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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 18 August 2006 6:01 pm Welcome to Flashback Friday, a weekly feature devoted to the 20th anniversary of the 1986 World Champion New York Mets.
Twenty years, 43 Fridays. This is one of them.
Yay! Darryl Strawberry is coming to Old Timers Night!
Unless he’s changed his mind again. If he has, would you be surprised?
Of all the things that have changed in our world since 1986, one of them is not the capriciousness attached to the actions of Darryl Strawberry. We never knew what we were getting then. We don’t know what we’re getting now.
Difference is it’s almost never our problem now. Except on twentieth anniversaries of world championships. We need him Saturday night to step to a foul line and tip a Mets cap and be beloved. Then he can go back to fuming at whomever owes him money or he thinks owes him money or whatever it is Darryl does between sucking up to the Yankees and engaging the law enforcement community. And we can go back to not thinking about him all that often.
In 1986, we needed him to be Darryl. Sometimes he was. When he was, it was awfully special.
When Darryl came up in 1983, one of the lazy man’s comparisons made over and over again was to Willie Mays, especially that Willie took the collar a few times before collecting his first hit, a homer off Warren Spahn. Darryl needed a few swings before getting it going, too (his first hit, a single off the decidely non-Spahn Ben Hayes, came in his twelfth at-bat, one fewer than it took Say Hey). Plus he had lots of talent. And he was black. There — Darryl Strawberry was the latter-day Willie Mays.
Worked for me. I decided that as my contemporary, Darryl would be the player with whom I’d mature. I’d watch him become one of the greats, deep into his and my 20s and 30s. By the time he was retired, having broken all kinds of records, I’d have a lifetime of crystal-clear baseball memories to share with the next generation. I’d have Darryl Strawberry stories that would make your head spin. I’d have my own Willie Mays. We all would.
We didn’t get that, though to be fair, Darryl didn’t get to be that. Darryl was occasionally plenty, but he wasn’t the immortal I was banking on. I got over it as best I could and found less promising, less exciting, less disappointing players to grow old to. I still do. They stay young. Darryl and I age. I don’t know if either of us ever matured. He’s not in the Baseball Hall of Fame. I didn’t get to see him inducted and I won’t get to see his plaque. A tip of a Mets cap to me and other Mets fans Saturday night will pretty much be it as far as post-career Strawberry ceremonies go.
Showing up for Old Timers Night at Shea is the least he can do. It’s the least every 1986 Met can do. I can’t believe they don’t all come home for this. Doc Gooden has an excuse of sorts, though if he’d taken a differently structured sentence, he could have been with us tomorrow. Instead, he chose to be scared straight; it’s worked so well for him before. Without being completely glib and superficial about his addiction, couldn’t have Doc resisted temptation until the twentieth anniversary of his first positive test? It’s not like they’re going to hold a 1987 Mets reunion.
I’ve read Ray Knight has a paying commitment but have also heard that he’s “angry” at someone in the front office. Unless the Mets have hired Eric Davis as strength & conditioning coach, that’s no excuse.
The ’86 Mets who are now uniformed authority figures — McDowell, Mazzilli, Gibbons (essentially the 25th man on the 24-man playoff roster) — should have carte blanche to abandon their posts for one lousy night. It should be part of the Basic Agreement and social contract. Teams can’t keep players from on-field championship reunions and former players must attend them. Would anybody hire Roger McDowell to coach anything but Rock ‘N’ Jock Softball if it weren’t for his Mets career? Would Lee Mazzilli have been enticing enough to get not one, but two jobs with George Steinbrenner if his employment hadn’t been viewed as a tweak of the Mets? Get over yourselves. Get to Flushing.
Is Bobby Ojeda coming? He had a falling out with the Wilpons. Who was right? Who was wrong? Who cares? Twenty years ago, he was our biggest starter. Twenty years later, he was still our biggest starter. I read he was coming but I don’t see his name on the guest list. Surely he can peel himself away from the Worcester Tornadoes to swing by for the evening.
And Davey. Oh Davey. How are you ever going to be remembered as the most successful manager in Mets history if you won’t let us remember you? Team USA can drill without you for one night. You’re a players manager. Come be with your players.
I’ve been looking forward to a full-blown salute to 1986 by the Mets probably since 1987. It took forever for them to truly embrace their greatest team. But the team has to join in and get embraced. If we have to settle for most and not all of the roster, then that’s what we’ll do. But it’s too bad. I hate to find reasons to be snippy toward players whom I’ll always owe the biggest debt of gratitude a fan can carry. They won me a championship. It pains me to have to remind them the championship and its attendant memories are bigger than any single one of them.
If you had told each of them twenty years ago, “you’ll win a World Series but you have to agree to stop by Shea Stadium in twenty years to be fussed over,” think any of them wouldn’t have agreed to the terms? I dunno. Perhaps their first question would have been “what do you mean a World Series? We win a lot, right?” Or maybe it would have been, “depends…how much do I get?”
One of the undercurrents of 1986, a real sidebar to the season in progress, was that there was finally about to be another year in the pantheon. All doting to date was for 1969 or, if people were in a generous mood, 1969 and 1973. That era stood alone in Mets history. When the Mets had Old Timers Day in 1986, themed to celebrate the franchise’s 25th anniversary, rain limited the celebration. But I don’t remember much fretting about it. There were some ’62 types on hand and the rest were from the ’69-’73 axis. We saw them all the time. The Mets were very good at nurturing the connection to Cleon and Kooz and Buddy and Rusty and Felix and Tug. It was to their credit that they did.
The ’86 Mets, when asked, admitted they looked forward to joining or even supplanting ’69. I recall a Marty Noble article that dwelled on the then-current cast betraying a bit of dismay that everything was always ’69-this and ’69-that. Keith Hernandez, in An Amazin’ Era, said as much in relatively diplomatic terms, mentioning he looked forward to the day ’69, ’73 and ’86 would be spoken of in the same breath.
He got his wish at last and then some. Time, more than perspective, has taken care of that. 1986 is having an anniversary and 1969 is, painful to say, ancient history. The Mets are 45 years old. Their youth is, not so suddenly, their ancient history.
Our ancient history.
A couple of months ago, Mets Weekly on SNY did a segment about the ’69 Mets that was sort of 1969 Mets 101, kind of explaining who they were and why you should care. Having grown up with the ’69 Mets as the literal foundation of my baseball life, it was stunning to me that a Mets show treated the Miracle Mets as some dusty, old relic.
Then I remembered. They are a dusty, old relic. In chronological terms, they were 37 years ago. If this were 1986, they would be a team from 1949, and in 1986, 1949 was the stuff of dusty, old relics. While it’s taken the Mets too long to out-and-out honor 1986, it’s downright bizarre to realize they are going to hold an Old Timers Night that will have nothing to do with Ron Swoboda or Tommie Agee or, most stunningly of all, Perennial Eddie Kranepool.
I’ve always loved Old Timers Days. The second Mets game I ever went to was Old Timers Day 1974. I got to pick the game and I picked that. Same thing next year and the year after. Made it to another in the early ’80s and almost every Shea event in that vein in the past fifteen years. I suppose I’ve never gotten over the childlike fascination I had with the way they could get baseball players from a long time ago to dress up like baseball players again. I didn’t care about the Old Timers games, which were routinely embarrassing to watch. I cared that the names from the books I read came to life. They put on a uniform, got announced over the loudspeaker and waved while we clapped. It became more meaningful as the retirees were guys from our childhoods, then our adolescences and, with the tribute to 1986, our young adulthoods.
Saturday night, Darryl Strawberry has one more chance to be the player I always wanted him to be. I’ll be there to applaud you, Straw. Don’t leave me hanging.
by Jason Fry on 18 August 2006 4:31 am All hail our most-reliable pitcher, the glue of the rotation, the man we turn to in times of need. All hail…John Maine?
Yep, John Maine. Who should stand as just the latest reminder that as a collective fan base, we say a lot but know a little.
Consider the many lives — in 2006 alone — of John Kevin Maine, born May 8, 1981 (your blogger's 12th birthday, by the way) outside Washington, D.C.
January-March: The “Who?” Months. Meet the other guy in the Kris Benson trade, if you remember his name. The five-second scouting report: Did well in the minors, got shelled in the bigs. If his name was spoken at all, it was as an ironic counterpoint to ranting about Jorge Julio. “…AND THE GUY CAN'T PITCH, HE'S A FREAKIN' HEAD CASE, AND HE EVEN FRIGGIN' LOOKS LIKE ARMANDO BENITEZ!” At which point the other guy would add, “But we got John Maine!” Rimshot. The best I could muster was that he'd always had trouble initially moving up a level, and then found himself. That and the fact that the Orioles were stupid. I'm sure I was crossing my fingers while typing it.
March-May: The “Where?” Months. Jorge Julio was a disaster. Kris Benson was Kris Benson. John Maine was in St. Lucie and Norfolk. Boy was he old for 25.
May-June: John Maine Gives Us the Finger. With Brian Bannister on the shelf for a couple of extra weeks (hahahaha!), Maine was a surprise starter. Greg's postgame take after his National League debut: John Maine pitched OK. I guess we'll see him again. He wasn't really all that interesting. No, he wasn't. Then he was gone with some nebulous finger injury. When he came off the DL five weeks later, we packed him back off to Norfolk. By then Jorge Julio had gotten just good enough to send off to Arizona for El Duque. Our great hope at the back end of the rotation? It was Alay Soler. John Maine was back in his native Virginia, next to be glimpsed in St. Lucie or on the waiver wire. If we thought of him at all, it was grumpily while Kris and Anna celebrated his win and his homer and her mouth. “John who? Oh yeah — the other guy in the Benson-for-El Duque swap. Man, not sure that one was worth it. Maine, Maine…wasn't there something wrong with his finger?”
July: The Maybe Month. First Maine was bad. Then he got tired with too much game to go. Then he was lights-out. Then he was lights-out again. Hmmmm. You know, I never liked Kris Benson anyway.
August: We've Loved John Maine Our Whole Lives. Three in a row lost to Philadelphia, Pedro back on the shelf, Wright exhausted, Delgado lost, Cliff in St. Lucie, Jose all by his lonesome. Granted, not a situation dire enough to reconsider October plans, but all of a sudden baseball wasn't the giddy pleasure it's been most of this remarkable year. With a day game on tap, I found myself walking to the subway this morning thinking dark thoughts about our offense, about the Phillies, about whether Lastings could really learn on the job, about a hundred other Met-related anxieties medium and small. And then I heard a most unexpected little voice in my head, offering a bit of Faith amid all this Fear.
I like our chances — Maine's going today.
Yes, the same John Maine who'd been the other guy and one of the anonymous guys and the forgotten guy and the guy with the finger and the guy who replaced Soler after he was undressed by the Yankees because…well, because we didn't have anybody else.
And that same John Maine throttled the Phils, the lone blemish a Ryan Howard dinger. (Which is the kind of blemish that's had a lot of pitchers reaching for the Clearasil this year.) Wasn't nervous, didn't rattle, had a plan and stuck to it, showed his usual swing-and-a-miss stuff — the kind of stuff only El Duque has on this staff, and then only sometimes. Beat the Phillies like the Phillies deserve to be beaten. Sent us home (with some help from the Carloses) happy. Restored order. Left us thinking about the '86 Mets reunion (Strawberry flavoring added back in!) instead of about Bad Things.
The regular season has six weeks to go, and a lot can happen. So I'm not going to speculate on future acts in the American life of John Maine. But let's leave a placeholder for him, one we never thought we'd need, but that he's shown us he deserves.
October: __________________.
by Greg Prince on 17 August 2006 8:10 pm NEW!
FROM SHEA-TEL!
IT'S THE SMASH-PACKED '70s HITS COLLECTION YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!
SINCE MONDAY!
YOU'LL GET!
John Sebastian's unforgettable Number One theme from “Welcome Back 'Gado!”
“Run Jose Run!” by the amazing David Geddes!
The stupendous Elton John's “Philadelphia Freedom…At Last!”
“Maine Street!” by Boppin' Bob Seger and the Throwing Bullets Band!
The lovely ladies of Heart and “Magic Number Man!”
“Let Your Runs Flow!” by the sensational Bellamy Brothers!
“First Place Long Time!” as prescribed by the incredible Dr. John!
And if you order this very minute, you can ride C.W. McCall's mighty “Convoy!” clear to the postseason!
by Greg Prince on 17 August 2006 2:56 am The only entertaining, non-Reyes aspect to Tuesday night's blowout loss (to be confused with Monday's night's blowout loss, but try to keep them separate) was a conversation between Keith and Gary that led to a startling revelation:
Keith Hernandez was upset that the Shea DJs That Be blasted “Who Let The Dogs Out?” after the Mets won Game Three of the 2000 World Series.
Gary Cohen seemed startled. I was actually shocked into laughing, something I hadn't done any of since the Mets boarded the Acela in Washington.
Keith's got it in for the Baha Men?
Yes, our Mex was hot (in the non-Paris Hilton usage sense) that the Mets were somehow rubbing it in the Yankees' face that they had just won a game. Never mind that this had become the Mets' anthem across late September and October. Never mind that the Yankees assaulted every victim with Frank Sinatra's latter-day warbling. Never mind that baseball stadia play songs after baseball games. Keith thought that “Who Let The Dogs Out?” fired up the Yankees, that the playing of a team fight song (you can debate among yourselves the efficacy of the song in question) slapped them in the face, that it was inappropriate given that the Mets still trailed the Series one game to two, that is was no wonder Derek Jeter hit Bobby Jones' first pitch over the fence the next night.
Keith is very fucking weird sometimes.
Of course this was also the same postseason in which the Athletics apparently had the inside track on the ALDS in Oakland until someone behind the scenes brainlessly beamed the pregame press conference onto their DiamondVision during Game Five BP. Eric Chavez was up on the big screen answering a question with a little youthful bravado, declaring the Yankees had been great but now it was the A's time to shine. Down on the field, the doddering Yankee dynasty turned up its hearing aid and was aghast, just enough to have a big first inning and hold on for dear life. That helped gild their path to the Subway Series if you believe in the power of video board material.
I don't know what Citizens Bank Park plays when the Phillies win, as they've been doing with alarming regularity this week. Given the Mets' failure to do anything with Cole Hamels, Randy Wolf or Jon Lieber — cumulative score: Phils 27 Jose 4 — it oughta be “It's The Same Old Song” by the Four Tops.
Shea blares BTO's “Takin' Care of Business” for wins, an excellent tune if a dubious message. It's very presumptuous and not a little generic, but at the last two wins I attended, I couldn't not rock out down the exit ramps and neither could my companions. In that sense, I suppose it works and I wouldn't screw with it. But they've gotta do something about the loss music.
Where is it written in the unwritten rules that we have to leave Shea like Schleprock? The two songs used to see us to our cars, trains and ferries this year have been Natalie Imbruglia's melancholy “Torn” and Coldplay's wistful “Clocks”. I like them both in other contexts, but quit dictating my emotions. Quit telling me that in a little while now, if I'm not feeling any less sour, I promise myself to treat myself to a visit to a nearby Serval Zipper tower. I feel bad enough as it is without the manipulative musical accompaniment.
It was worse in 1998 when, for reasons known only to the person who chooses these babies, every loss brought on a recording of the theme from Jurassic Park. It was mournful and instantly reminding that we had just been stomped back to the Stone Age by the Braves or Expos or somebody. “New York State of Mind” was a more benign bye-bye. One assumes somebody said to somebody else, “The Yankees use 'New York New York' whether they win or lose. We should do something like that.” Yeah, but you only used it when we lost. Some folks like to get away, take a holiday from watching Kevin Appier or Bruce Chen get lit up. Thankfully, we're no longer in a “New York State of Mind”.
Unfortunately, we still do lose home games from time to time (or in my case, a lot of the time). I humbly suggest to Mr. Vito Vitiello, Shea's producer, video/entertainment services and the guy who I believe makes these choices, to try “Right Back Where We Started From” by Maxine Nightingale the next time our boys fall short.
Ooh and it's all right
And it's comin' 'long
We gotta get right back
To where we started from
Love is good
Love can be strong
We gotta get right back
To where we started from
Between the indefatigable lyrics and the deft deployment of what sounds like a beta version of The Clapper, this is the happiest goddamn song I know. It's like “Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy” without Ren & Stimpy irony. My dear friend and our occasional illustrator Jim Haines once told me I like happy, snappy songs as if I needed to get vaccinated for it. Well, yeah, I like happy, snappy songs and there's nothin' wrong with it (Ms. Nightingale's 1976 smash is No. 262 on my All-Time Top 500). At the risk of shoving a happy helmet firmly onto everybody's head, I think everybody should be happy when happy songs are heard.
But we're not happy when we don't win? Yes, that's exactly it! We need something to boost us out of our orange-and-blues, something that tells us the sun will come out tomorrow without explicitly using that saccharine number from Annie. Getting back to where we started from this year means getting back to our winning ways. And most of the time those winning ways are only a day away.
Or, if you're waiting for a wakeup call from the operator at the Westin Philadelphia, maybe never.
by Greg Prince on 16 August 2006 10:13 pm Pedro Martinez is on the DL again. Perhaps we should abbreviate it to the PM. Ice that calf, get well and…ah, you know what to do, Pedro. You always do.
Heath Bell will be killing time with the Mets until he is allowed to go home to Norfolk. Taking Pedro's place in the rotation will be somebody wasn't all that great to begin with or somebody who used to be but hasn't been lately. But it won't be Lima.
Think we need pitching depth after the last two episodes of corporal punishment? The Cubs used all 25 players in an 18-inning win over the Astros last night/this morning. How is that even possible? How can you leave yourself without a bench and without a bullpen? One line drive pings off the wrong wrist and you're gonna lose 9-0. I only watched the final six innings, so I didn't see all the buttons Dusty pushed to get to the 13th, yet, it's practically unbelievable. Bobby Valentine and Davey Johnson managed historic, marathon wins in the postseason and held a body or two in reserve. Bobby Valentine also outmanaged Dusty Baker in the postseason.
Cubs beat the Astros 1-0 in a day game today. They used a pitcher called up from Iowa to start. And coffee by the potful.
As you may have heard, the Rockies and Diamondbacks also went 18 innings. Watched it sleepily to get my money's worth out of the aptly named MLB Extra Innings. First time four teams have played two games that went 36 innings in the same day ever…on the same day a National Leaguer hit three home runs in the same year he hit for the cycle and his team lost both games. And just now, with the Dodgers succumbing to the Marlins after winning 17 of 18 (best NL stretch since our own in early '86), Vin Scully said, “the wheels have come off the golden coach.”
Do other sports have stuff like this? Are there such angled oddities in football or the indoor activities associated with winter? Or legendary platinum voices who slice glittering phrases paper-thin like an expert deli counterman? If there are, I've missed them.
Meanwhile, right around the time the Minute Maid Park grounds crew was simultaneously punching out and punching in, shovels were hoisted and cameras were mugged for in advance of the erection of a facility somewhere in northern New York City. Comedian Billy Crystal was on hand, so you know it was a somber affair. Hours later, an official with the team that will use said structure told its sycophantic announcer (who masquerades as a sports talk host on an obscure staticky frequency), that if his employer didn't get to begin construction right this very minute, it would have very possibly forced his team to very seriously consider moving to the state of New Jersey.
How's that?
That Yankee COO Lonn Trost would address Michael Kay's softball with anything but WE HEART NY makes me wonder if something can still go wrong with the burgeoning blight in the Bronx. Trost used very peculiar language like “if we couldn't start in the next 24 hours…” before making his weird retro threat (just in case the state supreme court changes its mind?). Maybe we should all hop the 4 and form a human chain to stop this project in earnest. Call their bluff, pay their toll and get them out of our Metropolitan Area once and for all. Or as Trost's intrepid interrogator would put it, See Ya!
I have mixed emotions about watching the current Yankee Stadium close up shop…half of me wants to see it imploded in one grand swallow; half of me wants to see it knocked down arrogant piece by arrogant piece with a dynamite-packed wrecking ball. All of me says atta way to Piscataway, fellas.
by Greg Prince on 16 August 2006 1:51 am Jose Reyes hit for the cycle in June. It was the first time the Mets ever lost a game in which a Met cycled.
Jose Reyes hit three home runs tonight. It was the first time the Mets ever lost a game in which a Met hit three home runs.
Jose Reyes will throw the first no-hitter in Mets history tomorrow and will lose on an error by Chris Woodward.
Jose Reyes will turn eight unassisted triple plays on Thursday and the Mets will lose on a fly ball mishandled by Lastings Milledge.
Jose Reyes will walk, steal second, third and home four times on Friday and the Mets will lose 5-4 because they were no-hit.
Jose Reyes will fill in for Darryl, Doc, Davey and Ray at Old Timers Night on Saturday, retroactively win the 1986 MVP award and the Mets will lose the World Series to the Red Sox. They'll also lose to the Rockies despite Jose Reyes' five inside-the-park homers.
Jose Reyes will break ground on the new ballpark, construct it to make it triple-friendly and triple nine times Sunday and the Mets will lose when he passes Mike DiFelice on the basepaths during his last triple.
Jose Reyes will sit out next Tuesday. Then maybe the Mets will win.
by Greg Prince on 15 August 2006 8:47 am You already know Monday night in Philadelphia was a bad dream. Monday morning in my subconscious was just a weird dream. In lieu of anything remotely pleasant to talk about from Monday night, thought I’d let you know about what I dreamt Monday morning.
This isn’t a bit. I really had this dream.
Stephanie and I, after spending some time in a presumably local dry cleaners that let us linger about its premises like it was a Starbucks (after midnight, no less), were visiting another city, some combination of Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, maybe more. Though it didn’t look like Chicago, for at least a little while it must have been because I wanted to swing by this one particular spot under the El to show Stephanie the House of Blues Hotel, where I stayed on a 1999 business trip, the same one that allowed me to grab a foul ball off the bat of Carlos Lee at Comiskey Park.
But the House of Blues Hotel wasn’t where I brought us to, which was more under a freeway than under an El. We took a cab to find it, but once it became clear we didn’t, we were now on bicycles. And we were lost. Worse yet, it was dark out. So dark that we couldn’t see much beyond what our flashlights and/or none-too-powerful bicycle headlights would allow. A scary situation.
Still we pedaled. Glided on our ten-speeds was more like it. Found ourselves in a neighborhood of rowhouses near the water. Maybe that was the San Francisco part. In any event, it didn’t feel like we were finding our way back to our hotel in, ostensibly, the city that we were visiting.
Next thing I knew, the three of us — my high school buddy Larry Russo, the auteur from my high school reunion had somehow joined us — had climbed the steps from somebody’s basement to somebody’s kitchen. It was setup like the house I grew up in. There was a see-through door between the stairs and the kitchen, also like my house. I rapped on it.
There was a family inside. Big family. Three generations maybe. Nobody recognizable to me. As you could imagine, they were startled that three strangers had entered their home, but I explained that we were biking around (Larry was still wearing his helmet), had gotten lost and needed directions to our hotel. Stephanie explained that we were staying in “the baseball district”.
They accepted the explanation immediately and couldn’t have been friendlier. Come on in, they said. We’re watching the ballgame.
So they were. It was the Giants and Dodgers, the same matchup from ESPN Sunday night. This is where I got the feeling we were in Los Angeles because they were cheering for the Dodgers, who were winning. I think they were because I was a little uncertain of what was going on in the game and I was more uncertain as to where in California we were, so I hedged my bets. I said something like, “Hey, you must be happy with the way this is going.” Indeed, they were happy.
I explained again why we had entered their home. We were visiting town and had gotten lost on our bicycles and it was really dark out and if you could just give us directions, that would be great.
An older man, the father or perhaps grandfather, laughed: “I guess there’s no 7 train around here!” It wasn’t foreboding or anything. In fact, it was comforting. He kind of nodded at the rest of the family and indicated implicitly that he knew who I was, that he knew I blogged about the Mets, giving me the sense that maybe he, like the guys from Entourage, was from New York originally. For an instant, in their kitchen, I saw a sign that pointed to where the platforms for the 7 train and the Long Island Rail Road at Shea were. But we were still in their kitchen.
Almost verybody was having a good, friendly time: me, Stephanie, the unknown family. Larry, still wearing his helmet, however, was disengaged from the conversation. Instead, he asked a direct question of the man.
“Do you have a car?”
“Oh sure.”
“Could we put our bikes in your trunk and could you drive us home?”
“Sure!”
Oh good, we were going to get a ride home or back to our hotel from the nice man in, uh, Los Angeles who didn’t mind us entering his house unannounced and knew of my apparently mildly famous Mets fandom.
That’s the last I remember of the dream. Most dreams that I can remember are disturbing. This one was actually pretty OK.
by Jason Fry on 15 August 2006 12:50 am …baseball is a masterpiece of tension, with the storyline unrevealed until the final seconds. Some nights you spend guessing who'll be the hero. Which batter will end it in extra innings with a blast into the darkness or a clean single up the middle? Which pitcher will coax a final pitch past a final batter? Which manager will emerge from the chess match with bragging rights?
Other nights, you find something the hell else to do with whatever you can salvage of your evening. Because in January when you're moaning that you'd watch any baseball game, you don't mean games like this.
by Jason Fry on 14 August 2006 4:05 am When the Nationals spat the bit in gruesome fashion, Emily and Joshua and I were wandering Coney Island. I had Howie and Tom in one ear, the cacophony of Astro-Land in the other. And while that meant I couldn't see Frank Robinson, I could certainly imagine what he must look like. I assume it was something like this.
Frank Robinson is up there with Larry Bowa and Dallas Green in my personal pantheon of Managers Without Poker Faces. The beauty of this pantheon? It's that each of those three men gets catastrophically angry in his own unique way. (Willie, on the other hand, is a graduate of Headmaster Torre's Great Stone Face Academy. Kyle Farnsworth could give up a grand slam to a blindfolded relief pitcher who was holding the bat upside down and it's possible Torre might blink.)
Larry Bowa: Primordial rage, with the tics and head twists giving way to square eyes, purple face and bulging neck. The limits of mere human form couldn't contain Bowa's fury — properly capturing it would demand a master cartoonist, a Tex Avery or a Chuck Jones. Man, I miss watching Bowa in the Phillies dugout, particularly with Keith Hernandez gleefully narrating. Those nights were like performance art.
Dallas Green: His trademark was combining rage with astonishment at whatever numbnuts thing the Mets were doing. His signature face was the mouth hanging open while the rest of the body was absolutely still. Like he knew as well as everybody that he was going to lose it in spectacular fashion (with the shotgun mikes picking up every word), but the explosion was delayed while he processed how mindbogglingly awful whatever had just happened truly was.
Frank Robinson: Frank incensed is a dish served very, very cold. When things go bad, for a while he exudes ice and a certain lofty disgust, as if he's thinking, “I've got a half-century in this game, 586 home runs, nearly 3,000 hits and have dealt with more bullshit than any man should have endure, and you are going to subject me to this?” If you'd been kind enough to hand poor Ryan Zimmerman a shovel when he crossed the white lines after brainlocking on the number of outs, I'm sure Zimmerman would have gratefully used it to tunnel his way out of RFK rather than go anywhere near Frank.
As long as it doesn't come excessively at our expense, I'd be happy to see Frank Robinson get some payback for having to endure the cynical dismantling of the Expos, their shameful forced march into nomadism and their relocation without money. (Now that they have a new owner and a new park on the way, money would certainly help.) Watching the Nats, you're reminded that hey, this is what bad teams do — not all the time, but often enough to be out of it by late July. Tony Armas was rolling along impressively and then boom! A throwing error, a bobble and a wild throw erase a lead, and then a horrid mental mistake keeps them down. If you're a Nats fan, you can moan that a couple of bad breaks doomed them, but that misses the point — bad teams take the field having buried landmines for themselves, step on them more often than not, and good teams ensure they don't crawl away. (We know — we've been those bad teams more years than I care to remember.)
Anyway, Michael Tucker officially regained the use of his given name as we were leisurely oscillating far above the city on the Wonder Wheel, and Delgado bailed out Billy Wagner as Joshua was feeding his newfound rollercoaster addiction. Then it was off to Keyspan to see the Cyclones do very little against the horrendously named Batavia Muckdogs. Afterwards, Joshua did a fine job of running the bases despite being tired to the point of hallucination, with me trotting behind him reminding myself not to stop and gaze in rapture at the Real Professional Baseball Field I was on. At home plate Joshua (who'd been forbidden multiple times from sliding) even got in a low-five with Sandy the Seagull, an exchange Emily wanted broken down with a Zapruder film level of detail. Our assessment: It was a lame, perfunctory low-five. No, Sandy the Seagull is not off the family shit list 13 months after his infuriating brush-off of our kid.
(Yeah, I know it might not even be the same person in the smelly mascot suit. Don't come around here with your logic.)
Michael Tucker, on the other hand, is most definitely in the clear.
by Greg Prince on 14 August 2006 1:17 am In the past ten games, dating back to the finale in Miami on August 3, the five Mets starting pitchers have thrown 63 innings and given up 21 earned runs. That's an ERA of exactly 3.00.
That's not bad. That's not bad at all.
I guess we can now officially slide our floating anxiety anvil from above the rotation to above the corner outfielders because the starting pitching has quietly but definitely come around.
Each pitcher has taken two starts since August 3. These are the results.
Pedro Martinez: 13-1/3 IP, 3 ER
Orlando Hernandez: 13 IP, 6 ER
Tom Glavine: 13 IP, 5 ER
John Maine: 11-2/3 IP, 4 ER
Steve Trachsel: 12-1/3 IP, 3 ER
Not eye-poppin', Doc '85 numbers, but not eye-gougin', '06 Lima lines either. Every start in the last ten has given the Mets a genuine chance to win. The three club losses in this span are attributable at least in part to the other guy (Dontrelle Willis, Billy Traber) pitching just a little better twice and our pen pitching a damn sight worse than the other team's once.
We haven't been hitting a whole lot, which is of some nagging concern, but remember that we were getting antsy because our offense was making up for our pitching so often early in the year. Well, guess what — the reverse works sometimes, too. In Steve Trachsel's turns, it works to ridiculous extremes.
After being fed a mountain of runs start in and start out, he marched parched through the D.C. desert today. I'm not kidding about the parched — he wasn't allowed to haul his beloved case of vino with him on the team plane…a rather unjockly carry-on item that is presumably yet another reason we all love Steve Trachsel as we do. But he didn't let down. The Nationals may be a wine cellar-dweller, but do you feel gently buzzed or horribly hung over when the opposing lineup features the likes of Soriano, Johnson and Zimmerman? Stevie Shoelaces is certainly capable of pouring runs by the bottle for anyone, but he didn't for the second start in a row. He kept the Mets in the game long enough to allow the Nationals to take themselves out of it. And they did.
Good starting pitching today and the last ten days. Good, not great. Maybe we'll get enough great to make up for whatever bad is bound to come. But more than at any point this year, even when Alay Soler had me goin', I'm confident about whoever takes the mound on any given date.
As for the outfield corners, tie yourself up in knots at your own discretion. I'm not worried there either. I know it's quickly become de rigueur to fret the cast of Milledge, Chavez, Tucker and Ledee and the TBD availability of Floyd. I also know that there is a strain of Mets fans (otherwise known as “the majority”) that isn't happy unless they believe there's a segment of the big picture that's dangerously out of focus. The pen is falling! The mound is falling! Left field is falling!
Poppycock! Or pish-posh! Take your pick, they're both delicious.
Yes, it would be sweet to turn back the clock two weeks and whisper in Duaner Sanchez's ear, “you're sleepy…you're very sleepy…you don't want to go find Dominican food at two in the morning.” Then we'd still have Xavier Nady and Xavier Nady would be competent if not spectacular (in itself a crime in some Mets minds during his truncated tenure) and we'd have to stay up nights worrying about Delgado's slump and, perhaps, searching for our own Dominican food given that we're staying up that late. As is, Nady's not here, man. The guys who are, or maybe the guys who will be, will do the job because on the 2006 Mets, somebody usually does.
Can I prove that statement? Not exactly. Speculation is inadmissible as evidence if I remember my L.A. Law, but I can present for the court, your honor, today's Exhibit A, Michael Tucker.
Admit it, Mets fans. You've still got some of that 2004 in you even though we have now won exactly as many games in 2006 as we did during the entirety of two years ago. Maybe you are also unknowingly trudging around the darker portions of 2005, to say nothing of all of 2003 — and any number of the many unsuccessful seasons you've lived through — in your souls. It's OK, I do, too. Those years are hard to shake, but for your own good, at least try to shove them to way in the back, back where you keep your vaguely simmering dismay over George Bamberger or Wes Westrum.
When the Mets brought up Tucker, I don't know how many snarky references to Gerald Ice Williams I read and heard. “Oh no, Tucker! He's Williams! Why do they always do this to us? It sucks to be a Mets fan!” Or words to that effect.
Have you seen Michael Tucker since he came up? He's not Gerald Ice Williams. I don't remember Gerald Ice Williams throwing out a runner like Tucker did Thursday. He might have, but it doesn't stand out, know what I mean? I didn't see Gerald Ice Williams pile on some insurance runs as Tucker did that same day. And I sure as hell know when Gerald Ice Williams was double-switched into games the way Michael Tucker was at RFK Sunday, Gerald Ice Williams didn't wallop the tiebreaking and decisive homer late.
I know it's more fun, on some perverse level, to wallow in woe-is-Mets rooting; there nothing like claiming “I'm a long-suffering Mets fan!” for defeat cred. But that time has passed. If Michael Tucker were a 2003, 2004, even 2005 Met, it likely would have been dispiriting. Michael Tucker as a 2006 Met is at worst an experiment that won't come to fruition and at best a revelation. So far, it's the latter. This is what happens on good teams. It's the difference between depending on Michael Tucker and taking a flyer on Michael Tucker. On the 2006 Mets, Michael Tucker sits way down the depth chart. You get something out of him as you have twice in four games, then life is good. You don't? You find somebody else.
Who? I dunno, but he's out there and Omar knows where to find him. Put another way, who made more brilliant, game-saving plays at second today: you or Jose Valentin?
As for Michael Tucker's lousy, illegal slide into the person of Mike Piazza at Turner Field on July 5, 1998, that was more than eight years ago. He's on our side now. That pardons most crimes. If we were able to forgive Jay Payton for being stupid in Atlanta, we can dislodge the Scarlet A from Michael Tucker's cap if he's going to function effectively with an NY up there. Should he barrel home the same way as a Met that he once did as a Brave, we'll call him exceedingly competitive and exchange high-fives.
Shoot, if Angel Hernandez could catch day games after night games and get a hit or two in the process for us, he'd be dispensated so fast it would make Frank Robinson's head spin. And his doesn't appear to be a particularly spinnable head.
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