Slouching Towards September

At one end of the rickety Passarelle Boardwalk, the US Open was just getting going. I shared my LIRR train from Woodside with people who were far too clean, fit, and stylish to be going to the other end of those dubious planks. Not exactly a slobs versus snobs scenario, but our differences were palpable. Still, I wished them love, set, and match as their tournament got down to business. I noticed an official program for the Open costs $30. Business must be pretty good over there.

Ends of boardwalks, ends of months, ends of seasons. Tennis drawing crowds to Flushing Meadows is a sure sign that baseball’s season will soon be drawing to a close. Our baseball team sometimes keeps its facility open into October. They will not this year. We figured that out before April was over.

Yet they play on. For a couple of weeks in August, they played on with the kind of joy and verve and poetry that baseball movies slip in between long stretches of competitive indifference. You can be certain only in retrospect when the highest praise an Annie Savoy can muster has diminished to “You have to respect a ballplayer who’s just trying to finish the season.” The Mets just completed their third consecutive series in which they offered earnest if mostly futile opposition to a first-place team. In each case, they lost two out of three. The wins were pretty invigorating, suggesting the joy and verve and poetry has not wholly evaporated from the Met repertoire, but such performances have turned to aberrations. That spurt we relished coming out of the trade deadline overlapped with the inevitable becoming a reality. The 2026 Mets are just trying to finish the season.

On Sunday, in my periodic guise of working press, I decided to keep them company for their oddball start time of 3:10 PM, brought to you in living color by the National Broadcasting Company. The game presumably would have started at 1:40 like every Sunday afternoon Mets home game had NBC not decided ages ago it would make a fine prime time showcase. The game would have started at 7:10 had NBC not eventually judged the Mets must-avoid TV and flexed the hell out of showing it to a larger audience. We were, instead, the warmup act for the Cubs and Reds. Rain delayed the start of festivities at Wrigley. It also got wet for a while at the neighboring Open’s evening sessions, meaning had NBC stuck with the Mets in their original preferred time slot, that would have also been an episode of tarps on.

Mother Nature, like most of us when our team is involved, hates Sunday Night Baseball.

But we on our end of the boardwalk did OK with the weather when it was our oddball time to gather. We didn’t do so hot with the Astros, one of those first-place teams recently benefiting from a Mets-sized cushion in their schedule. They didn’t have to face Nolan McLean, a fact that apparently cheered them immensely and immediately. Three pitches in, their leadoff hitter, Jeremy Peña homered. During his pregame media session, Andy Green said Zac Thornton is regularly “on the attack”. Peña must have heard and attacked Zac.

Thornton’s teammates saw what Peña did and attacked back. Francisco Lindor led off with his own home run, passing Dave Kingman for sixth place on the all-time Met power chart in the process. Juan Soto followed directly behind Lindor and opted to do the same (save for the Kingman part). The first two Mets hit it out of the park! An announcement in the press box alerted us that this was the fifth time that had happened in Mets history. I clearly remembered the first. The announcement clued us into the fourth, or most recent. I watched Bo Bichette single, then spent the next few batters divining, via Stathead, the other two, which I only vaguely remembered.

For the record:

July 12, 2007: Jose Reyes and Ruben Gotay, en route to a Mets win over the Reds at Shea.

August 26, 2016: Reyes and Asdrubal Cabrera, en route to a Mets win over the Phillies at Citi.

June 6, 2019: Amed Rosario and Dom Smith, en route to a Mets win over the Giants at Citi.

October 4, 2022: Brandon Nimmo, Lindor, AND Jeff McNeil, en route to a Mets win over the Nationals at Citi.

Ya had to like the back-to-back-to-win precedent Lindor and Soto brought to bear for August 30, 2026. The Astros, though, didn’t. They tied the game in the second and more or less stopped giving up base hits to the Mets, who built one more run the rest of the day on a walk, a steal, an error, another walk, and a double play grounder in the fifth. That hitless wonder of rally gave the Mets a 3-2 lead. Maybe McLean could have made that stand up. Thornton didn’t have the chance, exiting after five innings and 97 pitches, all his attacking taking a toll. Jonathan Pintaro, usually the Jared Young of middle relief, wasn’t up to task at hand, allowing a two-out double, then a two-run homer to LaMonte Wade, Jr. A messy top of the seventh (featuring Jared Young not exactly being the Keith Hernandez of first base defense) increased the Astros’ edge from 4-3 to 6-3. So it stayed.

The main course wasn’t much, but I can always sate myself with side dishes of Metsoterica.

• I’d been waiting for Chris Devenski to get into a game, and he did, making the righty reliever the 64th Recidivist Met overall. The last time Chris pitched for us was last September 19. The Mets were in a playoff race then. He went to Pittsburgh in the offseason, only to boomerang back. “I am so ready to pitch for the Mets in another playoff race,” he might have thought had he not checked the standings these past eleven months.

• It didn’t happen Sunday, but something I totally missed while happily yammering away with Jason on Wednesday night merits mention in my mind and maybe out loud: Christopher Morel entered the middle game against the Brewers in the top of the fifth after Bichette fouled a ball off his foot in the bottom of the fourth. Bichette was playing third and Brett Baty was playing left. Baty’s a third baseman by trade, so he moved over there. Morel came into play left, not for the first time in his career, but for the first time as a Met. Then, as the Brewers pulled away, Green made more changes in the top of the seventh, among them resting Lindor. Baty shifted to shortstop, and Morel came in to play third. That, too, was not a career first for the versatile Christopher, but a Met first. Had I recognized what was going on in the moment, I might have let out a geek shriek. Anytime the Mets add to their all-time third base roster, I get unreasonably excited. We are now up to 195 Mets third basemen since Don Zimmer got the ball rolling in a not altogether satisfying manner on Opening Night 1962. But what Morel did was its own kind of Amazin’. Among the 195 Mets third basemen, 87 have also played in the outfield for the club, some of that a product of super utility, à la the first Mets 3B-OF Rod Kanehl, some out of front office conviction that this outfielder we have here is sure to solve our longstanding third base problem, the one that started Zip Zimmer went 0-for-34, didn’t make up for it with his glove, and got shipped to Cincinnati for outfielder-third baseman Cliff Cook. Occasionally, it’s been a third baseman nominated to fill an outfield hole (à la Baty once in a while). What made Christopher Morel’s Met left field and third base debuts remarkable is they happened in the same game, a Met first. Such temporal proximity represented a veritable Hot Rod Equinox. Even Kanehl, who Casey Stengel deployed almost everywhere, waited eight days between his Met third base and outfield debuts. Less remarkable was Morel popping up on the second pitch he saw from Josh Hader when he pinch-hit to lead off the ninth on Sunday.

• In Sunday’s game notes — that helpful sheath of stats and info one picks up in the press box as a dilettantish media member — Robert Stock was listed as Monday’s starting pitcher at Tampa Bay for the opener of the Mets’ next series versus a first-place team. Jason and I agreed last week that we’d likely seen the last of Robert Stock (the 63rd Recidivist Met) as one of our starters. Likely isn’t the same as definite, and for Morel’s on third/no, he’s in left reasons, I’m…I was gonna say delighted, but I’ll go with content, 7.40 ERA notwithstanding. Stock is currently tied with Bob Moorhead for most starts made by a Mets pitcher without posting a win. Not long ago, Christian Scott had surpassed Moorhead for this shall we say distinction, but Scott possessed a Met future and you figured he’d eventually go five innings, leave with a lead, and see his reWard. Christian currently has four Met wins to his credit. Good health willing, he will make myriad Met starts in the seasons ahead. For Stock, tonight may very well be it. Yeah, we said that last Wednesday, but the rosters are expanding, Jonah Tong is looking ready, and did we mention that 7.40 ERA attached to a journeyman right arm that was on nobody’s rotation radar before late July? I’d like Robert to not hold the record for most Met starts without a win. I’d like nobody to hold the record for most Met starts without a win, but I think the late Bob Moorhead can handle it. Moorhead made 47 appearances in all as a Met in 1962 and 1965, including 40 in relief. Never posted a win, and held that record until Tylor Bashlor came along in 2018 and 2019 and went winless in 48 appearances out of the Met bullpen. I never noted Bashlor’s drifting past Moorhead when it happened, because I didn’t realize it had happened until I was moved to look up all things related to Robert Stock’s Met winlessness seven years after Bashlor threw his last Met pitch. I must have been happily yammering away with Jason in 2019.

I’m just assuming Tong will be here soon, soon being September, which, per Annie (not Savoy) when she sang her heart out on Broadway, is only a day away. Tong’s been mowing down batters at Syracuse. There will be two extra roster spots. One generally goes to a pitcher. Andy Green didn’t mention any names when, in sportswriter mode, I asked him on Sunday about managing a slightly expanded roster. Having watched certain players recede into the bench and bullpen shadows during his interim tenure, I wondered how much priority he’ll give to keeping 28 players involved down not so much the stretch but the end of the season.

“When you expand the roster to 28,” he told the room, “you ensure there are multiple people who get the short end of the stick from an opportunity standpoint. It’s already that way with 26. Keeping guys in a consistent rhythm is hard with thirteen position players, and the bullpen is often dictated by how long the starters pitch. So you end up in a world where a lot of guys don’t get the opportunity they would love to have happen. That’s pretty typical in September, and we’re definitely not gonna do it like Little League, mandatory couple of innings play situation, but I would suspect everybody gets some measure of opportunity.”

Mind you, Green was a player who lived on the big league bubble; that was his status when I first spoke to him, loudly and ostentatiously from Promenade seventeen Augusts ago, as Jerry Manuel also mostly eschewed the aforementioned Little League rule. (even the 2009 Mets were technically big league). Yet it used to be, when teams could expand rosters from 25 to a conceivable 40, that opportunities arose a little more for final-month callups, if not every final-month callup. “It was a different world when they could expand like that,” Andy recalled when one of my colleagues for the day followed up on the topic. “I was often a September callup at that point in time, and I was really good at sitting and watching for most of that month, so I know what that feels like. Honestly, I know what it feels like to make an Opening Day roster and sit for thirty days before you have your first start of the season. Those things are not pleasant, those are tough challenges.”

I’m also really good at sitting and watching, in any month. Not a challenge at all, reasonably pleasant. One of the traditional reasons to sit and watch in September is to ring the New Met bell. You know, “Ding-ding! They’re ACTUALLY putting Mike Glavine in!” Fewer callups and even fewer chances for debuts and cameos means those of who revel in tracking Metsoterica will get the short end of the stick from an opportunity standpoint. Tong’s been here before. A rehabbing Mark Vientos coming back won’t be new news. Devin Williams, Green said, is working his tail off to pitch again before we run out of season. I already wrote his name down in March. It’s possible we’ve seen our final wholly new Met of 2026 already. Then again, people like me have been treated to a season that has encompassed the fifth one-two leadoff home run punch in franchise history, Chris Devenski becoming the 64th Recidivist Met, Christopher Morel becoming the 87th Mets outfielder-third baseman practically all at once, and Robert Stock striving to shake free of the ghost of Bob Moorhead all in a week’s time. I don’t know how much more Metsoteric excitement I could take.

The no cheering in the press box rule isn’t a hard one to abide by, especially when once Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto have finished circling the bases, there isn’t a ton of reason to cheer. My self-control was tested instead during a between-innings trivia segment during which one of Citi Field’s preternaturally upbeat emcees appeared on the big screen with one of Sunday’s 25,000 or so attendees to ask two questions related to the afternoon’s opponent. The first multiple-choice question regarded which Met manager broke in as skipper of the 1994 Astros. Had I been up in Promenade, I would have bellowed out whichever letter was attached to Terry Collins’s name. The average fan on CitiVision chose Jeff Torborg. I muffled my scream of disgust. But the guy, probably too young to remember Torborg or 1994, got a second chance when he was asked to identify which of three former Mets accumulated 500+ hits as a Houston Astro. The correct choice was Rusty Staub. The answer the guy gave was Jeff Kent. I bit down on my game notes so as to not shatter decorum.

I didn’t really show up at Citi to tear some kid standing next to a truck with a microphone in his face a new tailpipe; the past is a foreign country when it’s not your native land. I didn’t even come to gather further evidence of Christopher Morel’s versatility. A couple of Queens-based filmmakers had gotten in touch to let us know they are working on a documentary examining the life of Bill Shea, whose signature stadium was one that probably mostly predated the 0-for-2 trivia-trying youth. Shea’s been gone since 2008. Bill himself left us in 1991. His legacy lives on every time one of us boards a train for Mets-Willets Point with no intention of consuming tennis, or pays an exorbitant amount to park on asphalt that used to hold Shea Stadium. I guess they’re building something else there now. Yet you can’t pave over what Bill Shea did, no matter how ritzy the coming neighborhood casino aspires to be. He was as responsible as anybody for making sure New York’s National League town tendencies remained properly tended. Mets fans of a certain age are intimately familiar with Shea Stadium. Fewer and fewer people know about the man for whom it was named. That’s why these guys I was meeting up with Sunday want to make their documentary. When they asked for a little Faith and Fear perspective on the subject, I was absolutely delighted to contribute.

Since I had to dress like an objective media member on Sunday, I couldn’t be in full fan regalia without doing multiple wardrobe changes between acts. I could, however, wear under my respectable blue button-down a t-shirt some thoughtful entrepreneur sent me the first year of Citi Field. It reads I’M CALLING IT SHEA. I don’t really call Citi Field Shea Stadium, but I appreciate the sentiment. I’m not the only one. Ambling over to Citi on the boardwalk, before I had buttoned up my button-down, another gameday commuter stopped me: “Excuse me, I just have to say I LOVE your shirt.” I’ve been hearing it since 2009.

The gentleman who was filming me (himself loyal to his deGROM 48 jersey) also loved my shirt when I showed him I had it on behind the buttons. After he got through with his questions on what Bill Shea meant and still means to New York baseball, he asked me to do a Superman-style reveal. I’d unbutton my shirt, and the shirt’s words would emerge. This, I told him, was the first time anybody outside my doctor’s examining room had expressed a desire to see my chest.

Shortly thereafter, I slipped back into my identity as a mild-mannered Mets reporter, heading back to the press box, properly buttoned up and exercising neutrality. Yet as I made my way along the Excelsior level, who do I see but a woman wearing the EXACT same shirt I had underneath. “Excuse me,” I said as I began to unbutton a couple of buttons as uncreepily as I could, “we’re wearing the same shirt.” She gave me a “YEAH!” and an air fist bump before getting away from me ASAP.

The wearing of Shea and the speaking of Shea must have had an effect on the atmosphere. Maybe not at Citi, where miracles are on hold as September approaches, but maybe in Toronto. On Sunday, Max Scherzer rose from his state of dormancy to pitch seven innings of one-hit ball, striking out ten Mariners for the Blue Jays. Max Scherzer was a Met for parts of two interesting seasons at Citi Field, but of greater relevance to my Sunday, he remains the last active major leaguer to have played at Shea Stadium, making it to our ancestral mound in 2008. Time was knowing a player played at Shea was an everyday occurrence. For as little as Andy Green played when he was a Diamondback, he made it into three games for Arizona at Shea Stadium. I was at the first of them, on a Friday night in 2004. I remember it less for his being double-switched into the lineup than I do for the postgame fireworks show that occurred as a result of some vintage chicken tenders. Some night’s Shea’s food made a Mets fan green.

Scherzer’s usually injured or not lasting long when he does pitch. Like that sculpture in the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, he’s 42. But he’s lasted long enough to be, in his own way, the last avatar of Shea. For that, I silently applauded his effort Sunday. For that, I forgave his passing Jerry Koosman on the all-time major league wins list. Koosman had 222. Scherzer now has 223. Both are well ahead of Bob Moorhead.

Moorhead had an intriguing trajectory as a Met. Besides the never notching a win, I mean. He was the first Met to make his major league debut as a Met, in the very first Mets game, the same one in which Don Zimmer touched off the third base countdown. He was the last Met from that first game to still be playing for the Mets three-plus years later, yet he couldn’t rightfully be called The Dean (longest-running Met, à la Ed Kranepool forever and Francisco Lindor these days), because while he never pitched for another big league team, he did sorta/kinda wander into the Milwaukee Braves organization for a spell. He was, upon further review, the very first Met Once Removed, a branch of the Recidivist Met tree that grows separately from the Stocks and Devenskis of our world. And, for the purposes of Sunday at Citi, I am intrigued that Bob Moorhead’s first 1965 Met appearance, on August 16, came in a game in which Tug McGraw also pitched.

Tug was exactly two weeks from turning 21 years old, or half a Scherzer, that Monday night at Candlestick Park. I know what his age had to be because I read Screwball for book reports in sixth grade and eighth grade and tenth grade before losing the paperback I’d also read for the fun of it who knows how many times. Tug was born on August 30, 1944. I knew that because of the who knows how many times I’d read it in Screwball. Some stuff, like Shea Stadium’s chicken tenders, leave you quickly and violently. Some other stuff connected to Shea stays with you.

“If you tried to pin that down in history,” Tug wrote alongside collaborator Joe Durso, “it was about eleven weeks after the invasion of Europe in World War II. Gil Hodges was slogging it out on an island in the Pacific somewhere, Ted Williams was flying a marine airplane, Henry Aaron was a ten-year-old kid in Mobile, and Casey Stengel was a fifty-four-year-old manager with Milwaukee in the American Association.” Scrolling one social media app or another during a lull Sunday, I saw that it was Ted Williams’s birthday. I put August 30 and August 30 together, and I realized it was Tug McGraw’s birthday. Ted probably wasn’t much in the mood to celebrate turning 26 the day Tug was born, given his military assignment. But on Sunday, my Met mood, already pretty good despite the 6-3 loss in progress, amped up knowing Max Scherzer, the last Shea survivor, had chosen (or had been chosen by fate) to turn back the clock on Tug McGraw’s birthday, which I was spending next door to where Tug used to pitch, a place I had just spent a bunch of minutes discussing for a movie being made about the man that place had been named for.

To top it off, when I was at Woodside awaiting my train home, I saw an older couple I usually see on Sundays. They get on where I usually get on and wait to return where I inevitably wind up. The husband inevitably wears a Mets shirt that gets my attention. This Sunday he wore a jersey, No. 45. Not for Christian Scott. Not for Zack Wheeler, who also won on Sunday. Not for international baseball icon Pedro Martinez or local baseball icon John Franco or Silent Generation Met Michael Wacha, who won on Friday. (Wacha, Wheeler and Scherzer are three of the seven active major league pitchers with at least 100 career wins who used to be Mets; Jacob deGrom, Carlos Carrasco, Jose Quintana, and Justin Verlander are the others.) This guy’s 45 was for McGRAW, which was stitched onto the back of his top above the number. We’ll overlook for the moment that the font wasn’t regulation and that when Tug was a Met, there were no player names displayed. It was the thought that counted here, and I couldn’t resist going over to him and asking, “Excuse me, sir, but are you wearing Tug McGraw’s jersey today because it’s Tug’s birthday?” The man had no idea of the significance of August 30 vis-à-vis the name and number on his back.

“I’m wearing it because You Gotta Believe.” I agreed, even at the end of a Met August that was just trying to finish the season.