Wait, What About Mets Fans? We Have to Live, Too

12/16/2017

Terry Collins, bless his heart, doesn't have to do this anymore.

I am ecstatic for Yankee fans, really. Happy they have Giancarlo Stanton to go along with Aaron Judge. More homers in the Bronx. The natural order.

Mostly, I am happy for good friends like Big Al, like Marty, who share their Yankee highs and Yankee lows with me.

Now I read that the Yankees have signed the aging warrior C.C. Sabathia for $10-million for another season. How nice to have owners who spend money like that.

But: it’s that time of year – the holidays, good will to all.
I must admit, I am feeling the opposite emotion of the holidays –deprivation, not getting enough toys.

As a Met fan, cooped up indoors at this time of year, I remember how Mets games helped get me through last season, trying to avoid unpleasant subjects I will not mention.

I rooted for Curtis Granderson and Jay Bruce and Neal Walker and the best defensive catcher on the team, René Rivera, and Addison Reed, with his cap cockily tilted sideways after a successful inning. Then they all got shipped out.

The Mets have a new manager I never heard of.
They just signed a long reliever I never heard of.
Underwhelming.

Now I find myself playing a mental game:

Name one position in the Mets lineup, offense or defense, that is really secure.

C: Travis d’Arnaud tries hard. Kevin Plawecki is big. The Mets are bringing Jose Lobatón into camp, as a non-roster catcher. Adds up to – what?
1B: Dominic Smith showed some power but other times looked like the second coming of Mo Vaughn.
2B: Nobody has mentioned Weeping Wilmer Flores, who is what we Brooklyn fans used to call “The Peepul’s Cherce.”
3B: Asdrubal Cabrera aged five years last year. Jose Reyes is unsigned.
SS: Amed Rosario showed youth and flash. But Ron Darling or Keith Hernandez were often saying (but nicely): “Oooh, he shouldn’t have done that.”
LF: Yoenis Cespedes was dragging in the first television spring exhibition. He kept breaking down. I suspect that football physio from Michigan only made Céspedes worse. Maybe terminally.

Ray Ramirez, not his fault, had to escort Cespedes all too often

CF: Juan Lagares is altering his swing for more power. Three years ago he looked like Curt Flood. What went wrong?
RF: Michael Conforto was having a streaky year. Then he got hurt.
Pitching: Jacob deGrom. The best we have. Thor better stop lifting those freaking weights, or maybe it’s too late. The Dark Knight needs to leave Gotham City.

None of this is any consolation at the onset of bleak winter.

I cannot imagine watching this team, even as distraction from unpleasant subjects I will not mention.

I am happy for pals like Big Al, like Marty. Very happy.

But I am just asking: in the grand tradition of my home town, with all those gift packages heading to Yankee Stadium, would it be so terrible if something happened to, um, fall off the truck?

bruce

12/17/2017 12:37:19 am

george,

isn't there a saying that starts something like,,,,,the rich get richer and....

bruce

George Vecsey

12/17/2017 01:11:44 pm

"God Bless The Child"

Yes, the strong gets more
While the weak ones fade
Empty pockets don't ever make the grade
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own

---Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr. 1941

Ahron Horowitz

12/17/2017 01:08:18 pm

george-very depressing to read this in the middle of chanukah.regards

George Vecsey

12/17/2017 01:16:50 pm

Hey, Ahron:
Nice to hear from you.
I want to know who will replenish the Mets?
Not happening, as I see it now.

Had a good lunch with your talented son the other day. Best to the family. Be well George

Rick Taylor

12/17/2017 03:04:11 pm

George, if you want to weep, read the Newsday column entitled Wilpons Need to Be More Transparent About Payroll, Offseason Moves. I'm afraid if something did fall off the truck the Mets wouldn't spend the money to ship it to Queens.

George Vecsey

12/17/2017 03:51:45 pm

Rick: Thank you. Beat-reporter Marc Carig chastises Wilpons for (a) not using the $50-million technology windfall from MLB. Then he chastises them for not discussing budget plans.
https://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/mets-jeff-wilpon-1.15485312
They had two fun seasons in 2015-16 but have now blown all the goodwill engendered by Collins and players. Carig politely never mentions the specter of Madoff – but if you ask me, Madoff haunts this franchise.

Brian Savin

12/17/2017 07:09:31 pm

I haven’t read a position by position analysis this good since the Herald Tribune, or Street and Smith’s Baseball Yearbook were being published. Thank you, George. I’ll keep this we’ll into Spring training season.

Hillel Kuttler link

12/18/2017 04:04:54 am

George, your last paragraph had me immediately harking to the lyrics of "If I Were a Rich Man," when Tevye remarks/pleads, "It's no shame to be poor, but it's no great honor, either. What would have been so terrible if I had a small fortune? ... Would it spoil some vast, eternal plan if I were a wealthy man?"

Marty Appel

12/18/2017 08:28:12 am

This all still feels like someone "made off" with the Mets treasury. How long must Mets fans suffer? Baseball teams have long gotten many breaks from the community they reside in, in the form of tax considerations, roadways, police, transit....and of course, free publicity daily in media. There comes a point where a public outcry should widen and be heard. It was the public, after all, that led the Giants to dismiss their head coach 2 weeks ago. The public voice matters.

George Vecsey

12/18/2017 10:12:54 am

To the three most recent responses:
Brian, thank you for the kind words.
Hillel: I was actually thinking of Tevye. He would be a Met fan.
Marty: Hard to call them totally cheap when they did what people wanted and signed up Cespedes. Then he fell apart -- our Ellsbury, I guess. Difference is, the Yankees replace expensive parts. I'd be curious whether ticket-holders are going to re-up for the looming disaster. Sounds like 1979 to me. But where are Hubie and Mookie on the horizon? GV
GV

Joshua Rubin

12/18/2017 04:30:21 pm

I know we disagree about this, but I can't let go of the decision to let Murph go. Kind of this generation's Nolan Ryan, except an everyday player now hitting .330 and lots of doubles elsewhere. Alas, a little boneheaded, yes; despite that, or perhaps because of that, a quintessential Met hero.

The 2015 had an edge; 2016 was more competent, but lacked spark. When the wheels came off the rotation in 2017, there was no one to pick them up. Always risky to sacrifice a team's heart in pursuit of greatness.

Joshua Rubin

12/21/2017 10:31:51 am

Well, I admit it was a closer call at the time than in retrospect as it was possible to see Murph's September-October of 2015 as a bit flukey, and not want to bet on it for the future. But even as a .280 spray/doubles hitter, he was a big part of that team's identity. Michael Powell called him the "beating mutt-heart" of the team, which seems about right and probably equally true of Lenny on the '86 Mets. Sometimes a good team has an alchemy that doesn't show up in the analytics (I assume the data people disagree with this).

ahron horowitz

12/20/2017 09:18:53 am

george-thanks for the good wishes.joshua-the feelings about murph will hurt for many years.

George Vecsey

12/20/2017 09:26:29 am

Anybody who gave up on Murph, raise your hand. Ooops, that's me.
Before his great spurt at the end of 2015, I didn't realize he had upgraded his swing and approach. All I could see was the same old overthinking plays in the field. I'm sorry for sending out vibrations that he was expendable. I did know the Lenny-Roger trade for mopey Juan Samuel was horrid. So did our son, who called me from college and, sounding stricken, could only say "It....stinks. It....stinks." Clearly, so did the Murph decision. Mea culpa. GV

Brian savin

12/20/2017 07:33:06 pm

The hardest part is that Murph, it seemed to me, reallywanted to stay, but wasn’t given the chance.

Joshua Rubin

12/21/2017 10:32:50 am

I replied above, but meant to post it here.

Rick Taylor

12/20/2017 10:11:27 am

As we bid goodbye to a horrible 2017 (not just because of the Mets mind you) I present a headline from SNYtv.com that should cause a heavy sigh from those diagnosed with that serious affliction known as Mets Fan.

"Plawecki confident platoon with d'Arnaud can work in 2018"

Oh my.

George

12/21/2017 02:08:39 pm

Oy.

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

Wait, What About Mets Fans? We Have to Live, Too

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