We Won and the Fellas Look Good

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Good start to a famous Russian novel; excellent advice for baseball bloggers. It’s easier to write about miserable failing baseball teams than it is to write about happy successful ones. Angst and agita drive clicks and sports-radio hits and they also generate pixels, whether your subject is the distance between where you are now and success (agonizingly close? depressingly distant?), the paranoia that the current misery is intentionally inflicted, or when all else fails that old standby of bemoaning why a benevolent deity would allow what’s been happening to keep happening. (While I’m no theologian, I can help you with that last one: The baseball gods aren’t benevolent.)

Contrast all that with, well, We won and the fellas look good.

Still, Tuesday night’s win did generate its share of pixels, and for happy, not-so-alike reasons.

The Mets beat the Diamondbacks 8-3, one of those contests that wasn’t as close as the final score indicated. The W went to David Peterson, supported by a relentless offensive attack: Home runs from Francisco Lindor and Starling Marte were the warmup acts for a Pete Alonso blast that would have prompted a 70s color guy to cackle that a stewardess should have been aboard that one.

Peterson also benefited from an impressive show of defense: Alonso made two nifty plays, but up 7-0 in the top of the fourth, the Mets packed a month’s worth of highlight-reel plays into one frame. First came a magic-trick grounder that tipped off Mark Vientos‘ glove right to Lindor, who spun and fired it to Alonso to keep Randal Grichuk off base. Next came an extraordinary catch by Tyrone Taylor, who used a perfect read and first step to close ground on a Lourdes Gurriel Jr. drive into the left-field gap, diving on the warning track to snag the ball and just avoid contact with Jose Azocar. It was the kind of sequence you see in a superhero movie and mutter that the CGI looks impressive but needs a little more grounding in physics. Then came a bolt to Lindor’s backhand, which he coolly snagged and sent Pete’s way to erase Eugenio Suarez.

A pessimist might point out that Peterson was more lucky than good, as evidenced by the above; an optimist would note that Peterson was handed a big lead and pitched to contact, the kind of thing one wishes pitchers had the wisdom to do more often. Not even a pessimist could find fault with Jose Butto‘s relief outing — he looked very sharp after a string of worrisome appearances. Then came the latest mayfly Met — Kevin Herget was called up following Jose Urena‘s lone appearance, and will now be sent back down for Brandon Waddell, who will almost certainly then be sent down himself for yet another newcomer. Some of this reshuffling was needed because of the Mets’ current long stretch without an off-day; it was also necessary because A.J. Minter will be out for some time, possibly until next year. Minter’s replacement might ultimately turn out to be Brooks Raley, a move I was pleasantly surprised to see evolve from rumor to reality: Raley never struck me as the kind of player who takes to New York, so his return to the fold merits a little extra welcome.

In case you were worried, Urena and Herget had cards ready to be added to The Holy Books, as did Justin Hagenman; I’ve also got one set aside for Waddell and some other guys lurking in Triple-A. I went out and secured those cards during the deeps of winter when I wanted baseball to hurry up and get here faster. Then I pretty much forgot I’d done that and was pleasantly surprised to see that Past Me had been so thoughtful.

Baseball cards played a cameo in SNY’s broadcast once the outcome became academic, with a mint-condition, posterior-focused 1984 Topps Keith Hernandez spotted in the crowd emerging as a source of merriment for Gary Cohen and mock pique from the principal. Kudos to the kid who brought that card to Citi Field for sensing a good visual and parlaying it into a visit to the booth (with a piece of birthday cheesecake, no less!), though I’ll admit I was aghast that a 41-year-old card in beautiful condition was out there in the wild without so much as a plastic protective sleeve.

To stick with this theme, an odd sidelight of modern card collecting is that each spring Topps produces “factory team sets” for all 30 big-league clubs — they’re the blister packs you’ll find in ballpark team stores. Factory team sets are refreshingly simple and old school, a relief given modern cards’ relentless focus on stars and relics and holographs and other bric-a-brac. Factory team sets don’t have any of that but are essentially some marketing team’s first draft of the roster: You get most of the guys from Topps Series 1, a few obvious stars who won’t be in general circulation until Topps Series 2, and more obscure guys you won’t see until the Update set, if you see them at all. As an incorrigible baseball-card dork, it’s the obscure guys who excite me the most, as some of their factory team-set cards turn out to be unique.

So Topps’ Mets team factory set has nice cards for Alonso, Kodai Senga, Sean Manaea and Luisangel Acuna that are almost certainly the same as the ones we’ll get in Series 2. But it also includes cards for Harrison Bader and Jose Iglesias that will only ever appear here, since those beloved ’24 Mets are now the property of the Twins and Padres. And the big draw is a Juan Soto Mets card, which shows him Photoshopped (very nicely, I’ll add) into a Mets road uni.

Here’s the thing, though: It’s last year’s road uni, the iconic design that’s been lamentably discarded in favor of the putrid new Canal Street knockoffs. Soto is pictured in a uniform he’s never worn and that this tradition-minded Mets fan fears he never will wear. Maybe decades from now some kid will bring a 2025 NYM-16 to the booth for Soto to chuckle at and autograph.

But hey, a plea to that as yet unborn kid: Put it in a sleeve, will ya?