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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 24 June 2006 2:06 am 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.
Interleague play in 1986 was limited to eight games and they involved the same two teams. It was Mets 5 Red Sox 3. Seven of those contests were in the World Series, one was a September warmup.
Whaaa…? There was a preliminary? Yes. The Mets and Red Sox played each other on September 4 at Fenway. It was a charity affair to benefit the Jimmy Fund. Consider it a Mayor’s Trophy Game as facilitated by the Delta Shuttle.
It kind of came out of nowhere. When it appeared on the pocket schedule, it mandated a double-take. But as the season went on and the Mets and Red Sox showed every sign of locking down their respective divisions, it was billed as a World Series preview. (Bet that went over big in Houston and Anaheim.)
As an exhibition, it wasn’t important. But it was significant. Here’s Joe Klein from New York magazine that September:
It was a meeting between two teams that have a shared heritage of frustration and romance over the past quarter-century, and a surprising number of mutual fans. “There is,” says Bill James, the baseball scholar, “a definite type of fan in the Northeast, the Mets-Red Sox rooter. They are your dyed-in-the-wool Yankee-haters.” They are intellectual sorts, by and large, New Yorkers who went to school in Boston and fell in love with the Sox and Fenway; Mets fans who sought a more direct way to root against the Yankees. The prospect of a World Series between these two long-suffering fellow travelers is, at once, enormously satisfying and an existential nightmare: It would be a Subway Series of the soul.
As that exhibition came and went and, more importantly, as the collision course between New York (N) and Boston (A) for real stakes appeared inevitable, Klein’s point was proven. At least for me.
I’m assuming that every Mets fan’s kneejerk answer to “who’s your favorite American League team?” at some juncture or another in their lives has been Red Sox. They were for me from the time I learned who the Red Sox’ primary rival was; enemy of my enemy and such. Though I had never been any closer to Boston than an hour in Albany, I carried my FauxSox pride to extremes as they battled the Yankees in the late ’70s. I still remember being thought of a Red Sox fan by a particularly obnoxious Yankees fan who worked in the East End Dairy in 1978 because it was the B-for-Boston cap I wore every day that summer.
That didn’t work out so well.
After ’78, I didn’t wear the Red Sox regalia very much, preferring to be known as a Mets fan and only a Mets fan. The Red Sox faded from perennial contention in the early ’80s. I rooted for the Royals, the Brewers, the Orioles, the Blue Jays…whoever was keeping the Yankees in their place. My first pilgrimage to Fenway Park came in 1985 with mixed emotions. Tom Seaver was pitching for the White Sox, gunning for his 299th win. After idealizing the joint from afar, I wore Boston’s cap and rooted for Boston’s opponents. Tom won. I was happy for him.
One year later, the Red Sox raced to the top of their division and I could watch them on their flagship TV station, WSBK, carried by Cablevision of Long Island. They had that guy Roger Clemens who struck out 20 Mariners and April and Wage Boggs the perennial batting champion and admirable old men like Dwight Evans and Jim Rice and Bill Buckner and colorful names like Oil Can Boyd. I was happy for them.
Then at the end of June, they got Tom Seaver and I was ecstatic. Tom Terrific — my idol — on my more or less favorite American League team. He could tutor Roger Clemens (seemed like a good kid). Tom joked that all he could tell Clemens was when the bus leaves and to be on time. Great line. With him pitching and being backed up by such a good lineup, Seaver might even get to another World Series.
Uh-oh.
In my spare baseball moments of 1986, I wondered how I’d react if the Mets and Red Sox did meet. Oh, I don’t mean the ultimate outcome. It wasn’t much of a Subway Series for my soul. Mets in four or less, as far as I was concerned. But to watch them bat against Tom Seaver and to actively root for the failure of Tom Seaver on the national stage, in his first World Series in thirteen years? Choosing, possibly, between Tom Seaver, my all-timer and Dwight Gooden, my right-now’er?
Never happened. Tom got hurt in Toronto on September 19. He didn’t make the World Series roster. One of my eternal grudges against NBC is they never showed the player introductions at Shea before Game One. I wanted to see Tom’s reception. I still don’t know if it was overwhelming or if he was viewed as just another stranger in a gray uniform scheming to take away what would be rightfully ours. It was one thing to cheer Tom Seaver the visiting Red when the Mets were brutal and wounds over his departure were still raw. It was another when he was part of a team getting in the way of the Holy Met Grail.
Hey! Seavuh! Don’t tell Clemens nothin’ he could use against us!
Without Seaver, there was nothing about the Red Sox that particularly engaged me by September, let alone October. I was annoyed that Clemens had taken over Gooden’s mantle as Best Young Pitcher in the game. Sure, he was probably a swell fellow, but he was also an obstacle. Boggs? Glad he was sticking it to Mattingly in the batting race, but that’s a bat I didn’t want to see. Evans? Rice? Buckner? No thanks. I hoped we’d see the Angels after the Astros. They had guys who had fallen short of the Series too often. The Red Sox had been absent since 1975, but I was already feeling Boston fatigue, Yankee-hating simpatico or not.
Apparently, I wasn’t alone. I offer an opposing viewpoint to Joe Klein’s, from another writer, a friend of mine named Sharon Chapman. She and her husband Kevin lived in Boston in ’86, completing legal studies that summer. Before decamping to the homeland in time for a Met October, she formed her impression of our potential enemy of ourselves:
We lived within walking distance of Fenway. Our first two years we lived so close to the park, and in such a crappy neighborhood, that we didn’t have any real lighting at night unless the Red Sox were playing a night game. That was a five-minute walk from Fenway. For our third year, we had closer to a ten-minute walk, although we were right off of Beacon Street, which was nicer and closer to school. We attended Opening Day at Fenway in 1986, in the bleachers, along with Kevin’s Law Review compadres (he’s the smart one). It was the first home game of the season. As the team was introduced for the first time that year, manager John McNamara was loudly booed. I distinctly remember thinking at the time that fans who would boo their manager on Opening Day did not deserve to win anything. So when the Fenway Faithful complain about how much they suffered that season, in my opinion they brought a lot of it upon themselves. I never warmed to the Red Sox, despite living so close and seeing a lot of games in their stadium. From the moment we pulled into town with our little rented U-Haul van, I took an instant dislike to that team. And Fenway is a dump.
Sharon and Kevin overcame their Lyric Little Bandbox misgivings to attend Tom Seaver’s first game as a Red Sock. “We couldn’t not go,” she says. “He was always my favorite when I was a kid. The only time in my life I ever cut classes in college was to see him pitch Opening Day 1983.” They missed out on another piece of Red Sox history, however:
The game we almost went to that season was Clemens’ 20-strikeout game. We were thinking of going and buying tix at the gate — that was never an issue in the mid-’80s — but we had to study for the bar exam so we passed on the game.
What a shame, missing a moment like that…or not.
“In retrospect,” Sharon’s decided, “I’m glad that I wasn’t there for that asshole’s moment of glory.”
by Greg Prince on 23 June 2006 5:27 am On the morning of July 11, 1973, I boarded a bus bound for Shea Stadium. It was my first Mets game. It was also the last time I rode such a vehicle to a Mets game…until June 22, 2006.
Sometimes it's good to retrace your steps.
Helluva day to take a bus to Shea. Helluva day to sit way out in the right field mezzanine, so far removed from the action that it was sort of like seeing everything for the first time again. Helluva day to be part of a group. In '73, I went as part of Camp Day. I kind of did the same on Thursday, albeit with a much more advanced camp. The cap I wore 33 years ago identified me as a kid from CAMP AVNET. Thursday I donned a lid that read Lenox Hill Senior Center St. Peter's Church Volunteer. Helluva day to buy a brand new traditional blue Mets cap as well; 30 bucks well spent given the W that ensued. I purchased a fresh black/blue model in March, reasoning it really is the color scheme of our times, but the Mets kept losing when I wore it to their games. If I'm gonna go back to my roots buswise, may as well do the same on the top of my head.
Helluva day and helluva way to get over Wednesday night's debacle of a disaster of a farce of a joke. Pedro's six innings and David's two homers are what certified it all as hella good, but I'll remember this win over the Reds as a very special day as much for the bus as for everything thereafter.
While Wright was hitting two home runs for the greater good, the Mets were apparently “hitting a home run for senior nutrition”. That's what the folder pimping this event said, though I didn't actually hear much about senior nutrition. This was no day to eat your vegetables.
The savvier members of the Lenox Hill Senior Centers on the East Side, including the one Stephanie runs at St. Peter's, took the Mets up on their invitation to attend the game versus the Reds. I was enlisted to help out. My role? Wear my Pedro t-shirt and provide a walking landmark. If you get lost between the bus and the stadium, or the stadium and the bus, just look for Stephanie's husband. He's the big blue thing with MARTINEZ 45 on his back. Ya can't miss him.
I have to admit that while this sounds like a pretty cush volunteer assignment, I've been haunted for four years by my last out-of-Manhattan Lenox Hill bus duty. In August 2002, Stephanie recruited me to join her to lead a troop of feelin'-lucky seniors to Foxwoods Resort & Casino in The Middle of Nowhere, Conn. Not my kind of trip. Let's just say the Foxwoods Resort & Casino turning point of that game came when the bus door shut tight behind me, holding me hostage for one of the longest days of my life. The Wonder Of It All, my ass.
Today wasn't four years ago. This was fun, not just because of the destination, but the journey. Some of those who signed up for Senior Day at Shea were simply looking for a diversion, weather permitting. But there was a true hard core of baseball fans on the bus. Never mind you and me and our piddling three or four decades on the beat. I met people who knew Leonard Shecter (Jim Bouton's editor on Ball Four), Milt Richman (longtime UPI sports editor) and Bill Shea (you hafta ask?). Actually, that was just one lady. There was another lady who sang a rousing chorus of the New York Giants' fight song. Her late husband was a Yankees fan who was driven so up Coogan's Bluff by her constant playing of her favorite record, he smashed it. She demanded he go out and get another copy. Then she played it even more. In the words of Leo Durocher, stick that in your ear.
Did I mention what fun this was? I was recently wondering if I'd ever be able to look at Shea the way I'll look at Busch in early August, the way I look at every ballpark I go to for the first time. Having clicked past 300 on the Shea meter last summer, I didn't think so. Thursday afternoon was as close I'm likely to get to it between now and its destruction. Though I badly wanted a win after Silly Wagner blew Wednesday night away and just as badly desired to improve on my limp 1-5 mark on the year (plus finally see the home team shake hands while I wore MARTINEZ 45; another jinx bites the dust), I felt, in my way, like a Shea rookie once more. I was just happy to be there.
I was also elated to have been there with my baseball-reclusive wife. Sure, she'll fly halfway across the country and agree to make a vacation out of a Cardinals game, but she limits her Shea exposure to a single annual appearance most seasons. Weeknight games are out. Cold weather games are out. Steamy day games are out if she can help it, but technically this was work. She had to go (well, she had to go once I egged her on to make Lenox Hill a part of Senior Day). My fair lady played hide and seek with the sun, creeping back a row at a time to avoid feeling the burn. She slathered on the 'screen and hydrated and persevered through all nine innings with characteristic good cheer.
The whole gang did, not easy when humidity levels dwarfed our passenger-manifest's average age. Postgame, we even managed to find the bus with minimal fuss (I was still the big blue thing with legs). While cars fought their way through single-exit parking lot traffic and transit riders crowded onto the inadequate MTA steps I know all too well, our coach whisked us toward the L.I.E. in minutes. You gotta believe it was a way better ride than what Camp Avnet offered in 1973.
You also gotta continue to believe in the 2006 Mets. After the most recent Worst Loss Ever, they bounced back, just like in Philadelphia in early May, just like after the Saturday Subway Series train wreck. Other than Pedro's wildness (nicely quelled by his final inning), there was nothing not to like at Shea, and the fans — seniors, juniors, all shapes, sizes and vintages — didn't not like it.
After witnessing seven games in person this season (started by seven different Mets pitchers, for what that's worth), I can report the atmosphere this year is different from any I've experienced as a constant goer. Even more than our transportation mode, a 2006 Mets game feels like a joyride. I've witnessed mostly losses, but it still feels good every time I'm there. I've heard boos reasonable and irrational but it's not Venom Inc. There is expectation, but there is also participation. Everybody wants to be a part of this, and presumptuousness, 10-game lead or not, hasn't infected our huddled masses.
Is it simple bandwagon-hopping and value-pricing that explains more than 46,000 on a Thursday afternoon and nearly 50,000 the night before versus the Reds when all that was given away was a 5-4 lead? Some, I suppose, but this is bigger than that. I attended three games on this homestand and I was surrounded by Mets fans. No duh, you say, but really. There's a difference between those who show up because it's the thing to do and those who show up because they can't stay away. It's overwhelmingly the latter. It's not “the scene” as it was circa '86 or '88. And it's not as defensive or edgy as the best of the Valentine era required. Gosh, how I loved those seasons, but it was hard work being a Mets fan from 1997 through 2001. Even when we were World Series-caliber, it always felt like we had to prove ourselves. To the local media. To the star-fudgers who infiltrated our good seats in SOSA and McGWIRE garb. To the Braves (remember them?). To the mother-lovin' Yankees and their unpleasant slummers.
That in particular is changing. For years, I'd see a dozen too many Yankee caps at Shea Stadium and I'd get ready to rumble. What the hell are they doing here? Thursday, I saw a smattering of offending bonnets, but they weren't worn by the JEET-UH neanderthals on holiday from their criminal asylum. They were younger types — crisp WRIGHT 5 tees overshadowing the wrong NY on their caps — who emitted a vibe that they wanted to see the best baseball being played in New York, that they'd gladly let a good gust blow that piece of cap right off their noggins.
There was none of that familiar preening and pointing to their logo and reminding us about the rings, baby. Call it front-running if you choose. It's an unfortunate, occupational hazard of winning. Still, as long as I was in volunteer mode, I had to overcome the temptation to set up tables and have these wannabe-converts fill out amnesty request forms (plus a few credit card applications; it is Shea, after all). Conversely, there was a quick ramp-burst of YANK EES SUCK! after the final out, but I sense that's going to fade as it sinks in at last that our own affairs are job one.
The tide has turned, the plates have shifted and, as was the case when I first showed up at Shea in 1973, it's a great feeling to have grabbed a spot on the bus before everybody else did.
by Greg Prince on 22 June 2006 9:12 am First, our closer throws 98 MPH fastballs, collects two easy outs, fires up the crowd and then he loses the strike zone, never to regain it in any meaningful fashion.
Fucking Armando.
Then, our closer induces a pathetic little half-swing squib and, wouldn'tcha know it, that defensive excuse-me whoopsy! cut rolls less than 90 feet to exactly the wrong place to load the bases.
Fucking Franco.
Finally, just when it appears our closer is going to retire this one particular pesky thorn-in-our-side, having gotten him to oh-and-two — oh-and-two! — he throws a fastball that just sits over the outer edge of the plate and it's served into center for a two-run single, the lead and, ultimately, the game.
Fucking Looper.
Games like this, in which we waste dramatic offensive heroics, are nothing new in the annals of Mets givebacks. Hell, games like this are nothing new in the annals of Mets history when we're in first place a wide margin and we're on the verge of vanquishing the Cincinnati Reds.
But aren't we supposed to have bought our way out of them? Isn't this why we signed a fireman deluxe to a king-sized contract? Wasn't that, among all other fragments, the missing piece to our pennant puzzle? And do you feel particularly confident come the ninth inning and we hold a slim lead?
Fucking Wagner.
by Jason Fry on 22 June 2006 3:41 am The problem with a loss like this — and make no mistake, this was one of those “I got mauled by a grizzly bear and fell down a ravine and got disemboweled when I fell on a pointy rock and now cougars are uncoilng my guts and EATING them while I'm still alive” losses — is that it makes all the good stuff recede until it feels like it was a long time ago, and thus of no possible use in making you feel better.
Jose Valentin? Once upon a time he capped a very nice night at the plate by coming up to hit lefty against a left-hander for some bizarre reason and came through with a laser beam over the center-field fence. Man, you should've seen it: The crowd was going insane. It was particularly nice because it gave us the lead late in a singularly frustrating game, one that had been marked by crappy fielding, lukewarm pitching, failures in the clutch, a terrible giveaway at-bat from a guy who hit two home runs last night (Nady! What the hell?), a veteran costing us a run by not running hard with two outs (Delgado! What the fucking fuck?), long drives not quite going over the wall and a general feeling that our baseball team couldn't get out of its own way. Valentin's homer erased all that, like opening a window in a stuffy room.
Thing is, I can't quite remember when that timely, wrong-side-of-the-plate home run was. I think it was sometime in May.
Aaron Heilman? Heck, he's had a rough stretch, but you should have seen him. He was being depended on again, and you could tell he was a little nervous, and he got stuck facing Ryan Freel, whom we were unable to retire that entire series, and sent him packing on a gorgeous change-up. Talk about a key confidence builder for a guy we need back in top form.
Great pitch. Did I see it on Mother's Day? Been a while, whenever it was.
And then there was Jose Reyes. Oh, that Jose. Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated just wrote a very interesting piece about him, one that's a perfect marriage of new stats and old-style scouting, asking if Reyes isn't, in fact, far more valuable than his stats might indicate. And it was followed by a very interesting debate, for those who like diving deeper, among the readers of Baseball Think Factory. Lots to chew on there, and then Jose gave the debaters even more to think about, pummeling Reds' pitching left and right and capping it with the ninth cycle in Mets history. Oh, the crowd has never done the Ho-ZAAAAAY Ho-ZAAAAY Ho-ZAAAAY HO-zaaaay chant more happily, and Reyes has never grinned more ear-to-ear than he was grinning right there. I think that grin might've reached all the way around to the back of his head and bisected the whole business, in fact.
Nice moment. Having a little trouble placing it, though. All I remember is it was sometime before Billy Wagner showed up and there was the grizzly and the ravine and the pointy rock and the cougars. Which is really all I can think about now. The Mets' A/V folks, responding to whatever strange portents guide them, have started playing Natalie Imbruglia's “Torn” at Shea after losses, and while nothing won't make that choice bizarre, I can't much argue with it right now. (I'm not sure it mentions cougars or throwing one too many fastballs, but close enough.)
Oh well. Wagner hadn't given up a run in a month. Everybody else in the division lost. Lots of summer to go. Day game tomorrow.
If you've got any more straws, I'm ready to grasp at them.
by Greg Prince on 21 June 2006 6:53 pm As a people, we set our alarms to go off on Opening Day. For us, that's the flashpoint that turns the clocks, the calendars and our raison d'être ahead. The season began. The non-season went away. Those are the only seasons we care about.
But it's worth noting that summer is here. It crept in on little cat feet at 8:26 this morning. Actually, if this summer is anything like my Avery, it leapt onto our collective stomach, purred loudly, let out a shrill MRRYAAHHHH! and leapt off again to repeat the process from a running start four or five more times in a row.
I hope this summer is like my Avery. I think it will be.
It rarely occurs to me that whatever is going on in the present won't always sustain. The dead of winter is the dead of winter and, as such, baseball is never going to get here. What we call spring, mid-February to late March, wears out its welcome fast; the countdown to Opening Day works as slow as Steve Trachsel circa 2001. Fall, even if you're lucky enough to participate in its Classic, is just winter's anteroom. And winter, as we've already established, never ends.
But it did. Summer has arrived in every sense of the word. We are soaking up the sun on the longest day of the year atop the tallest elevation the National League East standings have to offer. We are Flushing Mountain High. I am convinced that being inside summer with the Mets being in first place is the rule, not the exception. Not should be, but is.
You have no way of proving me wrong on June 21, 2006.
The last icy fingers of the so-called winter sports have finally lost the last of their unwelcome grip on the back pages and highlight shows. On consecutive nights, the Heat has become something for which we seek a cool drink and Hurricanes, again, calamities to be fervently wished away. The hockey and basketball trophies have been awarded. Nobody will yearn for those activities to return anytime soon. Nobody. Nobody counts the days to when we all have to take our running around inside.
It's the first day of summer. Is it too late to make it to the Midnight Sun Game? It's never too late to play it. The Beatrice Bruins are heading from California up to Fairbanks to take on the Alaska Goldpanners tonight at 10:30 local time. They've been playing this game on the first night of summer for a solid century. The 1985 game lasted 'til 3:06 AM and the electric lights served no purpose beyond the decorative. The sun shines over Fairbanks for 24 hours when summer begins.
It matches the sun in my heart this time of year. Barring a return of those non-puffy, non-cumulus clouds that have haunted Shea every recent evening, I wonder how long it will stay light above the Mets and Reds. Fifth inning? Sixth inning? Shouldn't matter, assuming the Con Ed's been paid, but it's neat. Neat. A sixth-grader's term for staying outside and playing ball and actually seeing what you're doing 'til nearly nine o'clock. I haven't done that in decades, but knowing I theoretically (very theoretically) could makes the first day of summer a perennial keeper.
Is there something better than knowing there's nothing separating the New Mets and Ol' Sol but clear skies and that Ol' Sol promises to pack an extra dose of stamina tonight? That as much as there are 92 scheduled baseball games in front of us and hopefully somewhere between 11 and 19 more to breathlessly anticipate, there is, in a happy way, nothing more to look forward to because we're exactly where we always want to be? We're there.
This is the sweet spot — the longest day of the year and the largest lead in the Majors.
This is what we mope about missing all winter — summer…in the starting blocks.
This is what we can only imagine when it's snowy and seventeen — first place…by 9.5 miles.
This is our New York Mets reality on June 21, 2006.
Take a moment and love it.
by Jason Fry on 21 June 2006 4:42 am Lots of entertainment tonight.
Highlights:
* It’s a family game. Take Jose Valentin getting tagged out at home plate by little brother Javier after a rather eventful trip around the bases, including a no-doubt-double-take-inducing wave of the arm from Manny Acta. Jose had 360 feet to go; unfortunately, his tank apparently held enough fuel for 350. And no one could have guessed that Ken Griffey Jr. would find the best cutoff man a centerfielder could imagine in the pitcher’s mound. Bam! Jose looked like he’d have been happy to take a few minutes there at home plate. Can’t say I blame him.
* How perfect was it that Xavier Nady then promptly hit a conventional home run, with no need to tire oneself out or pick up third-base coaches or tangle with catchers? It’s an unfair game, Jose.
* Trachsel going deep was high comedy in itself, particularly when he was then trying to rechannel his mantra and recalibrate his visualizations or whatever it was he does while the rest of the dugout wanted to bullyrag him for a home run.
* With the game safely in the W column, watching the Yankees and Phillies trade broadsides was entertaining too. There was no bad outcome at that point: Phillies win, they pick up no ground and I can wallow in a big mucky field of Schadenfreude; Phillies lose, we get back to 9 1/2 games and the Servants of the Beast still spend tomorrow muttering about how Moose didn’t look right and they gave up seven runs. Life is good.
* Braves lost. They’re 11 under .500 and John Smoltz is being asked if he’d accept a trade to help the club. Hypothetically of course.
* Keith dropping a muuuultitasking from that Red Roof Inn commercial that sticks in your mind like a bit of popcorn under a tooth.
* With Delgado reaching 20 home runs and Beltran at 19, Todd Hundley’s single-season home-run mark seems like it could definitely be in jeopardy. Good. Nothing against Hot Rod, but I always thought that mark would be Piazza’s and should be Piazza’s. Never happened, but it’s time for a new name atop the column.
* Four Mets — Wright, Reyes, Lo Duca and Beltran — are atop the All-Star balloting at their positions, and Glavine has to have earned a trip. For some strange reason my image of the All-Star Game has undergone a recent change from “ludicrous exhibition” to “cherished stitch in the fabric of the game.” (My innate hypocrisy is always at the ready should I need it.)
* The Cyclones are back!
Lowlights? Hell, 33 years of being a Met fan ensures I can root around until I find a few. Let’s see:
* Gary Cohen is too smart to either not have read Moneyball or to be misrepresenting it on the air. On what page in what possible universe does Moneyball suggest a hitter not be aggressive on a 2-1 pitch in favor of trying to work a walk? C’mon, Gary. You’re better than that.
* Speaking of SNY, a pox on in-game interviews. Let Trachsel go take a leak and get an ice bag instead of discussing the ups and downs of his splitter. I’ve got half the night and all day tomorrow to dissect such things, as well as any points Sandy Alomar or Willie Randolph might have to make. Right now I’ve got a game to watch and so do they. Could we please do that?
* The Cyclones are back, but they got beat. They got beat by the Staten Island Yankees. They got beat 18-0 by the Staten Island Yankees. The grasping at straws in the postgame press release is pretty entertaining: “Wantagh native and Stony Brook alumni Nick Abel pitched the only back-to-back scoreless innings of the night. In addition, the Cyclones had runners on base in nearly every inning”. Nearly every inning, huh? Still, the folks in the Cyclones press office did admit that this was one with “the final outcome never truly in doubt”. Two touchdowns and two safeties and it was never truly in doubt? Gee, ya think?
by Greg Prince on 20 June 2006 8:04 am Hot one out there. I think I need to wear a cap. Why, I'll just put on my…
MERCURY METS CAP?
For those of you who wonder how co-bloggers surprise each other after a dozen years of continual baseball contact, it's with one of these babies. My reaction upon its presentation by Jason unto me?
“THE MERCURY METS? HOLY FUCK!”
Surely you remember the Mercury Mets. In case seven years have erased your memory of what the future was supposed to look like (suddenly 1999 is a very long time ago), this was our marketing department's twist on turning the clock ahead. Teams were supposed to be wearing uniforms that were sneak previews of what we could look forward to in Century 21. It would have worked better if we took the field dressed in gold jackets.
It's not that the Mercury Mets unis were gruesome — they were — or that we lost in our only appearance in them — we did. It was the one step too far that made it quintessential Metsiana, certainly to Jason's way of thinking (he seems to believe knocking down Shea will wipe away all the bozoness this organization brings to the table, first place or not; I think he's delusional, but don’t tell him I said that…he just gave me a Mercury Mets cap). Although the conceit of the promotion was how “futuristic” Major League shirts and pants would look in 2021, nobody bothered to remind the Mets that 2021, even then, was only 22 years away.
The experiment got away from us when Rickey Henderson stepped into lead off and DiamondVision presented Mercury Met Henderson with three eyes. Three eyes. Twenty-two years. Fun is fun, but Rickey wasn't having any of it. Neither was starter Orel Hershiser who thought the Mercury symbol was a little demonic for the tastes of The Man Upstairs, and I don't mean David Howard. Shaken beyond his hymnal, Orel took the L in that game, bowing to Pirate rookie hurler Kris Benson, someone else who allegedly had a boffo 21st century ahead of him.
A Wild Card, a Division Series triumph and a hard-fought National League Championship Series didn't erase the stigma of the Mercury Mets in 1999. The first National League pennant of the 21st century was also caught in their orbit. A snippy letter to Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated summed up the 2000 World Series in part as “Pinstripes vs. Mercury Mets outer-space uniforms”. Given the choice, I'd take space.
But like I said, HOLY FUCK! It's scalding hot having a Mercury Mets cap, albeit in a size that requires me to wear it like a yarmulke if I'm to wear it at all, but that's just my big head talking. Now I'm two-thirds of the way to my goal of owning every Mets cap that will never be part of any retro craze or Sotheby's auction. There's this one, there's the reviled white ice cream cap of 1997 (of which I have two) and there's the 1976 Mets Bicentennial pillbox cap. It's like the one the Pirates wore for several years except this was blue with horizontal orange stripes and was absolutely abominable. I've wanted one for thirty years. Had one in my grasp in 1978 but passed on it in favor of a far more pedestrian Superstripe cap endemic to that era. Poor choice.
Same could be said of those ticket-takers who have not refused me admission to Shea of late. Monday night was a good night for headgear, but The Log endured another beating. At 1-5, I'm off to my worst six-game start since 1995's legendary 0-6 launch. I've been to 17.6% of my team's home games yet attended 35.7% of their home losses. Why does the best National League team this side of Mercury melt at the sight of me? It's not like I've got three eyes or something.
by Greg Prince on 20 June 2006 7:53 am
by Jason Fry on 20 June 2006 4:20 am Some baseball games are made for converting newcomers to the sport, for infecting them with the fever, for teaching them about double plays and the hit-and-run and bunts and the infield fly and then blowing them away with the sheer joy of a come-from-behind win.
Tonight's game? It wasn't one of those.
Yes, Bronson Arroyo turned in a fine effort. Ken Griffey Jr. hit No. 548, tying Mike Schmidt. El Duque was good but not good enough. The odds caught up with Chad Bradford. Carlos Beltran hit a monster home run that didn't particularly matter. 4-2, meh, everyone get home safe. I'll remember the strange double play with El Duque snagging Arroyo's bunt attempt and then patiently waiting for Brandon Phillips to accept his remarkable degree of outness (as both teams kind of wandered off the field), but that's about it.
But wait, that's not true. I'll remember something else. Behind the outfield wall, in the parking lot, there are cranes. Cranes and stacked concrete blocks, walled away from the cars and the curious. They're the first signs of new Shea.
And tonight they were particularly welcome, because I'd had just about enough of old Shea. I used two different bathrooms. One had a busted sink; the other was out of soap. Both were flooded. (My suggestion for Diamondvision's next Define This Word contest: crepidahyrdrophobia, the not-unreasonable fear of having to use a flooded Shea Stadium bathroom in sandals.) The beer was warm. With five or six customers still in line, the woman churning out soft-serve ice cream stopped to carefully count the quarters in her register. And that level of decay and dysfunction doesn't even add up to a bad night at Shea these days. Walking out with Greg, I craned my neck to look at the cranes (um) and had a brief fantasy that they were constructing catapults out there, and soon I might get to see those giant blocks hurtling through the air (think the Pepsi Party Patrol, but gigantic and pissed) to level the grandstand and its hot-dog-free hot-dog stands and random caches of escalator parts and pigeon perches and flooded crappers and broken seats and soapless dispensers and urinal ads recruiting for the Dallas police (yes, really). Too harsh? Well, when you've twice had to step gingerly through a lake of toilet water, nostalgia isn't uppermost in the mind. Right now 2009 seems awfully far away.
Ack. Gotta close with something better. Fortunately, I have something. This afternoon for my day job I wound up doing a TV shoot at Sotheby's, which is about to have an exhibition of baseball memorabilia. Not cards and stuff like that (though there are cards, including 1968 Topps 3-D prototypes no one knew existed) but bats used by Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, balls signed by the 1927 Yankees (that's old enough for them to have lost all but a whiff of brimstone), and uniforms worn by Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams and Warren Spahn (as a Met!) and Hank Aaron when he was a rookie. There's a 1858 scorer's report from an All-Star Game in Brooklyn that looks new and one of the first gloves worn by a fielder.
And there's the centerpiece of the show: a Senators road jersey worn by Walter Johnson sometime between 1919 and 1922. I was standing with a Sotheby's official chatting about the uniform and the amazing condition it was in and she said, “It's wool — you won't believe how heavy it is. Here, feel it.”
Um…feel it? Walter Johnson's uniform? Really?
I did. Gingerly. The jersey didn't spontaneously combust. I wasn't carted off to the gulag. It was heavy — heavy enough to pity anyone who wore it in the summer, in fact. Wow, the Big Train pitched in this, I thought. Wore it to face Cobb and Ruth. It's been around for all these years and now it's here. Right here between my fingers.
Even on a night when we lost 4-2 and our park seemed like a particularly shabby antique, I'd call that a pretty good day.
by Greg Prince on 19 June 2006 6:35 pm Fourteen things to shovel on the last-place Atlanta Braves:
1. Fourteen spadefuls of dirt for each game that separates the last-place Atlanta Braves in last place from us in first place.
2. Four spadefuls of dirt for each position in the standings that separates the last-place Atlanta Braves in fifth place from us in first place.
3. One spadeful of dirt to acknowledge that if there were a lower place in which the last-place Atlanta Braves could languish, the last-place Atlanta Braves would most assuredly languish within it.
4. Three spadefuls of dirt in honor of the three Atlanta expatriates — Tom Glavine, Julio Franco and Eli Marrero — who played key roles in extending our lead over the last-place Atlanta Braves Sunday.
5. Two spadefuls of dirt to salute the two newspapers that came together to merge what we now know as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for it was the AJ-C's headline on the subject that alerted me to the irony surrounding three former locals being in first place while 25 current last-place Atlanta Braves are in last place. Well done!
6. Fourteen spadefuls of dirt to match each of the blown saves recorded by the last-place Atlanta Braves bullpen this season.
7. Seven spadefuls of dirt, one for each loss in a row the last-place Atlanta Braves have accumulated.
8. Ten spadefuls of dirt, one for each loss the last-place Atlanta Braves have chalked up (or down) in the past eleven games.
9. Fifteen spadefuls of dirt, one for each loss in June by the last-place Atlanta Braves.
10. Seventeen spadefuls of dirt, one for each loss the last-place Atlanta Braves have experienced in the past twenty games.
11. Twenty-four spadefuls of dirt, representing approximately how many thousands of Boston Red Sox fans turned Turner Field into Fenway South Sunday night. The Journal-Constitution reported The Ted was an evenly divided house. Sounded more Bostonian than Atlantan on ESPN. No matter how you slice it, a house divided against itself — even in the heart of Dixie — cannot stand…especially after fourteen consecutive division titles should've won you enough loyalty to drown out the invading armies of Red Sox nation.
12. Fourteen spadefuls of dirt for each division title in what was a remarkable run. It was quite a feat. It really was.
13. Eleven spadefuls of dirt specific to each consecutive National League Eastern Division title, dating back to 1995. That was a great streak. It truly was.
14. One spadeful of dirt for a new streak: Consecutive seasons without a National League Eastern Division title won by the Atlanta Braves.
And one to grow on.
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