PORT ST. LUCIE — He arrived a few years too late, truth be told. Terry Collins would have been the perfect manager to guide the Contender Mets of a few years back, the 2006-08 heartbreak kids who always found a way to spill tomato sauce all over the final chapters of their stories and their seasons.
We know that now, of course, because we saw the work he did with last year’s Mets, we saw the patience he has discovered late in the game, the way he relates not only to kids fighting every day for their livelihoods but to stars, too. We saw how he kept the team together after that 5-13 start, and when the annual injury purge struck, how they were .500 as late as Aug. 10 and only one game under on Sept. 7.
All the while, Collins saying, “We have to believe we’re better than people believe we are.” All the while, getting his players to buy into that, too. Yes, it might have been useful to have Collins’ steady, exacting hand at the controls when the Mets were allowed to drift during the star-crossed summers of 2007 and ’08, when they stopped playing for Willie Randolph and stopped listening to Jerry Manuel.
But, then, Collins’ career has been a study in unfortunate timing. He was the one who taught the Astros and the Angels how to win before they had the goods and the gumption to really win. And now, you suspect he has arrived at the Mets at a doubly difficult point of their timeline: After Madoff, before whoever and whatever can make them solvent again.
That’s a shame.
But it isn’t a burden Collins bears quietly. Your eyes may tell you one thing when you look at the Mets’ razor-thin roster, when you notice the growing exodus of talent, when you take a look at Johan Santana throwing baseballs yesterday, a wounded throwback to the Mets’ star-crossed recent past, when you notice the dearth of autograph hounds this year in the first days of pitchers and catchers, compared to recent years.
But your ears try to tell a different tale once Collins begins to talk.
“We’re better than people think we are,” Collins said yesterday. “There are expectations here.”
Sure, these are the kinds of things managers say all the time on Feb. 21, because if you can’t feel good about your team now, then god help you in the middle of August. And Collins admitted to small pangs of envy across the offseason when the Marlins would add another player, when the Nationals would add another player, when the Phillies and Braves would fine-tune their engines while the Mets stayed quiet.
But one thing you’ve never had to worry about with Collins is this: Every day, he will give an honest effort. Every day, he will coax and cajole better baseball out of his team. He sees a baseball schedule as 162 separate opportunities to play better — sometimes just a little bit better — than the other guys.
“It’s simply not good enough to want to be in the middle of the pack, to say ‘let’s get our 80 wins and be happy with that,’ ” Collins said. “I will not stand for that.”
If that sounds pie-eyed — many Mets fans will sign up right now, today, for 80 wins — maybe it is. Again: We saw the man’s work last year. His own owner had given up the ghost at 5-13, had started poking fun at his own players in the pages of a glossy magazine, and Collins guided them to wins in 50 of their next 88 games, a mark which isn’t just representative, it translates to 92-70 over a full season.
Most of those games played without his corner infielders, with his left fielder mired in a slump, with a starting rotation that was hit-or-miss just about every day, a closer with one foot out the door and a center fielder with two. By season’s end, he would have a warm conversation with his remaining franchise icon.
“It’s going to be better,” David Wright had told him, and if Wright truly believes that, it will mostly be because he saw what his manager can do. Too bad he didn’t arrive a couple years earlier.