Freaks and Geeks

Welcome to Flashback Friday: I Saw The Decade End, a milestone-anniversary salute to the New York Mets of 1969, 1979, 1989 and 1999. Each week, we immerse ourselves in or at least touch upon something that transpired within the Metsian realm 40, 30, 20 or 10 years ago. Amazin’ or not, here it comes.

Everything was fine in my world in the weeks leading up to September 21, 1999. My world was the Mets’ world in those lilting days of late summer, and the Mets remained in bloom as they had from the moment in June when Bobby Valentine announced his charges would win 40 of their next 55 — and they won exactly 40 of their next 55.

That took us into August. The Mets’ pace leveled off by the second week of the fifth month of the season (a .727 clip is tough to maintain), but they and Shea were still, as my man Fran Healy would say, rocking. Our team could beat anybody. We would swat those mosquitoes buzzing Queens with their deadly West Nile Virus if we had to. And if we could take the mosquitoes, we could surely beat the Braves.

Such confidence, I swear. I waited out an August rain delay with Jason and Emily and, after giving my usual disclaimer that nothing is won until it is won, I told them about an article I remembered Marty Noble writing in the inevitable summer of 1986 in which he asked current Mets which former Mets from the now dead bad old days they wished could share in this dream season with them (their consensus choice was Ron Gardenhire). We mulled it over — I nominated Rico Brogna — but it wasn’t a topic with legs. The ’99 Mets had reached the gates of greatness with ’99 Mets. No need to reach back any further.

These were the good new days.

Looking ahead toward September and October, several even newer Mets had been injected into our bloodstream, veteran players introducing themselves to us by their good deeds. There was Darryl Hamilton, who couldn’t be any worse in center than the stubbornly lackluster Brian McRae. There was Shawon Dunston, Brooklyn’s own, the sport’s No. 1 draft pick as a shortstop by the Cubs in 1982. He was now mostly a fill-in outfielder. There was that solid starting pitcher from Oakland, Kenny Rogers, here to reinforce the rotation that would be stretched out à la 1998 to include six men (Leiter, Yoshii, Rogers, Reed, Dotel, Hershiser). Two new pen men came on board, too: Billy Taylor and Chuck McElroy. Neither much helped pick up the slack for the disabled John Franco, but they seemed like good guys.

Everybody seemed like a good guy on the 1999 Mets, no matter the occasional foible. Rickey Henderson loafed a triple into a double one night in San Diego. Rey Ordoñez incited Luis Lopez to slug him on the team bus back from LaGuardia after a redeye flight. Bobby Bonilla and his .159 batting average were planted on the DL for quite a stretch since he seemed neither like a good guy or an even modestly productive player. OK, so there were a few malcontents lurking, but the few discordant noises of ’99 were all generated in good fun. Good guys, good fun.

Oh what fun 1999 was as July became August and August became September…

• Fun was sneaking out of an inconveniently planned friend’s birthday party (he had the nerve to be born between April and October) and into the backyard so I could listen in peace as a 3-0 deficit became a 4-3 win over the Padres.

• Fun was Octavio Dotel flirting with a no-hitter at Jack Murphy Stadium. Before I could decide whether it would be too late to call my friend Rob Emproto when the deed was done — I promised to call him on this most sacred occasion — Phil Nevin homered. Oh well, we’d all sleep easily when the Mets would go on to win in ten.

• Fun was Edgardo Alfonzo’s romp through the Astrodome on the Mets’ last trip into the Eighth Wonder of the World: six Fonzie hits, three Fonzie homers, seventeen Mets runs. Edgardo was quite the wonder himself.

• Fun was that well-deserved Sports Illustrated cover featuring Fonzie and friends. I bought several — and I was a subscriber.

• Fun was Fonzie forging a walkoff win over the Cardinals on a Sunday even after Mark McGwire broke a lineup lightbulb on the Shea scoreboard, even after we trailed 6-1 in the eighth.

• Fun was Matt Franco dunking a single into left in the ninth a night later, defeating the Astros and confirming that we were never, ever out of a game.

• Fun was the night in L.A. when Mike Piazza (big homer), Roger Cedeño (big catch) and Orel Hershiser (eight big innings) beat their old mates — I was due in for a gastroscopy in the morning, but staying up late seemed a much better idea.

• Fun was the Saturday evening at Shea when I called Stephanie to confirm that our other favorite team, the Liberty, had indeed been eliminated from the WNBA finals. They were getting their overmatched asses handed to them by the Houston Comets when I left for the train. Upon arrival, I went to a pay phone to console my lovely wife who not as schooled as I was in the way teams can let you down, but she said, no, we won. I assumed Stephanie was still getting the hang of spectator sports and didn’t understand the difference between a win and a loss, but it was I who was confused — Teresa Weatherspoon hit on a 47-foot prayer with time expiring to keep the Libs alive, 68-67. Obviously inspired, the Mets went out and slam-dunked Colorado.

• Fun was running back and forth between an airport bar TV set to ESPN and a pay phone at DFW, waiting out a boarding announcement in Dallas while desperately trying to divine the score in that afternoon’s Mets-Rockies game in Denver. The ESPN crawl was sporadic and small; Stephanie, once she tracked down FSNY, was a surprisingly unreliable play-by-play substitute: the Mets, she reported, were either leading 7-5 or 70-5. The important thing is they led, they won and she tried.

After the slightest of bumps (dropping the last three of a four-game set to the Dodgers at home), the Mets kept winning from the second week of August through the third week of September. The post-promise stretch, the part of the summer after the Mets fulfilled Bobby’s 40-15 pledge, yielded a 25-15 record. In terms of series, following the the nadir of Yankee Stadium and the ritual sacrifice of three coaches, we were 25-4-1, the definition of doing what we had to do. We occupied half of first place as late as August 21 and, just when it looked like Atlanta might pull away with the prize, we kept pulling them back to us.

On Saturday night September 18, Rey Ordoñez hit a grand slam (or “grand slam home run” as Murph called it, prompting Stephanie to ask how a grand slam home run differed from a grand slam…she’s come a long way in the last decade) to bury the Phils 11-1. The next afternoon, Rogers blew an early 4-0 lead, but the Mets stormed back with four runs and five-plus innings of spotless relief work to win 8-6. With twelve to play, we would be going to Atlanta Tuesday just one game out of first and four up on Cincinnati for the fallback Wild Card option.

All that and a walk on the warning track, too!

As was the case so often across 1999, I was at that Sunday’s game with my friend Richie, this time with his son Richie, Jr. It was DynaMets Dash day, a personal favorite after the clandestine operations of September 6, 1998 when I was smuggled onto the hallowed Shea Stadium diamond by a friend of a friend to Dash as the biggest kid in Flushing. This time I just ambled along with Richie and another proud dad, standing in line behind the outfield wall like everyone else, pretending to make a game-saving catch at the 371 mark like everyone else, gawking at everything like everyone else. As Richie, Jr. and the other dad’s kid were directed toward first base, we three adults kept walking per security’s directives along the track. This brought us past the Mets dugout where we noticed a familiar face from our Mets yearbooks.

“Hey,” Richie asked, “isn’t that Omar Minaya?”

Deciding that yes, we were pretty sure it was Steve Phillips’ lieutenant, we were as giddy as geeks like us would tend to be when sighting something as exotic as one of our team’s mid-level executives.

“Hey Omar!” Richie called over. Omar looked up to wonder who the hell recognized him. We let him know he was doing a fine job. Omar sort of nodded.

Ah, good times at the end of summer. I’d been having a good time, save for one scary eight-game losing streak in late May and early June, since this season began. I’d been having great times with Richie, Sr. in particular. After one shakedown loss in April, we’d go to Shea regularly and the Mets would never lose with us in attendance. They wouldn’t lose to the Blue Jays in fourteen even after David Wells went eight scoreless. They wouldn’t lose to the Yankees even when the unwelcome visitors homered six times versus just one for us (oh, but what a one: Piazza, 482 feet, a dent in the picnic tent roof). They wouldn’t lose on a rainy Saturday in August when my cap-shaped umbrella proved inadequate to the task of covering my wife’s head and we reluctantly abandoned our field box for an uncommonly early train home. While Stephanie and I bolted, the Mets completed their comeback on the Cardinals…and a foul ball came into what had been my seat, according to Richie, Sr. Naturally, he scooped it up with ease. Surprisingly, I didn’t mind. It was 1999. I didn’t mind anything where the Mets were concerned.

Missing a foul ball I could handle. Missing the playoffs? An unthinkable possibility, yet it was possible. Anything’s possible until it’s not. That’s why they have warning tracks: to warn you not to anticipate too much too soon.

I would think most Mets fans who were conscious entering the fourth week of September 1999 more or less remember what happened directly after that Phillie series at Shea. Certainly Mets freaks will never forget it. In case you somehow find yourself here without benefit of being either Mets freak or geek, I will recap that week-plus two ways.

1) By noting perfunctorily we were swept three at Turner Field and three more at the Vet, allowing the Braves to clinch the division and the Reds to surge past us for the Wild Card. All our dependable hitters stopped hitting dependably. All of them. Our pitchers pitched just well enough to lose, which is acceptable if your offense is producing at full throttle. It wasn’t. Even the Best Infield Ever couldn’t save us. We lost a seventh straight, at home to the division champion Braves; we bought ourselves a reprieve by unexpectedly bopping Greg Maddux (who expects that?); but then gave it back by losing an eleven-inning heartbreaker when Shawon Dunston, that fabulous old Cub shortstop, couldn’t catch a catchable ball in right field.

2) By dredging up from my personal files, a poem I wrote the morning after that last loss to Atlanta. With all the great vibes of late summer now wilted in those first chilling days of fall, I was moved to pen a little something I called

Ode to the Losers, 1999

We lost eight in a row, they left us for dead

They weren’t wrong, merely thinking ahead

From June Sixth on, we were top of the heap

Then we went to the Ted and were chopped right to sleep

Whatever happened to derail this express?

How did a monster devolve to a mess?

Schilling, Wells and Clemens all fell under our sway

But we made a Cy Young candidate of the immortal Joe Grahe

Valentine vowed too much losing oughta get him fired

There’s no disguising that’s the best news since Wes Westrum retired

Piazza’s been good — he plays hard, he plays hurt

The runner is going, the throw’s in the dirt

The “V” in “Ventura” doesn’t go with “M” and “P”

In the last four weeks, he’s hit oh-eighty-three

The best infield ever? Ours, I’ll say

The only one who can hit? That would be Rey

Olerud’s slumpin’, Fonzie pops out

There’s been no punch in this bunch since the Lou Lopez bout

Al Leiter pitches with an awful lot of heart

Which doesn’t explain his lot of awful starts

Good old Orel, now at forty or more

That’s not his age, but the earned runs he lets score

Dennis Cook is throwing, tonight he’s available

It’s a long fly ball…it’s deep, and I don’t think it’s playable

John Franco’s got 400 saves, a ton to remember

In his entire career, he’s saved none past September

From home to first ain’t all that far

Rickey will get there if we get him a car

They’ve brought in a righty, Matt’s walk will be sweet

No, wait, it’s a lefty, so Matt, take a seat

Roger can run, but his fielding’s been lame

As Casey might ask, can’t Agbayani here play this game?

We traded for McElroy, you know him as Chuck

Between him and Billy Taylor, back up the truck

Shawon Dunston was drafted over our old pal Dwight

But Gooden coulda caught the ball Jordan jerked to right

Todd Pratt likes to swing, but leaves runners tabled

Jay Payton’s on the bench, but will soon be disabled

Kenny’s hammy is tight, Bobby Bo is on deck

It’s a shame Shane Halter can’t put a halt to this dreck

You can chide Chipper Jones, a jerk among men

Or lock up John Rocker in the Atlanta bullpen

Resent Gl@v!ne and Maddux and their damn skipper Cox

But our lineup’s the thing with more holes than old socks

Tell Remlinger, then Rico and Person and Byrd

Torturing your old teammates is absolutely absurd

The Phillies were finished, done as you please

They sizzled like steak, we stunk like cheese

The race is now over, you gotta believe

Our wonderful season was one big deceive

Pack up the gear and get on the bus

Playoffs this year? The choke is on us

Give up much?

Well, yes and no. Yes, obviously, as you have just seen. But no, not necessarily. We were still alive, no matter how technical that status, entering October. The Mets sat two behind both Houston and Cincinnati, co-leaders in the N.L. Central. One of them was our Wild Card competition; we just didn’t quite know who yet. As resigned to ultimate defeat as my stab at shaggy doggerel would indicate, I wasn’t giving up on monitoring all enemy activities.

Mostly, however, we needed to concern ourselves with two other teams: the visiting Pirates (who weren’t much, but neither were the Philies) and ourselves. The 1999 Mets had been, for most of six months, our heroes, our buddies, our objects of affection, our surrogates in spikes. For what loomed as this final weekend of a season that suddenly was no longer the best year ever, could we be blamed for thinking we were our own worst enemy?

***

Visit the versatile Scratchbomb often and immerse yourself in day-by-day coverage of the most exciting season in Mets history via Matthew Callan’s ambitious and rewarding 1999 Project.

If every step down the treacherous path of the ’99 stretch drive still resonates in some recess of your Met-addled brain, then Chapter Twenty-Four of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets is the chapter for you. The rest of the book’s not bad either. It’s never too late in the season to order it from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or pick it up at a fine area bookstore. The discussion continues on Facebook.

And if you’re too damn lazy to read the whole thing for yourself, come on down to Two Boots Tavern on the Lower East Side for our final AMAZIN’ TUESDAY of the season — September 15 at 7:00 PM — and I’ll read some of it to you. As if that’s not enough incentive, I’ll be joined my co-host Jon Springer of Mets By The Numbers as we welcome special guests The Bad Guys Won author Jeff Pearlman and Metstradamus mastermind John Coppinger. And if THAT’S not enough, there will be great pizza, cold beer (the first of which is free if you bring Two Boots owner Phil Hartman a Mets baseball card) and more Met bonhomie than you thought could possibly be scraped together at the end of a year like this. The Mets-Braves game will be on, too, but don’t let that detract from the experience. Seriously, we’ve had three of these events and every one of them has been a blast, so come on down and have a great Mets time with us.