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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 8 April 2008 7:27 am Pallets of brown corrugated boxes sit somewhere in Queens. They are filled with magnetic schedules. Could be the reason I suddenly feel something.
I already kind of don’t remember the first week of the 2008 season. I was there, it was there, but there wasn’t much there there. Admittedly, I haven’t managed to sit down and focus like a laser on nine contiguous innings, but that’s just an excuse to go with all the others. Whether it’s the hangover of ’07 (if you can have a hangover after drinking no Champagne) or the clammy New York spring or the inability to mix and match new Mets with previous Mets and call the collection a team or, to be blunt, the saggy 2-3 start, I’m just not feeling this particular campaign yet.
But where I’m headed in a matter of hours…I’m feeling that. I’m feeling the pull of Opening Day at Shea Stadium. It’s absolutely magnetic.
Somebody’s down in storage unloading those pallets right now. Case upon case of those brown boxes. Somebody’s cutting through the bands, somebody’s rendering the adhesive obsolete. I can hear the boxes tearing open. I can feel it. Somebody with a clipboard is directing a fleet of forklifts. These go to Gate E, these to Gate D and so on. Break ’em out, have ’em ready. Company’s coming.
It’s the Home Opener at Shea Stadium. They always hand out magnetic schedules, since 1997 at least. It’s the first sponsorship, the first promotion of the year: Kahn’s…Delta…whoever pays the freight. They used to give one to everybody. Now it’s the first 25,000 through the gates. You’d figure they could afford another pallet’s worth, given the Amazin’ advertising the thing provides. These magnets go up on 10,000 fridges and 10,000 filing cabinets in the Metropolitan area almost immediately. Who knows how many millions of times this summer somebody in New York or New Jersey or Connecticut will say “hang on a sec…let me check…” and crane a neck toward the schedule he or she was handed April 8 and positioned purposefully onto a cooperative surface April 9? Who knows how many Mets fans have waited patiently since September 30 to replace the previous magnetic schedule with a better one?
The new magnetic schedule’s gotta be better than its predecessor. It’s just gotta.
Or so we hope, which is fine — which is required, actually. Hope’s in fashion this morning and afternoon, no matter how few sparks the season to date has thrown off, no matter that the cast of 2008 doesn’t feel whole, as if we’re in the Archie Bunker’s Place phase of All In The Family.
Ah, stifle yourself. Enough moping that these Mets haven’t clinched a darn thing after one week on the job. Those were road games. They counted only in fact, not at heart. The season starts when Shea unshutters, when indifferently trained personnel dip into those brown boxes and peel off a magnetic schedule to you…and to you…and to you…and sorry, we’re all out, you shoulda got here sooner. The season starts upon first sighting of the big blue shell with the white trim, its amazing Technicolor dreamcoat of seats and its green, green grass of home.
The season starts at Shea. One more time it does. The contents of a pallet of corrugated boxes sitting somewhere in Queens says so.
by Greg Prince on 8 April 2008 7:18 am 
In the middle of last season, Dave from The Gil Meche Experience was thoughtful enough to send us some shots of what you can see from the upper deck of Shea Stadium when you ascend to Row V and turn around.
by Greg Prince on 8 April 2008 7:16 am 
“The other day me and my friend were at a game sitting in the upper deck,” Dave related. “He suggested we go way up to the top and check out the view, as Gary Cohen had recommended it at some point this season. So we did, and were amazed at the view.”
by Greg Prince on 8 April 2008 7:14 am 
We don’t know precisely what we will see when we turn around at Citi Field. But we do know, on this final Opening Day at Shea Stadium, what Row V in reverse can get you. Like everything else about Shea, it’s something that will be succeeded, likely improved upon, but it will never quite be replaced.
by Greg Prince on 7 April 2008 4:47 pm 31: Friday, July 26 vs Cardinals
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to 1986 Weekend at Shea Stadium. We are saluting the most recent world championship in Mets history between now and Sunday and we're asking some folks associated with that season to remember to remove the Shea Final Games Countdown numbers from the right field wall. It's appropriate that we bring some '86ers in here because this seasonlong tribute, after all, is the countdown like it oughta be.
If you needed to pinpoint when the buildup to 1986 began to take hold, you would have to look to 1984, the year the Mets shook off the dust of several consecutive second-division finishes and began to contend in earnest for the N.L. East crown. That was when Shea Stadium began to shake, too, with the fierce belief by Mets fans that this team was going somewhere.
Nobody represented the crossroads of hope in the stands and the inspiration for it on the field like three young men who decided to express their belief one letter at a time. That letter was a K and their place was the left field corner from which they waved their Ks — much as National League batters waved at the pitches that resulted in K after K in 1984.
The guys who founded the K Korner are here tonight: Dennis Scalzitti, Bob Belle and Neil Kenny. And joining them to remove number 31…who else but the pitcher who kept them so busy by hanging his shingle out at Shea that summer and for a decade after that, Doctor K himself? Welcome back to Shea Stadium the 1984 National League Rookie of the Year, the 1985 National League Cy Young Award winner and the ace of those 1986 World Champion New York Mets, Dwight Gooden.
30: Saturday, July 27 vs Cardinals
Ladies and gentlemen, many were the hands that contributed to building a world champion at Shea Stadium in 1986, but no two pair of them were steadier than those that built the team and those that guided it.
To remove number 30, we welcome home two gentlemen who came from Baltimore, saw what Shea Stadium could be like when a World Series was won here in 1969 and decided to try it for themselves 17 years later. The general manager of the 1986 World Champion New York Mets, Frank Cashen and the manager of the 1986 World Champion New York Mets, Davey Johnson.
29: Sunday, July 26 vs Cardinals
We are excited, ladies and gentlemen, to be joined by a group of Mets who contributed to one of the two greatest achievements in club history. They were and will forever be champions…1986 World Champion New York Mets. A few of their teammates have come home to Shea this season and removed ceremonial numbers from the right field wall, and we have a hunch that a few more will make it back here before 2008 is out.
Tonight, we have ten men who proudly wear the rings they earned 22 Octobers ago.
The clutch-hitting backup catcher on the '86 Mets, say hello to old friend Ed Hearn.
A ten-game winner during the regular season, he is the pitcher of record on the winning side in the most famous game in Mets history, Game Six of the 1986 World Series, Rick Aguilera.
His walkoff, extra-inning grand slam home run electrified Shea Stadium on June 10. He would go on to homer in the World Series, too: Tim Teufel.
As sound defensively as they came at short, a fixture in the infield on those great Mets teams of the '80s, please welcome back Rafael Santana.
A rookie in 1986, he played with the steely nerve of a veteran when it counted most. Raise your cup and show your support for the man they called World, Kevin Mitchell.
No lefty was a tougher assignment for National League hitters in 1986 or, as he proved in October, that postseason. An 18-game winner for the world champs, ladies and gentlemen, Bobby Ojeda.
You know his voice now. You knew his right arm then, and was it ever right, to the tune of 15-regular season wins and two terrific outings in the World Series. Direct from the SNY booth, say hi to Ron Darling.
He was an All-Star starting pitcher in 1986, but it was in a World Series relief role that he truly earned his Met stripes for all time. His middle-innings appearance changed the tide of the seventh game and set the stage for the second world championship in Mets history. All the way from Hawaii, please welcome Sid Fernandez.
Nobody was grittier, nobody was guttier and, for that matter, nobody among the regulars had a higher batting average in 1986 than the second baseman from your World Champion Mets. Give it up for him as he always did for you…Wally Backman.
And finally, to remove number 29, he was the third baseman on those 1986 New York Mets, he was the comeback player of the year in the National League and he demonstrated some of the greatest never-say-die determination baseball has ever seen. The Most Valuable Player of the 1986 World Series, returning to Shea Stadium as a Met for the first time since the night of October 27, 1986, please give your warmest home-team welcome to Ray Knight.
Numbers 34-32 were revealed here.
by Greg Prince on 6 April 2008 11:37 pm At week's beginning, I questioned the efficacy of the Mets “watch parties” promoted by bars here and there. Well, I just came home from one and have to say they can be plenty of fun.
They give you something to do while the Mets aren't scoring.
The occasion was the launch of everybody's favorite book — surely it will be yours if you purchase a copy — Mets By The Numbers. Authors Jon Springer and Matt Silverman were there along with several members of the MBTN community who double as friends of FAFIF. A good time was had by all who weren't paying close attention to what was transpiring in Atlanta.
Which was absolutely nothing, save for the valiant, unsupported pitching of Johan Santana who must not have heard this is how we treat our aces.
Because I was deep into chicken wings and conversation, I didn't get a good look at John Smoltz, though after two decades, I think I've seen all I ever need to see of that mangy old goat. Baseball-Reference says Smoltz is a few games over .500 versus the Mets. I'm sure he's 500 games over and maybe we've won a few. It always looks worse when you're 2-3 in your bounceback season, but man did the Mets do anything today other than inspire us to order another round of Black & Tans?
The Braves aren't The Braves anymore, but they're still the Braves. I hope I've made myself clear. If I haven't, this is sort of what I mean: When the Mets go out and make a move, even a really good move, the Braves go out and match or trump it.
• In the winter of '02, as we're high-fiving over the imminent contributions of Robbie Alomar and Mo Vaughn, they get Gary Sheffield.
• Three years later, as we are ascending the ranks thanks to Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran, they manage to come up with Tim Hudson.
• Last summer, moderately jubilant that we have secured the pennant drive aid of Luis Castillo, they go out and grab Mark Teixeira, who was re-signed in January for exactly one year (whereas, as my partner so accurately put it, we filled a firehose with money and blasted Luis green in the face).
This offseason, the offseason of Santana, the Braves didn't match Johan. You don't match Johan. It was all they could do to replace Andruw Jones with Mark Kotsay. But they keep reviving bleeping John Smoltz. John Smoltz won't age. John Smoltz won't fall to pieces. Every series you turn around, John Smoltz is waiting to face the Mets. This was his 69th appearance lifetime against us, his 41st start. Both are career highs. His first start was at Shea Stadium in 1988, back when Rick Astley was riding high and the Soviet Union was at least riding. He won then, he wins now. He will, nuts to the knots behind his shoulder, keep winning against the Mets at Turner Field, at Citi Field, at whatever succeeds Citi Field. The John Smoltz Memorial Classic they'll call it. Buy a brick before they're all gone.
When it comes to pitching, John Smoltz knows his onions.
On our side of the fence, the Mets clearly aren't clicking, save for Santana and Church. Let's hope they can resist the pull of their new teammates and their old karma. It's already begun to suck Schneider and Pagan into that stale and dismal vortex that seems unchanged from last September, the one that makes you forget we're only five games into 2008. Funny, I thought that's what the Black & Tans were for.
by Greg Prince on 6 April 2008 10:05 am 34: Tuesday, July 22 vs. Phillies
Ladies and gentlemen, the unofficial motto of Shea Stadium for much of its life has been You Gotta Believe. How appropriate then that a man who inspired belief worldwide stepped into this ballpark on an autumn day in 1979 and brought with him, as he put it, “a message of faith and love.”
That man was Poland's Karol Wojtyla, known far and wide from 1978 until his death in 2005 as Pope John Paul II. He came to Shea Stadium in the second year of his papacy, acknowledging “the special character of this metropolis” and urging a predominantly youthful audience that “a city needs a soul if it is to become a true home for human beings.” Whatever your faith, it's a message for all New Yorkers to live by.
As we begin the second half of our final season in this ballpark, we remember the historic visit of the Holy Father to Shea Stadium on October 3, 1979. To commemorate it, we are honored to be joined by New York's Edward Cardinal Egan, who will remove number 34 from the right field wall.
33: Wednesday, July 23 vs Phillies
Ladies and gentlemen, from now until there is no more Shea Stadium, baseball will be the only order of business on this site. But as many of you know, last week Shea demonstrated more of its multipurpose versatility. Put more specifically, it showed one final time that this house knows how to rock.
The Who. The Police. Simon & Garfunkel. Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band. Elton John. Eric Clapton. Janis Joplin. Jethro Tull. Grand Funk Railroad. The Rolling Stones. And finally, Billy Joel. These were the headliners who made musical history at Shea Stadium these past four decades.
But before them, there was one act. And everybody who has ever played Shea Stadium bows to them and their impact on music.
There's nothing you can do that can't be done, nothing you can sing that can't be sung and nothing you can say except…the Beatles.
To take down number 33, ladies and gentlemen, Shea Stadium is proud to present, as it did in 1965 and 1966, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney.
32: Thursday, July 24 vs Phillies
As a pitcher's park, ladies and gentlemen, Shea Stadium will never be mistaken for a seat of power, but it has had a longstanding relationship with those who have resided in America's most famous seat of power. This afternoon we wish to recall those White House denizens who graced Shea with their presence.
During the 1969 World Series, the Mets were proud to welcome two New Yorkers in particular, the former first lady of the United States and her eight-year-old son. To represent the memory of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and John F. Kennedy, Jr., we welcome the daughter of the 35th president of the United States, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg.
In the late 1980s, after settling in the New York metropolitan area, this former president was a regular visitor to Shea Stadium. Sports had always been one of his passions and he held a particular fondness for baseball. To represent the memory of Richard M. Nixon, we welcome the son-in-law of the 37th president of the United States, Edward Cox.
Joining our special guests in removing number 32 from the right field wall, we have the man who threw out the first ball of the season in 1971 when he was the United States' ambassador to the United Nations — at the time, his uncle G. Herbert Walker was on the Mets' board of directors — and again in 1985 when he served as vice president of the United States. He would go on to the presidency and still knows some people in the White House. Ladies and gentlemen, the 41st president of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush.
And to make it a truly federal fab four, we welcome the only sitting president who ever visited Shea Stadium. He was with us the night Jackie Robinson's 42 was retired throughout baseball and he has been back from time to time since taking up residency in Chappaqua. Ladies and gentlemen, the 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton.
Numbers 40-35 were revealed here.
by Jason Fry on 5 April 2008 9:50 pm I don't know what the heck a rulebook expert like Bobby Valentine would have made out of what just happened in Atlanta. I don't know what the rulebook even says regarding a mess like that. But sometimes the best thing to do is put the rulebook aside and work it out like 12-year-olds would have — eventually — on the sandlot.
Which is what — eventually — happened.
1. OK, the ball was trapped. Bad call by Bruce Dreckman.
2. OK, Angel Pagan clearly passed Ryan Church on his way to a cancelled rendezvous between his foot and home plate.
3. OK, but Church had to stop and tag up once Dreckman's fist went up. He can't first assess whether random baserunners are speeding past his position.
And so … you could … but then again … and how about … You know what? Atlanta, get back on the field. Met runners, come here. Not you, Church — you go home. Pagan, you go stand on third. And we're not gonna talk about it anymore. Play ball already. I SAID WE'RE NOT GONNA TALK ABOUT IT ANYMORE!
You know what? Fair enough.
I'm only left with one question: Why do you never see both managers talking something over with the umpires? Would Cox and Randolph automatically start spitting on each other or come to blows? Aren't the arguments they'll make the same whether or not the other guy's in attendance? And isn't the explanation the same for both of them?
Ah, the mysteries of baseball.
Update: Tomorrow's Santana-Smoltz, shades of Pedro-Smoltz three years ago. All I'd like to commit to memory about today's crapfest is the promise of the game coming tomorrow, which I suppose kind of says it all.
by Greg Prince on 5 April 2008 11:24 am Last night, en route to the rainout, Kevin Burkhardt interviewed T#m Gl@v!ne. It wasn't to check in on the wife and kids.
The transaction was predictable. Kevin, who I think does a very good job making something out of what could be a very superfluous role, tossed him an “I have to ask you this” softball about the inglorious end of his mixed-bag Mets career. Gl@v!ne spun into damage control mode with all the aplomb of a Mitt Romney or a Joe Biden demonstrating the kind of political skills that got each of them so far in his respective presidential bids.
Paraphrasing, Gl@v!ne said people were upset with him because he didn't say he was devastated…and reminded us that he and Christine have been busy fighting the scourge of childhood cancer and he understands what real devastation is, but sure he was upset, it was a lousy start, he couldn't sleep.
Thanks for clearing that up, big guy.
Burkhardt's question was a little awkward, making it sound as if millions of us had asked ourselves last September 30, “gee, do ya think T#m is devastated?” when in reality it was Gl@v!ne himself who introduced the d-word into the Met lexicon. We didn't care that you didn't say you were devastated. We were annoyed, maybe more than annoyed on top of how livid we were over your crappy pitching, that you said you weren't devastated. It's not a fine difference.
Once a person has casually brought up his admirable work on behalf of aiding the youngest victims of a terrible disease, he makes us look small for questioning any of what we perceive as his shortcomings in something so silly (yet strangely so lucrative) as baseball and its attendant reactions. But we're not biting. You say you didn't sleep much after that final game? Welcome to the rest of us, T#m. We have families. We have concerns. We — surprise, surprise — have lives outside the Mets. Yet we were whatever it was you said you didn't say you were. And we weren't compensated lavishly for any of it.
Old news, old wounds at this point. My only real interest in invoking Gl@v!ne these days is to hope Johan Santana devastates him and his teammates Sunday afternoon. Still, with Friday night rain having given me the void in which to contemplate it clear into Saturday morning, I do wonder if it could have been different there at the finish.
How?
Alternate History 1:
T#m Gl@v!ne pitches valiantly, the Mets lose, 9/30/07
We write of him something like…
You can't blame Glavine for this. Maybe for the two previous starts, but he came through like the pro and the Hall of Famer he is Sunday and I appreciate him more now than I did when he won his 300th, when he beat the Dodgers and Cardinals last fall. Yes, his two previous starts were killers, but whatever happens now — even if he returns to, yeech, Atlanta — we and he can go in peace. It hasn't been for naught.
Alternate History 2:
T#m Gl@v!ne pitches brilliantly, the Mets win, 9/30/07
We write of him something like…
So that's why we signed Tom Glavine a half-decade ago. So that's why you invest in two Cy Youngs and 242 career wins. So that's why you cast aside a generation of enmity and hand someone like that the ball every five days for five years. So that's why we're going to Philadelphia Monday afternoon for a one-game playoff. So that's why so many of us were wrong about this man.
Alternate History 3:
T#m Gl@v!ne pitches as he did, reacts differently, 9/30/07
We write of him something like…
Glavine sucked, but at least owned up to it. Geez, I didn't think anybody could look worse than I feel right now, but he appears to have taken this debacle pretty hard. I don't know that it helps matters — no, actually, I do; it doesn't — but as a footnote, it doesn't hurt to know that at least one of these players understands the dimensions of a disaster like this. It's almost like Tom is bearing the burden for the rest of us. Maybe he wasn't Manchurian after all.
There are better things worth imagining.
by Greg Prince on 4 April 2008 10:09 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 358 regular-season and 13 postseason games to date. The Log records the numbers. The Tales tell the stories.
6/4/04 F Florida 12-7 Trachsel 13 150-119 L 5-1
You know, when I was a little girl, I always dreamed of being in a Broadway audience.
—Marge Simpson
I have until early Tuesday morning to complete one of my tasks for the 2008 home season. I have to nail down my Amazin’ playlist.
Though I was late to the iPod (let me guess — they’ve all been phased out by smaller, faster, more expensive devices that will themselves be outmoded by the time I break down and buy one), I embrace the opportunity to be my own Vito Vitiello and produce my own Shea Stadium soundtrack, or at least a pregame warmup. Without boring you to tears or scaring you half to death by the breadth of my banality (like I haven’t already), I’ll let it be known that no Amazin’ playlist would be complete without a Broadway component to it.
Meet that rare breed: the straight man born after World War II who is capable of really, really loving without irony Broadway musicals. You probably thought we were an urban myth.
Nope, we’re real. And at least one of us thinks the really great ones are that much better because they complement baseball so perfectly.
Not that a lot doesn’t, but it all makes airtight sense to me and my earbuds. I listen to ballgames to get the scores on my way to see Sunday matinees. I listen to the scores of Broadway musicals as I enter Shea. Either way, I sit in a large audience, the tickets overpriced, in the hopes of being roused, of being moved, of remembering what I just saw and heard for years to come, of not feeling ripped off in terms of time and money. I stop listening to my soundtracks once I reach my seat at a game. I stop listening to a game once the curtain rises on a show unless the first no-hitter in Mets history seems to be in progress (May 23, 2004, T#m Gl@v!ne vs. the overture to Bombay Dreams, impossible radio reception inside the Broadway Theatre on 53rd Street and Kit Pellow; no wonder he didn’t get it — he was triple-teamed).
So it’s before whichever performance I’m en route to that I get my fill. Where the Sheabound trips are concerned, it’s generally on the train and until I meet whomever I’m meeting, provided Mets Extra hasn’t lured me away with the promise of an injury update. I’m alone at that point, alone and suggestible to whatever I’m hearing.
Before the iPod, there was the Walkman, an unbeatable invention — or so it seemed. It had a radio and a cassette player. I stayed with the Walkman long after the rest of civilization had moved on to the Discman, well into the iPod era. I was the master of the compilation tape into the early 2000s in ways that I’m sure there are some skilled silversmiths and elevator operators who can kick ass in this century should anyone ask them to. Nobody asked me to make tapes by 2004, but I was still doing it through that spring. Man, the segues I could produce! I’d describe them, but as indicated, the banality would strangle you.
But I have to mention this one number, because it is the nexus of baseball and Broadway for me. It has no business being so, but that’s what it became four years ago and remains to this day. Its pull on me is so strong that I can no longer listen to it without turning to jelly, even though I didn’t much the like the show it’s from, even though it has no relationship to the Mets except for the backstory I created for it.
It’s November 2003, the baseball season is safely tucked away. I’ll agree to see most anything when there’s no Mets conflict, even Wicked, something Stephanie was interested in, something that had something to do with The Wizard Of Oz, something that darn near coincided with our wedding anniversary. Couldn’t turn it down.
The first act was a drag. The show was new yet felt stale. They could have shown The Wizard Of Oz on a big screen and that would have been fresher. We could have been home watching The Wizard Of Oz on our own screen and it would have been cheaper. I love great musicals. I like really good ones. The crappy ones are just three hours out the window, like those comic-strip iterations of $10 bills with wings. Lots of $10 bills.
My mind wanders. I don’t know if it wanders more than other minds because mine’s the only one I’ve had access to while sitting through events that have dead spots. All events have dead spots, even baseball games. If baseball games have dead spots, you can be damn sure everything else has dead spots. This is where the mind goes during a musical’s dead spots:
I’m watching a live event that required a ticket in a large public space with lots of other people. This reminds me of baseball. This reminds me of the Mets.
Like Gl@v!ne most nights in 2003, the cast is down 3-0 in the top of the first. They’ve gotta bear down to grab back my attention, because if there’s not a graspable plot twist or a knockout solo, they’re losing me to free agent signings (“If we get Guerrero, then it’s not such a bad lineup”), the memorized pocket schedule if it’s out (“I really want to go to that Expos game…can’t believe the bobbleheads are for 14 and under”) or, most distracting of all, the past.
This show blows… wish I was doing something else… wish the Mets were playing… wish the Mets were playing right now… the Mets now suck… wish they were better… they used to be better…remember when the Mets were good?
As the CPR of baseball nostalgia gives me mouth-to-mouth, funny thing about Wicked. It’s still not much good, but the score is beginning to get to me. It’s got that late ’60s, early ’70s Broadway feel the more I listen, that modern, hopeful vibe I associate with, well, the Mets. It’s that moment in time when New York, whatever its problems, is congenitally optimistic yet humble. It loves the underdog and is willing to throw off the musty odor of the past. It loves the Mets. It’s embracing a more contemporary style of musical, just like it loves Shea more than any other facility. It’s got Company. It’s got Pippin. Seaver to Sondheim to Schwartz…
Hey! Pippin! The guy who wrote Pippin, Stephen Schwartz, wrote this! Well no wonder it seems familiar. Pippin may be more than 30 years old in the fall of 2003, but its soundtrack, at least a little of it, is timeless to me. Its opening number is one of my Mets songs. In 1998 and 1999, I played Magic To Do over and over again because it, like critical junctures of those seasons, put me in mind of 1973 because a commercial for the show ran over and over again that September.
That’s how this mind works. Wicked‘s getting interesting in the sense that I’m in a pennant race now, first ’73, then ’69, at least the way I’ve idealized it. 1969 is a transfer point for the 7 at Times Square. And we all know that once you hop the 7, anything is possible.
Like the 2003 Mets growing into something palatable in 2004.
Like being what they were only a few short years ago.
Like those almost halcyon days when The Best Infield Ever flew across the Shea dirt like those dancers up on stage are doing.
Like when Ventura and Olerud and Alfonzo and Ordoñez were…
What’s that song they’re doing? “Defying Gravity”? Wow, I like this! It soars! It’s the first song I’ve heard all day that I like. And what a theme. “Defying Gravity,” that could be a whole new “Mojo Risin'” for when we get good again, like I know we will even though we’re saddled with Art Howe and T#m Gl@v!ne. What a shame this song wasn’t around in ’99. Rey Ordoñez, now there was someone who defied gravity. Can’t you just picture some latter-day Sign Man holding up one that says DEFYING GRAVITY after Rey-Rey leaps into the air? Or Robin goes to his back hand? They could bring Kristin Chenoweth or Idina Menzel to Shea to sing the national anthem! They could make t-shirts! I’d buy one!
“Defying Gravity” ended the first act. I was loving Wicked at intermission. Even if I spent the second act ignoring it so I could deconstruct Game Six of the ’99 NLCS (again), it was well worth whatever we paid to see this show.
The day the soundtrack was released, I bought the CD. When the time came for another compilation tape, I added “Defying Gravity” to the mix. And when I finally got to my first game of 2004, which wasn’t until early June, I hauled to Shea for probably the last time my Walkman to listen to that cassette. It just so happened that as I alighted at Gate E to wait for Laurie and her friend, “Defying Gravity” came up. As I leaned against the closed side of the day-of-game ticket windows, I was back in my nexus, Broadway meeting the Mets, 1969 meeting 1999, the two of them pecking on the cheek the slight but tangible promise of 2004. I expected nothing out of this year, yet it was somehow overdelivering. The Mets were winning a bit more than they were losing. The Mets weren’t hellaciously out of first. The Mets were…
The Mets were defying gravity!
I could never again listen to that song without a fistful of Kleenex at the ready. And I could never resist the temptation to listen to it when I or the Mets needed a boost. Come the afternoon of October 18, 2006, it was the last song I listened to before leaving the house for another Game Six in another NLCS. Come the evening of September 28, 2007, on the first iPod playlist I ever made, it was the track that stopped me dead in mine on the LIRR as I tried to figure how a one-game deficit on a Friday night might revert to a one-game lead by Monday. On a random Sunday afternoon last December, I heard it and paused it. I couldn’t handle it, not in the offseason, not after the way September ended, with the Mets not defying but submitting to gravity.
A new season means a new playlist and that means all new. None of last year’s 16 will be among this year’s 64 (I’ve gotten more comfortable with the iPod of late). No more BTO. No more Metallica. No more “All Right Now” even if it figures to be applicable well into the 2010s. And no more “Defying Gravity” in my ears en route to Shea in 2008. In the last year of the old ballpark, I won’t need nearly that much help being roused or being moved.
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