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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 6 August 2006 8:01 am I expected to attend my the 25th-anniversary reunion of my high school class Saturday night. I followed the directions until I saw the sign outside that said WELCOME CLASS OF 1981. I went inside, grabbed my nametag and affixed it to my lapel.
Talk about embarrassing. Like in one of those sitcoms, the first guy who comes up to me is someone I don’t recognize.
“Hey…Greg!” He was squinting at my nametag. I didn’t bring my reading glasses (yet another sign of aging) so I couldn’t easily read his.
“Hi!”
“Don’t tell me you don’t remember me?”
“Um…”
“Ha! That’s OK! I didn’t come into the class of ’81 until late in the year. I moved to New York from Milwaukee, remember?”
I couldn’t say I did.
“Aw, come on! Dan…Danny!”
“Uh, Dan…”
“Dan Boitano!”
“Oh yeah. Dan Boitano.”
“Aw, c’mon Greg! You can call me Danny!”
I zipped through the high school yearbook in my head but I couldn’t remember any Dan or Danny Boitano. But the name rang a bell. Wait a sec…
“Dan?”
“Yeah, Greg?”
“You didn’t go to high school with me, did you?”
“Uh, not unless you’re from Sacramento and were born in 1953.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Then, no, we didn’t go to high school together…kidder!”
I wasn’t kidding.
“Dan?”
“Call me Danny.”
“Danny?”
“Yeah, Gregster?”
I hate when people call me that.
“Um, if you weren’t in the Long Beach High School Class of 1981 what are you doing here?”
“Gregster, you always did have the sense of humor. I don’t get the joke, but I’ll go along. What are you doing here?”
That didn’t make any sense. But neither did much of high school.
“Dan, am I in the right place?”
“Well, this is where the Class of ’81 is meeting. See, look at the banner?”
And there it was. NEW YORK METS CLASS OF 1981 25TH REUNION.
“I think I’m in the wrong room.”
“Why do you say that? You’re a Mets fan, right?”
“Sure.”
“And you were a Mets fan in 1981, right?”
“Sure.”
“Then you’re in the right room!”
“The ’81 Mets are having a class reunion?”
“All teams do. Didn’t you know that?”
I didn’t know that.
“To be honest, Dan, no. I didn’t know. I’m a little surprised.”
“Don’t know why. If high school classes can reconvene in awkward, uncomfortable, possibly pointless fashion every five or ten years into seeming perpetuity, why shouldn’t baseball teams?”
“Well, I know the Mets are having the ’86 champions back…”
“That? Oh, that’s Old Timers Night. That’s the official stuff. I’m not talking about that. You think the Mets could sell ten tickets to a 25th anniversary 1981 reunion?”
“I’d buy one.”
“I know ya would, Greg. That’s why we fixed it so you’d be here tonight.”
“You did?”
“Sure! Some editions of the Mets — most editions of the Mets, actually — don’t get those fancy Old Timers Days, don’t get Dunkin’ Donuts quarters and commemorative logo t-shirts…”
“I was supposed to get one of those Friday night, but they ran out.”
“See? What’s the point?”
The point was I bought the ’86-pack in part so I’d get goodies like the t-shirt, but I wasn’t going to start arguing with Dan Boitano, possibly the most obscure of the 1981 Mets. So far he was still the only one at the reunion talking to me.
“What I mean, Greg, is there’s the 1969 team and they got all sorts of sanctioned reunions and there’s 1973 and now there’s 1986. You think the Mets are going to do anything for anybody else?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Yes you have.”
“Yes I have.”
“Yes you have, and you’ve figured out that the Mets are almost surely going to ignore 1988 and 1999 and maybe they’ll do something for 2000 and, if things go well, 2006, but that they’ll never do it the way you want them to and, worse yet to your way of thinking, they’ll never, ever honor the Mets teams that you remember so fondly, the teams whose only mistake was not making the playoffs.”
“Y’know, Danny, you’re right.”
He was. It’s great that the Mets are doing the 20th anniversary of 1986 all year, but where was any acknowledgement of 1985 last year? Will there be even the slightest note about 1997 next year? Those are two of my favorite years, but because they never made it into the postseason, they just pass into the mists of history.
“I am right, Greg. It’s up to fans like you to keep teams like the 1981 Mets alive. You’re the only way we keep getting together.”
“Gee, Dan, I didn’t realize it.”
“You should! Especially after all the good times you and me had, huh?”
Talk about awkward. As much as I appreciated being invited in a roundabout way to the 1981 Mets class reunion, Dan Boitano was the guy I least remembered. Naturally that didn’t stop him from assuming different.
“Hey, what about Pete Rose?”
“Um, what about him?”
“Gregster, you and that sense of humor of yours! You’re killin’ me here!”
Dan was laughing. I was confused.
“You’re pretending you don’t remember how in my first Mets appearance I walked Greg Gross but then got a double play ball out of Mister Hit King himself. C’mon, you remember that!”
“Uh, I guess. It’s been a good 25 years.”
“Yeah, that was a good game. Gave up just the one run in two innings. Zachry got the win and Allen got the save, but I got the hold.”
“Is the hold even a real statistic?”
Dan Boitano turned a little defensive.
“Man, some people!”
“Dan, I meant no offense. I just didn’t know.”
“Geez, Greg, don’t tell me you’re one of those fans who thinks the closers are so great. This is just like back in the Mets cafeteria where Swan and Zachry and Randy Jones and Dave Roberts that quiff would sit at one table and Allen and Reardon would sit at another. Guys like me and Ray Searage and Dyar Miller were treated like outcasts. It wasn’t fair!”
Wow. I didn’t know baseball was just like high school. I wanted to get away from Dan Boitano, but he was being kind of clingy, so I figured maybe I could just change the subject.
“So, who else is here?”
“Well, look around. Lee’s over there chatting up the cheerleaders. What else is new? Big man on campus…hmmph. Doug’s by the bar looking a whiskey sour into his glove hand — right next to Dude, crushing that beer can against his forehead. Oh, and there’s Frankie T, acting all bored. Like usual.”
“Dave Kingman coming?”
“That beatnik who used to sulk by himself in the back row of the auditorium? Nobody here’s heard from him since like 1983.”
“Tim Leary?”
“He was here at the beginning, but said his elbow ached and left. Pussy.”
“Rusty?”
“Won’t come out of the kitchen.”
“Mookie? Jesse? Wally?”
“Eff them. They all act like they weren’t even in the class of ’81. But I think Eddie Lynch will be coming by later.”
“Oh.”
What Dan Boitano said earlier was true, to a point. I mean, sure, I liked the Mets in 1981. I guess I loved the Mets in 1981. But the guys who really made something of themselves, especially those who became 1986 Mets, aren’t guys you’d associate with that team. Either way, we were joined by one of Dan’s classmates.
“Danny!”
“Greggers!”
It was Greg Harris, the ambidextrous pitcher.
“Hey, both you guys are Gregs. That’s hilarious!”
I didn’t laugh. Greg Harris chuckled.
“Hey Dan! Remember this?”
Greg Harris dug three baseballs out of his pockets and started juggling. “I can do it with either hand!”
Dan Boitano doubled over in laughter. A fourth joined our little circle and he wasn’t at all amused.
“Damn.”
“Dyarrhea! What’s up?”
“Cut that shit out, Boitano. My name’s Dyar.”
I had a vague recollection that Dyar Miller as being angry. I guess he still was.
“Chill out Dyar! I was just hangin’ with the Gregs.”
“Harris, you I remember. Who’s this?”
“He’s a big Mets fan. He’s cool.”
“Yeah? Ya wanna be cool? Where’s Coach Pignatano? I want another shot at that old coot!”
The only thing I remembered for sure about Dyar Miller was he got into a fight in a hotel bar with Piggy. I assumed guys get over gripes like that a quarter-century after the fact, but I guess not.
“What about Torre? He owes me!”
“Mr. Torre had to work tonight, Dyar.”
“He had to work? After 25 years he still has to work Saturday nights? HA! What a loser! Well, Screw him, and you can tell him I said that, Harris. Torre used me only 23 times all year. And not at all after September 2. No wonder we didn’t win the division.”
“Uh, Dyar?”
“Yeah, you, the fan?”
“Listen, I was as optimistic as anybody that you guys were going to pull out that split-season thing, but you can’t be serious that Joe Torre not using you in September is the reason we didn’t win.”
“Who the…who let you in? What are you, some kind of Mike Marshall? I see he’s not here. Probably thinks he’s too smart for us with all that kinesiology crap. I need a Schlitz!”
Dyar Miller stalked off. Greg A. Harris took his juggling act over to Bob Bailor’s table, where he and Cubbage and Jorgensen were sitting and nursing their vodka tonics, seemingly not in the mood for any parlor tricks. Once more, I was left alone with Boitano.
“Crazy, Greg, huh?”
“Yeah, Dan. Sure is.”
Uncomfortable silence. I groped for conversation.
“So Dan…”
“Yeah?”
“Um…is Mark Bomback coming?”
“Bomback? Oh, that’s hilarious! Bomback was Mets Class of ’80! Man, that’s priceless. Bomback! I gotta go find Gardenhire and tell him you said that!”
With that, Dan Boitano was off to find Ron Gardenhire. I assumed that like Joe Torre he was probably working, but I didn’t tell Dan. It was the clean break I was looking for.
Still, I was tempted to hang around. The DJ was cueing up “Bette Davis Eyes” and I was hoping to say hi to Hubie Brooks or even Charlie Puleo, but their nametags sat on the registration table unaccounted for. Meanwhile, I could hear Dyar getting into an argument with Searage, telling Ray he wasn’t “such a big man for batting a thousand and going one-and-fucking oh!” Not ten feet away, Pete Falcone started giving his “testimony” to Ellis Valentine, who didn’t look quite right. Then I found out the pickup in the parking lot with the bumpersticker I DON’T BRAKE FOR ANIMALS AND OTHER LIVING THINGS belonged to Joel Youngblood and Youngblood didn’t look much happier than Miller. Besides, I couldn’t believe he wore camo to this affair. Trouble was brewing.
As if that weren’t enough, Boitano was fast reapproaching, this time waving a clipping of a box score and yelling something about how he “struck out Dave Concepcion and got the win.” That did it. I fished out my valet stub as fast as I could, before a tipsy Ron Hodges told the Dave Augustine story again. I’d had enough of the New York Mets Class of 1981 to last me another 25 years.
Remind me not to RSVP for any more of these.
by Jason Fry on 5 August 2006 8:27 pm If you brought a newcomer to last night's game and then today's, he or she got a lesson in how two baseball games with more or less similar scores can be pretty different.
Last night's, despite being won by the bad guys, was a gem: intrigue, drama, history, and a touch of wackiness.
Today's, despite being won by the good guys, was at best a cubic zirconia: crummy fielding, good but not great pitching, and it was on Fox.
Yeah, Jon Leiber was quite good — he got blooped and bled in the first inning and then was betrayed by Pat Burrell and by himself in the sixth. Yeah, Glavine was pretty good himself, aside from that messy first inning. But neither one of them were dominant-good, leading to the sneaking suspicion that there was a certain amount of Day Game After a Night Game at work. (Game time: a tidy 2:11, as if it were a Cyclones game. BTW, the Cyclones have won 12 in a row and just booted the Staten Island Yankees out of first. If you've never been down to Keyspan, go.)
The best news had to be David Wright looking better: He had some of the best swings against Leiber, though his crucial blow was a ball Burrell misplayed hideously. (As always, it's an unfair game.) And he made two sparkling plays to his right, including saving Wagner from yet another bad ending against his old team and preventing the inevitable Gotham back-pages immolation. (Billy, you guys have the night off — go buy David a steak.)
But wait! I was wrapping this up without acknowledging the resumption of the Mike DiFelice Era!
At first glance, DiFelice might seem like he belongs to the Gerald Williams/Jose Lima category of Returns Nobody Asked For. And though it isn't his fault, we'll always remember that he was the guy who wound up taking what should have been Mike Piazza's final at-bat as a New York Met. (Not Willie's finest hour, though it might have been my illustrious co-blogger's.)
But go easy on DiFelice. He got brought back this year to play Crash to Mike Pelfrey's Nuke: At 37, with 512 big-league games and seven teams on his resume, he found himself in the Eastern League tutoring a bonus baby. Sure, that's better than working at Sears (do even ex-backup catchers still work at Sears?), but it's pretty far from the bright lights at a pretty advanced age.
Besides, you think Crash wouldn't have blown Annie off for another couple of days of hitting white balls in batting practice and hotels with room service? Welcome back, Little Mike. It would be taking it too far to say I've missed you, but welcome back.
by Jason Fry on 5 August 2006 4:24 am I don't know why the 43,000-odd who accompanied Greg and me to Shea tonight were booing Chase Utley like he was A-Rod; I really don't. I have nothing against Chase Utley — hell, I wish he were one of ours. (Granted, approximately since Alfonzo left town I've had a habit of coveting other teams' second basemen — I'd love to see Utley or Marcus Giles in our unis.) This isn't to say I was rooting for Utley, but I certainly wasn't rooting against him. What was with the venom? As was discussed often earlier this year, the Mets and Phillies have approximately zero history considering their proximity in the division and on the eastern seaboard. Nor do Shea fans have a habit of booing visitors chasing records — hell, I found it infuriating the way moronic looky-loos and supposed Met fans cheered Mark McGwire as he juiced his way toward Roger Maris in '98, when every McGwire blow at Shea was a blow to our playoff hopes. (But we're not here to talk about the past.)
Other than the outcome, that was a tidy, intriguing game: lots of action, lead changes, some anger, something you've never seen before (OK, I probably have seen two balks in an inning, but I sure don't remember it), a laugh-out-loud moment (El Duque! A triple!) and plenty of tension. It did lack one thing, though — the right outcome.
But, hey, we stopped Chase Utley!
Sigh.
As Greg and I remarked while wedged into a Calcuttaesque 7 train, we'd have traded Utley a cycle for a W.
Addendum: El Duque's triple reminded us that we were in the park once before for a triple by a pitcher, none other than Al Leiter — an occasion that let us hear the sound of 30,000 people laughing. And it got us wondering — surely Met pitchers haven't tripled all that often.
Nope, they haven't — that was the 29th triple by a Met pitcher ever. In fact, El Duque's three-bagger moves him into a tie for sixth place in the Met Pitcher Triples ranks, with 1.
The full list (best I could determine it from Baseball Reference. Math/searching done by me, so it's probably wrong):
2006 — Orlando Hernandez
2005 — Victor Zambrano
2002 — Al Leiter
2001 — Al Leiter
2000 — Eric Cammack
1993 — Dwight Gooden (2), Frank Tanana
1992 — Dwight Gooden
1990 — Dwight Gooden
1988 — Ron Darling (2)
1987 — Sid Fernandez
1986 — Dwight Gooden
1985 — Sid Fernandez
1983 — Tom Seaver (2)
1981 — Neil Allen
1980 — Roy Lee Jackson
1974 — Jerry Koosman
1973 — Tom Seaver
1972 — Tom Seaver
1971 — Nolan Ryan
1970 — Tom Seaver
1966 — Dick Selma
1965 — Darrell Sutherland
1964 — Al Jackson
1963 — Larry Bearnarth
1962 — Bob L. Miller
(I'll save you the calculations: Gooden and Seaver are the leaders with 5; Darling, Leiter and El Sid [!] each managed 2. Now go forth and amaze your friends!)
by Greg Prince on 4 August 2006 4:26 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.
On a summer Sunday morning in 1986, I called Fred Bunz to tell him I’d be on my way over to pick him up for our trip to Shea Stadium. Fine with him, though he said his mother didn’t understand why we were going to a Mets game. After all, it was going to be so crowded. I didn’t cotton to that sort of thinking. If we want to avoid crowds, I said, we can just go to a minor league game.
“Or a Negro League game,” said Fred.
And that, folks, was and, I suppose, is the essence of the wit and wisdom of Fred Bunz. He didn’t quite get this whole baseball thing, or at least why exactly people like me were so heavily into it, but the beauty of Fred, among other things, is he was up for anything and could find something to say about it that nobody else could; semi-sequiturs, if you will. His mother, a sweet-natured German-born woman, hadn’t raised a son who watched a lot of sports, so when Fred told her he was going to see the Mets with Greg and Larry, she didn’t get it either. Why fight the crowds, especially when the games are on television?
Sure, I suggested. Let’s just grill some hot dogs and watch TV.
Fred, deadpanning again: “And we can park at Waldbaum’s and walk home.”
Waldbaum’s was pretty far from where we lived, see, and the Negro Leagues hadn’t existed for…oh hell, I’m not going to explain it. I knew it was funny. If you knew Fred, you’d still be laughing, too.
In high school, I attempted to organize our newspaper staff into a softball team. Our coverage of the field didn’t quite match our coverage of scholastic sports (which generally consisted of visiting one practice and doing one interview with one coach), so it was a tall order whipping us into shape. Feature page editor John Gillespie — ironically later an intramural softball demon at Boston University — bundled himself up in a parka and wool hat (I didn’t wait for spring to start our drills) and chased a fly ball into centerfield. The fly ball won. Fred watched and, apropos of a dozen sportscasters he’d casually overheard, declared of John, “He’s on his horse!”
We never actually played a game, but “he’s on his horse!” remains in the record books.
There was seemingly no limit to what Fred knew at least a little about. He had finished his undergraduate work about the time the 1986 season got underway and was en route to a long program that would take him into a career of medical research. He was also a security guard at TSS, the department store in Oceanside that every family in Long Beach frequented when they needed anything at all. He was well-rounded that way.
But there was one thing Fred didn’t know: That you could just buy tickets to a professional baseball game. Mets, Yankees, Minor League, Negro League; he confessed it was a mystery to him. But when I brought it up that hey, this is 1986, the Mets are great, we should go to a game…well, like I said, Fred was up for anything.
So, I suppose, was Larry Russo. Larry knew you could buy tickets to a baseball game. Approximately once a year since we were in high school, Larry and I would go to a game together, usually with Joel Lugo. Joel was my go-to guy where Mets games were concerned. He was pretty much the only serious Mets fan I was friends with through high school and into the years that followed college. I knew other serious Mets fans, but not well. I was friends with Mets sympathizers and empathizers, but not fans. It had been Joel and me for roughly a decade.
Joel and I made it to Shea twice in 1986. That’s one less time than we did in 1982. It wasn’t that we couldn’t handle prosperity, it was that Joel either had to work days (regular hours at Chwatsky’s of Oceanside, odd shifts at Shell Creek Park) or wanted to go out, drink and find women at night. What an odd priority for 1986. Somehow, Joel was scarcer than he should have been for baseball.
Larry didn’t particularly care for the game, know a lot about it or offer up nifty bon mots in spite of it. If he had heard the “Negro Leagues” crack, I get the feeling he’d have innocently countered that if that’s going to be less crowded, then maybe that’s the game we should go to. I probably would have exploded in disbelieving indignation that he didn’t know something I took for granted. Instead of wondering why Larry wasn’t more interested in baseball, I probably should have been amazed he consented to one afternoon or evening a year of it with me and my stringent standards. But since we had a pretty good relationship that involved long discussions on the state of television and movies (he was a budding filmmaker) and life, I think he considered the annual Mets game kind of the cost of doing business with me.
Fred had said yes to August 3 against the Expos. Larry said OK, too. Joel? Chwatsky’s or Shell Creek or Chivas the night before kept him at bay. We’d hook up with him later for Chinese food in Atlantic Beach. Hence, it was an unusual baseball threesome. Me and two of my closest friends from high school, neither of whom had given the slightest thought to Mookie, to Lenny, to even Doug Sisk.
I picked them up and, per Mrs. Bunz’s forecast, parking was at a premium. We wound up in one of those lots more suitable to tennis than baseball. It was like three Waldbaum’s away from Shea. I’m sure I tried to put a good face on it, but I don’t think I was swaying my pals to the baseball fan’s regimen. We trudged through marshes and meadows and asphalt and up those notorious escalators until we were in the upper deck, way the hell out in left field. A nice crisp view of nine dots in the field and one more dot at bat. Back in Long Beach, Fred’s mother was probably clicking right by Channel 9.
It didn’t rain but it looked like it might, so I brought my Mets cap umbrella. You opened it, it was an oversized blue cap with an orange NY. My mother found it at a Macy’s in North Miami Beach. When the Mets scored — as they did early when Santana singled home Heep — I waved it. Fred, Larry and everybody in our section got a kick out of it. I’d have been on TV if we weren’t twenty sections removed from all the cameras.
Bobby Ojeda took it from there. He retired the Expos inning in and inning out. Our section and presumably all others couldn’t help but notice a no-hitter was in the works. Even Fred caught on; he knew baseball etiquette, however light he may have been on the particulars. Maybe Larry did, too, but as the tension mounted, he had wandered off to see if there was something on the premises more amusing than the game itself. Larry liked to wander around that way. Years in the future, I might do the same at a new ballpark and call it research. Larry, I determined then, was just being Larry.
Ojeda carried the no-hitter into the seventh. Could this be it? Even then, it was common knowledge that the Mets had never pitched a no-hitter. Four years earlier, Joel and I had watched Phil Niekro take one into the eighth here, but that was against us.
Alas, Luis Rivera, the Expos shortstop (making his Major League debut, no less) singled to right with one out in the seventh. Bobby O, who had been the Mets’ best pitcher all year, got a tremendous ovation. We had been conditioned to give those when no-hitters went awry. With that bit of business done, the Expos scored in the seventh to tie it.
Never occurred to me that the Mets wouldn’t win. And when Ray Knight doubled in two runs in the eighth, I brought out the umbrella and we cheered some more. Bobby started the ninth, but after getting the first batter, Montreal strung together three singles, the third of which, by Tim Raines, tied the score. A minute ago he had a no-hitter, now Ojeda was facing a loss.
But this was 1986. McDowell came in and got the Mets out of trouble. Larry returned to his seat for extra innings. In the bottom of the tenth, with two on and two out, Ray Knight stepped up. Most of the 47,167 who remained yelled and clapped and looked to unnerve Expos reliever Tim Burke. I say most, because one person somewhere in the stadium threw a paper airplane that was visible from where we sat. And Larry followed the path of the paper airplane. He was fascinated by it.
Knight singled, Backman scored, Shea shook and Larry asked, “What happened?” He was sore he missed the big moment, probably sorer that I pointed out he shouldn’t have been watching the stupid paper airplane. Fred likely said something droll that got Larry even madder.
Airplane or no, those ten innings got Larry off the hook Sheawise for 1986. Fred didn’t join me for any more games there either, but a week later when I said, real spur-of-the-momentlike, “Let’s go to Philadelphia to see the Mets!” he said, “Sure!” He had never been to a ballgame in his life before August 3. On August 13, he’d be going to his second. Maybe he was falling for baseball or maybe it was just the undeniable appeal of “ROAD TRIP!” to two twentysomething guys working irregular schedules.
I had never been to Veterans Stadium. Despite it being in a major city on the other end of a major turnpike that connected to the major city we lived near, I got us a little lost on the way down, but we made it in plenty of time. Though there were plenty of fellow travelers from New York and a few highlights to speak of — notably Lee Mazzilli’s first second-tour Mets home run — we lost 8-4. Fred, no more an expert on the Phillies than any other club, nevertheless managed to sum up the situation perfectly:
“Schmitty hit one out and the crowd went nuts.”
There’d be a handful of ballpark trips with various combinations of Joel, Larry and Fred over the next several years, though never all at once. It took Joel’s moving to Phoenix and Arizona getting a team and Joel having a family to lure each of us out there one weekend in 1999 to see the Mets play the Diamondbacks. By then, Fred had been living in Baltimore for quite a while, his passing youthful interest in baseball — the Yankees, alas — rekindled into a genuine appreciation for the sport by the opportunity to see games at Camden Yards. Larry was Larry as ever. His reception of baseball faded in and out like an AM station hundreds of miles away.
In the summer of 2006, however, Larry’s antenna proved unusually sharp. He got the idea that the two of us should travel down to Baltimore to see the Orioles with Fred — “ROAD TRIP!” redux — even though he had never heard of Camden Yards or its landmark impact on ballpark design. Twenty years earlier I would have lectured him for obliviousness and we would’ve gotten into a pointless argument. Now? I calmly explained its retro essence and added, “I think you’ll like it.” He said he looked forward to it.
Luck put a day game on the schedule on a Wednesday afternoon when each of the three of us could make it. Fred, no longer baffled by the process, bought the tickets. We went, shvitzed, watched Barry Zito outpitch Kris Benson and chatted about everything and nothing. I thought about mentioning that this was practically the twentieth anniversary of that game in the upper deck with the Expos, the cap umbrella, the near no-no, the Negro Leagues, the Waldbaum’s parking lot, the paper airplane and the missing of the walkoff hit, but I didn’t. I get accused of remembering too many details as is.
Among the three of us, everybody has grown as a person since 1986. We are deeper, more experienced, have lived life as you might expect men in their forties would have. That said, it became abundantly clear that hot day in Baltimore a couple of weeks ago that none of us has really changed a damn bit. Fred stays Fred, Larry remains Larry, I’m me.
No complaints here.
Thanks in great part to this series of tubes known as the Internet, I’m fortunate to have lots of friends these days who are Mets fans. When I want to see the Mets play in person, I can find that kind of company rather easily, and that makes me mighty happy. But these friends of mine from high school? The ones who don’t like awake juggling the 25-man roster in anticipation of October? Who wouldn’t know Jose Valentin if his mustache tickled them on the subway? As little as I see them anymore and as little as they are interested in the only thing that seems to interest me on a going basis, I wouldn’t trade their friendship for a dependable third starter, bullpen help and a lefty pinch-hitter…not even the reincarnation of Rusty Staub.
Fred and Larry, despite my putting them in front of the best team the franchise ever had to offer, aren’t Mets fans. My failure to convert them has always disappointed me a touch, but they are my friends and always will be. They indulge or at least humor me when it comes to baseball and I manage to focus on whatever the hell it is they’re talking about for minutes at a time when they bring up that stuff. After the game and a trip to the adjacent and surprisingly awesome sports museum in Baltimore, we went back to Fred’s house, met his lovely girlfriend and the four of us went to dinner in their neighborhood. About halfway through, I realized the entire day had gone by and nobody had mentioned the godlike characteristics of David Wright — not even me. I have to admit it made me a little antsy to get back on the train to New York and go back to being my usual Mets-myopic self with my usual Mets-myopic crowd, but otherwise, it was as nice a Metsless day as I could imagine.
Tomorrow night, the Long Beach High School Class of 1981 holds its 25th-anniversary reunion. Fred (Class of ’82) won’t be there, but Joel is flying in from California. Larry was on the organizing committee, so I’ll see him, too. I’m hoping he’ll show the film he prepared for the 20th reunion. It was quite moving, his weaving of all the still photos and footage he culled of our class from when we were our younger selves. I think there was even a shot of me in my brand new Starter satin Mets warmup jacket.
Like I said, I haven’t really changed a damn bit.
by Greg Prince on 4 August 2006 3:13 am On the same trip when we buried now and forever The Curse of Turner Field, have we discovered we are subject to a new kind of locale-based dysfunction?
Things don't go as well as they could at the big sack of Soilmaster. Pedro outdistanced by Dontrelle despite pitching brilliantly? That in and of itself ain't nothin' but a thang until you consider that Pedro's odyssey to hip-riddled ineffectiveness began inside the sack when he was ordered to change an undershirt. 'Twas only the first bad thing to happen a Mets pitching stalwart because the schedulemaker insists they go to Miami. Or would Duaner Sanchez be chillin' down South Beach way otherwise?
There's far too much of this sort of nonsense surrounding the Mets at a venue that is audibly friendly to them. The legend of Shingo Takatsu and the infamous “funk” happened there. Mr. Delgado battered Mr. Koo there. Mr. Delgado needlessly detoured there. Mr. Jacobs, who wouldn't have had to have been traded to the Floridians had the idiot agent with the Joe Cocker jones steered his client more eptly, kicked a ball from Paul Lo Duca's glove tonight. That after denting Pedro's armor. Since when does Lo Duca not get a call at home just because he doesn't have control of the ball? Who could forget his brilliant masking of a bobble on Opening Day, the same game when Xavier Nady went 4-for-4.
Xavier Nady was traded with the Mets in Florida.
The Lincoln-Kennedy comparison between Turner Field and Your Name Here/Football Team Stadium doesn't run perfectly down the 50-yard line. The biggest difference is the Braves used their Metmashing as a pivot point from which to dominate the division. The Marlins merely annoy — albeit effectively — now and then. Also, the Marlins have won two World Series since Turner Field opened, the Braves none.
We just lost two of three to the Fish, but we swept the Braves on what is hard to remember was this very same trip. We can still bask in that a bit until the Abreuless, Lidleless, so-happy-they're-gone-they're-hot Phillies cut our lead to a single digit.
Gotta have something besides the steam rising up from the asphalt to sweat over, Mets fans.
by Greg Prince on 3 August 2006 10:39 pm The problem with being one of those bloggers who blogs virtually every day is when you take a little trip and decide you're not going to blog that you still think like a blogger. You hear stuff, you see stuff and it is your impulse to post stuff. But you don't 'cause you can't or you won't.
Honestly, it's not so much the substance that went wanting. That's what a two-man operation is for (thanks bro). It's all those headlines that zip through your brain as perfect to the occasion, but the occasion slips away and it's too soon to treat it like nostalgia.
Hence, in the interest of satisfying my own needs, I will share with whoever wants them, my slightly stale, possibly irrelevant headlines and accompanying explanations to make them somewhat useful.
Aw, Hail No!
A cab? A pitcher and a fucking cab? AGAIN?
Nady of Shea I Adored You
I have to admit I've had this one simmering for the right spot — walkoff hit, something like that — since April, albeit in the present tense. All you many accordion fans should get it without prompting. (Sometimes I think I should be writing for Joe Franklin.)
He Was The X-Man, Coo-Coo-Ca-Choo
Some weeks ago, my partner advised not falling in love with players to the point you can't bear to trade them if it's for the good of the team. As a practitioner traditionally guilty of just such sentiment, I nodded and thought, “Nady would be like that.” I could see myself, if he were ever swapped out, trying to balance the “he was really important to our big start” instinct with “in the big picture, he's an OK rightfielder and a No. 7 hitter”. But we weren't going to trade Xavier Nady this year, so it was going to be moot.
He's His Own Grandpa
Given an evening to reflect on the events of Monday — Sanchez freakishly (or perhaps flukily) injured, R. Hernandez repurposed, Oliver Perez not traded for Scott Linebrink despite what ESPNews kept reporting over and over and over again — this is what I came up with: We traded Mike Cameron and got a reliever we already had. That thinking is so 2005 and ignores a dozen variables, but it is the bottom line on which I landed. Also, as ever, I blame Heath Bell.
King of the N-Men
What bugs me the most (given that little bugs me with a 13-game lead) is that while the rest of the world dwelled on the X in Xavier, I was quite proud of noticing how few Mets there were with a last name that began with N, and Nady was about to trump the lot of them. He left with, what, 14 homers? Well, eleven previous Mets, including pitchers, had last names beginning with the letter N. Those N-Men combined to hit 25 homers in 1,357 Met at-bats. Before Nady 'nocked one out (vs. the Nats) on 4/3/06, no N-Met had gone deep since Jon Nunnally took Russ Ortiz into McCovey Cove on 5/3/00. If Xavier had hit 15 Met HRs, he would have surpassed Charlie Neal's lifetime team N-mark, set at Crosley Field on 6/15/63. Instead, like Marcus Giles and Atlanta's Wild Card aspirations, Nady and Neal will forever be kissing their sisters until we trade for Albert Nujols.
It's Like One Million Degrees
Speaking of whom, I was in St. Louis for the last three days. You think it's hot here? Well, it probably is, but St. Louis took the hot cake.
It's Like One Billion Degrees
How hot was it? I don't have a swift reply. It was too darn hot for that sort of thing (the Post-Dispatch ran a front-page story this morning about how nobody in town was in the mood for “hot enough for ya?” repartee). Every time we got into our hotel elevator, it posted the outdoor temperature and every time we looked, it was 102. That's not a temperature. That's a fever.
It's Like One Trillion Degrees
If it's the searing middle of summer and I've dragged my wife to a mid-sized American city, it can mean only one thing: Somebody opened a new ballpark. Stephanie agreed to visit Busch Stadium II — or III, depending on how you take your Sportsman's Park — in early May when it sounded charming. Then came that nasty heartland hurricane followed by bulletins of power outages followed by forecasts for like one trillion degrees. My wife has the prettiest eyes, but that's not to say they're not capable of transmitting the stare of death.
It Sure Holds The Heat Well
We conserved energy in St. Louis. No, we blasted the hotel AC at will (while allowing our home to rise to a WLIR-high of 92.7 degrees while we were away). I mean we left the midday sun, which was straight out of that Twilight Zone episode in which the earth is heading the wrong way, to mad dogs, Englishmen and Cardinal Nation. If I wanted Stephanie's company for the Wednesday night game, she insisted on the joys of room service and demurred my bright ideas about going over to the park and taking many looks around.
I See Red People
Fortunately, our hotel was directly across the street from Busch. By paying through the beak for the desired view, we could watch Tuesday night's game go on in virtual luxury box isolation. And what a view! We could see just about everything one needed to see, augmenting the silent tableau with the folksy radio call of Mike Shannon (whose classy eatery we visited and enjoyed if not as much as the pilgrimage we made to The Greatest Restaurant Chain Ever) and the professional pipes of John Rooney. Almost as good was the chance to stand sentry, peek out the curtain at odd hours and make sure nobody stole the stadium. We could see life go on from climate-controlled comfort. What Stephanie and I couldn't help but notice was how red everybody was. Not from the burn of Ol' Sol but in homage to their lord god bird. We knew this from watching St. Louis games on television for many years, but it really strikes you being in the heart of it. As Stephanie noted, for all the ballparks we've been to (30 for me, 22 for her…all with, uh, me), it's an unmatched phenomenon. Not wanting to fire the ire of the locals, she requested an evening's blue and orange amnesty to purchase a red shirt with a red bird. Sportsman that I am, I went out into the heat and bought it for her with the caveat that come a potential Met-Cardinal LDS/LCS, it is hidden deep in the closet along with that one snapshot she took of a baseball-related tickertape parade that passed beneath her office window in the late 1990s.
Soulless Cages
For those of you itching to plant yourself inside Sheabbets Field in three years and partake of all that retro goodness you've seen elsewhere, I'm here to report it's overrated if not delivered correctly. Though I found Cardinals fans' self-ballyhooment as the best in baseball to be as laughable as Jeff Weaver's pitching — they boo bad things, they cheer good things, they say lame things, they wear red things — I'm willing to concede the franchise's historical track record…or as Stephanie observed as we listened to Shannon, “Do you think he brings up Stan the Man every game?” For all its brickiness and Musial statuary, I didn't feel very much Cardinalogy in the new building. Busch II/III only has four months in the books and it's perfectly fair to assume you can't manufacture ballpark lore like Whitey's Rats could manufacture runs. Maybe it takes time, but they got it right in Baltimore and Pittsburgh and even Philadelphia. Something's missing in St. Louis. Something needs to happen in that stadium before it can truly be their home field; God forbid it's a pennant in 2006. Until then, it will remain a very nice piece from the retro catalogue and not a lot more. Keep that in mind as you kiss Bill Shea's playpen goodbye. Our current facility may not be objectively gorgeous, but like the round Busch that's not there anymore, its team's fans spent four decades imbuing it with soul to spare.
No News Is Good News
It was a good trip and perhaps more details will seep out should they seem pertinent to our ongoing discussions, but after three days of the oppressive Missouri suns (surely there was more than one) and monitoring Tony LaRussa's moods (they're not good) and keeping up with a trickle of crooked numbers from Miami (we're still in first by a ton, right?) and discovering that our prime setup man and starting rightfielder are now, respectively, a Pirate and a patient, home is the place to be: Pedro and Dontrelle, me and the couch, the remote and Snigh. Long-term, any baseball that isn't the Mets is for the birds.
by Jason Fry on 3 August 2006 4:01 am Baseball, man — it'll kill ya.
Good luck teasing the storylines out of this one. First we pounded poor Ricky Nolasco, who must be seeing orange and blue ghosts in his sleep. Then — and it feels like we've done this too often — we went to sleep at the switch. 6-0 became 6-1 became 6-2 became 6-3 as the Marlins pecked away at Trachsel. Trachsel was Trachsel; Roberto Hernandez was unlucky, seeing a strikeout turn into a baserunner and his teammates let his runners score to make it 6-5; and David Wright…well. David Wright may be The New Franchise, but even The New Franchise isn't immune to slumps and wearing down during the dog days. Wright twice came to the plate with the bases loaded and nobody out, and came up empty both times. Ten men left on base. Ouch. Somebody please give the guy a breather.
Speaking of 23-year-old superstar third basemen, Wright and Miguel Cabrera sure had opposite games: Wright was hopeless at the plate, but made a sparkling play in the field; Cabrera drove in four, but managed the difficult trick of having a 3-for-5 night that he should be ashamed of. This Marlins team could be a beast pretty soon — they're young, talented and play hard. At least most of them do. Their All-Star third baseman, amazingly, routinely sulks and loafs his way through games. It was startling to see Cabrera get lectured about setting himself on throws in his own dugout; it was even more startling to note that the person delivering the well-earned lecture was Dontrelle Willis, a 24-year-old pitcher. Cabrera is far too good to play a game this beautiful this badly. Even though it benefited us tonight, it's a shame to see.
Back to our struggles: It didn't help that in the late innings we had to take on both the Marlins and the home-plate ump. Mike Reilly's incorrectly calling Jose Valentin out on a pickoff was excusable — bang-bang play, not a great angle — but Andy Fletcher didn't give Chad Bradford two pitches he deserved, and then gave Joe Borowski one he didn't. I kept waiting for the Andy Fletcher mask to get torn off and reveal the demonic visage of Angel Hernandez.
Even once Cliff had been excused for the night, I was hoping that Valentin might let us exhale by hitting one over the fence and setting up Heilman (very good once again) for a cakewalk save. But I knew better. Baseball being baseball, it had to come down to Billy Wagner back in the fire, didn't it?
C'mon, admit it: After Wes Helms singled and Wags somehow hit Brian Moehler, you thought we'd lost, didn't you? When Helms got on base I got up from my desk where I was listening to the radio and took up my sometimes-lucky post on the steps, but the thing I was keeping uppermost in my mind was this: When the Marlins tie it or beat us, don't wake up Emily and Joshua screaming obscenities.
But somehow Billy found his location (and wasn't distracted by the odd sight of Joe Girardi pinch-running for a pinch-runner, something I'm pretty sure I've never seen before) and also found a little luck. Hanley Ramirez couldn't bunt, he fanned Dan Uggla, and then here came Cabrera, doing the one baseball-related thing he reliably cares about doing. That rising fastball was a thing of beauty — kept the back pages safe for Billy, our butterflies at bay and snuffed talk (at least for now) of any kind of post-Braves letdown.
Great game — once we had it won.
On Another Front: I was heartened to see the Mets send Pelfrey down and hand the fifth starter's spot (at least for now) to Maine, particularly since I figured they'd do the opposite. To me, this wasn't a question of 17 scoreless innnings and rotational justice — ask Aaron Heilman about that — so much as it was about choosing strategy over splash, something the Mets haven't always been good at. Maine has the kind of swing-and-miss stuff that's scarce in our rotation right now, and wouldn't seem to have a lot left to prove in AAA. If he can build on what's been a successful year so far, he might have an important role to play in the postseason — and I don't think there's a better way for him to study up than to get repeated, relatively low-pressure starts.
Pelfrey is in his first months as a professional, and obviously looks like a big piece of our future. We can see that, and we don't need an extended audition to be reminded of it or to be convinced to come to the ballpark. But he's not ready: Like a lot of young pitchers, his primary battle is still against himself, and his to-do list begins with harnessing his other pitches and refining the location on his fastball. The big leagues isn't the place for him to do that — not yet, and not if it comes at the expense of what Maine needs to do. Pelfrey will be back, but for now, it was right for him to go. Good move by the Mets.
by Jason Fry on 2 August 2006 4:37 am One of my many little rituals is to wave my hand around during save opportunities to show how many outs there are, as if I'm an extra infielder signalling to the outfield. (I even use the index finger and the pinkie on two outs, I've taught Joshua to do the same, and I've explained to him why you can't just hold up two fingers like a normal person. Yes, I am mentally ill.)
So. Miguel Olivo leads off the ninth with a single. Then Wes Helms bunts him over. OK, fine, a hit ties it, but two productive outs won't get it done. So go get 'em Billy. Oh, and here's the first finger up for my imaginary outfielders to see. One out. Here comes Josh Willingham to pinch-hit. Wagner rears back and fires and…oops. The masters of the walk-off have just been walked-off.
You can't tell what the important parts of a story are until the story's done; with that in mind, the first inning should have been the canary in the coalmine. With Reyes on first, Lo Duca hits one 430 feet — into the glove of Alfredo Amezaga, who would have had to buy a ticket to catch it if he weren't playing in a half-assed conversion of a football stadium. (Someone move this damn team to San Antonio already!) By all rights it should be 2-0 with none out; instead it's 0-0 with one out. So Beltran doubles, Reyes trips over third, and suddenly there are two Mets converging on third base. Beltran loses this particular real-estate dilemma, and now by all rights it should be 2-0 with none out and a runner on second, but instead it's still 0-0, only with two out. And I'm wondering why I'd been so eager to see baseball, since it's obviously designed to torture and bedevil.
Then Delgado singles before Wright strikes out (our Boy Wonder looks like he needs a breather) and we've done it the hard way, but at least we've done it. Dame Fortune's reminded us she can spit in our eye if she wishes, and having proved her point will obviously now step aside like the well-bred lady she's been of late.
Then Pelfrey does a nice job getting a scoreless inning under his belt, giving up a Mike Jacobs single but then getting Miguel Cabrera to hit one straight at the newly arrived Milledge. Except Milledge doesn't catch the ball. Cody Ross promptly doubles to tie the game, and if not for the fact that Cabrera isn't playing hard, we should be down 2-1. OK, Dame Fortune, I'm paying attention again.
There was a lot to like later in this game. Beltran is a one-man offensive show right now, Lo Duca is on a tear, and best of all Pelfrey showed some good off-speed stuff and did a terrific job getting through the sixth, punching out Olivo and Amezaga. Bradford and Heilman were flawless on Day One Post-Sanchez, and thanks to Reyes, Pelfrey would have been in line for a gritty-if-not-pretty win.
But that was before Wagner threw a fastball that missed by “about 17 inches.” On further review, Dame Fortune let us know how this one would go way back in the first, didn't she?
by Jason Fry on 1 August 2006 5:20 am Sheesh, we went through the ringer today and didn't even play a game.
First Duaner Sanchez — fearless, fist-pumping, goggle-wearing Duaner Sanchez — was out for the year. Now he may not be. 50-50 he'll need surgery, Omar says. Regardless of the outcome, word of the injury forced the front office into a hurry-up offense on the trading front. When a last-minute deal fell through, the final tally was Xavier Nady departing, Oliver Perez arriving (and immediately heading for Norfolk), Roberto Hernandez returning, and Lastings Milledge reappearing.
You have to assume Sanchez won't be back until 2007, but let's not panic. Bert was awfully good for us last year and has decent numbers this year — and he's the kind of player one would expect to find another gear now that he's been airlifted off the roof of the Pirate embassy. And if Bert can't handle the eighth-inning role? Well, Aaron Heilman's looked better of late, and Pedro Feliciano and Chad Bradford have been trustworthy. Who says they can't step it up a notch? And if they can't, there are intriguing players a phone call away — a revitalized Royce Ring, Heath Bell and his always-tantalizing peripherals, Henry Owens having had a taste of the Show, maybe Perez if he can find his 2004 form. If that doesn't work? Come October we're not going to need five starters. Steve Trachsel's too much a creature of habit for pen work, but Orlando Hernandez has shown he can handle it. You're telling me there's no way John Maine could prove valuable in October? Or Mike Pelfrey? Even the forgotten Brian Bannister may have something to add to this equation before it's completed — Bannister turned in a glittering rehab start in St. Lucie tonight.
None of this is on a level with seeing Jason Schmidt in orange and blue (or Dontrelle or Zito, if you were really thinking big), but that dream was dashed when Duaner Sanchez's taxi crashed. Fortunately, we're not exactly in a dogfight here. We have a 14-game lead over the Phillies, who just raised the white flag; 14.5 over the up-and-coming but still-too-young Marlins, and 15 over the stiffening corpse of the Braves. We have far-from-bad options internally, and time to find answers.
And if there is no answer in-house? Again, no need to panic: After today I trust Omar even more.
Dontrelle Willis and Barry Zito probably weren't ever in the cards. But according to various reports, Sunday night Omar was working on a three-way deal that would have gotten us Roy Oswalt — not Cliff Floyd's best pal, but 29, an All-Star and signed through '07 –for Milledge. Then Omar was forced to scramble, so he moved quickly and creatively, swapping Nady for Bert and Perez with an eye toward turning around and trading Perez and Bell to the Padres for hard-throwing lefty specialist Scott Linebrink.
That deal fell apart, apparently when the Padres blinked, but even so, it's pretty impressive for an audible. I doubt the San Diego trade can be resurrected — it's hard to imagine Linebrink, Bell or Perez getting through waivers — but considering how close he came, I have faith Omar will find a way if a way needs to be found. And if there is no way, if the current roster is what we head into October with? After Jose Valentin and Darren Oliver, I trust Omar's eye. Besides, remember how we got Sanchez. Anybody miss Jae Seo?
by Jason Fry on 31 July 2006 8:07 pm Yes, it's true. Xavier Nady's been sent to Pittsburgh for Roberto Hernandez and Oliver Perez. Shame to see Nady go — one would assume Lastings is now on the way back, though his tenure at Norfolk hasn't exactly been sterling. Bert we know. Perez has been putrid this year — but won 12 games a year ago with a sparkling sub-3 ERA and is only 24.
Still, this is a case of the latest news not being the real news: The trade was required because Duaner Sanchez was in a car accident last night after arriving in Miami. The good news from a human perspective: There's no indication he was badly hurt in any kind of beyond-professional way. The awful news from a Met perspective: Separated shoulder, surgery today, done for the year. (Update: Maybe not done for the year. No surgery yet. Fingers and toesies.)
Fuck.
Just…fuck.
More reaction later, after the cloud of fear lifts or, more likely, remains in place and becomes choking. In the meantime, carry on….
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