If the 57 fits, wear it!
 
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans. Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here. Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here. Got something to say? Leave a comment, or email us at faithandfear@gmail.com. (Sorry, but we have no interest in ads, sponsored content or guest posts.) Need our RSS feed? It's here. Visit our Facebook page, or drop by the personal pages for Greg and Jason. Or follow us on Twitter: Here's Greg, and here's Jason. |
This is the fun part. This is the moment when Johan Santana can do no wrong. He will step up to a podium. He will be handed a uniform top and cap that each of us, by some bizarre coincidence, owns some iteration of. He will slip the top over his dress shirt, slap the cap on his noggin and smile the second-widest smile in all of Metdom. The rest of us will be tied for first. This is the moment when we stare in awe at what it says on the back of his uniform top. This is the moment when we will gaze upon SANTANA 57 and attempt to fathom the bizarre color scheme (orange? blue? really?) in which it is suddenly available. This is the moment when I pinch you and you pinch me and neither of us awakes. This is the moment when we ask ourselves, “Opening Day…Johan or Pedro? Pedro or Johan?” This is the moment when we don’t see our shadow, because there are no more weeks of winter, just a few days before spring. This is the moment when we dare glimpse ahead, not behind, to fall. This is the moment when we don’t look back because we no longer feel the discomfiting presence of something that not only gained on us but completely overtook us. This is the moment when collapse recedes and promise beckons. This is the moment when it stops being last year and commences to be now, the age of Pitching for the New York Mets, Number Fifty-Seven, Johan Santana. What a moment. What a God Almighty moment. There will be other moments similar in nature; first moments. There will be the first moment the uniform and cap go on and it’s not ceremonial. That moment is only a week and change away. There will be the first moment that garb gets a workout, then the first moment it is test-driven in exhibition play, then, at last, the real thing: the first moment when SANTANA 57, blue trimmed in orange on a field of gray or black, will be found on a mound in a stadium where the score is kept in ink. On March 31, no later than April 1, Johan Santana of the New York Mets will throw a pitch to Hanley Ramirez of the Florida Marlins. At that moment, there will be bliss. But also at that moment, Johan Santana is on the clock. From there on out, clear to 2014, he has to earn every moment we are dying to share with him. As soon as SANTANA 57 officially enters the ranks of New York (N.L.), as soon as that first pitch is recorded, the moment passes. Then he’s a pitcher who has to retire Hanley Ramirez and Dan Uggla and Jeremy Hermidia and everybody else attired in teal. There’s nobody else we’d rather have attempt this feat, but we do need to see it done. We need to see Marlins go down and, five days hence, watch Braves encounter the same fate. Five days after that, give or take, we require his considerable assistance in flattening the Brewers. Off in the April distance, there will be Nationals and Cubs who must also be overcome — preferably overwhelmed — by our ace pitcher. We will feel great about Johan Santana’s chances before he takes on these opponents, better than we would about anybody else’s chances in the same role, but the truth is he will be functionally no different from every Mets pitcher who has started a Mets game since Roger Craig. We will judge him not as our beau ideal, but as tonight’s or today’s starting pitcher. When he’s on, we will embrace him. When he’s off — and on some night or day, he will be — we will squirm. We will wonder what we are paying for, why we gave up so much, how we wound up committing to someone for so long when we understand clearly that no pitcher should be relied on to age gracefully, healthily and eternally successfully. We will lapse into that oh no mode our particular breed reaches faster than anyone else in either league. We will invoke the names of others for whom we had such high expectations, those who came to us with undeniably glittering credentials, those who invariably (we swear) let us down. We will hear word of progress achieved by one of the youngsters we surrendered to secure our ace pitcher’s services and we will press our default button and mutter on about our endless history of shortsightedness. We will cringe when helpful commentators and columnists remind us who failed when wearing that same model uniform top and cap our ace pitcher is wearing now and we have been wearing all along. We will likely conveniently forget that one off night or day is just one off night or day across the length of a very long-term contract. We will definitely forget that one off night or day is just one off night or day if there happen to be two of them strung together consecutively. And if we are morons, we will boo. Johan Santana will, by March 31, April 1 at the latest, descend into the morass of mortals, nestled between Ken Sanders and Rafael Santana on the roster that runs from Aase to Zimmer. He will be a Met and he will be continually judged, not altogether fairly. He may bow in our midst as the highest-paid pitcher in baseball and the most talented pitcher in baseball and the best pitcher in baseball, but in real time, he will be only a pitcher on the Mets who better locate his fastball if he doesn’t want to put Ramirez or Uggla or Hermidia on base and dig us a hole early. He has to pitch the way we imagine him pitching when he ascends that podium this afternoon. He is surely capable of matching, within reason, the lofty dreams, goals and standards we have been setting for him since we heard he became ours, ours, OURS! He’s just not capable of doing so on every single pitch he will ever throw for us. We will not always remember that, no matter how hard he tries, no matter how hard we try. In a sense that has little to do with pitching and everything to do with perception, it is all inevitably downhill from here…even if this singular southpaw figures to carry with him the gentlest such incline possible. That’s why today is the fun part, the moment when Johan Santana can do no wrong. This is when SANTANA 57 fits absolutely perfectly on the back of a New York Mets uniform, when a New York Mets cap fits absolutely perfectly on the head of Johan Santana, when that smile we’re smiling fits all of us absolutely perfectly.
Eighteen weeks ago yesterday I learned definitvely the dangers of counting chickens and magic numbers before their proper and complete hatching. Yesterday I learned the flip side: never assume something can’t happen just because it doesn’t seem remotely probable that it will. What a difference eighteen Sundays make. For the Baseball Mets-Football Giants fans among us — particularly if you list yourself in that order — the breathtaking unlikelihood of January and February triumph does not necessarily compensate for the C-word that defined September and ruined 89% of the succeeding offseason. The direct connection between one too many losses then and four increasingly incredible wins now is nil. Yet, gosh — it’s nice to be reminded that the lessons of You Gotta Believe weren’t lost on somebody we liked. This has not been a gauzy Super Bowl run for me. It was nothing like the slightly garish but overdue romp from the winter of ’87. Despite comparisons and a couple of functional similarities, it didn’t feel of a piece with January 27, 1991, the non-baseball sports date that will always tower above all others in my life. The Giants meant way more to me back in the day. XXI was what I’d waited for all my sentient autumns. XXV was uniquely intense, emotional, jubilant and profitable. XLII was nice. It’s getting nicer the more I think about it. But nice is the honest sum total I come away with once I take my thumb off the scale. Yes, the Giants are my football team longer than any other football team. Yes, I stuck with them through the sour ’70s and reveled in the golden age of Parcells and absorbed the sting of cruel Whack-A-Mole losses to the Vikings in ’97 and the 49ers in 2002 and a cringeworthy Super blowout to the Ravens in between. No, I never took up with Dallas or some “national” team, heaven forbid. Since the mid-’90s, however, the Giants have not really been a going concern of mine. I’ve cared about them when I’ve cared about them and cared less when I didn’t, if that makes any sense. When they did not put forth their best foot attitudinally, or presented personalities I found disagreeable, I chose to tune them out. It’s the Mets I love without question or qualification. Everybody else has to earn it as I grow older and maybe more mature. As much as I could never leave the Giants, there have been times when I couldn’t take them. I’ve pruned all my sporting priorities that way. When I was a kid, a teen and a younger adult, I could soak myself in football and basketball and hockey when their pools filled up with fortune for my teams in those endeavors. For the last dozen or so years, I don’t feel it like that. For the last dozen or so years, it’s been Mets against the world in my mind. Everybody and everything else just kind of gets in the way. Somehow, though, every time I looked up since the end of December, there were the Giants. Perhaps as a defense mechanism, I found reasons not to be worried about their fate. The day they beat the Bucs, I was coming down with a cold. The day they beat the Cowboys, Stephanie was sick. For two consecutive Giants playoff wins, I had my mind more on Coricidin than football. Then I had a specific selfish reason (no, not a bet; I gave up gambling after losing a 2008 Carvel helmet on the USF-Rutgers fiasco in October) to be unsorry in case the Packers beat the Giants for the NFC title. When that moment of ambivalence dissolved into Tynes’ winning kick, it was like a time-release capsule of joy. Not euphoria, but a jolt of joy. The Giants were going to the Super Bowl; why shouldn’t that be joyous? The Patriots have never done anything for me, yet a little bit of me disdained the idea — the idea — that such a phenomenal season would go to waste. The Patriots have never done anything for me, yet I thought it would be sort of fun to see one team go 19-0 in my lifetime. I generally go for the underdog, but once in a while, I’ll suddenly decide, respect must be paid particular overcats. It’s the reason I was practically the only guy in my dorm 25 March Madnesses ago disappointed that N.C. State shocked Phi Slamma Jamma…and I wasn’t any kind of college basketball fan. It’s the reason I was slightly excited when the very sated Chicago Bulls won surplus championships…and I never liked them at all. Again, I reason in the aftermath of a Giants win that could have been a Giants loss, I was employing a defense mechanism worthy of Steve Spagnuolo. If I convinced myself that I was in a no-lose situation if the Giants did lose — I just witnessed 19-for-19, what a treat — then how sorry could I be when they lost? Happily, I’ll never know. As I give it one more burst of pre-parade, pre-Santana press conference thought, how could anybody sitting on a couch in a grungy Giants sweatshirt watching Eli Manning breaking free and David Tyree soaring in defiant regard to gravity (Endy: The Sequel, a friend suggests) and Steve Smith showing up everywhere and Plaxico Burress cradling what needed to be cradled and Michael Strahan harassing who had to be harassed and Tom Coughlin succeeding after many of us insisted he never could survive in his job (crow equals delicious!)…how could you look at those Giant hearts practically leaping from those Giant chests and pretend you didn’t care? How could you see these guys in those uniforms, realize that because sports works the way it does that they may never get so close again, and not treat this as the milestone it is? How could I deny myself the ancestral thrill of at least brushing a hand against this third Giants Super Bowl trophy as it figuratively passed among the True Blue deserving diehards? As this Giants championship seemed more plausible, then possible, then probable and, finally, definite, I thought of other Giants fans. I thought of a clutch of our readers who have been far more active Giants fans than I of late. I was particularly happy for them, for their families, for those who passed the Giant gene on to them. Less happy for myself than satisfied that the now extraordinarily grungy sweatshirt can also be certified as pretty darn lucky. When Burress caught the go-ahead pass, I jumped up and hollered by Giant fan instinct, pausing not an instant to analyze why I was so happy. After the events of last September, I might do well to indulge more in yelling and less in thinking. The Mets completed a trade for the best pitcher in the world 52 hours ago. Eli Manning just led the heretofore mediocre Giants past the heretofore undefeated Patriots for the championship of professional tackle football. And, for all I know, cats are doing math. Sheesh…these days everything is possible.
Given the opportunity, you had to know these Giants wouldn’t Skip the opportunity to win Super Bowl XLII. Thanks, CharlieH, for sharing the cake. You’ll hear the word perfect tossed around quite a bit today. Nineteen football wins in nineteen football games, should the nineteenth of them come to pass, is admittedly awesome. Nevertheless, our idea of absolute perfection for a Super Bowl Sunday is transcribing the call of Hall of Fame broadcaster Lindsey Nelson for one half of one inning, specifically the top of the eighth from July 9, 1969. Tom Seaver on the mound for the New York Mets. Through seven innings he has retired twenty-one consecutive batters, and Ron Santo, who leads the National League in runs batted in with seventy-four, is up to lead off. He has struck out and flied to center. Rod Gaspar has come in in right field now in place of Ron Swoboda for the New York Mets. Rod Gaspar, that’s a defensive move by manager Gil Hodges. Wayne Garrett comes in at second base now and Bobby Pfeil moves over to third as Charles comes out of the ballgame. Here’s the pitch to Ron Santo. Swung on — hit in the air to deep centerfield, Agee going back, he has a bead on it, he’s there, and he makes the catch. Listen to the crowd, riding on every pitch of the ballgame now, riding on every play as Tom Seaver has retired twenty-two consecutive batters at the start of the ballgame. Wayne Garrett is playing second base. Bobby Pfeil is playing third. In the history of the Mets, the longest that any Met pitcher has ever gone without allowing a hit, seven-and-one-third innings, by Al Jackson, in Pittsburgh against the Pirates. Seaver has gone seven-and-one-third here. The pitch to Ernie Banks is high for a ball. The crowd is humming. Here is the one-oh pitch now to Ernie Banks. Swung on and missed, it’s one-and-one. Seaver has struck out nine and he’s walked none in this game tonight. This will be a one-one delivery, it’s on the way — curveball, swung on and missed, GOOD curveball. One-and-two now to Ernie Banks, as Seaver faces the heart of the batting order of the Chicago Cubs. Santo opening up with a LONG fly to center, Banks is at the plate and Al Spangler’s on deck. Here’s a one-two pitch — swung on and fouled back, he’s still alive at one-and-two. In the first inning, Kessinger struck out, Beckert lined out, Williams struck out. In the second inning, Santo struck out, Banks struck out, Spangler struck out. In the third, Hundley flied out, Qualls flied out, Holtzman struck out. In the fourth, Kessinger struck out, Beckert grounded out, Williams grounded out. In the fifth, Santo flied out, Banks grounded out and Spangler struck out. There’s a swing and a foul ball back and out of play. In the sixth, Hundley grounded out, Qualls grounded out and Abernathy struck out. In the seventh, Kessinger lined out, Beckert flied out, Williams grounded out. Here in the eighth, Santo has flied to center. The count is one-and-two to Ernie Banks and Seaver’s pitch is on the way — curveball misses WAY outside, caught in the webbing of the glove by catcher Jerry Grote, who leaned WAY out. Count goes to two balls and two strikes now. Here is a two-two delivery to Ernie Banks. Swung on, fouled back, it’s out of play, the count HOLDS at two-two, as 38-year-old Ernie Banks continues to foul that ball off. The Mets lead by a score of four to nothing. Here’s the two-two pitch — swung on and missed, he struck him out! Listen to the CROWD! Strikeout number TEN for Tom Seaver. He has retired twenty-three consecutive batters from the start of the ballgame. Left-hand batter Al Spangler’s coming up. He’s been up twice and he struck out swinging both times. The Cubs are batting in the top half of the eighth inning here at Shea Stadium. There’s a swing and a miss at strike one! Seaver again takes the sign from Jerry Grote, two men out and nobody on base. He’s into the motion again and here’s the strike one delivery. It’s in there for a called strike two! Oh-and-two the count now, to Al Spangler. Seaver again takes the sign. Here is the two-strike delivery — it’s high and away for a ball, one-and-two. Nancy Seaver, Tom’s wife, seated in one of the lower field boxes, on the EDGE of her seat, RIDING with every pitch of this ballgame. Here’s a pitch now — swung on and missed, he struck him out! The side is retired. Seaver has gone through EIGHT innings; he has retired TWENTY-FOUR consecutive batters; he has not allowed a HIT or a BASERUNNER; he’s getting a STANDING OVATION; he’s gone LONGER…without allowing a hit than any MET pitcher in the history of the New York Mets. That was his ELEVENTH strikeout. No runs, no hits, no errors and none left. In the middle of the eighth inning, the score IS the Mets FOUR and the Cubs nothing. Cap tip to Joe Dubin for passing along this greatest of baseball broadcasts. And, though we choose to salute baseball on this particular Sunday as we would any partcular Sunday, we are not completely tone deaf to other pursuits of local sporting interest. Go You Giants!  4 comments - (Comments closed) | |  Print This Post |  1969 Mets, Cubs, Lindsey Nelson, Radio, Salute to Baseball, Tom Seaver
It took four months and three slightly agonizing days, but the Met Fairy has finally delivered the offseason goods in the form of a done deal that makes Johan Santana a pitcher for the New York Mets. Way to go, you crazy, blessed seraph! (Thanks, too, for Ross Chapman’s inspired character and mom Sharon’s impressive illustration. Thanks to Omar as well. Plenty of gratitude to go around tonight.) WFAN is reporting Johan Santana is actually a Met. Six years, $22 mil per, $150 mil when everything (including '08) is added up. He still needs to pass a physical*, but with that kind of scratch, scratch, scratch on the table, you can be damn sure he'll be healthy as a horse and awesome as an ox. Metsopotamia exhales. *Saturday: He passed — and we feel great! It's beginning to feel like 1776 in here… It's a megadeal, I say They will cheer every clause Every number I wish I felt that way That we won't still have Phil Humber But then again The Mets are Mets And wrought with implication If they blow This trade of trades They'll need another nation An agent, a GM and an ace With lightning for an arm It's a simple fact To think that now we act As midwives to a pact We're waiting for the scratch, scratch, scratch To be paid Johan Santana Waiting for this trade to hatch On this soggy Friday afternoon a Fortnight before spring training God knows the contract is high enough To choke a giraffe But will it draft Johan? We're waiting for the swap, swap, swap To soon be deemed official Waiting until five o'clock For the Wilpons to start doling out that Citi Field naming money God knows the pile is high enough To solve the debt But will it yield a Met? Johan's gonna make big bucks So he oughta make 'em at Shea Brother, it would suck, suck, suck If twenty million stood between us And penciling in Santana I'm gonna click on MetsBlog again And hope that Omar has grabbed a pen To make sure Johan Belongs to us! |
Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers. 
Amazin' Again: How the 2015 New York Mets Brought the Magic Back to Queens by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers. 
Volume I of The Happiest Recap: 50+ Years of the New York Mets As Told in 500+ Amazin' Wins by Greg Prince is available in print and for Kindle on Amazon. 
Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History by Greg Prince (foreword by Jason Fry), is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers. |
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