The Almost Official Site of Mets Author Matthew Silverman

July 21, 2008

You’re My Home

This whole Shea Stadium Billy Joel thing kind of brought a little reality to this last year of the ballpark. Sitting one row and one section over in the mezzanine from where I watched the Mets of Keith and Mookie, Messy Jesse and Kid Carter, Bobby O. and HoJo, Doc, Darryl, Dykstra, and Darling, I came to the realization that Shea Stadium is indeed closing. It wasn’t the cool logo, the stories I’ve read, the things I’ve written, or the book I’m working on, but a few hours of driving music.

Speaking of driving, I’ve got to say that driving down was no problem despite all the warnings, though there was some traffic for a game at New York’s other stadium. Found a spot on the street a few blocks from Shea an hour before the show was supposed to start (because it is a musical act, of course it began an hour late). It was harder finding a score of the Mets-Reds game inside the park, but they did flash a 2-1 lead shortly before the show began. As it turned out, I’m glad they kept us in the dark about the score. I’ll take the 10 straight wins and the special lightboards on the field showing montages of Endy, Casey, McDowell, and other Amazin’s.

I wish they’d hire Billy Joel to choreograph who should pull down the “days remaining signs” on the wall in center. Someone who can get Paul McCartney and Roger Daltrey, singers in the signature acts in Shea’s rock heyday, to come out for that last night, and also throws in Steven Tyler, Garth Brooks, and Tony Bennett (plus John Mayer, John Mellancamp (nee Cougar), and Don Henley in the first “Last Play at Shea”), is probably not going to be content with having a Tri-State Chrysler-Plymouth dealer unveil another number in the dwindling life of the ballpark we grew up in.

Billy Joel ceding the final song to Paul McCartney is like Billy Wagner stepping off the mound in the ninth inning on September 28 and handing the ball to Tom Seaver, with Keith Hernandez, Edgardo Alfonzo, Bud Harrelson, Howard Johnson, Cleon Jones, Mookie Wilson, and Darryl Strawberry taking the field behind him. And Jerry Grote, yes, Jerry Grote, squatting for that final pitch.

When I saw a young woman cry when Paul McCartney took the stage, I sort of felt like it had all come full circle. We may all get there yet.

And Billy Joel’s advice for anyone who gives you a hard time about enjoying his music also works as a response to anyone who wants to dismiss a person’s passion for Shea: “Eat me.”

July 16, 2008

Swing and a Long Drive

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]

#6. July 1, 2000: Fireworks!

In 2000 it got harder to go to a Mets game. For the general populace? No. Attendance increased for the sixth straight year, notching 2.8 million for the first time since 1989. The Mets were a joy to see, winning 55 times at Shea, as many as the ’86 team and just one win off the club record set in ’88. They’d even win a pennant there in 2000, the third time the place saw it live and the first where the field lived to tell the tale. All was right at Shea that year. But like getting used to Todd Zeile replacing John Olerud, the way we got to the same place would be different.

I’d taken a promotion and moved the family from one hour east of Shea to two hours north. I quickly got used to many things being different in my new home and liked the change a lot, but the drive to the ballgame was—and remains—the toughest adjustment. There is no feasible mass transit option, though it’s been tried a couple of times. So it’s a four-hour roundtrip drive. Or watch it on TV. Missing homestand after homestand was not something I was comfortable with. I’d been to two dozen games in person in 1999, experiencing the most exciting season of Northeast baseball viewing of my life. (I’d spent large chunks of ’86 and ’88 in both Colorado and Virginia, though I’d caught a fair bit of the agony and the ecstasy of those two Octobers.) The ’99 season had more drama than I think I could personally handle, and when we hit the new millennium—or didn’t hit it—I couldn’t just stop going to ballgames. With my new home, young family, and increased responsibilities, I could have cashed out, gone to one or two games a year, and started finding other interests like most real adults. Or at least content myself with watching every game on TV.

By the start of April 2000, I’d already woken up at dawn twice to see the Mets play in Japan. I’d taken the day off to go the opener on this soil and seen Baggy Pants Bell ring in with a key home run. I’d left work early on the season’s first Friday to see the Mets beat the Dodgers and receive a Gil Hodges pin. Those were the only games they won on that homestand—both by 2‑1 scores—and to get an idea of how nice the weather was, the last game of that homestand was snowed out.

I was back at Shea when the Mets won their ninth straight game on April 29. That was Ken Griffey’s first game at Shea as a Red after he’d poopooed the Mets’ overtures for a trade. It was also Frequency  night—that somewhat bizarre Hollywood tribute to the Miracle Mets and ham radio—and the Mets wore 1969 replica wool uniforms with that special yellow-ish hue that polyester just doesn’t have. Robin Ventura tore his pants sliding into third base. Guess they don’t make them like they used to. The pants, that is. If the Mets had had Ventura and his Mojo Risin’ in 1969—two years before Jim Morrision’s lyrics hit the airwaves, mind you, but join hands with me over the ham radio and feel it now—the Mets wouldn’t have traded either Nolan Ryan or Amos Otis. Now that’s worth digging out the old equipment and trying to channel Jesus and Jerry Lee Lewis. Or at least two actors and an overreaching script. But hey, how many movies do the Mets get a co-starring role in?

Arriving back from Frequency night with some guys from work to the office at 1 A.M., I then drove another 45 minutes north to the place where I was staying until the new house was ready. Long night even after a win. Then the Mets went 5‑12 and our parent company got severely splattered by the “tech bubble” bursting, making for a turbulent May. I kept my job in a company restructuring. I paid close attention to the Mets to take my mind off the fear that I’d just moved in order to be canned. Like the ballclub cliché, I took it one day at a time.

The Mets kept things interesting. Even when they lost, it was still almost the most thrilling finish I could ever expect to see. In the ninth inning against the Marlins on May 13, pitcher Mike Hampton, serving as a pinch hitter after Bobby V. ran through his bench, whacked a ball two feet wide of the foul pole with the tying run on base in a one-run game in the ninth. He struck out and the Mets lost, and by the time I reached the car I heard that Ricky Henderson, who’d incensed everyone by going into a home run trot on what turned out to be a single the previous night, had been released.

I turned a work event in the city into a night at Shea. I thought I had a long ride home? I found out that because of a makeup of a rainout the previous night, the Orioles actually travelled all the way to Baltimore to spend the night and came back the next night. They must’ve been exhausted because they lost the makeup game on a home run by Kurt Abbott. 

I rode down with Jed to meet DBird and see the Mets beat the Marlins to go 12 games over .500 and pull within two games of the Braves. I missed the John Rocker hoopla, but I was resting up for the journey the next night. The biggest test yet. Fireworks Night.

I’d gone to Fireworks Night many times and had rarely seen a good game. The Grucci Bros. Fireworks? Always top notch, but as I drove down for the first leg of the trip, the most exciting on-field Fireworks moment I could think of had occurred the previous year when Matt Franco had become the second Mets position player to pitch in a game. Rick Reed had also played outfield that final inning in a 16‑0 dusting by these very same Braves. Traffic for that game had been horrific and we got there more than an hour after the game had started. We somehow got the car onto a patch of grass only a few hundred yards from the stadium. That spot had probably been vacated by someone who couldn’t handle sitting through a 10‑0 game in the fourth, forget what the Grucci’s might be providing later in the way of pyrotechnics. 

In 2000, I decided to forego the parking problems and add two extra legs onto the journey. Jimmy Jim and I would meet near where I would stay that night in Stamford, we’d take the train to Grand Central, and then the 7 to Shea. It worked ideally—if not slowly—yet we still found ourselves on the wrong end of a blowout. We arrived inside the stadium in time to hear a collective groan of a packed house as Piazza’s error allowed the third of three runs to cross the plate on a single. What else was new? The Mets had lost 19 of their last 25 to Atlanta, including an NLCS defeat so excruciating it might have been taken as a small measure of retribution for Sherman’s March. The South was rising again at Shea.

Somehow Hampton went seven innings while trailing 5‑0. The Mets finally scored in the bottom of the inning, but Eric Cammack came in quasi-mopup role and got lit up. Jim suggested that we go. The Promise of Grucci allowed me to seem morally superior as I made a raspberry-like noise. I would not be appeased.

In the meantime, Johnny Ho, who’d driven from his office in Stamford, had finally found a spot to park somewhere beyond the World’s Fair. About the time Cammack was getting pummeled—after last call, mind you—he showed us what he carried in his cargo shorts. Two pint bottles of Jack Daniels. I ran up to report this to an usher, but finding none—it was after all, a nontipping opportunity—I bought several Coca Colas instead. The mixture of black cola and brown liquor landed in my souvenir cup and hence into my mouth. And seeing that John had to drive us home, I did better than my fair share with this not so dark liquid. In fact, the fireworks started going off early.

We three former roommates, now each married and finding ourselves at these sort of events with great inFrequency—feel the ham radio: “Do you read me, Donn Clendenon?”—and we weren’t paying a lick of attention when Don Wengert took the ball to start the bottom of the eighth. We talked right through Derek Bell’s hit, and didn’t even glance up at Fonzie’s flyout. Though it was entertaining to see Piazza get credit for an infield hit and take second when Rafael Furcal made a lousy throw. “Hotshot rookie, my ass!” Oh, yes, we were very much part of the rabble.

Ventura’s groundout scored Bell to make it 8‑2 with two outs. The stories kept coming.

“Remember when we…” Todd Zeile singled in Piazza. 8‑3.

“And then she said…” Jay Payton singled. Kerry Ligtenberg replaced Wengert, providing time to have another little sippee and a li’l bit more talky.

“And every party, you’d hide beers behind every condiment in the fridge…” Benny Agbayani walked.

“You’d stash a full cooler in the back yard…” Pinch hitter Mark Johnson walked. Zeile scored.

“The band wouldn’t play its first set until like one o’clock…” Melvin Mora walked. Payton scored. Joe McEwing came in to run for Johnson.

“The tying runs are on base.” Ligtenberg, whose name in German translated on this night to “Dousing a campfire with kerosene,” was replaced not by John Rocker but by Terry Mulholland, a starting pitcher who’d thrown 8 1/3 innings in a win two days earlier. Perhaps it was his throw day. As in throwing bundles of dry sticks into the pyre.

“Ring my Bell! Ring my goddamn Bell!” Bell walks. 8‑6. The high fives, half-hearted before, are now in earnest. One of us gets a slap in the face by accident. We can’t even tell which one of us got it.

“Yeah, Fonzie! Fonzieeeeeeee!” Alfonzo singles to left. The game is tied. The voice is cracked now. Cracked but good. Who cares?

Bobby Cox, as if in a trance or slurping from the same cup that’s made my lips moist and my throat raw, leaves Mulholland out there.

“Come on, come…yeah!!!!!!!!” Laser. Mike Piazza. Gone in a split second down the line in left. 10-run inning.

There are hugs, high fives up and down the aisle to everyone and their Aunt Bessy. And the best part of all, it is Fireworks Night. Any other game there would have been 15,000 people tops who would’ve stayed. Now it’s like one giant blanket on the lawn with even the boozy Total Baseball guy barely caring about the official scorer’s decision to award Armando Benitez a win he’d probably trade for a save; thus denying Cammack what would have been the only win of his brief major league career.

Of the handful of the 52,831 who blew off the fireworks to miss the traffic in an 8‑1 game, I can tell them that last hour on the road is the hardest. Me? I got a ride and a bed and had too much too dream last night. A Real Mets of Genius comeback. For Mr. Leaving a Great Game to Beat the Traffic Guy, even if you got home in time to watch it, everybody knows fireworks just aren’t the same on TV. This you had to drink in. Mr. Leaving a Great Game Early to Beat the Traffic Guy. Mike Piazza: Flushing, New York.

July 11, 2008 

Read and Done

Thanks to all who came down to Madison Square Park Reads and for your attention in such a busy and beautiful place. Attendance was great and would have been even greater if we’d been closer to the Shake Shack, where there seems to be a perpetual line exceeding the number of people at a Mets game in 1979. Still, looking up from the book from my perch in front of the Farragut statue with a perfect view of the Flatiron building on a perfect night is something I’ll think about for a long time. And thanks to all at Madison Square Reads who set this up and keep it going. They have a great schedule and a great time. (And if you don’t want to wait all night for a milkshake, there is a very short “B-Line” that does not allow for shakes or hot food, but I got a provocative and tasty float that I sipped while listening to Scott Pitoniak’s reading about the Old Ball Orchard in the South Bronx.)

Overdue in this space is a mention of the Gary, Keith and Ron site that raises money for charity. It is obviously named after the Mets announcing trio that makes any game a treat. Their rain delay discussion about the state of pitching during the Mets-Giants game was the most insightful and interesting dialogue that I have heard on this city’s airwaves, which seem more concerned about Madonna’s religious influence—no, this isn’t a Renaissance painting we’re discussing—than they are about the slow drain that the babying of pitchers is having on the game we follow so intently.

Anyway, if you haven’t checked out Gary, Keith and Ron’s site lately, they have some new merchandise, which I bought on Wednesday and it arrived the next day. All this while planning they planned the final stages of the group’s first outing at Shea for the day game against San Francisco. And if you contribute to this worthy cause, you could go to a future game and meet the broadcasting triumvirate that is as good as this game has seen since these three kings.

July 8, 2008

Madison Square Park Gets Blue and Orange July 10

A few months ago I received one of the most surprising unsolicited emails in my life. No, it was not for Viagra or some other Balm of Gilead from cyberspace, but this was an extremely legitimate request to do a reading at Madison Square Park as part of the Madison Square Reads series. I immediately said yes, of course, and then picked out several things from 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die and something from Mets by the Numbers to read. As with everything in life and time, that far, far away event is fast approaching: Thursday, July 10, at 6:30 p.m. at the park.

Don’t know about the park or haven’t been in a long time? The park is a six-acre oasis of green encompassing a square (not surprisingly) at Madison Avenue, 23rd Street, 26th Street, and Fifth Avenue. Here’s some other historical stuff I learned on the park’s informative web site.

--To begin on topic, Madison Square Park is considered by some to be birthplace of baseball. Although Hoboken gets a lot of street cred from those who insist the game has to have a single specific “born-on date,” Alexander Cartwright formed his New York Knickerbockers at Madison Square in 1845. About 115 years later, Casey Stengel said he was overjoyed at being named the first manager of the Knickerbockers. I’m pretty sure he meant the Mets, but it could be awfully tricky to figure out the Old Perfessor’s meaning when he got to talking.

--I know that the park is not where the current Madison Square Garden is located, but the park was home to the first two incarnations of the world’s most oft-rebuilt arena.

--Madison Square Park has been a public space since 1686.

--The park was not named for Oscar Madison, the fabled New York sportswriter, but rather for the fourth President of the United States, James Madison. I guess that makes sense, too.

--It was among one of the most elite New York neighborhoods in the 19th century. The kind of place O. Henry used as a setting for some of the swells in his brilliant short stories that used a formula to nearly as successful an end as P.T. Barnum, history’s favorite huckster, who hosted his little circus just north of the square in 1873.

--The Statue of Liberty kept the home fires burning in the park. The big lady’s arm resided there for six years to raise funds to get the rest of her aloft.

--The park was home to the first community Christmas tree, in 1912.

--The park was restored a few years ago and now features lush lawns and has many of the elements of its 19th century design, plus a beautiful fountain and benches in the style of the World’s Fair.

It should be a beautiful night to gaze at the Flatiron Building and think about the way things used to be in the park, the city, the game, and with the team Casey christened. Anyone who works around there or would just like a fun, quick, and free activity in the city—Borders is selling books, I must add—please come on down. Fellow Triumph Books author Scott Pitoniak will also talk about Memories of Yankee Stadium, but to paraphrase the words of the man whose statue we’ll be speaking in front of—Civil War hero Admiral David Farragut—“Damn the Yankees, full speed ahead.” Bring the kiddies, bring the wife to Mets night at the park of Madison, Cartwright, Barnum, and Farragut. Let’s knock this out of the park.

June 30, 2008

Shea You: Getting Lonely, Getting Old

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]

#7. October 4, 2006: You’re Out. And You’re Out!

An hour into the opening game of the first postseason series at Shea Stadium in six years, a boy about 10 stands near a sink in the crowded bathroom, his dad beaming and close by. The kid is talking to everyone in sight. “What about that double play by Lo Duca?” he shouts. “Have you ever seen a play like that?” It’s his first postseason game and he can’t wipe the smile off his face. You tell him to enjoy the feeling. That when you were his age it was 11 years until you saw your first postseason game. These moments are rare. You are a curmudgeon. This place makes them.

You leave the kid and his father but as you walk back into the masses, the place is alive in the early evening. People shout. Strangers high five like it’s 1999. The tumult and the shouting fill the place again. A little more than a David Wright smash away is the replacement for Shea, which has gone from state-of-the-art to seventh-oldest stadium in baseball by this, October 4, 2006. Shea is maligned from the know-it-alls who equate convenience with charm and quirky dimensions with functional history.

A few hours later, you will descend the ramp that filters everybody into the Long Island night. The posters of hugging Mets, slugging Mets, draw your eye with every shuffle of your feet. There have been a lot of wild times at this place, a lot of good and a lot of bad. Hundreds you’ve seen and thousands you haven’t. A few of them don’t even involve the Mets. But there are some you don’t want to forget when the wrecking ball turns the maligning of Shea into just memories. It’s not just your team’s home, it’s your home, too. Houses are sold, babies born, jobs come and go, and still you walk in and out of this giant slab of concrete. Maybe that’s why there’s 56,979 people are all trying to get out at the same time. As they make their slow, happy procession out of the 43-year-old venue, you think about how long it has been in coming to this day.

The last time you left the building after a postseason game you were alone on the ramp, moving quickly yet obliviously, wife in tow, unsure of what you might do next, hurrying into the Shea night. An eerie glow emitted from the stadium, but you could not look back. Like Sodom and Gomorrah. Looking back to see the stadium that the Yankees had now forever colonized into their Army of the Living Dead, along with San Diego Stadium, Dodger Stadium, Candlestick Park, Crosley Field, County Stadium, Ebbets Field, Sportsman’s Park, Wrigley Field, and where it all began, the Polo Grounds. All these great stadiums—well, maybe great doesn’t apply in every case—were forever hijacked by the Yankees as a celebration board. A place where their seed was spilled. If you’d owned the team, you’d have asked the bishop, a priest, those nuns who used to hang out at Shea, to convene a blessing on the field before the 2001 season could commence. Bobby Valentine surely could’ve gotten someone.

I was in the car for the whole perverse coronation in 2000. Numb. And far from comfortable. Only the radio tuned to WFAN and Bob Murphy could talk you through it. If Murph can endure this, so can you, so can anybody. You listen to Murph until he goes off the air. The office the next day is like death.

Much has happened in that time. Bobby V., who seemed like he could take the most talentless Mets team and mold it into a contender, had a bad year and lost out when Fred Wilpon backed the wrong man. Everyone associated with the Mets lost out as it went from Valentine to Howe to Randolph. Anything was better than Art Howe. You always had to have faith that things would work out, but you weren’t wrong about Howe. No one was wrong about him. Only the owner.

Again the team was broken down and built back up. Free agents arrived in new tax brackets and toting new slogans. David Wright and Jose Reyes came into their own. Pedro truly lit up Shea when he wasn’t in the doctor’s office. Trades brought Carlos Delgado and Paul Lo Duca from Florida, you questioned it then and you’d question it later, but 2006 belonged to these two. Billy Wagner came to sew up what had been too, too many ugly ninth innings. You winced at the Duaner Sanchez for Jae Seo deal and also at Xavier Nady for Mike Cameron, and winced again at the Nady for Roberto Hernandez deal after Sanchez’s taxi accident, scoffing at the washed-up Oliver Perez tossed in by Pittsburgh. All proof that your place is in the stands. He gets Shawn Green’s contract for nothing and Guillermo Mota for less than nothing. Omar Minaya knows his stuff. His trades are all one-way deals, you just never know which way they’ll end up going. Though when he dumps the annoying Bensons for young John Maine and inconsistent Jorge Julio and later foists Julio on the Diamondbacks for Orlando Hernandez, it doesn’t take a genius to see which way those deals are heading. In Omar we trust.

You watch on television during the thrilling extra-inning wins, you watch as Wright’s brilliantly-turned double play buries the Phillies for good. In June. In June! You hold your breath at every infrequent two-game losing streak, but there is nothing to fear. Even a three-game sweep to Nady’s Pirates works out because you have tickets for that Monday night game. At Shea.

You meet people from your former job from hell at Shea. An extra person buys a ticket at the game and you do the old stub switcheroo and the only empty field level seat is right next to you and the fifth man sits right down. Jose Valentin, off the scrap heap, looking like he should’ve been cut in April, homers twice. Steve Trachsel, the only straggler from the Bobby V. regime, wins the clincher. You leave the stadium moments before Lo Duca and Wright come out and spray down the fans. It’s all right, you say. It’s a long drive home and you’ll be back for Game 1 of the Division Series.

You’ve been busy in the days leading up to the game, writing versions of Mets past for a past-deadline book. You hear something about El Duque, but you don’t know the extent until you’re in the car, cooler full, hours before the friendly 4 p.m. start to the Division Series. Maine will now start the opener against the Dodgers. Good thing you brought beer.

If they can just get through these two games in New York, maybe split in L.A., and then you’ll have Game 5 and the full bullpen ready to go at Shea. This place can’t be the same burial grounds for overreaching dreams as 2000. It just can’t.

But it’s a beautiful fall day. Paul’s waiting for you in the Marina Lot. Boother’s calling in. Duck’s on his way from the city. You’ve all seen enough games at Shea to know the fates are fickle and uncertain by the Bay. And Maine shows promise. Throws a lot of pitches, but he has hard stuff. And balls.

Earlier in the day you’ve signed a contract for Mets by the Numbers and you take to the stadium early and make your way down the first row at Shea to take photos. Some will actually make it into the book a year into the future. But it’s just fun now seeing the bunting. The sun hits the tri-color sashes and suddenly you feel like it must’ve for that first Championship Series in 1969. The players work out on the field. Line up for the introductions. The stadium fills. You’ve underestimated the crowd. Not the size, but the intensity. Because it’s a late day start, you know there’ll be a lot of kids. Good for them. Every postseason game should start at four o’clock—EASTERN TIME—if you’re not home in time, listen on the radio, follow on the computer, whatever, but let the kids see the game. They’ll be watching long after you’re dead. You hope. Then you pray that won’t be for a long time. Then you look at the bunting some more.

The roar during the introductions is unbelievable. So what if El Duque’s out? Pedro’s in a sling? Duaner is done? We’ve got playoff baseball. People in wigs. Faces painted. Overpriced beers at the ready. Bathroom lines cuing up. The entire place is standing for Maine’s first pitch. And his first strike. And his first two-strike count. You’d think people had been waiting six years or something.

Maine gets the Dodgers out in order in the first and the place is roaring like a DC-10 is passing overhead. The Mets put a couple on in the first but can’t score off Derek Lowe. The Mets take the field for what seems like an innocuous second inning. You don’t know that this will be the most memorable second inning you’ll ever see. Certainly the most memorable in which just a single run crosses the plate.

Maine is not as sharp in inning two and it shows when Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew single. The crowd is shifting in its seats. This is what we all feared on our way to the park. Russ Martin, the latest in a line of homegrown Dodgers catchers with superior hitting prowess, laces a drive to the wall in right. Shawn Green takes it on a hop, gets it to Valentin, who fires to Lo Duca at the plate. That much you can see. Except the crowd immediately stands when the ball is hit and you’re ducking your head around shapes and glimpsing the echoing green. You listen for the reaction and you spy a runner getting tagged out at home. It’s always exciting when a runner is gunned out at the plate. The stadium shakes and you say, “Well, they only got the one run.” But you quickly survey the bases—one runner, not two—and the outs on the scoreboard. The board reads “two” under “outs.” A tape delayed secondary cheer, that you are indeed leading among the blocked and the oblivious, ripples through the stadium even as Maine prepares to pitch to ex-Met Marlon Anderson. While still basking in this once-in-a-generation play, Marlon doubles in Martin. Maine walks Wilson Betemit—you heard that when this Glenallen Hill-looking dude gets into one he can launch it a long way—and then up comes Lowe. Maine whiffs Lowe to get through an inning where the pitcher was the only batter he actually retires. The 1‑0 deficit feels like a 10‑0 lead.

The Mets will go ahead on Carlos Delgado’s four-hit postseason debut (that guy is so clutch!) and they’ll maneuver through Willie Randolph’s many pitching changes (his daily handling of the pen is, in a word, deft) and they’ll even survive rocky outings from Guillermo Mota and Billy Wagner (those guys are always reliable). Though you can’t see into the future, it is fate that the Mets will win this game. No Mets team could turn in a defensive gem like that one in the second inning and lose the game. Never happen. At least not this year. You can see that, can’t you?

June 22, 2008

Matty’s Tix Don’t Come Off

Among the 3.8 million Shea Stadium tickets sold—or to be sold—this year, is a small parcel metsilverman.com has reserved in the Picnic Area for the night of Wednesday, September 24, 2008 against the Cubs. It’ll be the last week of Shea—five days from closing time—and it should be a lot of fun. Who knows? Maybe we’ll win the lottery and Moises Alou will actually be standing in front of us in left field.

If you’ve never sat in the Picnic Area, it’s a great place to see a ballgame. The ticket comes with a buffet and the food is actually, to quote Rob Reiner from The Odd Couple, “good, hot, and plenty of it.” The Mets have reserved the remaining dates in the Picnic Area that week for “friends of the Scotts.” This is the your last chance to go where the home runs go.

For the whole shpiel about how to get the tickets you can go here.

I’ve pointed this out before, but the Aramark people have put a vigorish on this thing like nobody’s business. Just having some fun with the situation, though the surcharge does make them seem like “unconscionable ballbreakers.” You can see Morrie below for a demonstration of how less reputable institutions collect such fees. (If you don’t like bad language, wait for Goodfellas to come on TBS or some other cable outlet and the scene will be chopped to sugar.)

Point is, after July 1, I’ve got to make the fee for the game $65 to break even. And after September 1, it’ll be $70. Just giving fair warning to everybody, and I mean everybody. If you send an email reserving the tickets or go through Paypal before July 1, I’ll process the tickets quickly for $60. And then I’ll get my shinebox.

June 17, 2008

Little Willie Goes Home

I think I’m like a lot of Mets fans who, tired of the constant West Coast start times for games, woke up to learn that the Mets won and Willie Randolph had been fired. A few coaches also hit the road, as is the Mets way (though rather than confuse anyone, they decided to keep both Sandy Alomars). I believe the ax came at 3 in the morning. Or, on Mets Standard Time, midnight. In Anaheim on Los Angeles.

As far as firings go in franchise history, this is pretty bad. Probably the worst. You know it’s pretty high on the list when Daily News writer Bill Madden, who’s been with the Yankees so long, says that “in the history of New York baseball, there has not been a more cowardly, indecent, undignified or ill-conceived firing of a manager.”

The Mets do have a precedent for bungled firings, however. The first ownership regime horribly handled the Yogi Berra terminus by first siding with him after a standoff with Cleon Jones, and then firing Yogi at the first opportunity after Cleon was released. M. Donald Grant reduced the franchise (both small and big “F”) to rubble, but the regime he presided over went through just eight managers in 19 seasons (including interims). The current regime has gone through managers at a similar pace: 12 in 29 seasons since 1980 (including Jerry Manuel). I’m counting Joe Torre on both lists because while the Grant regime hired him—flying Torre the washed-up player home for an interview while manager Joe Frazier had the club on the road in May of 1977—Fred Wilpon was president when the Mets fired Torre. And that firing was long overdue, I’ll add. (Willie had 12 more wins in 151 fewer games than Torre did with the Mets; it wasn’t only about horses, Torre’s genius only came to light when he made his Faustian pact to end up in the Bronx.) The point is, when Torre was canned in 1981, they did it the right way. On the day another miserable season ended. No airplane flights to California with an “aching in my heart.”

If you’re going to fire a manager during the season, look to the firing of Dallas Green. His old-school ways seem to lose some of his young players in August 1996 and, frankly, a team that hit as well as the ’96 club (the .270 average was the highest in club history to that point) and pitched that badly (the 4.22 ERA was the worst in 22 seasons) should probably axe the manager. Especially when that manager was a pitcher in his playing days. And when they replaced Green, they brought in a guy they believed in and let him bring his own pitching coach.

But what of Willie? I came across this program cover from Port St. Lucie last year that features some of the plotters who would do him in. He never lost faith in them, despite all signs to the contrary. They had a hiccup at the worst time in October 2006, and then the 2007 club had a prolonged and severe case of diarrhea in September. While wearing a white suit.

Now we say goodbye to the Willie era. Farewell the New Mets. Forever remembered for losing out in 2007 and not for burying the competition in 2006. Nothing else seemed to matter even though Randolph had the second-best percentage in club history (.544) and was 10 wins ahead of Yogi for fourth-place on the list behind Davey (595), Bobby (536), and Gil (339). All first-name guys.

Willie deserved to last the season. The general manager needs to show he still has full autonomy. Because that’s severely in question. The Wilpons may be looking for GM number seven soon (the Payson regime went through five). Someone has broken this one. And the players have won. Other than a few massive contracts and some different privileged players, is this club all that much different than 2004? That would be the year before Willie was hired for any of you Shea booers with short memories. Maybe you saw Art Howe when he was in with Texas the other day. Gary Carter was unavailable for comment.

I’ll admit Willie lost me a few times this year and I too pondered a change. But this change was handled even worse than the May 1990 drawn-out canning of Davey; he of the .588 winning percentage in New York. From the day Johnson was fired, it was sure as shooting that the team was heading toward a cliff and wouldn’t be content until it was rid of nearly everyone who’d helped get that second helping of world championship for the franchise. Thirds, anyone?

June 9, 2008

Dad, You’re the Best

I read the local national baseball writers and TV guys every Sunday—the Times Book Review I’ll get to when I get to it—and so after blinking in disbelief at the television screen after the latest lost weekend, I got around to Neil Best’s Sunday column in Newsday. He recommended Mets by the Numbers for a Father’s Day gift. Not a quotable quote from Neil, but a hearty endorsement nonetheless, along with some other great Father’s Day stuff like the Mets DVD, some interesting football books, and Jim Nantz’s book. (One of my first big interviews back when, Nantz later saw my wedding announcement in the paper and greeted my fiancé like a long-lost sister when we ran into him, and he even recalled from the paper where she went to grad school; I didn’t even know it was WestConn. Nantz was a Jim McKay fanatic and he must be quite down.)

Anyway, I recommend that any loyal reader who’s of a mind to should read Neil Best. Not to blow smoke up anywhere it shouldn’t be, but New York’s four major papers each have some of the best sports TV columnists in the country. Those of you who consistently complain about Best, Mushnick, and yes, Raissman (Sandomir at the Times is beyond reproach), should spend time in some other “big league” city and try reading that crapola.

A few days after Father’s Day, Greg Spira and I will be doing a day-night doubleheader tour of Queens libraries. On Thursday, June 19, the Whitestone branch is hosting Greg Spira and I at 2 p.m. (151-10 14 Road, 718-767-8010) and then we go over to the Richmond Hill branch at 6 p.m. (118-14 Hillside Avenue, 718-849-7150). Though we’ll have books available for purchase, please bring your own books, your library card, and your Aunt Maggie the Mets fan. I’m sure the Mets will provide plenty to talk about because…oh, goody, there’ll be on yet another western swing.

June 5, 2008

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

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]

#8A. Losers Bracket

By the time I get all the way down to the end of the list of the best games I’ve seen at Shea, you’ll note that they are all wins. (Not giving away any state secrets.) While SNY shows only “Classics” that are victories, I’d like to pay tribute to what all of us have witnessed numerous—yea, even countless—times at Shea: The “L” word. (Hey, I’m not talking about that show on Showtime. Jeez.)

Like all Mets fans, I’ve seen the Mets lose many a game at Shea. Some just stick with you. The last five on this list are permanent stripes that no one can ever take away. Though I wish someone could.

There are actually 11 games on this list, meaning there’s a tie—that’s better than a loss, right? And while it would seem that all of these game should have come against the Yankees and Braves, each signature “L” actually is against a different team. The Mets like to spread the love.

10. September 21, 1975

Phillies 4, Mets 2

This is where it all started. My second Mets game and my first Mets loss. This one, though, is what I would call, with all due apologies to South Pacific Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy loss. My dad promised to take me to Fan Appreciation Day so I could get a cool bag that I would use to transport my fifth-grade gym clothes until disintegration occurred. My dad wound up having to go on a business trip, but he arranged for Charles Moses Walker, a surrogate grandfather, to take me to the last home game of the year against the Phillies. He’d never been to a game and I’d been to two (I’d witnessed a Mets win in August and Yankees Old-Timers Day at Shea). It rained all morning but stopped an hour before game time. We had a Pleasant Valley Sunday at sold-out Shea. I still smile thinking about it. Jon Matlack pitched well but got no support until Ron Hodges homered in the last inning for the second straight day. Only this time it simply avoided a shutout.

10. June 4, 2006

Giants 7, Mets 6

Like the above game, this was a Mets loss where we went home feeling all right. This time I took my family. We were on our way to get in line for the Mr. Met Dash when Lastings Milledge slapped hands with the fans after his game-tying homer. We didn’t see the dramatic clout or the rook’s first failure to know his place, but I could tell the ball was gone by the cursing usher whose day just got longer. After the Mets lost in 12 and the kids ran the bases on a delectably cool Sunday, we stopped at a park in Corona where everyone played softball on turf, picnics were the rule, the people spoke Spanish, and we communicated with smiles. Such a great day and the Mets still had the largest lead in baseball, yet all we heard on the radio on the way home was how “bush” the best prospect in the organization was. We put on some music.

9. June 11, 1981

Reds 5, Mets 2

Nothing good about this loss. Tom Seaver beat Pat Zachry—as if I needed a reminder about the worst trade in my Mets existence four long years after the fact—and this was the last game anyone in New York saw for two months. The first prolonged strike in sports history happened just at an age when I needed all the diversion I could handle, even if the Torre-ibble Mets were 17‑34. I got into so much trouble that summer despite being constantly grounded for numerous transgressions. Enough about my miserable teen angst, the Reds got screwed, too. They were a half-game behind L.A. when the walls came down. Then they finished behind the Astros in the B.S. “second half” standings. They saw as much postseason as the Mets did despite winning the most games in the league. Seaver was 7‑1 in each half and was jobbed of his fourth Cy Young by fading Fernandomania. When I left Shea the night of June 11, I could not imagine what Armageddon—or, to be less dramatic, summer without baseball—looked like. On the plus side, Retrosheet says Dave Kingman both homered and stole a base in the game!

8. September 23, 2001

Braves 5, Mets 4

We were all contemplating more important things just then. My drive to the game gave me my first view of the skyline laid bare. In this kind of world, an Armando Benitez meltdown just as the Mets were poised to sweep the first-place Braves shouldn’t matter. But two outs, one on, up by three in the ninth, and the Mets still lose in 11. John Smoltz threw three innings in relief and probably could’ve pitched through the night if not for the Brian Jordan vs. the Mets home run rule. I hit a deer on the way home. The car was OK, but my mind was not. I didn’t sleep a wink. 

7. October 2, 2005

Rockies 11, Mets 3

Let’s wash out the harmful thoughts with the most lopsided loss on the list. This is the game where the result mattered the least: Mike Piazza’s final day as a Met. I already wrote a couple thousand words on his first game in the uni; this sunny afternoon seven and a half seasons later provided closure. The cheers he got, wave after wave after wave, remain indescribable. When people wonder why any player would want to put up with the demands of New York, this is the reason. Yet even then there was still testimony about New York being a results town. Victor Zambrano was booed off the hill even though the Mets had won 11 of their previous 13 to finish over .500 for the first time since 2001. Yet the cheering was so draining that we left after Piazza was removed—Willie never gave a good reason why he didn’t let him bat one last time in the eighth—and we listened to the end in the parking lot. Lost in the Piazza moment: It was also the last Mets action for Danny Graves and Shingo Takatsu. Now there’s a cause for an ovation.

6. October 18, 1986

Red Sox 1, Mets 0

My first World Series game at Shea and second in person. I’d sat in the upper deck above first base with my dad for Game 4 of the 1978 World Series: aka “The Reggie Hip Check.” (We had a perfect view of what happened on that play; a drunk threatened to throw this NL-sympathizing, 13-year-old kid over the railing when my dad left for the bathroom. Stay classy, Bronxy.) Anyway, my first Mets World Series game was thrilling in the getting there: still feeling the effects of a pulsating NLCS, travelling from school in Virginia to Shea, going to the Series with a brother whose last Mets bandwagon ride was in 1969, and meeting my buddy Paul after his own odyssey from the South (a first-person guest tale in 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know…). The game itself, though, was the coldest I’ve ever experienced at Shea—and that takes a lot of poor weather into account. Tim Teufel, who played the first inning in short sleeves before switching to a turtleneck, made the error that allowed the only run to score. It would all become just preamble for the legend.

5. September 28, 2007

Marlins 7, Mets 4

Um, do I really have to go into the details about this game? Sure, it wasn’t the final, Glavine-detonated debacle, but at least you could walk into that game with a little hope. The stink of death wafting from Shea for this one could be smelled several counties away hours before gametime. I haven’t booed since I had a revelation while booing Brian McRae in 1998 (and really, wouldn’t you like to say the last Met you booed was B-Mac?), but I did shout myself hoarse as the ’07 Mets fell out of first for the first time in five months. Oliver Perez was as bad in this one as he was good in another game yet to come on this list. I temporarily lost my sanity during this Friday night from hell against Byung-Hyun Kim and the friggin’ Marlins. I was working on three books set to come out about what was now to be the greatest choke team of all time! Thanks to the resiliency of Mets fans—and Johnny Lerno, who drove me back to where I was staying after we were the last ones in the Marina Lot—we’ve all moved on to the next chapter.

4. September 23, 1998

Expos 3, Mets 0

See above. Your first experience with cataclysmic failure while hosting a fifth-place team is always the hardest. This inexplicable loss to Carl Pavano and last-place Montreal came just hours after Cubbie Brant Brown’s botched flyball in Milwaukee seemingly handed the Mets the wild card. When this one ended, there was no doubt we would not see Shea again until the next spring. The Braves made that official soon enough. Thanks to Jimmy Jim for the chauffer service on this one. You get the idea: excruciating Mets loss late in the year, look for me in the Marina. Late. Tanksfuraridehomedamnyoualltohell!

3. October 26, 2000

Yankees 4, Mets 2

Gil Hodges removed Jerry Koosman with two down in the ninth in Game 2 in 1969. Davey Johnson knew when it was time to bring in El Sid for Ron Darling in the deciding game in 1986. Bobby V. may be firmly lodged as number three among all-time Mets managers, but Valentine had no business leaving Al Leiter in Game 5 after 130 pitches. When Luis Sojo beats you, it’s pretty clear you have nothing left. All we asked for was a win at Shea and then let them tear out our hearts in the Bronx. Anything so we didn’t have to see it in the flesh, with all those pariah Yankees fans in every crevice of Shea. I have not been to a Mets‑Yankees game since that night. And for those of you wondering how this loss isn’t number one, consider that even defeat at the hands of the Yankees in the World Series is still better than not getting to the Fall Classic at all.

2. October 9, 1988

Dodgers 5, Mets 4

Game 4 of the 1988 NLCS was going to be a coronation. I even snuck in the flask that I’d gotten for being in my sister’s wedding a few months earlier. The game was speeding along with the Mets up by two, though it could’ve been more. Doc was firing away, but I wondered why Davey didn’t bring in southpaw Randy Myers with lefty-swinging Mike Scioscia up. I will always wonder why. I could take any “true Yankee” managing the Mets, but I don’t think I could hack Scioscia calling the shots in Flushing, despite his being one of the best managers in the game. Like my pal P. in the upper deck that night, the Mets tumbled off their high perch in extras. I did not bring a flask to the nooner game the next day against the Dodgers. The party was over.

1. October 19, 2006

Cardinals 3, Mets 1

It was extremely close trying to pick between the Scioscia and Molina games, but having lived through the Dodgers disaster 18 years earlier, Game 7 against the Cardinals pushes past it in the pain department. Especially after I saw how lousy Detroit was in that World Series (not that the ’88 A’s lived up to their press clippings). And at least the Dodgers had an otherworldly Orel Hershiser watching the back of that Punch-and-Judy bunch. The must-win game against St. Louis had…Jeff Suppan. The worst part was that after Endy’s catch—the greatest catch, bar none, that I’ve ever seen at Shea or any other place in the flesh—I actually believed the Mets would win. My Shea shield of titanium pessimism was down long enough for Jose Molina to pop one over the top. Shea was so silent after the called strike three to Carlos Beltran, I could hear the Cardinals shouting on the field. No other noise. And that may just be my final Shea October memory.

Hey, you knew going in that this entry wouldn’t have a happy ending. The beat will be up for number 7 later this month.

May 28, 2008

Overnight

Jon Springer and I were on the Joey Reynolds Show last night on WOR Radio. An interesting 20 minutes on the air. Joey, among the last of the overnight hosts who brings guests into the studio, has quite an eclectic show. Mets by the Numbers was sandwiched between musical group Nu Millenium A Cappella Soul and Ippy and the Project . Ippy was going on as we were leaving, around 2 a.m., but Nu Millenium gave us a green room serenade of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” that was worthy of Jack Northworth and Albert von Tilzer’s songwriting of a century ago. They then sang on the stoop at the Trinity building with Ippy’s gang.

While George is a big Mets fan, Joey doesn’t much care about sports. To be fair, we weren’t that aware of his show before we were booked. I think we all walked away better for the experience, though it’s been a while for me between weeknights that ended at 5 a.m. It was quite cool being in a studio with roots that go back to advent of radio and the granddaddy broadcaster Red Barber.

A better gig for our sleep habits will be Friday, May 30, at the Holiday Inn LaGuardia . The event, a few minutes’ walk from Shea, starts at 5:30 p.m. Have a drink, get a book, and prepare thyself for the invasion of the Torres—I mean Dodgers; a Freudian slip I made last night while at the game. My buddy Paul and I wound up with tickets for the nether reaches of Shea for $7.50 a pop from a couple of guys willing to wait to see if we were hung out to dry at Will Call for a bleacher promotion from mets.com (note to Mets, in this day and age, maybe have more than one “internet sales” booth open when there’s a dozen people in line; we would’ve missed two more innings if we’d waited in that line). We then just availed ourselves to very nice seats in the Loge, following the plan put forth in number 88 in 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die.) Relatively affordable Shea tickets and a Mets win. How many more nights will there be like this? At Shea? In our eternity? I will let a much deeper thinker, the late Paul Bowles (from his landmark book The Sheltering Sky), handle the counting.

“Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply part of your being that you, that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.”

Welcome Home, Mr. Piazza

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]

Recap: #9. October 3, 2004 Le Morte [Click here]

#8. May 23, 1998: Mike Piazza Arrives at Shea

Almost exactly a decade after he debuted as a Met, Mike Piazza officially retired as a player. How he began his life as a Met is a day I will never forget. For a lot of different reasons.

Nineteen ninety eight had begun in a haze. My mother died at Christmas and my first child was born a little over a month later. If you asked me anything else that happened during the four-month span that bridged 1997 and 1998, old life and new, I could have easily and truthfully answered, “I don’t know.” Baseball, or maybe it was time, finally started to peel away the covering from interrupted sleep and troubled thoughts. Starting the baseball season with summer-like conditions helped the mind begin to work again. The 14-inning Opening Day win over the Phillies ran the gamut of emotions just as the temperature had gone from 87 to 57 over the course of the afternoon.

Despite that thrilling start, no one really seemed to care about the Mets. After a night game in which short-time Mets Rich Becker and Jim Tatum provided late-inning home runs to beat the Astros, Bob Murphy wrapped up the happy recap with a melancholy tone: “The game was exciting, but the crowd was small, just 12,772.” When Bob Murphy speaks like that, you almost feel ashamed. “But I was there last night, Bob,” I told the radio. A Wiz commercial was the only response.

The Mets continued to play well and draw almost no one. After sweeping a doubleheader from Cincinnati on May 19, Debbie and I went to the game the following night, a Wednesday—a rare night out for the new parents—and Shea had all the buzz of a movie theater playing Deep Impact. Honestly, the world wasn’t going to be hit by a comet—as reported by Tea Leoni to President Morgan Freeman with Leelee Sobieski thrown in to lure in the teens to see the world get drilled—but there were days when it felt like it might.

And all the while that we watched a loss to Harnisch the Red thanks to Hudek the Lousy in front of another 12,000 crowd that was barely half that size in actual body count, there was a comet indeed hurtling toward Shea.

As I read the well-documented, jaw-dropping account in Sports Illustrated of Mike Piazza’s departure from L.A. that previous week, Steve Phillips—yes, that Steve Phillips—was putting together what would be his signature deal and one of the franchise’s greatest trades (a book called Mets Essential  by some hack ranked it as second only to the Keith Hernandez heist of 1983).

The Friday afternoon of Memorial Day found me finishing work early so I could avoid the holiday weekend traffic for the Mets-Brewers game at Shea and hook up with some friends. I got a call on the work line at the home office in Connecticut that afternoon. There was no caller-ID—at least not on the expensive but useless office phones I’d been equipped with—and I could only hope it wasn’t someone thrusting a four-hour project on me while I had already checked out of the office mentally on a holiday weekend. This was not a call from clueless corporate HQ in Raleigh, it was Mike Gershman, a huge fan of the New York game and PR, calling from his home office in the next town.

“Did you hear,” he said excitedly. Mike often got excited, but this was a happy excited.

“Hear what?”

“The Mets got Piazza!”

I dropped the phone, forgetting he was my boss and dashed a few steps to turn on Debbie’s mid-1970s “hi fi” that acted as the office sound system. It was tuned to WFAN. I hustled back while Mike was still talking and I began soaking in the details. Mike Francessa, for all his lack of charm to Mets fans, had been pounding the drums all week on the radio for the Mets to get Piazza. Steve Phillips had originally said the Mets would wait for Todd Hundley to return from yet another extended stay on the DL. Nelson Doubleday, who often went months without being heard from publicly, had made it known that Stevie’s stance was B.S. No more Tim Spehr, Rick Wilkins, or even Alberto Castillo (the hero of the Opening Day marathon), and no more waiting for Hundley. The future was now. Actually tomorrow.

“Mike, you still on?”

“Yes!”

“You wouldn’t still have those tickets I arranged for you for tomorrow, would you?”

You can’t have everything. He had plans for the Piazza debut and I was still quite content to be at Shea for what was now New Year’s Eve Eve. It was, after all, the first Mets-Brewers game at Shea. (The Brewers, who had been an American League team and played at Shea against the Yankees in the 1970s, suddenly transformed in an NL team because MLB let new guy Jerry Colangelo talk his Diamondbacks into the senior circuit. So Bud Selig’s Brewers made the first-ever move from AL to NL and suddenly started selling out games against the Cubs. Well, that worked out nicely, huh?)

The first Mets game against the Brewers at Shea was so significant it sold the usual 12,000 seats, but the number of walk-ups added about 10,000 to that total. Dennis Cook had one of the most remarkable two-thirds of an inning in Mets history. He allowed a hit and walk and then picked off both runners during Jeff Cirillo’s at-bat. Then he walked Cirillo and allowed another hit before he was finally taken out and replaced with…Tug McGraw?

In one of the great moments in Mets numbers history, Franco came in and the reliever, number 31 for lo these many years, had moved it on over to 45 as a tribute to both Piazza and McGraw. When he got the last out he slapped his glove on his leg just as Tug had done on the same earth in the days before the Brewers had even been to Shea as an AL team.

Our extended gang celebrated long into the morning and I stayed over at a friend’s house, as planned, and headed back home in the morning, newspapers in hand to read every word about the stunning deal. Our new family of three was going to spend the day together, also as planned, but what we originally had scheduled fell through. Mike called and said someone else’s plans had changed as well and he suddenly had three tickets available to the game. But we couldn’t go; not with a three-month old, I insisted on the phone. Deb chimed in behind me. “Why not?”

She was an awfully big baby and could sleep through anything and she’d just passed the 100-day mark on this planet (comet free for 65 million years—maybe longer). We were off to Shea and didn’t even need to hurry because of the four o’clock start.

There were 10,000 more than the night before, but this time the announced crowd (32,908) actually seemed too low a number. Everyone with extra tickets likewise quickly filled out their twosomes or foursomes or sixsomes. It was tough lugging the baby seat through the crowd on the way to Gate B, but once they opened the side gate for us and we were finally in, a young man handed me a piece of clothing. While on the escalator I unfolded this odd package and realized what it was. Kids Shorts. I’d stopped acknowledging the youth giveaways when I could no longer pass for same. Now here I was on the other side. It was almost like Julio from Easy Money whispering in my ear, “Can I call you Dad?”. I glared at someone who bumped the baby seat as I got off the escalator.

Mike Piazza’s day was far more hectic. He was whisked by escort from LaGuardia to Shea to meet his new teammates. The catcher and Al Leiter quickly devised a plan for a four-hit shutout. Piazza was cheered wildly as his name was announced in the starting lineup and the third spot on the scoreboard read “31 C.” People cheered when he came out to catch in the first inning, crouching down in the same spot where he would receive the loudest ovation this side of Tom Seaver when he got out of that crouch in a Mets uniform seven-plus seasons later. I bought a scorecard and for the first time in years scored a game without a professional reason to. Fans held up pizza boxes and a slew of homemade signs that read, “Piazza Delivery.” Even Karl Ehrhardt, the Sign Man, would have had trouble coming up with something tremendously clever on such a tight deadline. There was one memorable banner, though: “If you buy them…we will come.” Steve Phillips was taking notes, too.

Piazza grounded out his first time up as a Met shortly after Brian McRae had stolen second, which prevented him from debuting with a double play grounder. (something he would do 132 times, more often than any Met other than Ed Kranepool.) After being called out on strikes by Jeff Juden his second time up, he batted with two outs in the fifth, Matt Franco on first, and the Mets leading, 1-0. Piazza launched a drive to center that enabled the plodding Franco to score from first, with Piazza taking third on the throw. A generous official scorer might have awarded him that rare triple, but did it matter? No. Shea was on its feet and Piazza soaked it in at third base. That wasn’t just “thanks for knocking in the run, dude”; that was New York’s version of the St. Louis welcome. Only earned. More than a few yahoos would boo Piazza despite a spectacular summer, but when it came time to sign for the big money that fall, he remembered the ovations and figured the people who booed were just a few jerks who’d go away. The man seemed right about everything.

My daughter slept through it all. Debbie was thrilled with both Piazza’s and her little girl’s debut. Mike—an old Dodger fan from Flatbush—beamed. It was a perfect day.

Al Leiter finished the 3-0 shutout—of the now rare complete-game variety—and he allowed so few Brewers to reach base that no one tried to steal and point out the new catcher’s greatest shortcoming. It was a weird year. Todd Hundley played left field when he did come back and looked worse there than Piazza would at first base in the distant future. There was the home run race that saved baseball, though it later turned out these heroes actually stained the game. There was the bizarre booing at Shea and a race among the mediocre for the postseason. Cub Brant Brown dropped a flyball in Milwaukee that seemed to hand the wild card to the Mets and the Mets responded by not winning another game.

Yet while the Mets did not earn the right to be swept in the Division Series by a superior foe (that honor went to the Cubs), they did get Piazza at Shea through 2005. He was the face of the team in good times and bad. His last game at Shea was another stellar moment, but that was goodbye. Life has too many goodbyes. We’d say goodbye to Mike Gershman a year and a half after we welcomed the other Mike to Shea. I learned to try to focus on new starts. And say goodbye when it’s time.

From Dos Carlos to D’oh, Carlos!

Is there anything Aaron “You Know His Middle Name” Boone can’t do to make me unhappy? We all remember that homer during his otherwise miserable Yankees tenure in 2003 and then there was the Mets-Nats finale Thursday, where in the space of an hour he broke up the 7,359th unsuccessful Mets attempt at a no-hitter and then snagged Carlos Delgado’s liner and doubled off the Mets’ best baserunner like he was someone on my four-year-old T-Ball team who didn’t know all the rules just yet. I had a great view, actually. I had to get from there to Toms River, New Jersey for a talk and sign at the Ocean County Library and didn’t want to get caught in traffic or miss the spine-tingling conclusion. The Mets were helpful on both counts. The game was over in just 142 excruciating minutes and the they made sure there’d be plenty to talk about.

In order to get closer to the egress, I bid farewell to Mets blogging All-Stars Greg Prince and Dana Brand, plus Meet the Mets co-editor Greg Spira, in the stunning seconds after the Willie Harris catch that I still think would’ve been an inside-the-park, run-off homer had he missed it. But Willie Harris doesn’t miss anything. Not against the Mets. None of the Nationals do.

I snagged a seat right behind home plate a moment after Carlos Beltran stole second and continued to third on the errant throw, and had a perfect vantage point for Carlos Delgado’s liner and Beltran’s Blunder (sorry, Carlos, Fred Merkle cornered the G-rated use of the word “boner” a century ago). Shea Stadium became one of those scenes from Bewitched, where everyone is frozen in place by a spell while Elizabeth Montgomery moves about freely and wiggles her nose in a let’s-not-burn-the-pretty-witch sort of way. I weaved through people as dumbstruck as Beltran at the sudden turn of events and in minutes I was at my car and soon I was crossing every bridge known to man on my way down south in Jersey. From what I heard later—sorry, after an ending like that, only Pete Townsend’s Scoop on the CD player can get my mind right, boss—Billy Wagner managed to aggravate people at home by wearing a Patriots hat and his teammates by asking why none of them had anything to say. Everyone was struck dumb, apparently.

All I can say is, at least it was quick. And thanks to all those people at the Ocean County Library—and to Scott Rodas for coordinating it—who made it a night to remember after a game to forget.

One Numbered Up Bluenatic

For those of you who missed the Mets Weekly gig with Jon Springer and I discussing Bill Shea and the retired Mets numbers this past weekend, here’s what it looked like.

Don’t worry, I’m getting help for that facial tic. Actually, I thought the camera was on Jon, but it got me working that jaw like it was the dawn after a five-kegger in 1987. Thanks again to Max Seigal and Mets Weekly. While tooling around on the SNY.tv site, I came across this piece by Meet the Mets contributor Ted Berg that gives some insights and options on how the Mets might be better served by dumping Jorge Sosa and his 7.06 ERA. As if to illustrate how random the wins statistic can be for pitchers, Sosa was the team leader in wins with four until Johan Santana and John Maine caught him.