|
A flashback to perhaps, the last time the Mets and Pirates were simultaneously relevant:
Baseball; A Rooky Lefty Helps Pirates Sweep the Mets
By JOSEPH DURSO, Special to The New York Times
Published: September 7, 1990
PITTSBURGH, Sept. 6— Valera Falters Early
Tomlin far outlasted Julio Valera, the 21-year-old rookie selected by the Mets to pitch them into the homestretch of the pennant race while established stars like Ron Darling watched from the bullpen. But Valera, making his second start in a week, was knocked out in the third inning and the Mets did not survive.
''You don't score runs, it doesn't matter,'' said Bud Harrelson, the manager of the Mets. ''I still think we can win. What can I do now? Pray a lot more, I guess.'' ''We did the best we could,'' said Howard Johnson. ''It's not the end of the world. There's still time.''
But the Mets were clearly shocked at the turn of events this week. Tim Teufel put it this way: ''Our fundamentals broke down. We didn't hang in there. We saw our offense at its lowest point, and that flowed over into other parts of our game.''
Succession of Troubles
For the Mets, this was what Harrelson calls ''reality,'' life in the thick of a pennant race with high stakes and low results. And the reality of the situation was that Harrelson's Mets were reeling from one disaster to another while time was running out.
The Pirates pounced on Valera tonight from the start, rocked him with two runs in the first inning and three in the third, and ended his second game in the big leagues after 57 pitches. The Mets, meanwhile, were watching or waving at a full repertory of breaking balls, sizzling fastballs and offspeed pitches slung at them by Tomlin with a sweeping sidearm delivery that seemed to come from somewhere out near first base.
For four innings, the Mets didn't even get a hit. Four of them even struck out, including honchos like Darryl Strawberry, Johnson and Teufel. They seemed as powerless against the rookie left-hander as they had been in their three previous losses against established left-handers.
''I don't know what it is,'' Miller said. ''When we see a left-hander, it's not that we think: ''Oh, no, not another one of those.' That's the weird thing about it.''
Weird or not, the Mets were muzzled one more time by one more left-hander while the Pirates pounced on the right-handed Valera.
Pirates Attack Quickly
Wally Backman opened the home half of the first by hitting a high chop near second base, and he beat it out for a single when Tommy Herr's hurried throw pulled Teufel off the bag. Jay Bell drew a walk, and the omens were there.
Next came Andy Van Slyke, who pulled a sharp grounder to the right side that Herr bobbled for an error, and now the Mets' rookie was surrounded by the ultimate problem: bases loaded, nobody out, Bobby Bonilla and Barry Bonds swinging bats.
He coped with the danger nobly for a moment when Bonilla grounded into a double play. But one run crossed, and another quickly followed when Bonds singled deep to the left side of the diving backhand of Johnson.
Valera kept peace for one more inning, but in the third he faced five batters, got none of them out and was gone.
Van Slyke led the charge with a double to left-center. Bonilla doubled down the left-field line, and the toll rose to 3-0. Bonds was safe in a photo finish on a grounder wide of first base. Sid Bream lined a single to right for another run. Jeff King drilled a single to left for yet another. And Harrelson walked slowly to the mound to rescue his rookie pitcher. |
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/07/sport ... tes&st=nyt
Harrelson: His Own Man?
By JOE SEXTON
Published: March 11, 1991
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla.— BUD HARRELSON does not appear alone in the photograph on the cover of the team's 1991 information guide, although he is not joined by any current member of the Mets or their front office. Instead, he is accompanied, basically, by a ghost, for it is a faded, grainy reproduction of the late Gil Hodges's profile that is peering over Harrelson's left shoulder.
It is an odd, if not an outright strange, touch.
Harrelson, as well, does not have the only locker in his office here at the team's spring training complex. Doc Edwards, the dugout coach, has a stall right next to Harrelson's, and he can often be found alone in the office, smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper.
It is a peculiar, if not entirely inexplicable, arrangement.
"Some people don't like to eat alone," said one longtime and respected regular for the Mets. "Maybe Buddy doesn't like to manage alone."
The wisecrack, of course, could be interpreted as a cheap shot. And the presence of Hodges in the photograph and Edwards in the office could amount to nothing substantially more than a self-deprecating style on Harrelson's part.
But the crack actually has its origins in a longstanding and widespread clubhouse curiosity, one that for more than a couple of players has deepened into an open cynicism about Harrelson's independence as a baseball thinker and field manager.
As a result, one of the spring's dominant and explosive questions for the Mets is this: Is Bud Harrelson his own man? It is a question asked by players, speculated about by those outside the team and dismissed disdainfully by Harrelson himself.
"It's important for him to have a grip on the clubhouse," said Ron Darling, the pitcher with more years of service with the team than any other current player on the Mets. "But that has to be nurtured."
Harrelson's grip appears at best partial as he begins his first full season directing the Mets, a contingent famous in recent years for its underachievement on the field and bellyaching in the locker room and newspapers.
There are corners of the clubhouse suspicious of Harrelson's tactical soundness as a manager, convinced that he lacks all genius for the unorthodox or improvisational, as well as the kind of outsized personality that could by force of ego lift a team to exceptional levels of performance. This perspective, at its most savagely sarcastic, portrays Harrelson as an acquiescent tool of the front office. To this contingent, Harrelson's recent rethinking of the lineup he had spent the off season devising amounted to a retreat from his first major strategic decision of the spring.
There are, however, numerous players nearly defiant in their support of Harrelson. They consider him immensely dedicated and sufficiently communicative, as well as absolutely entitled to a full year to craft his personal stamp and then apply it. To this collection, Harrelson's willingness to consider adapting his lineup according to the preferencess of individual players reflect his skills as a diplomat and open-minded manager.
"You're always going to have second-guessers, and you are always going to have guys who will say good things regardless," said Howard Johnson, the Mets' shortstop, who has returned Harrelson's reliance on him with a public faith in his manager. "I consider him a players' manager. And any players griping or questioning him behind his back should spend more time worrying about themselves."
Harrelson's own position is that he hasn't himself spent many minutes agonizing over the perceptions and politics of his clubhouse. He was skeptical of a reporter's claims as to the scope and seriousness of the doubts concerning him. And he pointed to the effort and enthusiasm of the spring training workouts to date as evidence that whatever grousing did exist was irrelevant to the product he was going to produce come April.
"I'm an organization man," Harrelson said while overseeing infield drills one day last week. "I think that's a strength. What I see more than anything else this spring are guys going the extra mile. I don't remember it being that way."
There are players, though, who can't forget the way it was last season, and the most bothersome images are of Harrelson, who had just one complete year of minor-league managing before taking over last May, repeatedly turning to Edwards, who had managed Cleveland for almost two seasons, in the course of a game for advice and direction, provoking doubts among some players about who was making the critical decisions.
Those questions have manifested themselves most sinisterly in Barry Lyons's angry understanding of the roots of his demise with the Mets. Lyons, who began last season as the No. 1 catcher for the Mets before injuring his back and then being sent to the minors for good, said in an emotional and profane outburst here Friday that he believed Edwards was behind his demotion and then departure to the Dodgers.
When asked about accusations from various Mets that Edwards's input was far too great to be too healthy, Lyons said bluntly, "I've heard that."
Harrelson will hear none of it. He argued with animation but not anger that he relied quite significantly on his entire coaching staff for information, experience and advice, and that he considered that both proper and intelligent.
"What am I supposed to be, the expert on every single category?" Harrelson asked. "Of course, I'm going to make all the final decisions, but I have people to remind me of things. I doubt that I'm getting too much advice. All managers lean on their people. Otherwise, what are they there for? To be figureheads?"
A figurehead of sorts, though, is what certain Mets firmly believe Harrelson is, his appointment of a piece with the front office's self-styled cleaning out of the clubhouse. Davey Johnson is gone, Darryl Strawberry is gone, Bob Ojeda is gone and Kevin Elster is poised for an exit.
"I don't put any stock in that," Frank Cashen, the general manager of the Mets, said of the theory that he had installed Harrelson to have easier access to the manager and more direct control of the team. "His appointment wasn't to satisfy any organization or individual aims. It was to win. This year will be more of an example of what Bud Harrelson is. He's going to be his own man."
But what kind of manager is that? Harrelson last season was a strategically conventional manager, one all but doctrinaire in his allegiance to "the book" and "the numbers." It led to debatable pitching changes, difficult to fathom pinch-hit assignments and a confusion in the clubhouse that bordered on the anarchic. The September promotion of Julio Valera, a prospect who endured a nightmarish start in a pivotal contest against the Pirates, was seen by many Mets as either a huge tactical blunder by Harrelson or an example of his willingness to obediently accede to the desires of management.
Harrelson's record of 71-49 after taking over for the dismissed Johnson profited from the rampage the Mets went on in June and early July, a binge of 27 triumphs in 33 games. Apart from that sequence, the Mets were only 44-43 under Harrelson. Interestingly, or maybe tellingly, the Mets from the All-Star Game break on were 14-25 in games decided by one or two runs.
"My style is more basic than anything else," Harrelson said. "I'm not Whitey Herzog. I'm not Tommy Lasorda. I'm not Davey Johnson. But I've been around the game long enough to understand that the game is mostly made up of standard situations, some creative additions and pure guts. And I think your guts get better the more you manage. And the public acceptance of those guts gets better."
Harrelson is at once a persuasively personable and acutely defensive personality, his relations with New York reporters characterized by a polite, but frequently strained neutrality. He perpetually answers questions by turning them around on reporters, and is prone to sizing up issues and people as either "positive" or "negative."
"The game, the manager's job, it will harden you," Darling said. "I think Buddy has become harder. There is so much pressure for the manager to be right all the time that they begin to believe they are."
Harrelson certainly is convinced that there was a lot wrong with the Mets of recent seasons. He said he had been aghast at the sorry state of the team's fundamentals and left red-faced by its behavior off the field. He said it would change, and that he would not bother to be tender about the transformation process. There is already talk among the players of Harrelson electronically locking off the televisions in the Shea Stadium clubhouse at the start of games and altering the menu of food available to the players.
"It's my privilege to change things," Harrelson said. "We did a lot of things that weren't classy, that weren't professional, attitudes off the field that I was embarrassed by.
"As for on the field, we faced ball clubs all the time that were not as talented as us, but more sound, and that ended up kicking the stuffing out of us. How about us for once kicking some rearends because we do everything right?"
Harrelson said he was braced for the size of the task and the potential resistance both open and clandestine he stands to be hit with.
"There were a couple of weeks there last year that got tough," Harrelson said. "I found it consuming, and I got tired. I was a vegetable a lot with my brain. I got haggard.
"But I'm going to be a lot less sensitive than I was last year. I felt the repercussions in the clubhouse, and it bothered me. I won't let it this year. All I can do is ask my players to give me 100 percent, for that's what I'm giving them. If we win, we will have won as a team. If we screw up, I'm going to get my rearend fired." |
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/11/sport ... tes&st=nyt
|
Clemente tripled for the Pirates only hit in the first Mets game I ever attended. 
[youtube]_vUhSYLRw14[/youtube]
.jpg)
They met while Janet was filming Angels in the Outfield. Ralph reportedly dated Jane Russell, Ava Gardner and Marilyn Monroe, though I couldn't find any pictures of those encounters.
.jpg)
