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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You know because a loss like last night's induces something in between annoyance and seething.
Earlier in April each game still feels a bit like a pleasant surprise, a way to resume the proper rhythms of life after a long winter. Earlier in April, if Shawn Green failed to advance Moises Alou from second as the tying run with none out down 1 in the 8th (for instance), your reaction might well be muted by some part of your brain that's thinking, “Hey! It's Shawn Green! In a Mets uniform! The Mets are on!” Earlier in April, if Jose Valentin then followed such a failure with his own harmless fly ball (as a hypothetical), you might drift off into a reverie about Mets who changed uniform numbers.
But not now. With April running out, failures like those seem borderline criminal, part of a flat, lifeless loss to a team the Mets should overpower. The honeymoon period's over and the main business of 2007 is at hand, and no other considerations — not even thinking that Oliver Perez pitching pretty well except for one bad pitch or that Joe Smith is headed for bigger things — can change that storyline.
I do not care for RFK Stadium, its short-term tenants, its deceptive power alleys, its resident closer, its proximity to potentially devastating news, its vast acreage from foul line to stands, its weird whammy on visiting baserunners, its Friday night blight on the Mets.
If it’s the final Friday of the month, then it’s the fourth installment of the special Top 10 Songs of All-Time edition of Flashback Friday at Faith and Fear in Flushing.
In early September 1990, I didn’t know two things that would be quite clear to everybody else by late October 1990.
1) Buddy Harrelson’s boys — Julio Valera, Kevin Baez, Tommy Herr — didn’t have what it would take to capture our third division title in five years. They would come up short against the surging Pirates of Bonds and Bonilla and Van Slyke. I was mighty disappointed if not completely stunned.
2) Vanilla Ice was a tool.
Who knew?
The artist eventually known as Robert Van Winkle was one of the most embarrassing acts to ever come down the pop pike for reasons that became obvious and myriad the second the world sought to learn more about him.
But by late October 1990 that information didn’t matter to me, because in early September 1990, I heard “Ice Ice Baby” and I was, as Vanilla Ice’s debut album was initially to be called, hooked.
All objective criteria about Vanilla Ice, how he created a ludicrous identity for himself, how he refused to give credit (artistic or financial) where credit was due, how he really couldn’t rap — which is tough if your profession involves rapping — was immaterial to me that autumn. “Ice Ice Baby” was, through whoever’s doing, the catchiest son of a bitch I ever heard. I walked around humming it for half the decade to follow.
That’s all I need to know in order to declare something nobody else seems to like the No. 7 Song of All-Time. Others can dismiss “Ice Ice Baby” for any reason they like. For me not to acknowledge how much I love that record, how much it got under my skin and never left, how much I still hum it about once a week…it’s like the man said: anything less than the best is a felony. For me circa September and October 1990, “Ice Ice Baby” was practically the best song I ever heard.
So sue me for questionable taste.
I just cued up “Ice Ice Baby” to revisit it for this writeup. Vanilla Ice is not a talented MC. He executes rhymes shakily and his cadence is all off. He doesn’t have much of a voice. The imagery he unfurls from start to finish is pointless. In the same year that Seinfeld first aired on a semi-regular basis, it is fair to say this song was also about nothing.
But I never noticed that. It was just so freaking catchy! The lyrics are inane, practically nonsense words no matter how much they’re intended to mimic the genuine hip-hop lingo of the day, but where I can make them out clearly, several tumble out as memorable phrases. Silly but memorable. There’s a tense bass line that repeats over and over and over (as I imagine one would from digesting one of Ice’s poisonous mushrooms) that makes for an outstanding hook. There’s that slight little cymbal action at the beginning, that clever refrain that twins “yo I’ll solve it” and “DJ revolves it” and that ever so famous riff Ice borrowed or ripped off or ever so slightly altered from two musical legends.
It works. That’s all I knew in 1990, that’s all I know in 2007. The first time I heard it, driving home from work the night after Labor Day, I heard the sample from “Under Pressure” and was like “wow, this is great!” Understand I never particularly cared one way or another for that song (at least until it was used to dramatic effect in the pilot for Studio 60, a show that went south a lot faster than Vanilla Ice’s career in my book). I know all the rock people were up in arms over its use in a lame rap song, but it didn’t bother me. Nothing bothered me about this song.
Maybe I’m naïve, but when I heard the name of the artist on the radio, Vanilla Ice, I didn’t put one and zero together and realize this was a white guy in a predominantly black field. I suppose that was part of the marketing, an Elvis for the hip-hop generation. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. All I heard was the bass line and the “Under Pressure” sample and, if not dope rhymes, then dopey lines like “to the extreme/I rock a mic like a vandal” and “take heed/’cause I’m a lyrical poet” and they just implanted themselves in my head for the rest of eternity.
How much did I love this song? In 1990, there were three stations in New York that ran nightly countdowns: top 10 at 10, top 5 at 9, that sort of thing. I practically timed my drives home on the Northern State and Meadowbrook parkways so I could be guaranteed of hearing “Ice Ice Baby” on Z-100 and Power 95 and Hot 97 every night when I knew it was going to air. It was one of the first cassingles I ever owned (the album wasn’t out yet and I had to have the song immediately). No picture of the artist was on the cover. Soon enough, he had a CD and a video and the first rap song to ever reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Deals were in place for an autobiography and a movie.
On his followup single, a remake of Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music,” Vanilla Ice boasted “1991 is my year.” Yet he barely made it out of 1990. First he was a tough guy from Miami (“my town/that created all the bass sound”) and a Motocross champ and running with gangs. No wait, he was from Dallas and just some average schmo. The more he talked, the less authentic he got. He came off badly in interviews, impressing neither the budding gangsta set nor the music cognoscenti. His lamest moment came in explaining why his sampling of “Under Pressure” wasn’t really straight-out theft.
The sad part is I got what he was saying. As I mentioned, I wasn’t a fan of “Under Pressure”. To this day I smirk when I remember it only rose as high as No. 29 on the pop charts. Vanilla Ice and DJ Earthquake derived more out of those seven notes than Queen and David Bowie did their whole song. But, yeah, it was a ripoff. So share the writing credit and share the money and stop making up stuff about yourself.
I’m still trying to figure out how songs that reach No. 1 are so often dismissed by everybody, even the hoi polloi. For example, I love “We Built This City” by Starship (including…no, especially the fake traffic report part that every station in every city remade as their own). It went to No. 1 on Billboard and it ranks as No. 55 on my Top 500. But I’ve not only never met anybody who likes it, I’ve yet to meet anybody who doesn’t hate it — not that it much comes up in conversation these days. VH-1 did one of those snarky Everything Sucks countdowns a couple of years ago that never fail to give me a headache and named “We Built This City” the lamest song ever. How can that be? Shouldn’t a song that stalls way down the chart be worse? Or is that like picking on Mario Diaz for a low batting average (.136 in 1990) and overlooking that he only had 22 any at-bats?
I think I’m digressing here. The point is that whenever I present my list to another musically inclined soul, “Ice Ice Baby” is the STOP sign in the middle of the Top 10, and not in an “all right stop/collaborate and listen” sense. The word “sucks” usually follows shortly thereafter.
Is it so impossible that a fairly sane and rational 27-year-old person would have heard this on his car radio when it came out and thought it was, if not as Cool as Ice, then…I dunno…good? Fun? Enjoyable?
That’s it! I enjoy this song! I get more pleasure out of this than all but six songs in the world by my reckoning. I can’t hear the cliché about somebody being “on a roll,” without being compelled to add if nobody’s around, “it’s time to go solo.” (I think Stephanie finally called me on it by about 1992.) I can’t hear a helicopter reporter relay that the Southern State is “bumper to bumper” without reflexively adding to myself “the avenue’s packed/I’m trying to get away/before the jackers jack.” It’s Pavlovian by now.
So would you call this a guilty pleasure? I wouldn’t. What’s to feel guilty about? I didn’t steal my copy of “Ice Ice Baby”. I didn’t break any laws. I didn’t cause harm to anybody with it — didn’t even blast it from my 5.0 with my ragtop down so my hair could blow. The concept of “guilty pleasure” should be deleted from the language. Like what you want, people. Don’t hide your crap.
That said, let me stress this is about the song, not the artist. Vanilla Ice was a human cringe during his time at the top. Rolling Stone ran a lengthy profile of him in early 1991 when he was still seen as viable, when he and MC Hammer loomed as the two biggest stars in music. Hammer had already done a deal with Pepsi. Would Ice go do Coke?
Nah man, Ice said — I don’t even like Coke. I guess that was supposed to demonstrate he wasn’t as commercial as people thought he was, that he had (and I hate this phrase, too) street cred. But then Ice must have thought about ticking off his corporate handlers because he corrected himself: Wait, I like Sprite! That’s a Coca-Cola product!
If Vanilla Ice ever got a beverage endorsement deal, I missed it.
I suppose Vanilla Ice’s whiteness was an advantage at the moment he hit, that his skin color got him over with a lot of non-urban youth that wasn’t quite as tuned into hip-hop as they would be down the road. Suddenly he became The First White Rapper and his coming was treated as Significant. Shouldn’t have gone down that way. Nobody needed to see what he looked like or learn anything about him. We never should have delved into how goofy or grating this guy was.
He should have been an Ohio Express, bubble-gum type act. We all might have enjoyed what was essentially a catchy, catchy, damn catchy novelty hit and never asked too many questions. You could have drawn a straight line from “Yummy Yummy Yummy/I’ve got love in my tummy” to “Ice Ice Baby/too cold too cold” and nobody would have blinked.
Instead we were forced to consider taking this fellow seriously and he disintegrated on contact.
At his peak, Ice and his group (which, if his lyrics were to be believed, included somebody named Shay, which is almost neat) played Saturday Night Live and really put on a good show. Lots of choreography, respectable rapping, nonthreatening…and you could have heard a pin drop. I didn’t know if a New York audience was just too dang sophisticated, but I actually felt bad as Ice pointed and clapped and tried to get some accompaniment from the crowd only to receive no love, no like, no nothin’. It was his fate that the strongest sketch-comedy program impression Mr. Van Winkle made was via Jim Carrey’s awesome rendition of “White, White Baby” on In Living Color.
I laughed my head off. I found Ice a joke like everybody else did. But it doesn’t take away from the way I felt about that song in the fall of 1990 and continue to in the spring of 2007. In its own unfortunate way, it just kicks ass. It slices like a ninja, it cuts like a razor blade and if no DJ will say it, I will:
Damn. If this song was a drug, I’d buy it by the gram.
In 2002, during one of his many desperate reinventions that continue to this reality-show era day (he once appeared on MTV to literally destroy his own video only to scare the likes of Jon Stewart and Denis Leary silent), he was asked how he viewed his signature hit. Many artists with much greater “cred” recoil from their blockbuster smashes of long ago. For example, Jim Kerr of Simple Minds is always disavowing “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” which I find dismaying since it’s No. 261 on my Top 500. But not Vanilla Ice. He told Salon:
Fuckin’ turn it up. It feels great. That’s a great song. It’s timeless. It holds a space in history and you can’t take it away. You just own that piece of time. Everybody loves that song. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t.
Funny. I didn’t know I was Vanilla Ice’s only acquaintance.
The No. 8 Song of All-Time was heard at the end of March. The No. 6 record will be played at the end of May.
Next Friday: Almost imperceptibly, the start of something big.
Bedrock baseball wisdom is that you don't look ahead. Not to the next series, not to the next game, not to the next inning, not even to the next batter. You keep the focus on this play, this pitch, and the good lord willing, things will work out. (Thanks, Crash.)
That said, have you seen our June schedule?
3 against Arizona — A team on the rise with loads of young talent, and this is the softest part of the month.
3 against Philadelphia — Lousy start, but they've crawled almost back to .500 and are unlikely to go away.
3 at Detroit — Won 95 games and the wild card last year, reigning American League champs.
3 at Los Angeles — Our old friends from the '06 playoffs, now much improved. Best team in the NL that isn't us.
3 at New York — After a West Coast trip! Won the AL East last year. 97 wins tied us for the best record in baseball.
3 against Minnesota — 96 wins last year, won the AL Central.
3 against Oakland — 93 wins last year, won the AL West.
4 against St. Louis — Beat us in the NLCS. (I know, I know. I hadn't forgotten either.)
3 at Philadelphia — And the first two are a double-header!
Oh, and after that we're off to Colorado and Houston before the All-Star break. That's technically July, so we won't talk about it.
There's no need for poor-mouthing or woe-is-us — not one of those teams will be relaxing and licking its collective lips because the Mets (97 wins, won NL East, ungodly hitting) are on the schedule. But still — our June opponents were 121 games over .500 last year. We face six playoff teams in a row, including the entire postseason slate from the American League. (I'm sure baseball will rectify the Padres' absence by subbing them for the D-Backs.) There's a West Coast swing. And, at the end, a double-header following seven straight days of baseball.
I'm neither a math jock nor have access to an Elias supercomputer, but has any baseball team ever faced a month like that? If the Phillies edge us at the wire, will it come down to Jimmy Rollins & Co. drawing three against the Royals while we're playing the Tigers? When did “strength of schedule” become a baseball term?
A little birdie told me next year baseball will trade our three pesky June off-days for games against steroid-fed clones of the '27 Yankees, the Wehrmacht, and the Megabats. So mark your calendars.
Three of the cockiest icons in Mets history have each crossed the path of the Mets fan who's been paying attention these last 24 hours. 1) Pedro Martinez. Tells the AP he's gonna be back…back in the New York groove in the second half of this year and feel like he did when it was great to be young and an Expo. Pedro's placid brand of cockiness is most pleasing most times, but this time, good sir, just keep rehabbing and keep mum and keep our hopes down. The idea all along is Pedro rejoins the team in August. But counting on it looms as a grand setup. Some of us counted on him being ready for the 2006 playoffs. If I believe in anyone in this game, it is Pedro Martinez. But I'll do some believing after I do a bit of seeing. 2) Tom Seaver. Did a bit of seeing Tom Seaver during yesterday's pitching-free telecast. Though the Terrific one empathized with Mike Pelfrey's showerful fate, one assumes Tom did not acquaint himself with the tiles and the Ivory that early very often. I love the way various Met greats have flitting through the booth and postgame set this year (even Dave Gallagher, for some reason), but seeing Seaver unleashes a set of emotions unlike any other. He definitely gives off that vibe of fulfilling a contractual requirement, but when Cohen and Darling ask about pitching, he'll talk pitching, at least until his car arrives. He speaks of his craft as a master, and if you can't keep up, too bad. Jerry Koosman a couple of weeks ago spoke slowly. Tom talked fast. Glad they met in the middle all those years ago.
So he's not thrilled to be there and he's not all that accessible. Yet that one inning of Tom Seaver presence was glorious. He's Tom Seaver, damn it. That's all I have to know. We've had, by my reckoning, two out-and-out, certified immortals play baseball in Mets uniforms: Willie Mays and Tom Seaver (Keith, Mike and Endy reside just a notch below). Willie was immortal long before he was a Met. Seaver's immortality was completely tied up in his Metness. Having him broadcast regularly between 1999 and 2005 diminished his luster a little for me. How immortal could you be while reading promos for the WB 11 Morning News and deconstructing Satoru Komiyama's myriad shortcomings? This is better. He's listed in the media guide as a club ambassador. I'm fine with that. I don't need much more than diplomatic relations from the gods.
Found it ironic, then, that hours after a glimpse of Himself that Jake Peavy was challenging Tom's most sacred, most heretofore unapproachable record, the ten consecutive strikeouts he threw past Peavey's predecessors in Padre togs on Earth Day 1970. Down goes Ferrara! Down goes Colbert! Down goes Campbell! San Diego swung through or looked at everything from two outs in the sixth to the bottom of the ninth when Al Ferrara (who had homered earlier) loomed as the tenth straight K and 27th out of the day. Seaver got him, too, his 19th in toto (then also a record), finishing up a two-hitter, winning 2-1.
What's more amazing by 2007 standards — all those strikeouts or the fact that Seaver pitched a complete game? Jake Peavy strung his K's against the Diamondbacks in the second, third and fourth, after which I found out he was nearing Tom. I turned on XM and rooted like hell against him. Normally I root for records to tumble on the oft-stated theory that they're set to be smashed. But I wanted Tom to keep his. So, apparently, did Jeff Kellogg. Umping first, Kellogg ruled Eric Byrnes, the potential Ferrara in this passion play, held his swing on a 2-2 pitch (maybe that's the most amazing thing of all, a check swing being called a check swing). Peavy walked him on the next delivery. Record safe in Arizona, sigh of relief exhaled on Long Island.
Peavy went on to strike out 16 Snakes in seven innings. Trevor Hoffman blew the win for him in the ninth. A premier starter has struck out 16, has allowed no runs, two hits and three walks and is removed because he has thrown 117 pitches. Not in Tom's day.
A contemporary account (captured in Tom Seaver: An Intimate Portrait by John Devaney) claims Johnny Podres, recently retired from the Padres, watched Seaver dominate his ex-mates that April afternoon and declare that the defending Cy Young winner would never throw that hard again in his life. Seaver's response?
“That's what Ron Santo said last year after my imperfect game against the Cubs. He said I'd never throw that hard again. Maybe Podres and Santo ought to get together and have dinner.” 3) Bobby Valentine.Required reading, everybody. Chris Ballard's profile in the current Sports Illustrated of our former leader of men is breathtaking. Everything you ever loved or hated about Bobby V is in exponential effect on the other side of the world. I knew he was big in Japan, but I had no idea how big. (Or how little he thinks of at least one current and one former Major League manager.) They've practically renamed the country for him. He's either happier than he's ever been or still cultivating a grudge that he's not managing in the States given his success with the Chiba Lotte Marines. I've generally fallen into the pro-Bobby camp though I can see why he has his detractors. As for the Valentine worship among the Japanese, it would not surprise me one bit if he's in for a Treehouse of Horror-type death spiral, figuratively speaking. Maybe they stop drinking BoBeer or don't record any more dance records or name any more streets in his honor. Surely every culture has its Bobby Valentine breaking point.
Oh that baseball, it is a funny game. One night it's as tense as can be. The next afternoon, it is ludicrous. A laugher for one team, an entity lacking humor for the other.
Joke's on us this time. When your best chance to stay competitive is to send Ramon Castro from first to home with two out down ten in the fifth, you try to chuckle and keep a smile on your face.
What over? Not Pelfrey, except maybe the thought that an off day means he is skipped a turn which means, in turn, Coach Rick can run him through a few more of his magical “bullpens” and perhaps yield Ollie-like miracles. Not Sele or Burgos either, each of whom lost the keys that keep a door shut. Not much on our side of the ledger (Reyes revives, Endy endures, Green gratifies) that accounted for beans in the scheme of things.
But try to find a good thought or two for our counterparts in Colorado, the serious Rockies fans who are lapping this one up and downing it with a cold clean Silver Bullet. I'm sure they're out there, I'm sure they needed this.
I don't have any particular use for the Colorado Rockies, but it's rather sad to see what's become of them over the last decade or so. They were the model franchise in waiting when I visited them in their spanking new playpen a dozen years ago, en route to the first National League Wild Card, performing marvelous offensive feats nightly in front of adoring throngs. Beyond conferring resident scholar status upon Superintendent of Schools Mike Hampton and installing that humidor (or humid-id-or, as Keith memorably called it last summer), I don't know what the hell happened to them. Nor do I much care. I sure won't when we're subject to Coors Field fireworks when the Mets are in Denver around the Fourth of July.
Still, bad for baseball that the most promising of its four most recent expansion markets has lost its elevation. You should have seen the Rockies fans in 1995. They were so enthusiastic, so into their duel with the Dodgers for first, so full of hope and passion. There hasn't been an N.L. West race since then that has involved them in any meaningful fashion.
They do seem to have a molehill if not a mountain of young talent: Atkins, Holliday, that irritating shortstop with a rifle for an arm and a howitzer for a last name…Tulowitzki, yes, that's it. Sprinkled in are admirable vets (Finley), annoying vets (Mabry), pesky vets (Carroll) and insanely overpaid vets (Helton). Their pitching is anybody's guess considering the altitude they spend half their time hurling through. It's looked good for two days, though.
The names may have been moved around but this is basically the same jumble of Rockies that comes to Shea every year and doesn't win too often. Colorado last recorded a victory here amid Mike Piazza's last appearance as a Met at the very end of 2005. Before then, their previous win was a Sunday in May 2002. How long ago was that? It was so long ago that Kane Davis took the loss.
Nowadays, to the extent we dare to be at all presumptuous about our standing in the sport, we sort of, kind of expect to beat teams like the Rockies. It wasn't long ago when we were the Rockies, expecting absolutely nothing but hoping like hell that our Phillipses and our Wiggintons and our Seos were going to mesh with our Piazzas and our Floyds to create a better tomorrow. When we'd rise up and take a game or — holy crap! — sweep a series, as we did from Colorado in August 2003, we'd cherish every inning and hold it as tightly to our collective bosom as we could until reality snapped back and slapped us in the face.
I'm pretty damn stingy about giving up games, but considering it's already gone, I'm willing to loosen my grip on this afternoon's for the sake of fans I've never met in a place I haven't been in a long time. They could use one.
Enjoy it Rockies fans and build on it. You play the Braves next.
Have you ever squealed in the literal sense? An honest-to-goodness squeal? Like a pig?
Have you ever pursed your lips and let out an “oooh!” like you were really amazed?
Have you ever reflexively combined a squeal and an “oooh!” again and again? It might sound something like this…
SQUOOOH! SQUOOH! SQUOOH! SQUOOH!
That was me when Endy put down the bunt that ended the game in the twelfth. It was really loud, too. Woke up the wife and everything. She’s the one who pointed out to me during Game Seven that Endy’s catch elicited a Warner Bros. sound effect from my throat. That was more an “uhAAH!” then an “oooh!” and less a squeal than a Hamilton Beach blender set on grate.
uhAAH! uhAAH! uhAAH! uhAAH!
Endy Chavez should go into ADR when he’s done playing, which is to say not for a very long time.
Of course Endy is about more than sound effects. He’s about sound baseball. It’s easy to take him at his leaping essence after he demonstrated The Strength To Be There last October 19, but as if we’ve forgotten, he’s a helluva player no matter what he’s doing out there. A helluva thinker, too.
Anybody can be blessed with speed (well, anybody but me and Ramon Castro) but Endy also has the gift of vision. He saw Clint Barmes playing back at second. He saw the drag bunt as a legitimate winning possibility. And he took what he saw.
That’s thinking. The Mets are good at that. The Met you tended not to think about before Tuesday night is a prime practitioner, or so we learned. No doubt a clever drag bunt into the devil’s triangle bounded by first, second and the mound is using your head as well as your feet. But a ball clean-and-jerked well over the left-centerfield fence? Damion Easley gave that one some thought and revealed it wasn’t just brute force at work.
Just after the game, SNY’s Kevin Burkhardt asked Easley what he was thinking about up there when he tied it in the tenth. Maybe because Damion had had two full innings to contemplate the answer or maybe because he has plenty of time to think in his job, he had a great and thorough answer.
“I’m just tryin’ to relax,” he said, walking Burkhardt and us through the whole at-bat, how he took one pitch that he shouldn’t have and then swung at one in his eyes that he was still obviously annoyed by. So he relaxed and he eventually got to Brian Fuentes, admitting later on “I kind of expected it to go out.”
The Shot Heard ‘Round Ten O’Clock may not have been the most dramatic home run in baseball history but Easley’s thought process was remarkably similar to that of another New York National League slugger who delivered in a late inning once. Bobby Thomson has been asked to replay what was going through his mind when he approached the plate to face Ralph Branca on October 3, 1951 probably thousands of times. The answer is always terrific: “I kept telling myself not to get overanxious…give yourself a chance to hit.”
In other words, relax. I thought of Thomson when I heard Easley. I thought how little baseball changes in the way these guys have to think their way through game situations no matter how much talent they may have. I thought, too, of how Jose Valentin was thinking clearly when he laid down a less celebrated but just as crucial bunt as Endy’s in the twelfth, the perfect sacrifice that moved Shawn Green from first to second. I even thought Ryan Speier was as heads-up as he could possibly be in trying to flick Endy’s dachshund of a drag to Helton with his glove. It didn’t quite make up for his maybe-thinking-too-much balk that pushed Green from second to third, but it was admirable in a desperate sort of way.
I also like how Willie Randolph thinks. When he was asked if this was his favorite game of the year, the manager did not sound like a fan. No, it was not his favorite — we left too many men on base for that. Good point, one he’s paid to remember, one we are free to forget, though I must confess I wondered as the zeroes were applied to the scoreboard how it was possible that two Major League teams, one of them our certified offensive powerhouse, couldn’t score for nine innings. Good pitching beats good hitting, but good hitting is good hitting. We’re just so used to scores like 7-2, 9-6 and 6-1, that 0-0 administers a shock to the system.
Though 2-1 is the balm that ensures a sound night’s sleep.
***
Say, here are the complete Major League standings through last night, April 24, 2007. Let me know if you notice anything similar to those for the close of business from September 3, 1990.
That’s what it took to beat the Rockies tonight — 485 feet of offense, in two equally unexpected doses. First came Damion Easley’s 400-foot drive into the bleachers with two outs and two strikes, a wonderfully ridiculous bit of theater (Down! To! Their! Last! Strike!) from the last Opening Day Met to crack the 2007 record books. And then Endy Chavez, somehow dropping a croquet mallet on a pitch at his feet and guiding it along that perfect, oh-so-hard-to-find line bisecting the pitcher and the first baseman, with the second baseman too far back to do more than bear panicky witness. Eighty-five feet worth of drag bunt, and one marvelously entertaining win. I particularly liked the way, on the replay, you saw that Ryan Speier’s desperate little heave had made it past Todd Helton’s glove and wound up rolling companionably alongside Endy, like a faithful dog curious to see what kind of neato adventure would be coming up next.
What came before was admirably succinct, if frustrating — both El Duque and Aaron Cook are the kind of pitchers who, when right, leave guys going back to the plate shaking their heads, feeling like they’ve been less overmatched than somehow unlucky three or four times in a row. If not for Shawn Green’s proximity, Carlos Beltran probably would have caught Troy Tulowitzki’s drive to the right-field fence — but then nobody who remembers pleading for Beltran and Mike Cameron to get up from the outfield grass in San Diego will ever fault Beltran for not catching such a ball. (And my goodness, the arm on Tulowitzki! He threw Reyes out on a slow bouncer like it was no big deal, and went in the hole to get Wright dead to rights on a play the umpire blew. Next year he’ll get that call.)
Extra-inning games always make sense after they’re over; when matters are final, the stops and starts somehow add up to a perfectly logical arc. At the time, though, you’re left wondering what flavor of free baseball you’re going to get. Will it be the dull grinding marathon that ends when a manager finally finds a dud in his clip of relievers? One that falls off the rails with some horrific inning that makes people do a double-take looking at the box score the next day? (7-1 … in 12?) One with lots of blown chances that leave you thinking no one deserves to win, or one of those knuckle-gnawers in which a runner on second with two outs gets you up off the couch to yell and clap?
And who’ll be the hero? You always wonder: One of the guys clicking through their lineup, or your lineup, or one of the bench guys left to be seen, leaving fewer and fewer candidates as the game rolls along? David Wright finally breaking through? Jose Reyes scampering around first and offering rapid-fire claps after a winning hit? Ramon Castro, the man brought in on the double-switch? Two batters before Endy I was struck by the symmetry of David Newhan finishing what Easley had started, a victory for the new Mets. (Nope. Too easy.) Or maybe it wouldn’t end so well. Maybe it would be Helton reminding you he’s not quite gone into that good night yet, or Matt Holliday telling you why fans in the NL Central already know his name, or Chris Iannetta bracketing Tulowitzki in a triumph for Rockie rookies.
Nope, none of the above. Easley and Endy and after all of the above, it ended so easily.
In the parlance of the pocket schedule, Monday night was a value date. Don't say there isn't truth in Mets advertising.
Five bucks for an upper deck ticket (Section 1!) bought the opportunity to watch the once, present and hopefully continuing first-place Mets easily quell the pleasantly pliant Rockies in an economical two hours and thirty-four minutes by the miserly hand of John Maine who makes more than all of us, but less than most of his peers, none of whom has matched his extravagant consistency.
Value all around on the first nonparka, practically shirtsleeve night of the season. Valentin cashed in with interest. Delgado hit the home run jackpot at last. There was outstanding outfield defense (Beltran's, Green's and, with a large enough lead to appreciate an opponent's effort, Finley's). There was Reyes running to second from first twice while Lo Duca batted. There was even a Mr. Met sighting in the red seats.
Warmth and a win. To turn Wes Westrum on his head, ohmigod, wasn't that wonderful?
This was my first night game of the year and it was good getting back in this particular groove, the one that starts smoothly with the 6:11 to Woodside and ends well with the 10:18 to Baldwin and includes the one and only Laurie. Why more Mets fans didn't take advantage of the weather and the prices I don't know, but fine with me. Does anyone remember legroom? I can't believe I'm saying this, but it was nice that the Mets didn't draw 55,000 for a change.
When we're winning and we're not freezing, everything insipid is practically charming. Tonight's unintentional entertainment was provided by two familiar sources: idiots in the row below us and the idiot box looming above left center.
The game was some 50 minutes old when the seats at our feet filled in with six or eight or ten (I lost track) college-age kids. They didn't seem all that interested in Maine's primacy or the Delgado bustout or, in the case of one young lady I wouldn't let out of the house if she were my daughter, underwear of a concealing nature. It was all about the yammering and the texting and the beer that was more expensive than the tickets. I've sat behind worse, but nobody more intriguing than one of the guys. He wore a blue Mets t-shirt whose back was blank until he or his little brother got a hold of it and made it read HERNANDEZ 17.
So? So he used white medical tape to pay his hero homage. The 17 looked close to professional, maybe something from a leftover Blue Jays minor league jersey, circa 1985, but the HERNANDEZ took on an accidental font similar to the name on your local Chinese takeout joint's menu. Picture TUCK LEI or SAM PAN, except now it's HERNANDEZ delivering your moo goo gai pan. Plus, the horizontal line in the R had peeled off, so it was more HE, followed by NANDEZ with an indecipherable emoticon separating them.
When Laurie and I weren't averting our eyes from the immodest thong girl, we bounced theories off one another as to what was the deal with HE NANDEZ. I mean, medical tape? Was somebody's gauze falling off an abrasion at home because this guy had to show his love for Mex? If Keith meant that much to him, he couldn't spring for silk-screening at the mall? It's not like he blew more than bucks on his ticket. Why not just go the Magic Marker route? And what about the missing line on the R? Did it just lose its gumption? Was it, like most bases, stolen by Jose Reyes? Is this man trying to tell us something besides he loves Keith Hernandez enough to show it but not enough to show it competently?
We could have asked him, but what fun would that be?
DiamondVision asked us several things and none of them was much fun, but none of them ever are. The quizzes are at least edging closer to baseball content than in previous campaigns. For example, nobody's asking whether Rome is 4,296, 4,298 or 150 Million miles from New York. Tonight's brainteaser was a multiple-choicer to determine Pedro Feliciano's favorite food. Turns out 85 percent of the crowd that saw fit to answer via cell phone (or 17 of the 20 people who must have participated) guessed right that he's a chicken, rice and beans man; Pedro retired his only Rockie on one pitch, so he can eat whatever he likes. I also learned recently that Billy Wagner carries six pieces of gum to the bullpen. You can win a lot of bar bets with tidbits like that, though you can probably earn a good crack in the mouth for even bringing stuff like that up in a bar.
Another bit of DV filler was recurring live coverage of the kitchen in what appeared to be the Diamond Club. There was no narration to accompany the video, just a chef preparing surprisingly mouthwatering entrees and a waiter picking them up. The message seemed to be you lucky people who chose one of the cheapest nights of the year to attend a game now have the privilege of watching your betters dine. Bon appétit!
There are 12 value dates on the schedule this season, only eight remaining. After next week, you have to wait until September 24 against the Nationals for a night of five-buck baseball. Pity. It has to be the last great bargain in Metland. Just as it hit me during Game Six last October that I was paying $150 for a seat that occasionally went for $5, I remembered Monday that I once paid 30 times as much to sit just a little to the left where I found myself six months later. Context is everything, of course, but relatively speaking, a Mets game is a Mets game. And a Mets win is such a deal.
I'll bet David Wright is in the lineup tonight. I'll bet David Wright, good health willing, will be in the lineup 158 times this year.
Would it kill Willie to sit him once in a while?
Boy is he pressing. I've never seen David look as lost as he does at present. Saturday, in particular, he seemed to be swinging at an idea of a pitch as opposed to anything he was actually thrown.
He'll pull out of it. The good ones do. When he does, lord help the pitchers who happen to be on the mound that week. Like anybody buying a five-dollar ice cream sandwich at Shea, they will pay through the nose.
But what's the harm of giving him a seat for a night? Or a day? I'm thinking Sunday. This isn't second-guessing (though I've never quite seen what's so bad about second-guessing since it might improve your next first guess). Watching David flail cluelessly on Saturday and seeing Damion Easley find his power stroke, I wondered aloud if maybe Willie should give David the day off tomorrow — now yesterday — and let Easley play third, partly to take advantage of the utilityman's momentum and keep him game-ready but mostly to take a load off David's shoulders for an afternoon.
I would have been shocked if it had happened. Willie doesn't readily rest guys, certainly not the ones under 30. And who'd want to not have David Wright in the lineup most of the time? But sometimes you're not helping yourself and you're not helping the team. So sit down, watch somebody else play, wave a towel like you're Lenny Harris. It's not as if you're going to lose your job to Damion Easley.
David won't volunteer for a day off and Willie won't initiate it. Both of them would say something to the effect of you can't sit your way out of a slump. Mr. Wright's neighbors in that fancy Flatiron co-op of his must be getting tired of hearing him take practice swings in the wee hours. I'm glad he wants to play baseball as much as he does. Once in a while he shouldn't. We don't need a Ripken per se. We need a whole club.
Though I'm highly pro-Randolph, it irked me a bit during the NLCS how the lineup remained so static even when it was clear the Mets were hitting with the donuts still attached to their bats. Granted, there wasn't much of a bench to deploy after Floyd went down and Endy went in, but a little juggling seemed in order. La Russa, of whom I'm no fan, kept finding spots for everybody and (grrr) it paid off. With Willie, it was the same eight night-in, night-out from Games Two through Seven, no shifting in the batting order, not even a hunch to play. The cumulative effect, save for the Game Four blowout, was lead weight on the offense.
This isn't October when you're going to roll your starters out there no matter what. This is April. This is a time to, if not experiment, then be flexible. To look at a 24-year-old superstar and see that he's struggling and take him aside and say “watch for a night,” and to look at a 37-year-old role player and take him aside and say “play for a night.” Easley and Newhan have had no chance and when we really need them, the rust may very well show. Same for the holdovers. Alou and Green have made themselves tough to rest, hoorah, but a little Endy here and there might make their long-term prospects (June, July, August) a lot brighter. As Delgado struggles, why not give Franco a start at first — for Franco's sake as much as Delgado's? And what's the harm of letting Lo Duca's finger and psyche heal an extra day? Castro couldn't be any hotter.
Keep 'em fresh, keep 'em sharp, keep 'em whatever you want to call it. Maybe you can't sit your way out of a slump, but you can certainly swing your way into a deeper one.
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.
