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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 Jason Fry on 20 March 2008 8:00 pm Johnny Estrada has a 2008 New York Mets baseball card.
2008 Topps Heritage #378, to be specific — a set made in the fashion of the 1959 Topps cards, down to the goofy personal info. (Johnny has a juco degree in recreation, which apes old-style Topps cards perfectly in that it’s simultaneously ridiculous and made to sound slightly demeaning.) He gazes out from it, black bat held ready, in a Milwaukee Brewers uniform whose cap has been airbrushed into a perfectly plausible Met hat.
Desktop publishing has transformed such baseball-card trickery — in the old days Topps was infamous for obviously recolored caps and hand-drawn logos that crept across players’ hats like spiders, but now they’ll recast an action shot of a player without a second thought. What they can’t alter, however, is memory — we know perfectly well that Johnny Estrada isn’t a 2008 Met, however much we might be willing to entertain the notion, standing as we do at the dawn of the era of Raul Casanova or Robinson Cancel or Gustavo Molina. (I was surprised — and, oddly, a little disappointed — to find Gustavo isn’t, in fact, part of the seemingly inescapable Molina catching clan. Perhaps “molina” means “receiver” in some Spanish dialect, much the way someone named Cooper can bet he had an ancestor who made barrels. Or perhaps it will mean that one day.)
Anyway, Estrada’s in D.C. with the growing cast of vaguely affronted ex-Mets, destined to be remembered in these parts (absent some future, Molinaesque blow struck against us) as being the return on exiled Guillermo Mota and one of those oddball winter-only Mets, like Joe Randa. (Who, come to think of it, had a blow struck against us that was at least a minor Molina.) But Estrada will forever be a member of the 2008 Topps Heritage roster — and that makes him a throwback to a baseball-card era I thought had vanished.
Back in the day, Topps issued cards in series, giving kids a few weeks to collect 100 or so cards before the next series arrived. (Which is why the “high numbers” from old sets are the most expensive — they were the year’s tail-enders.) One consequence of that was that Topps would periodically anoint players who’d switched clubs as regulars (or at least roster-fillers) for their new teams, posing them hatless or inking them into new hats and tops as described above. Inevitably, some of those bets proved wrong. For a kid collecting that year, this was no big deal — he’d remember that oh yeah, Joe Shlabotnik got sent down to Stumptown before the team went north. But for someone like me, collecting years later, the presence of these players was baffling. Who were these unfamiliar names? Errors in a checklist? Real Mets I’d somehow forgotten about?
These Non-Mets shouldn’t be confused with other fringe members of the blue-and-orange cardboard tribes. They aren’t guys who played briefly for the Mets but never got a Met card (Don Zimmer, famously, wears his honest-to-goodness, unairbrushed Met hat on a 1962 card identifying him as a Cincinnati Red), cup-of-coffee guys who never got a big-league card (a long list that begins with Ray Daviault in 1962), or members of the infamous Lost Mets, those who never got a card of any kind. (Al Schmelz is the king of this little-surveyed hill.) Prospects don’t count — the likes of Bill Haas, Randy Bobb and Nelson Figueroa may never have got into a game as Mets, but their placement on part of a Met card was speculative from the get-go. (And Figueroa may yet make it — he’s the player in Port St. Lucie I’m rooting for most.) Nor are we discussing Phantom Mets — your Jerry Moseses and Mac Suzukis and Billy Cottons and Terrell Hansens who took up a roster spot and wore the uniform but never got into a game. (Randy Bobb’s one of those, too.)
The Non-Mets begin with Neil Chrisley in ’62. Chrisley was a basically useless outfielder the Mets acquired from the Milwaukee Braves in October 1961, one of those odd “purchased from/sold to” deals that seem to have vanished from the baseball landscape. His biggest claim to fame is that his first name was Barbra. That oddity would have made him a good fit as an Original Met, but the Mets had no use for him, and returned him to Milwaukee on April 2, 1962. He never played in the big leagues again, and stares out from ’62 Topps #308 like a man who’s baffled by the general proceedings. If I’d been saddled with the name Barbra, I’d probably feel the same way.
Next up, 1963’s Wynn Hawkins, a blonde Midwestern pitcher whose gigantic, faked Met logo appears to be sneaking off the front of his cap, possibly to conduct a secret mission or out of sheer embarrassment. (You can also tell Wynn wore No. 34 with the Indians — it’s on his sleeve in a location the Mets never put a uniform number.) Hawkins was another purchased player — he arrived from Cleveland around Thanksgiving, 1962. ’63 Topps #334 states that “Wynn is sure to see lots of duty with the Mets.” It also says that “Wynn is a great fan of motion pictures.” The latter is, presumably, the more accurate of these two statements.
Third on the list is Mike Joyce, whose suspicious expression and brush cut on ’64 Topps #477 suggest he’s got a hankering to beat up a member of the Beatles or some other longhair. Joyce was purchased from the White Sox on the final day of March in 1964, then optioned to Buffalo on April 13. (As Topps mentions in an addendum on the cardback, perhaps with vague disapproval.) Joyce never made it back downstate — as with Chrisley and Hawkins, his Met card serves as a gravestone for his baseball career.
1966 brought Ernie Bowman, a former Giants shortstop whose forehead still bears the line of a just-removed cap on ’66 Topps #302. The cardback states that “the hustling veteran is given a good shot at making the 1966 starting team,” then introduces an unfriendly note of doubt by following that with “Ernie is eager to resume his big league career.” This mixed message probably led a lot of young Met fans to scan his card, and note that in 205 big-league at-bats, Ernie Bowman had hit one homer, collected 10 RBIs and hit .190. You probably know this is coming by now, but there was never a 206th at-bat. Bowman, who’d arrived in September 1965 from the Braves along with Lou Klimchock in exchange for Billy Cowan, departed in October 1966 (again with Klimchock) in a trade to the Indians for someone named Floyd Weaver.
The next Non-Met was Dick Kenworthy, a pleasant-looking young man posing hatless in a White Sox uniform on ’68 Topps #63. Kenworthy is billed by Topps as a “flashy fielding infielder,” which of course meant that he couldn’t hit. He did, however, escape the Curse of the Non-Mets, racking up 122 at-bats in ’68, once again in a White Sox uniform. There’s a transactional mystery there — Topps says Kenworthy became a Met to complete a deal for Ken Boyer, and my copy of 1968’s Who’s Who in Baseball (complete with a receipt showing it was bought for 64 cents at Andan News in Huntsville, Ala.) reports that he was sold “conditionally” to the Mets on Oct. 17, 1967. Conditionally? Based on what? Being good? Liking St. Petersburg, Fla.? Laughing at Tug McGraw’s jokes? I’m not sure exactly how Kenworthy got back to the White Sox; I like to imagine being a Met didn’t agree with him, so he just wandered off one day and showed up back where he was still wanted.
Then, finally, there’s 1971’s Jerry Robertson. Robertson was an original Expo, and pitched 1.1 innings in their first game against the Mets — the 11-10 Opening Day Met loss that turned out to augur absolutely nothing about the close of 1969. The Tigers traded him to the Mets on March 30, 1971 in return for Dean Chance and Bill Denehy. (Denehy occupies a different place in baseball-card lore: He had the misfortune to share a rookie card with Tom Seaver.) ’71 Topps #651 offers little in the way of interesting info: We’re informed that Jerry had a fine year at Tulsa in 1968, which is like someone trying to brag on me by saying I was in great shape in 2005. One can’t help but note that Robertson looks decidedly morose on his card. Is it that he’s stuck wearing a completely blank hat? Or that he suspects he’s seen in his final day in the Show? Since both of these things are true, I suppose you can take your pick.
by Greg Prince on 20 March 2008 8:36 am 78: Friday, April 11 vs Brewers
Ladies and gentlemen, the stadium you see before you, the one you sit in now and the one in which we hope you will be standing and cheering before this night is out, does not come together without the efforts of many fine people. Hundreds of men and women work behind the scenes and all around us to create what amounts to a medium-sized village 81 times a year. Since 1964, thousands of dedicated Shea Stadium employees have devoted themselves to presenting you with a baseball experience without peer.
To represent all those folks and all their efforts, we have chosen two longtime Shea denizens, two men with whose names and faces you might be familiar. Certainly you know their work.
Joining the Mets in 1962 and remaining with the organization clear into the 21st century, Bob Mandt probably knows more about Shea Stadium than anyone who has ever lived. He got his Met start selling tickets for a new expansion team out of the Hotel Martinique, took on responsibility for Season Boxes the next year and with the opening of Shea became ticket manager. He served as a vice president of operations, of purchasing and of special projects before his retirement just a few years ago.
If Bob knows the ins and outs of Shea, Pete Flynn understands the most critical aspect of our baseball stadium like no one else. For four decades, the field was literally his. Pete, like Bob, began with the Mets in 1962, actually building the advance ticket booth at the Polo Grounds. From there, he moved onto the grass, first in Manhattan and eventually here in Queens. Pete was named head groundskeeper in 1974 and tended the field like it was nobody’s business — ultimately, of course, it was his.
Pete, you always wanted people to stay off the grass to keep it in tip-top condition for the game. Tonight, we hope you don’t mind making an exception as you and Bob walk down the right field line and remove number 78 from the right field wall in honor of your long and honorable service to Shea Stadium.
77: Saturday, April 12 vs Brewers
Ladies and gentlemen, there is no sweeter music in this park of ours than bat hitting ball…unless it’s the top of the inning, when it’s ball hitting glove. One exception, however, came from the speakers of Shea Stadium between 1964 and 1979 when Jane Jarvis held court on the Thomas Organ. An accomplished jazz musician and music business executive, Jane will always have a special place in the hearts of Mets fans for her exceptional playing that provided the soundtrack to a generation of Sheacomers. A couple of bars of the “Mexican Hat Dance” and you knew a great day of baseball was about to commence.
One of Jane’s greatest hits, naturally, was the all-time classic “Meet The Mets,” a song that remains an anthem to all of us here, and a song that’s even older than the Mets themselves. This timeless entreaty to one and all to step right up and meet their favorite ballclub was actually written before the Mets had played a single game. It has been recorded and re-recorded over the years and played too many times to count here at Shea Stadium. For its perennial good cheer, we can thank the song’s co-writers, Ruth Roberts and the late Bill Katz.
Ruth will accompany Jane down the right field line to remove the number 77. Please step right up and show them your appreciation for all the good tunes and good times.
76: Sunday, April 13 vs Brewers
Today, ladies and gentlemen, we pause to consider who built Shea Stadium. It gives an opportunity to remember the architects Praeger-Kavanaugh-Waterbury, the construction firms P.J. Carlin and Thomas Crimmons and every worker who poured concrete, rigged lighting and installed every switch and every seat.
Many gave us Shea Stadium. But two names stand out from the annals of Mets history.
One is the mayor of New York City in the early 1960s, Robert F. Wagner, Jr. It was Wagner who was determined to make reviving National League baseball in New York a municipal priority. He saw to it that the new team would have a place to play…this place. He remained highly regarded by all who knew him right up to his death in 1991.
The other is Mrs. Joan Payson, a great sportswoman, a great baseball fan, a great New Yorker. Mrs. Payson led the ownership of the New York Mets from their inception in 1962 until her passing in 1975. She is remembered far and wide for her passion, her charm and her unabashed love of the team that has called Shea Stadium home since 1964.
To honor the memories of these two giants in Mets history, it is our privilege to call on Duncan Wagner, son of Mayor Wagner, and Lorinda de Roulet, daughter of Mrs. Payson, to join us in right field for the removal of number 76. Thanks to you and your families for all you did to make the New York Mets a reality.
75: Tuesday, April 15 vs Nationals
Ladies and gentlemen, it was on a Tuesday night exactly eleven years ago that the attention of a nation was focused squarely on Shea Stadium for a moving and memorable ceremony. It was then, in the company of the President of the United States and the Commissioner of Baseball, that Mets fans witnessed firsthand the retiring of the number 42 throughout the sport. It was a singular honor for a singular human being, Jack Roosevelt Robinson.
Jackie Robinson became a Hall of Fame player in Brooklyn but given his role as the first African-American in modern baseball, it is fair to say he was on his way to immortality before he ever lashed a single, stole a base or drove a pitcher to distraction. As Commissioner Selig put it, Jackie was the single person we could consider as “bigger than the game of baseball.” It is that kind of credential the Mets look forward to commemorating with the opening of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda at Citi Field next April.
With us at Shea that night eleven years ago, along with the president and the commissioner, was true baseball royalty and a loyal friend of the Mets, Rachel Robinson. Rachel took every perilous step her husband took as they together integrated major league baseball and, in a larger sense, America. With her family, she has carried the torch for understanding and human decency that she and Jackie lit one borough over some six decades ago.
We are truly honored to have Mrs. Robinson with us on this April 15 to remove number 75 from Shea Stadium’s right field wall on the eleventh anniversary of Jackie’s 42 going up on the left field wall, which itself marked the fiftieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson making his first appearance with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Accompanying her are several special guests who remember that big night in 1997 very well.
Please welcome home to Shea Stadium:
• Lance Johnson, who drove in four runs in the Mets’ victory over Los Angeles that chilly April night.
• Armando Reynoso, who pitched five shutout innings before we took time out for the ceremonies that so eloquently recalled Jackie’s legacy.
• Toby Borland, who threw four shutout innings to preserve the 5-0 win.
• Butch Huskey, the power hitter who wore 42 during his Met career as a tribute to Jackie.
• And Mo Vaughn, who would become the final Met to wear 42, also in memory of the great Jackie Robinson.
Gentlemen, if you would, please escort Mrs. Robinson down the right field line so she can help us say goodbye to Shea Stadium.
74: Wednesday, April 16 vs Nationals
Ladies and gentlemen, Shea Stadium has been making memories since 1964. As long as the Mets play here, we imagine we will be privy to a few more.
Some of the most recent memories we have here came courtesy of three who tonight we call visitors. It wasn’t until recently that we would identify them as such, but that’s the business of baseball.
We are happy to have back a trio of Washington Nationals who contributed to the good times at Shea in 2005, 2006 and 2007:
• The manager of the Nats now, he was the popular third-base coach of the Mets for two seasons, including the division-winning year of 2006 when he led a memorable clubhouse celebration at Dodger Stadium when the Mets clinched their first National League Division Series in six years. You’ll recognize him and his right arm from waving all those runners home safely. Say hi to Manny Acta.
• One of the most exciting young talents to hit Shea in a long time, he made an instant impression and a big splash in 2006 and showed a lot of promise in 2007 — enough so that the Nationals gave the Mets two very appealing players in exchange for his services. We wish him continued success in his nascent career and are happy to say hello once more to Lastings Milledge.
• And being asked to take down the number 74 with Manny and Lastings is the Mets’ All-Star catcher from that 2006 season, one of the most fiery players to ever call Shea home. Even though he plays most of his games in Washington, we will never hear “Stayin’ Alive” in Queens again and not think of one of the great competitors of this or any era, Paul Lo Duca.
Fellas, in a minute you go back to being opponents. But for not-so-old times’ sake, please do us a favor and head up that right field line one more time.
73: Thursday, April 17 vs Nationals
Ladies and gentlemen, someone very special to all of us is celebrating a birthday today. That someone, born 44 years ago on this date, is none other than Shea Stadium.
To celebrate Shea’s big day, we thought it would be nice to share birthday greetings with some other April 17 babies. So before we blow out the candles on number 73, let’s give a warm welcome to these birthday folks.
A lifelong Long Islander and a very big Mets fan, you hear him mornings on the Mets’ flagship radio station, WFAN. Turning 47 today, let’s hear it for former Jets quarterback Boomer Esiason.
He played exactly one game as a Met but carries the distinction of being the only player in team history to share a birthday with Shea Stadium. Give your best to catcher Gary Bennett, who has just turned 36.
You may remember him as one of those pesky Astros who nearly cost the Mets the 1986 pennant or you may recall him as a valued coach on Art Howe’s staff in 2003 and 2004. He was ten years old the day Shea opened, which today would make him…our very special guest, Denny Walling.
She was born on April 17, 1967 in New Haven and grew up to be a singer so well liked that she was invited to offer her rendition of “God Bless America” at the 2005 World Series. Her given name is Elizabeth but in deference to the neighborhood she’s in now, we’d like to offer her the nickname of World’s. But we’ll understand if she declines. In any case, please welcome the birthday girl, Liz Phair.
Finally, leading our contingent of celebrants is someone born on exactly the same day as Shea Stadium. He is a 21-season veteran of the NHL, a paragon of sporting excellence in the New York area with three Stanley Cups to show for it. Now a broadcaster for his old team, we are delighted to wish a happy 44th birthday to the great New Jersey Devil defenseman, Ken Daneyko.
As Ken and our gang of April 17ers head down the right field line, how about serenading them — and Shea Stadium — with a chorus of “Happy Birthday”?
Numbers 81-79 were revealed here.
by Greg Prince on 19 March 2008 10:00 am 81: Tuesday, April 8 vs Phillies
Ladies and gentlemen, today we begin the final season at a historic and beloved ballpark, the home of your New York Mets for 44 going on 45 years, Shea Stadium. While we look forward to the future just over the horizon, we plan to honor our past by paying homage to and celebrating our heritage. Each game we play during the regular season, in the middle of the fifth inning, we will ask some very special people to join us in the right field corner to remove a number that signifies how many games are left in the life of this place where so many memories were born and will forever live. Along the way, we hope you — the Mets fans who have imbued Shea Stadium with the crackle of fervor, intensity and belief — will be reminded of the events that occurred inside these walls, whether epic or unique or just plain fun. If in counting down this final season we all get to take part in what amounts to a Shea Stadium history lesson, all the better. Baseball is about history and we should never forget the remarkable history that has transpired right here.
It is fitting and proper that as we begin this countdown by peeling away the number 81, we assign the honor to the family of the man for whom this house was named. We sit today in William A. Shea Municipal Stadium. We know it better as Shea and he would rather you have thought of him as Bill. Bill Shea was one of New York's top attorneys throughout the 20th century and one of its most civic-minded. It was his unmatched savvy and sturdy commitment that assured generation upon generation of fans that they, after a brief but dark interregnum, would never again be deprived of National League baseball in this city. Many worked hard to make the New York Mets a reality, but no one did so more passionately and more effectively than the namesake of our stadium.
Every Opening Day until his passing in 1991, Bill Shea would return to home plate and present a floral horseshoe to the manager of the Mets so as to say good luck and safe journey in the coming season. His family has continued this wonderful tradition right up to today and we hope they will continue to do so in Citi Field. We know that in a very real sense, none of us would be here without their father's efforts.
To honor the memory of Bill Shea, we ask his three children, Kathy Shea Anfuso, Patricia Shea Ryan and Bill Shea, Jr., to move beyond home plate this Opening Day and join us in the right field corner to remove the first number, 81, from the wall, signifying that this farewell season of Shea Stadium is truly under way…and that whatever the future brings, we thank Mr. Shea for the remarkable journey that began in 1964.
80: Wednesday, April 9 vs Phillies
Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we salute those whose spikes left the first impressions in the Shea Stadium dirt, those whose footsteps every Met has followed.
This stadium sprang to life on a Friday afternoon, April 17, 1964. The Mets' first opponent was the Pittsburgh Pirates. The first result was not pleasing to the home crowd, a 4-3 loss. Yet history was made and it is that history we remember now.
Please welcome back to Shea Stadium, the true pioneers of this place.
He threw the first pitch and recorded the first out in Shea Stadium history: Jack Fisher.
He came up in the bottom of the second and drew a walk, becoming the first baserunner for the home team: centerfielder Jim Hickman.
With two outs in the bottom of the third, he stepped up and registered the first New York Met hit in Queens, a line drive single to right: first baseman Tim Harkness.
It would take another day, the third day in Shea Stadium history, for the Mets to enter the win column. When they did, the man who could take credit for calling the win was the catcher, Hawk Taylor.
And earning that W, and leading our group of Shea pioneers down the right field line to peel off the number 80, was the winning pitcher on April 19, 1964. He threw a six-hit, 6-0 shutout and would establish the record for most wins by a pitcher across a Mets career until a fellow named Seaver came along. Please welcome back to Shea Stadium, a longtime member of the Mets organization and Mets family, the lefthander from Waco, Texas, Al Jackson.
79: Thursday, April 10 vs Phillies
Ladies and gentlemen, it is no secret that the Mets team that inaugurated Shea Stadium in 1964 was not what you could accurately refer to as an artistic success. Not that those Mets weren't loved, but with 109 losses to their docket, let's just say that love was hard won.
It was, however, pretty easy for fans to embrace the first star of Shea Stadium, the first Met to break through as one of the best players in the National League. And what a stage he had for it.
On July 7, 1964, the All-Star Game was played right here at Shea. And starting at second base and playing the entire nine innings was our very own Ron Hunt. Ron was voted by his peers into a lineup that included Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Billy Williams, Roberto Clemente and Orlando Cepeda. He singled in his first at-bat and was among the National Leaguers who crowded around home plate to greet Johnny Callison after the Phillie outfielder's walkoff home run won it for that day's home team.
Ron enjoyed a great run as a Met in between 1963 and 1966 and went on to a long and successful career. As someone legendary for his willingness to absorb a hit-by-pitch to get on base, he has the bruises to prove it.
Tonight, we ask Ron Hunt to take one more for his team…take one more walk up the right field line and take the number 79 off the right field wall.
by Greg Prince on 18 March 2008 10:09 pm The long-rumored Faith and Fear Shea Stadium Final Season Countdown is taking its swings in the on-deck circle. We articulated the concept here, but there are a few things worth noting besides (because stuff is always more fun when somebody explains it to a fine pulp).
• That figure or group you're sure is deserving of recognition? The one more deserving of it than whomever we are recognizing at the moment? Please indulge our sense of drama and stab at delineation with patience. Chances are he/she/they will get his/her/their due soon enough.
• There is no more wonderful Mets book to own than Mets By The Numbers (buy it if you haven't, already yet), just as there has been no more vital Mets Web site since 1999 than mbtn.net. Our caps remain permanently tipped in the direction of creator Jon Springer and co-author Matt Silverman, who together have covered the whole who-wore-what vibe so thoroughly and brilliantly that we ourselves are not worried about matching the numerals from our mythical right field wall to the digits on anybody's actual uniform. We know there are numbers closely associated with particular Mets, but for our counting-down purposes, we will not necessarily be anchored to that angle.
• While this is a virtual countdown, we opted to make it as real as possible. We took into account the 81 games the Mets are playing at Shea in 2008: the opponents, the dates, the occasions. If somebody appropriate for number-peeling seems a good bet to be in the house for a particular series, chances are that somebody will get the call during those days. We thought about who might be available and who might not be. We want this to be the ideal celebration of Shea Stadium, the one we're not remotely confident Shea will be given, so we want it to take place within the realm of reasonable possibility. That said, there are exceptions to every rule.
• Unless otherwise indicated, you should hear Shea Stadium public address announcer Alex Anthony introducing each guest of honor.
• The one question we were asked repeatedly by those in a nominating state of mind was, “Does somebody have to be alive to qualify?” The answer was maybe. That answer stands.
• We received many terrific reader suggestions on who should be included in our countdown, and several of them found their way onto the final list. Thank you to everybody who cared enough about Shea Stadium to have contributed thoughts and ideas to this admitted flight of fancy.
The countdown commences Wednesday and will keep rolling until we have accounted for all 81 home games and the lifetime of a ballpark. So keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the loge.
Tonight at 8, the The Happy Recap is scheduled to host four bloggers — from the Eddie Kranepool Society, Mets Merized Online, Mets Geek and, yes, Faith and Fear in Flushing — for a chat on the upcoming season and all things Met. Please join us there if you get the chance.
by Greg Prince on 17 March 2008 11:41 am Y'know, I was about to be extraordinarily hindsightful and ask why we couldn't have kept Johnny Estrada around in case both our catchers were to be found grabbing their groins and such come mid-March, but I just checked and I see Johnny Blue Jeans is sitting with tendinitis, so maybe catcher is just one of those things we can't have for a while. It happens once a decade or so. Maybe Tim Spehr isn't busy. Maybe we can hold the fort with him and Alberto Castillo and Rick Wilkins and Jim Tatum and Todd Pratt until the third week of May until we can acquire Mike Piazza should we become impatient for the reactivation of Todd Hundley.
Maybe if this were ten years ago.
What's up with this? We'll all be guzzling Schneider Schardonnay if nobody's capable of stepping up and squatting down. Ron Darling said Ramon Castro is in the best shape of his life this spring. Ramon Castro's life hasn't been about shape up to now, so that wasn't reassuring, especially after watching Castro lash a ball into the left field corner and seeing him struggle his way to first. Ouch.
Lots of ouch around here. Had been getting the idea that Carlos Delgado was finding his groove (I did a lot of that last year) only to look up and see him escorted off the field by a man in a golf shirt. He was standing off third when Brady Clark's bat shattered and sliced his arm good. Only in St. Lucie, kids, only in St. Lucie.
Not that it's all bad news from the town of Tradition. Pedro Martinez threw four shutout innings yesterday, his first four innings that weren't simulated; the more Pedro that is actual, the better. Matt Wise appears to be the real deal — or as real as a middle reliever can be — and Scott Schoeneweis is hinting he may truly be the effective lefty the Mets thought he was when they generously lined his pockets the winter before this one. Plus nobody else, as far as I know, was attacked by Brady Clark's bat Sunday. Maybe things will be all right. Maybe we're just one inoffensive (though hopefully not too inoffensive) Molina away from fielding a full roster.
In the meantime, Lenny Dykstra is still happy. Good for him.
The Faith and Fear Shea Stadium Final Season Countdown is almost at hand. Watch this space. Until then, contemplate a true Shea Stadium original and wonder why nobody's called Ron Hunt home lately.
by Greg Prince on 15 March 2008 6:31 am 
| First they say they’ll demolish my stadium. Then they issue a slew of apparel commemorating their act of destruction.
Amazin’. And lucrative. I shudder to estimate the over/under on how much I spend on stuff like this between now and October.
(Thanks to Dave Murray at Mets Guy In Michigan for motivating me to look at shirts like these. Thanks a lot, Dave.) |
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by Greg Prince on 14 March 2008 8:03 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 358 regular-season and 13 postseason games to date. The Log records the numbers. The Tales tell the stories.
8/31/01 F Florida 10-5 Leiter 27 130-97 W 6-1
Contrary to the evidence presented by the jerk sitting behind you, the putz in front of you and the moron a couple of seats over, Shea’s baseball IQ is usually quite impressive. As a group, we tend to get what’s going on. We understand the nuances of the game beyond liking home runs and abhorring strikeouts. When we see something extraordinary coming, we take note and we express our indigenous amazement.
Never more so than when Al Leiter would bat. Everybody knew Al Leiter couldn’t hit. Everybody knew Al Leiter was as likely to get a hit as Billy Crystal and that he was only slightly more qualified to take a turn in the order. Al Leiter didn’t know how to stand in the box, Al Leiter didn’t know how to hold his stick, Al Leiter was lucky not to fall down.
But when Al Leiter fought futility and futility didn’t win, everybody’s breath was taken away.
It happened once. I was there. For all the pitchers’ plate appearances I have seen at Shea Stadium, it will always be Al Leiter’s third time up on the night of August 31, 2001 that will stay with me. Should they ever foist the designated hitter on the National League, at least I will be able to say I’ve seen the one thing every Mets fan should be able to say he saw when it came to a pitcher batting.
I saw Al Leiter triple.
Watch Al Leiter as many times as I did, starting 37 regular-season games plus one in the playoffs, and you’re bound to see Al Leiter do everything. But triple?
Yeah. It happened. You don’t forget something like that. I imagine I saw Al do things with his bat other than swing like a barn door and hit nothing but air, but other than a well-timed single off Greg Maddux very late in 1999 (when six consecutive Mets singled off Greg Maddux as prelude to a John Olerud grand slam), I don’t remember. But I do remember the triple.
“John Franco told me that if I was running the whole time, I could’ve scored,” Al said after the game. “I don’t think so.”
I didn’t think so either. Then again I never would have thought we would see unfold what actually did.
It’s the seventh inning, the Mets have just gone up 3-1. Agbayani is on third. Ordoñez is on first (a rare enough occasion). Leiter’s preparing to get splinters on his hands. He tries to bunt once but it doesn’t work. He tries to bunt twice but it doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t. This is Al Leiter we’re talking about, versus Brad Penny no less. He’s oh-and-two with two runners on base about to be rendered loiterers. Nothing left for Al to do but strike out.
Except Al connects. I mean really connects. Past the grasp of the catcher, far from the pitcher, clear over the infield, mightily into short left-center. Preston Wilson comes running and running and diving.
He doesn’t catch it! The ball rolls in the general direction of the World’s Fair Marina and now it is Al Leiter who is running and running, and all of us, 23,020 of us — including Jason and Emily and me on our Tuesday/Friday plan — are running with him in spirit. The Marlins send out a St. Bernard to find the ball. Benny scores. Rey-Rey scores. Al is still running. Or chugging. Maybe straggling. But he has not quit. He makes it to first. He touches second. He’s going to third. He lands there safely.
HE HAS A TRIPLE!
It is as if we are all out of breath. It is as if we have all raised our season average to .061. It is as if we have all surprised ourselves. Everybody exults. Nobody asks what the big deal is, why this three-bagger is different from all other three-baggers. Everybody understands what we have accomplished.
WE HAVE A TRIPLE!
This one belongs to Al Leiter and his Sheawide entourage, the 20,000-plus who have jogged and sprinted alongside him as best we can. Fans love it when their pitcher homers, but for a pitcher to triple…for this pitcher to triple…that’s beyond what Tim McCarver said about triples being better than sex. I don’t think you can print in a family blog the kind of ecstasy this feels like.
WOO!
It was the first triple of Al Leiter’s career. Also, the last triple of Al Leiter’s career. The two RBI that secured his win on that last night of August were his first two for the season. Almost a month later, he managed another, and the next year, two more. That would account for all five of the runs he batted in after the millennium was celebrated, even if Al Leiter did pitch clear into 2005 in the league where he was compelled to attempt to hit. He would wind up batting .065 in ’01, .084 as a Met, .085 overall.
The odds that you could buy a ticket to Shea Stadium and see Al Leiter pitch weren’t very long. Like I said, I saw him do that 38 separate times. Al and I were on the same cycle. You’d think we joined a convent together or something. But to pay your way in, sit yourself down and then jump yourself up and cheer him on a full 270 feet around the bases…successfully? That’s literally once-in-a-lifetime stuff.
by Greg Prince on 14 March 2008 11:30 am On the afternoon of October 11, 1986, I was watching the third game of the National League Championship Series. It was the bottom of the ninth inning and the Houston Astros were leading the New York Mets 5-4 and about to go up two games to one with Mike Scott scheduled to pitch the next night. Unless something great happened right away, the Mets were on the verge of big trouble.
Wally Backman bunted his way on, cleverly evading a tag. He moved to second on a passed ball. One out later, Lenny Dykstra stepped in against Dave Smith. Man, oh man, I thought, if Lenny can get hold of one here, I’d give him anything.
Every other Mets fan presumably thought the same thing. Lenny Dykstra homered into the right field bullpen. The Mets won 6-5. As his just reward, Lenny has everything.
You know how the rest of 1986 worked out. Do you have any idea how the rest of Lenny Dykstra worked out? I don’t mean in terms of the gym and whatever he did or didn’t inject to make those workouts manifest themselves. I mean where Lenny Dykstra’s life would go more than two decades later.
Let’s just say our wishes came true. Not only did we win that game, that series and the championship of the world on the unlikely bat of Lenny Dykstra, but Lenny Dykstra is winning the game of life.
If you have HBO, check out the current Real Sports the next time of many that it airs. I did after receiving a tip from AlbertsonMets and it was well worth it…though not worth as much as Lenny Dykstra.
Turns out Lenny is the live-action embodiment of Elmer J. Fudd, Millionaire in his “I own a mansion and a yacht” phase. Except Leonard K. Dykstra owns much more than that. He’s got a $400,000 German automobile, a Maybach, best car in the world, according to Lenny. He’s got a $17.5 million house, formerly Wayne Gretzky’s, best house in the world, also according to Lenny. He flies in a private jet and sits where “the big man sits,” a reliable source (Lenny) says.
Lenny Dykstra is swimming in dough. And it seems to make him happy.
Dykstra was a well-compensated athlete with a salary topping out around $6.2 million in the mid-’90s and total pre-tax earnings for his career topping $36 million. But that’s chump change for Lenny now. Lenny has become a mogul, somewhere short of Warren Buffett, perhaps, but well beyond the mere Johan Santanas of baseball.
How? By using his mind. His mind. Admit it. You didn’t think he had much of one underneath all that dirt. But he does. He became a financial titan, a business genius, a captain of industry, an admiral of arbitrage. He became good at it. Seriously good.
I’d heard something about Lenny Dykstra putting out a stock newsletter. I figured it was some gimmick, something where a retired athlete lends his name and somebody makes a profit off it and the retired athlete is cut a check until the checks disappear, like Mickey Mantle selling fried chicken. That’s not this, if you go by the Real Sports story. Lenny Dykstra is the wizard of Wall Street — himself, with nobody’s help, not even that of his first-grade teacher.
Lenny Dykstra, it shouldn’t surprise you, doesn’t care to read. Never did. A strain on his batting eye. “I can read, don’t get me wrong,” he reassures Real Sports‘ Bernard Goldberg, but he chooses not to. But he does watch and he does listen and he no longer has to say, as he did to his broker when he saw his investment nest egg cut to 20% of what he started with, “What the fuck happened to my money?”
You’ll be comforted to know that Lenny is still Lenny. He’s still a factory-irregular block of granite. He wears a fancy if rumpled suit, he has an oversized Blue Tooth hanging off his left ear, he’s a poster boy for entrepreneurial capitalism, but he still looks and sounds like the platoon centerfielder who hit the weight room (just for weights of course) in hopes of impressing Davey Johnson into giving him a full-time job. He’s just older and, if you believe wisdom is attached to the accumulation of riches, wiser. Or as Lenny put it when Goldberg asked him if he should really follow his investment advice:
“Only if you like money.”
By all indications, it’s not an act. Jim Cramer, the CNBC guy whose showmanship is an act, says Lenny is “one of the great ones” when it comes to picking stocks. I don’t know the first thing about any of this, so I’ll have to assume Cramer, Goldberg and Dykstra weren’t all in on an early April Fool’s joke. This really seems to be who Lenny Dykstra is, the man with the Midas touch for investing; the founder of the car wash chain (the one with his name that he recently sold for — what else? — big bucks) that in one breath he calls the Taj Mahal of car washes while freely admitting “I don’t even know what the Taj Mahal is”; and the publisher of a new mega-upscale magazine for athletes who want to invest like Lenny Dykstra and not wind up, as he warns against, with your…let’s say Adirondack in your hand.
There may be something intrinsically amusing about Lenny Dykstra, but he’s no barrel of laughs when it comes to his glue. He tells Goldberg he never liked coming to the plate and watching the umpire and the catcher pal around. “What the hell’s so funny?” he says he’d ask. “What are you guys laughing about? I’m playing for real money.” He still is and doesn’t much care that anybody who grew up with him while he was avoiding reading wouldn’t have thought he had it in him:
“Fuck them. We’ll see who’s laughing when you want a loan, motherfucker.”
Dykstra was named in the Mitchell Report, the longest-ago Met to be tabbed, with his alleged indiscretions dating back to 1989. Lenny denied any steroid use on camera in the HBO profile, though Goldberg claims Nails later told him he had to “lie” about that, but then on the phone said he was only kidding about lying. Our Lenny also has on his permanent record an ugly drunk-driving accident and a history of unsuccessful gambling. At the moment, however, Lenny Dykstra is riding high and rolling sevens. It wouldn’t surprise me if Real Sports does another story in a couple of years about how it all went wrong for Lenny Dykstra after he was on top of the world — or that by 2010 he’s purchased a solar system whose value has increased fivefold in the last 18 months. Either way, watching the baseball footage made me remember what a force from another planet Lenny Dykstra was as a Met and pissed me off all anew that he was traded to the Phillies for Juan Samuel.
We as fans often say, as our ultimate tribute to any player, I’d like to buy that man a drink. Don’t bother with Lenny Dykstra. That motherfucker owns the entire bar.
by Greg Prince on 13 March 2008 10:46 am What's so funny about a ballplayer sitting on the bench with someone else's bubble gum, fully tumescent, affixed to button of his cap? I'm not arguing that it's not funny (because, viscerally, it's hilarious), but why, when we've all seen it a hundred times, does it not fail to delight?
Luis Castillo, who's been sitting and hopefully healing rather than playing, was the victim of the time-tested childhood prank his fellow well-compensated adults pulled on him yesterday. Ramon Castro allegedly did the chewing and the blowing and the sticking…twice. Every Met looked satisfied with the result, except for Castillo, who appeared oblivious. Keith Hernandez and Kevin Burkhardt were certainly delighted. And it's pretty much the only thing I remember from Wednesday's exhibition game — and I watched chunks of it twice.
Perez finally pitched the kind of game that won him big bucks in Ollietration and Angel Pagan smacked his 75th homer of the spring while not being traded for Coco Crisp and J!4 tripled and Fernando Martinez did not dim his prospects. But by this weekend, I won't remember much of their exploits because none of them count. I will, however, remember the bubble that materialized over Luis Castillo's head. Given his state of awareness, one senses it wasn't a thought balloon.
Mets By The Numbers continues its hiatus from matters of significance with Part 2 of its bizarre conception of what constitutes a Met-Lovin' Big Shot
by Greg Prince on 12 March 2008 11:48 am Mets By The Numbers: No longer picky about whom they interview.
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