FIELD OF DREAMS: Opening Day at Citi Field yesterday gave Mets fans plenty of reason to cheer, writes The Post’s Mike Vaccaro, with outfielder Collin Cowgill giving those in attendance reason to come back. (
)
This is the way they build a ballplayer in the factory, the kind that gets his uniform dirty in batting practice, whose eyeblack runs all over his face because of sweat, not because he layered it on like war paint, who’s got his head down for three-quarters of a grand slam because it wouldn’t occur to him to admire a ball he has treated so harshly.
Yes. This is your center fielder, Mets fans, and this is your team. Even now, with a day to enjoy yesterday’s 11-2 stomping of the Padres at Citi Field, with another day to savor it, you’ve probably still kept your illusions in check, probably allowed reason and reality to temper your happiness just a little.
And that’s OK. Really. Sometimes, what you need as a fan is a team you can like because of how it plays, not how often it wins. Sometimes you need a team with guys like Collin Cowgill, too busy digging for a triple to notice his scalded line drive had cleared the fence for a victory-lap slam in the seventh.
“Hey,” third base coach Tim Teufel had to finally tell Cowgill, dusting the dirt off his uniform. “That went out.”
Cowgill shrugged and trotted the final 90 feet.
“We provide chances,” Mets manager Terry Collins would say. “It’s up to you what you do with them.”
So the Mets are 1-0, on the way to 65-97 or 77-85 or 81-81 or whatever awaits across the next six months, and even if the Padres aren’t likely to make the Giants or the Dodgers quiver out west, they are a major-league club, one that finished with two more wins than the Mets last year, and that didn’t seem to matter to the 41,053 at Citi Field yesterday.
They had roared before the game when David Wright was introduced for the first time as the fourth captain in team history, and while Wright has been an All-Star for just about every inning of his 8 1/2 years in Flushing, that’s always only been a partial reason for the bond between star and fan.
Ask Collins about Wright, and inevitably it always goes back to the same thing: “This is a guy,” the manager will say, shaking his head, “who played for weeks with a broken back. With a broken back!” And it isn’t just pain threshold that fills the manager with awe. It’s the sneering, grinding, stubborn way Wright has approached his time as a Met, which has essentially been long stretches of frustration peppered with occasional bursts of joy.
He’s a grinder, Wright, and while we often associate the word with the talent-challenged and the journeyman, when it’s paired with an accomplished player it can often yield some wonderful things. And here’s what Wright has liked most when he looks around the room this spring: There’s a lot of guys who share his approach.
You start with Cowgill, and you have to include Daniel Murphy, whose stomach you can sometimes hear churning and whose teeth you can hear grinding as a game reaches its desperate hours. John Buck, the veteran catcher? Teammates have long embraced him for his complete commitment to playing the game right. Throw Jon Niese in there, a guy who has gone from fringe starter to Opening Day stalwart in three years, whom you sometimes have to pry the ball away from.
And for added drama, why not toss in Scott Rice, who closed the game with a 1-2-3 ninth, his first inning as a major leaguer after bouncing around the minors for 14 years with 18 different teams? The lefty struck out two Padres, and got a ground ball, and afterward said, “Once the batter gets into the box, it’s all baseball and that’s it.”
That’s it. Look, we aren’t going to kid ourselves here: The Mets aren’t likely to give everyone the kind of feel-good happy recap they provided yesterday on a regular basis. The talent is too thin. The division is too strong. The best elements of their future will spend a couple of months, at least, toiling in Las Vegas. All true. All fair. All part of the conversation.
But so is this: You get a bunch of dirty uniforms playing together, you’re going to keep a lot of people interested. You compete like a Cowgill or a Murphy, which means following the lead of the Captain, you’ll earn the right to play in front of more people than maybe your record demands. It isn’t the ultimate goal. It is a start.