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The Mets aren’t necessarily going to win the NL East or gallop their way to a third World Series championship because of this new teammate they are calling the Home Run Horse.
They will need Jacob deGrom resuming his latest Cy Young push, and it would help for Carlos Carrasco and Noah Syndergaard to join the party, not to mention the $341 million version of Francisco Lindor that Steve Cohen expected.
But during the marathon slog that is the MLB season, a little fun can go a long way.
The Mets have weathered one storm after another, from the firing of general manager Jared Porter, to Michael Conforto’s and Jeff McNeil’s hamstring injuries, to the seemingly endless rehabs of Brandon Nimmo and J.D. Davis, to the stunning early-May firing of hitting coaches Chili Davis and Tom Slater.
You watch the Yankees play these days, and you can’t help but think they are weighed down to some degree by the weight of great expectations as they wait for Aaron Judge to ride back in on what they better hope is a white horse.
Once upon a time, Casey Stengel’s 1962 Mets were hailed as Loveable Losers, a 40-120 slapstick crew that was embraced by fans distraught over the Dodgers and Giants leaving for the West Coast following the 1957 season.
“I’ve been in this game a hundred years,” said Stengel, who turned 72 that year, “but I see new ways to lose I never knew existed before.”
These 2021 Mets are Loveable Winners, dominant at Citi Field and peering down at the rest of the NL East from their first-place perch.
It’s “the chicken or the egg?” debate: Are the Mets winning because they’re having fun, or are they having fun because they’re winning?
It is clear that there is a One Happy Family camaraderie on these Mets, fostered to a large degree by the force of Pete Alonso’s Polar Bear personality and Home Run Derby bat. If the artist formerly known as Donnie Stevenson can hammer a 450-foot home run, he can feel free to skip along the dugout with a stuffed horse on his shoulders.
Lindor’s greatest contribution to date has been his infectious smile and cheer even during a time when he was drawing the ire of Citi Field boobirds. Even when there was a calamity in the clubhouse tunnel one night, Lindor and McNeil concocted that rat versus raccoon goof, which went over like a lead balloon, not that they were terribly offended.
Oh, and Nimmo? He might be The Happiest Man In Baseball. Apologies to Bobby Bonilla, but New York hasn’t come close to wiping the smile off Nimmo’s face.
The Al Davis-Tom Flores Raiders routed the Dick Vermeil Eagles in Super Bowl XV after wild man John Matuszak led a parade of Bourbon Street curfew-breakers that added up to more than $15,000 in fines while Vermeil kept his players confined to a nightly 11 p.m. curfew.
“It’s tough to have a paramilitary group within the confines of a culture that isn’t paramilitary. You have to adjust,” Davis said afterwards.
Matuszak didn’t buy the argument that the Eagles either simply didn’t play well, or were burnt out: “He didn’t let them go out all week. You can’t treat a man like a boy and then expect him to play like a man. If I want to go out, I go out. Vermeil can’t understand that. I couldn’t play for him in a million years, and I wouldn’t want to.”
The rollicking, raucous 1986 champion Mets would have understood. Author Jeff Pearlman described it, in his book title, this way:
“The Bad Guys Won! A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo Chasing, and Championship Baseball with Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, the Kid, and the Rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put on a New York Uniform — and Maybe the Best.”
The champion 1998 Yankees were a businesslike machine and won 114 games. The Bill Belichick-Tom Brady Patriots won six Super Bowls and no one dared call them The Fun Bunch, and only Rob Gronkowski might have dared trotting out a stuffed Touchdown Horse or whatever. A GOAT head coach and a GOAT quarterback will do the trick more often than not.
These Mets have only one GOAT, and he has been sidelined with forearm tightness. They have been Loveable Winners in part because of all the unlikely heroes who have been asked from time to time to step up and hold the fort, from warrior Kevin Pillar to Jonathan Villar to Tomas Nido to Joey Lucchesi to Luis Guillorme and most recently to Tylor Megill.
The Mets, entering Saturday night against the Blue Jays, had hit 18 HRs over the first seven games of the second half. Taijuan Walker, Saturday night’s starter, emerged as a surprise All-Star.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, they called it Fun City. A fun team lives in Flushing. They’ve laughed in the face of adversity. The remainder of the long, hot summer will determine whether there will be enough Home Run Horsing around for them to have the last laugh.
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