4: Thursday, September 25 vs Cubs

Listen closely, ladies and gentlemen, to the following recording:

From beautiful Shea Stadium in Flushing, New York, the New York Mets are on the air.

That was the very first sentence ever spoken on a home team radio broadcast from this building. The second sentence from that momentous occasion tells you everything you need to know about whom we are proud to honor via the removal of number 4 in our Countdown Like It Oughta Be:

Well hi everybody, this is Bob Murphy with Lindsey Nelson and Ralph Kiner, all set to detail every exciting moment of the historic opening of Shea Stadium as the New York Mets meet the Pittsburgh Pirates.

That, in two sentences, is the sound of home, the sound of the home team, the sound of Shea Stadium.

You didn't need to be at Shea to hear that voice, the voice of Bob Murphy; nor did you need to buy a ticket to hear the voices who joined him on April 17, 1964, Lindsey Nelson and Ralph Kiner. These three sons of Oklahoma and Tennessee and California formed a brotherhood and bridged the gap from the ballpark in Queens to the Mets fan who, for whatever reason, couldn't be here. They painted the word picture of the first Shea Stadium opener, just as they did at the Polo Grounds, just as they would do on the road. They did it, no matter that they came from elsewhere, as true New York icons.

They did it together and they did it forever. Or so it seemed.

From 1962 through 1978 — a mind-boggling, heartwarming seventeen seasons of balls and strikes, wins and losses, ups and downs, missteps and miracles and always, you just knew, another Mets game — they did it brilliantly. The trio of Bob Murphy, Lindsey Nelson and Ralph Kiner was beloved, of course. They were rightly celebrated, famous far and wide and esteemed in the ears of all of their colleagues around baseball. But did you, the loyal Mets fan, realize that when you listened to Bob and Linsdey and Ralph that you were part of history, as much a part of history as any of the 50,312 in attendance for Shea's first game? You were listening to the broadcasting triumvirate that endured as a three-man team longer than any in the annals of Major League Baseball.

If you grew up a Mets fan between 1962 and 1978, you never knew there could be another announcer. You didn't need another announcer. You had the three best in the world. You had the home team.

Nothing lasts forever, we know. The trio broke up at last after 1978 when Lindsey Nelson left for the West Coast. Other announcers, fine announcers, came and filled in. Other voices would weave themselves into the Met tapestry. But there was something about those first three that made them forever the home team at Shea Stadium.

Fortunately for Mets fans, the rest of the team stayed intact. Ralph Kiner and Bob Murphy may have taken on different roles for most of the quarter-century that followed Lindsey Nelson's departure; Ralph was television, Murph radio. But there was no doubt they defined home for the Mets as much as Shea did, as much as any player could have. When you dropped by Kiner's Korner or you reveled in the Happy Recap, you knew you were nowhere but at a Mets game. It was as if you had come to Shea for the day after all and were, as the song promised, guaranteed to have the time of your life.

“Plenty of good seats still available,” Bob and Lindsey and Ralph used to remind the motorists who might be tooling by on the Grand Central. Yet, we can now say without fear of undermining walkup sales, there was no better seat at Shea than the seat closest to the speaker of your radio or your television between 1962 and 1978. Taking in a ballgame with Bob Murphy, Lindsey Nelson and Ralph Kiner was an experience not to be topped — only repeated into blissful perpetuity.

Lindsey passed away in 1995. We lost Murph in 2004. Ralph, thankfully, remains with us to this day. You have heard him on SNY in 2008 as you heard him on Channel 9 decade after decade; as you heard him on Opening Day in 1964 over WHN radio; as you heard him narrate the Mets' birth, the Mets' youth and the Mets' maturity as the Mets and you grew up in tandem.

Ralph Kiner, we know your Korner originated in left field at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh where you established your Hall of Fame credentials, but for tonight, we beg your indulgence as we ask you, Bob's wife Joye Murphy and Lindsey's daughter Nancy Nelson Wyszynski to pile into the backseat of our 1964 Cadillac convertible — what else for a home run hitter? — and be chauffeured out to right field by two of your most faithful protégés, Gary Cohen and Howie Rose. Number 4 was your number in your playing career and number 4 is for you to represent once more — for you; for your Hall of Fame broadcasting partner and brother Bob Murphy; for your Hall of Fame broadcasting partner and brother Lindsey Nelson; and for your family of an audience, the incalculable millions who joined you at Shea from wherever they sat year after year, whether you could hear them or not.

They sure heard you.

Number 5 was revealed here.

Number 3 will be counted down next Monday, June 16.

He overslept? Because he thought it was a 4 o'clock start local?

Oh Ramon, you do keep everybody loose.

Me, I'm theoretically in stitches because the Mets have passed the point of being a team I can truly stress over and are on the verge of being a team I have no choice but to laugh at. Or with. Whatever. It's all good. Or as good as it's going to get right now.

This is a silly, silly team. They lose three games by the exact the same score because they can't generate more than three runs total. Then they generate three runs in the first inning of the fourth game. Then they lose anyway.

And Ramon Castro overslept or didn't understand time zones.

Somebody hits a batter with the bases loaded and the game ends. Somebody on our side is safe on a rundown between home and third and we get almost nothing out of it. Somebody is sent into battle again and again despite two concussions despite a heartbeat in his head and finally he's definitively sat down. The other team has a runner run into a batted ball twice and they win those games. Finally, the backup catcher who doesn't play more than twice a week can't make it to the ballpark on time to catch a future Hall of Famer.

If it's not ha-ha funny, then ain't that peculiar?

The Mets are absurd. For all their ungoodness; for all their astounding lack of depth; for all the scoring they don't do when they pitch and all the pitching they don't do when they score; for all the name players that don't add up to what you could accurately call a team; for the seven of nine they somehow won before dropping four straight to the heretofore worse Padres; for their one rock of stellar performance who isn't shy about calling teammates out yet nailed the coffin of this trip shut by giving up a three-run homer to somebody who used to share a number with Mr. Met.

They are absurd. They're still working on lovable.

Addendum to Mets Stuff Worth Knowing About: You can meet No. 1 prodigal son Darryl Strawberry Tuesday night between 6 PM and 7 PM at the Best Buy Rockefeller Center store, 559 Fifth Avenue at 46th St. No, he's not the stuff in question (though he surely had the right kind in his day); rather, Straw''ll be signing copies of Essential Games of Shea Stadium and another DVD that sounds so cool that even I didn't know about it 'til just now (not to imply I'm at all cool): Shea Goodbye: 45 Years of Amazin'. Matthew Broderick narrates and it touches all the Shea bases, the big Met moments, the beloved Shea traditions (Banner Day!) and even the non-baseball stuff.

Sounds pretty good even without Darryl's signature.

MORE DARRYL: Strawberry's return to Shea as a Dodger is Monday night's Mets Classic on SNY, 7 PM. Spoiler alert: we win.

Last Sunday evening at Shea Stadium, jockey Kent Desormeaux threw out the ceremonial first pitch to Willie Randolph. Saturday each shared a problem: They had no horse.

No Triple Crown for Desormeaux's mount. Three consecutive 2-1 losses for the Randolph's stallions. Big Brown finished last. The Mets are running well out of the money and the remainder of their course looms longer than that at Belmont.

Do the Mets appear capable of pulling from the back of the pack to nose ahead of those Phillies at the wire? What is it horses say again? Oh yeah…

Naaaaaay!

I know nothing about horse racing except that a horse with a crack in his hoof probably isn't poised to win the most challenging race of his life. That and every time they tell us this is the year there'll be a Triple Crown, it means it won't happen.

I'd like to think I know a few things about baseball, but I have no idea when the Mets are going to start scoring some runs again. None at all.

I might have bet on Wright in the third at Petco, galloping as he was when that old nag Delgado set a fast pace by doubling to the right of the right field jury box. Wright could have cantered home given Brian Giles' throw from the pole position. Alas, Sandy Alomar was as cautious as Kent Desormeaux and pulled the reins in on David. Fernando Tatis then put the inning — and the Mets' offense — out of its misery for the rest of the night.

The Mets trotted into San Diego winners in seven of their previous nine starts knowing they wouldn't have to face Maddux or Peavy or Young. They've scored one run every night anyway. What were the odds of that happening?

Short, apparently.

Why haven't the Mets placed Ryan Church on the DL? Why do they schlep him on flights east, west, north and south like he's the title character of Weekend At Bernie's when every single night Gary and Keith come on and inform us that he doesn't look quite right, that he's still a bit glassy-eyed, that it's telling that he's not starting or pinch-hitting? They do not seem to be alone in their analysis of his state.

What is to gain by allowing a concussed player, even if he was your best player before taking a knee to the head, to linger in anything close to semi-twilight? Shouldn't Ryan Church be allowed to rest fully and heal as best as he can without the extra pressure of these road trips? I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on this blog, but I find this near negligence of his well-being (in June, not late September when you could be all competitive about it and demand all hands on deck) a mite disturbing. Does Ryan Church say he's OK? Then tell him, OK, you get better than OK.

Maybe he strides to the plate tonight and goes 3-for-4 and homers as he did on Sunday against the Dodgers before he had to board his third long flight since the collision in Atlanta. Maybe he's so close to swell that his situation is being misread by amateurs and managers. But we're now almost three weeks removed from his second concussion of 2008 and there has been no indication that every little thing is fine.

Fifteen or so days without him now may be doing him and us a big favor as the season unfolds.

UPDATE: Church is shut down for “a few days,” reports John Delcos of the Journal News, because he's been feeling pressure akin to “a heartbeat in my head”.

So I ask again, why is he not simply disabled so this matter can be attended to thoroughly?

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?

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

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.

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.

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.