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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 23 October 2007 9:37 am I don’t wander down to the playground or the Little League fields. I don’t drop what I’m doing for high school or college ball. Even the occasional minor league game that flickers across the screen doesn’t do much for me. Though any baseball beats no baseball, baseball without a strong and informed rooting interest doesn’t do all that much for me. October baseball, the theoretical pinnacle of the sport, still needs to hatch a rooting interest to have me completely engaged. At this late date, I’m not entirely sure I have one between the Rockies and the Red Sox. One will probably make itself known to me by Wednesday night.
Put the Mets in the playoffs (give them an 8-game lead with 16 to go to ensure it) and I’ve got my rooting interest. Burden us with another New York team and I have, at the very least, a spiteful rooting-against interest. The rest of the time, I make it up as I go along. Sometimes it’s fleeting, sometimes it’s grounded, sometimes it’s capricious. One October not so long ago, it was cherubic…and a little feline.
A very little feline.
Some of you might recall the tale of Casey the Cat, whose biography I shared with you on a Friday in June. Casey was the incredibly affectionate tabby who touched and tongued all whom he encountered. The story I told you, involving the departure of a beloved pet, couldn’t help but be a sad one. Today, on the eve of what will be a very good week for a very lucky set of fans, I’d like to offer a postscript to Casey’s story. It’s the part where life went on and eventually felt good again.
Casey the Cat was irreplaceable. But Stephanie and I knew he would be succeeded.
He had to be. Casey had made us a two-cat household and his big little brother Bernie required company. It felt wrong to deny him a companion (or at least an obstacle to his eating all the cat food in sight). But we required time and then closure. The loss of Casey on June 28, 2002 stayed very fresh all summer. July passed. So did August. We’ll look for a new cat in September, we said.
First, though, a task. We had Casey’s cremated remains — cremains, they’re called — which is an odd thing to have. It’s your cat, but it’s not, y’know? It felt right to have what there was to have of him, but these were ashes. And aren’t you supposed to scatter ashes? You don’t have to, but it sounded lovely in its way. Closure, remember?
We decided to keep some and scatter some. But where? Casey was an indoor cat. The carpet would have been most appropriate, I suppose. Instead, we chose to leave a little around the tree in our front yard (which he stared at when birds would alight) and take some more to our nearby park. There was a bay there. That was it; we’d scatter Casey’s cremains into the water. Cats didn’t like water, but this wasn’t for him. This was for us.
It was going to be all solemn, as you can imagine. We waited for the Tuesday after Labor Day when I assumed everybody would be back at school and work and we’d have the park to ourselves. But everybody apparently decided to extend their vacations an extra day. There were Frisbees flying and barbecues blazing and swimmers and fishermen and, gosh, everybody under the sun. There weren’t five unoccupied feet of shoreline to scatter Casey.
So we did it in broad daylight in front of whomever might have been watching. Casey always did like people.
We took the rest of him home and set him up in a Native American-made receptacle we bought at Foxwoods in August when I helped Stephanie lead her senior center members on a daytrip. Placed him on top of the television so he’d always be in our direct line of sight. Casey was an indoor cat, we were indoor people.
The Casey Era ended in June. The mourning period wound down the day after Labor Day. Thoughts of him would remain constant for a year or more.
The Remo Era began on September 22, 2002. It ended on September 25, 2002. It’s three days I’d prefer to forget completely.
A lady at Stephanie’s center heard we might be looking for a cat (as had everybody we knew that summer who wanted to place a deserving kitten — when the Princes have a cat opening, word of it spreads among cat people like news of a Vatican vacancy does among Roman Catholics). The twist was this lady lived in Queens. In Flushing, no less. How can you overlook a sign like that?
What wasn’t completely comprehended by us was this cat, who we drove out to see on a Sunday when the Mets were in Montreal, was an outdoor cat. He wasn’t domesticated. But he was so friendly! That was the word. And we fell for it. We showed up, the cat came scurrying toward us and right into our carrier. Satisfied that he seemed nice enough, we snapped him up and took him home.
“The adventure begins,” I announced to Stephanie as we walked our unnamed adoptee back to the car. That line was from an ’80s movie I had never actually seen but whose title (and Tommy Shaw theme) stuck with me: Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Right then and there we called the cat Remo.
Should have called him a cab instead.
It was a poor, poor fit, beginning the second he realized he wasn’t going to be able to roam the streets of Flushing any longer. Don’t know if it was the dizzying experience of being whisked to Long Island or he just had a taste for kimchi, but Remo didn’t want any part of us or wherever we were taking him. That much was apparent when he ruined the carrier on the way home.
When Remo wasn’t hiding in the apartment, he was destroying something. When he wasn’t destroying something, he was attacking Stephanie. Swiping at her. Not playfully, but feral-like. We had ushered Bernie into the bedroom for the duration of the planned transition period, but nothing was taking. Bernie was miserable alone, Remo was miserable with us and, in a sentiment familiar to every Mets fan that September, we wanted to undo the enormous mistake of 2002.
Trust me. This was worse than trading for Alomar. Stephanie, unflappable Stephanie, was near tears trying to cope with Remo’s hostility by Tuesday the 24th. Our plan was to lasso him, stuff him back in the carrier, get him to our vet for a checkup and appropriate procedures and get him the bleep out of our house forever. The strategy could best be described as Rescue and Godspeed, Remo. Go be somebody else’s problem (our vet gave her blessing to the plan, acknowledging that some cats aren’t meant to be housecats).
So I come home that Tuesday night. Remo has finally been captured. He’s in his carrier in the kitchen, not to be let out until his appointment the next morning. Bernie is sulking in the bedroom, wondering what he did to deserve quarantine. And though I know she’s not in there, I find Stephanie has closed the bathroom door. Strange, I think, she never closes the door when it’s vacant. What could be in here?
Another cat, that’s what. One over our legal limit.
At wit’s end with Remo, Stephanie visited our local pet store in search of answers or maybe a stun gun. What she found was a tiny kitten too awesome to pass up. Thus, she didn’t. She adopted this legitimately friendly, legitimately loving tabby — a tabby! like Casey! — on the spot. It was the Best Available Athlete theory of drafting. We didn’t really need another cat, but when there’s that much talent left on the board, you grab it.
I open the bathroom door and there’s the tabby, a gray and brown and…oh, all kinds of markings. He’s sitting on top of the toilet (the lid was down — he wasn’t that amazing) and staring at me. Stephanie has left on the lights and the radio (tuned to classical WQXR) to help him adjust to his new surroundings. I reach out for him. He doesn’t flinch. I pick him up. He doesn’t mind. I play with him. He plays with me.
This was our cat.
Stephanie took two cats to the vet the next day. They were both fixed…up and checked out and given clean bills of health. Then, with only a trace element of reluctance, she opened Remo’s carrier outside the house and he ran out. She ran inside and slammed the front door behind her. What would become of our three-day cat? As it turned out, nothing bad, to the best of our knowledge. Remo enjoyed being a neighborhood cat. We put out food for him, but we needn’t have bothered. A lot of people put out food for him. Remo was a survivor. He just wanted nothing to do with us.
The other cat she brought inside, he’s the one who stayed. I named him Hosmer, for Hosmer Mountain Bottling, a tribute to a very small soft drink company in Connecticut. He went from Hosmer to Hozzie in about a minute. We set him up in the bathroom for further acclimation (changing the station on my watch to jazzy WBGO) but were so enthused by his progress that we sped up our schedule of cat interaction. We opened the bathroom door and let Hozzie wander the apartment. We introduced him to Bernie and Bernie to Hozzie. I had read all kinds of horror stories of what happened when older, set-in-their-ways cats were exposed to interloping kittens. It wasn’t pretty.
But this was. Hozzie instantly adored Bernie (all Princes did). Played a spirited round of Hop On Pop with him. Bernie, then ten years old, instantly tolerated Hozzie. Occasionally brushed him off when he was too enthusiastic (think Garfield and Nermal) and indulged his Big Cat prerogative of eating while the newbie watched and waited, but welcomed him into the family. I swear I began to think that when Stephanie and I left the house, it was OK, because Bernie would babysit Hozzie.
It was early October by now. October the Fifth, Game Four of the only LDS that had captured my imagination, the American League Division Series between the dreaded Yankees and the unfamiliar Anaheim Angels. The Yankees won the first game at Yankee Stadium, which is what everybody said they’d do. Then they lost the second game, which wasn’t expected at all. The Angels, despite their deceptive name, murdered Andy Pettitte, the deep, brooding face of all those awful American League Octobers since 1995. Even the damaging presence of ex-Met Kevin Appier on their side of the mound couldn’t hurt my Anaheim amigos. The Angels, who were supposed to shrivel at the thought of Lou Gehrig (let alone the sight of his monument), pounded the Yankee bullpen into submission. They…or as I was coming to think of them, we won 8-6.
When Fox posted the starting lineups for Game Three, Stephanie riddled me this: “Wanna know another reason I hate the Yankees?” “You had me at ‘I hate the Yankees,’” I should’ve said. But her explanation was just as good: “Because I recognize all their names.” Damn October familiarity. Boy was I hoping my new favorite American League team could turn the Yankees into strangers lightning-quick.
Game Three was in Anaheim. No preapproved postseason cachet there. Not before October 2002. But now, yes. It was probably a bad example to set, but Angels management — Disney, they were called — handed out a pair of long, red plastic tubes to every fan as he or she entered. They were called ThunderStix. They made ThunderNoise. It was kinda ThunderBush, but it wasn’t illegal. It may have been intimidating. Poor Yankees didn’t know what hit them. To be honest, the slamming of the Stix must not have bothered them too much at first because they did hang a 6-1 lead on the board by the second. But Mike Mussina surely heard the thunder.
Mike Mussina had signed with the Yankees to win a ring. And for a vast amount of money. They always say it’s the first thing, but it’s probably more about the second. Mike Mussina wasn’t the first free agent to go the route of the ring, but he was the first, it would turn out, who didn’t always get what he wanted, jewelrywise. Perhaps that was because Mike Mussina — paving the presumptuous ringless way for Giambi, Matsui, Sheffield, Rodriguez, Pavano, Damon, Clemens II — was a creature of habit and demanded extra concentration. I know this because the Yankees play a lot of big games and even if I don’t want to know what their players are up to, I wind up hearing about it. As the third game progressed, Mussina could hear the ThunderStix loud and clear. They indeed worked lightning-quick. They were not part of his plan. What had been a five-run lead for Mussina was Thundered into oblivion by those Angelic warclubs — the bats and maybe the Stix. Mussina was gone after four. He was followed by Weaver, Stanton and Karsay, all of whom surrendered runs, lots of runs, juicy, mouthwatering runs.
Final score of Game Three: Angels 9 Yankees 6. Angles led the series two games to one. The Angels were one game from clinching.
This was the danger zone. I was so, so, SO excited. But I’d been here with Oakland, the bastards. They led 2-0 the year before, but it was a little too easy. It was eerie. It was a setup. That was when the Yankees flew to Oakland and executed that play where their shortstop, whose name escapes me at the moment, flipped a ball to their catcher from the first base line and Jeremy Giambi stood still for his tagging at home and everything went down the crapper after that. But gosh, the Angels felt different. This wasn’t the A’s where their best player, Jeremy Giambi’s brother, was biding his time so he could get in on some of that Steinbrenner ring & money action. The Angels were pure of heart. I could sense it.
I didn’t know shinola about these Angels, but I was learning and I was loving. Darin Erstad was intense. Scott Spiezio played in a band. Alex Ochoa, our five-tool failure? Their defensive replacement. Brad Fullmer was a reformed Expo. Adam Kennedy, a Cardinal for about 10 minutes, was scrappy, though not as scrappy as David Eckstein who appeared to be the love child of Lenny Dykstra and Freddie Patek. Garret Anderson looked every inch the MVP candidate they said he was. Troy Glaus was monstrous. Tim Salmon was Rookie of the Year in that league the same year as Piazza but seemed older. Their starters left something to be desired, but their bullpen was gutsy and this kid K-Rod, Frankie Rodriguez, well, he wouldn’t look bad in a Mets uniform. But he was serving his country in a more important capacity right then.
Maybe they could do it. Maybe the Angels could beat the Yankees in the Division Series. Maybe Angels. Hey, didn’t Sheryl Crow have a song by that name? I dug out her second album and found it:
I swear they’re out there,
I swear, I swear they’re out there,
I swear, I swear they’re out there,
I swear, maybe angels, maybe angels
I played it a couple of times, then I stopped. Nice way to put the ke nignehore — “tempt the evil eye” in Yiddish — on your team.
That brought us to Saturday afternoon, Game Four, when Hozzie left the bathroom behind and the Angels left the Yankees in the dust. There was no evil eye this October. There was no Evil Empire anymore. The Yankees had been dethroned the previous November by the heroic Arizona Diamondbacks, but that was the World Series and it went seven games and there was a variety of excuses made on their behalf and if you come across their home games from that 2001 championship round on YES, you’d think they won the damn thing. They didn’t then and now, in October of 2002, there would be no mistaking the outcome, no revising the history in the making. Where aura and mystique were concerned, Anaheim represented the Angel of dynasty death.
Our new kitten, of course, represented spiritual rebirth. It was quite the yin and yang.
Hozzie entered a world in which our better Angels prevailed. What a welcome! David Wells, notoriously clutch October pitcher (notorious tends to be misused, but I mean notorious from my perspective), nursed a 2-1 Yankees lead into the fifth. Then the Angels earned their wings. They scored eight runs in that inning. Eight runs off Wells, Mendoza and Hernandez, the one they called El Duque, but I preferred the less cuddly Hernandez. They scored on a homer. They scored on singles. They scored on a double. They scored and scored and scored until it was 9-2.
The Yankees dribbled a couple more runs home and did make me slightly nervous in the ninth with some baserunners, but this was over in the fifth. And when Nick Johnson popped to David Eckstein, it was done. The Yankees were defeated.
The Yankees were dead. The Angels were our avenging saviors. No longer Maybe Angels, but Definitely Angels. They were The Team That Saved October (I wonder if Disney thought about developing that for a summer release).
The Yankees were history, and not the kind they brag on. October was alive. Now there would be a true October. In the National League, the Giants would face the Cardinals for the pennant. The Twins beat the A’s (chokers) and were the next opponent for Anaheim — Anaheim, City of Heroes as one e-mail I received right after Game Four called it.
My residual loyalty to the wonderful ex-met Rick Reed notwithstanding, there was really no choice to be made for me between his Twins and Hozzie’s Angels. I rooted for Rick his one start, but as soon as he was knocked out (in the sixth), I had no conflict. And as the Halos threw down with the Twinkies, I could sit back and appreciate the Angels as kind of a West Coast kindred spirit of the Mets.
They were born in the same expansion litter. They battled second-sister perceptions vis-à-vis insufferable neighbors. They were star-crossed, the Angels more so. At least we had won a couple of times. The Angels had bad luck of all sorts, on the field and off. They’d had guys die (Lyman Bostock) and kill themselves (Donnie Moore). Gene Autry, an owner who sang cowboy tunes and signed free agents, was always disappointed. His wife Jackie carried on in the dismayed tradition even after Disney bought the team. Their 1986 came close to colliding with ours but was stopped cold. It was after that post-season flop — an out away from a flag only to have the Red Sox, of all people, spook them — that Roger Angell (no relation) inducted them into the corps:
“It’s about time we old-franchise inheritors admitted the Angelvolk to the ranks of the true sufferers — the flagellants, the hay-in-the-hair believers, the sungazers, the Indians-worshippers, the Cubs coo-coos, the Twins-keepers, the Red Sox Calvinists: the fans.”
And 1986 was a high point, relatively speaking. Little was heard from the Angels after Dave Henderson did them in. The next time they pricked the seamhead consciousness was 1995 when they built an impressive lead in the American League West and commenced to blow it to the Seattle Mariners. The Mariners refused to lose. The Angels had no problem with the concept.
This was a team whose uniform restyled frequently, whose caps switched shades and fonts every couple of years, whose actual name didn’t (and still doesn’t) hold steady. They once aspired to represent all of California. Now they were Anaheim’s team, giving them corporate synergy, one supposed, with hockey’s Mighty Ducks. If you could still be an Angels fan after all that, you deserved a trophy.
The Twins didn’t make it too hard on the Angels in the pennant tier. After losing the first game in the wacky Metrodome, Anaheim swept four. The fifth and final game was 13-5. Eighteen hits for the Halos. Adam Kennedy, the No. 9 hitter, smacked three home runs.
We were looking at an all-California series, the Angels and the Giants. Not My Giants. My Giants moved away after 1957. I didn’t have even the pretense of a hard choice here, National League affiliation notwithstanding. I was in the minority of fans who truly admired Barry Bonds’ skills despite his pungent personality (pre-revelations, mind you) and he was on a postseason roll. I felt some vindication for him — like he needed it — in the way he was obliterating his October ghosts. But he wasn’t my cause. The Angels were.
In late June, when the Mets held all my baseball attention and the Angels were just another team whose game last night ended too late for its score to be included in this edition, I was mostly thinking about Casey. Everything was about Casey. Every third song I heard was about Casey. The first one I adopted in tribute to him was Norman Greenbaum’s 1970 kitschy smash “Spirit In The Sky”. That was Casey. Casey was my spirit in the sky all summer long.
Come Game One of the 2002 World Series at Edison International Field of Anaheim (they also keep changing the name of where they play), the home team trotted out to their foul line to a loop of the opening strains of a 32-year-old pop hit. It was “Spirit In The Sky”. They did it for Gene Autry and to tie in to that whole Angels thing. But that was Casey’s song! Casey…MY spirit in the sky! Casey…MY angel!
Now it all made sense to me. I had latched onto the Angels not just because they beat the Yankees. They were the only team that could have been en route to that year’s World Championship. It was the year I said goodbye to Casey, hello to Hozzie and How About My Angels?
The Giants never stood a chance. Yes, it went seven games, and yes, the Giants were ahead by five runs in the sixth game and were eight outs from their first world championship since moving to San Francisco, but they never stood a chance. Not with my cats past and present aligning against them. Not with the powers of that silly Anaheim Rally Monkey being reinforced 3,000 miles to the east by an array of unofficial rally monkeys that Stephanie rounded up from Pathmark. She found five different stuffed monkeys and placed them strategically around the TV.
Hozzie grabbed one and made it his first pet.
The Angels, if you’ve forgotten (that Series got terrible ratings), stormed back from down 5-0 in the seventh inning to win 6-5 in Game Six. One night later, John Lackey, Brendan Donnelly, Frankie Rodriguez and Troy Percival pitched them to the finish line in Game Seven.
Funny thing about Percival. Back in the spring after we had acquired Mo Vaughn from these very Angels (for Appier), there was a tabloid tussle between Mo and the reliever. I think Percival, who was a perennial leader among A.L. savers, had said something to the effect of we’re better off without Vaughn. It wasn’t really that harsh. Mo lashed out like a madman, going on about how he had “hardware” — the ’95 MVP award — and playoff appearances under his belt (among other weighty things). Out of loyalty to our new first baseman, I decided I disliked Troy Percival.
Now, on October 27, I was rooting like crazy for him and all those Angels Vaughn left behind. When Percival induced Kenny Lofton to fly to Darin Erstad for the Angels’ first world championship in the 41-year history of the franchise, I was as thrilled as anyone who’d barely given them a second thought a month earlier could be. But that’s what October’s for.
I’m not sure who Hozzie’s rooting for in this World Series. I’m sure he’ll let me know.
by Greg Prince on 23 October 2007 9:34 am 
| That little fellow with all the stripes is Hozzie when he was a kitten, in the fall of 2002. And that black and white bolster with ears on which he’s resting? That was his big brother Bernie, the cat gracious enough to share his space with an adoring newcomer. Several months after the passing of our beloved Casey, and with the Anaheim Angels’ march to the World Series serving as stirring backdrop, it was a blessing to have Hozzie make us a two-cat family again. |
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by Greg Prince on 22 October 2007 8:01 am The Cleveland Indians did us a great solid in the ALDS, so it is with genuine regret I bid them adieu from these October proceedings. We'll never forget the well-timed release of their flying insects and how they may have buzzed an entire immoral empire to its knees. Nice job, Tribe. You're welcome back in the postseason anytime.
For as long as I've been aware of them, the Indians have been approximately five parts ineptitude and one part heartbreak. All those years when Red Sox Nation (before it was incorporated as such) was whining about its record-setting despair, I always thought a fan base that had mostly winning marks compiled on its behalf didn't have nearly as much to complain about as those whose team was never anywhere near a pennant race. Having experienced the consecutive-year indignities of October 19, 2006 and September 30, 2007 has made me rethink that formula, but that's neither here nor there. The Tribe has come within eyelashes several times of reducing 1948 from millstone to milestone. Instead, people like my friend Jeff in Chicago and this fine blogger Joe Posnanski will have to endure a 60th anniversary of their last world championship in 2008. I feel very bad for people who have been loyal to a franchise their entire lengthy lifetimes (Jeff is 48, Mr. Posnanski is 40) with zero to show for it on the bottom line.
I feel bad, too, that Joel Skinner is a household word. No third base coach has ever or will ever become widely known for doing something that turned out well. Usually third base coaches are mentioned for sending a runner (or runners, as in the case of Rich Donnelly green-lighting Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew in Game One of the 2006 NLDS…ahhh). Skinner came up with his own excuse for ignominy by holding the swift Kenny Lofton at third while Manny Ramirez waited to play a bounce in left. Lofton probably would have tied Game Seven in Boston at three in the seventh and the Rockies might have been making different flight plans. Or the Red Sox would have won 11-3 instead of 11-2. Either way, damn shame for Cleveland.
Nice going for the Red Sox, however. If we can derive something parochially uplifting about their second pennant in four years (besides the inevitable phlegm globber in the face of an organization without any class whatsoever), it's that second and third acts do occur in baseball. If ever a franchise had a reason to wallow in disarray and self-pity, it was the Red Sox after the 2003 ALCS. I don't think my heart ever broke for another team the way it did when Aaron Boone denuded that knuckler from Tim Wakefield and cost Grady Little his posting.
We could have heard — as we have in the convenient mythology that trailed Mike Scioscia's home run off Dwight Gooden in 1988 — that the Red Sox went into a funk from which they never recovered, that it was a blow that cost Boston not just a pennant but its self-esteem and its future, that a promising era ended as soon as it began. But nertz to that, said ownership and management up north. They regrouped, made some moves, didn't give up, brought Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore together and broke their nagging championship drought. The Red Sox won a World Series, went to the playoffs the next year, overcame whatever ailed them in 2006 and are back in the Fall Classic this year. Memo to the Mets: Adversity doesn't have to kill you. It can make you stronger.
Somewhere Out West, in the meantime, there is a baseball team thawing out in anticipation of resuming its own great adventure. Remember the Colorado Rockies? Remember 7-0 in the postseason and 21-1 overall? Remember Kaz Matsui, Bob Apodaca, Clint Hurdle along with their non-Holy Books accomplices? Broadcast Network America is finally going to get to meet the National League champs. Will the Rockies be ready for their closeup? Why the heck not? They're 7-0 in the postseason, 21-1 overall. They've got Holliday and Helton and Jimenez and Tulowitzki and Taveras and Torrealba and Carroll and Corpas and Coors.
Plenty of Coors.
It seems like a million years ago, but it was only a dozen that I visited Coors Field for the first and, to date, only time. The Rockies were as big a deal in Denver routinely as they have been for the past month. They, like their ballpark (the National League's first retro number), were new and the novelty was alluring. Everybody wanted to go to a Rockies game in the summer of 1995. I wanted to go to a Rockies game. That I wasn't ordinarily in Denver didn't stop me because I had something going for me that I didn't often count as a bonus.
I worked for a beverage magazine. And beverage magazines run stories about beverage companies. And beverage companies that own a minority share of baseball teams and the naming rights for baseball stadiums…I couldn't discriminate against them, could I?
No, I couldn't. Coors Brewing deserved my close attention. They deserved to have me travel to Denver…to Golden, Colorado, actually. They deserved to have me tour their brewery. To interview their people. To check out their field.
Coors Field. Home of, yes, the Colorado Rockies, but also SandLot Brewery. It was the first microbrewery built into a ballpark in the United States. It was owned and operated by mainstream Coors but definitely tilted in the direction of the craft beer movement that was gripping everybody's imagination in the business in the mid-'90s (the Blue Moon brand was developed and launched at SandLot). Denver is a big craft beer town. It's home to loads of brewpubs and plays host every fall to the Great American Beer Festival. It was, thus, a natural to attach a working brewery/sports bar to Coors Field.
Only natural that I'd want to check it out. Just doin' my job, right?
Actually, I was doing my job back at the Golden plant when they took me through the inner workings, gave me a great overview, prepared me for my meetings the next day. They may have handed me a beer or two. I know I really wanted some water. I was thirsty in that way that only water can quench. Never did get any water between the time my PR guides drove me east from Golden to LoDo (lower downtown Denver), site of Coors Field.
I had grown only thirstier for water when we were met by the brewmaster of SandLot before that night's Rockies-Cubs game. The brewmaster was a serious fellow named Wayne. Brewmasters are all serious fellows. They make beer, but to them it's science. Wayne may have been brewing beer adjacent to the first base line of a Major League baseball stadium, but that was just window dressing. Ditto the happening restaurant that fronted his lab. Wayne's world was making the best beer he could.
Party on, Wayne.
Wayne showed us the works, explained how this was a fantastic developmental lab for Coors, how instead of the minute pilot brewery in which the company used to experiment, it now had the “pots and pans” to create beers on a practical level. In the midst of America’s fascination with craft brewing, Coors could have it both ways.
I really wanted that glass of water, but Wayne was on a roll. As we continued to wander backstage, I had tuned out Wayne's technical talk altogether and stopped taking notes for what wasn’t going to be more than a sidebar anyway. I wanted water and then baseball, in that order. Wayne wouldn’t pause long enough for me to get the first and I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever see the second.
There is, however an upside to being the audience for a brewmaster. He wants you to sample his work. And because sitting at the bar to do so would be too pedestrian, Wayne wanted me to try something out of the pigtail. The pigtail, so named for its resemblance to the tail of a pig, is a stop along the pipeline in a brewery. It’s where the brewer can drain a few drops to test out his recipe, make sure the batch is okey-doke.
Wayne grabbed a beer clean glass (they have to names for everything) and tapped the pigtail. He handed me my first beverage in hours, a fresh, cold Squeeze Play Wheat.
It was beer, it was there, I got used to it…and it was the single, best beverage I ever put tongue to.
Wayne went on about the merits of wheat beer, how it’s the perfect summer beer because it’s so refreshing. Wayne, my man, you’re preaching to the choir. With my beer clean glass suddenly beer empty, I tugged on the tail and refilled it. Wayne continued to explain the unique process behind making a wheat beer. Uh-huh. Oh yeah. I see, I see, I said.
Meanwhile, I thought, Ohmigod, this is fantastic. I love wheat beer. Wheat beer is the best beer ever. Screw water. Screw diet cola. Wheat beer is my beverage of choice from now on. And I’ve got my own personal supply right frigging here!
This pigtail was the greatest invention of all time, no doubt about it. It was better than a water cooler. The beer was so cold, so fresh, so refreshing, so life-affirming, so relaxing. Can I just stay here and you guys can pick me up later? Standing and drinking in Denver, this beer transported me to a whole other mile-high club.
Membership truly has its privileges. As a member in good standing of the beverage community — the brotherhood of bev — I could lurk in the crevices that mere civilians could only walk by unknowing. Poor fools, these mortals. They were not privy to the pigtail. They were up along the concourses laying down four bucks for a plastic cup of crude, mass-produced beer. Even the customers who had the good sense to drop by the SandLot before first pitch, they had to pay money to a bartender or a waitress for a beer. Not me. I had a pig by the tail, and I was not letting go.
Coors to you, Wayne!
I was pretty drunk. OK, I was probably just pretty buzzed, but it was as tangible as it was rare. I hardly ever drank to excess, not even to effect. But the Pigtail Accessibility Act of 1995 changed all that. Who in my shoes would resist?
Somebody noticed time was moving even if I had no desire to. Why didn’t I think to bring handcuffs so I could chain myself to pipe that led to the pigtail? C’mon Wayne, tell me about the brew kettles again, you old dog.
One of my PR guides looked at the tickets and said we should get going. Oh yeah, baseball. I liked baseball and I liked ballparks didn’t I? I sure did, but on that hot August night 5,280 feet above sea level and several Squeeze Play Wheats to the wind, I liked my beer most of all.
by Greg Prince on 19 October 2007 8:40 pm If you’re down to remembering what it was like to remember everything that had come before, then it’s the penultimate Flashback Friday of 2007 at Faith and Fear in Flushing.
I was having a nice, friendly conversation with someone I’d known a long time in the fall of 2002, mostly but not primarily about baseball. I’m pretty sure he brought it up. My friend, someone I’d known for ages, was empathetic toward the Mets and didn’t like the Yankees but wasn’t and isn’t what you’d call a baseball fan. So when I made some casual analogy between a certain murderous, genocidal war criminal who attempted to wipe out an entire people in the 1930s and ’40s and George Steinbrenner, he was alarmed. You know Greg, he said with genuine concern in his voice, I think you take this much too seriously. Maybe you should get help.
Maybe you should get lost.
I didn’t say that. I like this person (my friend, not Hitler). And I understand that someone who isn’t a Mets fan would find what I said alarming, insensitive or even disgraceful. But that, I realized, is what you get for talking about the Mets with people who aren’t Mets fans.
So I decided not to do that anymore. Well, not forever. That would be rather confining and almost impossible. But that October, unburdened by a postseason (Mets long gone, Yankees recently eliminated by those helpful Anaheim Angels), I began to look toward December, toward my turning 40. Was there something I wanted more than anything for that milestone birthday nearly five years ago?
Yes, I decided. I wanted to be surrounded by Mets fans and only Mets fans. I wanted to make insensitive comparisons and not have to explain them. I wanted to speak in shorthand for a couple of hours, to drop names like Sergio Ferrer and Richie Hebner and not receive a blank stare in response. I wanted to transport a little summer into winter.
That’s all I wanted for my 40th birthday. And I got it. On Saturday afternoon, December 14, 2002, I gathered people from just about every chronological stage of my life into one room, at Bobby Valentine’s restaurant in Corona. The only thing the 20 or so of us had in common was a love of the Mets.
That’s all you needed to get past the velvet rope of my mind.
It was an awesome day. It was an awesome experience planning this thing and an amazing feeling that so many RSVPs came back yes. I felt a little silly reaching out on my own behalf…
The Mets and I mark 40th birthdays in 2002. The Mets made a mess of theirs. Help me do better with mine.
On Saturday, 1-4 PM, December 14th, you are invited to Bobby V’s in Corona (in the Ramada Inn across the Grand Central Parkway from Shea) to my 40th Birthday Luncheon and Tom Martin Celebrity Roast.
Why you?
Because ever since I was sentient enough to know better, the one thing I’ve always cared about is baseball — baseball and the Mets, as Terry Cashman would put it. As I am happiest when I am wallowing in Mets baseball (yes, even in 2002), I wanted to share this self-aggrandizing occasion with others who can relate. This is a Mets Fans Only event.
Surely you’ve spent birthdays and holidays in the company of your family and other loved ones who just stare at you when you blurt out the name “Duffy Dyer.” Well, I want this birthday to be all about Duffy Dyer. And Ron Hodges. And Luis Rosado. I want there to be arguments over backup catchers. Or blissful agreement regarding utility infielders. Teddy Martinez, Bob Bailor or John Valentin? That’s up to you.
The point is I want baseball for my 40th birthday (which is actually New Year’s Eve, but I’ll be early for once in my life). What better way to have it than with my fellow sufferers (and occasional exulters) at the most baseball place I can think of in the middle of December? Trust me — even if you didn’t care for Bobby V the manager, you’ll go nuts for Bobby V’s the restaurant. (He invented the wrap, you know.)
Your coming would mean a great deal to me. The whole afternoon can’t be any more embarrassing than last season was.
…but I guess I wasn’t the only Mets fan who wanted a Mets day in December.
Stephanie (who not only didn’t discourage this self-indulgence but encouraged it wholeheartedly; I love her so much) and I secured a cake and put together gift bags featuring cans of Rheingold and packs of baseball cards. I wrote up what was supposed to be a brief program that went on for fifteen pages, classed up by a cover that mimicked the Mets’ own 40th anniversary logo, engineered by my talented art director friend Jim. Folks showed up with some incredibly thoughtful presents — an autographed, game-used Rafael Santana bat; a personally inscribed copy of Lawrence Ritter’s The Glory of Their Times; a set of 1977 Royal Crown Cola ballplayer cans; publications heralding the coming of the brand new 1962 New York Mets; a stack of impossible-to-find Rainmakers CDs; a portable keyboard brought along for the day so the bearer, a wonderful musician, could lead a singalong of “Meet The Mets” (thus earning that man the enduring and endearing sobriquet “Jane Jarvis”) — but what meant the most to me was their incredibly thoughtful presence.
These were people with whom I’d gone to school, worked alongside, exchanged impassioned e-mails, engaged in frantic trade-deadline phone conversations, cheered, high-fived and commiserated. These were my Mets friends. These were my friends. They came from Long Island and Queens and Brooklyn and the Bronx and Westchester and New Jersey and Maryland and California, for goodness sake. They came from the ’70s and the ’80s and the ’90s and the young century. They came from Shea Stadium, which was both spiritually inside us and visible across the Grand Central outside Bobby V’s front window.
I’m not a party person, so I had no idea what to do beyond reserving the room and ordering lunch. I don’t think I’d been in on the strategizing of a birthday party since Pin the Tail on the Donkey was de rigueur. I wondered if I needed to do something else, to have something else, to plan something else. I think we did all right just being Mets fans in December for a few hours.
I never had a day quite like that celebration of my first 40 years on Earth, practically my first 40 years as a Mets fan.
But I’ve had a lot of days close to it, beginning February 16, 2005, the day Jason and I began Faith and Fear in Flushing. Every day in this space, particularly the days that come after the end of one season and before the beginning of the next one, is kind of like that Saturday afternoon. It’s Mets fans and nothing but Mets fans being Mets fans. And it, too, is awesome.
It is with no offense to my family that is Mets tone-deaf, nor the other good people I encounter in the course of a day, a week, a month or a year who have mostly other things in their heads or on their plates, but I must declare the camaraderie and bonhomie that I share with my fellow Mets fans via and because of FAFIF is something beyond compare in my life. This blog has brought me into contact with a stratum of Mets fans I never knew…and brought me closer to those I already did.
Boy, am I happy about that.
Sometimes it’s a celebration. Sometimes it’s a wake. Always it’s a privilege to be a Mets fan among Mets fans like you. Thank you for accepting our invitation to this party. Thank you, too, for staying.
I’m going to be 45 this December. I don’t need to organize a gathering of Mets fans I know and love to make me or any of us feel as if we belong. I’d say all of us together have it covered like a tarpaulin draping the infield on a gray Friday afternoon.
You may have noticed I tend to quote lyrics and dialogue and whatever else pops into my head and apply it to baseball. To end this final baseball Flashback of 2007 — which like so many before it has dealt on some level with the subject of growing up and growing older as a Mets fan — I guess I’ll just quote myself from that program I wrote for my 40th birthday party. Even if it’s five years out of date, and even if you weren’t with us at Bobby V’s that Saturday in late 2002, I think its essence still applies to you if you are one of the Faithful at Faith and Fear in Flushing:
I love, when all is said and done, my forgetting to grow out of baseball and the Mets. The thing I loved when I was six and sixteen and twenty-six and thirty-six and now on the eve of the big four-oh looks like it’s here to stay. Don’t you think?
I love that you’ve been a big part of it for me and love that you cared enough to share this realization with me. Thank you and arrive home safely.
***
Next Friday: The 2007 Flashback countdown concludes with a trip to a long, long time ago and the No. 1 Song of All-Time.
by Greg Prince on 19 October 2007 8:38 pm 
| Self-aggrandize much? This logo was conceived for a just cause, the gathering of dear friends and Mets fans five years ago this December on the eve of my fortieth birthday. I simply provided the rationale and the Rheingold. |
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by Greg Prince on 19 October 2007 6:16 am Being No. 2 in the nation (No. 1 by the judgment of impartial computers) was fun while it lasted, but my USF Bulls obviously don’t care for northern lights. While you were busy watching The Office or the season finale of Mad Men or Game Five from Cleveland (or perhaps not watching television at all), I was watching my alma mater’s short-lived national championship dream get sacked by a hard-charging Rutgers defense and run over by the remarkable Ray Rice in Piscataway on ESPN Thursday night. We lost 30-27. Maybe we can still win the Big East and grab a BCS berth. Maybe we’ll get another one of those muffler or pizza bowls. We won’t be topping Ohio State anytime soon.
For about an hour, an hour-and-a-half, I was extraordinarily bummed out. Then I remembered this whole thing was pretty new to me and I never expected to have the green and gold candle relit so brightly this autumn by a program that didn’t exist when I was going to school down there. It’s been exciting reconnecting to my USF roots, a thousand-plus miles and twenty-plus years removed. I’ll keep tabs on my team the rest of the way. Their season, unlike another I could mention, continues with honor.
If anybody cares, Flashback Friday will be up later today, and then Jason and I will be retiring our consecutive-days-posted streak at 213, having blogged daily between March 21 and October 19. We’ll be around throughout the offseason, just not every day.
by Greg Prince on 18 October 2007 8:39 pm I experienced an epiphany one day in 2007. It was Wednesday, May 30. I was kind of punchy, having fallen asleep on the reclining love seat in the living room after coming home from the Armando-Jose-Delgado twelve-inning thriller of May 29, and perhaps a little loopy from the fumes of the fire that broke out in another apartment in our building the following morning. I was tired, but I was alert to the situation at hand.
Over the previous few days, everything Met was working perfectly. We had swept the Marlins in Florida and then humbled the Giants in one of the great games Shea or any stadium will ever see. The Braves were in pieces. The Yankees, for that matter, were in pieces. The Red Sox were burying them. I endured what seemed like hours of monotonous Richard Neer through a long car ride the Sunday before just so I could keep hearing the FAN updates: Mets sweep, Yanks swept. Braves swept, Red Sox sweep. Everything we could ever want was coming true.
Even the fire on Wednesday, all things considered, wasn’t so bad.
I was still worn out on the afternoon of the 30th when, having decided everything was as close to copasetic as could be, I lit out for the nearest King Kullen to pick up a few groceries. I was sporting a Mets shirt and a Mets cap. This was not unusual. As I pulled into the supermarket lot, I saw somebody wearing a Yankees cap. That was not unusual either, nor was the familiar feeling of clenching that I’d been doing for a decade. Oh brother. I wonder what he’s going to say.
Then the epiphany: That fucker couldn’t say anything to me, not one goddamn thing! This was way beyond all the self-esteem grasping I’d been doing on and off since the late ’90s when I was prepared to answer any charges that the Mets suck with a veritable graph demonstrating that consecutive winning seasons and regular Wild Card contention meant, in fact, the Mets didn’t suck. I no longer had to make the case. The Mets were making it for me. They made it pretty clear throughout 2006 and now they had sealed it. The Mets didn’t suck. I didn’t suck for being their fan. We were now the arbiters of who sucked.
After the fire was the most satisfied I would be in 2007.
***
Five-Year Plans didn’t exactly yield long-term results for the Soviet Union, so there isn’t much sense in attempting to execute one now. Still, I thought I was in the midst of one.
We started this blog in 2005, a year that had a little of this, a little of that where the Mets were concerned: first year of Pedro and Carlos and Omar and Willie; last year of Mike; emergence of David and Jose; a whisper of Wild Card contention; a whiff of disappointment…a great way for us to get our typing fingers wet.
Then 2006 and the fast start and the obviously impending division title and the drama of a postseason with its highs and its lows and its lingering beauty…truly a privilege to blog.
Last winter, it dawned on me what an opportunity we had here. A season like 2005, a season like 2006 and, eventually, unbeatable storylines for 2008 (the last year of Shea) and 2009 (the first year of Citi). For the first five years of this endeavor, I theorized, it couldn’t get any better.
And smack in the middle? 2007? Of course this was going to be the world championship year.
It never, ever, ever occurred to me that we would have something of historic proportions to blog about in 2007 and it would not involve Met success. I just assumed the next logical step for a franchise that had come within one extra flare — just one — a gork, a ground ball with eyes, a dying quail…just one more dying quail of the World Series would in fact be in the World Series. Once we made the World Series, logically we would win it.
And wouldn’t that be something to write home about?
***
Well, we got a memorable storyline, all right, with a nice little twist there at the end. Nice little twist of the knife. Alanis Morissette would call it ironic. I don’t think it was irony. I don’t know that it was tragedy. I do know I would have chosen a different ending. Wouldn’t have we all?
But mostly I know that I knew very little about what was coming when this year began. And since I do know I was not alone in feeling this way, I know something greater was at work than sorry arms and aging legs.
For dousing my fiery passion, for altering my secret Five-Year Plan, for derailing our September and leaving our October blank, for showing once again that none of us — none of us — knows our elbow from our Aase, it is with great reluctance that I announce our Nikon Camera Player of the Year for 2007 is Uncertainty.
Why Uncertainty? Because you just never know.
***
Uncertainty takes its place alongside our previous Faith and Fear Nikon Camera Players of the Year, radiomates Gary Cohen and Howie Rose in 2005 and Shea Stadium in 2006, for having defined its season like no other entity. They broke up Gary and Howie and they’re going to tear down Shea, but Uncertainty isn’t going anywhere soon. Surely we learned that much in 2007.
***
When did you know? I mean really know, deep down in your heart know? When did you give up on your expectations? Surely you had them. We all had them. How could we not? Even if there was enough to make you suspicious, how could you not believe these Mets were going to leap that little hump that had separated them from the World Series in 2006?
Did you see it coming in Spring Training? I’d be self-aggrandizing my powers of prophecy to tell you I saw it, but when we were losing Grapefruit game after Grapefruit game, I had a dark little inkling that something was awry. But I dismissed it as quickly as it arose. Ah, these games don’t count. Why am I sitting up late stressing over Chan Ho Park?
Did you see it coming in April? When we weren’t sweeping the Nationals by throwing our gloves on the field? Sure, it was irritating losing games to the Braves, but not beating the Nationals on a regular basis at Shea…shouldn’t they have been easy pickin’s?
Did you see it coming in May? A little? We took first in May. We peaked in May. There were afternoons when we played like children in the best way possible, grinning and winning and surprising ourselves by how much we could accomplish in the course of a springtime afternoon. But there were days and nights when we were downright ordinary. Yet these were the 2007 Mets! The heirs to the 2006 Mets! The hairless 2007 Mets! They got buzzcuts and they started winning!
The night that followed the afternoon that followed the fire that followed the Delgado walkoff that followed Benitez balking Reyes home…we were shut down completely by Barry Zito who we were supposed to get, as we welcomed back Guillermo Mota who was supposed to be gone.
I never did care for those buzzcuts.
***
June wasn’t a week old when we all saw it coming. This was the month with all the playoff opponents: Detroit, L.A., Yankees, Twins…preceded by Arizona and Philadelphia, teams that lacked only priors. The Mets played 18 consecutive games against the lot of them and lost 14. Panic was in the air.
But hey, we’re the Mets! We’re in first place! Sooner or later, you know we’ll snap out of it. We won a division last year. We came within a game of the Series. We play Takin’ Care of Business after wins because we take care of business.
The power of positive thinking seemed to right the ship. We swept Oakland and kicked dirt on St. Louis, our erstwhile October tormentor. Then we boogied on down to Philadelphia and won two on a Friday and one on a Saturday. I saw the first and third of them. With eight of nine won, I was giddy gliding toward home on NJ Transit. I had brought my iPod for the train trip and kept playing Bachman-Turner Overdrive as I rolled through Central and North Jersey on June 30, one month after the fire.
I wonder if I’m celebrating too much too soon, I actually thought. I wonder if I’m enjoying this to excess. Maybe I shouldn’t be too happy. We haven’t actually won anything. Maybe I should stop indulging in personal triumphalism. Maybe I should just play “Takin’ Care of Business” once.
Nah.
***
In 2007, I had my moments of fright that I was jinxing the Mets, that I was letting myself get ahead of the situation. But I didn’t worry as much as in past years about it. I didn’t want to. I wanted to enjoy this particular ride. I didn’t want to believe anything could stop it.
I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing. Three losses to the ne’er-do-well Rockies. Jose Reyes, that vibrant blur of enthusiasm and line drives, dogging it to first in Houston. John Maine giving the lousy Reds a large lead right away. Losing in San Diego. Struggling with the Nationals again. July was supposed to put June behind us. It didn’t. For two months, we played sub-.500 ball. Yet we led the division by three games.
***
I saw the future on August 11. I saw the Mets gift-wrap it, tie a bow around it and prepare to give it away. This I couldn’t deny. I saw the Mets spit up a game to the Marlins they had no business regurgitating. I’d already been on edge. A loss that could have been avoided in Milwaukee…a bad call setting the tone in Chicago…more frustration with Atlanta…and now we couldn’t beat Florida at home.
On August 11, we led the Marlins 3-1. Glavine was pitching in the seventh, facing the bottom of the order. He gave up a hit. He recorded an out. Then he was lifted for Mota.
In a matter of minutes, it was Marlins 5 Mets 3.
Yet the Mets, the Mets of 2006-07 persevered off Justin Miller: Milledge; Castro; Reyes; Castillo; two runs were built in a blink. The Mets tied it up. Sure, David Wright fouled out and Jose was thrown out trying to tag up (another lousy call), but that’s OK. We’re the Mets. They’re the Marlins. We just stuck a dagger in their heart. We’ll finish the job later. We’ll take care of business.
Heilman gave up two in the eighth and we lost 7-5. To the Marlins.
***
I’m OK with the idea that this isn’t the season we’ve been waiting for. Not happy about it. Not satisfied with it. Not necessarily resigned to the notion that it won’t be, because it’s August 12 and 46 games remain and we are in first and I still believe we are capable of staying in first, at least as capable as anybody else is of replacing us there. But as Miguel Cabrera drove home Cody Ross and Hanley Ramirez in the top of the eighth Saturday night, as I watched from an upper deck box another late-inning score turn away from the Mets’ favor, as I considered how most of the past ten weeks have played out, as I took in the width, depth and breadth of the 2007 season to date, I realized that the Mets truly and really might not make the playoffs.
Not just might not win the World Series. Not just might not win the pennant. Not just might not win the first round. Not just might not win the division. Not just might not win the Wild Card.
The Mets might not make the playoffs in 2007.
—Me, 8/12/07
***
There was a time in the same month in which they executed that which is now known as The Worst Collapse Ever that the Mets were a lock. They had stumbled so unceremoniously so many times, most notably at the end of August in Philadelphia (takin’ care of business, indeed), but they bounced back. They were the Superball of baseball. They’d had a seven-game lead, let it melt, and chilled long enough to build it all the way back to seven by September 12. The Mets reeled off a 10-2 spurt. They were out of reach. Let the Magic Number countdowns and playoff lotteries and Met-a Culpas commence!
How dare I have thought something so right could go irretrievably wrong?
***
I did pretty well at being a student in first grade and second grade. It was a matter of pride and, to be honest, a matter of fact, that I was, for two years running, known (known, mind you) as “the smartest kid in the class”. But there was a spring day in second grade when I felt really dumb. I don’t remember what the day’s assignment was, but our teacher, Mrs. Cohen, told us we had to complete it quietly at our desks before we could have recess.
Everybody finished before I did. They had recess. I lingered and lagged, occasionally looking out the window to notice everybody else, none of whom was considered “the smartest kid in the class,” running around and yelling and tossing a ball or something. My assignment remained undone. It was getting late, so I hustled to finally finish. When I handed my paper to Mrs. Cohen, who was ready to move on to other lessons, I asked if I could have a little recess time outside. Sure, she said, go ahead, but don’t take too long.
I went outside. Everybody else had come in. I was all alone. I ran around in a circle a couple of times so I felt I was getting what was coming to me. Then I went back to my desk.
The first-place Mets who were swept three by the second-place Phillies; lost two of three to the fourth-place Nationals; blew leads of 3-0 and 7-4 before losing in ten innings to the last-place Marlins; were swept three more by the fourth-place Nationals; dropped a makeup game to the sub-.500 Cardinals; and lost two of three on the last weekend to the last-place Marlins reminded me of that spring afternoon in second grade.
They brought it back a lot.
***
It was exactly four months after the fire that the season ended. After the fire, I was full of certainty. There was nothing after the season except certain emptiness. Willie Randolph and Omar Minaya, the certified geniuses of 2006, had reverted to politicians, making the talk show rounds and insisting that no, the statistics didn’t tell the story, the losing twelve of seventeen wasn’t the complete picture, that this was still a good team that had endured a bad stretch, that the young players had just gained valuable pennant race experience for the first time. Randolph and Minaya had just watched their party lose both houses of Congress and were now in front of microphones telling anyone who was buying that the pro-Phillies election was just a blip. Really, they said, we’re living in a great Met era.
The Phillies played. The Yankees played. The Mets scattered. Shea went unoccupied. Citi Field went up, brick by potentially lucrative brick, but its foundation had been shaken. We really don’t know if it will be the home of winners come 2009 or if it will be just a pricey novelty for a little while. Willie Randolph was retained, more for the appearance of stability, I’m convinced (the team’s owners are politicians, too), than for anything he can offer as a manager. Tom Glavine declined his option for 2008, received $3 million to go away and didn’t offer a definitive plan for next year. It’s not impossible that he returns. God help us if he does.
In May when Cliff Floyd came back with the Cubs and June when Mike Piazza came back with the A’s, I heard each man go on the record lauding Mets fans’ judgment. Yes, they each said in so many words, they can be harsh when you fail, but when you come through for them, they really make you feel as if you did something great. The Shea faithful are faithful even if a segment thereof is not the most patient of sects. We can argue the merits of booing your own until we are orange and blue in the face, but who would have told anybody on the premises on September 30 that you’re sending the wrong message by booing the Hall of Fame pitcher who just hit the opposing pitcher with the bases loaded to force in the fifth run of the most important first inning of the year?
I didn’t boo Tom Glavine when he left after recording one out in nine chances. I was too busy cursing him and cursing myself for having been suckered into supporting him, publicly no less. I was certain I had gotten past my smoldering distaste for this ex- but never quite former Brave. I thought five years as a Met makes you a Met. In the end, it didn’t.
Glavine took lots of heat for not seeming hot and bothered that he turned in, almost inarguably, the worst pitching performance in a crucial game in Mets history. If the timing didn’t make it bad enough, the credentials of the pitcher made it unfathomably horrible. But there he was, the 303-game winner, in front of reporters, showered and powdered and explicitly “not devastated” by his cratering.
As the Mets offered themselves up to the media after they missed the playoffs, SNY showed each of them being true to themselves. Tom wasn’t devastated. Paul was one question from bopping Gary Apple. David held the emotional fort as long as he could. “Look at the way each of them is dealing with it,” Stephanie observed. “Glavine’s in denial, Lo Duca’s defensive and Wright wants to cry.”
Denial was the least pretty reaction of them all. Of course you give up five and leave three on in the first, you’re going to hear it from the crowd. But I cannot believe that a pitcher of Tom Glavine’s caliber — saluted as he’d been as he approached and surpassed 300 victories — had managed to build up so little goodwill in five Mets seasons that he didn’t rate the slightest sympathy from a representative sample of 54,453. A 303-game winner who wasn’t steeling himself with denial before he hit the first base foul line would have received that much. Maine, Perez, Pelfrey…freaking Brian Lawrence wouldn’t have been booed the way Glavine was, wouldn’t be regretted as Glavine will always be for his spectacular fade down the stretch in 2007.
I’m not glad he faded. I wish he had succeeded. I’d be perfectly willing to continue to indulge the illusion that I liked Tom Glavine being on the Mets up to and including November 1 and the seventh game of this year’s World Series if necessary. But on some perverse if impractical level, I’m thrilled that I didn’t have to root like hell for him one more batter than necessary. There’s a limit to the well-worn laundry argument. We sell bits and pieces of our soul to cheer on players we never wanted here. I once sat in the left field boxes and yelled “C’MON VINNY!” at Vince Coleman. I put my hands together for Mike Stanton. I could, for a time, look at Guillermo Mota in a Mets uniform without queasiness. And I gave my all for Tom Glavine because that was what I was supposed to do. I stood in my living room on the night of August 5 and applauded his landmark achievement. I applauded him a week later at Shea when his employers honored him with 300 golf balls and other tokens of appreciation.
We do sell our souls from time to time. Baseball’s personnel pool is too fluid not to. But I think a fan has to draw the line somewhere. I didn’t draw it firmly for Vince Coleman or Tommy Herr or Bobby Bonilla or Mike Stanton or Michael Tucker or Guillermo Mota. I draw it, finally, until the tip of the chalk breaks to keep Tom Glavine away from my heart and my head for the rest of my days. You will not read me rationalize ever again on behalf of Tom Glavine as a New York Met. He has lost his rationalization privileges.
I’ve taken that much of my soul back.
***
Glavine was a major culprit in the Worst Collapse Ever. He wasn’t the only one. The anti-Glavine, my precious Jose Reyes, was useless when it mattered most. Delgado’s hip pointed the wrong way just when the rest of him seemed to have figured things out. Nobody played second base more than 50 games the whole year. Lo Duca was angry more than he was good. Shawn Green leaned on his bat in the on-deck circle like he was waiting for a bus…and then stepped to the plate as if he had just missed a fleet of them. Really, where most of the Mets were concerned, the ineptitude was viral.
Wright the Valiant was on base the entire second half, but he couldn’t carry an entire offense on his back. Nor could Beltran the Magnificent, nor Alou the Astounding. These three, the 3-4-5 hitters almost every game, hit .352 combined in September. And it didn’t really help all that much. The only consistent pitcher — starter or reliever — in September was Pedro Martinez, and it would have taken a medical miracle to have wrenched an additional inning from him in any of his five sterling starts.
When even Pedro Martinez overcoming anatomical odds can’t rescue you, you are beyond hope.
***
There was a moment in September that was nice to see. I mean just nice. It was during one of the five wins in the final seventeen games, the one in which Ollie Perez held the Marlins at bay for eight innings, the kind of endurance generally unheard of from the Met rotation in 2007. With a large lead, Willie pulled him and the camera caught Ollie sitting down, collecting his thoughts when Jeff Conine walked over and shook his hand.
Jeff Conine? Jeff Conine who’d been a Met for about a month? Jeff Conine who contributed virtually nothing to this pennant drive? Jeff Conine who was about to retire no matter what the Mets did during his abbreviated tenure here?
Yeah, Jeff Conine. I wondered if Oliver Perez and Jeff Conine had done more than nod at each other since Conine joined the Mets. But there he was, being very much a veteran toward a younger player. I liked that. I really liked that. I suppose I liked Conine, too, though I never got much of a look at him as a Met. Nobody did.
I liked Castillo turning double plays and Anderson clubbing doubles and triples and, before them, Easley and Valentin contributing with smarts and base hits (Valentin could manage this ballclub someday, it occurred to me recently). I like older players, probably because they’re the ones closest in age to me. I like them a lot.
I just don’t need to see as many as often in 2008.
***
It was an imperfect roster, it is now obvious. There was almost nobody in the universally accepted prime of his career. The older guys broke down. The younger guys broke down, too, and had the nasty habit of not being fully formed (except for Wright). Kids like Gotay and Gomez and the tantalizing Lastings Milledge went untested at Randolph’s prerogative. Should have they played more? Would have they been the difference? Can’t tell without it having happened. I know I wasn’t particularly excited about entrusting our championship fate to a bunch of kids. But that’s because I thought we had a championship fate. We did not.
Remember the Mets’ rebuilding program of maybe three months in 2003 and three months in 2004? Remember the obtuse “Catch the Energy” come-on? Remember Jim Duquette’s retrofitted rationalization that Shea Stadium was a pitcher’s park, thus let’s load up on whiz-bang defenders and speedsters? It was enough of a strategy to allow me to bite my tongue when Vladimir Guerrero could have been had for a song in the winter of ’04 but was passed on. No, I said, we don’t need the best player in the National League. It’s not part of the plan.
What plan? There’s never any plan with this team. Or maybe there are just failed plans. “Catch the Energy” fizzled and next thing we knew, we were signing free agents. Good free agents. Game-changing free agents. I’m not complaining. But then we gave up on the youth movement, save for two positions. We had to have experience because we were so close. We were going to win the World Series in 2007. We needed to do that with Shawn Green and Moises Alou and an array of second basemen, many of whom could remember when Chevy Chase was boffo box office.
I don’t know that there is such a thing as rebuilding. It may very well be a polite euphemism for sucking without spending. But someday I hope to see the Citi Field Mets bring up some outfielders and let them play.
***
Magic Number countdowns throughout Metsopotamia stalled at 4. Anxious e-mails regarding potential playoff ticket acquisition halted. And unlike May 30, I didn’t want to wear a Mets shirt or a Mets cap or a Mets anything ever again — at least not right away. I wasn’t worried about what the lunkheads at King Kullen might say. I just didn’t want any part of us so soon. It took me more than a week after the season disintegrated to pluck so much as a faux Vaughn tee out of a pile of moderately viable garments to wear around the house. I preferred not being seen in it when I ventured outside to get the mail.
I’m back in my usual wardrobe since the Yankees were eliminated. Their losing helped. It always does.
***
I’m still superstitious about baseball. I was superstitious on May 17 when I realized my sitting patterns were key as the Mets mounted their furious five-run comeback on the Cubs. I was superstitious on September 29 when John Maine came oh-so-close to pitching the first…DON’T EVEN THINK IT…in Mets history. But my conviction that my thoughts and actions have an impact on the doings down below feels a little misplaced. There weren’t enough good thoughts in the world to save the Mets in September. There weren’t enough precautionary thoughts to block out all that expectation we had accumulated in advance of the reality of 2007.
I used to be more superstitious about baseball. Now I would just as soon be surprised by five-run ninths and not expect a blessed thing.
***
Is this still the golden age of Mets baseball? Was 2006 the norm and 2007 the aberration? Were Willie and Omar right, not just politic, in selling their storyline that a historic collapse could happen to anybody?
The 1970 Reds were the original Big Red Machine: Rose, Perez, Bench of course, but also Lee May and Bobby Tolan and Tommy Helms and rookie shortstop Davey Concepcion shunting aside Woody Woodward and kid pitchers named Wayne Simpson and Don Gullett and a 20-game winner in Jim Merritt and a formidable bullpen led by Wayne Granger and Clay Carroll. The ’70 Reds raced out in front of the pack the way the ’06 Mets did. The ’70 Reds fell a little short the way the ’06 Mets did. The ’70 Reds loomed as a powerhouse for years to come the way the ’06 Mets did.
The ’71 Reds went 79-83 and wound up in fourth. Their collapse was complete and early. But the ’71 Reds were an aberration in the history of Cincinnati baseball. Joe Morgan was acquired — terrible announcer but a heck of a second baseman — and the ’72 Reds won a pennant and the ’73 Reds won a division and the ’74 Reds won 98 games and the ’75 and ’76 Reds were World Champions, considered one of the great dynasties ever.
The 2005 White Sox shared several of the same characteristics as the 1970 Reds and the 2006 Mets, except the Sox went all the way; first time since 1917. Can’t think of a fan base (other than ours, naturally) that deserved it more. They could be forgiven for assuming a repeat was in order in ’06. Those White Sox had a great start, too. But it didn’t last.
“Still,” wrote film critic and South Side superfan Richard Roeper in the afterword to Sox and the City, “there was that ferocious lineup, and just enough good outings from the starting staff to make you believe that at any moment, the Sox were going to shift into a higher gear and blow away” the competition. “With all the distractions and disappointments,” Roeper wrote of the year-after hangover, White Sox fans still expected a finishing kick that would push the Chicagoans into another October. It never came.
“That’s what made things so frustrating,” Roeper explained. “The Sox didn’t have to be great in the last two months to get into the playoffs; they had to be average. They played hard, but they seemed to be lacking a sense of fire and urgency.”
In 2007, two years removed from their championship season, the White Sox went 72-90 and wound up in fourth.
***
Of all the sadness attendant to The Worst Collapse Ever, one of the saddest events was the death of glorious 2006. Even if ’07 proves to be a bump in the historical road, there is now separation. It no longer feels seamless. ’07 was a continuation of ’06. ’07 was going to perfect ’06. It would take all the robustness and add a couple of flourishes. Everybody who was good in ’06 was going to become great; everybody great was going to become awesome. We’d win more than 97 games. We’d win more than a division series. We’d rearrange Shea’s upper right field wall one last time. And we’d be takin’ care of business every day.
“All season long,” Roeper wrote of the White Sox’ failure to follow up 2005 with an equally satisfying 2006, “I urged my fellow fans not to expect a repeat. Live in the moment!”
I wish I’d read this book before September.
***
Theoretically, the future has never been more foreseeably agreeable for the Mets. If the three young pitchers who now seem to have assured themselves of rotation slots each succeed, our 2007 fortunes would figure to do no worse than shadow our 2006 accomplishments. That trio could easily go quartet by April 2008. The outfield would be rehabilitated next, with two of three fast-rising kids patrolling corners currently occupied by short-term elders. Not as publicized but just as tantalizing this spring is an eventual first base candidate who got some good swings in before being sent down. Thus, in a blink, we could be swimming in a plethora of prime: Maine, Pelfrey, Perez, Humber, Gomez, Martinez, Milledge, Carp joining Reyes, Wright and Beltran. Throw in two or three strategically signed free agents by our nonpenurious ownership and we’re looking at a nucleus that rivals our not-so-wild dreams from the crest of 1988. If you’re inclined to take it a step further, there’s the TV network and the new ballpark and the vast resources contemporary sports success seems to yield in staggering amounts every time you turn around. The foundation for this organization shapes up as solid as the accumulated brickage that will define Citi Field.
And you know what it all guarantees for our Mets and our Mets-related happiness? Absolutely nothing. It never did and it never will. Per the in-sickness-and-in-health vows each of us took when we betrothed ourselves to our team, the reality that everything’s a year-in, year-out crapshoot shouldn’t matter one little bit.
But it’s something to keep in mind.
—Me, 3/18/07
***
I guess I was never really that certain about 2007. I don’t mention that to let myself off the hook or attach the gift of exceptional vision to my blogging. I thought we might not win, but it never occurred to me that we would lose. I did understand there are no guarantees, though I was pretty sure we entered the past season as close to one as one could legally get.
The fine print at the bottom of the fan contract said otherwise. That’s the clause that says Uncertainty is the only thing that’s certain, that you’re guaranteed nothing, that you really do have to take them one game at a time, whether you’re 4-0 in April, 33-17 in late May or 83-62 and leading the field by seven games with seventeen to go on the Twelfth of September.
Damn. I should have read the fine print more closely.
***
We were in the midst of a five-year plan. Blog about a little of this, a little of that in 2005. Then a division championship and a postseason in 2006. Then something monumental and unforgettable in 2007.
Can’t say we didn’t have that to blog about.
The five-year plan, I suppose, is still in effect. The fourth year is next year. And next year will arrive.
Of that I am certain.
by Greg Prince on 17 October 2007 10:22 pm As the Western World waits to learn of the drawn-out fate of the revered Joe Torre, it’s nice to know that history repeats itself.
Thanks to a link from the one and only Metstradamus, we are reminded that a less revered Joe Torre was fired from his New York managerial perch once before. And that we as a civilization lived through it.
You gotta watch this YouTube link to the past, to Sunday, October 4, 1981, to the day the Torre watch was as succinct as could be…even if the Eyewitness News report wasn’t.
TV used to be long! Soundbites weren’t bites — they were enormous chomps! And hair…well, hair, like jeans (ooh la la), was something else, too.
Torre was fairly classy in the aftermath of this, his first dismissal. I love the characterization of how Frank Cashen broke the news to him after the Mets’ split-season divisional lunge (a.k.a. “the good times”) came up short: “The man came out and told me straight on.” News wasn’t managed nearly as tightly as it would come to be. Notice he’s interviewed in his office, not in front of a wall of dancing logos.
Yet not all questions from this video are answered:
• For example, what do you do with a chubby dog?
• What was Lee Mazzilli thinking with the mustache?
• How did the sainted Rube Walker survive 14 seasons? (Even if he merited survival, it’s hard to believe any pitching coach could last through five different managers).
• What array of narcotics would lead anybody to believe that we needed a “wild man” like Billy Martin to “come help coach the Mets”?
Thanks again to Metstradamus for the best YouTube clip I’ve seen since somebody turned me on to the TaB Mindsticker campaign.
by Jason Fry on 16 October 2007 3:00 pm Downstairs in our house you'll find a treadmill, and on one arm of that treadmill you'll find my iPod and headphones. The playlist I currently queue up for running is called MARCH 2007, which means very little beyond the fact that I created it then, thanks to months of adding a song here and subtracting one there. The songs are my typical fare — power pop and punk, indie noise and teenage crunch rock. A couple of exceptions aside, the common denominator is the songs have to move — they're for running, after all.
As you might guess, I listened to various incarnations of MARCH 2007 all season. Usually I'd get on the treadmill around 8:30, after Joshua had exhausted even his ability to forestall bedtime and I'd procrastinated for my own self-defeating reasons. 8:30 usually meant the middle innings, and running would usually take me into the 7th — I saw lots of Met innings triumphant and tragic and ordinary while sprinting in place, my iPod blasting loud enough for Emily to hear it in the next room. (Tinnitus? WHAT?)
After a rather Metsian collapse in September, I've been trying to whip myself back into shape this month. The treadmill schedule remains the same — except now there are no Mets. No Gary. No Keith. No badly lit, vaguely porno-looking actors and actresses saying they'd wished they'd had their teeth whitened years ago. Instead, there are Rockies and Diamondbacks, Indians and Red Sox, Chip Caray and Joe Buck and Dane Cook, the Miller High Life vigilante deliverymen and the Verizon techie mob.
In many of those Met innings I'd daydream about how some of these songs would work at Shea Stadium or CitiField — how, say, the get up get up part of “You Could Have It So Much Better” would work as a between-innings psyche-up on Diamondvision, or the leisurely crunch of the Hold Steady's “The Swish” would be awesome to start a big game. (This is a subject I've obsessed about before.) But all of a sudden, watching these strange teams and new ads, I've found myself paying attention to different songs. And I can't understand how this playlist ever seemed peppy, because the whole thing practically drips with tragedy and lyrical warnings I must have heard all summer and failed to heed.
Now you show in the ruins, ask me how I'm doin'
Baby can't you tell?
Stuck in Dogtown again….
If you're not in the postseason, it's always filled with ghosts — you see your team in the background of establishing shots for players still playing (Jimmy Rollins hit against the backdrop of the Mets dugout until Jimmy Rollins too went home), or mistake one uniform for another. (Oh hell, that's not Reyes — it's Soriano!) Ron Darling's been around, a welcome respite from TBS tomfoolery even when wedged between Charles Barkley and Frank Thomas. Masato Yoshii was the answer to a trivia question during Red Sox-Indians last night. These glimpses are what we get this year.
Then there are the alumni — except there really aren't, not in 2007. There's Paul Byrd on the Indians and Kaz Matsui on the Rockies. Peer in dugouts and you'll see Clint Hurdle and Luis Rivera and Dave Magadan. Provided you remember a) that Luis Rivera was a Met and b) what he looks like. Tony Clark went home last night, joining Cliff Floyd and Doug Mientkiewicz and Darren Oliver and quasi-Met Justin Speier. From the dugout ranks, Joe Torre and Larry Bowa and Orlando Mercado are home already, Torre maybe for good. I bear none of these former Mets any particular ill will — if anything, it's nice to hear a familiar name now and again. But of course it's not the same — it feels like some cruel part of a trick question. How will you feel about moving Reyes to second when Kaz Matsui's in the 2007 World Series? Um, great! Hey, wait a minute….
The sooner the better, you see me this way
We can't go on like this pretending it's OK
It's twisting and turning inside me again
We keep getting closer to the end
You keep raising the stakes I keep making mistakes
Like a lot of us, I had October blocked out and socially sacrosanct. I was going to Europe in September, but so what — I'd be home and ready in time for the main event. I was in for Game 1 and Game 5 of the NLDS — with “Game 5” being one of those concepts you're not sure how to address with the baseball gods. I'd like to go but I'd rather not go if instead they can wrap it up in Game 3 or Game 4 but I'm not saying I wouldn't go or I'd be disappointed because if they need Game 5 of course I want to be there, etc. That didn't happen, but there are other reminders. Most every night Joshua looks out the window around 7 to see if the outdoor lights are on yet, which he learned means the Met game is on. (They're on a timer for 7:10 pm.) While he's adopted bandwagon teams (the D-Backs are out but the Red Sox are still alive), there's still that moment where I have to remind him that there are no more Met games this year. Not that I blame him — I keep monitoring the weather as if it were of import, as if I might find myself standing outside for four hours one of these nights. I keep forgetting it doesn't matter.
I can't stand to think about a heart so big it hurts like hell
Oh my God I gave my best but for three whole years to end like this
Well do you want to fall apart?
I can't stop if you can't start
Do you want to fall apart?
I could if you can try to fix what I've undone
Cause I hate what I've become
Was it really just over two weeks ago? It seems like about a million years, somehow. I suppose that's good — anything that takes us away from Tom Glavine's inability to pitch and Jose Reyes' inability to hit and Lastings Milledge's inability to shut up and the veteran Mets' inability to care is a much-needed shot of baseball morphine.
But numb is no way to go through October. (By the way, I'd really like to stop hearing that in my head as “ahk-TOE-bur.” Stupid Dane Cook.) Have you watched the Colorado Rockies play? The God squad thing kind of annoys me (to quote Ron Darling, I don't trust any player who doesn't drink beer), but Troy Tulowitzki might actually be able to fly and Matt Holliday is a Wrightian gladiator to be appreciated for the wonderful things he does with a bat in his hands. And the Rockies were sure jumping like merry pagans last night — I could root for them. Have you heard the Jacobs Field crowd? Any bunch of 40,000+ fans can be loud for three or four innings, but they're ear-splitting for all nine, a civic concentration of pure will and total adoration. I could get behind that. I'm least likely to clamber aboard the Red Sox bandwagon (done that, they're still bathed in the afterglow and the pink hats need their ranks thinned a little), but if you want to see a perfectly constructed baseball team, it's the Red Sox: a terrifyingly lethal, beautifully balanced collection of monsters and assassins and wild-eyed kids.
And then there's baseball itself, in all its beauty — and when it's played at the highest possible level by the best teams in the land it's astonishingly beautiful, even when it doesn't end until 1:30 in the morning. And thank goodness, because right now it's all we have and everything we need. Before you know it the leaves will be gone and the snow will be here and you'll be staying up an extra hour to see Anderson Hernandez ground out in some winter-league game. No, I can't let go quite yet. Please don't make me.
You're in my mind all the time
I know that's not enough
Well if the sky can crack there must be some way back
To love and only love
The 2007 Mets didn't deserve to go anywhere; it's right and proper that they aren't around any more. But they have given me some consolation nonetheless. In the days after the implosion, I wondered what their legacy would be for me as a fan. Would their shadow darken the happy hopes of, say, a seven-game lead with 17 to play in some future September? Would their complacency keep me from giving my heart to some deserving Met squad yet to be assembled? At first I was afraid it would. Now, I'm confident it won't. While I've kept myself busy around my own personal hot stove, I've already let the 2007 Mets go fuzzy in memory, to be forgotten and replaced by the 2008 Mets. That team will share much of the same roster yet be altogether different, as every year's team is. And every day takes us further from the one and closer to the other, and the chance to try again.
by Greg Prince on 16 October 2007 1:21 pm 
| “[I]n the steep streets of Manhattan across the river,” Joe Durso wrote in Amazing: The Miracle of the Mets, “computer cards and ticker tape rained from office windows while people danced on the sidewalks below. The Mets were the champions of the world on October 16, 1969.”In broad daylight, no less. |
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