Tuesday night in New York was lovely, cool and not too humid. A few passing thunderstorms growled overhead, offering a spritz of rain before departing and leaving luminous orange and pink clouds in their wake. I spent the evening at the game and had a marvelous time. A friend who couldn’t be there was kind enough to pass along very good seats not far behind third base. Another friend and I spent a thoroughly grand three hours talking about baseball and kids and writing and the weird uniform of the mildly demented Mets fan across the aisle and other things besides. The young woman who sang the national anthem looked nervous but did a bang-up job. The security folks went about their business calmly and efficiently. The blue-uniformed woman providing in-seat food service was pleasant and speedy. The beer was cold and there was plenty of it. Our seatmates were at least 40% Cardinals fans, and they made more than 70% of the noise, but they were pleasant folk, as Cardinals fans tend to be. A little boy behind us practiced his Mets rooting at earsplitting volume, but all around smiled and encouraged him, as that’s exactly what lungs are for at the ballpark. The bathroom lines were short. The automatic towel dispensers worked without a bunch of kabuki gesturing. We left the park and the Super Express bore us speedily back to Brooklyn.
The baseball? I looked up from our conversation now and then and saw a Met heaving a ball over a teammate’s head, or craning his neck to spy a departing home run, or dropping a fly ball, or throwing ball four with the bases loaded. Whatever one of the teams on the field was doing seemed pretty incompetent, but I didn’t let it bother me — and the scattering of Mets rooters in the stands didn’t make much protest either, opting for shrugs of indifference. Which was a good choice: Why waste a nice evening dwelling on things nobody seems able to change?
It’s 12:30 am here in California. This evening I had dinner with my wife (a rare time she fixed something!) I’ve been setting up some ebay auctions for my mom. Watched a movie that came in the mail today. Read the news on the internet. And I just remembered the Mets game. At 12:30am. Five hours after it was over. I missed it. The first game I’ve missed this season.
Well, after going straight to Mets.com to see the nearly predictable outcome, I guess I didn’t really miss anything.
W L PCT GB
79 Mets 26 33 .441 –
13 Mets 23 36 .390 3
BATTING AVG
Jason Bay .226
METS .225
Let’s try this again
………W..L..PCT…GB
79 Mets 26 33 .441 –
13 Mets 23 36 .390 3
BATTING AVG
Jason Bay .226
METS .225
Next you’ll be trying to tell us Ollie has a lower ERA than the Met’s staff.
Nah, Steve. You had it right the first time. Having the “L” over the word Mets was correct.
Now that is taking #DoSomethingElseThisSummer to another level. Well done, sir.
Nice. Seems like you were going for sort of an Andy Griffith thing there in the last paragraph…What it Was Was Baseball.
Based on relative strength of competition that 1979 team faced, I think ’79 Mets would dominate today’s sad sack crew . . . consider that the ’79 Mets had to play a division weighted schedule against this set:
Pittsburgh Pirates 98 64 .605 —
Montreal Expos 95 65 .594 2.0
St. Louis Cardinals 86 76 .531 12.0
Philadelphia Phillies 84 78 .519 14.0
Chicago Cubs 80 82 .494 18.0
New York Mets 63 99 .389 35.0
and the ’79 crew actually fared pretty well against the World Champion “We Are Family” Pirates, going 8-10 . . . and those Buccos could hit a bit
Nice work…I too saw both teams and have a sinking suspicion the 2013 Mets are worse and further away from contending…remember the Mets contended for real in 1984.
They won their last 7-8 games in ’79, otherwise they easily could have been a 105 loss team.
.
1979 2013 Edge
1B Willie Montanez Ike Davis 79
2B Doug Flynn Dan’l Murphy 13
SS Frank Taveras Ruben Tejada 79
3B Richie Hebner David Wright 13
C John Stearns John Buck 79
OF Lee Mazzilli Lucas Duda 79
Elliot Maddox Rotating schmucks
Joel Youngblood Byrd + whomever
SP Craig Swan Harvey Even
Pete Falcone Niese
Kevin Kobel Gee
Dock Ellis Hefner
Tom Hausman Marcum
RP Neil Allen Parnell 79
Jesse Orosco Hawkins
Skip Lockwood Rice
Jeff Reardon Lyon
Dwight Bernard (who?!) Burke
Benches are about even. Can it be that the 1979 Mets were better than this year’s club? I think so.
Well, formatting didn’t exactly work out, but you get the point. 79 is better at 1B, SS, C, OF and Relief. 13 has better 3B and 2B. I think starters are a wash.
Difference is, it cost about $4 to see the ’79 Mets.
Actually, they still sold general admission tickets back then, and those were even less than that. And by about the 3rd inning or so, you could slip an usher a buck or two and sit wherever you wanted. Plenty of good seats…
Harvey over Swannie, Niese over Falcone, “good” Dillon Gee over Kobel (“bad” Gee vs. Kobel = toss-up). Wright & Murphy over Hebner and Flynn. Parnell over any RP (as impressive as those names might appear, none of them did squat as ’79 Mets). Otherwise, if they went head-to-head, my money’s on the 1979 squad.
Isn’t it funny, I had the same thought – the ’79 pen was LOADED! Not that they really amounted to anything.
Am I missing something? Skip Lockwood had a 1.49 ERA, Reardon 1.74 in a few innings albeit, Hausman 2.75, Glynn 3.00, a young Neil Allen 3.55. How is the current bullpen better?
http://www.hagenspan.com/NYMHall/seasons/1979.html
I preferred the ’79 vintage myself.
This is the way it’s gonna be for awhile. Might as well just enjoy life and let the Mets do whatever it is they do. But yes this is 1979– maybe even 1978, with the worst yet to come– all over again. Maybe the Yankees go all the way and reduce our team and its TV network to an utter afterthought in this town. Maybe the monetary black hole finally forces the Wilpons to sell (to whom is another question, who wants all that debt?).
I’ve been a fans since 1962, I’ve been through all the bad seasons. At some point, you step back, detach emotionally, and hope it gets a little better in the future.
Hey, if Zack Wheeler is any good, that means you can watch two games out of every five instead of just one.
“Super Express” to Brooklyn? Is this the bus? You mine telling me which bus/route? I actually never considered taking the bus
See, all the things you described could be enjoyed at someone’s backyard barbecue, without having to shell out over a hundred bucks, without having to commute, and without the annoyingly inept ballplayers on the field to distract you.
And I think many of the fans have figured that out.
Hi Jason,
Too bad you were in the stands and did not catch the conversations between Gary, Keith and Ron in the broadcast booth.
The first dealt with the Mets being honest with the fans and admit the team is rebuilding rather than saying they are
also looking to win now – and to admit to the fans that it is going to take a number of years and that we should not expect too much for the immediate future.
Sounds fine except this is three years under Sandy and they were talking about not having the bats in the system NOW and depending upon on draft picks to resolve it – then it is at least another four years or so which will make this a seven year cycle or something in that area since Sandy came on board.
They said even though Sandy might have $50 million to spend next season it would be unreasonable to start spending it now
on veteran players since they will be
toward the end of their careers when the youth start to nurture.
If that is the unfortunate truth, there was also no mention of a very inconvenient truth – that we could have remained competitive for the now while building up the farm system for the future which was not just two or three years away as originally told. The players he inherited carried the 2011 and 2012 squads for the first half without the help of any players Sandy acquired.
And now we know they were not standing in the way of other young talent waiting in the wings – there was none. And of course, we could have attempted to obtain the missing ingredients without sacrificing our young pitching prospects – after all, look who Milwaukee and St. Louis gave up for acquiring the rentals KRod and McGwire – from Sandy, of course.
Then there was another point about hitting – and this I was surprised
about because it was indirectly critical of Sandy Alderson and Dave Hudgens.
They pointed to St. Louis being aggressive, putting the ball in
play, not looking for a walk but to drive in runs, not laying off the first pitch but going after it, that the first strike they see might be the best one they will get to hit (LaRussa and Francona?).
It was cited how St. Louis is a high scoring club not concerned with OBP since they take very few walks – they step up to the plate to hit and that aggressive hitting always puts more pressure
on a pitcher than getting into more 3-1 counts instead and that George Brett is now a hitting instructor for KC and told his players to forget about working the count but simply go after pitches they think they could hit.
They said the hitters should stop looking at the computers and start looking at the pitchers (like Ted Williams?).
It was also mentioned on Sunday that putting the ball in play causes things to happen, not taking pitches and increasing
strikeouts in the process. There are seeing eye base hits along with errors, misplays and split second indecisions in the fieldthat increases the opportunities of putting runner on base than working the count.
GK&R were not referring to the Mets or St.Louis – they were talking about what the proper approach of hitting should resemble and openly critical of this organization’s statistical approach to hitting and OBP.
Wednesday in New York – Carlos Beltran gets a sustained, warm welcome from the small crowd that is there. Wonder if 40 percent of the crowd are Cardinal fans again this evening.
What am I going to watch when the Stanley Cup is over? Still a long way til preseason NFL?
Of note, the 20,000 avid high paying Blackhawk fans were nonexistent 6 years ago. Only one theatre showed live road games, as the team had no tv coverage. So maybe in 6 years, SheaDeux will rock.