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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 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.
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.
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