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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 15 June 2007 12:35 pm If you’re still trying to make sense out of a senseless act thirty years after the fact, then it’s Flashback Friday at Faith and Fear in Flushing.
The Mets seem to be mired in utter disarray as we speak, losers of five in a row, nine of their last ten, all four of their most recent series, each against a quality contender. They couldn’t be playing any worse. And they couldn’t be playing anybody hotter than the Yankees, three games this weekend, at Yankee Stadium.
It sounds like hell. Yet I can handle it standing on my head.
I can handle a whole host of Met hell because I’ve lived through the ultimate Mets detonator. I lived through the blowing up and immolation of the New York Mets. I lived through June 15, 1977. I was in the house when the house burned down.
I stuck around and waited for contractors to show up and start rebuilding. Not everybody did. Many fled to higher ground. Those who would define their interest in a baseball team as some kind of leisure activity related they saw fit to wash their hands of the whole mess. Why would I want to devote myself to a pastime that would make me miserable? these souls asked. They got out of baseball, certainly out of the Mets. Those who stayed with baseball and not the Mets? They will have their own Hell to deal with eventually.
Oh them of little faith and virtually no character. Silly ex-fans. Mets are for life.
Thus here I am, exactly thirty years later, alive and willing to recall the grisly particulars. So do me a favor and try not to use phrases like “I’m out on the ledge” near me to illustrate your displeasure with something as pedestrian as a five-game losing streak or an unfavorable upcoming schedule. Losing five is nothing. Losing 41 was everything.
Thing is we knew this was coming. This was in the air for a long time. In the very last edition of The Long Island Press, on March 25, 1977, Jack Lang reported it was inexorably en route:
Contrary to their denials, the Mets have promised Tom Seaver they will trade him if they can work out an equitable deal, The Press learned today.
The Press died the next day. But the talk of a deal lived on. Lang’s exclusive was the Mets would send Seaver to the Dodgers. That didn’t happen. But it was out there. The idea that our best player ever — then as now — could be swapped mainly out of management pique did not materialize without notice.
If you can ever be prepared for your one and only baseball hero to be sent somewhere else, you could have seen this coming. The ’70s in general and free agency in particular had stripped us of our native innocence. We were a cynical lot, we adolescents of 1977. Never mind Vietnam and Watergate (though those didn’t help). Sports had become a big, nasty business on our watch. If you were barely old enough to remember 1969, you were plenty old enough to have witnessed intense labor strife in and around the seasons that followed: strikes threatened, games cancelled, dynasties dismantled, contracts voided, options played out, clauses no longer reserved, checkbooks brandished, superstars dispatched over money, uniforms exchanged with alarming suddenness.
The Oakland A’s were no more, not really, by 1977. It wasn’t that I was an A’s fan. I wasn’t. But this was the dynasty of our age. This was the defending world champion we took to seven games in 1973 and felt little shame over losing to because they were the finest conglomeration of pitching, hitting, running, fielding and moxie we’d ever see operate over an extended period. But the A’s, the Swingin’ A’s who grew mustaches and challenged penurious authority, scattered to the four corners of the baseball map by ’77. Catfish Hunter got out on a technicality. Reggie Jackson wouldn’t sign so he was sent to Baltimore. Vida Blue, Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers were sold to deep pockets, albeit temporarily when the commissioner ordered Charlie Finley to cut it out. Didn’t matter. Free agency took care of just about every Athletic still in Oakland after 1976.
If the perennial champion A’s could go every which way but on, what was the likelihood that a perpetually middling 83-79 type outfit like the Mets would be immune forever? Money and player freedom and the possibility of more money were three elements that eluded the understanding of Mets management by 1977. It was their misfortune to employ the greatest pitcher of his era, one who could command compensation every bit as handsome as he appeared on all those Mets yearbook covers.
Tom Seaver wanted the Mets to spend more money. Some on him. Some on his team. The Mets were going to do no such thing. They didn’t care for the idea of this ingrate not appreciating that they had lowballed him before free agency took hold. They didn’t think much of Tom Seaver’s 182 wins between 1967 and 1976, his three Cy Youngs, his strikeout and ERA titles, his role in leading one miracle team to a world championship and another to the cusp of a second.
At least that’s how it seemed from here. I was probably more accepting of the idea of Tom Seaver being traded in the days leading up to June 15, 1977 than I am now. It makes no sense now. It made…well, it didn’t make any sense then either, but you understood it. No, actually you didn’t understand it, but you got it. At the very least you saw it coming.
It was everywhere. It was, sadly, all that was keeping anybody’s attention on the Mets in the spring of ’77. It is perhaps forgotten that prior to trading Tom Seaver to Cincinnati and similarly embroiled Dave Kingman to San Diego and, for weird measure, Mike Phillips to St. Louis on June 15, the Mets were not exactly Camelot.
1977, based on April and May, was already the first godawful year I experienced as a Mets fan. They lost 91 games in ’74, but there were injuries (the Mets were always injured in the ’70s) and residual goodwill from ’73 and, quite frankly, I kind of zoned out that summer. 1977 was way worse. Last place was achieved May 4 and maintained steadily thereafter. Make no mistake: We would finish last without Seaver and Kingman and Phillips but we would have likely finished last with them.
Would have been nice if we could have found out.
There was no goodwill to be had that grim spring, no equity allowing anybody the moral standing to tell anybody else they gotta believe. Since 1974 we had watched Tug McGraw, then Cleon Jones, then Rusty Staub marched beyond our borders. We saw Yogi Berra take the fall in ’75 despite putting his team and his legend over the top two years earlier. Against that backdrop, what chance did Cobra Joe Frazier have?
The manager who eventually succeeded Berra was offed before his second May in the job was over, removed from office after a 15-30 start despite bringing home a pretty decent 86-76 finish the year before. It was inevitable with Frazier, and not just because he had no relevant Major League experience and not just because by comparison Art Howe really did light up a room. Nobody’s head was safe by 1977. It was shocking when Yogi was axed because he was Yogi. It was more shocking that Frazier was ever hired. There wasn’t anything surprising about his no longer managing the Mets.
Under player-manager Joe Torre (sure, why not?), the Mets briefly righted their ship, winning seven of eight into early June. That made the Mets 22-31. Alas, they were still the ’77 Mets. Swift Lenny Randle punched out Frank Lucchesi in Texas (is it any wonder we were cynical?) and wound up our third baseman. He was having a good season. And Seaver raced to his usual sublime start, racking up seven wins in his first ten decisions…his last ten decisions of local consequence, it would turn out. I don’t remember anybody else on that roster excelling.
Unraveling in the shadows of Seaver’s staredown with M. Donald Grant and Grant mouthpiece Dick Young was the Met tenure of Dave Kingman. Kingman was not Seaver. Seaver was homegrown. Kingman was purchased from San Francisco when Horace Stoneham was broke and drunk. Seaver was as well-rounded a pitcher as one could imagine. Kingman was a one-trick pony. But, oh, that trick. Whereas Seaver’s craft became what the Mets would be known for, Kingman’s single skill — the ability to occasionally launch majestic, awesome, cloudburst home runs — was an anomaly. But what a delicious anomaly on a team forever starved for power or offense of any kind. Yeah, Kingman struck out when he wasn’t homering (he left town at .209) and didn’t exactly take extra fielding practice and maybe never finished in the top percentile of his charm school class, but he was Dave Kingman. In the schoolyards of 1977 New York, Dave Kingman equaled slugger. You swing for the fences? Who do you think you are…Dave Kingman?
The Mets couldn’t afford to lose anybody who was identified with anything positive, but now zero hour was at hand. SkyKing was relatively small potatoes, no matter how tall he stood. Seaver was The Franchise, the best nickname ever assigned any Met, maybe anybody. Tom Terrific wasn’t bad either. His mind was supple, his motion was exquisite. Just by going to the mound every five days he taught a generation to pitch.
But who needed to make every effort to hold on to that? Not the Mets of M. Donald Grant and Dick Young. They were content to chase Seaver far from New York and, if the dust pulled Kingman along, that’s fine. We’re the New York Mets. We won two pennants when nobody thought we could. We had a good record in August and September last year. Who needs an All-Star slugger and a Cy Young winner?
This is the publicly articulated front-office thinking we as 14-year-old-or-thereabout Mets fans were up against as the clock neared midnight on June 15, 1977 and as I woke up for school the next morning to collect the bloody details of the instantly dubbed Wednesday Night Massacre from the radio. It may has well have been an assassination bulletin. M. Donald Grant murdered our team.
A friend and contemporary suggested to me the other day that it was the end of our childhoods. Maybe. I guess. Childhood was no age of innocence if you were paying attention to the front or back pages back then. Like I said, the realpolitik of baseball — undeniably business every bit as much as game for the previous half-decade — was in evidence everywhere. Norman Rockwell was clearly done for.
But Tom Seaver not a Met? Adults took that one pretty hard. Roger Angell: Tom Seaver is gone — no longer a Met, no longer a sunlit prominence in this flattened city of New York. Indeed, what was the point of having the Mets if you weren’t going to have Tom Seaver be one of them? Seaver was angry with Grant and pretty satisfied to be joining the two-time titleholding Reds (I just assumed his presence would mean a resumption of their dominance and that their Big lumber-fueled Machine would assure him of 25 or 30 wins per annum), yet he wasn’t smiling. He cried. Nancy cried. It was on the front page of the Post. My sister had just begun an internship with an advertising agency that had Bausch & Lomb as an account. She clipped the pictures of them dabbing their eyes and mocked up an ad for soft contact lenses to show around the office. She was just being clever, but she picked the wrong week to start mocking Tom Seaver.
We were in the toilet already for ’77. Seaver could pitch his heart out, Kingman could connect on a semi-regular basis, Mike Phillips could do whatever it was that Mike Phillips might have done and we were going to have a tough time topping Montreal for fifth. We were in the toilet, but we should have all gone down together. And who knows? There was always 1978.
At least there would have been. The Mets were over for years to come. Seaver was as Red as they got. On Saturday the 18th, he appeared as if from out of a nightmare on the dingy mound at Olympic Stadium in Cincinnati grays, shutting down the Expos on the Game of the Week. NBC rounded up Marv Albert and Art Shamsky to broadcast. Two New Yorkers announcing that two days after wiping his eyes dry, the quintessential Met had thrown a three-hit, eight-strikeout complete game shutout. You couldn’t not look at Tom Seaver, whatever uniform he wore to work, and not see the Met within. I thought he deserved to have Bench, Rose, Morgan and Foster at his disposal. With hindsight, I thought wrong. Tom Seaver never, ever should have been let go.
What a pity. What a tragedy. Nobody died is the best I can say about it.
Ladies and gentlemen, Queens grew quiet. Again, what was the point? Except for the odd Jacket Day, plenty of good seats became available. The Mets, the locus of New York’s baseball coverage as recently as 1975 and still considered a contending entity as late as March, fell off the face of the city. There was a better chance the lights would go out for 24 hours than there was that you could spot bright faces congregating at Shea Stadium. The action had moved to another borough and would remain there well into the 1980s.
But like I said, I lived through it. Gritted my teeth and lived through it. Sucked it up and lived through it. The house wouldn’t be rebuilt for an eternity, but I hung in. I never stopped idolizing Tom Seaver but I never stopped rooting for his old team, my continuing team. The names were suddenly unfamiliar and the mix wasn’t particularly promising. To paraphrase from a General Washington dispatch dramatized in 1776, I began to notice that many of the Mets were lads under 25 and old men, none of whom could truly be called ballplayers. “Bring Your Kids to See Our Kids” was the Mets’ pitch. Without Seaver, pitching was the last thing they should have tried.
But I was a Mets fan. I couldn’t be one of those people who switched allegiances or swore off this habit. What was I going to do — stare out the window and wait for death? I was 14, but I was fully made. And unlike Tug and Cleon and Rusty and Yogi and Tom and Dave and Mike, made fans never leave the life.
I didn’t care for Tom Seaver’s absence, what it represented as regarded the immediate prospects of my team and how little it indicated management cared about its product or its customers. That Jack Lang story in The Press said the Mets thought they had a shot at Don Sutton. A thorough 30-year retrospective by Brian Costello uncovered Torre’s recollection that future Dodger star Pedro Guerrero was waiting in the wings. Instead Grant and Joe McDonald took the 99-cent store approach to rebuilding: quantity, quantity, quantity, quantity…and so cheap!
I came to pull for Steve Henderson, Doug Flynn, Pat Zachry and Dan Norman in short order. But I never should have had to.
Next Friday: Mighty Casey’s last at-bat.
by Greg Prince on 14 June 2007 6:35 am Good evening. Today is Wednesday, September the 24th, and this is my last broadcast. Yesterday I announced on this program that I was going to commit public suicide, admittedly an act of madness. Well, I'll tell you what happened: I just ran out of bullshit.
Am I still on the air?
It's not the Howard Beale spiel you're used to seeing on DiamondVision but it was the particular Paddy Chayefsky gem from Network that seeped to mind in the midst of Wednesday night's Mao Tse-Tung Hour of a baseball game.
Last night I got up here and asked you to stand up and fight for your heritage and believe the Mets are still en route to an inevitable division title — also admittedly an act of madness — and you did and it was beautiful.
But I think that was it, fellas.
That sort of thing is not likely to happen again, because at the bottom of all our terrified souls we know the Mets are a dying giant, a sick, sick, dying, decayed athletic concept writhing in its final pain.
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. First base isn't being covered. Double plays are going unexecuted. Balls are not cut off in center. Baserunners are stretching singles into outs. Opposing pitchers, if they're not flipping bats at will after smacking the third of three consecutive home runs on three consecutive pitches, bark in the faces of our hitters, unburdened by the slightest hint of retribution for their unsportsmanlike conduct. Sluggers carrying lifetime averages of .280 are retired with ease and regularity. Leads are taken and immediately surrendered. Series after series piles humiliation upon embarrassment upon debacle. Ricky Ledee is starting in left.
We know things are bad — worse than bad. They're crazy.
by Jason Fry on 13 June 2007 1:39 pm The beach? Lovely.
The Mets? Did I mention the beach was lovely?
We're staying for the week on Long Beach Island, one of our favorite places in the world between the beach, the general atmosphere of non-New York Cityness, the best beach burger place a body could ask for (Woodies) and, oh yeah, the fact that LBI has SNY on its cable system and is comfortably within WFAN range.
This is the first time we've been here in June -– normally we arrive after Labor Day (and will do so this year for an encore). Our first time here we stayed in a motel and heard the newborn Jose Reyes beat the then-mighty Braves with two home runs and some sterling defensive play. Other years haven't been as Met-friendly: 2005's LBI trip saw the end of the Mets as playoff contenders, including the still-harrowing game in which Braden Looper blew two saves in the same game. Last September the Mets were quietly jogging to a division title.
This year we're staying with a gang of friends in a huge house, one whose owners have outfitted it with multiple HDTVs and an audio system that I'm pretty sure could land the space shuttle if I could just find the right button combination on the right remote, which I can't. (Oddly, for all its A/V wizardry the house doesn't have high-speed Net access, which is why this post is link-free.)
I also need to find the remote that makes the team play better. Because Jeez Louise do the Mets suck right now.
It's been a while since we've had to endure this -– the nauseous certainty that something and in fact everything will go wrong. 3-0 lead? It won't last. Starting pitcher looks sharp early? The bullpen will blow it. There's evidence of clutch hitting? It'll be lost in the property room by the mid-innings.
Watching the Tigers, I wasn't sure what would happen first: Would we be pummeled into submission by the likes of Placido Polanco and Gary Sheffield, or would our wounded outfielders would be finished off by birds? Is it too late to do away with interleague play? When you win, it's a novelty. When you lose, it's an injustice. And we won one of those games.
And now L.A. — back in the National League, albeit in the middle of the night. Sour anger kept me awake until the eighth inning of the first game; I woke up hours later staring at some middle-of-the-night SNY nonsense and knew, without having to check, that there hadn't been a rally. Last night I resolved to make a better showing, but my eyelids were drooping by the time Maine took on the bottom part of the order. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! That woke me up briefly, even as it put the Mets to sleep.
I knew they'd lose. You knew they'd lose. If they'd been told what had just happened, those seagulls on the field in Detroit would have known they'd lose. I turned the game off in disgust and was asleep within seconds, and this morning when Joshua asked me if the Mets had won, I said for the first time in a long time that I didn't know.
But I did know. To confirm, I negotiated with the A/V system until SNY appeared. The highlights were starting. I saw Delgado drive in Wright again, and then heard that that was just about all the offense of the night. Fantastic.
One more in L.A. Then the Yankees, now out of the coffin and dangerous again. Then all the other 2006 AL playoff teams and the rest of this nightmare month. Before Hell Month started, I'd steeled myself to remember that a .500 month would be just fine, that going 3-2 and 4-3 in the postseason is the road to victory.
A .500 month? We should be so lucky.
by Greg Prince on 13 June 2007 7:57 am Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: We Win (Again)
by Greg on Wed 26 Sep 2007 04:32 AM
And who among us didn't begin to lose Faith during that dreadful first Dodger series coming on the heels of that dreadful Tiger series coming on the heels of that dreadful Phillie series coming on the heels of that dreadful Diamondback series? June looked like a dread end, I can confess that now.
I don't know that I ever felt lower all year than when Hong-Chih Kuo hit the third homer in three pitches off Maine and then flipped his frigging bat in celebration. I spent that whole night (it was a long one) ruminating on whether we should have followed Ronnie's advice and plunked somebody or if the best revenge would have been a retaliatory W. Of course it didn't come that night. Nothing came that night. I remember thinking it would have been great if Gomez or Reyes could have laid a bunt right down the first base line and then run right up the guy's ass. Gomez did bunt, I think, but right back to the mound. We weren't doing anything well during the first half of June.
But the first half of June didn't last forever. It rarely does.
True confession: I kind of began to give up on the Mets on June 12. Maybe my Faith was clinically dead for a few seconds. I began thinking what if the Mets do suck this much, what if losing eight of nine is what they do from now on? I brooded for a while and decided, so what? What am I going to do, not be a Mets fan? It seemed like one of the worst stretches I'd ever endured as vicarious participant in the cause, but it was still this year, 2007. I mean, come on. If you're a Mets fan, you'd have to unfurl the Worst Ever list for a couple of hours before any part of '07 could even begin to enter the conversation.
Funny thing was for all the lack of clutch hitting and clutch pitching and general air of discontent, we were still in first place even if it wasn't by as much as we would have liked. I guess we learned that in a season of 162 games they all count. Good thing the Mets had that good start. And that nine or so games somewhere in the middle aren't the end-all and/or be-all. And that we had players who were capable of turning it around as easily as they were capable of going down the tubes.
I think we all learned that by September.
by Greg Prince on 12 June 2007 8:18 am One by one, the Superfriends are reconnoitering at the Hall of Justice better known as the Mets' lineup. Valentin…Green…can Alou be far behind?
He can? So much for the “they're all getting healthy” theory. But we'll take who we can get among the Roosevelt Avenue regulars.
OJ was a sight for sore eyes and a balm for aching Easleys upon his weekend return to the infield. And Green didn't look a day over 34 when he came busting out of the gate Monday night, batting second (everybody takes turns there), lashing an RBI single, stealing second, dashing for third on the throw and coming home an instant later.
It's good to have Shawn back. A little too good. Because, let's face it, when the highlight of your Mets evening is Shawn Green having a hand in creating two runs in the first and essentially only competitive inning, well, there's just so much good news you can expect from your two-hole.
(Good thing Keith isn't doing this trip, or he'd crack up right there; the man can't even say Pete LaCock with a straight face.)
Anyway, it's best to remain distracted by small and pleasing developments through this particular continuing descent into the abyss. We're still in first place, et al, at least until we're not. Green did look like this week's missing piece of the puzzle. Jose and David continue to show signs of being Jose and David. The box says Delgado doubled and scored in the fourth but it ought to be negated by his leaving two on in the fifth.
I noticed Jose passed the 600-hit mark Saturday. Out of curiosity, I checked to see where The David stands. After his first-inning single Monday (in what other inning could it have happened?), he's one hit shy of 500. Did you know, or could have you guessed, that once you take into account the year-plus start Monday birthday celebrant Reyes (happy 24th, old man!) had on Wright — when Jose compiled 112 hits among assorted injuries — that our golden boys are virtually even in the H column? Since July 21, 2004, the date of Diamond Dave's debut, J!4 has 491 hits to his better-publicized teammate's 499.
Reyes passed George Foster for 23rd place Monday night when he singled in the — yup — first. Wright will tie Doug Flynn for 34th when next he reaches safely by his own doing. And how about this? Tom Seaver is No. 115 on the all-time Mets hit list. He accumulated 146 in ten full seasons and one cruel fragment, one hit more than Derek Bell, all of whose Met hits came in 2000. Meanwhile, Tom Seaver posted a 2.57 ERA in 3,045.2 innings as a Met; Derek Bell's one frame pitched in San Diego seven years ago yielded an earned run average of 36.00.
What the hell does any of this have to do with losing to the Dodgers? Not a blessed thing.
by Greg Prince on 11 June 2007 7:51 pm Count me among those who liked — or didn't hate — the Sopranos ending. I found it effective if not brilliant, sort of Glavinesque in that respect (if you don't use yesterday afternoon as a reference point). I've read some astounding vitriol on various TV sites about the need to string up David Chase and/or cancel HBO subscriptions. I've watched for 10 years only to get THIS? Is that really why you watched, for the conclusion? Do you only tune into a series week in and week out to see how it winds up? What, the first 85 episodes and the first 62 minutes of the 86th go out the window because the final few seconds cut abruptly to black without a whack?
While Journey thumped from the Holsten's jukebox in incidental homage to the 2005 White Sox, it was left to cluelessly depressed A.J. (Soprano, not Pierzynski) to bequeath us some Tony perspective we can use as our own 2007 story arc continues.
Focus on the good times.
I wouldn't expect anybody to be thrilled with the way the Mets are playing of late. And you're each welcome to register your dismay here the next time the scoreboard doesn't post the results we'd prefer. Goodness knows I've been doing it a good bit myself this past week. But as a public service geared toward our collective mental well-being, I'd suggest we consider the following:
• what a great run this crew has been on since the Minaya/Randolph storyline began to unfold;
• what a favorable position the 2007 Mets have secured for themselves in the standings to this juncture;
• what talent and ability has been assembled to assure as much as can be assured that bad patches don't stretch on endlessly;
• and what the odds are that a team this good will play this badly for that much longer.
Also, per the somewhat legitimate fretting that we are going up against one playoff team after another from 2006 this month, I'm almost certain that at some point this slice of uncomfortable scheduling indicates we'll have a great deal of games against non-powerhouses in the second half of the season. Those games will count, too.
Lousy week and change of baseball, that's for sure. The DL has become our safe house of woe, the clutch hitting has lammed it for Oyster Bay, the bullpen has gone to the mattresses and now the last two starting assignments have succumbed to gruesome hit jobs. Lousy. But ain't this the same team from which you've beamed and proudly pounded your chest over on multiple occasions this very same '07? Well, ain't it? Don't worry about giving the Mets a break. Give yourself a break. Take a deep breath and behold how we look in the long run versus the competition.
We're looking good, baby. I believe we're feeling fine. Our season finale's a long way off.
FYI, if you're one of those viewers who insists on definitive closure, to say nothing of happy endings, there's a completely satisfying Series conclusion that airs tonight at 6:30 on SNY.
by Greg Prince on 10 June 2007 7:04 pm 10-3 after five.
Glavine taking a shot at 300 losses.
Runners on third don't go home nearly enough.
I have a headache.
Edited to add:
15-7 after nine.
Smith is out of pixie dust.
Six runners in position to score in fact did not.
My headache was about gone before I began to think about this game again.
So I shall stop doing that.
But at least the Phillies were pounded worse.
And the Mets get to leave Detroit.
I hope Willie makes them run to Los Angeles.
BEST THING TO COME OUT OF THIS TRIP: Due respect to Sosa's eight innings and Gomez's first home run, I'm mostly thrilled that our friend the Mets Guy in Michigan got to spend a few hours with the Mets guys in Michigan. Read Dave Murray's account of his trip across the state with his daughter to meet the Mets for the first time in a long time.
by Greg Prince on 10 June 2007 7:57 am From the third inning of Tuesday’s game until the fifth inning of Saturday’s game, the Mets scored a total of nine runs. They came on a solo homer, a groundout to second, three consecutive solo homers, a solo homer, another solo homer, a sac fly and a catcher’s two-base throwing error. That means when Jose Reyes singled home Paul Lo Duca and Ricky Ledee in the fifth yesterday, the Mets had batted in 41 innings without delivering a base hit to drive in a baserunner.
Reyes’ turnaround of that situation could have indicated one of two things:
1) The Mets were clearly about to make up for lost runners on base.
2) The fifth-inning two-RBI single was an aberration.
The evidence as regards what developed from the sixth through ninth innings is inconclusive. The Mets would score four more runs Saturday, two of which scored when hits were delivered with runners on base, two of which were delivered either via out or with first, second and third completely unoccupied. Nothing wrong with sacrifice flies and solo home runs per se except the former indicates optimal production was not achieved and the latter…well, there’s something about solo home runs that seems almost counterproductive. That’s an odd inference to derive from a player swinging and scoring on the same play, but little good seems to come from them other than a single run that leaves the bases as clean in their wake as they were when the at-bat in question in started. I’ll take the run but I sure wish it would build something, not represent the totality of a rally.
I’m down on solo homers because David Wright’s one-run shot in the top of the eighth mocked us coming as it did in the Met plate appearance that followed Carlos Delgado’s in the top of the seventh. Delgado, as you know all too well if you saw or listened to the defining choke of this bloody fiasco, loomed as Wil Ledezma’s death sentence. The Mets were doing that thing they used to as recently as May 2007 where they fall behind but come back. I vaguely recall that it was known as being the Mets.
We went from 8-3 (I don’t even want to think about how Ollie Perez gave up five and would prefer Guillermo Mota grab an injection of whatever kept him from giving up three more in similar situations in 2006) to 8-5 on Ledee’s double and Castro’s sac fly off of Bonderman. Gotay singled off Yorman Bazardo’s glove for another run, sub-yeoman enough work to get Yorman pulled in favor of Ledezma at 8-6. Ledezma induced a disgusting popup out of Reyes but then it’s Mets time, baby. A bloopish Valentin double (Gotay to third). A Beltran walk. Bases loaded. Up steps Carlos Delgado, the man with more RBI in Interleague play than anybody who’s ever crossed N.L/A.L. borders.
He’s also Carlos Delgado who has been not the king of any league this year (did I actually hear the Fox guy say he’s having a good season after a slow start)? Still, CD seemed to be working Ledezma. Got ahead in the count. On the payoff pitch, with the possibility seeming very real that Carlos could make it anywhere from 8-7 to 10-8, he grounded out to second base.
So you’ll excuse me if when Wright launched his leadoff (read that solo) home run to start the eighth I wasn’t doing a joyful jig. David’s dinger made it 8-7. Carlos should have found a way to do that and more. And that is what is killing this team at the moment. They have forgotten how to bring runners home from first, second and/or third with less than three out. There’s no bigger fundamental flaw in baseball.
After Wright’s one-run homer, I assumed we would lose. When I next met up with the game, I heard Beltran’s fly ball drop in to right with two out in the ninth and Delgado stepping up. Well, he literally stepped up to the plate but figuratively failed to step up one little bit. Another grounder to second. We did lose. I hate when I assume correctly.
Five earned runs off Bonderman in six-plus innings and you don’t win. The bases loaded and Mr. Interleague with a bat in his hand against whoever in the seventh and you don’t win. A gift baserunner in the ninth the likes of which you only get from the Nationals never mind the American League champs and you don’t win. Four runners driven in by Mets batters and you don’t win.
We gotta do somethin’ about that.
by Jason Fry on 9 June 2007 5:14 am Being a baseball fan is hard work. At least the players can do things. Our primary occupation is to squirm, fret and get lost in our own anxieties.
Death Month '07 began in earnest with the Alternate Reality World Series, known in this universe as the World Series of Bitterness, or the Except for the Fact That the Cardinals Beat Us World Series. And it didn't seem like an invitation one would accept happily. In one corner, the suddenly struggling Mets, with their offense punchless and pressing, outfielders expiring on an hourly basis (David Newhan got eaten by paperwork, to be spat out in New Orleans), and the bullpen gone from sterling to suspect. In the other corner, the American League champs, engaged in a dogfight for the top spot in what might be baseball's best division.
Detroit has always been terra incognita on my baseball map. (Here be Tigers!) This is about all I know or have ever known about them:
* They've got one of baseball's greatest uniforms, one that's not just simple and classic but legitimately looks old. And bonus points for the subtle but effective orange D on the road.
* Rusty Staub was traded there in return for Mickey Lolich, who retired because he was too fat and then unretired once he didn't pitch for us. I still hate Mickey Lolich.
* They beat the tar out of us 10 years ago in a series we seemed ill-prepared for, a humiliation that turned me against interleague play and left me afraid for years to come that the Mets would acquire Bobby Higginson, who wasn't actually any good. That series left such a scar that I was startled to read we'd returned the favor by sweeping them in 2004. We did? Really?
* Cobb, Kaline, Trammell and Whitaker, Jack Morris, Mark Fidrych and … ummmm ….
* They've got Sheffield and Magglio Ordonez, both of whom talk too damn much but hit the ball all over creation, and a bunch of guys I've never really heard of but who are really good, except when the Cardinals hit balls to them in October.
Not a lot to go on, but I grasped that facing the Tigers didn't seem like the best possible treatment for being undone by some very un-Phillie-like play from the Phillies. (Points to Ron Darling for his smug note of the Royals' early outburst tonight and his dismissive, “They'll go back to being the Phillies.”) And despite the outcome, you can't exactly say the patient's been cured. Two solo home runs, a sac fly that came within a whisper of being overturned on appeal and the fewest pitches seen since the second keg of a company softball game aren't exactly an offensive explosion, and the middle relievers couldn't spit the bit because they were never saddled. Jorge Sosa was masterful, and we should all give thanks for his hard work and the Jacket's wise counsel, but all the starters have been good to excellent of late.
Still, one thing my co-blogger's finally rammed through my extra-reinforced skull is in the end, you don't dwell on style points. Mets win, Braves lose, Phillies lose. What more do you want out of a night of baseball? It wasn't even dark in Detroit by the time things looked a lot brighter for us.
by Greg Prince on 8 June 2007 6:40 pm If you’re flipping through channels and come upon a rerun you haven’t watched in a long time, then it must be Flashback Friday at Faith and Fear in Flushing.
No fictional character in the popular culture — not Sidd Finch, not Chico Escuela, not Oscar Madison — has done more to enhance the Metropolitan legend than Keith Hernandez. That Keith Hernandez is technically real shouldn’t detract from his contribution to the canon one bit.
I would think that every Mets fan knows what I’m talking about, though I could be wrong. On DiamondVision during the Delgado-Benitez balk game last week, Keith appeared to ask some lucky fan which Met appeared as himself on Seinfeld. The hint couldn’t have been any plainer than the questioner’s face.
The guy they picked to answer said Tom Seaver. He still won the Uncle Jack’s prize package. I wished they’d have given it to me so I could have poured that steak sauce on his head.
The answer was Keith Hernandez. Of course it was Keith Hernandez! Who doesn’t know that? Did they find one of those people who “doesn’t look at television”? Geez!
On February 12, 1992, Keith Hernandez, his playing days not two years over, made Mets and television history by guest-starring as Keith Hernandez on the then-cult sitcom Seinfeld. He was very convincing in the role. Jerry met him at a health club and developed what we would today call a man crush on him. Elaine dated him until his smoking turned her off. And Kramer? Well he and Newman said they didn’t care for Keith Hernandez.
KRAMER: I hate KEITH HERNANDEZ — hate him!
NEWMAN: I despise him.
ELAINE: Why?
What follows is one of the great moments television has ever beamed, a dead-on parody of the film JFK in which Jerry’s neighbors explain in Zapruderish detail why they so loathe the first baseman New Yorkers so loved.
NEWMAN: June 14, 1987…Mets-Phillies. We’re enjoying a beautiful afternoon in the right field stands when a crucial Hernandez error to a five-run Phillies ninth. Cost the Mets the game.
KRAMER: Our day was ruined. There were a lot of people, you know, they were waiting by the players’ parking lot. Now we’re coming down the ramp. Newman was in front of me. Keith was coming toward us, as he passes Newman turns and says, “Nice game, pretty boy.” Keith continued past us up the ramp.
NEWMAN: A second later, something happened that changed us in a deep and profound way from that day forward.
ELAINE: What was it?
KRAMER: He spit on us. And I screamed out, “I’m hit!”
NEWMAN: Then I turned and the spit ricochet of him and it hit me.
ELAINE: Wow! What a story.
JERRY: Unfortunately the immutable laws of physics contradict the whole premise of your account.
Yes, Jerry would prove beyond all reasonable doubt there was no magic loogie — and Keith would come along in the second half of the hourlong episode to reveal the true culprit.
KEITH: Well lookit, the way I remember it I was
walking up the ramp. I was upset about the game. That’s when you called me pretty boy. It ticked me off. I started to turn around to say something and as I turned around I saw Roger McDowell behind the bushes over by that gravelly road. Anyway he was talking to someone and they were talking to you. I tried to scream out but it was too late. It was already on its way.
JERRY: I told you!
NEWMAN: Wow, it was McDowell.
JERRY: But why? Why McDowell?
KRAMER: Well, maybe because we were sitting in the right field stands cursing at him in the bullpen all game.
NEWMAN: He must have caught a glimpse of us when I poured that beer on his head.
Wraps it up nicely, no? Except for one nagging detail:
The Mets were not at Shea on June 14, 1987 losing to the Phillies. They were in Pittsburgh beating the Pirates. An immutable law of physics — the one that would specify you can’t be in two places at one time — contradicts the whole premise of everybody’s account.
It’s still a funny episode, but it’s always bugged me that Seinfeld chose this particular date to portray this fanciful incident. I remember June 14, 1987 very well. It was twenty years ago next week and it represented a milestone in a spring full of them.
June 14, a Sunday, was the day Stephanie left town. Not forever but, save for a few visits, for three years. She was in New York to go to plays and museums to earn college credits over six weeks. Her six weeks were up on June 14. We spent the last five of them together, but now it was time for her to go, damn it.
Now what do I do with myself? First thing I did after putting her on a train south to Florida was grab a seat at a bar in Penn Station, order a drink and ask the bartender how the Mets did today. He didn’t know, which I thought was highly irresponsible. The Celtics and Lakers were playing for the NBA championship on his TV. I think the Lakers won the title that day. I’m not sure. I didn’t much care. It was left to Sports Phone to inform me the Mets beat the Pirates 7-3, Sisk going 4-2/3 for the win, Darryl and, yup, Keith homering. We were still floundering in the N.L. East, 7-1/2 in back of the Cardinals and behind the Cubs and Expos for bad measure. But it was something.
Now what else do I do with myself?
Stephanie and I met on May 11. Our first date, the Mets and Giants, was on May 15. We were spending most available waking hours together by the end of May. Our first fait accompli discussion of marriage was June 4. It was whirlwind, but it was real. Now it was hurry up and wait while she finished her sophomore, junior and senior years of college (she was only 19, for goodness sake) and I did whatever it was I had to do to become a viable member of society by the time she was done at USF.
So what do I do after getting the Mets-Pirates score? I take off to Montreal.
I had a very good friend who facilitated my meeting Stephanie. If he wasn’t in New York on that same arts program (trying to forget his old girlfriend) then I would never have been in the lobby of the hotel where my future wife was staying in May. Now it was June and not only was she riding the rails home but so was her roommate who happened to be the girl my friend got involved with that same spring (got that?). At that very moment, actually, they were broken up and he was all “let’s drink and forget her!” It was his idea to go to the bar in Penn Station.
It was my idea to go to Montreal and see the Mets play the Expos.
My friend had a whole family psychodrama playing out, culminating in his parents flying into Newark the following Friday. From there he and they would drive back to Miami. Or Philadelphia where they were from originally. Or something. I forget what the deal was exactly except he kind of invited himself to stay over at my house between Sunday and Friday, which was fine with me, not such a popular idea with my mother who really didn’t like having houseguests (despite a plenty big enough house to accommodate several). I needed to get me and my friend out of town. And plan a future. But first get out of town for the week.
I know, I said. Let’s drive to Montreal! The Mets will be there! My friend wasn’t a big baseball fan but had this accommodating habit of being into whatever you were into at the precise moment you brought it up. Like Zelig, if you ever saw the Woody Allen movie in which the title character of yore morphs right into the prevailing situation. In my friend’s case, it occasionally seemed insincere and a little desperate, but this time it was very convenient. He was totally into this impromptu sojourn into another country.
I was 24 and sporadically employed. He was 21 and had nothing to do for five days. The loves of our lives had just split. What better remedy than ROAD TRIP!?
So we did it. On Monday the 15th, three of us — me, my friend and another summer-semester castaway who just happened to need a ride to her grandmother’s in Burlington, Vt., piled into my 1981 Corolla and headed north. I barely drive round the block these days if I don’t have to, but kill time in Montreal? Sure! Drop off a virtual stranger in Vermont along the way? Why not?
As is my custom, I didn’t hit the road until late in the day Monday. In those days, I took pride in being a nocturnal animal, and driving at night didn’t bother me a bit. Besides, the summer solstice was fast approaching. It was staying light late and we were going in the general direction of the Arctic Circle. The immediate future was so bright, we had to wear…well, you know.
Day became night and New York became Vermont. The Mets on WHN faded in and out. The first of the four-game series pitted Doc Gooden, recently back from drug rehab versus Dennis Martinez, a recovering alcoholic getting a final shot. It was on Monday Night Baseball. It was also going badly: Martinez pitched a shutout (infer what you will about their respective addictions). Our third wheel guided us over the river and through the woods — or at least across Lake Champlain — to Grandma’s house. We let her out on a quiet Burlington street probably after 10 P.M. We spent maybe six hours together, the three of us, after being casually acquainted since mid-May. We shared an adventure, or part of one. And then I never saw her again.
Montreal lay ahead, but the Canadian border was of more immediate concern. This was my first trip to Canada and I didn’t know what to expect. I was told I didn’t need a passport but I had conflicting reports on whether I needed a special insurance card to drive there (Mom said yes, the Vermont girl said no; KBS Insurance mootly mailed one to the house that arrived after I returned, so I guess no). What I did understand was I was getting tired. My friend and I switched seats and he drove.
Well after midnight, we made it to Canada. A border guard greeted us with a smile. Welcome to Canada, what is your business here? My friend, at the wheel, told him, “We’re here to see a couple of ballgames.” Another smile from the guard. With almost no hesitation, he waved us through. I’m glad the Mets-Expos rivalry carried such weight.
Just like that, another country. It was still another hour and some to Montreal. Unlike in later years, I planned this not at all. Today, I research hotels and transportation and baseball tickets. Then, I figured, we’ll get there when we get there and we’ll find our way. I was quite spunky then or just became more fretful as I grew older.
As Montreal approaches, you reach a toll bridge. A Canadian toll bridge that wants a Canadian toll. A quarter, at least then. I panicked. Because I panicked, my friend panicked. Who had Canadian change? In fact, back in Vermont when we gassed up, the attendant gave me back Canadian change and I politely asked for real money. The funny thing is I seemed to believe I was the first American who ever entered Canada with only American money. I explained all this to the tolltaker at the bridge at probably two in the morning. He waved us on through. What a country!
We found downtown Montreal in the dead of night. A well-lit dead of night, I should point out, replete with restaurants advertising smoked meat sandwiches. Within downtown, we found a Holiday Inn. Looked good to us. Disheveled, unshaven and dressed nothing like businessmen, the desk clerk, who seemed mildly suspicious of our business in Canada, offered us the businessman’s rate if we could produce some proof that we had some. Business, I mean. My “Freelance Writer” card only confused him. My friend had an expired press credential from a defunct newspaper. That did the trick; we got a room and by 3:45 A.M., we saw it getting light out. I think the rate sounded absurdly high anyway, but that was in Canadian dollars. As I was catching on (and had been clued in ahead of time), it translated to like five bucks American.
That became the running joke the next morning. My friend got up and exchanged some of our money at a nearby bank and ya gotta see the prices. Everything costs like five bucks because, well, it’s Canadian.
We did what any two American guys would do in a bilingual city filled with mystery and intrigue. We went to McDonald’s. Sticking with my weird insistence on not being a stranger in a strange land, I tried to order a Quart de Livre. The girl behind the counter said, “Quarter-Pounder, what else?” Ah, the hell with it. Yes, plus fries and a diet Coke please.
It was all prelude to our business in Canada, the ballgame. The one piece of information I had cobbled together was there was subway service between downtown (which is where I assumed we were staying — it could have been midtown for all I know) and The Big O. In Montreal, you took the Metro to the games. They even talked about it on the Mets’ broadcasts from there. Our hotel was near the line that would take us to Pie IX, the local version of Willets Point. Man, I thought, this is not bad. I’m in some foreign country and I know how to get to the ballpark.
Unlike the way it was painted in the dying years of the franchise, there were Expos fans in Montreal in 1987. Enough of them so they populated a subway car. We followed them the way tourists on the 7 follow me so they don’t get lost. (At least a couple times a year that happens; I kinda dig it.)
It worked. We got off at Pie IX and never had to go outside. Just that season, the Expos finally managed to get a roof on Olympic Stadium. It wasn’t retractable as advertised 10 years earlier when it opened for baseball, but it shielded you from the elements — not a huge concern in June — and kept with the general Canadian ethos of avoiding the great outdoors. The walk from the subway to the ballpark was all indoors.
It included a pass through a lively plaza. People milled and ate and smoked and a band played “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone),” a hit by Glass Tiger from the previous fall. My friend and I looked at each other and laughed out loud. Glass Tiger, we both knew, was a Canadian group and this cover band doing their song played into our concept of Canada as a country with a complex. Listen! It’s the No. 2 hit in the States! And it’s Canadian!
Tickets were easy to get. We produced Canadian money but, again, that wasn’t necessary, just cost-effective. Other Mets fans on their own sabbaticals were here, some buying tickets with U.S. currency. Somehow I felt a little offended that they didn’t make the effort to use Canadian money. (Hmmm…maybe I was the one with the Zelig affliction.)
Box seats were maybe 15 bucks (or like five bucks American). Good deal. We sat on the first base side. I looked around and, gads, what an ugly place! Don’t get me wrong. I was happy to be there. It was exciting. It was a ballpark and the Mets were going to play. But this was everything it was said to be and less. Just because it was half in French didn’t make it slightly charming. So much space, so much of it useless. There was a veritable lumber yard behind the centerfield fence — some wood that had been left over from a construction project that ran out of funding. In the next phase of my career, I’d visit cold warehouses stacked with 24-packs of beer or soda and be reminded of Olympic Stadium.
That’s the critique in a nutshell. Too big for its own good. Too deep, too hollow. Too artificially loud thanks to the cheers that echoed all out of proportion to their actual heft. Too bad. This was the fifth ballpark I visited and I immediately decided it was No. 5 among my favorites. That pattern continued right up to the Expos’ death. At this writing, I’ve been to 30 ballparks and Le Stade Olympique is secure at No. 30 — until the 31st park gets visited. Tropicana Field or the Metrodome, long buried on my to-do list, will have to be awfully awful to undercut it.
But I’m not recollecting here to be mean to Montreal. I had a nice time. And if I had a nice time, I’m pretty sure my friend did, too. First off, the Mets took a 4-0 lead by the third and won easily, 7-3. Terry Leach, who was a godsend that season by filling in for all our injured starters, went eight innings for the victory. He was 5-0 at the end of the night. What a bon lanceur he was. I squinted down to the end of the Mets’ long dugout bench to pick out Tom Seaver who was on the comeback trail (it never took; he retired the following week) and may have seen him.
I know I saw No. 25 in the lineup, batting second and playing second. It wasn’t Backman and it wasn’t Teufel. It was Keith Miller, making his Major League debut right there in Montreal with me on hand. Because of that, I always felt proprietary of his career which didn’t amount to much, sad to say (at least before taking up agenting), but he did hustle. In the private baseball lingo another friend and I occasionally chatted in for fun, Stephanie became known as Keith Miller for coming out of nowhere and providing a spark to my life; I was Darryl Strawberry mostly ’cause I wanted to be.
Mets caps dotted the O. I was wearing one plus a Giants Big Blue Wrecking Crew sweatshirt, trying to stretch that City of Champions vibe a little longer (the Mets and Giants would both defend titles ineptly in 1987). Ran into a fellow in the men’s room who was also up from the Metropolitan area, also liked the Mets and Giants. We chatted briefly about both teams and concluded that we had had it pretty good lately in New York.
That was the only game we went to, at least the only Mets-Expos game. My friend and I walked along Rue Ste. Catherine, past the various Smoked Meat signs, and found a park near McGill University the next afternoon where we played Wiffle Ball. We’d had a Wiffle Ball game in progress since November ’85, my first post-college visit to Tampa. We played a few innings in the Albertson’s parking lot then and picked it up every time I came down. I don’t think we did much Wiffle Ball in New York, but made up for it with three innings in the park that day. We concluded the game the following March on the main baseball diamond at USF when I came down for Stephanie’s spring break. I seem to recall the final collective score winding up 43-33 in my favor, but I could be making that up.
We left Montreal Thursday morning, initially following the same path we took, back through Vermont. We got to the border, me driving this time. The United States guard wasn’t smiling when he asked what we were up to. I smiled and said we’d gone to Montreal to see the Mets play the Expos.
He looked us over. Young guys. Florida plates that I still hadn’t switched to New York. Hadn’t shaved. My friend was wearing one of his trademark Hawaiian shirts. Miami Vice was still on the air.
“Please get out of the car.”
The border guard decided were drug smugglers. He didn’t say it, but that was the strong impression he gave. He searched the car, searched our luggage, searched our pockets. He got excited twice, once when he found an empty baggy in my suitcase, once when he found pills in aluminum foil in my jeans. He actually cracked the foil open. Tylenol, I said. I get headaches.
He let us go.
The rest of the trip was uneventful except for me being pulled over for speeding on the Massachusetts Turnpike. I was doing 77 in a 55 zone. Gosh, that makes me smile today. The Mets salvaged a series split while we were in Connecticut. The next day, I drove my friend to Newark Airport (in record time from Long Island, I might add) and he hooked up with his parents. I turned around and went home.
That was it for me and Montreal and for me and grand, unplanned ROAD TRIP!s. I would have assumed this was the sort of thing I’d do from time to time for the rest of my life, but no, that was the only truly impulsive one I ever took off on. As for me and my friend, it was kind of a final flourish for our post-college friendship at least on the scale it existed in the mid-’80s. He and Stephanie’s roommate got back together in Florida and actually beat us to punch marriagewise (neither of them being sticklers about bothering to graduate). We all kind of stayed in touch, on and off, for several years thereafter. For reasons I don’t quite grasp, they and their daughter, born in December 1989, fell off our radar for good in 1996 and us off theirs. Wouldn’t have guessed that could possibly happen in June 1987, but it did.
The Mets arrived home from Montreal as well. They swept a weekend series at Shea from the Phillies in what was judged to be a great pivotal turning point to that frustrating season. No record exists on which player spit on which fans in real life.
Next Friday: The worst date in New York Mets history.
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