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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 18 March 2006 4:52 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.
A couple of days ago, I had a doctor’s appointment fairly close to Roosevelt Field. Deciding that I deserved something akin to a lollipop for enduring whatever poking and prodding to which I was subject for my own good, I took the long way home and stopped by the mall, site of one of two remaining Mets Clubhouse Shops in the Metropolitan area.
If you’ve ever been to a Mets Clubhouse Shop, you know how disappointing it is. There’s not a soul among us who couldn’t stock it better if given the chance. The selection is limited, unimaginative and overpriced. But since when does that stop a true fan who’s wandering around in self-indulgence mode? I came away typically lighter in the wallet, having made two purchases, a pair of items I decided are connected to our theme du jour.
First, a new Mets cap. No, they haven’t added a special Thursday afternoon brim (cripes, I may have just given them an idea). I decided to replace my careworn 1998 black & blue model, a lid whose headband shrunk from the sweat of a season that came up one agonizing game short of the playoffs. When I’m a few weeks removed from my last haircut, it becomes a tight squeeze. After depriving myself of a better fit in the seven succeeding seasons, I decided to splurge.
That was all I was going to spend on until I saw the one thing that’s both pretty cool and pretty reasonable in Clubhouse Land. It’s a box of 100 Mets cards for 10 bucks. The kicker is that the cards are assorted Mets from throughout the ’80s and the ’90s. They’ve had these knocking around the store for a few years, which explains why there’s one “recent” card of a “star” near the top of the pile; in the case of the case I bought, it was a 2003 “Jeromy Burnitz” (that wasn’t the actual Jeromy Burnitz then, was it?).
Anyway, I always enjoy these purchases since my card-gathering grew rather lax after sixth grade and downright sporadic by college (that almost makes me sound like I was becoming an adult, but don’t be fooled) and it’s nice to catch up with the preoccupation I’ve never quite shaken and add to the accumulation it would never occur to me to discard. I’m always surprised to find out Mets got cards when I wasn’t looking. Aase…Musselman…Machado…I wonder if the 12-year-olds of 1990 were as happy to see them as I was to have greeted Gene Clines and Harry Parker a generation earlier.
Here’s something else that kind of grabbed my attention in those cards: The 1986 uniform wasn’t exclusively the 1986 uniform.
The 1986 uniform will reappear in the (or on the) flesh this August 20. The day after as many champion Mets can be enticed, paid off or bailed out to appear at Old Timers Night, the Mets will wear replicas of what they wore when we were kings. It might surprise you to be reminded that this won’t be the first time they’ve turned back the clock on this count.
In 2002, during the week or two in July when things were going deceptively well, the Mets were the first of a bunch of teams to indulge in a “Triumphant Glory” series as MLB dubbed it. Fans voted online for which era they wanted thrown back at them. 1986 (with my vote in tow) won in a presumable landslide.
The Mets romped in both games against the Marlins during that set. Mike Bacsik threw a gem before he gave me cause to designate him for Hellsignment. And they all looked sharp in victory.
It was the best turn-back promotion the Mets had ever executed. The unis fit, which they most assuredly didn’t that 1999 afternoon in St. Petersburg when they dressed up as the alleged ’69 Mets with flannels that appeared to have been in storage since ’39. No, the ’86es were authentic as could be, right down to the green underside of the caps that had quietly turned gray in the ensuing 16 years. The usually addled Shea A/V squad even got into the act, playing the hits of that blessed year over the loudspeaker (though I assume Howard Jones was identified as Howard Johnson on the “now playing” message).
For two evenings, it was almost as if the organization was proud of its best team and its best season. Then, of course, the Mets went back to looking and playing like their 2002 selves. Everything, not just the insides of the bills, turned gray for the duration.
But while that was the only field-of-play homage the Mets have given their most successful predecessors, it’s not like the ’86 uniform — the home version — was sent to Goodwill on 1/1/87. The basic ensemble that was sported in pursuit of a championship, the so-called racing stripe model, was the Mets’ uniform at Shea every year for 10 years.
The 1983 Mets showed the franchise’s first genuine signs of life in almost a decade when they debuted those uniforms. The 1992 Mets disgraced all that had come before them and poisoned much that would come after them in those uniforms. Every iteration of the Mets in between batted in the bottom of the first in those uniforms. Aase…Musselman…Machado…that was their uniform, too.
There were nips, tucks and alterations along the way, none more significant than the 25th-anniversary patch featured on the left sleeve in 1986. That confused me but good twenty Aprils ago. I was always pretty decent at arithmetic, so when I subtracted 1962 from 1986, I got 24 years. It wasn’t until I heard the rationalization that it was the 25th-anniversary season that I got it. I didn’t buy it, but I got it. It became sartorial coincidence that our two world championships would become easily distinguishable in still photos. If you see the MLB patch, you know you’re looking at a ’69 Met. If you see the two bats and the marketing-driven math patch, it’s ’86. Accept no substitutes.
(Before you get any cute ideas, a patch is not a prescription for glory, witness the World’s Fair patch of 1964 and 1965, the Bill Shea ‘S’ tribute patch of 1992, the Miracle Mets anniversary patch of 1994, the 40th-anniversary patch of 2002 and the Shea Stadium 40th-anniversary patch of 2004. All were worn throughout those seasons and all were worn in the service of losing records.)
The road, by the way, was a different story. It did change. How good was Game Six of the 1986 National League Championship Series? So good that they apparently had to burn the uniforms. After the 16th inning, the Mets never wore those roadsters in another National League game. They went to an overwrought script for one season then the Kraft American Cheese boring block letter NEW YORK in ’88. The Astros? They gave up the rainbow ghost once and for all once Kevin Bass swung and missed. Come to think of it, even the Pirates, our final regular-season opponents, stopped wearing their stayed-at-the-fair-too-long Bicentennial pillbox caps after Game 162. Thus, if you think playing the ’86 Mets didn’t take everything out of you in October, think again.
This subject goes right to the heart of one our favorite quotes around here, Celebrity Mets Fan No. 1 Jerry Seinfeld’s observation that fans root for the laundry. From 1983 through 1992, we rooted for a long blue stripe surrounded by two thinner orange stripes accenting the pinstripes and the script to which we’d become accustomed long before. We rooted for it before it went into the wash and we rooted for it when it came out of the dryer.
So what happened to it?
Prior to 1983, the Mets dressed in essentially three editions of the home uniform. The unnumbered pinstriped front (1962-1964), the numbered pinstriped front (1965-1977) and the numbered pinstriped front with blue and orange piping around the collar and the sleeves (1978-1982). The racing stripe was a rather mod update — cribbed from those futuristic Expos, I always thought — and wiped away the painful associations with the Mardie Cornejo Mets. The look remained true through ’92.
Then the Mets lost their freaking minds and their uniform hasn’t been stable since.
If you can recall the early ’90s, there was a movement back to the allegedly traditional uniform. Traditional, I wondered, to what tradition? Apparently baseball would feel better about itself if it wasn’t so gosh-darned modern. 1992 was the watershed year, especially in the N.L. East. The Phillies abandoned the large, wavy P they wore when they won their only championship in 1980. The Cardinals got rid of the synthetic look that adorned them en route to a title in 1982. The Expos gave up their racing stripe, the one that was so blurlike when they were challenging for first place in ’79, ’80 and ’81. The Mets must have been taking notes. They had abandoned the pullover for buttons in ’91, but that wasn’t enough. Come 1993, the one blue and two orange stripes were removed.
Howie Rose, for one, hailed the hell out of it. I’ve always wanted to meet him just so I could ask why he hated those racing stripes. Every time the subject filtered onto Mets Extra, he’d make like Zero Mostel and cry “Tradition!” For Howie, the tradition was his tradition, wanting the Mets back in the uniforms he remembered from his childhood. For me, I had just seen these racing stripes race to seven years of plenty. Yeah, Bobby Bonilla and Eddie Murray weren’t enhancing the look, but don’t blame the damn stripes.
Howie was disappointed when the Mets didn’t quite take his advice or follow the example of the Phillies and bring back their ’60s-era tops and bottoms. It was a case of Harazin meeting Hertz.
Did you get us those great retro togs I’ve been flogging on the air for years?
Not exactly.
The Mets of ’93 ripped off the racers, reinstated the late ’70s piping and, for bad measure, underscored the script Mets with a tail.
A tail? What the…? It didn’t portend 103 losses, but we should’ve known something was awry. A year later, the Mets tried to fix things in their own half-assed way and removed the piping, but kept the tail. If you don’t remember it, it’s because they went on strike rather than wear it. (Though the tail was nearly attached to our uniform body from the start, it seems.)
Then came 1995 and it was Howie Rose’s Met dream come to life. The uniforms of his youth and Gary Cohen’s youth and, I suppose, the early part of my youth, had returned. There were pinstripes. There was script. It wasn’t an exact match for the 1960s, but it was close enough to make the “traditionalist” dewy.
It lasted two seasons. Starting in 1997, the fiddling picked up at a pace neither seen nor heard since the devil went down to Georgia. That was the year of the ice cream cap (scroll down and check out my man Reeder) and the Sunday snow white uniforms. Somewhere along the way the cap was mercifully put out of its misery but the unis caught on. They slowly superceded the pinstripes. In ’98, those snow whites got company in the form of what we’ll call pitch blacks. The pinstripes receded (an unnecessary drop shadow was added to the script Mets logo, making them look, upon their rare re-emergence, like they didn’t fit right). By ’99, we had three home unis and two for the road: a black NEW YORK and a gray NEW YORK (the NEW YORK, at least, retained a sense of style after a couple of failed early ’90s attempts to mutilate it). With the new tops and new bottoms came new cap designs in which black became the predominant color and the NY had all kinds of splashes and tints. The royal blue caps of yore remained but didn’t see much action.
Geez, I never thought I’d go into a fashion show mode doing this, but if you’ve watched the Mets in the past 13 years and tried to stay current, you know it’s part of the package. (It’s all accounted for here in typically Ultimate depth.)
What’s it all mean?
Well, when the Mets of Wright and Floyd and Reyes trot out to their positions on August 20 in the professional clothes of Knight and Mitchell and Santana, it will be…is breathtaking too strong a word? It will be nice, at least. It was nice when the New Jersey Nets put on their ABA retros a few weeks ago to remind me of Dr. J and the Nassau Coliseum and the 1976 New York Nets, and it will be superswell to be reminded in the most visible terms possible of the 1986 Mets. If they want to keep wearing them, or throw them back on again once in a while, all right by me. I have no real attachment to the blend of one blue and two orange stripes except that those are what were on the laundry when a World Series was won and I got to watch every pitch. That makes them beautiful. Just like the ’69 duds were to Howie.
That said, I hope the 2006 Mets are weaving whatever combination of fabrics and tones they usually don into something special. I want to look at the black tops and the white pants and whatever sporting goods manufacturers logo they’ve got stitched here or there (go right to the source to follow such corporate capers) in 20 years and think, “man, they were wearing those when…” In this game, you have to keep making new memories, not just replenish the old ones.
Hence, I bought a new black and blue cap the other day to replace the beat-up one from 1998. I sense I’m in the minority of middle-aged Mets fans who accepted the onslaught of official team merchandise that’s been hurled at us since 1997-98 in good humor. I’ve got every cap they wear. I don’t buy too many jerseys, but I thought the black road one was pretty sharp and coughed up whatever that cost in 1999 when I came across it in Roosevelt Field.
I know, it’s heresy. The Mets are supposed to wear blue caps. And the addition of black to the pattern meddled with the primal forces of nature. On some level, I agree, but I do as I do, not as I say. The Mets wear blue? I wear blue. The Mets wear black? I wear black. As long as what is being worn is being worn by the Mets and is in good taste (nothing with swastikas or appleless top hats, for example), I will eventually and heartily endorse it and attempt to mimic it on my pathetic 43-year-old person.
That’s what rooting for the laundry is all about.
by Jason Fry on 17 March 2006 5:19 am Sorry to hear about your 5 o'clock vigil, hombre. I'll fill you in on Opening Night.
I arrived late — Joshua is sick and was on a mission to watch every episode of Harold and the Purple Crayon, so when I tuned in Mets pregame was beginning. So were AV mishaps. The picture kept garbling and cutting out, and the sound would degenerate into squealing and cut out as well. In classic Met fan/little brother fashion, I caught myself hoping this had happened on YES's first night as well. (In the News, Bob Raissman says it did. Whew.) Then the picture went black and you could hear the control-room guys discussing things with a fair amount of urgency, and I braced myself for inadvertent profanity and a horse-whipping in tomorrow's tabloids. (Hey, I would've been cussing, and it just happened to ESPN.) The control-room guys stayed cool under fire, but the sound never really recovered — it sounds gravelly and murky even now.
But you know what? That's OK. It's the first night. It's spring training. And I found myself thinking, with surprising pride, “Hey, this is our network. Cool!” I didn't think I'd care — it's only a TV network — but I did. This is ours, I thought, and I was happy.
Granted, we're the faithful. In a pre-satellite-radio age I drove through August nights in Georgia with the windows up and the air conditioning off so I could catch the faintest bits of WFAN through the buzz of distance, so a little gravel on the audio track ain't gonna throw me. Anyway, between parenting and a combination of iPod and treadmill, the sound was off in the Fry household for the first couple of hours. Watching a Mets telecast in silence — consider it my parting tip of the cap to Fran Healy.
When I did turn the volume up, Gary and Keith offered an excellent augury for the season. Cliff Floyd launched a home run, one of those Clifford blasts that seem to curl their way off the very end of his bat before vanishing deep in the night, as if he'd hit it with an oar. That prompted Gary to note that with his kidney woes apparently behind him (wood knocking!), Floyd is as happy as he's been.
Gary: …and that's what Cliff can do when he's happy.
(beat)
Keith: And when it's over the plate and down.
Low point: Seeing Derek Jeter. Repeatedly. I know ads pay the bills, but couldn't they run a warning so I could cover my eyes or hustle my child away from the set? Or ask 2KSports to film an alternate version in which a Josh Beckett fastball drops Jeter like a hot coal? (As for the Willie Randolph/Joe Torre Subway ads, I'm refusing to admit they exist.)
What's that? The game? Well….
* I know I've said this before, but Lastings Milledge has ridiculously fast hands. Please mark down his debut as a Why Would You Be Anywhere Else? night to get tickets.
* I'm already preparing my first, second and third posts moaning about why Jose Lima is our fifth starter. I know there's not much more than my paranoia to suggest he will be, but I sense the Ice Williams mistake all over again — if a guy's a veteran and a good clubhouse presence, so what if he has no apparent remaining ability to play baseball? Maybe Jose just needs more work — it's only St. Patrick's Day, and Roberto Hernandez didn't look great last spring. But what, honestly, can Lima do that Brian Bannister couldn't?
* Baseball is cruel. Just ask Jeff Keppinger. He had a pretty solid '04 for us, lost '05 to injury under tough circumstances, and has been treated dismissively, almost scornfully, by Randolph this spring for no apparent reason. Tonight Matsui injures his knee (you'd like to imagine everyone hopes he's OK), and suddenly people are actually paying attention to Keppinger. So of course he has to have a horrible game, doing nothing right at the plate, in the field, or on the basepaths.
Poor Keppinger. It's not such a funny game when it bites you in the hinder.
by Greg Prince on 16 March 2006 10:20 pm I thought I was onto something. I'd read the rumors that Cablevision would be a good-faith bargainer and begin airing SNY when it emerged from the video womb full-grown at 5 o'clock this afternoon. One nugget I'd divined was Channel 60 was being saved for the birth of Snigh. Then I was sure I'd stumbled onto the brightest sign of all. On my system, 60 is used for a fairly worthless scroll of channel listings. So is Channel 14. The only difference between them is the occasional extra hockey game that won't fit on the formerly useful MSG or FSN-NY winds up on 60. But today Channel 14 let it be known that it would be the home of tonight's Islanders-Thrashers showdown.
All right! The way has been paved! Cablevision is clearing the decks. Sometime today, we'll see a blurb telling us that Channel 60 will be SNY country. Didn't happen. That's OK, it's not launching 'til 5. I can wait. I sat down in front of the telly at 4:58 and watched listings scroll until, I figured, we'd see whoever and whatever this promising new outlet would air before tonight's game against the Braves.
Five O'Clock came. Five O'Clock went. It's now 5:19. There's no SNY, no Snigh, no sign, no nothin' except those dadburn listings. The game isn't till 7. Mets Weekly doesn't debut 'til Saturday. Opening Day is April 3. It's not imperative that Channel 60 magically morph to Mets right this very minute, but I'd feel better about things if it would.
Imagine that: Cablevision letting down a subscriber.
This is madness, madness I tell you! But for a little March Metness, flip the dial to Gotham Baseball.
by Jason Fry on 15 March 2006 5:46 pm (Begin disclaimer)
I know we're a huge-market team. I know we get a disproportionate share of ink. I know actual Royals fans will be horrified that I'd even dare to find common cause with them, given our vast payroll, reasonably bright prospects and appetite for whatever free agents we desire.
But I came of baseball-fan age in the late 1970s, and back then the Mets were the Royals. The Royals were constantly in the playoffs battling the Yankees to the death, and meanwhile we had GMs who sent free agents laughably below-market free-agent offers by telegram. We traded Tom Seaver. We and about 1,000 others watched Mettle the Mule. We put up with crappy starting pitchers whose hats fell off after every goddamn pitch. And in suburban Long Island, every single day after school I had to put up with an endless parade of dirt-bike-riding, rock-throwing, sniggering Muttleys, Yankee fans who found nothing more astonishing and entertaining than the idea that they shared the Earth — never mind Long Island — with actual Met fans.
So yes, I claim this column as mine despite the differences between 1978 and 2006. Because reading it this morning was a balm for old wounds inflicted at an age that ensures they'll never heal, and because I found it a rallying cry for all those, in any sport and league and era, who are proud to stand up and say, “Hell no, I ain't no Yankee fan.”
(End disclaimer)
Anyway, this is the peerless Joe Posnanski, in this morning's Kansas City Star. He's answering an email from a young Royals fan having a crisis of faith:
First, hang in there. You talk about how all your fourth-grade friends make fun of you because you are a Royals fan. Listen: Throughout history, there have been men and women like Galileo, Joan of Arc and Thomas More who were condemned and even executed for their views. And as brave as they were — you can ask your teacher about this — not one of them had the courage to admit being a Royals fan.
Yes, it is hard being a Royals fan in these troubled times. But, take comfort in this: You are doing the right thing. Yes, as you say, some of your Kansas City friends take the easy route and choose the Yankees or Red Sox or Cardinals as their favorite teams. My dear friend, you will run into these kinds of people all your life. They will cut you off on highways. They will go through the 12-items-and-under supermarket lane with enough food to feed the Three Tenors. They will push their airline seats all the way back into your pelvis on overseas flights.
You are different. You write, “I will love the Royals, no matter what.” You are worth so much more than the kid who ran out to pick up a Chicago White Sox hat last year.
Now read the rest.
by Greg Prince on 13 March 2006 8:52 am Whatever became of Spring Training? Specifically, where did all the Mets go?
This is the spring of our diaspora. The Metropolitan-Americans seem to have been ruthlessly dispersed, scattered from their homeland, no longer allowed to live as a single, coherent tribe.
A third of our starting lineup, a fifth of our rotation and a chunk of our bullpen decided to be nationalistic instead of Metropolitan. Our longtime catcher showed up last week in the New York papers enough to make me think he was still one of us, but he's not (he wasn't even American for the duration of his old/new country's WBC cameo). Our TV network hasn't hit the air. Our primary radio voice has been tending to hockey. Our ace pitcher has been everywhere but on a real mound.
I turned on Sunday's FANcast of the meaningless exhibition game against the Orioles and was aghast at just how meaningless it all sounded, especially as I adjust to life with Tom McCarthy (and endure it without Isle-obligated Howie Rose). By the end of the game, I found myself rooting for pinch-runner Esix Snead to score the winning run for Baltimore a) because Esix Snead, unlike almost everybody else on the field in the tenth, had actually done something meaningful in a Met uniform once and b) my mind was already dispatched to the warning track to get in its running.
Exhibition games are supposed to bore you after the novelty of spring wears off and certainly after the first few innings of any single one of them evaporate, but I find myself surprisingly unengaged by the nuts and bolts of this particular spring. The last time I felt close to this was during the early portion of 1995 when the Mets weren't Mets and neither was any team. This March is waaaaaaaay different from that replacement March, but I have to tell you, I do not feel whole.
It's going to take more than Dorothy Boyd to complete us. Show me the Carlos and the other Carlos and the Jose and all the rest who are off gallivanting around this benighted television tournament known as the World Baseball Classic. I'll admit I've watched some of the contests with more than a smidge of curiosity, but when I pull back from the screen, I don't care whether Team USA beats Team Somewhere Else or vice-versa. I care about the Mets. And I've become positively testy that our players are not playing for us in our pretend games.
I was born and live in a country where despite all our flag-waving on practical matters of self-interest, we're not terribly ethnic about being American. Everybody, save those for whom insensitive baseball teams in Cleveland are named, is from somewhere else. So I can't quite imagine what it means to “represent my country” the way a Delgado or a Beltran does (is it impolitic of me to point out Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States, thus not anybody's country?). I'm sure it's a very big deal for them to play for Team Puerto Rico, for Reyes and Duaner Sanchez to be part of the Dominican squad, for Victor Zambrano and Jorge Julio to be pitching in uniforms that say Venezuela. There is pride and heritage and emotion that doesn't translate perfectly to our way of looking at the world.
But I don't care anymore. I just don't. I want them in St. Lucie and for more than medical examinations. I want my Mets to be Mets and I want them to be Mets starting immediately, not next week when it's convenient by dint of the WBC schedule. Call me Steinbrennerean if you must, but I'm resenting the heck, if not the hell, out of this thing for keeping Mets from being Mets the way they're supposed to be. Maybe come the 21st of March this will all be forgotten, but every day when the fellas who are Mets aren't being Mets is a day they and we will never have back.
I'm lovin' the guys who are here. I'm lovin' Wright and Glavine and Franco (whose native country, the Lost Continent of Atlantis, unfortunately disappeared while Julio was working his way up the Phillies' chain) and Woodward and Hernandez and Heilman and Matsui and Lo Duca and Redman and Pedro (lovin' his toe as it steps toward violently pushing off a real rubber any day now). I appreciate that these guys either bowed out or weren't invited or slithered away from the Classic's clutches.
I salute Billy Wagner for deciding that getting his act together for his new team with his new team was a higher priority than getting his throwing in under the auspices of the Stars and Stripes, no matter how much he or I proudly hail how brightly they wave…or something like that. I appreciate Steve Trachsel and Victor Diaz and Jeff Keppinger going through the motions on my radio Sunday. I revere Cliff Floyd for playing himself into shape, kidney concerns and all (be careful out there, Monsta — even the Mets aren't worth risking extremely serious injury over).
As for the WBC refugees, come home soon — to your real baseball home. This is getting to feel like that M*A*S*H episode in which all the nurses are evacuated and the 4077th is all too lonely an outpost.
by Jason Fry on 12 March 2006 7:32 pm Last season saw Met fans come around on Tom Glavine — after Glavine finally came around to realize that what had worked for him for so long in Atlanta wasn't working in New York. For the first half of the year he was still the Manchurian Brave — remember back in April? Andruw Jones said the Braves' whole lineup knew what Glavine would do. John Smoltz talked about how stubborn Glavine was about his paint-the-corners strategy. And this came after Brave after Brave stood on top of the plate, hammering changeups they wouldn't have been able to reach if Glavine had established the inside pitch. Glavine kept waiting for the strike zone to revert to late-90s Atlanta dimensions, or for Questec to go away, or for his arm to be five years younger, or for something that was never going to happen. And that kept happening: bad performances by Glavine, postgame analysis that sounded like diplomatic niceties but actually turned out to be excuse-making and finger-pointing, and through it all he stood there, aloof and bloodless, and we wondered if he was capable of change, or if he'd prefer to go down doing things the way they used to work, a Brave who made a bad decision but didn't have to compound that by accepting this hideous new blue-and-orange world where nothing was the way it should be.
In the second half he finally did change, mixing up his pitches, reclaiming the inside corner and forcing hitters to scrap their old scouting report. The results? He was 2-2 in July with a 3.43 ERA, 3-2 in August with a 2.50 ERA, and 3-2 in September with a 1.71 ERA. And by the time it was over, he was the Manchurian Brave no more — he was one of us, the Eventual Met.
Time to take the next step, Tommy.
Glavine will never be beloved here — he arrived too late and after too many ribbons earned in the enemy ranks, and he's an arm's-length kind of pitcher and person anyway. But he's got an opportunity to show us a little passion, a little fire.
John Schuerholz, the Braves' GM, has suddenly gone all Gotham in a new book called Built to Win. In that book, he says after agreeing to sign with the Mets, Glavine had second thoughts and told Bobby Cox he'd made a mistake. Schuerholz and Glavine met, with the GM bouncing the pitcher's kid on his knee, and Schuerholz convinced Glavine to renege on the deal and take a two-year contract for less money to stay in Atlanta. It's a decision that Schuerholz said left Glavine obviously relieved. The Braves were ready to hold a press conference celebrating this reversal of fortune, but Glavine then decided — or, perhaps, was pressured by the players' union — to stick with the original deal. (Here's the tick-tock, from David Lennon in Newsday.)
Don Burke of the Star-Ledger captures an annoyed Glavine pounding a new mitt in increasing agitation while calmly answering questions about what happened then. “It's interesting to me that for somebody who's been so tight-lipped about everything that goes on in that organization — player transactions, this, that and the other thing — that I'm the only player that [Schuerholz] ever talked about when it comes to a negotiation,” Glavine said. Throw in reports of Schuerholz's obvious pleasure in Glavine's 2003 struggles against his old club (after one Glavine implosion he was beaming and noting he felt great and had a heckuva barbeque lined up) and we've got what could fairly be called a situation.
Now, points to Glavine for admitting that the conversation took place as written — it's become standard operating procedure in our increasingly graceless age for athletes, celebrities and politicians to routinely and blithely lie about such things, even when the evidence to the contrary is on tape. Glavine called it “a business situation that should remain between the people that were involved,” and he's right — or at least, decency and appreciation for all Glavine did in Atlanta ought to dictate a longer statute of limitations.
So what will Glavine do about it, beyond pounding his glove? I'm not suggesting he deck Andruw Jones — or even Schuerholz's kid, who actually is a Brave prospect. But the Mets will be in Atlanta April 28th through April 30th, and odds are Glavine will be on the hill for one of those games. How about a little gesture — a little something to show blood does flow in those veins? A finger pointed at the GM's box, for instance. Or noting in the clubhouse that the victorious Mets have a heckuva barbeque planned. Because it would help to win the game, of course.
by Greg Prince on 10 March 2006 3:55 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.
I’ve never completely understood the notion that athletes aren’t supposed to express the opinion that they’re going to win before competition commences. Remember the trouble Benny Agbayani got into when he went on Howard Stern in 2000 and, once properly goaded, predicted the Mets would beat the Yankees in five? That was pretty innocent if incorrect. Maybe less so was David Cone’s/Bob Klapisch’s declaration in the Daily News that the Dodgers were a “high school team” in 1988, one that wouldn’t graduate to the World Series, not with the Mets grabbing at least four of seven diplomas in the NLCS. In both cases, the Met who made the proclamation was proven wrong and thus gave more meat to age-old idea that you never give your opponent an excuse to get riled up.
Davey Johnson never got that memo. Never saw a bulletin board that gave him pause. Never didn’t speak his mind, at least not when it came to expressing confidence in his team. There’s nothing taboo about saying you’re going to win as long as you do. The Mets backed up their manager. Their manager led them well.
It was probably more disturbing to read from Ken Davidoff in Newsday last Sunday that current Team USA bench coach Davey Johnson remains, at best, passively estranged from the Mets than it was to hear anything about Barry Bonds’ prodigious hormonal intake. If the Mets don’t do everything in their power to make the manager who directed them to their last world championship the centerpiece of their 1986 commemoration, then that’s the baseball tragedy of the year.
What did Davey Johnson ever to do the Mets that left him a prophet without honor in his own land? He was prophetic. It may not have been as snappy as “can’t anybody here play this game?” but Johnson’s declaration that he didn’t just expect the Mets to win in ’86 but that he expected them to dominate the National League East was probably the most accurate and heartening sentiment ever uttered by one of our managers.
What Davey told his players, as captured in Jeff Pearlman’s spellbinding The Bad Guys Won:
This is our year. I know the Cardinals won last year, but that’s done with. We’re not just going to win, we’re going to win big. We’re going to dominate. We’re going to blow the rest of the division away. I have no doubt about that. And neither should you. Now let’s get to work.
He expected it and he got it. He had something to do with it. A lot.
I didn’t like Whitey Herzog but I did like something he said in 1986 as the Mets were revving up, something along the lines of “the Mets think they won the last two years anyway.” He nailed it. It wasn’t arrogance (a word I never bought when the Mets became, for a brief time, the team the rest of the country allegedly love to hate) as much as it was confidence — soaring, rooted, realistic confidence. The ever improving Davey Johnson Mets of 1984 and 1985 formed the basis for that confidence. Maybe you can still grow a team to get good, then get better, then get best, but it doesn’t seem that way anymore. Then you could and then they did. Those ’86 Mets we honor today were the end result of a three-year project. If it were a science fair, Davey would’ve earned a blue ribbon. He created a club that took its time to blossom but when it did, boy did it cast a shadow over everything in its way.
The great managers are the night & day ones, the ones who take over and change the atmosphere 180 degrees. Bobby V did that, rendering evil ol’ Dallas Green marvelously moot. Gil Hodges left Wes Westrum out to dwell on a cliff of irrelevancy (with a dash of Salty Parker). Davey Johnson was every bit the turnaround specialist as those two more thoroughly chronicled and celebrated helmsmen. Does anybody remember the Mets immediately before Davey Johnson? Can you even name, without thinking, the two managers who preceded him?
Quick…
Wrong. They were George Bamberger and Frank Howard. Bambi and Hondo; I think those were also the names of the detectives from Riptide. Bamberger looked miserable from the day he got here, the sum total of his managing amounting to one endless moan over Pete Falcone’s failure to throw strikes. Howard was an interim guy who bled the first sign of success out of the young group that wasn’t yet a core — and he kept after rookie Darryl Strawberry to run hard because “the cheapest commodity in this game is 90 feet” (a story Howie Rose repeated once a week on Mets Extra) — but the Mets were in Chuck Berry mode in 1982 and 1983: riding around with no particular place to go.
Davey Johnson hotwired them. The moment he took the gig, the twinkle in his eye and the shine on his cowboy boots practically screamed “I don’t expect us to win, I expect us to dominate” from the get-go. It was only a matter of time before he cashed the checks his demeanor was writing.
Do you realize that the man who led the Mets from a team that averaged 65-97 every year for seven years to one that won 90, 98, 108, 92 and 100 wins annually for the next five was never voted Manager of the Year? Got votes every year, but not the prize. When the Mets were shocking the world by roaring from last to second in ’84, Jim Frey’s Cubs were advancing from fifth to first. The Cubs in the playoffs? A seismic upheaval, no doubt about it. But those Cubs were an amalgam of veterans brought in to Win Now and they did. Davey was tending something beautiful in New York, something that kept flowering long after Frey’s one-year wonders withered and died.
Everything that was said about Davey Johnson later — that he didn’t have to really manage, that he favored experience, that with that kind of talent why shouldn’t you win? — completely forgets what he did in 1984. Davey Johnson built a team on youth and heart. He had two vets as starters, Hernandez and Foster. Everybody else was still in the proving ground of his career. Darryl was the obvious talent, but what was obvious about a team with Mike Fitzgerald, Ron Gardenhire, Kelvin Chapman, Wally Backman, Hubie Brooks, Mookie Wilson and Rafael Santana shifting in and out of the lineup for the better part of the spring and summer?
Who knew what to do with a rotation comprised of almost entirely unknown quantities? Once he shook out the guys he could do without, his most proven starter was Ed Lynch. Frank Cashen went out and got him Bruce Berenyi. And they were essentially window dressing. Everything about the pitching would be about the kids. Terrell. Darling. Fernandez.
Gooden.
Davey knew what to do. Davey played and pitched the kids in the heat of the pennant race they had wrought. Somehow he knew enough to not overplay them but play them just enough. Made true big leaguers out of a bunch of ’em. Got what was to be had out of the rest of ’em. Experimented with lineups. Plugged in a computer when that was George Jetson stuff. Was never afraid (witness the 19-year-old ace and his 17 victories) and neither was his team.
I’m not sure how that bunch held its own into September with the Cubs of Cey, Bowa, Sandberg, Matthews, Moreland, Durham, Dernier, Sutcliffe, Sanderson and Smith, but they did. Even given the Cubs’ outlastment of the Mets (to say nothing of their one-year futility remission, which expired after the second game of the playoffs against San Diego), I don’t see how Jim Frey could be said to have outmanaged Davey Johnson.
Nor do I believe that the guidance of a team to 10 wins more than it accumulated the year before to secure its first division title in 13 years — by 21-1/2 lengths — is undeserving of honor. But Manager of the Year in 1986 didn’t go to Davey Johnson either. It went to somebody named Hal Lanier, whose long and successful managing career after that certainly validated the choice…
Oh wait, Hal Lanier never did a damn thing after the 1986 regular season was over. But even if we file that under Unknowable At The Time, why is leading a team to 96 wins more of an accomplishment than leading a team to 108 wins?
“The big thing,” third base coach Buddy Harrelson told A Magic Summer author Stanley Cohen in 1986, “is that this team is expected to win, and that’s what creates pressure.” He compared the circumstances between what was going on then to what was had gone on 17 years earlier:
In ’69, if someone screwed up, no one made anything out of it. Now if someone screws up, it’s a big deal. People ask questions, you’re expected to explain why it happened. That’s the big difference between the two teams. This one is playing under pressure that we never really understood in ’69.
The ’69 Mets (73 to 100 wins) are one blessed thing. The ’86 Astros (83 to 96) are another. Why is emerging from mediocrity to a division title considered so much more of an accomplishment than pushing the stone of triumph from near miss to excruciatingly near miss to resounding glory? Where is the stone of shame in that? The 1986 Houston Astros had a very nice season. The 1986 New York Mets had an extraordinary one. If you’ve read anything about those characters, you know they didn’t manage themselves.
Maybe Davey isn’t honored now because he wasn’t honored then. Maybe he was written off as a pushbutton manager. Tell me what button he pushed that didn’t work, though. His bravest decision, I thought, was the one he made before the third game of the World Series when the Mets were still panting following the draining NLCS victory that won them the pennant (the one that hinged on moves like pinch-hitting Dykstra to lead off the ninth and allowing McDowell to go five innings in relief; whose ideas were those?). Davey Johnson told his players to blow off the off-day workout, the batting practice staged for TV’s sake, the political faceshowing. Just go relax and get here for Game Three.
Can you imagine any manager flaunting the sport’s conventions so matter of factly today? Even Ozzie Guillen? Even then? But his players listened. They got there for Game Three, scored four in the first at Fenway and, in a blink, tied the Series at two.
What’s remembered most about his actual managing from that Series, however, is what is perceived as negative. Why in Game Six didn’t he keep Darryl in the lineup to start the ninth and why did he have HoJo up in the bottom of the inning in a bunting situation?
Darryl made the last out of the eighth after Gary Carter’s sac fly knotted things at three. Aguilera took Straw’s place in the order. He was due up frigging ninth. Kevin Elster, as raw a rookie at the plate as you’ll ever see in a World Series, was due up third. By doing what he did, Davey got another inning of defense out of Elster (OK, he’d make an error, but he was on the roster for his glove) and saved Howard Johnson’s switch-hitting bat to pinch-hit for the kid against righty Schiraldi. His only other options were righthanded Kevin Mitchell, righthanded Tim Teufel and break-glass-in-case-of-emergency catcher Ed Hearn.
As it happened, HoJo did come up to pinch-hit for young Elster with runners on first and second and nobody out in the bottom of the ninth. He attempted one bunt and then hit away. I’ve heard both possible criticisms of Davey on that sequence:
Why have a guy who can’t bunt up in a bunt situation?
Why not have that guy bunt?
Howard Johnson could bunt. I saw it with my own eyes. There was an exhibition game that March on Channel 9 against the Twins. Howard Johnson laid down the most gorgeous bunt I ever saw in my life. It rolled fair halfway up the first base line and he beat it out for a hit. Maybe Davey, HoJo and I were the only three people with any recollection of that by late October. Alas, his one attempt at a bunt in Game Six didn’t take.
Then why not swing away? Howard Johnson had already shown himself a Major League power hitter. He nearly hit one out versus Clemens in Game Two. If Howard Johnson could connect, Knight would score. If he could loft a fly to deep right even, Ray would be on third and that would be as good as a bunt.
It didn’t happen. Sometimes guys don’t come through.
And that’s the big complaint on Davey’s head? That’s the moral equivalent of not inserting Dave Stapleton for defense in the bottom of the tenth? I’ve read in more than one place that both Davey Johnson and John McNamara managed awful games that Saturday night. You’re kidding me. McNamara didn’t remove Buckner but did take out Clemens and found a way to involve Bob Stanley. Davey Johnson took a couple of logical whacks at winning and crapped out. (And why does nobody ever blame Aguilera for failing on an Armandoesque scale?)
So Davey Johnson didn’t win awards for his managing, and in his team’s finest hour, he’s remembered as an impediment to victory rather than a cause of it. Is that why his legacy as the most successful manager the Mets have ever had is so obscured?
Maybe. That and the pretty apparent contempt in which management held him all along. The greatest story in Pearlman’s book involves Davey destroying the bill United Airlines sent Frank Cashen for the players’ demolition of their plane after the NLCS. He won the battle, one senses, but Cashen and the people he reported to seemed to have maintained long memories and deep grudges. I doubt it was all about that one episode, though. It was that “screw it, we’re gonna win, nothing else matters” persona, so endearing to the fans and so effective in screwing it and winning, that probably also worked against him. You do impolitic stuff, by definition you’re going to lose at politics. If Davey Johnson couldn’t bring home any more World Series rings — and the record shows he didn’t — politics was all that was left.
After six seasons of winning records, six seasons of contending ballclubs, six seasons that included the greatest season in the history of the franchise, Davey Johnson was dismissed early in his seventh season of managing the New York Mets. It wasn’t just his ways, but him, that had become taboo where he won like crazy. Was it was time for a change? The team did launch to a tepid stairt in 1990 and it didn’t seem like coincidence that Buddy Harrelson sparked them to what I still consider the most torrid stretch I ever watched the Mets burn through, the 26-5 run that vaulted them into first…briefly. But Buddy shrunk in the manager’s chair following the streak and he’d be succeeded by a series of pretenders who didn’t come close to measuring up to Davey Johnson’s standards. Not until Bobby Valentine came along was there anyone remotely worthy of the job. Maybe Davey just needed a weekend off in 1990.
Davey’s first appearance at Shea after his dismissal came on June 13, 1992, Old Timers Night (Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball, the sponsor dubbed it). It was a loosely themed Mets’ 30th anniversary gala. Keith Hernandez took his first bow as an ex-player. He was extremely well received. But his ovation finished, like the ’86 Phillies, a distant second to Davey Johnson. The fans (me among them) went wild for the old skipper. We knew he’d been wronged. We knew it was right to have him back not just for an evening but presumably in the good graces of the organization.
Next time he was back, it was as manager of the Reds, a team he rescued from Marge Schott’s claws for as long as something like that could be rescued from someone of that ilk. He got them to the playoffs in 1995, the last time they were there. Then he was shown the door. He immediately went to Baltimore and took the Orioles to the postseason twice more, another instance of his tenure being the last successful one a team has seen. Peter Angelos offed him and Davey materialized in Los Angeles. The Dodgers weren’t bad with him, but they didn’t win anything.
With those other jobs behind him, he should have been welcomed home for good. He should have been given some superscout role, a consultant-for-life contract. At the very least, he deserved a bust in the Diamond Club, the repository of the Mets’ supersecret Hall of Fame. At the very little more, No. 5 never should have been made available to David Wright. Casey’s 37 is on the left field wall. Gil’s 14 is. Davey Johnson was every bit as important to the good fortunes of the New York Mets as Stengel and Hodges were, yet he has received virtually no kudos from those who employed him.
He shouldn’t just win such honors. He should dominate them.
• Last week’s topic du jour, Game 6, opens today. Looked up a bunch of reviews this morning to see if it was just me, my bias and my blog partner who didn’t care for it. It wasn’t.
• Happy birthday to someone situated way too far away for my tastes, someone with whom I saw one win, one loss and one decade of friendship come to baseball fruition in 1986. Joel Lugo is as old as me today, but still lagging well behind Julio Franco. Then again, aren’t we all?
by Jason Fry on 9 March 2006 4:48 am I'm horrified by the news about Barry Bonds.
No, not the news in the book by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams that says that, well, Barry Bonds took Winstrol. And the Cream. And the Clear. And testosterone decanoate, sometimes known as Mexican beans. And insulin. And human growth hormone. And Clomid, used to treat female infertility. And trenbolone, used to make friggin' cattle more muscular. I'm a bit stunned at the frightful breadth of the shopping list, but I'm not surprised, exactly. In fact, if you can find a Giants fan or Bonds fan out there who is surprised, ask them to come by my house next time there's a poker game going. And bring plenty of money.
No, what horrifies me is the reason offered for why Bonds first turned to the pharmaceutical cupboard after the 1998 season: He was jealous of Mark McGwire, then dominating the headlines during his chase of Roger Maris's record.
Mark McGwire? Really?
Even in the best of times, being a baseball fan means watching your team get beat at least 60 times a year. Losing 60 times a year guarantees some of those losses are going to really hurt — a fatal error, a desperate comeback that falls just short, a reliever spits the bit. Or you wind up facing the other team's best player with everything in the balance, and he carries the day.
I've had an interesting reaction to a small number of players who've beaten us in that situation — regret, almost immediately followed by a quiet acceptance and a little dose of wonder. In such situations, I don't throw things or swear a blue streak or turn on the FAN to be reminded that there are Met fans way crazier than I am. Instead, I find myself thinking, “You know, someday I'll tell my grandchildren that I saw [Player X Who Just Beat Us] play.”
There aren't very many players in that group. The example I always use is Tony Gwynn. But Barry Bonds was in that club — and he was a member before 1999. In his first years with the Pirates you could see he was going to be something special — you knew that perfect swing, those break-the-sound-barrier-fast hands, the superb batting eye and the combination of ferocity and smarts with which he played the game would make him a superstar before long. And he became one, and then he got better in San Francisco, and when he came to town it was an event, and when he beat us, I'd think, “You know, someday I'll tell my grandchildren that I saw Barry Bonds play.”
Mark McGwire? Please. An oversized masher with a feast-or-famine bat, glued to first base, lumbering around the bases. Even before reporters starting asking questions about andro, I never gave him much thought. Did I see Mark McGwire play? Sure, kiddo. But Grandpa saw Dave Kingman and Cecil Fielder and Rob Deer play, too. What of it? (While we're on the subject, I never cared for his unctuous sidekick from the Summer of Drugs, either. Plus Sammy Sosa was a Cub.)
If you weren't careful, McGwire could hit a ball a long way and beat you. Bonds could do that too. But he could also steal bases and beat you. Or gun down your runners and beat you. McGwire seemed a nice enough guy, and genuinely passionate about abused kids, but I can't remember an interview with him that amounted to more than back-of-the-Bull-Durham-bus cliches and bromides about family. Bonds wasn't a nice guy, but on the rare occasions he felt like talking, he was funny and intriguing and very, very smart.
But wait, you say: Mark McGwire was an event in '98. Well, yeah, but not one I wanted any part of. I remember the fans who came to Shea for Mets-Cards in '98. Not many of them struck me as Mets fans, or even Cardinals fans — who are reliably inoffensive in their Midwestern way. No, the McGwire attendees were the kind of fans you see at Shea in the playoffs or for Mets-Yankees: the clueless and the bored, the ones who spend half the game on their cellphones and eat their one hot dog at arm's length from whatever expensive nonballpark attire they have on, the ones who give you the gimlet eye if you ask them not to stand up throughout another inning and seem vaguely affronted that their chatter has to compete with discussions of the actual game. Long home runs were the fad that summer, but the folks who came to Shea to see them would have been equally happy to watch, say, cockfighting or demolition derby. Later, Bonds would attract these idiots too — but then that's part of the tragedy of Barry Bonds.
Yep, I called it a tragedy. I'll go further, in fact: Barry Bonds is the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy. A man who grew up in baseball clubhouses, whose godfather was Willie Mays, who saw his father's career derailed by alcohol and a bad reputation, one that may or may not have been earned. Who then surpassed his father in every respect, something that can't have been simple or easy for one proud, defiant man raised by another. A man I'd call the greatest player of his generation — and who was that before 1999. A man who was one of the greatest players in baseball history — before 1999. A man who was in the I'll-tell-my-grandkids-I-saw-him-play club — before 1999. Barry Bonds was great before you could buy great in a syringe or an ointment or something to stick under your tongue. And he destroyed all of it because he was jealous of Mark McGwire?
Mark McGwire! Destined to be remembered for a virtual-asterisked single season, who showed up before a congressional panel looking shrunken and lost, and took a match to his reputation in a few shameful minutes of pathetic ducking and weaving. Mark McGwire's name should have been all but forgotten while Bonds's was still mentioned in awe, and now, because Barry Bonds somehow didn't realize or didn't care that he was already the kind of player Mark McGwire could only dream of being, the two of them will be linked forever. Sure, Bonds took that home-run record away. Fat lot of good it will do him now.
There are steroids in baseball? Not news to me — hell, there's a Met or two whom I strongly suspect knew his way around the business end of a syringe.
Barry Bonds is a jerk of the first order? I don't particularly care — I think I'd be unhappy to find out how many players are.
The greatest player of his generation burned down his own legacy because he wanted the attention given to a bottle-bred circus freak by a cynical sport and its dimwitted pretend fans? I do care about that. In fact, it makes me furious. What a waste. What an absolutely infuriating, frustrating, confounding, horrifying, tragic waste.
by Greg Prince on 8 March 2006 3:33 am David Wright should put us in a good mood. He's Xanax in a big blue and orange bottle. He makes it fun to look back on the sordid history of Mets' third basemen (as I did at Gotham Baseball this week) and think, my, we've come a long way from the days when Richie Hebner lurked like a surefire hot corner upgrade.
I've felt for some time that the reality of the Mets' third base situation, historically, has been swallowed by myth, at least going back to the days of Hubie Brooks. Hubie wasn't bad at all. Nor were Knight or HoJo or Fonzie or Robin. It's just that there continued to be so darn many of them.
After reviewing the whole Zimmerian line of succession that led us through the desert until we reached our apparent 3B pinnacle, the Star of David, something dreadful did occur to me…proving that on some days — especially those when Kirby Puckett is gone, Barry Bonds grows ever smaller and I couldn't find a single store in these parts selling a single pack of 2006 Topps baseball cards (no wonder kids' bicycle spokes look so bare around here) — I am capable of finding a cloudy lining in anything.
Best Mets' third base seasons:
1969: Ed Charles
I'm not even going to bother backing this with numbers. He's Ed Charles, they were the 1969 Mets. What else do you need to know?
Ed Charles was retired/released 11 days after the 1969 World Series.
1973: Wayne Garrett
It wasn't much to look at statistically (16-58-.256), but Red got red hot down the stretch and was as good a reason as any to Believe we would get as far as we did.
Wayne Garrett leveled off in 1974, a nice way of saying he didn't stay hot.
1977: Lenny Randle
What a revelation! An average over .300 and all those steals. The brightest spot of a most dismal season.
Lenny Randle's average dropped 71 points in 1978, while he stole 19 fewer bases.
1981: Hubie Brooks
In a year when two to-be perennial All-Stars broke in with a bang, Hubie held his own with Fernando Valenzuela and Tim Raines, finishing third in Rookie of the Year voting on the strength of batting .307.
Hubie Brooks batted .249 in 1982 while his power numbers barely nudged despite receiving the benefit of about a hundred more at-bats in a non-strike season. Hubie didn't manage another very good campaign until 1984 by which time he was being groomed for a trade to Montreal. Good trade for us, good trade for Hubie. But no more Hubie for us.
1986: Ray Knight
An awesome April, an awesome October and some wicked punches in between. Ray Knight was The Man on The Team.
Ray Knight was a Baltimore Oriole in 1987.
1987, 1989, 1991: Howard Johnson
HoJo combined power and speed as no corner infielder ever had, certainly no Met corner infielder, barely any Met. Three times he slugged over .500; three times he cracked at least 34 home runs; three times he swiped at least 30 bags. Average RBI accumulation in those seasons: 106.
Howard Johnson suffered hangovers in 1988, 1990 and 1992 that tended to make everybody forget how good he was in the preceding seasons. His BA — never his strong suit to begin with — dropped 35, 33 and 36 points, respectively. No more than 24 homers, no more than 90 RBIs (not even close to that the other two times). He'd get hurt, he'd get down on himself, he'd get scapegoated. It wasn't easy being Howard Johnson in even years.
1997: Edgardo Alfonzo
This was the breakout Fonzie season. This was the year we told anybody who'd listen that this guy is a star whether you've heard of him or not or whether or not you take our team seriously yet. Hit .315. Drove in every run that required plating. Gold Glove defense without the hardware.
Edgardo Alfonzo wasn't bad in 1998. He just wasn't as good (.278, not enough pop to justify the drop) as he'd been in 1997. Fortunately, he'd get better in 1999. By then he'd be a second baseman because of the arrival of…
1999: Robin Ventura
It pays to pay attention a little to the American League where Robin was creating quite a career for himself. Forgive those of us who weren't particularly excited when he signed up to be our 3B. We just weren't, you know, paying attention. The guy could hit, the guy could field, the guy could lead, the guy could traffic in the dramatic. The guy could do it all.
Robin Ventura did a little less in 2000. A lot less, actually. Batting average plummeted from .301 to .232. RBIs from 120 to 84. No Gold Glove. No Mr. Mojo Risin'. No Grand Slam Single. Ventura wasn't terrible. He just wasn't Robin.
2005: David Wright
Home runs? 27. Runs batted in? 102. Batting average? .306. Age? 22. Future? Limitless.
David Wright in 2006 will attempt to do what none of his competent-or-better predecessors has ever done. He will attempt to follow an excellent season playing third base for the New York Mets with a second consecutive excellent season playing third base for the New York Mets.
Pedro's toe and Carlos D's elbow and Carlos B's psyche and so forth are all important to our forthcoming fortunes, but we assume David as a given and I imagine we've all inked in David Wright for a year at least as magnificent as the one we just witnessed. The great thing about his '05 was it just kept getting better. Remember that he was goofing up all kinds of grounders in June and seemed sapped of power in September. What made him wonderful, wonderful was the way he fought his way out of his various predicaments. David was the first Met we had seen tangibly improve on our watch at least since Fonzie. And we all believe, even those of who still can't look at No. 13 without dying a little inside, that David Wright's upside will make Fonzie's look fairly ordinary.
How could he, and as a result we, not keep getting better every day in every way in 2006?
Perhaps it's just coincidence, but Mets third base precedent suggests he might take a step back this year.
Then again, precedents are capable of being shattered.
Somebody hand this kid a bat. He's got some shatterin' to do.
by Greg Prince on 6 March 2006 8:40 pm Suddenly, everybody seems to have noticed how light on Mets the Mets are, thanks to the World Baseball Classic and the apparent allegiance some of our guys are showing to their respective countries. It's unfortunate (perhaps teams should be given a ceiling on how many players can be lost to the tournament if the tournament lives beyond this month), but the organization is at least playing ball, so to speak, for what is perceived as the greater MLB good.
Unlike some others.
Well of course the Skanks are lowlifes and creeps. That's right there with sun is coming up tomorrow among the certainties of the day. Latest evidence? Their insistence on apologizing that several of their leading lowlifes and creeps would be unavailable for local fawning in Tampa because they were selfishly serving their country (and making Team USA a tough root to boot).
But it's not about them. It never really is, save for six Seligrigged games in late May and early July, so let's not hate on them too much for now.
It's not even about hating all-time archvillain Roger Clemens, though I do feel compelled to repeat the best line of the spring thus far, courtesy of the one, the only Metstradamus, uttered after Hey I'm Retired/No I'm Not buzzed his son in Astros camp:
Shawn Estes also threw BP to the Astros' minor leaguers today, and missed Koby Clemens' hip by three feet.
If we're going to direct our bile wisely (and what else is Spring Training for except to get worked up over things we can't control?), let's align it toward Orlando and, ultimately, Atlanta. Let's hate the Braves. It's never too early and there's never not a reason.
The Braves are poormouthing again. I heard John Schuerholz revving up his “wetol'yaso” mode on the FAN a couple of Saturdays ago a good seven months early as if their fifteenth straight division flag is folded snugly in the bag. Andruw Jones came to camp with this number: “Every year people talk about how this is the year the Braves fall, and we prove them wrong…Last year it was the Mets, too. Two years ago it was who, the Phillies? All those years we still finished in first place.”
Well, fellas, nobody's not picking you anywhere I've seen. We've all learned our lesson. Just about every publication I've invested in has surrendered to precedent. The Sporting News likes the Braves. Street & Smith's likes the Braves. Cat Fancy is partial to the Tigers, but Cat Fancy isn't a reliable source on these matters. You get the picture, though. All the pre-aches/pains euphoria in Metsopotamia hasn't fooled a single one of us. We'll all pick the Braves if we know what's good for us.
So the Braves can cut it out. They can stop acting as if it's them against the world. The world thinks they'll find a way.
Which may make this the perfect time to knock them off. After years of button-down humility, they're suddenly smugger than Smoltz, surely the most irritating Brave of them all based on longevity. John Smoltz even has the nerve to imply that Leo Mazzone is no big loss.
Now you've disturbed the forces of nature, old-timer. How many pitchers have trudged into Atlanta unsure of which hand goes in the glove and emerged as solid starters because of Leo Freaking Mazzone? Maybe Smoltz has to put up a Brave front and talk up Roger McDowell (be sure to check that personality at the door, Rog'), but it strikes me as the height of pretension to pretend Mazzone is no more than a used rocking chair.
Tom Glavine understands. “I'd venture to say some people felt he got too much credit,” the ex-Brave mentioned upon alighting in St. Lucie for his fourth season as one of Us. “He was a big help in me becoming the successful pitcher I was” and will hopefully remain for another year or as long as he's here. (We love our Tom Glavine now, you know.)
One can figure the guy knows what he's talking about where Mazzone is concerned. When the world was young and Atlanta was in the West and the spunky Braves were a feelgood story, Mazzone told John Feinstein in Play Ball, “Payback is a bitch with Tommy Glavine. Just look into his eyes sometime.”
Those eyes have aged, but let's assume that the guy with 275 career wins — ought to be 285 considering all the leads that have been blown on his behalf since '03 — still operates under the same principle that he did when Feinstein's book was written in 1992. Let's figure that Tom Glavine has finally turned a corner where facing his ex-mates is concerned, something he showed signs of having done in the second half last year. And let's assume that the unceremonious dispatch of his old buddy the pitching coach throws him a little extra motivation.
It would nice to be the beneficiary of some of Tommy Glavine's bitchy payback instead of its unhappy, unwilling victim.
Hopefully Julio Franco mixes in some vengeance with those dozen egg whites he wolfs down for breakfast every morning. We kid Julio about his age, but what a remarkable specimen in every sense of the word he's proven himself to be. Reported Ben Shpigel in the Times last week, “He has the sculpted muscle definition and trim waist of an athlete half his age,” to say nothing of the work ethic that makes it so.
The same profile mentioned the drinking and carousing of his earlier years in the Majors. “Julio needed some guidance,” Tony Bernazard told Shpigel. “I'll leave it at that.”
How about adding this? Feinstein's book (a dollar find at Stephanie's senior center last year) attempted to cover the baseball world as it existed in 1992. It's subtitled The Life and Troubled Times of Major League Baseball, so you can infer that it's kind of a Worst Team Money Could Buy times 26 franchises. Anyway, one of the plagues on baseball's house in 1992 was, according to the author, Gary Sheffield, that talented kid with the bad rep.
“Most general managers,” Feinstein wrote, “would shake their head when his name came up and say one word: poison. There is no worse label for a baseball player. Its meaning is simple: Put this guy in your clubhouse and he is capable of killing the entire club.”
Example 1A was, naturally, Vince Coleman. Others tagged with the P-word by '92 included Rob Dibble, Wade Boggs…and Julio Franco.
Our Julio Franco? Isn't this the guy who we signed to set a great example for the youngsters, all of whom are young enough to be his grandkids? Yet you stay at it as long as Franco has, you have a chance to turn your rep around for real.
Never heard a discouraging word about Julio when he was in Atlanta. Chances are they were too cheap to keep him. Let's hope that whatever motivated Julio Franco to morph from poison-spreader to egg-white-eater and world-beater will add a little extra oomph to the Mets in their quest to topple those bleeping Braves.
Much has changed since John Feinstein wrote his book, but the Braves' status as a divisional champion hasn't. It's about time that it does. They've had too long a run. Saying it doesn't mean anything will be done about it, so maybe saying it is the last thing we want to do. Like Andruw said, they've been disregarded before…though it was the Marlins, not us, who were supposed to do it in 2005. If you're going to whine about history, at least get your history straight.
So smug. So self-assured. So quick to cast off Glavine and Franco and Mazzone. Somebody's got to be made to pay. Schuerholz* and Andruw should at the very least test positive for misuse of vowels.
Francoeur, too.
*Full disclosure: I spelled his name wrong when I first posted this. Wow, I hate the Braves.
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