Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing #72 — Grant Roberts and the Memory You Didn’t Expect

Last week in Forgotten Faces of Flushing, we took a detour.

No player. No box score. No forgotten middle reliever who once wore #47 for six weeks and later sold insurance in Tampa.

Just the escalator at Shea Stadium — that sacred conveyor belt to baseball heaven, where scorecards, tiny pencils, and childhood joy all waited at the top.

Funny thing about memory: you never know what opens the door.

Sometimes it’s an old scorecard.

Sometimes it’s the smell of a stadium concourse.

And sometimes it’s writing about someone else entirely.

Last week, while putting together the piece on the passing of Bobby Cox, I found myself remembering something I hadn’t thought about in years. I left it out of that article out of respect, because when someone passes, the point isn’t to reopen every old wound.

But one memory stayed.

And it led directly to this week’s Forgotten Face:

Grant Roberts.

Grant Roberts was one of those Mets prospects who arrived carrying the usual back story, a decent arm, a promising future, and enough hype to convince us all we had just discovered the next great bullpen weapon. Which, as Mets fans know, is a sentence that historically ends with someone icing their shoulder and pitching a no hitter for a different team.

The Mets drafted Roberts out of Grossmont High School in 1995 when he was still a teenager. He was one of those Southern California kids who looked like he belonged in either a baseball uniform or a 1960's Beach Blanket Bingo movie. The organization developed him as a starter early on, and for a while, the numbers suggested they may have found something. He won games, missed bats, and climbed through the system at a pace that had scouts talking and fans squinting at Baseball America like it was sacred text.

By 2000, Roberts had fought his way to Triple-A and earned a look in Queens. His debut was not exactly Tom Seaver arriving from the heavens. It was rough. Montreal got to him quickly, and after one short start, back to Norfolk he went. Still, September came, and so did another chance. He showed enough in relief to make people think maybe — just maybe — the Mets had found a useful arm.

That “maybe” became very real in 2002.

For about two months, Grant Roberts looked like the real deal. He opened the season practically untouchable. His ERA dipped below one. He attacked hitters with the confidence. He struck out five of seven hitters one April night and gave Mets fans a reason to believe.

Then came the Mets’ oldest enemy:

The human shoulder.

Rotator cuff trouble arrived like it always does in Queens — quietly, cruelly, and just when you started to enjoy yourself. Roberts spent much of that season and the next bouncing between the mound and the disabled list, trying to recapture what had flashed so brilliantly.

And then came the "photograph".

In September 2002, a tabloid story surfaced showing Roberts in an old photo smoking marijuana. The story became one of those media storms that was less about actual baseball and more about talk radio hosts pretending civilization was ending because a relief pitcher made a dumb decision. Roberts later said the image came from an ex-girlfriend trying to shake him down. It became one of those very Mets stories — where a guy’s ERA could be 0.59, but somehow the headline was about a photograph.

That should have been enough drama.

But baseball always adds one more inning.

A week later, in what turned out to be the final game of Bobby Valentine’s Mets tenure, the Atlanta Braves had a laugh at the Mets’ expense. Bobby Cox sent pitcher Jung Bong up as a pinch hitter, a not-so-subtle jab referencing the Roberts story. The Braves dugout loved it. They laughed.

Maybe I’m old school. Maybe I’m just old.

But some things always felt beneath the game. There’s enough losing and enough embarrassment in baseball without kicking a guy while his life is already on the back page.

Grant Roberts never really got back. The shoulder kept betraying him. Surgery followed. So did release. He briefly signed with the New York Yankees, which should have automatically disqualified him from this column, but never made it back to the majors. In 2005, he was suspended after violating the minor league steroid policy, a sad footnote at the end of a career that once looked like it had real chapters left.

His Mets numbers won’t make anyone in Cooperstown nervous. Over five seasons, he pitched in 79 games and showed flashes that teased far more than the final line suggests.

But here’s what I remember.

I remember watching him in 2002 and thinking, “This guy’s going to be around.”

I remember the fastball had life. The swagger was real. The kind of reliever who looked like he could become one of those Shea bullpen staples — the guy you trusted in the seventh before everything in baseball required six setup men.

Mostly, I remember how fast it disappeared.

That’s what this series always comes back to.

Some players are forgotten because they weren’t good enough.

Some are forgotten because they played in the wrong era.

And some — like Grant Roberts — are forgotten because for one brief stretch they looked like they belonged, until baseball, injuries, and life all decided otherwise.

Which is why one old memory about Bobby Cox somehow brought me here.

Because forgotten faces rarely stay forgotten.

Sometimes they’re waiting behind an old newspaper clipping.

Sometimes they’re hidden in a passing thought while writing about another player.

And sometimes, after all these years, they’re still standing there at the top of the escalator… waiting for you to notice them again.