The Almost Official Site of Author Matthew Silverman

May 17, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 5/17/1973… Watergate Hearings Begin 

Entire books have been written on the subject of Watergate; Swinging ’73 is not one of them. Yet the hearings, which started on this day in 1973, were an undercurrent of much that went on in that time. It was a drag on the nation’s attention, patience, and credulity, which resulted—in one way or another—to everything from the 1973 resignation of Vice President to the 1975 suspension of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for illegal campaign contributions. Of course, the scandal eventually led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon and the elevation of Gerald Ford, who replaced Agnew as vice president. Ford became president despite never being elected to an office higher than the House of Representatives. 

But that was all in the future on Thursday, May 17, 1973. Newsmen Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer, on the air together for the first time, set the stage far better than I—or most anyone else—ever could. Their continuing daily coverage launched what became known as The MacNeil-Lehrer Report and the show that is still a household favorite today: The PBS New Hour. Watergate, no matter how much time passes, remains with us, too. Even if the lessons are too often overlooked amid party pandering and finger pointing. One of the few things that keeps me somewhat positive in today’s never-ending cycle of inaction in Washington, is that if the U.S. could eventually recover from Watergate, it can survive anything. I hope. 

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May 17, 1973 was also the day Bobby Valentine’s career changed during a game in a game between the California Angels and Oakland A’s. Valentine was a shortstop, not a center fielder, but he played out of position to help his team and appease his superstitious rookie manager, Bobby Winkles. It cost Valentine dearly. The event is documented in Swinging ’73, and it is also explained today by Chris Jaffe in The Hardball Times.

May 15, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 5/15/1973… The First Nolan No-No

On this day in 1973, Mets fans died a little over something that happened far away and in another league. Nolan Ryan, all but given away by the Mets to the California Angels a year earlier, pitched the first no-hitter of his career. His first no-no was against a good-hitting Kansas City club, 2-0. Ryan threw another no-hitter later in the year and nearly had a third in 1973. In all, Ryan would throw seven no-hitters, along with 300 wins, 5,000 strikeouts, and joining the Hall of Fame after a 27-year career. Though he never won a Cy Young Award, he received more votes than Cy Young for the All-Century Team—a 1999 national popularity contest that excluded Tom Seaver in its final tally, and thus should be taken with a grain of salt. 

Back in ’73, Ryan had detractors despite his astounding success. Though he ripped through American League lineups—even with the designated hitter—he still had the same bouts of wildness that had plagued him with the Mets. As a pitcher who had more no-hitters than complete games in which he did not walk a batter, Ryan could thank his lucky stars he did not play in the era of pitch counts. A’s manager Dick Williams wouldn’t pick him for the 1973 All-Star team, but then again Williams didn’t pick eventual Cy Young winner Jim Palmer of the Orioles, either. Buttinsky commissioner Bowie Kuhn added an extra spot on the All-Star team—ostensibly so Met Willie Mays could be on the National League roster—and that’s how Ryan (11-12, 2.84 ERA, 233 K’s, 100 BBs in 199.1 innings at the break) got on the AL team. Palmer, with an 11-6 mark and 2.86 ERA, did not.

May 14, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 5/14/1973… Skylab, Ho!

Skylab was launched on this day in 1973. This anniversary is also being marked by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—we call it maize, I mean NASA. Their release this week states:

NASA launched Skylab on May 14, 1973. It was the nation’s first foray into significant scientific research in microgravity. The three Skylab crews proved humans could live and work effectively for long durations in space. The knowledge gathered during Skylab helped inform development and construction of the International Space Station, just as the research and technology demonstrations being conducted aboard the ISS will help shape a new set of missions that will take Americans farther into the solar system.

Not mentioned in the release was Skylab’s re-entry to earth six years after it left. Bulls-eye T-shirts were printed up and two San Francisco newspapers offered six-figure prizes for people affected by the debris. The calculations for Skylab’s 1979 fall back to earth were off slightly and large pieces came down near Perth, Australia. A big chunk of debris was even displayed on stage at the Miss Universe pageant that year, which happened to be held in Perth. (Miss Venezuela, Maritza Sayalero, was the 1979 winner—and because we can’t leave you hanging, Miss Phillippines, Margarita Moran, won the 1973 Miss Universe crown.)    

The bad PR from Skylab’s descent—and the inevitable scientific process of trial, error, and improvement—led to the reusable Spacelab module sent skyward in the 1990s, which could be returned to earth without the histrionics, bulleye T-shirts, and mortal peril for Miss Universe.

May 12, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 5/12/1973… One Uneasy Mother

Charlie Daniels was 36 years old when he had his first hit in 1973 with “Uneasy Rider” from the album, Honey in the Rock. It’s a spoken-word tale about a long-haired, pot-smoking dude making his way cross country when his car with a “peace sign, mag wheels, and four on the floor” breaks down in Jackson, Mississippi. He runs into a problem with some locals at a bar. The narrator goes on the offensive before his adversaries can. He gets away but has a little fun first—and is scared enough to reroute his trip to head to “LA via Omaha,” which, if you know any geography, is not exactly a direct line. It may—on paper—take you farther away from people with green teeth and members of the über-conservative John Birch Society. But don’t get Penny started about folks in her native Omaha.   

Though “Uneasy Rider” reached number nine in ’73, Charlie Daniels would be in his 40s before he hit it big with “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” in ’79, which won him a Grammy and a spot in the film, Urban Cowboy. Somewhere along the way, Charlie hopped the center line over to the far right lane and even remade his first hit, releasing “Uneasy Rider ’88.” The 1988 “updated” version featured a couple of buddies on a car trip who get in a bit of mischief at what turns out to be a gay bar in Houston. In his 70s, Charlie still plays that fiddle and does spoken and sung word with the best of them—country, rock, or both. I saw him perform at Belleauyre Mountain summer before last, and me and the Mrs. snuck up front to see that fiddle jam at the end. He just may be “the best that’s ever been.”

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Something that reminds me a little of “Uneasy Rider” is a short e-book I just read called Honky Tonk Tourist: The Night Buck Owens Almost Got Me Killed. It’s by Dan Epstein, author of a great book on baseball in the 1970s that I’ve recommended here before, Big Hair and Plastic Grass. Those of you with a copy of Swinging ’73 handy—I’ll wait while you turn over your copy—will see Dan had some nice words (namely “informative, amusing, and highly readable”) to say about my latest. That aside, Honky Tonk Tourist is a fun, quick, and cheap ($2.46) read that taught me that there was a lot more to Bakersfield Sound creator Buck Owens than Hee Haw and being mentioned in a Creedence song. Dan is a noted rock critic as well as baseball aficionado and the e-book and opened my eyes to music influences I had eschewed previously. Though using words like “eschewed” and “aficionado” at a bar in Bakersfield, Jackson, or Houston might get me in the kind of trouble that only Charlie Daniels could talk his way out of.

Speaking of talking, for those in the area of Kingston, New York, I’ll be on the air Monday (May 13) with old pal Dan Reinhard at WKNY 1490 AM at 6 p.m. I took a satellite ride on Mad Dog Radio on Friday with Dino Costa and spent 40-plus minutes talking ’73 baseball with the thoroughly knowledgeable and entertaining host.  

Missed Banner Day again, but my son and daughter both had games Saturday. As long as they keep having this in May (back in the day, the Banner Day doubleheader was held during the summer, after school—and Little League—were over), we may never get to Banner Day, but the boy did score his first goal Saturday—yes, he’s playing lacrosse; and I’m being a big boy about it. Just like in hockey when he lit the lamp the first time, lucky mom was with him and I was at my daughter’s sporting event—but her softball team won. Consider this win-win a Mother’s Day present we can’t wrap.

May 10, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 5/10/1973… The Knicks Win It All!

Yes, we are in the wayback machine if that is the headline. But that was the big news in New York on this date in 1973. The Knicks knocked off the Lakers at the Los Angeles Forum, and they did it in dominating fashion. After losing the first game of the finals in LA, the Knicks won four straight. They pulled away in the fifth game, 102-93, to claim their second title in three years. Then they hurried off to the locker room for the champagne that their fans would savor as the decades rolled by without another championship. 

The 1973 Knicks had the best defense in the league (98.2 points per game in an offensive era) and drew an NBA-best 790,031 to Madison Square Garden—more people than came to see the MLB Indians, Padres, and Texas in twice as many games, and almost as many as the Braves drew with Hank Aaron bearing down on Babe Ruth’s all-time home run mark. But in an exciting year in New York sports, the Knicks ruled the city with a team chock full of Hall of Famers.

From Swinging ’73:

The Knicks were the toast of New York, and plenty of teams were vying for that title. As of 1973, New York had two teams in every sport for the first time—including two tenants at the new Nassau Veterans Coliseum: the expansion Islanders, who won just 12 of 78 games (plus 6 ties) to earn Sports Illustrated’s designation as “one of the sorriest NHL teams ever,” and the 30‑54 New York Nets of the American Basketball Association, whose coach, Lou Carneseca, left the team in the summer of ’73 to return to his alma mater, St. John’s University in Queens.

The Knickerbockers—a name that harkened back to the city’s 17th-century Dutch roots—followed the world championship trail blazed by the Jets and Mets in 1969. The Knicks beat the Lakers for the NBA title in May 1970 with a limping Willis Reed providing the spark in the deciding seventh game. Reed was still at Madison Square Garden three Mays later, and all five Knicks starters in 1973 ended up in the Hall of Fame: ’70 championship holdovers Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere, Walt “Clyde” Frazier, and Reed, plus superstar acquisition Earl “the Pearl” Monroe. The team also had Hall of Fame coach Red Holzman, team president Ned Irish, and sixth man Jerry Lucas, who became the first player in history to win a championship in high school, college, the pros, and the Olympics. The ninth Hall of Famer in the group was thinking man’s forward Phil Jackson, who averaged 17 minutes per game for the 1973 Knicks after watching from the sidelines in 1970 due to back surgery; when his playing career ended, Jackson sharpened his focus to become a Zen master coach in Chicago and Los Angeles. At the LA Forum, New York claimed the ’73 title by dispatching the Lakers in five games, with the Knicks flashing the “number one” sign in the visiting locker room and leaving no doubt as to the authenticity of their claim.

May 10, 1973 was also the night the Montreal Canadiens captured the Stanley Cup in five games. The Habs defeated the Chicago Blackhawks, who had knocked off the Rangers in the semifinals after New York beat the defending Stanley Cup champion Bruins. Forty years ago, there were 16 NHL teams and three rounds of playoffs. In 2013, with 16 NHL teams making the playoffs, the hockey playoffs are still in the first round on May 10.

Another one for the wayback sports machine: While the Knicks and Canadiens were dousing themselves with champagne, the Mets and Yankees were slogging through an exhibition game in Queens. The Mets won the 11th annual Mayor’s Trophy Game, 8-4, behind southpaw George Stone. The win at Shea Stadium gave the Mets a 6-5 lead in the series.

May 9, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 5/8/1973… Soylent Green: It’s—Y’Know

The film Soylent Green was released on this day 40 years ago. I don’t know which is more frightening, this lousy trailer, or that the dystopian tale is set nine years from now, in 2022. Soylent Green was the final credit of Edward G. Robinson’s impressive career, as he died at age 79 in January of ’73. You could say he won an Oscar for Soylent Green since it was his last film, but it is more accurate to say he posthumously received the 1973 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy. He probably got it for the other 100 films he was in. And despite the way the Soylent Green trailer makes it appear, Robinson did not euthanize himself to avoid being around for this movie premiere. Yet the irony is delicious. 

The coda of Soylent Green came more than two decades following its release, and after it had made the rounds of the late-night movie showcases that were the rage in the 1970s and 1980s before cable provided a never-ending supply of tasty late-night fodder. A Saturday Night Live skit spoofed the film’s climatic scene that revealed the answer to the question: “What! Is! The! Secret! Of! Soylent! Green!” Spoiler alert, don’t click if you you are afraid of dining finding out (I really did type “dining” originally) the secret ending of this 40-year old schlock—I mean ’70s classic. But the late Phil Hartman—you may also remember him from such Simpsons roles as attorney Lionel Hutz and B-movie actor Troy McClure—did a great Charlton Heston. Love that scarf.

May 8, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 5/8/1973… Wounded Knee, Fractured Skull

On this day in 1973, the standoff ended between federal marshals and members of the American Indian Movement on the land where the Wounded Knee Massacre occurred in 1892. The standoff had lasted three months and would continue long afterward on the reservation as hostilities between residents and tribal leaders continued.  

Racial progress was slow. Even on the baseball diamond. Shortly before his death in 1972, Jackie Robinson had challenged baseball to hire a black manager. And in 1973, it happened—if only for a couple of hours. Cubs coach Ernie Banks filled in as manager for ejected Whitey Lockman in San Diego. Rick Monday tied the game in the seventh with a two-run home run and blow-drying pioneer Joe Pepitone made Banks a winner with an RBI-double in the 12th inning after Padres manager Don Zimmer elected to pitch to him with a runner on third and one out. A full-time African American manager in the big leagues would have to wait until the Cleveland Indians hired Frank Robinson as player-manager in 1975. Four decades later, there are exactly two black managers. 

One is Dusty Baker, who was in center field at Shea Stadium on the night of May 8, 1973 with Hammerin’ Hank Aaron and the last-place Atlanta Braves. General Dusty—actually at this point in time, he was more like a sergeant—was one of four Braves who would hit at least 20 home runs; three of them Aaron, Davey Johnson, and Darrel Evans became the game’s first trio of 40-homer sluggers on one team in ’73. The light-hitting Marty Perez batted in front of this formidable group, and with the bases loaded and a light rain falling in the seventh inning, Mets lefty Jon Matlack held a two-run lead and was one pitch away from escaping the jam. 

From Swinging ’73: 

“I’m trying to nail down this game,” Matlack recalls. “I overthrew the next pitch. It was a fastball, and I landed really hard when I threw it. I lost sight of the ball to the plate. I could see him swing and hear the bat crack, but I don’t pick up the baseball until it’s right on top of me. I barely got the fingers of my left hand in front of my face. It hit my fingers [on the mitt], hit my cap, and it hit me just over the left eye. They tell me—I don’t know because I couldn’t see it—but it went from my forehead into the dugout. It cost me two runs and ultimately cost me the ballgame.”

The sudden tie fell to secondary importance during this frightening moment at Shea Stadium. Right fielder Rusty Staub, shaking his head at the memory of it years later, summed up his teammates’ reaction: “We were just all thrilled that he wasn’t dead.” Dee Matlack wasn’t even sure of that as the trainer came out and pulled a tarp over her prone husband’s body as the rain fell.

“They’re messing with me, and it’s raining,” he thought as catcher Jerry Grote and his teammates gathered around him. “My wife thinks I’m dead because they cover me up with a tarp.” Still conscious and bleeding from his head, the dazed pitcher thought he’d been struck in the mouth until things came into sharp, painful focus. “I can see my forehead at this point. I can see it literally swollen up to where I can see it. I had a whale of a headache and felt very weak.”

Matlack was taken to the hospital and told he had a fractured skull... and a 10-6 defeat as the Braves rallied to win—the Braves scored seven times in the inning starting with Perez’s liner off Matlack’s skull that went for a two-run double. It was eerily similar to an event that took place almost exactly 40 years later, when a line drive hit Blue Jays lefty JA Happ in the head and went for a two-run double. But Matlack did not go on the disabled list. He started again just two weeks later and was actually more effective. On July 10, just two months after he was thwacked in head with a line drive that fractured his skull, Matlack tossed a one-hitter while facing just one batter over the minimum. And you were impressed that Matt Harvey started his one-hitter by overcoming a bloody nose.

May 6, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 5/6/1973… The WHA’s Missing Cup

On this day in 1973, the first World Hockey Association title was captured by the New England Whalers. The Whale beat the Winnipeg Jets in five games for the inaugural Avco Cup (a defense contractor was the sponsor). Since the cup was not yet ready, the triumphant Whalers had to skate around the ice holding their division trophy aloft. The rings were sweet, though.

The conclusion of the inaugural season was a triumph for a league that played its first game in October 1972. The National Hockey League, which had been expanding at a furious rate after a quarter-century as a six-team league, got its garters in a bunch at the thought of a rival league, hastily adding the New York Islanders as an expansion team to keep the WHA New York Raiders from playing at the Nassau Coliseum. The Raiders got the scraps of the Madison Square Garden schedule, eventually pushing the team to New Jersey, where they failed. But the league prospered even without a significant presence in New York. 

Many future Hall of Famers wound up in the WHA, including Gerry Cheevers, Rod Langway, Mark Messier, Bernie Parent, Jacques Plante, Derek Sanderson, Glenn Sather, and Bobby Hull, who was pushed out of the 1972 Summit Series against the Soviets because he’d defected to the new league. Legend Gordie Howe went to the Houston Aeros, where he became the first person to play professional hockey with his sons, Mark (another Hall of Famer) and Marty (a defenseman who made one WHA All-Star team). The WHA was also way ahead of the NHL in bringing European talent to North America.

After seven seasons inflicting wounds upon each other, the NHL reached a deal, just as the NFL and AFL, and NBA and ABA had done before them. In 1979 the NHL added three WHA teams that have since relocated: the Hartford Whalers (to Carolina), Quebec Nordiques (to Denver), and Winnipeg Jets (to Phoenix; the current Winnipeg club moved from Atlanta). The WHA provided the best thing to happen to hockey since the Zamboni. The fourth absorbed WHA team became an NHL dynasty: the Edmonton Oilers, thanks to securing a teenaged star named Wayne Gretzky.

May 5, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 5/5/1973… “Dancing Days Are Here Again”

On May 5, 1973 a crowd of 56,800 came out in Tampa to see Led Zepplin, to date largest single artist concert in history. Billed as “The Supershow of the Year,” the hype proved true at the old Sombrero. Promoting their 1973 album Houses of the Holy, Led Zep pulled out all the stops. They zipped from city to city aboard their own jet, “Starship,” playing large venues like Atlanta Fulton County Stadium, San Francisco’s Kezar Stadium, and Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh before wrapping the whirlwind tour with three nights at Madison Square Garden, which turned into the film and soundtrack album, The Song Remains the Same. The stadium rock and roll era was on!

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Good Sunday reading with media reporter Ed Sherman, formerly of the Chicago Tribune. His interview with me is here.

May 4, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 5/4/1973… The Deron Johnson Story

On the first of May, 1973, the defending world champion A’s were next-to-last in the American League West. They stood at  9-12, and in those 21 games had used six different players in the new designated hitter spot. Most AL teams made DHs from veteran sluggers whose body or glove prevented them from taking the field regularly. Orlando Cepeda was enjoying a career rebirth in Boston after the A’s did not offer the gimpy-kneed future Hall of Famer a contract just as the DH became the new law of the land in the AL. 

The A’s tried a novel—and rather unsuccessful—approach to the DH by using speedy ballplayers, or, worse idea, guys who couldn’t hit well. Then on May 2, Oakland owner Charlie Finley, who also served as the team’s general manager, worked a deal with Philadelphia that not only beefed up this newfangled DH spot, but the middle of the A’s order as well. Two days later he was in the lineup for the first time against Cleveland. Oakland embarked on an 8-2 run and went 84-56 from that point forward en route to their third straight AL West title.  

From Swinging ’73: 

While Oakland discard Orlando Cepeda was hitting .347 with six home runs and 17 knocked in during his first month as Boston’s DH, six different A’s combined to bat just .231 with two home runs and six RBI in the newly-created position over the same span. So Finley found the best available ballplayer to fill that void.

Deron Johnson, who had spent parts of two years with the Kansas City A’s before being sold to Cincinnati in 1963, returned to the fold a decade later at the expense of low-level minor leaguer Jack Barnstable. Johnson, in a slump since faltering for the Phils as a pinch hitter on Opening Day at Shea Stadium, fit perfectly in Oakland. The A’s stopped using speedsters like Bill North and Angel Mangual as DH and followed the path of other AL teams by going with a slow-footed slugger. “We changed our thinking on the DH,” Dick Williams said. “Deron Johnson is the DH we’ve been looking for.” Johnson, 34, who had never played in a postseason game in a major league career that stretched back to 1960, had three hits and knocked home four in his Oakland debut and barely missed a game until the last week of the season.

Though an unsung name on an A’s roll that includes Hall of Famers Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and Rollie Fingers, plus All-Stars Sal Bando, Joe Rudi, Vida Blue, and Ken Holtzman, among others, it should be noted that when Dick Williams shifted Gene Tenace back to catcher and put Deron Johnson at first base for the last two games of the World Series, the A’s came back to win. As important as he was in ’73, Finley liked to keep his machine running by changing parts often. Traded to Milwaukee the following year, Johnson wound up a member of the 1975 Red Sox, though he was acquired by Boston in late September and was ineligible for postseason play. So 1973 was his only postseason in a 14-year, eight-team career.

May 2, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 5/2/1973… Seaver’s Harvey-esque Start

What would Seaver do? You wonder 40 years later how Tom Seaver would have fared if he had to pitch with the anemic offense of the current Mets. I think he might laugh: “You’ve got a catcher who hits home runs? Sign me up.” 

Seaver, undoubtedly the best Met of all time since he first stepped on a major league mound in 1967, was also challenged when it came to offensive support. A month into the 1973 season the Mets scored all of six runs in his first five starts. Half of those runs came on Opening Day, when he beat reigning Cy Young winner Steve Carlton of the Phillies,3-0. In his next start he faced another Hall of Famer, Bob Gibson, whose first-inning error was the difference in Seaver’s 2-1 win over the Cardinals. After that, it was Seaver’s turn to suffer through no fault of his own. 

He went the distance in his third outing, allowing just one run to the Cubs, but Fergie Jenkins won 1-0 behind Rick Monday’s home run. Finally facing a non-Hall of Fame opponent, the immortal John Strohmayer of Montreal shut out the Mets into the ninth before Ken Boswell singled home Jim Fregosi, of all people, to tie the game at 1-1. Since Boswell was up to bat for Seaver, Tom’s day was done. The Mets lost the following inning when Phil Hennigan allowed a single to Tim Foli to score Boots Day.  

On April 27, Seaver finally had a bad inning. Hank Aaron and Darrell Evans, who along with Davey Johnson would become the first 40-homer trio on a major league club in ’73, homered back-to-back at the Launching Pad. Seaver allowed just one other hit—a single to Johnson—but the damage was done. Pat Dobson tossed his own three-hitter and blanked the Mets, 2-0.

Mark Simon at ESPN NY pointed out this week that the April that Matt Harvey enjoyed in 2013 was comparable to the opening month of Seaver’s superb 1971 season. But Seaver’s ’73 is as good, and can be considered superior to both. In five starts in April of ’73, Seaver pitched 40.1 innings, allowed 21 hits, 11 walks, and fanned 30. The five runs he allowed came on five solo shots, but even that indicates how much he bore down when men were on base. His ERA of 1.12 along with a walks and hits per inning ratio of 0.798 were both better than Harvey’s 2013 (1.56, 0.82) and Seaver’s 1971 (1.37, 0.84). Unlike those two Aprils, in which both pitchers finished 4-0, Seaver finished April of ’73 at 2-2. 

And he fell to 2-3 on May 2, 40 years ago today (talk about a roundabout way to get here). The Big Red Machine became the first team to score on anything besides a home run over Seaver in 1973. Dave Concepcion’s two-out double scored Tony Perez from first base in the fourth inning to break a scoreless tie. Johnny Bench and Pete Rose took him deep later in a game in which Seaver fanned 13; these same two culprits came through with homers in the opening game of the 1973 NLCS, when Seaver again fanned 13—and lost. By then, however, Seaver would have won 20, be the eventual Cy Young winner, and his Mets wound up having more punch in October than in April.

April 29, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 4/19/1973… George’s First Victim

Barely four months after heading the syndicate that bought the Yankees, chairman George Steinbrenner got what he wanted. On this day in 1973, Michael Burke, team president since 1966, resigned in disgust. Steinbrenner’s choice, Gabe Paul, took over the role. Burke’s abrupt departure marked the first domino in a line that would see GM Lee MacPhail, manager Ralph Houk, and PR head Bob Fishel all quit by year’s end. The old days in the Bronx were over. 

Mike Burke was a renaissance man, a success at everything he’d tried before baseball. He’d been a star halfback at the University of Pennsylvania when Ivy League football really mattered, a spy behind German lines during World War II, part of the early CIA, head of the world’s most famous circus, and the man who set in motion the sale of the greatest sports team of the day—the New York Yankees—to the top network of the era: CBS. Under Burke, however, the Yankees endured their most fallow period since the pre-Ruth period of the 1910s. Yet even before Burke took the helm, the team had let its guard down and the talent pipeline stopped—the wins quickly stopped, too. After years of teams like the Yankees signing the best young talent because of their prestige, the creation of the amateur player draft in 1965 allowed teams previously pushed aside to get first crack at the best young players. It took the Yankees years to get the hang of the draft. 

Since he was running the team for the Tiffany Network, Burke gets the blame for the decline of the Yankees—but he rarely receives credit for keeping the Yanks in the Bronx. In Nixon’s America, New York was no gleaming city on the hill; many saw it as dingy, dirty, and dangerous. Death Wish, based on the bestseller and filmed on location in 1973 in “the most violent town in the world,” along with Mean Streets—Martin Scorcese’s first major film, released in ’73—did little to improve the city’s image in terms of crime and violence. Many corporations, not to mention families, had already fled New York by the 1970s. More would follow—including the Giants. The Maras, whose football team had been born at the Polo Grounds before moving to Yankee Stadium in the 1950s, opted for New Jersey. The Meadowlands also pushed to reel in the Yankees. So did New Orleans, in search of a baseball tenant for its under-construction Superdome. Burke worked with beleaguered New York mayor John Lindsay to rebuild Yankee Stadium where it stood. When Steinbrenner bought the team—arranged by Burke with the understanding that he would stay on as president—the Yankees came with a ready-made agreement for an essentially brand-new stadium. And then Steinbrenner pushed the deal’s architect out the door. 

It is easy now to look at the win-loss record over these past four decades and dismiss Burke, MacPhail, Houk, as well as the players whose “crime” was being Yankees during the period when the rest of baseball finally caught up to—and passed—the vaunted Bronx Bombers. CBS wanted out badly enough to sell the team for $10 million (or closer to $8 mil, if you count a couple of garages included in the deal) after paying $13 million in1964. Yet the transition of ownership was not what you would call graceful. It was one thing when Steinbrenner issued a list of the uniform numbers of players he felt needed haircuts. It was another thing when personnel started getting cut.

From Swinging ’73: 

“It made no sense for us to try work together,” Burke later wrote of Steinbrenner. “We came at the world from two different poles, and Yankee Stadium was too confined a space to contain us. . . . He [Steinbrenner] shouted and blustered for lack of fundamental self-assurance, terrible tempered for reasons perhaps as unclear to himself as to others.” Burke’s letter of resignation was even more succinct: 

The scope of responsibilities and authority proposed to be assigned to me are so limited as to be incompatible with even the narrowest definition of “chief operating officer” and I must conclude that you do not want me to operate the Yankees. Slowly and sadly, I have come to this conclusion. It represents a stunning, personal setback. 

When the players heard of the resignation on April 29, Graig Nettles quipped, “Was his hair too long?” For the Yankees, it was the beginning of the “Bronx Zoo” period. Those who had options started to weigh them.

A change of the guard is rarely smooth, and treating people badly never looks classy. By 1976, with Burke running Madison Square Garden, the Yankees would have a new ballpark and a new ballclub, for the most part. But under Steinbrenner, the bodies would pile up higher than in a Scorcese picture.

April 28, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 4/28/1973… Starters Fast and Slow

The present has a way of getting in the way of the past. It’s been a week since I had a chance to update what was happening at this time of year in 1973. To recap, in the almost two months since I’ve started this feature, we’ve seen the Dark Side of the Moon released, sung along with Charlotte’s Web and Tom Sawyer, and looked at everything from comets to comics and POWs to G.I. Joe. What we haven’t done so much is look at the baseball season. That changes now.

April may be the cruelest month, as T.S. Elliot said, but in terms of baseball, April is a veritable Waste Land of quickly fading clubs that whither before the air is warm.  

To wit, on this day 40 years ago, the San Francisco Giants had the best record in baseball at 18-5. The Giants would barely play .500 ball the rest of the way and finish a distant third behind the Reds, who at this point in the season had the National League’s second-best record at 12-8. The NL West was vastly superior to their Eastern counterparts in 1973. The top three clubs all would have run away with the NL East, plus a fourth club, the Astros, were just a half game worse than the Eastern champion Mets when the season ended. 

On April 28, 1973, the Cubs and Mets were tied for first in the East at 11-8. The Cubs would surge ahead as the Mets fizzled until their alarm clock went off four months later. The Cardinals began the year with the game’s worst record at 2-15; they would surge past the Cubs into first place in July and then hit the same wall most NL East teams ran into—an inability for the top clubs to beat up on the bottom clubs, and vice versa. The Cardinals would finish second in the NL East at 81-81. 

The Kansas City Royals had the American League’s best record at 13-7 on April 28, 1973. The Royals also had their first career no-hitter, tossed a day earlier in Detroit by Steve Busby. The April 27 game was not only the first no-no of the year, it was the first ever pitched by a pitcher who did not bat—thanks to the new designated hitter rule. Busby was a Royal wunderkind making just his 10th major league start. The kid from Burbank, drafted in the second round out of USC in 1971, became the first  pitcher to throw no-hitters in each of his first two full seasons when he tossed another no-hitter in 1974. Busby pitched in two All-Star Games and racked up 56 wins in his first three seasons… then his rotator cuff gave out in 1976. With Busby in the Kansas City rotation, those three straight losses to the Yankees in the playoffs from ’76 to ’78 may well have been different. A longtime play-by-play man for Texas, Busby remains a student and ambassador of the game. As it was then, though, he could not pitch the Royals past the Oakland A’s at his—and their—peak. Oakland began ’73 sluggishly and after their 2-1 loss in a duel between Jim Palmer and Ken Holtzman on April 28, stood at 8-11, 4 ½ games out.  

With a 10-8 record, the Orioles led a tight AL East that saw all six teams within two wins of each other. Baltimore would be the only ’73 team that held first place on April 28 as well as September 28. That’s the Oriole Way. 

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A little more PR for Swinging ’73 while we’re back in time. Thanks to “The Maven” Stan Fischler (and assistant Mike Rappaport) for the column on me in the Kingston Daily Freeman. There is also a book excerpt in the John Delcos New York Mets Report and had a nice chat with Anthony Wayne and the Mets Public Record (I start nine minutes into the link).  

April 27, 2013

First Winners of Greg Spira Award

The first winners of the Greg Spira Baseball Research Award were announced this morning, which would have been Greg’s 46th birthday. I miss my friend, colleague, collaborator, and sometimes dog sitter. I was honored to be one of the judges. I also put together the press release, so I will just run the release here. It says it all.

For release at noon, Eastern Time, 4/27/13

April 27, 2013—Trent McCotter has been selected as winner of the first annual Greg Spira Baseball Research Award. McCotter’s 2012 essay, “Cal Ripken’s Record for Consecutive Innings,” compiled for the first time the correct total of consecutive innings (8,264) played by the Orioles’ great shortstop between 1982 and 1987. McCotter’s extensive research also created a list of every player who ever played at least 2,500 consecutive innings, information previously unknown despite the fact that the players involved had all retired many decades ago.

The article by McCotter, an attorney living in Washington D.C., first appeared in the Fall 2012 edition of the Society of American Baseball Research’s Baseball Research Journal (Volume 41, No. 2). It was this type of research and presentation that the Greg Spira Research Award was created to honor.

Spira later contributed to many sports books as a researcher, writer, and editor, including the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, the ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia, Total Baseball, and annual periodicals about the Mets. A lifelong and passionate Mets fan, Spira died on December 28, 2011 in his native New York City.

McCotter received $1,000 as the top prize for his article on Ripken’s consecutive innings streak. The $200 second prize went to Dan Farnsworth’s article on the economics of team restructuring, “Is Rebuilding Worth It?” A 2008 graduate of Franklin & Marshall, Farnsworth serves as director of baseball operations and player development at Carmen Fusco’s Pro Baseball & Softball Academy in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania. His article was originally published on Frangraphs.com.

The $100 third prize went to Caleb Hardwick’s detailed Web site and database about baseball in the 25th state: Arkansas Baseball Encyclopedia. Hardwick, 19, a student at the College of the Ouachitas in Malvern, Arkansas, has spent four years on the project and continues to add features to the site.

All three 2013 winners will be invited to serve as judges for the 2014 Spira Award.

April 25, 2013

Come for the Harvey, Stay for the Jordany

Late developments set up quite an evening Wednesday at Citi Field. Billed as Harvey Night, I got a last-minute call to the press box, my first time so treated at the Citi. I sat next to John Delcos, member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, and possessor of Hall of Fame voting rights. John and I discussed a periodic Swinging ’73 giveaway during his 1973 weekly articles on his site, plus another site with whom we are negotiating. I also talked to a couple of people interviewed in Swinging ’73: Steady Eddie Kranepool and Steve Jacobson, original New Breed writer and “Chipmunk,” who came out to see this Harvey in the flesh. He agreed that the best pitchers have a little swagger, a confidence necessary to compete against the game’s best. All at our dining room table, including Rich Coutinho, concurred that the Mets needed more people like that.

The press box was warm and three-quarters full—not bad for April in Flushing. Thanks to the wonderful and courageous Shannon Forde for setting me up, but as the game entered the sixth inning, I felt the need to go out and get a feel for whatever buzz the ballpark held on yet another chilly night. The packed bar/lounge adjoining the press box had no shortage of buzz, a phenomenon I recall seeing as well during the early Ike Davis days in a frosty doubleheader against the Dodgers in April of 2010. Unlike then, however, the stands emanated a buzz as well. Without a seat to call my own, I stood along the first base line as the Dodgers took a two-run lead on a “home run,” thanks to the unwanted miracle of instant replay. (After a century and a half of half-assed umpiring, does baseball suddenly need to be this precise?) 

I chowed on popcorn and nursed a can of beer as the Mets made it 3-2 on a sacrifice fly by Justin Turner. Alas, Burner was batting for the pitcher, ending Matt Harvey’s night. There were still quite a few new orange shirts pulled over sweatshirts and coats, as well as more energy in the park—24,170 closer to the actual number of people in the house than usual. I ran into Greg and Jason, the Faith and Fear fellas, who’d told me earlier they were sitting down the first-base line, and we chatted and warmed up for an inning. After a frustrating end to the eighth when, with the tying run at third and two outs, pinch hitter Jordany Valdespin grounded out on the first pitch as a pinch hitter, I decided to move closer to the egress in right field. It was in section 101, a beginner seating area apparently, since I had to stand, that I saw the Mets stamp their claim on this night. Beyond Matt Harvey, who later told the working media (as opposed to vagabond interlopers like myself) that he was disappointed in his outing, and beyond the machinations of Dodgers manager Don Mattingly, who double-switched like he was being paid by the move, the game would belong to the late-comers.

Mike Baxter, Flushing boy, hit a sinking liner botched by Carl Crawford, who played but three innings and screwed up all he came in contact with. Bax beat the throw to second for what Howie Rose called “a hustle double.” Bax went to third on a sacrifice by Ruben Tejada and Daniel Murphy worked the count in his favor against closer Brandon League before his soft pop was grabbed out of the stands by third baseman Jerry Hairston. The Mets were now 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position. “The Outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day”…  verse that we Mets fans—and indeed baseball fans in general, all subject to the laws of probability—are all too familiar with. 

Here came the David Wright, the big hope, the big kahunah. Just like Mike Piazza, you hoped he’d come through, but were rationalizing the numbers in your head, knowing they probably wouldn’t. Players like Mike and Wright are lucky to see one decent pitch in an at bat like this with a base open and the game on the line. But Brandon League got a ball over the plate and Wright went with it, dropping it on the grass below Citi 101 where I was now sitting (the green-jacketed mafia looked the other way long enough for me to set up camp in the back row—very glad I packed that extra jacket). David must have heard me telling him to steal, and the Dodgers must have heard as well, because he was out by a mile. But Harvey was off the hook and yet more free baseball was at hand. 

The ending of the game in the 10th was strange in that Donnie Baseball did not come to take out pitcher Josh Wall with runners on second and third and one out; the Dodgers manager took out his left fielder, Crawford, replacing him with Luis Cruz and putting him at third base while going with a five-infielder, two-outfielder configuration that I once saw work against my daughter’s Little League softball team. Too bad Jordany Valdespin wasn’t on her team.

Jordany worked the count and then crushed a ball that kept coming closer and closer to me as it became more and more obvious the game was over. It landed in the dopey net they have above the groundling seats in right field—can’t they just put a sign that says “Beware of Walkoff Grand Slams” instead of the net? But I guess that since the last such instance was by Kevin McReynolds in 1991—Robin Ventura’s basepath dance with Todd Pratt in October 1999 doesn’t technically count —they figured no one would much take notice of a sign. 

Is this a sign of greatness to come in 2013? Well, Kevin Mac’s ’91 walkoff slam portended a season that ended the most successful era in Mets history in ’91, so we won’t etch anything in stone. We’ll remember this one for a while, though. Even last year when things went wrong in the second half, I could take out and polish the April ninth-inning comeback I saw against the Marlins. As this was my first night-game triumph I had witnessed at Citi Field since 2011, before the reign of Jordany, I will tuck this away for polishing some day when the breeze is too hot and the team is not.  

I was so happy that on the way home I made my first-ever call to WFAN and Steve Somers. The Schmoozer is another person I interviewed for Swinging ’73, and someone I have listened to late at night since I worked the midnight journalism shift (not in a major league press box). We spoke for a few minutes before the 12:40 a.m. update. “Me here, you there,” only with Schmooze pitching the book and me reminiscing how Jordany’s wicked hacks reminded me of a speedier version of John Milner, misunderstood and without a position for much of his Mets time, but still “The Hammer.” A ’73 Met gone too soon, forgotten perhaps, but taken out and shined up through memory on a cold, contented April nights such as these.  

April 22, 2013

Movie Review: 42

Man, I got some grief for the latest 40 Years Ago Today that featured Tony Orlando and Dawn. I can understand that. What I can’t understand is how anyone would give any grief to the new film, 42. 

There have been a lot of baseball films through the years. Most of them, frankly, have sucked. Games, seasons, and even careers are jumbled together to fit the story, or the film’s budget. Or the characters come across as one dimensional, or two dimensional, at best. And few of them have anything important to say. No matter what you might say about 42, you can’t say that the subject matter isn’t important. 

I write about the past a lot—some would use the word “exclusively”—but I still live here in the present. And with two kids, I sometimes even find myself thinking about the future. My son, who is nine, asked to see 42. As I was taught about Lou Gehrig when I was in fourth grade, he learned about Jackie Robinson in fourth grade. Some day we will get around to seeing Pride of the Yankees, which even an avowed Yankee hater cannot watch without getting a lump in the throat. And we didn't stop at 42, we made a weekend of it, showing the whole family Mighty Macs, the 2012 movie about Immaculata College, the tiny school that gave women’s sports a face just as Title IX was coming into being; this all-women’s college, like the all-mustached Oakland A’s, claimed championships in 1972, ’73, and ’74. We borrowed that film from the library. (And the Macs borrowed their “Let’s go Macs” chant from another cheer I know.)

42 is in theaters, and I am glad to hear, is doing well. This event from 66 years back, two-thirds of a century ago, is hard to tell kids about in a way they can even begin to understand how harsh it was. In 42 the veil is lifted off. Robinson deals with a lot just getting on a major league roster. Then the Phillies come to town.  

Phillies manager Ben Chapman steps on the field and spews some of the harshest racial invective that I have heard in a film in some time. I looked over at my son wiping his eyes and I put my hand on his shoulder. (Lucas Black, as Pee Wee Reese, later does the same thing in the film.) You can explain all day what it was like, but 42 puts you there. Alan Tudyk, best known previously for playing a Pirate, plays the harsh Phillies manager. What made it even harder for me was knowing that he was my late beloved uncle’s favorite player and that Chapman, like my mother’s family, was from Birmingham, Alabama. Chapman was fired the next year—probably more because the Phillies had only one winning season between 1918 and 1948 than because of his harsh managing style. According to writer Allan Barra, Chapman did turn a new leaf in his later years, but we are often judged how we perform in the heat of the day not the cool of the evening. 

Before the movie began, I said I was ready to signal the historical inaccuracies as they came up. The only one I noticed was the number 13 worn by pitcher Kirby Higbe, the leader of the group of Southern Dodgers pushing for the petition against Robinson. Higbe wore number 13 and I said to myself, “That’s Ralph Branca’s number.” Afterward I checked and found that Branca took the number after the malcontent Higbe was traded—to Pittsburgh. So they even got that middling detail right, as they did in casting Hamish Linklater as Branca, who shows that barriers can start to come down a bit simply by putting out your hand and saying hello to someone new. Chadwick Boseman was fully believable in the lead role and Harrison Ford, who had to push the producers to play Branch Rickey, really caught the essence of the Mahatma, who not only had a hand in the installation of the farm system and, of course, the integration of the game, but as front of man of the would-be Continental League, Rickey helped break the National League’s seven-decade ban on expansion that resulted in the birth of our own New York Mets. You could almost smell the cigar Ford was constantly chewing on as Rickey. And Ford, who stands 6-foot-1, was filmed either alone or sitting for most scenes so he looked smaller. Rickey, who was a catcher in the majors in the 1900s before his considerable organizational and business talents landed him in management, stood just 5-foot-9. Another casting nod goes to John G. McGinley, who was marvelous as Red Barber.   

But it was young Dusan Brown, all of 11 when the film was made, who got the first tear rolling down my cheek. Sitting in the segregated section of the stands with his mother in spring training, he prays for Jackie Robinson. Maybe he is praying for his own future, too. After Jackie made the Montreal Royals—breaking the minor league color barrier a year before he would do the same in the major leagues—Robinson flips a baseball to a trio of black boys seeing him off on the train. Watching the train leave, the boys take off after it. They run until the train is out of sight and then Brown places his ear to the track to listen to the train still running and carrying Robinson into a future now opened to him. That child was Ed Charles, whose last game in the major leagues culminated with his dancing on the mound at Shea Stadium moments after the Mets clinched the 1969 World Series. Writer Ed Hoyt made that story live in The Miracle Has Landed, director Brian Helgeland made it live on the screen in 42, and Mets announcer Howie Rose gave it even greater relevance last week saying, while the Mets wore the number 42 uniforms in honor of Robinson, that the team should have Charles tell the younger generation of fans—and players—how Robinson literally changed the world they live in. 

I hope I haven’t given away too much, but if you are a baseball fan who knows the story, let me tell you, the important pieces are all there. I have long held Eight Men Out by John Sayles to be the best historical baseball movie. 42 is a different film, but it is even more important. Those who complain about the content of 42 should be forced to watch a 24-hour loop with John Goodman as Babe Ruth.   

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Now that I have suggested what to watch, now I will suggest what to listen to and read. I was on Spadora on Sports on April 20. I was on the show about one-third of the way through, talking about Swinging ’73 as well as the latest Matt Harvey start. There were also positive writeups on the book: American Profile, Alive East Bay Magazine, and The Writer's Journey. 

April 21, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 4/21/1973… “Tie a Yellow Ribbon”

“Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree” by Tony Orlando and Dawn reaches number one. It will be Billboard’s No. 1 song for 1973.  

To illustrate the song’s popularity, let me tell you about the Silverman family’s road trip in November of 1973. We drove to Washington D.C. in our big brown Impala: three people in the front, three in the back. My brothers and sister jostled in the back, while my eight-year-old self was up front between my parents. (Child booster seats? We didn’t even have functioning seat belts!) The entire way home through numbing traffic on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we listened to the radio—AM only, naturally. “Tie A Yellow Ribbon” played so many times I learned the song backwards and forwards. I can still see my dad clenching his pipe in the mouth as the song came on yet again as the car idled on unmovable roads and I sang loud and proud. I can only remember taking one interstate family car trip after that.

April 19, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 4/17/1973… Waltons Mountain Miracle

In 1973, this day was Holy Thursday, the start of Easter weekend. CBS, already the top network, packed in the heavy holiday artillery with a special two-hour, season-ending Waltons episode called “The Easter Story.” The story focused not just on Easter, but on Olivia, mother of the brood on Waltons Mountain, Virginia, contracting polio. This crippling disease had been contained in the U.S. by vaccinations by the 1970s, but anyone who had grown up 40 years before knew of its devastating effects that took many lives and changed many others. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president when the The Waltons was set (the show began in his first year in office, 1933), had lost the ability to walk because of the disease, though this handicap was kept from the public during his record four terms in office.

In the Waltons episode, Miss Michael Learned’s character, Olivia—or Liv, as she was called by John Sr. (not to be confused with John-Boy)—tries several remedies, but she seems resigned to life in a wheelchair. In the hours before Easter morning, she thinks she hears Elizabeth, the youngest of her seven children, call out to her in distress in the night. Liv gets out of bed and walks to her and discovers she is healed. The whole family attends Easter Sunday sunrise service. 

So much for TV having little to offer the American family in the cynical 1970s. The first-year Waltons remained on the air until it finally said goodnight in 1981. The show kept getting up for sporadic TV specials through 1997.

April 17, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 4/17/1973… The Birth of Star Wars

“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” On this day in 1973, George Lucas began writing the screenplay for what became Star Wars. After its 1977 release, the film’s name would transform into “A New Hope” and by Lucas decree be called Episode IV, even as the original spawned one of the most lucrative franchises in history. 

At age 30 in 1973, Lucas had completed directing the story of his growing up in Modesto, California: American Graffiti. It was a low-budget film still months from release, destined to become the year’s surprise hit (and introduce film audiences to a TV actor named Harrison Ford). Yet even before that, Lucas’s star burned bright. He had helped form Zoetrope Studios with Francis Ford Coppola, whom he had worked with in his first major effort, a bizarre film about bald people in a dystopian future: THX 1138. Coppola, who had challenged Lucas to write about his youth in Modesto, was enjoying a good run of luck as well in 1973. His Godfather won Best Picture and garnered 10 other Academy Award nominations. 

Lucas had a contract for a space film to follow American Graffiti. The result would take four years to get on the screen, but when it appeared in—or rather, took over—theaters in 1977, Star Wars would transform not only films about space, but also the concepts of special effects and blockbusters. Because of Star Wars’ extended production, Lucas was unable to direct Apocalypse Now, leading to the end of his partnership with Coppola, who fatefully took over as that film’s director. By then, Star Wars—starting with a story scrawl that had to be filmed manually (and translated for foreign language versions)—had become the stuff of legend. And it started with a man with a Flash Gordon fixation dreaming about space adventures.

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The appearances and reviews keep coming for Swinging ’73. It does a body good. Thanks to my 1973 classmate as well as baseball aficionado Bruce Markusen at The Hardball Times, new pal Eric Brach for our interview on Bleacher Report (and to whatever machine misidentified my image as David Wright—that is a mistake I can deal with), to fellow Mets sufferer Steve Keane at The Eddie Kranepool Society, and to WLIE Sports Talk NY for a meeting of the Mets minds with Greg Prince and me along with their knowledgeable panel. And though I do not have a link for the interview, thanks to Rob Barr at Sports Byline USA for having me on the radio last week.

April 11, 2013

Letters to the Met-idor

A new book means promo time. Swinging ’73 is the theme in the latest Letters to the Met-idor, your twice annual mailbag o’ fun with plenty of clip show tricks learned from a lifetime of sitcom viewing. Explore, procrastinate, drift off to sleep in your cubicle, it’s all good. I won’t tell… wake up, the boss is coming! 

We begin with the first metsilverman.com three-way. Get your mind out of the gutter, I mean communication three-way—um, let’s call it “around the horn.” It includes two responders and myself through a Facebook link last week about the 40th anniversary of Ron Blomberg becoming the first designated hitter in history. Let’s get it on….

Designated Hater

Dear Met,

Forty years ago today the first DHs batted. Ron Blomberg was the first—Tony Oliva hit the first DH home run that day.

Kevin Tabor

Dear Met, 

'73 was certainly an interesting year and UNFORTUNATELY, in my opinion, the DH has changed baseball forever! I've stated previously, I think the NL will eventually adopt the DH which will, at least, mean that major league baseball will be playing by the same rule in BOTH leagues!

George W. Case III

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One comment fits all for George and Kevin...

I note in Swinging ‘73 that Tony Oliva of the Twins hit the first DH homer—a perfect segue since he hit it in the opening game that year in Oakland, one of the teams I follow through 1973 in the new book. With his great bat and bad legs, Oliva was the kind of player the DH was made for. Rico Carty, too. I think it came along too late to protect their battered knees. Same goes for Orlando Cepeda, who was the first man crowned with the low profile Outstanding DH Award (now known as the Edgar Martinez Award for the man who won the award more times than anyone—until David Ortiz passed him with his sixth “Edgar” in 2011). 

As for George’s point on the DH. I think the DH will become a part of the major leagues across the board in the next few years—or sooner if a pitcher batting incident creates an outcry. But I have never been one to feel the need for uniformity across the leagues. I grew up when the AL was the league of the “pillow” chest protector, burgundy coats, and the high strike for AL umpires, not to mention the league with two extra teams, more complete games (because the DH eliminated late-game pinch hitting for pitchers), and a balanced schedule (which I like far less than the DH).

I can live with the game not being uniform. I’d rather not have the DH in either league, but I am also realistic (occasionally) and know it will never go back to the way it was pre-’73. The Players Association would never stand for its elimination, and many fans of the AL would also never stand for it. It is all they know.

It is inevitable that the DH will be the rule throughout baseball. Whatever year is the last without the DH across baseball may be a project for a book someday.

Best,

Matt

G-POP, Pop, Pop Music to My Ears

Dear Met,

I am co-owner of an e-zine known as G-POP.net. At G-POP.net, we strive to bring our readers all things entertainment. To that end, we have posted a review of your book, Best Mets. Thanks for such an entertaining read... one Mets fan to another. From Cy Young to Pantheon.

Melissa Minners

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Melissa,
To paraphrase something I often hear: I didn’t know your site existed before, but I love it. Thanks so much for not only reading the books but posting reviews. I am glad we had a disagreement about one or two things in Best Mets because it is a book about arguments. I even had a few with myself—especially over the order of the top 50 Mets.

A book you may want to think about, or put on your list for gifts, is one that is just out now, Swinging '73. I think you’ll enjoy it even if you don’t remember that year—I don’t, but it was a thrill recreating 1973 by talking to participants, watching videos, and reading everything I could find on the year. It takes a broader view than my past books—including New York Mets: The Complete Illustrated History (now available on Kindle; I couldn't help notice the book was not on your review list on G-POP.net—authorship in the 2000s is about self-PR).

I think Swinging '73 enables people who don’t know much about 1973 will come away with a better understanding of what it was like to live then. There’s something to be said about a time when the country was a bit down and progress was made by slogging through the mess. We did not have the world at our fingertips with phone in hand to answer everything, but in some ways I think it’s more fun to be looking up instead of down while walking around town. You never know what you might miss in front of you.

Again, thanks! (And I don't give out exclamation points easily, unless the sentence in question is “Let’s Go Mets!”)
Best,
Matt
 

Ranking Authenticity

Dear Met,

Great piece, Matt. Where do you think R.A. ranks in the pantheon of sports underdog stories? Lake Placid... I don’t even know what else... Kurt Warner? Rocky... Wait, that was make-believe.

Keith Thomson

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Keith,

In terms of great sports underdog stories, the Cy Young Award raises R.A. Dickey above the guy off the street who makes the unlikely jump to the big leagues—like countless ballplayers, such as the dude nicknamed “Rocky” after the fictional boxer, or the character played by Marky Mark in the movie Invincible, about the guy who went from 1970s bartender to Eagles wide receiver (Vince Papale); or the 1970s bartender who made the Falcons in midseason and kicked five field goals on Monday Night Football in his second NFL game (Tim Mazzetti)—was there something about the ’70s and bartenders who could play special teams? And there was Rudy Ruetteger at Notre Dame, the subject of an inspirational film made about his ascent from janitor to tackling dummy to garbage time tackler.

R.A. falls below legends like the 1980 Miracle on Ice, which many thought was America’s greatest sports moment of the 20th century, or the 1969 Miracle Mets, or any number of other great underdog team tales—’60 Pirates, ’73 Mets, ’91 Twins (and Braves), ’04 Red Sox, ’07 NY Giants football, ’08 Rays, ’12 SF Giants or any number of other stories that I’m probably forgetting. But R.A. is up there among the best stories in sports today—and best authors among athletes—and he certainly stacks up with any individual story in Mets history. For sports star comparison, I think you hit it on the head with Kurt Warner.

As a number one draft pick, R.A. started higher than Warner, though Dickey was quickly swatted down due to a missing arm ligament that turned him into roster filler instead of budding star in the eyes of the team that drafted him and then lowballed him, the Texas Rangers. Unless he pitches for another decade, wins a few more Cy Youngs, and leads his team to a World Series victory to push himself to Hall of Fame caliber, I think Kurt has him beat. Maybe I’m biased, but any star who leads both the Rams and Cardinals to Super Bowls has more impressive Pro Football Hall of Fame credentials than most any Packer, Steeler, 49er, or Giant. Go, Kurt! Go, R.A.! Wherever you call home.

Best,

Matt

Sammy I Ammy

Dear Met,
My dad has been a Mets fan since they were a team and Mets Essential and 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die were great gifts for him. I also got Mets by the Numbers for his b-day and he was very happy. Thanks.

Sammy

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Sammy,

Thanks for picking up the books for your dad. A book that has been out for almost a year is Best Mets. It ranks some of the best—and worst—aspects of the Mets experience. As is my wont, and maybe Dad’s wish, Swinging '73 is now out. It is about the 40th anniversary of the 1973 Mets, entwining their thrilling story with that of the team they competed with in the New York market, as well as the club they were destined to face in a thrilling World Series in a memorable year in America. 

Thanks for taking the time to read the site and write in.

Best,

Matt

Booked

Dear Met,

Hey, I saw your Swinging ’73 listed on Amazon, I look forward to reading it. What’s next? Thoughts on HOF votes and Dickey on Jays? I just picked up The Happiest Recap as you suggested on your blog. Also saw that there is now yet another '86 Mets book, but this is about the entire season in general.

Eric

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Hey Eric,

Thanks for checking in. Your question of what’s next really got me thinking. I do not have a next; I was sort of letting it come to me. I have some ideas, but I want to see what level of interest people have about 1973 before diving into another year. We will see. Though, be sure, there will definitely be a follow up. 

I assume the 1986 book you are talking about is Season of Ghosts by Howard Burman. I sort of feel that after The Bad Guys Won by Jeff Pearlman and One Pitch Away by Mike Sowell (it is a publishing sin that this book is not available at least electronically), plus the numerous columns, blogs, and suicide notes from Red Sox Nation about their side of 1986, the year has been done pretty well.

Glad you picked up The Happiest Recap by Greg Prince (volume two of the series is coming soon—OK, scratch what I said above; this is a book that includes 1986 that I am looking forward to). Having a book like this, from a source I trust more than any other, is a wonderful thing. And the best thing about that book is the Mets can’t lose!

Best,

Matt

April 10, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 4/10/1973… Royalty in Kansas City

The Royals were just in their fifth season of existence, but there was something different about them—and their stadium, which opened on this day in 1973. While it has now literally been decades since the Royals were competitive on a consistent basis, the Royals were building it right in 1973. They had stolen Amos Otis from the Mets, Fred Patek from the Pirates, Hal McRae from the Reds, Tom Burgmeir from the Angels, and Lou Piniella from the Seattle Pilots. They also had a brilliant farm system that developed pitchers Paul Splittorff and Steve Busby, along with Frank White, a product of the innovative Royals Academy that uncovered athletes in other sports and turned them into ballplayers. In August 1973 the Royals would debut a young third baseman named George Brett.  

But the ’73 home opener for the Royals revealed a different star: Royals Stadium. Still a gorgeous stadium even by today’s standards, resplendent Royals Stadium and its signature fountains—not all of which were working Opening Day—stood in stark relief to the nearly identical “concrete doughnuts” that had recently gone up in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. Astroturf be damned, Royals Stadium was a beaut—and it was a baseball only park in a time when the vast majority of cities had dual purpose facilities. (The Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium had opened for football only a few months earlier across the parking lot.) 

The stadium opened on a Tuesday in front of a full house of 39,464—the Royals also took the innovative step of having a smaller capacity, thus increasing demand and improving the experience for the baseball fan. Paul Splittorff set down Rangers Dave Nelson, Toby Harrah, and Mike Epstein in the top of the first inning. The Royals turned on the offense immediately. Fred Patek led off for the Royals with the first walk, stole the first base, and scored the first run on John Mayberry’s two-run single. Mayberry also had the first home run. (Amos Otis’s bunt single was the first hit.) Splittorff took a shutout into the ninth before it was broken up by a Jeff Burroughs home run. Still, a 12-1 win was a pretty nice way to start the best season to date by an AL expansion team. (The 1969 Mets still had the gold standard with 100 wins for an expansion club.) 

Only the Oakland A’s dynasty kept Jack McKeon’s 88-win Royals from grabbing the 1973 AL West title, something Kansas City would claim seven times in a 10-year span before going into a dormant phase after their 1985 world championship. Even after a recent renovation, the stadium remains a gem, but the franchise still slumbers.  

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The radio appearances have been coming fast and furious. Here is a recap of places you can go to get the word on Swinging ’73 and me. Thanks to Converted Mets Fan, Rising Apple, and Eric Brach at Bleacher Report. I have taped other interviews that have not yet gone on the air. If I have not included your spot, my apologies. Let me know the missing link.

April 6, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/31/1973… The DH Debuts

This is one of the biggest days on 40 Years Ago Today calendar, April 6, 1973 was Opening Day. Yankee Ron Blomberg became the first designated hitter against Luis Tiant at Fenway Park. For detail of how this came to pass, go here.  

Looking forward from 40 years back, I am glad that Ron Blomberg was the first DH. He is a thoroughly delightful man that I played phone tag with for two months last summer. He never tired of my persistent messages, and sincerely tried to get in touch, but the fame of being the first DH and the responsibilities he has for children at his camps, his family, and his game, keep him crisscrossing the country. Finally, an hour’s break in his relentless schedule near the book’s deadline afforded me one of the best interviews in the book. He is quick to say, “I ruined the game.” Ron is a jokester, but his initial at bat—actually it wasn’t even an official at bat, it was a walk—changed a fundamental rule that all nine men in the lineup must both bat and play the field, or be removed from the lineup. It was the biggest rule change in the game since the pitching mound went from 50 feet to 60 feet, 6 inches eight decades earlier. You think the 1973 AL underwent an offensive explosion? Check out the NL numbers for 1893, when the mound moved back 10 ½ feet: an increase of 35 points in batting average and 92 points in on-base plus slugging. The first year of the DH, the American League, which had been in an offensive and attendance decline, saw batting average go up 14 points (to .259) and OPS increase by 66 points (to .710). 

But the DH argument, now in its 40th year of debate, is not about numbers. It’s not even about the pitcher batting. It is about the game the way it was meant to be played. It is about using the whole bench instead of having to dust off the cobwebs from your backup infielder every two weeks. It’s about baseball.

I don’t mind the DH in the AL, as long as it doesn’t mess with my game. But they have already messed with it. Bud’s Folly (21st edition) of putting 15 teams in each league—for reasons that are laughable, at best—will one day soon bring the DH to every game, in every league. Though the word “league” will also be outlawed and the World Series will be determined by randomly-chosen brackets, like the NCAA basketball tournament. (I shouldn’t joke because it may give them more ideas.)

All it will take is an incident of a prominent AL pitcher breaking a limb on the bases, or someone like former NL manager Terry Francona not allowing any pitcher of his to swing at all in 30 interleague plate appearances, or the Players Association insisting on the DH for all games in the next collective bargaining contract—because the role of DH pays its members a lot better than PH. And that will be that for pitchers batting in professional baseball. I would rather see the game return to artificial turf  in cookie cutter stadiums. That at least kept teams on their toes. The DH for all is all about more swinging from the heels. To me, that is a little boring.

But whenever the DH becomes the rule throughout the land, don’t blame Ron Blomberg. He didn’t ruin the game. The people who are supposed to keep an eye on baseball are doing that.  

Bergino Thanks; Isaacs Tribute

Thanks to all who came out to Bergino Baseball Clubhouse Thursday night for my talk about Swinging ’73. I’ll forward the podcast when that is up. Special thanks to Greg Prince, my companion for this long day’s journey into night between Flushing and Greenwich Village. (And Greg will take to the air with me for a Mets fest with host Mark Rosenman on WLIE 540 AM Sunday at 7:15 p.m.) Converted Mets Fan Sam Maxwell, one of many Mets aficionados we met on Shea Bridge, showed for both ends of my Thursday day-night doubleheader.

Bergino proprietor Jay Goldberg is a swell host and promoter of baseball. He also has a few copies of the book to sell for those who missed my talk but want to make the pleasant sojourn to his shop on 11th Street in Greenwich Village. The people who come to his shop—pronunciation-wise, I learned that it is a hard “g” in Bergino—are the kind of folks I can only hope to find around me in the grandstand.

A person I wish I could have found near me in the press box was Stan Isaacs, the longtime Newsday columnist who passed this week at 83. A leading sportswriter in the early 1960s, he quit covering the championship Yankees for the fledgling Mets. He saw them as an escape from what had become, to him, a stifling beat in the Bronx. From the first day of the franchise, he cast off the old and predictable to embrace the new and the lively. You never knew what the Mets would do next—you still don’t. After their first game—a loss, naturally—his lede in Newsday for the April 11, 1962 game read, “There is no Santa Claus, the meek shall not inherit the earth and the Mets will not win all their games.”

I interviewed Isaacs last summer for Swinging ’73. It was a brief phone interview—he was not having as good a day as he had enjoyed at the Mets Conference at Hofstra University last April. The details were not at his fingertips as they’d been when he was a leading member of the Chipmunks, a nickname for the New Breed writers coined by sportswriting legend Billy Cannon and turned into a badge of honor by Isaacs and contemporaries like Steve Jacobson.

Isaacs gave me a good quote about Willie Mays and left me with an appreciation that two in the bush can beat a bird in the hand, if you can see the angles most others miss.

April 3, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 4/3/1973… The First Cell Phone Distraction

Martin Cooper, general manager for Motorola, makes the first cellular phone call—to rival AT&T. The cutting edge phone is the size of a brick. People stopped in their tracks to see a person making a phone call without wires, a booth, or rotary dial. It was Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone come to life from Get Smart. “Hello, Chief. Would you believe I am calling from a wireless phone in front of the New York Hilton? Would you believe from a car phone outside of Macy’s? Would you believe from two tin cans in front of the Y?”

In a recent New York Times Magazine piece about this device that turned more humans into drones than television, Cooper said that they handed the phone around to the press for them to try it out and confirm it wasn’t a hoax or delayed April Fool’s joke. One of the reporters at the 1973 demonstration called Australia and called his mother. “Gooday, Mum. Would you believe...” 

April 2, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 4/2/1973… News from Around the Dial

On this day in 1973, CBS-AM 880 in New York went all news 24 hours a day. After WINS 1010 AM made the switch in 1965, WCBS moved in that direction, but still had a few hours of regular programming daily until this Monday in ’73.  

There was a big story I knew about that did not make the news on CBS that day—but it was the first day with the new format. So CBS missed the scoop of my sister turning 18. Because of the 26th Amendment to the Constitution two years earlier, this meant Marie was now old enough to vote. I won’t ask for whom. Happy birthday, sis.

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Back in 2013, today is the official publication day of Swinging ’73. I have been in publishing for a while and I cannot even tell you exactly what this means, but I have seen some nice mentions in emails and the Twitter-verse, so I say thank you. I also say today is as good a day as any to recommend that you buy Swinging ’73. And if you don’t believe me…

New York Post columnist Mike Vaccaro calls Swinging ’73 “a fantastic ode to a year that began with the Yankees wife-swap and ended with the Mets’ second miracle.”

Sports Book Review Center says, among other things: “Silverman does good work on the three teams that serve as the center of the book. He interviewed some of the principals from those seasons, and they provide some good stories. The story about the A’s allocating playoff tickets with a skeleton staff by hand, for example, is a classic.”

And the Special Libraries Association did me the honor of publishing their in-depth interview with me on Opening Day.

If you want share any of your own insights, please join me at the fabulous Bergino Baseball Clubhouse in the Village on 67 East 11th Street this Thursday, April 4, at 7 p.m. The new bookmarks are here—a level of excitement in these parts on par with the arrival of the new phonebooks—and everyone who buys a book will get a genuine 1974 baseball card featuring the exploits of ’73, swinging and otherwise.

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I knew there was something I forgot—Opening Day. Some old friends gave me tickets to the opener and afforded me the opportunity to take my son to his first Lid Lifter. He also got to his first Lid Lifter tailgate, courtesy of Randy Medina at the Apple. It was great seeing the whole gang, including Sharon Chapman, who took the nice photo on the back of Swinging ’73. Her husband Kevin, is a serious lawyer and Mets fan and writer. I also got to see Taryn Cooper and Ed Leyro, who witnessed a doubleheader sweep, with the Rangers knocking off the Jets in the nightcap (that’s New York vs. Winnipeg, not Texas vs. New York, for those mixing their teams with multi-sports names). Also got to talk to Ted Berg, who is doing a swell job away from SNY with USA Today. Met up with Greg Prince, accosted Kerel Cooper in the beer line, and tracked down cousin and metsilverman.com designer Blair Rafuse in the Promenade. Anyone I forgot to mention is welcome to remind me at Bergino’s on Thursday night and collect their bookmark and baseball card. Let the swinging begin.

April 1, 2013

New Citi Field Postgame Song for 2013: “Dream On”

I thought I was just lucky that tickets fell in my lap for the opener due to the overwhelming popularity of the Mets, but then this scoop clunks me right in the head, too. Metsliverman.com has learned exclusively that the days of playing “Taking Care of Business” after wins and “New York State of Mind” after losses is out at Citi Field. Sources have confirmed that the new postgame song will be Aerosmith’s “Dream On.” 

The email message left on metsilverman.com stated, “We just wanted to streamline the process. Sandy [ed note: the GM, not the hurricane] says this year doesn’t matter. This way fans can pine for 2014, and then the song will have even more poignancy because there’s no way that team will be competitive, either. LOL.” My inside source also confirms that a band has been booked to perform the new theme live after a loss, er, game against the Phillies in July. The band isn’t Areosmith. (Rumor has it they are expensive.) It’s not even Aerosmith Rocks, the Aerosmith tribute band. The Mets thought they could get them cheap because their website said they are performing in Flatbush the same weekend—Mets offices are always on high alert for any site containing Brooklyn or Dodger code words. The Mets subsequently found out it was Flatbush, Alberta. So they instead booked the new band, Dude Looks Like a Lady, which is practicing in a garage on Jericho Turnpike—as soon as they clean out all the old newspapers and finish their geometry homework. The band has agreed to do the gig for tickets to two games vs. the Marlins, hot dogs, and three cases of Budweiser a year past the Born on Date. (Just don’t tell the drummer’s mom.) 

Win or lose, the Mets have one message for 2013: “Dream On.” Just think how that will look on the side of the stadium! 

They’re pretty pumped about it on Jericho Turnpike. I got a tweet from Dude Looks Like a Lady: “Holy crap, a gig at Citi Field. I mean, we did a penny social last week at the middle school that had like 30 people. But this might be bigger.” One thing about baseball, you never know. Keep dreaming.

March 31, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/31/1973… Islanders Marooned in Philly

It was like an April Fool’s joke, only a day early. The New York Islanders, enduring the final weekend of their inaugural season, absorbed a 10-2 beating by the Philadelphia Flyers. Coming into the game with 59 losses in 76 games, not much was expected against the West Division champion Flyers, who were enjoying their first winning season since helping usher in the NHL expansion boom in 1967. In the second period, everything went boom for the Islanders at the Spectrum.

Already leading, 2-0, the Flyers scored eight times in the period on just 14 shots. Rick MacLeish scored twice in the period, numbers 48 and 49 for the year (he’d hit 50 goals and 100 points in the season finale the next night). His second goal made it 8-0 and chased goalie Gerry Desjardins midway through the second. Rookie Billy Smith entered the net and allowed two more goals to the Broad Street Bullies to make it 10-0. The Islanders posted two garbage-time goals against a fight-happy Flyers team that won its 50th game of the year that night. Philly would go on to win its first postseason series in 1973, and then intimidate its way to Stanley Cup titles in both 1974 and ’75.

The Philly onslaught was the Islanders’ 60th loss of the season, making them the first NHL team in NHL history to suffer that many defeats. The Islanders were established by lawyer Bill Shea, who’d helped plant the Mets on Queens soil a decade earlier and had Shea Stadium named in his honor. New York Nets owner Roy Boe also put together the group to bring in the  Isles, keeping the rival World Hockey Association out of the new Nassau Coliseum. Boe, who’d brought Julius Irving to the American Basketball Association, hired Bill Torrey to run the Islanders. Torrey brought in Al Arbour to coach the team for the 1973-74 season—he would last exactly 1,500 games for the Isles. A decade after their 12-60-6 debut, the Islanders won a record 19 consecutive playoff series, plus four Stanley Cups in a row—starting with the Flyers in the 1980 Cup finals.

March 27, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/27/1973… Don Corleone in Dispose

Though Cabaret won eight Oscars, The Godfather captured Best Picture and had the most memorable moment at the 45th Academy Awards when Sacheen Littlefeather made a speech instead of Best Actor winner Marlon Brando. Brando, who won for his legendary turn as Vito Corleone, gave over his second career Best Actor trophy and his moment in support of the American Indian Movement. For three months in the spring of 1973, AIM was locked in a standoff with federal authorities on reservation land in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, near the site of the infamous Wounded Knee Massacre that marked the end of the Indian Wars in 1890.

From Swinging ’73:

The bizarre appearance of Sacheen Littlefeather in traditional Apache clothing at the Academy Awards ceremony in April 1973, refusing the Best Actor Oscar for sympathizer Marlon Brando, star of the year’s top picture, The Godfather, created popular support for the movement. The Academy never again allowed proxies and also watched its presenters more closely. The Hollywood ending to the tale is that Roger Moore, who took over the James Bond franchise in 1973 with Live and Let Die, took home the statuette that he was supposed to present to Littlefeather and kept it until a representative sent by the Academy removed it from his home.

March 26, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/26/1973… Something Bruin, Again

UCLA wins its seventh consecutive NCAA men’s basketball championship, rolling past Memphis, 87-66, in St. Louis in the first NCAA Monday night championship game. There is nothing new about UCLA’s dominance, however. It is the school’s ninth title in 10 years. Guided by the legendary John Wooden and fueled by Most Outsanding Player Bill Walton, who scores 44 points with a record 21-of-22 shooting, UCLA is like nothing seen in the sports world before or since. Even the Yankees and Canadiens at their dominating best can’t touch the Bruins; UCLA simply never loses a game. In addition to seven straight titles, the Bruins have an undefeated streak that hits 75 with the win over Memphis. UCLA’s last loss was in 1971. They won’t lose again until 1974, when Notre Dame ends the streak at 88 in January.

March 25, 2013

Coming Soon to a Store, Library, and Radio Station Near You

Yours truly is making the rounds for Swinging ’73 this spring. Dates will be added, but this is a good start. 

April 3, Wednesday, 7 p.m.: Kiner’s Korner and the Mets Kult of Personality Podcast. Hosted by Taryn Cooper and more Mets flavor than a Mex Burger. 

April 4, Thursday, 7 p.m.: Bergino’s Baseball Clubhouse at 67 East 11th Street, New York, NY. More than a year in the planning—I was the first to talk to Jay Goldberg about a 2013 guest spot at his unique shop in the landmark Cast Iron Building in the Village. The Swinging A’s shirt I bought at my 2011 Bergino appearance was worn frequently while channeling the Mustache Gang during the writing of Swinging ’73 (though not for the 1973 World Series chapter). 

April 7, Sunday, 7:15 p.m.: WLIE Sportstalk. Mark Rosenman and A.J. Carter will have me on their weekly sports show.   

April 9, Tuesday, 3 p.m.: 660 AM WORL in Orlando. I will be on to talk sports with host and former Orlando Magic general manager Pat Williams. 

April 17, Wednesday: The Eddie Kranepool Society’s Steve Keane will have me on to talk. Steve is probably as annoyed about Yogi Berra’s 1973 Game 6 George Stone decision as Kranepool is in the book. 

June 20, Thursday, 6:30 p.m.: Trumbull (Connecticut) Library. I’m excited to be invited to the home of the 1989 Little League World Series champions. I used to live a few towns from there and covered countless FCIAC high school games. Should be fun. 

July 9, Tuesday: Summer Author Series at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Still pinching myself over getting the call to the Hall.

Please contact me at matt@metsilverman.com to set up an interview. 

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And thanks to Rising Apple for the platform to talk about the 1973 Mets and the 40th anniversary of one of the most unlikely pennant runs in major league history. Tom Seaver, whom I saw pitch many times in my early seasons of fandom, never looked more dominant than he was on the big stage of Game 3 of the World Series (I found a bootleg video of the game). John Milner crushed two balls that stayed in Shea on the frigid night and the A’s scratched out the win in 11 innings. Despite long knowing the outcome, I rose out of my seat on the couch watching the video of the Hammer’s second blast, which Reggie Jackson tracked down in the corner to send the game to fateful extras. Just a little wind blowing out and...    

March 24, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/24/1973… Immaculata Reception

When Immaculata College won its second straight NCAA women’s basketball title in 1973 on NBC, it was the first women’s championship game broadcast nationally. The Mighty Macs—there is a movie of the same name—would win three straight titles and play in six consecutive semifinals, making this all-female Catholic school with 400 students, taught by nuns and offering no scholarships, as the women’s answer to the UCLA men’s basketball dynasty in the 1970s.  

The Bruins won 10 NCAA titles in 12 years between 1964 and 1975, the year John Wooden retired at UCLA. Immaculata coach Cathy Rush left at the end of her seven-year reign of dominance in 1977, retiring with a .909 winning percentage (Wooden’s was .808). At the time, women’s basketball was only a few years removed from the six-player game for women in which players could play offense or defense, but not both (because the powers that be believed full-court would be too much exertion for delicate ladies). In the wake of the emancipating 1972 Title IX Supreme Court decision, which would forever change sports for women, Immaculata proved it could beat the big boys, er, girls. (Check out the video of the 1973 title game at Queens College between the Macs and Knightees—yes that was the former name for QC women’s teams—with a student announcer who sounds like Suzyn Waldman; just kidding, Waldman went to Simmons College.) 

The 1973 tournament—the AIWA (the NCAA wouldn’t take over until 1982)—was played over four days in Flushing, whittling down from 16 hopefuls to one champion. The Macs knocked off the home team, 59-52, to finish at 20-0 and become the first undefeated women’s championship collegiate team. The Macs were mighty indeed.

March 21, 2013

My Randall K. Glynn Year

It is hard to believe that metsilverman.com is now in its fifth year. The aim of the site is to look back, though we subtly have an eye on the future. While I’ve been writing this blog, I have been fortunate to write nine books—about half of those featuring the Mets. Swinging ’73 is roughly about half Mets, but there will be time to discuss what’s inside that tome another day. Most days, actually, if you’ve been paying attention here. 

If you’ve been reading the site, following me on Facebook , or eagerly anticipating my every tweet @metsilverman, you may have come across Swinging ’73 Presents: This Day in 1973. I started this on March 1, which marked the 40th anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, one my favorite—and one of the most popular—albums of all time. The calendar has been fun but not simple, given my lack of computer savvy and having daily deadlines for the first time since my last newspaper job in the 1990s (though these current deadlines are self-imposed, plus I know the boss). Originally, I had another idea as a theme for the year with this as a sidelight, but anything else I did this year would have suffered as a result, so we’re going ’73 or bust in ’13. Maybe that should be the underachieving Mets theme this year as well. It beats “Underdog.”

Besides a theme, every year so far I have come up with a former Met to serve as guide for that year, a player who somehow corresponds with my current age. This year I am 48.

The only Met to ever play until age 48 was Julio Franco.

The ageless Julio and his ever-slowing swing do not do it for me, no matter how age-appropriate it may be. Choosing among the Mets who have donned uniform number 48 is more fun. So fun, in fact, that I couldn’t decide who in the Greater 48 should represent me this year. This conceit will only go on until I reach 50—there will (God willing) still be a site but, alas, no Rick White Year for 51 (standards must be upheld). This year I am setting a precedent for what was going to be one hard choice for the big 5-0 between Hawaiian Mets demigods. So we’ll head that off now with our first tie: Number 48s Randy Myers and Ed Glynn.

You say, “Randy Myers? OK, but what is an Ed Glynn?” And if you do know Ed Glynn, you say, “What is he doing here?” After all, there are standards to uphold. Let’s look at the roll call of Metsilverman.com Annual Representatives:

2008: Age 43—My Terry Leach Year, #43 (number worn, 1981-82)

2009: Age 44—My Ron Darling Year, #44 (number worn, 1983-84)

2010: Age 45—My Tug McGraw Year, #45 (number worn, 1965-67, 1969-74)

2011: Age 46—My Neil Allen Year, #46 (number worn, 1979-80)

2012: Age 47—My Jesse Orosco Year, #47 (number worn, 1979, 1981-87)

Yes, only pitchers have reached this numerical stratosphere. If the Mets had employed R.A. Dickey in 2007-08—a wish I can make for a lot more reasons than just my own age appropriate glorification—we would have kicked this off at 43 with a pitcher who was successful with ball and pen in hand (though Terry Leach’s prowess as an author should not be discounted, nor should his 11-1 ’87 season).

There were a lot of pitchers to choose from at number 48, and one position player. That was Joe Nolan, a lefty-hitting backstop with more pop than Ron Hodges, who was traded to Atlanta for Leo Foster and eventually took over for ailing Johnny Bench behind the dish in Cincinnati. Nolan wore 48 as a ’73 Met—which makes him a tempting tie-in for Swinging ’73—but Nolan didn’t bat or take the field in the majors that year. Though his lack of action as a ’73 Met allows me to say, “I could have just sat in the dugout, too,” and declare Joe as a kindred spirit, it’s no fun to have a year named after someone who literally did nothing in 48. And they asked Joe Nolan, not me, to sit in the bullpen with the warmup jacket on—though I was only eight years old at the time. But I digress.

I could have chosen Nino Espinosa, the first Met to wear the number in a game. He debuted in the number in 1974. (Ray Kress was the first person to wear 48 as a coach for the original Mets, but he was also the first uniformed Met to, um, die—passing in November 1962.) Nino switched to number 39 and had as much success as a pitcher tied to the anemic Mets offense of the late 1970s could have. Traded to Philadelphia for loathsome Richie Hebner in 1979, Nino had his only winning season in the majors that year at 14-12. He died prematurely at age 34 on Christmas Day, 1987. I decided not to tap the Nino Mojo. (Or Ray Kress’s, for that matter.)

Then there is Randy Tate, who was my first 48, and the first 48 to actually win a game, though it did not happen often. He held a no-hitter into the eighth inning against Montreal in his lone year with the team, but part and parcel with his bad luck, Tate lost both the no-no and the game. Like my mother, Tate was from Alabama, so I liked him off the bat. Speaking of bats, the man simply could not hit: 0-for-41—I too went my first year of baseball in 1975 without getting a hit in Little League, so I sympathized. I got a second chance the next year in Little League; Tate and his 5-13 mark and 4.45 ERA did not get another shot at Shea, or any other big-league city.

Juan Berenguer, Señor Smoke, went on to be a decent reliever for the Tigers and Twins, but not for the Mets. Next.  

That would be Ed Glynn. He was a lefty reliever who came to the Mets from Detroit for “The Chief,” Mardie Cornejo, a righty reliever of so-so talent who proved that even a century after Little Bighorn, Native American ballplayers still got stuck with the same tired nickname. Glynn came to Shea when the Mets were desperate for relievers, or any human activity.

The 1979 season was bottom of the barrel. The Payson family would sell that winter after the team lost 99 games and most of their fans—788,905 fans showed up for the entire season. A few of those visitors were members of the Glynn household. Ed Glynn grew up in Flushing, and in fact had worked at Shea as a vendor. That was just about the only thing cool about the brutal ’79 season that brought Richie Hebner, the carcass of Dock Ellis, and Mettle the Mule to the big, empty Shea. And with Mets Police chief Shannon Shark’s memoir of his life as a Mets maniac and Shea vendor—Send the Beer Guy—I had to summon Ed Glynn and the fun memories he brought along in his tray. (I have Shannon’s book and will have something to say about it when I get a chance to finish it.) 

I also could not ignore Randy Myers, the next player to don 48. (Mel Stottlemyre wore the uniform in his first year as pitching coach in 1984.) Myers was also a lefty reliever, but he wasn’t a filler, or a vendor; he was the guy whose presence allowed the Mets to trade Jesse Orosco (who would pitch into the next century). A hard thrower and even harder to intimidate, Myers dressed in camouflage, read scores of gun magazines, and had a demeanorr reminiscent of Francis “Psycho” Sawyer from Stripes. But Randy Myers could get those last precious outs in a game with the best of them. 

I still contend that if Randy Myers pitches to Mike Scioscia in Game 4 of the 1988 NLCS—I watched him warm up in the pen from my upper deck seat—the Mets not only win the pennant but the World Series as well. Consider that after Scioscia’s hope-crushing HR off Dwight Gooden, the Dodgers still sent Rick Dempsey to pinch-hit for Scioscia against Myers in extras, so I think we can say Dempsey would have been kept in the park and Game 4 would have been closed out by Randall K. Myers (announcer Tim McCarver liked to accentuate the “K,” as if it stood for the abbreviation for strikeout and not “Kirk”). And if the Mets went up three games to one on the Dodgers, they probably win the NLCS, and given how flat Oakland looked in the 1988 World Series… aw, let’s go back to number 48. 

Glynn and Myers both left New York too soon. After 84 games in two years as a Met, Glynn was shipped to Cleveland in 1981 for a minor leaguer who never did diddley. Myers was traded after the 1989 season for John Franco. Franco stayed around forever and set records in many categories for longevity, proved he’s a good New Yorker, served as team captain, and even earned a spot in the Mets Hall of Fame, but in the ninth inning I want a Nasty Boy on the hill. The Reds had their Nasty Boy standing on the mound in 1990 when theyi won the pennant and World Series. During an itinerant but successful career, Myers racked up 347 saves (56 as a Met). At one point Myers had the National League record for saves in a season (53), which did not even include punching out a fan who ran on the field in a fury after Randall K. allowed a ninth-inning home run at Wrigley.  

Back to our theme for 2013. I will not be updating Today in 1973 every day because A.) there are days in 1973 when not much of note occurred; B.) there are days in 2013 when I won’t feel like posting it; and C.) there are days, like today, when I will have other things to say and I’m not in the habit of posting more than once daily (though we may double up, now and again anyway, just to see if anyone reads this far down in this entry and calls me on it). 

Just like I wouldn’t stick myself all year with 48s like Ricardo Jordan, Pat Misch, or Lord help us, Frank Francisco, I’m not going to promise things I don’t plan on doing. For now I will say that writing about ’73—the year the Mets went from last to first in the final month, fought Pete Rose and Reds (literally) for the pennant, and nearly beat the big, bad A’s in the World Series—was something I really enjoyed and worked on harder than any other book I’ve written. It is also something you can read about in paperback or Kindle, and coming soon to Nook I brought in different ballclubs and storylines, so it is not just a Mets book, but it is my best book. So far. At 48 I need to keep looking forward even as I look back. Ya Gotta Believe is no mere motto, it’s mojo, baby.

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I included a link above to Mets by the Numbers, and there is big knews on what I think of as a big brother site (it’s sort of like a coaching tree, only without berating reporters at press conferences). Mets by the Numbers has donated its numbers data to Ultimate Mets Database. May the two longest-tenured sites in Metdom thrive and survive the down times in Flushing that keep all Mets fans honest, humble, and human.

March 20, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/20/1973… The Great One Voted to HOF

Roberto Clemente became the first Latin American player inducted in into the Baseball Hall of Fame on this day in 1973. The announcement brought fresh tears anew. “The Great One” had been killed in a plane crash 11 weeks earlier during a humanitarian mission to earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua. The normal five-year waiting period for election was dropped, the first time that had happened since Lou Gehrig died tragically in 1940. Clemente was voted into the Hall with contemporaries Monte Irvin and Warren Spahn, with the induction held in August. 

The Pirates wore number 21 on their sleeves all year for Clemente. Replacing him was an impossible task. All-Star catcher Manny Sanguillen, Clemente’s closest friend on the team, was tapped as the right fielder. It was admirable but misguided. Sanguillen, who had started once in the outfield in his five-year career before 1973, struggled to cover the ground Clemente handled so effortlessly. Yet manager Bill Virdon kept Sanguillen in right field through mid-June, even as the move weakened the Pirates at two positions. Rookie Richie Zisk finally got the starting assignment in the second half and batted .324. Another rookie, future MVP Dave Parker, saw time in right field for the Pittsburgh Lumber Company as well in ’73.

Clemente was more than a right fielder. He was a true hero and the beacon of a Latin American community that was not nearly as entrenched in baseball as it is today. Clemente was also the senior member of the Pirates and part of the exclusive 3,000-hit club after securing his final hit in the last week of 1972 against Mets lefty Jon Matlack. The Pirates, winners of three straight NL East titles—and the 1971 World Series—struggled down the stretch without their leader, even changing managers in the final month of the season. The Great One would very much be missed in Pittsburgh in the last week of 1973. And every other week, and day, and hour.

Do Players Care More About WBC Than MLB?

[We interrupt our 1973 obsession with a topical item. Our oarsmen resume bearing us ceaselessly into the past tomorrow.]

In less than two weeks, ballplayers all over America—and don’t forget Toronto—will take the field for the annual right of passage known as Opening Day. The crowd will be exuberant and the games a tonic after a long winter for fans. This Opening Day—on April Fool’s Day, no less—it is the fans of major league teams who might feel a bit the fool. The World Baseball Classic has shown that many players are more concerned about playing for their country than their professional team.

After the U.S. was eliminated, Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips lamented having to go back  to spring camp in Arizona instead of to the WBC semifinals in California. “I didn’t want to go back to Goodyear,” he said. “I wanted to go to San Francisco so bad. It stinks, man.” It does stink.

David Wright may sit out Opening Day with an intercostal muscle strain, an injury he withheld from U.S. team officials and the Mets, a cash-strapped club that nonetheless showered him with an eight-year, $138 million contract. Who knows if Wright would have sustained the injury playing in sleepy Port St. Lucie instead of in front of big, loud crowds in Miami (that second part of the sentence will sound strange after the MLB season commences). Come Opening Day at Citi Field, fans may be watching Justin Turner run out to third instead of the team’s most marketable—and right now, only—star player.

How about Wright’s former teammate, Jose Reyes? His demonstrative celebration after knocking home an insurance run in the ninth inning to help the Dominican beat the U.S.  reached a new level of exuberance even with his history of cheesing off old-school types like Jimmy Rollins. Phillies announcer—and former pitcher—Larry Andersen said during an animated 2008 Reyes home run trot, “Somebody ought to put one in his neck.”

When Puerto Rico knocked off the U.S., the celebration by Angel Pagan mirrored his triple-first pump that signaled San Francisco’s World Series triumph last October. Is winning a second-round WBC game in March on par with the World Series? The dog pile near the mound speaks volumes. And Dominican second baseman Robinson Cano has proven in the WBC that he is not the emotionless, nonchalant robot he sometimes appears to be at Yankee Stadium.

The major league season is a thrill to ardent fans, but as these emotional WBC displays show, the big leagues pales in comparison to representing their homeland. Good for them. But is it good for us? Perhaps a switch of the WBC from March to November could make the contrast in excitement between playing for money and playing for country not seem so stark. But that is an argument for another day.

For now, the WBC is a welcome change at a time of spring training that is nap inducing as the days until Opening Day slowly drag on. One can only hope that the excitement level for the players taking part in the WBC carries over to games that “count”—or at least count in the minds of the paying MLB customers. Maybe this attitude will change if the U.S. ever gets to jump up and down in the finals.

March 17, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/17/1973… Vietnam Comes Home

On this day in 1973, the new London Bridge opened in England, but in the United States, amid parades and celebrations in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, other low key reunions were held amid joyful tears. With the Vietnam War over, prisoners of war returned to the U.S., mostly overlooked by a public that had long ago soured on Vietnam or just wanted to forget about the American military’s first “loss.” The face of those returning vets—and the unbridled joy of reunion—was forever captured by a girl running to greet her long lost daddy. 

Lorrie Stirm started running as her father headed off the airfield at Travis Air Force Base in northern California. In the photo you can see the exultant faces of Lorrie, Bo, Cindy, Loretta, and Roger Stirm, but you cannot see the face of Lt. Colonel Robert L. Stirm. He sees is what we all see. Photographer Slava “Sal” Veder, who had spent the last few years covering anti-war demonstrations in San Francisco and Berkeley, saw the family running toward their father, stepped past a barricade, and started clicking. He recalled, “You could feel the energy and raw emotion in the air.” You can still feel it by looking at Veder’s “Burst of Joy” four decades later. 

The coda, however, is not joyous. Lt. Col. Stirm, who’d been shot down over Hanoi and held in North Vietnamese camps since 1967, including the infamous “Hanoi Hilton,” was given a “Dear John” letter from his wife, Lorretta, on the day he was released from captivity. They soon divorced. He was the only member of his family not to display the photograph they each received after Veder’s image earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1974. 

“We didn’t know if he would ever come home,” Lorrie Stirm Kitching later said in a Smithsonian Magazine interview.  “That moment was all our prayers answered, all our wishes come true…. We have this very nice picture of a very happy moment, but every time I look at it, I remember the families that weren’t reunited, and the ones that aren’t being reunited today—many, many families—and I think, I’m one of the lucky ones.”

March 16, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/16/1973… On Wisconsin

The University of Wisconsin forged its link as a college hockey power in the 1973 NCAA Championships with a comeback for the ages against Cornell in the semifinals at Boston Garden. Trailing 4-0 in the second period, and still down 5-2 in the third, the Badgers battled back to record the final four goals of the game. Tournament MVP Dean Talafous scored the tying goal with just five seconds left in regulation and the game-winner a mere 33 seconds into overtime. Wisco fell behind Denver the next night in the championship game before Talafous again scored the game winner for the first of the school’s six NCAA hockey titles.

March 15, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/15/1973… The Ides of Tom Sawyer

The musical film version of Tom Sawyer opened on the Ides of March, 1973. The title role was played by Johnny Whitaker, best known as Jody Davis—not the 1980s Cubs catcher, but the 1960s imp and brother of Buffy and Cissy, ward of Unca Biwl, and charge of gentleman’s gentleman Mr. French on the syrupy Family Affair. Tom Sawyer was also the first film to feature Jodie Foster in a major role. She played Becky Thatcher, but at age 10 was already well-known for numerous guest-starring and recurring roles on family shows like The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and My Three Sons, and even in cartoons—such as The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan (with one of the cooler animated intro themes in a decade full of cool animated intro themes).  

Written by the Sherman brothers, who’d penned the music in Charlotte’s Web and Mary Poppins, Tom Sawyer was a decent movie actually filmed on the Mississippi River, but what stands out is the where I saw the movie: Radio City Music Hall. It was the first class trip I remember. I was very much looking forward to the matinee with my second grade class. I tapped my fingers throughout the Rockettes, always hating the “dancing and girls stuff” that preceded a Radio City screening—and being with an all-boys Iona Grammar contingent, I was not alone in my impatience. I have been to Radio City many times since it stopped showing movies in 1979, but I always find myself tapping my fingers, momentarily thinking, hoping, that the show will end and the giant screen emerge. (Tom Sawyer author Mark Twain probably would have been tapping his fingers during the showing of film, which was produced by Reader’s Digest.) And now, ladies and gentleman, Tom Sawyer and the Injun Joe courtroom scene.

March 14, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/14/1973…Charlotte’s Web

The book Charlotte’s Web is one of the greatest children’s books ever written. It conveys how life can be changed by those around you through the tale of a lonely pig with a death sentence transformed into a celebrity by a common gray spider. Charlotte’s Web unblinkingly reminds us that life isn’t fair, but it is grand. And life keeps going, whether we agree with its meandering path or not. E.B. White’s 1952 novel ends this way: “It is not often that someone comes by who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.” 

It’s lump-in-your-throat kind of stuff whether you’re a child hearing it for the first time, or a parent trying to read it to them without a tear dropping on the page. I, like my children, was introduced to this barnyard tale by the 1973 film. The Hanna Barbara cartoon does not shy away from the book’s bleak yet hopeful ending and spices it up with songs written by brothers Richard and Robert Sherman, who provided the music for Disney’s Mary Poppins.  

Debbie Reynolds provided the star power and empathy needed in the title role, telling the producers she would take on the role for nothing. A veteran cast of distinct voices was brought in to play Wilbur (Henry Gibson aka Wrongo Starr on F-Troop), Fern (Pamelyn Ferdin, one of the most popular child TV actors of the period), Templeton (the incomparable Paul Lynde, a regular on Hollywood Squares and countless other shows), Goose (Agnes Moorehead, best known as Endora on Bewitched), Ram (Dave Madden, aka Mr. Kinkade from The Partridge Family), and Avery (Danny Bonaduce, also from The Partridge Family). It was narrated by country singer Rex Allen, who had brought life to another great animal-related film of a decade earlier, The Incredible Journey. 

E.B. White did not like the musical aspect of the film, but he and his wife were ill and needed the money, so they signed off on a lot of their control. I loved the film—and still do. As do many others who watched it on holidays and other occasions through the 1970s on TV. When it was released on VHS in 1994, it was one of the top videos of the year and Wilbur, Charlotte, and Fern became a staple in the childhoods of many second-generation households. Whether on the page or singing on the screen, people cannot get enough of the terrific, radiant, humble Zuckerman’s famous pig.

March 13, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/13/1973… MAD About Apes 

Baseball wasn’t yet on my radar in 1973, but Planet of the Apes sure was. In 1973 the fifth—and final—Planet of the Apes movie of the series was to be released, Battle for the Planet of the Apes. My eight-year-old body was aquiver to see this in the theater. Come March there was still three months to go until the final POTA opened (actually, we had more time to waste then and didn’t feel the need to abbreviate everything). There was little recourse other than to just wait for the movie. And then I saw the March issue of MAD. 

Alfred E. Newman’s irreverent brand was at its peak in the 1970s—or maybe the magazine just appears that way to every generation of American kid once they are old enough to read and appreciate satire and sarcasm. (My nine-year-old son reads it—I buy it for him—and I’m sure one day he will say that he grew up in the golden age of MAD.) But I think that MAD magazine making fun of Planet of the Apes was one of the coolest issues of the coolest magazines of my childhood. If this was science fiction, then I was a scientist fictionist. Damned dirty ape.

March 12, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/12/1973… Marcus Welby, “Quack”

The 1973 TV calendar was pretty well spent by March. Many shows had already wrapped for the season, making re-runs the bill of fare until September. With few alternatives (cable was in its infancy and VCRs were a few years away), people had to either watch their favorite shows again, or, God forbid, do something else. Tuesday night meant Marcus Welby, M.D. on ABC, a highly-rated medical drama featuring Robert Young. Known for his long-running hit Father Knows Best, the good doctor did not give the best advice to a patient in one of the ’73 season’s final episodes.

In “The Other Martin Loring,” Welby crosses a couple of lines: first, he convinces police to drop a drunk driving charge on the alcoholic Loring, and then, after the doctor deduces that his patient’s problems stem from homosexual thoughts, Doc Welby advises Loring to get cured. Played by Mark Miller (who appeared in many TV shows and starred in the 1960s family comedy Please Don’t Eat the Daisies), Loring attempts suicide, but after a failed try, he agrees with Welby’s advice to see a psychiatrist. The episode ends with Welby saying he believes Loring will win this “fight” and eventually lead “a normal life.”

Gay rights groups were infuriated. There was a sit-in at ABC’s New York office as well as picketing at the Los Angeles County Medical Association, featuring a protest sign that read, “Marcus Welby, Witch Doctor.” Protestors also did plenty of quacking to show what kind of a doctor they thought Dr. Welby to be. The witch, er, good doctor had to be hard of hearing as well, because a 1974 episode, “The Outrage,” featured a boy sexually assaulted by a male teacher. The episode was criticized for drawing homosexuals as pedophiles. “The Outrage” summed up what gay rights activists thought of the clumsy practice of Marcus Welby, M.D. handling these issues. As a result, 17 affiliates refused to show the episode, the first time affiliates boycotted a network TV episode due to protests. Regardless, Marcus Welby droned on until 1976.

March 10, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/10/1973… AWOL Willie

Willie Mays went missing in 1973 Mets spring training. The legendary slugger, passed as the all-time National League home run king the previous year by Atlanta’s Hank Aaron, had permission to return home on an off day during spring training. Now in Florida for spring training with the Mets after spending all but one of the 22 training camps of his career in Arizona, a relatively short flight from San Francisco, geography caught up with him in his final spring camp. Newly married to the alluring and alliterative Mae Mays, Willie wanted to be home with his wife, who was feeling ill. He left Thursday afternoon and was with her Friday on the off-day, but weather postponed his return cross-country journey until after the Mets were done for the day on Saturday in St. Petersburg.

Manager Yogi Berra, never known as a disciplinarian, put his foot down. Berra handed out a $1,000 fine for the game’s highest-paid player ($165,000 per year). Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich, who had covered Walter Johnson and Babe Ruth late in their careers, applauded Berra’s move: “There can’t be one rule for Mr. Wonderful No. 24 and another set of rules for the other 24 players on the roster.”

Mets owner Joan Payson adored the “Say Hey Kid” as a partial owner of the New York Giants, prior to the baseball team’s move west. She had set her heart on reuniting Mays with New York since the Mets first joined the league in 1962, but San Francisco kept saying no until Mays started showing signs of wear. The Mets finally got him for Mrs. Payson on Mother’s Day, 1972, a week after his 41st birthday. In the words of Povich, the great Mays was now a “teacher’s pet.” Though the pet was in Yogi Berra’s doghouse, injuries and poor planning by the front office left the Mets with no choice but to have the 42-year-old with rickety knees better suited for first base—or the bench—as the Opening Day center fielder in 1973.  

March 8, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/8/1973… The Weed and the Wing

Paul McCartney was fined £100 ($247) for growing marijuana outside his Scottish farm. The former Beatle said that he and wife Linda McCartney received seeds in the mail from a fan and planted them, not sure what they were (wink, wink). It still turned out to be a pretty good year for Paul with “My Love” going number one, the theme song to the James Bond film Live and Let Die being nominated for an Academy Award and a Grammy (losing the Oscar, taking the Grammy), and his signature non-Beatles album, Wings’ Band on the Run, being released in the fall. His song “Hi, Hi, Hi,” which left off the “gh”and the THC, apparently, peaked at number 10 in the U.S. in January 1973 and remained a popular in-concert song for the run of Wings. A pot bust in Japan in 1980, with McCartney spending more than a week in jail before being deported, led to Wings abandoning a tour before it started. Wings never performed another concert. Bummer.

March 7, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/7/1973… Comet Kohoutek

The Comet Kohoutek was first sighted by a Czech astronomer, Luboš Kohoutek. He named the “Comet of the Century” after himself, as is an astronomer’s right. Musicians followed this naming conceit, with Kohoutek songs by everyone from Argent to Journey to Bill Carroll to R.E.M. Academics got on board, too. The Kohoutek Music and Arts Festival has been held annually now for four decades at Pitzer College in California. Kohoutek also set up a cool episode during the heyday of The Simpsons, when Principal Skinner and Bart (serving detention) search the night sky for comets and find one that sends Springfield scrambling for the bomb shelter.  

The cult Children of God convinced its members in 1973 that the comet signaled the end of the world, precipitating much discussion about the end of days that was a bit frightening for an eight-year-old boy already learning way too much about heavenly anger and retribution in Catholic school. Of course, they were wrong about their dire predictions, and I survived to serve out a life sentence as a Mets fan while still missing out on the Ya Gotta Believers of ’73 . 

The comet did not live up to the hype. Even in the days before Facebook and Twitter made it easy to complain, the masses whined about the object’s lack of brightness—though the image taken when it was closest to the earth looks pretty cool to me. You can see for yourself when Kohoutek comes back into view in 74,960 years or so.

March 6, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/6/1973… Cadaver Plays “Frankenstein”

On newstands, Edgar Winter is on the cover of rock n’ roll magazine, Creem. The first musician with a strap-on keyboard, Winter takes the charts by storm with the instrumental, “Frankenstein,” so named because of how the recording was spliced together with a razor while cutting the single down to a marketable 3:28. It reaches number one in the U.S. in 1973, the first instrumental to do so since the theme from the film Romeo and Juliet by Henry Mancini in 1969. Winter has another top 20 hit with “Free Ride,” also off his double platinum album, They Only Come Out at Night. At age 26, the Texas albino (as is musician brother Johnny Winter) looks like death warmed over on the cover of Creem. Somehow, Edgar Winter is still alive—and touring—40 years later. The power of rock. And “Frankenstein.”

March 5, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/5/1973… The Swap

On this day in 1973, one of the strangest baseball stories ever came out of Fort Lauderdale. “Viral” was many technological advancements away from becoming a term not related to illness, but this story singed across telephone wires, TV wires, and newspaper wires, sending hordes of reporters from every section of the newspaper and every segment of the media to find out what happened between Yankees pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson. They traded wives, children, and even dogs. Yes, the swinging ’70s had come to the Yankees, like it or not.

To the pitchers, it wasn’t a big deal; to the Yankees it wasn’t anybody’s business. Both sides were proved wrong as the story made headlines throughout the country. It was even a segment on Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story,” which actually pleased Peterson, who’d grown up listening to the staccato-voiced announcer in Illinois.

In truth, “the swap” between the pitchers had taken place months earlier, and it was news now because the players and press were all together for spring training. Ball Four, Jim Bouton’s tell-all book of three springs earlier, had created a crack in the locker room wall between players and the public. Reporters could no longer keep this kind of information out of the papers as they had done for decades, from Babe Ruth’s “bellyache” (which was actually venereal disease) to the family life of Mickey Mantle (his carousing and drunkenness covered up by his front office, teammates, and friends in the press). The undue publicity did little for the careers of Peterson, a team leader and the team’s top lefty, and Kekich, a cerebral southpaw who gave new meaning to the term swingman. Peterson’s new marital relationship blossomed and remains strong while Kekich’s soon fell part, as did his career. Hurt and ineffective, the Yankees traded him to Cleveland in June.

From Swinging ’73:

Until the first week of March 1973, however, very few people knew of or even believed the story. “Nobody knew,” says Peterson. “The only player that knew anything was Mel Stottlemyre since Marilyn and Mike stopped out to see them during the offseason just before spring training in 1973. Mel and his wife Jean thought it was a joke and waited for me and Susanne to show up. It wasn’t a joke. We never showed up. I hoped it would have worked out for all of us.”

All these years later, this story can still make news. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have the option to do a movie version of the Peterson (Affleck) and Kekich (Damon) swap. Fritz Peterson is involved as a consultant for Warner Bros., but given Affleck’s own Hollywood redemption tale and higher profile since Argo, will this film get made? Hollywood and baseball have always made strange bedfellows, never more so here.

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Something that also may seem bizarre is my presence in a publication about the Yankees, but there I am with an article in the inaugural Lindy’s Sports In the Dugout Yankees 2013 Annual. My story centers on the brusque and blustery arrival of George Steinbrenner, the end of the original Yankee Stadium, the Kekich-Peterson swap, and the change of the guard in the Bronx is not a love poem to the Yanks. It is the truth. Oh, and most importantly for a professional writer, they said they would pay me.

I would gladly share the Mets’ side of events in 1973 in a Mets magazine, if any still existed. I will be sharing that info in a couple of online outlets in the days ahead. Stay tuned.

March 4, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/4/1973… The Grammys

The 15th Grammy Awards were broadcast on CBS live from… Nashville? It was the last year the Grammys were hosted outside of New York or L.A. It was sort of downer year at the Grammys, at least as far as who got what. “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” which went really well with a couple of Quaaludes and a tumbler of Harveys Bristol Cream, was chosen as Record and Song of the Year. The Concert for Bangla Desh—also a bummer, please—was the Album of the Year. Elvis won a Gospel award, Muddy Waters grabbed a folk award, and Helen Reddy had the top pop hit with “I Am Woman (Hear Me Roar).”

Then, as today, it was hard to figure out the Grammy mindset, but at least they got it right in the R&B category, where Billy Paul won Best Male Vocal Performance for “Me and Mrs. Jones” and the Temptations earned best song and instrumental for “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.”  Dadgummit.

March 3, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/3/1973… Mush!

The first Iditarod dog sled race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska begins. Commemorating the fabled 1925 diptheria serum run, the 1,000-plus mile race is won by Dick Wilmarth—and lead dog, Hotfoot—in just over 20 days.

March 2, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/2/1973… Go, G.I. Joe. Go!

Well, nothing too exciting happened in the big, wide world on this day in ’73, but since I was eight years old, at some point on March 2, 1973, I was playing with G.I. Joe. I was still getting plenty of mileage out of the Christmas gift of a lifetime, the “Seach for the Stolen Idol.” Though pieces were invariably missing three months into the adventure, I held onto that G.I. Joe helicopter, plus the cobra, for longer than I should probably admit. How Joe managed to climb down the winch to get the idol while the copter was still in the air is a feat of aviation I never quite figured out, but then again I never sucked the cobra venom out of Joe’s infected arm, either. But this was G.I. Friggin’ Joe, and I was part of the team, even if I was missing the facial scar and beard. I had been a member of the G.I. Joe Adventure Team since 1970. Jealous? I thought as much.

March 1, 2013

Swinging ’73 Presents

Forty Years Ago Today: 3/1/1973... The Dark Side

Dark Side of the Moon was released on this day 40 years ago. The Pink Floyd masterpiece, the best-selling concept album in history, remained on Billboard magazine’s top 200 for an unprecedented 591 consecutive weeks—or 11 years and four months. 

In case you’re like, “Whoa—what’s this, man?” I will be running a timeline of significant dates from 1973 for the rest of this year as we, or at least I, celebrate the release of Swinging ’73. It will be released to the public shortly, but this is what they call in the business, building anticipation—like the heartbeat beating louder and louder to open Dark Side of the Moon.

From Swinging ’73:

Dark Side of the Moon rocketed Pink Floyd from acquired taste to musical gods overnight…. The Dark Side of the Moon LP, with its now iconic cover image of light refracting through a prism, included stickers as well as posters that became de rigueur for teen room decoration for a decade and beyond. One poster featured members of the band in concert, the other an infrared image of the pyramids at Giza. All the better to behold while pondering the societal perils of time, money, war, isolation, and insanity—or simply contemplating one’s navel.

Just hearing this album played today on the WDST in Woodstock, my mind is as blown now as it was when I first heard it all the way through. How many other people’s top 5’s is this album in? Listen in. And if you want to cue up to pre-purchase a copy of Swinging ’73, “I’ll see you on the Dark Side of the Moon.” 

And because Swinging ’73 is shelved as a sports book, on 3/1/73 in sports:

Robyn Smith becomes the first female jockey to win a major race. A “Sensation in Silks” as Sports Illustrated called her on a 1972 cover rode North Sea to victory in the $27,450 Paumanauk Handicap at Aqueduct in New York.

We will be working on the format for this feature as the year goes on. And remember, in the words (and the brogue) of Abbey Road Studios doorman, Jerry Driscoll: “There is no dark side of the moon, really . . . Matter of fact, it’s all dark.”

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The first key review—and great review—is in. A starred review from Library Journal. Like to hear it, here it goes:

Silverman, Matthew. Swinging ’73: The Incredible Year Baseball Got the Designated Hitter, Wife-Swapping Pitchers, and Willie Mays Said Goodbye to America. Globe Pequot. Apr. 2013. 256p. photogs. notes. bibliog. index. ISBN 9780762780600. pap. $16.95. SPORTS If you had to pick out one year that epitomized the volatility of the 1970s, 1973 would be it. Watergate was rearing its ugly head. The Vietnam War finally ended. OPEC embargoed oil, sending gas prices soaring. In the midst of all of this, Silverman (Baseball Miscellany) suggests, baseball offered a reprieve. He details how the 1973 MLB season unfolded as it ushered in Willie Mays’s last season, and started two American League phenomena that changed the game: the designated hitter and George Steinbrenner’s ownership of the Yankees. Silverman takes readers around the major leagues, placing the baseball season in the cultural and political climate of 1973 as he does so. Anecdotes about such cultural details as the Atkin’s diet and Archie Bunker do not hinder the larger story as he effectively connects 1973 into baseball history. He crafts a thrilling account of the 1973 baseball season itself right up to the final out of the World Series. The reader will not get bogged down in detail during this fun and fascinating read. VERDICT Highly recommended both for sports fans and those interested more generally in this crucible of a year. They may also enjoy Tim Wendel’s Summer of ’68: The Season That Changed Baseball—and America—Forever.—Jacob Sherman, Texas A&M Univ. Lib., San Antonio.

Cleveland Rocks—In Head

The Mets are not getting fat this Tuesday, but they are on a diet they hope will make them look good in time for bathing suit season—in 2015. I usually rhapsodize on Mets history because when it comes to predicting the future, my crystal ball works probably about as well as yours. But in the case of Michael Bourn, Cleveland can have him at four years, $48 million. Add that on top of the Tribe’s equally dubious outlay for Dick Swisher (I know his name is Nick), which can easily vest to five years and $70 million, and I think the Indians will regret their decisions come 2015, regardless of whether the Mets look ugly in their bathing suits. The way the baseball gods love to toy with the Mets, we all know that whomever the team selects with their much-belabored 11th pick in the 2013 draft will likely be a bust—or will at least never reach the 14.3 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) Bourn has accrued the past four years.

Hey, at the end of the day, the money isn’t mine, and I don’t even like the beach, for that matter, but I would rather dole out four-year contracts to players more worthy than Cleveland has this offseason. Like the Mets, they were the underdog cat’s meow for the first half of the year and then went 25-54 after July 6, an even more heinous freefall than the Mets endured (29-49). Though, as was pointed out by Adam Rubin, if the Mets had lost just once more in 2012, they would have gotten the 10th pick anyway and would not have faced the prospect of losing it by signing Bourn. In New York’s version of Basementville, at least we can try to brace ourselves from rock bottom with the Marlins rather than with overpriced free agent outfielders. Around these parts, Jason Bay is being paid to go away in what is the last year of his ludicrous contract. You can only go so far robbing Peter to pay Paul, or doing the same with Bay and Bourn.

February 10, 2013

Last Call for Inaugural Greg Spira Award

Just a reminder that registration for the Greg Spira Award ends at midnight on Friday, February 15. Official regulations—as well as an application—are at SpiraAward.com. To be eligible for nomination, an article or book must be about baseball and must contain original analysis or research. Nominated pieces or books must have been published between January 16, 2012, and January 15, 2013. The nomination period remains open through 11:59 p.m. EST on February 15. Nominations after this period will not be considered. Winning entries must display innovative analysis or reasoning by an author who was 30 years old or younger at the time of the entry’s publication.

Articles, papers, and books eligible for consideration include those published in print or in e-books, posted on the internet, academic papers or dissertations (including the Mets Conference at Hofstra last April), and papers presented at professional or public conferences. The winner of the inaugural Greg Spira Award will receive the $1,000 cash prize. The committee will also recognize two additional writers with awards of $200 for second place and $100 for third place. The inaugural Greg Spira Baseball Research Award winners will be announced on April 27, the 46th anniversary of Greg’s birth. Greg was a good friend, neighbor, colleague, and co-editor of the Maple Street Press Mets Annual. Greg died of kidney disease in December of 2011.

If you are under 30 and reading this, thank you. If you did not write something that fits the criterion for this year, maybe this is incentive to get to work now on that long overdue baseball writing project you have put off. I spent much of my 20s putting off writing projects besides my newspaper assignments covering small town politics, business, and high school sports. If they had had the gull-darned intranets back then, I like to think a competition such as this might have spurred me to get off my duff and write about a subject that meant more to me. (Although back in the early 1990s I only had a dust-covered typewriter at my messy bachelor abode, but I could have used my Apple II at the West County News office on off days.)

 Maybe $1,000 will help motivate you or someone you know to start writing.

February 1, 2013

Merized Notice

Very grateful to get a nice notice in Mets Merized today for my upcoming book, Swinging '73. There is also a note about it in Publishers Weekly, which, ironically, only mentions the aspect of the Yankees in the book (probably because they ran out of room in the writeup). But this is no mere Yankees book, that is for sure.

I have reached out to a few blogs and publications thus far and will make a bigger push closer to the March, when the book is available. In case I miss any blogger or writer out there, this is an open invitation that I am putting in caps so it cannot be misconstrued or deemed too subtle.

PLEASE CONTACT ME AT MATT@METSILVERMAN .COM IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN WRITING OR TALKING MORE ABOUT SWINGING '73. I WILL HAPPY TO ACCOMMODATE YOU.

That said, we can go back into a little winter hibernation. Shadow or no.

January 17, 2013

Greg Spira Award for Writers Under 30

Greg Spira was a good friend, productive colleague, diehard Mets fan, and enthusiastic neighbor for several years. Sadly, he died from kidney disease just over a year ago at age 44. I’ll admit, it has been a tough year without him, but his name lives on with an award funded by his brother, Jonathan, and crafted by several people, including friends who worked with Greg and me at Total Sports Publishing.

The upshot: You could win $1,000 for a piece you’ve already had published—the only catch is you have to be under 30.

Greg was an avid researcher who owned more books—and magazine subscriptions—than anyone I’ve met in my age bracket. On the internet, he was a surfing pro. He could find information in a few minutes that might take others hours, but the internet does not always divulge its treasure so easily. There are rabbit holes at every turn on the web that can suck a person in and lead them in nine different directions from whence they came, and spit them out wondering what started all this. So getting the right information, putting it together cogently, crafting an article, and getting it published on the web, or elsewhere, ought to be worth something. Now is your chance.

You can read the official regulations—and find an application—at SpiraAward.com. I’ll summarize the information here.

In order to be eligible for nomination, a piece or book must be about baseball and must contain original analysis or research. Nominated pieces or books must have been published between January 16, 2012, and January 15, 2013. The nomination period remains open through 11:59 p.m. EST on February 15. Nominations after this period will not be considered.

Articles, papers, and books eligible for consideration include those published in print or in e-books, posted on the internet, academic papers or dissertations, and papers presented at professional or public conferences. So, in the case of Mets fans, papers prepared for the Mets Conference at Hofstra University last April are eligible. 

The winner of the Greg Spira Award will receive the $1,000 cash prize. The committee will also recognize two additional writers with awards of $200 for second place and $100 for third place. The inaugural Greg Spira Baseball Research Award winners will be announced on April 27, the 46th anniversary of Greg’s birth. Winning entries must display innovative analysis or reasoning by an author who was 30 years old or younger at the time of the entry’s publication.

Why the age restriction? For my two cents, I think it’s because he liked to encourage young talent, whether it was minor leaguers who could throw 95, or college students who showed promise at the keyboard. (The defunct Maple Street Press Mets Annual, which I edited with him, always included at least one writer who was in school or had recently graduated.) I think it is also partly because Greg spent much of his 20s at his parents’ home in Whitestone, unable to work following his kidney transplant. Greg had graduated Harvard and had many, many friends and Crimson contacts, so the confinement grated on him. Yet it also pushed him to reach out via the phone and the internet. Besides his excellent research skills, he was one of the most talented people I’ve known in terms of maintaining friendships. He would not let excuses like time and distance get in the way of staying in touch. Before MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, et al. provided virtual friendship, Greg was keeping in touch the old fashioned way, by actually caring. He is missed.

January 9, 2013

A Hall of a Shutout

My reaction to the baseball writers not voting anyone into the Hall of Fame in 2013? Good. 

It’s not good for Mike Piazza or Craig Biggio or Alan Trammell or Tim Raines or Dale Murphy, for heaven’s sake. And it certainly isn’t good for Cooperstown. I do not know what this will mean for future votes, or even for the Hall of Fame, but January shutouts are the only real punishment available for people who think that there should be some penalty for those who cheated the game, either by lying or by saying nothing. A high-profile journalist is sorry for not having pushed harder about making his information known to the public. I would love to hear a similar confession from any of the players blanked today, who may now wish they’d said something. By saying nothing, they are now paying the price for their complicit silence. They are being painted with the same brush as everyone else from their era. It is not so much a color as a stain. It is probably not permanent, but it sure looks ugly right now.

The players union, the commissioner’s office, and even the court of public opinion may have no harsher penalties to levy on the offenders than a few missed paychecks, or wagging fingers, but the vote here speaks loud and clear. There are eight or so worthy candidates on the ballot. Some worthier than others, based on their statistics. There is outrage over the vote in some corners. Someone reading this may even be outraged at me, but I don’t have a vote. I do have an opinion. Good.

January 6, 2013

Reflections of a Mets Life: 2012

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

As I continue a Dickensian form of expression—blame the Great Expectations book on CD in my car—this memorable opening line by Charles Dickens relates indeed to the 2012 Mets. In ways most of us are far too aware, the year sucked. But it could also be a Pip, and, for the most part was, until the clock turned to Game 84 on July 6. To that point, the club’s 45-38 mark tied them with the eventual world champion Giants for the NL Wild Card. Even more shocking, the Mets had the third-highest run total in the NL at that point with 384 (4.6 runs per game), trailing only the Cardinals and Rockies. From that point on, the Mets scored just 266 times (3.4 RPG), worse than every team except Houston. They finished 29-50, with three six-game losing streaks (it felt like more) and were so abysmal at home that they set a franchise record, and nearly broke a century-old major league mark, by scoring three runs or fewer in 16 straight home games. The Marlins mercifully provided the pitching fodder to finally snap the dubious streak, and provided a cushion for a 74-88 Mets team that deserved the basement. 

That’s the worst of times, in a nutshell. The best of times are worth polishing and looking at to brighten a winter’s day. If you scratch off the dingy exterior a little—well, actually a lot—you’ll fondly recall three moments in time from 2012. 

The No-Hitter

If the Mets had just managed to finish .500, I think this year would universally be remembered as the Year of the No-Hitter. As time goes by and more mediocre finishes pile up, the no-no will be what differentiates this year from other disappointing seasons. In 50 years the Mets had never had a no-hitter, but they had 35 one-hitters, including five from Tom Seaver, a couple of which were perilously close to perfection. 

The Astros and Rangers have been around roughly the same number of years as the Mets and had multiple no-hitters—including a former ex-Met in common, Nolan Ryan, who tossed no-no’s for both Texas teams. Yet neither of those teams had a world championship. The Mets have two world championships. It is hard to believe, given that the no-hitter is a one-day wonder while a world championship starts with a year that goes well enough to reach the playoffs, followed by the heavenly hand of fate—a heavy heavenly hand of fate, in the case of the 1969 and 1986 Mets—in order to win a world championship. No no-hitters became a fluke, like flicking a spinner 8,019 times and never having one of the outcomes on the board come up. On June 1, 2012, the Mets hit the lottery. 

My old friend, Duck, and I had a pact in pre-cell phone times, when we were younger, unmarried, childless, and irrational, that if it got past the sixth inning of a possible no-hitter and neither of us was at the ballpark, we would drop whatever we were doing to be at Shea by the ninth inning. Of course, Shea never saw a Mets no-hitter and saw just two in its long life: Jim Bunning’s perfect game for the Phillies in 1964 and Bob Moose of the Pirates, who skunked the Mets in September ’69—those resilient Mets proceeded to reel of nine straight wins to clinch the division. If one thing truly went right in my Mets universe in 2012, it was that Duck, who gave in and renewed his tickets after the season started, was at Citi Field with his son for the no-hitter. I was at home, my son asleep, but watching the last few innings with my wife and daughter riveted to the little kitchen TV with me. We could have moved to the room with HD TV and all, but I did not stir from my stool until the game had been over for an hour. 

The no-hitter was laborious for all involved: the umpires, the fans, the manager, and the players. Johan Santana had pitched a more dominant—and far less stressful—96-pitch, four-hit shutout in his previous outing; now, nothing short of a hit was driving him from the mound against the Cardinals, even as his pitch count soared past 130. Terry Collins looked as anxious as an expectant father in a waiting room in a pre-Lamaze Method world. Despite labor pains in the form of Carlos Beltran and Yadier Molina—and head nurse Mike Baxter taking one for the team—the Mets gave birth to a no-hitter at 9:45 p.m. Name on birth the certificate: Nohan. 

The Cy Young

Whether he won the Cy Young or not, R.A. Dickey’s 2012 would go down as one of the greatest seasons ever by a Mets hurler. If you judge by Wins Above Replacement, it doesn’t approach any of Seaver’s three Cy Young years (or several years when he didn’t win), but R.A. is not Tom Terrific and vice versa. Seaver was a phenom, R.A. a reclamation project. Seaver was fastballer, R.A. the knuckleballer. Seaver started one—one? one!—All-Star Game (and his manager, Gil Hodges, was the man who tabbed him with the deserving honor in 1970); R.A. got the shaft for starting the 2012 game by T.F.C. LaRussa. When the Mets got dumb and desperate, they traded Seaver for a parcel of prospects they hoped would turn the team around; when R.A. was traded… 

We all see what the Mets did here, but Dickey was the only reason anyone cared at all about the Mets in the second half. He even poured it on in the final weeks after the dead ass Mets seemed sure to drag him off the Cy Young pedestal. As Dickey has showed in his three memorable years proudly wearing the blue and orange, he rose above the club. He played the good soldier (almost) to the end. Even when they traded him, he understood the reasoning and thanked the fans. No. Thank you. 

His back-to-back one-hitters were incredible, but his 20th win in the home finale—the first Met to reach the milestone in 22 years—was the shining bright moment of the second half. Hopefully R.A.’s legacy will be the foundation of players sent from Toronto that changed the fortune of the Mets. Even if that never pans out, R.A. Dickey brought the Mets something that has been in very short supply: dignity. 

The Franchise Hits Record

Like the mystery of who will be on the All-Star team, the excitement dissipated as soon as the record was set by David Wright the night before the home finale. Hit number 1,419 enabled him to pass the longest-serving Met, Ed Kranepool. Now that Wright is signed, he will probably overtake all of Steady Eddie’s records for longevity during Krane’s 18-season run from 1962-79. The silver lining is that Wright should be around for a while. There are many other statistical milestones left, but the biggest goal is to surpass Kranepool’s mark—shared by several others—of appearing in two World Series in a Mets uniform. I’d even sign on for one, as long as Wright is in the happy dog pile for the final out.

December 26, 2012

Oscar, Oscar, Oscar

First R.A. Dickey, now Oscar Madison . This has been a tough month on the Mets faithful. Going over R.A. Dickey’s Mets pedigree isn’t necessary, but it’s been so long since Oscar took in a Mets game, I think a moment about him is necessary. 

Madison was a sports columnist for the New York Herald Tribune who lived in a spacious Manhattan apartment (Upper West Side in the original play’s script and on the Upper East Side in reality). Oscar, a bit of a slob, shared the apartment with compulsive neat-freak Felix Unger, a commercial photographer, portraits a specialty. When the show first appeared in 1970, there was a long truncated beginning—insisted on by ABC so viewers wouldn’t think they were gay. It went:  

On November 13, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence; that request came from his wife. Deep down, he knew she was right, but he also knew that some day he would return to her. With nowhere else to go, he appeared at the home of his friend, Oscar Madison. Several years earlier, Madison's wife had thrown HIM out, requesting that HE never return. Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?

The answer was no. That craziness created hours of laughs that went way beyond the five-year TV run, later remakes, a cartoon, and two films (I did not know until today that there had been a movie sequel made three decades after the first; it seems the less we know about The Odd Couple II, the better). In syndication, The Odd Couple became a phenomenon, especially in New York, where it was shown on WPIX five and six times a day. One of the few perks of being sick as a kid in the 1970s was catching a couple of midday Odd Couples. 

Oscar, played by Jack Klugman, who died on Christmas Eve at age 90, was a Mets fan—the “I don’t root for teams, I root for stories” pabulum of modern sports scribes be damned. He wore his Mets hat for most of the series. The Odd Couple, never a ratings giant on ABC, died after five years, but its death was actually a bit of a blessing. The show hadn’t gotten stale, as longer-running series invariably do. Its 114 episodes—including a series-ending climax—created a large enough base of programs to make it so that even at 40-plus showings a week on 11 Alive, it still took close to a month to go through the whole run. Only to start all over again. 

I don’t recall ever turning off an Odd Couple—my parents did it for me a few times. I knew the show so well that I could tell which episode was coming up by the credit freeze frame at the top of the show. It was good medicine to help forget the most recent Mets loss of the Grant’s Tomb Era. 

To me, there has never been another show like it. Nor has there been another Oscar like Klugman, a veteran actor of stage and TV guest star, including four Twilight Zone episodes—doozies all. He later starred as a medical examiner on the hour-long drama Quincy on NBC, which lasted longer on the air than the OC. I enjoyed his impassioned speeches at about the 50-minute mark of nearly every episode, usually starting with the words: “And if you think for one minute that I am going to sit by while innocent women and children are threatened…” 

He seems to have been born to play Oscar, but he was not initially taken to by Felix—played by Tony Randall, who died eight years ago. Randall wanted Mickey Rooney as Oscar, but producer Garry Marshall—who could do no wrong on TV in the 1970s—coerced Randall into teaming with Klugman. It was like the Mets bringing in the manager for the first half of The Odd Couple’s heyday: Gil Hodges. Everything just clicked. 

Somewhere perhaps the original Oscar (Walter Mathau) and Felix (Jack Lemmon, as well as Broadway original Art Carney) are playing poker with Randall and Klugman. You’d like to think this song is playing in the background. I could listen to it six times a day.

December 20, 2012

The Spirit of Mets Christmas Yet to Come

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came, I bent down upon my knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.

It was shrouded in a deep black—no, blue—garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. Yet after casting eyes on the floor before me, I could not help but notice that the Spirit’s cloak concealed a misshapen head far out of proportion with its body.

“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Mets Christmas Yet To Come?” I asked.

The Spirit answered not, but pointed downward with its hand.

“You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,” I pursued. “Is that so, Spirit?” 

The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer I received. The Spirit turned its head, and a frigid breeze pulled off his hood, revealing a most frightening visage.

“Mr. Met!”

He put both hands to his head in an expression of surprise and then yanked the hood back on his oversized noggin. He pointed downward with his hand again. “Does your hand gesture mean the Mets will finish lower in the future? Is that possible? I guess anything is possible with this team.”

The Spirit put out his hands in a universal gesture of “Who knows?” Then he got back in specter character. I shivered.

“Ghost of the Future!” I exclaimed, “I fear you more than any specter I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another fan from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?”

It gave me no reply. The hand was pointed straight before us.

“Lead on,” I said. “The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit.”

The Phantom moved away as it had come toward me. I followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore me up. “You know, this outfit is so much nicer than those black uniforms,” I thought. “Maybe Mr. Met can wear this hooded death garb the next time the Mets go a month without winning at home.”

We scarcely seemed to enter the clubhouse; for the clubhouse rather seemed to spring up about us, and encompass us of its own act. But there we were, in the heart of it.

They sat in chairs, watching a flat screen TV set in silence. Glancing around, I saw Duda with his hand in cast, Santana with his shoulder heavily bound, while Tejada stared at the screen, salsa music blaring through earbuds, crutches against the an empty chair. All tried to look away but could not. The voice of the announcer rang through every corner, calling all from the sanctuary of the trainer’s room. Wright and Rubin, Murphy and Martino, Cowgill and Coleman, player and press alike, none could look away. “One out in the ninth, here is the 0-1 pitch to Joyce… popped up behind the plate, near the stands… Thole makes the catch! Two down! R.A. Dickey is now one out away from a perfect game against the Tampa Bay Rays here at SkyDome.”

Quiet and dark, beside me stood the Phantom, with its outstretched hand. When I roused myself from this thoughtful quest, I fancied from the turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to myself, that the Unseen Eyes were looking at me keenly. It made me shudder, and feel very cold. “And to think I chased your entourage all over the ballpark to have my son’s picture taken with you.”

His head turned sharply at me. I demurred. “Lead on, Spirit,” I said, “lead on.” The voice of the announcer grew louder and then fainter as we exited that haunted place and walked into the darkness.

We stepped into the sunshine into a large empty expanse. Cups and wrappers swirled around in the wind. A crack of a bat and a ball skied toward us, to the left of the orange pole. I reached out and braced for impact, only to see the ball go right through me and bounce against a seat. Two men appeared, one faster than the other.

“Got it! I got it!! A major league home run from a former MVP.”

“Dude, Ryan Braun hit that. Not only is he a cheater, he’s a Brewer. Throw it back, dude.”

“Are you kidding me? That is a stupid tradition and it’s not even your tradition. This is a major league home run. No Met has hit one of those in two weeks. And who cares? I’m a Yankees fan. The only reason I’m even here is the 5-for-1 ticket deal. No Mets fan wants to come and see them lose their 100th game. How those prospects doing for you?”

“Every team has injuries.”

“No one gets ‘em like the Mets. See you, dude. I’m going to the Shake Shack. No waiting!”

“No kidding,” the other said, as he trudged away, resigned to his fate.

“Spirit," said I, shuddering from head to foot. “I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is this?”

I recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful language.

Then I recognized it. This was my son’s bed! Unmade as usual, I tried to pull up the sheets but my fingers could not touch. I looked closer. I hadn’t seen these sheets before, the odd markings... a Yankees insignia!

“Am I that fan who lay upon the bed?” I cried, upon my knees.

The finger pointed from the sheets to me, and back again.

“No, Spirit! Oh no, no!”

The finger still was there. 

“Spirit!” I cried, tight clutching at its robe, “hear me. I am not the fan I was. I will not be the fan I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if my team is past all hope?"

For the first time the hand appeared to shake.

“Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: “Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life.”

The kind hand trembled. And the long finger had changed into… foam. It said, “Number One!”

“I will honor the Mets in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this sheet!”

But he was gone. I jolted awake.

I looked around my room. All seemed the same. I ran into the boy’s room afraid of what I might see, but as I dashed inside I saw the Mets stickers still on the window, the Mets garbage can in the corner, the Mets pennants on the wall, and the poster taped to the dresser, though I told him not to do it. Oh, let is stay there forever, even if David Wright is the only person on the poster still on the Mets. And for all the aggravation they cause, the Mets are still here, if just hidden in the basement. Or damned close to it.

Looking back across the room from atop a shelf stood a bobblehead of Mr. Met. I’d swear he winked at me, but he was quiet as ever, while I, well, shouted, “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man.  A merry Christmas to everybody!  A happy New Year to all the world!  Hallo here!  Whoop! Hallo!”

Hallo indeed as I dashed down the stairs for all that was waiting for me below. Real people, not apparitions. The ghosts had worked their magic, but they needn’t have bothered. Where else was I going? Going to Citi Field the first chance I get. I will miss the Tiny Tim of the Mets, R.A. Dickey, as I missed past Mets who moved on—or were moved on—including Jose and John Olerud, Coney and Matlack, Staub and Seaver, and many, many others I have watched go. And more will go, that’s guaranteed. As for the events of the future, who can tell? As for the team we’ll be watching, that is no mystery.

As much as they make me—and so many others—totally nuts, there is love for each of the 940 players who have worn the uniform in 51 seasons, plus others who were sent away or had hard luck visit them before they ever even reached New York. Ownership and management… they’re on their own. But right now, when games are far away, and neither winning streak nor slump makes any never mind, let’s all have good cheer. God bless us all, every one.

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Apologies to Charles Dickens for stealing liberally and directly from A Christmas Carol these last three weeks. We will have a proper “Reflections of a Mets Life” for 2012 sometime soon. Until then, the razzleberry dressing is on me.

December 13, 2012

The Spirit of Mets Christmas (Recent) Past

“Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?”

“I am.”

“Who, and what are you?”

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

“Long Past?”

“No. Your past.”

“Um, crap. Line…”

“Cut… Great. We’re never going to get this done. You’re supposed to go into your past Mets experiences, yada, yada, yada. C’mon. This isn’t Shakespeare.”

“No, it’s Dickens.”

“Well you’ve already screwed that up. Mr. English major, all high and mighty, you said last week that in the original Dickens the ghost of Christmas Present comes first and then the ghost of Christmas Past. But that isn’t how Dickens wrote it.”  

“No?”

“That’s how they did it in Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. You are sad.”

“Well, Magoo is official enough to me. The script here started with the real Dickens until I messed up. Now the whole thing is preposterous. What were you going to tell me about my past?” 

“April.”

“April 1962: The first ever Mets game. They lose nine in a row before winning for the first time. April 1964: Shea Stadium opens. Guess what? They lose. April 1967: Tom Seaver debuts—they’ll still lose 100. April 1969: Tommie Agee launches the only fair ball into the Shea upper deck to win Gary Gentry’s first start. April 1970: Seaver fans 19 Padres, including the last 10—still the record for most K’s in a row. April 1978: First April without Seaver. I attend the second game of the year. We would have frozen to death if my dad hadn’t gotten us out of there early. Missed Ed Kranepool’s game-winning home run, though. April 1981: Tim Leary hurts his arm after two innings the first Sunday of the year in frigid Chicago. What was Torre thinking? And, of course, there was April 1983, when Duck, Des, Lerno and I—we can’t get in trouble now, can we?—skipped school senior year to see the Seaver return. It was my first Opening Day and…”

“That’s the problem.”

“What? Stealing the Faith and Fear imaginary running dialogue bit? We just had them on the site and we’re going to see Greg Prince at Foley’s in the city at noon on Saturday for his 50th birthday and book launch for The Happiest Recap.” 

“Very nice recovery, but come on, this is an imitation.”

“‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.’ Charles Caleb Colton said that.”

“Now you’re trying to be the English major again after flubbing Dickens. You looked that up.”

“Of course I did. Colton was dead a decade before A Christmas Carol was even written. C³ is more obscure today than Choo Choo Coleman.”

“That’s the problem. You already remember all this stuff from long ago and you’ll talk about it nonstop if no one stops you. I don’t need to come here in the middle of the night and remind you about decades ago. It’s what happened last season you can’t remember.”

“You mean 2012? The Mets finished fourth.”

“That doesn’t count. They finish fourth every year.”

“OK. There was the no-hitter.”

“Which you were lucky to catch on TV. You missed the first five innings.”

“Well, I saw the last four. R.A. threw back-to-back one-hitters. I saw those.”

“You saw, what, four, five innings between the two games on television. And you missed Opening Day for the first time since Art Howe was manager. You didn’t even see it on TV.”

“I was in Florida. Family. Grandparents. Disney. Overeating. Listen, there was a lot going on in 2012. I was helping coach my daughter’s softball team. My son was on the Mets in Little League, if that counts as watching them play in person.” 

“It does not.” 

“Come on, there was a lot to deal with. Elementary school graduation. Junior High graduation. And I was doing interviews for my 1973 book.”  

“A plug. Really? In the middle of a dialogue. And people can’t even buy the book for like three months.” 

“But they can pre-order it.”

“You really have a problem.”

“Right now the problem is it’s one in the morning and I am in sound stage limbo talking with a ghost about what happened to the Mets last season.”

“You were up until later than this to watch the 12-12-12 Concert on TV.”

“The Who kicked butt! And Roger Waters with Eddie Vedder? Epic. I was moved enough to make a pledge. And you?”

“Settle down, Don Kirshner. There are no pockets in this robe. I will get around to it.”

“You better...”

“...You bet. Yes, yes. I’m the one who’s supposed to be making the threats here. So I’ll tell you that the 2012 Mets season was a handful of momentous events followed by weeks and weeks of garbage time. No-hitter, one-hitter, another one-hitter, 20 wins. But it was mostly 1-2-3 inning upon 1-2-3 inning of Andres Torres, Josh Thole, and Ronny Cedeno. Take it from a ghost—or someone playing one—’62 was more fun. At least in ’62 they lost in grand style.” 

“Gangnam style?”

“I’m calling my agent. I’m out of here. Roll the metsilverman.com 2012 Citi chart already.”

                                                   Captain’s Log 2012 Citi Field

December 6, 2012

The Spirit of Mets Christmas Present

The last couple of years I have recommended a Mets gift of the year for the holidays. I have gone the team route before, recommending the Mets Kids Club, which I am renewing—my son loves it, even if the seats this past year were two rows from the top corner of the promenade, miles from home plate. But his ticket was included in the kid package and as I’ve said before and I’ll say again, kids under 10 don’t care where they sit as long as they’re at the park. And should they complain, tell them to sit down and watch the game or risk missing going to the kids area for hitting Wiffle balls off the tee—and if that doesn’t work, confiscate any handheld device/DS/BS, and leave your phone in your pocket, where it should be at the game. Unless, of course that device contains a Kurt Smith E-Guide for Citi Field, last year’s top gift suggestion, which is still a cheap yet wonderful way to learn the ins and outs of the ballpark. 

Surprisingly, there has not yet to be a printed book on the gift list as our official Present of the Year. Wait no longer.

Well, maybe a moment longer. Before we dive into another author’s very worthy work, the metsilverman.com PR machine compels me to disclose that this gift recommendation is for those who have, of course, already purchased my books. Available online and in stores are Best Mets and New York Mets: The Complete Illustrated History. 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die still sells as well as any Mets book around the holidays. They all make great gifts and I appreciate you thinking of the books—and me—any time of year.

And, I must interject that our legal department insists I say that you are welcome to give the gifts listed above and below for whatever holiday you choose to celebrate. Or not celebrate.

With all that said, I present the Mets Christmas, er, Holiday Present of the Year, not from my desk, but it will be sitting on my desk for years to come. It is The Happiest Recap.

There have been past books on Mets history covering the day by day doings of the team, but nothing before contains the scope, breadth, and authority of The Happiest Recap. Written by Faith and Fear in Flushing mensch Greg W. Prince, it distills the greatest games in team history. To say I have been waiting for this my whole life is not hyperbole. I have stacks of books of this type covering a dozen or so other teams, dog-eared 1980s recollections mostly, plus hardcovers, magazines, and even a rough manuscript someone sent to Total Sports. I have worked on projects requiring close study of these, or at least keep them handy. I even created my own collection of greatest days for every team in Big League Ballparks a few years back. But nothing I have seen before compares with what Prince has created.

It starts with the source. No matter how many Mets sites start up and close down, dwindle and dawdle, the top of the line is Faith and Fear, which is a partnership between Prince and Jason Fry, another superb and successful writer. I have thought of their site as my morning Joe (I don’t drink coffee) and the best thing on the web since I stumbled across Messrs. Prince and Fry a few months after they started in 2005. There is even a site that functions to critique the contributions of Faith and Fear. If only Mets ownership converted to this form of worship, they’d have saved millions in debt payments for a new stadium and we might have a real team in a real dump we could love. But, Jacob Marley warned, one spirit at a time. 

There are other Mets sites I have come upon before and since that I cherish, but for writing, reading, and researching, FAFIF is the Big Kahunah. Greg, the Prince of Mets Kahunahs, turns 50 this month. He is celebrating the big day next Saturday, December 15, from noon to 2 p.m. at Foley’s at 18 West 33rd Street in Manhattan. I don’t generally get out much after baseball season, but I’ve cleared the holiday calendar and, barring emergency, will be there for the soiree and to purchase my very own signed copy of the first edition of The Happiest Recap.  

A couple of years ago, Greg released the collection in a different form on Faith and Fear in Flushing (which, I should mention, is also the name of his tour de force first book). In “The Happiest Recap” version on his site, the wins—it’s only wins, folks, the losses get rehashed enough—were broken up by game numbers and rated by importance in team history. Here’s the best Opening Days, and the best game twos, and threes. Here is a sample. In book form it is set up differently. And there will be four parts. This initial offering goes by First Base, perhaps we can nickname it the Kranepool edition, for the guy who manned the bag the most from 1962-73 (he made 1,038 of his 1,302 starts at the position during the span covered in the book, according to numbers from another of the big cheese Mets sites: Ultimate Mets Database).

So as not to screw up the explanation, I corresponded with the author via email about the book’s specific makeup. Here is what the first edition of The Happiest Recap, covering the years 1962-73 contains: 

• An introductory section with three short essays (a tribute to Bob Murphy; explanation of the series you are about to read; brief consideration of the period covered by this book and why, beyond "duh," it's called First Base.

• 1962-64 (Games 1-29)

• 1965-68 (Games 30-56)

• 1969 (Games 57-85, including postseason)

• 1970-72 (Games 86-106)

• 1973 (Games 107-127, including postseason)

• A bit on sources & acknowledgements

“The next three volumes,” Greg says, “will be aligned similarly, with five chronological chapters apiece for clarity, but really, game after game after game. The emphasis is still on the individual wins, but as we go along, there is a kind of an organic narrative that forms to offer a flowing history of the franchise, with time taken for an occasional detour or digression... just like baseball (and, to a certain extent, like Baseball the Ken Burns program that was something of an inspiration in all this). I want it to read not like a team-approved timeline—in which case it would skip from 1973 to 1984—or as an encyclopedic adjunct to what fans like you and I already know, but as folktales, myths and memories, the way we as fans experience the Mets in whatever year we got hooked and stayed hooked. “500 bedtime stories” is a line I am using with conviction. (But not in that cookie-cutter ‘Tales from the Something or Other Dugout’ way.)”

His grand moment of justification came during the Hofstra Mets Conference back in April. Greg, moderator of the brownbag lunchtime sessions, turned them into absorbing and riotously fun Mets confessionals (with penance already having been served by all in attendance).

“I threw open the floor to a simple question: tell me about your favorite game,” he says. “The answers were rich and detailed and emotional and EVERY ONE of them (except for ‘yesterday against the Marlins’) was already included on my 500-game docket. That alone convinced me I was on the right track with this.

“Some of the material has been adapted whole from the blog series. Some of it (certainly the postseason stuff) is brand new. I started with a base of 326 games—the Happiests and the Also Happys from last year. Dropped some of those I used previously because they were redundant or not overly compelling (I am no longer concerned whether I have a ‘64th game of the season,’ for example, because the perfect-season conceit is not the deal here). Broke some previous entries into multiple entries to let the stories breathe; you’ll appreciate that every win from the stretch drive of 1973, starting with the second game in Pittsburgh on 9/18/73, gets its own treatment). Added others not written about at all on FAFIF in 2011 but really, really wanted to. I got it down to 661 games before I reached ‘no, that HAS to be in there!’ territory... but eventually the total became 500 (which will inch up to 501 or 502 by the final volume because of historical circumstances and wanting to end on a high note).” 

My office bookshelves are already double stacked, with books on the floor and in boxes, but I will find room for all four books in this series. Greg even addresses readers who will not want, but need, all four books when the series is complete.

“Perhaps when we have all four volumes we will box them into a beautiful gift pack or something, but 500 games as written by me in one volume might be a bit unwieldy. We’ll see if there is any call for it. I want it to be accessible, both mentally and physically. (And we’re figuring out the Kindle aspect of it since people seem to like that sort of thing).” 

If this is not your cup of tea, be my guest and spend $100 or more on a jersey for someone the Mets might trade today, or for a jersey style the team may deem as yesterday’s news tomorrow. I like my Mets T-shirts, but I don’t need everyone on every street to know my Metsdom by watching me pass in the latest and greatest clothing collection the Mets have put up for sale. If they can’t tell where my allegiance lies by my beat-up Mets cap and even more beaten-up soul, who need ‘em? The Mets pay numerous young men very handsomely to be their billboards and runway models. When checks from the Mets start coming this way, I’ll dress accordingly. In the meantime, I choose to overflow my bookshelf rather than my closet. I am in for Prince’s piece, complete with its information, confirmation, and affirmation.

OK, so this ran longer than I expected, but it would not be a Prince production without a little more length and significant commentary than most. I call it value. I’ll see you December 15 at Foley’s at noon. For now, let’s end with Greg’s parting words from our correspondence:

“Go Mets... but come back by April.”

December 5, 2012

“Expect the Visits of Three More Ghosts”

Around this time of year I get a little Scroogie. No, not the cartoon concoction by departed Mets great Tug McGraw; I mean A Christmas Carol. Good things always seem to start with A Christmas Carol. The line at the top here—out of the mouth of the late Jacob Marley—is in every incarnation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. And it is a great cameo role for an actor, a voice, a Goofy, you name it.

The top of the animated Dickens genre, Mr. Magoo’s A Christmas Carol, led to the creation of one of my all-time favorite short-lived shows—The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, which, while finding a link for this post, I was stunned to learn is now available with all the old Magoos on DVD for the first time (now I can put away the bootlegs I bought online, which my wife only wishes I was kidding about). All-time favorite runner-up Underdog is now available, too.... But here I am, tearing open gifts when the tree is barely up and I was supposed to be expecting three ghosts and all. Where was I? Oh, yes: Bah, humbug.

Over the next three Thursdays we will be looking at the present, past, and future—most say past, present, and future, but I go with the Dickensian order this time of year. 

• Expect the first ghost to strike tomorrow, bringing news of the Mets Gift of the Year and a way to make the spirit of Christmas present even better with a festive, but not very far, Mets holiday roadtrip.

• The next ghost will arrive a week later, on December 13, bringing a lot of news about my Mets experience this year. If that doesn’t sound like a frightening ghost post, it includes the last Citi Field appearances by Chipper Jones and Miguel Batista. (Chains a rattling.)

• And finally, we’ll end on December 20 with Reflections of a Mets Life: 2012.

I don’t usually like to say what is going to happen on the site because there may be a mechanical failure, or power failure, or motivation failure, or I get hit by a bus, or we all get hit by a bus. According to the Mayans, the world is supposed to end on December 21, which has me a day out ahead of the end—some who have known me a long time may tell you that me being ahead of schedule is a sign the world is ending. While the Mayan prediction has created actual panic in Russia and other locales in the East, we are so much smarter in the West that NASA feels obliged to discuss it. (I would feel more confident if noted Cal Tech theoretical physicist Dr. Sheldon Cooper and his colleagues issued some type of statement.) If the world really does end, the Wilpons will get the last laugh because they won’t have to pay David Wright one more dime!

And while waiting for the posts, or Christmas, or the end of the world, why not watch the Scrooge who has it all (since Mr. Magoo’s A Christmas Carol is somehow not included on the DVD that just shot to the top of my Christmas list). And how could a people pick the world to end four days before Christmas? That is just cruel, Mayans. Especially to Mets fans, who have already seen their baseball world end countless times. Oh, we’ll show them, and live it up. Ghosts and all.

November 27, 2012

Miller’s Time

It was very easy to dislike Marvin Miller. I never met Miller, 95, who died three decades after he stepped down as head of the Major League Players Association, but I spent a couple of summers staring at the brick wall of his negotiated legacy—the ruining of 1981 and the abrupt end of the 1994 season. In 1981 there was a postseason, but it was so convoluted it actually kept two teams home (St. Louis and Cincinnati) who would have won their divisions in anything even remotely resembling a regular regular season. But 1994 was worse—canceling the end of the season made me wish there hadn’t been a season at all; and giving out individual awards that year was, to me, an utter abomination.

By 1994 Miller had been retired for a dozen years, but his specter hung around the humongous dollar amounts and egos during the nuclear winter of a lost summer. And fall. There were other stoppages as well: 1972, 1985, 1990, and a few very near misses. It was like England and France in a near perpetual state of war between the Hundred Years War and the Napoleonic War, a period of 500 years or so. For those hardcore fans lucky enough not to remember the two big strikes, each one of them felt like half a millennium. My faith in the game was monumentally shaken. And I am pretty hardcore.

No one was more hardcore about unions or more supremely gifted at representing them than Marvin Miller. When he left the steelworkers union for baseball in 1966, owners had a hard grip on the game. The reserve clause bound players to teams for their entire careers, as it had since the 1880s. Fans could sympathize with players wanting to earn more, but ownership held the promise that the status quo not only kept ticket prices reasonable, it also kept your favorite player in your favorite uniform until he was too old or too banged up to be of use. Or perhaps trade him for someone else, with neither man coming or going having a say in the matter. Unless he quit and did something else for a living. Rebels were blackballed.

Players toiled summer and winter to try to earn a living and keep their place in organized baseball. There was no security if something happened to their bodies. There were always more where they came from. 

As a fan, it was hard to wean yourself away from the plantation mentality of what was good for the owner was good for the fan. Dynasties provided the image that things were swell and didn’t change. The Yankees, the Dodgers, the Orioles, even Charlie Finley’s colorful Oakland A’s took turns dominating the game. Summers came and went uninterrupted. Each October brought a Fall Classic and then there was football and Christmas and the Super Bowl and Valentines Day and hey, here comes baseball again, in the quaint and bright setting of Florida and Arizona. The players—the good ones—would be back, and the old or injured ones, well, survival of the fittest and all. No multi-year contracts to muddy up the works.

Marvin Miller took over a union that had no full-time employees and in a few years broke up the old boy fiefdom, unrigged the machine and fixed it so that jackpots found their way into the players’ pockets. If family ownership didn’t have the capital to keep up, well, survival of the fittest and all.

It took a lot of angst and growing up to see the other side of the argument. Neither my family nor my team was pro union and it sure looked like the players union was ruining the game that fans before me had enjoyed uninterrupted. It wasn’t fun to see the word “strike” not confined to an umpire’s right arm but threatening to blow apart a whole season, a whole way of life. It was not The Grapes of Wrath, not life or death, but in the same way it was a story of people who had one way of making a living, a great living, and their right to make it. If I had been given the athletic talent to stand with them, I certainly would have. So I reluctantly stood. If only figuratively. Even that was hard. I was angry but there is a difference between what is right and what is right now. 

Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who was at the wheel when every advantage shifted from the owner to the player, is in the Hall of Fame. Marvin Miller is not. Is that fair? Baseball isn’t always fair. Sometimes it takes time for change to come to it. And acceptance.

November 14, 2012

R.A. Dickey-ulous

The Cy Young balloting is over and it wasn’t even close. R.A. Dickey won all the swing states. Women loved him. Minorities—and aren't knuckleballers a minority—loved him. Anyone who’s ever been on the verge of seeing their dreams forever cast aside yet did not give up. Those people loved him. What’s not to love? 

Writers love him, too, but sometimes it’s tough love. Back in August, when the Mets were in the groove of never winning another home game, this writer wrote off R.A.’s chances of capturing the Cy Young Award. It was the game against the Rockies where these two brutal teams were tied 1-1 after seven innings and Terry Collins pulled Dickey, for reasons that still defy logic. He got the no decision and the Mets—stop me if you’ve heard this—lost the game in agonizing fashion. The odds seemed impossible for Dickey to get the 20 wins that would put him in the Cy conversation, while staying among the leaders in other stats: the ridiculous strikeout totals, the high innings count, the not giving up with a team that had packed it in. And every time you saw one of these talking heads on TV, they were coming up with every reason possible for someone besides Dickey to win the NL Cy Young, though they did concede it would be close. I remember one of them saying—was it Fox News?—that Aroldis Chapman deserved the award as much as anyone. When the votes were finally revealed, Chapman received one vote. As the saying goes, that’s only one more than I got. 

Clayton Kershaw was the smart pick for those who like to crunch their numbers sideways and toss out the wins, which, of course are as worthless as Greek currency nowadays. Yet there was a year (1986) when Met Roger McDowell won the same number as Kershaw this year—and he did it in relief. Not that a reliever can’t win the Cy Young Award, though I don’t think it’s advisable. The last reliever to win the award, French-Canadian export Eric Gagne, was later found out to be juicing in two different languages. 

And there is Gio Gonzalez, whom I saw beat R.A. live in a head-to-head outing when the Mets were treating everyone who came to Flushing like royalty. Gonzalez did quite well for his first year in the National League, though pitching for a first-place team and beating the Mets three times makes his feats seem less impressive. The one time the Mets beat him? Dickey was pitching. But there I go talking about wins again for an award that is named for Cy Young because he had the most wins in history—not that he knew from WAR (he retired before “World War” became part of the language). Beyond those 511 meaningless wins, old Cy’s WAR is also the best for any pitcher in history. Not even close, really.  

If you dug up Cy, who’d be 145 years old now, he’d give you an earful about wins. He pitched 22 years for a lot of teams, some of them lousy—the man came up as a Cleveland Spider, for corn’s sake—and he’d surely tell you wins mean even more for a pitcher who is on a crappy team. And R.A. was on a crappy team. With a crappy offense. And a crappy owner, who will find himself in a palace revolt if he doesn’t sign the best pitcher in the league. And just the third Met, and first since Dwight Gooden in 1985, to claim the Cy Young. The award, not the corpse (though Cy’s 1,217 career base on balls would give new meaning to The Walking Dead).

Now Gio may sound good and get good mileage, but I’m driving the R.A. mobile to the prom. 

Yet I was nervous watching the pre-award show with the three finalists interviewed on the MLB channel like it was The Dating Game. “So R.A., if you were a pie, what flavor would you be?” (I am surprised I did not see FNP Justin Turner emerge from a bush and plop a shaving cream pie into Dickey’s face.) And what is the deal with there being three finalists for the award? I understand people like awards shows—I don’t understand why they like awards shows—but the drawn-out nature of this made me long for the days of the press release.

Now that it’s over, we can all smile. The Mets did not blow this one. They did not trade Jose Reyes and four other starters to another country for a handful of beans. (Next time get a no-trade, Jose.) And if you’re listening Sandy—not the one that is still disrupting life and property in the tri-state area—Alderson must make sure to keep R.A. around. You’re lucky to have him. Or anyone that has Mets fans thinking about awards come fall. Team awards don’t come in on my TV.

October 24, 2012

Letters to the Met-idor

A couple of times per year I dump out a mailbag with a few questions (and answers) from emails at metsilverman.com HQ. I actually made this a World Series-timed edition because I wanted to include my last correspondence with Andy Esposito as editor of Mets Inside Pitch. He asked me to hold onto the news of the magazine’s final edition until the news became public. I hope to hear from Andy again and see him at the ballpark, but Inside Pitch has seen its last issue after 30 years of ups and downs with this up-and-down franchise. The cover of the last issue simply says, “Amazing,” with a backdrop of past covers; if you see the magazine around, pick up this collector’s item. Inside Pitch is yet another casualty in the I-Padification of printed matter as well as people’s dwindling interest in reading about the Mets. But when the Red Sox magazine is also going bye bye, you can be sure this is not just a Mets thing. I remember the elation when I first saw a writeup of one of my books in the magazine. Like news of a Mets win, the feeling never got old. Thank you, Inside Pitch. You will be missed.

With that in mind, let me say to those of you who read my books, follow my site, or just happen to have come across this: Thanks for reading and for being Mets fans. It’s too hard a road to hoe without some company. And the going will be a little harder without my favorite Mets publication. Or, as you’ll also see in this mailbag, my favorite third-base coach.

The Last Inside Pitch

Dear Met,

Hope all is well.

It took one year later, but looks like Mets Inside Pitch will go the way of Maple Street’s Annuals and the dinosaurs. We’re done.

They’re also killing Diehard, our Red Sox mag.

Sad, yes, but we’re now also another victim of the digital/online age, I guess.

Keep in touch,

Andy Esposito

--------------------------

Andy,
As someone who received every issue of the newspaper/magazine since I won a one-year subscription—along with a Croton watch—from Ed Coleman on a WFAN call-in Mets Extra quiz in 1997, I am saddened by the demise of Inside Pitch. I started reading the magazine around 1992. When I discovered it had been around for a decade before that, I could not believe I had gone so long without knowing about its existence. I am still amazed that I got through college in the NASCAR belt—during the greatest period of Mets success—by enduring local newspapers that deemed one sentence and a box score for each game to be sufficient baseball coverage. Savages.

You, Joe McDonald, and everybody who contributed to the magazine through the years should be commended for a great job. I have stacks of Inside Pitch around my office and just today I recycled a copy with R.A. grimacing on the cover from last year, an issue you gave me multiple issues of because of your kind coverage of one of my books. As I slid the issue into the bulging paper bag, I gave R.A. a high five. I didn’t know I’d be saying farewell to Inside Pitch as well. I will miss Inside Pitch more than Jose Reyes—and I was a big fan of his in blue and orange.

There was a great working relationship between your crew and the Maple Street Press Annual. Now we are both gone. My specialty in newspapers was layout and taking story ideas and finding the right image to go with the right story and working on spreads. I use pictures on my site once or twice a year—otherwise links seem sufficient in this medium. We may be old school, but it was a hell of a school and it taught us well. We will use those lessons again. Hopefully together someday soon.

Best,
Matt

 

‘The Walking Man’ Touches Them All

Dear Met,
Well, another member from the Miracle Mets has passed: Eddie Yost, the esteemed traffic cop along the third-base lines. He joins Agee, Cardwell, Clendenon, Frisella (3 games), Koonce, and Tugger as the ’69ers who’ve taken that long Shea escalator ride to the upper deck.

Mike McNamara

--------------------------

Mike,

Sad news about “The Walking Man.” He played when some “experts” complained that the likes of Ed Yost and Ted Williams needed to swing at more borderline pitches to help their teams. Now Yost would be getting $10 mil a year, or at least what Placido Palanco used to make.

I was queried by the obit writer for the New York Times. I had a bunch of stuff from the Hall of Fame clip file on him that I used to edit his piece in The Miracle Has Landed. It was too little and too late to aid in his obit, but I was glad to get a little extra study in on “The Walking Man.” 

The nitty gritty is that he was a great guy, a gym teacher, a World War II veteran, and a product of NYU. Yost never spent a day in the minor leagues and was a superb third baseman, team leader, and player rep when that could get you blackballed. He was not a big home run hitter because Griffith Stadium in Washington made the original Citi Field look like a bandbox. Pitchers could not help but walk the eagle-eyed guy. Yost walked 100-plus times eight different seasons, including a staggering 151 in 1956. He led the league in bases on balls six times and in on base-percentage twice. Despite a career batting average of .254, Yost’s career OBP was .394.

But what I remember about him was Lindsey Nelson saying every first inning, “And ‘The Walking Man,’ Eddie Yost along the coaching lines at third.” The day his death was announced, the Tigers—one of his former teams—were playing the Yankees in Game 3 of the ALCS. (The only time Yost saw the postseason was the 1969 and 1973 seasons coaching for the Mets.) In that game last week, Detroit third-base coach Gene Lamont held Omar Infante, who had just stolen a base, at third base on a softly-hit single. The throw came into second and Infante could have scored easily. He never crossed home plate. Yost would never have thrown away offense like that. He could not afford to be overly cautious with the popgun Mets hitters of the 1970s. He had the livelihoods of some of the great pitchers of the decade depending on his right arm. “Eddie Yost is waving Kingman home and he slides home safely. It’s now a 2-1 Pirates lead.” Runs were hard to come by, and Yost squeezed out every drop like a kid raised during the Depression.

That he was a right-hand man of Gil Hodges spoke volumes as well. Yost was on the greatest coaching staff of the greatest manager in Mets history, a group that included Rube Walker, Joe Pignatano, and Yogi Berra. (Hodges and Walker from the 1969 staff predeceased him.) There were other coaches flitting in and out, but native New Yorker Yost was with the Mets for nine seasons, through four managers, until he left for Boston in 1977 because M. Donald Grant—here’s a shocker—wouldn’t pay him what he was worth. R.I.P., Eddie Yost.

Best,
Matt

 

Grading on a Curve (Ball) 

Dear Met,

Thoroughly enjoyed your analysis [of Mets grades for the year]. R.A. Dickey almost can erase such a sour feeling about this season all by himself. Only way he doesn’t win Cy Young is if there are replacement writers voting or an anti-NY and Tenn. bias. I think you graded Torres too high. From Opening Day he showed that he couldn’t field, terrible judgment on the bases, and not much of a hitter. Couldn’t understand why he got so much PT. 

Niese’s success this year was under the radar. Never much of a Hairston fan, a space filler on a bad team. Most disappointing player to me is Thole. His was a nice story. I thought he would hit enough for average and walk a lot with few strikeouts to offset his lack of power. Player who most lived up to my expectations was Ramon Ramirez. Saw him in Spring Training on St. Patrick’s Day in Fort Myers a couple of years ago and he didn’t miss any bats, including a home run to Fernando Martinez. Later that season in Fenway I predicted a HR when he came in and sure enough…. Right handed lineup with Bay, Nickeas, Cedeno, among others, was unwatchable. 

Arnold Dorman

 --------------------------

Arnold,

A few of these guys probably got a higher grade than they deserved during the giddy first half—the first semester report was written around the time they beat the Phillies two out of three just before the All-Star break. To help my second-semester grading I went on ESPN.com and found the team’s stats broken down by half. Torres, Cedeno, and Turner all had far better numbers than reality would seem to warrant for a team that couldn’t hit lefties. Manny Acosta’s second-half numbers were Dyar Miller good, in reference to the 1980 Mets reliever who had superb stats during the short-lived Mets renaissance of June and July of that year. Though like Acosta, I recall very few moments where he got anyone out in a key spot at Shea or Strat-o-matic.

Johan Santana deserved an F for his second half, but given that he was hurt and coming off the no-hitter, I let him pass with a D-. And you are right, Ramon Ramirez does indeed suck. Elvin Ramirez may yet tend that way as well. Josh Thole played himself into a backup and Mike Nickeas should only be allowed out of the minors in a dire catching emergency. For another team. 

R.A. Dickey was getting an A+ without even looking at the stats, but your note made me see look up how he compares to past Mets in the new hot stat, Wins Above Replacement. His season ranks 19th all-time according to WAR, but it’s quite a list. Dwight Gooden tops the list with his stellar 1985, but Doc is nowhere else in the top 20. Tom Seaver is listed eight times—years listed by highest WAR—for 1973, ’71, ’75, ’69, ’68, ’74, ’67, and ’70; for that last year Tom Teriffic’s 5.4 WAR tied R.A.’s 2012 and Craig Swan’s 1978 (talk about a guy not getting much support). Also in the top 20: Jerry Koosman (1968, ’69, ’73), Jon Matlack (1974, ’72), Johan Santana (2008), Pedro Martinez (2005), Al Leiter (1998), Frank Viola (1990), and Sid Fernandez (1992). These pitchers had higher WARs than those garnered in what I consider three of the best seasons I have witnessed: David Cone’s 1988, Bret Saberhagen’s 1994, and Dwight Gooden’s 1984. Jerry Koosman’s 1976, which as a kid was the final flickering light as the last great season by a Met for what seemed like an eternity, clocks in at number 33. Go figure. While I am bombarding you with numbers, R.A. in 2012 was eighth all-time for the Mets in strikeout to walk ration in a season (4.259), which is staggering for a knuckleballer.  

So considering that only four of these two dozen seasons listed above garnered a Cy Young Award for a Met, I would not be surprised if the voters bathed themselves in obscure numbers and rationalized a way to give the Cy Young to someone else. But if you look at traditional WAR for 2012, defending Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw has a higher number than Dickey, but the hot pick—Atlanta reliever Craig Kimbrel—has a WAR down the list. The only thing I know is, I’ll go to WAR with R.A.

Best,

Matt

Get Me Rewrite!

Dear Met,

May be needing an update on your book for NOHAN!!!!!

Lol!

Frank Dirig

 -------------------------- 

Frank,

I may have to re-shuffle that group in 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, or at least rank the Johan Santana no-hitter ahead of the Tom Seaver “Imperfect Game.” Best Mets would require some tinkering, too. Now if we can just get the publisher to see the need for a new edition... 

Best,

Matt

October 22, 2012

The 2012 FNP Met: The Burning Question

Like a bad penny, or a bad Mets season that won’t go away—I’m back. While other teams were punching their cards for the World Series, I realized after signing off on the Mets Monday Monologue that I had plum forgot to do a couple of annual postings to provide the Mets public, which this time of year is either starved for information or licking its wounds from another lost season, info of the useless kind. Like the metsilverman.com Favorite Non-Playing Met Award. 

I like to pinpoint the origin of the award to 1990 Mets catcher Mackey Sasser—one in a long line of players I was convinced would become a quality ballplayer if given the at bats (or in Mackey’s case, a position that didn’t require him to throw the ball back to the pitcher). There have been many others who fit the bill of misfit Met who did not get a real shot at decent playing time. Some had shining moments of greatness: Todd Pratt and Heath Bell. The rest—Tim Bogar, Chris Jones, Jason Hartke, Joe McEwing, Mark Johnson, Dicky Gonzalez, Jeff Keppinger, Chris Woodward, and on and on—prove that those running the team know more about player acquisition and development than yours truly. Probably.

Like an awards show, we can’t simply read off the winner and let it go at that. So what follows are the recent history and drama paragraphs. 

Nick Evans won the award in 2009 and 2010, the first repeat FNP Met—yet Jerry Manuel played him grudgingly despite good results (.306 average and .472 slugging in just 37 begrudging plate appearances in 2010). With Manuel fired after the 2010 season—clearly caused by his abuse of Evans—Nick got another try under a new skipper. Terry Collins sent Nicky boy to the plate a career-best 194 times. Still, the Mets continually designated him for assignment when a roster move needed to be made. Evans wound up with the Pirates in 2012. He never got out of the minors and spent most of the year out of action after breaking three bones in his glove hand hustling after a foul ball.

Jason Orville Pridie, who like Evans grew up in the Phoenix area, joined the legion of Mets with moxie yet seemingly glued to the bench. Injuries got him to the majors in 2011, where he showed a good glove and surprising power with 18 extra-base hits and 20 RBI while getting into 101 games. He started 45 of those games and was the rare Met who actually hit far better at Citi Field than on the road: .260/.339/.450 vs. .204/.281/.296. The Mets, who had claimed Pridie from the Twins the previous year when Collins was overseeing the minor league operation, let him go as a free agent after 2011, even though he was probably one of the few players they could actually afford. Let loose on the world, he soon signed with Oakland—and was suspended for 50 games for violating MLB’s drug policy. Now we know where his surprising power came from. He then went to Philly, where he batted .300 in 2012. Of course that was in just 10 at bats. He did homer, double, and drive in all the Philly runs in a 4-3 loss to Atlanta on July 8, the last day before the All-Star break. When they came back from All-Stars Pridie was back on the bench and soon returned to minor league obscurity. The first cheater in the FNP bunch—that we know of, these guys trend toward the obscure—we need to wash our mouth out for the FNP Award for 2012. 

Rinse, spit, repeat. 

All right. This year’s winner showed grit and determination. He came off the bench as needed, putting together his signature moment of 2012 by working out a game-tying walk in the ninth inning against the Marlins in April, the best at bat this writer witnessed in person in 2012—albeit in a greatly reduced schedule for me. Ladies and gentlemen, the 2012 FNP Met is... Justin Turner.

Turner generally provided a competent bat for a mostly incompetent offense. If he had any ability to play the outfield he would have seen far more playing time, but as it was, his starts dropped by more than two-thirds over 2011, from 102 to 31. But he still administered a mean shaving cream pie, doing so on the elevated stage after Johan Santana’s no-hitter. He came through all year, just not in a way most Mets fans could see. Because he was an infielder on a team whose only stabilizing force was its infield, he saw plenty of pine time, but he was ever ready. In fact, the Mets bench, infield, and rotation was pretty good. It was the outfield, catching, and relief pitching that kept them from reaching .500 for the fourth straight year. You can’t blame Justin Turner. 

We fete him instead. There wasn’t a whole lot of competition other than Ronny Cedeno, but most of the players you figured would be reserves—Scott Hairston, Lucas Duda, Andres Torres—played far too often to get that FNP flavor going. Oh, fire-hued haired pinch hitter, we call you Burner. Now we call you FNP Met. Come and get your award.

Be aware that this award is often enjoyed in absentia because the non-playing Met—favorite or not—is often on his way to another locale where he hopes to play more. We hope you stick around, Turner.

October 19, 2012

Delighting in the Misery of Others Since 1976

Not long after becoming a Mets fan in 1975 I thought I might double my pleasure by also following the Yankees. It was all just baseball, right? Ah, youth. After a couple of weeks surveying Yankees fans, I ended the ill-fated experiment, though I continued to watch Yankees games on TV, only rooting against them.

The Yankees made the Mets look like amateurs throughout 1976, with their revamped and packed new/old stadium leading local sportscasters to intone the name of the year’s popular baseball-themed film with Walter Mathau, Tatum O’Neal, and the incomparable Vic Morrow into their derisive reportage of New York’s other team: “And now for The Bad News Mets.” In October came the first Championship Series I ever paid attention to—the 1975 Championship Series were both over before I knew what they were. The Reds swept the Phillies in entertaining fashion in the 1976 NLCS, but that year’s ALCS is still among the best, for drama, that I have witnessed—culminating with the Chris Chambliss home run against Mark Littell of the Royals as fans poured onto the field. The Yankees got clocked by the Big Red Machine’s legendary lineup in the World Series, complete with the DH, used in alternate Octobers for the first time in ’76. The result? Reds 4, Yanks 0.

It was wonderful seeing the braying horde of Yankees fans at school briefly humbled, but it was a rare defeat in an invasion that encircled my youth. The Yankees won the World Series in ’77 and ’78, those years in life that seem to go on forever but you later come to feel went by too quickly. The Yankees did not make the playoffs in 1979, but they rolled to another division title in 1980. The Yankees won 103 games under Dick Howser—in their Yankees way, two years earlier the team had announced that Bob Lemon would move from manager to GM and Billy Martin would take over as skipper in 1980, only to have already jumped the gun and gone through that whole scenario before ’80 even arrived. Howser was a longtime coach with the club—a Buck Showalter type that the team responded to. Until October. 

I had gone from sixth grader to high school sophomore in the years since the Yankees-Royals rivalry had been joined, and I had no reason to believe that Kansas City could do anything to the Yankees. The Royals had already found every way to lose heartbreaking best-of-five ALCS to the Yankees: the Chambliss homer in ’76, blowing a lead in the ninth inning of Game 5 in ’77, and even losing a three-homer game by George Brett in ’78. Why should 1980 be any different? 

The Royals won the first game of the series behind Larry Gura, an ex-Yankee and veteran of the Yankee-Royals wars. Red-haired, mutton-chopped Dennis Leonard—who like me was a product of Iona (he the college, me the grammar school)—tossed a gem in Game 2. George Steinbrenner chose to scapegoat third base coach Mike Ferraro for sending Willie Randolph home on a two-out double in the eighth. He was out and Dan Quisenberry escaped the ninth with a 3-2 win. 

To prove that Bud Selig wasn’t the only commissioner who made the unnecessary mandatory, Bowie Kuhn had the teams play again the next night—no off day—and it looked like it could be to the Yanks’ advantage as they scored two unearned runs. Future Mets batting coach Jim Frey, who’d replaced former Mets farm director Whitey Herzog as manager in K.C., went for the jugular that Friday night by bringing in Quisenberry in relief of Paul Splittorph with one out in the sixth. Sure-handed Frank White made a throwing error that helped the Yankees take a 2-1 lead. The Royals veterans, like me, had to know the coming attractions to this movie: Yankees comeback, winning three straight games at “The Stadium,” and tossing another pennant on the pile. And just to show that past Yankees third baseman endured benchings in the past, Aurelio Rodriguez—the Eric Chavez of his day, without the power—started instead of former home run champ and future Yankees captain Graig Nettles against the lefty.  

The Royals put a runner on second in the seventh, when Howser summoned Rich Gossage to face U.L. Washington, he of the constant toothpick chewing—a habit my father had recently taken up in lieu of cigars. Washington reached on an infield hit and up came Brett. He was the unquestioned MVP of baseball in 1980, batting .400 deep into September before relenting to the inevitable math and clocking in at .390, while tossing in 118 RBI, 27 go-ahead hits, and a 30-game hitting streak. Brett had been an animal in a losing cause in past playoffs, hitting the game-tying homer that set the stage for the Chambliss heroics in ’76, batted .300 against them in ’77, and .389 in ’78. He came up with two outs and the tying run on third. One of those singles that his Charlie Lau-honed swing seemed to crank out like an assembly line would do nicely here. After all the water under the bridge between these two teams, that was not good enough for Brett. Upper deck. His sixth home run in the four ALCS against a dreaded foe. This was for keeps. 

The Yankees went down in the ninth, Quisenberry’s fourth inning of work, and the Royals commenced on four Octobers of deferred celebration. My friend David from the neighborhood, whom I had worked on to the point where this once diehard Yankees fan was willing to celebrate a Yankees loss with me, took turns downing a proffered Schmidt’s near the bushes in front of my house. We’d never been drunk before—nor did we get so then—but while the Royals dumped buckets of champagne, beer, and anything liquid on themselves in the Yankee Stadium visiting clubhouse, we felt we should get in the spirit. 

It also marked the end of the rivalry, save for a 1983 game involving excessive pine tar, the AL president’s office, and a sham ninth inning. After four series in five years that truly lived up to the title Championship, the Yankees and Royals did not meet again in October. After another year, it was the Yankees who embarked on a nice, long postseason siesta, while the Royals, who lost the 1980 World Series to the damned Phillies, won division titles in 1981, 1984, and 1985, the last coming under Dick Howser—unceremoniously canned by Steinbrenner after his 103-win season in 1980. Howser’s 1985 Royals, with holdovers Brett, White, Quisenberry, Hal McRae, Willie Wilson, and a few others, finally won a world championship before turning into cicada bugs able to go decades without emitting a chirp. 

I watched the Tigers pile on runs on Thursday afternoon to complete the 2012 ALCS sweep of the Yankees, the TV at the ice rink surrounded by parents while my son skated with the team. Everyone assumed that I, like them, of course, was a commiserating Yankees fan. It made me wish you could still get Schmidt’s. Even a lousy beer on an inexperienced tongue can taste like satisfaction.

Mets Monday Monologue

The Monday Monologue ends with a nice round 30. I want to be off the Monologue, the Facebook, and just about every media device or platform before all hell breaks loose with the torrent of BS in the final weeks before the election. I would rather have strangers actively try to convert me to their religion or send me pictures of cute kittens every seven minutes than be inundated with people’s political views over and over and over. I maintain my independent voter status, even if I do tend to vote on one side of the aisle (because the people on the other side are just plain nuts). I am not leaving the site. I’ll be back on metsilverman.com for the election I will remember for a long time—the National League Cy Young vote. If you are interested in finding out more about Mets history, try Best Mets, or baseball in general, try Baseball Miscellany.

M³, Volume 30: I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together Edition

I can’t believe the Nationals blew that Division Series to St. Louis after they were up 6-0, even though I watched it happen. I also can’t believe that Davey Johnson didn’t walk Peter Kozmo with a base open to face pitcher Jason Motte in a tie game. That would have made the Cards have to at least pinch-hit for their best reliever. The Nationals took their chances with the rookie shortstop with 15 career RBIs—and he knocked in the winning run. Strategy never was Davey’s strong suit….

Since I am going off Facebook until after the election, I can’t reply to a strain of Yankees fans on FB saying how hard it is to watch them go down by a couple of games in the Championship Series against Detroit. To a Mets fan, that is like someone complaining from their Rolls Royce that they are out of Grey Poupon. (A product, I must confess, that I use every day, but never while driving.) Here’s hoping the people inside their Rolls have a dry, stale luncheon....

Breaking News: I am going to say something nice about the Yankees and Joe Girardi. I feel bad that Girardi lost his father last week. My condolences. I think anyone’s Dad would be proud to see their son have the stones to sit a $25 million player and go off the reservation and let C.C. Sabathia throw all the pitches needed to beat the Orioles in a very well-played Division Series. We now return to our regularly-scheduled programming….

It is pretty bad form, though, to whine about replay when you got hosed. When Girardi was catcher for the Yankees, the Orioles sucked it up after the ridiculous Rich Garcia call jumpstarted a Yankees dynasty in the 1996 ALCS. MLB has made so many foolish decisions regarding the postseason—such as allowing the bozo who thought he was umpiring third base and not left field work the Tigers-Yankees ALCS—I wouldn’t be surprised if they added replay for all calls as well as challenge flags to further kill the pacing of games. “The Mets win the World Series! No wait, there is a challenge flag on the field. Let’s sit here for five minutes and wait out this check swing.” Replay breeds indecisive officiating in football. I think its unrestricted use in baseball would make the game drag on even more and further harm its immediacy. But I say if you’re going to have replay, have the K-zone call strikes and balls since the lack of uniformity in that regard has more to do with altering outcomes than a blown call on the bases now and then. And when they argue a bad call, it at least is entertaining….

One day, I hope, the Mets will be involved in the postseason and then these postseason format objections will lack conviction when these rules invariably help the Mets, but something needs to be said now, if for this one postseason. The last-minute addition of an extra playoff game for each league—after the schedule was set so the regular season ended midweek—has resulted in teams playing with no day off between series and with the 2-3 Division Series format instead of the 2-2-1. I like the 2-3 format myself, it’s what I was raised on in the 1970s to the mid-1980s, and I think it proved more than able of creating more entertaining Division Series than most Octobers, where that round usually sees one or two bore fests. But MLB is going back to the 2-2-1, full-rest format next year. I don’t understand why they ramrodded this change in this year when it compromised the same playoff integrity they seemed so sure of upholding. There must have been a focus group that said to make it so….

And I don’t know if a focus group of one is any indication, but I am loving my period dramas on non-network TV. Copper, on BBC America, a channel I didn’t even know I got, is pretty damned good. Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana, the team from Homicide: Life on the Streets, and a group of actors I am not familiar with have made that show a new fave. The show about New York police during the Civil War is nearing the end of its first of what I hope will be many more years. They are not afraid to kill off characters you thought would last forever on the show. They did that on Boardwalk Empire last year, but that show either jumped the shark or is enduring the equivalent of a ballplayer batting .103 through April and May. I’m hoping that the ballplayer in question hasn’t become Jason Bay….

There is a lot of talk about whether Miguel Cabrera’s Triple Crown is enough to overcome the high WAR of Angel Mike Trout. I spent six years with Total Baseball, which regularly cranked out numbers like this before anyone knew what they stood for; but consider that a Triple Crown has not been won since 1967 and you want to give the MVP to a player who has been in the majors less than one year? For all we know he could conceivably flame out like past Rookies of the Year John Castino, Hector Cruz, or Ben Grieve. Ted Williams twice won the Triple Crown yet did not win the MVP either year—and that sounds awfully dumb now, doesn't it? Picking Cabrera for MVP should be as big a no-brainer as choosing R.A. Dickey for Cy Young….

Thanks to the people at Lifespring in Saugerties for having me come teach a class on baseball this past week. I do not do a lot of local appearances, and it was fun talking to people from a time when baseball was king….

A movement is afoot to get all-sports stations on FM. I don’t get it. Literally. That ESPN was willing to give up thousands of listeners outside FM range is one thing, but WFAN is a whole different matter. I live 100 miles from Citi Field yet I get the station clearly most of the time. I have even gotten it at night in the Adirondacks and deep into Pennsylvania. If the FAN switches (and subsequently gives up its AM presence like ESPN did), I hope the Mets switch to a station with an AM signal. The Mets don’t have what it takes to create their own affiliate radio network like the one they had in the 1980s, when Mets games could be heard across the Northeast and in Florida. The Mets have since ceded all territory outside Long Island to the Yankees. This will only kill off the last pockets of resistance…. 

And with that, the last word on the last Monologue: Thanks.

Mets Monday Monologue

I am a little pressed this week, so rather then have this be the final Monday Monologue, we will extend this by a week and leave it with a nice round 30. For those just joining in—or who were directed by a kind word on facebook from Greg Prince at Faith and Fear in Flushing, here in the 50th season of New York Mets baseball, we are honoring the memories of Mets clubs past and present with a Mets Monday Monologue. It’s a bit of mental stew on a few different subjects. This week we look at one thing the Mets did all right, the failure of the play-in playoff game, registering for the All-Star Game lottery, Bobby V. getting a raw deal, the potential availability of Mike Scioscia to manage, and ladybugs, or should I say ladybeetles.

M³, Volume 29: May the Fourth Be With You Edition

This season may have been a disappointment, but I will say that the 2012 Mets did one thing right: They won the last game of the season. Not that their last game against the Marlins mattered—what we all would give for that to be the verdict on the last day in 2007 or 2008. But by winning the last game, every time you go to a Mets site that has “last game”—such as ESPN New York—it will say Mets 4, Marlins 2 for the next five months. Too bad there’s not much to be done about their perpetual fourth-place standing right below the last game feature. That has dogged Mets fans for the past four winters….

I hate to say I told you so, but however wonderful people thought the second Wild Card was, the one-game play-in playoff looked horrible in practice. And to those who say, “Well, then you better win your division”—a coin flip would be about as fair to the team with the better record of the two teams as the current system. One of the teams won’t have a home game? And you call that playoff baseball? Another brilliant move by the people who will bring you interleague play every day of next year and for generations to come. What an encore…. 

So I registered for the All-Star Game lottery at MLB.com. If I am selected I will get one ticket to the big event. One ticket! Due to the ridiculous infrequency of the Mets hosting the All-Star Game I want to take my nine-year-old son to the game because he may well be pushing 60 by the time the Mets get another one. I know if you get season tickets you’ll be able to get All-Star tickets, but buying 81 tickets for a team with no real chance of postseason play, and has routinely made season ticket holders feel like schmucks by discounting everyone else’s single-game tickets, isn’t a legitimate option for me. And if they have the gall to pay themselves a dividend after their mismanagement has cost the teams hundreds of millions, and all credibility, I won’t give them any more money than necessary. They have done nothing to breed loyalty.…

Speaking of loyal, the Red Sox canned Bobby Valentine after one ugly season. I have long been a big supporter of Bobby V. The pushing of him off the plank of the S.S. BoSox brings to mind Nick Carraway’s words to his doomed friend Jay Gatsby: “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.” Maybe Boston will turn it around with someone new at the helm. Maybe the inmates—and inmates with diminishing skills—will continue to run the asylum. Maybe it is the beginning of a downward spiral that we Mets fans have been dealing with since our team failed to claim a playoff spot easily within reach. Terry Francona got a job after a year away—good luck in Cleveland, dude. And if Valentine goes back to being the best studio analyst the game has, I’d be happy with that, but I am not sure he would be…. 

I’ve heard that Angels manager Mike Scioscia’s job might be in jeopardy next year if the team gets off to a bad start. Um, I’ll take Scioscia as soon as he is available, even with that soul-crushing ’88 NLCS moment against the Mets on his résumé….

The ladybug—or more specifically Japanese beetle—infiltration in my office on warm October afternoons takes me back to West Point. It was an Indian Summer day a couple of years ago and I was golfing on the beautiful course at the United States Military Academy (anyone can play there, though I am proud my Dad served as an Army officer). On the course there is a ridge near the USMA ski training center—a steep, craggy slope with a single chairlift that even offseason looked like it has sent many a fearless officer off the slopes forever. I was driving a cart up a slight rise when suddenly Japanese beetles were everywhere, a black cloud of hundreds of them. They were all over the seat, on my hat, on my bag, on my sweater, inside my shirt, on the bag containing my lunch. I had to put a hand over my mouth to keep from ingesting the damned things. I was very thankful to be wearing slacks and not shorts. I dashed from the cart, grabbed a club, hit my shot quickly, hopped in the cart, and floored it. Beetles peeled off in the cart-generated breeze until just a dozen or two remained. When finally free of them after the hole, all I could think was how impregnable West Point had just repelled an invasion. Beetle invasion. Over and out.

October 4, 2012

Pencils Down. Grades In

The 2012 season was a weird one for me. When the Mets were at their peak, I was buried in work, missing wins, getting to the ballpark once, and, frankly, lucky that I was fixing dinner and flipped on the TV the night of June 1 to catch the last four innings of the signature moment of this season: Johan Santana breaking a 50-year no-hit silence for the Mets. The signature Met of 2012 is also pretty obvious: R.A. Dickey. No one else received much support, just as the offense mostly refused to support R.A. and every other pitcher on the roster. With a little luck—and a few hits against the Astros, Padres, Rockies, and Phillies—he might have been 24-3, and this talk about the Cy Young Award, not to mention the debate about the importance of wins, would be moot. And the fact that Dickey broke Tom Seaver’s 1975 record by earning the highest percentage of Mets victories in a season, 27%, is as impressive as any of the other numbers, new age and old, by R.A. in 2012. 

So R.A. gets an A+, his grade the same as the first semester. How did everyone else, do? Well, we are returning to the report card and updating the progress of these pupils. Many will be kept after school, some willl be left back, and many, I am afraid, will be expelled. All except R.A. will have a punish assignment. Write the following sentence 88 times (once for every Mets loss):

I will not destroy another promising season with a sucky second half.

As someone who specialized in writing punish assignments at Iona Grammar School during the Torre Administration (Torre’s Mets Administration, alas), I can tell you firsthand that punish assignments do little to stop future bad behavior.

Moving on to college, I recall that the local watering hole, Mac ‘n’ Bob’s, had a sandwich called “The First Semester,” which was a delectable roast beef sandwich, with sides and fixings; below it on the menu was “The Second Semester,” which was a peanut and butter jelly sandwich. Today’s lunch will be PB&Js. The crusts will not be cut off.

In general, I am disappointed, class. The class average is a C after getting a C+ the last two years. This marks the third straight year the class average had decreased—from 79 in 2010, to 77 in 2011, to 74 this year. That is unacceptable, especially after so many of you did so well in the first marking period. The grades include the first half mark (1H) and second half (2H) with the two grades averaged together for your final. Now here are your report cards.

Mr. Thole, no one told you stop clapping erasers.

Final 2012 Grades

                  1H   2H  Final         Notes

R.A. Dickey         A+   A+     A+  Will an A+ get you a Cy Young? It should, but don’t trust anyone in an election year.

Scott Hairston      B+    B+    B+   Most consistent Mets hitter—that says a lot about 2012. Will miss when he is a Brave.

David Wright        A     B-      B+  Sub-par second semester: .416 slugging was 150 points below first half. He’ll still get paid.

Mike Baxter         A     B-      B+   Grade seems high given recent hitting slump, but his .350 OBP in 2H was best on team.

Jon Niese            B-     B+    B     ERA went down 3/4 run in 2H. Great progress! Keep up the good work; avoid old habits.

Bobby Parnell       B-     B+    B     Like Niese, finally showed consistency. Had 2.14 ERA and tied for most 2H saves (5).

Ike Davis            C      B+    B     Worked himself out of mire to hit 32 HRs. Had .542 slugging in 2H and outhit Wright.

Daniel Murphy      B-     B-     B-    For a team in contention, he would be incredibly valuable off bench. Nice 40 2B season.

Ruben Tejada      B+   C-      B-    Slugging in 2H (.322) was almost as high as his BA in 1H. Needs stamina. Please feed.

Johan Santana     A      D-     C+   Second half ERA was 16.33, losing all four post All-Star starts. We’ll always have June 1.

Jeremy Hefner     C-     B-     C+   Showed something those last 2 starts after not getting an out vs. Philly.

Lucas Duda         B      D      C     Needs improvement to stay in NY. But team nosedived after he left. Wasn’t his fault.

Justin Turner        C      C     C     Played sparingly yet had fifth-best slugging in 2H—proof of how bad the team was.

Ronny Cedeno      C       C     C     His slugging was third on team in 2H—yet more proof how Mets struggled offensively.

Chris Young         C       C      C     Serviceable when healthy. Like a Kris Benson whose wife is not a crazy monster.

Jon Rauch           D+      B-    C     DFA looked likely when 1H grades came out. Pretty good for pretty bad team in 2H.

Andres Torres      D+      C+   C     Had better 2H, but I groaned every time he started. As I said before: he’s no Angel.

Kirk Nieuwenhuis   B        D      C     Mets kept journeymen instead of kids. Sent down 13 games into 2H and got hurt.

Jordany Valdespin  C+      C-    C     Wasn't quite as impressive in 2H. If Murph is dealt, he might be the 2B. Or maybe OF.

Frank Francisco     B-      D+    C     Like many Mets closers, he disappeared in 2H. A 5.53 ERA for the year is a C at best.

Tim Byrdak          B-     D-     C-    He pitched 13 times in 2H and was brutal before getting hurt and having surgery.

Josh Thole           C+    D-     C-    His only value is that he can catch Dickey and he bats left-handed. A scrub.

Ramon Ramirez    D       D+   D+  Terrible trade to bring him over with Torres. Good luck in the playoffs, Pagan.

Miguel Batista       C        F     D    Could’ve omitted his brief 2H, but since I was at his last game, I will grade that futility.

Mike Nickeas        D+     F      D     Wish I’d given him a worse grade in 1H because he deserves failing grade for year.

Jason Bay           Inc      F     F     He’s left back if no other school accepts him. He tries, but a Mets-worst .165 BA = F.

                                                    Only Appeared in One Half as Met

                     1H   2H         Notes

Matt Harvey                   A-          Three things to remember about otherwise rough 2012: No-no, R.A., and Matt Harvey.

Manny Acosta                 B+         This grade is shocking for someone in minors most of 1H, but had 1.78 ERA in 2H.

Justin Hampson               B-          There’s a 20-inning threshold for grading, but it is waved for lefties. Kid’s not bad.

Robert Carson                 B-          See above. Hopefully his elbow will be fine next year. Beats paying Byrdak $1 mil.

Omar Quintanilla    C+                   Fourth-string shortstop played well with bat and glove. Gets a playoff share with Orioles.

Dillon Gee             C+                   Pitched one of his best games just before break, then had tough break. Missed him.

Josh Edgin                      C           Edgin ain’t bad. I’ll attribute his last couple of bad outings to overuse. T.C. liked him.

Colin McHugh                  C-          Maybe has a future as a reliever. Got rooked out of win in brilliant debut start, though.

Elvin Ramirez                   C-         Supposedly great stuff, but only 4 of 20 appearances were in games Mets won.

Kelly Shoppach                 C-         Nice try getting him, but not great with bat or glove. Some power. Keep only if cheap.

Rob Johnson                    D+       Can hit better than Nickeas—who can’t?—but not nearly as good defensively.

Mike Pelfrey         Inc                   Won’t be back in 2012, or maybe ever as Met. Deserved better fate.

Jenrry Mejia                     Inc       Under the 20 IP minimum (for righties), but looked good vs. Bucs. Needs more study.

Jeuyrs Familia                   Inc       Like Mejia, he probably needs more time in minors and may need to end up as reliever.

                                             Manager 

Terry Collins         A         D     B-    Like Clint Hurdle, was Manager of Year candidate in 1H; could have been fired in 2H.

October 1, 2012

Mets Monday Monologue

Hey, the season is just about over. One minute it seems it will never end and then, poof!, it’s gone. I guess the first 50 years of Mets baseball kind of went that way, too. Here we are at the seasonal abyss, where we annually switch over to watching other teams dream—something good baseball fans do; don’t be a baseball hater when your team is out of it, like fans of a local team I know. So even if we do not like the new playoff format (I am not alone), let's go O’s; nice job, Atlanta; too bad, Bucs; way to win, Cards (and I don’t mean TFC LaRussa’s former team); hooray for our broadcasters; and good luck finding the station that the great seers at MLB have leased the game’s premiere month to.  

M³, Volume 28: The Snobby Chippy Bucc-O Clod Edition

I might think of Lucas Duda as a lumbering clod and I’m still not sure if and when the Jekyll and Hyde version of Jon Niese will show up again, but Duda and Niese helped foil Chipper Jones Night in Atlanta Friday with a well-timed home run and a well-pitched game, respectively. As much I don’t like to give Atlanta credit, Turner Field had huge and enthusiastic crowds all weekend for Chipper. In a town that has taken its baseball success far too much for granted throughout Chipper’s career, maybe last year’s comeuppance at the wire (with another big Duda hit as part of the drama) has created more appreciation for the game in Atlanta….

Speaking of Chipper, I am going to quote his proclamation that this one-game Wild Card playoff is “stupid.” I am with Chipper that the new Wild Card would make a lot more sense as a best-of-three series. Imagine playing 19 years as a perennial All-Star and sure-fire Hall of Famer, competing in a dozen or more postseason games in many of those years, and then, after you coast to the Wild Card in your final year—after the Braves lost series to Wild Card teams in 1997, 2002, and 2005—you are one bad game, or inning, from elimination. One game is fine if you are tied and playing to reach the playoffs, but even expanded, watered-down playoffs deserve more than a one-and-done. One of the reasons it is a one-game playoff right now because baseball doesn’t want to extend the postseason into November. Give it up already! The NFL fought the same battle with a February Super Bowl before finally throwing in the towel a decade ago, and it made that sport better. Baseball needs to do the same. The weather will be bad sometimes whether the calendar says October 30 or November 4. If you’re going to expand the playoffs, at least give us a historically significant best-of-three with the better team having the option of hosting the first game or having the last two at home…. 

Call me a snob, but surfing the dial every October to locate the Division Series, or whatever they want to call this Wild Card one-game thingee, and searching out baseball on channels I didn’t know existed is a rinky dink way to promote the game. Maybe that works for the NBA, but even hockey has NBC—when they play….

It seems to be coming down to a matter of when Terry Collins will be replaced by Wally Backman. Terry earned the right to continue through the first half of next year, but a second-half Metdown for the seventh year in a row and it will be Wally’s turn at the helm. Install Backman too early and saddle him with the kind of dreck that Collins has been stuck with—and Wally may well flame out without having a real chance. Leave Collins in for too long and there won’t be anyone left to care. For once, the lack of money worked in the Mets’ favor—keeping them from giving Collins a big, fat extension when he looked so smart in the first half.... 

Now that the Mets are done with the Pirates, I have to say how badly I feel that the Bucs will not be a .500 team for the 20th straight season. Pittsburgh is a good baseball town with a good baseball stadium. (Their football team, on the other hand, can suck it.) The Pirates were once fierce division rivals, who kicked the snot out of the Mets in the 1970s and early 1990s. Now they are like an old friend who moved away and has fallen on hard times…. 

The Orioles, however, offer hope to the Pirates, Mets, and fans of way too many teams out there. Years of seemingly aimless wandering the desert can morph into glory when you least expect it. Go O’s. Humble the pompous….

Speaking of humbled, that Ryder Cup ended rather badly, huh? And speaking of the desert, where the temperature still hits 100, the Arizona Cardinals are sizzling with a 4-0 start…. 

Regardless of what the final record is, one thing Mets fan can feel proud of is the team’s announcers. The Wall Street Journal’s look at all 30 major league TV broadcasts in terms of hometown bias found the Mets to be at the top of the list in that category. The Mets seemingly beat out Dodgers legend Vin Scully in this regard since it is harder to keep three guys on message than one. Put that on your board!

‘Matlack on the 0-and-1…. There She Is!’

Sunday marks 40 years since Roberto Clemente collected his 3,000th and final hit: A double of Mets lefty Jon Matlack, who was rapping up a Rookie of the Year season. In his penultimate start of the season on September 30, 1972, Matlack was 14-9 with a 2.31 ERA in 230-plus innings of work—and clueless. 

“I had no idea what was going on,” Matlack, now the minor league pitching coordinator for the Astros, told me earlier this year. “I was just another rookie kid trying to win another ballgame. I was having a tough day. I had walked too many. I was getting beat... I’m trying a back-door curveball to hopefully surprise him. I’m mad when it leaves my hand because I realize it’s going to be a ball. 

“He took that stride of us, his hands stayed back and he flicked the bat and hit a one-hop line drive off the left-center field wall for a double. I said, ‘OK, there’s another spot I’ve got to try to work out of.’ And the ball is not coming back to me. It’s being handed to him at second base. The place is going crazy and I’m thinking to myself, ‘What the heck is the big deal here?’ I finally glanced up at the scoreboard and saw ‘3,000’ there. That’s when the lightbulb went off.”

The Pirates scored three runs after Clemente’s hit. Matlack and the Mets would fall to the Pirates but the rookie would win his final start against the Expos. While Matlack’s career was just beginning, Clemente’s was nearing its end. No one knew how close, or tragic, the end was to be. The Pirates had clinched their third straight division title and Clemente had to be talked into playing in that Saturday afternoon game before 13,000 at Three Rivers so that he might get the milestone over with. He came out of the game before batting again against the Mets. Clemente never came to the plate again in a regular-season game. He went 4-for-17 with a homer in a heartbreaking loss to the Reds in the NLCS.

Clemente died just three months after the milestone hit. The Great One’s plane, which was  carrying relief supplies in the wake of a tragic earthquake in Nicaragua, crashed into the ocean shortly after takeoff on New Year’s Eve. The game’s greatest right fielder and humanitarian was gone.

Closing Time, Times Twenty

R.A. Dickey rearranged his schedule to pitch on Closing Day in Flushing, which is continuing justification of why Prof. Dickey is my favorite Met—not to be confused with my Favorite Non-Playing Met (the coveted award will be distributed on this site next week). Even watching from the Promenade with Spencer Gale, we could see that R.A. didn’t have one-hit knuckleball stuff—Rod Barajas alone took care of that—but Dickey persevered and came out with the only result that mattered: win number 20. The defense wasn’t perfect, but his teammates made most of the plays and, more importantly, tacked another “6” on the scoreboard, as they Amazin’ly did for all four games of the Pittsburgh series; they surpassed “3” on the board at home for the last seven games of the homestand after venturing perilously close to the Polo Grounds Yankees of the 1910s for the most anemic day-in and day-out offensive showing at home since the heart of the Deadball Era.

Ike Davis showed R.A. that the Mets had his back, launching a home run after the Bucs scored twice in the second. Then Mike Baxter tied it. Seemed to tie it. Got Gary Cohen and Pirates announcer Greg Brown and 31,506 in the place to call it a home run. But Travis Snider, whose existence I was not even aware of until that moment, climbed the fence and stretched his glove like Bugs Bunny on top of the Umpire State Building. Yer out! After a game-tying hit a couple of innings later by Daniel Murphy, Snider thought about more thievery, but David Wright’s liner was too fast and too far to be corralled. A day after becoming the all-time Mets hits leader, Wright received a well-deserved and quite sincere curtain call.

A curtain call also goes out to the 7-Line, which owned the center field section—all 550 seats—and will be remembered for their choreographed dressing , cheering, and Dickeying. In the first year of metsilverman.com, I hosted a gathering at the old Shea Picnic Area in the final week of the ballpark and it was stressful—and in the end, thanks to some remarkably unclutch hitting, a bit of a downer when the game was done. But the end of 2012 in Flushing provided a perfect day, a ton of people, and they were unburdened by the game having a bearing in the standings, even as it meant a lot to the fans, to Dickey, and to finally getting someone besides Frank Viola as the last Met to win 20. A full salute to the fans as well as the Mets for making it memorable by holding on for a 6-5 win that allowed R.A. to be adored by the crowd, the culmination of a day that started for me heading for the game at 9:15 a.m. 

I live 90 miles away, so I arrived in Flushing just in time for the Great Shave of Keith Hernandez. I can now say I have stood with 1,000 other people to watch a man shaved. Live. For a good cause. Only Keith could pull it off. And when Deadspin sped it up, it almost felt dangerous and gone too soon.  

After the shaving I hit the party held by The Apple that was attended by several Mets bloggers. It was billed as the “Final Mets Tailgate… Ever!” due to for the predicted, or not predicted, or impending, or whatever, doomsday scenario supposedly foretold by the Mayans before their civilization went down the tubes hundreds of years back. We schmoozed and ate like it was our last Citi meal. And then after some schmoozing with Mets scholar Ed Leyro—whose uncovering every Mets all-time hits leader was amazin’ —as well as chatting up a couple of Coops and Randy, and even talking hockey, it was time to head inside for baseball for the last time in 2012. My son was ill and at home, and I promised to get him a trinket from the game. Unlike past Mets final days when the cupboards were stripped bare, there were plenty of shtuff for all.

I still had a few minutes before first pitch, so I toured the Mets Hall of Fame for the first time all year. It was entirely empty, save for a security guard, but it led me to reflection, like walking into an empty church and feeling the impulse to kneel for a minute. I remained unbowed yet while staring at the Shea Stadium plaque, I was transported to my first Mets Closing Day from my first season, 1975. That September afternoon the rain parted, as did a 10-year-old’s disappointment, and a close family friend took me to see the Mets lose for the first time in person. It is one of the few times I will say that losing didn’t matter. The place was packed. I think I smiled for the whole two-and-a-half hours, and for the next two-and-half months… long after the epic 1975 Reds-Red Sox World Series. My Closing Day Fan Appreciation Day bag became my gym bag at school until it fell apart entirely. I saw Jon Matlack’s high leg kick in the flesh. And phenom Mike Vail throw out Dick Allen at the plate! And Del Unser doing Del Unser stuff!! And Dave Kingman playing third friggin’ base!!! But what I remember most is Ron Hodges homering off Tug McGraw in the ninth… so the Mets would lose by two instead of by four. But again, it didn’t matter. I spent all summer drawing their pictures from the yearbook and all winter thinking about how Ed Kranepool was going to be the next Bernie Carbo in the next World Series. And Tom Seaver was going to put on a better October show than El Tiante. The dreaming never stopped. 

Even in a year where I missed Opening Day, I made plans in April for the 2012 finale. Closing Day is like Don Quixote for me. I like tilting at windmills and recalling the glory days—even if the glory is mine and not the Mets’—though I try hard to keep it from spilling all over the ground at the ballpark like an $8.50 Hoegaarden kicked over by a meandering foot. Which brings me to another final day tradition I love. Tipping. Like someone leaving a Catskills resort and pressing small sums into employees’ hands after spending the summer there. “Here, this is a little something for the wife and kids. Take it. Have a good winter.” Of course, my $1.50 or $1.75 would be a lousy tip at a resort even in the Dirty Dancing glory days of the Grossingers Neville Concord, but we all feel good at the glad-handing at the last ballgame. It makes their platitudes to “have a good winter” sound as sincere as mine. And it is also goodbye to my carefree—and often tipfree—ballpark spending of summer. The people who are working that last game, after the kids have gone back to school, and the grumpy employees have been laid off or have found better work, are diehards of their own sort. As I said to the older lady who sold me my final Citi Beer of ’12—the aforementioned Hoegaarden—“I’ll see you next spring.” Then we both immediately retorted, “God willing.” Tipping can only take you so far.

That is the thing about Closing Day. There are no guarantees. Just like there is no guarantee of postseasons, of winning records, of 20-game winners. At least on this side of New York. Closing Day—even in the wake of a 14-inning loss in which Oliver Perez walks in the winning run (see 2010)—provides one last chance to look at things up close and philosophically. Unless, of course, the game is crucial, and you’re playing the Marlins. Or is it the Mayans?

Mets Monday Monologue

Sometimes I start scrawling down ideas for the Monologue several days before it is due. Late last week, this was negative all the way. Yet rather than a topical and typical screed on the worldwide superhighway of second-guessing, I dialed back and let it sit. Now I have a few revisions. Perspectives alter, life isn’t so bad, and everything looks rosier after a sweep and R.A. Dickey picks up number 19 to set up one last good day at the ballpark. As the late Warren Zevon said when he had every right to be bitter, “Enjoy every sandwich.”...

M³, Volume 27: The Sandwich Eating Edition 

And I plan to enjoy a sandwich and a beer or two on Thursday afternoon for the final Mets game of the year. It seems fitting that the ticket a friend gave me months ago features an image of the Mets’ version of Warren Zevon, Mr. Turk Wendell. Thanks to Jason Bay, of all people, and a Marlins rally coming up short—we have R.A. Dickey going for win number 20 against the Pirates. My favorite Met has a chance to become the first Met in 22 years to reach 20 wins—a feat Frank Viola achieved in a midweek afternoon game against the Pirates a day after Doc Gooden was beaten in his bid for 20. If R.A. doesn’t make it Thursday, he will have another chance on the road against the Marlins, against whom he is 5-0 this season. In a year when nothing has gone right for the Mets at home, R.A. moved himself up a day in the rotation so the Flushing faithful could see it. R.A. certainly has a touch of the Zevon and Wendell in him. Showman, competitor, genius…. 

Another great Mets character and player, and someone I am proud to have once worked with, will say goodbye, at least for a little while, to his signature feature. In case you missed the long discussion about it on Sunday during the game, the fabled Keith Hernandez mustache will be shaved to help the Alzheimer’s care facility that he established in his mother’s name. I heard him talk to Ed Randall on the radio Saturday after R.A.’s win. My mother has been gone for many years and it can still be hard to talk about, so I have even more respect for Keith for discussing what the disease did to his mom and his family and for doing something in public that I know he would prefer to do in his bathroom. So there is no way I can miss the Great Shave on Thursday, around 11:30 a.m., outside the Robinson Rotunda…. 

A sweep of the Marlins can’t erase a debacle of a second half, and with that said, here are a few still valid thoughts I came up with during the doldrums of the Phillies debacle that preceded it…. 

Having to play in the Pacific Coast League—because no city in the International League wants them—may very well hurt the development of Triple-A pitchers and hitters for the Mets next year. In case you missed it, the Mets are being kicked out of Buffalo (for the Blue Jays!) and have no place left to go but Las Vegas. The pitchers will be hurt because Las Vegas is in a hitter’s league and the hitters will suffer if they ever move on to spacious Citi Field, where they will join the legions of Mets under contract who already hate the place. On the up side, the Mets can look for a new Triple-A home in two years. Hope the Mets have a good frequent flyer account between Vegas and NYC…. 

The rumor that the Mets would trade Ike Davis and put Lucas Duda at first base is something I attribute to a slow news day. I like Duda. I think the team started floundering when he was sent down and the lineup lost a much-needed power threat. But when I see Duda wearing a mitt, I see the definition of a “lumbering clod.” He stinks in the outfield and at first base. I could not believe that with all the concern about R.A. winning number 19 on Saturday that they would play Duda at first—facing a tough lefty, no less. Fortunately, the popup he dropped was in foul ground and R.A. picked him up. I’m also not sold about Duda’s future as a major league hitter. Greg Luzinski you put up with. The jury is definitely out on Duda…. 

I flipped the channels the other day to discover that I suddenly had the NFL Network after never getting it before. I will now get to see the Cardinals-Rams game on October 4—and let me take a moment to crow about the Cards plucking the Eagles to go 3-0 for the first time since 1974, when my hero Jim Hart controlled the huddle. While the NFL Network seems to have no shortage of over-analysis on current teams, it is also the showcase of NFL Films programs of yore. It was both ironic and sad that the NFL Network—and NFL Films repository—fell out of the sky onto my TV the same week that Steve Sabol, the president of NFL Films, died at age 69. To many it seemed that the author of “The Autumn Wind” created the myth of the NFL out of a handful of mud, snow, leaves, and a few pieces of missing teeth…. 

It was Steve’s high school games that provided his father, Ed, with his main experience of filming live sports before he boldly propositioned NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle for the rights to packaging the league’s highlights. Ed Sabol was smart enough to think of it, Pete Rozelle was wise enough to agree to it, and Steve Sabol had the vision to take his family enterprise to the cutting edge of sports highlights even now, when highlights and live games are available at one’s fingertips 50 years after the Sabols produced the highlights of the 1962 NFL Championship Game on spec. They laid down classic brass standards over slowed-down angles from field level, and tied it together with brilliant writing and narration to turn a bloody game into a bloody art form. No surprise that Steve Sabol was an art major—and running back—at Colorado College of the Mines. Saturday nights came alive for me in the late 1970s with the NFL Films Game of the Week on Channel 11, followed by the Belushi-Ackroyd-Murray Saturday Night Live on NBC. At a time when all we could get were the lousy Jets and the lousier Giants on TV on Sundays, The Game of the Week—a cut-down version of the top game of the previous week—and shorter highlight packages of other games on This Is the NFL, opened the door to a world of games that was more exciting than what we were locally subjected to on Sunday afternoons. Each game on NFL Films was its own story in words, music, and narration. It was electric football in reality. It was bigger than life. It was better than the actual games. Watch this Super Bowl highlight package of NFL Films clips, and try to count all the tackles that would now be 15-yard penalties. More importantly, breathe in what was the greatness of the game, minus the yackety yack and the BS and the point spreads and the science and the technology that surrounds it, that too often smothers it, today.

Mets Monday Monologue

Here in the 50th season of New York Mets baseball, we are honoring the memories of Mets clubs past and present with a Mets Monday Monologue. It’s a bit of mental stew on a few different subjects. This week we look at a team with dwindling attendance adding more seats, the joke of a schedule in 2013, hockey lockouts, football lockdowns, and if Faith is shaken does that mean all we have to Fear is Fear itself? My biggest fear is the dreadful defense that belongs to the same guys who cannot hit a lick.

M³, Volume 26: I Dream of Third Place Edition

May I be the first, or 101st to say it, that the 2013 Mets will be such a joke that they are opening the season on April Fool’s Day. Almost as big a joke is bringing in San Diego to play in New York when the temperature here may well be in the 40s and the temp there is in the 70s, Maybe the Pads will coax Jody Gerut out of retirement so he can homer to open the year like he did in 2009 to christen Citi Field.…. 

The Mets are adding more seats to Citi Field. Why? I suppose these extra two dozen seats are for the All-Star Game. They aren’t for regular Mets fans, though the section with two dozen or so seats could probably accommodate all the people left at the average Mets game when the average 3-1 loss goes final. There’s another one….

The big question: Can the Mets score more than three runs in a game on their final homestand? I also have to ask: What was so bad about playing for third place? This team frankly deserves to be in last place…. 

By the time I saw Greg Prince’s column on Faith and Fear in Flushing about eschewing a free ticket from the Mets  to last week’s Mets-Nats game (the result of the Mets giving a free pass to those who attended the soggy Saturday vs. Atlanta), it was too long after the fact for my response to be relevant in his comments section. So I toss it in my commentary on my comment-free site for a week-old article that appeared somewhere else, which is linked here. My comment on the situation is this: When the Mets are giving a free ticket and Greg Prince, who would take in a Mets game if the team stood 101 games out and the world was set to end that night, yet he declines the offer to attend when the deficit is only double digits and the end of the earth is at least three months away, then you have screwed up your organization in a monumental way. The same goes when you have shaken his blog partner’s faith to its core. I am not even a diehard compared to these guys and they have been pushed to the edge by this lousy organization. We will all be back. Probably. Watching at home. Maybe.... 

Sorry for the confusion about commentary for another site, but the Mets from July forward—every year—are a veritable/terrible Ball of Confusion. And the band played on…. 

So the NHL is planning on cutting games again due to a lockout. At least half of Americans have never sat down to watch an NHL game on TV, three quarters has never attended a hockey game, and 90 percent of Americans cannot skate. Of course, I’m making this up because no one has ever paid enough attention to the sport to create such numbers. Those figures are, however, based on my own interactions. I like hockey, my first paid writing job was as a stringer in high school covering hockey for a local paper, I have skated since I was seven, my nine-year-old son plays hockey several times per week, and I have a U.S.A.-U.S.S.R. game in my basement. And you know how many NHL games I watch per year? Two: the NHL Classic on New Year’s Day—more interesting than most bowl games—and the deciding game of the Stanley Cup finals. I go to a few Albany Devil minor league hockey games with my son and I enjoy those far more than the Rangers games I used to occasionally attend, where I paid through the nose for the privilege. That the NHL has lost more games to work stoppages than any sport in the last two decades shows that Gary Bettman and Co. don’t get it. Outside of Canada and a few U.S. cities, no one even considers hockey a major sport. Cut the B.S. and lace up the skates, eh?... 

While on the subject of other sports. I was lucky to be in an area beyond the New York market and watched the last 20 minutes of the Patriots-Cardinals game Sunday. The Cardinals had not beaten the Patriots in Foxboro since 1984—four years before the Cards moved from St. Louis. Looked like they were going to lose this time, too. The Cards gave the Pats an extra timeout by not running back the kickoff after the Pats had failed to tie the game on a two-point conversion. Then, after getting a first down, Arizona fumbled when they should have hit the dirt to run the clock down as much as possible. The Pats recovered, scored a touchdown that was called back, and Steve Gostkowski, who’d made four field goals—including a 53-yarder that would have been good from 60—chunked a 42-yard try wide right. And the Cards had somehow not blown it! Then I went out with my son and his friend, who’d been waiting to play a promised round of miniature golf. Never has putt-putt felt so damned good, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that while I was playing the lousy replacement refs found some way to take it away after the last whistle. That’s how unlikely it was—not fully believing something I saw with my own eyes. Haven’t felt that way since a certain pitcher tossed a no-hitter against another Cardinals team on the first day of June.

September 12, 2012

I’m Gonna Pity Like It’s 1979

The Mets have mailed it in during many a September, but never until now had the mail been sent like in the magical month of September 1979. The mark for scoring futility at home, a seemingly safe and sorry record of 11 straight home games with three runs or less crossing home plate was shattered by the 2012 Mets this week. And the Citi Field record lives on, awaiting its inevitable continuation when the Mets come home to be beaten like a drum next week by the Phillies.  

I am kind of numb to this in 2012, but back in 1979, when I was the age my daughter is now, I was a high school freshman at a new school where baseball was not—how do you say?—cool. I tried to figure out school lockers, homerooms, girls. It was all new and confusing for a boy who’d spent eight years at the same lockerless, female-free Catholic school. The only thing I really knew was baseball. And God, did the Mets stink. 

During the last homestand of ’79, in a season when the Mets drew a record-low 788,905, Joe Torre’s Mets let it all hang out. From September 11-22, the Mets scored three runs or less at home for 11 straight games. They lost every one of them. (There was a two-game trip to Pittsburgh in between in which the Mets soiled themselves by actually winning a game and thus avoiding the teen-length losing streak the team deserved.) They were so bad, in fact, that the games before and after the Shea streak in which they refused to surpass the magic number three, they still lost—a 6-5 defeat to the Pirates on September 9 and a 7-4 loss to St. Louis on September 23. The one game they won at home that September, out of 16 tries, was a 3-2 win in the first game of a doubleheader on September 10 against Pittsburgh, in Dock Ellis’s last major league decision. The game went 15 innings. Even when the ’79 Mets won it was excruciating. The Mets were so pleased with Ellis that they sold the good Dock to the Bucs during the ensuing 0-9 homestand. 

The most memorable thing about the losses was the majority of them were in doubleheaders: four sweeps in five days against three different teams. For those scoring at home, here’s the low-digit litany: 5-2, 4-0, 2-1 (vs. Philly); 2-0, 2-1 (vs. Chi, DH); 3-1, 4-1 (vs. Mon, DH), 6-3, 2-0 (vs. Mon, DH); 6-3, 3-2 (vs. StL, DH). Not one of those games was what you would call a blowout. What torture to pitch for these Mets. To keep from carrying the low-budget streak into a new decade, the Mets broke the >3 string—though not the 13-game home losing streak—in the final home game of the miserable year. And then as the Mets were down to their last out in what would have been their 100th loss, at Wrigley Field against Cy Young winner to be Bruce Sutter, they rallied behind a game-tying single by the loathed and loathing Richie Hebner, of all people. The Mets won their last six games to finish at 63-99. Richie Hebner, patron Met of the worthless miracle. 

Knowing no one at my new school and being hopelessly stuck on baseball and the lousy Mets, I watched all of it unfold on Channel 9 in the waning days of Payson/de Roulet ownership. It took an act of God—new Pope John Paul II celebrating Mass at Shea after the last putrid homestand—for the Mets to start the new decade with a win at Shea under the savior partnership of Doubleday and Wilpon. Who’s going to save us now?

Mets Monday Monologue

Here in the 50th season of New York Mets baseball, we are honoring the memories of Mets clubs past and present with a Mets Monday Monologue. It’s a bit of mental stew on a few different subjects. This week we look at a blown call from a past Yankees-Orioles game that no one in the Bronx was crying about, R.A. Dickey and the power of the sun, Dickey piling up the most wins by a Met in 23 years, and getting a new book deal. Plus rethinking the Washington rotation, Red Sox nation, and our radio station.

M³, Volume 25: Gimme Three Runs, Gimme Three Runs Mister Edition

Before we get into less weighty matters, hope you take a moment to reflect on September 11, 2001. Dates become mere numbers to too many people too soon. But 2001 should always mean something, like other years of great change: 1775, 1861, 1917, 1941… 

My full bandwagon support is with the Orioles. I went to school with a lot of Marylanders who had such pride in the Orioles and loved baseball. Ownership essentially killed off that feeling over the past 15 years, but when you saw Cal Ripken sitting in his box Thursday after getting his statue that night and seeing the full house place go crazy—for the Orioles, not the visiting team!—you could see the man had chills. Oh, and that lousy call to end Saturday night’s game? How about that horrific Rich Garcia call on that Derek Jeter “home run” in the opener of the 1996 ALCS that jumpstarted a dynasty? Maybe the Torre genius is pushed a little harder if the Yankees are down to the O’s two games to none. And you do not dive into first.... 

R.A. stands for Rays Aplenty. Prof. Dickey set a Mets record last week for most consecutive wins in the dayshine. He has won 10 straight day games, and is 11-1 overall in the afternoon, leaving him two shy of Tom Seaver’s mark of 13 daytime wins in 1972, a year the Mets played 65 day games. (This year the Mets are scheduled for 59.) I hate being hot, but I love day games. Five of my six scheduled games this year are in the daytime, including Sunday’s “Goodbye, Mr. Chipper” and the home finale against Pittsburgh. The Mets love the daylight, too. According to Wendy Thurm, who went off on a day game riff o’ stats last week, since 2008 the Mets have a .483 overall win percentage; but .517 in day games. And this year, only the Reds have won more day games than the Mets. Thought you’d like you know…. 

If you’re keeping count—and if you’re a Mets fan what else do you have to do?—R.A. Dickey has the most wins by a Met since Frank Viola won 20 in 1990. The 20-win mark means both more and less than it used to: more because pitch counts and reliever proliferation have made it a rarer feat, and less because we are all so much smarter at baseball than we used to be (wink, wink), so there are other numbers for measuring pitcher performance that are not as round but even more sound. I still like 20 wins. And it’s been too damned long since a Met did it. Ironically, the last time the Mets had a 20-game winner was nearly the first time the Mets had multiple 20-game winners. Dwight Gooden had a chance for 20 wins in ’90 as well, but Doc lost his last start in Pittsburgh, while Viola beat the Bucs on the final day…. 

And because there’s nothing this guy seems incapable of, R.A. just signed a three-book deal for a series of children’s books in the wake of his wonderful Wherever I Wind Up. Even if they are for younger kids than mine, I’m buying them anyway…. 

Through the weekend the Mets were in a 5-20 funk at home and have been swept four times in seven series. I needed my son’s nine-year-old’s enthusiasm to get through the loss Sunday. He has hit more home runs at the Citi Field Wiffle park than the Mets have at their home stadium. Sunday made it 10 straight games in Flushing with three runs or less. PaMetic....

I wonder if Peter Gammons, who every year says how unfair it is for teams to have callups in September that may have an impact on races, is saying the same thing now that his Red Sox are dead. Join the rest of us. Looking at kids for next year is the only reason to even pay attention….

I’d like to give the Nationals grief about shutting down Stephen Strasburg due to innings limits, but the Mets are about to do the same thing with Matt Harvey. There was an interesting piece Friday about the wear and tear Strasburg’s specific motion puts on his elbow, but the reporter—a medical expert—said who knows if damage would occur if he threw 160 innings, 260 innings, or whatever. Also, the Nats are going to make the playoffs this year. They could probably use their ace. I know it looks like the Nats will be in the playoffs for years and years and he’ll have plenty of chances, but just remember the 2006 Mets and how the years of prosperity melted away in a blink. No one, except maybe the Yankees, is guaranteed extra chances. And keep in mind the Nationals—in two countries over four decades—have been to the playoffs exactly once in their history. If anyone should know how quickly assumed greatness can dissolve in the rearview mirror, it would be an ’86 Mets vet, like say Nationals manager Davey Johnson….

Another guilty pleasure is gone for me—although I suppose you have to derive some enjoyment from something for it to be considered pleasure. ESPN Radio got off AM for good, switching 1050 AM to the Spanish feed of the station. I am too far up the line to get their FM signal. I get 1050 AM fine during the day—guess I need to bone up on my Spanish….

Instead I’ll just listen to more WDST, Woodstock Radio, which took as long to play their whole music library A-Z (Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” to “Zombie” by the Cranberries) as I lasted Mets-free during my recent Mets sabbatical. Their eight days were better spent than mine. Unlike the fabled Woodstock 1969 festival, DST is actually located in the town of Woodstock. It’s the home station of the late Levon Helm. Sure beats the hell out of Michael Kay.

Mets Monday Monologue

Here in the 50th season of New York Mets baseball, we are honoring the memories of Mets clubs past and present with a Mets Monday Monologue. (Actually this edition came out on a Tuesday due to a technical glitch, but why quibble?) It’s a bit of mental stew on a few different subjects. This week we look at the view from the other side of my Mets sabbatical, Labor Day as summer benchmark not doubleheader destination, blown calls in Mets-Cardinals game both good and bad, how the wrong Cardinals are always winning once the NFL season starts,  If you want more Mets meat in your stew, stop bellyaching and pick up Best Mets.

M³, Volume 24: The Labor Day of Love Edition

Labor Day is one of those bittersweet holidays. I am glad I live in an area where the kids go back to school after Labor Day. It is a bookend holiday with July Fourth, when kids really get their summer on and it goes like a flash from there. Goes all too quickly. The whole damned thing….

Labor Day also used to be one of three high holy doubleheader days on the major league calendar, along with Memorial Day and July Fourth. Now there was not a single ballgame to be found on New York soil come this holiday Monday…. 

If there had to be a blown call by a base umpire standing right there in a Mets-Cardinals game, I’ll live with Andres Torres stepping on the bag yet being called out by the ump on Monday for the Carlos Beltran liner that kicked up chalk and was called foul in the Johan Santana no-hitter on June 1. Seems fair enough…. 

Well, my sabbatical from live Mets broadcasts lasted eight full days: a four-game losing streak followed by a three-game winning streak, with an offday thrown in. This sabbatical was not caused by a vacation, or even an undue work load, it was caused by the Mets and how they make me insane, even when the games don’t matter, which is too often the case. It also coincided with a slight bounce back, and I tuned in to see the fourth and final win in their recent streak—watching the middle game in Philadelphia with my son until he went to bed, and then coming back downstairs to catch the rest of a fine effort by Matt Harvey and a bullpen that doesn’t suck half as much as it did when the Mets were actually playing well in early summer. I can thank Harv for helping me see the light. Since he’s going to be shut down in a couple of weeks due to workload, it is silly not to watch him. Though my brief disappearance from Mets viewership, of course, had no relation to the reappearance of a few timely hits and wins, you’re welcome, anyway…. 

So as not to sound like sexist pig, I will not mention the attractiveness of Tiffany Simons, who hosts Mets Weekly and filled in for Kevin Burkhardt doing the in-game reporting on SNY this week in Philadelphia, but she did an outstanding job with her in-game notes and interviews. (Here she is chatting up Murph back when the 2012 Mets couldn’t lose.) SNY’s programming choices can be headscratching, but their eye for on-air talent for broadcasts—before, during, and after games—upholds the long tradition of the Mets having the best and most professional broadcasts in the game. The quality of the team they broadcast, on the other hand… 

In the poetic justice department, the lame duck Buffalo Bisons, who are trading in the Mets Triple-A affiliation for the Blue Jays, had their last game of the year rained out on Labor Day. Mets prospects as well as Four-A residents of baseball limbo, say hello to Las Vegas, Nev. At least that is the space where the smart money is for this latest game of affiliate roulette….  

Football season is upon us. I wonder how many of those Mets fans who are always quick to say, “Well, forget the Mets, I’m all in for the Jets this year,” will be counting down the days to spring training come Thanksgiving. I’d rather live in the past, or even the present, than wish on a future that may never come. All things come to pass quickly enough…. 

This is a tough week for me. Whenever the Mets play the Cardinals and my football Cardinals are playing the same week, the wrong Cards always seem to wind up winning. A tough one was the Cardinals finishing off a walkoff sweep in St. Louis on Labor Day weekend 2000—marking the first time I witnessed the epitome of good sportsmanship: the dance at home plate after a final inning win—and at the same time the Giants beat the Cardinals on the Meadowlands gridiron. But the worst was in October 2006 when the Arizona Cards spit the bit against the Bears on Monday night, complete with the ranting “They are who we thought they were” by their horrible coach; then over the three nights that followed, the Mets dropped two to hand the Cardinals the honor of feasting on the Tigers in the World Series. Yeah, you’ll never hear me writing off the Mets to get to Arizona Cardinals football. Especially with the noodle-arm QBs they’ve had since the Saints helped bounty Kurt Warner into retirement. Though we admire the moxie of John Skelton, the first Fordham Ram to play QB in the NFL since 1941.

Mets Monday Monologue

Here in the 50th season of New York Mets baseball, we are honoring the memories of Mets clubs past and present with a Mets Monday Monologue. It’s a bit of mental stew, on a few different subjects. We go through the angst of yet another homestand from hell, in which the starters had a 1.65 ERA and the team still went 2-5, but there are also films new and old to ponder, plus footage of a Joe Girardi-io tirade, comparisons of this year's Mets with clubs of old that had their slumps, we offer big picture analysis of the Red Sox trade, and say farewell to the man who said hello to the moon in the year in which the miracle landed. If you want more Mets meat in your stew, stop bellyaching and pick up Best Mets.

M³, Volume 23: The Reeking Like It’s 1982, Or 2002, Or Whatever Edition

Wait a second. The Mets were giving away tickets Thursday and drew just 22,000 on a perfect afternoon while school was still out. Shows what the public thinks of the product you’re putting out, Metsies….

Right now I am seeing how many days I can go without following a live Mets game. This is not easy for me. It is sort of like breathing under water. I might die, but I might also live. That may sound crazy, and maybe it is, but I really am holding my breath until the film Knuckleball  comes out. It is the one thing that could actually garner R.A. Dickey a few Cy Young votes. God knows the Mets aren’t doing anything to help his cause. 

Last week the Mets scored five runs in four games against a team with a 6.00 ERA, making it eight straight home losses to Colorado over the past two years. Pretty pathetic. Remember when the Mets had almost a .700 winning percentage (46-20) against the Rockies at Shea? This week’s rant by Mike Francessa about the Mets was almost worth being humiliated by the Rockies. He actually has a few good points. Imagine how mad he would have been if he actually liked the Mets…. 

Speaking of angry people with shows on WFAN, Joe Girardi went out of his way to go after a White Sox fan after the Yankees got swept by the White Sox. Girardi, who is from the Chicago area, showed that guy, huh? And then, as if nothing happened, Girardi picked up right in the middle of one of his innocuous answers…. 

The Mets scored two runs or fewer in seven straight games, the worst by the club since 1982, the poster boy year of giving up after a promising first half. Though I can only hope we are a mere two years removed from a 1984-esque renaissance in Flushing. Terry Collins is no George Bamberger. Thank God….

The 2012 Mets are giving off a stink like the 2002 team, which flat out gave up on Bobby Valentine, setting a record for the most consecutive home losses in club history (15). That was a Mets squad filled with overpaid veterans who also ripped the announcer, Keith Hernandez, for accurately calling out the team for quitting on the manager. Keith was forced to apologize. If T.C. wasn’t hand-picked by Sandy Alderson—and working cheap—he would be in trouble. Collins will likely be gone before this team turns it around, whatever century that may be. For now this team has stopped responding. Call a paraMetic…

Speaking of teams quitting on Bobby V., I am so pleased the Sox purged a bunch of bad contracts—whether they are bad people is for others to say. They shipped out Carl Crawford (Boston’s version of Vince Coleman, sans fireworks), Josh Beckett (a classless cur), Adrian Gonzalez (I think this trade is verification that he went behind Bobby V.’s back to the front office, no matter which scrub he tried to blame for it), and Nick Punto (don’t really have anything to say about him, but he looked pretty happy to be getting out of Boston). All you need to know about the sucky Sox attitude of late was that only four players showed up for Johnny Pesky’s funeral last week after the team supplied transportation and arranged for the service on an offday so it wouldn’t interfere with, y’know, work. Nomar Garciaparra flew in for it and was in tears. David Ortiz, trying to be diplomatic about his lame-o teammates, said, “I can tell you why I showed up: I had a friend that just passed away, and I want to be there.” Johnny Pesky played with Ted Williams, fought in World War II, hit. 300 for his career, and was in uniform for upwards of 8,000 Red Sox games. Management was reportedly pissed about the lack of respect the current players showed for Mr. Red Sox. Maybe it’s not so surprising a few days later, the blockbuster deal was made—none of those players traded, incidentally, attended the funeral….

Some people think the Sox trade was throwing in the towel, but I think a lot of teams are envious of the Red Sox, who got top minor league talent from the Dodgers and purged themselves not only of Crawford’s albatross, but also of A-Gonzo’s massive contract and his clear inability to “get” the intensity with which Red Sox fans take every pitch. Being saddled with a slow-footed first baseman with a massive contract is something that in the next few years any or all of following teams will look wistfully on: Yankees, Tigers, Twins, Angels, Phillies, Reds, and now the Dodgers. Since young stud hitters seem to gravitate to first base, these long-term contracts to guys into their late 30s can not only tie up payroll as well as hinder the development of potential stars. Ryan Howard, perhaps the biggest albatross contract of those mentioned, could not play every day with the Phillies in 2006 until they figured out a way to move the massive Jim Thome contract (a deal that, by the way, gave the Phillies Gio Gonzalez). Big money not only creates big expectations, it can also unearth big headaches that can slow you down. This is why we hope Sandy Alderson knows what he is doing….

If Jason Bay is going to remain on the roster, how about making him the most expensive defensive replacement in history and put him out in left field in the late innings for Lucas Duda. When the ball gets near Duda’s glove you can hear the “clang, clang, clang” from this old song from Meet Me in St. Louis….

The age of four seems to be about the edge of memory. And among my first vivid memories that did not originate in my house happened on another planet: Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. Armstrong died this past week at the age of 82. He remains a touchstone for the generations who watched the event unfold and for those to come who will know his name. I recall nothing of the momentous Mets moments of 1969 as they happened—though I somehow recall watching Tiny Tim’s stupid wedding on Johnny Carson. I’ll never forget Neil Armstrong and the “one small step” he took for all of us.

August 22, 2012

I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night

Maybe I am just older, or am more unlucky in this respect, but many people I grew up around are gone. That’s life. And a sad fact of it is more people end up on the other side of the line the longer you’re around. Sometimes these people pop up in thoughts during the daytime or in dreams at night.

I have been interviewing former Mets plus other ballplayers from the 1970s and writers and broadcasters from that era over the past year or so. So perhaps as a reward for my hard work I got another interview last night. With Joan Payson.

The original owner of the Mets is a just a name to most fans, yet someone we can all think of fondly for her untainted ownership. (Untainted if you don’t recall who ran her business, M. Donald Grant, the chairman of the Beelzebub.) I barely recall Mrs. Payson in a living state except for a couple of clips I saw during Channel 9 rain delay theater in 1975, the year she died. I was 10. She was 72. She was of a world of privilege and class that would be called Old World now. Born to the incredibly rich Whitney family and married into the prosperous Paysons, she felt a responsibility to use some of her wealth for causes—not to mention horses—and avoid any scent of scandal. Her family did things right, but they were not shirkers in World War II. Her brother, an Air Force colonel, was captured by the Germans and later escaped. Her eldest son was killed in Belgium in the Battle of the Bulge, just a few days shy of his 20th birthday. I think that is who she kept leaving the room to go see during our interview. 

It was not an exclusive interview, mind you. There was also a reporter from the New York Times, an amalgam of old and new writers at the Old Gray Lady (a nickname for the paper, not Mrs. Payson). He kept saying during the breaks that he was glad I was there lest anyone think he made the whole thing up. I was just happy to be invited to a Mets gathering with any media. And, I told him, it was pretty cool to be interviewing someone who was dead. 

That’s when I woke up. At 5:13 in the morning with a sneezing fit. I wrote on a small piece of paper some of the dialogue I remember as the memory of the dream poured from my head like sand from a hole in a bucket. Mostly what I recall was me thanking her for her ownership and taking a stand against the National League in 1960, courtesy of Bill Shea, who forced the NL’s hand to expand when they really had not planned on it. Her money helped create expansion where the major leagues saw status quo.

And for our exclusive, both the Times guy and I had trouble taking notes. I thought I had my tape recorder, but when I reached in my suit pocket (you don't go into her office without a suit on) I pulled out a TV remote. I just wish Greg Prince had been invited, too, because he has a much better memory and imagination. But I wound up with the scoop because I didn’t see anything in the Times about this today. There is a fine background piece by Joan Thomas that was in another publication a while back. 

The one question I remember asking clearly was, “Which pennant did you most enjoy: 1969 or 1973?” It is not as dumb as it sounds because she was there for all of the 1973 miraculous ending while she was on a long-planned trip when the Mets clinched the division in 1969. She responded in the clear throaty voice of someone who spent a lifetime giving good quotes: “That’s like asking which of my children I love most.”

Staring at the ceiling in the gray light of dawn, I wished she—and her descendents—had more children for all of us to love.

August 21, 2012

Bye Bye, Cy

With Monday night’s loss to the abysmal Rockies—and specifically, the failure of the team to get R.A. Dickey a victory—yet another goal for the 2012 season has gone out the window. Listening to the talking heads at ESPN and the MLB channel last week, who considered relievers, the soon-to-be-shut-down Stephen Strasburg, and anyone else they could find to argue for the NL Cy Young, you get the idea there was already little chance of R.A. Dickey winning the award. There is a growing trend to give the award to pitchers who have high nontraditional stats, like a couple of years ago when Felix Hernandez and Tim Lincecum won despite having ho-hum records and pitching for noncontending clubs. 

That is, unless you are a knuckleball pitcher. And then you best have a 22-4 record with 250 strikeouts, an ERA under 2.00, and a WAR of 10. Barring that, it has become obvious, from the T.F.C. LaRussa All-Star snub to the way Dickey’s pooh-poohed in the media outside New York, that the knuckleballer is seen as a nice story but he is not worthy of your Cy Young votes. No knuckleball pitcher has ever won the Cy Young Award. And I hate to say it, I don’t think one ever will. Known spitballer Gaylord Perry won twice and Randy Jones, whose sinker was kind of like a knuckleball, won in 1976—at the expense of Jerry Koosman—but actual knuckleball types need not apply. If guys like Phil Niekro and Wilbur Wood, who deserved Cy Young consideration just by giving their teams almost 50 starts and 350 innings per year, never got one in the 1970s; if Tim Wakefield never got closer than third place in the Cy Young voting (though for all his longevity, he honestly only had two outstanding season: 1992 as a Pirates rookie and his comeback year of 1995 in Boston); and if Charlie Hough got not a single Cy Young vote in his 440-start, 858-game career despite staggering feats like making 40 starts at age 40 in 1987, the Year of the Home Run… then I don’t think we’re going to see a knuckle Cy Young unless Dickey hits those numbers I listed at the top of this ponderous paragraph.

Then again, I don’t think I’ll ever see another Mets world championship. So maybe I’m sort of hedging against hope. You know, I’ve been wrong before.

No Cy for R.A. can go on the list of other goals for 2012 that have gone out the window, in order of dreams deferred.

• Actual contention.

• David Wright as a legitimate MVP candidate.

• Getting a prospect for Scott Hairston or Tim Byrdak.

• Trading for an impact player with more than this year in mind. Kelly Shoppach ain’t it.

• And given that the Mets would have to finish the year going eight games over .500 just to break even, the idea of the first .500 season since Shea went down is pretty much out as well.

• Getting up from watching a Mets game and not feeling like I have thrown away three hours of my life.

• Seeing an outfielder—any outfielder—emerge as a legitimate ballplayer who doesn’t whiff once every three times up.

• Designating Andres Torres for assignment (tell me they weren’t just getting rid of Angel Pagan, who could beat them in arbitration).

• And—why not dream big?—the outright release of Jason Bay.

We won’t even go into the pipe dream of getting deep pocketed new ownership like the Dodgers got. Until that happens, the Mets are destined to repeat the above list. Year in and year out. Only in a different order. And with the names changed to protect the innocent.

Mets Monday Monologue

Here in the 50th season of New York Mets baseball, we are honoring the memories of Mets clubs past and present with a Mets Monday Monologue. It’s a bit of mental stew, on a few different subjects. Eat hearty with sides of road trip survival, a bad case of Bryce, the Wilpon No Money Blues, minor towns for the birds, Kelly, Melky, Little Darlings, and the Maine event. And if you want more meat in your stew, stop bellyaching and pick up Best Mets.

M³, Volume 22: Lowered Expectations Edition

The way the Mets have been playing since the Fourth of July, I was actually pretty pleased with a 2-4 road trip to Cincinnati and Washington, the teams with the two best records in the game. Of course going two games under .500 every six days, as the Mets have been doing lately (in a good week), will put you a lot closer to 90 losses than 80 wins, but the Mets are essentially telling you they don’t expect to even think about being good until 2014 anyway, so what’s the diff….

It seems like Washington rookie Byrce Harper kills the Mets more than any other team. So I checked. through his first 375 plate appearances, he had more hits (12) against the Mets than any other team and his eight RBI were double what he had against anyone else. Another Mets killer is born….

It’s been leaked that the Mets plan to have the same payroll in 2013 as this year, which actually means that the operating budget will go down. That’s because Johan Santana’s salary goes up to $25.5 million in 2013, which does not even take into account a $5.5 million buyout for 2014. According to the interesting site baseballplayersalaries.com, Johan is already 26.18 % of the team payroll and is making $4 million per win this year, so far. Though the Mets could shut him down at any time, he is past the 16-start over/under I had him pegged for before the year began. (Next time, maybe I’ll specify “quality start,” which is at 10 and holding.) But don’t kid yourself, Santana earned the whole $24 mil this year for the gem on June 1. Even if he winds up with a losing record for the year, he still pitched himself into the team’s all-time top 50 that night. Here’s to him finishing strong—the year and the gargantuan contract….

Also leaked this week is the story that the Mets are getting bounced from Buffalo, in favor of the Blue Jays. This comes just a few years after the team’s Triple-A home for more than 30 years, Norfolk, said it would rather have the Orioles than the Mets. Granted, the Jays and O’s have home markets far closer to these minor league cities than the Mets, but this is a serious slap in the face at a New York team and the Mets organization. Or maybe those towns simply prefer bird names to bird brains…. 

After finishing cranking out a book, I immediately got in a car with the family to Maine for a superb time kicking back with the Butlers. Caught up with movies like The Bad News Bears, Stripes, and of course Dodgeball. I also finally got to see The Iron Lady  and at the same time was reading about a fictional plot on Margaret Thatcher’s life in the Jack Higgins book, Touch the Devil. Of everything, though, my Maine pleasure, as ever, was seeing the Portland Sea Dogs. Because the Saux are having a down year, it was not as crowded as usual to see Boston’s Double-A club….

Speaking of Boston, the Red Sox players putting the blame on catcher Kelly Shoppach for going over Bobby V.’s head to get to management, makes the ridiculous situation in Boston seem even more so. I think Shoppach is a good backstop, but if the Mets had waited a few days until the news broke about the Sox scapegoating Shoppach, I think they could have gotten him for a player to be named with less promise than Pedro Beato. I still think Beato is better than Manny Acosta….

So Melky Cabrera got caught with too much testosterone in his body and goes so far as to buy a web site to try to create a new version of the Ryan Braun Defense. Way to go, Melk-Man. What better way to prove one’s innocence than to make an innocent party look guilty. This does prove that the current 50-game ban for cheating is clearly not enough of a deterrent. Guys are still cheating on a regular basis. A 50-game ban is nothing compared to a career cut short by mediocrity, as Melky Cabrera was on path for until his “amazing” turnaround the past two years. I think a 162-game ban for first offense, plus the postseason, might deter a few more folks, as would a lifetime ban from the game and permanent ineligibility on the Hall of Fame ballot for a second offense. I am a little scared because after I first typed this, blowhard Curt Schilling called for the same penalties. Schill, I’ve got to admit, has a point here. Look at the lifetime bans handed out in the Black Sox case nine decades ago for precedent when dealing with people who would toy with the integrity of the game for their own purposes. Other than Pete Rose and a handful of other cases, that example did quite a job at getting gambling out of the game…. 

And to those of you who missed it Sunday because WPIX games went dark because of Cablevision and the Tribune Co.’s continued whining, Gary and Ron summed up their feelings—and mine—on the Little League World Series, which continues on ESPN unabated. Ron said, in summary, “Why do they have all these pitch counts and everything else when these kids with undeveloped arms are throwing curves two-thirds of the time?” Gary’s response: “Well, you know my feeling: That 12-year-olds have no business being on television.” Brilliant. ESPN, instead of forcing drama from kids who should be playing Wiffle ball at summer camp, how about spending more time on the big leagues instead? Though that might get in the way of their obsession with training camp football, which is about as thrilling as watching a 12-year-old pick his nose. Or ruin his arm.

Mets Monday Monologue

We’re dispensing with the usual pleasantries here about Mets Monologue Monday. It’s short and sweet this week.

M³, Volume 21: Team Handball Brought to You by Hoegarden Edition

I’ve been working round the clock to finish a new book, but I took a day Thursday to go to the Great Neck Library. Everybody there was great and there were lots of people. Imagine what one of these things could draw if the Mets were actually good? They even had someone there to handle the math so all I had to do was talk and sign. Thanks so much to all who came. And I am glad that the child Mets prodigy Daniel, who may know more about baseball than several announcers for other teams, won the free book….

Since it’s a long drive to do one thing, I also took in the Mets game. R. A. Dickey became the first Met in seemingly forever to win a game in Flushing, tossing a complete game, too. My last game had been one of his three losses, so I am 1-1 in Dickey starts, 2-0 in games against the Marlins played on Thursday afternoons, and 2-2 overall. I have one more Thursday afternoon game on my schedule and I’m going to let it ride against the Pirates....

It was quite unamazin’ to go into McFadden’s immediately after the game and not find a single TV with the Mets postgame. Granted there was a Yankees game going on and Olympic stuff, but without the Mets that place would not have enough customers on a Thursday afternoon to pay the light bill. I expected the music to be loud, but the yammering DJ had me running to the back room to have a seat and actually talk. A clean well-lighted place it’s not, but any port in a storm of BS…. 

I also realized that Bud Light is now on my list of beers I just don’t feel like drinking anymore. I used to drink them all the time, but now I usually drink less and have beer from Belgium, Germany, or Canada—three countries, by the way, that like the U.S. don’t have team handball reps in the Olympics. What gives? You’d think you have a few beers and then go out and play this mix of lacrosse (without the stick), dodgeball (without the deeking or the ducking or the diving), and water polo (without the agua). What does the U.S. have, like 300 million people now? We can’t get together a team that might be able to steal one of the dozen qualifying spots from, let’s say, Iceland? Until baseball or softball comes back, this is my favorite summer Olympics game. And I have not even seen it played in this Olympics. Watch the spin this guy gets on this thing. Team handballtastic! And those announcers are better than Sterling and Waldman.

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as sponsor of our Monday monologue, but this week you best be ready as we look into badminton, Bay, Buck, Bell, Bobby V., better homestands, and Best Mets in Great Neck.

M³, Volume 20: Great Neck Visit and Bay Window View of a Deal That Wasn’t Edition

Apparently a deadline deal between the Mets and Marlins with Jason Bay going there in exchange for Heath Bell and John Buck never came close to fruition. Which side gave up on the idea first? The Marlins would have essentially made $4 million on the deal and I think they would have just cut him. It would have at least provided the Mets with a right-handed-hitting catcher plus a former FNP Met (Favorite Non-Playing Met) who was an All-Star reliever before he went down to the Miami freak show. I wonder what the crowd reaction would have been at Citi Field if Bay was in a Marlins uniform with them in town this week? I think some people would have cheered just the sight of him in another uniform. Buck’s average actually went up this week—to .172!—which is still far more productive than Jay Bay’s .154, and Buck has more homers and RBI than Bay and Josh Thole combined. Bell’s 5.44 ERA is only half a run worse than Frank Francisco’s. If I were GM I’d have called and called and called the Marlins like a guy in the A/V club who thinks he can get a date to the prom with someone who’s actually breathing. In Best Mets I have Bay’s signing as the club’s fifth-worst free agent deal in an international house of suck. The four ahead of him are: Coleman, Bonilla, Cedeno, and Matsui. Unlike the first two on the list, at least Bay seems like a nice guy. He’s just done, that’s all….

Speaking of Best Mets, I have an appearance on Thursday, August 9, at the Great Neck Library at 7:30 p.m. in the Main Library’s Community Room, 159 Bayview Avenue. Come on down. It’ll be a doubleheader for me since I’ll be taking in the Mets-Marlins game that afternoon. I’m sure, Bell, Bay, and Buck—not to be confused with Bell, Book, and Candle—will provide innumerable topics to discuss. And there are plenty of other more positive issues to discuss for the team that again is living up to its title of “New York’s Agonizingly Amazin’ Team.”… 

I saw a piece on the New York Daily News website about Bobby Valentine going crazy and yelling in back of of a filming Dan Shaughnessy about “not trying to get myself fired.” It sounded very bizarre until I clicked on this link.  Talk about blown out of proportion. It is enough to keep people up nights in Boston, but it reminded me of Jimmy Conway rousting the napping FBI agents constantly tailing him in Goodfellas….

This week’s “I-Can’t Believe-Baseball-Isn’t-An-Olympic-Sport-But-This-Crap-Is” Award goes to Badminton. The Olympic ideal is fulfilled by multiple players losing on purpose. I guess this is their Black Sox Scandal....

I appreciate—and enjoy—that the Yankees hit a skid recently, but people calling it a “collapse” at the end of July, when you still have a huge lead, and two wild cards to break your fall. It is just further proof that Yankees fans just don’t get it. If there’s one area you’ll never beat the Mets in it is suffering. It’s like Mets fans saying in response to any intelligent question, “Count the rings!” It’s just dumb…. 

After that 0-6 homestand, I sign on for the 6-5 roadtrip to the West Coast, even if the Mets gave away Friday’s game in San Diego and the kid didn’t have it Sunday. For the next trick, how about a win at Citi Field? You can dream, can’t you?... 

I make a point to remember people who have the same first name as I do. (I wish everyone took that tact.) But I have to admit I have already called that new kid “Paul Harvey” about half a dozen times. And now you know… the rest of the story.

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as sponsor of our Monday monologue, but this week we look into Citi Tuesdays, the real difference between the Mets and Dodgers, Han-Ram and another sell-off by the Marlins, 14-year-old college football recruits, algebra, Oakland, Olympics, phone-ies, and the passing of a talented writer.

M³, Volume 19: The  Unnecessary Homework Edition

I got to two Mets games over the last homestand, finally equaling the number of A’s games I witnessed early in the season. I’m ready to go back to Oakland now…. 

I watched the Citi Tuesday commercial probably 100 times without paying attention to what they were offering. Someone in line at the Citi Field Wiffle field on Tuesday night told me you just show them your Citi card and they give you a $10 card for the stadium (plus free Cracker Jack if you see them outside the stadium on a Tuesday). And there is other stuff—Kerel has more. I’d still give it all up if we could arrange a stadium name trade of the Citi moniker for the more sensible MetLife name that the Meadowlands ended up with…. 

I privately hoped during the offseason that the Mets could somehow scrape together two nickels—or two billion 5-cent pieces—and acquire Hanley Ramirez, who was shipped to the Dodgers last week. He wasn’t happy being moved to third base as a Marlin and is the kind of guy that you don’t want if he’s unhappy. If he is happy and productive, he’s an All-Star and an MVP candidate. (Sort of reminds me of this other shortstop the Mets used to have.) I still think to reach the next level the Mets need a good all-around shortstop and move Tejada back to second base, where he would be a Gold Glover and maybe even hit better. At shortstop Rubin makes way too many decisions that wind up being base hits or needless errors. Maybe they’ll get another shot at Ramirez down the line. For now the Mets need pitching more at the moment. And if the lying, conniving Marlins really are dismantling their team yet again, the Mets need some pieces of that action. The 1999 Mets were built on debris from the S.S. Huizenga, but at least that ship lasted for a whole year...

Ten or so days ago I got a copy of Sports Weekly comparing the Mets and Dodgers and how they were both in contention after being on life support for lack of cash by ownership. Now the Dodgers have scooped up everyone they could find on the trade market and the Mets are back to “maybe we’ll be good in 2014.” Brilliant Matt Harvey debut aside, I sure do hope the prospects they are telling us to wait on are worth a damn in the big leagues….

Speaking of the Dodgers, the Mets had a four-game winning streak end at Dodger Stadium around the start of the month. You know many games it took the Mets to win their next five after that? Twenty. And three of those came in a five-game span against Philly and Chicago—back when the Mets won home games….

The University of Washington put out a scholarship offer, unofficial, of course, to a 14-year-old kid. Really? Hope that offer will still be good if he gets hurt or gives up football for skateboarding or grows one more inch while gaining 50 pounds between now and 2015. The NCAA is always looking out for improper conduct to recruits. What the Husky is this?...

When I was 14, I was just trying to survive my first run-in with algebra. I always had nothing but trouble with the subject and spent the summer of 1982 taking algebra II again. (I remember studying for the final the day that Joel Youngblood got hits in two cities in one day for the Mets and Expos.) I later almost did not graduate from college because I could not pass the math requirement for algebra. I eventually got through it as the only senior in a remedial class full of freshman. So there were many times I thought while daydreaming in class: Why am I being forced to take this? I feel some vindication that an academic posed the very question in the Sunday Times and posited that forcing people to pass a class many do not need has led to far too many high school and college dropouts. I got my diploma, but it was mainly because of great parents and several harsh doses of reality: in the afternoons following summer school in ’82 I worked as pump jockey at a gas station, and after leaving college in ’86 in the wake of an F, I thought I was ready to write at the pro level without a degree—I was informed, rather unanimously, that I needed more seasoning. The Times story should be enlightening reading for those who handled most subjects well save for one—biology, however, is another story—or for anyone who ever studied all week for an algebra test and still brought home a 56….

I keep going back and forth on the Olympics. I am bitterly angry that they so callously discarded baseball and softball this year, but events that are hard to consider sports—ping pong?—are still celebrated. Ditching baseball was a blatant swipe at America and our refusal to shut down the major leagues to have a dream team festival for their benefit. That is something that baseball cannot and should not do—unless the pooh-bahs want to go back to Sunday doubleheaders to make up for all the days missed. So I understand the petty IOC (Idiots on Crusade) tossing out baseball, but softball? Softball’s highest honor was the Olympics and it is played at a high level by women on four continents. Getting rid of that was just cruel….

So because of the reasons mentioned—and a book I am trying to finish—I have not watched much Olympics, but a couple of things I stumbled on were cool. Like the piece Sunday by Jim Gray—yes, that Jim Gray—on how the last London Games were put together in 1948 for just over $100,000 because the athletes and competing countries shared both food and a positive attitude. Like Antwerp in 1920, London in 1948 was not many years removed from almost being swallowed up by the Germans. I did enjoy the 1960s and 1970s rock part of the Opening Ceremonies, which I tuned in when I heard the Kinks and the Who on a TV downstairs, only to be turned off by Matt Lauer, who seems to think of being at Olympic events like a punish assignment. And the whole bit had these morons running around holding up phones, like it was part of an endless 5G commercial. I was lucky to be at the Salt Lake Olympics in 2002 and the best part was interacting with people and seeing things in the flesh. I used my phone so little I left it behind when I checked out (only to have a maid drop it in the mail). Those who are there should put down the friggin’ phone for a minute to see what is going on in front of you. Tell those who are perpetually contacting you to leave a message….

A sad note on Suzy Gershman, wife of the late Total Baseball editor and friend Mike Gershman, who died in her native San Antonio. I used to work in her house with Mike, and she was always off to or just back from some exotic locale as part of her fantastically popular Born to Shop series. Most people in publishing are looking for that one great series that never goes out of print or out of style. She worked extremely hard to keep everything up to date and raised their son, Aaron, the right way. They lived in Westport, CT, which was where I was working as sports editor when Mike plucked me from obscurity in the mid-1990s. Truth to be told, I am still pretty obscure, but I am proud to have been part of the same “Writing Tree” as Suzy Gershman, albeit on a low and distant branch.

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as sponsor of our Monday monologue, but this week , well, if you're reading this week you are a real fan, so good for you. Trying not to be too negative, but ESPN and Jason Bay really are downers.

M³, Volume 18: Getting Dark, Too Dark to See Edition

That week was pretty ugly. Before Saturday’s game I hadn’t been to a Mets game in three months—the longest drought I can recall since 1991, a good year to be absent. This is having that sort of ’91 disaster feel to it. If they are building toward something, which is hard to say with certainty, I’ll deal with it, as frustrating as it is. So many things went right for the Mets in the first half—the good starting pitching, guys coming from the minors and coming through, and all the two-out hits—you see how many two-out hits the Dodgers had this weekend? Saturday seven of their eight runs came with two outs and Sunday they scored five times in the 12th with two outs. Whatever happens, I’d feel a lot better about the season if Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Jordany Valdespin saw a lot more time together in the outfield than Bay and Torres, both of whom are playing like guys who should be released. And they can release half the bullpen while they’re at it…. 

I knew the other night when SNY showed MLB big-wig Joe Torre in the Mets dugout with Terry Collins before the game with the Dodgers that the Mets were going to lose. I’d seen that before with Genius Joe in the Mets dugout—420 times to be exact. I guess that’s 421 now…. 

The Mets are giving off that late ’70s vibe lately where if they lose the first game of a series, you get the feeling they aren’t going to win any games in that series….

Two appearances this week for those of you with a serious antennae. Today (7/23) on WKNY 1490 in Kingston at 6 p.m. with Dan Reinhard. And for Beantown Sports Trivia I am talking at 8:40 a.m. on Friday (7/27) for the book on WADT 95.9 in Plymouth, Mass., the official station of Miles Standish....

Is it just me or does anyone else ever notice that whenever you turn to ESPN—TV or radio—all they ever yammer about is the NBA? I figured this would end when the NBA season mercifully concluded, but it just goes on and on. Sort of like Stephen A. Smith….

ESPN’s web presence is much stronger and more useful since you can pick what you want to get involved in on their site. (What they want to give over the air is out-of-season NBA and NFL “news” when it’s 90 degrees out.) I was watching the Gamecast of Johan’s latest six-run outing and chuckled at how pitches thrown into the drawn-in little “strike zone” were consistently called balls by the umpires. Call all the pitches in the strike zone, well, strikes, and you’ll notice a lot more quick outs, a lot fewer walks, and maybe even a few more hits. More strikes by rule and not so much individual umpire strike zones. As Buck Martinez once said, “The worst thing they ever did was give the umpires numbers, because it made them think that anybody cared.”...

I was watching Mets Yearbook 1981 the other day and the nondescript announcer—even Murph and Kiner must have been worn out from doing those by the early 1980s—said that “coming in 1982 is Diamondvision. You’ll see why many people say it’s the best thing that’s happened to the game since peanuts.” Thinking about it, the big video board might be the worst thing since peanuts. It tells you when to cheer, it never shows an even remotely close play, and—worst of all—it allows advertisements to be blared at you even when you’re away out of the house and seemingly away from the boob tube. I am not saying the big board is all bad, and I really did like it when it came to Shea 30 years ago, but as it has evolved the board has drained some of the spontaneous experience of being at a game. It’s such a given in sports now that there are people who could not imagine a game without it. I could have lived without it in ’82—talk about a year with a second-half dive (a 12-41 mark from July 4 to August 31)—and I guess I could have probably gotten by without the year’s big video innovation. Or George Foster, for that matter. Though Jason Bay makes Jogging George look like a Mets superstar.

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as sponsor of our Monday monologue, but this week there is a profession of faith on the Collins crew, for not giving up the farm for an illusionary boost, the coolness of Cape Cod League, John McGraw, and Zack Greinke starting three straight Brewers games. Plus there is Tony LaRussa to deal with. To paraphrase the Lord Almighty, or at least the one depicted in The Simpsons: “He really displeases me, I think I'll give him a canker sore.”

M³, Volume 17: The Hope and Hate Edition

The 2012 Mets have done nothing the way the experts have predicted they would. After looking pretty bad over the last 10 days or so—with the All-Star break mercifully thrown in—the latest expectation is for the Mets to crumble and roll over in the second half, not even finishing with a winning record. I hope Terry Collins can prove the experts wrong once more….

The team is in dire need of a couple of pitchers, but I cannot take the Mets trading away their future for a fifth starter or mediocre reliever. The Giants rolled the dice last year for Carlos Beltran and it cost San Francisco their top pitching prospect, Zack Wheeler, now tearing up Double-A for the Mets. And the Giants gained neither the playoffs nor the services of Carlos Beltran beyond 2011…. 

Speaking of the Giants, what was up with that All-Star start on the hill by Matt Cain? I am going to just state up front that with Internet-savvy kids in the house, I don’t normally write out foul language—saying it is involuntary, writing it is, to me, a different matter. And I have as much respect for the longevity and managing skill that it takes to win almost as many times as John McGraw. And I respect that McGraw was named to manage the first All-Star Game in 1932, even though his long managing career with the New York Giants had recently ended. With all that said, let me make my next statement…

Tony LaRussa is a cock, a total fucking cock. 

R.A. Dickey was not only the best story of the first half, he was the best pitcher. All 11 members of Sports Weekly’s staff voted Dickey the first-half Cy Young in the NL (Wright was third for MVP). Dickey’s back-to-back one-hitters are rarer than Cain’s perfect game, which was seemingly the reason that Cain’s 27-year-old “career of excellence” was picked instead of Dickey to start the 2012 All-Star Game. A knuckleball pitcher who alters the way a pitch has been thrown for the last century is unique. And taking a dull as dishwater game and making it a little more intriguing is one of the obligations of the All-Star manager. “Home field advantage” is a byproduct, not a prerequisite for deciding who starts. This all predates the inane “this game counts” All-Star campaign, but hear me out for perspective’s sake: rookie Mark Fidrych starting the 1976 All-Star Game (decision made by Darrell Johnson), Fernando Valenzuela starting the 1981 All-Star Game (decision made by Dallas Green), and Hideo Nomo starting the 1995 All-Star Game (decision made by Felipe Alou). See the game slip LaRussa by. The man had nothing else to do this last month but make this decision and he blew it with the same overmanaging that has sent many a fan home early or scrambling for the TV remote. Thanks, Tony. Take all those 2,728 wins—and that victory Tuesday that I didn’t watch—and shove ‘em. I am glad you retired and that you never caught Mugsy McGraw, who had 35 more wins, four more pennants, and a winning percentage that was 50 points higher. You were never in his league.

How about Milwaukee’s Zack Greinke becoming the first pitcher since 1917 to start three straight games for a team? The last, Red Faber, did so for the 1917 White Sox. I don’t quite know how Faber did in those three starts, but I’ll bet it was better than Greinke’s cumulative total of eight innings and nine earned runs, with an ejection after four pitches, two losses, and an extended All-Star Game break thrown in. It worked out well for Faber, who would win three games for the “Clean Sox” in the 1917 World Series and became a Hall of Famer…. 

Saw my first Cape Cod League game last week in Chatham with my best friend along with my son. Regardless of ballgames and outcomes and other seemingly insurmountable tragedies, all is right with the world.

Mets Monday Monologue

Monday finds me out of town, so we’ll keep a Monologue going a little early. Rather than the usual rigmarole that leads into the Monologue, here is something I have always liked and now I am joining in. This fits in with the thoughts that maybe I could have been a teacher, or a big-time newspaper guy. I’m neither, just your lovable Shoe Shine Boy. So here is my first half Mets report card. It’s got some good marks, but it won’t mean anything if the Mets hand in the kind of D grades they’ve racked up in the final marking periods since 2006. No A-minuses. And nobody fails. I used a minimum for inclusion at 50 at bats or 20 innings, or something like that. Give me a demerit if someone misses those marks.

M³, Volume 16: The first-half 2012 grades

R.A. Dickey         A+       If you need to ask why so high, you have not been paying attention.

David Wright        A         Only thing Wright did wrong was not rig the All-Star voting.

Johan Santana     A         A Mets no-hitter gets you an A in this class.

Mike Baxter         A         For effort and for everything else. Can’t wait to see you back, Bax.

Ruben Tejada      B+       Only reason this isn’t higher is that he’s been absent a lot.

Scott Hairston      B+       Thought they shouldn’t have brought him back. What do I know?

Lucas Duda         B         If he could play OF at all, this grade would be higher.

Kirk Nieuwenhuis   B         Never mind his slump, Capt. Kirk has phasers on stun.

Jon Niese            B-        Still a kid. Never know what you’ll get or if five year deal is wise.

Bobby Parnell       B-        Still makes me nervous in any inning. If he ever gets it, watch out.

Daniel Murphy      B-        Hot and cold with bat. Better at 2B that I thought.

Frank Francisco     B-        I’ve wanted to give up on him twice, but he has bounced back.

Tim Byrdak          B-        Amazed he hasn’t pitched 60 times yet. Do not pitch to righties.

Dillon Gee            C+       Like a few guys on team, experts said he’d never make majors.

Josh Thole           C+       Grade is for taking concussion in Philly and catching no-no at Citi.

Jordany Valdespin  C+       Guy has pop and speed. Do not play at shortstop or trade.

Omar Quintanilla    C+       Fourth-string shortstop played well with bat and glove.

Ike Davis             C         Working his way up from an F in the first quarter. Keep trying.

Justin Turner        C         Key bench guy, but the less he plays in field the worse his glove is when needed.

Miguel Batista       C         Some games an A, other games an F—explains the grade. He is 41.

Ronny Cedeno      C         He’s better than I thought he’d be. And his glove is sound.

Chris Young         C         Very tempted to give an incomplete. Fingers crossed for his health.

Jeremy Hefner     C-        Just shipped out. His one win was in a start vs. Philly. Work him into pen group.

Mike Nickeas        D+       He’s got work to do to earn his MLB backup catchers union card.

Jon Rauch           D+       A great first month, but I could see him get DFAed soon.

Andres Torres      D+       Has made nice catches and an important film but he’s no Angel.

Ramon Ramirez    D         Key to Pagan trade has been brutal. And he got hurt cheering.

Jason Bay           Inc       Can’t kick a guy when he’s down, but a healthy Bay earns an F.

Mike Pelfrey         Inc       Won’t be back in 2012, or maybe ever as Met. Deserved better fate.

                                                    Manager 

Terry Collins         A         If there is a first-half NL Manager of Year, it’s Terry over Davey in D.C. and Clint in Pitt.

July 3, 2012

The Fishin’ Hole

We had a passing in our family this week that is pretty sad, and I am also a little sad today about someone more of you probably know, or have at least know the name. He had nothing to do with baseball or anything like that, but for anyone who has ever lived in a sleepy little town, or wanted to, The Andy Griffith Show let everyone pull up a spot on the porch and set a spell. Or go down to the fishin’ hole—the name of the theme song that is one of the great whistlin’ songs ever—that led off every show.

And there was no greater stand-in for sleepy Mayberry than the sleepy Virginia town where I went to college. There was always work to do, but there was always time to set a spell. We all knew plenty of people we’d started with freshman year who never made it to second semester or senior year. At 5:30 every afternoon in 1986 and 1987, just before dinner, a dorm room full of us watched re-runs of The Andy Griffith Show, postponing dinner until the last 15 minutes before the dining hall closed so we could catch Andy, Barney, Floyd, Gomer, Goober, Otis, Aunt Bee, and of course Opie. Black and white only. The color ones were made after Barney (Don Knotts) became a film star and was no longer in the cast. Barn was missed—and has been missed since he passed at 81 in 2006. 

Andy Griffith was also pretty darned funny.It was not the same plots that have been recycled on show after show for years and decades on end. And I always remember the three or four times a week where we took a half hour to slow down, set a spell, enjoy what was going on now, and have some lemonade (perhaps we had something stronger than lemonade). Isn’t that what a baseball game is supposed to be like, too? At least the early innings? 

Thanks for the late dinners and the early lesson, Ange. You’ll be missed.

And don’t even get me started on Salem Sunday nights with Kung Fu.

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as sponsor of our Monday monologue, but this week there is discussion of Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, daytime baseball, Ike Davis, more ballot stuffing, obesity, bloated bowl games, and some cool threads. Speaking of cool, R.A. Dickey is so cool I declare him...

M³, Volume 15: The Most Interesting Met in the World

Two years in a row the Mets have had a four-game series at L.A. in early July, have dominated the first three games of the series, and have lost to Clayton Kershaw in the fourth game while looking bad. That’s all right. A winning road trip after the way the Mets screwed the pooch the first two days in Chicago is something we should all be able to handle…. 

It’s summer and the Mets played back-to-back night games at Wrigley? Really? If there is one place in the world that can handle—no, thrive on—two day games in a midweek series, it is Wrigley Field. The place loses a lot of its charm under the lights, and its hospitality. This .333 club turned the lights out on the Mets last week. Those confines looked much friendlier come the daytime and the 17-1 pounding they should have been doing to the Cubbies all along. They get another shot at the Cubs this weekend. With two day games in New York…. 

Ike Davis came up two nights in a row with two outs in the ninth. Last Sunday night he flies out to right to end the game representing the winning run against the Yankees. The next night he homers to break up a shutout in a 6-1 loss against the Cubs. Baseball is a funny game.…

I’m just finding out officially what I could have learned from a quick trip to the mall: America is the fattest nation in the world. By a ton. A lot more actually….  

Almost as obvious as our domestic weight problem is our problem with crowning a college football champion each January. Now there is a four-team playoff. So instead of politicking for two teams to get into one game, we can debate and holler about four teams getting in. And the NCAA managed to do it while the relevance of the other three dozen bowl games remains untouched…. 

In R.A. Dickey’s latest outing in L.A. he shook off yet another chance at a no-hitter because Andres Torres played a flyball like a kid not wanting to drop it; R.A. singled and had the wherewithal to be forced out at second so he could go to the bench and do some funky exercises (or was he perfecting a new form of exercise to help solve that national obesity problem?); and then he defended his shortstop by drilling the opposition’s shortstop in the butt. With that beard, that air of mystery, that je ne sais quoi, I declare him, “The Most Interesting Met in the World.” Stay ahead in the count, my friends…. 

And I thought the voting for Miller Park as best ballpark in baseball in that ESPN poll was rigged. Pablo Sandoval over David Wright as the NL’s best third baseman? Wright’s batting average is as high as Kung Pow Panda’s on base percentage. Then I remembered it was the All-Star Game and I chilled the hell out. But if R.A. Dickey doesn’t start in that game, then….

Of the major league teams that went back to a more basic uniform style in 2012, the Mets got the top marks in a Men’s Life survey, beating out other cool back-to-the-future unis from Toronto, Cleveland, and Kansas City. Looking good, Billy  Ray! Feeling good, Lewis!!

Recount!

On Monday I listed my order of preference of the 17 18 current parks I have I visited. I snootily said I had not been to Yankee Stadium III. But I stupidly forgot to mention Citi Field. You think I have never made it there? I have actually been to the Citi 51 times since it opened (uh, oh, sounding snooty again). I am suffering through a drought just now between visits that will end after the All-Star Game. There are parks I prefer over Citi Field for aesthetic and other reasons, but I slot the Flushing park in just behind PNC Park. And buddy Bill Earl, who traveled to Wrigley this week for the first time, confirms the awesomeness of the Friendly Confines, especially when your team scores 17. And wins! Here is my revamped list.

1. Wrigley

2. Fenway

3. Camden Yards

4. San Francisco

5. Royals Stadium

6. Dodger Stadium

7. PNC Park

8. Citi Field

9. Minute Maid Park

10. Phillies Park

11. Miller Park

12. D-Backs Park

13. Ballpark at Arlington

14. Angels Stadium

15. White Sox Park

16. Busch Stadium III

17. Skydome

18. Oakland Coliseum

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as sponsor of our Monday monologue, but this week there is a lot of talk about chicken and sausage, not to mention ballparks all around the country, bomb shelters, and a TV re-run invasion.

M³, Volume 14: Overdone Chicken Edition 

However it works out when there is interleague play every day next year, I can only hope that the current hype machine that is Mets vs. Yankees ended its cycle this year. From a Mets fan point of view, it sucked: two viewings of the histrionics of Dick Swisher (I know the classless clown’s real name), three one-run losses caused by a lousy bullpen, and the end of the R.A. Dickey earned run streak. If interleague play is going to become such a daily occurrence we won’t even notice when the leagues are obliterated once and for all, let’s go back to the way it was the first year of interleague play in 1997. Then we had weeknight Mets vs. Yankees games with a quick flash of hype—like Rangers-Islanders/Devils. That chicken thing with Frank Francisco may be the dumbest thing I have seen in the 15 years of Mets vs. Yankees…. 

And I’ll call it Subway Series when they play again in a World Series. And then I’ll turn up Miracle Mets with the headphones on and not let anyone in my bomb shelter….

The state can’t get rid of its wacko governor, but Wisconsin enthusiasts did manage to cram enough online votes to defeat every other major league park in an ESPN bracket poll. (Citi Field went down in the first round to Petco Park.) I went to Miller Park a few years ago and felt rather blah about the experience—beyond the live sausage race. It was just a couple of months after the Randall Simon brat beatdown and they were playing the Cubs with about a 90-10 percentage of Chicagoans in the house. Unlike County Stadium, which I went out of my way to visit on several occasions, Miller is the Midwest version of Arizona’s so-so baseball stadium, whatever they call it. I’ll take a kielbasa and a Leinenkugel and wait for the opener at Lambeau Field, the NFL’s best stadium…. 

That puts us on a whole new topic of ranking the parks. I have been to a lot of parks that are now gone, but I did a quick count and realized I’ve been to 17 standing parks. I would pick Tiger Stadium at the top if she were still with us, but I am taking a rare trip into the now—with two 100-year-old parks leading the way. I only use corporate names that are beer companies or ones that I feel like typing (I’m just that way). And note that I have not been to the new big ball orchard in the South Bronx (I’m just that way, too):

1. Wrigley

2. Fenway

3. Camden Yards

4. San Francisco

5. Royals Stadium

6. Dodger Stadium

7. PNC Park

8. Minute Maid Park

9. Phillies Park

10. Miller Park

11. D-Backs Park

12. Ballpark at Arlington

13. Angels Stadium

14. White Sox Park

15. Busch Stadium III

16. Skydome

17. Oakland Coliseum

What’s your opinion? We’d like to know….

You may recognize the above tagline as the signoff from WPIX editorials for many years. During Friday night’s soggy start at Citi Field, I tuned in rain delay theater on two over-the-air channels. It’s one of those ironic moments with programming of Channel 9, which carried the Mets for 30-plus years, and now carries the Yankees; vs. Channel 11, which carried the Yankees for even longer, and now broadcasts the Mets on those rare occasions when its is allowable for people without cable to view local National League baseball. The rain delay choice of Channel 9 was Everybody Loves Raymond, a pretty so-so show by my count, though it does feature a sportswriter who is an unabashed Mets fan. Channel 11 had American Dad, which I think is the best animated show on TV, what with Family Guy and The Simpsons having long switched to automatic pilot. I’d still take the official show of Channel 11 aficionados, The Odd Couple, to get me through 40 minutes of rain—or 40 days and nights, for that matter.

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as sponsor of our Monday monologue, but this week there is much ado about Dickey, feng shui, letting one-hitters lie, catchers from other NL teams who might try to corral his fabled knuckleball, Phil Niekro's 2 cents on R.A., T-shirts, sweeps, and Steve Trachsel and Jim Furyk separated at birth.

M³, Volume 13: Out of the Rough Edition

I caught the last few innings of R.A. Dickey’s one-hitter in Tampa Bay, an outing that was arguably as dominant as Johan Santana’s no-hitter. I wish David Wright had gloved that hard-hit ball rather than barehanded it in the first inning. Shades of the Keith Moreland dribbler that was the only hit Dwight Gooden allowed the Cubs in September 1984. Challenging the official scorer’s decision wasn’t the most sporting maneuver. The team just had its first-ever no-hitter less than two weeks ago, which was aided by a blown call by an ump. Now the Mets ask to reverse an official scorer’s decision that would never be questioned otherwise. Obviously, R.A. wasn’t the one pushing for that appeal (and remember that he will be appearing at the Yogi Berra Museum this Thursday). If MLB one day decides to overturn no-hitters—as they did to several no-no’s with a new ruling in 1990—they could easily strike the Santana no-hitter, which would render the “No-Han” T-shirt and pennant I got for Father’s Day worthless/more valuable. Mind the feng shui, dudes....

Far more worthy of an MLB investigation would be if Dickey is somehow left off the All-Star team. I wonder which National League catcher will man up and volunteer to catch R.A. I’m predicting it’s Brian McCann, Brave and all.... 

Speaking of knuckleballs and the Braves, here is what Phil Niekro, the greatest knuckleball pitcher from the first family of knuckleballers, summing up R.A. Dickey’s streak in the Sunday New York Times: “I don’t know if any other knuckleballer has been on a hot streak like he has been”.... 

I have my Johan T-shirt, and I don’t want to deny anyone theirs, but if I were in the Mets marketing department, I would have had this week’s T-shirt Tuesday honor the 50th anniversary season and highlight the 1969 world championship against the Orioles, who make a rare appearance in Flushing this week. Let’s hope the O’s and the Mets—both of whom have specialized in second-half fades in recent years—can keep their heads up for a whole season. Both are great baseball towns with fans who deserve better. But I’d sign on for a repeat of 1969, if only for this week against the Orioles....

I was with the guys on the annual golf trip this weekend and for a change did a lot more playing than watching, but one thing I will say is that in the final holes of the U.S. Open all I could think was how much Jim Furyk reminded me of Steve Trachsel. Like Trachsel, who won the 1998 one-game playoff for the Cubs but is remembered for allowing the Mark McGwire 62nd home run a month earlier, Furyk may be remembered more for holding the lead for most of the 2012 Open and not winning than for claiming the trophy in 2003. I can only imagine that Trachsel plays golf even slower than Furyk.... 

This sweep/get swept pattern the Mets have going in recent weeks would be a very strange way to get to a .500 season. But after the last few years, I’ll probably take it.

I would be a pretty lousy promoter if I did not mention my three 2012 books for sale as we head to Father’s Day.

Best Mets: Perhaps you’ve heard this book mentioned once or twice on this site. A brief history of the things you love—and hate—about your Metropolitans. Best Mets ranks players, teams, games, managers, GMs, All-Star performances, and includes a section on the best Metly activities. I include profiles on some of the favorite non-uniformed personnel—and patrons—from half a century of Mets baseball. It was a lot of fun to put together and, I hope, to read.

Beantown Sports Trivia: Just yesterday I was saying how New England is taking over the sporting soul of upper New York, at least the non-Yankified segment. While I am obviously pretty hardcore about the Mets, I do not like any other New York team. I think the reason is fear, fear that a great moment of joy may be forever tarnished by having to high five someone wearing a Yankees hat. And I have the qualification of having lived in Massachusetts for several years, being roommates with a huge Sox fan, and spending part of three summers at Ted Williams Baseball Camp. Besides the Sawx, Celts, Pats, and Broons, there is plenty of trivia on the four Beanpot colleges and questions on as many other Boston schools as I could find interesting info on. I even included a few questions on Boston boxing and golf. Wicked good fun.

Golf Miscellany: I am a closet duffer, something I picked up back in Massachusetts when I could either play nine holes with the boss on Thursday afternoons or stay in the office and write obituaries. So golf it was. I found it to be a fun game that I could play alone or with a group of swillers who do not take it too seriously. I have been involved in a four-day outing with said bozos—to whom I dedicated the book—for 17 straight years, and I will be doing so again this weekend. Golf Miscellany is a companion to Baseball Miscellany, with 27 questions about the game answered with detail and humor, but the stuffed shirt stays at home. I used images of golf courses from all around the world, as well as pics of some of the game’s greatest legends. Just in time for the U.S. Open and Father’s Day. Fore! Well, four if you count Baseball Miscellany.

June 14, 2012

Book Review: R.A. = Remarkable Author

A little while back, my eight-year-old son asked me who my favorite player was. It is the kind of thing I never think about—unless of course the guy never plays, and then this site has an annual award to celebrate such men who spend their big league lives wondering if they are about to be cut from the 40-man roster. But my son isn’t thinking about the Nick Evanses or Jason Pridies of the world (neither of whom are with the organization now). The boy is thinking stars, or at least starters.

I like David Wright, but I am of the school that Jose Reyes was the harder of the two to replace. So as my favorite player replacement for Reyes (whom I named as my favorite player when a child at a book talk first put the question to me in 2006), I think Wright would be an insincere choice on my part. I like Ike, but Mr. Davis is still too young and inexperienced to take that mantle—and his three months well below the Mendoza line this year have not helped his case. Plus Ike has missed a lot of time to injuries—something you can say about any number of Mets, including Johan Santana. Using that criteria, a lot of Mets are eliminated from the favorite pool right there. But the boy was still looking for an answer to what seemed a simple question. Then it hit me. My favorite Met is Robert Allen Dickey. Of course!

I recently finished reading my new fave’s new book, and R.A. even made it topical by tossing his second one-hitter as a Met, breaking Jerry Koosman’s 39-year-old mark for consecutive shutout innings, and then saying how honored he was to be mentioned in the same breath as the Kooz. Loving you, R.A. Loving you! And truth be known, much of this review was written when he was just 5-1 and looking like one of the few bright spots in a questionable rotation. But one thing I was aware of even then—the man can write!

If you want R.A. sign your book—and want to go to a shrine to baseball created in honor of a former pennant-winning Mets manager—I suggest going on down to the Yogi Berra Museum on Thursday, June 21, at 6 p.m. (The museum is located on the campus of Montclair State University in New Jersey.) I have not had the chance to meet my new favorite Met, but from what I have observed and read, R.A. is an amazin’ guy with an amazin’ story that jumps off the page—and let’s not forget his co-author, Daily News writer Wayne Coffey. That R.A. falls into the favorite Met category as opposed to FNP (Favorite Non-Playing) Met is a tribute to the man and how hard he has worked to overcome many obstacles put in front of him. A truly rare breed, R.A. possesses great faith, confidence, and humility. And he throws one hell of a knuckleball. 

A child of both divorce and alcoholism, R.A. vowed from a young age to never drink. He had not ever taken a medication stronger than Tylenol until last year, when he was injected with painkiller in his heel before each of his last two dozen starts. After all he endured to finally find a major league home in his late 30s, there was no way he was going to go on the disabled list for something that was merely painful. And this is a man who went to Flushing nail salon—in full uniform—after cracking a nail in 2011. He is a Jedi warrior and claims as much in another worthwhile publication—the 2012 Mets yearbook, which includes plenty of 50th anniversary observances. On his page in the yearbook, he gives the kind of “favorite player” quotes I haven’t seen since the 1975 yearbook. Above the animated R.A. pitching grimace in the 2012 yearbook, Dickey claims his childhood icons were Luke Skywalker and Larry Bird. His favorite music is contemporary opera and his favorite film is The Shawshank Redemption. His life has indeed been long on redemption.

Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball  bares the soul of the man, warts, sins, lamentations, and everything else you would expect from the heart of R.A. Dickey. Sports Illustrated called it the best book by a major leaguer since Ball Four. I would say it is the best book by a Met since Keith Hernandez’s If at First (note: that was his first book, with co-author Mike Bryan). And since he arrived in New York in 2010, R.A. has conducted postgame interviews at a Hernandez mid-1980s level. SNY ought to create a special on the man. Because he certainly is special. And I am not just saying that because he is my favorite Met. 

R.A. can do it all. He can throw the best knuckleball in the game, field his position flawlessly, pitch without an ulnar collateral ligament in his right arm (a defect that cost him $800,000 in bonus money as the 1996 first-round pick of Texas), climb Mount Kilimanjaro for charity (that journey, worthy of its own book, occurred too late to get more than a few paragraphs in the Acknowledgments), use that University of Tennessee English major for all its worth (he also won a prestigious award for writing a haiku in high school), and overcome sexual abuse as a youth (though repressing it threatened his longtime marriage to his junior high sweetheart—but R.A. and his family worked to stay together; R.A. does not give up).

I would love nothing better than for the Mets to keep R.A. around for as long as the Red Sox kept knuckleball fraternity bro Tim Wakefield in their rotation. Of course, Wakefield stuck around for 17 seasons in Boston until he finally called it quits after 2011. Dickey did not get to New York until age 35, but given how long knuckleballers have been known to last, I’d take a decade on the mound and then see him move him to the Mets broadcast booth, maybe as the next Keith, or Kiner. Or even take the Jedi path to radio. Two of the best announcers the Mets have had came to New York via Tennessee: Ford Frick Award winners Lindsey Nelson and Tim McCarver. As they say, the third one is the charm. And as I say, this Vol is already a treasure. New York is lucky to be the place where R.A. Dickey wound up.

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as sponsor of our Monday monologue, but this week we look at the worst week of the year following the best, Red Sox Nation taking over vast expanses of unclaimed New York, hope yet for Jordany Valdespin, the Mad Men finale, and advice on how to spend $50 on something that has nothing to do with books.

M³, Volume 12: The Back to Earth Edition

For those people who came into 2012 thinking the Mets would be a joke of a team that could not hit, pitch, or field, that was the week that was. All teams have bad weeks, and some teams have the bad luck to gift-wrap a sweep to the Yankees, but this season will be remembered for the no-hitter, no matter what happens, it’s just a matter of whether it is tainted by a 90-loss finish or enhanced a valiant run toward newfound postseason slumming for the second Wild Card.

From ESPN NY, a recent Quinnipiac University surveyed New Yorkers’ allegiance, based on percent by region:

“Upstate” covers a lot of ground. I’m going to assume upstate here refers to anything north of the Tappan Zee Bridge. I live almost two hours north of Flushing, but I am still a good 200 miles south of what I would call “real” upstate. Syracuse, the region where I almost went to college and always thought of as most definitely “upstate,” calls itself “mid-state.” However you cut it, these numbers make sense from what I’ve observed over the past dozen years. As I noted in a comment at the 50th anniversary Mets conference at Hofstra, the lack of a true Mets radio network and spotty SNY carriage on cable systems essentially cedes upstate to the Yankees, with the Red Sox winning a lot more hearts and minds than the Mets. Many sporting goods stores, bars, and yes, book stores, up here only carry Yankees and Red Sox items. New York state may be losing population, but those who remain are either not Mets fans, or worse, don’t follow baseball at all. I am always happy when I find a Mets fan in these parts. And I suppose I should be. Not only are we the “New Breed,” but we’re the “Rare Breed” as well….

Jordany Valdespin needs to learn how to play the outfield. On the infield he is the Mets version of that Pena guy who boots everything he touches for the Yankees. After the season I hope they send Valdespin to the Florida Instructional, the Arizona Fall League, or the French Guiana Penal Colony League and hit him fly ball after fly ball and hope he catches on, literally. He’s only played 14 minor league games in the outfield and he is just 24 years old. He’s young, he’s cheap, he’s fast, he’s a good pinch hitter, and maybe he can be a decent outfielder. But another second baseman who cannot field is something the Mets have way too many of already….

I hope to forget this lousy week of Mets baseball, but I will keep thinking back on the just-concluded season of AMC’s Mad Men. The 2012 baseball season feels like it has been going on since time began. Mad Men feels like it just premiered last night. With the Mad Men series set to end in two years, I trust Matt Weiner has “shaken off the cobwebs” that doomed the last few seasons of The Sopranos to eternal mediocrity….

Before anyone spends $50 on a ticket stub to a no-hitter they did not see, take that money and instead take someone to the game who doesn’t normally go. It’s a much better use of money and life. You never know what you might see.

June 7, 2012

A Hit in the No-No Afterglow

I looked around the second floor at the Jacob Javits Center for Mark Weinstein, aka Bluenatic, a longtime Mets fan and my editor on several books. He was not at Book Expo on Wednesday, but I did stumble on Neil Young being interviewed by another rocker/author, Patti Smith. Just as fun was running into Wes Seeley, our PR man from Total Sports, who was positioned in front of a cool new book on The Who that caught my eye. We were talking away when I realized my signing was supposed to start in a few minutes. I walked over to the Taylor Trade booth figuring it would be an hour of small talk with them as a handful of people dribbled in, grabbed a free copy of Best Mets, got a signature, and left. 

But that was not what happened. I hadn’t been this surprised by a Mets related event in almost a week. Mets no-hitters A Mets no-hitter—let’s not get greedy—can do that to you.  

A line of Shake Shackian proportions awaited me! We went through three cartons—about 60 books—in under half an hour, and turned people away when the stock was gone. Neil Young, The Who, and Patti Smith aside, I was feeling like a rock star. It was all due to the Mets fanatics from all over the country who go about their daily lives disguised as librarians, book reps, vendors, and sellers who gobbled up copies of the book like Bud Harrelson gobbled up ground balls. (I am not going to make allusions about current Mets shortstops, and for good reason.) 

Thanks to all who came, including Lloyd Carroll of Queens Chronicle (who makes a great point that no no-hitter had been pitched in in Queens since the late Bob Moose did it for Pittsburgh in 1969) and big Mets fan/National Book Network account manager Spencer Gale, who came by before the event. And applause to Rick Rinehart and Kalen Landow at Taylor Trade for setting it up and letting me use their booth as home base. No more free copies, but Amazon has Best Mets for one third off—just in time for Father’s Day. Hey, you can’t spend all day at an industry event and not come out thinking sales.

I am signing Best Mets at Book Expo of Americ--not to be confused with the Montreal Expos--at the Jacob Javitts Center in New York on Wednesday, June 6, in the signing area in the rear of the main exhibit floor. D-Day is at 2 p.m.  If you are at the show, come on by; books in the signing area are available for free (a $1 donation to help literacy is encouraged, and an entrance fee to come to Book Expo of America). BEA is a good place to learn how easy and difficult it is to write, publish, market, or move a book.

June 4, 2012

Mets Monday Monologue

This is not your average Monologue. I have been working for a few days in what would be called in 1980s TV parlance, “A very special Mets Monday Monologue.” As you may know, for metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as sponsor of our Monday Monologue, but this week we look a little deeper into the landmark no-hitter, what it could mean going forward, and how it helped put some things into perspective. Now here is the 3-2 pitch:

M³, Volume 11: The No-Hit Edition

San Diego Padres, you are now on the clock. You have seven years to avoid breaking the record for longest franchise existence without a no-hitter. And whenever the Padres get their no-hitter—and now I can say with confidence that it will one day end, San Diego—I think there is a really good chance that the no-no will come against the Mets. The baseball gods may require that much….

To any Yankees fan who wants to rain on the parade about the foul ball call that the umpire missed in the sixth, all I can say is Jeffrey Maier. That people still remember that schmo’s name is an insult. I already can’t remember who the umpire was Friday night, but I recall ump Rich Garcia at Yankee Stadium in 1996. And if that isn’t enough, go back and look at the arguments against hometown official scorer Dan Daniel, who kept Joe DiMaggio’s fabled ’41 hitting streak from stalling long before it hit 56 games. As the saying goes, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”…

One can only hope that one day the video of Mike Baxter crashing into a wall might indicate a moment when something changed in Metsland. Like when everyone first noticed how good this Dwight Gooden was in June of 1984, or that Monday afternoon in May of 1997 when John Olerud hit a walkoff homer against Colorado, marking the start of five mostly fun years at the turn of our century. I’m not saying The Bax Catch is at that level, but all three of those above events did the same thing for me: They made me awfully proud to be a Mets fan after a long time of being a little bit ashamed. And the cheer that went up when Johan got the last out was the loudest roar for the Mets I can recall since Citi Field opened… I guess no one was checking their phone just then....

Lost in the shuffle Friday night was Josh Thole’s return. He looked so different in the new mask that I thought he was Rob Johnson. Like Mike Baxter, Thole took one for the team—a Ty Wiigginton elbow that is—almost a month ago to help spur the sweep in Philly. That Monday game, which featured the shocking Jordany Valdespin pinch-hit homer, had to be the best win for the merry, merry month of May—just as the ninth-inning comeback off Heath Bell I witnessed at Citi Field was the moment of April. June is only a few days in, but I’m going to put in my vote for that June 1 gem of Johan’s. If that gets topped, this will be one hell of a month.….

Former roommate and friend of the site Jimmy Jim, the first to text me on Friday after the no-no, sent me a link to the images taken by the Mets photographer as his sister took part in Banner Day. Apparently, the team took a pic of every banner. A lot of Carter tributes, and ’86, of course, plus 2001, and even ’69, but the most unexpected—and appropriate for Memorial Day weekend—was the Iwo Jima pose with the 1984 Mets. Go on, take another peak at the banners, you know you want to….  

I got on SNY for not doing much with Banner Day as it was happening, but the network upped its game on the go Friday night for the no-hitter. The SNY crew, along with Gary, Keith, and Ron, sharply clad in jackets and ties as if they knew it was going to be a big night, were all—as Keith likes to say—“on point” as the game grew more and more historic. When SNY did not go to commercial between the eighth and ninth innings, you knew the impossible just might happen. And the postgame show was on for almost an hour before I switched it off and started writing. Like Johan, Collins, Baxter, and Duda (his homer made sure you needn’t worry about another late-game nightmare in a Johan start), SNY rose to the occasion. Bravisimo!... 

I’ve noticed an odd trend in recent weeks. Just before designating a pitcher for assignment, Terry Collins brings him into a tight game and the pitcher—D.J. Carrasco, Manny Acosta, and now Chris Schwinden—proves they are indeed worthy of DFA status by giving up enough runs to put a game out of reach. How about a rock-paper-scissors to decide when to DFA a guy next time before throwing away a game on a player you are ready to throw away?...

They keep talking about David Wright’s contract, which is a watershed decision for the franchise, but I’d also make sure to keep R.A. Dickey’s agent in the loop. There’s only about 29 other teams that could use a pitcher with an 8-1 record, a pitch that no one can get a good swing on, and a man whose ego and heart make him a warrior poet. Lock him up….

In hustling to get out the Memorial Day issue of the Monologue, I plum forgot to mention the “above the fold” piece in the sports section written by Bobby Ojeda in the Sunday New York Times on May 27. It was essentially the story of his left arm from Little League until his final pitch in the majors. As you would expect from Bobby O., it was no holds barred, no B.S., and told as it was. His arm was in almost constant pain from the time he was a teen, yet he forged a long major league career based on guts and guile. The crafty lefty was the major personnel difference between the 1985 and 1986 Mets—and he admits his arm almost gave out during the 1986 playoffs! I was fortunate to sit next to Bobby O. in the Port St. Lucie press box for a spring training game last year and talked to him about a bunch of things, from the ’86 team to how often a kid should pitch in Little League. He didn’t know me from Adam, but when I told him my son was a lefty who liked to throw, he warned, “I’ll come up there and kick your ass if you go out and hire one of those personal pitching coaches!” I won’t, Bobby. His candor and analysis makes for the best postgame analysis this side of Kiner’s Korner. And he can write, too…. 

Speaking of writing, the no-hitter had me thinking about recently departed friends who missed this watershed moment. Greg Spira and Dana Brand were two of the best Mets fans—and people—I have been fortunate to know. On Saturday I noticed the programs from both of their services, both essentially left in the same spots where I put them down after coming home from these events. The day after the no-hitter, while listening to Evan Roberts on WFAN interview Howie Rose, Gary Cohen, and Bob Huessler, all Mets fans of remarkable provenance who work in the industry, I picked up the programs and put them in a folder. I can neither recycle them nor leave them sitting out for eternity, so I slid them in the filing cabinet where a lot of things are put that are out of immediate sight yet within reach, ready as needed. I wondered what to write as  identifier on the file tab, and thought of how other people and things may be added to it as time goes by. I thought of the title of a pop song by Al Stewart that has left me uplifted and a little sentimental since the first time I heard it long ago: “Time Passages.”  Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.

June 1, 2012

There Are No Words…

…but there are some clarifications in the wake of Johan Sanatana throwing the first Mets no-hitter after 8,020 regular-season and 74 postseason games.

Best Mets: Best Players

#44: Dave Magadan replaced by Johan Santana

Sorry Mags, you’re done. I had Johan in the top 50 for New York Mets: The Complete Illustrated History, but after he missed a good portion of 2010, after missing part of 2009, and then was out for all of 2011, I couldn’t justify having him in the top 50 when the book went to press last fall. Consider it justified forever.

100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die

Johan got in the paperback version a couple of years ago at number 92, but number 49 “No No-No” will need a rewrite if we do another update. Be happy to do it. 

On a personal note, the closest I ever came to seeing a no-hitter in the flesh was 6 2/3 innings of perfection from Rick Reed in the first game between the Mets and Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 1998—thanks for breaking it up, Wade Boggs. Now go have some chicken.

I got to watch Johan finish it on TV with my wife and daughter—the latter was stunned when GKR discussed the three no-hitters taken into the ninth by Seaver and I mumbled: Jimmy Qualls (1969), Leron Lee (1971), and Joe Wallis (1975). I followed the Wallis game at Wrigley—the only one of the three the Mets lost—in what was my first season as a fan. I had a hard time understanding how the season could go on after I’d just gotten my Fan Appreciation Day gym bag after the last Mets home game. 

I am eternally grateful I got to see the climactic last third of the game against the Cardinals—the team, ironically, that Tom Seaver finally threw his no-hitter against in 1978…. as a Red. At an age where I miss more Mets games than I would like to admit, I tuned in during the argument about the “foul” ball—with a former Met, Jose Oquendo, putting up the biggest stink on a ball hit by another former Met, Carlos Beltran. 

What makes it all even more special than it already is is Mike Baxter, who grew up closer to the home of the Mets than anyone this side of Ed Glynn, making the tumbling, unbelievable catch, throwing his body into it like any diehard would if given the chance (and some athletic skill). 

Here’s to my friend Duck, who has put up with as much from this team as anyone I’ve known, who bit the bullet and could not live without the team and got seasons again in May. He was at the game with his mother and son—three generations covered with one no-hitter. Someone I do not know as well, but who has the timbre to make a call for the ages: Howie Rose. You tell ’em, Howie. Bob Murphy would be proud.

And for Dana Brand and Greg Spira, not to mention a few more million Mets fans who never lived to see this day. Just yesterday in an interview with Brad Kurtzberg at Sportstalk, I said I should live long enough to finally see the first Mets no-hitter. I don’t want to get greedy, but…

I was on the air with Brad Kurtzberg at Sportstalknetwork.com talking Best Mets. It was a chat about the Mets and check it out if you want to get in on the fun and hear my reasoning for rankings and other Metly thoughts, including a way to get the doubleheader back in Banner Day without costing the team a gate date. Check in on the right-hand side on sr053112 and forward to 15:30 if you want to commence avec moi.

May 28, 2012

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as sponsor of our Monday monologue, but this week we honor Memorial Day, Banner Day, and the rain delay.

M³, Volume 10: Memorial Day Banner Edition

I was glad to hear on Mets Police that Banner Day was a big success. That was something I was unable to tell from SNY. I was a few hundred miles away with the family on a traditional Memorial Day retreat, but with SNY available I figured I could still get a flavor of Banner Day. In a far less technologically advanced time, like the Banner Day I attended in 1984, those who could not make Banner Day got extended coverage on Channel 9. I can’t expect a scheduled doubleheader, as was the case from 1963 to 1988, but I figured there would at least be a fair bit of coverage on the pregame show. Instead I got the usual Chris Carlin blah blah with barely a mention of Banner Day. I would have loved to see someone on site—whether Kevin Burkhardt or how about deputizing Greg Prince—to talk to some of the participants, or just get Howie Rose’s two cents. I was annoyed enough that when my son asked if he could watch Return of the Jedi on Spike, I said sure and we watched it together. That’s probably what that day’s pitcher, Star Wars fanatic R.A. Dickey, would have said if he was at home with the kiddies. I flipped back to the game during commercials and sent everyone out of the house when the ewoks took over the picture with the intergalactic cuddliness.… 

But I’m not going to let that be my final word on Banner Day. I never marched in it, maybe I never will, but hey I’m glad they brought it back. Thank you, Mets! I’d like to see it in the future. I am probably not the only one. And I think the people who make the effort to create banners should be given some commemorative item for the effort. That’ll also ensure that people keep coming out. The hundreds of people who put their sentiments on bedsheets, waited in line in the heat, and got to the game several hours early aren’t there because they’re yahoos who just want to hammer the Wilpons. They’re Mets fans. And God love ‘em….  

Since the Mets thumped the Padres over the weekend, I hate to kvetch about the one game of four that they lost, but guess what’s coming? I didn’t see Thursday night’s game because my daughter had a softball doubleheader that night (they split), but I do question the wisdom of Terry Collins bringing back a young starter after a rain delay of an hour plus. Jeremy Hefner was sharp the two innings before Thursday’s 68-minute rain delay in Flushing, but he was tattooed by the punchless Pads after he returned. Should young, healthy pitchers be able to come back after a rain delay? Sure. Can they handle it? I’m not sure at all. Pitchers are so babied now and people assume weather can’t change quickly that maybe they are not able to psyche themselves up for what is essentially two starts in one night. I can’t remember the last time a pitcher had a good start after sitting out a delay of more than 30 minutes. T.C. should have at least had someone on call to warm up quickly if Hefner faltered after the delay. Of course, San Diego’s Eric Stults, a 32-year-old veteran, came back from the delay and pitched great, so what do I know….

My views on war may have changed a lot in the last 40 years, but I revert to a wide-eyed kid again when I watch the AMC and TMC war movie marathons on Memorial Day weekend. I even saw one I had never seen before with Medical Center‘s Chad Everett and a young Gene Hackman. It takes me back to the golden age of war movies on TV in the late 1960s and early 1970s—a time when those kinds of films were regularly in theaters and on TV. These are actors and stuntmen getting blown up on the screen—sometimes the same guy in a German uniform buying it several times over—but these movies do represent the sacrifice and heroism by brave people in desperate situations. And we should always honor their bravery regardless of what we think about the causes that put them in harm’s way.

Look and Hear

Earlier this week I was podcasting with Kerel Cooper and Tanya Mercado, and this weekend I will be on the airwaves in upstate New York on Spodora sports (check here upstaters for locales and times).

Enjoy—and honor—Memorial Day. I am disappointed I will not be at Citi Field for the rebirth of Banner Day, but I would be even more disappointed if I ruined our family’s annual Memorial Day trip for my trip down Memory Lane. I still think the Mets should have held it on a Saturday on a non-holiday weekend and had the banners begin at the time the game normally starts, sort of like the Yankees do with Old-Timer's Day. What good are a bunch of cool banners if no one is there to see it? Counting on you for coverage, SNY. Counting on the Mets to have a little fun with this and not go all George Weiss on them.

May 21, 2012

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as sponsor of our Monday monologue, but this week we explore travel schedules, travel ensembles, Designated Justifiably Carrasco, college hoops tournaments, college baseball scholarships, and kid gloves.

M³, Volume 9: As the Glove Turns

With the New York metro area having contracted hockey fever for the Rangers-Devils war, kudos to the Mets for all donning hockey jerseys last week on the way to Toronto (home of the Maple Leafs and the very cool Hockey Hall of Fame). It’s hard to be a Jason Bay fan in New York, but of all the jerseys worn, the best choice goes to someone from the country where hockey is their greatest export. Vancouver-bred Bay did not go Canuck, but he picked the classic look of the dearly departed Hartford Whalers. His most positive contribution since he helped beat the Yankees last July. Go Whale!

Toronto gave New York a spanking, eh? They sweep two from the Yankees, then blow out and shut out the Mets before the Mets squeaked out the final game. The Reds kept New York guessing, too. The Mets and Yankees were both lucky not to get swept in those back-to-back series as well. Though interleague scheduling often causes more problems than anything else, it was kind of cool that both the Reds and Jays played the New York teams back to back. The Reds were in town so long I’m surprised none of the players wound up standing behind the Today show or SNY studio windows holding up signs for their Aunt Tilly’s birthday….

In anticipation of this Monologue, I wrote a long paragraph last week about D.J. Carrasco, macho posturing, protecting players, and all that jazz, but it all became moot when Carrasco was designated for assignment. Quoth Gary Cohen during what turned out be Carrasco’s final game as a Met: “D.J. Carrasco has done nothing in the two years he’s been a Met.” As proof of that, you know how the Mets fared in games D.J. appeared in? 10-32, including a walkoff balk. Nothing indeed….

I applaud the Ivy League for declining to hold an annual basketball tournament to determine the league’s automatic NCAA men’s tournament berth. Those league tournaments are mostly money grabs and are just about worthless for the larger conferences. With so many conferences willing to blow themselves up, abandon rivalries, and forget the long-term best interests of the schools, it’s good to see a league say no to the foolishness. Of course, the Ivy League is the one league where you can’t invite in new schools willy nilly. And those Ivy athletes—and the students who follow them—really should be studying instead of hitting the road for Columbia-Dartmouth….

While on the subject of college sports, I want to commend MLB for considering funding full college scholarships at a number of Division I programs. Yes, you heard right, this site is commending MLB—though, of course, they have yet to make anything official. Until I heard about this college scholarship situation last week, I was not aware that colleges only give partial baseball scholarships—generally stretching the funding for 14 scholarships to a full roster of 27. But by not having full scholarships available, the game is pushing yet more talented athletes to football and basketball for full-boat scholarships, or to sign for whatever is offered in the pros rather than getting an education. Asking someone to pay even a quarter of the tuition bill when that person’s family doesn’t have that $5,000 or $7,500 means that there is no room for them at the U. Maybe that is why D-I baseball programs have even fewer ballplayers of color (5%) than MLB does (8.8%). Whatever logistical problems this may involve, I hope MLB makes full college scholarships happen—even if it is one per school. College baseball—or softball, for that matter—should not be solely reserved for products of travel ball or suburban environments. It all filters to the big leagues and it is in their—and our—best interests to make this change…. 

While my son's left-handedness is an indescribable gift to a hard-core baseball person, it does make finding a good glove a chore. His current glove has gotten small and the replacement I recently purchased was scary big, so my wife returned it, and then went to another store to get a modestly-priced glove—with a Phil Hughes signature. Phil Hughes has his own glove model? Really? I didn’t think anyone had glove endorsements anymore, much less fifth starters/seventh-inning relievers. Anyway, my son, who is eight, overheard me mention that Hughes was a Yankee just before I tossed him down the glove. Without even trying it on, he announced, “I’m never wearing a Yankee glove,” and he threw the offending mitt over my head—and I was on a balcony. It stuck in a bush. The uninitiated might think this bratty behavior, but I was, you might surmise, rather proud. And I’m not just talking about his arm strength.…

Denouement: I went to Modell’s, returned the Hughes model, and found a better lefty glove that happened to have David Wright’s name on it: the A450 from Wilson. Meanwhile, somewhere in a landfill, the last surviving piece of leather from my 1977 Don Money Rawlings glove stretched toward the sun. Side retired.

May 16, 2012

A Mets All-Star Game? How Novel

In the woods near a lake in a part of Massachusetts I still couldn't find on a map, two dozen beds full of baseball-mad—or at least baseball-silly—kids gave their undivided attention to the Midsummer Classic. A week or so into my first session at Ted Williams Baseball Camp, and still a little homesick, your 12-year-old narrator peered into the small TV set in the center of the blockhouse feeling even more jealous of the Yankees than normal. On July 19, 1977 the Yankees were not yet the world champions—and were actually third in the tight AL East—but they were the defending AL champions, had 50 wins while the Mets had 55 losses, and the club from the Bronx possessed both a present and future. The Mets had only so recently blown up both during the Midnight Massacre. The Yankees not only kept their best players in the city, they grabbed the best players from other cities as well and either put them in pinstripes or at least hosted them for a night of All-Star revelry. 

I was overjoyed when the NL scored four times in the first and held on for a 7-5 win in the Bronx for what was, at the time, another in a long line of senior circuit wins in a one-sided series that indeed mattered. No network novelties were needed, no gimmicky voting was included other than the gimmicky All-Star ballot stuffing, and teams were locked into one league for a century or more and did not change leagues on the commissioner’s whim. The All-Stars put aside their intraleague rivalries for a night for old school interleague butt-kicking. And at a time when the uniforms were whackily interesting, the ’77 All-Star Game was like a lending library of dysfunctional fashion. Dave Parker forgot his Pirates helmet and wore Dave Winfield’s Padres helmet  for two at bats and a Reds helmet later—while Ruppert Jones of the brand-new Mariners became the first person to wear a Blue Jays helmet in an All-Star Game. Three years later Toronto’s Dave Steib would return the uni favor.  (Thanks to who but Paul Lukas at uniwatch.com for having this—and so much more—detailed to the letter.) 

The NL won the ’77 Midsummer Classic and Mets representative John Stearns actually played (half an inning), Tom Seaver actually pitched (in his new Reds uniform), and I went to bed happy because my league had won, not because the eventual NL champion Dodgers had home-field advantage in the World Series (they didn’t, it was the AL’s year to have the alternating honor, and LA would go down to defeat in a rain of Reggie homers come October).

Ten years passed, the Mets even claimed a World Series title, and I had access to regular seats at Shea. I wondered when I was going to see an All-Star Game in the flesh at my home park. The Mets hadn’t hosted the All-Star Game since 1964, when I was still in my mother’s belly and even then may have been wondering if they would credit the Mets for All-Star MVP since Phillie Johnny Callision wore a Mets helmet as he walked off around the bases at Shea. 

Another decade passed, I graduated college, I endured my first 100-loss Mets season and second prolonged strike, and the club was in the middle of a resurgence that made a married fellow in his 30s feel like he might still enjoy the night air of an All-Star Game.

Ten more years passed, two kids were born, the Mets got into one World Series and just missed reaching another, and it was assumed the new Mets stadium would soon see an All-Star Game. And in 2008 Yankee Stadium was to host an All-Star Game. Again. 

More years passed. The novelty of the new park wore off. The team became harder and harder to watch. The owners—who were buddy buddy with the damned commissioner—still couldn’t finish the job on getting the All-Star Game. 

While I continued my lifetime of All-Star waiting, I wrote Best Mets. The book includes a chapter dedicated to the Mets in the All-Star Game, complete with an obsessive segment on all the other teams to host All-Star Games since the Mets came into existence in 1962—18 teams have hosted multiple games and every club save for the Florida teams has held at least one. I assumed that the moment the book went to print last fall that there would be an announcement that the Mets would finally be awarded the 2013 All-Star Game. Well, the book has been in stores for several months and finally there is am All-Star confirming press conference. An All-Star Game at Citi Field. Well, what do you know? 

So much for the back story of why I waited to run with this until I got that email from mets.com confirming it. Oh, and at the conference, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that no city had ever before hosted the All-Star game twice in a five-year span…except for New York, which hosted the 1934 game at the Polo Grounds and the 1939 game at Yankee Stadium; and Chicago (1947 Wrigley, 1950 Comiskey). That is not to say all this waiting has left me edgy, but....

I will be talking about this subject, the top 50 Mets, and more with Taryn Cooper at Gal for All Seasons on Wednesday night at 7 p.m. Check it out here.

May 14, 2012

Mets Monday Monologue

The Mets handed over their mojo to the Miami Marlins and now we've been handed a Monday to deal with. How to cope? Well for metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is always a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as the sponsor of our Monday monologue, but this week we check out The Dude, Mad Men, Mayan calendars, Sosa-ian flashbacks, Benny Hill, and old-school strategy. Now that that’s all over, mix up some White Russians and chill.

M³, Volume 8: The Dude Abides

Like the Mets are the only team capable of coming back? Yet that Mother’s Day marring performance in the ninth inning Sunday was maddening. A month into his Mets tenure, Frank Francisco has knocked down the door into that high end group of volatile Mets closers, standing somewhere between another Francisco—Rodriguez—now a Brewer, and Braden Looper (the 2005 Looper, the one who imploded Opening Day, pitched the whole season with a bum shoulder, and didn’t tell anyone until he’d thrown away any postseason chance the team had). And for someone whose biggest past claim to fame was throwing a chair into the stands at Oakland Coliseum, Francisco’s ejection Sunday was embarrassing—and left his team in a no-win situation. The Marlins, who had played few games in their new stadium, and were having a closer crisis of their own, wound up with two wins for Heath Bell and long-term video board fodder of walkoff wins and dancing Fish.... 

On Friday, a friend called to say the Mets were playing with house money right now, the Marlins were hot, and he’d sign on for one of three in Florida. I pretty much agreed. From now on I sign on for nothing. The Miami drown machine series reminds me of the weekend in Chicago in May of 1996 when Generation K went off the tracks. Rookie Paul Wilson was just one out from a complete game win on Friday afternoon at Wrigley Field when Sammy Sosa, not yet the reincarnation of Babe Ruth that modern chemistry would make him into two years later, crushed a three-run walkoff home run off Wilson. Sosa did it again that Sunday against Jerry DiPoto. In between was a blowout Mets win by Bobby Jones, reminiscent of the easy win by R.A. Dickey this past Saturday. Thanks for the memories….

Friday night’s Mets game, the 8,000th in franchise history (still no no-no; no kidding), had one of those circumstances that makes National League baseball exciting. At least to me. Johan Santana has thrown 82 pitches through six innings. He has been masterful since a rough first inning, but he is still trailing, 3-2, and the Mets have the tying run in scoring position. What do you do if you’re Terry Collins? Well, he does what most of us would do: he sighs and sends in his best righty pinch hitter, Justin Turner, who is retired on one pitch. Now in the American League, there is no strategy to play along with. Turner is up anyway because he is serving as the designated hitter against the lefty starter. A different version of the same conundrum came up on Sunday, only with the ninth spot for Jon Niese coming up and the Mets looking to blast the game open. I think the DH has its place, but not in games I care about. I like the strategy, the novelty of a pitcher getting a hit, the execution of the bunt, and the pace. Let the AL keep its DH. If that creates problems for interleague play, get rid of that while you are at it. When the DH becomes the rule for all games in a couple of years because MLB has forced interleague play into the daily calendar, I’ll really miss these little bits of strategy to play along with at home. It’s their game, I’m just a spectator….

After Friday’s debacle of a denouement, I turned to an ace in the hole. I had never seen The Big Lebowski and, with the wife and daughter out of town on a school band trip, I borrowed the film from the library. People had always said how funny the movie was, but I had never seen it. I will still take Raising Arizona, which I saw in college—the only Coen brothers film I’ve seen in a theater—and to this day it is still the funniest pre-credit portion to a movie I have yet seen. The Big Lebowski, however, helped take the sting out of that ninth-inning loss. The Dude abides…. 

Sunday, Mad Men filled the role of soothing the mind after a meltdown of Franciscan proportions with a classic episode where much of the action took place in the characters’ and viewers’ head.…. 

And not to think I just sit around watching the boob tube by myself—with the ladies away, my son and I borrowed a film he needs to see before he gets too old: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. One of my favorites as a kid, the 1968 film still gives you a pat on the head as you age because of the presence of a Vulgarian toymaker played by Benny Hill. The only thing helping libidinous Mets fans tuned to Channel 9 in the final gloomy innings of a late 1970s night game was to hear the words, “And now stay tuned for the Benny Hill Show….” 

On the positive side, the New York Times reported on Friday that dead civilization calendar experts have reassuring news on the Mayan calendar, which some had interpreted as proof that life on this planet would end come this December. These experts relate that the calendar of this long-dead civilization is instead readjusting itself “like the odometer of a car rolling over from 120,000 to 130,000.” On the down side, though, we can’t count on the end of civilization to eliminate the obligation for the Mets to pay the last year of Frank Francisco’s two-year contract.

May 10, 2012

The Say May Kids

The Mets swept the Phillies. In May. They also did this in 2010—shut them out for three straight days just after Memorial Day—and that didn’t stop Philadelphia from winning the next three series from the Mets. The 2010 Mets won the last series of the year from Philly—after the Phils had wrapped up everything of meaning. And, it’s also worth noting that for the last three seasons, the Mets have had winning records in May—and were over .500 late in the season in 2010 and 2011—only to finish in complete irrelevancy.

This most recent series in Philly, though, was a thing of beauty. Each game was won by the Mets in the same fashion that they routinely lost at Citizens Bandbox against the young, always resurgent Phils. Maybe things are changing. Maybe the norm will settle back in. When the people who vehemently claimed they would boycott the Wilpons start showing up again in droves in Flushing, we’ll know it’s time to dust off the blue and orange bandwagon. Quoth Jasper from the The Simpsons: “By gar, it’s been a while.”

This might be another blip on the radar screen we’ll one day wonder how we could have gotten so worked up over. But right now it’s ecstasy in May. Beautiful, unpredictable, amazin’ May.

May 7, 2012

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as the sponsor of our Monday monologue, but this week we have look at math formulas, places where the Mets perform worse than Denver, tragedy in the NFL, the last word on Levon, the first word on Narwhals, and odd dream-like sequences.

M³, Volume 7: Pythagoras, Abacus, Barnabas

As we sit here before the Mets take the field in Philly, the Amazin’s own a 15-13 record despite scoring just 106 runs and allowing 134. Breaking out the eye shades, rolling up the sleeves, and going to the Pythagorean Winning Percentage formula, a team that scores that few runs and allows that many should have a 13-15 record. That does not mean the Mets will finish 22 games better than the law of averages, but a four-game swing this early is the season is another reason enough to feel good so far. Depending how you look at these things, it could be timely hitting, great managing, good old fashioned luck, or, more likely, a mix of all these. Whatever it is, be glad that the game is played on a diamond and not on an abacus.

When the Mets beat the Rockies in 11 innings at Coors Field, it was the first time they’d broken the Rocks there in extras. They’ve played five extra-inning games in 18 seasons at Coors. They had lost games there in extra innings in 1996, 2008, 2010, and let us not forget the longest and most aggravating game the Mets have played there, a game I called in Best Mets the fourth-most frustrating regular-season loss in team history: the 14-inning Twilight Zone-esque defeat to the Rockies on the night Coors opened in 1995. Lousy things just seem to happen to the Mets in Denver’s way too-friendly confines (humidor or no)—7-0 leads vanishing, 11-run innings, Dante Friggin’ Bichette—but the team’s actual record at Coors is 28-40, a .412 winning percentage. That is better than the Mets have fared at Dodger Stadium (.406), Pac Bell and its pseudonyms (.375), Turner Field (.344), Petco (.333), and a number of departed parks, including—get this—the original home of the Mets, the Polo Grounds. In their two seasons in Manhattan, the Mets were an appalling 56-105 (.348). Back to Colorado, though one of my favorite states, it’s hard for me to watch Mets games at Coors—I even missed Scott Hairston’s cycle after checking out following the 11-run inning. All things considered, I’d rather be in Estes Park….  

In the wake of the Junior Seau tragedy last week, it has been publicized that four out of five NFL players have some kind of immediate difficulty upon leaving the NFL, usually financial or marital. And it is a given that anyone who played in the NFL for any length of time has some physical issues as well. With all the money the league rakes in, an 80 percent rate of struggle post-NFL is inexcusable. That the NFL doesn’t care about its past is one thing, but that it does so little to aid its past players is something I hope the courts will take care of—and it still won’t help many who feel cast adrift after their playing days are over. The NFL has faced many challenges in 90-plus years of existence, but this may be its biggest test…. 

Last little bit on the passing of Levon Helm. Woodstock was essentially closed down for his funeral, and he was buried next to Bandmate Rick Danko. There have been many tributes by other bands to Levon, all of them seemingly playing “The Weight.” It is to the ever-loving credit of The Band that this tune is barely in my top five—ranking higher on my list are “Acadian Driftwood,” “Up on Cripple Creek,” “The Shape I’m In,” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” (“Don’t Do It,” “Back to Memphis,” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece” are awesome but not original Band compositions). Bruce Springsteen, was one of many to try on “The Weight” of late, but my favorite version by a guest is by the Staples Singers, who do their turn accompanied by The Band in Martin Scorsese’s incomparable The Last Waltz. And a one, two, three…  

Also close to my heart is my daughter’s 13-to-16 softball team, which debuted Sunday. It’s the first team in years in that age bracket in our town—covering Kerhonkson, Marbletown, and Rosendale—and coached by Wayne Decker and me. One of our three players named Ali stabbed a liner on a hop in right field and gunned the runner out at first with the bases loaded to end the game for the Narwhals (not the way it’s spelled on the uniforms, but there is a hypnotically awesome theme song). R.A. Dickey couldn’t get the complete game win on the hill in Flushing, but my daughter did—though with the opposite reaction of R.A. Huzzah for the underwater unicorns.… 

As someone who suffered countless severe nightmares as a kid as a result of the character Barnabas Collins on Dark Shadows, the scary soap opera of the late 1960s, I have to say I am a little insulted that the film version seems to be a slapstick comedy. My older brothers and sister watched it after getting off the bus. Four-year-old me felt cool watching with the gang at 4 o’clock every afternoon, even though it sent me scurrying to my parents’ room in a panic at 4 o’clock every morning. I remember that dopey show but recall nothing of the Miracle Mets drama running concurrently on Channel 9….

Speaking of odd dream-like sequences, I was at the Kingston Barnes & Noble on Friday and was looking at the R.A. Dickey book (I have the Kindle version; book review coming Tuesday). As I was looking at R.A.’s tome, a man standing behind me reached for the coffee table books on the Mets shelfed side by side: one by another company and one by me. I was sort of stunned for a second—the coincidence factor made it feel like a dream—but the fellow didn’t even look at the book he took, the other guys’ version. He just tucked it under his arm and walked to the check-out line. He was 75 feet past me in a few seconds. Too far to make a sales pitch that seemed more and more pathetic the farther he got away. So for all my self-promo moxie, I felt like I’d held the ball when I should have thrown home. Everybody’s safe.

May 2, 2012

The Stork and Friends, Getting Their Due

Some dream about retirement, some don’t want to think about it, some feel it is an outdated luxury, and some feel it is an entitlement. Being unable to see into the future, who can say what retirement will look like when I am directly affected? I leave it to others to argue about the merits and drawbacks of whatever system they are fortunate—or unfortunate—enough to be involved in (or not involved in). When it comes to baseball and retirement, however, I feel the obligation to chime in.

“Anyone who played even one day in the majors is of an athletic caliber that we in the stands can only imagine. They deserve their day, however belated.”

That is what I wrote to Doug Gladstone a couple of months ago. Gladstone, a journalist as well as the assistant public information officer for the New York Retirement System, helped prod MLB and the players association into an agreement to finally pay life annuities to former players not originally eligible to receive pensions. Hundreds of former major league players who didn’t qualify for any retirement benefits were finally rewarded for their contributions to baseball. 

Baseball takes care of its own, but until the agreement of 2011, MLB only took care of its own after 1980. It was 32 years ago, during contentious union-management negotiations that helped avert a strike—fleetingly, as it turned out—that provided benefits to anyone with even one game of major league experience after 1980. It was yet another in a long line of triumphs by the union over MLB owners, who had put the screws to players for decades under the reserve system. But under the 1980 agreement, those who played between 1947 and 1979 received nothing if they did not have at least four years of service time in the majors. This omission is especially egregious given the high-profile nature of the game, along with the fact that concessions to former players have been given in several other cases. 

This began when Gladstone was writing a piece for Baseball Digest and came across Jimmy Qualls, whom Mets fans know—or should know—as the villain who broke up Tom Seaver’s perfect game in the ninth inning on July 9, 1969. Qualls comes out the hero now. Gladstone remarked to the ex-Cub, now a farmer in his 60s, that at least he had his baseball pension to fall back on. Qualls informed Gladstone that he received nothing from MLB. And thus a crusade was born. 

Gladstone painstakingly put together the long and sad history of the pre-1980 players left out of the collecting bargaining agreement. Most of these guys were marginal players, the type you seemed to get two of in every pack of baseball cards you bought as a kid (if you bought your cards before 1980). The book that came out of Gladstone’s efforts, A Bitter Cup of Coffee (named after the proverbial “cup of coffee” that these 874 players got in the majors), examines the negotiating system as well as the lives of many of these people after baseball. Some have done fine. Others, who played during an era before exorbitant league minimums, are really struggling without these benefits.

The union and MLB, for the most part, contend in the book that this is the way collective bargaining is: someone is always left out. True, but that doesn't make it fair. Especially when the game is making out like bandits, while many who played in the era before big paydays, are being held up.

Gladstone kept putting the hard questions to MLB and the union. And both kept avoiding him, or pushing off the issue. That action was eventually taken is a "W" for him and for all the surviving ballplayers affected by the issue. Gladstone is happy that baseball has made amends with the annuity, but there are more concessions he thinks the pre-1980 players deserve.

“The life annuity payment plan is flawed,” he told me this week. “The payments end when the man dies.” So if a ballplayer dies tomorrow, his widow and son wouldn’t get the hard-fought payments due him in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016—the latter year is when the current collective bargaining agreement expires.

“Also, the men still are not permitted to buy into the umbrella health insurance coverage,” Gladstone said. “In 1993 the league awarded health insurance coverage to 39 vets of the Negro Leagues and their spouses. And these were guys who clearly didn’t have a contractual employment relationship with MLB. So from an employment benefits perspective, what the league and union are doing to the men I wrote about is comical.” 

Others have taken up the standard brought into battle by Gladstone, and there may one day be resolution on the issue, just like the annuity finally came the way of the players previously snubbed.

And what, you might ask, does this have to do with the Mets? Well George Theodore, the ever-loving Stork of 1973 fame, and one of the five all-time characters featured in Best Mets, was among those left out in the cold before Gladstone took up the issue. I talked to the Stork recently—Gladstone provided that contact (he has been working on me like he's been working the MLB and MLBPA). The Stork is as wonderful to speak to as he has been to think of in the 38 years since he last swung a bat at Shea Stadium.

Back in 1973, Theodore, a 31st-round pick out of the University of Utah four years earlier, stunned many in New York by making the team out of spring training. He was supposed to quickly be dispatched back to the minors, but a Minaya-esque number of injuries put the Mets in such a hole that the Stork stayed in New York, hitting .300 at one point until he too was injured in a horrific outfield collision with Don Hahn. He was never the same after that. He played with the 1974 Mets and spent 1975 at Tidewater before returning to the U. of Utah for his graduate degree. He has since embarked on a long and meritorious career as a counselor and social worker with elementary school students in Salt Lake. If you want to find out how people still feel about the Stork, check out his page at ultimatemets.com.  

“I just figured that when we played, you had to have four years in [the majors] to have a pension,” Theodore said. “I didn’t realize the other ways, how they used to grandfather things in before, whenever they made a new collective bargaining agreement. How they gave special recognition to many of the Negro League players and gave some compensation. So Doug took it on himself, his mission, that this was not fair for us players not to get part of a pension that he felt we should have. He’d been in labor relations and all of that, so he wrote the book.

“In fact, he even came out to [Salt Lake City to] promote his book at a bookstore here,” the Stork continued. “Now I’m thinking somebody had sent him and the publisher put him on tour, [but] he’s done this all on his own. He paid for that. Here’s another person that I’m indebted to. So now we’ve got some compensation through 2016 which wouldn’t have ever happened without Doug. You should get that book, A Bitter Cup of Coffee.” 

I can only reiterate what the Stork said.

A great scholastic athlete in his native Utah, Theodore didn’t look like your prototypical ballplayer, what with his nonstandard gait and thick glasses. He looked like that kid from the playground more than a major leaguer, plus who could resist his refreshing manner and love for marshmallow milkshakes (that comment on the back of his baseball card was reason enough for someone to plunk down a quarter in 1974 for a pack of cards). His story came to a crashing halt when he slammed into Don Hahn. He broke his hip and batted just once more the rest of the season, though he was kept on the postseason Mets roster and played in the 1973 World Series, for which he is still grateful to Yogi Berra today. We should be grateful for the Stork keeping people believing in `73 before it was decreed “Ya gotta believe.”

George Theodore is one of the good guys. And so is Doug Gladstone.

April 30, 2012

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as the sponsor of our Monday monologue. Last week ran a little Oakland-heavy and this week the thoughts are centered on the Mets 50th anniversary conference at Hofstra, like Metstock with Ed Charles instead of Country Joe and the Fish.

M³, Volume 6: Mets Life, A.C. (After Conference)

I had looked forward to the Mets 50th anniversary conference at Hofstra University since the day Dana Brand first told me about it in 2008. It was a long time in planning and some of the most beloved members of the Mets community never saw this weekend, including Dana, along with longtime Mets figures Bob Mandt, Jim Plummer, Jane Jarvis, “The Sign Man” Karl Ehrhardt, Gary Carter, and many others. Also taken too soon was Greg Spira, a good friend and hardcore fan who really would have enjoyed the conference. This past Friday, which would have been Greg’s 45th birthday, it was announced that SABR, an organization near and dear to his heart, will give an award annually in his name….  

I had to leave the conference before Saturday’s closing ceremony in order to attend a wonderful art opening in Chelsea by friend and artist Lynn McCarty. It was hard coming to the realization that the conference was over. The years of planning, the anticipation, the brilliant presentations, and the raw emotion I felt from so many of the participants made me feel the recent losses of friends Dana and Greg in the last year. But in a good way, a reflective way. The images of Shea Stadium’s demolition by Andy Richter made me feel once more the pull on the heart for the building so many of the people at the conference thought of—and still think of—as their second home. Of all the speakers I saw, the one I felt captured Dana’s spirit best was Judy Johnson, whom I didn’t get to talk to but whose work I have followed online. She wrote and read with the passion of an English professor who loves both the written word and the Metsian mystique, like Dana Brand. And saying anyone was the best at this conference is like saying one member of the 1986 Mets was better than everyone else. And that is how good her piece was. Bobby O. in ’86 good....

I want—no, need—to thank those who put this conference together, including Hofstra professors and co-directors Richard Puerzer and Paula Uruburu, conference coordinator Natalie Datlof, registration coordinator and old friend Jeannine Rinaldi, and all the staff members and students who helped out. Esteemed author and new friend Stanley Cohen made the strenuous trip, at my urging—being on a panel with him and old friend and mentor John Thorn was an honor. Thanks to Ron Kaplan, who ended up being my first roommate since college; getting to talk about the conference, baseball, and books as we watched the befuddlingly bad local news and the remarkably well-cast Shipping News made up for any of the stuff I missed during the daytime shuttling to three panels going on simultaneously. I got to spend time with people I will call colleagues but think of as friends in this Mets life: Jason Antos, Matt Artus, David Bagdade, Mike Cesarano, Kerel Cooper, Rob Edelman, Andy Esposito (who has a nice writeup of Best Mets in this month’s Mets Inside Pitch), Jason Fry, Jim Gates, Jay Goldberg, Leslie Heaphy, Steve Keane, David Krell, Lee Lowenfish, Mark Simon, Jon Springer, Ray Stillwell, and others I have neglected to mention or didn’t run into. And to everyone who lavished praise on my work and made me feel like, well, a big shot, all I can say is thank you. I truly was humbled…. 

Mr. Met was there on Friday, as was his co-author and Mets ambassador Rusty Staub, but I was surprised that I didn’t see anyone from the team’s front office, TV network, or websites. If they were afraid that people would hurl insults at them, it was a needless worry. The people attending the conference love the Mets, warts and all. If they are willing to trust the fans to do the right thing at Banner Day, they certainly should have trusted this crowd. If I had a say, I would have included a field trip to Citi Field on Thursday afternoon, even if it meant starting the sessions earlier or having them run later. I went to Thursday’s matinee on my own with Eric Aron and saw a hell of a game. Having not gone to a game this year, I could not justify sitting in a classroom listening to people talk about the Mets while the team played an actual game—and went for a sweep—just 15 miles away. During his epic 13-pitch at bat against Heath Bell in the ninth inning on Thursday, Justin Turner morphed into “Burner,” a reference to an old college buddy named Turner, who went with me to the Doc Gooden post-rehab rehab start in Lynchburg in April of ’87. Twenty-five years later in Flushing, I started shouting “Burner” from the upper reaches of the promenade, where Eric and I had retreated to get away from the late-day rain. I wound up missing most of the conference on Thursday, which was a shame, but there are only so many in-person, walk-off wins in the life of a Mets fan. I am glad I redeemed that one….

To me, and perhaps to those in attendance old enough to remember, the conference felt like the “Steve Henderson Game.” For those who don’t know the reference, the game in question occurred in June 1980, when Steve Henderson’s three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth capped a late rally from a 6-0 deficit for a Mets team making an unlikely—and ill-fated—run in the NL East. To those who lived through not just the Steve Henderson homer, but the dismal three years that preceded it, and the three drab years that followed it, the Hendu lightning bolt was a harbinger that things would one day be better—an Old Testament prophet spreading the vibe, “You just wait, meshugeners.” I don’t know if I can wait 50 years for another conference, or another World Series triumph, but I sleep better knowing that this elite guard of Mets fans is waiting with me. I want the Mets to win for these people. Man, do they ever deserve it.

April 25, 2012

Mets Conference Signing

I have already made my pitch and my point about coming to this weekend’s Mets 50th anniversary conference at Hofstra University (April 26-28), held in honor of the late author, Mets fan, and Hofstra professor Dana Brand. Be there or be square. I have some details about the book signings I will be taking part in. Here is the whole author signing schedule, which will be held in the multipurporse room at the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Thursday @ 12:30pm – Michael Shapiro

Thursday @ 8pm – Frank Messina

Friday @ 12:30pm – Frank Nappi, Matthew Silverman, David Bagdade

Saturday @ 12:30pm – Greg Prince

Saturday @ 3pm – Jason Antos

I will be the one with the bookmarks and bells on.

April 23, 2012

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as the sponsor of our Monday monologue, but this week we have thoughts on the late, great Levon Helm; the mustache view from Oakland; a metal German; Jack London; and Scott Hairston.

M³, Volume 5: Levon’s Legacy, Oakland Odyssey

I have to lead off with the passing of Levon Helm, who was one of my favorite musicians and singers. And now, in my rock and roll heaven lineup, Levon takes over the drumming when Keith Moon passes out, which is often. He plays the mandolin and sings the rest of the time. Levon was also sort of neighbor over in Woodstock, where he’d lived since Bob Dylan called the place home in the 1960s. Smitty and I even went over to Levon’s house for a ramble last year. We paid for the privilege but brought along some dessert as a tribute. Some house, some ramble, some man, some Band....

I heard about the leader of The Band’s demise while driving around Jack London Square in Oakland—and many friends sent word and condolences. I listened to The Band all weekend on Pandora from my hotel room. It helped me reflect and get revved up to talk to the 1972 A’s for a book I am doing—don’t worry, there is a New York angle as well. The A’s were pretty nice, if not pretty busy, but it was worth the effort just for the 15-minute face- to-face chat with Rollie Fingers—the first true Hall of Fame reliever, and one of the few pen men deserving of Cooperstown induction. If you have ever felt like you just could not stop staring at someone’s, let’s call it predominant feature, I was transfixed by the mustache. I can maintain my stare from a safe proximity at the Rollie bobblehead given away Saturday night....

I had been to San Francisco on several occasions, but I had only been to Oakland for an A’s game in 1997 and to Berkley for an evening a decade before that. I was either researching in the Oakland library, sitting in the press box, or driving around trying to find a damned parking space without paying through the nose or getting a ticket. (Not knowing the BART well enough to rely solely on—and Oakland has some dodgy neighborhoods—led me to rent the cheapest and smallest car available.) I was taken to dinner by publicist and SABR board member Paul Hirsch, and later went to the best burger chain in the country, but my favorite memory came during a Sunday morning walk to the farmer’s market when a dog barked like crazy at the statue of Oakland’s Jack London, author of perhaps the best book in the dog genre, The Call of the Wild....

Yes, in 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, I listed the Oakland Coliseum as the worst stadium the Mets have visited that I have also visited (I will gladly take anyone’s word for it and call it a tie with Tropicana Field). The view-blocking, soul-crushing Mount Davis in Oakland is about the ugliest thing I have seen at a ballpark—the extra seats for football sitting in the parking lot is another visual monstrosity. I ventured out each game, bought something to eat, and sat in an empty seat to dine. The food is better than the stadium: barbecue beef sandwich, soft tacos, and bratwurst (Gulden’s mustard available) were all good. The fries were mediocre, but they came in a cool, mid-size helmet the kids are already fighting over. The most unique item I purchased at the game was an apple for $1. It feels strange that I have thrice been to O.Co, as Raiders call the stadium, while not having been to Citi in 2012. Yet....

Plug alert: Best Mets and New York Mets: The Complete Illustrated History will be on sale after the author’s panel I am involved in Friday at the Hofstra Mets 50th anniversary conference on Friday. If you can't make it that day, come Thursday or Saturday. It will be the time of your young (or old) life. And if that is not enough hype, there will be metsilverman.com bookmarks as well….

As I type “metsilverman” on the IPad, it automatically becomes “metal German.” Achtung! And “achtung” comes out as “aching.” Oh, my aching metal German head after taking the red eye home Sunday night....

With the Giants here while I was there I noticed that Scott Hairston can’t hit and he can’t field, but the man can still slide!

April 19, 2011

The Mets Conference at Hofstra (April 26-28)

Up until now I have let others make the pitch for the 50th anniversary New York Mets Conference at the Hofstra University Cultural Center in Hempstead from Thursday, April 26, to Saturday, April 28. But now I am swinging the bat in the on deck circle, knee firmly on the Mets logo, and hands sticky with pine tar. 

It seems very strange that this event kicks off in just a few days. I received my first correspondence on this conference in November of 2008 from Dana Brand. A lot of people got that email—the conference was originally scheduled for November 2011—but upon consultation with the Mets, they moved it to the 2012 season. Because major league schedules aren’t set more than a year in advance, it turns out that the Mets leave town the day the event starts (April 26). If the weather is as nice as it’s been of late, tap me on the shoulder Thursday morning if you want to play hooky to see Mets-Marlins. I am sure Dana wouldn’t have minded me skipping out for my Opening Day. 

In fact, I think Dana would have enjoyed all of this. Hofstra Engineering department chair Richard Puerzer, who has been involved since the beginning, has carried through after what could not have been more difficult circumstances following Dana’s death last May. Paula Uruburu, like Dana, an English professor at Hofstra, has taken on the duties of co-director. And they have put together a great bill. I am not going to go into all the events going on, because you can see all that here. But I will list what I plan on checking out. Keep in mind that at any one time there might be three or more panels going on, so I plan to step in and out and check out as much as I can, but these are my leadoff spots. At least for now. If you don’t see me at something I highlighted or appear somewhere I didn’t mention, keep in mind that for this weekend I am a fickle little kid in a candy store with one of those big lollipops stuck to my face. 

Thursday, April 26

10:30-noon: Kathleen Lockwood on life outside the ballpark. Really enjoyed her book, Major League Bride, about her life in the majors with Mets reliever Skip Lockwood. 

Noon-1 p.m.: Brown Bagging in the Bullpen

An all-star lineup of Mets bloggers who will be around at lunchtime Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Many are friends of the site and all are worth listening to while you nosh: Matthew Artus and Matthew Callan (amazingavenue.com), Kerel Cooper (ontheblack.com), Michael Donato (ceetar.com/optimisticmetsfan.com), Shannon Shark (metspolice.com), Jason Fry and  Greg Prince (faithandfearinflushing.com), and Joe Dubin. 

An opening ceremony starts at 1 p.m., with John Thorn giving the keynote address and then there are several great panels in the afternoon, but I haven’t been to a Mets game yet and may not get to until June, so I may be promenade bound. But I will be rushing back for… 

4-5:30: A visit with prominent former sportswriters Hal Bock (AP), Stan Isaacs and Steve Jacobson (Newsday), plus Sal Marchiano, who has broadcast sports for every over-the-air channel in New York, plus Ed Ingles from Hofstra. I’ve had the chance to interview Marchiano and Jacobson and both have great tales to tell and were on the front lines. I remember walking by Marchiano doing a live remote outside Shea after the bleach-spraying incident of 1993.

6:45-8: Panel III-A: Charlie Vascellero, who wrote the definitive piece on the Sign Man a couple of years ago, takes on another one of my favorite subjects: Dave Kingman. James Holzmeister speaks on the 1977 “Midnight Massacre” that sent away Kingman and, of course, Tom Seaver. And Mets by the Numbers co-author Jon Springer of mbtn.net, who is pretty much a Mets blood brother, will also talk about Seaver. 

And then at 8 p.m. is a screening of Mathematically Alive, a film on baseball fandom (the Mets version). I saw this at an event I was at—jeez, was it four years ago?—and the film is a must. Even if you’ve seen it before.

Friday, April 27

9-10:30: Skip Lockwood on life as a player at Shea; John Saccoman, who wrote the Gil Hodges piece in the Miracle Has Landed, on Hodges; and esteemed author Lee Lowenfish on the wonder that was Jane Jarvis.

10:45-noon: Forgive the blatant use of boldface but… I will be on a panel about writing on the Mets, along with John Thorn (Baseball in the Garden of Eden), Stanley Cohen (A Magic Summer), and scholar Joseph G. Astmanon, with Metstock roomate Ron Kaplan (ronkaplansbaseballbookshelf.com) as commentator.

This day would have been Greg Spira’s 45th birthday, and I knew Greg well enough to say for a fact that he would have blown off both me and his former boss for a statistical analysis panel going on at the same time featuring friend of the site Mark Simon of ESPN.com. I miss Greg, his never-ending honesty, and Spock-esque logic.

1:30-3: After lunch with the All-Star bloggers is a session with Miracle Mets Bud Harrelson, Ed Kranepool, and Art Shamsky. 

3-4:15: Immediately following that is poetry with Ed Charles with an intro from George Vescey of the New York Times.

4:15-6: Vescey joins Mrs. Gil Hodges, Gil Hodges Jr., Ed Kranepool, and Joe Pignatano on life post Dodgers and pre-Mets.

6:30: VIP reception and dinner with the aforementioned Mets on hand, plus a keynote speech from Rusty Staub. I bought a ticket for the reception and dinner.

Saturday, April 28

9:30-11: Chris Horgan, Peter Carino, and Jeffrey Kroessler will all be presenting on Shea Stadium.

11:15-12:30: Sustainable practices at your ballpark. Or, as I might put it: How to avoid having the surface of the earth covered entirely in plastic refuse by the time the Mets turn 150. At the same time are two other panels, including one with Greg Prince on the Mets dictionary.

1:30-3: Always wanted to meet Joseph Antos, who put together the very cool Images of Baseball: Shea Stadium.

3:15-4: This is where it winds up with bits on Metmoirs from Taryn Cooper, John Coppinger, Steve Keane, and Greg Prince. And I will be there until the last minute listening to talks about Mets uniforms and baseball cards.

I sort of wish I were more involved, but I am also quite excited that I will be able to flit in and out of all the different panels, plus I’m done with worrying about public speaking after Friday morning. I know I left out a lot of the cool stuff on the full itinerary, much of which I will probably check out, but right now I am checking out.

I am flying to California to cover another team’s alumni event for a book I’m doing, then coming back on a redeye for my daughter’s confirmation, and help coach both of my kids softball/baseball teams. The point is, this is a really busy time—and I beg the pardon of my fellow bloggers and writers for not being able to link their work in this post but I am up at 3:30 in the morning to get to the airport. Yet I am making sure this conference gets my full attention. Like an All-Star Game hosted by the Mets, there is a good chance only one such conference will occur in your lifetime. Make time to attend. It is only a $40 daily rate ($45 on Friday), or $100 for all three. Hofstra students get in free. And so you don’t think I’m talking big because I got comped, I paid for it all myself, along with a hotel room so I won’t lose anything to commuting.

I know a few people unable to make it due to other commitments. I feel for them. Like a playoff game you might have missed, we’ll be here to tell you all about it, but it won’t be anything like being there in the flesh. This is like having Shea back for three more days. And I know Dana would have liked that.

April 16, 2012

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as the sponsor of our Monday monologue, but this week we have promos for the Red Sox radio network, SNY, ESPN, AMC, and the President of the South Florida Chapter of the Foot in Mouth Society.

M³, Volume 4: Speaking of Revolutionaries

In between jackhammer bursts from the workman next door, I hear what sounds like play by play of a ballgame. Fella must be listening to a rebroadcast of last night’s Yankees game. Who listens to radio rebroadcasts any more? Must be a big fan. That has to be it because there’s no game being played at 11:10 in the morning on a Monday. Then it hits me, that’s not the Yankees—it’s the Red Sox. And today is Patriots Day. A rare holiday for state employees—and hard work for Boston Marathoners—that I recall fondly and enviously from my days in western Mass. What could be better than baseball, hooky, and celebrating the start of the American Revolution? But my Patriots Daydreaming is interrupted by a phone call from the dentist. Did I forget my 11 o’clock appointment? In New York it’s still just another Monday….

I am a little afraid to say anything about the Mets starting rotation so far for fear of jinxing them—or coaxing them back to reality with faint praise—but they have been the reason for the 6-3 start. And despite a couple of bad outings by the bullpen, I have almost come to look forward to seeing Jon Rauch’s neck tattoo….

Power ranking are kind of dumb, but when your team is doing well you want to revel in them. And when the Mets were undefeated that first weekend, ESPN had them ranked—17th? The Yankees, winless at the time, were nine spots ahead. The top three spots after the first weekend went to undefeated Detroit, Tampa Bay, and Arizona. The Orioles, also 3-0 at the time, were three spots behind the Mets, at number 20. I guess this is why power rankings are kind of dumb.….

And when the Mets went to 4-0 last week, they beat the Nationals with eight homegrown Mets in the starting lineup, the first time the team had done that since April 19, 1990. That 4-1 win over Don Zimmer’s Cubs featured Tidewater-fed Mets Gregg Jefferies, Keith Miller, Mark Carreon, Dave Magadan, Barry Lyons, Kevin Elster, Doc, and Straw. The only import in the 1990 batting order was Howard Johnson, a far cry from April 9, 2012 lineup interloper Jason Bay, who was once a Mets farmhand for a few months (and is hitting like a minor leaguer again). Ironically, the 1990 homegrown win was one of Davey Johnson’s last as Mets manager. Twenty-two years later, he was victimized in the other dugout by the farm-fresh Mets in both ends of the ninth inning thanks to the play he so famously hated in New York: The bunt!...

After the first couple of episodes of this year’s Mad Men, I had a slight fear that the show might be starting a delayed production spiral like the one that turned the last few years of Matt Weiner’s last show, The Sopranos, into a slog of enduring two dull episodes for every good one. After watching the two most recent Mad Men episodes in succession Sunday night, twi-night doubleheader style, I’m sorry I ever doubted. He even had me feeling a slight touch of sympathy for lascivious lout Pete Campbell. Those Greenwich girls will break your heart, Pete. And those British blokes will break your face….

I was transfixed by the Ozzie Guillen press conference—clarification, the third Ozzie Guillen press conference, held last Tuesday. I will not make the same mistake and use a comparison regarding a specific group, but every ethnicity has a line that you do not cross and Ozzie not only crossed it, he pulled down his pants. He also potentially alienated a part of the fan base the Marlins must capture to survive in Miami, once the paint dries on the new stadium. Following Guillen’s mea culpa in two languages, ESPN interviewed Dan Le Batard, a prominent Miami columnist who co-hosts a fun TV show with his dad. His parents left everything behind in Cuba, and Le Batard had just spoken with his mother, who still cries thinking of how Fidel Castro’s regime forced her to flee her homeland. She felt that Guillen, a longtime Miami resident, has genuine remorse and shouldn’t be forced out of his dream job less than a week after debuting with the team. If she is happy with the apology, who am I to say differently? Though if I were the MLB poobah, I would have doubled the suspension. Ten games would be more of a lesson for others to shut the hell up when talking about sensitive matters they know nothing about. We can say anything we want to in America, but that does not mean what we say shouldn’t have consequences. Just because there is a microphone in front of your face—or a keyboard at your fingertips—does not require you to say the first thing that comes in your head at the expense of people who have suffered. It’s not being politically correct—it’s knowing one’s place in the world and respecting it.

April 11, 2012

Happy 50th, My Love

It’s always great when a really good friend is just a little bit older than you. You two are close enough in age to share most everything, but you retain just a bit of youth and the right to give some good-natured ribbing about age to someone who always gets there just before you. I grew up in a household where the mom was just a little older than the dad and I am slightly younger than my spouse. Same goes with my other mate for life, for better or for worse, in sickness or in health: The New York Mets. 

The Mets played their first game 50 years ago today, also a Wednesday, the night following a rainout in St. Louis. They lost the game at what people recall today as Sportsman’s Park, or if they are under the influence, the first Busch Stadium (now on the third round). The 1962 Mets did a lot of losing that first year and have generally lost more than they’ve won. In all, 17 of the existing 30 major leagues franchises have losing records in their history, with the Mets owning a .479 percentage,  behind the Royals—believe it or not—but ahead of the Guillen-otined Marlins and Bud’s Brew Crew at .477. Five teams, all from the older National League, have won 10,000 games. The Phillies, a .473 franchise, are not among them—in fact, the Phils have the most losses in major league history and are the only club more than 1,000 games below .500. So in those celestial standings, at least, the Mets hold a substantial lead that won’t be the end of the world if they blow in a decade or two. Pending a call-up for injured David Wright, who was poised to become the all-time Mets RBI leader, 923 men have hit the field in variations of orange and blue (we shan’t mention the black period). That’s an average of 18-plus athletes per year we wish we were.

You can only fit so much sentiment on a birthday card, but I wrote a bit more in a gift or two I had specially made for the occasion. I am glad you’ve been there for me all these years, dear old friend. I hope the feeling is mutual.

April 9, 2012

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as the sponsor of our Monday monologue, with this week is also brought to you by the MLB merchandizing department, The Bing Bang Theory, and a beatdown of the Braves—and the critics—for a change.

M³, Volume 3: A Bazinga of a Beginning

Just got back from Orlando. Did I miss anything? Oh, just the first Mets opening sweep coinciding with the Yankees getting swept to start a season in 27 years. I was at college in 1985 and missed that beginning as well—and that year the Mets started out 5-0…. This will be the first opening homestand I have not attended since I was in college, but it was my mother-in-law’s 75th birthday and she wanted to take the kids to Disneyworld. I don’t miss the opener for just anybody…. I still have baseball-related fodder generated from the Magic Kingdom. I looked past the sea of humanity constantly passing by like we were all fish under the sea. (Sorry, but after a few days you get used to hearing a Disney song every five minutes or so.) My daughter and I made a game of gauging which major league teams were best represented by the garb worn by visitors in the Disney parks. We saw people wearing clothing from all 30 teams, with the Angels finally chiming in on the last day—not surprising given that they play in the home to Disneyland: Anaheim (not Los Angeles). Who would want to go to the hassle of going across the country to Florida when the original is right in your backyard? Anyway, here’s the top 10 team garb spied at Disney during Easter week. MLB marketing department, take note:

1. Yankees

2. Phillies

3. Tigers

4. Red Sox

5. Braves

6. Cubs

7. Mets

8. Twins

9. Reds

10. Pirates

The Brewers had a lot of early support before fading and the Rays nearly stole the last spot at the last minute, but Tampa Bay did that last fall on the field and so they can cool their heels this spring on the fashion runway. Yankees and Phillies garb seemed to appear with the precision and routine of a Main Street USA parade. (I’ll stop now, really.) And what of the team that is supposed to be taking Florida by storm, the Miami Marlins? That new logo, even uglier in the flesh than in pictures, barely registered as many Magic Kingdom views as Big Bang Theory “Bazinga” t-shirts. And even Sheldon couldn’t infuriate Miami’s Cuban community like Ozzie Guillen, who’s in it up to his neck in the deep stuff after one weekend on the job. I’ll give the Mets a big bazinga for their unscientific seventh-place finish in the garb wars and for sweeping the Braves to begin the year. The Tigers also opened with an impressive sweep and had a lot more support at Disney than I would have imagined. I still can’t get over all the Pirates gear I saw. Bradenton is two hours away from Orlando while Kissimmee, home of the Astros, is next door, and there were only a handful of Houston hats. The Pirates prove that Disney is a fami-lee attraction…. These are the kind of clunkers I come up with when I miss Opening Day and the first series. And I mean I didn’t even see a highlight. There was exactly one sentence about Saturday’s game in Sunday’s Orlando Sentinel. But once back in New York and turning on the car radio to WFAN was music to my ears when the first caller said the Mets might just surprise some people and the second caller complained about Joe Girardi calling for intentional walk in the first inning of the first game. You have to enjoy vacation—even a vacation from reality—while you can.

March 30, 2012

Letters to the Met-idor, Guest Host Edition

I’m two weeks into the Mets Monday Monologue and here I am explaining that I’ll be unable to do the next one, or for that matter, toss in a clever seeming April Fool’s parody. So on April 1, or later, look at the Mets roster. The joke should be pretty obvious.

As a replacement I am bringing in--at great expense—the old stand-by Letters to the Met-idor, in which you write in, I write back, and the good times—or something like it—ensues. 

Josh Lewin, New Mets Announcer, Checks In

Dear Met,

Josh Lewin here, new Howie Rose sidekick... love your blog, and I’m interested in purchasing a Maple Street for 2012 ASAP... I’m sure they’re on the newsstands in NYC but since I’m heading straight to Port St Lucie from here in Dallas, can I get one sent down there?

Thanks for your help, Matt! I look forward to getting to know you this spring and summer. Your writing (both in blog and book form) is fantastic—you have totally helped me fill in the holes between my Mets fandom days ('77-'95) and the present.

Mucho appeciado,
Josh

------------------------

Josh,
Hey, thanks for the kind words and congratulations on the new gig.

Unfortunately, because of financing issues Maple Street Press was unable to produce any of the previews for 2012. Last year, there were two Mets preview magazines—ours and Amazin’ Avenue—but talking to Eric Simon at Amazin’ Avenue a little while back, he didn’t think he would be putting one out this year, either. [Note to Josh and everyone else, there is an electronic guide due out in April from Mets Merized Online.]

Some would say you’re starting with the Mets at a tough time, Josh. I’d say you’re getting in on the ground floor. There is no group of fans that cares more about its team than Mets fans. When they get this all together, you—and all of us—can say we were there when. Howie knows about it better than anyone.

Best,
Matt

Checking on ’98 Choking

Hey great book! Lifelong Mets fanatic. One question: Why not one word in Best Mets about the final game of ’98? If they win they tie for wild card. It ends with, of all things Turk Wendell (I believe), hitting a batter on an 0-2 count to lose it... ughhhh!!!!

Frank J. Dirig
Endicott, NY

---------------------------

Frank,

It’s funny how greater, more recent tragedies can wipe out the devastation of earlier traumatic incidents. If you look on the list of five most heartbreaking Mets losses, the first two are the last day of 2007 and 2008, followed by the Castillo dropped popup in 2009. I think most people would back me up on those, as well as the number five heartbreaker lock: The last game in St. Louis that essentially ended the Mets’ bid for the 1985 NL East title. Listening to Jack Buck call that game on the radio from my dorm room was like death. That game made me forever loathe Jack Buck and his progeny—and I had liked the man’s work on Monday night NFL and playoff radio broadcasts with Hank Stram.

The wild card in all this is number four on the list of heartbreakers: The first game of 1995, when the Mets repeatedly blew leads in a mile high Wiffle ball game in Denver that established brand-new Coors Field as a circle of hell for visitors. Due to bitterness over the just-ended strike, I was actually trying to boycott baseball at the time and only listened to only a couple of pitches of that game. My boycott attempt was as ultimately successful as Mets relief pitching in that first game at Coors. Yet the game’s very existence still annoys me enough to make the list. (And I still hate watching games from Coors Field enough that I have yet to attend a game there, even though I am quite fond of the Rocky Mountain State otherwise.)

But the end of the 1998 season was kind of like 2007, where the game was over early. Armando Reynoso, whom I liked, got lit up and Hideo Nomo pitched in relief in what would be the pair’s last games as Mets. The team never got closer than three runs in the 7-2 loss and sat home while the Giants and Cubs played a one-game playoff the next night. (Its overall affect on the Mets psyche is somewhat muted by the team pulling out a 1999 postseason berth in thrilling fashion.)

The game from 1998 that still sticks in my craw is the Carl Pavano/Ugueth Urbina shutout I witnessed at Shea earlier in the final week against a stone dead Expos team against a pitcher whose next outing would be famous for surrendering Mark McGwire’s mammoth 70th home run. (A mammoth being a majestic creature that’s somehow extinct while admitted cheater McGwire remains employed as a teacher of impressionable ballplayers. Go figure.)

So that mid-week September 1998 loss to the Expos, giving Montreal a sweep of the two-game Shea finale series, meant the Mets needed to do well that weekend in a three-game set in Atlanta against a Braves team that already had 103 wins and would have 106 by weekend’s end. And we have already established how well that went.

There wasn’t room for this long explanation in Best Mets anyway. So consider this extra credit. Thanks for reading.

Best,

Matt

Give 10 Catch by 10 Its Due

Dear Met,

How was Endy’s catch omitted from the last revision of 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die!? It was the last great play to take place at Shea and if it wasn’t for Beltran staring at a fastball the next inning we would have gone on to win a third World Series. Instead that couplet of events is just another almost page of Mets history, but one that should burn enough in our hearts to be in the book.

Derek Sekuler

----------------------------

Derek,

Thanks for reading. While Endy’s catch may not be numbered among 100 Things, it does get its due in number 48 (p. 126 of the paperback). That chapter, “Seventh Heaven and Hell,” discusses every Game 7 the Mets have played—only one of four has turned out the way Mets fans would want.

I was at the game in 2006 and had a great view of Endy’s leap, but to be honest I can’t think of that catch without thinking about how the Mets lost the pennant to the Cardinals a few innings later. (And, for the record Carlos Beltran went down looking at a knee-buckling curve.)

I don’t know if you recall Endy’s similar catch (though not as much extension) against the Marlins in the last game at Shea, but once Florida won the game and knocked the Mets out of the 2008 postseason picture, the catch was relegated to the rubble heap along with the ballpark. I don’t recall the catch ever being shown on TV after that day.

These kind of arguments are what make baseball fun. There’s more such rankings in a book of mine just out, Best Mets.

Endy’s two catches are included among the five most heartbreaking losses (regular season and postseason). I wish Endy the best in Baltimore. 

Best,

Matt

One for Our Side

Dear Met,
I just read your book, 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die. The book was given to me by my manager as a gift even though she is a Banke$$ fan! LOL. I really enjoyed reading about the history of the Mets from Casey and Ron Hunt to Johann and Beltran even though the latter is gone for good. I must admit I am a 1986 convert. Yes, a bandwagon fan that unfortunately never jumped off the wagon since.

While I was working for the company Cuisinart in Greenwich, CT, back in 1986, my boss was an avid Mets fan and his family owned box seats behind third base, about 20 rows back. He took me to four games, but unfortunately no playoff games… Sob, Sob… I was caught up with all the frenzy of the season and the gut-wrenching playoff series vs. Houston and the dreaded Mike Scott! Thank God we avoided that most certain loss! Then of course, the Buckner error, which had me jumping for joy in my living room!!!

Ever since, it has been heart-break city, all the way from the 1988 NLCS loss to the Dodgers (ironically, to one of their parents from Brooklyn) to the 2000 loss to the Evil Empire and then ending up with Beltran’s bat on his shoulder! Of course, it has been downhill all the way with the 7 up and 17 games to go collapse to the $50 million payroll cut to the 2012 roster ala the Wilponzis. Why did I ever root for these guys? Fate? love for hopeless causes? I don’t know. Being a life-long Jets fan is no better! And their last win was the year man was on the moon as well! I definitely plan to read your other books and let’s hope by a miracle the Mets can somehow repeat 1986 within the next decade!

Best Wishes,

Gene Casciari,

Stamford, CT

---------------------------- 

Dear Gene,
Bandwagon fans who hold on when the going gets rough are worth their weight in gold. I came across the team sort of by accident a decade before you (a tale told in the introduction of 100 Things, which actually resulted in a school board member reconnecting me to my grammar school—something both unexpected and gratifying).

The Mets are the ultimate test of will. When I got on the bandwagon, if 1975 can be called such a season, the Mets and Yankees were both playing at Shea. After the Mets finished third my first two seasons following the team, I assumed they would have to get better. As I learned from The Odd Couple, re-run five or six times daily in 1977, when you assume, “you make an ASS out of U and ME.” The Mets stunk from sixth grade until I was in college, so when the team got good in 1984 and I had the summer of freshman year to soak them in, it was heaven. Oh, the heavenly feeling when they won in 1986. I think a lot of us assumed they’d win more world championships. Didn’t The Odd Couple teach us anything?

Keep the faith, Gene. There’s plenty of other books on the subject to keep you busy while we wait once more on the Mets. It’s hard to believe my kids are now experiencing the same kind of Mets lean years at the same age as I did. Luckily, they like to play sports more than watch them. They’ll learn...

Best,
Matt


Bro Hung with R.A., Old School

Dear Met,

I enjoy your blog and books. I picked up 100 Things by chance at Duane Reade a few weeks ago and loved it. I am a baby Mets blogger myself, although I've been lazy about updating. My brother knew R.A. Dickey in high school, so I guess that’s my Mets connection.

Take care,

Joe

 ---------------------------- 

Hey Joe,

Thanks for the note and for the info that you got the book at Duane Reade. Most of the time I don’t know where they sell the books. It’s certainly not Barnes & Noble, which puts out half a dozen of my books, sells out and doesn’t order more. But I digress.

Liked your blog and the story about your roots as someone from the nontraditional Mets proving ground (read Long Island) who wound up stuck with the Mets. I grew up 30 minutes from Shea (away from Long Island), surrounded by Yankees fans. I was watching those 1979 Mets you missed when your grandmother took you to the Reds game. Picking the Phillies was the smart choice. Then or now, sorry to say.

Best,

Matt

On Greg Spira

Note: This note is emblematic of many notes I received in the days after Greg Spira’s passing. Most of these people I had never personally had contact with before. It shows the diverse group that was touched by Greg. Thanks again to all.

Dear Met,
I read your piece on Greg Spira. I only met Greg in person on a couple of occasions but I knew him for around 20 years, having first crossed paths online around 1989-90.  Back then, we used to talk about baseball on the phone frequently, and it was always a great conversation.

My interest in the sport faded over the years, and we lost touch at times, but we always reconnected, and had chatted as recently as a couple months ago.  He said he wasn't feeling that great, but that was usually the case, and it was a shock to find out that he had passed away.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that you wrote a really nice tribute to a very good man.

Andrew Fruman

----------------------------  

Andrew,
Thanks for writing and for the kind words. I was just counting how many different books Greg and I worked on together and I stopped at 10. I obviously never lost the sports bug and it enabled me to write about something I liked. Greg fell in the same boat.

It’s hard to appreciate someone who worked so hard to keep so many connections going until you try to replicate it, or until that person is gone. In all my correspondence of Greg since his passing, I always try to balance the reality of the situation with, "he could drive you nuts, but...” He’s driving me a little nuts now in not being there. And come baseball season it will probably start all over.

Best,
Matt

March 28, 2012

Viva El Birdos 

While the Arizona Cardinals can light up this site—or at least light up this site’s founder when all is right with the world—I am not a big fan of the baseball Cardinals. But let’s face it, they are a much, much better franchise than my Cardinals will ever be. And they pretty much have the Mets buried as well. In four do-or-die moments, the Cards beat the Mets in 1985, ’87, and, who can forget, 2006. I’d trade the one the Mets did win, 2000, to change history on any of those aforementioned dates. 

Larry Borowsky put together the Maple Street Press Cardinals Annual that was a distant relative to the Mets one I churned out until the company could no longer make it. But Larry, whom I know only from his work, marshaled his forces and put together an E-annual that matched the name of his site, Viva el Birdos. I would do an annual for the Mets, if I got purchase orders for 1,000 of these up front. These annuals are hard to do, and I was actually glad I did not have to do it this winter because co-editor Greg Spira passed on in December and it would have been a kind of sad exercise in more ways than one. So Mets Nation went from two annuals per spring to none in one year. But if the Mets had won the 2011 World Series like the Cardinals, I would have said to hell with it and gone for it like Larry did. And he did a hell of a job for $3.

I read all the articles on my I-Pad. On my device it came in at 159 pages on the standard setting. I don’t know how many pages that would translate to in the annual format. When I worked on the Mets Annual, my favorite part was going through tons of pictures and working out headlines and captions, but I-Pads and e-readers are not quite there graphic-wise yet, so Viva el Birdos instead uses numerous charts to spiff things up. And these are also pretty helpful.

Among the things I learned:

• The Cardinals farm system is light years ahead of the Mets. And not just now, but for the last quarter century.

• I also learned that when Gary Carter came up in Game 6 with two outs, the Mets had just a 1 percent chance of winning that Series, which is as far from reality as any team in history that has ever won. One more reason to love and miss the Kid.

• Mike Fitzgerald, the first-time-up-in-the-majors-homering, otherwise light-hitting Mets catcher before Gary Carter, was more like Yadier Molina offensively than you might think. Just don’t tell Fitz about Yadier’s new $75 million contract. 

There is just one pure history piece in this e-dition, but it’s a keeper: a look at the 40-year-old Steve Carlton-Rick Wise trade from a 1972 viewpoint, using the accepted stats of the day and the advanced numbers of today to examine the deal critically. The Cards still got hosed, but it’s not as bad as you’ve been led to believe (especially since the Cards sent Wise to Boston for Reggie Smith and got good production from the other Reggie before giving him away to L.A.).

One thing I can admit now: The Mets Annual always had a much larger history section than any other team annuals the company did. The first year we did it was the last year at Shea and so we went hog wild there. After that we kept a firm grip on the past each spring. And as 2009, 2010, 2011 came around, who really wanted more of the present? Or the future, what with Omar Minaya’s recommended slot slop, many of whom are out of the game now, stuck in the minors, or with other teams. Glad we didn’t waste your time with that

<> <> <>

Had a nice interview with Pete Spadora on Sports and talking Best Mets on March 24. Click here to hear.

March 26, 2012

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th year, the first day of the work week is a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as the sponsor of our Monday monologue. 

Today’s topics include the falling Mets market, lefties, center field (not the John Fogerty song), Tebow, Berkman, Swedish hackers and Madison Avenue’s finest, a far out Far East Opening Day in the middle of the night, and words to live by from Jerry Izenberg. 

M³, Volume 2: Zou Bisou Bisou!

The Mets are sixth in the Forbes franchise rankings. While teams always dispute these rankings, one thing you can’t argue with is that the Mets are falling. For years the Mets ranked second or third in franchise value. Now they are sixth, trailing the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, Cubs, and Phillies. The Dodgers are up 75 percent in value over last year. See what a little MLB takeover and new ownership can do?... I can’t understand why lil’ Danny Herrera isn’t the favorite to fill in as lefty on call in the Mets pen. He pitched nicely last year after coming from Milwaukee and he may have the later years John Franco-esque guile—and size—that gets people out with slop…. It’s a back-to-the-future feeling in center field for the Mets. Remember the early 1970s when Tommie Agee was slipping, Amos Otis was given away, and Don Hahn and the ghost of Willie Mays shakily manned that position in a World Series? Del Unser, where for art thou? And who is the next Lee Mazzilli for us to wait on?…. It was Tim Tebow as much as anyone who kept the Jets out of the playoffs last year, courtesy of his Thursday night comeback in Denver. Now he has the chance to keep the Jets out of the playoffs two years in a row. I like Tebow, or any person who can force the winning-is-all-that-matters pontificators to reach into their bag of BS for more adjectives and empty arguments. I think Tebow would have fit in better with the Cardinals, who need a QB as badly as the Mets need a CF….  For those who’ve tried to quit the Mets and can’t, someone who is living out of market and is smarter than most of us, David Brooks of the New York Times, has gone back to his pack a day habit of Mets addiction. We all need a drag. (Thanks to old pals at Loge13 for the link and for picking this up a couple of weeks back.)… Quite a Sunday doubleheader for me: finally got to see Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the season’s first Mad Men. Both ran a little long but I would call it a twinbill sweep.... And thank you, Lance Berkman, for using the term “extortion” about MLB forcing the new owner of the Astros to agree to shift to the AL West in 2013 so we can all enjoy/endure interleague play every day (which Bud Selig will probably soon use to justify changing both leagues to the DH). Why a league shift has to wait more than a year while the extra playoff teams are rammed down our throats weeks before this season starts is something that maybe MLB can explain in another ad in the Houston Chronicle…. Does anyone know—or care—that the Mariners and A’s are opening the season Wednesday in Japan? The 3 a.m. Opening Day pitch won’t inconvenience those fans on the West Coast too much.... For the rest of the teams, the final full week of spring training calls to mind the words of Jerry Izenberg, the longtime sports writer who was astute enough to call his book about Game 6 of the 1986 NLCS, The Greatest Game Ever Played. He said, “Watching a spring training game is as exciting as watching a tree form its annual ring.” Here’s to more trees and to games that count. I hope Tebow is praying for us.

March 19, 2012

Mets Monday Monologue

For metsilverman.com’s fifth season and the Mets’ 50th anniversary we are making the first day of the work week a Mets Monday Monologue, with tidbits and observances from the Mets and the world at large. Want to learn more about the best of Mets history? Check out Best Mets. Think of that book as the sponsor of our Monday monologue. 

Today’s topics include Las Vegas, the Mets owners having something positive to report for the first time since Bobby V. was on the payroll, the professionalism of the Mets radio announcing team, Daniel Murphy, Peyton Manning, Don Draper, spring training losing streaks, NCAA tourney upsets, and, of course, bowling and the fashion wisdom of R.A. Dickey and Monty Cappelletti.

M³, Volume 1: Betting the Under... Dog

I’m surprised Las Vegas hasn’t come up with an over-under line for Johan Santana. Let my first act of the season be to grab the croupier’s rake and set the number of major league starts this year that will be made by Johan. The number, and this is adjusted upward after watching him pitch on TV a couple of times, is 16 starts. No more bets, please. No more bets… And speaking of gambles, the Wilpons almost got to the courthouse steps Monday before settling their clawback suit with Madoff trustee Irving Picard for $162 million, which they don’t have to pay for three years. And the Mets paid some other outstanding debts as well. Now I’d be really impressed if they could get a player or two to strengthen the game’s weakest bench for the game’s most injury-plagued franchise.… A little piece of info I recently got from Howie Rose is that while he is in Florida covering Islanders hockey this week, Howie is hitting Port St. Lucie and calling games with new broadcast partner Josh Lewin. The broadcasts are just for them to practice, not for us to hear. To have a couple of guys who have been in this business for such a long time doing that to get better acquainted shows what professionals they are. Wish we could get a dose of them midweek instead of a few extra hours of the Sports Pope…. I hate to be a downer, but if Daniel Murphy keeps sticking his knee between the runner and the base on tag plays at second base he is going to get horribly hurt playing that position for the third straight year. And he was doing it on TV last week. I’d trade Murph to a team that needs a first baseman or DH and get back some pitching before someone slams into his leg. Again…. If the Mets can get this year’s eight-game losing streak out of the way in spring training, then the whole Grapefruit season has been worth it…. I cannot wait for the new season to begin—for Mad Men…. There was a rumor for a couple of days that Peyton Manning might be heading to the Arizona Cardinals, but now he’s going to Denver to wreck the city’s happy marriage with Tim Tebow. Maybe that decision will work out for the Cards. They got Peyton’s backfield mate Edgerrin James in 2006 and he wasn’t half the man he’d been with the Colts…. The NCAA tournament has been a lot of fun already. I admit I missed both number 15 teams beating the number 2 seeds, but mucho kudos for Lehigh and Norfolk State, not to mention South Florida, patron club of Faith and Fear. But my heart was broken before the tournament even began—please don’t insult us by declaring those play-in qualifiers to be first-round tournament games—when my beloved Iona blew a 25-point lead to BYU and wound up left at the altar in Dayton…. Now on to bowling. While Mets bowling night in Port St. Lucie isn’t really worth commenting on, the whole exercise is worth it just to see footage of R.A. Dickey sporting a bowling shirt. As always, the man just gets it. And I think we just might have a new model for the Monahan’s Department Store’s “Regular Guy Look.”

March 14, 2012

My Messy Jesse Year

I have now been doing this site long enough to have a fifth year and a fourth anniversary. Ugh. It’s that confusing kind of math that has the Mets complete 50 seasons in 2011, yet 2012 marks 50 years of Mets baseball. Pull out your fingers and count, if you don’t get it. So with the ugly bit of math out of the way… now the fun starts. Bob Murphy used to say that on a Mets promo from one of those first 50 seasons—or is it 50 years?

If my first paragraph didn’t send you scurrying away, congratulations. You are an old school Mets fan, regardless of your age. The kind of fan who cannot be turned off by cloudy math, lousy teams, clueless ownership, mediocre settings, and trying to compete for market share with the happeningest, bandwagoniest win(dbag) machine this side of the outer boroughs. And as in years past, I adopt a former Mets uniform number that corresponds with my age, and proclaim it as my own for a year. Here’s the metsilverman.com roll call:

2008: Age 43—My Terry Leach Year, #43 (number worn, 1981-82)

2009: Age 44—My Ron Darling Year, #44 (number worn, 1983-84)

2010: Age 45—My Tug McGraw Year, #45 (number worn, 1965-67, 1969-74)

2011: Age 46—My Neil Allen Year, #46 (number worn, 1979-80)

2012: Age 47—My Jesse Orosco Year, #47 (number worn, 1979, 1981-87)

I can only hope there is a Turk Wendell Year for #99.

I love that it’s worked out that all the years are pitchers numbers, and that four of them are relievers. The bullpen is a great place to accumulate pranksters, late bloomers, and guys who go out there and get people out even on days when they’ve got nothing. Jesse Orosco sort of fit into all these categories. And he is the most durable pitcher in history; not in Mets history, mind you—John Franco has that distinction—but no one has pitched as often in the major leagues as Orosco. And the funny thing of it is, it took Orosco a few years to break into what was an incredibly lame Mets bullpen.

Orosco made the majors out of spring training in 1979, just his second professional season and his first as a Met. The previous December the Mets and Twins were in talks about compensation for Jerry Koosman, who threatened to retire if not traded back to his native Minnesota. Even as a 13-year-old kid, I was not angry at Kooz. I was jealous. If only they could have shipped me to a team that was just as cheap as the Mets but managed to be entertaining. The Twins wanted to give the Mets a scrub or two for the best lefty in club history. Mets GM Joe McDonald mentioned Orosco, a 1978 second-round pick by the Twins from his hometown Santa Barbara City College. Poker face owner Cal Griffith’s reply: “Whose Orosco?” So Orosco wound up as the player to be named later, along with Greg Field, a fourth-round pick from 1975 who was dispatched without ever playing in the Mets system (or the major leagues). Kooz won 20 for the 1979 Twins, but patience was the dividend with Messy Jesse.

Orosco debuted on Opening Day 1979 wearing number 61—so Jesse and I may share another year some day. The lefty got the final out at Wrigley Field, retiring Bill Buckner, delicious irony for those who love an extra heaping of foreshadowing. He finished five other games in ’79, including one against world-champs-to-be Pittsburgh. I recall sitting on the floor of our den listening to the radio—a fair number of games weren’t on TV then—and I could tell by Bob Murphy’s voice that Willie Stargell’s eighth-inning home run was no wall scraper. Looking it up, it was the only hit Jesse allowed in three innings out of the pen, but it cost the Mets the game. That sums up the ’79 Mets.

Jesse’s last two games for the Mets that year were starts. Somehow the Mets won both, though he didn’t get credit for either victory. The ’79 Mets were desperate for a lot of things, especially pitching, but they weren’t desperate enough to keep the kid at Shea all year. He did not return to New York until 1981, but by pitching in ’79 he would get credit for being part of one of the worst Mets teams ever and it would enable him to later become a four-decade player. He retired at age 46, turning down offers to pitch for yet another year for yet another team. It would have been wonderful number symmetry for No. 47 to retire at age 47, but after 1,252 games pitched, Jesse figured he—and we—had had enough.

I pegged Orosco as the 18th greatest Met in my most recent book, Best Mets. Insane you say? Well, that’s not the first time I’ve heard that, but I am one of those people who think pressure does have some effect on performance. Remember Armando Benitez? (We will not be sharing a year when number 49 comes due.) Despite throwing as hard as perhaps any Met not named Ryan, Benitez just could not get the side out in a crucial game. On the other hand, I have never felt safer in the late innings than with Orosco standing on the hill. Oh, things could get characteristically messy, but just the idea that it was Orosco instead of Doug Sisk made me feel at ease.

And Orosco’s ascendancy allowed GM Frank Cashen to make up for the biggest gaffe in his early Mets years—keeping Neil Allen and trading Jeff Reardon in 1981. Cashen dealt Allen, plus prospect Rick Ownbey, to the Cardinals for Keith Hernandez at the 1983 trading deadline. Orosco led the last-place ’83 Mets in wins (13) and saves (17) while placing third in strikeouts (84) despite pitching just 110 innings—though that many innings for a “short” reliever showed how valuable he was to the team. And if that stat didn’t do it, his 1.47 ERA did. He placed third in the Cy Young voting for a team that the manager, George Bamberger, quit on in May. Orosco didn’t quit—and neither did I. Having just graduated high school, I went to Shea more times than I’d ever gone before to see interim manager Frank Howard’s spunky—though often clunky—band o’ merry Mets. I cheered on Mex, Mookie, Hubie, Straw, Seaver, and even Sisk, who was actually pretty good as a rook.

When I got back from college in the late spring of 1984, I ran to Shea Stadium the first chance I got. I bought a yearbook with Strawberry, Hernandez, and Orosco in profile on the cover, all looking like they could see something that I could not—like a babe standing up in a tank top behind the dugout. The Mets should have re-issued an All-Star version of the yearbook with rookie Dwight Gooden’s profile added to the cover. That quartet went to San Francisco for the All-Star Game for the first-place Mets. Finishing first wasn’t meant to be in ’84—or ’85—but by the time Orosco was a seasoned pro of 29, the bullpen tandem of Jesse and Roger McDowell gave Mets fans the most dominant season in team history. The pair could even fill in as outfielders when necessary. And when everything threatened to fall apart—repeatedly—in October, Orosco was on the hill when the big outs were needed.

I still don’t know how Orosco wasn’t named MVP of the 1986 NLCS for his three wins, not to mention five innings of relief in just over 24 hours in Games 5 and 6. Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter talked about coming to blows over Jesse’s fastball at the Astrodome. Orosco threw the curve, Kevin Bass missed, and the Mets were headed to the World Series. Orosco picked up a save in Boston, but his place in Mets history was forever assured when he fanned Marty Barrett to end the World Series. Yes!

The Mets could not follow up ’86, and after the ’87 season the 30-year-old Orosco was shipped to the Dodgers in a three-way trade that brought back three pitchers: Kevin Tapani, Wally Whitehurst, and Jack Savage. The trade tree of Mets who were on the mound when they clinched a World Series ended with Koosman and Orosco, though Tapani was in the Twins dugout when Minnesota won the 1991 World Series. By then it looked like Jesse was going to just fade away. He became a situational lefty who was handed from team to team, always in number 47. Almost. His first and last stops—with the 1979 Mets and 2003 Twins—were the only times in his nine-team, 24-year career where he had to find a new number. It was 50 with Minnesota, the organization where it all began. Orosco’s last pitch was wild, bringing in the winning run for Detroit and assuring that the ’03 Tigers would not break the Mets’ mark of 120 losses in 1962. Some records, no matter how negative they may seem, should forever stay with the Mets. Another save by Jesse.

What I loved most about Orosco, though, was that he fulfilled a prophesy I came up with as a bored and desperate young teen in the late 1970s. With nothing better to do than practice pitching in the mirror next to the lone color TV in the house—not that I was a pitcher, mind you—I somehow got it in my head that I should make phantom tosses left-handed in the mirror... even though I was right-handed. Anything to stay entertained with the ’70s Mets. Then, like Richard Dreyfuss and his Devil’s Tower fixation in Close Encounters, I came to believe in my vision that one day a left-hander would be on the mound and strike out the last batter when the Mets finally won the World Series. I hadn’t thought about this in years until I woke up after my post-championship bender in college in late October of 1986—oh, who are we kidding, late March of 1987. I realized that my vision had actually come to pass. Even the on-field celebration at Shea was a lot like the one I’d so often envisioned—though the glove toss was all Jesse.  

I have a vision of how the next Mets championship will be clinched, but I’m holding onto that premonition. I’ll pass it on to my grandchildren so they can tell their grandchildren what to look out for.

The final part of my annual declaration is resolutions for my new year. Usually I have a theme for regular postings on the site. Well, I’ve been thinking about this and by now I’ve detailed all my favorite Mets games witnessed (2008), reviews of Mets books (2009), and a two-year project to detail my impressions of the first 50 seasons in Mets history(2010-11). I thought about a top 50 list of players as other sites have done, but my last two books—New York Mets: The Complete Illustrated History and Best Mets each have similar but far from identical lists. And, to be honest, my past themes have taken a lot of time to write. I need to complete a book in the next few months... so I can push that during year number 48.

I have come up with something quick, fun, and maybe even a little snarky that I can hopefully post with more regularity than I have in the past. I am calling it the Mets Monday Monologue. It will be funny, poignant, ironic, and sarcastic all at the same time. And it will debut this coming Monday. Or next Monday. Or some random day to be determined. In any event, I hope this will make this 50th season, er, year, a little more fun. 

And remember, even Messy Jesse put in his time with crap Mets teams before he could throw that mitt high and proud. And it is Orosco’s year once more.

March 13, 2012

Book Review: Wilpon’s Folly

Given this subject, maybe this should be a cook-the-books review. In case you haven’t been following baseball for, say, the last 72 years—like Greg Prince’s friend’s cousin, Milton—there is this family who owns the Mets named the Wilpons. (If you need to know who the Mets are, I suggest reading up on it here and here.) This family came on the Mets scene when the team was at its nadir. Like a lot of people through the years, they got in on sports team ownership by being a small part of a larger group. Fred Wilpon has been Mets president since 1980, went halfsies as owner in 1986, and then took over the team lock, stock, and barrel in 2003. There have been many good times—the mid- and late-1980s come to mind, and 1986 in particular—and there were a lot of down times, such as the early 1980s, a six-season chunk of the 1990s, the first few years of the 21st century, and, well, now. 

I could go into how the Wilpons were duped into giving much of their money, plus a lot of other people’s, to this fellow they thought they could trust implicitly. But hey, Bernie Madoff was a big Mets fan! That seems to be about the extent of the check that was done on him and his magic money growing system. Goes to show that when it comes to money matters, fan loyalty isn’t a prerequisite. 

To read Wilpon’s Folly, that’s all the background you need to know. Howard Megdal provides the rest in the form of in-depth analysis not only of the Wilpon holdings, but on the financial system they were involved in. It paints the picture of a group that could have and certainly should have seen the warning signs of the Madoff meltdown, especially in lieu of a Ponzi-type scheme that the family had to deal with a few years earlier. It paints a picture of the Wilpon and the team finances that is as grim as the Mets rotation this year. And if the Mets hadn’t thrown a bunch of money at a couple of players who really are of little use in the surrender-now mode of the current roster, the payroll would probably be in the $35 million range the Royals threw out on the field last year. (I’ll forgive the Mets Johan, but not seeing Bay’s faults was either ignorant or, a term that comes up a lot in the book, willfully blind.)

As Megdal paints it, even selling the team might still keep the family in debt. Of course the Mets dispute these claims. They even took the proactive step of barring Megdal from sitting in the press box during games this year. That in itself is a sign that you’ve done solid reporting and hit close to the nerve when a fully buttoned-down, lawyered-up entity like theirs reacts like a seven-year-old might. But there’ll be a lot more people missing from Citi Field this year than just Howard.

With the trial set to begin shortly, Wilpon’s Folly is recommended reading. And important. I ripped through the e-book in less than three days. It was actually the first e-book I’ve read. I still like the option of being able to write notes in the margins or call up page numbers (maybe I can do that and just haven’t figured out all my I-Pad can offer). But the only folly with this book is acting like it doesn’t hit close to home. The walls are coming in all around…

Every Spring with the Baseball

Watching the Mets steal five bases in a spring training game is odd. Watching it amount to one run is something I am afraid will be a recurring theme in 2012. Enjoy. Spring games do not count. And the Mets leaving loads of men on base is kind of like a fuzzy blanket, taking me back to the late 1970s at Shea with my dad, watching the Mets stranding those underdogs who tried so hard to get on base, only to be left alone. The spring training opening crowd of 5,021 is about right for that era at Shea as well. The pitchers working their little buns off to keep the game close, only to lose. Ah, nostalgia. Ah, spring. 

A One-Game Rant

Well, another Bud Selig gem of an idea is going official. We will now have two extra “playoff” teams. This means there will be as many wild card teams annually as there were teams playing in the postseason in the two leagues combined from 1903 to 1968—during what was, supposedly, the game’s golden age. If you want to call these new teams “playoff” teams—and I don’t—that would push baseball into the double-digit mark for postseason teams. So much for being the sport where you had to earn your way into October. Or November. Whatever.

Oh, and because it was ram-rodded in after the schedules were put together, the team with the best record will have to play two road games to start the Division Series. Not like it’ll affect the 2012 Mets, so go crazy, folks, go crazy. I will be watching Family Guy re-runs instead of your convoluted new system. Skipping MLB postseason action, just like everybody else does.

The other day I handed my daughter a 7-pound, 2,500-page book I worked on a dozen years ago. (She wrote a paper for history class on the Roaring ’20s that included a summary on the best-of-nine 1920 World Series and can you believe she left out the Bill Wambsganss unassisted triple play from her first draft. Kids today!) It had been a while since I’d actually held that book in my hands, but I like its heft, and I especially like what it contains. Maybe it still can make people take notice. I wish I could go to the next meeting where baseball pooh-bahs gather, pick that book up, and aim it at these blockheads who may just yet find a way to ruin the game. (Do not get me started on the new every-day-is-interleague-day 2013 format.) 

Of course, I’m not advocating violence. But maybe when the book thuds to the floor, it would get their attention. And then I would tell them this:

Congratulations! You have just turned the information contained inside your former official encyclopedia and cheapened it beyond your own narrow-minded comprehension. You have taken the one-game playoff, the rarest of baseball occurrences—besides the Mets hosting an All-Star Game—and you have made the one-game playoff mean nothing. Because now you’ll have a one-game playoff every year. And unlike the real one-game playoff, which actually does not count as a postseason game, these will all be playoff games. Cheapened playoff games. A one-game playoff to break a tie forged over 162 games is a gift from heaven. A scheduled one-game playoff, in each league, is a load of crap. It clogs up what should be sacred postseason history while not even giving both teams a home game. If you’re going to screw up the game and fast-track the NBA-ification of the MLB playoffs, at least make it a best-of-three and use the traditional format that was used to break ties in 1946, 1951, 1959, and 1962, and give one team the first home game and the other club hosts the next two, if necessary. If I recall, this format gave you your best-remembered game ever between the ’51 Dodgers and Giants—cheating aside. And if you plan to fundamentally change the rules, how in God’s name can you spring it on everyone in spring training? Even the DH was agreed on the January before it began. This is kind of a big change, guys. Can’t we have one last season to enjoy before you guys screw it up, you sons of…

At this point I will be grabbed by a handful of bodyguards, put in a straight jacket with “purist” stenciled across the front, and forced to watch Yankee-ography with my eyelids propped open until I hate baseball as much as the average 15-year-old kid does today.

Meanwhile, Bud is being administered a Band-Aid where the corner of Total Baseball caught him above the eye. Oops.

As one of the owners blows on Bud’s boo boo, another owner says, “I didn’t understand one word that guy was rambling on about.”

“Yeah,” says another. “He didn’t mention money once.”

Kaplan Connection

Thanks to Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf for featuring me on the site and asking such good questions. I feel like a schlub, though, for going on about my Total Sports days and leaving out the influence of John Thorn and Mike Gershman, or talking about Mets by the Numbers without mentioning it was the brainchild of Jon Springer. Speaking of which, coach Bob Geren is given #7? If I were Jose, I would steal second, third, and home off the Mets just for that my first time back to New York.

Carter Belongs with Canadiens

I was away over the weekend and missed some of the Gary Carter tributes, but Total Sports vet Mike Meserole forwarded this Montreal Canadiens Carter tribute inexplicably omitted by NBC during its Sunday telecast. As is often the case, Canada shows more heart and class than their American brethren. And to hear the cheer for the Expo-clad Youppi (transferred to mascot of the Canadiens after the Expos left) shows that baseball and Montreal are like a divorce in which the people who could be the most bitter still have love in their hearts. Merci. Thank you. 

Always 8: Gary Carter (1954-2012)

Forever Kid    

     Thanks, Mr. Cashen

Expo Met Giant Dodger Expo

     No more Ron Hodges behind the plate

                            Sending Hubie, Herm, Floyd, and Mike to Montreal

     The Jarry Park P.A. Announcer Screeching, “Gar-y Car-ter!”

Balls blocked in the dirt                   A Mets catcher hitting cleanup

Line drives land in pen                       “The Curly Shuffle” rally maker

 Taking Neil Allen deep                          Fist pump Shea curtain calls

Scoring on Knight single                         Greeting Knight in full gear         

        Mets captain with Keith                        The Ivory soap commercials

                         Hall of Famer in 2003               Manager of St. Lucie Mets

                        Catching 19 innings v. Atl        7 RBI in 2 innings v. Atl

                          Dreading him as an Expo     Loving him as a Met

     Starter of the rally of ages in Game 6 of 1986 Series

   Catching every single 1986 postseason inning for Mets

                       Catching first completed night game at Wrigley in 1988

                        Waiting forever to hit home run number 300 in ’88

                      1974 3rd youngest in MLB        1992 5th oldest in MLB 

                    One of legion Mets 3Bs                   Also played 1B, LF, RF

All-Star MVP 1981                             All-Star MVP 1984

                Three Gold Gloves                                   Five Silver Sluggers

            Author of A Dream Season                         And also Still a Kid at Heart

          RBI single in 12th beats Astros                    Two WS homers at Fenway

            Hit .426 in only Expos postseason        Knocked in 9 in only World Series

                His double in the ninth beats Orel Hershiser in Game 1 of ’88 NLCS

     With Doc, Mitch, and kids on ramp in “Let’s Go Mets” video

     “Go ahead, Doc!” Yes, Doc, go ahead indeed

Messy Jesse breaking balls in Houston

   Knew when to not fight Keith

We’ll miss you, Kid

         Adieu

February 7, 2012

Whose Folly Now?

This was just supposed to be about thanking people who had recently written up Best Mets—including the Library Journal, Sportsology, spreading the good word at Goodreads and Amazon.com, and via our oldest ally in cyberspace, Mets by the Numbers. And while I appreciate the kind words about my book, I have to say something in support of another author, who has sadly been given the shaft by the team he loves. 

As someone denied access to the Mets press box more than once, this is how things are when you’re not a full-timer at a paper or part of the Baseball Writers Association of America, a place that, like the big leagues, you have to earn your way into. I haven’t earned the right to be a regular in a big league locker room. But Howard Megdal belongs there. 

Howard, who wrote for me for all four editions of Maple Street Press Mets Annual, also wrote for the Lo Hud Mets Blog, which sort of functions as my old hometown paper. When I was a kid, most towns in Westchester had their own editions of the suburban Gannett afternoon paper. Ours was called The Reporter Dispatch. All these papers eventually folded into one, The Journal News. The headquarters was a mile or two from where I grew up in White Plains. I never wrote for them, but Howard did, and he did a pretty good job of covering the Mets. 

Now, you would think that the Mets would be happy that any media outlet nowadays would want to cover the team on an even semi-regular basis. The papers near me—farther up the Hudson—simply use condensed Associated Press coverage, and only put the Mets on the first sports page when the Yankees are off or when the Amazin’s do something embarrassing. And they’ve done it again.

The Mets have chosen not to credential Howard. It’s their right. Their small-minded, thin-skinned right. The reason behind this is because of his new e-book, Wilpon’s Folly, which from all accounts is what it sounds like: How the first family of the Mets screwed up and made matters worse by holding the fans captive. 

I encourage all of you to join me in buying Wilpon’s Folly, even though I have to borrow my daughter’s Kindle to do so. Glad to do it. I don’t have anything else to advocate as a way to get back at the Mets for their continued absurdity. A boycott hurts me—and my kids—as much as it does the Mets. We care about the team, not the owners. We will still be here when they are gone. But I don’t know how long our children will stay patient with this team. Right now, waiting for the Mets to get their head out of…um…the sand sounds like folly indeed.

Video Interview with On the Black

Kerel Cooper from On the Black was good enough to conduct a little interview with me via Skype the other day. We chatted about everything from the current Mets situation to other players worthy of Mets Hall of Fame induction to the future of Mets blogging to the content of Best Mets and, as they say in the trade, so much more. And a free book goes to the first person who can correctly identify the strange figurine by my elbow on the bookshelf behind me. Thanks, Kerel, and y’all.

January 26, 2012

On Board with Steady Eddie and Johnny Franco

There has been a lot of talk about the Mets retiring numbers lately, but I think the team is doing the right thing by holding steady and sticking to honoring not just great players for their team, but those who stack up with the greatest of all time.

37: Casey Stengel, a legendary manager who gave the Mets their start. A special man and a special case.

14: Gil Hodges masterminded our touchstone moment as a franchise, the unbelievable transformation of chump to champ.

41: Tom Seaver is the best Met ever, case closed; Baseball-Reference lists him as sixth best in the history of pitching.

Mike Piazza, if he gets into Cooperstown, is the only player I foresee who can crack this numerical code. A Met like Mike comes along every 20 years—if you’re lucky. While we’re waiting, and are preparing for the 50th anniversary of the Mets, it is only fitting to fete a new member of the Mets Hall of Fame. And John Franco is the ideal candidate as the 26th member of the Mets Hall of Fame. 

In the past I’ve complained that the Mets ignored their Hall of Fame—notably during the eight years where no one was inducted between Tommie Agee (2002) and the deserving ’86 quartet: Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Davey Johnson, and Frank Cashen, all inducted at Citi Field in 2010. You can’t argue with the ones who are in the Mets HOF. The ones who aren’t—a group of deserving Mets that includes Edgardo Alfonzo, Howard Johnson, Jesse Orosco, David Cone, Al Leiter, Sid Fernandez, Ron Darling, and my dark horse favorite, Jon Matlack—are all fodder for future discussions during the Hot Stove period and on those days when the team is actually playing and you wish they’d just stop.

Franco is what Mike Francesser would call “a compila.” He compiled a lot of saves—426 in all, good for second all-time when he retired in 2005. He has been surpassed by Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman, but he is still number one among lefties. For those who think the one-inning save is too easily gotten, wait ’til next year. I hope I live long enough to see someone surpass his 276 Mets saves. Franco’s 695 games as a Met seems pretty safe as well, unless Pedro Feliciano (459) gets his shoulder in shape and returns from the Dark Side.

Franco, who gave his number to Mike Piazza in 1998, acquiesced to a secondary bullpen role for the team good in ’99. And for those who want everything perfect and liked to complain when he left too many men on base while getting out of a jam throwing junk, look at how well big man Armando did at getting big outs when most needed. As the setup man for Benitez, Franco ranks fifth in club history with 53 holds—Feliciano leads this ho-hum category with 98. Aaron Heilman (69) is second, so take this stat for what it’s worth.

But as far as years of service, Franco’s 14 seasons in a Mets uniform is second all-time, edging out Bud Harrelson (13). His post-Tommy John surgery GT (garbage time—it’s OK, Franco’s dad was a sanitation worker) puts Johnny ahead of a large crop of Mets who spent a dozen years on the field in Flushing: Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Tom Seaver, Craig Swan, Jerry Grote, Cleon Jones, and—as proof that a good attendance record is worth something—Ron Hodges.

Number one on that list is Ed Kranepool with 18 years served. I was talking to the master of Mets longevity about another project just after Franco was announced as a Mets Hall of Famer Thursday. Krane, a Mets Hall of Famer since 1990, was understandably pleased.

Franco has a great record. He’s done a great job. He’s a New Yorker, but he came out of Cincinnati and did a tremendous job. Look at how many saves he had for the Mets organization. He’s in the top half a dozen for saves lifetime. He deserves it. He’s been a great player for them. I like him and respect him.  

Steady Eddie also noted that it’s getting tougher to find Mets who have the longevity to be worthy of Flushing HOF induction.

I guess the Mets now are shortchanging guys who jumped around so much with free agency. It’s tough for guys to have any kind of longevity with the ballclub. John certainly produced on the field. And I think he does good work and does some PR for the club, in a limited capacity. So he’s still around New York. I saw him the other night at the [Baseball Assistance Team] Dinner.

(Two note taking sessions in one week! Try not to get used to me doing actual reporting. This could hurt my image.) 

Anyway, welcome to the Mets Hall, John Franco. In a year that no one is too excited about, the June 3 induction gives us something to look forward to.

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To see how Franco, Kranepool, and other top notch Mets rank in my all-time top 50—and how they rank based on Wins Above Replacement—check out Best Mets.

January 23, 2012

Carter Kids Pinch-Hit Homer for Dad at BBWAA Dinner

I attended the New York Chapter of the Baseball Writers Association Dinner Saturday night. That this is coming out 24-plus hours after the fact is perhaps reason one why I’m not a BBWAA member. As a newspaperman, I was still at least half a dozen career moves away from even being close to a beat writer job, and that career path was irrevocably changed when I read The Bad Guys Won by Bob Klapisch and John Harper, both of whom were in attendance Saturday. Their book portrayed the job of beat writer as one of hellish torment surrounded by rare moments of clarity and pleasure. At the very least, according to the writers, the occupation would make me hate whatever team I covered, and perhaps the game itself. If I reached this pinnacle of the profession, whenever I was asked what my favorite team was, I would be required to say something insipid like “I don’t root for teams, I root for stories.” 

But there I was at the 89th annual dinner anyway, thanks to Mets Inside Pitch’s Andy Esposito. And it was an entertaining and newsworthy night, if I may add. I guess this is where most of the people in attendance would tell me I’ve buried the lede (it’s pronounced lead—to be more specific, leed—but newspapermen on deadline are in such a hurry there is no time to wonder whether a word refers to the potentially hazardous material or a potentially hazardous paragraph opening so as to make a reader continue flipping the page, or in modern newspaper parlance, hit the “close” button). 

I got to chat up some of the veterans in the crowd like Marty Appel, Marty Noble, Lee Lowenfish, Jay Horwitz, New Breeder from Newsday Steve Jacobson, and 1980s Mets dynamo Randye Ringler, creator of the timeless tome GourMets. I also had a great chat with Tommy John and met original Met Frank Thomas. But the big news from the dinner wasn’t about me, or them, or any of the younger, crustier writers, it was about Gary Carter. 

As you may have heard, the news turned grave on Kid Carter the other day when new tumors were found on his brain. In the party-hearty 1980s, Carter sometimes got an unjustifiably bad wrap as a goody two shoes, but he was the best catcher in the league, and when we look back in hindsight, it’s plain to see that he was also probably the best person in the league. 

You can judge a lot about a person by his children, and Kid’s kids did him proud Saturday when they accepted the Arthur and Milton Richman “You Gotta Have Heart” Award. With a crowd of people that tends toward the cynical, you could hear a pin drop when Bobby Ojeda introduced the Carter clan, saying that “they’re learning that [when] you go through something like this, you go through it with that fight in your heart.” In Best Mets, when I assigned MVPs for the top Mets teams of all time, I picked Bobby O. as the ’86 Mets MVP. He’s still proving he’s the man more than a quarter century later.

The 40-second standing “O” from the no-cheering-in-the-press-box crowd was the equivalent of a mid-1980s curtain call. All that was missing was Carter himself, permed, a little sweaty, and very excited, popping out of the dugout for a fist pump. But that his family would make the trip after the devastating news received this week, says a lot about what the Carters think of the city and its game. 

Here’s some of what his daughter, Kimmy, said:

I’ll be telling my dad about that standing ‘O.’ He’d like that a lot…. We are so honored to be accepting this special award tonight even though we wish our mom and dad could be here. It’s been a difficult eight-month journey, however, the Lord has given us our daily strength. We would like to thank the friends and friends for their countless prayers, love, and support for our dad and our entire family. We are incredibly proud to be the kids of such amazing parents whom we love very much. There is no doubt that both of them have a lot of heart.

Before we left for New York, I asked my dad if there was anything he would like to share on his behalf. He spoke from his heart, and with the help of family, we would like to share his words.

This is where D.J. Carter, who looks quite a bit like his dad did as a fresh-faced Expos rookie, stepped up and read his father’s words: 

I’ll always have a special place in my heart for the people and city of New York. I’ll never forget my first day in a Mets uniform on Opening Day 1985 when I had the fortune to lead our team to victory over the St. Louis Cardinals with a 10th inning home run….

I have nothing but fond memories of my time in New York, highlighted of course by the World Series championship in 1986. I still remember the feeling of riding in that World Series parade with over one million people lining the streets to celebrate our championship. The fans were always supportive of me on the baseball field and continue to support me and my family since my diagnosis of brain cancer in May of 2011. I’ve always strived to put my heart and soul into everything in my life, whether it’s playing baseball, coaching my team at Palm Beach Atlantic University, or raising money to support efforts for the Gary Carter Foundation. I am truly humbled to be recognized by the New York Chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America for the Arthur and Milton Richman “You Gotta Have Heart” Award. It is with honor that I accept this award. I want to wish all of you the very best in the future and hope the Mets can win many, many more World Series championships.

Carter’s other daughter, Christy, followed that up the only way anyone possibly could, by saying “Thank you and God bless you always.”        

There were actually many more acts to go on the night, including some needed levity in a sportswriter’s version of “Who’s on First.” And one of the few publication covers the Mets will get this year is Scorebook, the annual NYBBWAA dinner program edited by Marty Noble. And I could not leave without getting a Casey Stengel coffee mug caricature by Johnny Pennisi (and I don’t even drink coffee).

The other highlights, edited for your protection:

The “Willie, Mickey, and the Duke” Award went to the ’62 Mets, represented by Al Jackson, Frank Thomas, and Jay Hook, who was pretty funny for an engineer and a 19-game loser. Choo Choo Coleman was also in the audience.

The Joan Payson Award for community service, first given to Payson in her memory following her death in 1975, was awarded to Yankee Dave Robertson, who worked tirelessly in his hometown of Tuscaloosa, Alabama following the tornado devastation there last spring.

The Casey Stengel “You Could Look It Up” Award went to former Met Tommy Davis, who corrected ex-Met Jay Hook, who introduced him by saying Davis knocked in 193 runs instead of 153 in 1962 (as a Dodger, mind you). “If I’d knocked in 193 runs,” the Brooklyn native said, “I’d own this whole place.” 

And yes, Jose Reyes was back in town, wearing glasses I noticed, to receive the Ben Epstein-Dan Castellano “Good Guy Award.” He was not on the podium long, but he was up there longer than he was on the field on closing day last September.

Jose Bautista, Jeremy Hellickson, Joe Maddon, and Tim McCarver, were also honored but not present.

On hand for their fete were retiring Yankees trainer Gene Monahan, never-retiring Yankees relief ace Mariano Rivera, Braves top-notch rookie reliever Craig Kimbrel, Diamondbacks manager Kirk Gibson, and Cardinals World Series MVP David Freese, winner of the most obscure major-minor award in the game, the Babe Ruth Award. That award has been given out annually to the top World Series performer since well before there was an MLB official Series MVP. It does make it easier when, like this year, the Babe Ruth winner and Series MVP are the same guy. Sometimes life has more spice, like in 1969 when Met Donn Clendenon was Series MVP and Al Weis won the Babe Ruth Award. That’s the kind of spice I’d love to try more often.

There was another award that also requires some explanation: the J.G. Taylor Spink Award. Named after the longtime publisher of The Sporting News, this honor does not put you in the Hall of Fame per se, but it puts your face on a plaque with all the other sportswriters in an exhibit down the hall from the player plaques in Cooperstown. This year’s Spink Award winner went to Canada’s Bob Elliot, who has fought the good fight for years to bring the best baseball coverage to a nation that thinks as much of baseball as most Americans do of hockey. That’s only a slight dig. I like hockey, but I’m probably as lukewarm about the sport’s daily doings as the average Canadian is about the grand old game. Turnabout’s fair play, eh?

And then there were the awards we were all waiting for: the presentations of the MVPs and Cy Youngs.

Justin Verlander made it easy by winning both awards in the AL, but 85-year-old Don Newcombe made it unforgettable with a hilariously long tale of double entendre about how he finally tracked down Verlander on vacation to congratulate him. Newk and Verlander are the lone players in history to own a Rookie of the Year, Cy Young, and MVP award. Verlander can only hope he makes it to this dinner in 57 years, and gets this level of both respect and laughter.

Mets manager Terry Collins, who was part of the Dodgers hierarchy when he saw Clayton Kershaw make his minor league debut just five years ago, introduced the southpaw. The deserving Cy Young winner came across as humble and engaging as you’d want your Cy Young winner to be. 

And then there was Ryan Braun. To be honest, I thought Matt Kemp deserved the MVP. And you have to be honest, this would be a lot less messy if Kemp had won. Of course, a few weeks after Braun won the MVP, it was leaked—pardon the pun—that he had tested positive for a banned substance and would be suspended for the first 50 games of 2012. Braun spent part of this week’s trip to New York meeting with MLB execs about his situation, to no avail. Most of his Saturday speech was innocuous, but at the end of his four minutes he addressed the elephant in the New York Hilton ballroom. 

Sometimes in life we all deal with challenges we never expected to endure. We have the opportunity to either look at those as obstacles or as opportunities. I chose to view every obstacle—every opportunity—excuse me, I chose to view every challenge I’ve ever met as an opportunity and this will be no different. I’ve always believed that every person’s character is revealed by the way they deal with those moments of adversity. I’ve always loved and had so much respect for the game of baseball. Everything I’ve done in my career has been with that respect and appreciation in mind, and that is why I am so grateful and humbled to accept this award tonight. Thank you again to everybody and hope you enjoy the rest of your evening.

Freudian slip aside, it was a nice try by a ballplayer caught in a pickle. Sorry, Braunie, I just can’t believe anyone anymore who gets caught using banned substances. Even if the test was incorrect, Braun can thank his fellow Players Association members, whom he did thank earlier in his speech, for creating this situation where a whole generation of ballplayers may never be trusted by the same public that once watched them in awe. And Braun was addressing an audience that will one day judge him and others in his situation—or who just seem like they might be under suspicion. Hope he enjoyed the dinner because I think MVP votes for him will be harder to come by in the future.

And sitting next to the podium was Boston’s new manager, Bobby Valentine, with a look of distaste on his face the entire time Braun was speaking next to him. The filet was rumbling a bit in my belly as well, Bobby. But what’s a big night in the city without a little drama.

January 16, 2011

Thank You Notes and More

I have a tradition where I collect my favorite letters a couple of times per year and run them like a Sunday letters to the editor section in your favorite newspaper or other anachronism. It features sometimes pithy—and often real—responses given to the person who sent an email here at the site. Best Mets came out a few weeks early, and today is the official publication date. There’s already been a mythical party in the book’s honor, so here are a couple of thank you notes penned within a month of the holiday and sent out on the world wide web rather than in personal mailboxes. And there is a third note I am not sure how to classify.

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To Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Book Shelf:

Thank you for including two of my books on the Mets 50th anniversary of the Mets, New York Mets: The Complete Illustrated History and Best Mets: Fifty Years of Highs and Lows from New York’s Most Agonizingly Amazin’ Team. One book is not meant to replace the other but rather as a compliment. And I appreciate the compliment of being compared with some of the more prodigious Red Sox authors.

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To Florida Mets Fan Rich:

In an online review of the paperback version of 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, you said, and I quote:  

I am an avid Met fan and I did enjoy reading about the history of the Mets and top Mets moments, but I found the title of the book to be a little deceiving.

There were only 2 thing TO DO in the whole book attend a Met Road game and have you kids run the Mr Met Dash.

How about watch a Met practice during spring training.
Watch a spring training game or better yet watch the Mets play two games in one day at two spring training parks.

The book was a good read but I was looking more for places to go or things to do!

Well, that was some of the best criticism I have ever received. Really.

First, let me explain why there wasn’t much in the way of activities in the version of 100 Things. The hardcover version, which came out in 2008, included many activities at Shea Stadium in honor of the last year of the park. When the paperback version of the book was released two years later, Shea was lamentably gone, and most of the activities and advice were thus rendered worthless. With just a couple of weeks to make changes for the paperback version, I replaced the obsolete Shea chapters with profiles of several Mets who missed the cut in the original version. And I also included a bit on the last game at Shea. The short turnaround time for the paperback did not allow for changes to the book’s structure. But your criticism was 100 percent accurate. I thank you.

When I started working on Best Mets, I recalled your words and put together a special section on Mets Activities with this in mind. It features numerous things to keep a Mets fan busy, including books, the internet, spring training (something near and dear to your heart I’ve noted in your postings on other websites), Mets minor league team info so people can see them in person or follow them on the web, a few favorite watering holes where you can be with Mets-minded people, the upcoming Mets 50th Anniversary Symposium at Hofstra University, and something on the Hall of Fame at Citi Field, which hadn’t opened when the 2010 version of 100 Things came out. 

Of course, when I handed in Best Mets to the publisher, who knew the Mets would welcome back Banner Day and usher out their Gulf Coast League team. Both decisions floored me.

Anyway, thanks Rich.

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To the first reviewer of Best Mets on Amazon.com:

Thanks for acquiring a copy and providing feedback. Your review on Amazon included some valid criticism, but it is apparent you did not read the book—or look at the Table of Contents—because most of the points you railed against are indeed in the book, including a list of best regular-season games—with the post 9/11 game well represented—and two pages on the “Midnight Massacre.”

Online reviews are always welcome—encouraged even—but, good, bad, or inaccurate, they sit on Amazon forever and are viewed by every potential customer. In the latter instance—a first for me, I will admit—all I can hope for is the kindness of strangers in cyberspace. And when this reader asks if the author did “any real research,” I have to stand up and point out where the reader is wrong. Hope this doesn’t come out as snitty, but I take a lot of pride in the opportunity afforded me to write about the team through 50 years of triumph and travails.

By all means, feel free to share your opinions on the book, or any of my works, whether in letters on this site, reviews, discussions on other sites, loose talk on the street corner, graffiti, whatever. We can be defensive, obviously, but we are not that particular.

January 10, 2011

Fame Not What It Once Was

So Barry Larkin is in the Hall of Fame. It has become such a ho-hum that I forgot to even check on the Hall voting until a day after it was announced. When I heard, I winced. I knew Barry Larkin probably had as good a shot as anyone, but I often wince when the Hall of Fame voting is announced. I winced when it was announced Barry Larkin was the 1995 MVP. He didn’t deserve that either.

I’m not against Barry Larkin. He was a solid shortstop for a long time for Cincinnati. But was he 50 percent of the vote better than Alan Trammell, who had a long and illustrious career and also helped an underdog Midwestern team to its only world championship of the last couple of decades? I would put Dave Concepcion in the Hall of Fame before Larkin if there was a need to put a Reds shortstop in. If someone from this class should have gone in, I would have taken Tim Raines, and only half the baseball writers needed to make that happen agreed. 

All things considered, I am not a big fan of recent Hall of Fame inductees Andre Dawson and Kirby Puckett, and to some extent, Jim Rice and Ryne Sandberg. And do not get me started on the Veterans Committee—or whatever they call it nowadays—banging in fellows that were not voted in by the baseball writers. This is also not a case of sour grapes over Larkin not waving his no-trade clause to come to the Mets in 2000. Though I’ll admit if he were wearing a Mets ring into the Hall of Fame as a slayer of the Yankees I would wince considerably less. 

I like the Hall of Fame. I like the above-mentioned players. But there are more people in the Hall than there should be. The first 40 years of the Hall of Fame’s existence enabled Cooperstown to catch up with all the players from past generations who deserved to be in the Hall of Fame. And there are only a few players from each generation that deserve to join them on the walls in Cooperstown. If there is no one deserving to be in the Hall of Fame in a given year, I think no one should be voted in, regardless of what MLB or the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce thinks. If you’ve been to Cooperstown lately—and if you haven’t, you should—you will see that they are running out of plaque space in the rotunda. But they’ll find a place for more plaques. Whether they are needed or not. 

Whenever I see players elected other than those I looked at during their playing days and said, “Oh, yeah, he’s a Hall of Famer,” my reaction is to wince. I won’t wince when Greg Maddux or Randy Johnson or Pedro Martinez are elected to the Hall of Fame. (I’ll wince when Tom Glavine gets in, but for a different reason.)  

I don’t know what my reaction will be when the first guy gets in that I’m not really sure didn’t have Hall-worthy stats because some substance might have given him a boost. And that may be coming as soon as next year (and, yes, I know which Mets catcher is on the ballot). All things being equal, I’d rather wince than cringe.

January 6, 2011

There’s Some Things in This World You Just Can’t Explain

The latest news is that a bankruptcy consultant is on the case with the Mets. And despite what the team may tweet in the meantime, people are going to draw their own conclusions. Or at least draw hope.

Many Mets fans have—in the short term—stopped getting on their knees and wishing for a financial windfall out of the sky for themselves, but they look to the heavens for something to happen that will finally force the Mets to be sold. At this point when you see that the Mets won’t retain the services of Willie Harris, your first thought isn’t that Willie Harris sucks (though his .351 OBP was downright productive for this team), your first thought is that the Mets can’t afford Willie Harris. Though they somehow scraped together enough from the seat cushions to bring back the least useful Hairston brother.

There is no more legitimate good news surrounding the Mets in what we can only hope is the waning days of this ownership regime. Most news about the Mets these days falls into the categories of either humbling or pathetic.

The perks the team is handing out to minority owners for handing over $20 million are especially embarrassing. So let’s stop calling for a Mets fan boycott. How about a boycott that will actually force a change? You know who you are. That person with so much dough that they might actually consider handing over $20 million for a piece of the Mets nonaction. If getting a front show seat on the deck of Metanic somehow sounds appealing, please think of something more productive to do with your money instead. Give it to the poor, use it to develop alternative fuel sources, bury it in the yard like crazy old Lucius Clay in “The Legend of Wooley Swamp.” Handing over large sums of money to the current ownership is like tossing a sponge into the ocean and thinking it could soak up all that water.  

I don’t care about the Ponzi schemes. I don’t care about who is in the right in the courts. What I care about is the Mets, and if the people who owned the team truly cared about it, they’d sell at a nice profit and give their descendants cash instead of the headache the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club Incorporated has become in the latter years of their reign. They figured all they had to do was get at the revenue streams of a new ballpark and get through the final years of Shea Stadium, which they denigrated at every opportunity. Now what? 

I lived through Lorinda deRoulet ownership in the late 1970s, the woman that Nelson Doubleday—and yes, minority owner Fred Wilpon—saved us from in 1980. But you can say that Mrs. deRoulet went out trying, even if she did greenlight Elliott Maddox and Mettle the Mule.

Though she has remained a fan from afar, I’m sure it was a little lonely for Mrs. deRoulet to watch her mother’s team win a world championship for somebody else. Mrs. deRoulet at least had her dignity.

This was supposed to run at the end of 2011, but something more important came up. Thanks to those who sent me notes in the past few days. Now we move on to the future by saying farewell to our shared past.

January 2, 2012

2011 in Review: The Eve of Destruction

“Probably all the other families will line up against us. That’s alright—this thing’s gotta happen every five years or so—ten years—helps to get rid of the bad blood.  Been ten years since the last one.”

                                                                                                        —Peter Clemenza, The Godfather (1972)

(Insert “fans” for “blood” above and that pretty much sums up where we are.)

It having been three months, I’d forgotten exactly what the Mets record was for 2011. They finished 77-85, which is pretty good for a team that from all I’ve heard of late is coming off a 7-155 season and will be even worse in 2012.

For all the gloom and doom—and I’m guilty of some of it as well—maybe it’s not so bad winning 77 times and finishing ahead of the Marlins before that team changed its address to Miami and found its checkbook and mojo along the way. Take away the Yankees residing in the same town and the Mets are suffering a similar fate that has befallen most major league teams at some point in the past decade. And things could be worse.

Haven’t you heard the Mayans, whose glory days are even further in the past than the Mets’, declared hundreds of years ago that the world would end in 2012? On the good side, it’s not supposed to happen until December 21, 2012. On the down side, we have this baseball season to get through. It’s a shame that so many Mets fans are going to boycott the team this year and miss the final fleeting pleasure of a summer afternoon or evening at a ballgame. Oh, well. It’s your funeral.

But that is then, this is now. What happened that was considered the end of the world in 2011? I’m going to tell you, like it or not. And I’m going to sprinkle in a pleasant moment now and then, so stay alert. Here are ’11 Mets moments in time, in no particular order in a season that made no particular sense. 

1. Jose Reyes. He is like handling a rose bush. It could be beautiful, it could crumple in a sudden frost, or a thorn could get stuck in the wide part of your thumb and hurt for days. Jose became the first Met to win a batting title in 2011, but he won it after taking himself out of a tight race following one at bat on the last day, thus robbing the fans of giving him the hand he deserved for nine seasons, several of which were among the most exciting individual years that offensive-starved Mets fans have ever enjoyed. He also had two 2011 stints on the disabled list, making it three straight years that his legs have broken down at some point. We all knew he was going to bolt the Mets, but it was an unnecessary parting shot saying the Mets didn’t show him the love. Et tu, Jose? 

2. Terry Collins and Sandy Alderson. Let’s give a little credit here for these two hires. Maybe they were hired because they work cheap, but they made a decent team out of the stuff that others had thrown away. And they did this while still paying—and playing—Jason Bay, a left fielder who makes one long for Joggin’ George Foster the Met. Alderson has thrown some clunkers out there—D.J. Carrasco comes to mind—but he cut bait with Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo and we were all better off for that. Alderson dealt the impossible-to-move contracts of Francisco Rodriguez and Carlos Beltran and got good value. And Collins may not have had a team that was capable of competing every day, but he always gave it his all and I think he got more out of a few players than could have been expected. 

3. Johan Santana. He did not throw a pitch all year and has a $24 million price tag. The two-time Cy Young winner cannot be counted on for anything except to serve as an albatross around the team’s neck. And by albatross I mean an anvil forged to a stone, wrapped in iron chains, and hung around the neck of a man standing at the edge of a cliff. Can they get a Leroy Neiman rendering of that for the cover of the 2012 yearbook?

4. The Atlanta Braves. You think we forget how you forced the decimated Mets to play a doubleheader after they just lost a doubleheader in April? It’s two weeks into the season and the Mets have two more trips to Atlanta where could make up that rainout. You might even draw more fans if you did a twinbill when the Mets return in June. OK. Fine. The Braves have their April doubleheader despite the Mets’ wishes and Atlanta wins both games. But come late September and Atlanta is running on fumes, the Mets, just swept four straight at home by the Nationals, take two of three in Turner Field, until then a House of Horrors for the Mets. The greatest moment was a classic late comeback in the Sunday finale to throw a wrench into the postseason dreams of a team that seemed to have the Wild Card in the bag long ago. My middle finger was raised in mock Tomahawk Chop at the TV every time a Brave was shown sitting stunned in the dugout. Been waiting for any kind of payback in Atlanta for a loooooooooooooooooooooooong time.

5. The St. Louis Cardinals. Just after that Atlanta September trip the Mets went to St. Louis, a team in hot pursuit of the Braves. The Mets slept through the first two games and appeared well on their way to doing it a third time in the afternoon matinee when, down by four runs in the ninth, they put together an unlikely rally with Ruben Tejada getting a game-tying two-run double and Willie Harris notching the go-ahead hit. A lot of things did not go right for this team in 2011, but I was as impressed with the Sunday Atlanta win and Thursday victory in St. Louis as anything I saw all year. And if you admire pluck, you had to hand it to the Cardinals for getting off the mat after this devastating loss left them two out in the Wild Card with six games remaining. But the Cards stole the Wild Card from the Braves, beat the Phillies in the NLDS, knocked off the why-so-cocky Brewers in the NLCS, and put together their own rally for the ages in the World Series against the Rangers.

6. Best comeback ever. Almost. A fun comeback with no postseason meaning occurred on June 2 against the Pirates. Because of a change in my schedule, I had gone to the game the previous night—an uninspiring loss—and gave away the tickets I had for the Thursday matinee against Pittsburgh (asking anyone to give you money for tickets to a Mets game became as laughable in 2011 as it had been in 1981). But on this afternoon Mike Pelfrey—so mediocre and confounding in 2011—allowed the Bucs to take a 7-0 lead in the third inning. But Carlos Beltran hit what I will remember in the future as a “real” Citi Field home run to left field to put the Mets back in the game and Ruben Tejada and Daniel Murphy came up big as the Mets completed their second-biggest comeback in history. 

7. The New Yorker. I don’t know if it was reading on a moving bus or the words from Fred Wilpon in the infamous New Yorker piece on him that made me feel nauseous. I had already heard reactions to what the Mets owner said, but I figured it was probably overblown. I got off the bus in Manhattan realizing that I was wrong, wrong for previously believing that Jeff Wilpon was the biggest problem in the Mets universe. His father has personally messed up the Mets in every conceivable way—and a few ways that hadn’t been invented. 

8. Cutting the GCL Mets. I’d love to talk about the positives from rookies Dillon Gee and Lucas Duda, but given the team’s financial straits, there will be a lot more rookies where they came from—but don’t expect them to come out of Rookie ball in the Gulf Coast League. Saving $800,000 is a lot for most of us, but for a major league team it truly is peanuts. And nothing reeks of desperation or refutes what Sandy Alderson has been saying about the importance of player development quite like cutting a low-level minor league team. Yes, I know the franchise had among the most minor league affiliates of any major league team, but the Mets need all the minor leaguers they can get. It is also makes it look like a team that’s hemorrhaging money has totally lost its way. If Sandy Alderson is staying at his post in New York for Bud Selig’s benefit, the commissioner owes him big time.

9. Remembering. The Mets have a special tie to 9-11 and they were on Sunday Night Baseball telecasts with Bobby Valentine in the booth for the night that Osama Bin Laden was taken out and the evening that September 11th marked its 10th year. Both games went extra innings and the Mets won one and lost the other. Doesn’t really matter which was which. 

10. R.A. Dickey. This guy’s personality alone could scale Mount Kilimanjaro. He said the wrong thing early on in the year when the team was floundering and he endured a tough first half, but R.A. hung in there and finished 2011 as the team’s most consistent pitcher. Again. I’d love for him to be the Mets knuckleballer in residence like Tim Wakefield was in Boston for 15 years. Prost, Prof. Dickey. Can we pay you in books instead of bucks? 

11. Carlos Beltran. He freed himself of the burdens of center field in spring training and went on to have a sensational season. He was so good the Mets were able to get a desperately-needed top-notch prospect in return for him at the trading deadline. He didn’t play the last two months of the season in Flushing and still led the team in homers (15) and RBI (66). That says a lot about Carlos and even more about this anemic offense. Don’t blame the park, blame the players who call it home. Good luck in St. Louis, Carlos. Wish us luck, too. We’re really going to need it.

My advice for 2012? Enjoy. Bring your kiddies, bring your wife to Citi Field. None of us may be around at all by the time 2012 ends and our final thoughts should be about weightier matters than David Wright’s contract status or the financial status of the Wilpons. Such as how is Britney Spears preparing for the end of days?

December 31, 2011

Greg Spira (1967-2011)

I used to have a big office. This may sound self-important, but the former IBM complex in Kingston, New York had space for more than a thousand workers, all of whom had come into work one day to find their occupation no longer existed. A gun shop located a quarter of a mile away was purposely closed that day, lest anyone do anything rash. Five or so years after that dark day in Kingston history, I worked in the abandoned IBM compound, with its row upon row of cubicles, dust-covered offices, and bathrooms of a size you’d normally find in a ballpark.

Total Sports Publishing had big plans on the eve of the millennium. We were hiring, airlifting people to otherwise sleepy Ulster County, and cranking out honking-big sports reference books and other titles as quickly and prudently as possible. I had several reference books open on my desk because information like this was much harder to locate on the Internet. And there was a need to get things done quickly because we were less than three months away from D-Day on Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia. The book, containing biographies of the 2,000 most important people in baseball history, was such a massive undertaking and one taken so seriously by my boss, esteemed author and later MLB historian John Thorn, that most new editorial people were handed over to me upon arrival. As associate publisher for reference, I in turn handed them all manner of biographies to edit.

A knock came on my door one morning in December 1999—scratch that, he rarely knocked and the door was generally open, and make that late morning because he was not what you would call an early riser. I looked up from my books.

I can’t say he said his full name or even his first name, he just started talking. His unique manner of speech, the result of overcoming a cleft palette as a child, took a moment or two to get used to. If I thought my initial meeting with Greg Spira would last 10 minutes, it was probably closer to an hour and 10 minutes. This was a trait of the countless conversations we had from that December day until we had our last conversations this December, those marked by an odd feeling that he was hanging up too soon.

Greg was ill more often than not. Before arriving at Total Sports at age 32, he had spent most of the previous decade undergoing, and recuperating from, procedures related to kidney disease. That was what why he was in the hospital when he died after a series of heart attacks on December 28, 2011.

It wasn’t always easy working with Greg, though he—along with me—worked better when we were free of the small talk and niceties required in an office setting. He was all honesty, telling me when he thought my work was not up to snuff, irritating me to the point where I made him buy my last few books on his own. When a month ago he told me that New York Mets: The Complete Illustrated History was the best of the crop of books released for the team’s 50th anniversary—he ordered all of them—I felt I had won over my toughest critic. And he knew his Mets as well as anyone I’ve known. From Whitestone, Queens, he was a Mets fan from the day he watched Benny Ayala homer in his first major league at bat in 1974. I did not join the Mets multitude, if you could call it that, until a year later.  

Greg was far better than me at making and keeping contacts. He had a long and complicated network of people that he regularly kept in touch with and when his health allowed he frequently visited far-flung outposts, trips often highlighted by a new ballpark and a serious bookstore. For a former state capital, Kingston had no first-run bookstore when he arrived, and insider talk was that the chains did not think Kingston “smart enough” to support a big-time bookstore. Within a couple of years of his moving there, though, Kingston not only got its own Barnes & Noble, but it was located a mile from Greg’s apartment. It was coincidence, I’m sure, but good business on B&N’s part nonetheless.

When Greg moved to Philadelphia three years ago, I was drafted to help him pack. His housekeeping habits, to put it nicely, were along the lines of Oscar Madison. He had more sports books in his not-so-big apartment than big box B&N down the street. And he also subscribed to every periodical known to man and had a serious comic book, soap opera, and DVD habit. For my packing effort I received a T-shirt that I wear as I write this and will fittingly retire to the attic, to reside near a box of Mets artifacts that Greg left behind for safe keeping. The shirt reads: “I Helped Greg Move And Didn’t End Up Buried Under a Pile of Books.” Though, I will confess, it was close.

Greg enjoyed pursuits beyond books and baseball—after several years of trying, we finally saw the annual hockey game between his alma mater Harvard and the local power, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy. But most everything else in his sports consciousness was baseball. If there was a baseball-related, car-bound journey to undertake, he was a willing participant—if his health permitted. We took the long drive to see the Class A Pittsfield Mets in their final year in 2000, and when he finally nudged me enough to attend the 2002 Society of Baseball Research Convention in Boston, I witnessed a game with him at his beloved Fenway Park. I took him to the only postseason game he ever attended, the “Benny Agbayani Game” in the 2000 NLDS. He became seriously ill at the end of the workday that Monday and the paramedics thought him in enough pain that someone should ride with him. I hopped on board, spending the evening waiting with him for treatment at the Kingston Hospital E.R. He was still there two weeks later, fading in and out of consciousness as the Mets lost to the Yankees. His health forever dogged him, always putting him behind or making him start over once more.