Talking to a longtime New Yorker the other day, and he posited that he was not at all surprised about how the season has gone for the Mets. Not because of fancy metrics, or an in-depth analysis of the roster, or even because of the average age of this veteran team.
No, the Mets were screwed because they are the Mets.
I scoffed at the notion and told him he was being too old school and that curses don’t exist. Sure, it’s seems ridiculous that every superstar on the team has gone on the DL this year. And the bungling of press conferences by the front office added to the notion that this team was being poorly run. But a curse?
My New Yorker (and Yankee fan) friend pointed out that even in the days of Cleon Jones (career 110 OPS+), Rusty Staub (career 124 OPS+) and Eddy Kranepool (career 97 OPS+), when the ’73 Mets made it to the World Series, Mets fans knew they were cursed and didn’t have chance. Really? That team had Tom Seaver (career 127 ERA+), Jerry Koosman (career 110 ERA+, 128 in ’73) and Tug McGraw (career 116 ERA+). They didn’t have a chance?
“No,” he said. “They were and always have been cursed. They are a team that got lucky once and may never again.” “Maybe it was the uniforms,” I said. When something like three quarters of the league is wearing red and blue, those blue and orange unis really stick out. “Those togs certainly are offensive,” he said, “but changing the color scheme won’t get the mutt out of the Mutts.”
“Think of all the good players that have come here and failed (Bobby Bonilla, Bret Saberhagen, Vince Coleman), and all the players that left and flourished in other places (Nolan Ryan and Rusty Staub). Think about Darryl Strawberry and Doc Gooden,” he said. “This team is cursed,” he said.
“But what about Carlos Beltran and David Wright? What about Johan Santana? Plenty of players have come here and flourished,” I said. “And where has their success got the team?” he replied.
But what about the Angels I said? They’ve always been the ‘other’ team in Los Angeles, they are a former expansion team, and they’ve had bad uniforms, a bad home park, and a history of ineptitude. They turned it around in 2002 and are now an elite team every year. The Mets can do that, too, right?
My Yankee fan friend pointed out that the Angels, for all their success, haven’t supplanted the Dodgers as the team in Los Angeles. (For a Yankees fan, it’s always about the Yankees in the end.)
Can’t the Mets turn it around? Jayson Stark seems to think not, but we’ll take a rosier look at the team on Sunday.
