THE 10th man played again today at Shea and it had nothing to do with reserve heroes for the day Raul Casanova or Nelson Figueroa.
For better or for worse – and to talk to a Met anonymously is to know they only think the worse – the negativity emanating from the Shea stands is a real part of the games. Most days these players feel as if it is the Mets vs. both the Braves and their own fans.
As if to dramatize the point, Carlos Delgado broke out of both a season-long power drought and a Shea hate fest with two homers and zero response to demands for a curtain call. After his second blast went a long way – both in distance and in assuring a 6-3 triumph over Atlanta – Delgado was beseeched by about the 20,000 remaining at Shea to take a bow. He didn’t. After a few moments most of the cheering turned to boos for Delgado not obliging their sudden adoration.
Delgado insisted afterward this was no statement. But it was the strongest one yet to define this current reality: Met fans don’t like this team too much and the players don’t like the fans, either. If there are more days like yesterday and more weekends such as this one, when the Mets recover from a Friday loss to beat co-aces Tim Hudson and John Smoltz, perhaps the relationship can heal.
For now, however, this is not a happy marriage. It teeters between unease and outright hostility. Players like to say they don’t read newspapers and don’t hear the crowd. They do both, of course.
“To some extent it is overdone,” Billy Wagner said of the disapproval at Shea that comes quickly and loud. He added, “I think it gets a little malicious with no reason for us.”
Yankee fans do the role call early in the game. The Met loyalists turn verbally pessimistic at the first sign of trouble in a nine-inning game. The booing feels like the in thing; hey everyone is doing it, so why not me? The faithful seem to feel slighted that the team hasn’t won in a long time, came achingly close in 2006 and – especially – endured an all-time collapse late last September. There is no let-bygones-be-bygones here. There is a lack of trust toward the team, a lack of faith that the manager or management knows what they are truly doing, a lack of conviviality toward the roster.
And as one player asked, “Do they think that is helping us?” In other words, it is hard to win, harder yet when you are playing either in anticipation of the boos or to try and ward them off. Both media and fans have become harsher over the years, but there is a quick, energy-sapping maliciousness at Shea that is hard to match anywhere.
“That is the way things have been and the way they are going to continue to be,” Carlos Beltran said. Beltran stressed the need to understand it, and to be professional and overcome it. Yet, it feels like an extra load the Mets are carrying beyond aging/injured bodies and a dubious rotation.
The Mets – whether it is fully recognized by their fans or not – have received a couple of breaks at home this year against their top competitors. They lost their Shea opener against the Phillies, but Philadelphia lost Mets killer Jimmy Rollins to an ankle injury. The Mets took the next two. The Braves won their Shea debut, but lost Mets killer Chipper Jones to back spasms and then lost the next two. And yesterday even the Mets acknowledged Smoltz was not Smoltz, operating with a diminished fastball, lasting just four innings.
That was long enough for Delgado to crush a changeup to the opposite field, his fifth career homer off Smoltz. More encouraging was he launched a slider from a lefty, Wil Ohman, off the right-field scoreboard on a tough day to get the ball out. The first homer brought “Don’t Stop Believing” over the sound system. The second brought the fickle home fans to suddenly want a hug from the man who had been the bane of their existence.
Delgado snubbed the approach, the cheers turned to more familiar derision.
The final season of Shea promises to go out not with a bang, but with a boo.