One Tuesday, two press conferences. First the Mets. They make it official that Carlos Beltran has signed a seven-year contract to play centerfield and bat in the middle of their order. He smiles and calls his new employers the New Mets. The smirks are barely suppressed. Then the circus packs up and hauls ass across the Triborough for the second show, the main event, the Yankees’ introduction of Randy Johnson, just acquired from Arizona. Johnson is an all-timer and a Diamondback hero. But Johnson has had enough of his home-area team’s rebuilding program (it had been more than three years since the 2001 World Series) and he wants another ring. A trade to the Yankees…yeah, that’s the ticket.

The Big Unit gets the big coverage. Maybe he ensured that with his shove of a Channel 2 cameraman the day before. Maybe he’s a slightly bigger story that Tuesday and on the front and back pages that Wednesday because Beltran’s news leaked out over the weekend. Maybe it’s because he’s a future Hall of Famer and the Yankees are the Yankees. The Mets, after all, are the Mets.

It’s almost exactly two years later. Half of the featured attractions of January 11, 2005 are gone. Is gone. The Yankees have traded Randy Johnson, his bad back, his advanced age, his disappointing performance, his dyspeptic personality and cash back to Arizona for a middle reliever and some minor leaguers. They couldn’t wait to get him, they couldn’t wait to get rid of him.

Carlos Beltran helped the same old Mets of the early 2000s become the New Mets as advertised of 2005 and led them into becoming the powerhouse Mets of 2006 and, knock wood, years to come.

I think we had a better Tuesday.

One Tuesday, two press conferences. First the Mets. They make it official that Carlos Beltran has signed a seven-year contract to play centerfield and bat in the middle of their order. He smiles and calls his new employers the New Mets. The smirks are barely suppressed. Then the circus packs up and hauls ass across the Triborough for the second show, the main event, the Yankees' introduction of Randy Johnson, just acquired from Arizona. Johnson is an all-timer and a Diamondback hero. But Johnson has had enough of his home-area team's rebuilding program (it had been more than three years since the 2001 World Series) and he wants another ring. A trade to the Yankees…yeah, that's the ticket.

The Big Unit gets the big coverage. Maybe he ensured that with his shove of a Channel 2 cameraman the day before. Maybe he's a slightly bigger story that Tuesday and on the front and back pages that Wednesday because Beltran's news leaked out over the weekend. Maybe it's because he's a future Hall of Famer and the Yankees are the Yankees. The Mets, after all, are the Mets.

It's almost exactly two years later. Half of the featured attractions of January 11, 2005 are gone. Is gone. The Yankees have traded Randy Johnson, his bad back, his advanced age, his disappointing performance, his dyspeptic personality and cash back to Arizona for a middle reliever and some minor leaguers. They couldn't wait to get him, they couldn't wait to get rid of him.

Carlos Beltran helped the same old Mets of the early 2000s become the New Mets as advertised of 2005 and led them into becoming the powerhouse Mets of 2006 and, knock wood, years to come.

I think we had a better Tuesday.

I wouldn’t dare attempt to match the eloquence displayed Wednesday at Grace Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids by Donald Rumsfeld…

“There’s an old saying in Washington that every member of Congress looks in the mirror every day and sees a future president. Gerald Ford was different. I suspect even after he was president, when he looked in the mirror, he saw a citizen.”

…or Jimmy Carter…

“‘For myself and our nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land.’ Those were the first words I spoke as president, and I still hate to admit they received more applause than all the other words in my inaugural address.”

…or Richard Norton Smith…

“President Ford used to joke he was charismatically challenged. Whatever he lacked in charisma, he more than made up for in character.”

…but after being treated to a series of remembrances that were solemn and stirring, warm and wonderful, I feel compelled to add a tiny something extra on behalf of Jerry Ford, the 38th president of these United States.

He was a winner.

Gerald Ford may have been an “accidental president” and not have won a national election to attain his high office, but he was a winner in his home district in Michigan. He triumphed over an entrenched incumbent in his first Republican primary and then won election and re-election a total of 13 times between 1948 and 1972. He won election as minority leader in the House in 1965 and won his colleagues’ acclaim every two years after that through 1973. He won confirmation as emergency vice president after Spiro Agnew resigned his post (during the deciding game of the Mets-Reds NLCS, it will never be forgotten) and, in the face of a vigorous internal challenge from a charismatic challenger, prevailed over Ronald Reagan to win the GOP nomination in 1976.

Most importantly, he and the Mets were winners together.

That is, the first time Gerald Ford and the New York Mets — who never crossed paths in any meaningful fashion of which I’m aware — contested their respective opponents on the same day, they hit the daily double.

Ford first.

On April 27, 1976, voters from both parties headed to the polls in Pennsylvania. In the midst of a rough nomination season, Ford easily outpaced challenger Reagan. Granted, Reagan did not campaign in the Keystone State, but delegates were delegates and a win was a win.

Back in New York, the Mets were playing the Atlanta Braves a day game at Shea. While political pundits awaited a definitive reading of the results from Pennsylvania, there were tea leaves turning in Jerry Ford’s favor everywhere in Flushing.

• Jerry Koosman started for the Mets.

• Jerry Royster was the Braves’ third baseman

• Jerry Dale was the third base umpire

• Jerry Grote scored the winning run.

Though they, like Jimmy Carter (who won on the Democratic side that day in PA), were from Georgia, the ’76 Braves offered a few Fordian slips beyond what fell from the Jerry tree.

• Their shortstop was D. Chaney, only a deep throw to first from the president’s chief of staff, another D. Cheney (who has terrible aim).

• Their staring pitcher was named Morton — as was the chairman of the committee to elect President Ford. Mr. Morton won 4, Mr. Morton lost 9 for the Braves that year. Mr. Morton went 0-1 for the White House at the same time. Both Mr. Mortons retired afterwards.

• Jimmy Wynn played for Atlanta, albeit without the WIN button Ford attempted to popularize in ’75 as a method to Whip Inflation Now. WIN buttons, alas, had far less pop to them than the Toy Cannon.

• As Ford sought to maintain the Oval Office, centerfield for the Braves was patrolled from the sixth through the ninth by Rowland Office.

The chief executive in the Braves’ dugout was Dave Bristol, a longer-tenured version of his Mets’ counterpart Joe Frazier. But making appearances for each team that afternoon were two future multiple-term world champion managers: Cito Gaston for Atlanta, Joe Torre (ouch) for New York.
It probably wasn’t of utmost concern to the afterschool gathering of 4,002 at Shea what Ford or Reagan or Carter were doing one state away. It was probably cause for great celebration that Bruce Boisclair drove home Grote for the winning run in the three-run ninth, a walkoff triumph for the briefly (10-7, 1-game lead) surging Mets.

Our boys wouldn’t hold their lead for long in 1976. Ford, on the other hand, put just enough distance between himself and his charismatic rival that evening to outlast Reagan’s rightward rush in states more friendly for what was then considered his fairly exotic brand of conservatism.

When the president was officially nominated in a squeaker on August 18, the Mets were in Los Angeles and lost…in a walkoff.

The Mets were done by the time the fall campaign heated up. They went home 86-76, mired in third place. Jerry Ford’s most memorable statement in the general election was that Poland and other Eastern European countries did not suffer under the thumb of Soviet oppression. In 1976, that was a little like saying there was no Phillies domination of the Eastern Division of the National League. Nevertheless, he steadily made up ground on Carter (who was setting a template for the not-quite-blowin’-it 2005 Chicago White Sox) right to the proverbial 162nd game before falling a run or two short.

If you’re an American citizen — even a National Leaguer — this has been a fascinating week, as fascinating as one can be without baseball or a baseball trade or a baseball rolling by as you’re walking down the street. (Gads, I miss baseball.) A new governor in Albany…a new majority in both chambers of the legislature in Washington…a new Speaker of the House of Representatives named Nancy…and a President of the United States laid to rest with honor and praise three decades after he was barely nominated in his own right and barely rejected by the electorate as a whole the only time he sought its approval.

Growing up in the middle of the 1970s, bookended by the final corrosive lunges at power by Richard M. Nixon and M. Donald Grant, I watched the continuing ceremonies that marked the death of Gerald Ford and sort of waited for the punchline. Another funeral? Is he still dead? Is he going on tour? Is somebody going to drop the casket and is Chevy Chase going to burst out and let us in on the joke?

But it wasn’t like that at all. It was indeed solemn and stirring, warm and wonderful. Just like, as I’ve learned this past week, Jerry Ford himself.

Happy New Year! And thank you!

Thank you for 1,450,926 page views of Faith and Fear in Flushing in 2006.

Even when you subtract out all the porn sites that glom their filthy automatic trackbacks onto us and all the times Jason and I log on to ascertain that we’re still here and all the electronic counting vagaries I sure as hell don’t understand, it means we’re not just talking to ourselves here.

Not that we’re beyond talking to ourselves here. But still.

Thank you for showing up to join us as often as you do. What you mean to us defies measure.

Happy New Year! And thank you!

Thank you for 1,450,926 page views of Faith and Fear in Flushing in 2006.

Even when you subtract out all the porn sites that glom their filthy automatic trackbacks onto us and all the times Jason and I log on to ascertain that we're still here and all the electronic counting vagaries I sure as hell don't understand, it means we're not just talking to ourselves here.

Not that we're beyond talking to ourselves here. But still.

Thank you for showing up to join us as often as you do. What you mean to us defies measure.

What's all the hubbub about tonight, anyway?
We all know that New Year's is actually a moveable feast. It came on April 3 this year, it will fall on April 1 next time around. Properly, tonight is just another night in the waning of the Year of Our Mets 45. But plenty of deluded folks will spend tonight toasting and wearing funny hats and making resolutions about this thing called 2007 — so many that we ought to take notice, lest we get confused and think everybody's gathered in Times Square to celebrate word that Pedro's rehab is months ahead of schedule, or confirmation that the Marlins just sent the D-Train north for Shawn Green and Anderson Hernandez.
I'm writing these words at a quarter to three on a Sunday afternoon, which means my internal clock keeps nagging at me. Hey! Jace! There's gotta be a ballgame on somewhere. Probably in the fourth or fifth inning by now but plenty of action left. Maybe all this silly football has pushed it up the dial someplace, but it oughta at least be on the radio. No? So we're the Sunday night game, then?
Alas, no. All over but the hot-stovin', I have to remind myself, seeking comfort in the fact that the days are slowly getting longer, that winter's entrance comes with the promise of its exit. It's nice to see Halloween and Thanksgiving and Hanukkah and Christmas arrive — and since each key date off the calendar is one fewer between us and what matters, it's also been nice seeing them depart. So, welcome, Rest of the World's New Year's. Once you're behind us, all that's left is the Baseball Equinox, the Super Bowl, and Pitchers and Catchers, after which the days and nights will soon resume their right and proper patterns and rhythms.
Anyway, 2006 won't go down as a shining chapter in the American annals, staggering as it did under the weight of war and terror, division and anger. I won't miss any of that — and 2007 seems likely to deliver plenty more, anyway. But I will miss what happened in our own little orange and blue world. Because 45 MR (Mets Reckoning), it was…well, it was amazin'.
It was the first look around the friendly surly but still somehow beloved confines of Shea knowing that its days are officially numbered. So much history, glorious and futile, triumphant and farcical. With a bit more to be written before moving over a few hundred feet for another chapter.
It was new faces — of which not one but two of my signature moments were written by Paul Lo Duca. First there was the May afternoon that saw him slam the ball into the grass a la David Cone all those years ago in Atlanta. Then there was the October afternoon in which he slammed the gate on the Dodgers' postseason before it could really begin. It took me a minute or two to grasp that yes, Lo Duca had just tagged out Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew on the same deliriously unlikely play. It took me quite a bit longer to grasp that Lo Duca, utterly unable to hear his teammates on the field, had divined from some tenor to the deafening roar of the crowd that a second runner was inbound, or for me to notice around Replay #1,000 that after tagging Drew, Lo Duca sprang to his feet to see if he could erase Russell Martin as well. The first play was recklessly inattentive, the second astonishingly focused. I loved him for both.
It was old faces, too — none greeted more enthusiastically than Mike Piazza, none regarded more ambivalently than Big Mike after he celebrated his return by smacking not one but two home runs off Pedro Martinez, then came to the plate as the potential go-ahead run in the eighth — and hit an Aaron Heilman offering on the screws. That moment sparked a family feud on this little blog and throughout Metdom — do you want that third drive to come down in Beltran's glove, or disappear over the fence? Like most good arguments, there is no right answer: I cheered in relief when it turned into a loud out, but I also knew that if it had been unreachable, few losses would have been less disappointing. Speaking of old heroes, my first must-see date for 2007 will be the return of one Cornelius Clifford Floyd, the 2006 Met I'll miss most, and the player who just might be the coolest man to ever play the game.
And it was old faces seen in a new light. Carlos Beltran's 2005 (sorry, Year of Our Mets Forty-four) was a disaster: disappointing at the plate and in the field, marred by injuries small, medium and terrifying, and greeted by shameful boos from shameless fans. 2006 didn't start out much better — Beltran went into the first weekend of the year without a hit, and with that old familiar sound in his home ballpark. Then — bang! Home run! A home run followed by an old-fashioned baseball morality play — a moment that was a watershed for 2006, and maybe for Beltran and for this franchise. Beltran refused the request for a curtain call, which was just payback for his shabby treatment by the fans. Until the moment went on too long, and you knew that a) if he didn't come out, nothing he did might stop the boos; and b) there was no longer a dignified way for him to come out. And then Julio Franco found a way out of the trap, all but dragging Beltran to the top step. And with that, 2005 became past and April 6, 2006 became prelude — the precursor to a legitimate MVP season, and a love affair with the fans that not even a despairing look at a knee-buckling curve from Adam Wainwright will derail.
Not every crucial encounter between our center fielder and a Cardinals closer ended like that. In August, Beltran stepped to the plate with Lo Duca on base and the Mets down one in the ninth, setting up Gary Cohen's best call of the year and my personal moment of wildest, wildest joy in a season that offered plenty of them. “HE RIPS IT TO DEEP RIGHT! THAT BALL IS OUTTA HERE! OUTTA HERE! THE METS WIN THE BALLGAME!” If you ever, ever, ever play that call for me and I don't tear up or start beaming, please call an EMT.
That game ended with Beltran leaping into the arms of his teammates — in this marvelous photo you can see Dave Williams and Carlos Delgado and Lo Duca and others competing to be the first to dog-pile him. (Steve Trachsel's golf-clapping at the rear now seems like an icy bit of foreshadowing.) 2006 was about a Mets team that seemed to genuinely like each other, as evidenced by Lo Duca, Delgado, Beltran, Jose Reyes and David Wright on the cover of SI and Tom Verducci's wonderful article on “the adventures of Captain Red Ass and the intrepid Mets.” Contrast that with that other team in town, whose chief drama (also chronicled by Verducci) was whether or not the shortstop would ever release the third baseman from social purgatory.
That's just scratching the surface of an amazin', amazin', amazin' campaign — 2:45 has turned to 5:00 (it oughta be time for a last word from the booth, or maybe extra innings), and somehow I haven't turned to David Wright willing a ball over Johnny Damon's head, or Jose Reyes' helmet being left behind as he rounds second yet again, or the sheer pleasure in Gary Cohen on TV and Howie Rose on the FAN and Keith Hernandez on Planet Mex, or Delgado's trillion-watt smile, or the giddiest West Coast swing in 20 years, or the long-awaited, finally arrived crumbling of the Atlanta Braves, or what might just be the greatest damn catch in the history of the greatest damn game.
That's OK — there'll be time to think on all those things as New Year's Day 46 draws near, as well as time to wonder and then to witness what 2007 has in store. Can we surpass a season in which the margin between exhausted agony and a date with Detroit was a line drive that didn't tail, a breaking ball that broke perfectly? Will someone in orange and blue finally spring us from the Clubhouse of Curses? If so, will it be an old warhorse like Tom Glavine or El Duque? A young gun like Mike Pelfrey or Philip Humber? Or some hurler not even on our radar — the John Maine of 2007, perhaps? Or will that have to wait for Citi Field, rising behind the outfield fence as 2007 goes by?
Before too terribly long we'll be deep in the business of finding out, and 2006 will be part of our long history, a chapter recalled by other wins and losses and players and plays instead of one still to be fussed over. I'll remember it as a year in which a lovable, formidable, indomitable team fought all the way to the final pitch of the final inning of Game 7 of the NLCS, with the outcome undecided until the very last second. As I've said many a time since then, in response to offerings of consolation, you can want more than that, but if you've learned anything from watching baseball, it's that you damn well can't ask for it.
Maybe 2007 will be the fulfillment of 2006's promise. Maybe it'll be a disappointing retreat from it. Either way, it's got a hard act to follow — a campaign I'll always recall with a smile, an eventual sad shake of the head, and a struggle to sum up so many days and nights of amazement and excitement and joy.
Raise a glass.

What's all the hubbub about tonight, anyway?

We all know that New Year's is actually a moveable feast. It came on April 3 this year, it will fall on April 1 next time around. Properly, tonight is just another night in the waning of the Year of Our Mets 45. But plenty of deluded folks will spend tonight toasting and wearing funny hats and making resolutions about this thing called 2007 — so many that we ought to take notice, lest we get confused and think everybody's gathered in Times Square to celebrate word that Pedro's rehab is months ahead of schedule, or confirmation that the Marlins just sent the D-Train north for Shawn Green and Anderson Hernandez.

I'm writing these words at a quarter to three on a Sunday afternoon, which means my internal clock keeps nagging at me. Hey! Jace! There's gotta be a ballgame on somewhere. Probably in the fourth or fifth inning by now but plenty of action left. Maybe all this silly football has pushed it up the dial someplace, but it oughta at least be on the radio. No? So we're the Sunday night game, then?

Alas, no. All over but the hot-stovin', I have to remind myself, seeking comfort in the fact that the days are slowly getting longer, that winter's entrance comes with the promise of its exit. It's nice to see Halloween and Thanksgiving and Hanukkah and Christmas arrive — and since each key date off the calendar is one fewer between us and what matters, it's also been nice seeing them depart. So, welcome, Rest of the World's New Year's. Once you're behind us, all that's left is the Baseball Equinox, the Super Bowl, and Pitchers and Catchers, after which the days and nights will soon resume their right and proper patterns and rhythms.

Anyway, 2006 won't go down as a shining chapter in the American annals, staggering as it did under the weight of war and terror, division and anger. I won't miss any of that — and 2007 seems likely to deliver plenty more, anyway. But I will miss what happened in our own little orange and blue world. Because 45 MR (Mets Reckoning), it was…well, it was amazin'.

It was the first look around the friendly surly but still somehow beloved confines of Shea knowing that its days are officially numbered. So much history, glorious and futile, triumphant and farcical. With a bit more to be written before moving over a few hundred feet for another chapter.

It was new faces — of which not one but two of my signature moments were written by Paul Lo Duca. First there was the May afternoon that saw him slam the ball into the grass a la David Cone all those years ago in Atlanta. Then there was the October afternoon in which he slammed the gate on the Dodgers' postseason before it could really begin. It took me a minute or two to grasp that yes, Lo Duca had just tagged out Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew on the same deliriously unlikely play. It took me quite a bit longer to grasp that Lo Duca, utterly unable to hear his teammates on the field, had divined from some tenor to the deafening roar of the crowd that a second runner was inbound, or for me to notice around Replay #1,000 that after tagging Drew, Lo Duca sprang to his feet to see if he could erase Russell Martin as well. The first play was recklessly inattentive, the second astonishingly focused. I loved him for both.

It was old faces, too — none greeted more enthusiastically than Mike Piazza, none regarded more ambivalently than Big Mike after he celebrated his return by smacking not one but two home runs off Pedro Martinez, then came to the plate as the potential go-ahead run in the eighth — and hit an Aaron Heilman offering on the screws. That moment sparked a family feud on this little blog and throughout Metdom — do you want that third drive to come down in Beltran's glove, or disappear over the fence? Like most good arguments, there is no right answer: I cheered in relief when it turned into a loud out, but I also knew that if it had been unreachable, few losses would have been less disappointing. Speaking of old heroes, my first must-see date for 2007 will be the return of one Cornelius Clifford Floyd, the 2006 Met I'll miss most, and the player who just might be the coolest man to ever play the game.

And it was old faces seen in a new light. Carlos Beltran's 2005 (sorry, Year of Our Mets Forty-four) was a disaster: disappointing at the plate and in the field, marred by injuries small, medium and terrifying, and greeted by shameful boos from shameless fans. 2006 didn't start out much better — Beltran went into the first weekend of the year without a hit, and with that old familiar sound in his home ballpark. Then — bang! Home run! A home run followed by an old-fashioned baseball morality play — a moment that was a watershed for 2006, and maybe for Beltran and for this franchise. Beltran refused the request for a curtain call, which was just payback for his shabby treatment by the fans. Until the moment went on too long, and you knew that a) if he didn't come out, nothing he did might stop the boos; and b) there was no longer a dignified way for him to come out. And then Julio Franco found a way out of the trap, all but dragging Beltran to the top step. And with that, 2005 became past and April 6, 2006 became prelude — the precursor to a legitimate MVP season, and a love affair with the fans that not even a despairing look at a knee-buckling curve from Adam Wainwright will derail.

Not every crucial encounter between our center fielder and a Cardinals closer ended like that. In August, Beltran stepped to the plate with Lo Duca on base and the Mets down one in the ninth, setting up Gary Cohen's best call of the year and my personal moment of wildest, wildest joy in a season that offered plenty of them. “HE RIPS IT TO DEEP RIGHT! THAT BALL IS OUTTA HERE! OUTTA HERE! THE METS WIN THE BALLGAME!” If you ever, ever, ever play that call for me and I don't tear up or start beaming, please call an EMT.

That game ended with Beltran leaping into the arms of his teammates — in this marvelous photo you can see Dave Williams and Carlos Delgado and Lo Duca and others competing to be the first to dog-pile him. (Steve Trachsel's golf-clapping at the rear now seems like an icy bit of foreshadowing.) 2006 was about a Mets team that seemed to genuinely like each other, as evidenced by Lo Duca, Delgado, Beltran, Jose Reyes and David Wright on the cover of SI and Tom Verducci's wonderful article on “the adventures of Captain Red Ass and the intrepid Mets.” Contrast that with that other team in town, whose chief drama (also chronicled by Verducci) was whether or not the shortstop would ever release the third baseman from social purgatory.

That's just scratching the surface of an amazin', amazin', amazin' campaign — 2:45 has turned to 5:00 (it oughta be time for a last word from the booth, or maybe extra innings), and somehow I haven't turned to David Wright willing a ball over Johnny Damon's head, or Jose Reyes' helmet being left behind as he rounds second yet again, or the sheer pleasure in Gary Cohen on TV and Howie Rose on the FAN and Keith Hernandez on Planet Mex, or Delgado's trillion-watt smile, or the giddiest West Coast swing in 20 years, or the long-awaited, finally arrived crumbling of the Atlanta Braves, or what might just be the greatest damn catch in the history of the greatest damn game.

That's OK — there'll be time to think on all those things as New Year's Day 46 draws near, as well as time to wonder and then to witness what 2007 has in store. Can we surpass a season in which the margin between exhausted agony and a date with Detroit was a line drive that didn't tail, a breaking ball that broke perfectly? Will someone in orange and blue finally spring us from the Clubhouse of Curses? If so, will it be an old warhorse like Tom Glavine or El Duque? A young gun like Mike Pelfrey or Philip Humber? Or some hurler not even on our radar — the John Maine of 2007, perhaps? Or will that have to wait for Citi Field, rising behind the outfield fence as 2007 goes by?

Before too terribly long we'll be deep in the business of finding out, and 2006 will be part of our long history, a chapter recalled by other wins and losses and players and plays instead of one still to be fussed over. I'll remember it as a year in which a lovable, formidable, indomitable team fought all the way to the final pitch of the final inning of Game 7 of the NLCS, with the outcome undecided until the very last second. As I've said many a time since then, in response to offerings of consolation, you can want more than that, but if you've learned anything from watching baseball, it's that you damn well can't ask for it.

Maybe 2007 will be the fulfillment of 2006's promise. Maybe it'll be a disappointing retreat from it. Either way, it's got a hard act to follow — a campaign I'll always recall with a smile, an eventual sad shake of the head, and a struggle to sum up so many days and nights of amazement and excitement and joy.

Raise a glass.