To sound like a Madison Avenue hack flak from days gone by, it’s a whole new ballgame in Flushing.
This Metsian year has taken on the all-too-familiar hue of 2009 and 2010: some early hope, a crippling wave of injuries and a total capitulation to the rest of the NL once the temperature finds itself north of 85. July and August have been the cruelest months the last couple of years, as frontliners have fallen and the reserves turned out to be ill-equipped and ill-prepared to fill the breach. In the past, we fans were given bromides from management (“Aww hell…we’ll be OK once my gangstas come back – Carlos and Johan and Jose and Jason and Frankie. We’ll be ok.” – J. Manuel) and players (“We miss these guys and it’s tough to play without ‘em, but we have to until they come back.” – D. Wright) alike. Their eyes told us a different story. With every post-game locker interview or press conference, it seemed we fans could see deeper into the secret hearts of Jerry, David, Omar and whoever else was talking and could know what they know: the big guys weren’t coming back. Everybody could talk the brave game, spout the current cliché and platitude, then go on the field and make it a lie. It was plain as day: the slump of the shoulder, the hang of the head, the droop of the lip. Without the big buffaloes in the lineup or on the hill, the guys all knew they were done and they showed us exactly that.
This year, the facts aren’t any different. We haven’t seen Johan Santana all year. We haven’t seen Ike Davis since mid-May. We hadn’t seen David Wright from mid-May until a couple of weeks ago. And now, we won’t see Daniel Murphy until February, and won’t see Jose Reyes until after Labor Day, in all probability. We’ve said goodbye to Frankie Rodriguez and Carlos Beltran. The Manuel Mets would throw in the towel right about…here.
This one has a different flavor, though – the Mets are taking what the Baseball Gods are dishing out and actually fighting back. Last night’s (8/8) thoroughly enjoyable and intermittently maddening walkoff win over the Padres is – if not proof — symbolic of that. There are still a bunch of hungry guys on this squad, including Jason Bay and David Wright. There are still a bunch of guys with something to prove. There are still a bunch of guys who look like they want to be here next year: that’s a rare thing in Met-land. Watching the likes of Justin Turner, Reuben Tejada, Scott Hairston, Lucas Duda and Jason Pridie scratch and claw their way through this stretch and Terry Collins instill that kind of ethic in them reminds me why I started watching in the first place.
I was at a family wedding on Saturday and one of my cousins – one of those Yankee fans who never has anything good to say about the Mets, even when they are good – says to me, “Oh you gotta like this team this year.” I couldn’t help but agree. Look, they’ll probably finish within the fierce gravitational pull of .500. Watching them make every effort possible to escape it may make for the most fun of all this season.
The fact that this team competes to the 27th out, day in and day out, makes them entertaining to watch no matter what the result. They give their all with the ability that they have and at the very least project a winning attitude. Their cup is literally half full and not half empty.