Two Mounds, One Hill

After giving injury rehab his best shot among a flock of Toronto Blue Jay minor leaguers, native Ontarian and lifelong Cincinnati Red Joey Votto announced his retirement on August 22. Johnny Cueto, who made his season debut one day earlier for the Angels, pitched exactly once more in L.A. of A garb. The Halos considered his 7.15 ERA and DFA’d him on August 30; one is tempted to say “serves him right” for his participation as a Kansas City Royal in the 2015 World Series, but we’ll try to let that go. Three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer began the year on the injured list; he made eight starts for Texas between late June and the end of July before shoulder fatigue returned him to the IL. Three-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw’s recent trajectory eerily mirrored Scherzer’s: seven starts spanning late July to the end of August, with a toe issue compelling the Dodgers to sideline him. David Robertson’s campaign has gone uninterrupted, allowing him to make 54 healthy appearances, but there’s one place he hasn’t appeared, as his Rangers have followed a road schedule that didn’t direct them to Queens.

Two surefire Hall of Famers in Scherzer and Kershaw. One with very good Cooperstown odds in Votto. Two others in Cueto and Robertson whose careers can be described without dispute as distinguished. Five players spanning ages 36 to 40 who spent as much of 2024 as possible being what they’d always been since they stopped going to school — professional ballplayers. How long have or had Votto, Cueto, Scherzer, Kershaw, and Robertson been around? Long enough so that each man’s Career Splits page on Baseball-Reference includes a line reflecting what he did at a ballpark that ceased operations on September 28, 2008.

Yet only one man in this season can say he played a game there way back when and played a game next door right here in a present that’s as current as can be as we speak. Yet it was none of the above who pulled off the twin-thrilling. Not until Wednesday night, September 4, did a real, live Shea Stadium veteran cross into fair territory at Citi Field and spring into 2024 action. No spring chicken he, perhaps, but when it comes to major league longevity, he’s both cock of the walk and king of the hill.

Make that Hill. Rich Hill. Rich Hill of the Boston Red Sox, as he has been frequently in a big league journey that began nineteen summers ago and now encompasses eight discrete signings with the Sawx. The eighth came following what could have been interpreted as his final season, 2023, when he was a Pirate and a Padre. At the stage when this Met season was young and hopeless, Jason sent me a list of the five active players he knew of who could claim Shea experience, wondering if there was anybody he’d missed. I e-nodded back that I didn’t know of any others who met the criteria of being under contract to somebody at that instant, but later thought to do a quick search to see how Rich Hill was spending his days.

Hill wasn’t pitching anywhere when 2024 began, but he wasn’t exactly not pitching. The New Englander had let it be known he preferred to spend the spring watching his son play Little League. Then, should the opportunity arise, he’d listen more closely to the offers he was still getting. Rich Hill may have turned 44 in March, but he had a left arm that threw curves capable of getting batters out on occasion. Of course he heard offers.

The Red Sox made another in August, and there he was, tuning up for Triple-A Worcester after signing his eighth contract with the Boston organization. Soon enough, he was in a Boston uniform, and Boston’s road schedule just happened to direct the Red Sox to Queens. The stakes weren’t as high as the first time the Red Sox visited the Mets for games that counted (Rich was 6 in 1986), but they mattered to both teams. The Sox are barely hanging on in the American League Wild Card race; the Mets are pounding at the door of being one of the leaders of the NL’s.

Only the Mets had been playing like a team that planned to turn September into October, having won six in a row before jumping out to a 4-0 lead in the first on Wednesday in the clubs’ series finale. Jumping? More like slamming, once Jesse Winker stepped up with the bases loaded and got hold of a Tanner Houck delivery, transporting it just high enough above the left field fence so it could it be of optimal use to the home team. We’d already taken the first two from Boston, and we were well ahead from the get-go in this one, so unless something went terribly wrong, a Mets fan with Shea on the brain simply had to sit back and look forward to a possible Rich Hill appearance at Citi.

Did I mention Tylor Megill was pitching for the Mets? Yeah, probably should have noted that. Megill enabled the Red Sox to creep to within 4-3 while Houck shut down the Mets after Winker’s slam. Who knew games in September aren’t always a breeze? Interest in linking Shea and Citi had to take a back seat to more vital matters. Megill departed in the fifth. The relievers of most relevance were any Mets who could throw double play ground balls. As it happened, we had three of them. Alex Young in the fifth, Huascar Brazoban in the sixth, and Danny Young in the seventh each escaped a jam by coordinating with his infielders on lead-preserving GIDPs.

Three different pitchers. Three different innings. Three double play grounders. Somebody disseminated the info that that had happened once before in Mets history. At Shea, of course. I say “of course” out of affection for Shea as the kind of place where all the fun things happened. Like 1986. Like 1969. Like the trio of happy ground balls that were elicited on August 7, 1966, in the first game of a Banner Day (fun!) doubleheader versus the St. Louis Cardinals. The pitchers who disentangled then were Gerry Arrigo in the fifth, Larry Bearnarth — in his final Met appearance — in the sixth, and Darrell Sutherland in the seventh. Maybe because the game was a Met loss in a season when the Mets finished ninth, the names Arrigo, Bearnarth, and Sutherland haven’t carried any extra resonance from their combined feat over the past 58 years. Or maybe people weren’t quite so impressed by randomness in 1966. Yet should September 4, 2024, become recognized as one more essential step on a championship trail, let’s not forget how two fellows named Young bracketed a Huascar named Brazelbon to keep a 4-3 game 4-3.

When he was Montreal’s pitching coach, Larry Bearnarth would regularly get play from Bob Murphy in that way Murph would talk about Mets who’d been around from almost the beginning. That’s how I learned good ol’ Larry Bearnarth, a Met from 1963 to 1966, was a standout at St. John’s. What a wonderful guy. In my mind, Larry Bearnarth’s Met Equity measures at least a 5 out of 10. If Bob Murphy could sound delighted well after the fact about somebody who went 13-21 across four second-division seasons, he must have been important. Using that same scale — 1 to 10, with your Ed Kranepools and Mookie Wilsons at 10 and whatever reliever we released after no more than two innings in July a 1 — I’d slot Rich Hill’s Met Equity at about a 3.

That’s right: Rich Hill was a Met. Almost a half-season in 2021. Came to the Mets for the same reason he came back to the Red Sox, to help along a team with postseason aspirations. It didn’t work that well for Hill and the Mets, either. Amiable gentleman as far as I could tell. Tried his hardest throwing his softest. I don’t doubt Bob Murphy would have said nice things on his behalf. But there was a here-and-gone quality to Hill, just as there was a here-and-gone quality to the 2021 Mets as a whole. Though it’s stayed with me, his status as likely the last pitcher to ever lay down a sacrifice bunt at home have probably endured in the collective consciousness as long as the ground ball-getting exploits of Messrs. Arrigo, Bearnarth, and Sutherland.

Yet in the eighth inning on September 4, 2024, I was overjoyed to see Rich Hill take the mound at Citi Field. I was already joyed, if you will. That 4-3 lead that had been protected so carefully by so many Met bullpen arms (including Phil Maton’s), was now growing. The Red Sox had developed a new strategy to avoid home run balls like the one Winker sent for a ride. They apparently took that “cock of the walk” stuff to heart and decided to walk everybody. No complaints here. A walk, a single, and a walk loaded the bases with one out. Another walk pushed in a run to make it 5-3, Mets. It also pushed Alex Cora out of the third base dugout to remove Kenley Jansen and bring in Hill.

Here came living history! Here came somebody who played at Shea Stadium! Rich Hill pitched for the Cubs on August 5, 2005. Started and didn’t make it out of the second. It was so long ago that he was succeeded to the mound by Glendon Rusch, who pitched for the 1999 Mets. His right fielder was Jeromy Burnitz of the 1993 Mets. On TV that night, I distinctly remember Ralph Kiner comparing Cub first baseman Derrek Lee to 1941 Brooklyn Dodger phenomenon Pete Reiser before Fran Healy interrupted him. Pete Reiser! My mother would talk about Pete Reiser like Bob Murphy would talk about Larry Bearnarth. Shut up, Fran, I thought, just as I’d been thinking since first getting cable in 1985.

All of that happened around Rich Hill at Shea Stadium in 2005, the same Rich Hill who entered the game at Citi Field on Wednesday night in 2024. When was the last time you heard anybody bring up Pete Reiser? Or Fran Healy?

Hill had one more Shea outing, May 16, 2007. The game, which I also distinctly remember, started three hours late because of rain (can’t blame everything on Healy). Jose Reyes was dealing with a tight hamstring, which we believed was the worst thing that could happen to the Mets at the time. Reyes proved OK…and we learned much worse things could happen to the Mets in 2007.

Places where Rich Hill has been known to spend the night, still.

Distant, tangible memories of a ballpark I’ll never forget. They had nothing to do with Rich Hill at the moment they were generated, but Hill has survived in uniform to embody them. Pending what becomes of the handful of active players who stopped by in 2008 as youngsters, Rich looms as the last player to play at Shea Stadium to play at Citi Field. I wouldn’t put it past any among Scherzer, Robertson, or Kershaw to find his way to Flushing next year, but I also wouldn’t doubt Hill getting another contract or eight from the Red Sox. Pete Rose played against the Mets at the Polo Grounds in 1963 and against the Mets at Shea Stadium in 1986. An ageless left arm could take a pitcher clear to 2031 if handled with care.

The Mets, delighting me as much as Hill’s mere presence at Citi Field did, handled their venerable opponent with care, which is to say they stood by and let him do what was being done before he came in. He walked Jeff McNeil with the bases loaded. He walked Francisco Alvarez with the bases loaded. Slumping Harrison Bader, who could have really used a base hit, made sufficient contact for a sacrifice fly. Rich Hill exited with the score Mets 8 Red Sox 3, soon to go final.

“Shea Stadium lives” is the tempting conclusion to our Rich Hill interaction, but Shea Stadium has been alive in our hearts this whole time. Of more concern now that Hill and the Red Sox have moved on is that the team that plays 81 games a year at Citi Field couldn’t be more alive or well. The 2024 Mets have now won seven in a row. The third Wild Card remains a Brave hiccup away. The record for consecutive Met victories is eleven, established in 1969 and matched four times since. No eleven-game winning streak in Mets history has occurred in a season’s second half, but being hot in September is not without precedent. The 1969 Mets won ten in a row, then another nine in a row.

“1969 Mets comparisons don’t seem altogether inappropriate” is therefore today’s coda of choice. It has the benefit of being true.