The blog for Mets fans
who like to read
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.
Got something to say? Leave a comment, or email us at faithandfear@gmail.com. (Sorry, but we have no interest in ads, sponsored content or guest posts.)
Need our RSS feed? It's here.
Visit our Facebook page, or drop by the personal pages for Greg and Jason.
Or follow us on Twitter: Here's Greg, and here's Jason.
|
by Greg Prince on 14 January 2006 12:23 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.
Let’s kick off the proceedings with one very simple question: Was 1986 the best year ever?
That’s not a snarky VH-1 formulation. It is a sincere inquiry. Was there ever a better time to be a Mets fan than 1986?
During that summer, Newsday, presumably running out of angles related to the National League East standings, dared to consider that it wasn’t or that at least by the second half a certain tedium was setting in. I remember a story by Marty Noble bemoaning that whereas 1985 brought day after day of pennant race tension, 1986 with its double-digit leads and surfeit of certainty was kinda…boring. Future Snighcaster Ron Darling and Rafael Santana agreed, each looking back on the heated, ultimately unsuccessful hand-to-hand combat against St. Louis almost wistfully. A year later, the Cards and everybody else in the division were smote early and often. We had gotten everything we wished for, the article seemed to say. Should have we been careful?
When I read that, I nodded. Yes, first place as a way of life was and is highly aspirational, but in 1986 I was already missing 1985. As the notion that the ’86 Mets represented the pinnacle of baseball existence was hardening — even as that season was in progress — I wondered if the breath-holding we had collectively undertaken less than 12 months earlier would be overlooked for the ages. The only thing not marvy about ’85 was the Mets’ inability to win a couple of extra contests versus the Cardinals and the refusal of the Wild Card to materialize as a second-place option for another decade.
History loves a winner and occasionally dotes on a highly memorable loser. What does it do with a phenomenally well intentioned runner-up?
Forgets it a little too soon, I fear. You play, a football coach has said, to win the game. By extension, you execute a baseball season to garner titles in the division and the league and the World Series. You win 98 games, as the ’85ers did, and then go home with nothing more than goosebumps and something in your eye. Without a line in the almanac, did a year like that even happen outside of your mind?
A mind, of course, is a terrible thing to waste, so what goes on there endures forever. Perhaps 1985 wouldn’t and didn’t get its due from historians who don’t have time nor space in their nine-part documentaries for nuance, but no Mets fan who lived through it would dare forget it or skip over it. Every discussion of “what’s your favorite season?” I’ve ever come across in online Mets talk almost always gravitates to oh-so-close 1985 rather than land definitively on run-and-hide 1986. It’s almost that the year that is represented by no flag and no decal above the rightfield fence cries out for the extra attention. ’85 was no pathetic Charlie Brown Christmas tree, but there seems to be implicit agreement that it does need a little love in order to flourish for eternity. (I believe the same principle guides the general fan consensus that 1999 beat 2000 even if 2000’s results outdistanced 1999’s.)
Quite simply, there is no 1986 without 1985. Without the frustrating no, there is no pleasurable yes. There is no nearly guaranteed promise of a championship without the agonzing lunge that came up short. There is no fan base on the edge of its collective couch between October 6, 1985 and April 8, 1986 waiting until it can’t wait any longer for the next pitch to be thrown. There is no Davey Johnson obliterating the rule about providing material for the other guys’ clubhouse bulletin board. When Davey matter-of-factly insisted the Mets would not just win but dominate, that was confidence built on 98 wins from the year before and the knowledge that most of the talent that procured it was coming back even hungrier.
1985 was a magnificent year to be a Mets fan. It was necessary in terms far deeper than chronological to set up 1986 and, in its way, it was more fun than 1986.
But let’s be serious. 1986 was the best year ever.
1986 was da bomb before that expression exploded into consciousness. It was the highest of highs. What ’85 was to heavy petting, ’86 was to climaxes. Every morning that a Mets fan woke up in 1986 was the best day there ever was to wake up a Mets fan. To live in New York and to be a Metsopotamian citizen of baseball in 1986 was to hover above everything and look down and laugh because, damn it, we’re the Mets and we’re in first place by eight, ten, twelve and counting games at any given instant.
How did that feel?
It felt like President Josiah Bartlett’s explanation of ancient Rome:
Did you know that two thousand years ago a Roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation? He could walk across the earth unharmed, cloaked only in the words ‘Civis Romanis’ I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome, universally understood as certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens.
It felt like Henry Hill’s definition of being made:
It means you belong to a family and a crew. It means nobody can fuck around with you. Also, you can fuck around with anybody, as long as they aren’t also a member. It’s like a license to steal. A license to do anything.
It felt like this at the close of business, April 30, 1986:
x-New York 13-3, .813, 5 GA
x-clinched division
Long before the Wild Card provided a potential virtual bye into the playoffs, it felt like we had one by May Day.
The tense moments that October would bring kept us honest and characteristically Metlike — damp hankies, novenas, booze…you name it — by the time it was all over. For storyline purposes, it made for better drama. Otherwise, we’d be the ’84 Tigers or the ’89 A’s, vaguely recalled as a one-year champion that was really good, but we don’t really remember you that well. The postseason that shook the Mets to their Amazin’ roots also added a dash of the lovable to what outsiders saw as huffy and haughty.
Not that we cared. Maybe we were huffy and haughty thanks to a pile of wins that reached the sky, a presumptuous if catchy World Series Shuffle video and a once-in-a-lifetime sense of entitlement bubbling up through our veins like so much RC Cola, but we knew we were the good guys. When the last glove was flung in the air, the good guys — no matter what you might have read elsewhere — won.
By the same one-dollar subway token, the conniption fits that accompanied our penultimate and ultimate competitions with Houston and Boston, respectively, skewed the truth. We were not Amazin’ for the balance of 1986. We were simply amazing. We marauded. We stomped. We swept all four games of three-game series. That’s how good we were.
That was fun, too.
The only other Mets year that can be reasonably compared to 1986 is 1969. Only one was instantly legendary to the world at large and remained so. That was 1969.
George Burns as the title character in Oh, God! claimed his last miracle was the ’69 Mets. More than a quarter-century later, Ray Barone and his sad-sack cop brother Robert — his dog was named Shamsky — drove to Cooperstown to commune with seven of their childhood heroes. “Do they know who we are?” asked Tommie Agee during that Everybody Loves Raymond episode. It was the most rhetorical of queries — the whole world knew the ’69 Mets. Some weird ham radio netherworld knew them, too, as demonstrated in the 2000 film Frequency. A modern-day fireman saved the day three decades earlier by getting in touch with his late dad in Queens who was alive sitting at home smoking too many cigarettes as the Mets were about to throw down with the Orioles…honestly, it was a pretty stupid movie, except for the ’69 Mets playing backdrop, which made it a pretty awesome movie.
The 1969 Mets may be the stuff of legend, but the 1986 Mets were better. They were greater, and not just because 108 is more than 100. Maybe their bottom line accomplishments were equal (they both won a World Series — and the ’69ers essentially rampaged through the postseason at 7-1), but I can’t discount the prevailing dominance factor. If nothing was as uplifting as the underdogs of 1969 rising up to shame Chicago, addle Atlanta and bean Baltimore, there’s nothing in Mets history that matches us playing the role of overcat and playing it to the hilt. There’s always been an element of ’69 in every good thing the Mets have accomplished, but 1986 has thus far served as precedent for feats to be named later. The only ’86 successors who whispered at that kind of success were the 1988 Mets and they morphed into the ’69 Orioles at the absolute worst time.
My very first Mets memories are of 1969, so I don’t dismiss it lightly. Hey, I don’t dismiss it at all. It was a wondrous season. It is to be cherished and held with the family jewels for as long as there is a New York Mets franchise. The 1986 bauble, however, is just that much shinier. Call it the Every Morning Factor. Every morning that we woke up in 1986, our team was the best team in baseball.
That’s the greatest feeling there is.
by Greg Prince on 10 January 2006 9:24 am We should have been able to set our watches or at least our calendars by Dwight Gooden's retirement. The first post-BCS Tuesday in the first January that followed his first five years of not pitching was supposed to be a day of celebration and validation in Metsopotamia. No matter what historical Hall of Fame judgment was passed on Gary Carter or Keith Hernandez or Darryl Strawberry, we knew that the 1986 Mets would be represented in the sanctioned ranks of the immortals because we could absolutely count on an announcement that Dr. K was going to be elevated to Dr. Koop — as in Kooperstown.
Yes, they were going to change the spelling in his honor. It was a mortal lock.
The Dwight Gooden watch that was so state-of-the-art when we first strapped it on in 1984 turned out to keep not such good time. It slowed down perceptibly in 1987, but we brought it to the jewelers for rehab and repair, and it worked pretty well into 1991. However, it stopped ticking altogether in 1994.
We threw it out in 1996.
Dwight Gooden is not going into the Hall of Fame this afternoon or ever. By now, we're not surprised. There was a time…well, you know what happened and what didn't happen. (If you somehow don't, find out.)
Gregg Jefferies, Rick Aguilera and Orel Hershiser joined Doc on this year's Hall of Fame ballot and will no doubt keep him company on the castoff pile when the voting is announced at 2 PM. I'd be surprised if any of our four 2006 candidacies live to be considered in 2007.
But let's not give up on gaining another plaque for our guys. Let's start a movement. Let's get Jerry Koosman into the Hall of Fame.
So what if he retired in 1985? Who cares if he passed from the Baseball Writers Association of America ballot with four votes in 1991? Or that two revamped Veterans Committee elections came and went in 2003 and 2005 with 26 and 25 players listed, respectively, and that none of them was Jerry Koosman?
Big deal that it's almost never occurred to anybody with or without BBWAA credentials that Jerry Koosman is a Hall of Famer. He should be in anyway.
Why? Because Jim Bunning is. And if Bunning is, there's no good reason Koosman isn't.
Jim Bunning was not voted in by the writers but he had a ton more supporters than Kooz. He made the ballot all 15 years that he was eligible from 1977 to 1991. His support fluctuated from the 38.12% he got his first time out, down to 33.25% five years later and then, magically, up over 50% for the first time in his ninth attempt. In 1988, he came thisclose, with 74.24%. Seventy-five is what's needed.
Naturally, you'd think he'd make it the next year, but his vote total dipped to 63.31% in '89, then 57.88% in '90. His last shot saw him bounce back to over 63%.
Jim Bunning was voted on 15 times and passed over 15 times. That was it, over and out…until he was eligible to be elected by the Veterans Committee, which did just that in 1996.
His win total remained stagnant in the five years that followed the end of his career, stayed just as stagnant in his decade-and-a-half on the writers' ballot, held steady during the five years thereafter and hadn't increased or decreased by as many as one when he finally gained entrance to Cooperstown. To be fair about it, he had as many career losses in 1996 as he did in 1971 when he stopped pitching.
You could say the same about Koosman. Actually, you could say a lot of the same about Bunning and Koosman.
Jim Bunning pitched 17 seasons in the big leagues.
Jerry Koosman pitched 19 seasons in the big leagues.
Jim Bunning won 224 games.
Jerry Koosman won 222 games.
Jim Bunning won 20 games once.
Jerry Koosman won 20 games twice.
Jim Bunning won at least 14 games in nine separate seasons.
Jerry Koosman won at least 14 games in nine separate seasons.
Jim Bunning's average won-lost record, according to Baseball Reference, was 13-11.
Jerry Koosman's average won-lost record, according to Baseball Reference, was 13-12.
Jim Bunning won 54.9% of his decisions.
Jerry Koosman won 51.5% of his decisions.
Jim Bunning's career ERA was 3.27.
Jerry Koosman's career ERA was 3.36.
Jim Bunning threw 3,760-1/3 innings.
Jerry Koosman threw 3,839-1/3 innings.
Jim Bunning struck out 2,855 batters.
Jerry Koosman struck out 2,556 batters.
Jim Bunning gave up 1,000 walks.
Jerry Koosman gave up 1,198 walks.
Jim Bunning completed 151 games.
Jerry Koosman completed 140 games.
Jim Bunning tossed 40 shutouts.
Jerry Koosman tossed 33 shutouts.
Jim Bunning pitched a perfect game at Shea Stadium.
Jerry Koosman pitched a complete game to win a World Series at Shea Stadium.
Jim Bunning never pitched in the postseason.
Jerry Koosman was 4-0 in six postseason starts.
Jim Bunning won 106 games in the National League and 118 games in the American League.
Jerry Koosman won 160 games in the National League and 62 games in the American League.
Jim Bunning was an All-Star seven times.
Jerry Koosman was an All-Star twice.
Jim Bunning's most prominent pitching staff cohorts were Frank Lary, Chris Short and Rick Wise.
Jerry Koosman's most prominent pitching staff cohorts were Tom Seaver, LaMarr Hoyt and Steve Carlton.
Jim Bunning appeared on the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot 15 times, receiving 3,213 votes and was later elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee as soon as they had the chance.
Jerry Koosman appeared on the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot once, receiving 4 votes and has never been considered by the Veterans Committee.
Conclusion: The respective Hall of Fame statuses of Jim Bunning and Jerry Koosman make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Either they're both Hall of Famers or neither of them are.
Why on earth was Bunning a consistent if solid also-ran with the writers and then enough of a cause célèbre to merit immediate inclusion by the veterans? And with a career that was in so many ways a lefty mirror image of Bunning's, why was Koosman completely shunted aside by both constituencies?
A few theories for Bunning:
• He was in the U.S. House of Representatives when admitted to the Hall in '96 and baseball, still trying to nail down a Basic Agreement after the '94-'95 strike, figured it could use all the friends it could get in Washington.
• He helped form the Players Association in 1966, and while Marvin Miller's work has gone unrecognized by those who make these decisions, the players on the Veterans Committee appreciated their peer's action on their behalf.
• He threw a perfect game, which is pretty rare — and was extraordinarily so when he did it in 1964.
• He won 100 games in both leagues, a neat trick.
• He was the undisputed ace of most of the staffs on which he pitched.
• He was remembered fondly by some old buddy who got the ball rolling, standard operating procedure for the Vets before their committee was retooled in 2003.
Koosman?
• He wasn't a politician, either before or after he played. Though he was well liked by teammates, I don't know much about his networking skills.
• He didn't throw a perfect game.
• He didn't win 100 games in each league.
• He pitched alongside Cy Young winners and wasn't often looked upon as the No. 1 starter on his teams.
However…
• His numbers are almost the same as Bunning's in virtually every relevant category.
• He was a 20-game winner for the Mets in 1976 and the Twins in 1979. That's two different leagues. It's not a hundred wins, but it's an accomplishment. Besides that, both 20-win seasons marked personal renaissances that followed first a series of beleaguering injuries and then two off-years in which non-support saddled him with dreadful records. Jerry Koosman won 20 for the first time at age 33 and 20 for the second time at age 36.
• He won 19 games as a rookie on a ninth-place team and would have been Rookie of the Year most any other year, but 1968 happened to be the year Johnny Bench debuted.
• He didn't make nearly as many All-Star teams as Bunning — perhaps a symptom of not being the ace on the Mets, the White Sox or the Phils — but he was considered the clutchest of September pitchers. (All-Star teams are picked in July.)
• He is arguably the best postseason pitcher the Mets have ever had, something Bunning can't claim for any team, as Bunning never got to October. The closest he came was 1964 when the Phillies fell apart. Bunning was shelled in his two must-win starts in the final week of that year, though it must be said he was pitching on two days' rest at the behest of the legendarily panicking Gene Mauch.
Truthfully, it's not so much that I think Jerry Koosman belongs in the Hall of Fame. Sure, I'd like to see it, but that's not my point. My point is what is Jim Bunning doing there? I recall only the tail end of Bunning's career first-hand, but I don't remember him being discussed in the stratosphere of the great pitchers of the day, either the old hands like Gibson and Marichal or the young guns like Seaver and Carlton. When his career was complete, there were no surprising Blylevenian totals that caught your attention. While it's interesting that his wins were split pretty evenly between the N.L. and A.L., he was facing Major Leaguers every year either way. In these days of player movement (perhaps facilitated by Bunning's union activity), it's less uncommon to see a pitcher succeed in two leagues. The perfect game was memorable but it was against us…the 1964 (53-109) us. And it was one game in June.
Speaking of feats at Shea, if I had to have one pitcher for one game, I'd take Kooz over just about anybody, based on the way he hung in against and then dominated the Orioles — 6-1/3 one-hit innings after spotting them a 3-0 lead in the third — in Game Five of the '69 World Series. He pitched 8-2/3 innings of two-hit ball four days earlier in Baltimore. Jerry Koosman pitched a New York team to a world championship. It was he who threw the last pitch of the most fabled underdog season of modern times. Ed Charles and Jerry Grote creating a Koosman sandwich is one of baseball's truly iconic baseball images. Where's that supposed New York bias when a fella needs it?
In his illuminating 1994 book The Politics of Glory, Bill James warned against falling head over heels for the “If-One-Then” argument, which goes “if this player is in and he's comparable to this other player, then the other player should be in, too.” What it gets you, he wrote, is a Hall of Fame filled with players whose main qualification is they are all better than the worst Hall of Famer. Comparisons of the “If-One-Then” nature, James said, can help you make a case but they shouldn't be the case.
Understood. But I'm still stumped as to why Jim Bunning was considered such a legitimate candidate for so long and why Jerry Koosman, his statistical near-doppelganger and the No. 13 Greatest Met of the First Forty Years, received all of four votes. Ideally, I'd simply throw Bunning out of Cooperstown, but they don't do that sort of thing.
If the Doc Gooden watch had kept better time, this wouldn't be an issue here today.
Even though Kooz wasn't on this year's HOF ballot, I filled one out anyway at Gotham Baseball.
by Jason Fry on 10 January 2006 3:57 am Walked home over the Brooklyn Bridge tonight, marveling that it was 58 degrees out, and had the inevitable thought.
Y'know, I've sat through three-hour games in far worse weather than this. Why the heck isn't there a game on? Slackers.
When there is (not too long from now), how about some musical changes at the old ball yard? Something to shake up the usual tired blend of screech metal, whompin' jingo-country, chugga-chugga hip-hop and hyperactive salsa, leavened with novelties and hits o' yesteryear accompanied by really easy trivia questions. (If you hear “Born in the U.S.A.,” the hint will be something like “It was the year right after 1983….”)
It's not that all the music is terrible, though most of it is, but that with the exception of the salsa none of it moves. The players' music is mostly young aggro stuff for young aggro guys, and it kind of cuffs you around, but the players get what they want, within reason. (I still wanna know why Braden Looper kept coming out to “Lightning Strikes,” an obscurity from the years in which an Aerosmith show was Steven Tyler falling down onstage while hired guns waved over the EMTs.) But you get whiplash when these various concussions are followed by lowest-common-denominator tunes that sheepishly alternate three years ago's marketing with bleached-out oldies. There have been songs I've heard at Shea and come to like, but usually only because they accompanied good things happening on the field in the late 1990s. I heard “We Like to Party” or “Let's Get Loud” or “Stop the Rock” while we were winning baseball games back then and now I'm as helpless as a dog responding to the bell that he's learned precedes chow. But that's not the same as actually liking these songs — in fact, I can only think of two songs I first heard at Shea and legitimately like in any context: “Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)” and the original, Slade version of “Cum On Feel the Noize,” which was inexplicably popular a couple of years back.
If I was musical King for a Day at Shea, things would be different. Here's a handful of songs I'd love to hear instead of the usual parade of pablum. (Links will lead you to streaming Amazon samples in WMA format. They're supposed to open in their own windows, but that's not happening for some reason that's beyond me.)
* Steve Earle, “N.Y.C.” — More a stomp than a groove, but it would kill as the soundtrack for a video montage for a new player from the sticks. Here's the chorus:
I'm going to New York City
I never really been there
Just like the way it sounds
I heard the girls are pretty
There must be something happening there
It's just too big a town
The camera operators could objectify cute women for the “girls are pretty” line (inevitably freezing their image just after some mook sticks his Yankee hat into the frame), and the song's readily adaptable to a certain gloating over one's own town, which is perfectly honorable in this context. But the clincher? It's the narrator telling the song's hero: “Billy, give 'em hell!” How can this not be Billy Wagner's song?
* The Sugarhill Gang, “Apache” — Here's an experiment. Go to a Sunday matinee at Shea, then head out to Keyspan Park for a Cyclones game. It's just sad how much cooler everything is at Keyspan, even considering there are dizzy bat races and God knows what between innings. (Unhappily, “God knows what” has sometimes included the mascot being rude to my child.) But the Cyclones have more fun, keep the crowd more entertained, have better food and better music. Much better music. Like “Apache.” Scientists have actually proven it's impossible to be completely unhappy as long as “Apache” is playing over a PA system. “Lazy Mary,” on the other hand, has never been cool. Not for a nanosecond.
* The Hives, “Hate to Say I Told You So” — I don't know how a bunch of Swedes managed to pen the perfect song for taunting the opposing team after a manager's visited the mound, left his pitcher in, then had to return to get him after he's given up the big hit, but they did, and we ought to take advantage. (The sample doesn't quite get this across, but trust me.)
* The Figgs, “The Daylight Strong” — Give me a Met highlight reel, this song and access to the Diamondvision and I will create power-pop heaven and an immediate surge in record sales for a criminally unappreciated band: Mets hitting drives on the drum parts, going deep, flexing, etc. There's even a “watch it go round and round” line that would sync perfectly with footage of an umpire signaling home run. Then pair it with the same band's “Reaction,” a song made for alternating shots of good things happening on the field with fans going nuts in the stands.
* Earth, Wind and Fire, “September” — A month of happiness packed into three minutes and 36 seconds. Play it after every September win with pennant-race implications and let karma take over.
Of course it's January, and right now I would pay an inordinately large amount of money to watch us lose 7-2 to the Brewers and wouldn't complain if the PA played a rotation of “Lazy Mary,” “The Best,” “The Final Countdown” and “New York State of Mind.” (OK, maybe not “The Best” — though losing 7-2 to the Brewers would presumably keep it from rearing its gloppy little head anyway.) But summer's coming, and while I can't wait to get back to Shea, I can definitely wait until I have to endure the Blackout Allstars yet again.
by Greg Prince on 8 January 2006 11:58 am This afternoon will mark the 21st time in my sentient life that I will be delightfully surprised by a particular televised event. It will be the 21st time since I started paying attention to their intermittently competent antics that the New York Football Giants will be playing a playoff game.
When I was growing up, I never thought I’d see even one. I was happy when there was simply the hint of contention in the air, a dab of a dream that the Giants and not the Cowboys or the Redskins or the Eagles (or the Cardinals a couple of times, for cryin’ out loud) would represent the National Football Conference’s Eastern Division in the National Football League’s postseason tournament. If I could get a 5-3 going in early November, I found that highly satisfying. If such a year ended smashed to 6-10 pieces, well, it was nice to remember when they were 5-3.
I was born with the promise of something better. In fact, I’m fairly confident that the lead sports story in all the New York papers on the very day I trotted onto the gridiron we call Earth was the Giants’ participation in the NFL championship game the day before. Indeed, on December 30, 1962 (or Greg Minus One as I like to think of it), the Giants lost the league title to the Green Bay Packers, 16-7. It was part of a natal-era trend, the Giants playing for and losing it all. The Giants won the NFL East in 1961 and would do so again in 1963, getting beaten by the Packers and Bears, respectively, after doing so…not that I could possibly remember the former or reasonably recall the latter.
My mild absorption into the New York Football Giants (I love that they’re still called that, as if somebody hasn’t found out there’s nothing but an ugly housing project hard by Coogan’s Bluff) began in the fall of 1969, presumably after I settled down from that year’s World Series and on a Sunday when the Knickerbockers were off. My dad liked the Giants, so I liked the Giants. There was nothing to like, mind you. The Giants had to streak to get to 6-8 in the old Century Division. Right then and there I learned to have no pretensions to success where my favorite football team was concerned.
They didn’t disappoint in that sense. The Giants gave me nothing through the decade of the 1970s. Absolutely nothing. Nevertheless, I gave them my habitual viewership — if there was no league-mandated TV blackout — and earspace (do today’s 6-year-olds rabidly listen to sports on the radio and accept it to be normal behavior as I did?). I was rewarded with an endless string of 4-10/5-9 seasons that changed only when the NFL tossed an extra couple of loss possibilities on the pile with a 16-game schedule. Then it was 6-10 or 4-12.
It’s not that I was in the Giants’ camp on par with the way I was a Mets fan. Nothing of the sort. Sports required a local allegiance (a pox on New York-area children who choose favorite teams from other places) in each of its sectors, so it was kind of a default thing. I knew nobody else who rooted for the Giants besides my dad — he wasn’t that rabid on the subject — and I wasn’t going to start watching football with anybody but him. I had no Giant clothing or any desire to wear any. There was no 1969 in the Mets’ sense or 1969-70 in the Knicks’ sense in which to invest a little residual faith. I knew they had been good about the time I was born, but that may as well have been in the 1800s. If it didn’t happen on my watch, it didn’t happen.
To be fair, I didn’t take it all that seriously. It was only football. I loved baseball. By the late ’70s, I liked football a lot more than I had earlier in the decade — it left basketball in the dust for second place in personal sports affection — but the Giants weren’t cooperating with my ramped-up interest. There’d be a hint that something good was about to happen, but it was usually fumbled away (rather than sensibly fallen on and protected) in the last minute of play.
All I wanted was one lousy playoff appearance. The kids in Dallas and Miami and Oakland and Minnesota and Pittsburgh and Los Angeles seemed to have had them provided in a trust fund. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to see my favorite football team play once there were only a couple of games on any given Sunday. Lord knows I couldn’t fathom winning one of those games and I surely never would have taken it for granted as I assume the Cowboy and Viking and Steeler and Raider fans must have.
Even the perennial crappy teams were getting in on the action. The Eagles started being good. The Oilers. The Broncos. The Patriots. Almost everybody but the Giants was getting a shot.
Almost. There was another football team that was equally inept. Naturally I started rooting for it, too.
This is where the baseball me becomes completely unfamiliar to you. This is where I grow so desperate for New York to get in on some of that sweet playoff action that I divide my loyalties. Or increase their parameters.
In 1978, I started rooting for the Jets. Not instead of the Giants, but in addition to them. I saw nothing strange or hypocritical about any of this. If anything, at 15, I was finally doing what I think I was supposed to be doing. Mets…Jets…Shea…it’s a natural.
I never made the connection even as I recognized it. I think the roundabout reason I didn’t go green upon my introduction to football was because it was exactly the one and only time there was a Jets’ bandwagon worth jumping on. I’d already decided the Giants were my team. The Jets, in their post-Super Bowl glory — I remember them being defending champs but have no recollection of them getting there — were the ones getting most of the attention circa 1969. I actually knew kids who rooted for the Jets. Namath, even on gimpy knees, was more glamorous than all the Giants combined. But the Giants were my team. In an early example of the principles that would guide me well into middle age, I found myself resenting the Jets for the very act of being somebody else’s choice, leaving my choice as the de facto odd team out. I didn’t like being ignored, whether accidentally or deservedly.
But I didn’t hate the Jets. What would’ve been the point? To my mind, they were in another league. It took me a couple of years to sort out that the AFL was now the AFC and in the NFL. As long as they weren’t bothering the Giants very often, I wished them well. In fourth grade, there was the added motivation of one of the Jets’ player’s kids (the kicker’s daughter) being in my class. “Hey, I’m glad the Dolphins kicked your dad’s team’s ass yesterday while Norm Snead teased a little more false hope from me!” wasn’t my style.
Sheer desperation for one lousy playoff game including one lousy New York football team drove me to give one half of my football self over to the Jets in ’78. They won their first game and did so in snazzy new green uniforms with their name spelled out on their green helmets in a way that made JETS look really cool, like the SST. That’s about all it took for me to think that maybe they could be my ticket to ride. (Though we never discussed it, that was also the season when my father quietly began shifting to the Jets; I doubt he gave it as much as a paragraph of thought.) As for their playing in Shea, I grudgingly forgave them that. Forgave? Not embraced? What can I tell ya? As a preteen I was a junior Pete Flynn, continually bristling (albeit without the brogue) that my precious baseball surface was being torn up by large men in cleats. Baseball, gentlemen.
In whatever color they came and wherever they deigned to call home, I decided it was fun to have this other New York team to pull for, quantifiable evidence aside. No matter how well they were going, the Jets always seemed one series of downs from toppling like a tenuous banana republic tinhorn dictator whose army wasn’t nearly the force he thought it was during the walkthrough. That sense of danger made the Jets more entertaining than the win some/lose some/muddle through Giants. I didn’t like my new team more than my old team. I just liked them differently.
The ’78 Jets had a few moments — Matt Robinson is a name that echoes amid the cobwebs — but they managed to let me down with the same thunderous thud the Giants delivered weekly. Surely you’re familiar with the Joe Pisarcik episode at the Meadowlands. On that very afternoon at virtually the same moment (both locals were playing home games at 1 o’clock, unthinkable now), Pat Leahy, the kicker who replaced my erstwhile classmate’s father, shanked a 19-yard field goal that would’ve beaten the Pats. I was stung by both defeats. Ow! OW! Although the Giants had a nine-season head start on being my wet blanket of autumn, the Jets caught up quickly in the doling of disappointment.
Come 1981, I got my wish twice. The Giants made the playoffs. The Jets made the playoffs. In fact, the Jets making the playoffs by beating the Packers ensured the Giants their spot, so it felt very right to cheer on both teams. By then, I was in college in another state and had to taste my first iota of New York football success while sitting in my parents’ condo in Florida.
That was all right because the games were on TV. That’s where I’ve seen every NFL game I’ve ever seen save two (the Giants and the Jets each visited Tampa Stadium once while I was at USF and I took advantage), and that’s fine. I’ve been careful to not have used the phrases “Giants fan” or “Jets fan” here to describe myself. It’s not because I don’t share some of the characteristics common to fans of these teams (for instance, I have a decent stash of Giant and Jet apparel these days), but as an identifier, I realize it’s one thing to follow a team, rejoice when it wins, bum when it loses, stick with it regardless, but it’s another thing entirely to declare yourself a [Blank] Fan.
I thought I could call myself a Giants Fan when they put all the Pisarcik behind them at the dawn of 1987 and reached the Super Bowl. Then I watched the true diehard Giants Fans who were on hand for the NFC championship win at the Meadowlands express how much it meant to them, how long they’d been going to the games, how big a part of their existence the Giants composed. Wow, I thought, that’s not me — I just like them a lot and want them to beat Denver. Listening to Joe Benigno on WFAN when he was hosting early Monday mornings after dismal Sunday afternoons (think of Fireman Ed with more than four letters to his vocabulary) told me I wasn’t that way about the Jets either.
I may sincerely if modestly revel in their triumphs and just as sincerely if modestly suffer in their traumas and occasionally yell at the TV or radio on these teams’ behalves or very occasionally lie awake calculating who will have to lose to whom so one or both of them can win the right to compete in January, but that doesn’t grant me license to refer to myself as an upper-case Giants Fan or Jets Fan. Not the way I’m a Mets Fan. Or METS FAN.
Rooting for the Giants or the Jets is something I do when they’re in season and the Mets are not. During the Giants’ Wild Card round game against the Panthers today, I’ll be a Mets Fan first and foremost. Still, I always find it wonderful to have at least one of the New York football teams playing right about now. If the Giants beat the Carolina Panthers, it will make me happy. If they lose to them, I’ll still be delightfully surprised they had a game at all.
by Greg Prince on 7 January 2006 6:22 pm It was a week or two before Opening Day 1992. My car was still new as was my fascination with having my very own built-in cassette deck. I had just bought Rhino’s Soul Hits of the ’70s: Didn’t It Blow Your Mind Vol. 6. Playing Side B, driving home from work after midnight, I came across a song that was vaguely familiar.
Before it was over, the chorus had become mine.
‘Cause I want to be happy and free
Livin’ and loving for me
I want to be happy and free
Livin’ and loving for me
Like a natural man (like a natural man)
A natural man (like a natural man)
It was written by Bobby Hebb and Sandy Baron, but the emotion was purely that of Mr. Lou Rawls, the transcendent vocalist who died yesterday from cancer at the age of 72.
This 1971 classic, in fact, belonged to Lou Rawls, but he was kind enough to let me borrow it that night and I got a lot of use out of it. I kept rewinding the tape and singing along with it. By the time I got to my dark suburban street, I saw no point in parking until the song was over. I drove around the block a couple of times so I could absorb every drop of “A Natural Man”.
Fourteen years later, it’s a part of me still. Voices through a Toyota speaker, whether they belong to baseball announcers or silky soul singers, can have that kind of long-term effect on you.
Amazin’.
by Greg Prince on 6 January 2006 9:13 am With all due respect to 1971, 1976, 1981, 1991, 1996 and 2001, there’s only one Met milestone anniversary worth wallowing in via the now legendary Flashback Friday treatment (see the “A Year To Remember” listing along the sidebar) in 2006. And I think you know which year I’m talking about.
Welcome to 1986 + 20. Welcome to the most overwhelmingly successful year in Mets history all over again.
In wedding terms, it’s the China or platinum celebration. In baseball terms, it’s the one that says what has reflexively seemed like yesterday is now truly a long time ago. Tenth anniversaries are tentative. They’re too close to what we’re commemorating to allow us to be completely lost in the past. Thirtieth anniversaries are historical. Our remove from the event in question is suddenly a little too distant. The 25th strikes me as a do-over for the twentieth; Hey, didn’t we just do this five years ago?
The twentieth anniversary of the 1986 Mets. Honestly, I feel like I’ve been waiting 19 years for this.
This was no typical season, so this is not a one- or two- or even three-part job. 1986 is stitched too deeply into our fabric for one Friday. This needs to be a weekly series.
So it will be.
From this Friday to next Friday to the Friday after next, clear through — should vigilance be properly committed — to the final Friday in October (which just happens to be October 27), we will be, in some form or fashion, commemorating 1986.
There’s a lot to remember, a lot to sift through, a lot to say. Some of it will call up the obvious, some will invoke the mostly forgotten and not a little, I imagine, will be peppered by the personal. I look forward to sharing, and to you sharing back…bit by bit, week by week. No need to rush straight to Buckner, if you get my drift.
Consider this programming advisory the first of our Flashbacks. But don’t worry. We have ten months of Fridays to mull in detail what Met life was like two decades ago and how what happened then continues to impact us now. As a great voice probably said more than once in those halcyon days, fasten your seatbelts.
Twenty years, 43 Fridays. This was the first of them.
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
|
|
