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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Burgos, Sele, Smith…all in, all somewhat mild suprises if you think back to mid-February when they were just three more pitchers in a hurling jumble. It could have just as easily been some other combination of stray relievers and spot starters heading to St. Louis later today. But it's these three. So go get 'em Amby, Other Aaron and Bazooka Joe. The pitching mound is indeed your proving ground.
But no one's ascension to the 25-man roster is quite the surprise that Lastings Milledge's is, which is surprising in itself. Lastings Milledge was this organization's pick to click a year ago. He was instant savior when he came up in late May, bringing an arm and a bat and a religious symbol that got everybody's attention all at once. He was almost legendary before the middle of June.
Then he was hopeless and rude and trade bait before the season was over. Milledge was easy to dismiss…sort of the way Aaron Heilman was two years ago at this moment. One one-hitter and many seventh- and eighth-innings later, Heilman — also a first-round draft choice whose stock had sunk like a stone in the pond of impatience — became quite an after-the-fact find. As there is precedent in these matters, why do we keep assuming highly rated youngsters who don't take the world by storm immediately are never going to be worth a damn?
Milledge the outcast is making the band after all. Granted, it may be only a two-week stay of execution with Pelfrey placed in warm storage until a fifth starter is needed (man, that's gotta suck). Lastings' talent is supposed to direct him to playing every day in New Orleans instead of sitting in New York; nice reward for being skilled, eh? The kid (22 next week despite suddenly having been around the Met equivalent of forever) might find himself in the Green fields of right and if he connects a little and plays that position the way he did last year (remember, his defensive travails were in left), who knows? Willie may “challenge” him and it may take. Or he could be on his way down around April 15.
But for now, Lastings may be the nicest surprise of all from this spring.
(This Milledge-inspired blog is a pretty nice surprise, too.)
If it’s the final Friday of the month, then it’s the third installment of the special Top 10 Songs of All-Time edition of Flashback Friday at Faith and Fear in Flushing.
Dave Kingman was driving in 19 runs. George Foster was driving in 10. Ellis Valentine was driving in nobody. And me? I was driving myself home.
It was April 1982. As the Mets drove toward a .500 record — 10-10 at month’s end — I sped for New York. My first year in college was over, so for the first time ever, I took off on a long-distance haul: Tampa to Long Beach. Before I discovered the relative shortcut provided by Interstates 75 and 10, I headed east across the middle of Florida on I-4 to the Space Coast and then joined I-95 for the balance of the whole darn northward shooting match. In my six later NY-FL/FL-NY trips, I’d get it down a lot closer to a thousand miles, but I can see the odometer still settled at the end of the line: 1,197 miles.
I can remember even more clearly the songs I picked up along the way as I wound the FM tuner to find the closest thing each market had to a CHR format.
• Couldn’t have been an hour east of school, somewhere near Orlando, when Rick Springfield urged me “Don’t Talk To Strangers”.
• Splashing past Daytona my ears spied Mike Post’s “Theme from Magnum P.I.”
• Jacksonville’s vastness called up “867-5309/Jenny”.
• Georgia filled with “Empty Garden” by Elton John.
• Breakfast at the Florence, S.C. waffle house served up a stack of Hall & Oates’ “Did It In A Minute”.
• Pulling out of the Waffle House parking lot for the second day on the road pulled in “Goin’ Down” by Greg Guidry.
And somewhere in the vicinity of Raleigh, I heard this really neat song whose title and artist escaped me.
I’d find it again. Or it would find me and stay with me long enough to become the No. 8 Song of All-Time. The song was — is — great. But as seems to be the case when one tools up and down a list of one’s favorite songs, it’s the circumstances of where and when and how you meet the record that determine where and when and how you rate the record. For me, it was I-95, Baltimore, the end of April, the end of freshman year, Friday evening, around 6 o’clock, hunched into my burnt orange Corolla, the trunk and back seat jammed with the belongings of nascent adulthood, the Realistic FM converter striking gold.
I’m not much on the phrase “driving music,” but if a tune ever melded itself to a car of which I was behind the wheel, “Rosanna” by Toto was it. That was driving music. On this second hearing, in Baltimore, as the South morphed into the North, as Interstate highway signs at last used N.Y. City as a miles-to benchmark, as one who fought off post-semester fatigue through five states over two days (I think I dozed for a nanosecond in Central Florida; thanks a lot “Run For The Roses” by Dan Fogelberg and “Making Love” by Roberta Flack) was gathering finishing-kick momentum, “Rosanna” was my soundtrack. It was the music bed for the chase scene, the one where I put hundreds of ragged, uncertain miles behind me.
Come to think of it, “Rosanna” wasn’t driving music. It was flying music. Because I swear my Toyota had wings for those five or so minutes Toto played.
Toto? That’s who does this song? The ones who did “Hold The Line” and “99”? Those were OK. But this is special. I knew it from the first subtle hint of a beat. It built. Then it built some more. There’s a quality I love in certain songs. I like to think of it as tension. Something’s coming. I don’t know what it is, but like me and the Orange Flame, I know it’s gonna get where it’s going any time now.
“Rosanna”‘s instrumental introduction started coming at me in waves. I imagine some Baltimore disc jockey was talking over it, telling me where to get two-for-one drink specials by the Inner Harbor now that we’re done working for the weekend. I don’t remember that. I remember the waves. The waves waved me into the first words of the song.
All I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is see your eyes.
The words were just part of the waves, really. Every one of my Top 10 songs is to some degree unbearably catchy, in none do the lyrics matter less than in “Rosanna”. Well, let me clarify that.
The lyrics as lyrics don’t matter. I didn’t waste one hosanna on Rosanna (had no idea who Rosanna Arquette was, that she sort of inspired the title, that she was dating somebody in the band). The words were instruments to carry along those waves.
All I wanna do in the middle of the evening is hold you tight.
WAH-nuh…MID-dle…EVE-ning…HOLD you…see? Those words flow so easily, just like the Maryland traffic that Friday evening.
Not quite a year since she went away.
What’s this? This is more than a break or a bridge. It’s a whole other little song in the middle of the bigger song. Instead of singing to her, Steve Lukather and Bobby Kimball are singing to us. I drove an automatic, but “Rosanna” shifted gears repeatedly.
Now she’s gone, and I have to say.
Say what?
Meet you all the way!
Huh? Meet you all the way? You mean like “I’ll Meet You Halfway” by the Partridge Family, but twice that? Clever. This is yet another direction Toto is taking as I drive north. Things have gotten very rousing in Rosannaland. First there was beseechment of the title character. Then wistful reflection. Then back to beseeching the face still shining through the window on the other side. Anything else for those of us rocking up the highway?
Yes! A kickass guitar break! With horns! And that’s where and how “Rosanna” becomes the No. 8 Song of All-Time. Because that break — with Toto’s waves practically inundating I-95 like high tide from the Chesapeake — coincided with the Interstate moment when the concrete grew pleasingly curvy. Curving right. Curving left. This is where I was flying. This is where I was confident and going, I don’t know, 65, 70, 75. Doesn’t sound like much, but through beautiful Baltimore (after ham ‘n’ egging it up from the south and staring at a million boring trees and South of the Border billboards, urban blight never looked so good) at the tail end of rush hour when I became, for the first time, a fully confident long-haul driver, it was fast. Fast and airy. I glided along on the wings of Toto.
The break ended. The chorus returned. Some impressive jazzy doodling wound matters down. I don’t recall if my Baltimore station let the single go its full five-and-a-half minutes. Didn’t matter. By the time it was over, I was in Delaware.
Not really, but I knew for sure I’d make it home. There were still 200-some miles before it would be official. Night would fall and I’d have to stop at the Maryland House for the bathroom and on the New Jersey Turnpike for gas, but we were getting close, me and my car and my baggage.
This was a trip I feared and dreaded. I was exhausted from all the drama of the last weeks of being a freshman — the finals, the girlfriend, the girlfriend’s roommate’s crisis, my roommate’s last-minute personal revelations, the packing, the selling the textbooks…the whole bit. My mother had urged me to put up an ad in the dorm to share driving chores and expenses. She’d heard college kids did that. I said I did and found no fakers. I didn’t look very hard. It was a Toyota, for crissake. Where was I going to put this other person and this other person’s stuff?
So it was me alone, encountering disgusting lovebugs by the dozen on I-4 (I learned to use a squeegee), the insides of my eyelids if I wasn’t careful, the Florence Holiday Inn and — this was the best part — all those different radio stations. They didn’t necessarily sound terribly different. Even then consultants seemed to be programming everything and the Magic 102 of Philadelphia didn’t vary much from the soft rock hits of Richmond. But I’d always had romantic notions about distant stations. As a youngster, I delighted in twirling the AM dial to 800 so I could hear CKLW out of Windsor, Ontario. Imagine that, a radio station from Canada hearable on Long Island. Driving 1,197 miles had the same effect, even if I was twirling myself up along countless broken yellow lines. And to discover a song like “Rosanna” I hadn’t heard to death on Q-105 in Tampa? This must have been how Columbus felt at the sight of San Salvador.
“Rosanna” has obviously stayed with me. Written by keyboardist David Paich, it got the hell played out of it through the summer of ’82, rising as high as No. 2 on Billboard. It was kept from the top spot by the Human League’s technosmash “Don’t You Want Me,” which I mention not as trivia but as a sign of the times. I didn’t have cable in college. I didn’t know an MTV revolution was taking place without me. New York and L.A. got Music Television in the ensuing months and the pop charts would change. My drive back to school at the end of August was peppered by more stylish Human Leagues and fewer workmanlike Totos. What was dubbed New Music, essentially video for radio, was taking over. Even Tampa’s sad outlets would be dragged along in 1982-83 so that by my next big trip north one year later, the prevailing sounds from start to finish tilted away from the Fogelbergs and Flacks and toward an MTV-inflected Top 40. I had no problem with the content (Men At Work, Scandal, Naked Eyes) but couldn’t help but notice the radio had grown a little less mature as I was becoming eligible for Adult Contemporary.
Toto, thus, was out of its element just as it truly arrived. Though they made a video for “Rosanna,” starring the then little-known actress of the same name, it was a murky affair, the guys pretending to be in a schoolyard rumble or something. It was no match for what Michael Jackson would pull off in “Beat It” just up the road apiece. Duran Duran was an MTV act. Toto was not at all videogenic. Though “Rosanna” and “Africa” were huge hits, one could sense Toto’s time was going about as quickly as it had come. They would be lumped in with the so-called faceless bands, the “corporate rock” acts Journey and Styx and Foreigner, all of them no longer interesting in the face of Adam Ant and the Go-Go’s. That was a shame because Toto really had musicianship going for them. To listen to a Toto collection today is to hear less style than craft, to experience expert masterful blends of rock, pop, R&B and jazz.
Actually, all of those were on “Rosanna” alone. “All of our favorite music put into one,” Lukather has described it. “It was funky, it had a little Spinners thing in the middle section, it had horns, it still had loud guitars, a little New Orleans groove. It was a lot of different influences that made that record, and the we put our stamp on it and made it our own.” I’ve always had a soft spot for kitchen sink recordings, but they usually brush up against novelty hits. Not this one. “Rosanna” is the real McCoy. Or Arquette.
The best sound I heard that whole trip, at least tied with Toto, materialized somewhere in Central Jersey. WMCA, 570-AM. Bob Murphy and Steve Lamar welcoming me to New York Mets baseball from Candlestick Park. Home had to be near now, for there was no truer north than the flagship station of the New York Mets radio network.
Just before our game got underway, I flipped over to WABC. The Yankees were losing late to the Mariners. Tee-hee. I got to the Goethals Bridge toll plaza. Guy in the booth had it on. “What’s the score?” I asked, knowing damn well Seattle was winning. He grumbled about the Yankees. Yeah, I said, not their year. The Yanks were falling to 7-11 for April. Worse than the Mets. Neither one of us would see .500 at season’s end, but entering New York at last, I was in too good a mood to see anything bad about the 1982 Mets. Hell, we were 10-9! (10-10 after Reggie Smith scorched Neil Allen in the bottom of that night’s ninth, but we were still better than the Yankees.)
My final mission — decided as I crossed the Goethals, then the Verazzano, then traversed the Belt until the Sunrise Highway exit when I could turn right onto Long Beach Road — was to pick up a pizza from Gino’s and get it in the front door before midnight, before April could become May. I wasn’t that starved for a pizza, but it seemed like an amusing thing to do. Mom had roast beef sandwiches from the Lido Deli waiting. Mighty thoughtful. Anyway, I made it by twelve, pie and all.
There’s a lyric from a song I didn’t hear on I-95 that Thursday and Friday probably because it had yet to be written. It’s from the No. 114 Song of All-Time, “One Headlight” by the Wallflowers:
Man, I ain’t changed.
But I know I ain’t the same.
I heard it the other day and it resonated anew for me as I started thinking about “Rosanna” and the sojourn that introduced us. It’s 25 years later, an honest-to-god quarter-of-a-century, and I think I’m still the same person, but how could I be? I was 19 years old then. I continue to be fascinated that I was ever 19, more so than any other age before it or beyond it. It’s so young. It wasn’t then but it is now. Nineteen was the age when I decided I was no longer a kid, even if it took me until I was 29 to fully buy it and 44 to understand how long ago being a kid was.
Never say never, but I’ll never take a trip like that again. I’ll never drive 1,197 miles by myself over two days. I don’t even know if I’ll ever drive on a highway again. I’ve been allergic to it for more than a decade, and going much above 40 reduces me to clammy pools of sweat. But when I was 19, it was just one of those things I had to do and I did it. When my song came on, I did it better than I ever thought I could.
There is a definite divide: me to 19, me since 19. I can hear “Rosanna” still playing in the Corolla on the other side.
The No. 9 Song of All-Time was heard at the end of February. The No. 7 record will be played at the end of April.
Next Friday: The night Jackie Robinson became a Met.
Spring Training has officially become a blur. I turned on SNY in the office earlier and saw the Mets losing to the Braves, thought “not again” and kept it on in the background waiting for things to turn until I noticed Kevin Burkhardt conducting the exact same in-game interview as yesterday. “Oh, this is yesterday's meaningless, depressing exhibition,” I concluded. I finally turned it off when I realized the score would not change in any sort of favorable manner.
The Mets won this afternoon's meaningless, less depressing contest. They'll play one more tomorrow and one more after that against the American League (9-18) version of us, the Devil Rays, in the Stupid Dome Saturday before packing up their troubles in an old kit bag and recycling them into the Gulf of Mexico. Oh-and-Oh from there, you know.
Hoorah! Spring Training is always a revelation once it starts and an utter and complete drag by its end. Glad to know one more eternal truism has come home to roost. Baseball is so reassuring that way.
A couple of other things are on track. The Star Struck catalogue arrived the other day with hundreds of dollars worth of apparel that is a single unfettered buying frenzy away from being mine, but I'll probably keep my Visa in my pants for now. Every March the MLB people send me this brochure and every March I'm ready to refurbish my wardrobe with new and better shirts and jackets and caps and whatever they've got my favorite four-letter word stitched onto. You know the rule: You don't not wear blue and orange after Opening Day. I'll succumb to temptation to some limited extent at a later date, though maybe not to the tune of the $107.95 Alternate Color Elevation Premier Jacket (“Dress like your favorite pitching coach!”).
There's also the matter of getting used to the new names I'll be calling out toward the television in the living room once the television in the living room gets fixed (not having our primary boob tube transmit its cathode-ray warmth toward us 12 hours a night is probably why I can't tell one day's St. Lucie debacle from the next). The turnover wasn't so vast this winter that I'll be rooting for a city of strangers, but it's always a bit rough on the tongue acclimating myself to vocally contemplating, complaining about or once in a great while complimenting new Mets.
• If Chan Ho Park sticks, will his de facto theme song stick in my head and pour out of my throat the way it has every time I've seen Park on Baseball Tonight since I first saw Ghost World in 2003? That's a given. I greeted every 2005 Ramon Castro at-bat with an approximation of Mira Sorvino's “Rrrraaaa-MOAN!” from Romy & Michelle. It's funny once, grating soon enough. Stephanie still cringes at 1991's loop of “Carreon! You Will Always Remember!” — and she's from Kansas.
• How long will it take Damion Easley to definitively drop the unflattering middle name I applied to him on June 5, 2004 when he wrecked a reasonably lovely Saturday afternoon in the mezzanine by launching a three-run bomb off Mike Same Unflattering Middle Name Dating Back To When He Was A Particularly Unlikable Skank Stanton? If I could find it within me to be pro-Michael Tucker, pro-Guillermo Mota and, for that matter, pro-Mike Stanton for mutually beneficial stretches, I suppose I'll accept Damion Easley into the family with little prompting. Besides, Sunday night will remind me that the middle name in question is sole eternal property of Yadier Fucking Molina.
• I'm pretty sure I've seen Scott Schoeneweis referred to as Shoney. That's a modern-day, lazy-ass baseball nickname if ever I've heard one. I'll bet his mom called him Shoney.
• David Newhan and Aaron Sele…get your own first names. You're Other David and Other Aaron until further notice. Got a gripe? Take it to Other Jose.
• Ben Johnson? Doesn't strike me as a Beh-NEE! Get recalled and we'll talk.
• Joe Smith is probably Smitty, though I prefer Pseudonym.
• Jon Adkins…I still say getting rid of him is an option.
• Ambiorix Burgos, should he make the team, is Amby already. I shorten long names and lengthen short ones. Endy Chavez became Endomorphin Machine from Prince's overlooked 1995 Gold album early in '06. It came out without a second thought the other day. (And in the mind's ear, Jay Payton still fires JPEGs to second in hopes of nailing Quilvio Veras.)
• I imagine I'll be spending a lot of time yelling at those who call Moises Alou “Moses,” which right now is Mike Francesa. I'm veering toward Moishe, which would put him in honorary kosher company with the Mets' all-time franchise record of three Jewish players at once. Worst-case scenario: Fifteenth inning, Shawn! (who brings out the Wallace & Gromit in me) on third, Other David on second, emergency pinch-runner Shoney on first…and Moishe strikes out to end the game. Next day's headline in the News or perhaps the Forward: MOI VEY. Not very likely, I grant you, since shorn Green would have to actually get to third base in the first place.
Besides, Julio Franco has dibs on Moses among the Met-huselah set. Sudden thought for a bumpersticker: The 2007 Mets: We Go For Older Men
Best news is we get to call the season here. The runup has been unbearably long, even if it started later than usual (October 19, to be precise). So glad baseball isn't politics. I mean literally. The 2008 presidential campaign started before Spring Training and the same one will be in progress after next year's World Series. Not a single nominating vote will be cast until January. Talk about extended Spring Training.
In baseball, unlike politics, your dark horses have a track record of making legitimate runs once or twice a decade. The '69 Mets…the '82 and '91 Braves…the '03 Marlins…the '06 Tigers…the can't-possibly-happen happens. A while back I read a quote attributed to somebody in the Jim Gilmore '08 campaign. Counting the person who was quoted, the person who reported the quote, me who read the quote and Jim Gilmore, that's four of us who know there's a Jim Gilmore '08 campaign.
No offense to the former governor of Virginia, but a lifetime of watching politics as my other favorite spectator sport clues me in that a 2007 Devil Rays-Rockies Fall Classic is more likely than a 2009 Jim Gilmore inaugural ball. How overheated is the political process? Tom Vilsack and Evan Bayh have already entered and dropped out of the 2008 race. At least Colorado and Tampa Bay will show up and play the full 162. Except maybe in the last season of the ABA, sports teams generally don't bow out of contention because they can't raise enough money.
When I was studying journalism in college, a famous syndicated columnist came and spoke to us. An election cycle (a much shorter one) was underway and the writer was writing off the candidates of the moment as a collective of clowns. I raised my hand and asked whether this wasn't self-fulfilling prophecy masquerading as political coverage — you've decided that those seeking the highest office in the land are not to be taken seriously therefore you don't take them seriously. The columnist paused, said that was interesting and went back to mocking them.
Baseball coverage is conducted in a not completely dissimilar manner. Experts ride the Conventional Wisdom train all winter. The obvious is pounded into granite and those who have not revealed themselves as contenders ahead of time are easily dismissed. Yet the games will be played without these experts' input. The teams and the players will prove themselves and no agenda of any substance is set by anybody but them and their record. In politics these days, it's hard to imagine anybody not deemed a favorite in the preseason breaking out of the proverbial pack. In baseball, all it takes is pitching, hitting and fielding to turn the polls upside down.
Enough bloviating, enough prognosticating. Let the 2007 campaign begin in earnest.
Braves 8, Mets 3.
I know it's March.
I know our 10-20-1 record has all the permanence and hold on memory as a sand castle surrounded by already-wet beach.
If there's a cup for the Grapefruit League championship, I know it's never displayed.
I know Jon Adkins is ticketed for New Orleans or another club. (I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he didn't enhance his trade value today.)
But cripes. Jeebus. Fuckola.
Braves 8, Mets 3 isn't going to make me happy in October or in March or if I'm playing Strat-o-Matic in January with a bunch of cards from the 1970s someone found in a shoebox at a yard sale. 10-20-1 isn't going to make me holler, “Save some of that for the regular season!” 10-20-1 and daily ass kickings up and down the east coast of Florida makes you start thinking about stuff.
What kind of stuff? This kind of stuff:
* It makes you start thinking that jeez, that bullpen sure looks patched together.
* It makes you start thinking that Moises Alou plays the outfield like a blindfolded man.
* It makes you start thinking that Jose Valentin sure had a crappy second half and Damion Easley's never had a good half and Anderson Hernandez's never had much of anything except one good catch.
* It makes you start thinking that Shawn Green looks like a backup first baseman, only he's the right fielder and part of the starting lineup.
* It makes you start thinking that Julio Franco looks like a coach, only he's the backup first baseman.
* It makes you start thinking that a team that pulled Darren Oliver out of a hat in 2006 might be pushing it expecting Chan Ho Park and Aaron Sele to grow big ears in 2007.
* It makes you start thinking that Tom Glavine and Orlando Hernandez are awfully old.
* It makes you start thinking that Mike Pelfrey is awfully young.
* It makes you start thinking that Joe Smith is a nice story this year, but Henry Owens was a nice story last year.
At 20-10-1 or 16-14-1 or even 13-17-1 you don't think about this stuff. You think about veterans who know how to prepare and youngsters who have said and done all the right things and will build on that, and from there you think about green grass and hot dogs and summer nights and then from there you think (with all the required propitiation to the baseball gods) about the possibility of fall nights and bunting and packed houses and all the marbles. But you don't think that at 10-20-1. At 10-20-1 every glass is half-empty (or two-thirds empty, in the case of this particular glass of cloudy, acidic suck), every rookie is raw and every vet is over the hill and every box score is filled with bad portents.
Even at 13-17-1, you just want it to be April and Opening Day, even if it will be the Cardinals with the banners and the rings and the red and the Mex and the guarantee that even if we win, we'll all be mildly pissed off about it.
10-20-1 is different. At 10-20-1, you don't want it to be April and finally Opening Day. You need it to be April and Opening Day.
Last August, when its exhibits had yet to encompass any painful memories-to-be from the forthcoming October, Stephanie and I visited the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame which has the decency to share space with the St. Louis Browns and the St. Louis Stars as well as share admission with the International Bowling Museum & Hall of Fame (rolled my first frames in 19 years — and it showed). All right attraction as these things go (better than ours, ahem), except for the Cardinal MVP display. One of the players pictured looked all wrong. Like Frank Cashen 23 years earlier, I did what I could to spruce him up.
Keep plenty of Pepto-Bismol on hand for the opening series of the year. You'll want the dark pink kind to combat that queasy feeling you'll get from seeing too much red.
On Sunday night, according to Paul Lukas' Uni Watch, the Cardinals will swaddle themselves in commemorative patches and gold trim to honor their 2006 World Championship. On Tuesday night, they'll be handing out rings to everybody who enters Busch Stadium — everybody but the Mets. And the night after, each of their fans gets a replica World Champions banner that measures three feet by five feet. FEET!
That's a big ol' keepsake they're giving away to everybody. You could fit a lot of treasured but tiny 8″X6″ TD Waterhouse 2000 National League Champions flags on that kind of square footage. That's on top of the mounted rings that go to all fans and the replica World Series celebration locker room cap for kids. Except that this stuff says Cardinals, it's a pretty awesome haul.
If my team showered me in such treasures, maybe I'd smile a lot and behave like a Best Fan In Baseball, too. If we'd won, you know the most we'd be getting would be a ceremonial wipe of the seat from a commemorative usher, redeemable only with the exchange of the first two George Washington photographs out of your wallet.
But if we'd won, we wouldn't care, because we'd have won. Sigh.
Anyway, the Cardinals are doing it up right, which is their prerogative, but one component of their Salute To Themselves is a bit much: The team will also honor its 1967 and 1982 World Championship teams in recognition of their 40th and 25th anniversaries, respectively, with such standouts as Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Whitey Herzog, Keith Hernandez and Bruce Sutter scheduled to attend.
Which of those Cards is not like the other? Right. There's a Cardinal in there who became a Met on June 15, 1983 and we're not giving him back. I know it's just for an evening, for festivities' sake, for milestone purposes (and who wallows in a good milestone anniversary more than me?). I know we're not swapping him out retroactively for Neil Allen and Rick Ownbey. I know The Baseball Encyclopedia doesn't come with disappearing ink for everything he accomplished once his paychecks weren't signed in Bud.
But no sir, I don't like it. I don't like that Keith would forgive the Cardinals when a measly quarter-century has yet to pass. I don't like the way Keith yammers on a little too fondly about his Cardinal days during Mets telecasts. I'm a little worn by his yammering on about his Met days during Mets telecasts, actually, because I could use a touch more yammer about these Met days during Mets telecasts, no matter what kind of hammer Atlee Hammaker dropped on him for strike three when the world was young, but that's another story.
Keith the Cardinal was outstanding. Keith the Met remains iconic.
Keith the Cardinal won a World Series. Keith the Met won the World Series.
Keith was a Most Valuable Cardinal. Keith was The Indispensable Met.
Keith was their star. Keith was our Captain.
If Keith were entering the Hall of Fame (if only petitioning made it so), then which cap do you think he'd be wearing? Which cap do you think he should be wearing? Keith is Ours as few have been even if we keep issuing 17 to every Dae-Sung and Lima that comes down the pike (pending massively wonderful revelations to the contrary, David Newhan ain't worthy either). The Redbirds renounced their Keith rights when Ratzog discarded him not eight months beyond that '82 championship they're suddenly intent on marking. St. Louis turned on Mex. Mex turned on New York and we were totally plugged into Mex. For all his Keithfoolery on the air, it doesn't take much to close one's eyes and picture in his prime the Second-Greatest Met of the First Forty Years — fielding, hitting, leading…always leading. Leading us in '84 and '85 and '86 as he targeted the gray at Shea and replaced it with sunny bursts of blue and orange. Those colors, like Keith, were Just For Mets.
Keith Hernandez invited back by the Cardinals? On one of his myriad days off from the booth, I wouldn't blink because I understand the concept of completism and squaring circles and players honoring their pasts because they are the fans' pasts, too (Ozzie Guillen would scoff at such sentimentality, but when doesn't Ozzie Guillen scoff?). That he's throwing out the first ball for our Home Opener makes me feel somewhat less queasy, but trotting out Keith Hernandez as their own on the night they raise their flag in our face after having secured it at the expense of us…pass the Pepto.
Counting on things, particularly Mets things, is a fan's folly. Does anybody project lingering suspensions and sudden reinjuries and slow recoveries gumming up the works? And if nobody can, why do we pretend that they can't?
The bullpen is supposed to be this team's strength…right? It was so good last year, it will be so good this year…right? I'll give you last year, for it is indeed mine to give. This year I'd love to give you my word that it will be just as good. But my word is only as good as my hope.
I hope it's all good. But the veritable two-right-armed monster that amounted to Duamo Santa won't be here in any segment until at least May 27, the 51st game of the season. By then, Guillermo Mota will have served his suspension, but I don't expect he'll be back right away. I don't expect anything anymore. I expected Duaner Sanchez would be settling back into the eighth inning right about now and he isn't. Instead he's heading for more surgery, the shoulder from the cab accident worse than we'd dreamed.
So there's no Sanchez. No Mota, on whom we weren't counting right away but who appears remorseful enough for those of us who may have made a mistake or two in our lives to get off our high horse about (if that is indeed a sentence). No Juan Padilla — whose return to late 2005 pleasant surprise form from an '06 spent getting to know Tommy John was probably a pipe dream — either. That's a helluva half of a bullpen's workload that isn't available to us.
The big four, led by Shaky and Gloomy and backed up by Lefty and New Lefty, will have to carry that weight with no proven relief commodities behind them. Their support group is comprised of Chan Ho Park, Aaron Sele and Joe Smith.
Despite my logical instincts to see how it all goes, gulp.
I can't believe I don't have a Commandment for this, but one shouldn't overreact to the composition of the bullpen as it shapes up before Opening Day, for it almost invariably takes many twists and turns in the ensuing weeks. One only has to peek back two springs to a Met relief corps that included Felix Heredia, Mike Matthews, Mike DeJean, Dae-Sung Koo, Manny Aybar, Roberto Hernandez and Battlin' Braden Looper to understand the Yikes! of March are not necessarily an enduring phenomenon.
Was the April 2005 bullpen horrendous? Pretty much, but not for the reasons we foresaw. DeJean and Hernandez switched places mighty fast. Felix, Manny and the other Mike were here-and-goners (I hear they went into the auto parts business). Mister Koo…well, before I cheer us all down, the point is April blowers often bring May throwers. Thus, getting worked up over the impending presence of Park and Sele and Smith probably isn't wise.
But still.
There seems to be a school of thought that Chan Ho Park can succeed as a set-up man because it would be really great if he would. Watched him look very sharp against the Dodgers last night. And hang one of the droopiest curveballs I've ever seen to Matt Kemp. Thinking Park will succeed in a role for which he is by experience and desire unsuited is awfully wishful. On the other hand, Heilman will at least have company in his dungeon of resentment.
Aaron Sele? I assume he's been hot stuff against somebody in his career, but the only times I've paid any attention to him, he's been dreadful, either miserably (6-11, 4.50 ERA in 162 IP versus the Skanks) or happily (0-1, 9.64 ERA in 4.2 IP versus us). With Burgos exposing his unreadiness and Sosa exposing his Sosaness and Adkins having only one option left (namely getting rid of Adkins), Sele has stepped front and center to be a poster boy for the employment opportunities engendered by seven-man bullpens.
Joe Smith? The whole world's in love with this kid. I'd like to be, too. Sidearmers make me nervous, though, which I admit isn't much of an analysis. The good news is the ones who prove themselves remain effective for a long time. The bad news is Smith hasn't proven anything. But with three different set-up men who did prove themselves at various extended junctures during the past two seasons all nowhere near the sound of Guy Conti's phone, the Mets bullpen has indeed morphed into a proving ground. You feel less vexed by that sort of thing coming off 91 losses and just hoping to be pretty good than you do succeeding a division title and craving more.
Smith may prove himself a great find. Park may pick up where he left off in the World Baseball Classic and prove himself an electrifying reliever. Sele may be the first fringe starter to make the Mets and prove himself an invaluable long man since way the hell back in 2006 when Darren Oliver did exactly that. May, however, is an iffy proposition when you start April against the Cardinals, the Braves and the Phillies. It would be far more comforting to have one-third or more of Sanchez, Mota and Padilla. But we don't.
And that's why you never count on anything.
It’s been a big dance, but as ever, 2007’s edition of March Metness has come down to a pair of last waltzes — the Tom Filer Four, this Saturday’s last two games before the Metropolitan Championship hoedown Monday, April 2. It is then that we will find out what is, indisputably, the Quintessential Mets Thing.
The semifinals are at hand. As all sports fans are probably aware by now, the brackets have come down to this:
Congratulations are in order for this quartet of survivors. The matchups that await five days hence are indeed intriguing, with LGM and J!4 representing a dual shoutout to the Mets fan soul. Meanwhile, The Happy Recap and Buckner share a common bond of their own. When, after all, was there a more ecstatic postgame mood in Mets history than after Game Six?
Here’s how each of the remaining combatants have survived and advanced to the Filer Four.
LET’S GO METS Chant with which Mets fans have regularly urged on their team since 1962 AASE ROUND: Defeated Mercury Mets (16); Defeated Mojo Risin’ (9) RICK SWEET 16: Defeated Jane Jarvis (5) ELLIOT EIGHT: Defeated Rheingold The Dry Beer (2)
JOSE! JOSE! JOSE! JOSE! Soccer-derived song/cheer dedicated to Mets leadoff sensation Jose Reyes in 2006 AASE ROUND: Defeated LaGuardia (10); Defeated Bill Shea’s Floral Horseshoe (15) RICK SWEET 16: Defeated Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? (3) ELLIOT EIGHT: Defeated The 7 Train (1)
THE HAPPY RECAP Signature post-victory phrase of 42-year Mets announcer Bob Murphy AASE ROUND: Defeated Michael Sergio (16); Defeated John Rocker (9) RICK SWEET 16: Defeated Seinfeld (4) ELLIOT EIGHT: Defeated The Franchise (3)
BUCKNER First base error that turned 1986 World Series in Mets’ favor AASE ROUND: Defeated Dairylea (15); Defeated Jimmy Qualls (10) RICK SWEET 16: Defeated Pete Rose (5) ELLIOT EIGHT: Defeated Mr. Met (1)
The Road to the Metropolitan Championship continues Saturday. We will, of course, be there to cover all the action.
Saturday yielded one regional championship that clicked true to form — 1-seed Let’s Go Mets dominating the Miracle bracket — and another in which Cinderella raced around the bases when 7-seed Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose! stole the Magic bracket. We know they will meet in six days to decide who will play in the March Metness Metropolitan Championship game.
And there to meet that winner? That’s what we learned earlier Sunday.
BELIEVE REGION FINAL The Happy Recap (1) vs The Franchise (3)
Bob Murphy never tried to pitch, but Tom Seaver did attempt to broadcast. Let’s just say The Franchise’s forte wasn’t found away from the mound. But Seaver, whatever his disagreements with management in retirement and forced estrangements from the team during his playing career, represented the Mets like no player before, no player since, no player ever. Tom Seaver earned a place in the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame, won his 300th game in a Chicago White Sox uniform and threw his final strike for the Boston Red Sox, but he was never The Franchise for any of them. Bob Murphy announced games for the Orioles and Red Sox, yet no fan of those teams could possibly connect the words Happy and Recap the way we can. Seaver and Murphy were two professionals at the tops of their respective professions when Tom wore the blue and orange and Bob voiced fables, foibles and fierceness that shaded those colors. The Franchise provided the direct foundation for 198 Happy Recaps in 11 different regular seasons, all but nine of those coming before the dreaded Wednesday Night Massacre of 1977. Seaver was out. The recaps grew less frequently happy in his absence. But those that occurred felt every bit as special as any that Murph summed up in 1969 or 1973. Bob Murphy was sunshine when darkness descended on Shea, not just between Seaver’s two Met tenures but long afterwards. He is remembered for 1986, yes, but also for 1993, clear through to 2003. Bad years, good years, all years. Murph made each recap and every pitch that preceded them happy affairs just by communicating them. The Franchise comes away with a no-decision from this intense battle of Met quintessence. The Happy Recap gets the win.
AMAZIN’ REGION FINAL Mr. Met (1) vs Buckner (2)
It’s easy to make jokes about the size of Mr. Met’s head because, let’s face it, it’s hard not to notice it. But Mr. Met has heart. Miles and miles of heart, extending all the way back to his first appearance as a logo in the Polo Grounds. A man named Dan Reilly put on a papier-mâché noggin and made Mr. Met come to life at Shea in the mid-’60s. We didn’t see much of the personification of MM immediately thereafter, but he never left the Metscape completely. Got a Shea raincheck from the ’70s handy? Look whose picture is there, holding an umbrella and seeming distressed that there will be No Game Today. Mr. Met lives for the game, so of course he’s sad it’s raining. On the other hand, he was delighted when the Mets brought him out of storage and made him three-dimensional in 1994. At the time he may have been the Mets’ best player (him or Rico Brogna), certainly its most popular personality. Mr. Met’s stature has only grown over the past 13 years. He went to ESPN, he went to Japan, he even went into the army reserves (well, one of the guys who wore the head did). Mr. Met is all over New York, all over Shea. He himself is impossible to ignore and why would you want to? The same could be said for the legacy of the moment we need refer to only as Buckner. This isn’t about the first basemen who amassed 2,715 base hits, a batting title and loads of admiration for the way he played. Bill Buckner, too, had miles and miles of heart. His existence, however, remains of interest to Mets fans because of one silly little baseball that changed the course of human events. It wasn’t just Buckner that defined the Tenth Inning. There were three base hits and a wild pitch (passed ball if we’re scoring with our eyes open). There was a tie in place when Mookie Wilson connected. There was a prospective eleventh inning if Buckner didn’t happen. But it did. It’s the most famous play in the history of the Mets, the best moment in the history of the Mets, the signature event in the history of the Mets. Mr. Met is an icon, but Buckner is as iconic as it gets. Twenty-one years after an honorable career went askew, Mr. Met becomes one silly big baseball Bill can handle.
Believe champion The Happy Recap and Amazin’ winner Buckner will face off in the Tom Filer Four on Saturday, March 31, approximately 40 minutes after the conclusion of the Let’s Go Mets-Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose! matchup.
So, barring an expansion of the dog-and-cat trade awaiting out-of-options Jon Adkins, the roster appears set. And Moises Alou, David Newhan, Damion Easley, Chan Ho Park, Aaron Sele, Joe Smith and Scott Schoeneweis are ready to join the exalted ranks of The Holy Books.
Last season Philip Humber was the final addition to the orange and blue, bringing the all-time Mets count to a close-but-no-cigar 799. Barring something startling, Alou should claim the 800th spot, hopefully in the top of the first a week from tonight. (Because then the Mets would have baserunners and possibly an early lead, y'see?) THB Occupants 801 through 806 should follow within the first week's patchwork schedule. (I know the off-days are there for rain, but if the weather's nice Monday April 2 is going to be agony, and Thursday April 5 will be worse.) Humber's pal Mike Pelfrey (THB #792) will start the year in New Orleans or in extended spring training, a brief furlough that should end when the fifth-starter slot comes around for the first time right before Tax Day.
So, some early-season storylines already.
* The Shawn Green Watch? It's already on. Lastings Milledge will keep Pelfrey's roster spot warm and get some starts. If Lastings hits and acts like he has in St. Lucie, and Green stays cold, how long can right field really stay Green's? If Lastings is sent to New Orleans, can he keep his head?
* Is Pelfrey ready? Lots of guys have found April's rather different than March.
* Can Chan Ho succeed in the Darren Oliver role? Can he accept that? What's Aaron Sele's role on the team? Can they and Aaron Heilman get a discount on t-shirts that say PELFREY WENT TO THE ROTATION AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY BULLPEN SPOT?
* Who'll wind up playing second? Is there anything left in Jose Valentin's tank? Has there ever been anything in Damion Easley's tank? Anderson Hernandez's got the glove — can he make things interesting by hitting in New Orleans the way he never has on U.S. soil?
* When will I learn to spell Schoeneweis without cribbing? (I had Mientkiewicz down by May, but I was younger then.)
* Will Joe Smith step up as the third legitimate Brooklyn Cyclone to play a real role on the Mets roster? For the trivia-minded, Mike Jacobs and Brian Bannister are the others so far. Danny Garcia and Joe Hietpas didn't do enough to merit discussion as Mets, Matt Watson was moved down to Brooklyn to pack a postseason roster (shameful Yankee move, that), and rehab cameos like those of Tsuyoshi Shinjo, Mike Stanton and Cliff Floyd don't count. Certainly nobody's ever made the leap quite so quickly as Smith seems poised to do.
A month from now some of these questions will be answered. They'll have gone from storylines to stories, just like the story of 2007 will have started to emerge, pieced together from Ws and Ls on the now-blank schedule. Can't wait.
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.
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