A new year and a new age. Welcome to the eighth year of metsilverman.com. You could call us a jinx, if you like, though 2008 was the year I swore off luck (my first April Fool’s post) and it was the last year the Mets had a .500 season, or played at Shea Stadium, or had a September game that mattered—it was all too much. But I am still here, a survivor—and so are you. Even if you weren’t even a Mets fan then, you are a survivor of the lineage—just as you are a celebrant of 1969 and 1973 and 1986 and 2000, even if you never saw a pitch.
Each year I tie in a Mets player uniform number with my age. That’s how the site began during a happily sleepless night as I planned out the first year of the site. And why stop now? Even if I am the big 5-0 now. And what bigger 5-0 could there be than Sid Fernandez, unless it was Benny Agbayani. This year for 50, and having been fortunate enough to spend a couple of days in the Aloha state for the first time, I have fused a two-headed Hawaiian hydra out of this pair: the right-side being all Benny and the lefts-side being Fernandez.
El Sid was a latter day Jon Matlack, though not as consistent or as adept as Matlack as finishing what he started. Sid had his greatest contribution as a Met in Game Seven of a World Series, Matlack his worst—further proof that one game can decide championships and careers (and another reason why the one-game play-in in the postseason runs contrary to baseball, where everything—even the previously precious one-game playoff to get into the postseason—should have a back story).
But when we talk about Sid Fernandez you should know three things: he was from Hawaii (why he was the first Mets player to wear 50, for the 50th state), he is fourth all-time in major league history with just 6.85 hits allowed per nine innings (behind only Nolan Ryan, Clayton Kershaw, and Sandy Koufax), and when the Mets were on the ropes in Game Seven of the 1986 World Series, El Sid stepped out of the bullpen and shut down the Red Sox. If he’d bombed that game, well, just think what the last 29 years would have felt like without that championship. He was quiet yet colorful, heavy on the hill but light on his feet, stolen from Los Angeles and underrated in New York, a great pitcher though plagued with not getting enough wins, the measuring stick of his day. He was the NBC Miller Lite Player of Game Seven of the World Series, the only Game Seven the Mets have ever won.
Benny Agbayani also came through at crucial moments for the Mets. Steve Phillips might have kept him perpetually in the minors, possibly because Benny was a Bobby Valentine creation, and not a traditional prospect he could trade for a broken-down reliever. Benny hit his way to the majors, needing to outperform the entire outfield to get to stay in New York. He came up in 1998 and didn’t impress anyone with his .133 average in 16 at bats. He got another chance during the 1999 season and hit 10 home runs in his first 73 at bats to become a Mets folk legend. He may have faced more minor league purgatory the following spring, but his grand slam in Japan earned the Mets a split of the first major league games played there, and he also earned himself a spot of the Mets roster. He was the most interesting member of a nondescript outfield and his home run in the 13th inning to win Game Three of the Division Series and—combined with the next afternoon’s Bobby Jones NLDS clincher against the Giants—logged in as number five of my favorite Shea Stadium moments seen in person. (A first-year feature on the blog in the last year at Shea.) The glass slipper only fit for so long, but Benny was a hero when it counted. If he hadn’t hit a tiebreaking double in the eighth inning of Game Three of the 2000 World Series, maybe the Yankees would have the three-peat sweep instead of the simply humiliating loss in five games. Benny may have been too free on the Howard Stern show in predicting the Mets to win in five, but in his two best years he combined for 29 homers and 102 RBI in 626 plate appearances. And Benny thrived when the games mean the most.
Now if you have been playing close attention, since that first year there has been a recurring theme in posts throughout a given year, whether it’s my favorite games at Shea (2008) or a critique and accounting for every doubleheader in Mets history (2014). I’ve tried just about everything, so this year the theme will be: no theme. I have a book I am trying to finish—on the 1986 Mets—and I need to put my investigative talents into that. But there will be posts, just nothing as thematic as in the past. Maybe next year there’ll be something different.
In the meantime, enjoy the games, everything is starting anew. There is talk about the Mets finally turning it around. Well, I will believe that when it happens. I left my Ya Gotta Believe at the door in Swinging ’73.
But this will be the last time I name a year after Mets and their uniform numbers. At least until my Turk Wendel Year comes around at 99. It’s not a conceited after-50 thing in age but rather a complete lack of useful numbers to count the age past 50. Dave Murray, Mets Guy in Michigan, God bless him for including not one but two of my books in his Mostly Mets Reading Month in March. He is just old enough to be a year ahead and celebrating a Mel Rojas Year at 51. I’ve had enough crashing and burning myself to involve Mr. Rojas, but I’ll still be around. At least I hope so.
As for hope and the Mets, well, hope is dispensed with an eye dropper when it comes to the Mets around here. A lifetime of pessimism made it so I expected the worst in Game Six in the 1986 World Series, and I was utterly shocked when the best happened instead. And then Sid saved the day in Game Seven. I wonder if lightning will ever strike twice for me and my kind, but that’s why we watch and we wait for another Sid Fernandez or Benny Agbayani to come up big when we’re least expecting it.