Mets Fan Fiction

Getting to Know Zack Wheeler

2011-08-04T11:28:00.000-04:00

Mets Fan Fiction noticed that there had been very little coverage of the newest Mets prospect Zack Wheeler, so we devoted our entire 400 person staff to tracking him with light waves (eyes), sound waves (ears), echolocation (ears, skin (bats, dolphins)), television waves (eyes), hidden device (ears) and psychic impression (aura). Here is a log of our findings.

Sunday, July 31st, 2011
7:03am: Wheeler throws 173 fastballs all at 93mph. He throws them against rocks. The rocks are connected to guitar strings which twang each time he hits a rock. Over three hours, he plays Stairway to Heaven. Musically it was tacky, but damn he can pitch.

11:17am: Wheeler orders a fresh coconut juice from a nearby establishment. "Gotta start getting in the habit, y'know?" he tells the cashier. The cashier says "Yeah, I hear ya," and carries out the transaction, all the while completely unnerved by the utter stillness of Wheeler's head and torso.

3:33pm: Wheeler rides a bus. He is one of many anonymous busriders, unnoticed by the others. That changes when, seemingly unprovoked, Wheeler shouts: "Woodwind! Brass! Percussion! Strings! THOSE ARE THE FOUR CATEGORIES OF INSTRUMENTS MOTHERFUCKER!!"

9:42pm: Wheeler adorns spectacles and lightly grasps a fountain pen. He writes a letter to the local paper about the need for more fire hydrants. Then he burns the letter and chuckles at the irony.

Monday, August 1st, 2011
7:03am: Wheeler throws 173 fastballs all at 93mph. He throws them against rocks. The rocks are connected to guitar strings which twang each time he hits a rock. Over three hours, he plays Stairway to Heaven. Musically it was tacky, but damn he can pitch.

3:22pm: Wheeler chews the first bite of his lunch for eight minutes before realizing it is a piece of bark from a birch tree. "Wait, where am I?" he says. "Dunedin," says R.A. Dickey, who wasn't there before. "Where's Dunedin?" asked Wheeler, but Dickey was gone, and Wheeler had already given up three runs.

6:18pm: Wheeler rides a bus with his new teammates on the St. Lucie Mets. He converses with them, keeping things light, friendly and respectful, until, seemingly unprovoked, he shouts "Aeschylus! Sophocles! Euripides! THOSE WERE THE THREE BEST ANCIENT GREEK DRAMATISTS MOTHERFUCKER!

9:00pm: Wheeler attends the ballet. "I'm not following the plot at all," he whispers to the person next to him.

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011
Wheeler is undetectable by all means other than psychic impression for the entirety of the day. He is "fuzzy, ethereal," and then for a period of twenty minutes, "Crisp and clear like a large ball bearing in an empty desert." After that, nothing.

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
7:03am: Wheeler throws 173 fastballs all at 93mph. He throws them against rocks. The rocks are connected to guitar strings which twang each time he hits a rock. Over three hours, he plays Stairway to Heaven. Musically it was tacky, but damn he can pitch.

Gee and Turner Tell Dickey Their Secret

2011-06-05T01:44:00.000-04:00

Dillon Gee kicked back a cold one, feet on the ottoman, gazing out the window of the 35th floor of the Mets building. He had just shut out the Braves. He felt like 400,000 bucks. Yeah.

R.A. Dickey descended the stairs from the 43rd floor. His mind was a quagmire of quibble sticks. Every restaurant he went to was booked. Strangers coughs would arbitrarily point toward him. He received parking tickets, though he did not own a car. Something was amiss.

As he stepped out onto the 35th landing, a thunderous trample was heard by both ears. It was Justin Turner, crashing about like a friendly rhino. He was knock knock knocking on Dillon Gee's door before Dickey could get there. R.A. faced a choice. He had hoped to pick Gee's brain, but the exuberance of Turner would likely prevent this. Justin had made a name for himself by "turning into a monkey" at random throughout the day. He would drop a conversation on the team bus to climb precariously onto the back's of the seats. Hooting and demanding bananas. One time, while standing on second base in a spring training game, Turner dropped let his arms swing down by his knees, and while everyone was waiting for the pitch he scampered over to the opposing dugout, jumped on its roof a number of times, then ran into the crowd, spilling people's drinks whenever he could. "I just have to be me," he explained.

R.A. thought about turning back, but he had come this far, and his only plan for the evening was to read Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which he had already done several times before. When the door opened for Turner, he followed him in without a word.

"R.A.? No way!" said Turner. "We've been talking about you! You're like a stegosaurus!"

"But I have lost my thunderous stego-stomp," said R.A. wistfully.

"We've been talking about it," said Gee. "You know what you have to do?"

"What?" said Dickey.

"It's easy," said Turner.

"What is it?" Dickey asked.

"Real easy," said Gee.

"Stupid easy?" said Turner.

"Easy as the third bite of pie," said Gee.

"And that's the easiest one," said Turner.

"Because you're not too full," said Gee.

"And you've already established that it's your pie," added Turner.

"You just gotta..." Gee started.

"You gotta you gotta you gotta," said Turner with a mini-headbang.

"You gotta just look at the batter's face," said Gee.

"You have to notice the pitcher's nose," said Turner.

"You gotta really see his face," said Gee.

"Like it's more than just knowing that there is a face there," said Turner.

"You gotta really see that face with your eyes," said Gee.

I'm not going to write out the whole thing, but this went on for literally 44 minutes, which is a really long time for that sort of thing.

Dickey thanked them for their high energy, if incomprehensible advice. He got in the building's not especially fast elevator and went down to the ground floor to take a walk.

"Greetings Richard Alan," said Pops the doorman. "A late night stroll?"

Dickey looked his way. He saw eyes. He saw a nose. He saw a mustache that covered most of Pops' mouth. He saw his face. He saw his face. Then, instinctively, he walked out the door like a gila monster.

What Jeffrey Toobin Did Not Report... Until Now!

2011-06-02T16:05:00.000-04:00

Mets Fan Fiction is best friends with Jeffrey Toobin. Before either was famous, they would take long canoe trips in which Toobin would probosculate on the legality of the hidden ball trick and MFF would sing loud arias to the pine cones. Because the bonds of friendship are stronger than those of money and career (most people think that the Brooklyn Bridge is held up by really intense cables, but it's actually friendship), Toobin has allowed Mets Fan Fiction to break into his home and procure his notes from the fateful interview with Fred Wilpon.

"What I never told my son," Wilpon said between bites of ravioli, unprovoked, abandoning a previous diatribe about mittens, "is that there are seven suns in the world, and each shine in various intensities and bandwiths. I have named them "Money" "Hair" "Nasturtian" "Sunglasses" "Honor" "Winning" and "Agbayani." I really thought he was the one. I probably should have told Jeff that. It's a big part of my deal."

Then he reclined, and sat in silence. Tracking a recalcitrant fly with his eyes. Jeffrey Toobin agitated in his chair, trying to attract the waiter for water and coffee refills. 90% of Toobin's diet is water and coffee. The rest is sand.

"I'M THE KING DAMNIT!" Wilpon shouted. Toobin was taken aback, but then he recalled something. He pulled out his blackberry and called up an email he had tagged. It was from Einhorn.

"Toobs- Be advised that Fred Wilpon has occasional Tourettic outbursts from time to time expressing monomaniacal desires. Do not worry or be offended, and above do not mention it to Fred. He doesn't know that he does this. He does not notice, in much the way that we do not tend to notice our digestive processes or the circulation of the air. Regards- Einhorn"

Einhorn. Was he Bruce Wayne or Batman? And when will we see the other one?

Wilpon, two-thirds of the way through his ravioli, ordered a full lobster.

"You see," he explained. The trick is to wait until what you have taken for granted [indicating the ravioli] has a little more left in the tank, and then you spend big for a marquee item! That's the secret to my success!"

The waiter, simultaneously filling up Toobin's water and coffee, coughed a cough that sounded very much like the words "Mo Vaughn."

"This guy Einhorn, though. I don't like his face. It's a face that says 'glarb glarb glarb. I have a cat. I have a dog. blarg blarg blarg.' You have to watch out for people like that. And here's another thing. He gets advance reports on everyone. And I mean everyone. He told me you eat sand."

The waiter placed the water container and the coffee bullet on the table: an unusual action, and one that attracted the attention of the two sitters. "Wha-" Fred started. "I'M BIGGER THAN THE MOON!" he shouted, but the waiter did not flinch. Instead he reached for his face... and pulled off a mask.

"Dinner is served," said a face that said blarg blarg blarg and so much more.

"Damnit Einhorn!" Wilpon cried.

Mets Win Over Astros is Mysterious and Invisible.

2011-05-14T03:24:00.000-04:00

I heard darkly that the Mets had played the Astros. It was one of those nights that seems to escape from nighthood, a rogue evening, a lonely whisperer. Silent people rapped mad flows as you walked down the street and doesn't that sandwich look right, but it's just one kind of right, and on nights like this, right drifts out of its normal situation.

The Mets were confused. The sphere had obvious patterns. It came toward them leisurely, asking questions along the way, not so much because it didn't know or did care, but just to interact with the community. Jose Reyes had initial success (he is the initializer after all), but after that the ball was like a ball of glue: sticky and undesirable. Thole flailed. Wright wronged. Beltran went off the rails. Bay wasn't where we thought he was. Murphy got cancelled. Turner went the wrong way. Pridie felt ashamed. Gee H'd.

Longly they groggled. Quietly they looked at the moon. Grayly they traced shapes with the ends of their bats in the on-deck circle. Winsomely they beckoned at curveballs. Forlornly they returned to the Mets scrabble-letter-holder-shaped station (MSLHSS).

It was Beltran with arrows for eyes and a pocketful of . As Dr. Norris delivered his diagnosis, Beltran tossed the silence from his pocket like a cloud of powder. This is against the rules of baseball, but he wasn't caught, because silence is mysterious and invisible. Needless to say he hit a double. It could have been a real groovy inning, but Bay was still looking for parking, so that didn't work out. However, the lightning bolt of possibilities provided by Beltran's fine whack painted the whole scene in watercolors and all of a sudden the Mets were chatting to each other, saying boy was that interesting! Pridie, how's things going with that girl. Huh. Reyes tell us about that time you accidentally hypnotized someone. Someone call up Pedro in the bullpen and get him to beatbox over the phone. Are you going to drop some rhymes? I just might. Ike you're really confident these days.

And surely now they will score runs they thought, but it was not they who responded. Astros streaked around the bases like cool demons. The Houstonians were pretty into it but frankly it wasn't my satchel. The Mets, meanwhile, glorped along for two innings. After the second one, in the field, they chatted about what they would get if they got a master's.

As they jogged back to the MSLHSS, Richard Alan Dickey had that fire in his eyes he gets sometimes. Thole felt a rush of excitement and anxiety until he remembered that R.A. wasn't pitching that day.

"Beltran's coming up this inning!" he declared. The Mets didn't know that, and they buzzed with conversation about the latest development. He struck out, as Wright did before him. Just then, Bay arrived at the stadium (up until then, the opposing pitcher had just been pitching to a generic strike zone with no one standing in the batter's box, and the Mets had been playing without a left fielder. He was handed a bat, and he looked over at the Mets in their MSLHSS. He saw the glimmer of the hope they once held, and that worked for him. Unburdened by the history of the game, Bay hit a home run. The ball did not go to the moon, of course, but an odd number of people said it did.

"Hey guys," said Thole. "This is totally corny, but I'm just going to say it. The past doesn't matter. We can all hit home runs off anyone. Even the pitchers!"

The Mets high-fived like they weren't getting paid. As Dickey connected with Thole, he said "You just turned all these 0s and 1s into 4s."

The next inning, Fernando Martinez appeared like a ghost materializing and hit a home run. Fantastic. When Wright came up, he turned to Angel Hernandez, the homeplate umpire and head of the MLB Botanists Conference. "Hey" said Wright. "When he starts his windup, ask me who's right." Angel complied, because there are rules, and then there is going with the flow, and he understood that. The pitch approached...

"Who's right?" he asked.

"I'M WRIGHT!" he roared into the ambiance of the crowd, and the ball sailed over the wall.

I heard that the Mets stayed up late walking across Houston that night. They went down alleys, they checked out hidden pubs. They chatted up the populace. Later, Thole wrote an email to his grandmother, Bay and Ike hit up the taco truck. The bullpen played mafia (the party game). Wright and Reyes ended up reenacting most of an episode of Firefly to some middle aged ladies who had never seen the show. It was one of those kinds of nights. It was one of those kinds of nights.

One Wrongball Kills Whole Doubleheader

2011-04-14T23:04:00.000-04:00

Everything was going according to plan. Bases loaded, bottom of the 9th, down by one, David Wright at the plate. Sure, this could have been easier, but Terry Collins saw the long season, and he knew an ordinary victory wouldn't do.

"If the lead doesn't change after the 6th inning it's like watching television on a Wednesday," he told pigeons as he fed them. "You go to bed like a human, but you don't get to say 'Yeah!'" To Collins, the season came down to how often and how loud you could go "Dananananananana!!" He went "Dananana," for Reyes' homer and "Danananananana!" for Hairston's but he still wasn't satisfied, he needed the full blast. When something truly awesome happened he did a wiggling dance and emphasized the "na" that happened when he completed his rotation. Several Mets had whispered to each other about this habit the first few times they saw it ("He reminds me of yesterday," said Bay; "He reminds me of tomorrow," said Ike; "He reminds me of a ladybug, crawling up a window, standing on transparent eternity, crawling into nothingness, vanishing into ever-smaller specks, feeling 7s and 9s at the ends of its feet, pondering Spain in the fall," said Ryota Igarashi) but after a few weeks most of them barely noticed it.

Collins had designed this moment to elicit his dance. If he could do the full "Danananananananananana!!!" with the complete wiggle, surely the Mets would be inspired to many wins. He did the dance at his interview to get the job. He did the dance to remind himself who he truly was. Wright would strike the seamed sphere with the mallet of truth and glory would be the emotion of choice in Queens. Sadly, Jim Tracy, chief communicator between rocks and Rockies, had a counterplan. As the 9th inning trickled forward and more and more Mets occupied the bases, he was Wright on the horizon and knew he was doomed... unless.

He called the bullpen.

"Who of you throws a wrongball?" he asked. One by one the rocky pitchers shook their heads in negation. The line of head shakes reached Matt Lindstrom who shrugged. "I tried it once in college," he said. "Then damnit, get in the game," said Tracy.

Lindstrom, as you may have seen could do little against most Mets. He even struggled for five pitches against Wright, and then we were where we started, where we wanted to be all along. Bases loaded, bottom of the nth degree, two outs, the fate of humanity pretending to enter into the equation.

"Who is Wright?" asked Ike from the on deck circle.

"I'M WR-" bellowed Wright, but then Lindstrom released the wrongball, and like the scout killing the captain in Stratego, the wrongball could only do one thing, but it did it well. The wrongball beat Wright. The "Danananana!!" that had begun to uncoil with Captain Collins was stifled and he coughed up a hairball.

"All is lost," he sighed.

"But TC-thousand," said Umptar the Umpire, "there's still a whole 'nother game!"

"I said, all is lost!" cried Collins, and Umptar didn't push the matter, because he could see that Collins was feeling surly. A stifled "Danananananana!!!" will do that every time. For the second game of the doubleheader, Collins stayed in the clubhouse. He drank whiskey, smoked cigars and played backgammon. Capuano simply pitched until he didn't feel like it anymore, and then he placed the ball on the mound and announced that whoever grabbed the ball first had dibs. It was only a baseball game because it counted in the standings. It only happened because so many people saw it.

Wright sipped the precious juice of a young coconut. "Dang, what was that pitch?"

Jason Bay, 2011 Scouting Report

2011-03-20T17:54:00.000-04:00

Advice followed Jason Bay like a swarm of butterflies that first seems benevolent, well-meaning, an auger of good things, but soon revealed themselves to be a constant presence, a perpetual nuisance, a thing that remained there with him, even when he watched TV, which he did (the Adam West Batman series). He was a man advised.

"Elbows forward, hands back!" said Howard Johnson.
"Eyes to the skies, rhubarb pies!" offered Ike Davis.
"Usually," said Angel Pagan, "I think of the ball as a snack, and I ask myself, do I want this snack? Yes? Not now? Perhaps something more savory?"
"GNARRR!" cried David Wright. It was actually really good advice, but he was so in the zone, he couldn't put it into words. (He had just come out of Wright Time.)

He went to the doctor and the doctor said, son, you gotta stop getting all that advice, and Jay Bay said what do you think I should do, and the doctor stood there cold and remote, on an other planet within himself, because all possible responses he could think of were themselves advice, and he believed he had found the uncurable malady. He was thrilled in a sort of cognescenti glee way, but Bay was all the more morose. He got really into making soup, and said stuff like, "Hmmm... there are three clouds and... oh! a fourth one. Do you guys think that big mass counts as a cloud, or only if you can see a distinct one against the mass?"

But the question remained: what happened last year? Sure there were injuries, but they were 99% half mental anyway, and that's not to diminish the physical trauma and recovery, but there's this whole mental component that goes with it where sometimes you feel like a bird, and sometimes you feel like the sidewalk, but you can't locate yourself as the one who walks down the street. It's like when you have a certain amount of certain coffee and all of a sudden it's like: boom. which way is this elevator going?

There was a simple reason for it all. It has to do with Bay's approach as a hitter and how that changed in New York. I'm not a professional scout, but I'm pretty sure I have this one figured. Before Bay came to New York, he had a very specific hitting ritual. He would tap his ankle, then toe on his left foot with the bat, then the same on the right, then walk up to the batter's box, take a good look at the pitcher while holding his bat out at an angle, then
all of a sudden he wouldn't even see the game anymore, he would be getting a tour from an old butler of a huge manor, and it felt like those dreams where you have found a secret special place and it's going to mean so much about life going forward and you feel the tingle and the warmth, and each and every time he came to the plate he learned something new about the manor. A candlestick gifted by a very important Scandanavian, a model train track that bent in golden ratio-derived segments, a door that no one has opened in one hundred and forty years down the hall...
and

invariably, the dream would be interrupted by either the crack of his own bat, or the crowd expressing disappointment, except not quite the crowd, that is, the crowd, at least some of them with proper rooting interests, attention, or the willingness to fake these things, would express disappointment, but that is not what Bay would hear precisely. He would hear a smaller group, one that wouldn't fill half the stadium, not even one level, or even one section. The crowd he imagined contained few people, and they weren't exactly in a stadium, it was an outdoor environment, but without the colossal man-made structure, and even standing there where one doesn't expect such large crowds, it was a meager one by these undefined standards, and in fact crowd is not at all the right word, for when Jason Bay struck out, he invariably imagined a chubby boy standing in a field with no one around him, wearing a striped shirt and staring straight ahead with reeds of wheat and fall leaves falling, leaving their home, their mother tree for the reabsorption and the boy is seeing that but he is also knowing, even when he is not actively knowing that the world he lives in makes his moments here in the field, one arm extended outward at 3'oclock in every dimension, purposeful, but for a purpose unknown, and for a moment the breeze stops and the boy, nowhere near any kind of game, says "Aw dang! He struck out!"

Except last year, that wasn't really happening. Not the way it's supposed to anyway. The manor was just a beach house with seven rooms, and it was nice of course but there really was no comparison to the manor, and the kid wasn't in the field anymore. He was waiting on line to buy a scepter of brussels sprouts, and the various characters on the line changed, but the kid was always third. Instead of the sudden realization, tinged with innocence, he spoke, "aw, he struck out," quietly wide-eyed to no one in particular, innocuous enough to not really be noticed by most of the people around him, except for the baggers who snicker snacked.

Advice plagues Jason Bay like a color he was trying to avoid seeing, but as he stepped up to the plate one brassy sun day at Spring Training, the game faded from his experience of that moment, and he was hiking on a trail. They (they?) reached a clearing.

"Give me the binoculars."
"Okay," said Jason, passing them while looking straight out into the pleasant abyss.
"I see it!"
"Where Sidd? Show me!"
Sidd showed him. At first a finch flew in front of the binoculars, making Jason momentarily believe a bird the size of an elephant was descending on them, but then he saw it. The manor, high up on a ledge. Distant, but visible. Jason Bay smiled.

"How's Bay looking?" a lizard-like reporter asked a scout made of shadows and stone.

"He's almost back," said the scout. "Crack of the bat sounds real good."

Sandy Alderson: A character profile of the Mets new GM

2011-02-14T17:57:00.004-05:00

"Is it short for Sandace or Sandrew?" The Wilpons were never much for casual conversation, but with a new G.M. out-cooling them at every turn, it was time to put on some charm. The Wilpons were men of business. They told you what they thought. They took people at their word, even when other people's words seemed to suggest otherwise. Small talk was like a pile of dust when they were in their element, but now Wilpon's Wind Tower had been replaced by Alderson's Aqueous Solution, and as Fred and Jeff Wilpon and Sandy Alderson stood on a balcony on floor 100 of the Mets Apartment Building, only Sandy felt the breeze.

Oliver Perez exited the elevator with confidence. First impressions were a specialty of his. He had long run out of impressions with the Wilpons or wombulous Omar, but with Sandy, all was fresh and new. They were new people in a new moment, each aware of a different set of air particles and wave types, but they shared the brotherhood of the present, the this, the thisthat.

"Wolf nature, that's what I've been thinking about for you. Have you considered walking west until you meet a wolf, knowing its nature in which knobby knees mean nature could one day open its jaws and then snappity-whap?"
Oliver Perez had been planning on explaining how he can start. The Mets need starters, and he's the guy for the job. In fact, one time he started game 7 of a League Championship Series. He spent the whole day eating Newman's Championchip cookies to prepare.
"Mr. Alderson, have you realized that I have the arm of champions?" It wasn't what he meant to say at all, but what's done was done.
"Yeah, but not enough wolf power. You're all mink, need more wolf. Wolf and reptile. Bask in the sun. Slither through your windup like a scaly thing zipping along the rocks. That way you won't give up so many walks. And sorry to keep harping on wolf power, but you need hitters to fear you."

"Next?" Jim Thompson had been making sandwiches all day. Boy was he tired. The customer rush had slowed to stream, then a trickle, then they arrived only slightly more frequently than comets with names that people know. In came a man who looked the guy who played the neighbor's father in that movie, but this guy embraced the silver fox thing more than that guy. He approached the counter in a small number of large steps.
"Avocado," said the man. "sliced in delicate cuts where rivulets of dressing may form, unless the avo is rendered formless by the weight of sunchokes, sliced truthfully, bamboo shoots, shot from a gun, raw garlic, so raw as to be on fire, but even if all this and more distorts the shape of the avocado, make those little cuts in there anyway so that I'll know something about it that only you and I know, and though we two, we few drawn onward to new era, may be the only ones ever to interact with the sandwich, the secret will live in my belly, yes it will live, and grow into a secret tree, and there will be invisible branches sprouting from me, holding invisible leaves that rain in the fall. People will crunch them silently. On wheat. Everything on it.

Isn't it Cool That the Mets Won the World Series?

2010-11-07T22:22:00.001-05:00

David Wright walked up to the pitcher's mound.

"I'm Wright! What Wright? David Wright! Wright to meet you!"

Mariano Rivera watched him with the cold death of an assassin who has killed so well and so often for so long that he now does it with the fluidity of eating pasta. Linguini. Pleasantly oily. Goodnight.

"Lettuce be victorious," murmured Chip Hale, gnawing a forgotten sandwich, speaking to Jose Reyes who danced like a well programmed robot off third base. On second base, Angel Pagan was of two mindsets. One marveled at the moment. Game 7, world series, 9th inning. What a life. What a world. The other planned dinner. Tarragon. Rice. Seaweed. Dino Kale. Trust me, he said to himself. On first, Jason Bay was singing the "da na na na na nuh- HEY!" song. He was audible to everyone.

As David Wright jogged back to the batter's box, he reflected on all that happened to lead to this moment. Seven games back, with seventeen left to play, Jason Bay awoke one morning to find he was perfectly healthy and could resume baseball activities. Furthermore, upon whacking the seamed sphere with the stick, the sphere frequently flew over the barrier 400 feet away, allowing for free passage about the lily pads.

That same morning, Johan Santana awoke with both vim and vigor, and that was before finding out that all charges against him had been dropped. This made K-Rod hopeful, but, sorry dude, no.

Oliver Perez awoke in the middle of a really intense trip. He looked into his mirror, and said "Am I there?" He wasn't sure, but he did see Razor Shines where his bedside table usually sits.

"I dosed you pretty hard. Hope that's cool," said Razor.

"Give me the ball," said Perez.

For the next 17 games, the Mets won baseball games as if their opponents were children, and they were giant marsupials, some of whom could traverse entire basepaths in a single galumph. One game was won, because right at the moment that Chase Utley was to whack a Jon Niese slider most decisively, he was attacked by sparrows. He swung his bat wildly at the birds, missing them, and also the baseball, and so the game ended, and the Phillie Phanatic was so despondent that he wrote a letter to an ex, trying to impress her with the depth of his existential phleh.

Another game was won because, at a crucial moment in the 7th inning, Jeff Wilpon bought the Marlins, fired all of their employees, including the baseball players, so they had to forfeit the game. Wilpon then sold the Marlins, because he felt they were a shaky investment.

Most peculiar of all was that time when disciplined at-bats, well-executed pitches, enough hits for some of them to be timely, and some prudent managerial decisions resulted in a win against a somewhat less talented team. The game created enough of a stir to be covered as a non-local interest piece in Russian newspapers and Quantum EntangleMet.

The result of these things and more, was that the Metropolitans finished first in their division, with the Philistines as Wild Card.

In the first round, things were looking desparate against Los Gigantes. Razor Shines took Tim Lincecum out for dinner. The next day, Tim's changeup didn't change, but Oliver Perez was able to make the ball invisible. No one was sure how literally that was happening.

The second round meant the Phillies and boy were they mad. Mr. Met had somehow smuggled a young antelope into the Phillies locker room. The antelope itself wasn't dangerous, but the Phillies knew if they even got close to it, its mom would find them and destroy them. That whole episode really threw them off their game. Johan Santana was able to win the first game throwing nothing but change-ups. The Phillies swung early every time, including once when Jayson Werth struck out before the pitch had even been thrown.

"Is that even possible?" Werth asked Umptar the Umpire.

"Stop making excuses," said Umptar, basically peeing on the field (this is a metaphor).

In another game, every batter got a hit every time. It wasn't clear how innings were changing with no outs, but somehow they were. The umpires, managers, official scorer and Krang held a meeting, and decided that to reduce the silliness of the game, the teams would alternate at bats, and whichever team got a hit followed by getting the other team out would be victorious. Ike got the hit, then through an extrapolation of the hidden ball trick, became the pitcher, and struck out Ryan Howard on his patented pie ball. "I throw the ball exactly if I were throwing a pie," he said into any number of microphones after the game. "It usually works."

In the World Series, the Mets opponent would have been the Texas Rangers, however they were disqualified from the tournament due to a series of unfortunate events. Texas seceded from the nation, was promptly invaded by Mexico, reneged on their secession, which the U.S. accepted, but considered the entire state to have immigrated back into the country illegally, and detained Texas indefinitely. As an upshot of all that, the Texas baseball franchise, despite arguing that it is an institution separate from the state, was forced to withdraw from the World Series. They were replaced by a rather unpleasant beast, the New York Yankees.

As David Wright tapped his bat against his shoe, he remembered how the Yankees had bribed many of the Met players into sensory deprivation tanks, then taken advantage of their depleted roster, winning 3 of the first four games, losing only to Oliver Perez, whose pitches still may have been actually invisible, and who also hit a home run off C.C.C.C.

Awakened from their stupor, and brimming with inner peace, the Mets were most victorious in games 5 and 6. To Jason Bay, the ball appeared to be moving extremely slowly, as if the entire scene were underwater. "It's beautiful down here," he said to Jorge Posada, as he launched an Andy Pettite slurve into several other boroughs.

Then came game 7, and all of a sudden it was like everything was really serious, and things you said, and probably didn't even remember saying, they all came back to me like it was a big deal, and that time when I thought you were going to make coffee for both of us, and you were like I didn't know you wanted any, and I was like, well I'm here, right? so... and you were like yeah, but you knew I was making some and didn't say anything, and then in the park there was a man who talked to me for like twenty minutes about these different flying objects he had brought with him, and how he could throw them across the entire park on a good day, and at night as we walked by bars that were lit by candles due to the blackout and everyone seemed so happy to not have electricity, and

After eight innings, Santana had to come out. He had thrown so many pitches. He felt shipwrecked. Extremely shipwrecked. He had given up 2 runs on a clutch groundout from Jeter, followed by a boring, at-least-they're-paying-me homerun by Teixeira. Later, A-Rod stole home, but was booed for a really awkward high-5 with the batboy.

The Mets had not scored. Yankee pitcher Joba Chamberlain had used his starter's mentality to pitch eight shutout innings, with the help of sneaky offspeed stuff, and four homerun saving catches by Curtis Granderson. David Wright had watched him do it. Each time he used his gloved hand to leverage himself off the top of the wall and caught the ball bare-handed.

In the ninth, ageless Mo struck out Luis Castillo, despite some fabulous fake bunting. He got Josh Thole to hit a shockingly fast line drive that deflected off of Cano's glove, right to Jeter, who for no obvious reason, had positioned himself in shallow right-centerfield.

Jose Reyes came up to bat and strike one was already there waiting for him. He got ready to hit, but strike two had already let itself in. Then Rivera, toe absentmindedly on the mound, dropped the ball, and it rolled lazily away. Reyes swung at nothing, striking himself out, and then scampered to first really fast (but not faster than a speeding bullet, because that's completely unrealistic). Rivera hit Pagan with the next pitch, and Jason Bay laid down a Perfect Bunt for a single.

David Wright, his mental season recap completed, stepped into the batter's box and watched a cutter go by for strike one. Tension rose like steam off of the crowd, clouding glasses, including those of Umptar the Umpire, who called a second strike on a pitch that was like this far off the plate.

Jerry Manuel trotted out of the dugout, a freshly opened young coconut in his hand. He handed it to Wright, who gulped it hungrily.

"Who's Wright?" he whispered to David. Wright looked back vacantly. "Who's Wright?" Manuel repeated, but it was like David couldn't hear. The words seemed unfamiliar.

"Ok, meeting time over, let's get back to the... y'know... umm... sporting contest," said Umptar, who secretly didn't know the word for baseball.

Manuel retreated, shaking his head. Things looked hopeless. Wright gave a couple of practice swings then stepped back into the box.

"What did you say to him?" asked Razor Shines.

"I asked him who's Wright," said Manuel. David heard. Mariono Rivera went into his windup.

"I'm Wright!!!"

Whack.

The crowd, as if they had only just discovered the use of their own voices after untold years of harrowed silence, let loose a cry that cowed wild dogs in distant lands. The ball traveled deep into the centerfield and Granderson was lining it up. Yes, he thought, I will have this one too. He placed his mitt on the wall above the 400 sign, and lifted himself upward, beginning to extend his bare hand...

when the ball dropped just short of the warning track. Reyes scored to make it 2-1, Pagan scored to tie the game, Bay, swift as a weasel, rounded third. Brett Gardner's throw came in ahead of Bay. It bounced and rolled, but it was still going to get there first. Posada prepared himself for a Big Moment, a Big Big Moment, a Big Big B- the ball rolled through his legs! Bay scored standing up! The Mets win the World Series! The Mets win the World Series!

"Is that really how it happened Grandpa David Wright?" asked the innocent little ones.

"Oh," he sighed, "that's about Wright."

THANK YOU FOR READING BEAUTIFUL HUMANS! THAT'S ALL FOR THIS SEASON, BUT STAY TUNED FOR OFFSEASON MADNESS AND A TIME THAT WILL SURELY BE FULL OF MAGIC... 2011!

Exclusive Interview with Jose Reyes

2010-10-01T13:23:00.000-04:00

Recently, Jose Reyes was interviewed by Baseball Moonthly's longest tenured reporter, Walter Elbow. Here is the unedited transcript, made available to Mets Fan Fiction. The interview, edited down to tight nuggets of wisdom, will appear in the BM's next issue.

Jose Reyes: The seagulls, they are so important, but you sit there, examining your recording device, not noticing them.

Walter Elbow: Okay, I think we're rolling. Check, check.

JR: They are made of the same stuff as we, yet they fly. I am trapped within the basepaths, but these birds that prey on life, who knock on the door of eternity, and while they wait for the answer, swallow fish raw.

WE: Wait, sorry, now I'm not sure. I don't see any reading on the thing, but it could still... hang on.

JR: The waves as well, they are solitary, unendingly lapping. Lapping each other in a race. They are the lap dogs of the moon. They lap at us, because to them, we are fuppy.

WE: Hank? Can you come over here? I am having uncertainties about my recording device.

JR: Against the overwhelming sky hang imperturable clouds. Docile. Silent. Until! Until! Rain! Thunder! Lightning! They offer no guarantees. They could turn into a bunny, or just fade into nothing. I knew someone like that once.

WE: See, all the correct buttons are pressed, but the desired result has not necessarily occured.

Hank: Have you considered these buttons?

WE: Yeah. Not sure what to think about those.

JR: And then there's us. Three homo sapien sapiens. Triple homo illuminatis. Walking, peaceful, beachside, absorbing it all, like the universal sponge, ignoring it all like the blind rhinoceros. rhino ceros. I think about that word sometimes. It wants to be broken down, but I don't know why.

WE: Sorry Jose, we might have to do this another time.

JR: We already are. It's already the future. We are already talking about my offseason regimen in a cafe full of self-stuffing meaning, full of forms swallowing each other because they are each other's favorite alligator. The answers to the questions you will ask me are: blue, we are already in negotiations, buck 65, I already have and I'll show it to you once it's edited, Serge King, Pablo Picasso, Bill McKibben and of course, Razor Shines, mangoes, she's doing fine, thank you.

WE: Sacks on College and Derby okay?

JR: I'm already on my way.

Lion, Phoenix, Tree

2010-09-14T21:12:00.000-04:00

"Robots!" Jeff Wilpon's wife, Nasturtium Wilpon, thought he was speaking in his sleep, as he often does (just the other night, he sat up suddenly and announced "Here's my statue. I thought it was real fuckin original until I realized it looks exactly like those things on Easter Island. What is UP with those. Fuckhorse.")

This time, Jeff was fast awake. It was his latest scheme to improve the offense. Nasturtium asked how that would work in practice to which Wilpon yelled "Crag norbit!" and looked despondently out the window for the balance of the afternoon. Nasturtium resumed her calligraphy, wondering which of her lovers she would send it to. She spoke about these lovers openly (just this morning, she joined her husband on the balcony, saying "the quality of the light, it reminds me so delicately of another morning when I woke up in the arms of Evo Morales."), yet Jeff Wilpon was entirely unaware of them. In fact, the specific actions of his wife had fallen off his radar years ago.

Howard Johnson picked a nasturtium and cheerfully gobbled it up, as he walked alongside Ruben Tejada and Ike Davis.

"Hitting's like this," he said, picking another one and examining it.

"Like what coach?" asked Ruben, pulling a spin move on a pigeon.

"Orange, peppery, surprising, edible," mused Johnson.

"Guys," asked Ike, "do you think I could overthrow the military industr- I mean, do you think that's a normal pigeon?"

As omniscient narrator, I'll field that question. No it wasn't. It looked like this.

"What are you?" gasped Tejada.

"I'm like hitting!" it screeched. "ORANGE! SURPRISING! PEPPERY! EDIBLE! You made me Howard Johnson! You made me!"

"You really did it this time HoJo," said Lenny the local hotdog vendor. "You guys hungry or what?"

"You bet!" said Ike. "Got any coconuts?"

"What do I look like, a banyan tree? Of course I got coconuts!" The four of them consumed the cocos, both water and meat, while sitting on the street in silence. It was a nice day to do that. It was a nice day to. It was a nice. It was. .

"I didn't used to be in this type of music, but it is rapidly becoming my favorite variety," said Hisnori Takahashi.

"Toldja," said Toby Stoner.

The End of Francouer

2010-09-04T17:11:00.002-04:00

The wind rushed through Pagan's hair. It tousled Beltran's. Even Bay, confused, concussed, felt its gentle comb. Not Francouer though. As he prepared with the other outfielders to hang glide to Hamlet Field (that's what it's called, right?), he felt no wind at all. No gushes, gusts, gales, streams, rivulets... he was even surprised he had air to breathe.

"Something's amiss," he said.

"You'll try again," said Pagan, but Beltran wasn't so sure. He had felt something was off with Frenchy by a sensation in his nose, that could loosely, but 48% incorrectly be called smell.

"Do you think it's the demon?" asked Bay.

"Could be. It's not his style though. He mocks me on the phone, but he's never removed the wind from my sterling hair."

The others took off, but Francouer, due to intense perplexion and a mild fear of death, did not. He went down to his room. He picked up his phone, though it had not rang.

"Demon?" he asked.

"I'm gone. So are you. Pack your bags Frenchy."

"Enough of your taunts!"

"Not taunts!" protested the demon. "I'm a mythic troublemaker of disproportionate proportions and don't you forget it! But at the moment I'm just trying to be straight with you. Real as applesauce. I'm headed southwest. You might want to see if you can beat me there. Get some good hacks in before I clobber your competency."

Francouer hung there like a three piece suit hung out to dry on a balmy Sunday that had suddenly lost its clothesline, its clothespins, its clothesconcept. In that moment, though he had never had in his many years, and before long it would be long forgotten, he knew the name of the demon that had taunted him from the moment he had graced the cover of Sports Illustrated.

"Thanks Satchel," he said.

"No prob French. By the way, my tormenting of you for your entire career, it's just a bet I made with Nancy. He said I couldn't get you out."

"Gosh."

Francouer went to the top floor of the building, where management oversaw.

"Jeff!" said Omar. "Shouldn't you be on your way to um... the field, you know..."

"Village field?" Francouer offered.

"Yes, that sounds right."

"No, I shouldn't. I've been traded."

"I thought I made the trades around here." Francouer shrugged. The phone rang. It was Texas. Texas spoke. Omar said, "Really? Sure! Hey he's right here, do you want to say hi?"

But Francouer was on longer there. He had disappeared, demonlike, possessions in his satchel, on the roof, finding the wind suddenly, absurdly, of-coursely, but not coarsely, blowing his hair, shaking his mop, moving his skin cells and bones, whispering jokes from faraway lands...

... and blowing toward Texas.

Pelfrey and the Sloth

2010-08-28T17:38:00.000-04:00

Mike Pelfrey strutted through the Houston Mammilarium, head held high, giving his "danger point" to lemurs, sloths and red pandas. To do the danger point, Pelfrey would lean back on one knee, then launch forward, pointing at his target with both arms. Omar had tried to limit it to certain specified occasions in his contract, due to the injury risk, but Pelfrey replied as such:

"The danger point and I are one. You restrict it, you restrict me. You cage it, you squash my me-ness as assuredly as if my own corpus had been placed in an unleavable box. Are you all in? Or are you not in at all?"

And so the danger point was allowed to be free, and at the moment it was frightening monkeys, worrying capibaras, and having zero effect on the peculiar smile of the sloth.

"You feel it too, dontcha slothy. You feel the arteries and veins pulsing with pale life fire, the orange and blue heat of madness that infects us all. I sense your sensing of it in the lazy grip of your claws on the top of the cage, the way your fur bristles in the breeze."

The sloth seemed to nod. It moved so slowly it was difficult to determine.

"Can I help you?" a Mammilarium monitor asked Pelfrey. This is the modern use of "can I help you," meaning, "you're going to need to do less of what you're doing right now."

"It's not I who need help," Pelfrey replied. "Not slothy either. See, we get it. We are the albatross of existence, the wing of the universe-sparrow, the br of the breeze that lets the rest of you just take it easy."

"I don't follow," said the Mm.

"I guess I'm just jazzed is all," said Pelf. "Jazzed and feeling it. It pops my rocks. Pretty classic really. Makes me feel like a country."

The sloth, in its long life, had moved on its own strength, a total of 12 feet. At that moment, it doubled this total by leaning back on one knee, then launching itself to the front of its cage, extending both arms toward Pelfrey.

"By gum, it knows the danger point! How much for the sloth?"

Pelfrey's game that led to aforementioned jazzedness: 8IP, 6 hits, 0 runs, 4Ks, 2 walks

Salmo vs. Finches- Wandering Thole Linkorama

2010-08-21T18:43:00.000-04:00

Josh Thole looked out his window, reading Emerson out loud. He would read a sentence than say it to the outdoors. A collection of pigeons had assembled by his window to listen. A fire blazed in the fireplace and the discarded shells of coconuts were strewn across his floor.

"Pigeons, sometimes I feel you're the only ones listening," he said.

He took a walk down Clinton St, stopping in at Ted and Honey's.

"All of the sandwiches," he ordered.

"You must be a Met," said the human behind the counter.

"Is it in my eyes?" asked Thole.

"Getting there," said the human. In truth, the Met in Thole's eyes still needed some work, but the human liked to be encouraging.

He meandered over to Cobble Hill Park, tossing bits of bread to the pigeons.

"In Los Angelos alone, falling palm fronds kill five people every year!" a man was standing on soap box, saying things. The soap box was not the traditional kind, but rather the small cardboard ones that individual bars of soap often come in these days. It elevated the man's height, almost not at all.

"Cooking brings bears into your home. Bears can wreck a marriage!"

Thole consumed a sandwich while watching the man, but he was only worth a sandwich of his time. He proceeded up to Montague and turned left to go to the Promenade. He sat on a bench and looked at the skyline. A large group of people walked by, saying nothing. Thole followed them, conspicuous due to his young age, his many sandwiches and that he was wearing his full Met jersey. The people he walked with paid him little mind.

They arrived at a building and entered single file. A doorman tapped his foot each time one of them crossed the threshold. Thole was last in line, and as he approached, not one but three doormen converged to block his path.

"Be thee salmon or be thee not?"

"Salmon? That's not a baseball team."

The doormen laughed deep, frightening laughs."

"No," said one, "but some baseball teams are salmon."

"Are the Mets salmon?"

"Mets?! We can have no Mets in here!" They charged toward him and Thole scampered away. He ran ran ran to the Turkish bath house where he knew Jerry Manuel could often be found.

"Skip, what's a salmon?"

"Kid, there's salmon and there's finches. We aspire to be finches. Salmon don't drink coconuts. They get high, but they don't fly, so when they get there they die. We can't lay eggs at that rate, so we take a more measured approach."

Thole took in these words. They were so confusing.

"Are we talking about baseball?"

"And more."

"Is baseball talking about us?"

"Always."

Manuel sipped a coconut. "Stick with the team," he said. "I'll probably be gone soon, and they'll erase my memory, but you, kid, you've got promise."

"Erase your memory? Why?"

"When I leave the team. Before it was just a non-disclosure agreement, but the Twins have telepaths on their staff, so it just wouldn't do."

"This baseball stuff is so much more complicated than I ever imagined," said Thole.

"You're telling me," said Jerry.

K-Rod's Press Conference

2010-08-15T12:51:00.000-04:00

Francisco Rodriguez glumly faced the reporters, those desperate hounds of text and story. They looked at him hungrily, knowing that it was time for him to give up the goods. Just say your piece, and don't give them more than you need to, he told himself. Just keep it simple. He turned to face the slobbering beasts, and delivered this statement.

"First of all, I'm extremely sorry. I want to apologize to Fred Wilpon, Jeff Wilpon and Mr. Katz for the incident that happened Wednesday night. I want to apologize also to the Mets fans, to my teammates. I want to apologize, of course, to the front office for the embarrassing moment that I caused. I'm looking forward to being a better person.

"Right now the plan is I'm going to be going to anger management program. And I cannot speak no farther about the legal stuff that we're going through right now. I want to apologize. Sorry.

"There are things I have seen that I cannot describe with your human words. There are things I have felt that make me unique on this planet. No one will know about my quest for the perfect virus, and the depth of misunderstanding visited upon me by my girlfriend's father.

"See, what we need is to get infected. Not bad-style. Not like you have to stay home and watch Blues Clues and Dr. Philandery. No, we need something undetectable and awesome. Something that will make everyone look up and see the cascading butterflies defying the lumbering caterpillars. Something to make raindrops violate their standard spectrum. Something to make people advanced in age as we believe in Santa Claus."

K-Rod was standing now, making wild gestures, occasionally breaking into a voice more suited to opera than a press conference.

"It will challenge toads! The toads within us all! It will fillet philistines! It will make strangers break into song in unison! It will be the conqueror of cream pies!"

He seemed to awake from his trance. He looked at the reporters, disoriented, confused.

"So..." said Joe Budd. "How does this relate to, y'know, that thing you got in a lot of trouble for?"

"I have answered all questions! I will not answer any more!" And with that, K-Rod mounted his travel camel and rode to the bullpen.

Mets on a Plane! (wright Wright)

2010-08-10T12:38:00.004-04:00

Iron Man 2 was playing on the Mets plane back to New York. Barajas laid back with an eye pillow shading his pupils. Castillo hummed an obscure tune. Francouer stood in the aisle of the plane, despite the wishes of the plane staff.

“We are soaring through the air people!” He imitated the plane’s motion with its arms.

“I used to be upset by turbulence,” Reyes chimed in. “But then I said to myself, be reasonable, we are in a metal machine flying through the air high above the Earth. It’s okay if it’s not completely smooth.”

“Mickey Rourke isn’t so much swarthy as sunburned,” Wright observed. “I was worried when I saw this big swarthy guy approaching with ominous music, about the potential arise of moral ambiguities over the only prominent Hispanic being a bad guy, but then I realized it was just Mickey Rourke. That was a relief. Wright on.”

“Guys,” said Perez, standing up awkwardly in his window seat, clamboring over Feliciano, his neighbor in the aisle. “I already know what I’m going to do this offseason. I’m going to start somewhere in Kansas, and just start walking, and see where I end up.”

“I just awoke from the strangest dream,” said Jon Niese. I was aware of the entire ocean. It was like we grew up together.”

“Some say it’s all a dream,” shined Razor. “This is the one we hang out in cause it’s mellow.”

“Oh, dang, he is a minority, but he’s really thoughtful too. I just don’t know what to think about this. I was already barely holding the plot together and now we got this whole mess. Stay back. Wait for the wright Wright. Wright?”

“I’m like that other guy in the movie, the one with the hair” said Beltran. “Like me, he is a sphinx.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Fitzgeraldo, the captain of the bat boys who sometimes travelled with the team. Beltran shrugged.

“Hey guys, what would you think about a team painting?” Manuel asked the lot of them.*

“NICE!” said the entire team in unison.

“Wow! That’s a much larger reaction than I anticipated!” What Manuel did not realize was that Iron Man had just had a crucial revelation, and the team, all of them wearing headphones on ear, had been reacting to that. They quickly forgot Manuel had asked the question.

“Geez, he’s a Russian. Call me old fashioned, but I feel that Russian bad guys in movies that have nothing to do about the Cold War, is just the country’s attempt to cover for its odd sense of embarrassment over that rather long happenstance. Whoa, but wait, now the Russian who tricked the American weapons contractor into building droids for him is using those droids for a terrorist attack! My word! My word is Wright! That’s Wright. Sometimes I think a thing, and then I think another thing, and it’s like I dropped a ball of yarn, but the yarn is my thoughts, and it takes a while to put it all back together, but then I think ‘Wright on!’ and after that, usually ‘Wright stuff!’ and then maybe ‘Wright time!’ and then I’m just rocking the awesome. Wright? Wright! Wright Wright!!

New Jersey went from sight to memory, and then the Mets began their initial descent. They were always happy to come home, but it also made them a little sad to leave the air.

*If someone actually wants to make a Mets team painting, drawing, or medium of your choice, send it to metsfanfiction@gmail.com and I’ll post it.

Baseball Moonthly's Exclusive Interview with Omar Minaya

2010-08-03T21:39:00.000-04:00

As the trade deadline came and went with barely a whisper in the entire borough of Queens, Walter Elbow of Baseball Moonthly caught up with Omar Minaya in this month's edition of Waxing Gibbous.

WE: Omar, thank you for joining me in the Baseball Moonthly helicopter.

OM: It's my pleasure Walter. My pleasure, and perhaps someday my helicopter.

WE: Unlikely. Omar, the trade deadline came and went with no action from the Mets. With literally every Phillie injured and the rest of the league plagued by maladies too horrid to mention, did you not feel that the proverbial iron was proverbially hot?

OM: I have more scouts out there than anyone knows, including the IRS. They examine players from the soul on out. When they return, I ask them a simple pregunta, "Is this guy a Met or not." There were shockingly few Mets out there this time around.

WE: But presumably, by acquiring them, they would become Mets.

OM: It's not so simple. If my team was the Cats, and I acquired a dog, would that make him a cat?

WE: Any players you were outbid for or otherwise missed out on?

OM: Like I said, our scope was narrow, but we did attempt to trade for 44 different catchers. The value of catchers is cumulative.

WE: With the deadline passed, attention now turns to the waiver wire. What's the story evening primrose?

OM: Let me tell you something. On July 31st, I stayed up watching television. You would simply not believe what's on there these days.

WE: Like what?

OM: People sit around on an object and make sounds at each other for an entire program. Also, lots of cleavage.

WE: This seems unlikely.

OM: Toldja. Anyway, I'm watching this stuff, and then it's 11:45, 11:52, 11:56... see where I'm going with this?

WE: To midnight?

OM: Exactly. The clock strikes and I immediately put my self on waivers.

WE: Yourself? Who does that?

OM: I do. Because I'm a Met. No leader should ever ask someone to do something that he himself is unwilling to do.

WE: What will you do if claimed?

OM: As with any other Met, I will evaluate my history, my reasonable projections for the future, who might replace me, and then I will do what is best for the organization.

WE: Any truth to the rumor that the Yankees had claimed the entire organization?

OM: They were going to, but Boston blocked them by claiming Mr. Met, several bat boys and Oliver Perez.

WE: Really? They took Ollie?

OM: No I was joking. They did claim Mr. Met though. We pulled him back of course. We'd be lost without that guy.

Beltran v. Wainwright revisited (Endying the Pain)

2010-07-27T22:09:00.002-04:00

"Carlos. You must finish what I started. Finish what I started Carlos."

Beltran hung up. He had been getting these calls for the last 48 hours. He had been booed, attacked in the media, mocked by elected officials, pissed on by forgotten gods, but nothing like this. Whoever this was had his personal phone number. Unable to shake the feeling, he got in the elevator and went down to the 12th floor to see Francouer.

Frenchy was admiring his haircut.

"Carlos! This is awesome! You are in my apartment! We're teammates and buddies!"

"Yes," said Beltran, businesslike. "Jeff, you have told me about a demon that calls you sometimes. Is this a non-fiction?"

"Sure is! Probably! It's certainly true to me. As for the rest of the this and that, who knows? I am me, me alone, just myself. You know?"

"What does it say?"

"Usually it mocks my ability to play baseball, says my streaks won't last, that I'll never fulfill my potential. Occasionally it asks about my family and other stuff, but it's mostly just, y'know."

"Stunningly accurate," Beltran whispered.

"Hrmm?"

"Does it ever ask you to do anything. Perhaps an ambiguous task for you to fulfill?"

"Nope. Say, are you nervous about facing Wainwright tonight? You kind of famously struck out against him a few years back. The last time we..."

Frenchy was still talking, but Beltran could not hear him. He could only see the curveball, the brutal hammer, the pitch he had been most asked about. The one that would haunt him until... it stopped.

"I was about to head to the roof. Are you ready?" Beltran tuned back in to hear those words. He nodded wordlessly. Up on the roof they met Pagan and Bay.

"We were about to leave without you!" said Bay.

"You're lucky I always underestimate the cooking time of quinoa!" declared Pagan. They strapped on their hang-gliders and took to the air, angling toward Citi Field.

"Hey Carlos," said Pagan. "What were you talking to Endy about?"

Beltran looked over, not saying anything, his mind processing millions of possibilities every second.

"I ran into him at Book Court. He said he's been calling you."

Beltran looked at New York. It was such a strange place. He looked down. Somewhere in that city was Endy Chavez. His phone rang. He didn't pick it up. Given that he was hang-gliding, that would have been extremely dangerous, but he also didn't pick it up out of a newly found emotional strength. Today, he thought to himself, will be slightly less about 2006 than it had been previously, and slightly more about today.

Beltran vs. Wainwright, 7/27/2010: 4 plate appearances, a single, a double and a walk, 1 RBI, 1 run.

Razor's Ritual to Cure the L.A. in all of Us

2010-07-22T16:19:00.001-04:00

Ike Davis wandered aimlessly around L.A. He had heard of this city, seen it on maps, read about it in several books. Now he was here, and he couldn't make any sense of it. Everyone was traveling, but no one had a destination.

"Where are you going?!" he asked a man with hair so cool it was intensely ugly. The man was confused by the question.

"Where..."

"Yes, where," said Ike. "Surely you are on your way to some new location. Wright?

"Location! Hells yeah! Say, want to take my picture? You and me, we're gonna go places!"

Ike just shook his head. He had asked this question of four other people and had literally the exact same interaction with them down to the word. It was almost as if he was interacting with the city itself through these people. L.A. was so cool it was intensely ugly.

"Where are you going, L.A.?" Ike would ask. L.A. was confused by the question, but as soon as Ike said "location," it invariably triggered the same response: "Say, want to take my picture? You and me, we're gonna go places!"

"I don't get it," said Ike to Razor Shines as they sipped coconut water and looked over the balcony of the 52nd floor condo of one of Razor's many lovers.

"There's nothing to get," said Razor. "That's all there is to get. Get it?"

"Kind of."

"Here, let me show you something that will make you feel right at home."

Razor led Ike back into the condo. Its walls felt wild with life, but Ike couldn't put his finger on why. Actually one of them was a giant aquarium, but the rest were just walls.

"Rowena, would you prepare the fires?"

Ike became a aware of a robed shadow moving through the dwelling. She had substance to go with her form, but she only revealed it when necessary.

Razor had Ike lie on his back in the middle of the room and close his eyes. A minute went by and Ike was already feeling more peaceful.

"Now open," came Razor's voice.

Ike opened his eyes. There was a spider web-like pattern on the ceiling that wasn't there before. There was fire on three sides of him.

"Just look into the middle of the web. Let it catch you." Ike let himself be absorbed. He lost his sense of where his body was and how it hooked into his mind. It all seemed free floating without a destination. Times and places that were not his own flashed through his mind. His identity seemed stretched to unimaginable lengths. The fires burned away the last vestiges of what he knew to be himself.

When he came to, Razor was watching TV with his lady friend.

"You took quite a nap!" she said. The laugh track blurted into the room. Ike was disoriented.

"Razor, I saw so many people! They were so far away, but I was right there with them!"

"They were all Mets."

"Mets? But some of them were from the pre-colonial Pacific islands!"

"They were Mets before the Mets were established in 1962. There have been many Mets throughout history. You are our latest greatest hope."

Ike joined them on the couch and together they enjoyed the idiot box.

"I think Old Man Withers is the one dressing up as a monster to keep people away so he can look for the lost treasure," said the special lady.

"Baby, ain't no one like you who can solve these Scooby Doo mysteries."

Lincecum and Dickey pregame

2010-07-16T16:34:00.000-04:00

R.A. Dickey and Tim Lincecum sit in a sauna, listening to free jazz.

"I always dreamed of being a knuckleballer," said Lincecum.

"I always dreamed of winning consecutive Cy Youngs," said Dickey.

"Some day you will," they both said simultaneously.

They let the tunes and tones bombard them chaotically. What bonded these two most is that they relaxed in the same way.

"You can't allow any runs today," said Lince. "You and your bullpen will need to go ten innings without allowing a run if you want to win."

Dickey mopped his brow.

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm going 9. No runs. I can see it in the jazz."

"Dang. I don't think I can match that."

"Then it is settled. We will win. It's a shame we have to play out the game. This place is so delicately relaxing."

"That it is Timmy. That it is."

Pitching lines from Thursday's game:
R.A. Dickey: 7 innings, 5 hits, 1 run, 3 strikeouts, 1 walk
Tim Lincecum: 9 innings, 6 hits, 0 runs, 5 strikeouts, 1 walk

"How about after the season, we'll go mushroom foraging and you teach me that knuckler?"

Beltran is Back!

2010-07-15T14:02:00.000-04:00

Jeff Francouer lingered in the lobby. He found himself looking at the walls. They were ordinary walls. They didn't seem to have a color or a pattern. They could only accurately be described as ordinary, and every other term you could put to them felt overly poetic. Francouer laughed out loud to himself.

A blur. Something too fast for vision was in the lobby!

"It's the demon!" Frenchy exclaimed. But it was no demon.

snip-snip-snip-snip-snip-snip-snip-bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-comb-comb-snip-comb-snip-does-that-look-okay-snip-snip-bye

Francouer looked down and saw his own hair. He heard the elevator door open and he looked over to see Carlos Beltran stepping in. With one hand he pushed the button for floor 15. With the other he grasped a pair of shears, an electric razor and a comb.

"I thought you could use a trim, bombero," he said as the door closed.

Francouer ran his hand through his hair. It felt clean and stylish.

"He's back!" he gasped.

Stars in his Eyes

2010-07-09T15:17:00.001-04:00

Omar Minaya looked deeply into the mirror, pretending to shave. He did actually need to shave, he'd been letting himself go, but he was too deep in thought for something so grounded. He had found, many years ago after an altercation at a bar with Mackey Sasser, that he did his best thinking while pretending to shave.

Omar had let himself dream. First there was the news on Thursday that LeBron James had rejected his overtures. Then a report that the Yankees were on the verge of trading for Cliff Lee. His calls to Ilya Kovalchuk had been nothing short of embarrassing:

OMAR: Standard Russian salutation! May I speak to Mr. Kovalchuk?
ILYA: That's me.
OMAR: Ilya old friend! It's me! It's Omar Minaya! Come play for me Ilya! We have no salary cap!
ILYA: Omar, you are the GM of a baseball team.
OMAR: A Metsball team!

ILYA: Omar, I'm a hockey player.
OMAR: You're going to let that define you?
ILYA: I don't need a bag, I'll just carry it.
OMAR: I really know what you mean.
ILYA: What? Sorry, I was just buying a sleeping bag. I'm going camping this weekend!
OMAR: Well, when you look into the clean night sky, speckled with unfathomably large glowing dust, brushing away moths, protecting them from your campfire, thinking about how big the trees are and how small everything is... you think about my offer.
ILYA: Omar, I'm a hockey player.

"Ah!" gasped Omar as he pretended to nick himself just above his jawbone. He had imagined a revolutionary team with Lee in the rotation and James and Kovalchuk redefining "baseball." It had been a beautiful dream one that Omar had allowed himself to believe. He splashed his face, but not with real water, because that would be wasteful. He toweled off his face and lit a pipe. At times like these, he liked to call a friend most considered a rival, but Omar thought of him as the person best equipped to understand him. He tapped in Brian Cashman's number and hit "talk."

BRIAN: Omar! Omar! Omar! Two steps ahead of you baby, one step back. As soon as I finish this deal for Lee, I'll send you Vasquez. I don't even need anyone that good. Someone who could maybe hold down the 7th in a year or two. I hate signing relievers. They make you pay em like 8 million dollars that they're just going to fritter away on ho-hos and ding-dongs and half the time they suck.

OMAR: Cash, do you think I'm a good GM?

BRIAN: Ain't none like you Omar. Hey, we should get some flat noodles at that place you like. We'll wine and dine like we're nobody and everyone. Y'know. It'll be like a waking dream. Like when you're camping and the trees look so small and you feel so big. Hey Omes, I gotta run. Jack Z's on the other line, and he's about to offer me a ride on a swordfish. I'd say just kidding, but I'm totally serious. Ciao!

Omar quietly patted himself on the back. The subtle tendrils of influence had reached Cashman, and were loosening him up for a trade. "I bet he'd do Vasquez for Mejia," he said to himself.

Mets Team Meeting

2010-07-02T14:59:00.000-04:00

This is how the Mets have team meetings. They are not scheduled or planned. A certain number of Mets independently arrive at the same spot in space-time, and they have a meeting. It has to be 10 or more. As described in the Metsifesto,

2 Mets is a run in
3 Mets is a crowd
4 Mets is a happenstance
5 Mets is the Pentagon
6 Mets is a jamboree
7 Mets... for some reason this has never happened.
8 Mets is a sideways Met infinity
9 Mets is a game, and
10 or more Mets is a team meeting.

A team meeting happened in the wee hours after the Mets sad 2-1 loss to the Nationals. 14 Mets independently went to the Lincoln Memorial to do some soul searching. They each approached Honest Abe from different angles, completely focused on him and not seeing each other. Even when they started to speak to him, they did not realize there were others around them. The voices they heard- well there was a lot going on in their minds and in the presence of the Great Emancipator, well is it so strange to hear voices?

The Mets only realized that there were 13 other Mets among them when Barajas started into an interpretive dance. He was swimming through his troubles when he bumped into Thole. Thole toppled into Takahashi who stumbled into Elmer Dessens, and one by one, the Mets fell like dominoes in a circle around Abraham Lincoln.

Perhaps they would have stayed that way, had it not been for one late arrival. David Wright approached Lincoln head on and saw his team collapsed around our 16th president.

"Arise Mets!" he commanded. They did, and the team meeting was under way. "Who are we?" called Wright.

"Mets!" they answered in perfect unison.

"Mets, we have met!" Words came to Wright from an untraceable origin: "Mets, Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow! The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing! Die when I may, I want it said by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow! Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition! Everybody likes a compliment! Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe! Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible! I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it! I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends! I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end! I walk slowly, but I NEVER WALK BACKWARD!!!"

"What time is it?" shouted Ruben Tejada.

"The WRIGHT time!" Wright shouted back.

Thole: "Who's right"

Wright: "I'M WRIGHT"

Francouer: "What stuff?"

Wright: "WRIGHT STUFF!"

Barajas: "I have writer's block!"

Wright: "WRIGHT ANYWAY!"

Abe Lincoln: "If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"

Wright: "WRIGHT FACE!"

Howard Johnson arrived with a wheelbarrow full of young coconuts. He was followed by Dan Warthen wheeling in a boombox and Razor Shines with a raging campfire that somehow was not burning his wheelbarrow. They each unloaded the contents of their barrows, and the Mets spent the night nomming their coconuts, warming themselves by the fire and jamming to the sounds of the boombox, all under the watchful eye of Abraham Lincoln.

Pelfrey pregame

2010-06-30T21:12:00.000-04:00

"Glarb nobbit!" yelled Pelfrey as he punctured a coconut before pouring its contents into a glass. "Every time, and I mean EVERY time I go to Puerto Rico, we lose two to the Marlins and then the third one gets rained on! It's liked this place is cursed!"

"How many times have you been here?" asked Jesus (Feliciano).

"This is my first," said Pelfrey, "and I love it."

"But you just said-"

"Never mind all that. You guys like baseball?"

"Mike, we all play for the Mets with you."

"Of course you do. It's what binds us together."

The other Mets were avoiding Pelfrey. They didn't dislike him, but he would get into these modes and they wouldn't know what to say to him. He was moody and sharp, and there was little consistency between his statements.

"One time in Puerto Rico, I challenged a man to a duel. He said the duel's already happening. It's been happening for years. It will continue to happen long after we're whale food. I still think about that guy sometimes." Though he was in a narrow locker room, he still found enough room to stare off into space.

"That was last night," said Jason Bay. "I was with you. You were talking to Dan Uggla."

Pelfrey nodded. "I'm gonna throw bad today," he said. "No, don't try to stop me. There's nothing that can be done now. Someone told me years ago that I have inadequate elbows, and it didn't bother me then, and it hadn't bothered me until now, and I'm sure I'll be over it by tomorrow, but dang, what a thing to say to someone. Inadequate! Yeah, two runs in the first, and that's if no one takes me deep. Deal with it boys. It's reality."

Enter Thole

2010-06-25T15:19:00.000-04:00

"Be thee Met or be thee not? For only Met shall pass." Josh Thole always flinched unconsciously at the question. He did the same thing when going through scanners at the front of stores and anytime someone mentioned standardized tests.

"Met sir," he told Pops the doorman. "Thole, number 30, emergency catcher." Pops sat up, his bushy white mustache still bearing the shape of the table on one side where he had been resting his face.

"Is this an emergency?" he asked.

"Well, if it is, I'm here to catch it." Thole had a personal policy of saying jokes when he thought of them. It was a way of being sociable and combatting bashfulness. Still, it had made him a touch self-conscious, and he chuckled quietly at his own joke to fill the space directly after it. This turned out to be unnecessary. Pops fell into fits of laughter. He rotated in his seat. He bunched up sections of his newspaper, barely present enough to aim for the parts he had already read. He laughed for long enough that Thole considered leaving, because he wanted some time to settle in before the game against the Twins, and it was not at all clear when the laughing would end. Pops did stop though, and Thole was glad he hadn't walked off.

"Do you have memories?" Pops asked him when he'd returned.

"I do."

"So do I. Sometimes they get tickled."

"Doesn't everyone have memories?"

"Yes, but some only a little. Francouer for instance. Don't tell him I said this, but he remembers the smell of toast, but not how it's made. You get me?"

Thole was surprised, perplexed even by how well he did understand Pops. He nodded. Pops nodded back and tossed him his room key. The key flew fast and straight into Josh's hand. He caught it instinctively before he was fully aware of what had happened.

"Pops?"

"Elevators just there. It's slow and steady, but it gets there."

Thole nodded and stepped over to the elevator. He pushed the button, the door opened and he entered. The key in his hand was still hot with life.

The ride to the 30th floor felt like a brief safari. As he passed the 4th floor, he heard the nasal buzz of Henry Blanco's oboe playing. At the fifth floor, "Who's right? I'M WRIGHT!" The seventh floor brought the unmistakable sound of a dozen ping pong balls all kept in constant motion. At the twelfth floor, half a conversation about whether or not the other half existed. At the 29th floor, he heard an old audio recording of what sounded like Dwight Eisenhower.

At last he arrived at the 30th floor. Thole tossed his bag on the couch and sat down next to it. He went to the refrigerator which had been stocked ahead of time with young coconuts. He absentmindedly opened one with a machete, and sipped the water inside.

"Met," he said, half-intentionally. The door knocked. Thole scampered over. It was Rod Barajas.

"Mr. Barajas! This is an honor! Come in, may I offer you a coconut?"

"Got my own," said Barajas, lifting one with a straw sticking out of it.

"So, I here you're a little dinged up," said Thole, once they were seated and comfortable.

"It's my mind," said Barajas, staring straight ahead at the wall. "The catcher is the mind of the whole team. That is why we sit by home plate. We wear our mental burden like catching gear. For me though," he made jagged gestures, "cracks in the armor. I read the mind of the pitcher, batter and umpire, but lately I can't tell them apart. Is it my friend or my opponent who wants the curveball. Someone is focusing on the batter's footwork, but who? Me? Who is thinking of Montana? I have memories that feel as though someone is else is remembering them. People tell me things, and I think it is I who have told them. I am excited when I have nothing to do, and bored when I am stimulated. Some days I blame the media. Other days the weather, America, Howard Megdal, parking regulations, an uneventful canoe trip I took as a boy."

Silence took over. They finished their coconuts.

"Why did you tell me all this?" Thole asked Barajas.

"Because if I don't get my mind back, you will have to become the mind of the Mets. And if I do, this conversation will have meant little, but you will have had an interesting afternoon."

As Thole closed the door, he suddenly felt very certain his phone was about to ring. It would be Razor Shines. He would want Josh to come up to see him. Part of him was very surprised to have this realization, and another part was not surprised at all.

An Unexpected Free Agent the Mets Fully Intend to Sign

2010-06-21T21:21:00.000-04:00

Basketball's top free agent may have an unlikely suitor. Lars Metatarsal of Baseball Moonthly is reporting that a conversation with the Brothers Wilpon (speaking in unison from different locations on a conference call) took a surprising turn when the name LeBron James was mentioned.

LM: Who is this year's free agent class' LeBron James?
BW: Lebron James

LM: Pardon my lack of specificity. I meant in baseball.
BW: No, pardon our lack of clarity. The answer is still LeBron James.

LM: I don't follow.
BW: You and everyone from Alger Hiss to Zoroaster. LeBron James is filled with a successful essence. This will transfer to any athletic activity he attempts. He has more Met in him than most of our roster put together.

LM: How do you expect to lure James to a sport that he has no experience with?
BW: LeBron has nothing left to accomplish in basketball. He has already placed the sphere in the assigned location numerous times. When it comes to sporting events, baseball is Shakespeare, the Beatles and Mount Everest. Furthermore, the rules of the NBA will only allow a contract of up to $15 million annually. In baseball we may shower him with gardens of wealth symbols.

LM: What position do you envision James playing?
BW: It would be narrow minded to limit James to one position. We envision a new defensive alignment in which James would cover the entire left side of the field, allowing us to stack the right side with six defenders. He will also be our spot starter, left-handed reliever and emergency catcher.

LM: How do Oliver Perez and John Maine fit into your future plans?

In response question the Brothers Wilpon fell into fits of laughter that lasted a long time, and both of them had to be helped up after toppling over not once but four times. The interview concluded then because the Wilpons had been rendered incoherent. Mets Fan Fiction contacted Omar Minaya about the rumor. He said that he didn't want to risk tampering, but he had been allocated a "significant quantity of Parmensan cheese to lure a certain very talented angler fish." Asked if this was a euphemism, Minaya did not specify.