Too Soon & Right On Time

It was 34 degrees this morning in New York because it’s March 27, and on March 27, about a week beyond winter, you’re as likely as not to get a very chilly morning. Days with mornings with that low a temperature don’t exactly scream baseball weather.

But the Mets were in Florida for a month-and-a-half (where they compiled an identical number of wins and losses, which seems to be the proper way to handle Spring Training) and now are in Houston, where there’s a retractable roof. So play ball on March 27. And March 28. And so on and so on until the weather is uniformly chilly again, sometime in the heart of fall.

Welcome to the dawn of a new season, even if new seasons oughta start in April. A lot of traditional baseball oughtas get flattened by progress’s army of steamrollers and erased like a blackboard. Houston used to be in the National League, and maybe still oughta. We didn’t used to open seasons let alone play in the regular season versus American League teams, and probably still shouldn’t oughta. No need coming back to the pox on strategy that remains the designated hitter, a quasi-position that spread to the NL for good in 2022 and isn’t going away. “Baseball has marked the time,” Terence Mann declared in Field of Dreams. The time is March 27.

Too soon? Probably. Glad to greet it today? Absolutely.

March 27 marks the 32nd birthday of the Mets’ Opening Day starting pitcher, Clay Holmes. Clay Holmes is starting on Opening Day? I used to get hung up on who takes the ball on Opening Day because Tom Seaver takes the ball on Opening Day, and if you don’t have him, Dwight Gooden takes the ball on Opening Day. This Opening Day, the hill is manned by the former closer of a team from another league, someone who’s never been a Met or an ace before. Blasphemy? The Mets’ rotation isn’t deep enough for standing on ceremony. Holmes looked good in Spring and was deployed so his birthday would be his throw day and, besides, starting pitchers don’t go that deep most days, so what the hell? Have a happy birthday, Clay Holmes. Give us five or six innings we can celebrate.

It is also Brandon Nimmo’s 32nd birthday. As soon as Brandon steps into the box score, he reaches the baseline qualification for Hall of Fame consideration. This season is Nimmo’s tenth in the big leagues. That should rate more of a “wow!” than I’m willing to give it. I feel we’ve watched Brandon age in real time, which is to say for a while he was a very young player, then he was a player who was still young but had gained experience, and now he’s a solid veteran in the solid prime of his solid career. We are predisposed to love a lifetime Met. That’s what Brandon has been and will hopefully remain without pause.

Prior to David Wright, Eddie Kranepool was our primary example of a lifetime Met. Came up with us. Stayed with us. Never played for anybody but us. Plus he was Eddie Kranepool. We lost Eddie last September. Given his eighteen seasons — which included an Opening Day start in right field at the age of 18 on April 9, 1963, at the Polo Grounds, along with six more at first base spanning 1965 to 1977 — our memories of the Krane should and will live on without much prompting. A sleeve patch affixed to our jerseys will underscore for us Eddie’s eternal Met presence in 2025. A check of Baseball-Reference reminds us Eddie was usually ready for the season to start every season, whether he was starting or not. Mr. Kranepool, from the year he was a veritable kid to the last year he played as a grizzled vet, in 1979, batted .295 in April, his best month hitting. He didn’t have any at-bats in March. Baseball didn’t commence so early back then.

Since last summer, which was winding down when we said goodbye to Ed — having already bid adieu in 2024 to Bud Harrelson, Jim McAndrew, Pat Zachry, Jerry Grote, and Willie Mays — too many other Mets have passed away. They won’t get patches, because sleeve space is limited, but let’s remember them for a moment.

Wayne Graham, our infielder from 1964 who went on to a long and distinguished college coaching career at Rice University (one of his charges was eventual Met Phil Humber);

Ron Locke, who pitched for us in 1964, something I learned when I picked up his 1965 baseball card in 1975 at the first baseball card show I ever attended;

Jack DiLauro, whose contribution to the 1969 Mets I wouldn’t have known about from the front of the 1970 baseball card I pulled from a pack as a kid because he’d been traded over the winter and his cap was blank (I had to flip it over to grasp he’d been one of ours);

Bob Gallagher, the 1975 Met outfielder who we received in exchange for another Miracle man, Ken Boswell;

Lenny Randle, one of the few Met reasons to have felt good about 1977;

Mark Bradley, the toolsy 1983 Mets outfielder who holds the distinction of being the first Met I ever photographed with my own camera, on a rainy Saturday afternoon in St. Petersburg (the game was cancelled, but I know I have the picture somewhere);

Rickey Henderson, the leadoff man of leadoff men who requires no reintroduction from his eventful days with us in 1999 and 2000 (the A’s, wherever they play now, will wear a patch in his honor);

Felix Mantilla, who lasted all of 1962 as an Original Met and ninety years in all;

Tommie Reynolds, an infielder-outfielder who crouched behind the plate in a classic and absurd emergency catcher situation in 1967;

Mike Cubbage, a Met player for one season, in 1981 (he homered for us in his final MLB AB), a Met coach under five different dugout administrations, and about as interim as an interim manager could be, steering the ship home for the final week of 1991 before returning to assisting;

and Jeff Torborg, a well-regarded baseball man whose best work probably wasn’t as Met manager in 1992 and 1993, but when he passed, I read nothing but kind words from those who knew him, so maybe it just wasn’t the right fit here.

Going back prior to last summer, in May, Bill Murphy, referred to in his playing days as Billy, passed on. Murphy was a Rule 5 player who stuck through 1966 in order for the Mets to hold on to him. I began to research his story and found some fascinating threads, but never got around to weaving them together. I hope to give Bill his due before long.

For now, thanks to all the Mets who’ve come before, a sum that measured 1,252 overall (Ashburn to Acuña) through 2024. The all-time quantity can increase by as many as seven while the Mets are in Houston, as the first 26-man roster of 2025 includes Holmes; similarly reoptimized starter Griffin Canning; backup catcher/Whole Foods utilityman Hayden Senger; childhood Mets fan who grew up to relieve for his favorite team Max Kranick; defensive whiz and pun waiting to be run into the ground Jose Siri; former division rival A.J. Minter; and somebody named Juan Soto. More will emerge, but these are the half-dozen poised to make their Met debuts late this March, and I look forward to welcoming them. Especially that Soto fellow.

Fitting enough we’re packing seven potential first-time Mets in Houston as this is the first Opening Day that has pitted the Mets versus the Astros. One Shea Home Opener (2005, this blog’s first April and that ballpark’s fourth-from-last), but nothing that led off a season. We each began life as expansion franchises in the same April, but not only have we never been until now each other’s first opponent, we’ve competed against one another in a season’s first week only six times, no such series more recent than 1994. In 1968, in our fifth game of the year, we and they did play 24 innings. The Astros scored once, the Mets not at all; the 1968 Mets lacked the equivalent of Lindor, Soto, Alonso, Nimmo, and Vientos to get things going on the offensive foot. Drop that crew into 1968, and it might not have become known as The Year of the Pitcher…at least in theory.

All that has been theoretical about this club leading into 2025 is about to turn actual. All the excitement a lot of us have been feeling is about to be put on the line. I’ve been up for other seasons to start — all of them, really — but this one has a legit April-in-March sense to it. Like it really couldn’t wait another day. Good thing it’s arriving when it is.