The blog for Mets fans
who like to read
ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 22 March 2007 5:48 pm I developed a newspaper habit when I was 6, right in sync with the other habit we begin feeding in earnest 8:05 a week from Sunday night. I know I can read much of the content from the same machine where I type, but I love the actual sensation of buying and opening a newspaper. I love sorting through the Sunday papers, going right to the sports, finding all the columnists who I can’t stand and the few I can. I don’t even mind the ink on the hands. It’s a smudge of honor.
A new book is a gift. So is an old book. I almost never open a book and read it from page one to page last. I skip around, sometimes for weeks, before I settle in. Skipping around is the highest compliment I can give a book. It means the author has sent me into flights of contemplation and silent debate. There are three recent releases that should be not skipped by Mets fans in the broader sense, and I keep meaning to recommend them. Recommending a book is another thing I love to do, so I urge you to look into these three and, if so intrigued (you will be), purchase them:
• The 100 Greatest Days in New York Sports by Stuart Miller is a touchstone reference work for anybody who grew up in this area rooting for the Mets or other teams that have called one or more of the five boroughs home. You will get lost in the history of the city’s magnificent sporting tradition every bit as much as you’ll wonder how Mookie-Buckner only rated 11th place (or Bobby Thomson a mere 6th). You’ll also discover yourself overwhelmed by the research, thoughtfulness and scholarship Miller put into creating something so definitive. My Long Island upbringing forces me to quibble with the decision to shunt the feats of the ’86 Giants, the Islander dynasty, the ABA Nets and even Secretariat into “The ‘Burbs,” as if they are unworthy of association with “New York,” but the author remains true to his standards and I admire that. I admire everything about this book. So will you.
• The Best New York Sports Arguments by Peter Handrinos is a lighthearted yet mature and detailed examination of a hundred questions we’ve all probably thought about at any given moment watching games in these parts. What I love about this extraordinarily logical book is it takes every issue seriously because we as sports fans do. Handrinos doesn’t level cheap shots or seek easy ways out and is marvelously even-handed. There’s plenty of Mets in here, but it’s not necessarily pro-Met or anti-Met (or pro- or anti-anybody). It’s in favor of free thinking. That’s always appreciated by the sports fan who loves to read.
• Mets Essential by Matthew Silverman lives up to its title and then some. Silverman is no dispassionate factory-approved, all-purpose author (in other words, put your Golenbock fear away), but, at the same time, this is no hagiography. This is an informed and experienced Mets fan who writes an honest history of his and our favorite team. He pilots us on a breezy flyover of everything that’s happened to this franchise since the Giants and Dodgers made that bizarre decision to abandon the nation’s largest market. If you look out the window to your left, there’s Casey Stengel…You can see on your right Gil Hodges…We are now approaching 1973… So the journey winds, stopping along the route at every year, the uplifting and the dreadful, right through the high, puffy, cumulus clouds of 2006. Silverman doesn’t use the first-person plural, but you can feel the “we” all over this thing and that feels very good indeed.
Each of the above will make, to borrow one of the most brilliant handles in all of blogdom, a beautiful addition to your baseball library.
Oh yes. Blogs. They’ve been a most beautiful addition to my baseball library, the one up here (I’m pointing to my head), since I became aware of them the moment I began writing one. I no longer remember how I followed baseball without them. I hope more fans who haven’t ever clicked beyond espn.com or mlb.com get curious and find the lot of us. If they care about baseball, they won’t be able to put us down.
The point of this virtual media tour is to get me to magazines. I love magazines. I don’t know that I love magazines more than newspapers, books or blogs, but I feel a jolt of excitement every time I come across one I want to read.
I shop for magazines like Carrie Bradshaw shops for shoes. They pick me up whenever I’m down. I have more than I need but I can always use more. They’re piled up all over the house. Some I read on special occasions, others anytime.
Having worked off and mostly on as a writer and editor for magazines, almost none of which you’d recognize unless you’re an aficionado of the likes of Truckstop World (in which case, ten-four good buddies), for the past quarter-century probably informs my love of them, too. I can look at them and discern what they were thinking when they put that box there or this sentence here. But my professional interest in magazines doesn’t nearly account in full for why they give me such a big kick.
Newspapers come out daily. Books come out when they come out. Blogs are constant. And magazines? Their individuality is their beauty. Weekly, biweekly, monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, annually. If you’re a schedule-hugger, magazines, as a rule, don’t fit easily. But I’ve never been much on schedules that don’t come with little orange and white squares.
Also, magazines are shiny. Those to which I don’t already subscribe (I have internal rules about that, too) beckon to me from the newsstand. One of the things I miss about commuting in and out of Penn Station — the only thing, actually — is that I could always find new magazines the day they were released. Out here in my stretch of Stuart Miller’s suburban sports wasteland, there are no newsstands to speak of. Very small selections locally. I find most of what I’m looking for by accident in the CVS or supermarket. The magazines are the same magazines as they are in the city, but tossing them in a shopping cart alongside the bagged salad and fabric softener dulls the sensation.
Glossiness is an attraction but content is truly king. I’ll buy almost any magazine I’ve never heard of if the cover lures me to pluck it off the rack and the TOC (sorry…table of contents) has the headline or blurb to get me to turn to Page 109 or wherever. If there are two stories I want, that’s it, I’m buying it. I might look at the price, but I usually don’t. It’s $3.50 or $4.95 or $6.99 well spent, I figure. Look at all the writing this thing has! And it’s mine! I’ll probably discard it after thoroughly depleting the information I came for, but I might love it so much that I’ll keep it forever.
I mean forever. I have magazines I bought when I was 13. Yes, they’re baseball magazines, but they don’t have to be. But it always helps if a non-baseball, non-sports magazine finds a reason to discuss baseball…and discuss the Mets.
For example, even though I’m not particularly manly or all that healthy, I’ve been keeping an eye out for the April issue of Men’s Health because David Wright is on the cover. I’ve already looked at the online version of the article and I’m pretty sure I won’t be all that interested in what David has to say about applying his “4-day-a-week practice formula” to my own non-baseball endeavors, but that’s not the point. The point is a fairly major magazine has put a Met on the cover.
A Met making the cover’s a plum, but it’s not a must to make me pony up. I bought GQ twice last fall because of the Met content inside despite there being none on the outside. One was the ill-conceived David & Jose fashion show, the less recalled the better (though “Newcomers of the Year” was a pretty flattering appellation); the other was a sports-themed issue which included a gallery of athletic legends. One of them was Willie Mays. That was all I needed to see to plunk down my George Washingtons. What made it even better was this latter-day description of the Say Hey Kid’s prime:
Nobody’s as complete on the field; there’s no point of reference. The closest thing would be this: a big-league freak with Ichiro’s average, Torii Hunter’s glove, Vlad Guerrero’s arm, Albert Pujols’s power and Jose Reyes’s speed.
Did you see that? Jose Reyes is big enough to be a reference point in a definitely major magazine! Jose Reyes’s speed is state-of-the-art! You need to mention speed to someone? That’s something Jose Reyes has! Say nothing of the gratifying fact that he has been compared, even if it’s just in one facet of the game, to WILLIE MAYS. You know I’m keeping that page forever.
I hadn’t read Esquire in quite some time when I was alerted through various sources that there were two reasons to take a look at the April issue. I stumbled across it the other night at King Kullen (sigh) and was immediately lifted. Two Met mentions in a magazine that needs no introduction — an honest-to-goodness, long-established, quasi-general-interest, literate monthly magazine. The Mets are that big now.
One was a baseball article, a feature on Barry Zito. Zito’s gigantic contract is that big now, too. Zito stayed professional in his description of meeting the Mets — “I’ll just say that the Giants meeting was more positive” — but the writer, Chris Jones, inferred an allusion to San Francisco management lacking “a lot of ego” was really a shot at Jeff Wilpon. Don’t know if that’s so, but Zito’s quote that “you don’t want to go into a situation feeling like you’re having to prove to them how good you are” was a little revealing.
At the Mets offered rate of $75 mil over five years, you should feel you’ve been viewed as pretty worthwhile by your suitor (at the final number of $126 mil over seven, your left arm should be deposited in the Cayman Islands until absolutely needed). Zito said he was curious about playing in New York, but not $51 million curious. At that kind of price differential, curiosity is entitled to dwindle, but still, when somebody starts negotiations at $15 million a year, I find it hard to believe you’d say anything but “they were very nice to me”.
Either way, the best part of the Mets section of the Zito article was learning it was “interrupted at one point by Tom Hanks and Ron Howard, just saying hello”. Don’t know if they were greeting Jeff and Omar or Zito and Scott Boras, but those guys did come out to see us in Cincinnati last summer. Funny how they weren’t unnerved by the presence of Metness.
And if you like movie stars who pay homage to the Mets, this issue of Esquire hits it out of the park with its cover story on Hilary Swank. I knew who she was and that she’d won a couple of Oscars but I had formed no definitive Hilary Swank opinion until I picked up the magazine. Her pictorial has it all over that Wright & Reyes spread by any objective and slinky standard, but I actually do read magazines for the articles, so here’s what makes Mike Sager’s article blue and orange gold:
As Chris [her hairstylist] works, Swank will simultaneously try to give an interview, telling a story about her reaction to Mets outfielder Carlos Beltran’s now infamous strikeout to decide the National League Championship, which she attended in person and which she will talk about for nearly seven minutes, a rather incisive discourse by a rabid fan (forgetting for a moment the fact that she calls them points instead of runs) on matters of fame and talent and opportunities lost, on the value of the long run and the big picture, meanwhile carefully keeping close the ranks of celebrity, never once even suggesting that the great man might have choked.
Ohimigosh, Hilary Swank uses the Mets as a metaphor for practically everything. Now that’s my idea of a $126-million baby.
Ironically, I was planning to mention most of this stuff even before the words “Faith,” “Fear,” “In” and “Flushing” appeared strung together in Sports Illustrated this week. SI‘s decision to include us in a “best Mets info” poll with our friends and blolleagues at Mike’s Mets, MetsGeek and MetsBlog (Matt’s minions are running away with this thing, but vote anyway, just as you would have or possibly did for John Milner over Steve Garvey) and to “feature” each of our sites on their Mets page this season was enough of a thrill to kind of get me really going about how much I love magazines.
Who knows? Maybe someday some magazine dude will be excited about scoring a mention in a blog.
by Jason Fry on 21 March 2007 10:32 pm Last night I got some welcome signs of spring.
First off, it was my fantasy-baseball draft — this will be the third season I've played since getting sucked back into the fantasy-sports black hole. I spent 2005 staring at the computer like a cargo cultist, amazed at the fact that there were players and stats behind the glass. Pathetic, but grade me on the curve: Last time I played fantasy baseball, there was still a Soviet Union. I was commissioner and had to put the stats together by hand using USA Today, then mail them to my college pals. By attaching them to the wings of pterodactyls. (Oh, and I was 20 and I wasted a night a week while living for the summer in New Orleans. I hate myself.)
Last year I actually came in third, largely by betting on Ryan Howard and Justin Verlander. Though my real contribution to my fantasy-baseball league was insisting I was taking David Wright with the #2 pick in the draft, then actually doing it. That helped me formulate my commandmants for playing fantasy baseball without losing your soul:
1. Go With Your Heart. I wanted Wright, I got Wright. Santana? A-Rod? Pujols? Ppppt. Watching David Wright play baseball made me happy all year. Having my favorite player on my fantasy team was better than all those Ryan Howard dingers.
2. Don't Be Too Much of a Moron. This is a corrective measure to #1. I don't remember whom my next pick after Wright was, but it wasn't some middling Met. Sure, I opted for Mets I liked over roughly equivalent players — and utterly disdained Mets I didn't like over their rough equivalents. But being a fan doesn't mean you take Shawn Green over Vernon Wells.
3. He Who Rides With Yankees Rides With Satan. In fact, I excluded every one of them from my Auto-Draft. Now, I didn't use the Auto-Draft, but that's not the point. I was making a statement of principle. Along those lines, this year I also used the Auto-Draft to symbolically excommunicate the Jones boys, Roger Clemens, Victor Zambrano, Braden Looper, Armando Benitez, Kaz Matsui, Kenny Lofton and Brett Myers. The only Yankee who's ever been a member of Jaison D'Etres (I know, sorry) was Chien-Ming Wang, and I'm still apologizing to Emily for that one.
4. No Having It Both Ways. If the Mets are facing “my” pitcher, you will never hear me spinning have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too scenarios like “I hope he pitches a one-hitter with no walks but a reliever gets beaten 1-0 in the ninth.” That's deplorable behavior. Same goes for being upset because “my” Met was in the on-deck circle when the winning RBI came. Eyes on the prize: If the Mets trash “my” closer for a crooked number and win, it's a good day.
5. Don't Draft Billy Wagner. This is nothing against Billy Wagner. Rather, it's a simple statement of survival. Closers are notable primarily when they fail, and having them on the mound is stressful no matter what. If Billy Wagner is your real-life closer and your fantasy closer, weeks are being taken off your life with each appearance. No one needs that level of stress. I refused Wagner in a mid-season trade last year, opting instead for Bobby Jenks ( who promptly ate Idaho and began to suck, but that was OK). Wagner was available this year when I decided it was time to grab a closer. I took Huston Street.
So how'd I put the commandments into action? This year I had the third pick, and after watching Pujols and Santana vanish from the board, I shockingly let David Wright go to a subsequent bidder.
Because I took Jose Reyes.
I confess to a brief fear of karmic backlash — that my opting for Reyes might somehow make one of his hamstrings twang at a frequency only dogs can hear and then immediately disintegrate. But I'm getting less superstitious (within reason) as I get older: If my wishes and secret thoughts really affected anything more than an arm's length away, by now I'd either be living the life of a pasha or been struck down for being habitually low and vile. Watching Jose Reyes whirl around first on his way to third or perform celebratory taekwondo with Carlos Delgado makes me laugh out loud, so having him on my fantasy team is a beautiful bonus — whether he's MVP or winds up with a year that's supposed to build character.
I assembled the rest of my offense without further Mets (though somehow I have A.J. Pierzynski as my catcher for the third-straight year), but on the pitching side I scooped up Glavine (another three-time D'Etre), then took Mike Pelfrey, and finally pounced on Oliver Perez. Is having three-quarters of the Mets' probable rotation a good idea, fantasywise? Probably not. But I really do believe in all three of those pitchers. And I was going to live or die with them anyway, so why not?
The night wasn't done with Mets, though. The draft ran very long, which was a problem even beyond being a burden on poor Emily — because I had a ticket to see the Hoodoo Gurus in midtown. The Gurus are a semi-legendary Australian rock band, one of those groups that rules the charts in a better parallel universe where power-pop rave-ups get the respect they deserve. In 1985 I heard “Bittersweet” on WBCN at like two in the morning and sat transfixed in my dorm room, speechless with delight and then numb with fear that the DJ might not tell me what that song was, meaning I'd quite possibly never hear it again. He did and I've loved the Gurus ever since — but I'd never had a chance to see them live.
The Gurus were supposedly going on at 9; as 8:30 turned to 8:45 and the draft kept creeping along, I got antsy. Surely they wouldn't really go on right at 9, I thought — normally, the concept of Musician Time annoys me, but last night the idea of the Gurus hanging around backstage was just fine with me. No such luck: I arrived at around 9:25 and the band was galloping along onstage. I shamefacedly got a beer and hunted down Steve Reynolds — a commentor here, co-proprietor of the very fine Zisk Online and all-around Good People — to find out what I'd missed. (About five songs. Ugh.)
But here's the thing: The Gurus have a song called “Where's That Hit?” in which singer Dave Faulkner imagines himself as a young hitter facing bases loaded and two out in the bottom of the ninth.
Just up from the minors
A kid with potential, they said.
You've dreamed of this moment,
One game you'll never forget.
And then there's this little detail:
Here you are at Shea, your heart's in your throat
Will you make the grade? Will you miss the boat?
Hero of the day — Hero, or the goat?
Winners never quit waiting for that hit.
Where's that hit?
It's a pretty good song — and I always admired the fact that an indie rocker from the other side of the world had gotten the lingo and feel of baseball pretty much dead-on. In fact, for a while a few years back, when an enemy reliever would come in in a big spot I would grab the Gurus CD and give “Where's That Hit?” a quick spin. (I stopped doing it because, to be frank, it never, ever worked.) But I'd always assumed that use of Shea was just chance — that it was a one-syllable name that fit the meter.
Not so. Steve had interviewed Faulkner earlier that day, and it turns out the singer of the Coogee, Australia-based Hoodoo Gurus is a huge Mets fan. Steve kindly shared the transcript of his interview with me — here's an edited bit:
Dave Faulkner: You know there’s a song on one of our albums that is all about the Mets. It’s called “Where’s that Hit,” on the Magnum Cum Louder album. It’s all about baseball. Well if you think about it, it says — the lyrics specify “bottom of the ninth, here you are at Shea” so it’s gotta be the Mets batting.
Steve Reynolds: So when you wrote that, had you been to a bunch of Mets games?
DF: Oh God yeah, I’ve been to millions of them. Cause apart from all the touring — we’d catch Mets games on the road, not just in New York City. I went to Busch Stadium, and in San Diego against the Padres.
SR: Too bad South By Southwest wasn’t in April, so you could work a Mets game into your schedule.
DF: Exactly! You don’t think I didn’t look at that? And when we come back again — we’re talking about coming back again hopefully in October, and the World Series will be on and hopefully the Mets will be in it, but I think it’ll be too late for me to get a ticket.
An Aussie rocker who loves the Mets. Reyes and Glavine and Pelfrey and Perez on my fantasy team. I sense a season just around the corner.
Addendum: Vote for your favorite Mets blog at SI.com. (Visual proof here!) Exciting to see SI dipping into the Mets blog world, and we're thrilled to be mentioned alongside three pretty awesome blogs.
by Greg Prince on 21 March 2007 9:47 pm 
| Page 109 of the current Sports Illustrated — Baseball Preview issue with Daisuke Matsuzaka on the cover — offers you, the FAFIF reader, a chance to express your choice for the fan site with “the best Mets info”. Since it doesn’t seem to be a sudden-death competition (the above blurb indicates each of us will be “featured” on SI‘s Mets site this season), then this is just for fun.
Then just for fun, vote for your favorite blog. Or, if we’re not it, vote for us. I can’t speak for Jason, but I’ve been waiting all my life just to get on the ballot in a meaningless, unscientific popularity contest.
Whatever the outcome, it’s pretty cool to have opened the mailbox, torn into my favorite magazine, turned to the Mets preview and seen our name pop out. The other ones, too. A blog victory, indeed.
(But seriously, vote for us. I have self-esteem issues.) |
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by Greg Prince on 21 March 2007 10:06 am It happens almost every spring, or least by fall. We pick up the guy who’s widely identified for something besides what he has accomplished in the realm of baseball statistics and achievements. This isn’t a Central Casting call per se, but rather the guy whose playing fame and whatever skills that has entailed is augmented, sometimes overshadowed, by his infamy, notoriety or slightly off-kilter triviality. What makes them stand out is less reputation than recitation. They’re known for something that they did or was done to or around them before they became Mets and you hear about it an awful lot upon their arrival. There always seem to be a few of those guys around, mixed in with the run-of-the-mill free-agent studs, utility infielders and such. Just by luck of the draw, one supposes every team gets its share. But it sure seems we’ve dipped into that pot fairly frequently over the past decade.
You know who I mean…
The guy whose father’s a sportswriter.
The guy who hardens his hands by not disturbing the plumbing.
The guy who didn’t catch what Steve Bartman shouldn’t have tried to (whoops…same guy).
The guy who played for his pop (Moises Alou — one-man curiosity sidebar).
The guy who was (was, apparently) the greatest Jewish ballplayer since Hank Greenberg.
The guy who was chased into a Spring Training clubhouse by Mike Piazza (though that may have been more our pet peeve than an issue for the industry at large).
The guy who named a Time after himself.
The guy who didn’t stand for “God Bless America”.
The guy who was really old even before he got here and became even older.
The guy who was born in Saigon.
The guy who kept the ball from the last out of the World Series and caught hell for it.
The guy whose wife wasn’t exactly camera-shy.
The guy who mixed it up with a Fenway Park groundskeeper while Don Zimmer attacked a Red Sox pitcher.
The guy, for that matter, who threw Don Zimmer to the ground in the same playoff game (in self-defense) and hoisted a midget on a regular basis (don’t know what that was).
The guy who was traded for Ken Griffey.
The guy who played for everybody…including us already.
The guy who spit at an umpire.
The guy who gave up the record-breaking homer to McGwire.
The guy who was a fashion model in Japan.
The guy whose manager kept a pair of his shoes on his desk so upset he was to have him traded away.
The guy who had been (had been) the first great Japanese pitcher.
The guy who brushed his teeth between innings before somebody told him it was bush.
The guy who wore a helmet in the field.
Some of ’em, like the helmet guy, work out quite nicely. Some of ’em, like the spitting guy, don’t. Others, like Vietnamese native Danny Graves and cantankerous ex-Skank Karim Garcia…I have to confess I’d all but forgotten they were ever here, and they weren’t here terribly long ago.
As for the latest crop of Mets with pasts that don’t show up in the box score, we’ll see if those imported anecdotes about Ross Newhan’s son — what, you hadn’t heard a dozen times in the last month that David’s dad writes about baseball? — are embellished with actual production in a Mets uniform. If they are, then the “did you know Newhan’s father…?” stuff will fade in due order, as did Carlos Delgado’s stance outside the batter’s box and Pedro Martinez’s eccentric Bostonian past. Can’t do anything about Julio Franco’s age — he just keeps getting older. (So do we all, but he had a head start.)
If Newhan doesn’t succeed? We won’t much care if his spouse’s name is Anna or his maternal grandfather’s full name was Zeile Shinjo Rockefeller. All of the above is footnote stuff, more glaring in spring than in summer. Mets fans create their own histories about their guys, making the contents of their prefab backgrounds immensely irrelevant. After all…
The guy who, if he wasn’t startin’, wasn’t departin’ turned into our last-legged backup first baseman.
The guy who punched out his manager turned into our most dynamic player amid a dismally dark season.
The guy who was at loose enough ends to rate a biopic turned into our man who ran the bases backwards.
The rest of the baseball world may not remember Garry Templeton, Lenny Randle or Jimmy Piersall — to name three — for their Mets deeds, but we do. And that’s the identity that counts with us.
Sure hope Moises’ hands got good and hard by the time he left San Francisco, though. New York’s a soap-and-water kind of town. And we’re big believers in Flushing.
by Greg Prince on 19 March 2007 4:33 pm In many ways, the first weekend of March Metness ran true to bracketology form, with each of the four 1-seeds still alive. Then again, did anybody see two 7-seeds advancing to the Rick Sweet 16? Did you think you would hear Jane Jarvis playing on? Was there a lot of money put down on Pete Rose hustling to two victories?
And how do your brackets look after the first 48 games? Home Run Apple’s stunning loss to 15-seed Bill Shea’s Floral Horseshoe may have upset more than a few, well, apple carts.
The big question is who and/or what’s left to compete for the title of Quintessential Mets Thing. Right off the bat, it’s a noticeably broadcast-heavy tournament now, with Bob Murphy (The Happy Recap), Ralph Kiner (Kiner’s Korner) and Gary Cohen (Outta Here!) all represented, to say nothing of television’s Seinfeld. Two chants — Let’s Go Mets and Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose! — both have their chance, too.
The field also includes one promotion (Banner Day), one sponsor (Rheingold The Dry Beer), one conveyance (The 7 Train), one mascot (Mr. Met) and one favorable miscue (Buckner) to go along with one villain (Rose), one organist (Jarvis), one slogan (Baseball Like It Oughta Be) and a pair of entries best described as hybrids. The Franchise nickname and the Terrific pitcher who inspired it are inseparable, while Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? stands both for Casey Stengel’s extraordinarily Original Mets and the Jimmy Breslin book that helped immortalize them.
However these indelible components of signature Metsiana arrived at this next level, they’ve survived, they’ve advanced and they figure to make Rick Sweet 16 weekend an exciting one. The Miracle and Magic regional semis will tip off Thursday, to be followed by the quartet of Believe and Amazin’ games on Friday. As ever, Faith and Fear will be on hand to report and analyze all the action.
The tourney as it’s been reset:
THE MIRACLE REGIONAL
1 LET’S GO METS
__________________
5 JANE JARVIS
—
3 BANNER DAY
__________________
2 RHEINGOLD THE DRY BEER
THE MAGIC REGIONAL
1 THE 7 TRAIN
__________________
5 OUTTA HERE!
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3 CAN’T ANYBODY HERE PLAY THIS GAME?
__________________
7 JOSE! JOSE! JOSE! JOSE!
THE BELIEVE REGIONAL
1 THE HAPPY RECAP
__________________
4 SEINFELD
—
3 THE FRANCHISE
__________________
7 BASEBALL LIKE IT OUGHTA BE
THE AMAZIN’ REGIONAL
1 MR. MET
__________________
5 PETE ROSE
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3 KINER’S KORNER
__________________
2 BUCKNER
If you missed any of the Don Aase round matchups, you can come from behind and catch up here:
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
by Greg Prince on 19 March 2007 2:23 am The weekend that makes March Metness the memory-laden free-for-all that it is came to an end Sunday, with the final eight qualifiers for the Rick Sweet 16 earning their trips to the next round. While some pack for home, others pack for quintessence. Here’s who and/or what made it to Getaway Day and what they did once they got there.
MIRACLE REGIONAL
Ball Off The Wall (6) vs Banner Day (3)
Ball Off The Wall gave Mets fans every reason to Believe. The one-of-a-kind bounce (score it Fence-7-5-2) allowed the Mets to move within a half-game of first place on September 20, 1973, a position they’d seize the next night and, improbably, never let loose of the rest of that year. It’s moments like those that make fans want to scribble uplifting message on bedsheets for years to come. Funny thing, though, is the Banner Day banners came out in seasons far removed from 1973. No matter how much the Mets fan outlook is informed by a play as perfect and perfectly bizarre as Ball Off The Wall, the banner phenomenon was in place 11 years before Richie Zisk succumbed to Ron Hodges’ well-placed tag. There were banners and placards flying through the Polo Grounds before the Mets could ever dream of reaching .500 let alone reaching a game below .500 — which is where their record stood when Hodges drove in John Milner in the bottom of the inning when he outed Zisk. This, like that game, was a battle that lasted a full 13 innings, but when it was over, Banner Day slid home with the winning score.
Marvelous Marv (7) vs Rheingold The Dry Beer (2)
“CRANBERRY! STRAWBERRY! WE LOVE THRONEBERRY!” So went the chant at the Polo Grounds in 1962. What were those fans…drunk? Only on love for the quintessential 1962 Met. Or perhaps a little on the sponsor’s product. We can’t tell from here. It is ironic, in light of this matchup, that Marvelous Marv Throneberry’s latter-day fame would come from his starring in a beer commercial. It’s too bad it wasn’t for Rheingold The Dry Beer, a brand that disappeared from the market by the time Miller Lite was hiring old athletes to demonstrate the manliness of being calorie-conscious. The Mets would find other cult heroes, other first basemen, even another fan-magnet whose name ended in berry. They’d also take their business to Schaefer and, once the company that brewed it evaporated, Budweiser. But does anybody think of Mets and beer without thinking of Rheingold? Anybody over 40 at least? Even somewhat under 40? The sudsy connection is too strong to be watered down, even at the stone hands of Marvelous Marv. Rheingold The Dry Beer wins — it will take on Banner Day — and graciously throws a victory party for everyone to enjoy. Everyone? Even Throneberry? Well, they wuz going to give Marv a cold one, but they wuz afraid he’d drop it.
MAGIC REGIONAL
Mettle The Mule (11) vs Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? (3)
Some futility is cuter than other futility. 1962 futility, as painful as it was to have lived through for the uniformed personnel of the New York Mets, lives on fondly recalled because there is a mulligan and an innocence to be applied to first-year expansion teams, particularly one helmed by someone as eminently quotable as Charles Dillon “Casey” Stengel. When he rhetorically asked, “can’t anybody here play this game?” all anybody could do was laugh (and, in Jimmy Breslin’s case, take copious notes). But there is nothing cute or innocent or funny about an eighteenth-year expansion team. That was what the Mets had become by 1979, and the introduction of Mettle The Mule as mascot and de facto grounds crew helper underscored that sad, sad fact. It’s not Mettle’s fault the Mets lost 99 games in ’79. Nor were the jokes that followed his removal from the Shea scene — usually involving that strange meatlike dish they were serving in the press room — in good taste. He was just a mule stuck where no more than 788,905 persons chose to be in 1979. Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? may have been a question born of frustration, but it advances here for having left behind the happier legacy. One Hundred Twenty losses, yes, but nobody ever had to clean up after it.
Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose! (7) vs Bill Shea’s Floral Horseshoe (15)
Is the lowest seed to make it out of the first round any more than an early season wonder? Bill Shea deserves to be remembered longer than the stadium that bears his name will stand, and it is fervently hoped that the Shea family’s tradition of offering the Mets’ manager a good luck floral horseshoe every Home Opener will survive into Citi Field. It is also hoped that the new joint will vibrate just as the current one did in 2006 with cries of Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose! and then some. The Sheas did New York proud by returning National League baseball to the city where it belongs. Jose Reyes and those who encourage his exploits are ready to keep the pride going. A happy new tradition edges a beloved and well-meaning established ritual. The four Jose!s next set their sights on answering Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?
BELIEVE REGIONAL
The Happy Recap (1) vs John Rocker (9)
The mere thought of “Hi everybody!” emanating from the tinniest of transistor speakers obliterates every ugly thought associated with the ugliest buffoon to disgrace Shea Stadium in all of its 43 seasons. If Bob Murphy can dismember John Rocker at the beginning of his broadcast, imagine what The Happy Recap would do to him. Murph moves forward. Rocker can buy a MetroCard.
Revised Yearbook (12) vs Seinfeld (4)
Given in-season trading deadlines, waiver wire pickups and minor league recalls, it would figure the Mets’ always colorful annuals with their suitable-for-framing team pictures would require a Revised Yearbook. Seinfeld, on the other hand, was Mets-friendly from the beginning. The fifth scene in the pilot episode, when the show was still called The Seinfeld Chronicles, showed Jerry picking up a ringing phone and anxiously telling his caller, “If you know what happened in the Mets game, don’t say anything, I taped it,” before ever mentioning “hello”. Now that’s media that had its priorities start from the first run. Seinfeld is already lobbying for its next gig, against the Happy Recap to be scheduled for — when else? — Thursday at 9.
AMAZIN’ REGIONAL
Mr. Met (1) vs Serval Zipper (9)
The Queens skyline hasn’t been quite the same since the Serval Zipper sign came down. Mr. Met is sympathetic for the loss, but notes he doesn’t bother with zippers. He’s a stitch man himself. And let’s be honest: In your life as a fan, you might peer over the fence and notice Serval Zipper. You might notice U-Haul. You might even notice the occasionally blazing car fire in what’s left of the parking lot. But when he pads on by, you can’t take your eyes off Mr. Met…especially if he stops and sits right in front of you. For now, he stands at the head of his bracket.
Pete Rose (5) vs 1964 World’s Fair (4)
While Shea Stadium and the 1964 World’s Fair are linked by birth, boardwalk and Marina, they were not a single-admission ticket. Shea was considered a commercial success, boosting Mets attendance by 650,000 versus the last year at the Polo Grounds and instantly attracting attention among tourists and locals with rides and exhibits like the 32-inning doubleheader, the Jim Bunning perfect game and Ron Hunt’s start in the All-Star Game. Robert Moses’ other Flushing Meadows project didn’t, uh, fare quite as well. The ’64 version was not as well received as its 1939 predecessor, did not attract the crowds predicted for it and, not long after it was over, its grounds did not maintain itself as any kind of cohesive going concern — as the New York Pavilion’s Gilkeyesque gag cameo in Men In Black illustrated. Pete Rose never called the Shea area home, but as a visitor, he was hardly an alien presence. You gotta have somebody to root against, and for a quarter-century nobody ever quite filled the despicable shoes of Mets Opponent as did Rose. He takes it to the Fair and will bet all he has that he can upset Mr. Met the way he upset Mets fans for a quarter-century.
by Greg Prince on 18 March 2007 8:10 pm March Metness isn’t so much a big dance as it is a three-week Merengue Night. The first Saturday is when everybody starts to get up and move in earnest. Let’s see who and/or what among Day One’s winners will be shaking and/or grooving their way to the Rick Sweet 16.
MIRACLE REGIONAL
Let’s Go Mets (1) vs Mojo Risin’ (9)
Did you know “Mr. Mojo Risin’,” the mystical refrain from the Doors’ “L.A. Woman,” is a perfect anagram for Jim Morrison? Did you know that Robin Ventura intuitively knew it would provide the backbeat for perhaps the craziest September and October in Mets history? Do you remember the bass accompanying Todd Pratt’s trip around the bases once it could be ascertained that Steve Finley caught nothing but air to end the 1999 National League Division Series? There’s never been a less sensical yet simultaneously more appropriate theme for any Mets’ pennant drive. It was “You Gotta Believe” without actually spelling it out. Mojo Risin’ belongs to the dying and resurrecting days of the last Mets season of the last century, a magnificently momentous stretch by any measure. But Let’s Go Mets is eternal. Eternity beats back the Risin’ challenge.
Jane Jarvis (5) vs Mike Vail (13)
Vail is the Cinderella of the Miracle region, ironically going up against the only lady in the March Metness tournament. Mike made it this far based on both the electrifying 23-game hitting streak he put together shortly after his August 1975 elevation to the big leagues and his resounding lack of followup. He earned a starting role for ’76 after his strong debut, but sabotaged himself by breaking a foot playing offseason basketball. Not that basketball has anything to do with March Metness, but let’s just say flashing in the pan will only get you so far. Ms. Jarvis can pound out a triumphant charge as she heads to the next round against the formidable Let’s Go Mets.
MAGIC REGIONAL
The 7 Train (1) vs In Ten Years… (9)
It is not widely known whether Casey Stengel ever opted to take the Times Square-bound IRT after skippering one of his team’s many home losses in 1964 and 1965. If he did, it’s not out of the question that he might have had to have waited an unacceptable amount of time for the next train. And if we accept that premise, Casey may have turned his wit on the New York City subway system and remarked to a companion, “In ten years, one of my Youth of America has a chance to be a star…or sooner than this damn hell-train will commence to arriving.” For a legend whose managerial career ended on a broken hip sustained while getting out of an automobile, perhaps he should have been more patient and used mass transit. In any event, The 7 Train has been synonymous with ferrying Mets fans to Casey Stengel Plaza for well over ten years. It wins. You could look it up.
Outta Here! (5) vs Grand Slam Single (4)
The signature phrase of the most skilled announcer in modern-day Mets history was applied to the signature postseason swing of modern-day Mets history. This is what Gary Cohen had to say about what Robin Ventura did on October 17, 1999: Ventura is waiting. McGlinchy staring in has his signs. The two-one pitch…A DRIVE IN THE AIR TO DEEP RIGHT FIELD! THAT BALL HEADED TOWARD THE WALL…THAT BALL IS…OUTTA HERE! OUTTA HERE! A GAME-WINNING GRAND SLAM HOME RUN OFF THE BAT OF ROBIN VENTURA! Ventura with a grand slam! They’re mobbing him before he can get to second base! The Mets have won the ballgame! Did the moment make the call or did the call enhance the moment? The answer to both is absolutely yes. This matchup goes not just to overtime but to a fifteenth inning…and is decided by Cohen’s keen and immediate observation, amid a frenzied tableau, that Ventura never got to second base and his presence of mind to note it seconds after unleashing what would be, from another announcer’s tonsils, just a catchphrase. Grand Slam Single is indelible. Outta Here! echoes for the ages. The echo takes it. Will it be resonant enough to drown out The 7 Train? We’ll find out.
BELIEVE REGIONAL
Shoe Polish Ball (6) vs The Franchise (3)
Shoe Polish Ball contributed mightily to a world championship. But so did The Franchise. Would have the Mets beaten the Orioles without Gil Hodges’ heady intervention and stoic powers of persuasion? It certainly helped the 1969 cause, but to imbue it with singular responsibility would be to overlook two catches by Tommie Agee, one by Ron Swoboda, fabulous timing by Al Weis, quick wristwork by J.C. Martin and, for that matter, the bat of Donn Clendenon who came up after the smudged sphere nudged Lou DiMuro into sending Cleon Jones to first. It also obscures the masterful pitching of Jerry Koosman, Nolan Ryan, Ron Taylor and The Franchise himself, Tom Seaver, who threw a masterful ten innings to capture a) Game Four of the World Series and b) this round of March Metness.
Baseball Like It Oughta Be (7) vs Meet The Mets (2)
Bravado boiled into five words takes on two verses, a bridge and a chorus of friendly-like invitationeering. Meet The Mets is a perennial sentiment. Baseball Like It Oughta Be can portray but one annus. And what a sweet annus 1986 was. The guarantee you’d have the time of your life in the Mets’ theme song didn’t really come true for almost a quarter-century after its debut. When MTM was first heard in 1963, the Mets were preparing to go out and capture 51 ballgames. An improvement over ’62, but hardly a peak in one’s existence. As for knocking those home runs over the wall, the ’86 Mets set the mark with 148, exceeding by nine the previous standard…established in 1962. Info like this Oughta not be ignored. Meeting The Mets is always fun, but Oughta Be pulls off the upset and will meet The Franchise in the Rick Sweet 16.
AMAZIN’ REGIONAL
Jack Lang (11) vs Kiner’s Korner (3)
Jack Lang is closely identified with the Mets beat given that he was on it from its beginning in 1962 to the late 1980s, first with the Long Island Press and then (after the Press folded in 1977) the Daily News. He also wrote the invaluable team history The New York Mets: Twenty-Five Years of Baseball Magic, contributed to Mets magazine Inside Pitch until 2004 and served as longtime secretary of the Baseball Writers Association of America, a job that allowed him the honor of informing retired players that they were about to be immortalized in Cooperstown. As if that weren’t enough, it was Lang who came up with “The Franchise” as the perfect sobriquet for the perfect pitcher, a creation that carries the added bonus of having driven M. Donald Grant to distraction. The chairman of the board once scolded Lang that “Mrs. Payson and I,” not Tom Seaver, were the franchise. In all, it was a long and meritorious career for Jack Lang, one of the most Mets-associated people to never actually work for the organization. But Kiner’s Korner is Kiner’s Korner and Ralph Kiner does not go down easily — or at all — even to a Hall of Fame writer.
Jimmy Qualls (10) vs Buckner (2)
You can argue it was the trade of Nolan Ryan that assured the Mets of missing out on at least seven of the theoretically dozens of no-hitters they could have accrued by now. But it’s impossible to consider Jimmy Qualls — lifetime .223 hitter over 139 at-bats — and not apply his name above all others to the no-hitless Metropolitan phenomenon. What ungodly business did Jimmy Qualls have in reaching Tom Seaver for a single when Seaver was two outs from achieving a perfect game on July 9, 1969? Jimmy Qualls experienced, it’s safe to assume, 138 completely inconsequential at-bats and one that lives forever in the heads of millions of New York National League baseball fans. When Antonio Perez or Chris Burke or Luis Castillo or Kit Pellow or Chin-Hui Tsao or whoever’s next throws up the latest obstacle to that transcendent moment of Met happiness we can all only wonder about, there is but one name that will spring to mind again and again and again. Jimmy Qualls is our quintessential heartbreak kid in our quintessential quest for the one goal we can never reach. What a powerful name it is. If Jimmy Qualls had never been in Leo Durocher’s lineup that July night, if Don Young hadn’t been frozen out of it by his atrocious defense the afternoon before, if Tom Seaver had cashed in that no-hit, no-walk, no-flaw performance, we would be collectively and retroactively ecstatic for all the days of our lives. But if Buckner doesn’t do Buckner…such a hypothetical is not to be contemplated. We would trade a dozen Fregosis and a thousand anti-Quallses for that single, solitary E-3 every time. Outcome: Prepare for Buckner versus Kiner.
by Greg Prince on 18 March 2007 6:35 am Attempting to cope with the baseball anxiety attack this listless spring has brought about, I decided to watch something I recently recorded. This from that: the top of the ninth inning of the 1988 division-clincher aired (again) by SNY last week, Fran Healy talking to special guest in the booth Jack Lang…
Fran: Jack, [can] you believe that the Mets right now will win their second division under the regime that took over in 1980?
Jack: That’s right. And what a machine they’ve built. This won’t be the last of these we’re gonna see from them. Not with that pitching staff.
I got chills from that exchange. It was a completely reasonable assessment from Lang (amid not altogether unreasonable hyping and prodding from Fran). The Mets were three outs from nailing down their second N.L. East title in three years. Healy said it would have been three had the Mets been healthy “last year,” a.k.a. 1987. There were no ifs, ands or buts about those late ’80s Mets. Despite a brief bout of dynastis interruptus, we were a powerhouse, plugged in and ready for more.
1986 was considered the norm by September 1988 standards; it was September ’87 that had gone haywire. The Mets were, as the DiamondVision highlight reel would confirm on the final Sunday of the ’88 regular season, back in the high life again, back where they belonged. We were stopping briefly to be coronated against the Phillies on September 22 and obviously we would take out the Dodgers soon enough and probably the A’s right after.
Yeah, with our pitching staff, who would argue? Doc was finishing up an 18-win season. Ron, the man on the mound in the clinch, would get to 17. And theretofore unknown David Cone was piling up a 20-3. Among them and El Sid and closer Randall K. Myers, there was nobody next to 30 years of age. Why wouldn’t 1988 be like 1986, avenge 1987 and, more importantly, set the stage for 1989 and the 1990s?
Why wouldn’t it, indeed? In the eighth, the Phillies had a rally going, causing Mel Stottlemyre to trot out to take stock with Darling and Carter. The whole infield joined in, including third baseman Gregg Jefferies. It wasn’t the Jefferies who would annoy everybody and leave bad tastes in his wake. It was Gregg Jefferies who was earning Rookie of the Year votes based on a late August callup. Standing next to him behind the mound — and moments from starting the inning-ending 6-4-3 double play — was Kevin Elster, in the process of setting a record for most consecutive errorless games by a shortstop. When the top of the ninth rolled around, Lang noted that not only were the Mets blessed by a great young staff and a terrific manager but they featured “the most underrated player in the National League” in left field, Kevin McReynolds.
After Darling got Lance Parrish on a called strike to end the game and give the Mets their second East crown in three years, SNY showed a bit of the postgame celebration. It was rather subdued, owing perhaps to the experience of the ’86 vets. Keith Hernandez — who had missed a sizable chunk of the summer of ’88 with a bad hammy, thus providing quality audition time to yet another young talent, Dave Magadan — admitted it could never be like it had been when the Mets won in 1986, but pledged he would be plenty excited if…when (he corrected himself quickly) the Mets won the ’88 World Series.
I report on what I watched on disc Saturday night not to drag us again through the crushing blow of Mike Scioscia and all those Dodger blues, but because it was so otherwise haunting. Those Mets were a consensus lock to be great for the foreseeable future. Five awesome arms only now scratching their primes. Four youthful position players of high ceiling installed since the last world championship. Plus Darryl Strawberry delivering on all that potential we’d been reading about since Sports Illustrated uncovered him as a high school senior. Hernandez and Carter may have been aging before our eyes, but really: Gooden, Darling, Cone, Fernandez, Myers, Jefferies, McReynolds, Magadan, Elster, Strawberry. What a nucleus! Of course this wouldn’t be the last of these we’d see from them.
Again, this isn’t about 1988 or the years that directly followed. I’m not here to talk about the past. It’s this notion that there exists such a creature as a foreseeable future that got to me while watching this 19-year-old clincher. You would have bet every bit of Monopoly money you had and probably some real bucks, too, that what Fran Healy and Jack Lang were projecting would be so. But there was no knowing. There was no knowing about Scioscia, no knowing about Jefferies, no knowing about the tumult that would spin out of control in what was once a clubhouse of us-against-them fighters, no knowing that a big batch of ’86ers would be dismissed across June, July and August of ’89, no knowing that Davey Johnson’s managing would, depending on whom you believe, not save the sinking ship or maybe contribute to its descent, no knowing that young and stellar talent doesn’t necessarily translate to timeless victory.
That was the chill. That and the fact that there was no followup to ’86 in the offing. There wasn’t even an encore to ’88. Imagine a team packed with the pitchers and players I just described not winning one lousy additional division title. Imagine that the franchise that was feeling warm all over for compiling the best five-year record in baseball since 1984 not finishing in first place again until 2006. If I told you that on September 22, 1988, you’d think I was peddling bizarro science fiction.
I even detected a slight chill over the opponents that clinching night. En route to 65-96, the 1988 Phillies were the epitome of nothing special, but they sent up a few young studs against Darling, names that would surely make an impact in the National League for years to come. Ricky Jordan, Ron Jones, Chris James…all good prospects as I recall. They came and they went (Jones with an assist from the unpadded Shea right field wall he ran a knee into a year later). The Phillies would undergo an extreme makeover in 1989, nabbing Lenny Dykstra — another talented and still-young Met in 1988 — among others, yet continue to fall drastically shy of contention right through 1992. As much as any division winner I’ve ever seen, they captured lightning in the proverbial bottle in ’93, gave their fans one magical season, fell short in the World Series and have been absent from October ever since.
Could the Philophiles of late 1988 have imagined they’d go 1-for-18 in postseason bids clear into the new century? I don’t particularly mind Philadelphia’s lack of results, of course, but it’s scary. It’s scary that as fans, any team’s fans, we get hooked on new players and young players and changes of direction and we’re sure we’re going to benefit — if it’s March — this year or — if it’s September — next year. Yet we just don’t know. It’s the ultimate blind trust.
Theoretically, the future has never been more foreseeably agreeable for the Mets. If the three young pitchers who now seem to have assured themselves of rotation slots each succeed, our 2007 fortunes would figure to do no worse than shadow our 2006 accomplishments. That trio could easily go quartet by April 2008. The outfield would be rehabilitated next, with two of three fast-rising kids patrolling corners currently occupied by short-term elders. Not as publicized but just as tantalizing this spring is an eventual first base candidate who got some good swings in before being sent down. Thus, in a blink, we could be swimming in a plethora of prime: Maine, Pelfrey, Perez, Humber, Gomez, Martinez, Milledge, Carp joining Reyes, Wright and Beltran. Throw in two or three strategically signed free agents by our nonpenurious ownership and we’re looking at a nucleus that rivals our not-so-wild dreams from the crest of 1988. If you’re inclined to take it a step further, there’s the TV network and the new ballpark and the vast resources contemporary sports success seems to yield in staggering amounts every time you turn around. The foundation for this organization shapes up as solid as the accumulated brickage that will define Citi Field.
And you know what it all guarantees for our Mets and our Mets-related happiness? Absolutely nothing. It never did and it never will. Per the in-sickness-and-in-health vows each of us took when we betrothed ourselves to our team, the reality that everything’s a year-in, year-out crapshoot shouldn’t matter one little bit.
But it’s something to keep in mind.
by Greg Prince on 17 March 2007 8:58 pm The split-squad Mets fell to pieces today. 9-0 loss in Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore. 13-1 drubbing by Washington at St. Lucie. Everywhere you looked, the Mets were out in farce.
Sele got rocked.
Park got rocked.
Sosa got rocked.
After Lima, can we stop with the four-letter pitchers? (It’s been ten springs since Rick Reed made himself gloriously apparent.)
Maybe it’s just as well that the journeymen hurl to their notices and thus can be told to hit the road. Except it seems we’re not so deep we can dismiss every second-rater we’ve invited to camp.
Yes, it’s still just Spring Training. But as encouraging as Maine, Perez and Pelfrey are, there’s a real hole at the back end of the bullpen, and in this six-inning world, that’s no small detail. Smith wasn’t so hot today and Burgos was ice cold last night. And we’re still not hitting with any kind of consistency.
A composite of 22-1 today on top of blowing a 4-0 last night…all to projected lousy teams. It doesn’t matter on paper, but I was just getting used to assuming we were good for the long haul.
I know we long-timers like to pat ourselves on the back for having stuck with the Mets through all that dreadful thin so we can revel in the relatively recent thick, but I don’t want to start earning grief miles again. I want thick and I want it to stick. That’s not a scouting report so much as a panicky tantrum. Gads, don’t turn this into another [insert season that was supposed to be good but wasn’t; we have several from which to choose]. I can’t go back.
I can, of course, but I’d really prefer to avoid that trip for a decade or two.
by Greg Prince on 17 March 2007 8:46 pm The second day of March Metness proceeded with its usual mix of the expected and the unexpected. Let’s just say some brackets are already looking better than others after completion of the first phase of the Don Aase Round.
Here’s who played Friday and who will still be playing Sunday for the right to go on to the Rick Sweet 16.
MIRACLE REGIONAL
The Ball Off The Wall (6) vs Ten-Run Inning (11)
Ten-Run Inning (’00) was feeling confident. It had just tied the game and Mike Piazza was coming up with the promise of a laser-beam home run to left. However, Mike wasn’t facing Terry Mulholland. He was facing the most pixie-dusted defensive play in regular-season Mets history. Alas, Piazza’s shot hit, yup, the top of the wall and bounded straight into Jones’ glove. He relayed it to Garrett who relayed it to Hodges who put the tag and on the signature big inning Mets history.
Banner Day (3) vs Say Goodbye To America (14)
Willie Mays gave the most memorable speech in Mets history, uttering one of the greatest retirement lines by any baseball player at any time. But Willie could have orated, driven in the crucial run in Game Five of the ’73 NLCS, flown to Oakland and actually caught a couple of balls in the time it took any Banner Day parade — even one from the really sad years — to complete its trek around the track. The perfect expression of fan devotion outlasts the perfect expression of farewell and takes its placards to the next round against The Ball Off The Wall.
Marvelous Marv (7) vs Al Lang (10)
The Mets shared Al Lang (Field, then Stadium) with the Cardinals for the first 26 springs of their existence. Marv Throneberry spent time as property of the Orioles, the Athletics and the Yankees. But the ultimate cult Met belonged to nobody but us. The Mets ditched Al Lang for the wilderness of Florida’s east coast. Nobody has ever replaced Marvelous Marv in Met lore. Throneberry’s a winner.
Rheingold The Dry Beer (2) vs Generation K (15)
Longtime and quintessential Mets sponsor Rheingold offered the 10 Minute Head…or a foam that lasted longer than Izzy, Pulse and Paul lasted as a unit. The ultimate Met disappointment is flattened by the ultimate Met beverage. Come Sunday, it’s beer versus Marv in a battle of classic Met four-letter words.
MAGIC REGIONAL
Who Let The Dogs Out? (6) vs Mettle The Mule (11)
In an all-animal act, the De Roulet daughters made an ass of themselves, unveiling the most unlikely mascot in the history of the Mets. But at this, arguably the organization’s lowest moment, a mule named Mettle was just what the doctor ordered…assuming the 1979 Mets weren’t too cheap to pay a doctor. The fight song of the 2000 National League champions absorbs the upset after ill-advisedly slowing into a trot.
Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? (3) vs Scioscia (14)
Mike Scioscia’s ninth-inning home run continues to represent the worst letdown in Mets history. But losing the 1988 NLCS was cake next to the 1962 season as chronicled by Jimmy Breslin. The sometimes stubborn columnist’s timeless work bears down against the legendarily stubborn mule Mettle on Sunday.
Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose! (7) vs LaGuardia (10)
Planes taking off and landing at a major air transportation hub doesn’t make for the best accompaniment to a baseball game, but it is a signature sound of Shea and will probably be so at Citi, too. The jets makes opposing batters step out of the box. But Jose Reyes and his very own sing-song chant unnerves opposing pitchers. Is there a flight that lands at LaGuardia as fast as Jose rounded the bases in 2006? Nope. Jose took off and was never topped.
Home Run Apple (2) vs Bill Shea’s Floral Horseshoe (15)
No surer sign of a new season than Bill Shea or, since his 1991 passing, his family members showing up at their eponymous stadium with the good luck arrangement. Every manager who’s managed Opening Day since 1964 has been greeted with this simplest of gestures. It’s great for the florist business, too. Home Run Apple, on the other hand, once misplaced its leaf. And it sits at the outer edge of a horseshoe-shaped ballpark named Shea. There’s just too much karma to mess with Bill. Ladies and gentlemen, we have our biggest upset of the tournament to date. Bill Shea’s Floral Horseshoe topples Home Run Apple and will run up against Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose! on Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!
BELIEVE REGIONAL
The Happy Recap (1) vs Michael Sergio (16)
Michael Sergio parachuted into Shea Stadium before Game Six of the 1986 World Series. Several hours later, Bob Murphy was delivering the happiest Happy Recap imaginable. Sergio is quintessential Mets trivia. The Happy Recap is quintessential Mets. No contest.
Diamond Club (8) vs John Rocker (9)
Elitist Mets insitution taking on anti-Mets buffoon. Elitism has no place at Shea Stadium. Buffoonery, even the vilest kind, is a baseball tradition. If it’s a choice of having somebody looking down their nose at you versus having somebody to look down your nose upon…Rocker takes this one. The buffoon figures to be a vast underdog to Murph in their Sunday clash.
The Sign Man (5) vs Revised Yearbook (12)
Two prime outlets for information at Shea go head to head. Karl Ehrhardt hoists the message “There Are No Words”. But Lindsey Nelson reminds us our baseball library won’t be complete without the revised edition of our 1976 yearbook which is full of great new pictures and words. Who’s going to argue with Lindsey Nelson? Revised Yearbook upsets The Sign Man.
Seinfeld (4) vs Yo La Tengo (13)
Forty-four years later, it still may be the best anecdote in Mets history, the story of how Richie Ashburn learned to yell “I Got It!” in Spanish in order to call of Elio Chacon, only to have monolingual Frank Thomas not understand him and run him over. It sounds like a plot out of Seinfeld, the television show with more and truer Met plotlines than any other. Ashburn’s in the Hall of Fame, but Keith Hernandez is Keith Hernandez. Seinfeld in a close one. Next stop: Revised Yearbook.
AMAZIN’ REGIONAL
Mr. Met (1) vs Wednesday Night Massacre (16)
Mets fans everywhere grimaced when M. Donald Grant traded Tom Seaver and Dave Kingman on June 15, 1977. But Mr. Met just kept on smiling. You think one lousy night is going to get to the quintessential team symbol? Mr. Met keeps his smile pasted on.
Mayor Lindsay (8) vs Serval Zipper (9)
John Lindsay had a topsy-turvy 1969. After a massive snowstorm crippled Queens that February, the Manhattan-minded mayor was slow to get the easternmost borough of New York City dug out. But he was sure fast to find his way to Flushing to have his picture taken celebrating with the champions of the National League East, the National League and, finally the world. It’s said that association with New York’s baseball finest got him re-elected, making Mayor Lindsay the quintessential Met-glomming politician. Just over Shea Stadium’s left field fence, the Serval Zipper sign — the ultimate Met neighborhood landmark — was just thawing out from Lindsay’s neglect. Politicians have to pay the price for dissing Queens eventually. Serval unzips Hizzoner and looks to button up Mr. Met on Sunday.
Pete Rose (5) vs Ed Sudol (12)
No opposing player wore the mantle of Met Villain as long and as hard as Peter Edward Rose, not after his infamous brawl with Buddy Harrelson in the 1973 playoffs. No umpire wore the chest protector as long around the Mets as Ed Sudol, at least not in any given games. Sudol called balls and strikes and kept calling them in the Mets’ 23-, 24- and 25-inning losses in 1964, 1968 and 1974, respectively. In a test of endurance, just about every Mets fan still hates Pete Rose. Even Sudol — officiating left field after Rose trotted out to his position in Game Three — couldn’t eject that emotion. Rose fancies himself a winner, and in this case he’s correct.
1964 World’s Fair (4) vs Called Strike Three (13)
Of the countless third strikes taken by Mets batters in the franchise’s first 45 seasons, one looms over the rest: the very last one. Called Strike Three ended the 2006 National League Championship Series in a most unsatisfying fashion. In the mind’s eye, Carlos Beltran is still standing and looking at Adam Wainwright’s ungodly breaking pitch. The 1964 World’s Fair, which will forever be linked with Shea in the way Beltran and Wainwright are glued together…well, it was more fun than that. And baseball’s supposed to be fun. Fun carries the day here. We’ll see if Peace Through Understanding has any effect on the rambunctious Rose in their Sunday matchup.
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