As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Johan Santana threw the first no-hitter in New York Mets history on June 1. It took the Mets 51 seasons and 8,020 games to get their first no-no, so it’s been a long time coming. Believe me, prior to Friday a significant portion of Mets fans counted down from 27 until the opposing team got their first hit every single game. I know I did.

A no-hitter is a rarity. It’s an unbelievable attraction that can spark a team, lift a fan base, and give meaning to an entire season. Just listen for Ron Darling’s yelp when you watch Johan get the final strike. As far as I’m concerned, my team won the World Series on Friday. But when you’ve been playing as long as the Mets have is it more improbable that they finally got a no-hitter or that it took until now to get it?

Ironically enough, Baseball Prospectus published an article about the unlikelihood of the Mets not having a no-hitter just three days before Johan’s occurred. BP used a (relatively) simple equation to calculate the probability and ended up with this: “Between the birth of the Mets in 1962 and May 27th, 2012, there were 209,764 starts made by major-league pitchers, with 131 ending up as no-hitters. This gives us a p(no-hitter) of .000625.” Based on those odds as well as a more complicated model used by Rob Neyer and Bill James, the Mets should have thrown five no-hitters through their first 8,008 games. Should.

But looking past the raw numbers is when the real fun (or agony) begins. Major League Baseball officially recognizes 275 no-hitters between 1876 and 2012, including Johan’s. Over the same time period, a player has hit for the cycle 293 times, which makes the two feats near equally common. The Mets have never had a problem with the latter accomplishment. Ten players have hit for the cycle while wearing a Mets uniform, the most recent being Scott Hairston on April 27.

Furthermore, of the 275 no-hitters in history, 24 were thrown by pitchers who played for the Mets at some point in their careers. Most notable is Nolan Ryan, who threw seven no-hitters after leaving the team, but Dwight Gooden, Tom Seaver, David Cone, Mike Scott, and Phillip Humber each got one after their Mets career ended. Additionally, Al Leiter, Don Cardwell, Brett Saberhagen, Dock Ellis, Kenny Rogers, John Candelaria, Scott Erickson, and Dean Chance threw one, and Warren Spahn two no-hitters before coming to the Mets. Just to pile it on, Hideo Nomo threw two no-hitters as well, one before and one after playing for the Mets. Let’s just keep piling it on: A.J. Burnett, who was drafted by the Mets (although he never played for them), threw a no-no in 2001, while Alejandro Pena and Octavio Dotel combined with others for no-hitters in 1991 and 2003 respectively; which, of course, was after they’d left the Mets.

But wait, there’s more! Do you know who the Mets traded Nolan Ryan for? Of course not, because it’s Jim Fregosi, who had an astonishing five home runs and 32 RBI in 146 games over a season and a half with the team. Young Met superstars Gooden and Cone pitched their no-hitters for the cross-town rival Yankees. Perhaps most egregious of all, Tom Seaver, who pitched for the Mets for over a decade and was accurately nicknamed “The Franchise” (he remains the only player wearing a Mets hat on his Hall of Fame plaque), threw his no-hitter in 1978, his first full season on another team.

Don’t worry, I’m still not done. The Mets have collected 35 one-hitters over the years. Seaver had five of those, and three were no-hit bids that he lost in the ninth inning. Damn you Jimmy Qualls! The team’s most recent one-hitter came from R.A. Dickey on August 13, 2010. Whoever got the lone hit in that game? Why, starting pitcher Cole Hamels of course. Yes, you read that right. Starting pitcher Cole Hamels.

Just one more story. This whole drought/half-century of misery thing could have been avoided but for a Joe Amalfitano single in the Mets’ very first season. In June 1962, rookie pitcher Al Jackson gave up that single in the first inning of a double header before “settling down.” He  went the next nine innings without giving up a hit. The New York Times headline the following day: “A Single in First Spoils No-Hitter.â€�

There you have it, a much-abridged version of our tale of anguish. So please don’t roll your eyes every time you read that the Mets “finally got a no-hitter,” even when “finally” is in italics. And don’t you dare say the team (and its fans) didn’t earn or deserve it, even if Carlos Beltran’s ball did hit the line.

Instead of being a public advocate of the dangers of drugs and alcohol, former baseball star Darryl Strawberry has decided to write a book to gloat about how much cocaine and sex he had when he was a player.

Strawberry has a new book coming out in April, and something tells me his ex-teammates aren’t going to appreciate the contents much. Strawberry’s claims about all the cocaine they did and the women they had sex with — sometimes during games — probably won’t sit well.

“We were the boys of summer. The drunk, speed-freak, sneaking-a-smoke boys of summer,” writes onetime home-run legend Darryl Strawberry in “Straw: Finding My Way,” out in April from Ecco. “[An] infamous rolling frat party . . . drinking, drugs, fights, gambling, groupies.”

Beer “was the foundation of our alcoholic lifestyle,” he writes. “We hauled around more Bud than the Clydesdales. The beer was just to get the party started and maybe take the edge off the speed and coke.”

The team’s mantra on the road, he writes, was to “tear up your best bars and nightclubs and take your finest women . . . The only hard part for us was choosing which hottie to take back to your hotel room. Lots of times you . . . picked two or three.”

Then there are these little tidbits about how the Mets would kill time between innings.

Although he doesn’t name names, Strawberry relates how team members picked out girls from the stands for quickies. He once watched a pitcher march a frisky fan to a private room for oral sex: “I was jealous. When I saw her heading back to her seat, I gave her a sign. She smiled, turned right back around, and met me in that same little room . . . I had to be quick and run back out on the field.”

Another time, “I was in the clubhouse, having one last quickie with this cute little Florida girl. Charlie Samuels, the equipment manager, came in and caught us. He just stood there shaking his head while I finished up.”

But, hey, at least they weren’t taking steroids right? That might give them a competitive advantage. All cocaine does is give you superhuman strength and help you ignore any pain you might be feeling. Steroids don’t do any of that.

Far more than the moments any DVD could ever capture, my memories of Shea Stadium run much deeper than that. I grew up on Long Island, and my dad and brothers and grandfather influenced me at a young age to root for the Mets, which can be thrilling and heartbreaking at different times, sometimes at the same time.. I suppose that’s the case with any pro sports team, but the Mets and Shea always had some sort of magical undertone going on.

Which is why it’s incredibly sad that yesterday, the last regular season game at Shea clinched nothing more than a ticket home for the players and coaching staff. As I texted my buddy Dave and his kids during the game (they were there in person to experience the heartbreak), I watched the game and had some awful memories come flooding back—the collapse of this year equaling the collapse of last season. I also felt the familiar disappointment that was a little more pronounced in the 2006 NLCS, as Yadier Molina clubbed a two-run homer the inning after Endy Chavez made one of the most spectacular plays you’ll ever see. Chavez did it again yesterday, and then the Marlins hit two home runs in the following inning off of a Mets bullpen that was overmatched pretty much all of 2008, but more so since Billy Wagner went down with a season-ending elbow injury.

But, well, we can’t change fate. And while the Brewers and Phillies play in the 2008 postseason, and Shea Stadium gets ready to be torn down for good, I’d like to share a few memories that stand out in my mind Read the rest of this entry »