If you’re a fan of a bad football team, it’s possible that you’ll spend an entire season of Sundays without a win — an entire season without a single day of smiling or feeling a spring in your step.
Happily, that can’t happen in baseball. Even if your team is awful, you’re guaranteed 50 or so days of joy. And a least a few of those wins will be the happiest variety of all. They’ll be laughers.
When things are going well, a laugher is like a benediction from the baseball gods: Yes, you really are that good. When things are going so-so, a laugher suggests the great possibilities inherent in your team, if only the players would bear down or fortune would smile. When things are going badly, a laugher is a respite from the dismay — a day in which you can exhale and not take it all so hard.
It’s not clear whether the Mets are one of the so-so teams or one of the bad ones, but they pretty obviously needed a laugher, and Steven Matz and the Dodgers delivered, supplying an 8-0 victory and a series win. A series win on the road, in fact. On the road and on the other side of the world, in fact. Will wonders never cease?
Young Matz doesn’t know anything except laughers. He’s never appeared in a game he hasn’t won. He’s never appeared in a game in which the Mets have scored less than seven runs. He’s never appeared in a game and failed to collect an RBI. He’s never appeared in a game that wasn’t worthy of paroxysms of joy from his grandfather.
The 999th Met in club history — a prelude to a milestone I was happy to hear trumpeted on Twitter and WOR today — isn’t blind. He knows perfectly well that the Mets don’t normally score seven runs in a week, and that pitchers don’t key the offensive attack most days. But Matz is old enough to also know that baseball is a cruel game, one in which bad luck will undo preparation and the virtuous often go unrewarded.
In other words, he knows this won’t last. Not because of any flaw in his makeup or any lack of talent, but because it never does.
Which means he also probably knows that you laugh while you can.
Nice to see them have one of these games for a change. So the road trip from hell has started 2-1. Funny, for all the doom and gloom talk surrounding this team, they have the same record as the World Champs. Would be great to a get a W right off the bat, especially since the Giants are coming back late from the East Coast. LGM!!!!
Met fan since 1963–now live in LA since 1976–was at game yesterday– sat about 15 rows behind Home plate. Matz was excellent –speeds between 75-95 MPH.
In 1968/69 @ Shea, I watched young Mets Seaver, Ryan, McGraw…. come up and Matz, Thor & Harvey seem to be coming along.
Duda is completely lost at Home plate trying to hit–he looks dazed & confused.
On to Frisco!–
Let’s Go Mets!
Bob
There is a pretty reasonable sample size that says they are so-so at WORST. They’ve gutted their way to a .500 record fielding half of the Las Vegas 51s. They can’t possibly get more banged up, and even if they do, they can’t possibly score any less runs (Matz games notwithstanding).
If they plummet from this point, it will be because the PITCHING goes south, not because of anything the offense or defense does, and if that happens, then we got BIG problems. I still contend that the defense isn’t nearly as bad as they’ve been blamed for, but the offense has bottomed out and there is only one place to go from here.
For you guys who still think the floor is lower…yes, it COULD happen, but you are talking an historic level of futility. Think of all the historically bad teams of all-time…you’re betting on these guys being worse than HISTORY’S worst. I’m keeping my money on these guys getting healthier and getting better as they develop.
I hope you’re right, but it wouldn’t be shocking for our rookie and sophomore arms to go through some more growing pains, and if multiple guys hit bumps at once things would get pretty grim. Which would also mean things weren’t as bad as they seemed, but it would be hard to maintain that perspective losing night after night.
But here’s hoping players heal up, the offense comes around and that takes the pressure and the spotlight off the defense. Certainly possible. Overdue, a hopeful fan might even say.
Trivia fact of the century has to be that the last Met to have 10 hits in a three game series prior to Flores doing so this weekend was Ruben Tejada, against the Rockies in 2012. Even trivia co-king Gary Cohen had a tone of disbelief in his voice when he announced that one yesterday.
Of course yesterday the fight between the Dodgers and DirecTV meant I couldn’t see the game at home, but I enjoyed watching the gamecast via MLB app. Would be nice if they can grab another win or two or three in SF.
Imo Duda needs about 3 days off. I think the pressure of feeling like he had to hit HRs and drive in runs or the team wouldn’t score led him to chase pitches and now he’s screwed up. Give him a breather and remind him of what he was doing earlier in the year and much of last year and see if that helps.
Who cares if David Wright never comes back? He has had only one good season since Citi Morgue opened in 2009. The insurance money received will be worth more than he is.
The guy we really miss is D’Arnaud. Whenever he WAS in the lineup, the team hit like a regular major league team.
That was the most idiotic statement about Wright that I’ve ever read.
Legares is as dumb a ballplayer as Angel Pagan, and that’s sayimg something. After he got hit by the pitch, he looked like he was going to cry… And, oh yeah, he’s still fat, otherwise he would have been safe at second.
“After he got hit by the pitch, he looked like he was going to cry”
I’m sure with your experience playing major league baseball, that you never were hurt after getting hit with a pitch. Although I don’t think a wiffle ball counts.
David Wright is one of the best Mets EVER. He had one bad season – last year – a year he very likely played hurt. He plays the game right, he plays with integrity, and he left it ALL on the field for a team that mostly sucked and was mostly in chaos his whole career. Yet he never complained, never asked to be traded, never threatened to leave…nothing. He just played, and mostly to a high standard. What kind of Met fan turns on a player like that?!?! If there is any kind of baseball justice, he comes back and gets to be part of something special for as long as he can.
David Wright:Don Mattingly.