WHO among us, if gifted with the talent and blessed with the fortune to play major league baseball, wouldn’t play hard, wouldn’t have our heads in the game? Yet, rare is the modern game that doesn’t include indifferent play from chronically indifferent professionals.
Crazier, is those who seem to indulge or excuse minimalist play, are those who played better, know better and stand to lose the most from it – big league managers. Willie Randolph, for one.
That brings us to Tuesday night. If you couldn’t believe your eyes, how about your ears?
SNY is in large part owned by the Mets. It’s understandable that its announcers would see things in the most generous artificial light. Yet, these Mets, the Minimalist Mets, for a second consecutive season, have made looking the other way impossible.
Before the first inning of Jerry Manuel’s first game as Mets’ manager had ended, Gary Cohen and Ron Darling were moved to imply that the least the Mets could do was all they continued to do. The unfathomable quickly became self-evident.
But let’s first return to the first inning of the first game this season, the first half-inning following the colossal collapse of 2007. When Marlins’ center fielder Cody Ross couldn’t catch Carlos Beltran’s windblown fly, Beltran easily made second. But Luis Castillo, jogging all the way from first with two out, wound up at third instead of scoring.
On SNY, Keith Hernandez, unable to ignore the obvious, didn’t. Thus, from the start, this season, nothing had changed. Under no circumstances – and the same manager – were the Mets any more moved to play winning baseball.
A month later, Castillo, with two out, jogged from first on another two-out fly that fell. He had to stop at third. Again. The Mets, at home, lost to the last-place Nationals, 1-0.
One base short of where they should have been. After last season’s calamity, Randolph dismissed such criticisms as media “fodder,” but such minimalism cost the Mets the season then cost Randolph his job.
Tuesday night. In the first inning of their first game under Manuel, the Mets again showed up ready, willing and able to do the least they could do, whatever it took to lose, so much so that Gary Cohen, SNY’s hopeful Voice of the Mets, could not pretend otherwise.
Before there was even one out, there was that hassle between Manuel and Jose Reyes, who, at 25, still behaves like a teen who has to have the car keys confiscated to make the point.
In the bottom of the first, Carlos Delgado, the most indifferent fielder I have seen regularly play for a New York team – something now hinted at by all the Mets’ radio and TV voices – misplayed a hard grounder, allowing Casey Kotchman to reach. And then, when Kotchman was picked off by Johan Santana, Kotchman got the eighth stolen base of his five year career – because no Met covered second.
“And so far,” said Cohen, “Manuel’s first inning as manager has gone about as poorly as it possible could have.” Yep, the first inning had not yet ended and the Mets were showing no greater interest in playing any harder or more alertly than they had for Randolph.
The Mets are now risking the Knicks’ reality, when lifelong fans begin to root against them as a wishful means to expedite an overhaul. Sometimes, too, it’s beneath discriminating fans’ dignity to care for teams that include players who seem to hardly care. No matter the town or team, it’s hard to root for those who are hard to root for.
Meantime, the Mets continue to attach pre-determined values and precious metal designations to their tickets. There’s platinum, gold and silver, when Moe, Larry and Curly would make for more valid enterprise. “Everybody clap your hands!” now blares from the Shea public address system less as a bush-league canned prompt than it does as a come-on for sarcasm.
Tuesday’s top of the fourth in Anaheim ended when Delgado whiffed on 3-2 in the dirt. Looking behind him, Delgado saw that the ball had kicked off catcher Jeff Mathis. But instead of running, thus forcing a throw, Delgado just stood there and waited for Mathis to tag him out.
In the bottom of the fourth, two out and a man on first, Damion Easley, at short, fielded a grounder then looked to throw to second for the easiest-play force. But, as Cohen instantly noted, “Castillo didn’t bother to cover.
“The Mets,” he continued, “have been a bit lackadaisical.” Even in the first game under a manager who replaced a manager who was fired because his team didn’t play hard? Yeah.