Mets Mood Swings – With No Swing At All

Conforto gear for next game. Via Offspring 1

The daily rollercoaster of emotions continues for the Amazing Mets.  
The Mets won a game Thursday when Michael Conforto’s arm happened to be extended into the strike zone, with the bases loaded, just in the right place to get pinged – for a game-winning run.
Some people who know the game very well – including a relative of mine -- think it was a bush stunt by Conforto – cheating, in fact.

I'm not condoning cheating -- like the Astros a few years ago, or doctoring the balls, or the bats. But I do accept "gamesmanship" -- a soccer goalie "cheating" off the line for a penalty kick, or a batter taking his chances with letting a pitch hit him. 

I learned the game from 1962 on, in the company of Casey Stengel, as he managed The Worst Team in the History of Baseball.
Casey's first young star with the Mets was Ron Hunt, tough country boy and master of getting hit by pitches.
Casey knew the odds were stacked against the Mets. He said the umpires “screw us because we are lousy,” only he said it more graphically.
So his Mets had to do something. He had a club rule – anybody who got hit by a pitch with the bases loaded would make $50.
On May 12, 1963, Rod Kanehl, scrappy itinerant, took one for the team – and for his wallet – by managing to get hit by the Reds, scoring (NB: delightful Mets names about to appear) Tim Harkness, with Jim Hickman moving to third and Choo Choo Coleman moving to second. It is said that Rod virtually skipped on his way to first, laughing at the manna from heaven, or Casey, either way.

How much would $50 be today? Kanehl’s protégé in 1964 was Bill Wakefield, rookie pitcher. Being a Stanford guy, Wakefield crunched the numbers the other day and figured the windfall for his late pal would be worth between $600-750 today. “We were all making $7K - $10K a year,” Wakefield wrote. 
Plus, the Mets went on to win the game, no small achievement then, or ever.

Casey’s belief that you gotta do something was not lost on Ron Hunt, who used to wear floppy flannel jerseys a size or two big, so they would hang out and absorb a pitch. Hunt even dared the fates by getting hit by Bob Gibson, the surliest pitcher in the universe, and proud of it. Hunt went on to set a modern record by getting hit 50 times in 1971 (for Montreal.)

Being around scrappers like Hunt and Kanehl and enablers like The Old Man, I still think it is part of the game to bend the rules until the umps wise up. One ump who may have wised up by now is Ron Kulpa, who ruled Conforto was legitimately hit, and the game was over, but later admitted Conforto had his arm in the strike zone and should have been called out. (Every sportswriter in American promptly dubbed him Mea Kulpa, obviously.)
Having been around tough birds like Casey, Hunt, Kanehl and Gibson, I have some advice for the admirable Michael Conforto: in the next two games against Miami, you just might want to hang loose.
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PS: Talk about mood swings:  the Mets were down, 2-1, going into the bottom of the ninth. Howe Rose, on Mets radio, said he knows the mindset of Jeff McNeil, intense second baseman (when management leaves him alone) who was hitless in his first 10 at-bats this season. Take it from an old-timer, McNeil has some Rod Kanehl and Ron Hunt in him.  Howie Rose said McNeil would try to pull a home run -- which he did, tying the game, prompting a celebratory bat flip, seen as bad form by opponents these days, Soon came Conforto's bases-loaded heroics. If I were McNeil, I also might want to hang loose in the next two games.
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Rod Kanehl’s $50 plunking in 1963:
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1963/B05122NYN1963.htm
 
Lovely profile of Ron Hunt: 
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-year-ron-hunt-got-hit-by-50-pitches/ 

Casey Stengel on Ron Hunt: "Whaddaya want him to do, tiptoe up to home plate and get tagged out?"