Cheering for baseball

It’s been a long time, maybe 25 years, to be honest, since I cared this much about baseball, since I followed every single game of one team. Why else would I listen to an afternoon game on a transistor radio in my office on the Friday before Labor Day for a sub-.500 team 12½ games out of first place?

Why else would making a pilgrimage to a stadium make me as giddy as a 10-year-old (and as disappointed as a petulant child when an earlier trip was canceled)?

It’s baseball.

The Mets pennant may be over, but that hardly diminishes my enthusiasm for my adopted team. Perhaps it’s the relative newness of following a National League club. Perhaps it’s still the early stages of a love affair, where everything bad is viewed through rose-colored glasses and notice only the good. Either way, I’m going to be sad when the Mets season ends in a month.

(Originally published at The Icepick Cometh)

On dodging career bitterness to become the ‘other guy’ and escape ‘the depths of Mordor’

In what has become a disaster of a Mets season after so much promise in June, R.A. Dickey remains a highlight and perhaps the most inspirational story to come from on-field performances in this baseball season.

Dickey’s story has been well-told: born without (or perhaps it atrophied as a youngster) an ulnar collateral ligament — the primary tissue that stabilizes the elbow — in his pitching arm, he shouldn’t be able to turn a doorknob without pain, let alone pitch.

He was drafted out of college by the Texas Rangers, but a team doctor discovered the oddity in his arm, and the team downgraded a promised $800K offer to $75 grand.

After wandering through the majors and minors and through several organizations for more than a decade — the very definition of a journeyman — Dickey has found success in his first season with the Mets this year by mastering the unpredictable knuckleball, a pitch so rarely used that only two Major League hurlers use is as a primary weapon (Dickey and Boston’s Tim Wakefield). Dickey is doing this at 35, an age when most professional ballplayers are in their decline stage (though some top-level pitchers do throw into their 40s, as do many knuckleballers).

Oh, and by the way, in the world of monosyllabic jock quotes, Dickey was an English major in college, is an avid reader, and is a thoughtful quote.

But what continues to strike me, and what gives me inspiration as a 38-year-old former English major with what feels like a stalled career and little understanding of what to do about it, is R.A. Dickey’s attitude about his own career, which saw such promise (and promise of riches) turn to a kind of professional wandering in the desert, and then to an eventual career reboot that is well on the way to redemption.

As he told the New York Times in 2008 (while still working on, but not yet perfecting, that knuckleball):

“‘Imagine winning the lottery and then losing the ticket,’ said Dickey, who signed with the Rangers because he assumed no team would give him a chance again. He reported to the minor leagues knowing that precious little was keeping his elbow together, that each day pitching could be his last.

“‘Every day I had to decide whether I was going to be bitter, if I was going to be that guy — woe is me, you know?’ Dickey said. ‘I had to choose every day to be the other guy.’”

Or, as Keith Hernandez said in the Mets’ SNY broadcast earlier tonight (in a bit of coincidental and unfortunate timing, just before Dickey gave up a game-tying home run), Dickey’s career was “in the depths of Mordor,” and now he is a candidate for comeback player of the year.

Mad Men and the Mets

With Mad Men kicking off its fourth season on Sunday, it’s time to celebrate the Mets-Mad Men connection.

Mad Men takes place at a point in history, to cite a 2008 New York Times Magazine article, when ad men were rock stars of an era, when “the creative revolution in advertising was taking off.”

The Mets were born in 1962, in the heart of the Mad Men era (and the year in which season two of the series takes place). They were New York City’s new team in the National League after the Dodgers and Giants left town, and much of their essence, which survives today, is — at least in part — a product of early Sixties advertising. The “Meet the Mets” song, as much an effort by J. Walter Thompson as it was of the Mets’ execs themselves, has that fun, zippy feeling of the early, swinging part of that decade.

The Mets even garnered passing references in two episodes of the show, both from junior executive Ken Cosgrove. He tries to use the lure of Mets tickets (“great seats for probably a terrible game”) for a date with Jane, the new secretary — and future second wife of partner Roger Sterling — in season two (1962), then drops by Pete Campbell’s office with an offer of Mets tickets, which Paul Kinsey takes him up on, in season three (1963).

Even the Mets acknowledged the connection as much (or merely latched onto a popular show, or both), with a promotion last year related to Mad Men at their new, new modern stadium.

Jimmy Breslin, in his own way in his 1963 book “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?,” links advertising and the Mets’ birth:

“As noted earlier, it took more than baseball people to create the Mets. One of the biggest culprits, for example, is a beer company called Rheingold. This company, based in Brooklyn, put up, on the advice of an advertising agency, $1,200,000 per year on a five-year contract to sponsor the Mets on television and radio. The bid was made and accepted in the fall of 1961. The Mets had not yet signed a player. By December, the Mets had signed players and the Rheingold account was taken away from the ad agency and placed with another organization, J. Walter Thompson. …

“‘We didn’t like losing the account at all,’ one of the admen said over a martini.
“‘How come you lost it?’
“‘Somebody gave the client a bad report.’
“‘What was it?’
“‘They told the sponsor who was going to play third base for the Mets.’”

The “Meet the Mets” song and the Mr. Met mascot fit in perfectly with the early Sixties. It’s something that perhaps Don Draper wouldn’t have thought of — Draper, socially climbing, image conscious, would probably have been a stodgy Yankee fan, and possibly would have dismissed the Mets ad campaign, the way he is both intrigued by and then dismisses the ultimately iconic “lemon” Volkswagen Beetle ad in the first season.

Though who knows? Would the 1960s version of J. Walter Thompson, which was involved in the “Meet the Mets” song, have had more in common back then with Sterling Cooper (though certainly not today) than Doyle Dane Bernbach, which came up with those “lemon” and “think small” ads? Or perhaps the Mets’ early campaigns fell more in the category of “traditional” (for 1962) advertising rather than DDB’s ironic VW Bug ads.

Either way, perhaps the mysterious, slowly adapting Don Draper might have come up with the Mets’ catchy, enduring ad campaign, after all. Along with the upheavals of the Sixties, perhaps we’ll see more changes in Don Draper, with a new firm to run (as set up in the final episode of Season Three) and presumably new life away from his wife and children (we’ll see, beginning Sunday night). Of course, this might come down to where you feel the Mets’ ads of 1962-1964 fall in the traditional-ironic advertising divide.

Author Dana Brand describes in his Mets Fan book, how, as a child in the early Sixties, he loved the “novelty of the blue and orange colors, and the cool, contemporary brevity of the name” of New York’s new team.

(And, come to think of it, orange surely must have seemed to be the “new” color for the Sixties. Along with the Mets, think of the orange adopted by new teams like the Astros in 1965 and hockey’s Philadelphia Flyers in 1967. Or, put another way, think of teal and purple as the new “orange” of the Nineties, with the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies.)

SNY’s chipper “Mets Yearbook” TV commercial — with the bobblehead doll, clips of Casey Stengel and the Polo Grounds, an easy-to-whistle tune, and the 8mm filmstrip feel — pays homage to those days.

Brand, later in “Mets Fan,” writes in a piece about the “Meet the Mets” song:

“It fits with Mr. Met (who would think him up now?). It fits with the apple that comes out of the hat every time a Met hits a home run. It doesn’t come out of the twentieth-first century … It is the tone of the team. It brings us back to the smiling sixties. It draws us into the Mets-happy universe.”

How correct he is. It is a team for the Mad Men era, both then and now. New York was changing, New York baseball was changing (even the Mets themselves, who moved from the old Polo Grounds to the modern Shea Stadium in 1964), and, of course, America was changing. The orange-and-blue Mets were, and still are, the baseball baby born of the Mad Men period.

Mets need hitting more than pitching

We saw it against Atlanta all last weekend. We saw it Thursday night against Tim Lincecum. We’ve generally seen it all year when Johan Santana pitches.

The Mets don’t need a fifth starter. They need another bat.

There was hopeful talk about getting Cliff Lee before Seattle traded him to Texas. There is vague talk about getting Ted Lilly from the Cubs.

The thing is, the Mets starters from No. 1 through No. 4 are about as good as you’re going to get for a contending team apart from the upper, upper echelon of the leagues in terms of pitching — the Yankees and the Padres.

What the Mets need, after another futile night at the plate, is another bat.

Carlos Beltran is back, yes. How will his right knee hold up, and how long will he need to get back into real playing shape, remains to be seen. Jose Reyes’ lingering injury is more of a concern every day. Without Reyes, the Mets’ engine is essentially at a stand-still.  Buster Olney at ESPN ranked Reyes the Majors’ sixth most irreplaceable player for his team, and that sounds about right. Olney was discussing Dustin Pedroia and how his injury would impact the Red Sox. Olney ranked Reyes right behind Albert Puljos, Adrian Gonzalez, Ubaldo Jimenez, Miguel Cabrera, and Joe Mauer, saying of Reyes: “When he started hitting, they started winning.” Olney might as well have added, without him, it gets a lot tougher for the Mets to win.

David Wright and Angel Pagan have had amazing years at the plate. But beyond them, and with an injured Reyes, the Mets’ lineup is lacking. Ike Davis had an inspiring stretch after he was called up, but has cooled off. Jason Bay appears to be a lost cause this year, but you need to start him nearly every day because of what you’re paying him. The catching — both behind the plate and at bat — is about as solid you’re going to get outside of Mauer.

Basically, with the personnel the Mets have around the field, there is only one spot that you can target: second base.

That’s why the Mets need to Target Baltimore’s Ty Wiggington, an infielder who can play second base and add some pop. He’s had a surprising All-Star year. Sure, he could cool off, but what are your options? Alex Cora may have a great baseball mind, but you can’t have a .222 hitter batting second. Luis Castillo is hurt, and is often ailing when he’s back on the roster. Ruben Tejada is a decent back-up option in the middle infield, but with Reyes’ lingering woes, Tejada may need to play more at shortstop.

The Mets need to get Ty Wigginton. They can get by with a committee at fifth starter. Hisanori Takahashi is much better suited in the bullpen, but he can spot-start at No. 5 every once in a while. Pat Misch, an All-Star at Triple-A, could be worth a look. Once his rehab is done, so could (shudder) John Maine (though not, please not, Oliver Perez). This is the fifth starter slot we’re talking about, remember. The one who can get skipped if the rotation and the days off align. The one that is, by definition, the worst of the five starting pitchers.

With the Mets’ lacking at the plate right now, you almost say they need to afford putting a bum out there in No. 5, if it means upgrading their lineup. The Braves upgraded, and may be the team to beat in the NL East.

Forget Lilly. Go get Wiggington for second base.