THE Mets, since at least the Mike Piazza days, have been a minimal ist team. It’s the least they can do. And though it’s a recidivist and self-evident truth, what you see is apparently just your imagination, yours and a few in the media.
Mets are always on first base when they should be on second; they seldom pressure outfielders to make a frantic throw, the wild one that would place that Mets runner, the one who should have been on second, on third. Win or lose, they regularly get out-hustled and out-fundamentaled. They neither play nor think hard.
And then, older but no wiser, they go out there and do it again. The Mets attach the names of precious metals to their ticket pricing – platinum, gold, silver – but they mostly play with hearts and heads of tin.
Last season, they colossally blew the season because they lost games to indifferent and thoughtless play. At season’s end, Willie Randolph dismissed such an assessment as “media fodder.” But what Randolph calls fodder is real.
In the top of the first of Game 1 of this season, there were two out when Carlos Delgado’s wind-blown fly to center fell. But as SNY’s Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez duly noted, Luis Castillo, jogging from first, already had surrendered, thus he made third instead of home. Here we go again.
And here we are again. If there’s a game-winning, season-changing lesson to be learned, it’s always lost on the Mets.
Thursday, in a 0-0 game, two outs and Castillo at first, David Wright hit a high fly down the right-field line. Castillo and Wright jogged it out. And when the ball was dropped and the play ended, Wright was at first instead of second, and Castillo, again, was at third instead of scoring. Mets baseball, the Mets being Manny.
Hernandez, who six weeks ago noted that Castillo’s two-out jog cost the Mets a 1-0 lead, this time said, “It’s a lesson learned.” No it isn’t.
And in SNY’s post-game, Cohen, Hernandez and Ron Darling incredibly joined Randolph in semi-absolving Castillo, all suggesting that he might not have scored anyway. Good grief, he could have scored skipping hard! Regardless, neither Castillo nor Wright minimally forced the last-place Nationals to panic, to make an act-fast throw.
With one out in the bottom of the ninth, the game ended when Carlos Beltran was doubled off third after a line drive to first. Why, with one out, he was heading home on a line drive as opposed to only a ground ball to the right side – if a line drive gets through, he easily scores – never even came up.
There was no fundamentally good reason for Beltran to be breaking for home on a line drive. The Mets lost, 1-0. Yeah, media fodder.
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To fully understand the profundity of Charles Barkley‘s gambling jones is to know that the last thing a casino wants to do is to publicly go after a celebrity in pursuit of payment. If it’s bad publicity for Barkley, it’s not much better for the house.
Though Barkley claims it’s just an oversight, a casino asking the district attorney’s assistance to collect a debt is evidence that where there’s fire, there’s a big fire, and perhaps more than one.
Forget the fact that Good Time Charley, the TNT star and darling of pandering media everywhere, is also a societal critic who should first tend to his own social ills. He clearly needs help.
In addition to being a compulsive gambler, one admittedly given to $20,000 per-hand black jack, he’s a problem drinker. Though that didn’t prevent him from being selected to star in beer commercials, it’s reasonable to assume that while Barkley was losing millions in casinos, his hosts kept snapping for waitresses to bring him more “free” booze to keep him loose and lubricated to better enable his losing.
If Barkley, bright as he thinks he is, didn’t know what he was doing, a casino that extends multiple 100G markers certainly does. The house knows a good risk from an excellent one. The house’s only bad play was betting that Barkley was good for what he would lose.
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Paul Goydos‘ strong and exciting performance in the Tournament Players Championship last week inspired no fewer than two dozen lookalike submissions: Goydos and Lou Piniella.
phil mushnick@nypost.com