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Megdal, referencing Madoff by noting how no one's talking about him, on Harvey's Citi Field debut:
Harvey returns, and Citi Field sounds like Shea
By Howard Megdal 7:51 a.m. | Apr. 15, 2015
The Mets fans in blue Matt Harvey jerseys starting gathering in a Citi Field parking lot a little before 3 p.m., drinking and dreaming.
A workday could not prevent many people from extending the experience of Harvey's first home start of 2015. And though Harvey was far from perfect in his return to the same mound where he started an all star game in 2013, something more significant washed over the 39,489 who ventured to the game, an absurd 6-5 victory for the Mets that ended with two Mets regulars out due to injury and a catcher playing third base.
Harvey allowed Citi Field to sound and feel like Shea Stadium, a place where Mets fans were often disappointed but never quite so fatalistic as they became following a pair of late-season collapses, a place where the name "Madoff" was never uttered anywhere outside the owner's box, and where the Mets were a baseball team, not a financial cautionary tale.
That is the magic of Matt Harvey, and why the Mets are so right to focus so much of their marketing effort on him. Harvey, instantly excellent when most pitchers struggle to adjust to the major leagues. Harvey, even better in his second season. Harvey, somehow with better command and a new pitch following Tommy John surgery this spring.
And so, the Mets' promotional plan revolves around Harvey like an everyday player. Harvey pitching Tuesday. A Harvey t-shirt giveaway Friday night. Harvey pitching again Sunday. If the Mets could get away with using him to close Wednesday and play shortstop Saturday, they would, as long as they could also advertise it. And after all the injuries Tuesday night, maybe they will.
But Harvey does what no player since Carlos Beltran took the called strike that ended the 2006 season could do: he makes Mets fans forget about the losing, and the debt, and the broken promises of ownership. Matt Harvey makes believers of those who watch him.
Even with many fans stuck behind the metal detectors that delay entry to Major League Baseball's parks in 2015, the roar that went up when Harvey took the mound to begin the game had no precedent at the new ballpark, now in its seventh season. Even the highlights of the intervening seasons—R.A. Dickey's Cy Young run, Johan Santana's no-hitter—didn't quite put the team's reduced circumstances out of anybody's mind. It was a diversion, not a path.
And Harvey, too, may be just that. But when he pitches, rising to every occasion, the possibility of pairing Harvey with something more important than an exhibition all star game, or a midyear subway series game against the Yankees, or an effort to sell more tickets to the second home game of 2015 is impossible to put out of one's mind.
Fans stood and cheered Harvey for the entirety of his warmups, for the first pitch—a strike, naturally—and the loud Harvey chants in a half-full Citi Field boomed louder than any of the few sellout crowds in the building's history.
A strikeout, then another. All things seemed possible. The analogue in orange and blue is Dwight Gooden, who never actually pitched a no-hitter for the Mets, and Nolan Ryan, who didn't either, but eventually tallied seven. Don't believe me? Ask Hall of Fame second baseman Ryne Sandberg, now Phillies manager, who threw out a comparison to those two when describing how his hitters should prepare for Harvey prior to the game.
Chase Utley ended perfect game dreams with a home run into the right field stands, a place he's never struggled to reach at Citi Field, but fans didn't boo. Rather, they were shocked, as if the feat itself had been an optical illusion. No matter—Harvey followed with a strikeout of Ryan Howard, who's made a career of hitting right-handed pitchers, with a 98 mile per hour fastball.
For Harvey on this night, it was more about battles than dominance. The Phillies scored again off Harvey in the second and fourth. Phillies pitcher David Buchanan hit a pair of Mets, and Harvey responded, with one pitch planted in Utley's back that brought the crowd to its feet once again, the "Harvey! Harvey!" chants louder than before. Terry Collins was ejected from the game. Everything felt like it mattered in a way few things have since the Mets commenced their six losing seasons at their new home.
There's been a reserve in Mets fans, especially in the new building, that the circumstances of the team has exacerbated. Impact players, whether Jose Reyes or Carlos Beltran or R.A. Dickey, were mostly evaluated in terms of when they'd be leaving. Seasons were endured with hopes of winters to add to the lacking talent base. Most stayed away.
Harvey was a beacon within those times, but now he is a pitcher on a team that's given fans the most reason to hope of any in the Citi Field era. This is not some problem with the building—ask Mets fans of a certain age how Shea Stadium sounded in 1979. And typically, downtrodden franchises require success for this transition.
Matt Harvey, at least for now, allows Mets fans to believe each time he takes the mound that this transition has already happened. And on a night when a pair of Mets left due to injury, Michael Cuddyer and franchise icon David Wright, the celebration continued late into the night, even when Anthony Recker, a catcher, was forced into his first professional action at third base.
The crowd had thinned out by then, Harvey departing after six innings, the rest of the Mets not quite so compelling yet. But not even a home run by Jeff Francoeur could draw out the boos. This from a fan base that in recent years booed Aaron Heilman preemptively when he'd go 2-0 on a hitter.
Nor could the departure of Wright, who voluntarily left the game, dampen spirits, at least in the crowd. Considering Wright played a month with a broken back several years ago, and played most of 2014 with a severe shoulder injury, that was a bad sign, one Collins called "a major problem" after the game.
"If it wasn't major, David Wright wouldn't open his mouth," Collins said with a mixture of regret and pride.
Still, if Wright was down, what was striking as well was how disappointed both Collins and Harvey himself sounded about a start in which Harvey allowed only three runs over six innings, didn't walk a batter, and struck out eight.
"Everyone in this room has had an adrenaline rush at some point, at some time," Collins said. "And it beats you down. From all the hype and stuff he's been through, there has to be a letdown. There has to [be] at some point...I've had too many great pitchers tell me, the first start's easy, the second start's hard. Tonight, we saw with one of the best pitchers in the game, that the second one was hard."
Or as a low-key Harvey said to reporters when it was all finished, "It's not like I'm not ever going to give up a run." |
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/m ... ounds-shea
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