Game Four of the World Series (in St. Louis, not my imagination) was rained out last night. May be rained out tonight. Or maybe tomorrow. Who can keep up?
Who cares to?
Back when we were just some second-rate, second-division afterthought, I probably would have. Baseball fans watch baseball games and I'm a baseball fan. Yet after our having filled the collective role of Icarus from April 3 to October 19, I suspect a lot to most of us wing-melted Mets fans have landed on Pluto where this Tiger-Cardinal matchup is concerned. And we're not alone. Dancing With The Stars outrated Game Three of the freaking World Series and that was with Game Three going off as scheduled. On a Thursday night, which is übercompetitive in network television to begin with (even without new eps of Earl and The Office, dang it), I suspect the numbers will plunge to Bob Gibson 1968 levels.
I'd like to believe it's because America is absolutely mournful that its Mets — how could a team as beautiful as ours belong to merely a single city? — are missing from action. But that's not it. The World Series ain't what it used to be in terms of national glue and it has nothing to do with participant market size. I really miss those days when baseball was everything to everybody even if I never lived in them. In Memories of Summer, the great Roger Kahn described the phenomenon of autumn as it existed when he prepared to cover his first Fall Classic in 1952, New York (A) at Brooklyn:
Six hundred of the best and most popular sportswriters in the country would cover every inning of every game. The ranks included […] Vincent X. Flaherty of San Francisco. The closest major league stadium, Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, stood 2,140 miles east of Flaherty's home base, but the old World Series transcended geography. It was a front page story across the country, especially exotic to people who lived thousands of miles away. Few Americans had seen anything more of a World Series than patchy black-and-white scenes worked into newsreels. Those glimpses left imagination free to roam.
Now the World Series is just something Fox airs so it can plug the BCS and Brad Garrett. The USA doesn't need an excuse to ignore it. Giving it the mostly anonymous Tigers and momentarily overachieving Cardinals certainly helps, though.
A few days ago, stripped of fresh Met nits to pick, my regular e-mail group was trying to realign baseball to buy us a more favorable outcome. I've read everything from four eight-team divisions to eight four-team divisions (we're expanding, apparently). I'm tempted to say let's just go back to two leagues: the Mets in one, everybody else in another, us in the World Series no matter what.
The root of my friends' not altogether unreasonable gripe with the system is how the fudge can a 97-win behemoth like ours sit home while some non-entity that barely finished over .500 gets t-shirts and stuff? Of course we all pay lip service to 1973, but it is frustrating when October Madness places the Red shoe on the other foot, namely ours. I took it as total sour grapes until I read Sports Illustrated and it was noted that “St. Louis had 83 wins, which ranked them 13th among Major League teams this year.”
THIRTEENTH? Really? Geez. How did that happen?
Oh yeah, we stopped hitting.
I doubt the Dancing With The Stars crowd would be moved by statistical niceties, but 13th-winningest team is a little jarring. The Blue Jays were better. The Phillies were better. Nearly half of baseball was better. In 1973, only eight teams had more wins than us (“only,” he says with a straight face). But 1973 was…well, it was 1973. It was a magic fluke. The Cardinals, at least until they reveal themselves transcendent, are just some decent team from a lousy division that got on a roll when somebody else fell into a slump. They're also two wins from a world championship.
Rain. Don’t rain. Whatever.
Programming Notes:
• While the Mets gave away a World Series last week, we will attempt to give away a World Series DVD tomorrow, the one with highlights from 1969 and 1986, two years when baseball's playoff setup was astoundingly perfect. There will be a quiz, for which I offer this advance hint: title & artist.
• Next week, look for a proper Faith and Fear retrospective on that semi-championship season, 2006. I don't know what's going to happen in 2007, but I'm pretty handy with a rearview mirror.

Game Four of the World Series (in St. Louis, not my imagination) was rained out last night. May be rained out tonight. Or maybe tomorrow. Who can keep up?

Who cares to?

Back when we were just some second-rate, second-division afterthought, I probably would have. Baseball fans watch baseball games and I'm a baseball fan. Yet after our having filled the collective role of Icarus from April 3 to October 19, I suspect a lot to most of us wing-melted Mets fans have landed on Pluto where this Tiger-Cardinal matchup is concerned. And we're not alone. Dancing With The Stars outrated Game Three of the freaking World Series and that was with Game Three going off as scheduled. On a Thursday night, which is übercompetitive in network television to begin with (even without new eps of Earl and The Office, dang it), I suspect the numbers will plunge to Bob Gibson 1968 levels.

I'd like to believe it's because America is absolutely mournful that its Mets — how could a team as beautiful as ours belong to merely a single city? — are missing from action. But that's not it. The World Series ain't what it used to be in terms of national glue and it has nothing to do with participant market size. I really miss those days when baseball was everything to everybody even if I never lived in them. In Memories of Summer, the great Roger Kahn described the phenomenon of autumn as it existed when he prepared to cover his first Fall Classic in 1952, New York (A) at Brooklyn:

Six hundred of the best and most popular sportswriters in the country would cover every inning of every game. The ranks included […] Vincent X. Flaherty of San Francisco. The closest major league stadium, Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, stood 2,140 miles east of Flaherty's home base, but the old World Series transcended geography. It was a front page story across the country, especially exotic to people who lived thousands of miles away. Few Americans had seen anything more of a World Series than patchy black-and-white scenes worked into newsreels. Those glimpses left imagination free to roam.

Now the World Series is just something Fox airs so it can plug the BCS and Brad Garrett. The USA doesn't need an excuse to ignore it. Giving it the mostly anonymous Tigers and momentarily overachieving Cardinals certainly helps, though.

A few days ago, stripped of fresh Met nits to pick, my regular e-mail group was trying to realign baseball to buy us a more favorable outcome. I've read everything from four eight-team divisions to eight four-team divisions (we're expanding, apparently). I'm tempted to say let's just go back to two leagues: the Mets in one, everybody else in another, us in the World Series no matter what.

The root of my friends' not altogether unreasonable gripe with the system is how the fudge can a 97-win behemoth like ours sit home while some non-entity that barely finished over .500 gets t-shirts and stuff? Of course we all pay lip service to 1973, but it is frustrating when October Madness places the Red shoe on the other foot, namely ours. I took it as total sour grapes until I read Sports Illustrated and it was noted that “St. Louis had 83 wins, which ranked them 13th among Major League teams this year.”

THIRTEENTH? Really? Geez. How did that happen?

Oh yeah, we stopped hitting.

I doubt the Dancing With The Stars crowd would be moved by statistical niceties, but 13th-winningest team is a little jarring. The Blue Jays were better. The Phillies were better. Nearly half of baseball was better. In 1973, only eight teams had more wins than us (“only,” he says with a straight face). But 1973 was…well, it was 1973. It was a magic fluke. The Cardinals, at least until they reveal themselves transcendent, are just some decent team from a lousy division that got on a roll when somebody else fell into a slump. They're also two wins from a world championship.

Rain. Don’t rain. Whatever.

Programming Notes:

• Next week, look for a proper Faith and Fear retrospective on that semi-championship season, 2006. I don't know what's going to happen in 2007, but I'm pretty handy with a rearview mirror.

Three hundred twenty-three regular-season games. Six National League Division Series games. Seven National League Championship Series games. Two exhibition games. One intrasquad game. Two games rained out after I sat down. One baseball card show.
I've been inside Shea Stadium quite a bit. But never was I as cold as I was Tuesday night. And never did I care less.
It was gloves and ski caps and blankets and every thermal underthing I could steel myself in. It was still freezing. It's taken me this long to thaw my fingers lest they shatter on contact with a computer keyboard.
But you endure a few inconveniences for your first World Series game. Given the choice between the warm and comfy couch and the laughingly labeled “Fall” Classic (correct only in the chronological sense — assuming it's still October), I'll take going out to meet Jack Frost in Flushing every time.
Jack Frost? How about Jack Delgado? Let's call him that from now on for his one, no two jacks that made Jim Leyland presumably the warmest soul in Flushing. Yeah, I'd be lighting up in the runway, too, if I saw my clean-handed lefty starter go down in flames, so to speak, when Delgado went the other way on him not once but twice. Two two-run homers to left for our Roberto Clemente Award winner. Throw in the deuce by his lefty buddy Shawn Green, the stab and throw by Wright on Polanco and six good ones by leading man John Maine with best supporting action from Mota, Feliciano and Hernandez (take the night off, Billy) and you've got the Mets' first home World Series win in exactly six years.
We should really be in these things more often.
I'm 1-0 in World Series play, dammit. That's almost as special as the Mets being 2-1 in this particular set of games. Almost.
We (Laurie and me — nice birthday present, don't you think?) got there early to get our shivering underway ahead of the rush. But when you've been waiting a lifetime to see the Mets in a World Series at Shea Stadium, you don't mind. We got our silly towels and waved them for warmth. OK, so they only contributed to the breeze, but at our altitude, we lost the ability to think clearly.
They say a World Series congregation is calmer than your average, regular-fan crowd. I don't know about that, seeing as how I have only one World Series game under my belt and we were far from the corporate swells of urban field level myth. It was plenty loud in the upper deck, just as it was in the NLDS and NLCS. It was pretty savvy at times, too, not just sticking it to Kenny Rogers when he was introduced — Piiiine Taaaar has replaced Laaaarrrreeee in the Shea arsenal of insults — but resurrecting, of all things, the ol' “everybody say Rey-O!” in spots for Magglio Ordoñez (who quite fortunately hit like our erstwhile Gold Glove shortstop and goodwill ambassador).
Not that there weren't dollops of stupidity. For example, I came upon a gent I noticed during Game Six of the Cardinal series, a fellow with a blue and orange Mohawk, a black Mets jersey (the buttons of which were no use to him) and, apparently, a tab with his local Anheuser-Busch distributor. He was imploring us, the whole of Section 22, to let loose. We didn't really need his help, which irked him when one of his exhortations fell flat. “You sons of bitches,” he grumbled before moving onto UD 24.
I'll miss that guy next week, but enough of him for now. I didn't come to see him. I came to see the World Bleeping Series. I wondered if it would be tangibly different from any other postseason game. It was. Besides being colder, it's longer. The between-innings stuff takes forever. But you put up with it because a) it's the World Series; b) the Mets are in it; c) would you rather this be going on in St. Louis?
Don't know what they showed on TV — I don't dare record these things — but I loved that the Mets brought back everybody who played with them this year for the introductions, at least everybody who isn't with another team. I'm thrilled to report for Laurie's sake that Victor Zambrano got a nice hand. Even Jose Lima was cheered. The coolest was when they stuck a familiar face from behind the home dugout on the DiamondVision. It was Pittsburgh Pirate rightfielder Xavier Nady. He went without official comment (is there a rule against it?) but a big round of applause ensued and swelled.
Bringing back Davey Johnson to throw out the first ball, alongside Joan Hodges, was what brought me to my feet the longest. I was there the night in 1992 when Davey first came back for an Old Timers event (then known as the Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball). The Mets were playing Pittsburgh that night. Leyland was the opposing manager then and trotted out seven pitchers in nine innings to beat us 3-2. Willie Randolph played second for us and went 0-for-5. This was by far the happier homecoming.
I loved when they unfurled the giant American flag (where do they put it when they're not using it — Yosemite?) and really loved it when Simon & Garfunkel came out to do not the national anthem but their own “America,” as in having gone to look for. I guess they were our hometown answer to Bob Seger singing “America The Beautiful” at Comerica the other night (up 2-1 in Series games, up 2-1 in area legends). The mere mention of “Michigan” as “a dream to me now” rated a boo, while the Use Mass Transit pleas must have filtered up to Paul and Artie because I swear I heard them say they were “counting the cars on the Long Island Rail Road”. That, however, could be my commuter's imagination.
How do you top a performance like that? How about Tim McGraw ending the actual “Star Spangled Banner” by shouting “New York, You Gotta Believe!”? Well, that gave me more chills than the wind. Believe we did and rewarded we were from there.
Going to see the Mets in the World Series at Shea Stadium is about exactly the way I pictured it when I dared to imagine it in the middle of the playoffs. We got a win, we took the lead, there was once-in-my-lifetime pageantry, I dropped a pretty penny on programs, pennants and pins and, quite self-absorbedly, I can say I saw the World Series at Shea Stadium. By attending Game Three, my final 2006 record, regular & post, was elevated to a blessed .500 at 14-14.
Yes, that's my final game for this World Series. Next year I'll want to do it again, but for now — at last — I'm no longer out in the cold.

Granted, I'd like to be leading two-oh going into Game Three, but I like our chances with the World Series one-one coming to Shea tonight. I also like John Maine. A lot.
Let's shake off Game Two. Whatever it is Kenny Rogers did or didn't have on his hand, we can assume he was waiting seven years for this chance. Glavine pitched well, Rogers pitched better. Let's just put it behind us. At least we've seen him. Besides, if Kenny Rogers' postseason has been a shock, you have to take El Duque's return in Game One as at least a mild surprise. Guy doesn't pitch for weeks and he gives us seven solid innings before turning it over to Aaron and Billy (a 1-2-3 ninth at last!).
This thing's turning right back in our favor. Wright has begun to hit. Beltran's still hot (fouling off that impossible curve ball from Wainwright, staying alive and stroking that walkoff triple on the next pitch, of course he's still hot). Chavez we know can field. He's bound to poke another one through the infield like he did off Verlander to win Saturday night.
I guess it all comes down to Maine. He pitches very well at Shea as he proved in Game One of the NLDS and Game Six of the NLCS. He's got to avoid mistakes to Monroe and Inge, who are killing us, but he's also got to stay aggressive. He has a little American League experience and that can't hurt (though if it were that impressive, I imagine he'd still be an Oriole; I wonder what Kris and Anna are doing tonight…oh yeah, same as La Russa and Molina: watching us). We wouldn't be here without him and Perez, and I like the both of them in Games Three and Four. But let's just focus on Game Three. That's what at Shea tonight.
Jose will get on and Lo Duca, bad thumb and all, will move him along, and the rest you already know. We play our game, we can win. And all of us, we're the tenth through 56,000th man, as in man, I can't wait to get out there tonight! My first World Series game. The Tigers think they know loud? Forget it. This is the Mets' den. I'm so excited, I'm shaking again.
Gonna be a cold one. Gotta go start layering.
Let's Go Mets!

Both teams look like garbage, Dad. All's I know is Da Bears could be kicking some major butt right now.
—Denise Swerski
I never realized how boring this game is.
—Homer Simpson
I'd hide under the sink except Tommy Lasorda beat me to it.
Endy Chavez himself could not save this matchup from sailing out of Consciousness Park.
Where's that 1988 division-clincher when we need it?
It's not who's not playing in this World Series. It's who is. The Cardinals I completely begrudge and the Tigers, scattered familiar personages notwithstanding, I simply do not know.
No doubt Detroit is populated by deserving fans pulling for swell fellows, but given my weekend-long dwelling upon of the events of last Thursday night (Bunt? Nah. Maybe. Nah. I dunno.), I am not in the mood for introductions at this late date. That's Pudge, and there's Casey, and I think that guy helped lose 119 games, and Leyland as ever appears three Marlboros from a lung transplant…yeah, that's about it.
Good luck Tigers, whoever you are.
Surprisingly, La Russa's only the second-smarmiest bastard I've encountered thus far. Even he takes a back seat to that smug, self-congratulatory SOB CEO who bought his employees ergonomic chairs and a puppy with Mastercard. I hope he and Tony the Genius go into business together and are charged with sexual harassment by Yadier Molina.
And that Molina falls down a hole.
I'm doing my duty, Judy. I'm watching. I'm not saying I'm not dozing off here and there, but I've got it on. Maybe something interesting — like Kenny Rogers washing his mysteriously filthy left hand again — will occur and I'll be compelled to revise my initial impressions. But compelling is the last thing I'd expect from these teams.
(And to think somebody told me he was impressed by my complete lack of bitterness the other day.)

Both teams look like garbage, Dad. All's I know is Da Bears could be kicking some major butt right now.

—Denise Swerski

I never realized how boring this game is.

—Homer Simpson

I'd hide under the sink except Tommy Lasorda beat me to it.

Endy Chavez himself could not save this matchup from sailing out of Consciousness Park.

Where's that 1988 division-clincher when we need it?

It's not who's not playing in this World Series. It's who is. The Cardinals I completely begrudge and the Tigers, scattered familiar personages notwithstanding, I simply do not know.

No doubt Detroit is populated by deserving fans pulling for swell fellows, but given my weekend-long dwelling upon of the events of last Thursday night (Bunt? Nah. Maybe. Nah. I dunno.), I am not in the mood for introductions at this late date. That's Pudge, and there's Casey, and I think that guy helped lose 119 games, and Leyland as ever appears three Marlboros from a lung transplant…yeah, that's about it.

Good luck Tigers, whoever you are.

Surprisingly, La Russa's only the second-smarmiest bastard I've encountered thus far. Even he takes a back seat to that smug, self-congratulatory SOB CEO who bought his employees ergonomic chairs and a puppy with Mastercard. I hope he and Tony the Genius go into business together and are charged with sexual harassment by Yadier Molina.

And that Molina falls down a hole.

I'm doing my duty, Judy. I'm watching. I'm not saying I'm not dozing off here and there, but I've got it on. Maybe something interesting — like Kenny Rogers washing his mysteriously filthy left hand again — will occur and I'll be compelled to revise my initial impressions. But compelling is the last thing I'd expect from these teams.

(And to think somebody told me he was impressed by my complete lack of bitterness the other day.)

Now, you listen to me! I want trading reopened right now. Get those brokers back in here! Turn those machines back on! TURN THOSE MACHINES BACK ON!
—Mortimer Duke
The first time I woke up today (my attempt to hibernate the entire winter away proving as futile as any nine Met batters against Jeff Suppan), I found myself thinking about 2000. No, not the World Series — the election. There was going to be a recount right? I mean, seriously, all those people in Palm Beach County didn't intend to vote for Adam Wainwright.
Just one more swing…that's all I want.
Two bits of housekeeping:
1) Congratulations Cardinals. Congratulations Tigers, too. I am reminded again how hard it is to get where both of you have gotten no matter how much you do to get there.
2) This was our 205th consecutive day of blogging. It was our pleasure, believe us, but even unshakable Faith requires a bit of a break. FAFIF takes a holiday this weekend but returns Monday and on a recurring if not necessarily daily basis through the long, dark, cold, gaping maw of an offseason.
Seriously, they can't get everybody back on the field? It's just one swing.

Now, you listen to me! I want trading reopened right now. Get those brokers back in here! Turn those machines back on! TURN THOSE MACHINES BACK ON!

—Mortimer Duke

The first time I woke up today (my attempt to hibernate the entire winter away proving as futile as any nine Met batters against Jeff Suppan), I found myself thinking about 2000. No, not the World Series — the election. There was going to be a recount right? I mean, seriously, all those people in Palm Beach County didn't intend to vote for Adam Wainwright.

Just one more swing…that's all I want.

Two bits of housekeeping:

1) Congratulations Cardinals. Congratulations Tigers, too. I am reminded again how hard it is to get where both of you have gotten no matter how much you do to get there.

2) This was our 205th consecutive day of blogging. It was our pleasure, believe us, but even unshakable Faith requires a bit of a break. FAFIF takes a holiday this weekend but returns Monday and on a recurring if not necessarily daily basis through the long, dark, cold, gaping maw of an offseason.

Seriously, they can't get everybody back on the field? It's just one swing.