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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 6 January 2006 1:29 am Dennis Cunningham, the longtime Channel 2 movie critic, reviewed St. Elmo's Fire as such:
It stars seven of Hollywood's freshest young faces. And if you don't like those, we've got seven more for you.
This is pretty much how teams build bullpens. Certainly it's how ours does. Closers are generally etched in stone and everything else takes a pencil.
When we approached 2005 in spring training, who were we looking at for those pesky innings between Pedro (who was going to be so decrepit he wouldn't see the sixth) and Looper?
Bell, Koo, DeJean. Something like that.
Where were we by year's end?
Padilla, Heilman, Hernandez.
In between, there was…oh, I don't need to run through them the way Randolph and Peterson did. Suffice it to say we won 83 games with a dinged-up fireman and a relief corps that was more vamped than revamped.
This is why I applaud Omar's recent efforts to bring in dependable bullpen guys. Or guys who could be dependable. Or guys who have been dependable somewhere. Or guys who weren't here a year ago at this time.
Duaner Sanchez, Steve Schmoll, Chad Bradford (he'd love your support, but requests you keep it to yourself)…sure, why not? They could be pretty darn good more often than they're not, and that's really all you can ask of middle and setup men.
I agree, to a point, with a friend who shakes his head at Minaya's latest trade by noting “setup men are almost a dime a dozen and finding really effective ones is a crapshoot.” By definition, every pitcher who isn't a starter or a closer is a setup man or one who would like to be so as to get out of being the Maytag long man. So yes, they are plentiful. And, yes, it is a crapshoot, judging by the dice we kept rolling on Matthews, Takatsu, Aybar, Hamulack, Ring, Santiago, Graves and all of the above last year.
Then why not try to reduce the odds and show up to camp with some guys in whom you have some confidence? That's hardly what was done in '05, a season in which the six games between us and the Wild Card may have been a matter of securing a better bullpen sooner than later. Seeing as how at least one relief pitcher and usually more are used in 154 or so games annually, the dime-a-dozen, bring 'em in, move 'em out philosophy should not be our default position.
I don't understand the outdated thinking that shudders at trading starters for relievers, no matter the pitchers in question. Early next week will likely bring a recurrence of perennial handwringing at the exclusion of Bruce Sutter and Goose Gossage from the Hall of Fame. Those who take relief pitching seriously will lower their voices and decry the shame of it all. The rest will blindly go about ignoring how important the sixth, seventh and eighth are and dismiss the significance of the men entrusted more often than not with securing their outs.
I liked Jae Seo. Not as much as other people and not nearly enough to adopt the colorful nickname another chum gave the Mets' GM in response to the trade that sent him and Hamulack to the Dodgers for Sanchez and Schmoll. I will not call him Omoron Minaya for this. Seo pitched us some real nice games in 2005, sort of like he did in 2003 and not at all like he didn't in 2004. In August, he was marvelous. In September, he was more than adequate.
But, boy, I just never felt comfortable with him out there on a going basis. Consider me as unwilling to adjust my worldview on Jae Seo as some are on relievers. He just didn't convince me he was a long-term proposition. He tends to teeter on the edge of oblivion in any given game and I sense he may have used up his rabbits in hats last year.
I wouldn't have rushed to trade him, but I don't think bolstering the bullpen is exactly giving him away. And let's remember that rosters aren't frozen on January 5. The general manager's desire is to do Omore. It may result in another setup type, like the long-discussed Danys Baez. This may be a piling up of chip after chip, and when the chips fall, we could wind up with Manny Ramirez. Or it could just be Seo & Hamulack for Sanchez & Schmoll and I could live with that.
Pedro, Glavine, Benson, Zambrano, Trachsel, perhaps Heilman. Seo is younger than all of them except Heilman and we don't know if Heilman is a starter (I liked him fine in the ninth when tried, but that ship has sailed). On the other hand, Seo had been bouncing around the Mets' system for eight seasons, was given to mound snits and has not shown a propensity for consistency. Youth isn't everything.
We still need a lefty in the pen and none of the new guys (acquired after and projected to pitch before Wagner) is that. And we're still shy a second baseman, even with the minor league contract proffered to Bret Boone. Guys get minor league contracts all winter long, so I'm not ready to recalculate the lineup's average age upward just yet. We haven't had much luck with erstwhile All-Star second-sackers. Bret Boone wouldn't be my first option. I doubt he'll be Willie's.
by Greg Prince on 5 January 2006 9:12 pm It's been a fun trip to Met Hell, especially because we can leave it anytime we want. But the Mets aren't about hell. They're about something higher.
Today is the second anniversary of a terrible loss and the beginning of a bad year for luminescent Met presences; two would wind up wind leaving us. I couldn't help but think of both last spring when I was considering the man who died two years ago today as the No. 7 Greatest Met of the First Forty Years.
One pitched. One talked. No, check that — both talked, but only one got paid for it, technically speaking.
In 2004, the Mets' soul absorbed two body blows delivered by the deaths of Tug McGraw in January and Bob Murphy in August. The genuine sadness that greeted their departures was so deep that it had to go further than proper respect for two people so associated with one ballclub.
It came from this: For the better part of the fortysomething seasons that the Mets have existed, the optimism and limitless possibilities expressed long ago by McGraw and continually by Murphy were articles of faith for fans who saw past won-lost results that would discourage more rational folks.
Tug and Murph, in their own fashions, told the Mets faithful to ignore mere statistical and empirical evidence. Forget the Games Behind column. Don't worry about the score if it's not in our favor. Good things can always happen.
The essential nature of the Mets fan accepted this throughout the tenure of Tug and right up to the end of Murph's days. By the early 2000s, operating in a city overrun by Yankees and a division controlled by Braves, Mets fans, the hardest core of us, dug in and unfurled miles and miles of hope, nightly and yearly.
A singular sentence uttered by Tug and the consistent tone set by Murph goes a long way toward explaining our perpetual state of delighted delusion. Whatever brought them to their own brands of hopefulness and their impulse to share it, each was infectious.
Behind a mike or leaping off a mound, they channeled Churchill: Never give in…never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy…not even down two in the tenth with two out and nobody on or 6-1/2 back and behind five teams at the end of August.
While the modern-day Mets marketing department churns out obtuse come-ons like “Catch The Energy” for sub-.500 goods, Tug caught the zeitgeist of the Mets fan in 1973 and tossed it back to us for safe keeping. “You Gotta Believe” was a simple enough directive. Echoing down the decades, it spoke to Mets fans then and later. We can do it, said Tug — I'll pitch, you persevere and together we'll figure this thing out. It worked in 1973, as the Mets rose from a late last to a furious first, and it cobbled its way into the Met DNA.
Every unlikely scenario since, whether it's gone in the Mets' favor (the Buckner affair, the grand-slam single) or not, has played out under Tug's rule.
Murph's game, meanwhile, wasn't just a game of inches, as the cliché allows, but more universally, “a game of redeeming features.” In more cynical times, his reliable forecast that the sun'll come out tomorrow — breaking through a few harmless, puffy, cumulus clouds — would qualify as shilling. But for Bob Murphy, it was natural and, by all accounts, real. Thus it resonated.
What sold McGraw's and Murphy's chin-up admonitions was their audience's desire to buy them, hold onto them and never let them go. It became the Mets fan's nature to, yes, believe. No season was so far gone until mathematical elimination struck that you couldn't. No game was beyond the reach of one of Murph's happy recaps until the third out of the final inning was recorded. If the Mets lost, the recap may have been less giddy, but it was never morose. In a game of redeeming features, redemption is only a day away, all you need is belief.
That and a bitchin' scroogie.
by Jason Fry on 5 January 2006 5:24 am And here we are at last. The Ninth Circle of Met Hell.
In the Inferno, the Ninth Circle is a frozen lake, at whose center Dante and Virgil find Satan, trapped in the ice and chewing on Brutus, Cassius and the head of Judas Iscariot. The deepest part of Met Hell, however, does not look like the cover of a heavy-metal album. All you’ll find here is a small, dimly lit room. It is empty except for a tarp cylinder. There’s a man trapped under the tarp cylinder. He’s been down here for some time.
Why? Let’s go back and find out.
It’s July 24, 1993. We’re in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium. Meet Vincent Maurice Coleman, a 31-year-old professional baseball player. He’s in his third year with the New York Mets, and it’s not going well. Once a Cardinals speedster, he arrived in New York before the 1991 season, signing a four-year, $12 million deal as the key man in the team’s post-Darryl makeover. But various injuries — usually to his hamstrings — have prevented him from ever putting together a decent season as a Met, and he’s done himself zero favors with his off-field behavior. There have been, well, incidents. Like the time he cursed out coach Mike Cubbage during batting practice and refused to apologize. Like the ugly confrontation with Jeff Torborg in the Atlanta clubhouse that ended with a two-game suspension. Like the time he hit Dwight Gooden in the shoulder swinging a golf club, costing Doc a start. Like the ridicule he brought on himself by saying that Shea’s sandy infield was keeping him out of the Hall of Fame.
No, life as a Met has not gone well for Vince Coleman, who has just finished going 1-for-5 in a 5-4 extra-inning loss to the Dodgers. Now, at about 4:10 in the afternoon, he’s riding with Bobby Bonilla (figures he’d be involved somehow, doesn’t it?) in a Jeep Cherokee being driven by the Dodgers’ Eric Davis. Life isn’t great for Vince Coleman, but it’s about to get worse. He’s about to earn a date with Met Hell’s hungriest, heaviest tarp cylinder.
The Dodger Stadium parking lot is bordered by a chain-link fence, and on the other side of that fence are some 200 to 300 fans. Coleman steps out of the Jeep and lights a small green explosive. It explodes at a distance from the fans that Los Angeles fire officials will later estimate at 27 feet. Arson investigators will determine the explosive was similar to an M-100. This has been called a firecracker or cherry bomb, but those are rather innocent-sounding terms for this particular explosive: It’s about three inches long, about seven-eighths of an inch in diameter, and packs the explosive power of more than a quarter of a stick of dynamite.
The explosion leaves Cindy Mayhew, 33, with inner-ear damage. Marshall Savoy, 11, winds up with a cut shin. And a two-year-old girl, Amanda Santos, suffers a finger injury, second-degree burns under her right eye and lacerations of her cornea. Coleman gets back in the Jeep and Davis drives off. Coleman will play three more games for the Mets, going a robust 1-for-7, before the team puts him on “adminstrative leave” and vows he’ll never play for them again. (He doesn’t — he’s sent to Kansas City in the offseason for Kevin McReynolds.) In the real world, Coleman gets a one-year suspended sentence, three years’ probation, a $1,000 fine and 200 hours of community service. His lawyer says he’ll start serving his community service by helping with the cleanup from the Malibu fires, noting that “the jeans and shovel are in the car.” Coleman is then seen barbequeing chicken for firemen. A civil suit is later settled; details unknown. At least we’ll always have Vince’s public apology, in which he vomits forth some of the most scrofulous scripted regret in the sorry history of grudging athlete apologies, reading that “Amanda stood out near a gate to catch a glimpse of a ballplayer. But today, I want her to catch a glimpse of a loving father and a helpful friend.”
Baseball players’ contracts contain a lot of things they’re not allowed to do — typical banned activities include surfing and motocross, though a Met fan might want to add to the list puttering around with garden shears and pitching for the Dominican Republic in March with a bum toe. As far as I know, baseball contracts don’t bother to forbid things that should be perfectly obvious to anyone sentient. For instance, there’s presumably no line like this:
43(a). Player shall refrain from discharging quarter-sticks of dynamite in a fashion that deliberately or through absurdly stupid negligence causes eye injuries in children attending a baseball game.
Truth be told, I don’t loathe Vince Coleman quite as thoroughly as I do Roberto Alomar or Bobby Bonilla. But no matter what our psychic ulcers, we have to have some perspective, and some standards. And that calls on us to confront the undeniable. Let’s recall who populates the ranks of the Met Damned, and compare their crimes.
The First Circle of Met Hell is wandered by creeps we couldn’t truly embrace. But Rey Ordonez, Rickey Henderson, Kevin McReynolds and Darryl Strawberry never injured a child with an explosive.
The Second Circle of Met Hell is reserved for those tarred by image problems, but who escape further sanction because most of their bad behavior happened elsewhere. But Carl Everett, Eddie Murray, Julio Machado, Juan Samuel and Jeff Kent never injured a child with an explosive. Well, OK, Julio Machado did kill somebody. But it was in South America, and he was a Brewer, and…um, we’ve got to move on. Nothing to see here.
The Second Second Circle of Met Hell is a prison for those who tarnished their tenure with bad exits. But George Foster and Mike Hampton never injured a child with an explosive.
The Fourth Circle of Met Hell is the eternal home for minor Mets who commited major sins. But Mickey Lolich, Tony Tarasco, Jim Leyritz, Jose Offerman, Rey Sanchez, Karim Garcia, Mike DeJean and Don Zimmer never injured a child with an explosive.
The Fifth Circle of Met Hell is the unhappy kingdom of Mets we may not have hated, but we sure disliked. But Dave Kingman, Gregg Jefferies and Armando Benitez never injured a child with an explosive.
Following the Fifth Circle, Greg rounded up some other Mets deserving of infernal internment. But Brett Butler, Pete Harnisch, Doug Sisk, Rich Rodriguez and Mike Bacsik never injured a child with an explosive.
The Sixth Circle of Met Hell is the dreary hotel domain of unmotivated third baseman and one-time gravedigger Richie Hebner. But while Hebner dug his own grave, he never injured a child with an explosive.
The Seventh Circle of Met Hell is a brimstone-fueled flight with the two Bobby Bonillas. But while at least one of them was an eyewitness to such an act, neither Bobby Bonilla ever injured a child with an explosive.
The Eighth Circle of Hell is marked by a plaque for disgraceful quitter Roberto Alomar. But Alomar never injured a child with an explosive.
Vince Coleman did. And therefore, here he is under that rather heavy-looking tarp cylinder. And here he will stay, forever. I’m turning out the lights now, and shutting the door. Rest in peace, Vince.
And now our hellish tour is done. Ignore the screams of the condemned and come along with me, away from this place. Because it’s 2006. And you know what? February’s not so far away.
by Jason Fry on 4 January 2006 5:20 am We may be more than halfway home, but down in Met Hell we’ve still got a little ways to go. And two more permanent residents to confront.
In the non-baseball Inferno, the Eighth Circle of Hell was Malebolge, a domain of ditches separated by great folds of earth. The inhabitants of those ditches included hypocrites, thieves, false counselors, sowers of schism and falsifiers — all apt descriptions for the man who dwells forever in the Eighth Circle of Met Hell.
When he arrived in 2002, he seemed destined for a realm both loftier and gentler: He’d just turned 34 and had a fair amount of mileage, but hardly seemed like he was about to slow down. Why, the previous year he’d hit .336, driven in 100 runs, stolen 30 bases and won a Gold Glove. He was a sure-fire Hall of Famer and a member-in-waiting of the 3,000 Hit Club. It seemed quite possible that he’d reach that lofty plateau as a Met — after all, he had 2,389 hits on his resume already, and spent his first winter in Port St. Lucie talking about a contract extension.
When things hit a bump early, our latest Met hero kept talking a good game. Officially, anyway: “I’m happy here. I want to play here and I want to stay here and hopefully things can get better. There’s things said that I haven’t said. I haven’t opened my mouth, and then other people open their mouth and say, ‘Robbie’s not happy,’ this and that. Maybe there’s another Robbie Alomar out there.”
Hmm. If there was, it would explain a lot. Because the Roberto Alomar Met fans endured for 222 dismal games in 2002 and 2003 sure didn’t seem very interested in playing baseball.
In 2002 he hit .266, drove in 53 runs and stole 16 bases. Mediocre numbers, but rarely has a player shown so little in achieving mediocrity. Shea Stadium didn’t seem to agree with him: There were mutterings (always secondhand) that he was dismayed to see previous years’ home runs turn into flyouts, that he was miffed to find Shea’s thick grass turning ground-ball hits into 5-3s and 6-3s and 3-1s. Maybe that was the explanation for his mulish insistence on dropping down bunt after bunt, regardless of whether or not the situation called for one. And then plenty of times Alomar would snatch defeat from the jaws of questionable ideas, turning potential bunt hits, however ill-conceived, into outs by trying to dive head-first into first base.
In the field, that Gold Glove turned into pyrite. Balls that he snapped up in San Diego and Toronto and Baltimore and Cleveland skittered by him, but the worst thing was watching him turn the pivot. One of the most-acrobatic second basemen in the history of the game had turned into Gregg Jefferies: He’d take throws from shortstop with his rear end heading for left-center, shot-putting a lollipop throw that would float into the first baseman’s glove or bounce into it after the batter crossed first. It happened again and again and again, as Met announcers wondered what was going on and the boos came down from the stands.
But surely a lock for Cooperstown made his teammates better with his intangibles? Ha ha ha. Alomar sulked about being moving around in the batting order and took such umbrage to needling about his rookie card from Roger Cedeno (who may not be able to play baseball but has always been hailed as a prince of a guy) that Mo Vaughn had to intervene in the dugout in front of TV, God and everyone. Then in April 2003 he was part of the double-play tandem that blamed Jae Seo — a rookie — for the well-coiffed, Bentley-driving Rey Sanchez’s failure to cover the bag against the Expos. That’s veteran leadership! (Given that Jose Reyes’ first two double-play mates and counselors were Alomar and Sanchez, it’s a testament to his character that he isn’t Maurice Clarett.)
Then, in late June 2003, a miraculous thing happened. Suddenly Alomar was hanging in there on the pivot. Suddenly plays not made for a season and a half were being made. Suddenly he looked like…well, suddenly he looked like Roberto Alomar. The source of this miracle? The Mets were openly shopping him on the trade market. (Talk about testaments to character.) When Alomar was sent to the White Sox, he departed without mentioning the mysterious Other Roberto Alomar: “I didn’t feel real comfortable with the situation. Sometimes teams don’t work for you. I think the New York Mets weren’t the right team for me.”
Of course, sometimes players don’t work for teams. Gary Cohen, witnessing the Miracle of Robbie, turned the blowtorch on, offering a furious, dead-on indictment of his halfhearted play and famously calling him a disgrace. The response from Alomar (who was honoring the White Sox by showing actual interest in the game he was paid millions to play) was to boycott the New York media. “I heard the tape,” he said of Cohen, adding that “I did the best I could. It just didn’t work out. But to say I was a disgrace or I didn’t play hard, I don’t understand that.”
Perhaps he was also baffled by the Arizona Diamondbacks’ reaction to the mystery of Roberto Alomar. Alomar went to camp with the D’Backs in 2004, where it was hoped he’d tutor young Matt Kata. Instead, Arizona officials were left puzzled by his vanished range and lack of interest in fielding uncooperative grounders. He wound up back with the White Sox briefly, signed with the Devil Rays, then retired in March 2005, explaining (without apparent irony) that “I played a lot of games and I said I would never embarrass myself on the field.”
Alomar will undoubtedly be part of the 2010 Hall of Fame class, which means I will seethe at the voting results and again at whatever self-serving nonsense emerges from his mouth upon his induction. But I take comfort in this: No examination of his career that’s more than a couple of paragraphs long will fail to note his precipitous decline, or ponder the reasons for it. And no one who ever watched him play in New York will let a discussion of him go by without noting that he was a selfish, malingering washout in baseball’s premier city.
Robbie, I know you have to wait until 2010 to get to Cooperstown. But you don’t have to wait another minute for your induction into Met Hell, where your plaque will always be displayed. If you’re passing by, here are some words on it that might jump out at you:
HYPOCRITE
THIEF
FALSE COUNSELOR
SOWER OF SCHISMS
FALSIFIER
And finally, this one:
DISGRACE
by Greg Prince on 3 January 2006 3:55 am The final out of the 2005 season was made at approximately 3:56 PM, October 2.
The first pitch of the 2006 season is scheduled to be thrown at 1:10 PM, April 3.
Thus, the baseball equinox occurred at 2:33 AM, January 2.
At that exact moment, we were equidistant from Jose Offerman’s last swing and Pedro Martinez’s (toe pending) next pitch.
Barring weather, we are now closer to the Mets playing again than we are to them having played last.
I knew there was a point to January.
Some thoughts on the baseball media dynamic, particularly between the paper you just put down and the computer you’re now staring into, at Gotham Baseball.
by Greg Prince on 2 January 2006 11:51 pm How do you measure…measure a year? Here's one way:
In 2005, Faith and Fear in Flushing received 380,887 page views. Or roughly 380,886 more than we envisioned last February 16, Day One of the great Met dialogue.
All I can say is…
1) Holy Cram!
2) Just as many thank yous as there were page views from Jason and myself to everybody who was doin' the viewin'. Special acknowledgement goes to FAFIF's final visitors of '05, the rightly prioritized who registered 78 page views between 11 PM and midnight on December 31. The champagne industry's loss is our gain. In 2006, we'll do our best to make you skip other occasions that have been, to this point, mysteriously unaffiliated with baseball.
On a personal note, I appreciate from all both the happy birthday wishes and the condolences on the USF Bulls' understated entry into small-time bowls (a 14-0 loss to the N.C. State Wolfpack). I overcame the football hurt pretty quickly — and I got, belatedly, what I wanted most of all for my big day very early this morning. I got a ballgame.
XM 175 came through with a rebroadcast of Game Four of the 1999 National League Division Series. You know it as the Pratt Game. It was the WFAN feed, so it was Murph and Cohen at their finest. Having been at that game (thanks to the largesse of my now second-year blogging buddy), I never bore concentrated earwitness to it until now. I only got to hear an inning-and-a-half between 5:30 and 6:00, but that's pretty good for January 2.
(And you thought this sort of thing happened only in the parallel universe.)
Things I learned or was reminded of:
• The first seven innings had gone by in less than two hours before things turned “riveting”.
• Todd Pratt had gone 0-for-7 in the series prior to his 10th inning at-bat.
• John Franco had waited his whole life for that week.
• Lenny Harris, then a Diamondback, nearly ruined Franco's week with a grounder that Franco had to make a sensational play on.
• Tony Womack, though the goat for dropping the crucial flyball that gave the Mets life, was in the middle of the eighth-inning rally that was briefly the Mets' undoing.
• With a runner at second and two out, there was actually some question about whether to pitch to John Olerud or Roger Cedeño.
• By the tenth, the only available player left on Bobby Valentine's bench was Bobby Bonilla.
• “Bucky” Showalter, as Murph called him, sprinted out to the mound when he wanted to annoy his pitcher.
• Fonzie can't be the hero every time (said before he didn't drive home the winning run in the ninth).
• Matt Williams' removal from that game in a double-switch while it was tied was insane.
• Todd Pratt was “downcast” between first and second when his deep fly looked Finleybound.
• Shea Stadium was “bedlam” after it was clear it had gone out. I didn't need to be reminded of that, actually, but it was good to be.
• Bob, observing how the Mets were pouring out of the dugout and jumping around, reported you never saw a happier bunch of fellows.
“I wish,” he said, “that you could be here.”
by Jason Fry on 1 January 2006 4:59 am
by Greg Prince on 31 December 2005 3:37 pm They’ll be amazing, amazing, amazing, and this year I want you to follow ’em. They’ll be known in all the periodicals because they’ll be in South America — New Year’s Day will be their best game. This year will be over in a hurry.
—Casey Stengel, 1969 World Series Highlight Film
The Ol’ Perfesser is right. (Is he ever wrong?). This year will be over in a hurry, so if New Year’s Day is going to be the Mets’ best game, they’re going to need to warm up. I know it’s a long flight to South America, but it can’t be as bad as the one to Japan in 2000. There’s still time to get a game in before the big one in Brazil or Paraguay or wherever Casey says we’re playing next.
The good news is we’ve got a game today, New Year’s Eve. Good news? That’s great news!
For just a little longer, the year is 2005. But no more am I 42. Today is my birthday. I’m 43. Seven years from Modern Maturity in my mailbox, but fresh-faced if I’m thinking about running for office. And only 14 in Julio Franco years.
I’ve always liked December 31st as a birthday and not just because I share it with John Denver, Donna Summer and Rick Aguilera among others (presumably 1/365th of the population). I like the finality. As you may have noticed, I’m good with the looking back, so being born on the final day of the year seems appropriate.
What isn’t right, barring a relocation to the Winter Leagues, is I will never get to go to a ballgame on my birthday. If that sounds like a rather childish plaint from such an antiquated man, so be it. It’s not like anyone’s done anything about remedying this injustice in the calendar on my behalf since 1962.
Until now. Thanks to Casey (who always has something insightful to add to even the bleakest situation), I’m going to a game for my birthday. It’s gonna be my kind of game. You’re all invited, of course.
Don’t worry that it’s December 31. We’ve got birthday weather today. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
My game starts at the Polo Grounds. I haven’t been born yet, but it’s my game, so logic and chronology can take the day off. I get to see what all the fuss was about. The Mets are playing in Manhattan. I walk down Coogan’s Bluff to my seat. Centerfield is practically in the Harlem River. The foul poles are a Shell Creek Park poke in either direction. The air is thick with Chesterfields, but since it’s my birthday, it’s less sickening than charming. Best of all, Roger Craig is pitching, Choo Choo Coleman is catching and Ol’ Case is actually managing. Well, he appears to be napping, but he’s doing what we’ve only read about to now. Jim Haines — who shares my wistfulness at having missed the PG the first time around — and I unfurl a bedsheet urging the Mets to go-go-GO! But it’s not working. It’s the top of the first, Stan Musial has gone deep and we’re already losing 6-0. Maybe if Casey would pay less attention to our placard and more to his pitcher. Craig is getting shelled out there. Ken MacKenzie stanches the bleeding. (Is there anything these Yale guys can’t do?)
Let’s move this party to Shea. That’s brand new William A. Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadows, Queens. They just built it for the Mets, you know. Right by the World’s Fair. Wow, look at this place! It’s so clean! Gotta be the best ballpark in baseball. Too bad the escalators don’t work, but you can’t have everything. It’s the first game they’ve ever played here, so I decided to watch some of it with Joe, my friend who scores every game he goes to and fills me in on the minutia to the nth degree. Since it is, by definition, the first game we’ve ever been to at Shea, this, like the Chesterfield cloud, isn’t so bad. Joe just inked in HBP for Hunt. Anything to get on base. I wonder if it’s too early to buy tickets for the All-Star Game.
Onto the top of the second. It’s 1976, so I’m here with Joel Lugo, whom I’ve known since, well, 1976. We became friends at almost the exact minute the Mets began losing, but maybe today will be different from what we grew accustomed to. We’re in the left field boxes so we can get a good look at Joel’s favorite player Dave Kingman. Sure enough, a fly ball is hit to Sky King and…darn. Cesar Cedeño is on second with what they’re generously scoring a double, but at least Dave isn’t hurt. Kingman catches the third out of the inning fairly uneventfully and is careful not to throw it to us or anybody in stands. On the other hand, he doesn’t throw it at us.
In the bottom of the second, it’s a scoreless game (tallies don’t carry over from one half-inning to the next — I’m not spending my birthday down six or more runs because freaking Marv Throneberry couldn’t handle a simple popup). Leading off is Darryl Strawberry and he hits one a mile off of John Smiley. Wow! That makes it 1-0, but even with the bases empty that should be worth three runs. Chuck and I high-five in the mezzanine. I’m happy, but Chuck is practically swinging from chandeliers. This is funny because when my best friend and I went to our first Met game together in 1989, it was against the Pirates and Smiley. Chuck was looking forward to seeing Darryl but the Strawman sat it out. But not this time. It’s my birthday. I’m giving out Strawberry to celebrate. Chuck is still cursing out the Pirates like he was back then. That’s his gift to me.
For the top of the third, we’re playing the Reds. We’ve been playing the Reds for as long as we’ve played ball, so I’ve decided I don’t need to see any particular Met team play any particular Red team. Koosman’s pitching. Keith’s playing first. Doug Flynn’s at second. Roy McMillan’s at short with Hubie at third. The outfield is Cleon in left, Lance in center and Joe Orsulak around in right. Grote is catching. Pete Rose leads off with a single. He claps his hands at first. Mex holds him on but then charges toward the plate. He makes a nice play to get Ron Oester but Rose goes to second. Chris Sabo doubles. Eric Davis drives one to the track but Orsulak makes a nice running catch. Sabo moves up to third. Kurt Stillwell sneaks one through the hole, just under McMillan’s glove. Damn! Kooz, who just doesn’t have it, departs with McMillan as part of a double-switch. Luis Lopez is at short. Deion Sanders steps in. Ray Sadecki, now pitching, brushes him back. Sanders takes a step toward the mound. Grote grabs him. Doug Harvey gets between them. Sanders walks. Woody Woodward is hit by a pitch. Bases loaded, two out, Joe Randa coming up, pinch-hitting for Mario Soto. Torre comes out and removes Sadecki in favor of Roberto Hernandez. Bert gets him to line to Mex. Inning over. I’ve seen worse Mets-Reds innings.
Between innings, I go out to the concession. Nothing’s more than a dollar, but since it’s December 31, I’m comped. I bring back one of those pizza rolls Rob Emproto’s wife Janet turned me onto in 1995. I haven’t been able to find those for a decade, but they’re selling them again for my birthday. I also get some of those Daruma of Great Neck California Rolls I ate regularly in 1999. Whenever I had them, the Mets would win. Sure enough, with all my rolls, the Mets get on a roll. They jump Tom Hume but good. Mazz singles. Hundley singles. Santana bunts them over. Rose orders Hume to walk Del Unser. Nice move, Pete. You just paved the way for Keith Miller to bang his first grand slam. The Mets take the lead! I keep eating. Don’t gain an ounce and suffer no indigestion. It’s my birthday. There’s the pretzel guy…only a quarter? And they’re warm?
Rose removes Hume for Rob Dibble. Tim Bogar triples. Rico Brogna singles. And Rose is suspended from baseball for good measure.
Top of the fourth. We’re winning. And will ya look at these seats? I’m right behind home plate thanks to Laurie and her friend Dee whose husband Rick is pitching for us again. I sat here a bunch of times in the late ’90s thanks to Laurie’s fabulous connections and it’s good to be back. You wouldn’t believe the gossip I’m overhearing. Incidentally, Rick just retired the Dodgers 1-2-3. Reeder, as ever, is the man.
I’ve never sat in the Pepsi Picnic Area but today it’s ours. I’m out here with every New York baseball fan I ever worked with in the beverage business, every Mets fan and every Yankee fan. It’s a great way to catch this Subway Series game, especially the two homers Ordoñez hit off Wells. Naturally the Mets are sticking it to the Yankees. All the Mets fans who stuck with me all those years are sticking it to all the Yankees fans who suddenly remember that they have to be up early. Diet Pepsis on me!
I don’t have to work on my birthday, but I decide to visit Bloggers Row. It used to be called the press box, but it’s been taken over by us today. Everyone from Always Amazin’ to Zisk Online is here typing away. It’s all great stuff. Uh-oh, Todd Zeile just made an error. MetsBlog has a rumor that he’s going to Colorado. MetsGeek has produced an equation to indisputably prove that he’s a better fielder than Vic Power. Metstradamus just remembered something truamatizing that a kid with a last name beginning with Z did to him in high school and links it to a picture of Luis Aguayo. Mets Guy in Michigan has an amusing anecdote about the time he passed Todd Jones in the carpool lane. Mets Walkoffs recalls Todd Haney never had a walkoff hit. Everybody’s got something. That’s why I love these guys.
The Mets overcame Zeile’s error (MetsBlog was right again — Zeile’s a Rockie) and maintain their lead in what I think is the bottom of the fifth. Joe may still be keeping score somewhere but I’ve pretty much given up. So has Cub pitching…Mets home runs, that is. First John Milner. Then Tommie Agee. Then Donn Clendenon. Gil has two relievers warming up in the pen. I can’t make out who from where I’m sitting, but Bob Murphy on WHN tells me it’s Danny Frisella and Tug McGraw.
Leo Durocher only looks worse when he steps outside the Cub dugout to have a cat cross in front of him. Everybody points and laughs, including me and Rob Costa, whom I haven’t seen since 1996. A black cat? From a distance. But on closer inspection, he’s black and white and mighty big. Hey! That’s my Bernie! I was wondering where he went. Agee, Clendenon and Tug, who just hopped out of the cart, hand him back to me. Murph chuckles on the air about it. Sorry about that, I tell the players. They’re cool with it. (Bad cat! But I forgive you.)
In the top of the sixth, Tom Seaver strikes out Jimmy Qualls. Pedro Martinez gets Chris Burke looking. And David Cone fans a helpless Benny DiStefano. Though it’s only the sixth, it counts as the first no-hitter in Mets history. For the first time since the clinching of the 2000 National League pennant, Rob Emproto shows emotion. He always said that when the Mets get that elusive no-no (in this case a perfect game), I could call no matter what time it was. On my birthday, it was our good fortune to be able to witness it together in person.
Between innings, our attention is directed to the DiamondVision so we can watch Dwight Gooden’s induction into the Hall of Fame live from Cooperstown. First unanimous selection, you know.
Next half-inning, Richie tells me something I don’t know about baseball. Doesn’t matter what it is. I’m better off for him having told me. I will use this knowledge in the coming years and pretend that I figured it out myself.
In the top of the seventh, Seaver gets Joe Wallis to ground out. Antonio Perez taps one back to Pedro. Doc, just off the plane from his ceremony, gets Keith Moreland on the fists. Moreland bounces to Knight at third who handles it cleanly and throws to first. Three out. Rob and I high-five some more. It never gets old.
Between innings, our attention is again directed to the DiamondVision so we can watch Bill Pulsipher’s induction into the Hall of Fame live from Cooperstown. It wasn’t unanimous, but you can’t have everything.
Seventh-inning stretch coming up. I put down my wooden spoon full of chocolate and vanilla ice cream (I haven’t seen those cups here in decades…thoughtful of Harry M. Stevens to bring them back for my birthday) so I can get up and sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” with Jason, Emily and Danielle, arms over shoulders just like we did when had that season-ticket plan. As with every seventh-inning stretch, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is the only song that’s played. Except for “L.A. Woman” and “Who Let the Dogs Out?” of course.
Before the bottom of the seventh starts, P.A. man Roger Luce reads the lucky ticket number for the “special giveaway” they’ve been touting all game. It’s Mezzanine, Section 21, Row M, Seat 23. Jason won! It’s a rare set of baseball cards featuring Al Schmelz, Lute Barnes, Bob Rauch, Francisco Estrada, Tommy Moore, Greg Harts, Rich Puig, Brian Ostrosser and Leon Brown. They also throw in a snappy subset of Xavier Nady and Mike Cameron with a clever two-part story printed on the back (a Topps first). The cards are delivered to our seats by Rich Sauveur. See, I tell Jace — they have great promotions on New Year’s Eve.
Energized, Jason gives extra oomph to his standard taunt of a new enemy reliever, something I always enjoyed when we had the Tuesday/Friday deal. “BRING ON JOHN ROCKER!” he shouts.
Indeed, Bobby Cox has brought on John Rocker to face the Mets in the seventh. Lenny Dykstra leads off with a bunt down the first base line. He runs over the lefty, stepping on his shoulder with his spikes in the process. Rocker is forced to leave the game. Cox then brings in the recently signed Roger Clemens who decided he wanted to pitch one more year. Backman bunts, Clemens fields and…yup, same thing. The Mets score 10 in the inning. Rocker and Clemens are never heard from again.
I’m so delighted that I arrange for the eighth inning to be played in the Mets’ new ballpark, the one that’s not supposed to be built until 2009. Jason and Emily are in awe (and not just because it’s named Stengel Hodges Stadium and not after some faceless corporation). They barely tolerated Shea all these years, but now they’re showing Josh all the great postmodern Ebbets touches. See, Jace tells me — there’s life after Shea. Unfortunately, Braden Looper surrenders a bomb to Pat Burrell. We have a big lead but the unfortunate aspect is the old Mets top hat, which they brought over from the old place, has an apple rise out of it to salute the visitor. Looper departs and Wagner gets the Phillies in order.
I get one more half-inning in the new place so I decide to spend it with Jeff from Chicago. He’s not a Mets fan but we share a love of ballparks. We wander around the concourse and decide it compares favorably to PNC (where we rendezvoused in ’02) and Camden and the Jake where his beloved Tribe plays. Jeff especially likes how the ’85, ’99 and ’06 WORLD CHAMPION banners sway in the breeze and how each week’s issue of Gotham Baseball is sold throughout the stadium. He asks what happened to that rule from Shea about not being allowed on the field level without field level tickets. Oh, I blogged about that the first season we did Faith and Fear and Fred Wilpon read it and changed it. We get back to our seats in time to see Reyes steal second, Beltran double him home and Wright, Delgado and Gary Carter homer back-to-back-to-back.
Is it the ninth inning already? Gosh, that was quick. Back to Shea. Since it’s my birthday, I reserved the entire Diamond View Suite level. Everybody I’ve ever known and cared about who has any connection at all to my love of the Mets is here. My parents are watching on one of the monitors. My mother always felt she understood the game better with Tim McCarver explaining it. My sister and brother-in-law are availing themselves of the buffet. They hate baseball but love buffets. My four cats are sleeping oblivious in a corner, rousing occasionally to crowd noise but otherwise ignoring it.
All the folks from my e-mail group are here. Frank swore he’d never set foot in Shea again I don’t know how many times, but he’s here cracking everybody up with his reminders of how bad the Mets were going to be. Joe Dubin is remembering the Polo Grounds. I told him I finally know what he’s talking about. The two Dans are making perfect sense, but they always do. Gary and the real Jane Jarvis are having a go at dueling organs. I think Gary’s winning. The music drowns out the Crane Poolers’ friendly debate over whether Kevin McReynolds was a better clutch hitter than Cliff Floyd. At least I think it’s friendly.
One Met after another does something to elicit a cheer and Laurie cheers with them. There’s nothing to boo. Only to moo. Mookie Wilson just ripped a grounder down the first base line. Clean single. Randy Myers came in to strike out Mike Scioscia. Roger McDowell coaxed an innocent fly to right out of Terry Pendleton. Kenny Rogers has exceptional control.
On the radio that I have turned up in the background, Gary Cohen just mentioned to Howie Rose that not only were the Yankees eliminated again but that they’re still having no luck finding a shortstop. “It’s been a long time since Russell Earl ‘Bucky’ Dent,” Howie notes. “And about that long a time since they played in New York,” Gary adds. “Life’s very different for the Utah Yankees these days.”
I’m having a great time seeing everybody, from the kids who lived down the block from me when I was starting first grade (which happened to be 1969) to the Faith and Fear commenters. Albertsonmets came from Albertson. J M made it from Massachusetts. Metlady516 left her area code. Doobie is scouring the out-of-town scoreboard to see how the Royals are doing. CharlieH just showed up but he’s more than welcome. And the anonymii, in all their nameless glory, are out in full force. (I really shouldn’t have made registering for this affair so difficult.) I didn’t know any of these people before my last birthday but I feel I know them now.
Having greeted all my guests, I grab a Kahn’s Hot Dog and find my seat next to my wife.
“What’d I miss?” I ask.
“Mora singled,” she tells me. “Then Fonzie singled him to third. Oly was intentionally walked. Now they’re bringing in Clontz to face Mike.”
“Wow, Sweetie” I say. “This level of detail is uncommonly precise coming from you.”
“Happy birthday.”
When action resumes, Clontz throws one in the dirt. Mike reaches down and it golfs it anyway. Five-hundred sixty-six feet if it’s an inch. Grand slam! The Mets have tied the Pirates in the bottom of the ninth.
Tied? Yeah. It’s up the next batter to win the game. And he does. With his one swing, he sends the Mets to victory. Aguilera gets the W (it’s his birthday, too). I accept congratulations all around. Stephanie and I hug.
“I guess you were right,” she says. “Having a son and naming him Darryl Strawberry Prince really did guarantee we’d raise a superstar slugger.”
As the chants of DAR-RYL! Eventually wind down, Stephanie gathers her things, including the two foul balls she snagged (Robbie Alomar is good for something after all). “Time to go,” she said.
“Are you kidding? This is my birthday. We’re definitely staying for the nightcap.”
by Greg Prince on 30 December 2005 6:55 pm I’m amused to read the stories of “what are people who want to watch the Giants-Raiders game on New Year’s Eve going to do?” Watch it, of course. Or keep up as best you can via radio. If it’s important to you, you know what you have to do.
This blog, as our longtime readers know, endorses following baseball games to the exclusion of all civility and good manners no matter the event into which you’ve been sucked or the people who might take offense; it is you who should take offense that anyone should try to keep you from what matters to you as long as what matters to you isn’t blowing somebody’s head off or other hurtful activity. We make an exception from time to time as sensitivities and considerations warrant, but we try to follow our own advice. Football is not baseball (boy is it not ever), but it has its place and time and that place and time is approximately here and now. The Giants have a big game. Do what you have to do.
Speaking of big games, New Year’s Eve starts at 11 AM on ESPN2 as the North Carolina State Wolfpack take on the (be still my Golden Brahman heart) UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA BULLS in the (I better hold tight to something) MEINEKE CAR CARE BOWL.
I may even wake up for this.
When I attended USF from 1981 to 1985, we didn’t have a football team, and that was fine with me. I actually preferred it that way. The whole notion of being on the inside of a college football school turned me off. I pictured such a campus as one big fraternity, one from which I would somehow be blackballed. (And Revenge of the Nerds didn’t even come out until the end of my junior year.) Besides, being in Florida, one had his choice of top-notch college football, a fact and a sport of which I was barely aware before I headed south. I became a U of Miami fan during their Bernie Kosar age of enlightenment — they were new at being a powerhouse and they threw the ball a lot, both of which seemed appealing — and that contented me just fine from a short distance.
Now that I’m long graduated, I can be one of those alumni who dresses up in a raccoon coat and cheers his alma mater’s pigskin accomplishments in a fashion completely hypocritical to his younger self’s values. USF started a football program in 1997 and I’ve followed it lightly but loyally. The Bulls’ promising 2005 Big East debut, primarily the taking out of Louisville (the Phillies of the conference), gave them every opportunity to become something called bowl-eligible, assuming they didn’t trip up late to Connecticut (the Expos) or West Virginia (the Braves). Of course they did both but fortunately managed just enough wins before that to eke their way into the Muffler Shop championship.
The Meineke Car Care Bowl, played in Charlotte, is one of those bowls that everybody with any sense makes fun of as soon as they hear of it. That’s all right. I’d scoff, too, if USF weren’t a participant. But you have to understand that this is a program (how come college sports teams are “programs”?) that is nine years old. Nine-year-old programs don’t go to bowls, not even silly, obscure ones played before noon when sensible people are out stocking up on mixers. So I’m as excited just for the invite as I was the night Miami beat Nebraska to win the ’83 National Championship…and I was pretty excited then.
School spirit. Better late than never.
Let’s not kid each other, though. I’d drop the Meineke Car Care Bowl, let alone the Super Bowl, in a Temple Terrace minute if there were a Mets game on, even an old Mets game. There isn’t. Not a good one anyway.
In case you’re desperate, YES is showing Game Five of the 2000 World Series between 1 and 4 PM. And XM 175 is airing between 3 and 6 AM (I assume after midnight tonight) Game Two of that fetid Fall Classic. No, you’re not that desperate.
Don’t forget — we offer the pleasing alternative of sublime play-by-play of “ordinary” baseball action to get you through these alleged holidays. Theater of the mind and all that.
MSG and FSNY used to favor us once in a great winter’s while with a vintage Mets game, but they’re out of the Us business. Snigh, whatever they wind up doing, isn’t doing it yet. And ESPN Classic is plugging away with old college football games, which makes no sense to me whatsoever. Show old college football games to college football nuts when there’s no live college football on every five minutes. Show baseball fans baseball games when we don’t have any. Logic would tell you that.
What’s wrong with people?
New Year’s Eve means a lot to me. I wouldn’t be here without it. It would mean more if I could go to a ballgame just once on December 31. Hey, maybe I can…
by Greg Prince on 29 December 2005 9:21 am 
| Mr. Met gets a little wistful this time of year, realizing that though another season is just around the corner, it means he’s gotten a little older and he has to put one more year in the books.
Wow, Mr. Met’s been thinking, 2005 was a heckuva time for him. He made new friends from Boston and Houston and is looking forward to making newer ones from Miami and Philadelphia. His head swells with pride when he looks at the left side of the infield and he’s reduced to stitches every time he thinks of the time that fellow from Korea hit a double off that overly tall drink of water who came by sneering one Saturday afternoon. And what about that nice man who ran around the bases blowing bubbles but never stopping until he scored?
Yeah, Mr. Met’s sentimental. He’ll miss all the guys he came to know last year who won’t be here anymore. No, most of them weren’t going to be of very much help in 2006, but Mr. Met likes to think of all 771 Mets as family, so it deflates him just a bit every time one of them has to leave. But he knows that’s baseball. He just hopes his pal Omar doesn’t see him as one more chip to be thrown into the pot. A lot of teams could use a good mascot, but Mr. Met is a 10-and-5 character. He would have to approve any trade and he’s not planning on going anywhere.
Mr. Met says Happy New Year to all Faith and Fear in Flushing readers. He’ll probably be hanging around here right up until the ball drops on Saturday night. If there’s one thing Mr. Met doesn’t like to see, it’s a ball drop. It gives him a sympathy headache.
Mr. Met’s priceless expression courtesy of Jim Haines and Zed Duck Studios. |
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