Mets’ Dog Day Afternoon: A Laugh To keep From Crying

“Contenders hate August. It’s hot, sticky and uncomfortable: the pennant races don’t start for another month. Bad teams, like the Mets, hate August. It’s hot, sticky and uncomfortable: the season doesn’t end for another month.” — Maury Allen on the 1968 Mets (just before Gil Hodges’ first heart attack), from the book The Incredible Mets

August is here. This is where – as my friend Jason Fry so aptly put it yesterday – maybes go to die. Hopes that are hatched in April, May and June find themselves wretchedly withered in the humidity of the eighth month. Here sit the Mets. The team was lucky enough to catch a breather last night (8/3) and have an off-day today, so they have time to shake the cobwebs and try to focus on the task at hand, namely trying to sweep the Braves out of Citi Field this weekend. I will make no predictions as to the outcome, other than to say this will probably be the Mets’ last stand: anything but three wins in a row will put a silver dagger into the heart of this vampire season (the Mets are dead, but still walk among us). Any student of the history of the Mets – especially those of us who have lived through a large chunk of it – will be unsurprised if it actually happens, simply more evidence of the cosmic jesting of which the Mets find themselves the butt more often than not.

If you live or work in the New York megalopolis and come into contact with many Yankee fans – and really, how can you avoid it? – you’ve heard “The Mets are a joke” at least once or twice in the last 50 years. Maybe the secret is to out-joke the universe. Let’s get in the first shot to possibly disarm the Baseball Gods. I think some puns are in order. Take the follies of the right side of the infield the last few nights, for instance: they make me want to Turner the page and dropkick Murphy. And though he’s been called upon to Wright the ship, some of David’s throws wouldn’t even be caught by Goliath. Meanwhile, we’ve experienced the shock of the Bay and seen some outfield plays become a Pagan ritual. Sometimes, you have to wonder “Gee, what’s a Met fan to Duda?” when the catcher let’s one get through the T-Hole. Some of these guys should be sent out to St. Paulino, but some give us a genuine sense of Pridie.

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I’ll put a Capuano on these jokes by recounting one of my favorite stories from the glory days. It’s August, 1973. The Mets are about to make their historic pennant run and on a hot afternoon, an agent pays a visit to manager Yogi Berra’s Shea Stadium office. The agent swears up and down he has the answer to all the team’s problems, a tremendous young hitter. “Let’s take a look,” says Yogi. They walk out to the field and amid the pitchers doing their pre-game stretching; all Berra sees is a horse standing at home plate with a bat in his teeth. “Hey! Whaddaya tryin’ to pull, here?” an angry Yogi snarls. “That’s a HORSE!” “I know,” says the agent, “But he’s a fantastic hitter! Give him a shot.”

Yogi – thinking hard – says, “Sure, OK. Hey, Tom! Come over here.” Ace Tom Seaver trots over to Yogi who sticks a ball in his hand and whispers in his ear, “Pitch to that horse like it’s Game Seven. Don’t hold anything back, give it all you got.”

“Right, Skip. You got it.”

Seaver takes the mound, winds up and cuts loose with a 98 MPH hummer with late movement. The horse swats it over the left-field fence. “Try the deuce!” shouts Berra. Seaver drops a classic noon-to-six yakker on the poor animal, who promptly loses it in the right-field bullpen. “Changeup!” yells Yogi. Tom takes something off and the horse hits an absolute bomb to dead-center.

“This is the damndest thing I ever seen,” marvels Berra. “Let’s get this horse signed up!” So GM Bob Scheffing draws up a contract, the horse drops the bat and puts a pen in his teeth and signs the deal. Yogi puts him in the leadoff spot and gets the agent a ticket right next to the first-base dugout. Jerry Koosman sets down the Pirates one-two-three in the top of the first. Yogi takes up his spot in the corner of the dugout, next to where the agent is sitting. The horse steps in in the bottom half against Dock Ellis. On a first-pitch fastball, the horse lashes a laser-beam to right center that two-hops the wall. The horse stands stock-still at the plate. A frantic Yogi turns to the agent and screams, “Why don’t he run?!?!”

Calmly, the agents says, “Hey, if he could run, I’da brought him to Aqueduct.”

Be good to your waitresses and try the veal: I’m here all week…