One of those things was R.A. Dickey. He was a reason I considered spending money on Mets tickets. He was a reason I sat and watched or listen to a game. As Read The Apple often said, “R.A. Dickey: Because every five days, we don’t suck!” He was intelligent and kind and thoughtful and although everyone kind of held their breath waiting for the shoe to drop, and for him to beat the crap out of his father in law or have sex on a golf course or date 17 year old girls or do something, anything that you would expect a professional athlete to do, he didn’t do any of those things. He wrote a book, he talked about Faulkner, and he made us proud to be Mets fans.

And then the Mets felt the need to denigrate him as they traded him up to Toronto. Which is standard operating procedure. This organization thinks that the fans are stupid, and that we can’t see through everything they do and everything they try to spin and everything they try to position. They have not yet realized that it is 2012 and there is so much transparency there is nowhere for them to hide any more. And when I say “they” I mean “the Wilpons.”

“People have sent me the articles about not being a good clubhouse guy and my response to that is go ask my teammates. Are there quotes around and has anybody come out saying R.A. is a bad teammate?” he said. “I don’t know if `smeared’ is the right word. I think I just feel sad about it. … It seemed beyond coincidence.”

If you don’t live here and you aren’t subjected to the 24/7 barrage of negativity from the media, you can’t understand what it’s like to finally have someone worth rooting for. He was a good guy objectively, subjectively, analytically, in any kind of old-fashioned and sabermetric sense. I understand the potential of the prospects we got in trade, but it’s tough to weigh potential against one of the few things that made your team worth watching. I don’t know why that’s hard to appreciate. (I also don’t know why I’m bothering to explain it to cranky jerks who just want you to view baseball the way they view baseball, either. Sorry about that.)

It’s been tough to write about baseball when the thing that you do is go to games and write about going to games, and you don’t go to games. But I miss writing about baseball and I’m going to try to figure out how to do it without making every post a litany of current sins against the Wilpons. But it’s difficult; they are charging too much money, and I am tired of sitting in the Promenade (or might be less tired if the seats were more attractively priced). It’s no accident that the few games I did make it to in 2012, I sat on the field level or in the Caesar’s Club (all purchased on StubHub, of course). At this rate, I have zero enthusiasm for the All Star Game at Citi Field (which is another post for another time). It’s like they want us to hate them as much as possible.

It was a good day to be there.

As most of you know, I wasn’t lucky enough to grow up with all of this. As a result, I don’t have a switch in my brain that automatically goes on at a certain point in a game, I don’t think about it after the first out like TBF does, I’ve had to train myself to watch for it. Even then, tonight, it was the last thing I would have expected. I didn’t get out of work until 6:15, and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it in time for first pitch. TBF has been under the weather and there was a brief discussion about whether or not he was healthy enough to go to the game. We don’t have a ticket plan this year and picked this specific game because we wanted to see Beltran’s return to New York. I showed up a little after 7 with no camera and no scorebook and was happy to have the distraction. I was happy to applaud Beltran, I was happy to watch Johan, I was happy to boo Yadier Molina (and seriously, people, the fact that you booed Beltran harder than Yadier Molina — REALLY?). This was only my second game of the season.

I was happy to be at the ballpark again, that familiar respite of the Friday ballgame, the separation between the week and the weekend. It was just going to be a game, you know? It was just going to be a ballgame.

I said something about how my uninspired prediction was that this would be a quick, low-scoring game that we would win if it were not for Santana’s lack of run support and the Horror That Shall Not Speak Its Name (aka the bullpen). Johan pitched well. The Mets hit baseballs. Johan walked too many people but it was still 8:22 and he was at 49 pitches and there were innings that were gems. It started to rain, and we moved up a couple of rows. We were in the “Excelsior Level,” the middle level that reminds us of our old Shea mezzanine seats. We had the view off of third base, just like we used to at Shea.

It was in the fifth or sixth inning when my internal engine light went on and I thought, wait, have they– and there was that line of 0s on the scoreboard. Half an inning later I looked at Twitter and people were starting to murmur. It was the sixth inning when I said to TBF, “People are talking about things they aren’t supposed to be talking about,” and his reaction was, “Well, they had better stop.” And even then I did not think, This is going to happen tonight . I think that it will probably happen some day and if we are lucky we might be there.

But tonight? It was just a Friday night in June.

At the bottom of the 6th, I think, the rain stopped and TBF insisted that we move back down to the front row. It wasn’t crowded, there was plenty of room, but we did go to the trouble of picking the front row for a reason, might as well actually sit in them. When we got there, the guys who had been in the row all night leaned over and said, “You know what’s happening, right?” There was much eye-rolling as TBF pointed at his scorecard.

They meant well; everyone meant well. This was the closest Citi Field has come to feeling like Shea, with people laughing and joking and talking to each other, not just little random bubbles of people all disconnected from each other. It felt good; it felt like home.

There was some muttering about neck tattoos and horrible people when Yadier Molina came to the plate, just like we always do when Yadier Molina comes to the plate. (No. We do not forgive, we do not forget.) And then that ball went out, and I leapt out of my seat screaming NO NO NO NO SHIT DAMMIT GET IT PLEASE GOD NO PLEASE and then Mike Baxter performed the act that canonized him as well as ensured he will never pay for a drink anywhere in New York ever again. I am alternately horrified as Ray Ramirez comes running out at full tilt but also selfishly comforted that the umpire signaled the out.

LET’S GO BAXTER , chanted the guys one section over. LET’S GO BAXTER , came out of our section next. LET’S GO BAXTER , I could see it in the outfield and on the field level and out in the Pepsi Porch. We chanted as he was lying there, we chanted as he got up, we chanted as he carefully made his way back to the dugout.

I started getting emotional. I never considered that being at a no-hitter would make me so emotional. I felt guilty because I haven’t been waiting for this my whole life. And I felt guilty for thinking that it might happen, that if I thought about it too hard I might jinx it. I think that I will buy a hat if — WAIT NO WHAT ARE YOU DOING.

The eighth inning. It was the eighth inning, and we all now are believing. We are believing. We are creeping closer to our hearts opening up that this might be actually possible, this could happen, it isn’t just going to fall apart and shatter like every other moment that the Mets have come close to something tremendous in the past few years. But there is belief, it is everywhere. It is cautious and it is tentative but it is belief, and not defeat, it is not resignation, it is a step forward towards embracing the possible.

We boo Terry Collins the minute he walks up the dugout steps. We cheer as soon as he jogs back from the pitchers mound.

And then Carlos Beltran comes to the plate.

I do not want to believe in jinxes or think about what would happen if Carlos Beltran did smash a ball out towards the bullpens and I think I probably held my breath throughout the entire at-bat. Because despite the lovely meditation on belief above, we are New Yorkers and we are cynical fucks and given that the Mets have a habit of playing straight along with every narrative that is assigned to them, I could see it happening. I think we all could have seen it happen.

But it didn’t happen. He lined out, it was the last out — it was the last out.

The Mets are up. Is Johan coming out – Johan is coming out. Johan has a helmet on. There is movement in the bullpen but it could be someone stretching their legs. We growl at them to sit down. There is muttering about how he is not going to swing so just throw it down the middle, wouldn’t it be embarrassing to walk the guy who is very definitely not going to swing at anything you throw him, et cetera. Mostly we just want to put Johan into a protective field so nothing can happen to him between home plate and back to the dugout and then back to the pitcher’s mound.

The 9th inning, and I do not know how I am breathing. I am trying to keep the tears from forming around the edges of my eye. TBF hands me the camera and says, “Here, YOU do it,” and I am taking pictures of Mr. Met hanging out in the crowd right below us. I am taking pictures of the ballpark. I know I will never forget it but I am taking pictures of it all anyway. Everyone has a phone out, a camera, everyone is standing up, no one anywhere in the ballpark is sitting down except maybe Gary, Keith and Ron.

One. Matt Holliday hits a ball and I panic and it is caught.
Two. Allen Craig hits a ball and it is caught by Nieuwenhuis.

It is happening. It is actually going to happen. We are here. It is going to happen. One more out. Oh my god. One more out.

And then David Freese strikes out swinging and everything explodes and simultaneously freezes and I realize I have a camera and I want to hug TBF and high-five everyone around me but I have a camera and there is celebrating and screaming and music and cheering and camera crews and wait why is security in the huddle, oh wait, it’s an idiot in a Gary Carter jersey, I finally finish taking pictures and grab TBF and hug him hard, hug him harder. Oh my god. A no hitter. The Mets finally had a no-hitter and we were there to see it.

It is improbable that we would be here tonight. We did not buy a ticket plan this year. This was only my second game of the season. We are going to Europe, I am writing a book about Bruce Springsteen, we are doing other things right now. We came tonight because we wanted to see Carlos Beltran’s return. It makes no sense. I always worried that TBF would see a no hitter on a night he went to a game without me. He always worried that we would see one by another team before we’d see one from the Mets. He worried that it would happen on the road. He worried that it would happen while we were sitting at home in Brooklyn on an off night.

There was one. Tonight. We were there. This is crazy. This is beyond ‘you can’t predict baseball’. This is insane. This is gloriously, deliciously insane.

Kevin Burkhardt comes out for the hero interview with Johan, and Justin Turner gets him with the whipped cream pie. We cheer our hero some more, for as long as he stands on that field, and then he leaves.

We take more photos and we help people take photos and people take photos of us, and security miraculously does not act like total dicks and try to move people along. I head into the nearest store and buy a 50th Anniversary hat; I remind TBF to buy a program. I finally make it to the ladies room (I still have two bottles of water I didn’t drink because after the 6th inning I was not going anywhere).

We are walking out of the ballpark as the text messages and tweets and calls start to flood in. Fans from every team, who live everywhere in the country (and the world) are sending congratulatory notes. People are singing and chanting and chattering, singing “Johan, Johan, Johan” as we walked down the stairs, as ebullience carried us to the subway. The last time we saw anything like this was in 2006.

All the way home it continued, to the Court Square stop, down the stairs, on the G train platform, on the G, getting off at our stop and walking through the station. I start to whistle “Meet the Mets” because TBF’s voice is gone at this point and he can’t sing. I give up and start singing, and as we turn to go upstairs and leave the station, I hear a woman behind me pick up the refrain as she walks the other way.

It is about the improbable, the unexpected, the unanticipated, the random, the wonderful, the enormous, about serendipity and luck. It is about baseball, and hope, and more hope.

It is wonderful. I am still smiling the same smile I had when I walked out of the ballpark, four hours later.

Tonight.Boss.#Johan

— Mets WFAN (@MetsWFAN) June 2, 2012

Some people behaved well; some people behaved stupidly. Most importantly, Johan Santana pitched an absolute gem, and despite that, the Mets managed to win the game.

Since we don’t have a plan and we’re not going to a lot of games this year, we splurged on good seats for tonight. It was nice to be on the field level for this game, although I have to say that in future we need to avoid sitting behind the dugout. I cannot deal with the incessant clamoring for balls. At the end of every inning when I’m trying to watch the players come back to the dugout or get some photographs, there is a massive wall of people in front of me.

There seems to be some rule that the closer you get to home plate, the dumber people get, and the more casual fans around you. After booing the Reyes tribute, the casual fans behind us didn’t have much to say when I asked if they didn’t like to get a raise at work and did they not think that Jose Reyes played well for us while he was here. They had to agree that, yes, well, he sure did.

As soon as the starting lineup was announced, which was immediately after the tribute video, you heard the boos. Later in the game you heard the cries of SELL OUT and HOW’S YOUR HAMMY, culminating at one point when people one section over started waving 20 dollar bills while Reyes was at bat. That’s when this happened:

People waving $20 bills at Reyes. TBF yells “YOU DO UNDERSTAND HE WASN’T OFFERED A CONTRACT, MORONS?” gets applause.

— Caryn / metsgrrl.com (@metsgrrl) April 25, 2012

There was more applause early in the game, more than I expected, or maybe less booing than I expected. I was thoroughly disgusted at the media narrative at how “deserted” Citi Field was. I’ve had a plan that involved Tuesday games in some fashion since 2006. Citi was fuller than average for a Tuesday night in April, Jose Reyes or no Jose Reyes.

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I liked the changes to the park. I think they did a good job moving in the fence. I like the new placement of the pennants, I like the new graphics on the scoreboard. Although I’m generally not a fan of sitting in the outfield, the party deck looks interesting and I think we’ll make an effort to try it out later this year.

It felt good to be back at the ballpark. We are both still so angry at the organization for different, yet similar, reasons, and it was good to know that I can still come to a game and be happy sitting in between the green and the blue and just watch baseball.

This is the first Opening Day in 5 years that I haven’t attended in person. I just can’t spare the vacation day. I thought it would be harder than it was, but it was okay, and I am glad to see that I am genuinely looking forward to Mets baseball.

We took advantage of the “please please please buy a ticket from us for Opening Day” special which gave us free tickets for Sunday. So I will see the Mets and the changes to the ballpark before my first officially ticketed game on June 1.

Things are quiet here because behind the scenes I am getting things ready to move to a new platform, and don’t want to also have to migrate a ton of new content as well. Imagine the old internet “under construction” graphic here.

Hey, look, it’s a presale code for 2012 Mets tickets!

Starting Wednesday, February 29th at 10:00 am, visit this page and use the code “HODGES”.

I will refrain from my usual comments about how the passwords and presale process are so transparent as to be useless and fail at creating any kind of feeling of urgency or exclusivity.

Taken by Stephanie Segal, age 9

Well, the day has arrived. The day where the scab on the pain of losing my team, the Expos, always threatening to fall free, is ripped off entirely. The twist in my stomach and tears in my eyes because Gary Carter, more affectionately The Kid, #8, lost his battle to cancer today.

When Caryn asked me if I wanted to say anything about this, I felt myself cringe. Would it be right for me to pay homage to a man who in absolute all honesty has been on my shit list since it was revealed he was questioning entering the hall as an Expo when his time came? Should it be me to bring to mind his greatness when the last few times I pumped my fist in the air toward Carter it was the fabulous emotional cocktail of anger spiked with betrayal?

But here I am writing. Because, of course saddened when I followed the stories in the Gazette of the tumours spreading and worsening, robbing him of his life piece by piece, I didn’t realize what would happen when this inevitable end came. And it’s this: I forgive him. No, I more than forgive him. I completely forget about it, who cares, you were an Expo AND a Met, it was me, not you, Gary. I’m so sorry.

It started in the 70s when my dad took my brother and me to a lot of games. We listened to Dave Van Horne and Duke Snyder on the car radio as we ate at the Orange Julep. Springtime and summertime became baseball time. So to me, the 70s Expos are the definitive team. When I think outfield, I think Andre Dawson and Warren Cromartie. When I think infield I think Chris Speier. And more vividly than those, I think catcher and its only Gary Carter. Gary Carter signaling the pitch. Gary Carter springing up with that grin after strike 3 out 3. Gary Carter with the hair sticking out the bottom of his hat and the dimples. Young Gary Carter. Healthy Gary Carter.

That image of him in my mind’s eye has stayed true, and will remain. He was part of the team that cemented my love for baseball, the Expos, Montreal and being a Montrealer. His impressive stats and skills were something for us to all stick in our belts and boast, but that smile and joie de vivre made us swell with pride and love.

Every spring and summer I miss it. I miss it in the evenings when my radio is silent. I miss it on Sunday afternoons spent not at the Big O. I miss it, I miss it, I miss it…the hot dogs, the popcorn, the crack of the bat, the delight in yelling at the ump, the love of a team, the roar of a crowd (yes, sometimes there was a crowd). I tried to care about another team but couldn’t. I’m an Expos fan to a fault. At least I had my guys, all my guys, my 70s team to the final team. The comfort of them in the news one way or another. I had them all.

Until now. Rest in peace, Gary Carter. Like the Expos, gone far too soon. My condolences to his family, former teammates and players, Expos fans, Mets fans, baseball fans. #8, I love you. No tears in baseball? Can’t say that, anymore.

By Stephanie Segal, Montreal

RIP, Gary Carter.

Yeah, I got nothing to say. But I do have 6 years of photographs.

Tuesday night, I sat in the first row of the promenade reserved infield, leaned over the railing, held my breath and watched Jose Reyes on third base, a base he had obtained by getting a single and then strolling over to second on a throwing error and then, of course, stealing third base. This was after watching Jose Reyes make the Home Run Apple light up not once but twice, improbably, impossibly, twice – once was amazing but twice just felt supersonic.

And now he was doing what he does best, which is annoy pitchers as he dances while taking a healthy lead down the baseline. He is dancing down the third base line like he is going to steal home and he totally unnerves Aroldis Chapman, flame throwing Aroldis Chapman, and the fans who are in the ballpark erupt in a cheer without aid of scoreboard idiocy and I murmur, wouldn’t that be something? In this 3/4 empty ballpark on the second to last night of the season, wouldn’t that be something?

Wouldn’t that be something, indeed.

But watching Jose Reyes play day after day for the 7 years I have personally watched Jose Reyes play day after day has been something. He is infectious and electric. As goes Reyes, so go the Mets, and as stale a cliche as it was it was also 1000% true, for better and for worse. I loved the dancing and the handshaking and the triples and the base stealing, the claw and the spotlight and the dreadlocks and Profesor Reyes teaching us spanish, I loved watching him distract pitcher after pitcher as he would take a lead and he would dance back and forth and you can throw over to first or second as much as you like, he’s going and you can’t stop him. I loved watching Air Reyes as he leapt into the air to retrieve errant balls heading into the outfield, loved watching him zoom the balls back across the infield, 6-3 or 6-4-3, you are out, and that is Jose Reyes.

“We have Jose Reyes, and you don’t,” became our watchword at one point. I have sat next to fans at road games out of town who booed him one minute and the next were telling me that they had a tshirt at home with his name and number on it. He is the player every fan disses but in the next breath talks about having on their team next year. He is the guy that drives the Phillies and their fans bananas. He is not Derek Jeter, and we do not care. We don’t want him to be Derek Jeter. We want him to be Jose Reyes, and he is.

I am not going to talk about the things that I do not love, like injuries or errors, because that is not my job, that is not what I want to write about, because that is not interesting to me, because that is not what I am going to remember, because that is not what matters. I am going to remember Jose poised just off of first base and keeping Albert Pujols or Ryan Howard or Mark Teixeira on their toes. I am going to remember Jose sitting on the top step of the dugout, standing on the top step, being the first one up to congratulate whoever was coming back to the dugout. I am going to remember Jose and David Wright, cigars in hand, coming out to the fans the night the Mets clinched the NL East.

I was lucky I was there on the second to last day and not the last day, even though we have been there for the last days since 2006. (It was a day game; work is crazy; it is a holiday week; it is dumb to have all the final games be day games; fuck the Wilpons and MLB, you’re not getting any more money.) I spent the morning being angry at the Mets for pulling Jose, and then still being angry at the Mets for letting Jose take himself out: he answers to Terry Collins, and was there no one around that could have said, hey, I get it, but there are a lot of people here today and they came to see you and maybe we can do this better than the way you are asking us to do this. I also know that no matter what happened, if Jose Reyes had taken himself out of the game because there was an accident on the Grand Central Parkway and there was a burning school bus full of orphaned children and he ran to the burning bus and singlehandedly saved each and every child all we would read was how Derek Jeter would have done it differently. (Seriously sometimes I think the Mets front office says, “No matter how we play this we’re screwed, so fuck it, just do whatever you want, it won’t matter anyway.”)

And now I am doing the thing I didn’t want to do, which was write about the things I wasn’t interested in writing about. I do not want to write about what might happen next, because we don’t know, no one knows. I have gone from “He’ll be back” to “They don’t have the money” to a kind of calm acceptance. There is nothing I can do about it. TBF has gone through a similar continuum, but we both end at the same place, which is that it will be very hard for us to give the Mets any money for baseball tickets next year if Jose Reyes is not back. It will be hard to go to games, it will be hard to watch games, it will be hard to watch him with whatever other colors he has on his back — and of course, there is a continuum there as well, with pinstripes and South Philly red being a fate worse than baseball death.

I scored Tuesday’s game so carefully because I wanted to make sure I had that scorecard from the last night I saw Jose Reyes as a Met. Jose Reyes made me proud to be a Mets fan, made me cheer, made me scream, made me jump, made me love baseball even more.

Buena suerte y gracias, Jose. Muchas gracias.