Reviews

Mets Fans Should Know: Never, Ever, Look Ahead

9/21/2015

How to watch the last two weeks of the Mets' season

It was only a few days ago that I was indulging in texting foolishness with another fan who shall remain nameless.

It was during a Mets game – a Mets victory; remember them? – and we were as giddy (and mindless) as a couple of Wall Street tv yakkers during a market mood swing.

Who would make the post-season roster? That was our preoccupation. With every stupid little bounce of the ball, we would make our snap judgments.

Is the slumping Duda healthy enough for the post-season?
Can they afford a space for Young as a pinch-runner?
You gotta have places for Colon and Niese because of the pitch counts for the Youth of America.

What a luxury, to be speculating on the final utility spot, the last seat in the bullpen.

We forgot half a century of more misery than joy.

In the two losses to the Yankees, the Mets seemed to be carrying the curse of the pitch count, their young pitching stars facing limits, like some exotic breed of butterfly.

It is hard to argue against medicine, which knows how to put pitching arms back together. The Mets’ management – even Matt Harvey’s manipulative agent Scott Boras – did not invent pitch counts for rebuilt patients.

The pitch count is here to stay. No sense in harboring nostalgia for bygone days, when wily pitchers could outsmart bitty little popgun hitters. Nowadays pitchers are mostly brutes, some of them bionic, trying to blow the ball past other brutes with bats in their hands.

Somehow the Mets have accumulated a rotation packed with fragile pitching machines. It is not just about the obvious self-interest of Harvey, the Dark Knight, indeed. He’s got reputable doctors telling him to back off at some point. The Mets’ front office did not invent this.

The least Mets’ fans can do is stop speculating on post-season rosters. Remember the last terrible days of 2007 and 2008.

Who’s the long man in the post-season? Who could get lefties out in October? Banish these thoughts and grab the worry beads. These are, after all, the Mets.

Biig Al

9/21/2015 10:03:29 am

The Met fans looked despondent and defeated, like they did on the Luis Sojo 9-hopper in 2000. Can anyone play a little D in Flushing?

George Vecsey

9/21/2015 11:31:47 am

Al, stop it. And don't remind me about Yogi and Newk again, either.
Their defense is a little dodgy -- particularly when Murphy improvises. You should hear Keith give seminars on Duda at 1B. Stop with the Sojo. That was 15 years ago. GV

Josh Rubin

9/21/2015 12:21:41 pm

You guys are both scaring me. I'm just going to crawl up on the couch, invoke all my superstitions, and say nothing (other than to keep fretting about pitching, and now hitting and fielding).

I do think it is unfair, though, for fans/media etc to gang up on Matt Harvey. His agent screwed up by making this public and he's caught in the middle. He wants to compete and he doesn't want to lose another year and a half. So of course he is going to say inconsistent things. he's a ballplayer, not a PR agent. With the circus swirling around him, I am impressed with his performance yesterday.

George Vecsey

9/21/2015 03:13:05 pm

Josh: I was impressed, too. My fellow Met fan and I had decided this was Harvey's biggest start as a Met. He was terrific. Did it affect his pitching to know he had only five innings? I doubt it. As for my friend Big Al, he likes to do things like, in the middle of winter, dash off an e-mail that asks, "Seriously, how good was Yoggelah, anyway?" Met-Yankee rivalry has never reached the level of Dodger-Yankee or even Dodger-Giant. The man says "Kuzava" and I quiver. GV

Brian Savin

9/21/2015 07:52:08 pm

Catharsis!
Thanks, Euripides

Alan Rubin link

9/22/2015 11:19:02 am

Please keep things in perspective. The Mets are 6.5 games out front with 12 games left. They would clinch with 7 wins, even if the Nationals won all 13 remaining games.

All this anguish from fans who never expected the Mets to be a serious threat.

If they clinch early, many can get much needed rests.

The post season resets things and will probably provide ample opportunity for new anguish and concern.

Also, it is better than being a Giant's fan. The should lobby for a rule to shorten the fourth quarter.

I'm content seeing the NE Revolution and the NY Red Bulls fighting for first in the MLS East. Although I now live in western MA, which is different world from the Boston area and mentality, I'm still an old MetroStars fan at heart.

Josh Rubin

9/22/2015 12:56:41 pm

Not to start a spat with my dad -- who I love dearly, of course -- but if he'd wanted me to follow his footsteps as a sanguine Yankee fan and inherit (and endure) a less fraught history, he should not have taken me to a twi-night Mets sweep in the heat of the 1969 pennant race as my introduction to the game. I'm stuck with the Mets in my psyche now, and both history and my own nature tell me it is too soon to relax and look ahead..

Alan Rubin link

9/22/2015 01:07:21 pm

Josh

There is no spat. Not only was it a great double header, each game was about two hours.

It is always a parents desire to have their children enjoy a better life. Creating a Mets, rather than a Yankee fan, is only of my better moves.

George Vecsey

9/22/2015 02:22:39 pm

An act of pure selflessness. We all want our kids to be better off than we are, and Alan you have accomplished that. Mazel Tov.GV

PS: they played three home DHs that September -- swept two, lost one.

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1969/VNYN01969.htm

Our son David was born very early on the day the Mets clinched the division, Sept. 24, 1969. Later I wrote that the Mets had been winners all his life. He has learned to suffer since, including every time Murphy interacts with a batted ball.

Ed Martin

9/22/2015 02:40:52 pm

What kind of poetry is Jonathon Niese pitching a shutout over 6, with the perfect relief help? If the Met's weren't hurting after the last week's results ending with being trounced by the Yankees, I'll be a monkey's uncle--to coin a phrase. Here comes Jonathon, under-appreciated sixth man and he comes up with a huge game, reversing the psychological direction, (I hope.) Meanwhile, I can't make fun of Murph, he has too many big hits. Besides I remember Pirate first baseman, Dick Stuart, who was known as "Clang" for the sound the ball made when it hit his glove. GO METS!

Hansen Alexander

9/23/2015 12:40:46 pm

George, my man. Enjoy the game. It's baseball. It's fun. The Mets are walking away with their division and into the playoffs. It's fall. The air is cool, the sun bright. If you need perspective, read some "Leaves of Grass," and enjoy and celebrate the young baseball workers and their muscles. Oh, yes, did I plead for you to enjoy yourself? Yes, I did.

George Vecsey

9/23/2015 01:13:59 pm

Hansen, thanks. I've unleashed my inner fan -- plus I think I am seeing the game better than I ever did, because of the Mets' broadcasters. I call pitches now, before the umpires. I was always being neutral, thinking of angles, doing six things at once. Sixth Game, 1986, I was all into the Red Sox' finally winning. Amazing denouement, in man-bites-dog category, but I was fine. I am reading a book, the latest by Simon Winchester, on explorers on the NA continent. GV

bruce picken

9/23/2015 02:44:36 pm

george,

thanks for the '66 box score.

very unkoufax like box score. two Ks and six hits in six innings.

it's too bad he had to end his career with a game like that.

i remember the davis jokes....he was regarded as the fastest runner in baseball at that time, wasn't he?

he tried to commit suicide after the game and jumped in front of a train, but it went through his legs.

the ball definitely hit his glove. i heard it clang.

it was a different world re expectations of employers and employees.

bruce

Bruce, true, it was a 1 PM game, bright sun (Oct often the hottest month in LA) ....It was last game for Koufax. I had a photo of US VP Humphrey talking to Koufax at his locker after game in Balt,. I was standing, eavesdropping, got in the picture. Now I cant find it.

Players did not take time off. Neither did reporters. I went to Detroit for two football games when our son was born (my wife stayed in the hosp. an extra day...but still)

GV

Brian Savin

9/23/2015 08:18:09 pm

Rest in peace, Yogi. The first game I ever attended in my life, sitting in the Ballantine Field Box, Yogi hit a home run and the Yanks beat Detroit, 6-4. I grew up (well, from age 10) near his golf course, Baltusrol. Whitey played with him a lot. So did Mickey. The Mets are more interesting these days, but those Yanks were always special.

George Vecsey

9/24/2015 07:52:21 am

Brian, thanks, I have a Yogi/Whitey/Yankee column up on the NYT site...it will be in the Friday paper, I am told. The link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/25/sports/baseball/whitey-ford-a-six-time-champion-can-add-a-title-greatest-living-yankee.html?ref=sports&_r=0&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&gwh=23CA4A85C03AB4DB0A76E77ABC743A65&gwt=pay

Brian Savin

9/24/2015 08:25:03 am

Wow, George, great article I'll be thinking about all day and then some. The Chairman and the Yankee Rat Pack. The Chairman would have to double as Lawford, too, as no one else could pass in the class department. Yogi was a better Joey Bishop. Mickey lived the way Dean Martin pretended. Sammy could only dream about being Elston, but was once a decent "Golden Boy" on stage. When Yogi next calls Whitey, and asks him his famous, "Are ya dead yet?" I'd like to think Whitey will smile for all eternity.

Thanks for the memories.

Comments are closed.