This is a simple game: You TAKE the lead, you BUILD the lead, you KEEP the lead.

There's no crying in baseball? The hell there isn't!

2013-05-18T01:23:25Z

Cries of happiness, and of hope, and of Harvey, at least.

This afternoon, in the duly designated daytime, Matt Harvey made his debut on the field eponymously named for him in the early scenes of A League of Their Own. Its sugary-sweet magnate, Walter Harvey, was plainly based on the gummy Chicago bear of Phil Wrigley, and today's venue got renamed "Harvey Field" for those opening tryouts by Geena and Rosie and Madonna (oh Ma!).

And, like the peachiest of the Rockford Peaches, the Harvey Bar rose above all the other measurements of the day, both on the mound (past a shaky first) and at the bat.

Until yesterday's pitching performance made Nice-Niese, it had been a rough mid-May, but now the Mets are on a moderate (for them) roll, with Harvey's next two starts scheduled for home grounds, if the five-day rotation holds.

Next, that would mean, would be against the Reds next Wednesday. And, following that, would be the opening night of this year's abbreviated Subway Series against the You Know Whos.

For which my ticket arrived, in today's post. Bullpen entrance, section 140-something. By the time I arrive, in all probability, I'll gotta pay:

Move Along. Nothing to See Here.

2013-05-12T12:21:23Z

You'd think that, after avoiding this blog for the entirety of the regular season so far, I'd have something really profound to say.

Can't say I do, thanks, largely, to the staff and management of Metropolitan Baseball Club, Incorporated or whatever they're calling themselves these days.

For the second year in a row, the Mets brought back Banner Day. Also, for the second year in a row, the Mets deprived their beyond-the-ballpark fandom of the chance to be in the moment with their new home and their fellow fans.

There was hope they'd get it right. When ESPN grabbed the rights to whatever the original date was, the team actually listened and let the fans pick the date for the replacement game, letting them choose among three. (Not on the ballot, of course, was the correct answer- BETWEEN GAMES OF A SCHEDULED SINGLE-ADMISSION DOUBLEHEADER- but such a choice would probably cause the Shea Bridge to collapse and the rest of the venue to crumble into the garbage dump below.) So I was hopeful, indeed, when I tuned to SNY (after seeing various check-ins at the ballpark), that I would read the sheets, see the sheets, step right up and greet the sheets from the comfort of my faraway living room.

Instead I got a Bowflex informercial. Just like last year.

The tone-deafness of this organization is deafening. If you're going to go retro to the moments of our glory days as a Mets Family, for crysakes invite all of us to be a part of it- even the crazy Uncle Ray who can't show up for any damn game on a whim. Do the makers of E400 Energy Boost Supplement really line the Wilpockets enough to demand exclusive rights to their Saturday noon timeslot? Do Gary, Keith and Ron really charge that much more to go live an hour or so early?

No, it's the usual bullsheet we've come to expect. Less expected was the sudden decline of Jonathan Niese, he of the modern reincarnation of the old Boston Braves rotation of "Harvey and Niese and Pray for Peace." I couldn't even watch the damn game, since it, before the Banner Day rescheduling, was one of the pittance of games palmed off on PIX for the few remaining tri-state hoi poloi with rabbit ears. Time Warner used to carry the Channel 11 feed here locally for those games, but that was when the Mets were the Bisons parent club and they were within recent memory of being a professional baseball team. Instead, that cable channel is showing high school lacrosse.

Let's go Long Island Tomahawks!

----

I watched some Opening Day. I saw the OhNoHeIsnt! Facebook posts about Harvey last week and tuned THAT in just in time to see the Chisox put that first 1 up on the board. Other than that, I've relied mainly on online scoreboards and the daily, patient-as-saint postings of Mets bloggers to see just how bad it is and how likely it is to get worse.

Ever the optimist, I offer the following:

- We're still ahead of the Marlins. (Local power ranking comment on their 30th-out-of-30 showing: If this was European soccer, they’d be a lock to be relegated.)

- Despite acquiring two of our recently best players over the winter, the Blue Jays are five games ahead of us in the Suck Standings. (They merely managed to play five more games, no doubt due to the roof on their ballpark and a lack of April games being scheduled in Colorado or Minnesota.)

- We're achieving this level of mediocrity without either of the stud ballplayers acquired for Beltran and Dickey, both of whom are surrounded by space aliens in Area 51 right now.

Sorry. All I got.

On the bright side, one other thing I got is a seat at the first Subway Series game in a little over two weeks. I have no idea where it is, but I got it through the 7 Line, so please holler if you are going to be in the building. Bring your banners from yesterday and I'll help you parade them around the old Shea infield. Maybe I'll even get arrested for violating the open container law out there- and then, maybe, a Banner Day parade could finally get back on television where it belongs.

Well, now it's official:

2013-02-24T15:13:05Z

Deadspin has the scoop on what we already suspected:

The New York Yankees are the Evil Empire.

Evil Enterprises Inc., owners of a website with the URL baseballsevilempire.com which currently will not load due to a malware warning—probably Yankee tampering—recently filed a trademark claim for the term "Baseballs Evil Empire," which was sniffed out and promptly disputed by the lawyers employed by Basbeball's Evil Empire. Even though the Yankees would never use the term to promote their team, they need to own it, because it exists.

But you can't just allege an intellectual property interest in such a mark. You need evidence. Here's what Team George submitted:

In its legal papers, the team referenced a number of articles from the past decade using the term in connection with the Yankees, and conceded that the team has "implicitly embraced" the "Evil Empire" theme by playing music from Star Wars during their home games.

The panel of judges sided with the Yankees, ruling that the Yankees are strongly associated with the phrase. Allowing anyone else to use the phrase exclusively would likely cause confusion, ruled the judges.

"In short, the record shows that there is only one Evil Empire in baseball and it is the New York Yankees," wrote the judges. "Accordingly, we find that [the Yankees] have a protectable trademark right in the term . . . as used in connection with baseball."

Deadspin is now moving on with its latest investigation, of how the Yankees are trying to get out of the remainder of ARod's contract by proving that he doesn't actually exist- at least after October 1st.

"Nobody retires here anymore. It's too crowded."

2013-02-22T13:47:36Z

Yes, it's true. The day before the Mets return to the playing field for the first time since October 3rd, this blog rises from the dead for the first time since October 25th. (Trust me about leaving off the link; it was bad filk about an even worse post-season memory.)

I haven't been dead, or even not writing. Hell, I wrote a whole novel in November; perhaps you've even seen it in a spam folder near you. I just haven't had anything new to say about the Mets.

Still don't. They signed their best position player, finally; gave away their best pitcher for what will hopefully not turn out to be a bucket of balls; and generally did nothing else to redeem themselves or make themselves seem relevant in the coming year. Only the train wreck of Miami 2013 seems to be keeping the Mets safe from cellardom.

So, having nothing new to say, I'll retreat to something old- and even older- as I weigh in on the subject of retirement.

----

37. 14. 41. 42. No, we're not Lost, but I think we're behind in the count, and hot stovers have brought it up in recent days. Today, FAFIF's Jason Fry offers his cents and sense about some of the coulda-been-contendahs. He proposes going with two new ones: 31 for Piazza and 17 for Keith. (I presume Jack Dilauro and Don Bosch won't be invited to the ceremony.) A second tier of numbers, leading off with 8, is proposed for a Senior Counsel level of not quite retirement: to be "on the shelf next to 24, to be assigned infrequently, and only when circumstances warrant."

With one exception, I concur. That exception is for the 8 Men.

The piece of 8 in that article was all about Gary Carter, the last man of any note to wear the number between the foul lines. His main disqualification seems to be that he was only here for five years, at least one of them being "awful."

Oh my God, wasn't it? But if those are DQ's for enshrinement out there, we may as well paint over the four numbers we've got with a Dairy Queen ad and forget the whole thing. Casey Stengel was a Met for only five seasons. Likewise, Gil, except for a waning two months of Polo in 1963. Even the Franchise spent close to half his career with other franchises. And all of them had whole seasons that waned in comparison to their typical waxiness.

So if that's not a real objection, a case can be made for the Kid on his own, but it doesn't have to be. For this discussion needs to include the almost-Original owner of that number- the one who wore it the longest, ain't-over-till-it's-overed in it, and remains the oldest living man to ever wear it or any other number on those fields.

Yes, I give you Lawrence Peter Berra.

----

It's not unprecedented to recognize a retirement in tandem. Burns and Allen, Abbott and Costello, and for our purposes, Staub and Dawson. Both of the latter wearers of numéro dix were honored by its retirement in Montreal before the inter-National incident of their shameful unretirement. Number 8 is already a shared memory across the Triboro, with Berra's time in it being shared with the second best ballplayer ever to be named Dickey.

Yogi's Mets tenure was itself mixed, and his Evil Empire connections may have kept him off the board to some extent. But just as he may not make the case alone, the combined mojo of the Old Man and the Kid should be enough. I daresay it must be. We didn't do it when Gary Carter was still alive, but we damn should get an 8 on that wall while the Yahweh of Yoo-Hoo is still around to see it.

When I attended my first Citi Field game for the honoring of the 1969 Mets 40th season, it was Yogi's introduction, and inclusion among the heroes of my past, that brought me to tears. Likewise, when he stepped on Shea's plate for the final time following that horrid final game there the previous year. Seeing him one more time, with the permanence of all those memories, would no doubt do it again.

Un-Barry-able

2012-10-25T20:26:08Z

Everybody sing! (To this tune, obviously- or maybe not so....)

♫His name was Timmy, he was a Phillie,
And a Cardinal for years before destroying all our ears
He caught Steve Carlton- go on, just ask him-
And when his booth career began- he quickly lost me as a fan
While Joe Buck does the call, he's quite the know-it-all
He sounds like nails on the baseball blackboard
Each and every fall!

Yes it's Timmy! (TIM!) Timmy McCarver!
You're not listening to Red Barber!
No, it's Timmy! (BOO!) Timmy McCarrrrrverrrrr
He's trying for laughs but they come out as gaffes
Yep with Timmy,.... that's what you get....

His name was Barry, last name of Zito
He was pitching pretty well, but Timmy dragged him straight to hell
For when the crowd cheered, it called out "Barry!"
McCarver heard a different chant and started yet another rant
Was he looped out on candy? Too many sips of brandy?
But just like that, he gave a shout-out to the guy who sang Mandy!

Yes it's Timmy! (TIM!) Timmy McCarver!
You're not listening to Red Barber!
No, it's Timmy! (BOO!) Timmy McCarrrrrverrrrr
He's trying for laughs but they come out as gaffes
Yep with Timmy,.... that's what you get....

His name is Timmy, he's still a sidekick
But it's been 30 years or more that he's been fucking up the store
He needs a gold watch, some Metamucil
And if Selig won't whack him, maybe FOX will
He sits there at his mike, no fact he doesn't like
It's time for MLB to tell this clown
To take a hike!

Yes it's Timmy! (TIM!) Timmy McCarver!
You're not listening to Red Barber!
No, it's Timmy! (BOO!) Timmy McCarrrrrverrrrr
He's trying for laughs but they come out as gaffes
Yep with Timmy,.... that's what you get....♫

Not Yet.

2012-10-12T01:15:22Z

Oh to be a fly on the wall this morning....

::brrrring!::

Caller: Hi, can I speak to Mr. Alderson, please?

Receptionist: I'll see if he's in. Who's calling?

Caller: Brian.

Receptionist: Brian who?

Caller: He'll know.

::buzz::

Alderson: I figured I'd be hearing from you.

Caller: Sandy! How's the family? Tee times going okay for your guys now?

Alderson: Shut up, Cashman. I know what this is about.

Caller: Oh, really? I was just checking on whether you'd consider renting out your ballpark on road trips a few times a year. We're, um, having trouble with our sluggers who can't hit left-handed pitching for shit.

Alderson: Let's cut to the chase, Brian. You're benching your all-world third baseman and want to see if we'll give you David even up, right?

Caller: That would be tampering and you know it. And That Would Be Wrong. Besides, we'd want a lot more for such a surefire box office draw if, ....hypo-thetically, A-Rod was available.

Alderson: Let me guess. You also want Dickey, Wheeler and some players to be named later.

Caller: Who needs later? Throw in Matt Harvey and a spare DH or two for Scranton and we can talk.

Alderson: But we DON'T talk. That's the point. The all-time roster of the New York Yets barely fields a team.

Caller: Well, THAT's something you should be familiar with.

Alderson: Oh, go suck on a crabcake. We never talk. Barely ever, anyway. Who have we traded between us since that awesome Stanton-Heredia deal eight years ago?

Caller: The heck with that. We only made nine trades with you in 30 years of Boss George. He hated you guys for daring to compete with him. Told me, Stick and Watson not to even take your calls.

Alderson: But you took that one about Benitez. How'd that work out for you?

Caller: Hey. Even a stopped clock catches fire if you pour gasoline on it twice a day.

Alderson: That list isn't complete, anyway. Didn't we trade Swoboda to you?

Caller: Not quite. You dumped him off on the Expos before the '71 season, and we grabbed him from there before the trade deadline. You know, back when the trade deadline was in June.

Alderson: At least you didn't unretire number 4 for him. We have our own issues with numbers, yaknow.

Caller: So, before I call Magic Johnson, what do you think? Dude grew up a Mets fan. You need fannies in those seats. Might be just the Wright thing to do....

Alderson: I'll have to go visit Bernie in prison and get back to you.

Junk in the Trunk

2012-10-03T19:42:43Z

When I became a baseball fan in late second grade, I went all-in. I devoured every rule, every stat, every story to get up to speed on this game that the cooler kids all knew better and even played far longer than I did. Baseball cards, cereal boxes, newspaper clippings- they all became my lifelines. Then I got my public library card in third grade, and even more worlds opened. To this day, the only Dewey Decimal number I know by heart is 796.357- home of the baseball non-fiction collection. When those ran thin (and face it, in 1968, books about the Mets were the essence of thin-ness), I sought out fiction. Including one which I can still see in my mind's eye, and, thanks to the amazin'ment of the Internet, in my eye's eye too:

You can even find it in at least a handful of upstate (mostly school) libraries, or buy it on Amazon, and the tale told of it there is about what I remember it being:

Tom Faust is a sparkling young pitcher with a live arm and a superb fastball. So good that he can simply rear back and throw it by major league hitters. He also has superb control, which means that he can put the ball in the locations most difficult for the batters. His desire to win is so great that he agrees to pitch at a frequency that burns his arm out in a few years.

After consulting numerous physicians, he is finally told that his arm is simply worn out and no medical treatment, even rest, will lead to recovery. His only hope to return to the major leagues is to develop a set of off-speed pitches, known in the trade as junk. It is a struggle at first, requiring him to completely change his style. He also must learn to become a super fielder, the batters that before were whiffing in style are now hitting him hard, and he must be prepared to respond at all times.

Despite a few emotional outbursts, Tom is a willing and eager learner and eventually works his way back into the major leagues. In an act of coincidental revenge, he pitches his greatest game against the team that originally burned him out. Barely missing a no-hitter, he shows the world that he is truly a pitcher and not just a body with a whip for a right arm.

I'd forgotten the Marlowe-ian foreshadowing in the character's name (and can't let it go, seeing how this blog is named for a Marlowe-ian character) , but otherwise, that long-lost story came back to me this morning after reading the accounts of R.A. Dickey's final appearance, and of the speculation on how it would impact his Cy Young chances. There seems to have been much suspicion from potential voters about his bona fides on account of his being a Junk Pitcher, such that his similar story of failure, frustration and fantastic readjustment is held against him rather than as cause to celebrate.

Further, I don't recall any emotional outbursts on R.A.'s part, but other than that, the parallels to this old tale are striking. The revenge against those who gave up on him, the barely missing a no-no, and then the stranger-than-fiction inclusion of Adam Greenberg in the story of last night's events. I heard Greenberg on a sports show earlier today, who considered it a strange irony that he'd get his second shot against a guy with such a striking story of his own. He flat-out declared Dickey as deserving of the Cy Young, no question about it; and he looks forward to getting a second at-bat against him in the future to redeem himself.

Unless, of course, two final fates converge, and the Mets both retain R.A. and sign Greenberg. You can never go wrong with a name like that in New York.

----

Other than those memorable moments, last night just put more runny icing on the cake left out in the rain. I don't think that I can take it, all the memories of the past few months after the promise of the first three. The only certainty so far seems to be the retention of the field generals, which will no doubt result in Wally Backman going elsewhere, a year before Wright and R.A. likely do the same. Only the prospect of a complete collapse, whether on the field or in the financials of the Wilpons, would give me hope of things becoming different any time soon. After seeing how quickly an ownership transfusion changed the fortunes of the Dodgers, there always is that hope if it happens. I fear, though, that it won't, and probably can't, happen without that change.

On the other hand, the Wilpons could try selling their souls to the devil- again- and see if it works out better this time. Hey, it could work as well as it apparently did down in D.C. this year. If you need to get in touch with the ol' boy, just get in touch, Jeffy; I just might be able to figure out the Prince of Darkness's website address;)

Going out on a limb. Plank. Whatever.

2012-09-24T23:42:36Z

This should have been a happy occasion.

Back in late June, we would have been looking at this final homestand of the season with nervous anticipation. The Marlins, who we all knew couldn't have been a contendah by then, were likely to be the easy pickins that they proved to be the past three games, and then the Pirates? The then-division-leading Pirates? Nah. Never would have lasted. We coulda cleaned up on them nicely- just like we should've done when I went down there on this same weekend in 2006 and, somehow, they swept us.

Tonight could've brought the historic clinch we were unable to get that year. On September 24th, the anniversary of our first-ever zeroing of a Magic Number. Instead, all the Mets have to play for the next four games is a limitation of their own Tragic Number to something not too negative- and, come Thursday, for RA to have his likely last shot at XX.

That game, I'll take as it comes. But for the next three nights, Ich Bin Ein Piratesfan.

They are a team that deserves better, in a ballpark that's been wasted for even longer than our boneyard of a new ballpark, in a city with proud histories in three professional sports. They are still barely alive in the wild card race- 6½ back with ten to play- but a more reachable goal is to have their first winning season since 1992, our year of The Worst Team Money Could Buy. Going into tonight, they are two games under .500 with those same ten to play: these four, and then two much tougher sets of three against the Reds and Braves, both at home, and for whom, by then, either or both might have nothing to play.

I'd say the Mets can at least contribute the next three nights to rebuilding Pirate confidence. Then, even with Dickey winning on Thursday, they'll be at .500 going into those final six home games, where, unlike certain people we know, they are a commanding nine games over .500 thus far.

This will clearly take some practice. Do they still chant Beat 'em Bucs! to the cadence of LGM? Is "We Are Family" still part of the family? Who are these guys, anyway?

It's scoreless as I post this, so at least my rooting interest hasn't hurt yet. We'll see how this-all holds up.

Miami 2012

2012-09-23T13:29:05Z

I've seen the season die in Flushing
Saw Casey Stengel hang his head
And life went on in all the pennant races,
They all kept playing after July 1st
And left us here for dead.

They cut their losses up in Buffalo
They said, "These so-called prospects blow!"
They'll try for better days,
With draft picks from Blue Jays,
While we keep sucking in the Show...

I've seen the season die in Flushing
The Wilpons ruined what once was proud,
You know we almost didn't notice it
With a Shake Shack and a Caesars Club,
Which are great but never loud.

They burned the bridges first with Beltran
And soon thereafter with José,
You think they'll try to fight
To make a deal with Wright
Or show some money to R.A.?...

I've seen the season die in Flushing
I watched a mighty stadium fall.
They built a pretty one in its parking lot,
It'd be a tougher ticket,
But we never came at all.

They sent a prophet named Francesca
Who said the Yankees were the best.
They said the Mets could stay,
To play one more game at Shea,
But they lost that game like all the rest...

You know that field was bright in Flushing
But that was so many years ago...
Except when that team comes up from Florida
Just to prove that, yes, you can stoop more low.
There are not many who remember
Their empty seats and strange Red Grooms
But still, today, I wish
We'll out-un-suck the Fish
And push them home with our stinky brooms!

It just doesn't matter.

2012-09-10T22:15:12Z

When last we spoke in this space, the Mets had just seen the final not-so-fleet-ing moment of their Labor Day "push" get appealed away from them. That was followed by a split of the two remaining Cards, and finally by the debacle of the past three days on the Hats Off To Larry Tour.

What could there be possibly to look forward to now? The final 2012 appearance of Stephen Strasburg, I suppose. I saw his first AAA appearance at a Bisons game, many pre-Tommy John seasons ago, and the guy's the real deal. So naturally that rules out running him out against the Mets.

Our oppo-Nats for the next three nights, per Yahoo Sports?

G. Gonzalez (18-7, 2.98)
J. Zimmermann (10-8, 2.99)
J. Lannan (2-0, 3.46)

No sign of Steve in the first game of the weekend Atlanta series, either, which is as far as their probables go, so maybe they've just decided to begin the shutdown sooner. Or, more likely, why would they waste any of those precious innings on the likes of Josh Thole and Jordany Valdespin? I heard the far-off voice of Bill Murray, telling me that we've hit the depth of despair in comparing ourselves to real competitors, and while his message of "It just doesn't matter!" wound up being an inspirational one-

- the simple fact is that, for at least the balance of 2012, it's the Mets that just don't. They don't get it, they don't care to rock the boat, and from everyone from their old hated rivals in Atlanta to their won't-be new ones in the District, they just don't matter anymore.

My football team just got run over by a clown car, my hockey team is likely to be shut out for another season of BS labor law, and I'd really like to find something right about now that DOES matter.

A game of inches.... and the agony of de feet:P

2012-09-03T21:59:13Z

I've referenced my August trip to Citi Field a few times, never mentioning the actual game. What was to mention? By the time I got home and was able to even think about writing about it, the Mets were mired in a losing streak against two of the worst teams in the league where they couldn't muster more than two runs, and even that, or one, was a near-impossibility for most of the week. By the time the homestand was over and they'd eked out a couple of good-riddance wins against their soon to be ex-pansion cousins, all hope of this season going anywhere was largely out of the box- or, rather, hopelessly stuck inside it.

Yet there was this play at the end of that first Rockies game. Sharon and Taryn had already said their farewells (Coop not entirely of her free will, as the Caesars Police wouldn't let her back in), so Greg and I got to experience the moment of reverse schadenfreudestalisis that is an attempted Mets comeback.

Recall the scene. Bottom eight, Mets down 2-1, that early staking of a Dickey lead having long passed into that deficit and the offense having managed exactly one hit in six innings against a less than stellar crew. Yahoo tells it, retrospectively and impassively, like this:

- R. Tejada popped out to shallow right
- M. Baxter doubled to shallow left
- D. Wright intentionally walked
- I. Davis struck out swinging
- D. Murphy walked, M. Baxter to third, D. Wright to second
- M. Belisle relieved R. Brothers
- J. Valdespin hit for S. Hairston
- J. Valdespin grounded out to first

All due respect, Son of Serious, but that's not how it happened. Jordany, who'd been with the Bisons in recent days and would be back here eight nights later for their home (and likely Met) finale, hit the squibbiest of squibblers up the first base line. The tying run crossed, the go-ahead might have been in motion as well, but the fielder threw to first and, by the barest of measures, if any, he was out, the inning was over, and the ninth was completely anticlimactic.

----

From there, it got worse before it got even a little better. The wrapup wins against the 'Stros helped; so did the road results against our true current competition. And yet, I saw the stories about post-Labor Day collapses. The Braves and Red Sox can tell you how safe a big Labor Day lead is, they said. I checked the standings for the first time in a month, and there we were, nine games out with 30 to play.

Hell, we've come from almost as far ahead to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Could I believe? Today's Citi Field contest would tell a lot, as the Cardinals are one of the teams we'd likely have to beat out in that stretch.

Except it wasn't AT Citi Field. My bad; turning the game on and seeing an Arch dispelled that. Also seeing an Arch enemy behind the plate and probably the worst choice of starters for a key-to-any-chance victory.

I saw Collin McHugh on the preview page. He pitched great in the Bison game at Fenway I attended three Saturdays ago, then pitched almost as well in the fourth lost-cause game against Colorado three days after I was there. He was back in Buffalo for that rather depressing Bison finale, where he was staked to an early 2-0 lead, lost it, left in the fifth with the bases empty and the score tied at 2 when a pitch count limit kicked in, got into a Twitterfight with the local baseball columnist later that week, and then promptly lost his stuff in his fewer-than-five stint early this afternoon.

It looked bleak. I started catching up on Newsroom episodes I'd missed on my computer; I put laundry in; anything to avoid the Cardinal sin unfolding before me. Yet the picture was always on, and before I knew it, first Shoppach and then Murphy had gone yard and a seemingly random insurance tally against Robert Carson (by my count the 2,130th reliever on the staff this year) was all the difference going to the top of the ninth.

Crucially, the Mets got that second tater and a lot of wear and tear off a variety of Card relievers, forcing them to bring in their closer top eight to get five outs. Of which he got exactly four. The fifth came through another of those bang-bang inch plays at first, so much like the aborted mission I saw in Queens, that might have been the Budweiser Turning Point of the Season, which, when you're the beer that owns the opposing team, can never be good.

Andres Torres, leading off, hit a shot almost straight along one of those lawnmower-perfect lines fanning out near, but not quite in, the right field corner. He's gonna try for two!, my heart pounded, while my head did some basic math and trigonometry to gauge his chances of making it. They were good, and we had the tying run in scoring position with nobody out and the top of our order one pinch hitter away.

Only then came.... well.

Until I was about eleven, I thought there was something in baseball called "a peel play." My father could never explain it to me, and it took years to get the metaphysics of it all.

And that goddam LaRussa acolyte in the dugout promptly tossed a peel on the field and Torres slipped right on it. Bang bang, season dead, ten game deficit in your head.

Collins put up a semblance of a fight, but as SNY the boys properly noted, the runner never bothered to react himself. (At least Ike Davis, when he'd been nearly doubled off in the previous inning, did his best imitation of a wide receiver signaling the officiating crew to move the chains or change possession.) And from there, as with the final Met turn I was at against the Rockies, it was all over except the waiting. They got a guy on, who would've made it two on and one out in a parallel universe, but you just knew, as you saw him standing there, that this team, on this date, was just Beat All.

It ain't over until mathematical elimination pays a call, probably sometime in the next homestand. But today felt like our last and best chance, and it is even more painful to realize that we missed it by that much. Or little.

Another mixedy-uppy timey-wimey entry

2012-08-27T20:49:34Z

It's been a week now since Sharon-ing a lovely evening, Taryn' up time, and enjoying some of the most Greg-arious company Citi Field has ever had to offer. Parts of those stories are in words and pictures here and here, respectively, but I will try to get back and give them more of a happy recap before this summer completely falls away.

Fine. Have a picture.

In the week since then, however, other Met things have happened. Few of them involved scoring runs, as the home plate drought in Queens threatens to overwhelm even the worst of the one in the Midwest. When your weekly run totals against two of the worst teams in your league are 1, 2, 2, 0, 1, 3 and 2, and you still somehow manage to win the last two of those games? Something is terribly rotten in the neighborhood of Chop Shops.

Yet all of that, you know. It's as plain as the no's in your run column. What you may not know, though, is that a potentially beautiful friendship is about to come to a sudden end and it is only going to make things worse for the Mets in years to come: tomorrow night, in all likelihood, is the final home game for the Buffalo Bisons under Mets affiliation. The starter will be last Thursday's Citi Field Flavor of the Week Collin McHugh, one of the five Met pitchers with a good claim against ownership for failure to provide support; he did a little better in his last Bison appearance, the one I saw him in at Fenway weekend before last, where he pitched six strong shutout innings with only two runs to show for it. (Unlike the parent bullpen's usual results, that lead held up in the end.)

It was Wally Backman who spilled the beans the day after that game:

Backman pretty much confirmed late Sunday afternoon what has been plainly obvious for several weeks: These are the New York Mets' final days as the parent club of the Buffalo Bisons.

Speaking to The News following his team's 4-1 loss to the Pawtucket Red Sox at McCoy Stadium, Backman pulled no punches when asked if he was disappointed he couldn't produce a playoff club in Buffalo. That was probably the only way the Mets could get an extension of their player development contract.

"I would guess that's true," Backman said when asked if he expected the homestand that begins Monday night to be the Mets' final one in Coca-Cola Field. "It's a shame for us, really. Buffalo is a great city but I don't envision us coming back, from the things I've heard from the grapevine."

The Bisons are 62-67 and headed to their third losing season in four years with the Mets. Backman is convinced things would have been different if not for injuries, both in New York and Buffalo. The Bisons have gone through 61 players and 154 roster moves this season.

And the next thing the Mets are almost certainly going to go through is the Pacific Coast League:

Teams execute player development contracts for either two or four years, and the Bisons are the only International League team not signed for the period covering the 2013-14 seasons. They are expected to sign next month with the Toronto Blue Jays.

Buffalo became the lone holdout when Rochester surprised some observers by signing a two-year extension with Minnesota on Friday. Their agreement dates to 2003 but seemed to be in jeopardy after the team posted horrendous records of 49-95 and 53-91 the last two years but bounced back this year to get within 3½ games in the wild-card race.

Bisons officials face fines from Minor League Baseball if they discuss affiliation switches prior to the opening of the 15-day window to make those deals on Sept. 16. At that time, Buffalo is likely to make the move to the Blue Jays. The Mets will thus be forced to the Pacific Coast League, to either replace the Blue Jays in Las Vegas or perhaps step in for the Houston Astros in Oklahoma City.

Which gets us back to the bad old post-Norfolk years, where the Mets prospects will not only be based far away (a switch to the Red Wings had seemed likely until they re-upped with the Twins) but won't even be passing through Buffalo or Rochester as visitors. These past four years have been a shotgun marriage at best, with little love coming from the parent club this year in terms of past-player appearances or career-minor-leaguer signings. At this past weekend's 25th anniversary celebration of the downtown era of the team, the old-school red-and-green Bison uniforms were much more in view than they'd been in the Met-color era.

The short, and soon to be ended, era.

You might think the Blue Jays would be a logical choice for us, given how close Toronto is. (Unless your name is Taryn, anyway:P) You would be wrong. Their cable-package games are not televised here; their major league stadium is atrocious from a playing-field standpoint; local sports fans hate the city for their snooty ownership of the Maple Leafs and their poaching of one of our annual Bills home games; and the Jays ownership basically wore out their welcome in Syracuse prior to the Vegas move after years of neglecting the affiliate. Yet the local ownership seems determined to go with the devil they don't know rather than with the Wilpons they do.

After the past week of agony, can you blame them?

Crack investigative reporter peers into Mets Executive Offices and finds lights on, nobody home.

Weather permitting, I will join McHugh and Nickeas and possibly Valdy for one last Met hurrah tomorrow night. I fully expect the focus will be on the distant past and on the future rather than on these past four years. And that's a damn sad reflection on what might have been.

Welcome to the (Unofficial) Official Mets Victory at CitiField Blog:)

2012-08-09T22:57:01Z

Only that can explain why I've been so silent for the past month.

There are third-world regimes that have conquered and been deposed since we last witnessed a top-nine end of game in the 11368.

A trade deadline came and went. Another 40 percent of the starting rotation left the building. Dudae and Nickei burned out EZ-Passes coming back to the Bisons, while Harvey pulled at least one rabbit from his hat and his AAA replacement found his way into his Wheeler-house (one night and one thunderstorm away from my seeing him do it).

We saw Dickey lose twice. That might be the strangest occurrence of all, squared. But today, he was back with a vengeance, and even though I missed the sight of it, I was still within the sound of the posts about it. Why this man does not start pitching every fourth day is beyond me- even if that gorks the rest of the rotation and maybe sends Chris Young back somewhere more appropriate to his Young-ness.

Tomorrow begins our penultimate chance to say goodbye to Hello, Larry. Then, a brief roadie to the west and south awaits before the triumphant return to Citi of....

me?

I sure hope so. Sharon Chapman was gracious and kind in securing ticketing and parking for the weary traveler, but a Rochester apartment complex just grabbed about half of my travel budget, so I need to work, hope and even pray a bit that replacement funds will roll in between now and next Thursday to enable the full trippage I have planned. Otherwise, it may wind up being an either/or proposition between a Bison game at Fenway with a next-morning 5K, and Rockies and Met fans two nights later.

But hey. The Mets won a home game, so anything is possible:)

Making way for a hyperspace bypass

2012-07-25T16:48:35Z

The team is in freefall. We're losing an average of a player a game to injury, apparent intentional injury, or demotion. Yet the rest of MLB keeps doing what it does as the trade deadline approaches:

Bypassing the Mets.

MISTER PROSSER:
Come off it Mister Dent, you can't win you know! Look, there's no point in lying down in the path of progress!

ARTHUR DENT:
I've gone off the idea of progress. It's overrated!

MISTER PROSSER:
But you must realise that you can't lie in front of the bulldozers indefinitely!

ARTHUR DENT:
I'm game. We'll see who rusts first.

MISTER PROSSER:
I'm afraid you're going have to accept it! This bypass has got to be built and it is going to be built. Nothing you can say or do -

ARTHUR DENT:
Why has it got to be built?

MISTER PROSSER:
Wha - what do you mean, “why has it got to be built?” It is a bypass! You've got to build bypasses!

One could easily mistake "Arthur Dent" for "Alderson" in a crowded pub, both their names and their strategies. Both seem resistive to the idea of a bypass, but neither seems set on doing anything to do anything about it short of rusting.

The Yankees seem determined to acquire replacement bats even before their stars get injured, and every third base incumbent on 28 (I would pray not 29) other teams are likely fair game for the Bronx Bankers between now and next Tuesday. The Dodgers add, the Phillies protect. The Mets? Call up a starter who should've been called up in June, and ship out Duda while still keeping one-eighth of their lineup at Bay.

Game starts in 15 minutes, and hurry; the world's about to end.

Now is the summer of our great content/Made dubious winter by these Sons of York

2012-07-22T12:45:14Z

Forty summers ago, the rallying cry of this team was "Ya gotta believe." For 2012, I submit it should be "Ya gotta admit."

Ya gotta admit it's been fun. For a group of castoffs and hopeless prospects who were given no hope at all, we got half a season of utter amazement. We witnessed the wresurgence of Wright and many comings-of-age in the infield and outfield and some of the lowest numbers of hits allowed in 50 seasons of history.

Ya gotta admit the ballpark has finally become something resembling home. The reconfiguration did a little of it, but most of it was just having players on the field who we cared about and who, for the first time, seemed to care back.

Ya gotta admit that the injury bug, which seemed infectious in spring training, has been positively virulent of late, particularly among the pitching corpse. I have to think that a July with Gee and Baxter and even (horrid as it sounds) FrankFrank would have been better, if even more nail-biting, as this 7-train wreck of a July has proved itself.

Ya gotta admit that we're still comfortably ahead of the Fish and Phillies, two hated rivals whose dust we were supposed to be eating.

The next two weeks hold the key to whether that cry will still rally me, or even Tug itself back into believing territory. Three home games against the Ex-pos, followed by the annual West Coast extendo-swing that has historically been make-or-break for this team, will tell much of that tale. As will whether Sandy becomes a buyer between now and the 31st instead of Beltraning my heart like he did last year.

Tomorrow would have been my sister Sandy's birthday, and Ya gotta admit that always stands for something good.

Mad Men and Philly Dogs

2012-07-05T01:29:50Z

I'd marked this event on my baseball calendar. SNY's broadcast of the Met Yearbook tribute to 1964, that first magical year of Shea, was one not to be missed. I wound up DVRing it, since dinner fell at the exact hour; but I replayed it about an hour ago, when the Wayback Machine kicked in and there I was, in the days of Don Draper.

Lindsey and Bob did the commentary, Ralph only making a brief cameo from the booth as the all-time home run leader among broadcasters. (Blessedly, he still holds that distinction over the likes of Singleton, Hernandez, and, best of all, McCarver:P) Yet there was enough innuendo in that Yearbook to last an entire AMC season: the '64 Mets and their fans were a love story, years before some guy named Segal appropriated the term. Shea was their new swinging bachelor pad, saying to the fans of that season, Come on up and see my escalators. (This, remember, was back in the first season, when they more-or-less worked.) Men were welcome to leave their wives behind at the Fairgrounds, although one of the narrators was quick to suggest that some wives might run that dodge in reverse. The Diamond Club was hostessed by some of the Mets' best prospects not coming out of the Instructional League. Wink wink nudge nudge.... what's it like?

Well, at least some of the players knew what it was like, since their male spawn were shown beating the pants off their dads in the annual Players Family Game as representatives of the far-future Met "Class of 1980." Given how our real Class of 1980 did turn out, I wouldn't have minded a whole outfield of Jim Hickmen descendants wearing Number 9 simultaneously. (I wonder if John Lennon was at that game, as the gaggle of them might well have inspired his Number 9 song.)

Best of all, though, was the shiny and new of the venue, shown being constructed in much the same way, forward rather than reverse, that we watched its demolition four sad Octobers ago. The sightlines, the scoreboard, but especially the size were perfect for this New Breed of team and their equally New Breed of fan. They (for I would not join "them" for three more seasons) still carried torches for former loves like Mays, Snider and Musial(???), but in the end it was Christopher and, yes, Kranepool who would win their hearts.

The banners of Eponymous Day got good play. They riffed on Barry Goldwater, predicted Great in '68, and best and shortest of all, just exhorted us to PRAY. It was nice of Channel 9 to preserve those moments for posterity; perhaps they even televised them while they occurred.

At the end, the lights went out on the '64 season, a year and two months before my sixth birthday, when all the lights did for thousands of miles. They invited us back for an improved '65 season (it wasn't), for Casey's even bigger 75th birthday celebration (likewise), for the hustle of Berra and Spahn (praying for rain was more like it), but most of all for the fun and friendship of a day, or as many as 81 days, at the ballpark.

That last part remains right to this day. Even on days like this, when our six-inning starter again proved he can't go seven and our long-relief corpse is befitting of that name. Still, I saw so many posts and tweets about friends of all kinds being there and part of the experience, making it more fun for me even while I was limited to listening to Keith's lamb-grilling tips on the tv. I may not be a button-down sexist like Don Draper, but you guys are the best ad campaign this team could ever have:)

Party like it's 1969....

2012-06-27T23:20:21Z

or in our case, 1964. Today's win reminded me of the famed call-in to one of the New York dailies that year, immortalized in Wikipedia as well as my own memory of stories of the era:

On May 26, 1964, in Chicago, they played like champions (at least for one game) and pummeled the Chicago Cubs, 19–1. According to legend, later that day a fan called a New York newspaper to get the score. He was told: "They scored 19 runs." There was a long silence, then the fan asked: "Did they win?"

The '69 reference is pertinent to the Mets only in hindsight, but it concerns the story that was all over ESPN this afternoon as I did some final pre-5K tuning up: the one about how those pullets of pop from the Bronx managed to steal an out, and an infielder, from the Indians by having their left fielder Dewayne Wise play the ol' hidden ball trick on a foul "out." You've no doubt seen the replay, and heard the controversy and the apology, but the connection here is our official left-field line call blower of the night: MLB umpire Mike DiMuro.

Mike, it turns out, is a Western New York native, but more to the point is the son of former American League umpire Lou DiMuro, who was the final arbiter, and probably just as much the patsy, in the 1969 World Series finale's famed shoe polish incident. So I guess what goes around comes around for the DiMuro clan.

I just wonder where all this 60s nostalgia is going to go from here. Will Terry Collins break his hip coming out for his birthday cake? Will David Wright make it to his 200th home run and celebrate by running the bases backward? Is Chris Young destined to have luck as bad as Anthony Young?

Or we could just take the Orioles in five again. That'd work:)

Seventh Inning Retch

2012-06-24T13:36:11Z

I guess I'm lucky that at least I didn't have the same problem Metstradamus did with last night's Fox-sucking. I watched it with the sound off, as I generally do when our games get hijacked by that particular posse. So I didn't have to listen to the whining and idol worshipping of that know-it-all catcher of Steve Carlton's balls. I've had more than a lifetime supply of "Listen to me! I know everything! I used to be 60 feet away from a Hall of Famer!" Well guess what, Timmy? We have two more recent and equally knowledgeable players who used to be 60 feet away from each other, and you steal them from us every time you show your face on Faux thanks to that damn exclusive-rights-for-Saturday deal.

Did that make it any better? Not as much as you'd think, because even though I was self-deprived of the Wisdom of Chairman Tim, I still had to suffer through the cinematography.

Bottom seven sticks out. Mets have a runner on third and one out, but do we see the unfolding drama? We do not. We see all the Bombers-and-that's-all-we-do-hit-bombs, high-fiving each other and smiling snarky self-entitled smiles, a whole half-inning after taking a one-run lead on a team they supposedly outclass and obscenely overspend. Never mind that they should act like they've been there before; did the director have to spend that much time rubbing in their rubbing-in?

And then, from the Department of Non-Sequitors Department (motto: Do you carry your lunch or walk to work?), we got Pirates. PIRATES? Arrrrr, tis out of season for ITLAPD, and Johnny Depp's well past walking a plank right about now, so wtf was with that, mateys?

I didn't even stay to watch the final two. Instead, I'll save my TV time for tonight, on a better network and with a starter who might just give up six home runs. But I doubt it.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

2012-06-23T20:38:34Z

It started too late, thanks to the rain. It ended too worriedly, Franks to the second power.

But in the end, it all worked out.

(I'm old enough to remember when Chicken Delight was part of the NYC metro experience. Ours was on Newbridge Avenue between the post office and the library. As with last night's Chicken Delight, it was awful tasty when it finally got there.)

Only oddity was Gary being off. I'm guessing he's taking a long weekend of it, seeing how the next two nights are given over to the networks.

As one who tries to avoid glimpses of the Evil Empire at all costs, this is one of the few times I've actively paid attention to them, and for me at least, the most striking observance is, Man this team is old. I counted at least seven road-grey visitors last night who were on this, or at least some other, major league roster when these teams met in the 2000 World Series: Jeter and ARod on the left side, three of their only four outfielders (Andrew Jones, Raul Ibanez and Dewayne Wise), and two of their current pitchers including last night's Pettite (Freddy Garcia's the other). Sabathia just misses that arbitrary cutoff, but Rivera would have met it (and a half) had he not gone on the DL, so that's a virtually a full third of their 25-man roster in the AARP section of the MLBPA.

The Mets? Three pitchers who have MLB experience dating to 2000, and not a single position player.

Conclusion: the Yankees may be chicken, but they're no spring chickens. And they're in a division with far more troubling teams than the Mets are.

It takes a tough fan to make a tender prediction, but I'm gonna wing it here and say it: that our guys are the ones who'll be telling Yankee fans to go cluck themselves for years to come.

The Buck Stops Here.

2012-06-20T00:54:01Z

I have come to the conclusion that missing an R.A. Dickey start is just plain dangerous. For as much of a Forrest Gump persona as he exudes, he is turning out to be the essential opposite of the box-a-chocolates. You do know what you're gonna get, and it's gonna be frankly amazing.

Making last night all the more compelling was the guy in charge of the other dugout. In his post-game remarks, Dickey offered serious credit to the manager who helped turn his career around:

One of the people Dickey can thank for his incredible success story is Orioles manager Buck Showalter, who was instrumental in persuading Dickey to remake himself into a knuckleballer when both were in Texas.

''He had every attribute of a major league pitcher except the arm,'' Showalter said, his thoughts then turning to the fact that his team was about to face Dickey. ''I wish it hadn't happened.''

After the game, Dickey said he would be remiss not to thank Showalter.

''You know, and this is a tip of the hat to him: It was fairly poetic, I thought. The last game he saw me pitch live I gave up six home runs and tied a modern-day major league record,'' Dickey said. ''It's really incredible.''

Any one who's read R.A.'s memoir- and if you haven't, why haven't you?- knows about that game. It is the denouement of its first chapter, which is titled "The Worst Night I Ever Had." You might've expected, as I had after hearing the initial press about the book, that R.A.'s "worst night" would have involved a babysitter, or a bully, or a surgeon- but no. It refers to that very night in Texas, where the knuckleball refused to knuckle, and the arm strength behind those non-knucklers, as per the custom of the craft, was virtually nil.

Showalter went on to cut Dickey from the Rangers; but he also encouraged him to develop the pitch even further in OKC. Which he did, along with stops in Minnesota, Seattle and Buffalo before finally landing in Queens. And we are all the more blessed for it.

Is there anybody who can't like this guy? Even Yankee fans will have no choice but to be impressed on Sunday night, which will be partly broadcast by Orel Hersheiser, another of the great pitching minds behind this conversion of a wounded power pitcher into an even more powerful one.

And if he's not starting for the National League next month, something is seriously wrong with this picture.

Oh dad, poor dad....

2012-06-17T20:27:20Z

A few comforting thoughts watching the end of a very bad Red Brick Road within the last few minutes:

- At least we have a no-hitter now, too, which makes the old images of the Jim Bunning Fathers Day perfecto a little more tolerable;

- Keith and Gary can probably make a public execution seem entertaining;

- The Phillies are tanking, Baltimore beat the Braves, and a certain group of New Yorkers are sweeping the Nats, making things much better than they would've been.

- Most of all, though, was seeing the excellent camera work around the ballpark today, with fathers of all generations being loved and appreciated in their holiest of temples- by sons and daughters, wives and brothers. They almost made the outcome irrelevant.

This team makes you feel like growing as prematurely bald as your father probably did. How can those three games in Tampa be such an anomaly? Three games and three decent pitching performances later^*, those same mighty bats turned into little kittycats, leaving Gee, Niese and Young with L's as badly tagged as a grafitti-covered overpass. We sent back Justin Turner, so that'll help, and if we had any AL-park games left, I'd suggest calling up Pascucci again, who can put a home run into the right field porch of Yankee Stadium from home plate of Citi. But alas, we don't, and will thus get to see another six nights of AL pitchers hitting for themselves.

One of whom will probably win a game with a home run or somesuch:P

----

^* Gary and Keith had a fun discussion about whether Chris Young's seven-inning, three-run outing constituted a good effort or not. "Minimum quality start," decreed the Oracle of Mex. "Seven innings, three earned runs, that's a 3.86 ERA. Nothing to write home to your mom about." You could hear Gary's wheels turning as he then replied, "Maybe just an email? Or how about a text?"

Moyer Force Be With You

2012-06-09T12:27:02Z

Fleeing from the Wilpon tyranny, the last Mettlestar leads a ragtag, fugitive fleet of emergency fill-in shortstops and evil relievers, on a lonely quest—

which will take them, once more, into the heart of enemy territory tonight.

I won't be watching. Rather, I'll be downtown here, with kids in tow, at the Bisons' annual Star Wars Night- this year, featuring a special guest appearance by the oldest Jedi Master of them all:

Jamie Moyer was designated for assignment last week by the Colorado Rockies but the 49-year-old still isn't ready to call it a career. He signed a minor-league deal Wednesday with the Baltimore Orioles, one of his eight former organizations, and will report to the Norfolk Tides.

Lo and behold, where will Moyer's first start be? Saturday night in Coca-Cola Field against the Bisons during the team's ultra-popular Star Wars Night.

Just to give you an idea of how long a trail that is: I saw Moyer pitch for the Rochester Red Wings, at their long-demolished Silver Stadium, back before his first Oriole callup. He did, or maybe not did; there is no try.

It just adds an extra layer of hyperspace to what promises to be a Force-filled evening. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised to see Luke himself pressed into infield duty; at least if he gets his hand chopped off on a freak hard smash to short, he can just pop on another one.

P-Leia ball!

Obelisks and Asterisks

2012-06-04T17:59:58Z

(If that reference is a little dense- and I didn't get the nickname of "Doctor Obscurity" in college for nothing- this should explain it.)

Just a few final thoughts about the departing Cardinals and the shows put on over this past weekend, by their bats (not much of one) and our Mets (a pretty damn nice one).

The obelisk isn't one, really- more of a nice plaque in a very nice Hall-

You can't really tell from that shading if it's one of the Basic Black uni's worn by his worthy successors last night in his honor (and, one would hope, auctioned off for charity and never seen again), but it's definitely not pinstriped. His era may not have shared the heights of the earlier generations making up most of that room, but he stands alone, or near alone, in two important respects. First, our newest Famer is only the third inductee who's younger than I am (Gooden and Straw being the other two, Franco, despite playing later, being the oldest of the three). Just as meaningful, he's the first to have grown up as a fan of the team he later starred for. We talked about that at the conference- Ed Kranepool was our team's first homegrown player, but when he played at Monroe High, there were no Mets to root for. Others may have come before him, but Franco was the first of them to be enshrined- and to shine the way for possible future stars like Mike "from Whitestone" Baxter, who is guaranteed at least a photo in that room, if not a plaque, for his contributions to Friday night.

----

Ah, the other part of the story. You've seen the picture from St. Louis (who, I'm told, is the patron saint of sour grapes):

^*Kiss my asterisk, Mizoo.

Does anybody really want to turn baseball games- post-season ones, much less a routine except-in-hindsight regular season contest like this one- into the NFL's annoying little brother? Is the field of dreams doomed to be befallen by challenge flags and peep-show booths for the umpires to review fair/foul calls on grounders? Do we want these games to end after midnight on a routine basis while the Girardis and Valentines prolong these moments?

Or does a team that's not exactly Madoff good luck, once in awhile, get to benefit from some?

The only relevance of the * to Friday night's magic? It's on the same keyboard key as the 8- the number of Met runs, the number of Met hits, and the number of Met fielders who kept it alive for all time.

Life is but a dream....

2012-06-02T15:42:06Z

From the look of the morning-after posts all around, I was one of the many people looking for proof this morning. Proof that it hadn't been a dastardly realistic dream and we'd be awakening to an 8,020th box score with at least two different numbers in the third-and-second-to-last columns of the top row. I half-expected to see a familiar face, shockingly peeking out of our shower and saying, "Good morning!"

(That actually could have happened. Our daughter's boyfriend has moved in with us while his family is off taking the cure for their current affliction of Madly Stupid, and this one-full-bathroom deal is going to be pretty interesting the next few days....)

But no. It's real. It's been riffed on and back-paged enough for it to be indisputably true. One wonders: did the Mets have those scoreboard graphics all ready to go, much the same way that newspapers already have all the good obituaries of living people mostly pre-written? Is there a "YOU DON'T NO-NO DICK-EY!" in the same folder, or a "GEE, THAT ONLY TOOK 50 YEARS!" that we're not going to see now?

Perhaps obviously, I was not there. I was touched by how many of the Blogger community were- who don't always go, almost didn't go. I shed a half-tear that Greg didn't get to be there, but one does not argue with the results, particularly given what he was predicting.

(I have to go start the DVR now. We're only getting the hour-compressed Fast Forward, not the full Encore, because as usual, SNY's programming priorities are off the W.B. Mason outfield wall. Couldn't pre-empt that Best Pillow Ever infomercial for a real-time replay of the most historic moment ever, huh? Next, we'd expect live coverage of Banner Day parades.

Fine. I'll shut up. But get off my lawn.)

I wasn't even watching here at home. It just didn't feel like a baseball kinda night, with Cameron having his first family dinner with us, the weather having turned suddenly chilly and raw, and the Bisons having departed after what seemed like a 128-game homestand for parts unknown, leaving the ballpark to a windswept country music concert that resulted in a near-riot.

Instead, I was puttering around my usual Interwebs sites, posting about a dear friend's wedding and the ultimate suckitude of the month of May, when a random Yahooing brought up the line score in the seventh. A verrrry small line score on the top.

Nope, too soon. I bawled after Qualls. Leron Lee, he was too strong, I won't be his friend. The other names of the other breaker-uppers have died in random beer-drinking raids on brain cells over the past 30-odd years, but collectively their name spelled N-O-T U-S. I checked once or twice during the eighth and saw no change in those numbers. By then, the worst was over, although I had no way of knowing that. Beltran had his own personal outbreak of Flushing Black Cat Disease, which may someday change the replay rules but won't retroactively put no Frick-ing asterisk on this one. And I'd missed Molina- it HAD to be Molina, right?- taking Mike Baxter to the edge of Endy's Wall and saving the night, if not his own anterior cruciate ligament.

Still too soon to say anything- at least for me. But the hints were starting to come out online. Even non-regulars among the faithful were chiming in: Tracy Burgess, who I've known since we were five and who worked in the belly of the FAN for many years, put up a "you'd better turn on SNY right about now" post. Nobody was saying The Word, but everybody, by now, knows what you're not saying.

I finally wandered out to the living room for bottom eight. Bottom eight was interminably good. My only fear was that Johan would seize up in the dugout from it going so long, or, worse, that he'd come to bat, get on base, and pull something or other out there. I honestly thought he'd walked on that last pitch to him, thanks to the delayed call from the plate representative of perhaps the blissfully worst umpiring crew I've seen in years. I cheered when I saw him head for the dugout.

That's when the disk went in to the DVR and my ass got similarly inserted on the sofa.

And it's one, two, three outs you're DONE. Those first two outfield outs, seemingly routine, each put my heart about a foot above its usual resting spot. The fielders seemed happy but not surprised to have pulled them in.

Which brought up Mister Freese.

Think of all the bad Otto Preminger and Ah-nold jokes we'd be making now if he'd been the one to break it up. Soon as he came up, I said, to the assembled fellow fans in the room (none following the Mets like I do, but all knowing how important it was to me, and to you), either way, this guy is going to be more famous in five minutes than he's ever been.

Only it was more like 90 seconds. I kept catching Johan on every pitch- WALKS ARE OKAY! DON'T GIVE HIM ANYTHING!- and, just like that, my wait since near-infancy was finally over.

The field exploded in joy. I saw the guy in the Kid jersey joining the party; I did not see the alert Citi Security agents wrestling him to the ground. I saw the aftermath of the big pie fight. And quickly, I came back here, to post, and read the posts, and share the moment with so many of you who have waited, and wanted, and needed for as long (give or take a year or decade here and there) as I have.

As I've mentioned before, the Mets are blessed with perhaps the best set of broadcasters of any team, on both television and radio. In one of the most touching moments of the night, I got to hear Gary Cohen, in the post-game bliss, express his appreciation for his radio counterpart's skills and love of the team- and how much he wanted to hear his call of the final out. (I couldn't at the time, but I now have- as you can, thanks to the Remembering Shea blog.) I'm told that Howie expressed similar sentiments during his post-game remarks.

So many who were there had the same experience: that last night was Citi Field's bat-and-ball mitzvah. It was the first time the fans came alive together, shook the foundations, and finally invited in the 45 years of ghosts and good spirits residing in the parking lot one former stadium over. More than ever, we were all Remembering Shea last night- and much as Johan gets the credit, its aura shines back on, and honors, all of the near-misses of next door- from Al Jackson, through Tom Seaver, to Martinez, Muniz, Heilman, Schoeneweis & Wagner LLP's combined effort on the last Shea-era one.

And to Tug, and the Kid, and Gil- who, along with one Dana Brand, are smiling their fool heads off this morning.

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Feeling good about things right now? Want to share that feeling? Join my fellow blogging panelist Ed Randall later this month in supporting Fans for The Cure- as in the cure that isn't a joke- and maybe win tickets to see the Mets on Fathers Day. You will need to be on Twitter for this, which might be the one thing that drags me kicking and screaming into that Land of Hashtag (pop. 140), and the action begins on Buddy Harrelson's birthday, aka June 6th.

He's just preoccupied, with 19....19.....1965.

2012-05-30T02:37:56Z

I got out of a ridiculously long church meeting at 9:30 tonight, the only solace being I'd hear Howie if the sky waves were bouncing right. They were, but instead I heard Steve telling me about the Metropolitans, punning about Hugh Hefner and sounding awfully happy.

By the time I got home, I saw the tarp, and the mid-8th stasis we were still in, and then began the 1965 Mets Yearbook. This team can't televise Banner Day live, but it has an awfully good archive for when they don't have infomercials scheduled, that's for sure.

The '65 Mets are probably the team I know the least. They lacked the novelty and Marvelous-dom of the inaugural season; the '63 story of Snider I picked up in some discarded East Meadow library book in the 70s; the All-Starry tales of '64; and the 9th place triumph of '66. (All the ones after that, I witnessed personally.) And there were all the young dudes, being pitched as the Expressway to the Big Leagues, few of whom I recognized, much less remembered. A quick journey over to MBTN certainly helped:

Hey hey Johnnie. Nobody on a New York NL team was going to get assigned number 24 without some forethought, but Johnnie Lewis got it to open the 1965 season, and wore it from then through the first three months of my debut '67 fandom, without creating a single stir in my brain cells before tonight. The Yearbook announcers featured him prominently, though, as if he Mays just have been the answer to this team's outfield and offensive struggles.

Orrrrrr not.

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Speaking of Johnny.... Moments later, the '65 Yearbook turned to Number 20, the big 19-year-old catcher named Greg who at least I had heard of- mainly through Casey's ulti-Met putdown of him ("he's 20 years old and in ten years he has a chance to be 30"). But Goose wasn't the only staunch member of the Mets' Kiddie Katching Korps: John Stephenson wore number 19 that year, meaning that in an inning or so he had a chance to be within one uniform number of the great Greg Goosen.

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Moving right around. Some guys in this retrospective looked familiar, but were mathematically wrong. Suh-boda, for instance. The Yearbook showed headfirst dives and other inanity by a Number 14 that was definitely too young to be Gil Anybody. Sure enough, that was Rocky, when first assigned the #14 he would later wear with the hated enemies across the river some years beyond. We also saw a Dueling Acting Manager, following Casey's hip injury, wearing the odd number 51, accepting the fans' love for the Perfesser on his birthday, who turned out to be my first year's #9, Wes Westrum.

It was round this point that SNY cut back live to the tarp, which, Yahoo tells me, is still down and the game not yet out. I'm sure there are stirring moments with Dick Selma and Frank McGraw I haven't gotten to yet, but I still have notes to record from that stupid church meeting and besides, the game's back on:)