Mets Fan Nostalgic for Daniel Murphy

6/22/2015

Never Appreciated Him in the Field Until Now

This season is seriously dragging. The lost weekend in Atlanta did nothing except make me long for the return of Daniel Murphy – on defense.

The quickness, the agility, the intuition, the hands, the smarts.

Plus, he hits.

Murphy is due back from injury soon, the Mets say, and David Wright, who knows, but the parade of infield horrors in Atlanta only served to blot out some of the rallies and pitching of nearly half the season.

So much suffering for so many fans. Bad teams. Mediocre teams. Day after day.

Maybe it’s a sign of bad spring weather, or too much time on my hands, but I have been enjoying the Mets for nearly two months, pretty much ignoring the Yankees and all the other baseball on the other channels. Just the daily soap opera of one team.

But now it is getting very old. Eric Campbell watched a runner score before throwing to first. He looked the runner home! Dilson Herrera and Wilmer Flores failed to cover second on a steal. And Ruben Tejada regressed again.

In case you missed it, here were the absolute highlights of the past weekend, as emphasized by the Mets’ broadcasters, and who can blame them.

Friday: After the ominous sight of Jeurys Familia clutching his hamstring, the Mets said it was only muscle soreness.

Saturday: After the contact at home plate, Travis d’Arnaud’s elbow was not shattered, merely hyperextended.

Sunday: In the fifth inning, Wilmer Flores hit a single. This meant the Mets would not be no-hit again.

This was the good news. Monday’s good news is that the Mets are off. I can watch the United States in the Women’s World Cup in peace.

Maybe Daniel Murphy, now known as Leather, will be back soon. At least he is intense.

Brian Savin

6/23/2015 12:37:07 pm

They ain't dead yet. In fact, they're still captivating....on the field. All the rest we hear is "commentary."

George Vecsey

6/24/2015 06:33:04 am

Brian, it got worse Monday night. Tejada matched Campbell for sleepwalking off third. This ailment is catching. GV

Ed Martin

6/24/2015 07:00:34 am

Hope Solo for second base? (After WC).

George Vecsey

6/24/2015 02:14:27 pm

She would hang in there on double plays. Like to see her be the attitude coach for those infielders. GV

Josh

6/24/2015 09:01:32 am

The problem is that we were spoiled by the fast start. But if on opening day you told me we'd be at 500 and not far off the hunt for the division title without Wheeler, Wright,or D'Arnaud, with a decimated bullpen and without Murphy for a bunch of games I would have said you're dreaming. St. Louis had a season like this a few years back where a bunch of key players were out for long stretches and came back in August-Sept and the team had quite a run. So here's hoping.

George Vecsey

6/24/2015 11:34:12 am

Josh, fair enough. Fact is, these Mets have given me a very enjoyable spring -- lot of rallies and good playing. But now they are alternating four infielders who make pitchers earn 30-32 outs a game.
Given the Nationals' problems, the Mets could be "contenders" for a while. Good point. GV

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Mets Fan Nostalgic for Daniel Murphy

Categories

Buy the Book