TOM Glavine came here during a previous administration, before Omar Minaya and Willie Randolph, before Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran, and before Jose Reyes or David Wright had even played a major-league game.
He was bought for big money to help transfer a certain aura, a certain feel, a certain winning sense from Atlanta to the Flushing part of New York.
But that has never fully happened. Glavine pitched well here, but his heart always seemed in Atlanta. And he might have saved his absolute worst for the closing act of his Mets career. This will no longer be remembered as the year Glavine won his 300th game, at least not around here it won’t. This will be remembered as the year Glavine pitched the Mets out of a season in Game 162.
This final game will be remembered for Glavine lasting nine batters and one out and long enough to surrender seven runs. He lasted long enough to make sure the Mets’ season didn’t last any longer.
There were many villains in a collapse both epic and pathetic, and the Shea crowd was not shy at treating players such as Jose Reyes and Guillermo Mota yesterday as if they were Roger Clemens after he plunked Mike Piazza. Reyes, in many respects, symbolized the team: great and beloved in the first half, terrible and derided down the stretch.
But Glavine was as culpable as any Met for a demise stunning and unfathomable. He was miserable in late September. And yesterday, 24 hours after the inexperienced John Maine resuscitated the Mets with one of the five best performances in club history, specifically because of the time of year, the Cooperstown-bound Glavine pretty much single-handedly assured the death of this season with one of the five worst performances in club history, specifically because of the time of the year.
The Marlins won, 8-1. That made it 13 losses in 19 games to end the schedule. Even one more victory in that period gets the Mets into at least a play-in game for the playoffs. Glavine started four times in that span, and the Mets lost all four games. He did pitch well against the Phillies on Sept. 14, but blew a late 2-0 lead. Then in his final three starts – exclusively against the woeful Nationals and Marlins – Glavine lost the feel for his signature changeup and pitched to a 14.81 ERA.
“I’m not devastated, I’m disappointed,” Glavine said. “This is not the way I wanted to pitch.”
Nevertheless, Glavine suggested he made most of the pitches he wanted yesterday, that he was undermined by well-placed grounders. But Glavine is going to the Hall of Fame as a finesse master because enough balls have been hit at fielders. He, therefore, cannot alibi away yesterday because balls were hit hard enough to find holes, especially when you add in his two walks, his horrid throwing error and that he ended his day (Mets career, career in total?) by hitting the opposing starter, Dontrelle Willis, with a changeup.
He was booed off the mound and said, “when you give up 5-6 runs in the first inning of a big game you don’t expect a standing ovation.”
The Met ‘pen actually followed with 82/3 innings of one-run ball. But the shortest outing for Glavine since May 16, 1989 – when he was a Brave making his 51st career start and Dale Murphy was his center fielder – already had deflated and demoralized the Mets and an entire stadium. Glavine’s departure essentially triggered a three-hour wake at Shea, the fans looking on at the most expensive, frustrating, underachieving corpse in franchise history.
Still, Glavine insisted that, despite a poor effort in career start No. 669, he is glad about his Mets days. He believes the organization transformed from a slum to a contender while he was a key piece. But it feels now as if the Mets ran 25 miles of a marathon with Glavine here, and now are backtracking with this kind of collapse. They have yet to get through 26 miles as hoped when Glavine was imported from Atlanta.
And now with the Braves or retirement possible for Glavine and the Mets at a crossroads again as an organization, it appears they are never going to make it to that hoped for finish line together.