The Almost Official Site of Mets Author Matthew Silverman

December 23, 2008

In the Winter Time

I do not count down the days until baseball season. In my own way, I dread them. Trust me, this web site and these books aren’t part of some act, I truly love the game of baseball with all my heart and soul.

In the spring of 1978, when the New York area was hit by not one but two major blizzards and the snow did not melt even as the beginning of spring passed on the calendar—and the Mets promised nothing but 95-loss pain—I went out in the yard on the first day of March vacation, by myself, and hit fungoes in the snow. For two hours. Thirty years later, I’m still just about there. 

The truth is, winter is all that keeps me sane. Keeps me away from the obsession. The mania, like Toad in The Wind and the Willows. Most evenings from early spring to early fall develop a pattern: dinner, kids to bath, kids to bed, Mets game, postgame (optional if they lose), to my office to write, read, go to bed. And get up to put the kid(s) on the bus. In the summer there’s other stuff that makes one long for the regimen of the school schedule.

The only time this changes is when I actually go to the game.

How I love the unpredictability of winter. The storms that the weather mavens miss (this occurs frequently). I admit that I have always been a winter devotee. I know this makes me strange, but honestly, rooting for the Mets in a world where any sane person should be rotting—I meant to type rooting, I guess—for the armchair-easy, world champeens from da Bronx…honestly, aren’t we all a little nuts to have wound up here? Let it snow.

I live near the mountains, so liking snow makes life more enjoyable. But what happens come spring? Specifically, this spring? Will I care less now that my viewing shed (emphasis on shed) has been transformed from comfortable old shoe to a newly-built replicon of a 1913 park with all the amenities of a toney downtown club? Will the change of venue change my desire? Will I suddenly find myself walking out in the fifth inning of a game? Can the spell be broken?

Doubt it. Even if the spell did somehow break, I’ve got a responsibility to those two people waiting for the school bus with me in the 10-degree chill. They’ll need to love winter, too; lest they run away to some southern clime one day and find themselves waiting 10 minutes to buy a Mr. Pibb at a Hop-In where only one person is ahead of them in line. I’ve lived there, done that—maybe not the Mr. Pibb part—but it’s not worth it for a 50-degree January. And all they care about is football; I mean Nascar. Not that there’s anything wrong with it…

I like the seasons. There’s baseball and snow. Yet if there’s a winter with no snow, I don’t mope around two and a half months months later about that time it snowed a little and then turned into rain. Like Daniel Murphy waiting patiently for someone to bring him home. Waiting.

Who am I kidding with this Byronesque baseball brooding. I’ll be there. You’ll be there. We’ll all be there. New place, old place. Frosty night or sweltering afternoon. We are creatures of our own shared habit. Some endure winter. Others endure summer. Constantly waiting for resolution. Waiting for Gaspar.

December 16, 2008

Over 40

So the Mets have some new bullpen people for the new bullpen at Citi Field, if that is its real name. It probably is better that they start from scratch with the pen at the new playpen, but there is one thing that this new Mets bullpen must do in 2009. Save 40 games.

Every Mets postseason club has saved at least 40 as a team…except one. In 1969, the Mets didn’t save 40 games—they didn’t need to. They had 51 complete games, 28 shutouts, and a manager who would’ve politely dismissed you if you’d tried to tell him he was ruining the arms of Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, and Nolan Ryan by having them pitch so deep into games. The ’69 Mets still collected 35 saves between Ron Taylor, Tug McGraw, and Cal Koonce in the first year that the save was deemed an official statistic by Major League Baseball.

Since then, the save has become a measuring stick for relief pitchers’ bank accounts. Today, most closers will sit down once a lead of four runs has been attained. They probably should sit down, but not based on a silly rule that only suits one person and not the other 24 players or the front office or the throngs of the team’s followers.

Dan Rosenheck put forth the smart math theory in the New York Times  recently that a team’s best reliever could be better employed elsewhere than in the ninth inning. The article also used probability theorems of the chances of winning a game with a lead of such and such size, etc. That sounds nice in theory, but if you’ve ever watched a Mets game, you know the hardest out is the last out. You don’t need any theorem to tell you that.

The Mets did somehow save 43 games in 2008 (they blew 29). So maybe the caveat should be that saving 40 is the first step, but to take that anywhere you’ve got to keep the save percentage—like your grades—somewhere on the good side of 60. Eight times the Mets have saved 40 games and missed the postseason. I didn’t say this theory was fool proof! Nothing is fool proof when it comes to bullpens. There’s generally one overpaid guy and several other overworked young or old guys making somewhere between the minimum and the seven-digit threshold. If these nonclosers were so great, they’d be starters with job security. Then they could spend parts of every non-contract year on the disabled list and still have multiple suitors ready to hurl eight figures a year at them.

I won’t go into detail about the recent Mets bullpen failings, which are too well known and too painful. While the bullpen wasn’t the main reason for the ’07 collapse, a couple more quality outings by the pen would have pushed the Mets jalopy over the finish line…same goes for ’08, except this time the bullpen was getting pushed across the finish line by Johan Santana, but the jalopy kept slipping into reverse and running over Johan. Sort of like the ending of an episode of Wacky Races, with the Milwaukee Surplus Special stealing the race at the end.

One last thing, don’t hit 50 saves. Both times the Mets have hit that mark—1984 and 1987—it was second-place city. A nice place to be in retrospect following the seven years in the desert before ’84…or the year after a world championship that would have to last you for a while. Of course, no Mets club has hit 60 saves yet. Maybe that’s the ticket. But to be honest, I’d take the 51 complete games from Gil Hodges’s club and take my chances with 35 saves. That’d be a modern day miracle.

December 8, 2008

For Once, It’s in the Cards

Forgive me going off topic, but this has never happened to me before. In all my time watching professional football, my team has never won a division title. You see, I…ahem…I’m not sure how to say this…I am an Arizona Cardinals fan.

I didn’t start out that way. I was a St. Louis Cardinals fan and then a Phoenix Cardinals fan and then after they figured that they didn’t actually play in Phoenix and needed a larger base from which to draw 30,000 fans per game, I became an Arizona Cardinals fan. Each step along the way a humiliation.

And just this Sunday afternoon, while driving from upstate to down, I heard them clinch their first division title in my fandom the only way an East Coast Cardinals fan can: I listened to the Jets game—against AZ’s closest competition, San Francisco—and when Bob Wichusen stopped giving updates and it was clear they Jets weren’t going to beat the 49ers and get the Cardinals their division title in the only way I figured them capable of winning one, I switched to the FAN and who else but Eddie Coleman told me rookie Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie had just run an interception back 99 yards for a 34-10 lead over St. Louis—ah, the irony—with only a couple of minutes left.

Sure, you say—for those of you who haven’t moved on in search of the latest unappetizing Mets free agent tidbit—why bring it up now? They’ve had that lousy division wrapped up for weeks. Anyone can hop on the bandwagon after the fact.

All I can say to that is this: After the last two Septembers of people assuring me my baseball team was a postseason lock, forgive me for waiting until something was actually clinched.

But the bigger question is: How does an East Coast fan who grew up in the New York area wind up rooting for the Cardinals? The oldest and lousiest team in NFL history.

It, of course, starts at Shea Stadium.

It’s August 1976 and my dad and four friends—the giddy residue of a two-house slumber party—are strolling triumphantly out of the big Shea after a rousing win against the Dodgers. Bruce Boisclair, whose splayed stance defied the law of physics, somehow willed his first major league home run over the fence against Rick Rhoden, who had far more power and batting skill than Boisclair. Felix Millan, who choked up on the bat to such a degree that his power was harder to come by than Boisclair’s, knocked in the game winner. I’m feeling saucy. My friends stop at the only open souvenir stand and with $5 bills from their dads—or what remained of this booty—to seek out exit goodies to mark the last game at Shea before the trials of sixth grade begin. I’ve got no folding money, as they say, but I have my dad right there. I spot a flashy red St. Louis Cardinals hat and knowing full well I have a Mets hat at home, I ask my dad if I might please get that hat. He’d taken four 11-year-olds to Shea Stadium, made it through the whole game, and is probably feeling a little saucy himself. He stands back and lets me put my ordering hands on the counter. Moments later, the “S” and “L” with the little “t” on a patch are all mine. Medium. You see, this is a year before those mesh hats would come into power and you still order hats in small, medium, or large. Yes, it cost less than $5. And yes, the Mets actually sold hats and paraphernalia from other teams at their souvenir stands. It was another lifetime. Tom Seaver and Dave Kingman were several stories below me taking off their yet-to-be-traded pants one leg at a time.

I wear the cap to Mr. Casetellano’s gym class at Iona Grammar. He’s new and trying to get the names down of the 36 kids in our class. I’ve got the cap on—we’re outside that day, so it’s all right—and I’m mouthing off to someone who’s annoying me and Mr. Casetellano says, “Hey, St. Louis, pipe down.” Everyone laughs as good naturedly as three dozen 11 year olds can. We play capture the flag and I’m near the flag at the end of class. I take my hat and fling it at the goalie, who goes for the hat; I dive for the flag. We win. The “St. Louis” nickname catches on as well as Cardinals football did in their hometown.

A month later, the Mets are long done, the Yankees just pulled off their first pennant in my lifetime—ah, it was a long time ago—and are getting ready to play the Reds that Sunday night in Cincinnati in Game 2 of the World Series. I’m a little antsy, wanting so much for the Big Red Machine to drub them. I was futzing around and channel 2 was on. The Dallas game. I knew the Cowboys because I’d watched them in the previous year’s Super Bowl, my first. (I was not your average sports-overfed child.) One thing I did know, I didn’t like the Cowboys. I happened to look up and saw Jim Hart unload a 50-yard bomb to Mel Gray for a touchdown. “Touchdown, St. Louis!” Don Coryell’s dynamic team went on to win the game in thrilling fashion at Busch Stadium. Mel Gray, Terry Metcalf, Jim Otis, Jim Hart.

A quick scan of the sports pages the next morning—after seeing “Yankees Fall to Reds in 9th”—they’d be swept by midweek—revealed this about the October 18, 1976 standings around the NFL:

Cardinals          5-1

Giants              0-6

Jets                  1-4

The Jets were playing the Patriots on Monday Night, which was how the Teamster-like grip the New York teams had on the 1 and 4 p.m. Sunday TV time slots actually allowed me to see an out-of-town game. (The Jets would lose, 41-7, at Schaefer Stadium, later known as Foxboro.)

A confluence of events changed my football-living life. The Cardinals, the defending NFC East champs, went 10-4 in 1976 and did not make the playoffs. It was the year Bill Arnsparger coached the Giants and Lou Holtz the Jets. Both teams were bad. Cardinal bad as it turned out.

If only I’d worn my Mets hat to that game against the Dodgers or that souvenir stand had been closed, perhaps I could have been spared, but such is life when children are allowed to pick their own favorite sports teams.

In all the years since that fateful choice—and most of those have been in a 16-game schedule—the Cardinals have not reached 10 wins since. They probably won’t reach 10 this year, either. (Their defense is porous.) But they do have a division title. And a home playoff game…something they’ve never had in all that time. Or my lifetime. Or any of my siblings’ lifetime. My dad was 15 when it last happened.

Cardinals history is pathetic, even if it does stretch back a century. I’ve tried to quit the franchise. I went to Jets games many times for eight seasons trying to get it to rub off. I sat a few rows from Fireman Eddie in seats we bought for $20 apiece from a Stamford restaurant owner on a game-by-game basis. Had some great times, but the Jets thing never took. And the Giants, it always seemed like there were too many Yankees fans around for me to get comfortable.

I’ve regretted my decision for many years, but I do not regret a moment of the Jim Hart era. That guy could throw a bomb like no one I’ve seen. A Jerry Koosman/Jon Matlack type of guy. Classy. Talented. Unlucky.

I go to Hart’s restaurant for a drink my first time in St. Louis, near closing time in August 1985. He owns the joint with former Cardinals teammate Dan Dierdorf. Hart is retired a year or two. My brother is oblivious. I say, “Do you know who that is?” And I tell him my tale. He’s suitably unimpressed. “You’re a Cardinals fan? I thought you were gaga about the Mets.” (You can see why I was so late getting to the sports buffet of life.)

“Go over to him, say hello,” he says.

Hart was just sitting there doing nothing. Place was kind of empty. (St. Louis may give standing ovations to every baseball player they trade for in his first at-bat, but when it comes to football they’re as impatient as any slob from anywhere else.) I stand up. Finish my drink. Feel myself getting stagefright like in my senior year play and walk out the door. I did one day get his autographed picture via the internet, that’s been sitting in my desk…until now.

My other brother and two of my best college friends live in the Phoenix area, so I do actually get to a Cardinals game every couple of years during family visits. I went last year and saw their last clobbering of the Rams, so barring some unforeseen circumstance—like repeated wins—I won’t see them in person this year. But I’ll be watching them on national TV wearing my old Cardinals logo clothing (I dislike the new bird to the point I sent a scathing email to the team when they made the 2005 logo change that’s imperceptible to everyone else.)

For all the 35-7 Giants drubbings when they were in the NFC East, all the lost $20\full-beer chug\hour of free drinking wagers to Giants fan friends that led me to give up all gambling, all the highlight reels featuring Cardinals jerseys chasing other teams’ stars, the last-second field goals made by opponents and missed by the Cardinals, Jim Hart never being considered for the Hall of Fame, Jackie Smith getting there but being remembered only for a dropped pass as a Cowboy, O.J. Anderson being handed to the Giants in time to help them win two Super Bowls, and me missing out on what being an NFL fan can really be like.

Because this one time the Cardinal rule has been broken.

Since it’s lonely being an Army of One, anyone brave enough to lay claim to being an East Coast Cardinals/Mets fan, please email me at the site. There may be a Diner-like quiz for verification purposes (14 questions as opposed to 140), but those who qualify will receive a book (whichever book you don’t have or whatever I have the largest inventory of at the moment). Until proven otherwise, I’m convinced this is a singular affliction.

November 26, 2008

Thankee

At this time of the year, it is a national custom to give thanks. It’s something the Mets fan can identify with: No matter how miserable things might be, it could be worse. Y’know, you could have Bruce Boisclair as your first baseman.

In the world of the Mets rootification, we should count ourselves fortunate. Yes, fortunate. Allow me to count the ways.

THANKS…

That M. Donald Grant has gone to where they took the first part of the Tampa Bay baseball team’s name.

That some other penurious owner or pretender to same hasn’t taken hold of New York’s National Nine and sold off the David Wrights and Jose Reyeses of the world because of their arbitration eligibility.

That the taxpayers haven’t had to foot the whole bill for the new stadium (they bought the last one).

That with less than five months to go before its opening, the name of the new stadium has yet to change. (The Citi better not sleep after ringing the tin cup while still insisting they’ll make good on every one of the $20 million checks they promised to the Wilpons.)

That Johan Santana is a Met.

That Jerry Manuel is still making out the lineup card.

That the Mets front office has shown more patience than the fans. You win today with the young people, friends. Not by throwing money at every free agent that’s available. “But I want an Oompa Loompa now!”

That we—as fans—have somehow not jumped off bridges the past two Septembers. Let the team do the jumping. They’re professionals.

That Mets Nation—or whatever you want to call it--has more class than the City of Brotherly Love will ever have, even if they’ve finally caught the Mets in terms of championships won. So much for the 79-year head start. City of Ben Franklin, you are indeed the champions. Congratulations. Now please act like one and stop reminding the widow in Queens that her husband is dead. She may one day hit you with her cane.

That we won’t have to watch a Met jog in from the bullpen for another four months. For that, we should all be most thankful.

November 6, 2008

Making It to the Hall

I don’t often have to authenticate why I love baseball. To me, it’s like loving a parent or a dog. Sure they may have taken away the car once or threw up just before you were about to go to sleep—ideally, these commands did not all exit from the same mouth—but the anger or frustration always subsides. You love them just because…they’re there. Parents won’t always be there. A good dog has the life expectancy of a solid major league career. Though not a Hall of Fame career. No dogs allowed.

I drove to the Hall of Fame over the weekend to witness statue dedications in the front entrance of three greats to the character and courage of the game: Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, and Roberto Clemente. You can’t argue with the selection of this trio. I’ve always been partial to Christy Mathewson myself, but Matty played a full career without disease, discrimination, or death keeping him from accomplishing all he could on the field. Though Mathewson—like the three mentioned—met an untimely end far too soon. So I went with Gary Gillette and pretended to be media, listening to short speeches by Vera Clemente, Rachel Robinson, and Curt Schilling; the latter, despite being an All-Star blowhard, has done quite a bit for ALS and did haul his kids to Cooperstown for Halloween so he could be at this event. Then I got to do my favorite things at Cooperstown, like looking at Matty’s New York Giants cap and uniform holding up well after almost a century and checking out stuff I hadn’t even seen when I was there in June for the washed-out final Hall of Fame Game. There was a room filled with old-time board games dating back to the 1880s, plus the trophy balls from the original Cincinnati Red Stockings that went back two decades further.

I’ve loved the old-time game since I first discovered how far back baseball went. Honus Wagner and I share the same birthday—Hans had me beat by 3,415 hits and 91 years—and when I first saw that this shortstop listed on a 1976 baseball card was the greatest shortstop of all time, I just had to learn more about this game. I read everything I could find on the game going back to Candy Cummings and Harry Wright. That fall my dad relented and we drove up four-plus hours each way to Cooperstown (he had to work the next day). That was a long time and eight or so trips to Cooperstown ago.

This time I drove up by myself along a blanket of snow. Sometimes it snows in October and sometimes the Phillies rain on my parade, but both are generally rare, if inconvenient. The snow occupied the landscape, not the road, and with the still changing leaves, it made the backroads drive picturesque. The Phillies’ win brought out more red caps in Cooperstown than I’ve ever seen beyond Broad Street.

I returned home with a handful of trinkets, from a large Hennepin bottle courtesy of Omegang Brewery (for consumption at a later date) and of course the requisite baseball items. Save for the lack of a Book-on-Tape to bring me home through the nonpicturesque darkness, I bought something I probably never would have considered in the gift shop: a reproduction of the program—plus an audio CD—from the baseball centennial ceremonies for Cooperstown in 1939. That centennial is, of course, a joke. Even the Hall itself now acknowledges that the Abner Doubleday myth lured everyone to Cooperstown under false pretenses. Baseball is actually older than it lets on. Ageless, some might say.

But I couldn’t think of a place that exemplifies the charms of the game any better than Cooperstown. Some say the city is where such a museum should be, but baseball thrived because of small town America. And Cooperstown is the best small town I’ve ever seen (and I lived in a few). The Cooperstown fathers took the ball and ran with it…and then put it in an attractive display case

At the height of the Depression, $100,000 was spent to construct the Hall of Fame at a time when there were no other Halls of Fame to speak of for sport. The amazing thing about the opening of the Hall was that it wasn’t just filled with fans and locals, the greats of the game of the past and the present all streamed to the little upstate town. They weren’t getting appearance fees and it doesn’t even seem they were threatened into attending by Judge Landis. They traveled to Cooperstown on their own and seemed thrilled at the idea that there would be a place where their great deeds might last forever. According to the radio broadcast of the ceremonies on the CD, Ty Cobb missed the induction ceremony because he was driving around with his family looking for a hotel and forgot what time the shindig started. Now that we hold Ty Cobb along with Christopher Columbus as monsters of revisionist history, Cobb was probably drunk, cursing every minority under the sun, and kept driving off the road between Utica and Cooperstown while turning to turn around to beat various family members. Cobb still showed up for the exhibition game, which is more than many players of recent years have done when their teams were actually playing in it. This year’s rainout in June was the last such exhibition game scheduled after 69 years due to a lack of interest. And that interest wasn’t from the fans.

The CD of that first day in the Hall’s life let in the voices of The Flying Dutchman and Alex the Great and Cy and Nap and Spoke and Gorgeous George and the Big Train and several guys that are not even thought of today by people who pack the parks or collect the money. Thanks to an annual award, people remember Cy Young, and they’ll always remember the Babe. As well they should.

Thankfully, they started voting in people a few years before the Hall opened, so for the grand opening on June 12, 1939, they had a gathering of probably the 10 greatest living players, with the only players not there from that class the departed Matty and Wee Willie Keeler. They even honored seven figures from the 19th century: Alexander Cartwright (the true father of the game—or at least a lot truer than General Doubleday), Morgan Bulkeley (a figurehead who served as NL President at the whim of league founder and Cubs owner William Hulbert), George Wright (a good player, but his brother Harry probably should’ve been in there first), Henry Chadwick (the first great sportswriter and creator of the box score and rule book), Ban Johnson (hated by many but founder of the American League amid great opposition; he did the dirty work to make it thrive), Connie Mack (no one will ever manager one club longer than his 50 years and no one could act with more dignity), and John McGraw (rough and tumble Oriole who made the Giants a powerhouse in three different decades). Connie Mack was the only one of this group to see the Hall open its doors. Umpire Bill Klem, firm upholder of the rules over five different decades and a tough old bird, cried on the air.

And that first game played at Doubleday Field, with Wagner and Eddie Collins managing, featured a few future Hall of Famers in uniform, including starting pitchers Lefty Grove and Dizzy Dean, plus Mel Ott, Charlie Gehringer, and Lloyd Waner; Little Poison, unlike the other four mentioned, shouldn’t have ever made the Hall, but it was nice of him to come all the way from Pittsburgh. Everyone’s favorite spy Moe Berg was behind the plate—and batting fifth—but for which team I can’t recall. They just threw everyone together regardless of leagues, however the managers saw fit. The action—and with two-minute innings it went quickly—was called by scurrying go-getter announcers Mel Allen and Arch McDonald, who would both eventually be honored in the Writers and Announcers exhibit (if you saw the modest wall where these guys are honored in Cooperstown, you’d never confuse it with a “wing” again).

And then this priceless record of first-pitch swinging and the 15-second induction speeches, where humbleness and class were the operative words, abruptly ends with NBC cutting away to something else after an inning and half with no score. It’s hard for me to imagine what could possibly be more important, but everyone listening at home needed to get in their fun back in the summer of ’39. Before the pennant race was even decided that year, Poland had been invaded; three years later, many of these same players tossing the pill around Doubleday Field would be tossing hand grenades or at least playing baseball in military-issue uniforms for Uncle Sam. You realize that yes, everything was in the right hands. And you’re talking about more than any game.

October 28, 2008

Metancholia

I know I haven’t written. My post for the final day at Shea, now a month gone, has remained in this portal. I’ve been writing about the Mets nearly every day for several projects and I haven’t been able to muster the optimism and energy about the Mets beyond that. The idea of a new stadium stripping away the familiar, five and a half months of ecstasy overcome by another two weeks of agony, the booing at the first sign of trouble, the tradings and firings. Maybe I’ll be ready when the time comes. But not now.

I’ve tried. A piece on my outrage about the Rays and Phillies (Kazmir vs. Hated Rival) in the World Series was written ahead of time and all but posted the night of October 16 when I discovered one small problem: a disappearing 7-0 lead by Tampa (I still like to call them “Tampa” because original Devil Rays owner Vince Naimoli had an absolute fit when the Mets didn’t put “Bay” on the scoreboard in the expansion team’s first trip to Shea in 1998). The Red Sox had a huge comeback and then won again before the Rays won Game 7. (If only Naimoli had concentrated instead on losing the first half of the team’s evil nickname, then maybe they’d have seen October lots of times before now.) The piece I’d written, though still applicable, seemed too stale.

I had planned another piece comparing the Mets vs. the Phillies to the four-year conflict of the Civil War. Distant relatives of mine fought on both sides and I actually bought tickets in previews to the rather depressing Civil War musical in 1999 in New Haven. Still, as a wannabe military historian, I felt I could pull off the comparison between division rivalry and division of a nation. But upon hearing the opening strains of what has become known as the Civil War theme used in the Ken Burns landmark documentary, I could not bring myself to compare the sacrifice, death, and destruction that occurred from 1861 to 1865 to the doings of a bunch of spoiled ballplayers a century and a half later. And learning that the synonymous Civil War music, called “Ashokan Farewell,” was originally written about an area a few miles from where I now sit, a place near Woodstock where several towns were flooded at the turn of the last century to create the reservoir that still serves New York City—lives disturbed, houses still under water, whole towns obliterated under millions of gallons so someplace else could call it progress—that just drove the point home even more.

I did come across something from a time and date I cannot specifically date, but it describes the same malady I’ve been suffering with these last few weeks. With all respect and consideration, here is that long lost letter home.

My dearest love,

I hope this finds you well and handling the deprivations of the situation as well as can be expected. I wish I could be there with you, but circumstances keep me otherwise engaged. Take heart, I have suffered no wound nor have I visited the hospital, a place none of us plans to go. I must confide, however, that I have incurred a disease that has inflicted many over the past month as we make winter camp, with little to do but dwell on the last engagement—a resounding defeat that has some wondering if what we’re fighting for is worth it.

In short, I’m suffering from acute Metancholia. Many of us have it now. Amnesia seems the only known cure. Switching allegiances is as risky as transplanting a pig’s heart for one’s own. Watching others enjoy their autumnal pursuits may in fact only make the condition more calamitous. Throwing oneself into other pursuits can put a soul into danger nonetheless because a Sunday ritual cannot ease the daily pain that remains. Without proper and an array of homemade medicines, the disease may become terminal.

Symptoms include moping, head tilted perpetually downward, and seeing spots where it all could have turned around. I keep seeing the Murphy boy standing 90 feet away, hoping to be rescued, only to be left standing helpless while the whole camp watched in pain. Poor kid never made it. The final day of the campaign began with such promise and hope, and by sundown there was only the sad withdrawal, the honoring by the old guard—too old to fight but all of us wishing their spirit could be imbued in the ranks. We marched away from our home base, only to see the vultures swoop in and tear it all apart the moment we left. Our foe boldly taking anything they could while we made our retreat at double quick. It made some of us ill, but there was no going back.

That’s the day this Metancholia took root in a lot of us, though some had already gotten sick from it long before then. Some veterans recall having it last fall, too. Those men say it will fade with time and should be gone by the spring offensive. I only hope they’re right. But once you have it, I must confide, it’s hard to think that you won’t get it again.

I will be strong, dearest, and I pray that you will remain safe through these difficult times. It is my fondest wish that come next fall, I will be home for the harvest, this Metancholia just a distant memory. And then we may embrace in triumph.

Yours with never-ceasing devotion,

Taylor Miller Smith Hernandez Johnson III

1969th New York

Now listen to “Ashokan Farewell” again. It’s not quite the haunting version with the fiddle that Ken Burns commissioned, but this simpler and lower-scaled version suits the Mets and the man with the five most popular surnames in club history. The notes still allow one to picture a black-and-white cleared field, the mountainous backdrops of Virginia or Tennessee, tents stretched as far as the eye can gaze, the real work ahead: life and death. And it’s easier to remember that we’re only talking about a game. This latest outbreak of Metancholia will, somehow, pass. Will burn away like fog on a sunny day. It just won’t be today. No, it won’t be today.

To read about baseball and the Civil War, there are many accounts that run from the lively to the stale, but the most entertaining book I’ve ever read is the historically accurate account by Tom Dyja surrounding the 1864 Wilderness Campaign in Play for a Kingdom.

September 29, 2008

Why Should I Care?

I get it.

All this time I thought I knew about the Mets and Shea Stadium and what it all stood for. The history, the numbers, the great players, the stellar moments, and all that stuff. But I didn’t get it until the day the stadium Shea-ed Goodbye. I don’t know if the team really knew it before…because of the way they clumsily handled many potential celebrations of Mets history, with numerous examples you can remind yourself of. But as I left for the last time Sunday, I wasn’t as sad as I thought I’d be. Not even with the humiliating defeat. We lost the place whose existence put the Mets into existence. There’d be no Mets without Shea Stadium. And the Mets said goodbye to the place the right way—with a lineup as brilliant as any that ever took the field there—at the very moment we needed perspective on our very fandom.

I nearly lost it when several kids about my 10-year-old daughter’s age started crying when the ceremony was over. I was that age when I went to my first Mets game in August 1975. Craig Swan pitched. By good fortune, he was there as well the day that Shea was laid to rest. Shea lived a good, long time for a stadium of its type. I may yet drive by the stadium before all’s said and done, but it lives only inside me now. A loved one moved on. The family pet that got too old and ill and had to be put down. I’m not comparing the end of a stadium to putting down the family pet, but Shea—like Topper, the big black dog I had from age 4 to 17—will always be with me. And she’d love all that grass to run around on.

Taking Topper to the vet for the final ride on a rainy afternoon a quarter century ago was the first truly hard thing I had to do: knowing it had to happen, doing the responsible thing, and trying to move on from it. My mom and brother and I all cried. I will always miss that dog. Likewise, I may always miss the place where I always felt at home.

Shea is just a building, but its demise is something I’ve had to wrestle with for the last year and a half. And I knew long before that that its day would come. Shea is my touchstone for so many things and what’s kept me connected with many people I’d otherwise have lost touch with. I will go to Citi Field. I certainly hope to be there when it hosts its first big-league game. I learned Sunday that nothing could shake me loose from the Mets, practical as it might be to move on. Maybe in the future I won’t go to as many games, but who dares tell the future?

Shea is who I am. Who I was. Who I’ll be. I didn’t know that until Sunday, though I probably should have. I’ll never forget what happened on September 28, 2008—either before or after the final pitch. This is isn’t some jerkwater town where football is what really stirs the passions. It’s the Mets or bust for us. Hope the guys who played in that final game understand what it means to be a part of something like that. Like the guys who touched the plate at the end seemed to. The 50,000 people who stayed and cheered after one of the toughest losses in franchise history, well, they’re my heroes as much as the people they cheered on.

I’ll have the seats in the basement to watch the games in. Along with some dirt I snagged last week using a mint container, proof that there was actually a place I once felt the need to steal a spoonful of now minty smelling diamond dust. Home. A place where many non pro athletes I know called home, too. I’ve written God knows how many words about great games at Shea, but this is the first time I understand what the concept of Shea means to me moving forward.

I get it. It’s not gone.

September 28, 2008

’86ing Houston

Top 10 Shea Moments

(For the last go round at Shea Stadium, I’m going to count down my 10 favorite games at Shea that I have witnessed, with a side list or two thrown in to stretch it out. I chronicle the greatest moments at Shea in both Meet the Mets and 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, but this list is based on being there in the flesh. And what it felt like at Shea on that date.)

Recap: #10. April 5, 1983 Tom Seaver Returns [Click here]

Recap: #9. October 3, 2004 Les Morts [Click here]

Recap: #8. May 23, 1998: Welcome Home, Mr. Piazza [Click here]

Recap #8A. Losers Bracket [Click here]

Recap #7. October 4, 2006: You’re Out. And You’re Out! [Click here]

Recap #6. July 1, 2000: Fireworks! [Click here]

Recap #5. October 7-8, 2000: Benny and Bobby [Click here]

Recap #5A. What’d I Miss? [Click here]

Recap #4. October 3, 1999: My Kingdom for a Tie [Click here]

Recap #3. October 9, 1999 Catcher of the Day [Click here]

Recap #3A. Three Reasons Never to Leave Shea Early [Click here]

Recap #2. October 17, 1999: The Grand-Slam Single [Click here]

#1. October 11, 1986: Nailed

It was a hasty and far-reaching decision in 1986 that resulted in me attending only two regular-season games in the most dominant season in Mets history. The games were on successive days during Labor Day weekend. They beat the Dodgers on Saturday for their 87th win—with August on the calendar—a total they had not reached in my first nine Septembers (or Octobers) as a fan. That number had, however, been reached each year since 1984. And even the most superstitious Mets fan could tell you that with a 20-game lead at the end of August, this thing was over. It was.

I left almost three hours early for the 25-mile trip to Shea to see the Dodgers series, and I still sat in the clog of the Mets, U.S. Open, and holiday beach traffic. I spent less time driving down to Virginia that Tuesday than I did spending the weekend on the Hutch, Whitestone, and Grand Central. I hadn’t been back to school since February, calling time on my rickety course load there and spending most of that spring and summer in Colorado. I took a course at the university in Boulder, and decided what to do next. I lived in a pseudo city in a weird time zone, read a lot, drank a lot, wrote a little, and played Wiffle ball on Folsom Field while the Colorado football team, about to emerge from the laughingstock bin of the Big Eight, practiced on the other end of the field. I’d go back to Colorado a couple of years later and work as a security guard while trying to find a newspaper job in Anywhere, U.S.A. That was after CU wouldn’t touch me as a transfer, and after I’d graduated from the school where I’d dug a huge hole for myself. There were a lot of holes to dig out of in ’86.

The Roanoke Times & World News had a single paragraph about the Mets clinching the NL East. On the Nightly News, I caught a glimpse of Shea as a sea of celebration. How I wished I could be there. I had never seen a postseason game at Shea—on TV or in person—because they hadn’t played one in the 11 years I’d been following the team. I put together all I had and made plans with friends at northern schools to meet at Shea for the NLCS. I wound up with tickets to all three games, plus a flight back after Game 5. That way—I assured my dad each night—I would only miss one day of school. But the Mets were so good, it would be over in four. Right?

Of the 34 games at Shea I’ve written about in this list (way to pad a Top 10, huh?), Game 3 in ’86 was the fastest. Perhaps not in terms of length, but in my mind it lasted all of three minutes. It must’ve been years of anticipation that led up to it. Like all the times I walked away sad because I wasn’t tall enough to ride Playland’s Dragon Coaster (erected 1929). One summer I exceeded the little cutout with a hand showing the minimum height. I got on line, felt the bar come over my lap, watched as we clanged to the top of it, peered onto Long Island Sound, plunged down at high speed, just missed the dragon’s tooth, then over another hill pitching forward, until we suddenly came back to where we started, and I stumbled off. It’s over? Yes. What did you think?

We were nervous that this 1-1 best-of-seven series (just two years before it had still been best of five) might not be as easy as everyone assured us. People like to do that with Mets fans. They tell them, “Oh, don’t worry, you’ve got this game, series, season, division, wild card, pennant, World Series, decade all wrapped up. What are you so anxious about?” But they can say that because they are not Mets fans. We are a separate species. No, not the Red Sox or Cubs fan of the 1980s, who, though doleful that somehow they’d mess up at the worst possible moment, they at least had the devotion of the general populace for several states around them. The Mets are the children of a Giant-Dodger divorce, stepbrother to the likes of the White Sox, Angels, and A’s—only with a little more charisma—always having to prove themselves in their own market, as well as in the baseball populace as a whole. The players might have thought they owned New York—and they did—but deep inside every Mets fan should be the Latin proverb that George Patton (or George C. Scott as the general) interpreted simply as “all glory is fleeting.”

The state troopers weren’t taking anyone’s crap. They were on motorcycles, blocking intersections, glaring hard, and handing out tickets to anyone whose vehicle did not fall immediately into line. We parked on the outer edges of the Marina, I think, but it was like a fog. This packed stadium, people streaming in on a chilly Saturday afternoon…football weather at Shea. Didn’t the Jets move out a few years back? What’s everyone doing here? We all knew, but there was a crackle of anticipation and nervousness in the air. No Dr. K Korner nor St. Louis showdown had prepared the heart for this.

Because the Astrodome had to host a Bears-Oilers football game, Houston got the four NLCS games (* if necessary) during the week and Shea—as a dual-sport facility now in its single-sport prime—received the weekend games instead. People in New York could growl that the NFL had stolen a home game from the Mets this series—and because home-field advantage was based on a rotating system, the Mets would essentially lose another NLCS home game two years later because of this change—but in ‘86 I was thankful because I wouldn’t have been able to go during the week. I was lucky to be going now. Damned lucky.

For the best game I’ve ever seen at Shea Stadium, I had probably as bad a seat as I’ve ever had: last row of mezzanine almost even with left fielder. Hey, there are lots of bad seats at Shea. Some would argue that the top reaches of the upper deck are worse than the last row of the mezzanine because they are that much more removed from the field, but you can see the sky, a majority of the outfielders (usually), and track balls hit to the field you are not sitting in. In the back of mezzanine for a big game, you only see people standing up in front of you, your back against the wire cage, unable to see anything that isn’t a grounder or line drive at an infielder. But why quibble? For the first postseason game at Shea since Game 5 of the 1973 World Series—which had been won by Jerry Koosman, recently retired, who threw out the first ball against the Astros—all 55,052 of us were happy just to be there.

Until the game started. Ron Darling got rocked and it was 4-0 after two innings. Bob Knepper kept setting down the Mets and their righty lineup, keeping Dykstra and Backman on the bench. Knepper wouldn’t be so lucky in the sixth. Kevin Mitchell and Keith Hernandez singled, and Craig Reynolds let Gary Carter’s grounder get through him for a run-scoring error. Strawberry was up. He took a good cut. The crowd’s timbre rose several level in a split second and my eyes tried to confirm what my ears were telling me. They couldn’t. The upper deck overhang blocked my view, but I thought I saw a white dot land somewhere. No matter. I listened. The noise told me everything I needed to know. I watched Darryl touch all the bases. The game was tied and Shea was shaking. Six innings into my first postseason game and my voice was completely gone.

Houston came right back and scored when Ray Knight flubbed a sacrifice bunt as Bill Doran, who’d already hit a home run in the game, went to third on the play. He came home on a groundout and the Astros set the Mets down the next two innings. When Wally Backman led off the ninth with a drag bunt single against Dave Smith, even from arguably the worst seats in the house, we could see that he was out of the baseline. The Astros, with presumably a much better view, argued about it as well. I imagined how pissed the Astros must have been to have the leadoff man on in the ninth when he had no business being there. Maybe Koosman might have thought for a second about J.C. Martin’s out-of-the-baseline body (bent at the wrist) deflecting a throw that won Game 4 of the 1969 World Series. But I wasn’t thinking about that right then and Kooz probably wasn’t either. Although he was always thinking about something and from his spot he had a good view. I’m hoping he stayed because no one associated with the Mets would want to miss the next five minutes.

Houston catcher Alan Ashby missed a pitch and it rolled to the backstop. That worked as well as a bunt, which was something we didn’t expect from the Earl-Weaver-Wait-for-the-Home-Run School of Baseball Law that Davey Johnson adhered to. It was a good school.

After Heep lined out, Lenny Dykstra stepped in. An old school guy, the type they called a gamer, and other trite expressions that were nonetheless true (before circumstantial evidence changed that word to “juicer” at the end of the 1980s). You knew, sipping from the blue Harry M. Stevens cup as he stepped in, that Nails was the kind of guy you wanted at the plate. Duck, Pepe, and Mike Kaplan of Wayne, N.J. (email me if you ever come across this, Mike, wherever you may be), mumbled to ourselves, because we wouldn’t dare jinx him or state the obvious: “Just a little bloop, a little gork, an error, anything; just tie this game.”

Dykstra swung and the noise level surged. Having done this all day, I knew not try to find the ball. I looked at Kevin Bass in right field. He went back to the wall, moved his gloved hand upward…and then his head went down. This guy who was smaller than me had done it. The postseason comes to Shea and we are it!

We banged on the wire fence, high fived, jumped up and down, and did what it is you’re supposed to do in moments like this. We didn’t have that kind of training. We had crowded nights in summer, Curtain Calls, and the Wave, but not Saturday afternoons in October, when baseball is on every New Yorker’s mind. We were out of the box here. We were out of our minds here. The Harry M. Stevens cup spilled all over my program. That was OK, too.

After the game, it was time to savor it. We went to the Sports Page, once an ice cream/hot dog place our family went to every Saturday as kids (Dad’s excellent idea of fixing lunch!), but now as I had grown older it had become a bar/restaurant. I didn’t go there much, but it was two or three miles from my house. The people there didn’t even ask where we’d been. These strangers saw us enter and came over and slapped our backs like we’d just crossed home plate. Even now, boarded up, weeds growing out of the pavement, and given up for dead, it is still a personal testament to that day. As if I could use bolt cutters to crack open the lock and walk in and someone would hand me a beer and shake my hand. My throat burning, unable to speak, and not wanting it any other way.

That is what it’s all about. That first taste. I did not know what October really meant until that afternoon. I’d watched every World Series and playoff series—we didn’t have to use the term postseason then because there wasn’t any Division Series, otherwise we would have felt this in ’84 and ’85—but seeing other teams do it didn’t count at all. It wasn’t in the same ballpark.

That beer tasted so good over my hoarse, caked throat. I drank a lot of beer that year, but I don’t think anything ever quite tasted like that one. Like I’d earned it.

I had.

September 25, 2008

You People Are Great!

Thank you one and all for coming to Metsilverman.com Picnic Area night. I really had no idea what to expect, from the people to the players, but I think everyone had a fine time. And now you’ve seen a game from the Picnic Area, which hasn’t always been there. And it won’t be there much longer. I’ll upload a few photos some nasty day when I’ve caught up with all the work and gotten over whatever there is to get over.

For those of you who won’t be at Shea again, I’m sincerely glad that I could help. And for some of you I hadn’t seen in a long time, it was great catching up. Thanks to the gang from Last Play at Shea, too. Regardless of what happens on the field, I will miss the old place and all the good times I’ve had here. It’s just an old building, really. The people have given it whatever personality it has. Same with the new place. I can only hope.

Thank you for coming. You didn’t have to, but you wanted to. And that’s why Mets fans will always be the best people I know.

September 23, 2008  

It’s Time, Boo Boo

The Picnic Area Game is Wednesday, Sept. 24. You can start entering at 5:40 p.m. Food is served at 6 p.m. It will be served until 8:30 p.m. Snacks and light beverages are available until the seventh inning stretch. Beer and other concessions can also be purchased there. I originally planned to have beer tickets for the event, but upon further review—plus a high minimum that had to be purchased—everyone’s on their own for the beer. (I’m reimbursing anyone who paid in advance for these when they arrive.)

I haven’t been to a game in the Picnic Area in a while (they make you buy a lot of seats!), but from what they tell me: You walk in and you’ll receive a bracelet—pink, I believe—that will allow you to go to the buffet. You sit wherever seats are available and have a great time. I’m hoping there’ll be a nice little group of us sitting together and complaining—it’s what Mets fans do—and yes, cheering. But please no spitting or booing. Think of the children!

One last note, I do have a handful of extra tickets for $70. Please email me as soon as you can if you want them because the extra tickets will be scattered to the four winds once I reach Shea. I’ll also have a couple of my books if anyone is in need.

As an added bonus, the makers of the documentary film Last Play at Shea have asked if they could interview some of the group about their fondest Shea Stadium memories. (Thanks to Faith and Fear for the referral.) So the Mets will get some play in this film and you can perhaps have a part in it. Think about something you want to say about the old place and maybe you’ll get a chance to speak your piece on film. Keep it clean.

Have a great time! I’ve only been looking forward to this since February. I’m not going to let anyone—least of all the Mets—ruin it now.

Picnic Clock and Movie Star

The Picnic Area Game is now less than a week away. Tickets for the Wednesday, September 24 game against the Cubs are nearly sold out. Since some people have asked me for a specific count of how many are left. The number is: 9.

Tickets are $70 each and include buffet and soft drinks. Beer tickets are also available for $7.50 apiece. Email if you want to go. (There’ll be slightly more info next week about what to do when you get to the Picnic Area.)

As an added bonus, the makers of the documentary film Last Play at Shea have asked if they could interview some of the group about their fondest Shea Stadium memories. (Thanks to Faith and Fear for the referral.) So the Mets will get some play in this film and you maybe can have a part in it. Think about something you want to say about the old place and maybe you’ll get a chance to speak your piece on film.

Let’s keep a stiff upper lip and do what’s been done at Shea since 1964: Cheer for the boys. They need us now more than ever.

September 22, 2008  

Yankee Stadium: The Shea Eye View

I never made it to the Yankee Stadium of Ruth, DiMaggio, Ford, Berra, and Stengel. Pity that, because I heard it was something to see. My great grandmother was apparently quite fond of the watching Ruth and Gehrig and went frequently. I only made it to the refurbished stadium. I thought about taking my kids this year, if only for a tour, but my heart wasn’t in it.

Though I haven’t been there this century, I went to my share of games at the new Yankee Stadium because I grew up in the 1970s as the biggest baseball fan on the block. I got a lot of invites because the dads knew I wouldn’t ask for something to eat every five minutes or say I was bored and wanted to leave an hour after the anthem. And I could fill them in on who was good and who wasn’t or on rules interpretations. Baseball geekdom has its privileges. Saw a lot of good games that way and got in the door a few times with business contacts later. Note that number one on this list is the only game that I’m sure I actually paid to attend. To all who actually put the money into Steinbrenner’s pocket for me, a belated thanks.

Since I’ve been turning in some LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG tales about my favorite days at Shea, it seems only fair I give a thumbnail sketch of the games I remember best from Yankee Stadium as its doors close (a second time). Of course, this is from a Sheasian point of view, so there’ll be no genuflecting.

10. April 30, 1993: Yankees 3, Mariners 0

Rob Cooke got tickets from his company and we tooled down to the Bronx in his convertible. The seats were right behind the Yankees dugout. This is one of the very few times I’ve ever seen the Mariners in person—it’s that other league thing—and I had the good fortune of glimpsing Wally Backman’s brief Marinership. He played third base, struck out three times, and would make his final career appearance two weeks later. I also saw Mattingly and Griffey during the last full season before the Yankees started making me angry again.

9. May 22, 1983: Dodgers 5, Mets 0

Yes, this is a Mets game at Shea Stadium—and a bad one—but it has a pre and post Bronx twist. After a very long night in the waning days of high school senior year, we drove into Manhattan on a Sunday to pick up unused tickets for a Mets game (Tom Seaver was pitching). We weren’t good with directions, so we asked a cab driver how to get to Shea Stadium. He gave us perfect directions…to Yankee Stadium. A couple of weeks later, we went to Yankee Stadium on purpose, thanks to Durkin, but I really can’t recall what team it was against, only that the ushers forced us to sit in the occupied parts of the upper deck rather than let go out near the foul pole, like I wanted to.

8. April 23, 1978: Brewers 3, Yankees 2

I think Peter Rossi’s dad got us these ducats right over the Brewers dugout just after Milwaukee went to the ubercool ball-in-glove logo. (Yankee Stadium actually used to sell hats of all AL teams and was the only place I knew to get the adjustable-mesh Blue Jays, M’s, and, of course Brew Crew hats.) Paul Molitor was the rookie shortstop and George Bamberger was showing what he could do as a manage if his heart was in it. Gorman Thomas walked back to the dugout after a whiff and I called out to him, “You’ll get ‘em next time, Gorman.” He looked up at me and nodded, probably shocked that he wasn’t being cursed out. Though he struck out the other two times he batted that Sunday, I was a huge Stormin’ Gorman fan from that day forward.

7. June 30, 1999: Tigers 8, Yankees 2

Total Sports Field Trip. I didn’t like the concept, but a paid-for Wednesday afternoon at the park beats sitting in front of a computer. Took the subway with Mike Gershman and it was during that ride that we planned a pilgrimage to Detroit—and Toronto—during the final weeks of Tiger Stadium. Glad we did that. He died surprisingly of cancer a few months later.

6. October 27, 1999: Yankees 4, Braves 1

I was very busy at the office when John Thorn said he had seats to the World Series. I said I had too much work. He paused and said, “The World Series. Go.” He handed me two tickets for Game 4 in the upper reaches of the upper deck courtesy of Major League Baseball. Witnessed a sweep the Braves just over a week after they’d broken my heart in the NLCS. This was the last game I went to in the Bronx.

5. May 7, 1995: Brewers 9, Yankees 1

The Brewers, still an AL team, put a thumping on the Yankees in my first game from the Yankees’ press box. I was gathering quotes for a radio station and it was just after the strike, so they actually sat me in the press box proper with the subsidized hot dogs and all. I’ll admit their locker room is better than the one at Shea. A week later I went back and saw Jeter’s first career multi-hit games. I had to slap myself to keep from getting tractor beamed into his aura. I was shocked when they sent him down in favor of Tony Fernandez, a fine player who dogged it like Richie Hebner as a Met.

4. September 17, 1978: Red Sox 7, Yankees 3

Eck was brilliant and Yaz homered as the Red Sox ended the 1-9 funk that frittered away their huge lead. Boston then went 12-2 and wound up forcing that fabled one-game playoff. We had great seats over the dugout and a bat slipped out of Chris Chambliss’s hands, flew past us, and clocked an old lady. She seemed OK at first but was carried out a few innings later.

3. April 21, 1976: Yankees 10, White Sox 7

My first time at Yankee Stadium was the fifth game after it re-opened, a day game during spring vacation. The previous summer I’d seen Yankees Old-Timers Day at Shea, so I’d seen black pinstripes before. What made it memorable was the White Sox had Cleon Jones, who, like Wally Backman 17 years later, wouldn’t have much longer in the bigs. I at least got to say a proper goodbye to Cleon after his abrupt departure from Queens in ’75, though he looked mighty silly in pajamas the White Sox wore. My dad, who’d done business at a South Bronx property that had been torched a couple of years earlier, took a look around the neighborhood and said, “We’re not coming here again.”

2. October 14, 1978: Yankees 4, Dodgers 3

The World Series changes things, though. When someone dropped upper deck seats for the 1978 Series in my dad’s lap, we headed to the Bronx for Game 4. (Though if it had been a night game, I’m not so sure.) My first World Series game is best remembered as the game when Reggie stuck out his hip and let a throw deflect off it to spoil a double play, inciting a huge argument and a game-tying rally. We were right over first base and I still don’t know what the umpire was thinking on that call. A sensitive older Yankees fan waited until my dad went to the bathroom and then told me, a 13-year-old: “You keep rooting for the Dodgers, I’ll pitch you over the side.” And I hated the Dodgers.

1. June 16, 1997: Mets 6, Yankees 0

Though I’d seen Pink Floyd from the first row at Yankee Stadium three years earlier, no Bronx experience compares to this one. I used the automatic redial button on our otherwise useless company phones to get through and get tickets for the first two rows in the loge—four and four—for the first-ever game between the Yankees and Mets. We were stuck in traffic forever, but got a laugh when a fellow down on his luck, but not on his chutzpa, charged people that came in after us $10 to park in an unattended lot. One of two soakings Yankees fans would get that night. The series between the teams has been all downhill for me since then, but we’ll always have Dave Mlicki.

September 19, 2008  

Moon for the Misbegotten

Top 10 Shea Moments

(For the last go round at Shea Stadium, I’m going to count down my 10 favorite games at Shea that I have witnessed, with a side list or two thrown in to stretch it out. I chronicle the greatest moments at Shea in both Meet the Mets and 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, but this list is based on being there in the flesh. And what it felt like at Shea on that date.)

Recap: #10. April 5, 1983 Tom Seaver Returns [Click here]

Recap: #9. October 3, 2004 Les Morts [Click here]

Recap: #8. May 23, 1998: Welcome Home, Mr. Piazza [Click here]

Recap #8A. Losers Bracket [Click here]

Recap #7. October 4, 2006: You’re Out. And You’re Out! [Click here]

Recap #6. July 1, 2000: Fireworks! [Click here]

Recap #5. October 7-8, 2000: Benny and Bobby [Click here]

Recap #5A. What’d I Miss? [Click here]

Recap #4. October 3, 1999: My Kingdom for a Tie [Click here]

Recap #3. October 9, 1999 Catcher of the Day [Click here]

Recap #3A. Three Reasons Never to Leave Shea Early [Click here]

#2. October 17, 1999: The Grand-Slam Single

The so-called Mets-Braves rivalry (c. 1997-2002) was a one-way event. Just when they Mets were about to make a move to the penthouse, the Braves strutted by and flipped them a coin and told them to follow, like a bellboy waiting in the lobby. He thinks he’s something special, but he’s always put in his place by one look from the big shot.

“Bellboy!

I’ve got to get runnin’ now.

Bellboy!

Keep my lip buttoned down.

Bellboy!

Turn the bloody baggage out!

Bellboy!

Always running at someone’s bleedin’ heel,

You know how I feel,

Always running at someone’s heel.”

But in 1999, no matter how often the Braves put the Mets in their place (9 of 12 times, if you’re scoring), the Mets still somehow snagged the extra postseason spot and beat Arizona in the Division Series while the Braves knocked off the Astros and shuttered the Astrodome. Now the bellboy and tycoon were in the elevator together en route to the top floor.

And I had tickets for all games at Shea. Then why was it so hard to concentrate?

The 1999 Mets-Braves NLCS disturbingly morphed from the most important thing in my life to a distracting interruption. I was standing in the new Total Sports HQ in Kingston, New York, when a list of sweeping changes was announced for our company. I was suddenly an associate publisher, a position that had been discussed but I thought was far down the road. Now I was in the road.

I lived 100 miles south of Kingston and had been dragging my feet in the transfer from home office to our publishing HQ (the parent corporate office was located in North Carolina). I continued coming up to Kingston two days a week: coming up in the morning, staying overnight at the sumptuous Kingston Holiday Inn, and then driving home the next day after work. The rest of the time I worked from an office in my home in Connecticut, a state where I’d lived for several years, gone to high school, and where I met and married my wife—a Nutmeg native herself (as was my daughter). We weren’t really anxious to move, but when someone offers you a big boost in pay to create sports books, you know it’s something you probably won’t get asked twice. From the moment the room was informed of my promotion—at the same moment I realized it was happening—that Nutmeg life was over. I needed to move up there and fast and come into the office every day. I had a place to spend the next six months that was 45 minutes north of Kingston, where I could sleep and commute from; then I’d come to Connecticut on weekends and see the wife and baby and dog. We’d do all the rigmarole involved in moving and getting a new place, but we’d do that in the spring, after my massive project was done.

My boss, John Thorn, came to me and we talked about the my new benefits and responsibilities. Applying captain’s bars to my trembling shoulders. To me it was like a battlefield commission. Ready or not, it was my duty to take the next objective. And that objective was sitting through a long meeting and say that, yes, Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia would meet all its dates and the 1,300-page book would be in stores a few weeks before Father’s Day. I was also introduced to publishing contracts and a few other large undertakings. Two hours later, I struggled out into the sunlight. Oh, and the Mets were down to the Braves by a game and a run. And in came John Rocker.

Yes, this was fatheaded Johnny Rocker’s series in the sun. Where his left arm actually moved as fast as his mouth in denigrating all thing diverse and/or New York. This was Game 2. Eighth inning. Before he’d insulted every fan of decency or the Mets. And the tying run was at second. Johnny Olerud up. Johnny Olerud down. He walked Mike Piazza, putting the go-ahead run on base for Robin Ventura. Robin Ventura! Mr. Mojo Risin’ (sing it loud and proud), who’d taught us about staying cool in the midst of a red-hot and then Reds-not-so-hot Wild Card chase, who’d driven in 120 runs, more than any Met in history—except for the guy they walked to get to him—and whose presence gave the Mets a power trio (and with Alfonzo, the runner on second, it was a quartet). He’d show this Rocker a thing or two. He went down on strikes, too.

Then Bobby Cox was crazy enough to take Rocker out…and bring in John Smoltz. Game over. Mets down two. I had another 90 minutes in the car to think about all the changes in my life away from the Mets.

“OK, here’s what I’m going to do when I get home…” I won’t bore you with the details—because there were 2,000 of them (the number of player bios in the book)—and it was the type of deal where something you thought would take five minutes turned into five hours. I did not emerge from my office—other than to sleep fitfully—until Friday afternoon, when it was time to go to Game 3. I battled traffic with Smitty and Jimmy Jim and got inside Shea in time to see the Braves scratch a chintz run in the first inning without even getting a hit as the Mets made two errors. Tom Glavine made it stand up and John Rocker rubbed their face in it. Al Leiter pitched great and Armando Benitez retired all five he faced. You’d want this game back 1,000 times in a few days. Or just a couple of those outs Benitez or even Leiter made look so easy.

Three games to none. It was over. But we still went to the Shea funeral on Saturday night with my wife. We were sedate. My thoughts drifting to all that I had to do on Sunday and should I really go to that Jets-Colts game at 4 p.m. Game 4 of the NLCS was just close enough where you knew the Braves would figure out a way to steal it. A 1-0 Mets lead just wasn’t like a Glavine lead of the same score—though I’d still take Rick Reed in a big game any day of the year over the Bastard of Billerica—and that foreboding came to pass when Atlanta hit back-to-back homers off Reeder in the eighth.

Smoltz—starting this time—allowed a single to Roger Cedeno to open the bottom of the inning, but Rey Ordonez popped up a bunt. They brought in Mike Remlinger to face Matt Franco, who was pulled for Benny Agbayani. As action resumed, I stepped into action. Cupping my hands to my mouth, I yelled as loudly as I could—shocking Duck’s mom a little—“Steal! Steal!!” The guy had broken Mookie’s club steals record. He was a good player in ’99. And he did steal. Agbayani also struck out at the same time, but the tying run was in scoring position. Melvin Mora walked and Remlinger walked off. In came Rocker to face Johnny O. Again.

I didn’t yell anything at them, but Cedeno and Mora took off. They were now both in scoring position with Olerud up. This time he hit one through the middle. Ozzie Guillen, not yet a loud-mouthed manager but an aging shortstop, couldn’t knock it down. Both runs scored. It’s moments like that, a decade after he so sadly left, that make me proud to say the only Mets T-shirt I possess with a number on it is No. 5 with Olerud on the back. If the Mets could’ve had Moises Alou in his prime to go with Fonzie, Olie, Mike, and Robin, Atlanta would have been torched. But I digress. Actually this whole thing is a digression to this point. What about the frigging Grand-Slam Single?

Patience, Grasshopper. The Grand-Slam Single is an eternal Mets mystery whose power can only be revealed through a series of phrases. In headlines. From newspapers. That never existed. But are like those in the days when papers had many editions. With an extra now and then when there was something big happening. Here are the many editions of Sunday, October 17, 1999, from the retrospective Shea Stadium Gazette.

AM Edition

Forget Football; Mets All the Way

And I did forget about the Jets game. I wound up walking into Shea with that Jets ticket in my pocket. The Colts weren’t a draw back in ’99—regardless of second-year Peyton Manning. The previous year, when the Colts wound up 3-13 in Peyton’s rookie season, I picked up a discarded Jets-Colts ticket off the asphalt while waiting in line to enter the Meadowlands and auctioned it to all comers starting at $5. $4. $3. $2. And finally $1. When I went through the turnstiles, I released the ticket to the wind (that’s not littering; that’s karma). The Colts would start an 11-game winning streak that Sunday in ’99, propelling them to a 13-3 season, and the Manning boy to stardom. La di da.

“Damn the Cholesterol, Full Speed Ahead” Edition

Fried Chicken, Lerno Picked Up

Young Tom showed up at my house and pried me out of my office. The babysitter was already there so I could dither on my computer about the career benefits of Frenchy Bordagaray. We took my car. A brilliant choice if for no other reason that there was—under a bunch of stuff in the back seat—a dry sweatshirt. You never know what you’ll need after a Mets game. We stopped and picked up Lerno, who’d gotten back a few hours earlier from a concert the previous night in a state that did not neighbor his. Really, though, what we wanted was some food and he lived near one of Stamford’s top restaurants: Pudgies. We got the large bucket. Good decision on the size.

“Oh Yeah, the Game” edition

Johnny O. You Kid!

The man crush on Johnny Olerud grows and grows. He socked a home run off Evil Maddux. Worthy of its own edition because it would be more than five hours until the Mets scored again.

“Insult the Famous Met” Edition

Duck Angers Mex; No Rain in Forecast

Duck, who had gone to function in Florida between the end of Game 3 and the early innings of Game 5, had landed at LaGuardia at game time and cabbed it to Shea. The rain commenced falling and among Duck’s possessions lugged into Shea, a hat was not among them. So he improvised with a cardboard Shea tray as protective headgear. (Good move not using the Pudgies chicken bucket. Besides, we’d eat the bones and skin like a rugby team stranded in the Andes.) Two well-known New York sports figures used our row to make a getaway from the inclement weather. One was John McEnroe, and the other Keith Hernandez. As they passed us, drawing adoring stares on either side of us, only Duck managed to say something that got anyone’s attention. “Hey Keith, going out for a cigarette?” Duck, voted “Most Obnoxious” in our high school yearbook—a distinction that could have covered the whole New England Region, caught the 11-time Gold Glover like a perfectly-executed “butcher boy” play. Keith stopped, turned, looked Duck in the eye, and told him crossly: “I haven’t had a cigarette in eight years!” And Mex and Mac were gone. The game continued.

“Bobby V. Outsmarts Bobby Cox” Edition

Dennis Cook Used; No Fatalities, Strikes

In a moment more stunning than when Bobby Valentine put on the fake mustache and glasses and sat in the dugout following an ejection, the Mets manager outsmarted Bobby Cox. Bobby V. knew/knows his stuff, but there still wasn’t much you could slip by Bobby Cox. Here’s how it went. Watch carefully. Turk Wendell replaced Orel Hershiser, who was miraculous in avoiding runs in a 3.1-inning outing that was the longest by any of the nine pitchers used (including starter Masato Yoshii). Wendell struck out Chipper Jones—no easy feat—but he fell behind on Brian Jordan as pinch runner Otis Nixon stole second. Bobby V. removed Wendell and brought in Cook, who couldn’t have gotten an out in a Wiffle ball game despite a 0.00 NLCS ERA. The Mets then threw the last two balls to Jordan intentionally, setting up a force with Ryan Klesko up. Except we all knew that Klesko couldn’t hit lefties and Bobby Cox wouldn’t let him. So Brian Hunter came up to bat and Cook had to pitch to him because the rules state that a pitcher who enters the game must pitch to one batter. But he did throw the intentional walk (though it was charged to Wendell). So Cook left the game having not thrown a single pitch near the plate on purpose (I could have done that, y’know). “Perfect” Pat Mahomes (8-0 on the year) entered and walked Hunter to fill the bases, but Andruw Jones flied out. The chess match in the seventh cost each manager four players. And players would be hard to come by.

Extra Extra: “Eureka Moment for Narrator” Edition

It’s Not About You; It’s About Us

It was the Dennis Cook move that flicked the switch. Through this chess match, my mind still worked over work. How I had to be in Kingston the next morning, of the meeting I wasn’t prepared for, of the contracts I’d never worked on before, of all the…yes, of all the lame-o things that I’d ever done, this had to be up there. I’d waited a dozen seasons to see another postseason at Shea. Had been to two dozen games in ’99 and spent two of the best weekends of my Shea-going life there since October had begun, and I’d sat through four of the last five excruciating home games in ’98 (the Mets lost all but one that I was at, though they did win the day I went to Jersey instead for the Jets-Colts game where I couldn’t give away the ticket). Yet here I was standing in the rain thinking about the office.

This must be the way Yankees fans think (a lot of them at least). “Yes, yes, we’ll win, but I’m concerned about the traffic.” Or like the 49ers fan who sat next to DBird at Candlestick and said to his girlfriend as the Niners started an improbable comeback against Peyton’s Colts the previous fall: “I don’t have time for a close game; I’ve got to be in Marin for dinner at six.” I’d gotten a promotion and some extra responsibility? Deal with it. Others have achieved far more and forgotten about everything else while at the game. THAT’S WHY YOU GO, DUMBASS! There’s plenty of time to think about and deal with that other crap. The season’s hanging by a thread. You’re a Mets fan. Act like one!

My interior monologue switched to baseball the adventure, not the job. The monologue became: I’ll be damned if I’ll watch the Braves cavort on my field, Rocker making more faces at the fans and slurping champagne.

No more work tonight. No dinner in Marin. “Lerno, are one of those last-call beers for me? We may be here for a while.” And I settled in to watch the best extra-inning game I’ve ever attended.

“He’s Out at the Plate” Edition

Mora the Same: Melvin the Immortal

Rookie Octavio Dotel entered the game