The Mets March Toward Medicority

I’ve kind of fallen out of the blogosphere recently, but I’ve been planning to jot down my thoughts about the Mets this year. I’d meant to do this as a pre-season exercise, but never got around to it, so now I get to do it knowing that the Mets won’t have Bobby Parnell all season. Despite that, I do think the Mets will be incrementally better this year and, absent a disaster, they should win in the neighborhood of 80 games. But they are a lot more likely to win 70 than win 90 and, at some point, you have to actually win enough games that people take you seriously as a team, rather than just waiting for next year. You would think that GM Sandy Alderson would be feeling the pressure at this point (which may explain his “90 win goal” comment).

But if you are going to be mediocre, the Mets are certainly in the right division. This is definitely not a great group of teams and the Nationals should win it easily. The Phillies are old, bad and getting worse. If they start off slowly and decide sell off Cliff Lee and their good old players (and there are fewer of those than you’d think), they might really stink this year.  In any event, they are headed into a serious down period that should last for years. The Mariners are the reverse sort of team. They have young talent (probably too young for this year), especially pitchers, but a miserable lineup and the Mets should beat them for third. The Braves are certainly more talented than the Mets, but they have had terrible injuries to their pitching and have big holes in their lineup. It isn’t hard imagining a big slip back toward .500, so it is possible that a mediocre Mets team could actually be fighting for second place (but not a playoff spot absent a series of miracles) at season’s end. The problem is that if you are a mediocre second or third place team, you are still just mediocre. I have to admit that I’m getting impatient and I’d like to see a meaningful September game, something that hasn’t happened in Citifield for so long that I’m not sure that there has ever been one in September at the now not-so-new ballpark.

Are the Mets broke? There has been endless speculation about this. The Mets apparently owe a lot of money to the banks and some wonder if the banks are preventing the Mets from spending. It would be an odd, counterproductive bank policy, since the Mets really need to spend some money to improve their team and more attract fans, allowing them to make more money to pay off their creditors. On the other hand, banks do lots of stupid things and often seem like they have never heard of economics. So is lack of money why didn’t the Mets make a big splash in free agency this past off season? I think another way of looking at it is that the Mets and Sandy Alderson just have different view of the market for baseball talent:

There is no question that the market has changed in a number of ways. (1) Almost all teams manipulate their prospect’s playing time and then sign the good ones to extensions, so that the really good players don’t reach free agency until their early 30s or later, when the are starting on the downslope of their careers. (2) While baseball players in the PED Era had suspiciously long careers playing at high levels, it would be fair to wonder whether contracts paying large sums for a player’s age 37-40 seasons is a smart thing if player decline is going to return to pre-PED levels. (3) The few superstar free agents command long, stupid contracts and while it is possible to plan to for some dead money at the end of one of these contracts for a great player who will put you over the top (I’m looking at your Robinson Cano), you can’t do it often (unless you are the Yankees). (4) Free agent pitchers (especially starters) get big contracts and are likely to get hurt, making contracts beyond 2-3 years incredibly risky (and making young pitchers so valuable). (5) Finally, the rules that teams like the Red Sox, Rays and As exploited in the past to accumulate draft picks, throw money at draft picks and international prospects, etc. have been eliminated. It is now more important than ever to be smart and to develop your own talent.

So if you are Sandy Alderson and you believe something like this, you probably do just what he did this off season. Even with lots of money coming off the books, the Mets avoided bidding on the superstars who would help in the short run but arguably cripple their payroll down the road. They took a chance on Curtis Granderson, whose value was depressed somewhat by two freak injuries he suffered last year and signed him to a contract that should end before his major decline occurs. The signed Bartolo Colon for two years at a relatively reasonable rate, so they can capitalize on his upside if he continues to pitch well and are not wiped out if he falls apart. They did some dumpster-diving with Chris Young and Jose Velvarde, hoping to get lucky. They continued to carefully develop their young pitching. The looked at Steven Drew and decided that $30 million and a draft choice wasn’t worth it for a shortstop who is likely to decline and would really only be worth an additional win or two, and less if Reuben Tejada remembers how to play baseball like he did in 2012. However, in light of the injury to Parnell, it is even clearer than it was at the time that the Mets should have signed a second-tier closer like Grant Balfour and otherwise upgraded their bullpen, and if you want to criticize Alderson for not spending money on free agents, that is your best argument.

Can You Ever Have Too Much Starting Pitching? There is no question that starting pitching is the strength of this team. Zach Wheeler will at least be good and might be great. Bartolo Colon was an inspired signing to replace Matt Harvey’s innings this year and is possible trade bait this summer if all of the young pitchers develop or everything collapses. Dillon Gee is a solid end-of-the-rotation innings eater that most teams would love to have. It is a little hard to say what Jonathan Niese really is (other than left-handed), but he should at least be decent. I thought that Matsuzaka was going to be the fifth starter and place-holder and was surprised (like most people) when the Mets chose Jenry Mejia, who looks like he could be very good, if his arm holds up. Dice-K (currently in AAA) will probably make an appearance when the inevitable pitcher injury happens. John Lannan would probably be in the rotation for a bad team, but he is the bullpen. Of course, in addition to all of this, the Mets have tons of pitching talent at various levels in the minor leagues. Young pitching is a pretty volatile commodity, so a good percentage of those guys will get hurt and/or burn out, but as they get closer to the major leagues, it becomes more reasonable to dream on them. Noah Syndegaard looks like the real deal as does Rafael Montero and they are in AAA with some guy named Jacob deGrom (the Mets will set a record for small d’s on uniforms if they call up him and CF Matt den Dekker to go with d’Arnaud). They could all pitch for the Mets this year. (Montero would already be pitching for many teams.) There are apparently more arms in the lower levels of the minors.  And of course, next year, Matt Harvey will will return, along with Jeremy Hefner (who last year apparently had made a Faustian pact and was pitching shockingly well, when the devil showed up and took his elbow back). So the Mets have lots of starting pitching in the majors and on the way. The question is what do you do with it all? It’s one thing have Dice-K or Lannan around as insurance policies in case of injury, but young. talented guys have to pitch and, if they are ready to pitch in the majors, as it seems a number of them are or will be this year, it makes little sense to have them rotting in Las Vegas, although that does delay their paydays. They could bring up pitchers and stick them in their bullpen, which could certainly use the help, or they could make some trades to strengthen one of their many other weaknesses. Either way, the Mets have reached the point where they are going to have to make some decisions this year about who stays and who goes, and about who is a starter and who is a reliever, that will determine, not just their success this year, but in years to come. Starting pitching is valuable and young starters are like gold. If you analyze your talent correctly you can  look very smart, but if you don’t you can look terrible. You can trade a young Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi or you can use Floyd Youmans to help you get Gary Carter or trade Neil Allen for Keith Hernandez. This is what to watch over the next year.

What about the Offense?: It was pretty pathetic last year and, despite the addition of Curtis Granderson, who really just replaces Marlon Byrd’s good production from last year, it is hard to see it being much better. The Mets problem is that seem to only develop players like Daniel Murphy or Lucas Duda. They seem like pretty good hitters, but they don’t hit well enough to play at a position like first, where you must be a very good hitter, or field well enough to play a position up the middle, where their hitting skills would look good. Imagine a guy who hits .250 with 15 home runs and draws a decent number of walks. If he is your second baseman or shortstop (and can actually field well, unlike Murphy), you are happy. If he is your first baseman, say hello to Lucas Duda. Wilmer Flores was supposed to be the answer, a hard-hitting shortstop. There is no question that he is their best hitting prospect, but as he got older, he got bigger and slower and is really the second coming of Daniel Murphy. Like Murphy, he should probably play third, but cannot on this team and has never played in the outfield. The Mets have to figure out what to do with him, because he can actually hit.

Ike vs. Duda? It’s a good back page story, but the real question is why the Mets don’t have a good first baseman. What looked like a strength when Ike Davis was hitting in the second half of 2012 has turned into a black hole. And Lucas Duda is just mediocre. Big and strong, Duda looks like he should hit but he doesn’t really, and he can’t run and he can’t field. He is barely good enough to be in the major leagues and would be a bench player, at best, for any decent team. Ike Davis teased me into thinking he might be a good player, or at least a low batting average, power hitting, good fielding first baseman, kind of like Carlos Pena. But he is too inconsistent, doesn’t drawn enough walks to support his low average and doesn’t seem to have the ability to make adjustments. Maybe Wilmer Flores should be the next first baseman, since the idea of playing him at shortstop on a team built around pitching is ludicrous. I suppose we can just pray that Ike or Duda have fluke good year. The Mets seem to value these guys more than anyone else, so we are probably stuck with at least one (or both) them for at least this year.

Will the Bullpen Ruin the Season?  It would be nice if the Mets’ starters all pitch seven or eight innings every game, but that just isn’t going to happen in modern Baseball. The Mets bullpen looks like a major area of weakness. I know that bullpen construction is mostly about luck and small sample size, but Alderson has not shown any aptitude for creating luck in this area (or creating his own luck by collecting hard throwers and seeing who works out). The gamble that Parnell would recover from his neck surgery failed. Valverde does not inspire confidence. There is not much out there but relievers recovering from surgery and I’d guess they’ll probably sign a guy like Hanrahan, who might help this summer. But the real answer is going to have to come from identifying one or two of the hard throwing prospects now in the minors and stick them in the pen, at least for this year. Who knows if they will do this. I suppose their is a risk that becoming a reliever could screw them up (See Chamberlin, Joba), but it always seemed to work for Earl Weaver.

Things to Look Forward To: (1) I’ve come to really appreciate what a great, professional ballplayer David Wright is. He may not be a Hall of Fame talent, but he is close and he is just fun to watch. (2) Watching Juan Lagares play center field. He really is special. I was afraid that the Mets might actually play Eric Young Jr. (a really useful, but limited bench type) in his place, but Lagares has started well enough that it probably won’t happen. (3) The development of Zach Wheeler, Jenry Mejia, and eventually Noah Syndegaard, Rafael Montero and the other young Met pitchers. (4) A summer listening to the Mets remarkably wonderful TV announcers.

Things to worry about: (1) Any serious injury to David Wright or Granderson would be crippling and they would not recover. Without one of them, their offense would be terrible, Without both, they might never score a run. (2) The bullpen turns out to be so putrid that it drags the team down the gurgler.(3) Travis D’Arnaud turns out to be complete bust and by mid-June, he is hitting under .200. I don’t think this isn’t too likely, but the alternate, more possible nightmare is that he gets hurt. The Mets really don’t have another option at catcher. (4) The Mets have a long losing streak early in the year and decide to trade Colon, etc. to build for the future and the season spirals down to a fight to win 70. (5) They trade Ike Davis for a bag of baseballs (there is no way that they can get much for him) and he hits 35 homers somewhere.

Let’s Go Mets!

The Agony of a Mets Fan

Matt Harvey. Tommy John Surgery. It is almost too much to bear. It has always been pretty hard being a Mets fan and that has been especially true for the last four or five years of wandering in the wilderness, tormented by the ghost of Bernie Madoff and the lingering effects of the Omar Minaya regime. But Matt Harvey was not just a reason to turn on a Met game this year, he was a beacon of hope that the Mets have a future as an interesting playoff-worthy team in the years ahead. This latest disaster was like a slap in the face by the baseball gods, saying “Foolish Mets’ fans. You are not allowed to dream.”

I understand that pitchers get hurt and that something like one-third of all major league pitcher have had Tommy John surgery. I know that Matt Harvey is likely to be back in 2015, basically as good as ever. I know that two other Mets pitchers are also looking at surgery. (Of course, Jeremy Hefner is only comparable to Harvey in the fact that he is a human being and is right-handed. And Mejia is just getting bone spurs out and will probably be OK by the spring.) And I get why the Mets have compounded the Harvey pain by trading Marlon Byrd and John Buck to the Pirates (probably for not much), although it will make the Mets increasingly hard to watch over the final month. (Byrd and Buck both have contracts that expire at the end of the year and are older players that will not help the Mets when they finally become competitive.) I understand that the Mets really do have a lot of young pitchers and that some of them will step up next year to replace Harvey and make the Mets better in the long run. But I’ve been thinking about the Mets “in the long run” for a long time and it was nice think about them being a good, young contending team on the rise as the old, expensive, broken-down Yankees begin their fall. Harvey’s injury takes that away from me.

The thing is that these sorts of devastating things seem to happen to the Mets. I’m talking about Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, two players on the cusp of certain Hall-of-Fame careers who were expected to lead the  Mets to a dynasty, both felled by drugs. Or Robbie Alomar, a Hall-of-Fame talent somehow obtained by the Mets and immediately inhabited by the evil ghost of Doug Flynn. And the trade of Tom Seaver for a whole lot of nothing (including Doug Flynn). The serial breakdowns of Joahnn Santana, often after transcendent moments of greatness. The destruction by Dallas Green of the three young pitchers who were going to lead the Mets’ resurrection in the 90s. The epic collapses of 2007 and 2008. Maybe this kind of stuff always happens to every team. Can’t-miss prospects that miss (from Ed Kranepool to Lee Mazzili to Greg Jeffries to Francisco Martinez) to deals that backfire (from the instant aging of Carlos Baerga, to Lenny Dykstra for Juan Samuel to the early disasters involving Amos Otis and Nolan Ryan to the signings of Jason Bay and George Foster). Maybe that is the definition of being a fan of a team. When it happens to your team, it is a disaster and a curse. When it happens to another team, it is tough luck. I suppose that is the rational way to look at Matt Harvey. Maybe I’ll get there some day. But not today.

The Unavoidable Disappointment of Tom Durnin

Once or twice a season, the Roundabout produces a new play instead of the usual revivals, usually at the Laura Pels Theater. This week we saw “The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin” by Steven Levenson. It is a play that seems to be based on the idea of what would happen if a Bernie Madoff sort of character got out of jail and wanted to reconnect with a family whose lives have been destroyed by his actions. It’s a good idea and it was executed pretty well.

The play is essentially an exploration of the relationship between the father and son. The father, played by David Morse, who has been in countless television series and movies, is an initially somewhat sympathetic figure who becomes darker and more threatening as the play progresses. Morse plays this part very well, allowing Tom Durnings underlying anger and sleaze to emerge gradually. The son, Jamie, played by Christopher Denham, is a confused mess of a person, whose life collapsed with his father’s arrest. He is ineffectually trying to put his life back together when his father reappears in his life and talks his way into staying with him. Jamie is taking a creative writing class at the Community College (he had to drop out of Yale when they lost all their money), where he meets a girl, Katie, who seems like she might be able to help him cope and get it back together. Sarah Goldberg is wonderful as the spaced-out Katie, but the budding relationship collapses when she learns that this potential beau comes with lots and lots of baggage. There are two other characters–Tom’s wife, who is a pretty one-dimensional character in her overwhelming anger about what happened to her, and Tom’s son-in-law, a partner at Tom’s old law firm. It is the scenes with the son-in-law, trying to get back in to the firm, that really reveal Tom’s depravity.

All in all, it was a good cast and a well acted show. The concept for the play is a good one and you’d have to say that this is a promising new playwright. But the play itself is ultimately not completely satisfying. It was a play that had interesting moments and some interesting characters, but seemed to be missing a dramatic arc. I was sitting there trying to figure out what the play was about. For example, it might have been about the gradual slide of Tom Durnin to some pointed conclusion (as the name sort of implies), but it ends with him quietly leaving. It might have been about Jamie finding himself, either through a developing relationship with Katie or some sort of O’Neill-like confrontation with his father. But the relationship with Katie seems doomed by all of his problems and the confrontation, when it finally occurs, is too tepid to be satisfying. In a way, that is the nature of the main character of Jamie, who is broken and having difficulty functioning in the world. Since he is tentative and unable to really deal with things, the play has that same feeling. I suppose the end of the play is meant to show that he has reached some sort of inner understanding about his father, but the whole thing seems more like a three week slice of life that doesn’t really have an ending. I guess, in a sense, that is more “real”, but it doesn’t make fora neat dramatic evening.

It was worth seeing and you have the feeling that this guy is eventually going to write a really great play. But this wasn’t quite it.

The Great Ball Park Road Trip

As a sixtieth birthday present, my son Alex suggested that we take baseball road trip together. We just got back. The itinerary was New York (Mets), Baltimore, Bowie (AA baseball), Washington DC, Pittsburgh, Hagerstown (A baseball), and Philadelphia. It was a lot of fun if a bit exhausting (and too much beer and fattening food). Some highlights (and they are not all about baseball):

The Games: The first five games were exciting and featured two walk-off home runs. The first, a Mets against the Royals, ended in the 12th inning on a home run by Eric Young Jr. (of all players), a great way to start the trip. (But a costly win for my beloved Metsies, who lost David Wright to a popped hamstring for up to a month!) Later in the trip, the Pirates capped a comeback against a pretty miserable Miami Marlins team with a pinch-hit, 9th inning home run by Josh Harrison (of all players). That game also featured an incredible performance by Andrew McCutchen, who showed that he can do it all, as he beat out a hit, smashed two-run double and had a run-saving catch. Earlier in the trip, the Orioles managed to lose to a Mariners team that did everything they could to hand them the game, including making several base-running blunders that would be shocking in a high school game. Two nights later, the Braves played good enough to beat a really moribund Nationals team (on an 8th inning home run by Justin Upton). The Brave solidified their hold on first place with the win and the Nationals wasted a good effort by Steven Strasburg. The Nationals look dead (and played that way). The Mets might catch them for second, which would be a disgrace with the disparity in talent. The final major league game we saw was a 12-1 blowout, as the Phillies (who have been in free fall since the All-Star break) walked all over the Cubs on a really hot and humid Thursday afternoon. Sloppy fielding sped the Cubs demise. They looked like they just wanted to get out of town once they fell way behind in the fourth. I’ll talk about the minor league games later.

The Stadiums: All the games we saw were in the new generation of stadiums that began with Camden Yards in Baltimore. My two favorites were Camden Yards and PNC Park in Pittsburgh, with a slight edge to Pittsburgh, which is really an updated version of the original in Baltimore. Both Stadiums are in their cities and we could walk to both from where we stayed. That is so much nicer than a stadium as an island in the middle of parking lots and highways (the big drawback of both Citifield and the Phillies’ stadiums). PNC Park is a across the river from downtown Pittsburgh, which you can see over the outfield wall, along with the Roberto Clemente Bridge that many fans walk over to reach the game. It is set on the river and has its own river walk behind the bleachers where you can buy food and sit at picnic tables and otherwise take in the view. This is clearly based on Camden Yards, where Eutaw Street is closed between the stadium and the Camden Yards Warehouse, forming a ballpark area where you can shop and go to bars in the bottom of the warehouse, buy food and team stuff and picnic at tables that are everywhere. A key to both designs is that the playing field below grade, so that you can walk directly in to everything and then either down or up to your seats. This makes it easy to expand the concourses and create picnic areas, etc. (I am guessing that it was impossible to have the field lower than ground level at Citifield for some reason, which mean that most things are up a level, diminishing the possibilities for extra amenities. The Phillies’ stadium is very much like Citifield. Interesting food choices, comfortable, lots of nice amenities. It really is a modern version of the old Walter O’Malley vs. Robert Moses fight that sent the Dodgers west. Do you build your new ballpark in a neighborhood, where fans can walk to games and take mass transit (O’Malley) or do you build it so that it is accessible by lots of cars? Moses won that fight, but the other model seems to be in ascendancy. The Washington Nationals’ stadium is the newest of the ones we visited and, while it was perfectly nice, it was our least favorite. It is on the outskirts of DC and, while there is some development going on, it still feels like you are nowhere. It may have been that I was put off by the awful videos, screeching announcers and a general refusal to provide much actual baseball information on all of the scoreboards. It just felt big and impersonal. (In contrast, the Pirates did their videos great. Their lineup introduction was a takeoff on the beginning of Saturday Night Live, using iconic scenes of Pittsburgh, which sent the clear message “we are a cool team playing in a hip city”.) See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDKYaIwequ8.

Ballpark food: This is something that new stadiums have improved upon. It is one area that I think Citifield wins out, for sheer variety of offerings. In Baltimore, we were tempted by Boog’s Barbecue (which is the classic spot there and operated by Boog Powell) but went for a crab cake sandwich (quite good) and a softshell crab sandwich (too greasy) and later tried the Korean tacos (good kimchee topping, but greasy). “Natty Bo” (National Bohemiam) is the standard beer in Baltimore (Bud like) and has a cute logo. We got to the Nationals park so early (you can get there very quickly by Metro) that much of the Stadium food offerings, including the Danny Meyer spots like Shake Shack, weren’t open yet. So we ended up eating at a nice outdoor bar in centerfield while batting practice was going on. It was pretty easy to get into and you didn’t need a special ticket and the food was good. We were eating our pizza and a one of the Braves hit the table next to ours with an impressive blast, nearly killing one of us. Other than that, walking around, the food there didn’t seem all that compelling. In Pittsburgh, we had pierogis (great) and later had chicken wings. We thought about Manny’s (Sanguillen) Barbecue, but the line was enormous. One of the specials there is a barbecue sandwich with pierogies on top. There were also lots of sausage spots. There is also a famous sandwich which is something like hamburger with french fries and a salad on a roll. We didn’t have the stomach to try it. In Phildelphia, we had cheese steaks, whiz with (which I learned means with cheese whiz and onions). There were a number of other good food offerings (the fried chicken got good reviews and I was curious about the “Schmitter”, a classic Philly steak sandwich with salami and cheese) and I might have tried something else, but it was so hot that it was hard to eat or move (at least until the rainstorm arrived).

Favorite Museum: Not an easy choice since we spent a day wandering around the Smithsonian and the Baltimore Museum is pretty nice, but the American Visionary Art Museum in the Federal Hill section of Baltimore was amazing. It is a museum for artists without formal training and they are often obsessives or complete nut jobs. It is not like a museum you have been to before and it is a lot of fun. There was one powerful exhibit that was a series of embroidered panel by Esther Niesenthal Krinitz, describing her life and survival as a Polish jew during World War II. There was art made of toothpicks and other of matchsticks and a series of sculptures using only telephone wire. It goes on and on and is spectacular. There was one series of wonderful drawings where the note about the artist said that most of his work was thrown away each day as part of the policy of the insane asylum he was in. In some ways, the stories about the artist was as amazing as the art they created. The gift shop is really fun too and the restaurant looked very cool. This place is definitely worth a detour if you are even near Baltimore.

Fallingwater: This classic piece of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture is place I’d always meant to go to and, since it was roughly on the way from Baltimore to Pittsburgh, we did. It is wonderful and is presented tremendously well by the conservancy which runs it. The fact that it was donated with the original furniture and fittings from the 30s is incredible. It is architecture as art, housing as sculpture and man as a part of nature. It may have helped that it was a lovely summer day. It was just a great experience.

Pittsburgh: We didn’t have much time to spend it Pittsburgh and I really need to go back. We stayed at a wonderful place called the Inn on the Mexican War Streets that was in this wonderful old mansion in a very cool neighborhood. We walked around downtown Pittsburgh a little, and then took the Duquesne Incline, a funicular that goes to the top of a hill overlooking the city. The views were spectacular and we had a great lunch at the Monterey Bay Fish Grotto. The food/view combination really would be hard to match anywhere. (For a pure food experience, our lunch at the Thames Oyster House in Fells Point in Baltimore may have beaten it.) A bizarre highlight of the trip to Pittsburgh:

Judie asked us to go by the house that her mother had lived in and that she had visited as a girl. It was in the Carrick section, which is outside of town. So we found it on the GPS and drove over. We pulled up and there was a police car stopped across the street and they were giving us the evil eye as we stopped. But we got out and started to take a photo when a woman came up the street yelling “What are you doing taking a picture of my house?” So I explained about Judie and Joan and when I mentioned the name Bazis, she relaxed. It turned out that she had bought the house from Judie’s grandmother in 1977 and recalled the military gentleman (Judie’s father, no doubt) who was involved in the sale and in moving her to California. We chatted about how she had fixed up the house and had to knock down the garage and how it was still a nice neighborhood with  a lot of the old families even though the police were just arresting that woman in the house across the street for drugs. Alex took pictures.

Minor League Baseball: The two minor league games we went to were fun, but it is a completely different experience from going to a major league game. In some ways they were more fun. Bowie is the AA affiliate of the Orioles. AA baseball is where the real separation takes place in the minor leagues. Up until this level the good players have had little trouble shining, but now they are seeing pitchers who throw more than fast balls effectively, etc. So the teams seemed to be made up of hot shot prospects on their way up, guys who seemed to be repeating the level and may have plateaued and guys who were on their way down or recovering from an injury. There was obvious talent but inconsistent play as the Bowie Baysox beat the Portland Sea Dogs (Red Sox) 6-4. Denny McClain was at the game signing autographs. He was supposed to be on a book tour, but his publisher had screwed up so there were no books. I got a signed baseball. My favorite on-field event of the night (they had one every half inning) was sponsored by the area Plumbing Contractors, who had a billboard in left field with two toilet sets on the top. The contestant had to throw a football through the toilet seat to win a prize. They had free programs and game notes. We sat in the second row behind the catcher and there were scouts sitting around us with radar guns. The ballpark was nice and pretty new. The food was forgettable.

The game at Hagerstown, Maryland pitted the Hagerstown Sun and the Lakewood (NJ!) Blueclaws and visitors won 6-1, pulling away late in the game. The ballpark was reminiscent of Oriole Park in Sydney, where I watched a lot of Australian Baseball League games. The level of play, A ball, was also similar. These teams were made up of mostly young guys (mostly ages 21-23) on their way up. There were a few older guys, who had to be playing for the love of the game. If you are 25 or 26 and still playing A-ball, you have no chance of a major league future, unless you are rehabbing an injury. It was all very homey. No scorecards. The video screen was slightly broken (at least they had one, I guess). There were various people cooking different foods on grills and selling it. There were lots of kids running around. The lights weren’t so hot. Most of the folks in the stands seemed to know each other.

There is more to tell, but I’ve written more than enough. All in all, it was a memorable trip.

Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812

“This is immersion theater” the flamboyantly dressed host advised us after we sat down at “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812”. He explained that means that, while the performance would be taking place all around us, we were not to interact with the actors, just watch. We had gone to this performance with our friends Ivy and Debbie not really knowing what to expect. We knew that it was going to be outside the usual theatrical experience and didn’t know if it would be like “Sleep No More”, a bizarre participatory experience . It’s not, which you may or may not view as a positive. What it turns out to be is a kind of hip dinner theater.

The theater part of it was extremely good. The whole thing takes place in a big tent set up under the High Line on 13th Street. The walls are hung with red drapes that hide a few openings and hold various framed paintings, giving the place the look of either a bordello or a Williamsburg steak house (I suppose it is supposed to look like a Russian night club.) Banquettes and tables are in the room, which has an aisle up the center, where much to the action takes place and a platform running around the outside, with stairs coming down at various spots (and with more people at tables), where the rest of the action occurs. The band is interspersed around the space (something like “Once”) and some of the actors play instruments (an increasingly popular device).

The performance itself is a musical telling of a portion of “War and Peace” in which Natasha and Sonya arrive in Moscow, while Natasha waits for her fiancee, Andrei, to return from the war. She gets involved in decadent Moscow society, is seduced by the handsome ne’er-do-well, Anatole, and her life is ruined, despite the efforts of Pierre. (Dostoyevsky must have had bad experiences with women, since it seems like most of his “heroines” are like this, while many of the other women are just sluts.) The music and songs, while not particularly memorable, are peppy and clever and the show is paced very quickly. The performers are talented. Phillipa Soo, who plays Natasha, really carries much of the show, especially the first act, and does it very well. She has a lovely voice and a real stage presence. I also liked David Abeles, who plays Pierre (and the accordion and piano) and Blake DeLong, who had a great number right next to us. The society scenes at the Moscow ball and opera lend themselves to costumes and elaborate production numbers. And the fact that the cast is in front of you, behind you and across the room, often at the same time, makes it exciting. If you pay for the better seats, the actors are literally leaning over you. It is an enjoyable theatrical experience.

The dinner part of the “dinner theater” was simple and clearly part of a business model that must make this a real money machine. The tickets run from $125 to $175 to $237 and include a dinner. The “cheap” tickets (which we got) puts you on the edge of the action, although we at least got to sit at a banquette at the main level since we got there early. You are encouraged to get there at 7:00, but they don’t clearly tell you that the entree is not served until intermission. So they offer to sell you appetizer plates, in addition to wine and vodka, while you wait for the thing to start. Before the play there is only a few vegetables and dip, a skinny perogi and a small glass of borscht. The dinner, when it finally arrives, is served family style (we were sharing a table of ten with two other parties–which was kind of fun). The portions are small and the food is nothing special. If you come hungry, you end up spending money on an appetizer plate and then buy a drink or two. It adds up and I’m sure that they do very well.

Ultimately, the food isn’t really that important. The experience and the production are why you are there and that part is well worth it.

The All-Star Break and the Mets

Judie and I went to the Home Run Derby on Monday night. Considering that we were essentially an audience for a made-for-TV event, it was surprisingly fun. We didn’t get the usual ridiculous Bryan Cave seats, which I assume went to important Major League Baseball types or other high rollers selected by sponsors. It was painfully hot and humid and I thought Major League Baseball (which was clearly running the show) might have done something to address that. For example, they gave out these free little towels (for us to wave around in a fake TV moment) and the might have had tubs of ice water to stick them in. Instead, we were forced to buy $5 bottles of water. You’d think that with $300 tickets to watch something that isn’t even real and $35 to park a mile from the stadium, they might have taken the fans’ comfort into account, but I guess that runs counter to the ethos of modern professional sports.

This brings me to the Mets at the All-Star Break. Here are a few miscellaneous thoughts:

1.  The Mets are not in contention for anything: They really have played good baseball over the past three or four weeks, certainly better than the Yankees and a bunch of other teams over that period. It is kind of a relief. In early June, they had been playing so terribly for so long that they were becoming difficult to watch and I was wondering if I was facing a summer of not being able to enjoy baseball games (except when Harvey is pitching). So it is nice that they are finally looking like a Major League baseball team. But there is no point in getting too excited. Even after this nice spurt of good play, they are still only 41-50. To reach 81-81 by the end of the season, they would have to win at 92 victory clip for a whole season. Frankly, I doubt that they can do that and I am convinced that the cannot win enough games to have any shot at a wild card or the division. But a month ago, we were all wondering if they could win 70 games on the season or might completely collapse and lose 100. Now they look like a good bet to win between 75 and 80 with an outside shot at 81. You’ve got to be thankful for these little things. It is possible that they could catch the Phils. But the injury to Niese and the need to figure out Ike Davis will make a strong finish hard to accomplish.

2. The Mets turned things around when Duda got hurt and their outfield improved. One of the keys to the improvement is that the Mets finally settled on some outfielders who were at least minimally competent. That may not sound like much (and it really isn’t), but for much of the season the Mets were sorting through a variety of bums, has-beens and never-will-be’s. Marlon Byrd is having a surprisingly good season and took over right field (although you have to worry that he will suddenly turn into a pumpkin) and Eric Young was picked up off the scrap heap and gave them a decent lead-off hitter (so far) and an outfielder who, unlike Lucas Duda, can actually run and field. This has allowed them to experiment with some younger guys in center to see if any of them will amount to anything. Lagares is at least an impressive fielder although he may not be able to hit well enough to make it. I guess Duda will get healthy again at some point and will get some playing time in a platoon role, but hopefully this has taught the Mets that he is a limited player. I trust that they don’t think that Duda is  the answer at first if Davis continues to crash and burn.

3  The Ike Davis conundrum. For most of the last two seasons (other than a hot streak for the last two months of 2012), Ike has been arguably the worst hitter in baseball. His swing is such a mess that it should be obvious to everyone. He is swaying around and moving his hands as the pitch comes in and can’t get all the moving parts to synch well enough to hit major league pitching. He can’t seem to hit a curve ball or a change up and has become so screwed up trying to adjust to all the slow stuff that he sees, that he can’t hit a fast ball either. At the beginning of the year, I was hoping that the would be an Adam Laroche type of player (.260, 30 HR with walks), then I was hoping the could at least be Carlos Pena (.210, 25 HR, good glove). Now, who knows? Is he really a major leaguer? Have pitchers figured him out and he can’t adjust? The Mets do need to figure this out. Josh Satin is a nice ballplayer and useful to have around, but he is not the building block type of player that Ike looked to be. Right now, it looks like the Mets have big hole at first base that they are going to have to figure out how to fill. In the long term, it might make sense to play Ike for the rest of the year to confirm that he is a bum that they will have to replace (or, more hopefully, that he somehow turns it around). But he stinks and is going to cost the Mets wins if they do it. If he doesn’t turn it around, when do the Mets finally pull the plug on him?

4. The starting pitching is good and about to get better. Harvey is a stud. Wheeler looks very good and may be great. Hefner has magically transformed himself from a soft-tossing generic journeyman into a very good pitcher for the past two months. Gee is a solid back-of-the rotation guy who would be a top pitcher on prior Met teams. I haven’t given up on Niese, although this season has been disappointing for him. (Losing Marcum was kind of blessing since he was mostly lousy and is not part of the future anyway.) Even if Hefner’s last two months were a fluky mirage and Niese never really develops into a top starter, the Mets have lots of other arms in the pipeline. Montero could be starting for them next year and Syndagard may be better than Wheeler. And there are other live arms that could help the bullpen. You can build a contender around pitching like that and this has to give Mets fans hope.

5. Is Jordanny Valdespin a Jimmy Piersall for this millennia? He seems to be a player with legitimate skills. He is fast and has some power and has some versatility in the field. But there is something going on with him that sometimes seems to be more that simple immaturity. Maybe his personality just runs counter to whatever the Mets’ culture is, but perhaps it is more organic than that. Is this guy possibly suffering from some sort of mental problem? It would be a potentially interesting “Fear Strikes Out” sort of tale, if anyone could ever figure out what is the story with him. But it is hard to see him ever playing for the Mets again and you have to wonder if he has a future in baseball going forward. It is a strange and sad end for a talented player.

6. What I am looking forward to seeing in the second half: (a) How good a pitcher Wheeler might be. (b) Watching Harvey pitch and even hit. (c) The debut of Travis D’Arneau in late August or September. (d) The potentially painful resolution of the Ike Davis situation. (e) Just watching David Wright play baseball the way it should be played every day. (f) Seeing if Reuben Tejada ever makes it back and what they are going to do with him in the long term. (Is he a a starting shortstop or a back up infielder?) (g) Seeing the Yankees struggle to make the playoffs (and I’m betting that they come up short.)

“The Big Knife”

When you have a theater subscription, you sometimes find yourself going to a play that has not gotten good reviews. That was the case last night, when we went to see Clifford Odets’ “The Big Knife” at the Roundabout. I go into these kind of things with an open mind, mainly due to the “Ben Brantley Doesn’t Like Anything”™ factor. I’ve enjoyed a number of shows that he has panned in the Times.

But as I was sitting there and watching the play, I had to admit that it just wasn’t working. It was nicely produced, as all Roundabout productions are, and Bobby Cannavale and the cast were working hard. The play is Odets’ expression of anger and disgust about Hollywood and the Studio system. He had been lured away from Broadway, where he had been so successful, and clearly hated everything about his Hollywood experience. It’s not his greatest work, but theaters should not just revive classics. It is valuable to revive plays like this, if they retain any life or relevance. The play is a little dated, but the basic themes could still resonate. So what happened?

One of the problems is the play itself. Odets was so angry about Hollywood that the anger and disgust sometimes overwhelms the story. The characters, especially Cannavale’s character Charlie Castle, are given speeches about what a corrupt cesspool it all is. They are sometimes of eloquent but the don’t exactly sound like dialog, which bogs things down a bit. The plot is rather convoluted and the exposition takes forever, partly because it is extended by the excoriation of Hollywood.

While it is not the greatest play ever written, I think the whole thing might have worked but for a serious casting/directing error. The ultimate bad guy in this story is the studio head, Marcus Hoff, played by Richard Kind, a character actor that you instantly recognize. (See photo.) In many plays and movies, the tension is dependent on the performance of the villain, rather than that of the hero. In “The Big Knife”, Hoff has virtual life and death power over people. He has to be more than just a rich studio head. He has to be scary. Underneath his facade of being a movie executive, he has to be menacing–like a Michael Corleone. If Hoff is played that way, the play makes more sense. Charlie Castle’s decision to continue with the studio, after loudly protesting that he hates it, makes sense if he (and the audience) realizes that Hoff can and will ruthlessly destroy him if he does so. It would explain why the various lackeys around him seem to fear him. Richard Kind doesn’t really look like a tough guy and you associate him with situation comedies, so he is arguably miscast. But that would have worked if underneath the affable movie executive exterior, you saw a vicious, steel-hard tyrant who would do anything to get his own way. That just wasn’t there, so the play didn’t work. I think Hoff’s part was meaty enough that this angle could have been portrayed. And you would think that an actor as experienced as Kind could have been menacing (although maybe that is beyond his range). So I take this as an inexplicable directorial approach by Doug Hughes, who is certainly a famous Broadway director. The focus of the play seemed to be more about Charlie’s relationship with his wife, rather than his relationship with the studio.

Although the production didn’t really work, there were some good performances and some interesting language. It was interesting to watch, if ultimately unsatisfying.

Drug Testing and Baseball

Baseball is entering its Post-Steroid Era. I was never as outraged by the use of PEDs as a lot of people, although I recognize that it messed with the records that are a fundamental part of baseball’s fabric. But since their use was widespread, I think it is probably more appropriate to look at the 10-15 year Steroid Era like we do the Dead Ball Era before 1920 or the Pitching Dominant Era of the 60s (before the mound was lowered). Now it seems pretty clear that the MLB Drug Program is working and that use of PEDs is way down. The interesting question to me is what does that mean going forward to competition and team construction.

My theory about steroids and all of those PEDs is that what is important about them is not so much that they allow you get stronger (which they do since you can lift weights more and recover faster). What is important is that they allow you play at a higher level longer. Most people have experienced this in one way or another. When you are a teenager, you can do practically anything you want to your body and just hop out of bed the next day like nothing happened. By the time you are approaching thirty, you’ve got aches after a big workout and as you get into your thirties, it is aches and pains. Steroid use interferes with this natural process.

I learned this for myself when I went to two baseball fantasy camps. First, I went to the Mets Fantasy Camp. I was about 45 or 46 and I made a big effort to get into shape. But as Bill “Spaceman” Lee predicted at the beginning of the second fantasy camp I attended, it didn’t do me any good. The problem is that baseball is a game where you spend a lot of time standing around and then have to make a quick movement when the ball is hit. Combine that with the fact that you are trying to play in Florida in early February, when it is still fairly cold, and the fact that you are no longer young and supple and injuries are inevitable. On the second day, I hit a double over the center fielder’s head and I’m feeling great. I went to third on a grounder and tagged up on a fly. I took one step toward home and seriously popped a hamstring. The Mets’ trainers kept me taped up all week so I could still sort of play, but running was out of the question. Later in the week, I swung and missed at a pitch and pulled my oblique or rib cage muscle or something. So, by the end of the week, I couldn’t run, could barely bat and actually couldn’t really take a deep breath. But there were other campers in the same or worse shape and I had a great time.

Fast forward two years. After talking about my experience at them Mets’ camp, my friend Chris convinced me to go to another one–this time a Red Sox/All Star camp in Fort Myers. I was trying to get ready and had already sprained my thumb at a batting cage. I went to see a doctor for a cold and mentioned that I was going to a fantasy camp and that I was already hurt and he said that he normally wouldn’t do it, but he prescribed a short course of steroids for me. I don’t know what they were, but I was to take eight the day before camp and then one less each day until they were gone after eight days. I went through the weeklong camp and felt great. Almost everyone on my team pulled at least one hamstring (we joked that we had twelve guys with fifteen legs and it reached a point where we had Alex and Nathaniel–who were 12 or 13– pinch running until the camp guy found out and made them stop for insurance reasons). But I was fine all week. I hit nothing but line drives. I probably did something to my elbow since it turned a rainbow of colors, but it didn’t bother me. There is no doubt in my mind that my steroid use was the reason I felt great and never got hurt.

Baseball is a game in which little injuries are inevitable. There are countless times where you have make sudden movements and lunges, slides and stretches. Swinging a bat is a violent act which can cause injury in various ways. And throwing a ball overhand is an unnatural act which damages your shoulder and elbow. Baseball players are always playing through various little injuries and starting pitchers essentially hurt themselves so badly when they pitch that they can’t do it agin for four or five days. When baseball players are young, they recover quickly, like the rest of us. But as they age, all of these little bumps, bruises and strains begin to take their toll and they can’t throw as hard or run as fast as they did when they were rookies. And crucially, they begin to lose bat speed. What happend in the 80s and 90s is that players learned that there was something that they could take that would mitigate the effect of all of these little injuries, allowing them to play longer and at a higher level. The basic rules of athletic aging could be deferred chemically.

This all had a big impact on the economic structure of baseball and the creation of teams. Ever since Marvin Miller eliminated the Reserve Clause and players gained free agency, MLB has worked on a system under which players remained tied to their teams for six years as major leaguers (with arbitration rights kicking in at some point). For most players, that means that they become free agents somewhere around the age of 30-32. Since studies ever since Bill James first looked at it in the Baseball Abstract have shown that players peak at roughly age 27, these free agents are looking for their big payday when they are in the decline phase of their career. Superstars declined much slower, but many players were through when they were 35 and some collapsed earlier. But PEDs meant that players could maintain their value over a longer period of time. This made signing free agents to longer contracts a better bet, which a great advantage to the richer teams, like the Yankees, who could spend big money on good to great players in their early thirties and have them continue to produce at fairly high levels during their contracts.

What happens now? It seems to me that the ten-year contracts that take players into their 40s are going to disappear as more teams get burned on them, but the transition is going to be difficult. The first test of this will be Robinson Cano of the Yankees. In the old days, he’d be looking for something like an 8-10 year deal, worth over $200 million that would keep him on the Yankees until his early 40s. But how many good 40 year old second basemen have there been in the history of baseball? (None.) For that matter, how many 37 year old second basemen have there been in the history of baseball worth a $20+ million salary? How do the Yankees deal with their best player in the coming off-season, especially after the A-Rod contract debacle? There may be some team out there willing to give Cano a stupid deal. Are the Yankees willing to have a large amount of dead money on the 2021 payroll to make sure that Cano pays for them now?

What about the Mets? Let’s assume that their young pitching turns out to be the real thing. Their offense is still going to stink and they have no real outfield. If they don’t want to waste their young pitchers, they are going to need to go aout and sign some offensive talent. And this winter, they will have money to spend with the Santana and Bay salaries finally coming off their books. The Mets have been repeatedly burned by long-term free agent deals and I suspect that Sandy Alderson is smart enough to suspect the same thing that I am writing about here. At some pont in the future, a 32 year old outfielder will not be able to get much more than a three year deal, but this winter it may take five years, that last two of which are likely to be a sinkhole. How do the Mets and Alderson deal with this?

The lesson of “Moneyball” is that good teams have to capitalize on inefficiencies in the market. It seems to me that figuring out the impact of drug testing and the likely return of more normal athletes to baseball will be a test for teams going forward (and may eventually be a test for the Union too). The teams that figure it out will be ones that succeed going forward.

Mets at the Quarter Pole

I told myself that I wouldn’t write anything else about the Mets until they had played 40 games–a quarter of the season. It is still arguably a small sample size, but certain horrifying patterns have emerged.

When I left for vacation on April 24th, the Mets were playing OK and actually had a winning record I think. As soon as I was gone they lost six straight and proceeded to stink at virtually all levels for over three weeks. They didn’t hit, most of their pitchers were awful and they cost themselves games with lousy fielding. They were utterly hopeless and hard for even me to watch. The Mets aren’t good enough to recover from a terrible stretch of baseball like that, since it is impossible to really imagine this team going on a long winning streak. They will probably play better than they have recently, but the best you can really hope for is 70-75 wins at this point. The season is effectively over for them and the only real question is whether the Phillies will be bad enough that the Mets can battle them for an ugly third place finish in the NL East. They can thank the utter futility of the Marlins for the fact that they will not finish last. A few thoughts on the debacle so far:

Matt Harvey make the Mets worth watching every five days: He is just a wonderful pitcher. He reminds me (and lots of others) of a young Tom Seaver. As a Met fan, there is no higher compliment. The Mets not only have a chance to win on the days that he pitches, there is a chance that you are going to watch an extraordinary pitching performance. I’m assuming that the Mets will cut him off when he reaches 180 innings or so, since there is no point risking his future by having him pitch in meaningless September games. Since I am a Mets fan and feel like the team is cursed, I worry that he will be hit by a bus or something.

I wonder if David Wright regrets signing that long-term deal? I really feel sorry for him. The Mets line up is just so awful that I cannot see why the other teams pitch to him at all. Despite that, Wright has had a good, professional season. It is fun to watch him play. In fairness, Daniel Murphy has turned himself into one of the better second basemen in the NL. But beyond those two, there isn’t much there.

Who is the worst player on the Mets? Ike Davis is certainly the biggest disappointment, since he looked like a young power-hitting first baseman who could be one of the Mets’ core players moving forward. But now he looks totally lost as a hitter and cannot touch off-speed pitching. On a real team, he’d either be benched or sent to the minors, but the Mets don’t have anyone who is even OK who could replace him and I think they figure that, with the season already gurgling down the drain, they might as well see if this is just a long slump or if they need a new first baseman going forward. Either way, having him in the middle of the line-up, often behind Wright, just kills them. Meanwhile, Lucas Duda is doing a poor imitation of Adam Dunn (all walks, home runs and strikeouts, combined with poor fielding). It’s beginning to look like my earlier comparison of Duda to Ron Swoboda was unfair to Swoboda. And the sad thing is that he is probably their best outfielder, unless it is Rick Ankiel, who wasn’t good enough to play for the Astros, the worst team in Baseball, or Marlon Byrd, who is probably washed up but at least looks like he knows what he is doing even if he can’t quite do it anymore. Predictably, John Buck has sunk back to back-up catcher level after his great start, for which he gets a lot of credit. But it will be months before D’Arnaud is recovered from his foot injury and ready to be called up, so we are stuck with watching Buck’s stats slowly sink toward the Mendoza line. As for Tejada, I haven’t given up on him and he is at least young, but he looks more and more like a back up infielder than a starting shortstop on a decent team. Valdespin looks like he has some talent, but it seems like he is detested by the team and probably needs to be traded.

The really frightening thing is that the Mets don’t seem to have any hitters in the minors who look like future starters. They don’t even have  the kind of guys who put up great stats in the low minors before they are exposed by pitching at AA or AAA (I’m talking about you Alex Ochoa and Fernando Martinez).

Pitching remains the hope: Jon Niese shouldn’t be the second best pitcher on your team, but he is pretty good and hopefully by next year, he won’t be the number two starter. Marcum, Gee and Hefner are all at various levels of pitchers with mediocre stuff who need to be perfect to win. Marcum has done it in the past and seems to be coming around after his injuries, although he is a good bet to get injured again. Gee is just a back of the rotation guy who can only rationally be expected to pitch well once in while. Hefner is the devil you know. He probably isn’t any better than the so-so pitchers in the minors, but you know what you are getting with him and he is only holding a place until one  of the good young prospects is ready. Zach Wheeler seems likely to join the Mets some time this summer, which will be the end of Hefner’s career, unless Marcum gets hurt again. Behind Wheeler are Montero and Syndegard and maybe Mejia, so there is some real hope in the long run.

The relief pitching has been OK, considering that too many of the starters have been knocked out of games far too early and the bullpen has been crushed by overuse. Just replacing Frank Francisco with Bobby Parnell has been a major upgrade and Francisco has contributed to the upgrade by being hurt all year. The rest of the bullpen has been competent or better overall, particularly Lyons, Hawkins and Rice (at least until Rice’s arm falls off). As far as I can tell, they seem to keep Robert Carson around for comic relief (Seven home runs allowed in eleven innings!!)

If the season wasn’t already shot, you’d fantasize about bringing up Wheeler and maybe some of the other pitching talent down below and having a good pitching staff to make a late-season run, but it is hard to see the offense ever being competent enough for good pitching to make a difference this year.

Ya Gotta Believe????

Council Memories: Chapter 9–Election Day

Monday was May 13th, which happens to be the fifth anniversary of my election in 2008. Kathryn, Jerry, Cary and I met at Egan’s that evening for a small celebration. It was interesting that none of us really missed being on the Council. Actually, none of us even seem to be following the developments of the current Council that closely, although since they seem to have decided to govern using the Soviet Politburo as their model and are so incredibly opaque that I doubt that anyone in Town can figure out what they are doing.

Election Day 2008 was a frantic muddle for me. I got up early and voted. I took the kids. How often do you get to vote for yourself? I wanted to share it with them. I reported to our headquarters and got assignments from Bill Harrison and was running around all day. The first job I was given was to bring coffee and doughnuts to the poll workers. It occurred to me as I was doing it that I might be violating some arcane election law, but at that point, if Bill told me to do something, I was going to do it. It was a nice thing to do for people who are paid very little to do a boring and important job. And I suppose if some dispute arose later in the day about something, that earlier Dunkin’ Donut moment couldn’t hurt.

There was some mess at one of the polling stations and I was sent over there to see what was going on and then to the Municipal Building to see that something was being done about it. I recall that Bill and the others really wanted to get the final numbers from each of the polls when they closed, without having to wait for them to shut down, return to Town Hall and report to the Town Clerk. There was some question about whether the poll workers could do that (Bill insisted that they could, so that meant that they could as far as I was concerned). I was sent to the Town Hall to talk to Linda Wanat, the Town Clerk (who I barely knew at that point). There was a certain amount of stress involved in dealing with the Town on all of this (which I now know was because Linda is completely overworked on Election Day). I eventually got Linda to agree that the poll workers would announce the results when they printed out the final vote totals, although our poll watcher would not necessarily be allowed to see the print-outs themselves.

I was also sent out to do a little last minute campaigning. Bill sent me over to Greenwood Avenue to try and get the people who lived around there out to the polls. This was a part of the Third Ward that had some low income housing and poorer people. As I mentioned earlier, I had the feeling when I campaigned there that I was the first candidate who had ever come around (and almost certainly the first white one). So I went back to make sure they all know where to vote. I’d like to think that some of them did. Later, I spent the end of the day standing outside the polling station around the corner from our house, where I had started the day.

As the polls got ready to close, everyone started to gather at our headquarters, but Bill sent me off to the Municipal Building to be there as the official results were announced. I was a bit disappointed to be missing the fun at headquarters, but I assumed that Bill was sending me there for a reason. It was an odd scene. Channel 34 was broadcasting on the local access channel, but had nothing to report, so they ended up interviewing me for about 10 minutes. I have no real recollection of what I said and I doubt I actually said anything of consequence. There were a lot of people hanging around speculating and chatting. Finally the numbers started to come in from the polling stations. It became pretty obvious very soon that I was going to win as I was winning almost every precinct. Jerry Freier was there (he was the incumbent who was running as an independent, so he had no ticket to hang out with) and he congratulated me, effectively conceding. A number of others who were there also congratulated me on my win, which was nice. It was also clear almost immediately that Cary Africk was going to win easily and Roger Terry, the ex-Deputy Police Chief was rolling up a big lead for one of the two At-Large positions.

Jerry jumped out to an early lead in the mayoral race, but it wasn’t overwhelming and it wasn’t clear how he would do in the Fourth Ward, so there was some tension early on, but it eventually became clear that he was pulling off a surprisingly easy victory. In the remaining At-Large race, Kathryn Weller and Robin Schlager were in an incredibly close race (Sandy was behind and finished fourth overall). It went back and forth and in the end Kathryn won by something like 20 votes. Gerry Tobin’s race in the First Ward was a very close three way race (it was the only race where one of the Mattox candidates had a good showing) and in the end, Rich Murnick defeated him. That ill-advised e-mail he had sent (that I discussed earlier) may have cost him the election. So, in the end, four of the six of us had won.

When the results were clear, I took off and returned to our headquarters, which was already a riotous party. Kathryn was depressed, as the numbers they had been getting showed that she had lost and I got to tell her that no, she had won. She ran (waddled actually) off to go to the Municipal Building to make sure. That race was so close that at one point there was talk of a recount, but I can’t remember if it ever happened.

It was a wild celebration. The other candidates all came by to congratulate us, as did other members of the Montclair “political class”. All of our friends (most of whom had helped on the campaign in some way) came by to join in the fun. Reporters were there interviewing us and there was some guy taking a video. Wine and beer flowed freely. I didn’t want it to end in a way, although we were all pretty exhausted.

It was a great night and one of the greatest highs of my life. Unfortunately, the next day, the reality that we were now actually going to govern ended the euphoria.