Let’s head into the backyard of our childhood and dream. Let’s take a ball and go into our windup. Let’s pretend that we are registering the out that wins our team something of substance. We are the champions…of the world! We win the pennant! The division! We’ll accept a postseason berth or a playoff series, because those inspire dogpiles on the mound and champagne showers in the clubhouse. It’s the stuff that baseball fans’ dreams are made of from the time it occurs to us to mimic what we see the big leaguers do.
Twenty-four times the Mets have won something of surpassing substance: eleven playoff spots (six of them NL East titles); one Wild Card Series; five Division Series; five National League championships; two World Championships. Once, one of these — the 1999 NLDS — was earned on a Met home run, an ending a kid in a backyard likely dreamed up as well. The other twenty-three times, a pitcher threw the ball that, whether taken, swung past or hit to a fielder, became that glorious last out. The second it is secured in a mitt, the Mets are transformed, and so are we. We are in. We have moved on. We have won what there is to be won and we are in the best mood we can inhabit. We have definitely reached a level not reached every day.
Every day? The New York Mets have played 10,077 games since April 11, 1962, regular season and postseason combined. Twenty-four have been cause for sustained teamwide celebration. So if you’ve thrown a pitch to uncork one or more of those joyous jamborees, you deserve a little something for your efforts.
For Billy Wagner, a Hall of Fame plaque will do nicely.
Billy isn’t going to Cooperstown only because he flied the Marlins’ Josh Willingham to Cliff Floyd in left at Shea Stadium on September 18, 2006, and he induced L.A. pinch-hitter Ramon Martinez to foul out to right fielder Shawn Green at Dodger Stadium on October 7, 2006. But when his plaque is unveiled this July and the “NEW YORK, N.L., 2006–2009” line jumps out at us, those two pitches ought to fill our consciousness and inspire us to clap or whoop or whatever we did when Floyd and Green cradled what Wagner threw.
As noted, we don’t get those situations every day, let alone every year. When Billy was called upon to pitch the ninth in the prospective division clincher in 2006, it was the first time in six years a Met was tasked with putting the Mets in the playoffs. The same time span stood in terms of the Mets advancing within a postseason when he got the ball to finish off the Division Series. In neither case was Wagner credited with a save, as the leads he protected were four runs apiece. Yet the manager, Willie Randolph, had Billy Wagner in his bullpen and high-end sparkling wine on ice. Who else was he going to call?
When Billy, lately of the Phillies, hit the open market after the 2005 season, he made all the sense in the world as a Met target. The 2005 Mets were pretty darn good. Flushing eyes focused on approaching greatness. As dominant a closer as the National League had experienced for the previous decade was available. The Mets needed somebody in that role. They went for the best they could get their hands on.
Oh, those 2006 Mets. They were beautiful for many reasons. One of them was surely Billy Wagner, he of 38 saves built on a strikeout rate of 11.7 per nine innings. Any nine Wagner innings would be accumulated over approximately nine games, but they were almost always critical and they were mostly completed successfully. A few stand out as having gone awry. Just a few. They stand out because that’s how we’ve conditioned ourselves to process closers.
Wagner closed out the division and the Division Series. It was a small sample size compared to all the sizzling Hall credentials he established as an Astro between 1995 and 2003 before he split for Philadelphia, and they were merely two appearances in the scheme of 189, regular and post, as a Met. An injury stopped him cold just as the 2008 playoff chase was heating up in earnest. That was his second consecutive All-Star season as a Met, his third as a top-of-mind presence in our thinking. When your team is competing for real and you have a closer you depend on, you think about that man and his operative arm a lot. Billy Wagner was our guy and his left wing was our weapon of choice in those do-or-die spots in 2006, 2007 and 2008. A lot of coming through. A little of shall we say not so much, but only a little. “No regrets” won’t appear on his plaque regarding NEW YORK, N.L., 2006–2009, but we can read between the lines.
Billy’s comeback from injury didn’t return him to the Mets until the summer of 2009 was already a lost cause. He got loose long enough to make himself attractive in trade to Boston, where it was thought he might help push the Red Sox to October (he didn’t). He then found a landing spot in Atlanta, where it was thought he could help the Braves return to October in 2010 (he did). Sixteen seasons finishing games in lights-out fashion, then turning out the lights on his own career before he could appreciably decline. Four-hundred twenty-two saves, still a Top Ten ranking for all of baseball history. Ninth innings upon ninth innings when it appeared he couldn’t be touched and wasn’t. Implosions on occasion, but they were the exception. Fella who wanted the ball and wanted to win in ways that transcended the notion that all pitchers want to pitch and want to win. You can feel it more with some closers than others. You felt it like crazy with this closer.
Now Billy Wagner’s the sixteenth player who played for the Mets who goes into the Hall of Fame as a player, the sixth such pitcher, the first recognized as a reliever. We recognized him coming in twice to get us a couple of the final outs we allow ourselves to dream of. He got them for us. Good for him getting this.
It still hurts seeing him in a Braves uniform. But huge congrats to Billy, he deserves this. Wish we had a Billy Wagner now…