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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Jason Fry on 10 April 2007 7:29 am Even with just one eye on the set at work, it was clear that Opening Day 2007 was the next Mets Classic. This one had everything: pomp and circumstance, sudden reversals, mild controversy, tension, comedy and a boatload of karma.
It's very, very late and I can barely see, so I'll just let memory be my guide through the highlights. There was Ryan Howard knocking poor Abraham Nunez for a loop after the Phillie infielders chased Cole Hamels out from under Jose Reyes' pop-up, after which Howard looked at his fallen third baseman and threw his hands up like a man who's just whacked into a display of wine glasses at the mall and is very, very sorry — a play that nearly became a 75-foot triple. There was Ambiorix Burgos winning the kind of epic pitcher-batter battle against Chase Utley that Met pitchers never seem to win — only to have all his good work unravel on a single splitter that young Mr. Howard nearly hit into Citi Field. There was the meltdown of Geoff Geary, who seemed strangely and a bit disturbingly unmanned by the situation and his surroundings, and the grim mop-up work of John Leiber, who may have Aaron Heilman beat as most disgruntled bullpen draftee. There was Carlos Delgado's sneaky bunt (clever and satisfying, though it eliminated all possibility of a double up the gap — cue a debate at least as old as Ted Williams vs. Cleveland) and his sneakier slide home by way of the pitcher's mound, a mildly controversial call that the ump got right. (As the umps did on Wright's little dunker that at first looked like a trap.) There was Pat the Bat spitting out chunks of chaw after the end and Charlie Manuel sitting by his lonesome in the dugout long afterwards, like Pedro Martinez all those years ago when he was on the wrong team.
But most of all there was karma. Earlier this week, asked for what must have been the 9,000th time about Jimmy Rollins and his description of the Phillies as the team to beat in the NL East, Paul Lo Duca noted that “in this game, talking usually comes back to bite you.”
A veteran fan could tell you that as surely as a veteran: The baseball gods do not generally approve of woofing and predictions, even if they're made to shake up a team with a long history of not being able to get out of its own way. That said, the baseball gods usually don't bring the karmic hammer down quite so obviously or as forcibly as they did today. First Rollins grounded into a double play with the bases loaded. Then he booted the ball that let the Mets tie the game. Then, the floodgates having opened, he stood there while 56,000 taunted him. In a movie, the studio would have sent that back to the writers as too ham-handed a comeuppance. Hell, if Rollins had looked down in the eighth and found himself playing in nothing but his jock he might actually have been relieved. Oh man, this is just a terrible dream. Whew! Think I'll pinch myself and wake up now.
Nope. Sorry Jimmy — it was all too real.
by Greg Prince on 10 April 2007 1:58 am 
| Mr. Met was cold, too. But he is smiling.
Meteorology courtesy of Zed Duck Studios. |
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by Greg Prince on 10 April 2007 1:46 am The wind chill was punishing. The men’s room line was eternal. The reconfigured commutation hub was a headscratcher. The manager’s decision to allow his shakiest reliever to face the opponent’s most dangerous slugger with an open base and two out was curious.
But all that goes in the “never mind that right now” file thanks to seven rousing runs and one raucous chant. And what, pray tell, did we chant?
Let’s just say that if Jimmy Rollins played in New York, they’d name a lollipop after him.
Jimmy Rollins sucks. Or hadn’t you heard?
His eighth-inning error was pivotal, both to the delightful final score — it tied the game, kept the bases loaded and applied untold pressure on Geoff Geary — and to the pro-Lion, anti-Christian (metaphorically speaking) majority whose taste for blood would not go unsated.
Go on, we said. Give us an excuse. You dared express confidence in your team which, by our mob mentality, meant you dissed us. You, therefore, suck. We just needed a little ballast for our claim.
And you gave it to us.
Rollins misses Reyes’s grounder and…ka-BOOM! We explode. First positively for the thrill of the run. But then vengefully on he who would doubt us.
Jim Mee Rahl Ins!
Not enough.
Jim Mee Rahl Ins!
YOU SUCK!
That’s the ticket. He’s no longer Jimmy Rollins at Shea Stadium or, one senses, Citi Field. He’s Jimmy Rollins You Suck.
He does more than suck.
He sucks in the second person.
He owns it.
On a team that “boasts” the evil Pat Burrell, the horrifying Chase Utley and the blood-curdling Ryan Howard (who sliced Burgos into paper-thin cold cuts), we have chosen you, Jimmy Rollins, to suck out loud in 2007, 2008, 2009, into the next decade — wake up the echoes razzing your name! As my host and companion for the day put it, he’ll be back here in 2015 and he’ll continue to suck.
Indeed, his failure to grab a grounder gurantees he’ll be forever reminded in these parts of his loose-lipped comment that the Phillies (1-6 at this writing) shaped up as the team to beat in the National League East this year.
Tsk Tsk.
You could have written that check as cashed it with your bat. Or your glove. But no. You didn’t. You couldn’t suck the way Chipper Jones and Pete Rose have here, by sucking on principle. You spoke up and then let down.
Big mistake.
Big.
Huge.
I have to go booing now.
Bless you Jimmy Rollins. You are a part of us now.
Jim Mee Rahl Ins!
YOU SUCK!
Rollins’ error opened the proverbial floodgates. Wild pitches and walks and sac flies and a couple of legitimate hits rained down and what had been a frustrating Met afternoon morphed into a New York laugher. Oh, the 11-5 final was amusing but the chant was fucking hilarious! Seriously, I’ve never laughed that hard at anything the crowd came up with probably because I never heard anything like that go on as long as this one did.
It was coarse, it was base — you wouldn’t trot it out at the Algonquin — but it wasn’t vicious. If tens of thousands could have fun at one poor soul’s expense and morally get away with it, then this was the exception that proves all the rules of good sportsmanship. You shouldn’t taunt a guy when he’s down.
Unless it’s too much fun not to.
Jim Mee Rahl Ins!
YOU SUCK!
The rest of the game is less a blur than a brrr. Jesus it was cold in the left field shadows. The presence of sunshine and the absence of snow permits teams to play in these conditions, as opposed to the perpetual cancellation that has become the Cleveland franchise, but it was awfully Jakey in the mezz. I’m told it was warmer in the sun. It couldn’t have been any colder.
Shea couldn’t have been any dumber, as is Home Opener tradition. They shifted some turnstiles around by the subway kiosk. It didn’t seem to help matters upon exit (though Mets 11 Phillies 5 forgives a lot of poor planning), especially when one of the two Roosevelt Avenue staircases was closed for…I have no idea why it was closed, but I’m sure somebody was following orders.
The pizza (authentic Sbarro!) has gotten worse, the puddles have seeped faster (the concourse behind mezzanine section 6 briefly turned into Flushing’s version of the lower ninth ward) and most of those whose jobs it is to hand you a thing you specifically ask for were befuddled no matter how decisively you pointed at said item. So it was Shea for the course, but ya know, if you wanted to be warm, use a bathroom and eat what you desired at bargain prices, you’d stay home.
Screw that. Shea is always gorgeous from the outside in on Home Opening Day. The Shea family’s floral horseshoe, Mex with the first pitch, the navy flyover (actually, with a major airport steps away, I have to wonder why that’s special) — this is the stuff I primp and preen for all morning. That and baseball, featuring not just their shortstop (who still sucks) but our shortstop (who’s still great).
Jose! times four was back in force. The Copiague High School marching band played it in pregame, so you know it’s a standard. Every Endy sighting unleashed a two-syllable call that seemed to celebrate No Decisions (ND! ND!). And to all those who whined last October that “Sweet Caroline” was thieved from Fenway, it’s ours now. Deal with it.
Citi Field, maybe 15% (?) of it, loomed in the near distance. It’s a stunner to look at. Not that you can really connect the construction to the CGI we’ve been fed, but just realizing it’s becoming real…it’s daunting. Shea is stupid, but it’s the only ballpark we have. The Citi site is practically back-to-back with its older, condemned brother. Workmen were up on its planks doing something during the early innings. Perhaps building a better tomorrow. Perhaps looking busy while they tried to sneak a peek in our direction. Wouldn’t you?
When I’m sitting in the new joint swapping stories about what used to be in that parking lot behind us, I’ll remember today, certainly the wind that froze and the shortstop who sucked and the result that didn’t, but more than all that, I’ll remember the thoughtful gesture of a very kind reader who decided to offer an extra ticket to a total stranger because she liked the way he wrote about their favorite team. My heartfelt thanks to Jodie, Adam and Zack for making today possible…or as Yogi put it so correctly in this case, necessary.
And Jimmy Rollins? You do suck.
by Greg Prince on 9 April 2007 8:24 am 
You prefer express but you’ll take any train that advertises its destination with such specificity.
Sadly, this 7 was idling at the Transit Museum in Brooklyn last fall. They need to put these Shea specials back into service at once.
by Greg Prince on 9 April 2007 8:19 am If you’re anything like me, you’re starting Your Day of Days.
You’re going to the Home Opener!
You weren’t counting on it, and you were fine without it, but somebody stepped forward from out of the blue and orange to be your eleventh-hour angel and what the hell? It’s Your Day of Days.
You’re waking up with minimal mechanical provocation because you couldn’t sleep anyway.
You’re checking the weather every few minutes on WINS or Channel 61 or by typing in 11368 at weather.com.
You’re debating how many layers to lay on and erring on the side of caution because all the weather reports indicate a Real Feel that won’t top 40.
You’re wondering whether it’s worth breaking out the new orange REYES 7 tee since nobody’s going to see it under all your layers.
You’re wearing the new orange REYES 7 tee because you’ll know it’s there.
You’re spending valuable minutes choosing among sweatshirts, hoodies and warmup jackets.
You’re opting for the royal blue ski cap with the orange NY over any particular cap out of respect for your ears.
You’re bringing a cap in case it’s not all that bad…but not before you weigh the merits of each and every one in contention for the honor of The Cap You Bring To The Home Opener.
You’re packing your game bag with care. Train schedules? Check. Reading glasses? Check. Phone? Check. Bottle of water? Check. Spare bottlecaps? Check. Umbrella? Check — because if you don’t bring it, it will definitely be needed. Pills, ointments, first aid? Check (you hypochondriac). A fistful of napkins? Check — because maybe this is the year they start charging for napkins at Shea. A half-dozen plastic bags? Check — because you have all kinds of organizational compulsions that anybody who saw the way you live would not believe.
You’re stocking extra batteries. For your radio, for Howie, for Tom, for Eddie C. Not for Pat Burrell.
You’re removing your iPod because you don’t really need it…until you remember you may want to hear a song that will put you in the mood…until you remember you’re already in the mood.
You’re bringing your iPod anyway. You’re bringing everything else.
You’re noticing the 2006 and 2005 pocket schedules buried in some crevasse of the bag. Maybe they’re lucky.
You’re leaving your 2006 and 2005 pocket schedules where you found them.
You’re considering what book to shove in there. You’re reading a hardcover that’s just going to weigh you down and you’re going to be too excited on your trip in to read it and you know you’re going to buy the papers at the station and you know you’re going to be leafing through a yearbook and a program on the way home, but it’s a really good book and it’s about baseball, so you shove.
You’re throwing in a magazine just in case your train idles uncomfortably just shy of Valley Stream or Jamaica as it’s been known to do on days that weren’t Your Day of Days.
You’re patting your parka pockets over and over to ensure your gloves are where you they think they are.
You’re stuffing a few ibuprofen and a couple of Pepcid in that extra pants pocket where you keep four pennies (to round out change) just in case your headaches or indigestion get to you.
You’re lugging ample supplies of ibuprofen and Pepcid in your bag, but you don’t have time to unravel your own logic.
You’re leaving your house and considering your car. You’re not crazy enough to decide to drive at the last minute (you hardly ever drive to Shea and doing so today will not spike your confidence in the process) but you’re thinking it sure would be nice to leave the car at the station. Except the station lot will be full since this isn’t a legal holiday.
You’re flinging your bulging bag over your right shoulder, hitching up your jeans and walking the 14 or 15 minutes between your home and your station.
You’re ducking into your station newsstand to buy those papers, maybe a diet soft drink if the lack of sleep is catching up with you, maybe a not altogether stale bagel depending on how much that 14- of 15-minute walk has taken out of you.
You’re withdrawing one of those handy plastic bags for the papers and probably the soda and the bagel and ascending the escalator to the platform, unalone in your particular journey for the first time today, even if you are older than most everybody heading toward your ultimate destination.
You’re feeling a strong breeze. Maybe you should have added a layer between layers.
You’re patting your parka pockets for your gloves. You can’t be too sure.
You’re removing your Metrocard from your wallet and placing it in your pocket for quick access should connections dictate the 7 over the LIRR from Woodside to Shea. Why wait?
You’re glancing at your newspapers’ back pages or sports section front page, a bit disgusted that some other event got more play than yesterday’s or, better yet, today’s Mets game.
You’re sticking a hand in your schlep bag to make sure you can access your reading glasses (with a book, a magazine, three newspapers and several schedules on your person, you don’t want to inadvertently re-enact the Burgess Meredith role in the “Time Enough At Last” episode of The Twilight Zone) and your phone. You decide the phone belongs in one of the parka pockets because if the eleventh-hour angel, who is the reason you’re on the platform with seemingly half of everything you own, needs to reach you, you better be able heed the call.
You’re searching your phone for messages related to work until you realize you’re not going to be of much help to anybody today.
You’re hoping those people who don’t know today is Your Day of Days won’t bother you. This is no way to earn a living, but you can do that any old time. Today is Your Day of Days.
You’re positioning yourself for the train as it arrives, choosing a less crowded car up front versus a more crowded car in the middle even though settling for the middle will deposit you nearer to the stairs to the 7. Right now you’re counting on your Woodside LIRR connection to make that decision moot. Right now you could use a Sandy Alomar to flash you a sign.
You’re plopping yourself into an unoccupied three-seater and for a moment you’re not a Mets fan going to the Home Opener. You’re a commuter plucking his ten-trip ticket out for the conductor and you’re an antisocial animal who spreads out your crap so nobody will sit next to you.
You’re drifting back into your mission once your ticket is punched. Your solitude is breached because there are like eight teenagers with 24 cans of beer whooping it up, but you drown them out not with your iPod (it’s drooped too deep in the schlep bag to be worth fishing out), but with your thoughts.
***
You’re thinking about where you’re going.
You’re thinking that once you set foot inside Shea Stadium, this will mark your 35th consecutive year of making such an entrance.
You’re thinking if you can say you’ve been going anywhere else every year since 1973 and you’re coming up blank.
You’re thinking that your father sold the house you grew up in in 1991 and your sister didn’t move into her current home until 1984 and an insurance plan forced you to switch doctors in 2003, you’ve narrowed it down to a diner on Long Beach Road (a longtime favorite, but there was a stretch there in the late ’90s when you didn’t go at all), a mall in Garden City (your wife’s catalog shopping saved you those trips for a couple of years) and a transpiration hub in Manhattan (you know you missed it entirely that year you stayed at college for the summer semester). Having eliminated the East Bay Diner, Roosevelt Field and Penn Station, you’ve concluded you’ve been going to Shea Stadium longer and more regularly than you’ve been going anywhere in the world.
You’re thinking you’ll mark a 35th consecutive year today and, knock wood, a 36th consecutive year some twelve months from now, and that will be it.
You’re thinking how weird that will be, that Shea Stadium won’t be there anymore after next year.
You’re thinking that Shea’s faults are myriad and that a few more will reveal themselves today but that you want to remain subject to them because it’s Shea.
You’re thinking that it took you the better part of the first thirty years to know Shea intimately, to differentiate substantively between loge and mezzanine, to know which gate gets you to which ramp, which way to cross Roosevelt Avenue before a game versus afterwards, which stand sells what and which men’s room is preferable to which. Now that you’ve got it down cold, you’re left with the equivalent of a Cold War-era map of Europe.
You’re thinking you’re a Kremlinologist about to lose your U.S.S.R.
You’re thinking that Your Day of Days is no day to think about endings. You turn your attention to beginnings.
You’re thinking about how you romanticized the Home Opener long before you ever got close to attending one, how you blew off Hebrew School to watch 1975’s and good thing you did, too, because otherwise you would have missed Tom Seaver besting Steve Carlton, both of them pitching complete games (and you were never going to be a Talmudic scholar no matter how much Hebrew School you didn’t blow off).
You’re thinking about how you skipped a Spanish test in twelfth grade to make it to your first Home Opener, 1981, only to have rain postpone your dream outside Gate D and your Spanish teacher not buy your flimsy excuse of being sick the next day (you were never going to be a Spanish scholar either).
You’re thinking about maybe the greatest Home Opener of them all, 1985’s, the one Gary Carter wins with the tenth-inning home run while you’re a month from graduating college in another state and you’re lapping up wire copy in your school paper’s newsroom and dialing Sportsphone on their dime every five minutes and, when you learn what your new catcher did, you’re high-fiving everybody you’ve turned into a temporary Mets fan that afternoon.
You’re thinking that when you finally broke through the grass ceiling, that when you were at Shea to greet the new season the first time in 1993 that it was everything you imagined it would be, that it was the center of the known universe. The Colorado Rockies were born and Dennis Byrd was walking (they gave him a “Met for life” jersey with No. 90 on it) and Doc, 28 years old and six years removed from cocaine, threw a shutout. It was chilly but it was brilliant.
You’re thinking of your return engagement on a raw Monday afternoon three years later, the tail end of a winter when it snowed three times a week. That day it spit a cold rain and the Mets fell behind Tony LaRussa’s Cardinals 6-0 and the concessions ran out of hot chocolate immediately. But Hundley homered and Gilkey homered and it was 6-3 in the seventh when the kid shortstop who lit up St. Lucie electrified your frigid section of the mezzanine with a throw from his knees to nail Royce Clayton at the plate. The Mets brought home four runs in the bottom of the inning and won 7-6 and what a year 1996 was going to be.
You’re thinking of a much brighter, much warmer — much hotter — Home Opener in March of 1998. March! You stared at that date, March 31, ever since they announced it and prepared to shiver like you never had before, except a heat wave hit New York days before and it was 87 degrees, which was good because the game went on all day, 14 innings, until the Mets (wearing black caps with blue bills for the first time) won on a single to right by Bambi Castillo. Bambi Castillo was now as big a part of Met history as Rey Ordoñez and Doc Gooden and Gary Carter and Tom Seaver and Mr. Ritaccio the Spanish teacher. Home Opener history at least.
You’re thinking how Home Openers became a happy habit over the next four years, how through the good graces of good friends you found your way in Opener after Opener and the Mets won Opener after Opener and you never went home unhappy.
You’re thinking how exciting it was to return to the scene of the crime in 2005, how a new era was plainly underway, even if the old stadium was not in great working order, even if the Home Opener brought out the dope and lout in every other customer, even if pedestrian traffic was a nightmare. Yet it was Your Day of Days and you were so very glad to have witnessed another lidlifting win, your eighth in eight such opportunities.
You’re thinking now that you don’t want to blow it for everyone else, that you hope you can keep this streak going to 9-0, that maybe you should have declined the eleventh-hour invite because maybe you should sit on your perfect 8-0 until you remember records aren’t for sitting on.
You’re thinking, albeit not that hard, about today’s matchup, about John Maine and Cole Hamels, two of the soap operaest names you might imagine (you can just hear Victor Newman threatening he will destroy John Maine and Cole Hamels if it’s the LAST thing he ever does, but you just as soon keep your intermittent Y&R viewership to yourself).
You’re thinking maybe it’s not so bad the Mets got a loss or two out of the way in Atlanta, maybe you don’t want them to be 6-0 and risk it all for the Home Opener, though that’s sort of at odds with your own 8-0 superstitions and you try not to think all that much about records.
You’re thinking instead of what’s driving you here, and you don’t mean the Long Island Rail Road. This is your 39th season as a Mets fan. You never tire of mentioning that you boarded this train in 1969 and you take enormous pride that you never got off.
You’re thinking it’s an accomplishment to have rooted for the Mets as long and hard as you have, yet it never occurred to you to do anything else, so what’s the accomplishment exactly?
You’re thinking once a Mets fan always a Mets fan, even if you know not everybody who’s a Mets fan at this moment has pursued as pure an existence.
You’re thinking you made this choice before you made any other choice of consequence and that it’s a choice you’ve stuck by going on four decades, though you can barely fathom a phrase like “going on four decades” applies to something you remember choosing at the age of six.
You’re thinking you never wavered, that this is who you are above and beyond just about anything else you are and even if you now and then allow yourself to wonder if you’re hopelessly shallow for thinking in such terms, you think in them nonetheless and have no intention of reversing course at this late date.
You’re thinking precious few people have given you more pleasure and happiness than your baseball team has and that nobody has done it over a longer span and that nobody and nothing have plucked at your emotions more than your Mets have. Nobody and nothing ever will.
You’re thinking that though you might be willing to trade for a little righthanded relief help or an honest-to-god slugger to come off the bench in the late innings, you would not trade your lifetime as a Mets fan for anything. Not today on Your Day of Days. Not ever.
You’re thinking that you better make sure you don’t have to change at Jamaica for Woodside lest you be so lost in thought that you wind up at Penn Station and blow the whole day before it truly begins.
***
You’re paying attention to your commute again, staying on to Woodside, exiting, peeking down the Port Washington tracks, deciding between the eastbound LIRR and the 7 and, in not too many minutes, disgorging from one or the other at a stop called Shea Stadium.
You’re elbowing your way through crowds who are clogging the staircases and ramps you wish to negotiate cleanly.
You’re sneering at the red caps with white P’s (there are always a few) and the navy caps with hormonally whack NY’s (there are always a few too many).
You’re looking at your fellow travelers and are amazed at how underdressed so many of them are. It’s 42 freaking degrees!
You’re calculating how many beers and furtive flask sips it takes to compensate for a lack of a coat.
You’re reading the slice of oaktag that declares the supremacy of Jose, David and the Mets in general and looking at the kid who’s toting it and you’re sorry there’s no chance it will show up on TV.
You’re assessing the construction that’s gone on east of Shea all winter and are blown away by the progress. Two years…
You’re keeping an eye out for freebies. Bumperstickers? Placards? Anything that doesn’t require you to fill out a form?
You’re snapping up whatever you can buy outside the park on the slight chance it will sell out by the time you’re inside (you’re haunted by the way those inaugural Mets-Rockies programs flew). Pins…yearbook…program…miscellany items that you try to convince yourself you don’t need but you don’t try all that strenuously.
You’re stuffing this wave of purchases into one of your spare plastic bags (you’re not so crazy now, huh?).
You’re making contact with your eleventh-hour angel. There’s a ticket with your name on it so, without further ado, it’s onto the security line for a halfhearted pawing of your stuff, a pause for a man with a wand to pat you down (you don’t look like you’d cause any trouble, but how is he supposed to know that?), a scan of your magic ducat, a grab of a magnetic schedule and anything else you’re handed and…you’re in!
You’re getting your bearings. The last time you were here, last October via a similar shot-in-the-dark ticket situation, you were a much different bundle of nerves. Then it was one and done. Today it’s 4-2, 156 (yes, 156) to go. But you’re a bundle of nerves anyway.
You’re escalating to your level (though you’re not discounting the possibility that you’re climbing) and you’re reaching your seat and you’re shoving your bags underneath it and you’re sitting down (how these plastic chairs have narrowed since fall; same thing happened last April) and you’re studying the fence for new sponsors, the DiamondVision for new fonts, the field for new players. It’s all new enough to beg the question of what’s with the new park over the fence?
You’re forgetting about the future today. And you’re even putting aside your cherished past. You’ve got a present. You’ve got a Home Opener.
If you’re anything like me, Your Day of Days has arrived.
by Greg Prince on 8 April 2007 11:10 pm The “161-1” winks are no longer valid. And I'd forget the 160-2 scenario based on precedent.
El Duque was outdueled by El Davies, El Andruw was his old octopus self and the inbred Braves foiled the Mets' bid to never, ever fall out of first place again. We seemed to have taken up permanent residence there after the third game of 2006. Now we're in (gasp!) second.
Maybe it's the Islanders' having shotout their way into the playoffs (it was a Melvin Mora week all around in Uniondale), maybe it's the impending premieres of The Sopranos and Entourage, maybe it's that I'm heading out in a few minutes to pick up Indian for dinner, maybe it's knowing Shea glorious Shea opens for business in 18 hours…but I'm not all that bothered.
We're 4-2 from the road. We could have been 6-0 but there was no way we could have been any worse than what we are now. The starting pitching has been acceptable-plus, often golden, since a week ago tonight. Everybody among the regulars has accomplished something lovely so far and most have done more. A little more hitting or a little more bullpen the last two days would have compensated for the shortcomings of one or the other, but it's a long season. They'll both take care of themselves.
When you're good, losing two out of three to your nominal archrivals at your erstwhile burial ground is just one of those things you learn to breathe through.
Beat the Phillies though, OK?
by Greg Prince on 8 April 2007 6:53 pm Yesterday was the first game of the year in which the throw pillows on the couch lived up to their name. With that game-tying line drive intercepted just shy of the end zone (Georgia being SEC country), I threw a pillow clear across the living room.
With that, the 2007 season became real. The f-word that’s neither faith nor fear made its maiden appearance of the year. Welcome back frustration. (There may have been a fourth f-word flung toward the television as well…a lot.)
The moment that made it more unbearable than one L after four W’s should be was the penultimate out of the ninth inning. After Wright singles and Delgado trots to third, Alou comes up. Moises Alou seems like somebody I would want up here. He’s off to a warm start and he’s a proven RBI man. Then Joe Buck tells me Alou is a notorious first-ball hitter.
He is?
Moises Alou has been knocking around the National League since 1990, and knocking around the ball quite effectively. But all these years that he’s been a Pirate, an Expo, a Marlin, an Astro, a Cub and a Jint, I confess that I’d never watched him closely enough to know all his tendencies. He’s a notorious first-ball hitter? Does that mean he’s going to swing at Wickman’s first offering even though he went to 3-and-2 to Beltran before striking him out, 3-and-2 on Delgado before walking him and 3-and-1 on Wright before David’s single?
It does. Moises does Wickman the biggest favor imaginable and swings and pops meekly to center. Instead of working the count and pressuring the closer, there’s only a second pointless out cramping our style.
This was a game the Mets didn’t particularly deserve to win, not the way they fielded, not the way Glavine was pitching, not the way Smoltz outclassed our lineup. But great teams occasionally pocket games they have little business winning. This ninth inning, not unlike the ninth inning of the last Met loss of any consequence, shaped up as a ninth inning in which we could grab a couple runs off the shelf while the gods were out having a smoke.
Nothing doing. One distressing repositioned lineout later, I was left to ponder Alou the way I was forced to ponder Beltran last October 19. I reasoned then if Carlos got this far in his career by not swinging at curves breaking inside then it was ludicrous to demand he change his habits with a pennant on the line. I’d spend the winter reasoning the opposite, too, but that was winter and last year, so never mind that right now. Point is my, your, everybody’s rule is when a pitcher is playing footsie with the strike zone, don’t make it easier on him. When it’s first and third and you’re down by two runs with one out in the ninth, DON’T SWING AT THE FIRST PITCH!
But if this is how Moises Alou has become Moises Alou, maybe he sees something that I don’t and maybe he was right to swing when he did. Despite being aware of Moises Alou for 17 years, I realize I don’t really know him yet. And that you don’t really know a man until he becomes a Met.
by Jason Fry on 8 April 2007 12:50 am Last night, luxuriating in a 4-0 start, I debated noting that the Mets hadn’t trailed in an inning in 2007. I decided not to — as I wrote to my co-blogger, “Nah. We’ll point it out the first time it’s true.”
Today it was true — part of an unasked-for matching set that included 2007’s first errors, first boneheaded plays, first substantive bad luck and that first disgruntled feeling that follows losing a baseball game.
Smoltz-Glavine II wasn’t a classic along the lines of Smoltz-Pedro two years ago, or even Smoltz-Glavine I. It was long, grinding and slightly tedious, not just for the sloppy plays and the lousy conditions, but for the slow-motion demolition of the whole thing. I did a double-take realizing the Braves had batted around in that dreadful sixth, because it was more a bunch of minor bad things happening than the kind of pummeling that ought to come with Batman-style WHAMs and BIFFs and SOCKs on the screen. Double, single, line out, walk, ball dropped by Green, sac fly, walk, Baltimore chop 50 feet high off the plate, flyout. Ugh. Blame the heavens for Edgar Renteria’s plate job, but Green’s extra out sticks in the craw. For the life of me I cannot understand why baseball players persist in putting their sunglasses atop the brim of their caps on sunny days. (Or leaving them there once the folly of doing so has been demonstrated.)
I suppose you could take heart in a patient ninth inning that came just short. I wound up shaking my head, amused and annoyed at what a kick in the ass baseball can be. David Wright stealing second, putting us one hit away from a tie game and a re-evaluation of that revitalized Braves bullpen, looked like a heads-up play and a vapor-lock by Bob Wickman. Too bad the stolen base let Craig Wilson come off the line, leaving him in perfect position to snare Green’s liner just before it zipped by him. (Talk about it not being Wright’s day.)
“The line drives are caught, the squibbles go for base hits,” Rod Kanehl once said. “It’s an unfair game.” Green and Edgar Renteria can attest to that. On the other hand, the baseball gods don’t give out favors to those who don’t put their sunglasses over their eyes. Nor, I suppose, should they.
by Greg Prince on 7 April 2007 6:39 pm These last couple of years the trademark of the Atlanta Braves has been a preponderance of young, homegrown players who were born and bred in Georgia: Jeff Francoeur, Brian McCann, Chuck James, Macay McBride, Kyle Davies.
Think maybe the inbreeding has caught up with them?
The family elders — Cox, Smoltz and those dirty Jones boys — still preside over the clan and I keep hearing about this new, improved bullpen that’s nothing like all those previously new, improved bullpens, but the Braves don’t look like The Braves to me anymore. Turner Field doesn’t look like Turner Field to me anymore. They’re just another team in just another ballpark on just another road trip. They could beat us today. They could beat us tomorrow. Anybody could beat anybody twice. That still wouldn’t make them The Braves. That’s over. That’s not four games talking. That’s 166 and counting.
Chris Woodward…Tyler Yates…Roger McDowell…the Braves don’t poach outside the family as well as they used to either.
by Jason Fry on 7 April 2007 3:54 am Opponents' fans, as New York Mets bloggers we would like to remind you to come to the game early. Like you, we like nothing better than to bask in all the joys a few hours at the ballpark can bring: The sights and sounds of batting practice, that first bite of a hot dog, warbling the Star-Spangled Banner, having your buddy hand you a cold beer, watching your kids lick stray cotton-candy fibers off their fingers, appreciating the arcs and lines of the ball going around the infield while the pitcher warms up, and of course just relaxing in the sight of all that green grass. We love all these things too, and we want to ensure that you and your guests get to enjoy them. So please — make sure you have enough time to savor your surroundings. Because by the second or third time through the New York Mets' batting order, your time at the park will no longer be so enjoyable. By then it may hurt quite a bit.
Between St. Louis and now Atlanta, we've wrecked two bitter rivals' home openers and probably driven 75,000 Braves and Cardinals fans out of their seats and home early. (Kudos to former President Carter and Rosalynn for not being among them.) Tonight, before the napkins and plastic bags had stopped flying from first base to third base and the baseballs had stopped flying from Met bats to all points, Turner Field was a gallery of portraits of misery. Some of those were our own: John Maine in his knit cap, with nothing whatsoever to do but try to stay near the heater; Damion Easley huddled on the bench, now the lone Opening Day Met not to take the field; and Carlos Delgado standing at first with his arms folded over his chest, looking like he'd almost rather be somewhere else, if not for the hits and the runs and the winning. Fortunately there were more-wretched expressions on the other side: Roger McDowell, looking increasingly grim each time we see him (sorry, Roger); poor Brayan Pena chasing a week's worth of errant balls in a miserable inning-plus of catching Macay McBride; the entire Braves' defense during that endless 8th; and of course Bobby Cox. But then Bobby Cox always looks that way. Joe Torre may have perfected looking imperturbable until the final out of the World Series, but Bobby Cox always looks like a guy who accidentally sat in a puddle and now doesn't see how moving would improve things.
Rick Peterson, on the other hand, looked about as happy as a man spending several hours outside in a biting wind could look. As he should. For proof of the Jacket's value, look no further than the inaugural 2007 starts of John Maine and Oliver Perez. Not the results, though those were wonderful, but the approach that led to those results. Maine blitzed the Cardinals with an arsenal that looked totally different than anything he had last year, when you admired his guts but worried about his vulnerability to the long ball and what would happen once the league saw him a few times. Maine has worked to remake himself as a pitcher, and while it's just one start, that one start should be viewed as the hard-earned sequel to a spring training spent wisely. Perez, to my eyes, wasn't as good tonight as his numbers might indicate — in the middle innings his release point wobbled around and his focus seemed to wander, and he benefited from a Braves team that didn't seem inclined to let a pitch go by. But that said, his game plan, too, looked different. His release point was mostly consistent. His focus was mostly on Lo Duca, home plate and the batter. And he seemed able to rein himself in when he needed to. (And hell, aggressive Braves or not, he didn't walk anybody.) Those are big steps in remaking him not into what he once briefly was, but into an entirely new pitcher who should have a longer lease on life.
On the offensive side, it's easy to admire Jose Reyes triples and Carlos Beltran doubles. (And I do, believe me.) But the two at-bats I found most cheering were from Shawn Green and Jose Valentin in the eighth, when it was all over but the shouting. Up 10 runs on a cold night, Green worked a walk. Up 10 runs on a cold night, Valentin hit a little ground ball and raced toward first like a dog after a dropped Quarter Pounder — and almost beat out a hit. Neither at-bat led to a run tonight, and they were all but lost amid the blue-and-orange Blitzkrieg. But as with the continuing maturation of Maine and the rebuilding of Perez, those at-bats were signs of success in what might be the hardest part of baseball for these incredibly gifted athletes: How to bear down mentally time after time after time, whatever the score and the situation. The at-bats that get you wins in the dogfights and in the dog days of August don't happen in a vacuum — they date back to doing the right thing in games that are already won on cold nights in April.
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2007 Mets, Jimmy Rollins, Mets Home Opener, Shea Stadium 
