Metsosphere to attempt to explain away what the hell is wrong with the Mets, hit on the head the Mets fan's attitude for eternity and how it's been tested of late:
The manager and his players can’t get it through their closed minds that WE REALLY, REALLY ADORE THE METS. Now I didn’t say we adore the players but it’s the team, the whole Blue and Orange universe, that comes with being a Mets fan that we all embrace. I get a sense from fans I talk to that there is a real disconnect between Mets players and management and the fans a/k/a the folks who pay the freight. That comes from mismanagement by the higher-ups in management.
Yes, exactly. You find yourself irritated by the Mets, annoyed by the Mets, at odds with the Mets, but you never stop loving the Mets. You don't stop caring about the Mets even as you — I, anyway — discover you — or I — have stopped being bothered by the Mets.
I'm just not that moved by what happens to the Mets, even if my daily actions would indicate otherwise. I genuinely look forward every day to first pitch; I turn on every game at the appointed hour; I watch the action; I listen to the announcers; I think about what to write; and I write it with much gusto…but the results of the games themselves are not penetrating my head or my heart or my soul in any way that is familiar to my system. I maintain a vague preference for the Mets' winning and I disdain, in theory, the idea that the Mets would lose. But the wins, certainly the ones I'm not in attendance for, don't crackle for me. I may walk away from the television relatively satisfied with the Mets victorious, but I hardly ever leave it overjoyed. And the losses…they only bother me in the sense that I'm a Mets fan and the Mets losing is antithetical to the crux of that identity.
Yet my identity in my eyes is solid. It's so solid that it's never depended on cumulative wins and losses to reinforce it. It's now apparently so solid that I'm not disturbed by losses nor elated by wins.
It's weird but it feels kind of normal.
It's not that I don't care. It's maybe that I've maxed out on caring until further notice, as if something has short-circuited in my Met receptor. I click it on and off but it's not connected to anything. Maybe it flickers for a pitch here or a hit there, maybe it hums if stimulated by enough aural and visual cues when at the ballpark — but it doesn't last. It just doesn't.
How did this happen?
I don't think the possible causes are all that difficult to divine:
1) Last year never ended, particularly last September.
In one of my 50 or so postmortems to The Collapse, I attempted to gauge how miserably 2007 rated in comparison to its hard-luck Met predecessors. I made a reasonable case as to why 2007, no matter the horrors of its final chapter, wasn't so bad: at least we contended; at least we were in first place a lot; at least it was noisy; at least there was much on the line. What I never considered was that none of the good stuff would resonate whatsoever and that all of the bad vibes would carry over. As poorly as 1987 and 1998 ended, they were history by the time the springs of '88 and '99 rolled around. As bad as '79 and '93 and '03 were, at least there was next year, and next year is sacred. But 2007 just would not and has not gone away. As much as I try to shoo it from my consciousness, as much as I try to buy into one season being a separate proposition from another, it clings like bubble gum to the soles of my shoes. As an outside political consultant told a key White House insider regarding President Bartlet's mishandling of a grave matter on The West Wing, “You guys are so pissed at him you don't even know it.” A month had gone by on the show when he said it. Time doesn't always fly when you're pissed.
2) Indifferent play elicits indifferent response.
Geez, if the Mets can't pick themselves up, dust themselves off and start all over again, why should I? Why should I outcare them? The Mets are trying to motivate themselves through meetings and mottos. Their fightin' words are now “We B4 I”? I'd sooner they be hooked on winning than hooked on phonics, but whatever. Even if I don't subscribe to the notion that they don't care (they must) or that they're not trying (of course they are), they have a frustrating way of showing it. For how long can one be expected to accept the idea that they're just trying so darn hard that none of them — none of them — is delivering? Somebody in the chain of command by now should have told somebody down the line to stop gripping the bat handles into sawdust, to stop squeezing the baseballs until they squirt yolk. Somebody has to be better than they've shown. One player has played above his head in 2008 and now his head has finally been decreed off-limits from the playing field. While I now realize adding an acelike pitcher to an uncomfortably elderly and thin roster did not guarantee the comeback of the century for which I fervently hoped in February, I am still miffed at the stubborn mediocrity in our midst. This is the perfect sub-.500 team, if a sub-.500 team could ever be categorized as perfect. It is perfectly impossible to become energized or even enraged by that sort of packaging. No wonder so many of them didn't bother to greet Carlos Beltran at home. They suck too much to do well something so associated with winning.
3) A wrecking ball is aimed straight at my memories.
I fucking hate Citi Field. Perhaps one year from today I will be enjoying a Shake Shack burger and all the sparkling amenities the new world-class home of the Mets has to offer and I will wonder what I ever could have dreaded because this place is faaaabulous! I wouldn't necessarily bet against my adoring it on merit once I'm inside it. But right now, in 2008, with a proliferation of logos telling me that there will not be a 2009 where I've sat since 1973, I fucking hate Citi Field. I hate it and I resent it and I wish I didn't have to face it every time a fly ball is hit in its direction. I don't argue with the economic model that suggests a sports franchise will compete more effectively with a modern facility. I don't carry a brief that insists, even on its deathbed, that Shea Stadium is ideal for any activity other than freezing, shvitzing and standing in line for the men's room. I understand why it was deemed necessary to supplant a 1960s multipurpose stadium with a 2000s baseball throwback. But I fucking hate Citi Field for infringing on my psychic and Shea's physical space in the here and now. Why couldn't have they thrown a tarp over the damn thing 'til it's done? I don't like it staring down Shea. I don't like that for all its ballyhooed “intimacy,” its light stanchions are taller than Shea. I don't like that it's nudging Shea ever closer to its fate as Parking Lot A and concomitantly attempting to fray the bond I've shared with my team since the first time I saw my team on TV nearly 40 summers ago. By extension, I suppose I'm not happy with the people who are doing this clearly for their own interests first and foremost. Again, check back in a year. I may be 180'ing and loving it. Right now, I'm not.
Mad at the Mets for last year. Mad at the Mets for this year. Mad at the Mets for next year. Add 'em up and maybe it's just too overwhelming to overcome. But I'm not sold the answer's that easy because, even when enduring all the finished-basement basement finishes I lived through, I could at least throw my hands up forcefully and blurt “I've had it with them!” This doesn't feel like that. I'm unable to get my full Met on. It isn't really anger and it's not exactly apathy. I can't pin down why I've become so numb to the Mets' fortunes even as I don't for a second believe my fervor for the Mets has diminished.
Thus, while I'm confused to find myself wandering through a spiritual desert where the Mets are concerned, I also find myself having arrived upon an eerily calming oasis of clarity. I don't completely understand why I'm not spectacularly upset by a 31-33 enterprise, but I do understand that I'm not upset. I'm not really waiting for the big turnaround, the 2008 equivalent of the 40-15 revival that followed the 27-28 stutterstep in 1999, my favorite year of them all. I'll take it if it comes, sure. It may even snap me out of whatever funk I'm in. But I'm neither counting on it nor secularly praying for it. Actually, it seems kind of an insult to 1999 to even mention 2008 in the same breath.
Perhaps the clarity comes from knowing this is going on, knowing that another loss isn't going to make things materially worse, knowing that another win isn't going to make things materially better, knowing that I'm getting by either way, knowing that I still love the Mets even as I am compelled to confess that I don't really give a damn what happens to them next.
I don't know who should play here the rest of the season and who shouldn't. Despite my impulse to slot into the lineup every Nick Evans and Fernando Tatis who blows by like tumbleweed, the short-term solutions are ultimately unpleasing and ineffective. I couldn't tell you who to trade and who to keep. I don't feel much attached to anyone anymore.
The best I can come up with for next year is replace everything and everybody. It'll be just like starting over.
New ballpark next year? I've resisted its allure, but fine. New ballpark. The old one is obviously haunted by failure. Let's get moving on disappearing Shea Stadium.
But let's not stop there.
Fire the manager. We've been itchy to detach the pink slip from the pad for weeks, maybe months, so bye-bye Willie, Willie bye-bye.
Omar? You can't let Omar Minaya stick around. Adam Rubin broke down the GM's failings in damning detail the other day:
“You are watching the painfully slow demise of The New Mets, the vision Omar Minaya articulated four years ago but built as a house of cards.”
Omar's gone. Who else, then? Surely a team in this kind of mess rots from the head down. Lousy management ascends to ownership, so Messrs. Wilpon and Wilpon, please sell the team. Put in a deposit on seats at world-class Citi Field on your way out if you like, but next time you come to a Mets game, please use the rotunda.
You too, Saul Katz.
Tony Bernazard ain't stayin'. Nor is the crackerjack medical staff. Whoever decided black uniform tops were a grand idea can fold them up for good. The scouts haven't scouted so hot either. Scout out a new employer, fellas. You're yesterday's news, just like everybody in the front office, everybody in stadium operations, everybody who's ever run his hands up and down my sides at Gate E.
It's an epidemic. No one can be spared.
The players? In the name of Moises Alou's uncle Jesus (yes, he is that old), why would the players get a pass? They all go. David Wright…go be the face of another franchise. Jose Reyes…keep running so the door doesn't tag you on the way out. Johan Santana…use your J.R. Watkins Apothecary Liniment elsewhere. Billy Wagner…exit, sad man.
If we're gonna off the stars, the scrubs must surely follow. Pretty much everybody is a scrub on the 2008 Mets, so it's been nice knowing them (it hasn't; I'm being sarcastic). The whole 40-man is now no-man's land.
Empty roster? Oh well. We'll work with the commissioner on restocking. The White Sox overcame eight men out. We'll start even fresher.
So let's see…new ballpark, new management, new ownership, new players, new vendors, new ushers, new everything…am I leaving anybody out?
How about a new name? Mets isn't gitting-r-done anymore. Mets isn't Amazin', isn't Magic, isn't Miraculous. The new owners can hold a contest. Given that this organization has sponsorship deals with not one, not two, but three different banking institutions, I'm sure naming rights can be sold to a highest bidder. The Capital One Citi Sovereigns has as nice a ring to it as anything else — and only one fewer ring than the New York Mets (1962-2008) earned as the result of world championships.
Done and done. Let's Go Sovereigns!
But let's assume that won't happen. What then?
Ideally, the Mets will remain competitive through 2008. Did I say “remain”? I meant become. If they can avoid a 1993-style plunge through the earth's surface and achieve a level of plausibility for playoff contention — say five games out of the Wild Card on August 1 — I might be satisfied. The 2001 Mets pissed me off something awful clear into the middle of August, but when they began to pat themselves on the back for digging themselves out of the hole of their own slothful making (the Shea PA blared “Ain't No Mountain High Enough” after wins began, at last, to be strung together convincingly), I didn't scoff for too long at their gall for pretending to be scrappy underdogs one year after landing in the World Series. I patted them, too, and urged them on some more.
I doubt I have another round of Met backpatting in me, but who knows? Maybe I'll be that easy. Maybe I just want a little taste of plausibility before moving day arrives. Don't totally embarrass Shea. Don't totally embarrass me. Let us leave on a high note if I can't leave on the highest note. Don't send Shea into history with a chorus of Smashing Pumpkins: “Shakedown…1979.” Shake us down as you will, suck if you must, but ease up on the Hebnerian dismalness at some point, OK? I'm not asking for a pennant. I'm not even asking for a genuine pennant race. Just seem interested when you're tied in the ninth, exuberant when you win in the thirteenth, professional the rest of the time.
Play ball.
by Greg Prince on 11 June 2008 10:44 pm Dear Mets and Mike Pelfrey,
Wanna start converting some skeptics into believers? Beat the best pitcher in the National League tonight.
Your opponent, lifetime at Shea:
4 starts, 2 wins, 1 loss (a 2-1 affair in which Victor Zambrano went deep, throwing the game of his life), 29 innings pitched, 29 strikeouts, 5 walks, 18 hits, 1 earned run.
Brandon Webb's earned run average in those four Shea outings: 0.31
This year overall, Webb is 11-2, toting a 2.58 ERA and wielding a WHIP of barely more than 1.
Alou isn't available (the sun shifted imperceptibly this afternoon, requiring Moises to undergo an MRI). Chris Aguila is apparently up, Abraham Nuñez undeniably down. The Mets are riding 'round in a hole in the ground.
Want us to believe you're worth believing in tomorrow? Beat Brandon Webb or at least his team tonight.
Cordially,
F.U. in Flushing
F.U., of course, stands for Fired Up.
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