Reporting At Last

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (FAF) — The mind of veteran blogger Greg Prince reported to New York Mets camp Monday to prepare for its nineteenth season of observation, reflection and regular blogging output. It showed up just in time to meet the deadline for position players to check in at the East Coast complex that has been the site of Mets Spring Training since 1988.

“Yeah, I guess I took a while,” Greg’s mind told the assembled media gathered around the Mets dugout at Clover Park, where Greg’s mind clearly warmed to the idea of addressing a small crowd. “Maybe it just takes me longer to get going than it did when Greg first got into the game. Maybe I was perfectly content to let winter run its course for all it was worth. The weather hasn’t been too bad in New York, you know. Or maybe I’m the only one who won’t claim to be in the ‘best shape of my life’ this Spring.”

Greg’s mind, which rarely fails to amuse itself, began blogging on February 16, 2005, eighteen years ago last week. The anniversary is usually an occasion for commemoration on Faith and Fear in Flushing, where Greg’s mind is generally set well ahead of reporting date, but the milestone went unremarked upon this month.

“How about that?” Greg’s mind mused. “I can’t say I didn’t think about it, and I really did try to get Greg to write something about it, but, I don’t know…” With that, Greg’s mind trailed off.

In line with the enthusiasm evinced by the Mets players when they arrived at Spring Training, Greg’s mind said it, too, is raring to go (“I wouldn’t know how to process a Mets season if I wasn’t writing about it several times a week”) and definitely likes the club’s chances in 2023, even if the mind isn’t necessarily subscribing to the ‘World Series or Bust’ rhetoric that has attached itself to the team.

“Frankly, I don’t know what the hell that means,” Greg’s mind said, as it drifted toward a state of mild agitation. “Bust? Was last year a bust? No World Series, but a pretty fun year. I’m still residually bummed it didn’t go as far as we all thought and hoped it might, but that’s fandom. I still think about 2006 and 1999 and those types of near-miss years fondly even if my meandering middle-of-the-night reminiscences are inevitably tinged with regret. Yet we move on. If we can’t have fun without winning the World Series, why have we been looking forward to new seasons every year despite not winning a World Series in an eternity? So it’s not like I’m going to think eight months from now if we still haven’t won, ‘that was a bust.’

“Unless it really is a total bust. I’ve lost sleep to a few of those, too.”

The Mets haven’t won the World Series since 1986, and have only two such titles in their history, though that’s hardly news to Greg’s mind, which has been working out its historical muscles all offseason despite producing only sporadic content for Faith and Fear readers since the 2022 campaign ended with a National League Wild Card Series loss to the Padres. “I’m always training,” Greg’s mind explained. “Spring is just another time of the year for it. I’m diving into newspapers.com, going down stahead.com rabbit holes, just wandering — but wandering with a purpose.” What that purpose is, Greg’s mind admitted, isn’t always clear.

“I got excited by a game from 1974 just before reporting to camp,” Greg’s mind revealed. “I’m not going to tell you which one or put it in context right now, but that sort of thing happens regularly.” Asked why Greg doesn’t just write about a game that interests his mind as soon as Greg’s mind decides it’s a worthwhile subject, Greg’s mind insisted it’s not that simple: “I want to put it all together, not just think, ‘hey, look, it’s an old game,’ and to do that takes time. It takes focus and dedication.” Although the offseason provides plenty of opportunity unencumbered by the obligation to stay explicitly current, Greg’s mind said “a season in progress tends to focus a baseball fan’s mind, even a so-called baseball writer’s or historian’s mind.”

Nevertheless, Greg’s mind said it wouldn’t mind just following the muse of its research and ignoring whatever topic is fleetingly vexing the rest of “Metsopotamia” — Greg’s mind’s occasionally invoked term of art for the critical mass and culture of Mets fandom, or what most others are satisfied to reflexively label Mets Nation.

“Of course,” Greg’s mind chuckled, “then we’d have 2020 once more, and I don’t believe any of us really wants to be Burgess Meredith with ‘time enough at last’ due to a pandemic or worse.” The reference is from a Twilight Zone episode in which a put-upon man is left with his beloved books after a nuclear holocaust, the sort of allusion Greg’s mind favors and is willing to gamble doesn’t require a surfeit of elaboration.

Greg’s mind kept busy through the winter months thinking not only about the Mets but the other local sports teams he supports. “The Giants made the playoffs, that was nice,” Greg’s mind remembered. “Their one postseason win, over the Vikings, was while Greg was at a Nets game, but that actually made for a delightful cross-pollination of rooting interests, everybody at Barclays Center cheering when the Nets — who were winning at that moment — posted the final score from Minnesota. I don’t know if Citi Field will have an opportunity to do that for the Nets come the NBA playoffs” The Nets, Greg’s mind sighed, “are being the Nets again,” plagued by existential questions despite maintaining a competitive record. “I think about them quite a bit when I’m not thinking about the Mets. But I usually keep the Nets to myself.”

Cross-pollination of rooting interests in evidence (baseball fandom implicit).

The trades of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant constituted Greg’s mind’s favorite offseason food: the kind that’s for thought. “I know everybody thinks the ‘superteam’ bit was a total bust, to use that word, because there was no championship,” Greg’s mind said, “but although that was the goal, and the goal wasn’t reached, how could you not be absorbed by those interludes when everything seemed to be jelling? I still love that they went to a seventh game in the playoffs in 2021, the way I still love that the Mets went to a seventh game in 2006, regardless of the outcome that continues to eat at me. But maybe I’m just a different kind of mind that way.” Surprisingly, Greg’s mind also allowed it might have been more “satisfied” by what it got from Durant’s abbreviated tenure as a Net than Jacob deGrom’s nine seasons as a Met.

“Durant and deGrom were two of the best players I ever sat up and dwelled the night away over,” Greg’s mind said. “Durant’s biggest moment was tying Game Seven as time expired, his shoe being the only thing bigger than the shot when it barely touched the three-point line and they couldn’t beat Milwaukee in overtime. All due respect to what he meant in winning a pennant in 2015, DeGrom was at his most brilliant in 2018, 2019, when there were comparatively lower stakes for the Mets. Jacob elevated us, but he was all alone out there. Only last year did the team surrounding him begin to feel ‘super,’ and he wasn’t around for most of it. I’m missing them both from my immediate thoughts in particular ways, but I try not to say that out loud, at least not loud enough for KD to conceivably hear me in Phoenix or Jake wherever he is in Arizona en route to his perceived paradise in Arlington. Technically, I’m still mad at them for not wanting to be on my team anymore.”

Greg’s mind said it felt deGrom’s departure most deeply when the Mets released an online hype video, the kind that annually featured the presence of the two-time Cy Young winner as a primary come-on for potential ticket-buyers. “I’m still getting used to thinking in terms of Verlander and, yes, Scherzer as ‘my’ guys,” Greg’s mind acknowledged. “DeGrom had become my guy in the Gooden or Seaver sense, which is as much as I can give to a player. Now that’s over.”

Five weeks of familiarity honed by dispatches and footage from Florida should help develop an affinity within Greg’s mind for the Mets’ remodeled high-profile pitching rotation that also includes newcomers Kodai Senga and Jose Quintana, “no matter how endless taking seriously games that don’t count is going to start to feel in a few days,” Greg’s mind projected.

Ultimately, Greg’s mind assured the media, it always comes back to the Mets and baseball, even if Greg appears less than thoroughly engaged by the familiar routines of Spring Training. “Listen, I don’t take the concept of annual renewal lightly,” Greg’s mind said as it veered to the philosophical. “I get what this time of year means in the grand sweep of baseball. I’m not immune to it. It’s just that, geez, how excited is a person’s mind supposed to get over who might be the additional backup infielder or eighth arm in the bullpen, especially when you know how rosters churn? I like the clips from camp of players ambling in from the parking lot. I like the surge of adrenaline I get from the introductions to the first exhibition games broadcast or televised. I like the first look at the new guys in our uniform. But then, if I’m being honest, I’d like to get back to some game in 1974 or whenever, at least until Opening Day. I just have to focus myself, dedicate myself, stay within myself…or maybe step outside myself for a change.”

Nineteenth year or not, Greg’s mind added, “It’s good to be in Spring Training. I won’t say ‘this never gets old,’ because that implies ‘old’ is something to avoid. Old is a blend of experience, expectation and exceptions to what you’ve seen before or think you’ll see next. Every Spring is kind of the same and every Spring is absolutely different. I wouldn’t be reporting for a nineteenth Spring in a row if I didn’t absolutely feel that way.”

After dropping its Spring baggage, Greg’s mind planned on loosening up with a “brief concept post — you know, one of those things where instead of being direct and expository, you frame your points in a repurposed familiar format the reader isn’t automatically anticipating in the realm the reader suddenly encounters it. It’s theoretically entertaining and it doesn’t come off quite as self-important as an ‘I/me/my’ piece might, even if it really is thinly veiled first-person writing in a first-person written medium. When you’ve been doing this for eighteen years, you consciously or otherwise strive to thwart complacency when you can, both for the reader’s sake and the writer’s sake.”

Greg’s mind winked, “It’s an old blogger device, and I’m the mind of an old blogger.”

Greg’s mind requested anybody seeking a more traditional welcome to Spring Training check out the most recent episode of the National League Town podcast.