Not that a formal invitation is required, but this Thursday night, April 2, Greg will read from Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, at the Happy Ending Lounge, home of Varsity Letters. Here's hoping you'll come out and listen and cheer and maybe buy a copy. (Already got one? FAFIF: AIPHOTNYM also makes a great gift!)

Varsity Letters is a great venue, even when the program isn't properly Metscentric. The Happy Ending Lounge is easy to get to: It's at 302 Broome Street, between Forsyth and Eldridge on the Lower East Side. Near the F train and an easy taxi ride from downtown or midtown. Despite the name, the happy endings are strictly figurative by now -- to paraphrase a Castillo-sized rock star, we'll do anything to get readers, but we won't do that. Though speaking of trading money for pleasure, around the corner you can get five awesome dumplings for a measly buck at Dumpling House.

Though I'm admittedly biased, let me join more-objective readers in saying that Faith and Fear is a great book. It's one of those one-more-chapter books that keep you reading until suddenly it's hours after you planned to go to bed. Yes, it's a terrific baseball chronicle. But it's also a superb memoir, told with bracing, unflinching honesty and gentle humor. I knew my favorite team before I read Faith and Fear, but when I finished it I knew them far better and appreciated them far more. The same goes for my friend Greg.

Oh, and it's got pictures! And an afterword with Gary Cohen! And a foreword by some schlubby co-blogger that's not even that bad.

Anyway, I'll have the honor of introducing Greg Thursday night and the greater honor of sitting back and listening to him tell part of his story. I hope you'll join me for that, and come say hi and help celebrate his book.

Speaking of Faith and Fear, you can read a terrific interview with Greg by Jim Chairusmi at Gelf Magazine. And Greg took part in a roundtable with MetsBlog's Matthew Cerrone and Amazin' Avenue's Sam Page today at Bats, the New York Times' baseball blog. All three have wise counsel for the season to come.

The rest of the lineup for Varsity Letters: Matt McCarthy, author of Odd Man Out, a memoir of life in the minors; Mets poet Frank Messina, whom we like already; and Alex Belth, creator of Bronx Banter and the author of a terrific Curt Flood biography. Belth's a Yankee fan -- you're not going to let him pull in a bigger crowd than Greg, now are you? (Actually Alex is a great writer and a wonderful guy, inexplicable rooting interests aside.)

Hope we see you there!


Sartorial Announcement: We now have lots more Numbers shirts available at PrintMojo, so if your size was out in recent weeks, head on over and gear up.

(Let's try an experiment -- follow along with this travelogue at this album on Facebook. If it doesn't work, holler in the comments and I'll put it on Flickr or something.)

The first thing that I saw at Citi Field and the first thing that happened to me at Citi Field had something in common: They were nice surprises. Neither is a guarantee of anything, but they made for a heartening start.

Joshua and I landed at La Guardia around 11:30, and had made plans to meet Emily at noon in front of the rotunda, which was logical enough given that it's the only Citi Field landmark any of us know. The dispatcher looked at me blankly when I said Citi Field. So did the cabbie. If nothing else, Shea Stadium will live on in the navigational lexicon of New Yorkers for some time. To spare the cabbie a potentially hellish odyssey, I told him to let me and Joshua out where the left-field corner borders whatever road it is that used to serve as the boundary between the parking lot and the chop shops. (We'll learn.) We stepped out of the cab and right in front of us were sepia banners affixed to the side of the new stadium. And there, friezelike, were Tom Seaver, Tug McGraw, Rusty Staub, Keith Hernandez, Jesse Orosco, Gary Carter, Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Lenny Dykstra, Mike Piazza and John Franco -- along with Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, David Wright, Johan Santana and room for some more. Below them, crowning the left-field gate, was a silhouette instantly recognizable as Endy Chavez leaping above the fence. The right-field gate has Ron Swoboda in full dive, making for nice bookends. Oh, and from the sublimely reassuring to the ridiculously reassuring: The looped message that plays outside Citi Field still inveighs against "the irresponsible action of a misbehaving few." (I think an 's' got dropped somewhere, but that's OK.)

Veteran readers of this blog will know Greg and I were of different minds about the passing of Shea and the arrival of Citi Field. But we agreed that we saw worrisome signs of an organization inclined to downplay, sell or erase its history in moving into Citi -- our fear was that the park would evoke Ebbets Field but skip over Shea, as if a shabby park somehow invalidated the scintillating memories that were made in its blameless confines. As we'll see, things aren't as they should be in that department just yet, but the Mets' first steps are absolutely in the right direction. Getting a first sign of that while I still had one foot in a cab did a lot to set my mind at ease.

Joshua and I decided we wouldn't go in just yet, so we could all share first impressions with Emily, arriving via the 7 train. So we started to walk down the left-field facade to the rotunda. I got within about 10 feet of the first bag checkpoint, staffed by Citi Field security guys in maroon jackets and Met caps, and heard something that made me do a double-take: "Welcome to Citi Field -- thanks for coming out, and hope you enjoy the game."

Huh?

Not "that bag is an inch too big, so take it back to your nonexistent car or hide it in a bush." Not "BAGS OUT!" Not the vacuum created by surly silence. It was a greeting (I paraphrased a bit, as I was shocked), one that sounded genuine. And it wasn't just one guy -- everywhere we went in Citi Field, we were treated invariably courteously and often warmly. That was another thing Greg and I had worried about in the interim -- that better-angled seats and new amenities would be undermined by transplanting the same surly, inept vendors and ushers and counter people who too often made Shea a lousy experience to the new park. So far, the indications on that score are all very, very positive. There are old faces (and to be fair, some of the Shea staffers were welcome exceptions to an ugly rule), but the attitudes seem very new. It's a completely different experience.

Part of the fun of the St. John's-Georgetown exhibition was seeing 20,000 or so Met fans (the mist/cold/rain seemed like it cut down the crowd considerably) collectively wandering around with craned necks, learning their new home and trying stuff out. (Greetings to Dana Brand and Zoe Rice, online friends finally met in the flesh.) Conditioned by Madison Square Park, Emily and Joshua and I marched immediately to Shake Shack, whose trademark letters rise just below the old skyline that crowned Shea's scoreboard. Those sights together were enough to make me want to jump up and down, and it got better from there. The lines at the Shack were shorter than your average queue for a helping of Congealed Whatever at Shea ("We don't got no more Congealed Whatevah -- NEXT!"), the prices were reasonable, and the quality of the Shackburger was indistinguishable from Madison Square Park. OK, the staff didn't have any idea what to do with customers waiting for their orders, which needs to be fixed but falls under the heading of First Day Forgiveable given everything else. I was too busy wolfing down Shackburgers with obscene glee to try the other Danny Meyer offerings, but I'll put that right soon enough. Another welcome sign in the left-field eateries area -- staffers emptying trash cans so stuff wasn't overflowing everywhere.

Our seats were in the Promenade level; temporarily sated, I looked down at our tickets and realized I had not the faintest idea how to get there. And what's Promenade level, anyway? That was definitely a strange experience, being utterly lost in one's home park. (The backstairs are the way to travel. And, I suspect, the place people will congregate to smoke. Which would be against the new rules but basically harmless.) Once we got there, we found that the Promenade is the equivalent of the upper deck at Shea, and we were seated under the out-of-town scoreboard down the left-field line. The good news about Citi Field's seats is they're wider, have more legroom, are properly angled to the field of play and much closer to the action. Heck, that all adds up to great news. Basically, take the equivalent level of Shea, subtract one and move about a third forward and you'll have an idea of what kind of view you'll get: Our seats were far down the left-field line, a few rows from the top of the stadium, and they felt like we were in the same spot at Shea but about a third of the way up the mezzanine with a good angle. The bad news? The park's dimensions and overhanging decks suggest to me that there are a fair amount more seats where you'll lose an outfield corner and part of center.

There are many more places to eat -- with lines that looked shorter everywhere, I suspect because the infrastructure is much better. There are many more bathrooms, with the whir of automatic towel dispensers replacing the roar of geysering toilets, and no recruiting pitch from the Dallas Police Department just yet. (The ovoid urinals struck me as a bit more Barcelona disco than New York ballpark, but so long as they work....) The left-field and right-field bleacher areas are connected by bridgework that doesn't particularly evoke any New York City landmark (though I'm sure the Mets will claim it's channeling something) but serves surprisingly well to tie those areas together. Generally speaking, the pathways for circulating around the stadium almost invariably take you behind people's seats instead of in front of them, which should cut down on screams of "DOWN IN FRONT!" And unlike Shea, Citi Field has a lot of unique geography -- there's a food-court area high behind home plate that will become popular, the rotunda, the overview of the bullpens, the bridges that link the bleacher areas and the main stadium, and a lot of other nooks and quirks that we'll need to learn but I think will come to like, with fans sharing navigational tips and favorite hangouts in ways that weren't possible at Shea. Oh, and the home-run apple is gigantic and has its own lair in center -- a Georgetown player hit one out, and the Hoyas were nominally the home team, but we couldn't see if it rose. (Update: It didn't.) Happily, Shea's apple is still there too -- it's been saved and is down by the bullpens, where it attracted a long line of folks waiting to have their pictures snapped with it.

Another difference is more subtle: Shea was surrounded by an ocean of parking, and so felt like a suburban park. The back of Citi Field overlooks the maze of Willets Point chop shops, which will lead to thousands of jokes but definitely feels different: At least at that end, Citi Field feels like an urban park. It would be easy to make too much of this: The view is more Albania than Wrigleyville, and between eminent domain, ground pollution and the lack of infrastructure out there it'll be the view for a long, long time. But it's a bigger change than you might think.

Those are scattershot impressions from a single, very odd day with a small crowd and no actual big-leaguers on the field. (The plink of aluminum bats was borderline sacrilege.) I'm going to be lost for a while (what's Empire level, anyway?), and to really start getting to know Citi Field I'm going to need to see it after a Met comeback that leaves the faithful bellowing LET'S GO METS! as we march triumphantly out. And I'm going to need to sit it during some hot-as-hell night when the boys are down 10-2 in the third and the relievers have applied to enter the Witness Protection Program. I'm going to need to see it during close plays and managerial rhubarbs and slow-building rallies and tense extra innings and torpid middle ones. I'm going to need to see National Anthem singers and throwers of first pitches and giveaway days and ceremonies. I'm going to need to build up a backlog of Citi Field knowledge the way I did at Shea, in other words.

Oh, and of course there are things that need to be put right:

* The rotunda is not what it should be. It looks impressive from the outside and does make for a very nice introduction to the stadium. But inside it still looks a long way away from completion -- you come in, look up at the ceiling and see not a soaring dome, but a crazy quilt of ductwork and pipes. (To be fair -- Citi Field is, in fact, not actually finished. For example, the outfield walls are missing not only retired numbers but also distance markers.) A bigger problem is that the big number 42 detracts from the very nice salute to Jackie Robinson -- at least for me, it's unfortunately more evocative of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" than of a ferociously brave ballplayer and human being. I think an actual statue would work much better than a big number.

* The interior hallways are pretty bare. I'm sure this is temporary, but I hope, expect and will soon demand that we get many more banners and posters and nods to Met history to serve as not only reminders but also as landmarks. I hope all those banners at Shea are replicated somehow, and other bits of Met history are unearthed and shared. Again, early indications are very good -- there's the scoreboard crown, the sepia banners, the silhouettes of players, and the old apple having not just been saved but presented so you can actually touch it. Much more of this please -- for example, inscribe a concourse wall with the name of every Met to wear the uniform. (I'll make an Al Schmelz rubbing just to say I did.) Give us busts for the members of the Met Hall of Fame. Do anything and everything you can think of. Steep and soak the place in Met history.

* The A/V services aren't in place, so Citi Field gets an incomplete there. I hope the radio feed is piped into the bathrooms, and the concourses and concession stands have TVs so you don't miss anything. Again, the early indications are good: There were HDTVs in the right-field seats, and what looked like mountings for many more. And the area around Shake Shack and the kids' wiffle-ball field (another nice touch) has a mini-scoreboard and DiamondVision so parents can keep following the game while keeping a promise to Junior.

* The Danny Meyer area doesn't have anywhere to stop and eat -- we kept looking for chest-high counters or somewhere to set down our burgers. This may be intentional, in order to get you back to your seats, and there are tables a bit farther along. But the natural inclination is to stop there, and there's nowhere to do it -- so at the very least, fans will have a learning curve figuring out where to go. The food area above and behind home plate (I don't know the name of anything yet) has lots of picnic-style benches, and works a lot better.

* OK, this is ridiculously petty, but it annoyed me: The shade of blue in the bathrooms is closer to the Chicago Bears than to the New York Mets. I know Met blue has wandered around the Pantone scale since 1962, but it should match the team logo. (Oh, like you didn't guess I'd scrutinize the blue in the pissoir.)

I'm sure I'll nitpick more. But I don't want nitpicking to obscure the main point, and that's that my first impressions from a whirlwind tour were that Citi Field delivers: much better views of the game, much better food options, many more concessions and bathrooms, and customer service that feels night-and-day different than Shea's. (None of that is necessarily Shea's fault, but what else are you going to compare the new place to?) And the ballpark doesn't feel generic, which was something else I'd feared -- the rotunda, despite its faults/growing pains, feels unique, as does the bridgework in the bleacher areas, the light stands and many other things. You want to explore not just to figure out where to go, but because you actually find interesting places if you do. That's nice.

And hey, Citi Field has Shake Shack and will soon have the Mets. Those are pretty big advantages too.

***
You'll also have a big advantage if you pick up Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets. And don't forget that this Thursday, Greg will be reading from his book at Varsity Letters on the LES. I even get to introduce him! You can get copies of FAFIF: AIHPOTNYM there, or come prepared with your own by visiting Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or a bookstore near you. To keep up on discussion and events related to FAFIF: AIPHOTNYM, join us at Facebook.

I like this week, the week when Spring Training winds down. It's not next week, the week when the season begins and we forget this week, but I always enjoy the Baseball Eve feeling that breezes in right around now. It's the last ten minutes of eighth period before the bell rings, the Sunrise Highway exit off the Belt from my longer-haul driving days.

This is the week of Jose Valentin, the veteran who isn't making the team in 2009. Will he go to Buffalo to player-coach? Get an offer elsewhere? Decide this would be the summer to try living without baseball? We get caught up in these little veterans' last chance stories every February and March. Most times they don't work out, sometimes they work a little, once in a while they blow your mind and work brilliantly. This time Jose Valentin didn't work out. It was nice to see if it would, though.

This is the week of Marlon Anderson, a veteran with a contract but not a spot. Will Marlon get the benefit of the doubt? Be too expensive to release? Seem not worth the trouble? Will we regret whichever decision we make that involves Marlon Anderson? We won't necessarily know next week or for a couple of months. This week it's compelling to dwell on him.

This is the week for Bobby Kielty and Nick Evans, guys who deserve permanent roster space — as permanent as permanent can be down the personnel food chain — based on their spring work (which is to say that every time I look up, one or the other is doing something helpful). Yet they are the fellows most prone to that phrase you'll hear this week a lot and not much after: the numbers game. The numbers say we can only keep this many bench players, and we had to make a decision and as a result...

This is the week for the fifth starter. Liván Hernandez has clinched it, but he won't be the fifth starter after a fashion. He'll be the starter on the date he starts. His designation matters, at most, in terms of keeping an extra bat (Evans?) around for a few days next week. But once you're around a few days, anything can happen. Liván, if he's around more than five days, will be just one of the five guys doing the same job.

This is the week of Rule 5 draftee Darren O'Day and late pickup Fernando Nieve and ancient Elmer Dessens and the reality that they can't all make the staff. One or two might. Three won't. Maybe one dips down to the Bisons and comes back. Maybe one is claimed by another team or offered as required to the club that let him go. Maybe it won't matter within a couple of weeks if Bullpen Roulette — inevitable, even in bullpens that aren't as suicidal as ours was last year — takes hold early.

This is the week, perhaps, of somebody we haven't yet met. Guys do show up late. It was thirty years ago yesterday, a friend reminded me, that the Mets traded Nino Espinosa for Richie Hebner, making us a little surlier and a lot less hairy in the process. Mark Clark moved into the rotation the day before there was a rotation in 1996. I showed up at the Opener in '93, saw Wayne Housie trot out to the Mets' baseline and wondered, despite having paid close attention all spring long, who the hell is that?

In weeks to come, new names will join the team to, in the words of Terry Cashman, start...or augment...another dream. This week is this week. This week is unique. It's not next week, but it'll do for now.

***
Three reviews came in yesterday for Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets and each was Amazin', more Amazin' and then even more Amazin'. Great thanks to Mr. Healey, Ms. Rose and Mr. Brand for reading closely, thinking deeply and writing beautifully. For your copy of the book described generously as "written just for you"; "full of heart, and full of heartbreak"; and "a gift, from one of us to all of us," please visit Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. To keep up on discussion and events related to FAFIF: AIPHOTNYM, join us at Facebook.

***
Flashback Friday is going through its dead arm period and is slated to return Friday, April 3. In the meantime, be sure to catch one of the repeat airings of SNY's Mets Weekly between now and then. New host, new look and a lot of Razor Shines.

As someone who grew up subject to my father's AM audio leanings, I can't think of too many things that sound classier than a traditional radio talk show from an outstanding restaurant. No kidding. Puts me in mind of Barry Gray, of Bill Mazer and now of Mark Healey, host of Baseball Digest Live, broadcast out of Foley's NY on W. 33rd St., across from the Empire State Building between Fifth and Sixth middays. This Friday, March 27 at 12:30 PM, Mark has invited me on BDL to discuss Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, the first such public forum for the book everybody (and I mean everybody...no, really, everybody) is talking about. (Here's a taste from NY Sports Day if Messrs. Amazin', Loge and Numbers haven't convinced you.)

You can listen to it here, but you can also come down and be a part of it here, where I'll sign your copy of the book or almost anything you'd like (your lunchtime check and my death warrant excepted...actually, let's just stick to the book). We'd love to have you join us somewhere in there as much as this clever site wants David Wright to grow a mustache. I know that's the face on which The Wright Stache is Wrightly focused, but I thank them for shining a hairy spotlight on this guy for what was going on a little south of his often uncooperative cap. Between the Barry Gray reference and the John Pacella homage, I am feeling quite old-school tonight.

Reminder: This is only the beginning of the Faith and Fear media assault. Next stop: On Wednesday, April 1, 7 PM, I join Mike Silva and Howard Megdal on NY Baseball Digest for a full hour of intense personal history. And the next night — Thursday, April 2 at 8 PM — I'll be on the bill at Gelf Magazine's Varsity Letters sports reading series, at the Happy Ending Lounge on the Lower East Side. Jason Fry, who you may remember from Faith and Fear in Flushing: The Blog for Mets Fans Who Like to Read, returns from top-secret assignment to introduce me, having already proven expert at that underrated task.

More FAFIF promotional arrangements are being made as we speak, so keep one eye peeled to this space and one more on the book's page on Facebook, where you can discuss the book with at least 107 individuals who I'd objectively have to say possess exquisite taste. And keep your ears directed toward Baseball Digest Live.

THANKS TO ALL WHO DROPPED BY OR CALLED FRIDAY. IF YOU SOMEHOW MISSED THE SHOW, YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT HERE (I come in at about the 1:30:00 mark; the audio is slightly weird in the early going but you can hear me).

Your copy of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets awaits you via Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a book store near you.

The phone rang at my desk on May 22, 1998. I didn't recognize the voice.

"Hi," someone said. "You're gonna have Mike Piazza on the Mets, but he might or might not use some substances that aren't exactly on the up and up to keep his performance at the extraordinary level it's been since he's been in the majors. Not saying he's doing that now, but he might have been. You still want him on the Mets?"

I said yes.

The phone rang in my home on October 19, 1999. Same voice.

"Hi," someone said. "The Mets are down to the Braves 7-3 right now and if they don't come back, they're done for in the NLCS. We're headed to the seventh. Piazza can hit an absolute laser of a homer off Smoltz and tie it in a few minutes, but he might need a little something to help him, considering how banged up he's been this month. He might not, but I'm just saying it's a possibility. You OK with that?"

I said yes.

The phone rang in my pocket at my seat on June 30, 2000. Same voice.

"Hi," someone said. "Listen, I know this game sucks right now in the middle of the eighth, the Mets losing 8-1, but some baserunners are gonna get on and before you know it, it will be tied 8-8, two will be on and Piazza will be up. He can take one mighty swing and give you the memory of a lifetime here. I mean you'll be talking about this forever. Thing is the swing might not produce anything unless he's sort of 'enhanced' before coming to bat. Can't say for sure that he'll need that extra boost, but if we have to go that route, will you sign off on that decision?"

I said yes.

Every now and then, I'd get a call like that. Same basic proposition: Mike Piazza will perform as no Met before him did, as no Met around him could. Every time he did, it would give me a thrill unsurpassed by any other sensation. But I had to say yes, that however Piazza prepared himself to deliver on my behalf was all right by me.

I always said yes.

It's years since Mike Piazza played for the Mets. I got one more call from that voice, this afternoon.

"Hi," someone said. "A book is coming out that alleges Mike Piazza used performance-enhancing substances. There's no irrefutable evidence, but it's by a writer you basically trust. And it's not the first time someone's mentioned this sort of thing. Anyway, you've been a Mets fan your whole life and you never got a rush from any Met the way you did from Piazza hitting those amazing, dramatic homers he had such a knack for. So I'm just wondering, do these revelations — if they're true, and we don't know if they are — change any of the way you felt toward Mike Piazza?"

I said no. Not really.

Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other fine booksellers.

"So," Jason asked me Friday. "Have you been in the wilds yet?" His way of asking had I been to a book store so I could view my merchandise in its natural selling habitat.

Not yet, I said, but I'm headed there.

Good timing had me abandoning my hermit-ish existence and meeting some former colleagues Friday night in what we Long Islanders call the city. It allowed me three brief excursions before joining the party.

Penn Books in Penn Station. Cramped fixture of my commuting experience. Sometimes sports books meander to the front of the store. The Torre book and a new book about Walter O'Malley were in evidence immediately, but not Faith and Fear. Walked laterally (it's really cramped) to the back, to the sports shelves. No particular order, not even alphabetical, but blue and orange tends to stand out. Yup, there it was: my first sighting of my first book in a retail environment. It was next to a book about a team I can't stand by a writer I'd cross the street to avoid based on what I've read, but as with your relatives, you can't necessarily choose your contemporaries. I literally high-fived my book's binding. It's still saleable.

Borders at Penn Station. I've had lots of good luck finding gems in this Borders and other Borders. I had no luck finding Faith and Fear. Place was way crowded. Rush hour plus Knicks game must have equaled store traffic. Went to a DIY computer, typed in my title and it told me "Likely in store." Thought about badgering a clerk to go get it. I had to do that once for a DVD that had just been released at this Borders, and someone I know had to the same at a Suffolk County Borders earlier in the week to get FAFIF. If it were less busy and I didn't have an engagement, I might have, but I wasn't buying a copy of my own book at that moment, so I let it go...not without angst that it's wasting away in a storage room. Next trip in, I will be on them like Olerud on base. Still, encouraging to see that in this economy, people flock to book stores.

Barnes & Noble in Union Square. When I worked eight blocks south and then nine blocks north, Union Square was my midway, midday oasis, no place more of a lunchtime refuge than the giant book store on E. 17th St. If I were to get up and count all the books in this room right here that were purchased at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square, I'd probably not finish, 'cause I'd pick one out and start reading.

So I enter the place I consider The Capital of Books. Maybe I'm with new non-fiction or new releases or New York...nah, let's not get greedy. Let's just head up to the second floor, to where they keep the baseball, to where I used to scour the shelves, absorb the breadth of titles, roll my eyes at how many frigging Yogi Berra books get published and wonder if someday I'd see my own unwritten, sketchily conceived book about being a Mets fan here.

Someday came Friday night. There I was...I mean there it was, Faith and Fear in Flushing, facing out from a top shelf (luck of the alphabet). A little high for immediate consumer eye contact, but who wants to be down near the floor? There's three copies of me/it, then some other stuff, then Tony La Russa's uninviting mug.

It was like Endy Chavez made a nice catch. Not a great catch, but a nice catch at an important moment. When he would do that, I might jump up (not as high as Endy) and shriek (not as high as Endy could jump), but I knew I'd seen something. I saw something. I saw my book at the book store where I bought other writers' baseball books for eight years. I jumped and, yeah, I shrieked.

After calling Stephanie to alert her to my discovery (noticing I was leaning on a table of baseball remainders...how foreboding), I went back to my shelf. I reached up there, pulled my three copies out a little further so they'd be more prominent than La Russa and was on my way to meet my friends. When I returned to Penn Station many hours later, I went back to Penn Books to check on FAFIF's status. A second copy had materialized in the course of the evening. Maybe it had been there all along. I hope it wasn't from an unsatisfied customer.

***
My sister and her husband wanted to take us out Saturday night to celebrate the release of the book: dinner, then a trip to see the damn thing in action. We wound up at a diner, which was fine with Stephanie and me and extraordinarily appropriate given the Long Island-bred nature of the author and his work. Just down Glen Cove Road from where we dined is my de facto hometown B&N. I don't live in Carle Place, but it's close enough. Another busy store that's gotten its fair share of my discretionary income over the years. My sister asked me where the sports books are kept, for she had never, ever had cause to seek them out previously.

A nice big table hosted all kinds of baseball books by the stack. One stack was a nice tall pile of Faith and Fear in Flushing. While I was marveling at its presence, Stephanie was over at the shelves. And, in alphabetical order just like the night before, there it was. But more, lots more. I began to wonder if I should be more concerned than happy that so many were here. Why weren't we moving more units? Then I remembered it came out like three days before. Patience, rookie. Patience.

Suzan whipped out a camera and handed it to Mark. I posed with the book and with various members of my family, sort of like Friday night when I brought a copy with me for my Facebook-driven reunion with old work friends. I've written and occasionally still write for magazines. I write various forms of corporate communications. I write a blog. Nobody asks to pose with those. A book, even now when digital reigns supreme, is different. Seeing the book you wrote in a book store is way different from seeing it anywhere else, except maybe in the hands of those who care enough to grab a copy.

We hung around longer than necessary. Stephanie and Mark each went to browse for other things. I gave Suzan a brief tour of the baseball inventory vis-à-vis the other authors I've gotten to know, the other books I've read and reviewed, the books wherein our blog and I have been acknowledged. We had to keep inching away from the Faith and Fear display, lest we block others from a clear view. As we were about to leave, I noticed a woman in a Mets jacket was in a nearby section. Stephanie — not a salesperson by nature — picked up a FAFIF and marched over to her. "This is my husband's book. If you're a Mets fan, you'll really like it."

"We're not really going door to door," I felt compelled to add. "But as long as you're here and wearing that jacket..."

She promised to take a look.

***
Friday, March 27, 12:30 PM, I'll join Mark Healey for Baseball Digest Live, airing from Foley's NY, on West 33rd Street in Manhattan, between Fifth Ave. and Sixth Ave., across from the Empire State Building. Stop by if you can or listen online.

Coming Wednesday, April 1, 7 PM, I join Mike Silva and Howard Megdal on NY Baseball Digest. And the next night — Thursday, April 2 at 8 PM — I'll be on the bill (introduced by the fabulous Mr. Fry) at Gelf Magazine's Varsity Letters sports reading series, at the Happy Ending Lounge on the Lower East Side, a venue with a name that meshes quite fortuitously with Chapter One of the book.

Hope you'll be listening/calling/attending to any and all of these events as applicable. More such stuff To Be Announced. Watch this space and this space.

Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets: available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a book store near you.

Welcome to Flashback Friday: I Saw The Decade End, a milestone-anniversary salute to the New York Mets of 1969, 1979, 1989 and 1999. Each week, we immerse ourselves in or at least touch upon something that transpired within the Metsian realm 40, 30, 20 or 10 years ago. Amazin' or not, here it comes.

They were young. They were guns. But the hopes of a franchise didn't hang on their rifle arms. They were just the easiest, most inexpensive options available. So they were opted for. In retrospect, they were quite a bargain.

Seventeen years before Generation K went down in flames and infamy, there was Generation Pre-K, if you like. Not as celebrated in advance as Jason Isringhausen, Bill Pulsipher and Paul Wilson but a lot more durable in Met lore was this trio: Neil Allen, Jesse Orosco and Mike Scott. It was three decades ago this spring that each made the Mets.

If 2009 has anything in common with 1979 — and perhaps most springs — it's that the Mets came to camp with holes in their pitching staff, particularly their starting rotation. You could count on 1978 National League ERA champ Craig Swan. You could hopefully count on 1978 National League All-Star Pat Zachry, a great first half to his credit, but also a fractured foot that kept him out of action in the second half after he gave up a record-tying single (longest modern N.L. hitting streak) to old teammate Pete Rose. Kevin Kobel had a shot in March, but his own foot sprain put him out of action until May. Lightly used outfielder Tom Grieve was swapped to St. Louis for Brooklyn's own Pete Falcone, whose claim to fame, at least in my eyes, was the Mets always beat him; we were 9-0 against him since he came up in '75, 0-4 in '76 alone. His other claim to fame was his cousin was eternal bullpen coach Joe Pignatano

After those relatively sure things, 1979 was full of pitching question marks. As punctuation went, they surely outnumbered dollar signs. That became evident when that season's prospective No. 4 starter, Nelson Briles, was disinvited from Spring Training for having some wear on him. You'd think the '79 beggars wouldn't be choosers (even if Briles, 35, hadn't been particularly effective since 1976), but they chose not to pay him the $60,000 a veteran of his stature would have demanded. Joe Torre wanted his former St. Louis on the teammate, perhaps to keep him company, perhaps to remind of him of what it was like to play behind a rotation of Gibson, Carlton and a much younger Nellie Briles. But sixty-thou was big money to the Lorinda de Roulet Mets. As Jack Lang recounted in his essential The New York Mets: Twenty-Five Years Of Baseball Magic, "the austerity campaign was on and [GM Joe] McDonald would not or could not pay Briles the money a veteran commanded."

So count Briles — whose lasting contribution to Mets history was his cameo in Bill Murray's coverage of Chico Escuela's courageous Spring Training comeback — out of St. Petersburg. And count Nino Espiñosa and his impressive afro out, sent to Philly with ten days to go for slugging (if not sunny) Richie Hebner. The Mets headed for Opening Day in Chicago with three experienced starters: Swan, Zachry and Falcone.

This is where the youth movement drifted in. This is where the Major League Baseball minimum of salary of $21,000 per year came in to play. This is how Neil Allen, Jesse Orosco and Mike Scott became, at the respective ages of 21, 21 and 23, 1979 New York Mets. Three rookies for just over the price of one Briles? A steal.

Their ascension onto the roster was not completely without merit. These weren't California Penal League refugees, not even at that tender stage of their nascent careers. Jesse Orosco, the player to be named later in the Jerry Koosman deal (named after Greg Field), showed up in St. Pete as a non-roster invitee and chalked up six scoreless appearances. Allen had a 10-2 single-A season under his belt from just two seasons earlier. Scott threw nearly 200 innings two consecutive years in the minors. Time would bear out that each belonged in the bigs. But that time was a ways off.

There were moments. Orosco's came first, in the Opener at Wrigley, a whale of a game the Mets led 10-3 (Richie Hebner, four hits, four RBI) behind eight solid frames out of Craig Swan. Dwight Bernard — of whose Met career absolutely nothing positive can be said — came in to mop up and quickly set the ivy ablaze. In a blink it was 10-6. Torre called on young Jesse Orosco to face Bill Buckner with a runner on second. Not a save situation, but close enough. Orosco flied Buckner to right and that was that. The Mets were 1-0 and Jesse was golden.

For about a minute. Orosco wasn't ready. Allen served as de facto fourth starter when the first doubleheader rolled around and pitched the barest of quality starts (6 IP, 3 ER) before going down to a vengeful Espiñosa. He lost to Nino and the Phils again six days later, looking less impressive. Neil wasn't ready. Scott's first start went well, a romp over Vida Blue and the Giants. But Mike proved progressively less able and the Mets, even the 1979 Mets, were not willing to wait for him to be ready. He and Jesse were sent down in mid-June. Neil lost his spot in the rotation by May and was scheduled to join his fellow young guns as Tides after a Disabled List stint, but then closer Skip Lockwood had a shoulder problem (joints were killing the Mets; Zachry's year was ruined by a bad elbow), so Allen stayed a Met. He began pitching effectively in relief and eventually succeeded Lockwood to save whatever Mets wins there were to save.

Cheapness was the reason they got their break, but their youth would be served, albeit once they matured. Allen was probably the brightest spot of the bleak second half. He was the closer of record clear to early 1983 and a darn good one, too, at least through '82. Orosco would need time to hone his craft, but at about the time Neil was crumbling in New York (and becoming legendary trade bait), Jesse moved into the closer's slot and earned All-Star honors twice. Scott never amounted to much as a Met, but you likely know he became quite the craftsman — particularly with sandpaper — in Houston.

By October 1986, the discount seeds of the spring of '79 had blossomed all over the postseason: Scott scuffing and stifling the Mets, Orosco asphyxiating the Astros and Red Sox and the bounty Allen brought to Queens, Keith Hernandez, driving in the runs that turned around the final game of that Fall Classic. Neil Allen pitched until 1989, Mike Scott until 1991, Jesse Orosco, a.k.a. Methuselah, until 2003. I'm not sure that three pitchers with zero big league innings among them every came up to the Mets together at one season's beginning and went on to have three individual tenures quite as long.

Sometimes you can't judge at face value what you see in a given Spring Training. And sometimes you just have to reserve judgment.

Don't be left off the final roster: get yourself a copy of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets before Opening Day! Available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, other online booksellers and fine bookstores throughout the Greater Northeast. Discuss the Damn Thing, too, at Facebook with other FAFIF fans.

Gary Cohen just mentioned your favorite blog (or at least this one) in the bottom of the fourth inning. Keep an ear open when you eschew college basketball this evening for SNY's rebroadcast.

When Air Metropolitan departs from Palm Beach International in a couple of weeks (assuming this perpetual Spring Training ever ends), I think we all know who's going to be sitting in the fifth row of the starting pitchers' section and who will be deplaning to meet his connecting flight, ETA April 11 or 12 against the Marlins, maybe sooner given the way rotations have of never, ever spinning as planned.

Meet the new Met, same as the old Met in that Liván Hernandez is classic fifth starter Met-erial. Is anybody here really surprised this veteran's veteran whose shiningest moment in baseball came in the previous decade wound up a Met? Isn't everybody more surprised that he hasn't already been a Met? Doesn't he seem just that familiar?

Tim Redding was injured before he ever had a chance to pitch well. Freddy Garcia was injured long before we signed him. Jonathon Niese was born not 22½ years ago, which makes him kind of young to be keeping this kind of company just yet. That leaves Liván, and not just by process of elimination. The old man has pitched well (embellishing his credentials with five very solid innings Wednesday), though it certainly helps that Redding, Garcia and Niese have a combined ERA of way more than Hernandez's age...whatever number that might be today.

Niese should have a future, Garcia has shown nothing more discernible than a past, Redding has a bad shoulder and Liván Hernandez — named World Series MVP right around Kid Jonathon's eleventh birthday — is undeniably the fifth starter of the present. Liván Hernandez is officially 34. And I'm the King of Sweden. But whaddaya want from a fifth starter: an accurate birth certificate or lots of innings, many of them dependable? That's Liván's stock-in-trade. He's big, he's durable plus he hits. I saw him hit a home run at RFK, and that's no mean poke. Let the "bat Liván eighth and Castillo ninth" talk commence in earnest (hell, let the "play Liván at second the days he's not pitching" talk commence, too). I'm not convinced Liván will endure into May or June let alone September or (deep breath) October, but let's get to the first week of the season with five starters on board and take it from there.

Santana had to shut it down at one point this spring. Pelfrey was seen wearing a boot. Maine ain't all the way back even if he's out there firing. Perez mentioned something about being tired from Playing For His Country. Hopefully they'll all be tip-top when everything counts again. Until then, I'm not going to look askance at someone with Liván Hernandez's track record, long-term or extremely recent. The King of Sweden would never be so shortsighted.

As for the man ultimately on the other end of the rotation's deliberations, Brian Schneider — not my favorite catcher by any means but surely a guy we need given the present roster composition — is experiencing "pain and stiffness behind his right knee". I would assume all catchers experience loads of pain and stiffness, but Schneider hasn't played since Sunday and he required an examination that revealed "inflammation of the capsule in the knee". Omar Minaya said he was not particularly concerned. I'm pretty sure that means Schneider will be out six to eight weeks.

Also, an X-Ray showed David Wright's left big toe is all right after he fouled a ball off it in WBC play. Excuse me while I go hyperventilate into a paper bag For My Country.

Thanks to the Eddie Kranepool Society for a glowing appraisal of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers — and at many fine bookstores near you, including Barnes & Noble and B. Dalton locations from Connecticut to Washington, D.C. All are welcome to join the FAFIF: AIPOTNYM discussion on Facebook here.

Thanks to Joe Dubin's New Breed-bred eagle eye for such things (though discounting the Odd Couple game we won only in fiction), it appears the Mets' winning ways date back further than originally thought, all the way to June 13, 1967, a full 44 games before the juncture initially calculated (when I was either too sleepy or too timid to wade through what loomed as a full and daunting pallet of L's on baseball-reference).

Commencing with that evening's doubleheader split against the Reds at Shea, specifically rookie Tom Seaver's eight-hit complete game 7-3 victory over Cincinnati in the nightcap (the fifth win of the young man's career), the Mets were 22-22 up to and including the aforementioned July 28 loss in Los Angeles...meaning that since the middle of play 6/13/67, the Mets are 3,308-3,307 (winning percentage: .50007559), marking the furthest you can go back in time and call the Mets cumulative winners. Before the second game of that June 13 twinighter, up to and including the 6-0 shellacking the Reds pasted on Bill Denehy in the opener, the Mets were 277-582 (winning percentage: .32246799).

The larger points stand as previously reported:

• The Mets were very bad well into their sixth season, covering a period of their first 859 games.
• They've been intermittently almost as bad since then but sometimes they've been pretty good and once in a while magnificent. Thus, for more than four decades, they've been the slightest shade over middling in a span that covers 6,615 games, right through last September 28's 4-2 defeat at the fins of the Marlins.
• They still need to win 82 games this season to have as many yearly winning records as losing records in their checkered 48-year history.
• They will still have an all-time losing record even if they go thirty games over .500 every year for the next ten years.
• Buy my book please.