Usually, it’s the weather that forces the baseball poets among us to turn downright lyrical this time of the year. “Pitchers and catchers” — three words, five syllables that conjure all that is good about the grand old game: green grass and blue skies, temps in the high 70s and low 80s, live BP and PFP, and all the other abbreviations that make the ice melt around the corners of our soul.
But the weather has been a few ticks warmer around here than usual this winter. The snow has mostly been someone else’s problem. And yet, for that faction of New York baseball fans who paint their hearts orange and blue, there has rarely been another year when pitchers and catchers have been more looked forward to — out of necessity more than yearning.
The Mets need to start playing baseball.
Because only in playing baseball — and playing it well, better than it’s been played by the Mets since 2016 or so — can the turbulent past few weeks finally be put behind everyone. Look, backing the Mets has always meant inviting a little chaos into your life, alongside the team’s bookend specialties of heartburn and heartache. So in that sense this winter has been no different than so many others.
But in another sense?
Let’s put it this way: It was early last month that our baseball crew here at The Post broke the story that Yoenis Cespedes’ season-shattering injury last year at his Florida ranch occurred because was attacked by a wild boar.
Let’s repeat that last part again: He was attacked by a wild boar.
For most teams, that would be enough. That would be the story that carries everyone through until pitchers and catches and beyond, the fact that, first, one of the team’s best players was willing to fork over a whole bunch of cash for unsanctioned off-field shenanigans and, second … HE WAS ATTACKED BY A WILD BOAR!!!!
But when the Mets’ pitchers and catchers report to Port St. Lucie — to the complex now called Clover Park, located on Piazza Drive — beginning Monday, the Cespedes/pig incident will be no higher than the third-most absurd talking point surrounding the Mets.
No. 1, with a bullet, of course, will be the unending saga regarding the sale of the team, and the never-ending musical question: “If you had 2½ billion dollars in disposable income, would you let Jeff Wilpon figure out how to spend it while you sit blithely by on the sideline?”
Right behind is the manager situation. I’ve tried to convince Mets fans for years that they aren’t followed by a dark cloud, that there is no jinx or pox or hex infecting their team’s DNA, that they were, in fact, the beneficiary of perhaps the two most remarkable baseball miracles ever in 1969 and 1986 …
Yet, that’s hard to sell to a fan who just saw three managers lose their jobs because of the sign-stealing scandal, with two of them wandering off into the sunset comforted by the presence of gaudy World Series rings on their fingers. The other, Carlos Beltran, never even managed an intrasquad game for the Mets, let alone a championship-clinching game.
So yes, the Mets need the baseball part of the program to start, as quickly as possible. Mets fans need to start fretting about other things: Can Jacob deGrom three-peat? Can Edwin Diaz remember how to get hitters out? Can Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil approximate their All-Star 2019 seasons? Can Michael Conforto finally put together the MVP-level season Mets fans have been waiting for? Can Robinson Cano bounce back from a subpar season? Can Cespedes bounce back from being attacked by a wild boar …
Is Luis Rojas up for the challenge of managing in New York City?
“The guys want to get this going,” Rojas told The Post’s Kevin Kernan earlier this week, and in most years that would sound exactly like the kind of rah-rah pap most managers specialize in just before spring training. Only in this case, it is a holy mantra and a holier mission. The Mets want to get this going. The fans want this to get going.
Pitchers and catchers?
Oh, yeah. This year more than ever, that isn’t just a quaint ideal. This time it’s a safe haven.
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