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Pulling Shakespeare out of My Ass

AG/DC Oct 11 2008 09:47 PM

A one-man play starring Wally Matthews. Mets are legends in their own minds Wallace Matthews 9:29 PM EDT, October 11, 2008 There's a feeling around the Mets that somehow they are the uncrowned champions of the National League, the best team with the worst luck, or some such nonsense. They tell themselves they should have been in the 2006 World Series, and that they were by far the best team in the NL East in 2007, and that everybody knows they should be in the playoffs right now. The Mets, not those pretenders from Philadelphia, should be duking it out with Joe Torre's Dodgers. They think they're a lot closer than they really are to where they want to be. They rely on subject-changing cliches such as "we spent more days in first place than any other team" and "we competed right to the end," but rather than obscuring the truth, they make it more obvious. When baseball's truly good teams play their best baseball, the Mets play their worst. Or they don't play at all. This is my head. This tale of Mets Greatness Denied is a work of fiction, a tale told by an idiot, as Shakespeare wrote, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. If the Mets think what has happened to them in their recent history is mere coincidence, then they are doomed to repeat it, again and again, or until Fred Wilpon gets tired of wasting his money on another failed regime and cleans house once again. But truly, there are no quick fixes and no easy answers for this team. Their mouths and attitude have elevated them into a stratosphere that requires immediate results and precludes the patience to wait for the likes of Fernando Martinez and Nick Evans and Bobby Parnell and Jon Niese to become everyday performers. The performance of their front office and scouting department, even with a relatively blank check from ownership, does little to inspire confidence that they can buy their way out of this mess, either. In the Mets-free NL playoffs, several things have become abundantly clear to the objective mind. First of all, the Mets finished behind the Phillies for a very good reason. They weren't as good as Philadelphia. Period. Three games ahead after the final regular-season game doesn't even begin to tell the story of how superior the Phillies are to the Mets. Secondly, even if the Mets had lucked up and nipped the Brewers for the wild-card spot on the last day of the season, by now they would be out of the playoffs, vowing revenge for next year and making excuses for how, once again, the Best Team in the National League made an early exit. And that kind of thinking, my friends, would have been a recipe for a fourth straight disaster in 2009. Watching the Phillies beat the Brewers in the Division Series, and take a 2-0 lead on the Dodgers in the NLCS only confirms the suspicion the Mets are more than just a minor tweak or two from what they believe to be their entitlement. The first step toward conquering a problem, of course, is admitting you have one. The Mets failed to see a problem after losing in the NLCS to the 83-win Cardinals in 2006. They went into 2007 assuming they were the better team and put it all down to bad luck. Then they collapsed in 2007 and put it down to overconfidence and that "understandable" lack of motivation that comes with getting a big lead early, then sleeping the rest of the season. They went into 2008 assuming that once again, they were the best team in the league. The addition of Johan Santana in the offseason would only cement their rightful place atop the NL. So here we are in October, watching teams the Mets certainly believe are not as good as them, just luckier, continue to play meaningful baseball games. And somewhere, you know there are players and team executives thinking, "That ought to be us." Um, no, it oughtn't. The unvarnished truth about this incarnation of the Mets, the $140-million All-Star Revue that disappears along with the warm weather, is this: They now have played a total of three absolutely, positively must-win games. The first was Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS. The second was the 2007 season finale against the Florida Marlins. The third was this season's curtain-dropper against the same underfinanced Triple-A outfit. They lost all three. That is not by accident, any more than it is by accident that for the past two seasons, the Mets have finished behind the Phillies, a team they arrogantly dismissed in not one, but two preseasons. This September, as the floor was opening up beneath them once again, even as fiery a competitor as David Wright was beginning to lapse into the kind of excuse-making and justification that only ensures eventual failure. "This is nothing like ," he would insist after every loss. "We're just falling into a rut at the wrong time of the season." The Mets always seem to fall into that rut at the wrong time of the season, the time when good teams play their best. Still, they go on, believing they deserve better, railing at the injustice of it all, shaking their heads and searching for reasons why once again, the postseason goes on without them. The reason, although simple, is one the Mets will never think of and will never accept. Once again, they simply aren't good enough.

smg58 Oct 12 2008 07:53 AM Re: Pulling Shakespeare out of My Ass

There's a feeling around the Mets that somehow they are the uncrowned champions of the National League, the best team with the worst luck, or some such nonsense. And your evidence for this is what? They tell themselves they should have been in the 2006 World Series, and that they were by far the best team in the NL East in 2007, and that everybody knows they should be in the playoffs right now. They do? Does anybody else get that vibe? They think they're a lot closer than they really are to where they want to be. They rely on subject-changing cliches such as "we spent more days in first place than any other team" and "we competed right to the end," but rather than obscuring the truth, they make it more obvious. Agrred, those were lame attempts at rationalizing the situation, but that doesn't imply the sense of entitlement that Matthews is suggesting. If the Mets think what has happened to them in their recent history is mere coincidence, then they are doomed to repeat it, again and again, or until Fred Wilpon gets tired of wasting his money on another failed regime and cleans house once again. And your evidence that that's what the Mets are thinking is... But truly, there are no quick fixes and no easy answers for this team. Or for any other team who's not still playing. Their mouths and attitude have elevated them into a stratosphere that requires immediate results and precludes the patience to wait for the likes of Fernando Martinez and Nick Evans and Bobby Parnell and Jon Niese to become everyday performers. I would agree that the Mets rush their prospects along too quickly, but Murphy at least has turned out well. And is there a New York sports franchise that's less insistent on immediate results? Certainly not in baseball. First of all, the Mets finished behind the Phillies for a very good reason. They weren't as good as Philadelphia. Period. Three games ahead after the final regular-season game doesn't even begin to tell the story of how superior the Phillies are to the Mets. They weren't as good. They did (and do) have a superior offense, but the Phillies have a great bullpen and the Mets a terrible one, and that affects a lot of close games. I'd say three games tells the story pretty well, though. Secondly, even if the Mets had lucked up and nipped the Brewers for the wild-card spot on the last day of the season, by now they would be out of the playoffs, vowing revenge for next year and making excuses for how, once again, the Best Team in the National League made an early exit. Because the Cubs, who would have been their opponent, left little doubt in their opening round performance of their superior ability and character. Watching the Phillies beat the Brewers in the Division Series, and take a 2-0 lead on the Dodgers in the NLCS only confirms the suspicion the Mets are more than just a minor tweak or two from what they believe to be their entitlement. Who's said anything about entitlement? Yes, it will take more than a minor tweak to make their bullpen good again. What's your point? The first step toward conquering a problem, of course, is admitting you have one. The Mets failed to see a problem after losing in the NLCS to the 83-win Cardinals in 2006. They went into 2007 assuming they were the better team and put it all down to bad luck. And your evidence for this is what? That they didn't sign Barry Zito? If anything, you could argue that the Mets would have been much better off if they'd done absolutely nothing than make the deals that they made in the 06-07 offseason. They went into 2008 assuming that once again, they were the best team in the league. The addition of Johan Santana in the offseason would only cement their rightful place atop the NL. If he wants to say that it takes more than bringing in a star player to cover multiple flaws in a team, he's right. But he seems to be getting at something else, and it's not clear what. And somewhere, you know there are players and team executives thinking, "That ought to be us." I doubt that. The unvarnished truth about this incarnation of the Mets, the $140-million All-Star Revue that disappears along with the warm weather, is this: They now have played a total of three absolutely, positively must-win games. The first was Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS. The second was the 2007 season finale against the Florida Marlins. The third was this season's curtain-dropper against the same underfinanced Triple-A outfit. Weren't the Marlins above .500? They lost all three. And three games is such a representative sample that it guarantees a continuation of the trend for the indefinite future. That is not by accident, any more than it is by accident that for the past two seasons, the Mets have finished behind the Phillies, a team they arrogantly dismissed in not one, but two preseasons. They did? Once again, they simply aren't good enough. So are any of you aware of a Met, or a Met supporter, who actually disputes this?

Frayed Knot Oct 12 2008 08:35 AM

Yeah I read that this morning. Nothing like writing a piece which starts with the conclusion and then makes whatever assumptions are necessary to back it up.

holychicken Oct 12 2008 10:34 AM

Does anyone have access to a sports article that is worse than that one? I would love to read it.

Rockin' Doc Oct 12 2008 11:07 AM

Entitlement? Matthews obviously got the Mets team and ownership confused with that team in the Bronx.

metsguyinmichigan Oct 12 2008 11:27 AM

Wallace wears Yankees pajamas with JETER 2 written on the back with marker. What an idiot.

G-Fafif Oct 12 2008 12:09 PM

The grain of truth in Matthews' admittedly idiotic article is the Mets, I believe, have spent two years trying to make up what management seems to perceive as a one-game deficit: the one game they lost to the Cardinals for the pennant. Signing Moises Alou; shuffling non-entities around the bullpen; not making allowances for the age-driven deterioration of the four- and five-spots in the rotation; depending on injury-riddled players to heal and resume playing at their highest level; plugging in a pair of mediocre catchers this year; never taking seriously the hole at second base. I don't know that that's "entitlement," but I do think it indicates a reticence to address a reality that this team has been more than one game away from the World Series. Santana was a big and great move, but you're still stuck with a team that has decidedly fallen off from when it was, literally, one game from the World Series. It indicates a lot of short-term, "we just need to win one more game" fixes. If the Phillies, plenty talented and definitely deeper than the Mets, were as great as Matthews says, they would have finished ten games up these last two years. It may be [url=http://faithandfear.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2008/9/30/3907887.html]a half-baked theory on my part[/url] but that would make it about 50% closer to fully baked than Matthews'. In Newsday's Shea Goodbye special section, Matthews penned a [url=http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-spswally285861680sep28,0,7767878.column]heartfelt tribute[/url] to the old ballpark, remembering his childhood trips there with great fondness and displaying unusual (versus the standard claptrap in local media) insight into the appeal of the park and the team as they both stood in the 1960s. Toward the very end, he betrays bizarre bitterness -- disappointed that they fell off after 1969, angered that they went to the trouble of winning in '86 -- and we get a little peek inside a very tortured soul. ]I had to look up the date - Aug. 14, 1964 - on a Web site, but I can remember the day as if it were yesterday. The Mets played the Phillies in what used to be known as a "twi-night" doubleheader, two more losses in what would turn out to be a 109-loss season. But the results didn't matter. Some guy named Ed Kranepool hit two home runs in the nightcap and my brothers and I figured he must be one of the best players in all of baseball. That was my first visit to Shea Stadium, and the place has never looked better than it did through 7-year-old eyes that day: the dizzyingly high escalators, the dazzling blue sky, the seats that went on forever and the impossibly green grass so far below. I'm told I am the only man in New York who will miss the stinking, rusting junkheap along the banks of the lovely open sewer known as the Flushing River after they close it down, but I don't believe that. I'm just one of the few who is not ashamed to admit it. After all, that stinking, rusting - and did I mention noisy? - junkheap was my field of dreams. It may be a dump now, and it may have been a dump then, but to me and those of my generation, it will always be what Bob Murphy told us it was: Big Shea. Beautiful Shea. Not a bad seat in the house. If you're in the neighborhood, stop in for the second game. Plenty of good seats left. What did we know from beautiful? What did we know from good seats? Thank heavens, we had never heard of luxury boxes or PSLs. If we had, we wouldn't have believed it any more than we would have believed that within five years, a man would walk on the moon. All we knew was that there was a ballfield down there, and a ballgame, and a team we loved despite its flaws, which were many. We could see the game fine and the prices were reasonable. Even into the 1970s, five dollars bought train fare, a seat in the upper deck, a hot dog, a scorecard and a day to remember. That's how much it cost me to see Willie Mays - in a Mets uniform! - in 1972. Aside from the prices, much of that is still true. So tell me, what exactly is wrong with the place? And why does it have to go? The answer, sadly, is because it does not "generate enough revenue" to keep the Wilpons happy, or offer "the amenities" modern sports fans have come to expect and value, even above the quality of play on the field. It wasn't always thus. In 1964, the Mets truly were New York's blue-collar team, loved by its blue-collar fans, the ones who swore they'd never watch baseball again after being jilted by the Dodgers and Giants. To my brothers and me, sons of a Brooklyn Dodgers fan who considered rooting for the Yankees like rooting for Khrushchev, the so-called Cathedral of Baseball up in the Bronx was enemy territory, dingy and old-fashioned and faintly snooty, the kind of place sissy kids from Westchester and Connecticut went with their bow tie-wearing fathers. The kind of place we wouldn't be caught dead in. "You want a knish, go to Shea," a grumpy Yankee Stadium vendor said to a friend of mine in the 1960s. "This is the home of champions." The Yankees could have their stadium and their championships. We took the Mets and the knishes. In fact, before I became a sportswriter, I had been in the place only twice - once for the Ali-Norton fight, and the second time, admittedly, for a Yankees game, but only because Tom Seaver was pitching for the other team. He was going for his 300th win, and in case you hadn't heard, he got it. To me, Yankee Stadium was never more than a workplace. Shea Stadium was a playground. Yankee Stadium was Lincoln Center. Shea was Coney Island. And that 1964 season, to my mind, was the greatest in the history of the park. In May, the Mets played a 23-inning game against the Giants, the second game of a doubleheader, no less. They lost. Of course. On Father's Day, Jim Bunning pitched a perfect game. The Mets lost. Of course. In July, you had the All-Star Game, and Ron Hunt - a Met! - started at second base. And in August, I saw my first game there - and my second. The Mets lost both, of course, but who cared? The sights and sounds and smells of the place are permanently etched into the memory: The Serval Zippers building, the huge neon Delta Air Lines sign, the incredibly ornate RKO Keith's movie house on Main Street in Flushing, all visible beyond the outfield fence. The jets roaring, either on their way up or down but always, it seemed, directly overhead. To us, it seemed as if great, mystical things always happened there. In 1967, a fastball left the hand of Nolan Ryan, glanced off the bat of Johnny Bench and somehow wound up under our loge seats, where my brother Chris came up with it. We saw Seaver and Koosman and Gentry and Grote and Jones and Clendenon and Harrelson. Those were our Mets. The 1969 championship was our championship. Shea Stadium was our ballpark. Admittedly, after that miracle season, the place never seemed quite the same. The crowds grew more demanding of victory, more impatient with defeat. Gil Hodges died, Seaver was exiled to Cincinnati, Banner Day was abolished, Karl Ehrhardt - the guy with the silly Oktoberfest hat and the perfect sign, it seemed, for any occasion - was run out of the ballpark by the new, crass Mets ownership. They put up some cheesy apple behind the wall and brought in mercenaries like Hernandez, Knight and Carter to bully their way to a second world championship. Soon, Shea, too, became nothing more than a workplace, and a not very pleasant one at that. When I look around it now, I can see why so many will be glad to see the place go. It is dirty and smelly, rusting and noisy, and to a generation brought up on iPods, HDTV and luxury suites, hopelessly antiquated. But to me, it's always 1964 there, when the park was new, the fans and players relatively innocent, the ballpark experience what it originally was intended to be. Fun.

TheOldMole Oct 12 2008 02:14 PM

SMG nails it.

AG/DC Oct 12 2008 02:27 PM

What I like about is the over-used Shakespeare quote he's so hot to get in there doesn't really make sense when applied to the Mets. But, on second read, it seems to apply to his article. If he thought game 162 was the only must-win game they had, he wasn't paying attention. I mean, almost every team's season but one ends by losing a must-win game.

Centerfield Oct 13 2008 08:15 AM Re: Pulling Shakespeare out of My Ass

Asswipe wrote: The unvarnished truth about this incarnation of the Mets, the $140-million All-Star Revue that disappears along with the warm weather, is this: They now have played a total of three absolutely, positively must-win games. The first was Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS. The second was the 2007 season finale against the Florida Marlins. The third was this season's curtain-dropper against the same underfinanced Triple-A outfit. Forget everything else, but wasn't Game 6 of the 2006 NLCS kind of important too?

AG/DC Oct 13 2008 08:41 AM

As were game 161 from both the 2007 and 2008 seasons.

Vince Coleman Firecracker Oct 13 2008 09:37 AM

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