I made the mistake of going to a Mets game on a Sunday. I knew the Mets did not play well on Sunday, and were 0-4 in trying to complete home sweeps—all on Sunday. But how was I to know that when I bought seats online directly from a season ticket holder in the last row of the first section at Citi Field behind home plate. My whole family attended a game for the first time since the 2013 All-Star, when our standing room tickets transformed into great seats when the people in front of us left early.

This one got a late start, thanks to a downpour, but the seats had four different clubs to seek refuge in. With two picky eaters gone teenagers, I was not about to waste the $33 all-you can eat ballpark food at the Porsche Club, so we gambled on the Foxwoods Club and waited out the rain until we could order Shake Shack from the waiter service. But I am not there for the food. It’s better than anything I ever ate at Shea, but I wonder what’s the surcharge to order a second helping of the ’86 Mets, please.

Both WOR radio and the New York Times did a fine job of chronicling the Mets’ woes on Sunday. The Mets had been 4-0 in games I attended this year this year (all on Friday or Saturday nights), and somehow got great pitching performances each time. I did not get a bad effort from Rafael Montero against Oakland, either. But the Mets lived up to the Sunday billing.

They have actually won twice at home on Sunday (once in April and once in June). Yet they lost this one to Oakland, the closest loss they’d had on a home Sunday all year—the other seven losses had been by an average score of 9-2. This was 3-2, sounding a lot more like the 1973 World Series against the A’s than a pedestrian interleague game against a foe whose players’ names were almost entirely unfamiliar to me except for Yoenis Cespedes, who wants to go back there for his final year. I hope the final year of Yo’s career won’t come for a while and if I could go back in time and spend one more year in the house where I grew up, I’d probably wish for it aloud, too.

On Sunday Yoenis gave everyone a jolt—if not a McDonald’s-sponsored compression sleeve with his #52 on it—when he skied a high fly to center with a man on in the ninth. The crowd behind me oohed and ahed, but I had a perfect view up the middle of umpire, catcher, pitcher, and center fielder. Jaycob Brugman (I so had to look up the A’s CF) never moved and the Mets never quite got off the Sunday schnide.

And if the Mets had gotten three wins in Flushing in 1973, there would have never been that ill-fated flight to Oakland or the George Stone what-if, or facing Catfish Hunter, or Ken Holtzman, or Reggie Jackson stomping on home plate, and the A’s celebrating all around the Oakland Coliseum, which is now the fifth-oldest ballpark in baseball, if not the least attractive. The Mets lost their last game at the Oakland Coliseum in 1973—on a Sunday, no less.

The question isn’t Why Did Mr. Met Flip Someone Off

The question is, What Took Him So Long!?!

Mr. Met had a little trouble this week. In case you don’t think the Mets are overly-scrutinized, Mr. M got in trouble for giving the middle finger, which is hard to do when you have four fingers. Three-Finger Mordecai Brown had four fingers (he lost one finger and another was badly bent) and his natural curve was one of the reasons the Cubs repeated as world champion 109 years ago. Jerry Garcia had four fingers and he was a great guitarist. Mr. Met has four fingers, never says nothin’ to nobody, and… well you know things are with the Mets.

Being a Mets fan is the equivalent of the maxim, “May you live in interesting times.” The Mets are an interesting team. Whether they are good or not depends what year you are asking.

The Mets have been good for less than half the years of their existence (25 for 55). And by good, I mean .500 or better. The Mets aren’t one of those teams where if they don’t win the World Series, it’s abject failure. It only feels that way minutes after the excruciating final World Series loss. (See 1973, 2000, 2015.)

The team is interesting because they are like someone who cannot throw a straight ball. It is always darting this way or that. And sometimes the Mets have pitchers who can do that very well. That makes things really interesting. And then they have pitchers do that and it is constantly called a ball. It feels like every pitcher on the team is having that problem in 2017.

But the beauty of baseball is that it is every day. It is looking good today, terrible tomorrow, and OK the day after. They play enough games to keep things lively. It’s up to them to add the interesting. And it is up to you.

I try to treat the team like a long-term investor, who knows they will never sell the stock while enduring the ups and down of marketplace volatility. One day it was low, like Friday night, when a five-run inning was immediately followed by a seven-run inning by the opponent—and that was that. The next night, which I saw in person, was a clean game with Robert Gsellman—he of the funny hair and funny name—pitched as well as I’ve seen him pitch this year. The bullpen actually pitched out of trouble. Addison Reed got the first two-inning save of his career, which I thought was “That ’70s Move” by Terry Collins, but it worked this time. Of course back in the 1970s, the “stopper” could pitch two or three innings in relief and then not be needed the next couple of days because one of the starters would pitch a complete game. The Mets have seven complete games in the four years since efficient and effusive knuckleballer R.A. Dickey was sent to Toronto. (Not to say in any way that was a bad trade. It was one of Sandy’s finest moments.)

And there I go, off on a tangent. Just like the 2017 Mets, it seems to make sense for a moment, and then it’s all over the place. Like a dream. And by dream I mean herky-jerky, hazy, and not quite there. Because this is no dream season. More like one of the 30 seasons that have not even come close to being a winner. I hope it is not a year that is remembered solely for Mr. Met going all Richie Hebner on the fans.

In the days before the new season begins is as good a time as any to reflect back on summers at the ballpark. Looking back on the 2016 season I did not get to that many games at Citi Field, but I did see some epic moments, even if they were more epic for the other team. I did not see the season kick off in New York, but I was there when it ended. I heard the “thunk” of the ball landing on the met bullpen roof from my perch from the 7-Line seats. I sat there twice in 2016 after never getting out there before. I also made my Citi party deck debut in 2016. Not featured on my Citi roll call was my visit to Marlins Parks, where I saw the game Jose Fernandez was supposed to pitch, but tragically did not.

My record may not be so great this year, but I really enjoyed every game. Living 100+ minutes away makes you appreciate the journey as well as the game. And as things turned out I went to the same series once and back-to-back games another time. So it came in bunches. Like runs sometimes do. But not wins. I only saw the Mets win once in 2016, but it was against the Nats, who beat them like a drum. If you look at their home record overall, the Mets enter 2017 at exactly .500 at home since Citi Field opened. A nice recovery for a team that couldn’t win at home for several years and couldn’t beat anybody at all for several more. I am still under .500, but that’s just me.

Here is the log of my games at Citi Field, which I do annually so I never have to say I think I’ve been to so and so many games at the park. This also does not include the 30+ games I worked at “The Joe” in Troy for the Tri-City Valley Cats. My major league scorecard may be shrinking, but I am still seeing plenty of baseball. And talking about it now and again (thanks to Media Goon and Greg Prince for providing video of the panel discussion I was in on Tom Seaver at QBC ’17.). Thank you very much.

Captain’s Log 2016 Citi Field

Tremendous time at the third Queens Baseball Conference at Katch Astoria. I am 3-for-3 in QBC and had plans to go to the one snowed out last year. This was the first time I was on a panel, thanks to Greg Prince. Bill Ryczek, Greg, and I were the anchorman panel to close out the event, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Tom Seaver’s debut season of 1967. I got a little worried when I saw that Greg and Bill had written remarks, but luckily I brought along a Seaver Danbury Mint statue (making its outside my laundry room debut) plus a copy of the latest edition of 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, which has numerous Tom Seaver chapters to choose from. Greg assigned me the saddest Seaver day: June 15, 1977. I read chapter 13: “The Seaver Deal.” One person said he got misty during it.

Well, that made my day. So did getting a gift of a 1976 bicentennial patch from Mets memorabilia man Jessie Burke, winning a signed Ron Hunt ball in a silent auction from Scott Green’s Play at the Plate booth, jawing with old pal and uniform creator/historian Todd Radom, and meeting former MLB PR man Jeff Heckleman plus Mets pregame host Pete McCarthy. And of course old friends Sharon and Kevin Chapman, Arnold Dorman, Mets by the Numbers founder, author, and pal Jon Springer, Uni Watch’s Paul Lukas, Game of My Life New York Mets author Michael Garry, Mr. Met, and the organizers of the event, including Shannon Shark and Dan Twohig, who also aided in a couple of books of mine that came out last year. And there are other names I am too tired to drop. It was just a fantastic time. It always gets me geared up for the baseball season and to get back to work writing about baseball. I am still in the midst of a hiatus I have to take every few years to keep sane. There really is nothing like the Mets community—because anyone else would have given up on the whole thing long ago. But fans do not give up easy. Or forget. God bless ya!

The last time the Mets opened the season on Sunday Night Baseball, it was a rematch of a heartbreaking loss to a Missouri-based foe. In 2007 it was the Cardinals. The Mets smoked them in the opener, swept the series, and looked great until the last frightening fortnight of the season. In 2016 it was the Royals. They smoked the Mets and Matt Harvey, the teams spilt the series, and New York turned it on in a final formidable fortnight of the 2016 season.

The Mets are a fickle bunch, and their fans can be, too. After a 2015 run where everyone was healthy and producing, where late-inning and late-season rallies happened with remarkable regularity, the Mets seemed rundown and out of luck for much of 2016. In 2015 they did not win a single regular-season game against either the Cubs or the Pirates, both playoff teams, but they overcame. In 2016 the Mets went a staggering 2-11 against the Rockies and Diamondbacks, teams that went a combined 36 games under .500. The Mets also had losing records against divisional foes Washington and Atlanta.

During the final homestand I sat in the upper deck and saw the last-place Braves sweep the Mets on a game-saving, over-the-fence catch by center fielder Ender Inciarte (he earned the 2016 Gold Glove right there). It left the Mets tied with the Giants and Cardinals for the two wild card spots. There were just 10 games left in the season, and given the Mets’ past history with the Cardinals, it was hard to think they’d steal a spot from them. But they did.

The Mets went 7-3 to finish the season, taking three of four from the Phillies, starting off with the best—and most important win of the season the night after that crushing loss to the Braves. Back and forth they went with the Phillies, Yoenis Cespedes tied the game in the fifth and then put them ahead in the seventh, only to see the Phils score three times in the eighth in a rare stinker outing by Addison Reed. The Mets rallied to tie it in the ninth on a Jose Reyes two-run homer. And then after Jeurys Familia faltered in the 11th and two runs scored, a three-run, walkoff bomb by Asdrubal Cabrera saved the day.

From that point forward, during a part of the season when Mets teams have faded badly over the past 20 years, the Amazin’s were, well, amazin’. Their only two losses in games that mattered: against the Phillies in Flushing, when they were down by 10 runs before rallying to make it 10-8 with the tying runs on base when the game ended, and against the Marlins on a night when Jose Fernandez was supposed to pitch but did not.

I was heading to Florida to visit my dad, with plans to see one of the games in Miami. Fernandez was scheduled to pitch that first game. He had never lost to the Mets, had a career 1.34 ERA against them, with the Mets hitting just .177 against him. Fernandez was cocky, but I liked him. He loved the game and it reminded me of watching young Pedro Martinez in Expos garb dominate a good Mets club. But Fernandez died in a boating accident the day before I left for Florida, the day before he was supposed to pitch against the Mets.

I walked around the mall-like stadium complex by myself that Monday night. It was somber but still had the bustle before a big-league game, especially with both teams still with a chance for the postseason. But when the Marlins took the field all donned in number 16 jerseys with Fernandez on the back, it was hard to think about a game. I don’t like Dee Gordon, or anyone who cheats the game (he spent half the year suspended for performance enhancing drugs), but it was hard to not feel something positive when he hit Bartolo’s second pitch over the right-field fence at that massive park. It was his only home run of the year. He cried when he got to the dugout.

The Mets put together a comeback, but lost that game. Against this team, playing the role of opponent in something bigger than the game, the Mets could have done their usual September slide. But they did not. The Mets were respectful of the Marlins the last two games, but they did not let down. Jay Bruce, who had been quiet as a dormouse since being acquired from the Reds for never-to-be Favorite Nonplaying Met Dilson Herrera, came alive the last week of the season. The Mets won those last two games in Miami and then won the first two games in Philly, the second of which clinched the top wild card seed.

Anytime the Mets make the postseason, it is a real achievement. The way this season looked, it was a grand achievement. Beating out the Cardinals, not beating themselves, and holding it together when they had to with a pitching staff made of Noah Syndergaard, Bartolo Colon, and three guys I hadn’t heard of before the year began. I thought Terry Collins deserved Manager of the Year, but for the second year in a row, he didn’t even come close in the voting. And I did not think much of the man’s managing ability (and occasionally still have questions) until last year. After so many things went right in 2015, so many things went wrong in 2016. Reaching the postseason at all was amazin’ indeed.

Now look, the one-game playoff/playin/playwithyourself game had its chance to convince me of being a worthy postseason format for baseball. A homer by a banjo-hitting third baseman against the league’s best closer did not change my belief that the wild card teams (if two such teams are really necessary) should play a best-of-three format reminiscent of the old way that the National League handled ties at the end of the Year (see “Shot Heard ‘Round the World, The”).

The Mets were bounced from October quick as a wink, but it was still a tremendous October. The Indians had their best team in years and with a little luck might have ended a drought that stretches to when my Dad, who just turned 85, was a teenager. (Happy birthday, Pop!) My grandfather, who has been dead for two-thirds of a century, was seven years old when the Cubs had last won. Something had to give.

But I would not give back one iota of the 2016 Mets season. Wright gets hurt, Reyes comes back. No deGrom? We get Gsellman. Duda and Walker are out? Loney and T.J. Rivera are in. Rene Rivera takes over when Travis d’Arnaud turns as small as the letter that starts his last name. Seth Lugo, for crying out loud. Josh Smoker, for corn’s sake. A team that has done nothing but frustrate me for a long time made me proud. They played exciting, meaningful baseball, and I walked out of there thinking the season was over the Wednesday night Inciarte stole that would-be home run. I walked out of there two Wednesdays later knowing that their season was done, but having no doubt they had given their best.

We want a world championship, just like everyone else, but barring that we’ll take a fun season. And these Mets gave us that and more in 2016. Here’s to even more in 2017.

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You want fun in 2017? Well, how about the Queens Baseball Convention this Saturday at Katch Astoria at 31-19 Newtown Avenue, Queens, NY 11102. I’ll be on Greg Prince’s 50 Years of 41: Tom Seaver Panel at day’s end, about 5 p.m. Be there or be square.

Just came from the mall where I bought… a bunch of crap. It’s nice that the Newburgh Mall has a branch of the library there, with lots of people sitting and reading. For shopping it would have been nice to have an actual bookstore to browse through titles in hardcover, softcover, and CD, but you still might order your favorite Mets book online if you don’t mind getting it after Christmas. But if you are reading this, I am assuming you already have One-Year Dynasty covered. Thanks so much.

Anywho, going to the mall is a pain. An hour and 15 minutes spent there feels like 15 hours and 1 minute to me. I can think of someplace where standing for 75 minutes waiting in line feels mighty fine: The Queens Baseball Convention. I’d gladly wait that long for two former Mets infielders and third base coaches in Bobby Valentine and Tim Teufel.

And the Queens Baseball Convention will have me, too. I have been asked by Mets author and blogger extraordinaire Greg Prince to take part in a panel on Tom Seaver, who became a Met 50 years ago. Whoa! I get a lot of anniversary numbers thrown at me, but that one made my knees buckle a bit. I’ll hopefully have recovered enough by Saturday, January 28, at Katch Astoria, 31-19 Newtown Avenue in Queens. This is inside information since I’m not listed on the QBC web site. So keep it under your (blue) Mets hat.

And what does this have to do with holiday shopping? Well, since we all waited too long to order our stuff online, my recommendation for your Mets Christmas gift of 2016 is to buy a ticket to QBC, print it out, and put it under your favorite Mets fan’s tree. I attended the first two QBCs put together by Mets Police and many other dedicated volunteers. I was monumentally bummed out that last year’s QBC was snowed out—the one storm all year! Bobby V. and Timmy T. won’t let that happen again.

This being the holiday season and me having books to sell, I figure why not combine both sentiments? I have included links below to click on to order from Amazon, but feel free to break out on your own and buy it from Barnes & Noble or your local book shop, like my favorite new place, Postmark Books in Rosendale.

My latest book is about everyone’s favorite insufferable Mets team, the ’86 world champs. It’s called One-Year Dynasty: Inside the Rise and Fall of the 1986 Mets, Baseball’s Impossible One-and-Done Champions. I also updated a couple of old stand-bys, 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die and Mets by the Numbers (which I co-authored with Jon Springer). I also updated Cubs and Red Sox books with my co-authors in the By the Numbers series. So I did books on three teams this year and all of them made the postseason. One even beat a 108-year curse and ended the San Francisco even-year, Ho-Jo-like domination thingee. Not too shabby.

If you want autographed copies, email me at matt@metsilverman.com.

Thanks for listening and no matter what gifts you choose, have a Metty Christmas and Happy Harvey Year!

It’s with a heavy heart I pen this tribute to Ralph Branca, who died the day before Thanksgiving at age 90. He will be forever known for allowing the home run dubbed the Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff on October 3, 1951—“The Giants win the pennant,” over and over, and Branca splayed across the steps at the Polo Grounds sobbing.

Before I even knew what baseball was, I knew that story. It was whispered around our house like the tale of someone who had killed someone in a tragic accident. Ralph Branca lived near us in White Plains, at first in the neighborhood next to my aunt’s house, and then moved a couple miles closer to where I grew up. He overcame his inglorious moment and his injury-shortened career to become a successful life insurance agent, who was still going to the office every day and calling clients in his late 80s, which I saw in the documentary made on him, Branca’s Pitch. My mom and Ann Branca were best friends. When I hear Ann Branca talk even now, I can hear strains of my mother coming through her voice, even though my mother was from Birmingham and she from Brooklyn.

Ralph was not just the nicest person I knew in baseball, he was the nicest person I knew. And when it became known that the Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff was the endgame of an elaborate sign-stealing system instigated by Giants manager Leo Durocher and perpetrated by coach Herman Franks, along with assorted bullpen scrubs, I realized he had the most integrity of anyone I’ve known. Joshua Prager’s initial Wall Street Journal story about the scheme came to light 50 years after the Giants stole the pennant. And Ralph had never said a word despite people calling him for years at all hours to tell him what a bum he was. And he was married to the daughter of the Mulveys, part owners of the Dodgers at the time, so it wasn’t like losing the pennant to their closest rival was easy to forget.

Prager’s The Echoing Green is the story of that season, that game, and the life that Branca and Bobby Thomson lived in the years that followed and how it changed with the revelation about the sign stealing. The Brooklyn Dodgers may have moved, but the team never left the hearts of its fans. Just ask the Wilpons. When you think of best known Brooklyn Dodgers, you—or at least I—number them like so: 1. Jackie Robinson, 2. Gil Hodges, 3. Duke Snider, 4. Pee Wee Reese, 5. Roy Campanella, and 6. Ralph Branca. Ralph isn’t there on ballplaying merit with four Hall of Famers and a should-be Hall of Famer, but when it comes to integrity, he was cut from the same cloth.

The New York Times obit goes into great detail about Ralph’s life, his 16 siblings, finding out decades later that Ralph, a devoted member of our church, Our Lady of Sorrows in White Plains, had a mother who was Jewish and never told him about that or her family in Hungary had died in the camps during World War II. But I can tell you that in a family where everyone’s name began with an “M,” he never once called me by my brother’s name, which was more than my parents could say; he arranged for me to go to Vero Beach and meet Tommy Lasorda and play catch with Steve Garvey during spring training in 1979; he provided tickets to my first baseball game, box seats at Shea Stadium for Yankees Old Timers day (yes, the Yankees at Shea) where he and Thomson performed their shtick; he sang at my sister’s wedding, a smooth voice that had once resulted in a side light career in an era when ballplayers had to have other ways of making money; and he put up with requests from my friends for autographs whether it was at Camp Pelican or my wedding. My way of paying him back was to respect his privacy and I never one asked him to do business or an interview (though I admit, I did ask once).

But what mean the most to me were the phone calls. After almost every book I wrote, I got a phone call from Ralph Branca saying how he’d heard about the book in the news and how it sounded like a winner. And sometimes he said how much my mother would have been proud of me. The kind of answering machine message you don’t need to save forever, because it is forever saved in your heart.

The last time we spent much time together was in October 2013. My son was stunned to learn that we knew the pitcher who was first to welcome Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers in 1947. So after one of his congratulatory calls, I talked to him about his book, A Moment in Time, and how much I liked it. I asked if we might arrange a meeting with my family. He said he would love to, and insisted on paying. I went to lunch with him one day to talk baseball and family. The next day he signed balls and books and he and Ann told my children about the grandmother they never knew.

You can’t say they don’t make ballplayers like that anymore; they don’t make people like that anymore.

For all its managerial misfirings and ridiculous bullpen moves, Cubs-Indians was the best Game Seven I can recall seeing. There have been 38 deciding Game Sevens in the World Series. The crème de la crème begins with a Game Eight, due to a tie, in 1912 (Red Sox over Giants in extras), 1924 (Senators over Giants in extras), 1926 (Cardinals over Yankees), 1955 (Brooklyn over Yanks. At last.), 1960 (Mazeroski HR sends Bucs over Yanks), 1964 (Cards beat Yanks in their last WS for like ever—or 12 years for those of you who can only count rings), 1971 (Pirates over Orioles by a run in the Roberto Series), 1972 (Hairs 3, Squares 2), 1975 (Reds over Red Sox in my first World Series and still maybe best I have seen), 1982 (Keith comes through for Cardinals over Brewers), 1986 (Keith comes through again. Natch.), 1991 (Twins over Braves in maybe the best Game Seven pitching duel ever), 1997 (another really touch one, Cleveland), 2001 (Diamondbacks over Yankees with the best bloop ever), and 2014 (Bumgarner 3, Royals 2).

Just the idea of Cubs and Indians playing for all the marbles, that something’s got to give with the BS curses, should have had you tuning in. And Game Seven drew the most eyeballs for a World Series game since 1991 (though this could be be bad because it might only encourage Fox to keep carrying baseball and hiding the playoffs from large swaths of the country without top tier cable). But it was worth the exhaustion.

For all my Chicago friends, especially my Cubs by the Numbers co-authors, Al Yellon and Kasey Ignarski, who rarely miss a game at Wrigley, congratulations. They each have attended thousands of games there and have seen and put up with a lot crap through the years. As much as I think I know about baseball, I have no idea how good this feels for them. The one time I attended a Mets game with  Al, in 2009 at Citi Field, he stopped me in my tracks when I complained about the lousy team the Mets had that year. “Listen, your team has two world championships in your lifetime. I just hope for one in mine.” Well earned.

Best stadium, best celebrity fan (Bill Murray), and now best team. That’s some hat trick. Hats off.

It was 30 years ago that the Mets won the world championship. I almost did something for the site on the 30th anniversary of Game Six, but I fought the urge. To me, Game Six means nothing without Game Seven. Without fulfilling the destiny, the glory of Game Six is the Carlton Fisk home run in the 1975 World Series: a tremendous moment, but invariably anticlimactic because Boston blew a 3-0 lead in Game Seven in ’75. And the Red Sox blew a 3-0 lead in Game Seven in 1986.

Many people forget that the Mets were down by three runs in the sixth inning and were dominated by Bruce Hurst in the deciding game, who’d already beaten them twice in the Series. Then in the span of just over a dozen pitches, the Mets rallied to tie the game. Keith Hernandez’s two-run single to put the Mets on the board may be the biggest hit of his Mets career. And during our interviews for One-Year Dynasty, Keith still couldn’t believe that it was almost the exact same situation as Game Seven in the 1982 World Series, when Keith the Cardinal got the big hit with his team trailing the Brewers in the deciding game. “I just did what I always did in a tight situation,” he said, “which is take a couple of deep breaths and count to ten, slow everything down and get in the box. I mean you can’t run and hide. There I am. I’m either going to do it or I’m not.”

If he’d hit into a double play, the inning is over. Maybe Hurst pitches a complete game like he did in Game Five. Then there is no Curse of the Bambino and perhaps Boston has an even more inflated image. It’s possible. Hurst had already been voted Series MVP. But of course, Keith got the hit, Ray Knight got the Series MVP, and Hurst and the Red Sox got the short end of the stick. But who cares about them? It’s the Mets who have had to hold onto that moment, milk it, have people not yet born accept it as their team’s greatest moment. It was a superb moment. The team didn’t have staying power but the moment certainly did.

I still have a pennant from that season—as do the Mets—but all the swag I received at Christmas disappeared over time. And while I have bought a couple of Mets NL Champion shirts and Division Series shirts over the intervening three decades, I rarely wear them. I am holding out for the real thing. And I am going to make sure I don’t let it out of my sight. With the Mets you never know how long you’re going to have to make it last.