Dana Brand’s Mets Fan Blog

Children born on the evening that Mookie Wilson’s ball went through Bill Buckner’s legs will be having their first beer, or glass of wine, or worse, tonight.

Let’s toast them. 

On a long drive yesterday (10/24) I had to listen to Mike and the Mad Dog talk about the upcoming World Series.  Yes, I had to.  Don’t ask me to explain or justify.  Anyway, Russo was going on and on about some Vegas oddsmakers making the Red Sox favorites in the Series by Two and a Half to One.  He thought this was ridiculous.  I agree.  I agree with Mad Dog.

Now he may have gotten this wrong.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but sometimes Mike and the Mad Dog get things wrong.  Like, for example, I had a wonderful fifteen minutes yesterday before Mike realized (REALIZED!) that the 2004 Red Sox did not in fact belong on the list he had repeated several times of teams that had been inactive for over a week before the World Series.  Oh man.

Anyway, who makes these odds?  Don’t these guys realize that one of several things that makes baseball eternally superior to football and many other sports is that the odds are never two and a half to one that any team will beat another?  Never.  Take it to the bank.  An excellent pennant winning team with the best record in baseball, like the 2007 Red Sox, has won 3 games for every 2 they’ve lost.  On average, they do slightly better than this against under .500 teams, just about this against .500 teams, and slightly worse than this against teams over .500.  When playing a team with a record of 88-74, that beat them in the season series, the odds of the Red Sox winning any single game will be less than 3 to 2. 

I would have given the Red Sox three to two odds to win the Series before any game was played and that is a little generous.  I cannot even imagine an argument that the Red Sox have, going into it, a 5 to 2 chance of winning this World Series. 

Now that the Red Sox have won the first game 13-1, I can imagine an argument for 5-2, although I still think the odds are lower.  Not every Red Sox starter is Beckett and the Rockies do have a genuinely formidable lineup.  I am rooting for the Red Sox for family reasons and because I am curious to see what happens to their fan base and culture if they have to absorb the shock of two Series championships in four years.  But I think the Rockies are a great story.  And they do remind me a little of you-know-who.  You remember, of course, who won the first game of the 1969 World Series?

The Yankee ownership put their heads together and came up with the brilliant idea of offering Joe Torre, whose current salary is $7.5 million, a one-year contract giving him $5 million dollars, with a bonus of $1 million for making it to the ALDS, another $1 million for making it to the ALCS, and another $1 million for making it to the World Series.  Can you imagine the utter intellectual and moral vacancy of the heads that could have come up with such a plan? 

A team that spends money on a scale that makes it meaningless, a team that draws over 4 million fans and has no money worries or limitations of any kind, chooses to “make a point” by cutting, by one-third, the salary of a manager who has brought them into 12 postseasons, and who literally brought them roaring back from the dead this year.  Did they do this to save $2.5 million lousy dollars?  No, the only reason they did this was to insult someone who deserves only praise, only respect, only admiration. 

Maybe they thought that they were providing him with an incentive?  Yeah, that’s real smart.  I guess the reason that Joe Torre hasn’t won any World Series since 2000 is that he didn’t have enough incentive.  Dangle an extra million dollars in front of him at each additional step on the way to the championship and he’ll get there!  Yes, just like when you want a rabbit to come out of a cage!  That’s the way it works!  What insight into human psychology!  Maybe they did some kind of experiment down in Tampa, with their cats and dogs and tuna and steak!   Gee, dad, let’s try this!

When I first heard Mike Francesa report that Joe Torre had accepted this insulting offer, I was genuinely downhearted.  When I heard that he actually turned it down, it brought tears to my eyes.  The Yankees, as an organization, are about to lose what they have left of dignity.  I wish I could have seen what happened when Torre took his principled stand.  It must have been like that moment in the movies, when the principled hero speaks truth to power and tells them where to go and where to put it.

I hope it stays like that.  I don’t want this to be one of these stupid Yankees things that are never what they seem to be.

How would you like to be a Yankees fan right now?  You know, for all of our joking around, we Mets fans know that there are plenty of decent people who root for the Yankees.  I feel for these people right now.  I mean, fans complain about ownership and management all the time.  That’s part of what it means to be a fan and what it means to own or manage a team.  But imagine what it would be like to have to root for a team owned and managed by such people.

There aren’t words in the English language for such people. 

“Why panic?” Ramirez said. “If we don’t do it, we’ll come back next year and try again … If it doesn’t happen, who cares? There’s always next year. It’s not the end of the world.”
TV and radio people and “let’s get everybody all worked up” sportswriters couldn’t be happier than when a ballplayer says something like this.  To them, this is the coolest thing to happen since Michael Vick.  How could he say this?  Omigosh!  Doesn’t he WANT it?  Doesn’t he know what happens when baseball players and baseball teams don’t WANT IT BADLY ENOUGH WITH THEIR WHOLE HEART AND SOUL AND THEIR BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS AND THEIR GUTS AND THEIR LIVERS AND THEIR COJONES????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You know what maybe happens when a player has an attitude like this?  Maybe 4 home runs and 11 runs-batted-in in 7 games.  Maybe getting on base two thirds of the time.  Maybe that happens.  Did anybody ever think of that? 

I guess not.  Well, we’ll know who’s to blame if the Red Sox don’t win the pennant this year, won’t we?  I mean who the hell does he think he is watching those home runs he hits and raising his arms?  Yeah, there’s no room on a team for somebody like that. 

So, Red Sox, if you don’t want someone on your team who is such a bad influence on the image of the sport and on the whole American can-do spirit …

There’s a 718 number I would dearly love to give you. 

Just after the Yankees were eliminated and I was left without anything much to want for the post-season, some kind of unexplainable software glitch made it impossible for me to access my blog as an administrator.  I was reduced, against my will, to silence.  The freaky demons of the 2007 season were not done with their work. 

Now I’m back online. 

I like the Rockies.  I always like it when teams like the Rockies, who were mainly picked for last, make it to the World Series.  But family loyalties will have me rooting for the Red Sox if they manage to get past Cleveland.  

I’d also like to see the Red Sox win the Series because I am curious to see what will happen to New England if the Red Sox win two World Series in four years.  It will have to become some other place.  New England’s mythic sense of identity will have gone haywire.  Palm trees will start growing.  And bougainvillea.  Sidewalk cafes with accordion music will spring up in defiance of strict zoning laws and white clapboard churches will become glamorous nightclubs.   The Scarlet Letter will suddenly have a happy ending.  Emily Dickinson will leave home.  And Thoreau will invite Whitman and his buddies up from New York to go skinny dipping on the lake.  It really never could be the same dear old unhappy place again. 

Anyway, we are now at that particularly strange time when baseball is fresh in our minds, it’s even continuing, but the Mets are nowhere.  They’re out of sight and out of mind.  Did we dream them?  Here’s a short piece from my book that tries to describe the eerieness of this time of year.

THE BEGINNING OF THE OFFSEASON

If the season doesn’t ended with a ticker-tape parade, you feel, for the first few days, as if you were driving a speeding car that has gone off the road and is now on its back, with the wheels spinning. It takes a while for the wheels to stop spinning, for the adrenaline in your system to get back to a normal level.

Some fans, apparently, can start talking right away about trades and free agents and all that. I can’t do it. I need some time to get used to the fact that the season is finally over, that nothing more can ever be added to it. It’s as if someone you know has disappeared. Suddenly a constant background hum is silenced. You turn on the radio or the TV and the Mets are not there. It’s as if some evil conspiracy has managed to eliminate all evidence that they ever existed.

Every so often during the offseason, you’ll hit the WFAN button on your radio and hear the Schmooze talking about football, or Howie announcing a hockey game, or Gary announcing a basketball game. You feel as if you’ve caught them having an affair.

There is now the long, fitful, and boring night. You don’t want to be outside. Soon, you forget what it was like, exactly, to have leaves on the trees and baseball on the radio.

KENT
I know you. Where’s the king?
Gentleman
Contending with the fretful element:
Bids the winds blow the earth into the sea,
Or swell the curled water ‘bove the main,
That things might change or cease; tears his white hair,
Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage,
Catch in their fury, and make nothing of;
Strives in his little world of man to out-scorn
The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain.

What we see this morning in the sports pages is a rash and foolish old man, outraged by his inability to control what he can’t control, attended by a faithful daughter.

Baseball does not get much more Shakespearean than this. 

And baseball has suffered from the vanity of this man for how many years?  Baseball can thrive, baseball can be pleasurable only if those who are involved in it understand what baseball proves to us at every chance it gets: 

The natural condition of life is disappointment, and the sustaining pleasure of life is hope.  And love.  Baseball mirrors the human condition.  And no one can use it successfully to escape from that condition. 

A decent, loyal man about to lose his position (like Edgar?  like Cordelia?) says it best this morning: 

“I understand the requirements here, but the players are human beings, and it’s not machinery.  Even though they get paid a lot of money it’s still blood that runs through their veins.'’   Joe Torre

On the one hand, it’s very easy to explain what happened to the Mets in the 2007 season.  It’s like explaining the results of the 2000 Presidential election.  The margin of victory and defeat, one game in the NL East, one game in the Wild Card, is so small that any explanation you come up with will work.  For this same reason, it’s something of a trivial exercise.  Any team that wins 88 games has a lot of flaws.  So does any team that wins, say, 92 games, which would have given us a solid 3-game lead, the best record in the National League, and a result exactly where most people pegged us at the start of the season.  The issue isn’t whether you could have gotten rid of flaws, the issue is whether you could have achieved a balance of strengths and flaws that would have been marginally better than that of other teams.

Sure, if only Jose Reyes had been even just a little better in the second half than he was, it would have made the necessary difference.  Sure, if we hadn’t lost Moises Alou for much of the season, it would have made the necessary difference.  Sure, if Carlos Delgado’s run production hadn’t dropped, it would have made the necessary difference.  Yes, if Pelfrey had straightened himself out at the beginning of the season, that would have done it.  Hell, if you want to blame something, blame El Duque’s bunion.  That threw off everything, showing us that we didn’t have a fifth starter and we didn’t have a middle-relief staff that could pick up the slack.  You could really do this endlessly.  But you know what?  You could go through the roster of every team in the league and find the reasons why they did not win 1, 2, 3, or 4 games that they could have won.  The fact is that young players will often lose their direction or focus from time to time.  Veterans will have more slumps and get injured.  A lot of times, all you can do is hope for a favorable balance of the stuff you can do and the shit that will happen.

I’m not accepting what happened.  I’m not being fatalistic.  Sure, I think it is the responsibility of management to maximize the strengths and minimize the flaws.  But I have had my fill of “explanations” of what has happened.  I scoff at some of what I’m hearing.  So the Marlins did what they did to Glavine because some of the Mets players like to dance?  (They dance well.  It’s cool.  I like it.  And sometimes they do it on the top step of the dugout because that’s where they encounter their teammates.  But I guess if they do it just in the dugout next year, they’ll win, like 100 games.  That’s the ticket!) How come I hardly heard anything about Tony Bernazard during the season?   What does it mean that Willie Randolph has to get control of his team and how do you know this and why do you think it is the reason the Mets didn’t win the division when you have facts like an insufficiently talented middle relief staff and an insufficiently deep and durable starting pitching staff available to explain the same thing?

I have already said that I still need to be convinced that a lack of motivation or heart explains what happened.  I’ve already said that:  “I think that we rely too much on the idea of a lack of motivation to explain disappointing performance and I think that we rely too much on the idea of motivation to explain good performance …  It’s not that motivation is irrelevant.  It’s just that there are too many other factors involved.” 

Yes, I know what players have said to reporters.  But when I read their words, I do not find evidence that they lacked motivation.  I find them acknowledging that they had to maintain a constant struggle against complacency, like other talented first-place teams being lazily and intermittently pursued by deeply flawed second and third place teams.  I think a lot of what happened can be explained by the fact that no one feared the Phillies, because no one had sufficient reason to fear the Phillies, until the very end, when the weakening of the pitching staff left the Mets vulnerable.  This is not, in my view, a lack of motivation or dedication.  I think it’s something different, and that the players, unlike the radio shock jocks, seem to have an awareness of it.  They didn’t have the right psychological fix on the season.  They didn’t understand the degree to which they were in danger.  And by the time they were in actual danger and had to summon up everything they had, the pitching staff had opened an iceberg-size gash in the hold.

Maybe better leadership could have created a sense of urgency when the standings weren’t enough to do so.  I don’t know.  And I realize that our perceptions of the Mets are shaped by considerations that have nothing to do with fair and thoughtful analysis and everything to do with attracting listeners or readers.

I don’t really know what I’m trying to say in this post.  I realize that I am complaining about explanations and am offering explanations myself.  Am I being inconsistent?  Yeah, I guess.  But I also think I’m being typical of a great many Mets fans who are trying to understand what happened, in a fair, reasonable way, and who are getting sick of the kind of unfair and facile “explanations” and finger-pointing that is most of what you hear right now.
 

It isn’t fair that you live through 162 games and are left with this. 

It isn’t fair that after that golden spring and that irritating restless summer filled with good things and bad things, all you have now is this.

It isn’t fair that you got to have that warm September Sunday with a seven game lead and Pedro on the mound.  It isn’t fair that you got to have that now impossibly distant day before this one, when it looked as if everything might be all right and the heavens opened up and we had 13 runs and 19 hits and almost our first no-hitter. 

It isn’t fair that after all of the pleasure and excitement of comebacks and renewals, after all of the promise of a baseball season that was always on the point of redeeming itself, all we have now is this thing that can no longer change or be redeemed.   See, it’s hardening already into an unpleasant memory.  It might have lived.  One third of an inning different today and we could have had one last historic game, that we might have won, that might even have led to the World Series.  But we’re done, one game out of the NL East, one game out of the Wild Card.  And we’ll always look back on this  exciting, exasperating season through the dirty glass of this rotten Sunday. 

2007 will always be like a love affair or a marriage that had its ups and downs, but that had lots of wonderful moments, even though all you can remember now is one awful final argument.  It’s like a wonderful productive life of a friend whom you can’t remember without thinking of the awful circumstances of his death.  2007 will always be like any good and hopeful thing that is stamped forever by the awfulness of its end. 

Years from now you won’t want to think about this thing that made you so excited this morning.  It’ll be like 1988 and 2000, such wonderful seasons!  But it will be much, much worse.  It won’t just be a disappointment.  It will be something shameful.  Because we didn’t even make it to the postseason, having been in first since the middle of May.  It was something we had and we lost.  It was like something solid that turned to sand and our fingers couldn’t hold it. 

One reason we love baseball is that the death of a season is not really the end.  The Mets, like the earth, come back to life in the spring.  The Mets, weirdly enough, are eternal.  But each season is mortal.  And each is preserved in a numbered box in our closet.  Some boxes we open and look at over and over.  And some never get opened.   

This one won’t be opened much.  Even though it had its treasures.  The emergence of Perez and Maine.  The return of Pedro.  The magnificence of Reyes in the first half and Wright in the second.  The steady brilliance of Beltran, the aging grandeur of Moises Alou.  All these great things, and the last things that passed before our eyes today.  Is this the last time we’ll see Tommy Glavine, or Paulie LoDuca, or Shawn Green?  What happens now?  The Mets who come to life in the spring will not be the Mets we’ve known this season, nor should they be.  What will come back to life will be different.  It will be new.  But it will also be old.  And we will follow it to the end of its arc across next summer’s sky, just as we followed this one. 

So there it is.  Say goodbye to it.  It was a good season that ended horribly and the future will always be unfair to it.  Give it a last kiss.  And remember that you once loved it, just as you’ll remember forever how and why you hated it.  There it is pale and cold on that slab.  Isn’t it pitiful to see it like that?