I heard people say they were worried about me when I announced I was not following the Mets this year. Well, just to reassure you, it’s been a month or so, and I am OK. I may still crack, but I really haven’t missed not following the Mets for the first time since 1974.

It was the automatic runner being placed on second in extra innings that pushed me over the edge. If that didn’t get me the seven-inning doubleheaders would have. And the idea of flying people all around the country in the midst of a pandemic to play in empty stadiums just doesn’t make sense to me. The virus is so out of hand in America that we aren’t allowed to travel to most countries. The bubble idea adopted in Canada—plus the grown-up way they’ve addressed the pandemic—has impressed me a lot. I’ve watched almost every night of the NHL playoffs so far and it’s been mesmerizing. I was pulling for a Canadian team to finally win the Stanley Cup again, and my nhl.com playoff bracket is pretty much busted. C’est la vie.

But, oh, yeah, I was here to talk baseball. If I ever have to write about the 2020 Mets season some day, I’ll utilize the same methods I’ve successfully used to recreate the pre-’74 seasons I never witnessed. At this point, I want to see if I can take it all the way and skip an entire season—though 60 games seems awfully easy to leave out. Especially with the social media posts I’ve encountered fleetingly regarding impending doom both on the field and in terms of Covid health. This year is not normal, and pretending otherwise is an insult to the 170,000 and counting whose lives this disease has claimed just in the U.S.

I’ve spent so much time over the years obsessing over this team, one benefit is I feel like I’m getting some of my time and energy back. I’m not losing any sleep over blown leads, or injuries, or front office foolishness, or a dozen other things I can’t do a thing about. My main concern isn’t that I’m missing something in this asterisk season, it’s that I am not using my extra time wisely. Maybe we’ll meet again in October. Or in the brave new world of 2021, the year in honor of Tommie Agee (number 20) and Cleon Jones (21), the Mets from Mobile. Goin’ Mobile in 2021!

“I’m an air-conditioned gypsy

That’s my solution,

Watch the police and the taxman miss me, I’m mobile!”

Actually, everything changed in about three days. I laughed at the idea of taking my bottle of hand sanitizer with me on the plane for our family trip to Colorado—and if the world is moving toward shut down, it is nice to be surrounded by majestic views. Yet by the time I got on the plane to fly back home, I was infuriated that United had no hand sanitizer on board the plane. Oh, if I could turn back time.

I’d also pay more attention to spring training. With preparing for the trip and getting over being sick—it wasn’t Corona Virus, truly, but I stayed away from people for several more days than necessary just because—I saw not a single pitch of spring training. I did listen to a few, though.

It was actually a third of an inning.  I stumbled on Howie Rose’s voice during a game from Port St. Lucie against the Cardinals. (I’ll even miss the interminable number of spring games against the Cardinals!) Luis Guillorme bunted for a base hit, which was not especially notable, but Howie Rose’s description of it was. He explained how you rarely see someone bunt for a hit like that anymore—not bunting against the shift, but a drag bunt placed in an ideal spot between first baseman, second baseman, and pitcher. I pictured Lee Mazzilli doing it to perfection in a 1978 game you knew the Mets would lose, 2-1—probably to the Cardinals! Howie was so pleased by it that I was pleased by it. And then someone I never heard of got a double and Luis trundled home. And then there was a walk, and another walk, and a sacrifice fly, and then one more walk, but Howie maintained the a lively patter. I flipped the station when the Cardinals yanked the pitcher—Silvio Martinez? No, I’m still back in 1978.

Well, we wish we were back to a time when things seemed normal. But we’re not. When things are closer to normal, I’ll be back. I’ll miss the occasional email where somebody enjoys my books, or even the website. One thing I hope to learn in this interval is to appreciate the little things more. And all this time with the family—whether in close quarters in Mountain Time or Eastern Time—is a major blessing during a difficult and frustrating period.

In that hopeful future, whenever I complain about something not going right in a baseball game, I hope I can calmly reflect on what small potatoes that it is compared to having no baseball. Or any other activity considered normal, routine. Instead of this situation where everything you hear feels like coming into a game with the bases loaded and nowhere to put anybody. Life without baseball due to Corona Virus makes you long for the little details and realize that it isn’t baseball that matters but normalcy. And family.

Facebook™ is a time-sucking drag. If you’re reading this on Facebook, you see the irony. But today it was not so useless because it was there that I saw proof that the Mets Hall of Fame actually exists.

Jon Matlack, Edgardo Alfonzo, and Ron Darling, two of the most unsung Mets and one of the most visible, respectively, are to be inducted in the Mets Hall of Fame this summer. They will be the first Mets inducted since Mike Piazza in 2013.

Alfonzo was treated pretty shabbily when the Mets did not bring him back after he led the Brooklyn Cyclones to the first league title in club history. I gave him his proper respect in a profile on Rising Apple last spring. I always loved him, even though he nearly broke my hand with a line drive hit right at me when I was playing hooky from work one afternoon. I saw Edgardo a few times as I worked for a rival New York-Penn League team. We never spoke, but I thought we experienced some telepathic communication. Me: “Let’s Go, Fonzie!” Him: Imperceptible head nod. I even saw him sign an autograph for a kid between innings—of a playoff game he was managing!

Jon Matlack was working for the Astros organization back in the days when that team was routinely losing 100 games but was scandal free. He came from a spring training workout and spent an hour talking to me on the phone about 1973 for Swinging ’73. Let me tell you, there is not a detail he did not recall and provide insight for, whether it was getting clonked on the noggin by a liner by Marty Perez or surrendering a mammoth home run in Game Seven of the ’73 Series to Reggie Jackson. If you go by Wins Above Replacement (WAR), he is a top 10 Met (as is Fonzie). Get this, 26 of the big lefty’s 82 Mets wins were complete-game shutouts. Sid Fernandez is a beefier version of Matlack, and El Sid needs to go Mets Hall next!

Ron Darling has been a Mets announcer as well as national broadcaster, but he really was a tremendous Met. Like the aforementioned Fernandez, he walked too many batters, but he was a Yale man who could pose on the cover of GQ and then go out and whip the Phillies—like he did to clinch the 1988 division title. Ron and Kevin Burkhardt came to the Mets Booster Club in Port St. Lucie for an event where I was signing. Ron (and Kevin) not only stayed through my little speech, but Ron cited a couple of my books and afterward we had a drink at that bar/bowling alley. Like Matlack, he is the only Met to start three times in one World Series, and all of us hope Mr. P will one day get to call the club “the defending world champions.”

Well done, gentlemen. And after rave reviews of the Mets Fan Fest, that’s two historically inclined moments by the Mets in one week. Keep up the good work, Metropolitans!

Your fans are counting on you. They always have.

Nobody asked, so here’s my take on the new Mets manager, Luis Rojas.

I don’t know if he’ll be a good manager. Can you say for sure? I do think it’s a smart hire, given the team’s situation and the forced end of the Carlos Beltran regime before it began. They really had little choice butto facilitate that, but it was terrible in terms of PR and timing. Let me count the ways they may yet bounce back…

1. Rojas was already with the organization and managed some of the players when they were in the minors, so they know him and consider him a wise baseball man.

2. Other teams were sniffing around, saying that he was an up-and-coming manager of the future. The baseball gods owe them in the up-and-coming manager department after Mickey Calloway.

3. With the team’s first-ever Fan Fest coming up, it’d sure look dumb if the Mets didn’t have a manager at the event. And do we really need the Mets to look dumber?

4. His dad, Felipe Alou, was a very good manager the Mets should have hired long ago. Let’s put it this way, Alou was available when the Mets hired Art Howe. Let’s not relive that nightmare.

5. People whose job it is to shake their heads in disbelief at what the Mets do thought it a good hire. In the words of ESPN baseball smart guy Keith Law put it: “The Mets have inadvertently hired a highly qualified manager.”

Baseball’s original smart guy and huckster Bill Veeck famously said, “Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don’t make.” Maybe we can switch that around to say: Sometimes the best moves are the ones you don’t plan.

I want to thank you for stepping down as Mets manager without ever managing a game. I know it had to be hard to do, but it was for the good of the team. It’s what leaders do, even if it is falling on your sword.

All spring training it would have come up. All six preseason games with the Astros it would have come up. Every time the Mets lost during the season it would have come up. When the Mets played the Yankees it would have come up. When the Mets played the Astros—four frigging times during the regular season—it would have come up. When the Mets needed to win a big game it would have come up.

The Mets need to be about winning, not figuring out who was banging on a garbage can in the Astros clubhouse in 2017. If two World Series-winning managers implicated in this mess were pushed out, the call for the third man named in the commissioner’s report to lose/forfeit his position was not going away.

Thanks again, Carlos. And for being the most productive center fielder the Mets have ever had.
Now if we could get the ownership issue resolved this quickly…
Best,
Metsilverman.com

Put down the phone, put on the Bobby V.-style Groucho glasses, and open this book while we wait for the Mets to figure out what they want the story of 2020 to be.

Matthew Callan’s Yells for Ourselves: A Story of New York City and the New York Mets at the Dawn of the Millennium brings back the most dramatic Mets period since 1986—and with the Mets, we’re talking about a lot of drama options—and puts you right in it. The day-to-day exploits of Mike Piazza and Robin Ventura, the managerial machinations of Bobby Valentine, the bewildering motivations of the villain who would derail them all: Bobby Bonilla, the pouty superstar speedster: Rickey Henderson, and the Mets version of John Entwhistle: John Olerud—if The Quiet Guy in The Who reached base at a .427 clip, knocked in 96 runs, and scored 107 times despite being one of the slowest runners this side of Rusty Staub. But was Olerud the quietest or best member on the right side of the infield? Edgardo Alfonzo hit .313 during 1999-2000, knocked in 202 runs, scored 232, walked 180 times (with just 150 whiffs), had arguably the best day ever by a Mets hitter (6 for 6 on 8/30/99 at the Astrodome with three homers—plus, with a chance for his fourth homer, lashed a long RBI double in the ninth of a blowout and came around to score his sixth run), and made just 15 errors in those two years in 1,400 chances at second base.

One thing Callan does that I found interesting is that the source of this take is an encapsulation of the New York papers’ coverage of the team. Back when you had to watch an interminable hour of ESPN’s SportsCenter to get a few fleeting Mets highlights, the papers were how you followed the team, how you lived and breathed the ’99 Mets, who were actually more interesting than the team that followed in 2000, though that team went further—and broke even more hearts by losing to the Yankees in the Subway Series everyone wished for but Mets fans wished had never happened after Luis Sojo’s 100-hop grounder in the ninth inning of Game Five. Callan also flips the papers over to the front page, where we see how the city was run by Rudy Giuliani—and this does make you feel old, because he is very credible as New York’s mayor.

Yells for Ourselves is a great read and a must for Mets fans who want to relive those two tremendous and thrilling seasons, when people watched what was happening on the field instead of their phones, when fans crammed into less-than-perfect Shea, where they could buy a decent ticket (instead of a down payment on a decent-sized beer) for under $10. And it is also a superb read for people who do not remember those days, or a world where the Mets were a couple of wins—and a couple of shut-down ninth innings—away from knocking off the Yankees for back-page (and front-page) supremacy of New York.

(Note: This review is also listed on the Yells for Ourselves Amazon page for this book. Whether you like Amazon or not—not a big fan here—it is the way publishers and many book buyers judge whether they should proceed with a work by an author. Even a one-word review means something. Try it for all your favorite authors. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.)

Houston, January 13, 2020: Major League Baseball handed down its penalties from the investigation over electronic sign stealing during 2017. The results are shocking: The team forfeited its first two picks in 2020 and 2021, was fined the maximum amount ($5 million), and both manager A.J. Hinch and GM Jeff Luhnow received suspensions for the entire season. Astros owner Jim Crane then held a press conference, plainly stating that both men were fired. I spied the list of punishments on a muted MLB TV screen while in the midst of a house cleaning mission, not realizing that the Astros had been far more thorough.

I have followed baseball avidly since the 1970s and I can think of nothing to compares with this in terms of punishment for an organization. I think the revelations of the steroid scandal are more damaging to the game, but there is a huge difference: No players are involved. These were members of management and the owner has the right to dismiss them wholesale and not worry about grievances through the MLB Players’ Association. The MLBPA’s involvement made the steroid situation far more difficult to police and as a result there were a lot of slaps on the wrist when I thought chopping off hands would have been more in line with issues concerning the integrity of the game.

This is a different level of integrity. Let’s be clear, the Astros are the first team to be so punished and we could see other teams—and individuals—similarly disciplined in the weeks, months, and years to come. Astros owner Jim Crane brought up a good point: What major advantage was expected to gain for the ultimate penalty of putting their team and their own careers in peril? Did it make a huge difference? The 2017 Astros won their division by 21 games. They are also accused of using these systems during the postseason that year, when the Astros beat the Red Sox in four games to take the Division Series and needed seven games to dispatch both the Yankees in the ALCS and the Dodgers in the World Series. It was the first world championship in franchise history.

I believe in strict punishment for cheating the game, whether it’s betting by players or gambling with the game’s integrity. This is not a lifetime ban, but this is not throwing games or putting yourself and your team in a vulnerable position—as Pete Rose did. But this is the kind of suspension I think is deserved. Did new Mets manager Carlos Beltran have knowledge of this scheme as an Astros bench player? As a veteran with a lot of time to sit in the clubhouse and dispense wisdom, you’d have to think he knew something about it. I’m sure he will be asked, but in this instance it seems like players may evade punishment. Who knows? This was a shock. Who knows what other surprises may be in store?

Sponsored by Shea Stadium Remembered

The Jets play their final game at Shea Stadium. It also winds up being the final game for Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw, whose elbow gives out after a touchdown pass and he never plays again. The Steelers win, 34-7, and the fans tear down the goalposts and everything else they can get their hands on as the Jets exit for New Jersey. (The NFL Network put together an awesome segment about the last Shea game.)

The Jets finish their 20 seasons at Shea with a 70-67-3 mark, plus a 1-2 record in the postseason (that one win clinched an AFL championship in 1968). They drew 7.7 million fans to Shea. The opening of the stadium in 1964 made the Jets—previously known as the doleful Titans—the most popular team in the AFL. Even before they signed Joe Willie Namath. Their Shea tenure was often turbulent, battling Mets ownership about perpetually opening the season on the road and not playing at home on October. The situation eventually took the Jets to court. And eventually to New Jersey. Like the planes flying over Shea, these Jets were heading out of air space. As one fan’s sign said that last day at Shea: “Good luck in the swamp.”