The Wife and I schlepped down to Union Square late Saturday morning and were happy we made the trip.
The market was gorgeous, flowers selling like hotcakes on the count of Mother’s Day.
And ramps! I found a guy, that’s all he was selling. I figured I’d buy a bunch and pickle the suckers. Which is what I did yesterday.
For years, Greg Prince has co-authored one of the great team blogs–Faith and Fear in Flushing. I’ve gotten to know Greg over time and a nicer guy you will not meet. He’s a fine writer, too. Last week, he was at Gelf Magazine’s Varsity Letters Reading series talking about his new book–the first of a four-part series detailing 50 years of Mets wins. I recently had the chance to chat with him about The Happiest Recap: First Base.
Dig in.
Bronx Banter: How did this project start?
Greg Prince: The Happiest Recap started in the depths of depression over the then-current Mets of 2009, who weren’t winning very often in real time. With the franchise’s 50th anniversary approaching, I got to thinking about highlights and wins from better times and came upon the idea of constructing a mythical season in which I — on Faith and Fear — would write about the “best” 1st game (or Opening Day) in Mets history, the “best” 2nd game…clear through to the “best” 162nd and 163rd games. The key was the number had to match an actual game played on a previous Mets schedule. Thus, the “best” 37th game, for example, was the 37th game of 1973. The “best” 146th game was the 146th game of 1976. It was a different twist on merely listing the Top ‘X’ games in Mets history or doing a “This Date” feature. I followed through and ran the series in 2011, shadowing the actual Mets schedule that year.
BB: So then how did it go from a series on the site to a book?
GP: Having published the book version of Faith and Fear in Flushing in 2009, I guess I had the fever a little bit to do something else. Around the time I began to think this project might work as a book, a publisher came out with a team-by-team series called “162-0,” which was similar but not exactly in line with what I was doing. So for a moment I was discouraged that a good idea had been used elsewhere, and not necessarily to my satisfaction. Thing is, the more I worked on the blog series, the less concerned I became with the “best” aspect for a particular game number and found myself fascinated by more than 162 games fitting a narrow description. I wound up writing about 326 games — a “Happiest” entry and an “Also Happy” entry for each game number — and within those entries, sometimes incorporating more games and more stories.
BB: That’s a nice evolution.
GP: The box scores I was researching and the books, magazines, web sites and newspaper clippings I was looking up in support of those box scores were reminding me of lost Met tales and bringing up names that had been tucked away in the Met memory storage locker for decades. It seemed a shame to leave them to fade into obscurity. Met histories are too often narrowed down to the lovable losers of 1962; stumbling into Seaver and hiring Hodges; 1969; 1973; 1986; and maybe Piazza hitting a dramatic homer after 9/11. Our fandom (anybody’s fandom, really) is so much more than the agreed-upon milestones. It’s the big inning we’re all talking about the next morning or the rookie who came up to pitch a shutout and then disappeared or the quirky game where all 17 hits were singles. It’s firsts and lasts and lots of in-betweens. It’s the championships and superstars, too, of course, but it’s also the moments of contention that fizzled and the stage being set for great things and the residual fumes on the other side of those great things and the games and players who got us through the rough times. It’s everything, if you’re a steadfast fan of a team.
BB: I love that.
GP: So with 50 years of Metsdom completed, I decided to shake out the contents of the blog series and rearrange and supplement all I’d done, digging a little deeper to come up with the 500 Amazin’ wins that would best tell the story of the first half-century of the franchise the way we as fans experienced it. It’s Mets History of the Subconscious, almost. The losses filter in because, let’s face it, these are the Mets, but I guarantee a 500-0 record when all is said and done.
BB: How did you decide to make it a four part series instead of one fat volume?
GP: I wanted to let the game stories breathe. I wanted to be able to write about Jim McAndrew for as long as it took to explain Jim McAndrew. I wanted to take a detour into Tom Seaver’s history as a relief pitcher. I wanted to make note of the handful of times the Mets have used a de facto designated hitter (a pinch-hitter who bats for the pitcher and then comes up again when the lineup bats around). I wanted to transcribe Bob Murphy’s and Lindsey Nelson’s calls where reading how we listened to them would bring a moment alive again. I wanted these, in a way, to be 500 bedtime stories. Put all that together, and that’s a pretty hefty volume. I found breaking the saga into four pieces helped discipline the eras a little better.
B: Yeah, that makes sense.
GP: There is no narrative, per se, but I think one coalesces organically in each volume. In First Base, you can feel the youthful ineptitude of the early Mets wearing off little by little as you read about the first big moments produced by an Ed Kranepool or a Cleon Jones. At the same time, you have a sense that it’s still a team depending on a blast from the past via Duke Snider or leaning into a hopeful future with Ron Hunt or Grover Powell, whatever those guys become eventually in their careers. In a way, it’s the Mets family history as told by your well-meaning if slightly obsessive uncle.
BB: Did you have any hesitation about just writing about wins and not loses?
GP: From a practical standpoint, not really any regrets on 500 wins and 0 losses. The losses worm their way in anyway. You can’t write about the great wins of the 1973 postseason, for example, without acknowledging the gut-wrenching losses. Since the first volume officially ends with Game Five of that World Series, wherein the Mets take a 3-2 lead over Oakland, you can’t just say, “well, good night everybody!” Thus, Game Five becomes the platform to also discuss Games Six (George Stone not being chosen to start) and Seven (Willie Mays not being chosen to finish). And you can’t fully appreciate the few resonant wins from 1962 without noting there were only 40 wins to begin with that year.
BB: Good pernt.
GP: I mention in the introduction that my personal favorite game ever — best game I ever watched, in my opinion — was Game Six in 1999 against Atlanta, the one remembered mainly for Kenny Rogers walking in the winning run in the eleventh inning (thus largely reviled by Mets fans) but remembered fondly by me for how the Mets fought back from 0-5 in the first inning and 3-7 later to take 8-7 and 9-8 leads and how the game topped off the most intense 30 days of fandom I ever experienced. I promise “you won’t read about it here,” and then instantly backtrack that, yeah, you probably will, but only in the context of the whole story. I’ve learned from eight years of blogging that while Mets fans are willing, almost anxious to cope with reality (reminding each other of the woe that has befallen us from time to time), nobody really wants to be hit over the head with it as a going concern. So while you can say, “Oy, the collaspe of 2007!” the minute you start detailing the four-game sweep at the hands of the Phillies that presaged the blowing of an enormous lead (as I did in a blog entry in late August of 2012), the reaction is, per Tom Petty, let me up, I’ve had enough.
BB: I liked what you talked about in terms of being a steadfast fan. That can be a problem when you root for the Yankees where you tend to evaluate seasons on whether they’ve won the World Series or not. And when you do that you neglect some of the smaller things that are really the rich moments that make up not only a season but our fandom.
GP: It’s crossed my mind in the process that this wouldn’t necessarily work for other franchises, particularly ones wherein postseason berths are almost a given. The Mets have won 43 playoff and World Series games, and they’re all in here, but they’re not necessarily the most, shall we say, Amazin’. You get a Mets fan who was sentient on June 14, 1980, and he or she will eventually tell you about the Steve Henderson Game, a night the Mets trailed the Giants 0-6 and won 7-6 on Hendu’s three-run homer in the ninth. What made that game special was it was in the midst of the “Magic is Back” season in which the Mets had that silly ad campaign of the same name and weren’t winning and weren’t drawing flies and all of a sudden, everything falls into place for a couple of months. Every win is a come-from-behind affair and the “magic” thing catches on to such an extent that even Joe Torre and his players are talking about it. Henderson hits the home run on a Saturday night, and the next day there is such a large walkup crowd that they actually had to turn fans away.
BB: I vaguely remember that because Joel Youngblood was my brother’s favorite player at the time.
GP: Now by the end of 1980, the magic has dissipated and the Mets are back in the dumps and nobody is showing up at Shea, but a game like that lives forever. That’s the reward of constancy.
BB: Getting back to the format of the book for a sec. How much re-writing did you do with these pieces from the original blog posts?
GP: It depended on the entry. Some games were transplanted whole if they worked as such. Others were expanded if I didn’t think I gave enough information in the first place. For 1973’s pennant race on the blog, I had layered a lot into a couple of posts. In the book, every win from the middle of September onward gets its own treatment (maybe a few paragraphs, maybe a few pages) so you’re living the most improbable weeks in Mets history day-to-day almost, just as it occurred. I’ll do something similar when 1999 rolls around. Conversely, some blog posts were contracted altogether if I thought one more extra-inning marathon or walkoff home run wasn’t really revealing anything that wasn’t already being revealed in another game. And there’s a bunch that — because the original “best game number” format demanded tough choices — simply didn’t appear on the blog.One name that didn’t show up whatsoever in the blog series was Les Rohr, the Mets’ first-ever amateur draft pick.
BB: Wait–who?
GP: His debut in late 1967 (Game No. 50 in the book) was a success, which in itself is a bit of a milestone — one of the recurring themes of First Base is the Mets’ search for that young fireballer who’s going to lead them to the promised land — but digging a little deeper, I realized Les was the 54th player used by the 1967 Mets, the most they ever used in a season. So Les gives me a reason to talk about the Grand Central Terminal atmosphere that prevailed in the clubhouse in those days. Plus the year he was drafted, 1965, was the same year the Jets drafted Joe Namath. It’s not a huge thing, but it’s an intriguing parallel where highly touted prospects (playing in the same stadium, no less) are concerned. And then there’s what happened with Les Rohr after that first start. He pitched well a couple more times, hurt his arm in the 24-inning, 1-0 loss at the Astrodome the following April (an instance when I can mention a historic loss in a book all about wins) and after a token appearance exactly two years after his debut — as the Mets were on the verge of clinching their first title — he was done. Rohr was, on the surface, a flameout, but the Mets drafted very spottily with their high picks in those days, which is another tidbit I get to throw in (Steve Chilcott over Reggie Jackson and all that) and it provides some foreshadowing as well, because the lousy drafting would come back to haunt the Mets in the ’70s. In other words, you could do worse than drafting Les Rohr with your very first pick…and the Mets somehow managed to.
BB: Did you write it all at once and then are releasing it in four volumes or are you still working on the others? What are the publish dates for the other volumes?
GP: I’m pushing ahead chronologically so the second, third and fourth volumes are coming together in order, publication dependent on the respective schedules of my talented art director Jim Haines and myself. Second Base is currently in production. Third Base is being written. Home is loosening up in the on-deck circle. Think of it in the realm of waiting for the next series from Topps in a given year.
BB: One last thing. I’m curious about what, if anything you found in your research that surprised you?
GP: In a broad sense, it was surprising to realize that players who are historically written off as hopeless actually accomplished some things in a Mets uniform. Marv Throneberry hit a game-winning home run. The two Bob Millers teamed to pitch the Mets to a win. Jack Fisher may have lost 24 games in 1965, but he threw a gem from time to time. On an individual basis, if I hadn’t done this, I wouldn’t have known about the proto-Steve Henderson Game, the Tim Harkness Game, in 1963. It was a 14-inning affair that Harkness won, 8-6, with a grand slam after falling behind the Cubs in the top of the 14th when Billy Williams hit a two-run inside-the-park homer. What blows my mind about it is a) that Harkness came out from the center field clubhouse onto the balcony to take a bow the way Bobby Thomson had 11 years earlier and b) the comments I found on Ultimate Mets Database from people who were kids back then, still remembering the cries of “Let’s Go Mets!” echoing as they headed back to the subway. This was 1963, 111 losses, yet it didn’t matter. A friend once told me he thought the 1963 Mets were the bravest team he ever saw, that if they had the talent of the 2008 Mets, they’d have won 140 games. I didn’t get it when he told me that. I kind of got it after Tim Harkness and the rest of the games I looked at from that season.
BB: That’s interesting.
GP: One more surprise: I knew that The Odd Couple filmed its baseball scenes before a game in 1967 at Shea, with Bill Mazeroski hitting into a choreographed triple play. What I didn’t know was there was an even more bizarre scene in the real game that day with the Pirates batting out of order and Wes Westrum — who you never read anything about other than he couldn’t take all the losing — waited until a key moment in the game to bring it to the umpires’ attention and wound up getting Pittsburgh runs taken off the board. If you were at that game, you probably went home talking about it for a week.
BB: Go figure that.
GP: I know a lot about the Mets. I didn’t know that at all.
Boy, Hiroki Kuroda handled the Royals’ hitters on Sunday. Gave up a run in the first and another in the eighth; otherwise, they didn’t give him much trouble and hit a lot of ground balls. Kuroda is a pro, man. His time in New York will be brief (even if he does return next year which seems unlikely), but we’ll remember him with fondness for his professionalism and effectiveness.
Robinson Cano (10) and Vernon Wells (9?!) wasted flat sliders from Ervin Santana in the third–both were shots–and Wells added an RBI single in the fifth. That was more than enough. Mariano faced three batters in the ninth (a single; ground ball double play..on the first pitch, thank you very much; fly out to right), good for his fifteenth save and the Yankees’ fifth straight win.
Final Score: Yanks 4, Royals 2.
Today gives our man Hiroki.
Brett Gardner CF
Robinson Cano 2B
Vernon Wells LF
Travis Hafner DH
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Jayson Nix SS
Lyle Overbay 1B
Chris Nelson 3B
Chris Stewart C
Never mind the riffin’:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Via: Running Amuck]
I was too young to remember Ali in his prime, or even Dr. J. I watched Bird and Magic and then Jordan, so I know from watching greatness, admiring it, even when–in the case of Magic or Jordan–I rooted against it. But I’ve never rooted for anybody as great as Mariano Rivera. After the game was over last night and Rivera had recorded his 14th save of the season I tried to articulate my feelings when it hit me–I don’t have any idea of what it’s like to watch Rivera as a Yankee-hater. Every time I’ve seen him pitch, I’ve wanted him to succeed.
With Rivera, discussions of the value of a closer compared with the value of a starting pitcher or an everyday player are mind-numbingly boring. And they miss the point. Sure, his numbers provide their own proof and satisfaction (Looking at Rivera’s post-season statistics is like watching a parade of zeroes). But greatness is a singular thing Rivera’s aesthetic brings a touch of myth to the discussion. Mike Francesca was right when he dubbed Mo “The Great Mariano,” a nod to Hemingway and “The Great DiMaggio.” With Rivera, we’re talking a modern myth: The Silver Surfer.
More than any player I’ve ever rooted for, Rivera makes me appreciate the moment, the now. This has something to do with the dramatic nature of his position, coming in a the end of the game, but also his stubborn calm–I’m always reminded of the phrase “mulish imperturbability,” which James Agee used to describe Buster Keaton.
There’s an old sports writer’s cliche that says it is easier to write about the losers than the winners because winning isn’t that compelling. How do you explain what Rivera does? He chalks his gift and success up to the Lord and what can you do with that? We can dream up our own theories but they amount to the same thing: He’s blessed by something deep and profound. We know he works hard and appears to posses humility.
Last week he told reporters:
“When you respect the game of baseball, you respect everything that comes with baseball–the guys that are my peers, the other teams, you have to respect them…You’re not bigger than the game. You’re finished and the game will continue, so take into consideration, you always will keep that line and say humble. Because the game will always be bigger than you. Always. So it’s nothing you can do that will be better than the game.”
He’s said things like this for years and he seems sincere, even though we can never pretend to know a public figure intimately by what they say for print. We do know that opponents flock to him as if he were a Holy Man like this scene a few weeks back against the Blue Jays.
And we know that his pitching motion is as beautiful and fluid as any that we can remember. Dr. J once said, “When you reach a level of greatness, there’s a certain added element that goes into making it look easy.”
What we can do is talk about what it means to watch such a performer, how they give us a sense of assurance and peace in our imperfect and unpredictable lives. For Yankee fans, that feeling goes away at the end of this year. There will be other great players, more artistry to come, but nobody will ever do it quite like this.
[Photo Credit: David Zalubowski/AP]
Yanks face their old friend, the always-tough James Shields, tonight in KC. After a couple of lousy starts in a row, Andy Pettitte looks to regain his early-season form.
Brett Gardner CF
Robinson Cano 2B
Vernon Wells LF
Travis Hafner DH
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Jayson Nix SS
Lyle Overbay 1B
Chris Nelson 3B
Chris Stewart C
Never mind the standings:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: James Kao/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest]
[Photograph by Tierney Gearon via This Isn’t Happiness]
Ah, what to do with Phil Hughes. He was back to his mediocre self last night. Yanks gave him a 4-0 lead and he coughed it up and later gave him a 10-5 lead and he gave up another run. He got the win but the start was a regression for Hughes. He was picked up by Shawn Kelley who was dynamite, facing seven batters and striking out six.
The star of the game was the offense, led by Lyle Overbay who had two doubles and a home run. The Yanks had 16 hits in all–it was one of those “All Too-gether-Now” nights, made even more enjoyable by the announcing team of Ken Singleton and David Cone. A fine Friday night indeed.
Final Score: Yanks 11, Royals 6.
[Image Via: This Isn’t Happiness]
Tonight gives Phil Hughes vs. Wade Davis, the former Tampa Bay Ray. (In fact, there are familiar faces starting for the Royals all weekend: James Shields and Ervin Santana.)
Over at Sports on Earth, Jorge Arangure Jr has a nice piece on Hughes:
“If you pick up on things that hitters were trying to do to you, and you don’t really have anything to combat that, then I guess you start thinking about ways that you can start incorporating new pitches into what you do,” Hughes said.
The easiest solution, and the one that would require the least amount of drastic makeover, would be for Hughes to transform his cutter into a full-fledged slider. The two pitches aren’t so different. They both move sideways. The slider is just a more drastic version of the cutter.
“I think at the time I wasn’t pitching horribly,” Hughes said. “It was just something that I wanted to incorporate. I felt it would be better if I did do that. I felt it would be a good pitch for me because it would be a little bit of a change of pace, just off the slower curveball that I throw, four seam fastball and change up. I felt it was something that came out of my hand like a fastball.”
Brett Gardner CF
Robinson Cano 2B
Vernon Wells LF
Travis Hafner DH
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Jayson Nix SS
Lyle Overbay 1B
Chris Nelson 3B
Chris Stewart C
Never mind the BBQ:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: Old One Eye]
Over at Verb Plow, Glenn Stout tells “A Glove Story.”
Straight to the hole like my man Malik Sealy.
“You know, when I’m walkin’ down Yonge Street, you won’t believe this, but you know some of them funny people have the nerve to point the finger at me and grin and smile and whisper. But you know, that don’t worry Jackie, because I know I look good. And every Monday morning I laugh and grin on my way to the bank, because I got mine. I look good, I got money and everything else that I need. You know what my slogan is? Baby, do what you want, just know what you’re doing. As long as you don’t force your will and your way on anybody else, live your life, because ain’t nobody sanctified and holy.”
Jackie Shane.
Figs. Picture via Sleepless.
Tom Junod profiles Leonardo DiCaprio in Esquire and it’s a good one:
Guy walks into the venerable Hollywood establishment Dan Tana’s. Different guy — not Leonardo DiCaprio. But this guy, Rick Yorn, has something very valuable in a place like Dan Tana’s back in 1999 — he has Leonardo DiCaprio, whom he has represented as a client since DiCaprio was a kid. When the kid was just a teenager, he made two movies that announced his talent to a new generation of moviegoers the way, says one of his friends, that The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy announced not just the arrival of an actor named Dustin Hoffman but also a whole new style of acting. The movies were This Boy’s Life and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, and in the first one the kid stands up to Robert De Niro, in the second to Johnny Depp. And then he made Romeo + Juliet and Titanic, which made him, as a very young man, the biggest movie star in the world. So when Yorn goes to Dan Tana’s to meet some friends, he gets summoned to the table of a tanned old man in big black eyeglasses, Lew Wasserman.
Wasserman is the wise old owl of Hollywood, in the sense that he has night vision and talons. He’s a combination rabbi and mobster, pope and Caesar, Darryl Zanuck and Henry Ford — he invented the industry he lords over. And now he wants to speak to Yorn about his client.
“Lew was old and near the end by this time,” Yorn says. “He died a year or two later. But he knew I was Leo’s manager, and he wanted to give me some advice. He said, ‘Only let them see him in a dark room.’ It took me a minute to figure it out. But what he meant was only let people see him in the movie theater. That’s the dark room.”
It’s harder now, Yorn says. It’s harder to live out of the public eye than it was in Wasserman’s day. Every citizen has a camera, and every tabloid photographer has a camera with a telephoto lens. The kid lives in a celebrity surveillance state. Still, he’s done a pretty good job of “maintaining his mystique,” Yorn says — of making his living in the dark. And besides, he’s not a kid anymore. These days, when you call Rick Yorn and tell him you want to talk about Leonardo DiCaprio, this is what he exclaims:
“The king!”
He’s been a pretty good king, as kings go.
No, we don’t know very much about him outside the dark room, by his own design. What we do know is that he’s been doing what he’s doing for a very long time, and that he seems to have created for himself a life of unalloyed advantage. He has meaningful work and meaningful friendships. He has the power to make any movie he wants and a choice of both directors and women. He can go anywhere he pleases and has lately chosen to go where he feels he can do the most good. He’s not only talented but driven. He’s dogged in everything he’s ever done, a largely unschooled man who’s learned the value of doing his homework. If, at times, talking to him about life is like talking about food with someone who’s never done anything but order from a menu — well, the menu has been both expensive and extensive, and he’s learned enough to know exactly what he likes. He is always in ferocious demand, and yet he has always been in equally ferocious control of his own life, from the time he was very young. Is there anything else we can possibly ask of him, other than to lose control of his life, for our benefit? Is there anything else we can possibly ask of any of them, be they Leonardo DiCaprio or Brad Pitt or Matt Damon? We have a prejudice about kids who become kings, in that we like to see them earn their crown, preferably by enduring some kind of trial — by going off to battle or taking speech lessons or marrying a tragic queen. But what can we possibly ask Leonardo DiCaprio to endure, to prove himself to us? Can we see him as any less a man because he made the road to manhood look so easy?
Quelle Horreur! Our pal Emma defends Alex Rodriguez:
In the wake of the Biogenesis clinic scandal, Major League Baseball would plainly love to see Alex Rodriguez ride off into the sunset. And lord knows the Yankees would like to get out of the massive payments they owe their injured and PED-tainted albatross. There’s just one small problem: The evidence simply isn’t there, at least not yet. Maybe you believe that’s because it never existed; maybe you believe Rodriguez paid to have it destroyed, as “sources familiar with MLB’s investigation” have told ESPN. Either way, though, that means Rodriguez is probably not going away any time soon. Which means we — me, you, the media, the Yankees, the league — are going to have to make some sort of peace with his continued presence in the game, or risk going completely insane.
Given all that, the battle that Major League Baseball is waging against Alex Rodriguez — its own star, and not so long ago one of its most marketable — is, if not quite unprecedented, still fairly astounding. Some obvious comparisons leap to mind: Pete Rose, of course, and Shoeless Joe Jackson, who were each banned from the game. Yet neither hung around for years being loathed before their sentences were handed down, and both have plenty of defenders, even now. By the end of his career, MLB was none too fond of Barry Bonds, who felt (not without reason) that he was being blacklisted and forced into retirement; other PED users have also gotten a cold shoulder, but some, like Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi, have been forgiven. And Bonds and A-Rod’s fellow Biogenesis-linked bête noir Ryan Braun at least has a home team and fanbase that appreciates and enjoys him.
The same cannot be said of Rodriguez. It has been suggested that he should be banned from baseball, that he should be arrested, that he should be sued — just about everything short of Yankees general manager Brian Cashman killing him and making it look like an accident for the insurance money, and a poll would probably find some fans supporting that, too. There’s so much piling on, it’s almost enough to make you take the unnatural step of defending the guy.
Only Baseball Matters this morning on the 1 train.
It was grey in Colorado this afternoon when the game started and C.C. looked good. Then came dark skies, rain, and a two-hour delay. When they started again, Robbie Cano hit a solo home run and by the time Mariano earned the save the sun was out and the Yanks were headed out of a town with a series win.
All Praise Mo.
Final Score: Yanks 3, Rockies 1.
