Some thoughts on ex-ballplayers, composed while a) thinking back on 20 years of baseball fandom, and b) expecting the Mets to lose, which pretty much sums up my 20 years of baseball fandom:
C- Gary Carter
The image of Gary Carter that stands out for me was his game-winning base hit in the first game of the ’88 NLCS against the Dodgers. Yeah, I know, the hit in the ’86 Series was bigger, but Gary Carter is my clearest lasting memory from the 1988 season, which was my first full season as a serious baseball fan.
Carter got off to such a hot start, it looked like he’d put the 1987 off year behind him, and had a great day at the plate against the Phillies on his birthday. Then he lost that game thanks to Juan Samuel's hidden-ball trick, and went utterly, completely, dead cold. He was stuck on 299 home runs, and didn’t hit one for months. I don’t know if it was the pressure of the milestone-- Gary was, I think, the sort of personality who would press for a mark like that-- or simply age catching up to him. But it was painful to watch, this great hitter the Mets had always relied upon struggling for just one more homer, any homer. I remember he hit at least one long foul down the line, in Shea I think... I was sure that was the blast. It would all go back to normal then.
The ball went foul. The slump continued. Finally, in a day game at Wrigley Field, Carter caught up with one and blasted number 300. He played a little better the rest of the year, I recall, but Mets fans... well, I... had lost confidence in him. Then he goes and wins our first playoff game with a ninth-inning hit. That's baseball.
LHP- Frank Viola
Funniest pitcher to watch hit of my lifetime. The man could not tell a baseball bat from a stalk of cauliflower, and in fact might have stroked better with the veggies. He also had a really funky moustache, and having said that, I've made all the jokes that conscience will allow, because this sono####un could flat pitch.
RHP- David Cone
Favorite David Cone memory: Pitching against the Braves years ago, a call went against him at first base. He stopped and argued it with the umpire-- ignoring the fact that no time had been called. Both Braves runners scored. I listened to that game on the radio, and even as a Mets fan, I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
Least-favorite David Cone memory: Watching him sel####estruct in his brief 2003 comeback attempt. A little piece of my favorite team had been given back to me, only to get ripped away a few starts later. But even that had its bright spots: I won't forget a particular at-bat against Vladimir Guerrero in the first, most promising start of Coney's run: With the bases loaded, Cone started The Impaler off with a couple of balls, then got him to pop a couple foul. Then Guerrero swung for the Hudson River on a hunchbacked bender, generating the breeze that led to the cold front that changed global weather patterns and resulted in an ever-more-ferocious El Nino, which should kill us all around 2097. But until then, it remains a sweet moment.
1b- Glenn Davis
The Houston/Baltimore Glenn Davis trade of the early 90's was one of the wonkiest in history. The Astros didn't just get value for a guy about to go into decline, they got serious value: Schilling, Finley, and Harnisch. Yet it's hard to say they really cleaned up, because two of those guys went on to have their best years elsewhere. I do hope the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks sent Glenn a Series ring, though, or at least a thank-you note.
CF- Dale Murphy
I remember him as a sort of rival for Mike Schmidt; people spent much of the 1980's comparing their relative worth as boppers. Murphy was supposed to be one of the greatest guys in the league, but I (perhaps perversely?) always found myself in Schmidt's corner; mostly I thought his mustache was cooler than Murph's clean-shaven look. At the crucial moment, though, Dale gave me a shave of my own:
There was a game played in 1987... I was rooting for the Phillies and my boy Schmidt; my Uncle Bob had the Braves and Murphy. We got to arguing about it. My uncle ended the argument by saying "Well, watch him hit a grand slam right here."
And he did. Murphy went deep; the Braves went on to win. I never liked Dale Murphy after that, but I sure as heck respected him. (As for my uncle, I still suspect he set that up somehow, but I've never figured out the trick. We had a VCR, but could he have pulled that off seamlessly? Doubtful; back then, VCR's were considered about two steps below Artoo-Detoo on the tech scale... these days we have TiVo and use old VCR's as doorstops.)
I realize I owe you the other half of the team, including an entire double-play combination, but the Mets are having one of their occasional identity crises when they forget that they exist solely to make me cry. I wouldn't want to miss that, so we'll pick this up again next time. I leave you with my mother's comment on tonight's Mets/Giants game, in which the announcers have dissected Barry Bonds' health, by conservative estimate, 25 million times by the eighth inning:
"Maybe if they'd let him use steroids, his knees wouldn't hurt!"
And you wonder why I live in the past of the Pastime...
