They’re Pullin’ Tylor Megill in the Evenin’

As it’s Father’s Day, allow me this recollection of the night, over dinner, my father decided he needed to read us a poem written by Rudyard Kipling.

What, this type of thing didn’t happen in your kitchen?

This was when I was in seventh grade, so perhaps the impetus was me mentioning, only because I was asked, that we were studying poetry in English class. If so, Dad insisted, I had to go upstairs and find that ancient volume of literature gathering dust in the sloped room. Bring it down, you have to hear this. I did as told. My father opened up the book, found his Kipling, and read aloud, the way he would when he wanted to share something he considered amusing from that day’s Wall Street Journal.

It went on as such for another three stanzas. Not a good day to be Danny Deever, obviously. I remember asking my father what a Files-on-Parade was (a corporal, he said). I didn’t ask why he considered this a great poem. He just said it was a great poem, so I accepted it as a great poem. I think I used it for whatever assignment spurred his presentation. “‘Danny Deever’ by Rudyard Kipling is a poem that…” I probably turned in the assignment late. For two years, every grade I received in English arrived with ten points removed for lateness. Perhaps it was a reaction to the fate of Danny Deever. If they can’t find me in the mornin’, I won’t be subject to hangin’. Or maybe I was just an all-district procrastinator.

I’ve rarely thought of the poem since junior high, but I thought of poor ol’ Danny Deever Saturday night in the wake of poor ol’ Tylor Megill getting proverbially strung up by the Tampa Bay Rays at Citi Field. Two reasons, I’m guessing.

1) Tylor’s outing, like Danny Deever’s fate, was pretty sad.

2) My dad would have liked the name “Tylor Megill”.

The name is Megill, not McGill, but knowing my dad, he would have impishly pronounced it with an Irish accent. “Ah, poor ol’ Tylor McGill, strafed for so many runs in so little time.” My dad had a thing about Irish or very Irish-sounding names. When he rallied his baseball consciousness one final instance for the 2015 pennant drive, it was Daniel Murphy more than any Met who got his attention, not because Murph hit all those home runs, I’m convinced, but because he grew up around a lot of Muprhs and the like in Jackson Heights. One of the few Jews in his neighborhood, he became good friends with some of the Irish kids. Some other Irish kids also became his worst enemies. Either way, he seemed to maintain a strand of fascination with those who were or might be Irish.

Until the mid-’80s Mets pulled both my parents into their orbit, Dad generally didn’t watch enough baseball to gather awareness of too many players of any background. Yet he managed to take notice of the emergence of benchwarming rookie infielder Brian Doyle in the 1978 postseason when, unfortunately, the Yankees were too big a story to ignore. Thrust into a starting role after Willie Randolph was injured, Brian hit like crazy for the Yankees the way Al Weis hit like crazy for the Mets in the 1969 World Series. Every time Brian Doyle did something, the announcers would mention that Brian Doyle was the brother of veteran major leaguer Denny Doyle, and with their other brother Blake Doyle, they ran a baseball school in Florida in the winter. My father had never heard of Denny Doyle before all this, but the idea of the Doyle Brothers tickled him no end. “Dinny” Doyle, he called him, as he effected his idea of an Irish brogue, the way he had for Danny Deever: “After the season, Brian Doyle and his brother Dinny Doyle will get together with their brother Blake Doyle and teach others to hit like the Doyles.” It was a running joke in our house that lasted clear to Thanksgiving.

Had Dad lived long enough to know of Tylor Megill, I’m confident he would have conferred honorary Irishness upon Saturday’s losing pitcher…or more of it in case Megill is already Irish. Whether Tylor is or isn’t (I have no idea), he surely didn’t have the luck of the Irish with him versus the Rays. Nor the luck of any ethnic group. Against Tampa Bay’s band of Yandy and Junior and Jonathan and Jake and Kameron with a K and two guys spelled L-O-W-E but they pronounce it differently, Megill didn’t make it through four innings. By the time he could no longer be left to fend for himself, our beleaguered righty received ten well-meaning but ultimately mournful “get ’em next time” taps to the butt.

I counted. Three from the glove of shortstop Francisco Lindor. One from the glove of second baseman Brett Baty. Three from the glove of third baseman Ronny Mauricio. Two from the mitt of first baseman Pete Alonso. And one, ungloved and more of a slap than a pat, from Carlos Mendoza, as the skipper came to ceremoniously remove the ball from Tylor’s glove and Tylor from the game altogether. Megill seemed utterly unconsoled by his infield’s and manager’s ritual show of empathy. The fans in the stands on this gloomy late Saturday afternoon that had become an even gloomier early Saturday evening showed nothing of the kind as Tylor made his long march to the Met dugout. A traffic jam of boos in Flushing was backed up to Jackson Heights.

The fight hadn’t exactly gone out of the Mets by then, but they lacked a certain life. They hit Tampa Bay’s starter Drew Rasmussen well, but to not enough avail. Four relievers — one of whom, Cole Sulser, once wore a Mets uniform the way his penmates Edwin Uceta and Eric Orze had (briefly and without distinction) — scattered hits and walks, but no runs. The Mets lost, 8-4, outdoors, after a rain delay, to a team that only recently got the hang of hosting home games somewhere other than indoors. The Rays are always sneaky good. The Mets have chosen this weekend to be openly bad. It had been such a splendid week, too.

Still, with the Mets holding a reasonably robust lead in the National League East, I’m confident my father would have maintained enough whimsy to have gotten a kick out of Tylor Megill, or at least his aura. My mother, on the other hand, would have wanted only to have kicked Tylor Megill for pitching as he did. But it’s not Mother’s Day today, is it?