I’m a strict constructionist when it comes to the two seasons: baseball and off. If it’s not baseball season, then something’s off. It’s why, when I calculate the Baseball Equinox every December [1], the end point I plot for our long winter’s journey across the sunless sky is the first pitch of the first game of the regular season. That’s when we’re fully ensconced where we’re supposed to be. Spring Training is part oasis, part mirage along the way. It’s a great place to visit, but it’s not where we’re meant to live.
But it will do for now.
New York and its neighboring precincts have been beaten up by the winter like Zack Wheeler was beaten up by Nationals hitters last year. Yesterday’s storm may have been the worst of the weekly punishings, but only because it was the most recent one. Who can remember anymore which batch of snow, ice, freezing rain, sleet, freezing ice snow or whatever was worst? Yet we are somehow plucky enough to have collectively decided — based partly on the calendar, partly on impatience — that this last episode was it. The weather’s not going to suck this much anymore this March.
Likewise, we as Mets fans have decided, as if the call is ours to make, that this is the year the Mets stop sucking. We may be right; we may be crazy. Doesn’t matter. The 162 games that begin a month from now will tell that tale, same as atmospheric conditions will opt to assault our roadways, windshields and sanity without our input if they feel like it.
In the meantime, this part of the journey, the Spring Training, hikes up its interest rate this afternoon. My rate of interest is way up. Howie Rose on the radio. Gary Cohen on television. Matt Harvey on the mound. None of it counts except for potentially reassuring us that Tommy John doesn’t deter a career that was previously evoking Tom Seaver. For all the sweet, sweet pitching the Mets are lining up, Harvey is Harvey and everybody else — until further notice — is everybody else.
We’ve been here before. Recently, in fact. We salivated to watch Jose Reyes get his legs going in February 2010 [2] after 126 games of absence in 2009. Our hearts pounded to see Johan Santana reappear in March 2012 [3] after he disappeared for the entirety of 2011. They came back, but not then. Those Grapefruit League brushes with some semblance of competition were not the real thing. It was the part that got us to the real thing. You don’t need to consult with Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell to know ain’t nothing like the real thing [4], baby. Matt Harvey on the mound at Whatever It’s Called This Week Park in sunny Florida against the Tigers definitely isn’t that [5].
But it will do for now.
It was kind of a sleepy spring when the Mets assembled. Fifty-two of the 57 players in camp were on hand last year. Hard to derive novelty from so much familiarity. Then, on Tuesday, it was a can of silly spring for a couple of hours, with rookie lunches being revoked and veteran protocol being invoked [6]. A couple of hours later, after the most pointless exercise March has to offer — the dreaded Intrasquad Game (a contest appropriately bereft of scoring) — Met spring took a vexing detour when viewed from a human standpoint [7]. It was something to ponder and probably deserves a little more thought.
Then on Wednesday, some Mets played some Braves somewhere and Wayne Randazzo introduced himself to Josh Lewin and the rest of us over 710 WOR and it was better than Tuesday, better than all the months of nothingness that bring us to spring. Thursday, it snowed here, but the Mets and their nemeses the Nationals were somewhere else that it wasn’t snowing and old buddies Josh and Wayne were on my radio again, at least until I had to go downstairs and shovel the car out, a skill at which I have become disgustingly practiced.
Today? Port St. Lucie, the best dateline one can hope for this time of year. There’s TV and there’s radio and there’s the “A” teams behind their mics and there’s the likely Opening Day lineup in the field and there’s the pitcher who might not get the ball on April 6 but we know that’s a technicality, because he’s Matt Harvey and we’re Mets fans and this is may not be what we’ve been waiting for, but, oh yes, it will do for now.