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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 29 January 2008 9:54 pm The Mets and Twins have agreed on a trade for Johan Santana. This is not a drill. The Mets and Twins have agreed on a trade for Johan Santana. Repeat, this is not a drill.
According to USA Today (link provided immediately by brkpsu), the deal is three promising pitching prospects — Kevin Mulvey, Phil Humber, Deolis Guerra — and one talented outfielder, Carlos Gomez, for the two-time Cy Young winner, the dominant lefty in the American League, the ace in his prime the Mets haven't had since the world and Doc Gooden were young.
The trade's been agreed to, but it's not final. The Mets have to negotiate a deal with Santana, which will encompass loads of money and a ton of years and there has to be one of those pesky physicals. We'll probably know by the end of the week whether this is a cruel Never Met hoax (bar the windows and lock the medicine cabinets if so) or St. Lucie just became a much sunnier springtime destination. Until then, we'll hold the euphoria, the inevitable Frank Viola comparisons and our breath.
This is not a drill.
by Greg Prince on 29 January 2008 3:07 pm These two, they’re stuck together whether they want to be or not. Make no mistake: they do not. They were sworn enemies in the last life yet nowadays share psychic space that has become all too real to them. In one sense, they are no longer with us. In another, more significant sense, they have never left.
Their names? Let’s call one of them Eb and the other Po. Unusual names (short for something else in both cases) but they were and are singular sorts. That the fates have thrown them together for eternity presents us with a more delightful twist than they will ever appreciate.
Eb and Po don’t have much to do these days. They just kind of exist in their shared space, reliving their glory days, embellishing their well-worn tales and unleashing more than one lifetime’s worth of venom on the other. Though they have all the time in the world, they are oblivious to clocks and calendars. It takes something momentous to snap them out of their tedious bickering and focus their attention on what we might call the fierce urgency of now. Maybe today will be the day they have reason to get their heads out of their clouds.
If it helps you to understand them better, envision them as the quintessential grumpy old men, roommates even, characters from the pen of Neil Simon — somewhere beyond The Odd Couple, more like eternal Sunshine Boys, despite their currently craggy dispositions.
Picture a spacious prewar apartment, rent-controlled. Maybe somewhere between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Maybe somewhere else altogether.
“So,” Eb says to Po, “any plans to cheat today?”
“Oh, not this again,” an exasperated Po answers. “When are you going to give that up?”
“Give up? Give up what? You’re the one who should give it up. Give up the pennant already! You stole it!”
“I stole nothing and I will not have my good name sullied through your ample supply of mud just because you never learned to lose gracefully…not that you didn’t have plenty of opportunity to learn.”
“What? What was that crack supposed to mean?”
“Oh, nothing. Say, Eb, your third base is looking a little worn today. I guess that’s what happens when you have three men standing on it at the same time.”
“Once! It happened once!”
“Like your one world championship?”
“Listen big shot, if I were you, I wouldn’t start trading credentials.”
“Why not? I’ve got plenty of them. I had the world champions in 1904…”
“1904…you wouldn’t even play the other league.”
“…1905, 1908…”
“1908? You didn’t win nothin’ in 1908!”
“We were robbed. And note my proper use of English in expressing that thought.”
“You wuzn’t robbed of nothin’! Next time tell your players to touch the base in front of them.”
“…1921…”
“Boy, you sure do like your ancient history.”
“…1922…”
“Oh, and then what? You let those lousy interlopers win in ’23.”
“Not until we had the good sense to evict them.”
“Yeah, and they took that real hard. How many times they beat your brains in after that?”
“…1933 and 1954. World championships all.”
“Geez, Po, it gets a little lonely there at the end, don’t it? Some pretty long gaps between titles. But when you don’t know how to measure nothin’…”
“What are you implying?”
“Uh, gee, I dunno. 257 feet to left, 483 feet to center. Your ma drop you on your head when you were a baby or somethin’?”
“The word is idiosyncratic. If you ever spent a day in your life outside of that charming neighborhood of yours…Pigtown, you might understand what an idiosyncrasy is.”
“Use all the big words ya want, big fella, it don’t mean ya make any sense. And as for charm, I got it by the boatload. Who else had the genius to put up an ad that said ‘Hit Sign, Win Suit’?”
“How very, very droll. Please, be sure to mention that again tomorrow, just as you have every single day for as long we’ve been here.”
“Ah, you’re just jealous.”
“Jealous? Don’t make me guffaw.”
“We had fun in my day. We had the Sym-phony!”
“The cacophony, you mean.”
“You can’t pronounce nothin’ right. We had Hilda Chester and her cowbell, too!”
“What a boon to culture. What a shame we had to settle for actual talent among our fans.”
“Like who?”
“Such as Tallulah Bankhead.”
“Tallulah, tashmullah. Now if it’s Dan Bankhead ya want…”
“Pass. The glitterati came to see me. The show people adored me.”
“Too bad no people actually showed to see ya.”
“Pardon?”
“I don’t think I will. All your highfalutin, hoity-toity fans — where’d they go? Where’d any of your fans go? The only time you sold out after a while wuz when my boys had to schlep all the way up to your godforsaken neck of the woods.”
“You mean New York City? The capital of the world?”
“Don’t be givin’ me that bunk. I’m from America’s Fourth Largest City!”
“I think that claim lost its essential veracity around 1898.”
“I don’t know what kind of city that is, but we had it all. We wuz the borough of churches, too.”
“And I was America’s first sporting cathedral.”
“Always with the past tense. They’re still calling me The Greatest Ballpark Ever. Ever.”
“No accounting for taste. Besides, I’m known as The Echoing Green. How poetic.”
“Ya mean pathetic. Echoing with the sign-stealing.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you when you’re not making any sense.”
“Cheater!”
“Low-life!”
“Big joik!”
“Insecure runt!”
“Ya lost to the Yankees!”
“You did nothing but lose to the Yankees!”
“We had Zack Wheat!”
“We had Christy Mathewson!”
“We had Pete Reiser!”
“We had Mel Ott!”
“Robinson!”
“Mays!”
“Durocher!”
“Durocher — when he won!”
“We won last!”
“You won once!”
“You had 20,000 empty seats for the biggest game ever played!”
“WHICH WE WON!”
“BECAUSE YOU CHEATED!”
“BECAUSE YOU BROUGHT IN ERSKINE INSTEAD OF BRANCA!”
“OISK BOUNCED THE COIVE IN THE PEN!”
“BRANCA GAVE UP A HOMER TO THOMSON IN THE FIRST GAME! WHAT KIND OF IDIOT BRINGS THE SAME PITCHER IN TO FACE THE SAME BATTER HE COULDN’T GET OUT TWO GAMES BEFORE? WITH THE PENNANT ON THE LINE! WHICH WE WON!”
“DRESSEN!”
“EXACTLY!”
Eb and Po paused to regain their bearings and then resumed their dialogue.
“CHEATER!”
“LOW-LIFE!”
It pretty much went on like this all the time, Eb and Po in their ebb and flow, selectively reminding one another of failures and slights and shortcomings. Nothing ever got solved. They would stew and then they would growl and then they would rest before starting all over again. This went on for as long as either of them could remember. Today, however, their carefully hewn routine was interrupted by the sound of shuffling papers.”
“What’s that sound?” Po asked Eb.
“Somethin’ under the door, I think. I’ll go take a look. It’ll give me somethin’ to do to get away from you for a few seconds.”
“Do be sure not to stop on third if there are already two other men there.”
“You’re a riot, Po. A regular riot.”
Eb headed to the door and found a piece of stray mail had been slipped under by a considerate neighbor.
“That putz Shibe musta got our mail again,” Eb reported.
“Anything good?”
“Ya mean like another book about how everybody loves me and nobody remembers you?”
“Sorry, I wasn’t listening to a word you babbled. I was just re-reading Underworld. Oh look, I’m an entire novella!”
“Probably some junk mail. The postmark says Flushing.”
“Flushing? Never heard of it.”
“You dope. That’s in Queens. You know, where they were going to move…”
“Oh, right. Guess I’d put all that out of my mind.”
“You’re tellin’ me. What wuz that bit O’Malley came up with? ‘If they move to Queens, they won’t be the Brooklyn Dodgers.’ Guess he had the last laugh.”
“At least they offered your team a new spot relatively nearby. Mine was headed to Minneapolis in all likelihood.”
It didn’t happen often, but once in a while Eb and Po would curb their snapping and reflect on the actions that brought them to this current state of theirs. They didn’t like to think about it, didn’t like to contemplate the concept of progress that made them, like their neighbors Shibe and Forbes and Crosley, obsolete. None of them wanted to be where they wound up, holding forth only in the mind’s eye. They wanted to be back where they used to be, back where people remembered them, doing what made them famous. It was tough to talk about, especially for Eb and Po, the best of enemies, so they masked their pain by going at it, hammer and tong, day and night, over and over.
“So,” Po asked, “what is it anyway, the mail from Flushing?”
“Looks like a brochure. Tickets.”
“Tickets? Baseball tickets?”
“Are there any other kind? You were dropped on your head!”
“Lemme see that, you knothole.”
Po grabbed the brochure and stared at its cover. He was dumbfounded.
“Eb! Did you see this?”
“Not before you grabbed it out of my hands I didn’t.”
“Go ahead! Read it!”
“‘Shea Stadium…’ Shea…that’s the new kid, ain’t it?”
“Was the new kid.”
“‘Shea Stadium, 1964-2008…’ Hey, what year is this?”
“Who notices up here?”
“‘Shea Stadium, 1964-2008, Final Season.'”
Eb was speechless. So was Po. It took them what felt like an eternity to compose themselves and look at the brochure again.
“What’s this all about?” Eb asked.
“I guess the kid is done for,” Po reasoned.
“Aw come on! No frigging way! They just put that up like…how long ago?”
“Here, lemme see that postmark. I’ll be damned. It’s 2008 right now.”
“And when did Shea go up?”
“You saw, 1964.”
“So that’s…”
“Forty-five seasons, counting this one.”
“Geez! I thought it had only been a coupla years. Shea’s the same age I wuz, for crissake.”
“Almost the same age I was, too. Well, except for those last couple of years.”
“That’s right. You had them for a while, didn’tcha?
“When they were born!”
“What were their names again?”
“Amazin’ something…Amazin’…Amazin’…Amazin’ Mets, that’s it. It’s in the brochure. Funny, I’d kind of forgotten that.”
“They wuzn’t much good, wuz they?”
“For once, Eb, you’re dealing in understatement. Those Amazin’ Mets were terrible. Dreadful. The worst.”
“The woist?”
“Like I said, the worst. But they were fun to have around. A ball, actually.”
“Musta been nice. There wuz already a housing project where I’d been by then.”
“Yeah, I suppose so. That was ’62, ’63. Just before my housing project.”
A little more silence passed between the two old enemies who’d kind of forgotten they hated each other.
“So what gives already? What’s goin’ on with the Amazin’ Mets? They beatin’ it outta town, too?”
“I don’t think so, Eb. If I’m reading this thing correctly — and I’m from Manhattan, so I probably am…”
“Condescending joik.”
“Anyway, it seems the Amazin’ Mets will still be in New York next year.”
“They will? Moses give them that plot of land O’Malley wanted?”
“It doesn’t say, but it appears they’ll be staying in Queens.”
“That’s a relief. I’d hate to see the National League fans go through what our fans went through. That must be, what, fifty years ago by now?”
“Exactly, Eb. Exactly fifty years ago. Yes, that was rough. That was way worse than losing any ballgame.”
“You said it, brother. But what I don’t get is what wuz wrong with Shea. Wuzn’t it supposed to be all new and shiny and everything they said we’d never be?”
“That was a long time ago, my friend. A long time ago. They said the same things about us a century ago, give or take. We were the latest in ballpark technology and so on and so forth. And what did we last?”
“Not fifty years.”
“Not fifty years.”
Eb took the brochure from Po and noticed something that struck him strange.
“This thing they sent in the mail, Po.”
“What about it?”
“Well, most of it’s boring. I don’t even know what ‘state of the art’ means, but in the pictures, it looks like they’ve got tons of people in the stands at Shea.”
“You’re right, Eb. Says something about record attendance in 2007, which would be last year. ‘Get your tickets early’ and all that.”
“But if they’re breakin’ attendance records, what gives? What’s wrong with Shea? Why they gonna pull him down?”
“Like I said. progress. Whoever owns the Amazin’ Mets must want to make more money.”
“Just like O’Malley and Stoneham.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. It’s not like they’re leaving for California. It says here the Amazin’ Mets are gonna have a new park in 2009 right next door. That doesn’t sound so bad, all things considered.”
“No, I guess not. Beats the team leaving.”
“On that we can agree.”
“Plus it’ll be nice to have some company, don’tcha think? Shea’ll probably be comin’ here, right?”
“Why, I guess he would be. Gives us something to look forward to, Eb. Maybe we can stop arguing all the time.”
“That’ll be the day.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
Nevertheless, the roomies sat for a moment, feeling not nearly as hostile as they were used to. Maybe the impending visit of their spiritual offspring from Flushing at the end of 2008 would be good for both of them. Maybe they could, after nearly one hundred years of antagonism, finally get along.
Eb thought of a question for Po:
“Say, anything in that brochure about what the Amazin’ Mets are building to take Shea’s place? Gosh, Po, you had them when they were infants, maybe it’s gonna look like you. Even I’d have to admit that would make a little bit of sense.”
Po turned the pages and found a drawing of the ballpark that was going to take Shea Stadium’s place. Quite suddenly, his face echoed a very dark green. He hadn’t smoked in decades, but out of instinct, he quickly lit a match under the brochure.
“Oh gosh, Eb,” Po said. “I was just lighting up a Chesterfield and I burned the damn thing to a crisp. Sorry ’bout that. Don’t worry, though. I’m sure the new ballpark doesn’t look like anything special. Probably one of those crazy domes. They’re all the rage, I hear.”
“Yeah. They’ll never build a real ballpark like one of us again, Po.”
“Not really, Eb. Not really.”
by Greg Prince on 25 January 2008 8:10 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.
8/12/93 Th Atlanta 2-4 Gooden 11 35-42 L 8-4
It would be easy to say the sole purpose of football is to fill a few hours a week between baseball seasons. In theory, I believe that. When it comes to sports, just as it comes to life, there’s baseball and there’s everything else.
But let me give football a little credit as a practical matter. There are aspects of it I truly enjoy.
1) I honestly don’t have to know that much about it to watch it. What does a tackle do as opposed to a guard? I’ve never bothered to find out, but I’ve picked up enough Pidgin Football English to convince myself I’m as conversant in the game as Andy Robustelli. Quarterbacks shouldn’t throw into coverage. Smart coaches make adjustments at halftime. An explosive first step is very helpful. The rest is common sense: Don’t run a draw play on third-and-eighteen (a Joe Walton specialty); don’t score the go-ahead points with too much time left on the clock (because 48 seconds and two timeouts is an eternity); don’t grab a facemask or anything you wouldn’t want grabbed yourself.
2) I don’t have to follow a particular team to think I know something about them. Who’s on the Vikings these days? Damned if I know, but they used to be the Purple People Eaters. They had Gary Cuozzo and Norm Snead before they got Tarkenton back. It sure was cold at their games then. Dallas was the Doomsday Defense and Tom Landry and irritated everybody with that America’s Team crap. Pittsburgh had a Steel Curtain and a Three Rivers Stadium full of Terrible Towels. The Falcons and Lions almost always sucked. Still do, if I’m not mistaken.
3) NFL Films is awesome. When I was up nursing a horrible cold a few weeks ago, I kept searching ESPN for Super Bowl highlights, anything from NFL Films, just one lousy Joe Montana pass spiraling through the air, landing softly in Jerry Rice’s sure hands. I could watch their productions in the middle of an anthrax attack and forget anything was wrong. NFL Films could make a box of Kleenex riveting.
4) Though we have never institutionalized it, Chuck and I have a Sunday ritual in which he calls from Florida to discuss the score: the Bucs game…the Giants game…the Jets game…whatever game. Neither one of us gambles or is in a fantasy league, it’s just what we do. We spend about three seconds on the score and a half-hour reliving something John Madden said about Sean Landeta more than twenty years ago. Two Sundays back, when I was trying to sleep off the aforementioned cold, I was dozing when he called. I glanced at the clock and knew the Colts-Chargers game was underway. First and only question out of my mouth before rasping that I’d have to call him back later was “what’s the score?” He said that moment of putting football above all else did more than any other in recent memory to convince him that I am a Real Man.
Yes, football has its charms and has its purposes. It’s also got one thing that baseball simply doesn’t.
It’s got my father’s interest. It provides us with common ground, a shared language, something to mull like it matters. If Chuck and I indulge in a few laughs over football every Sunday, it is the course of the week where this sport definitively proves its worth to me. Somewhere between Monday and Friday, I will speak with my Dad. And we will have something to talk about.
Football. You bet.
He’s not a huge fan. He won’t watch the CFL at three in the morning or anything like that, but he does get into it. With his radio tuned faithfully to WNEW-AM every Sunday afternoon when there was an NFL blackout in effect, he’s the reason I chose the Giants over the Jets when I was a kid. And his later enchantment by everything green and ultimately futile is the reason I’ve followed the Jets at least as closely as the Giants (to the limited extent that I follow either), especially in the last ten or so years. He shifted, so I shifted. I’ve never asked why he shifted. I don’t ask him very much, actually. I just accept.
I have three favorite end-to-end football games from the past quarter-century: Miami’s upset of Nebraska in the 1984 Orange Bowl, the Jets’ insane 51-45 shootout win over the Dolphins in 1986 and, topping the list, Super Bowl XXV, January 27, 1991. It is no coincidence that I watched each of those games with my dad. I would have liked them fine by myself, but I loved that we cheered for victory in unison.
There was nothing festive about how we watched Super Bowl XXV. It was seven months after my mother died and he was getting ready to put the house up for sale. Plus he was taking his doctor’s direction to lose weight seriously. So when Stephanie and I came over to watch the Giants and Bills, all we ate were these terrible, Styrofoam chips from a cellophane bag. Didn’t make any difference. Our Super Bowl party consisted of sitting around the kitchen table glued to the suspenseful conclusion to the Giants’ unlikely march to this, their second championship. Now that’s what I call a Super Bowl party. There was the promise of a trophy for our ancestral team, sure, but there was also the not insignificant matter of some Super Bowl boxes I had bought into — I had Giants 0 and Bills 9 and it was 20-19 with seconds remaining. If Scott Norwood made a long kick, it would have been 22-20…and Stephanie had Giants 0 and Bills 2. In that sense (unless it was bizarrely blocked and run back), it was a no-lose proposition. But who wanted to win that way? The Giants who weren’t lining up against the field goal attempt were on the sidelines holding hands in prayer. We may as well have been doing the same.
My father doesn’t raise his voice often and almost never jumps up and down. My wife (then fiancée) is literally incapable of yelling and gives new meaning to the word reserved. But there they were, like me, on their feet, gasping and shouting and doing everything a crazy sports fan does. When the Giants held on, the three of us exploded like a first step. There were hugs and high-pitched screams and tremors that shook the chandelier over that kitchen table. We won the Super Bowl! We won the pool! I was thrilled. Stephanie was thrilled. Dad was thrilled. We all showed it. It was such a moment.
Then I had to go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like “wow, I guess this is the last Super Bowl we’ll ever watch in this house.” You would have thought Norwood had kicked his 47-yarder straight through the uprights. I had been moved to reflection and retrospection. My father wanted no part of it. He never has and I’ve never asked why. When I went to the trouble of implying that 29 years of family history in our house were about to come to an end, that we would never again have a moment like the one we just reveled in when Norwood had to kick from too far and our Giants emerged champions, he didn’t say “shut up” or anything like that. He just gave me this “yeah, all right, drive safe, talk to ya later” look.
OK, so we don’t go deep. We’ve never completed any kind of substantive father-son conversation. But we get along, y’know? We’re cordial. We chat amiably. I like him every bit as much as I love him. But he tells his problems to my sister, my sister tells them to me and I kind of, sort of ask him what’s going on and maybe he’ll clue me in, but mostly he’ll steer the subject back to something less onerous, like didja hear what Parcells said this week? I used to be put off by this triangulation. I used to clear my throat and try to elicit information directly from him. He doesn’t go for that. He doesn’t want to tell me directly what he doesn’t want to tell me. He doesn’t want to be reminded of what he doesn’t want to be reminded. It’s the last Super Bowl we’ll ever watch in this house? Why would I go and mention that?
So I won’t. I won’t do metacommentary with my dad. I’ll just enjoy what I can. I know I listed my favorite football games before, but you know what my absolute favorite football memory is? It’s a Saturday from 1985, the year I returned home after college. My mother goes out to do some shopping or whatever and it’s just me and Dad. The Giants are going to play the Steelers with a playoff spot on the line: win and get in. We’re going to watch the game, no big deal there. But his eyes light up, as if we’re putting one over on the watch-your-weight police and asks, “wanna get a pizza?” At first I thought he was joking, like we were in a beer commercial or something. We never did stuff like that, just me and him ordering a pizza and watching a football game. But he meant it. Let’s call the Capri and get a pie delivered.
Um, sure!
And we did. It was no big deal. it was just a pie. It probably had sausage and mushroom on it. The Giants won, clinched their playoff berth. It wasn’t a jump-up-and-down episode or anything. It was just…us doing something together. Watching football. Eating pizza. Nice. I wanted it to keep going. The next game that Saturday was the Redskins and the Cardinals. I was like, “hey let’s watch this one now.” But he lost interest and so did I and the pizza was mostly eaten and my mother came home and life went on.
Football did its job, however. It still does its job. It still gives us a few minutes of conviviality instead of awkward silences. It gives me the chance to say “did you see where USF is nationally ranked?” or “what was Mangini thinking in the fourth quarter?” It does, I hate to tell you, what baseball never has between us.
My dad doesn’t much care for baseball. It’s just not his game. I’ve never really pursued an answer as to why not. He mentioned a few times when I was growing up that his father and uncle dragged him to Yankee Stadium on a steamy Memorial Day, 1945, for a doubleheader against the Tigers (they split) where he drank warm sarsaparilla and he was jammed in among 70,000 and it used up all his patience where baseball was concerned. He was 16 then. The next time he showed any discernible interest in our National Pastime was the mid-1980s, when he and my mother climbed earnestly and enthusiastically aboard the Mets’ bandwagon. It still blows my mind to recall how into it they both were for about five years, how these two parents of mine who had always treated my baseball mania primarily with benign neglect were suddenly superfans. There would be nights when I was doing something else and my dad would call up the stairs: “Hey! Did you see what Mookie just did?”
Mind-blowing, I tell you.
Once Mom died, Dad suddenly recalled he didn’t like baseball. It was warm sarsaparilla all over again. There went one topic of conversation forever. But I wouldn’t let it go without a fight. You know those 15 pairs of tickets I was given for my 30th birthday? For the 1993 season that turned out so well? I had one goal for one-fifteenth of them. I was determined to go to a Mets game with my father because isn’t that what sons and fathers do? We had never done it, just the two of us. I invited him and, perhaps sensing it meant something to me, perhaps because he didn’t have a good excuse not to, he accepted.
It wasn’t that many years removed from those bulletins up the stairs, of my father being all over Mookie and HoJo and Doc and being on the same nickname basis with the Mets that I was and that New York was. Surely, I thought, we could summon up the remnants of that fervor for one more night.
Surely, I was insane.
The evening got off all right. Dad drove to my office in Great Neck and we had dinner at a coffee shop pretty close to the train station (he had his car radio antenna removed in the Shea parking lot on a rare family outing in ’75, so we agreed the LIRR was the way to go). I remember two things about our meal: We managed a steady stream of some of that amiable chat on which our relationship is built so I was relieved it wasn’t one long awkward silence; and dinner was over fast, leading me to think “oh god, what now?” There was plenty of time before our train and I had no idea how we were going to fill it.
I know, I said — why don’t we take a walk? Dad was really into walking and I could always use a little exercise. We could amble down Great Neck Road, turn right and then amble back up via Middle Neck Road for our train. Only problem was I kind of underestimated how long all this ambling would take. From worrying about killing time before the train, I was now worried that I would be killing my father because we were suddenly racing for the train. From leisurely stroll to dead-on dash, me in no great shape, him, you know, 64. We survived the sprint and made the train. I found it partially amusing, partially embarrassing (never wander away from your mode of transportation is a valuable lesson I learned that night). He was all right, but I don’t think he was too pleased with my sense of logistics.
We had some nice first base field level tickets. All my tickets that year were pretty good given that my brother-in-law picked them out in December. It was a Thursday night against the Braves who were beginning to make their move on San Francisco. As luck would have it, Dwight Gooden was pitching for the Mets. Almost everybody else from the glory days was gone, but Doc I knew he knew. I figured this would give us a point of entry through which to talk a little baseball and enjoy ourselves.
No, it didn’t work that way. I could point out Gooden all I wanted, but Dad wasn’t biting. I could even note the presence of Deion Sanders, a football guy, on Atlanta (he went to the same high school as Stephanie, which always seemed worth remarking upon), but that didn’t make much of an impression either. My father wasn’t rude or anything. Once we got our diet colas, we sat. I’d bring up baseball and he’d nod or something. I’d say something snarky about these awful Mets and he wouldn’t react. He’d just sip his soda. I had a co-worker in those days who once described a Baptist wedding at which there was no alcohol served. Once the men attending the ceremony learned that dispiriting fact, he said “they just sat there — and waited” until they could leave. That was my father with me at a Mets game in 1993, the only time we went together as father and son, son and father. He sat down, crossed his legs and waited until he could leave.
The Braves rolled the Mets (surprise, surprise) and two-and-a-half hours after it started, it was mercifully over. He could uncross his legs and toss out his cup and we could get our train back to Great Neck. Few have been the days or nights when I spent an entire game wanting to get the hell out of Shea Stadium. This was one of them. The Mets could have rolled the Braves and I would have felt the same way.
But Super Bowl XXV in the kitchen with nothing but a bag of Styrofoam and the Hurricanes over the Huskers when Tom Osborne went for two and Wesley Walker catching that overtime TD from Ken O’Brien to make it 51-45 and the pizza we had delivered from the Capri and those weekday conversations we’ve filled with tidbits and observations from the previous weekend…how did those Coors Light commercials from a few years ago go again?
Here’s to football.
by Greg Prince on 24 January 2008 2:05 pm Johan Santana might yet become a Met. Yet he might not. Feels like he’s already been here, won a couple of Cy Youngs, blew out his arm, started Games 1, 4 & 7 in the World Series, cost us an entire Gold Glove outfield and half a rotation and made us very glad/very sad we dealt for him.
Actually, we’ve only imagined all that. Santana is still on another team, no swap has been consummated, no trade might ever be made. But that would be OK as regards Johan Santana’s Met legacy, because even if he never shows up at Shea or Citi, he stands an excellent chance of having one.
At his current pace, Santana is headed for a spot on the All-Will Rogers Team.
Will Rogers, great American humorist and inventor of the stove (I’ll have to check on the latter) said, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” We’re keying on one phrase within that quote: Never Met. There are loads of players who haven’t been fortunate enough to wear the blue, orange, sometimes black and white, but only a special sect has been rumored, reported and ruminated upon as potential Mets. Yet the deals didn’t go down. While they’re simmering on the hot stove or brushing up against July 31, however, you can close your eyes and see for yourself that player in a Mets uniform.
Then you can’t — because they’re Never Mets.
A Never Met, not to be confused with a Paper Met (like Joe Randa or Johnny Estrada) or a Spring Met (like Terry Puhl or Andres Galarraga) or a Recidivist Met (like the second comings of Tsuyoshi Shinjo and Roger Cedeño, only in name the same players they had been before) or, for that matter, a nevernude (like Tobias Fünke), is the stuff of legend. He exists primarily in the words of the griots, unsearchable by statistic, undetectable on Ultimate Mets Database or any database. He is the Met whose destiny was derailed. We were told he’d be a Met. It was broadly hinted he’d be a Met. It was just a matter of time before he became a Met.
Then the deal fell through or failed to be consummated or just didn’t happen or was never really going to happen. He never becomes a Met. He is, you see, a Never Met.
Many players are buzzed about as trade bait, of course, but there has to be a certain critical mass to bump a non-Met into Never Met territory. You have to be hit over the head for weeks, months, even years that this guy is coming. It’s gotta make loads of sense that he’ll arrive. The contract has to be no more than a formality at this point. Hands have to be figuratively or literally shaken. The player’s old cap must receive at least one coat of airbrush from the good folks at Topps. Pens must be removed from a drawer and the dotted line must beckon tantalizingly. You yourself are penciling them in on 25-man rosters and potentially potent lineup cards. It’s only something unforeseen that can mitigate the obvious, that this guy will be a Met…yet something has to and will mitigate it.
It could be jump-the-gun journalism, or wishful thinking or cold feet. Somehow a fly lands in the ointment. The dude who was going to become a Met for sure, surely does not. And he never, ever does.
Constructing the All-Will Rogers team can be tricky — Will Rogers follies, if you will — because some apparent Never Mets lose their status when they do, in fact, become Mets. Some of these players float in the atmosphere so long that it’s almost a legacy for the next general manager to complete the franchise’s quest for a particular guy. It’s like finding last year’s letters to Santa and deciding it’s probably not too late to fulfill a kid’s slightly dated wishes.
Shawon Dunston is one example of the genre. Shawon, then a young shortstop playing for the cheap Cubs, was as good as here in the offseason between 1987 and ’88 — Dunston for Kevin Elster and Roger McDowell, a new operation called Sportsline had it. But then, for whatever reason, they didn’t have it, and the Mets didn’t have Dunston….until they did in 1999, thus depriving Shawon of Never Met stardom.
Joe Torre also comes to mind on this count. The Atlanta stalwart was the focus of a hot trade rumor in the spring of 1969. He had slumped in ’68 and was wearing out his welcome down south, but he was surely a stronger righty bat than the Mets were used to, was capable of playing first where the Mets were stuck with lefty Ed Kranepool full-time and, à la Dunston, would be more or less returning to his Brooklyn roots. He was going to be a perfect fit for the Mets. The devil, however, was in the details. Atlanta demanded a package that included Amos Otis and Nolan Ryan and the Mets balked. Torre was instead sent to St. Louis for Orlando Cepeda. Joe appeared to be a classic Never Met until October 1974 when all it took to acquire him was Ray Sadecki and Tommy Moore. By then, Torre was clearly in the “former” stage of his career, as in former MVP, former All-Star and former third baseman — which didn’t stop the Mets from putting him at third base to open 1975.
At least the Mets hung on to Ryan and Otis.
Pending the resolution of Santana’s fate this winter and spring and maybe over the course of his career, we can still piece together a pretty representative All-Will Rogers Team. These men will go down in the annals of the game as the best Never Mets that ever were.
CATCHER: Yorvit Torrealba
I don’t know if I ever saw an about-to-be Met become a Never Met so quickly. In November, it was reported widely and thoroughly that Torrealba was en route from the National League champion Rockies, a sure thing to supplant previous fan favorite Paul Lo Duca. Yahoo! Sports had already listed him on its Mets’ roster. He was so close to Shea, he could smell the Italian sausages grilling on the field level. It was a matter of dotting and crossing a couple of letters, maybe completing a routine physical. Physicals are always formalities, right? Well, not this time, as one party or the other backed out somewhere late in the twelfth hour. It was never made clear why Torrealba didn’t become a Met, but it was alleged to have something to do with his health. The Torrealba camp made noise about suing the Mets, but they have since retreated to Colorado where Yorvit is a Lo Ducaesque folk hero. Brian Schneider was soon traded for and Torrealba’s reign of terror as Mets catcher was over before it started. It’s as if it Never happened.
FIRST BASE: Richie Allen
The problem with designating a Never Met first basemen is the Mets seem to eventually get their man, albeit too late (Mo Vaughn), sometimes a little ahead of the expiration date (Carlos Delgado). First base being a power position and the Mets being traditionally power-starved usually combines to unleash unrealistic images of big boppers at corner positions that dance irrepressibly in Metropolitan heads, leading management to fall all over themselves for every seen-better-days Willie Montañez, Mike Marshall or Eddie Murray who ambles by. Hard to stay a Never Met if the Mets won’t let you keep walking. Way back in the spring of ’69, however, it was the Phillies’ Richie Allen, a frightening slugger who was famously unhappy in his decrepit surroundings (the feeling was mutual at Connie Mack Stadium), who enticed the Mets — either he or Torre would have been an upgrade over incumbent Kranepool. According to George Vecsey in Joy In Mudville, the Phils agreed to swap Allen to the Mets if only the Mets would send Tom Seaver or Jerry Koosman down the Turnpike. After GM Johnny Murphy presumably laughed for a few hours, he countered with a choice of Nolan Ryan or Jim McAndrew. His Phils counterpart John Quinn asked for Amos Otis in addition to one of those young stud pitchers. No deal. Allen, converting from third to first in 1969, banged more homers (32) and RBI (89) than any Met, but the Mets — eventually bolstered by Donn Clendenon — did pretty well without him. In the winter of 1970, Otis would, in exchange for Joe Foy, wind up in Kansas City where he would four times place in the Top Ten of voting for American League Most Valuable Player, an award won by Dick Allen in 1972. Nolan Ryan, meanwhile…oh, never mind.
SECOND BASE: Mark Grudzielanek
Did anybody see the Roberto Alomar trade coming? Not really. Thus, it figures that once we were surprised with the unforeseen appearance of the veritable consensus choice for Greatest Second Baseman Ever that he would become Flop Of All Met Flops (him or George Foster) and send the Mets into the second base wilderness for a half-decade to come. Our sights were set so low post-Alomar that we would salivate over every mediocre second baseman on the open market, especially Mark Grudzielanek (or as my friend Laurie calls him, Unpronounceable Name). Grud was a free agent following the 2005 season, a year during which second nominally belonged to former shortstop Kaz Matsui but in reality was condemned community property. The Met second baseman of record, with 82 appearances on his uninspiring ledger, was Miguel Cairo. Was it any wonder that Mark Grudzielanek — a.k.a. Unremarkable Player — loomed so large in so many fans’ plans a scant two winters ago? He represented stability where there had been turmoil…a potentially whelming presence after several go-rounds of Danny Garcia, Joe McEwing, Ty Wigginton, Ricky Gutierrez, Jay Bell, Rey Sanchez and a dollop of Jose Offerman collectively underwhelmed. He also turned his back on any and all Met overtures and signed, in the spirit of Amos Otis, with the Kansas City Royals, uniting with Doug Mientkiewicz to launch a thousand lame Internet jokes about unspellable right sides of infields; no doubt we made a few ourselves. Since 2006 at second for the Mets, it’s been a little Anderson Hernandez, intermittent Jose Valentin, a dash of Damion Easley, a pinch of Marlon Anderson and will be, if you believe contracts, four more years of Luis Castillo.
SHORTSTOP: Barry Larkin
Everybody knew the Mets had their sights set on Alex Rodriguez to play short and raise the profile of the franchise once he became a free agent following the 2000 season, but in the meantime, there was the little matter of completing said 2000 season, a task that became a bit more daunting when Rey Ordoñez’s magic glove (and amazing, disappearing bat) went into cold storage once he broke his arm trying to tag F.P. Santangelo — he didn’t ding it writing child-support checks, that’s for sure. Scraping by on Melvin Mora’s improved offense and shaky fielding, GM Steve Phillips nevertheless craved a bigger and more experienced name to vacuum up ground balls. A-Rod was still in Seattle for the summer, so he turned his attention to Barry Larkin of the Reds. Cincinnati looked at their captain, their heart, their longtime soul…and said, sure you can have him. A tentative deal was announced in July. Fox harped on it endlessly during the Mets’ visit to Atlanta during the 48-hour period Larkin was granted to consider his options. While it was known Larkin had been traded to the Mets, for whom was unclear (though Alex Escobar and Paul Wilson were mentioned). It didn’t matter in the end, in light of Larkin’s 10 & 5 veto power. He exercised it decisively and passed up a chance to play on a legitimate contender alongside old teammates John Franco and Lenny Harris. Forever Red until his 2004 retirement, Larkin would finish up perennially out of the money, while the Mets — settling for an inevitable Mora-Mike Bordick swap with the Orioles — would win the pennant. Thereafter, Bordick would bolt, Mora would blossom and Alex Rodriguez, 24 + 1 or not, would maintain his own Never Met status for years to come. We give the nod to Larkin at short, however, because he was actually traded here. He just refused to show up.
THIRD BASE: Norihiro Nakamura
I have to confess this guy was a total repressed memory for me, unearthed only after a friend mentioned his name once Torrealba stopped short of Shea. Amid all the nonsense that erupted after a venomous 2002 — Art Howe, T#m Gl@v!ne, Mike Stanton — the Mets tried to slip a new third baseman under the door in time for Christmas. While they allowed fan favorite (this fan’s favorite, anyway) Edgardo Alfonzo to walk, they talked up the possibilities surrounding he who would be the first big-time Japanese infielder to test his skills in the States. Like many of his All-Will Rogers teammates, Nakamura, a power-hitting stud in Japan, was as good as delivered to Queens: two years, $7 million, souvenir jerseys no doubt coming off the line to overstock Mets Clubhouse Shops everywhere. But the erstwhile Osaka Kintetsu Buffalo slammed on the brakes before the Diamond Club could be unlocked for December press conference purposes. Some combination of popsicle toes and saved face got in the way of Nakamura replacing Alfonzo and freezing out Wigginton. Depending on whose story you buy, Norihiro said no because the Mets let word of his imminent signing leak before they were supposed to…or he just wanted better terms. In short order, Nakamura became a Never Met, reupped as a Buffalo and washed out as a Dodger while third base would become occupied by a youngster from Virginia whom, one fervently hopes, will be that rarest of breeds, a Forever Met. If our almost-imported third-sacker had gone through with the act of signing with us and had managed a decent April 2003, we can pretty safely assume that Steve Phillips would have traded David Wright for someone like Scott Elarton; hence let us tip our cap to Norihiro Nakamura for helping to cork the Mets’ perpetually recurring third base black hole by refusing to toss himself into it.
OUTFIELD:
This is the toughest group of all to define, because the Mets have always sought saviors in the outfield, therefore almost every attractive/discontented outfielder tends to come up in conversation. Some, however, come up more than others. We acknowledge the recurring Never Met status
• of Gary Sheffield, allegedly almost a Met over and over for nearly two decades (because he’s related to Doc; because the Marlins are shedding salary; because the Dodgers don’t want to pay him; because the Yankees will gladly take Mike Cameron in his stead) even if he always struck us as a disastrous fit;
• of Sammy Sosa (conformed to everybody’s preconceived notions of who Omar Minaya would take a flier on although, it should be noted, he never has despite ample opportunity to since October 2004);
• of Juan Gonzalez (bottomless stockpile of power, buddies with Robbie Alomar, surely the last piece of the 2002 makeover puzzle);
• and of the outfielder it pains me for the historical record to omit from the All-Will Rogers Team, though not nearly as much as it pains me that he is, in fact, a Never Met — Vladimir Guerrero.
The Vlad trial balloon flew high if not long in early January of 2004. The Mets were going to kick their rebuilding program up a notch by signing arguably the best player in the game at a bargain rate because he was just sitting out there the whole offseason for the taking so how could we pass him up, Jim Duquette’s propaganda about getting younger and more athletic notwithstanding? I’ll never forget the frigid Saturday afternoon when I heard it was practically a done deal, Guerrero to the Mets for three years and all manner of incentive…and the even icier Saturday night when I learned the deal that got done was Guerrero to the Angels for five years and many more millions than the Mets were chatting up. I’m still not certain any of this was more than a pipe dream, but I do know Vladimir Guerrero is a Never Met (and, in turn, appreciate what a historical miracle it is that one year later the same franchise — if not exactly the same organization — targeted and captured January 2005’s best player available, Carlos Beltran).
Our choices for All-Will Rogers outfielders were all about to be Mets either right away or forever. Their names were mentioned forcefully, repeatedly and never faded from public discourse. Of those who are still active, I wouldn’t be totally surprised if they will someday shed their Never Met stripes. Regarding he who is retired, I can’t believe we never got him.
LEFT FIELD: Manny Ramirez
First off, how is it possible that the Red Sox never traded him? One gets the sense Boston signed him to get rid of him given how he has been framed since 2001 as a head case who has irreparably disturbed the vaunted Fenway karma. And how is it possible he is still a Never Met? The Mets were going to get Manny and let Manny be Manny, win over the Washington Heights crowd by bringing home their homeboy, stealing headlines from the local team that didn’t have Manny, maybe even challenge for a Wild Card somewhere in there courtesy of his booming bat. Lastings Milledge would have to go. Aaron Heilman would have to go. Mike Cameron would have to go. Everybody short of David Wright and Jose Reyes seemed to have been ticketed for the Delta Shuttle at one point or another in the mid-2000s to make room for Manny. Cripes, there was actually a mockup of an ad touting the addition of Manny Ramirez printed in the Daily News three Novembers ago. Omar would surely, surely, surely bring this Dominican Dandy to Shea where Ramirez would just as surely cause all kinds of problems not catching flies and barely running after them (you know, the same way Pedro Martinez was a bad idea for the Mets). Yet somehow the Sox didn’t let go of their left fielder and managed to win two World Series with him defending the Green Monster and driving in two tons of runs annually. FYI, he becomes a free agent after 2008.
CENTER FIELD: Ken Griffey, Jr.
I fell into Fred Sanford mode amidst SportsCenter one December night in 1999 when it was related that the Mariners had agreed to trade their future Hall of Fame outfielder, perhaps the future home run king of all of baseball, to the Mets for Armando Benitez, Roger Cedeño and Octavio Dotel. Huh? Wha’? We’re getting Ken Griffey? ELIZABETH! I’M COMING TO JOIN YOU, HONEY! Wait a sec…we didn’t actually get Ken Griffey? But you just said the Mets and Mariners agreed…what’s that? They did agree, but Griffey didn’t? He says the Mets gave him 15 minutes to decide because the Mets needed to know immediately and Griffey didn’t want to be rushed? WHAT? THEY DID WHAT? IS THAT TRUE? I listened a little more closely. Seems the Mets and Mariners could agree all they wanted, but it didn’t mean a thing because we didn’t get Junior’s swing. The report was yes, a trade was on the table, all freshly inked and prepared for notarization, but the would-be Met said, uh-uh, no, I don’t think so, I want to, uh, play closer to my Orlando-area home (how is it all those superstars who want to play close to their Orlando-area homes never choose the Rays?). Benitez and Cedeño and Dotel would not be going to Seattle and Griffey most decidedly would not be coming to New York. Roger and Octavio would be used to pry Mike Hampton loose from Houston before the month was out. Armando…well, you know what Armando did. Griffey would engineer a trade to the Orlando suburb of Cincinnati where, despite his fond childhood memories of the place, he has never been what he was in Seattle. Though his hasty thumbs-down earned him permanent villain visitor status, he continues to be mentioned now and again as someone the Mets “should go after” to compensate for their annual case of outfield shorts. But he never came and I’m assuming he will never come, certainly not as he might have at the dawn of the millennium, when it might have meant something.
RIGHT FIELD: Bobby Higginson
I’ll be damned if I know why Bobby Higginson spent close to a decade as a staple of every other Met trade rumor, but he did. Higginson wasn’t Ramirez or Griffey. That seemed to be the point. He was exactly the kind of player the Mets were destined to settle for. He was, you know, pretty good. He even demonstrated his occasional above-averageness against the Mets when he hit three homers against them in our first Interleague matchup with the Tigers. He drove in a hundred runs twice and batted .300 a couple of times. He wasn’t bad. He was a step up over whomever the Mets would theoretically replace him with. He was Bobby Higginson. Surely, in the vein of endlessly rumored slightly more than middling Cliff Floyd or B.J. Surhoff types, we were bound to get him one of these days. Imagine my surprise to have checked and discovered that a) he has been out of the Majors since 2005 and b) he is a Never Met. Still, I wouldn’t be stunned if we wind up sending Carlos Gomez to Detroit for Bobby Higginson. I just wouldn’t be.
STARTING PITCHER: Don Sutton
In these free agent days when the Mets are reasonably comfortable throwing dollars around, it is assumed the Mets will ante up and acquire the big pitcher of the moment. We’ll outbid other teams with more money (Carlos Zambrano, Barry Zito) or, as necessary, more money and more prospects (Dontrelle Willis, Roy Oswalt, Dan Haren, Erik Bedard, this Santana fellow). Whatever it takes, you hear on talk radio and read on message boards, the Mets will do it. That we never seem to come up aces means we could probably construct an entire rotation of Never Mets pitching right now. But why don’t we go back more than three decades for a scenario that seemed then and seems now out of science fiction? In the spring of 1976, typically enlightened Mets management, fearing the bargaining power of one George Thomas Seaver, explored trading him instead of signing him. With free agentry around the corner and Seaver not exactly going to come cheap (why, he might even insist on being paid like the best pitcher in baseball!), the M. Donald Idiots in the front office actually worked out a trade: Tom Seaver to Los Angeles in exchange for Don Sutton. On paper, it would be a swap of approximate peers: one was clearly on his way to Cooperstown, the other was making a very good case for inclusion. In reality, it is impossible to believe how close the Mets came to trading their Franchise player for someone who, whatever his career numbers wound up being (thirteen more wins than Seaver given his three extra seasons of activity), was not Seaver. Yet the Mets nearly did it. According to Jack Lang in The New York Mets: Twenty-Five Years Of Baseball Magic, a deal was in place and all GM Joe McDonald had to do “was satisfy Sutton’s agent. Arrangements were being made to find a home for Sutton and his family in Connecticut and for Sutton to join the Mets’ radio-TV crew when his playing days were over.” The ensuing reaction when Lang broke the story “was one of anger”. To trade Seaver “was unthinkable. Such a furor was raised that the Mets backed off.” Yeah…unthinkable. As a postscript, once Sutton became a free agent on his own in the winter of 1980, the next generation of Mets ownership did make a less complicated pitch for him, but he opted instead to join Nolan Ryan in Houston. He made a brief stop in Oakland but didn’t stay long enough to be floated in a “Billy Beane’s gonna fleece the Mets again, isn’t he?” rumor.
RELIEF PITCHER: Scott Linebrink
On trade deadline day in 2006, I’m traveling. As soon as I arrive at my hotel, I turn on ESPNews to see if anything’s happened. Has it ever: Duaner Sanchez was in a taxi accident; the Mets traded Xavier Nady to Pittsburgh for a replacement in the bullpen, Roberto Hernandez; they got another pitcher in the deal whose name was vaguely familiar, Oliver Perez, and he was being turned around and shipped to San Diego for more relief reinforcement, Scott Linebrink. Good, I thought. Without Sanchez, we’re going to need all the help we can get — Hernandez and Linebrink…that’s the ticket. Sometime before I unpacked, however, the Padres backed out, so no matter what ESPN promised me, we were stuck with Perez, the dude with the astronomical ERA (6.63), the horrendous won-lost record (2-10) and the alleged flightiness. Damn, what a shame we couldn’t solidify the pen with Linebrink. Oh well, at least this other kid is a lefty. Maybe Rick Peterson can make something out of him. Moral of the story in case we don’t get Johan Santana and one of those we didn’t trade for him becomes a star for us: Not all Never Mets entail a tale of woe.
by Greg Prince on 22 January 2008 9:33 pm The recent passings of Jim Beauchamp and Don Cardwell demonstrate the power of association by distillation. They both had long and distinguished careers in the Majors but it is the instinct of the fan to boil it all down remember them for the one or two things they did on your team.
Beauchamp? He good-naturedly gave up No. 24 in May 1972 when the Mets acquired a centerfielder who may have been more readily identified with it. Pretty good righthanded pinch-hitter, too.
Cardwell? He drove in the only run of a 1-0 shutout in the second game of a doubleheader after Jerry Koosman performed the same unlikely hitting feat in the first game. Also, I hear he wasn't crazy about love beads.
Granted, Don Cardwell was about five minutes before my time and I wasn't terribly conscious of Jim Beauchamp until he was traded here with a flock of Cardinal bit players in exchange for Art Shamsky, whose 24 he donned for about a month before switching to 5 in deference to Willie Mays. I know Cardwell pitched a no-hitter as a Cub and, in the aftermath of his passing, have learned more about several of his 1969 contributions beyond that RBI single and those eight shutout innings in Pittsburgh. I recall Beauchamp as a Braves coach when they got good again in '91 and persevering there before he retired and they became intolerable at the end of the '90s.
But Cardwell drove in the only run of a shutout in the doubleheader in which Koosman did the same. And Beauchamp gave up his number for Mays. That's what I remember. That's what came to mind in the instant after I learned of their respective deaths, just as it was what came up every time their names were mentioned since they stopped playing. It may not make for a complete or representative portrayal, but it is what has stuck with me. It's probably what's stuck with most Mets fans.
What do you suppose we'll remember about Endy Chavez when his name comes up after he's not playing anymore?
That drag bunt single to win a game against Colorado, the homer off Pettitte, a big hit against the Pirates on the July 4 before last…plenty of good, strong contributions. If you want to recall him generically as architect of perhaps the most significant fourth-outfielder season in Mets history — 133 games as a stellar fill-in in 2006 — go right ahead. If he makes you yearn for low-fat dairy, raise three glasses of skim milk to him.
All that acknowledged, who're we kidding? You think Endy, you think catch. What else is there to think about? We'll remember the catch. We'll remember other stuff, too — he is surely no one-catch pony — but we're tethered to the catch. The next generation will know of the catch and the generation after that one, too.
The Mets have secured Mr. Chavez's services for another two seasons, agreeing on a two-year $3.85 million contract. This comes a couple of weeks after he aggravated a hamstring in winter ball. That wasn't the one he strained and missed a load of time over in regular ball last June. He played the last month or so of 2007, but it wasn't quite the same Endy from 2006. And now he's recovering from injury again.
If this were Player X, I'd be a mite reflexively grumbly that management just overcommitted, as it is prone to do, to someone 30, brittle, part-time and theoretically replaceable. But he's not Player X. He's Endy Chavez.
Endy Chavez made that catch. How much do you suppose that would be worth in arbitration if any one of us were the arbitrator? How much would have you given in the course of the evening of October 19, 2006 to have had Scott Rolen's surefire two-run homer retrieved and converted into a double play? For how long would you feel privileged to compensate Endy Chavez in appreciation of his dash, his leap, his grab and his throw?
Two years? Make it two eternities. One for now, one for later. It was that good.
Technically, the catch took place 15 months ago. Seems more like 15 years, doesn't it? A little? Doesn't that moment when the world froze for a handful of unyielding seconds seem from another era already? Endy was in left. Who were in center and right — Tommie Agee and Ron Swoboda? Is it possible that that same Endy Chavez who made in 2006, with all due respect to glorious Met outfielders past, the greatest postseason catch ever played on the 2007 Mets of badly constructed legend? What would a Mets team with Endy Chavez be doing coughing up a large divisional lead? No, impossible. Endy is associated with only goodness; he drinks his milk, he eats his yogurt and everyone wins!
Of the theories that have abounded and will always be bandied about where The Greatest Collapse In Baseball History is concerned, you don't hear much about the extended absence of Endy Chavez, how 133 games in 2006 were reduced by almost half in '07, how Chavez came to the rescue in Cliff Floyd's absence one year but was unavailable to do the same for much of Moises Alou's predictable recovery period, how a team rises to the occasion when it has an Endy Chavez and how it falls flat when nobody plays that role for months at a time.
To be fair, the Mets were muddling along in first place when Endy went down on June 6 (against the Phillies, appropriately enough) and were still masquerading as front-runners on August 28 (once more versus Philly) when he returned. A check of Baseball-Reference's gamelogs reveals he had slumped from .337 to .292 in the week-plus before his left hamstring gave out…reflecting eerily the southbound turn the Mets as a whole had begun to take. When he came back, he wasn't quite the same Endy, not the one from 2006. That's perfectly understandable as it's tough to miss 73 games and reconjure your magic all at once.
He also wasn't used that much down the stretch. With Alou healthy and hot, Chavez wasn't going to left. Among lefty Green and righties Gomez and Milledge, he got lost in the other corner shuffle. He started all of three times in September, all in right, not once after September 18 (when he went 3-for-3 and drove in two runs). I sat at one of the final games of the year, the Friday night loss to the Marlins, and wondered, amid the parade of pinch-hitters Willie Randolph was dispatching to the plate and welcoming back to the bench hit-free, where in the world was Endy Chavez?
Venezuela, I learned. His sister died. He went home for the funeral and would miss the final series.
2007 was almost never the same as 2006. There were dozens of factors that went right previously that simply underwhelmed later. In one year, a journeyman utility outfielder first steps up and then jumps up and makes a breathtaking catch for the ages and an incalculable difference to our fortunes. In the next year, he's the same man, yet he can only do so much. He can't do anything when he's hurting. He can be a bobblehead promotion and he can be the one universally beloved component of the “Sweet Caroline” video, but he can't play if he can't play or they won't play him. Subtract such a glaring disparity between '07 and '06 and you wind up deleting the extra from extraordinary.
None of which makes me think of anything but that catch when I think of Endy Chavez. Whatever he does in 2008 and whatever he does for however long he plays for the Mets, he makes that catch. That thought sticks with me.
by Greg Prince on 22 January 2008 9:30 pm 
| I’m a little fuzzy on why more baseball cards don’t portray players executing their signature moments. I was extraordinarily delighted when Jason sent me Upper Deck No. 381 from its 2007 set last spring. If you’re gonna get an Endy Chavez, you might as well get the Endy Chavez. We have him, incidentally, for two more years. We will have what he did on October 19, 2006 for much, much longer. |
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by Greg Prince on 22 January 2008 9:25 pm 
| Jim Beauchamp, wearing the number he was issued when 24suddenly needed to be ripped off his shirt, indeed did some fancy pinch-hitting as a 1973 National League Champion Met, landing on base at a .325 clip when called off the bench and into action by Yogi Berra. Ken Boswell lost his second base job to Felix Millan that same season but he, too, did his part to inspire the ’74 yearbook’s caption writer, belting a pair of pinch-homers in a reserve role. You’d think that two guys who combined to start all of 21 games in 1973 wouldn’t be smiling all that much. But if you look closely, you might recognize the setting for this photo as the Oakland Coliseum. Beauchamp and Boswell were pinch-hitters on a World Series team. Jim Beauchamp’s final appearance in the big leagues, for that matter, was in that Fall Classic, the only one in which he played.Knowing that, I ask you, why wouldn’t you smile? |
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by Greg Prince on 22 January 2008 9:13 pm 
In the 1968 yearbook, Don Cardwell doesn’t quite look like he’s thrilled to be here, but inside of two seasons, he had every reason in the world to be satisfied with what must have seemed like exile to baseball purgatory. Traded to the perennially lousy Mets before 1967, he earned the Opening Day start (kid named Seaver took the ball for the next game) and produced sparkling ERAs of 2.96 a year later when the Mets improved immensely and 3.01 the year after that, when they won it all. With a Major League career that began ahead of any of his 1969 teammates, he was the personification of “elder statesman” on the world champs’ pitching staff, even if he was seven weeks shy of his 34th birthday as the ticker tape rained over Lower Broadway.
As for those love beads Ron Swoboda wore on a team flight — the ones that raised Cardwell’s ire — Don told Stanley Cohen, in the essential 1988 book A Magic Summer, he had long transitioned into forgive & forget mode: “He thought I was a southern redneck, and I thought…I thought he was just a Rocky.” Confirmed Swoboda in the wake of the news of his teammate’s passing, “Just old school, man. He was old school back then.”
by Greg Prince on 21 January 2008 4:51 am Kudos to my friend Mark for putting the NFC championship into Met perspective for me:
I root for the Jets, but I’d have to imagine for a Giants fan, that was kind of like winning Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS.
Yeah, I thought, kind of. There was a definite twinge of life after death that followed the kicker missing the winning field goal at the end of regulation and being given another attempt in OT. It was as if Beltran had gotten just a tiny little bit of that 0-2 curve from Wainwright and was granted another swing.
And connected.
Now, thanks to Lawrence Tynes, the Giants are going to the World Series of football, the Super Bowl. It’s only sinking in how amazin’, amazin’, amazin’ this is. These are the Giants of Eli Manning, which as recently as a month ago was code for don’t be silly, there’s no way they’re going anywhere even if they are in the playoffs for a third consecutive year. These are the Giants of ornery Tom Coughlin for whom I’ve been willing to endure a 5-11 season just to get him fired on principle. I look at Tom Coughlin and I see Art Howe’s nasty brother.
Yet there they are, Manning and Coughlin and the rest of them I barely know or moderately tolerate in the same laundry and logo I’ve always gravitated to and they are half of the last two teams standing. When I was a kid in the ’70s, I couldn’t imagine the Giants in the playoffs, let alone the Super Bowl. Then, finally, there was that golden age of Parcells and Simms and Taylor with a dash of Hostetler and Ottis Anderson and several other true Giants, and the result was two absolutely thrilling world championships. I really gave a damn back then. As overtime began at Lambeau, it was noted the Giants were 0-2 in playoff sudden death, including the infamous loss to the Colts in ’58. What was the other one, I wondered. Oh yeah — the Flipper Anderson game that knocked them off on January 7, 1990. I was so inconsolable after that one, the date sticks with me eighteen years later.
Somewhere along the way, the Giants’ shortcomings became a matter for which consolation was not required in copious amounts. I never expected a single Super Bowl. I got two mighty wins. Everything thereafter was bound to be letdown (especially Ray Handley). In the handful of dramatic mediocrity-interrupting Giants losses since they last lived up to their enormous name, I’d be miserable for a day, then an evening, then an hour, then maybe the seconds it took me to resume the countdown to pitchers and catchers.
The Mets long ago overwhelmed all my ancillary sports loyalties. Annoyance with Coughlin’s “you’re late if you show up five minutes early” brand of motivation (which probably makes sense to football players) notwithstanding, I’ve never actively rooted for Giant failure. I just became less and less concerned with what they did. A quarter to half of their season interferes with baseball. I resent that. By the time I look up in November (once I’ve had the opportunity, as Chuck puts it, to decompress from whatever catastrophic event I’ve experienced in September and perhaps October), there are suddenly large, tattooed men wearing numbers that used to belong to Gary Reasons and Lee Rouson and spare ’80s Giants I have no business remembering but do because those Giants teams were so memorable and football today is just something that gets in the way of baseball.
A few weeks ago, there was an inane public debate over whether the Giants, a playoff spot inexplicably in their pocket, should play hard against the Patriots, who were going for a perfect record. I watched that game more intently (mostly rooting against the ’72 Dolphins) than I’d watched any Giants game in a few years. I watched them beat the Bucs two Sundays ago and it was quietly gratifying. I watched them beat the Cowboys last Sunday and it was surprisingly exciting. I watched them play the Packers with muted emotions earlier. It was good to see they were still playing hard. But honestly, they were playing at literally below zero, against Brett Favre, the guy with the misplaced “v” and all those comebacks. What was the point?
The point was Tynes the kicker got another shot at a winning field goal and, after that asinine coach barked at him when he missed in the fourth quarter, took the bat off his shoulder and nailed it, and the football team I’ve rooted for as long — if nowhere near as deeply — as I’ve rooted for my baseball team was going to the Super Bowl for the fourth time…which makes it four more times than I ever thought I’d see. I have almost no doubt they’ll lose 43-6 when they face the Patriots again, but I think I’ve been pretty clear that football isn’t the sport where I excel at understanding. I rarely if ever show up five minutes early for anything.
by Greg Prince on 20 January 2008 10:33 am 
The most versatile t-shirt on earth just got a pretty good workout in Bermuda, the fourth nation in which The Numbers have been photographed (fifth, if we count Texas separately). The occasion was, as the sign in the background suggests, Bermuda International Race Weekend, and our wearer of the hour, Sharon “Inside Pitcher” Chapman, went the extra mile in completing the 10K course and spreading the gospel. “Several people watching the race asked about the numbers,” Sharon reports, “and were supportive when I told them that they were the Mets’ retired numbers.”
One assumes K26 has something to do with the race and is not part of an organized campaign to have a marker commemorate one or all of Dave Kingman’s 672 Met strikeouts.
If you want to show us what you’re doing in your Faith and Fear shirt, by all means, send us a picture and we’ll do our best to post it. And if you want your very own Faith and Fear shirt, just take a jog over here and order one up. Medal not included.
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