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Hitting: 145 points. Fielding: -30 points Baserunning: 10 points (he was a good baserunner) Getting a shoutout at a Pearl Jam concert: 5 points Grew up in tiny Trail, B.C., where hockey is everything: 5 points Quit hockey at 11 because he didn’t want to wake up early to get...
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FYI. I still have to log in to Patreon every time I arrive here. Adding insult to injury, I either agree to let Patreon view my user profile and something else I don’t remember, it won’t admit me. Just to read a blog I’ve paid to read. Sigh.
I click allow because I want to read it. Doesn’t bring me joy, though.
This is true. It does stink.
What is the big deal? It is two button clicks.
@Adam You’re right in that it’s not high effort. But really, every other website in the world is able to use cookies to remember users so that they don’t have to log in every damn time they visit a website, except apparently Patreon. I’m more than happy to pay for Joe’s work, the fact that I got it so long for free is amazing. So there’s no grudge there. But it is a pain when I come to the site like this morning and go to read the 3 new posts since my last visit and then have to login a bunch of times again.
I wouldn’t, and couldn’t, dispute that Mets fans can be sarcastic and caustic. (Though that’s really not a charitable description of a fanbase for a team once known as the Miracle Mets and that once had a slogan “You Gotta Believe.”) But LOTS of players played their post-31, “decline” years with the Mets and made it out alive or even beloved.
Off the top of my head, I can think of:
Todd Zeile
Robin Ventura
Curtis Granderson
Shawon Dunston
Carlos Delgado
Lee Mazzilli
Paul Lo Duca
Gary Sheffield
Bartolo Colon
Julio Franco
Ray Knight
Though I’m sure there are 100 more.
Jason Bay and George Foster (and Carlos Baerga and Roberto Alomar) were not the result of either a jinx or overdemanding Mets fans. They all just played badly in Queens. (Foster then blamed his reception on being black. )
I think what Joe is trying to say is that if you are a good player in your prime for a small market team, such as Cincinnati or Pittsburgh, then sign a free agent deal with a large market team, such as the Mets or Yankees, your earlier years will be overshadowed by the years in the spotlight with the big market club. He used the Mets as an example, but it could have also been the Yankees (Kevin Brown, Jason Giambi) or the Red Sox (Carl Crawford, Hanley Ramirez).
The Mets had something of a curse in the early to mid 2000s, when they would sign guys who would underperform. Piazza, Mo Vaughn, Roberto Alomar, Pedro Martinez, Carols Beltran, Tom Glavine, Johan Santana, the aforementioned Ventura Bay and Delgado. Some of these guys had an MVP type season or two, but none of them came close to what they did before their Mets time.
Right, Mike Piazza “underperformed” as a Met.His OPS+ was 24 points lower than as a Dodger, overall. He was the centerpiece of a team that returned to the playoffs after an eleven year absence, then went to the World Series the next year. He finished 7th and 3rd, respectively, in the MVP voting those 2 seasons.
He hit the game winning HR in the Mets’ first home game after 9/11, which isn’t really a performance point, but rather a “this is what you would want to have happen if you could script that moment” data point.
When Shea closed down, Seaver and Piazza were the guys the team asked to be there. Not Hernandez or Straw or Doc.
Go ahead, ask any Met fan whether they think Piazza underperformed while he was here. Then you might get caustic and sarcastic back.
Amen. Heck sometimes even a bad moment (see, e.g. Beltran, Carlos) in a Mets/Yankees/ Red Sox uniform can overshadow a great career in lesser lights like KC or St. Louis or Houston.
Mets fan here. Foster and Bay are joined by Bonilla (STILL getting paid annually by the Wilpons), Alomar, Mo Vaughn, Willie Randolph, Vince Coleman, Hubie Brooks (in his second go-round after leaving Montreal), Eddie Murray, and many others.
What Joe’s talking about is a huge part of the post-’86 Mets narrative.
The sad thing is I enjoyed this column, and then at the end I read this: “And he fell in the trap, signed a huge deal with the Mets, began to break down physically, and, well, you know where all that led. Unhappy times. Injuries. Strikeouts. Boos.”
And as I read this I immediately got cynical – “Yeah right, signs a huge deal and then has unhappy times. Cry me a river.”
I don’t want to think this way, but I do. It’s involuntary.
Every time you have that thought, just imagine it’s Fred Wilpon getting that money instead of Jason Bay. It should help.
Won the only Rookie of the Year Award in Pirates history: 10 points