NewsMets finding Confines less friendly
Team's history of homers at Wrigley has not carried over
By Marty Noble / MLB.com
08/30/09 2:09 PM ET
CHICAGO -- The story, as Leo Durocher told it in the early '70s, was that Billy Williams pulled a pitch well over the right-field stands of Wrigley Field and through a second-story window across Sheffield Avenue. Durocher claimed the home run not only broke the window, but it also damaged a lamp inside the apartment, and that the occupant complained enough to the Cubs that they covered the costs of the repair and a new lamp.The Lip, who had an abiding appreciation for the apocryphal, noted the offended woman was appreciative. Nonetheless, he said, she rotated her lamps until the Cubs' left-handed power and the club's naïveté provided her a full new set.
Such is life in the residences beyond but close to the outfield walls of the Friendly Confines. Life, limb and lamp are imperiled when the Cubs are playing, particularly when a slugger is batting. The folks living on Sheffield and Waveland Avenue must be aware.
It was dangerous when Williams or Andre Dawson was batting. And Sammy Sosa was a greater danger, to which the Mets can attest. Witness the day in May 1996 when Sosa crushed a three-run, final-pitch home run against Mets rookie Paul Wilson. The home run struck the building across Waveland, some 12 feet off the sidewalk. It was such a shot that an hour after Sosa's walk-off, then-Cubs general manager Ed Lynch walked off the distance from the outside wall of Wrigley to the three-story walk-up. And two days later, Sosa repeated the performance against Mets reliever Jerry DiPoto.
Residents accepted the bombardment, even rooted for it to continue. It was the Cubs, after all. And their unofficial address was Wrigleyville.
Sosa was a clear and present danger, but Dave Kingman hit 'em farther -- if less often. As a member of the Mets in April 1976, he hit one beyond Waveland and onto the far side of Kenmore Avenue, the street that runs perpendicular to Waveland. Ralph Kiner called that area "unreachable."
Nineteen months later, Kingman signed with the Cubs, prompting the landlord who owned the walkup across Waveland to suggest he might install a protective shield for his new investment.
But that was a different time and a different team. The Mets are in town now, and the danger is all but non-existent in the tops of innings this weekend. They haven't been able to reach the seats, much less the buildings beyond them. They've had 18 turns at bat in two games, and only Fernando Tatis has hit one as far as the ivy.
The absence of a Mets home run in the smallish ballpark that, through Saturday, had allowed 143 homers has come as no surprise. This is the same team that went without an extra-base hit in a three-game series in hitter-friendly Citizens Bank Park in early July.
The Mets rank last in home runs in the big leagues with 76 in 130 games. They are one of two teams -- the Giants are the other -- that have hit fewer than 100. And they trail the Giants by 17.
Given their current rate of home run hitting, the Mets will finish with 95, the fewest in the big leagues since 1993, when the expansion Marlins hit 94. It would also be the fewest for the Mets since 1992, when a team with Howard Johnson, Eddie Murray and Bobby Bonilla produced 93.
Other Mets teams have hit far fewer, including the defused 1980 team that managed a mere 61, prompting the reacquisition of Kingman. Lee Mazzilli led the team with 16 in 1980, 32 fewer than National League leader Mike Schmidt. But Mazzilli's 16 hardly is the lowest figure to lead the Mets. Three years earlier, Steve Henderson, John Milner and John Stearns hit 12 each to tie for the team lead. George Foster led the league with 52 in 1977.
The 12 is to be challenged this year. Gary Sheffield leads the team with 10, two more than David Wright and Carlos Beltran. Tatis and Daniel Murphy have seven each.
Blame it all on the pitcher-friendly dimensions of Citi Field and/or the injuries to Beltran and Carlos Delgado, but the Mets' home run hitting is something to track. They haven't hit many, and there's no indication that will change soon.
Marty Noble is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
