“And, a few days after Bill stepped behind the plate, something happened to the Blues. When you live with a team eight months of the year, season after season, its thoughts and responses and spirits become your own. I never felt it stronger than the week Bill took charge behind the plate.”
“Not that it happened overnight. The making of a team never does. It creeps up on players and writers and fans alike, until one day you look down on the field and the feeling chokes you because, building up in everyone, unseen and unknown, it finally becomes so strong you blink your eyes, just once, and it is all there.”
The descriptive genus of Frank O’Rourke, the prolific 1950’s and 60’s author of countless Westerns and short stories of sports fiction, resonated as I read “The Catcher,” a short story included in the author’s collection published as part of “The Heavenly World Series.”
Told from the point of view of a daily beat reporter, O’Rourke’s tale is an evocative recount of an aging St. Louis Blues catcher who culled and nurtured a young pitching staff as part of a developing team that, almost without fanfare, found themselves in a pennant race.
Our current New York Met team might not have the aging catcher as the captain of its command center, but we certainly have layered the young arms over successive years that made O’Rourke’s words almost jump off the page for me.
Like the Blues in this charming tale, a team that finished in the second division for several years before finding themselves in contention, our Mets did not become a contender overnight. Our Mets ascension was part of a slow and gradual process that is still underway.
That message was emphasized during the early game coverage of Friday night’s showdown at Citi Field with the Washington Nationals. Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling were reminiscing about the rise of the Mets championship team in the 80’s, with both noting that there were bumps along the way during the 1984 season as the Mets transitioned from a 68 win team to a pennant contender that finished second with 92 wins.
According to the Mets broadcast voices, those ‘84 Mets didn’t originally fare well going into critical showdown series with divisional opponents, particularly the Cubs. Those Mets had to learn how to win the big one.
I looked back to actually see how the Mets fared in crucial series that year. Of course, Ron and Keith were right. On July 27th the Mets edged the Cubs at Shea 2-1 to move 22 games over .500 at 59-37. But the Mets then dropped the final three games of that series and then traveled to St. Louis where they were swept in four games by the Cards.
That edition of Mets recovered to take three-of-four from the Bucs in Pittsburgh then traveled back to Chicago for a crucial series with the Cubs. After a four game Cubs sweep by August 8th, those 22 games above .500 were down to just 14. The Mets and Cubs would play three more three-game series down the stretch that season with the Cubs taking 2-of-3 in each series.
I remember a similar pattern of development from a gang of embedded under-performers who eventual became World Champions under the calm, strong hand of Gil Hodges in the late 1960’s. In 1968, almost unnoticed, the Mets made subtle gains under Hodges, then in ’69 it seemed like they literally evolved before our eyes.
I don’t think Ron and Keith were spewing bad vibes or making excuses about the series at hand with the Nationals. Instead, from experience, they were describing a pattern that has repeated itself again and again throughout baseball history, a pattern O’Rourke describes so aptly in his fictional account of the St. Louis Blues.
For far too long, I’ve yearned for meaningful games in August and September for our Metropolitans. The nervous tension, the accelerated heartbeat, the clenched fists and tight stomach as last night’s game unfolded were welcomed. Win or lose, the outcome of this game mattered. Games of this ilk are the moments when memories are forged and perhaps heroes are made. “Whose going to blink first?” Keith kept repeating during the late and extra innings.
The calvary has arrived leaving us primed and ready for our stretch run. That, too, is an adjustment that can sometimes take time. Whether we have enough gas in the tank to reach our 2015 postseason destiny or not, I relish the chase.
The feeling around these Mets is building, creeping up, shaping and reshaping with a force that one way or another leaves me more amped than ever that we are amidst a process of the making of a team. Someday soon, today or tomorrow, Met fans, too, will blink their eyes, just once, and that team will be there.
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