Category Archives: 1999 Project

1999 Project

1999 Project: Games 2 and 3

Click here for an intro/manifesto on The 1999 Project.

rickey2.jpgApril 6, 1999: Mets 12, Marlins 3

The Mets recovered from an embarrassing Opening Day loss to clobber the Marlins in the second game of the season. Every starter had a hit, including pitcher Rick Reed, who also contributed an RBI sac fly and threw no-hit ball for four innings. Mike Piazza slugged his first homer of the year, and new acquisition Rickey Henderson wreaked havoc on the basepaths. The always humble Henderson told reporters:

I’d probably be the king of stealing runs and creating runs if they
kept those stats…Making them throw the ball away, I’d probably be
the king of that, too.

Ex-World Series MVP/future Met Livan Hernandez was torched for seven runs. After the game, Hernandez said, “[The Mets] have the strongest bats in the National League.” The Times article linked above doesn’t mention if Livan performed some tensile strength experiments on the Mets’ bats to confirm this.

The never smug and never presumptive GM Steve Phillips suggested a headline for the beat writers: “Money well spent.”

99_rickey_marlins.pngApril 7, 1999: Mets 6, Marlins 0

Henderson was in full force again in the series finale, with two solo homers, two doubles, four runs scored, and 12 total bases, one shy of a club record (that record would fall later this year). How did Rickey recover from a dreadful spring training?

Any time the bell rings, we’re ready to play…It rang. I heard it solid.

Rickey also said he couldn’t remember having so many extra base hits in one game, “But I can’t remember half the things I do in this game.”

Bobby Jones recovered from his own terrible spring to toss seven shutout innings. Armando Benitez retired both batters he faced in his Mets debut.

1999 Project

1999 Project: Opening Day

Click here for an intro/manifesto on The 1999 Project.

99_dunwoody.jpgApril 5, 1999: Marlins 6, Mets 2

The 1999 Mets were eager to leave the previous year’s collapse behind. They signed Mike Piazza to a huge, seven-year deal, and so they’d have a full season of one of the most feared sluggers in baseball. They acquired Rickey Henderson to provide spark at the top of their lineup. They also made a three-way trade to get Roger Cedeno and Armando Benitez, bolstering both their outfield depth and their bullpen.

One of their biggest off-season acquisitions was All Star third baseman Robin Ventura, known for his bat and his glove (so much so that Edgardo Alfonzo moved over to second base to accommodate him). But both failed Ventura in his Mets debut, and contributed to a 6-2 loss.

[Ventura] got a late jump on Luis Castillo’s leadoff Baltimore chop that led to a single and he was unable to glove Derrek Lee’s hard smash to third with one out and runners on first and third, turning a potential inning-ending double play into a run-scoring single and opening the way for the Marlins’ three-run rally.

”If I can get a glove on it, I should get it,” Ventura said. ”I thought I did and then I didn’t.”

Todd Dunwoody [seen to your right, because no, I don’t remember him either] lined a run-scoring single to center, Mike Piazza committed a passed ball to allow the runners to move to second and third. Preston Wilson, who was part of the trade that brought Piazza to New York last May, delivered a sacrifice fly to center.

Just like that, the Mets were down, 3-0.

But there were many contributors in the defeat, if you can call them that. The Mets left 14 men on base in total. They were able to scratch out hits against Alex Fernandez, making his first start in 18 months after rotator cuff surgery, but couldn’t plate any runners other than a weak sac fly and late homer by John Olerud.

Al Leiter’s overall ineffectiveness was no help either: five runs (four earned), nine hits, and 124 pitches in only five innings of work. This was cause for concern, after a sub-par spring training and a bruised right hip he suffered in an exhibition game. Although Leiter himself thought he got unlucky on a few dinky grounders that managed to find holes or bounce off of gloves.

The loss underscored the Mets’ troubles beating bad teams, which cost them dearly the previous year. In 1998, they went 7-5 against the post-fire-sale Marlins, who won an NL-low 54 games. They fared even worse against the 65-win Expos. The New York Times believed that Opening Day was a bad omen for the team:

Unlike the Marlins, the Mets are built to win now. Their starting
lineup averages 31 years of age, their starting rotation 34; their
closer is 38. [GM Steve] Phillips had talked before the game about his only expectation being that his players perform to their average capabilities.

If that happens, the general manager was asked, is this a playoff team? ”It should be,” Phillips said, well aware that the Mets have not qualified for the post-season since 1988. ”It better be.”

But today, the Mets looked a lot more like the team that had trouble beating the Marlins and the Expos last season.

1999 Project

The 1999 Project: A “Humble” Introduction

mora_cedeno_rocker.jpgToday I unveil The 1999 Project. Not to be confused with the Manhattan Project, the Montauk Project, or–god forbid–the 9/12 Project.

In case you hadn’t peeked at a calendar lately, it’s the year 2009. That means it’s ten years since the year 1999. That may or may not mean much to you. To me, 1999 means a lot. It was the year I finally dove headfirst back into baseball.

I loved baseball as a kid, but drifted away from it in high school and most of college. I dipped my toe back in the water a few times in 1998. That was the year the Mets acquired Mike Piazza and Al Leiter, and the first year they seriously contended for a playoff spot in many a moon. It seemed a good year to reqacquaint myself.

It was also, unfortunately, the year where they lost their last five games–when even one win would’ve meant a three-way tie for the wild card–and finished one game out of the postseason picture. The newspapers, and many fans, called it a choke job, a collapse. Oh, if they only knew what a real collapse looked like…by having the definition drilled into their heads two years in a row…

But 1998 was almost worth it for the insane, monstrous glory and agony that was 1999. If any year of Mets baseball was going to bring you back to the fold, this was it. 1999 remains my favorite season.

I wasn’t born in 1969 or 1973. I wasn’t old enough to appreciate 1986. But in 1999, I was fresh out of college, on my own, entering the workplace, and rediscovering a team that made itself impossible to not like. The fact that they didn’t win the World Series, or even get to it, almost seems beside the point.

For a while, I thought 2006 would take the place of 1999 in my heart, but Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, and Guillermo Mota conspired to take it out of the running. 1999 still reigns supreme.

And Bobby Valentine remains my favorite Mets manager of all time. Probably the only true genius who ever helmed the team. He had one sort-of ace (Leiter) and one bona fide slugger (Piazza), and that was pretty much it. He built the 1999 Mets into a 97 win team with a great bullpen and solid defense (The Best Infield Ever), while dealing with fair-to-middling starting pitching and a completely anonymous outfield.

Several years later, once the 1999 Mets had scattered to the four winds, I made a concerted effort to get jerseys of all members of its vaunted infield. I only got halfway there: Robin Ventura and Edgardo Alfonzo (my favorite all-time Met). I can understand not being able to find a Rey Ordonez jersey, but no eBay love for Jon Olerud? That still shocks me.

So as I noted the passage of time this New Year’s, I said to myself, “Self, why don’t you do a retrospective of your favorite season?” Methought, with the assistance of Retrosheet.org and a few newspaper archives, I could reconstruct the season from beginning to end.

I’ve played around with this idea in my head for months. Seriously, for months. I weighed the pros and cons of this project endlessly. I considered the glory of success, the ignominy of failure. Because if I say I’m going to do this, I have to do it, for all 162 regular season games (technically, 163) and beyond.

What put me over the edge was my recent devouring of Faith and Fear in Flushing (which I promise to give a proper review very soon). Greg Prince’s breathless account of that year was enough to convince me that this project should be done–nay, must be done. Particularly his description of Game 6 of that year’s LCS as the best game he’d ever seen, even though the Mets lost it–and thus the series–on a bases-loaded walk.

(Pause here to bite your knuckle and curse the memory of Kenny Rogers.)

I will probably do one post a week, chronicling the games that were played during that 7-day period (I realize that the weeks probably won’t line up the same way, in Sunday-to-Saturday terms, but if I don’t mind that detail, neither should you). But I also reserve the right to concentrate a daily post on particularly awesome or heartbreaking games.

I also figure this will help me keep perspective and not worry too much about the state of the current Mets, which I otherwise would have great difficulty doing. I have certain thoughts about this year’s team that I’d rather keep close to my vest, having been burned by two years of…

Jesus, how can you even describe the last two years? It’s like the famous banner lofted by the original Sign Man at Shea after the conclusion of the ’69 Series: THERE ARE NO WORDS. No, there are not, but for all the wrong reasons.

Without further ado, let the pain begin!