Wilmer Flores is stronger than dirt

“When we’re all gone and Suhboda [sic] stays and he commences to hit balls over buildings, who says he won’t lead this club to ten or a dozen pennants?” – Casey Stengel, spring training, 1965

The Mets, sudden winners and the current innamorata of New York City, have never lacked for “folk heroes” – players who were taken into the collective bosom of the fan base, regardless of anyone’s particular ability on the field. It started with Marvelous Marv Throneberry, who became the living, breathing symbol of the legendary futility that was the 1962 Mets. It transferred to Ron Hunt, the scrappy, modestly talented second baseman who gave a faint hint of better days ahead. It was hammered home by the emergence of Ron Swoboda. These were all guys the fans fell in love with. Back in those hazy days of the early-‘60s, the Mets were a (m)adman’s dream: a rag-tag bunch, diametrically opposed to the ultra-successful, ultra-conservative team across town. Where the Yankees had Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and Whitey Ford and Tony Kubek, and won the pennant just about every year, the Mets had these guys and lost just about every day. The Mets were the anti-Yankees and as such were a perfect breeding ground for imperfect players. The Mets were the team of the folk, and the folk knew that one day, one of their own would help them get to that far off promised land of a World Series. As we all know, of course, “one day” came sooner than anybody could have imagined.

Swoboda was the one. He looked like Li’l Abner and played like him a lot of the time, as well. Yes, he hit some prodigious homeruns, but he struck out an awful lot and had a tendency to fall down in the outfield when trying to corral lazy flies – thus earning him his enduring nickname “Rocky.” The fans took to him like he was Elvis. One bedsheet banner took a phrase from a laundry soap campaign of the day: “Ron Swoboda is stronger than dirt!” Heck, he even graced the cover of Sports Illustrated in ’68, trumpeting the emergence of the young Mets – the “Youth Of America,” in Stengel’s famous phraseology. Of course, by the time the Mets actually did get good, Swoboda had been relegated to the status of a platoon player. Oh he would have his moments – witness his two-homer game vs. the Cardinals in September 1969, the night Steve Carlton struck him out twice and the rest of his teammates another 17 times. And of course, there was that catch… But in general, he was a part-timer, whose shortcomings manager Gil Hodges didn’t find amusing at all.

On July 29 of this year, the Mets and their fans discovered a new folk hero. This is a guy who tried his damnedest while being played out of position as a shortstop, who had limited range and who just could not turn a double play consistently. He heard the wrath of fans who’d had enough and were in no mood for another Rocky. Yes, the kid might hit a little, but where are you gonna play him? On the 29th, though, that all changed. Wilmer Flores, having heard he’d been traded to Milwaukee, stood at shortstop that night and cried. He cried because the fans – so hard on him and critical in May – were giving him a series of standing ovations. He cried because he would be leaving the only organization – the only employer – he’d ever known. He cried because he knew he was a part of something brewing in the biggest City of all. He cried because he cared, most of all, because he cared to be here, with this team at this time. And when the trade was scuttled after all, both sides of the equation – Flores and the fans – were overjoyed. In his next start, against the big, bad Nationals of Washington, DC, he got a standing ovation for his first at-bat. He got a more sustained standing ovation for a diving stop at second base. And he got the biggest ovation of his life when he hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the twelfth. Those two days sealed Flores in the hearts of Met fans everywhere and if this season does turn out to be something special, we all will point to that July 31 game as the emotional equivalent of Swoboda’s World Series catch.

We love our folk heroes around here.

Follow me on Twitter @CharlieHangley.