Mets Mix: Opening Day Ceremony Stirs Emotions and Memories of Carter

Article first published as Mets Mix: Opening Day Ceremony Stirs Emotions and Memories of Carter on Blogcritics.

Okay, let's get it out of the way: the Mets are 1-0, tied for first place. They beat the Atlanta Braves before an almost capacity crowd at Citi Field. In the spring sunshine you can't blame the hope springing eternal in the minds of Mets fans, holding their collective breaths to see if Johan Santana could pitch again. Pitch he did - five scoreless innings- and there was a feeling like all was possible, even if it was only for just one day.


There is something about returning to the park on Opening Day, kind of like the first day of school with the smell of newly sharpened pencils, the new clean notebooks, and the bright clothes for another year. There is the smell of spring, the freshly cut grass, the odor of hot dogs, the crunch of the Crackerjacks, and the soda that tastes better than the stuff from a can. There is the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, and the feeling that you're home again, sitting in that blue seat in an ocean of orange and blue shirts cheering for the team you love. What could be better than that?

Before the game there was the usual pomp and circumstance befitting Opening Day. Everyone looked good in new uniforms, and young and old Mets were on hand for the occasion and to honor Gary Carter. There was a feeling that the Kid was there, hovering over the stadium as a presence almost as powerful as his smile once had been in the clubhouse so long ago.

The Mets wore Carter's Number 8 on their batting practice jerseys as a tribute to Carter, and then would wear the black home plate "Kid 8" icon that they will wear on their right sleeve all season. Current Mets "kids" like Lucas Duda, Dillon Gee, Justin Turner, and Josh Thole may not have ever played with Carter (or were even born before that great 1986 season), but they all know how much Carter meant here and they honored him as much as guys like Ron Darling, Keith Hernandez, and Bobby Ojeda who played with him.


It was hard to keep a dry eye when Carter's family stood in the outfield against the wall when the tribute in center field was revealed. That home plate icon will be there where it should be, reminding everyone of the true "center" of that 1986 team, the guy who kept things together when they could easily have fallen apart. It was a fitting tribute to a great guy, and the Mets and their fans showed the reverence that was deserved on this day.

So in the spring sunshine we Mets fans had our day. Despite predictions of the team losing 100 games this year and being abysmal to watch, this day proved that there is hope. Santana threw those five innings, David Wright knocked in the only run, and fans had something to cheer about. Carter was honored and the fans went home happy. There's a long season ahead, but Mets fans are smiling today and they have a right to enjoy it. It was a great day to be a Mets fan.

Photo Credits - Daily News

2010 Mets Are a Pain in the Grass

Okay, I should have posted this column before the start of the season, but I wanted to wait until the first Mets loss before I did. In truth, the loss against the Marlins only makes the Mets 1-1 on the season, but the obvious reality is staring us in the face: there will be many more losses than wins this season. The oft-injured Metsies are once again a pain in the grass.

As a lifelong Mets fan, I take no pleasure in stating what is true here. I would have loved to write about our great winter acquisitions of John Lackey, Benji Molina, and Orlando Hudson. Alas, I can say we have Jason Bay, but that’s like saying the Titanic had waterproof doors. I think Bay is a tremendous asset, and a real improvement over the likes of past leftfielders George Foster or Stork Theodore, but he can’t get the job done alone.

When I see an opening day lineup featuring Met retread Mike Jacobs as the cleanup hitter, I start thinking fondly of the days when “slugger” Marvelous Marv Throneberry was in that spot for the Mets. How can the management of this team believe this is an equitable way to treat the fans: the ones who have to plunk down mucho dinero to get seats in the house that Citibank built?

All of this started last year: 2009 was the first year of pain in the grass at Citi Field. One by one like blue and orange dominoes, our Metsies fell onto the disabled list. Our wounded boys of summer included Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, and Johan Santana. David Wright, who was hurt but valiantly played that way, had no help in the lineup, giving him as much protection as an acne-scarred teenager on a blind date with the head cheerleader.

We all suffered through the dubious explanations of what happened in 2009. We listened to the comic relief of skipper Jerry Manuel in his press conferences, holding his disabled list and walking and talking like Hamlet going across the stage with the skull of Yorick the fool. No matter how much goodwill Jerry managed to establish, the aftertaste of 2009 eventually resonated with fans like a greasy burger and a glass of curdled milk.

Everyone wanted to get past last year. We had the beautiful new stadium to think about. All the excitement generated by the dedication of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda helped matters a bit, but one couldn’t stop from gazing at the hallowed ground where the simply wonderful but ugly Shea Stadium once stood and thinking, man, those were the days. Can you imagine actually feeling nostalgic for Shea Stadium after all the horrible seasons there? That is what the 2009 Mets did to us.

Along comes 2010 and we Mets fans have been waiting for the year that should have been last year. We hear the good news about Jason Bay, but we keep wondering when they’re going to pull the strings and get some more help. We need a starting pitcher, we need a second baseman, we need a first baseman, and we need some arms in the pen. As we were waiting for this good news, Carlos Beltran goes down as the first casualty of 2010. Carlos is hurt again? Kids were wandering around Flushing muttering, “Say it ain’t so, Carlos!” Can you imagine kids wandering around a place called “Flushing” saying anything else?

Along the way to spring training we got pictures of Jose Reyes running bases and looking good, and then the next thing we know he is being shut down because of an undisclosed illness. Another guy on the DL? It’s only March. We learn about his thyroid problems and start longing for the days when Chico Escuela was telling the world how "berry" good baseball had been to him. Damn, we would even take good old Felix Millan back if we could get him in a trade for Luis Castillo.

In silence Mets fans suffer as the Yankees management always adds this and that to the pot, like chefs who find the right ingredients to make the stew delicious. No matter how much I hate the Yankess (and it grows more intense with the passing of each season), I do have to give them credit for going out and getting talent. The problem is how they treat that same talent when they’re done with them. Just ask Bernie Williams and Johnny Damon how it feels. Or even better yet, ask Joe Torre. He knows how it feels to be kicked in his former Yankee butt.

But I digress, because the problem here is the 2010 Mets. We just have to face reality, Mets fans. I am going to predict a very stark reality for you: we will be lucky if we get a record of 72-90. I don’t know if we can even expect that much. Hey, I’m being honest as I can be.

What can we expect of the 2010 team. Oliver Perez will melt down faster than a candle in a furnace. John Maine will probably win 10-12 if he can get his head on straight. Pelfrey wins 9 or 10 games if he’s lucky, and while Niese is nice, I don’t think we can expect more than 9 or 10 wins from him either. That leaves poor Johan, who is probably thinking I should have signed with the Nationals and would have had a better shot at winning. If Johan stays healthy, his record will be something like 14-10.

As for the everyday guys, I like Franceour and Bay and Wright. They will get their numbers, but not anywhere near what they would get if they were playing somewhere else. Besides, if you have been to Citi Field, the ball goes up and then it dies up there in some kind of stagnant air that comes in off Flushing Bay. Wright hits 20 homers if he is lucky; Bay gets to 25, and Franceour maybe hits 15. If the team gets 100 homers this year, we’ll give them the old Ed Kranepool trophy for power hitting. By the way, I always loved sweet old Ed. I wonder if he is still available to play first base?

I hope I am wrong, Mets fans, but I don’t think so. If Santana could pitch on two days rest, maybe we’d have a chance. Right now I am thinking the worst, and I wish it could be otherwise. I will still wear my orange and blue because those are my team colors, and I will accept the losing because our Mets were born from losing. As the great Casey Stengel used to say, “You can look it up.” Of course, you can. One thing I can tell you is that we won’t lose 120 games this year. Of that I am certain, but we will get to around 90 losses and that means 2010 will be another real pain in the grass at Citi Field.

2009 METS: BACK TO THE FUTURE

I am writing this book about being a Mets fan, and this is not for the average baseball lover but mostly for the true Mets fan: the real, honest to goodness bleeding orange and blue fan. I have been one of them all my life, and there are many of us out there. The book touches upon the big years of 1969, 1973, and 1986, but they are really years that are only part of the bigger picture. For the most part, being a Met and being a fan of the Mets is about losing, and the happiness that went along with just rooting for the home team and loving them, no matter what the final score and how bad the team looked in the standings.

I know there are other fans in other cities who understand this kind of thing: Cubs fans in Chicago and Red Sox fans in Boston (at least before the Sox turned it all around in recent years). Losing and continually losing becomes part of the fan psyche, and the idea is that you wear the colors proudly, almost defiantly, in order to honor the team and your own emotional investment in it, despite the fact that the basement becomes an almost permanent living arrangement.

The great New York Daily News sports cartoonist Bill Gallo created a character to honor the Metsies: Basement Bertha. Good old Bertha is as ugly as Ernie Borginine and has teeth like an old pirate, but she also captured the spirit of the good old orange and blue in such a way that she was, and still is, an endearing character. No such character could be created for the Yankees and their fans because they didn’t need a rough and tumble mascot like the Mets did.

I can remember wearing my Mets hat as a kid and having people say things about them to me. “They’re a bunch of bums,” was a usual one. “They’re meatballs” said the old fat Italian guy with a Yankees cap who always sat on his stoop across from the corner deli when I was going to get my Mom a quart of milk. I just would wave at him and say, “Have a nice day,” tipping the old blue cap with the bent orange NY emblem on it.

When I told my father about these things, he said I shouldn’t let it bother me. Though Dad had grown up a Yankee fan, he switched allegiance for me as a kid, which is about the nicest thing a Dad could ever do. I can tell you one thing, if my son ever grows up and becomes a Yankee fan, I don’t think I would have the same benevolence. The truth is though that being a Met fan means having gone through more twists and turns than Mr. Pretzel, and in the end you just can’t shed that orange and blue like it didn’t mean the world to you, because it did and always will.

My mother’s father was a diehard Brooklyn Dodgers fan. He intimately understood a team being called a bunch of bums because that was the Dodgers’ nickname: “Dem Bums.” Pop talked a lot about going to Ebbets Field to see the Dodgers, taking my mother and her sisters with him and his brother Matty. Sometimes they got in, and sometimes the kids had to watch the game through a knothole in the fence. They had a name for those kids: the Knothole Gang. Ah, those were the days.

So the allegiance to the Mets, fierce, determined, and unwavering despite their losing ways, was born out of Dodger suffering. We borrowed the Dodger blue and the NY Giants orange after they left for California, and those colors were then imbued upon new hats and uniforms, and soaked into the blood of every fan who switched allegiance if, for no other reason, as to have a team to root for that was not the Yankees.

As a kid I watched the games and never expected a victory, so imagine my surprise in 1969 when the Mets became the Amazins. There can never be a fully understood response to this unbelievable victory other than emotional euphoria that bordered on hysteria. People honked horns in the streets, banged pots and pans, screamed from rooftops, set off fireworks in alleyways, and set fires in garbage cans. My grandfather noted that the revelry reminded him of when the Dodgers won in 1955, and that was even more delirious because the Dodgers had beaten the hated Yankees, which was better than when he and lots of other guys beat the Kaiser in World War One.

All of this, of course, brings us to present day Met fans and their grief and misery and still unbridled happiness. Currently, no one on the Mets has ten or more homeruns, which does indeed remind me of the glory days when Ed Kranepool led the team with 9 homers (and we thought that was a lot back then). They are making errors in the field, dropping balls, misplaying balls, and throwing them like your five year old sister tossing a softball against the fence. Yes, the old Mets are back and I’m loving every minute of it.

Of course, that is because of nostalgia and a new stadium that is conspicuously like old Ebbets Field. There is a smell in the air of days of old, and the malingering notion of pennant or wild card does not even register because you’re going out to the old ball game, you’re getting your Cracker Jacks, and rooting for the home team. Sure, it’s a shame if they don’t win, but that is not what matters anyway. We’re Mets fans, born from losing, and they may be bums and meatballs, but they are our bums and meatballs, and we love them.

So, I put out of my mind the way Omar Minaya has messed things up for the Wilpons. I forget about that huge payroll, about the minor league system that is in disarray, and the wounded warriors that have left the field and are plagued by mysterious injuries and maladies that would drive old Sherlock Homes batty trying to investigate them.

There is no rhyme or reason for the 2009 Mets, but we old Mets fans never had it so good. No matter how many years spent in the basement, no matter how many times the guys across the river win the big one, we still know how to have fun and enjoy being the blue collar team in town. The Mets are always the underdogs, as are their fans, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We can celebrate years like 1969 and 1986, but we can also cherish the many years of bumbling and losing in between, being true fans and not summertime Benedict Arnolds becoming fair weather Yankees fans.

The 2009 Mets are reminding me of the good old days almost in every game these days. It’s really just like the old Mets theme song put it: “Bring the kiddies/bring your wife/guaranteed to have the time of your life.” So, drop that ball, Luis Castillo; throw that ball away, David Wright; throw those lollipops to the opposition, Mike Pelfrey. It’s all okay. Good old Casey Stengel is looking down on you, and he still loves you. Basement Bertha does too, and so do a whole lot of fans who remember that the old ball game is more about having heart and loving your team than about anything else.