Trip to Shea: 6/25

Baseball is a sort of slow game and following it diligently is a somewhat meditative process that becomes more rewarding as one’s knowledge increases, and in its final form endows one with a certain reverence for history. However, if one were ever to seriously doubt the American-ness of the sport, it would take only a very brief time at the ballpark to see that baseball is not our national pastime without cause.

The ballpark is like America. To sit in the warm summer air with several more hours of baseball ahead of you is delightful. The smell of the hotdogs and grease is delicious. The green of the field is beautiful. The feeling of unity, of shared hopes and fears with the teaming mass of fans is wonderful. There is something whimsical and mechanical about the grounds crews, like the figures on an elaborate coo coo clock. The seats all face inwards, towards one central project, yet one frequently looses the game to the antics of the fans, and the distractions and exultations to make noise that emanate from the big, neon screens. The seats are arranged in tiers, that are in fact clear demarcations of class, as the tiers correspond directly to changes in price; yet it would be somewhat uncouth (and, indeed, misleading) to form an opinion of one’s fellow fans based on how much they paid for their seats. You can’t spit without hitting someone trying to overcharge you for something that will make you fat.

The following observations are presented in approximately chronological order:

I showed up very early for the game, and paid five dollars for a wad of glossy advertising that happened to contain a score-card and the rosters. The score-keeping process was badly explained, in a poorly written, smarmy piece that uses (of all things) game 6 of the 1986 NLCS as an example. My efforts at keeping the score card ended after the third inning, when I decided that I found keeping it distracting and couldn’t find the symbol for “wandered off the bag and got caught in a run-down like a chump” which is what happened to Valentine in the first.

In many ways the high-point of the evening was watching Reyes and Carlos Gomez warm up before the game started. The energy and excitement of both young players, even as they did something as mundane as stretch out, was visible in the stands.

There were only a handful of players on the field during the national anthem, and they all stood for it, but with differing levels of attention. David Wright looked like he had wandered away from basic training. Paul Lo Duca also looked military but more like an embittered Clint Eastwood character, whose life is the army, because his wife left him, because she realized that his life was the army. Reyes and Gomez were fidgeting, and I think Delgado was talking to the trainer standing next to him out of the side of his mouth.

Lo Duca, perhaps because of his all-star election campaign and perhaps because of his recent ejection and impending suspension, was the only player whose name was regularly used as a chant (Paul—Lo—Duca, clap clap, clap clap), aside from the “ole/Jose” song.

Alcohol at the ballpark is primarily available in the form of domestic beers (Budweiser and Miller) sold in plastic bottles, that are specially designed so that the effects of getting hit with one will be minimal; one of these will set you back $7.50. I didn’t have one. In retrospect, I wish I had, if only so I could have gotten a first hand-look at the process by which they were distributed: I saw bottles in the hands of two men sitting several rows in front of me, who looked and acted very much underage—I would have imagined, however, that the carding process would be rigorous. Perhaps they had really good fakes? Back in the day, I would never have tested my fake ID in a place as well-lighted, organized and corporate as a ballpark.

Conversely, I never saw the four young men sitting in front of me with beer-bottles, but from overhearing their conversations I gathered the impression that they had been drinking. They liked to sing along with the jumbotrons, and one of them made a comment about how a sound clip of them slurring the words to “Enter the Sandman” should be put in an advertisement against teenage drinking; the fact that the guy thought that they would make “a million dollars” on that advertisement could probably be included in the commercial as well.

The primary interest of these four young fans was Billy Wagner, and they salivated whenever they posted his pitch speeds. On this night that made sense, as Wagner worked a scoreless ninth and tenth. Personally, I felt like Wags owed me that, since the last time I went to the park Reyes hit for the cycle and Wagner blew the save.

Prior to a Delgado at bat late in the games, they blasted the song “Mr. Roboto” and flashed the words “MISTER DELGADO” on the screen, along with clips of him doing impressive things. What the hell?

The picture of Keith Hernandez advertising “Just for Men” hair color that they show whenever a new pitcher is brought on (“stay in the game with Just for Men”) is one of the most atrocious pictorial representations of any human being ever. It makes him look like a combination of a used car salsmen and a terrifying, aging lounge-lizard-- which would, I guess, be a men’s hair-dye salesman.

Shawn Greene won the game with a walk-off homerun in the eleventh. The Mets piled onto the field behind home-plate and I exchanged high-fives with the four Wagner fans in front of me. The jubilation of the moment rendered irrelevant all the tawdry commercialism surrounding the ball-park. The yells of fans as we exited the stadium were louder, more vibrant, more real, than five dollar score cards and seven dollar beer.

DAMN IT!

Everything about the last two games completely sucks, but last night’s game…oh man.

First off: Endy Chavez is injured, and it looks bad. Well fuck. Endy was always the Met’s ace in the hole; Endy always got them the hit, or made the play that it seemed that they didn’t quite deserve to get; Endy is about 60% of the reason that I am thinking of moving to Venezuela. Endy was what allowed the entire starting outfield to go gimpy on us without anyone really freaking out or even noticing—in fact Endy’s presence on the bench, is probably what allowed Minaya to sign an outfield of brittle old dinosaurs, without anyone seriously questioning his sanity. Moises Alou makes a hell of a lot more sense if you can bring Chavez in for defense, days off, and the inevitable periods when Alou is injured—one of which we are in right now, and which does not seem likely to end anytime soon.

And Easely came up with a bum knee before the game, marvelous…the silver lineing is that this might exactly coincide with the return of Valentin.

Way to be injured right now, Lastings Milledge: the club is so strapped for outfielders that he’d be getting playing time even if he had been collaborating with Don Imus on the hip-hop adaptation of the works of the Marquis De Sade (instead of putting a track on his website that would only offend someone who had never listened to hip-hop). But he’s injured, so we’ll probably get to see some Ricky Ledee. Awesome.

Also, screw you, Aaron Heilman. I try real hard to like you, honest. I got much sympathy for the whole ‘I want to start but they won’t let me start’ thing, that seems like a bummer. But you gotta stop losing us games. Seriously.

Casey Stengel once remarked that “good pitching will always stop good hitting and vice versa.” Right now, both his old teams are built primarily around that “vice versa,” and this season (along with, oh I don’t know, THE ENTIRE GOD DAMN HISTORY OF MAJOR LEAUGE BASEBALL) is serving to prove that this is a seriously flawed premise. The Mets are where they are because their pitching has been outstanding, through no fault of the general management. Going into the season the odds that either Maine or Perez would show themselves to be a major bum were more than decent; the fact that they have both been excellent so far (knock on wood… oh please god don’t let me jinx those poor kids) is a serious piece of luck. The hell there was any sane reason to think that Jorge Sosa was going to stroll out of the minors and be lights out, but that happened and that has been huge. Going into the season everyone said that the bullpen was the club’s weakness, but it has been outstanding and one of the club’s major strengths; at the same time, the fact that it has lost two games in a row to the Phillies (who hardly even have a bullpen) shouldn’t actually shock anyone, given the initial doubts about it.

The strength of the Mets, and the Yankees, is supposed to be their offence. Delgado, Reyes, Wright, and Beltran are supposed to be coming up with key hits, and they are not. The Mets had chances to win last night’s game and score more runs, but they did not do that. The main difference between the Mets and the Yankees is that with the former the pitching has been far better than expected and with the latter it has been far, far worse.

Billy Wagner and Paul Lo Duca have apparently been calling the team out, and saying that it is not playing with the ‘fire’ that it had last year. Perhaps. Lo Duca is the same old singles machine that he ever was (knock on wood again), so I guess that he can say whatever he wants. Wagner has also been technically brilliant, converting all of his save opportunities. He’s still either a disturbing adrenaline junky or not quite the pitcher that everyone thinks, because he makes it interesting and puts runners on base, or gives up any runs that he might have to spare. I hate to do this, but I predict Wagner’s first blown save for either tonight, or sometime on the upcoming inter-league road trip. Again, sorry. Hope I’m wrong.

Injuries Shaping Both New York Baseball Teams:

This was initially intended as an audition for the yet-to-be-created job of sports writer at Timessquare.com, but they haven’t gotten back to me and it is getting less topical by the minute:

The baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint. This is one of those things that players, coaches, and sports writers like to say until they are blue in the face—but fans and the press persist in acting like the Yankees, at twelve games out of the lead in the AL East, are in significantly better position than they were at thirteen.

Due to the length of the season, the frequency of games, and the nature of the game itself injuries are a more integral part of the baseball season than they are for other sports. Particularly, baseball teams have to be able to weather injuries to multiple players— good GM’s build them that way.

At the same time, no team could be expected to weather the injuries that have faced the Yankees. Initially it was their pitching, as first Chien-Ming Wang and Mike Mussina went to the DL, followed shortly by Jeff Krastens, Phil Hughes, and Darrell Rastner. Even Karl Pavano bravely overcame his brief bout of health, and is now scheduled for Tommy John surgery, which should end his Yankee career. However, they eventually reached a point of equilibrium with their pitching when Wang and Mussina returned, and now Roger Clemmens is expected momentarily to provide even more help on that front, but only in time for the injury bug to transfer itself to the offense. Hideki Matsui, Jason Giambi, and Johnny Dammon have been dealing with nagging injuries, hampering their games. Now Giambi is out for the rest of the season, just in time to avoid being suspended for admitting to doing steroids. At this point their ability to score runs seems to come and go with the pain in Dammon’s calf.

The Mets got beat the first time that they played with their entire opening day outfield injured, but all-star third basemen David Wright was joining them on the bench due to back-spasms. In fact, the Met’s starting second basemen, Jose Valentin, has been on the DL since April, and they played almost all of May without their number two starting pitcher, Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, and half of it without Moises Alou. The club is still waiting for Alou’s return; although Shawn Greene and Carlos Beltran, the other two outfielders, should be out for significantly less time.

But the injuries have not slowed the Mets down much, largely because, outside of El Duque (who is at best “pre-injured,” rather than healthy), they have been lucky enough avoid injuries to pitching. The Spring Training line-up that barely lost to Brandon Webb, might have beaten a less dominant pitcher. Indeed, many of the changes that the Mets have gone through as an organization are seen in their personnel at second base. In 2005 they had poor old Kaz Matsui— the most laughable and doomed of the Mets efforts to emulate the Yankees. In 2006, injuries to Anderson Hernandez and the continued awfulness of Kaz, forced them to experiment with Jose Valentin, a veteran form whom they had hoped for little more than the occasional pinch-hit. Valentin, however, played the position admirably, won the job of every-day second basemen, and became a valuable member of the ’06 Mets. He had continued to contribute for them into 2007, until he went down with injury—but he was replaced by Damion Easley who has also stepped up, fielding well and hitting seven home runs. Ruben Gotay has been filling in as Easely’s back-up, and he hasn’t been awful either.

To those of us out of the loop, it is impossible to tell weather the fact that the Mets have been regularly able to come up with a completely decent back-up option for second base and most other temporary needs is a result of managerial brilliance or dumb luck—but it is a huge part of why the Mets are holding onto a (admittedly not very impressive) lead in their division and the Yankees are hoping that a magnificent run of dominance and luck will have them in the Wild Card race sometime in August.

So it begins...

Drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, listening to nimrods on the am radio go on and on about hockey, waiting and hoping that they say something about if El Duque is healthy enough to pitch. An add for the star-registry follows someone whose system will eliminate your credit card debt. Jose Valentin might also be headed for the DL- the Dailey News makes a brief reference to calling up Anderson Hernandez or Ruben Gotay…Gotay, I think I remember him getting a hit or two in Spring Training, that’s nice.

Well, it is a team of old men, and we all knew it would get here sooner or latter. [someone says that the Yankees would be justified in firing Joe Torre, someone else thinks they’d be crazy- they talk about this for a while… Torre won’t be fired] I kind of hoped that we could make it for another month or so, before dipping into the minor leagues and seeing things like a Chan Ho Park start… Tiger Woods wants me to get laser surgery on my eyes, a perky woman asks if I want to be a millionaire she offers to teach me how to sell things on the internet…

With El Duque we definitely knew it was coming, sooner or latter, and if the offense does what it’s supposed to (hit far, far better than they have for the last week) they could weather a month of Park. But an extended absence of Valentin might screw them completely. I really wish they had went and got a second baseman in the off-season. The good performances form Valentin were like finding a twenty that you didn’t know you had in your pants… it’s pretty cool, but shouldn’t really be the backbone of a long-term financial strategy. Valentin was just so freakishly and unexpectedly good- both at fielding his position and getting some hits. Particularly with all the ground-ball pitchers and the double play being such an important aspect of the Met's game so far this season, you dread going back to being defensively weak at second.

If Chan Ho Park knows what’s good for him he’ll pitch us a good one tonight: with Pelfery the way he has been, there are clearly starts on this club for a guy who steps up, and Park is getting the first shot at being that guy.

One factor in the tension between Mets and Yankee fans is stuff like this: I want to hear about Jose Valentin’s knee, but ‘Boomer’ just keeps on talking about weather or not Jeter should defend Torre to the press, and so why didn’t he defend A-Rod.

There was an interesting and slightly poignant moment during Saturday’s broadcast. Shawn Greene, along with Sele, Schoenwise, and Newhan had been to see the Holocaust museum (presumably while Reyes and Wright hit up the Air and Space Museum for freeze dried ice-cream), which led Ron Darling and Gary Cohen to discuss the different edifying sights in Washington. Darling praised the Vietnam memorial and spoke about the mass of names. He alluded to having lost two cousins in the war, and was starting to describe the experience of finding their names on the memorial, when Beltran got the Mets first hit of the game. Darling acknowledged the hit and said another sentence or so about the memorial while Beltran was running the bases, but then the baseball took over and he and Cohen began discussing Beltran’s hit, and he never brought up the Vietnam Memorial again.

Games 2-6

Since I last said anything about them, the Mets have been playing .500 ball, gaining dominant wins over St. Louis and then Atlanta, before losing to Atlanta twice. The two losses seemed mainly to do with breakdowns of their defense and bullpen, whereas the victories seemed defined by commanding offensive performance coupled with solid starting pitching. This is, more or less, what we are lead to expect from the team: we are told that their line-up is the most powerful in the National League, and team officials see this as mitigating any shortcomings from pitching and defense. When they all hit, the Mets are fairly close to unbeatable- but all offences are prone to periods of stagnation, and over the course of 162 games, the laws of probability indicate that there will be a bunch of them where they don’t hit, or don’t hit very much- and these are games that the Mets have a perfectly decent chance of losing, at least until Mota, Sanchez, and Pedro get back.

Looking back at yesterday’s game, it seemed obvious that Willie Randolph has been reading this blog, and took to heart my thoughts on the desirability of having David Wright hit in the two-hole. With Lo Duca taking the day off, Randolph had Jose Valentin (who did miserably) batting second, and Wright, same as ever, hitting fifth. Shawn Green had better be extremely careful.

Reflecting on today’s home opener, and the six games that preceded it, it seems that the thing that Mets fans should hope for most fervently is the emergence of either John Maine or Oliver Perez as the real ace on the rotation. This is in no way a criticism of Glavine or El Duque: both of them are, and have been, great pitchers and will be both useful and essential to the team this season. The best thing that can be said for either of the youngsters is that they have shown that they might, at some point, be capable of doing what El Duque and Glavine have already done: survive in the big leagues for many years as an unquestionably dominant pitcher. At least the potential to do this has been shown by both Maine and Perez, and the chance to see how they perform over a full season is one of the most exciting things about the 2007 Mets.

Opening Day

In the 48 hours proceeding last night’s game I had worked myself on into a frenzied state of anxiety about the rotation and the bullpen. The low point came when I was on my way home on Saturday night, and got into a conversation with a fan on the N train, who shared my apprehensions about Wagner (he disagreed, however, with my assertion that we had to wait seventeen hours for the start of baseball, dating the start of the season to when he began ‘drinking and watching movies’ with his friends, which event was apparently scheduled for somewhat earlier). By Sunday I was capable of nothing except for watching the re-play of the 2006 division clincher on SNY, which, for some reason, I found fascinating.

Anyway, it is pretty difficult to want the opener to go much better than it did. Scoring five runs off of Chris Carpenter is always a good thing; six innings of one-run ball from Glavine is always appreciated. The defense, which has been maligned by sports writing sources lately, was fantastic- Reyes and Valentine showing themselves to still be double-play artists, Beltran with an excellent outfield assist, Lo Duca more than solid behind the plate, and, perhaps most pleasantly, a very nice diving catch from Alou. The bullpen, despite their best efforts, pitched three innings of scoreless relief.

Actually, for all the base runners they allowed, I am most impressed with the relievers. Particularly, since I skimmed a piece in the Daily News calling it into question, I think the choice to use Joe Smith for most of the eighth was excellent. What is best about it is that Willie Randolph is telling everyone who cares to listen that the individual win is less important to this club than the information about how one of their young relievers will perform under pressure. Randolph doesn’t need to play mind games with the Cardinals, and the opportunity to see what Smith would do against Albert Pujols (walked him) was more irreplaceable than the opportunity to notch up a W- Randolph seems to think that they will have opportunities to do the latter all season long.

As for Smith’s actual performance, there are a couple of ways of looking at it. He faced three batters and gave out a walk and a hit, and recorded one strike-out. On the other hand, barely out of college, in his first-ever big league appearance, he faced three batters from the reigning world champions, including the best hitter in baseball, and didn’t give up any runs, and that’s pretty good.

It seems sort of unfair that they have an off day today. But after waiting all winter for game 1, I guess I can wait until Tuesday for game 2- barely.