I started watching baseball in 1946 when my dad took me to Ebbets Field and the Dodgers beat the Reds. I was seven.
Since then, I have never seen “my team” play a series like the one the Mets just played in Washington. (I can afford to gush; I’m retired, and do not have to pretend at neutrality.) I have, however, seen another team play a dismal three-game series like the one the Nationals just did. More about this in a moment. My Brooklyn Dodgers were so good they were expected to win (except in the World Series against the Yankees.) They were better known for disasters – Bobby Thomson’s homer in 1951 being just one of them. The Mets came along in 1962 and have had epic seasons and stunning games, including two straight (Koosman and Seaver) over the Cubs at home on Sept. 8-9, 1969, to move within half a game of first place. But even those surging Mets never won three straight over their closest competitor, coming from behind in all three when logic said they were done for the day. Of course, the Nationals were already a sodden team going into this week. One of the Mets’ greatest gifts this year was the refusal of Washington management to fire Matt Williams when the team skulked for half a season. The hapless manager brought in Drew Storen Wednesday night after his failure of nerve and location on Tuesday. Any sentient manager would have invented a blister on one of Storen’s fingers; the term “unavailable” was made for that guy. Instead, Cespedes hit a two-run homer. After thinking about it overnight, I realized I had witnessed a contending team losing three straight in September. I was in chilly St. Louis in 1964 as the Phillies, who had lost seven straight, lost three more, more or less straightforwardly, and fell out of first place. To be fair: some of the Phillies’ stars were hurt; their pitching staff was shot; their best player, John Callison, had a fever so bad that Bill White, the Cardinals’ first baseman, helped him on with a jacket, rarely allowed for any runner but a pitcher. The Cardinals whooshed past the Phils, into first place, toward a marathon victory over the Yanks in the World Series. Gene Mauch of the Phillies gets the blame for overworking his pitching staff; he was a remote and intelligent man, part Ahab, part Queeg, but I cut him much more slack than I do Matt Williams. Many teams have their sagas of comebacks and failures but I have never seen anything quite like those three games in DC this week. Will we someday talk about Granderson the way we do about Clendenon? Flores the way we do about Weis? Familia the way we do about McGraw and Orosco? No matter what happens, the last three games deserve Casey Stengel’s adjective: Amazing. Okay, the Mets stunk it up in extra innings Friday night. Not sure Collins should have gone back to Carlos Torres one night later, but if they keep playing extra innings, Torres will keep being available. Laura Vecsey was ranting about Cespedes' apparent loaf after the inside-the-park HR. Blessedly, I missed it. I had switched to a swath of "Bird Man," which I had never seen. Michael Keaton. The Mets. You are seeing a pattern here? Mets fans still have Thursday night, and, as Gary Cohen blurted on the tube, "The play of the year!" Carlos Torres of the Mets is one of those unsung players that exist on every post-season team – the guys who helped get their teams there. The Mets of 1969 had pitchers named Calvin Koonce and Don Cardwell. The Mets of 1986 had Rick Aguilera and Randy Niemann, among others. Amidst this current bizarre spontaneous combustion sparked by the salary-dump arrival, Yoenis Cespedes, there are so many disparate elements. Consider Carlos Torres, tall and lanky, out of Kansas State and San Jose State, who does his job, impassively, maturely. Torres is rarely interviewed. When he is, he comes off, as Casey Stengel used to say about Wakefield and Anderson and Altman, “a university man.” Torres has not been as good this year as last year. So it goes. But his exploits Thursday night will always be remembered by hard-core fans. Good grief, I think I have become one. In the 10th inning Thursday, the first batter Torres faced whacked a grounder off his soccer-style boot and bolted toward first. Daniel Murphy scrambled to recover the ball wide of first and violated the Mets’ own Murphy’s Law: Don’t Improvise, Murph. He flipped the ball sideways, blind, toward first base, classic Murphy, hoping Torres would get there. Like a greyhound, Torres sprinted to the base, caught the ball, and Jeff Francoeur nudged him aside, to make sure not to maim him, I think. First out. Three innings later, Torres dribbled a ball to deep short and the shortstop messed it up, as Torres again sprinted to first – for his first hit and, as far as I can tell, his first trip to the bases since 2013. Torres took a lead and dove back to first like a professional pinch-runner, as the Mets’ radio guys pointed out. Then he toured the bases, bolting home on Murphy’s double for the go-ahead run. The Mets scored four runs and Jeurys Familia finished up. No matter what happens from now on, Mets fans will always remember Torres, this long, lean, pitcher playing the game the way it used to be played, before the gimmick of the designated hitter, by pitchers like Ruth and Ferrell, Gibson and Newcombe, Drysdale and Guidry. Torres hit, in a fashion. He ran. He fielded. He pitched. He was an athlete. National League ball. Real baseball. In this strange unexpected season, another memory. (Portrait of a professional long man, after pitching second through fifth innings, 2014.) With a great deal of Metsian guilt, I confess that I wandered around the house Wednesday night after the Mets took a 7-0 lead. Time to get some stuff organized. Had to get ready for the Clown Car Thursday night. Have I learned nothing in 53 2/3 seasons of watching this club? Imagine my surprise when I returned to the radio and heard Juan Uribe saying that in baseball you never know. Still, the Mets have won six straight -- and there is talk about David Wright and Michael Cuddyer getting ready to come back. Ummm. That's all I'm saying. Meantime, the summer doldrums keep getting postponed. Already a people's choice for his tears last week, Wilmer Flores evaded a tag Tuesday for a crucial run in Miami. His slide reminded me of the sideways one-and-a-half gainer dive by Mickey Mantle in the 1960 World Series, to avoid Rocky Nelson's tag at first base, one of the great impromptu athletic moves ever seen on a baseball field. Wilmer Flores. Mickey Mantle. Same sentence. Also red-hot is Ron Darling, who has made himself into one of the great baseball broadcasters. Darling spotted his lodge brother, Jon Niese, the on-deck batter, in a direct line with Flores, urgently waving for him to go wide to his right. Everybody is playing up. In the usual August torpor, I have other things I want to write about, but the Mets have won five straight as of Wednesday morning. "Pitching!!!!" Bill Wakefield, the best reliever on the 1964 Mets, says in an e-mail. "Bandwagon!!!" texts the noted women's soccer writer, Laura Vecsey. "Madhouse!!!" writes David Vecsey, our correspondent from the Mets' ballpark Sunday night. David said he felt the season ratchet up in the eighth inning Sunday when Terry Collins let Noah Syndegaard deal with Brian Harper with two outs in the eighth. The kid blew away the kid with 99-mph heat. It is on. I have run out of vapid attempts at profundity. It’s summer. Humidity saps the brain. I have seen family and friends, gone swimming, watered lawns and flowers. We went to Queens for the National Theatre in a movie house.We went to Hicksville for dosa. Mostly, the days and nights are built around the Mets I sold myself to the devil last winter when the snow was piled high and there was nothing on television as usual. Please, I bargained, just make this a good baseball season. The devil has kept his end. The Mets are captivating, even when they lose. This is why baseball is the greatest game. They play every day. This past week has been one of the weirdest stretches I have ever seen. You know all this already. On Wednesday, Wilmer Flores heard rumors from the selfie crowd that he had been traded. Flores cried. The social-media gossip was premature. My son and I texted each other: What’s wrong with Familia? Wait, can they trade Wheeler after surgery? On Thursday, the front office clarified: no trade. On Friday, the Mets got Yoenis Cespedes, but kept Flores. (Gardening note: The Mets now have players named Lawns and Flowers in Spanish. Make of this what you will. Perhaps they will trade for a player named Árboles.) On Friday, Flores ended the game with a homer. My son texted Well, that was obviously going to happen. I have never seen players embrace a teammate so fervently. Ron Darling said the same thing Monday night. On Saturday, Cespedes flailed at sinkers. I worried he would turn into this year’s Foy, this year’s Samuel, this year's Vaughn, this year’s Bay, but he could be the great rent-a-slugger the Mets have ever had. Lucas Duda kept hitting homers. I'm sorry I called him a lug. I was building my Sunday around the dreaded 8 PM game. Then on Sunday morning there was a charity soccer match from Wembley. My Arsenal and Chelsea mates watched – together again! – in Brooklyn. Wenger 1, Mourinho 0. Done and dusted, as somebody once said. Sunday night was insane. Too bad ESPN was doing the game. The great Richard Sandomir critiques the office-temp superficiality of national broadcasts. Must read this. On Monday, Cespedes and Conforto and Colon were magnificent. The Mets are in first place. Can’t write now. Things just getting interesting. This very young baseball season has been so much fun, just to have the sport back but obviously for the 10-3 record through Sunday.
Then Jerry Blevins received a fractured arm and Travis d'Arnaud a fractured hand within minutes of each other as the Mets beat the Marlins. Since the first weird days of 1962, Mets fans have known that following this team demands great mood shifts. But this is ridiculous, after promising the Higher Power, just get me through this nuclear winter of Little Anthony and the No-Names and let me watch Juan Lagares chase fly balls. . Baseball is liberation from the yammering of cable news. . It’s sticking up for Bartolo Colon’s right to start opening day and watching him win his first three starts – and driving in runs in two consecutive games – and fielding his position, for goodness’ sakes. I went to opening day at New Shea, hordes of macho males (and females, too), whacked on alcohol or testosterone or who knows what, conducting the rites of spring that reminded me of Brueghel and Bosch, collaborating on their epic St. Patrick’s Day in the Lower Depths of Penn Station. Nobody watched the game. Back home, games are faster, so much faster so that you cannot click away and watch a snippet of a movie you never knew existed. Now, when you click back, there is already an out and a runner on first. Congratulations, baseball, for making those lugs stay in the batter’s box. The Mets and the Other Team in Town have opened with division rivals. This is a wonderful thing because the games have extra value for post-season possibilities, but more immediately because they bring home the familiar faces, the worthy oppositions. In the Madoff Era, the Mets have been the soft underbelly of the National League. Now they are going through the first two weeks – Bryce Harper and the Nationals, Andrelton Simmons and the Braves, Chase Utley and the Phillies, Giancarlo Stanton and the Marlins. But what is Ryan Howard doing lurking in the Phillies’ dugout? One thing I hate about contemporary big-biz baseball: the looming salary dump, further devaluing gallant players who got a bit old or a bit hurt. After two weeks, the timid, repressed optimist dares to whisper, “Wait…those teams aren’t that great right now.” Spring. Early spring. False spring. Who knows? Out-of-town box scores vanish from the printed page. You could spend an entire breakfast or commute checking the box scores. Now you have to read the front page. Yikes. But at least there is the two-week glory of watching Soft Hands Lucas Duda hitting to the left side, playing grounders like a big cat. Sandy Alderson was right. This guy is no oaf. Then again, how could the Mets send down Eric Campbell and open the season with a four-player bench? Campbell came back swinging hard -- and his throws from third base are special, too. Now the Mets have to replace two players who have been so vital in these early days. Meanwhile, on the team from another borough, Alex Rodriguez, the man we love to hate, is keeping the Anonymous Yankees almost respectable. Maybe he will shame the owners into paying him his bonus. Pay-Rod, the working man’s hero. Who woulda thought? Your thoughts? Bartolo Colon makes me laugh. That doesn't sound like a good reason to endorse his pitching opening day for the Mets, but I think the two are connected.
Colon’s nomination to pitch in Philadelphia next Monday has caused a great amount of chatter in New York because Matt Harvey is acknowledged as the ace. I say Colon held the Mets together – relatively, that is -- with his rubbery arm and impassive face, after Harvey went down and before Jacob deGrom and Zach Wheeler settled in. There is a place in the 162-game schedule for symbolic events like opening day, even on the road, to honor a pitcher for making them respectable in most of his 31 starts. Not only that, but Colon made me laugh – not once but twice – in a revealing new book: “Baseball Maverick: How Sandy Alderson Revolutionized Baseball and Revived the Mets,” by Steve Kettmann, published by Atlantic Monthly Press. (The most interesting figure in the book is Alderson’s jet-fighter pilot dad, John.) There hasn’t been much fun about the Mets in recent years, but Alderson has been plugging along with what his budget allowed. He gave serious access to Kettmann, an astute reporter who has worked in Oakland, New York and Berlin and now lives in California. Alderson was an early advocate of computers and new ways of judging talent, and somehow he was flexible enough to recruit portly, much-traveled Colon as that handy-dandy implement, the inning-eater. No pitching staff should be without one. Now he lets the Mets coddle their young talent early in the chilly season. We all watched Colon perform like a stubborn old work- horse last season, showing no interest in batting or running toward first base when he happened to make contact. For that matter, Colon is not that much interested in fielding his position. But Colon – who turns 42 in May -- pitched 202 1/3 innings, with a 15-13 record and a 4.09 earned-run average. Early in the season, Kettmann, in the clubhouse, observed Colon and Gonzalo Germen “playing an elaborate game of hide-and-seek. Colon squeezed his porcine bulk just past me to hide in a corner locker, grinning as he pulled one door closed to hide himself within.” So Colon has an inner fun guy, the fourth Stooge – El Gordo. Months later, Kettmann, who speaks Spanish (and German) introduced himself to Colon, with no purpose other than civility. “Colon then grunted that he had to sign baseballs, as if that had anything to do with anything," Kettmann wrote. "I smiled at this, since we both knew how deeply redolent of bullshit it was, but moved away from him and there he sat, doing nothing, for the next half hour, not twitching a muscle.” All reporters get stiffed. (Ask me about the Roman Catholic cardinal from the U.S. who popped a 180 in a narrow corridor, robes flowing, rather than talk to me.) Kettmann sums up Colon’s evasive tactic: “That was the man’s genius: He didn’t think too much, and he didn’t care about anything except having a good time, making jokes, staying loose, and going out every five days and throwing a lot of darting fastballs. You could plug him in for twelve to fifteen wins and 180 to 200 innings, even on a sub-.500 team, but don’t ever expect him to go out of his way to try harder than necessary.” Colon kept the Mets competitive last year – a su manera, his way. Whatever baseball logic this makes, this is the Mets’ way of thanking him for his version of respectability. Bob Goldsholl once saw two teammates squabbling over a uniform -- with No. 9 on the back.
This memory came flooding back as New York University begins its first baseball season since 1974. Goldsholl, a retired New York sports broadcaster, pitched NYU into the College World Series in 1956, wearing a hand-me-down uniform from a certain team in Boston. The venerable NYU coach, Bill McCarthy, had friends with the Red Sox, ranging from a scout to the owner, Tom Yawkey. Every year, the Red Sox shipped used uniforms to NYU, which led a couple of top dogs to bicker over Ted Williams’ elongated uniform. (The team name was altered on the front.) Those were great days for baseball in New York – three teams in the major leagues and seven local rivals in the Metropolitan Conference – City College, Wagner, Brooklyn, St. John’s, Hofstra, Manhattan and NYU. Personal note: As the student publicist for Hofstra, I sat on the bench, kept score and heckled the other team. The St. John’s players used to shout, “Shut up, Pencil.” Three players I saw made the majors – Chuck Schilling of Manhat-tan, Ted Schreiber of St. John’s and Brant Alyea of Hofstra. From the home-and-home series, you got to know the players in the Met Conference. City College had a squat little center fielder named Tim Sullivan who bravely wore No. 7 in a city with another outfielder bearing that number, and a junk-balling lefty named Lubomir Mlynar. (My Hofstra guys made fun of his nose and his name and his stuff – but they could hardly hit him.) City College had an all-star third baseman, Weiss, who had missed a scholarship to NYU because of a bureaucratic slipup. He savored playing his good friend, Jerome Umano, the shortstop, whose NYU uniform had Johnny Pesky’s name sewed inside. (Weiss would play well into his 70’s in adult hardball leagues, and is currently featured in a book about New York and baseball, Penance and Pinstripes: The Life Story of Ex-Yankee John Malangone, by Michael Harrison.) NYU had a great history, sending Ralph Branca to the majors plus Eddie Yost, Sam Mele and my good friend, a two-sport star, Al Campanis, who had a war-time cameo with the Dodgers. They played on the uptown campus, right next to the Hall of Fame. No New York team had ever reached the College World Series in Omaha until Goldsholl and Art Steeb pitched NYU there in 1956. “I was warming up in Omaha before our first game against Arizona,” Goldsholl said Thursday. “The public-address announcer introduced the squads -- NYU, with a record of 16-4-1 and the University of Arizona, with a record of 45-6.” Struck by the ludicrous disparity between northern baseball and southern baseball, Goldsholl said, “I just stopped throwing and started to laugh.” NYU lost to Arizona and Wyoming. Goldsholl played two years in the Giants’ system, and later became a familiar New York voice. NYU gave up baseball after 1974 and moved from Division I to Division III and consolidated (to say the least) its presence in Greenwich Village. The new players need not inspect their uniforms for any Red Sox names. THIS JUST IN
My friend Ron Swoboda has some thoughts on the steroid-era players. Now a broadcaster in his long-time home in New Orleans, Swoboda admits that he and other players from the 60’s have no idea what decisions they would have made if the stuff had been available back then. If I was the new commish coming in the front door I'd try to figure out how to bring all of God's wayward children into the Hall. Even if it meant admitting that baseball was lax on steroids when Sosa and McGwire were bringing fans back to the game after the stupidity of 1994. Of course, the players would all have to own up to their transgressions as well. Then after the truth has set us all free, we have the players in the Hall who belong there and a good set of rules and blood checks to go forward with. Since I'm not in any danger of becoming commish, these musings come cheap. Your thoughts? (Comments Below) PREVIOUS POSTING I couldn’t wait for a baseball game so I popped in a DVD for one of my favorite baseball movies. I love “Eight Men Out” for the Dixieland music and vintage suits and funky hotel lobbies and ball parks – also for the loving look at the game even in a dirty time, the Black Sox scandal of 1919. Well, I guess all times are dirty. Baseball currently has two separate scandals hanging over it. One involves Pete Rose, who bet on games while managing, and then lied about it. I am conflicted about Rose, a total knucklehead who gave me a great amount of enjoyment as writer and fan. I think Pete played honest, although we all knew he had a major gambling jones and ultimately broke the major rule of baseball – No Gambling. I wish Rose the player were eligible for the Hall of Fame – but I don’t know I would make that decision if I were commissioner. Then there is the whole steroid generation, when the union fought testing, for reasons I am sure the union leaders understood. No player identified or suspected as a steroid user has later been voted into the Hall by the writers. Some come back as coaches and guests at old-timers’ games and some just vanish with bloated home-run and strikeout totals. Now Alex Rodriguez, the ghost of scandals past, is haunting Yankee camp, yawning his way through first-base practice. What a chump. But the Yankees and baseball are legally stuck with him, no doubt hoping he breaks a leg taking grounders, and the insurance kicks in. What are we going to do with all those specters? A friend of mine says baseball writers of the past generation will never vote for suspected users because of guilty consciences for not breaking the story. Fair enough. I do not vote because the Times does not want its writers making news; I also never had proof of anything, except what my eyes told me about body sizes, and what common sense said about union stonewalling. Apparently, some writers did suspect some White Sox players were throwing the 1919 World Series. I love “Eight Men Out” because I am a huge John Sayles fan but also because I was there when they were filming it – in Indianapolis, an old ballpark – and also because I wrote about how D.B. Sweeney learned to hit left-handed to portray Shoeless Joe Jackson. I love the movie for the portrayal of a cheapskate owner and a hanging judge turned commissioner who channeled eight players of varying guilt into a lifetime ban. I love the image of the great David Strathairn as a pitcher, Ed Cicotte, who is cheated out of a bonus, and John Cusack as a tormented infielder, Buck Weaver, who plays it straight, but will not squeal. The gamblers and thugs and cynical sportswriters and innocent wives are all part of a beautiful American period piece. Today, would Shoeless Joe Jackson (.375 in that Series) and Buck Weaver (.324) be included along with the core fixers? I do not feel any sympathy for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and A-Rod, great players who got in deep, as far as I can see. But the game goes on. I helped myself to a seasonal preview in “Eight Men Out” – dirt, grass, finger signals, wood on ball, clunk of ball on an outfield fence, and a Dixieland band. Hang in there. Sometimes in sports, it is possible to over-think.
We saw that in the Super Bowl when the Seahawks coaches decided to “waste” a down by putting the ball in the air at the goal line. Some waste. New Yorkers are watching an entire basketball season get wasted as the Knicks stumble around the court, consulting copies of a textbook titled “Triangle Offense.” The flawed reasoning is clear in Harvey Araton’s fascinating luncheon interview with Phil Jackson in Wednesday’s Times – too old New York hands talking hoops. What I take away from the candid conversation is that even very smart and successful people like Jackson can over-think. I am reminded of that in the computer age,when people belatedly employ statistical analysis to what athletes and coaches did on the field, on the fly. Two examples: The 2014 World Series ended with the tying run on third base for Kansas City. Many hours afterward, the great Nate Silver – who aced the 2012 presidential election –wrote that the runner should have been sent home as the ball was kicked around in left field. Silver came up with statistics that the tying run scores from third with two outs only 25-27 percent of the time. Silver suggested that the Royals were not likely to get another hit off Madison Bumgarner and postulated that a collision at home plate would have favored the Royals because of rule changes since Buster Posey of the Giants had his leg broken in a collision in 2011. I found that specious over-thinking because Posey remains a tough and resourceful catcher. Having seen the play as it happened, on television, and in many replays, I go along with the decision by the Royals’ third-base coach – Mike Jirschele, a baseball lifer – as he lined up the wayward ball, the butterfingered Giants fielders, and the hitter, Alex Gordon, as he steamed toward third. This was a decision on the fly that journalists and numbers crunchers will never have to make. If the coach had tried to remember the statistical probabilities of tying runs on third base, the process would have interfered with his complicated spot decision. After a lifetime of covering sports, up close, talking to managers and coaches, I have great respect for what they know and do, in real time. Not that mistakes don’t happen. We saw one in the Super Bowl, when the very smart Pete Carroll and his offensive coordinator called a pass from half a yard outside the end zone. A day later, I read an “analysis” in the Times that said in football, as in life itself, people have to employ a “mixed strategy” or else they become too predictable. I agree, in theory, but I say that second-and-goal, maybe 18 inches away, is not the time to get cute and put the ball in the air, where a defensive back, having the greatest moment of his career, maybe his life, can go get it. Somewhere in the Football Handbook of Statistical Probability, there is a rule: Give the Ball to the Big Fella. That’s not statistics, a day later. That is common sense, for playing the game in the moment. Your thoughts? There was a commercial break in the 1975 Richard Pryor rerun of Saturday Night Live. Was he brilliant.
I clicked on the Mets. Two outs. Runner on third. Mets down, 1-0. Duda against some lefty. “Game over. He can’t hit lefties,” I informed my wife. Clang. Home run off the foul screen in right. Perfect timing for my baseball wisdom. I texted our son. Doo-dah. Doo-dah. David was on the phone with his wife, who was visiting family. At the same time, he was watching the Mets. “Losers to the end,” he said. Duda can’t hit lefties. Clang. Do we know the game, or what? Soon there will be no Mets, no season. As mediocre as the Mets have been, they have given us Lagares and de Grom, Mejia and Familia, and Daniel Murphy, who worked himself into an all-star. Collins is really a good manager. My guess is that baseball fans in a lot of cities feel the same way, bereft. Yankee fans and others now that Jeter-mania is over. Baseball has been with us every day since April. I’m adopting the Pirates to make a run in the post-season, and I’m adopting the Tigers in the other league. I like the old cities, the old clubs, and root for them in October. But it’s not like having your own team, every day, even when you are 100 percent positive that Duda cannot hit lefties. Clang. The (imagined) sound will echo all winter. I heard somebody on the radio the other night suggest the Yankees drop Derek Jeter down in the lineup as they make a run at the post-season.
That would constitute not only bad baseball but bad karma. Take it from an old Brooklyn Dodger fan who has never rooted for the Yankees in his long and tormented life, the Yankees need to finish the Jeter generation with him high in the lineup and playing shortstop most of the time. He deserves it, and the Yankees need him, just the way he is. You don’t monkey with the great ones. Casey Stengel put Joe DiMaggio on first base one day – DiMaggio sweated through his uniform, and went to ownership after the game – and Mickey Mantle had to hobble out to first base late in his career because it would have been inhumane to make him play the outfield anymore. Jeter will go out with dignity and competence. He was batting .261 going into Friday, and his range has gone down, but he is not among the top 10 reasons the Yankees are outside the wild-card zone. Joe Girardi knows that. If younger Yankees were playing better, Jeter would be seen as a stabilizing force, but he cannot carry this assortment of mostly strangers and failures. That’s not his game. He always made everybody better, but that was when they had Bernie and Posada and Mo and Andy and all the gamers they collected. That era is over. Just don’t take it out on an epic Yankee who is drawing deserved cheers as he goes around baseball one last time. The only slip I detect in Jeter’s dignity is his huckstering of autographed balls and other so-called collectibles. He is making $12-million on his final one-year contract, and I am not sure he needs to hustle all kinds of junk to rich people just because they can afford to splurge. I don’t see any reference to his foundation or other charities. Maybe Jeter is putting a new wing on his modest Tampa Bay bungalow which locals call St. Jetersburg. (I think it is the model for Putin’s dacha wherever Putin plans to go in exile.) But Jeter’s choice of life style is not the issue here. He has been an epic Yankee, a great baseball player, and the club gains from treating him with respect, through his last game. If the Yankees are out of contention, I think Jeter owes it to himself to show up in Boston for the final weekend, Sept. 26-27-28, rather than pull a Teddy Ballgame and skip the last road trip. He has always been a class act. Let him go to Boston, and let a great baseball town fuss over him. He deserves it. Boston fans know that. This old Brooklyn Dodger fan knows that. Presumably, so does Derek Jeter. * * * This just in. I discovered today's terrific piece by Richard Sandomir, about the Yankees' collectibles deal with Brandon Steiner. I don't get this kind of collecting but am willing to compartmentalize my respect for Jeter the player. Still, when is enough enough? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sports/baseball/brandon-steiner-in-deal-with-yankees-is-a-sports-memorabilia-maven.html?action=click&contentCollection=Baseball®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article Haruko Hasumi loves baseball – Japanese baseball, American baseball. She flew from Tokyo to DFW in 1991 and witnessed the seventh and last no-hitter of Nolan Ryan’s career.
First time I met her, she was wearing her SWOBODA 4 Mets jersey outside the Tokyo Dome in 2000. She and the Swoboda family were in Queens for the final days of Shea Stadium in 2008. This year Hasumi began following another team – Nichidai-Fujisawa High School. She has been going to the same dentist, Yasuki Ito, for many years, and this spring his son Rui was a senior on the team. “I heard that parents cheered for their children every game but they had no time taking photos,” she wrote in an e-mail. “That's why I thought of taking photos for them. At first I introduced myself to the parents, ‘Hi guys, I'm Dr. Ito's patient since 1990.’ That cracks them up.They call me ‘Ms. Patient.’” Recently, Nichidai-Fujisawa was playing in the Kanagawa Prefecture playoff, the prelude to the famous Koshien national tournament. (Final Four and Super Bowl, wrapped into one.) In the ninth inning, she caught Rui Ito throwing out a runner at home, and his father cheering in the stands. But the team lost, which is clear from the mothers’ faces. The players bowed, everybody cheered – and the juniors had to carry the bags to the team bus. Now Haruko will devote her energy to rooting for the Mets, from afar. And good luck with that. The contrast between baseball and soccer, my two favorite sports, was never more apparent than this past week.
With baseball acknowledging the yawning length of games – now over three hours and getting worse – soccer returned (was it ever away?) in Europe with matches under two hours. This is a huge advantage for soccer. A fan can commit to a match, or even half a match, without falling into a slack-jawed stupor in front of one of those four-hour Sunday-night horrors the Yanks always seem to be playing. I made the decision last Saturday morning that I could afford to watch the first half of Manchester United and was rewarded with the delicious sense that it was 2013-14 all over again. (Man U, lost, 2-1.) Then I came back from chores to watch the second half of Everton, with Tim Howard picking up where he left off for the USA in the World Cup, trying to overcome a weak back four. (Everton coughed up a tying goal, late.) Two welcome chunks of the Premiership, and it was not yet noon. Meantime, baseball is acknowledging that the average time of a game has gone from 2 hours 35 minutes to 3 hours 2 minutes 47 seconds -- the longest on record, according to Tyler Kepner in the Times. One reason the games get longer was noted by Howard Kitt, once a promising lefty in the Yankee chain, who has been a specialist in antitrust issues with a keen eye on sports business. (I covered him helping win county titles in basketball and baseball at Oceanside High around 1960.) Kitt, who advanced as high as AAA ball, listed one cause of long games – “the number of pitching changes per game, especially in the late innings. “When I played, there were three categories of pitchers: starters, long relievers and short relievers. Starters were expected to finish; long relievers were used when a starter didn't have it; and short relievers were used when a starter ran out of gas and/or when a fresh arm was needed to finish a tight game. Closers? Never hoid of 'em! “Now, the last three innings frequently take at least as long as the first six because of the number of pitching changes by each side. Think about it: A manager walks out to the mound; signals for a reliever; who comes in from somewhere beyond the outfield fence; who then proceeds to take eight warmup pitches (hardly necessary simply to get a feel for the mound, given that the pitcher is already warm); after which--finally--the game resumes. Multiply that time two or three times per team, and some real time elapses (this can easily be verified with a stopwatch).” Kitt, who understands the importance of commercials in televised sports, added: “If this is required by TV sponsors, understood; if not, limit the number of changes per inning and watch the game speed up.” Asked about the number of pitchers who seem to fall apart these days, Kitt cited the high salaries since free agency. Players don’t have to take off-season jobs as they did back in the 60’s and can work out virtually all year. Do their bodies ever really rest? However, no sport grinds its players down more greedily than soccer. We saw Champions League-level players trudge into the World Cup in early June and many of them were still slogging into July. A few weeks after the final, my favorite-named player, Bastian Schweinsteiger of Germany, flew across the world for a meaningless friendly and was creamed by a red-hot player from Major League Soccer. Now he’s out six weeks. Soccer, under the see-no-evil “leadership” of Sepp Blatter, does not care. On Monday, Neymar of Brazil, last seen writhing on the grass with a broken back on July 4, was running around Camp Nou on Barcelona, along with his new playmate, Luis Suarez, he of the health-hazard choppers. I know Suarez is suspended from some league and national matches, but shouldn’t he be banned from going out in public until he is trained? On Tuesday, some of the lads were playing in an early round of the Champions League. But at least soccer league matches are over in two hours, whereas baseball could be dawdling toward irrelevancy. We were driving through upstate New York and I saw a sign for Oriskany Falls.
Right away, I flashed to a ball park in Brooklyn on the last day of the 1954 season, the Dodgers and Pirates playing out the string. Before Sandy Koufax became Sandy Koufax, before Clayton Kershaw was invented, there was Karl Spooner. I was there, one of 9,344 fans. A lefty from the minors, who had shut out the hated Giants on Thursday, came back and shut out the Pirates on Sunday. Eighteen innings in his first two games. Seven hits. Twenty-seven strikeouts. No runs. One of the best two-game debuts in major-league history. As my friend and I took three subway lines back to Queens that day, we envisioned the career ahead for Karl Spooner. As Brooklyn Dodger fans always said, wait til next year. Next year arrived, and Spooner had an 8-6 record, and the Dodgers finally won a World Series. But he had already blown out his shoulder in spring training of 1955, and never again pitched in the majors. Nowadays, there might be an operation for it, but by 1958, he was retired and living in Vero Beach, Fla., the training base of the team that had just deserted us. He died in 1984 at the age of 52. I ascertained via the Internet that a ball field is named for Spooner in Oriskany Falls, so my brother and I made a detour and asked a nice man at the filling station for directions. “I saw him pitch in 1954,” I said. I asked whether people in town still remembered Karl Spooner, and he said a few. I did not ask for their names or numbers; I had my own memories. We found the field down the hill. This being America in 2014, nobody was on the ball field – no league game, no kids playing choose-up, no game of catch. There was a modest sign, painted in Dodger blue, and on the other side facing the field is a resumé of Spooner’s career, from childhood to Ebbets Field. The records were compiled by Dr. Rich Cohen. “My friend, my doctor,” said my kid brother Christopher Vecsey, a professor at Colgate University. They umpire Little League games together, and every spring they gambol in a game of town ball, the ancestor of modern baseball. Dr. Cohen has also written a lovely biography of Spooner for SABR: http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/b6f00e89 My brother said he might take his grown son, who still pitches in an adult league, to this field. He can imagine his son taking aim at the short porch in right field. I strolled out to the mound and approximated a left-handed delivery, in homage to the man I saw pitch in 1954. I stick with things a long time – ratty t-shirts, tattered sneakers, faded easy chairs.
For the same reason, I am glad the Mets did not break up this juggernaut at the trading deadline. Is this a personality defect, this disinterest in change? Probably. Go tell it to my clamshell cell phone. But some things work just well enough; you get used to them. I just got an e-mail from a senior-citizen hardball player in the city who says he has stopped being a Yankee fan because of the way they dumped Brian Roberts, essentially an Oriole, to make room for new infielders. Reminder: guys got dropped to make room for Johnny Mize and Johnny Sain and Enos Slaughter and Pedro Ramos over the years. Pistol Pete helped salvage the 1964 pennant, although he arrived too late to be eligible for the World Series. As somebody who follows most Mets games, I’m glad they did not scuttle Bartolo Colon. I got used to his constant half smile (is he happy? is it gas?) and his Iron Mike steadiness. I know he’s a one-year wonder at 42, but move him in the off season. I’m glad they didn’t trade Daniel Murphy because he hustles, old-school, even though he makes fans nervous every time he bends for a simple grounder. Generally, I hate the trading deadline in the era of free agency. I hated it when the Mets sold David Cone in one of those weasel waiver deals in late August of 1992. I hated it last season when the Mets unloaded Marlon Byrd. By mid-summer, you get used to a player who is doing his job. These mid-summer dumps happen when players’ contracts are running out, or getting too expensive. It’s the drawback to free agency, which the players earned, although the so-called reserve clause, servitude, contributed to that wonderful decade of my childhood – six pennants in 10 years for the Boys of Summer. That will never happen now. Duke Snider would have opted out. Or Big Newk. Or somebody. If players have the right to move around, clubs have the right to move them first, for some quick-fix advantage. I get it. Fans have a lust for trades; if they didn’t, there would be no sports-talk radio. But this Mets’ season is just comfortable enough, given our limited expectations in the hundred-year contamination period from Bernie Madoff. Sandy Alderson is building something – I don’t know what. They made a good move in keeping Duda. Who knew? They sent d’Arnaud to the attitude farm in Las Vegas, and brought him back fast. Who doesn’t love watching Famiglia and Mejia in the eighth and ninth? It’s been fun watching deGrom pitch – and swing – from his first game. So play it out in Queens, while the Lesters and Lackeys and Prices go flying around, office temps. Maybe Mets fans would feel differently if the Mets were a legitimate contender. Who has that kind of time? Let me first say that I get the creeps whenever I encounter the new journalism buzz-phrase “long-form journalism.”
Long-form -- rhymes with chloroform. Why not just say “long,” since that seems to be what is being advertised. To be effective, the writer needs to blend facts, details, descriptions, observations, quotes, opinions, in an interesting manner. That is, the writer needs to be able to write, and the editors need to be able to edit. That’s long enough, right there. However, some long pieces are glorious, worth reading slowly, carefully, from beginning to end. I just read three over the weekend. The Passion of Roger Angell. By Tom Verducci. Sports Illustrated, July 21, 2014. Roger Angell has graced the New Yorker and his own books for the past half century with his writing about baseball (along with other elegant pieces.) On July 26, Angell will be honored at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., with the annual J.G. Taylor Spink Award, the highest honor given by the Baseball Writers of America. (Angell has never held a BBWA card since the New Yorker does not cover baseball on a daily basis.) Tom Verducci, a Sports Illustrated writer and television commentator, has proven worthy of his subject, accompanying Angell to the cottages and docks and sailboats of his beloved Maine, and even to the cemetery, containing the headstones for Angell’s mother, Katharine Angell White, his step-father, E.B. White, his brother, Joe, his daughter, Callie, and Angell’s wife, Carol, whom he misses badly, and for Angell himself, the stone (1920-) lacking only a final date. To his immense credit, Verducci captures the bittersweet outlook of a man who is 93 and has much left to say about baseball, about life, about writing: “I used to have a terribly hard time starting, because when I wrote I didn’t do first drafts. I wrote the whole piece on typewriters and would x out and use Scotch tape. I think I began to realize that leads weren’t a big problem. You can start anywhere.” For many decades, the best baseball writing of the year would arrive in the mail at the end of spring training -- Roger Angell’s report on spring training, often from the baseball hangout, the Pink Pony in Scottsdale, Ariz., now defunct. The first Angell of spring was a sure sign we would outlive winter, real life was resuming. His pieces could have gone on forever, as far as this reader was concerned. Amazingly, long-form journalism had not yet been invented. Wrong Answer: In an era of high-stakes testing, a struggling school made a shocking choice. By Rachel Aviv. The New Yorker. July 21, 2014. Speaking of trends, the current infatuation with testing scores led the Atlanta school system to encourage cheating. Rachel Aviv followed one idealistic educator, feeling forced to abandon actual teaching and caring for the young, down the path to Watergate-style chicanery. Great reporting provides a guide to this tragedy. The Trials of Graham Spanier, Penn State’s Ousted President. By Michael Sokolove. The New York Times Magazine. July 20, 2014. The former president of Penn State allowed a seasoned magazine writer to visit him in the wreckage of the child-abuse case involving Jerry Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator with the football team. The article says Spanier was brutalized by his own father; I never knew that. Now Spanier faces legal charges that he failed to investigate the possibility that Sandusky was sexually abusing young boys within the football “program.” There is no doubt Spanier and Joe Paterno were clueless in coping with developing hints and charges about Sandusky. (I listened in on a Paterno press conference in 2008; in retrospect, this was not the same man I had followed for decades, but Spanier could not get him to retire.) Sokolove makes the case that the institution of Penn State was willing to chuck Spanier and Paterno into history and pay $60-million to the loan-shark-minded N.C.A.A. for the privilege of being able to make more money as a football “program.” Note: I just discovered a piece by James Bennet in the Atlantic last December, decrying the spawn of longform-journalism. It’s really good. And not that long. With no soccer match Friday, I was at loose ends, as you can imagine. Turned on the tube and re-discovered another sport.
Guy with a bushy head of hair sticking out from under his ball cap, pitching furiously, getting himself out of jams in two innings of relief. High drama. No biting. No flopping. No unseen stopwatch in the umpire’s hand. Timeless, to say the least. Baseball. Soccer. The yin and the yang. The other night I was pushing my book (did I mention my soccer book?) at the Midtown Scholar, a major used-book emporium and café in funky downtown Harrisburg, Pa. Somebody asked the question, do I see soccer supplanting baseball in the hearts and minds of America? I looked in the front row and saw a father and son, with St. Louis roots, carrying my Stan Musial book. We had chatted before the talk. My answer was no, that baseball had a hold in the cities of America, where memories of Ty Cobb and Josh Gibson and Roberto Clemente still live. Americans know and feel those old rivalries – Yankees and Cardinals, Dodgers and Giants – the way traditional soccer nations honor the derby – Real-Atlético, Tottenham-Arsenal, AC Milan-Inter. Soccer continues to boom in the U.S. Look at the huge crowds watching the World Cup, immeasurable by single-set gauges. Look at the rivalries and rising caliber of Major League Soccer. Look at the weekend audience for great soccer on the cable. There are now five major team sports in the U.S.A. And I don’t think soccer is fifth, either. But supplant baseball? Not when a young pitcher like Jenrry Mejia, with great energy and great stuff, can get himself into trouble and get himself out in two straight innings, on the road, in grand old Pittsburgh, near the confluence of the rivers. The Mets lost an inning later. Of course. Nice to see nothing has changed while I've been watching the World Cup. The message popped up in my queue. Fifty years. Bill Wakefield lives near his alma mater, Stanford, and is well aware that Saturday is the 50th anniversary of the epic 23-inning nightcap he started for the Mets. Some of us are lucky enough to remember the game. I woke up that morning in Kansas City, covered the Yankees’ game, 46-minute rain delay and all, flew back to LaGuardia on the Yankees’ charter, saw the game still going on in Shea, was met by my wife, and we watched the last 9-10 innings at my family’s home in Queens. You couldn’t not watch. The box score (below) says Wakefield started the second game (he was quite a good reliever most of that season, his only in the majors) and lasted two innings. Craig Anderson then came in and gave up four runs. I’m going to send him an e-mail and ask his memories of the day. Wakefield has told me that as the game went on (and on, and on) Casey Stengel tried to send him into the game. Since Wake had already pitched, that would not have been a good idea. So he dressed and went into the stands. Some players had even shorter games. Ken McKenzie, an original Met, faced one batter in the seventh, gave up a hit, and was yanked by Alvin Dark. Duke Snider, ex-Dodger, ex-Met, pinch-hit and had to sit around for hours. Willie McCovey pinch-hit, and sat. Galen Cisco pitched a complete game, 9 innings, for the Mets and lost, finally. Gaylord Perry pitched 10 innings and was the winning pitcher. The box score is wonderful. Back in the day, pitchers were pitchers, men were men, nobody had heard of Tommy John and his elbow. I love the names – Jesse Gonder, Joe Christopher (he’s around somewhere), oldies like Tom Sturdivant and Frank Lary, and Wakefield’s good pal, the late Hot Rod Kanehl. Oh, and check out who played shortstop for the Giants for a while during that game. ADDENDUM ON SATURDAY: Just to warm up for the anniversary, the Mets played 14 on Friday night (and lost, but you already know that, after a muffed fly ball.) THIS JUST IN FROM CRAIG ANDERSON, ORIGINAL MET: "Yes , how well I remember that memorable day although not the type of memories i will cherish. I am glad to be in a record-making doubleheader and I even saw my name in Cooperstown when this box score was displayed up there. I had pitched pretty well since being called up on May 1st but after this outing I was sent to Buffalo, thus my last day in the big leagues. Never to be called up again or invited to spring training. "My only out was a ground ball fielder's choice hit by Willie Mays. I sat in the stands for about 8 hours and can't say it was enjoyable to me." * * * Your memories and reactions are welcome in the Comments (below) Meanwhile, the great Ed Lucas tells his memories: http://www.nj.com/jjournal-news/index.ssf/2014/05/lucas_50_years_later_mets-gian.html Nice web site with other people’s memories: http://www.ultimatemets.com/gamedetail.php?gameno=369&tabno=B Yankee game. http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B05310KC11964.htm First game. Normal 9 innings. Normal Met loss. http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B05311NYN1964.htm Second game. Not normal. 23 innings. Normal Met loss. http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B05312NYN1964.htm When Michael Piñeda of the Yankees was caught with pine tar on the back of his neck the other day, my thoughts flashed back to a high-school football game I covered, oh, a few years ago.
In bright sunshine, with witnesses in the stands, a defender put the slug on an opponent – on the 50-yard line. The referee tossed him. After the game, the crusty old coach told the wave of reporters (that is to say, me), “Geez, I told the guy, don’t do stuff like that in the middle of the field.” The operative phrase was, “in the middle of the field.” Whack the guy in the bottom of the pile. Knee him. Gouge him. But, geez, not in full view. They all know. That’s my theory about sports. Coaches have a pretty good idea what their players are up to but cannot afford to “know.” During the great steroid frolics, owners and general managers did everything but administer the injections. (Looking back, I heard one owner make creatine jokes before I knew what he was talking about, and one terrific player talk about a “major-league coffee” before a game.) Some of the best people I have known in baseball relied on little tricks of the trade. Rick Honeycutt used a tack in his glove to cut the baseballs, alter their aerodynamics. Got caught by the home-plate umpire, Bill Kunkel, himself a former pitcher. Geez, not in the middle of the field. http://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/25/sports/sports-of-the-times-rich-honeycutt-is-sharp-again.html Rick is a great guy, now in his ninth year as the Dodgers’ pitching coach. I once saw Elston Howard set a world record for a lumbering catcher in full gear sprinting from home plate to the dugout tunnel after catching one hellacious curve from Whitey Ford for the last strike against the Tigers. Elston took the ball with him, I might add, and was on the George Washington Bridge heading home to the beautiful Arlene Howard before the Tigers could scream for the ball – and Elston’s belt buckle, which was filed to nearly lethal sharpness. And so it goes. Briana Scurry moved forward from the line to smother a penalty kick during the shootout for the final of the 1999 Women’s World Cup. The referee did not notice, or chose not to notice, Scurry’s dancing feet. The U.S. beat China a minute later. Donna Lopiano, then of the Women’s Sports Foundation, and one of the strong, ethical voices in sport, called Scurry’s move cheating. I called it gamesmanship and wrote a whole column about it: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/08/sports/backtalk-when-is-it-gamesmanship-and-when-is-it-cheating.html Everybody in baseball knows what pitchers do, as Tyler Kepner writes in the Friday Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/sports/baseball/missing-on-mound-a-dab-of-discretion.html Piñeda deserved the 10-game suspension not so much for cheating but for a worse violation. Tontería. Stupidity. Geez, not in public. Your thoughts? Last Friday Sandy Koufax was chatting with fans at the Dodgers' spring base in Glendale, Ariz.
This photo was taken by Abe Schear, the Atlanta attorney who has been interviewing baseball people for years. Later, Koufax was hit in the head by a line drive off the bat of Andre Ethier. He was conscious, with some blood on the side of his head, as he sat on a cart while being taken for treatment in the clubhouse. Koufax, who serves as an adviser and occasional tutor to young Dodger pitchers, assured reporters and players that he was fine. The story: http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/mlb/story/_/id/10496606/sandy-koufax-hit-head-foul-los-angeles-dodgers-spring-training In another Brooklyn angle, MLB has come up with a video from spring training of 1945. Because of wartime travel restrictions, the Brooklyn Dodgers were training at Bear Mountain, above the Hudson River, north of New York City. The video was sent to me by the former Mets pitcher, Bill Wakefield: http://wapc.mlb.com/cutfour/2014/02/20/68015582/brooklyn-dodgers-spring-training-69-years-ago Leo (The Lip) Durocher, the manager, candidly says in that brassy voice of his that the Dodgers can’t get much worse, since they finished seventh the year before. Leo always did have opinions. He fusses at his wartime players, perhaps knowing that the Dodgers have stockpiled players named Hodges and Snider when the players come back from war. Spotted briefly on the scruffy looking diamond are Dixie Walker (wearing No. 14 instead of No. 11) and Tommy Brown, (No. 9), all of 17 years old. Also on the roster is Ben Chapman, the old Yankee outfielder, who was hanging on – as a pitcher. Chapman would pitch 10 games for the Dodgers that year. In 1947, he would become infamous as the Phillies’ manager, for racial heckling of Jackie Robinson. I never knew, until now, that Chapman had passed through the Dodgers toward the end of the war. In 1947, when Chapman was not directing vile words from the dugout, Chapman and Robinson posed for a photo. My friend the photographer, John McDermott, wonders if we should even look at a photo of Chapman. I mainly stuck it on here because I was intrigued upon learning Chapman pitched for the Dodgers in 1945. John has a point., The first baseball sighting was on the tube the other night. The Yankee network YES had the brilliant idea of showing a game last summer with Masahiro Tanaka facing the Tokyo Giants.
American broadcasters, aware of Japanese subtleties, were calling the game, pitch-by-pitch. In real time, Tanaka was chartering a jet to get to New York. My reaction to watching him pitch in the Tokyo Dome -- against those classic orange-and-black-trimmed Giants uniforms -- was that Tanaka was poised, and had a variety of pitches, but not a lot of power. Will he be able to find the extra 5 mph he will need in MLB? Not evident from the few innings I saw. That's the Yankees' problem. More important, I saw baseball being committed. Saw a dandy over-the-shoulder basket catch by a second baseman. And I saw a Giants pitcher wince when he did not get a third strike call from the umpire. Sure enough, he fell apart, started to groove the ball, and gave up four runs. Baseball in mid-season form, with all its human imperfections. I did have one flashback. Playing for Rakuten was Kazuo Matsui, now 38 -- the other Matsui, as he is known in Queens. He is still the only major-league player to lead off three straight seasons with a home run, but Mets fans celebrated when he went to Colorado early in 2006. The Yankees kept their Matsui, much longer. Now the Yankees have Tanaka and the Mets have Matsuzaka. Meantime, my high-school pal Thor Larsen visited Scottsdale the other day and took a photo of the stadium, just waiting for pitchers and catchers. Stay warm. This Met fan I know, up north, thought he was ready for pitchers and catchers and all the rest of it.
Then, even while slipping and sliding on the ice, he began to think about the alleged warming powers of spring training. That implies preparation for another season. He can’t remember the last time the Mets had hope. His two favorite players last season were Marlon Byrd and LaTroy Hawkins, grownups, gamers. The Mets didn’t keep them. Instead, in the Age of Madoff, the Mets have signed Kyle Farnsworth and Daisuke Matsuzaka and they are bringing back Duda and Tejada. My man would like to be warmed by the prospect of another season. But now he’s not sure. Should he actually obsess about a 2014 season? A good actor always knows his cues. The last loads of Super Bowl schleppers were being hauled back to civilization when Derek Jeter entered, stage right.
Jeter took batting practice on the field in Tampa Monday and said he was fine. Of course, he says that when he has broken bones. Funny thing. I was thinking of Jeter last Thursday while watching the current London production of Coriolanus, in our favorite movie house in Kew Gardens, Queens. It seemed to me that the star, Tom Hiddleston, resembled the Yankee captain: A star. A distant star. But a star, nonetheless. Probably not a good recommendation for the production, if your mind wanders like that. Hiddleston is popular with young audiences. (The Queens audience skewed decades younger than usual for the mid-week production, live from the UK.) We saw Ian McKellan play Coriolanus at the National Theatre in 1984, for goodness' sakes. McKellan was 45, an aging and properly arrogant soldier-survivor. Hiddleston looks like a star shortstop. With my mind wandering from this pop version of Shakespeare, I found myself hoping Jeter has one more good year left in him. This is no fun, even for somebody emphatically not a Yankee fan, to watch the wheels fall off one of the signature players of our time. Jeter has started the rallies, clapping his hands as he reached second base, standing up, staring back at the dugout, as if saying, “Next!” He retrieved a wayward baseball and retired a knucklehead who did not bother to slide. (One of my favorite columns:) http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/26/sports/sports-of-the-times-slide-jeremy-slide-slide.html Jeter has also played an extremely dependable shortstop. He is the Yankee captain. He doesn’t give much of himself away, but he represents the team. Coriolanus would respect him. Is it too much to ask that Derek Jeter be healthy and productive for one more season, clapping his hands at second base and retiring knuckleheads? Plus, he knows his theatre. Football exits, stage left. The captain walks out on the field. I have consulted with noted Talmudic and Jesuit scholars and am assured it is all right to watch the Super Bowl as long as one thinks pure thoughts of spring.
Say to yourself: “I am watching it for the ads.” “I am watching it for Renee Fleming.” “I want to join the water-cooler conversation on Monday.” “The TV just went on by itself.” It looks as if the blizzard I predicted for this week hit the South instead. Oops. New York is unscathed. Gov. Christie hasn’t shut down any bridges or tunnels, so far. And six of us were on the East Side of Manhattan the other night, had a lovely meal at Teodora on E. 57 St. – and there was not a trace of Super Bowl in that part of Big Town. Not one button or chant. Just repeat: Pitchers and Catchers. Pitchers and Catchers. One fine day in Florida in 1962, Casey Stengel lined up five prospective starters. Sometimes when he released a player, he said he had to do it because the Mets expected to be contenders.
At one point the Mets were 12-19. Then they lost 17 straight. These five pitchers were professionals, good people, a pleasure to be around. Roger Craig was the ace with a 10-24 record. Jay Hook was 8-19. Robert L. Miller was 1-12. (The Mets later acquired a left-hander named Robert G. Miller. Casey solved it by calling the righty “Nelson.”) Craig Anderson won both ends of a doubleheader in May. His record was 3-1. He finished with a 3-17 record that year, and lost three more decisions over the next two years. This is what I wrote about Anderson in 1993: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/13/sports/sports-of-the-times-horrid-mets-can-t-match-originals.html Alvin Jackson finished with an 8-20 record. He kept the ball low and Casey loved him. He was impossible to cover in autumn touch football games on Long Island. He still works for the Mets. The Mets finished with a 40-120 record. These hopeful faces invoke instant spring. (The Mets’ records for 1962) http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/NYM/1962.shtml This photo refers backward to John McDermott's comment in my Eusebio posting from last week. We have our memories in North American sports -- Jim Brown trudging back to the huddle, Tom Gola doing it all for LaSalle, the Rocket bearing down on the net. But these days I am concentrating on the warm sport to get me through to spring training.
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