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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 31 March 2006 9:49 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.
Who should bat second, Lo Duca or Beltran? Lo Duca doesn’t strike out much, which will help Reyes steal bases. But Beltran has historically thrived more out of the two-hole than batting third, where he tends to put pressure on himself. And will Reyes learn to take more pitches batting leadoff than he did last year?
Boy, it’s gotten complicated. Twenty years ago, it was simple.
Lenny Dykstra batted first.
Wally Backman batted second.
Magic ensued.
That’s how I remember it. That’s how I think we all remember it, even if both Lenny and Wally were only part of the story at the top of the lineup. They were platoon partners, and not just to each other in the batting order. When a lefty started, Lenny and Wally sat in favor of Mookie Wilson and Tim Teufel.
Why don’t we think of Mookie and Teuf the way we think of Lenny and Wally?
You have to ask?
C’mon. Lenny and Wally were more than tablesetters. They were the between-meals snack that spoiled your dinner but you didn’t mind. They gave you frequent chances to score and just as many opportunities to annoy the opposing pitcher. It was a lot of fun to watch them. A lot.
Lenny Dykstra and Wally Backman were our way of life. Never did two men so small loom so large in the Metsopotamian consciousness. Or as Houston Astros coach Yogi Berra said in October of 1986, “It’s always some little guy who beats the hell out of you.”
They were dirty and scruffy and lovable, Lenny more than Wally where lovable was concerned, but Wally more than Lenny where the rubber met the road, at least at that stage of their development.
Leonard Kyle Dykstra and Walter Wayne Backman…doesn’t it surprise you to learn they had middle names? What for? It’s not like they stopped between first and third.
Individually, they were outstanding. Together, they were quintessential. Partners in grime they were called. The Dust Brothers. Pig Pen come to life times two (no reflection on their off-field hygiene).
If I had to guess, I would assume that each player’s on-base percentage in 1986 was about Always. In fact, it wasn’t even .999. Wally got on 34.4% of the time, Lenny 37.7%. The proto-statgeeks might have had a field day with this, letting us know that these were not optimal rates for the top of the order, that the Mets must immediately insert John Gibbons and his .545 OBP in the leadoff slot (or Randy Niemann — 2 for 6 with a walk).
Balderdash! That’s not my argument. That’s the sound Lenny and Wally made as they raced around the bases.
They were the perfect sparkplugs in the era before your lyin’ eyes were trumped by pesky numbers. Seems Tim Raines led the NL in OBP in ’86 (a shade ahead of Mex). Raines was an awesome player, but I’ll take Lenny to lead off twenty years ago. I’ll take him to find his way on and pester the poor sap who thinks keeping him close to first is doable. I’ll take him to take off and take Wally to slap the ball through the hole to right.
Hey, look! It’s first and third, nobody out, with Mex, Kid and Straw up next. No wonder we won 108 games.
Though it is sadly conventional, there is statistical proof that Lenny and Wally enjoyed something like career-to-date years in 1986, something not many of their teammates could claim (even if the franchise could). Wally, totally: batted .320, 45 points above his final lifetime average. Lenny, partially: His Phillie phuture a phar-phetched phantasy, he burst out of his rookie season and into his first full year by raising his average 41 points. Pressed into full-time duty after Mookie had that scary spring incident when his sunglasses shattered, Lenny batted .327 in that 13-3 April. Talk about leading off effectively.
They were our dirty little secrets for a while. Not everyday players, not picked as All-Stars (stupid Whitey), we grew to know them and love them in the way fans do when things are going well. We knew Wally was from Oregon, a place whose immense distance from everywhere became one of those cute little facts when he flew back from the break just in time to catalyze a rout of the Astros in Houston. His main concern? Not that he nearly missed the chance to post 5 RBI but that “I missed all the card games. I missed dominoes.” We knew Lenny had an odd effect on women, at least one of whom donned a wedding gown and followed him around ballparks hoisting a sign urging him to MARRY ME LENNY.
When you’ve got a team winning like the Mets were, almost everything about them becomes public domain. During the postseason, Newsday ran a profile of the lady who actually had MARRIED LENNY. The one who wed Wally, too. “Married to the Mets,” it was called, and it contained this priceless exchange between Terri Dykstra and Margie Backman:
TERRI: Wally and Lenny are so spoiled.
MARGIE: That’s true. Wally can’t do anything. Wally has to have his clothes laid out for him, you have to take off his shoes for him.
TERRI: You take off his shoes?
MARGIE: Well, I don’t expect him to take off his shoes after a game. He’s so exhausted. He comes home and heads straight for the couch and he wants food and he doesn’t want to move.
TERRI: Well, I take off Lenny’s shoes. I feed him, take his shoes and socks off, and when it’s time to go to bed, I pull him off the couch. People are going to think we’re crazy.
To the contrary. Who wouldn’t have wanted to aid and comfort our one- and two-batters by then? They were carrying us on their diminutive backs to the Promised Land.
• Together, they teamed to chase Nolan Ryan to the showers in Game Two of the NLCS, scoring three of the five runs that beat him. Lenny, in particular, showed what the Mets were made of by hitting the deck after a Ryan fastball whizzed by him and hitting the heck out of Nolan’s next delivery. Take that, Mr. No-Hitter!
• It was Wally who set the stage for one of the great ninth innings in Mets history, drag bunting his way on past hapless Dave Smith with the Mets down one in Game Three and it was Lenny who chewed up the scenery with his game-winning walkoff homer. Actually, it was more of a hugoff. Said Keith Hernandez at the time, “It was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.”
• Wally was the catalyst to another all-time memorable inning, the twelfth in Game Five, smashing a single off the glove of Denny Walling and coaxed an errant pickoff throw off of proto-Rocker Charlie Kerfeld. Wally was now on second, implicitly sending Keith to first on an intentional walk (nice managing, Lanier), giving Gary Carter the chance to take a bow. Wally crossed the plate with the winning run, just as he technically tied things up three afternoons earlier.
• Game Six? You mean the first Game Six? No Lenny or Wally in the starting lineup, yet they combined to go 3-for-6 with two runs scored and two runs batted in. So you see, Dykstra (who woke up the Mets with a leadoff, pinch-triple in the ninth) and Backman (who scored the seventh Mets run of the afternoon/evening, the eventual difference by the bottom of the 16th) didn’t just open games. They knew how to close them.
The World Series was another showcase for the little guys. Dykstra went deep twice at Fenway while Backman batted .333. We became champions because they were champions. It wasn’t odd at all that they wound up on the field for the final out even if it was Mookie and Teufel who played in the front end of Game. Lenny and Wally had our backs. They always did.
Their post-Mets careers and after-playing lives haven’t always been smooth rides. Not quite Darryl/Doc difficulties, but dust continues to cling to them, more to Wally than to Lenny. Backman was manager of the Diamondbacks for five minutes before a murky past came to light and his dream job was deleted from his under decidedly tired feet. Lenny? He’s been mentioned in the context of gambling, of steroids, of quitting (a job as a minor league instructor with the Reds), but he remains an imp in collective perception and has been nostalgically embraced by Mets ownership. Wally moves under a cloud. The guy has paid his dues and copped to the part of his past that isn’t as flattering as 1986, but he hasn’t been embraced by the organization he helped make famous.
I hope that’s not the case for much longer. I can still see Lenny and Wally exactly as they appeared twenty years ago.
They were huge.
• Do you know who’s throwing out the first ball on Opening Day? Jesse Orosco. Catching it? Gary Carter. Now THAT’S the way to kick off an anniversary season.
• Will get into it a little more on another Friday, but picked up my ’86 DVD set the night it came out. If you didn’t do the same, run along and get yours right now. The bonus disk alone is worth the price of admission, yet there are eight others to watch as well. Go ahead — I mean it. I’ll wait here ’til you get back…
by Jason Fry on 31 March 2006 9:18 pm
by Greg Prince on 30 March 2006 7:14 am We just refreshed our links section over there on the left side of the screen, particularly the New Breed, our now exceedingly expansive guide to our blolleagues on the Mets' Worry, Wallow & Wail circuit. Give 'em a try sometime. You'll also find a few new fun things to distract you at work in the Picnic Area and a piled-high snow drift of our cold-weather contemplations under the heading Winter League. The more-or-less best of us from last year can be found by clicking on the newly stashed 2005 Faith and Fear Yearbook.
2005 will always be special to us here as it was our first year of doing this. And it certainly had its charms from a purely baseball standpoint, what with the winning more than losing for the first time in four years and the making a move on a playoff spot until September and the Pedro and the whatnot.
But putting aside personal attachment and hardcore Metsopotamian values, it's hard to imagine a tied-for-third, 83-79 enterprise would be straight-up memorialized as it has been in a real book by a real Mets beat writer.
Pedro, Carlos and Omar by Adam Rubin is all about last year. It's 2005 in 210 pages. It's all there, front office intrigue to final day curtain calls — everything you remember, a lot you forgot and a bunch you can't imagine any sane person would need to know again.
Every sit-through-two-rain-delays Mets fan (“because I wouldn't want to miss a comeback from down 13-1 in the eighth inning, and besides I never ever. leave early”) should own this book. It needs to be nestled in your baseball library somewhere below your Breslin and your Koppett and somewhere above your Shamsky and your Golenbock (way above your Golenbock). If you're not of the “no, that wasn't Lee Guetterman, that was Eric Gunderson” strain of human, then, honestly, it might strike you as The Bland Guys Won.
While almost none of PC&O is salacious, let's just say there are details and then there are details. If you're curious about the kinds of t-shirts that were popular in the clubhouse in 2005 versus 2004, then you're a detail devotee and, therefore, the audience for this book. If it fulfills you to know which Met draws faces on watermelons and which Met tosses them, go for it. If you need to relive a four-game series in Houston in which the biggest development was nothing much changed, why are you waiting? Buy it now.
Yet as someone who is squarely in the demo for this book, I found myself thinking this is nice, but if I want to recall what it was like to lose three to the Astros in July or how it felt to watch Carlos Beltran grab his quad in Washington or remember how Pedro Martinez lit up an early June night with a smile and a sprinkle, I'd read us. I don't mean us us, per se. I mean I'd dig through the archives of the blogs written by Mets fans. That's where I lived a lot of 2005, that's where I'd relive it if so motivated.
No disrespect to Rubin of the News, Shpigel of the Times, Lennon of Newsday or any of the local beat reporters. Nothing but respect for them, actually. They're doing the heavy lifting that we can't do from our keyboards and, in the case of most of us (I assume), never seriously tried to do. Last baseball game I covered, for a journalism class, was the opener of a fall league doubleheader between the University of South Florida and South Florida Community College; South Florida won. After it was over, I interviewed USF coach Robin Roberts, Hall of Fame pitcher himself. Whatever it was I asked him, it wasn't enough to get him to look up at me from his between-games sandwich. I didn't stick around for the nightcap.
Couldn't tell you what grade I received for the assignment, but I do recall my teacher demanding to know what kind of sandwich Coach Roberts was munching on. From there, I pretty much lost whatever appetite for sportswriting I might have had.
But somebody has to sit in the press box and delve into the clubhouse and record the thoughts of undressed 24-year-old millionaires and take note of who draws faces on watermelons in case a publisher might ask. I never planned on it being me, so my hat's off to the beat guys.
That said, my hat's off to the likes of us as well. Reading PC&O, it struck me that something was missing from Rubin's reality-based account. It was the passion that a baseball season nurtures among the people most passionate about it. It was what it felt like to watch the 2005 Mets and listen to the 2005 Mets and live with the 2005 Mets…literally if not physically. I got that feeling blogging in 2005 and blog-reading in 2005. I got it that way over the winter and I know I'm going to get it again starting Monday when 2006 begins and the New Breed gears up in earnest.
Last week, Sports Illustrated acknowledged us as a class in a feature that declared “the Internet is changing sports coverage.” It was about sports bloggers and online sports sites and the people who swear by them and how the sports fan has become empowered by technology. Author Chris Ballard and his sidebar sidekick Albert Chen visited with a number of veritable icons in our field, including ESPN.com's Bill Simmons, Deadspin's Will Leitch and Aaron Gleeman, the Twins fan credited with helping to make baseball blogging relatively fashionable (I hope he's not expecting residuals). As he explored this territory in his respectable publication, I could almost see Ballard's eyes roll.
The tone of the article was less “hey, there's some interesting stuff out there, but buyer beware” and more “irresponsible idiots write this stuff and brain-dead morons actually bother to read it.” The undercurrent was these…these…these bloggers aren't real sportswriters like Chris Ballard, but rather fans who decided sports piqued their thoughts enough so that they downloaded them onto a server and shared them with anybody who might get a kick out of them. In Ballard's view, we are practicing “fan-alism” and “reclinerporting,” making each of us a “self-appointed expert.”
The nerve of us.
Seems to me I've read variations on this theme for a decade or more. If it's information and it shoots through a wire to a place convenient to your eyeballs, there must be something wrong with it. The new thing has to be belittled before it's accepted. Potential users — in our case readers — have to be turned off before they have a chance to tune in. In the mid-'90s, it was the Internet as a whole. Of late it's been blogging. Tomorrow or the next day it will be some other heretofore unfamiliar element. The most extreme and uncomfortable examples (Ballard chuckled at Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers blogging basketball) are plucked out of context and held up as wholly unprofessional or inanely unorthodox. Cumulatively, we are led to believe the whole world is going to hell in a hand BasKet.
Funny I should find myself a defender of the electronic faith in that I don't much know what I'm doing technologically. This just happens to be a more efficient means of communication than the Brother electric typewriter my sister gave me for my high school graduation. The rest is thinking/talking/writing about the Mets. I check my spelling, I avoid libel and I attempt to tell a story from a perspective that's mine. Give or take some proofreading, I think that describes what each of us in the New Breed is about.
I'm happy every Wednesday when SI appears in my snailmailbox. I still dutifully lay out two dollar bills to feed my lifelong daily newspaper habit. But I dare say that when it comes to reading about baseball, I go to the blogs, the ones I enjoy and trust, first and last. This is truly where it feels like it's happening — here and over on the left side of the screen.
by Greg Prince on 28 March 2006 9:35 pm Holy crap! The baseball season starts in less than a week!
I’ve been holed up with my Snigh for the last few days and realize that everything I’m seeing (except for the sailing show, the poker show and the Dean Martin Roasts infomercial) translates to potential implications for the first days of the rest of our life.
Seeing this afternoon’s slightly meaningful exhibition, for example, implied strongly that Mr. Lima and Mr. Iriki, each conch-shelled by Marlin hitting, will not be joining us for Opening Day. And by implication of his non-appearance at the game’s beginning, Aaron Heilman will be joining the bullpen, ceding his slot in the rotation to Brian Bannister, a positive dual development.
Heilman to the pen? Never fully understood why he was being airlifted out of it. He was a tremendous reliever last year and relief counts in this man’s game. If he doesn’t think you can get rich pitching often and briefly, he should chat with his wealthy teammate Billy Wagner. A lights-out setup man can become a lights-out closer elsewhere. I’m not endorsing the transactioning of Aaron anywhere but to the seventh or eighth inning, but he shouldn’t be wearing that hangdog (I mean the really hangdog) look of his at this development. He can help the team now and eventually help himself on the open market (or as Billy Wags’ successor if he’s extremely patient).
As for Bannister, he could storm out of the gates and into the rotation like Bill Latham in 1985 or Tyler Yates in 2004 but I’m thinking otherwise. The kid looks good — sorry, that’s as deep as my analysis goes on limited exposure — and it demonstrates the kind of starting depth for which the New York Mets weren’t supposed to be known in 2006. It’s also a little gratifying to see the farm system produce an arm that’s ready to produce in kind. I’m generally and literally with the guy in this discussion who said developing your own prospects is akin to having good posture…
People admire it, but if you can slouch your way across the street just as quickly, who really cares?
…but it’s nice to rediscover that the land of Seaver and Gooden isn’t a total slouch when it comes to creating pitchers.
With Heilman in the pen, I don’t know what that means for Heath Bell’s immediate future. I have to be honest and say I’ve never really worried about Heath Bell’s immediate future, which puts me in the minority in the Metsosphere, where Heath has been a hurl célèbre for as long as I’ve been here. I’ve not been interested in freeing Heath Bell from Norfolk purgatory because I haven’t been all that impressed with his pitching (lifetime ERA 4.88) to this point in his young career.
But a) he has been pitching well this spring and b) on his son’s bedroom wall, as captured by the cameras of Mets Weekly, is a faux road sign that says TO SHEA STADIUM. When I saw that, I felt a kinship for the Bells, father and son. What if Heath’s released or traded, I wondered. Does the kid take down the sign and replace it with, hypothetically, TIGER FAN PARKING ONLY?
More concrete questions have been arising this week as well. Trachsel gets lit up this late in spring and I ask, is Trachsel going to be OK? That’s normal. But Zambrano is sharp and I worry, is Zambrano just teasing us to get us overconfident so we throw around misguided phrases like pitching depth? That’s normal for me in the course of a season, never taking very much good news very well for very long. It’s another sign that Upper-Case Spring is ending and lower-case spring is really here.
Second base is really decided as well. Was it ever a contest? We knew Bret Boone would disappear, we knew Kaz Matsui would implode and we knew Jeff Keppinger would need Anderson Hernandez to step on a grenade to get a legitimate shot at the job. Hernandez didn’t and now Hernandez is the second baseman.
Unless Hernandez has a kid with a TO SHEA STADIUM sign on his bedroom wall, I’m not ebullient over this development. I don’t trust too many second basemen since Fonzie was truly Fonzie. The recent track record (Alomar, Sanchez, Garcia, Gutierrez…Kaz looks pretty good by comparison) is littered with disappointment and Disabled List visits. Hernandez is the rawest rookie to start the season at second since Kelvin Chapman in 1979, not counting Gregg Jefferies in 1989, but Jefferies was mostly raw in the head.
The rationale for A-Hearn over J-Kepp (somebody slap A-Rod for starting this dopey T-Rend) is defense, which sounds awfully familiar…
• “Robbie Alomar brings a Gold Glove to Shea.”
• “Don’t worry about second. Ricky Gutierrez will be a surehanded glove until Reyes gets back.”
• “Having Randolph as his manager will help Matsui adjust to second, as will having Mientkiewicz at first.”
What’s that? Ancient history? Maybe. And defense becomes a primary concern with Delgado lumbering around first? Perhaps. But will it be enough to make up for whatever we don’t get out of the eight-spot in the order if Anderson Hernandez is as feeble in April as he was last September? If he’s been tearing it up in camp, it’s been when I haven’t been watching. Hernandez and the pitcher equaling two outs is a lot to overcome even if one through seven are as nifty as advertised.
If.
You know which second baseman could hit for us at least some of the time? Jeff Kent. You know who’s the longest-ago Met still active? Jeff Kent. Not sure why this occurred to me the other night, but I’ve poked around and concluded that no player who played for the Mets as long ago as Kent — August 28, 1992 — remains a big league player. He quietly replaced John Franco in this heretofore unheralded role last summer upon Franco’s designation for retirement.
Following Kent as LAMSA:
• Jeromy Burnitz, 6/21/1993
• Jose Vizcaino, 4/4/1994
• Kelly Stinnett, 4/5/1994
Fernando Viña, who Met-debuted somewhere between Vizcaino and Stinnett in Chicago a dozen years ago, was just cut by the Mariners. The shelf lives of 1994 Mets are dwindling as we speak.
Preceding Kent as LAMSA:
• Felix Mantilla, 4/11/1962; reigned until 10/2/1966
• Al Jackson, 4/14/1962; reigned until 9/26/1969
• Chris Cannizzaro, 4/14/1962 (C for Jackson at the Polo Grounds, so he technically saw action after his pitcher); reigned until 9/28/1974
• Ed Kranepool, 9/22/1962; reigned until 9/30/1979
• Tug McGraw, 4/18/1965; reigned until 9/25/1984
• Nolan Ryan, 9/11/1966; reigned until 9/22/1993
• Jesse Orosco, 4/5/1979; reigned until 9/27/2003
• John Franco, 4/11/1990; reigned until 7/1/2005
Six days to go…
I’m not a big believer in preseason predictions, but you can count on these at Gotham Baseball coming true.
by Greg Prince on 25 March 2006 1:00 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.
It rained in Jupiter Thursday night. It rained on the Mets and the Marlins. It rained out a baseball game.
How often can you offer praise for rain?
SportsNet New York came to Cablevision Thursday night. It called for an impromptu evening of thanksgiving. Yes, I’m a tool of corporations on either end of a lucrative business proposition. The Mets and the Time Warners and the Comcasts and, unfortunately, the Dolans will be taking their taste out of my hide in cable bills to come. But on the night when a new network featuring Mets baseball arrives on my clicker, honestly, who cares?
No, it’s not wall-to-wall Mets, but I’ll take one wall for now and hope for more later. Indeed, should I ever be elevated to the Vice Presidency of the United States, this is the channel to which I will demand every TV in my hotel suite be tuned in advance of my downtime.
When one of SNY’s many pregame shows reported it was raining at the spring training home of the Marlins, I didn’t sweat it. I guessed that a delay/postponement/cancellation of a Meaningless Spring Training Exhibition Game would give this channel a chance to preview its portfolio for those of us who were previously uninitiated. If it didn’t result in Fran Healy interviewing Bob Cousy, I knew we’d instantly be ahead in the win column.
SNY did not disappoint. We got a look at Mets Weekly — including three quick glances of yours truly sitting and typing in a preview of the world-awaited Bloggers Roundtable (there should be more of us a week from Saturday, so begin averting your eyes now); Kids Clubhouse, a show doing the Lord’s work of brainwashing children to our side of the street; and…yes!…a Mets Classic.
What did SNY pick to fill the rainy void? Why, the division-clincher of September 17, 1986. Good choice! A popular choice, actually. When the Classic Sports Network, precursor to ESPN Classic, broadcast over-the-air on Channel 31 in New York nearly a decade ago, this game was actually something of a staple. Watching it then for the first time in 10 or so years drove me to a steady drizzle of tears. This must have been early 1997, so the Mets had not yet begun to rise under Bobby Valentine, meaning the sight of Mex and Kid and Doc in their prime of primes, as well as that babyfaced Magadan kid coming out of nowhere, really got to me.
Didn’t have the same effect last night, but it was a most, most welcome sight and sign where Uncle Snigh and Mother Nature were concerned. Our new network will indeed cater to us on some level, and as far as the Florida weather is concerned, I could think of worse things than missing an MSTEG in favor of an MC.
Some Friday up the road, we’ll revisit 9/17/86, the days leading up to it and the hangover seeping out of it. But after last night, I’d rather talk about the rain.
Rain is almost never welcome in our baseball landscape. There was that cute scene from Bull Durham in which Crash Davis created his own rainout which led to a 50-game winning streak or something improbable (the greatest baseball movie ever made didn’t always make sense) and we’ve heard about Spahn and Sain and how all opponents preferred precipitation. Groundskeepers like Pete Flynn (still probably cursing the onrushing crowds from that clincher) know a hose can’t do everything.
But honestly, rain? In baseball, who needs it?
Last night, we in Cablevision country needed to be reassured that we were right for hailing SNY’s entry onto our family package tier. Likewise, in 1986 rain served a purpose as well.
During that championship season, the Mets were rained out eight times in the regular year and twice more in post. That’s ten times I winced, grimaced or outright frowned. I don’t have the pictures to prove it, but what else would any of us have done? Especially in 1986, who would pray for rain? If anything, we’d ask that the heavens above make this particular season go on and on and on and not stop the beat ’til the break of dawn.
But there were some good things to come in out of the rain in 1986. For one, there was No Surrender, the best Mets highlight film (therefore, the best highlight film) ever. Whenever there was a rain delay on SportsChannel, SportsChannel broke out No Surrender, the official video paean to 1985. And while 1986 cruised along to bigger and better things, I couldn’t relive 1985 enough.
The greatest thing about No Surrender…well, there were several. First of all, it was on videotape, not film, a first for Mets highlight packages. Nowadays that’s considered cheesy. Maybe it was then, too, but I thought it made the Mets modern — enough of the grainy footage, let’s enter the MTV age already. It was narrated by Tim McCarver at the height of his prowess. Anything that involved Timmy carried the good broadcasting seal.
And within the baseball video there were music videos. Keith Hernandez was, bang-bang, “The Warrior”. The National League wasn’t messin’ with Gary Carter because then, as per the Blues Brothers, it would “Messin’ With The Kid”. When the Mets got payback big-time against the Cubs for ’84, they showed no mercy…and did so to “No Mercy” by Nils Lofgren. Particularly inspired, I thought, was the use of Buffalo Springfield’s antiwar anthem “For What It’s Worth” to illustrate the summer of Dwight Gooden. Singing songs/And carrying signs/Mostly say/Hooray for our side as the soundtrack for fans waving K cards? In the word of those Guinness ads, Brilliant!
When the rain didn’t merely delay but rather postpone, it represented a bleak moment, but in retrospect, it was gratification denied, a sense that those who wait long enough will eventually be rewarded (which is what ’86 was teaching those of who came so close in ’85 and ’84 and ended up so far away in ’83 and ’82 and ’81 and…). Those rainouts resulted in a little something we old-timers called doubleheaders.
The Mets scheduled one doubleheader in 1986 (a Banner Day doubleheader yet) and they swept it. They played eight more in the course of the year, each of them cobbled together to make up rainouts. On those occasions when the Mets played two games in one day when they were only supposed to play one, they swept three times, split four others and inexplicably dropped both ends once. In 1986, we generally expected a win every day. Eight days in ’86 had unscheduled doubleheaders and the Mets collected 10 wins. Once again, they exceeded our expectations.
There was quite a bit of rain early in the year. The second game of the season in Pittsburgh was a washout. A week later, the second and third home games against St. Louis were deluged. The one that concerned me was that second home game, marketed then (in another uncharacteristically clever turn) as Opening Day II. Joel and I had tickets. Rodney Dangerfield was going to throw out the first ball because, you know, the second game gets no respect, I tell ya.
For us, it represented a bit of redemption for the last time we attempted to attend a home opener, five years earlier, our senior year of high school. It rained on April 14, 1981 and I missed a Spanish quiz for nothing (which may or may not explain why I hablo so expertly today) but the chance to eyeball the newly installed Kingman Fallout Zone warning signs in the parking lot we’d read about in Newsday and the chance to bring it up right here. Joel and I walked away soaked from Shea; we were two of maybe eight people who held out hope that it would clear up — but ya gotta have miles and miles of hope, especially in the rain, especially in 1981, especially if you’re taking Spanish with Mr. Ritaccio who wasn’t too keen on anybody missing his quizzes.
I was away at college the next four years and, given the sold-out nature of Opening Day I in ’86 and Joel’s work schedule at Chwaktsky’s of Oceanside, Opening Day II represented our next best chance at getting even with the weather and the fates. But it rained. It rained a lot. Torrents of Biblical proportions. Joel and I showed up anyway just in case it might stop on our account.
Alas, there was no Opening Day II that day. Oh-for-two at home openers and faux openers, we turned around and headed back to Long Beach, stopping at the recently opened Chi-Chi’s in Valley Stream for lunch, though not before exchanging our rain checks on the spot for a game against the Astros in May. So we got some pretty excellent (I mean excellente) nachos and we got a win eventually.
Meanwhile, the Cardinals would have to be dealt with. Two rainouts in April translated to two doubleheaders in August. For one of only two times that I can recall, the Mets played a six-game series at Shea.
Four days…six games…Mets…1986…who could ask for anything more?
Sad to say, it was a 2-4 series, but really, what’s so sad about that? The Mets had themselves a pretty nice double-digit cushion, so Whitey could do his worst and we wouldn’t feel a thing. Thus, I smile remembering the doubleheaders. The beginning of the first one, a Thursday twinighter, coincided with me coming home from work early enough to grab a radio and a lounge chair and make my annual appearance at the Roosevelt Boulevard beach. I stretched out in the late afternoon sun and let the Murph and the Thorne wash over me until I remembered I don’t much care for the beach, which explains why I put in only annual appearances there despite its proximity to my address (two whole blocks away). I was home in the central air conditioning by the time Kevin Mitchell drove home Mookie Wilson with the walkoff run — though I’m not sure if it’s really a walkoff if it takes place in the first game of a doubleheader.
I bought tickets to the Sunday twinbill and went with my college buddy Rob Costa. They were lousy seats way up in the left field upper deck, but I was surprised there were seats at all. This was two 1986 Mets games in one day against our theretofore archrivals. New York must have been napping to allow two ducats to be available to the likes of me. We lost the first game 2-1 (Aguilera came out early with an injury) but then romped in the nightcap. Home runs for Heep, Teufel and Dykstra, a win for starting pitcher Randy Niemann, his only Met start, his only remotely positive on-field contribution that I ever observed.
More important than the loss and the win was the marvelously pleasant afternoon with Rob. He wasn’t much of a fan but it was a good excuse to spend time with someone whom I would only see four more times before he died depressingly young 12 years later. We pounded overpriced Budweisers as the Mets pounded Danny Cox, Ricky Horton and ghost of 1979 Met past Ray Burris (with Lee Mazzilli suddenly relocated to our dugout, we weren’t afraid of no ghosts). It rained in April and I was distraught. It was sunny in August and I’m still glad Rob and I got that extra game in.
And what about that rainout from the first week in Pittsburgh? That got grafted onto a Friday night in June and became our only loss to the Pirates all year. Yet it wasn’t such a bad loss because it evolved into the second of a series of brawls that would mark the ’86 Mets as pugilists for the ages. That opener featured perhaps the funnest fight of the season, the one started by our first base coach, Bill Robinson, calling out Rick Rhoden for doctoring the ball. Know any other teams where a coach takes on the other team’s ace? Boy, the coaches on my team were tough, I tell ya…
Earlier that afternoon, I was coaxed from my anticipatory doubleheader trance by Joel and our non-baseball-conversant pal Larry for a trip to a pizza place in Point Lookout. The Mets relevancy of that detail is negligible except that Joel referred to a heavily advertised Matthew Broderick vehicle opening the next week as Forrest Sawyer’s Day Off. To this day, when I see the now venerable anchor or watch Ferris Bueller, I think of that remark, and Bill Robinson throwing down with Rick Rhoden hours later, and how we took 17 of 18 from Pittsburgh, and, eventually, 108 wins and a world championship, a world championship, by the way, that was clinched in a Monday night makeup game after it rained.
I’m kind of rambling now. But that’s what you do during rainouts.
by Greg Prince on 23 March 2006 11:22 pm Spring training as a rule is indeed too long. But are we really ready for what lies beyond?
I'm not endorsing a pushback of Opening Day or anything heretical like that, but the real thing (known as the Zeile thing in 2000, 2001 and 2004 and we looked forward to it anyway) is but a scant 11 days away.
Eleven days! How can that be?
It's still mostly freezing outside. My TV screen has been mostly blank where it counts (Cablevision Channel 60, however, makes with the Snigh tonight, so hallebleepinglujah!) and, most importantly, like Team USA, I don't know that I've had enough time to prepare. The Mexican, the Canadians and the South Koreans are going to hand me my head if I don't get cracking.
Namely, I've gotta work on names.
This is no small task. In the course of a season, we feel the need to act intiMet with our guys. We need to pretend to know them well enough to call them out by first name or, should one make itself apparent, nickname.
With too much WBC and not nearly enough SNY, I don't know if I'm ready. I have a lot of old habits to break before I can start developing their useful replacements.
First of all, is the matter of Mikes.
In 2005, the Mets featured Mike Piazza, Mike Cameron, Mike Jacobs, Mike DeJean, Mike DeFelice and Mike Matthews (featured may be too strong a word for the last few). For good measure, there was also Miguel Cairo. That's six or seven varieties, hard on the heels of — since 2000 — Mike Stanton, Mike Glavine, Mike Bacsik, Mike Hampton, Mike Bordick and Mike Kinkade.
Barring a late surge on the part of Mike Venafro — who I tend to think is Matt Perisho — there won't be a Met Mike (even if there's a Mike's Mets) for the first time since 1997.
A moment to reflect on the Mikes with whom we've been recently inundated and those who paved the way…
Mike, Mike, twenty-nine Mike
Have played for the Mets
Not counting an Ike
Plus a Mickey and a Mickey
And a Mackey and a Mac
A Mookie and a Moock
And Miggy isn't back
There've been Mikes
Who have raised a Fyhrie
Mikes who Rem-lingered
And then pitched weary
Mikes by design
Who coulda been Drapers
Mikes so obscure
They couldn't make the papers
Like Bruhert and Bishop
And Birkbeck and Vail
He was gonna make it
But that Mike did fail
Mike, Mike, twenty-nine Mike
Have played for the Mets
Not counting an Ike
Plus a Mickey and a Mickey
And a Mackey and a Mac
A Mookie and a Moock
And Miggy isn't back
Maddux was a Mike
Too bad he wasn't Greg
Scott was a Mike
Who later scuffed the egg
Cubbage was a Mike
Whose timing wasn't lucky
Torrez was a Mike
Not the same after Bucky
Mike, Mike, twenty-nine Mike
Have played for the Mets
Not counting an Ike
Plus a Mickey and a Mickey
And a Mackey and a Mac
A Mookie and a Moock
And Miggy isn't back
If you're gonna have Mike Marshall
You oughta have two
If you're gonna dig Mike Phillips
There's sympathy for you
Howard never cowered
Fitzgerald didn't fit
Jorgensen was traded
But Jorgy never quit
Mike, Mike, twenty-nine Mike
Have played for the Mets
Not counting an Ike
Plus a Mickey and a Mickey
And a Mackey and a Mac
A Mookie and a Moock
And Miggy isn't back
Not a Mike to be found in Two Thousand Six
Not unless Mike Venafro is the southpaw who sticks
For Cammy and for Jakey and for ol' Thirty-One
For the love of Mikes whose Mets days are done
We'll remember your name, we'll remember you fine
Tho' we may not remember all twenty-nine
As you can see, we've had plenty of practice at rooting for Mikes. When the next one comes along, we can draw on vast experience. The new crop? I'm not so sure. For example…
“C'MON TIKE!”
No precedent, albeit a Prentice. But, hey, Tike rhymes with Mike.
“C'MON ENDY!”
Endy The World As We Know It
Sorry. Practicing my headlines for when he makes the last out of a tight game.
“C'MON PAUL!”
Lo Duca does not have a rich heritage behind him. Four Pauls in Mets history, two of whom — Wilson and Byrd — are active and thereby potential enemy combatants and two of whom are Paul Gibson and Paul Siebert.
Appalling.
“C'MON BILLY!”
The last Billy in these parts was Billy Taylor. The most famous Billy was Billy Beane, though that had nothing to do with his being a Met and more to do with him turning Billy Taylor into one. The last Bill was Pulsipher who came up with Isringhausen who was traded for Taylor at the behest of Beane. So this will take some doing.
Take Two:
“C'MON BILLY WAGS!”
I've heard myself say this once during a peek at Channel 11 and I was, again, appalled.
“C'MON BRIAN!”
Buchanan, Bohanon, Fonanon…wait, where were we? Daubach, Ostrosser, Rose…Brian McRae's the best of this bunch. Brian Bannister, when he makes it, redefines Brian. I have to watch out for Briiiiii….
“C'MON CHAD!”
Not since Palm Beach County in November 2000. I don't wanna talk about it.
“C'MON DUANER!”
Uh, is that common American pronunciation with an “r” thrown onto the end (or Endy) or is it more exotic than that? I can't go with “SANCHEZ!” for all the bad memoReys that summons.
“C'MON JORGE!”
Toca? Fabregas? Velandia? We already have a Julio, a.k.a. Gramps, so we'll have to familiarize ourselves with the first name and the idea that it's not amazingly superfluous.
Pray it doesn't become Armando.
“C'MON YUSAKU!”
Will probably go with “C'MON IRIKI!” which will probably morph into Rick which will either evolve into Aggie or Reeder. But he's probably not making the team right away.
“C'MON CARLOS!”
Overlap city. Will we be reduced to C-Bel and C-Del? I'd prefer “ALL RIGHT” after their at-bats to worrying about what to say beforehand.
Finally, the trickiest of all.
“C'MON XAVIER!”
An X name? That's totally new on us. (Not a lot of last-N's in Mets history either.) Nady's apparently being cute or X-cessively polite about the pronunciation. You say Zavier, he says Ex-avier, unless it's the other way around.
X-Man? Way too predictable, meaning that will be the scoreboard he-got-a-hit X-hortation of choice. And if he makes a great catch?
“X 'EM OUT!”
Victor Diaz might say let's call the whole thing off, but if I don't get the hang of somethingavier, my options will be reduced to cribbing Neil Simon from The Sunshine Boys:
“Nady he rhymes with baby, no wonder he's dead!”
These things have a way of working themselves out. Didn't think I'd ever be taking “TOM!” in vain, but come Opening Day, it looks like I'll be on the side of the Glavines and not blink twice or stutter once.
Fifteen Toms and what do you get?
Start with Tom Seaver, not any old Met
Add in Agee from the Tomm(ie) roll
Spring's still got eleven days to go…
There are lessons to be applied from a previous generation of new ballparks to the planning of Sheabbets Field. Find out what they are at Gotham Baseball.
by Jason Fry on 23 March 2006 3:41 am In mid-March you’re struck by your annual worry: that this year’s Mets don’t seem to hold the same power over you as all the previous years’ did.
In late March I’m struck by my annual grumble: that spring training is just too long.
Oh, spring training. You wait for it forever, the first spark of anticipation appearing with the first significant free-agent signing, then heating up through the winter holidays, then bursting into open flame in January, then becoming a five-alarm blaze that makes early, baseball-free February unbearable. Then it arrives, and pretty soon you can’t wait for it to just go away already.
And this is the worst period, the week during which the novelty is long gone and yet nothing has been decided. There are still guys hanging around whose mannerisms you know you don’t need to memorize. (Todd Self, Tim Lavigne and Endy Chavez — beware the Tides of March.) There are still old guys hanging around who are overdue for that closed-door talk that “you’ve done everything we asked of you, so it’s only fair we give you a chance to hook on somewhere else.” (Jeremi Gonzalez? Why?) Starters are going five and even six innings, but it’s too early to figure out who the LOOGY or the extra outfielder will be. It’s even too early to figure out which couple of guys are the finalists. That always-unforseen roster-scrambling trade isn’t even a rumor. And so you wait, and wonder why the hell it can’t hurry up and get to really be spring, with leaves and grass and games without veterans pretending to run on the warning track.
But then you find some things to occupy you, after all.
You can make your peace — or realize you haven’t — with last year’s roster, with the acceptance that those guys no longer matter. Last night I was flipping idly through the TiVo and saw Joshua’s babysitter had taped (recorded? DVRed? TiVoed?) Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel, a show she loves that I’ve never watched, more because there’s already plenty of sports in my life than because I have some objection to it. The lead story was about Danny Graves’s trip to Vietnam, and I decided I’d like to see that. I admit that part of it was curiosity about the story and part of it was a less-admirable impulse: The photos of Graves from Vietnam suggested he’d taken up the Lolich Diet, and I wanted to see just how thoroughly he’d let himself go. A bit of spite there? Guilty as charged.
Well, Graves did indeed appear large, but I also found his story pretty compelling, from his still-wounded fury at the Reds fan who told him to “go back to fucking Vietnam” to how he turned that into a challenge to make sense of his Vietnamese heritage. And his mother’s reluctant return to a home she hadn’t seen in three decades was riveting: His mom’s a pistol, and her reunion with her long-lost little sister…well, it got a little dusty in the Fry living room for a moment there, and I found myself clapping when Graves remembered that rude fan and said, smiling, “so I did go back to fucking Vietnam.” When it was over I went downstairs, fired up Google and saw Graves has a chance to make the Indians, and I was happy for him. I’m still not sure why he got as much time on our roster as he did, but I’m happy for him.
On the other hand, earlier today I was reading an article by Tom Singer that noted that Braden Looper “was one of only two relievers with 28-plus saves to allow more than a hit an inning”. And I found myself grinding my teeth at one of the more damning statistics I’ve read in years. More than a hit an inning? Goddamn Looper! And then came the blessed, blessed clarity: Braden Looper is now the Cardinals’ problem.
Fortunately, there are happy adjustments of the two-weeks-to-go variety as well. Like watching SNY and finding it free of technical hiccups, with Gary and Keith and Ron Darling all in fine form. Darling and Keith had an interesting conversation about pitching to defense, Darling dissected the difference between Gary Carter, Mike Fitzgerald and Junior Ortiz as catchers (Carter’s target was much higher than the other guys’), and Sid Fernandez came on TV and was even funny, cracking a decent joke about having clogged up the basepaths. (Even though he did look hurt when Keith brought it up.)
Another happy adjustment: Feeling the teeth bare a bit at the thought of The Enemy, whatever The Enemy might be at a particular given second. Like the Dodgers wearing their proper road uniforms for a stupid spring-training game in the middle of nowhere in March, which sent me into some Homer Simpsonesque muttering. Stupid Dodgers. Always playing the swells. And what’s with them still being in Florida anyway? Why don’t they train in Arizona like a sensible West Coast team? Oh, because they invented spring training. Stupid Dodgertown. They lost the right to be all high and mighty about their great traditions when they abandoned Brooklyn. If I saw them enough times a year I would totally hate the Dodgers.
Then, just when I thought I was insane and should really investigate some kind of boring anger-management regime, this email arrives from the Human Fight, also watching an utterly meaningless March game: yankees appealing a missed bag in fucking spring training. god i hate them.
Oh, and then there was the final inning. John Jose Valentin at the plate, two out, tie game, and I noticed Lastings Milledge was on deck. And it just popped into my head: If Valentin can get on, Milledge will totally win this game. (It also popped into my head that Valentin was playing the entire inning with his batting helmet folding his ear almost completely over, indicating he’s either impervious to pain, kind of dumb, or possibly both. But never mind that.) So of course Valentin gets aboard on an error, Milledge works the count to 3-1, and uses those light-speed hands of his to tomahawk a high fastball to left-center for the game.
Lastings Milledge, already a legend in March.
OK, so spring training is good for something.
by Greg Prince on 21 March 2006 12:49 am American League batters will no longer have Al Leiter to kick around nor, I suppose, will we.
Our erstwhile ace hung ’em up yesterday while a Yankee exhibition was already in progress, saying the time was right. Seemed very Al-ish to bid the game adieu in mid-game. Throw a pitch, get an out and grab a YES headset in order to talk about it. Even in the last uniform he wore as he left the mound, that was our Al.
Al did a lot of talking in his 19-year big league career, especially during his Mets tenure. From 1998 through 2004, he was more often than anyone the voice of the clubhouse, the guy whose quotes peppered more stories than anybody’s. It seemed to have reached a point toward his Flushing finish where he went from articulating eloquently to not knowing when to shut the eff up. Before all was said and he was done, Al Leiter may have talked his way out of blue and orange.
I’m in the midst of Adam Rubin’s Pedro, Carlos & Omar, a dutifully detailed work that is long on nuggets and short on dirt (which is fine). The author is so conscientious and so fair that nobody comes off all that badly in his book. But Leiter edges close to it precisely because Al had a mouth and he knew how to use it. Nothing extremely revelatory on this count, but it’s not a celebration where ol’ No. 22 (and our “Hundred Greatest” No. 28) is concerned. Al as clubhouse counsel…Al as unnatural chum of ownership…Al as denier of misdeeds in L’Affaire Kazmir…Al as head of the Florida Marlin chamber of commerce successfully luring Carlos Delgado to Miami’s allegedly higher standard of living…Al as sulking, spurned homecoming float last April, deflated by the darting boos of the Shea crowd when he was the visiting starter; sorry ’bout that, ol’ pal, but we’d moved on to Pedro.
Al came off as a bit of operator in the book, fairly true to my recollection of him circa 2004. The sense I always got, though, was it wasn’t an act and he wasn’t being a phony. Al, I’m guessing, was being Al all along, which would explain his political aspirations. He was genuinely a politician, but genuine for the whole ride. That’s why we liked Al, really liked Al even if we (or least I) never quite loved him.
The mouth, when in motion on our behalf, could be endearing, especially the oft-repeated tales of growing up one of us, a Mets fan from the suburbs. Al Leiter, until it no longer served his professional purposes, took being a main Met very seriously. We wish every ballplayer would bond with his uniform that closely. Best of all, he talked like he pitched — until he couldn’t anymore.
Al Leiter’s mouth is just one element of Al Leiter’s face, and Al Leiter’s face was, hands down, the best part of his anatomy. Yes, it even beat his left arm when that particular limb was winning 95 games as a Met (sixth-most in franchise history). In a game that’s so at home on radio, you really needed TV to appreciate Leiter. All the effort, the frustration, the disgust, the joy, the result of any given pitch was right there on the face. Wearing his emotions on his sleeve would have been superfluous.
If the Mets were, as one of the marketing slogans of his day insisted, Always Amazin’, Al always looked amazed. Amazed at the diving play Rey made behind him. Amazed he didn’t get that strike called. Amazed his cutter didn’t cut as he intended. Amazed there was contact between his bat and a ball. Amazed that he grew up to pitch for the team to whose Opening Day his dad took him and his brothers when he was a small child deciding he wanted to someday be Seaver or Koosman. That quality of saying it all with his face was what made him more Amazin’ than most.
by Greg Prince on 18 March 2006 9:56 pm 
On the heels of our 1986-inspired tour of Mets unifalia, Paul Lukas of ESPN.com’s Uni Watch was kind enough to share a sample image of the Ol’ Perfesser himself showing what the original Mets uniform was supposed to look like (standing in front of what the original Flushing Meadows Municipal Stadium was supposed to look like, no less). The tail that almost nobody liked in 1993-94? Its ancestor was intended to drag out of the gate right behind the expansion Mets in 1962. No reason given for us not wearing tails from the start, though we can assume that Casey wuz gonna give one to Marvelous Marv, but wuz afraid he’d step on it.
by Greg Prince on 18 March 2006 9:36 pm Mike Pelfrey started. Billy Wagner finished. The Mets beat the Braves. Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez told me all about it as I watched exactly what they were watching. And we're still getting a new ballpark.
Have I mentioned that life is good?
Spring training finally began this afternoon. The WBC, save for Reyes and Sanchez, is utterly irrelevant, semifinals or not. The NCAA…what's that? I had the Mets on television today. Not ESPN sterile television, not a technically difficult channel blocked by Cablevision television, but good, old-fashioned Channel 11 television. There were Mets on the field. Familiar Mets. Newish Mets. Mets who I remember as Cyclones unironically wearing 97. It felt like the real spring thing at last.
I'm out of the dumps. There will be baseball. There will be Mets baseball. I'm guessing that I will eventually have access to the sight of it every day and night but until then, the WPIX taste of SNY's production Saturday afternoon was a gorgeous lunch entrée.
Mark it down: Gary and Keith will be superstars. Not just superstars to us but superstars to the world at large. Together they are the best thing to happen to baseball on TV in New York since Tim McCarver told Ralph Kiner that baby, he loved it. They are a chemistry set with all the beakers measured to perfect proportion. Gary is Gary and Keith is benefiting. Keith has so much great stuff to offer and Gary is the first partner he's had who's jarred it out of him.
They showed themselves in so many ways big and small. Keith explaining the art of sunglass-wearing. Gary playfully excoriating the fan who nonchalanted a foul pop because he wouldn't sacrifice his malt beverage, Keith insisting the guy had to make a choice, Gary wondering which cost more, the ball or the beer and Keith sincerely guffawing. Keith coming out against players “Fancy Danning” their catches. Gary dropping his signature p-word (passel) into conversation. Keith only going into his weird sing-song lilt (that bizarre I'm going to TELL THE TEACHER tone) once as far as I heard. Gary drawing out Keith's story about Joe Torre showing him the ropes as a young Cardinal and Bob Gibson not being thrilled that he replaced McCarver (with Gary noting Keith had Met ties before he knew they were Met ties and Keith seeming surprised at the obvious-to-us observation). Gary and Keith jointly dissecting the emergence of Juan Perez as lefty reliever candidate. Fran Healy organizing his sock drawer somewhere outside of Worcester.
These guys are great together! The concerns expressed in some quarters that Gary would find a rough transition period going from radio to video seem downright silly. You put a picture in front of Gary, he talks over it. This is not Michael Kay still boring the spit out of everybody with his “interlocking NY” detail. Gary Cohen is a professional announcer and a budding video star. Keith Hernandez was a brilliant ballplayer who is being drawn out as a brilliant full-time analyst. I'm no longer rooting against the top of the seventh thinking Mex is gonna bolt. They're there and they're on the air. Man, I'm psyched!
Felt compelled to mix in a couple of minutes from the other team, Howie and Tom (though not in that “must drown out inane television voices with superior radio insights” mode of the past two years). They'll be fine. It finally struck me that Howie is now The Man where the FAN is concerned. Whatever Tom McCarthy becomes, this is Howie's booth. He will be, in all those situations where we will inevitably find ourselves tethered to a radio, the Voice of the Mets. I'm happy for him. To think of a guy who grew up rooting for and loving this ballclub and working as hard as he has to get that to that position — it just feels right.
And the Mets themselves looked pretty midseason. The big, impressive kid from Wichita continues to be big, impressive and different from all other phenoms before him; the latest one always is (besides, I have a predilection for those with Kansas ties). Julio Franco is chiseled. Anderson Hernandez is athletic. David Wright filled out. Carlos Beltran is home with a haircut. Billy Wags was having no problem with spring. There were Endy and Tike sightings. All the injuries we want to heal are healing; I'm sure of it. We lost the split-squad game in Viera, but Milledge homered, so who's counting wins and losses? Yet somehow the win in St. Lucie and on Channel 11 felt like a win. We're all winners when we can see our team play baseball.
Oh, and as far as Sheabbets Field goes, my Gotham colleague Mike McGann has some details and even an artist's rendering. Can't wait to sit myself inside the new joint…or queue up by a monitor in an open-air concourse to catch a few pitches as described by Gary and Keith while waiting for better-tasting beer and leaving a hand free to not so Fancily Dan a foul ball coming right at me.
Today, the Mets were on local TV. Today, anything is possible.
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