My brother is younger, wiser and more mature than I am. I know, I can hear those of you who know me thinking “Hmm, not a tough trifecta to achieve!â€
He coined the phrase “The Nightly Burden†to describe the bittersweet addiction which being a serious Met fan can be.
Baseball is different than the other sports; far different in the sense that the players come into our homes just about every day from late winter into the fall. Football is great and hugely popular, but it is one day a week for barely five months for non-playoff teams. Basketball and hockey are also great, but the ridiculously excessive playoffs have rendered the regular seasons much less meaningful than baseball. College football has become similar, as just about every winning team gets to a bowl game, and March Madness’ recent greed-infested comedy about expanding the field to 96 teams will render another regular season as meaningless; soon half of the Division 1 teams will make a tournament.
Baseball alone has protected and retained the sanctity of the regular season. The longest season, but also one where every darn one of those 162 games really does count for playoff hopefuls. Fans of no other team can understand this as well as Met fans, after the disastrous finishes of 2007 and 2008.
————————————————————-
So another Opening Day is upon us, and even for those of us whose optimism has been severely tested by the spring training hitting festival hosted by all of our pitchers aside from KRod and Feliciano, it is a very exciting time.
Tomorrow brings the beginning of another marathon year, as every baseball season is. Another year where the more unreasonable among us will clamor for Ike Davis after Jacobs’ first strikeout with men on base, and another year where the more patient will enthusiastically follow the development of the very promising Junior Core in Buffalo. Indeed, this September should see the best crop of callups since the incredibly now three-decade-old month when Mookie Wilson, Wally Backman, and Hubie Brooks all made the final month of 1980 for first true bright spot for longtime fans since the nightmare day of June 15, 1977.
The only Opening Day I have attended was 1983, and I remember it vividly. It was a nice contrast to the 1977 Day of Infamy, as it marked the return of Tom Terrific, who along with returning NL HR (and strikeout) champ Dave Kingman, received by far the loudest ovations in the pregame introductions. Want to hear a crazy stat? In 1982, Kingman led the NL with 37 HR in 607 plate appearances; he also had 62 singles, an incredible 9 doubles, and 1 triple for a .204 BA—even with a respectable 59 walks, his OBP was .285. A HR champ with an OPS of .717? Only the Mets. His OPS was .956 when he won his other HR crown with the Cubs.
But I digress. Even after 6 consecutive 5th or 6th place finishes, opening day 1983 was crowded and raucous, and the Mets and Seaver beat the eventual NL champ Phils (sound familiar?) and Steve Carlton 2-0. Doug Sisk, who along with Luis Castillo and Armando Benitez probably are the three most unfairly abused players in team history, threw three shutout innings for the win. 7th inning RBI singles by Mike Howard and Brian (not THAT Brian Giles) Giles were the margin of victory.
1983 turned out to be much like the previous six years, but was different in that Mookie, Hubie, Wally, and soon-to-be-called-up Strawberry, the impressive young minor league fireballer Dwight Gooden, and other farmhands such as Lenny Dykstra and Ron Darling all combined to give the fans the sense that while 1983 might be another disappointment, the future surely would be worth waiting for.
————————————————————-
To this longtime fan, while the parallel is not perfect, and the 2010 Mets have a lot of talented players, there is some serious similarity.
We greet another opener with great enthusiasm (after all, the Mets do better on Opening Day than almost any other team; it is the other 161 games that are often the problem) despite three consecutive years of great disappointment, all intensified by how close the 2006 team came, and how that group gave us a sense that we would be watching playoff baseball every year for a while.
I think we might be soon, starting in 2011. There is every reason to feel that among Jennry Mejia, Jon Niese, Brad Holt, Ike Davis, Ruben Tejada, Fernando Martinez, Josh Thole, Kirk Nieuwenhuis, and others, that several seriously good major league players are brewing just beneath the surface. Adding these guys over the next couple of years to what will still be a young David Wright and Jose Reyes, as well as Johan Santana and Jason Bay, makes the future for this team look extremely bright.
While I do not at this moment share the optimism many feel for this team’s current chances to win 90+ games and play in those pesky and elusive meaningful October games, I most definitely vehemently disagree with those who assert that we need a “rebuilding†year, or the even more unreasonable folk who claim that the “window†for this group is closed or closing.
Maybe it is just Opening Day optimism infecting me, but I can’t wait for the Nightly Burden to again inject itself into my life, and to again feel as though DRod, Jose, Beltran, Johan, and the rest are practically members of my family. I seriously hope I am soon writing pieces saying how wrong I was to doubt what I once thought was a potentially super 2-3-4 in Pelf, Ollie, and Maine.
Even if that fails to materialize this year, the next Met era of sustained playoff competition is coming, courtesy of the Junior Core which Chef Omar has quietly assembled while being routinely pilloried.
Let’s Go Mets, tomorrow and every day, and whatever 2010 does hold in store for us, the future is bright, just as it was on Opening Day 1983.
21 comments
rustyjr
4/4/2010-4:38pm at 4:38 pm (UTC -4)
Tomorrow will be my first ever opening day – and it only took a 70-92 season for me to get them lol
just stay positive my friends
GravediggerHebner
4/4/2010-4:57pm at 4:57 pm (UTC -4)
Kong! You as one of our most optimistic fans have sold the Mets short. They are not “better than almost any other team” on Opening Day, they are “the best!”
Mets 31 – 17 – 0 .646
Yankees 63 – 45 – 1 .583
Brewers 23 – 17 – 1 .575
Orioles 62 – 46 – 1 .574
Cubs 74 – 58 – 2 .561
Kingman 26
4/4/2010-5:07pm at 5:07 pm (UTC -4)
Huh, I looked at a site, I think baseballalmanac.com, and they had percentages, and had Tor, Sea, and the Yanks better than us….a Yahoo story says the same….I definitely had thought we were the best—where did you get these numbers Grave?
Baseball Almanac has us at 29-19 (which is made more amazing by us going 1-8 the first 9, so we are 28-11 since!)
They have Toronto 25-8 (.757)
Yanks 72-36-1 (.660)
Mariners 21-12 (.636)
Mets 29-19 (.604)
Kingman 26
4/4/2010-5:16pm at 5:16 pm (UTC -4)
OK, baseball almanac is clearly wrong as hell, and embarassingly so. I just cannot find an easy chart elsewhere, but the best guess I can come up with is that baseball almanac might mean just HOME openers, which they do not say.
I thought we were best, and put the qualifier in there because I could not find a chart…where did you get your info?
GravediggerHebner
4/4/2010-5:46pm at 5:46 pm (UTC -4)
Sorry I had to step away. I read it in this:
MLB.com press notes
First click on the Mets logo, then it’s on page 3 of 3, about halfway down on the left side.
Kingman 26
4/4/2010-6:05pm at 6:05 pm (UTC -4)
Cool; thanks.
After thinking about it, I remember something else a few years ago my brother and I checked out on baseball almanac that was way off too….
stickguy
4/4/2010-5:44pm at 5:44 pm (UTC -4)
nice piece. I am glad I am letting you back on the float. I am also teary almost.
of course, I am also drinking gin and tonics, so that might have something to do with it.
I went to opening day almost every year from abut 1985 to 2000. Including the infamous Hibachi day (it was so damn cold, we had to huddle over the hibachi in the parking lot to stay warm).
I miss those days.
Kingman 26
4/4/2010-5:49pm at 5:49 pm (UTC -4)
Well, I sure do appreciate it.
I will be drinking bourbon in a few hours, so while I root hard for the Red Sox, I will be preparing the float with orange and blue tears running down my face….
stickguy
4/4/2010-5:50pm at 5:50 pm (UTC -4)
I hope you are around the saturday in August that I am up there, since I can’t wait to see what you are like in real life!
Kingman 26
4/4/2010-6:03pm at 6:03 pm (UTC -4)
Same here! August is a VERY busy time for my business, so I usually take some time off in June and early July and am here all August, so let me know, as we NEVER work on Saturdays!
stickguy
4/4/2010-6:04pm at 6:04 pm (UTC -4)
will do. always up for 1 saturday in the middle. Usually the week before the travers I think.
saltygary
4/4/2010-6:54pm at 6:54 pm (UTC -4)
Dearest Kong,
I personally feel the window already closed, and by your statement “Adding these guys over the next couple of years to what will still be a young David Wright and Jose Reyes, as well as Johan Santana and Jason Bay, makes the future for this team look extremely bright.” I think you technically feel the window is closed as well even though you don’t wish to admit it. Delgado’s gone, Beltran could be as well. That ’06 team is just a distant memory and most of us are looking to the future which isn’t ready yet, but soon will be.
Yours Truley,
SaltyGary
stickguy
4/4/2010-7:08pm at 7:08 pm (UTC -4)
well to be fair, no team really stays the same year to year. The phils I guess were pretty close, at least with the core.
So sure, one window might have closed, but Kongs point I think is that another one opens up.
IMO, the idea that the window is closing isn’t that some of the players are changing, it is that the team won’t have the talent to compete at all, even with new players (so I guess you could say rebuilding).
So the mets window could stay open for the next 6 years, and they could finally win it all with only 3-4 of the current team remaining.
saltygary
4/4/2010-7:23pm at 7:23 pm (UTC -4)
That was my point as well, another window is about to open. It’s silly to even think about completely blowing up the team now, but when it was Wright, Reyes, Beltran and Delgado, the discussion was out there.
stickguy
4/4/2010-7:38pm at 7:38 pm (UTC -4)
delgado was the one of that bunch I thought should go anyway, so I guess we will see how that works out!
Kingman 26
4/4/2010-8:28pm at 8:28 pm (UTC -4)
Thanks for reading and thanks for the thoughtful response.
I guess it depends on what we consider “this group” to be.
You are largely right; I guess I am considering Wright and Reyes to be the core of The Core, and the only members of the 2006 core which will be mixed with the members of the Junior Core, hence concocting the New Core.
Regardless, I do feel that at some point later this year, or next year at the earliest, we are going to see the most exciting infusion of young homegrown talent since the days of Straw, Doc, Lenny, Wally, Mookie, etc.
Thanks again; appreciate the response.
metsfan4decades
4/4/2010-7:55pm at 7:55 pm (UTC -4)
My first and only opening day game was 1987. Oh, what high hopes I had for that season…
So glad the season starts tomorrow. Whatever is in store for us NY Met fans this year, I still look forward to each and every season and watch just about every game.
LGM !
saltygary
4/4/2010-8:28pm at 8:28 pm (UTC -4)
That was a really good season, in the beginning anyway and a great opening season game to make.
saltygary
4/4/2010-8:26pm at 8:26 pm (UTC -4)
Only went to one opening game and it was the Yankees Home Opener with Clemons making his first Yankee start at home. Was in the bleachers got very drunk and helped save the life of a dumb-ass 16 year old that thought it would be funny to wear a Mets hat in the section.
My favorite opening day moment was Kaz’s HR in his first Mets AB. I was so excited and didn’t know what to do I ended up judo kicking my poor wife in her hip. In my only domestic violence attempt, it didn’t work out to well but I didn’t have to go the hospital, and we have 2 kids now. LGM!!!
GravediggerHebner
4/4/2010-8:59pm at 8:59 pm (UTC -4)
My only Opening Day was 1984. The event was unforgettable, a guy who lived across from me in the Marist dorms’ father worked for the company that produced “This Week In Baseball” and through him we got tickets in the 2nd row behind the Mets dugout. In front of me was the gentleman who was the President of the National League at the time (Chub Feeney? not sure). Best seats I’d ever been in at that point in my life, one of the worst games I’ve ever attended. Mets lost 10-0 to the Expos and future Met Gary Carter who crushed a salami off Darling.
saltygary
4/4/2010-10:39pm at 10:39 pm (UTC -4)
Hey you’re a Marist alum? So am I. Technically class of ’99 but graduated ’00.