Mark Reichman

Just like the Yankees to upstage the Amazin’s.  A stunning, dominating 9-game win streak by the Mets has taken a back seat to the farewell to Yankee Stadium that the All Star Game represents.   Or as the insightful Jonathan Papelbon put it, “we’re in Yankee Stadium and blah blah blah.”  Not that Billy Wagner and David Wright wouldn’t love to lock up home field advantage in the fall classic, but I’m guessing the Mets more than any other team would have been delighted if the All Star game for some reason got cancelled this year.

If you saw the momentum generated by back to back home sweeps of NL doormats Colorado and San Francisco, you would have gotten the totally wrong impression of how the Mets got to this place (one half game behind Philly at the break and red hot).  You would have assumed the Met pitchers had been commanding all season if you saw a stretch where they allowed three or fewer hits per game over an amazing five games.  You might have thought pitching coach Dan Warthen had been working with the staff for longer than three weeks.  You could easily turn on the TV and think that Mets offense was operating smoothly and that the team was confident and in control.

I think the Mets honed their mental toughness, and maybe changed the tone of their season when they took three of four in Philadelphia, just prior to the Giant/Rockie broomfest.  All the games in Philly were tests of intestinal fortitide - gut-wrenching, seesaw affairs where even when the Mets won it felt like they lost. 

It began on Friday July 4.  Johan Santana was pitching in the last game of a six-game stretch in which the Mets scored a total of only 12 runs, and lost all six games.  Johan was chafed by his soft hitting teammeates and squandering his Run Support Karma left and right.  Santana blew a 2-0 lead when he allowed two 2-out RBI singles in the sixth and Mets ended up losing.  

Then on Saturday July 5, the Mets blew a lead again, this time a 3-0 lead which disappeared with one swing from the fearsome Ryan Howard.  But after the Phillies nudged ahead 4-3 on a two out pinch-hit single from Jayson Werth, the Mets got the most significant hit of their season so far.  It came off the bat of Brian Schneider, an unlikely source.  With the Damion Easley’s and Endy Cavez’s of the team moved off the bench and into the starting lineup due to injuries, the Mets were forced to turn to Schneider as a pinch hitter.  And Schneider delivered big time with a double on a rope into the gap that scored two and put the Mets up for good.  The Mets two out production has been anemic all year, so it was huge of Schneider to come through with a knock like that.

On Sunday July 6 the Mets were one strike away from a 2-0 victory when Billy Wagner let up a two run bomb to Jayson Werth.  But with all the air let out of them, the Mets somehow managed to pull themselves together and fight on.  Joe Smith gritted his way through 2-1/3 scoreless innings to get the Mets more chances.  Fernando Tatis ended up as the 12th innning savior once again with his go ahead homer. The game was truly epic, a 2:50 rain delay kept this game, which started at 1PM, going until almost 9!

To finish the series, the Mets shot ahead of the Phills 10-1 on Monday July 7.  Time to coast?  Hardly.  The Phills came all the way back to 10-9 getting the last two agonizing runs off an ineffective Wagner on a Pedro Feliz single and Carlos Beltran error.  Up to the plate comes that guy again, Jayson Werth.  But this time Wagner reaches down deep and gets Werth to fly out, and the Mets leave Philly winners of 3 of 4 but with no fingernails left.

The rollercoaster Philly series changed something about the Mets.  Somehow they figured out that even when it feels like they just blew the game they still have a chance to win.  That belief that you can always come back when you’ve lost momentum is such an asset to a winning team.  Certainly looking at events now through the lens of the last six games, the Philly series was a turning point for the Mets. Somehow the Mets got their confidence back, somehow they became Rocky AFTER he climbed the steps of the Art Museum.  (Excuse the stolen analogy Philly fans).

That turning point will only remain relevant if the Mets keep winning…hopefully their hot streak will blow through the all star break like a forest fire and keep burning on the other side!

Finally, a quick note to close on Josh Hamilton.  Not a big fan of the Home Run Derby, but Hamilton having his name chanted in Yankee stadium was a powerful moment.  Its a very human emotion to want to embrace someone who has gotten their life together after having big problems.  It gives us everyday people inspiration and the belief that we can conquer the demons in our lives, whatever they may be.  It reminds me of Robert Redford’s Roy Hobbs character in The Natural.  Hobbs’s demon was a black veiled femme fatale, but that’s really just a symbol.  In the real world demons take the shape of drugs and alcohol (in the case of Hamilton), or mental blocks (Rick Ankiel), or arm problems (Kerry Wood) or cancer (Jon Lester).  One of the things that makes baseball special are these stories of overcoming obstacles.

Mark Reichman

Oliver Perez is the owner of the most enigmatic and frustrating arm in the Mets rotation; lately you expect the worst but never know when you might see his dominant side.   Sunday in the “Dirt Match” against the Yankees, Perez was completely in control of the game for seven surprising innings.  (”Dirt Match” is a phrase I’m trying to establish for the final game of a four game series when one team is fighting for the split, “dirt” being less solid footing than “rubber”).  It’s odd how Perez can go from averaging close to a walk an inning with a 5.29 ERA and then suddenly turn it on and scatter three hits and no walks in a big game.  Does it have to be all or nothing, can’t he bottle some of that excellence and just be a capable pitcher most of the time?

I suppose the answer is that Perez has great stuff but can only control it once in a while.  Sunday his location was spot on, it was great watching him frustrate A-Rod in the seventh with a well placed fastball, tempting enough to swing at but a near miss resulting in a mile high popup. Or getting Melky Cabrera to strike out on a breaking pitch that bounced a foot in front of home plate in the fifth.

Jose Reyes continues to confound Mets fans with his childish on-field antics, even as he regains his role as the catalyst at the top of the order.  In the bottom of the sixth and top of the seventh Sunday a “Reyes run” was traded for a Reyes tantrum.  After a manufactured run on a single, wild pitch and sac fly, Reyes had dirt on every part of his uniform from all his sliding and avoiding pickoffs while rounding the bases.  Moments later this commendable hustle is offset by a reaction to a throwing error.  Reyes seemed to feel Carlos Delgado could have done a lot better catching the ball, and a pouting glove-throwing fit ensued.

I actually had the YES version of the game on at that point and it was classic to hear the Yankee broadcasters rip into Reyes.  Michael Kay, never one to let professionalism get in the way of a snappy one liner, shared some rhetorical Q and A with: “is this a hissy fit?” [shows the video of the glove throw] “I think that’s a hissy fit.”  I looked in several dictionaries and they all define a “hissy fit” simply as a tantrum, so I really am impressed that Kay knows enough about the subject to distinguish hissy fits from regular fits even if Noah Webster can’t.  David Cone and Ken Singleton were also more than happy to pile on the “strictly selfish” Reyes, who “still has some maturing to do,” despite “how many years in the big leagues? Five??”  Not that I disagree mind you but the “sour grapes” announcing style is funny.

Of course Reyes also might have cost the Mets the game Saturday when he got picked off straying too far from second to cancel out a threat in a 3-2 nailbiter.  Nevertheless I was displeased with Johan Santana’s calling out of teammates.  A pitcher always has to try to allow at least one fewer run than the opponents, whether that opponent has scored one run or seven.  So for Santana to say he “did his job” by allowing only three runs is false.  On this day his job was to allow only one run because his team would only score two.  An ace of the staff such as Santana should be able to give his team confidence even if the run support is not there.  Santana saying he “did his job” works contrary to the principles of Run Support Karma, which state that complaining about run support makes matters worse.  I think if Santana had only discussed his own responsibility in allowing three runs it’s a lot more inspiring to the offense to want to produce for him than the complaining is.

The two most optimistic things you could say about the Mets are that they are hanging around in the NL East and they do show occasional flashes of brilliance.  Philly continues a cold hitting slide and the Mets, despite a 40-41 mark are now only three games behind their rivals.  Indeed a recent dumbing down of the entire National League has resulted in only four teams in the league possessing a winning record as of tonight.  The door is still ajar for the Mets and they have the skills to open it if they don’t slam it in their own face first. 

Mark Reichman

I live to hate the Yankees and consequently I love the midseason Mets-Yankees “subway” series, but I wonder how does the rest of the world outside of New York feel about these games?  Is it an overhyped matchup of two teams you dislike, or do you find the rivalry makes for compelling drama even if you’re not a fan of either team?  Love to hear what you think sports fans.

I can tell you for me personally, the Yankees have always been the arch enemy.  Like a lot of people I developed my baseball loyalties through my father, but oddly enough, I grew up in a household where the most revered team never existed in my lifetime. My Dad was, and in many ways still is, a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. 

Amazingly, between 1947 and 1956 Brooklyn lost a “subway” World Series to the Yankees five times! And of course tucked in there was the magical year of 1955 where “Dem Bums” from Brooklyn actually defeated the hated Yankees, on an epic complete game from Johnny Podres in a Game 7 at Yankee Stadium.  (Podres recently passed away, may he rest in peace as a champion for eternity).  That’s six matchups between the same two teams in one decade of the World Series.  And the Yanks won two more titles against other teams during the span!

Hard to imagine that level of domination by one team in today’s game, with the one-and-done Marlins and others winning the title left and right. And the fact that Brooklyn was just as dominating to the National League, only to lose in the Series over and over, made the rivalry that much deeper, and 1955 that much sweeter.

Only two years removed from the Miracle of 1955, Brooklyn baseball was uprooted forever as owner Walter O’Malley moved the team to Los Angeles in 1957, an unprecedented, sad and utterly shocking development to Dodgers fans who lost their team along with some of their identity as Brooklynites.  Interestingly, historians now point to an impasse between O’Malley and New York City Construction Coordinator Robert Moses, who wanted to build a stadium in Flushing where Shea Stadium now stands, as the major reason the team departed.  “We’re not from Queens we’re from Brooklyn, and if that’s the best you can do I’m moving to LA!”  Or something to that effect.

Fast forward to December 1969; that’s when I entered the world on the heels of an amazin’ world championship by the “Ya Gotta Believe” Mets of Seaver and McGraw. I grew up in Long Island in a house where the Yankees were “the man”, “the establishment”, “the enemy”, the uptown dandies that thumbed their noses at the rest of the world.  There was a lukewarm appreciation for the Mets, but I didn’t truly understand why my Dad wasn’t passionate about any team.  However in 1984 when Doc Gooden and Daryl Strawberry came up as rookies I was 14 and totally enthralled, and became a die hard Mets fan for life. And in 1986 I had my miracle as well, as the Mets won the title in storied fashion over Bill Buckner and the Red Sox. 

But then in 2000, something happened to me that would up the ante on my Yankee hatred for the rest of my life, and forever align me side by side with my father as a sworn enemy of the Bronx Bombers.  You see, I experienced a subway series of my own, and what it was like to have hopes crushed by the Yankees while the rest of your own city seems to mock you in disgrace.  I was there for the final game, Game 5 at Shea, got to see the Yankees pile onto our mound in celebration on our field, got to see Derek Jeter’s name in lights on the jumbotron announced as the MVP.  And I had the horrible, sinking feeling of being on my team’s own home field while thousands upon thousands of the fans of our bitter rival celebrated in drunken glee, leaving me with nothing to do but quietly pick up my things and make my way through the revelry towards the subway packed with more raucous Yankee fans.

I actually started to laugh, thinking the situation was so bad, it’s almost comical.  By my count that would mean we now need to win two subway series from the Yankees to have the upper hand there, plus 23 more championships overall to have a better record than the Yankees.  Although I’m a very hopeful person I think my best chance of seeing that happen is to be cryogenically frozen alongside Ted Williams.

It’s a long, long uphill climb, who’s first small step is at 1:35 PM this afternoon when the two teams square off at Yankee stadium on the first half of a “subway doubleheader”.  I will always be passionate about this fight, as symbolic of good and evil to me as anything in my world.  I will also look to band together with my Dad, our anti-Yankee sentiment linking our two teams across time. 

And finally, I’m hoping that the first time my Dad and I walk into the new Citi Field next year, through the Jackie Robinson rotunda and through the façade designed to look like the old Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, that he will leave his pain over the Dodgers behind and we will walk into the new stadium as true Met fans together.