My Mets Bible: Scoring 30 Years of Baseball Fandom

Contents

Introduction

The 1990s

My First Game

Hitting the Road for the First Time

Baseball Is Back!

Jason Isringhausen’s Debut and My First Game at Wrigley

Todd Hundley: Home Run King of Catchers

Jackie Robinson Night

First Ever Subway Series Game

The Yankees Win the First Subway Series

Buy Those Damn Playoff Tickets!

Marathon Opening Day Win

I Can’t Believe Mike Piazza Is a Met

The Beginning of a Collapse

The Beginning of the House of Horrors

Welcome to a World of Pain

Stopping Streaks in the Bronx

The Matt Franco Game

There Will Be a Game 163

Going to the Real Playoffs

Late Night Baseball

He Jumps and He Missed It!

The Grand Slam Single

It Can’t End Like This

The 2000s

Bagels and Baseball

The Most Memorable Rainout

The 10-Run Inning

Doc Returns

Clemens Beans Piazza in the Head

The Bittersweet Clinch

Strike Three Looking to Bonds

Benny the Legend

The Bobby Jones One-Hitter

Winning the 2000 Pennant

One of Those Games You Will Never Get Over

Roger Clemens Threw a Bat

Winning a World Series Game

First-Pitch Doom

Losing the 2000 World Series

Back in New York for Baseball

We Hated Him in Atlanta, We Hate Him in New York

Meet the New Mets, Same as the Old Mets

A Classic Regular Season Game

Division Clincher and I’m Free

Elimination Day

Mets Lose Game 7 at Home

Are the Mets Collapsing?

A Trip to D.C. to Save the Mets

The 2007 Collapse U.S. Tour

The John Maine One-Hitter

Collapse Complete

With a Torn Meniscus

Closing Shea Stadium

Opening Citi Field

Live in L.A. for the Ryan Church Game

The Omir Santos Game

The Luis Castillo Game

The 2010s

The Longest Game

Nets and Mets Pain Converge

Johan Santana’s No-Hitter

Harvey’s Better

All-Star Game Comes to Citi

deGrom’s Debut

Chris Heston No-Hits the Mets

Sweeping the Nationals Out of First Place

The Mets Win the Division

The Return of October Baseball

The Chase Utley Game

Mets in Five

Completing the Pennant Sweep

Déjà Vu of the Worst Kind

The 60 Feet, 6 Inches Game

Where It All Went to Hell

Losing the World Series at Home

The Bat-Flip Game

The Playoffs?

Farewell to David Wright

I Had to Be in the Building

The 2020s

Greatest Day in Mets History

The Return

The Combined No-Hitter

Living the Dream

The Farewell We Didn’t Realize

The Missing Scorecards

Return to New York Baseball

The Wilmer Flores Game

Max Scherzer’s Dominance

Acknowledgments

Introduction

In 1992, at the age of eight, I started scoring Mets games. It went from a thing I did when my dad brought me to Shea into an absolute obsession. Despite decades upon decades going by and plenty of life changes, I remained completely dedicated to scoring just about every Mets game played. At age nine, I played with wrestling figures; I don’t anymore. At age 14, I collected baseball cards; I don’t anymore. At age 22, I would go to karaoke bars and sing my lungs out; I don’t anymore. But through all of those hobbies, one has remained constant—my absolute love affair with sitting down and scoring a baseball game.

This was not an easy process in the days before DVRs. There were times I had to hide my scorebook under the covers to make my parents think I was sleeping, because it was after midnight on a Tuesday evening and I had school the next day. But I couldn’t just go to sleep. The Mets were battling the Padres, and Eric Gunderson just came in to try and record a huge out against Tony Gwynn. So, even though it was well past my bedtime, my pen and book needed to record what would happen next.

When I lived the dating lifestyle in the early 2000s, I needed to DVR every single Mets game because God forbid I miss scoring a pitch from the Mets-Pirates game on a Friday night while I searched for the girl of my dreams! Scoring was a constant in my life from the age of eight until the present day, and nothing would get in the way. Upon working full-time at WFAN in 2007, I noticed that my insane habit was a real positive. When breaking down a Mets game the following day on WFAN with Joe Benigno, having the entire game in front of me was a major help. But let’s not kid ourselves…whether it was going to help me do my job or not, scoring Mets games was something that would continue no matter what my life’s work was.

Flash forward to 2021. I was sitting in the WFAN radio studios doing my old show with Craig Carton. He was mocking my scoring infatuation and threw out the idea that would stop me dead in my tracks: Evan, you should write a book and publish them. Craig said it half-sarcastically but half-seriously. Why not go through the thousands and thousands of games you have scored and pick out your favorites? As soon as that thought came out of his mouth, a light went off in my head. Oh, hell yeah! My brain started going into overdrive—I could finally take all these games sitting in books and put them to good use.

How many games should I pick? was a question I asked myself immediately. The only number that made sense to me was 81. Why 81, you ask? When I went to games as a kid with my father, we always had the unrealistic goal of going to all 81 home games of a Mets season. While we never accomplished that mission, we certainly came damn close. So I spent hours and hours going back through scorecards I hadn’t looked at in decades to pick my favorites. Actually, favorite is the not the correct word, because a lot of these games elicit pain and tears. So they’re the most memorable—both good and bad from more than 30 years of scoring Mets games. The mission of going through all these scorecards was therapeutic; I not only had baseball memories flash back into my mind, but all of my life experiences along the way. I realized that each scorecard not only told a baseball story but also explained the story of my life. Laugh with me, cry with me, and wonder what the hell is wrong with me as we take a trip through my life, viewed through the lens of scoring Mets games.

The 1990s

My First Game

Pirates 3 Mets 2

June 13, 1992, at Shea Stadium

We start with a Mets game that I have zero recollection of. I was eight years old when this game took place, and after exhaustive research this is the oldest, living, breathing scorecard from me that I could find, which makes it the first! It is simultaneously the George Washington of my scorecard collection for the being the first, and the Millard Fillmore, because I have no memory of it ever happening. I’m also taking the leap of faith that this is the genuine article, because I trust that my parents never threw out an earlier scorecard that could have been my first. So, for the sake of my psyche, I assume this is legit the first time I ever laid pencil to scorecard.

I have asked my father what got me into scoring games, and the truth is scoring games actually got me into baseball. My dad has been a diehard Mets fan since their inception in 1962 and a season ticket holder since the late 1970s, so I obviously grew up in a household where the Mets were religion. But my older sister was the one who went to games with my dad and sat there for all nine innings without an issue…. I was the opposite. Apparently (as I’ve been told), I could not sit still, and my dad eventually abandoned the idea of taking me to games alone. Granted, I was between the ages of one and six at that time, but my sister, who is only a few years older than I am, was a real trooper. I, on the other hand, was a terror to take to games. I would cry, complain, and just flat-out not watch the game, while my sister was a little angel. So, while I would still go to games, it would only be if my mother was there too, so she could keep an eye on me. As nuts as my dad was about the Mets, my mom could not possibly care less, so she was the absolute perfect person to essentially babysit me while my dad and sis would enjoy the Mets game uninterrupted.

I got a lot of my craziness from my dad, including my propensity for keeping records on everything; he actually kept a complete list of games we attended as kids. I was able to look at this list and study it, and I noticed a trend. Starting in 1991, when I was seven, the games I attended started to increase, while my mom and sister were going less and less. It started to become just me and my dad. What the heck happened? Well, I started pounding him with questions about baseball, and somewhere along the line he brought up scoring games to me. He probably figured it would distract me from losing interest in the game. Little did he know he was slowly creating a monster. I went to 21 games in 1992, and the ninth game I went to is apparently the first game I scored. His master plan worked to perfection. Learning about scoring the game and then perfecting my process of doing it got me into baseball in a big way. Based on the stories my dad has shared, baseball didn’t get me into scoring, but scoring got me into baseball.

I can tell by the handwriting that my dad contributed big time to this inaugural game. My hand clearly got tired toward the end of the game, because he is the one writing in the pinch-hitters and new pitchers that came into the game. My spelling is simply awe- inspiring! As you can see in the old Shea Stadium scorecard, they conveniently supplied the rosters of both the New York Mets and visiting Pittsburgh Pirates, but that didn’t stop me from butchering every freakin’ name. Eight-year-old me also apparently decided to create a new baseball player named Andy Slyke, as I got rid of the Van. I really wish I had an answer for the doodling that featured Peace and Love. I’m going to just blame either my mother or sister for this one, as they were also at this game. What is pretty cool about looking back is that, while the Pirates defeated the Mets that day, it was Barry Bonds who hit the game-tying home run in the top of the eighth inning. I have said many times on the radio that Bonds is the greatest baseball player I’ve ever laid eyes on, so it was only fitting that he played a key role in the first game I officially scored. It would take some time, but my scoring would get better and so would my spelling!

Keeping Score: The Mets had taken a 2–1 lead on Howard Johnson’s two-run double in the bottom of the sixth before Bonds connected off reliever Wally Whitehurst, leading off the eighth. Two outs later, Orlando Merced doubled home the go-ahead run.… Bonds hit 38 of his major league–record 762 home runs against the Mets. That is the 10th highest total for any opposing player.… The 1992 Mets went 72–90 under new manager Jeff Torborg and finished 24 games behind the Pirates, who won their third straight NL East title.

Hitting the Road for the First Time

Mets 7 Cardinals 1

July 25, 1994, at Busch Stadium, St. Louis

The first season I truly remember from start to finish was 1993, but 1994 was when my fandom really began taking off. Each summer from 1990 to 1993, I went away for two months to attend a sleepaway camp called Camp Chen-A-Wanda in Pennsylvania. I had a ball at camp, but every year that went by I started to miss the Mets a little bit more and more. Even though 1993 was a historically bad season for the Mets, as they lost 103 games and became famously known as The Worst Team Money Could Buy, I still needed the Mets in my life. So in 1994 I had a pretty simple request: Can I retire from sleepaway camp and just go to Mets games all summer? My dad was going to games all summer anyway—in fact, during the summer of 1992 while I was away, he went on a road trip to see the Mets in Chicago and Pittsburgh. You can look this up if you don’t believe me, but during that six-game road trip the Mets went 0–6! Even as I look back now as a 40-year-old father of two myself, I must commend his level of fandom for wanting to travel and watch that crap. Considering all the games he was going to, if I didn’t go to camp, my dad would have someone to join him.

As my love for baseball and scoring continued to explode, we went on our first road trip during the late summer of 1993 to see the brand-new Camden Yards in Baltimore for the first time. Since this was a few years before interleague play, we clearly didn’t see the Mets, but it was still an awesome time. In 1994 there would be no Chen-A-Wanda, which meant there was plenty of time to plan out some Mets road trips, so my dad came up with two for us: St. Louis and Chicago. Nineteen ninety-four was a spectacular season for the Mets.… Okay, well, really only spectacular in my naïve little eyes. All I had known so far in my young Mets-loving life was pathetic, awful, overpaid, washed-up-stars baseball. The Mets lost 90 games in 1992 and then 103 in 1993. In 1994 the Mets were beginning a long rebuilding process. We began to hear about the young arms in the farm system and also saw young players such as Todd Hundley, Ryan Thompson, Jeremy Burnitz, Bobby Jones, and Jason Jacome break in. But more than just the youth was the fact that the Mets were actually winning some games and were far improved from the abysmal showing of a year earlier. It was a fun season, and we were about to see the upstart Mets on the road for the first time.

You know what excited me the most about seeing Busch Stadium? The carpet! Even though artificial turf was universally hated by just about every baseball fan, including myself, I thought it would be so damn cool to see it in person. As we walked into Busch Stadium, I was in awe. The place I had watched on TV was in front of my eyes, and I loved it. The game itself would become incredibly pivotal in my fandom as it was the day I truly fell in love with Rico Brogna. Despite spelling his name incorrectly in this scorecard, Rico was a guy I was already sort of intrigued with. Right before the start of the season the Mets traded Alan Zinter, a former first-round pick, to the Tigers for Brogna, a minor league first baseman who had played a few games for Detroit a couple of seasons earlier. At the time, my dad and I would check Baseball Weekly to get updates on Mets prospects, and I had read about Zinter and Butch Huskey as potential future infielders for the Mets. The only thing I knew about Rico is that he had a cool name. About a month earlier David Segui had gotten hurt, and Rico got the call to fill in and play first base. Rico was playing really well offensively and his glove work was something to behold. In this game, just one month into his Mets tenture, Rico put together a signature performance that would stick with me. He went 5-for-5, including a two-run double, and made a great defensive play. I found out many years later when Rico came on my Mets podcast (which happens to be called Rico Brogna), that that particular game happened to have a profound effect on his confidence, especially when Mets starter Bret Saberhagen, who pitched a complete game that night, complimented him on his sparkling defensive play. The Mets won the game, and Rico had won my sports heart. The ’94 season was a blast and so was this road trip, but there was one major cloud hovering over all of us. The impending doom of a players’ strike was all the talk around baseball, and little did we know that while the St. Louis trip was a raging success, our big Chicago trip would not happen.

Keeping Score: The Mets went on to sweep that three-game series in St. Louis, but the season came to an end a little more than two weeks later after the players did go on strike.… They finished third in the National League East at 55–58, and their winning percentage of .487 was a 123-point improvement over the previous season.… Brogna ended up batting .351 with seven home runs and 20 RBIs in 39 games after being called up from the minors that season. He went on to have a strong 1995, batting .289 with 22 home runs and 76 RBIs, but after injuries cut short his 1996 season, he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies for relievers Ricardo Jordan and Toby Borland, both of whom had short and ineffective Mets careers.… Saberhagen went 14–4 with a 2.74 ERA in 1994, made the All-Star team, and finished third in Cy Young Award voting.

Baseball Is Back!

Mets 10 Cardinals 8

April 28, 1995, at Shea Stadium

The players’ strike of 1994 came at the worst time for a blossoming baseball fan like myself. I turned 11 years old in July 1994, and my baseball fandom was exploding as rumors persisted about a potential stoppage. At first I didn’t want to believe the rumors. I didn’t think it was possible that baseball would just stop in the middle of a season like that. My dad would tell me stories about the 1981 strike and how damaging that was to the integrity of that season, but I just wouldn’t believe something as foolish as that would happen again. Well, let’s be honest. Since I was 11 years old, I wasn’t using some kind of rigorous logic, I just had a hard time picturing a summer without baseball. When August 12 finally came and baseball shut down, my new form of denial was that it would only be temporary. There was no way they would wipe out the postseason and not declare a 1994 World Series champion, right? The news of baseball’s cancellation was absolutely devastating. Even though the Mets weren’t going anywhere, I still had hoped to see if the Montreal Expos could win their first title, or if the Cleveland Indians could get to their first World Series in my lifetime, and sure, to see if the New York Yankees could go on a deep October run. It caused me to learn the names of Dick Ravich, Donald Fehr, and Bud Selig. I wasn’t an expert on the issues, but I knew that those three guys were responsible for taking baseball away from me.

While people would talk about not forgiving baseball for its sins, and potentially boycotting the sport when it came back, I was not partaking in any of those thoughts. I was desperate for baseball to come back and would hold no grudges once the game returned. Even when the awful plan was hatched by the owners to try and break the players union by using replacement players, I was ready to watch. While it wasn’t ideal, it was baseball—the sport I was learning and watching religiously. Luckily, right before the season was set to begin, future Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor issued an injunction that effectively ended the strike as well as the owners’ attempt to stage a season with replacement players. The Mets were actually scheduled to play the first replacement regular season game in Miami against the Marlins to open the 1995 season. Luckily, it didn’t happen, and the Mets would open the season a few weeks later in Denver instead.

I remember staying up very late on that midweek night to watch the Mets open the brand-new Coors Field in a very Coors Field–like game. I can still see Dante Bichette shaking his fist as he knew he’d ripped one out for a game-winning, walk-off home run off Mike Remlinger in the 14th inning. Two days later I would walk into a baseball stadium for the first time in eight months and I was ecstatic. The Mets played the Cardinals on a Friday night that opened up the home season in 1995. Everything about the scene was so freaking weird. First off, the game didn’t sell out, and they didn’t even come close. (The announced attendance was just 26,604—just two years earlier, the opener had drawn more than 53,000.) Apparently, most people weren’t as forgiving as I was, or my father, who couldn’t wait to walk into Shea Stadium. The game was ugly and sloppy but damn entertaining. Bret Saberhagen pitched poorly, allowing home runs to Ray Lankford and future Mets killer Brian Jordan. I guess that was to be expected, as there was a very short spring training and pitchers were certainly behind the eight ball. My man Rico Brogna was hitting third in the order as the Mets were fully believing in him after his red-hot 1994 that was stopped short because of the strike. The Mets trailed 5–1 in the fourth inning, 7–2 in the fifth, and 8–6 in the seventh before Brogna homered and Todd Hundley hit a two-run double later in the inning to give the Mets a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.

The amazing Mets comeback on Opening Night was certainly not the most memorable thing about this game, however. All these years later I can still picture a few gentlemen running onto the field shirtless with the word greed written on their chests. But that wasn’t all…they then threw money at Bobby Bonilla and Jeff Kent. Despite my father and I running back to Shea, it didn’t mean we weren’t pissed about what had happened a year ago, so we stood up and cheered the men on. The crowd also roared in approval, and that wasn’t the only fan interference from this game. While not as vivid in my memory, I also recall numerous other fans showing their disgust by jumping onto the field and making a scene. But all these years later I have to credit the greed guys. It was creative, sent a message, and has stuck with me all these years later. What I forgot about was the fact that baseball wasn’t all the way back either. The umpires in this game were replacement umpires because of a labor issue between the owners and umpires. You can’t make it up…here we were finally seeing real players play baseball, and there was still something MLB couldn’t get right. But on that night, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass. Baseball was back, and I was pumped to watch it from our seats in loge box 325 at Shea again.

Keeping Score: Winning pitcher Blas Minor had been claimed off waivers from the Pittsburgh Pirates the previous off-season and went 4–2 in 35 appearances in ’95.… Saberhagen would be traded to the Colorado Rockies at the trade deadline for righty Juan Acevedo and minor leaguer Arnold Gooch.… The Mets beat the Cardinals again the day after the home opener to even their record at 2–2, but after dropping the final game of the three-game series, they fell below .500 and stayed there for the remainder of the season.

Jason Isringhausen’s Debut and My First Game at Wrigley

Mets 7 Cubs 2

July 17, 1995, at Wrigley Field, Chicago

It’s very tough to remember the exact moment I became an obsessed baseball fan. There are certain moments from 1991 as a seven-year-old that I vaguely recall and a few more from 1992 and 1993. But 1994 is the first year where I can almost recall the entire season. During the spring months of ’91 to ’93, I went to a bunch of games with my father, but come summertime I would be out of commission as I was shipped off to sleepaway camp. I had a fun experience at Camp Chen-A-Wanda, but I knew something was missing. Baseball. This wasn’t 2023, when I could simply check my phone or sneak an iPad into my bunk and watch every game. We would get baseball updates every few days, and my dad would send an occasional letter updating me on the status of the ’93 Mets. (The status reports were not positive.) When the 1994 season was about to start, I made a request of my parents: no more camp! Hey, I wanted to go to as many Mets games as possible, and while all those summer camp activities were fun and all, I needed to be laser-focused on my baseball team, even though they were coming off a 103-loss season.

Nineteen ninety-four was the year of watching and scoring the Mets! To take things up a notch, my father booked us a trip to Chicago to see the Mets on the road and make my first ever pilgrimage to the legendary Wrigley Field in late August. I was so pumped up. Early in the 1994 season, the team already felt like Murderers’ Row compared to the previous year’s team, so I had my calendar marked for August 26–28, when the Mets would visit Chicago for a weekend series at Wrigley. Unfortunately, Donald Fehr, Dick Ravitch, and Bud Selig conspired to devastate baseball fans all over the country. The 1994 strike was brutal. I cried like a baby when games started to be canceled and cried a little more when I knew the Wrigley trip would not happen. While the 1994 baseball strike turned many away from baseball, all it did to me was reaffirm my love for the sport, because not having it made me miss and appreciate it more.

The Chicago trip would still happen, though. How, you ask? Well, in one of the all-time coincidences that you couldn’t make up, the New York Football Giants happened to be in Chicago that very same weekend to play the Bears. That was cool and all, but I’m a Jets fan, so while I was excited to go, it would have been a tad more awesome if I got to see Boomer Esiason instead. What really saved the Chicago trip was the fact that SummerSlam 1994 was taking place at the brand-new United Center. This turned out to be the first event at the new arena, and I got to see Bret Hart battle Owen Hart for the WWF title and the Undertaker vs. the Undertaker. I could write a whole piece on how dopey the Undertaker–Undertaker match was, but I digress. All was not lost in Chicago in 1994, but my dad and I both knew we were going to have try again whenever baseball came back.