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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Jason Fry on 18 August 2007 12:46 pm Willie Randolph's postgame analysis of whatever we collectively hallucinated in Pittsburgh was harsh. (I had vague hopes of Willie turning over the buffet table, though I knew better — that tradition seems destined to end with Lou Piniella's departure from the managerial ranks.) I can only imagine, though this may be giving a confounding team too much credit, that the various postmortems on the plane to D.C. were harsh as well. But mostly, I was happy that Tom Glavine would be on the mound, his 300-win resume and perfectionism demanding a certain focus from his teammates that had been missing 24 hours earlier. (One of the most-embarrassing memories of an embarrassing period in Mets history remains the sight of Glavine staring out at Roger Cedeno, clearly dumbfounded that a) anyone could play the outfield that badly; and b) that he'd willingly signed up for a team with such players on it.)
Glavine got that focus , thank goodness — and we all got the kind of run-of-the-mill win that's chiefly memorable after blowing 5-0 wins to last-place teams, but welcome all the more for that.
The lasting memory of this game won't be Glavine mixing his pitches the way he once could do routinely, or the sight of Mike DiFelice (now our No. 1 catcher, yipes) chugging into third. Rather, it was Reyes and Castillo turning a CGI-assisted double play. Apparently they've been practicing shovels and transfers in the Matrix. (Castillo, in Keanu Reeves voice: “I know the pivot.”) Good thing, too.
Postscript: This Tim Marchman discussion of Pedro will have you roaring like a “Braveheart” extra by the end. Pedro Martinez is no ordinary man, and every time he's ever been doubted he's shoved it right in everyone's face. It won't be long before he does it again. From Tim's keyboard to the baseball gods' ears.
by Greg Prince on 17 August 2007 7:52 am If you can remember when there were first times and when there were long times, but when there was no first time/long time, then it’s Flashback Friday at Faith and Fear in Flushing.
Twenty years ago this month Dick Young died. I know — easy applause line. Go ahead: give his demise a hand if you are so inclined. Between railroading Tom Seaver out of town and attempting to poison the atmosphere for Doc Gooden’s return from rehab, that nominally sad event didn’t call for restraint or politeness.
But dancing on a Mets Hellion’s grave isn’t the point here. The point here is Young, one of the gigantic figures of New York sports, passed from the scene on August 31, 1987 and a local radio station produced and ran a short but smart feature on it.
That was the first time I honestly thought Sportsradio 1050 WFAN knew what it was doing.
Ah, the first all-sports station in New York or, more or less, anywhere. I once read there was one in Denver. And I can remember when WWRL gave itself over, circa 1981, to the Enterprise Radio network, which employed a Bostonian named Eddie Coleman. But WFAN was something else.
Boy was it ever. It was very satisfying, on the face of it, to have a station devoted to sports 24 hours a day. What other topic should get that kind of wall-to-wall coverage? But, y’know, sports…24 hours a day? What the hell are they going to talk about?
At 3:00 PM on July 1, 1987, when WHN spun its last country platter — “For The Good Times” by Ray Price — and Suzyn Waldman started the first update in WFAN history (something about Ron Guidry), we found out that repetition goes a long way. In the beginning, or at least right after Waldman, there was Jim Lampley taking calls about Darryl Strawberry. You could get a lot of mileage out of Darryl Strawberry in 1987. Darryl was either very or faking sick that week, slithering his way out of a big series with the Cardinals to raised eyebrows in his own clubhouse. Every series against the Cardinals was big in 1987. Every series the Mets played was big in 1987. There was plenty to talk about and about and about.
It was no accident that Emmis Broadcasting chose the Mets’ flagship station to pioneer all-sports. You might say WFAN was the house the Mets built and you would be more right than wrong.
WHN began dabbling in sports talk the previous winter on the heels of broadcasting the greatest season in the history of the New York Mets from start to finish. They picked up Bob Costas’ new syndicated talk show. Called themselves Sportsradio WHN even. When the Mets’ championship defense began, they expanded pre- and postgame coverage to wonderfully absurd lengths. Less country, more sports. Those were the good times.
But all the time? Gosh, sure, we’ll try it.
It wasn’t working. Don’t get me wrong. It was great to not have to call Sportsphone or wait ’til :15 or :45 to go the news station for a score. The FAN, as it went by familiarly, wasn’t shy about sharing scores. They did it four times an hour. Plus they placed correspondents at every game all over the continent. Need to know exactly what was going on in Arlington between the Royals and Rangers? The FAN had it covered. Need to know Paul Molitor’s daily take on his hitting streak? You could tune in like clockwork to the Molitor Monitor. And need to get something off your chest, like, say, whether Darryl Strawberry was really under the weather on Monday or your considered opinion on whether in fact Straw was jakin’ it so he could record “Chocolate Strawberry”?
Sportsradio 1050 WFAN was for you. It had Lampley and Greg Gumbel among network TV people you’d heard of and Coleman, Waldman, sports updater John Cloghessy and overnight host Steve Somers among those you hadn’t. Art Shamsky was an original, holding court at “the training table” during lunch hour. We were promised the most famous sports talk host in America, Pete Franklin, for drive time, but Pete was (unlike Darryl) indisputably ill when the FAN came on, so he was filled in for a lot by guys name Lou (Lou Boda, Lou Palmer, Lou ever).
It was a mish-mash, that first FAN summer. Its constancy was great. Its informational potential was promising. Its content was mostly vapid. No, it wasn’t just the first wave of Vinnies from Queens (Vinnie from Queens is the archetype caller everybody remembers). We weren’t new to sports talk in New York. Bill Mazer had done it before on WNBC and a previous incarnation of WHN. Art Rust was still bellowing away the evenings on WABC. Richard Neer and Dave Sims hung in there at ‘NEW and ‘NBC, respectively. Eventually all these voices would wind up on the FAN for a while or forever because eventually WFAN ate up all the sports talk within the sound of its voice. We were used to dopey callers. They weren’t so bad because we weren’t yet inundated by them.
The hosts? Some were better than others, but the whole tone of WFAN felt consultant-driven, as if a company with a lot of money never bothered to figure out how to spend it wisely. Thus, WFAN had almost nothing resolutely New York about it in the early going. Who cared about Royals games? Who cared about Paul Molitor? Who cared about getting college football scores every quarter-hour? Who cared about Jim Lampley or Greg Gumbel in this context? Who did Pete Franklin think he was fooling? (And as far as doing radio was concerned, Art Shamsky was a heck of an outfielder.)
Almost everything WFAN brought onto the New York scene was a waste of time. The two things it held onto, however, made it a municipal treasure.
It had the Mets. It had Howie Rose. On the Mets and Rose, you could build an empire if you were smart enough to keep both around.
Howie was a vaguely familiar voice to me over the years, both from Sports Phone and his here-and-there radio work. He had been on WCBS-AM doing sports for a while in the ’80s. He pulled a couple of stints on WHN back in the days when stations that weren’t sports stations actually covered sports because they also covered news (those days, which included non-news stations treating hourly newscasts as staples, are essentially gone). It was his new assignment, begun in late Spring Training of 1987 that made him almost a part of my family.
“Howie Rose,” Joel said to me after I quoted him for the 50,000th time, “is your father.”
Before we heard there was going to be a FAN, Howie was on WHN hyping a new show, Mets Extra. He called it “every Mets fan’s dream.” He was 100% right. Seventy-five minutes before every Mets game, 75 minutes after every Mets game. That, if you’re keeping score at home, added up to 2-1/2 hours of solid Mets talk and nothing but solid Mets talk wrapped around every single Mets game. That, in case you’re too young to remember ’86 and its immediate aftermath, is how big the Mets were then. I’ve yet to encounter any sporting phenomenon since then in this market that comes close. Any.
Was it really a dream come true? Well, I didn’t really dream of such a thing as 2-1/2 hours of solid Mets talk on a daily basis, but only because I don’t aspire to possibilities anywhere close to that lofty.
Howie was technically not the first Mets Extra host. During the 1986 playoffs and World Series, WHN decided to cash in on the fervor and fever by airing a pregame show hosted by Dave Cohen and Rusty Staub. I remember Roger Angell coming on as a guest (which is something I don’t remember ever happening on the FAN). Rusty was Rusty. Cohen wasn’t anything great. Thus, let’s recognize the Rose version as the Real McCoy (which is the kind of not-quite-ancient, not-quite-modern reference Howie would make so effectively on the air.)
The first installment of the new Mets Extra ran after an exhibition game right before the season started. Howie began with a nice preamble, explaining how much he was looking forward to this, how we’d get all kinds of reports on Met health and batting orders and farm clubs and inside info from Davey Johnson, who will come on each day. He really imbued it with a sense of higher purpose.
Then he took his first call. It was to ask what were we going to do about Rafael Santana. He hit .218 last year. Is Elster going to be ready soon? Can we play HoJo there more often once Magadan is off the DL?
The second call pointed out Santana was going to drag down the lineup, I’m really worried about Santana.
The third call: “Howie, can the Mets get more pop out of shortstop than Santana?”
I didn’t know Howie Rose’s tendencies well yet, but in retrospect, I find it hard to believe he didn’t cry. Instead, he calmly pointed out that the Mets just came off a World Series victory in which Rafael Santana was the everyday shortstop and on this team, whose offense was improved in the offseason with the acquisition of Kevin McReynolds, it really doesn’t pay to worry about Rafael Santana.
Poor Howie.
Mets Extra was a smash. Technically I don’t know what the ratings were, but I listened before every game and after every game. All 2-1/2 hours. I loved the give and take between Howie and Davey. I loved the attention the Mets were being given by somebody who obviously understood the Mets and us Mets fans. This was the job Howie Rose was born to.
When Emmis declared its intention to flip 1050 from country to sports, they held a fancy press luncheon and announced it would conduct a “nationwide talent search”. In David J. Halberstam’s Sports On New York Radio, Howie said he had one thought: “At that point, I knew we were screwed.”
Poor Howie.
Whatever else Emmis did wrong twenty years ago, they got it right when they kept Howie to do Mets Extra and, on nights there was no ballgame, host a five-hour call-in show. Let me tell you something in case you never heard it or completely forgot it: Nobody — nobody — in the history of that station ever did a call-in show as well as Howie Rose.
Howie respected the format. He respected the callers (if not their hypothetical trade proposals, which always boiled down to Barry Lyons for Barry Bonds). He respected his guests. He worked at it. He did all-baseball shows in the middle of the winter, the Hot Stove League. He did theme shows, bringing on, say, members of the ’61 Yankees. Yes, Howie was a Mets guy, grew up in Bayside a Mets fan, but he was so damn professional. He knew the Yankees and could talk about them with historical accuracy. He knew football, basketball and, of course, hockey. He was a New York sports fan turned New York sports host turned, on occasion, New York sports play-by-play announcer. One Presidents Day, he called an overtime tilt between the Rangers and Devils in the afternoon and pulled his five-hour shift that night — a workload he noted was killing his throat.
They couldn’t work him enough for my tastes. He was just so sensible about everything. I didn’t necessarily agree with every point he made, but they were all fair-minded and thought-out. He didn’t bark. He didn’t snap. He didn’t cut anybody off. He cared about sports, the way New Yorkers do.
He was intelligent, for goodness sake. Intelligent sports talk. In New York. I’m telling you, it existed.
That report on the death of Dick Young? Whose voice do you suppose we heard explain the significance of the columnist? It wasn’t somebody from Iowa. It was Howie. I heard that and I knew that this station had a real shot because, obviously, somebody there was listening to him and valuing his judgment. It may not sound like much, but after a summer of the most irrelevant crap you could imagine, sandwiched by a full loaf of Darryl calls (handled maladroitly by one disinterested or overmatched host after another), it was a breakthrough.
The FAN eventually found its financial footing. There was always something in the paper about it teetering on the brink, but Emmis made a deal to swap frequencies, trading 1050 for 660. Grand old WNBC, pretty toothless since Howard Stern was fired in ’85, went out of business on October 7, 1988 and WFAN took up residence down the dial, Imus in the morning, Franklin in the afternoon, any number of experiments the rest of the time (anybody remember Stan Martyn’s gentle nostalgia show on Saturday nights?). Pete Franklin gave way to two local boys in the afternoon. The rest is kind of miserable history.
WFAN is a necessity for the New York sports fan. It is not a joy. It is a horrible listen most of the time. I can’t begin to describe how much I despise their marquee names and find nothing but disappointment in most of their secondary talent. My reaction is so visceral because radio is so personal. But it’s never as simple as “if you don’t like it, change the station,” because it is part of being a sports fan in New York. You can go days or weeks avoiding it or confining your listening only to Mets games (and the long-since-abbreviated Mets Extra), but sooner or later you’ll put it on for a score or to hear about some big story and you’ll find yourself stuck in its evil groove again. One of its self-important hosts will eventually turn you off from it, but you won’t be able to help yourself. At some point you’ll turn it back on. Thanks almost entirely to one host who was there at the beginning and, albeit in a far different capacity, is there today, it built itself into a New York institution.
Howie Rose left the talk show grind in 1995. He became TV voice of the Islanders and the Mets, eventually rotating back to radio half the year as the only possible legitimate successor to Bob Murphy. He’s wonderful in that role, too, but I really miss his nightly gig. Nobody’s filled his shoes on WFAN. Nobody. They’re all pretenders. WFAN had a lot of problems at the beginning, but they had the perfect host.
On the other hand, how many calls about Rafael Santana could one man be expected to take?
If you didn’t catch WFAN’s reunion weekend in June, visit their site to listen to Howie Rose’s too-short hour and fifteen minutes of reminiscence. There are some other interesting airchecks there, but as was the case from ’87 to ’95, Howie is the highlight.
Next Friday: The card I waited all summer for.
by Greg Prince on 17 August 2007 7:51 am 
| It’s been theorized in our darker hours that the Mets used up every bit of karmic energy in their reserves to pull out the 1986 World Series and once Buckner became Buckner, that was it, no more titles for us.
Has it occurred to anybody that maybe we’re subject to the WFAN Curse?
When the Mets were last champions, it was under the banner of flagship station WHN, a very listenable country station right here in the middle of the big city. The Mets and WHN were a nice fit. Sheila York, the nighttime DJ who followed Bob Murphy and Gary Thorne on the air, was always very supportive of the cause. I was sorry when she and future Shea PA man Del DeMontreaux and Dan Taylor and the rest of the staff — everybody but Howie Rose — lost their jobs when all-sports WFAN came into being.
I wasn’t much of a country music fan, but I liked how the Mets infiltrated something that wasn’t necessarily baseball by nature, the way baseball should weave itself into every facet of life, even Alabama records. I also liked the idea of the Mets being on a station whose name you either knew or you didn’t. Calling a sports station “FAN” seemed like too much of a sop to its audience.
All right, so things more or less worked out on the sports station. But it seems to me that the Mets are a much smaller part of WFAN’s overall consciousness now than they were in 1987 or, for that matter, than they were on WHN in 1986 — for 21 years the last season in which the last Mets broadcast of the season was a win in late October.
(I looked all through my many boxes and bags of flotsam and Metsam for the Mets Country bumper sticker pictured here but came up empty. Luckily, Big Apple Airchecks came to the rescue, and this image I remember so well from the back of many a bumper is courtesy of their WHN tribute page.) |
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by Greg Prince on 17 August 2007 6:47 am Game?
What game?
I saw no game.
There was no game.
You thought you saw a game?
No.
You saw no game.
There was no game.
by Jason Fry on 17 August 2007 2:31 am You know what's smack in the middle between champs and chumps?
Chimps.
Last time I checked, chimps had never won a World Series. Or much of anything else.
by Jason Fry on 16 August 2007 5:26 am Five in the first. Five in the ninth. A whole lotta mess in between.
The Mets prevailed in a game that had neither manager inclined to take his charges to the Tastee-Freez afterwards. Lord, what a mess. That thing took 326 pitches, six walks, six hit batsmen, 18 strikeouts and a whole lot of forbearance in the face of lousy baseball. Yesterday we all vented a lot of our 2007 New York Mets frustrations, but let the record show that these enigmatic, infuriating Mets are not the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates are young, bad and dumb in various measures, and the only sure thing with too many of them is that they'll get older. I felt for Damaso Marte when he finally decided, “Hell with it, I'm drilling someone” — not because poor Shawn Green had it coming, but because the rules make it difficult for a reliever to throw a baseball into the back of his teammates, general manager or owner. Speaking of which, has anyone seen anything to justify our apparent interest in Ronnie Paulino? Based on the last two nights' admittedly small sample, he can neither hit, run, nor throw.
The good news, for me, was seeing that Willie's legendary patience with veterans has finally run out where Green is concerned — Milledge will get the bulk of the playing time from here on out, as he should have a couple of weeks ago at least. And clearly Jorge Sosa has bumped Guillermo Mota from the relievers' ladder, raising the possibility that a revitalized Joe Smith could return and keep the Run Fairy II the hell away from our postseason roster. (Alternately, Mota could get better. Because it ain't personal. Well, Mota's a headhunter and a cheater and a dimwit, so it's a little personal. But I've forgiven worse.)
Speaking of tired, what's to be done with John Maine and Oliver Perez? A couple of days over at Metsblog, Matt did an interesting interview with Ron Darling, and one of the things Darling discussed was how difficult a full season can be for a young pitcher. He talked of how winning nine games in the first half of his rookie season turned out to be a burden, how it's not just mechanics and physical fatigue but mental fatigue that can rob velocity from your pitches and take the edge off your game. Perez's fastball is off and his slider's inconsistent, and Maine looks frankly lost right now, easily undone by anything that goes wrong behind him. On the plus side, there's plenty of season to go and time to get them out of the rut. On the negative side, there are the Braves breathing fire behind us, and — as covered amply yesterday — the unsettling sight of our exasperating, inconsistent reflection in the mirror. Get well, young men — we need you.
The one moment of pure beauty tonight? It was Carlos Beltran striding into the gap after Jose Bautista's ninth-inning drive — I'd say streaking but Beltran runs so gracefully that he never seems to be going all that fast. At first it looked like Beltran couldn't possibly catch up to the ball. Then there was the slight possibility he could — followed by the frightening possibility that he, Moises Alou and the baseball might wind up in the same space at the same time. Then the deep exhale, and the promise not to run down Beltran the next time he looks indifferent at the plate, or is sitting in the dugout because something's not 100%.
I was startled by the reminder that Alou left the Pirates in the trade that brought them Zane Smith towards the end of the 1990 season. The same Zane Smith who looked like a Cabbage Patch doll, and who throttled us in the front end of a doubleheader on Sept. 5, 1990 — one of the more-disappointing days of my life as a Met fan. Keith Miller led off with a single, but that was it — Smith absolutely shut us down in one of the most-dominant pitching performances I've ever seen. (Franco lost, 1-0, in the ninth, with the coup de grace a single by Barry Bonds.) In the second game Bobby Ojeda got beat, 3-1; a day later Buddy Harrelson sent Julio Valera to the mound for a shellacking. Between that and a horrific gag job against Montreal not long after (I knew I was remembering Chris Nabholz from somewhere), we never recovered.
Now Alou is the gimpy, aging force that's meant twice meant the difference between wins and losses against the Pirates, and just might save this lineup from itself. It ain't exactly payback, not 17 years later. But it's some small something.
by Greg Prince on 15 August 2007 5:00 pm Hey, Jace, isn't this the March conversation? The one in which I'm all “Who the bleep are these guys calling themselves Mets? I don't think I'm going to be able to get behind them as I have every April since I was 7”? And you tell me, no, of course you will…and I generally fall in line.
Now you, dear blog brother, are having these doubts in the dog days of August? That's a hoot.
A mighty familiar hoot, too. I've been feeling the same way, that I haven't been feeling the Mets. The lumbering performance has been a big reason, but personality has factored in, too. Who the bleep are these guys who have been calling themselves Mets?
You know how many individual Mets I've been into this year in that “I can't wait to see him do his thing” way? One. Reyes. He's it. He's been disappointing (in relation to Jose '06 and Hanley '07), but he's far and away my favorite. My only favorite.
Beltran's still my distant second-place favorite. Of all the “I wish he'd break out” stars on this team, he's the wishiest. A great Beltran is worth more than a great anybody. Last night he gave yet another hint that he's MVP-in-exile. I wish he'd offer more than hints. He's nothing like Reyes as a personality (so says my deeply informed perspective of watching from a distance), but I admire the way he carries himself. I just wish he'd carry himself into a dazzling hot streak.
I don't think I've had a third-favorite Met in 2007. Ollie was my wild card early. I get a huge kick out of him when he's on. When he's off, he's just wild. I do like his zest for pitching, however.
When the world was young, of course, there was Endy. I really miss him. It's been too long.
That's basically it. There are a lot of guys I like and respect and root hard for. There's nobody I hate. But there's also nobody else with whom I really identify or for whom I can claim a solid 2007 kinship.
Wright? Heresy here, but I've never completely climbed aboard the Wrightwagon with ten toes. It's bugged me ever so slightly all along how he was the anointed one after no more than a half-season, how I showed up on Opening Day 2005 and there were crisp white Wright shirts everywhere. It's probably my Reyes bias showing and my dismay that some idiot higher-up in the Mets' front office actually referred to our David as “our Jeter”. Ugh. I'm deep enough to admit that I'm shallow enough to look past that when he's blazing with the bat. Sometimes I'm that easy. I never said I was as deep as Atlantic Monthly. If Wright hits (and he has a good bit lately), I'm as big a sucker for this guy as anybody.
Delgado? Delagdo was a sterling veteran sage last year. This year he's mostly one long slump who doesn't make himself available to reporters every night.
Lo Duca? The more I think about the raging eyeballs and getting himself thrown out of that game against Oakland, the more I think he's not using that thing under his helmet and behind his mask…his head. It's cute once in a while when he morphs into Paulie Go Nuts, but he really seems to let himself get the best of himself.
Maine? A good pitcher struggling to become great. A quiet fellow. Not enough there to get me excited when he's not mowin' 'em down.
Wagner? I get a big kick out of him and he's the only Met of substance having a far better than 2007 than 2006. But he gives me the impression he'll turn on a dime if he ever has two bad outings in a row. Too touchy for my tastes, though I suppose it comes with the hard-throwing closer territory.
Gotay? Nice contribution from someone I wasn't counting on. Then he became the cause of the year — why don't they play Gotay more? Because he can't turn a double play. It's less Gotay that doesn't thrill me than the aura that's attached itself to him.
Alou? Gone too long. He's in the wholehearted admiration category for now — until he swings at a first pitch and doesn't drive it (swinging at the first pitch and driving it as he did Tuesday night in Pittsburgh…that's fine).
Green? He's doing just a little less than I expected this year, which shows my expectations were pretty low. Thus, I'm kind of in this “it's not his fault he is who he is” forgiveness mode for Green. I won't deny external factors make me a wee bit protective of Shawn, but his RBI total keeps me from getting all Orthodox about it.
Glavine? We've been through this enough. Hell, he's actually moving up the charts.
Feliciano? I liked him a lot even if he was only in there for a batter or two. Say, whatever happened to him?
Pelfrey? Gads, what a disappointment.
Castro? How into a backup catcher can you be?
DiFelice? Like I said…
Castillo? His value, besides the occasional bunt and generally sure glove, is Reyes seems to like him. But Reyes likes all his second basemen. That Reyes sure is a swell kid.
Heilman? He's forever Sherman from Peanuts, right down to way he sets his shoulder to pitch from the stretch and/or join in the Linus & Lucy dance.
Sosa? I've been known to fall for surprising middle relievers (Hausman, Mahomes), but it's only been a few outings.
Lawrence? Not picking him out of a crowd.
Mota? I don't hate him but I don't want him here.
Milledge? Once bitten, twice reserving judgment.
Gomez? Too soon to know.
Smith? I felt that way about him before I felt that way about Gomez.
Schoeneweis? The approval matrix is almost at “backlash to the backlash” at this point. But he's still Scott Schoeneweis.
Hernandez? Outta sight the nights he pitches. Out of sight, out of mind the rest of the time.
Sele? He suffers from being associated only with blowouts the Mets are almost sure to lose.
Easley? I had a fan-crush on him for about ten minutes when he was, not coincidentally, hitting home runs. I love listening to him explain his sporadically successful at-bats. The rest of the time, sadly, he's a 37-year-old journeyman.
Valentin? More or less Easley.
Anderson? Good to have him back. Good. Not great.
Newhan? Playing long-toss with Ricky Ledee, I hope.
Randolph? He deserves a mention here because a year ago I was impressed by his calm demeanor and stoic leadership, this year I think he's a stiff. How could the onetime second base great not go out and argue that horrendous call at second Tuesday night? When did this wretched “transfer” rule supplant common-sense umpiring? But back to Willie Randolph: From Hodges to Howe in one season? I hope not.
Pedro? He hasn't been a 2007 Met.
So buddy, you're not alone in loving the Mets for always yet only kind of, sort of liking the Mets who are Mets this year. Given the standings and the ability to maintain their position atop them despite the lock they've had on lackluster, maybe that makes us the ones who are unlikable.
Editor's Note: Comics maven and illustrator par excellence Jim Haines points out Sherman from Peanuts was better known as Shermy. To my own recollection of him as an Aaron-straight straight arrow with a more formal name, I say Good Grief!
by Jason Fry on 15 August 2007 4:09 am The schedule was for Joshua's grandfather to bring him back on the late side tonight — somewhere between 9:30 and 10:00. So this afternoon Emily and I started batting dinner ideas back and forth. About halfway through, she stopped and said, “Unless you want to watch the game….”
“Nah,” I said. “That's OK.”
As it turned out, I listened to or watched the first four innings or so, brought my portable radio to dinner (it stayed off at the restaurant, since I'm not a complete barbarian), heard Wright and Beltran start the rally on our walk back to our house, saw Alou deliver the decisive runs on TV, and watched Wagner put it in the books after a groggy Joshua was unfolded from his car seat and put into his own bed. This wasn't a WW in honor of the departed Phil Rizzuto.
But something's very wrong. Fanatics who talk other fanatics into starting crazy Met blogs don't shrug off that night's game. Particularly not when the current collection of Mets is in first place. I know that. I've spent no small number of hours worrying about it. But I can't escape it, just as I can't escape the awful truth.
I don't like this team.
I don't know what it is. The personnel aren't that different. The biggest change is the absence of Cliff Floyd, whom I loved unconditionally as one of the coolest guys to ever play the game — yet I was always realistic about Cliff's inability to stay on the field. It's no secret that the clubhouse misses Pedro Martinez and his spit-in-the-devil's-eye charisma. I undoubtedly miss him too. But Pedro was MIA for most of the second half last year, and I didn't love the 2006 Mets any less for it.
Is it the absences of year-ago sparkplugs such as Endy Chavez and Duaner Sanchez? The disappearance of Jose Valentin? Bouts of surliness from the likes of Paul Lo Duca, Julio Franco (from wise old sage to annoying codger in one season — ouch!) and Beltran? My head tells me those guys, however much I cheered for them, never had the keys to my heart. Those were always held by Wright and Reyes, and they're not so different. But my heart won't be reasoned with — it watches last year's heroes try and fail and succeed, and somehow remains cold.
I always suspected that deep down, the day-to-day intensity of our fandom was more a reflection of a team's record than most of us would ever want to admit. 66-52 and first place ought to equate to finding the 25 guys who've forged that record plucky and valiant and loyal and likeable. But at least so far, it doesn't. Yes, there are Mets on this year's roster I have no use for — master out-maker Shawn Green and master run-allower Guillermo Mota come to mind. But last year I actively loathed Steve Trachsel and Michael Tucker and desperately wanted the pathetic Victor Zambrano and Kaz Matsui to just freaking go away already — and I still find myself daydreaming about the 2006 Mets. I get the feeling the 2007 Mets will never be more than an “oh yeah, them” in my memory.
I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the depressing frequency with which this team gets blown out, or looks inept against lousy teams. Or its inability to get out of its own way against the resurrected Braves. Maybe it was that horrid stretch in June and July. Or the inability to keep the same eight on the field so I can really get to know them as a unit. Maybe it's the conservatism that's retained Green and imported Luis Castillo at the expense of potentially deserving, exciting young players such as Milledge and Gotay. Or the endless, paranoia-driving parade of injuries. Maybe it's as simple as the fact that now anything less than the playoffs — and dominance en route — is disappointing. Maybe 2006 was just the prettiest girl in the room, and now I'm stupidly overlooking 2007's many admirable qualities.
I can't tell you, because I don't know. All I know is from the way I feel, it could practically be the 2003 Mets out there. And that's crazy.
I desperately want this to change. And maybe it will. Pedro's on his way back, Beltran has returned, Lo Duca and Castro shouldn't be long and Endy's out there somewhere. Milledge got to play tonight, Sosa's been a bright spot in relief, and Omar can read Mota's stat line as well as I can. A mettle-testing, character-breeding crucible of games against the Phillies and Braves awaits. And Tom Glavine's candor about our having to warm up to him and his having to warm up to us has led me to finally give him my full allegiance. If that can happen, nothing's impossible.
September's coming, with the possibility of an October that matters. But August ought to matter a lot more than it does. I wish I knew why it doesn't.
by Greg Prince on 14 August 2007 9:45 pm In the summer of 1999, Nike ran the most brilliant series of commercials I ever saw. It was geared to the New York market and aired in sync with that season’s Subway Series.
Maybe you recall it, too. There were six Mets — Ventura, Ordoñez, Yoshii, McRae, Olerud and John Franco — playing four Yankees — Jeter, Posada, Stanton and I think O’Neill — at stickball. The longest version (and it wasn’t long enough, that’s how good it was) featured a heated dispute between the players about whether a ball hit down the street was fair or foul, a ruling determined by the parked Lincoln that was serving as third base. Yoshii and Ordoñez went back and forth in their native tongues; Olerud wore a helmet and said nothing; Franco was characteristically feisty; even the icy Yankee stalwarts were unusually amusing. What made it extra special was the surprise presence midway through of three neighborhood kibitzers — Tom Seaver, Keith Hernandez and Willie Randolph — on a nearby stoop taking up the cause of their respective kids. All the arguments droned on and on until the old man of the block, overcoated Phil Rizzuto, wordlessly left his brownstone, removed his car keys from his pocket, entered said Lincoln and drove away with the base, the argument, the game and the commercial.
That my favorite Phil Rizzuto moment involved him being silent is not intended as a backhanded tribute, I swear, even if I didn’t care for the announcing style of the man they called the Scooter when I first caught it in dribs and drabs. But I was spoiled. Anybody who broadcast a game in a way different from Lindsey Nelson, Ralph Kiner or Bob Murphy was obviously doing it wrong. What’s with the birthday wishes? What do you mean you’re leaving in the seventh inning? And why can’t you stay focused on the game? How do people put up with this?
But people did, lots of them. Rizzuto’s inhibition-free warmth sucked in a lot of viewers and listeners. He was himself. He was genuine. Over time (amid albeit limited exposure because I didn’t really watch a lot of Yankees games), I got it. The Scooter was just being The Scooter. There was only one of him and nobody else could have made it work the way he did.
We had our guys, they had theirs. We were all winners in those days.
So here’s to a man who made Fran Healy sound personable, made Tom Seaver sound comfortable, made Meat Loaf sound amazingly cool and made many a New Yorker’s ears very happy.
by Greg Prince on 14 August 2007 3:00 pm Dana Brand told a fib. But we’ll forgive him.
Up front in Mets Fan, Dana says he has written a book “for fans of the New York Mets, and for baseball fans everywhere.”
It’s a benign half-truth. This is a book for us. It’s a book for Mets fans. It’s a book we deserve. It’s a book we will absorb through our pores. Baseball fans everywhere who aren’t Mets fans? They can go read something else.
I’m not trying to undercut Dana’s book sales (which are reportedly and deservedly brisk). I hope he sells one apiece to Braves fans and Nationals fans and Royals fans and all fans. He certainly touches on themes universal in nature to anybody who cares — really cares — about baseball. But a few pages in, he begins to speak in the secret language understood only by us. Braves fans and Nationals fans and Royals fans will scratch their heads at the dozens of arcane-to-them yet plain-as-day-to-us references.
And that’s fine. If fans of Not The Mets need a translator, that’s their problem. This is our book. It’s about time we got one like this.
Though Dana and I have exchanged an e-mail or two and a couple of comments on each other’s blogs (he started his between last October’s LDS and LCS to help promote his to-be-published work), he’s not somebody I’ve gotten to know on any personal level…until now. I’ve gotten to know him as a Mets fan through reading Mets Fan. I’ve gotten to know myself a scooch, too. Dana’s a fantastic mirror for his core audience. It’s not so much that the author is one of us. He is all of us and he’s gone to the trouble of articulating it in a book.
The legend of Dana Brand, if you’re not familiar with him, began about two years ago when he wrote an essay that appeared in Newsday. He pushed a fairly novel notion for 2005: that there are Mets fans and we care and we have a history and we like ourselves just fine. The Hofstra professor’s take was so well-received, he followed it up with a series of essays that became Mets Fan.
We are well off for it. Dana has combined memoir with history and given us a rich tour of the lifetime of a franchise. He was 7 when the first season began and he has never not been a Mets fan as long as there have been Mets. One of the things I really appreciate about his book is the demystification he applies the early years. As much fun as the Original Mets were to have around, losing 100+ per annum wasn’t fun. Ed Kranepool wasn’t promising, he was just Ed Kranepool — “the older Kranepool was the same as the younger Kranepool” is one of his many Amazin’ lines. But Dana Brand bought into it right away. He was hooked for life (even if, as he rightly concludes, “Eddie didn’t happen. But he didn’t exactly not happen either.”) He was rewarded with 1969 and a handful of similarly great seasons. He has endured the soggy filling between pennants with good humor. If he wanted a dynasty, he knew where to find one. He didn’t. Like the rest of us, he wanted the Mets.
Dana moves in and out of the history portions to indulge in the personal. His life may not have been exactly our lives (he lucked into a trip to Tom Seaver’s house in the early ’80s and studied under Bart Giamatti), but it’s close enough. You will recognize yourself in Dana. I recognized myself in his words. We have lived parallel existences even though he had a head start. For example, he relishes the way Mets fans end letters and e-mails and conversations with “Let’s [or Lets] Go Mets!” I do that. Just about everybody I know does that. He says everybody he knows does that. Who knew we all did that?
You’ll get a lot of that sensation with Dana Brand. It will feel good. Baseball may foster a spirit of community, especially online, but really we root alone more than we root with anyone else. We replay games and seasons for at least a portion of each of our waking hours when nobody else is around or nobody nearby knows what we’re thinking. It’s nice to have it confirmed that somebody else out there is doing it, too.
Mets Fan goes for a level of subject-inclusiveness that few Mets books, even the good ones, go for. The effort is appreciated, though now and then I think Dana dug for material where there wasn’t that much on which to dwell (the fandom of Jerry Seinfeld, for example, or the minutiae of the local radio talk show scene). His salute to 2006 is a little eerie, as if the Mets are frozen in time there, forever leading the East by a dozen games (we wish). But better more than less. Dana’s not an anthropologist. He writes for us by us. Have I said something like that three or four times already? It’s just so true.
One of the ways I judge the effectiveness of a Mets book is how few mistakes make it into print. Most of Mets Fan is solid in this regard. Dana moved Darryl Strawberry’s debut from May to July and collided Cameron with Floyd instead of Beltran, but that’s forgivable in the big picture of heart and soul that he delivers for almost 200 pages. The one niggling annoyance — and I’m betting an underinformed editor was overinvolved on this count — is the strange spellings several Met icons come in for. Tommy Agee, Don Clendenon, John Matlack, Bobbie Ojeda, Bobbie Bonilla, Greg Jefferies and the truly offensive Edgardo Alfonso never played for the Mets. I wish publisher McFarland had been more careful. Dana’s work was too meticulous and too genuine to be marred by such sloppiness. A Mets fan notices these things.
Now that I’ve made certain to find fleeting fault here and there so I can’t be accused of just rolling over for a blolleague who gave us a nice shoutout on page 185, I can otherwise overwhelmingly recommend Mets Fan.
Have you ever watched a big game with your family? And then another big more than a decade later and realized how much had changed yet how much had remained the same? This book is for you.
Have you looked at Shea, shaken your head, yet defended it to its impending death? This book is for you.
Have you rolled your eyes to the point of Excedrin Headache No. 9 from listening to dopey politicians intrude on your baseball or your fellow fans booing your own players? This book is for you.
Have you given more thought to Mr. Met and the Home Run Apple and Cow-Bell Man than you ever imagined you could? This book is for you.
This isn’t unchallenging stuff either, by the way. It’s not “hey, we’re Mets fans, we’re kooky” shallow. Dana Brand is an authentic Mets fan and an authentic wordsmith. Save for a dissonant tic toward the adjective “stupid” (though, admittedly, so many obstacles to Met happiness can be just that), Dana strings together beautiful phrases like Mail Vail did singles during his hitting streak. 1969 represented “the bursting of all boundaries”; 1986’s characters did not blandly “blend into a mass of big chests and broad smiles”; Bobby Valentine “approached managing as if it were a combination of rocket science and performance art”; and, because he’d like to see another boundary burst, “I don’t know if Rusty is gay, but I’d like to think he is.”
His wife’s in there, his daughter’s in there, his parents are in there, his career is in there and, most importantly, the Mets are in there. Dana Brand has put it all in Mets Fan. You’ll want to get in there, too.
You can order Mets Fan through Dana Brand’s site. He says it might take a little longer than he’d like before supply catches up with demand, but be patient. This book is worth the wait. In fact, you’ll probably enjoy it a little more if it shows up unexpectedly in your mailbox once the season turns to winter.
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