If you’re a dispassionate observer of New York Mets baseball, you’d take Francisco Lindor [1]’s 4-for-4 day with a pair of homers and a quartet of RBIs on Wednesday and interpret that as a long overdue breakout that augurs well for an established star getting back to his career norm and likely having a characteristically terrific season now that he appears thoroughly untracked.
If you’re a Mets fan who’s been around a while, you instinctively think, “Bobby Bonilla had a game like this [2] in 1992 and it didn’t help in the long run.” Jason Bay doing something similar to fleeting ends in 2010 rings a bell [3] as well. You know one player’s big game has nothing to do with what any other players ever did, and that Lindor in 2024 comes with a Met track record that should reassure a person, but somehow you come back to a Mets-case scenario like Bonilla or Bay or whatever went wrong whenever it went wrong. Why am I not convinced this means Lindor has broken out of it for good?
Probably because when you’re a Mets fan who’s been around a while, you’re more Velcro than Teflon. Everything sticks, especially episodes that animate your darker fears. Win a getaway game [4], 8-2, in San Francisco, you’d think the Four Horsemen of the Metspocalypse — Skepticism, Pessimism, Cynicism, Fatalism — would be detained in their attempt to stow away on the happy flight east. Yet there they were flitting through your consciousness Wednesday evening, a presence at least as striking in the mind’s eye as any of Lindor’s designer gloves.
Then again, we put Faith ahead of Fear in our name here, so let’s say it was a .500 trip to California, which is never an easy accomplishment, especially when the itinerary includes Los Angeles. Two more West Coast trips await, both in August. No Dodgers will be involved, yet breaking even will probably sound pretty good when those roll around.
Faith!
[5]Lindor’s offensive onslaught, Tyrone Taylor [6] backing him up with three ribbies in addition to Francisco’s four and Reed Garrett [7] notching another relief win were the biggest stories to emerge on Wednesday, unless you were Faith and Fear in Flushing. For FAFIF, the mere act of watching and chronicling meant a milestone: 3,000 consecutive regular-season games blogged, starting with Opening Day 2005 and continuing through the most recent. If you keep doing something every day that the opportunity presents itself, you’ll rack up some impressive-sounding milestones. Roberto Clemente’s 3,000th hit came against the Mets. Pedro Martinez’s 3,000 strikeouts came for the Mets. Faith and Fear’s 3,000th straight game recapped simply had to take place around the Mets.
[8]Naturally, I’m glad it was a win. The Mets have won more often in our history than not: 1,513 victories versus 1,487 defeats. It only seems like they lose all the time. If this feeling persists, consult your horsemen.
Prior to Wednesday’s first pitch (not delivered by Blake Snell as scheduled, which was bad injury news for the Giants, but certainly didn’t hurt our cause in the short term), I came across the tweeted roster for the Long Island Ducks. I went to one Ducks game in 2011 and have followed them on social media ever since. I saw they have a pitcher named Liam Pulsipher. Could it be…? Of course it is. That’s the son of Bill Pulsipher!
“Son of Bill Pulsipher!” deserves an exclamation point on multiple levels. Son of a Met? Son of a Met! Top pitching prospect Jack Leiter just made his major league debut for Texas, which was also fun to notice [9]. Met progeny will always get your attention. Al Leiter becoming a big league dad doesn’t seem that surprising. Leiter was a veteran when we came to know him as ours in 1998. He’d been around practically forever. Hell, he was pitching for the Yankees when WFAN was 1050 on your AM dial. Bill Pulsipher, on the other hand, first grabbed our attention when he came up through the Met minors thirty minutes ago.
Correction: thirty years ago! That’s another exclamation point, but not the last. The FAFIF origin story coalesces around the day of Papa Pulse’s own MLB debut, June 17, 1995, an event witnessed at Shea Stadium by those would create this blog ten years later and keep it going for 3,000 consecutive regular-season games, plus 18 in the postseason. Had somebody told Jason and me that our future encompassed the Mets in the playoffs, that alone might have floored us in 1995. Bill’s career didn’t wind up being one of those where you’d figure most who attended his debut would point to it as a big deal, but it was a big deal in its time. Also, look at the long-term impact it had. Liam Pulsipher is pitching professionally and Faith and Fear blogs without pause (even when its mobile edition is on the fritz).
[10]We celebrate this FAFIF3K milestone by reacting to the most recent Mets game and planning to do the same after the next. May that one be a win, too, and may we learn to accept it without wondering what could possibly go wrong. I doubt we will, though. We’re Mets fans who’ve been around a while.