This weekend the Mets honored the 40th anniversary of the team that earned the term ‘amazin.’ In 1969 the Mets upset the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles to win their first World Series. That improbable summer the Mets manager, Gill Hodges, made a young group of ballplayers believe they could win and in doing so made Mets fans believe in miracles.
The Mets weren’t just celebrating the anniversary of that championship this past weekend; they were celebrating the true birth of their image, as lovable underdogs.
Today Mets fans are still rooting for those underdogs, but right now it’s hard to say they’re lovable.
Pedro Martinez and his jheri curl made their respective return to Queens on Sunday. Martinez didn’t have to wait for his trip to the mound for a warm reception from the Flushing faithful, that’s because Oliver Perez was nice enough grant the former Met ace a first inning at-bat.
I didn’t go into the game expecting the Mets to win, especially with the waste of talent Oliver Perez on the hill. I honestly considered the poetic irony of Pedro possibly pitching a no-hitter. Frankly, that would have surprised me less than Mike Vick doing a PETA campaign.
Ollie didn’t let me down. Perez gave up two first inning 3-run home runs, while throwing 46 pitches, and recording only two outs. Omar Minaya signed Perez to a 24 million dollar, two-year contract this past winter. Call me crazy but 24 million dollars is a lot of coin for a pitcher whose fastball seems to be slowing down each start and has had location issues his entire career.
The Philadelphia offensive arsenal showed up, as usual, tallying 9 runs on 10 hits. It seemed a gift-wrapped win for Martinez, but it wasn’t.
Martinez looked a shell of his former self; his fastball topped out at 90 mph and found the Mets bats more than the catcher’s mitt.
The Mets team that is taking the field each humid August day may not have much talent, but for what it’s worth they give all of it. Angel Pagan, an ideal fourth outfielder but currently the starting center fielder, hit CitiField’s first inside-the-park home run in the bottom of the first inning. As an encore performance Pagan connected for another home run in the 3rd.
The Mets are full of second chance players (Fernando Tatis), journeymen (Brian Schneider, Cory Sullivan), ‘never-have-beens’(Nelson Figueroa, Pat Misch), and ‘never-will-bes.’(Oliver Perez, Anderson Hernandez)
As frustrating as the season has been, with all the big-named high-priced talent nursing their knees, pinkies, hips, hamstrings, egos, and who knows what else; watching players fight for their futures is interestingly refreshing.
In San Diego or Kansas City this kind of effort in the face of such hardship might produce feature articles about the grit and determination of the less talented trying to live the MLB dream. In New York they are just second-rate players in a first-rate city, and next year, with the exception to Luis Castillo and Jeff Francour, they will mostly likely be gone.
The way Sunday’s game ended was a microcosm of the Mets season. The bottom of the 9th inning started with an error on Ryan Howard, then an error on Eric Bruntlett, then an botched double play opportunity by Bruntlett; then Bruntlett turned an unassisted triple play the 14th in MLB history only the second to end a game.
How rare is an unassisted triple play? Glad you asked. It happens less often than a perfect game.
After it happened you could feel the collective moan of Mets fans everywhere.
When you see something as infrequent as an unassisted triple play and your first thought is “typical,” you know there is something wrong with your team.
Every sign of promise this season has been coupled with a sharp dagger to the kidney. May I present the case of ‘Castillo vs. the Pop-up.’
I’m a sports fan so by definition I’m pessimistic, but did the Mets use up all the magic and miracles in 1969 and 1986? I really hope not.
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