Doug Flynn (Photo courtesy of Jacob Kanarek, From First to Worst)

It was one tough week for Mets fans. There I was at Citi Field on Sunday, July 30, having a great time with the Mrs., the boy, and his friend. I had my first in-person view of Justin Verlander in a Mets uniform. He dominated the Washington Nationals, a team that shamelessly dumped its stars after winning the World Series that had eluded the franchise since it debuted in Montreal in 1969. (The ’69 season should ring a bell with Mets fans.) I saw him with his 250th career game and his sixth as a Met.

And then some 48 hours after rolling past the Nats, 5-2, the Mets were in the same boat as rudderless Washington—without the benefit of a recent World Series victory.

At the end of March, as the Mets rode the short distance from Port St. Lucie to Miami for Opening Day, the team was among the favorites to win the World Series. Four months later 90 wins are out the window; 90 losses seem inevitable. Gone are Dave Robertson, Max Scherzer, Mark Canha, Tommy Pham, and Verlander. To be honest, without injured Edwin Diaz locking down close games, I had doubts that the Mets were true championship contenders. Having been a Mets fan for way too long, I am perpetually skeptical that the team will finish the job.

Owner Steve Cohen fired a warning shot in June during his odd meeting with the press. The Mets struggled so badly that month (7-19) that even a 6-0 start to July  did little to move the needle (they went 8-9 the rest of the month). A few other struggling teams like the Padres and Angels doubled down at the trade deadline, but when you are under .500 and seven games out of the final Wild Card spot in a watered-down playoff system, with two pitchers pushing 40 and making over $40 million per year, the right thing is to cut bait. The Mets organization is light years behind Atlanta and the only way to even the playing field is to build from within. Free agents have rarely worked out for the Mets.

I would have liked to keep Verlander and at least entertain the concept of being competitive the next two years, but if you are going to retool, then trade your best chip. And Cohen threw all kinds of money in on these massive contracts he’d handed out, assuring the Mets would get the best prospects in return. That is exciting. You’d wish they’d gotten more pitching, but the experts were all impressed with the haul. Yet be warned that minor league busses and major league benches are filled with highly-touted prospects that never made it.

The future appears promising, but no one is excited about watching this team play now. That first post-trade game against the Royals—a team barely staying ahead of a historically bad and completely gutted Oakland team—seems like a harbinger of things to come. If the bullpen could have held it together for one night, it might have provided hope. Some teams get rid of high-priced headaches (see Scherzer, Max) and actually play better. That extra-inning loss to the Royals—followed by getting blanked in Kansas City and then blown out for the sweep—was a bad sign. How they called up all these scrubinees from the minors and didn’t at least give Luke Voit some at bats instead of letting him walk is the most questionable move of the week. The rest of the deals make sense on paper.

This isn’t the Midnight Massacre. I spent the first part of the summer editing a new edition of Jacob Kanarek’s From First to Worst about what happened in the years immediately following the 1973 National League pennant. I relived it all in this well-written book due out next year. I grew up a diehard fan during that time, for anyone who wants to compare what is happening now to that period—please stop. The “prospects” the Mets got from Cincinnati for Tom Seaver at the 1977 trade deadline were players the Big Red Machine didn’t want or need. There was no Steve Cohen writing big checks to get the best prospects or maybe the four players they got back in 1977 could have been 20-year-old stud minor league pitchers Mario Soto and Bill Caudill, infielder Ron Oester, 21, and a 24-year-old young infielder named Ray Knight, who had essentially taken over the Doug Flynn reserve role in Cincinnati. Knight would replace Pete Rose at third base for the Reds in 1979 and, of course, rock Shea with a World Series MVP trophy in New York in 1986. The post-trade 1977 Mets were held together by bailing wire. Joe Torre was a rookie manager in way over his head. The Mets were a dead club walking (and not hitting).

Many of today’s Mets fans, to judge from needy social media posts, sound awfully spoiled considering that the team has historically been pretty average. (Through 9,700+ games the Mets have an all-time .483 winning percentage.) To the people who constantly complained during a 101-win season last year, all I can say is: You really do have something to complain about now. See you in 2026.

On the Air

I got these conflicted thoughts down in preparation for my appearance on the air with Dan Reinhard on WKNY in Kingston, NY, on Monday, August 7, at 7 p.m.

Cubs Shout Out

I recently sat in the Wrigley Field bleachers, thanks to the seat-saving stylings of Bleed Cubbie Blue and Cubs by the Numbers co-author Al Yellon. Al sat with me at Citi Field when the park first opened and our book was new. It was good to finally return the favor and sit in God’s own sunshine!

I love the Mets and even watched most of their games this week, but this year’s team is not worth the five-hour effort of gathering the info, summarizing the season so far, come up with a grade for each individual, and format it. I still think they can do something and I hope there’ll be a good second half. If that happens, I’ll do an end-of-year grade report. Right now everyone—with a few exceptions, notably Francisco Alvarez—deserves C- to D- for overall play. Enjoy your time off from this team. No complaints of “What am I going to do tonight with the Mets?” Here’s what you can do: LIVE!

The 2023 Mayfest at the Walkway Over the Hudson marked the fourth time I took a booth at the landmark converted bridge in Highland/Poughkeepsie, NY. Despite the first day being all but a total washout, I was still amazed by how many people—and dogs—came out in the downpour.

On Sunday I crushed every personal milestone for books sold at an event. By early afternoon, I had to call home to tell my wife and son to come two hours early to bring the books I thought I would never need—plus singles and fives to make change.

I want to thank everyone who came by and bought books and those who took a bookmark and said they’d stop by on the way out or buy it on Amazon. There’s still time to get them for Dad on Father’s Day. Wink! Wink! If you want a signed copy, contact me here or through Facebook Messenger.

The Walkway is the only event I still do. Bookstore events frankly just make me anxious. The Walkway makes it easy to do and be successful. That’s due to the great work by Jami Anson and the Walkway team who put their hearts into setting up these events twice a year. On a beautiful day like Sunday, you can’t even begin to count how many people stream past. The people who bought Out of a Dog’s Mouth keep me going. And Mets fans? They are crazy, generous, fickle, and fiercely loyal—just like me! The Mets winning both games that day was further proof that all was in line in the Metiverse.

See you at the Walkway the weekend of October 21-22 for Walktoberfest!

Among the numerous and overstuffed bookcases in my office is one that is filled with books on the Mets. There you will find a slim orange volume in a binder that dates to the 1980s. The book? GourMets.

Published by Doubleday, sponsored by the Lady Met Fan Club, Ltd., and edited by Randye Ringler (currently assisting former Mets catcher Ed Hearn publicize the safety of live kidney donation), GourMets is a Mets cookbook as well as a time capsule. Proceeds went to the March of Dimes. (This is not to be confused with a 2007 Mets cookbook of the same name.)

I assume I bought this at Shea at some point in the 1980s for someone and, like many well-intentioned gifts, it ended up back in my lap in time. So here we stand 41 years later and I find myself in the rotation to cook at least once per week in a strange new world where kids are mostly out of the house, I am mostly home, and the Mrs. has an office job. So I leafed through the old Mets cookbook and found many recipes for hypertension and heart disease.

Despite contributions from every player and many employees (PR guy/funnyman Jay Horwitz gave directions to Ponce’s Pizzeria in Clifton, NJ), a lot of the recipes left me flat. Or they were way too complicated—ballplayers apparently have a lot of time on their hands when the season is over. Then I came across the Dave Kingman entry: Lasagna. I’d never made lasagna, but if Kong could do it…

Kingman and I went back, “way back,” in the words of Bob Murphy (Mini Cherry Cheese Cakes). Kong landed with the Mets about a month before I did in 1975. At 6-foot-6 he was as massive as almost any ballplayer of the day. A half century later, there are not many players—at least those without steroidal help—who could hit the ball as high or as far as Kong. Dave did it on lasagna power.

As a first-year fan in ’75, I was mesmerized by his longball prowess as much as I was by Tom Seaver’s overall excellence. You didn’t need to know much about baseball as a kid to know that these guys were good at it. If Kingman struck out constantly or couldn’t field, it was forgotten with his next moon shot. And Kong played four different positions in 1975 despite not being good at any of them. That he manned third base at the second Mets game I ever attended (three whiffs but five assists and no errors!) remains a thrill that might only be surpassed by the ball he launched into the parking lot that I witnessed at Shea during the Year of the Kong in 1976.

But since this cookbook dates to 1982, I will put this in the context of the second Kingman regime. Like pretty much all Mets subsequent acts, his second tenure was more complicated; though he did win the home run crown I was ready to die for in ’76, when his dive for a flyball turned into a broken thumb and he lost the HR title to Mike Schmidt, 38-37.

Fast forward through the Midnight Massacre, Kong’s tour of every division in 1977, his 48 bombs as a Cub in 1979, and his eventual return in a trade with Chicago for Steve Henderson exactly seven years after Kingman came from San Francisco. The 1982 Kong was a retread, but he led the NL with 37 homers and 156 K’s. We’re talking the last-place ’82 Mets here, so let us not get caught up in rhetoric. Kingman was the first Met to win a home run crown and despite hitting just .204, he still led the team in RBI (99), walks (59), and slugging (.432), plus he stole four bases without getting caught and somehow got down three sacrifice bunts.

Kong also knew his way around a kitchen. His lasagna recipe sounded good, not too complicated, and something I could whip up. On the other hand, Rusty Staub’s Veal Zingara sounded great if he made it for you at Rusty’s Restaurant; Le Grande Orange lost me when his first ingredient in this cookbook entry was white leg of veal. Check, please!

Rather than tire you with too many stovetop details, it’s probably more helpful to explain what happened in the kitchen in the context of a 1982 game—from the early part of the season, when the Mets had a little something cooking. In May the Mets went 17-11 and were in contention! Then they won nine games in June. July and August were excruciating. The Mets went just 14-41 in those two months and lost 15 straight games, highlighted by three straight walkoff, extra-inning losses in as many nights on a winless nine-game road trip. Even I had stopped watching by then. At 17, I had finally found something better—let’s at least say more interesting—to do than watch godawful Mets baseball. The Mets rallied enough in September to avoid triple-digit defeats—losing a mere 97.

In May of ’82, though, there was hope. I was keeping track of each game on my Mets souvenir from Calendar Day. A Mets game that sums up my preparation of Kongsagna 41 years later is represented by the game at the Astrodome on May 22, 1982. At the end of that night, the Mets were just 2 ½ games behind the eventual world champion Cardinals. I included the starting Mets lineup from that night and their corresponding recipes from the cookbook:

CF Mookie Wilson (Candy Yams)

3B Bob Bailor (Chicken Biscuit Pie)

LF George Foster (Broccoli Casserole, Lemon Cake)

1B Dave Kingman (Lasagna)

RF Gary Rasijch (Cheesecake)

C John Stearns (Creamy Butter Squares)

2B Wally Backman (Super Spicy Beef Enchiladas)

SS Ron Gardenhire (Stuffed Tomatoes, Cobbler)

P Pete Falcone (Rock Cornish Hen Gravy & Stuffing)

Like procuring and chopping up all the ingredients, the Mets took the lead thanks to Kingman. With two on and two outs against Nolan Ryan in the seventh, Kong singled in Bob Bailor with the go-ahead run, putting Pete Falcone in line for the win. Former ace Craig Swan (Frosted Salad) had by now been injured enough times that he served as a reliever. He set the ‘stros down in the seventh and eighth and the Mets added enough runs to take a 5-1 lead into the ninth.

Seemed like an easy win—just like Kong’s lasagna seemed like an easy dish. Then I botched a simple play when I misread the instructions and did not realize that the meat, the vegetables, the spices, and the tomato sauce needed to be on the stovetop for 90 minutes. That threw off my planning, prep, and timing. Likewise, Kong mishandled a grounder in the ninth that loaded the bases with none out and chased Swan for Neil Allen (Spaghetti with Shrimp). The big Saturday night crowd at the dome finally had something to cheer about. Allen promptly allowed a game-tying grand slam to Terry Puhl, who hit all of eight home runs in 1982.

We all make mistakes. And Allen atoned for his on that night in ’82. He held the Astros scoreless for four innings. Batting with two on and two outs in the 12th—manager George Bamberger (Meat Loaf and Vegetables) had gone through his bench by then—Allen’s topper in front of the plate resulted in an error by Astros catcher Alan Ashby that brought home John Stearns with the go-ahead run. Allen then retired the dangerous Jose Cruz with a man on for the 6-5 victory.

The game, like the meal, was unnecessarily nerve-racking and required a lot of relief (from my wife). Yet in the end it was delicious and goes down in the books as a win. And Kong’s meal goes in the recipe folder for the next time I need a little drama with my lasagna.

I have done a couple of interviews of late. And I am late on posting my interview with Bob Hurte and his podcast, The Baseball Doesn’t Fall Far from the Tree. It was earlier in the year and I listened to it to make sure that it hadn’t gone stale. It’s still very fresh, as is Bob’s book, Intelligent Influence in Baseball.

More recently I spoke with Dan Reinhard on Sports Talk in Kingston, discussing the Amazin’ Mets and more. Always an honor to be asked and always a pleasure to talk baseball.

If you recall, last season’s first half ended with a blown lead to a bad Pirates team. This year the first half ended with a loss to a Cubs team that is not good, but plays hard (if not all that well). Still, Chicago manager David Ross should not get too comfortable. Buck Showalter, on the other hand, has done a remarkable job in his second go-round in the Big Apple. Anytime over the past 25 years the Mets probably could have hired him, but I am glad it did not happen until now because he has matured, Mets ownership has matured (or, more accurately, changed), and the fans have… well, mature is not the word I would choose. I liked when you did not hear people bitch on each pitch via social media. I much preferred the more passive approach of watching them parade around Shea Stadium once per year letting the world know their feelings between games of a Banner Day doubleheader.

But how ’bout those Mets? To be 23 games over .500 at the All-Star break is something I could not have dreamed. Last year they were 47-40 at this point. The Mets excelled in the first half without Jacob deGrom, unveiled the Seaver statue, retired No. 17, and showed they will do what it takes to win. The acquisitions they made this past offseason paid nice dividends in the first half. Let’s see how they fared.

Overall Class Grade: A- Last year I gave them a B+ for the first half. There is still room for improvement, but this first half is better, no?

Metsies who have not accrued 50 at bats or 15 innings pitched, please remain in your seat. That means you, Nick Plummer, Ender Inciarte (recently cut), Khalil Lee, Matt Reynolds, Stephen Nogosek, Sean Reid-Foley, Tommy Hunter, Yoan Lopez (who has done a lot in 8.2 innings), Trevor May, Jake Reed, Thomas Szapucki, and Robinson Cano, who was mercifully released before he could accrue enough ABs to get a grade (which would have been nowhere near an A or a B).

First-Half 2022 Report Card

Edwin Diaz A This is the guy you trade your top prospect to get. This first half must be what Diaz looked like in his 57-save year in Seattle in 2018.

Pete Alonso A- It is not just the long ball. What I like most is his attitude, aptitude, and ability to try to make contact late in counts. Maybe that is why he is leading the NL in RBIs. Alonso (and Lindor) played every game in 1H.

Max Scherzer B+ He has bank account and sanity of an Arab sheik, but you want him in a must-win game. Despite injury, 6-1, 2.22 ERA, 90 Ks in 69 IP.

Taijuan Walker B+ After the way he crapped out after a great first half in 2021, you feel the need to bump up his first marking period grade a bit.

Jeff McNeil B+ At this time last year, Squirrel was utterly lost. This year he was chosen as the NL All-Star starting 2B. He’s excelled in LF, too.

Brandon Nimmo B+ I don’t want to jinx him by saying he’s finally healthy, but he has been the key cog in this lineup and his defense is topping.

Starling Marte B+ I see why there was talk for years about acquiring Marte. He electrifies the top of the order, the ball leaps off his bat, and I don’t know which is better, his glove or him arm.

Francisco Lindor B Reminds me of Beltran the way people are never happy with him. I am! He’s a shortstop with 16 HRs, 66 RBIs, 10 steals, and 36 BBs.

Luis Guillorme B Luis has made himself into an essential player on this team: In 224 plate appearances he has .293/.369/.369 and is a superb infielder.

Mark Canha B I knew little about him before he arrived, but he has a great plate approach and is good LF. Feels like he scores every time he gets on.

Adam Ottavino B I don’t really trust him in a big spot, but he has done a pretty good job. Elder statesman of the pen.

Colin Holderman B They say wins don’t matter for pitchers, but when he’s in, the Mets win. He is 4-0 in 15 appearances (Mets are 10-5 in those games) with a 2.04 ERA.

Carlos Carrasco B- Cookie has not been as consistent as some pitchers, but 10 wins are as many as almost any NL pitcher in first half, for what it’s worth.

Chris Bassitt B- Leads team in innings, but has been inconsistent and a bit of a red ass. He’s whiffed more batters and allowed more HRs than any Met.

Drew Smith B- He may have blown the game before the break, but then you recall the Mets got him from the Rays (for Lucas Duda). I want to stay patient.

Tylor Megill C+ When healthy, he has looked good despite a 5.01 ERA. Sophomore pitcher steps in at last minute and endures rain delay to win Opening Day.

Adonis Medina C+ Has had a couple of huge moments for the Mets, so I wonder why he hasn’t been used in bigger situations when the big guys can’t go.

Trevor Williams C He’s been in the majors longer than I thought. He threw seven shutout innings one start and had a three-inning save a week later.

Tomas Nido C Has caught twice as many games as McCann and handled himself well behind the dish. His .211 average is better than many catchers.

Seth Lugo C I still think this team’s success in crunch time will depend on Seth coming through in a big spot. Cannot use him on successive days.

Eduardo Escobar C- On any given night, his bat is either great or terrible, but his glove at 3B is very steady. Also seems to fire up the clubhouse.

Joely Rodriguez C- Mets traded a better reliever (Miguel Castro) to the Yankees to get Joely because he’s a lefty. They need another southpaw.

Patrick Mazeika D+ No walkoff fielder’s choice magic for Mazeika this year, but he’s gotten some nice hits and gunned down base stealers.

James McCann D+ Every time he comes up, I repeat, “His job is to catch,” over and over. He has a good arm. Called a no-hitter, but so did Josh Thole.

Travis Jankowski D Because so little was expected of him, I’ll rate Travis above a couple of bigger disappointments. He’s fast and a good drag bunter.

Dominic Smith D- I thought that one silver lining about forcing the DH on the NL was that Dom and J.D. would finally platoon. That has not worked out so far.

J.D. Davis D- Still figuring out which end of this paltry platoon has been more of a letdown. But Dom is a better runner and fielder, so he goes first.

Chasen Shreve F He’s already been cut, so let’s saddle him with a well-deserved F. Mets need a second lefty, gave him every chance, and he failed.

Manager/GM

Buck Showalter A I have been watching the Mets a long time, and this guy gets it as well as any Mets manager I have seen. He has them prepared for anything.

Billy Eppler B I am not sure how much of the handiwork from the past six months is his, but in the coming month he’ll have a chance to get his grade up.

To Keith Hernandez… getting No. 17 retired is a quite an achievement—for a second choice! On that franchise-shifting day when he arrived out of the (baby) blue and put on a Mets jersey in June 1983, he knew he was going to need a new number to go with his new surroundings. He well knew that the Mets had retired No. 37 for Casey Stengel. Mex came up with a new number to honor childhood fave Mickey Mantle while maintaining his Keith-like individuality.

I don’t know how to say it without sounding like I’m bragging, so I’ll just say it—years ago I wrote a book with Keith on his view of the Mets and the last days of Shea from his unique perspective. He far eclipsed that book effort with his recent memoir, I’m Keith Hernandez, which I had nothing to do with—as far as I can tell, neither used a ghostwriter, nor needed one. I listening to the audio book, which has the added bonus of Keith reading Keith. I cannot recommend that book enough. He and I don’t cross paths much, but whenever I have needed to ask him something or interview him for a project, he has been nothing but kind, generous, and friendly. So I felt I owed it to Keith, the baseball gods, and myself to be in the “upper tank”—Keith’s term—for the occasion with a couple of old friends, trying not to get sunburned while taking it all in. What a ceremony! What a win!

Keith joins the retired numbers of Tom Seaver (41), Gil Hodges (14), Stengel (37), Mike Piazza (31), and Jackie Robinson (I was at Shea in 1997 for the surprise announcement that 42 would be retired forever throughout baseball). Honestly, I don’t think the Mets need to retire any more numbers. Keep it special. Keep it for the precious few. For the difference makers. The Mets don’t win in 1969 without Seaver and Koosman; they don’t revitalize the fan base without bringing in Piazza in 1998 and, like Keith, tying him up with a contract worthy of the man; and the Mets don’t win in 1986 without Keith arriving before almost everyone else in 1983 to set the groundwork and—using another Keith favorite—be on point. We were all on point for him at Citi.

The Ozzie Smith of first base, the perennial All-Star, the blue-and-orange icon, the broadcast legend—Keith belongs in the upper pantheon of Metdom. In case that was not obvious enough before, now it is official.

I relished the text I sent out to my hardcore foursome in the eighth inning on Friday, April 29, 2022. “Mets game on if possible. You’ve been alerted.” No other words were needed. All tuned in. The Mets got their second no-no. No lives were ruined in the attempt of watching a potential Mets no-hitter.

There was a time, long ago, when some of these same obsessed friends and I would freeze when a potential Mets no-hitter went beyond the sixth inning. Then you were supposed to hop into your car and drive to Shea Stadium, without tickets, with no word to loved ones as to where you’d gone, and be there in person when the impossible happened. Fortunately for me, it never came up. I never had to explain why I went to wash my hands and didn’t come back for three hours.

I was, however, actually sitting at Shea Stadium on June 9, 1998, when Rick Reed took a no-hitter into the seventh. Wade Boggs broke it up with a two-out double in the first game ever between the Mets and the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Reed completed the three-hitter, throwing 121 pitches.

The last part is the rub. Managers like Bobby Valentine were well aware of pitch counts in the 1990s, but they certainly were not married to them. In MLB in ’98, there were 302 complete games and 101 route-going shutouts. Last year there were 50 complete games and 29 complete-game shutouts—and I was surprised to see that many. The world is changing, baseball along with everything else. As lofty as those 1998 pitching totals were, go back a quarter century before that. With fewer teams and thus fewer opportunities in 1973, with the advent of the DH and lots of other interesting stuff, there were 1,061 complete games and 236 CG SHOs.

So what does that have to do with a combined no-hitter by the Mets? Well, some say that a five-man no-hitter is not as impressive as the one-man variety—and maybe it isn’t. Johan Santana’s 2012 gem also included a ball that clearly landed fair, but that was before instant replay was fully adopted. And while Santana went the distance in a star-spangled night, the reality is that he was never the same after the 134-pitch effort against the defending world champion Cardinals to end the Mets’ 50-year no-hit drought, at the time the longest any team had gone before finally tossing a no-no (the Padres had even more staying power before finally getting their first no-hitter last year). Johan’s previous outing before the no-hitter, a complete-game shutout against San Diego at Citi Field, was a much cleaner affair. He allowed four Padres hits and threw just 96 pitches, allowing fewer baserunners than he did in the no-hitter (when he walked five Cardinals).

Johan got the Mets’ monkey off their backs, but he was never quite the same. Santana went 3-6 with an 8.27 ERA in what were the final 10 starts of his career. He shut it down in August, never to fully ramp it up again. Johan attempted multiple comebacks, but he did not pitch again after 2012. I know Mets manager Terry Collins was worried about what might happen to Santana that night, and I do not blame him or any of us who so wanted Johan to finish it.

I love the days of the four-digit complete games in the big leagues, of the swash-buckling stud pitchers going toe to toe, of starters going 10, 12, 14 innings to get a win for their team. I appreciate that generational pitchers like Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan had body parts that wore out from age—finally—instead of from overuse. Just like Tom never expected to approach Cy Young’s career mark of 511 wins—he was exactly 200 short—maybe we too should adapt. Starting with me. Even if I don’t like it. A No-Han is more storybook, but I like it better when the story has a happy ending for the guy who made it happen.