Talk about a tough stretch. The Mets are now riding a season-high six game losing streak after being swept by the Braves in Atlanta.

Very few things went right in this series. The starting rotation continues to show signs of regression. The offense was a no-show. The inability to cash in with runners on remains a huge problem. Oh, and injuries continue to bite.

All the while, the Mets continue to suffer at the hands of their old nemesis. As a result, New York’s division lead has been wiped out. Meanwhile, the door may have been opened back up for the Braves to sneak into the NL East race.

Overall, it was a forgettable three days in Atlanta for the slumping Mets, who now face a crucial run of divisional games against the Phillies and the Braves.

Before we turn our focus to the Phillies, though, let’s unpack everything from the Braves series in the latest edition of 3 Up, 3 Down…

Juan Soto (22) Credit: Brett Davis-Imagn Images

3 UP

MAKING HISTORY

We could have very easily turned this into a ‘6 Down’ feature given how bad things were in Atlanta. There are very few positives to take from this series. However, God loves a trier. As such, we’re going to attempt to draw some good notes from the debacle against the Braves. Let’s start with Juan Soto. The superstar hitter went 2-for-3 with a home run in the opener. He then made history in the finale, recording the 1,000th hit of his career. Reminder – Soto is still only 26-years-old. As a result, he joins Hall of Famers Mel Ott and Mickey Mantle as the only three players in MLB history to collect 1,000 hits, 200 home runs and 700 walks before their 27th birthdays. Pretty impressive.

SHOWING SOMETHING

Tyrone Taylor quietly had a very productive series against the Braves. The outfielder went a combined 4-for-10 with a double, a home run, two runs scored and three RBIs in the three games. The highlight was the opener, with Taylor hitting a homer and a two-run double. Now hitting .237/.300/.348/.648 on the year, Taylor showed some signs of breaking out offensively during the series in Atlanta.

FINDING HIS GROOVE

Starling Marte continued on his current upward trajectory in Atlanta. The veteran knocked in three hits, including a double, in two games against the Braves. Yes, he grounded out in a big spot in the finale. But, overall, Marte is hitting .438/.471/.500/.971 over his last four games. Consequently, he’s continuing to show signs that he’s becoming more and more comfortable in a part-time role for the Mets.

Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

3 DOWN

ICE-COLD OFFENSE

Okay, let’s get right to the meaty part of this edition of 3 Up, 3 Down. The bad. Because, boy, was there a lot of ugly in the sweep at the hands of the Braves. A hell of a lot of ugly.

Let’s start with the offense. The Mets managed just five runs and 18 hits in three games in Atlanta. Yes, the red-hot Chris Sale was the Braves’ starter for the shutout loss in the second game of the series. But, given the sheer amount of talent in that Mets lineup, scoring just five runs in any series is unacceptable. The big three of Soto, Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso – particularly Lindor – simply didn’t do enough to put the entire lineup on their backs and help their team win baseball games. They have to be better. And, given the current state of the starting rotation, it is on the offense to now carry the load. They didn’t do that against the Braves. It also didn’t help that the Mets went a combined 2-for-15 with RISP, leaving a total of 14 runners stranded on base. That’s a problem that doesn’t show any signs of going away anytime soon.

ESCALATING CONCERN

What was once a strength is now rapidly becoming a house of horrors for the Mets. Statistically speaking, New York still has the best pitching staff in baseball. However, how much longer that continues to be the case remains to be seen. After all, the rotation can only stay afloat for a certain amount of time before all these injuries sink it.

Tylor Megill was placed on the IL with inflammation in his elbow earlier in the week. Frankie Montas will join the rotation next week, but confidence in the righty should be low after his rehab assignment nightmare. In terms of the pitching in Atlanta, it was brutal. Reed Garrett blew the save in the opener, paving the way for a gut-punch of a loss in extra-innings. Paul Blackburn was shelled in his second start of the year on Wednesday. He also wasn’t helped by his catcher, with Luis Torrens making a couple of costly errors. Then, in the finale, Clay Holmes walked six and gave up three earned runs in just 4 2/3 innings. Huascar Brazobán made matters worse, allowing four earned runs and three walks. All in all, the pitching is in the doldrums right now.

TIME FOR A RESET?

Francisco Alvarez is really going through it right now. The catcher is simply not hitting, and he also struggled defensively in the Atlanta series. Alvarez committed a series of defensive blunders in the opener, and his fingerprints can be found all over that loss. Furthermore, Alvarez is offering nothing offensively. He went a combined 0-for-6 with three strikeouts in two games against the Braves. As a result, he has now posted career-low marks in both slugging percentage (.305) and OPS (.621). There is now enough of a sample size to suggest that something is really amiss. Therefore, it might be beneficial for all parties if Alvarez spends some time in Triple-A for a much-needed reset.

The post 3 Up, 3 Down: Mets’ Skid Continues In Atlanta appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

The Mets showed once again their ability to flush previous disappointment and bounce right back. After dropping the middle game of the series against the Diamondbacks, New York produced a big-time performance in the finale to take the series and end the road trip on a high.

It was the first series win for the Mets since they swept the Phillies in late April. After what has been a tough stretch, taking two out of three in Arizona against a good D-Backs team was just what the doctor ordered.

And, on that note, let’s dive into another edition of 3 Up, 3 Down…

Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images

3 UP

HERO BALL

The Mets are paying Juan Soto the big bucks because of his otherworldly hitting ability, not to mention his ability to take over games. And they are also paying him the richest contract in sports to deliver games like we witnessed on Wednesday. Needing a win to take the series, Soto put his team on his back and authored a monster day at the plate. The outfielder went 2-for-4, hitting two home runs and finishing with three RBIs and two runs scored. Soto’s first home run of the day got the Mets on the board in the top of the sixth. His second, which came in the eighth, effectively iced the game. Soto is now hitting .346/.455/.885 over his last seven games, with four home runs. He’s starting to really heat up and that’s only good news for the Mets.

Soto also etched his name in the history books in a pretty significant way in Arizona. By drawing two walks on Tuesday night, Soto passed Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle for the most walks (798) by a hitter before turning 27. That is quite some achievement. It also highlights just how big of an on-base machine Soto is.

GOING LONG

While the starting pitching was far from stellar in this series, the Mets did get some much-needed length from the rotation. Kodai Senga didn’t have his best stuff in the finale, but managed to survive a full six innings without giving up a run. As a result, Senga lowered his ERA to 1.16 on the year. David Peterson also gave his team six innings, although he ran out of gas and departed after giving up four earned runs on five hits. Then, in the opener, Griffin Canning allowed just one over five innings after navigating a tough start. All three starters in this series were far from their best, but they were able to make a somewhat lighter workload for the bullpen.

DOING IT ALL

Francisco Lindor‘s fingerprints can be found all over this series victory. The shortstop made a slew of contributions, both at the plate and out in the field. In the opener, Lindor blasted a massive three-run home run that added on some crucial insurance runs. He also executed an incredibly perfect tag to record an important out in the ninth inning. The four-time All-Star was part of a clutch defensive play that kept Arizona off the board in the finale, before going 2-for-5 with a run scored and a pair of RBIs at the plate. Lindor can change games with his bat and with his glove, and that was on full display throughout the series in Arizona.

3 DOWN

Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images

MINOR CONCERNS

The Mets had to endure a couple of injury scares against the Diamondbacks. Having already lost Jesse Winker to the IL days before, both Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil flirted with danger over the three-game series. Nimmo hyperextended his knee during the middle game and was forced to DH on Wednesday after looking compromised in the field. Then, in the finale, McNeil looked to have hurt his hamstring and was pulled from the game in the seventh inning. Thankfully, it seems that both Nimmo and McNeil avoided major injury. The off-day on Thursday should help when it comes to recovery and extra rest. However, the Mets will now hope to avoid any more close calls. They certainly don’t need to lose anyone else to the IL.

TIME TO MOVE ON?

Starling Marte has been a net negative so far in 2025. The veteran endured another quiet series, finishing 1-for-7 with no extra-base hits and two strikeouts. Furthermore, he is now just 3-for-20 hitting cleanup this year. Marte had a chance to play hero during Tuesday’s loss, coming up to the plate with the bases loaded in the third inning. However, the part-time DH struck out in an at-bat that accentuated his overall struggles this year. Now, granted, more playing time with Winker on the IL may lead to a turnaround for Marte, but if he continues to struggle, then a breakup between player and team could be on the cards sooner rather than later.

MIXED BAG

David Peterson gave the Mets length in his start on Tuesday, but he couldn’t give them the quality required. He started out red-hot, not allowing a hit through the first three innings of the game. However, the wheels quickly fell off, and Peterson ended up allowing four earned runs on five hits with four walks and six strikeouts. He also gave up a two-run shot to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. in the sixth, a blast that effectively sealed the loss for New York. Peterson threw a season-high 104 pitches, but he just couldn’t execute in the biggest spots, and it cost his team.

The post 3 Up, 3 Down: Mets Snap Series Skid In Arizona appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Regularly the smallest player on every organized team he played on, Collins realized that he could stand out by routinely playing harder than the rest.

Collins, 74, has spent over five decades in professional baseball. Drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 19th round of the 1971 Major League Baseball Draft, he never appeared in the big leagues as a player. Collins soon understood that if he wanted to taste the life of a major leaguer, he would need to do so in a different way.

The baseball lifer worked his way up from managing in the minor leagues to earning a coaching spot with Jim Leyland’s Pittsburgh Pirates team before getting his first shot as a major league skipper with the Houston Astros in 1994. The Astros would go on to finish second in the N.L. Central in each of the three seasons Collins was at the helm. Houston fired him following the 1996 season, however, after the team went 8-17 in September and saw their division lead disappear.

Collins wasn’t out of work long though, as the Anaheim Angels named him the 15th manager in franchise history in November of 1996. The Angels won 84 and 85 games, respectively, in 1997 and 1998, but went a disappointing 51-82 in their first 133 games of the 1999 season. Despite receiving a contract extension midway through that campaign, Collins resigned as manager following a nine-game losing streak at the end of August. Stories of player unrest and a fractious clubhouse marred Collins’ tenure as Angels manager.

Following stints as an advance scout with the Chicago Cubs, bullpen and third base coach with the Tampa Bay Rays, field coordinator and director of player development with the Los Angeles Dodgers and manager for the Orix Buffaloes of Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan, Collins was hired by the New York Mets as their minor league field coordinator for the 2010 season.

Almost a year after the Mets brought Collins on, he was tasked with a new, yet familiar, responsibility: managing a ball club.

Collins returned to the dugout, becoming the 20th skipper in Mets history. He made a promise to himself to enjoy this time more and not make the same mistakes he did with the Astros and Angels.

In total, he was at the helm for seven seasons (2011-2017), becoming the second manager in franchise history to lead the club to back-to-back postseasons in 2015 and 2016 (joining Bobby Valentine). Collins is the longest-tenured manager in Mets history, managing 1,134 regular season games.

Recently, Collins joined X (formerly Twitter) and began a podcast with John Arezzi aptly called “The Terry Collins Show.” The weekly show features Collins bringing listeners behind the scenes of a major league clubhouse, along with hosting a variety of guests, including David Wright, R.A. Dickey and Daniel Murphy.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Collins over the phone, where we discussed his playing career, transitioning to managing and some of his memories from his time with the Mets.

MMO: Who were some of your favorite players growing up?

Collins: I grew up in Michigan, and Al Kaline was a big star with the Tigers. There was another player named Rocky Colavito who became a great player with the Tigers.

The Yankees won a lot back then, so I was a big Mickey Mantle fan.

One of the stations we listened to in Michigan had Milwaukee Braves baseball. I used to listen to the great Braves players like [Hank] Aaron and [Eddie] Mathews. The catcher’s name was Del Crandall, who I played for in the minor leagues. So that was cool.

MMO: You played all over the field throughout your minor league career. Were you always a versatile player?

Collins: I grew up playing just second base. I was always the smallest guy on every team I ever played. Second base was my position, and I only played a couple of games at shortstop in American Legion.

When I got to college, I made the team as a freshman. The first game we had was a doubleheader, and the second baseman on varsity got hurt. They brought me up for those two games, and I got six hits in the doubleheader.

The next day the coach asked me, “Can you play shortstop?” I told him yes. He said, “Well, meet me at the field,” and the following day I played shortstop against the University of Michigan. I ended up playing shortstop the rest of my career at Eastern Michigan.

MMO: You’ve always been known as an intense and fiery competitor. Do you remember when you first started displaying those traits?

Collins: Well, again, I’m a little guy. When I had to compete, if I was going to compete, I had to play hard. I played harder than anybody.

When I was a little boy, my mother got a phone call from one of my friend’s mothers. She said, “I don’t want Bobby playing with Terry anymore. He plays too hard.”

When my dad got home from work that night, my mom said to him, “You need to talk to Terry.” My dad asked, “Why?” She said, “One of the mothers called and said Terry plays too hard, and we need to talk to him.” My dad said, “I’ll talk to him.” She asked, “What are you going to tell him?” He said, “I’m going to tell him not to play with Bobby anymore.” [Laughs.]

MMO: When and how did the chance to manage in the minor leagues come about? 

Collins: It’s pretty funny. My first spring training, I saw Triple-A guys who were 29-30 years-old still playing. I wrote a letter to my mother that spring telling her there are guys who are 29 and 30 years old still playing in the minors. I told her I’m giving it three years, and if I’m not in the big leagues in three years, I’m going to go back and use my education. Fifty years later, I’m still doing it!

I kind of fell in love with the game. The one thing I always wanted to do was be a coach. When I went to the Dodgers organization from the Pirates, in spring training you would go into a backroom, and they had this little area where guys could get a beer. It was part of the complex. You would sit there and listen to [Sandy] Koufax, [Don] Drysdale, [Johnny] Podres, Maury Wills, Wes Parker, Walter Alston and [Tommy] Lasorda. They were always at spring training. You just sat there and absorbed as much information as you could.

When I was hoping I would get a chance to manage, as I said, I played for Del Crandall. I picked his brain because he was an outstanding minor league manager, great teacher, and great teacher of catching. Back then, you didn’t have any coaches in the minor leagues; it was just you. I had to learn how to teach catching, how to teach outfield play and how to work with the pitchers.

I picked the brains of those guys as much as I possibly could. I knew at some time I was going to have to use all of that information. It was the greatest education you could have.

MMO: It’s crazy to think there was a time where the only coach on a minor league time was the manager.

Collins: My first year managing, I’m in Lodi, California, and in the minors you have halves. So, the first half, our team wasn’t very good. Fernando Valenzuela burst onto the scene in Los Angeles, and he was throwing a screwball. There was an older pitcher the Dodgers had at one time named Jim Brewer, and Jim threw a screwball. The Dodgers hired him to go through the minor leagues and try to teach some guys that were average pitchers the screwball.

The first place he came was Lodi. He saw our pitching staff and said, “Terry, first of all, I’m going to teach them how to throw their fastballs for strikes. I’m not worried about the screwball. If they can’t throw their fastballs for strikes, the screwball is not going to help them.”

He turned our entire pitching staff around in three weeks. We ended up winning the second half and won the championship because Brewer came and taught my pitchers to throw strikes with their fastballs. That’s the kind of stuff you got the opportunity with. Again, this was my first year coaching by myself.

When I got to Triple-A, we had coaches; we had a pitching coach and third base coach. My pitching coach was Dave Wallace, who was one of the best pitching coaches for a long time and one of my best friends. He had to go home, and I’m the only guy who’s ever had Sandy Koufax as a pitching coach. Sandy used to roll through the minor leagues, and he came to Albuquerque when Dave was going to be gone. Sandy was my pitching coach for a day.

MMO: You can’t do much better than having Koufax offering his tutelage.

Collins: We were sitting on the bench and the game was going on, and I brought a pitcher in for the ninth. He walked the first guy, and I went, “God damn it!” And Sandy, sitting next to me, said, “Did you ever pitch?” I said, “No.” Then he said, “Well, it ain’t that easy.” I never, ever said that again! I learned a lesson in one little sentence. [Laughs.]

MMO: Can you talk a bit about the role Hall of Fame manager Jim Leyland played in your development as a skipper?

Collins: Jim had a similar background as me. He only got to Double-A as a player; I spent six years in Triple-A. Neither of us got to the big leagues. Jim started managing at a young age and was stuck in the Tigers organization where Sparky [Anderson] was the manager, so Jim was going nowhere.

He was stuck in Triple-A and had a chance to go with Tony La Russa, but he wanted to be a Tiger; that’s all he wanted to do. Sparky wouldn’t hire him, so Jim ended up leaving. It was a very similar thing [for me]. Tommy [Lasorda] was the manager of the Dodgers, and he was never going to go until he decided he was going to. There was no place for me.

I had been managing in Albuquerque for six years as the Triple-A manager, and I had a chance to go to the Pittsburgh Pirates and manage their Triple-A team. I went to Pittsburgh and asked, ‘How do I get to the big leagues?’ I met Jim, and he liked me, and he brought me to the big leagues three years later. We had this relationship because of our backgrounds. He’s such an entertaining guy and funnier than heck.

In September, they started bringing the Triple-A manager up to the big leagues at the end of the season as part of the call-ups; they bring five, six, seven guys up in September. They started bringing the managers up so that you could help the coaches and the [minor league] manager knows about the [minor league] players. The other teams brought their minor league guys up who I saw [play]. So you could help.

When I got to the big leagues, Jim said to me, “Here’s your job: I want you to sit next to me on the bench during the games. I want you to throw batting practice to [Barry] Bonds, [Bobby] Bonilla and [Andy] Van Slyke. If I ever see you throwing batting practice to Tom Prince, I’m going to send you back to Triple-A. When the game’s over, I want you to come in, sit right over there in the corner, and listen to what kind of questions the sportswriters ask me and how I answer them. You don’t have to say the same things I say, but you need to hear the kind of questions you’re going to face.”

For the next number of years, that’s what I did. We’d sit on a plane together, and I’d ask questions about situations that happened in the game that night. He’s very upfront and blunt about it and would talk about it.

I asked him one time, ‘Jim, when you got the job in ’86 in Pittsburgh, what changes have you made to be the manager you are today?’ He looked off for a second and said, “Well, I’ll tell you, Terry. The biggest change I made was I write Barry Bonds’ name in a lineup now and not Jason Thompson’s.” [Laughs.]

MMO: There’s no better way to get acclimated to a future as a major league manager then getting to essentially shadow one as you did with Leyland.

Collins: Absolutely. They had a lockout one time, and Jim was in minor league spring training, so there were no big-league players at camp. The Triple-A manager ran spring training with the Pittsburgh organization at the time, so I ran spring training.

When it was over, Jim came over to me and said, “They opened up the camp for the big-league players. I don’t make promises but the next spot on my staff, you’re it.” That’s how I got my chance. I was really lucky, and we’ve just been very, very good friends. We stay in constant contact.

MMO: Are you planning on being in Cooperstown for his induction into the Hall of Fame this summer?

Collins: Yeah, absolutely.

MMO: I interviewed Ned Colleti several years ago, and he sang your praises during your time with the Dodgers as director of player development. He said when you left for Japan, he often missed your approach, intellect and honesty. What are your memories from your time with the Dodgers organization?

Collins: I was talking with Andy Green when he got the job with the Mets, and I told him that he’s the perfect guy. I told him he can make a huge impact on people. What helped me, Mathew, to be honest, I had already managed in the big leagues for six years. I had some situations with young players that got to the big leagues that failed miserably, and they were good players! It took them a while to get through it. That was one of the theories when I became the minor league director of Los Angeles was, look, I’m going to challenge my good players, and if they’re good enough they’ll get it and move faster.

I challenged Matt Kemp when he was 19; I put him in Double-A. He might have had a little problem in the beginning, but at the end of the year, he’s the best player in the league bar none.

My time with the Dodgers, Paul DePodesta was the GM, and when Jim Tracy was let go and I was going to get that job, Paul got fired two days before they were going to name me the manager. Ned got hired, and he came down to Florida to talk to me, and he said, “Look, you’re not going to get the job. I’m going to go with somebody else.” I said, “Okay.” And he said, “I don’t know what you want to do.” I told him, ‘I’m going to do what I always do: I’m just going to do my job.’

But I didn’t mope; shit happens! I stayed on and tried to help Ned as best I could and was always there and calling about different things. I had a great relationship with him, but I had a chance to go to Japan [to manage] for a lot of money, and I couldn’t turn that down. That’s why I left.

MMO: How would you compare baseball in Japan vs. the States?

Collins: The whole game’s different. Number one, they are fundamentally off the charts; tremendous cut-offs and relays. They can lay down the best bunts you’ll ever see, they can run the bases – they don’t steal a lot – but they run the bases great. They play to score one run and they play to protect one run. It might be the top of the first inning, and a guy’s on third base with one out and they’re bringing that infield in. They’re not giving up runs. You’re going to have to get a hit to earn a run; that’s how they play.

They have a tremendous work ethic. I mean, the pitchers with 200-pitch bullpens between starts, and hitters will take 500 swings before a game. They trained themselves and want to make the game easier so they get themselves into tremendous shape. They run and run and run and run!

You go to spring training, and they don’t have the number of fields we have over here, but spring training starts at nine in the morning and you’re off the field at six. You have dinner, and then the players get their bats and go out in the parking lot and swing. The rookies went to a room at the hotel and had night batting where they used wiffle balls. It’s pretty intense. It’s always go, go, go!

They have a day off or two every week, they play 144 games, but there’s a number of off days. They take the bullet trains, or they’ll take an easy flight, which are only an hour and ten minutes.

They’re very sound players. All of their pitchers throw the ball over the plate. Here, we like strike one and then expand the zone. They do almost the opposite. They nibble the outside corner and see if you’ll swing at it. If you don’t, they’ll throw it over. They don’t like to strikeout, so those guys will put the ball in play. They’ll hit that borderline pitch. They may not hit it good, but if you really work the count, you’re going to get a good ball to hit.

When I got over there, Bobby Valentine told me, “Terry, you’re not going to like the cut-offs or relays, but leave them alone because they do it.” Mathew, in all my years in the United States, I have never seen a guy tag up at third base on a fly ball to the outfield and try to score where the ball is cut off and relayed to home never be thrown out. I saw it three times in Japan! They are so good at it. Every cut off is perfectly thrown.

MMO: Did you take anything you learned in Japan and bring it back to the States when you were managing the Mets?

Collins: Not really. I saw a thing the other day that Carlos [Mendoza] was saying we took infield. Well, you know, in all my years in New York, we took infield. You know how they used to take it after batting practice? We took it before. When we were at home, our guys threw to the bases twice during a homestand. The outfielders loved it. You had [Yoenis] Céspedes and [Juan] Lagares, who both had tremendous arms. It was like a challenge of who was going to make the better throw.

Tommy Goodwin was my outfield coach, and those guys loved him. We took infield/outfield most every day. Those fundamentals in Japan, I remember I took an American coach over and a scout asked him one day before the game, “You guys going to take infield?” And John said, “Let me think, this is our hundredth game, and we’ve taken infield one-hundred times. Yeah, we’ll take it again.” [Laughs.]

I liked it. You make it easy because they want to take ground balls anyway. We came out 15 minutes early before we started hitting, and guys got all of their defensive work in. Now, if you want to take some balls off the bat during batting practice, that was fine. It eliminated guys getting hit because they were catching a ground ball while someone was taking BP. It really helped out, and I thought it was a big difference, so I brought that over.

Their batting practices at home [in Japan], have two cages going; they have a right-handed pitcher and a left-handed pitcher. You just go from cage to cage. It’s tremendous! They have routines, man. I saw [Yu] Darvish when he was 19. I saw [Masahiro] Tanaka when he was 17. They were electric, and both threw between starts. They would throw 150 pitches in the bullpen because that would make their game easier when they got to 120. That was their theory. But you couldn’t bring that here. You’d never get an American guy to do that.

MMO: The July 29, 2015, game is one fans will likely never forget with the sight of Wilmer Flores crying on the field believing he had been traded. What memories stick out for you from that night, and how did you go about managing a game that clearly had so much off-the-field speculation going on?

Collins: It was during the trade deadline, and Wilmer’s name was never mentioned; Sandy did that stuff himself. I’m just standing in the dugout and the game’s going on, and Wilmer was on deck, and some fans were yelling good luck and we love you. I’m going, “What the heck is that?”

David [Wright] came up to me and said, “Terry, it’s all over TV. He’s been traded.” I said, ‘David, he has not been traded.’ He said, “I’m telling you they’re broadcasting right now on TV; he’s been traded.” I said, “David, this guy has not been traded. You see that phone right there?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, ‘That phone goes to Sandy. If there’s a deal done, that phone would be ringing, and I’d be taking him out of the game.”

Now people are telling Wilmer he’s been traded, and he’s upset. I walked down the dugout to him, and I said, “Hey, let’s go. You’re on this team. You have not been traded. You’ve got to go out and play.” He goes out, and sure enough, he starts crying on the field. As he comes in off the field, I went over to him, and at the time, I think he was the only shortstop I had who was healthy. I said, “Look, you’ve got to finish this game, man. You’re fine, you’re still a Met. You’re not going anywhere.”

He went back, and he’s still crying on the field. The next thing you know, the phone rings, and it’s Sandy. And he said, “You’ve got to take Wilmer out.” I asked, ‘Is he traded?’ He said, “No, but he’s crying on the field!” So, he came back in, and I got him out, and sure enough, he wasn’t traded. I didn’t know what else to do. I told him, ‘Wilmer, if you were traded, I would’ve been told, and I would’ve taken you out of the game. You are a Met. Everything’s going to be okay.’

Sure enough, it ended up being okay. And that’s why, Mathew, two days later he hit that home run against the Nationals that couldn’t have been written. You can’t read a Hollywood script better than that.

MMO: Your “To who? For What” postgame comment will forever be etched in my brain. I always loved watching your pre and postgame press conferences because you were very transparent.

Collins: Absolutely, Mathew, and I’m going to go back to Jim Leyland. Right when I got my interview with the Houston Astros, I called Jim and said, ‘I’m going to go to Houston tomorrow and interview for the manager job.’ He said, “I’ll meet you at the stadium.” I was living in Pittsburgh, and we went to the stadium and I spent six hours with him. He just talked about all these different questions that I was going to face and different things.

One of the things he said was, “Listen, I’m going to tell you right now, you treat every reporter as if they’re the sports editor of The New York Times. There are no dumb questions, but if you’re hit with one, treat it like any other question. Don’t belittle the guy, just answer the question.”

When I got to the Mets, Jay Horwitz was the guy who told me, “Terry, one of the best things you can do is learn everybody’s name.” When I did these press conferences and if Mike Puma asked me a question, I would say, “Well, you know Mike…” Now his name is tied to that question.

There were some questions asked by some young guys or people from a different team or something that didn’t make much sense and all the writers would laugh. I didn’t laugh; I just answered the question. I thought that really helped, not to belittle any reporter. They have a job to do, and I respect it.

The only thing I ever asked of these guys was not to lie. Don’t make something up. It’s your opinion and strictly your opinion; that’s fine. There were a couple of times where there was an unnamed source that says this. I would go to them and say, “I know you won’t tell me who it was that said it, but how do I know you just didn’t make that up? Maybe you just said this is what I think, and I’m going to put it down and say somebody else said it.” I always did that one-on-one, I never did it in front of any of the other writers.

After your press conference, you’ve got to budget two minutes for almost every one of those guys; they all want their own two minutes. They’d ask a question or two for their own stories that they don’t want out there. That’s why I try and tell anybody that’s ever managed in New York that you’ve got to understand to budget your time for these guys and answer their questions. Don’t blow them off because they’ve got the pen, and they can make it miserable for you. Just treat them with respect, and that’s about it. I thought it helped me out a lot.

MMO: How beneficial was the Matrix during the 2015 season?

Collins: It was just coming into play then. I think it was a great coaching tool, I think it’s really good for coaches to use. The players can get overwhelmed with information, and their job is to go play. As a coach or manager, you take that information and try to use it to your benefit to put those guys in the best position to succeed. We didn’t flood them with a bunch of information; I just didn’t like it. Number one, most of them have played a long time, I had a pretty veteran club. The last thing I want to do is put stuff in their head.

I remember one time when I was in Anaheim, Tim Salmon, who’s a great, great player, somebody on the team said, “Hey, I’ve got the signs. Do you guys want them? If I’m on base I can tell you what’s coming.” And Tim said, “I do not want to know. I’m fine.” I asked him after the game was over why that was, and he said, “Terry, if he’s wrong, it’ll screw me up mentally. Let me just figure it out.” I thought that made sense.

They used it (analytics) a lot in Japan. In interleague play in Japan, you can have your advance scout on the bench with you. The other team brought in a pitcher, so this advance scout got up and talked to my rookie shortstop, who was a pretty nice player, and said, “There’s a thirty percent chance you’re going to get this, another thirty percent chance you’re going to get this pitch, a twenty-five percent chance you’re going to get this pitch.” You’ve got to be shitting me! [Laughs.] Go up there, and if you get a fastball, hit it!

You’ve got to filter it. I thought our coaches did a great job of using that information for their benefit to help the players and not try to overwhelm them.

MMO: One of the moments I’ll always remember is when SNY caught the shot of you going over and putting your arm around Jacob deGrom in the dugout after he gave up eight earned runs against the Texas Rangers in 2017. Do you remember some of the things you relayed to deGrom in that moment?

Collins: First of all, everybody saw how talented Jake was. Great talent. He was the best pitcher we had. There were times Matt [Harvey] was the best, or [Noah] Syndergaard might have been the best, but Jake was our guy.

I remember years ago, Walter Alston told me when I first started managing, “Terry, there are two kinds of players. There are the ones who have been humbled, and ones who will be humbled in this game.” And that was what I pretty much told Jake. Everybody’s going to have a bad day. [Sandy] Koufax had a bad day; Bob Feller had a bad day. He had a bad day. You’ve got to be able to forget about it, because in four days you’re going back out there, big boy. Blow it off, tip your cap and say I’ll see you in four days.

That was just a moment where you could look back and say, guess way? Welcome to the game. It’s not easy out there. That’s why guys who compete like he did, it can cause that humbleness that a player needs once in a while to realize the game is not easy. I thought that was a coaching chance for me to tell Jake that he’s still the guy. You’re going to be just fine, you had a bad night and move on.

MMO: Does a day go by where someone doesn’t mention the ass in the jackpot game?

Collins: You know what? It’s become part of me, it really has!

I live in St. Lucie, and I belong to a golf course where three quarters of the members are New Yorkers. During this time of year, people come down and they’ll come out and somebody will introduce me. And that’s the first thing they’ll bring up!

I have a friend who’s a golf pro at the pro shop, and every time I walk in the first thing I hear is, “Give us a shot! Gotta give us a shot!” So there’s not a day.

MMO: It still baffles me that Adam Hamari had such a quick trigger when it came to Syndergaard’s pitch behind Chase Utley.

Collins: That was my argument. Do you remember John McSherry? Great, big umpire. He actually died on the field in Cincinnati. He was a long-time umpire, and we had a fight in Houston. When the fight finally stopped, I went over to him, and he’s writing down names of guys he’s going to kick out. He never looked up; he was just writing names down. He said to me, “You get one shot. You get the first guy in the batter’s box and then I’m going to put an end to this.”

Four years later, I’m managing the Angels, and we get in a big fight in Kansas City. Don Denkinger said exactly the same thing to me when all the stuff stopped finally. He said, “You get the first guy and it’s over with.” This was the first time we saw Utley, and I was shocked. That’s why when Tom [Hailon] said, “You had a shot,” no we didn’t! This was it! That was my whole argument. I wasn’t mad at Tom; we didn’t get the chance to get Utley and that’s what I was upset about.

MMO: What advice would Terry Collins in his final year as manager in 2017 give to first-year manager Terry Collins in 1994?

Collins: Enjoy the game more. I took it real serious, that’s why I rubbed people the wrong way. I’m a pretty intense guy, you know, when I played, I was intense. I had an old manager tell me one time, “Players will take on the personality of the manager.” I really respected the game. I wasn’t a good enough player, but there wasn’t a time that I didn’t play as hard as I could. Not one day.

One year I broke my jaw, and seven days later with my jaw wired shut, I was in the lineup. I was playing with a pair of pliers in my pocket in case I got sick so I could snip the wires off. You just played; you played as hard as you could. I always thought you had to respect the game. If it wasn’t for baseball, what would we all be doing? Give it back, give it back effort. And for some people that rubbed them the wrong way. And I understood it. Shoot, I apologized to a lot of players.

Garret Anderson was a really good player, but he was one of those guys who didn’t run every ball out. One time I went up to him and asked, “Do you have a problem with me?” He said, “Absolutely not. You’re wound a little too tight for me, but I know you want to win, and I have no problem with that.” I told him okay, and that I just wanted to make sure because he’s going to be playing, he’s going to be in the lineup every day.

There are times where you’ve got to take a stance on something. It might rub a player the wrong way, but I just think that’s the way the game should be played and managed.

When I went to New York, I told myself that I’ve got to start enjoying the game more. I’ve got to enjoy my time because these jobs are hard to get. I’ve got good players, and there’s nothing more fun than going out with the best players in the world and competing. So, I told myself I’ve got to enjoy it, and that’s how I went about it in New York.

MMO: Tell me about joining X and starting a podcast. What can fans expect from “The Terry Collins Show”?

Collins: John Arezzi called me about it, and I had absolutely no idea I was going to do it. I’m not a big social media guy, and I’m too old to get on that stuff. But I just want to have some fun with it.

As you said earlier in the conversation, I’m an honest guy. I think there are things the fans might want to know about with the actions during a game or what goes on behind the scenes. The more they know the more they’ll enjoy the game. I want to have some fun and have guests on and talk about their careers.

I’ve got a buddy who’s a bookie, and one of the shows is going to be about gambling in sports, especially baseball. It’s just something to have some fun with and to relate to the fans. I’ve never been big enough in the game to think that I don’t have a relationship with the fans. I respect that. I try and say hi to everyone and take pictures. It takes ten seconds to sign an autograph, and that ten seconds means a lot to people.

MMO: When you look back over your fifty years in the sport, what are you most proud of?

Collins: That’s a tough one. I guess I’m most proud that I lasted for fifty years. After I signed, three years later I was released. I loved the sport and endured enough through all of the years, rode a lot of buses and didn’t make much money for a long, long time. I still respected and loved the game enough that it was fun, and it was all I wanted to do. So, I stayed with it.

I stayed with what I wanted to do and made a life. I took the ups and downs and tried to be the same guy every day. I think baseball teaches that.

Follow Terry Collins on Twitter, @TerryCollins_10.

Check out Terry’s podcast here.

The post MMO Exclusive: Former Mets Manager, Terry Collins appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

For the first time since 1994, the Mets are hosting an Old Timers’ Day. What once had been a staple of the organization ever since the team originated has now been revived under the Steve Cohen regime, helped by crowdsourcing on Twitter shortly after taking ownership. The early years of the festivities celebrated New York’s brilliant baseball past, especially in 1977 when they brought out Joe DiMaggio, Duke Snider, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Mays — appropriately — from center field.

Now with 60 years of its own history to look back on, this latest version is entirely orange and blue. It’s a day that will span generations as 65 former Mets are taking part, some of whom date back to the very beginning of the franchise.

Plenty of famous faces will be there: Mike Piazza, Mookie Wilson, Keith Hernandez, and starting pitchers Dwight Gooden and Bartolo Colon, but many others who made an impact on this team’s unique past are also going to be recognized Saturday — and may even take their turn at the plate or on the mound. Here are just a few:

Jay Hook

The Mets have won over 4,630 times and it all began with him. Hook pitched a five-hit complete game and walking one in a 9-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field on April 21, 1962. The Northwestern University alum with a degree in engineering finished ’62 at 8-19 for the 40-120 club and ended his eight-year major league career as a Met in 1964. At 85 years old, Hook will toss out the ceremonial first pitch to Mike Piazza before the present-day Mets take the field for their contest with the Rockies and is hoping to pitch during the Old Timers’ Game.

Frank Thomas

The original Frank Thomas was also an original Met, acquired from the Milwaukee Braves on November 21, 1961. A the three-time All-Star with Pittsburgh clouted at least twenty-five homers in five different seasons—and found similar success with the short left-field porch of the Polo Grounds. He went three straight August games belting two home runs apiece and finished with 34 on the year, a mark which stood for 13 years. Although his power eventually subsided, Thomas topped the 1963 team in RBIs with 60—giving him a two-year total of 154 before getting sent to the Phillies in August 1964.

While Jay Hook is known for a Mets first, Orosco specialized in endings. Specifically in 1986, when he was on the mound for the NLCS and World Series clinchers. Orosco also has ties to the team’s first title, as he was traded to the Mets from Minnesota in exchange for the pitcher who finished the ’69 series, Jerry Koosman. The left-hander who set the MLB record for appearances had his longest stop in Queens, taking up eight of his remarkable 24-year career and racking up 107 saves. Often forgotten in the spotlight of ’86 was his stellar 1983 season, in which he had a 1.47 ERA and was third in the NL Cy Young Award voting.

Howard Johnson

HoJo might be the most underrated Met ever. There’s certainly a case to be made for him having the greatest hitting season, considering what he did in 1989: 36 homers, 101 RBIs, a league-best 104 runs scored, a career-best 41 stolen bases, and the highest single-season Mets totals in OPS+ (169) and offensive bWAR (8.0). Johnson recorded three 30-30 seasons in all (1987, ’89, ’91) and remains prominent on the franchise hitting leaderboards: fourth in home runs, fourth in RBIs, fourth in runs, and third in steals.

Rafael Santana

The starting shortstop on the 1986 Mets is largely forgotten because he didn’t have the star power of his teammates nor did he put up any tremendous figures with the bat. But Santana was a splendid fielder at shortstop and had the sixth-best defensive bWAR in the NL in ’86. He started all 13 games in the postseason that year, and set NLCS positional records for most putouts (13), assists (18) and chances (31). Santana took advantage of the lively ball in 1987, setting career-highs in homers and RBIs.

Terry Leach

The right-handed sidearmer had two separate stints with the Mets in the 1980s and was a godsend to the ’87 club. The loss of Dwight Gooden to drug rehab and Bob Ojeda to injury, among other ailments to New York pitchers, necessitated Leach’s insertion into the rotation. All he did was tally ten consecutive victories, seven of eight as a starter, and have an overall 11-1 record. The Mets were far healthier in ’88, keeping Leach in the bullpen but not keeping him off the mound, as made 52 appearances for the NL East champs and posted a 2.54 ERA.

Rico Brogna

Looking at his Baseball Reference page, it’s hard to believe he only played for the Mets in 228 games over three seasons. Because growing up, I swore he was their first baseman for like eight. Brogna had 138 plate appearances in 1994 but was quite efficient, slashing .351/.380/.626 with an OPS over 1.000. His only full season came in ’95, when those numbers dipped slightly but he still produced 22 homers and drove in 76 with 27 doubles, not to mention being stellar with the glove. A highlight for him came when he hit a walk-off homer on John Franco Day after Franco (and others) were ejected for their involvement in a brawl with the Cubs.

Turk Wendell

There’s quirky, then there’s Turk. Baseball is known for its superstitions and probably no one had more than Wendell. You always could figure out who was coming in to pitch when it was a guy with a shark tooth necklace emerging from the bullpen. Idiosyncrasies aside, he was an oft-used high-leverage reliever during one of the team’s best eras, appearing in 157 games from 1999-00 with a 145 ERA+. If he ends up pitching Saturday and doesn’t throw the rosin bag and jump over the baseline as he jogs to the dugout, we will have not gotten the full Turk Wendell experience.

The post An Old Timers’ Day Primer appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

If the Mets hadn’t converted all their disbelievers by now– those who were still convinced the Orioles superiority would overcome New York’s combination of pitching, timely hitting, and spectacular plays in the field — would be given even more of a reason to believe in miracles after game 4.

Of no miracle was the performance by Tom Seaver on this afternoon. Following a shaky opening game loss in Baltimore, Seaver was vintage at Shea Stadium as he even carried the Mets into extra innings. But the game probably would never have gotten to that point, and the Mets wouldn’t have taken a 3-1 series lead, if not for the heroics of a most unlikely defensive star. On the heels of Tommie Agee‘s exhibition in center field one day earlier, Ron Swoboda garnered the spotlight with one incredible catch that still ranks among the best ever in a World Series.

Here are some highlights to look for:

• Enjoy the pregame show plus commercials. Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle were among the many who predicted a Baltimore series victory, and provided analysis from a room that must have been used for a darts tournament.
• Original Mets manager Casey Stengel tosses out the first pitch around the 29:00 mark.
• Donn Clendenon, the eventual series MVP, continues to feast on the Orioles’ left-hand pitching at 59:00. It would be his second of three homers (each off southpaws) in the five-game set.
• Orioles skipper Earl Weaver proceeds to get tossed by home plate umpire Shag Crawford beginning at 1:05:31, becoming the first manager to be ejected from a World Series game since 1935.
• At 2:22:10, the play of the game — and maybe of the Mets’ franchise: Ron Swoboda’s sensational, diving play with runners on first and third and one out in the top of the ninth robs Brooks Robinson. Frank Robinson manages to tag up and score the tying run, but Swoboda’s heroics limit the damage.
• The Mets win it in the tenth as J.C. Martin “drives” in the winning run. His sacrifice bunt attempt is fielded by Baltimore reliever Pete Richert, whose throw to first base strikes Martin in the wrist and allows pinch-runner Rod Gaspar to come in from second base. The Orioles contest afterward that Martin interfered with the throw, but to no avail. Everything was coming up Mets.

The post Mets Video Vault: 1969 World Series Game 4 appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

If you follow the Mets on Twitter, you probably caught a glance of a photo taken from behind of Duke Snider, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle walking in from center field at Shea Stadium shown on Thursday. That picture of baseball royalty took place some 43 years ago during a once-annual Mets event in which they honored National League greats and New York notables alike.

The 1977 version may have been the most start-studded of them all. And the Mets were well-served to offer their fans a touch of goodwill on this hot July afternoon.

Yes, the New York City blackout which occurred just three days ago (and happened in the middle of a Mets game at Shea) was no fault of theirs. But the trading of Tom Seaver and Dave Kingman a month before certainly was.

There stood little to no reason to support the team other than for ceremonial events like this. If the Mets weren’t good at holding on to their superstars, at least they were excellent in paying tribute to legends of the past.

https://youtu.be/Rq3Sxaw-bYU?list=FLSOVqh6cJCMpJB2Bbbt3pGw

If you’re a nostalgic buff, there are tons of content. But here are a few things of note:

• To those that miss hearing the voices of Bob Murphy and Lindsey Nelson, you get an added treat of seeing them too. Bob introduces the broadcast (and you might need sunglasses before staring at his attire). Lindsey, as he was known to do, appears at 7:17 wearing a suit probably made of the same material from my grandmother’s curtains.
• The theme of the afternoon is “Memorable Moments from World Series Play.” As you might imagine, it has a strong Big Apple flavor — with Brooklyn Dodgers like Carl Erskine (wearing a Mets jersey even though he was never a Met) and Roy Campanella, New York Giants like Monte Irvin, and even Yankees such as Bobby Richarson and Whitey Ford.
• Of course, plenty of Mets from 1969 are on hand — Ron Swoboda, Al Weis, and Gary Gentry among them.
• The ceremony makes room for Joe Torre (at 38:56), recently tabbed Mets manager, despite never having been to a Fall Classic. “We are confident and hopeful that one day in the not too distant future, he will be managing in one,” Lindsey Nelson says. If by “not too distant future,” he meant 19 years later and doing so wearing Yankee pinstripes, this was spot-on.
• Then comes the climactic moment (starting at 39:27). Nelson introduces Snider, Mantle, Mays, and DiMaggio individually and each member of the immortal New York center field quartet emerges, appropriately enough, from the center field gate before walking down together to join the rest of the players.
• Longtime Shea organist Jane Jarvis plays Auld Lang Syne and then the national anthem starting at 43:50.
• The shortened “game” begins at about the 53:00 mark, and is a definitely a come down from the high just felt moments earlier.

The post Mets Video Vault: 1977 Old Timers Day appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Babe Ruth has been dead for over seventy years, but he’s been haunting Jane Leavy’s mind for over two decades.

Leavy, the New York Times best-selling author whose works include heavily researched biographies on Hall of Famers Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle, had been planning to write a then-novel on the most celebrated and, by most standards, greatest Major League Baseball player of all-time back in 1995.

Due to the voluminous works that were written on Ruth, Leavy felt it necessary to go the fictional route in order to better “inhabit the caricature that he had become,” as she says. She did not want to recycle the same information that had appeared in endless pages dedicated to Ruth in years past.

Sidetracked with her aforementioned works on Koufax and Mantle, Leavy returned to her Ruth project in 2011, when she met with his daughter, Julia Ruth Stevens, who is now 102-years-old. It was during a sit-down with Julia that her initial idea of writing a novel shifted.

Julia informed Leavy that Ruth’s father, George Sr., and mother, Kate, were separated, information that was not privy in previous works on Ruth.

While Leavy didn’t have the opportunity to speak with former contemporaries of Ruth, as other notable writers had, what she did have was the digitization of archived resources at her disposal. It was through a simple Google search that she further researched Julia’s claim of Ruth’s parents being separated. What she found was that not only were they separated, but George Sr. had filed for divorce from his wife after he found her in a compromising position with his bartender at the saloon he owned in Baltimore.

With reams of information at her fingertips – literally – Leavy was able to compile a profusion of information pertaining to Ruth’s childhood, which up until this point was filled with many myths and just plain falsities.

This amounted to her penning a six-hundred-plus-page biography titled “The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created.” In it, Leavy dispels several decades-long myths, including the real reason Ruth was sent to St. Mary’s Industrial School for boys at the age of seven.

The book revolves around Ruth and Lou Gehrig’s 1927 barnstorming tour, after a season in which Ruth hit 60 home runs – a total that would not be exceeded until Roger Maris in 1961 – and Gehrig fresh off his first M.V.P. season. The book traces the superstars’ tour in fantastic detail while eschewing every career highlight. Instead, Leavy focuses on how Ruth transcended the game not only on the field but off it.

With the help of Christy Walsh, who pioneered the sports agent role, Ruth became a cultural phenomenon who made appearances in films, advertisements, and ghostwritten columns. With help from Walsh, Ruth ultimately became the model for the modern celebrity athlete.

Beyond the adulation Ruth was constantly met with was a man who needed the spotlight and people who loved him around. Being brought up in St. Mary’s, where they were overcrowded with young boys, Ruth knew and was used to being around large crowds, and felt at his best in those situations.

Understanding that notion, what the book does a superb job of is retracing young Ruth’s childhood in detailed form, to illustrate what made Little George – as his parents called him – into the Big Fella.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Leavy in late December, where we discussed how long she had thought about writing a book on Ruth, who Christy Walsh was and how important he was in Ruth’s life and debunking some decades-long myths.

MMO: How long had you been thinking of writing a book on Babe Ruth, and what was the process like?

Leavy: It was basically a nightmare. I’ve been thinking about it probably since 1995. That was when I took my then-seven-year-old son to the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum in Baltimore. At that point, the trip was for me to introduce him to the Babe, but also for me to research into what I thought would be a novel about Babe Ruth.

I somehow got sidetracked doing Sandy Koufax, and then Mickey Mantle. When they were done, where do you go? Where do you go after Koufax? You go to Mantle. Where do you go after Mantle? You go to Babe Ruth. And don’t ask me where I go next because I have no clue. [Laughs.]

MMO: I read in an interview you gave with another outlet that you took a full year just to read all the biographies already written about Ruth for your research.

Leavy: Yeah, I had to persuade myself before I could persuade anybody else that there was a new way to tell the story about Babe Ruth and a new story to tell. After [Abraham] Lincoln, Muhammad Ali and a couple of other people, he is one of the most written-about guys of the twentieth century.

He [Ruth] was written about repeatedly, and repeatedly well, starting with Bob Creamer in 1974. I had to be sure that there was something that I could add to what they had already done. I was very skeptical that I would find new material about him; my friends will tell you I was a bore for months!

There was nobody who was presently alive who I wanted to speak to who I could speak to because most of them are dead. I was able to get to some family members and to some elderly gentlemen who had seen him play. I knew that I wouldn’t have access to the teammates, opponents, managers, general managers, and Yankee officials that some of the other biographers had been able to speak with.

The only place that I was going to find stuff that was new was in archives. Those archives weren’t available in 1974, not in any way that you could easily access. As it turned out, there was plenty for me to write that was new.

Just as I didn’t have access to the living voices, Bob et al. didn’t have access to the voices that emerge out of legal documents that I was able to find at the Maryland State Archives and to newspaper articles. While they would’ve been in microfilm, you would’ve had to spend your whole life going through reams of tape in order to find what I could find with a click of the mouse.

Player’s Tribune

MMO:  I loved what you wrote in the introduction of your book about how Cal Ripken Jr. wanted to hold Ruth’s bowling ball at the Hall of Fame, so he could stick his fingers in the holes to see how wide his hand and spread were. Can you talk about that story a little bit, including what you found out about the diameter of his thumb?

Leavy: In June 2014, as a celebration of the 100^th anniversary of Ruth’s debut in the major leagues for the Boston Red Sox, the Hall of Fame opened a new Babe Ruth exhibit, which was the first new one in thirty years. I made sure to be there, and I was remembering what I had seen of him when I was a child and remembering his big red locker from Yankee Stadium standing sort of by itself, like a totem. Its doors were flung open so you could see the stenciled white letters “Ruth,” and the number three.

I get to this redone thing, which was upstairs on the second floor, and museums have changed a lot in the way they present things. It’s in a dim room with black ceilings, and Tom Shieber, the curator who is a very good friend and helped me a lot, had organized it sort of like a scrapbook if you were walking through his life.

By the time you get to the locker, it’s sort of subsumed in dark museum cabinetry, and it’s filled up with a bat of his, a picture of him sitting by the locker on his last visit to Yankee Stadium, silver loving cup that had been given to him, and all sorts of stuff. It’s become sort of an exhibit case more than an object.

While I’m standing there looking at it, I’m feeling claustrophobic on his behalf because I’m thinking, This is not big enough for the Babe. This is too dark for the Babe. He needs green grass; he needs wide expanses to gallop after fly balls.

As I’m trying to make myself stay there, Cal Ripken Jr. – who I covered as a young reporter for The Washington Post – in fact, I covered him in his rookie year, comes over to me and says, “Come here, I’ve got to show you something!”

He dragged me over to, I think, the last display cabinet where they had Babe Ruth’s blue and black paisley custom drilled bowling ball. After Babe retired in June 1935 and baseball couldn’t find anything or any place for him in the game, he spent a lot of time bowling, mainly by himself. And so this is the ball that he had used, and Cal says to me, in that very Cal way of his, “Gee, I wish I could stick my fingers in Babe’s ball.” [Laughs.]

I looked at him like, ‘Oh, come on, Cal. You realize what you just said?’

He really wanted to feel the spread of his hand. As silly as the initial statement sounded, what he was saying was, Here’s a great athlete of the late twentieth century, trying to get a grip and literally feel what was the greatness of Babe Ruth. He wanted to do that by feeling how large his hands were because he can’t get a tactile feel for the Babe any other way. So I said, ‘No problem, Cal. We can do that. I know there’s another ball downstairs.’

I went off to get Tom Shieber, and we were all set to go downstairs, but by that time, Cal had disappeared. What I did was, I got a bowling ball expert from Oneonta to come in with his bowling ball measuring tools, and he measured the distances between the thumb hole and the middle finger, the thumb hole and the pointer finger, which were ample; four inches, and the other one was about a quarter-inch shy of that.

The guy figured that the spread of his hand must’ve been about ten inches, which is plenty big but not overwhelming for big guys today. What blew him away was the diameter of the thumb hole. He measured that Babe Ruth’s knuckle on his left hand would’ve been exactly 1 3/32 inches wide; that’s approximately the size of an unshelled walnut.

If you want to know what made Babe Ruth, Babe Ruth, why he could equally handle a 54-ounce bat and make a baseball dance from the pitcher’s mound, that’s the reason.

MMO: That anecdote very early on stuck with me, especially in relation to how he could handle such a big bat for his career.

Leavy: You know what’s funny? When I started writing about Sandy Koufax back when, people would say to me, “Have you shook his hand?”

I said, ‘No, not yet.’

Well, then I did, and I’m not a big person, but my hand splayed out and sits in the palm of his hand. When he shook my hand, it reached all the way up past my elbow.

They were trying to say to me very much the same thing about Ruth. Look at what he was physiologically able to do in the way he held a ball and could make it do what he wanted to at his behest.

MMO: One of the myths you debunk in the book was the fact that young George was not an orphan or an incorrigible. Can you touch on what you found out about why he was sent to St. Mary’s?

Leavy: We live in such a different time than the one he grew up in. Today, if you have family woes and a tough growing-up story, somebody pitches it to an online magazine or a cable show, and you get sympathy votes for that. In Babe Ruth’s era, when he was coming up, this was nothing to brag about and nothing to talk about.

In the absence of fact, two colliding myths grew up. One was, why did he get sent to St. Mary’s Industrial School? Why did he spend his childhood there?

Many people assumed, and some still do, that he was an orphan because people thought St. Mary’s was an orphanage. It was not. It was a reform school that also took in some orphans, some wayward boys, and some incorrigibles, which was a legal term for boys who were sent by the courts because they had gotten in trouble with the law.

The other myth about Babe was that he was one of those incorrigibles, that he had been a roustabout kid, running amok on the waterfront of Baltimore, and that his parents had gotten a friendly justice to send him to St. Mary’s. And this is where those documents and archives we were speaking about turn up.

I went to interview Babe Ruth’s daughter, Julie -who’s still alive at age 102 – back in 2011, that’s when I started working on this. And she said to me, out of absolutely nowhere from nothing I was smart enough to ask, “Well, you know, George Sr. [Babe’s father] and his mother Katie were separated.”

I did a double-take and said, ‘No, I didn’t know that!’ And Babe Ruth certainly never said that in the thousands of interviews.

All I had to do was go to my computer and type in George Herman Ruth Sr. v. Katie Ruth, adding the legal versus, and guess what pops up? What pops up in the archives is the entire case file for not a separation, but a divorce. The reason Babe Ruth was sent to St. Mary’s was that his parent’s marriage was stormy, tempestuous and fraught with loss after loss after loss of children. By the time Babe Ruth was seven and was sent to St. Mary’s, he had seen the deaths of four siblings; two from malnutrition that I found in death certificates in the archives.

In March 1906, George Sr. found his wife in a compromising position with the bartender at George’s saloon, and he threw her out. Had she and the bartender arrested and immediately filed for divorce, which was granted two months later in May 1906. She never came back to the family home, as far as I could tell, except to pick up her clothing and the depositions in the divorce are ugly and tawdry and sad beyond belief. Once that marriage was completely dissolved, George Sr. didn’t have any time or interest in raising his son.

MMO: While your book is on Babe Ruth, another huge component of Ruth’s adult life, and who you write extensively about, is Christy Walsh. Talk about the role Walsh played in Ruth’s growing fame.

Leavy: Christy Walsh was, in fact, the model for Jerry Maguire. And while he didn’t stick out his hand and say, “Show me the money,” that’s basically what he was doing. He was the first guy to do that for a baseball player in a very systematic way.

Their relationship started in February 1921. Everybody wanted a piece of the Babe, and Christy was out of work and was fired from yet another job. [He] found out where he was staying, climbed up a fire escape, and found a window to Ruth’s hotel room open; this is according to Christy’s nephew, Richard. [He] climbed through the window, slapped him on the butt, and said, “I want to represent you.”

This resulted in a one-year deal to allow Walsh to syndicate ghostwritten byline columns under Ruth’s name. Ghostwritten columns, at that point, before radio and before pre-game shows and before reporters went down to get locker-room quotes routinely, those were the ways that a player allegedly could speak to his fans. Everybody sort of knew that they weren’t really true or real, but it didn’t really matter; people ate them up.

By the middle of the twenties, Christy Walsh – who was trained as a lawyer but never practiced – had legal rights to manage all of his money and basically saved him from himself, because absent Christy Walsh, he [Ruth] would’ve spent every cent that he had and ended up in the poor house.

MMO: Talk a bit about the relationship between Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

Leavy: The book, as you know, recreates their 1927 barnstorming tour. I wanted to let readers feel what it was like to be Babe Ruth at the absolute apex of his fame. To feel what it was like to be around him. I specifically chose not to do the conventional biographical beginning, middle, end, because I had figured that had been done pretty well already.

In 1927, Lou Gehrig is what my grandmother would’ve called a pisher; he was a young guy, he was 24 and had won the Most Valuable Player Award because Babe Ruth wasn’t allowed to win it a second time; he had won it in ’23. And he was in awe of Ruth.

What comes across in the articles I was able to access through the Library of Congress and newspapers dot com and all those local stories was it was such a big deal that they came through their town. The local writers wrote the byplay between them and what the relationship was like between them. It was at that point affectionate, and it was maybe brotherly. Christy Walsh used that to promote Ruth as the wise elder, which was kind of hilarious in retrospect.

Gehrig had never been west of St. Louis, and in Ogden, Utah, where they changed trains on the route to California on this barnstorming tour, they went for a ride through the canyon. Gehrig was so naive that he was disappointed that there were no cowboys and Indians, and he said something like, “Well, it sure was an education to go around with the Babe.” [Laughs.] I bet it was!

I think the relationship was good then and not exactly equal; that would change later, will become fraught later. But at this point and time, it was quite a good relationship.

MMO: The inside cover of your book features a picture of hundreds of boys trying to cram themselves in to take a picture with Ruth after an exhibition game in 1925. Ruth looks completely unfazed, in fact, he’s smiling and looks to be genuinely enjoying the attention.

After reading your book and piecing his life together, I came away thinking that Ruth enjoyed the spotlight and adoration so much because of his tragic upbringing. Losing at least four siblings and still being placed in a reform school and having a feeling of being unwanted, did you get the sense that Ruth was at his best when he was around others?

Leavy: Yes. One thing that Julia told me, I asked her what he said about St. Mary’s, and she said, “He only said one thing ever. That he never felt full.” Which I think is a statement of actual hunger, because the Xaverian brothers had a lot of boys they had to care for, and not that much money, and they had meat once a week, and guess what? It was hot dogs. Is it any wonder that he’d gorge himself on them later?

Those kids lived head to toe in long rows of metal cots that were separated just wide enough apart that they could get down and say their prayers at night. There was nothing personal to distinguish one child’s bed or place from another. They slept together, bathed together, went through puberty together and they played baseball together.

And what Babe Ruth learned at St. Mary’s – in addition to how to make a shirt collar or how to throw a baseball and how to hit one – was how to be public. That’s what was comfortable for him. That’s where he felt most at home in his skin. What he couldn’t do, and what was so hard for him, his second wife Claire would say later, was being alone.

At the end of his career in June 1935, when baseball could find no useful place for him in the entire game and the institution that he had made and thought of as a family turned their back on him, it was a replication of the abandonment in his childhood, and I think it was excruciating for him.

MMO: After you compiled all your research and finished the book, did your perception of Ruth change for the better or worse?

Leavy: What I wanted to do when I was first going to write a novel, I wanted to write a novel because I wanted to inhabit the caricature that he had become. I thought there was no other way to do it other than fictionally. I was wrong as it turned out. I couldn’t understand or anticipate what history and the digital revolution was going to give me, so I was able to do it with actual fact instead of with gut reaction.

I came to admire him even more than I did when I started out because his parents abandoned him. Imagine how he felt; he was seven-years-old and they had lost four children and there were only two left. They may have lost six, but I could only find documentation for four, and they still didn’t want him. That’s got to feel pretty awful, and he was left at St. Mary’s to make a self and to make a life, and he did it. That it was flawed, that he didn’t know how to be a parent or a husband when he came out of St. Mary’s is hardly surprising, and he’s certainly not the only major leaguer about whom you could say that.

And he did change over time, and he was quite frustrated as I read in a 1963 story by a young guy named Jhan Robbins, who had visited him as a high school reporter in the Yankee locker room in 1934. Jhan had asked about not being asked to be the Yankees manager, which was, of course, the talk of all the tabloids and all the papers in New York. And Ruth went nuts on him! “That’s what’s wrong with all of you newspaper guys,” to a fourteen-year-old kid. “You never give a guy a chance to change. Wasn’t I good to you? Didn’t I always give you things to write about? Can’t you see that I’ve changed? Sure, I ran around in my time, but I’m different now.”

Babe Ruth learned the lesson that so many celebrities have learned since. Since he was the model for celebrity, which is if you create a persona – and he certainly colluded in the creation of the persona of the guy that ate too much, drank too much, stayed out late too much – you’re going to get trapped in it. And it’s going to be very hard for people to accept that you’re not necessarily that person anymore if you were that person ever.

MMO: Thanks very much for your time today, Jane. The book was a terrific read and I wish you all the best with it.

Leavy: Thanks so very much.

Follow Jane Leavy on Twitter, @janeleavy1

Visit Jane’s website here.

You can purchase “The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created” here.

The post MMO Exclusive: Jane Leavy, Author of “The Big Fella” appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

I’m not sure if it occurs in the first, second or third trimester. But some time while we’re in the womb, all Mets fans—actually all New Yorkers who are fans of NL Baseball—receive the gene that makes us hate the Yankees.

However, maybe once every generation, a player dons the pinstripes who we hate…but who we also kinda love.

My grandfather grew up in The Bronx but bled Dodger blue. He hated the Bronx Bombers–Except when it came to Joe DiMaggio. Ya just had to love The Yankee Clipper.

My dad was born in The Bronx and like his father, grew up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium. Like his dad, he also bled Dodger blue.

I, too, spent the first several years of my life close to The House That Ruth Built. I fell in love with Baseball in the early 70’s. As I studied the game’s glorious history and read about the three great center fielders who all played in NY during the 1950’s, I asked my father one day, “Dad, was Mickey Mantle better than Duke Snider?” He smirked. “Oh, please. Mickey couldn’t carry the Duke’s jock strap.” (I then asked my dad what a jock strap was.) But I could tell my dad was embellishing. The Duke was his favorite player as a young boy but…Mickey? Well, he was The Mick.

In the late 70s’, I watched the Mets struggling to avoid 100 losses while Reggie Jackson’s legend grew to mythical proportions. I hated Mr. October…but yea, ya kinda had to love the guy.

DiMaggio, Mickey, Reggie. Then came guys like Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera. Yes, they were Yankees. Yes, they were good. And yes, we hated them. But at the same time, we kinda loved ‘em. We respected their ability.

Anytime we read a biography or autobiography, we hope to learn something about the individual. Get a feel for them. Get a sense that we know them. I recently read “The Closer” by Mariano Rivera, co-authored by Wayne Coffey. Sadly, after 265 pages, I knew nothing more about Mo than when I started. The book was a major letdown.

The first 65 pages or so were powerful, moving, and touching. Extremely personal as Mariano opened his heart and went into great detail. Born in Panama City, Panama, he grew up in Puerto Caimito, a small fishing village. He, his parents and three siblings lived in a 2-room cement house at the end of a dirt road. No electricity. No running water. They used an outhouse.

It’s hard to imagine that Baseball’s All-Time Saves leader and the greatest closer in post-season history, the fella who was always calm, cool and collected on the mound, was a bad kid. He dropped out of school in the ninth grade. His father, an alcoholic, abused him physically and verbally. He was nearly killed twice, once out at sea on his father’s fishing boat and a second time when a classmate chased him with a machete. Mariano Rivera, the guy who recorded 1,173 strikeouts in 1,283 IP, posted a career ERA of 2.21, a 13 time All-Star who holds the post-season record for saves (42) and lowest post-season ERA (0.70) hated math and didn’t have a head for numbers.

He expressed his feelings about being a young prospect in the Yankees system and living in a country where he didn’t speak the native language. The scene in which he described his initial tryout was extremely stirring.

When he made the Yankees, his life changed. When he made the Yankees, the book changed, too.

Suddenly, by about page 65, the personal touch was gone. The book went from being an autobiography to a biography. It appeared written not by a guy who pitched for the Yankees for 19 years and won 5 championships but rather by an outsider, an observer.

Each chapter was a different season. However, it read not like a first-hand account, but rather like the Wikipedia page for the 1997 Yankees, 1998 Yankees, 1999 Yankees, and so on. Remote and detached.

Each chapter/season read like bullet-points without any emotion:

“We started the season 8-3, then slumped in late April. We had a good May and early June, then hit a rough spot in late June. At the All-Star Break, we were 48-39, 2 games behind Boston. I had 21 saves and a 1.97 ERA. After the break, we went to the west coast and won 5 out of 8. But then we lost 4 of our next 6 against Detroit and Chicago.”

That’s not exact but you get the gist. The post-seasons were written with the same isolated, disconnected style.

If you’re a Yankees or Mets fan, the 2000 World Series was special. It was the first subway series since 1956. It was the first time many of us experienced that. The city was spirted, energetic and alive. Yet, in “The Closer,” Mariano gave no more pages to defeating the crosstown Mets as he did to defeating the San Diego Padres.

Mariano spent his entire career in The Bronx. For many years he had the same teammates. However, he shares not one personal story, not one anecdote. I found that very peculiar. I wasn’t looking for a tell-all book, no juicy gossip. But he never allowed the reader an inside look at the Yankees on a personal level. He never shared a narrative about going to dinner with Derek Jeter. Maybe something funny Tino Martinez said during batting practice. Perhaps a story about shagging fly balls with Bernie Williams. Nope, nothing. Toward the end of the book, Mariano expresses his sadness when hearing his best friend, Jorge Posada, was retiring. Whoa, what? For 250 pages Mariano made no mention of having anything to do with Posada other than him being his catcher. The reader has no idea they are friends. Did they go to dinner often? Did their wives hang out? Did their kids play together? Who knows? We were never told anything about their friendship until they were going separate ways.

Joe Torre was manager for most of Mariano’s time in the Bronx. Yet, we’re told of only two conversations between them, both very short, both just one page. Longtime pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre is mentioned only once. George Steinbrenner, love him or hate him, is arguably the most charismatic, most controversial owner of the last half century. Yet, by reading this book, it seems like the owner and his legendary closer were virtual strangers. We’re told of one brief conversation during the 2000 World Series that lasted three paragraphs. That’s it.

“The Closer” is also, in my opinion, over-the-top in political correctness. Mo pitched from 1995 through 2013, the height of the steroid era. Yet, he never really discussed his thoughts other than basically saying, “Cheating is bad.” He never allows us a sense of what he was feeling, what he was thinking. Mariano glosses over the infamous incident between Roger Clemens and Mike Piazza. For the most part he never shares his insight about the time when Don Zimmer charged the mound and was brushed aside by Pedro Martinez.

What was it like when he passed Trevor Hoffman as All-Time Saves Leader? What did it feel like to walk through the bullpen gate to “Enter Sandman”? What goes through your head when you’re on the mound for the final out after winning a World Series? On the flip side, what did it feel like when Luis Gonzalez came through in Game 7? Perhaps strangest of all was that when Boston became the first team to come back from down 0-3 and shock the Yankees, this historic comeback was completely omitted from “The Closer.”

One final thing—and I’m going to tread lightly here—is the religious aspect of the book. I was unaware of the degree faith played in Mariano’s life. That was eye-opening to me. But, at times, it felt like I was, no pun intended, being preached to.

Approximately every 8-12 pages, the story comes to a halt so Mariano can explain what role his faith played in regards to a particular event: injuries, the cut-fastball, an altercation with an irate fan. Everything that happened in his life is part of a Master Plan. If something good happened to Mariano, he is blessed. If something bad happened, it was the Lord’s way of teaching him a lesson in humility. I applaud the man’s faith, but if you choose to read this, keep that in mind. I found “The Closer” not so much a book about a ballplayer who was very religious, but rather a very religious man who just happened to be a ballplayer.

I’ve read numerous books about Baseball and baseball players. This one, to me, was very weak and disappointing. If you want to read a good book about Baseball, I suggest any of the following:

Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Out of my League by Dirk Hayhurst

Doc: A Memoir by Dwight Gooden

Pedro by Pedro Martinez

The Bad Guys Won by Jeff Pearlman

The post Book Review: “The Closer” by Mariano Rivera appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

We’re all familiar with the many unique aspects that make Baseball the true National Pastime. The game can conceivably go on forever. It’s the only sport where the defense has the ball. The team trying to score is outnumbered 9 to 1. My personal favorite is that it’s a team sport based around a collection of one-on-one match-ups.

In 2014, after 6 weeks of spring training, 162 games spread out over the course of six months, one month of post-season games and more than 750 players from 28 different cities, the entire year came down to Madison Bumgarner standing 60 feet 6 inches away from Salvador Perez.

Players are part of a team that strives to bring a championship to their fans and their city. But there is still that part of them that burns deep inside, a natural born competitiveness. They’re not just competing against other clubs but in a way against each other.

Over the game’s long and glorious history, some players are eternally joined. Ruth and Gehrig. Koufax and Drysdale. Mantle and Maris. Harvey and DeGrom?

A closer look at these unique pairings indicates that not only did these players join forces to bring greatness to their respective teams and push each other but they had completely opposite personalities.

Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig alone combined for 1,207 home runs, 4,208 RBI’s and 5,594 hits. When Gehrig retired, he and Ruth held the top two spots on Baseball’s All-Time HR list. Yet, these legends could not be more different.

The Bambino was larger than life, both literally and figuratively. More than 80 years have passed since he took his final AB and yet he remains the most iconic figure in the history of American sports. He was loud, rambunctious, flamboyant and exciting. He drank and partied.

The Iron Horse, by contrast, was quiet, reserved and modest. When the Yankees traveled, Ruth had women in every town. Gehrig, on the other hand, was frequently accompanied by his mom on road trips.

The most potent 1-2 pitching duo in history was Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. For half a decade they dominated the pitching landscape like never before. Koufax was a skinny Jewish kid from Brooklyn who feared pitching inside, and worried he would end someone’s career with his fastball.

Drysdale, born in California, stood at 6’6 with broad shoulders and movie star looks. Twin D once stated “I hate all hitters. I start a game mad and stay that way until it’s over.” He also loathed intentional walks, claiming, “If I hit a guy that only takes one pitch. Why waste four?”

In 1961, two teammates were assaulting Ruth’s single season HR record of 61. Mickey Mantle was adored, worshiped and idolized. He played hard but lived harder and excelled  under the media glare and pressure of NY. He remains one of the games’ most loved stars. Roger Maris, however, was quiet, sullen and withdrawn. He detested the attention,  became physically sick and began losing his hair as he closed in on Ruth’s mark.

Thurman Munson was the tough, gritty hard-nosed captain of the Yankees in the 70’s. Then along came Reggie Jackson who was the media darling and seemingly always rose to the occasion. These two diametrically opposed teammates single-handedly brought the Bronx Bombers back to relevance after more than a decade of ineptitude. During one post-game interview after a Yankee victory, a reporter asked Munson a question. He sourly clipped, “Go ask Mr. October.” The name stuck.

However, one doesn’t have to look at other teams. The leaders of the Mets in the 1980’s were Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter. “Mex” epitomized the “Live Hard, Play Harder” approach of their take-no-prisoner attitude. He smoked (sometimes in the dugout) and had a history of drug use. “The Kid” lived a clean life, loved his wife and children, was religious and frequently thanked Jesus Christ after something good happened.

An injury to Johan Santana in 2012 forced Sandy Alderson’s hand. Sooner than he hoped, he recalled Matt Harvey from Buffalo.

The 23 year-old did well in his debut season, compiling 70 K’s in 59 1/3 innings and recording a 2.73 ERA. It was just the beginning.

In 2013, The Dark Knight of Gotham began drawing comparisons to Curt Schilling and Justin Verlander. Doc Gooden called him ‘The Real Deal.’ In April, Harvey was named Pitcher of the Month fanning 46 batters in 40 IP, a 1.56 ERA and .153 Opponents Batting Average. In May, despite a persistent nosebleed Harvey retired the first 20 batters he faced.

Finally, after all these years and all these promises, the Mets just may have found ‘The Next Tom Seaver.’

Like The Sultan of Swat, The Mick and Mr. October, The Dark Knight relished the media spotlight. He loved New York and New York loved him. He appeared on magazine covers. He did skits on late night TV. Not since Doctor K nearly three decades earlier had a pitcher with this much greatness and potential toed the rubber in Flushing.

The last time the Mets hosted an All-Star Game was 1964. Gas was .25 cents per gallon, the government was sending troops to some place most Americans never heard of called Viet Nam, the price of a Rolls Royce had climbed north of $16,000, people wondered if four long-haired mop-tops from Liverpool were just a passing fad, and the surgeon general reported for the first time that smoking may be hazardous to your health.

Now, in 2012, the Mets were again hosting the Mid-Summer classic. And Matt Harvey was the starter. In two innings he fanned three batters and allowed just one hit. 22 of his 33 pitches were strikes. It was the largest crowd ever at Citi Field.

Then, later that summer, it all came crashing down. A partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow ended his season. And the next one as well.

As Harvey rehabbed and came back from Tommy John surgery, someone else materialized.

The 272^nd overall pick in the 2010 draft, Jacob Anthony DeGrom was originally slated to work out of the pen. As the year progressed, it became clear that there just may be a new ace in town. Seaver had Koosman. Koufax had Drysdale. Harvey had deGrom. Or maybe deGrom had Harvey?

After posting a 9-6 record with 144 K’s in 140 IP and a 2.69 ERA, lower than Harvey in his first year, deGrom became the first Met to win a Rookie of the Year award since Dwight Gooden in 1984.

And just like that, The Dark Knight found himself behind DeGrom.

Like many other celebrated duos, DeGrom and Harvey are very different. Harvey maintains a robust physique whereas DeGrom is wiry and lanky. Harvey gets into twitter spats with Yankee fans, argues with the front office and is photographed extending his middle finger. Although both take their pitching seriously, Harvey comes off as brooding, serious, almost as if he is battling inner demons to be the best.

DeGrom, on the other hand, has fun on the mound a la Tug McGraw, enjoying the stardom but with an awestruck boyish charm.

At the start of 2015, it became clear there woulde be no sophomore jinx. While deGrom came out quick, Harvey pitched tenuously as he battled back from elbow surgery. We all watched—nervously—to see if the Dark Knight would be okay. Initially he took a back seat to deGrom. But now Harvey’s coming on strong.

After a June 10 loss to the Giants, Harvey’s ERA was at 3.86, the highest of his career since August 3, 2012 – his second start ever. Since then, however, he’s turned it up. Possibly for himself, possibly for the team, possibly to reclaim his status as Mets ace and possibly for a pennant.

Since then, he’s lowered his ERA more than a full point. In 74 1/3 IP, he’s fanned 59, allowed just 54 hits and posted an impressive 1.61 ERA. His teammate meanwhile has allowed just 54 hits over his last 79IP, averaging more than a strikeout per inning and maintaining a 2.41 ERA.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter who the ace is. As someone once said, “My number one is the guy on the mound today.” But if Harvey pushes DeGrom to be better and DeGrom pushes Harvey to be better, the biggest benefit will be to the Mets and their fans while the NL may just have to sit back and deal with a 21^st century tandem equivalent to Koufax and Drysdale.

2015 may just be the beginning.

Metsmerized, a Fan Site with Pride, Passion and Personality!

The post Matt Harvey and Jacob deGrom: Baseball’s Next Great Dynamic Duo? appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

1964 was a bustling time in our nation’s history. With America still reeling from the shock of our president being assassinated on the streets of Dallas, we were under invasion by a group of four long haired lads from Liverpool. New President Lyndon Johnson declared a ‘War on Poverty.’ Average annual income in America was $6000, a new house cost $13,000, a new car $3500. For $1.25 you could purchase a movie ticket, for $4.50 you could fill your car.

Sidney Poitier became the first African-American to win an Oscar for his role in “Lilies of the Field.” Ford unveiled a new sports car called the Mustang, a game show named “Jeopardy” premiered and another group from England, this one calling themselves the Rolling Stones, released their debut album. In New York, a group of twelve young men were arrested for their rebellious act against the establishment. In what is regarded as the first anti-war protest of the decade, they publicly burned their draft cards in protest of our growing involvement in a place half way around the world most Americans could not locate on a map. A place called Vietnam.

People in NY were excited. Not only were we hosting the World’s Fair but with the opening of Shea Stadium, NL baseball was officially back in NY. With this new state-of-the-art modern facility that could be modified for football, Mets fans were ecstatic. In only the 31st game ever played at Shea, Jim Bunning tossed a Perfect Game. It was the seventh perfecto in history and the first in the NL since John Montgomery Ward tossed one against the Buffalo Bisons in 1880.

Now it was time for our home to appear in the National spotlight. 50,850 packed Shea as the Mets hosted the 35th All-Star Game. The 1964 midsummer classic is regarded by historians as one of the best ever. Walt Alston managed the NL club and Al Lopez piloted the AL players. Current Mets manager Casey Stengel and future Mets manager Gil Hodges were coaches. Dean Chance took the mound for the AL, Don Drysdale for the NL. The Mets own Ron Hunt started at second base. Of the 18 starting players, eight wound wind up in Cooperstown.

Batting Orders

American League                                                                 National League

Jim Fregosi  (SS)                                                                  Roberto Clemente   (RF)

Tony Oliva   (RF)                                                                   Dick Groat         (SS)

Mickey Mantle  (CF)                                                              Billy Williams    (LF)

Harmon Killebrew  (LF)                                                         Willie Mays     (CF)

Bob Allison    (1B)                                                                 Orlando Cepeda  (1B)

Brooks Robinson  (3B)                                                          Ken Boyer     (3B)

Bobby Richardson  (2B)                                                        Joe Torre      (C)

Elston Howard     (C)                                                             Ron Hunt       (2B)

The AL wasted no time taking the lead. Fregosi opened the game with a solid hit to left field, moved to second base on a passed ball and scored two outs later on a rocket to left off the bat of Harmon Killebrew. 1-0 AL.

LA Angels’ Dean Chance baffled the NL for three innings. In the fourth he was replaced by John Wyatt of the Kansas City A’s. Billy Williams welcomed Wyatt to the game by leading off the fourth with a solo home run. Later that inning a solo blast by Ken Boyer put the NL on top, 2-1.

The NL added to the lead in the fifth. With two outs, Clemente singled up the middle off of Camilio Pascual. Cardinals shortstop Dick Groat doubled, Clemente raced home and the NL was up 3-1.

The American League rallied to tie the game in the sixth. After Oliva was fanned, Mantle and Killebrew singled. Brooks Robinson hit a line drive to the power alley in left-center. The ball rolled to the wall, Mantle and Killebrew scored. 3-3.

The AL recaptured the lead in the seventh when Elston Howard was hit by a Turk Farrell pitch. Pinch-hitter Rocky Colavito doubled, making it second and third. Fregosi hit a sac-fly to center that scored Howard and put the AL back on top, 4-3.

Boston’s Dick Radatz came in and once again the NL hitters were baffled. Radatz struck out 4 of the 6 batters he faced in the 7th and 8th. Juan Marichal made quick work of the AL in the top of the 9th. Radatz took the mound in the bottom half of the frame needing only three outs. But he’d have to face the heart of the NL’s potent lineup.

Mays opened the inning with a walk and stole second. With the tying run in scoring position, Mays’ teammate Orlando Cepeda dug in. He hit a pop fly to short right that dropped. Mays scored easily to tie the game at 4-4. Cepeda, who took second on the throw home, was replaced by pinch runner Curt Flood. Ken Boyer popped out for the first out. Reds catcher Johnny Edward was intentionally walked to set up the DP. With runners on first and second and the game knotted at four in the bottom of the ninth, who was due up but none other than our own Ron Hunt, the Mets sole representative.

Manager Alston, however, decided to pinch hit for Hunt with Hank Aaron. The future HR king was fanned and it seemed like Radatz would get out of the jam when Phillies outfielder Johnny Callison stepped to the plate. Callison sent the first pitch high and deep and the ball sailed over the right field wall and gave the NL an improbable come from behind 7-4 victory, scoring four runs in the bottom of the ninth. The Phillies outfielder joined Ted Williams and Stan Musial as the only players to win an All-Star Game on a walk-off HR.

It was a great and memorable All Star moment and it happened right here in Flushing, right here at Big Shea.

The post An All Star Game To Remember appeared first on Metsmerized Online.