PORT ST. LUCIE – He knows what you were feeling, knows how badly you were hurting, because he understands what it is to suffer and to bleed – literally – when your baseball team is careening helplessly into the abyss.
Fred Wilpon was 15 years old, working at Frank’s Luncheonette on 65th Street in Brooklyn on the afternoon of Oct. 3, 1951, when there tumbled out of the radio the most horrifying news imaginable: Bobby Thomson had just taken Ralph Branca deep at the Polo Grounds, the Giants were winning the pennant, winning the pennant, and one of the great sporting collapses of all time was over and it was official.
Wilpon carries a memento of that day still, on the ring finger of his left hand, a hardened slab of skin where he cut himself slicing salami at the fateful moment of impact, ball meeting bat, heart meeting break. The customer didn’t seem to mind the secret sauce on his sandwich – “He still gave me a dime tip,” the Mets’ owner remembered yesterday – but Wilpon’s was just one of millions of scars littering Brooklyn that day, and across the decades to come.
So he knows. And he still suffers. And he still bleeds. He admits that not a day has passed since last September when he hasn’t thought about what the Mets had last year, and what they squandered. He has looked forward to this season every bit as much as you have, because he wants to put 2007 behind him every bit as much as you do.
“I would expect to be in the playoffs,” Wilpon said, during his annual spring-training gathering with reporters. “I expect a deep postseason run.”
A few moments later, the owner would stop short of issuing ultimatums to Willie Randolph and Omar Minaya, saying, “Every year you ask yourself the same questions: How did you do? How did you perform?” It was the same standard he’d used last October in deciding against a punitive purge of his baseball leadership.
“We think our people did a good job,” Wilpon said.
Still, there is the lingering disappointment of an historic collapse to deal with. That isn’t going away, and it isn’t going to disappear, any quicker or any easier than the 561/2-year scar that remains on his ring finger. There is little question that as demanding as rank-and-file Mets fans are going to be this year, the two men with the team’s most prominent surname will be just as exacting.
“That’s the way it should be,” Randolph said, when his boss’ comments were relayed to him. “That’s what I want to hear.”
It should be a melodic message to Mets fans, too. Both Fred and his son/successor Jeff absorbed years of barbs wondering if they cared enough about winning, if they’d ever be willing to spend enough to ensure that winning became as regular a habit in Queens as it has been on the other end of the Triboro.
The last three years have brought Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado and Billy Wagner and Johan Santana, plus rich long-term deals for the kid cornerstones, Jose Reyes and David Wright. That’s well over $350 million worth of commitment. The checkbook is open.
And so is the family’s veins. Jeff downplayed his own devastation, said he recovered from September quickly in an effort to keep plowing forward. But not Fred. “I didn’t,” he said. “It’s not my nature.”
It has rarely been his nature to be quite so emphatic in February, either, but as he has taken his golf cart from station to station at Tradition Field the past few days, he has sensed that his players don’t plan to waste time wallowing.
“I think you feel it here, a quiet, strong confidence in each player I’ve talked to,” he said. Asked about Beltran’s uncharacteristic team-to-beat boast, he said, “Coming from someone like Carlos, I think that’s very meaningful.”
And coming from the man who signs the checks, the personal way in which he talks about this team, suffers with this team and bleeds with this team – even if it’s not quite so literal any longer – should be meaningful as well. If you thought this has felt like an extra-long offseason – well, you weren’t alone.