The logic was so sound, the Mets went ahead and did it. Although the feel good story of Nelson Figueroa sort of came to a sudden halt.

Just added to the world tour is an appearance on Bluenatic radio. It’s a good place to go for all Mets fans, but for those whose blue and red hue goes with your blue and orange, it’s an ideal destination on your procrastination rotation. The radio show will be on Sunday, May 18, at 11 a.m. on 91.9 FM in Manhattan and available any time after that with iTunes on http://amber.streamguys.com:4920/listen.pls.

This and everything else on the Metsie tour can be found in more detail in the Events portion at this site. You’re here already, you might as well look.

May 9, 2008

We Want the Airwaves

After a few weeks without a lot of promotional activity, we’re preparing for another onslaught. Even non electronic media are included. Listen to the Ramones and the namesake song of this post while reading.

METS WEEKLY: Saturday (5/10) at noon, Sunday and Monday (5/11-5/12) 1:30 p.m.

Why: When the Mets add Bill Shea to the wall in left, Jon Springer and I explain what the others numbers mean, who’s up there, and other minutiae. Jon is slated to be on Mets Weekly next week as well. Thanks to Max Seigal and SNY for contacting us. As Bing Crosby told Danny Kaye in White Christmas: “It’s one great big plug for the show.” Ba-ba-bum.

May 14, Wednesday, 4:40 p.m.: Ocean and Monmouth Counties, NJ, 1310AM and 1160 WOBM-AM

For those of you in New Jersey, I’ll be in the Locker Room. That’s code for Fox Sports Radio 1310AM and 1160 WOBM-AM for Locker Room with Kevin Williams, which is available via the Internet at www.shoresportsnetwork.com.

May 15, Thursday, 7 p.m. Ocean County Library, Toms River, NJ

The radio gig will be followed the next day by an appearance at the Ocean County Library, 101 Washington Street, Toms River, NJ 08753. Phone: (732) 349-6200, (609)971-0514

May 18, Sunday 7 a.m., WTNH-TV (Channel 8) New Haven, CT

Bright Lights, Elm City. It will be an early day to get to New Haven in time for the show, but when someone wants to book Mets by the Numbers on TV, you set that alarm clock and smile the whole way there.

May 30, Friday, 5:30 p.m., LaGuardia Holiday Inn, featuring Jon Springer and me http://www.holidaylga.com/holidayinnlaguardia.html

Book signing plus pregame schmoozing. Come have a drink, a bite, say hello, perhaps purchase a book, talk Mets, then make your way to Shea. They tell me it’s less than a 10-minute walk: 37-10 114th Street Corona, Queens, NY 11368, (718) 651-2100

May 5, 2008

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. I chronicle the greatest moments at Shea in both Meet the Mets and 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, but though these games all have some historical significance in Mets history, 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]

#9. October 3, 2004 Le Morte

“…by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own into contemplation…”

John Donne, For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1623

Baseball helps us mark the time when things are good and pass the time when things are not. This little universe is a constant of teams and cities and people dating back many years. When that order is upset, it is like seeing an old, trusted, and often busted neighbor lose his home of longstanding. A hole in memory.

I still recall my awe and wonder when I first turned on WOR and realized the Mets were playing baseball in Canada. (Wow! This game is everywhere!) I still visualize our slow drive past Parc Jarry on a family trip to Montreal in April 1976 (retrosheet.org disabused me of my long-held belief that the Mets had been there and we hadn’t gone just because the temperature was 2 degrees…Celsius, of course). Or the pang of remorse when Rick Monday homered off Steve Rogers in the ninth to win the 1981 pennant for the Dodgers; it would be the last postseason game in Montreal. My pilgrimage to Stade Olympic in 1991 avec retractable roof, finally functioning some 15 years after I’d first seen it under construction (it wouldn’t last). The signed Expos ball my friend Duck got me after our Flushing Bay dip in ’93; the memorabilia dealer he got it from clearly couldn’t tell the difference between a Marlin and an Expo.

That begs the question: What is an Expo anyway? It is Canada’s 1967 version of the World’s Fair (unlike the unsanctioned Queens adaptation held two years earlier). Montreal was still so thrilled about the event that when the major leagues awarded them a team for the ’69 season, they went with the hot name…as a hockey team would stick with the hot goaltender in the playoffs. Like the World’s Fair, baseball in the hockey belt started out with a lot of hope and promise and ended up maligned and forgotten.

From the day the 1994 strike wiped away Montreal’s best record in the majors, baseball was on its way out in Quebec. There are many complex reasons why the game was doomed there, but Montreal baseball always seemed so different, so French…and it had been that way for me from the first time I saw bespectacled Tim Foli artfully turning a double play wearing that tri-colored chapeau at Parc Jarry.

I like the underdog. That’s probably why I’ve always remained so loyal to the Mets despite countless signs that I should cut and run. The Montreal Expos are the ultimate underdog franchise. Or, how do they say in English, were.

The Expos had been “dead club walking” since Bud Selig first uttered the words “contraction” in the wake of the 2001 postseason. Bud made it no secret that he wanted Minnesota and Montreal out of the baseball business in what would be the first elimination of franchises since 1899. Yet the Twins refused to die and it wouldn’t be good business to kill just one franchise. So MLB instituted Plan B to starve the club out of Montreal. A franchise swaperoo gave the Marlins to Jeffrey Loria, who’d fired the great Felipe Alou in Montreal and replaced him with buddy/stooge Jeff Torborg. John Henry landed the Red Sox after running the Huizengafied Marlins for three years and still saying it was “terrific.”

With MLB now running the Expos, parts started falling off the chassis completely. The ultimate indignity came when MLB let Vladimir Guerrero leave as a free agent in an undervalued market after the 2003 season. The Montreal farce continued for one more year. The team would not even receive a decent burial. Despite the sincere efforts of Omar Minaya, Frank Robinson, and many young players held captive by the system, the Expos died a slow death. Despite two winning seasons under horrible operating conditions, the Expos weren’t even permitted to open their final season in Montreal and instead began the “home” part of the schedule in San Juan on Easter weekend playing the Mets when there was sure to be no one at the games. When the Expos finally played in Montreal for the first time, it was April 23. They drew 30,000, or nearly as many people as had seen the Mets and Expos for three dates in San Juan.

But where are my manners? I’m neglecting the other miserable team in this story, our own Mets.

The charismatic Bobby Valentine had been replaced by the lifeless Art Howe after the Mets finished with 75 wins in 2002. That “unacceptable” win total would wind up being better than anything the Mets would see for until 2005. The overpaid Tom Glavine had taken over as ace. The farm system, stripped bare by Steve Phillips, started from scratch when Jim Duquette took over as GM during the bleak 2003 season. Duquette traded the dogs collected by Phillips for minor parts, and Duke played the good organizational guy and took the hit when Vlad the Met Killer went to California and when shortstop phenom Jose Reyes had to move to second base in order to show off Kaz Matsui, the new toy from Tokorozawa (home of the Seibu Lions).

The Mets showed surprising life the following spring, despite an outfield of Yankees castoffs Shane Spencer and Karim Garcia flanking superlative flycatcher Mike Cameron. Cliff Floyd and Jose Reyes were injured, the starters weren’t good, and Braden Looper was the closer, for corn sake. Yet the Mets were winning…at least as often as they were losing. They swept the first series played at Citizens Bank Ballpark at the end of May to stand at a surprising 26-26 and just 3 ½ games out of first. The division stayed mediocre for the next month. On July 4, the Mets completed a three-game sweep of the Yankees, an unimaginable feat a year after the Mets had lost six straight games to the Yankees. The Mets were now just two games out of first. There were signs that the farm system was about to bloom, Reyes’s legs would one day heal, and maybe the Mets weren’t light years away from the big time after all.

Fans get giddy. Fans want it now. But the people entrusted to run a major league team have to stay clear of these capricious whims. The only hope fans had in coming to Shea was the stockpiling of talent in the minors and the patience such faith requires. Now it seemed so close. They just had to keep doing the right thing a little longer. It was almost a blessing when the team went 8-13 as the trading deadline neared. The Mets were six games out in the division and seven out in the wild card, let other teams mortgage their future. We were smart, we’d have the last laugh. David Wright was already in New York and Scott Kazmir wasn’t far away now…

I was driving with the family in Maine, monitoring the come-and-go signal from The Sporting News radio affiliate as the days dwindled down in the trading deadline. I had heard through the crackling airwaves that the Mets had gotten Kris Benson—it seemed inevitable—from the Pirates for Ty Wiggington (despite some prospects thrown in the only other name that rings a bell came to the Mets in that deal: Jeff Keppinger). The car was stopped—mercifully—when the frightful news came over the radio: “And the Mets have traded Scott Kazmir to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays…for Victor Zambrano.”

It was as if Jim Duquette had pushed me out of the driver’s seat and rolled the car right off a cliff and into the frigid Atlantic. That would have made about as much sense as what he did in his cozy office; his minions applauding after trading away the greatest asset for a handful of Zambrano beans. Immediately after the deal, the Mets were swept in Atlanta, then swept Milwaukee with Zambrano getting the first of his 10 career victories as a Met, followed by a Cards sweep in St. Louis. Bob Murphy died in Florida during this schizophrenic road trip. It was one of the most depressing weeks in Mets history, and there are many to choose from.

After a brief period where they actually won a handful of series, the Mets went just 3-18 between August 22 and September 12, including a 1-10 homestand where even Art Howe could not even claim that his team “battled.”

I was at Shea the night it was leaked that Art Howe had been fired yet allowed to continue ruining, I mean running, the club. By then, even that bit of welcome news wasn’t going to cut it. Sitting in free yet lousy seats at Shea—a make good by the club after enduring a downpour in August—I watched what is probably the last complete-game shutout I will ever witness at Shea. That it was by Kris Benson made me livid. That Zambrano had already spent a month of his Mets tenure on the disabled list while Kazmir had been called to the majors by Tampa Bay and that night was beating the Red Sox at Fenway, made my blood boil and mouth run. I demanded Duquette’s head on top of Howe’s. And I’d been a big fan of Duke’s up until the fateful afternoon of July 30. My friend Paul pointed out the common belief that Duquette had only been acting under orders from the front office or Rick Peterson or Satan…. “It’s Duquette’s job to say, ‘I’m the GM and I cannot authorize that move. You’ll have to fire me before I will make that deal.’ If the Mets fired him, he’d have a job in a month for showing his integrity and intelligence.” They fired him anyway and, like Howe, kept him around.

The Wilpons brought in Omar Minaya off the sinking deck of the SS Expo. They’d wanted Omar to share GM duties with Duquette the previous winter and he’d turned down that offer. Now Omar would replace Duquette and be given full autonomy…and the company checkbook. This was the first bit of good news from the Mets since the sweep of the Yankees on Independence Day.

As was the case in the third game of many series during the Art Howe era, the Mets went into that first Sunday in October trying to avoid a sweep. They were swept 12 times in 2004, with half of those coming at Shea. Only the Expos, after paddling for three years in the open sea without any type of flotation device from MLB, could protect the Mets from the basement. If last rights for the Expos franchise couldn’t be given in Montreal—they drew 31,000 for the last game there—Shea was the most appropriate substitute. Surely, it must have been an error in the MLB scheduling software.

Shea had been where the Expos had been born on April 8, 1969. The first great season at Shea began with the ultimate indignity, losing 11-10 to an expansion team just when it seemed like the Mets would finally win on Opening Day. Now it would be perfect symmetry if the Expos could end with a win in the city that had just taken its general manager, in the home of MLB corporate, in a city where even on an NFL Sunday proper media coverage would be given the first franchise to move since the Nixon Administration.

I have never gone to Shea hoping another team would win. I can’t say I did that day either, but I wouldn’t have minded.

As it turned out, four current Mets played that day: two on each team. Ryan Church and Endy Chavez wore the Montreal logo for the last time in the heat of battle and neither had a hit. Jose Reyes finally played shortstop and looked like a free man who’d spent the season with his hamstrings tied to second base. He stole three bases, including third base while the pitcher still had the ball, sprawling into third base like Superman without so much as a throw. David Wright homered and knocked in three runs as I found myself in awe of him for the first time. Despite all this, the day belonged to a journeyman.

The shorthanded, shortsided Mets didn’t have enough catchers and Mike Piazza still manned first base. So Todd Zeile, who had wanted to catch one last time and had already done so during a doubleheader in Pittsburgh, caught the last game of the year. Did a great job working with Tom Glavine—one run in six innings in the season-ending game against a last-place team. Wow, way to be, Tom.

And in the sixth inning, with two men on, Zeile pulled one deep to left for a home run. Though it felt like Ted Williams was the only man to have done it before, 41 others had homered in their final at-bat in the majors.  While Mike Cubbage (1981), Chris Jelic (1990), and Chico Walker (1993) had previously achieved it as Mets—plus one-time manager Joe Frazier as an Oriole—most players aren’t aware when it’s their last at-bat. Zeile, who’d been on 11 clubs, including two stints as a Met, knew his time was up. The question was, did Art Howe know?

Lame Duck Art had made his peace with 44-year-old soft-tossing John Franco, whom he finally brought in after not using him for a month. Howe called on Franco with two down in the eighth to relieve Heath Bell (remember him?) and throw his last pitch as a Met. Church popped it up and Zeile, who’d begun his career as a highly-ranked receiver, squeezed one last pop wearing the equipment. But as the bottom of the eighth was about to commence, Zeile stood in the on-deck circle. What was Howe doing? Was he going to mess this up, too? A career-capping moment of relative statistical uniqueness blundered by Art Howe? Was there anything he couldn’t ruin?

Suddenly Zeile turned his back to the field and the fans responded with a warm ovation. A guy whose arrival as the replacement for beloved John Olerud had been cause for a dashboard punch in December 1999 now had me orchestrating his final stage exit. Scrappy Danny Garcia stepped out of the dugout and singled in what turned out to be his last at-bat in the majors. See, most people never know when it’s coming.

Garcia scored the last run ever against the Expos, crossing home plate on a single by Wilson Delgado in his final major league at bat. Francis Beltran, in his final outing in the majors, got the last out by an Expos hurler, retiring Craig Brazell on a groundout (Brazell would re-emerge for a handful of at-bats as a 2007 Royal). Joe Hieptas made his first and last appearance behind the plate in the majors (though he’s since been converted to pitcher in the minors, so ya never know). It all pointed to the ultimate snuffing: putting down a franchise.

RFK was being readied for baseball. Les Expos would go National—like the Winnipeg Jets moving to Phoenix—and the encyclopedia would read Montreal and Washington as a continuous franchise, but the remaining Shea crowd of 33,569 inched forward in their seats for an otherwise meaningless top of the ninth in an 8-1 game. Paul and I had moved down to the front row, complimentary Smallville T-shirts in hand, to see a baseball death up close.

Bartolome Fortunato, the throw-in in the Kazmir trade, readied for the end of the ‘spos. He resembled his partner in transaction crime, Victor Zambrano, being victimized by an error on a grounder by Einar Diaz and compounding it by walking Brendan Harris. Then he fanned Josh Labandeira, ending the 14 at-bat career of one of the few callups allowed Montreal by MLB, and forever relinquishing the name Labandeira to an average of .000. Maicer Itzuris followed with a strikeout. All that stood between the Expos and oblivion was a skinny outfielder who’d played 273 games the final two years of Montreal baseball: Endy Chavez. This was no Shea folk hero to be or even the National catastrophe who’d be traded to the Phillies seven games into his Washington experience. This was inevitability batting.

Like many great and ordinary moments in baseball history, there was a grounder to second (Keppinger), a throw to first (Brazell), and it was over. This public execution of a baseball team had little drama and only meant something to those who realized what they were witnessing. It just ended like any other one-sided game. If not for the proliferation of Expos regalia and more tri-colored hats than I’d seen on both trips to Montreal combined, you would’ve just thought it was a fourth-place team beating a fifth-place club. Maybe that’s all there was. But as someone who has printed out thousands of pages of gray matter, proofed and counted the lines for Total Baseball and The Baseball Encyclopedia, it had to mean something more. Surely.

No team had relocated in the 30 seasons I’d been following baseball. And now I could only hope I would live a long time and it would never happen again. Not to a rival they’d played—not counting the seven San Juan games—a total of 608 times (305 -303, Mets; now that’s an even rivalry). Montreal would become that story you’d tell younger fans about in the future. How you saw Andre Dawson in his Expos prime or Gary Carter before his knees were shot or Pedro pre-Red Sox, Dennis Martinez and his big chaw, British Columbia’s own Larry Walker; Woodie Fryman, Jose Morales, Rodney Scott; Delino DeShield, Bombo Rivera, Razor Shines; Bryn Smith, Archi Cianfrocco, Jerry White; Barry Foote, Steve Renko, Chris Nabholz; Ken Singleton, Tim Foli, Mike Jorgensen, all sent north for Le Grande Orange, Rusty Staub. The high-pitched PA announcer at Jarry Park shouting, “Pete Ma-ck-anin,” or that guy with the long plastic horn blowing it during an Expos game as if he were stranded in the Alps and calling for help. A smoked meat sandwich and a Molson from a vendor. But the Expos no longer lived in the now, they only lived in the books cluttering up my office. Their 5,702 games, 2,755 wins, 2,943 losses, and four ties all part of the record, nothing more. A grim reminder even as Paul and I played catch near the soon to be eliminated grassy knoll in the Shea parking lot, that our park would one day cease to exist. Our favorite players would join the paper lives of past greats in books, kept alive only by memory and Mets Classic on a network that was still just a plan on someone’s computer.

It was an up close reminder that all things do end. We know all about that in life, but in baseball, the constant game, the reminder was jarring. For those of us who mercifully missed the relocation of the Dodgers and Giants, this was a shot across the bow; a memo not to be so smug with anyone else’s memories. What if they were your Expos, your Warren Cromartie, your Stan Papi....Baseball giveth and baseball taketh away. Ash bat to ash bat, diamond dust to diamond dust. Game without end.

Teams relocate. Fans do not.

April 28, 2008

Crocodile Cheers

Only in New York can you get a hard time even when you finally do something right. Here’s Carlos Delgado, off to a horrible start, finally hitting a pair of home runs—the first time a Met has done so this year—and he enters the dugout to receive congratulations from his teammates. Fans have booed him mercilessly, writers have called him “done,” and the wishful thinking is that he’ll do the right thing and retire so the Mets can throw that money at someone else. For a day, at least, he looked like that guy we saw in all those Baseball Tonight highlights circling the bases wearing a Blue Jays uniform. The same New York fans, who get off on booing anything that moves, now demand that he come out and bask in their latest capricious reaction. Carlos stays in the dugout. Good for him.

I’m not a fan of Carlos Delgado. Was glad that the Marlins, who should have known they were about to embark on another player giveaway spree, kept the Mets from getting him in 2005. Was annoyed that the Mets traded for him in 2006. Yet was, like everyone else, pleased when he made the ’06 Mets lineup hum for the first time in what seemed like forever. And wished he was boiled in oil for comments about being “bored” as the Mets were melting like plastic soldiers in a fireplace during The End in ’07. To prove my point, I was on record with the Destroy Delgado Bandwagon in the 2008 preview article in Meet the Mets: “Cocky, outspoken players are great when a club is winning, but after what the Mets and their fans endured in the fall, many wish his contract were already up instead of paying him $16 million this year.” Now, like the fickle boobirds who cause their neighbors to cringe, I’m joining in the flip flopping.

Go Carlos. Finish that overgenerous contract in style. Hit as many home runs as you can and never come out for a curtain call. Don’t tip your cap to the crowd. There was this guy named Ted Williams who didn’t do it at Fenway Park until three decades after he retired. You, sir, are no Ted Williams, but Ted would tell you if he were around today, you’ve got Moxie.

April 22, 2008

You Complete Me

September 6, 2006. That’s 206 games ago. And counting. That is the last time the Mets had a complete game. If you look at the raw numbers from last year, you’ll see that Tom Glavine and John Maine each had one, but that is a mirage. Rain cancelled those games after six and five innings, respectively. Last year marked the first time in Mets history the club went an entire year without a nine-inning complete game. The 1962 Mets, the worst baseball team since the 19th century, had 43 complete games and only 40 wins. The most CGs the Mets have had are 53 in 1976, the last full year of the Seaver-Matlack-Koosman triumvirate.

There are many reasons why the complete game has gone down the tubes throughout baseball. Stronger hitters, technology that allows hitters to better study pitchers, overprotecting young arms, Quest Tech, Tony La Russa, whatever…throw 100 pitches—120 absolute max—and you’re done. Add in the pitcher’s spot coming up in the National League lineup and there’s even less chance for a complete game. So? The lack of complete games kept the                 Fans overthrow the bullpen in 1986.              Mets from winning the division in 2007. And it may keep it from happening again.

Through the first 19 games of the season, the Mets are averaging almost five pitchers per game. On Saturday, a day the Mets held the Phillies to two runs and won, they used seven pitchers. Through 19 games, three relievers have already made double-digit appearances. Duaner Sanchez, who just came back from 21 months off for shoulder injuries, has already been used four times and warmed up another night. Oliver Perez, the last Met to throw that elusive nine-inning complete game in ’06—and that is probably attributable to his pitching the nightcap in a doubleheader (the last single admission twinbill at Shea)—has twice been lifted in the sixth inning with a shutout in 2008. I’ll gladly extol the virtues of the manager and his staff when the Mets go nine innings, but it’s getting harder and harder to imagine that scenario.

One day it would be great if someone stole Rick Peterson’s pitch counter and a guy pitching a great game stayed in there. If a Met had a no-hitter going, would he get the chance to finish the game? It’s hypothetical. And I’m not only picking and Rick and Willie. Through the first three weeks of the season, there have been just 10 complete games among all 30 teams. But if you’re going to count pitches, for God’s sake, also count how many pitchers you’re using and how often they’re going in. Complete games don’t matter nearly as much as complete meltdowns like last September. That’s something none of us can ever see again.

April 17, 2008

You’re Kidding Me

Saw Gary Carter last night. Not gloving a Bobby Ojeda pitch in an SNY Classic, but in person. He actually knew who I was. Kind of. Jon Springer and I, along with Original Mr. Met Dan Reilly and former Brooklyn Dodger George “Shotgun” Shuba, handled the overflow at Bookends in Ridgewood, NJ, for the Carter signing of his book, Still a Kid at Heart: My Life in Baseball and Beyond. It was written with Phil Pepe, the longtime newspaperman. He wanted a cut of our royalty for the night as we served as David Johanson to Carter’s The Who, to borrow another great act that once played at Shea.

As I’ve gotten older, I think Gary Carter got a bad rap from a lot of people in New York. In the rough and tumble 1980s, the reporters and the public seemed to want their stars a little skewed; ready, willing, and able to knock back a few cold ones, smoke if they needed to, and dabble in other pursuits that ended late in the night. Carter played the toughest position in baseball. He was extremely good at it. The best in the National League once Johnny Bench, who also wrote the foreword in Carter’s book, relinquished the mantle. While there is some debate as to whether Carter should have worn an “M” on his cap on his Hall of Fame plaque for the now forgotten Montreal franchise, he accepted the choice that was made for him by the Hall poobahs. And for all the hellions on that 1986 Mets, he’s your lone Hall of Famer. That’s a lesson for you kids out there (though I still like to pretend I’m too young to make such a statement).

After the large crowds at Bookends had dispersed and we had talked to a few people still a little dazed from meeting such a courteous Hall of Famer—and the man who snapped a slump to win Game 5 of the ’86 NLCS and whose single started the World Series rally that will ne’er be forgotten among the Mets faithful—Jon Springer (he’s doing a Mets by the Numbers signing solo Thursday, April 17, at 7:30 p.m. at Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s Word Books) walked with me down the stairs to do what hundreds had done earlier. I brought along his book for signing as well as a gift, a copy of 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, after I checked what number he’d been listed under in the countdown. Number 43 was certainly respectful. It was behind iconic teammates Keith Hernandez (14) and Mookie Wilson (32), plus manager Davey Johnson (16) and a dual entry at 34 for two casualties of that mid-1980s nightlife: Doc and Straw. Carter would have ranked even higher if he’d been a Met for longer than five years. (John Olerud, one of my all-time favorite Mets, didn’t even make the list because he was on the club for just three fantastic years.)

Jon Springer, who carried a copy of Mets by the Numbers, and I were introduced to the Hall of Famer and we made our offering. That’s when Carter said that Bill Ames from Triumph Books, the company that published 100 Things as well as Carter’s new book, had already been given him a copy of 100 Things. He was looking forward to reading it. It made me very glad I’d purchased his book and descended the stairs to meet him before he packed up. I look forward to reading his tale told by, as the book jacket even says, “an irresistibly upbeat personality.” That personality rubbed off on me. Sometimes there’s a little letdown after these events on the inevitably long drive home through the dark, but meeting many nice people at Bookends, plus an audience with Kid, a nice supper at Ridgewood’s multi-TVed “The Office,” and viewing the Mets’ decisive rally on the screen between bites of grouper made everything seem bright in Carter Country. The time just flew.

April 1, 2008

Through with Luck

Over the years I’ve given up many habits I used to live and die by and today I’ve got one that might be the hardest of all to break: Luck. Sometime after two o’clock last September 30, I realized it was all over. If there is such a thing as luck, I’d used mine up. At least for baseball. I hope whatever personal luck or fate or whatever there may be remains intact to keep me from getting hit by a bus, from getting on the wrong flight, biting into a McE. Coli patty, and so on. The Mets will have to go on without any of my charms and talismans. All except this little thing I saw at a shop counter around Christmas that simply reads, “Lucky Baseball Stone.” I won’t skip it across a pond, but I won’t be bringing it to any games. It’ll sit here on my desk as a reminder of how foolish it all is.

I’m not getting rid of my previously “lucky” Mets stuff. I have a mountain of it and am an easy mark for any gift-giving occasion. (One day I will collect and photograph all my Mets stuff in one place, but such a photo may have to be taken from the Met Life blimp.) I have and will continue to wear this stuff with pride and purpose despite living in an area that remains supremely Yankified. Yet the inhabitants are not as universal or as smug as when I arrived here eight years ago. The freedom fighters are making gains in the northland.

I will, however, forgo wearing this shirt on this day because they won, not wearing that on that day because they lost, or doing anything because I think it might somehow help squeak out a Mets win. I even walked into Flushing Bay in 1993—with another half-insane friend—to prove some kind of point and pay off some foolish bet after the Mets finished behind an expansion team. (The Marlins cannot lose enough times for me.) Like someone overcoming a more serious problem, just admitting these things in my past makes me feel foolish and low. But I did all that. And more.

As part of my change, I also must say that I have nothing to do with the New York Mets’ fortunes…other than their finances what with the tickets, the cable bill, and people buying me all this blue and orange stuff. Any thoughts regarding my ability to change their luck are nonsensical rigmarole. I’m sure many have been tempted to think this way in moments of weakness and insecurity. Sitting on a couch, with the club perhaps thousands of miles away, as the batter steps out and the pitcher gets the sign again and each second piles on another and the count is 3-2 and the score is 2-1 and the inning reads last…it is hard not to try to will some influence into a powerless situation. Carlos Beltran looks at strike three no matter what I am doing 150 feet away. It is a great curveball not great magic.

I can quote A.E. Housman and decry, “Ter[r]ence [Long], This Is Stupid Stuff.” www.bartleby.com/123/62.html. While Mithridates died old, a ninth inning can be a thousand deaths: the end of the seat worn to a nub, the hands together, nails chewed to bits, “And here’s the 3-2 pitch…fouled back again.” It is ripe for bargains made with any who might listen. Just make it the way I want it, you mumble. Shall I pace right to left? If it so pleases. Shall I take my hat and punch it? (You may remember how well it worked for Charles Emerson Winchester in that M*A*S*H unit in 1951. www.tv.com/mash/a-war-for-all-seasons/episode/43403/recap.html) Shall I move to this seat for better mojo?

It doesn’t work. I finally came to this cruel, harsh realization last year. I always knew it didn’t work, but I didn’t accept it until my personal and professional future was on the slab and the hooded brute with the axe got into position. I learned the executioner’s name just before he struck the blow. Glavine.

When I found myself in the church where I was baptized, lighting candles on the morning of September 30—and I don’t live near there—I realized I had a problem. When I was stuck in traffic, having rushed from a family gathering to a memorial service, and tuned in during the second inning to catch the clipped bits of news spaced out by Howie Rose to let people such as me slowly become aware of the horrible revelation. “The Marlins with an 8-1 lead…” It all ended right there for me. The game. The season. The lucky life. Kid stuff over. At 42. Oh, the humanity.

I should have learned it while listening to Bob Murphy with my Tootle-Oop Radio dangling off the handlebars when the Dodgers scored three in the ninth to beat the Mets in…you pick the year under Torre the Beleaguered. But there were so many other signs of hope. Boldly putting on the record “Give Me Shelter” in a friend’s dorm room moments before the Mets rallied to tie Game 7 in 1986, the rally-inducing chicken wings, the cup with the last bit of beer that we passed around like chalice in extra inning in the Todd Pratt game. It rings as false now as the story of Pratt the backup hero who turned up a steroid cheat. I’ll forever take the win and the feeling that day, but the man who performed the deed is no longer a hero in my eyes. As empty as the cup that hit the ground as ball cleared the wall.

So we’re flying without a net here. No more lucky stuff. Just stuff. I hope I can follow through. It won’t be easy. Wish me luck.

March 29, 2008

Ten Years After

I had a rant prepared about the about cutting of Ruben Gotay for Fernando Tatis, but then I saw something that made it seem like small potatoes, which is probably what it is. Greg Spira sent me a link from the jphillips41 trove of old Mets telecasts and it stopped me cold. It was the 1979 Old-Timers introductions, in two parts.

While 1979 can be numbered among the three darkest years in Mets history (1977 and 1993 are in the running in my Mets lifetime) the appreciation shown by the fans for the ’69 team is so heartfelt it truly moved me. This from the same year that the Mets drew the fewest people of any full schedule, where Torre’s Terribles had to win their last six to avoid 100 losses, where the Payson family ownership went through its final death throes, where Mettle the Mule was paraded on the field before games, where a winning club was still five years away. I wanted to climb through the screen and give a hearty handshake…not to the 1969 Old-Timers, but to the fans who filled up that dead place (the 28,254 take that day against the Giants was the biggest crowd of the year). And I would have thrown my arms around Bob Murphy and Lindsey Nelson, ‘cause it just ain’t the same anymore without ‘em. Then I’d have been escorted off the field, not unlike the “beauties” in their 1890s dresses brining the old gang from the dugout to the diamond. I would have had as much right to be on the field as Chico Esquela, aka Garrett Morris of “Saturday Nigh Live”—the second No. 5 on the field along with “The Glider” Ed Charles—and Morris trying berry, berry hard to hand the beauty his phone number or some written message that probably couldn’t have been written on any banner.

Murph presides over it all, wincing as the planes fly over at a rate as if they’re using LaGuardia as the staging point for a bombing run on Bremen. It’s almost eerie seeing Murph dressed in white suit and vest, like an angel behind the microphone. It’s hard not to swallow a little bit as the widows of Gil Hodges and GM Johnny Murphy come out, but harder still to see Chuck Cottier lead the young widow of Dan Frisella, who’d died from an accident two years earlier at age 31. Agee and Cleon are there. The still-active Kranepool is the only Met lined up with his name on the back (they’d just started putting the names on the uniforms, though it would have been far better if they’d remained anonymous). The best players of that group—Seaver, Ryan, Koosman, and McGraw—are all toiling in other cities instead of doffing cheap mesh Mets hats.

It is moments like this that I’ll miss when Shea is torn down. Where Shea basked in its greatest triumphs even as it suffered through one of its most humiliating years. The retired colonel parading down Main Street with his medals even as his shoe has a huge hole in it. I wait for these moments to appear again on SNY. Or a couple of old highlight films. Or a Mets-Pirates game from 19-whatever. In the meantime, I’ll watch true Mets fan Sue Simmons on Channel 4 Saturday at 7:30, with NBC-TV giving us what should be the first in long line of video toasts to the Big Shea. Shea deserves it, but you know what? We deserve it even more.

[Since I wrote this piece and Blair tried to put it up on the site, many of these precious Mets moments have been pulled off YouTube--sounds vaguely familiar--making it even more imperative for the powers that be to please humor us and put this kind of thing on SNY from time to time.]

Takin’ Care of Business

No, this doesn’t refer to the Mets’ theme song, courtesy of Bachman Turner Overdrive, that went off the tracks in October 2006 and then was used again as a theme song in 2007. Last September, it not only went off the tracks, it careened off a cliff, landed in the middle of an oil refinery, and burned the surrounding countryside to a horrifying crisp. Maybe they’ll try a new tune this year, like “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

The purpose here is to make note of the business end. There’s a few events coming up and I just want to make official note of them here. These events will be listed in greater detail in the News & Events section.

March 30, Sunday, 10:40 a.m. Interview on 1050 ESPN Radio with Jody McDonald.

April 5, Saturday, 3 p.m.: Bayside Queens Barnes & Noble, 23-80 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY 11360; 718-224-1083. storelocator.barnesandnoble.com/storedetail.do?store=2562                                                                                           At Bell Boulevard and 26th Avenue in the Bay Terrace Shopping Center, 1/4 mile east of the Clearview Expressway.

Mets game in Atlanta starts an hour later.

April 6, Sunday: 1 p.m. Mets by the Numbers Launch Party. Stouts, New York City www.stoutnyc.com                               133 West 33^rd Street, New York, NY 10001

April 8, Opening Day: Not really a book event. But something not to be missed. Bring the transistor radio to work. Whatever it takes.

April 16, Wednesday: Bookends, Ridgewood, NJ. www.powerpg.net/bk. Jon Springer and I will be signing Mets by the Numbers. Gary Carter, original Mr. Met Dan Reilly, and Brooklyn Dodger George Shuba will also be on premises to sign. Diverse lineup.

March 25, 2008

Morning Has Broken…Bats

I was groggily getting out of bed this morning after working too late when the 20:20 Update on “Boomer and Carton” on WFAN had this nugget of information. “Top of the fifth inning, Oakland leads the Red Sox, 2-0…” I was up like a shot.

I did many of the same morning rituals: buttering toast for the kids, getting something to eat, trying to get the boy dressed, and getting the eldest on the bus. Only this time, instead of doing it to Pinky Dinky Doo or Cyberchase (pbskids.org/cyberchase - an excellent kids program for teaching math concepts, plus they had a day at Shea last year), I was making the morning ready for major league baseball. It was a rough start, though, as the first thing I heard was Bud Selig being interviewed by exiled Mets blowhards Steve Phillips and Gary Thorne (that’s a little harsh on Gary, yes, who did some good work with Murph on the radio, but the best thing about him in the Channel 9 booth was that when he spoke, it was harder for Tim McCarver to talk). Initially, I thought I’d slept too long and I hadn’t heard about Bud Selig finding the cure for cancer on the flight to Japan. It seemed that way with the Bud-man taking credit for nearly everything this side of Ted Williams hitting .406. Good thing that the only ballplayers to have ever taken performance enhancing drugs were all listed in the Mitchell Report. And baseball will soon become a TV-only—and radio-only—form of entertainment for those who don’t fit MLB’s upscale demographics.

Mercifully, though, the inning ended quickly and I got to see the first meaningful commercials of the new season. Ideally, Bud went somewhere in the Tokyo Dome where people didn’t speak English and nodded approvingly. That’s what the Commish-for-life wants us all to do.

Red Sox Nation is now fully international, sort of like the Roman Empire, colonizing new lands. Better them than the Hank’s Yanks, who were the first team to play in Japan. Wait, there was someone before then…having a flashback…Mike Hampton walking in the first run of the year…oh, yeah, the 2000 Mets. Apparently Bobby Valentine forgot, too. A brief post-game interview with the manager of that first Japanese invasion (along with Cubbie Dusty Baker, who inexplicably has a job stateside while Bobby V. doesn’t) saw Valentine complain about the timing and purpose of the U.S. opener in Japan. The Mets and Cubs did not seemingly disrupt the Japanese baseball schedule in 2000, though by playing at 5 a.m., they certainly disrupted mine. The Saux now have a 6 a.m. baseball wakeup call, but in one of the great ironies, the same kids who couldn’t stay up to celebrate with their club in the wee hours of the morning in Denver last October had to leave for school before the Boston rally in the opener. They couldn’t have done this on Monday, when every kid had the day off? Bud’s always thinking about the future. It was, however, sweet that for once, the West Coasters, for whom postseason baseball has been scheduled for many years, couldn’t see the game unless they gave up sleep entirely. As Robert DeNiro teases the Feds constantly trailing him in Goodfellas, “Come on, f---oes. Let’s go for a ride. I keep ’em up all f---in’ night.” Apologies to D. Bird, a western Saux fan not getting much sleep, presumably.

(Found the shooting script for Goodfellas on line at dailyscript.com/scripts/goodfellas.html. To quote Hendry--Ray Liotta--just before Tommy gets whacked, “It’s like a license to steal.” Only we’re stealing great dialogue from my favorite film.)

So what’s this got to do with the Mets. Not much. But I’ll be in front of the tube Wednesday at dawn to see Saux-A’s in what’s sure to be a more lackluster game. I’ll watch almost any sporting event televised at 8 a.m., even if I wouldn’t watch if it were on during more normal hours: British Open, Olympics, even the World Cup. Great stuff to eat cereal to. Beats the pants off Pinky Dinky Do.

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A quick note of thanks to anyone who’s been buying the Mets books on Amazon. 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die reached the top 10 for all sports books yesterday. I must mention that because it’ll be gone quicker than that Oakland rally in the 10th inning. Anyone willing to put their feelings—good or bad—about the book in an Amazon or B&N review will receive my undying appreciation.

Mets by the Numbers outsold 100 Things and Meet the Mets in a spirited battle at the annual New York SABR meeting at the library over the weekend. Thanks to all who came, who saw, who bought. Nice to meet Mets professor Dana Brand (metsfanbook.com), uniform guru Michael Cesarano (ultimatemets.com/uniforms.html), Henry Chadwick biographer Andrew Schiff (henrychadwick.com/news.html), On the Sportslines hosts Steve Ferguson and Pedro Hazel Jr., and all who chatted up Jon Springer (mbtn.net), Greg Spira, and me. And always good to see the Longobardis. The story of how Lou stumbled across a piece of the Shea fence months after the pandemonium of the ’69 Miracle—a tale featured in 100 Things—is one of those Mets stories that will outlive Shea.

Thanks to Joe McDonald at New York Sports Day (nysportsday.com) for posting an excerpt from Meet the Mets on their site. I met Joe, who is publisher and editor-in-chief of the site, while down in Port St. Lucie. Joe and the site also work with New York Sportscene. He’s also often found in Mets Inside Pitch.

Also to Edwin Tse, a great photographer, Blue Jays fan, and rare Toronto native who doesn’t like hockey, thanks for making me his photo of the day on March 7 (edwintse.com/muse/index.html) following my brief fling with glory in the New York Times. We both survived floggings on the deck of a prisoner ship masquerading as a publishing house docked near Tarrytown a while back. We got out of there with our lives and little else. But we lived to fight another day.

March 8, 2008

It’s Alive!

Review: Mathematically Alive was shown at the Linda (the WAMC Arts Studio) last night in the state capital. Let’s get this out of the way up front, see this film. Here’s where it’s playing in the near future http://www.mathematicallyalive.com/page5aa.html or buy it on DVD. http://shop.mathematicallyalive.com/main.sc

I told the filmmakers this, I told the people in the audience this, and now, lucky you, gets to hear this again: Mathematically Alive is better than anything on SNY, except for the 1969 World Series rebroadcasts. That’s not a knock on SNY, because it’s my favorite network and they have a lot of good programming, but Mathematically Alive is an engaging film that takes the audience on a ride of events in 2006 that they know the outcome of, and the viewer still clings to hope that on the big screen, Beltran will—let’s pretend—hit a check-swing doinker over first base that drives in two runs and then “Ronnie Belliard overruns the ball…and here comes Anderson Hernandez…with the winning run. The Mets win! The Mets win the pennant!” But that’s Hollywood. This film is made in Flushing, where fans are toughened like steel in purifying fire. They go in cold, are exposed to the white heat, and are then deposited in a pile with the others. Yet the Mets fans and their hearts of steel maintain hope through the hottest flame. That’s what creates the pathos. Pathos aplenty.

When the film begins, I’m thinking, “Hey, why didn’t they ask me to be in this thing? I was there in the 1970s. I was at Shea for Dykstra’s home run. I’ve been to each of their last 21 postseason games. I’ve wa