I’m sitting here in my basement watching the Brewers and the Diamondbacks play game 4 of their division series, and it’s not going the way I’d like (I’d like the Brewers to win tonight, and thus take the series, moving on to the NLCS; they can still win tomorrow of course, but that’s not the point). I’ll ignore, for now, the fact that the Phillies lost to the Cardinals earlier tonight, forcing a 5th game in that DS.
The point of all this, friends, is that we as Mets fans should be used to disappointments; I don’t need to point out our team’s history, nor our masochistic love for them. Our teams do not win. They’ll look good for a while – maybe – and then lose. Of course, I’m not a pessimist. I do believe our team can and will win the World Series in the next five or so years. So yes, I’m disappointed the Diamondbacks may win tonight (I suspect they will have won by the time many of you read this… Or not.) Yes, I’m disappointed that the Rays made an amazing run for nothing. Yes, I’m disappointed that the Phillies may go to the NLCS again… But these are minor disappointments compared to the years of roller-coaster-ride heartache of being a Mets fan.
And so, Mets fans, here is my proposal. Since we are, first and foremost, New Yorkers, let us extend the olive branch and well-wishes to our brethren in the Bronx. I am not suggesting we jump ship, nor am I suggesting we jump on a bandwagon or become front-runners. What I am suggesting, however, is that we not hate the Yankees – at least for now (I’d say forever, but I know that’s too much to ask from many of you). Our team has absolutely no shot of winning the World Series this year, and so there is absolutely no harm in rooting for the Yankees. They are, after all, New Yorkers just like us.
I know, many of you will now tell me that Yankee fans would not do the same for us, were the situation reversed. First of all, I don’t believe this is true. Perhaps many wouldn’t, but a great deal would, in fact, do what I am asking here. It doesn’t hurt to extend our good will; perhaps when we are eventually a contending team, such will be given to us. And who knows? Perhaps one day the Mets will be the better New York team, at least for a while.
The Mets have one more game to play tomorrow, but it doesn’t really matter. While technically speaking, tonight’s game didn’t matter either (except for Jose Reyes, but more on that later), there’s a difference: tonight’s game was the last one I’ll be able to go to this season, so it mattered to me.
For one thing, I truly love the sport of baseball. Though I hesitate to sound bombastic, I believe that it is one of the most majestic games ever created. The amount of skill required to play the game, even at it’s most basic levels; the strategy, the planning, the tension, relief and anguish inherent in nearly every moment… It truly is a wonderful game. It’s a game of the people, and contemporary stadiums try to incorporate that aspect of the game into the same building where they jam as much “luxury” as possible… And that’s just one of the many reasons that I truly love CitiField; it really is one of my favorite places in the world.
But I digress. Tonight’s game was important to me because I love baseball. Tonight’s game was important to me because I love my Mets. Tonight’s game was important to me because it completes my (attended) baseball season.
Tonight’s game was of particular importance to me as it was, perhaps, my chance to say goodbye to Jose Reyes, Mets shortstop. (I say “perhaps” only because we don’t know if he’ll sign somewhere else upon hitting free agency at the end of the season.) What a game it was for him, too – he went 3 for 6, with two home runs, his efforts rewarded with a batting average .001 higher than that of Ryan Braun (.336 vs .335, respectively). It looks, for the moment at least, as if Jose Reyes will win the National League batting title – the first man in the history of the franchise to do so. At the very least, then, if Jose does decide to sign elsewhere (though the Mets should sign him for the salary he deserves and would get on other teams), at least he’ll have left us with that parting gift.
A fuller discussion on that could and may receive due attention in its own post, as may thoughts on the playoff picture. Maybe they’ll share my next post.
Oh, and a final thought – my record at Mets games for the year is something like a pathetically paltry 2 for 12. Well, here’s to next season for the Mets, and to a successful 2011 postseason for the Yankees. Until then, my friends, I bid you adieu.
Well, that’s that. The Mets just lost, 11-6, to the Cardinals. I can’t say I’m terribly surprised; my faith in the team’s playoff chances didn’t fade until a day after I’d learned they’d been mathematically eliminated from contention. (In fact, I’m fairly certain most if not all of you reading this knew that I’d predicted the Mets to win the 2011 World Series. I believed that, despite the Phillies and their record, despite the strength of the Braves, despite… well, despite every little fact and bit of logic that said otherwise.)
Having said that, I can’t even say that I’m disappointed. How can you be truly disappointed when in your mind, you’ve already given up? I’m sad, and I wish they’d done better… I think what it comes down to is that I feel so let down. There was such promise, such potential… And now we’re looking at a potential 4th or 5th place finish in the division.
Mets fans, I believe we deserve better. I’m not calling for revolution-esque movements and protests outside the front office, but there has to be something we can do. I have faith in Sandy Alderson, and I have faith in Terry Collins, too. I truly believe that they want this team not only to be successful, but to be successful in the long-term – perhaps even dynastically so. Heck, I even think the Wilpons want that too (though, between you and me, I think their minds are more focused on the money side of the game; I can’t blame them, as I would be too if I were in their position). I also think, however, that perhaps we could put a little pressure on the men and women in the front office. “Johan and Ike were hurt all season,” we’ve been told and will be told again, “but look how well we did without them!” Well, yes, folks, all things considered, we’ve done ok. But a sub-.500 record is not something we should just be ok with because players were hurt. We are in not only the greatest city in the world, but one with such a rich, rich history of baseball that to have a team just accept a record below .500… that’s just embarrassing.
At this point, many of you may think I’m being unrealistic. We can’t expect to be the best team 100% of the time. I’d agree with you on that, and I’ll even say we can’t always make the playoffs. But we should be in the race until the very end every year. We need to develop our young talent so that they grow through the minors together, and not promote them too early. We need to spend more money than we have in the past, except we need to spend it wisely. If the Oakland Athletics in the early years of the 21st century could do it on a shoestring, then the Mets of today ought to be able to pull similar miracles. Lose the over-priced contracts (keep Wright and Reyes, for sentimental reasons if nothing else) and spend the money to buy statistically excellent players, big names or not. And then… Well, yes, on some level we need to accept the role of luck. Like I’ve said, we may not win it all every year, but we can certainly afford a team that will finish over .500 AND contend until the very end of every season.
Let’s call upon the front office to do all this, and not just silently wait until next year and cross our fingers and pray that the team does better. We deserve better, Mets fans, and we deserve it now. (Well, beginning in April of 2012, I suppose.)
Now that that’s finished, let’s bring the title of the post in. It’s been real, Mets, but your games simply don’t matter anymore this year. Yes, I may still watch one on TV – when I’ve got the time. Yes, I’ll still want you to win every game – though for the rest of this year, I really won’t care. Yes, I’ll still go to a game or two more – but I’ll most certainly have spent a great deal of time in McFadden’s first. Where will my caring be? In the actual playoff races. I’ll be rooting for the Giants to win the NL Wild Card, though I’ll be ok with the Braves taking that. I’ll be rooting for the Rays to overtake the Red Sox in the AL Wild Card standings, though a Yankees/Red Sox ALCS is always excellent for baseball and so fun to watch. I’ll be hoping for the Phillies to be knocked out in the Division Series. I’ll be hoping… for a lot. I think the Yankees will win the World Series.
Then, when it’s all over and depression starts to kick in ‘cuz I have to wait 4 months for more baseball, I’ll turn to football, where my regional bias kicks in and I can only really root for the Jets and the Giants, and against the Eagles.
Of course, there’s also the 2012 MLB season to look forward to. The Mets will be in Toronto mid-May (roadtrip, anyone?)… Until then, or at least until next time, my friends, I bid you adieu.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I very firmly believed in then-Senator Obama’s candidacy in 2008, albeit after Mayor Giuliani dropped out of the race. I believed then, as I believe now, that Mayor Giuliani would be the best person to hold the highest office in the land.
That being said, I’m of the belief that President Obama has done an excellent job thus far, and deserves reelection. I’ve made donations to his campaign, and have publicly shown support for the man, campaign-related and otherwise. There are things he’s done that I have not supported 100%, but that’s to be expected with any politician.
This post, however, should not be read as an endorsement. Yes, I support the campaign, but I will withhold my endorsement until such time as it becomes known for sure whether Mayor Giuliani will be running or not, for he will have my endorsement in a heartbeat.
I realize I’m not giving any reasons or details now, and I apologize for that. However, such notes will come eventually, as I’m sure I’ll be speaking about the election and the GOP candidates and the President often enough.
Until that post, and until next time, my friends, I bid you adieu.
That title there pretty much says it all. This post means absolutely nothing… but if I didn’t write it, if I didn’t put it out there, I probably wouldn’t have gotten myself back into the habit of writing – my ultimate intention being to turn this into a daily blog. It’s so easy to burst right out of the gate and then slow down, to justify this then only being a weekly blog… and before you know it, it’s another five and a half months before I’ve written again. That’s unacceptable. In an effort to avoid that, I make no promises for the frequency. You know my ultimate intention… let’s see how I get there, if I get there.
Anyway, I apologize for wasting your time with this particular post. It’s not that I don’t care about your time. I do. I just don’t know what to say right now. Has anything happened in my life since my last post? Of course. Anything worth writing about? Absolutely. The thing is, I’ve been turning to twitter with such a high frequency that blogging had started to seem almost irrelevant. It’s taken until now to realize that micro-blogging like that really just isn’t satisfying. You’re restricted in how much you can say; you’re left with no space for true explanations and half the time you’re forced to write as if you had no higher than a 3rd grade education just to fit within the 140-character limit imposed upon you. “But what about services like Twitlonger?” Folks, how often are you near your computer when you’re tweeting? Granted, many of us are often by our computers. However, people are typically on their phones (be they smart or regular) when they tweet. If you use a regular phone, there’s no tweet-extension services. If you’re using a smartphone, you’ve got an extension that really only adds 300-400 extra characters. Folks, by the end of this sentence, this post will already be 321 words! (Yes, I’ve counted… via the counter at the bottom of the “new post” page.) I’m beginning to ramble. The point of this paragraph – I’ve grown tired of tweeting. No… That’s not the point. I still love tweeting… but tweeting ought to be simply supplementary to a true blog. So… that’s where that is.
Another question to address – what will the format of this blog now be? I can’t make any promises. I loved doing the food blog that I did. I also loved doing travel-writing. I think it’s safe to say that I’ll include both of those. I should put a single focus to this blog. Really, I should. That’ll help me to grow and talk to a wider audience. I just can’t do that, though. This will be a multi-purpose blog. That title on the top of the page here isn’t just a meaningless name. This is my blog – my thoughts, my ideas, my experiences… my wonderings.
Yeah, I’ve got nowhere else to go with this post. The real stuff should start coming in tomorrow. Good night – and until next time, friends, I bid you adieu.
The first time I went to a concert of any significance was July 15, 2003. I know, it seems odd to remember the exact day, given that it was so long ago. I know it’s not really that long; but with my lifespan thus far, I’d consider that a long time. Anyway, back to the point. I’d been trying all summer to get tickets to the show, not having any source of money (nor a piece of plastic with 16 digits printed on the front), it seemed like an impossible dream.
I’d all but given up on it when my mother, my sister and I took our dog to the vet – for what, I don’t remember, though I don’t think it was anything too good. Not the point (not trying to be blase about it, it just doesn’t make a difference to the story). By some miracle, one of the women who worked in the office had a sister who had bought too many tickets (or, as I’ve since learned to be a fairly standard procedure, she bought several groups of tickets and kept the best ones for herself, selling the rest – or attempting to), and she’d posted a sign in the vet’s office telling that there were two tickets for sale for $75 each. I asked if we could get the tickets… and was told no. When we came back to that same office about a week later, the tickets were still for sale, though now they’d been reduced to $50 apiece. I asked again, expecting the answer to be no. And yet, I was told yes, and arrangements were made; we came back a couple days later to buy them.
It’s not every concert that can change your life, but that one most certainly did. I know, that sounds melodramatic, but consider this: I’m almost 100% certain that you, your friends, your family members – essentially, everyone that you know or even see on the street – will have at the very least some vague recollection of when they first heard their favorite song or artist. What’s more, even though they might not know quite how to describe what had happened to themselves when they heard the song/album/artist, you know there’s a change there. Doesn’t make sense? Let me try again: everyone, whether they know it or not, has had their life changed by a certain song, or a certain artist, or a certain album. It doesn’t have to be any concrete reason, though it certainly has to do with where you are in life when you first hear it – or how it stays with you and grows with you over the course of your life until the original meaning isn’t really there anymore.
So, who was this artist I’d gone to see – which band had I begged my parents to let me go to? Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band. This concert was part of the tour to accompany The Rising, Springsteen’s answer to 9/11, so to speak. (That particular topic – Springsteen’s new role after 9/11, as it were – for those who care to know, makes up a fairly large portion of my senior Honors Thesis.) Some backstory, however, before we begin. I can speculate as to the first time I heard Bruce Springsteen, but in modern memory, that would have to have been in the fall of 2001, as he performed at the “Tribute to Heroes” concert telethon. As I listened more and more to the NYC’s only classic rock radio station, I became more and more excited for Bruce’s new album. The wait was well worth it, and once I’d had a copy of that album, I began my quest to own every album he’d ever released. I loved his music, but I wasn’t obsessed – that would come the night of the concert – a concert full of such energy, passion, talent and love that it became something akin to a religious experience (a sentiment I’m not alone in expressing towards Springsteen’s performances) – July 15, 2003.
Those of you who’ve paid attention thus far, I truly appreciate it. That being said, if you’ve made it this far, you’ve no doubt realized by now that the first 600 words (or 4 paragraphs, or whatever) of this post have nothing at all to do with the title. That’s not true, though – let me tell you why. In all the concerts I’ve been to since the summer of 2003 (9 of them Springsteen concerts), there have been very few that I was truly and absolutely impressed by. No one that I’ve seen live has had the ability to get me as truly pumped, as truly excited, and as truly, genuinely involved as I was at that or the subsequent Springsteen performances.
Don’t get me wrong – I’ve seen a lot of great performances from the likes of Hey Monday, Fall Out Boy, and the like. However, only four groups have ever come close to creating a passion in me matched by that at the Springsteen shows. I saw two of them for the first time in the same night – Cobra Starship and The Academy Is… at the Honda Civic Tour’s stop at PNC Bank Arts Center in NJ, though those two would go on to absolutely stun me when I’d see them in small venues later on. The third group was/is Bon Jovi. For nearly the same length as Bruce and the band would do, Jon and the boys played hit upon hit after hit, and some other great songs of theirs too – always alive, always dancing and moving about and just having an all-around ball.
That group – a highly selective group that I very, very rarely find myself willing to add anyone to – grew by one tonight.
I’d seen Me Talk Pretty once before, at a pre-VMA concert where they were named as the Breakout Artist/Group of the Year for 2009 in New York City. I had already been impressed by them that night. At a show where Cobra Starship was performing, it was hard for me to imagine coming away from the concert talking about anything but them. Suffice it to say, I left that night talking to my sister and my then-girlfriend about Me Talk Pretty. Cobra had done for me what they’d always done – but here was this new, great band on the scene that had absolutely stolen the show. For weeks – months, really – after the show I could hear Uliana (the lead singer) singing “hello, hello” into the microphone and the sound of the crowd answering back in kind. It hadn’t been a surprise, once I’d seen their performance, that they’d be the winners that night.
Despite all that, however, I was still hesitant to add them to my personal list of greats (the list of four bands I mentioned earlier). Yes, they’d done an absolutely incredible job, and I’d become hooked, but I couldn’t add them just yet. For a year and a half since then, I’ve looked for when I might be able to see them in concert again – and there began the dilemmas. When they’d be anywhere nearby, I wouldn’t be available to go see them play. Whenever I would have been able to, they were somewhere far enough away for me not to be able to go. Either way, it didn’t work out for a year and a half. I couldn’t forget them, though – they were too damn good for that, so I began doing some street team-type work for the band. I started telling friends about them, I started mentioning them in my blog, I started talking about them on Facebook… I did what I could to get their names out there. Not so long ago – somewhere near the end of last summer, I’d say, if I had to guess – I won a contest of theirs and was THRILLED that I not only had a tee shirt and a signed copy of their debut CD, We Are Strangers, but that I would get to see them in concert again, and often.
Things finally worked out, and I was able to go to a concert of theirs tonight (although it’ll be “last night” by the time most people read this). I could not be happier that such was the case. Having been so graciously guest-listed by the band (I’d find out later in the night that Uliana herself had answered my email and added my name to the list), we arrived at the venue, picked up our tickets and went right to the barrier before the stage (anyone who’s ever been to a concert in a venue like this will know that it does not at all lessen the experience, nor the level of performer/audience interaction) so that we could be as close as possible for their performance. I had some idea what I’d be in for (remember, it had been a year and a half since the last time I’d seen them play), and I certainly expected to be as wowed as I had been at the pre-VMA concert, perhaps even something more. I didn’t expect to have my fucking mind blown.
From the moment that the houselights went down and stage-lights went up, I knew we were in for a particularly special treat. On the one hand, there was the instrumentation, which was, in a word, flawless. Not only in style, which is by nature subjective, but in technique (a naturally objective entity/quality), too. Uliana’s voice was perfect, and she demonstrated such range and abilities as I’ve rarely seen before. The lighting – and at times, the lack of lighting – added a whole ‘nother dimension, always playing perfectly to the beat and feel of the music. And, lest I forget, I’d also like to point out that Uliana is stunningly beautiful and, dare I say it (for the fear that it’d be taken as anything more than a compliment, but one believed) quite sexy, too. While that’s important, we also must not forget the band’s stage presence – a two-pronged entity including the band’s look on stage (flawless- well-coordinated, comfortable [I'd guess?] yet chic) and their interactions with each other (as often if not more often than many other bands) and with the fans (Uliana was nearly always moving around the stage and the space between the stage and the barrier, making connections with countless fans throughout the audience as she’d make eye contact, talk to them or smile at them and perhaps even grasp their hands for a second or two).
Not only that, but when their set was over, all the band-members – each of one of them so incredibly nice, so gracious, so friendly and accommodating and every nice adjective I can think of – were near their merch tables helping to sell their products and interacting with all the fans that came down to see them – and there were plenty of those. If doing all that even after a mind-blowing set as they had tonight says anything, it says dedication and caring and love for their fans – if not anything even better.
Yet all this does not make a band perfect. No, in order for that particular designation to be given out, a band’s performance must, for lack of a better term, feel perfect. (It’s much like going on a first date with someone – while you might get along with the other person perfectly on the surface, something just doesn’t feel right. You’ll go on another date or two, and give them a chance – but if it just doesn’t feel right, then the relationship or series of dates ends, and both parties move on with their lives.) Needless to say, tonight’s performance has absolutely sealed that feeling in me, and I know for a fact that I’ll be going on another “date” with Me Talk Pretty as soon as I possibly can; I highly recommend that each and every one of you out there reading this do the same – tell them Jon Rossi sent ‘ya.
And so, Uliana, Leon, Guerin and Nate, having said all that I’d like to formally welcome Me Talk Pretty to my personal pantheon of great groups and musicians. You guys have an absolutely incredible future ahead of you and I look forward to seeing you in concert as often as possible. And remember, the first round’s on me next time!
***
For those who won’t be anywhere near where they’ll be performing you, I offer the following music video – I really like it and hope you enjoy it, too.
On paper this year, the Mets have a decent team. There are far better on-paper teams in the Majors this year, and I respect that. They’ll do well, and I won’t begrudge them that. But by some miracle, I’m feeling – genuinely feeling, more than just a fan’s hope – a playoff-bound team this year. Maybe even a World Series winning team. It’s been 25 years. It’s about time.
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