Flushing Express

For one night, when you hear "Nolan Ryan" 'round these parts, it's not followed by the seven no-hitters he pitched somewhere else. It's not followed by echoes of one of the worst trades ever. It's not followed by the pangs of wonder of what might have been if management had been a little more patient with his inconsistencies, his blisters doused in pickle brine, and his maniacal fastball with wrecking ball control.

On August 22nd, 2009, "Nolan Ryan" was only followed by the wild cheers of 38,049 strong.

The last time Ryan wore a Mets uniform was on September 28th, 1971, which was personally witnessed by 3,338 not so strong fans who were anticipating the end of a disappointing season. Ryan lasted zero innings, walked four, gave up a hit, and he was yanked by Gil Hodges. In 2008, an outing like that would have gotten him a 36 million dollar contract en route to a rehab stint in Buffalo. But in 1971, it got him traded for Jim Fregosi en route to the Hall of Fame. Boy, inflation's a bitch.

But Ryan eventually returned to help celebrate the past as a peripheral pawn in the moment where the future was blown to bits. After all, the Ryan Express only reached the pinnacle at one stop: Flushing. It's where the miracle of all baseball miracles occurred forty seasons ago. He couldn't come back for 20, he was still pitching. He had just retired by the time 25 came, but after pitching for 27 seasons, who wants to go on an airplane for a reunion? That's just one more unnecessary road trip. Besides, the Mets in 1994 probably would have tried to sign him as a better alternative to Pete Smith. Who could blame Nolan for not wanting to be tempted? But here he is for the fortieth anniversary, with no reason and really ... no excuse to not show up. His mission to build up the pitch counts of the entire Rangers organization can wait another day.

No word on whether the Mets tried to sign him as a better alternative to Oliver Perez.

1969, much like the rest of Mets' history, belongs to Tom Seaver. He will always be the headline act at these things, will always be the one to speak at the podium, whether he reads his words as if he's a disciple of Evelyn Wood's reading dynamics or not (seriously, he read that speech as if the piano player from the Oscars was cueing him off ... was Jeff Wilpon rushing him?) He deserves the honor for all he's done for the the New York Mets. He is, after all, The Franchise. But Ryan stole the show on Saturday. Much like Doc Gooden stole the show (at least for me) during the final day at Shea on September 28th, 2008 (the 37th anniversary of Nolan Ryan's fateful final day), Ryan returns as probably the final person who can come back from years and years without wearing a Mets uniform and be cheered the way he was (Bobby Bonilla returning to the Mets payroll in 2011 isn't going to count, sorry.) With open arms he is received, and perhaps because of it, the future will be presented to us with at least one less ghost haunting our favorite franchise.

Ryan's final outing as a Met occurred when I was just finishing up my first season on planet earth, where the only thing being blogged was my size in relation to the Thanksgiving turkey (I lost that battle), and that was done with a Polaroid. So you'll forgive me if there's no record of me complaining about that outing, or about the trade that sent him to California. I was one year old ... and the only way I could communicate was by puking all over the living room. Was I possessed? No, probably just pissed about another season down the drain. Before the invention of computers, vomit was the only way I could get my point across.

So as you can imagine, I wasn't even a twinkle in anybody's eye in 1969 ... which means that I'm not the best guy to wax poetic about the season of miracles. Yup, I missed it. I'm just not that old. You want to talk about 1986? I'm your guy. Hell you want to talk about 1979? At least then I was nine and counting down the winding days of that season celebrating that they actually avoided 100 losses. The '69 Mets? I can only rehash and mimic what I've seen in the old video clips.

Not that I'm not all too happy to do that for you. It's what I was doing for a friend of mine when I was a senior in high school during a late night school function that involved singing for a rock and roll band (wrap that one around your collective head). I couldn't tell you what notes I missed, what lyrics I tried to sing, or how rockin' the place was, but I could tell you about the girl who asked me who Tommie Agee was.

Who's Tommie Agee? You've gotta be kidding. Of course, this was before the understanding that not everybody in my high school followed baseball. "Who's Tommie Agee? Really? Okay, if you've gotta know, Tommie Agee is the guy who made the two greatest catches in World Series history. Here, let me demonstrate for you on this filthy cafeteria floor. No matter that I'm about to be the front man in my best rock singer outfit ... I need to educate a poor young soul as to who Tommie Agee was. That takes precedence!"

I should mention the reason why this girl bothered to ask me who Agee was ... he was in the room at the time.

I have no idea why a World Series hero was in my high school at a late night carnival. But here I was diving on the floor to my left, and crashing into the school wall to my right ... because how else could one really explain who Tommie Agee was. My demonstration must have been the universal sign for 1969 ... I might have butchered it, but the guy who brought Agee to the event recognized it well enough that he came up to me and asked me if I wanted to meet him.

Crap, I'm about to sing in front of a crowd of people, and I could care less. I'm about to meet Tommie Agee!!! And at that moment, it really didn't matter that I wasn't alive for the original version of those catches. Because I was about to shake hands with 1969. That was good enough for me.

The rest of the meeting was a blur. It all happened so fast. I know I shook his hand. I know it had a World Series ring on it. And I know that he signed an 8X10 black and white to "my very good friend", which I still have to this day. And like I said, I don't remember the rest. The one thing I regretted was not rushing out after the carnival to Shea to see the end of the Met game that I had missed to be at this carnival. Not that I regret it ... I freakin' met Tommie Agee for crying out loud! And heck, it was a good omen that I took with me to the television to catch the final pitch of that night's game.

You could probably guess at this point that when Agee died in 2001, a childhood memory of mine shed a few tears. Thankfully, the scrambled memory neither died nor even faded all that much. When you hear the latest outcry as to why the Mets need to honor their history, that's why. Saturday night was for all the people who lived through '69, and for all of us who grabbed ourselves a memory of a 1969 hero almost twenty years after the fact. These memories need to be honored, re-honored, then honored some more. We need to see Jerry Koosman around more. We need to see more photos of Wayne Garrett and Al Weis. We need to have more celebration of one of the iconic teams in baseball history without having to wait until the 50th anniversary.

My hope is that instead of looking back at Saturday night in the "boy we made it through a hectic day that was really a lot of work", Mets management will look back on it and understand the many connections between fans and Tom Seaver ... and Nolan Ryan ... and Jim McAndrew ... and yes, Tommie Agee. They'll understand the roar that they heard when Seaver, Koosman, and Ryan reunited to throw first pitches to Jerry Grote, Duffy Dyer, and Yogi Berra ... and that finally, they'll get it. They'll have it seep through their brains and that it'll finally hit 'em why we scream bloody murder when they want to erase a Dwight Gooden autograph on a concrete wall.

Am I holding out hope? Well, seeing as if they totally forgot to pencil Kenny Boswell's name into the script, no I'm not. Boswell, as Bob Murphy liked to point out, wanted to be out there "each and every day". Ironically, this is the one they failed to mention ... the one that wanted to be out there every day, but couldn't make it out there on this day. What, you expected a Mets arranged notation of history to go perfect?

So they almost got it right for the fortieth anniversary party. Maybe they'll get it 100% right in 2019. Maybe the fiftieth anniversary will be even better. Maybe they'll mention everyone. Maybe, just maybe, the 2019 Mets will win the game instead of flood the disabled list ... and maybe the team will wear some '69 replicas this time around.

Or perhaps we're not going to have to wait that long for the next nod to the past. But we waited 38 years for Ryan to come back. What's ten more, right?

Conducting a Symphony of Kazoos

So why did Daniel Murphy sit in favor of Fernando Tatis?

"I want to get guys in a rhythm." -Jerry Manuel

He's not a manager, and he's not a gangsta. He's a bandleader now. By choosing to bench Murphy after a good start on Wednesday, he's got us all scratching our heads as to what exactly you have to do to stay in a major league lineup. Yup, it's spring training in July as Snoop continues to force feed Tatis to the world to "get him into a rhythm", as if making sure that Tatis can count in 4/4 time is a component to winning baseball.

Ladies and gentlemen, your manager: Ricky Ricardo.

"Oh Daaaaanieeeeeel, you're on the beeeeeeeench!"

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah."

Babaloo, baby.

It doesn't matter so much in the prism of tonight's game, as with Livan Hernandez's start tonight the 1927 Yankees only would have won 33 games (they won 109). But all the more reason to say: what does it matter? Let's reward our young player for getting himself a couple of hits and stealing a nut from a squirrel with that defensive play. What about getting Daniel Murphy in a rhythm? Or do we only care if Fernando Tatis is in rhythm while Murphy is hid in the back of the band playing the triangle? Doesn't it serve the long term interests of the club to develop Daniel Murphy into a legitimate option at first base and not just as trade bait in some ill advised deal which will set the team back another decade?

Or will playing Fernando Tatis keep those viewers tuned to SNY and keep those ticket sales flowing?

Seriously, how is it that a team that just put their 429th position player on the disabled list today can't find a spot for Daniel Murphy in the starting lineup every day?

But speaking of SNY, there was some good news tonight as for the first time all season (or at least that I saw), I could actually clearly see who was warming up in the visiting bullpen on an SNY's broadcast.

The bad news? It was Guillermo Mota.

Oh well. As tonight was the 40th anniversary of the closest a Met has ever come to a perfect game, why don't you check out what the '69 Mets are doing now, thanks to Sports Illustrated? (Hint: Throwing up while watching Livan Hernandez ... not on the list.)

Speaking of ill-advised trades which set the team back a decade ...

Beginnings of What, Exactly?

They played the wrong Chicago song.

When Tom Seaver and Mike Piazza reprised their first pitch from Shea Stadium's last pitch tonight at the brand new Citi Field, "Beginnings" was blaring over the sound system. In the reality we know as Mets baseball, "Old Days" would have been a better choice for this 6-5 historical blemish. Too many eerie reminders of the old days.

First off ... a cat? Come on. Waaaaaaaaaaay too convenient. Waaaaaaaaaaay too coincidental. You tell me that that by chance there was a cat roaming the field to open up the new stadium on Opening Night when one of the signature moments of Shea Stadium involved a cat? Yeah, I'm sure some cats made the trip ... but Opening Night? Please. If there weren't so many flight restrictions in New York there would have been a parachutist in the second inning. Somebody set that up.

Then, let's return to older days like ... last season, as in Jody Gerut becoming the first player ever ... ever ... to open a new stadium with a home run, a stadium that's supposed to be impossible to hit a home run in, or at least Gerut-proof just as Shea was supposedly "Gerut-proof" last season. Somehow, that wasn't a coincidence either.

Or, let's go back in time to ... yesterday, as in another outfielder having a ball go right off his glove and helping to bring in the winning run which, if it wasn't balked home, it would have been driven home by David Eckstein. You remember Eckstein from 2006 when he was being a general pain in the ass during the NLCS, never to be seen or heard from again until the next momentous moment in Mets history, the opening of a new park. Of course Eckstein would be around to screw that up by driving in two runs with three hits. What, the Padres couldn't trade for Yadier Molina and Jeff Suppan?

No, they decided instead to get two former Mets to close out this game for the Padres. Filthy Sanchez and Heath Bell. Six up, six down. First game ever at Citi Field, and it's closed out by Sanchez and Bell ... from the old days. Heath not only was dreaming about this moment, but he got it to come to fruition with a 1-2-3 ninth. Awesome. Just awesome.

And I'll state the obvious: if this is what we are to expect from Mike Pelfrey over the coming weeks, then Citi Field is going to turn into the House of Angst for a New Millennium. Oliver Perez goes on Wednesday for the Mets. Maybe the appropriate Chicago song will reflect the final score ... as in 25 or 6 to 4. And we'll have endings before the beginnings actually begin.

Drifting All The Way Home

People have asked me over the offseason if I thought the Mets could win with Daniel Murphy's defense in left field. My response was that if the Phillies could win with Pat Burrell playing left field, then the Mets could win with Murphy.

Murphy's drop which led to the two unearned Marlin runs had nothing to do with an infielder playing outfield. That had nothing to do with range, ability, nothing lying alongside of the UZR road. That was, plainly and simply, dopey. And we'll just have to accept that along with all of the good things Murphy is going to bring to the table, every once in a while he's going to do that. Hopefully, not all of his blunders are going to be the kind of mistakes that turn Johan Santana gems into Josh Johnson gems.

Now, here's the thing about this 2-1 loss which drops the Mets to 3-3: There's no reason for panic because they dropped two of three to Florida. Sure, you don't want to waste Johan Santana starts, and they haven't wasted many since that June day in '08 when women went crazy and Yankee fans were ... well, Yankee fans. You can, however, start panicking if the Mets lose two out of three to the Padres at home. And before you tell me I'm crazy for even suggesting that scenario against a team that Gary Cohen said would have trouble merely competing during a spring broadcast back on March 19th, remember this: Oliver Perez starts on Wednesday. Jake Peavy starts on Thursday. If the Mets somehow lose Monday's opener, then all those pigeons ready to push that panic button could be let loose by Thursday. Remember, this Padre team is 5-2.

(What it probably all means is that the Mets will lose Monday and win the next two. Logic? What's that?)

Hopefully, logic will hold for at least one game, and the Mets will pull out a win for the first real game ever in the new digs. Even with the two games against the Red Sox, even with me having been to one of them, I still don't know how I'm going to react to seeing a Mets home game that counts played somewhere other than Shea. Every opening day I was ever at was played at Shea. I was there for Craig Swan's two run single in 1980, after skipping school. (There were really only 12,000+ at that one?) I was there for Seaver's return in '83 ... again, after skipping school. Strawberry's dinger off of Pascual Perez in 1988? Yup, skipped school again. The Rockies' debut at Shea? I probably skipped some nutty college class for that too. In fact, I was at every home opener between '87-'93. If I hadn't skipped so much school I probably would have made more of my life.

And I have to admit that I was a little emotional after being at Citi Field for the first time, and having it really hit me that Shea is really gone, reduced to a pile of rubble that shrinks every day as if it was a division lead in September of '07. But the past is the past, and the future is upon us. If you're like me, you'll have to remind yourself every once in a while that progress is good.

My only hope is that the vibe from the stands, the atmosphere that made Shea so unique, the one that Mets fans created will make its way across the parking lot. There was always a certain roar that came from Shea that was so recognizable to me that I could close my eyes, have a random game on, and I knew that the game was being played at Shea. Something was always different from the roar after a strikeout at Shea than the roar after a strikeout anywhere else. That was more fans than building, but the building had a little something to do with it.

Who knows if that roar will return ... we're all still feeling our way through this new park, and you know that at least in the beginning, there will be a lot of people visiting more for new architecture and better food than to watch Luis Castillo butcher a ground ball. So that unique atmosphere might not be all there to start. That's to be expected. Hopefully familiarity and a pennant race will bring that atmosphere, along with some home field advantage, to the new digs. Here's hoping.

Happy housewarming.

The Manifesto (New And Improved)

Guess that sabbatical I suggested last year wouldn't have been such a bad option, eh?

There's a saying, you might have heard of it.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

That's how I feel. Not that this team duped me, but that I let this team dupe me. To a certain extent, we were all fooled by this team ... that this time would have been different. This team, with Daniel Murphy and Argenis Reyes and Nick Evans and an improved Mike Pelfrey and a more focused Oliver Perez and a rejuvenated Carlos Delgado and a revived Jose Reyes and a more honest Snoop Manuel and a less complicated Dan Warthen and Billy Wagner pitching from the windup and all of the moving parts that made the 2008 team less "bored" than their 2007 counterparts and that this team was choke-proof.

We put our blinders on and begged this team to tell us it would be all right. And if it wasn't going to be all right, we begged them to lie to us.

I was fooled. Again. Roger Daltrey, I'm not.

I was looking for the footnote to 2007. Seven games with seventeen to play is a monumental choke job. There were two footnotes that were possible when history was to look back on 2007. One of them was: "The Mets would bounce back from that horrible collapse to make the playoffs the following season." The other was "The Mets would plunge into the abyss after the collapse, missing post season play for the next 25 seasons."

No way did I think of the third option: "The Mets repeated their historic collapse of 2007 in 2008 when they were once again eliminated on the final day of the season by the Florida Marlins." But that's what we're stuck with. Because one choke is a fluke ... two is a trend.

(And three is grounds for contraction.)

Here's what's bothering me already about Collapse Part II: Every time somebody who watches maybe nine innings of baseball all year tell me that this team needs intangible, imaginary concepts like "heart" and "fire" and "guts". I've heard it already. I've used those terms. Sometimes, they apply. This year, they're inconsequential. We don't need "heart" or "fire" or "guts".

We need a bullpen.

Whereas 2007 was one giant choke, 2008 was more like many small chokes encompassed into a big picture that you need to look past the "big picture" to really see. Not that it's any consolation to us, but 2008 was less choke and more suck. If baseball was an eight inning game, the Mets would have had an eight game lead going into the final weekend of the season. Curse you Abner Doubleday for choosing the number 9.

But most of all, curse you Mets bullpen. Curse you Mets bullpen for being the sole ... and I mean the sole reason that the Brewers are going to Philadelphia and not to the golf course where they've been every year since Ben Oglivie roamed County Stadium. And curse you for forcing me to resort to the most simple and the least eloquent to put your accomplishments into a tidy twenty words or less:

You all suck.

When Oliver Perez was slugging through his innings of work on Sunday, I thought of the relief pitchers I would want to keep for '09. The first guy I thought of was Joe Smith. And I'm guessing that Snoop agreed with me. When Perez started slowing down, in came Smith into an impossible situation: bases loaded, one out. He was lucky to escape with only letting one of Ollie's runs to score.

The second guy I thought of? Brian Stokes ... because we need a long man. And he was second in to preserve the tie game that Carlos Beltran created with his two run HR that rocked the house for ... what turned out to be ... the final time. Stokes also didn't disappoint with a scoreless inning.

After that, I really don't trust anybody to come back. But if you had put a gun to my head for a third guy? You guessed it, the third guy in. Scott Schoeneweis.

Um, never mind. I'll stick with two.

But really, if everybody in that bullpen was to depart I wouldn't be heartbroken. Certainly, the only way anybody in that bullpen besides Smith and Stokes attends Opening Day at Corporate Field is either with a ticket or a contract with the Padres. And I'm to the point now ... at this very moment ... if anybody besides Johan Santana were to leave this team, I'd shrug my shoulders in an act of indifference. That includes the Carloses, that includes Jose Reyes, that includes the very handsome David Wright, that includes everyone.

And that's why I'm glad that the current team didn't show their faces at the Shea Goodbye ceremony. Some may disagree, but it took a lot of effort to get the angry crowd (or the portion that didn't leave right after the game like myself) to feel good about anything. And the ceremony actually accomplished that ... seeing this current crop of star-crossed imitators posing as Mets would only send the crowd back to step one of the twelve step program.

We certainly needed one today with the range of emotions the crowd had to go through today. Ticket holders today had just about an hour and a half to go from happy to angry to morose to sullen to nostalgic all at once. After the sixth inning, I'm thinking about changing work schedules so I could get to Game 3 of the Cubs/Mets playoff series on Saturday. By the ninth inning, I'm looking up at the soda stains on the back of the upper deck stands ... trying to take in every nook and cranny that this Stadium had to offer me in the last 32 years of my life, and resigning myself to the fact that "Holy crap, this is it. Once I leave here, that's that."

And that's why I had to stay. Some left, and I can't blame them. Everybody has to deal with these things in their own way. I stayed. I'm glad I did. It started with some reminders as to why we're thought of as second class citizens by the people that provide us with this stupid sport called "baseball", as we were told at 5:23 that the ceremony would start in five minutes. Eight minutes later we were told the ceremony would start in two minutes. This confirmed what we already knew: that this team's only good at counting when they're counting the money they're going to make by selling the dugouts and the championship banners and the NYC parks logos that encase the trees.

Sorry if that comes off as being petulant.

(Some Phillies website referred to my Choke Manifesto from last season as "petulant". I don't necessarily disagree, and there's sure to be more of it in the coming post, and in the coming weeks and months. So if you're expecting anything different, you might be disappointed.)

Then we were reminded that there were very important Mets that had "other things to do" rather than be here for the only closing ceremony that Shea Stadium will ever know. Great, more misery. Not that Nolan Ryan, Hubie Brooks, Mookie Wilson and the like didn't have better things to do. But after what Mets fans had to endure on Sunday, the previous week, and the previous two years, everything felt like a slight.

But then the players who were here came out. And we were excited again for a few minutes. The highlights, of course, were guys like Doc, Darryl, Piazza, and Tom Terrific. But what got me were the guys that helped introduce me to baseball that you don't see anymore. Did anybody really expect to see Dave Kingman come back (or for that matter, show his face in public anywhere?) When was the last time Craig Swan was at Shea Stadium? And my first ever favorite Met, Doug Flynn? They really invited Doug Flynn? Boy, I didn't think this organization had it in 'em to be all-inclusive and recognize players from all eras and not just the good ones. The Mets have been accused of not recognizing their history. Every single criticism in that regard has been well deserved.

But Doug Flynn? Well played, evil geniuses ... well played.

It was all emotional, and it made us forget for a little while that our franchise is once again the joke of the sporting world. But it reminded us that this is it. The old barn is gone forever. No playoff games with the Cubs ... and no next season. It'll be knocked down and made into a parking lot by April.

It's a lot of childhood they're knocking down.

Unfortunately, every time I think about all the good times I've had at Shea, and even the multitude of bad events I've witnessed personally (Pendleton in '87, Gibson in '88, the Yankees clincher in 2000, Scott Speizio in '06), I'll think about the fact that while our bullpen sucks, it was former Met Matt Lindstrom officially closed out Shea Stadium by knocking the Mets out of the playoffs. And that it was the Marlins who were scooping dirt from home plate as a keepsake ... and as a symbol of conquest.

And that the Honeymooners episode that was shown tonight was the one I referenced yesterday: the one with the cornet. Everything was supposed to be louder than everything else. Instead, Shea Stadium exits stage left ... quietly.

If Wayne Gretzky Can Be Traded...

This came in to the L.A. Times mailbag:

"Any chance the Angels can go after David Wright? I know he's almost untouchable, but the Mets need pitching, and we have it, as well as a lot of good young players. Wayne Gretzky was thought to be untouchable with the Edmonton Oilers, so why not go after Wright?"

My quick answer to that is that the murder rate for New York City is down to a 40-year low. If David Wright were to be traded, it would send the violent crime rate in another direction. Probably not murder, but imagine a Mets front office member, a bottle of Tabasco sauce, a mortar and pestle, and a branding iron. Conservatively, there would probably be 'bout 2,000 accomplices to that crime.

But the real point here is that, if I'm not imagining anything, David Wright just got compared to Wayne Gretzky. That should tell you something about what they think of Wright somewhere other than New York. For even David Wright, that's some high praise. Hopefully, the comparisons between Wright and Gretzky end with both being excellent at their sport, and will never share the distinction of being traded at the height of their careers in trades that make people drop their jaws to the floor.

But will there be a day where Fred (or Jeff) Wilpon becomes the next Peter Pocklington, and trades perhaps the best third baseman in Mets history for Jimmy Carson and Martin Gelinas (or Bartolo Colon and Hideo Nomo)? Will we see, one day, David Wright wiping tears at a podium muttering "I promised Jose I wouldn't do this?"

Seriously: assuming that Wright continues the path of production he's on now, and considering what you know about the history of this Mets franchise (there was a time when trading Tom Seaver was unthinkable), the history of the Wilpons, and the unpredictable nature of sports, do you see a day where David Wright wears another uniform? And I'm not talking about Wright playing for the Las Vegas Marlins when he's 39 and is hoping for one last grab at glory ... I'm talking about David Wright in his prime say, 31 or 32, right around that unrestricted free agent age, holding up another uniform at a podium? I know what your preference would be. But what do you think? Via the comment option, the forum is now yours.

Keep in mind: "If Wayne Gretzky can be traded ..."