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The Almost Official Site of
Mets Author Matthew Silverman
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MetSilverman.com picnic tickets for the last homestand at Shea.
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August 26, 2008 Picnic Your Price Shea’s days have never been so numbered. You know they’re getting close when they have actual Mets pulling down their uniform numbers as opposed to car dealers yanking down the number of days remaining out in center field. The days also grow short for the metsilverman.com Picnic Area Game. To meet the fees charged by Aramark, I have to raise the price to $70 per ticket (buffet included) for this unique vantage point on Wednesday, September 24, vs. the front-running Cubs. I will hold the $65 price until September 2 (I’m holding it an extra day because of the Labor Day holiday.) Go here to get it done. I can send the game tickets before the game, but the food bracelets and the beer coupons can’t be distributed until you walk in the gate the night of Sept. 24. (Gates open at 5:40 p.m.) We’re not generating a profit here, but we will be generating fun. And sending out Shea the right way. |
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August 25, 2008 Thank You Very Much Top 10 Shea Moments (For the last go round at Shea Stadium, I’m going to count down my 10 favorite games at Shea that I have witnessed, with a side list or two thrown in to stretch it out. I chronicle the greatest moments at Shea in both Meet the Mets and 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, but this list is based on being there in the flesh. And what it felt like at Shea on that date.) Recap: #10. April 5, 1983 Tom Seaver Returns [Click here] Recap: #9. October 3, 2004 Les Morts [Click here] Recap: #8. May 23, 1998: Welcome Home, Mr. Piazza [Click here] Recap #8A. Losers Bracket [Click here] Recap #7. October 4, 2006: You’re Out. And You’re Out! [Click here] Recap #6. July 1, 2000: Fireworks! [Click here] Recap #5. October 7-8, 2000: Benny and Bobby [Click here] Recap #5A. What’d I Miss? [Click here] #4.
October 3, 1999: My Kingdom for a Tie As a Mets fan, it’s hard to say anything could be worse than September 2007, but once upon a time, the Mets came within a weekend of the longest-running nightmare in franchise history. The 1998 team dissolved into nothingness the last week of the season. The last Tuesday of the year saw the Mets leading the wild card by a game over the Cubs with five to play. They were 3 ½ games ahead of the Giants, whose late-season winning streak couldn’t make up for a lackluster season. But it could. The Giants won six in a row and even dropping two in a row in Denver didn’t wind up hurting them. Likewise, Brant Brown’s dropping of a fly ball in the bottom of the ninth in Milwaukee allowed the Brewers to beat the Cubs, but it didn’t stop Chicago from securing a tie for the wild card. The Mets, who needed one win in their last five to force a playoff—two wins would’ve clinched it—didn’t win again. Two excruciating losses to the Expos followed by three straight to the division champion Braves, who had nothing to play for, ended the Mets season. Not with a bang, but a whimper. So…here comes 1999. And the Mets are a better team. A deeper team. This speedy kid named Cedeno. This grand slam machine called Ventura. Bullets firing from the belt of Benitez. “The Best Infield Ever?”!!!! And here comes mid-September and there it goes…all your hopes and dreams. Again. One day you’re playing for first place in Atlanta with 12 games to play and before you know it you’ve completed an 0-6 roadtrip with a sweep at the hands of a horrid Phillies team. Then there’s a loss at Shea against these very same Braves to make it seven straight (I’m there), an actual win against Greg Maddux to stop the streak, and a crushing extra-inning loss to the Bravos that transforms Shea into one giant crying towel (there for that, too). I was done. I had nothing left to give. Being superstitious back then I did not even watch the Friday night game against the Pirates, figuring I’d seen all of the last nine games and had experienced one win. It had to be me. Clearly. The Mets won the Friday night game, beating Pittsburgh. At this point, that really didn’t make much difference, the important thing was what was happening in Milwaukee. And just about the time the winning run scored in the 11th at Shea, Ronnie Belliard actually helped out the Mets by singling in the deciding run in the 10th against the Reds. Cincinnati—having a fantastic year under Jack McKeon—handled the pressure of being in front about as well as the Mets had. The Astros were in the mix, too, but really, they were more a diversion than anything else. Houston had the NL Central just about wrapped up, but if the Astros spit the bit—and they had lost Friday night to L.A.—the Reds could tie them for the division crown. And if the Mets, Reds, and Astros were in a three-way tie, the Reds and Astros would play for the NL Central crown and the Mets would take the wild card. Not really a fair situation for the Central clubs, but going face-to-face with two straight Septembers blown to hell, I didn’t give a crap about fair. I watched the updates from Milwaukee while shucking a dozen or two Maryland crabs for a small gathering we were having that night. (Obviously a dinner party scheduled in advance, and we were stuck with far more crabs—at $3 per, who could argue?—than we could handle from an obsequious Baltimore crab house.) The Reds were beaten again by the Brew Crew while I was elbow deep in Old Bay seasoning. Suddenly, the season had completely changed. Again. Duck had tickets for that night’s game and it was his call if we should go. He demurred at about 6:15 p.m., saying he did not want to tempt the baseball gods. We were all going Sunday, no matter what. My wife never found out that I was a word away from walking out the front door and driving off to Shea minutes before my friends were scheduled to arrive for dinner. We pounded crabs in my kitchen and the Mets pounded the Pirates at Shea. Rick Reed went the distance—and got a key hit—as the Bucs showed a little fight but eventually faded. I was glad I’d saved it for Sunday while assuring I would not spend the rest of October sleeping on the couch. I awoke early to a warm, sunny day. I put on shorts, a Mets hat, and an old-time Brewers jersey. We were all Brewers today. I even forgave them their ridiculous switch of leagues of a year earlier. The series with the Reds at County Stadium was probably the most meaningful games the Brew Crew had played this late in a season since Stormin’ Gorman was in his prime. Brant Brown was last year and damn Kevin Brown now. I cursed the Dodgers ace for refusing to pitch that day’s potentially crucial game against the Astros—but I thanked his manager, the one and only Davey Johnson, for asking. The Astros clinched the division by knocking out Robinson Checo in the last start of his brief career. The man getting his 22nd win of the year—and final victory as an Astro—one Michael William Hampton. Duck and I had gone to many Closing Day games as some sort of ritual, but the season ender rarely meant anything beyond the esoteric, except for the ’98 Shea closer against Carl Pavano and the Expos, which had only meant heartbreak. The day was warm and the park was filled. The Mets had been well short of sellouts the first two games against Pittsburgh, but this afternoon the place was packed with 50,111; Young Tom joining us to fill out the total nicely. The crowd was loud from the first pitch. And then the Pirates scored a few minutes later. Kevin Young, the only bat remaining in a depleted Pittsburgh lineup and in the final day of what would be his last good year, somehow got a pitch to hit with two outs and a base open. Orel Hershiser, who’d started the last postseason the Mets had won in ’88, now pitched a must-win game for the good guys. And he allowed only one other hit while lasting into the sixth. Rookie Kris Benson, on the other hand, was a month away from marrying the Frankenbabe of baseball wives and figured he had nothing to lose. He allowed two hits in the first, but then retired the next eight. In the fourth, the Kevin Young career crumble began. He botched a ball hit by John Olerud for a two-base error. With a base open and two down, up stepped deadline pickup Darryl Hamilton (not to be confused with the deadbeat pickup of Billy Taylor that cost both Jason Isringhausen and Greg McMichael). Benson worked him away and Hamilton lined one down the line in left that landed inside the line. Olerud loped home and we were ecstatic. That was the only run Benson gave up in seven innings that day. We licked our chops to see the Buccos bullpen that had helped win the first two games, but we still needed to sweat through the innings by the Mets bullpen. Believe it or not, that part was smooth sailing. Pat Mahomes, the third pitcher of the sixth inning, got through the one troublesome moment after the first. “The Perfect One” preserved his 8-0 record, the 1-1 tie, and also continued early decline of Kevin Young’s career by fanning him to end the inning. Turk Wendell then pitched into the ninth until the very same Kevin Young showed one last blip of life by singling and stealing second. Armando Benitez—you heard the name right—fanned a young Aramis Ramirez in a tight spot to get us to the bottom of the ninth still tied. Fans tried to cheer when Bobby Bonilla batted for Shane Halter, which was a perfect decision since Halter’s brief seven-game Mets career ended at that moment without him ever batting. Needless to say, Bonilla was retired—not for good, mind you, but for the day. Then up stepped Melvin Mora. Mora had been on the team since May, but had played sporadically, never batting more than three times in any game. He was one of those Bobby V. finds that Valentine liked to polish up and display on occasions where little was expected. Mora had entered the game as a pinch runner for the all-time stolen base leader, Rickey Henderson, and stayed in the outfield. With an extended bench of callups and the benefit of last licks, Bobby V. just had to find a way to win this one. Of course when you manage a team where “you’re not dealing with real intelligent guys for the most part”, you never know what you’ll get. And Mora brought a .133 batting average to the plate against Greg Hansell, who like Mr. Checo down in Houston, would never pitch again in the majors. He’d never get another out, either. Mora hit a sharp single to right and the crowd roared. Edgardo Alfonzo—was there a crucial rally that October that he wasn’t in the middle of?—also singled to right and Mora dashed to third. Hansell and the Pirates didn’t mess with Johnny O. and passed him intentionally to set up a force at any base. And whereas the first three players mentioned in the batting order at this point in the most important Mets game in a dozen seasons were counted on to come through, the best hitter on the team—and perchance in club history—came up to the plate with fans begging one thing silently, or in my case aloud: “Please don’t hit a ground ball, please don’t hit a ground ball…” I loved Mike Piazza. We all loved Mike Piazza. But Mikey P. was running on fumes. He was your National League MVP—or at least mine—when September started. Catching each of the past 12 crucial games, his average had dropped from a once lofty .323 to .305, and Chipper Jones had locked up the award during the pummeling of the Mets. While Piazza had home runs the past two nights against Pittsburgh, he’d had just four other hits in the past week and led the NL in double plays bounced into. Brad Clontz, a sidewinder with groundouts a specialty, came in to try to do more of the same. The astute observer—or one looking at Retrosheet closely a decade later—would note however, the Piazza hadn’t bounced into a twin killing in almost a month. And he didn’t do it here, either. Never had a chance. The pitch was nowhere near the plate, it bounced early, it veered wildly, and catcher Joe Oliver never made a move to retrieve the ball once it started on its inevitable path toward the neighborhood of the most famous Shea Stadium wild pitch had gone. Despite 1,700 words to the contrary, I cannot think of a word to accurately describe what I felt as Mora touched home. Joy? Redemption? Relief? Yes. And a few other things to boot. Everyone jumped and hugged. At worst, there’d be another game on Monday. And after waiting out nearly six hours through the rain in Milwaukee, the Reds finally won and there would be a game number 163. It was the Mets’ turn. Our turn. My turn. As we exited the stadium, a friendly hand slapped a baton-sized bat in my hand courtesy of Charles Schwab that read, “Mets: Fan Appreciation Day 1999.” Thanks, buddy. Thanks, Brewers. Thanks, Pirates. And most of all, thank you Cincinnati. Thank you very much. |
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August 20, 2008 Fair to Good
Many times I’ve been able to combine more than one event with a Mets game. Some I still remember: missing a Mets comeback and then missing the deciding putt of the Buick Classic in 1990, the Mets and a Letterman taping in 1992, the Mets-Jets “doubleheader of doom” in ’92, the Mets-Cyclones Sunday in 2002, and just last year an afternoon game in Pittsburgh and a Shea nightcap. But I’d never combined anything as bucolic as a Mets game with a county fair ‘til Tuesday. The Dutchess County Fair is a wonderful place for kids—admission is free under age 12—and after cramming in a lot Monday night to free up Tuesday, we headed there for the first day of the fair with the kids for some cramming of fun and food akin to Templeton the Rat—not Garry—from Charlotte’s Web. (Paul Lynde’s voiceover sums it up the experience aptly: “Never have I seen such leavings.”) There are rides for big and little kids, people doing 30-foot dives, dogs jumping and agilitating, pigs racing, tractors pulling, and in-your face livestock. And during the spare moments in Rhinebeck I wondered: Just how are the Mets going to screw this day up? Even the shiny-faced fair can’t keep the cynical Mets fan’s mind from working on the next crisis. There was Billy Wagner’s elbow talking louder than his mouth, Ryan Church missing his 39th straight game in New York with a concussion yet at least playing in New Orleans, Luis Castillo doing summer stock, and John Maine being likened to the next Eckersley as a bullpen stopper though he is probably too married to routine and suffering enough arm weariness of his own to really be closer material. And for seven innings—five if you count the debilitating traffic on the Tappan Zee—I had a title for this piece of “Fair to Poor.” Jo-Jo Reyes made like Jo-Jo’s Circus by turning the Mets into trained seals able to swing feebly on cue. Then as happens so often with this game, the bullpen came in try to make it exciting. Thankfully, it was Atlanta’s turn to toss cow patties on a nice start. Sometimes, it seems as if pitch counts aren’t dictated by pitching coaches or managers, but by network executives looking for the most compelling programming to keep people glued to the channel (but unlike in drama, the weary sports fan will sometimes give up at the climax and turn off—how else can one explain the sixth-inning exit of the annoying guy next to Greg, Greg, the King, and I. Thanks, Jo-Jo.) Just as we Mets fans were ready to lament woe is we (bad English, but it rhymes…and fits) up steps Carlos Delgado in a crucial situation: sacks packed, one out, and the Mets down by a run. He drills one foul that everyone in the park wishes had been caught so it could have tied the game and kept him from hitting into the inevitable double play. Lo and behold, he whacks one even harder and farther. Before we can stop high-fiving and start complaining that Carlos Beltran should have scored, the stadium starts shaking. Not the slightly jovial lower-deck shaking I first recall in the ’99 Division Series, but full on quaking like joints were scraping against something underneath. For those of us existing east of the San Andres Fault, this was our sports-related earthquake. Or maybe I was riding the spider back at the fair. I can stand the ride—at least think I can—just please don’t let me get sick. I want to live to see it end…happily. |
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Chatter A couple of quickie notes. If you want to hear my talk with John Strubel at New York Mets Daily…go to the podcast here. We touched all the Mets bases historically and I sound sort of rational—well, you be the judge—even though we conducted the interview at a time of day when I’m usually eating cereal. And if you’re lucky enough to be in Kingston—New York’s original state capital (take that, Albany)—I’ll be on WKNY 1490 with Dan Reinhard a little after 6 p.m. on Monday night, August 18. Click here for more details. |
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August 15, 2008
Mark Your Calendars Citi Field—“the new world class home of the New York Mets”—opens on Tuesday, April 14, 2009, vs. the San Diego Padres. Don’t ask why New York is hosting a warm weather team in the middle of April and don’t ask what happens if there’s a rainout. There’s already a game scheduled for that Wednesday, so if you’ve got season tickets or want to make sure you don’t miss the first game, by all means make sure you’ve got ducats for game two. It’ll probably cost a grand or so less than the first game and it could pay off big time if the weather is uncooperative. Watch out for game three, though, that’s the day the Yankees open their new stadium. (John Sterling is working on a clever nickname as we speak.) Sure, this is all sort of like planning the wedding to the second spouse while the first one is in the terminal ward, but you’ve got to think ahead and sell that kidney for Citi seats or make sure you’ve paid your cable/Fios/Satellite bill eight months from now because that’s how 90 percent of Mets fans will view Citi Field. What better place than a brand new stadium to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1969 Mets, the best thing that ever happened to the old place. |
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August 12, 2008 We Need a Little Christmas NOW
After Monday’s debacle against Pittsburgh, I figured my thoughts about the last family outing at Shea was like eating potato salad that had been out in the sun too long. But as I mulled it over Monday night at the fabulous Muniz wedding (not Carlos Muniz’s), I figured, “I’ll be damned if lousy relief pitching is going to spoil another great memory.” And like Auntie Mame after she got fired, we need a little celebration right now. A little celebration of what’s important. Even if it’s August now and Shea will be shuttered and probably unrecognizable before Christmas even gets here. (Let me say here that I don’t like bringing up Christmas until at least December, but with nine losses when leading after eight innings—when it hits 10, sell—let’s break out Santa Claus and see if he can get someone out.) This year’s extremely early Christmas gift turned out to be bobbleheads with Billy Wagner’s likeness and now starting at $20 on the open market. So what if the real Wagner is mothballed when the Mets need him most—again—and what does it matter if even at his fittest he is a cross between Skip Lockwood and Armando Benitez? So what if my crude efforts at voodoo could not transform this well-turned toy into the diminutive Virginia fireballer? So what if the Mets got trounced that day and then blew the homestand the next afternoon? What matters for these purposes is that the Mets got it right. Yes, the Mets got it right. Let me count the ways. 1. Bobbleheads. Granted, there were only 25,000 for 54,242, but all individuals entering the stadium got bobbleheads until they ran out. There was a time when only kids received them, which invariably led to grownup envy with parents using children as instruments to procure the goods, not to mention other methods of tomthievery. I didn’t even know it was bobblehead day until a few days before the game, so it was like finding something good in your stocking when all you’d earned was coal. 2. Jane Jarvis revealed “24” in the Shea countdown in center field. The longtime organist and musical impresario who gave us daily doses of “The Mexican Hat Dance” in the seventh inning and ballpark appropriate music at all other times is perhaps the most important lady in Shea Stadium history next to the great Joan Payson. My daughter didn’t see what the big deal was, but her dad applauded with zeal and was glad the bobbleheads had gotten him inside the stadium early. 3. The AIG VP threw out the first pitch. While I was loudly complaining that Jerry Koosman must have been too busy, my wife pointed out that it was AIG that sponsored these cool bobbleheads, which arrived in a box almost big enough to have fit a G.I. Joe back in the day. I guess the VP could have been a Yankees fan and then we might’ve gotten doodley. 4. A Shea video tribute. I don’t remember what it was all about because when I tried to tell my daughter why Jesse Orosco was throwing his glove in the air, no words came out. It was a generation ago, but it was my generation, baby. 5. While the game wasn’t much, my wife and I knew that barring some miracle—or added level of patience—the kids would never again come to Shea. So we got them whatever foodstuff they desired: hot dogs, chicken tenders, popcorn, cotton candy, frozen lemonade, unfrozen lemonade, and the ice cream cycle: Carvel in a helmet, Dippin Dots (these actually cost 50 cents more than Carvel, if you can imagine), delicious Dibs, and, on the way out, a free sample of Nestle Drumstick (including baseball cards). We could have even hit the ice cream man on the street for milkshakes, but by this time everyone—including Dad batting cleanup in the uneaten ice cream lineup—was feeling a might full and even somewhat relieved that the Mr. Mets Dash had been cancelled because of sporadic rain. And that was it. Four decades of attending games between parents and children at Shea Stadium was over for my family. (That’s counting four decades as in Tim McCarver played in four decades, but his career didn’t last 40 years—though to hear him prattle on about it…) I thought back to my dad taking me to games back in the 1970s. Of learning the lingo of the pop up: “That’s an elephant’s ass: it’s high and it stinks.” Of making light of others’ shortcomings: “Joe Torre should take some of the hair off his chest and put it on his head.” And the importance of frequent evacuation: “You don’t buy beer, you rent it.” My dad didn’t much care for baseball, but he went to dozens of games at Shea and footed the bill for yet more because I couldn’t live without it. He went to his last game at Shea Stadium in 1984. He’s had many happy Shea-free years since then. I have happy thoughts of the horrific 1970s at Shea because of him. And I can only hope my gang will have pleasant memories of the games we spent there together. My daughter who insisted we sit through the rain until the last out has been to Shea 10 times (starting when she was three months old), my son has been five times (and defied the usher this last time by marching down to the front railing and watching for as long as the Mets held his interest), and my wife has gone to Shea an unknowable number of times, including half a dozen games with a broken leg in 1993 and one afternoon a year later when she collected souvenir cups by the armload to stand in as glassware in my barren new apartment. I knew for certain on the way home that day—also a loss to the Marlins—that I must marry this person. I will miss Shea, obviously. Not the building so much as all this I’ve collected and carry with me to ponder during the quiet moments I can steal at the noisy old place. The family will go to Citi Field and like it very much, I have no doubt, but these connections to the past are what make Shea Shea. At least for the sentimentalists in the house. And as we stand at the precipice of a doomed final season because of a brutal bullpen, the prospect of extra games at Shea will require a miracle akin to the one the Mets mustered the year Lucy appeared as Mame in 1973. We indeed need a little Christmas right this very minute. And remember—as the kids did with all their eating—“Life’s a banquet and most poor bastards are starving to death.” Now if only the Mets could starve out someone besides themselves and bring this banquet back home. |
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August 7, 2008 Top 10 Shea Moments (For the last go round at Shea Stadium, I’m going to count down my 10 favorite games at Shea that I have witnessed, with a side list or two thrown in to stretch it out. I chronicle the greatest moments at Shea in both Meet the Mets and 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, but this list is based on being there in the flesh. And what it felt like at Shea on that date.) Recap: #10. April 5, 1983 Tom Seaver Returns [Click here] Recap: #9. October 3, 2004 Les Morts [Click here] Recap: #8. May 23, 1998: Welcome Home, Mr. Piazza [Click here] Recap #8A. Losers Bracket [Click here] Recap #7. October 4, 2006: You’re Out. And You’re Out! [Click here] Recap #6. July 1, 2000: Fireworks! [Click here] Recap #5. October 7-8, 2000: Benny and Bobby [Click here] If you’ve been following along with this countdown—and if you have, God bless you—you will eventually realize that there’s a few landmark Mets games seemingly missing. Since this is from a live, first-person perspective, there’ll be a few games missing from the ultimate list the Mets have been promoting on the team web site. (To vote—and you best do so by August 15—click here. To find out how badly the pooch has been compromised by that list, read Faith and Fear in Flushing’s breakdown of what went missing on the ballot when the paid chroniclers of Mets history tried to get cute. And after reading Greg’s piece that came out after I finished my original list, I’m adding the Matt Franco game as a bonus at #10.) The list is liberally mixed with my rankings from 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die and Meet the Mets and whatever else moved me at the time of this writing. I’ve done everything possible to be on hand for the biggest moments at Shea Stadium in my Mets lifetime, including going to every postseason game at Shea since 1986 except for two nights: The two that happen to be on the list below. Let’s go… 10. The Matt Franco Game - July 10, 1999 Before I’d been scarred for life by the “real” Subway Series and could actually take some joy in going to these Yankees games in Queens in person, I saw both the Friday and Sunday games in this series from the stands. The Saturday Game of the Week was a back-and-forth thriller with Piazza hitting a ball that still might be rolling off a tent somewhere. Ninth inning, two outs, down by a run off—everyone genuflect—“The Great Mariano,” Matt Franco singled to right. Here comes the tying run! Here comes the winning run!! The Mets 9 and the Yankees 8. My one-year-old daughter jumped up and down in my arms in the living room. Thanks to that other Matt and thanks to Greg at FAFIF for making me realize what I was missing…again. 10. Ten in a Row - April 22, 1970 A game that’s somewhat forgotten, except in the record books. Tom Seaver’s fanning of the last 10 Padres on a midweek afternoon game in 1970 the major league record and his 19 K’s still stand as the club record (tied by David Cone 21 years later). It was probably the best performance by Seaver as a Met except for this one… 9. The Imperfect Game - July 9, 1969 This game is about more than just a near perfect game. That part has grown in stature as the decades have piled on and the Mets have still not had a no-hitter, but that Seaver’s dominance came against the Cubs at a time when Chicago seemed like your runaway winner in the NL East makes the game yet more significant. Jimmy Qualls, not even a regular, singled to left to break it up with one out in the ninth, but few things went right after that in Chicago as the Mets would overcome a 10-game deficit. 8. The Black Cat - September 9, 1969 Is this game better than the almost perfect game? No. But it gets a slight edge due to timing and that when it was over—and Tom Seaver had beaten Fergie Jenkins—the Mets were just a half-game out of first place with less than three weeks remaining in the season. Say you got to this game in the first inning with your kid, sat down in your $3.50 box seat, sipped your 55-cent beer, wrote down the lineups in your 25-cent scorecard, and then your five-year-old interrupted you with, “Dad, how come there’s a cat on the field?” If you believe in jinxes or no—and it’s pretty clear the Cubs got to be believers—the cat wandering in front of Ron Santo in the on-deck circle and then hissing at Leo Durocher before disappearing was surely a sign beyond any feral cat colony. That and the waving of the handkerchiefs while singing, “Goodbye Leo.” Miraculous, indeed. 7. The Ball on the Wall - September 20, 1973 Flash forward four years and this time it’s the Pirates showing wear as the Mets make their move. By now the NL East is such a middling mess that the Mets have risen from last place in a matter of weeks to be 1 ½ behind the Bucs. The fourth game in a weird five-game home-and-away series belonged to the Bucs until Duffy Dyer doubled in Ken Boswell with two outs in the ninth. The Pirates seemed to have the game won in the top of the 13th when Dave Augustine’s drive to left hit the top of the wall and caromed directly to Cleon Jones. Wayne Garrett’s relay throw bounced into Ron Hodges’s mitt and into Mets lore. Richie Zisk was out at the plate and Hodges singled in the winning run in the bottom of the inning and the Mets somehow wound up in the World Series. 6. Standing Up - September 21, 2001 As you are probably aware, this was the first game in New York after the attacks in September 2001. It’s really hard to quantify where this should go on a list such as this, but it was important enough where it would have merited inclusion even if Mike Piazza hadn’t hit that dramatic home run. I needed to be with my wife for an event that was really important to her that night. I’ll always wish I’d been at Shea, but if there’s something that still remains with me from that horrible time, it is that family comes first. 5. Agee for the Ages - October 14, 1969 All three games at Shea from the 1969 World Series in the top five? As the A-1 commercial claims, “Yeah, it’s that important.” In the first-ever World Series game at Shea, Tommie Agee homers to lead off against Jim Palmer. Gary Gentry pitches in and out of trouble with loads of help from two spectacular catches by Agee in center. Nolan Ryan, making his only career World Series appearance, is on the hill when Agee makes his second snag in the seventh inning sprawling on the warning track in right center to rob Paul Blair. 4. It’s All in the Wrist - October 15, 1969 You might say Ron Swoboda’s catch the next day might have been even better than either of Agee’s. It came at a more crucial time with runners on the corners, ninth inning, and a 1-0 game. And while Agee was a Gold Glove outfielder, Swoboda’s fielding was—like his nickname—a tad “Rocky.” Swoboda robbed Brooks Robinson with a backhanded dive on what would have otherwise given Baltimore the lead. The sacrifice fly turned into Baltimore’s only run off Tom Seaver, who went 10 innings. J.C. Martin, on a bunt, was hit on the wrist with the throw on what probably should have been ruled an out for running out of the baseline. 3. “It Gets by Buckner” - October 25, 1986 “Wait! How is this number three? It was number one in 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die. What are you doing?” This is the touchstone moment of the franchise for Mets fans who came of age beyond 1970. But if I could pick one moment, it would be to be on hand for the winning of a World Series. I stayed up way past my bed time to see Carlton Fisk’s home run in Game 6 in 1975 and as wondrous as that game was, the Red Sox still lost the Series to the Reds the next day. What would the Buckner moment have meant if the Mets had lost Game 7? Baseball is full of surprises; this game is proof that—like Yogi said in ’73—“it ain’t over til it’s over.” 2. The Smudge That Changed the World - October 16, 1969 Personally, it was a harder call between the clincher in 1969 and 1986. In ’69 you had the Mets falling behind, 3-0, and then in the sixth the Dave McNally pitch glancing off the foot of Cleon Jones and Gil Hodges quietly emerging with the ball with polish on it. Donn Clendenon followed with a home run. Al Weis, who had absolutely no power, clocked a home run to tie it in the seventh. Ron Swoboda knocked in the go-ahead run in the eighth. And Jerry Koosman made it stand up with Cleon taking a knee. I have seen it so many times it almost seems like a Hollywood script—and it was actually part of the plot in the film Frequency—and I can only imagine how it felt. I know what it was like when the Mets won in 1986. 1. “The Dream Has Come True” - October 27, 1986 Like in 1969, the Mets again trailed 3-0 in the sixth with Keith Hernandez playing the role of Clendenon and getting the Mets back in the game off a tough left-hander. Gary Carter tied it and Ray Knight later gave the Mets the lead. Jesse Orosoco bailed the Mets out of a jam in the eighth and then even singled in a run in the bottom of the inning on the old “butcher boy” play. But what we will all remember of Shea—or at least I will never forget—is the lefthander striking out Marty Barrett to win the world championship. A lefty—as I’d imagined through countless mirror mimics as a kid while losses by Torre’s Mess blared on behind me—had finally done it. That Orosoco had come in a trade for Kooz, and the reaction that those two lefties had after the last out, was beyond my imagination. And the way that moment made me feel was beyond any script. Anticlimactic? My ass! We’ve been waiting 22 years for another taste. |
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July 28, 2008
300 It finally happened. It took until I was in Maine, where it takes the better part of a day to find out scores from New York with teams not called the Yankees—it took 32 hours to get the score of Saturday night’s loss—but the news Sunday came in quicker via an ESPN station that only comes in in black and white and has no sound. The scroll had two simple letters next to Johan Santana’s name that made me keel over: “CG.” From what I recall, those letters stand for “complete game,” which in old-time baseball parlance means that the same pitcher who throws the first pitch in a game also throws the last pitch. As was the case in 2007 with the Mets, it happened twice in rain-shortened games when Tom Glavine and John Maine went “the distance” in games that were shortened by rain to six and five innings, respectively. But a complete game in which the pitcher went a full nine innings dates back to Oliver Perez on September 6, 2006, when Ollie was more an experiment than part of the rotation. How long has it been since then? Add with me, if you will, the number of games since a Met went nine innings: 24 games in 2006 10 postseason games in 2006 162 games in 2007 104 games through 2008 300 Total That’s 300 games in which two different managers made some type of change before the game ended. Counting pitches, counting pitchers, and in the case of 2007, counting games blown by an overworked pen when you needed them to be at their most effective. But complete games are irrelevant in today’s hustle and bustle game, no? Thanks, Mr. Santana. A new streak starts today. But who’s counting? |
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July 25, 2008 The 24 Hours at Flushing or Top 10 Shea Moments (For the last go round at Shea Stadium, I’m going to count down my 10 favorite games at Shea that I have witnessed, with a side list or two thrown in to stretch it out. I chronicle the greatest moments at Shea in both Meet the Mets and 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, but this list is based on being there in the flesh. And what it felt like at Shea on that date.) Recap: #10. April 5, 1983 Tom Seaver Returns [Click here] Recap: #9. October 3, 2004 Les Morts [Click here] Recap: #8. May 23, 1998: Welcome Home, Mr. Piazza [Click here] Recap #8A. Losers Bracket [Click here] Recap #7. October 4, 2006: You’re Out. And You’re Out! [Click here] Recap #6. July 1, 2000: Fireworks! [Click here] #5. October 7-8, 2000: Benny and Bobby
Even in its 45th season and near the end, Shea Stadium still teaches, it instructs. Just when you’re all set to be disappointed, you may yet have an unforgettable evening. Or afternoon. Or both. After losing the first game of the 2000 Division Series, the Mets blew a lead in Game 2, but Jay Payton singled in Daryl Hamilton to pull the Mets out of the San Francisco fire and give the team what would be its only win at Pac Bell Park in the stadium’s first three seasons of operation. We had to wait until early Friday evening to find out what time Saturday’s game at Shea would be (three networks carrying the postseason and not one can make a decision!) But at four o’clock we were in orange seats at Shea, the Division Series even at a game apiece. A motley game-ready crew was there that included my wife, Greg Spira, and DBird, who just happened to be in town that weekend on business. Duck, who owned the damned seats, was sitting in the upper deck and let me have this afternoon. It had been 17 seasons since we’d first attended a game together. The Seaver return game. And whenever we found ourselves at Shea, we realized that for those few fleeting hours at least, we really hadn’t changed much at all. The Mets had, though, and for that we were extremely grateful. These Mets were in the unprecedented position of being in the postseason for the second year in a row. A feat not even worth mentioning for some franchises, but with the Mets, nothing was or ever should be taken for granted. Success is always in short supply and you never know if more will arrive. That’s why its sweetness must be savored. People who are given sundaes every day of the week get sick of them and forget how good they taste. I hope these people’s teeth rot. Game 3 of the Division Series seemed to grow bleaker as the faint sunlight gave way to night. The Mets were down, 2-0, in the sixth inning with their most reliable pitcher Rick Reed allowing RBI-hits to the likes of Bobby Estalella and Marvin Benard (BALCO anyone?). Unlike the two flashy lefties at the top of the Mets’ rotation, Reed was a workingman’s ace. His years of struggle made him never take a day in the game for granted. Today wasn’t his day. Russ Ortiz was sailing along until he foolishly walked Mike Bordick to start the sixth. Then Hamilton came through with the Mets’ first hit of the game and his second big hit of the series. Timo Perez, who some would come to later loathe for his fatal baserunning hesitation. He’d cracked the starting lineup following one of the greatest-timed injuries in Mets history: Derek Bell’s leg injury in Game 1 at Pac Bell. Timo singled in Bordick and it was 2-1. The Giants then failed to turn a double play on a grounder hit by Edgardo Alfonzo, but Robin Ventura acquiesced. It was getting white knuckle time in the eighth as the Mets still trailed by a run. Somehow, the Giants again let Bordick get on base without doing anything. Ex-Met schlub turned reliable setup guy Doug Henry hit Bordick with a pitch to start the inning. Bordick was then forced out by Lenny Harris. The pinch-hitting barrel o’ fun stole second with two outs. Up came Alfonzo. Fonzie was born under the radar. If he were a Hall of Famer, someone still would have spelled his name “Alfonso” on the plaque. With John Olerud and then Mike Piazza batting behind him, pitchers wanted to get him out rather than face the better-known names. This was a mistake. Rob Nen and Dusty Baker made the mistake again. With first base open, Fonzie laced a double. It was tied. It was cold, too. The wind howled in from left in and seemed to build a wall in left field. An impenetrable, invisible wall that knocked down every ball that approached it as the teams stumbled through the ninth, 10th, and 11th. Things looked promising in the 12th when the Mets got a two-out hit from Fonzie. Up came Joe McEwing, by now playing third base (Ventura was at first, Kurt Abbott at shortstop, and Todd Pratt was catcher). He got his first and only postseason hit—he would only get one more October at-bat despite appearing in 10 more games for Bobby Valentine—but Fonzie overran second base and was tagged out. Inning over. I slammed my hat on the ever-present railing in front of me and the Gil Hodges pin went flying off dangerously in the direction of a little girl, who probably should have been in bed. As a few people turned to look at me, I apologized. Ashamed and frustrated, I abruptly left. I couldn’t go home. I went up. Up, up, up. Running upward on the ramp. Ever higher. Like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Excelsior”. Past people smoking by the railings, by people exiting an epic after sticking around for the first five hours, and I ran, I ran like Forrest Gump until I stopped at the place I needed to be. Midway up in left field. Upper deck. Up where I should be. With Duck and Jimmy Jim. Just in time to see Rick White navigate the seventh shutout inning from the Mets bullpen. The wind was whipping in the upper tank in the home 13th. And as Ventura grounded out against Aaron Fultz, I told my brethren. “No one is ever going to hit a ball out in this wind.” And I started thinking about how Glendon Rusch was the last pitcher available. And the pitcher’s spot was due up in two batters. And would Bobby V. use a pinch hitter? Though he didn’t have a bat left, except for Mike Hampton, who may have to come in to pitch if this game goes on forever. And if the pitcher’s spot didn’t come up in the 13th, would White come out for a third inning of relief? And suddenly the strategy was all out the window into a full-force gale. Our perch a hundred feet or two above the fence afforded a perfect view of the ball that defied the wind, that cut right through it, and ended the 5-hour, 22-minute game just like that. Benny Agbayani, 0 for 5 and looking dubious in that five-hole when suddenly…Bam! Duck and Jim and I rejoiced on high. And suddenly the smile slid off my face. My wife was four tiers below in an emptying stadium. We’d been here for more than six hours. And I had the car keys. Again I ran, only this time down, down, down. I was about as popular in our little group as Aaron Fultz was in San Francisco’s locker room right about that moment. But I’ll let you in on a little secret: I didn’t care. This was a Mets playoff game. The last one I’d been to had gone 15 innings before it ended on a ball that cleared the fence in adverse weather conditions. And unlike that game, where the Mets had to travel to try to pull off a miraculous series win. The Mets could wrap this up tomorrow.
Part 2: The Next Day Bobby Jones had been very good when the Mets were not. Consistent and not flashy in any way. Kind of like Fonzie, only from the mound. Despite these lengthy last two Shea postseason games, I’d actually been to one game at Shea once that had gone than the either. Jones, a rookie, pitching for the bastard sons of ’93, threw the first 10 scoreless innings of a 17-inning marathon played three days after the Mets had already achieved their 103rd and final loss. (The Mets used only four pitchers that night. Imagine!) Jeff Kent had finally won that game with a double. On October 8, 2000, a Kent double would be all that stood between Bobby Jones and immortality. Robin Ventura homered with a man on the first and it was clear from early on that that might be enough. Jones set the Giants down in the first four innings without so much as a whimper…or a baserunner. Up stepped Kent to start the fifth. A postseason game at Shea brings out the most superstitious and most oft-heartbroken denizens this side of Fred Wilpon’s Brooklyn Bridge. No one was making eye contact, but no one was thinking about anything else. Granted, it had only been four innings, but this was the playoffs. Wouldn’t that be like the Mets to never have a no-hitter during the season, but have one in the postseason. Would that even count in the MLB record books? Of course, none of these superstitious people in blue and orange, who were afraid to breathe the wrong way at times like these, dared even think such thoughts, much less articulate them. We contented ourselves in cheering every pitch and every time Agbayani ran out to take his position. Then Kent started the fifth by crushing one. Just foul! While we were still holding our collective breath, Kent hit one down the line and fair. Forget the no-hitter, you selfish moron, can they hold the lead? Do you really want to go back to Pac Bell for a deciding game after what happened to Armando Benitez in Game 2 (if you don’t know, don’t ask) After Kent took third on a long fly by Ellis Burks, J.T. Snow walked. Rich Aurilia flied to left, but not deep enough to score Kent. The Mets walked Doug Mirabelli to face the pitcher’s spot. Mark Gardner, who’d pitched pretty well himself, came up amid open mouths throughout Shea Stadium. Those mouths were open and roaring moments later when Gardner’s popup was caught by Fonzie. Those three men stranded were the only runners San Francisco had all game. Then Fonzie doubled in two runners in the bottom of the inning to knock out Gardner. Dusty Baker, Manager of the Year and Super Genius, who operated in the best pitcher’s park in the game and had the best player, seemed to have his jock on when he went out to take out Mark Gardner, but I could’ve sworn Bobby Valentine had managed it right off him. Again. Jones, who’d gone to the minor leagues earlier in the year to straighten himself out, straightened out the Giants but good with a one-hit shutout. In roughly half the time it took to complete the previous night’s game, the Mets had knocked out 100-win San Francisco. Winning that first round leaves one with a sense of still not having captured something tangible. No Russ Hodges bellowing over and over: “The Mets win the right to go to the Championship Series! The Mets win the right to go to the Championship Series! The Mets win the right to go to the Championship Series! And they’re going crazy, they’re going crazy, ah-yeh!” What was left of my voice beamed out to a St. Louis radio station that night, for a previously arranged hour-long midnight interview on a sports talk show to promote Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia. Between Rajah Hornsby and Spoke Speaker stories, the show’s host and I spent a lot of time talking about how our scruffy little teams had pulled off upsets. (The Cardinals had swept the unbeatable Braves.) No matter that the Mets and Cards would be playing each other in a few days. We were in that rare glow between one postseason series and the next when all there is is triumph and possibility. And your mind still won’t believe what your eyes have seen. You do not know how this month will end. And right now you’d kill anybody who tried to spoil it by telling you. |
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July 21, 2008 You’re My Home This whole Shea Stadium Billy Joel thing kind of brought a little reality to this last year of the ballpark. Sitting one row and one section over in the mezzanine from where I watched the Mets of Keith and Mookie, Messy Jesse and Kid Carter, Bobby O. and HoJo, Doc, Darryl, Dykstra, and Darling, I came to the realization that Shea Stadium is indeed closing. It wasn’t the cool logo, the stories I’ve read, the things I’ve written, or the book I’m working on, but a few hours of driving music. Speaking of driving, I’ve got to say that driving down was no problem despite all the warnings, though there was some traffic for a game at New York’s other stadium. Found a spot on the street a few blocks from Shea an hour before the show was supposed to start (because it is a musical act, of course it began an hour late). It was harder finding a score of the Mets-Reds game inside the park, but they did flash a 2-1 lead shortly before the show began. As it turned out, I’m glad they kept us in the dark about the score. I’ll take the 10 straight wins and the special lightboards on the field showing montages of Endy, Casey, McDowell, and other Amazin’s. I wish they’d hire Billy Joel to choreograph who should pull down the “days remaining signs” on the wall in center. Someone who can get Paul McCartney and Roger Daltrey, singers in the signature acts in Shea’s rock heyday, to come out for that last night, and also throws in Steven Tyler, Garth Brooks, and Tony Bennett (plus John Mayer, John Mellancamp (nee Cougar), and Don Henley in the first “Last Play at Shea”), is probably not going to be content with having a Tri-State Chrysler-Plymouth dealer unveil another number in the dwindling life of the ballpark we grew up in. Billy Joel ceding the final song to Paul McCartney is like Billy Wagner stepping off the mound in the ninth inning on September 28 and handing the ball to Tom Seaver, with Keith Hernandez, Edgardo Alfonzo, Bud Harrelson, Howard Johnson, Cleon Jones, Mookie Wilson, and Darryl Strawberry taking the field behind him. And Jerry Grote, yes, Jerry Grote, squatting for that final pitch. When I saw a young woman cry when Paul McCartney took the stage, I sort of felt like it had all come full circle. We may all get there yet. And Billy Joel’s advice for anyone who gives you a hard time about enjoying his music also works as a response to anyone who wants to dismiss a person’s passion for Shea: “Eat me.”
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July 16, 2008 Swing and a Long Drive Top 10 Shea Moments (For the last go round at Shea Stadium, I’m going to count down my 10 favorite games at Shea that I have witnessed, with a side list or two thrown in to stretch it out. I chronicle the greatest moments at Shea in both Meet the Mets and 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, but this list is based on being there in the flesh. And what it felt like at Shea on that date.) Recap: #10. April 5, 1983 Tom Seaver Returns [Click here] Recap: #9. October 3, 2004 Les Morts [Click here] Recap: #8. May 23, 1998: Welcome Home, Mr. Piazza [Click here] Recap #8A. Losers Bracket [Click here] Recap #7. October 4, 2006: You’re Out. And You’re Out! [Click here] In 2000 it got harder to go to a Mets game. For the general populace? No. Attendance increased for the sixth straight year, notching 2.8 million for the first time since 1989. The Mets were a joy to see, winning 55 times at Shea, as many as the ’86 team and just one win off the club record set in ’88. They’d even win a pennant there in 2000, the third time the place saw it live and the first where the field lived to tell the tale. All was right at Shea that year. But like getting used to Todd Zeile replacing John Olerud, the way we got to the same place would be different. I’d taken a promotion and moved the family from one hour east of Shea to two hours north. I quickly got used to many things being different in my new home and liked the change a lot, but the drive to the ballgame was—and remains—the toughest adjustment. There is no feasible mass transit option, though it’s been tried a couple of times. So it’s a four-hour roundtrip drive. Or watch it on TV. Missing homestand after homestand was not something I was comfortable with. I’d been to two dozen games in person in 1999, experiencing the most exciting season of Northeast baseball viewing of my life. (I’d spent large chunks of ’86 and ’88 in both Colorado and Virginia, though I’d caught a fair bit of the agony and the ecstasy of those two Octobers.) The ’99 season had more drama than I think I could personally handle, and when we hit the new millennium—or didn’t hit it—I couldn’t just stop going to ballgames. With my new home, young family, and increased responsibilities, I could have cashed out, gone to one or two games a year, and started finding other interests like most real adults. Or at least content myself with watching every game on TV.
By the start of April 2000, I’d already woken up
at dawn twice to see the Mets play in Japan. I’d taken the day off to go
the opener on this soil and seen
Baggy
Pants Bell ring in with a key home run. I’d left work early on
the season’s first Friday to see I was back at Shea when the Mets won their ninth straight game on April 29. That was Ken Griffey’s first game at Shea as a Red after he’d poopooed the Mets’ overtures for a trade. It was also Frequency night—that somewhat bizarre Hollywood tribute to the Miracle Mets and ham radio—and the Mets wore 1969 replica wool uniforms with that special yellow-ish hue that polyester just doesn’t have. Robin Ventura tore his pants sliding into third base. Guess they don’t make them like they used to. The pants, that is. If the Mets had had Ventura and his Mojo Risin’ in 1969—two years before Jim Morrision’s lyrics hit the airwaves, mind you, but join hands with me over the ham radio and feel it now—the Mets wouldn’t have traded either Nolan Ryan or Amos Otis. Now that’s worth digging out the old equipment and trying to channel Jesus and Jerry Lee Lewis. Or at least two actors and an overreaching script. But hey, how many movies do the Mets get a co-starring role in? Arriving back from Frequency night with some guys from work to the office at 1 A.M., I then drove another 45 minutes north to the place where I was staying until the new house was ready. Long night even after a win. Then the Mets went 5‑12 and our parent company got severely splattered by the “tech bubble” bursting, making for a turbulent May. I kept my job in a company restructuring. I paid close attention to the Mets to take my mind off the fear that I’d just moved in order to be canned. Like the ballclub cliché, I took it one day at a time. The Mets kept things interesting. Even when they lost, it was still almost the most thrilling finish I could ever expect to see. In the ninth inning against the Marlins on May 13, pitcher Mike Hampton, serving as a pinch hitter after Bobby V. ran through his bench, whacked a ball two feet wide of the foul pole with the tying run on base in a one-run game in the ninth. He struck out and the Mets lost, and by the time I reached the car I heard that Ricky Henderson, who’d incensed everyone by going into a home run trot on what turned out to be a single the previous night, had been released. I turned a work event in the city into a night at Shea. I thought I had a long ride home? I found out that because of a makeup of a rainout the previous night, the Orioles actually travelled all the way to Baltimore to spend the night and came back the next night. They must’ve been exhausted because they lost the makeup game on a home run by Kurt Abbott.
I rode down with Jed to meet DBird and see
the Mets beat the Marlins to go 12 games over .500 and pull within two
games of the Braves. I missed the John Rocker hoopla, but I was resting I’d gone to Fireworks Night many times and had rarely seen a good game. The Grucci Bros. Fireworks? Always top notch, but as I drove down for the first leg of the trip, the most exciting on-field Fireworks moment I could think of had occurred the previous year when Matt Franco had become the second Mets position player to pitch in a game. Rick Reed had also played outfield that final inning in a 16‑0 dusting by these very same Braves. Traffic for that game had been horrific and we got there more than an hour after the game had started. We somehow got the car onto a patch of grass only a few hundred yards from the stadium. That spot had probably been vacated by someone who couldn’t handle sitting through a 10‑0 game in the fourth, forget what the Grucci’s might be providing later in the way of pyrotechnics. In 2000, I decided to forego the parking problems and add two extra legs onto the journey. Jimmy Jim and I would meet near where I would stay that night in Stamford, we’d take the train to Grand Central, and then the 7 to Shea. It worked ideally—if not slowly—yet we still found ourselves on the wrong end of a blowout. We arrived inside the stadium in time to hear a collective groan of a packed house as Piazza’s error allowed the third of three runs to cross the plate on a single. What else was new? The Mets had lost 19 of their last 25 to Atlanta, including an NLCS defeat so excruciating it might have been taken as a small measure of retribution for Sherman’s March. The South was rising again at Shea. Somehow Hampton went seven innings while trailing 5‑0. The Mets finally scored in the bottom of the inning, but Eric Cammack came in quasi-mopup role and got lit up. Jim suggested that we go. The Promise of Grucci allowed me to seem morally superior as I made a raspberry-like noise. I would not be appeased. In the meantime, Johnny Ho, who’d driven from his office in Stamford, had finally found a spot to park somewhere beyond the World’s Fair. About the time Cammack was getting pummeled—after last call, mind you—he showed us what he carried in his cargo shorts. Two pint bottles of Jack Daniels. I ran up to report this to an usher, but finding none—it was after all, a nontipping opportunity—I bought several Coca Colas instead. The mixture of black cola and brown liquor landed in my souvenir cup and hence into my mouth. And seeing that John had to drive us home, I did better than my fair share with this not so dark liquid. In fact, the fireworks started going off early. We three former roommates, now each married and finding ourselves at these sort of events with great inFrequency—feel the ham radio: “Do you read me, Donn Clendenon?”—and we weren’t paying a lick of attention when Don Wengert took the ball to start the bottom of the eighth. We talked right through Derek Bell’s hit, and didn’t even glance up at Fonzie’s flyout. Though it was entertaining to see Piazza get credit for an infield hit and take second when Rafael Furcal made a lousy throw. “Hotshot rookie, my ass!” Oh, yes, we were very much part of the rabble. Ventura’s groundout scored Bell to make it 8‑2 with two outs. The stories kept coming. “Remember when we…” Todd Zeile singled in Piazza. 8‑3. “And then she said…” Jay Payton singled. Kerry Ligtenberg replaced Wengert, providing time to have another little sippee and a li’l bit more talky. “And every party, you’d hide beers behind every condiment in the fridge…” Benny Agbayani walked. “You’d stash a full cooler in the back yard…” Pinch hitter Mark Johnson walked. Zeile scored. “The band wouldn’t play its first set until like one o’clock…” Melvin Mora walked. Payton scored. Joe McEwing came in to run for Johnson. “The tying runs are on base.” Ligtenberg, whose name in German translated on this night to “Dousing a campfire with kerosene,” was replaced not by John Rocker but by Terry Mulholland, a starting pitcher who’d thrown 8 1/3 innings in a win two days earlier. Perhaps it was his throw day. As in throwing bundles of dry sticks into the pyre. “Ring my Bell! Ring my goddamn Bell!” Bell walks. 8‑6. The high fives, half-hearted before, are now in earnest. One of us gets a slap in the face by accident. We can’t even tell which one of us got it. “Yeah, Fonzie! Fonzieeeeeeee!” Alfonzo singles to left. The game is tied. The voice is cracked now. Cracked but good. Who cares? Bobby Cox, as if in a trance or slurping from the same cup that’s made my lips moist and my throat raw, leaves Mulholland out there. “Come on, come…yeah!!!!!!!!” Laser. Mike Piazza. Gone in a split second down the line in left. 10-run inning. There are hugs, high fives up and down the aisle to everyone and their Aunt Bessy. And the best part of all, it is Fireworks Night. Any other game there would have been 15,000 people tops who would’ve stayed. Now it’s like one giant blanket on the lawn with even the boozy Total Baseball guy barely caring about the official scorer’s decision to award Armando Benitez a win he’d probably trade for a save; thus denying Cammack what would have been the only win of his brief major league career. Of the handful of the 52,831 who blew off the fireworks to miss the traffic in an 8‑1 game, I can tell them that last hour on the road is the hardest. Me? I got a ride and a bed and had too much too dream last night. A Real Mets of Genius comeback. For Mr. Leaving a Great Game to Beat the Traffic Guy, even if you got home in time to watch it, everybody knows fireworks just aren’t the same on TV. This you had to drink in. Mr. Leaving a Great Game Early to Beat the Traffic Guy. Mike Piazza: Flushing, New York. |
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Read and Done
Thanks to all who came down to Madison
Square Park Reads and for your attention in such a busy and beautiful
place. Attendance was great and would have been even greater if we’d
been closer to the Shake Shack, where there seems to be a perpetual line
exceeding the number of people at a Mets game in 1979. Still, looking up
from the book from my perch in front of the Farragut statue with a
perfect view of the Flatiron building on a perfect night is something
I’ll think about for a long time. And thanks to all at
Madison Square Reads
who set this up and keep it going. They have a great schedule and a
great time. (And if you don’t want to wait all night for a milkshake,
there is a very short “B-Line” that does not allow for shakes or hot
food, but I got a provocative and tasty float that I sipped while
listening to Scott Pitoniak’s reading about the
Old Ball Orchard in the South Bronx.) Overdue in this space is a mention of the Gary, Keith and Ron site that raises money for charity. It is obviously named after the Mets announcing trio that makes any game a treat. Their rain delay discussion about the state of pitching during the Mets-Giants game was the most insightful and interesting dialogue that I have heard on this city’s airwaves, which seem more concerned about Madonna’s religious influence—no, this isn’t a Renaissance painting we’re discussing—than they are about the slow drain that the babying of pitchers is having on the game we follow so intently. Anyway, if you haven’t checked out Gary, Keith and Ron’s site lately, they have some new merchandise, which I bought on Wednesday and it arrived the next day. All this while planning they planned the final stages of the group’s first outing at Shea for the day game against San Francisco. And if you contribute to this worthy cause, you could go to a future game and meet the broadcasting triumvirate that is as good as this game has seen since these three kings. |
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July 8, 2008 Madison Square Park Gets Blue and Orange July 10
A few months ago I received one of the
most surprising unsolicited emails in Don’t know about the park or haven’t been in a long time? The park is a six-acre oasis of green encompassing a square (not surprisingly) at Madison Avenue, 23rd Street, 26th Street, and Fifth Avenue. Here’s some other historical stuff I learned on the park’s informative web site. --To begin on topic, Madison Square Park is considered by some to be birthplace of baseball. Although Hoboken gets a lot of street cred from those who insist the game has to have a single specific “born-on date,” Alexander Cartwright formed his New York Knickerbockers at Madison Square in 1845. About 115 years later, Casey Stengel said he was overjoyed at being named the first manager of the Knickerbockers. I’m pretty sure he meant the Mets, but it could be awfully tricky to figure out the Old Perfessor’s meaning when he got to talking. --I know that the park is not where the current Madison Square Garden is located, but the park was home to the first two incarnations of the world’s most oft-rebuilt arena. --Madison Square Park has been a public space since 1686. --The park was not named for Oscar Madison, the fabled New York sportswriter, but rather for the fourth President of the United States, James Madison. I guess that makes sense, too. --It was among one of the most elite New York neighborhoods in the 19th century. The kind of place O. Henry used as a setting for some of the swells in his brilliant short stories that used a formula to nearly as successful an end as P.T. Barnum, history’s favorite huckster, who hosted his little circus just north of the square in 1873. --The Statue of Liberty kept the home fires burning in the park. The big lady’s arm resided there for six years to raise funds to get the rest of her aloft. --The park was home to the first community Christmas tree, in 1912. --The park was restored a few years ago and now features lush lawns and has many of the elements of its 19th century design, plus a beautiful fountain and benches in the style of the World’s Fair. It should be a beautiful night to gaze at the Flatiron Building and think about the way things used to be in the park, the city, the game, and with the team Casey christened. Anyone who works around there or would just like a fun, quick, and free activity in the city—Borders is selling books, I must add—please come on down. Fellow Triumph Books author Scott Pitoniak will also talk about Memories of Yankee Stadium, but to paraphrase the words of the man whose statue we’ll be speaking in front of—Civil War hero Admiral David Farragut—“Damn the Yankees, full speed ahead.” Bring the kiddies, bring the wife to Mets night at the park of Madison, Cartwright, Barnum, and Farragut. Let’s knock this out of the park. |
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June 30, 2008 Shea You: Getting Lonely, Getting Old Top 10 Shea Moments (For the last go round at Shea Stadium, I’m going to count down my 10 favorite games at Shea that I have witnessed, with a side list or two thrown in to stretch it out. I chronicle the greatest moments at Shea in both Meet the Mets and 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, but this list is based on being there in the flesh. And what it felt like at Shea on that date.) Recap: #10. April 5, 1983 Tom Seaver Returns [Click here] Recap: #9. October 3, 2004 Les Morts [Click here] Recap: #8. May 23, 1998: Welcome Home, Mr. Piazza [Click here] Recap #8A. Losers Bracket [Click here] #7. October 4, 2006: You’re Out. And You’re Out!
An hour into the opening game of the first postseason series at Shea Stadium in six years, a boy about 10 stands near a sink in the crowded bathroom, his dad beaming and close by. The kid is talking to everyone in sight. “What about that double play by Lo Duca?” he shouts. “Have you ever seen a play like that?” It’s his first postseason game and he can’t wipe the smile off his face. You tell him to enjoy the feeling. That when you were his age it was 11 years until you saw your first postseason game. These moments are rare. You are a curmudgeon. This place makes them. You leave the kid and his father but as you walk back into the masses, the place is alive in the early evening. People shout. Strangers high five like it’s 1999. The tumult and the shouting fill the place again. A little more than a David Wright smash away is the replacement for Shea, which has gone from state-of-the-art to seventh-oldest stadium in baseball by this, October 4, 2006. Shea is maligned from the know-it-alls who equate convenience with charm and quirky dimensions with functional history. A few hours later, you will descend the ramp that filters everybody into the Long Island night. The posters of hugging Mets, slugging Mets, draw your eye with every shuffle of your feet. There have been a lot of wild times at this place, a lot of good and a lot of bad. Hundreds you’ve seen and thousands you haven’t. A few of them don’t even involve the Mets. But there are some you don’t want to forget when the wrecking ball turns the maligning of Shea into just memories. It’s not just your team’s home, it’s your home, too. Houses are sold, babies born, jobs come and go, and still you walk in and out of this giant slab of concrete. Maybe that’s why there’s 56,979 people are all trying to get out at the same time. As they make their slow, happy procession out of the 43-year-old venue, you think about how long it has been in coming to this day. The last time you left the building after a postseason game you were alone on the ramp, moving quickly yet obliviously, wife in tow, unsure of what you might do next, hurrying into the Shea night. An eerie glow emitted from the stadium, but you could not look back. Like Sodom and Gomorrah. Looking back to see the stadium that the Yankees had now forever colonized into their Army of the Living Dead, along with San Diego Stadium, Dodger Stadium, Candlestick Park, Crosley Field, County Stadium, Ebbets Field, Sportsman’s Park, Wrigley Field, and where it all began, the Polo Grounds. All these great stadiums—well, maybe great doesn’t apply in every case—were forever hijacked by the Yankees as a celebration board. A place where their seed was spilled. If you’d owned the team, you’d have asked the bishop, a priest, those nuns who used to hang out at Shea, to convene a blessing on the field before the 2001 season could commence. Bobby Valentine surely could’ve gotten someone. I was in the car for the whole perverse coronation in 2000. Numb. And far from comfortable. Only the radio tuned to WFAN and Bob Murphy could talk you through it. If Murph can endure this, so can you, so can anybody. You listen to Murph until he goes off the air. The office the next day is like death. Much has happened in that time. Bobby V., who seemed like he could take the most talentless Mets team and mold it into a contender, had a bad year and lost out when Fred Wilpon backed the wrong man. Everyone associated with the Mets lost out as it went from Valentine to Howe to Randolph. Anything was better than Art Howe. You always had to have faith that things would work out, but you weren’t wrong about Howe. No one was wrong about him. Only the owner. Again the team was broken down and built back up. Free agents arrived in new tax brackets and toting new slogans. David Wright and Jose Reyes came into their own. Pedro truly lit up Shea when he wasn’t in the doctor’s office. Trades brought Carlos Delgado and Paul Lo Duca from Florida, you questioned it then and you’d question it later, but 2006 belonged to these two. Billy Wagner came to sew up what had been too, too many ugly ninth innings. You winced at the Duaner Sanchez for Jae Seo deal and also at Xavier Nady for Mike Cameron, and winced again at the Nady for Roberto Hernandez deal after Sanchez’s taxi accident, scoffing at the washed-up Oliver Perez tossed in by Pittsburgh. All proof that your place is in the stands. He gets Shawn Green’s contract for nothing and Guillermo Mota for less than nothing. Omar Minaya knows his stuff. His trades are all one-way deals, you just never know which way they’ll end up going. Though when he dumps the annoying Bensons for young John Maine and inconsistent Jorge Julio and later foists Julio on the Diamondbacks for Orlando Hernandez, it doesn’t take a genius to see which way those deals are heading. In Omar we trust. You watch on television during the thrilling extra-inning wins, you watch as Wright’s brilliantly-turned double play buries the Phillies for good. In June. In June! You hold your breath at every infrequent two-game losing streak, but there is nothing to fear. Even a three-game sweep to Nady’s Pirates works out because you have tickets for that Monday night game. At Shea. You meet people from your former job from hell at Shea. An extra person buys a ticket at the game and you do the old stub switcheroo and the only empty field level seat is right next to you and the fifth man sits right down. Jose Valentin, off the scrap heap, looking like he should’ve been cut in April, homers twice. Steve Trachsel, the only straggler from the Bobby V. regime, wins the clincher. You leave the stadium moments before Lo Duca and Wright come out and spray down the fans. It’s all right, you say. It’s a long drive home and you’ll be back for Game 1 of the Division Series. You’ve been busy in the days leading up to the game, writing versions of Mets past for a past-deadline book. You hear something about El Duque, but you don’t know the extent until you’re in the car, cooler full, hours before the friendly 4 p.m. start to the Division Series. Maine will now start the opener against the Dodgers. Good thing you brought beer. If they can just get through these two games in New York, maybe split in L.A., and then you’ll have Game 5 and the full bullpen ready to go at Shea. This place can’t be the same burial grounds for overreaching dreams as 2000. It just can’t. But it’s a beautiful fall day. Paul’s waiting for you in the Marina Lot. Boother’s calling in. Duck’s on his way from the city. You’ve all seen enough games at Shea to know the fates are fickle and uncertain by the Bay. And Maine shows promise. Throws a lot of pitches, but he has hard stuff. And balls. Earlier in the day you’ve signed a contract for Mets by the Numbers and you take to the stadium early and make your way down the first row at Shea to take photos. Some will actually make it into the book a year into the future. But it’s just fun now seeing the bunting. The sun hits the tri-color sashes and suddenly you feel like it must’ve for that first Championship Series in 1969. The players work out on the field. Line up for the introductions. The stadium fills. You’ve underestimated the crowd. Not the size, but the intensity. Because it’s a late day start, you know there’ll be a lot of kids. Good for them. Every postseason game should start at four o’clock—EASTERN TIME—if you’re not home in time, listen on the radio, follow on the computer, whatever, but let the kids see the game. They’ll be watching long after you’re dead. You hope. Then you pray that won’t be for a long time. Then you look at the bunting some more. The roar during the introductions is unbelievable. So what if El Duque’s out? Pedro’s in a sling? Duaner is done? We’ve got playoff baseball. People in wigs. Faces painted. Overpriced beers at the ready. Bathroom lines cuing up. The entire place is standing for Maine’s first pitch. And his first strike. And his first two-strike count. You’d think people had been waiting six years or something. Maine gets the Dodgers out in order in the first and the place is roaring like a DC-10 is passing overhead. The Mets put a couple on in the first but can’t score off Derek Lowe. The Mets take the field for what seems like an innocuous second inning. You don’t know that this will be the most memorable second inning you’ll ever see. Certainly the most memorable in which just a single run crosses the plate. Maine is not as sharp in inning two and it shows when Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew single. The crowd is shifting in its seats. This is what we all feared on our way to the park. Russ Martin, the latest in a line of homegrown Dodgers catchers with superior hitting prowess, laces a drive to the wall in right. Shawn Green takes it on a hop, gets it to Valentin, who fires to Lo Duca at the plate. That much you can see. Except the crowd |
the Mets beat the Dodgers and receive a Gil Hodges pin. Those were the
only games they won on that homestand—both by 2‑1 scores—and to get an
idea of how nice the weather was, the last game of that homestand was
snowed out.
up for the journey the next night. The biggest test yet. Fireworks
Night.
