Losin' in Amazin' Fashion

(I just got internet in my new apartment today, Thursday, November 5. This was written on Tuesday while on the B train heading into the city from Brooklyn.)

On Monday, I treated everything that had happened on Sunday night as a New Orleans-type 2015 New York Mets funeral, marching around Brooklyn in my new Orange and Blue Mets 2015 World Series cap, my Mets Mitchell & Ness Jacket, and my Green Jets shirt. Neither team had played well the day before, though no one had anything at all to say about the football team.

"Yo, what happened last night, man?" Said a man in a Brooklyn Nets hat as I passed New York Avenue and Snyder Avenue.

"We didn't get it done, but it's alright. We'll be more athletic next year and beyond."

"We need to get a closer that can shut it down!"

"It's not Jeurys' fault (Other than the one quick pitch too many in the 1st game.) We need to make plays behind him! It's alright, we're gonna take it all next year!"

"Hey, man. They could go back next year. Gotta get it done."

I passed a group of 5 school kids somewhere between Rogers and Bedford Avenues, probably somewhere between the ages of 7 and 12.

"The Mets are not winning the World Series, bro."

"That is now officially true."

I should have added "...smartass," to the little twerp. All in good fun.

I got to a Staples Print Center, and while waiting on line for a computer, a middle aged man with very heavy bushes of hair in his ears sat on a chair off to the side. I asked him if he was on line, he just pointed at the computer and muttered something. I didn't really understand what he said, but I understood his next words.

"What happened last night, man."

The conversation continued and so on and so forth.

On Church Avenue, next to the old Dutch Church, a man in a Yankee hat of some New Era nature stuck his head out the passenger's side of a moving car.

"What happened, man?"

"Wait Til Next Year!"

And that's all I could think of after the Murph and Clippard debacle from Game 4; the parallels to another young National League team of this region, whose old adage, "Wait Till Next Year" kept their faithful sane and warm through the winter. I hoped it wouldn't be the case the next night, but unfortunately, Game 5 became even more devastating than the 1941 Brooklyn Dodgers parallels I had started drawing up.

You see, the 1941 Brooklyn National League Baseball Club hadn't been to the big show since 1920 and had never won a championship in the World Series era.  After just inching out the Cardinals for the pennant, the young team was poised, at home in Ebbets Field on Bedford Avenue and Sullivan Place in Flatbush, to tie the experienced North Neighbor Yankees 2-2 in the series. Up 4-3 with no one on, 2 out and a 2-strike count to Tommy Hendrich, Hugh Casey unleashed a curveball that was swung on and missed, but ate up catcher Mickey Owen, allowing Hendrich to reach 1st base. The Yankees rallied from there and won 7-4.

Unlike OUR Game 5, the Yankees controlled that one throughout, where the Bombers' Tiny Bonham outpitched Brooklyn's Whit Wyatt and New York (A.L.) won 4 games to 1.

What's even spookier for a series that was played on Halloween was that Ebbets Field, whose facade was mirrored by our Citi, also saw it's home team lose 4 games to 1 in its inaugural World Series in 1916, against the Boston Red Sox, although, oddly, Game 5 was back in Boston back then.

So, after marching around happily mournful yesterday (attempting to let the belief that the Mets are about to get more athletic as the Minaya position players start fading away keep me smilin') Tuesday is a different story. Combined with the fact it's unseasonably 70 today, I left my hat and jacket at home, only dressed in jeans and an orange Knicks shirt. I didn't want to talk about it anymore. I just wanted to write about it.

This season started with me heading down to Washington on a Megabus at 5 in the morning to catch the afternoon game between the Nats and the Mets. It brought me back down to Washington in September for one of the greatest times I've ever had watching this team on the road. It brought me to work at Citi Field for Two Boots from Mid-September all the way through the last game of the year, which turned out to be in November and turned out to be the WORLD SERIES. It may not have turned out the way we wanted to, but I can't say I didn't have fun.

I had the time of my life, but now I've got work to do. I've got an new apartment that I OWN to get together and a life to attend to.

But I'll have the Mets on my mind the entire time.

Wait till Next Year indeed.

KEEP. ON. PUSHIN'.

LET'S. GO. METS.

A Bolt From the Blue For Murph

Monday generally starts my weekend, with two days off as most everyone else runs off to their day jobs. I don't have a day job...other than this stuff, that and the other kind of writing; the one that's set to screen.

Then I work at night. 5 nights a week.

So, after catching up on sleep after a busy end to my week that is your weekend at Two Boots Hell's Kitchen, I woke up in Flatbush Brooklyn, got some work done, and ventured out to pay a bill at Best Buy at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush, where Walter O'Malley had wanted a ballpark and where one currently resides in the form of the ball of basket.

(Technically, it's at the intersection of Atlantic and Fort Greene Place, but you get the drift. It seems insult to injury that there's a shopping center with a round facade that, though not at all identical or modeled after Ebbets Field in any way, invokes the feeling of a former Ballpark in Brooklyn.)

As the Mets game got started, I had no headphones with me, nor did I want to buy any. So, like it was 1952 and I was walking around with my transistor radio, I hugged Prospect Park on the outside, starting at Parkside Ave, and heading up the Southwest street.

With fantastic sunset skies complementing the great houses of row, town and single family-style, that face the park, the game moved unbelievably on its way.

Prospect Park is not a perfect rectangle like its contemporary, Central Park, but perfectly fits what a city that's shaped like Brooklyn should have as its main nature-fabricating hub. In fact, the designers of both Central and Prospect, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, cared more for their Brooklyn masterpiece when it was all said and done. So, the street of Prospect Park Southwest is basically split up into two different long straight stretches that curves off somewhere in the middle. After having taken off around the beginning of the game, it must have already been the 4th inning when I turned onto Prospect Park West, which is at the top of the slope that heads to the park, otherwise known as the neighborhood of Park Slope. The game moving feverishly along, I had no idea the peak of aesthetics I was headed towards, though about a half hour or so before the peak of last night's game.

Though there had of course been some great skies already on this journey, the level that it got to by the time I got to the Flatbush/Atlantic intersection, where the Ebbets Field flagpole stands in front of Barclays, was absolutely breathtaking. I could tell there was a BBall game, since people were still scalping, but the place outside the arena was rather subdued, and I soon found out it was around the end of the first half, with Atlanta leading the new Brooklyn ballsquad. Around this same time, Dillon Gee must have had like 2 pitches through 7.

Eventually, I met up with a friend and found myself at Pork Slope, where Playoff Sports, of Hockey and Basketball type, were on, and not April Baseball in Miami. I understood. And I turned the radio off as to not be rude to my friend nor the patrons around us. Gameday it would have to be.

And the Gee ride was done. The Marlins struck first, and all I saw was, "In Play, Run(s)," words that only look good together when it's a report about your Mets team.

Luckily, Carlos Torres was able to slay the Giancarlo Beast on one pitch, and we were onto the 9th a lot sooner than any of us thought we'd arrive.

I had been actively conversing and balancing attention towards the game, and I believe I maintained it when the Live-Look-In was presented to me. Steve Cishek was the Marlin closing, someone I remember us handling in Miami once upon a time when Kelly Shoppach was on the team (he singled up the middle to give us an eventual 3-2 win back in 2012.) That one comes to mind occasionally, but it wasn't that fact that made me believe we could comeback. It's the 2015 New York Mets.

What an AB by Juan. I couldn't help it and uttered, "Yes!" out loud. Duda walked, and the Live-Look-In was done. Are you freakin' kiddin' me?! Right NOW?!

I was left to watch the gameday feed for Murphy's AB. Those words, however, that we saw earlier, entered the screen once more, this time on the proper side of things.

"In Play, Run(s)."

FANTASTIC!! I thought the game was tied.

I waited...and waited...

"Daniel Murphy homers (2) on a flyball to right field."

Alllllllriiiiiight.

I enjoyed some tater tots. What a night that ended a lot quicker than I expected.

And Brooklyn won, too.

No matter what, Brooklyn always wins.

Let's Go Knicks though...😁

And LET'S. GO. METS.

Ya Know...'Cause Harvey's Better

The early start surprised me a day or two before the event. But nonetheless, I was prepared to tune in at 1. Though I didn't prepare properly.

It wasn't like I wasn't awake for a sufficient enough of time to plug my phone in and get a proper charge. I just didn't. Thinking I could get it done with 31% left. I left E 18th and Church in Brooklyn listening to Howie and Josh, then eventually finding myself on Ocean Ave when the Brooklyn CITY Historian Ron Schweiger called me about the 11am ET podcast taking place today with myself and him talking about the NYC transit system and...sorry. I lost my digital breath there.

But the gist of it was after I got off the phone with him, and found Harvey in his first inning striking out Bryce Harper, I was turning the Ocean Ave corner that connects to Flatbush, where the Ebbets Field Apartments come into frame, and where the once-upon-a-time ballpark came into frame.

On Flatbush, directly looking at the Ebbets plot across the botanical garden's way, is the Lefferts House, which you see here. I got the picture off, and at 19%, Howie and Josh faded, and my battery completely died, as I was in the middle of walking the long Flatbush stretch of Prospect Park.

So, completely off the grid, I marched up Flatbush Ave, passing Grand Army Plaza, finally going underground at its 2/3 stop towards Manhattan.

At some point underground, completely unaware of what was going on above, and miles away in DC, I asked someone with a charged phone what the time was (it was the older 3 train. No time readings.)

It was 2:01.

Nice.

Who knows what time I finally reached the game I was searching for, as well as the power source I needed, but before I did, I walked the 42nd St strip of Times Sq, from 7th to 8th, passing the Yankees Clubhouse store where I wondered whether they had the game on (I glanced. They didn't), stopping for money at 9th, pausing at the Dalton's windows to catch a glimpse of the score, only to find a commercial.

I then scurried to Rudy's Bar & Grill, right next to Two Boots Pizza Hell's Kitchen, of where I am employed, and whom have graciously given me tickets to April 14, 2015 at Citi Field, where, if you remember, they have our great pizza.

When I arrived at the literal wooden bar, in my bright big-logoed orange Mets shirt, I asked a guy with a Brooklyn Cyclones hat what the score was.

4-0.

I rejoiced. I ordered two hot dogs for breakfast, hold the buns, with sides of ketchup and mustard. And I chomped down, watched the game, and had my hot dogs with some Matzos.

And of course, A Brooklyn Lager.

And combined with a great night in Two Boots, it was a perfect #HarveyDay.

I can't wait for the next one.

CHOP. DEM. BRAVES. DOWN.

LET'S. GO. METS.

A Metropolitan in Every Borough

1. 
   

   met·ro·pol·i·tan

   ˌmetrəˈpälətn/

   adjective

   1. 1.

      of, relating to, or denoting a metropolis, often inclusive of its surrounding areas.

   noun
2. an inhabitant of a metropolis.

Sometime in September of 2014, I left a friend's place near Dyckman St. and Broadway up in the 200's of the Grid of the Island of Manhattan around 12:20am. I went down into the A train station and got to the machine to refill my Metrocard. As I got to the machine, I looked back at the stairwell, then back at the machine. I smiled to myself and walked back towards the stairs.

In an effort to be somewhat stingy as a sacrifice for a journey, I ventured off at 12:25am, first down Broadway.

I passed Fort Tyron Park, and Trinity Cemetery, which proceeds what I've seen in the daytime to be a hidden gem of the city in the Audubon Terrace.

I passed a McDonalds at 145th St. I did not stop.

Though I didn't pass it's beautiful campus, I passed the City College 1 train stop on Broadway at 137th St.

The land under me dipped at 125th Street.

I passed Columbia University.

I passed Duke Ellington Blvd.

I entered the Upper West Side.

Let's even put Zabars on there as a landmark.

I kept going passed a number of namable landmarks on this New York Journey, probably arriving at 59th and Columbus Circle, at the Southwest corner of Central Park, around 2, give or take who knows how long.

I hopped on a CitiBike.

From there, I traveled, yet again, down Broadway, turning onto Chambers St. to catch the Brooklyn Bridge.

From Tillary over to Jay Street, I eventually made my way over to Fulton, catching it to Franklin Ave before turning and letting the Bike off at Lefferts Pl.

I then walked down Fulton St to Brooklyn Ave, which is where I made my first stop of the night. I had gone so long just walking, biking, and walking, it was time to replenish some nutrients.

At the deli, I got a plastic jug of water, IMMEDIATELY OPENED IT, then ordered a burger, a breakfast sandwich for later, a Naked juice (I don't remember which one) and a banana. and I'm pretty sure I got a coffee as well.

I then walked down Brooklyn Ave passed Atlantic Ave and turned onto Sterling Pl. I arrived in the room I was sleeping in at 3:59am.

And some may ask, "WHY'D you do THAT?"

Because I DO THAT kinda shit.

That's a Metropolitan way of life.

See, at the time, I was staying in Crown Heights between Brooklyn and Kingston Aves on Sterling Pl. This was after staying in East Williamsburg on Powers St between Olive and Bushwick in August. And before that, for 15 days, I lived off the goodwill of some lovely folks and their couches/spare beds after leaving my mothers' living room loft on July 15, after basically a 2-year stint under the roof of two different mothers (lesbians, fyi, BOTH Jewish) at two separate times. And that's after my girlfriend and I broke up.

Living at home can stunt growth. Living in your mother's loft is adolescent purgatory.

So, finally, and really, under the "THIS IS WHEN YOU HAVE TO LEAVE" window, negotiated to increase by 15 days, I left.

And I ventured off backpacking across the city of New York with a Mets Wheelie bag at my stead.

New York City has it all, but it shouldn't be mistaken for a city. Really, it is a conglomerate of cities that just so happened to unite under the city term so to make its expansion much more seamless. And it's really the thing I have the most passion for in my life.

I am a Metropolitan.

I am of this "city."

I have lived in every borough but Staten Island, no offense to them (and knowing me, I'll probably stay out there 6 months or so one day just to round it out.) I have lived in Queens twice, Manhattan a number of times, it being the place I grew up after 10 years old (which is really when I was born again and my growth arch has reflected that.)

I have lived in Parkchester in the Bronx, kinda Park Slope in Brooklyn, but not really, Crown Heights twice, Astoria and Sunnyside, Queens, Hell's Kitchen the majority of the time and Greenwich Village to kick the whole thing off in '95.

Everything in my life, baseball, the Mets, film, music, family, Two Boots, is fueled by my passion for the City of New York. For 20 years now, come the end of August, I will have been a New York City resident.

And 10 years ago, I had my first season as a full-fledged Mets fan.

I have needed to grow up, and have, in some fashion, a similar arch the last 10 years to the Mets. But it's time.

So, it's about me. And it's about you. And it's about her, and it's about him. And it's about them, and it's about IT.

It's about being a Metropolitan.

And it's never been a better time to be one.

Life is finite, but as long as we're alive, there is an infinite amount of stories we can collect. And as I write this, I am getting ready to collect more in a few hours. I will catch a bus to to another city, a fantastic walking city that happens to be our nation's capitol, to kick off this new era in the world of the Mets. And I can't be any more pumped.

2015 has finally arrived, and I will take it in in apparently 73 degree weather at 4:05pm ET for the first time in Nationals Park. Bartolo Colon. Max Sherzer.

I'm Back.

The Metropolitan is ready to take off.

Get Up Offa That Thing.

LET'S. GO. MET'S.