Interview #47: Greg, Grimace and the Mets
ESPN's Greg Wyshynski talks about his love of the Mets and his sportswriting career
Intro
Greg Wyshynski is currently a senior NHL writer at ESPN. He’s also a New Jersey native and lifelong Mets fan. So before the NHL season started I was able to snag him and ask about his love of the Mets and his sportswriting career. He’s had a lengthy sportswriting path that started in local Maryland/DC publications before getting a national beat writing for the hockey-focused Puck Daddy arm on Yahoo! Sports. He now works for ESPN and you can see his work on their website as well as frequent TV appearances. He’s also hosted several different podcasts, including Puck Soup.
I’ve been a fan of his over a decade, so I was definitely excited when he agreed to this interview. Then I had to try my best to stay focused. I only had an hour and wanted to go over baseball, writing and the mind of a New Jersey sports fan. But also, he’s a hockey writer and how could I not ask about the Sharks and Macklin Celebrini?! Somehow I managed not to. We talked a little bit about hockey and the Devils, but other than that stayed pretty focused.
You can read Greg’s writing on ESPN.com, including a season preview he just published here: Bold predictions for every NHL team for the 2024-25 season
He is also active on Twitter: @wyshynski
Lastly, he has published two books, Take Your Eye Off the Puck: How to Watch Hockey by Knowing Where to Look (I really like this one, especially for newer hockey fans) and Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History.
Sportswriting
I'm somebody who likes to eat the spicy pepper
You’ve been a journalist your whole life?
I started off in public relations. That was my first job out of college. I worked for some PR firms. Eventually grew tired of the smell of bullshit on my breath when I got home, so I decided to fight for truth and light and become a journalist. I've been a sports writer since, like 2000 is around the first time I got my first newspaper job.
When I was living in DC after college, so I went to the University of Maryland and then I settled down there afterwards, I worked for a place called SportsFan Magazine. It was a startup magazine. It was the kind of magazine that would have free boxes in certain cities and they’d have wire racks inside of bars. So you go to the sports bar, you pick up the free SportsFan Magazine. I believe somebody once called it the number one magazine found on the bathroom floor at The Greene Turtle bar. Which was a point of pride.
Were you just kind of casually looking around or like you said, you probably weren't cut out for PR, but you do need to pay bills so…
I came up at the right time because digital media was really booming. So I'm at this dead end PR job during the day, the phones aren't ringing. So at the same time I'm there, I’m writing hockey for websites. I got my first real journalism job at this newspaper in Virginia based on my clips writing hockey on the Internet. That's how they knew I could write. The benefit of going to Maryland for journalism was that you could then spin off and to do a couple of different things, PR being one of them. The reason I went into PR is people said you can make money at it, and everybody said if you become a sports writer, you’re not going to make any money. So I'm like, I'm broke, I'd like to make money. Let's do public relations! Little did I know that it didn't necessarily work for me, but the training that you got on that path was journalism training. So I had all the tools that I needed to try to become a reporter and eventually I took that path.
But I was always into sports writing. I wrote sports in my high school paper and I knew that I had a knack for it. I also came up at a time not only where you could write on the Internet and get people to notice you, but also that my style of writing, in sort of that Bill Simmons-y, catering to fans, catering to an American audience, doing it with pop culture references was also in the zeitgeist. It was really a time that played to my strengths and I was lucky to take advantage of it.
I was familiar with you from Puck Daddy. I'm a longtime hockey fan, too. But before Puck Daddy, you're right, Bill Simmons was the man back in the mid-2000s. Everyone read him, and his articles were really, really lengthy. Did anybody, while you were starting in sports writing, try to rein you in and say, hey, try to be a little more traditional?
I mean, they still do. They still try to rein me in. Like, can't you break more news like Adam Schefter? I’m like, I’ve probably made fun of all the GMs, they probably don’t want to talk to me. I think the thing for me is not necessarily people tried to hem me in as a young writer, I think the challenge for me was this notion that you couldn't do both. And that's a problem I've had throughout my entire career. I just joked about it, but it's true. There's a notion that you can't be someone who's caustic and sarcastic and funny and opinionated about things, and also be somebody who can write a straight news story or become an insider.
That was more than anything people in my career being like, not necessarily you can't do the funny stuff, it was like you understand that by doing the funny stuff, people won't take you seriously or you won't get sources. I don't know about the taking-you-seriously part. I do think that there is a part of it that might have been true. There's definitely people that don't necessarily take my opinions as seriously as they probably would if I wasn't joking half the time.
But the other part of it, the thing I found, which is sort of interesting to me over the years, is that there are going to be people that don't want to talk to you because you're critical of them, but there are also going to be people that want to talk to you because you're critical of them, and there are also a ton of people that want to talk to you because they see that you are honest and insightful, and they're intrigued by how you came to certain opinions. Actually writing that way has opened more doors than it's closed for me, which I'm surprised by considering how many people were like, you can't do both, and still say you can't do both.
How did you handle, as your career grew, more and more exposure but also any criticism of your style from fans and people in the sport?
It's always stinging. But I mean, I think I'm somebody who likes to eat the spicy pepper. I never shy away from reading criticism. I'm fascinated by it. I'm fascinated by me writing something, and then somebody taking it in a way that I didn't intend and trying to figure out why that was. I'm always intrigued by people that are dismissive of my work. I don't know. I'm one of these people that really loves to read caustic movie reviews, too. I'm fascinated by failure in life. So maybe that's just part of it, is that I don't shy away from consuming the criticism of the things I do.
But in the sense of how did I process it to keep doing what I did? It's honestly one of those things where, I know that the work that I do means something to somebody, and then I know that it's reaching somebody and somebody out there is being entertained by it. And I can't control the reaction to what I write. I mean, sometimes I'm obviously doing it on purpose and I'm clearly having a go at a team or a fan base. And if I get the desired effect then I can't be upset about it.
But as far as people being like, this guy's a clown, or it's corny, or it's cringe, there's just as many people that are coming to read my work every day and being like, you know, this guy's really funny or he's one of my favorite writers. It all balances out at the end. But it never is a roadblock to what I want to do. I handle my writing the same way I handle my interviews, I just assume it's the last time I'll ever talk to this person, so I might as well ask all the questions I care about. And if they're offended by it, who cares? I mean they'll either forget about it the next time we talk or I never talk to them again. And I feel the same way about writing. This might be the last time I write about this thing, I might as well just write what I want to write about it, and then let people decide if they like it.
Yeah, hockey and baseball are so regional that you can really poke those hornets nests without even trying.
In my case, half my shtick is making fun of Canada, so it's real easy to poke that bear from down here, you just stick it across the border a few times. That's probably the most heat I get is that that the Canadians inherently knowing that I'm very jingoistic and dismissive of their teams and their national team and the painful cliches of Canadian supremacy in hockey, it's become part of my shtick but it's also what I truly believe, too.
So I remember finding Greg’s writing when he went to work for Yahoo! and he was the editor for Puck Daddy. And I would include a visit that page daily as part of my morning routine at my various desk jobs. That was the peak time of sports blogging, when Bill Simmons and Deadspin were still super-popular, and it was great to have that style of coverage for hockey.
I also thought his approach to his career and owning his style was impressive. Most people would adapt a more sanitized, generic style to try to advance their career and then maybe show personality more later on. But he’s been the same since day one, which is a very talented and engaging writer that knows who he is and is confident in his work. I’d love to have that mindset but I hate criticism so I’m rarely as unburdened and free with writing as I probably should be, especially since those types of writing get me the most positive feedback. Then again, I don’t like heartburn, so maybe I avoid spicy peppers that Greg enjoys so much.
The Mets
What drew you to the Mets instead of the Yankees when you're making your initial choice?
There is no choice. I mean, you're born into it. The only choice I made was being a Devils fan. My dad was an Islanders fan and before that was a Rangers fan. And then when I was born, I'm a kid of Jersey, I’m of course gonna root for the local hockey team. And so then my dad converted. But I was born into Nets fandom and Jets fandom, which is a whole other topic, and Mets fandom. And so there was no choice.
But I think that now that I've had all these years of being a Mets fan, I think they definitely fit more in my general sports aesthetic than a Yankees fan. I'm not a fan of any team that could be considered a prestige team. Like the Devils had a really good run in the 90s, a dynastic run, but before that they were a team that Wayne Gretzky called a Mickey Mouse Franchise because of how hapless they were. And the Jets obviously, it's very well chronicled what an abject disaster that franchise has been. And then the Nets the same thing. The Nets are known more for losing than winning. So the Mets to me fit more that aesthetic. I think I probably would have gravitated to them regardless of birthright at some point.
All the cities with two teams feel like they have that dynamic, with one prestige team and then one underdog team.
I say every year that it's not that we're going to lose. We know we're going to lose, it's just like what extremely interesting and new way will we come up with to lose? That’s what keeps you rooting for the Jets. The thing about being a Mets fan, though, in New York, and this might just be my own personal delusion as a Mets fan, but you're seeing it again this year. When they're good, it's good with personality. It's a weird thing when the Mets are good. It's not just some mechanical team that happens to do well. It's usually something ethereal happening, too, where they're a funky little bunch of misfits. It kind of takes over the town.
The Yankees are really good this year, and I think there's an expectation that they could go pretty far, but I don't think there's the level of… like Grimace isn't at the Yankees game, you know? When the Mets are good, there's something that's sort of magical that happens, this alchemy that happens amongst New York sports fans where, you know, you could take all of those Yankees World Series and none of them meant as much in New York as ‘86 did. Because ‘86 was just magical. Same thing with ’69. When the Mets win, it just becomes a fable, versus all of the times that the Yankees win, where you look and you're just like, oh, another pennant.
I don't think Grimace would be allowed inside Yankee Stadium.
I mean, the Hawk Tuah girl would definitely not be allowed inside of Yankee Stadium, and she definitely was at a Mets game this year. That’s, to me, the difference and that's what makes being a Mets fan fun. We know that there's going to be tons of swings and misses and tons of times when the team is irrelevant and new owners and new managers and new directions and the promise of a highly touted free agent that turns out to be a bust that we trade two years later; like that's the life cycle of the Mets. But when you get seasons like the one that we're having now, even if it doesn't turn out to be one that ends with a playoff berth (note: it did), it just becomes the most fun you could have as a baseball fan in New York.
So you were like 9 or 10 for the ’86 win, right? 11.43
I was cognizant. I was born in ’77, I look younger than I am. My first year of being a sports fan was ‘85. I remember the rivalry with the Cardinals. I remember certain aspects of the Devils season. So ‘86 happened right as I became sentient as a sports fan. I still remember the utter euphoria of watching the Astros series and Mike Scott fiddling around with the baseball, or so we were convinced of, and then the Red Sox series just being something, again, that was larger than life. The Buckner thing became larger than life, the rally became larger in life. It just became this incredible moment.
And also, one of the odd things that I remember about being a Mets fan at that point, was they either did their own music video or somebody did a music video for them called “Let's Go Mets”. And it had all of these New York celebrities like the guy from Twisted Sister (Dee Snider) and Joe Piscopo saying “Let's go Mets!” in the video. And so it became a thing. It was kind of drafting off the Super Bowl Shuffle a little bit, but it became the thing where you're just like, they ain't doing this for the Yankees. The Yankees don't have the “Let's Go Yankees” video with Joe Piscopo saying “let's go Yankees.” They just don't and it was just like that point of demarcation of just like, OK, this is different. This is a different sort of fandom than other things that are happening in New York.
So that cemented you as a Mets fan? What was your favorite sport growing up when you were a kid?
Well, it's funny, the only sport I played on a team was baseball. Little League and then a little bit beyond that. I actually tried out for high school, but I was a pitcher, and I came to find out that the real key to being a pitcher in high school is the ability to throw really hard. Young hitters can't catch up with heat, and that was not my forte. I was Greg Maddux; I was a pinpoint accuracy guy. I was not up there throwing 100. So that did not work out.
But my favorite sport growing up was hockey. That's what I gravitated to. It's the sport that I loved it. Again, fandom hit at the right time. The Devils’ first season in the playoffs was ‘88, so that's like real prime time. Their Cup aspirations came at the end of high school, beginning of college for me. So it all hit at the right time and then plus just, and the sport isn't this anymore, and it's one of the struggles I have as a writer in remembering that the thing that I love is not the thing that exists anymore, but the fighting and the brutality and the enforcers and the blood and the guts and all the nastiness that was hockey back in the 80s and 90s, really struck a chord with me. Probably also because I was a wrestling fan and just gravitated towards cartoonish violence.
My Mets fandom was definitely, I mean, so it was multifaceted. And I think it's the same story for a lot of kids, which was that I liked watching the games on television with my dad. He would watch a lot of games on television. He'd walk down to our wood-paneled basement, get away from his wife, and watch some baseball, as one does. He would take me to games. His company would sometimes have outings at Shea Stadium. So we would actually go sit in the bleachers at Shea. He grew up in New York, so Shea was a big part of his experience as a fan, so he'd like to take me there. He is a very frugal man. So when we would go to games at Shea or Devils games, your legs would ache with how far you've walked up the upper deck to get to your seats. He is not spending a dime more than he needs to on tickets. So that was part of the experience too.
The other part of it though was I was a huge stats nerd and I would collect baseball cards. At one point I had all of the hats from Major League Baseball teams on these racks in my room. And then the other thing I would do is I would take my baseball cards and I created a Strat-o-Matic, I created my own version of it using my Dungeons and Dragons dice wherein when you throw roll the 20-sided dice if you got a certain number range, that's what the pitch would be. And then you roll it again to see what the result was going to be. So I was a huge nerd of all of the ancillary stuff that baseball sort of produces for fans on top of also being a fan of the game itself.
The stats side, baseball was the easiest to dive into from that perspective back then, right? Hockey had like 5 stats they tracked in the 80’s and 90’s.
It was. My fandom predated the analytics revolution, but I think the stats side for baseball was always commiserate with the history side of baseball. The most wonderful thing about baseball growing up is you knew who the statistic leader was in every category all-time, and you go to Cooperstown and you see their plaques and then you get really excited when somebody hits their 500th home run, or you get really excited when somebody gets their hitting streak up to 30 games. You're like, whoa, baby, here it comes. The DiMaggio record will fall.
The stats helped tell the story of baseball and educate you as a young fan as to who all of these people were and then you use that as a way to compare. To me, the biggest change that happened wasn't analytics. It was steroids. In the 90s is where you sort of lost the thread on statistic achievement versus yesteryear. Again, as a kid, you're not thinking about the segregation of baseball and that impact on stats and that sort of thing. We see that through that prism now. But for me the biggest change was like I look at these numbers, I know what they mean. You got an entire generation of guys in the 1990s doing things that they shouldn't be doing statistically unless something funky is happening. That's where baseball kind of fell off its axis to me as a place where the stats told the story of the history of the game, because now all of a sudden there are people being invited to the party that shouldn't be.
What is it about baseball that you loved growing up and now?
That's a great question. I think a lot of it was that mano a mano-type relationship between a hitter and a pitcher. It's not only just how hard can you hit the ball or how hard can you throw the ball, it's the psychology of it, the guessing game of it, and the anticipation of it. That part of it was really fascinating to me. You have two athletes that are basically trying to outwit each other within the core of this grander game where if the ball is in play, there's eight other people that are now involved and there's an entire bunch of hitters involved. The inherent soul of baseball is a one-on-one matchup, and I always thought that was really cool.
Did going to games keep that fire going. I always feel like every fan, there's a team that they latch on to. You've got to have a team that had a great run; it doesn't have to be a World Series. It just has to have characters, it has to have excitement, like you had Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, Howard Johnson and Gary Carter.
Yeah, easily, and Lenny Dykstra is my guy. That was my guy growing up. He was my favorite Met. But I think what happened in those early years was definitely my affinity for pitching is what those teams did good. David Cone, my God, David Cone, probably out of every pitcher, had the most impact on me. I was obsessed with the variety of ways he would he would deliver the ball to the plate where he would drop down and do a three-quarter, sidearm thing occasionally and he was endlessly inventive in in the ways he was trying to strike out people.
I became really fascinated with the way that different pitchers pitch, because everyone was a little bit different. Like Doc was basically just a two-pitch pitcher, but those two pitches were unhittable. And Sid Fernandez, where his curveball looked like it was going to hit a satellite orbiting Earth because it was just such a rainbow of a pitch. And then getting obsessed with side arm pitchers like Quisenberry, like what is happening here? As a fan, definitely the Mets and their personality, but as a kid who loved to pitch, it was becoming obsessed with all of these pitchers that were good and the variety of ways in which they were able to throw the ball.
(watch David Cone in a dominant Mets start)
What was it like going to Shea Stadium growing up?
Hearing the roar of the crowd, doing the wave, hearing the We Will Rock you beat to get people chanting “Let's go Mets”, I mean it was all really fun. The only team I followed where going to the game sucked was the Nets, because inherently they were terrible for many, many years. When I was a kid, the Nets existed for other people to go see really good NBA players. My dad would take me to a Nets-Bulls game and we'd be the only Nets fans in Jersey because everybody else was there for Jordan. So those games sucked as a fan.
Has your baseball fan level changed over the years?
Oh it definitely has. It certainly fell off for a long time when the Mets were treading water and meandering. Obviously very much was into the team that made the World Series. They were a team that I always kept tabs on, and maybe I would go to a game a summer, but there's no question that the current incarnation of this team, as well as my daughter becoming a huge fan, has very much rekindled my love of this team. It's pretty easy when your kid is like, ‘Let's go to a Mets game’ and it's just like, OK, that sounds great.
The other part of it, too, is that Citi Field is a really great place to watch a game. Sight lines are great, the amenities are fantastic, getting there and getting out, because I live in Brooklyn, is not very hard if you drive there, which we do. Not only are you going to see a good a good team, not only is it a team that you care about, but it's also a really nice place to go. I'll take Citi Field over Yankee Stadium every day of the week as far as the atmosphere and the amenities and everything.
A New Generation of Mets Fans
What's interesting about baseball fandom, though, like baseball to me, when compared to hockey, was slow. And that was one of the struggles I had as a young fan was I didn't feel like I could dedicate that much time to watching a baseball game versus a hockey game, which was more condensed and faster paced. I have a 14-year-old daughter who is a huge Mets fan, and I don't think she'd be a huge Mets fan if they didn't change the rules, if they didn't make the game faster. Just like I came up at the right time for something like hockey, I think she came up at the right time for this version of baseball, and it's why she's so into the team. Sitting down and watching a game for her is not the chore that it probably was for me as a young fan, and I think that's why she's into it.
What changed for her? So the rules changes came in last year. You've obviously been to baseball games with her. And then all of a sudden she goes, oh this is actually a lot more fun than I remember?
I think it's that. I think it's also she became more of a sports fan. Her introduction to the Mets was basically like, it's a pretty day out, we'll take you downstairs to buy you a shirt or a doll and where’s the ice cream and the little hat. Those were her priorities. It wasn't Francisco Lindor’s slugging percentage. In the last couple of years, and I think part of it is her hockey fandom that brought this out of her, now she cares about the players, she cares about the stats, she cares about the standings. Some of that is definitely based on social media. She's a huge TikTok girl. She's very big on Instagram and she follows all of these sites that are giving her a constant, refreshed feed of stats and rankings and all kinds of stuff which just made her cognizant of not only the performance of her team vis a vis the rest of the league, but also the rest of the league.
And so in the last two years, she's become much more interested in, like, how many home runs Brandon Nimmo has, or things like knowing about the players on the other team they're going to face in the three-game series. And she's getting that information from social, applying it to her own fandom, and I think that's been the change. So she became more into the machinations of sports at a time when baseball figured out, oh, we've got to change to keep young people watching this sport. And she's definitely one of those kids that got swiped up in the butterfly net and became a baseball fan because of it.
So she got hooked onto hockey much faster, and baseball took a few years to finally stick. Why do you think that is?
That was simply because we took her to hockey games when she was younger than her first baseball game. Actually, her hockey fandom is sort of interesting in the sense of her first game wasn't a Devils game. Her first game was a team called the Metropolitan Riveters, which was part of a pro women's hockey league that existed at the time. They actually played their games in the in the Devils’ practice facility next to their arena in Newark. So my wife and I took her to a game, and she's kind of into it, and then at the end of the game, one of the Riveters players jumped one of the opponents. And women's hockey is not known for physicality, it’s not one of the hallmarks of that version of the sport. But that happened and her eyes got like the size of saucers. And so after we gave her a taste of hockey through the women's league, we took her to her first Devils game and then from that point on, she was just like, when are we going, how am I getting back, when am I getting a jersey? Her hockey fandom, for whatever reason, and maybe it's because her dad's a hockey writer, I don't know, but like her hockey fandom definitely sparked before her baseball fandom did.
Who's your favorite player all time?
I mean Dykstra’s up there, for sure. And then I'm trying to think, it would have to be some level of relief pitcher, like Eckersley or somebody like that. I was always fascinated by the psychology of the closer and you'd always kind of like envision yourself doing that too. I don't think I was ever a bigger fan of anyone than Dykstra as a young kid. I mean, probably less so when he became a Phillie and definitely less so after baseball. But I mean, he was always great.
Who's your favorite player on this version of the Mets?
It's Lindor. The idea that that you have a player making that much money and he's that good, and that clutch, and that fun to watch is incredible to me. It's just great. I've had two guys on the Mets in the last 15 years that I've run hot and cold on: David Wright and Pete Alonso. Their numbers are insane, but at the end of the day, like how good were they? They were clearly the best on the Mets, but I don't know what that means in general. So those two guys have always vexed me as a Mets fan because there are times when you're like, Oh my God, these numbers are insane. Then then you watch him and you're like, really could have used a hit there, Pete.
I think he sums up being a Mets fan as well as anyone can in this brief interview. Watching from afar, there’s something captivating about the Mets every year. They always have stars, even if Greg committed blasphemy with his David Wright criticism. They always should be good, yet even when they made the World Series in 2015 they still had a “Mets” vibe to them. The Yankees always feel like the emotionless behemoth that would steamroll through the league. The Mets always seem to be winning with whatever mojo they can muster up. They’ve had spectacular postseason runs and also painful collapses, so it’s never a dull ride.
It was also cool to see how the game has captured a new generation, and surprising to hear MLB social media helped do that. Baseball is definitely a slow burn, if you’re consistently exposed to it at whatever age, eventually that hook catches and you’re in for life. Compared to hockey, which is an immediate addiction (I was hooked less than a period into my first in-person game), baseball just has to keep putting in the work and effort knowing eventually that ember will ignite. Now they get to watch a magical, Grimace-led postseason run in 2024 together.
We interviewed the Friday before the regular season was over, so we didn’t know what the Monday double-header’s stakes would be yet. But that Game 1 to clinch for the Mets was an all-time classic. Let’s check in with Greg and see how he’s doing:
