Perhaps you’ve heard the story of John Daly, host of CBS’s What’s My Line?, introducing his broadcast of Sunday night, May 31, 1964, with the honest admission that he’d been backstage watching the most “marvelous” — or in one retelling “fantastic” — baseball game between the New York Mets and San Francisco Giants just before coming on the air that evening. Why, it had been going on for hours and was still going on well past regulation, here at 10:30 PM on the East Coast. Panelist Dorothy Kilgallen fretted that John must stop expressing his fascination at once, for if he extolled its virtues any further, he would risk chasing Metropolitan Area viewers from their show on Channel 2 to that very game on Channel 9!
Which there was plenty of time to do, given that the game in question — the second half of a doubleheader that commenced a little after one o’clock that afternoon — would march on toward 11:30 and total 23 innings before it was all over. Legend has it that countless dials clicked seven notches up the VHF spectrum to see what exactly at Shea Stadium had Daly so riled up, and there went the rating for that night’s What’s My Line?
In our splintered media universe of more than a half-century later, one wonders if anybody anywhere who wasn’t already watching our Metsies go similarly long last night opted to set aside whatever popular culture he or she was consuming in order to sample a taste of extra, extra innings 2015 Mets-style. If so enticed, did they find it marvelous? Was it fantastic?
If you were new to baseball and tuned in to decipher the fuss inherent in an endless 1-1 game, I can’t imagine it necessarily sold you on the virtues of the National Pastime. And if you are a hardened fan of several decades, chances are you were tempted to weep — or maybe just sigh a lot — for the farce your beloved game had become. Still, no matter why you found yourself watching the Mets and Cardinals from Busch Stadium on Sunday afternoon deep into Sunday evening, I can’t imagine you could pull yourself away.
That is the appeal of the marathon game, no matter how poorly it is executed (and no matter how much you believe its participants should be executed, or at least designated for assignment). It keeps going. Even if you maintain a severe rooting interest, you are torn between wanting the definitive run scored by your team and desiring no such thing because then it will be over. You may have things to do, places to go, people to see, but never mind all of those concerns. You are ensconced in what is becoming one of the longest baseball games you will ever experience.
Deep down, you don’t want it to end.
The Mets and Cards were cooperating with your wishes. They weren’t going anywhere for the bulk of six hours and neither were you. Certainly Mets batters weren’t going any further than third base, for that was the signature of this particular marathon dance between ancient rivals. This one wasn’t about spectacular fielding or dazzling strategy or mano-a-mano slugging. It was only sort of about clutch pitching; the pitching was effective as far as it went, but it was difficult to ascertain whether the pitching was smothering the hitting or the hitting was absolutely useless.
There were plenty of hits, actually: sixteen from the Mets, thirteen from the Cardinals. We learned Saturday night that hits don’t necessarily lead to runs. The Mets accumulated a dozen hits in the game before this one but scored only twice. The Mets are expert practitioners in the art of making copious amounts of noise without creating a discernible sound. Except for the sound of silence. If you attached a microphone to home plate in hopes of hearing the bottom of a spike cross it, you wouldn’t hear a peep.
We know how the Mets can be. What was the Cardinals’ excuse? Aren’t the Cardinals the best team in baseball, with the best fans in baseball, with the best opposition research in baseball? Shouldn’t have they hacked into the Mets’ mainframe for at least one run during the first dozen innings when the Mets were depositing and abandoning everybody from Wilmer Flores (stranded after a one-out double in the second) to Kirk Nieuwehnhuis (stranded after a one-out double in the twelfth)?
Credit Jon Niese, he who regularly pitches without support or particular joie de vivre, for the first seven-and-two-thirds of scoreless ball. It was a grim task, but there is no one more suited for sucking the action out of a baseball game played under unyielding clouds. Niese was grimly great for as long as Terry Collins would allow him to be. It wasn’t until the eighth, when he hit Randall Grichuk (and who among us hasn’t wanted to do that to the latest word in Met-killing?) that he was removed to make way for his fellow veteran, Bobby Parnell. Like Niese, Parnell has been a stoic Met since Shea Stadium stood. Unlike Niese, Parnell hasn’t shaved since Citi Field was built.
No situation was too hairy for Parnell. He struck out the dangerous Jhonny Peralta — all Cardinals are dangerous — and it was off to the torpid races from there. The Mets had a chance to go ahead in the ninth, if you interpret a baserunner as synonymous with a chance. Eric Campbell walked with one out. He was still on first with two out when he decided stealing was the better part of valor. Kevin Siegrist picked him off and was in the dugout enjoying a cool beverage before Soup was tagged out at second.
And on they went. The Met relief corps — Parnell in the ninth; Jenrry Mejia for the next two, Hansel Robles during the inning after that — kept the Cardinals at bay. The Cardinals seemed determined to disavow their Runnin’ Redbirds reputation and jogged as slowly as possible on most of their own batted balls. Everybody had an excuse. Yadier Molina was tired from squatting. Matt Holliday was recovering from injury. Carlos Villanueva was a pitcher. Even the Best Fans In Baseball booed impatiently when Villanueva didn’t take advantage of a potential infield flub in the twelfth…and much of the crowd that remained by then was sticking around for the sharing of postgame Christian Day testimony.
Thou shalt not pass on scoring opportunities was the key commandment of a game schlepping into the thirteenth. The Mets, at last, heard The Word, because they jumped on the energy-conserving Villanueva pronto. Curtis Granderson, an interloper into the festivities (having been initially sat in deference to Cy Young…check that Tim Cooney starting for the Cardinals), lashed a leadoff single that Curtis deemed worth stretching into something more. He sped up and was safe at second. While Keith Hernandez was in the booth audibly moaning for “a whiskey — please,” Granderson helped himself and made his own double.
Kevin Plawecki was up next and found the first significant hole of the day, not counting the 24 holes in all those doughnuts on the scoreboard. Kevin’s grounder darted between Kolten Wong at second and Mark Reynolds at first. Granderson, who had earlier attempted to inject life into listlessness with an unlikely stolen base, kept running as the rest of St. Louis sleepwalked. He scored an actual run. The Mets had an actual lead.
The Mets liked the sensation so much, they tried to extend it. Ruben Tejada singled Plawecki to third. A sacrifice fly would make it 2-0, so on the off chance that the next Met pitcher gave up a leadoff home run, the Mets would still be out in front. Campbell tried his best to make a worthwhile out, but his fly ball to right was too short to send Kevin home. Juan Lagares, in one of his ten at-bats, made one of his eight outs, also not long enough to aid the greater cause. Daniel Murphy was intentionally walked, bringing up Robles’s spot. Collins looked down his bench, shrugged and called for Johnny Monell.
Monell popped up. The Mets didn’t tack on an insurance run. Disappointing, but not unexpected. Prior to Plawecki’s hit, the Mets were 0-for-Ever with runners in scoring position or, really, any position. Still, a 1-0 lead was better than a perpetual 0-0 tie, and besides, Jeurys Familia, the All-Star in everything but being named one, was coming into pitch. Familia had saved the last four wins the Mets had compiled. He couldn’t have been any better rested, not having worked in a week. All he had to do was…
Oh, you know what he did. He gave up a leadoff home run to Wong in the bottom of the thirteenth. He had to. A thirteen-inning, 1-0 win would have been relatively simple. On the other hand, a thirteen-inning, 2-1 loss would have been brutally painful. Familia played his role perfectly. He put two more runners on before striking out Tommy Pham to guarantee a fourteenth inning.
There are exceptions to every rule, but extra-inning games don’t start running toward marathon status until they reach fourteen. Keith could sigh and moan and ache for the sanctity of the game he held dear every eight seconds, but until we knew we had a fourteenth inning — by which the time the LOB had been declared the official state bird of Flushing — we couldn’t be sure we were experiencing something we’d be referencing way down the road. Like the 23-inning game from 1964. Or the 25-inning game from 1974. Or the 19-inning game from 1985 that ended with fireworks at four in the morning. Or the 20-inning game at this very ballpark in 2010, one that also nibbled the edges of sanity with its offensive ineptitude, except Fox did that one, so we couldn’t sit inside Keith Hernandez’s head and watch it ooze out of his ears.
SNY was blessedly on the air Sunday and Keith’s disdain was running wild in the streets of downtown St. Louis. Thank heaven for small favors.
Now that Collins and Mike Matheny were legitimately low on personnel, a technically dull game was promising to get incredibly interesting. Matheny would eventually turn to starter Carlos Martinez. Terry went with perpetual mystery guest Sean Gilmartin, a pitcher whose identity would surely stump Dorothy Kilgallen, Arlene Francis and Bennett Cerf. Gilmartin, in case you’ve forgotten, is the pitcher who keeps pitching for the Mets because he was obtained in the Rule 5 draft. Rule 5 specifies that you must keep Sean Gilmartin on your roster all year long. Rule 6 delineates that you keep forgetting who Sean Gilmartin is.
Gilmartin pitches very well for someone who barely exists. He took care of the Cards with ease in the fourteenth and fifteenth and worked out of a bit of a jam in the sixteenth. Martinez, who came on in the fifteenth, had the easier job. He had to face the Mets, the pennant contenders who’d left eighteen runners on base thus far on top of the eleven from the night before, all while scoring a grand total of three runs in 23 innings.
That’s a lot of zeroes to get to a 1-1 tie, but it takes a lot of nothing to go a long way when you’re running a Metsian marathon. Martinez was no less successful than his seven pitching predecessors. A double play erased a hint of an uprising in the fifteenth; a single to Gilmartin (!) and a walk to Lucas Duda (a.k.a. Lucas Nada or Lucas Do Nothing; I haven’t decided) led to three meek outs in the sixteenth; the theatrical loading of the bases in the seventeenth, featuring an intentional walk to Murphy to set up an unintentional walk to pinch-hitter Jacob deGrom (!!) merely served to adorn Lucas’s two-out strikeout.
Carlos Torres, whom I tend to refer to as Carlos Tsuris so as to distinguish him from his non-biological brother Alex Tsuris, shook off his distinguishing family trait and didn’t bring the Mets trouble when he replaced Gilmartin in the seventeenth. C. Tsuris struck out his first two batters, surrendered a base hit, but then benefited from Plawecki’s gunning down of Peralta in an attempted steal of second. Molina may be the bee’s knees of catchers over the last decade, but Yadier was outshone in this particular marathon by young Kevin. Perhaps had Aaron Heilman pitched, it would have been a different story.
At last, a different chapter unfolded from all those that had preceded it. The eighteenth inning brought a sustained Met offensive onslaught. Flores singled. Granderson singled. Plawecki bunted and confounded Martinez. The bases were loaded again, with absolutely nobody out. The sport would be legally compelled to fold operations if the Mets couldn’t push one lousy run across.
Two were forthcoming, one via Tejada sacrifice fly, one via Campbell suicide squeeze. The latter couldn’t stand as an isolated moment of triumph, however, as good ol’ Soup got himself thrown out at first upon further review mostly because he slowed down en route to glance over his shoulder at the play at the plate. Terrible baseball instincts, but perfectly understandable from a human standpoint. If you cling to a spot on the sub-.200 Met bench of 2015, maybe you should eschew the best advice of Satchel Paige and look back; something ought to be gaining on you.
With a third run in and a franchise record-tying 25th runner left on base (yes, the Mets had done this before), all that could go wrong instead went uneventfully right. Carlos Torres — in for Carlos Tsuris — set down what was left of the Cardinals in order and the Mets had themselves a 3-1 win that took eighteen innings, ran five hours and fifty-five minutes and, with the notable exception of Keith Hernandez’s will to live, rendered no casualties. The Christian Day pilgrims, like the nocturnal fireworks enthusiasts of Atlanta, indeed stayed inside the park to hear special guest testifier Kurt Warner share his “incredible story,” which certainly had a new coda to it after that long an afternoon and early evening.
The entire package was billed in advance by the Cardinals sales office as “a wonderful day of faith and baseball”. Considering Sunday’s particulars and how it all worked out from our perspective — frustration, followed by aggravation, followed by deliverance, followed by a flight to take on an alleged powerhouse first-place club still only two games ahead of ours in the standings — we can’t say there wasn’t truth in that advertising.
Can’t anybody here hit with a man on base?
Plawecki did. Otherwise, not so much.
More apt had it been called “a wonderful day of faith and fear and baseball”.
Great memories of What’s My Line?!
That ’64 23-inning game vs. the Giants was a doozy: Orlando Cepeda hit into a triple play (after stealing home in the first game of the doubleheader); Willie Mays played shortstop for three innings; and Gaylord Perry, who pitched nine of the last 10 innings for the Giants, introduced the Mets and the world to the spitter that would take him all the way to the Hall of Fame. I think that game had What’s My Line? beat.
On the other hand, Liberace was one of the mystery guests on the game show that night.
What a shame … i mean game.
It wasn’t Mets versus Cardinals. It was Mets pitching versus Mets hitting.
That said, good jobs by Granderson and Tejada. Credit where credit is due: Tejada’s been okay.
I’m starting to be a little worried about Familia. Before the all-star break, he wasn’t as sharp. Effective still, but not sharp like before. Then last night, he gave up the lead-off HR to Wong. The Mets haven’t lost due to a Familia BS yet. Hopefully, he’s not slipping. He’s needed.
At least the Mets got a lot of men on base. That’s a step in the right direction.
I don’t wish ill on Cuddyer, but his deteriorating knee which likely will force him onto the DL, and is perhaps season-ending, should (well, might) force the Mets to upgrade the position.
True story – the moment I saw the Mets go up 1-0 (and fail to punch in a 2nd run with runner on 3rd, no outs) I turned the set off. I fully expected the Cardinals (whose tenacity I had to live through during the 80s) to get a bloop and a blast. Besides, I had other things to do.
I turned on SNY at 7:45 expecting to read the final scope on the bottom crawl hoping I was wrong. Turns out, I was right and wrong – the Cardinals did tie it up to bring on more excruciating innings, but lost the game anyway. With FAFIF and video highlights, why would anyone sit through 18 innings of stagnant, inept and incompetent Mets “offense”?
When Ruben Tejada is quietly becoming your batting average leader, you know your team is a tough watch.
25 men left on base. 1 for 26 with runners in scoring position. 1 for 26! And they won. Impressive.
With the bases loaded with no outs in the 18th, I had my doubts they’d squeeze out 1 run let alone 2, but Tejada and Campbell did their jobs.
The pitchers have carried their weight and then some. Gilmartin and deGrom even tried to help out the position players with their bats.
thanks for the memorable, if not necessarily happy, recap. i have to say, it wasn’t so much as a mets fan i watched the whole thing; increasingly, it was as a spectator at a game of chicken.
with ron darling covering dodgers-nats for tbs, gary and keith really ran the bases all by themselves. one amusement: early on this broadcast — it might have been one of the others this weekend, they blur together — keith, ever the dead-red cardinals alum, gushed about molina, and recounted how larussa told him not to worry about his batting for the first three years, to focus on his defense. keith said that in his third year, 2006, molina hit .216. gary noted gently that actually mets fans probably didn’t need to know that molina batted only .216 in 2006.
Faith restored, fear incoming.
In the bigger picture, the Mets didn’t lose ground to the Nationals with the 1st series out of the break, and the Nationals are within reach for the upcoming series.
Harvey, deGrom, and Syndergaard – best foot forward. Do any of them have a track record in pennant-race level games?
It’s a statement series for the pitchers and the team, but it’s not make or break. Ground gained can be quickly lost in the following Dodger series. On the other hand, the Nationals face the Pirates next, and the same can be said for them.
After playing uncle to four little babies all day, I decided to turn on SNY at around 7:15, assuming the Beat the Booth rerun was on again (haven’t watched this year’s version yet). When I saw what looked like Busch Stadium, with most of the screen taken up by a virtual lineup card with lines through players used in the game, I thought Really? This gam’s still going on, or was there a rain delay? Nope, it was going on. Guess I turned it on in time for the 14th inning and watched the next three. After the 16th, SNY’s transmission went out. I decided cleaning was more important. A friend texted me that they won and asked if I saw it. I said no, I gave up on the game. If I did that after three innings, I can only imagine what it was like to sit through all 18. And poor Keith. Was he sighing to keep from cursing?
I guess we should be happy the Mets didn’t get swept in St. Louis. But I’m not. That was some terrible baseball this weekend and I’m glad I missed most of it. Am I crazy or do I have good reason to think there will be a fan revolt if a trade isn’t made by July 31 to upgrade this offense? Really, how much longer do we have to watch this crap? Or better yet, how much longer does the pitching staff have to watch it? I swear the Mets’ lineup is so impotent multiple doses of Viagra and Cialis couldn’t get it to perform.
Yeah I know, we’re 2 out of first and a sweep of the Nats puts us in first. On the surface I have no reason to complain. But again I have seen this movie too many times in recent years with the Mets and if the bats don’t pick up the slack (and the front office doesn’t help) tonight may be as close as we get to first.
Ok venting over, think I’ll go get that whiskey Keith wanted yesterday.
If the Mets lose 3 well-pitched games by their ace, recovering ace, and rising ace against the Nationals, more so if the Cubs are also beating the Reds and/or the Giants are beating the Padres in the WC race, there will be a reaction.
APV-I have to wonder if Sandy (and Little Jeffy) will use this game as an excuse not to make any moves.
e.g. “We obviously can compete with the best team in the game with what we have, so we’re standing pat and using our time to figure out how much to charge for hot dogs if we make the playoffs.” :)
If 1968 was the Year of the Pitcher, 2015 should go down as The Year of the Non-Hitter. The pitching just doesn’t seem that good. Tim Cooney can be equated to Cy Young, when he’s facing the Mets anyway.
PS: Not for nothin’ but I’m on a campaign to require that all links to NJ.Com articles should come with a warning that they take forever to load and/or freeze up your computer for what seems like hours (same results with a desktop, a laptop, and a chromebook).
Regarding site freezes with NJ.com, you might try installing a browser plug-in like Ghostery that blocks trackers. All of the local tabloids seem to have gone way overboard with that stuff lately, and it definitely seems to affect my loading times. (I just checked, and they’re sending info to 70 different advertisers, web analytics companies, etc, while that Hernandez page is loading. Block everything and the page loads normally, for me at least. FAFIF, by contrast, is just collecting info via Google Analytics, WordPress, and ShareThis, and you can whitelist those sites to enable independents to continue to collect aggregate pageview info).
Thanks for the tip Matt. I tried that with NJ.com on my Chromebook and it does seem to speed things up. I’m well behind the curve on what’s going on with these websites behind the scenes, so your post was really informative.
Thanks again.
I had no idea we were doing any of that.
Sharethis is the widgets at the bottom of each post that enable readers to click and post to twitter or Facebook, etc. And WordPress automatically keeps up with unique pageviews. Google Analytics IDK, maybe Jason installed a plugin? None of that stuff is invasive, though. Just monitors traffic flow. Your site is super clean. Bloat is really becoming a problem for local news sites though. Sorry to go off topic, but I thought I would share since I had been having the same problem as Ken K. with my old laptop and even my newish desktop.
I appreciate the breakdown. My OS is fairly ancient, so I assume to a certain degree it’s me who’s having problems with an NJ.com. Bloat is the right word. Guess they have to find a revenue stream somehow. We tend to forget that there was a time if you wanted to read what the Star Ledger had to say, you’d have to find a newsstand in Penn Station or the Port Authority — or go to Jersey.
We can make light of Keith’s frustrations…but seriously it is as if the players have lost all sense of fundamentals over the years and not just the Mets. On top of that add an explosion in strikeouts, constant shifts, replays and no complete games anymore and it is a new world for guys like Keith.
Keith spoke for all of us last night–as he does most nights. I love that he makes no bones about how much it pains him to see this tragically inept offense and porous D. And that his bags are always packed for the quickest possible getaway. This is the beauty of having the best first baseman on earth (who doesn’t need the gig) behind the mike.
We were blessed and truly spoiled.
i love how at one point he talked about making $55,000 the year he won the mvp.
Oddly – or perhaps tellingly – Terry Collins is supposed to be a player development guru, yet the Mets’ poor fundamentals persist.
It’s not just jaded vets or top talents, either. AAAA types like Ceciliani, Muno, Campbell, etc, who need sound fundamentals to compensate for lesser talent and last at the MLB level yet aren’t executing the basics reliably. That’s an indictment of the Mets whole organization as well as, perhaps, baseball culture as a whole.
Alas, poor Heilman. I knew him Horatio. How soon we forget (or repress) the nightmares of yesterday.
Great article!–again..
Was at that DH VS Giants @ Shea in 1964. My father–an old Giants fan who had seen GOOD baseball teams had enough about 1/2 thru second game. I missed Mets Triple play & comeback–but did get home in plenty of time to watch them lose (& suffer along) in 23 innings!
One thing my father said to me that day @ Shea– pointing at Willie Mays–“the best baseball player ever”.
Kudos to Plawecki, too, for catching 18 sweltering innings while also contributing on offense late in the game.
two silver linings from yesterday’s snoozefest :
1. extra innings/waste of bullpen arms/team-wide fatigue on getaway day was not caused by a failed execution of DP
2. gary (finally?) recommended keith get into uniform and provide some offense…how many mets fans haven’t fantasized about this?
(keith’s unedited streams of outrage were one of the few reasons to stay tuned. that and seeing the cards look so mets-like at the plate, if only for one day.)
We all know this team has been inept (and that’s putting it politely) at the plate. So why not have every player bunt every at bat. Sure, the players can’t bunt either, but it couldn’t hurt and this way the game would go faster than waiting for so many of them to strike out.
P.S. Greg, and dmg, thanks for reminding us not once but twice about Heilman and Molina.
Nearly had apoplexy when I saw that Terry Collins was “really proud” how his players “hung in there” and “kept battling”. Hung in there? KEPT BATTLING? If that was “battling”, then the Mets are the most incompetent army since the Antietam-era Union, with Collins in the role of Ambrose Burnside.
Twenty-five runners left on base. Ye gods. This is ineptitude of the rankest rank. I suggest we replace all the hitters with minor leaguers, they surely can’t possibly do worse than this.
Well…..what did you expect him to say? Inept or not, that was a pretty big win to avoid the sweep.
i just enjoyed reading this leisurely including comments while watching this brutal first game against Washington, amazingly with some really boneheaded non fundies (really Soup?)
and our pitcher having the only 2 RBI while using that at bat to propel his pitching to greater heights. this team just makes me laugh to keep from crying. and yet I can’t turn it off.
Meh, Harvey didn’t have it until he did. The Mets may have a bad offense, but five runs in the first three is a difficult deficit even for really good offensive teams to overcome. He made it exciting by driving in two himself, and I thought it was awesome that he gutted it through seven to preserve the bullpen for tomorrow after pretty much everyone threw two innings (other than A. Torres) yesterday. In that sense, he did really well, but you can’t always say that Harvey isn’t to blame for a loss. He gave up five runs in three innings and then toughed it out.
Fair enough per Harvey giving up 5, but his fielders – FUNDIES!!! – are to blame, too.
I thought a later turning point was the great outfield catch on the ball Campbell hit in the 5th. If that falls in, it’s 5-4, and with the way Matt was pitching, I’d have like the Mets’ chances…
Wonderful recap!
I came from NASCAR in time for the top 9th on Sunday, and had another hour to kill before hitting the hay. Then they actually took the lead in the 13th in the most pathetic way possible, and with Familia coming in, all would be well at twenty minutes past midnight.
Except it wasn’t. I threw myself into bed in disgust right after the Wong homer. If *that* guy can take Familia deep, I didn’t need to stay around for the inevitable soul-killing loss and rather get my sleep. The 3-1 win came as a surprise in the morning.
I can feel Keith. He does have to watch these Mets all the time and stay polite about them. I can’t stay calm. When I watch the Mets on the laptop, I usually put OOTP Baseball side-by-side with them and manage my own involuntarily comical, pathetic team (eight consecutive losing seasons, the last one after being 16 games over .500 on May 31) along with the real game. The resulting double misery is hard to endure without crying, and impossible to palate without calling names at either half of the screen regularly. Maybe I should try booze, too.
Steve 2916 is correct. If that ball drops in its 5-4 and a new game. But a great catch by the centerfielder. We will get them tonight. Lets go mets!!!!!
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