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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If it’s the final Friday of the month, then it’s the seventh installment of the special Top 10 Songs of All-Time edition of Flashback Friday at Faith and Fear in Flushing.
In March of 1983, there were two particularly sweet sounds that captured my attention: überprospect Darryl Strawberry making contact in St. Petersburg and Dexys Midnight Runners making beautiful music with “Come On Eileen”.
We would have to wait until May 6 for Darryl to go into medium rotation at Shea Stadium. By then, Dexys Midnight Runners had already been to the mountaintop in Billboard, posting the most popular song in America in late April, breaking for a week the sequin-gloved grip Michael Jackson was keeping on No. 1 that spring.
Darryl would stick around for quite a while following his callup. Dexys would be gone by summer, seemingly forgotten by December. Their hear-today/”who?”-tomorrow plight was best summed up by the entity that sums up everything best — The Simpsons, specifically the Barber Shop Quartet episode from 1993.
HOMER: Lisa, did you see the Grammys?
LISA: You beat Dexys Midnight Runners!
HOMER: Well, you haven’t heard the last of them!
Poor old Dexys Midnight Runners. Sounded spry upon the radio, they moved a million miles into obscurity soon thereafter.
My introduction to “Come On Eileen” came through a most unlikely source. It was early March, spring break. I was visiting the folks at their condominium in Hallandale, a place I sincerely referred to as Condo Hell. In between moaning by phone to Suzan how much of a mistake I made agreeing to spend an entire week here while our mother was projecting this or that anxiety onto me, we veered off onto the subject of music, an unlikely one for her. The only reason my sister knew from Top 40 in those days was she listened to WNBC those four hours a day when Howard Stern was becoming a sensation. It was so early in the Howard phenomenon that he was still forced to play records. And one of them, Suzan told me, was a “disco version” of “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra” or however many Loo-Ras she gave it. I doubted that by 1983 anybody was doing disco versions of anything; she was probably thinking of how some smart producer remade “If They Could See Me Now” and “Tangerine” when she was in college.
About five minutes after I got off the phone, I heard what I believed was this souped-up Irish lullabye. I got the name and the artist straight and fell for it instantly. As my sophomore year at college wound down, all activity would cease so I could listen to “Come On Eileen” and its cheery, kitchen-sink approach. It had all kinds of exotic tones to it. Did I hear bagpipes? Flutes? Fiddles? Jugs? Damned if I knew. It just made me happy. Kevin Rowland, the lead singer and co-writer with Jimmy Patterson and Kevin Adams, conducted a four-minute Irish festival, a parade marching through my radio every time it came on.
The words? Also damned if I knew. Of all my Top 10 songs, this one more than any hooked me without me familiarizing myself with the lyrics very much. Or hardly at all. I got the one line with the name of the song: “Come On Eileen!” I got that cold. No problem. The rest, as Kevin Dillon said in “Heaven Help Us” when directed to explain the Holy Trinity — it was his homework and he hadn’t done it — was a total mystery that cannot be understood.
At least not by me.
Johnny Ray was mentioned, I figured that out. I read the words in Newsday in May, and I retained Johnny Ray. I knew there had been a singer Johnny Ray, but I retained Johnny Ray because he was the Pirates’ second baseman at the time. “Poor old Johnny Ray”? Johnny Ray had given Steve Sax a run for his money in the ’82 Rookie of the Year race. Must not have been about that Johnny Ray.
Apparently there was a not-so-hidden subtext to my No. 4 Song of All-Time.
The subetext concerned sex.
Sex with Eileen.
Oh.
Well.
Ya don’t say.
I feel silly not picking up on that, but not surprised. In college, I took an English class in which the professor read us a very short story and asked us to identify what the author was alluding to when he described a great upward struggle of some sort. I thought it had something to do with preventing nuclear war and our ultimate destruction. Actually, it was about sperm swimming toward an egg. He wrote “you’re distressingly pure” on my paper. Truth be told, I mostly wasn’t listening to what he was reading, but I was probably a few games behind in the sophistication column when I was 20.
A big part of the 90% or so of “Come On Eileen” I literally didn’t understand was Rowland confessing to Eileen that his thoughts “verge on dirty”. You know when I figured that out? When I Googled the lyrics last week to write about how much I loved “Come On Eileen”. Think about it, me the 5,000-words-RDA writer and I’ve spent almost a quarter-century charmed by a song that I’ve never known what exactly was going on in.
What can I tell ya? It didn’t stop me in 1983. It doesn’t really matter to me in 2007. I was pretty sure I heard the word “dirty” in there somewhere, but I assumed it had something to do with how grimy they all looked in the video.
Yup. Distressingly pure.
Y’know, I loved so many things about music from the time I was 9 that I guess I never listened to it the way others did. I loved the melody and the uplifting spirit and the carnival atmosphere of a song like this as well as the chance to make lists in which I could include it as one of my favorites. It never occurred to me that there were those who saw music as an avenue for enhancing their chances for getting laid. I thought it was curious that all the nightspots in Tampa seemed to be located in the lobbies of Travelodges and such. A friend had to point out to me that people like the idea of going dancing and then already being in a motel, because…you know.
Sadly, I had to think about it for a minute.
Music was always such a private matter for me. I found it hard to imagine that I would want to go to dance to it. I wanted to listen to it and I wanted to rank it numerically. I was enamored of the notion that I liked songs that were officially popular, but it never seemed to translate to my own popularity and that wasn’t what I was going for anyway…just as I wasn’t going for the opposite of that. People who read my reflections on my Top 500, the nice ones, seem to give me more credit than I deserve for marching to my own drummer. They tell me they admire my courage in stating my own tastes no matter what the crowd thought or thinks.
To this day I still don’t get that interpretation. I liked all these songs that were played on the radio, usually on highly rated radio stations. The ones I loved were counted down once a week and were often the last song played on those shows. I liked what I liked, sure, but I liked what was big. Or I didn’t not like what wasn’t big.
This is the other thing I didn’t get about music, that people who professed to love it cultivated reasons to not like certain segments of it, no questions asked. I understood not liking a particular song or not having much enthusiasm for a particular artist or not really favoring a particular genre, but only until I heard something about that particular song that I liked, or something from that particular artist that moved me in some way or something in that particular genre that beat what I had experienced within it before. Otherwise I’d just be missing out.
For example, I’ve never considered myself a country music fan. Much of it is a gigantic turnoff to me. But intermittently since I was a kid, I’ve been exposed to country music and every now and again a country song appeals to me. I probably have dozens more country CDs in my collection than I would guess. The same for standards. The same for jazz. The same for — and 30 years on, I can’t believe it’s a word that still verges on dirty in some quarters — disco. I mean, what the fudge? It’s all music, right?
Hey, I even like so-called mainstream/classic rock even though I sort of despise everything about it. No, I don’t mean the sex or the drugs (in addition to getting laid, people also like music for getting high, I’m told) or any reason anybody would censor any of it. I’m referring to the attitude surrounding it, the attitude that surrounded it when I was growing up and predominated when I started college, almost right up to the moment I discovered “Come On Eileen”.
You know what one of my biggest disappointments in high school was? I was in a play whose opening night was so close that we were required to come in on a Sunday morning and rehearse. There were some kids with a radio (it might have been known as a boom box by then) and I was excited. Sunday morning meant Casey Kasem to me. Oh goody, I thought, we’re going to hear AT40!
Except of course not. These were cool kids who were listening to the rock station, WPLJ. Figured. They were blasting a Who song from several years earlier. Didn’t sound like a long-distance dedication.
That was the moment I realized I was, for the most part, alone as a music lover…which seemed odd since I was about to turn 16 which is when you’re on schedule to be in with the in crowd. But I was just never there. The in thing, at least in the white suburban circles in which I nominally traveled, was the rock station, either ‘PLJ or ‘NEW. It was the Who, whom I had nothing against per se, but didn’t really care about enough to plaster their logo on my denim jacket (I didn’t have a denim jacket either). It was the Stones, not just “Angie” or “Miss You,” but the ability to drone endlessly about seeing them at the Coliseum and the Garden and in Philly and continually repeat the lyrics to “Let It Bleed” (drugs may have played a role for some of my classmates there). It was the Grateful Dead, whom I have to admit I always confused with Black Sabbath, not based on content but probably because I must have seen their names in the same magazine once.
It wasn’t that those groups that turned me off. It was their fans. It was the joylessness that these peers of mine seemed to exude in being avid aficionados of their favorite music. It was such serious business. It was sold that way. I may not have been thrilled by the teeny-bopper stylings of a 99X or a WABC, but at least it felt like somebody was having fun. Listening to WPLJ or WNEW-FM was an absolute chore. Every disc jockey, allegedly carrying forward the spirit of Woodstock, was condescending, smug and cliquish. I felt like I had to take an admissions exam just to hear “Revolution” by the Beatles. Again, I can’t stress enough, I liked lots of the music those rock stations played, I just couldn’t get through the “we’re so cool” barrier.
And believe me, when it came to music, I never had anybody tell me that one day, I’d be cool.
Then “Come On Eileen” came along.
And “She Blinded Me With Science” came along.
And “Mexican Radio” came along.
And “Der Kommissar” came along.
They came along by way of MTV and then through Q-105, Tampa Bay’s contemporary hits flamethrower (the station I listened to in college), and to Y-100, its counterpart in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market (the station I listened to during spring break). The MTV component of the equation was new — and virtually unexperienced by me, not having cable until 1985 — but snappy hit songs on snappy hit radio stations was old hat. If I didn’t know anything more than some new acts called Dexys Midnight Runners and Thomas Dolby and Wall of Voodoo and After The Fire were getting airplay, I might not have noticed anything unusual.
But something was delightfully amiss. Those songs, and dozens of others by the spring of 1983, represented something more, something I needed to be clued into by my friend Joel Lugo the previous summer. That was the summer of ’82, the summer New York had a new rock radio station, WAPP. The Apple. It was their commercial-free summer. As long as they didn’t play commercials, they got ratings. So we were listening one day in one of our cars when Joel complained “WAPP doesn’t play any New Music.” What are you talking about, I asked. They play “Hurt So Good” by John Cougar and “Caught Up In You” by 38 Special plenty.
No, Joel said. That’s not what I mean.
Joel introduced me to the concept of New Music, as it was being played on WLIR out of Garden City. I thought ‘LIR was just another dopey rock station, but apparently it had evolved during my freshman year at USF. It was now the station that Dared to be Different when that meant playing Stray Cats records a few months before — as Screamer of the Week — the Top 40 stations picked up on it. In hits-challenged New York, when WABC had switched to talk and WPIX was “nothing but love songs” and WNBC dreadfully dull in the twenty hours a day not occupied by Howard Stern, anything that even attempted to be different sounded promising.
I didn’t hang around long enough to dig on ‘LIR (which could also be a little condescending, smug and cliquish), but I got the idea. Driving back to school in late August of ’82 was a different aural experience that driving away from it four months earlier. All the way down I-95, I was peppered with Men at Work and Flock of Seagulls and…it probably doesn’t sound very daring, but for 1982, it was wild enough. I mean, gosh, I had a roommate who was impressed that I knew who Stray Cats were.
By the spring of ’83, MTV has made itself and New Music felt. The effect was dramatic. The previously obscure Duran Duran had its first major hit with “Hungry Like The Wolf”. Adam Ant had broken through with “Goody Two Shoes”. Toni Basil’s “Mickey” went to No. 1 and not as a novelty. Culture Club’s lead singer, a chap named Boy George, was considered safe for your sons and daughters. The hacky local DJ who hosted our dorm’s Halloween dance promised first prize in the costume contest will be “a trip for two to London to see the Clash,” and then cued up “Rock The Casbah”. Two months earlier, my hipster roommate lamented that nobody besides him and me knew from the Clash, who weren’t exactly new. Gosh now everyone, even in Tampa, knew from Massapequa’s own Stray Cats. Pop music was positively bubbly as 1982 turned to 1983.
And rock music? That’s the thing. All that stuff, and all the stuff from the spring of ’83 — led by Dexys Midnight Runners as much as anybody — had infiltrated the rock stations in Tampa Bay. I said I want a “Revolution”? I was getting one. Led Zeppelin was grounded. Lynyrd Skynyrd was in partial retreat. Whereas Men At Work were, to co-opt the joke from Footloose, merely construction guys as late as the middle of 1982, they were now at the heart of AOR formats from coast-to-coast. Even my namesake, Prince, rolled onto rock stations with “Little Red Corvette”.
In other words, for the first time in my musical life, I was the cool one! The music I liked was taking over the rock stations, the most offputting outlets on the dial! Frequencies that called themselves 95-YNF (say it in a real deep voice) and 98 Rock were playing…they were playing “Come On Eileen”!
I’d won! I’d won! And I did it without firing a shot.
I was just being me, y’know? I wasn’t trying to exclude anybody. I wasn’t looking down my nose at any other kinds of music. I wasn’t all “AC/DC Sucks” or anything. I didn’t think AC/DC sucked. I judged nothing to suck as a class, only on an individual case-by-case basis. My musical choices were merit-based. And somehow, the zeitgeist found merit in what I liked.
I didn’t even know Dexys Midnight Runners was what you’d call a rock group when I first heard “Come On Eileen”. Or a New Music act. I still have zero idea what they or it had to do with the groups whose classification they fell under. I just knew they were singing something about somebody named Eileen and it was influenza-catchy. It could have been the disco version of “Toora-Loora…” like my sister thought. It didn’t matter. It never mattered.
Except to those who make the decisions on what’s cool. Naturally, that couldn’t be me for too long.
“Come On Eileen” and its ilk wouldn’t last on album-oriented rock radio. The forces of Zep were entrenched again by the fall of ’83. YNF put the hammer down (say it in a real deep voice). 98 Rock became Z-98, around the same time New York got Z-100 and ‘PLJ became Power 95. The rock stations couldn’t exist for long as the musical paradise I fancied them in the spring of ’83. It was either purge all that New Music and get your Molly Hatchet on or give up altogether and go Top 40. I find it amusing that “album rock,” the self-proclaimed heir to the throne of “rock ‘n’ roll,” simply couldn’t handle being inclusive. They imploded or they switched, but they just couldn’t stand to be home to a little Wall of Voodoo, a little After The Fire, a little Dexys Midnight Runners, even a little Who.
Or make anybody named Prince feel at home.
As Scandal featuring Patty Smyth so succinctly put it that magical spring, I had to tell my accidental coolness “Goodbye To You”. There would more New Music, even if the term faded from use. There would be more songs I would love, if none quite as much in the 1980s as I loved “Come On Eileen”. But once Casey Kasem completed his hits-of-the-year countdown for ’83, I could feel something more than a bunch of records had ended.
Maybe it was simply the difference between being 20 and turning 21, but I never enjoyed a specific year of music the same way again. It had been exciting to turn on the radio in 1983 and hear Dexys Midnight Runners. It had been thrilling. I fancied it as my own British Invasion, akin to what I imagined it was like to have discovered the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five all around you in early 1964. But even though many of the songs I fell for were from the U.K., it wasn’t really a particular sound I was into. It was that feeling that I had stumbled into being the cool one. It didn’t last much longer than the four minutes it took Kevin Rowland to share with Eileen all his dirty thoughts, but my thoughts, I confess, are that I rather got off on it.
The No. 5 Song of All-Time was heard at the end of June. The No. 3 record will be played at the end of August.
Winning them all continues to be not an option. Damn.
The not-quite-lucky/not-quite-sound doings in the top of the sixth bubble up like goo from time to time in a season, even against a preternaturally doomed club like the Pirates. Unappealing, but a fact of life. So take it out on the Nationals this weekend.
One thing did irk me more than merely losing, even if I feel a little killjoy in being bothered by it. Ramon Castro leads off the second with a base hit that takes off into the left-center gap. It's got just enough legs to make it a double. Problem is Ramon doesn't. Ramon's a scow in a sea of cigarette boats. Ramon's a Heinz Ketchup man. Ramon's a direct descendant of Ernie Lombardi. Ramon's…
Ramon's not fast.
So Ramon Castro, the piano on his back conflicting with the instinct in his head, tries to stretch his long single into a medium double. Nate McLouth's throw, much like the fall harvest, beats Ramon to second. Ramon slides — if you're not picky about literal definitions for the term “slides”. It's less a slide than a abdominal descent into second. Or not quite second. Either way, he's out. Score it 8-somewhere-near-4.
Such a tableau would be amusing to watch if it were occurring to a chunky, leadfooted catcher who plays maybe twice a week on any of 29 other teams; you know, it's funny because it's not the Mets. But this was the Mets, the Mets whose fantastic opportunity to add to a 1-0 lead had just gone by the boards, so I wasn't amused. Actually, I was annoyed. No man on second. No man on first. No baserunner at all. I think that's legitimate grounds for annoyance.
Yet I might have forgotten about it by now in the wake of Oliver Perez's mini-implosion had not Castro's teammates been so yukking it up when he returned to the dugout, laughing heartily at his inability to reach second safely or reach second at all.
Ha-ha! You're slow! And lack grace!
Guys, you've just had a leadoff baserunner erased in the second inning of a 1-0 game against a pretty good lefty who generally gives you fits. You don't have an impenetrable lead either in the game or in the standings. You have been running warm and cold for two months. While you're chortling at Castro, Shawn Green is striking out and Ruben Gotay is preparing to do the same. May I then ask you, the professionals, a simple question?
What the fudge was so funny?
Celebrate your heads off when you homer. Foxtrot on air to commemorate a W. Do your space age handshakes after sacrifice flies if you promise not to hurt yourselves in the process. But when one of you makes the first out of the second inning, a consolatory slap on the ass is the most we need to see.
Joshua and I are back from five blissful days up in the piney woods in Maine, a nice dose of anti-New York City for a New York City boy. My parents' summer house is idyllic for a kid who loves animals and learning about nature, offering no shortage of rewarding sights and sounds for small boys who manage to stop and watch and listen. A sextet of turkeys marching through the juniper, eating blueberries. Hummingbirds dueling and quarreling like miniature fighter jets. Chipmunks so tame they'll eat sunflower seeds out of your hand. (Not an expression. Literally.) Downy woodpeckers, scarlet tanagers, nuthatches, bluebirds, goldfinches. After all that, the city's close horizons and right angles were decidedly jarring.
Still, while we had lots to see and do and much to enjoy thanks to the indulgence of Joshua's grandparents, we were missing one thing up in Maine: the Mets.
Joshua likes to ask me what the Mets did last night; recently he's learned enough to also ask what the Braves did. Over the weekend he had to content himself with the briefest mentions gleaned from staticky postgame WFAN, or forays onto dial-up. In coastal Maine WFAN doesn't even begin to come in until the sun has completely gone down, and that far east in the time zone at this time of the year you're talking 9:30 at the earliest. The only live Mets action of the trip was heard Tuesday night, in what turned out to be the ninth inning.
One of these years I suppose I'll manage to borrow an XM radio from someone for the annual Maine trip. But truth is that I never try that hard. Pretty soon, the summer cottage in the pines will have crystal-clear cellular coverage, wireless Internet, holographic HDTV and who knows what else. For now, it's kinda nice that it lacks those things, even if the price is missing such shoulda-been-theres as Billy Wagner's high-wire save, Chip Ambres's big hit and John Maine getting the keys to his Cadillac.
On the flight home yesterday, I reminded Joshua of all the birds and critters he'd seen. I showed him pictures of the adventures we'd had. I also reminded him that he'd get to see three or four innings of the Mets for the first time in a while. (To a child's loss-of-innocence file add the concept of West Coast swings.) That cheered him up, and come 7:10 he was parked on the couch while I finished hauling in dishes from outside. When I came in there were too many orange dots on the diamond schematic and Joshua was barking at the TV, his tone equal parts encouragement and exasperation, “Come on, Tom Glavine.”
You know that baseball season that began a few weeks ago on a Sunday night in April? It's one hundred games old now. Time has alternately flown and dragged, but somehow we have again reached triple digits.
And?
We're 57-43, in first place in the N.L. East, four games in front of the second-place team, holding the best record in the National League.
One year ago?
We were 59-41, in first place in the N.L. East, 11-1/2 games in front of the second place team, holding the best record in the National League.
Big difference in one of those descriptors, to be sure, but otherwise we have practically the same record 100 games in to 2007 as we did 100 games in to 2006. We have played lethargically for most of the past two months, yet we maintain a solid if not overwhelming margin in our sector of the circuit. Some nights are better than others. Some are undeniably worse. But we're 57-43. We're in first place. We're almost shadowing '06, not after a third of a season but nearly two thirds.
We're all right, I think.
Mind you, I'm not giving up the toughlove. This is no time for curtain calls, unless another Mets pitcher hits another home run. Nor is it time for pats on the back for six decent innings against an eminently beatable team, even if I am enjoying the 9-4 molehill we've mounted since the All-Star break and am looking forward to Tom Glavine achieving his milestone. I just don't want to revel in this recent burst of eptitude too much, lest my favorite squadron of Nye Mets take a casual attitude toward work.
Wednesday night's baseball match at Shea (where I've been spending many a happy, sweaty evening of late) was fine and good. It got the job done. All wins are created equal from this seat in the mezzanine. But there remains in me the nagging feeling we could be doing more to grind our heels into the Pirates' generally useless throats and we're not. This is the one team to whose level we really play down. Did it last year, doin' it to a certain extent this year. The last two games were won by scores of 8-4 and 6-3, both of which are fairly satisfying tallies.
Y'know what, though? We should have won by more. Not to run up the points in case of a tiebreaker and not even to stick this bizarre Milledge-plunking fixation down their throats, but because we can and we haven't. This team's gotta keep takin' care of business. This team's gotta bring runners home from third with nobody out. This team's gotta shred desperate bullpens. This team's gotta be safe at second when it has the refreshing moxie to attempt the extra base. This team's starters gotta avoid letdowns even as they edge one win shy of 300. This team's outfielders gotta stop hurting themselves. (Plus I don't think featuring Moises Alou in DiamondVision's “Whatever Became Of…?” segment sends a positive message.)
I'm verging dangerously close to whiny Mets fan territory here, you know the “we never beat anybody who we're playing right now” supporter, the one who can't get over how every trade has backfired, every move was the wrong one, every ex-Met who takes us on beats the crap out of us with a vengeance (oh wait, that one is true). I'm trying to not do that.
We're doing all right. We could be doing better is all. We could've done better last October. It would be most sweet to take another swing at that particular month.
From my 19th visit to Shea Stadium in 2007, a few observations:
• It's too darn loud. The bloggerhood was in full effect Wednesday night: me and Mike Steffanos of Mike's Mets converged for our first-ever mutual win. We made a point of arriving early so we could sit and chat for the hour before first pitch. This is where you insert a laugh track. It was Discover Queens Night, which is when you discover if you still have an eardrum. For 20 minutes before the national anthem we were treated to a blaring cacophony of Queens' finest cultural attractions — something Latin, something Asian, something rockin'. None of it is why Mike or I (or you) go to Shea. There was also a presentation of Mets Good Conduct certificates to various Queensians, also loud for no sane reason. This all reeked of municipal payola. From 1964 to 2005, the Mets barely acknowledged their borough. Now it's head-hitting-over time. You promote the county, we approve whatever zoning variances you need to build your ballpark. Both parties somehow do everything with a straight face. (The DQ people handed out a brochure that strongly intimated Shea opened in 1962 — I guess this really is a marriage that Discovered convenience and religion at the same moment.)
• It's too darn commercial. This hasn't been news since Harry M. Stevens first sold Breyers to the Indians, but boy are all the ads and sponsorships grating. Usually it's background noise. Last night, as one conversation after another had to be put on hold for another commercial, I wanted to reconsider capitalism as an economic system. I kept telling myself that as long as whatever money the Mets are making by pimping the new Jackie Chan movie and Bon Jovi CD is going to building an effective on-field product (and I'm just assuming that), that it's a small price to pay. It's not, actually, but that's what I told myself. Meanwhile, Mike noted after the twin assaults of Kiss Cam and Smile Cam, “They have too many cams here.”
• It's not too darn crowded. But there are a lot of people at Mets games all the time now. Mets' attendance is the great underreported story of the summer. That four-game series against the Reds after the break drew 203,515. The Reds. It set a record for a four-date set at Shea, breaking by 4,000 what the Mets and Pirates drew in 1988 when they were dueling for first place in the heat of summer (note to anyone who just began following baseball over the past 15 seasons: the Pirates used to be competitive against everybody). These last two games have brought more than 49,000 per game to Shea. Against the Pirates. The Pirates. Even if the tickets-sold thing is a fudge versus the ol' fannies-in-the-seats metric and even if Six-Pack extortion gooses the advance, that's bleeping amazing. The Mets weren't giving anything away the last two nights, not even ballgames. Also, kudos for — after more than half a season of not doing so — making the trains run on time. Or making the foot traffic flow smoothly after games. The weeknight express 7 seems to be making a difference. It more than makes up for the disappearance of the perfunctory April and May “Welcome to Shea Stadium” greetings that have vanished as I predicted they would (right after I predicted the sun would come up most mornings).
• It's so darn close, or at least getting closer. The bricks on the 126th St. side of Citi Field are in place. Noticed them Tuesday night when my buddy Rich, who discovered Queens a long time ago, took us to his special parking place. I walked over myself Wednesday night, through a very dusty rightfield parking lot (where precious spaces were given over to tailgater setups…more Fan Magic at work), to press my nose up to the chain link fence that keeps us and the future separated. It's stunning, as in I'm stunned the bricks are already there. My first impression is it looks more like the side of a school than a ballpark, but that's quite a sketchy, incomplete take. For the first time, I hear myself referring to Citi Field as living thing, not just a marketing concept or a construction site — which scares the bejeesus out of me on behalf of my big blue friend due west of there. Maybe life begins when you lay the first brick. I noticed there was a Jay Buckley Baseball Tours group sitting near us in Mezz Section 6, folks who travel the country going to a different ballpark every night. I thought about asking what they thought of Shea, but then I decided it would be nice if the volume on the PA would be cranked so I wouldn't have to hear an objective analysis.
• It's gonna have cats! Thanks to Loge 13 for this link to a Times story on what will likely become of our furry, feral friends as we move across the asphalt. Come home, King Felix…all is forgiven.
The American League doesn’t know what it’s missing.
Eff the DH. Eff the “nine hole”. Eff the whole concept that the pitcher is an automatic out, because in those lunar eclipse moments when maybe once a year, maybe once every few years, you see your guy take the other team’s guy deeper than the night, stronger than the north wind blowin’…well, shoot — is there anything more fun in this ol’ game of ours?
And when it’s John Maine? Not just “the John Maine” of your staff, as in the pitcher who’s batting ninth only because they won’t let him bat eleventh, but actually John Maine himself who didn’t connect for even one base safely until the end of the 2006 season? John Maine himself who was carrying (presumably folded up in his back pocket) an .088 average to the plate in the bottom of the fourth when all 49,122 of us at Shea assumed a bunt was in order? That or a white flag attached the to barrel of his bat?
When it’s exactly that John Maine who finds a high strike from Ian Snell in what we’ll assume is his wheelhouse and it’s exactly that John Maine who decides a swing is as good a bunt and it’s exactly that John Maine who sends a high fly ball to left that never stops being high until Jason Bay is watching it be gone?
Nope. There’s nothing more fun.
Except, perhaps, watching John Maine round the bases. There was plenty of time for that.
Remember Darryl Strawberry doing in Al Nipper and the Red Sox once and for all in Game Seven? Remember how he Cadillac’d around first and made it home just in time for the next day’s parade? Remember Vin Scully snorting upon the replay, “It’ll take him about 20 minutes to go around the basepaths.” and Joe Garagiola concurring, “Oh, he really took his time.”?
Darryl Strawberry’s still waiting at the plate to greet John Maine.
I don’t think Johnny M. was trying to show up Snell or the Pirates or the fans at PNC Park for serenading him with DAAARRRYYYLLL! last September. I think he was just wondering “uh, which base is next?” I swear, though, I watched the homer, I indulged in a celebration, I considered the last time I saw one of these (Bobby Jones in the Home Opener in ’99) and I looked down and he was only at third. His reluctant curtain call was quicker and believe me, it was reluctant.
Once you’ve got your pitcher hitting a home run, you’ve got no business losing, so Maine took care of that, too. He seemed, as he so often does, uncomfortable in the early going. Hitting the homer seemed to straighten him out. (“So that’s what one of those feels like? Dang, I don’t want to have to stand on the mound while somebody else rounds the bases. I’m gonna pitch much better now.”) Thus, that was pretty much that. Lastings Milledge would tickle the stratosphere for emphasis later and the Mets oh-by-the-way won decisively.
Where does a pitcher home run rank in terms of “you know what I saw tonight?” events? I’m not exactly sure. A pitcher home run isn’t a no-hitter (not as if we would know) and it’s not a cycle. Maybe it’s a triple play, though one run on one swing is one run on one swing regardless of who swings, whereas three outs on one pitch is pretty fricking amazing. Maybe it’s a steal of home, an inside-the-park job; maybe the moral equivalent of a five-for-five or a three-homer night by a nonpitcher. A pitcher home run is more than an oddity, maybe a bit shy of an epiphany.
But when the John Maine of your staff does it…it’s just so cool is what it is.
***
Speaking of cool, I’d be remiss if I didn’t (again) quote the late Howard Beale to express my joy and gratitude that so many you took up the righteous cause of enshrining Dick Young in the singularly sublime MetstradamusHall of Hate, letting it be known that we, the truest of the blue and orange, will not be distracted by petty flavors of the month when it comes time to set in virtual stone our hardiest grudges:
Last night I got up here and asked you to stand up and fight for your heritage, and you did, and it was beautiful…the people spoke, the people won. It was a radiant eruption of democracy.
It won’t negate the trade of Tom Seaver nor the several lean years that ensued, but this little statement of ours certainly feels appropriate to this particular endeavor, doesn’t it?
The third annual Hall of Hate balloting is nearing its close, 11:59 tonight. As the dawn approaches, Dick Young is 13 votes behind the All-Star Home Field Rule in the election for the second of two spots available to enshrine the worst of the worst, the lowest of the low, a list that encompasses — in the words of its brilliant creator — the biggest enemies in Mets history, “the ones who the mere mention of their names makes one want to drink a bottle of ipecac just so you can puke all over your dog.”
Hate is a hateful emotion to carry around with you. We're all about the peace and the love here, but sometimes we have to make an exception. Hall of Hate voting is one of those occasions. Metstradamus was clearheaded enough to make the Hall the repository for all our bile. No need to boo or stew. Just vote.
Just vote for Dick Young. And no one else.
True, Metstra fashioned a thoughtful ballot of worthy villains but has imposed a stringent limit on who gets in this year. He says just two. I say just fine. As long as one of them is Dick Young.
Don't bother with anybody else on the ballot. It's too late for Richie Hebner this year. All ticket-splitting detracts from the mission at hand. Don't bother with runaway leader Braden Looper. He's a passing fancy anyway. And certainly don't bother with the All-Star Rule. It shouldn't be in second place. It garnered support in a fit of passion. Metstradamus rendered unto us the ballot in the days following the All-Star Game. Of course the Rule is going to look bad in its wake. It always looks bad. It's a stupid rule. But honestly, it's two weeks since the All-Star Game. Have you thought about it at all lately?
On the other hand, how can the actions of Dick Young not keep occurring to you if you are a Mets fan? Dick Young was M. Donald Grant's key henchman in running Tom Seaver out of New York. Dick Young was the company man of his day (even though he was technically on the Daily News' payroll). Dick Young printed scurrilous gossip — Nancy Seaver is jealous of Ruth Ryan! — and did all he could to remove Tom Seaver from the New York Mets. Dick Young didn't like Tom Seaver, didn't care for modern times, didn't want players who thought for themselves. For Grant (already enshrined) and Young, it was imperative the old order be preserved and that Seaver be dispatched.
Grant's and Young's plan worked like a charm: Seaver was gone and the Mets went into the toilet for the next seven years. Your team was ruined. Your enemies celebrated. You or your forebears were cackled upon. Your baseball life was in ruins.
How can you not hate that? How can you not hate Dick Young? Even if you weren't around in 1977, how can you look back on the history of your club, the club you shape at least part of your identity around, and not want the world to know Dick Young, one of the most powerful columnists New York ever read, was one the most hateful men who ever lived?
American League gets home field advantage in the World Series? So what? We're talking about the single most important player in Mets history and the single worst move in Mets history. M. Donald Grant pulled the trigger. Dick Young cleaned the gun. Together, they destroyed the New York Mets.
Do your heritage a favor. Do your self-esteem a favor. Vote Dick Young for the Metstradamus Hall of Hate. You have until one minute before midnight tonight. Go. Get it done. You'll feel better knowing you did the right thing.
You know the FAFIF retired numbers t-shirt has made it big when the grand poobah of Mets uniform numerology himself is sporting it at Shea. No, not Charlie Samuels, but our buddy Jon Springer from Mets By The Numbers, one of the greatest Web sites in the history of the world (we are told its core data has gone into the shop for detailing and will emerge all new and glistening in the coming weeks).
Not yet wearing any numbers but definitely making an impact is 14-month-old Ivan Springer, taking in his first afternoon at Shea Stadium last Sunday. How did he like it? We are told that he was a real gamer, at least for the first four innings. Alas, the cumulative effect of a ceremonial flyover on Military Appreciation Day and oodles of cheering Mets fans sent the Springer men to an uncommonly early exit.
The kid’s lifetime record stands at 1 win and 0 losses. He’s got some nice numbers of his own there.
Some successful cultural phenomena defy mortal understanding. One of them is the Broadway genre known as the jukebox musical, one that has turned the catalogues of pop artists or soundtracks from familiar films into excuses for shows — expensive-to-attend shows. With the exception of the GrandABBA of them all, Mamma Mia, Stephanie and I have avoided these with plaguelike precision. Until Sunday afternoon.
Having timed our way into hella discounted third-row tickets, we rolled the dice on Xanadu, a musical based mostly on the 1980 Olivia Newton-John vehicle of the same name, with a few extra ON-J and ELO chestnuts (a very music critic-y word) thrown in. About three notes into the very first resuscitated number, Electric Light Orchestra’s “I’m Alive,” I couldn’t help but think:
They made a musical out of this? They made a musical out of bleeping Xanadu? They made a musical out of perhaps the worst movie ever?
That they did. And with up-close seats that cost no more than some of your ritzier Gold, even Silver dates at Shea, I am compelled to report that Xanadu lived up to its surprisingly glowing notices. It moved fast, it was totally aware of itself (who would have thought roller disco could be so tolerable and leg warmers such a plot point?) and it starred the delightful Kerry Butler, whose performance as “checkerboard chick” Penny Pingleton charmed us so in Hairspray five years ago. The show was as fluid as the film was torpid.
I’m predisposed to like anything that features a Top 500 smash, which Xanadu most certainly did, specifically the No. 270 song of all-time, Olivia Newton-John’s “Magic”. It was my anthem for June and July and August of 1980, perfectly synced to those “Magic Is Back” Mets, continuing to echo in what’s left of the mind I had when I was 17. I couldn’t hear it Sunday without thinking of Steve Henderson and Allen Ripley and all that hope I invested in the Torreadors of 27 summers ago. My musings usually drift to baseball during stage productions (or anytime I’m in an audience), so having a legitimate shove like “come take my hand…” was all the more appreciated.
I mentioned it was a fast-moving show. It started at 3:00. It was over by 4:30. Just long enough to give us our money’s worth, just quick enough to get us out onto 44th Street in the second inning. You have to believe I switched the FAN on. Nothing could stand in my way.
Through dinner at the dependable Westway Diner on Ninth Ave., through the 10-block walk south to Penn Station, most of the trip home on the 6:04…everything stood in our way. Rafael Furcal…Nomar Garciaparra…that annoying Eric Stults from last September…the first seven innings sounded decidedly unmagical. I was beginning to really resent Xanadu for being set in and around Los Angeles.
But then! All over the world, gotta tell you what I just heard…
• The top of the eighth, somewhere east of Valley Stream: A Reyes double, a Milledge grounder, a Beltran fly ball. Dodgers 4 Mets 3.
• The top of the ninth, driving home from the station: infield single, wild pitch, helpful grounder, rightfield error. Dodgers 4 Mets 4.
• The top of the tenth, on the well-worn couch: Milledge and Beltran with the base hits, Wright with the beatout of the double play and the muse-assisted Chip Ambres finds a hole. Mets 5 Dodgers 4.
• The bottom of the tenth, edging from our seats: Billy Wagner, not without bumps (nor as smoothly as Heilman and Feliciano), strikes out three dangerous Dodgers. The Mets hang on to something it didn’t seem they would have at all.
And now, open your eyes and see, what we have made is real. We are in Xanadu.
Well, we’re in first place, still, even after the turbulence of one too many West Coast flights. We’re in first place, still, no matter how many pebbles have accumulated in our shoes. We’re in first place, still, despite having played few eighth, ninth and tenth innings as transcendent as the three final frames we gutted out Sunday afternoon.
Should these Mets use this 4-3 road trip, this 7-4 stretch since the break, as a launching pad for further momentum, to build a more impenetrable divisional margin, to ride to another Eastern title, to ascend Mount Olympus as planned but pre-empted a year ago, then this game was totally magic — the Chip Ambres Game, we’ll call it; he walks in and he’s suddenly a hero.
And if this was just one isolated sparkly Hollywood win and it’s back to wallowing in muddy waters on the shores of Flushing Bay against the Bucs and Nats, so what? It was still a helluva win. We’re alive and the world shines for us today.
Every one of us who thought “yeah, that's too bad about Valen…oh boy! Ruben Gotay is gonna play more!” deserved to watch Gotay throw away a sure double play ball in the sixth and, with it, any hope of keeping the Dodgers in sight Saturday.
For shame. For shame on anyone who took the least bit of solace in any Met's injury, especially one as serious as that which befell Jose Valentin.
Myself included.
I like what Ruben Gotay has shown with the bat, I really do. But he's a subpar second baseman. If he plays enough, he will be exposed. He has been exposed. He might get better and he might be worth it because he might hit, but I have to believe there's a reason that Gotay was made readily available by Kansas City last year and went unclaimed when he was dropped off the major league roster over the winter. As a part-time contributor, he qualifies as one of Omar's potential gems. As an everyday second baseman, I'm not nearly sold. Not yet.
I'm having a bit of déjà vu with Gotay. This is, on a less monumental scale, Melvin Mora all over again. Mora became the everyday shortstop when Rey Ordoñez went down in 2000. Mora could hit. There was no doubt about that. He was 1999's Endy Chavez except with added versatility. Problem was he wasn't an everyday shortstop, certainly not when he was asked to prove he was in the heat of a pennant race. Watching Melvin play short was painful seven years ago, as much because I had fallen in love with his hitting and outfield skills the fall before as because he wasn't a good shortstop and it was the costing the Mets baserunners and potential outs.
The Mets traded for a great shortstop, Barry Larkin. But Larkin vetoed the deal. Then they traded for a proven shortstop, Mike Bordick. He wasn't all that proven anymore at that stage of his career. Plus they traded Melvin Mora to get him. Mora went on to become an All-Star for the Orioles, if not an All-Star shortstop. Bordick went on to find the bottom of the hill as a Met.
Might have the 2000 Mets gone on to an N.L. flag with Mora at short? I honestly can't say. He really was a poor shortstop. I didn't want him traded, but I didn't want him in there at that moment playing at that spot. But injuries mean hard choices. Willie has one right now at second, juggling among Gotay's bat, Anderson Hernandez's just-recalled glove, Marlon Anderson's moxie and whatever Damion Easley has left once he returns to the roster. I've still got that fantasy trade for Brandon Phillips on the front burner, but I'm not the GM…of the Mets or the Reds.
I don't know who's going to play second or who should play second or if anyone's going to emerge as the answer. I do know none of us should have felt even ancillary relief that Jose Valentin was no longer an option. I know I did and I know I was wrong.
A plea for Jose Valentin, AKA “Other Jose” when Reyes's cheer was adapted for his good deeds: In six to eight weeks please be careful crossing streets and going down stairs. Because it ain't your year.
Valentin's run of miserable luck (knee, wall-punching hand, etc.) has now culminated with a broken tibia, one I imagine will end his season and his Mets career. So now what? Hmm. Well, the signing of Marlon Anderson now looks even smarter, doesn't it? Ruben Gotay, recently entering his period as Promising Young Player Being Hazed by Willie Randolph, has a crack at finishing stealing the second-base job away for his very own. (Provided he hits against lefties.) Does David Newhan get back on the Crescent City shuttle? Hey, forgotten man Anderson Hernandez's hitting .259 against lefties down in New Orleans, which for Anderson Hernandez is a lot of hitting.
On the other hand, it sure looks like it's Oliver Perez's year. Never has an ill-advised taxi ride proved such a blessing in disguise: It gave us Oliver, a once-and-potentially-future ace, and Roberto Hernandez, whose poor outing in enemy colors let us finally break through. (Who knows, maybe Xavier Nady was out letting the air out of various Dodgers' tires.) I've written it before, but it bears writing again and again: Every time I doubt Omar, I try to remember that forced into a desperate midnight trade (and don't let hindsight and fungible memory convince you we weren't desperate), he turned a serviceable but unexceptional outfielder into an OK reliever and a guy whom I firmly believe could shutter the Clubhouse of Curses and lead us to a title.
On the other hand, I was aghst during Omar's in-booth chat about Pedro (Martinez, not to be confused with Feliciano, who did a marvelous job keeping the Dodgers at bay). The conspiracy theories will bloom, but I don't think Omar was playing possum by ratcheting down expectations with his talk that anything we get from Pedro this year is a bonus. That sounds to me like Dr. Altchek has recommended more than a mental rest. It sounds to me like something is wrong or Pedro's coming along a lot more slowly than we believed a couple of weeks ago.
Bad news. But, well, let's take 'em one game at a time, and the good Lord willing, things'll work out. Like they did tonight: Oliver was masterful, both Carloses seem to be reviving, and we got to display a second raised middle finger to the schedule-makers.
And now I'm off with the kid to the piney woods of Maine. Back in '05, my trip didn't go so well: It was Humberto Cota and Braden Looper and Greg ordering me back home. Last year there was a bit of Lima (any bit of Lima is too much Lima), a lot of runs for newborn met Mike Pelfrey, and then the All-Star break.
This year? Who knows. Though with Brad Penny taking the mound later today, I've got a hankering for revenge. The Spanish have their own expression about revenge, but I've always heard it's a dish best served by breaking it over Brad Penny's fucking head.
Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
Amazin' Again: How the 2015 New York Mets Brought the Magic Back to Queens by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
Volume I of The Happiest Recap: 50+ Years of the New York Mets As Told in 500+ Amazin' Wins by Greg Prince is available in print and for Kindle on Amazon.
Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History by Greg Prince (foreword by Jason Fry), is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
