The blog for Mets fans
who like to read
ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
Got something to say? Leave a comment, or email us at faithandfear@gmail.com. (Sorry, but we have no interest in ads, sponsored content or guest posts.)
Need our RSS feed? It's here.
Visit our Facebook page, or drop by the personal pages for Greg and Jason.
Or follow us on Twitter: Here's Greg, and here's Jason.
|
by Greg Prince on 7 June 2008 6:30 am The 2008 Mets and 2008 Padres both seem to be suffering hangovers after stumbling through the floor in 2007. If the 1965 Phillies could take on the 1979 Red Sox, this would be the weekend it would happen.
Grrr…reasonably well-played game, I suppose. Grrr…a shame someone had to lose. Grrr…if it had been a postseason contest, it would be talked about for some time to come.
Come to think of it, if Friday night's nailbiter had unfolded amid a playoff atmosphere, then we would have won, 'cause Trevor Hoffman would have blown the save.
Cheap shot! Particularly unseemly considering we lost. But cheap shots are all I got after two consecutive 2-1 losses to a Padres team I had been led to believe was far more pathetic than we are. On paper, they sure are. In direct competition, it's all about the same.
Who am I kidding? If these were the playoffs, we'd be as absent as they'd be based on most recent available data.
Pads owe us a couple now as payback for taking the heat they deserved as much as we did in the closing days of 2007. San Diego was a mirror image of the Mets last September, an under-the-radar West Coast version of no-way-they'll-be-caught but got caught anyway.
Seven up with 17 to go, meet one strike away. Not so pleased to make your acquaintance.
You may have some dim recall that Hoffman just needed to throw one more ninth-inning pitch by Tony Gwynn, Jr. — if I made up that name, you wouldn't believe me — to vault the Padres to the Wild Card they'd been positioned to win for an eternity. But with two outs and a 2-2 count, the son of the biggest Friar of them all lashed a triple down the right field line at Miller Park, tied matters up and sent the Padres to an eventual eleventh-inning loss. They lost the next day and then gave away, via the charitable impulses of Hoffman, a two-run lead in the thirteenth to the onrushing Rockies in Game 163.
Had you heard about any of this? Did you even notice the Padres doing a mini-Mets thousands of miles away? Somewhere during the final week of last season, a Mets-Padres NLDS was pretty close to a TBS coming attraction, almost certainly a probable occurrence. Surely a gross of commemorative t-shirts was manufactured for the occasion.
One can only hope those t-shirts went to a good cause.
It's next year now and the Padres likely won't have to worry about being caught from behind. They're eleven under and eight back in the West, leading only equally disheveled Colorado. The Trevorous travails of September in San Diego — a 4-1/2-game Wild Card lead crushed by a pile of Rox — received scant notice back east where we were obsessed with our own history-making ordeal. Therefore, I have to confess that not only did I enter this series unfamiliar with the 2008 Padres, I am completely surprised to be reminded that the Padres were ever en route to the playoffs in 2007.
Who besides Peavy and Young made the Padres such a mortal lock for such a lengthy portion of last year? Is the absence of their two aces the reason they've fallen off the map so quickly? Could a team whose entire offense can be summed up as Adrian Gonzalez and a prayer have been any good to begin with? Why doesn't Trevor Hoffman blow saves against us? Why is Heath Bell unhittable when in New York he was so not unhittable?
And how have we lost two incredibly tight games to such a bland outfit? Why didn't Wright's bomb go out? Why did it hang up just long enough for Scott Hairston to catch up to it? Why couldn't Johan have been just a little better? Why did Luis Castillo suddenly develop latent jet lag? When did this Gonzalez fellow become the Chase Utley of first basemen? Most of all, how come the San Diego Padres can collapse at the end of a nightmare year, stumble out of the gate into another, all but eliminate themselves by early June and we're the ones who look bad?
by Greg Prince on 6 June 2008 8:43 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 371 regular-season and 13 postseason games to date. The Log records the numbers. The Tales tell the stories.
6/28/75 Sa Philadelphia 1-0 Tate 1 2-1 W 5-2
This is what C.J. Cregg on The West Wing would call a process story. It’s the process by which I had carried with me for almost three years a nagging insecurity and the process by which in the past several days I have shed it.
Last Saturday, I inscribed into The Log my 200th win. It was a great personal milestone for me and I noted it for all the world to see. The world, almost without exception, went about its affairs largely undisturbed by my moment, but that’s OK. Before I had this blog through which to shine a light on it, I’d regularly announce to whomever I was with what my record had just turned to as we left Shea Stadium. I strongly suspected whomever I was with would sleep soundly either way, but I liked to mark the occasion vocally before marking it down in ink.
After Fernando Tatis & Co. ensured my nice, round number, of course I wanted to let it be known it had been achieved. Two-hundred times I wrote “W” under “Result”. Two-hundred times, I bore witness to at least a portion of Met home regular-season victory. Two-hundred times, at the very least, I didn’t jinx my team.
But deep down, I was nagged. Was it really 200 last Saturday? Or was it 199? No matter what The Log said, was the true 200th win the next night? Was it possible that I took something as innocuous as the practice of writing down the essential details of every game I’ve ever attended and stirred up a searing statistical controversy, albeit a searing statistical controversy that robbed only me of rest?
If anyone could do it, I could. But I am relieved to declare — even if you are apathetic to learn — that I can rest easily now. 200 wins equals 200 wins for real, and not just in the “nine balls used to equal a walk” sense of processing old numbers in a modern context.
This is how I remember June 28, 1975:
For the second consecutive year, my sister and I got on a train, then another train and we arrived at Shea Stadium for Old Timers Day. It was cloudy. We watched the Old Timers introduced and play their game. We waited for the real game, Mets vs. Phillies, to begin. It got started. Then it started to rain. After an inning-and-a-half, play was called. It was raining hard. After waiting it out a while (I distinctly recall buying the “Shea Stadium Edition” of The Baseball Quiz Book, which featured Jack Davis renderings of Ruth, Aaron and Maris touching home while a tiny pitcher trembled), Suzan insisted we leave. C’mon, she said, look at how it’s raining, you know they’re not going to play. Besides, we’re coming back with mom and dad on Wednesday.
Reluctantly agreeing that it was pretty wet, we departed. To avoid a long wait at Woodside, we took the LIRR back into Penn Station (I saw the Amtrak trains to Philly and asked if it would be possible to go to Veterans Stadium some day to see the Mets there; she said that would cost something prohibitive, like thirty bucks). From there we rode back to Long Beach. And once in the door at home, we found our parents watching Kiner’s Korner.
The game had resumed. It was completed. The Mets won 5-2. I growled a bit at Suzan for giving up so soon but was otherwise happy for a Mets win. I would remember having gone to this game, started by Randy Tate, as my second win. True, I didn’t stick around to the end, but I was there and it happened. Good enough for me.
The rock on which The Log was built when it opened for business in 1981 was my memory which, even at 18, was considered by those who encountered it as exceptional. “How do you remember all that?” I’d be asked about whatever it was I was rattling off the top of my head like dandruff. I don’t know, I said, I just do.
But even at 18 I knew I couldn’t remember everything into perpetuity. I knew that although I could tell you the essential details of every one of the Mets games I’d attended since I began attending Mets games, I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to keep it up forever. So as a precaution against future fallibility, I finally jotted down, in a steno pad, what happened as I remembered it from the eighteen games I’d been to since 1973: Date; Opponent; Starting Pitcher; Result. After 1981, with what we’ll call The Original Eighteen put in the books, I kept it up on a game-by-game basis. I’d go to a game, I’d mourn or possibly celebrate its outcome and I’d make official what I saw by Logging it.
It never occurred to me as I moved through the ’80s, into the ’90s and past the millennial marker that I had ever gotten any of the Original Eighteen wrong. Dates, you see, were my strong suit. Some writers are geniuses at description; they can introduce you to a man or woman whose face is blessed or cursed by an “aquiline nose”; they will profile a powerful executive by the way he “tucks into his steak”; they can recount a ballgame without blurring a play Carlos Delgado made on Andre Ethier into a play he made on Jeff Kent.
I don’t do that. What I do is tell you that on July 17, 1976, for example, I went to see the Mets play the Astros. I tell you about who I went with and who gave me a ride and what they offered me from the back of their trunk and what the overactive, over-the-hill cheerleader type in our section chanted. I tell you Tom Seaver pitched. I don’t tell you how his breaking stuff tickled the corners of the strike zone because, quite frankly, how would I know?
I don’t know that stuff. I don’t notice that stuff unless I’ve got slo-mo and Tim McCarver in his announcing prime turning me into an advance scout. I don’t know and I don’t notice plenty. I don’t notice what people look like all that much. I don’t necessarily remember what people I’ve met several times look like. I went to a game last week with somebody I know mostly through blog and e-mail, somebody whose only defining physical characteristic I could recall from our one prior meeting was that he wore a Todd Zeile jersey. Thank goodness he was wearing it again or I might have circled Shea in search of him.
Thank goodness for The Log, for it makes clear without aid of statistically enhanced Web site what I saw when I was a kid. I saw Randy Tate in 1975. I saw Tom Seaver in 1976, Craig Swan in 1977, Jerry Koosman in 1978…
I didn’t see Jerry Koosman in 1978. I walked around for 27 years fairly certain Koosman started the only game I saw in 1978, the game I remembered better for what I got (and didn’t get) from a storage closet of Met merchandise. I remember being told wearing a Red Sox cap to Shea Stadium was a fashion faux pas. I don’t remember that on June 25, 1978 Jerry Koosman was actually Nino Espinosa.
No use fighting it once I stumbled upon the boxscore on some combination of Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference and Ultimate Mets Database. They all said the same thing: Espinosa pitched for the Mets (and the Mets still lost). I was compelled by research to put a line through Koosman and amend the STARTING PITCHER column to Espinosa for 6/25/78. That was all right in terms of history. I had seen Kooz once before. I could now say I had seen Nino.
But could I any longer be certain of all I was sure I had seen? Did I really get from 1973 to 1981 with memory intact? Were all my details correct?
I take great pleasure in introducing or at least being on hand for a person’s first game at Shea Stadium. It is my missionary work. I was thrilled to do it for Alex and Zack, the sons of my friend Alan, one of the least baseball-savvy people I’ve ever known well. Technically, it would be just older brother Alex watching the field; Zack had a cold and slept through the entire Mets-Dodgers game of July 24, 2005. Alex asked a few questions but, I’d be told in ensuing summers, didn’t really take the bait to become a Mets fan. Oh well. But it was a lovely afternoon nonetheless. The Mets won and my all-time total games attended at Shea, if I were to incorporate the eight postseason games I had seen in ’99 and 2000, was an even 300.
Such happiness. Such pride. Me, the kid from Long Beach who got to only one or two games a year in his youth…who didn’t get started at Shea until he was a ripe old ten, four long years after discovering the Mets in the newspaper and on Channel 9…who somehow never got to more than seven games in any one season until he was thirty…I had made up for lost time and how! I don’t know that I constituted much of an adult on any other count, but I had sure grown up to be the all the fan I could be.
Maybe it was a victory lap that caused me to explore Retrosheet in the wake of the perceived milestone. I just had to go back and look at some of my early work. I examined my third game, that Old Timers Day from 1975, the Randy Tate start, the one delayed for about an hour-and-a-half in the second, the one I had to leave but the one I was at, so it counted.
1:27 rain delay at start
What?
That’s what Retrosheet said, but that’s not how I remembered it. They played. The Mets and Phillies played the top of the first, then the bottom of the first, then the top of the second. I didn’t remember that Steve Carlton was the opposing pitcher, I only vaguely remembered each team scoring a run, but I did remember getting an inning-and-a-half in before the rain. That’s why it was so deflating to have the delay, so defeating to have to be dragged away. The Mets wouldn’t have started that game on June 28, 1975 if they didn’t think they could finish it. And they had finished it!
But did they start it? Specifically, did they start it before or after the rain? I knew they did. I was there!
I was also there for the Old Timers ceremonies, the whole shmear. They introduced the players from another era, then they had them come out and play one of those games that doesn’t count…
Hold on. Could have I mixed them up? Could it be that the Old Timers game was the one for which they had to clear the diamond and unfurl the tarp? Is that what I was remembering all these years? Is it possible I never saw Randy Tate fire a pitch that afternoon in 1975?
Retrosheet said it was. And I depended on Retrosheet to fill in all my blanks.
I continued to function in 2005 and I continue to function to this day. It’s not debilitating to learn you may have had your facts confused somewhere between the ages of 12 when you saw what you saw and 18 when you wrote down what you saw and 42 when you were led to question if you really saw what you thought you saw.
I saw Randy Tate. I know I did! It’s in The Log!
No players’ names are written down in The Log except those of the starting pitcher. The starting pitcher’s identity is one of four prime identifiers, right there with the date, the opponent and the final result. The starting pitcher is a pelt, a notch. It is what I tack up over the fireplace, what I carve into the bedpost. Seeing Randy Tate, even if Randy Tate’s career lasted a single 5-13 season, even if Randy Tate is remembered primarily for not throwing a no-hitter (he held the Expos hitless into the eighth and wound up losing anyway), was a prize. I liked having written down “Tate” in The Log.
Who am I kidding? I loved having written down “Tate” in The Log.
In 2005, I was distressed by the information I had uncovered in Retrosheet. It’s not as if the game hadn’t taken place. But if it took place and I didn’t see it, did it really fall under the purview of The Log? In 1999, I arrived in the seventh inning of the opener of a twinight doubleheader against the Brewers. It started at four in the afternoon. I couldn’t leave work early, so I just had to take what I saw. Well, I thought, I’ve seen some of it. So I guess it counts in The Log. That became my guide: See one pitch, it counts. Show up between games of a twinbill, the first one doesn’t count. Respond to an emergency phone call before first pitch and bolt, it doesn’t count. Theoretically, if I show up at Shea, spend nine innings chatting with the lady at the mezzanine BBQ stand…well, why would I do that?
Let’s not lose sight of the issue. If, in fact, I was at Shea on June 28, 1975 but left the premises before any of the Mets-Phillies game was played, could I count it?
I decided in 2005 I could. I decided I was there in good faith. I decided it was part of The Log’s legacy, one-eighteenth of its foundation. I couldn’t be responsible if my sister was a wuss.
So it stayed counted. And when I occasionally let people in on my record, I included the Randy Tate game. When I counted up starting pitchers I’d observed in person in Flushing, I included it as well. Yet…yet even then, a little voice inside my head told me everything would have to be “plus one”. Want to say safely and soundly that you’ve seen 200 Mets wins? Make sure you see 200 plus one. Want to say, as I hope to before this season is out, you’ve seen 400 games, regular and playoff, at Shea Stadium? Make sure you see 400 plus one. I crossed my fingers last Sunday that I’d get my 201st win because, deep down, I wasn’t 100% sure I had actually gotten my 200th.
The curiosity nibbled at me Monday night. Retrosheet had never changed its story. Baseball-Reference and UMDB shed no light. The New York Times doesn’t let you go back that far for free.
But The Sporting News does. The Sporting News‘ archive is online at paperofrecord.com. You have to register and you have to hold tight to your password because it’s not one you get to make up and you have to find it every time you want to look anything up, but you can go straight to The Sporting News and look up almost anything from the distant past. That’s what The Sporting News was for back in the day. It was the Bible of Baseball. I began reading The Sporting News in 1975. They printed boxscores and summaries for every single game played in the Majors in the course of the season.
So I took a deep breath and logged on. I entered the name Tate. A targeted search brought me to the July 19, 1975 edition. I began to scroll. And there it was:
Staub and Kingman each drove in pair of runs and rookie Tate hurled four-hitter to give Mets 5-2 victory over Phillies. Staub singled home tally in first frame and delivered another with sacrifice fly in third. Kingman’s bases-loaded single snapped 2-2 tie in fifth. Game was delayed hour and 27 minutes by rain in last of second inning.
GAME WAS DELAYED HOUR AND 27 MINUTES BY RAIN IN LAST OF SECOND INNING!
I saw it. I saw enough. I saw enough to say I was there. Me and my sister and Randy Tate and the third game in Log history and the second win in Log history and all it represents to me.
“I write poetry, Toby,” Tabitha Fortis said in the West Wing episode entitled “The U.S. Poet Laureate”. “That’s how I enter the world.”
Me, I write down the date, the opponent, the starting pitcher and the score of every game I go to. I’m definitively 201-170 as we speak. 201-170 plus nothin’.
by Greg Prince on 6 June 2008 4:00 pm Even as Citi Field rises, the Citi Field Preview Center maintains its space in Loge. It seems rather superfluous with the real thing sprouting toward reality, but I assume there are still Excelsior Club memberships to shill, the price of which, one imagines, stretches ever upward. While I haven't been inside the CFPC since my chilling visit last September (when everything going on at Shea, to be fair, was chilling), I have noticed a change regarding its exterior.
The Mets plastered on the CFPC last year lifesize pictures of the players we can look forward to paying StubHub for the privilege of seeing when their world-class home opens in April 2009. Of course there was No. 5 and No. 7 and No. 15 and No. 34…
No. 34? I wondered. Who the hell is No. 34?
Oh right. Mike Pelfrey.
Easy enough oversight to make on my part. Mike Pelfrey visited Shea between May and September 2007 less frequently than I did. He had started the season in the rotation but then rotated his way back to N'Awlins. Didn't mean to forget the big fella, just hadn't indelibly plastered his image into my consciousness.
This year when you pass by the Citi Field Preview Center, you don't see No. 34. You see No. 57 in his place. Well, of course Johan Santana would be pictured. It's impossible to picture Citi Field without him. It will be impossible to buy a morsel or a trinket without thinking of how much of the markup is attributable to luring him into the new park.
Pelfrey? I guess we can picture him coming to life at Citi Field, too, even if he's been painted over at the Preview Center. I guess we'd better, even if the world can change and change again in ten months' time. Santana was a Met pipe dream last August, even further from Flushing than Pelfrey. Last August, you would have penciled in Philip Humber for Citi Field before writing Johan in ink. Pelfrey's only now working his way from pencil to pen.
If every fifth day of this season is to be given over to the education of Mike Pelfrey — and it may as well be — one of the subjects I hope he gets better at is remedial arithmetic. Somebody's got to teach him to count, because the number of pitches he throws in every start is undermining him and us.
Check this out:
6/5 vs Padres: 112 pitches thrown, 6 innings pitched
5/31 vs Dodgers: 109 pitches thrown, 7 innings pitched
5/26 vs Marlins: 95 pitches thrown, 4 innings pitched
5/21 vs Braves: 104 pitches thrown, 4 innings pitched
5/15 vs Nationals: 100 pitches thrown, 7.2 innings pitched
5/10 vs Reds: 106 pitches thrown, 6 innings pitched
5/3 vs D'backs: 102 pitches thrown, 5 innings pitched
4/25 vs Braves: 99 pitches thrown, 5.1 innings pitched
4/20 vs Phillies: 98 pitches thrown, 5 innings pitched
4/15 vs Nationals: 100 pitches thrown, 7 innings pitched
4/9 vs Phillies: 100 pitches thrown, 5 innings pitched
That's eleven starts to date, all of them strikingly similar. He's made it into the eighth inning once, through seven twice, through six twice, including last night. Six times he hasn't lasted six full innings. Yet he has thrown between 95 and 112 pitches every time out.
This is not efficient. The whole staff, come to think of it, is not efficient. Santana and Maine have run high pitch counts as a matter of course, though Johan generally gives you a little more bang for the buck (four straight starts of at least seven innings, no more than 110 pitches in any one start). Maine's had only two starts out of eleven lasting more than six innings but only three that have come up short of six. I don't know if it's Rick Peterson or Brian Schneider or not enough Brian Schneider and too much Ramon Castro or Raul Casanova, but I can't recall another season when pitch counts uniformly rose so quickly in just about every game.
Oliver Perez threw only 36 pitches Monday night in San Francisco, but he recorded only one out, so pitch counts don't tell you everything. But when you match up Mike Pelfrey's (and, to a certain extent, Santana's and Maine's) pitches thrown and innings pitched with walks and strikeouts, they don't add up. Pelf does not walk an inordinate number of batters: three last night, one on Saturday, three the three previous starts, no more than four in any of his eleven starts. He also isn't a master of the strikeout, not yet anyway. He recorded only one against the Padres. Except for the last Dodger game, he hasn't fanned more than four in any start in 2008.
So what gives? Why can't big ol' Mike Pelfrey blow batters away? Or make them swing and miss a little more? Opponents tag him for hits, not homers — yay! — but mostly they seem to work him into more pitches than would seem necessary. They work Santana and Maine, too (while Ollie mostly does himself in). It's a veritable epidemic in this rotation and if it's doing anybody harm, it's the bullpen. It's why one dip in the road by a Schoeneweis or a Sanchez in their otherwise substantive seasons stands out as it does.
Maybe we were better off not knowing about pitch counts. I never saw any displayed on a scoreboard until I visited Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego a dozen years ago. I found it distracting. Now it's standard fare. Now you can't ignore it, not as long as pitching coaches and managers don't. With pitch counts embedded into their statistics and our brains, your starter either has to go after the hitter with more confidence that he can make the batter swing and miss (something Pelfrey began to emit last Saturday) or figure out a way to throw ground balls to the shortstop and second baseman. Gary Cohen loves to tweak Greg Maddux over his tendency to pull himself after only so many frames, but you can't argue with Maddux's pitch counts in any given game. He's always gotten out of innings quickly, just as Josh Banks did last night. Bruce Bochy took out Banks after six just as Willie removed Pelfrey after six. Banks threw 71 pitches in the time it took for Pelf to throw 112.
Why does Mike Pelfrey have to throw 41 more pitches than Josh Banks?
It's a random coupling, I grant you, but have you noticed that Pelfrey seems to get outpitched or at least evenly matched by not the cream of the crop of the other team's rotation most games? Since he last won on April 15, he's faced Josh Banks, Chad Billingsley, Ricky Nolasco, Jair Jurrjens (twice), Jason Bergmann, Bronson Arroyo, Brandon Webb and Adam Eaton. Webb is a Cy Young winner and Arroyo too often has the Mets' number. Billingsley's been hot of late and Jurrjens shows every sign of being yet another annoying Brave. But Banks has made three big league starts, Nolasco is traditionally a Met snack, Eaton's what you'd kindly refer to as a journeyman and Jason Bergmann lowered his ERA to 7.45 at Shea on May 15. But Pelfrey hasn't been able to beat any of them or the Mets haven't been able to hit any of them on his behalf.
There's just something weird about the way all of Pelfrey's steps are of the baby variety, something increasingly unsettling. I'd almost feel more encouraged if he were walking six but striking out eight as long as he's going to throw too many pitches to last seven most nights. I'd believe we're seeing raw talent if not immediate results. I'd believe we'd have a weapon in development, not a very tall, very nice kid who doesn't show quite enough stuff to merit a place on the Wall of the Future and barely enough stuff to keep his place in the rotation ahead of Claudio Vargas. I suppose it's progress that Mike kept the Mets in another game last night when the offense forgot to unpack its punch. I suppose it's progress that last night he made it through six on the road for the first time in 2008. I suppose it's still way too early to form definitive judgments on a 24-year-old in his third professional season, even if I'm a little antsy about that remaining the default setting for measuring his progress.
Not that I trust the appellation of “No. 1 draft pick” to guarantee or even promise anything where the Mets and their sordid amateur selection history are concerned, but I still believe there's more to Mike Pelfrey than he's revealed in 28 big league starts. There has to be. The Mets weren't the only team to like the cut of his jib when they selected him as high as they did in 2005. Still, my hunch remains he was a little overvalued and my fear is he's being insufficiently taught. I look forward to watching No. 34 pitch at Citi Field nonetheless. I could do, however, without seeing No. 51 — and The Jacket that obscures it — coaching him or the rest of the Mets staff any longer.
by Jason Fry on 6 June 2008 5:30 am Well, on the plus side Schoeneweis didn't allow a hit in the inning.
You knew this one would end strangely, and not just because the Mets were playing in West Kamchatka. Though that's often enough — I don't think I've ever watched a road game against the Padres and not felt like I was up in the middle of the night watching the Mets play in the Tokyo Dome. I know San Diego's no farther than L.A. or San Francisco — heck, I've been to the place — but it sure feels like it is. And it doesn't help when you're playing a lineup that sounds like a videogame maker didn't pay the MLBPA the rights for player names. McAnulty? Carlin? Banks? Who?
Mike Pelfrey's line looks OK, but he certainly had his Brian Bannister going on. You thought it was amazing that I got out of this straitjacket? Then watch me emerge from this LOCKED CHEST THROWN INTO THE RIVER! And now, for my next trick … oh hell, I've thrown 112 pitches. Never mind.
Give this game credit, of an I-didn't-ask-for-this sort, for featuring not one but two moments where I couldn't figure out what was going on and was left goggling like a fish in the bottom of a boat. The first came when Kevin Kouzmanoff's groundout to Reyes caromed off Tadahito Iguchi, becoming a hit for Kouzmanoff (Gary's right, that's a stupid rule) but the third out of the inning. Between Iguchi twitching in the air like he'd stepped on a downed power line and Wright pointing and yelling, I was completely lost. Wha? It hit him? The second moment, of course, was the culmination of the Misadventures of Scott Schoeneweis, which left me spinning around in my seat to stare at the radio. Wha? It hit him?
So Kouzmanoff got a hit without ever reaching first and McAnulty got an RBI without swinging the bat. And Schoeneweis got this not-a-typo line added to his resume:
0.1 IP 0 H 1 R 1 ER 3 BB 0 SO 0 HR
Oh, and 1 L.
Not weird enough for you? I suppose it could have gone into McAnulty's shirt.
by Greg Prince on 5 June 2008 11:08 pm Need a Father's Day, graduation day, birthday, whatever day item? Just want to enhance your sense of Metsian self? Several items have crossed our proverbial desk of late that are worth your knowing about, perhaps worthy of adding to your baseball library, your baseball wardrobe or your baseball life.
The Faith and Fear T-Shirt
OK, I'm cheating a bit by leading off with this one because it's not new. Rather, it is the classic illustration of the Mets' four retired uniform numbers: 37, 14, 41 in Flushing orange, 42 in Flatbush red. Many of you have treated yourselves to FAFIFwear and are happier for it. Many have you denied yourselves. I feel bad for you if you're in the latter category. We recently heard through the shirtvine that some of you are waiting for an updated shirt that reflects the yet unretired number of Mike Piazza. I personally have been waiting for the Mets to retire the numbers of Willie Mays and Keith Hernandez for many a season, yet I enjoy my FAFIF shirt at every opportunity. As does Jason. As does this gal and this guy and this kid just about everywhere he goes. The Mets do not move with the dexterity of a lizard in numerical matters, so my heartfelt, objective recommendation is to not let year upon year go by without honoring the sacred memories of Casey Stengel, Gil Hodges, Tom Seaver and Jackie Robinson, just as the left field corner of Shea Stadium has since 1997. (We are aware of the honorary retiring of the name SHEA as well, but we're sabermaticians when it comes to shirts: we deal in numbers.) To gander, mull and, if you are so moved, order the classic Faith and Fear shirt, go here. The price is $17.31, so it's not like Mex and Mike aren't involved with the shirt in a very real way. As for Willie, you get 24 thank yous from Jason and me for your time and consideration.
Gary, Keith & Ron
Our beloved SNY announcers are lending their names and images to a shirt concern of their own, operated by Lynn Cohen, to raise funds for charities near and dear to them. I chose the “It's Outta Here!” model and it's sharp, I tell you what. The best part is you don't have to wait for Carlos Delgado to get into a power groove to wear it. Coupon code “yodaddy” will fetch you a 15% discount through June 15. Shirt-buyers are eligible to buy $10 tickets to Gary, Keith & Ron Day at Shea, July 10. Check it all out here. (Dana Brand has a nice story about meeting Lynn at his blog. Dana Brand also continues to have a wonderful book here.)
Ramets
My friends at the Crane Pool Forum get their Forest Hills on with merchandise that — Gabba Gabba Shea! — honors Mets history in the sedated style of Joey, Johnny, et al. I really like the “Grote” part of the shield. Check 'em out here.
Working at the Ballpark
From the same publisher who brought us the perpetually awesome Mets By The Numbers comes an insider's look at the game from those who work every angle of it: players and coaches, yes, but also the media, the scouts and the stadium personnel. I meant to mention this last Friday when I related the story of my brother-in-law the onetime Shea vendor but, well, forgot. For what it's worth, author Tom Jones found peanut and beer guys who seem less hostile about their ballpark jobs than my sister's husband was. But their tales are entertaining nonetheless. Find out more here.
101 Reasons to Love the Mets
We don't seem to have been favored with a full-out coffee table book to remember Shea by (we deserve something along the lines of this imperial tome which, it pains me a little to admit, is spectacular if you love pictures of ballparks, even ballparks that are homes to teams you can't stand), but 101 Reasons is a nice, colorful history volume, arranged chronologically and written breezily. If you have a small coffee table, it's perfect. Look into it here. (This is not to be confused with the compelling text that is 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, which you should also have by now, I should hope. Acquire them simultaneously and you'll be up 201 things and reasons over the less informed fan.)
The New York Mets: Ethnography, Myth and Subtext
I read this during the winter and held off on writing it up because, quite frankly, I'm not over the moon about it despite the intriguing title (and picture of Endy on the cover). I'm not sure I share much of Richard Grossinger's worldview on what it means to be a Mets fan — he's a little dour and a bit uncomfortable that he's devoted chunks of his life to such a lightweight concern — but he certainly gives the matter some thought and his story about working with Terry Leach is fairly gripping. Investigate further here.
Jewish Major Leaguers Baseball Cards
The latest edition of this glossy, glatt set is out and it's a beaut, featuring a salute to Hank Greenberg on the 75th anniversary of the rookie year of the original Hammerin' Hank. Met angles include new cards for Shawn Green and the surprisingly undepressing Scott Schoeneweis. You don't have to be Jewish to love Jewish Major Leaguers 2008. Kosher, collector or otherwise, they're a world of fun. Flip through 'em here.
Heckuva Day
The makers of the enchanting documentary Mathematically Alive are working on a new film, one in which Mets fans can wax rhapsodic (or, I suppose, vitriolic) about their Shea experiences. Info on their next group shoot here if you want to share your perspective for posterity. Chance to purchase their first DVD here.
The New York Mets: Essential Games of Shea Stadium
These discs, covering Game Four '69 WS; Game Three '86 NLCS; Game Six '86 WS; Game Five '99 NLCS; 9/21/01's return to NYC baseball; and Wright's walkoff hit that beat Rivera (plus worthy extras), deserve a more thorough going over, but a glimpse through the box's contents — I fast-forwarded immediately to the bottom of the fifteenth of the Grand Slam Single game — indicates a Mets fan wouldn't want to live without this set for very long. We all know every Mets game played at Shea is essential. I don't know that these are the six most essential the ol' ballpark has hosted (presumably rain delay favorite May 19, 2006 ranks as one of the most available for transfer to digital video), but you can't go wrong with any of 'em. Rumor has it Faith and Fear may be giving one or two away in the near future, but winning DVDs from us is never easy…certainly not as easy as enjoying a Faith and Fear shirt this summer (which is super easy). Essential viewing and ordering detail is here.
by Greg Prince on 5 June 2008 8:52 pm 
I don’t usually pay any mind to the baseball draft, not since waiting unsuccessfully for the Mets’ No. 1 pick of 1995 to turn Shea Stadium into Jaroncyk Park. But this headline from mlb.com surely got my attention:
by Greg Prince on 5 June 2008 12:10 pm I dressed all wrong for it, of course. The game that Stoneham and I had fixed upon was a midweek afternoon meeting between the Giants and the San Diego Padres in late June — a brilliant, sunshiny day at Candlestick Park, it turned out, and almost the perfect temperature for a curling match. I had flown out from New York that morning, and I reported to Stoneham’s office a few minutes before game time. He shook my hand and examined my airy East Coast midsummer getup and said, “Oh, no, this won’t do.” He went to a closet and produced a voluminous, ancient camel’s-hair polo coat and helped me into it… [When] we went back to Stoneham’s office, I took off the polo coat, and Stoneham hung it up in the closet again. I suddenly wondered how many Giants games it had seen.
—Roger Angell, “The Companions of the Game,” Five Seasons, 1975
What can be viewed as a certain sameness to every baseball season can also be looked upon as reassuring if momentarily distressing regularity. You know there’s going to be the indignity of Sunday Night Baseball; you know there’s going to be the late night West Coast opener that your system and your team aren’t quite geared to handle; you know you’ll be cursing your talented but erratic (or erratic but talented) lefty deep into the next morning when that opener, in fact, is not well handled; and you know you’ll be waiting far too long to avenge the bad taste of last night’s 10:15 start with another 10:15 start.
You also know, or at least you may have noticed, that there will be one tiny gem tucked into the schedule most every year. There will be a weekday afternoon game in San Francisco.
There was in 2006: a Wednesday afternoon win following a Tuesday night win following a Monday night loss. There was in 2007: a Wednesday afternoon win following a Tuesday night win following a Monday night loss. And there it was again in 2008, the very same pattern made famous first by Brian, Barry and Billy and then by buzzcuts. This time around, Wednesday afternoon in San Francisco was more mundane if ultimately no less satisfying: score early, pitch well, feel unease, hang on, what’s for dinner?…ooh, they’re showing it again!
You can’t necessarily count on the West Coast trip breaking just this way — although vigilant reader Ben pointed out to me after Ollie’s implosion Monday that the Mets were poised to follow a seemingly irrefutable pattern, going so far as to note we’d won the Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon games by three and two runs, respectively, in ’06 and ’07…which is just what we did in ’08. You can’t necessarily count on anything in baseball, but you like the idea that you can, especially day baseball from San Fran.
I actually took off from work in 2000 to watch the Mets play an afternoon game on TV during their first trip ever to Pac Bell. My Baseball Tonight glimpses whetted my appetite that much. It was a terrible game and a terrible series, setting the stage for the Mets’ first several sojourns there. Pac Bell (and let’s just refer to it as such, for the constant jangling of its ever changing nom de phones just gives me a headache) behaved as Turner West at the dawn of the century. It took the Mets four seasons and thirteen tries to win a single regular-season* contest there, and that didn’t happen until Piazza, New York Catcher sacrificed his groin — so to speak — to avoid being hit by an inside pitch from Jason Schmidt. Mike was pronounced out indefinitely. Then the Mets finally won a regular-season game at Pac Bell. Talk about a tough way to change your luck.
(*Feel free to interject that the Mets won an enormous and thrilling postseason game in October of 2000 at the very same venue. That took the edge off any potential Pac Bell curse before it could start leaving threatening messages on our voicemail.)
The bad taste of any given loss drenched in San Francisco sunlight will eventually block out the good vibes I have coming in to every day game there, but those vibes are always good the next time around. Pac Bell remains the best-looking park in the National League for afternoon baseball, at least on television. It simply sparkles. It’s never cloudy…never — at least not on my watch. That green lawn beyond second base just expands out into forever. Not so good for Fernando Tatis, but a damn fine sight for the invention of color TV. The brickwork, the arches, the stationary cable car, the peekthrough walkway, the fanciful glove, the silly Coke bottle, the massive scoreboard that starts somewhere near Market Street and ends in Sausalito…plus where else you gonna get a whole bay to keep you company at a ballgame?
You can count on hearing the same things from the fellas when you tune in for day baseball from San Fran. You will hear that it’s a gorgeous day, that it’s 57 degrees (it’s always 57 degrees in San Francisco), that it was a little chilly last night but it’s 57 and gorgeous this afternoon, that this is so much more comfortable than it was at Candlestick, that Candlestick was, in more polite terms than is permissible to mention on SNY, the ass end of the earth. Pac Bell, according to Gary, Keith and Ron, is everything that Candlestick wasn’t. Too much wind at Candlestick. Too much foul territory at Candlestick. Too many roving biker gangs at Candlestick. Horace Stoneham had one nip too many one fine morning at Candlestick Point in the late ’50s and was convinced by crooked elements to stick a stadium out there on the edge of the Arctic. Horace took another nip and signed on the dotted line.
Here at Pac Bell, you’ve got the scenery and you’ve got the observations that come with it. There’s the Bay Bridge — it takes you to Oakland. There’s Willie’s statue — 24 Willie Mays Plaza, to be exact. There’s McCovey Cove — imagine how many Stretch would have hit here. There’s the kayak korps — whoops, they went the way of Barry Bonds. But what a nice place, huh? What a nice day for a game, huh?
The bundling-up of the San Francisco crowd is always duly noted. I bundled up on my one trip to date to Pac Bell — a Friday night in July — and I was overmatched by the elements. My friend Fred, not a huge sports fan but an observer-at-large second to none, chuckled when I told him how Stephanie and I required defrosting after seven innings: “Yeah, whenever they show highlights, I notice everyone at a Giants game is dressed like it’s winter in the middle of summer.” Given how frigid it gets at Pac Bell yet what a marked improvement it represents in climatological terms, I can only imagine that Candlestick must have been an ice cube tray in a deep freeze in Green Bay in a particularly harsh January.
One thing that jumped out at me yesterday afternoon was something I’m not used to seeing from San Francisco in this decade: swaths of empty seats. Paid attendance was 35,646. Similar crowds were announced Monday and Tuesday nights. Horace Stoneham would have killed (or maybe even sobered up) for such figures at Candlestick, but they’re a bit thin compared to what was the norm at Pac Bell for Mets games when the park was novel, when Bonds was productive, when the Giants were any good. Capacity in San Francisco doesn’t much exceed 42,000. For several years, the wind was against you if you wanted your choice of ticket. Now, no matter how pretty their park remains, it is a veritable breeze. Something for us to think about in parochial terms down the road…perhaps.
Something else: In 2006 and again in 2007, the Mets scored five runs in the first game they played after leaving Pac Bell. And they won. Should it happen tonight starting at 10:05, you read it here first.
by Greg Prince on 4 June 2008 8:50 am The accepted folkways of the big league clubhouse escape me. Even having grown up watching a team whose acknowledged leader — the player whose mere presence was and is universally acknowledged to have transformed the attitude of all those around him — was a pitcher, I’ve been hearing all my life that a pitcher can’t be a team’s leader. Even after watching a team derive its heart and soul from a relief pitcher as it followed his philosophy to nearly ultimate victory, I’ve been hearing all my life that a pitcher can’t be a team’s leader. Even after watching a team rally around another relief pitcher, one who was its seniormost member and clearly its dean, and agree it was right and proper to affix a “C” to his uniform, I’ve been hearing all my life that a pitcher, because he’s not an everyday player, can’t be a team’s leader. Captain, sure. Leader, no way.
All right, then. Tell me somebody besides Gil Hodges led Tom Seaver. Tell me somebody besides Tom Seaver led Tug McGraw. Tell me anybody could have led John Franco. And find me the Met whom Pedro Martinez could or should possibly fall in behind.
Pedro marches at the front of this parade as long as he’s around. To pretend that anybody else does is folly. For these New York Mets, it’s Pedro or it’s nobody. For too long it’s been nobody. For now, let’s say it’s Pedro.
Leading by example, it is universally agreed, is the way to go. Pedro’s examples get your attention. Pedro taking the ball Tuesday night, no matter how cold Phone Company Park was, no matter the wind that blew off the China Basin, got your attention. Pedro bearing down in the fifth got your attention. Pedro coming back for the sixth really got your attention. Pedro singling twice and driving in a run didn’t escape notice either. Pedro is a singular talent. Pedro is a singular presence. Pedro is more than that. Pedro is a magnet. He draws eyeballs, he draws teammates, he draws victories.
Somewhere in the middle of this cathartic and joyous Pedrofest, Ron Darling began to say how good it was for the Mets to have their leader back. But then, realizing of course that teams simply can not be led by a pitcher — I’m guessing Darling’s thought process was intimidated by his former first baseman and captain sitting next to him in the booth — he amended his statement to say the Mets’ pitchers had their leader back.
They sure did. So did the Mets’ catchers, the Mets’ infielders and the Mets’ outfielders. I suspect Mets management will gladly follow where Pedro Martinez leads. He’s got the fans’ support, that’s for sure. Pedro Martinez is pied piper with bulging portfolio. Pedro Martinez backs up his words with pitching and backs up his pitching with personality, with charisma, with a sense of right and wrong and responsibility and with honest-to-goodness leadership.
What the hell is leadership when it comes to baseball? I’m with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart when he groped to define obscenity: I know it when I see it. For the first third of 2008, leadership was obscenely lacking on the New York Mets. In San Francisco Tuesday night, I knew when I saw it. Now pitching and now leading the New York Mets, number 45, Pedro Martinez.
by Greg Prince on 3 June 2008 4:00 pm [H]ere, coming through the same tunnel as so many champions have walked before, the great man, Frank Sinatra, who has the phrasing, who has the control, who understands the composers, who knows what losing means as so many have, who made the great comeback, who stands still, enduringly, on top of the entertainment world.
—Howard Cosell, Madison Square Garden, October 13, 1974
Frank Sinatra retired from show business to great fanfare. He returned to it not long after and loomed larger than life, bigger than ever, for the rest of his career. His fans, naturally, were thrilled to have him onstage and in studios again, even if the name Sinatra became jokily synonymous in some circles with short-lived retirement.
When it comes to comebacks, Pedro Martinez puts Ol’ Blue Eyes to shame.
Pedro has never said anything about retiring. Well, maybe he has, but that was just talk. Pedro likes to talk. I like it when Pedro talks. I like it more when Pedro pitches.
The chairman of our board hasn’t thrown in front of an audience of discernible size since April Fool’s Day when the joke was on us that a rotation headed by the firm of Santana & Martinez could be counted on for regular starts of the every-fifth-day variety. Johan, rainouts notwithstanding, has kept up his part of the bargain. Pedro’s 2008, however, has been one outing and out: an uncomfortable three and one-third innings cut off at the legs…or at least one of their hamstrings.
I didn’t expect Pedro back any time soon once he left his April 1 start against the Marlins early and injured. I figured he’d tool up I-95 to St. Lucie, rehab in that nebulous way he does, emitting hope and frustration in every murky dispatch that wafted north. By now, Pedro Martinez must hold all the pitching records for extended spring training.
Tonight, two months and two days after he hobbled off the Joe Robbie Pro Player Dolphin Stadium mound and into the mists of the presumably zillion-day disabled list, he will reappear from out of the San Francisco fog. He will no longer be Pedro Martinez the question mark — Any word on Pedro? How is Pedro progressing? When might we see Pedro? — but Pedro Martinez the pitcher.
Pedro Martinez lights up a room as no pitcher does, as no pitcher can. Pedro Martinez’s sudden re-emergence in the Mets clubhouse is considered a balm even when he’s just passing through town for a checkup. That’s usually all he has time for. He has to get back to St. Lucie. He has to get back to the Dominican. He has to disappear for a while longer. But he’ll be back, they say. When? They’ll let us know.
Tonight’s the night. Just as it was in late July of ’06, just as it was that September, just as it was on Labor Day 2007. Pedro knows how to come back. Pedro knows how to pitch. Pedro Martinez is one of the indisputable greats. He looks so good out there when he’s out there. But he and us, we need to be more than strangers in the night exchanging glances.
by Jason Fry on 3 June 2008 5:09 am From: Jason Fry
To: Greg Prince
Date: Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 10:44 PM
Subject: Re: Resting Easy With Randy Tate At Last *
you should tell retrosheet. seriously, they'd be thrilled.
meanwhile, tonight's game already really sucks.
From: Jason Fry
To: Greg Prince
Date: Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 11:28 PM
Subject: Re: Resting Easy With Randy Tate At Last
we're gonna win this damn thing.
From: Jason Fry
To: Greg Prince
Date: Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 12:09 AM
Subject: Re: Resting Easy With Randy Tate At Last
or maybe not
* I'm sure this will be explained by Greg at some point.
|
|
