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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 15 September 2006 7:10 pm Welcome to Flashback Friday, a weekly feature devoted to the 20th anniversary of the 1986 World Champion New York Mets.
Twenty years. Forty-three Fridays. This is one of them.
Two of the many things I didn’t know much about in 1986 were blank VHS cassettes and domestic champagne. But I knew I needed both.
It was Friday afternoon, September 12. The Mets would be playing the Phillies in a matter of hours. I had to be ready. I went to Delman’s, the electronics shop that had been on Park St. forever and asked for a videotape. Then I went next door to the liquor store, the name of which escapes me, and bought something bubbly but inexpensive.
One cassette. One bottle. One game. One Met win. One Phillie loss.
One division championship at last.
Something’s coming, something good…tonight. Thirteen years of waiting, but that didn’t really describe why I wanted to preserve and to celebrate what I was about to see.
The last Mets’ division title was in 1973. But that and the years that immediately followed were ancient history. The two periods that concerned me were the seven-year famine that stretched from 1977 through 1983 and the two years succeeding them.
I don’t think there was a worse team in baseball from 1977 through 1983. Almost every team had managed at least one winning season in that span. The Mariners didn’t, but the Mariners enjoyed a brief and vast improvement at one point. The Mariners won 76 games in 1982. The Mariners had a little buzz going for them that summer.
The Mets never had anything of the sort between 1977 and 1983. They didn’t win 70 games in any year of the seven. They never played to a winning percentage higher than .420. The one time they didn’t finish last or next to last was the second half of 1981 when, after the strike, there simply wasn’t enough time for them to lose enough games to finish lower than fourth.
When I bonded myself with the Mets in 1969, I was overwhelmed by their generosity. I didn’t expect what happened to happen every year. But I never expected the seven leanest years in baseball. Put aside the disease of Yankee frontrunning that coincided with the Met despair. Forget the slings, arrows, barbs and insults one suffered merely by being identified as a Mets fan. Ignore how the Mets were ignored when they weren’t being laughed at.
They were just so fucking bad to watch. From the beginning of 1977 to the end of 1983, they won 434 games and lost 641. That’s 207 games below .500. They started being horrible as I was completing eighth grade and they were continuing to be so into my junior year of college.
My reaction to all of this? Hope. Either I was the most loyal, most optimistic, most faithful fan you would ever meet or I was an incredible fucking idiot. A little of both, I’d say. But I had hope. If not miles and miles of it, then just enough to see something better over the horizon for 1984.
The 1983 Mets finished on an up note. An up note for them. They were their usual inept, incompetent selves into late July, their record cratering at 37-65, their asses buried in sixth place as per usual.
But something happened. A spark. A flicker. I don’t know, but there was the slightest sign of improvement. They swept a doubleheader on July 31 from the Pirates in what we would later refer to as walkoff fashion. Both wins took twelve innings. The guys who came up big that day were guys like Mookie Wilson, Hubie Brooks, Keith Hernandez, Darryl Strawberry and Jesse Orosco. Jesse won both games. Mookie scored from second on an out to secure the nightcap. A team with players like these couldn’t suck for long.
From July 31 to the end of the 1983 season, the Mets went 31-29. It was the first time the Mets had finished the season on a serious up note since 1976, and 1976 begat 1977. This didn’t feel like a portal to more of the same. This felt like a change was gonna come.
It did. 1984 turned everything about the Mets around in one glorious swoop. They lost on Opening Day but then won their next six. They had young pitchers named Dwight Gooden and Ron Darling and, by July, Sid Fernandez. Darryl was getting better. Keith was taking charge. Rafael Santana came up. Wally Backman took over his position. Davey Johnson had replaced Frank Howard who had replaced George Bamberger and was guiding this heretofore hapless bunch into first place. First Place. It sounded so good. This wasn’t the first place of 1-0 or 3-1 or 9-6 when the back pages of the Post and News would get an annual April chuckle out of the first-place Mets. This was the Mets in first place in June and July. It was such a vibrant feel that it felt like the preceding seven years had never taken place.
But now there were new concerns, new frustrations, new disappointments. The Mets couldn’t hang on to first in 1984. It had been a very, very good season — 90 wins! — but falling helplessly behind the Cubs in August and September dampened the impact. Fortunately, the Mets were now clearly in the realm of good teams. They were only going to get better.
That winter, ’84 going into ’85, they added Gary Carter, a legitimate All-Star catcher. It meant giving up Hubie, but it would mean the heart of the order would have heart: Hernandez, Carter, Strawberry. Gooden had been Rookie of the Year. No telling how good he’d be. Howard Johnson came along, too. He could play third with Ray Knight, a veteran with a rep. Another young reliever, Roger McDowell, came up. Another young starter, Rick Aguilera, too. When Mookie couldn’t play, Lenny Dykstra debuted.
These 1985 Mets were better than the 1984 version. They were tougher, stronger, older. Their ace pitcher, Gooden, was the best anybody had ever seen. It was a dream season in so many ways. The only nightmare was not being able to build a lead. A little time in first place, even in September, didn’t cut it anymore. Their competition, the Cardinals, outlasted them, outmaneuvered them, outwon them. The Mets had played meaningful games every day from April to early October, but they came up three games short in the end.
Hence, there were two collected sets of weight hanging on the shoulders of the longtime Mets fan entering 1986, the year when Davey said our team would dominate. There was the residual ridicule still festering deep down in our innards. And there was the more vital bitterness of having been the Marvelous, Exciting, Terrific, Super M-E-T-S for two almost-joyous seasons yet having nothing but moral victories to show for it.
1986 was supposed to change all that. 1986 did. The Mets had the big start and never stopped. They ran over everybody who got in their way from the outset. They had a double-digit lead before July. They were inevitable.
All that awaited was the single moment that would make it all official, wipe away the shame of 1977-1983 and avenge the unfairness of 1984-1985. That is why I wanted to record the game that would make it so and then drink a toast to it. That is why, an insurmountable lead of 22 games with 23 remaining notwithstanding, it was going to mean so goddamn much to actually clinch the National League Eastern Division.
I couldn’t wait.
But I would. We all would.
I can’t imagine I was the only person in the Metropolitan Area stocking up on tape and champagne, Friday, September 12. The setup was so perfect. We had a magic number of 2 and the team whose loss could combine with our win to change it to 0 was the team we were playing. The Phillies.
And there was no reason we shouldn’t beat the Phillies. We had seven of 12 times in 1986. We had beaten everybody more times than we lost to them. They shouldn’t be any different.
They were talking brave. Mike Schmidt said something about not celebrating on his field. I’d have been more impressed if he’d thrown down that gauntlet in April and made it stick. The Phillies were three years removed from a pennant. They had been the opposite of us from ’77 to ’83, winning the division most of the time. They were the opposite of us again. We were on the verge of being certified winners. They were talking like losers.
“Not on our field.” Whose field? Veterans Stadium was conveniently located on the other side of the Jersey Turnpike. When I was there in August, the joint was easily one-third Mets fans, probably 40 percent. I clapped for the Mets with impunity. Some local started loudly comparing the relative fortunes of the Flyers and Rangers. You know you’ve got nothing if hockey’s what you bring to a baseball game.
Of course the Mets lost that particular game, but they weren’t swept the series. They’d have to be swept this series to be kept from clinching in Mike Schmidt’s face.
Mike Schmidt’s face went unclinched upon. The Phillies, who had shown no real interest in competing for the balance of 1986, got motivated and got hot. The Mets, perhaps pressing with the prize right in front of their eyes, got tense. Or they were just having a bad weekend when an average one would have done. The bottom line is the Phillies outplayed the Mets every step of the way. Mike Schmidt was Mike Schmidt, Steve Jeltz was Ozzie Smith and 1986 felt suspiciously like 1982.
Three games, three losses, 19-game lead with 20 to play. Magic number still 2. Champagne in the visitors’ clubhouse shipped to St. Louis. Champagne in the Prince fridge still chilling. Videotape still clean.
Monday brought no movement in the situation. Schmidt and the Phillies, crackling in over WCAU 1210 AM, won their fourth in a row, over Pittsburgh. Darling and Tudor dueled like they had a year earlier. Alas, this thing felt a lot like 1985 without Darryl hitting the clock. The Mets lost in the 13th. The magic number wouldn’t budge.
The lead was down to 18. Down to 18. There was no way, no ever-lovin’ way, that this division wasn’t going to get clinched sooner or later, presumably sooner. But by Tuesday morning we’d been saying the same thing since Wednesday night. The Daily News was quoting Waiting For Godot, for cryin’ out loud. It wasn’t urgent, but it was a little disturbing.
Was there reason to believe the failure — a word we hadn’t used in the first-person all year — of the Mets to wrap this thing up was foreshadowing? Poll a hundred Mets fans in a hundred places in 1986 and a hundred would tell you we would march through Houston and then either Boston or California. None of the four division leaders was in a race, but none of them had so separated themselves from the pack as we had. If we could be tripped up by the Phillies and Cardinals, could any of them give us trouble? Was Sports Illustrated on to something when it dared to ask on a September cover, “Are the Mets as good as their record?”
On September 16, they were, breaking their second four-game losing streak of the season. The Mets beat St. Louis 4-2. Because the Phillies beat the Pirates, the Magic Number was 1. The Mets had clinched a tie for the N.L. East. That meant that if the Mets lost their next 18 while the Phillies won their next 18…what it really meant was the Mets and me couldn’t open our champagne, but the Mets could give each other shaving cream pies in the face as they packed to come home.
I might have shaved. I don’t remember.
It would have been very, very nice to have clinched as soon as Metropolitanly possible. Would have been fine to have done it in Philadelphia. Would have been OK to have done it in St. Louis. But now they could do it at Shea. Where better? It was September 17, still a week earlier than they nailed down their first division title 17 years earlier, two weeks before they achieved their second. The ’86 Mets were still way ahead of schedule. They were also right within the sweet spot of Bob Murphy’s and Gary Thorne’s predictions. The two announcers had guessed the 16th or the 19th. I thought they were overly cautious. Turns out they were more or less right.
On the 17th of September, a future Hall of Famer faced a pitcher whose promise was wrecked by substance abuse. Dennis Eckersley, who had once won 20 games, had bottomed out as a starter and an alcoholic. Even though he had fallen off his 1985 pace, Dwight Gooden was still considered in the midst of the early stages of a brilliant career. Poll a hundred baseball fans in a hundred places and a hundred would tell you which man was headed for the Hall and which was on the path to oblivion.
Eckersley wasn’t bad, but was easily overcome. Keith Hernandez, who could catch everything, caught a nasty cold, so first base and the three-hole were covered by callup Dave Magadan. Magadan drove in the game’s first run in the fourth. A Strawberry single made it 2-0. Magadan — should we call him Mags? — plated another in the sixth to make it 3-0. He would finish the night 3-for-4, his only “out” mishandled, so he reached on an error. A resourceful fan used a Sharpie and an empty personal pizza box to craft a DAVE MAGADAN FAN CLUB sign that got picked up by TV. The new kid was removed in the eighth. Hernandez felt just well enough to want to be on the field when the game was over. Who would deny him?
Gooden did what Gooden did across most of 1986. He pitched well. Not blindingly brilliantly, but decisively competently, especially against a bad team, which — despite the presence of three or four long-term Cooperstown candidates (Sandberg, Maddux, Palmeiro and, though no one would have guessed, Eckersley) — they were. The Cubs of 1984 were long gone. Like the Cards of 1985 and the successes they attained over our live bodies, they were about to be downgraded to the collective subconscious.
The Phillies were finally losing, at home to the Cardinals. Bad timing. If they lost before we won, wouldn’t that be anticlimactic? Luckily there was a total of 13 runs being scored at the Vet. Our evening moved along more rapidly.
Doc struck out eight and scattered six hits. He also walked five and gave up a two-run homer to Rafael Palmeiro, the second of his career, in the eighth. That cut the lead to 4-2. Gooden persevered and finished the inning and came back out for the ninth.
On the field behind him: Hernandez, Backman, Santana, Knight, Wilson, Dykstra, Strawberry. Gooden threw to Carter. For all the clever platooning and maneuvering Davey Johnson was wont to do, the nine men most responsible for making 1986 different from every Met year since 1974 were in the game.
In the booth, Steve Zabriskie and Rusty Staub concentrated on how this would make up for the near misses of the previous two seasons. Tim McCarver and Ralph Kiner were down in the clubhouse, awaiting a drenching.
If Doc were still Doc, he would have finished off the Cubs three up, three down, maybe on six high heaters and three Lord Charles. But style points weren’t a factor. In the top of the ninth, Jody Davis drew Dwight’s fifth base on balls. Dunston grounded to Santana who got Davis at second. One out. Chris Speier, a veteran who gave Gooden fits, pinch-hit and singled. First and second. Though it seemed unlikely, the Cubs had the tying runs on and the go-ahead run at bat. Gooden was still pitching. He was the ace. You don’t take the ace out of a 4-2 game in the ninth when you’re trying to win something important. Davey wouldn’t anyway.
Doc struck out Mumphrey. Two out. Chico Walker stepped in. He grounded to Backman. Backman tossed it to Hernandez.
WE DID IT!
“We” didn’t do anything. The Mets did. The Mets clinched their first division title in 13 years. They slew the dragons of finishing sixth, sixth, sixth, fifth, fifth/fourth (’81), sixth and sixth. They eased the pain of finishing second and second. But after 145 games, it felt that they did it for us, the fans who stuck by their predecessors and then them for so long. No matter what the Mets would do in the next month, the simple act of moving 18-1/2 up with 17 to play was all the gratification I could have asked for at that moment.
WE DID IT!
That’s what I yelled as Hernandez clenched the clincher. I ran over to my mother and hugged her. It was the first time I voluntarily did that since I was old enough to make such choices. Mom, who had pressed REC on the VCR when the ninth started, had been a Mets fan since 1984. Dad had been a Mets fan since 1984. They missed the grinding numbness of bad baseball but they felt the sharp annoyance of coming close and missing. This was something besides a roof that we could share. We opened the champagne, poured, clinked and drank.
WE DID IT!
The front door buzzed. It was Joel. Joel was taking a business class at Nassau Community that fall, something my mother was always encouraging him to do. I think he skipped out early so he could hear the clinching. He drove right over. My mother gave him a glass of champagne. On TV, we noticed it was a riot. Most of the nearly 50,000 fans (not quite 48,000 paid) remembered the way previous crowds stormed Shea after final outs in 1969 and 1973. ’69 was spontaneous. This seemed 13 years premeditated. The players, we would hear, barely escaped with their equipment and their well being (Aguilera’s shoulder was grabbed hard enough to bother him). But the players looked pretty raucous, too, in their clubhouse. Lots of champagne for them. And shaving cream. And everything else. No reprimands for the players; they deserved it. The fans were already coming in for criticism. The Mets would need their field the next afternoon for a 1:35 start. They’d also have a bunch of games after the regular season ended. Groundskeeper Pete Flynn surveyed his grass and eventually opined that these fans didn’t deserve a champion.
WE DID IT!
We emptied our bottle. Joel and I took the celebration to the Beach House, a bar a couple of blocks away. I put on my Mets jacket. Was disappointed when that didn’t generate more instant camaraderie among strangers.
WE DID IT!
I had business in the city the next day and bought every newspaper I could find along the way.
The News had its trademark bunny hop out of its familiar magician’s hat and high-five Davey on the back page under a headline that said, simply, CLINCH! The front page? AT LAST!
The Post: WE’RE NO. 1 on the front, How sweet it is! on the back.
They Clinch It! and FINALLY! for both editions — Long Island and New York — of Newsday.
The Times dutifully reported that Finally, the Mets Achieve the Inevitable Title.
The Asbury Park Press sedately announced, The number is zero.
USA Today alerted America: METS FIRST TO CLINCH.
El Diario went with a Mets logo and CAMPEONES.
On the LIRR home, I noticed nobody had left any newspapers on the seats as was the custom. Everybody, like me, was saving theirs.
WE DID IT!
The playoff previews and such would wait. The big story was the fans and the field. TV kept showing it. Channel 9’s newscast played the bullrush accompanied by Lionel Richie’s current hit, “Dancing On The Ceiling”. Strangely, they hadn’t thought to flip images upside down the way Lionel partied on in the video. It would have been appropriate. The world we had been stranded in for 13 dry years was turned on its head.
The Mets were champions of something. We had done it.
by Greg Prince on 15 September 2006 3:44 am Chuck James is so The Man.
With the help of 1 or 2 vital Braves (it’s the least they can do) taking advantage of a roster of decomposing Phillies — Randall Simon, Jeff Conine, Jose Hernandez, Jamie Moyer…is that Johnny Callison lingering by the bat rack? — the magic number is 1.
1.0020: Perspective. 1 quarter-century ago, on a Sunday afternoon in September 1981, I sat in my dorm room in Tampa, my first month in college, my first month away from the Mets. I twirled my AM tuner up and down the dial searching for some station that gave baseball scores at regular intervals like WINS and WCBS did at home. I also added to my first long-distance bill by calling (516) 976-1313 every 10 minutes. I wanted…needed to know what was going in the Mets-Cardinals game. The Cardinals were in first, but the Mets had taken the first 2 games of their 3-game series. A win would get us within 2-1/2 of the lead with 2 weeks to go in this, baseball’s only split season. After trailing 5-0 in the 3rd when Pat Zachry had nothing, the Mets scored 2 in the 6th and 3 in the 7th off Lary Sorensen, Doug Bair, Jim Kaat (who gave up a pinch single to Rusty Staub, the only batter he faced), Jose DeLeon and Bob Sykes. In the top of the 9th, Neil Allen — following shutout work from Ray Searage, Mike Marshall and Jesse Orosco — allowed a 2-out triple to Tito Landrum, who scored when the Met centerfielder made an error. In the bottom of the 9th, Bruce Sutter, attempting to save the game for Mark Littell, also got the first 2 outs. But then Frank Taveras doubled and the centerfielder whose gaffe resulted in the lead run, No. 1 Mookie Wilson, homered. The Mets, as I learned in a 1-line summation on the CBS radio network rundown of football and other scores, won 7-6. Alone in my room some 1,100 miles south of Shea Stadium, I jumped around for probably a half-hour. The Mets never made it to 1st place, but I never forgot what happened that September day.
1.0040: More Perspective. 1 decade ago, on a Thursday afternoon in September 1996, I sat in my office in Manhattan. I had the radio tuned to WFAN. The Mets were playing the Astros. The Mets were nowhere near 1st place, but I followed every pitch. No. 1 Lance Johnson had made September exciting by toppling 1 Met record after another. That day at the Astrodome, he collected 3 of what would turn out to be 227 base hits, 1 of them his 21st triple of the season. The exploits of Johnson, Todd Hundley (41 homers) and Bernard Gilkey (117 RBI) kept me entranced as an otherwise miserable and typical season wound down. As the game progressed, a salesman in my company who fancied himself a baseball fan wandered by and heard the play-by-play. “What game is this?” he asked. “Mets and Astros,” I said. “Oh,” he decided. “That’s not important.” It was 1 of the most ignorant statements I ever heard anybody say about a baseball game, even 1 Rick Trlicek would lose to Doug Drabek. The Mets finished deep in 4th place, but I never forgot what happened that September day.
1.0060: A Little More Perspective. 1 quadrennium ago, on a Saturday night in September 2002, I sat in the mezzanine at Shea Stadium. I had been doing a lot of sitting in that mezzanine that summer, none of it to any positive effect of late. Starting with a doubleheader defeat at the hands of the defending World Champion Arizona Diamondbacks, I had seen the Mets lose 6 in a row. The Mets simply weren’t winning at home that August and losing a lot in September, too. Long since dropped out of the Wild Card race, the Mets were running out the clock versus the Montreal Expos. Javier Vazquez (7 IP, 2 ER) and Endy Chavez (4 hits) mostly toyed with the home team. I was mostly annoyed by the family sitting to my right. The father thought it very clever when “Tequila” was played during a pitching change to yell “Juice!” at the chorus, which inspired his son to yell “Gatorade!” and they just kept taking turns naming different beverages. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say I sort of wanted to kill myself. In the 9th inning, an inning I hoped would go quickly so I could go quickly, the Mets were down to their last out, trailing 3-2. Edgardo Alfonzo was on 3rd and Marco Scutaro was on 1st when Brady Clark grounded to Andres Galarraga, as surehanded a 1st baseman as there was. Galarraga muffed it and Alfonzo ran home to tie the game. I saw a reason to live. In the bottom of the 11th, with 2 on and 2 out, No. 1 Esix Snead deposited a 3-run homer into the Met bullpen. The Mets won 6-3 and I was as happy as I’d been inside Shea Stadium all year. Last place would prove inescapable, but I never forgot what happened that September night.
1.0080: And Even More Perspective. 1 year ago, across 30 days in September 2005, I spent a month right here at my computer. I, like my partner in this venture, blogged, and much of that blogging reflected the hopes and dreams of a promising season crashed on the rocks of reality. I wrote things after losses like “I know I said I’d care, but I didn’t” and “but really…thrown out at second on a single to center?” and “‘come on out to Shea,’ urged New York Mets eulogist Fran Healy, ‘and watch the Mets lie in state.'” 1 year ago tonight, I pushed myself away from my computer to go to a morose Shea Stadium to pay my respects. The Mets lost a game so futile and so uneventful that I don’t remember a single detail except what I wrote when I got home: “This, I told my companion…is what we will look back on next year, or perhaps the year after that, or some distant year beyond that 1, when the Mets are titlebound. ‘Yeah, remember that game against the Nationals in September ’05, how we went and there was nobody there and the Mets lost? Yeah.'” The Mets would turn it around as the season ended — calling up No. 1 Anderson Hernandez, winning 12 of their last 16 and salvaging an above-.500 record — but mostly I never forgot what I felt that September night, that as fans we put up with lots of sad denouements just so someday we can point back and say, “Yeah, remember?”
1.01: Perspective In Toto You’ll read a lot and hear a lot in the coming days and weeks about who you are and what you think. Those who have no clue what it’s like to be a Mets fan will become authorities. Others who have never spent a single moment in your shoes will be sitting in your seats. People who couldn’t possibly match your track record for getting caught up in a team that has been bringing you down for much of your lives will be talking at you in what sounds like a foreign language, so unfamiliar will they be with the Met dialect. As this September becomes this October, many things will feel different. A lot of them will be great. Some of them will get in the way of your good time. Now that the magic number in this unbelievably magical season is down to 1, now that what we’ve waited 17 years and 145 games for is potentially hours away, now that you and your team will forever be the National League Eastern Division Champions of 2006, never forget this 1 thing.
This 1’s for us.
by Jason Fry on 15 September 2006 1:22 am “Let's go Braves!”
Whoa. No, that feels weird. Oh man, are the TBS guys showing something about their trillion consecutive division titles? If I weren't running on the treadmill with headphones on I could hear them…. Oh, who needs to hear them? I'm sure it's something about how Bobby Cox's touch cures measles, scabies and cataracts, turns dead spots in the lawn green, is worth a full year of Baby Einstein tapes to newborns and transforms water into Gatorade. Yeah, that and $2 million will get you like 77 wins.
“C'mon Atlanta!”
Naw. That feels wrong too. What are they doing now? What standings are those? Why the hell aren't we on top of them? Ohhh, it's the wild-card standings. Man is it nice to only take a scholarly interest in those. There's Atlanta down at the bottom. Seven back. Yeah right. Stick a tomahawk in 'em.
“Whoh-oh-ohhhh-wh — ”
Um. Absolutely not.
“Braves! Braves! Braves!”
Yeesh. Oh, look, it's all their pennants panning by. Wow, last year this sight would have filled me with rage while Braden Looper was blowing the same game twice. Even back in May it would have left me swearing and snarling. Now…my God, it's actually relaxing. I'm thinking about champagne. Will Billy jump in Lo Duca's arms? Will it be a blowout that ends with Darren Oliver putting his arms up calmly but proudly? Will Pedro pump a fist after also pitching the first no-hitter in Met history? Will Willie smile? Will he actually grin? Which Met will be the most insane in the celebration? What will the new guys who had nothing to do with it like Ledee and Humber do? Will I feel sorry for Nady? Will I scream? Will it get a little dusty in the room? Wait a minute, that's for another night. Back to business….
“At-a-lan-ta!” [CLAP, CLAP, CLAP CLAP CLAP!]
Ack. No, I hate the dolphin clap in all situations. It can make a platoon of Navy SEALS sound like a bunch of junior-high cheerleaders. Hey, Francoeur got a hit. That's something. Looks like it's too late for my chosen script of Francoeur leading Atlanta to victory as his three grand slams outweigh Ryan Howard's two grannies and three solo shots. Besides, that's mixing real baseball with fantasy baseball, and the baseball gods don't like that. Still, there's Frenchy and his sub-.300 OBP on first. If I could only find a decent cheer….
“Go, Braves, go! Go, Braves, go!”
Ugh. Man, this is a pretty decent crowd for Atlanta — it's like 1/4 full. Twice this and you'd think it was the playoffs, hee hee. Playoffs! Atlanta! Ho ho ho! OK, a hit for Diaz. There we go. Fuckin' Braves…hey, that's it!
“LET'S GO, YA FUCKEN BRAVES! C'MON ATLANTA — YOU FUCKS! WHOA-OH-OHHHH, ASSMUNCH LOSERS!”
Ahhh. Better. And looky there! That one's gone! I temporarily love you….ummmm….Martin Prado!
by Greg Prince on 14 September 2006 3:11 am Don’t send the Braves to do the Mets’ job.
They couldn’t win one lousy game from the Phillies to facilitate our clinching. But so what? Our continuous demoralization of the Fish — poor babies — is plenty for 2 nights. And watching Turner Field in September of 2006 resemble a very depressed Shea Stadium from September of 2002 (1 loss after another, plenty of good seats still available) was worth it.
All our timely hitting, heads-up running and massive advantage-taking is public record and happily familiar. A couple of things I noticed that seem worth mentioning:
Thumbs up for the Dolphin Stadium organist. This person played “Take The ‘A’ Train” for The Beltra(i)n and “Love Me Tender” for Valentin(e). Thumbs down for whoever at SNY operates the bases diagram, which is always about five pitches behind. Thumbs scratching my head when Keith said that given his cold, he was better off up in the booth than on the field. Uh, Keith…is playing technically an option for you anymore?
And Gary acknowledged the sacks of Soilmaster! I knew it wasn’t our imagination.
Now of course we count on nothing and we don’t care to choreograph anything, but is anybody here really sorry that a possible Phillies loss tomorrow (no sure thing, they are playing the Braves) won’t clinch for us? Who wants to grab the brass ring in absentia?
We play in Pittsburgh Friday night. An hour later Phillies throw down with another personal favorite, the Astros in Houston. Don’t know what the magic number will be then. For now, it’s a highly satisfying 2.
2.01: A Great Combination. Sometimes, Mary MacGregor would have us believe, you are torn between 2 loves (she actually said lovers, but that’s not something I’d know about). Jason said last month there were Gary people and Keith people in the ’80s much the way there were John people and Paul people in the ’60s (he actually said Mick people and Keef people, but I’m clearly a Beatles person). In this century, are there Jose people and David people? I have to confess that a small percentage of me, like .0000000000000002%, slightly resented the instant popularity of David Wright when he came along in 2004 and trumped the presence of the previous year’s savior, Jose Reyes. Reyes is the guy who zoomed up from the minors at not quite 20 and shook me from my brief but steep stupor in 2003 where the Mets were concerned. Reyes is the 1 who made me forgive the untimely, unfair, unclassy dispatch of now-minor league infielder Edgardo Alfonzo (who must be sticking pins in his Ricky Ledee doll every night). Reyes is the one who made me forget the disappeared balleticism of Rey Ordoñez, not much of a hitter, kind of a questionable person, but oh what a shortstop. Reyes is the one, more than any other Met in my estimation, who opened the door to the new and promising Met era that grew just a little up the road from his debut. When Wright came up, Reyes was either on the DL or heading back there from 2nd freaking base. When I attended the Home Opener in 2005, I couldn’t believe how many WRIGHT 5 jerseys confronted me. He had been here barely 2-1/2 months the year before and now he’s the idol of millions? Ah, but what Wright did for them, Wright did for me. He matured a little ahead of Reyes and in no time at all (remember, my so-called resentment was infinitesimal), I saw why everybody wanted to turn their backs into advertisements for David. I made mine into 1, too. Wright was the recipient of the M!-V!-P! chants right out of the gate this year. It was hard to not want to coronate. That support has since been inherited by Carlos Beltran, yet lately the “smart” talk says Jose Reyes is the real most valuable player on this club. And you know what I find myself thinking? That people are awfully quick to dismiss David Wright. So to answer my own question, I’m definitely a Jose-and-David (Josavid?) person. I plan to spend the next several years as such.
2.02: Love Him Tender. First time in 18 years. First time since 1988. No division title since then. In Octobers 1999 and 2000, I didn’t sweat such details. We were Wild Cards and proud of it because it put us into the tournament and that’s all that mattered. The man who guided us to that particular promised land was No. 2, Bobby Valentine. Color me aghast on the order of Keith Hernandez Tuesday night when an online poll was hyped during the Snighcast asking fans to vote for the greatest Met manager ever. Choices? Hodges, Berra, Johnson, Randolph. With apologies to the unfortunately omitted Casey Stengel, it should be illegal to have any such discussion without Bobby Valentine. Has it really been so long that the only manager to guide the Mets into two consecutive postseasons (and about a million amazin’ memories) is now a footnote? Or was this some sort of sanitization of history, like a few days earlier when the same survey asked which of four Mets should be considered for number-retirement and none of them was Doc Gooden? Whatever. As we edge into that elusive first divisional championship since the last year of the Reagan presidency, let us remember to toast the skipper who gave us a helluva lot to keep us occupied somewhere in between 1988 and 2006.
by Greg Prince on 13 September 2006 9:32 pm Bellowed unironically a few minutes ago for the first time since the 1996 World Series:
GO BRAVES!
Atlanta's up 5-0 in the the 3rd in the opener of a doubleheader. Kyle Davies has homered.
Two wins for them and one for us tonight and magic gets a whole lot more magical.
Still don't like them, but who cares? They're just some team playing the Phillies.
UPDATE: In the minutes since I shared this with you, Davies loaded the bases, Howard drove one over the fence that Andruw Jones reeled back, turning it into a monumental sac fly. And then Mr. Marlin Jeff Conine singled home two. Davies is out and it's 5-3 and Oscar Villarreal is in and there's a long way to go.
Did I say GO BRAVES!? I'm sure I meant to hell.
by Greg Prince on 13 September 2006 6:53 am It had only been two lousy losses since the previous Mets win, but it felt fairly major that the Mets asserted themselves in Florida. For you pre-Mentos mint lovers, think of it as Asserts…with Metsin!
For the rest of you, consider a club that was pulling itself back to the pack in its actions if not actually in the standings. More significant than the new, improved magic number having been reintroduced as 25% thinner and a thousand percent more delicious, it was a relief to watch a team whose collective head has been taking a collective nap up its collective rump wake up and get back to the work of slapping around the hapless hopes and distant dreams of all comers, contenders and pretenders.
Given the positive result and apparent attitude adjustment, consider Tuesday night 2…2…2 wins in 1.
The Mets reacted to the Marlins Monday night and much of Tuesday the way the Russians and Cubans recoiled at the Wolverines in Red Dawn. Patrick Swayze and his band of young, courageous freedom fighters attacked the Colorado Commie incursion like the fierce animals named for the local sports collective they were, never giving up no matter the odds that sent them into the mountains scrapping for their and America’s survival in the nascent stages of World War III. The invading communist imperialists in their warm coats never knew what hit them.
Well, everything about these Wolverfish is surface-appealing and everybody who isn’t an overcat loves the underdog, but a) we’re the good guys, b) we never give up and c) the National League is our territory. There will be no teal dawn here.
Delgado, Floyd and Wright in particular asserted themselves. They waited out the close pitches and swung hard at the hittable ones. Our bullpen, with Bradford, Mota and Heilman holding them, Wagner stopping them and Heath Bell enjoying sunflower seeds, resisted falling prey to the Marlins’ hackneyed script. We gutted out some very trying innings, but by the ninth, we had persevered and advanced. Let the diehard Florida fan (note use of singular) remember this night the way we can pick a dozen to rue from September 1987 or 1998. They had their chance. They lost to a better team.
Glad to see us acting like it.
And yes, the penthouse is finally vacant. To Cox, to Smoltz, to Jones and Jones, to Giles, to Jordan, to McCann and Francoeur, to all who have attained and defended National League divisional titles for so long, from West to East, from 1991 to 2005, you have been honorable champions and all those who care for baseball will miss your noble presence this October.
I’m just kidding. Take a well-deserved hike you losers. Highway’s that way, fellas.
For us, it’s 3 for the road.
3.01: Sweet! There was no greater clutch hitter in Mets history than Keith Hernandez, but if I needed 1 Met batter to get on base, I might very well choose the ultimate 3-hole hitter, John Olerud. Back when the Atlanta Braves were an obstacle as opposed to an afterthought, it was Oly’s grand slam off none other than Greg Maddux that brought the 1999 Mets back to life after a 7-game losing streak nearly ruined a beautiful season. Olerud’s swing was also a thing of beauty and his ability to accept the pitch that came after ball 3 was sublime indeed. While nobody will ever match Mex at 1st base, when Oly was 3 on your defensive scorecard, you were in good, soft hands. It’s taken 7 years to ride the ex-Jay highway from Olerud to Delgado and have a guy in that position in whom we can feel confident on both sides of the ball (though it’s surely more power than leather where Carlos D is concerned).
3.02: Between Throneberry and Strawberry. Yes, baseball was berry, berry, berry good to Chico Escuela. He was the toast of an otherwise barren Spring Training in 1979 when Bill Murray followed his last-gasp career-extending exploits through St. Petersburg for Weekend Update. Sadly, Chico had become a social leper after choosing to run down 3 separate Mets icons in his controversial book, Bad Stuff ‘Bout The Mets. What was worse — Tom Seaver taking up two parking places, Yogi Berra’s limited card skills or Ed Kranepool forgetting to return Chico’s soap? The real crime, it seemed to us watching the Mets at home that March, was the decision to take 3 young unknowns north that April: Neil Allen, Mike Scott and Jesse Orosco. It was obvious cheapness, the kind of cheapness that has choked Dolphin Stadium of any tangible support as the non-football sublessee make its improbable playoff run. The ’79 Mets couldn’t match the ’06 Marlins for raw talent but as judged by the trio of inexpensive pitchers’ future endeavors, maybe Joe McDonald’s people weren’t as lame as we thought. As you may know, Jesse Orosco debuted as a Met wearing No. 61…and if you know that, you’re either me and nuts or you treat Mets By The Numbers like WINS and tune in 2, 3, 4 times a day. If you want to know more about the numerical savant who runs that Mets site of Mets sites, immerse yourself in Paul Lukas’ Uni Watch blog, which features a berry, berry, berry good interview with its exceedingly capable keeper.
3.03: Our Old Pal. After beating Florida Tuesday night, the Mets need to win 11 of 18 games to become the 4th edition in team history to rack up 100 regular-season victories. The other 3 had 1 man in common, the quintessential Met No. 3, Buddy Harrelson, ’69 shortstop, ’86 and ’88 coach. Buddy’s managerial prospects peaked in the 100-60 year of 1988 when, filling in for Davey Johnson in Los Angeles, the Mets that were temporarily his snapped out of a disturbingly sluggish period way worse than that which has afflicted these Mets for a couple of days, swept the Dodgers a 3-game series and took off on a tear that culminated in a 29-8 stretch run to end that regular season. During the radio broadcast from Miami, Howie mentioned Jerry Manuel and Manny Acta as potential managerial candidates because coaches on winning teams go the head of such lists. Indeed, Bud Harrelson was actually sought by teams that weren’t the Mets (or the Ducks) based on how highly valued he was as a Johnson lieutenant. When he got his chance as Met skipper, he was highly successful…for a while. Harrelson ultimately fizzled as a Met manager. But Buddy will forever be a cherished Met icon. Need proof? Chico Escuela had not 1 iota of bad stuff to say about him.
by Jason Fry on 13 September 2006 5:15 am You'd think an epochal game like that one would have felt more like a celebration. Instead, after six hours, 60-odd calls missed by Brian Onora and approximately 60,000 gallons of water falling from the Miami sky, it felt like survival.
But the end result is the same.
The Atlanta Braves are dead, their NL East reign of terror is over. (Their wild-card chances? Mathematicians can find a heartbeat, but they're the only ones.)
A million years ago, before the skies opened up, Oliver Perez was decidedly enigmatic, alternating mowdowns and meltdowns. Our offense was on hiatus. And then, when it looked too late, when it looked like we might spent Wednesday moaning about that 1-1 pitch to Julio Franco, it all snapped back into focus: Our usual buzzard's luck at Soilmaster Stadium turned as Carlos Delgado found the 410-odd-foot zig in the outfield fence instead of the 434-foot zag. One sight I've come to love is Delgado's baleful glare as he tracks the arc of a long drive that may or may not be out — that ball wisely chose not to give Carlos any lip. Wright's ball wasn't quite so cooperative — he just missed a home run — but OK, we'd do it the hard way, Floyd-style. (Limp for another six weeks, Clifford. You've a role yet to play here.)
And the specter of Cody Ross, a night terror I don't think I'd ever heard of until a couple of days ago, and of course Miguel Cabrera standing between the Mets and the chance to crawl back to the hotel. Fortunately, Shingo Takatsu and his funk were nowhere to be seen. We won. Somewhere down in Atlanta, I can only hope Chipper was watching when the inevitable became official.
By now we can agree we're a bit tired of these Marlins, of their semi-anonymous sluggers and their parade of good young left-handers. (Though I must admit if we were duking it out with the Nats, I'd be rooting hard for Girardi & Co.) Looking beyond the immediate business at hand, I'm not so sure the Marlins are the evolving juggernaut we think they are. Young teams can go backward as well as forward, particuarly if the Marlins don't spend a little money to add what Lance Johnson once memorably called “more wolves to protect the pubs.” Which they won't. That said, I certainly don't want to see them tomorrow or later this month or in October — they're playing with house money right now, which can be awfully dangerous.
As for the late, no-longer-so-great Atlanta Braves, I wish I were more excited. If it were 10 pm, I would be. Ding-dong the witch is dead and all that. Still, right now all I can think is, They're no Florida Marlins.
by Greg Prince on 12 September 2006 9:36 am “Mr. Randolph? Hi, I'm Rachel. NLE Properties.”
“Hello Rachel. Sorry I'm running late. I had to call a last-minute departmental meeting.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Oh, just had to shake up some complacent employees. Nothing to worry about.”
“Are you sure? Because I know we're so close to signing the papers…”
“Really, just a bump in the road. And to make up for my tardiness, I brought us lunch.”
“Oh, Mr. Randolph, sandwiches. You shouldn't have.”
“No problem. I get 'em free. They're toasted.”
“Yes, of course they are…um, are they tuna?
“No. Why?”
“Thought I smelled fish.”
“That's just from my job. We had a problem with some fish last night. That's why I had to call the meeting.”
“I see…oh, this is our floor. Penthouse.”
“Whoa! Nice.”
“Yes, I thought it would be a good idea if we looked around one more time. Now you're sure you're going to take the place?”
“Rachel, I've always been a winner. And this is where winners live, right?”
“I'm glad to hear you say that. Between you and me, I get my biggest commissions when I can get a new client into the penthouse. It's been a while. Twice I thought Mr. Valentine was going to take this space, but things fell through at the last minute.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Now what day were you thinking about moving in?”
“Any day now. Maybe as soon as Wednesday night if all goes well.”
“Is that when you expect to be ready?”
“Can't say for sure. I'll be traveling Thursday. Could take 'til the weekend. Can't imagine it will be much longer. That all right?”
“Oh, that's fine. Gives us plenty of time to get the old tenant out.”
“Old tenant? You mean this place isn't vacant yet? Seems pretty empty.”
“Well, technically the old tenant has another day on the lease. He's been moving out in stages since April. There's hardly any sign of him here anymore.”
“Hmmm…say these closets aren't empty.”
“That must be all that's left of his belongings. You know, the man who had this place has been here for a long time. I thought we were going to get a new tenant from Canada back in '94, but that whole summer was crazy.”
“I see. But his stuff will be out?”
“Absolutely.”
“Because it's kind of creepy seeing all those tomahawks in the closet.”
“Believe me, Mr. Randolph, everything will be ready for you to move in when you're ready.”
“What's with this guy? There must be like 14 of those things in this closet!”
“We try not to pry. Mr. Cox hasn't been a bad neighbor. A little grouchy of late, but he knows the rules.”
“Also, this place needs a paint job. It's all red and white. I don't care for that at all.”
“Oh, we'll have it repainted for when you move in. What colors would you prefer?”
“Do you have blue and orange?”
“I was in the warehouse this morning and saw we have a nice stockpile of cans of those two colors. The company ordered a case of it around 1988. They thought we'd be using a lot of it in the penthouse. I'm not sure what happened.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I see you're admiring the picture windows. Lovely isn't it?”
“I'll say. This is a great view. I can look down on everybody from here. You know I've visited the penthouse in your complex across town…”
“At ALE Properties? You know Mr. Torre?”
“Oh, we've shared a few sandwiches.”
“He's very happy there. He used to live in this building, though not on the top floor.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Say, you know what I found out from one of our more tenured agents the other day? When this structure was built in 1969, there was something of a struggle over who would get custody of this penthouse.”
“You don't say.”
“Funny story. A Mr. Durocher was all set to move in. Had all his suits and hats — big clotheshorse, they say — on racks right by the elevator. Had a truck from the liquor store around the corner coming by to stock the wet bar and everything. But then you know what happened?”
“He didn't get the penthouse?”
“Exactly! A Mr. Hodges moved in, right in front of him. That was before my time but they say he was a really nice man.”
“I've heard.”
“Didn't stay long. Same for Mr. Berra and Mr. Johnson. They all worked for the same company as you, didn't they?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, we certainly hope you'll be able to take out a longer-term lease on the place.”
“I hope so, too.”
“Any other questions, Mr. Randolph?”
“No, looks good. Like I said, I'm ready to sign the papers and get my stuff in here by the weekend.”
“Great. NLE Properties will be happy to have you.”
“One thing…”
“Yes?”
“Please be sure to get those tomahawks out of the closet. No kidding, they really creep me out.”
by Greg Prince on 12 September 2006 2:20 am Breaks are good. It’s not a bad idea taking a break every now and then. I know how hard you all work…my point is this: Break’s over.
—President Bartlet
OK, so maybe Dave Williams isn't the answer. That was Uggla all around, but the starting pitching is where it begins and, against the Marlins, ended. Quickly.
Maine makes me nervous, Trachsel makes me nauseous and now Williams has made me negate my previous enthusiasm for his playoff elevation. Given that our last three games this trio's hurled — and I do mean hurled — has produced a composite score of Others 30 Us 6, I withdraw my endorsement of any Mets pitcher who isn't Pedro, Glavine or El Duque. Right now, if we need a fourth starter in the NLDS, Mets in three.
Assuming we qualify for the NLDS.
by Greg Prince on 11 September 2006 4:19 am My father goes somewhere, he generally carries nothing. Whatever he needs is presumably in his pockets. I never noticed it until I realized how he’s the opposite of me. I take after my mother. I carry a bag.
Not a purse, not a man purse. A shoulder bag I guess you’d call it. An overnight bag or a gym bag maybe. When I had a Mets game, it was my game bag. It replaced a briefcase for me years ago and it just became a habit. First for work, then for anywhere I went that involved public transportation. I was never a backpack person and those messenger bags never cut it for me. Mine was kind of bulky, a little too rectangular for the subway, but I liked it.
What was so important that I decided I needed a whole bag to schlep it everywhere?
Press kit folder from the last event I attended
Older press kit folder repurposed to hold current work stuff
Legal pad
Steno pad
Reporter’s notebook
Pens (some run dry)
Pencils (none very sharp)
Rusting paper clips
Brittle rubber bands
Dozens of tissues and napkins, mostly crumpled or deteriorating
Dozens of business cards, many creased beyond respectability
A book
A magazine
The Times
The News
Newsday
Occasionally, if I wasn’t mad at it, the Post
A plastic bag with an AM/FM walkman, headphones, four to eight spare AA batteries and three homemade compilation tapes
An extra plastic bag
Sprint PCS phone
New York City subway map
Long Island Rail Road monthly ticket
Long Island Rail Road monthly ticket sleeve
Timetables for two or three LIRR branches and two or three stations
Portable umbrella
Repeatedly refilled Poland Spring bottle
Small plastic bag for water bottle in case of leakage
Spare bottlecaps (as some facilities take your caps away when you buy their beverages)
A baseball cap if my destination involved the sun and/or baseball
The current Mets pocket schedule
The previous season’s Mets pocket schedule
A pack of Big Red chewing gum, possibly open
A Ziploc bag filled with prescription medicines plus emergency supplies of Advil, Lanacane, Band-Aids, Tums, Pepcid, Gas-X, Tylenol Sinus, Tylenol Cold, Tylenol Cold Non-Drowsiness Formula, Hall’s Mentholated Cough Drops, Chapstick and a spare pair of shoe laces.
In my entire life of carrying spare shoelaces, I’ve never needed them. Maybe the day I stop carrying them, I’ll rue it.
There was a Saturday when I grabbed the bag and hopped a train. Not because I had to but because I wanted to. Both of us, Stephanie and I, made a rare weekend daytrip out of East Rockaway into Manhattan. Our first destination was Grand Central Station. Maybe because we don’t commute in there on a regular basis, we love that place. We once spent a vacation looking for excuses to hang out there. Our two favorite destinations: the Transit Museum annex & store and the dining concourse on the lower level. We would hit both on this Saturday.
The Transit Museum held special appeal. It hosted a salute to the Subway Series, all of them. The Giants and the Yankees. The Dodgers and the Yankees. The Mets and the Yankees. One wall was dominated by a Mets pitcher. “Al Leiter,” I said. “Bobby Jones,” Stephanie corrected me. I’ll be damned. It was a righthander with facial hair after all. I so associated the disappointment of the 2000 Series with Al’s heroic effort in Game Five that I just assumed it was him.
We took some pictures and then retreated to Junior’s for lunch. Stephanie loved the original Junior’s. She worked downtown and once or twice found an excuse with a workmate to cross the Brooklyn Bridge and take out dessert from there. Its spinoff location was our favorite spot to eat in Grand Central. Overpriced, but almost worth it. The waiter, a chatty, older New York guy who probably turned on the local charm for tourists, inquired into what we were up to, specifically making note of my t-shirt. It said Mets 13 on the front, ALFONZO 13 on the back.
I’m going to the game tonight, I told him. Great, he said — where ya sitting? I’ll look for ya! I gave him my general location in the mezzanine, fully aware he wasn’t going to watch that closely and that I’d be out of camera range.
Even if he made good on his word, he wouldn’t see Stephanie. She wasn’t coming with. This was a Joe affair. Joe is my friend who invites me to games months in advance that I half-heartedly agree to attend with him. When they creep up, I begin to dread them, particularly if they’re on Saturday nights as they seemed to be at least a couple of times a year. I go to games throughout the week but if there’s one time slot I don’t care for, it’s Saturday night. Joe’s single. Saturday night is any night of the week to him. Not that Stephanie and I hit the town in any meaningful fashion on Saturday nights (we’d mostly do laundry), but being married, you tend to want to be with your wife then. Still, I had agreed, so I was going. The afternoon in the city was a way to make the day not a total loss for us.
We finished our Junior’s cheesecake, left Grand Central and headed east. Stephanie wanted to show me around Tudor City. She used to have clients there when she was a case worker. It’s all the way over on the East Side. We could walk over there and up to the UN and take some more pictures. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm. In my black ALFONZO shirt, I needed no jacket. It was probably the only potential item not stuffed into that bag.
It must have been heading toward 5:30 when I pulled out a Long Island Rail Road schedule and coordinated our plans. We would go back to Grand Central and shuttle to Times Square. There, I’d kiss my wife goodbye and put her on a 1, 2 or 3 to Penn Station. I’d U-turn onto a 7, squeeze in among baseball fans, tennis fans and fans of nothing more than going home to Queens. I was headed to Shea for my Saturday night with Joe, the Mets and the Marlins. I found a seat and put my big bag on my lap and we chugged toward Flushing. As I had done a couple of dozen times already in the season, I rode that 7 straight to Willets Point/Shea Stadium. Grabbed my bag, found the open staircase (curse you, U.S. Open) and presented my ticket at Gate D. I walked from the subway right through the entrance completely unimpeded.
I’d see Joe on the escalator but didn’t exactly flag him down. Wanted to make a few stops before committing to our regular round of lulls mixed in with dabs of conversation. Go to the men’s room, stroll the loge, enjoy a Carvel helmet before a line formed, pick up a pretzel and a Diet Pepsi. I like Joe but I didn’t need an extra hour of him before the game. I joined him after stalling, shook hands and shoved my big bag under my seat.
The night would unfold like these tended to. Joe kept score and yelled embarrassing things at the Mets to motivate them (his favorite was telling a player who failed in a particular situation that his Yankee counterpart “wouldn’t do that”). I was annoyed, but more than annoyed, I was cold. So warm was the afternoon in Manhattan and so black was my Fonzie shirt — it held the heat real well — that a jacket seemed unnecessary. But this, rookie, was Shea Stadium, where chill can break out anytime. I grew colder and one of my headaches developed. I had those a lot then, which is why I carried the Advil and the Tylenol. They didn’t help and neither did folding my arms. I told Joe I was cold. He told me he wasn’t. If Joe played the Bernard Gilkey role in Men In Black, he wouldn’t have noticed the space ship either.
I was cold enough to break with an informal policy of mine. I usually rolled my eyes and turned up my nose at what my friend Jace called the credit card hawkers, the presumably struggling actors and actresses recruited to lure you to fill out an application for a card with a Mets logo. To entice you, they would offer you a premium. The idea of spilling confidential information where others were spilling their Gulden’s seemed juxtaposition-challenged. But at last, they had something I wanted, and it wasn’t an additional line of credit.
By signing up for an MBNA Mets credit card, I was entitled to a Mets beach towel. I wasn’t one for the beach. I just wanted something to wrap around me. It was better than nothing, but it wasn’t much help. It provided little warmth and the inks used to create the black Mets insignia only made my headache worse.
As for the game, it was 2-2 seemingly all night. Kevin Appier pitched well and hit better. He singled home the two Mets’ runs in the second. He would go eight, giving up single runs in the fourth (John Mabry homer) and fifth (Luis Castillo sac fly). Otherwise, things stayed tied and got colder. Stephanie was home. I wished I was there.
It went on like this until the bottom of the eleventh. With one out, recurring callup Jorge Toca (Joe called him his “cult favorite” and would shout “it’s TOCA Time!” during his rare at-bats) singled. After another out, Jay Payton — replacing Benny Agbayani who somehow broke a bone in his wrist checking a swing — doubled. Toca bellyflopped across home plate with the Mets’ third run, making a winner out of Grant Roberts and pinning a loss on ex-Met Juan Acevedo. Briefly snapped out of my frigid, pain-filled torpor, I high-fived Joe. Then I gathered up my big bag and headed for the 7 to Woodside and, eventually, the LIRR east. Stephanie had already gone to bed.
That bad check was Agbayani’s final swing as a Met. The W was the first Roberts would inhale. And Toca had time for only two more runs in the bigs. They’re footnotes to my Saturday night at Shea, though. The figure I remember most was not a player, not a credit card hawker, not Joe, not even my towel. What I remember now is my big bag. It would never see the underside of a Shea Stadium seat again.
The game took place on Saturday, September 1. The next day, when the Mets were stymied by Ryan Dempster, I watched from the couch. With the Mets then heading to Philadelphia, Florida and Pittsburgh, I wasn’t due back at Shea until Friday, September 14.
***
In the first week of September 2001, just as in the first week of September 2006, just as it had been pretty much every week preceding September 2001, baseball was my overriding concern. The Mets were defending National League champions. They weren’t doing much of a job on defense, falling out of the race for good by mid-August. I knew they were done. I saw them first-hand enough to claim an enhanced sense of observation.
After two thrilling postseason rides in a row when we sweated out ticket requests, bids and scrums, Jace and his wife Emily had a fairly obvious but nevertheless clever idea: Let’s buy a season-ticket plan. Jace’s co-worker Danielle was in on it and then I climbed aboard. We were in for every Tuesday and Friday, April to September. Shea’s seasonlong charms notwithstanding, the plan was supposed to result in ease of access for October. October, however, appeared elusive.
The Mets sputtered from the get-go in 2001. They fell under .500 in April and never fully recovered. Our postseason privileges were moot. It was fun going to more games than ever before, but fun had its limits. Every Tuesday night and every Friday night began to feel like moonlighting. Work all day in the city and rush out by six to get to the night job in Flushing. Could there be too much of a good thing?
This was the year of the return of the unbalanced schedule. The Saturday night with Joe was my fifth Mets-Marlins game of 2001. The Mets were bad. The Marlins were worse. I had to wonder what was more unbalanced: the schedule or my priorities? Through September 1, I had been to Shea — Tuesdays, Fridays, stray days besides — on 31 separate occasions. I enjoyed the quality time when the gang showed up (they skipped a few dates, the sanity-lovers), but the question really wasn’t whether there could be too much of a good thing. It was how much of a lousy team could I watch in person?
The cumulative effect left me cynical. I was in a fairly intense Met e-mail group that summer and I had a dark-humor ball composing tributes to the lousiness of the Mets. I wrote an obituary for Darryl Hamilton’s career. I suggested Glendon Rusch could join the cast of ER, reconfigured as a “tense drama of Earned Runs and heartstopping fifth-inning pitching changes.” And I told one of our more hopeful pen pals, Dan, to stop insisting this could be another 1973, you’re insulting its memory.
Funny thing was Dan was a visionary. For all the cynicism those Mets inspired, they had a little baseball left in them. They snapped an August losing streak in California. They came home and whupped up on an unwelcome Mike Hampton and the Rockies. They stuck it to Barry Bonds and the Giants three times before Barry got to Appier once. Pat Burrell couldn’t prevent the Phillies from losing twice. When the Marlins visited for the thirtieth or fortieth time, Al Leiter greeted them with a triple. Then Toca.
Weird 1973-style stuff was happening. The Mets, out of it by 13-1/2 games on August 17, pulled to within 7-1/2 of the Braves and Phillies on Payton’s double and Toca’s slide. They had won 11 of 14. Oddly, the Wild Card was out of reach but the N.L. East was in play. Wouldn’t it be something that after four consecutive seasons of chasing the best second-place record in the National League that this time maybe, just maybe, a miracle might lie in a good, old-fashioned first place finish? You had to believe.
Dempster’s dominance on September 2 didn’t deter them. The Mets went to Philadelphia starting Labor Day and swept three. Then they took Thursday and Friday night games in Miami. I wanted to see if they could make it six in a row on Saturday. I wanted to see something else, too.
While the Mets floundered in the summer of 2001, the Brooklyn Cyclones rose. It had been discussed for years, this idea of sticking a minor league team in Brooklyn. It sounded self-defeating and pointlessly nostalgic. Who would want to go to a ballgame in a borough abandoned precisely because enough people wouldn’t go there for a ballgame? And why would the Mets want to set up their own competitive product (never mind the obvious jokes in waiting, like “if I want to see a minor league team, I’ll go to Shea”)?
But I was flat wrong. Keyspan Park on the boardwalk in Coney Island was beautiful. Neon lights. Ocean breeze. Perfect atmosphere. Jammed every game. And though the results were inconsequential, the Cyclones were apparently good, too. It was raw rookies but apparently ours were pretty decent. Jace and Emily introduced them firsthand to Stephanie and me on a Sunday in early August. Their treat. We had a blast. I came back with some friends from work later in the month. Coney Island at dusk after a long day was even better.
The Cyclones’ first season saw them make the playoffs. Who should be their opponent in the first round but the Staten Island Yankees? It was the previous October’s Subway Series all over again in miniature. The two teams split two games. The decider would be at Keyspan Saturday night, September 8.
I was supposed to fly out on business that night. National Airlines, however, called me at home to tell me my flight from JFK was cancelled but they could put me on a plane Sunday morning, no extra charge for the lack of a Saturday stayover. Great, I said. I was only going Saturday night because of that fee. I had no reason to be where I was headed until Sunday anyway. I never much cared for traveling unless a ballpark was involved. This trip, it wasn’t.
I wanted to stay home with my wife, my cats and my teams as long as I could. I wanted to watch the Mets play the Marlins in Miami on Channel 11. I wanted to watch the Brooklyn Cyclones play the Staten Island Yankees for the McNamara Division championship on Fox Sports Net. Thanks to National Airlines, I didn’t have to go anywhere. An airline screws up and it’s a reprieve. Imagine that.
In the minor league portion of the simultaneous doubleheader, the Cyclones’ catcher, Brett Kay, deked a Yankee runner at Keyspan Park. It was called pulling the dead man. He fooled him into slowing down and then tagged him out and then got the winning hit, a homer. The Cyclones had beaten the Yankees! It didn’t make up for the Yankees beating the Mets the previous October, but for a few passing seconds, it kind of did. Call it minor revenge.
Meanwhile, it was back and forth in Florida. Matt Lawton doubled home two runs in the ninth and Desi Relaford added another and the Mets beat the Fish, 9-7 in a game that, at 3 hours and 57 minutes, felt like it would never end. It was our sixth in a row. We had pulled to within seven of the Braves. We were a game under .500, but the division was shaping up like another 1973. We had lots of dates left with the Braves.
***
“Excuse me, but what cap is that?”
“Brooklyn Cyclones.”
The desk clerk said something I couldn’t make out. I asked him to repeat it.
“Mike Piazza stays here.”
Or was it “Mike Piazza’s gay here”? No, probably the former.
Regardless, it was odd to be somewhere where a Cyclones cap didn’t elicit instant recognition. It was the accessory of choice in New York, but I wasn’t in New York anymore. For the fourth time in a decade, I was in Las Vegas to cover the National Beer Wholesalers Association convention, a city and an event that filled me with no enthusiasm.
I showed up at JFK Sunday morning brimming with baseball. The Cyclones were going to play Williamsport for the league championship. And the Mets had one more game at Pro Player, Trachsel, trying to stretch the Mets’ winning streak to seven, versus Matt Clement. I found a newsstand and bought the papers, discarding extraneous sections and supplements and saving the sports pages. All year long I would reduction-copy one tabloid page — back page if we merited it — that reflected a Mets win. It was a habit I got into late in 2000. 2001 showed no signs of being an encore, but habit was habit. I decided I’d place them all in a binder after the season and present them to Jace as a keepsake from our season-ticket adventure. With headlines on September 9 like THEY WON’T GO AWAY and Another Stunner signifying how the Mets were creeping back into the race, maybe there’d be more pages than I’d anticipated.
By the time I got to Vegas, got my bags, got to the hotel and got to the check-in clerk who wanted to dish Mike Piazza, I was antsy. The only good thing I could discern about being here was the presence of sports books. They took action on everything, even baseball games. I have no idea how one bets on baseball, but I remembered following another Mets-Marlins game in Vegas when I was in town for the same convention in 1993. I watched a toteboard flash the results for the Mets’ 59th win of that wretched year on its last day. I’m sure I was alone. My guess was I could find a monitor somewhere on the strip beaming the Mets and Marlins which was probably in the sixth or seventh inning. Since my room wasn’t going to be ready for a spell (very annoying), I found that monitor in my hotel. It was buried amid big screens transmitting the first Sunday of NFL games and horse racing. It was actually a black and white set. But here they were in Nevada, my Mets. Losing. In Florida.
Stupid Trachsel.
I rounded back to the desk. The clerk pleaded for my patience. I raised a fuss. He pushed a few keys on a computer and gave me a room I wasn’t supposed to have. I thanked him and headed there for my scheduled two-night stay, in on September 9, out on September 11 to fly to another leg of business, a San Francisco conference on New Age beverages.
Once in my room, I found ESPN. The Mets had lost. Wasn’t that big a story. Barry Bonds hitting his 61st, 62nd and 63rd was. He was seven from McGwire. The Mariners, aiming at the Yankees’ record of 114 wins from three years earlier, shut out the Orioles to improve to 103-40. Atlanta won. We were 8 back that Sunday. We were off Monday.
***
September 1, 2001 was the last time I carried my big bag to Shea. I’ve learned to consolidate. Plus, since I decided to become self-employed, I’m almost always leaving from home to go to the ballpark. Don’t have to lug work stuff around. I’m still a hypochondriac of sorts but I’ve ditched the office supplies.
Lately I use a promotional mini-duffel bag I got covering an investors’ conference in 1998. The Walkman, hopelessly out of fashion even then, has been replaced by a tiny radio I bought at the Wiz on September 21, 2001, which turned out to be the next time after September 1 that I’d be going to Shea. That night I jammed it, like my phone, in my pockets. Brought nothing to read for the ride home. We were told not to bring anything but our tickets with us.
It was no hardship to scale back then and it’s not now. I kind of miss the handy pockets and pouches of the big bag, especially when I’m buying a yearbook or a scorecard. Even if it’s not explicitly banned from the premises today — I kind of doubt it is, regardless of what it says about security precautions on the Mets’ Web site — there would just be more to be sorted through by strangers’ hands before I could walk in and see my team.
Every time I grab the mini-duffel that replaced the big bag, every time I figure out what I absolutely need, what I might need and what I don’t need to bring to a Mets game, every time I go about meticulously cramming everything in there so I can find what I want without a lot of groping, I think back to when I didn’t have to think about it at all.
I think back to September 1, 2001.
I think back to the June night in 2001 when my season ticket partner rolled fully packed luggage into the building, on to an escalator and up to our seats because he had just landed at LaGuardia.
I think back to seventh-inning stretches that consisted only of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” and “Lazy Mary,” even on Sundays.
I think back to thinking of heroes in terms of men who throw 142 pitches and tragedy as the 38-hop single that squeaks through the infield on the 142nd pitch.
I think back to wandering through Grand Central Station or rushing through Penn Station and seeing a transit cop or two but not a single National Guardsman.
I think back to flying to Las Vegas and my biggest worry being when my stuff would come out at baggage claim so I could grab it and make it to Bally’s in time for the last few innings of the Mets and Marlins.
I think back to picking up the tickets to that first Cyclones game in August 2001 from Jace. He worked downtown. I wasn’t sure which subway stop I’d have to go to in order to get back uptown but Jace knew the neighborhood and led us down into the World Trade Center where I could head to Penn and he could go to Brooklyn.
The first time I was in the World Trade Center was on a class trip in seventh grade. The American Stock Exchange, then the Twin Towers. They warned us not to get any bright ideas about throwing pennies from the observatory deck. In the cafeteria where tour groups were led, I was introduced to pita bread. I had what they called a Pocketburger. Ate lunch with Marianne Fickler on whom I had a fleeting crush because she was a 13-year-old political junkie like me. It was the day of the California primary, June 8, 1976. The last time I was in the World Trade Center was with Jace after picking up the Cyclone tickets. It was August 2, 2001.
I think back to a helluva lot that happened later, too, starting with five years ago today, the Tuesday morning I woke up in Las Vegas, turned on the TV at about 8:40 AM Pacific time and saw destruction so unfathomable that I honestly thought I was watching a promo for some creepy movie-of-the-week, one about what would happen if terrorists struck a major American city. I never cared for those kinds of films but it sure looked realistic. The things they can do with computers, I thought.
Hey, why are they promoting this movie on every channel at the same time?
I think back to grasping that what I was watching was real and that it was taking place — had taken place, actually; we were three hours behind New York — around the corner from where my wife worked and across the street from where my season-ticket partner worked. I think back to making frantic phone calls to discover my wife had hoofed it across the Williamsburg Bridge and eventually to a friend’s house in Bay Ridge but not before she saw people jump from dozens of stories above the street and the second tower collapse. She saw a sidewalk littered with keys and beepers and a piece of an airplane engine. I think back to reading the e-mail I received from my season-ticket partner to tell me he was all right, too, that he wasn’t yet in the office when the planes hit. I think back to being stranded in Las Vegas for five days longer than I’d planned, begging National Airlines and Travelocity for the first possible flight home after the government allowed planes back in the air. I think back to spending the balance of that week in my hotel room, blowing my nose (I’d come down with a cold on September 10), changing channels, talking to everybody I could connect to on the phone and wondering what would become of us as a city, a nation, a people. I think back to thinking of all of those I never met who should have been so lucky that their worst problem was being stuck in Las Vegas for a few days.
I think back to not thinking about baseball. Not thinking about it at all.
***
The Mets were frozen 8 back, their games called off for the time being. The Cyclones and Williamsport were declared co-champions after Brooklyn won the first of their scheduled best-of-three. None of this penetrated my brain. When I ran across ESPN on my remote and heard Tim Kurkjian speculate about what might be postponed or cancelled, he expressed concern that whatever solution is reached be fair to the Mariners. Fair to the Mariners? Thousands are dead and you’re worried about 115 wins?
I had threatened to give up on baseball at the end of 1998 when the Mets choked away the Wild Card and again a year later when they came close to doing the same. Then I couldn’t imagine giving over my heart and soul to a team that had relentlessly disappointed me. Now I couldn’t imagine caring enough to be disappointed or elated by baseball. It was a game. This was life. Life was overwhelming.
Still, I sure had liked baseball. I dipped into all my convention stuff and found the clippings from Sunday’s papers. There were Matt Lawton and Desi Relaford beating the Marlins last Saturday. I remembered how much baseball had meant to me, how important the 2000 World Series and the 1999 playoffs were. Or seemed.
I wanted to get home in the worst way. If I could have driven on highways (something that gives me the shakes), I would have rented a car and driven. As I failed to make progress with the airline, I started making daily trips to the Gap at Caesar’s — past the dancing waters of the Bellagio, now stilled as Lee Greenwood replaced Frank Sinatra on the speakers — to buy extra underwear. If I can’t get out on a plane by Monday, I’ll track down a Greyhound. However long the journey takes, I am leaving Las Vegas.
Of course I wanted to get home. I wanted to see my wife and my cats, my father and his girlfriend, my sister and her husband, my office and my colleagues. But I decided it was just as crucial that I see my friends at Shea Stadium again. I wanted to be there when the Mets started playing ball again. I wanted to be there for the national anthem. I wanted to climb the stairs to Row M of Section 9 of the Mezzanine to my aisle seat, Seat 24, and stand in front of it and sing in salute to what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming. And I wanted to do it next to Jace and Emily and Danielle.
***
I got a flight out Sunday, September 16. The airport wasn’t the mob scene Vegas TV made it out to be. I snapped the file off of my nail clippers just in case anybody was going to ask about it. They didn’t. Was assigned the middle seat. Never so happy to be wedged between two fellow travelers for five hours. When the flight landed at JFK, I affixed my Cyclones cap (red, white and blue) to my head and ran straight for Stephanie.
The next game at Shea was Friday. I ran straight there, too.
Got my embrace with my friends. Got my national anthem, performed by Marc Anthony, me and however many of 41,235 who had made it past the bag searches and the frisking that I doubt anybody questioned. Diana Ross sang “God Bless America,” but I was in the long security line and had to listen to it on my new tiny radio. That’s also where I heard the bagpipes.
Did see the Mets and their supposed enemies the Braves wish each other the best. Did see Liza Minnelli belt out a rousing “New York New York” supported by a kickline of suddenly smiling fire fighters and police officers in full dress. She ended it by hugging Jay Payton in the on-deck circle. That was going to the bottom of the seventh. In the bottom of the eighth, Mike Piazza hit a two-run home run off Steve Karsay. The PA shelved the usual Gary Glitter accompaniment. It was left to us to cheer and wave flags. We did. And we beat the Braves to move within 4-1/2 games of first place.
It was hailed as a solemn victory of healing, a stirring triumph of the resilient New York spirit and a fitting tribute to those who gave their lives heroically so that others could keep theirs. September 21, 2001, the first home game after 9/11, is universally recalled as among the most remarkable nights anybody will ever witness or feel inside Shea Stadium. I wouldn’t disagree and I’ll never forget it.
But I’d take September 1, 2001, my last home game before 9/11, every time.
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